Colwyn opened the silver and enamel box, and emptied the matches on the
table.
"I showed this match-box to Charles on my return to the inn, and he told
me that Penreath used it in the upstairs sitting-room the night he dined
there with Mr. Glenthorpe. Therefore, it is a reasonable deduction to
assume that he had no other matches in his possession the night of the
murder.
"This fact is highly significant, because the matches in Penreath's
silver box are, as you see, blue-headed wax matches, whereas the matches
struck in Mr. Glenthorpe's room on the night of the murder were of an
entirely different description--wooden matches with pink heads, of
British manufacture--so-called war matches, with cork pine sticks. The
sticks of these matches break rather easily unless they are held near
the head. Two broken fragments of this description of match, with
unlighted heads, were found in Mr. Glenthorpe's room the morning after
the murder. Superintendent Galloway picked up one by the foot of the
bed, and I picked up the other under the broken gas-globe. The recovery
of Penreath's match-box in the murdered man's room suggested several
things. In the first place, if he had no other matches in his possession
except those in his silver and enamel box, he was neither the murderer
nor the second person who visited the room that night. But if my
deduction about the matches was correct, how was it that his match-box
was found in the murdered man's room? The inference is that Penreath
left his match-box in the dining room after lighting his candle before
going to bed, and the murderer found it and took it into Mr.
Glenthorpe's bedroom to point suspicion towards Penreath.
"This fact opened up a new possibility about the crime--the possibility
that Penreath was the victim of a conspiracy. When we were examining the
footprints which led to the pit, the possibility of somebody else having
worn Penreath's boots occurred to me, because I have seen that trick
worked before, but the servant's story suggested that Penreath did not
put his boots outside his door to be cleaned, but came to the door with
them in his hand in the morning. But Penreath told me this morning that
he put out his boots overnight to be cleaned, but had taken them back
into his room before Ann brought up his tea. The murderer, therefore,
had ample opportunity to use them for his purpose of carrying the body
to the pit and to put them back afterwards outside Penreath's door.
"But Peggy's belated admissions did more than suggest that Penreath was
the victim of a sinister plot--they narrowed down the range of persons
by whom it could have been contrived. The plotter was not only an inmate
of the inn, but somebody who had seen the match box and knew that it
belonged to Penreath.
"I returned to Flegne to resume the investigations I had broken off
nearly three weeks before, and from that point my discoveries were very
rapid, all tending to throw suspicion on Benson. The first indication
was the outcome of a remark of mine about his height, and the broken gas
light in Mr. Glenthorpe's bedroom. It was purely a chance shot, but it
threw him into a pitiable state of excitement. I let him think, however,
that it was nothing more than a chance remark. That night I was put to
sleep in Penreath's room, and there I made two discoveries. The first
was the existence of a small door, behind the wardrobe, opening on a
corresponding door on the other side, which in its turn opens into Mr.
Glenthorpe's room. Thus it would be possible for a person in the room
Penreath occupied, discovering these doors as I did, to see into the
next bedroom--under certain conditions. My second discovery was the
outcome of my first discovery--I picked up underneath the wardrobe a
fragment of an appealing letter which Penreath had commenced to write to
his fiancée, and had subsequently torn up. It was a long time before I
grasped the full significance of these two discoveries. Why should a
man, after writing a letter of appeal to his fiancée, decide not to send
it and destroy it? The most probable reason was that something had
happened to cause him to change his mind. What could have happened to
change the conditions so quickly? The hidden doors in the wall, which
looked into the next room, supplied an answer to the question. Penreath
had looked through, and seen--what? My first thought was that he had
seen the murder committed, but that theory did not account for the
destruction of the letter, and his silence when arrested, unless,
indeed, the girl had committed the murder. The girl--Peggy! It came to
me like a flash, the solution of the strangest aspect of this puzzling
case--the reason why Penreath maintained his dogged silence under an
accusation of murder.
"It came to me, the clue for which I had been groping, with the
recollection of a phrase in the girl's story to me--her second story--in
which she not only told me of her efforts to shield Penreath, but
revealed frankly to me her relations with Penreath, innocent enough, but
commenced in chance fashion, and continued by clandestine meetings in
lonely spots. I remembered when she told me about it all that I was
impressed by Penreath's absolute straightforwardness in his dealings
with this girl. He was open and sincere with her throughout, gave her
his real name, and told her much about himself: his family, his
prospects, and even his financial embarrassment. He went further than
that: he told her that he was engaged to be married, and that if he
could get free he would marry her. A young man who talks in this strain
is very much in love. The artless story of Peggy revealed that Penreath
was as much in love with the girl as she was with him. 'If he could get
free!' That was the phrase that gave me the key to the mystery. He had
set out to get free by writing to Miss Willoughby, breaking off his
engagement. Later he had torn up the letter because through the door in
the wall he had seen Peggy standing by the bedside of the murdered man,
and had come to the conclusion that she had murdered him.
"If you think it a little strange that Penreath should have jumped to
this conclusion about the woman he loved, you must remember the
circumstances were unusual. Peggy had surrounded herself with mystery;
she refused to tell her lover where she lived, she would not even tell
him her name. When he looked into the room he did not even know she was
in the house, because she had kept out of his way during the previous
evening, waiting for an opportunity to see him alone. Consequently he
experienced a great shock at the sight of her, and the mystery with
which she had always veiled her identity and movements recurred to him
with a terrible and sinister significance as he saw her again under such
damning conditions, standing by the bedside of the dead man with a knife
in her hand.
"Penreath's subsequent actions--his destruction of the letter he had
written to Miss Willoughby, his hurried departure from the inn, and his
silence in the face of accusation--are all explained by the fact that he
saw the girl Peggy in the next room, and believed that she had committed
this terrible crime.
"I now come to the clues which point directly to Benson's complicity in
the murder. I have already told you of his alarm at my chance remark
about his height and the smashed gas globe. You also know that he was in
need of money. The next point is rather a curious one. When Benson was
telling us his story the day after the murder I observed that he kept
smoothing his long hair down on his forehead. There was something in the
action that suggested more than a mannerism. The night after I
discovered the door in the wall, I left it open in order to watch the
next room. During the night Benson entered and searched the dead man's
chamber. I do not know what he was looking for--he did not find it,
whatever it was--but during the search he grew hot, and threw back his
hair from his forehead, revealing a freshly healed scar on his temple.
The reason he had worn his hair low was explained: he wanted to hide
from us the fact that it was he who had smashed the gas-globe in Mr.
Glenthorpe's room, and had cut his head by the accident.
"But his visit to the dead man's room revealed more than the scar on his
forehead. How did Benson get into the room? The room had been kept
locked since the murder. That night I had taken the key from a hook on
the kitchen dresser in order to examine the room when the inmates of the
place had retired. Benson, therefore, had let himself in with another
key. This was our first knowledge of another key. Hitherto we had
believed that the only key was the one found in the outside of the door
the morning after the murder. The police theory is partly based on that
supposition. Benson's possession of a second key, and his silence
concerning it, point strongly to his complicity in the crime. He knew
that Mr. Glenthorpe was accustomed to lock his door and carry the key
about with him, so he obtained another key in order to have access to
the room whenever he desired. There would have been nothing in this if
he had told his household about it. A second key would have been useful
to the servant when she wanted to arrange Mr. Glenthorpe's room. But
Benson kept the existence of the second key a close secret. He said
nothing about it when we questioned him concerning the key in the door.
An innocent man would have immediately informed us that there was a
second key to the room. Benson kept silence because he had something to
hide.
"I now come to the events of the next morning. My investigation of the
rise and the pit during the afternoon had led to a discovery which
subsequently suggested to my mind that the missing money had been hidden
in the pit. I determined to try and descend it. I arose before daybreak,
as I did not wish any of the inmates of the inn to see me. Before going
to the pit I got out of the window and into the window of the next room,
as Penreath is supposed to have done. That experiment brought to light
another small point in Penreath's favour. The drop from the first window
is an awkward one--more than eight feet--and my heels made a deep
indentation in the soft red clay underneath the window. If Penreath had
dropped from the window, even in his stocking feet, the marks of his
heels ought to have been visible. There was not enough rain after the
murder was committed to obliterate them entirely. There were no such
marks under his window when we examined the ground the morning after
the murder.
"I next proceeded to the rise and lowered myself down the pit by the
creepers inside. About ten feet down the vegetable growth ceased, and
the further descent was impossible without ropes. But at the limit of
the distance to which a man can climb down unaided, I saw a peg sticking
into the side of the pit, with a fishing line suspended from it. I drew
up the line, and found attached to it the murdered man's pocket-book
containing the £300 he had drawn out of the bank at Heathfield the day
he was murdered.
"Let me now try to reconstruct the crime in the light of the fresh
information we have gained. Benson was in desperate straits for money,
and he knew that Mr. Glenthorpe had drawn £300 from the bank that
morning, all in small notes, which could not be traced. The fact that he
obtained a second key to the room suggests that he had been meditating
the act for some time past. It will be found, I think, when all the
facts are brought to light, that he obtained the second key when he
learnt that Mr. Glenthorpe intended to take a large sum of money out of
the bank. Penreath's chance arrival at the inn on the day that the money
was drawn out, probably set him thinking of the possibility of murdering
and robbing Mr. Glenthorpe in circumstances that would divert suspicion
to the stranger. Penreath unconsciously helped him by leaving his
match-box in the room where he had dined with Mr. Glenthorpe. Benson
found the match-box on looking into the room to see that everything was
all right when his guests had retired, and determined to commit the
murder that night, and leave it by the murdered man's bedside, as a clue
to direct attention to Penreath. His next idea, to murder Mr.
Glenthorpe with the knife which Penreath had used at dinner, probably
occurred to him as he considered the possibilities of the match-box.
"It is difficult to decide why Benson chose to enter the room from the
window instead of by the door when he had a second key of the room. He
may have attempted to open the door with the key, and found that Mr.
Glenthorpe had locked the door and left the key on the inside. Or he may
have thought that as Penreath was sleeping in the next room, he ran too
great a risk of discovery by entering from the door, and so decided to
enter by the window. We must presume that Benson subsequently found Mr.
Glenthorpe's key, either inside the door or under his pillow, and kept
it. He entered the window, stabbed Mr. Glenthorpe, and placed the
match-box and the knife at the side of the bed. His next act would be to
search for the money. Finding it difficult to search by the light of the
tallow candle, he decided to go downstairs and turn on the gas.
"During his absence Peggy entered the room, saw the dead body, and
picked up the knife and the match-box. Then she picked up the
candlestick by the bed, and fled in terror. Benson, after turning on the
gas at the meter, returned to find the room in darkness. Thinking that
the wind had blown out the candle, he walked to the gas with the
intention of lighting it. In doing so he knocked his head against the
globe, cutting his forehead, and smashing the incandescent burner.
"Benson, when he found that the candlestick had disappeared must, in his
fright, have rushed downstairs for another. He could not light the gas,
because he had smashed the burner. In no other way can I account for the
second lot of candle-grease that I found in the room underneath the
gas-light, which made me believe at first that the room had been
visited by two persons on the night of the murder. There _were_ two
persons, Benson and his daughter, but Peggy did not bring a candlestick
into the room. It looks to me as though Benson, on returning with the
second candle, attempted to light the gas with it and failed. That
action would account for the gas tap being turned on, and the spilt
grease directly underneath. He then searched the room till he found the
pocket-book containing the money.
"The subsequent removal of the body to the pit strikes me as an
afterthought. The complete plan was too diabolically ingenious and
complete to have formed in the murderer's mind at the outset. The man
who put the match-box and knife by the bedside of the murdered man in
order to divert suspicion to Penreath had no thought, at that stage, of
removing the body. That idea came afterwards, probably when he went
upstairs the second time with the lighted candle, and saw Penreath's
boots outside the door. I cannot help thinking that the clue of the
footprints, which was such a damning point in the case against Penreath,
was quite an accidental one so far as the murderer was concerned. The
thought that the boots would leave footprints which would subsequently
be identified as Penreath's was altogether too subtle to have occurred
to a man like Benson. That is the touch of a master criminal--of a much
higher order of criminal brain than Benson's.
"It is my belief that he originally intended to leave the murdered man
in his room, thinking that the match-box and knife would point suspicion
to Penreath. But after killing Mr. Glenthorpe he was overcome with the
fear that his guilt would be discovered, in spite of his precautions to
throw suspicions on another man, and he decided to throw the body into
the pit in the hope that the crime would never be found out. The fact
that he had entered the room in his stocking feet supports this theory,
because he would be well aware that he would not be able to carry the
body over several hundred yards of rough ground in his bare feet. He
took Penreath's boots, which were close at hand, in preference to the
danger and delay which he would have incurred in going to his own room,
some distance away, for his own boots. Having put on the boots, he took
the body on his shoulders and conveyed it to the pit.
"There are two or three points in this case which I am unable to clear
up to my complete satisfaction. Why did Benson leave the key in the
outside of the door? Was it merely one of those mistakes--those
oversights--which all murderers are liable to commit, or did he do it
deliberately, in the hope of conveying the impression that Mr.
Glenthorpe had gone out and left the key in the outside of the door. In
the next place, I cannot account for the mark of the box underneath the
window. There is a third point--the direction of the wound in the
murdered man's body, which gave me some ideas at the time that I am now
compelled to dismiss as erroneous. But these are points that I hope will
be cleared up by Benson's arrest, and confession, for I am convinced, by
my observation of the man, that he will confess.
"There are one or two more points. Benson is an ardent fisherman, who
spends all his spare time fishing on the marshes. The stolen pocket-book
was suspended in the pit by a piece of fishing line. But I attach more
importance to the second point, which is that since the murder has been
committed the nightly conversation at the inn tap-room has centred
around a local ghost, known as the White Lady of the Shrieking Pit, who
is supposed from time immemorial to have haunted the pit where the body
was thrown, and to bring death to anybody who encounters her at night.
This spectre, which is profoundly believed in by the villagers, had not
been seen for at least two years before the murder, but she made a
reappearance a night or two after the crime, and is supposed to have
been seen frequently ever since. It looks to me as though Benson set the
story going again in order to keep the credulous villagers away from the
pit where the money was concealed.
"This morning, in company with Mr. Oakham, I saw Penreath in the gaol,
and by a ruse induced him to break his stubborn silence. His story,
which it is not necessary for me to give you in detail, testifies to his
innocence, and supports my own theory of the crime. He did not see the
murder committed, but he saw the girl go into the room, and subsequently
he saw her father enter and remove the body. It was the latter spectacle
that robbed him of any lingering doubts he may have had of the girl's
guilt, and forced him to the conclusion that she and her father were
accomplices in the crime. But he loved her so much that he determined to
keep silence and shield her."