The Truth of the Matter
Wendover brought out cigars and cigarettes, and endeavoured to make
his guests as comfortable as possible without too much fuss. It was
some days after the affair at the Maze which had ended in Ernest
Shandon’s suicide; and Sir Clinton had asked his host to invite
Stenness and Ardsley to dinner. The Squire had at first objected to
the toxicologist, for his prejudices were quite unabated; but Sir
Clinton had made it clear that Ardsley’s presence was essential from
his point of view, and Wendover had given way without too much
argument. Dinner had passed off without any friction, for the Squire
was not the sort of person to abuse his position as a host.
Sir Clinton picked out a cigar and cut it with some care.
“I hear we may congratulate you on your engagement, Stenness,” he
said. “I suppose it’s rather early to ask when you’re going to be
married?”
Stenness looked across the room, rather as though he were in doubt
about the intention behind the question.
“I’ll have to make some money first,” he answered. “One can’t live on
somebody else’s income.”
Sir Clinton laughed.
“Some people don’t seem to find it so hard as all that. But if that’s
your difficulty, perhaps I could do something for you. I’ve some small
influence in South Africa, and it so happens that a man out there
asked me to look round for someone to fill a post. The pay’s good
enough to marry on. I’ll come across to-morrow to Whistlefield in the
morning and talk to you about it. My impression is that it would suit
you. And it has one big advantage. It would take you both out of your
old surroundings and make a clean break with all this affair, which
would hang round your neck if you stayed in this country. People will
talk, no matter what happens; and Miss Hawkhurst couldn’t help knowing
they were talking if she stayed on here.”
He paused to light his cigar before he continued.
“And that brings me to my reason for getting you people together
to-night. None of you are likely to talk; but you’d be hardly human if
you didn’t think about this Whistlefield affair. And it’s on the cards
that you might fall into misapprehensions over it, which might lead to
difficulties. I’ve come to the conclusion that it will be better if
you know all that I know myself about it; and I think that will clear
the whole thing up and let you get it out of your minds. Once a
puzzle’s solved, no one troubles about it any more; but even a trace
of mystery will keep one worrying spasmodically and so one can’t put
the matter aside for good.”
He glanced round the group and he could see that his suggestion met
with the approval of them all.
“Very well. You must bear in mind, first of all, that I’m going to
give you a mixture of facts and theories. I can’t guarantee that every
detail will be absolutely accurate, for some of it’s guess-work on my
part.”
“Go ahead,” said Wendover. “We understand that well enough.”
“One thing that most people forget when they read about a police case
in the papers,” continued Sir Clinton, “is the handicap of local
knowledge. On the face of it, any one of you three had a better chance
than I had of getting to the bottom of the Whistlefield affair. All of
you had some knowledge of the characters of the people involved; each
of you at any rate knew his own part in the business: but a detective
coming in from the outside sees nothing before him but a group of
strangers with totally unpredictable qualities. He has all that
lee-way to make up before he even starts level with you—and he hasn’t
much time to pick up his information.”
“That’s true,” said Stenness, thoughtfully. “I’d never looked at it in
that light. The police have a harder job than I thought.”
“There’s a countervailing advantage, of course,” Sir Clinton hastened
to admit. “A detective comes to a case with no preconceived ideas
about character. The actors are all strangers to him; and he has to
depend on his wits and his judgment entirely. That was my position
when I came into the Whistlefield case. I knew none of you personally,
and I was quite free from prejudices about you.”
“Facts are more important than opinions in a case of this sort, so
that really leaves a balance in your favour,” Ardsley suggested.
“Quite true—once you’ve got your facts,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Now
let’s take the facts in the order that they presented themselves. The
things I saw when I was called to the Maze were plain enough. An
airgun had been used to fire poisoned darts. Roger Shandon had been
hit in the shoulders and the neck; Neville Shandon had been struck
rather lower down in the body. There had been no attempt at robbery,
except for the tearing away of the sheet of notes in Neville’s hand.
Loopholes had been cut in the hedge, evidently beforehand—for no one
would start cutting loopholes with his victim a few yards away. A box
of darts had been spilt at the loophole from which Roger Shandon was
shot. The murderer had managed to dodge either Miss Forrest or young
Torrance, or both of them, as he made his way out of the Maze.
Finally, my dog proved that the murderer had followed a very
round-about track in leaving the Maze. He got out near the river bank.
He went across to a clump of trees, on one of which there was a mark
about three feet off the ground. Then he had gone across the grass to
the road. And when he reached the road, his trail stopped short.”
“Yes,” Wendover interjected, “you talked a lot of rot about the
murderer getting into his private aeroplane and flying away, I
remember.”
Sir Clinton smiled slightly.
“I was near enough for all practical purposes, as you’ll see, Squire.
Now we come to what I thought it reasonable to infer from the facts.
First of all, an air-gun can be fired by either a man or a woman, so
the weapon didn’t even suggest the sex of the criminal. The poison was
obviously going to be a good clue; for it made the crime abnormal, so
to speak; and the more uncommon the method is in a murder, the more
you limit the possibilities in the identity of the murderer. Next, it
was clear enough that Roger had been shot while he was sitting in his
chair with his back to the murderer. In that position, only his
shoulders and neck would be exposed as targets and it was there that
he was hit. Neville, on the other hand, had been shot from the front
or slightly to the side. That suggested the possibility that Roger
might have been killed in mistake for Neville, whereas Neville could
not have been mistaken for Roger, since the murderer, shooting from
the front or side, could see his face as he fired.”
“Did you lay much stress on that in your mind?” Stenness asked.
“Not much at the time. It suggested that Roger might have been killed
first of all, by mistake, and that Neville was the man the murderer
was really after. But alone, it amounted to very little. Then comes
the fact that nothing seemed to have been removed from either body,
except the notes torn out of Neville’s hand. Of course, I’d been
following the Hackleton case; and it was clear enough that Neville
Shandon might have been put out of the way to keep him from examining
Hackleton. That’s been done before—remember how Maître Labori was shot
in the back as he was going into Court to examine General Mercier
during the Dreyfus case. I merely docketed that in my memory and kept
an open mind on the point. I hadn’t enough data to make it worth while
doing more.
“The next point was the discovery of the loopholes. That established
premeditation—the crime had been thought out and prepared for
beforehand. And that meant, further, that the murderer was someone who
knew that one or other of the Shandons was likely to be in the Maze
that afternoon or at least at some time thereabouts. That looked like
a local criminal at first sight. But one has to be judicial; and it
was clear enough that a premeditated crime might have been preceded by
a good deal of quiet spying; and thus an outsider might have got to
know the Shandons’ habits. One couldn’t lay much stress on that.”
“So at that point you didn’t know whether the Hackleton case came in
or not?” Stenness asked.
“No. I simply kept an open mind on the point. Now the next thing was
the box of darts which Skene found scattered about. That was easy
enough to read. The murderer must have fumbled while he was shooting
Roger—because the box was at Roger’s loophole. He was in a deadly
hurry, or he’d have picked them up then. Evidently he’d something else
to do in a hurry and he meant to come back for the darts. Isn’t it
clear enough that when he’d shot Roger, he saw the face after he’d
fired; and he realised he’d hit the wrong man. Neville had still to be
reckoned with—and it looks to me as if the murderer had counted on
Neville being in the Maze just then. I expect he had private
information. So he grabbed three darts from the ground and rushed off
to finish Neville, which he did. Neville may have been alarmed by
something, which would account for his standing up when he was shot
at. Then the murderer proposes to go back for his lost darts. But now
he finds someone else in the Maze. He hears voices. Probably he finds
his road back to Helen’s Bower blocked by these strangers. So he runs
as hard as he can to get rid of his air-gun, which is the deadly
evidence against him. But he gets into difficulties in avoiding these
unknown people in the Maze and it takes him some time to get out.”
“Did you suspect anyone in particular at that point?” Wendover
interrupted.
“It might have been young Torrance, of course,” Sir Clinton admitted.
“He might have doubled his own part with that of the murderer. I kept
an open mind.”
“I suppose it might have been Miss Forrest, if you take everyone into
account,” Ardsley commented.
“I didn’t speculate much at the time,” Sir Clinton answered. “What
really started me thinking definitely was the clue that my dog gave
us. He led us, you remember, by a very winding track through the
Maze—evidently the turnings and windings were due to the murderer
dodging someone in the alleys. Then we came near the river—that
suggested that he flung away his air-gun into the water as he passed.
Then the dog led us to a tree in a small clump near by. Wendover
noticed a mark on the trunk of the tree, about three feet off the
ground, and he suggested that it had been made by the boot of the
murderer while he was trying to climb the tree. But after that the
trail went on and reached the road—and there it stopped dead. The dog
simply baulked there; it found nothing further.”
Sir Clinton paused for a moment to let this point sink in.
“A trail can only stop dead in that way for either of two reasons.
First, a man may stand still and wait. But since the man wasn’t there
he obviously hadn’t waited. The only other way in which a thing like
that could happen is by the man getting into the air off the road at
that point.”
“Ha! The private aeroplane, I suppose,” said Wendover sarcastically.
Sir Clinton’s retort crushed the Squire slightly.
“Or the private motor—or even the humble push-bike. If you step into a
car or get on to a bicycle your trail will stop so far as footsteps
are concerned.”
Wendover admitted the hit.
“What an ass I was not to see that at once. And of course the road was
bone-hard and had no dust on it, so he left no track of his tyres?”
“None that I could swear to. Now that bicycle settled a good deal. It
cleared at once Torrance, Miss Forrest, and most probably Costock as
well. I may say at once that I never took Costock seriously. He’s a
miserable creature who couldn’t screw himself up to murder if he
tried. I had him watched; but I never really suspected him of anything
beyond a futile attempt at blackmailing Roger Shandon. He hadn’t even
the nerve for that. His pistol was really for self-defence against
Shandon, I’m sure, just as he said it was.”
Wendover harked back to the problem of the track.
“You seem very sure it was a bicycle and not a motor car.”
“Isn’t it fairly certain?” Sir Clinton asked. “If the murderer had
used a car, he’d have been seen by the lodge-keepers if he left the
grounds—at least he’d have run that risk. But a bicycle can be carried
off the road by hand and taken through a gap in a hedge quite easily.
Since the murderer evidently would not want to be seen, the bicycle is
the obvious thing. Call it a bicycle, anyway, for convenience just
now. My trouble was that I couldn’t prove which way the bicycle went:
whether it went towards the house or towards the East Gate. I left the
matter alone for the time, hoping for something else to turn up. Of
course, I set my men at work to hunt for any bicycle that had been
concealed in the grounds; but they failed to find it.”
“Why didn’t you make inquiries about bicycles at Whistlefield?”
Wendover demanded.
“Because I wanted to keep my thumb on the bicycle question. I didn’t
want to get the name of being too clever—so far as the murderer was
concerned. It was far better to let him think his method was
undetected.”
“So at that point,” Stenness put in, “you didn’t know whether the
murderer had gone back to the house or had gone outside the grounds?”
“No,” Sir Clinton admitted. “I didn’t. The next thing, if you
remember, was my visit to the house and my interviews with various
people, yourself included. Bear in mind that at that time, I didn’t
know whether the murderer was one of the house group or had come in
like a bolt from the blue from outside. I had to get that point
cleared up as soon as possible; and it offered a good deal of
difficulty.
“When I came to interview the various people at the house, it was
simply a case of meeting a number of strangers for the first time. I
had to pick up what I could, and at the same time take care not to be
prejudiced by initial impressions. That’s more difficult than you’d
think. Torrance and Miss Forrest were cleared already, so I did not
need to pay much attention to them, apart from their evidence. You,
Stenness, gave me a bit of trouble, I admit. I couldn’t quite make you
out at that time.”
Stenness acknowledged this with a faint smile. Sir Clinton hastened on
with his narrative without giving either of the others a chance of
interrupting.
“Arthur Hawkhurst caused me some thought, though. Stenness gave me a
hint about his attack of sleepy sickness. He came in with an air-gun
in his hand. He seemed an irresponsible sort of boy. But that was all.
There’s a big chasm between that and homicidal mania. I simply
docketed him in my memory and left the matter there.”
At this point Sir Clinton seemed to find his narrative growing more
interesting to himself. He pulled himself up in his chair and glanced
round his audience before taking up the next part of his subject.
“Ernest Shandon was the final figure—for, of course, I dismissed Miss
Hawkhurst at once. Now at first sight, friend Ernest was an
unattractive fellow. First, he was obviously callous in the extreme.
He didn’t seem sorry about his brothers’ deaths; his sore toe bulked
far more prominently in his conversation. That seemed a bit grotesque
to me at the time. It stuck in my memory on that account alone. Then,
second, he seemed absolutely selfish. His ego seemed to be the only
thing that really interested him. He wanted his tea; and he meant to
have it, too. That seemed a bit abnormal, though one can’t hang a man
for wanting his tea, of course. Third, he gave me the impression of
being one of the dullest and stupidest men that one could wish to
meet. Altogether, one would say, there wasn’t much to be got out of a
person of that type: dull, selfish, callous, and stupid. And yet, if
you look back now, you’ll see that the whole basis of the Shandon
tragedies lies in just those qualities. It’ll be quite clear when we
come to it.
“I’ve pointed out that my difficulty was to fix as soon as possible
whether this was ‘an inside job’ or one carried through by an
outsider. Also, quite possibly there might be more trouble at
Whistlefield. Now I’d taken particular care to note that the murderer
knew the Maze thoroughly. So as a wild shot I dropped the hint about
Ariadne’s clue—the thread which would guide a man through the Maze if
he didn’t know it very well. I flung that down casually. I hadn’t
really much hope of doing much with it; for I hardly believed in
further trouble then. But it would do no harm, so I dropped the
suggestion in presence of some of the possible criminals.”
“H’m! Now I begin to see some light,” Wendover commented.
“The next point was the nature of the poison,” Sir Clinton went on.
“The local doctor suggested you, Ardsley, as an expert; so I went over
at once to get your views. Once I knew it was curare, I felt I’d got
something definite enough to go on. That isn’t common stuff. Of course
you probably had a stock yourself; and I didn’t feel inclined to
interfere with you. I thought it fairly clear that if you had gone on
the murder tack you’d have avoided a stuff which could be traced to
you directly. So I asked about any other local source, and you put me
on to the pot in the Whistlefield museum.
“That put a different complexion on the whole case. It was evidently
essential to get hold of that supply immediately. If the murderer had
drawn a private stock from the pot, we couldn’t help that. If he had
just used enough to poison his darts, then we could stop further
supplies by confiscating the pot. So I packed you and Wendover off to
secure it.”
“Wendover being to watch me, I suppose?” Ardsley put in with a grim
smile.
“I won’t deny it. You’d have done the same in my place,” Sir Clinton
pointed out.
“Why didn’t you come yourself?” Wendover inquired.
“Because I’d something else on hand that had to be done in a hurry. I
must confess frankly that I’d nothing definite to go on. It was mere
intuition, if you like; or you can call it a case of taking
precautions against eventualities which one doesn’t expect to occur.
It was rather like the business of Ariadne’s clue—a long shot which
might come off. And I thought it had more chance of bearing fruit.
These poisoned darts were clues of a sort. They were also weapons. So
if the murderer got a chance of grabbing them, I thought he might be
tempted. But I wasn’t going to let him have the real things, not
likely. I gave him a substitute, quite similar in appearance, but
really quite harmless. Then if he tried any more of his games, the
chances were that he’d use the darts I gave him; and do no great harm
with them. Even if he had one or two deadly darts left, he’d be sure
to mix the lot together, and that reduced the risk of poison in a dart
chosen at random from the mixture of deadly and harmless ones.
“So, when we were passing through the village, I got you to drop me,
Wendover; and I bought some darts, drilled them like the deadly ones,
faked them to match with Condy’s fluid, put some litmus in so as to
make my lot easily recognisable by a simple test, and then I was
ready. Incidentally, I think I got the reputation of being quite mad.
I needed a tin to keep the deadly darts in—I wasn’t going to have them
loose in my pocket—and I had to leave the real tin for the murderer to
pick up if he wanted. So I sent out for some Navy Cut, used the tins
for the lethal darts, and staggered the sergeant down there by
presenting him with the tobacco. He’s still puzzling over it, I guess.
“You know what happened next. I left the sham darts on the mantelpiece
of the museum purposely; and the murderer lifted them. Now as Ardsley
didn’t touch them—he went out of the room in front of me and they were
still lying there—and as Wendover wasn’t the murderer, that left only
you, Stenness, and Miss Hawkhurst, young Hawkhurst and Ernest Shandon,
as possible thieves. If the tin vanished, then I had got down to
pretty narrow limits.”
“I see you’d ruled me out by that time,” Ardsley said.
“Oh, practically,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Of course my convictions were
quite fluid still. I was quite prepared to reconsider things at any
time. The next point was to go over the alibis as well as I could.
Wendover gave me a hand with that. Once one got into that matter, it
was clear enough that the only possible suspects were yourself,
Stenness, young Hawkhurst, you, Ardsley—because I knew nothing about
your doings that day—and finally, somebody with a bicycle. But once
you bring in the bicycle, Ernest Shandon’s alibi falls to bits. I’ll
show you how.
“This is my reconstruction of the murders in the Maze: I don’t say
it’s correct in every detail—only the main outlines are really
important. Ernest Shandon went off with Miss Hawkhurst in the car. I
suspect that he knew his brothers were going to the Maze that
afternoon. He’d already taken his bicycle along and concealed it in a
little plantation near the East Gate; and he’d hidden the air-gun
there as well.
“He got off the car at the East Gate, walked along the road quickly,
and got through the hedge into the plantation. He took out his bicycle
and the air-gun and pedalled as hard as he could go for the Maze. His
one risk was meeting someone on the road. If he’d done that, he’d have
had to postpone his affair until another day. He met no one—it’s a
road hardly anyone walks on, I believe. He got to the Maze, went in to
his loophole commanding Helen’s Bower. There he saw someone whom he
took to be Neville Shandon. I suspect that he had the Hackleton case
at the back of his mind during the planning; and he meant to make it
appear that Neville had been killed on that account. You know
yourselves what a troublesome false trail it turned out to be at the
start.
“My belief is that he was sweating like a pig owing to his sprint up
to the Maze—you must remember that his whole alibi depended on the
time factor and he hadn’t a moment to waste. Very likely his nose was
greasy and he had trouble with his glasses. You remember they were
always going askew or falling off? However it happened, he didn’t
recognise Roger from behind, and he shot him first of all. He shot him
in the neck; and I am led to suppose that Roger didn’t cry out,
because the heavy dose of curare paralysed his vocal muscles almost
immediately.
“Then, as Roger fell, Ernest recognised that he’d blundered. He’d
killed the wrong man; and the Hackleton business wouldn’t serve to
complicate this case. I expect he got flustered—and no great wonder. I
suppose he dropped the darts, his glasses fell off, and altogether he
was in a pretty state of confusion. And there was still Neville to
finish off.
“At that moment, he’d no idea that the Maze wasn’t empty except for
Neville in the other centre. So he abandoned his darts after grabbing
three from the ground; and he went off to kill his other brother
before anything more happened. Bear in mind that speed was everything
to him, and you’ll get some idea of the flurry he must have been in. I
expect he meant to come back for the spilt darts and the tin as soon
as he’d finished Neville.
“We know from the evidence of Torrance and Miss Forrest that the first
murder passed unnoticed so far as they were concerned. They didn’t
even pay any attention to the reports of the air-gun in Roger’s case.
Considering the queer acoustics of the Maze, there’s nothing wonderful
in that. But I think it’s likely enough that Neville Shandon had heard
something; and Ernest just got him as he was standing up and wondering
if he shouldn’t hunt about for the cause of the funny noise he had
heard.
“Whatever the details were, Ernest got him all right; but he shot him
in the body and Neville was able to give a yell or two before he
collapsed. That accounts for the cries that Miss Forrest heard and
also for the air-gun noises. And with that, friend Ernest’s little
troubles suddenly increased; for he heard voices in the Maze as these
two called to each other, and he must have known he was up against
it.”
Sir Clinton’s voice became grave.
“It was a bit of sheer luck that he came across neither of those two
on his way out. He’d have shot them without any hesitation if he
could. My reading of it is that he was hindered in two ways. First,
he’d used up all his darts and daren’t waste time and risk detection
by going back for those that he’d spilt. Secondly, he was losing
time—and time was the essence of his alibi. So he dodged about, no
doubt suffering agonies of terror, and at last he got out of the Maze
safely, undetected. He pitched his gun into the water at once and went
for his bicycle. In lifting it, he scraped the tree with the
brake-handle, I think. He wouldn’t be in a state to do things
cautiously. That was the mark Wendover noticed. He carried his bicycle
across the grass so as not to leave the track of crushed stems that
he’d have made if he’d wheeled it. And then, once on the road, he
mounted—and his trail stopped, so far as the dog was concerned.
“He sprinted down the road to near the East Gate, carried his machine
into the plantation, and concealed it. I set my men to hunt for it;
but they didn’t find it. It’s pure theory; but I think it’s quite
likely he had some tackle ready and hoisted the thing up into a tree.
No ordinary country constable would ever think of looking up into the
air for a bicycle, and it would be well hidden among the leaves. But
that’s mere conjecture.
“Once clear of the bicycle, he got through the hedge again on to the
public road, hurried along it as far as he could and then sat down by
the wayside to wait for the postman’s cart, which he knew was due to
pass along at a fixed time. When the postman came, he had his yarn
ready about his sore toe and all the rest of it.”
“That’s remarkably neat,” said Ardsley. “But if I’d been in your shoes
I wouldn’t have given Ernest Shandon credit for as much brains as all
that.”
“You must remember that I knew nothing about his brains,” Sir Clinton
pointed out. “I’d only seen him in circumstances where one doesn’t
expect brains to come out very strong in most cases. I kept an open
mind about him. All I admitted to myself was that Ernest Shandon
hadn’t a cast-iron alibi after all.”
“Very sound,” Ardsley commended. “You ought to be in the scientific
line, Driffield. Some of us aren’t so cautious.”
“Then came the burglary,” Sir Clinton went on. “On the face of it, it
was possibly genuine, possibly a fake. It might have been a real
attempt to get at something connected with the Hackleton case; or it
might have been the usual blunder of a murderer trying to strengthen
the case against someone else. I didn’t know at the moment. But when
Miss Hawkhurst gave me back the tin of darts that morning and when I’d
found by testing them that they weren’t my faked darts, then I had a
pretty fair notion how things stood. The murderer had been careful not
to steal the tin of darts outright. He’d given me back some _darts_
right enough; they had been faked like mine, only they hadn’t my
litmus in them.
“That told me two things straight away. The murderer was one of the
people in the museum that night and—much more important than that—he
had work still to do, for he wanted those darts at any price. That
gave me some worry, I can tell you; for I couldn’t be absolutely
certain that his teeth were drawn. He might have had a deadly dart or
two in reserve for all I knew. It was a stiff business to be up
against; and really I didn’t feel comfortable.”
“Was that the time you were so perplexed?” Wendover asked.
“Yes.”
“I don’t wonder at it now.”
Sir Clinton brushed this aside.
“Now I’m coming to Ernest Shandon’s first big mistake. In telling me
the story of the burglary, he dragged in a tale about the transactions
relating to his late brother.”
Stenness showed no outward sign of perturbation, but Sir Clinton could
see he was uneasy as to the next stage of the narrative. With a
glance, the Chief Constable reassured him. Stenness, realising that
his affairs would not be brought in, leaned back again in his chair.
“I needn’t go into details about the thing,” Sir Clinton continued.
“All I need say is that it would take a pretty smart man to spot what
Ernest had spotted. And so, naturally, I reconsidered my ideas about
friend Ernest. He wasn’t an ass after all—not by any means. That set
me thinking hard. And what made me think harder was his evident desire
to throw suspicion on you, Stenness. He tried to persuade
me—indirectly—that he was in fear of his life from you.”
“From me?” Stenness asked in amazement.
“I’m telling you the facts,” Sir Clinton contented himself with
pointing out. “Well, the next business was the news that Ernest
himself had been attacked in the Maze. And at that point I began to
feel pretty sure of my ground. It was the most obvious line he could
have taken to divert suspicion from himself. And, what made me more
uneasy, it was a possible preliminary to an attack on someone else.
He’d killed his two brothers. If a third attack was made, he might
come under suspicion—and a breath of suspicion might be enough. So he
boldly faked up an attack on himself next. Then, if still another
attempt was made, who would suspect the poor victim who had nearly
lost his life just a few days earlier?”
“One has to admit he showed some acuteness,” Ardsley said, drily.
“At that point the case began to clear up a little in my mind.
Assuming Ernest to be the murderer, what was he after? The more I
thought about it the clearer it seemed that cash must be at the bottom
of the affair. He wanted money. He’d never worked in his life. How
could he lay his hands on cash? And of course it was as plain as
anything then. If he could kill off his brothers he’d inherit part of
their money—I learned that pretty easily from the fact that there were
no near relations except himself, Arthur and Miss Hawkhurst. But the
craving for money isn’t easily satisfied. Obviously, if he could
eliminate his nephew and niece, he’d be left with not only the whole
of his two brothers’ fortunes, but the Hawkhurst money as well.
“If you look into criminology, you’ll find that the murderer for money
reasons is a fairly definite type. He’s usually clever enough to
devise a fresh method of murder, or of disposing of the body. Apart
from that, he’s not a very brainy type. And he has a terrible knack of
repeating the same method in successive crimes. Suppose you have to
cross a boiling torrent by stepping from stone to stone. You get
across the first time in safety. If you have to cross again, you’ll
choose the same stones as before. You’ve proved them to be safe. Any
other stones may be insecure and may bring you down. Now that’s the
state of mind of the mass-murderer when he goes in for his work. He
carries out his first crime by a novel method. He isn’t detected. So
when he tries his hand again he follows his first procedure slavishly
in all its mean details. These are the safe stepping-stones for him.
Look at the case of Smith, how he repeated all the minutiæ of his
bath-business time after time. Deeming used to put down a fresh cement
floor in a room to cover the bodies of his victims. He did that more
than once. He’d found it safe the first time, you see. If you read up
Burke and Hare’s doings, you’ll find them a steady repetition of the
same method applied without variation. It’s the mark of the
mass-murderer.
“So naturally, I expected the poisoned darts and the air-gun to come
into play again, if Ernest carried his work to a further stage. And I
made up my mind that I’d choose his next victim for him. He made two
deadly slips in that interview he had with us, Wendover. Perhaps you
noticed them?”
Wendover shook his head.
“You told me after our talk with him that I ought to know who the
murderer was; but I didn’t guess it. What slips did he make?”
“The first slip was when he volunteered that he had a bicycle and had
used it to get down to the Maze. Once I had information that he owned
a bicycle, his alibi with the sore toe disappeared instanter from my
mind. His second slip was a worse one. He said to us that he hadn’t
been down to the Maze since the murders. And then he let out that he
knew the position of the loophole through which Roger Shandon was
shot. Speaking of his mythical assailant he said: ‘He was at the same
loophole as he’d used when he killed Roger.’ If he’d never been near
the Maze, how could he have known where that loophole was? Perhaps you
think he might have picked up the information from those who were
there. But if he had, I doubt if he’d have phrased the thing as he
did. He seemed to me to pitch on that description of its position
simply because it was the easiest that came to hand—which meant that
it conveyed something definite to his own mind.
“That finished him, so far as I was concerned. But I took the trouble
to go down to the Maze, just for my own satisfaction. I’d been there
that morning; and I’d noticed gossamer all over the hedge at the
loophole—some of it actually stretching across the hole in the hedge.
When I went down, after interviewing friend Ernest, those gossamer
threads were still there. No gun could possibly have been shoved into
the hole without snapping them. I put my hand in, just to see; and of
course I got it covered with spider’s web.”
“So that was why you cleaned your hand on the hedge and made such a
fuss about spiders!” Wendover exclaimed. “I thought you were simply
fooling——”
“I was certainly in high spirits,” Sir Clinton confessed blandly. “I
think I’d every right to be. I’d got complete confirmation of my
suspicion—though really I didn’t need the confirmatory evidence. Let’s
get on with the story. We picked up friend Ernest’s cigar-case there;
and I kept it. I had a notion that he hadn’t left it there without
some ulterior purpose. And besides, I thought his finger-prints might
come in useful some time. We didn’t need them, as it turned out. It
was merely a precaution on my part. You see, there was very little to
be done with finger-prints on these air-guns. It seems friend Ernest
had carefully organised a grand air-gun shooting competition on the
morning of the day he killed his brothers. He’d had the guns passed
from hand to hand, so that the finger-marks of nearly everyone were
printed on them in addition to his own. Of course, I had the tin box
containing the spurious darts. He’d handled that. But I hardly
troubled to examine it for finger-marks. I was sure he’d use gloves in
touching it.
“Then I found another thing which I half-expected. I’d dropped the
hint about Ariadne’s clue and the possibility of an outsider having to
resort to something of the kind. Well, Wendover and I found some yards
of black thread carefully placed where we couldn’t help seeing it. No
black thread was found when the Shandons were murdered. But after I’d
dropped that hint in Ernest Shandon’s presence, behold! we get the
clue which is meant to suggest an outside murderer. Wasn’t that
evidence, on the whole, quite enough to raise some suspicions about
him?
“Wendover, I may tell you, thought I treated our friend Ernest rather
brutally in our interview after the mythical attack on him. I
certainly told Wendover afterwards that I thought Ernest had had a bad
half-hour. What I meant, Squire, was the bad half-hour he had when he
was laying off his tale to us and wasn’t sure what I thought about it.
That was a stiff time for him. As a matter of fact, I took no pains to
conceal from friend Ernest that I thought his yarn was a mere pack of
lies. I wanted him to feel afraid of me, afraid of what I was getting
at in the Whistlefield case. Then, I felt sure, he’d have a shy at
knocking me out before I became really dangerous.
“To help on that good work, I arranged to play bridge one night at
Whistlefield, so as to let him operate on his own ground. In case of
accidents, I had arranged that Ardsley should come over and take
charge of the casualty. I’d taken most things into account—I had
to—and in case friend Ernest hit anyone else in his flurry, I arranged
with Ardsley that the injured person was to ‘die’ nominally; so that
friend Ernest might be convinced of the efficacy of the faked darts
I’d put into his hands, and might go on to further crimes.
“I needn’t go into that affair. I’m not proud of it. I never intended
to risk Miss Hawkhurst in that way. Of course, I knew at once she
hadn’t been poisoned with curare. But though I’d done my best to
sterilise the faked darts, I was afraid of blood-poisoning setting in.
I spent a bad time over it, I can tell you. One can never be sure in a
case like that.
“Well, there we were. He’d managed to nip back into the winter-garden
before Wendover got after him. He believed Miss Hawkhurst was dead and
only Arthur’s life stood between him and the whole of the
Shandon-Hawkhurst money. By this time, like all successful
mass-murderers, he’d begun to feel a complete contempt for the risk of
detection. See Burke and Hare.
“So young Hawkhurst was marked down. And this time, friend Ernest
meant to have a perfect alibi. He must have guessed that I suspected
his other one; and he’d made up his mind to avert even a shadow of
suspicion. He’d stay under my eye at the very time that murder was
being done in the Maze; nearly a mile away. That was a master-stroke,
I admit.
“He used his cigar-case to bait the trap—got Arthur’s back up very
skilfully on the point of cowardice. And beforehand he’d set a
booby-trap. He’d fixed the air-gun in position to shoot at the right
level; and he’d arranged a thread to the trigger. When young Hawkhurst
came to the entrance to the Maze he stepped against the thread
stretched across the opening; the gun went off; and the dart hit him
near the heart. So simple! And then Ernest came down with us; stumbled
‘accidentally’ over the air-gun; tore away the thread from the trigger
before handing the gun to us. And then he ‘found’ Ariadne’s clue for
us—the thread he’d laid down as a blind, to make us think it was a
stranger at work, someone operating from the river.”
“He was cleverer than I gave him credit for,” Stenness confessed,
rather grudgingly. “I always thought him a dull brute.”
“The contents of Roger Shandon’s will took away my last doubts,” Sir
Clinton went on. “Besides that, I’d tested the dart he’d used against
Miss Hawkhurst and found it was one of the faked lot stolen from the
museum that night. So by then the only question was: ‘What should be
done with friend Ernest?’”
Sir Clinton paused and lit a fresh cigar before going on to the end of
his narrative. When he spoke once more his audience was rather
surprised by this theme.
“There’s always a good deal of talk in the newspapers from time to
time about ‘unexplained mysteries,’ ‘unsolved crimes,’ ‘police
inefficiency,’ and so forth. Now I’ll put a case to you. Suppose you
were a detective engaged on some beastly case like the Jack-the-Ripper
business. And suppose you discovered in the end that the criminal was
a lunatic—as Jack-the-Ripper obviously was. And, finally, suppose that
his insanity has been discovered and that he’s been put into an asylum
since his latest crime. What would you do? Would you publish your
results? Even if he weren’t already in an asylum, what could you do?
Try him, and get him sent to Broadmoor? For you couldn’t hang him,
since he’s insane. Would you do that? If you did, the net result would
be that you’d spatter all his innocent relations with the mud of his
crime; and you’d do no good at all. There are some sleeping dogs that
are best left lying. Mind, I’m giving you merely my own private view.
I don’t mean that you can take that to represent police procedure. I’m
simply telling you how I feel about the business.”
Ardsley nodded in agreement.
“So long as a brute gets his deserts, it doesn’t seem to me to matter
how he gets them. And I agree with you about making an innocent family
suffer through no fault of their own.”
Sir Clinton acknowledged Ardsley’s support.
“That’s how I looked at the Shandon case,” he said. “I could have
arrested the brute. Then we’d have had a trial. And the Hawkhursts
would have been branded as relatives of a murderer. I thought things
could be done just as efficiently by making Ernest Shandon his own
executioner. In fact, my method was a stiffer one than mere hanging,
as you know. And if it failed—well, the law would take its normal
course.
“I’d found a suit-case packed ready in the Maze on the night that
young Hawkhurst was attacked. I expected something of the sort and
went specially to look for it. I’d a notion that he wouldn’t care to
sneak out of the house with a suit-case in his hand at the last
moment, if he bolted. He’d have it cached somewhere, so that he could
leave with empty hands, quite unsuspicious, you know. I knew he’d need
a complete change of clothes so as to be able to alter his appearance
and put the hue and cry off his track. He’d shown a penchant for the
Maze all along. He’d even dragged it into his story of the attack on
himself; so it was clear he had it very much in mind. I banked on that
when I looked there for his suit-case. It was a good enough choice. He
could sneak out of the house, pick up the suit-case, go across to the
boat-house, and row himself down to the village without having to be
seen carrying the bag on the public road at all—quite a good plan, if
you ask me.”
“I hadn’t seen why he went to the Maze, I admit,” said Stenness. “It
seemed rather like a bit of magic on your part to have foreseen that.”
“Once I’d found the suit-case,” Sir Clinton went on, “all that
remained was to arrange the moment for his bolt, so that I could grip
him. There was no use waiting on his good pleasure to fix the time. I
gave him a plain hint that I’d be glad to see him go—let him think I
wanted to avoid the scandal of a trial. There was no lying in that. I
certainly did want to avoid putting him in the dock.
“Now as it happened, Stenness had been realising some capital at that
time; so I got him to put his cash into the study safe that night. And
I told friend Ernest that the money was there—a good round sum. That
gave him the sinews of war for his bolt, free of charge, you see? He’d
only to grab it in passing. And as soon as I felt he was nibbling, I
telephoned a code-message to the police-station: some rot about Navy
Cut tobacco. From that prearranged message, they knew they’d only to
open an envelope and carry out their sealed orders which I’d left with
them. They came up to the Maze during the night; watched Ernest into
it about 6 a.m.—I’d been keeping an eye on his room during the night,
so he couldn’t have given us the slip anyhow. Then, as soon as he went
into the Maze my men closed the gates behind him—and the game was up!
“You know the rest. We had to hold an inquest, of course; but you must
have seen that we gave the bare legal minimum of evidence; just enough
to prove suicide. Of course there’s sure to be some talk. One can’t
help that. But we’ve stifled it as far as we possibly could; and the
reporters got so little that the thing was hardly talked about in the
papers.”
Sir Clinton smiled with a tingle of sardonic amusement.
“I wonder what they’d have made of it if they’d known all about our
methods! Perhaps I wasn’t quite orthodox. Perhaps I ought to have got
him nicely hanged—and incidentally run the public in for a big bill
for his prosecution. I can only say that my conscience is quite clear;
it doesn’t give me a twinge. Consciences are weird things.”
He glanced across at Stenness with a glint of humour in his eye which
the rest failed to see.
“And now, what about some bridge?”
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
This transcription follows the text of the 1927 edition, as reprinted
by Penguin Books, with the exception of the chapter names, which were
omitted in that edition. The ebook reprint by Orion House was
consulted to restore the original chapter names.
The following alterations have been made to correct what are believed
to be unambiguous errors in the Penguin Books edition:
* “two laces at once” to “two places at once” (Chapter IV)
* “may seen strange” to “may seem strange” (Chapter VII)
* “a tract almost grazing” to “a track almost grazing” (Chapter X)
* “dissapeared” to “disappeared” (Chapter XI)
* “In easy visions” to “In uneasy visions” (Chapter XIII)
* “Arthur Shandon” to “Arthur Hawkhurst” (Chapter XIII)
* “Your afraid” to “You’re afraid” (Chapter XIII)
* “polished then” to “polished them” (Chapter XVI)
* “slighty” to “slightly” (Chapter XVI)
* “fron” to “from” (Chapter XVI, three occurrences)
* “as he did do” to “as he did so” (Chapter XVII)
* “didn’t you makes” to “didn’t you make” (Chapter XVIII)
Additionally, several occurrences of unpaired quotation marks have
been corrected. Lastly, in Chapter IV a single line of dialogue (“Can
you guess what poison was used?”) was erroneously omitted. It has been
reinstated here (obtained by consulting the Orion House ebook).
Other errors, if any, in the Penguin Books edition have been left
as printed.