“So it was an outsider all the time,” he muttered. “Gaa! I think I knew it in my bones all the time.”
Professor Ingram spoke politely. “So? I think you were the one who kept assuring us what a fine young fellow Harding was. At least, when you managed that fine and tasteful wedding this afternoon——”
The other’s face flamed.
“Don’t you see I had to do it, curse it all? Or I thought I had to do it. Harding convinced me. He said——”
“He said a lot of things,” observed Major Crow, with measured grimness.
“—but when I think of what this night is for her——”
“Do you?” asked Professor Ingram, picking up the dice and dropping them into the cup. “You always were a bad psychologist, my lad. Do you think she loves him? Do you think she ever loved him? Why do you think I entered such strong protests against the whole devilish, sickening performance this afternoon?” He picked up the dice-cup and shook it. He looked from Dr. Fell to Elliot to Major Crow. “But I think, gentlemen, you owe us an explanation. We want to hear (as people usually do at the end of a story) how you dropped to Harding as the murderer, and how you hope to convict him. It may be clear to you; but it isn’t clear to us.”
Elliot looked at Dr. Fell.
“You do it, sir,” he suggested glumly, and Major Crow nodded. “My wits aren’t quite up to the mark.”
Dr. Fell, his pipe lighted and a tankard of beer at his elbow, stared meditatively at the fire.
“I also have many regrets in this business,” he began, in what was for him a quiet voice. “I have those regrets because, nearly four months ago, what I regarded as a scatterbrained idea of mine was really the beginning of a solution. Perhaps it would be as well to start even before the beginning; to show you events in consecutive order as I saw them, and to follow them as they passed under our eyes to-day.
“On June 17th, then, the children were poisoned by chocolates from Mrs. Terry’s. I outlined to-day to Inspector Elliot my reasons for thinking (even at that time) that the poisoner had used no such clumsy device as dropping a handful of poisoned creams into an opened box. I thought it much more probable that the trick had been managed by some such means as a spring-grip bag, which would have made easy the somewhat difficult exchange of open boxes. I thought it would be better to look for someone who (say at some time in the previous week or so) had gone into the shop carrying a bag. Now that immediately postulated somebody who could carry in a bag without its being noticed or remembered afterwards as an unusual thing: like Dr. Chesney or Mr. Emmet.
“But,” said Dr. Fell, pointing with his pipe, “as I indicated to the Inspector, there was still another possibility. Even Dr. Chesney or Mr. Emmet carrying a bag would have been noticed, in the sense that every habitual thing is noticed. But there is still another type of person who could have carried a bag in there without Mrs. Terry ever thinking twice about it then or afterwards.”
“Another type of person?” inquired Professor Ingram.
“A tourist,” said Dr. Fell.
“As we know,” he went on, “Sodbury Cross carries the main tourist traffic. There is a great volume of it at most times, and at certain times it grows dense. X or Y or Z, a tourist and a stranger, travelling through in a car, could have gone in with a bag, asked for a packet of cigarettes, and vanished again, without the shopowner thinking of his bag or thinking of him afterwards. Dr. Chesney or Mr. Emmet, natives, would have been in the eye of the shopkeeper; X or Y or Z, stranger, would be sponged out of her mind before they even appeared.
“But this seemed mere lunatic nonsense. Why should a stranger wish to do anything like that? A stranger, a criminal lunatic, could have done it; but I could hardly say to Major Crow, ‘Look for (in all England) a stranger to Sodbury Cross, a stranger of whom I can give you no description travelling in a car about which I have no hint and carrying a trick bag which I have no reason to suppose exists.’ I thought I was being too fantastic; I shelved the idea; and I remember this now with curses.
“For what happened this morning?
“Elliot came to me and stirred bad memories with his story. I already had Marcus Chesney’s letter; I had got the gist of the business from my deaf waiter; and Elliot’s outline rather startled me. I learned from him (heaven knows I learned) that in Italy Miss Wills met and became engaged to her sloe-eyed charmer, George Harding. There was no reason to suspect Harding just because he was a stranger. But there was thundering good reason to suspect somebody, somebody in that right little, tight little group grappled round Marcus Chesney, somebody who had thrown the extra sleight-of-hand of murder into a carefully designed sleight-of-hand performance. So let us begin by an examination of this performance.
“We knew it was planned far in advance. We knew (in fact, it was crammed down our throats) that this was a sleight-of-hand in which you couldn’t believe your eyes any of the time. We could suspect that the fun and games might be not alone on the stage, but extend to the audience as well. Hear Chesney’s letter on this point. He is speaking of witnesses:
“They do not know what goes on on the stage, still less what goes on in the audience. Show them a black-and-white record of it afterwards, and they will believe you; but even then they will be unable to interpret correctly what they see.
“Now, in attempting to read the riddles of the performance, we have three points or contradictions which clamour for an explanation. They are these:
“(A) Why did Chesney, in the list of questions he was going to ask you, insert a totally unnecessary question? Why did he tell you that Dr. Nemo was Wilbur Emmet, if immediately afterwards he was going to ask you the height of the figure in the top-hat?
“(B) Why had he insisted that everybody should wear dinner-jackets that night? It was not your usual custom to wear them; but on this particular night of all nights he demanded it.
“(C) Why had he included the tenth question in that list of his? The tenth question has been rather overlooked, but it bothered me. He meant to ask, you recall, ‘What person or persons spoke? What was said?’ And immediately afterwards he added a note that he wanted the literal answer to the above. But where was the trap in that? It seemed generally agreed by the witnesses that only Chesney himself had spoken on the stage, though it is true that a few other words were whispered or spoken by members of the audience. But where is the trap?
“Gents, the answer to points (A) and (B) seemed almost certainly clear. He told you Dr. Nemo was Wilbur Emmet for the far-from-complicated reason that Dr. Nemo was not Wilbur Emmet. Dr. Nemo was not Emmet, but somebody wearing the same dress trousers and evening shoes as Emmet. But this person could not have been the same height as Emmet, obviously. Otherwise the question, ‘What was the height of the person who entered by the French window?’ would again have lost its point. If the person had been the same height as Emmet, six feet, and you had said six feet, you would still have been right after all. So he had to trick you with someone who was several inches off Emmet’s height, but was still wearing dress trousers and evening shoes.
“Harrumph. Well, where do we look for a person like that? It might, of course, have been an outsider. It might have been any acquaintance of his in Sodbury Cross. But in that case the joke would completely have lost its point. It would not have been a good trick at all: it would only have been a lie: and it will not square with those words, ‘They do not know what goes on on the stage, still less what goes on in the audience.’ If that means anything at all, it means the figure in the top-hat was a member of the audience.
“And straightaway the false-bottom drops out of the trick. We see that Marcus Chesney had another accomplice besides Emmet. An innocent-looking accomplice. An accomplice, as is usual in conjuring entertainments, sitting in the audience. In the twenty seconds of complete dead blackness after the lights were turned out, Emmet and this other accomplice changed places.
“The accomplice in the audience slipped out through the open French window in those twenty seconds o
f dead blackness, while Emmet slipped in and took his place. It was the other accomplice, not Emmet, who played the part of Dr. Nemo. It was Emmet himself who was sitting or standing in the audience throughout the performance. That, gents, was how Marcus Chesney planned the trick to take place.
“But which member of the audience?
“Whom did Emmet impersonate?
“Here we are on pleasantly easy ground. Miss Wills would be out, for obvious reasons. Professor Ingram would be out, for at least three reasons: he was sitting farthest away from the Music Room windows, in the chair Chesney assigned to him; he has a conspicuous and shining bald head; and it is highly unlikely that Chesney would take as an accomplice the very man he wanted most to deceive.
“But Harding?
“Harding is five feet nine inches tall. Both he and Emmet are lean, and of much the same weight: Harding 11 st. and Emmet 11 st. 8. Both of them have smooth-brushed dark hair. Harding was placed at the extreme left—the very worst possible position for anyone wishing to photograph the stage, in fact a ridiculous position; but in the position Chesney assigned him, and within two strides of the windows. Finally, Harding was standing with a ciné-camera pressed to his eyes in such a way that his right hand could naturally hide the side of his face. Admitted?”
“Admitted,” said Professor Ingram gloomily.
“Nothing could be easier—psychologically speaking—than such an exchange. The difference in height would not be noticed, because he was standing up and the other two witnesses were sitting down. Also, Harding says he was ‘crouching,’ meaning that Emmet was crouching. If you were deceived at all, it was because the superficial differences in their appearance were so easily hidden by the darkness. Harding is good-looking; Emmet was sensationally ugly, but this would not be observed in the dark and with the figure’s hand hiding its face. You obviously did not concentrate on that figure. You hardly glanced at it at all; otherwise you could not have seen what went on on the stage. To state that you saw both Harding and the stage is a contradiction in terms. You say you saw Harding ‘at the corner of your eye’; and that is true: what you vaguely noticed was a shape and nothing more. You saw Harding because you expected to see Harding.
“The darkness, too, concealed another psychological trick which I think was played on you. You say that the figure holding the ciné-camera spoke out loud. I will offer the meek suggestion that it did nothing of the kind. The psychological effect of darkness at an entertainment is to make people speak, automatically, in whispers. These whispers sound like ordinary voices; sometimes they even sound like roaringly loud voices, as you will agree (with profanity) if you go to a theatre and hear some idiot jawing away behind you. Actually it is a whisper, though you would not believe it unless you heard the whisper under conditions of ordinary speech. I will therefore offer the suggestion that when the figure said, ‘Sh-h-h! The Invisible Man,’ it whispered. Therefore you were deceived because all voices sound alike when they whisper. And you heard Harding’s voice because it never occurred to you that it could be anybody else’s.
“In fact, for the role of the other accomplice Harding is the only reasonable choice. Chesney would not have chosen you, Professor Ingram, with whom he had been arguing for years. He would not have chosen you, Dr. Chesney, with whom he had been arguing all his life: even if the fact that you are the same height as Emmet had not automatically excluded you to begin with. No. He would choose the deferential, sycophantic Harding, who hung on his every word, who flattered his vanity, who believed in his theories; and who, above all, had a ciné-camera which could be useful in more ways than one.
“Whereupon we are led back to another pointer straight at Harding. If there is anything we have heard constantly in this case, it is the attitude of extreme deference Harding never failed to show towards Marcus Chesney. It never faltered, never abated, never jarred. It never jarred, that is, except at the one point where it should not have jarred. This performance was the pride of Chesney’s heart. He took it with deadly seriousness, and expected everybody else to do the same. But at one of the high points of the show—the dramatic entrance of Dr. Nemo through the French window—this (alleged) Harding, after being expressly warned to keep silent, jeered out with the whispered words, ‘Sh-h-h! The Invisible Man.’ Such sudden facetiousness at Chesney’s expense seemed odd. It might have provoked laughter. It might have spoiled the whole show. But this (alleged) Harding said it.
“Now, in just a moment I want to point out to you why that one remark in itself proves the case against Harding. But for the time being here is all I thought about it: ‘That’s wrong. That’s Wilbur Emmet posing as Harding in the audience. And, since Emmet would no more think of being funny at Chesney’s expense than Harding would—by the temple of Eleusis, that remark is prearranged too.’ Even those words were a part of the show; and back we went to the old question, ‘What person or persons spoke? What was said?’
“I’m not going ahead of myself, gents. I’m telling you the thing just as it unfolded. This was how my trend of ideas went when Elliot first told me the story. I didn’t dare, at first, give him too much hope that Harding was guilty——”
Dr. Chesney stared at them.
“Hope?” he demanded, with a suspicious blink. “What hope? Why should he hope Harding was guilty?”
Dr. Fell cleared his throat with a long rumbling noise.
“Ahem,” he said. “A slip of the tongue. Shall I go on?
“But even at this point, shutting our minds firmly against motive, against any other consideration except the mere mechanics of the crime, it was obvious that Harding could have played Dr. Nemo’s part.
“Look at our time-schedule. In the twenty seconds’ complete darkness between the time the lights were switched out and the time Chesney opened the double-doors, Emmet could have slipped through the window into the Music Room. He could then take the camera from Harding, who slipped out through the same window to put on Dr. Nemo’s disguise. The substitution of places would take no more than two or three seconds. Even so, forty seconds more elapsed before Dr. Nemo entered the office. That gives Harding nearly a full minute to put on his disguise; and Professor Ingram will tell you the remarkable list of things that can be done in one minute.
“After thirty seconds in the office, Nemo goes out. Next consider the switch back again, when Harding returns; how will this fit our time-schedule?
“Now, at this point I had not yet seen the film. But Elliot quoted Harding’s testimony to me. Harding said: ‘Just after this top-hatted bloke stepped out of the picture, I looked up, and stepped back, and shut off the camera.’ In other words, that’s what Wilbur Emmet (posing as Harding) really did. He stopped filming just as soon as Dr. Nemo left the office. But why? The performace was not yet over, you know. Marcus Chesney still had to flop forward, in his dramatic pretense of death, and then get up and close the double-doors. Chesney was giving them plenty of time for the change back.
“It seemed clear that Emmet, after the departure of Nemo, immediately ‘stepped back’—past the line of the others’ vision—and slipped out of the Music Room to meet Harding. That would be their plan, Marcus Chesney’s plan. But Harding (if my theory were correct) had an interesting variation of it. He would just have finished giving Chesney a poisoned capsule. (Of course there never was more than one capsule at any time. This debate about a second capsule is unnecessary. If it had been arranged that Harding should play the part of Dr. Nemo, why should there have been a second capsule? There was only one: the one with which Harding had previously been entrusted, and which he had loaded with prussic acid.) After this, then, Harding would be ready for his next variation of the plan.
“At Nemo’s exit, Wilbur Emmet stops filming and slips out through the Music Room window. Harding, needing only a few seconds to strip off his disguise as opposed to putting it on, is waiting. Propped in the shadow behind a tree, and just beyond that narrow grass border, is a poker which has been waiting there for hours. Harding—his Ne
mo disguise flung in a heap by the office window—is now waiting by that tree. He beckons Emmet there. He takes the camera. He points in pantomime towards the house. As Emmet turns, Harding, with his hand wrapped in a handkerchief, strikes with the poker. He then slips back through the Music Room before the lights go on. Time (as Professor Ingram has estimated it) fifty seconds.”
Professor Ingram was rattling the dice in their cup. He frowned, shaking his head.
“Fair, I grant you. He would have had enough time. But didn’t the man run an insane risk?”
“No,” said Dr. Fell. “He ran no risk at all.”
“But suppose somebody—I or anybody else—had put the lights on too soon? Suppose the lights had been put on before he got back to the Music Room?”
“You are forgetting Chesney himself,” said Dr. Fell sadly. “You are forgetting that man practically planned his own murder. He above all people wanted Harding to get safely back to home base before the lights went on. It would have ruined his scheme, it would have made him a laughing stock, had Harding been caught. That must be prevented. You recall, as I said a moment ago, that Chesney treated you to more of the show—sitting there quietly at his table for a while, and then falling forwards on his face: obviously an impromptu bit of business, since no questions are asked about it in the list—he treated you to more of the show after Nemo’s exit. That was to give Harding time. It seems clear that Harding gave some prearranged signal, like a cough, to let Chesney know he was back in the Music Room. Then Chesney wound up the show by closing the doors. It might have taken Harding as short or as long a time as he liked to break Emmet’s skull. It might have taken him twenty seconds or a hundred and twenty. But Chesney would not end the show until he was back.”
“Damn his soul!” suddenly roared Joe Chesney, bringing his fist down on the card-table so that the backgammon board jumped. “Then he was simply playing a sure thing the whole time?”
The Problem of the Green Capsule Page 21
