by E.
Step by step he went over the stages of the night’s happenings in the cottage, as he had visualized them from his inspection, and subsequent corroborations. But nothing came of the recapitulation.
“It won’t work, Henry,” said Merry. “Canley was killed with his coat off. There’s nothing more certain.”
The doctor seemed not to hear the remark. He remained still emulating Rodin’s ‘Thinker’. But a moment later he got energetically to his feet, seemingly becoming once more aware of his surroundings.
“What did you say just now, Jim?” he asked.
Merry looked up, startled. “Only that Canley was killed with his coat off, Harry. We already know that, anyway.”
“We knew it, but we did not realize that we knew it. Confound me for a dim wit. That is the explanation.”
The doctor seized his telephone, and put a call through to Doctor Gaunt. The gruff voice of the medico answered.
“Doctor, you put the death of Canley, did you not, as having taken place about eleven-thirty.”
“I said that if I were pressed to give a definite time I would put it round about that time, Manson.”
“Because, I suppose, of the temperature of the body, allied to the temperature of the air, and the state of the blood?”
“Those were the main factors, of course,” agreed the medico. “And, of course, because of the decapitation,” he added, grimly humorous. “You understand that the blood would not have flowed if death had been much earlier? That’s the weakness of your case, Manson.”
“Quite so, Doctor. But listen—”
He spoke for a few moments, detailing rapidly three points of variance. “Would that lead you to alter your view, Doctor?” he asked.
Doctor Gaunt swore a very un-Hippocratic oath. “It would make a very big difference to the time,” he agreed.
“An hour or more difference?”
“It could well be.”
The scientist replaced the receiver.
“Case proved?” asked Merry.
“With full marks to you, Jim. Now let us pester something else.”
The deputy scientist lifted the tumbler from the table and regarded it with curiosity. “What is the idea of this?” he asked. “It has no fingerprints.”
“But a curious iridescence, Jim. I thought it might give us something. You remember that I asked Mrs. Skelton if there was paraffin in the house, or if she used any on the glasses. She denied both aspersions. Therefore, the iridescence must have come with the visitor.”
Merry held up the glass to the lamp, and remarked the prismatic colours acting to the rays of light. “I don’t think it is paraffin,” he decided. “And it doesn’t smell like paraffin. The aroma would not go so quickly from paraffin as it has done here. I should say it is an oil of some kind.”
“Give it to Wilkins, and see what he can make of it. And then, I think, we may as well go over to Thames Pagnall, and tell the story of the murder to the Chief Constable and Mackenzie. And at the same time get a few local inquiries started on a new line. We will complete this little lot when we return.”
CHAPTER XXIV
Colonel Mainforce awaited the conference in the police station at Thames Pagnall. A gloomy and unappreciative Inspector Mackenzie sat with him. To the invitation extended to the inspector to reveal the results of the further inquiries he had pursued, he retorted with foreboding that he had no results to show. Nobody had seen Canley in the village after the incident in the Miller’s Arms, he said.
“Well, that is a good point, Mackenzie,” said Manson, cheeringly. “For it can mean only one thing—that Canley was not out in the village at all. In other words, he was in his own house from nine-thirty onwards.”
The inspector looked a trifle surprised at the unexpected success which had attended his efforts. He strove to extend it. He proclaimed aloud that the same result had been achieved in regard to Mrs. Andover. Nobody had seen her about the place.
This, however, did not work out so well. “That, Inspector, is not so good,” chided Doctor Manson. “Because, you see, we know that she was not in her own house. The only cheering point in it is that she was not obviously out and about in the village at the vital times we have associated with Canley’s death.”
“Well, that’s all,” announced Mackenzie.
“How have you come on, Doctor?” the Chief Constable asked. He presented the appearance of ‘a man of hope and forward-looking mind’. The reply of the scientist justified the prophecy.
“I can tell you now, Mainforce, the full story of the happenings in Canley’s cottage on the night he died,” he announced, quietly.
The Colonel patted his stomach complacently. He looked at his inspector. “There you are, Mackenzie. I told you so,” he trumpeted. He settled himself comfortably in his chair, lit a cigarette, and waved a hand in the direction of the Yard officers. “Elucidate,” he commanded, airily.
“We will have to begin some time before the murder of Canley,” began the scientist. “Before Mrs. Andover went to the cottage expecting, as she told us, to stay there for the night. Canley was expecting a visitor. I don’t know whether he had expected Mrs. Andover to turn up that night. I should think not, otherwise he would have told her not to do so.
“But she did appear. He had to get rid of her. It rather looks as if the visitor might have been someone who knew both of them,[VII] and he did not want the visitor and the woman to meet. Or perhaps he didn’t desire his acquaintance with the woman to be known. Whatever was the reason, he cleared Mrs. Andover out after a short dalliance and he went with her to the crossroads to make sure she would not be coming back to the cottage to see whether he had, or had not returned. From her story, it seems that she thought he was going to Esher by bus. The mistake Mrs. Andover made was thinking that Canley’s business was in Esher, not in the cottage.”
Doctor Manson paused to light up one of his Sullivans. He blew a spiral of smoke towards the ceiling, and resumed the story. “Now the visit was to be somewhere around ten o’clock—”
“Just a minute, Manson.” The Chief Constable interrupted. “Why ten o’clock?”
“Because Canley made an appearance in the Miller’s Arms after he had parted from Mrs. Andover, Colonel. He did not go in there to trap Mrs. Andover with Appleton. He might have felt annoyance at seeing her in there with Appleton, and I have no doubt that he recalled all about their earlier acquaintance before he had taken Mrs. Andover for his mistress.”
“Hence the reason that he picked the row with her and got booted out by Ted North, eh?”
“I don’t think so, Colonel. When he saw Mrs. Andover there you realize the position he was in, don’t you? He had told her that he had to go out on business, and would not be home until at least midnight. That is her story and I see no reason to doubt it. Now, here he was back in the place again. The likelihood of that would be that Mrs. Andover might very well think that the business had been completed very much earlier, or had fallen through, and she might rid herself of Appleton, who was only a stop-gap anyhow, and pay a visit to Canley at the cottage when she had done so. That, seemingly, was the last thing that Canley wanted—”
“How do you know that?” asked Inspector Mackenzie.
“I don’t know it,” said Manson, testily. “Not having any method of conversing with dead men. But it seems fairly obvious, does it not, that if he had not minded Mrs. Andover meeting the visitor, he would not have minded her coming to the cottage while the visitor was there. The point of the whole thing is that he didn’t want the woman at the cottage at all, so led her to suppose that he was going to Esher or some other place for the business.”
“Some underhand business, do you suppose, Manson?” asked the Chief Constable. “Or was Canley acting as an agent, or go-between to someone working ‘under the counter’ cloak? We haven’t any operators round these parts—that we know of.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea, Mainforce. All I can say is that Canley was so keen to keep the woman away
from the cottage that night, that he was prepared to go to the length of having a row with her, and getting them turned out of the hotel. In the state of mind in which she was when she told him, as she says, to go to the devil, she was not likely to wander round to his house again that night. There Canley seems to have signed his death warrant—at least on that night. For had she gone round to the cottage, I don’t think the visitor would have gone to the lengths of murder.”
“I should think you are right,” agreed the Chief Constable.
“However,” Doctor Manson proceeded, “somewhere about ten o’clock the visitor arrived at the cottage—”
“Who was he?” demanded Mackenzie.
Doctor Manson ignored the question, and continued with his story. “He was a welcome visitor, and, as I have already said, was expected by Canley—”
“How do you arrive at that, Doctor?” asked the Chief Constable.
“Because Canley had put out a bottle of whisky and glasses for the two of them.”
*“Two glasses?” the Chief Constable looked surprised. “I thought only one glass was found on the table.”
“And one on the sideboard, entirely devoid of fingerprints,” pointed out Doctor Manson.
“I see.” Colonel Mainforce nodded his head slowly. “He put the other back after wiping his prints off it—the visitor, I mean.”
“Quite so. Now, Canley admitted the visitor—since there is no sign of forced entry, and there is every evidence of a host awaiting his guest—and the pair of them sat drinking whisky for some time. What was the object of the business I do not know, and cannot even conjecture, but I can say this—that whatever Canley expected to get from it, the visitor expected to get a great deal more, for he had, gone there with the express intention of killing Canley.”
“God bless my soul, Manson. What the devil for? And from what source do you get that?”
“From the preparations he had made, Colonel, and from what he did subsequent to the murder. For instance, he had taken the trouble to bring a couple of cigars—”
“Burn me!” said the Colonel. “What makes you suppose that?”
“I think that he purchased one only, and had the other on him,” went on Doctor Manson, ignoring the question, “because had he gone to get two cigars, he would undoubtedly have purchased two from the same box. As it was, he had two of different tobacco, and that proved one of his mistakes.”
“How?” demanded Mackenzie.
“Because the visitor was a very clever man. You asked me just now, Colonel, how I supposed that the visitor brought two cigars. The answer is that he wanted one, or part of one, to strengthen his scheme. That was why we found the stub on the railway line. Canley was to have been supposed to have walked to the line smoking the cigar, which the visitor knew would be found when the police searched the track.
“The mistake he made, Mackenzie”—he turned towards the local inspector—“was in attributing to Canley the wrong cigar. You see, when he delivered the fatal blow, a stub of cigar was jerked out of Canley’s mouth, and shot with some violence to the floor. You all saw it, and I told you that the stub had impinged on the floor in a way different to that which would have been made had the cigar merely been dropped. Now, the butt found on the railway line was not the cigar which Canley had been smoking, judged by the ash on the floor. It was the one that the visitor had smoked. Ipso facto, there were two cigars, and the railway episode shared the purpose for which one was wanted.”
Doctor Manson paused to light another cigarette. He puffed a few eddies of smoke, and then resumed. “Where was I?” he pondered, “before I diverged from the story?”
“You had given Canley a blow which shot the cigar from his mouth,” reminded the Chief Constable.
“Ah, yes. The visitor had in some way distracted Canley’s attention, and had got behind him. He delivered the blow at the top of the spine, where the neck is fitted on, and with a weapon with which he was familiar and could use with certainty—another proof, you see, that he had come with murder in his heart, for he had even brought a lethal weapon with him. All this, I should say, happened somewhere about ten-thirty o’clock; it may have been a little later, but not much.”
“I am not disputing your estimate, Doctor, but did not both the doctors agree on one thing—about the only thing upon which they found common ground—that the probable time of death was eleven-thirty o’clock?” asked the Chief Constable.
“They did, Mainforce. And for a time that fact caused me considerable perturbation. Then, the fluff which we collected from Canley’s overcoat on the line solved the riddle for me. However, we will deal with that a little later on in the story. Doctor Gaunt will now agree with me on an earlier time of death.
“We have now, you remember, Canley lying dead in the cottage, with his murderer with him. Now we come to the main evidence on which I base my allegation that this was a planned murder, and done to a time-table. Because Canley had to be dead by ten-thirty or shortly afterwards, else the arrangements made by the murderer for staging an accident would have broken down.” Inspector Mackenzie had been listening to the building-up of the scientist’s story with lively obfuscation, and now goggled at this latest claim to authenticity in deduction. He gave the impression that he would not have been surprised to see Doctor Manson’s feet develop into cloven hooves, and a tail appear behind him. A growing conviction that there might, after all, be something in spiritualism and mediums began to stir inside him. He voiced his fears as to the means whereby the doctor had penetrated into the mind of the murderer. “How can you say with any certainty that that is so?” he asked.
Doctor Manson eyed him with reflective interest. “Because, Mackenzie, the man had to be clear of the place before Canley was found dead, therefore the train to kill Canley had to be the last train. Any earlier train might have resulted in the following train, or another approaching train spotting the body, whereupon the murderer would not have been safe away with an alibi. Thus, in order that the accident could be realistically staged with perfect safety—as he thought—for the murderer, Canley had to be out of the way somewhere about ten-thirty.”
“An hour before the train, Doctor?” Surprise lifted the Chief Constable’s voice a tone higher than its usual pitch.
“An hour before the train, Mainforce, yes—for a very good reason. You remember that there were only one set of footprints—Canley’s?”
“Yes, which you say were made by somebody walking in Canley’s shoes, and carrying Canley to the railway line. That we accept.”
“Right! But, the murderer could make those footsteps only once. The dead man could not walk back again, once he had reached the railway. And there were no other footsteps either approaching or leaving the cottage, you know. In other words, when the murderer left the cottage, carrying Canley, he was leaving the cottage for good. That is, I think, elementary logic and deduction.”
The Chief Constable considered the point. “Yes, I should think, probably, that there is something in the argument, Manson,” he agreed.
“Then, you realize, do you not, that before he left the cottage for good, he had to remove all traces of his presence and arrange the interior of the lounge to justify the idea that Canley had left there on his feet, gone to the line, and in walking across the metals, was knocked down by the train?”
“By gad, yes, of course!” The Chief Constable thought for a moment, and added, slowly, “I am beginning to see the earliest workings of your mind in this case. You had decided this on the very morning of the discovery had you not?”
“Pretty nearly, Mainforce. Not, mark you, that I was actually convinced, but I guessed something of the kind must have happened. There was evidence, I thought, of great preparation and careful inspection afterwards, and it could not, of course, be done while the victim was still alive. Then, again, the murderer had to allow a little time for stray passers-by who might be using the lane. He could hardly go carrying bodies along the place unless it was completely deserted. He
might have had to wait for a few moments or even minutes. Thus, he had to allow a margin. I do not think that an hour gave him any too much time for what he had to do.”
“What did he do?” The inquiry came from Mackenzie.
“Lest you attribute to me uncanny powers, Mackenzie, I cannot say the order in which he carried out his programme, but I can tell you pretty well everything that he did in that time. Firstly, then, he wiped with a towel, or some cloth of some kind, the glass which he had used. He, in fact, polished it of any marks at all, and he replaced it on the sideboard. That, he thought, removed the evidence of any other drinker. Having achieved that, he wiped and polished the whisky bottle and Canley’s glass.”
The scientist smiled slightly. “That was his really big mistake,” he said. “Had he left Canley’s glass alone, it would have been scattered all over with the dead man’s fingerprints. I do not think that I should have proceeded so carefully to search the other things and the table for prints, had I found on the first object—Canley’s glass—a mingled assortment of fingerprints of the same hand. I might, on examination of the bottle and finding only one set of prints, have put it down as unusual, but possible. But it was when I saw the marks of a glass having been raised and put down four times on the table—as shown by the wet rings on the polished surface—and found that, according to the fingerprints on the glass, it had been lifted only once, that my suspicions were aroused, and I made a very detailed examination of the other articles and of the table.”
“I suppose the wet rings were planted by the murderer,” suggested the Chief Constable. “For a clever man, as you say he was, Manson, he made a bad slip there.”
“Perhaps he couldn’t help it, Colonel,” Merry made the suggestion. “In the stress of the moment, he might not have been sure that accidentally, he had not handled the glass. To have left one of his prints on it would have been fatal.”
“Possibly,” agreed Doctor Manson. “But whatever the reason, the fact remains that he did wipe off all Canley’s naturally placed prints. Then, having thus cleaned it, he bent over the body of his victim, and pressed the fingers of Canley’s right hand round the polished surface, thus leaving the one set of prints. Why he didn’t do it three or four times I cannot imagine.”
