“Good Lord! Bingham!” George gasped.
“I always distrusted that man!” Miss Melbury announced. “But of course Osmond was a very poor judge of character.” She looked across the room at me, superciliously. “I am sure we must be grateful to you, Colonel Halstock, for at last relieving us from the terrible anxiety we felt so long as the criminal was still at large; we must all feel thankful that we, at least, are still alive. To think of that assassin having the run of the house, and a family of defenceless women and children in his power!”
“I say, Aunt Mildred, draw it mild!” George protested. “I mean to say, I was here, and Cheriton and the rest of us—”
Jenny had risen and was quietly moving towards the door. I opened it for her and as I did so I saw young Cheriton moving restlessly about on the other side of the hall. Once Jenny reached the door she was so quick that I couldn’t help see her rush at him and throw herself incontinently into his arms.
Postscript
by Colonel Halstock
I have been asked to set down the questions which Kenneth Stour had drawn up, with the help of the homework, on Friday afternoon, and the answers which identified the murderer of Sir Osmond Melbury. I give Kenneth credit for his work in setting out this evidence in orderly form and so confirming the conclusions I had arrived at. It will be noticed that several other names would provide answers to some of the questions, but only one name would answer them all.
KNOWLEDGE
1. Who knew, at the time, of Sir Osmond’s visit to Crewkerne to discuss a new will?
Bingham, who drove him.
2. Who knew of the Santa Klaus plan at least by the Saturday before Christmas?
Bingham, who mentioned it then to Miss Portisham and on learning of it abandoned his earlier plan for a day off with her.
OPPORTUNITY
1. Who was on the spot to intercept the first Santa Klaus costume if it came on Saturday morning, as expected, or on a later day?
Bingham. He might well be able to intercept a parcel at the back door.
2. Who could keep unobtrusively au fait with the Santa Klaus plans and would know at once that a second costume was obtained?
Bingham, through Miss Portisham.
3. Who had opportunity to use the typewriter on Tuesday afternoon?
Bingham, who was fixing Christmas-tree lights in the library, next door to study.
4. Who had opportunity to get hold of a glove from Witcombe’s and plant it in library?
Bingham, when he helped carry the body upstairs on room Thursday at lunch time. He was the one person who had no need to plant the glove in the library; merely to say he had found it there.
5. Who had opportunity to remove the Santa Klaus costume from the house after the murder?
Bingham, under the rug which he carried out on Thursday afternoon, before driving Col. Halstock to Bristol.
ATTEMPTS TO LAY FALSE SCENT
1. Who attempted to divert the search for the costume away from Flaxmere by suggesting that Ashmore had taken it away?
Bingham.
2. Who prevented the finding of the costume on the first search of outbuildings?
Bingham, who so obligingly helped the police.
3. Who tried to implicate Ashmore by frightening the man into flight and perhaps into suicide?
Bingham.
We were not sure until Saturday that the two last questions and answers were true statements, but even before the costume had been found and Ashmore had told his story, we had circumstantial evidence for them. As for Bingham’s knowledge of the contents of Sir Osmond’s will, there was a possibility that he had confided in his secretary, as all his family thought he might. In that case it might have been difficult to regard Miss Portisham as completely innocent of any complicity. Her written story of the events of Christmas Day, in which she accidentally gave Bingham away, implied her innocence and I am glad to say that eventually this was fully established.
Bingham had been ruled out as a suspect because he had an alibi. There was ample evidence that he reached the servants’ hall before Witcombe and assuming that Witcombe went straight there, Bingham couldn’t have committed the murder. But later we found that Witcombe had dallied on the way and had even gone into Jennifer’s room, thus happening to leave the murderer a clear route along the passage to the cupboard under the stairs and thence to the servants’ hall. Philip’s, Witcombe’s and Carol’s prevarications had falsified all the evidence about time and had presented Bingham with a convenient alibi. The mist of suspicion created by rash actions and untruths obscured for a time the fact that Bingham’s alibi crumbled when truth emerged.
Bingham had hustled Miss Portisham out of the library when everyone else had left after the Christmas-tree ceremony, and no one knew how long he remained there. Doubtless if Witcombe had gone straight to the servants’ hall and Bingham’s late arrival there had been questioned, he would have tried to establish an alibi by explaining that he had been kept busy with his electrical job.
I believe that he trusted to the false clue of the open window to cause a hue and cry after some supposed intruder from outside and a general confusion, in the course of which he may have hoped to get the costume out of the house and perhaps to dump it in some place where the fugitive might be supposed to have shed it.
Bingham was a conceited little man. He was confident that Miss Portisham was ready to fall into his arms at any moment and he cunningly refrained, before the murder, from getting her promise to marry him, but hastened to do so immediately afterwards, before he could be supposed to know that she was an heiress, as he thought. He evidently felt sure that she would not throw him over when she knew her good fortune.
He over-reached himself when, desperately anxious to prevent the discovery of the Santa Klaus costume, he threw suspicion upon Ashmore and further, to make sure that such suspicion should never be cleared away, tried to drive the old man to suicide. When I saw that hideous trick, any pity which I might have felt for Bingham was extinguished.
When it became clear that all the members of the Melbury family and Philip Cheriton and even Witcombe had disgorged the truth at last and were not implicated in any way, I felt as if I had myself been cleared from complicity in some horrible crime. Even Gordon Stickland’s strange story about emeralds was true, as far as I ever discovered, and Eleanor did get those stones in the end and looked very lovely wearing them.
Kenneth’s conviction that Witcombe would never have joined that Christmas party at Flaxmere without some sinister motive proved to be quite wrong. Kenneth told me that for a long time he had suspected that Witcombe must have some blackmailing hold over Sir Osmond, but nothing of the kind was traced and I believe the truth was simply that the man was so complacent that he never realized how unpopular he was. I have wondered whether he may have guessed some time before that Sir Osmond was considering Carol with great favour and have decided to abandon his courtship of Jennifer and lay siege to Carol instead. But I have never been able to decide this certainly.
Hilda is probably the only one of Sir Osmond’s children who really misses him and mourns him, but she and Carol are soberly enjoying their new affluence and Carol is to begin her architectural training in the autumn.
As for Dittie, I think she will stand by her husband to the end of his life and I admire her courage and humanity. I think that she has made peace with herself and will now be happier because she is no longer waiting for something to free her from the bonds, which, she now realizes, she he
rself keeps fast and could cut if she wished to. She remarked to me about Sir Osmond’s notes for the new will:
“He was right; that was all I deserved; perhaps not that. Carol deserves it far more and would do more good with it. But she thinks that she and Hilda have plenty and she won’t take anything. She insists that Father only made those notes in a fit of spite and never really meant them. I’m not deceived by that. Carol is generous, for she might easily have made me feel uncomfortable about the money and I won’t pretend to deny that I’m glad to have it. I’m going to make an effort to use it really wisely, because I think that’s only fair to Carol.”
George is now established at Flaxmere, with Miss Melbury in the Dower House at the gates. She loves to preside over gossip parties at which she explains how she always foresaw that trouble would come of those Christmas gatherings and always warned Osmond that he ought not to talk so much about his affairs; of course she saw at once, when “that terrible business” occurred, that “none of us” could have had anything to do with it; in fact, she was a good enough judge of character to discern pretty quickly where the guilt lay, and if it hadn’t been for some timely hints which she dropped, the criminal might never have been brought to book.
There is a tacit understanding among the Melburys that there shall be no more family gatherings at Christmas time at Flaxmere.
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