The poisoned chocolates case

By Anthony Berkeley

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Title: The poisoned chocolates case

Author: Anthony Berkeley

Release date: February 27, 2025 [eBook #75476]

Language: English

Original publication: London: The British Library, 1929

Credits: Brian Raiter


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POISONED CHOCOLATES CASE ***


The Poisoned Chocolates Case

by Anthony Berkeley

Published in 1929 by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd
Reprinted in 2016 by The British Library



          To
     S. H. J. Cox
  because for once he
    did not guess it



Chapter I

Roger Sheringham took a sip of the old brandy in front of him and
leaned back in his chair at the head of the table.

Through the haze of cigarette-smoke eager voices reached his ears from
all directions, prattling joyfully upon this and that connected with
murder, poisons and sudden death. For this was his own, his very own
Crimes Circle, founded, organised, collected, and now run by himself
alone; and when at the first meeting five months ago he had been
unanimously elected its president, he had been as full of proud
delight as on that never-to-be-forgotten day in the dim past when a
cherub disguised as a publisher had accepted his first novel.

He turned to Chief Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard who, as the
guest of the evening, was sitting on his right, engaged, a little
uneasily, with a positively enormous cigar.

“Honestly, Moresby, without any disrespect to your own institution, I
do believe that there’s more solid criminological genius in this room
(intuitive genius, I mean; not capacity for taking pains) than
anywhere in the world outside the _Sûreté_ in Paris.”

“Do you, Mr. Sheringham?” said Chief Inspector Moresby tolerantly.
Moresby was always kind to the strange opinions of others. “Well,
well.” And he applied himself again to the lighted end of his cigar,
which was so very far from the other that Moresby could never tell by
mere suction at the latter whether the former were still alight or
not.

Roger had some grounds for his assertion beyond mere parental pride.
Entry into the charmed Crimes Circle’s dinners was not to be gained by
all and hungry. It was not enough for a would-be member to profess an
adoration for murder and let it go at that; he or she had got to prove
that they were capable of worthily wearing their criminological spurs.

Not only must the interest be intense in all branches of the science,
in the detection side, for instance, just as much as the side of
criminal psychology, with the history of all cases of the least
importance at the applicant’s finger-tips, but there must be
constructive ability too; the candidate must have a brain and be able
to use it. To this end, a paper had to be written, from a choice of
subjects suggested by members, and submitted to the president, who
passed on such as he considered worthy to the members in conclave, who
thereupon voted for or against the suppliant’s election; and a single
adverse vote meant rejection.

It was the intention of the club to acquire eventually thirteen
members, but so far only six had succeeded in passing their tests, and
these were all present on the evening when this chronicle opens. There
was a famous lawyer, a scarcely less famous woman dramatist, a
brilliant novelist who ought to have been more famous than she was,
the most intelligent (if not the most amiable) of living
detective-story writers, Roger Sheringham himself, and Mr. Ambrose
Chitterwick, who was not famous at all, a mild little man of no
particular appearance who had been even more surprised at being
admitted to this company of personages than they had been at finding
him amongst them.

With the exception of Mr. Chitterwick, then, it was an assembly of
which any organiser might have been proud. Roger this evening was not
only proud but excited too, because he was going to startle them; and
it is always exciting to startle personages. He rose to do so.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he proclaimed, after the welcome of glasses
and cigarette-cases drummed on the table had died away. “Ladies and
gentlemen, in virtue of the powers conferred by you the president of
our Circle is permitted to alter at his discretion the arrangements
made for any meeting. You all know what arrangements were made for
this evening. Chief Inspector Moresby, whom we are so glad to welcome
as the first representative of Scotland Yard to visit us”—more
drumming on the table—“Chief Inspector Moresby was to be lulled by
rich food and sound wine into being so indiscreet as to tell us about
such of his experiences as could hardly be given to a body of
pressmen.” More and longer drumming.

Roger refreshed himself with a sip of brandy and continued. “Now I
think I know Chief Inspector Moresby pretty well, ladies and
gentlemen, and the occasions are not a few on which I too have tried,
and tried very hard, to lure him similarly into the paths of
indiscretion; but never once have I succeeded. I have therefore little
hope that this Circle, lure it never so cooingly, will succeed in
getting from the Chief Inspector any more interesting stories than he
would mind being published in _The Daily Courier_ to-morrow. Chief
Inspector Moresby, I am afraid, ladies and gentlemen, is unlurable.

“I have therefore taken upon myself the responsibility of altering our
entertainment for this evening; and the idea that has occurred to me
in this connection will, I both hope and believe, appeal to you very
considerably. I venture to think that it is both novel and
enthralling.” Roger paused and beamed on the interested faces around
him. Chief Inspector Moresby, a little puce below the ears, was still
at grips with his cigar.

“My idea,” Roger said, “is connected with Mr. Graham Bendix.” There
was a little stir of interest. “Or rather,” he amended, more slowly,
“with Mrs. Graham Bendix.” The stir subsided into a still more
interested hush.

Roger paused, as if choosing his words with more care. “Mr. Bendix
himself is personally known to one or two of us here. Indeed, his name
has actually been mentioned as that of a man who might possibly be
interested, if approached, to become a member of this Circle. By Sir
Charles Wildman, if I remember rightly.”

The barrister inclined his rather massive head with dignity. “Yes, I
suggested him once, I think.”

“The suggestion was never followed up,” Roger continued. “I don’t
quite remember why not; I think somebody else was rather sure that he
would never be able to pass all our tests. But in any case the fact
that his name was ever mentioned at all shows that Mr. Bendix is to
some extent at least a criminologist, which means that our sympathy
with him in the terrible tragedy that has befallen him is tinged with
something of a personal interest, even in the case of those who, like
myself, are not actually acquainted with him.”

“Hear, hear,” said a tall, good-looking woman on the right of the
table, in the clear tones of one very well accustomed to saying “hear,
hear” weightily at appropriate moments during speeches, in case no one
else did. This was Alicia Dammers, the novelist, who ran Women’s
Institutes for a hobby, listened to other people’s speeches with
genuine and altruistic enjoyment, and, in practice the most staunch of
Conservatives, supported with enthusiasm the theories of the Socialist
party.

“My suggestion is,” Roger said simply, “that we turn that sympathy to
practical uses.”

There was no doubt that the eager attention of his audience was
caught. Sir Charles Wildman lifted his bushy grey brows, from under
which he was wont to frown with menacing disgust at the prosecution’s
witnesses who had the bad taste to believe in the guilt of his own
client, and swung his gold-rimmed eye-glasses on their broad black
ribbon. On the other side of the table Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, a short,
round, homely-looking woman who wrote surprisingly improper and most
successful plays and looked exactly like a rather superior cook on her
Sunday out, nudged the elbow of Miss Dammers and whispered something
behind her hand. Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick blinked his mild blue eyes
and assumed the appearance of an intelligent nanny-goat. The writer of
detective-stories alone sat apparently unmoved and impassive; but in
times of crisis he was wont to model his behaviour on that of his own
favourite detective, who was invariably impassive at the most exciting
moments.

“I took the idea to Scotland Yard this morning,” Roger went on, “and
though they never encourage that sort of idea there, they were really
unable to discover any positive harm in it; with the result that I
came away with a reluctant, but nevertheless official permission to
try it out. And I may as well say at once that it was the same cue
that prompted this permission as originally put the whole thing into
my head”—Roger paused impressively and glanced round—“the fact that
the police have practically given up all hope of tracing Mrs. Bendix’s
murderer.”

Ejaculations sounded on all sides, some of dismay, some of disgust,
and some of astonishment. All eyes turned upon Moresby. That
gentleman, apparently unconscious of the collective gaze fastened upon
him, raised his cigar to his ear and listened to it intently, as if
hoping to receive some intimate message from its depths.

Roger came to his rescue. “That information is quite confidential, by
the way, and I know none of you will let it escape beyond this room.
But it is a fact. Active inquiries, having resulted in exactly
nothing, are to be stopped. There is always hope of course that some
fresh fact may turn up, but without it the authorities have come to
the conclusion that they can get no farther. My proposal is,
therefore, that this Club should take up the case where the
authorities have left it.” And he looked expectantly round the circle
of upturned faces.

Every face asked a question at once.

Roger forgot his periods in his enthusiasm and became colloquial.

“Why, you see, we’re all keen, we’re not fools, and we’re not (with
apologies to my friend Moresby) tied to any hard-and-fast method of
investigation. Is it too much to hope that, with all six of us on our
mettle and working quite independently of each other, one of us might
achieve some result where the police have, to put it bluntly, failed?
I don’t think it’s outside the possibilities. What do you say, Sir
Charles?”

The famous counsel uttered a deep laugh. “’Pon my word, Sheringham,
it’s an interesting idea. But I must reserve judgment till you’ve
outlined your proposal in a little more detail.”

“I think it’s a wonderful idea, Mr. Sheringham,” cried Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming, who was not troubled with a legal mind. “I’d like to
begin this very evening.” Her plump cheeks positively quivered with
excitement. “Wouldn’t you, Alicia?”

“It has possibilities,” smiled that lady.

“As a matter-of-fact,” said the writer of detective-stories, with an
air of detachment, “I’d formed a theory of my own about this case
already.” His name was Percy Robinson, but he wrote under the
pseudonym of Morton Harrogate Bradley, which had so impressed the more
simple citizens of the United States of America that they had bought
three editions of his first book on the strength of that alone. For
some obscure psychological reason Americans are always impressed by
the use of surnames for Christian, and particularly when one of them
happens to be the name of an English watering-place.

Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick beamed in a mild way, but said nothing.

“Well,” Roger took up his tale, “the details are open to discussion,
of course, but I thought that, if we all decide to make the trial, it
would be more amusing if we worked independently. Moresby here can
give us the plain facts as they’re known to the police. He hasn’t been
in charge of the case himself, but he’s had one or two jobs in
connection with it and is pretty well up in the facts; moreover he has
very kindly spent most of the afternoon examining the dossier at
Scotland Yard so as to be sure of omitting nothing this evening.

“When we’ve heard him some of us may be able to form a theory at once;
possible lines of investigation may occur to others which they will
wish to follow up before they commit themselves. In any case, I
suggest that we allow ourselves a week in which to form our theories,
verify our hypotheses, and set our individual interpretations on the
facts that Scotland Yard has collected, during which time no member
shall discuss the case with any other member. We may achieve nothing
(most probably we shall not), but in any case it will be a most
interesting criminological exercise; for some of us practical, for
others academical, just as we prefer. And what I think should be most
interesting will be to see if we all arrive at the same result or not.
Ladies and gentlemen, the meeting is open for discussion, or whatever
is the right way of putting it. In other words: what about it?” And
Roger dropped back, not reluctantly, into his seat.

Almost before his trousers had touched it the first question reached
him.

“Do you mean that we’re to go out and act as our own detectives, Mr.
Sheringham, or just write a thesis on the facts that the Chief
Inspector is going to give us?” asked Alicia Dammers.

“Whichever each one of us preferred, I thought,” Roger answered.
“That’s what I meant when I said that the exercise would be practical
for some of us and academic for others.”

“But you’ve got so much more experience than us on the practical side,
Mr. Sheringham,” pouted Mrs. Fielder-Flemming (yes, pouted).

“And the police have so much more than me,” Roger countered.

“It will depend whether we use deductive or inductive methods, no
doubt,” observed Mr. Morton Harrogate Bradley. “Those who prefer the
former will work from the police-facts and won’t need to make any
investigations of their own, except perhaps to verify a conclusion or
two. But the inductive method demands a good deal of inquiry.”

“Exactly,” said Roger.

“Police-facts and the deductive method have solved plenty of serious
mysteries in this country,” pronounced Sir Charles Wildman. “I shall
rely on them for this one.”

“There’s one particular feature of this case,” murmured Mr. Bradley to
nobody, “that ought to lead one straight to the criminal. I’ve thought
so all the time. I shall concentrate on that.”

“I’m sure I haven’t the remotest idea how one sets about investigating
a point, if it becomes desirable,” observed Mr. Chitterwick uneasily;
but nobody heard him, so it did not matter.

“The only thing that struck me about this case,” said Alicia Dammers,
very distinctly, “regarded, I mean, as a pure case, was its complete
absence of any psychological interest whatever.” And without actually
saying so, Miss Dammers conveyed the impression that if that were so,
she personally had no further use for it.

“I don’t think you’ll say that when you’ve heard what Moresby’s got to
tell us,” Roger said gently. “We’re going to hear a great deal more
than has appeared in the newspapers, you know.”

“Then let’s hear it,” suggested Sir Charles, bluntly.

“We’re all agreed, then?” said Roger, looking round as happily as a
child who has been given a new toy. “Everybody is willing to try it
out?”

Amid the ensuing chorus of enthusiasm, one voice alone was silent. Mr.
Ambrose Chitterwick was still wondering, quite unhappily, how, if it
ever became necessary to go a-detecting, one went. He had studied the
reminiscences of a hundred ex-detectives, the real ones, with large
black boots and bowler hats; but all he could remember at that moment,
out of all those scores of fat books (published at eighteen and
sixpence, and remaindered a few months later at eighteen-pence), was
that a real, _real_ detective, if he means to attain results, never
puts on a false moustache but simply shaves his eyebrows. As a
mystery-solving formula, this seemed to Mr. Chitterwick inadequate.

Fortunately in the buzz of chatter that preceded the very reluctant
rising of Chief Inspector Moresby, Mr. Chitterwick’s poltroonery went
unnoticed.



Chapter II

Chief Inspector Moresby, having stood up and blushingly received his
tribute of hand-claps, was invited to address the gathering from his
chair and thankfully retired into that shelter. Consulting the sheaf
of notes in his hand, he began to enlighten his very attentive
audience as to the strange circumstances connected with Mrs. Bendix’s
untimely death. Without reproducing his own words, and all the
numerous supplementary questions which punctuated his story, the gist
of what he had to tell was as follows:—


On Friday morning, the fifteenth of November, Graham Bendix strolled
into his club, the Rainbow, in Piccadilly, at about ten-thirty and
asked if there were any letters for him. The porter handed him a
letter and a couple of circulars, and he walked over to the fireplace
in the hall to read them.

While he was doing so another member entered the club. This was a
middle-aged baronet, Sir Eustace Pennefather, who had rooms just round
the corner, in Berkeley Street, but spent most of his time at the
Rainbow. The porter glanced up at the clock, as he did every morning
when Sir Eustace came in, and, as always, it was exactly half-past
ten. The time was thus definitely fixed by the porter beyond any
doubt.

There were three letters and a small parcel for Sir Eustace, and he,
too, took them over to the fireplace to open, nodding to Bendix as he
joined him there. The two men knew each other only very slightly and
had probably never exchanged more than half-a-dozen words in all.
There were no other members in the hall just then.

Having glanced through his letters, Sir Eustace opened the parcel and
snorted with disgust. Bendix looked at him enquiringly, and with a
grunt Sir Eustace thrust out the letter which had been enclosed in the
parcel, adding an uncomplimentary remark upon modern trade methods.
Concealing a smile (Sir Eustace’s habits and opinions were a matter of
some amusement to his fellow-members), Bendix read the letter. It was
from the firm of Mason & Sons, the big chocolate manufacturers, and
was to the effect that they had just put on the market a new brand of
liqueur-chocolates designed especially to appeal to the cultivated
palates of Men of Taste. Sir Eustace being, presumably, a Man of
Taste, would he be good enough to honour Mr. Mason and his sons by
accepting the enclosed one-pound box, and any criticisms or
appreciation that he might have to make concerning them would be
esteemed almost more than a favour.

“Do they think I’m a blasted chorus-girl,” fumed Sir Eustace, a
choleric man, “to write ’em testimonials about their blasted
chocolates? Blast ’em! I’ll complain to the blasted committee. That
sort of blasted thing can’t blasted well be allowed here.” For the
Rainbow Club, as every one knows, is a very proud and exclusive club
indeed, with an unbroken descent from the Rainbow Coffee-House,
founded in 1734. Not even a family founded by a king’s bastard can be
quite so exclusive to-day as a club founded on a coffee-house.

“Well, it’s an ill wind so far as I’m concerned,” Bendix soothed him.
“It’s reminded me of something. I’ve got to get some chocolates
myself, to pay an honourable debt. My wife and I had a box at the
Imperial last night, and I bet her a box of chocolates to a hundred
cigarettes that she wouldn’t spot the villain by the end of the second
act. She won. I must remember to get them. It’s not a bad show. _The
Creaking Skull_. Have you seen it?”

“Not blasted likely,” replied the other, unsoothed. “Got something
better to do than sit and watch a lot of blasted fools messing about
with phosphorescent paint and pooping off blasted pop-guns at each
other. Want a box of chocolates, did you say? Well, take this blasted
one.”

The money saved by this offer had no weight with Bendix. He was a very
wealthy man, and probably had enough on him in actual cash to buy a
hundred such boxes. But trouble is always worth saving. “Sure you
don’t want them?” he demurred politely.

In Sir Eustace’s reply only one word, several times repeated, was
clearly recognisable. But his meaning was plain. Bendix thanked him
and, most unfortunately for himself, accepted the gift.

By an extraordinarily lucky chance the wrapper of the box was not
thrown into the fire, either by Sir Eustace in his indignation or by
Bendix himself when the whole collection, box, covering letter,
wrapper and string, was shovelled into his hands by the almost
apoplectic baronet. This was the more fortunate as both men had
already tossed the envelopes of their letters into the flames.

Bendix however merely walked over to the porter’s desk and deposited
everything there, asking the man to keep the box for him. The porter
put the box aside, and threw the wrapper into the waste-paper basket.
The covering letter had fallen unnoticed from Bendix’s hand as he
walked across the floor. This the porter tidily picked up a few
minutes later and put in the waste-paper basket too, whence, with the
wrapper, it was retrieved later by the police.

These two articles, it may be said at once, constituted two of the
only three tangible clues to the murder, the third of course being the
chocolates themselves.

Of the three unconscious protagonists in the impending tragedy, Sir
Eustace was by far the most remarkable. Still a year or two under
fifty, he looked, with his flaming red face and thickset figure, a
typical country squire of the old school, and both his manners and his
language were in accordance with tradition. There were other
resemblances too, but they were equally on the surface. The voices of
the country squires of the old school were often slightly husky
towards late middle age, but it was not with whisky. They hunted, and
so did Sir Eustace, with avidity; but the country squires confined
their hunting to foxes, and Sir Eustace was far more catholic in his
predatory tastes. Sir Eustace in short, without doubt, was a
thoroughly bad baronet. But his vices were all on the large scale,
with the usual result that most other men, good or bad, liked him well
enough (except perhaps a few husbands here and there, or a father or
two), and women openly hung on his husky words.

In comparison with him Bendix was rather an ordinary man, a tall,
dark, not unhandsome fellow of eight-and-twenty, quiet and somewhat
reserved, popular in a way but neither inviting nor apparently
reciprocating anything beyond a somewhat grave friendliness.

He had been left a rich man on the death five years ago of his father,
who had made a fortune out of land-sites, which he had bought up in
undeveloped areas with an uncanny foresight to sell later, at never
less than ten times what he had given for them, when surrounded by
houses and factories erected with other people’s money. “Just sit
tight and let other people make you rich,” had been his motto, and a
very sound one it proved. His son, though left with an income that
precluded any necessity to work, had evidently inherited his father’s
tendencies, for he had a finger in a good many business pies just (as
he explained a little apologetically) out of sheer love of the most
exciting game in the world.

Money attracts money. Graham Bendix had inherited it, he made it, and
inevitably he married it too. The orphaned daughter of a Liverpool
ship-owner she was, with not far off half-a-million in her own right
to bring to Bendix, who needed it not at all. But the money was
incidental, for he needed her if not her fortune, and would have
married her just as inevitably (said his friends) if she had had not a
farthing.

She was so exactly his type. A tall, rather serious-minded,
highly-cultured girl, not so young that her character had not had time
to form (she was twenty-five when Bendix married her, three years
ago), she was the ideal wife for him. A bit of a Puritan, perhaps, in
some ways, but Bendix himself was ready enough to be a Puritan by then
if Joan Cullompton was.

For in spite of the way he developed later Bendix had sown as a youth
a few wild oats in the normal way. Stage-doors, that is to say, had
not been entirely strange to him. His name had been mentioned in
connection with that of more than one frail and fluffy lady. He had
managed, in short, to amuse himself, discreetly but by no means
clandestinely, in the usual manner of young men with too much money
and too few years. But all that, again in the ordinary way, had
stopped with his marriage.

He was openly devoted to his wife and did not care who knew it, while
she too, if a trifle less obviously, was equally said to wear her
heart on her sleeve. To make no bones about it, the Bendixes had
apparently succeeded in achieving that eighth wonder of the modern
world, a happy marriage.

And into the middle of it there dropped, like a clap of thunder, the
box of chocolates.

“After depositing the box of chocolates with the porter,” Moresby
continued, shuffling his papers to find the right one, “Mr. Bendix
followed Sir Eustace into the lounge, where he was reading the
_Morning Post_.”

Roger nodded approval. There was no other paper that Sir Eustace could
possibly have been reading but the _Morning Post_.

Bendix himself proceeded to study _The Daily Telegraph_. He was rather
at a loose end that morning. There were no board meetings for him, and
none of the businesses in which he was interested called him out into
the rain of a typical November day. He spent the rest of the morning
in an aimless way, read the daily papers, glanced through the
weeklies, and played a hundred up at billiards with another member
equally idle. At about half-past twelve he went back to lunch to his
house in Eaton Square, taking the chocolates with him.

Mrs. Bendix had given orders that she would not be in to lunch that
day, but her appointment had been cancelled and she too was lunching
at home. Bendix gave her the box of chocolates after the meal as they
were sitting over their coffee in the drawing-room, explaining how
they had come into his possession. Mrs. Bendix laughingly teased him
about his meanness in not buying her a box, but approved the make and
was interested to try the firm’s new variety. Joan Bendix was not so
serious-minded as not to have a healthy feminine interest in good
chocolates.

Their appearance, however, did not seem to impress her very much.

“Kümmel, Kirsch, Maraschino,” she said, delving with her fingers among
the silver-wrappered sweets, each bearing the name of its filling in
neat blue lettering. “Nothing else, apparently. I don’t see anything
new here, Graham. They’ve just taken those three kinds out of their
ordinary liqueur-chocolates.”

“Oh?” said Bendix, who was not particularly interested in chocolates.
“Well, I don’t suppose it matters much. All liqueur-chocolates taste
the same to me.”

“Yes, and they’ve even packed them in their usual liqueur-chocolate
box,” complained his wife, examining the lid.

“They’re only a sample,” Bendix pointed out. “They may not have got
the right boxes ready yet.”

“I don’t believe there’s the slightest difference,” Mrs. Bendix
pronounced, unwrapping a Kümmel. She held the box out to her husband.
“Have one?”

He shook his head. “No, thank you, dear. You know I never eat the
things.”

“Well, you’ve got to have one of these, as a penance for not buying me
a proper box. Catch!” She threw him one. As he caught it she made a
wry face. “Oh! I was wrong. These are different. They’re twenty times
as strong.”

“Well, they can bear at least that,” Bendix smiled, thinking of the
usual anæmic sweetmeat sold under the name of chocolate-liqueur.

He put the one she had given him in his mouth and bit it up; a burning
taste, not intolerable but far too pronounced to be pleasant, followed
the release of the liquid. “By Jove,” he exclaimed, “I should think
they are strong. I believe they’ve filled them with neat alcohol.”

“Oh, they wouldn’t do that, surely,” said his wife, unwrapping
another. “But they are very strong. It must be the new mixture.
Really, they almost burn. I’m not sure whether I like them or not. And
that Kirsch one tasted far too strongly of almonds. This may be
better. You try a Maraschino too.”

To humour her he swallowed another, and disliked it still more.
“Funny,” he remarked, touching the roof of his mouth with the tip of
his tongue. “My tongue feels quite numb.”

“So did mine at first,” she agreed. “Now it’s tingling rather. Well, I
don’t notice any difference between the Kirsch and the Maraschino. And
they do burn! I can’t make up my mind whether I like them or not.”

“I don’t,” Bendix said with decision. “I think there’s something wrong
with them. I shouldn’t eat any more if I were you.”

“Well, they’re only an experiment, I suppose,” said his wife.

A few minutes later Bendix went out, to keep an appointment in the
City. He left his wife still trying to make up her mind whether she
liked the chocolates or not, and still eating them to decide. Her last
words to him were that they were making her mouth burn again so much
that she was afraid she would not be able to manage any more.

“Mr. Bendix remembers that conversation very clearly,” said Moresby,
looking round at the intent faces, “because it was the last time he
saw his wife alive.”

The conversation in the drawing-room had taken place approximately
between a quarter-past and half-past two. Bendix kept his appointment
in the City at three, where he stayed for about half-an-hour, and then
took a taxi back to his club for tea.

He had been feeling extremely ill during his business-talk, and in the
taxi he very nearly collapsed; the driver had to summon the porter to
help get him out and into the club. They both described him as pale to
the point of ghastliness, with staring eyes and livid lips, and his
skin damp and clammy. His mind seemed unaffected, however, and once
they had got him up the steps he was able to walk, with the help of
the porter’s arm, into the lounge.

The porter, alarmed by his appearance, wanted to send for a doctor at
once, but Bendix, who was the last man to make a fuss, absolutely
refused to let him, saying that it could only be a bad attack of
indigestion and that he would be all right in a few minutes; he must
have eaten something that disagreed with him. The porter was doubtful,
but left him.

Bendix repeated this diagnosis of his own condition a few minutes
later to Sir Eustace Pennefather, who was in the lounge at the time,
not having left the club at all. But this time Bendix added: “And I
believe it was those infernal chocolates you gave me, now I come to
think of it. I thought there was something funny about them at the
time. I’d better go and ring up my wife and find out if she’s been
taken like this too.”

Sir Eustace, a kind-hearted man, who was no less shocked than the
porter at Bendix’s appearance, was perturbed by the suggestion that he
might in any way be responsible for it, and offered to go and ring up
Mrs. Bendix himself as the other was in no fit condition to move.
Bendix was about to reply when a strange change came over him. His
body, which had been leaning limply back in his chair, suddenly heaved
rigidly upright; his jaws locked together, the livid lips drawn back
in a hideous grin, and his hands clenched on the arms of the chair. At
the same time Sir Eustace became aware of an unmistakable smell of
bitter almonds.

Thoroughly alarmed now, believing indeed that Bendix was dying under
his eyes, he raised a shout for the porter and a doctor. There were
two or three other men at the further end of the big room (in which a
shout had probably never been heard before in the whole course of its
history) and these hurried up at once. Sir Eustace sent one off to
tell the porter to get hold of the nearest doctor without a second’s
delay, and enlisted the others to try to make the convulsed body a
little more comfortable. There was no doubt among them that Bendix had
taken poison. They spoke to him, asking how he felt and what they
could do for him, but he either would not or could not answer. As a
matter of fact, he was completely unconscious.

Before the doctor had arrived, a telephone message was received from
an agitated butler asking if Mr. Bendix was there, and if so would he
come home at once as Mrs. Bendix had been taken seriously ill.

At the house in Eaton Square matters had been taking much the same
course with Mrs. Bendix as with her husband, though a little more
rapidly. She remained for half-an-hour or so in the drawing-room after
the latter’s departure, during which time she must have eaten about
three more of the chocolates. She then went up to her bedroom and rang
for her maid, to whom she said that she felt very ill and was going to
lie down for a time. Like her husband, she ascribed her condition to a
violent attack of indigestion.

The maid mixed her a draught from a bottle of indigestion-powder,
which consisted mainly of bicarbonate of soda and bismuth, and brought
her a hot-water bottle, leaving her lying on the bed. Her description
of her mistress’s appearance tallied exactly with the porter’s and
taxi-man’s description of Bendix, but unlike them she did not seem to
have been alarmed by it. She admitted later to the opinion that Mrs.
Bendix, though anything but a greedy woman, must have overeaten
herself at lunch.

At a quarter past three there was a violent ring from the bell in Mrs.
Bendix’s room.

The girl hurried upstairs and found her mistress apparently in a
cataleptic fit, unconscious and rigid. Thoroughly frightened now, she
wasted some precious minutes in ineffectual attempts to bring her
round, and then hurried downstairs to telephone for the doctor. The
practitioner who regularly attended the house was not at home, and it
was some time before the butler, who had found the half-hysterical
girl at the telephone and taken matters into his own hands, could get
into communication with another. By the time the latter did get there,
nearly half-an-hour after Mrs. Bendix’s bell had rung, she was past
help. Coma had set in, and in spite of everything the doctor could do
she died in less than ten minutes after his arrival.

She was, in fact, already dead when the butler telephoned to the
Rainbow Club.



Chapter III

Having reached this stage in his narrative Moresby paused, for effect,
breath and refreshment. So far, in spite of the eager interest with
which the story had been followed, no fact had been brought out of
which his listeners were unaware. It was the police investigations
that they wanted to hear, for not only had no details of these been
published but not so much as a hint had been given even as to the
theory that was officially held.

Perhaps Moresby had gathered something of this sentiment, for after a
moment’s rest he resumed with a slight smile. “Well, ladies and
gentlemen, I shan’t keep you much longer with these preliminaries, but
it’s just as well to run through everything while we’re on it, if we
want to get a view of the case as a whole.

“As you know, then, Mr. Bendix himself did not die. Luckily for
himself he had eaten only two of the chocolates, as against his wife’s
seven, but still more luckily he had fallen into the hands of a clever
doctor. By the time her doctor saw Mrs. Bendix it was too late for him
to do anything; but the smaller amount of poison that Mr. Bendix had
swallowed meant that its progress was not so rapid, and the doctor had
time to save him.

“Not that the doctor knew then what the poison was. He treated him
chiefly for prussic acid poisoning, thinking from the symptoms and the
smell that Mr. Bendix must have taken oil of bitter almonds, but he
wasn’t sure and threw in one or two other things as well. Anyhow, it
turned out in the end that he couldn’t have had a fatal dose, and he
was conscious again by about eight o’clock that night. They’d put him
into one of the club bedrooms, and by the next day he was
convalescent.”

At first, Moresby went on to explain, it was thought at Scotland Yard
that Mrs. Bendix’s death and her husband’s narrow escape were due to a
terrible accident. The police had of course taken the matter in hand
as soon as the woman’s death was reported to them and the fact of
poison established. In due course a District Detective Inspector
arrived at the Rainbow Club, and as soon as the doctor would permit
after Bendix’s recovery of consciousness held an interview with the
still very sick man.

The fact of his wife’s death was kept from him in his doubtful
condition and he was questioned solely upon his own experience, for it
was already clear that the two cases were bound up together and light
on one would equally clarify the other. The Inspector told Bendix
bluntly that he had been poisoned and pressed him as to how the stuff
could have been taken: could he account for it in any way?

It was not long before the chocolates came into Bendix’s mind. He
mentioned their burning taste, and he mentioned having already spoken
to Sir Eustace about them as the possible cause of his illness.

This the inspector already knew.

He had spent the time before Bendix came round in interviewing such
people as had come into contact with him since his return to the club
that afternoon. He had heard the porter’s story and he had taken steps
to trace the taxi-man; he had spoken with the members who had gathered
round Bendix in the lounge, and Sir Eustace had reported to him the
remark of Bendix about the chocolates.

The inspector had not attached very much importance to this at the
moment, but simply as a matter of routine had questioned Sir Eustace
closely as to the whole episode and, again as a matter of routine, had
afterwards rummaged through the waste-paper basket and extricated the
wrapper and the covering-letter. Still as a matter of routine, and
still not particularly impressed, he now proceeded to question Bendix
on the same topic, and then at last began to realise its significance
as he heard how the two had shared the chocolates after lunch and how,
even before Bendix had left home, the wife had eaten more than the
husband.

The doctor now intervened, and the inspector had to leave the
sick-room. His first action was to telephone to his colleague at the
Bendix home and tell him to take possession without delay of the box
of chocolates which was probably still in the drawing-room; at the
same time he asked for a rough idea of the number of chocolates that
were missing. The other told him, nine or ten. The inspector, who on
Bendix’s information had only accounted for six or seven, rang off and
telephoned what he had learnt to Scotland Yard.

Interest was now centred on the chocolates. They were taken to
Scotland Yard that evening, and sent off at once to be analysed.

“Well, the doctor hadn’t been far wrong,” said Moresby. “The poison in
those chocolates wasn’t oil of bitter almonds as a matter of fact, it
was nitrobenzene; but I understand that isn’t so very different. If
any of you ladies or gentlemen have a knowledge of chemicals, you’ll
know more about the stuff than I do, but I believe it’s used
occasionally in the cheaper sorts of confectionery (less than it used
to be, though) to give an almond-flavour as a substitute for oil of
bitter almonds, which I needn’t tell you is a powerful poison too. But
the most usual way of employing nitrobenzene commercially is in the
manufacture of aniline dyes.”

When the analyst’s preliminary report came through Scotland Yard’s
initial theory of accidental death was strengthened. Here definitely
was a poison used in the manufacture of chocolates and other sweets. A
terrible mistake must have been made. The firm had been employing the
stuff as a cheap substitute for genuine liqueurs and too much of it
had been used. The fact that the only liqueurs named on the silver
wrappings were Maraschino, Kümmel and Kirsch, all of which carry a
greater or lesser flavour of almonds, supported this conception.

But before the firm was approached by the police for an explanation,
other facts had come to light. It was found that only the top layer of
chocolates contained any poison. Those in the lower layer were
completely free from anything harmful. Moreover in the lower layer the
fillings inside the chocolate cases corresponded with the description
on the wrappings, whereas in the top layer, besides the poison, each
sweet contained a blend of the three liqueurs mentioned and not, for
instance, plain Maraschino and poison. It was further remarked that no
Maraschino, Kirsch or Kümmel was to be found in the two lower layers.

The interesting fact also emerged, in the analyst’s detailed report,
that each chocolate in the top layer contained, in addition to its
blend of the three liqueurs, exactly six minims of nitrobenzene, no
more and no less. The cases were a fair size and there was plenty of
room for quite a considerable quantity of the liqueur-blend besides
this fixed quantity of poison. This was significant. Still more so was
the further fact that in the bottom of each of the noxious chocolates
there were distinct traces of a hole having been drilled in the case
and subsequently plugged up with a piece of melted chocolate.

It was now plain to the police that foul play was in question.

A deliberate attempt had been made to murder Sir Eustace Pennefather.
The would-be murderer had acquired a box of Mason’s chocolate
liqueurs; separated those in which a flavour of almonds would not come
amiss; drilled a small hole in each and drained it of its contents;
injected, probably with a fountain-pen filler, the dose of poison;
filled the cavity up from the mixture of former fillings; carefully
stopped the hole, and re-wrapped it in its silver-paper covering. A
meticulous business, meticulously carried out.

The covering letter and wrapper which had arrived with the box of
chocolates now became of paramount importance, and the inspector who
had had the foresight to rescue these from destruction had occasion to
pat himself on the back. Together with the box itself and the
remaining chocolates, they formed the only material clues to this
cold-blooded murder.

Taking them with him, the Chief Inspector now in charge of the case
called on the managing director of Mason & Sons, and without informing
him of the circumstances as to how it had come into his possession,
laid the letter before him and invited him to explain certain points
in connection with it. How many of these (the managing director was
asked) had been sent out, who knew of this one, and who could have had
a chance of handling the box that was sent to Sir Eustace?

If the police had hoped to surprise Mr. Mason, the result was nothing
compared with the way in which Mr. Mason surprised the police.

“Well, sir?” prompted the Chief Inspector, when it seemed as if Mr.
Mason would go on examining the letter all day.

Mr. Mason adjusted his glasses to the angle for examining Chief
Inspectors instead of letters. He was a small, rather fierce, elderly
man who had begun life in a back street in Huddersfield, and did not
intend any one to forget it.

“Where the devil did you get this?” he asked. The papers, it must be
remembered, had not yet got hold of the sensational aspect of Mrs.
Bendix’s death.

“I came,” replied the Chief Inspector with dignity, “to ask you about
your sending it out, sir, not tell you about my getting hold of it.”

“Then you can go to the devil,” replied Mr. Mason with decision. “And
take Scotland Yard with you,” he added, by way of a comprehensive
afterthought.

“I must warn you, sir,” said the Chief Inspector, somewhat taken aback
but concealing the fact beneath his weightiest manner, “I must warn
you that it may be a serious matter for you to refuse to answer my
questions.”

Mr. Mason, it appeared, was exasperated rather than intimidated by
this covert threat. “Get out o’ ma office,” he replied in his native
tongue. “Are ye druffen, man? Or do ye just think you’re funny? Ye
know as well as I do that that letter was never sent out from ’ere.”

It was then that the Chief Inspector became surprised. “Not—not sent
out by your firm at all?” he yammered. It was a possibility that had
not occurred to him. “It’s—forged, then?”

“Isn’t that what I’m telling ye?” growled the old man, regarding him
fiercely from under bushy brows. But the Chief Inspector’s evident
astonishment had mollified him somewhat.

“Sir,” said that official, “I must ask you to be good enough to answer
my questions as fully as possible. It’s a case of murder I’m
investigating, and—” he paused and thought cunningly “—and the
murderer seems to have been making free use of your business to cloak
his operations.”

The cunning of the Chief Inspector prevailed. “The devil ’e ’as!”
roared the old man. “Damn the blackguard. Ask any questions thou
wants, lad; I’ll answer right enough.”

Communication thus being established, the Chief Inspector proceeded to
get to grips.

During the next five minutes his heart sank lower and lower. In place
of the simple case he had anticipated it became rapidly plain to him
that the affair was going to be very difficult indeed. Hitherto he had
thought (and his superiors had agreed with him) that the case was
going to prove one of sudden temptation. Somebody in the Mason firm
had a grudge against Sir Eustace. Into his (or more probably, as the
Chief Inspector had considered, her) hands had fallen the box and
letter addressed to him. The opportunity had been obvious, the means,
in the shape of nitrobenzene in use in the factory, ready to hand; the
result had followed. Such a culprit would be easy enough to trace.

But now, it seemed, this pleasant theory must be abandoned, for in the
first place no such letter as this had ever been sent out at all; the
firm had produced no new brand of chocolates, if they had done so it
was not their custom to dispense sample boxes among private
individuals, the letter was a forgery. But the notepaper on the other
hand (and this was the only remnant left to support the theory) was
perfectly genuine, so far as the old man could tell. He could not say
for certain, but was almost sure that this was a piece of old stock
which had been finished up about six months ago. The heading might be
forged, but he did not think so.

“Six months ago?” queried the Inspector unhappily.

“About that,” said the other, and plucked a piece of paper out of a
stand in front of him. “This is what we use now.” The Inspector
examined it. There was no doubt of the difference. The new paper was
thinner and more glossy. But the heading looked exactly the same. The
Inspector took a note of the firm who had printed both.

Unfortunately no sample of the old paper was available. Mr. Mason had
a search made on the spot, but not a sheet was left.

“As a matter of fact,” Moresby now said, “it had been noticed that the
piece of paper on which the letter was written was an old one. It is
distinctly yellow round the edges. I’ll pass it round and you can see
for yourselves. Please be careful of it.” The bit of paper, once
handled by a murderer, passed slowly from each would-be detective to
his neighbour.

“Well, to cut a long story shorter,” Moresby went on, “we had it
examined by the firm of printers, Webster’s, in Frith Street, and
they’re prepared to swear that it’s their work. That means the paper
was genuine, worse luck.”

“You mean, of course,” put in Sir Charles Wildman impressively, “that
had the heading been a copy, the task of discovering the printers who
executed it should have been comparatively simple?”

“That’s correct, Sir Charles. Except if it had been done by somebody
who owned a small press of their own; but that would have been
traceable too. All we’ve actually got is that the murderer is someone
who had access to Mason’s notepaper up to six months ago; and that’s
pretty wide.”

“Do you think it was stolen with the actual intention of putting it to
the purpose for which it was used?” asked Alicia Dammers.

“It seems like it, madam. And something kept holding the murderer up.”

As regards the wrapper, Mr. Mason had been unable to help at all. This
consisted simply of a piece of ordinary, thin brown paper, such as
could be bought anywhere, with Sir Eustace’s name and address
hand-printed on it in neat capitals. Apparently there was nothing to
be learnt from it at all. The post-mark showed that it had been
despatched by the nine-thirty p. m. post from the post office in
Southampton Street, Strand.

“There is a collection at 8.30 and another at 9.30,” Moresby
explained, “so it must have been posted between those two times. The
packet was quite small enough to go into the opening for letters. The
stamps make up the right value. The post office was shut by then, so
it could not have been handed in over the counter. Perhaps you’d care
to see it.” The piece of brown paper was handed gravely round.

“Have you brought the box too, and the other chocolates?” asked Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming.

“No, madam. It was one of Mason’s ordinary boxes, and the chocolates
have all been used for analysis.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was plainly disappointed. “I thought there
might be finger-prints on it,” she explained.

“We have already looked for those,” replied Moresby without a flicker.

There was a pause while the wrapper passed from hand to hand.

“Naturally, we’ve made inquiries as to any one seen posting a packet
in Southampton Street between half-past eight and half-past nine,”
Moresby continued, “but without result. We’ve also carefully
interrogated Sir Eustace Pennefather to discover whether he could
throw any light on the question why any one should wish to take his
life, or who. Sir Eustace can’t give us the faintest idea. Of course
we followed up the usual line of inquiry as to who would benefit by
his death, but without any helpful results. Most of his possessions go
to his wife, who has a divorce suit pending against him; and she’s out
of the country. We’ve checked her movements and she’s out of the
question. Besides,” added Moresby unprofessionally, “she’s a very nice
lady.

“And as to facts, all we know is that the murderer probably had some
connection with Mason & Sons up to six months ago, and was almost
certainly in Southampton Street at some time between eight-thirty and
nine-thirty on that particular evening. I’m very much afraid we’re up
against a brick wall.” Moresby did not add that so were the amateur
criminologists in front of him too, but he very distinctly implied it.

There was a silence.

“Is that all?” asked Roger.

“That’s all, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby agreed.

There was another silence.

“Surely the police have a theory?” Mr. Morton Harrogate Bradley threw
out in a detached manner.

Moresby hesitated perceptibly.

“Come along, Moresby,” Roger encouraged him. “It’s quite a simple
theory. I know it.”

“Well,” said Moresby, thus stimulated, “we’re inclined to believe that
the crime was the work of a lunatic, or semi-lunatic, possibly quite
unknown personally to Sir Eustace. You see . . .” Moresby looked a
trifle embarrassed. “You see,” he went on bravely, “Sir Eustace’s life
was a bit, well, we might say hectic, if you’ll excuse the word. We
think at the Yard that some religious or social maniac took it on
himself to rid the world of him, so to speak. Some of his escapades
had caused a bit of talk, as you may know.

“Or it might just be a plain homicidal lunatic, who likes killing
people at a distance.

“There’s the Horwood case, you see. Some lunatic sent poisoned
chocolates to the Commissioner of Police himself. That caused a lot of
attention. We think this case may be an echo of it. A case that
creates a good deal of notice is quite often followed by another on
exactly the same lines, as I needn’t remind you.

“Well, that’s our theory. And if it’s the right one, we’ve got about
as much chance of laying our hands on the murderer as—as—” Chief
Inspector Moresby cast about for something really scathing.

“As we have,” suggested Roger.



Chapter IV

The Circle sat on for some time after Moresby had gone. There was a
lot to discuss, and everybody had views to put forward, suggestions to
make, and theories to advance.

One thing emerged with singular unanimity: the police had been working
on the wrong lines. Their theory must be mistaken. This was not a
casual murder by a chance lunatic. Somebody very definite had gone
methodically about the business of helping Sir Eustace out of the
world, and that somebody had behind him an equally definite motive.
Like almost all murders, in fact, it was a matter of _cherchez le
motif_.

On the exposition and discussion of theories Roger kept a firmly
quelling hand. The whole object of the experiment, as he pointed out
more than once, was that everybody should work independently, without
bias from any other brain, form his or her own theory, and set about
proving it in his or her own way.

“But oughtn’t we to pool our facts, Sheringham?” boomed Sir Charles.
“I should suggest that though we pursue our investigations
independently, any new facts we discover should be placed at once at
the disposal of all. The exercise should be a mental one, not a
competition in routine-detection.”

“There’s a lot to be said for that view, Sir Charles,” Roger agreed.
“In fact, I’ve thought it over very carefully. But on the whole I
think it will be better if we keep any new facts to ourselves after
this evening. You see, we’re already in possession of all the facts
that the police have discovered, and anything else we may come across
isn’t likely to be so much a definite pointer to the murderer as some
little thing, quite insignificant in itself, to support a particular
theory.”

Sir Charles grunted, obviously unconvinced.

“I’m quite willing to have it put to the vote,” Roger said handsomely.

A vote was taken. Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming voted for all
facts being disclosed: Mr. Bradley, Alicia Dammers, Mr. Chitterwick
(the last after considerable hesitation) and Roger voted against.

“We retain our own facts,” Roger said, and made a mental note of who
had voted for each. He was inclined to guess that the voting indicated
pretty correctly who was going to be content with general theorising,
and who was ready to enter so far into the spirit of the game as to go
out and work for it. Or it might simply show who already had a theory
and who had not.

Sir Charles accepted the result with resignation.

“We start equal as from now, then,” he announced.

“As from the moment we leave this room,” amended Morton Harrogate
Bradley, rearranging the set of his tie. “But I agree so far with Sir
Charles’s proposition as to think that any one who can at this moment
add anything to the Chief Inspector’s statement should do so.”

“But can any one?” asked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.

“Sir Charles knows Mr. and Mrs. Bendix,” Alicia Dammers pointed out
impartially. “And Sir Eustace. And I know Sir Eustace too, of course.”

Roger smiled. This statement was a characteristic meiosis on the part
of Miss Dammers. Everybody knew that Miss Dammers had been the only
woman (so far as rumour recorded) who had ever turned the tables on
Sir Eustace Pennefather. Sir Eustace had taken it into his head to add
the scalp of an intellectual woman to those other rather
unintellectual ones which already dangled at his belt. Alicia Dammers,
with her good looks, her tall, slim figure, and her irreproachable
sartorial taste, had satisfied his very fastidious requirements so far
as feminine appearance was concerned. He had laid himself out to
fascinate.

The results had been watched by the large circle of Miss Dammers’s
friends with considerable joy. Miss Dammers had apparently been only
too ready to be fascinated. It seemed that she was living entirely on
the point of succumbing to Sir Eustace’s blandishments. They had
dined, visited, lunched and made excursions together without respite.
Sir Eustace, stimulated by the daily prospect of surrender on the
following one, had exercised his ardour with every art he knew.

Miss Dammers had then retired serenely, and the next autumn published
a book in which Sir Eustace Pennefather, dissected to the last
ligament, was given to the world in all the naked unpleasingness of
his psychological anatomy.

Miss Dammers never talked about her “art,” because she was a really
brilliant writer and not just pretending to be one, but she certainly
held that everything had to be sacrificed (including the feelings of
the Sir Eustace Pennefathers of this world) to whatever god she
worshipped privately in place of it.

“Mr. and Mrs. Bendix are quite incidental to the crime, of course,
from the murderer’s point of view,” Mr. Bradley now pointed out to
her, in the gentle tones of one instructing a child that the letter A
is followed in the alphabet by the letter B. “So far as we know, their
only connection with Sir Eustace is that he and Bendix both belonged
to the Rainbow.”

“I needn’t give you my opinion of Sir Eustace,” remarked Miss Dammers.
“Those of you who have read _Flesh and the Devil_ know how I saw him,
and I have no reason to suppose that he has changed since I was
studying him. But I claim no infallibility. It would be interesting to
hear whether Sir Charles’s opinion coincides with mine or not.”

Sir Charles, who had not read _Flesh and the Devil_, looked a little
embarrassed. “Well, I don’t see that I can add much to the impression
the Chief Inspector gave of him. I don’t know the man well, and
certainly have no wish to do so.”

Everybody looked extremely innocent. It was common gossip that there
had been the possibility of an engagement between Sir Eustace and Sir
Charles’s only daughter, and that Sir Charles had not viewed the
prospect with any perceptible joy. It was further known that the
engagement had even been prematurely announced, and promptly denied
the next day.

Sir Charles tried to look as innocent as everybody else. “As the Chief
Inspector hinted, he is something of a bad lot. Some people might go
so far as to call him a blackguard. Women,” explained Sir Charles
bluntly. “And he drinks too much,” he added. It was plain that Sir
Charles Wildman did not approve of Sir Eustace Pennefather.

“I can add one small point, of purely psychological value,” amplified
Alicia Dammers. “But it shows the dullness of his reactions. Even in
the short time since the tragedy rumour has joined the name of Sir
Eustace to that of a fresh woman. I was somewhat surprised to hear
that,” added Miss Dammers drily. “I should have been inclined to give
him credit for being a little more upset by the terrible mistake, and
its fortunate consequences to himself, even though Mrs. Bendix was a
total stranger to him.”

“Yes, by the way, I should have corrected that impression earlier,”
observed Sir Charles. “Mrs. Bendix was not a total stranger to Sir
Eustace, though he may probably have forgotten ever meeting her. But
he did. I was talking to Mrs. Bendix one evening at a first night (I
forget the play) and Sir Eustace came up to me. I introduced them,
mentioning something about Bendix being a member of the Rainbow. I’d
almost forgotten.”

“Then I’m afraid I was completely wrong about him,” said Miss Dammers,
chagrined. “I was far too kind.” To be too kind in the dissecting-room
was evidently, in Miss Dammers’s opinion, a far greater crime than
being too unkind.

“As for Bendix,” said Sir Charles rather vaguely, “I don’t know that I
can add anything to your knowledge of him. Quite a decent, steady
fellow. Head not turned by his money in the least, rich as he is. His
wife too, charming woman. A little serious perhaps. Sort of woman who
likes sitting on committees. Not that that’s anything against her
though.”

“Rather the reverse, I should have said,” observed Miss Dammers, who
liked sitting on committees herself.

“Quite, quite,” said Sir Charles hastily, remembering Miss Dammers’s
curious predilections. “And she wasn’t too serious to make a bet,
evidently, although it was a trifling one.”

“She had another bet, that she knew nothing about,” chanted in solemn
tones Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, who was already pondering the dramatic
possibilities of the situation. “Not a trifling one: a grim one. It
was with Death, and she lost it.” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was
regrettably inclined to carry her dramatic sense into her ordinary
life. It did not go at all well with her culinary aspect.

She eyed Alicia Dammers covertly, wondering whether she could get in
with a play before that lady cut the ground away from under her with a
book.

Roger, as chairman, took steps to bring the discussion back to
relevancies. “Yes, poor woman. But after all, we mustn’t let ourselves
confuse the issue. It’s rather difficult to remember that the murdered
person has no connection with the crime at all, so to speak, but there
it is. Just by accident the wrong person died; it’s on Sir Eustace
that we have to concentrate. Now, does anybody else here know Sir
Eustace, or anything about him, or any other fact bearing on the
crime?”

Nobody responded.

“Then we’re all on the same footing. And now, about our next meeting.
I suggest that we have a clear week for formulating our theories and
carrying out any investigations we think necessary, that we then meet
on consecutive evenings, beginning with next Monday, and that we now
draw lots as to the order in which we are to read our several papers
or give our conclusions. Or does any one think we should have more
than one speaker each evening?”

After a little talk it was decided to meet again on Monday, that day
week, and for purposes of fuller discussion allot one evening to each
member. Lots were then drawn, with the result that members were to
speak in the following order: (1) Sir Charles Wildman, (2) Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming, (3) Mr. Morton Harrogate Bradley, (4) Roger
Sheringham, (5) Alicia Dammers, and (6) Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick.

Mr. Chitterwick brightened considerably when his name was announced as
last on the list. “By that time,” he confided to Morton Harrogate,
“somebody is quite sure to have discovered the right solution, and I
shall therefore not have to give my own conclusions. If indeed,” he
added dubiously, “I ever reach any. Tell me, how _does_ a detective
really set to work?”

Mr. Bradley smiled kindly and promised to lend Mr. Chitterwick one of
his own books. Mr. Chitterwick, who had read them all and possessed
most of them, thanked him very gratefully.

Before the meeting finally broke up, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming could not
resist one more opportunity of being mildly dramatic. “How strange
life is,” she sighed across the table to Sir Charles. “I actually saw
Mrs. Bendix and her husband in their box at the Imperial the night
before she died. (Oh, yes; I knew them by sight. They often came to my
first nights.) I was in a stall almost directly under their box.
Indeed life is certainly stranger than fiction. If I could have
guessed for one minute at the dreadful fate hanging over her, I—”

“You’d have had the sense to warn her to steer clear of chocolates, I
hope,” observed Sir Charles, who did not hold very much with Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming.

The meeting then broke up.

Roger returned to his rooms in the Albany feeling exceedingly pleased
with himself. He had a suspicion that the various attempts at a
solution were going to be almost as interesting to him as the problem
itself.

Nevertheless he was on his mettle. He had not been very lucky in the
draw and would have preferred the place of Mr. Chitterwick, which
would have meant that he would have the advantage of already knowing
the results achieved by his rivals before having to disclose his own.
Not that he intended to rely on others’ brains in the least; like Mr.
Morton Harrogate Bradley he already had a theory of his own; but it
would have been pleasant to be able to weigh up and criticise the
efforts of Sir Charles, Mr. Bradley and particularly Alicia Dammers
(to these three he gave credit for possessing the best minds in the
Circle) before irrevocably committing himself. And more than any other
crime in which he had been interested, it seemed to him, he wanted to
find the right solution of this one.

To his surprise when he got back to his rooms he found Moresby waiting
in his sitting-room.

“Ah, Mr. Sheringham,” said that cautious official. “Thought you
wouldn’t mind me waiting here for a word with you. Not in a great
hurry to go to bed, are you?”

“Not in the least,” said Roger, doing things with a decanter and
syphon. “It’s early yet. Say when.”

Moresby looked discreetly the other way.

When they were settled in two huge leather armchairs before the fire
Moresby explained himself. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Sheringham, the
Chief’s deputed me to keep a sort of unofficial eye on you and your
friends over this business. Not that we don’t trust you, or think you
won’t be discreet, or anything like that, but it’s better for us to
know just what’s going on with a massed-detective attack like this.”

“So that if any of us finds out something really important, you can
nip in first and make use of it,” Roger smiled. “Yes, I quite see the
official point.”

“So that we can take measures to prevent the bird from being scared,”
Moresby corrected reproachfully. “That’s all, Mr. Sheringham.”

“Is it?” said Roger, with unconcealed scepticism. “But you don’t think
it very likely that your protecting hand will be required, eh,
Moresby?”

“Frankly, sir, I don’t. We’re not in the habit of giving up a case so
long as we think there’s the least chance of finding the criminal; and
Detective-Inspector Farrar, who’s been in charge of this one, is a
capable man.”

“And that’s his theory, that it’s the work of some criminal lunatic,
quite untraceable?”

“That’s the opinion he’s been led to form, Mr. Sheringham, sir. But
there’s no harm in your Circle amusing themselves,” added Moresby
magnanimously, “if they want to and they’ve got the time to waste.”

“Well, well,” said Roger, refusing to be drawn.

They smoked their pipes in silence for a few minutes.

“Come along, Moresby,” Roger said gently.

The chief inspector looked at him with an expression that indicated
nothing but bland surprise. “Sir?”

Roger shook his head. “It won’t wash, Moresby; it won’t wash. Come
along, now; out with it.”

“Out with what, Mr. Sheringham?” queried Moresby, the picture of
innocent bewilderment.

“Your real reason for coming round here,” Roger said nastily. “Wanted
to pump me, for the benefit of that effete institution you represent,
I suppose? Well, I warn you, there’s nothing doing this time. I know
you better than I did eighteen months ago at Ludmouth, remember.”

“Well, what can have put such an idea as that into your head, Mr.
Sheringham, sir?” positively gasped that much misunderstood man, Chief
Inspector Moresby, of Scotland Yard. “I came round because I thought
you might like to ask me a few questions, to give you a leg up in
finding the murderer before any of your friends could. That’s all.”

Roger laughed. “Moresby, I like you. You’re a bright spot in a dull
world. I expect you try to persuade the very criminals you arrest that
it hurts you more than it does them. And I shouldn’t be at all
surprised if you don’t somehow make them believe it. Very well, if
that’s all you came round for I’ll ask you some questions, and thank
you very much. Tell me this, then. Who do _you_ think was trying to
murder Sir Eustace Pennefather?”

Moresby sipped delicately at his whisky-and-soda. “You know what I
think, Mr. Sheringham, sir.”

“Indeed I don’t,” Roger retorted. “I only know what you’ve told me you
think.”

“I haven’t been in charge of the case at all, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby
hedged.

“Who do you really think was trying to murder Sir Eustace
Pennefather?” Roger repeated patiently. “Is it your own opinion that
the official police theory is right or wrong?”

Driven into a corner, Moresby allowed himself the novelty of speaking
his unofficial mind. He smiled covertly, as if at a secret thought.
“Well, Mr. Sheringham, sir,” he said with deliberation, “our theory is
a useful one, isn’t it? I mean, it gives us every excuse for not
finding the murderer. We can hardly be expected to be in touch with
every half-baked creature in the country who may have homicidal
impulses.

“Our theory will be put forward at the conclusion of the adjourned
inquest, in about a fortnight’s time, with reason and evidence to
support it, and any evidence to the contrary not mentioned, and you’ll
see that the coroner will agree with it, and the jury will agree with
it, and the papers will agree with it, and every one will say that
really, the police can’t be blamed for not catching the murderer this
time, and everybody will be happy.”

“Except Mr. Bendix, who doesn’t get his wife’s murder avenged,” added
Roger. “Moresby, you’re being positively sarcastic. And from all this
I deduce that you personally will stand aside from this general and
amicable agreement. Do you think the case has been badly handled by
your people?”

Roger’s last question followed so closely on the heels of his previous
remarks that Moresby had answered it almost before he had time to
reflect on the possible indiscretion of doing so. “No, Mr. Sheringham,
I don’t think that. Farrar’s a capable man, and he’d leave no stone
unturned—no stone, I mean, that he _could_ turn.” Moresby paused
significantly.

“Ah!” said Roger.

Having committed himself to this lamb, Moresby seemed disposed to look
about for a sheep. He re-settled himself in his chair and recklessly
drank a gill from his tumbler. Roger, scarcely daring to breathe too
audibly for fear of scaring the sheep, studiously examined the fire.

“You see, this is a very difficult case, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby
pronounced. “Farrar had an open mind, of course, when he took it up,
and he kept an open mind even after he’d found out that Sir Eustace
was even a bit more of a daisy than he’d imagined at first. That is to
say, he never lost sight of the fact that it _might_ have been some
outside lunatic who sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace, just out of
a general socialistic or religious feeling that he’d be doing a favour
to society or Heaven by putting him out of the world. A fanatic, you
might say.”

“Murder from conviction,” Roger murmured. “Yes?”

“But naturally what Farrar was concentrating on was Sir Eustace’s
private life. And that’s where we police-officers are handicapped.
It’s not easy for us to make enquiries into the private life of a
baronet. Nobody wants to be helpful; everybody seems anxious to put a
spoke in our wheel. Every line that looked hopeful to Farrar led to a
dead end. Sir Eustace himself told him to go to the devil, and made no
bones about it.”

“Naturally, from his point of view,” Roger said thoughtfully. “The
last thing he’d want would be a sheaf of his peccadilloes laid out for
a harvest festival in court.”

“Yes, and Mrs. Bendix lying in her grave on account of them,” retorted
Moresby with asperity. “No, he was responsible for her death, though
indirectly enough I’ll admit, and it was up to him to be as helpful as
he could to the police-officer investigating the case. But there
Farrar was; couldn’t get any further. He unearthed a scandal or two,
it’s true, but they led to nothing. So—well, he hasn’t admitted this,
Mr. Sheringham, and you’ll realise I ought not to be telling you; it’s
to go no further than this room, mind.”

“Good heavens, no,” Roger said eagerly.

“Well then, it’s my private opinion that Farrar was driven to the
other conclusion in self-defence. And the chief had to agree with it
in self-defence too. But if you want to get to the bottom of the
business, Mr. Sheringham (and nobody would be more pleased if you did
than Farrar himself) my advice to you is to concentrate on Sir
Eustace’s private life. You’ve a better chance than any of us there;
you’re on his level, you’ll know members of his club, you’ll know his
friends personally, and the friends of his friends. And that,”
concluded Moresby, “is the tip I really came round to give you.”

“That’s very decent of you, Moresby,” Roger said with warmth. “Very
decent indeed. Have another spot.”

“Well, thank you, Mr. Sheringham, sir,” said Chief Inspector Moresby.
“I don’t mind if I do.”

Roger was meditating as he mixed the drinks. “I believe you’re right,
Moresby,” he said slowly. “In fact, I’ve been thinking along those
lines ever since I read the first full account. The truth lies in Sir
Eustace’s private life, I feel sure. And if I were superstitious,
which I’m not, do you know what I should believe? That the murderer’s
aim misfired and Sir Eustace escaped death for an express purpose of
Providence: so that he, the destined victim, should be the ironical
instrument of bringing his own intended murderer to justice.”

“Well, Mr. Sheringham, would you really?” said the sarcastic Chief
Inspector, who was not superstitious either.

Roger seemed rather taken with the idea. “_Chance, the Avenger._ Make
a good film title, wouldn’t it? But there’s a terrible lot of truth in
it.

“How often don’t you people at the Yard stumble on some vital piece of
evidence out of pure chance? How often isn’t it that you’re led to the
right solution by what seems a series of mere coincidences? I’m not
belittling your detective-work; but just think how often a piece of
brilliant detective-work which has led you most of the way but not the
last vital few inches, meets with some remarkable stroke of sheer luck
(thoroughly well-deserved luck, no doubt, but _luck_), which just
makes the case complete for you. I can think of scores of instances.
The Milsom and Fowler murder, for example. Don’t you see what I mean?
Is it chance every time, or is it Providence avenging the victim?”

“Well, Mr. Sheringham,” said Chief Inspector Moresby, “to tell you the
truth, I don’t mind what it is, so long as it lets me put my hands on
the right man.”

“Moresby,” laughed Roger, “you’re hopeless.”



Chapter V

Sir Charles Wildman, as he had said, cared more for honest facts than
for psychological fiddle-faddle.

Facts were very dear to Sir Charles. More, they were meat and drink to
him. His income of roughly thirty thousand pounds a year was derived
entirely from the masterful way in which he was able to handle facts.
There was no one at the bar who could so convincingly distort an
honest but awkward fact into carrying an entirely different
interpretation from that which any ordinary person (counsel for the
prosecution, for instance) would have put upon it. He could take that
fact, look it boldly in the face, twist it round, read a message from
the back of its neck, turn it inside out and detect auguries in its
entrails, dance triumphantly on its corpse, pulverise it completely,
re-mould it if necessary into an utterly different shape, and finally,
if the fact still had the temerity to retain any vestige of its
primary aspect, bellow at it in the most terrifying manner. If that
failed he was quite prepared to weep at it in open court.

No wonder that Sir Charles Wildman, K.C., was paid that amount of
money every year to transform facts of menacing appearance to his
clients into so many sucking-doves, each cooing those very clients’
tender innocence. If the reader is interested in statistics it might
be added that the number of murderers whom Sir Charles in the course
of his career had saved from the gallows, if placed one on top of the
other, would have reached to a very great height indeed.

Sir Charles Wildman had rarely appeared for the prosecution. It is not
considered etiquette for prosecuting counsel to bellow, and there is
scant need for their tears. His bellowing and his public tears were
Sir Charles Wildman’s long suit. He was one of the old school, one of
its very last representatives; and he found that the old school paid
him handsomely.

When therefore he looked impressively round the Crimes Circle on its
next meeting, one week after Roger had put forward his proposal, and
adjusted the gold-rimmed pince-nez on his somewhat massive nose, the
other members could feel no doubt as to the quality of the
entertainment in store for them. After all, they were going to enjoy
for nothing what amounted to a thousand-guinea brief for the
prosecution.

Sir Charles glanced at the note-pad in his hand and cleared his
throat. No barrister could clear his throat quite so ominously as Sir
Charles.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, in weighty tones, “it is not
unnatural that I should have been more interested in this murder than
perhaps any one else, for personal reasons which will no doubt have
occurred to you already. Sir Eustace Pennefather’s name, as you must
know, has been mentioned in connection with that of my daughter; and
though the report of their engagement was not merely premature, but
utterly without foundation, it is inevitable that I should feel some
personal connection, however slight, with this attempt to assassinate
a man who has been mentioned as a possible son-in-law to myself.

“I do not wish to stress this personal aspect of the case, which
otherwise I have tried to view as impersonally as any other with which
I have been connected; but I put it forward more as an excuse than
anything. For it has enabled me to approach the problem set us by our
President with a more intimate knowledge of the persons concerned than
the rest of you could have, and with, too, I fear, information at my
disposal which goes a long way towards indicating the truth of this
mystery.

“I know that I should have placed this information at the disposal of
my fellow-members last week, and I apologise to them wholeheartedly
for not having done so; but the truth is that I did not realise then
that this knowledge of mine was in any way germane to the solution, or
even remotely helpful, and it is only since I began to ponder over the
case with a view to clearing up the tragic tangle, that the vital
import of this information has impressed itself upon me.” Sir Charles
paused and allowed his resounding periods to echo round the room.

“Now, with its help,” he pronounced, looking severely from face to
face, “I am of opinion that I have read this riddle.”

A twitter of excitement, no less genuine because obviously awaited,
ran round the faithful Circle.

Sir Charles whisked off his pince-nez and swung them, in a
characteristic gesture, on their broad ribbon. “Yes, I think, in fact
I am sure, that I am about to elucidate this dark business to you. And
for this reason I regret that the lot has fallen upon me to speak
first. It would have been more interesting perhaps had we been
permitted to examine some other theories first, and demonstrate their
falsity, before we probed to the truth. That is, assuming that there
are other theories to examine.

“It would not surprise me, however, to learn that you had all leapt to
the conclusion to which I have been driven. Not in the least. I claim
no extraordinary powers in allowing the facts to speak to me for
themselves; I pride myself on no superhuman insight in having been
able to see further into this dark business than our official solvers
of mysteries and readers of strange riddles, the trained detective
force. Very much the reverse. I am only an ordinary human being,
endowed with no more powers than any of my fellow-creatures. It would
not astonish me for an instant to be apprised that I am only following
in the footsteps of others of you in fixing the guilt on the
individual who did, as I submit I am about to prove to you beyond any
possibility of doubt, commit this foul crime.”

Having thus provided for the improbable contingency of some other
member of the Circle having been so clever as himself, Sir Charles cut
some of the cackle and got down to business.

“I set about this matter with one question in my mind and one only—the
question to which the right answer has proved a sure guide to the
criminal in almost every murder that has ever been committed, the
question which hardly any criminal can avoid leaving behind him,
damning though he knows the answer must be: the question—_cui bono?_”
Sir Charles allowed a pregnant moment of silence. “Who,” he translated
obligingly, “was the gainer? Who,” he paraphrased, for the benefit of
any possible half-wits in his audience, “would, to put it bluntly,
_score_ by the death of Sir Eustace Pennefather?” He darted looks of
enquiry from under his tufted eyebrows, but his hearers dutifully
played the game; nobody undertook to enlighten him prematurely.

Sir Charles was far too practised a rhetorician to enlighten them
prematurely himself. Leaving the question as an immense query-mark in
their minds, he veered off on another track.

“Now there were, as I saw it, only three definite clues in this
crime,” he continued, in almost conversational tones. “I refer of
course to the forged letter, the wrapper, and the chocolates
themselves. Of these the wrapper could only be helpful so far as its
post-mark. The hand-printed address I dismissed as useless. It could
have been done by any one, at any time. It led, I felt, nowhere. And I
could not see that the chocolates or the box that contained them were
of the least use as evidence. I may be wrong, but I could not see it.
They were specimens of a well-known brand, on sale at hundreds of
shops; it would be fruitless to attempt to trace their purchaser.
Moreover any possibilities in that direction would quite certainly
have been explored already by the police. I was left, in short, with
only two pieces of material evidence, the forged letter and the
post-mark on the wrapper, on which the whole structure of proof must
be erected.”

Sir Charles paused again, to let the magnitude of this task sink into
the minds of the others; apparently he had overlooked the fact that
his problem must have been common to all. Roger, who with difficulty
had remained silent so long, interposed a gentle question.

“Had you already made up your mind as to the criminal, Sir Charles?”

“I had already answered to my own satisfaction the question I had
posed to myself, to which I made reference a few minutes ago,” replied
Sir Charles, with dignity but without explicitness.

“I see. You had made up your mind,” Roger pinned him down. “It would
be interesting to know, so that we can follow better your way of
approaching the proof. You used inductive methods then?”

“Possibly, possibly,” said Sir Charles testily. Sir Charles strongly
disliked being pinned down.

He glowered for a moment in silence, to recover from this indignity.

“The task, I saw at once,” he resumed, in a sterner voice, “was not
going to be an easy one. The period at my disposal was extremely
limited, far-reaching enquiries were obviously necessary, my own time
was far too closely engaged to permit me to make, in person, any
investigations I might find advisable. I thought the matter over and
decided that the only possible way in which I could arrive at a
conclusion was to consider the facts of the case for a sufficient
length of time till I was enabled to formulate a theory which would
stand every test I could apply to it out of such knowledge as was
already at my disposal, and then make a careful list of further points
which were outside my own knowledge but which must be facts if my
theory were correct; these points could then be investigated by
persons acting on my behalf and, if they were substantiated, my theory
would be conclusively proved.” Sir Charles drew a breath.

“In other words,” Roger murmured with a smile to Alicia Dammers,
turning a hundred words into six, “‘I decided to employ inductive
methods.’” But he spoke so softly that nobody but Miss Dammers heard
him.

She smiled back appreciatively. The art of the written word is not
that of the spoken one.

“I formed my theory,” announced Sir Charles, with surprising
simplicity. Perhaps he was still a little short of breath.

“I formed my theory. Of necessity much of it was guesswork. Let me
give an example. The possession by the criminal of a sheet of Mason &
Sons’ notepaper had puzzled me more than anything. It was not an
article which the individual I had in mind might be expected to
possess, still less to be able to acquire. I could not conceive any
method by which, the plot already decided upon and the sheet of paper
required for its accomplishment, such a thing could be deliberately
acquired by the individual in question without suspicion being raised
afterwards.

“I therefore formed the conclusion that it was the actual ability to
obtain a piece of Mason’s notepaper in a totally unsuspicious way,
which was the reason of the notepaper of that particular firm being
employed at all.” Sir Charles looked triumphantly round as if awaiting
something.

Roger supplied it; no less readily for all that the point must have
occurred to every one as being almost too obvious to need any comment.
“That’s a very interesting point indeed, Sir Charles. Most ingenious.”

Sir Charles nodded his agreement. “Sheer guesswork, I admit. Nothing
but guesswork. But guesswork that was justified in the result.” Sir
Charles was becoming so lost in admiration of his own perspicacity
that he had forgotten all his love of long, winding sentences and
smooth-rolling subordinate clauses. His massive head positively jerked
on his shoulders.

“I considered how such a thing might come into one’s possession, and
whether the possession could be verified afterwards. It occurred to me
at last that many firms insert a piece of notepaper with a receipted
bill, with the words ‘With Compliments’ or some such phrase typed on
it. That gave me three questions. Was this practice employed at
Mason’s? Had the individual in question an account at Mason’s, or more
particularly, to explain the yellowed edge of the paper, had there
been such an account in the past? Were there any indications on the
paper of such a phrase having been carefully erased?

“Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed Sir Charles, puce with excitement, “you
will see that the odds against those three questions being answered in
the affirmative were enormous. Overwhelming. Before I posed them I
knew that, should it prove to be the case, no mere chance could be
held responsible.” Sir Charles dropped his voice. “I knew,” he said
slowly, “that if those three questions of mine were answered in the
affirmative, the individual I had in mind must be as guilty as if I
had actually watched the poison being injected into those chocolates.”

He paused and looked impressively round him, riveting all eyes on his
face.

“Ladies and gentlemen, those three questions _were_ answered in the
affirmative.”

Oratory is a powerful art. Roger knew perfectly well that Sir Charles,
out of sheer force of habit, was employing on them all the usual and
hackneyed forensic tricks. It was with difficulty, Roger felt, that he
refrained from adding “of the jury” to his “Ladies and gentlemen.” But
really this was only what might have been expected. Sir Charles had a
good story to tell, and a story in which he obviously sincerely
believed, and he was simply telling it in the way which, after all
these years of practice, came most naturally to him. That was not what
was annoying Roger.

What did annoy him was that he himself had been plodding on the scent
of quite a different hare and, convinced as he had been that his must
be the right one, had at first been only mildly amused as Sir Charles
flirted round the skirts of his own quarry. Now he had allowed himself
to be influenced by mere rhetoric, cheap though he knew it to be, into
wondering.

But was it only rhetoric that had made him begin to doubt? Sir Charles
seemed to have some substantial facts to weave into the airy web of
his oratory. And pompous old fellow though he might be, he was
certainly no fool. Roger began to feel distinctly uneasy. For his own
hare, he had to admit, was a very elusive one.

As Sir Charles proceeded to develop his thesis, Roger’s uneasiness
began to turn into downright unhappiness.

“There can be no doubt about it. I ascertained through an agent that
Mason’s, an old-fashioned firm, invariably paid such private customers
as had an account with them (nine-tenths of their business of course
is wholesale) the courtesy of including a statement of thanks, just
two or three words typed in the middle of a sheet of notepaper. I
ascertained that this individual had had an account with the firm,
which was apparently closed five months ago; that is to say, a cheque
was sent then in settlement and no goods have been ordered since.

“Moreover I found time to pay a special visit myself to Scotland Yard
in order to examine that letter again. By looking at the back I could
make out quite distinct though indecipherable traces of former
typewritten words in the middle of the page. These latter cut halfway
down one of the lines of the letter and so prove that they could not
have been an erasure from that; they correspond in length to the
statement I expected; and they show signs of the most careful
attempts, by rubbing, rolling and re-roughening the smoothed paper, to
eradicate not only the typewriter-ink but even the actual indentations
caused by the metal letter-arms.

“This I held to be conclusive proof that my theory was correct, and at
once I set about clearing up such other doubtful points as had
occurred to me. Time was short, and I had recourse to no less than
four firms of trustworthy inquiry-agents among whom I divided the task
of providing the data I was seeking. This not only saved me
considerable time, but had the advantage of not putting the sum-total
of the information obtained into any hands but my own. Indeed I did my
best so to split up my queries as to prevent any of the firms from
even guessing what object I had in mind; and in this I am of the
opinion that I have been successful.

“My next care was the post-mark. It was necessary for my case that I
should prove that my suspect had actually been in the neighbourhood of
the Strand at the time in question. You will say,” suggested Sir
Charles, searching the interested faces round him, and apparently
picking upon Mr. Morton Harrogate Bradley as the raiser of this futile
objection. “You will say,” said Sir Charles sternly to Mr. Bradley,
“that this was not necessary. The parcel might have been posted quite
innocently by an unwitting accomplice to whom it had been entrusted,
so that the actual criminal had an unshakable alibi for that period;
the more so as the individual to whom I refer was actually not in this
country, so that it would be all the easier to request a friend who
might be travelling to England to undertake the task of posting the
parcel in this country and so saving the cost of the foreign postage,
which on parcels is not inconsiderable.

“I do not agree,” said Sir Charles to Mr. Bradley, still more
severely. “I have considered that point, and I do not think the
individual I have in mind would undertake such a very grave risk. For
the friend would almost certainly remember the incident when she read
of the affair in the papers, as would be almost inevitable.

“No,” concluded Sir Charles, finally crushing Mr. Bradley once and for
all, “I am convinced that the individual I am thinking of would
realise that nobody else must handle that parcel till it had passed
into the keeping of the post-office.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Bradley academically, “Lady Pennefather may have
had not an innocent accomplice but a guilty one. You’ve considered
that, of course?” Mr. Bradley managed to convey that the matter was of
no real interest, but as Sir Charles had been addressing these remarks
directly to him it was only courteous to comment on them.

Sir Charles purpled visibly. He had been priding himself on the
skilful way in which he had been withholding his suspect’s name, to
bring it out with a lovely plump right at the end after proving his
case, just like a real detective story. And now this wretched
scribbler of the things had spoilt it all.

“Sir,” he intoned, in proper Johnsonian manner, “I must call your
attention to the fact that I have mentioned no names at all. To do
such a thing is most imprudent. Do I need to remind you that there is
such a thing as a law of libel?”

Morton Harrogate smiled his maddeningly superior smile (he really was
a most insufferable young man). “Really, Sir Charles!” he mocked,
stroking his little sleek object he wore on his upper lip. “I’m not
going to write a story about Lady Pennefather trying to murder her
husband, if that’s what you’re warning me against. Or could it
possibly be that you were referring to the law of slander?”

Sir Charles, who had meant slander, enveloped Mr. Bradley in a crimson
glare.

Roger sped to the rescue. The combatants reminded him of a bull and a
gadfly, and that is a contest which it is often good fun to watch. But
the Crimes Circle had been founded to investigate the crimes of
others, not to provide opportunities for new ones. Roger did not
particularly like either the bull or the gadfly, but both amused him
in their different ways; he certainly disliked neither. Mr. Bradley on
the other hand disliked both Roger and Sir Charles. He disliked Roger
the more of the two because Roger was a gentleman and pretended not to
be, whereas he himself was not a gentleman and pretended he was. And
that surely is cause enough to dislike any one.

“I’m glad you raised that point, Sir Charles,” Roger now said
smoothly. “It’s one we must consider. Personally I don’t see how we’re
to progress at all unless we come to some arrangement concerning the
law of slander, do you?”

Sir Charles consented to be mollified. “It is a difficult point,” he
agreed, the lawyer in him immediately swamping the outraged human
being. A born lawyer will turn aside from any other minor pursuit,
even briefs, for a really knotty legal point, just as a born woman
will put on her best set of underclothes and powder her nose before
inserting the latter in the gas-oven.

“I think,” Roger said carefully, anxious not to wound legal
susceptibilities (it was a bold proposition for a layman to make),
“that we should disregard that particular law. I mean,” he added
hastily, observing the look of pain on Sir Charles’s brow at being
asked to condone this violation of a _lex intangenda_, “I mean, we
should come to some such arrangement as that anything said in this
room should be without prejudice, or among friends, or—or not in the
spirit of the adverb,” he plunged desperately, “or whatever the legal
wriggle is.” On the whole it was not a tactful speech.

But it is doubtful whether Sir Charles heard it. A dreamy look had
come into his eyes, as of a Lord of Appeal crooning over a piece of
red tape. “Slander, as we all know,” he murmured, “consists in the
malicious speaking of such words as render the party who speaks them
in the hearing of others liable to an action at the suit of the party
to whom they apply. In this case, the imputation being of a crime or
misdemeanour which is punishable corporeally, pecuniary damage would
not have to be proved, and, the imputation being defamatory, its
falsity would be presumed and the burden of proving its truth would be
laid upon the defendant. We should therefore have the interesting
situation of the defendant in a slander action becoming, in essence,
the plaintiff in a civil suit for murder. And really,” said Sir
Charles in much perplexity, “I don’t know what would happen then.”

“Er—what about privilege?” suggested Roger feebly.

“Of course,” Sir Charles disregarded him, “there would have to be
stated in the declaration the actual words used, not merely their
meaning and general inference, and failure to prove them as stated
would result in the plaintiff being nonsuited; so that unless notes
were taken here and signed by a witness who had heard the defamation,
I do not quite see how an action could lie.”

“Privilege?” murmured Roger despairingly.

“Moreover I should be of the opinion,” said Sir Charles, brightening,
“that this might be regarded as one of those proper occasions upon
which statements, in themselves defamatory, and even false, may be
made if from a perfectly proper motive and with an entire belief in
their truth. In that case the presumption would be reversed and the
burden would be on the plaintiff to prove, and that to the
satisfaction of a jury, that the defendant was actuated by express
malice. In that case I rather fancy that the court would be guided
almost wholly by considerations of public expediency, which would
probably mean that—”

“Privilege!” said Roger loudly.

Sir Charles turned on him the dull eye of a red-ink fiend. But this
time the word had penetrated. “I was coming to that,” he reproved.
“Now in our case I hardly think that a plea of public privilege would
be accepted. As to private privilege, the limits are of course
exceedingly difficult to define. It would be doubtful if we could
plead successfully that all statements made here are matters of purely
private communication, because it is a question whether this Circle
does constitute, in actual fact, a private or a public gathering. One
could,” said Sir Charles with much interest, “argue either way. Or
even, for the matter of that, that it is a private body meeting in
public, or, _vice versa_, a public gathering held in private. The
point is a very debatable one.” Sir Charles swung his glasses for a
moment to emphasise the extreme debatability of the point.

“But I do feel inclined to venture the opinion,” he plunged at last,
“that on the whole we might be justified in taking up our stand upon
the submission that the occasion _is_ privileged in so far as it is
concerned entirely with communications which are made with no _animus
injuriandi_ but solely in performance of a duty not necessarily legal
but moral or social, and any statements so uttered are covered by a
plea of _veritas convicii_ being made within proper limits by persons
in the _bona fide_ prosecution of their own and the public interest. I
am bound to say however,” Sir Charles immediately proceeded to hedge
as if horrified at having committed himself at last, “that this is not
a matter of complete certainty, and a wiser policy might be to avoid
the direct mention of any name, while holding ourselves free to
indicate in some unmistakable manner, such as by signs, or possibly by
some form of impersonation or acting, the individual to whom we
severally refer.”

“Still,” pursued the President, faint but persistent, “on the whole
you do think that the occasion may be regarded as privileged, and we
may go ahead and mention any name we like?”

Sir Charles’s glasses described a complete and symbolical circle. “I
think,” said Sir Charles very weightily indeed (after all it was an
opinion which would have cost the Circle such a surprisingly round sum
had it been delivered in chambers that Sir Charles need not be grudged
a little weight in the delivering of it). “I think,” said Sir Charles,
“that we might take that risk.”

“Right-ho!” said the President with relief.



Chapter VI

“I dare say,” resumed Sir Charles, “that many of you will have already
reached the same conclusion as myself, with regard to the identity of
the murderer. The case seems to me to afford so striking a parallel
with one of the classical murders, that the similarity can hardly have
passed unnoticed. I refer of course, to the Marie Lafarge case.”

“Oh!” said Roger, surprised. So far as he was concerned the similarity
had passed unnoticed. He wriggled uncomfortably. Now one came to
consider it, of course the parallel was obvious.

“There too we have a wife, accused of sending a poisoned article to
her husband. Whether the article was a cake or a box of chocolates is
beside the point. It will not do perhaps to—”

“But nobody in their sane senses still believes that Marie Lafarge was
guilty,” Alicia Dammers interrupted, with unusual warmth. “It’s been
practically proved that the cake was sent by the foreman, or whatever
he was. Wasn’t his name Dennis? His motive was much bigger than hers,
too.”

Sir Charles regarded her severely. “I think I said, _accused_ of
sending. I was referring to a matter of fact, not of opinion.”

“Sorry,” nodded Miss Dammers, unabashed.

“In any case, I just mention the coincidence for what it is worth. Let
us now go back to resume our argument at the point we left it. In that
connection, the question was raised just now,” said Sir Charles,
determinedly impersonal, “as to whether Lady Pennefather may have had
not an innocent accomplice but a guilty one. That doubt had already
occurred to me. I have satisfied myself that it is not the case. She
planned and carried through this affair alone.” He paused, inviting
the obvious question.

Roger tactfully supplied it.

“How could she, Sir Charles? We know that she was in the South of
France the whole time. The police investigated that very point. She
has a complete alibi.”

Sir Charles positively beamed at him. “She _had_ a complete alibi. I
have destroyed it.

“This is what actually happened. Three days before the parcel was
posted Lady Pennefather left Mentone and went, ostensibly, for a week
to Avignon. At the end of the week she returned to Mentone. Her
signature is in the hotel-register at Avignon, she has the receipted
bill, everything is quite in order. The only curious thing is that
apparently she did not take her maid, a very superior young woman of
smart appearance and good manners, to Avignon with her, for the
hotel-receipt is for one person only. And yet the maid did not stay at
Mentone. Did the maid then vanish into thin air?” demanded Sir Charles
indignantly.

“Oh!” nodded Mr. Chitterwick, who had been listening intently. “I see.
How ingenious.”

“Highly ingenious,” agreed Sir Charles, complacently taking the credit
for the erring lady’s ingenuity. “The maid took the mistress’s place;
the mistress paid a secret visit to England. And I have verified that
beyond any doubt. An agent, acting on telegraphic instructions from
me, showed the hotel-proprietor at Avignon a photograph of Lady
Pennefather and asked whether such a person had ever stayed in the
hotel; the man averred that he had never seen her in his life. My
agent showed him a snapshot which he had obtained of the maid; the
proprietor recognised her instantly as Lady Pennefather. Another
‘guess’ of mine had proved only too accurate.” Sir Charles leaned back
in his chair and swung his glasses in silent tribute to his own
astuteness.

“Then Lady Pennefather did have an accomplice?” murmured Mr. Bradley,
with the air of one discussing _The Three Bears_ with a child of four.

“An innocent accomplice,” retorted Sir Charles. “My agent questioned
the maid tactfully, and learned that her mistress has told her that
she had to go over to England on urgent business but, having already
spent six months of the current year in that country, would have to
pay British income-tax if she so much as set foot in England again
that year. A considerable sum was in question, and Lady Pennefather
suggested this plan as a means of getting round the difficulty, with a
handsome bribe to the girl. Not unnaturally the offer was accepted.
Most ingenious; most ingenious.” He paused again and beamed round,
inviting tributes.

“How very clever of you, Sir Charles,” murmured Alicia Dammers,
stepping into the breach.

“I have no actual proof of her stay in this country,” regretted Sir
Charles, “so that from the legal point of view the case against her is
incomplete in that respect, but that will be a matter for the police
to discover. In all other respects, I submit, my case is complete. I
regret, I regret exceedingly, having to say so, but I have no
alternative: Lady Pennefather is Mrs. Bendix’s murderess.”

There was a thoughtful silence when Sir Charles had finished speaking.
Questions were in the air, but nobody seemed to care to be the first
to put one. Roger gazed into vacancy, as if looking longingly after
the spoor of his own hare. There was no doubt that, as matters stood
at present, Sir Charles seemed to have proved his case.

Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick plucked up courage to break the silence. “We
must congratulate you, Sir Charles. Your solution is as brilliant as
it is surprising. Only one question occurs to me, and that is the one
of motive. Why should Lady Pennefather desire her husband’s death when
she is actually in process of divorcing him? Had she any reason to
suspect that a decree would not be granted?”

“None at all,” replied Sir Charles blandly. “It was just because she
was so certain that a decree would be granted that she desired his
death.”

“I—I don’t quite understand,” stammered Mr. Chitterwick.

Sir Charles allowed the general bewilderment to continue for a few
more moments before he condescended to dispel it. He had the orator’s
feeling for atmosphere.

“I referred at the beginning of my remarks to a piece of knowledge
which had come into my possession and which had helped me materially
towards my solution. I am now prepared to disclose, in strict
confidence, what that piece of knowledge was.

“You already know that there was talk of an engagement between Sir
Eustace and my daughter. I do not think I shall be violating the
secrets of the confessional if I tell you that not many weeks ago, Sir
Eustace came to me and formally asked me to sanction an engagement
between them as soon as his wife’s decree _nisi_ had been pronounced.

“I need not tell you all that transpired at that interview. What is
relevant is that Sir Eustace informed me categorically that his wife
had been extremely unwilling to divorce him, and he had only succeeded
in the end by making a will entirely in her favour, including his
estate in Worcestershire. She had a small private income of her own,
and he was going to make her such allowance in addition as he was
able; but with the interest on the mortgage on his estate swallowing
up nearly all the rent he was getting for it, and his other expenses,
this could not be a large one. His life, however, was heavily insured
in accordance with Lady Pennefather’s marriage settlements, and the
mortgage on the estate was in the nature of an endowment policy, and
lapsed with his death. He had therefore, as he candidly admitted, very
little to offer my daughter.

“Like myself,” said Sir Charles impressively, “you cannot fail to
grasp the significance of this. According to the will then in
existence, Lady Pennefather from being not even comfortably off would
become a comparatively rich woman on her husband’s death. But rumours
are reaching her ears of a possible marriage between that husband and
another woman as soon as the divorce is complete. What is more
probable than that when such an engagement is actually concluded, a
new will will be made?

“Her character is already shown in a strong enough light by her
willingness to accept the bribe of the will as an inducement to
divorce. She is obviously a grasping woman, greedy for money. Murder
is only another step for such a woman to take. And murder is her only
hope. I do not think,” concluded Sir Charles, “that I need to labour
the point any further.” His glasses swung deliberately.

“It’s uncommonly convincing,” Roger said, with a little sigh. “Are you
going to hand this information over to the police, Sir Charles?”

“I conceive that failure to do so would be a gross dereliction of my
duty as a citizen,” Sir Charles replied, with a pomposity that in no
way concealed how pleased he was with himself.

“Humph!” observed Mr. Bradley, who evidently was not going to be so
pleased with Sir Charles as Sir Charles was. “What about the
chocolates? Is it part of your case that she prepared them over here,
or brought them with her?”

Sir Charles waved an airy hand. “Is that material?”

“I should say that it would be very material to connect her at any
rate with the poison.”

“Nitrobenzene? One might as well try to connect her with the purchase
of the chocolates. She would have no difficulty in getting hold of
that. I regard her choice of poison, in fact, as on a par with the
ingenuity she has displayed in all the other particulars.”

“I see.” Mr. Bradley stroked his little moustache and eyed Sir Charles
combatively. “Come to think of it, you know, Sir Charles, you haven’t
really proved a case against Lady Pennefather at all. All you’ve
proved is motive and opportunity.”

An unexpected ally ranged herself beside Mr. Bradley. “Exactly!” cried
Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “That’s just what I was about to point out
myself. If you hand over the information you’ve collected to the
police, Sir Charles, I don’t think they’ll thank you for it. As Mr.
Bradley says, you haven’t proved that Lady Pennefather’s guilty, or
anything like it. I’m quite sure you’re altogether mistaken.”

Sir Charles was so taken aback that for a moment he could only stare.
“_Mistaken?_” he managed to ejaculate. It was clear that such a
possibility had never entered Sir Charles’s orbit.

“Well, perhaps I’d better say—wrong,” amended Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,
quite drily.

“But my dear madam—” For once words did not come to Sir Charles. “But
why?” he fell back upon, feebly.

“Because I’m sure of it,” retorted Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, most
unsatisfactorily.

Roger had been watching this exchange with a gradual change of
feeling. From being hypnotised by Sir Charles’s persuasiveness and
self-confidence into something like reluctant agreement, he was
swinging round now in reaction to the other extreme. Dash it all, this
fellow Bradley had kept a clearer head after all. And he was perfectly
right. There were gaps in Sir Charles’s case that Sir Charles himself,
as counsel for Lady Pennefather’s defence, could have driven a
coach-and-six through.

“Of course,” he said thoughtfully, “the fact that before she went
abroad Lady Pennefather may have had an account at Mason’s isn’t
surprising in the least. Nor is the fact that Mason’s send out a
complimentary chit with their receipts. As Sir Charles himself said,
very many old-fashioned firms of good repute do. And the fact that the
sheet of paper on which the letter was written had been used
previously for some such purpose is not only not surprising, when one
comes to consider; it’s even obvious. Whoever the murderer, the same
problem of getting hold of the piece of notepaper would arise. Yes,
really, that Sir Charles’s three initial questions should have
happened to find affirmative answers, does seem little more than a
coincidence.”

Sir Charles turned on this new antagonist like a wounded bull. “But
the odds were enormous against it!” he roared. “If it was a
coincidence, it was the most incredible one in the whole course of my
experience.”

“Ah, Sir Charles, but you’re prejudiced,” Mr. Bradley told him gently.
“And you exaggerate dreadfully, you know. You seem to be putting the
odds at somewhere round about a million to one. I should put them at
six to one. Permutations and combinations, you know.”

“Damn your permutations, sir!” riposted Sir Charles with vigour. “And
your combinations too.”

Mr. Bradley turned to Roger. “Mr. Chairman, is it within the rules of
this club for one member to insult another member’s underwear?
Besides, Sir Charles,” he added to that fuming knight, “I don’t wear
the things. Never have done, since I was an infant.”

For the dignity of the chair Roger could not join in the delighted
titters that were escaping round the table; in the interests of the
Circle’s preservation he had to pour oil on these very seething
waters.

“Bradley, you’re losing sight of the point, aren’t you? I don’t want
to destroy your theory necessarily, Sir Charles, or detract in any way
from the really brilliant manner in which you’ve defended it; but if
it’s to stand its ground it must be able to resist any arguments we
can bring against it. That’s all. And I honestly do think that you’re
inclined to attach a little too much importance to the answers to
those three questions. What do you say, Miss Dammers?”

“I agree,” Miss Dammers said crisply. “The way Sir Charles emphasised
their importance reminded me at the time of a favourite trick of
detective-story writers. He said, if I remember rightly, that if those
questions were answered in the affirmative he knew that his suspect
was guilty just as much as if he’d seen her with his own eyes putting
the poison into the chocolates, because the odds against a
coincidental affirmative to all three of them were incalculable. In
other words he simply made a strong assertion, unsupported by evidence
or argument.”

“And that is what detective-story writers do, Miss Dammers?” queried
Mr. Bradley, with a tolerant smile.

“Invariably, Mr. Bradley. I’ve often noticed it in your own books. You
state a thing so emphatically that the reader does not think of
questioning the assertion. ‘Here,’ says the detective, ‘is a bottle of
red liquid and here is a bottle of blue. If these two liquids turn out
to be ink, then we know that they were purchased to fill up the empty
inkpots in the library as surely as if we had read the dead man’s very
thoughts.’ Whereas the red ink might have been bought by one of the
maids to dye a jumper, and the blue by the secretary for his
fountain-pen; or a hundred other such explanations. But any
possibilities of that kind are silently ignored. Isn’t that so?”

“Perfectly,” agreed Bradley, unperturbed. “Don’t waste time on
unessentials. Just tell the reader very loudly what he’s to think, and
he’ll think it all right. You’ve got the technique perfectly. Why
don’t you try your hand at it? It’s quite a paying game, you know.”

“I may one day. And anyhow I will say for you, Mr. Bradley, that your
detectives do detect. They don’t just stand about and wait for
somebody else to tell them who committed the murder, as the so-called
detectives do in most of the so-called detective-stories I read.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Bradley. “Then you actually read
detective-stories, Miss Dammers?”

“Certainly,” said Miss Dammers, crisply. “Why not?” She dismissed Mr.
Bradley as abruptly as she had answered his challenge. “And the letter
itself, Sir Charles? The typewriting. You don’t attach any importance
to that?”

“As a detail, of course it would have to be considered; I was only
sketching out the broad lines of the case.” Sir Charles was no longer
bull-like. “I take it that the police would ferret out pieces of
conclusive evidence of that nature.”

“I think they might have some difficulty in connecting Pauline
Pennefather with the machine that typed that letter,” observed Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming, not without tartness.

The tide of feeling had obviously set in against Sir Charles.

“But the motive,” he pleaded, now pathetically on the defensive. “You
must admit that the motive is overwhelming.”

“You don’t know Pauline, Sir Charles—Lady Pennefather?” Miss Dammers
suggested.

“I do not.”

“Evidently,” commented Miss Dammers.

“You don’t agree with Sir Charles’s theory, Miss Dammers?” ventured
Mr. Chitterwick.

“I do not,” said Miss Dammers with emphasis.

“Might one enquire your reason?” ventured Mr. Chitterwick further.

“Certainly you may. It’s a conclusive one, I’m afraid, Sir Charles. I
was in Paris at the time of the murder, and just about the very hour
when the parcel was being posted I was talking to Pauline Pennefather
in the foyer of the Opera.”

“What!” exclaimed the discomfited Sir Charles, the remnants of his
beautiful theory crashing about his ears.

“I should apologise for not having given you this information before,
I suppose,” said Miss Dammers with the utmost calmness, “but I wanted
to see what sort of a case you could put up against her. And I really
do congratulate you. It was a remarkable piece of inductive reasoning.
If I hadn’t happened to know that it was built up on a complete
fallacy you would have quite convinced me.”

“But—but why the secrecy, and—and the impersonation by the maid, if
her visit was an innocent one?” stammered Sir Charles, his mind
revolving wildly round private aeroplanes and the time they would take
from the _Place de l’Opéra_ to Trafalgar Square.

“Oh, I didn’t say it was an innocent one,” retorted Miss Dammers
carelessly. “Sir Eustace isn’t the only one who is waiting for the
divorce to marry again. And in the interim Pauline, quite rightly,
doesn’t see why she should waste valuable time. After all, she isn’t
so young as she was. And there’s always a strange creature called the
King’s Proctor, isn’t there?”

Shortly after that the Chairman adjourned the meeting of the Circle.
He did so because he did not wish one of the members to die of
apoplexy on his hands.



Chapter VII

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was nervous. Actually nervous.

She shuffled the pages of her notebook aimlessly, and seemed hardly
able to sit through the few preliminaries which had to be settled
before Roger asked her to give the solution which she had already
affirmed, privately, to Alicia Dammers, to be indubitably the correct
one of Mrs. Bendix’s murder. With such a weighty piece of knowledge in
her mind one would have thought that for once in her life Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming had a really heaven-sent opportunity to be
impressive, but for once in her life she made no use of it. If she had
not been Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, one might have gone so far as to say
that she dithered.

“Are you ready, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming?” Roger asked, gazing at this
surprising manifestation.

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming adjusted her very unbecoming hat, rubbed her
nose (being innocent of powder, it did not suffer under this habitual
treatment; just shone a little more brightly in pink embarrassment),
and shot a covert glance round the table. Roger continued to gaze in
astonishment. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was positively shrinking from the
lime-light. For some occult reason she was approaching her task with
real distaste, and a distaste at that quite out of comparison with the
task’s significance.

She cleared her throat, nervously. “I have a very difficult duty to
perform,” she began in a low voice. “Last night I hardly slept.
Anything more distasteful to a woman like myself it is impossible to
imagine.” She paused, moistening her lips.

“Oh, come, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” Roger felt himself impelled to
encourage her. “It’s the same for all of us, you know. And I’ve heard
you make a most excellent speech at one of your own first nights.”

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked at him, not at all encouraged. “I was not
referring to that aspect of it, Mr. Sheringham,” she retorted, rather
more tartly. “I was speaking of the burden which has been laid on me
by the knowledge that has come into my possession, the terrible duty I
have to perform in consequence of it.”

“You mean you’ve solved the little problem?” enquired Mr. Bradley,
without reverence.

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming regarded him sombrely. “With infinite regret,”
she said, in low, womanly tones, “I have.” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was
recovering her poise.

She consulted her notes for a moment, and then began to speak in a
firmer voice. “Criminology I have always regarded with something of a
professional eye. Its main interest has always been for me its immense
potentialities for drama. The inevitability of murder; the predestined
victim, struggling unconsciously and vainly against fate; the
predestined killer, moving first unconsciously too and then with full
and relentless realisation, towards the accomplishment of his doom;
the hidden causes, unknown perhaps to both victim and killer, which
are all the time urging on the fulfilment of destiny.

“Apart from the action and the horror of the deed itself, I have
always felt that there are more possibilities of real drama in the
most ordinary or sordid of murders than in any other situation that
can occur to man. Ibsenish in the inevitable working out of certain
circumstances in juxtaposition that we call fate, no less than
Edgar-Wallacish in the _καθαρσις_ undergone by the emotions of the
onlooker at their climax.

“It was perhaps natural then that I should regard not only this
particular case from something of the standpoint of my calling (and
certainly no more dramatic twist could well be invented), but the task
of solving it too. Anyhow, natural or not, this is what I did; and the
result has terribly justified me. I considered the case in the light
of one of the oldest dramatic situations, and very soon everything
became only too clear. I am referring to the situation which the
gentlemen who pass among us in these days for dramatic critics,
invariably call the Eternal Triangle.

“I had to begin of course with only one of the triangle’s three
members, Sir Eustace Pennefather. Of the two unknown one must be a
woman, the other might be woman or man. So I fell back on another very
old and very sound maxim, and proceeded to _chercher la femme_. And,”
said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, very solemnly, “I found her.”

So far, it must be admitted, her audience was not particularly
impressed. Even the promising opening had not stirred them, for it was
only to be expected that Mrs. Fielder-Flemming would feel it her duty
to emphasise her feminine shrinkings from handing a criminal over to
justice. Her somewhat laborious sentences too, obviously learned off
by heart for the occasion, detracted if anything from the interest of
what she had to convey.

But when she resumed, having waited in vain for a tributary gasp at
her last momentous piece of information, the somewhat calculated
tenseness of her style had given way to an unrehearsed earnestness
which was very much more impressive.

“I wasn’t expecting the triangle to be the hackneyed one,” she said,
with a slight dig at the deflated remains of Sir Charles. “Lady
Pennefather I hardly considered for a moment. The subtlety of the
crime, I felt sure, must be a reflection of an unusual situation. And
after all a triangle need not necessarily include a husband and wife
among its members; any three people, if the circumstances arrange them
so, can form one. It is the circumstances, not the three protagonists,
that make the triangle.

“Sir Charles has told us that this crime reminded him of the Marie
Lafarge case, and in some respects (he might have added) the Mary
Ansell case too. It reminded me of a case as well, but it was neither
of these. The Molineux case in New York, it seems to me, provides a
much closer parallel than either.

“You all remember the details of course. Mr. Cornish, a director of
the important Knickerbocker Athletic Club, received in his Christmas
mail a small silver cup and a phial of bromo-seltzer, addressed to him
at the club. He thought they had been sent by way of a joke, and kept
the wrapper in order to identify the humorist. A few days later a
woman who lived in the same boarding-house as Cornish complained of a
headache and Cornish gave her some of the bromo-seltzer. In a very
short time she was dead, and Cornish, who had taken just a sip because
she complained of it being bitter, was violently ill but recovered
later.

“In the end a man named Molineux, another member of the same club, was
arrested and put on trial. There was quite a lot of evidence against
him, and it was known that he hated Cornish bitterly, so much so that
he had already assaulted him once. Moreover another member of the
club, a man named Barnet, had been killed earlier in the year through
taking what purported to be a sample of a well-known headache powder
which had also been sent to him at the club and, shortly before the
Cornish episode, Molineux married a girl who had actually been engaged
to Barnet at the time of his death; he had always wanted her, but she
had preferred Barnet. Molineux, as you remember, was convicted at his
first trial and acquitted at his second; he afterwards became insane.

“Now this parallel seems to me complete. Our case is to all purposes a
composite Cornish-cum-Barnet case. The resemblances are extraordinary.
There is the poisoned article addressed to the man’s club; there is,
in the case of Cornish, the death of the wrong victim; there is the
preservation of the wrapper; there is, in Barnet’s case, the triangle
element (and a triangle, you will notice, without husband and wife).
It’s quite startling. It is, in fact, more than startling; it’s
significant. Things don’t happen like that quite by chance.”

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming paused and blew her nose, delicately but with
emotion. She was getting nicely worked up now, and so, in consequence,
was her audience. If there were no gasps there was at any rate the
tribute of complete silence till she was ready to go on.

“I said that this similarity was more than startling, that it was
significant. I will explain its particular significance later; at
present it is enough to say that I found it very helpful also. The
realisation of the extreme closeness of the parallel came as quite a
shock to me, but once I had grasped it I felt strangely convinced that
it was in this very similarity that the clue to the solution of Mrs.
Bendix’s murder was to be found. I felt this so strongly that I
somehow actually _knew_ it. These intuitions do come to me sometimes
(explain them as you will) and I have never yet known them fail me.
This one did not do so either.

“I began to examine this case in the light of the Molineux one. Would
the latter help me to find the woman I was looking for in the former?
What were the indications, so far as Barnet was concerned? Barnet
received his fatal package because he was purposing to marry a girl
whom the murderer was resolved he should not marry. With so many
parallels between the two cases already, was there—” Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming pushed back her unwieldy hat to a still more
unbecoming angle and looked deliberately round the table with the air
of an early Christian trying the power of the human eye on a
doubtfully intimidated covey of lions—“_was there another here?_”

This time Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was rewarded with several real and
audible gasps. That of Sir Charles was quite the most audible, an
outraged, indignant gasp that came perilously near to a snort. Mr.
Chitterwick gasped apprehensively, as if fearing something like a
physical sequel to the sharp exchange of glances between Sir Charles
and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, those of the former positively menacing in
their warning, those of the lady almost vocal with her defiance of it.

The Chairman gasped too, wondering what a Chairman should do if two
members of his circle, and of opposite sexes at that, should proceed
to blows under his very nose.

Mr. Bradley forgot himself so far as to gasp as well, in sheer,
blissful ecstasy. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked as if she were to prove
a better hand at bull-baiting than himself, but Mr. Bradley did not
grudge her the honour so long as he was to be allowed to sit and hug
himself in the audience. Not in his most daring toreador-like antics
would Mr. Bradley have ever dared to postulate the very daughter of
his victim as the cause of the murder itself. Could this magnificent
woman really bring forward a case to support so puncturing an idea?
And what if it should actually turn out to be true? After all, such a
thing was conceivable enough. Murders have been committed for the sake
of lovely ladies often enough before; so why not for the lovely
daughter of a pompous old silk? Oh God, oh Montreal.

Finally Mrs. Fielder-Flemming gasped too, at herself.

Alone without a gasp sat Alicia Dammers, her face alight with nothing
but an intellectual interest in the development of her fellow-member’s
argument, determinedly impersonal. One was to gather that to Miss
Dammers it was immaterial whether her own mother had been mixed up in
the murder, so long as her part in it had provided opportunities for
the sharpening of wits and the stimulation of intelligence. Without
ever acknowledging her recognition that a personal element was being
introduced into the Circle’s investigations, she yet managed to
radiate the idea that Sir Charles ought, if anything, to be detachedly
delighted at the possibility of such enterprise on the part of his
daughter.

Sir Charles however was far from delighted. From the red swelling of
the veins on his forehead it was obvious that something was going to
burst out of him in a very few seconds. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming leapt,
like an agitated but determined hen, for the gap.

“We have agreed to waive the law of slander here,” she almost
squawked. “Personalities don’t exist for us. If the name crops up of
any one personally known to us, we utter it as unflinchingly, in
whatever connection, as if it were a complete stranger’s. That is the
definite arrangement we came to last night, Mr. President, isn’t it?
We are to do what we conceive to be our duty to society quite
irrespective of any personal considerations?”

For a moment Roger indulged his tremors. He did not want his beautiful
Circle to explode in a cloud of dust, never again to be re-united. And
though he could not but admire the flurried but undaunted courage of
Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, he had to be content to envy it so far as Sir
Charles was concerned, for he certainly did not possess anything like
it himself. On the other hand there was no doubt that the lady had
right on her side, and what can any President do but administer
justice?

“Perfectly correct, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” he had to admit, hoping
his voice sounded as firm as he would have wished.

For a moment a blue glare, emanating from Sir Charles, enveloped him
luridly. Then, as Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, evidently heartened by this
official support, took up her bomb again, the rays of the glare were
switched again on to her. Roger, nervously watching the two of them,
could not help reflecting that blue rays are things which should never
be directed on to bombs.

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming juggled featly with her bomb. Often though it
seemed about to slip through her fingers, it never quite reached the
ground or detonated. “Very well, then. I will go on. My triangle now
had the second of its members. On the analogy of the Barnet murder,
where was the third to be found? Obviously, with Molineux as the
prototype, in some person who was anxious to prevent the first member
from marrying the second.

“So far, you will see, I am not out of harmony with the conclusions
Sir Charles gave us last night, though my method of arriving at them
was perhaps somewhat different. He gave us a triangle also, without
expressly defining it as such (perhaps even without recognising it as
such). And the first two members of his triangle are precisely the
same as the first two of mine.”

Here Mrs. Fielder-Flemming made a notable effort to return something
of Sir Charles’s glare, in defiant challenge to contradiction. As she
had simply stated a plain fact however, which Sir Charles was quite
unable to refute without explaining that he had not meant what he had
meant the evening before, the challenge passed unanswered. Also the
glare visibly diminished. But for all that (patently remarked Sir
Charles’s expression) a triangle by any other name does _not_ smell so
unsavoury.

“It is when we come to the third member,” pursued Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming, with renewed poise, “that we are at variance. Sir
Charles suggested to us Lady Pennefather. I have not the pleasure of
Lady Pennefather’s acquaintance, but Miss Dammers who knows her well,
tells me that in almost every particular the estimate given us by Sir
Charles of her character was wrong. She is neither mean, grasping,
greedy, nor in any imaginable way capable of the awful deed with which
Sir Charles, perhaps a little rashly, was ready to credit her. Lady
Pennefather, I understand, is a particularly sweet and kindly woman;
somewhat broad-minded no doubt, but none the worse for that; indeed as
some of us would think, a good deal the better.”

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming encouraged the belief that she was not merely
tolerant of a little harmless immorality, but actually ready to act as
godmother to any particular instance of it. Indeed she went sometimes
quite a long détour out of her way in order to propagate this belief
among her friends. But unfortunately her friends would persist in
remembering that she had refused to have anything more to do with one
of her own nieces since the latter, on learning that her middle-aged
husband kept, for purposes of convenience, a different mistress in
each of the four quarters of England, and just to be on the safe side
one in Scotland too, had run away with a young man of her own with
whom she happened to be very devotedly in love.

“Just as I differ from Sir Charles over the identity of the third
person in the triangle,” went on Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, happily
ignorant of her friends’ memories, “so I differ from him in the means
by which that identity is to be established. We are at complete
variance in our ideas regarding the very heart of the problem, the
motive. Sir Charles would have us think that this was a murder
committed (or attempted, rather) for gain; I am convinced that the
incentive was, at any rate, a less ignoble one than that. Murder, we
are taught, can never be really justifiable; but there are occasions
when it comes dangerously near it. This, in my opinion, was one of
them.

“It is in the character of Sir Eustace himself that I see the clue to
the identity of the third person. Let us consider it for a moment. We
are not restricted by any considerations of slander, and we can say at
once that, from certain points of view, Sir Eustace is a quite
undesirable member of the community. From the point of view of a young
man, for the sake of example, who is in love with a girl, Sir Eustace
must be one of the very last persons with whom the young man would
wish that girl to come into contact. He is not merely immoral, he is
without excuse for his immorality, a far more serious thing. He is a
rake, a spendthrift, without honour or scruples where women are
concerned, and a man moreover who has already made a mess of marriage
with a very charming woman and one by no means too narrow to overlook
even a more than liberal allowance of the usual male peccadilloes and
lapses. As a prospective husband for any young girl Sir Eustace
Pennefather is a tragedy.

“And as a prospective husband for a young girl whom a man loves with
all his heart,” intoned Mrs. Fielder-Flemming very solemnly, “it is
easy to conceive that, in that particular man’s regard, Sir Eustace
Pennefather becomes nothing short of an impossibility.

“And a man who _is_ a man,” added Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, quite mauve
with intensity, “does not admit impossibilities.”

She paused, pregnantly.

“Curtain, Act I,” confided Mr. Bradley behind his hand to Mr. Ambrose
Chitterwick.

Mr. Chitterwick smiled nervously.



Chapter VIII

Sir Charles took the usual advantage of the first interval to rise
from his seat. Like so many of us in these days by the time of the
first interval (when it is not a play of Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s that
is in question) he felt almost physically unable to contain himself
longer.

“Mr. President,” he boomed, “let us get this clear. Is Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming making the preposterous accusation that some friend
of my daughter’s is responsible for this crime, or is she not?”

The President looked somewhat helplessly up at the bulk towering
wrathfully above him and wished he were anything but the President. “I
really don’t know, Sir Charles,” he professed, which was not only
feeble but untrue.

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming however was by now quite able to speak up for
herself. “I have not yet specifically accused any one of the crime,
Sir Charles,” she said, with a cold dignity that was only marred by
the fact that her hat, which had apparently been sharing its
mistress’s emotions, was now perched rakishly over her left ear. “So
far I have been simply developing a thesis.”

To Mr. Bradley Sir Charles would have replied, with Johnsonian scorn
of evasion: “Sir, damn your thesis.” Hampered now by the puerilities
of civilised convention regarding polite intercourse between the
sexes, he could only summon up once more the blue glare.

With the unfairness of her sex Mrs. Fielder-Flemming promptly took
advantage of his handicap. “And,” she added pointedly, “I have not yet
finished doing so.”

Sir Charles sat down, the perfect allegory. But he grunted very
naughtily to himself as he did so.

Mr. Bradley restrained an impulse to clap Mr. Chitterwick on the back
and then chuck him under the chin.

Her serenity so natural as to be patently artificial, Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming proceeded to call the interval closed and ring up the
curtain on her second act.

“Having given you my processes towards arriving at the identity of the
third member of the triangle I postulated, in other words towards that
of the murderer, I will go on to the actual evidence and show how that
supports my conclusions. Did I say ‘supports’? I meant, confirms them
beyond all doubt.”

“But what are your conclusions, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming?” Bradley asked,
with an air of bland interest. “You haven’t defined them yet. You only
hinted that the murderer was a rival of Sir Eustace’s for the hand of
Miss Wildman.”

“Exactly,” agreed Alicia Dammers. “Even if you don’t want to tell us
the man’s name yet, Mabel, can’t you narrow it down a little more for
us?” Miss Dammers disliked vagueness. It savoured to her of the
slipshod, which above all things in this world she detested. Moreover
she really was extremely interested to know upon whom Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming’s choice had alighted. Mabel, she knew, might look
like one sort of fool, talk like another sort, and behave like a
third; and yet really she was not a fool at all.

But Mabel was determined to be coy. “Not yet, I’m afraid. For certain
reasons I want to prove my case first. You’ll understand later, I
think.”

“Very well,” sighed Miss Dammers. “But do let’s keep away from the
detective-story atmosphere. All we want to do is to solve this
difficult case, not mystify each other.”

“I have my reasons, Alicia,” frowned Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, and rather
obviously proceeded to collect her thoughts. “Where was I? Oh yes, the
evidence. Now this is very interesting. I have succeeded in obtaining
two pieces of quite vital evidence which I have never heard brought
forward before.

“The first is that Sir Eustace was not in love with—” Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming hesitated; then, as the plunge had already been taken
for her, followed the intrepid Mr. Bradley into the deeps of complete
candour “—with Miss Wildman at all. He intended to marry her simply
for her money—or rather, for what he hoped to get of her father’s
money. I hope, Sir Charles,” added Mrs. Fielder-Flemming frostily,
“that you will not consider me slanderous if I allude to the fact that
you are an exceedingly rich man. It has a most important bearing on my
case.”

Sir Charles inclined his massive, handsome head. “It is hardly a
matter of slander, madam. Simply one of taste, which is outside my
professional orbit. I fear it would be a waste of time for me to
attempt to advise you on it.”

“That is very interesting, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” Roger hastily
interposed on this exchange of pleasantries. “How did you discover
it?”

“From Sir Eustace’s man, Mr. Sheringham,” replied Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming not without pride. “I interrogated him. Sir Eustace
had made no secret of it. He seems to confide most freely in his man.
He expected, apparently, to be able to pay off his debts, buy a
racehorse or two, provide for the present Lady Pennefather, and
generally make a fresh and no doubt discreditable start. He had
actually promised Barker (that is his man’s name) a present of a
hundred pounds on the day he ‘led the little filly to the altar,’ as
he phrased it. I am sorry to hurt your feelings, Sir Charles, but I
have to deal with facts, and feelings must go down before them. A
present of ten pounds bought me all the information I wanted. Quite
remarkable information, as it turned out.” She looked round
triumphantly.

“You don’t think, perhaps,” ventured Mr. Chitterwick with an
apologetic smile, “that information from such a tainted source might
not be entirely reliable? The source seems so very tainted. Why, I
don’t think my own man would sell me for a ten-pound note.”

“Like master like man,” returned Mrs. Fielder-Flemming shortly. “His
information was perfectly reliable. I was able to check nearly
everything he told me, so that I think I am entitled to accept the
small residue as correct too.

“I should like to quote another of Sir Eustace’s confidences. It is
not pretty, but it is very, very illuminating. He had made an attempt
to seduce Miss Wildman in a private room at the Pug-Dog Restaurant
(that, for instance, I checked later), apparently with the object of
ensuring the certainty of the marriage he desired. (I am sorry again,
Sir Charles, but these facts must be brought out.) I had better say at
once that the attempt was unsuccessful. That night Sir Eustace
remarked (and to his valet of all people, remember); ‘You can take a
filly to the altar, but you can’t make her drunk.’ That, I think, will
show you better than any words of mine just what manner of man Sir
Eustace Pennefather is. And it will also show you how overwhelmingly
strong was the incentive of the man who really loved her to put her
for ever out of the reach of such a brute.

“And that brings me to the second piece of my evidence. This is really
the foundation stone of the whole structure, the basis on which the
necessity for murder (as the murderer saw it) rested, and the basis at
the same time of my own reconstruction of the crime. Miss Wildman was
hopelessly, unreasonably, irrevocably infatuated with Sir Eustace
Pennefather.”

As an artist in dramatic effect, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was silent for
a moment to allow the significance of this information to sink into
the minds of her audience. But Sir Charles was far too personally
preoccupied to be interested in significances.

“And may one ask how you found _that_ out, madam?” he demanded,
swelling with sarcasm. “From my daughter’s maid?”

“From your daughter’s maid,” responded Mrs. Fielder-Flemming sweetly.
“Detecting, I discover, is an expensive hobby, but one mustn’t regret
money spent in a good cause.”

Roger sighed. It was plain that, once this ill-fortuned child of his
invention had died a painful death, the Circle (if it had not been
completely squared by then) would be found to be without either Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming or Sir Charles Wildman; and he knew which of the two
it would be. It was a pity. Sir Charles, besides being such an asset
from the professional point of view, was the only leavening apart from
Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick of the literary element; and Roger, who had
attended a few literary parties in his earlier days, was quite sure he
would not be able to face a gathering that consisted of nothing but
people who made their livings by their typewriters.

Besides, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming really was being a little hard on the
old man. After all, it was his daughter who was in question.

“I have now,” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, “established an overwhelming
motive for the man who is in my mind to eliminate Sir Eustace. In fact
it must have seemed to him the only possible way out of an intolerable
situation. Let me now go on to connect him with the few facts allowed
us by the anonymous murderer.

“When the Chief Inspector the other evening permitted us to examine
the forged letter from Mason & Sons I examined it closely, because I
know something about typewriters. That letter was typed on a Hamilton
machine. The man I have in mind has a Hamilton typewriter at his place
of business. You may say that might be only a coincidence, the
Hamilton being so generally used. So it might; but if you get enough
coincidences lumped together, they cease to become coincidences at all
and become certainties.

“In the same way we have the further coincidence of Mason’s notepaper.
This man has a definite connection with Mason’s. Three years ago, as
you may remember, Mason’s were involved in a big lawsuit. I forget the
details, but I think they brought an action against one of their
rivals. You may remember, Sir Charles?”

Sir Charles nodded reluctantly, as if unwilling to help his antagonist
even with this unimportant information. “I ought to,” he said shortly.
“It was against the Fearnley Chocolate Company for infringement of
copyright in an advertisement figure. I led for Mason’s.”

“Thank you. Yes, I thought it was something like that. Very well,
then. This man was connected with that very case. He was helping
Mason’s, on the legal side. He must have been in and out of their
office. His opportunities for possessing himself of a piece of their
notepaper would have been legion. The chances by which he might have
found himself three years later in possession of a piece would be
innumerable. The paper had yellowed edges; it must have been quite
three years old. It had an erasure. That erasure, I suggest, is the
remains of a brief note on the case jotted down one day in Mason’s
office. The thing is obvious. Everything fits.

“Then there is the matter of the post-mark. I agree with Sir Charles
that we may take it for granted that the murderer, cunning though he
is, and anxious though he might be to establish an alibi, would not
entrust the posting of the fatal parcel to any one else. Apart from a
confederate, which I am sure we may rule out of the question, it would
be far too dangerous; the name of Sir Eustace Pennefather could hardly
escape being seen, and the connection later established. The murderer,
secure in his conviction that suspicion will never fall on himself of
all people (just like all murderers that have ever been), gambles a
possible alibi against a certain risk and posts the thing himself. It
is therefore advisable, just to clinch the case against him, to
connect the man with the neighbourhood of the Strand between the hours
of eight-thirty and nine-thirty on that particular evening.

“Surprisingly enough I found this task, which I had expected to be the
most difficult, the easiest of all. The man of whom I am thinking
actually attended a public dinner that night at the Hotel Cecil, a
re-union dinner to be exact of his old school. The Hotel Cecil, I need
not remind you, is almost opposite Southampton Street. The Southampton
Street post-office is the nearest one to the Hotel. What could be
easier for him than to slip out of his seat for the five minutes which
is all that would be required, and be back again almost before his
neighbours had noticed his action?”

“What indeed?” murmured the rapt Mr. Bradley.

“I have two final points to make. You remember that in pointing out
the resemblance of this case to the Molineux affair, I remarked that
this similarity was more than surprising, it was significant. I will
explain what I meant by that. What I meant was that the parallel was
far too close for it to be just a coincidence. This case is a
deliberate _copy_ of that one. And if it is, there is only one
inference. This murder is the work of a man steeped in criminal
history—of a criminologist. And the man I have in mind _is_ a
criminologist.

“My last point concerns the denial in the newspaper of the rumoured
engagement between Sir Eustace Pennefather and Miss Wildman. I learnt
from his valet that Sir Eustace did not send that denial himself. Nor
did Miss Wildman. Sir Eustace was furiously angry about it. It was
sent, on his own initiative without consulting either of them, by the
man whom I am accusing of having committed this crime.”

Mr. Bradley stopped hugging himself for a moment. “And the
nitrobenzene? Were you able to connect him with that too?”

“That is one of the very few points on which I agree with Sir Charles.
I don’t think it in the least necessary, or possible, to connect him
with such a common commodity, which can be bought anywhere without the
slightest difficulty or remark.”

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was holding herself in with a visible effort.
Her words, so calm and judicial to read, had hitherto been spoken too
with a strenuous attempt towards calm and judicial delivery. But with
each sentence the attempt was obviously becoming more difficult. Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming was clearly getting so excited that a few more such
sentences seemed likely to choke her, though to the others such
intensity of feeling seemed a little unnecessary. She was approaching
her climax, of course, but even that seemed hardly an excuse for such
a very purple face and a hat that had now managed somehow to ride to
the very back of her head where it trembled agitatedly in sympathy
with its mistress.

“That is all,” she concluded jerkily. “I submit that I have proved my
case. This man is the murderer.”

There was complete silence.

“Well?” said Alicia Dammers impatiently. “Who is he, then?”

Sir Charles, who had been regarding the orator with a frown that grew
more and more lowering every minute, thumped quite menacingly on the
table in front of him. “Precisely,” he growled. “Let us get out in the
open. Against whom are these ridiculous insinuations of yours
directed, madam?” One gathered that Sir Charles did not find himself
in agreement with the lady’s conclusions, even before knowing what
they were.

“Accusations, Sir Charles,” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming squeaked correction.
“You—you pretend you don’t know?”

“Really, madam,” retorted Sir Charles, with massive dignity, “I’m
afraid I have no idea.”

And then Mrs. Fielder-Flemming became regrettably dramatic. Rising
slowly to her feet like a tragedy queen (except that tragedy queens do
not wear their hats tremblingly on the very backs of their heads, and
if their faces are apt to go brilliant purple with emotion disguise
the tint with appropriate grease paints), heedless of the chair
overturning behind her with a dull, doom-like thud, her quivering
finger pointing across the table, she confronted Sir Charles with
every inch of her five-foot nothing.

“Thou!” shrilled Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “Thou art the man!” Her
outstretched finger shook like a ribbon on an electric fan. “The brand
of Cain is on your forehead! Murderer!”

In the silence of ecstatic horror that followed Mr. Bradley clung
deliriously to the arm of Mr. Chitterwick.

Sir Charles succeeded in finding his voice, temporarily mislaid. “The
woman’s mad,” he gasped.

Finding that she had not been shot on the spot, or even blasted by
blue lightning from Sir Charles’s eyes, either of which possibilities
it seemed that she had been dreading, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming proceeded
rather less hysterically to amplify her charge.

“No, I am not mad, Sir Charles; I am very, very sane. You loved your
daughter, and with the twofold love that a man who has lost his wife
feels for the only feminine thing left to him. You considered that any
lengths were justified to prevent her from falling into the hands of
Sir Eustace Pennefather—from having her youth, her innocence, her
trust exploited by such a scoundrel.

“Out of your own mouth I convict you. Already you’ve told us that it
was not necessary to mention everything that took place at your
interview with Sir Eustace. No; for then you would have had to give
away the fact that you informed him you would rather kill him with
your own hands than see your daughter married to him. And when matters
reached such a pass, what with the poor girl’s infatuation and
obstinacy and Sir Eustace’s determination to take advantage of them,
that no means short of that very thing was left to you to prevent the
catastrophe, you did not shrink from employing them. Sir Charles
Wildman, may God be your judge, for I cannot.” Breathing heavily, Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming retrieved her inverted chair and sat down on it.

“Well, Sir Charles,” remarked Mr. Bradley, whose swelling bosom was
threatening to burst his waistcoat. “Well, I wouldn’t have thought it
of you. Murder, indeed. Very naughty; very, very naughty.”

For once Sir Charles took no notice of his faithful gadfly. It is
doubtful whether he even heard him. Now that it had penetrated into
his consciousness that Mrs. Fielder-Flemming really intended her
accusation in all seriousness and was not the victim of a temporary
attack of insanity, his bosom was swelling just as tumultuously as Mr.
Bradley’s. His face, adopting the purple tinge that Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming’s was relinquishing, took on the aspect of the frog
in the fable who failed to realise his own bursting-point. Roger,
whose emotions on hearing Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s outburst had been so
mixed as to be almost scrambled, began to feel quite alarmed for him.

But Sir Charles found the safety-valve of speech just in time. “Mr.
President,” he exploded through it, “if I am not right in assuming
this to be a jest on this lady’s part, even though a jest in the worst
possible taste, am I to be expected to take this preposterous nonsense
seriously?”

Roger glanced at Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s face, now set in flinty
masses, and gulped. However, preposterous though Sir Charles might
term it, his antagonist had certainly made out a case, and not a
flimsy, unsupported case either. “I think,” he said, as carefully as
he could, “that if it had been any one but yourself in question, Sir
Charles, you would agree that a charge of this kind, when there is
real evidence to support it, does at least require to be taken
seriously so far as to need refuting.”

Sir Charles snorted and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming nodded her head several
times with vehemence.

“If refuting is possible,” observed Mr. Bradley. “But I must admit
that, personally, I am impressed. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming seems to me to
have made out her case. Would you like me to go and telephone for the
police, Mr. President?” He spoke with an air of earnest endeavour to
do his duty as a citizen, however distasteful it might be.

Sir Charles glared, but once more seemed bereft of words.

“Not yet, I think,” Roger said gently. “We haven’t heard yet what Sir
Charles has to answer.”

“Well, I suppose we may as well _hear_ him,” conceded Mr. Bradley.

Five pairs of eyes glued themselves on Sir Charles, five pairs of ears
were strained.

But Sir Charles, struggling mightily with himself, was silent.

“As I expected,” murmured Mr. Bradley. “There is no defence. Even Sir
Charles, who has snatched so many murderers from the rope, can find
nothing to say in such a glaring case. It’s very sad.”

From the look he flashed at his tormentor it was to be deduced that
Sir Charles might have found plenty to say had the two of them been
alone together. As it was, he could only rumble.

“Mr. President,” said Alicia Dammers, with her usual brisk efficiency,
“I have a proposal to make. Sir Charles appears to be admitting his
guilt by default, and Mr. Bradley, as a good citizen, wishes to hand
him over to the police.”

“Hear, hear!” observed the good citizen.

“Personally I should be sorry to do that. I think there is a good deal
to be said for Sir Charles. Murder, we are taught, is invariably
anti-social. But is it? I am of the opinion that Sir Charles’s
intention, that of ridding the world (and incidentally his own
daughter) of Sir Eustace Pennefather, was quite in the world’s best
interests. That his intention miscarried and an innocent victim was
killed is quite beside the point. Even Mrs. Fielder-Flemming seemed to
be doubtful whether Sir Charles ought to be condemned, as a jury would
certainly condemn him, though she added in conclusion that she did not
feel competent to judge him.

“I differ from her. Being a person of, I hope, reasonable
intelligence, I feel perfectly competent to judge him. And I consider
further that all five of us are competent to judge him. I therefore
suggest that we do in fact judge him ourselves. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
could act as prosecutor; somebody (I propose Mr. Bradley) could defend
him; and all five of us constitute a jury, the finding to be by
majority in favour or against. We would bind ourselves to abide by the
result, and if it is against him we send for the police; if it is in
his favour we agree never to breathe a word of his guilt outside this
room. May this be put to the meeting?”

Roger smiled at her reprovingly. He knew quite well that Miss Dammers
no more believed in Sir Charles’s guilt than he, Roger, did himself,
and he knew that she was only pulling that eminent counsel’s leg; a
little cruelly, but no doubt she thought it was good for him. Miss
Dammers professed herself a strong believer in seeing the other side,
and held that it would be a very good thing for the cat occasionally
to find itself chased by the mouse; certainly therefore it was most
salutary for a man who had prosecuted other men for their lives to
find himself for once in the dock on just such a terrifying charge.
Mr. Bradley, on the other hand, though he, too, obviously did not
believe that Sir Charles was the murderer, mocked not out of
conviction but because only so could he get a little of his own back
against Sir Charles for having made more of a success of his life than
Mr. Bradley was likely to do.

Nor, Roger thought, had Mr. Chitterwick any serious doubts as to the
possibility of Sir Charles being guilty, though he was still looking
so alarmed at Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s temerity in suggesting such a
thing that it was not altogether possible to say what he did think.
Indeed Roger was quite sure that nobody entertained the least
suspicion of Sir Charles’s innocence except Mrs. Fielder-Flemming—and
perhaps, from the look of him, Sir Charles himself. As that outraged
gentleman had pointed out, such an idea, looked at in sober
reflection, was plainly the most preposterous nonsense. Sir Charles
could not be guilty because—well, because he was Sir Charles, and
because such things don’t happen, and because he obviously couldn’t
be.

On the other hand Mrs. Fielder-Flemming had very neatly proved that he
was. And Sir Charles had not even attempted yet to prove that he
wasn’t.

Not for the first time Roger wished, very sincerely, that anybody were
sitting in the presidential chair but himself.

“I think,” he now repeated, “that before we take any steps at all we
ought to hear what Sir Charles has to say. I am sure,” added the
President kindly, remembering the right phrase, “that he will have a
complete answer to all charges.” He looked expectantly towards the
criminal.

Sir Charles appeared to jerk himself out of the haze of his wrath. “I
am really expected to defend myself against this—this hysteria?” he
barked. “Very well. I admit I am a criminologist, which Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming appears to think so damning. I admit that I attended
a dinner at the Hotel Cecil on that night, which it seems is enough to
put the rope round my neck. I admit, since it appears that my private
affairs are to be dragged into public, regardless of taste or decency,
that I would rather have strangled Sir Eustace with my own hands than
see him married to my daughter.”

He paused, and passed his hand rather wearily over his high forehead.
He was no longer formidable, but only a rather bewildered old man.
Roger felt intensely sorry for him. But Mrs. Fielder-Flemming had
stated her case too well for it to be possible to spare him.

“I admit all this, but none of it is evidence that would have very
much weight in a court of law. If you want me to prove that I did not
actually send those chocolates, what am I to say? I could bring my two
neighbours at the dinner, who would swear that I never left my seat
till—well, it must have been after ten o’clock. I can prove by means
of other witnesses that my daughter finally consented, on my
representations, to give up the idea of marriage with Sir Eustace and
has gone voluntarily to stay with relations of ours in Devonshire for
a considerable time. But there again I have to admit that this has
happened since the date of posting the chocolates.

“In short, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming has managed, with considerable skill,
to put together a _prima facie_ case against me, though it was based
on a mistaken assumption (I would point out to her that counsel is
never constantly in and out of his client’s premises, but meets him
usually only in the presence of his solicitor, either at the former’s
place of business or in his own chambers), and I am quite ready, if
this meeting thinks it advisable, for the matter to be investigated
officially. More, I welcome such investigation in view of the slur
that has been cast upon my name. Mr. President, I ask you, as
representing the members as a whole, to take such action as you think
fit.”

Roger steered a wary course. “Speaking for myself, Sir Charles, I am
quite sure that Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s reasoning, exceedingly clever
though it was, has been based as you say upon an error, and really, as
a matter of mere probability, I cannot see a father sending poisoned
chocolates to the would-be fiancé of his own daughter. A moment’s
thought would show him the practical inevitability of the chocolates
reaching eventually the daughter herself. I have my own opinion about
this crime, but even apart from that I feel quite certain in my own
mind that the case against Sir Charles has not really been proved.”

“Mr. President,” cut in Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, not without heat, “you
may say what you like, but in the interests of—”

“I agree, Mr. President,” Miss Dammers interrupted incisively. “It is
unthinkable that Sir Charles could have sent those chocolates.”

“Humph!” said Mr. Bradley, unwilling to have his sport spoiled quite
so soon.

“Hear, hear!” Mr. Chitterwick, with surprising decision.

“On the other hand,” Roger pursued, “I quite see that Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming is entitled to the official investigation which Sir
Charles asks for, no less than is Sir Charles himself on behalf of his
good name. And I agree with Sir Charles that she has certainly made
out a _prima facie_ case for investigation. But what I should like to
stress is that so far only two members out of six have spoken, and it
is not outside possibility that such startling developments may have
been traced out by the time we have all had our turn, that the one we
are discussing now may (I do not say that it will, but it _may_) have
faded into insignificance.”

“Oho!” murmured Mr. Bradley. “What has our worthy President got up his
sleeve?”

“I therefore propose, as a formal motion,” Roger concluded,
disregarding the somewhat sour looks cast on him by Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming, “that we shelve the question regarding Sir Charles
entirely, for discussion or report either inside or outside this room,
for one week from to-day, when any member who wishes may bring it up
again for decision, failing which it passes into oblivion for good and
all. Shall we vote on that? Those in favour?”

The motion was carried unanimously. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming would have
liked to vote against it, but she had never yet belonged to any
committee where all motions were not carried unanimously and habit was
too strong for her.

The meeting then adjourned, rather oppressed.



Chapter IX

Roger sat on the table in Moresby’s room at Scotland Yard and swung
his legs moodily. Moresby was being no help at all.

“I’ve told you, Mr. Sheringham,” said the Chief Inspector, with a
patient air. “It’s not a bit of good you trying to pump me. I’ve told
you all we know here. I’d help you if I could, as you know”—Roger
snorted incredulously—“but we’re simply at a dead end.”

“So am I,” Roger grunted. “And I don’t like it.”

“You’ll soon get used to it, Mr. Sheringham,” consoled Moresby, “if
you take on this sort of job often.”

“I simply can’t get any further,” Roger lamented. “In fact I don’t
think I want to. I’m practically sure I’ve been working on the wrong
tack altogether. If the clue really does lie in Sir Eustace’s private
life, he’s shielding it like the very devil. But I don’t think it
does.”

“Humph!” said Moresby, who did.

“I’ve cross-examined his friends, till they’re tired of the sight of
me. I’ve cadged introductions to the friends of his friends, and the
friends of his friends of his friends, and cross-examined them too.
I’ve haunted his club. And what have I discovered? That Sir Eustace
was not only a daisy, as you’d told me already, but a perfectly
indiscreet daisy at that; the quite unpleasant type, fortunately very
much rarer than women suppose, that talks of his feminine successes,
with names—though I think that in Sir Eustace’s case this was simply
through lack of imagination and not any natural caddishness. But you
see what I mean. I’ve collected the names of scores of women, and they
all lead—nowhere! If there is a woman at the bottom of it, I should
have been sure to have heard of her by this time. And I haven’t.”

“And what about that American case, which we thought such an
extraordinary parallel, Mr. Sheringham?”

“That was cited last night by one of our members,” said Roger
gloomily. “And a very pretty little deduction she drew from it.”

“Ah, yes,” nodded the chief inspector. “That would be Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming, I suppose. She thinks Sir Charles Wildman is the
guilty party, doesn’t she?”

Roger stared at him. “How the devil did you know that? Oh! The
unscrupulous old hag. She passed you the wink, did she?”

“Certainly not, sir,” retorted Moresby with a virtuous air, as if half
the difficult cases Scotland Yard solves are not edged in the first
place along the right path by means of “information received.” “She
hasn’t said a word to us, though I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been
her duty to do so. But there isn’t much that your members are doing
which we don’t know about, and thinking too for that matter.”

“We’re being shadowed,” said Roger, pleased. “Yes, you told me at the
beginning that we were to have an eye kept on us. Well, well. So in
that case, are you going to arrest Sir Charles?”

“Not yet, I think, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby returned gravely.

“What do you think of the theory, then? She made out a very striking
case for it.”

“I should be very surprised,” said Moresby with care, “to be convinced
that Sir Charles Wildman had taken to murdering people himself instead
of preventing us from hanging other murderers.”

“Less paying, certainly,” Roger agreed. “Yes, of course there can’t be
anything in it really, but it’s a nice idea.”

“And what theory are you going to put forward, Mr. Sheringham?”

“Moresby, I haven’t the faintest idea. And I’ve got to speak to-morrow
night, too. I suppose I can fake up something to pass muster, but it’s
a disappointment.” Roger reflected for a moment. “I think the real
trouble is that my interest in this case is simply academic. In all
the others it has been personal, and that not only gives one such a
much bigger incentive to get to the bottom of a case but somehow
actually helps one to do so. Bigger gleanings in the way of
information, I suppose. And more intimate sidelights on the people
concerned.”

“Well, Mr. Sheringham,” remarked Moresby, a little maliciously,
“perhaps you’ll admit now that we people here, whose interest is never
personal (if you mean by that looking at a case from the inside
instead of from the outside), have a bit of an excuse when we do come
to grief over a case. Which, by the way,” Moresby added with
professional pride, “is precious seldom.”

“I certainly do,” Roger agreed feelingly. “Well, Moresby, I’ve got to
go through the distressing business of buying a new hat before lunch.
Do you feel like shadowing me to Bond Street? I might afterwards walk
into a neighbouring hostelry, and it would be nice for you to be able
to shadow me in there too.”

“Sorry, Mr. Sheringham,” said Chief Inspector Moresby pointedly, “but
_I_ have some work to do.”

Roger removed himself.

He was feeling so depressed that he took a taxi to Bond Street instead
of a ’bus, to cheer himself up. Roger, having been in London
occasionally during the war-years and remembering the interesting
habits cultivated by taxi-drivers during that period, had never taken
one since when a ’bus would do as well. The public memory is
notoriously short, but the public’s prejudices are equally notoriously
long.

Roger had reason for his depression. He was, as he had told Moresby,
not only at a dead end, but the conviction was beginning to grow in
him that he had actually been working completely on the wrong lines;
and the possibility that all the labour he had put into the case had
simply been time wasted was a sad one. His initial interest in the
affair, though great, had been as he had just realised only an
academic one, such as he would feel in any cleverly planned murder;
and in spite of the contacts established with persons who were
acquainted with various of the protagonists he still felt himself
awkwardly outside the case. There was no personal connection somehow
to enable him really to get to grips with it. He was beginning to
suspect that it was the sort of case, necessitating endless inquiries
such as a private individual has neither the skill, the patience nor
the time to prosecute, which can really only be handled by the
official police.

It was hazard, two chance encounters that same day and almost within
an hour, which put an entirely different complexion on the case to
Roger’s eyes, and translated at last his interest in it from the
academic into the personal.

The first was in Bond Street.

Emerging from his hat-shop, the new hat at just the right angle on his
head, he saw bearing down on him Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer. Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer was small, exquisite, rich, comparatively young,
and a widow, and she coveted Roger. Why, even Roger, who had his share
of proper conceit, could not understand, but whenever he gave her the
opportunity she would sit at his feet (metaphorically of course; he
had no intention of giving her the opportunity to do so literally) and
gaze up at him with her big brown eyes melting in earnest uplift. But
she talked. She talked, in short, and talked, and talked. And Roger,
who rather liked talking himself, could not bear it.

He tried to dart across the road, but there was no opening in the
traffic stream. He was cornered. With a gay smile that masked a
vituperative mind he spoilt the angle of his beautiful new hat.

Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer fastened on him gladly. “Oh, Mr. Sheringham!
Just the very person I wanted to see. Mr. Sheringham, _do_ tell me. In
the strictest confidence of course. _Are_ you taking up this dreadful
business of _poor_ Joan Bendix’s death? Oh, don’t—_don’t_ tell me
you’re not.” Roger tried to tell her that he had hoped to do so, but
she gave him no chance. “Oh, aren’t you really? But it’s too dreadful.
You ought, you know, you really _ought_ to try and find out who sent
those chocolates to Sir Eustace Pennefather. I do think it’s naughty
of you not to.”

Roger, the frozen grin of civilised intercourse on his face, again
tried to edge a word in; without result.

“I was horrified when I heard of it. Simply horrified.” Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer registered horror. “You see, Joan and I were such
_very_ close friends. Quite intimate. In fact we were at school
together.—Did you say anything, Mr. Sheringham?”

Roger, who had allowed a faintly incredulous groan to escape him,
hastily shook his head.

“And the awful thing, the truly _terrible_ thing is that Joan brought
the whole thing on herself. Isn’t that appalling, Mr. Sheringham?”

Roger no longer wanted to escape. “What did you say?” he managed to
insert, again incredulously.

“I suppose it’s what they call tragic irony,” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
chattered happily. “Certainly it was tragic enough and I’ve never
heard of anything so terribly ironical. You know about that bet she
made with her husband, of course, so that he had to get her a box of
chocolates and if he hadn’t Sir Eustace would never have given him the
poisoned ones but would have eaten them and died himself, and from all
I hear about him good riddance? Well, Mr. Sheringham—” Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer lowered her voice to a conspirator-like whisper
and glanced about her in the approved manner. “I’ve never told any one
else this, but I’m telling you because I know you’ll appreciate it.
You _are_ interested in irony, aren’t you?”

“I adore it,” Roger said mechanically. “Yes?”

“Well—_Joan wasn’t playing fair!_”

“How do you mean?” Roger asked, bewildered. Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
was artlessly pleased with her sensation. “Why, she ought not to have
made that bet at all. It was a judgment on her. A terrible judgment of
course, but the appalling thing is that she did bring it on herself,
in a way. I’m so terribly distressed about it. Really, Mr. Sheringham,
I can hardly bear to turn the light out when I go to bed. I see Joan’s
face simply looking at me in the dark. It’s awful.” And for a fleeting
instant Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer’s face did for once really mirror the
emotion she professed: it looked quite haggard.

“Why oughtn’t Mrs. Bendix to have made the bet?” Roger asked
patiently.

“Oh! Why, because she’d seen the play before. We went together, the
very first week it was on. She _knew_ who the villain was all the
time.”

“By Jove!” Roger was as impressed as Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer could
have wished. “The Avenging Chance again, eh? We’re none of us immune
from it.”

“Poetic justice, you mean?” twittered Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer, to
whom these remarks had been a trifle obscure. “Yes it was, in a way,
wasn’t it? Though really, the punishment was out of all proportion to
the crime. Good gracious, if every woman who cheats over a bet is to
be killed for it, where would any of us be?” demanded Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer with unconscious frankness.

“Umph!” said Roger tactfully.

Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer glanced rapidly up and down the pavement, and
moistened her lips. Roger had an odd impression that she was talking
not as usual just for the sake of talking, but in some recondite way
to escape from not talking. It was as if she was more distressed over
her friend’s death than she cared to show and found some relief in
babbling. It interested Roger also to notice that fond though she had
probably been of the dead woman, she now found herself driven as if
against her will to hint at blame even while praising her. It was as
though she was able thus to extract some subtle consolation for the
actual death.

“But Joan Bendix of all people! That’s what I can’t get over, Mr.
Sheringham. I should never have thought Joan _would_ do a thing like
that. Joan was such a nice girl. A little close with money perhaps,
considering how well-off she was, but that isn’t anything. Of course I
know it was only fun, and pulling her husband’s leg, but I always used
to think Joan was such a _serious_ girl, if you know what I mean.”

“Quite,” said Roger, who could understand plain English as well as
most people.

“I mean, ordinary people don’t talk about honour, and truth, and
playing the game, and all those things one takes for granted. But Joan
did. She was always saying that this wasn’t honourable, or that
wouldn’t be playing the game. Well, she paid herself for not playing
the game, poor girl, didn’t she? Still, I suppose it all goes to prove
the truth of the old saying.”

“What old saying?” asked Roger, almost hypnotised by this flow.

“Why, that still waters run deep. Joan must have been deep after all,
I’m afraid.” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer sighed. It was evidently a grave
social error to be deep. “Not that I want to say anything against her
now she’s dead, poor darling, but—well, what I mean is, I do think
psychology is so very interesting, don’t you, Mr. Sheringham?”

“Quite fascinating,” Roger agreed gravely. “Well, I’m afraid I must
be—”

“And what does that man, Sir Eustace Pennefather, think about it all?”
demanded Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer, with an expression of positive
vindictiveness. “After all, he’s as responsible for Joan’s death as
anybody.”

“Oh, really.” Roger had not conceived any particular love for Sir
Eustace, but he felt constrained to defend him against this charge.
“Really, I don’t think you can say that, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer.”

“I can, and I do,” affirmed that lady. “Have you ever met him, Mr.
Sheringham? I hear he’s a horrible creature. Always running after some
woman or other, and when he’s tired of her just drops her—biff!—like
that. Is it true?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Roger said coldly. “I don’t know him at
all.”

“Well, it’s common talk who he’s taken up with now,” retorted Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer, perhaps a trifle more pink than the delicate aids
to nature on her cheeks would have warranted. “Half-a-dozen people
have told me. That Bryce woman, of all people. You know, the wife of
the oil man, or petrol, or whatever he made his money in.”

“I’ve never heard of her,” Roger said, quite untruthfully.

“It began about a week ago, they say,” rattled on this red-hot
gossiper. “To console himself for not getting Dora Wildman, I suppose.
Well, thank goodness Sir Charles had the sense to put his foot down
there. He did, didn’t he? I heard so the other day. Horrible man!
You’d have thought that such a dreadful thing as being practically
responsible for poor Joan’s death would have sobered him up a little,
wouldn’t you? But not a bit of it. As a matter of fact I believe he—”

“Have you seen any shows lately?” Roger asked in a loud voice.

Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer stared at him, for a moment nonplussed.
“Shows? Yes, I’ve seen almost everything, I think. Why, Mr.
Sheringham?”

“I just wondered. The new revue at the Pavilion’s quite good, isn’t
it? Well, I’m afraid I must—”

“Oh, don’t!” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer shuddered delicately. “I was
there the night before Joan’s death.” (Can no subject take us away
from that for a moment? thought Roger). “Lady Cavelstoke had a box and
asked me to join her party.”

“Yes?” Roger was wondering if it would be considered rude if he simply
handed the lady off, as at rugger, and dived for the nearest opening
in the traffic. “Quite a good show,” he said at random, edging
restlessly towards the curb. “I liked that sketch, _The Sempiternal
Triangle_, particularly.”

“_The Sempiternal Triangle_?” repeated Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
vaguely.

“Yes, quite near the beginning.”

“Oh! Then I may not have seen it. I got there a few minutes late, I’m
afraid. But then,” said Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer with pathos, “I
always do seem to be late for everything.” Roger noted mentally that
the few minutes was by way of a euphemism, as were most of Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer’s statements regarding herself. _The Sempiternal
Triangle_ had certainly not been in the first half-hour of the
performance.

“Ah!” Roger looked fixedly at an oncoming ’bus. “I’m afraid you’ll
have to excuse me, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer. There’s a man on that
’bus who wants to speak to me. _Scotland Yard!_” he hissed, in an
impressive whisper.

“Oh! Then—then does that mean you _are_ looking into poor Joan’s
death, Mr. Sheringham? _Do_ tell me! I won’t breathe it to a soul.”

Roger looked round him with a mysterious air and frowned in the
approved manner. “Yes!” he nodded, his finger to his lips. “But not a
word, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer.”

“Of course not, I promise.” But Roger was disappointed to notice that
the lady did not seem quite so impressed as he had hoped. From her
expression he was almost ready to believe that she suspected how
unavailing his efforts had been, and was a little sorry that he had
taken on more than he could manage.

But the ’bus had now reached them, and with a hasty “Good-bye” Roger
swung himself on to the step as it lumbered past. With awful stealth,
feeling those big brown eyes fixed in awe on his back, he climbed the
steps and took his seat, after an exaggerated scrutiny of the other
passengers, beside a perfectly inoffensive little man in a bowler-hat.
The little man, who happened to be a clerk in the employment of a
monumental mason at Tooting, looked at him resentfully. There were
plenty of quite empty seats all round them.

The ’bus swung into Piccadilly, and Roger got off at the Rainbow Club.
He was lunching once again with a member. Roger had spent most of the
last ten days asking such members of the Rainbow Club as he knew,
however remotely, out to lunch in order to be asked to the club in
return. So far nothing helpful had arisen out of all this wasted
labour, and he anticipated nothing more to-day.

Not that the member was at all reluctant to talk about the tragedy. He
had been at school with Bendix, it appeared, and was as ready to adopt
responsibility for him on the strength of this tie as Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer had been for Mrs. Bendix. He plumed himself more
than a little therefore on having a more intimate connection with the
business than his fellow-members. Indeed one gathered that the
connection was even a trifle closer than that of Sir Eustace himself.
Roger’s host was that kind of man.

As they were talking a man entered the dining-room and walked past
their table. Roger’s host became abruptly silent. The newcomer threw
him an abrupt nod and passed on.

Roger’s host leant forward across the table and spoke in the hushed
tones of one to whom a revelation has been vouchsafed. “Talk of the
devil! That was Bendix himself. First time I’ve seen him in here since
it happened. Poor devil! It knocked him all to pieces, you know. I’ve
never seen a man so devoted to his wife. It was a byword. Did you see
how ghastly he looked?” All this in a tactful whisper that must have
been far more obvious to the subject of it had he happened to be
looking their way than the loudest bellowing.

Roger nodded shortly. He had caught a glimpse of Bendix’s face and
been shocked by it even before he learned his identity. It was haggard
and pale and seamed with lines of bitterness, prematurely old. “Hang
it all,” he now thought, much moved, “somebody really must make an
effort. If the murderer isn’t found soon it will kill that chap too.”

Aloud he said, somewhat at random and certainly without tact: “He
didn’t exactly fall on your neck. I thought you two were such bosom
friends?”

His host looked uncomfortable. “Oh, well, you must make allowances
just at present,” he hedged. “Besides, we weren’t _bosom_ friends
exactly. As a matter of fact he was a year or two senior to me. Or it
might have been three even. We were in different houses too. And he
was on the modern side of course (can you imagine the son of his
father being anything else?), while I was a classical bird.”

“I see,” said Roger quite gravely, realising that his host’s actual
contact with Bendix at school had been limited, at most, to that of
the latter’s toe with the former’s hinder parts.

He left it at that.

For the rest of lunch he was a little inattentive. Something was
nagging at his brain, and he could not identify it. Somewhere,
somehow, during the last hour, he felt, a vital piece of information
had been conveyed to him and he had never grasped its importance.

It was not until he was putting on his coat half-an-hour later, and
for the moment had given up trying to worry his mind into giving up
its booty, that the realisation suddenly came to him unbidden, in
accordance with its usual and maddening way. He stopped dead, one arm
in his coat-sleeve, the other in act to fumble.

“_By Jove!_” he said softly.

“Anything the matter, old man?” asked his host, now mellowed by much
port.

“No, thanks; nothing,” said Roger hastily, coming to earth again.

Outside the club he hailed a taxi.

For probably the first time in her life Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer had
given somebody a constructive idea.

For the rest of the day Roger was very busy indeed.



Chapter X

The President called on Mr. Bradley to hold forth.

Mr. Bradley stroked his moustache and mentally shot his cuffs.

He had begun his career (when still Percy Robinson) as a
motor-salesman, and had discovered that there is more money in
manufacturing. Now he manufactured detective stories, and found his
former experience of the public’s gullibility not unhelpful. He was
still his own salesman, but occasionally had difficulty in remembering
that he was no longer mounted on a stand at Olympia. Everything and
everybody in this world, including Morton Harrogate Bradley, he
heartily despised, except only Percy Robinson. He sold, in tens of
thousands.

“This is rather unfortunate for me,” he began, in the correct
gentlemanly drawl, as if addressing an audience of morons. “I had
rather been under the impression that I should be expected to produce
as a murderer the most unlikely person, in the usual tradition; and
Mrs. Fielder-Flemming has cut the ground away from under my feet. I
don’t see how I can possibly find you a more unlikely murderer than
Sir Charles here. All of us who have the misfortune to speak after
Mrs. Fielder-Flemming will have to be content to pile up so many
anti-climaxes.

“Not that I haven’t done my best. I studied the case according to my
own lights, and it led me to a conclusion which certainly surprised
myself quite a lot. But as I said, after the last speaker it will
probably seem to everybody else a dismal anti-climax. Let me see now,
where did I begin? Oh, yes; with the poison.

“Now the use of nitrobenzene as the poisoning agent interested me
quite a lot. I find it extremely significant. Nitrobenzene is the last
thing one would expect inside those chocolates. I’ve made something of
a study of poisons, in connection with my work, and I’ve never heard
of nitrobenzene being employed in a criminal case before. There are
cases on record of its use in suicide, and in accidental poisoning,
but not more than three or four all told.

“I’m surprised that this point doesn’t seem to have struck either of
my predecessors. The really interesting thing is that so few people
know nitrobenzene as a poison at all. Even the experts don’t. I was
speaking to a man who got a Science scholarship at Cambridge and
specialised in chemistry, and he had actually never heard of it as a
poison. As a matter of fact I found I knew a good deal more about it
than he did. A commercial chemist would certainly never think of it as
among the ordinary poisons. It isn’t even listed as such, and the list
is comprehensive enough. Well, all this seems most significant to me.

“Then there are other points about it. It’s used most extensively in
commerce. In fact it’s the kind of thing that might be used in almost
any manufacture. It’s a solvent, of quite a universal kind. We’ve been
told that its chief use is in making aniline dyes. That may be the
most important one, but it certainly isn’t the most extensive. It’s
used a lot in confectionery, as we were also told, and in perfumery as
well. But really I can’t attempt to give you a list of its uses. They
range from chocolates to motor-car tyres. The important thing is that
it’s perfectly easy to get hold of.

“For that matter it’s perfectly easy to make too. Any schoolboy knows
how to treat benzol with nitric acid to get nitrobenzene. I’ve done it
myself a hundred times. The veriest smattering of chemical knowledge
is all that’s wanted, and nothing in the way of expensive apparatus.
Or, so far as that goes, it could be done equally by somebody without
any chemical knowledge at all; that is, the actual process of making
it. Oh, and it could be made quite secretly by the way. Nobody need
even guess. But I think just a little chemical knowledge at any rate
would be wanted, ever to set one about making it at all. At least, for
this particular purpose.

“Well, so far as the case as a whole was concerned, this use of
nitrobenzene seemed to me not only the sole original feature but by
far the most important piece of evidence. Not in the way that prussic
acid is valuable evidence for the reason that prussic acid is so hard
to obtain, because once its use was determined anybody could get hold
of or make nitrobenzene, and that of course is a tremendous point in
favour of it from the would-be murderer’s point of view. No, what I
mean is that the sort of person who would ever think of employing the
stuff at all ought to be definable within surprisingly narrow limits.”

Mr. Bradley stopped a moment to light a cigarette, and if he was
secretly pleased that his fellow-members showed the extent to which he
had engaged their interest by not uttering a word until he was ready
to go on, he did not divulge the fact. Surveying them for a moment as
if inspecting a class composed entirely of half-wits, he took up his
argument again.

“First of all, then, we can credit this user of nitrobenzene with a
minimum at any rate of chemical knowledge. Or perhaps I ought to
qualify that. Either chemical knowledge, or specialised knowledge. A
chemist’s assistant, for instance, who was interested enough in his
job to read it up after shop-hours would fit the bill for the first
case, and a woman employed in a factory where nitrobenzene was used
and where the employees had been warned against its poisonous
properties would do for an example of the second. There are two kinds
of person, it seems to me, who might think of using the stuff as a
poison at all, and the first kind is subdivided into the two classes
I’ve mentioned.

“But it’s the second kind that I think we are much more probably
dealing with in this crime. This is a more intelligent sort of person
altogether.

“In this category the chemist’s assistant becomes an amateur dabbler
in chemistry, the girl in the factory a woman-doctor, let us say, with
an interest in toxicology, or, to get away from the specialist, a
highly intelligent lady with a strong interest in criminology
particularly on its toxicological side—just, in fact, like Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming here.” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming gasped indignantly and
Sir Charles, though momentarily startled at the unexpected quarter
from which was dealt this tit for the tats he had lately suffered at
the gasping lady’s hands, emitted the next instant a sound which from
anybody else could only have been described as a guffaw. “All of them,
you understand,” continued Mr. Bradley with complete serenity, “the
kind of people who might be expected not only to keep a Taylor’s
Medical Jurisprudence on their shelves but to consult it frequently.

“I agree with you, you see, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, that the method of
this crime does show traces of criminological knowledge. You cited one
case which was certainly a remarkable parallel, Sir Charles cited
another, and I am going to cite yet a third. It is a regular jumble of
old cases, and I am quite sure, as you are, that this is something
more than a mere coincidence. I’d arrived at this conclusion myself,
of criminological knowledge, before you mentioned it at all, and I was
helped to it as well by the strong feeling that whoever sent those
chocolates to Sir Eustace possesses a Taylor. That is a pure guess, I
admit, but in my copy of Taylor the article on nitrobenzene occurs on
the very next page after cyanide of potassium; and there seems to me
food for thought there.” The speaker paused a moment.

Mr. Chitterwick nodded. “I think I see. You mean, anybody deliberately
searching the pages for a poison that would fulfil certain
requirements. . . ?”

“Exactly,” Mr. Bradley concurred.

“You lay great stress on this matter of the poison,” Sir Charles
remarked, almost genial. “Do you tell us that you think you’ve
identified the murderer by deductions drawn from this one point
alone?”

“No, Sir Charles, I don’t think I can go quite so far as that. I lay
so much stress on it because, as I said, it’s the only really original
feature of the crime. By itself it won’t solve the problem, but
considered in conjunction with other features I do think it should go
a long way towards doing so—or at any rate provide such a check on a
person suspected for other reasons as to turn suspicion into
certainty.

“Let’s look at it for instance in the light of the crime as a whole. I
think the first thing one realises is that this crime is the work not
only of an intelligent person but of a well-educated one too. Well,
you see, that rules out at once the first division of people who might
be expected to think of using nitrobenzene as the poisoning agent.
Gone are our chemist’s assistant and our factory-girl. We can
concentrate on our intelligent, well-educated person, with an interest
in criminology, some knowledge of toxicology, and, if I’m not very
much mistaken (and I very seldom am), a copy of Taylor or some similar
book on his or her shelves.

“That, my dear Watsons, is what the criminal’s singular choice of
nitrobenzene has to tell me.” And Mr. Bradley stroked the growth on
his upper lip with an offensive complacency that was not wholly
assumed. Mr. Bradley took some pains to impress on the world how
pleased he was with himself, but the pose was not without its
foundation in fact.

“Most ingenious, certainly,” murmured Mr. Chitterwick, duly impressed.

“So now let’s get on with it,” observed Miss Dammers, not at all
impressed. “What’s your theory? That is, if you’ve really got one.”

“Oh, I’ve got one all right.” Mr. Bradley smiled in a superior manner.
This was the first time he had succeeded in provoking Miss Dammers to
snap at him, and he was rather pleased. “But let’s take things in
their proper order. I want to show you how inevitably I was led to my
conclusion, and I can only do that by tracing out my own footsteps, so
to speak. Having made my deductions from the poison itself, then, I
set about examining the other clues to see if they would lead me to a
result that I could check by the other. First of all I concentrated on
the notepaper of the forged letter, the only really valuable clue
apart from the poison.

“Now this piece of notepaper puzzled me. For some reason, which I
couldn’t identify, the name of Mason’s seemed to strike a reminiscent
note to me. I felt sure that I’d heard of Mason’s in some other
connection than just through their excellent chocolates. At last I
remembered.

“I’m afraid I must touch here on the personal, and I apologise in
advance, Sir Charles, for the lapse of taste. My sister, before she
married, was a shorthand-typist.” Mr. Bradley’s extreme languor all of
a sudden indicated that he felt this connection needed some defence
and was determined not to give it. The next instant he gave it. “That
is to say, her education put her on rather a different level from the
usual shorthand-typist, and she was, in point of fact, a trained
secretary.

“She had joined an establishment run by a lady who supplied
secretaries to business firms to take the places temporarily of girls
in responsible positions who were ill, or away on holiday, or anything
like that. Including my sister there were only two or three girls at
the place, and the posts they went to only lasted as a rule for two or
three weeks. Each girl would therefore have a good many such posts in
the course of a year. However, I did remember distinctly that one of
the firms to which my sister went while she was there was Mason’s, as
temporary secretary to one of the directors.

“This seemed to me possibly useful. It wouldn’t be likely that she
could throw a sidelight on the murder, but at any rate she might be
able to give me introductions to one or two members of Mason’s staff
if necessary. So I went down to see her about it.

“She remembered quite well. It was between three and four years ago,
and she liked being there so much that she had thought quite seriously
of putting in for a permanent secretaryship with the firm, should one
be available. Naturally she hadn’t got to know any of the staff really
well, but quite enough to give me the introductions if I wanted them.

“‘By the way,’ I happened to say to her casually, ‘I saw the letter
that was sent to Sir Eustace with the chocolates, and not only Mason’s
name but the actual paper itself struck me as familiar. I suppose you
wrote to me on it while you were there?’

“‘I don’t know that I ever did that,’ she said, ‘but of course the
paper was familiar to you. You’ve played paper-games here often
enough, haven’t you? You know we always use it. It’s such a convenient
size.’ Paper-games, I should explain, have always been a favourite
thing in our family.

“It’s funny how a connection will stick in the mind, but not the
actual circumstances of it. Of course I remembered then at once. There
was quite a pile of the paper, in one of the drawers of my sister’s
writing-table. I’d often torn it into strips for our paper-games
myself.

“‘But how did you get hold of it?’ I asked her.

“It seemed to me that she answered rather evasively, just saying that
she’d got it from the office when she was working there. I pressed
her, and at last she told me that one evening she was just on the
point of leaving the office when she remembered that some friends were
coming in after dinner at home. We should almost certainly play a
paper-game of some kind, and we had run out of suitable paper. She
hurried up the stairs again back to the office, dumped her
attaché-case on the table and opened it, hastily snatched up some
paper from the pile beside her typewriter, and threw it into the case.
In her hurry she didn’t realise how much she’d taken, and that supply,
which was supposed to tide us over one evening, had actually lasted
for nearly four years. She must have taken something like half a ream.

“Well, I went away from my sister’s house rather startled. Before I
left I examined the remaining sheets, and so far as I could see they
were exactly like the one on which the letter was typed. Even the
edges were a little discoloured too. I was more than startled: I was
alarmed. Because I ought to tell you that it had already occurred to
me that of all the ways of going about the search for the person who
had sent that letter to Sir Eustace, the one that seemed most hopeful
was to look for its writer among the actual employees, or
ex-employees, of the firm itself.

“As a matter of fact this discovery of mine had a more disconcerting
side still. On thinking over the case the idea had struck me that in
the two matters of the notepaper and the method itself of the crime it
was quite possible that the police, and every one else, had been
putting the cart before the horse. It had been taken for granted
apparently that the murderer had first of all decided on the method,
and then set about getting hold of the notepaper to carry it out.

“But isn’t it far more feasible that the notepaper should have been
already there, in the criminal’s ownership, and that it was the chance
possession of it which actually suggested the method of the crime? In
that case, of course, the likelihood of the notepaper being traced to
the murderer would be very small indeed, whereas in the other case
there is always that possibility. Had that occurred to you for
instance, Mr. President?”

“I must admit that it hadn’t,” Roger confessed. “And yet, like
Holmes’s tricks, the possibility’s evident enough now it’s brought
forward. I must say, it strikes me as being a very sound point,
Bradley.”

“Psychologically, of course,” agreed Miss Dammers, “it’s perfect.”

“Thank you,” murmured Mr. Bradley. “Then you’ll be able to understand
just how disconcerting that discovery of mine was. Because if there
was anything in that point at all, anybody who had in his or her
possession some old notepaper of Mason’s, with slightly discoloured
edges, immediately became suspect.”

“Hr-r-r-r-mph!” Sir Charles cleared his throat forcibly by way of
comment. The implication was obvious. Gentlemen don’t suspect their
own sisters.

“Dear, dear,” clucked Mr. Chitterwick, more humanly.

Mr. Bradley went on to pile up the agony. “And there was another
thing, which I could not overlook. My sister before she went in for
her training as a secretary, had played with the idea of becoming a
hospital nurse. She went through a short course in nursing as a young
girl, and was always thoroughly interested in it. She would read not
only books on nursing itself, but medical books too. Several times,”
said Mr. Bradley solemnly, “I’ve seen her studying my own copy of
Taylor, apparently quite absorbed in it.”

He paused again, but this time nobody commented. The general feeling
was that this was getting really too much of a good thing.

“Well, I went home and thought it over. Of course it seemed absurd to
put my own sister on the list of suspects, and at the very head of it
too. One doesn’t connect one’s own circle with the idea of murder. The
two things don’t mix at all. Yet I couldn’t fail to realise that if it
had been anybody else in question but my sister I should be feeling
quite jubilant over the prospect of solving the case. But as things
were, what was I to do?

“In the end,” said Mr. Bradley smugly, “I did what I thought my duty
and faced the situation. I went back to my sister’s house the next day
and asked her squarely whether she had ever had any kind of relations
with Sir Eustace Pennefather, and if so what. She looked at me blankly
and said that up till the time of the murder she had never heard of
the man. I believed her. I asked her if she could remember what she
had been doing on the evening before the murder. She looked at me
still more blankly and said that she had been in Manchester with her
husband at that time, they had stayed at the Peacock Hotel, and in the
evening had been to a cinema where they had seen a film called, so far
as she could recall, _Fires of Fate_. Again I believed her.

“As a matter of routine precaution however I checked her statements
later and found them perfectly correct; for the time of the posting of
the parcel she had an unshakable alibi. I felt more relieved than I
can say.” Mr. Bradley spoke in a low voice, with pathos and restraint,
but Roger caught his eye as he looked up and there was a mocking glint
in it which made the President feel vaguely uneasy. The trouble with
Mr. Bradley was that one never quite knew with him.

“Having drawn a blank with my first ticket, then, I tabulated the
conclusions I’d formed to date and set about considering the other
points in the case.

“It then struck me that the Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard had
been somewhat reticent about the evidence that night he addressed us.
So I rang him up and asked him a few questions that had occurred to
me. From him I learnt that the typewriter was a Hamilton No. 4, that
is, the ordinary Hamilton model; that the hand-printed address on the
cover was written with a fountain-pen, almost certainly an Onyx fitted
with a medium-broad nib; that the ink was Harfield’s Fountain-Pen Ink;
and that there was nothing to be learned from the wrapping-paper
(ordinary brown) or the string. That there were no finger-prints
anywhere we had been told.

“Well, I suppose I ought not to admit it, considering how I earn my
living, but upon my soul I haven’t the faintest idea how a
professional detective goes about a job of work,” said Mr. Bradley
with candour. “It’s easy enough in a book, of course, because there
are a certain number of things which the author wants found out and
these he lets his detective discover, and no others. In real life, no
doubt, it doesn’t pan out quite like that.

“Anyhow, what I did was to copy my own detectives’ methods and set
about the business in as systematic a way as I could. That is to say,
I made a careful list of all the available evidence, both as to fact
and to character (and it was surprising how much there was when one
came to tabulate it), and drew as many deductions as I could from each
piece, at the same time trying to keep a perfectly open mind as to the
identity of the person who was to hatch out from my nest of completed
conclusions.

“In other words,” said Mr. Bradley, not without severity, “I did _not_
decide that Lady A or Sir Somebody B had such a good motive for the
crime that she or he must undoubtedly have done it, and then twist my
evidence to fit this convenient theory.”

“Hear, hear!” Roger felt constrained to approve.

“Hear, hear!” echoed in turn both Alicia Dammers and Mr. Ambrose
Chitterwick.

Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming glanced at each other and then
hastily away again, for all the world like two children in a
Sunday-school who have been caught doing quite the wrong thing
together.

“Dear me,” murmured Mr. Bradley, “this is all very exhausting. May I
have five minutes’ rest, Mr. President, and half a cigarette?”

The President kindly gave Mr. Bradley an interval in which to restore
himself.



Chapter XI

“I have always thought,” resumed Mr. Bradley, restored, “I have always
thought that murders may be divided into two classes, closed or open.
By a closed murder I mean one committed in a certain closed circle of
persons, such as a house-party, in which it is known that the murderer
is limited to membership of that actual group. This is by far the
commoner form in fiction. An open murder I call one in which the
criminal is not limited to any particular group but might be almost
any one in the whole world. This, of course, is almost invariably what
happens in real life.

“The case with which we’re dealing has this peculiarity, that one
can’t place it quite definitely in either category. The police say
that it’s an open murder; both our previous speakers here seem to
regard it as a closed one.

“It’s a question of the motive. If one agrees with the police that it
is the work of some fanatic or criminal lunatic, then it certainly is
an open murder; anybody without an alibi in London that night might
have posted the parcel. If one’s of the opinion that the motive was a
personal one, connected with Sir Eustace himself, then the murderer is
confined to the closed circle of people who have had relations of one
sort or another with Sir Eustace.

“And talking of posting that parcel, I must just make a diversion to
tell you something really interesting. For all I know to the contrary,
I might have seen the murderer with my own eyes, in the very act of
posting it! As it happened, I was passing through Southampton Street
that evening at just about a quarter to nine. Little did I guess, as
Mr. Edgar Wallace would say, that the first act of this tragic drama
was possibly being unfolded at that very minute under my unsuspecting
nose. Not even a premonition of disaster caused me to falter in my
stride. Providence was evidently being somewhat close with
premonitions that night. But if only my sluggish instincts had warned
me, how much trouble I might have saved us all. Alas,” said Mr.
Bradley sadly, “such is life.

“However, that’s neither here nor there. We were discussing closed and
open murders.

“I was determined to form no definite opinions either way, so to be on
the safe side I treated this as an open murder. I then had the
position that every one in the whole wide world was under suspicion.
To narrow down the field a little, I set to work to build up the one
individual who really did it, out of the very meagre indications he or
she had given us.

“I had the conclusions drawn already from the choice of nitrobenzene,
which I’ve explained to you. But as a corollary to the good education,
I added the very significant postscript: but not public-school or
university. Don’t you agree, Sir Charles? It simply wouldn’t be done.”

“Public-school men have been known to commit murders before now,”
pointed out Sir Charles, somewhat at sea.

“Oh, granted. But not in such an underhand way as this. The
public-school code does stand for something, surely, even in murder.
So, I am sure, any public-school man would tell me. This isn’t a
gentlemanly murder at all. A public-school man, if he could ever bring
himself to anything so unconventional as murder, would use an axe or a
revolver or something which would bring him and his victim face to
face. He would never murder a man behind his back, so to speak. I’m
quite sure of that.

“Then another obvious conclusion is that he’s exceptionally neat with
his fingers. To unwrap those chocolates, drain them, re-fill them,
plug up the holes with melted chocolate, and wrap them up in their
silver paper again to look as if they’ve never been tampered with—I
can tell you, that’s no easy job. And all in gloves too, remember.

“I thought at first that the beautiful way it was done pointed
strongly to a woman. However, I carried out an experiment and got a
dozen or so of my friends to try their hands at it, men and women, and
out of the whole lot I was the only one (I say it without any
particular pride) who made a really good job of it. So it wasn’t
necessarily a woman. But manual dexterity’s a good point to establish.

“Then there was the matter of the exact six-minim dose in each
chocolate. That’s very illuminating, I think. It argues a methodical
turn of mind amounting to a real passion for symmetry. There are such
people. They can’t bear that the pictures on a wall don’t balance each
other exactly. I know, because I’m rather that way myself. Symmetry is
synonymous with order, to my mind. I can quite see how the murderer
came to fill the chocolates in that way. I should probably have done
so myself. Unconsciously.

“Then I think we can credit him or her with a creative mind. A crime
like this isn’t done on the spur of the moment. It’s deliberately
created, bit by bit, scene by scene, built up exactly as a play is
built up. Don’t you agree, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming?”

“It wouldn’t have occurred to me, but it may be true.”

“Oh, yes; a lot of thought must have gone to the carrying of it
through. I don’t think we need worry about the plagiarism from other
crimes. The greatest creative minds aren’t above adapting the ideas of
other people to their own uses. I do myself. So do you, I expect,
Sheringham; so do you, no doubt, Miss Dammers; so do you at times, I
should imagine, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. Be honest now, all of you.”

A subdued murmur of honesty acknowledged occasional lapses in this
direction.

“Of course. Look how Sullivan used to adapt old church music, and turn
a Gregorian chant into _A Pair of Sparkling Eyes_, or something
equally unchantlike. It’s permissible. Well, there’s all that to help
with the portrait of our unknown and, lastly, there must be present in
his or her mental make-up the particular cold, relentless inhumanity
of the poisoner. That’s all, I think. But it’s something, isn’t it?
One ought to be able to go a fair way towards recognising our criminal
if one ever ran across a person with these varied characteristics.

“Oh, and there’s one other point I mustn’t forget. The parallel crime.
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned this. To my mind it’s a closer
parallel than any we’ve had yet. It isn’t a well-known case, but
you’ve all probably heard of it. The murder of Dr. Wilson, at
Philadelphia, just twenty years ago.

“I’ll run through it briefly. This man Wilson received one morning
what purported to be a sample bottle of ale, sent to him by a
well-known brewery. There was a letter with it, written apparently on
their official notepaper, and the address-label had the firm’s name
printed on it. Wilson drank the beer at lunch, and died immediately.
The stuff was saturated with cyanide of potassium.

“It was soon established that the beer hadn’t come from the brewery at
all, which had sent out no samples. It had been delivered through the
local express company, but all they could say was that it had been
sent to them for delivery by a man. The printed label and the
letter-paper had been forged, printed specially for the occasion.

“The mystery was never solved. The printing-press used to print the
letter-heading and label couldn’t be traced, though the police visited
every printing-works in the whole of America. The very motive for the
murder was never even satisfactorily ascertained. A typical open
murder. The bottle arrived out of the blue, and the murderer remained
in it.

“You see the close resemblance to this case, particularly in the
supposed sample. As Mrs. Fielder-Flemming has pointed out, it’s almost
too good to be a coincidence. Our murderer _must_ have had that case
in mind, with its (for the murderer) most successful outcome. As a
matter of fact there was a possible motive. Wilson was a notorious
abortionist, and somebody may have wanted to stop his activities.
Conscience, I suppose. There are people who have such a thing. That’s
another parallel with this affair, you see. Sir Eustace is a notorious
evil-liver. And that goes to support the police view, of an anonymous
fanatic. There’s a good deal to be said for that view, I think.

“But I must get on with my own exposition.

“Well, having reached this stage I tabulated my conclusions and drew
up a list of conditions which this criminal of ours must fulfil. Now I
should like to point out that these conditions of mine were so many
and so varied that if anybody could be found to fit them the chances,
Sir Charles, would not be a mere million to one but several million to
one that he or she must be the guilty person. This isn’t just
haphazard statement, it’s cold mathematical fact.

“I have twelve conditions, and the mathematical odds against their all
being fulfilled in one person are actually (if my arithmetic stands
the test) four hundred and seventy-nine million, one thousand and six
hundred to one. And that, mark you, is if all the chances were even
ones. But they’re not. That he should have some knowledge of
criminology is at least a ten to one chance. That he should be able to
get hold of Mason’s notepaper must be more than a hundred to one
against.

“Well, taking it all in all,” opined Mr. Bradley, “I should think the
real odds must be somewhere about four billion, seven hundred and
ninety thousand million, five hundred and sixteen thousand, four
hundred and fifty-eight to one. In other words, it’s a snip. Does
every one agree?”

Every one was far too stunned to disagree.

“Right; then we’re all of one mind,” said Mr. Bradley cheerfully. “So
I’ll read you my list.”

He shuffled the pages of a little pocket-book and began to read:—

        Conditions to be Filled by the Criminal.

  1. Must have at least an elementary amount of chemical knowledge.
  2. Must have at least an elementary knowledge of criminology.
  3. Must have had a reasonably good education, but not public school
     or University.
  4. Must have possession of, or access to, Mason’s notepaper.
  5. Must have possession of, or access to, a Hamilton No. 4
     typewriter.
  6. Must have been in the neighbourhood of Southampton Street,
     Strand, during the critical hour, 8.30–9.30, on the evening
     before the murder.
  7. Must be in possession of, or had access to, an Onyx fountain-pen,
     fitted with a medium-broad nib.
  8. Must be in possession of, or had access to, Harfield’s
     Fountain-Pen Ink.
  9. Must have something of a creative mind, but not above adapting
     the creations of others.
 10. Must be more than ordinarily neat with the fingers.
 11. Must be a person of methodical habits, probably with a strong
     feeling for symmetry.
 12. Must have the cold inhumanity of the poisoner.

“By the way,” said Mr. Bradley, stowing away his pocket-book again,
“you see that I’ve agreed with you too, Sir Charles, that the murderer
would never have entrusted the posting of the parcel to another
person. Oh, and one other point. For purposes of reference. If anybody
wants to see an Onyx pen, and fitted with a medium-broad nib as well,
take a look at mine. And curiously enough it’s filled with Harfield’s
Fountain-Pen Ink too.” The pen circulated slowly round the table while
Mr. Bradley, leaning back in his chair, surveyed its progress with a
fatherly smile.

“And that,” said Mr. Bradley, when the pen had been restored to him,
“is that.”

Roger thought he saw the explanation of the glint that had appeared
from time to time in Mr. Bradley’s eye. “You mean, the problem’s still
to solve. The four billion chances were too much for you. You couldn’t
find any one to fit your own conditions?”

“Well,” said Mr. Bradley, apparently most reluctant all of a sudden,
“if you must know, I have found some one who does.”

“You have? Good man! Who?”

“Hang it all, you know,” said the coy Mr. Bradley, “I hardly like to
tell you. It’s really too ridiculous.”

A chorus of expostulation, cajolement, and encouragement was
immediately directed at him. Never had Mr. Bradley found himself so
popular.

“You’ll laugh at me if I do tell you.”

It appeared that everybody would rather suffer the tortures of the
Inquisition than laugh at Mr. Bradley. Never can five people less
disposed to mirth at Mr. Bradley’s expense have been gathered
together.

Mr. Bradley seemed to take heart. “Well, it’s very awkward. Upon my
soul I don’t know what to do about it. If I can show you that the
person I have in mind not only fulfils each of my conditions exactly,
but also had a certain interest (remote I admit, but capable of proof)
in sending those chocolates to Sir Eustace, have I your assurance, Mr.
President, that the meeting will give me its serious advice as to what
my duty is in the matter?”

“Good gracious, yes,” at once agreed Roger, much excited. Roger had
thought that he might be on the verge of solving the problem himself,
but he was quite sure that he and Bradley had not hit upon the same
solution. And if the fellow really had got some one . . . “Good Lord,
yes!” said Roger.

Mr. Bradley looked round the table in a worried way. “Well, can’t you
see who I mean? Dear me, I thought I’d told you in almost every other
sentence.”

Nobody had seen whom he meant.

“The only possible person, so far as I can see, who could ever be
expected to fulfil all those twelve conditions?” said this harassed
version of Mr. Bradley, dishevelling his carefully flattened hair.
“Why, dash it, not my sister at all, but—but—but _me_, of course!”

There was a stupefied silence.

“D-did you say, _you_?” finally ventured Mr. Chitterwick.

Mr. Bradley turned gloomy eyes on him. “Obviously, I’m afraid. I have
more than an elementary knowledge of chemistry. I can make
nitrobenzene and often have. I’m a criminologist. I’ve had a
reasonably good education, but not public-school or University. I had
access to Mason’s notepaper. I possess a Hamilton No. 4 typewriter. I
was in Southampton Street itself during the critical hour. I possess
an Onyx pen, fitted with a medium-broad nib and filled with Harfield’s
ink. I have something of a creative mind, but I’m not above adapting
the ideas of other people. I’m far more than ordinarily neat with my
fingers. I’m a person of methodical habits, with a strong feeling for
symmetry. And apparently I have the cold inhumanity of the poisoner.

“Yes,” sighed Mr. Bradley, “there’s simply no getting away from it.
_I_ sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace.

“I must have done. I’ve proved it conclusively. And the extraordinary
thing is that I don’t remember a single jot about it. I suppose I did
it when I was thinking about something else. I’ve noticed I’m getting
a little absent-minded at times.”

Roger was struggling with an inordinate wish to laugh. However he
managed to ask gravely enough: “And what do you imagine was your
motive, Bradley?”

Mr. Bradley brightened a little. “Yes, that was a difficulty. For
quite a time I couldn’t establish my motive at all. I couldn’t even
connect myself with Sir Eustace Pennefather. I’d heard of him of
course, as anybody who’s ever been to the Rainbow must. And I’d
gathered he was somewhat savoury. But I’d no grudge against the man.
He could be as savoury as he liked so far as I cared. I don’t think
I’d ever even seen him. Yes, the motive was a real stumbling-block,
because of course there must be one. What should I have tried to kill
him for otherwise?”

“And you’ve found it?”

“I think I’ve managed to ferret out what must be the real cause,” said
Mr. Bradley, not without pride. “After puzzling for a long time I
remembered that I had heard myself once say to a friend, in a
discussion on detective-work, that the ambition of my life was to
commit a murder, because I was perfectly certain that I could do so
without ever being found out. And the excitement, I pointed out, must
be stupendous; no gambling game ever invented can come anywhere near
it. A murderer is really making a magnificent bet with the police, I
demonstrated, with the lives of himself and his victim as the stakes;
if he gets away with it, he wins both; if he’s caught, he loses both.
For a man like myself, who has the misfortune to be extremely bored by
the usual type of popular recreation, murder should be the hobby _par
excellence_.”

“Ah!” Roger nodded portentously.

“This conversation, when I recalled it,” pursued Mr. Bradley very
seriously, “seemed to me significant in the extreme. I at once went to
see my friend and asked him if he remembered it and was prepared to
swear that it took place at all. He was. In fact he was able to add
further details, more damning still. I was so impressed that I took a
statement from him.

“Amplifying my notion (according to his statement), I had gone on to
consider how it could best be carried out. The obvious thing, I had
decided, was to select some figure of whom the world would be well
rid, not necessarily a politician (I was at some pains to avoid the
obvious, apparently), and simply murder him at a distance. To play the
game, one should leave a clue or two, more or less obscure. Apparently
I left rather more than I intended.

“My friend concluded by saying that I went away from him that evening
expressing the firmest intention of carrying out my first murder at
the earliest opportunity. Not only would the practice make such an
admirable hobby, I told him, but the experience would be invaluable to
a writer of detective-stories such as myself.

“That, I think,” said Mr. Bradley with dignity, “establishes my motive
only too certainly.”

“Murder for experiment,” remarked Roger. “A new category. Most
interesting.”

“Murder for jaded pleasure-seekers,” Mr. Bradley corrected him. “There
is a precedent, you know. Loeb and Leopold. Well, there you have it.
Have I proved my case, Mr. President?”

“Completely, so far as I can see. I can’t detect a flaw in your
argument.”

“I’ve been at some pains to make it a good deal more water-tight than
I ever bother to do in my books. You could argue a very nasty case
against me in court on those lines, couldn’t you, Sir Charles?”

“Well, I should want to go into it a little more closely, but at first
sight, Bradley, I admit that so far as circumstantial evidence is
worth (and in my opinion, as you know, it is worth everything), I
can’t see room for very much doubt that you sent those chocolates to
Sir Eustace.”

“And if I said here and now that in sober truth I _did_ send them?”
persisted Mr. Bradley.

“I couldn’t disbelieve you.”

“And yet I didn’t. But given time, I’m quite prepared to prove to you
just as convincingly that the person who really sent them was the
Archbishop of Canterbury, or Sybil Thorndike, or Mrs. Robinson-Smythe
of The Laurels, Acacia Road, Upper Tooting, or the President of the
United States, or anybody else in this world you like to name.

“So much for proof. I built that whole case up against myself out of
the one coincidence of my sister having a few sheets of Mason’s
notepaper. I told you nothing but the truth. But I didn’t tell you the
whole truth. Artistic proof is, like artistic anything else, simply a
matter of selection. If you know what to put in and what to leave out
you can prove anything you like, quite conclusively. I do it in every
book I write, and no reviewer has ever hauled me over the coals for
slipshod argument yet. But then,” said Mr. Bradley modestly, “I don’t
suppose any reviewer has ever read one of my books.”

“Well, it was a very ingenious piece of work,” Miss Dammers summed up.
“And most instructive.”

“Thank you,” murmured Mr. Bradley, with gratitude.

“And what it all amounts to,” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming delivered a
somewhat tart verdict, “is that you haven’t the faintest idea who is
the real criminal.”

“Oh, I know _that_, of course,” said Mr. Bradley languidly. “But I
can’t prove it. So it’s not much good telling you.”

Everybody sat up.

“You’ve found some one else, in spite of the odds, to fit those
conditions of yours?” demanded Sir Charles.

“I suppose she must,” admitted Mr. Bradley, “as she did it. But
unfortunately I haven’t been able to check them all.”

“She!” Mr. Chitterwick caught him up.

“Oh, yes, it was a woman. That was the most obvious thing about the
whole case—and incidentally one of the things I was careful to leave
out just now. Really, I wonder that’s never been mentioned before.
Surely if there’s anything evident about this affair at all it is that
it’s a woman’s crime. It would never occur to a man to send poisoned
chocolates to another man. He’d send a poisoned sample razor-blade, or
whisky, or beer like the unfortunate Dr. Wilson’s friend. Quite
obviously it’s a woman’s crime.”

“I wonder,” Roger said softly.

Mr. Bradley threw him a sharp glance. “You don’t agree, Sheringham?”

“I only wondered,” said Roger. “But it’s a very defendable point.”

“Impregnable, I should have said,” drawled Mr. Bradley.

“Well,” said Miss Dammers, impatient of these minor matters, “aren’t
you going to tell us who did it, Mr. Bradley?”

Mr. Bradley looked at her quizzically. “But I said that it wasn’t any
good, as I can’t prove it. Besides, there’s a small matter of the
lady’s honour involved.”

“Are you resuscitating the law of slander, to get you out of a
difficulty?”

“Oh, dear me, no. I wouldn’t in the least mind giving her away as a
murderess. It’s a much more important thing than that. She happens to
have been Sir Eustace’s mistress at one time, you see, and there’s a
code governing that sort of thing.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Chitterwick.

Mr. Bradley turned to him politely. “You were going to say something?”

“No, no. I was just wondering whether you’d been thinking on the same
lines as I have. That’s all.”

“You mean the discarded mistress theory?”

“Well,” said Mr. Chitterwick uncomfortably, “yes.”

“Of course. You’d hit on that line of research, too?” Mr. Bradley’s
tone was that of a benevolent headmaster patting a promising pupil on
the head. “It’s the right one, obviously. Viewing the crime as a
whole, and in the light of Sir Eustace’s character, a discarded
mistress, radiating jealousy, stands out like a beacon in the middle
of it. That’s one of the things I conveniently omitted too from my
list of conditions—No. 13, the criminal must be a woman. And touching
on artistic proof again, both Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
practised it, didn’t they? Both of them omitted to establish any
connection of nitrobenzene with their respective criminals, though
such a connection is vital to both their cases.”

“Then you really think jealousy is the motive?” Mr. Chitterwick
suggested.

“I’m absolutely convinced of it,” Mr. Bradley assured him. “But I’ll
tell you something else of which I’m not by any means convinced, and
that is that the intended victim really was Sir Eustace Pennefather.”

“Not the intended victim?” queried Roger, very uneasily. “How do you
make that out?”

“Why, I’ve discovered,” said Mr. Bradley, dissembling his pride, “that
Sir Eustace had had an engagement for lunch on the day of the murder.
He seems to have been very secretive about it, and it was certainly
with a woman; and not only with a woman, but with a woman in whom Sir
Eustace was more than a little interested. I think probably not Miss
Wildman, but somebody of whom he was anxious that Miss Wildman
shouldn’t know. But in my opinion the woman who sent the chocolates
knew. The appointment was cancelled, but the other woman might not
have known that.

“My suggestion (it’s only a suggestion, and I can’t substantiate it in
any way at all except that it makes chocolates still more reasonable)
is that those chocolates were intended not for Sir Eustace at all but
for the sender’s rival.”

“Ah!” breathed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.

“This is quite a new idea,” complained Sir Charles.

Roger had been hastily conning over the names of Sir Eustace’s various
ladies. He had been unable to fit one before into the crime, and he
was unable now; yet he did not think that any had escaped him. “If the
woman you’re thinking of, Bradley, the sender,” he said tentatively,
“really was a mistress of Sir Eustace, I don’t think you need worry
about being too punctilious. Her name is almost certainly on the lips
of the whole Rainbow Club in that connection, if not of every club in
London. Sir Eustace is not a reticent man.”

“I can assure Mr. Bradley,” said Miss Dammers with irony, “that Sir
Eustace’s standard of honour falls a good deal short of his own.”

“In this case,” Mr. Bradley told them, unmoved, “I think not.”

“How is that?”

“Because I’m quite sure that apart from my unconscious informant, and
Sir Eustace, and myself, there is nobody who knows of the connection
at all. Except the lady, of course,” added Mr. Bradley punctiliously.
“Naturally it would not have escaped her.”

“Then how did you find out?” demanded Miss Dammers.

“That,” Mr. Bradley informed her equably, “I regret that I’m not at
liberty to say.”

Roger stroked his chin. Could there be another one of whom he had
never heard? In that case, how would this new theory of his continue
to stand up?

“Your so close parallel falls to the ground, then?” Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming was stating.

“Not altogether. But if it does, I’ve got another just as good.
Christina Edmunds. Almost the same case, with the insanity left out.
Jealousy-mania. Poisoned chocolates. What could be better?”

“Humph! The mainstay of your last case, I gathered,” observed Sir
Charles, “or at any rate the starting-point, was the choice of
nitrobenzene. I suppose that, and the deductions you drew from it, are
equally important to this one. Are we to take it that this lady is an
amateur chemist, with a copy of Taylor on her shelves?”

Mr. Bradley smiled gently. “That, as you rightly point out, was the
mainstay of my _last_ case, Sir Charles. It isn’t of this one. I’m
afraid my remarks on the choice of poison were rather special
pleading. I was leading up to a certain person, you see, and therefore
only drew the deductions which suited that particular person. However,
there was a good deal of possible truth in them for all that, though I
wouldn’t rate their probability quite as high as I pretended to do
then. I’m quite prepared to believe that nitrobenzene was used simply
because it’s so easy to get hold of. But it’s perfectly true that the
stuff’s hardly known as a poison at all.”

“Then you make no use of it in your present case?”

“Oh, yes, I do. I still think the point that the criminal not so much
used it as knew of it to use, is a perfectly sound one. The reason for
that knowledge should be capable of being established. I stuck out
before for a copy of some such book as Taylor as the reason, and I
still do. As it happens this good lady _has_ got a copy of Taylor.”

“She _is_ a criminologist, then?” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming pounced.

Mr. Bradley leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling. “That,
I should think, is very much open to question. Frankly, I’m puzzled
over the matter of criminology. Myself, I don’t see that lady as an
‘-ist’ of any description. Her function in life is perfectly obvious,
the one she fulfilled for Sir Eustace, and I shouldn’t have thought
her capable of any other. Except to powder her nose rather charmingly,
and look extremely decorative; but all that’s part and parcel of her
real _raison d’être_. No, I don’t think she could possibly be a
criminologist, any more than a canary-bird could. But she certainly
has a smattering of criminology, because in her flat there’s a whole
bookshelf filled with works on the subject.”

“She’s a personal friend of yours, then?” queried Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming, very casually.

“Oh, no. I’ve only met her once. That was when I called at her flat
with a bran-new copy of a recently published book of popular murders
under my arm, and represented myself as a traveller for the publisher
soliciting orders for the book; might I have the pleasure of putting
her name down? The book had only been out four days, but she proudly
showed me a copy of it on her shelves already. Was she interested in
criminology, then? Oh, yes, she simply adored it; murder was _too_
fascinating, wasn’t it? Conclusive, I think.”

“She sounds a bit of a fool,” commented Sir Charles.

“She looks like a bit of a fool,” agreed Mr. Bradley. “She talks like
a bit of a fool. Meeting her at a tea-fight, I should have said she
_is_ a bit of a fool. And yet she carried through a really cleverly
planned murder, so I don’t see how she can be a bit of a fool.”

“It doesn’t occur to you,” remarked Miss Dammers, “that perhaps she
never did anything of the sort?”

“Well, no,” Mr. Bradley had to confess. “I’m afraid it doesn’t. I
mean, a comparatively recent discarded mistress of Sir Eustace’s
(well, not more than three years ago, and hope dies hard), who thinks
no small champagne of herself and considers murder too fascinating for
words. Well, really!

“By the way, if you want any confirmatory evidence that she had been
one of Sir Eustace’s lady-loves, I might add that I saw a photograph
of him in her flat. It was in a frame that had a very wide border. The
border showed the word ‘Your’ and conveniently cut off the rest. Not
‘Yours,’ notice, but ‘Your.’ I think it’s a reasonable assumption that
something quite affectionate lies under that discreet border.”

“I have it from his own lips that Sir Eustace changes his mistresses
as often as his hats,” Miss Dammers said briskly. “Isn’t it possible
that more than one may have suffered from a jealousy-complex?”

“But not, I think, have possessed a copy of Taylor as well,” Mr.
Bradley insisted.

“The criminological-knowledge factor seems to have taken the place in
this case of the nitrobenzene factor in the last,” meditated Mr.
Chitterwick. “Am I right in thinking that?”

“Quite,” Mr. Bradley assured him kindly. “That, in my opinion, is the
really important clue. It’s so emphasised, you see. We get it from two
entirely different angles, the choice of poison and the reminiscent
features of the case. In fact we’re coming up against it all the
time.”

“Well, well,” muttered Mr. Chitterwick, reproving himself as one might
who had been coming up against a thing all the time and never even
noticed it.

There was a short silence, which Mr. Chitterwick imputed (quite
wrongly) to a general condemnation of his own obtuseness.

“Your list of conditions,” Miss Dammers resumed the charge. “You said
you hadn’t been able to check all of them. Which does this woman
definitely fulfil, and which haven’t you been able to check?”

Mr. Bradley assumed an air of alertness. “No. 1, I don’t know whether
she has any chemical knowledge. No. 2, I do know that she has at least
an elementary knowledge of criminology. No. 3, she is almost certain
to have had a reasonably good education (though whether she ever
learnt anything is quite a different matter), and I think we may
assume that she was never at a public-school. No. 4, I haven’t been
able to connect her with Mason’s notepaper, except in so far as she
has an account at Mason’s; and if that is good enough for Sir Charles,
it’s good enough for me. No. 5, I haven’t been able to connect her
with a Hamilton typewriter, but that ought to be quite easy; one of
her friends is sure to have one.

“No. 6, she could have been in the neighbourhood of Southampton
Street. She tried to establish an alibi, but bungled it badly; it’s
full of holes. She’s supposed to have been in a theatre, but she
didn’t even get there till well past nine. No. 7, I saw an Onyx
fountain-pen on her bureau. No. 8, I saw a bottle of Harfield’s
Fountain-Pen Ink in one of the pigeon-holes of the bureau.

“No. 9, I shouldn’t have said she had a creative mind; I shouldn’t
have said that she had a mind at all; but apparently we must give her
the benefit of any doubt there is. No. 10, judging from her face, I
should say she was very neat with her fingers. No. 11, if she is a
person of methodical habits she must feel it an incriminating point,
for she certainly disguises it very well. No. 12, this I think might
be amended, to ‘must have the poisoner’s complete lack of
imagination.’ That’s the lot.”

“I see,” said Miss Dammers. “There are gaps.”

“There are,” Mr. Bradley agreed blandly. “To tell the truth, I know
this woman must have done it because really, you know, she must. But I
can’t believe it.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, putting a neat sentence into one
word.

“By the way, Sheringham,” remarked Mr. Bradley, “you know the bad
lady.”

“I do, do I?” said Roger, apparently coming out of a trance. “I
thought I might. Look here, if I write a name down on a piece of
paper, do you mind telling me if I’m right or wrong?”

“Not in the least,” replied the equable Mr. Bradley. “As a matter of
fact I was going to suggest something like that myself. I think as
President you ought to know who I mean, in case there is anything in
it.”

Roger folded his piece of paper in two and tossed it down the table.
“That’s the person, I suppose.”

“You’re quite right,” said Mr. Bradley.

“And you base most of your case on her reasons for interesting herself
in criminology?”

“You might put it like that,” conceded Mr. Bradley.

In spite of himself Roger blushed faintly. He had the best of reasons
for knowing why Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer professed such an interest in
criminology. Not to put too fine a point on it, the reasons had been
almost forced on him.

“Then you’re absolutely wrong, Bradley,” he said without hesitation.
“Absolutely.”

“You know definitely?”

Roger suppressed an involuntary shudder. “Quite definitely.”

“You know, I never believed she did it,” said the philosophical Mr.
Bradley.



Chapter XII

Roger was very busy.

Flitting in taxis hither and thither, utterly regardless of what the
clocks had to tell him, he was trying to get his case completed before
the evening. His activities might have seemed to that artless
criminologist, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer, not only baffling but
pointless.

On the previous afternoon, for instance, he had taken his first taxi
to the Holborn Public Library and there consulted a work of reference
of the most uninspiring description. After that he had driven to the
offices of Messrs. Weall and Wilson, the well-known firm which exists
to protect the trade interests of individuals and supply subscribers
with highly confidential information regarding the stability of any
business in which it is intended to invest money.

Roger, glibly representing himself as a potential investor of large
sums, had entered his name as a subscriber, filled up a number of the
special enquiry forms which are headed Strictly Confidential, and not
consented to go away until Messrs. Weall and Wilson had promised, in
consideration of certain extra moneys, to have the required
information in his hands within twenty-seven hours.

He had then bought a newspaper and gone to Scotland Yard. There he
sought out Moresby.

“Moresby,” he said without preamble, “I want you to do something
important for me. Can you find me a taximan who took up a fare in
Piccadilly Circus or its neighbourhood at about ten minutes past nine
on the night before the Bendix murder, and deposited same at or near
the Strand end of Southampton Street? And/or another taxi who took up
a fare in the Strand near Southampton Street at about a quarter-past
nine, and deposited same in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly Circus?
The second is the more likely of the two; I’m not quite sure about the
first. Or one taxi might have been used for the double journey, but I
doubt that very much. Do you think you can do this for me?”

“We may not get any results, after all this time,” said Moresby
doubtfully. “It’s really important, is it?”

“Quite important.”

“Well, I’ll try of course, seeing it’s you, Mr. Sheringham, and I know
I can take your word for it that it is important. But I wouldn’t for
any one else.”

“That’s fine,” said Roger with much heartiness. “Make it pretty
urgent, will you? And you might give me a ring at the Albany at about
tea-time to-morrow, if you think you’ve got hold of my man.”

“What’s the idea, then, Mr. Sheringham?”

“I’m trying to break down a rather interesting alibi,” said Roger.

He went back to his rooms to dine.

After the meal his head was buzzing far too busily for him to be able
to do anything else but take it for a walk. Restlessly he wandered out
of the Albany and turned down Piccadilly. He ambled round the Circus,
thinking hard, and paused for a moment out of habit to inspect with
unseeing eyes the photographs of the new revue hanging outside the
Pavilion. The next thing he realised was that he must have turned down
the Haymarket and swung round in a wide circle into Jermyn Street, for
he was standing outside the Imperial Theatre in that fascinating
thoroughfare, idly watching the last of the audience crowding in.

Glancing at the advertisements of _The Creaking Skull_, he saw that
the terrible thing began at half-past eight. Glancing at his watch, he
saw that the time was twenty-nine minutes past that hour.

There was an evening to be got through somehow.

He went inside.

The night passed somehow, too.

Early the next morning (or early, that is, for Roger; say half-past
ten), in a bleak spot somewhere beyond the bounds of civilisation, in
short in Acton, Roger found himself parleying with a young woman in
the offices of the Anglo-Eastern Perfumery Company. The young woman
was entrenched behind a partition just inside the main entrance, her
only means of communication with the outer world being through a small
window fitted with frosted glass. This window she would open (if
summoned long and loudly enough) to address a few curt replies to
importunate callers, and this window she would close with a bang by
way of a hint that the interview, in her opinion, should now be
closed.

“Good morning,” said Roger blandly, when his third rap had summoned
this maiden from the depths of her fastness. “I’ve called to—”

“Travellers, Tuesdays and Friday mornings, ten to eleven,” said the
maiden surprisingly, and closed the window with one of her best bangs.
That’ll teach him to try and do business with a respectable English
firm on a Thursday morning, good gracious me, said the bang.

Roger stared blankly at the closed window. Then it dawned on him that
a mistake had been made. He rapped again. And again.

At the fourth rap the window flew open as if something had exploded
behind it. “I’ve told you already,” snapped the maiden, righteously
indignant, “that we only see—”

“I’m not a traveller,” said Roger hastily. “At least,” he added with
meticulousness, thinking of the dreary deserts he had explored before
finding this inhospitable oasis, “at least, not a commercial one.”

“You don’t want to sell anything?” asked the maiden suspiciously.
Impregnated with all that is best in the go-ahead spirit of English
business methods, she naturally looked with the deepest distrust on
anybody who might possibly wish to do such an unbusinesslike thing as
_sell_ her firm something.

“Nothing,” Roger assured her with the utmost earnestness, impressed in
his turn with the revolting vulgarity of such a proceeding.

On these conditions it appeared that the maiden, though by no means
ready to take him to her bosom, was prepared to tolerate him for a few
seconds. “Well, what _do_ you want then?” she asked, with an air of
weariness patiently, even nobly borne. From her tone it was to be
gathered that very few people penetrated as far as that door unless
with the discreditable intention of trying to do business with her
firm. Just fancy—business!

“I’m a solicitor,” Roger told her now, without truth, “and I’m
enquiring into the matter of a certain Mr. Joseph Lea Hardwick, who
was employed here. I regret to say that—”

“Sorry, never heard of the gentleman,” said the maiden shortly, and
intimated in her usual way that the interview had lasted quite long
enough.

Once more Roger got busy with his stick. After the seventh application
he was rewarded with another view of indignant young English girlhood.

“I’ve told you already—”

But Roger had had about enough of this. “And now, young woman, let me
tell _you_ something. If you refuse to answer my questions, let me
warn you that you may find yourself in very serious trouble. Haven’t
you ever heard of contempt of court?” There are times when some slight
juggling with the truth is permissible. There are times, too, when
even a shrewd blow with a bludgeon may be excused. This time was one
of both.

The maiden, though far from cowed, was at last impressed. “Well, what
do you want to know then?” she asked, resignedly.

“This man, Joseph Lea Hardwick—”

“I’ve told you, I’ve never heard of him.”

As the gentleman in question had enjoyed an existence of only two or
three minutes, and that solely in Roger’s brain, his creator was not
unprepared for this. “It is possible that he was known to you under a
different name,” he said darkly.

The maiden’s interest was engaged. More, she looked positively
alarmed. She spoke shrilly. “If it’s divorce, let me tell you you
can’t hang anything on _me_. I never even knew he was married.
Besides, it isn’t as if there was a cause. I mean to say—well, at
least—anyhow, it’s a pack of lies. I never—”

“It isn’t divorce,” Roger hastened to stem the tide, himself scarcely
less alarmed at these quite unmaidenly revelations. “It’s—it’s nothing
to do with your private life at all. It’s about a man who was employed
here.”

“Oh!” The late maiden’s relief turned rapidly into indignation. “Well,
why couldn’t you say so?”

“Employed here,” pursued Roger firmly, “in the nitrobenzene
department. You have a nitrobenzene department, haven’t you?”

“Not that I’m aware of, I’m sure.”

Roger made the noise that is usually spelt “Tchah! You know perfectly
well what I mean. The department which handles the nitrobenzene used
here. You are hardly prepared to deny that nitrobenzene _is_ used
here, I hope? And extensively?”

“Well, and what if it is?”

“It has been reported to my firm that this man met his death through
insufficient warning having been issued to the employees here about
the dangerous nature of this substance. I should like—”

“What? One of our men died? I don’t believe it. I should have been the
first to know if—”

“It’s been hushed up,” Roger inserted quickly. “I should like you to
show me a copy of the warning that is hung up in the factory about
nitrobenzene.”

“Well, I’m sorry then, but I’m afraid I can’t oblige you.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” said Roger, much shocked, “that no warning
is issued at all to your employees about this most dangerous
substance? They’re not even told that it is a deadly poison?”

“I didn’t say that, did I? Of course they’re warned that it’s
poisonous. Everybody is. And they’re most careful about the way it’s
handled, I’m sure. It just happens that there isn’t a warning hung up.
And if you want to know any more about it, you’d better see one of the
directors. I’ll—”

“Thank you,” said Roger, speaking the truth at last, “I’ve learned all
I wanted. Good morning.” He retreated jubilantly.

He retreated to Webster’s, the printers, in a taxi.

Webster’s of course are to printing what Monte Carlo is to the
Riviera. Webster’s, practically speaking, _are_ printing. So where
more naturally should Roger go if he wanted some new notepaper printed
in a very special and particular way, as apparently he did?

To the young woman behind the counter who took him in charge he
specified at great length and in the most meticulous detail exactly
what he did want. The young woman handed him her book of specimen
pieces and asked him to see if he could find a style there which would
suit him. While he looked through it she turned to another customer.
Not to palter with the truth, that young woman had been getting a
little weary of Roger and his wants.

Apparently Roger could not find a style to suit him, for he closed the
book and edged a little along the counter till he was within the
territory of the next young woman. To her in turn he embarked on the
epic of his needs, and in turn too she presented him with her book of
specimens and asked him to choose one. As the book was only another
copy of the same edition, it is not surprising that Roger found
himself no further forward.

Once more he edged along the counter, and once more he recited his
saga to the third, and last, young woman. Knowing the game, she handed
him her book of specimens. But this time Roger had his reward. This
book was one of the same edition, but it was not an exact copy.

“Of course I’m sure you’ll have what I want,” he remarked garrulously
as he flicked over the pages, “because I was recommended here by a
friend who is really most particular. _Most_ particular.”

“Is that so?” said the young woman, doing her best to appear extremely
interested. She was a very young woman indeed, young enough to study
the technique of salesmanship in her spare time; and one of the first
rules in salesmanship, she had learned, was to receive a customer’s
remark that it is a fine day with the same eager and respectful
admiration of the penetrating powers of his observation as she would
accord to a fortune-teller who informed her that she would receive a
letter from a dark stranger across the water containing an offer of
money, on her note of hand alone. “Well,” she said, trying hard, “some
people are particular, and that’s a fact.”

“Dear me!” Roger seemed much struck. “Do you know, I believe I’ve got
my friend’s photograph on me this very minute. Isn’t that an
extraordinary coincidence?”

“Well, I never,” said the dutiful young woman.

Roger produced the coincidental photograph and handed it across the
counter. “There! Recognise it?”

The young woman took the photograph and studied it closely. “So that’s
your friend! Well, isn’t that extraordinary? Yes, of course I
recognise it. It’s a small world, isn’t it?”

“About a fortnight ago, I think my friend was in here last,” Roger
persisted. “Is that right?”

The young woman pondered. “Yes, it would be about a fortnight ago, I
suppose. Yes, just about. Now this is a line we’re selling a good deal
of just at present.”

Roger bought an inordinate quantity of notepaper he didn’t want in the
least, out of sheer lightness of heart. And because she really was a
very nice young woman, and it was a shame to take advantage of her.

Then he went back to his rooms for lunch.

Most of the afternoon he spent in trying apparently to buy a
second-hand typewriter.

Roger was very particular that his typewriter should be a Hamilton No.
4. When the salesmen tried to induce him to consider other makes he
refused to look at them, saying that he had had the Hamilton No. 4 so
strongly recommended to him by a friend, who had bought a second-hand
one just about three weeks ago. Perhaps it was at this very shop? No?
They hadn’t sold a Hamilton No. 4 for the last two months? How very
odd.

But at one shop they had; and that was odder still. The obliging
salesman looked up the exact date, and found that it was just a month
ago. Roger described his friend, and the salesman at once agreed that
Roger’s friend and his own customer were one and the same.

“Good gracious, and now I come to think of it,” Roger cried, “I
actually believe I’ve got my friend’s photograph on me at this very
minute. Let me see!” He rummaged in his pockets, and to his great
astonishment produced the photograph in question.

The salesman most obligingly proceeded to identify his customer
without hesitation. He then went on, just as obligingly, to sell Roger
the second-hand Hamilton No. 4 which that enthusiastic detective felt
he had not the face to refuse to buy. Detecting, Roger was
discovering, is for the person without official authority to back him,
a singularly expensive business. But like Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, he
did not grudge money spent in a good cause.

He went back to his rooms to tea. There was nothing more to be done
except await the call from Moresby.

It came sooner than he expected.

“Is that you, Mr. Sheringham? There are fourteen taxi-drivers here,
littering up my office,” said Moresby offensively. “They all took
fares from Piccadilly Circus to the Strand, or _vice versa_, at your
time. What do you want me to do with ’em?”

“Kindly keep them till I come, Chief Inspector,” returned Roger with
dignity, and grabbed his hat. He had not expected more than three at
the most, but he was not going to let Moresby know that.

The interview with the fourteen was brief enough however. To each
grinning man in turn (Roger deduced a little heavy humour on the part
of Moresby before he arrived) Roger showed the photograph, taking some
pains to hold it so that Moresby could not see it, and asked if he
could recognise his fare. Not a single one could.

Moresby dismissed the men with a broad grin. “That’s a pity, Mr.
Sheringham. Puts a bit of a spoke in the case you’re trying to work
up, no doubt?”

Roger smiled at him in a superior manner. “On the contrary, my dear
Moresby, it just about clinches it.”

“It what did you say?” asked Moresby, startled out of his grammar.
“What are you up to, Mr. Sheringham, eh?”

“I thought you knew all that. Aren’t we being sleuthed?”

“Well!” Moresby actually looked a shade out of countenance. “To tell
you the truth, Mr. Sheringham, all your people seemed to be going so
far off the lines that I called my men off; it didn’t seem worth while
keeping ’em on.”

“Dear, dear,” said Roger gently. “Fancy that. Well, it’s a small
world, isn’t it?”

“So what have you been doing, Mr. Sheringham? You’ve no objection to
telling me that, I suppose?”

“None in the least, Moresby. Your work for you. Does it interest you
to know that I’ve found out who sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace?”

Moresby eyed him for a moment. “It certainly does, Mr. Sheringham. If
you really have.”

“Oh, I have, yes,” said Roger very nonchalantly; even Mr. Bradley
himself could not have spoken more so. “I’ll give you a report on it
as soon as I’ve got my evidence in order.—It was an interesting case,”
he added. And suppressed a yawn.

“Was it now, Mr. Sheringham?” said Moresby, in a choked voice.

“Oh, yes; in its way. But absurdly simple once one had grasped the
really essential factor. Quite ridiculously so. I’ll let you have that
report some time. So long, then.” And he strolled out.

One cannot conceal the fact that Roger had his annoying moments.



Chapter XIII

Roger called on himself.

“Ladies and gentlemen, as the one responsible for this experiment, I
think I can congratulate myself. The three members who have spoken so
far have shown an ingenuity of observation and argument which I think
could have been called forth by no other agency. Each was convinced
before beginning to speak that he or she had solved the problem and
could produce positive proof in support of such solution, and each, I
think, is still entitled to say that his or her reading of the puzzle
has not yet been definitely disproved.

“Even Sir Charles’s choice of Lady Pennefather is perfectly arguable,
in spite of the positive alibi that Miss Dammers is able to give to
Lady Pennefather herself; Sir Charles is quite entitled to say that
Lady Pennefather has an accomplice, and to adduce in support of that
the rather dubious circumstances attending her stay in Paris.

“And in this connection I should like to take the opportunity of
retracting what I said to Bradley last night. I said that I knew
definitely that the woman he had in mind could not have committed the
murder. That was a mis-statement. I didn’t know definitely at all. I
found the idea, from what I personally know of her, to be quite
incredible.

“Moreover,” said Roger bravely, “I have some reason to suspect the
origin of her interest in criminology, and I’m pretty sure it’s quite
a different one from that postulated by Bradley. What I should have
said was, that her guilt of this crime was a psychological
impossibility. But so far as facts go, one can’t prove psychological
impossibilities. Bradley is still perfectly entitled to believe her
the criminal. And in any case she must certainly remain on the list of
suspects.”

“I agree with you, Sheringham, you know, about the psychological
impossibility,” remarked Mr. Bradley. “I said as much. The trouble is
that I consider I proved the case against her.”

“But you proved the case against yourself too,” pointed out Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming sweetly.

“Oh, yes; but that doesn’t worry me with its inconsistency. That
involves no psychological impossibility, you see.”

“No,” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “Perhaps not.”

“Psychological impossibility!” contributed Sir Charles robustly. “Oh,
you novelists. You’re all so tied up with Freud nowadays that you’ve
lost sight of human nature altogether. When I was a young man nobody
talked about psychological impossibilities. And why? Because we knew
very well that there’s no such thing.”

“In other words, the most improbable person may, in certain
circumstances, do the most unlikely things,” amplified Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming. “Well, I may be old-fashioned, but I’m inclined to
agree with that.”

“Constance Kent,” led Sir Charles.

“Lizzie Borden,” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming covered.

“The entire Adelaide Bartlett case,” Sir Charles brought out the ace
of trumps.

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming gathered the cards up into a neat pack. “In my
opinion, people who talk of psychological impossibilities are treating
their subjects as characters in one of their own novels—they’re
infusing a certain percentage of their own mental make-up into them
and consequently never see clearly that what they think may be the
impossible for themselves may quite well be the possible (however
improbable) in somebody else.”

“Then there is something to be said after all for the detective story
merchant’s axiom of the most unlikely person,” murmured Mr. Bradley.
“Good!”

“Shall we hear what Mr. Sheringham’s got to say about the case now?”
suggested Miss Dammers.

Roger took the hint.

“I was going on to say how interestingly the experiment had turned
out, too, in that the three people who have already spoken happen each
to have hit on a different person for the criminal. I, by the way, am
going to suggest another, so even if Miss Dammers and Mr. Chitterwick
each agree with one of us, that gives us four entirely different
possibilities. I don’t mind confessing that I’d hoped something like
that would happen, though I hardly looked for such an excellent
result.

“Still, as Bradley has pointed out in his remarks about closed and
open murders, the possibilities in this case really are almost
infinite. That, of course, makes it so much more interesting from our
point of view. For instance, I began my own investigations from the
point of view of Sir Eustace’s private life. It was there, I felt
convinced, that the clue to the murder was to be found. Just as
Bradley did. And like him, I thought that this clue would be in the
form of a discarded mistress; jealousy or revenge, I was sure, would
turn out to be the mainspring of the crime. Lastly, like him I was
convinced from the very first glance at the business that the crime
was the work of a woman.

“The consequence was that I began work entirely from the angle of Sir
Eustace’s women. I spent a good many not too savoury days collecting
data, until I was convinced that I had a complete list of all his
affairs during the past five years. It was not too difficult. Sir
Eustace, as I said last night, is not a reticent man. Apparently I had
not got the full list, for mine hadn’t included the lady whose name
was not mentioned last night, and if there was one omission it’s
possible there may be more. At any rate, it seems that Sir Eustace, to
do him justice, did have his moments of discretion.

“But now all that is really beside the point. What matters is that at
first I was certain that the crime was the work not only of a woman,
but of a woman who had comparatively recently been Sir Eustace’s
mistress.

“I have now changed all my opinions, _in toto_.”

“Oh, really!” moaned Mr. Bradley. “Don’t tell me I was wrong all along
the line.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Roger, trying to keep the triumph out of his
voice. It is a difficult thing, when one has really and truly solved a
problem which has baffled so many excellent brains, to appear entirely
indifferent about it.

“I regret to have to say,” he went on, hoping he appeared humbler than
he felt, “I regret to have to say that I can’t claim all credit for
this change of view for my own perspicacity. To be quite honest, it
was sheer luck. A chance meeting with a silly woman in Bond Street put
me in possession of a piece of information, trivial in itself (my
informant never for one moment saw its possible significance), but
which immediately altered the whole case for me. I saw in a flash that
I’d been working from the beginning on mistaken premises. That I’d
been making, in fact, the particular fundamental mistake which the
murderer had intended the police and everybody else to make.

“It’s a curious business, this element of luck in the solution of
crime-puzzles,” Roger ruminated. “As it happens I was discussing it
with Moresby, in connection with this very case. I pointed out to him
the number of impossible problems which Scotland Yard solves
eventually through sheer luck—a vital piece of evidence turning up of
its own accord so to speak, or a piece of information brought in by an
angry woman because her husband happened to have given her grounds for
jealousy just before the crime. That sort of thing is happening all
the time. _The Avenging Chance_, I suggested as a title, if Moresby
ever wanted to make a film out of such a story.

“Well, The Avenging Chance has worked again. By means of that lucky
encounter in Bond Street, in one moment of enlightenment it showed me
who really had sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace Pennefather.”

“Well, well, well!” Mr. Bradley kindly expressed the feelings of the
Circle.

“And who was it, then?” queried Miss Dammers, who had an unfortunate
lack of dramatic feeling. For that matter Miss Dammers was inclined to
plume herself on the fact that she had no sense of construction, and
that none of her books ever had a plot. Novelists who use words like
‘values’ and ‘reflexes’ and ‘Œdipus-complex’ simply won’t have
anything to do with plots. “Who appeared to you in this interesting
revelation, Mr. Sheringham?”

“Oh, let me work my story up a little first,” Roger pleaded.

Miss Dammers sighed. Stories, as Roger as a fellow-craftsman ought to
have known, simply weren’t done nowadays. But then Roger was a
best-seller, and anything is possible with a creature like that.

Unconscious of these reflections, Roger was leaning back in his chair
in an easy attitude, meditating gently. When he began to speak again
it was in a more conversational tone than he had used before.

“You know, this really was a very remarkable case. You and Bradley,
Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, didn’t do the criminal justice when you
described it as a hotch-potch of other cases. Any ideas of real merit
in previous cases may have been borrowed, perhaps; but as Fielding
says, in _Tom Jones_, to borrow from the classics, even without
acknowledgment, is quite legitimate for the purposes of an original
work. And this _is_ an original work. It has one feature which not
only absolves it from all charge to the contrary, but which puts it
head and shoulders above all its prototypes.

“It’s bound to become one of the classical cases itself. And but for
the merest accident, which the criminal for all his ingenuity couldn’t
possibly have foreseen, I think it would have become one of the
classical mysteries. On the whole I’m inclined to consider it the most
perfectly-planned murder I’ve ever heard of (because of course one
doesn’t hear of the even more perfectly-planned ones that are never
known to be murders at all). It’s so exactly right—ingenious, utterly
simple, and as near as possible infallible.”

“Humph! Not so very infallible, as it turned out, Sheringham, eh?”
grunted Sir Charles.

Roger smiled at him.

“The motive’s so obvious, when you know where to look for it; but you
didn’t know. The method’s so significant, once you’ve grasped its real
essentials; but you didn’t grasp them. The traces are so thinly
covered, when you’ve realised just what is covering them; but you
didn’t realise. Everything was anticipated. The soap was left lying
about in chunks, and we all hurried to stuff our eyes with it. No
wonder we couldn’t see clearly. It really was beautifully planned. The
police, the public, the press—everybody completely taken in. It seems
almost a pity to have to give the murderer away.”

“Really, Mr. Sheringham,” remarked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “You’re
getting quite lyrical.”

“A perfect murder makes me feel lyrical. If I was this particular
criminal I should have been writing odes to myself for the last
fortnight.”

“And as it is,” suggested Miss Dammers, “you feel like writing odes to
yourself for having solved the thing.”

“I do rather,” Roger agreed.

“Well, I’ll begin with the evidence. As to that, I won’t say that I’ve
got such a collection of detail as Bradley was able to amass to prove
his first theory, but I think you’ll all agree that I’ve got quite
enough. Perhaps I can’t do better than run through his list of twelve
conditions which the murderer must fulfil, though as you’ll see I
don’t by any means agree with all of them.

“I grant and can prove the first two, that the murderer must have at
least an elementary knowledge of chemistry and criminology, but I
disagree with both parts of the third; I don’t think a good education
is really essential, and I should certainly not rule out any one with
a public-school or university education, for reasons which I’ll
explain later. Nor do I agree with the fourth, that he or she must
have had possession of or access to Mason’s notepaper. It was an
ingenious idea of Bradley’s that the possession of the notepaper
suggested the method of the crime, but I think it mistaken; a previous
case suggested the method, chocolates were decided on (for a very good
reason indeed, as I’ll show later) as the vehicle, and Mason’s as
being the most important firm of chocolate manufacturers. It then
became necessary to procure a piece of their notepaper, and I’m in a
position to show how this was done.

“The fifth condition I would qualify. I don’t agree that the criminal
must have possession of or access to a Hamilton No. 4 typewriter, but
I do agree that such possession must have existed. In other words, I
would put that condition in the past tense. Remember that we have to
deal with a very astute criminal, and a very carefully planned crime.
I thought it most unlikely that such an incriminating piece of
evidence as the actual typewriter would be allowed to lie about for
anyone to discover. Much more probable that a machine had been bought
specially for the occasion. It was clear from the letter that it
wasn’t a new machine which had been used. With the courage of my
deduction, therefore, I spent a whole afternoon making inquiries at
second-hand typewriter-shops till I ran down the place where it had
been bought, and proved the buying. The shopman was able to identify
my murderer from a photograph I had with me.”

“And where’s the machine now?” asked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming eagerly.

“I expect, at the bottom of the Thames. That’s my point. This criminal
of mine leaves nothing to chance at all.

“With the sixth condition, about being near the post-office during the
critical hour, of course I agree. My murderer has a mild alibi, but it
doesn’t hold water. As to the next two, the fountain-pen and the ink,
I haven’t been able to check them at all, and while I agree that their
possession would be rather pleasing confirmation I don’t attach great
importance to them; Onyx pens are so universal, and so is Harfield’s
ink, that there isn’t much argument there either way. Besides, it
would be just like my criminal not to own either of them but to have
borrowed the pen unobtrusively. Lastly, I agree about the creative
mind, and the neatness with the fingers, and of course with the
poisoner’s peculiar mentality, but not with the necessity for
methodical habits.”

“Oh, come,” said Mr. Bradley, pained. “That was rather a sound
deduction, I thought. And it stands to reason, too.”

“Not to my reason,” Roger retorted.

Mr. Bradley shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s the notepaper I’m interested in,” said Sir Charles. “In my
opinion that’s the point on which the case against any one must hang.
How do you prove possession of the notepaper, Sheringham?”

“The notepaper,” said Roger, “was extracted about three weeks ago from
one of Webster’s books of sample notepaper-headings. The erasure would
be some private mark of Webster’s, the price, for instance: ‘This
style, 5s. 9d.’ There are three books at Webster’s, containing exactly
the same samples. Two of them include a piece of Mason’s paper; from
the third it’s missing. I can prove contact of my suspect with the
book about three weeks ago.”

“You can, can you?” Sir Charles was impressed. “That sounds pretty
conclusive. What put you on the idea of the sample books?”

“The yellowed edges of the letter,” Roger said, not a little pleased
with himself. “I didn’t see how a bit of paper that had been kept in a
pile could get its edges quite so discoloured as all that, so
concluded that it must have been an isolated piece. Then it struck me
that walking about London, one does see isolated pieces of notepaper
stuck on a board in the windows of printing-firms. But this piece
showed no drawing-pin holes or any other signs of having been fixed to
a board. Besides, it would be difficult to remove it from a board.
What was the next best thing? Obviously, a sample-book, such as one
usually finds inside the same shops. So to the printers of Mason’s
notepaper I went, and there, so to speak, my piece wasn’t.”

“Yes,” muttered Sir Charles, “certainly that sounds pretty
conclusive.” He sighed. One gathered that he was gazing wistfully in
his mind’s eye at the diminishing figure of Lady Pennefather, and the
beautiful case he had built up around her. Then he brightened. This
time one had gathered that he had switched his vision to the figure,
equally diminishing, of Sir Charles Wildman, and the beautiful case
that had been built up around him too.

“So now,” said Roger, feeling he could really put it off no longer,
“we come to the fundamental mistake to which I referred just now, the
trap the murderer laid for us and into which we all so neatly fell.”

Everybody sat up.

Roger surveyed them benignly.

“You got very near seeing it, Bradley, last night, with your casual
suggestion that Sir Eustace himself might not have been the intended
victim after all. That’s right enough. But I go further than that.”

“I fell in the trap, though, did I?” said Mr. Bradley, pained. “Well,
what is this trap? What’s the fundamental mistake we all side-slipped
into?”

“Why,” Roger brought out in triumph, “that the plan had
miscarried—that the wrong person had been killed!”

He got his reward.

“What!” said every one at once. “Good heavens, you don’t mean. . . ?”

“Exactly,” Roger crowed. “That was just the beauty of it. The plan had
_not_ miscarried. It had been brilliantly successful. The wrong person
had _not_ been killed. Very much the right person was.”

“What’s all this?” positively gaped Sir Charles. “How on earth do you
make that out?”

“Mrs. Bendix was the objective all the time,” Roger went on more
soberly. “That’s why the plot was so ingenious. Every single thing was
anticipated. It was foreseen that, if Bendix could be brought
naturally into Sir Eustace’s presence when the parcel was being
opened, the latter would hand the chocolates over to him. It was
foreseen that the police would look for the criminal among Sir
Eustace’s associates, and not the dead woman’s. It was probably even
foreseen, Bradley, that the crime would be considered the work of a
woman, whereas really, of course, chocolates were employed because it
was a woman who was the objective.”

“Well, well well!” said Mr. Bradley.

“Then it’s your theory,” pursued Sir Charles, “that the murderer was
an associate of the dead woman’s, and had nothing to do with Sir
Eustace at all?” He spoke as if not altogether averse from such a
theory.

“It is,” Roger confirmed. “But first let me tell you what finally
opened my eyes to the trap. The vital piece of information I got in
Bond Street was this: _that Mrs. Bendix had seen that play_, _The
Creaking Skull_, _before_. There’s no doubt about it; she actually
went with my informant herself. You see the extraordinary
significance, of course. That means that she already knew the answer
to that bet she made with her husband about the identity of the
villain.”

A little intake of breath testified to a general appreciation of this
information.

“Oh! What a marvellous piece of divine irony.” Miss Dammers was
exercising her usual faculty of viewing things from the impersonal
aspect. “Then she actually brought her own retribution on herself. The
bet she won virtually killed her.”

“Yes,” said Roger. “The irony hadn’t failed to strike even my
informant. The punishment, as she pointed out, was so much greater
than the crime. But I don’t think,”—Roger spoke very gently, in a
mighty effort to curb his elation—“I don’t think that even now you
quite see my point.”

Everybody looked inquiringly.

“You’ve all heard Mrs. Bendix quite minutely described. You must all
have formed a tolerably close mental picture of her. She was a
straightforward, honest girl, making if anything (also according to my
informant) almost too much of a fetich of straight dealing and playing
the game. Does the making of a bet to which she already knew the
answer, fit into that picture or does it not?”

“Ah!” nodded Mr. Bradley. “Oh, very pretty.”

“Just so. It is (with apologies to Sir Charles) a psychological
impossibility. It really is, you know, Sir Charles; one simply can’t
see her doing such a thing, in fun or out of it; and I gather that fun
wasn’t her strong suit, by any means.

“_Ergo_,” concluded Roger briskly, “she didn’t. _Ergo_, that bet was
never made. _Ergo_, there never was such a bet. _Ergo_, Bendix was
lying. _Ergo_, Bendix wanted to get hold of those chocolates for some
reason other than he stated. And the chocolates being what they were,
there was only one other reason.

“That’s my case.”



Chapter XIV

When the excitement that greeted this revolutionary reading of the
case had died down, Roger went on to defend his theory in more detail.

“It _is_ something of a shock, of course, to find oneself
contemplating Bendix as the very cunning murderer of his own wife, but
really, once one has been able to rid one’s mind of all prejudice, I
don’t see how the conclusion can possibly be avoided. Every item of
evidence, however minute, goes to support it.”

“But the motive!” ejaculated Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.

“Motive? Good heavens, he’d motive enough. In the first place he was
frankly—no, not frankly; secretly!—tired of her. Remember what we were
told of his character. He’d sown his wild oats. But apparently he
hadn’t finished sowing them, because his name has been mentioned in
connection with more than one woman even since his marriage, usually,
in the good old-fashioned way, actresses. So Bendix wasn’t such a
solemn stick by any means. He liked his fun. And his wife, I should
imagine, was just about the last person in the world to sympathise
with such feelings.

“Not that he hadn’t liked her well enough when he married her, quite
possibly, though it was her money he was after all the time. But she
must have bored him dreadfully very soon. And really,” said Roger
impartially, “I think one can hardly blame him there. Any woman,
however charming otherwise, is bound to bore a normal man if she does
nothing but prate continually about honour and duty and playing the
game; and that, I have on good authority, was Mrs. Bendix’s habit.

“Just look at the _ménage_ in this new light. The wife would never
overlook the smallest peccadillo. Every tiny lapse would be thrown up
at him for years. Everything she did would be right and everything he
did wrong. Her sanctimonious righteousness would be forever being
contrasted with his vileness. She might even work herself into the
state of those half-mad creatures who spend the whole of their married
lives reviling their husbands for having been attracted by other women
before they even met the girl it was their misfortune to marry. Don’t
think I’m trying to blacken Mrs. Bendix. I’m just showing you how
intolerable life with her might have been.

“But that’s only the incidental motive. The real trouble was that she
was too close with her money, and that too I know for a fact. That’s
where she sentenced herself to death. He wanted it, or some of it,
badly (it’s what he married her for), and she wouldn’t part.

“One of the first things I did was to consult a Directory of Directors
and make a list of the firms he’s interested in, with a view to
getting a confidential report on their financial condition. The report
reached me just before I left my rooms. It told me exactly what I
expected—that every single one of those firms is rocky, some only a
little but some within sight of a crash. They all need money to save
them. It’s obvious, isn’t it? He’s run through all his own money, and
he had to get more. I found time to run down to Somerset House and
again it was as I expected: her will was entirely in his favour. The
really important point (which no one seems to have suspected) is that
he isn’t a good business-man at all; he’s a rotten one. And
half-a-million . . . Well!

“Oh, yes. There’s motive enough.”

“Motive allowed,” said Mr. Bradley. “And the nitrobenzene? You said, I
think, that Bendix has some knowledge of chemistry.”

Roger laughed. “You remind me of a Wagner opera, Bradley. The
nitrobenzene _motif_ crops up regularly from you whenever a possible
criminal is mentioned. However, I think I can satisfy even you in this
instance. Nitrobenzene as you know, is used in perfumery. In the list
of Bendix’s businesses is the Anglo-Eastern Perfumery Company. I made
a special, and dreadful, journey out to Acton for the express purpose
of finding out whether the Anglo-Eastern Company used nitrobenzene at
all, and, if so, whether its poisonous qualities were thoroughly
recognised. The answer to both questions was in the affirmative. So
there can be no doubt that Bendix is thoroughly acquainted with the
stuff.

“He might easily enough have got his supply from the factory, but I’m
inclined to doubt that. I think he’d be cleverer than that. He
probably made the stuff himself, if the process is as easy as Bradley
told us. Because I happen to know that he was on the modern side at
Selchester (that I heard quite by chance too), which presupposes at
any rate an elementary knowledge of chemistry. Do you pass that,
Bradley?”

“Pass, friend nitrobenzene,” conceded Mr. Bradley.

Roger drummed thoughtfully on the table with his finger-tips. “It was
a well-planned affair, wasn’t it?” he meditated. “And so extremely
easy to reconstruct. Bendix must have thought he’d provided against
every possible contingency. And so he very nearly had. It was just
that little bit of unlucky grit that gets into the smooth machinery of
so many clever crimes: he didn’t know that his wife had seen the play
before. He’d decided on the mild alibi of his presence at the theatre,
you see, just in case suspicion should ever impossibly arise, and no
doubt he stressed his desire to see the play and take her with him.
Not to spoil his pleasure, she would have unselfishly concealed from
him the fact that she had seen the play before and didn’t much want to
see it again. That unselfishness let him down. Because it’s
inconceivable that she would have turned it to her own advantage to
win the bet he pretends to have made with her.

“He left the theatre of course during the first interval, and hurried
as far as he dare go in the ten minutes at his disposal, to post the
parcel. I sat through the dreadful thing myself last night just to see
when the intervals came. The first one fits excellently. I’d hoped he
might have taken a taxi one way, as time was short, but if he did no
driver of such taxis as did make a similar journey that evening can
identify him. Or possibly the right driver hasn’t come forward yet. I
got Scotland Yard to look into that point for me. But it really fits
much better with the cleverness he’s shown all through, that he should
have gone by ’bus or underground. Taxis, he’d know, are traceable. But
if so he’d run it very fine indeed, and I shouldn’t be surprised if he
got back to his box a few minutes late. The police may be able to
establish that.”

“It seems to me,” observed Mr. Bradley, “that we made something of a
mistake in turning the man down from membership here. We thought his
criminology wasn’t up to standard, didn’t we? Well, well.”

“But we could hardly be expected to know that he was a practical
criminologist rather than a mere theoretical one,” Roger smiled. “It
was a mistake, though. It would have been pleasant to include a
practical criminologist among our members.”

“I must confess that I thought at one time that we did,” said Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming, making her peace. “Sir Charles,” she added
unnecessarily, “I apologise, without reserve.”

Sir Charles inclined his head courteously. “Please don’t refer to it,
madam. And in any event the experience for me was an interesting one.”

“I may have been misled by the case I quoted,” said Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming, rather wistfully. “It was a strangely close
parallel.”

“It was the first parallel that occurred to me, too,” Roger agreed. “I
studied the Molineux case quite closely, hoping to get a pointer from
it. But now, if I were asked for a parallel, I should reply with the
Carlyle Harris case. You remember, the young medical student who sent
a pill containing morphine to the girl Helen Potts, to whom it turned
out that he had been secretly married for a year. He was by way of
being a profligate and a general young rotter too. A great novel, as
you know, has been founded on the case, so why not a great crime too?”

“Then why, Mr. Sheringham,” Miss Dammers wanted to know, “do you think
that Mr. Bendix took the risk of not destroying the forged letter and
the wrapper when he had the chance?”

“He very carefully didn’t do so,” Roger replied promptly, “because the
forged letter and the wrapper had been calculated not only to divert
suspicion from himself but actually to point away from him to somebody
else—an employee of Mason’s, for instance, or an anonymous lunatic.
Which is exactly what they did.”

“But wouldn’t it be a great risk, to send poisoned chocolates like
that to Sir Eustace?” suggested Mr. Chitterwick diffidently. “I mean,
Sir Eustace might have been ill the next morning, or not offered to
hand them over at all. Suppose he had given them to somebody else
instead of Bendix.”

Roger proceeded to give Mr. Chitterwick cause for his diffidence. He
was feeling something of a personal pride in Bendix by this time, and
it distressed him to hear a great man thus maligned.

“Oh, really! You must give my man credit for being what he is. He’s
not a bungler, you know. It wouldn’t have had any serious results if
Sir Eustace had been ill that morning, or eaten the chocolates
himself, or if they’d been stolen in transit and consumed by the
postman’s favourite daughter, or any other unlikely contingency. Come,
Mr. Chitterwick! You don’t imagine he’d send the poisoned ones through
the post, do you? Of course not. He’d send harmless ones, and exchange
them for the others on the way home. Dash it all, he wouldn’t go out
of his way to present opportunities to chance.”

“Oh! I see,” murmured Mr. Chitterwick, properly subdued.

“We’re dealing with a very great criminal,” went on Roger, rather less
severely. “That can be seen at every point. Take the arrival at the
club, just for example—that most unusual early arrival (why this early
arrival at all, by the way, if he isn’t guilty?). Well, he doesn’t
wait outside and follow his unconscious accomplice in, you see. Not a
bit of it. Sir Eustace is chosen because he’s known to get there so
punctually at half-past ten every morning; takes a pride in it; boasts
of it; goes out of his way to keep up the good old custom. So Bendix
arrives at ten thirty-five, and there things are. It had puzzled me at
the beginning of the case, by the way, to see why the chocolates had
been sent to Sir Eustace at his club at all, instead of to his rooms.
Now it’s obvious.”

“Well, I wasn’t so far out with my list of conditions,” Mr. Bradley
consoled himself. “But why don’t you agree with my rather subtle point
about the murderer not being a public-school or University man,
Sheringham? Just because Bendix happens to have been at Selchester and
Oxford?”

“No, because I’d make the still more subtle point that where the code
of a public-school and University might influence a murderer in the
way he murdered another man, it wouldn’t have much effect when a woman
is to be the victim. I agree that if Bendix had been wanting to
dispose of Sir Eustace, he would probably have put him out of the
world in a nice, straightforward, manly way. But one doesn’t use nice,
straightforward, manly ways in one’s dealings with women, if it comes
to hitting them on the head with a bludgeon or anything in that
nature. Poison, I fancy, would be quite in order. And there’s very
little suffering with a large dose of nitrobenzene. Unconsciousness
soon intervenes.”

“Yes,” admitted Mr. Bradley, “that is rather too subtle a point for
one of my unpsychological attributes.”

“I think I dealt with most of your other conditions. As regards the
methodical habits, which you deduced from the meticulous doses of
poison in each chocolate, my point of course is that the doses were
exactly equal in order that Bendix could take any two of the
chocolates and be sure of having got the right amount of nitrobenzene
into his system to produce the symptoms he wanted, and not enough to
run any serious risk. That dosing of himself with the poison really
was a master-stroke. And it’s so natural that a man shouldn’t have
taken so many chocolates as a woman. He exaggerated his symptoms
considerably, no doubt, but the effect on everybody was tremendous.

“We must remember, you see, that we’ve only got his word for the
conversation in the drawing-room, over the eating of the chocolates,
just as we’ve only got his word for it that there ever was a bet at
all. Most of that conversation certainly took place, however. Bendix
is far too great an artist not to make all possible use of the truth
in his lying. But of course he wouldn’t have left her that afternoon
till he’d seen her take, or somehow made her take, at least six of the
chocolates, which he’d know made up more than a lethal dose. That was
another advantage in having the stuff in those exact six-minim
quantities.”

“In fact,” Mr. Bradley summed up, “our Uncle Bendix is a great man.”

“He really is,” said Roger, quite solemnly.

“You’ve no doubt at all that he is the criminal?” queried Miss
Dammers.

“None at all,” said Roger, astonished.

“Um,” said Miss Dammers.

“Why, have you?”

“Um,” said Miss Dammers.

The conversation then lapsed.

“Well,” said Mr. Bradley, “let’s all tell Sheringham how wrong he is,
shall we?”

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked tense. “I’m afraid,” she said in a hushed
voice, “that he is only too right.”

But Mr. Bradley refused to be impressed. “Oh, I think I can find a
hole or two to pick at. You seem to attach a good deal of importance
to the motive, Sheringham. Don’t you exaggerate? One doesn’t poison a
wife one’s tired of; one leaves her. And really, I find some
difficulty in believing (_a_) that Bendix should have been so set on
getting hold of more money to pour down the drainpipe of his
businesses as to commit murder for it, and (_b_) that Mrs. Bendix
should have been so close as to refuse to come to her husband’s help
if he really was badly pressed.”

“Then I think you fail to estimate the characters of both of them,”
Roger told him. “They were both obstinate as the devil. It was Mrs.
Bendix, not her husband, who realised that his businesses _were_ a
drainpipe. I could give you a list a yard long of murders that have
been committed with far less motive than Bendix had.”

“Motive allowed again, then. Now you remember that Mrs. Bendix had had
a lunch appointment for the day of her death, which was cancelled.
Didn’t Bendix know of that? Because if he did, would he have chosen a
day for the delivery of the chocolates when he knew his wife wouldn’t
be at home for lunch to receive them?”

“Just the point I had thought of putting to Mr. Sheringham myself,”
remarked Miss Dammers.

Roger looked puzzled. “It seems to me a most unimportant point. If it
comes to that, why should he necessarily want to give the chocolates
to his wife at lunch-time?”

“For two reasons,” responded Mr. Bradley glibly.

“Firstly because he would naturally want to put them to their right
purpose as soon as he possibly could, and secondly because his wife
being the only person who can contradict his story of the bet, he
would obviously want her silenced as soon as practicable.”

“You’re quibbling,” Roger smiled, “and I refuse to be drawn. For that
matter, I don’t see why Bendix should have known of his wife’s
lunch-appointment at all. They were constantly lunching out, both of
them, and I don’t suppose they took any particular care to inform each
other beforehand.”

“Humph!” said Mr. Bradley, and stroked his chin.

Mr. Chitterwick ventured to raise his recently crushed head. “You
really base your whole case on the bet, Mr. Sheringham, don’t you?”

“And the psychological deduction I drew from the story of it. Yes, I
do. Entirely.”

“So that if the bet could be proved after all to have been made, you
would have no case left?”

“Why,” exclaimed Roger, in some alarm, “have you any independent
evidence that the bet was made?”

“Oh, no. Oh, dear me, no. Nothing of the sort. I was merely thinking
that if any one did want to disprove your case, as Bradley suggested,
it is the bet on which he would have to concentrate.”

“You mean, quibbling about the motive, and the lunch-appointment, and
such minor matters, is altogether beside the point?” suggested Mr.
Bradley amiably. “Oh, I quite agree. But I was only trying to test his
case, you know, not disprove it. And for why? Because I think it’s the
right one. The Mystery of the Poisoned Chocolates, so far as I’m
concerned, is at an end.”

“Thank you, Bradley,” said Mr. Sheringham.

“So three cheers for our sleuth-like President,” continued Mr. Bradley
with great heartiness, “coupled with the name of Graham Reynard Bendix
for the fine run he’s given us. Hip, hip—”

“And you say you’ve definitely proved the purchase of the typewriter,
and the contact of Mr. Bendix with the sample-book at Webster’s, Mr.
Sheringham?” remarked Alicia Dammers, who had apparently been pursuing
a train of thought of her own.

“I do, Miss Dammers,” said Roger, not without complacence.

“Would you give me the name of the typewriter-shop?”

“Of course,” Roger tore a page from his notebook and copied out the
name and address.

“Thank you. And can you give me a description of the girl at Webster’s
who identified the photograph of Mr. Bendix?”

Roger looked at her a little uneasily; she gazed back with her usual
calm serenity. Roger’s uneasiness grew. He gave her as good a
description of Webster’s young woman as he could recall. Miss Dammers
thanked him imperturbably.

“Well, what are we going to do about it all?” persisted Mr. Bradley,
who seemed to have adopted the rôle of showman for his President.
“Shall we send a delegation to Scotland Yard consisting of Sheringham
and myself, to break the news to them that their troubles are over?”

“You are assuming that everybody agrees with Mr. Sheringham?”

“Of course.”

“Isn’t it customary to put this sort of question to a vote?” suggested
Miss Dammers coolly.

“‘Carried unanimously,’” quoted Mr. Bradley. “Yes, do let’s have the
correct procedure. Well, then, Sheringham moves that this meeting do
accept his solution of the Poisoned Chocolates Mystery as the right
one, and send a delegation of himself and Mr. Bradley to Scotland Yard
to talk pretty severely to the police. I second the motion. Those in
favour. . . ? Mrs. Fielder-Flemming?”

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming endeavoured to conceal her disapproval of Mr.
Bradley in her approval of Mr. Bradley’s suggestion. “I certainly
think that Mr. Sheringham has proved his case,” she said stiffly.

“Sir Charles?”

“I agree,” said Sir Charles, in stern tones, equally disproving Mr.
Bradley’s frivolity.

“Chitterwick?”

“I agree too.” Was it Roger’s fancy, or did Mr. Chitterwick hesitate
just a moment before he spoke, as if troubled by some mental
reservation which he did not care to put into words? Roger decided
that it was his fancy.

“And Miss Dammers?” concluded Mr. Bradley.

Miss Dammers looked calmly round the table. “I don’t agree at all. I
think Mr. Sheringham’s exposition was exceedingly ingenious, and
altogether worthy of his reputation; at the same time I think it quite
wrong. To-morrow I hope to be able to prove to you who really
committed this crime.”

The Circle gaped at her respectfully.

Roger, wondering whether his ears had not really been playing tricks
with him, found that his tongue too utterly refused to work. An
inarticulate sound oozed from him.

Mr. Bradley was the first to recover himself. “Carried,
non-unanimously. Mr. President, I think this is a precedent. Does
anybody know what happens when a resolution is not carried
unanimously?”

In the temporary disability of the President, Miss Dammers took it
upon herself to decide. “The meeting stands adjourned, I think,” she
said.

And adjourned the meeting found itself.



Chapter XV

Roger arrived at the Circle’s meeting-room the next evening even more
agog than usual. In his heart on hearts he could not believe that Miss
Dammers would ever be able to destroy his case against Bendix, or even
dangerously shake it, but in any event what she had to say could not
fail to be of absorbing interest, even without its animadversions of
his own solution. Roger had been looking forward to Miss Dammers’s
exposition more than to that of any one else.

Alicia Dammers was so very much a reflection of the age.

Had she been born fifty years ago, it is difficult to see how she
could have gone on existing. It was impossible that she could have
become the woman-novelist of that time, a strange creature (in the
popular imagination) with white cotton gloves, an intense manner, and
passionate, not to say hysterical yearnings towards a romance from
which her appearance unfortunately debarred her. Miss Dammers’s
gloves, like her clothes, were exquisite, and cotton could not have
touched her since she was ten (if she ever had been); tensity was for
her the depth of bad form; and if she knew how to yearn, she certainly
kept it to herself. Passion and purple, one gathered, Miss Dammers
found quite unnecessary to herself, if interesting phenomena in lesser
mortals.

From the caterpillar in cotton gloves the woman-novelist has
progressed through the stage of cook-like cocoondom at which Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming had stuck, to the detached and serious butterfly, not
infrequently beautiful as well as pensive, whose decorative pictures
the illustrated weeklies are nowadays delighted to publish.
Butterflies with calm foreheads, just faintly wrinkled in analytical
thought. Ironical, cynical butterflies; surgeon-butterflies thronging
the mental dissecting-rooms (and sometimes, if we must be candid,
inclined to loiter there a little too long); passionless butterflies,
flitting gracefully from one brightly-coloured complex to another. And
sometimes completely humourless, and then distressingly boring
butterflies, whose gathered pollen seems to have become a trifle
mud-coloured.

To meet Miss Dammers and look at her classical, oval face, with its
delicately small features and big grey eyes, to glance approvingly
over her tall, beautifully dressed figure, nobody whose imagination
was still popular would ever have set her down as a novelist at all.
And that in Miss Dammers’s opinion, coupled with the ability to write
good books, was exactly what a properly-minded modern authoress should
hope to achieve.

No one had ever been brave enough to ask Miss Dammers how she could
hope successfully to analyse in others emotions which she had never
experienced in herself. Probably because the plain fact confronted the
enquirer that she both could and did. Most successfully.

“We listened last night,” began Miss Dammers, at five minutes past
nine on the following evening, “to an exceedingly able exposition of a
no less interesting theory of this crime. Mr. Sheringham’s methods, if
I may say so, were a model to all of us. Beginning with the deductive,
he followed this as far as it would take him, which was actually to
the person of the criminal; he then relied on the inductive to prove
his case. In this way he was able to make the best possible use of
each method. That this ingenious mixture should have been based on a
fallacy and therefore never had any chance of leading Mr. Sheringham
to the right solution, is rather a piece of bad luck than his fault.”

Roger, who still could not believe that he had not reached the truth,
smiled dubiously.

“Mr. Sheringham’s reading of the crime,” continued Miss Dammers, in
her clear, level tones, “must have seemed to some of us novel in the
extreme. To me, however, it was perhaps more interesting than novel,
for it began from the same starting-point as the theory on which I
myself have been working; namely, that the crime had not failed in its
objective.”

Roger pricked up his ears.

“As Mr. Chitterwick pointed out, Mr. Sheringham’s whole case rested on
the bet between Mr. and Mrs. Bendix. From Mr. Bendix’s story of that
bet, he draws the psychological deduction that the bet never existed
at all. That is clever, but it is the wrong deduction. Mr. Sheringham
is too lenient in his interpretation of feminine psychology. I began,
I think I may say, with the bet too. But the deduction I drew from it,
knowing my sister-women perhaps a little more intimately than Mr.
Sheringham could, was that Mrs. Bendix was not quite so honourable as
she was painted by herself.”

“I thought of that, of course,” Roger expostulated. “But I discarded
it on purely logical grounds. There’s nothing in Mrs. Bendix’s life to
show that she wasn’t honest, and everything to show that she was. And
when there exists no evidence at all for the making of the bet beyond
Bendix’s bare word . . .”

“Oh, but there does,” Miss Dammers took him up. “I’ve been spending
most of to-day in establishing that point. I knew I should never
really be able to shake you till I could definitely prove that there
was a bet. Let me put you out of your agony at once, Mr. Sheringham.
I’ve overwhelming evidence that the bet was made.”

“You have?” said Roger, disconcerted.

“Certainly. It was a point you really should have verified yourself,
you know,” chided Miss Dammers gently, “considering its importance to
your case. Well, I have two witnesses. Mrs. Bendix mentioned the bet
to her maid when she went up to her bedroom to lie down, actually
saying (like yourself, Mr. Sheringham) that the violent indigestion
from which she thought herself to be suffering was a judgment on her
for having made it. The second witness is a friend of my own, who
knows the Bendixes. She saw Mrs. Bendix sitting alone in her box
during the second interval, and went in to speak to her. In the course
of the conversation Mrs. Bendix remarked that she and her husband had
a bet on the identity of the villain, mentioning the character in the
play whom she herself fancied. But (and this completely confirms my
own deduction) Mrs. Bendix did _not_ tell my friend that she had seen
the play before.”

“Oh!” said Roger, now quite crestfallen.

Miss Dammers dealt with him as tenderly as possible. “There were only
those two deductions to be made from that bet, and by bad luck you
chose the wrong one.”

“But how did you know,” said Roger, coming to the surface for the
third time, “that Mrs. Bendix had seen the play before? I only found
that out myself a couple of days ago, and by the merest accident.”

“Oh, I’ve known that from the beginning,” said Miss Dammers
carelessly. “I suppose Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer told you? I don’t know
her personally, but I know people who do. I didn’t interrupt you last
night when you were talking about the amazing chance of this piece of
knowledge reaching you. If I had, I should have pointed out that the
agency by which anything known to Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer (as I see
her) might become known to her friends too, isn’t chance at all, but
certainty.”

“I see,” said Roger, and sank for the third, and final, time. But as
he did so he remembered one piece of information which Mrs.
Verreker-le-Mesurer had succeeded, not wholly as it seemed but very
nearly so, in withholding from her friends; and catching Mr. Bradley’s
ribald eye knew that his thought was shared. So even Miss Dammers was
not quite infallible in her psychology.

“We then,” resumed that lady, somewhat didactically, “have Mr. Bendix
displaced from his temporary rôle of villain and back again in his old
part of second victim.” She paused for a moment.

“But without Sir Eustace returning to the cast in his original star
part of intended victim of the piece,” amplified Mr. Bradley.

Miss Dammers rightly ignored him. “Now here, I think, Mr. Sheringham
will find my case as interesting as I found his last night, for though
we differ so vitally in some essentials we agree remarkably in others.
And one of the points on which we agree is that the intended victim
certainly was killed.”

“What, Alicia?” exclaimed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “You think too that
the plot was directed against Mrs. Bendix from the beginning?”

“I have no doubt of it. But to prove my contention I must demolish yet
another of Mr. Sheringham’s conclusions.

“You made the point, Mr. Sheringham, that half-past ten in the morning
was a most unusual time for Mr. Bendix to arrive at his club and
therefore highly significant. That is perfectly true. Unfortunately
you attached the wrong significance to it. His arrival at that hour
doesn’t necessarily argue a guilty intention, as you assumed. It
escaped you (as in fairness I must say it seems to have escaped every
one else) that if Mrs. Bendix was the intended victim and Mr. Bendix
himself not her murderer, his presence at the club at that convenient
time might have been secured by the real murderer. In any case I think
Mr. Sheringham might have given Mr. Bendix the benefit of the doubt in
so far as to ask him if he had any explanation of his own to offer. As
I did.”

“You asked Bendix himself how it had happened that he arrived at the
club at half-past ten that morning?” Mr. Chitterwick said in awed
tones. This was certainly the way real detecting should be done.
Unfortunately his own diffidence seemed to have prevented Mr.
Chitterwick from doing any real detecting at all.

“Certainly,” agreed Miss Dammers briskly. “I rang him up, and put the
point to him. From what I gathered, not even the police had thought to
put it before. And though he answered it in a way I quite expected, it
was clear that he saw no significance in his own answer. Mr. Bendix
told me that he had gone there to receive a telephone message. But why
not have had the message telephoned to his home? you will ask.
Exactly. So did I. The reason was that it was not the sort of message
one cares about receiving at home. I must admit that I pressed Mr.
Bendix about this message, and as he had no idea of the importance of
my questions he must have considered my taste more than questionable.
However, I couldn’t help that.

“In the end I got him to admit that on the previous afternoon he had
been rung up at his office by a Miss Vera Delorme, who plays a small
part in _Heels Up!_ at the Regency Theatre. He had only met her once
or twice, but was not averse from doing so again. She asked him if he
were doing anything important the next morning, to which he replied
that he was not. Could he take her out to a quiet little lunch
somewhere? He would be delighted. But she was not quite sure yet
whether she was free. She would ring him up the next morning between
ten-thirty and eleven o’clock at the Rainbow Club.”

Five pairs of brows were knitted.

“I don’t see any significance in that either,” finally plunged Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming.

“No?” said Miss Dammers. “But if Miss Delorme straightly denies having
ever rung Mr. Bendix up at all?”

Five pairs of brows unravelled themselves.

“_Oh!_” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.

“Of course that was the first thing I verified,” said Miss Dammers
coolly.

Mr. Chitterwick sighed. Yes, undoubtedly this was real detecting.

“Then your murderer had an accomplice, Miss Dammers?” Sir Charles
suggested.

“He had two,” retorted Miss Dammers. “Both unwitting.”

“Ah, yes. You mean Bendix. And the woman who telephoned?”

“Well—!” Miss Dammers looked in her unexcited way round the circle of
faces. “Isn’t it obvious?”

Apparently it was not at all obvious.

“At any rate it must be obvious why Miss Delorme was chosen as the
telephonist: because Mr. Bendix hardly knew her, and would certainly
not be able to recognise her voice on the telephone. And as for the
real speaker . . . Well, really!” Miss Dammers looked her opinion of
such obtuseness.

“Mrs. Bendix!” squeaked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming catching sight of a
triangle.

“Of course. Mrs. Bendix, carefully primed by _somebody_ about her
husband’s minor misdemeanours.”

“The somebody being the murderer of course,” nodded Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming. “A friend of Mrs. Bendix’s then. At least,” amended
Mrs. Fielder-Flemming in some confusion, remembering that real friends
seldom murder each other, “she thought of him as a friend. Dear me,
this is getting very interesting, Alicia.”

Miss Dammers gave a small, ironical smile. “Yes, it’s a very intimate
little affair after all, this murder. Tightly closed, in fact, Mr.
Bradley.

“But I’m getting on rather too fast. I had better complete the
destruction of Mr. Sheringham’s case before I build up my own.” Roger
groaned faintly and looked up at the hard, white ceiling. It reminded
him of Miss Dammers, and he looked down again.

“Really, Mr. Sheringham, your faith in human nature is altogether too
great, you know,” Miss Dammers mocked him without mercy. “Whatever
anybody chooses to tell you, you believe. A confirmatory witness never
seems necessary to you. I’m sure that if some one had come to your
rooms and told you he’d seen the Shah of Persia injecting the
nitrobenzene into those chocolates you would have believed him
unhesitatingly.”

“Are you hinting that somebody hasn’t told me the truth?” groaned the
unhappy Roger.

“I’ll do more than hint it; I’ll prove it. When you told us last night
that the man in the typewriter shop had positively identified Mr.
Bendix as the purchaser of a second-hand No. 4 Hamilton I was
astounded. I took a note of the shop’s address. This morning, first
thing, I went there. I taxed the man roundly with having told you a
lie. He admitted it, grinning.

“So far as he could make out, all you wanted was a good Hamilton No.
4, and he had a good Hamilton No. 4 to sell. He saw nothing wrong in
leading you to suppose that his was the shop where your friend had
bought his own good Hamilton No. 4, because he had quite as good a one
as any other shop could have. And if it eased your mind that he should
recognise your friend from his photograph—well,” said Miss Dammers
drily, “he was quite prepared to ease it as many times as you had
photographs to produce.”

“I see,” said Roger, and his thoughts dwelt on the eight pounds he had
handed over to that sympathetic, mind-easing shopman in return for a
Hamilton No. 4 he didn’t want.

“As for the girl in Webster’s,” continued Miss Dammers implacably,
“she was just as ready to admit that perhaps she might have made a
mistake in recognising that friend of the gentleman who called in
yesterday about some notepaper. But really, the gentleman had seemed
so anxious she should that it would have seemed quite a pity to
disappoint him, like. And if it came to that, she couldn’t see the
harm in it not even now she couldn’t.” Miss Dammers’s imitation of
Webster’s young woman was most amusing. Roger did not laugh heartily.

“I’m sorry if I seem to be rubbing it in, Mr. Sheringham,” said Miss
Dammers.

“Not at all,” said Roger.

“But it’s essential to my own case, you see.”

“Yes, I quite see that,” said Roger.

“Then that evidence is disposed of. I don’t think you really had any
other, did you?”

“I don’t think so,” said Roger.

“You will see,” Miss Dammers resumed, over Roger’s corpse, “that I am
following the fashion of withholding the criminal’s name. Now that it
has come to my turn to speak, I am realising the advantages of this;
but really, I can’t help fearing that you will all have guessed it by
the time I come to my denouement. To me, at any rate, the murderer’s
identity seems quite absurdly obvious. Before I disclose it
officially, however, I should like to deal with a few of the other
points, not actual evidence, raised by Mr. Sheringham in his argument.

“Mr. Sheringham built up a very ingenious case. It was so very
ingenious that he had to insist more than once on the perfect planning
that had gone to its construction, and the true greatness of the
criminal mind that had evolved it. I don’t agree,” said Miss Dammers
crisply. “My case is much simpler. It was planned with cunning but not
with perfection. It relied almost entirely upon luck: that is to say,
upon one vital piece of evidence remaining undiscovered. And finally
the mind that evolved it is not great in any way. But it _is_ a mind
which, dealing with matters outside its usual orbit would certainly be
imitative.

“That brings me to a point of Mr. Bradley’s. I agree with him to the
extent that I think a certain acquaintance with criminological history
is postulated, but not when he argues that it is the work of a
creative mind. In my opinion the chief feature of the crime is its
servile imitation of certain of its predecessors. I deduced from it,
in fact, the type of mind which is possessed of no originality of its
own, is intensely conservative because without the wit to recognise
the progress of change, is obstinate, dogmatic, and practical, and
lacks entirely any sense of spiritual values. As one who am inclined
to suffer myself from something of an aversion from matter, I sensed
my exact antithesis behind the whole atmosphere of this case.”

Everybody looked suitably impressed. As for Mr. Chitterwick, he could
only gasp before these detailed deductions from a mere atmosphere.

“With another point of Mr. Sheringham’s I have already inferred that I
agree: that chocolates were used as the vehicle of the poison because
they were meant to reach a woman. And here I might add that I am sure
no harm was intended to Mr. Bendix himself. We know that Mr. Bendix
did not care for chocolates, and it is a reasonable assumption that
the murderer knew it too; he never expected that Mr. Bendix would eat
any himself.

“It is curious how often Mr. Sheringham hits the mark with small
shafts, while missing it with the chief one. He was quite right about
the notepaper being extracted from that sample-book at Webster’s. I’m
bound to admit that the possession of the piece of notepaper had
worried me considerably. I was at a complete loss there. Then Mr.
Sheringham very handily presented us with his explanation, and I have
been able to-day to destroy his application of it to his own theory
and incorporate it in my own. The attendant who pretended out of
innocent politeness to recognise the photograph Mr. Sheringham showed
her, was able to recognise in earnest the one I produced. And not only
recognise it,” said Miss Dammers with the first sign of complacence
she had yet shown, “but identify the original of it actually by name.”

“Ah!” nodded Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, much excited.

“Mr. Sheringham made a few other small points, which I thought it
advisable to-day to blunt,” Miss Dammers went on, with a return to her
impersonal manner. “Because most of the small firms in which Mr.
Bendix figures on the board of directors are not in a flourishing
state, Mr. Sheringham deduced not only that Mr. Bendix was a bad
business-man, with which I am inclined to agree, but that he was
desperately in need of money. Once again Mr. Sheringham failed to
verify his deduction, and once again he must pay the penalty in
finding himself utterly wrong.

“The most elementary channels of enquiry would have brought Mr.
Sheringham the information that only a very small proportion of Mr.
Bendix’s money is invested in these concerns, which are really a
wealthy man’s toys. By far the greater part is still where his father
left it when he died, in government stock and safe industrial concerns
so large that even Mr. Bendix could never aspire to a seat on the
board. And from what I know of him, Mr. Bendix is quite a big enough
man to recognise that he is not the business-genius his father was,
and has no intention of spending on his toys more than he can
comfortably afford. The real motive Mr. Sheringham gave him for his
wife’s death therefore completely disappears.”

Roger bowed his head. For ever afterwards, he felt, would genuine
criminologists point the finger of contempt at him as the man who
failed to verify his own deductions. Oh, shameful future!

“As for the subsidiary motive, I attach less importance to that but on
the whole I am inclined to agree with Mr. Sheringham. I think Mrs.
Bendix must have become a dreadful bore to her husband, who after all
was a normal man, with a normal man’s reactions and scale of values. I
should be inclined to think that she morally drove him into the arms
of his actresses, in search of a little light companionship. I’m not
saying he wasn’t deeply in love with her when he married her; no doubt
he was. And he’d have had a naturally deep respect for her then.

“But it’s an unfortunate marriage,” observed the cynical Miss Dammers,
“in which the respect outstays its usefulness. A man wants a piece of
humanity in his marriage-bed; not an object of deep respect. But I’m
bound to say that if Mrs. Bendix did bore her husband before the end,
he was gentleman enough not to show it. The marriage was generally
considered an ideal one.”

Miss Dammers paused for a moment to sip at the glass of water in front
of her.

“Lastly, Mr. Sheringham made the point that the letter and wrapper
were not destroyed, because the murderer thought they would not only
not harm him but definitely help him. With that too I agree. But I do
not draw the same deduction from it that Mr. Sheringham did. I should
have said that this entirely confirms my theory that the murder is the
work of a second-rate mind, because a first-rate mind would never
consent to the survival of any clue which could be easily destroyed,
however helpful it might be expected to prove, because he would know
how often such clues, deliberately left to mislead, have actually led
to the criminal’s undoing. And I would draw the subsidiary deduction
that the wrapper and letter were not expected to be just generally
helpful, but that there was some definite piece of misleading
information contained in them. I think I know what that piece of
information was.

“That is all the reference I have to make to Mr. Sheringham’s case.”

Roger lifted his bowed head, and Miss Dammers sipped again at her
water.

“With regard to this matter of the respect Mr. Bendix had for his
wife,” Mr. Chitterwick hazarded, “isn’t there something of an anomaly
there, Miss Dammers? Because I understood you to say at the very
beginning that the deduction you had drawn from that bet was that Mrs.
Bendix was not quite so worthy of respect as we had all imagined.
Didn’t that deduction stand the test, then?”

“It did, Mr. Chitterwick, and there is no anomaly.”

“Where a man doesn’t suspect, he will respect,” said Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming swiftly, before her Alicia could think of it.

“Ah, the horrid sepulchre under the nice white paint,” remarked Mr.
Bradley, who didn’t approve of that sort of thing, even from
distinguished dramatists. “Now we’re getting down to it. Is there a
sepulchre, Miss Dammers?”

“There is,” Miss Dammers agreed, without emotion. “And now, as you
say, Mr. Bradley, we’re getting down to it.”

“Oh!” Mr. Chitterwick positively bounced on his chair. “If the letter
and wrapper _could_ have been destroyed by the murderer . . . and
Bendix wasn’t the murderer . . . and I suppose the porter needn’t be
considered . . . Oh, _I_ see!”

“I wondered when somebody would,” said Miss Dammers.



Chapter XVI

“From the very beginning of this case,” Miss Dammers proceeded,
imperturbable as ever, “I was of the opinion that the greatest clue
the criminal had left us was one of which he would have been totally
unconscious: the unmistakable indications of his own character. Taking
the facts as I found them, and not assuming others as Mr. Sheringham
did to justify his own reading of the murderer’s exceptional
mentality—” She looked challengingly towards Roger.

“Did I assume any facts that I couldn’t substantiate?” Roger felt
himself compelled to answer her look.

“Certainly you did. You assumed for instance that the typewriter on
which the letter was written is now at the bottom of the Thames. The
plain fact that it is not, once more bears out my own interpretation.
Taking the established facts as I found them, then, I was able without
difficulty to form the mental picture of the murderer that I have
already sketched out for you. But I was careful not to look for
somebody who would resemble my picture and then build up a case
against him. I simply hung the picture up in my mind, so to speak, in
order to compare with it any individual towards whom suspicion might
seem to point.

“Now, after I had cleared up Mr. Bendix’s reason for arriving at his
club that morning at such an unusual hour, there remained so far as I
could see only one obscure point, apparently of no importance, to
which nobody’s attention seemed to have been directed. I mean, the
engagement Sir Eustace had had that day for lunch, which must
subsequently have been cancelled. I don’t know how Mr. Bradley
discovered this, but I am quite ready to say how I did. It was from
that same useful valet who gave Mrs. Fielder-Flemming so much
interesting information.

“I must admit in this connection that I have advantages over the other
members of this Circle so far as investigations regarding Sir Eustace
were concerned, for not only did I know Sir Eustace himself so well
but I knew his valet too; and you may imagine that if Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming was able to extract so much from him with the aid of
money alone, I myself, backed not only by money but by the advantage
of a previous acquaintance, was in a position to obtain still more. In
any case, it was not long before the man casually mentioned that four
days before the crime Sir Eustace had told him to ring up Fellows’s
Hotel in Jermyn Street and reserve a private room for lunch-time on
the day on which the murder subsequently took place.

“That was the obscure point, which I thought it worth while to clear
up if I could. With whom was Sir Eustace going to lunch that day?
Obviously a woman, but which of his many women? The valet could give
me no information. So far as he knew, Sir Eustace actually had not got
any women at the moment, so intent was he upon the pursuit of Miss
Wildman (you must excuse me, Sir Charles), her hand and her fortune.
Was it Miss Wildman herself then? I was very soon able to establish
that it wasn’t.

“Does it strike you that there is a reminiscent ring about this
cancelled lunch-appointment on the day of the crime? It didn’t occur
to me for a long time, but of course there is. Mrs. Bendix had a
lunch-engagement for that day too, which was cancelled for some reason
unknown on the previous afternoon.”

“_Mrs. Bendix!_” breathed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. Here was a juicy
triangle.

Miss Dammers smiled faintly. “Yes, I won’t keep you on the
tenterhooks, Mabel. From what Sir Charles told us I knew that Mrs.
Bendix and Sir Eustace at any rate were not total strangers, and in
the end I managed to connect them. Mrs. Bendix was to have lunched
with Sir Eustace, in a private room, at the somewhat notorious
Fellows’s Hotel.”

“To discuss her husband’s shortcomings, of course?” suggested Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming, more charitably than her hopes.

“Possibly, among other things,” said Miss Dammers nonchalantly. “But
the chief reason, no doubt was because she was his mistress.” Miss
Dammers dropped this bombshell among the company with as little
emotion as if she had remarked that Mrs. Bendix was wearing a
jade-green taffeta frock for the occasion.

“Can you—can you substantiate that statement?” asked Sir Charles, the
first to recover himself.

Miss Dammers just raised her fine eyebrows. “But of course. I shall
make no statements that I can’t substantiate. Mrs. Bendix had been in
the habit of lunching at least twice a week with Sir Eustace, and
occasionally dining too, at Fellows’s Hotel, always in the same room.
They took considerable precautions and used to arrive not only at the
hotel but in the room itself quite independently of each other;
outside the room they were never seen together. But the waiter who
attended them (always the same waiter) has signed a declaration for me
that he recognised Mrs. Bendix, from the photographs published after
her death, as the woman who used to come there with Sir Eustace
Pennefather.”

“He signed a declaration for you, eh?” mused Mr. Bradley. “You must
find detecting an expensive hobby too, Miss Dammers.”

“One can afford one expensive hobby, Mr. Bradley.”

“But just because she lunched with him . . .” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
was once more speaking with the voice of charity. “I mean, it doesn’t
necessarily mean that she was his mistress, does it? Not, of course,
that I think any the less of her if she was,” she added hastily,
remembering the official attitude.

“Communicating with the room in which they had their meals is a
bedroom,” replied Miss Dammers, in a desiccated tone of voice.
“Invariably after they had gone, the waiter informed me, he found the
bedclothes disarranged and the bed showing signs of recent use. I
imagine that would be accepted as clear enough evidence of adultery,
Sir Charles?”

“Oh, undoubtedly, undoubtedly,” rumbled Sir Charles, in high
embarrassment. Sir Charles was always exceedingly embarrassed when
women used words like “adultery” and “sexual perversions” and even
“mistress” to him, out of business hours. Sir Charles was regrettably
old-fashioned.

“Sir Eustace, of course,” added Miss Dammers in her detached way, “had
nothing to fear from the King’s Proctor.”

She took another sip of water, while the others tried to accustom
themselves to this new light on the case and the surprising avenues it
illuminated.

Miss Dammers proceeded to illuminate them still further, with powerful
beams from her psychological searchlight. “They must have made a
curious couple those two. Their widely differing scales of values, the
contrast of their respective reactions to the business that brought
them together, the possibility that not even in a common passion could
their minds establish any point of real contact. I want you to examine
the psychology of the situation as closely as you can, because the
murder was derived directly from it.

“What can have induced Mrs. Bendix in the first place to become that
man’s mistress I don’t know. I won’t be so trite as to say I can’t
imagine, because I can imagine all sorts of ways in which it may have
happened. There is a curious mental stimulus to a good but stupid
woman in a bad man’s badness. If she has a touch of the reformer in
her, as most good women have, she soon becomes obsessed with the
futile desire to save him from himself. And in seven cases out of ten
her first step in doing so is to descend to his level.

“Not that she considers herself at first to be descending at all; a
good woman invariably suffers for quite a long time from the delusion
that whatever she does, her own particular brand of goodness cannot
become smirched. She may share a reprobate’s bed with him, because she
knows that only through her body at first can she hope to influence
him, until contact is established through the body with the soul and
he may be led into better ways than a habit of going to bed in the
daytime; but the initial sharing doesn’t reflect on her own purity in
the least. It is a hackneyed observation but I must insist on it once
more: good women have the most astonishing powers of self-deception.

“I do consider Mrs. Bendix as a good woman, before she met Sir
Eustace. Her trouble was that she thought herself so much better than
she was. Her constant references to honour and playing the game, which
Mr. Sheringham quoted, show that. She was infatuated with her own
goodness. And so, of course, was Sir Eustace. He had probably never
enjoyed the complaisance of a really good woman before. The seduction
of her (which was probably very difficult) would have amused him
enormously. He must have had to listen to hour after hour’s talk about
honour, and reform, and spirituality, but he would have borne it
patiently enough for the exquisite revenge on which he had set his
heart. The first two or three visits to Fellows’s Hotel must have
delighted him.

“But after that it became less and less amusing. Mrs. Bendix would
discover that perhaps her own goodness wasn’t standing quite so firm
under the strain as she had imagined. She would have begun to bore him
with her self-reproaches; bore him dreadfully. He continued to meet
her there first because a woman, to his type, is always a woman, and
afterwards because she gave him no choice. I can see exactly what must
inevitably have happened. Mrs. Bendix begins to get thoroughly morbid
about her own wickedness, and quite loses sight of her initial zeal
for reform.

“They use the bed now because there happens to be a bed there and it
would be a pity to waste it, but she has destroyed the pleasure of
both. Her one cry now is that she must put herself right with her own
conscience either by running away with Sir Eustace on the spot, or,
more probably, by telling her husband, arranging for divorce (for, of
course, he will never forgive her, _never_), and marrying Sir Eustace
as soon as both divorces are through. In any case, although she almost
loathes him by now nothing else can be contemplated but that the rest
of her life must be spent with Sir Eustace and his with her. How well
I know that type of mind.

“Naturally, to Sir Eustace, who is working hard to retrieve his
fortunes by a rich marriage, this scheme has small appeal. He begins
by cursing himself for having seduced the damned woman at all, and
goes on to curse still more the damned woman for having been seduced.
And the more pressing she becomes, the more he hates her. Then Mrs.
Bendix must have brought matters to a head. She has heard about the
Wildman girl affair. That must be stopped at once. She tells Sir
Eustace that if he doesn’t break it off himself, she will take steps
to break it off for him. Sir Eustace sees the whole thing coming out,
his own appearance in a second divorce-court, and all hopes of Miss
Wildman and her fortune gone for ever. Something has got to be done
about it. But what can be done? Nothing short of murder will stop the
damned woman’s tongue.

“Well—it’s high time somebody murdered her anyhow.

“Now I’m on rather less sure ground, but the assumptions seem to me
sound enough and I can produce a reasonable amount of proof to support
them. Sir Eustace decides to get rid of the woman once and for all. He
thinks it over carefully, remembers to have read about a case, several
cases, in some criminological book, each of which just failed through
some small mistake. Combine them, eradicate the small mistake from
each, and so long as his relations with Mrs. Bendix are not known (and
he is quite certain they aren’t) there is no possibility of being
found out. That may seem a long guess, but here’s my proof.

“When I was studying him, I gave Sir Eustace every chance of plying
his blandishments on me. One of his methods is to profess a deep
interest in everything that interests the woman. Naturally therefore
he discovered a profound, if hitherto latent, interest in criminology.
He borrowed several of my books, and certainly read them. Among the
ones he borrowed is a book of American poisoning cases. In it is an
account of every single case that has been mentioned as a parallel by
members of this Circle (except of course Marie Lafarge and Christina
Edmunds).

“About six weeks ago, when I got in one evening my maid told me that
Sir Eustace, who hadn’t been near my flat for months, had called; he
waited for a time in the sitting-room and then went. Shortly after the
murder, having also been struck by the similarity between this and one
or two of those American cases, I went to the bookshelf in my
sitting-room to look them up. The book was not there. Nor, Mr.
Bradley, was my copy of Taylor. But I saw them both in Sir Eustace’s
rooms the day I had that long conversation with his valet.”

Miss Dammers paused for comment.

Mr. Bradley supplied it. “Then the man deserves what’s coming to him,”
he drawled.

“I told you this murder wasn’t the work of a highly intelligent mind,”
said Miss Dammers.

“Well, now, to complete my reconstruction. Sir Eustace decides to rid
himself of his encumbrance, and arranges what he thinks a perfectly
safe way of doing so. The nitrobenzene, which appears to worry Mr.
Bradley so much, seems to me a very simple matter. Sir Eustace has
decided upon chocolates as the vehicle, and chocolate liqueurs at
that. (Mason’s chocolate liqueurs, I should say, are a favourite
purchase of Sir Eustace’s. It is significant that he had bought
several one-pound boxes recently.) He is searching, then, for some
poison with a flavour which will mingle well enough with that of the
liqueurs. He is bound to come across oil of bitter almonds very soon
in that connection, actually used as it is in confectionery, and from
that to nitrobenzene, which is more common, easier to get hold of, and
practically untraceable, is an obvious step.

“He arranges to meet Mrs. Bendix for lunch, intending to make a
present to her then of the chocolates which are to come to him that
morning by post, a perfectly natural thing to do. He will already have
the porter’s evidence of the innocent way in which he acquired them.
At the last minute he sees the obvious flaw in this plan. If he gives
Mrs. Bendix the chocolates in person, and especially at lunch at
Fellows’s Hotel, his intimacy with her must be disclosed. He hastily
racks his brains and finds a very much better plan. Getting hold of
Mrs. Bendix, he tells her some story of her husband and Vera Delorme.

“In characteristic fashion Mrs. Bendix loses sight of the beam in her
own eye on learning of this mote in her husband’s and at once falls in
with Sir Eustace’s suggestion that she shall ring Mr. Bendix up,
disguising her voice and pretending to be Vera Delorme, and just find
out for herself whether or not he will jump at the chance of an
intimate little lunch for the following day.

“‘And tell him you’ll ring him up at the Rainbow to-morrow morning
between ten-thirty and eleven,’ Sir Eustace adds carelessly. ‘If he
goes to the Rainbow, you’ll be able to know for certain that he’s
dancing attendance on her at any hour of the day.’ And so she does.
The presence of Bendix is therefore assured for the next morning at
half-past ten. Who in the world is to say that he was not there by
purest chance when Sir Eustace was exclaiming over that parcel?

“As for the bet, which clinched the handing over of the chocolates, I
cannot believe that this was just a stroke of luck for Sir Eustace.
That seems too good to be true. Somehow, I’m sure, though I won’t
attempt to show how (that would be mere guesswork), Sir Eustace
arranged for that bet in advance. And if he did, the fact in no way
destroys my initial deduction from it, that Mrs. Bendix was not so
honest as she pretended; for whether it was arranged or whether it
wasn’t, the plain fact is left that it is dishonest to make a bet to
which you know the answer.

“Lastly, if I am to follow the fashion and cite a parallel case, I
decide unhesitatingly for John Tawell, who administered prussic acid
in a bottle of beer to his mistress, Sarah Hart, when he was tired of
her.”

The Circle looked at her admiringly. At last, it seemed, they really
had got to the bottom of the business.

Sir Charles voiced the general feeling. “If you’ve got any solid
evidence to support this theory, Miss Dammers . . .” He implied that
in that case the rope was as good as round Sir Eustace’s thick red
neck.

“Meaning that the evidence I’ve given already isn’t solid enough for
the legal mind?” enquired Miss Dammers equably.

“Psy—psychological reconstructions wouldn’t carry _very_ much weight
with a jury,” Sir Charles took refuge behind the jury in question.

“I’ve connected Sir Eustace with the piece of Mason’s notepaper,” Miss
Dammers pointed out.

“I’m afraid on that alone Sir Eustace would get the benefit of the
doubt.” Sir Charles was evidently deprecating the psychological
obtuseness of that jury of his.

“I’ve shown a tremendous motive, and I’ve connected him with a book of
similar cases and a book of poisons.”

“Yes. Oh, quite so. But what I mean is, have you any real evidence to
connect Sir Eustace quite definitely with the letter, the chocolates,
or the wrapper?”

“He has an Onyx pen, and the inkpot in his library used to be filled
with Harfield’s Ink,” Miss Dammers smiled. “I’ve no doubt it is still.
He was supposed to have been at the Rainbow the whole evening before
the murder, but I’ve ascertained that there is a gap of half-an-hour
between nine o’clock and nine-thirty during which nobody saw him. He
left the dining-room at nine, and a waiter brought him a
whisky-and-soda in the lounge at half-past. In the interim nobody
knows where he was. He wasn’t in the lounge. Where was he? The porter
swears he did not see him go out, or come in again; but there is a
back way which he could have used if he wanted to be unnoticed, as of
course he did. I asked him myself, as if by way of a joke, and he said
that he had gone up to the library after dinner to look up a reference
in a book of big-game hunting. Could he mention the names of any other
members in the library? He said there weren’t any; there never were;
he’d never seen a member in the library all the time he belonged to
the club. I thanked him and rang off.

“In other words, he says he was in the library, because he knows there
would be no other member there to prove he wasn’t. What he really did
during that half-hour, of course, was to slip out the back-way, hurry
down to the Strand to post the parcel (just as Mr. Sheringham saw Mr.
Bendix hurrying down), slip in again, run up to the library to make
sure nobody was there, and then go down to the lounge and order his
whisky-and-soda to prove his presence there later. Isn’t that more
feasible than your vision of Mr. Bendix, Mr. Sheringham?”

“I must admit that it’s no less so,” Roger had to agree.

“Then you haven’t any solid evidence at all?” lamented Sir Charles.
“Nothing that would really impress a jury?”

“Yes, I have,” said Miss Dammers quietly. “I’ve been saving it up till
the end because I wanted to prove my case (as I consider I have done)
without it. But this is absolutely and finally conclusive. Will
everybody examine these, please.”

Miss Dammers produced from her bag a brown-paper-covered parcel.
Unwrapping it, she brought to light a photograph and a quarto sheet of
paper which looked like a typed letter.

“The photograph,” she explained, “I obtained from Chief Inspector
Moresby the other day, but without telling him the specific purpose
for which I wanted it. It is of the forged letter, actual size. I
should like everybody to compare it with this typed copy of the
letter. Will you look at them first, Mr. Sheringham, and then pass
them round? Notice particularly the slightly crooked s’s and the
chipped capital H.”

In dead silence Roger pored over the two. He examined them for a full
two minutes, which seemed to the others more like two hours, and then
passed them on to Sir Charles on his right.

“There isn’t the slightest doubt that those two were done on the same
machine,” he said soberly.

Miss Dammers showed neither less nor more emotion than she had
displayed throughout. Her voice carried exactly the same impersonal
inflection. She might have been announcing her discovery of a match
between two pieces of dress-material. From her level tone it could
never have been guessed that a man’s neck depended on her words no
less than on the rope that was to hang him.

“You will find the machine in Sir Eustace’s rooms,” she said.

Even Mr. Bradley was moved. “Then as I said, he deserves all that’s
coming to him,” he drawled, with a quite impossible nonchalance, and
even attempted a yawn. “Dear me, what a distressing bungler.”

Sir Charles passed on the evidence. “Miss Dammers,” he said
impressively, “you have rendered a very great service to society. I
congratulate you.”

“Thank you, Sir Charles,” replied Miss Dammers, matter-of-factly. “But
it was Mr. Sheringham’s idea, you know.”

“Mr. Sheringham,” intoned Sir Charles, “sowed better than he knew.”

Roger, who had hoped to add another feather to his cap by solving the
mystery himself, smiled in a somewhat sickly way.

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming improved the occasion. “We have made history,”
she said with fitting solemnity. “When the whole police-force of a
nation had failed, a woman has uncovered the dark mystery. Alicia,
this is a red-letter day, not only for you, not only for this Circle,
but for Woman.”

“Thank you, Mabel,” responded Miss Dammers. “How very nice of you to
say so.”

The evidence passed slowly round the table and returned to Miss
Dammers. She handed it on to Roger.

“Mr. Sheringham, I think you had better take charge of these. As
President, I leave the matter in your hands. You know as much as I do.
As you may imagine, to inform the police officially myself would be
extremely distasteful. I should like my name kept out of any
communication you make to them, entirely.”

Roger was rubbing his chin. “I think that can be done. I could just
hand these things over to him, with the information where the machine
is, and let Scotland Yard work the case up themselves. These, and the
motive, with the evidence of the porter at Fellows’s Hotel of which I
shall have to tell Moresby, are the only things that will really
interest the police, I think. Humph! I suppose I’d better see Moresby
to-night. Will you come with me, Sir Charles? It would add weight.”

“Certainly, certainly,” Sir Charles agreed with alacrity.

Everybody looked, and felt, very serious.

“I suppose,” Mr. Chitterwick dropped shyly into all this solemnity, “I
suppose you couldn’t put it off for twenty-four hours, could you?”

Roger looked his surprise. “But why?”

“Well, you know . . .” Mr. Chitterwick wriggled with diffidence.
“Well—I haven’t spoken yet, you know.”

Five pairs of eyes fastened on him in astonishment. Mr. Chitterwick
blushed warmly.

“Of course. No, of course.” Roger was trying to be as tactful as he
could. “And—well, that is to say, you want to speak, of course?”

“I have a theory,” said Mr. Chitterwick modestly. “I—I don’t _want_ to
speak, no. But I have a theory.”

“Yes, yes,” said Roger, and looked helplessly at Sir Charles.

Sir Charles marched to the rescue. “I’m sure we shall all be most
interested to hear Mr. Chitterwick’s theory,” he pronounced. “Most
interested. But why not let us have it now, Mr. Chitterwick?”

“It isn’t quite complete,” said Mr. Chitterwick, unhappy but
persistent. “I should like another twenty-four hours to clear up one
or two points.”

Sir Charles had an inspiration. “Of course, of course. We must meet
to-morrow and listen to Mr. Chitterwick’s theory, of course. In the
meantime Sheringham and I will just call in at Scotland Yard and—”

“I’d much rather you didn’t,” said Mr. Chitterwick, now in the deeps
of misery. “Really I would.”

Again Roger looked helplessly at Sir Charles. This time Sir Charles
looked helplessly back.

“Well—I suppose another twenty-four hours wouldn’t make _much_
difference,” said Roger with reluctance. “After all this time.”

“Not _very_ much difference,” pleaded Mr. Chitterwick.

“Well, not very much difference certainly,” agreed Sir Charles,
frankly puzzled.

“Then have I your word, Mr. President?” persisted Mr. Chitterwick,
very mournfully.

“If you put it like that,” said Roger, rather coldly.

The meeting then broke up, somewhat bewildered.



Chapter XVII

It was quite evident that, as he had said, Mr. Chitterwick did not
want to speak. He looked appealingly round the circle of faces the
next evening when Roger asked him to do so, but the faces remained
decidedly unsympathetic. Mr. Chitterwick, expressed the faces plainly,
was being a silly old woman.

Mr. Chitterwick cleared his throat nervously two or three times and
took the plunge.

“Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, I quite realise what you must be
thinking, and I must plead for leniency. I can only say in excuse of
what you must consider my perversity, that convincing though Miss
Dammers’s clever exposition was and definite as her proofs appeared,
we have listened to so many apparently convincing solutions of this
mystery and been confronted with so many seemingly definite proofs,
that I could not help feeling that perhaps even Miss Dammers’s theory
might not prove on reflection to be not quite so strong as one would
at first think.” Mr. Chitterwick, having surmounted this tall
obstacle, blinked rapidly but was unable to recall the next sentence
he had prepared so carefully.

He jumped it, and went on a little. “As the one to whom has fallen the
task, both a privilege and a responsibility, of speaking last, you may
not consider it out of place if I take the liberty of summing up the
various conclusions that have been reached here, so different in both
their methods and results. Not to waste time however in going over old
ground, I have prepared a little chart which may show more clearly the
various contrasting theories, parallels, and suggested criminals.
Perhaps members would care to pass it round.”

With much hesitation Mr. Chitterwick produced the chart on which he
had spent so much careful thought, and offered it to Mr. Bradley on
his right. Mr. Bradley received it graciously, and even condescended
to lay it on the table between himself and Miss Dammers and examine
it. Mr. Chitterwick looked artlessly gratified.

    Mr. Chitterwick’s Chart

                              ANGLE OF           SALIENT
 SOLVER         MOTIVE        VIEW               FEATURE
 ---------------------------------------------------------------- . . .
 Sir Charles    Gain          _Cui bono_         Notepaper
  Wildman
 Mrs. Fielder-  Elimination   _Cherchez la       Hidden triangle
  Flemming                     femme_
 Bradley (1)    Experiment    Detective-         Nitrobenzene
                               novelist’s
 Bradley (2)    Jealousy      Character of       Criminological
                               Sir Eustace        knowledge of murderer
 Sheringham     Gain          Character of       Bet
                               Mr. Bendix
 Miss Dammers   Elimination   Psychology of      Criminal’s
                               all participants   character
 Police         Conviction,   General            Material clues
                 or lust of
                 killing

     Mr. Chitterwick’s Chart (continued)

                     METHOD OF       PARALLEL
 SOLVER              PROOF           CASE             CRIMINAL
 ------------ . . . ---------------------------------------------------
 Sir Charles         Inductive       Marie Lafarge    Lady Pennefather
  Wildman
 Mrs. Fielder-       Intuitive and   Molineux         Sir Charles
  Flemming            Inductive                        Wildman
 Bradley (1)         Scientific      Dr. Wilson       Bradley
                      deduction
 Bradley (2)         Deductive       Christina        Woman unnamed
                                      Edmunds
 Sheringham          Deductive and   Carlyle Harris   Bendix
                      Inductive
 Miss Dammers        Psychological   Tawell           Sir Eustace
                      deduction                        Pennefather
 Police              Routine         Horwood          Unknown fanatic
                                                       or lunatic

“You will see,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with a shade more confidence,
“that practically speaking no two members have agreed on any one
single matter of importance. The divergence of opinion and method is
really remarkable. And in spite of such variations each member has
felt confident that his or her solution was the right one. This chart,
more than any words of mine could, emphasises not only the extreme
openness, as Mr. Bradley would say, of the case before us, but
illustrates another of Mr. Bradley’s observations too, that is how
surprisingly easy it is to prove anything one may desire, by a process
either of conscious or of unwitting selection.

“Miss Dammers, I think,” suggested Mr. Chitterwick, “may perhaps find
that chart especially interesting. I am not myself a student of
psychology, but even to me it was striking to notice how the solution
of each member reflected, if I may say so, that particular member’s
own trend of thought and character. Sir Charles, for instance, whose
training has naturally led him to realise the importance of the
material, will not mind if I point out that the angle from which he
viewed the problem was the very material one of _cui bono_, while the
equally material evidence of the notepaper formed for him its salient
feature. At the other end of the scale, Miss Dammers herself regards
the case almost entirely from a psychological view-point and takes as
its salient feature the character, as unconsciously revealed, of the
criminal.

“Between these two, other members have paid attention to psychological
and material evidence in varying proportions. Then again the methods
of building up the case against a suspected person have been widely
different. Some of us have relied almost entirely on inductive
methods, some almost wholly on deductive; while some, like Mr.
Sheringham, have blended the two. In short, the task our President set
us has proved a most instructive lesson in comparative detection.”

Mr. Chitterwick cleared his throat, smiled nervously, and continued.
“There is another chart which I might have made, and which I think
would have been no less illuminating than this one. It is a chart of
the singularly different deductions drawn by different members from
the undisputed facts in the case. Mr. Bradley might have found
particular interest in this possible chart, as a writer of
detective-stories.

“For I have often noticed,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick to the writers
of detective-stories _en masse_, “that in books of that kind it is
frequently assumed that any given fact can admit of only one single
deduction, and that invariably the right one. Nobody else is capable
of drawing any deductions at all but the author’s favourite detective,
and the ones he draws (in the books where the detective is capable of
drawing deductions at all which, alas, are only too few) are
invariably right. Miss Dammers mentioned something of the kind one
evening herself, with her illustration of the two bottles of ink.

“As an example of what really happens therefore, I should like to cite
the sheet of Mason’s notepaper in this case. From that single piece of
paper the following deductions have at one time or another been drawn:

 1. That the criminal was an employee or ex-employee of Mason & Sons.
 2. That the criminal was a customer of Mason & Sons.
 3. That the criminal was a printer, or had access to a
    printing-press.
 4. That the criminal was a lawyer, acting on behalf of Mason & Sons.
 5. That the criminal was a relative of an ex-employee of
    Mason & Sons.
 6. That the criminal was a would-be customer of Webster’s, the
    printers.

“There have been plenty of other deductions of course from that sheet
of paper, such as that the chance possession of it suggested the whole
method of the crime, but I am only calling attention to the ones which
were to point directly to the criminal’s identity. There are no less
than six of them, you see, and all mutually contradictory.”

“I’ll write a book for you, Mr. Chitterwick,” promised Mr. Bradley,
“in which the detective shall draw six contradictory deductions from
each fact. He’ll probably end up by arresting seventy-two different
people for the murder and committing suicide because he finds
afterwards that he must have done it himself. I’ll dedicate the book
to you.”

“Yes, do,” beamed Mr. Chitterwick. “For really, it wouldn’t be far
from what we’ve had in this case. For example, I only called attention
to the notepaper. Besides that there were the poison, the typewriter,
the post-mark, the exactness of the dose—oh, many more facts. And from
each one of them not much less than half-a-dozen different deductions
have been drawn.

“In fact,” Mr. Chitterwick summed up, “it was as much as anything the
different deductions drawn by different members that proved their
different cases.”

“On second thoughts,” decided Mr. Bradley, “my detectives in future
will be the kind that don’t draw any deductions at all. Besides, that
will be so much easier for me.”

“So with these few remarks on the solutions we have already heard,”
continued Mr. Chitterwick, “which I hope members will pardon me, I
will hurry on to my explanation of why I asked Mr. Sheringham so
urgently last evening not to go to Scotland Yard at once.”

Five faces expressed silent agreement that it was about time Mr.
Chitterwick was heard on that point.

Mr. Chitterwick appeared to be conscious of the thoughts behind the
faces, for his manner became a little flurried.

“I must first deal very briefly with the case against Sir Eustace
Pennefather, as Miss Dammers gave it us last night. Without belittling
her presentation of it in any way at all, I must just point out that
her two chief reasons for fixing the guilt upon him seemed to me to be
firstly that he was the type of person whom she had already decided
the criminal must be, and secondly that he had been conducting an
intrigue with Mrs. Bendix and certainly would have seemed to have some
cause for wishing her out of the way—_if_ (but only if) Miss Dammers’s
own view of the progress of that intrigue was the correct one.”

“But the typewriter, Mr. Chitterwick!” cried Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,
loyal to her sex.

Mr. Chitterwick started. “Oh, yes; the typewriter. I’m coming to that.
But before I reach it, I should like to mention two other points which
Miss Dammers would have us believe are important material evidence
against Sir Eustace, as opposed to the psychological. That he should
be in the habit of buying Mason’s liqueur chocolates for his—his
female friends hardly seems to me even significant. If every one who
is in the habit of buying Mason’s liqueur chocolates is to be suspect,
then London must be full of suspects. And surely even so unoriginal a
murderer as Sir Eustace would seem to be, would have taken the
elementary precaution of choosing some vehicle for the poison which is
not generally associated with his name, instead of one that is. And if
I may venture the opinion, Sir Eustace is not quite such a dunderhead
as Miss Dammers would seem to think.

“The second point is that the girl in Webster’s should have
recognised, and even identified, Sir Eustace from his photograph. That
also doesn’t appear to me, if Miss Dammers doesn’t mind my saying so,
nearly as significant as she would have us believe. I have
ascertained,” said Mr. Chitterwick, not without pride (here too was a
piece of real detecting) “that Sir Eustace Pennefather buys his
notepaper at Webster’s, and has done so for years. He was in there
about a month ago to order a fresh supply. It would be surprising,
considering that he has a title, if the girl who served him had not
remembered him; it cannot be considered significant,” said Mr.
Chitterwick quite firmly, “that she does.

“Apart from the typewriter, then, and perhaps the copies of the
criminological books, Miss Dammers’s case has no real evidence to
support it at all, for the matter of the broken alibi, I am afraid,
must be held to be neither here nor there. I don’t wish to be unfair,”
said Mr. Chitterwick carefully, “but I think I am justified in saying
that Miss Dammers’s case against Sir Eustace rests entirely and solely
upon the evidence of the typewriter.” He gazed round anxiously for
possible objections.

One came, promptly. “But you can’t possibly get round that,” exclaimed
Mrs. Fielder-Flemming impatiently.

Mr. Chitterwick looked a trifle distressed. “Is ‘get round’ quite the
right expression? I’m not trying wilfully or maliciously to pick holes
in Miss Dammers’s case just for amusement. You must really believe
that. Please think that I am actuated only by a desire to bring this
crime home to its real perpetrator. And with that end alone in view, I
can certainly suggest an explanation of the typewriter evidence which
excludes the guilt of Sir Eustace.”

Mr. Chitterwick looked so unhappy at what he conceived to be Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming’s insinuation that he was merely wasting the Circle’s
time, that Roger spoke to him kindly.

“You can?” he said gently, as one encourages one’s daughter on drawing
a cow, which if not much like a cow is certainly unlike any other
animal on earth. “That’s very interesting, Mr. Chitterwick. How do you
explain it then?”

Mr. Chitterwick, responding to treatment, shone with pride. “Dear me!
You can’t see it really? Nobody sees it?”

It seemed that nobody saw it.

“And yet the possibility of such a thing has been before me right from
the beginning of the case,” crowed the now triumphant Mr. Chitterwick.
“Well, well!” He arranged his glasses on his nose and beamed round the
circle, his round red face positively aglow.

“Well, what is the explanation, Mr. Chitterwick?” queried Miss
Dammers, when it seemed that Mr. Chitterwick was going to continue
beaming in silence for ever.

“Oh! Oh, yes; of course. Why, to put it one way, Miss Dammers, that
you were wrong and Mr. Sheringham was right, in your respective
estimates of the criminal’s ability. That there was, in fact, an
extremely able and ingenious mind behind this murder (Miss Dammers’s
attempts to prove the contrary were, I’m afraid another case of
special pleading). And that one of the ways in which this ingenuity
was shown, was to arrange the evidence in such a way that if any one
were to be suspected it would be Sir Eustace. That the evidence of the
typewriter, in a word, and of the criminological books was, as I
believe the technical word is, ‘_rigged_.’” Mr. Chitterwick resumed
his beam.

Everybody sat up with what might have been a concerted jerk. In a
flash the tide of feeling towards Mr. Chitterwick had turned. The man
_had_ got something to say after all. There actually was an idea
behind that untimely request of the previous evening.

Mr. Bradley rose to the occasion, and he quite forgot to speak quite
so patronisingly as usual. “I say—dam’ good, Chitterwick! But can you
substantiate that?”

“Oh, yes. I think so,” said Mr. Chitterwick, basking in the rays of
appreciation that were being shone on him.

“You’ll be telling us next you know who did it,” Roger smiled.

Mr. Chitterwick smiled back. “Oh, I know _that_.”

“_What!_” exclaimed five voices in chorus.

“I know that, of course,” said Mr. Chitterwick modestly. “You’ve
practically told me that yourselves. Coming last of all, you see, my
task was comparatively simple. All I had to do was to sort out the
true from the false in everybody else’s statements, and—well, there
_was_ the truth.”

The rest of the Circle looked their surprise at having told Mr.
Chitterwick the truth without knowing it themselves.

Mr. Chitterwick’s face took on a meditative aspect. “Perhaps I may
confess now that when our President first propounded his idea to us, I
was filled with dismay. I had had no practical experience of
detecting, I was quite at a loss as to how to set about it, and I had
no theory of the case at all. I could not even see a starting-point.
The week flew by, so far as I was concerned, and left me exactly where
I had been at its beginning. On the evening Sir Charles spoke he
convinced me completely. The next evening, for a short time, Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming convinced me too.

“Mr. Bradley did not altogether convince me that he had committed the
murder himself, but if he had named any one else then I should have
been convinced; as it was, he convinced me that his—his discarded
mistress theory,” said Mr. Chitterwick bravely, “must be the correct
one. That indeed was the only idea I had had at all, that the crime
might be the work of one of Sir Eustace’s—h’m!—discarded mistresses.

“But the next evening Mr. Sheringham convinced me just as definitely
that Mr. Bendix was the murderer. It was only last night, during Miss
Dammers’s exposition, that I at last began to realise the truth.”

“Then I was the only one who didn’t convince you, Mr. Chitterwick?”
Miss Dammers smiled.

“I’m afraid,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick, “that is so.”

He mused for a moment.

“It is really remarkable, quite remarkable, how near in some way or
other everybody got to the truth of this affair. Not a single person
failed to bring out at least one important fact, or make at least one
important deduction correctly. Fortunately, when I realised that the
solutions were going to differ so widely, I made copious notes of the
preceding ones and kept them up to date each evening as soon as I got
home. I thus had a complete record of the productions of all these
brains, so much superior to my own.”

“No, no,” murmured Mr. Bradley.

“Last night I sat up very late, poring over these notes, separating
the true from the false. It might perhaps interest members to hear my
conclusions in this respect?” Mr. Chitterwick put forward the
suggestion with the utmost diffidence.

Everybody assured Mr. Chitterwick that they would be only too
gratified to hear where they had stumbled inadvertently on the truth.



Chapter XVIII

Mr. Chitterwick consulted a page of his notes. For a moment he looked
a little distressed. “Sir Charles,” he began. “Er—Sir Charles . . .”
It was plain that Mr. Chitterwick was finding difficulty in
discovering any point at all on which Sir Charles had been right, and
he was a kindly man. He brightened. “Oh, yes, of course. Sir Charles
was the first to point out the important fact that there had been an
erasure on the piece of notepaper used for the forged letter. That
was—er—very helpful.

“Then he was right too when he put forward the suggestion that Sir
Eustace’s impending divorce was really the mainspring of the whole
tragedy. Though I am afraid,” Mr. Chitterwick felt compelled to add,
“that the inference he drew was not the correct one. He was quite
right too in feeling that the criminal, in such a clever plot, would
take steps to arrange an alibi, and that there was, in fact, an alibi
in the case that would have to be circumvented. But then again it was
not Lady Pennefather’s.

“Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” continued Mr. Chitterwick, “was quite right
to insist that the murder was the work of somebody with a knowledge of
criminology. That was a very clever inference, and I am glad,” beamed
Mr. Chitterwick, “to be able to assure her that it was perfectly
correct. She contributed another important piece of information too,
just as vital to the real story underlying this tragedy as to her own
case, namely that Sir Eustace was not in love with Miss Wildman at all
but was hoping to marry her simply for her money. Had that not been
the case,” said Mr. Chitterwick, shaking his head, “I fear, I very
much fear, that it would have been Miss Wildman who met her death
instead of Mrs. Bendix.”

“Good God!” muttered Sir Charles; and it is perhaps as great a tribute
as Mr. Chitterwick was ever to receive that the K.C. accepted this
startling news without question.

“That clinches it,” muttered Mr. Bradley to Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.
“Discarded mistress.”

Mr. Chitterwick turned to him. “As for you, Bradley, it’s astonishing
how near you came to the truth. Amazing!” Mr. Chitterwick registered
amazement. “Even in your first case, against yourself, so many of your
conclusions were perfectly right. The final result of your deductions
from the nitrobenzene, for instance; the fact that the criminal must
be neat-fingered and of a methodical and creative mind; even, what
appeared to me at the time just a trifle far-fetched, that a copy of
Taylor would be found on the criminal’s shelves.

“Then beyond the fact that No. 4 must be qualified to ‘must have had
an opportunity of secretly obtaining a sheet of Mason’s notepaper,’
all twelve of your conditions were quite right, with the exception of
6, which does not admit of an alibi, and 7 and 8, about the Onyx pen
and Harfield’s ink. Mr. Sheringham was right in that matter with his
rather more subtle point of the criminal’s probable unobtrusive
borrowing of the pen and ink. Which is exactly what happened, of
course, with regard to the typewriter.

“As for your second case—well!” Mr. Chitterwick seemed to be without
words to express his admiration of Mr. Bradley’s second case. “You
reached to the truth in almost every particular. You saw that it was a
woman’s crime, you deduced the outraged feminine feelings underlying
the whole affair, you staked your whole case on the criminal’s
knowledge of criminology. It was really most penetrating.”

“In fact,” said Mr. Bradley, carefully concealing his gratification,
“I did everything possible except find the murderess.”

“Well, that is so, of course,” deprecated Mr. Chitterwick, somehow
conveying the impression that after all finding the murderess was a
very minor matter compared with Mr. Bradley’s powers of penetration.

“And then we come to Mr. Sheringham.”

“Don’t!” implored Roger. “Leave him out.”

“Oh, but your reconstruction was very clever,” Mr. Chitterwick assured
him with great earnestness. “You put a new aspect on the whole affair,
you know, by your suggestion that it was the right victim who was
killed after all.”

“Well, it seems that I erred in good company,” Roger said tritely,
with a glance at Miss Dammers.

“But you didn’t err,” corrected Mr. Chitterwick.

“Oh?” Roger showed his surprise. “Then it was all aimed against Mrs.
Bendix?”

Mr. Chitterwick looked confused. “Haven’t I told you about that? I’m
afraid I’m doing this in a very muddle-headed way. Yes, it is
partially true to say that the plot was aimed against Mrs. Bendix. But
the real position, I think, is that it was aimed against Mrs. Bendix
and Sir Eustace jointly. You came very near the truth, Mr. Sheringham,
except that you substituted a jealous husband for a jealous rival.
Very near indeed. And of course you were entirely right in your point
that the method was not suggested by the chance possession of the
notepaper or anything like that, but by previous cases.”

“I’m glad I was entirely right over something,” murmured Roger.

“And Miss Dammers,” bowed Mr. Chitterwick, “was most helpful. _Most_
helpful.”

“Although not convincing,” supplemented that lady drily.

“Although I’m afraid I did not find her altogether convincing,” agreed
Mr. Chitterwick, with an apologetic air. “But it was really the theory
she gave us that at last showed me the truth. For she also put yet
another aspect on the crime, with her information regarding
the—h’m!—the affair between Mrs. Bendix and Sir Eustace. And that
really,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with another little bow to the
informant, “was the foundation-stone of the whole business.”

“I didn’t see how it could fail to be,” said Miss Dammers. “But I
still maintain that my deductions from it are the correct ones.”

“Perhaps if I may just put my own forward?” hesitated Mr. Chitterwick,
apparently somewhat dashed.

Miss Dammers accorded a somewhat tart permission.

Mr. Chitterwick collected himself. “Oh, yes; I should have said that
Miss Dammers was quite right in one important particular, her
assumption that it was not so much the affair between Mrs. Bendix and
Sir Eustace that was at the bottom of the crime, as Mrs. Bendix’s
character. That really brought about her own death. Miss Dammers, I
should imagine, was perfectly right in her tracing out of the
intrigue, and her imaginative insight into Mrs. Bendix’s reactions—I
think that is the word?” Mr. Chitterwick inquired diffidently of
authority. “Mrs. Bendix’s reactions to it, but not, I consider, in her
deductions regarding Sir Eustace’s growing boredom.

“Sir Eustace, I am led to believe, was less inclined to be bored than
to share the lady’s distress. For the real point, which happened to
escape Miss Dammers, is that Sir Eustace was quite infatuated with
Mrs. Bendix. Far more so than she with him.

“That,” pronounced Mr. Chitterwick, “is one of the determining factors
in this tragedy.”

Everybody pinned the factor down. The Circle’s attitude towards Mr.
Chitterwick by this time was one of intelligent expectation. Probably
no one really thought that he had found the right solution, and Miss
Dammers’s stock had not been appreciably lowered. But certainly it
seemed that the man had at any rate got something to offer.

“Miss Dammers,” proceeded the object of their attention, “was right in
another point she made too, namely that the inspiration of this
murder, or perhaps I should say the method of it, certainly came from
that book of poisoning cases she mentioned, of which her own copy (she
tells us) is at present in Sir Eustace’s rooms—planted there,” added
Mr. Chitterwick, much shocked, “by the murderess.

“And another useful fact she established. That Mr. Bendix had been
lured (really,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick, “I can use no other word)
to the Rainbow Club that morning. But it was not Mrs. Bendix who
telephoned to him on the previous afternoon. Nor was he sent there for
the particular purpose of receiving the chocolates from Sir Eustace.
The fact that the lunch appointment had been cancelled was altogether
outside the criminal’s knowledge. Mr. Bendix was sent there to be a
witness to Sir Eustace receiving the parcel; that was all.

“The intention was, of course, that Mr. Bendix should have Sir Eustace
so connected in his mind with the chocolates that if suspicion should
ever arise against any definite person, that of Mr. Bendix would be
directed before long to Sir Eustace himself. For the fact of his
wife’s intrigue would be bound to come to his knowledge, as indeed I
understand privately that it has, causing him naturally the most
intense distress.”

“So that’s why he’s been looking haggard,” exclaimed Roger.

“Without doubt,” Mr. Chitterwick agreed gravely. “It was a wicked
plot. Sir Eustace, you see, was expected to be dead by then and
incapable of denying his guilt, and such evidence as there was had
been carefully arranged to point to murder and suicide on his part.
That the police never suspected him (that is, so far as we know),
simply shows that investigations do not always take the turn that the
criminal expects. And in this case,” observed Mr. Chitterwick with
some severity, “I think the criminal was altogether too subtle.”

“If that was her very involved reason for ensuring the presence of Mr.
Bendix at the Rainbow Club,” agreed Miss Dammers with some irony, “her
subtlety certainly overreached itself.” It was evident that not only
on the point of psychology did Miss Dammers not find herself ready to
accept Mr. Chitterwick’s conclusions.

“That, indeed, is exactly what happened,” Mr. Chitterwick pointed out
mildly. “Oh, and while we are on the subject of the chocolates, I
ought to add that the reason why they were sent to Sir Eustace’s club
was not only so that Mr. Bendix might be a witness of their arrival,
but also, I should imagine, so that Sir Eustace would be sure to take
them with him to his lunch-appointment. The murderess of course would
be sufficiently conversant with his ways to know that he would almost
certainly spend the morning at his club and go straight on to lunch
from there; the odds were enormous that he would take the box of Mrs.
Bendix’s favourite chocolates with him.

“I think we may regard it as an instance of the criminal’s habitual
overlooking of some vital point that is to lead eventually to
detection, that this murderess completely lost sight of the
possibility that the appointment for lunch might be cancelled. She is
a particularly ingenious criminal,” said Mr. Chitterwick with gentle
admiration, “and yet even she is not immune from this failing.”

“Who is she, Mr. Chitterwick?” ingenuously asked Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming.

Mr. Chitterwick answered her with a positively roguish smile.
“Everybody else has withheld the name of the suspect till the right
moment. Surely I may be allowed to do so too.

“Well, I think I have cleared up most of the doubtful points now.
Mason’s notepaper was used, I should say, because chocolates had been
decided on as the vehicle and Mason’s were the only chocolate
manufacturing firm who were customers of Webster’s. As it happened,
this fitted very well, because it was always Mason’s chocolates that
Sir Eustace bought for his—er—his friends.”

Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked puzzled. “Because Mason’s were the only
firm who were customers of Webster’s? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Oh, I _am_ explaining all this badly,” cried Mr. Chitterwick in much
distress, assuming all blame for this obtuseness. “It had to be some
firm on Webster’s books, you see, because Sir Eustace has his
notepaper printed at Webster’s, and he was to be identified as having
been in there recently if the purloined piece was ever connected with
the sample book. Exactly, in fact, as Miss Dammers did.”

Roger whistled. “Oh, I see. You mean, we’ve all been putting the cart
before the horse over this piece of notepaper?”

“I’m afraid so,” regretted Mr. Chitterwick with earnestness. “Really,
I’m very much afraid so.”

Insensibly opinion was beginning to turn in Mr. Chitterwick’s favour.
To say the least, he was being just as convincing as Miss Dammers had
been, and that without subtle psychological reconstructions and
references to “values.” Only Miss Dammers herself remained outwardly
sceptical; but that, after all, was only to be expected.

“Humph!” said Miss Dammers, sceptically.

“What about the motive, Mr. Chitterwick?” nodded Sir Charles with
solemnity. “Jealousy, did you say? I don’t think you’ve quite cleared
up that yet, have you?”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Mr. Chitterwick actually blushed. “Dear me, I
meant to make that clear right at the beginning. I _am_ doing this
badly. No, not jealousy, I’m inclined to fancy. Revenge. Or revenge at
any rate so far as Sir Eustace was concerned, and jealousy as regards
Mrs. Bendix. From what I can understand, you see, this lady is—dear
me,” said Mr. Chitterwick, in distress and embarrassment, “this is
very delicate ground. But I must trespass on it. Well—though she had
concealed it successfully from her friends, this lady had been very
much in love with Sir Eustace, and become—er—had become,” concluded
Mr. Chitterwick bravely, “his mistress. That was a long time ago.

“Sir Eustace was very much in love with her too, and though he used to
amuse himself with other women it was understood by both that this was
quite permissible so long as there was nothing serious. The lady, I
should say, is very modern and broad-minded. It was understood, I
believe, that he was to marry her as soon as he could induce his wife
(who was quite ignorant of this affair) to divorce him. But when this
was at last arranged, Sir Eustace found that owing to his extreme
financial stringency, it was imperative that he should marry money
instead.

“The lady was naturally very disappointed, but knowing that Sir
Eustace did not care at all for—er—was not really in love with Miss
Wildman and the marriage would only be, so far as he was concerned,
one of convenience, she reconciled herself to the future and, quite
seeing Sir Eustace’s necessity, did not resent the introduction of
Miss Wildman—whom indeed,” Mr. Chitterwick felt himself compelled to
add, “she considered as quite negligible. It never occurred to her to
doubt, you see, that the old arrangement would hold good, and she
would still have Sir Eustace’s real love with which to content
herself.

“But then something quite unforeseen happened. Sir Eustace not only
fell out of love with her. He fell unmistakably in love with Mrs.
Bendix. Moreover, he succeeded in making her his mistress. That was
quite recently, since he began to pay his addresses to Miss Wildman.
And I think Miss Dammers has given us a true picture of the results in
Mrs. Bendix’s case if not in that of Sir Eustace.

“Well, you can see the position then, so far as this other lady was
concerned. Sir Eustace was getting his divorce, marriage with the
negligible Miss Wildman was now out of the question, but marriage with
Mrs. Bendix, tortured in her conscience and seeing in divorce from her
husband and marriage with Sir Eustace the only means of solving
it—marriage with Mrs. Bendix, the real beloved, and even more eligible
than Miss Wildman so far as the financial side was concerned, was to
all appearances inevitable. I deprecate the use of hackneyed
quotations as much as anybody, but really I feel that if I permit
myself to add that hell has no fury like—”

“Can you prove all this, Mr. Chitterwick?” interposed Miss Dammers
coolly on the hackneyed quotation.

Mr. Chitterwick started. “I—I think so,” he said, though a little
dubiously.

“I’m inclined to doubt it,” observed Miss Dammers briefly.

Somewhat uncomfortable, under Miss Dammers’s sceptical eye, Mr.
Chitterwick explained. “Well Sir Eustace, whose acquaintance I have
been at some pains to cultivate recently . . .” Mr. Chitterwick
shivered a little, as if the acquaintance had not been his ideal one.
“Well, from a few indications that Sir Eustace has unconsciously given
me . . . That is to say, I was questioning him at lunch to-day as
adroitly as I could, my conviction as to the murderer’s identity
having been formed at last, and he did unwittingly let fall a few
trifles which . . .”

“I doubt it,” repeated Miss Dammers bluntly.

Mr. Chitterwick looked quite nonplussed.

Roger hurried to the rescue. “Well, shelving the matter of proof for
the moment, Mr. Chitterwick, and assuming that your reconstruction of
the events is just an imaginative one. You’d reached the point where
marriage between Sir Eustace and Mrs. Bendix had become inevitable.”

“Yes; oh, yes,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with a grateful look towards his
saviour. “And then of course, this lady formed her terrible decision
and made her very clever plan. I think I’ve explained all that. Her
old right of access to Sir Eustace’s rooms enabled her to type the
letter on his typewriter one day when she knew he was out. She is
quite a good mimic, and it was easy for her when ringing up Mr. Bendix
to imitate the sort of voice Miss Delorme might be expected to have.”

“Mr. Chitterwick, do any of us know this woman?” demanded Mrs.
Fielder-Flemming abruptly.

Mr. Chitterwick looked more embarrassed than ever. “Er—yes,” he
hesitated. “That is, you must remember it was she who smuggled Miss
Dammers’s two books into Sir Eustace’s rooms too, you know.”

“I shall have to be more careful about my friends in future, I see,”
observed Miss Dammers, gently sarcastic.

“An ex-mistress of Sir Eustace’s eh?” Roger murmured, conning over in
his mind such names as he could remember from that lengthy list.

“Well, yes,” Mr. Chitterwick agreed. “But nobody had any idea of it.
That is— Dear me, this is very difficult.” Mr. Chitterwick wiped his
forehead with his handkerchief, and looked extremely unhappy.

“She’d managed to conceal it?” Roger pressed him.

“Er—yes. She’d certainly managed to conceal the true state of matters
between them, very cleverly indeed. I don’t think anybody suspected it
at all.”

“They apparently didn’t know each other?” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
persisted. “They were never seen about together?”

“Oh, at one time they were,” said Mr. Chitterwick, looking in quite a
hunted way from face to face. “Quite frequently. Then, I understand,
they thought it better to pretend to have quarrelled and—and met only
in secret.”

“Isn’t it time you told us this woman’s name, Chitterwick?” boomed Sir
Charles down the table, looking judicial.

Mr. Chitterwick scrambled desperately out of this fire of questions.
“It’s very strange, you know, how murderers never will let well alone,
isn’t it?” he said breathlessly. “It happens so often. I’m quite sure
I should never have stumbled on the truth in this case if the
murderess had only left things as they were, in accordance with her
own admirable plot. But this trying to fix the guilt on another
person . . . Really, from the intelligence displayed in this
case, she ought to have been above that. Of course her plot _had_
miscarried. Been only half-successful, I should say. But why not
accept the partial failure? Why tempt Providence? Trouble was
inevitable—inevitable—”

Mr. Chitterwick seemed by this time utterly distressed. He was
shuffling his notes with extreme nervousness, and wriggling in his
chair. The glances he kept darting from face to face were almost
pleading. But what he was pleading for remained obscure.

“Dear me,” said Mr. Chitterwick, as if at his wits’ end. “This is very
difficult. I’d better clear up the remaining point. It’s about the
alibi.

“In my opinion the alibi was an afterthought, owing to a piece of
luck. Southampton Street is near both the Cecil and the Savoy, isn’t
it? I happen to know that this lady has a friend, another woman, of a
somewhat unconventional nature. She is continually away on exploring
expeditions and so on, usually quite alone. She never stays in London
more than a night or two, and I should imagine she is the sort of
woman who rarely reads the newspapers. And if she did, I think she
would certainly not divulge any suspicion they might convey to her,
especially concerning a friend of her own.

“I have ascertained that immediately preceding the crime this woman,
whose name by the way is Jane Harding, stayed for two nights at the
Savoy Hotel, and left London, on the morning the chocolates were
delivered, for Africa. From there she was going on to South America.
Where she may be now I have not the least idea. Nor, I should say, has
any one else. But she came to London from Paris, where she had been
staying for a week.

“The—er—criminal would know about this forthcoming trip to London, and
so hurried to Paris. (I am afraid,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick
uneasily, “there is a good deal of guess-work here.) It would be
simple to ask this other lady to post the parcel in London, as the
parcel postage is so heavy from France, and just as simple to ensure
it being delivered on the morning of the lunch-appointment with Mrs.
Bendix, by saying it was a birthday present, or some other pretext,
and—and—must be posted to arrive on that particular day.” Mr.
Chitterwick wiped his forehead again and glanced pathetically at
Roger. Roger could only stare back in bewilderment.

“Dear me,” muttered Mr. Chitterwick distractedly, “this is _very_
difficult.—Well, I have satisfied myself that—”

Alicia Dammers had risen to her feet and was unhurriedly picking up
her belongings. “I’m afraid,” she said, “I have an appointment. Will
you excuse me, Mr. President?”

“Of course,” said Roger, in some surprise.

At the door Miss Dammers turned back. “I’m so sorry not to be able to
stay to hear the rest of your case, Mr. Chitterwick. But really, you
know, as I said, I very much doubt whether you’ll be able to prove
it.”

She went out of the room.

“She’s perfectly right,” whispered Mr. Chitterwick, gazing after her
in a petrified way. “I’m quite sure I can’t. But there isn’t the
faintest doubt. I’m afraid, not the faintest.”

Stupefaction reigned.

“You—you _can’t_ mean. . . ?” twittered Mrs. Fielder-Flemming in a
strangely shrill voice.

Mr. Bradley was the first to get a grip on himself. “So we did have a
practising criminologist amongst us after all,” he drawled, in a
manner that was never Oxford. “How quite interesting.”

Again silence held the Circle.

“So now,” asked the President helplessly, “what the devil do we do?”

Nobody enlightened him.


  The End



Transcriber’s Note

This transcription follows the text of The British Library edition,
published in 2016. However, the following errors have been corrected
from the text:

 * A mismatched quotation mark was repaired (Chapter VI).
 * “unwieldly” was changed to “unwieldy” (Chapter VII).
 * “appears to thinks” was changed to “appears to think”
   (Chapter VIII).
 * “Aways” was changed to “Always” (Chapter IX).
 * “Masons’” was changed to “Mason’s” (Chapter XIII).
 * “assumptions seems” was changed to “assumptions seem”
   (Chapter XVI).

All other seeming errors and unusual phrasings have been left
unchanged.





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