The Rasp

by Philip MacDonald

  Anthony looked, then turned away with a shiver. Lucas dropped a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Never mind, Gethryn,’ he said, after a moment. ‘It isn’t your fault.’

  Anthony shook off the hand. ‘Damn it, I know that! Only the whole thing is so filthy. It might be said, I know, that I sent That mad. But it wouldn’t be true. He did that himself. Hatred, ingrowing hatred of a better man: that’s the cause.’

  Lucas was thoughtful. ‘It complicates things, this madness.’

  ‘It does. What’ll happen?’

  ‘Usual, I suppose. The case’ll be tried. He’ll be convicted—and sent to Broadmoor, where he’ll die, or recover in a year and be let out to kill someone else. We’re so humane, you know!’ Lucas was bitter. ‘Anyhow, you won’t be bothered any more, except for the trial, at which you’ll figure prominently. Oh, yes! Great glory will be yours, Gethryn. Think what a press you’ll have!’

  Anthony grunted his disgust.

  Lucas went on: ‘Lord! What a stir this is going to make. Millionaire M.P. arrested for murder of Cabinet Minister! It won’t be nice for us at the Yard either. Not at all nice! Getting hold of an innocent man and all that. Police shown the way by amateur!’ He groaned. ‘Never mind, The Owl shall be the first to publish anything. I arranged that before I came down. And then they’ll have that report of yours to get out, too. What envy will tear Fleet Street! Of course, that report can’t come out yet, you know. At least, I don’t think so; not before the trial—’

  Anthony started. ‘Lucas,’ he said, ‘there’s something we’ve forgotten.’ He put a hand up to his hair.

  ‘Gad! So we have. Let’s see.’

  Together they stooped over the prisoner. He looked up at them and cackled.

  ‘Rotten business!’ Anthony grunted. ‘Seems almost indecent when the man’s like this.’ He put his hand on Sir Arthur’s head. His fingers groped for a moment; then came away. With them came that immaculate head of greying hair.

  ‘Wonderful toupé!’ Lucas stretched out his hand for it. ‘I’d never have noticed it. And I thought they were always obvious. Well, that’s the last confirmation of your theory, Gethryn.’ He peered at Anthony. ‘Lord! You look worn out, man!’

  Anthony said heavily: ‘I am. Think I’ll get back to bed at my pub.’

  Lucas glanced at his watch. ‘Yes, do. Get off now: it’s only ten past eleven. Shall—’

  ‘What time did you say it was?’

  ‘Eleven-ten.’

  ‘Gad! I thought I’d been here at least five hours. Only eleven-ten! And I’m sitting here!’ Anthony made for the door.

  Lucas grabbed at his arm. ‘Here, what’s to do?’

  ‘Got to go and pay a call.’ Anthony wrenched himself free and got to the door, paused to say over his shoulder: ‘Don’t tell Deacon to come to my pub. Just let him go. He’ll get where I want him,’ and was gone.

  Lucas stared after him. ‘Fool ought to be in bed,’ he muttered. ‘Clever devil, though, but queer!’ He turned to the business on hand.

  Sir Arthur still sat on the floor, playing his game. His fingers wandered ceaselessly over the carpet. His head, bald save for a sand-coloured tonsure, was sunk between his square shoulders. Every now and then he laughed that high-pitched laugh.

  CHAPTER XVII

  BY ‘THE OWL’S’ COMMISSIONER

  THE letter which Anthony had written in the early hours of that morning and despatched by District Messenger, the letter which had brought so important a person as Mr Egbert Lucas down to Abbotshall, had run as follows:

  MY DEAR LUCAS—AS you know, I have been playing at detectives down at Marling. I have finished my game; the rest is up to you.

  What I have found, how I have found it, and my opinion of the meaning of what I have found you will discover set out in the enclosed document, typed by my very own fingers. You may—I cannot tell—think my conclusions wrong, and say that in real life, even as my fairy tales, a set of circumstances, a collection of clues, may equally lead to the innocent as to the guilty. For me, however, I am convinced. To put it in my own diffident way: I know that I am right!

  So please read the enclosed. If you agree with me, as I think you will, you will yet find that the evidence is insufficient: and you will be right. I will, therefore, endeavour to arrange for a confession by the guilty person to be given in the (unsuspected) presence of officers of your able department. In order for this to be done, will you give orders for some of your men—three, including a shorthand writer, would be enough—to meet me at the cross-roads on the London side of Marling at about nine tonight? I will then get them covertly into Abbotshall and dispose them in advantageous but secret positions. This may, I know, be irregular, but you can take it that I can manage things without anyone in the house knowing until the business is over. Once your men are where I shall put them, I shall enter the house by a more orthodox way. The rest will follow.

  This is asking a lot of you, but, after all, you know me well enough to be reasonably certain that I am less of a fool than most. So, if you agree with my conclusions as set out in the report, please arrange this. Whether you agree or not ring me up, before seven tonight, at my pub in Marling (Greyne 29). If I am not there leave a message: ‘All right’ or ‘Nothing doing,’ as the case may be. Whichever your answer is, I will ring you up when I have received it.

  My main reason—or one of my main reasons—for doing all this work was to do Hastings’s little paper, The Owl, a good turn. The report is really for them, though I don’t know when and to what extent you will allow them to publish it. But I rely on you to see that The Owl gets as much journalistic fat as it can digest. No other paper must hear a whisper until you’ve allowed Hastings to make a scoop out of the ‘Dramatic New Developments’.

  Yours,

  A. R. GETHRYN.

  P.S. Don’t forget that if you decide to let me try to arrange this confession, I may fail. I don’t think I will; but I might. I shall rely to a great extent upon the fact that I am something of an actor.

  Coming to the end of this letter, Mr Egbert Lucas had whistled beneath his breath, instructed his secretary that on no account was he to be disturbed, and had settled down—he has the most comfortable chair in the Yard—to read the typewritten report.

  Unfolding it, he murmured: ‘Unexpected chap, Gethryn. This ought to be interesting.’

  He read:

  ‘THE MURDER OF JOHN HOODE

  ‘Upon the morning of the 20th of August, 192– I drove to the village of Marling in Surrey. By 9.30 a.m. I had gained admission to the house Abbotshall.

  ‘Owing to circumstances which need not be set down here, and also, in a great measure, to the courtesy and assistance of Superintendent Boyd of Scotland Yard, I was able from the beginning to pursue unhampered my own investigations. The result of these I give below.

  ‘(For reasons which must, I think, be obvious, I have divided this report into four parts. Also, I would point out that, for reasons equally evident, the steps in my deduction, reasoning—call it what you will—are not necessarily given here in their chronological order.)

  I

  ‘Immediately upon my arrival at Abbotshall, I spoke at some length with Superintendent Boyd, who gave me the history of the affair as obtained by him through close questioning of the inmates. It appeared then that with the exception of the butler, these one and all had alibis, complete in some cases and in others as nearly so as could be expected of persons who had not known beforehand that they were likely to be accused of murder. (Later, of course, it was revealed—see reports of the inquest—that Mr Archibald Deacon’s alibi did not exist in fact.)

  ‘Superintendent Boyd and I at once agreed that to suspect the alibiless Poole (the butler) was folly. He had been, obviously and by common report, devoted to his master. Moreover, he is physically incapable—even were he out of his mind—of dealing such blows as caused the death of the murdered man.

  ‘After our conversation, Superintendent Boyd and I together
made an examination of the study, the room in which the murder was done. Together we came to the following conclusions,fn1 all of which were explained by the superintendent in his evidence at the inquest. Since, therefore, these points are by this common knowledge, I will not go into the processes by which they were arrived at, but will merely enumerate them follows:

  ‘(i)That when Hoode was struck, either by the first or all of the blows, he was seated at his table.

  ‘(ii)That the appearance of the room had been carefully arranged to convey the impression that a struggle had taken place.

  ‘(iii)That the murderer was well known to Hoode, and was, in all probability, an inmate of the house.

  ‘(iv)That the murderer had worn gloves for most of the time during which he was in the study, there being no fingerprints anywhere except on the wood-rasp.

  ‘(v)That the blows which killed Hoode must have had tremendous strength behind them.

  ‘(vi)That, in all probability, the murderer entered by the window. (I fully endorsed, at that stage of the inquiry, the opinion of the Police that Poole’s evidence was reliable.)

  ‘It will be seen that the cumulative implication of these six points tends to strengthen considerably the case against Deacon, which even without them is by no means weak circumstantially. It is now, therefore, that the keynote of my report must come.

  ‘I met and spoke with Deacon for the first time on the afternoon of the day I arrived at Abbotshall. It needed but three minutes with him to convince me that here was a man who had not been, was not, and never could be a murderer. I cannot defend this statement with logic. It was simply conviction. Like this: In a party of, say, twelve persons there will be eleven about none of whom I could say definitely: “That one is incapable of stealing the baby’s marmalade”; but in the twelfth I may find a man—perhaps unknown to me before—of whom I can swear before God or man: “He could not have stolen the baby’s marmalade—not even, if he had tried to! He is incapable of carrying out such a crime.”

  ‘Deacon was a twelfth man. Before I had seen him, my views were beginning to differ from those of Scotland Yard: after I had seen and spoken with him they became directly opposed. It became my business to prove, in spite of all difficulties, that this man, whatever the appearances, had had no hand in the death of John Hoode. In what follows, they who read will find, I hope, absolute proof of his innocence; or if not that, at least a battering-ram to shake the tower of their belief in his guilt.

  ‘Knowing that Deacon was not the murderer, I nevertheless realised that his innocence—so strong was the case against him—could only be established by definite proof that someone else was. That is to say: a negative defence would be useless.

  ‘It will be seen, then, that the divergence of my opinions from those of the Crown began almost at the outset of my investigation.

  ‘Let us go back to the study at Abbotshall. On each of the numbered points I gave earlier, I agreed with Superintendent Boyd. Where I began to—had to—disagree was concerning their implication of Deacon. Points (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv) can be left alone; they will fit my murderer as well as, or better than, they fit Deacon. The remaining two, however, must be dealt with more fully.

  ‘We will take (v) first. The obvious fact that strength far above the normal was behind the blows that killed Hoode was a perfect link in the chain of circumstantial evidence against the gigantic Deacon. But at the inquest, Dr Fowler, the divisional surgeon, said: “The wounds were inflicted so far as I can judge, either by a man three times stronger than the average or by a person of either sex who was insane and had the terrible strength of the insane.”

  ‘Having to find an alternative to Deacon and having determined to cling to my theory that the murderer was an inhabitant—permanent or temporary—of the house, my choice of Dr Fowler’s alternatives was a man or woman mentally unbalanced. This choice was not, as it might at first seem, a drawback; rather was it the reverse. For one of my first impressions had been that there was something of terrible senselessness about the whole affair, and this impression had increased a thousandfold when I saw the battered head of the dead man. Madness was my first thought then. Those blows—four of them, mark you! when the first had been obviously sufficient—surely spoke of madness; either the lust for blood and destruction of a confirmed homicidal maniac or the consummation of a hatred so deadly, so complete in its possession of the hater, as to constitute of itself insanity.

  ‘The second was the theory I adopted. For, believing the murderer to be an inmate of the house, it was clear that I must look for one whose insanity was not of a type apparent to the world.

  ‘Now for point (vi)—the entry by the window. As I have said, I agreed with the police that the murderer did enter by the window; but there our agreement ceased. It is a point in the Crown’s case against Deacon that his are the only legs in the house long enough to enable their owner to clear the flower-bed in stepping from the flagged path to the low sill of the study window. This, I am sure, is, as evidence against Deacon, more than useless. I have not taken measurements, but it is obvious that even for his long legs, a step right into the study would be impossible. This being so, the fact that he could step on to the window sill is of no importance whatever. For one thing, it would have been extremely difficult for him to retain balance; for another, if he had retained his balance, the necessary scrabbling at the window and the twisting and turning he would have had to perform to get legs and then body into the room would have attracted Hoode’s attention before he could see enough of the intruder to recognise him. And then the theory, agreed to by the police, that Hoode did not rise from, or anyhow did not remain long out of, his chair, falls to the ground.

  ‘Now let us get back to my murderer. Yes, he got in by the window; but he left the flower-bed unmarked. Now, as he is a member of the household we know that his legs cannot be as long as Deacon’s. How, then, did he approach the window?

  ‘He must have (a) jumped over the flower-bed and into the room; (b) stepped on the flower-bed, but, on leaving, repaired or disguised the damage he had done; or (c) got his feet on to the sill and his whole self into the room without having crossed the flower-bed.

  ‘It is almost impossible that he should have done (a); (b) is unlikely, since after the murder the murderer had no time to spare. (This is proved later.) One is left, then, with the conviction that the real answer lies in (c). This means either that the murderer erupted through the floor or walls of the study or that he descended the wall of the house and entered the open study window without ever reaching the earth in his journey. (Entrance through the door is barred. Remember, we are taking Poole’s evidence on that point as reliable.)

  ‘As the murderer was presumably flesh and blood and there was no hole in walls or floor, I fastened on the “descent” theory, which was subsequently confirmed by an examination of the wall outside and above the open study window. Over this wall—over the whole house, in fact—the commonest and creepiest of creepers creep. I refer to Ampelopsis Veitchii. A large drainage-pipe runs to earth beside the study window in question, and for a space of perhaps half a foot on each side of it throughout its length the creeper has been cleared away. But half-way between the top of the window through which the murderer entered the study and the first-floor windows above it, a shoot of creeper has pushed its way out into the cleared space beside the pipe. This shoot drew my attention because it was black and shrivelled.

  ‘Ampelopis Veitchii, though one of the commonest forms of creeper, is also one of the most tender. A sharp blow upon the main branch of a shoot means death to that shoot within a few hours. The dead piece of creeper I refer to was, I thought at first, at that point on the wall where it might have been struck by the feet of a man of middle height climbing out of either of the first-floor windows over the open one of the study at the moment when he was clutching the sill with one or both hands and hanging with arms bent.

  ‘It was, I saw, clearly impossible for the murderer to have dropped
from the upper window on to the sill of the open study window and so miraculously to have retained his balance that he did not fall on to the flower-bed. Also—in spite of the novelists—there are few drain-pipes which can be used to climb by. This drain-pipe is no exception. Fingers could not be clasped round it; neither would it support more than a five- or six-stone weight. It was clear, therefore, that the murderer, in descending the wall, had used something to climb down—probably a rope. (Descent of the wall was another confirmation of the theory that the murderer was of the house.)

  ‘It will have been noticed that I have used the masculine personal pronoun to describe the murderer. Dr Fowler’s statement at the inquest, which I quoted earlier, would allow, given insanity, of equal rights to women. But I felt, from the beginning, that John Hoode had been killed by a man, and I worked throughout on that assumption. At every turn little things told me that this was a man’s work; and I was finally satisfied when I accepted the theory of descent by the wall.

  ‘I will bring to an end here the first part of this report. But before starting upon the next, I will summarise the conclusions already shown, give them life with a touch of imagination, and let you see the picture.

  ‘The murder was committed by a man who, if not completely mad, was at least insane in his hatred of Hoode and Hoode’s. He was at the time of the murder an inmate of Abbotshall. He effected entrance to the study that night by letting himself down from the more easterly of the first-floor windows over the most easterly of the study windows. He spoke to Hoode, jokingly explaining his unceremonious entry. By some pretext (it would, you know, be easy enough) he got behind Hoode as he sat at his big table. Then he struck.