by Bruce, Leo
“Once more the chauffeur ascends. He takes the rat-trap with him. He enters madame’s room. She awaits him. All is well. There is very little light. He remains with her a little while. Why? Ah, that is no matter for the detective, that delay. It is for the priest to understand. Perhaps the crime seems at last too terrible. Perhaps he wishes her to be at a disadvantage. Who can say now? But at last he can delay no more. He has brought his weapon. He strikes. Voila! It is done. Quite silent. She had no time to cry out. She is dead.
“And now he is nervous. He crosses quickly to the Window. He throws it up. He is on the rope. And he can climb. Parbleu! But can he climb, this man who was once a sailor? He pulls down the window, and climbs swift, swift, to the window of the apple-room. He enters. He commences to draw in the rope.
“So far, all has gone a merveille. But now occurs a little disaster for the murderer. Downstairs there is a conversation between Dr. Thurston, Monsieur Williams and Monsieur Townsend. The wireless plays. What does Monsieur Townsend? See, he rises. He will fetch something from his overcoat. He goes to the door and opens it. But no. Monsieur Williams addresses him. He is interested. He forgets the something in his overcoat, and returns to the other messieurs.
“But what is the effect? The poor Enid! She has been waiting for ten minutes for her lover to descend from the apple-room, so that she may do her part. But still he has not come. And now she hears the noise of the wireless suddenly increase as the door is opened. Someone comes, she thinks. Someone will find her. She is discovered. Her lover will be hanged. But wait—there is yet time. He has surely climbed in now? Quick, to the door. Ah, bien, he is there. He descends. She returns to the room of Dr. Thurston and she screams. She has saved his life, she thinks. But she could not foresee that Amer Picon, the great Amer Picon, would investigate!
“The chauffeur is what you call nonplussed. Why has she screamed too soon? In a panic he runs into his own room. Then, in a moment he realizes that he must show himself at once, as soon as possible. He joins you at the door. He is relieved. His alibi, though not as good as if he had been with the cook, is still perfect. He will escape.
“What is there more to do? He offers himself now to those who seek the criminal. He is calm, and confident. He fetches the doctor and the policeman. Why not? The doctor may now examine the body, but it is more than half an hour since the murder. It cannot be possible for him to tell that she died just four or five minutes before the scream. And the policeman—but he is acquainted with our honest Bœuf. He is enchanté that he should investigate. So he goes willingly.
“Nor is he troubled that the ropes should remain concealed in the tank. Why should he be? He has seen that the screams of Enid have been taken by all to be the screams of the murdered woman, so that his alibi is perfect. No rope in the world can convict him, he thinks, not having foreseen the intervention of Amer Picon.
“He made, however, one stupid blunder, this so longsighted young man. He arranged to meet the girl on the afternoon before he committed his crime. And he tried to conceal that afterwards. Then when I wanted to find out what his movements had been that day, he fell plop into the trap, and was caught as surely as the little rats in the apple-room. Figure to yourself—he has decided on Friday to carry out the scheme he has planned. Already, as we know, he has in view the public-house he will take when he has received the money. He has made up his mind. He wants, of course, to meet his accomplice. This he effects so secretly that none see them go away in the car together. Perhaps the girl is hidden in the back. Perhaps she waits for him beyond the village. At all events their meeting was concealed. They drive to their customary place, where it is unlikely that they will be observed. They leave the car where they have always left it, and where it will arouse no comment, since a car may often be left near to a lovers’ lane. They are quarrelling. The girl, perhaps, is impatient with so much waiting, and with her lover’s attentions to madame. He must pacify her. He tells her of his decision—that the day they have awaited is here. They complete their plans. They smile again. They return to the car, and drive to the house —unseen.
“But then, quel dommage! I put my little question. I want to be sure that he was not in the village, I say. Can he tell me something which will prove him to have been elsewhere? And he, the poor fool, who does not know Amer Picon, tells me of the flag that was at half-mast. He leaves me then only one thing to do. It is a hope, a chance, that he stopped the car at a point from which that tower is to be seen. And voila! it comes true! I discover that he went there with his accomplice.
“Then worse, they both deny that they were out together. How foolish! Had they been innocent, why should they conceal it? A little scolding for an offence in the routine of the house, what is that? Nothing. And by denying it, they make it guilty. Oh yes, even this young man had his blunders.
“That then, mes amis, is the explanation of this mystery. You, unfortunately, all of you who tried to solve it, sought the impossible. You thought, as the murderer intended that you should think, about the manner in which someone could have escaped from the room after the screams and before your entry. That was foolish. It should have been evident at once to you that nobody could have escaped in that time. Then either he was still there, or the screaming had not been done at the time of the murder. And since he was not still there, voila! the certainty was the latter. You see how simple, how logical, now that Papa Picon explains? But no—you do not reason so. You begin to think of the unnatural, of creatures with wings. You should have known that always, my friends, always in such cases of a murder behind locked doors the explanation is a matter not of the means of escape, but of the time at which the crime was done. Ah, if we all drew the conclusions which murderers mean us to draw, what a happy time for murderers! But fortunately there are some who have a sense of logic!
“This man had, as you say, all the luck. Everything conspired to shift the blame on to other shoulders, and to confuse the investigators. There was Monsieur Strickland, the stepson, who would benefit so much, who had been in trouble and changed his name, who slept next door. There was the butler, already guilty of blackmail. There was the cure, who was not quite well in the head, and who arrives at the bedside so soon after the murder. And there was Monsieur Norris who was also upstairs at the time. So many to be suspected! So much confusion. Surely he is lucky. But no—fortunately there arrives Amer Picon, with his sense of logic He is lucky no more. He and his accomplice are discovered. Voilal C’est tout!”
Looking back on the moment at which M. Picon finished, I think that my first emotion was one of sympathy with Lord Simon. It must have been galling to him to see his card-castle collapse, and the iron-clad edifice of M. Picon take its place. He had worked so hard and conscientiously, that the deserved to have been successful. But no. The little foreigner was obviously congratulating himself. All doubt was now removed.
CHAPTER 30
M. PICON had scarcely finished speaking, and was still smiling in self-congratulation, when Mgr. Smith unexpectedly began.
“What you all seem to forget,” he said, “is that a man who can be a spy, can also be a spider”
At once I remembered all his mystic references to King Bruce, and things of people or facts that hang on threads, and I asked myself what abstruse wonders were now to be revealed as commonplace.
“You, too, have discovered the murderer?” I asked; not, I must own, taking the little cleric very seriously, but willing enough to be diverted by his account.
“I have discovered the murderer,” he replied, “by a rope, a phrase, and by the way in which a man killed flies. It is very simple, but it has the terror and the power and the immensity of all simple tnings.”
He paused for a moment, as though wondering whether he should tell us. Then he went on. “There was a woman murdered in a locked room, from which the only escape was by the window, and the only manner of exit from the window was by a rope. So without beginning to talk in that superstitious way of unnatural happenings, it was nec
essary to discover how that rope had been used. It could have been neither climbed nor used for descent, so we came to Lord Simon’s explanation—that a rope may swing, and a man may swing on it. But what I think Lord Simon failed to see, was that when a rope can swing from left to right, another may swing from right to left.
“In Mrs. Thurston’s room there were two windows, one which was made to open, and one, constructed without frame or hinges, which would not open. And both had stone ledges at least a foot wide. And you were all observant of the window which opened. But what about the window which did not Open? It could have let in lovely things, fresh air and moonbeams, the scent of flowers, and truth. For the truth of this matter was behind the window which did not open, waiting to be admitted.
“To escape from the room a man had to swing on a rope. But he did not swing to the right to the window of Strickland’s room, but to the left, to the unopening window, for the rope to which he clung was let down not from Pellowes’s room, but from the box-room. And there he stood on that ledge, gripping the stonework above him, while you were searching the room. He could not watch you clearly, for the window is of stained glass, but he could see when you had gone. And then he returned. For another rope was hung from the window of the apple-room, on which he could swing back to the window which did open. It was simple to discover this. One only had to remember that no pendulum goes only one way, that an action has its reaction, that black, in fact, is opposed to white.
“But who had done it? Whoever had swung on the ropes had had an accomplice who hung them. Or should one say that whoever had hung the ropes had had an accomplice who swung on them? At all events there were two people concerned.
“And while we sat at lunch on Friday a spider appeared on the table. The butler came into the room and picked it up carefully in his fingers. I was watching, and I thought that the man who shrank from killing an insect would probably hesitate to kill an employer. But suddenly I saw a very horrible thing. The butler had not shrunk from killing the spider because he loved spiders, but because he hated flies. He took the creature and carefully set it on the window-ledge where several sleepy flies were crawling. And he turned away regretfully, as though he wanted to wait and watch the results. It was appalling, but like many appalling things it showed the truth. The man who had set a spider to kill a fly had set a man to kill a woman.
“But what man? It had been a weak man who was persuaded into it, a guilty man who was blackmailed into it, or a devil to whom it had to be no more than suggested. It could have been no one who came to the door of the room or was present at the search. And that afternoon I set off for the village church. At first I thought that I should have to look elsewhere, for Mr. Rider was neither a weak, nor a guilty, nor a bad man. But when he showed me a fine piscina in the chancel of his church and referred to it as a wash-basin, I perceived the terrifying truth. He was not himself a devil, he was possessed of devils, he was insane. And this madman was the instrument which the real murder had chosen.
“But only one rope had been found. If it had happened as I thought there must be two. I hoped, as I thrust my hand into the tank, that there would be nothing in it but water. The crime as it appeared to me then seemed too vile. But no—it was there. Two ropes had been used.
“You see, this butler here was a very wicked and very clever man. He had been a butler for twenty years or more, and as he said, he had excellent references. But imagine what had gone to the making of those references, what innumerable subservient humilities, what civil grins, what concealment of personal emotion! He was a man given to hatred and jealousy, who had been forced for two decades to show complaisance and satisfaction.
“At last he is employed by a woman who thinks she can trick her servants into loyalty. But loyalty comes with trial, not with trickery. A man may call a June evening New Year’s Eve, but we shan’t sing Auld Lang Syne. A man may put a crown upon his head, but we shan’t sing God Save the King. A woman may make a will, but we shan’t sing For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow. And when Mrs. Thurston signed this will she was not securing for herself any service—except unfortunately the Burial Service. It was her death warrant.
“For the wicked and clever man of whom we are speaking was too wicked and not quite clever enough for success. He was wicked enough to see that if he could get Mrs. Thurston murdered he would inherit her money, but not clever enough to know that there was no money to inherit. He was wicked enough to plan her murder, but not clever enough to find out that she had only a life interest in her first husband’s money. So that the trick has worked twice—on the murderer as well as on the murdered woman.
“He saw a way of escaping from all service, of achieving what all his life he had most ardently craved—his independence. If he could eliminate this woman he would not only leave the house, from which he had already been dismissed by her husband, without danger of the blackmail he had practised being discovered, but he would also inherit his share of her money. He would be comparatively well off for the rest of his life, for we may presume that he had already saved a certain sum.
“But how? He had not even the courage necessary to murder this woman. But what he lacked in courage he had in guile. He looked about him for someone to do the thing for him. And it was probably not for some time that he found this agent in the unlikeliest place—the local vicarage. Something like a sardonic smile must have come to him when he first thought of that. For who would look for violence in a vicarage? Who would expect to find a murderer in a manse?
“Stall sang bass in the choir, and made himself useful to the Vicar. At first, while the weak brain of the latter had still enough health to ape normality, he was satisfied with that. But gradually be came to exert more and more influence over the wretched man, until he had only to suggest something to the poor lunatic brain of the other, and he could persuade him to take any course of action that he chose—always providing, of course, that the Vicar was convinced that it was his duty Quite early in their sinister relationship, Stall must have learnt that this was his easiest way to accession—he had to prove to the Vicar that such and such a thing was his duty, and the thing was done. When I think of it I see the stars turn awry with nausea. He was an unusual criminal, and I thank God for it.
“Then, drawing nearer to his final object, Stall began to suggest to Rider that there was evil in the relationship between Mrs. Thurston and young Strickland. The Vicar, with his mania for what he called purity but what I should call puritanism, needed very little instigation on this point. His mental disorder took the form of an abnormal hatred for even the happiest and most innocent love, and when Stall began to fill him with suggestions of this scandal, he was quickly and insanely alert, and doubtless saw many things which did not exist.
“Then slowly the butler must have begun to suggest the horrible idea that it was Rider’s duty to assassinate the woman he had represented as guilty He had found a weapon which had hitherto been the prerogative of political plotters—a madman who could be made to commit an act of violence for the sake of an imaginary virtue, a man who would undertake a crime as though it were a crusade. It was here, probably, that he used that absurd story of the avenging angel striking at the old man in the tower. He led him on with a legend, fanned his anger with a fable, lured him with a lie. Until at last Mr. Rider was ready.
“I wondered at first that he should have troubled to extort that last sum of two hundred pounds from Mrs. Thurston at that point. But I underestimated Stall’s gift for calculation. He had a very vile fault—a love of scoring off his fellows. By manipulating the murder of Mrs. Thurston, he felt, he would be scoring off the whole series of his employers. By securing this two hundred pounds, which should rightly have been divided with the rest of the estate, he would be scoring off his fellow-servants. How he will have to wipe off those scores, it is not for us to say.
“When at last the unfortunate Vicar arrived on Friday evening he knew what he must do, and had been schooled into the method he must follow. No wonde
r he questioned Mr. Townsend before dinner, as though be sought some final confirmation of the facts to influence his diseased brain, And it is possible that even then he might have escaped the domination of Stall, and gone home an innocent man, if it had not been for that unlucky conversation with Mrs. Thurston before he took his leave. But she ingenuously told him that she was fond of the young chauffeur, as indeed, and inoffensively enough, she was. He left the room with his crazy conscience quiet, determined to set about the dreadful work which he believed to be his duty.
“Stall, meanwhile, had everything ready. There was the rope hung from the window of the box-room and caught at the opening window of Mrs. Thurston’s room, on which he was to escape, and the rope hung from the window of the apple-room to the unopening window of Mrs. Thurston’s room, on which he was to return. If one could have seen them there they would have appeared to make a great X on the side of the house, marking it out for its doom, a sinister parody of that ink-mark by which ‘our window’ is designated on post-cards from the seaside.
“But unfortunately no one did see them. It was a dark night, and you were all indoors. So that when Mr. Rider went upstairs to wait in Mary Thurston’s room for his victim, no one suspected that he was not on his way home, except Stall, who had shown him there.
“She went up to bed. At her door she hesitated, startled, not unnaturally, to find Mr. Rider awaiting her in a room which had been partially darkened by Stall in the hope that the murder might be committed before the murderer’s intention was apparent to the victim, and the alarm raised.
“What crazy appeal the poor man made in those ten minutes we shall never know, or what were the unhappy lady’s answers. But at last the thing was done, and thereafter the Vicar followed Stall’s instructions minutely. He seized the rope, pulled down the window, and swung, a giant spider on his thread, to the window which did not open. There he stood, gripping the masonry above him while Stall pulled in that first rope, and descended to the door to prove his alibi.
