The Problem of the Green Capsule

by John Dickson Carr

  “Yes.”

  “Go on,” said Professor Ingram quietly.

  Dr. Fell sniffed. “That, then, was the position this morning. And, as you can understand, I was very eager to get a look at that film—the film I thought Emmet had taken. Harding, just before I got my first great setback, was beginning to appear in curious if not definitely sinister colours. He was a research chemist. He could have manufactured prussic acid at any time. He alone of those in the case, would have known the trick of putting on and taking off rubber gloves in an instant. I do not know whether you have ever tried this experiment. To get the gloves on is comparatively easy, provided they are powdered inside. But to get them off in a hurry is almost impossible unless you know the trick. You cannot get them off by pulling at the fingers in the ordinary way; you will only split the gloves to blazes or stand yanking away at the fingers while you swear. You must roll them from the wrist, as these were found neatly rolled; and I exhibited about them an interest which seemed to surprise Inspector Elliot.

  “But the image of Harding as the murderer came out with a clear, hard stamp before we had even seen the film. It became plain from a conversation Elliot had with Miss Wills in the room over Stevenson’s chemist-shop. I overheard that conversation, gentlemen. I listened without dignity and without shame. There was a sheet hung between double-doors, between the sitting-room and the bedroom; and behind that sheet in the bedroom I (if you image the manoeuvre possible) lurked.

  “Up to this time I knew nothing of Harding except what I had been told by Elliot. But now, by thunder, I was beginning to know something! Elliot had assured me that Harding had never even heard of Sodbury Cross until he met Miss Wills on the Mediterranean trip. I found, on the contrary, that he had known her long before that; that he had known her before the poisonings at Mrs. Terrys; and that she used to go up to London to meet him. Kindly do not look so startled, gentlemen,” said Dr. Fell testily; “and restrain any impulse you may have, Dr. Chesney, to whang those fire-irons at my head. Even the maids in the house know it. Ask them.

  “But the real information was the insight it gave into two sides of Mr. George Harding’s character. You could not blame him, of course, for wanting to go a crooked way in hiding his previous acquaintance with her from her family, though it seemed rather an elaborate, florid manner of going about it. I could not blame him for that. But I could blame him, and Inspector Elliot could have murdered him, for suggesting meltingly that he needed a holiday anyway; that he could do with a trip abroad; and that she had better pay the expenses of his trip while he was meeting her family. But that was not all. Gentlemen, I stood in the chemist’s bedroom and I was (if this can be credited) struck dumb. I saw visions and I heard voices. I thought I sniffed Wainewright’s scented locks. I thought the ghost of Warren Waite sat in the rocking-chair. I thought I saw, outside the window like banshees, the magnetic eyes of Richeson and the great bald skull of Pritchard.

  “But there was another side to this. Whatever else George Harding was, he was a magnificent actor. Now, I had heard about that little scene at Pompeii. One moment: never mind how I heard about it. But, if what I had just learned by eavesdropping at the chemist’s were true, just think for a moment what that Pompeian scene meant! Think of Harding, innocent staunch, heroic, standing among you and letting you tell him about Sodbury Cross. Think of the way he introduced the subject of poisoners and prodded your wits until you told him: ‘I suppose it was easy to get away with wholesale poisoning in those days.’ Think of his start of surprise, the hasty way in which he put away the guide-book with a confused apology, when he realised he had blundered up against a sore subject with you. Think of——

  “Well, it need not be stressed. But let the scene remain in your mind as a kind of symbol of everything that followed. It forms a neat small painting of Harding’s mind. For at the complete and minute hypocrisy of everything he said and did there, the way he pushed, pulled, dragged, and posed, I saw him (in my ghostly company) received with welcome beside Holy Willie Palmer.

  “I will grow less metaphysical. We next saw the cinema film: and that tore it. The slip was so bad that I thought Harding had done for himself then and there.

  “Now, you have all seen that film. But one thing, when we first saw it, some of us tended to overlook. It is this. If we accepted Harding’s story, if we agreed that he had taken the film, if we allowed his alibi and suspected no jiggery-pokery of any kind: allowing all this, then that film constituted Harding’s eyesight.

  “You follow that?” inquired Dr. Fell with great earnestness. “That film constituted what he saw, and all he saw. It was his own version of what had happened in the office. It was as though we had a record, from a kind of picture in his own mind. We could see, therefore, only what Harding himself saw.

  “Now, by the testimony of the other witnesses and by Harding’s own testimony, what had happened? Go back to the beginning of Chesney’s show. The grotesque figure in the tall hat steps in at the window. As it walks forward, Harding whispers, ‘Sh-h-h! The Invisible Man!’ And the figure turns round and looks at the audience.

  “But what do we get in the film? We see that, the instant the figure appears in the film, it is in the act of turning round to look at us. It appears; it turns, and this is our first view of Dr. Nemo. This turn to look at us undoubtedly occurs just after Harding has said, ‘Sh-h-h! The Invisible Man,’ for that is the only time Dr. Nemo looked out at the audience. But how in blazes did Harding come to use those remarkable words, or any words at all? For up to that time we couldn’t see the Invisible Man; and neither could he.

  “He couldn’t see the French window at all. He was too far to the left. So we couldn’t see it. We couldn’t see the figure come in; we couldn’t see it until it turned round to look at us. Then how (ask yourselves) did Harding know what Dr. Nemo looked like? How could he give a very apt description of Dr. Nemo before Dr. Nemo had even come within his line of eyesight?

  “And the answer is not complicated. Whoever was crouching there with that ciné-camera, that person was an accomplice in the show; he knew already what Dr. Nemo looked like; he had been given that line to whisper; he had seen Chesney’s head turn, knew it was time, and whispered it a few seconds too soon, when the others could see Dr. Nemo but he couldn’t. Since Harding later swore up-hill-and-down-dale that he had said the words, he was therefore an accomplice whether he had taken the film or whether Emmet had taken it. It confirmed my former belief that Emmet had taken the film and Harding had taken the part of Dr. Nemo.

  “At the pre-view early this afternoon, I was just about to sing out and announce this. I had already made definite noises when Major Crow stumbled slap over the truth by saying that Marcus Chesney actually planned the way in which the murderer could kill him. It was true, though Crow applied it to something else. But at that very point my case fell down with a crash.

  “We got a clear view of Dr. Nemo in the film.

  “And he was six feet tall.

  “Not only was he six feet tall, but he was positively identified by his walk as Wilbur Emmet.

  “And I received a blow in the solar-plexus from which it took several hours to recover.

  “I commend to you the virtue of humility. It is a refreshing virtue. I had been so confoundedly sure I was right: not only building my tower but putting mortar on the bricks to stick them together. It was not until we found the Photoflood-bulb container in Miss Wills’s drawer later in the afternoon that I realised: again, once more, and for the umpty-umph time, we had been hocussed by still ANOTHER of Chesney’s ingenious tricks. It was the final one, but it had made Harding’s scheme triply secure.

  “Of course, one point had been putting us on brambles for some time. Never mind who the murderer is: whoever he was, why hadn’t he destroyed the film? He had every opportunity to destroy it unobserved. It was lying there openly in an empty room. Anybody could have wrecked it in five seconds by exposing it to the light. No murderer, not even a lunatic, could possibly wan
t the police to pore over a real film of him committing his murder. But it wasn’t touched. If I had had the sense to interpret this plain indication from the first, I should have seen that it was shoved into our hands, pressed on us tenderly, because it wasn’t a film of the real murder at all.

  “It was, in fact, the film of a rehearsal which Chesney, Emmet, and Harding had staged that afternoon—the afternoon before the show—with Emmet in the role of Dr. Nemo.

  “The Photoflood bulb gave it away. Already, in a musing, curious, but entirely perplexed way, I had been asking questions about those bulbs. What intrigued me was the report I had heard of Miss Wills’s obvious astonishment when she was told that the bulb had burned out. Why should she have been astonished? The question, possibly, was of no importance; but it is just that sort of wrongness which presses the button when a door is obstinately stuck. Now, she bought the bulb that morning. It was not called into use until that night. How long had it been in use that night?

  “That was easy enough to determine. Chesney’s show started (roughly) about five minutes past twelve. The bulb was turned on. It was left burning until the police arrived at twenty-five minutes past twelve at which time (do you recall?) it was turned out. That’s twenty minutes to start with. It was turned on again, very briefly, when the police had a short look at the room before they were interrupted by you, Professor Ingram. Out it went again, after a period of a very few minutes: less than five, anyhow. The third and final time it was turned on was when the police-surgeon and the photographer arrived. There again the period was brief, just long enough for Elliot to explain to Major Crow about a spring-grip bag, and for them to make an examination of the clock on the mantelpiece; then it burned out. Say five minutes more.

  “Even agreeing that all these times are approximate, still there’s too great a discrepancy. That bulb has burned out after a total of only half an hour’s use altogether. For Stevenson the chemist assured me that bulbs would burn for well over the full hour.

  “It burned out after half an hour’s use because somebody had been using it before, earlier in that same day.

  “That simple fact stared me in the face when I found the cardboard container in the drawer. Miss Wills had bought the bulb that morning, and put it into the drawer. She hadn’t used it afterwards, because we heard from the maids that she went over to Professor Ingram’s house in the morning and stayed there until late afternoon; and, in any case, we have had impressed on us over and over that she never dabbles with photography.

  “We were supposed to believe, in fact, that nobody had used it up to the time Pamela was sent upstairs to fetch the bulb at a quarter to twelve that night. But as I have just indicated, this couldn’t be so. And it was emphasized by another reason. We found the cardboard container. Now, if Pamela had been told to go upstairs and get the bulb, and the bulb was still sealed into its box, she would have brought it down box and all. But she didn’t: she brought the bulb alone. Which meant that the container had been already opened, which meant either that the bulb was lying loose in the drawer or stuck back into an open box.

  “It had already been plain, I grant you, that Chesney, Emmet, and Harding must have had long careful rehearsing for this little show. The thing had to go without a hitch. And the question was, when did they do the rehearsing? Clearly that afternoon. Chesney had got the bulb bought that morning. Miss Wills was absent in the afternoon; and since you, Dr. Chesney, do not live here anyway, there was no reason why you should be here. But Harding was here right enough: we heard that from the maid.

  “You now perceive the nature of Chesney’s final trick and joke, his last hoax for the witnesses. He was going to deceive you even after all possible deception had ended. By having Harding take a film of the show in advance—a show which in several subtle points should be completely different from the real one—he would keep an ace up his sleeve. He would say, ‘Well, you have made your replies. Now see what really happened. The camera cannot lie.’ But the camera could lie; for it was Emmet who played Dr. Nemo’s part, and the words Chesney spoke were totally different though the number of syllables was approximately the same. I darkly believe that this fraud was intended for my benefit. In a few days, you know, he was going to invite me over to see his show. Then he would say to me as well, ‘Now look at a film we took of it the other night.’ And (presumably) I should have been gulled as well, while all the time he, uproariously amused, should be saying from the screen, ‘I do not like you, Doctor Fell.’ He almost admits as much in his letter. ‘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.’

  “Changing those films on us was George Harding’s one great, smashing mistake. There were, of course, duplicate cameras. He let Emmet take the film with one camera; he gently handed us the other camera with the other record. It will probably soothe you to learn that Bostwick has found the other camera hidden in his room, with the film miraculously undestroyed; and that little bit of pure conceit is going to hang him.

  “But the solution of the two films provided our last answer and drove in the last nail. For a long time I had been wondering dimly: was the fact that George Harding took the picture from so far to the left only an indication that he wanted to be close to the windows? And here was still another reason. He wasn’t placed so that he could film the window of the office, through which Nemo appeared, because he didn’t dare film it. It would have shown the afternoon sunlight—when he took the rehearsal-film—blazing in at the windows as Nemo entered. The windows of the office face west, and yesterday was a day of brilliant sunshine. So he had to stand at one side; and, in the same way, Emmet had to stand at one side for the evening performance. When Inspector Elliot suddenly realised what was happening from my questions about the Photoflood bulb, he also hit on the meaning of what we may call the Left-handed Photographic Stance; and a picture of the truth appeared plain and clear on the wall.”

  Elliot grunted. Dr. Fell, whose pipe had gone out, drained his tankard of beer.

  “Now let us sum up the rather painful business of George Harding and Marjorie Wills.

  “Harding planned a series of clever and savagely cold-blooded crimes some months ago for just one motive: Financial gain. He meant to show first off that, whoever the poisoner at Sodbury Cross might be, it could not possibly be George Harding. His method of attack was not new. It had been tried before. All along you have been quoting the case of Christiana Edmunds in 1871. I told Elliot there was a moral in that story; but some of you have discussed the case and persistently refused to see the moral. The moral is not: beware of women who run after doctors. The moral is: beware of the person who may poison innocent people at random merely to show he could not have been the poisoner. That is what Christiana Edmunds did; and it is what George Harding did.

  “In his fat-witted vanity, a vanity comparable to Palmer’s or Pritchard’s, he believed he could do exactly as he pleased with Marjorie Wills. I grant you he had reason to think so. A woman who pays your expenses for a several months’ holiday may fairly be described as indulgent or even doting; and, if it is any consolation to him, he will be the legal husband of a rich woman until the hangman turns him loose into other pastures.

  “Marcus Chesney was a very rich man, and Miss Wills was his heiress. But until Chesney (a tough-fibred man in every sense of the word)—until Chesney died, Harding could hardly hope for a penny. He knew that all along, and I understand Chesney made it very clear to him. Harding really did want to launch his new electro-plating process along large lines, and for all I know it may be a very fine process, though it is a different sort of electrical treatment I should like to see applied to him. He thought himself a great man who had to have it, so Marcus Chesney must be eliminated.

  “He was thinking along these lines, I suspect, from the very time he met Marjorie. He therefore ‘planted’ a poisoner at Sodbury Cross along the lines you know. One visit to Mrs. Terry’s shop, in any s
ort of disguise, would give him the layout and the position of the chocolate-boxes; a visit a few days later would enable him to switch the boxes. He used strychnine for a deliberate reason—because it is one of the few poisons a research chemist does not deal with. Where he bought it we don’t yet know, but it is hardly a wonder the police failed to trace it: they had never heard of George Harding.”

  “Thanks,” said Major Crow.

  “Nor do we know what his original scheme was for eliminating Chesney. But bang into his lap, a gift from heaven, dropped this opportunity to poison Chesney with his victim’s actual encouragement and co-operation. Also, Chesney had tumbled to the trick with the chocolate-boxes; and Harding had to make haste. Ironically, Chesney never for an instant suspected Harding’s guilt. But he must not go on too far with his investigations, or he might uncover too much. Now, one thing rather worried Harding. If he were to carry out the murder in that way, he had to use a poison which struck and killed almost instantly. That meant that it had to be one of the cyanides; he was working with potassium cyanide; and suspicion would instantly be directed at him.

  “He got round it with a great dexterity of acting. I said this afternoon that I was sorry to tell you Harding had obtained no poison from his laboratory. He hadn’t. He manufactured it here. This house, as you have noticed, and particularly the grounds round-about, are both haunted by a faint odor of bitter-almonds. The one difficulty about concealing prussic acid anywhere is its faint smell even when corked down; but this smell would never be noticed at Bellegarde unless somebody got a deep whiff from the opened bottle. So he manufactured his prussic acid, and he deliberately left some of it in the bathroom cabinet. He did this so that he could point out to you how easy it was for anybody with a small knowledge of chemistry to make prussic acid, and that someone was trying to throw suspicion on him. I have no doubt he made a good story of it.”

  “He did,” said Major Crow.