Pons looked up presently, after having written rapidly for a few moments.
"If you have some knowledge I do not have, I think it only fair that you tell me," said Jamison then.
"Quite right. In the first place, then, the young man for whom you are advertising did not commit the murder."
"I am somewhat familiar with your methods, Pons, but I don't follow you."
"There is for one thing, the matter of footprints," said Pons. "I doubt the possibility of tracing them through to the inner office, however wet the shoes were, but if by chance the prints could be traced, I think you would find that they stopped at the threshold. It may be possible to so trace them, and I suggest you try to find the print of a number seven shoe in the inner office anywhere beyond the threshold. That should settle the matter to your satisfaction since the knife could not have been hurled from the threshold."
"Meeker took the prints on the stairs, after we had the newspaper-boy's story. But how do you suspect that? I confess I see nothing to indicate it."
"Obviously, because the man you want told me so himself."
Jamison looked the astonishment he felt.
"And by reason of the fact that he should seek my help, he is innocent; he would never otherwise have done so. From him, too, I learned that at the time he made entry to the building, he encountered a woman he took to be a char coming down —an old woman wearing a shawl over her head."
"We have a record of her."
"Ah, who was she?"
Jamison shrugged. "We don't know."
"Ah, well, I will tell you. It was she who murdered Deming."
"Fantastic!"
"Slowly, slowly, Jamison. You proceed from the theory that the young man committed the crime. I proceed from the premise that he did not. We are thus left with no alternative but the old woman. However implausible or impossible that may sound, I think you will find it to be the ultimately correct explanation. And to facilitate that end, I have here prepared two notices, which ought to appear in all the papers tomorrow. I have taken the liberty of attaching your name to one of them, Parker, and yours to the other, Jamison."
He passed over to Jamison the two notices he had written, and I read them over the Inspector's burly shoulder.
"Found: a large kitchen-knife, of the type commonly used for carving fowl, with From Emily burned on the handle near the blade. Owner will please apply to Dr. Lyndon Parker, Number Seven, Praed Street, Apartment 7B." The second notice was more concise: "Will the florist who yesterday, between opening hours and five P.M., sold a single black narcissus to an elderly lady wearing a shawl, please communicate at once with Inspector Jamison at New Scotland Yard.''
Jamison looked up, perplexed. "Still going on about that narcissus, Pons."
"I believe it holds the key to our puzzle." Pons smiled. "You'll see that these notices reach the papers, I hope. And if you do set Meeker to looking for footprints of a size seven shoe in the inner office, I would appreciate having a report of his findings in the morning. Furthermore, you can oblige me by coming around when your notice is answered."
"Very well, I'll do it."
Pons touched a match to his pipe, which had gone out. "I think we've done al' we can. Ready, Parker?"
We found young Rudderford in an agony of apprehension on our return, but Pons had no great difficulty calming him, telling him only that he must be prepared to make a truthful deposition about his part in the matter, and delivering himself of a few remarks about the potential murderer and the fear of punishment. Following Rudderford's return to his own home, Pons spent some time going through a bulky compendium of newspaper accounts of his own compilation —a collection of scrapbooks containing many thousands of stray bits of information relative to frauds, murders, larcenies, and other offenses against the law. He was still at this long after I went to bed.
In the morning Pons examined the papers for the notices he had written. He found them easily, and observed to Jamison's credit that the evening's Wanted had vanished. We prepared ourselves to await an answer to the knife advertisement, though Pons was not at all sure that such an answer would be forthcoming, admitting the possibility that the owner of the knife may not have missed it, or may quite probably have been the murderess herself.
At shortly after one o'clock, Jamison appeared.
"Well, Jamison?" asked Pons, looking at the Inspector through the haze of smoke in the room, though the expression on Jamison's face told its own story.
"You were right, Pons," said Jamison, sitting down. "Meeker did manage to trace footprints to the threshold, but there they stopped. There were nines and tens in the inner office, and that's all we found, though we looked half the night. The weather made it possible even after the prints had dried."
Pons nodded cursorily. "It is the notice in which I am interested. Any answer?"
"A florist in Cheapside telephoned at noon to say he had sold a black narcissus to the woman you described. Cost: one pound. It was sold at around four o'clock yesterday afternoon."
"Capital!" exclaimed Pons.
"I'm not so sure, Pons. Admitting that the young man for whom we advertised did not commit the crime, we are confronted with the fact that a woman —an old woman, mind you, who yesterday bought a black narcissus, for what reason I have still not been able to ascertain —stabbed Deming with a common carving-knife, and with such strength that the knife went into him up to the hilt. Is that tenable?"
"That is the situation as I see it, Jamison. You need only ask yourself what peculiar conditions need to be satisfied to make it possible." He reached down among a stack of papers near his armchair, and, after rummaging among them, he came forth with one and pointed to a photograph. "Could this person, for instance, have done it?"
Jamison favoured the photograph with a long, cold stare, and I did likewise. The photograph, in a paper of two days past, was that of an old woman. Beneath it appeared her name: Emily Riswall, and above, in black type: Escaped from Strathbone Asylum for the Insane.
Whatever Jamison might have said was cut short by a sharp ring at our bell.
A few moments later, Mrs. Johnson ushered in a thin, slatternly woman, who stood hesitantly on the threshold.
"Come in, come in, my good woman," said Pons.
Thus invited, she ventured three steps—just far enough to permit the door to close behind her—and stood looking from one to another of us.
"You are looking for Dr. Parker, I presume," continued Pons.
"Yes, sir," she said nodding.
"You've come for your knife," continued Pons, in his role.
She nodded, and Pons went into his laboratory and brought out an exact duplicate of the knife which had been used to kill Deming; he had evidently prepared this after I had gone to bed the previous night. He handed it to her and waited while she looked it over, turned it to where From Emily was burned on the handle, and nodded with a satisfied, if somewhat worried, air.
"It's mine, all right."
"May I ask how you came to lose it?"
"It was stolen from me."
"Ah? Only the knife?"
For a moment our visitor hesitated. "Well, sir, I guess the same person what took the knife took the two pound' I had hid in the teapot."
"Took a knife and two pounds, eh?" Pons looked at her earnestly. "Someone who knew the house, I take it, and knew where you kept your money."
The woman nodded emphatically. "Yes, sir, and so I thought. I kep' an eye on 'Enery —that's my 'usband —because I thought he'd done it, 'specially when he said that he couldn't get home on account of the rain yesterday. The night of the same day the money was took —that was yesterday, after I come back from a neighbour's house —I found ten shillings back in the tea-pot. Then I knew twasn't 'Enery, because he'd have spent it all." She looked at the knife. "And this knife, now —I wouldn't care much for it, but seeing as it was a present from my dear sister Emily, I took a fancy to it."
"And your name?" asked Pons.
"Clymer
. Mrs. 'Enery Clymer."
"Your sister's?"
"Hers was Riswall. She married a good-for-nothing who shot 'imself and she went out of her 'ead, poor thing." She sniffled a little. "She's been in the asylum these ten years."
"I think you've proved your right to the knife, Mrs. Clymer. You may keep it."
"Thank you, sir." She backed toward the door, a little suspiciously. "Good-day, sir." And she was gone.
Jamison stared after her in bewilderment. By this time the Inspector was convinced that Pons was correct, but he had not yet discovered the essential explanation of the mystery. However, he was not to be kept long in ignorance.
"A curious affair," mused Pons, sitting down again, with one volume of his encyclopedia of clippings. "I take it you spent very little time on the black narcissus, Jamison."
"Meeker is looking the matter up."
"Well, we have it here." He was leafing through the pages as he spoke, and now stopped. "It would appear —this is from the Daily Telegraph of about a decade ago —that the Black Narcissus was the name of a spurious mine, through which Deming, who promoted it, mulcted investors of a good many thousand pounds.
Among stockholders suffering the greatest losses when it crashed in 1918 were Sir Evelyn Mansfield, Selwyn Carington, Thomas Gainbridge, and James Riswall. Riswall lost his entire savings and shot himself on the same day. Observe the similarity of the pattern, for that was your young man's experience; his name, by the way, is James T. Rudderford, and he is prepared to make a deposition as soon as you call on him. Shortly after this event, mention of the Black Narcissus so enraged Riswall's widow that she made a murderous attack on Deming, inflicting some injuries. As a result, she was confined to Strathbone Asylum for the Insane, labouring under an obsession to revenge her husband by killing Deming. You will observe, Jamison, the outcome of the obsession, and the singular significance of the flower left on Deming's desk."
"It's clear now, Mr. Pons —or reasonably clear, at any rate," said Jamison, with some trace of bewilderment still in his eyes. "But we haven't got the murderer, after all."
Pons shrugged. "Technically, there is none. The woman will be found, I think, somewhere about the home of her sister, whose statements you will have to take. You might watch for her there."
End of Volume 1 of the Solar Pons Omnibus
Table of Contents
Foreword by Robert Bloch
From the Notebooks of Dr. Lyndon Parker
The Adventure of the Sotheby Salesman
The Adventure of Ricoletti of the Clubfoot
The Adventure of the Unique Dickensians
The Adventure of the Haunted Library
The Adventure of the Aluminium Crutch
The Adventure of the Circular Room
The Adventure of the Purloined Periapt
The Adventure of the Lost Locomotive
The Adventure of the Five Royal Coachmen
The Adventure of the Frightened Baronet
The Adventure of the Missing Huntsman
The Adventure of the Amateur Philologist
The Adventure of the Seven Sisters
The Adventure of the Limping Man
The Adventure of the Shaplow Millions
The Adventure of the Innkeepers Clerk
The Adventure of the Crouching Dog
The Adventure of the Perfect Husband
The Adventure of the Dog in the Manger
The Adventure of the Swedenborg Signatures
The Adventure of the Spurious Tamerlane
The Adventure of the Rydberg Numbers
The Adventure of the Praed Street Irregulars
The Adventure of the Penny Magenta
The Adventure of the Remarkable Worm
The Adventure of the Retired Novelist
The Adventure of the Missing Tenants
The Adventure of the Devil's Footprints
The Adventure of the Sussex Archers
The Adventure of the Cloverdale Kennels
The Adventure of the Lost Dutchman
The Adventure of the Grice-Paterson Curse
The Adventure of the Dorrington Inheritance
The Adventure of the Norcross Riddle
The Adventure of the Late Mr. Faversham
The Adventure of the Black Narcissus
End of Volume 1 of the Solar Pons Omnibus
August Derleth - The Solar Pons Omnibus Volume 1 Page 78
