The Emperor's Snuff-Box

by John Dickson Carr

  “Yes. Is Mrs. Neill guilty of infidelity, or is she guilty of murder? She can’t be guilty of both, you know.”

  Toby opened his mouth, but shut it again.

  And Dermot, moving his eyes from one to the other of them, went on in the same heavy, patient tone as he addressed Toby.

  “That’s what you seem to be forgetting. In one breath you say you can’t bear to think of Atwood being there when you were telephoning to her. In the next breath you shout for an explanation of how a chip from the snuff-box came to be tangled up in her robe. It seems rather rough on Mrs. Neill when you, her friends, try to have it both ways.

  “You must make up your mind, Mr. Lawes. If she was over in this house murdering your father—from no reasonable motive that I can see—then Atwood certainly wasn’t with her in her bedroom. The question of infidelity doesn’t arise to shock you. And if Atwood was with her in the bedroom, then she certainly wasn’t over here murdering your father.” He paused. “Which one will you have, sir?”

  The polished, ironic courtesy of his tone struck at Toby like a barb. It brought realization to them all.

  “Doctor,” said M. Goron, in a loud but steady voice, “I should like the favor of a word with you in private.”

  “Willingly.”

  “Madame would not mind —” M. Goron swung round to Helena, and spoke in a still louder voice, “— if Dr. Kinross and I went out into the foyer for a moment?”

  He did not wait for a reply. Firmly taking hold of Dermot’s arm, M. Goron marched him across the room like a schoolmaster. M. Goron opened the door to the hall, motioned Dermot to precede him, bowed briefly to those still in the room, and went out.

  In the hall it was nearly dark. M. Goron touched a light switch, illuminating an arched, gray-tiled entrance with a stone staircase covered in red carpet. Breathing hard, the prefect of police hung up his hat and cane on the hat stand. He had followed the conversation in English with some difficulty; now, making sure that the door was closed, he addressed Dermot in angry French.

  “My friend, you disappoint me.”

  “Many apologies.”

  “Furthermore, you betray me. I bring you here to be of some assistance. And, my God, what do you do? Will you tell me why you take this attitude?”

  “The woman isn’t guilty.”

  M. Goron took a few rapid little steps up and down the hall. He stopped only to give Dermot a very inscrutable, very Gallic look.

  “Is that,” he inquired politely, “the head or the heart which speaks?”

  (Confound the fellow!)

  “Come!” said M. Goron. “I had thought that you at least, the merchant of scientific fact—I think that was your own term?—would be impervious to the charms of Madame Neill. This woman is a public menace!”

  “I tell you —!”

  The other regarded him pityingly.

  “Dear doctor, I am not a detective. No, no, no! But as for zizipompom, that is different. Any form of zizipompom I can detect at a distance of three kilometres and in the dark.”

  Dermot looked him in the eye. “On my word of honor,” he retorted truthfully, “I don’t believe she is guilty.”

  “This story of hers?”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “My dear doctor! You ask me?”

  “I do. This man Atwood falls on the stairs and cracks his head. Mrs. Neill’s description was absolutely characteristic: I tell you that as a medical man. Bleeding from the nose, without injury to it, is one of the surest signs of concussion. Atwood gets up, thinking he is not seriously hurt; he walks to his hotel; and there he collapses. That’s characteristic too.”

  At this word “characteristic,” M. Goron seemed very thoughtful. But he did not pursue it.

  “You say that, after M. Atwood’s own statement…?”

  “Why not? He realizes that he is in a bad way. He has the sense to realize that nothing must connect him with Mrs. Neill or the affair in the rue des Anges. How is he to know that she will be dragged into the murder as a principal? Who, in God’s name, could have foreseen that? So he blurts out this story of being knocked over by a car.”

  M. Goron made a face.

  “Of course,” Dermot suggested, “you have compared specimens of Sir Maurice Lawes’s blood with the blood found on this lady’s sash and negligée?”

  “Naturally. And both specimens, I may tell you, belong to the same blood-group.”

  “Which group?”

  “Group Four.”

  Dermot raised his eyebrows. “That’s not much good, is it? It’s the commonest blood-group of all. Forty-one per cent of all Europeans belong to it.—Have you tested Atwood’s blood too?”

  “But naturally not! Why should we? This is the very first I have heard of madame’s story!”

  “Test it, then. If it comes from a different group, her story is automatically disproved.”

  “Ah!”

  “But if, on the other hand, it also comes from Group Four, that’s at least negative confirmation of what Mrs. Neill says. In any case, don’t you think that in the interests of justice you ought to make the experiment before throwing that woman into prison and subjecting her to more refinements in the way of torture?”

  M. Goron took another little run up and down the hall.

  “Myself,” he shouted, “I prefer to think that Madame Neill heard of M. Atwood’s injury from the car, and used it to fit her story. Being very sure—mark you!—that the also love-sick M. Atwood will confirm whatever she says when he wakes up.”

  This, Dermot had to admit in his soul, was infernally plausible. He could have sworn he was right, but what if he were wrong? The disturbing effect of Eve Neill remained with him: he could imagine her presence now.

  Yet he knew with fiery certainty that his judgment, his instincts, every weight of human logic as opposed to the logic of evidence, had not been mistaken. And, unless he fought back with every thrust and trick, they would have this woman in the dock for murder.

  “Motive?” he suggested. “Have you even yet found a ghost of a motive?”

  “To the devil with this motive!”

  “Come, now! That’s unworthy of you. Why did she kill Sir Maurice Lawes?”

  “I told you this afternoon,” returned M. Goron. “It is theoretical, yes. But it marches. The afternoon before he is killed, Sir Maurice hears something of a monstrous nature against Madame Neill —”

  “He hears what?”

  “And how, in the name of a small green cabbage, should I know?”

  “Then why suggest it?”

  “Doctor, be silent and listen to me! The old man returns home, in that strange state they describe. He tells M. Horatio, this Tobee. Both are in a state of emotion. At one o’clock in the morning, M. Horatio telephones to Madame Neill and informs her of what they know. Madame Neill comes over, also in a state, to see Sir Maurice and debate this matter with him….”

  “Ah! So you also,” interposed Dermot, “want to have it both ways?”

  M. Goron blinked at him.

  “Pardon?”

  “You will notice,” Dermot continued, “that this is what did NOT happen. There was no quarrel. There were no angry words. There was not even a confrontation. According to your own theory, the murderer walked in softly, stole up behind a deaf man, and struck him down without warning while he was still absorbed in his beloved snuff-box. Is this correct?”

  M. Goron hesitated. “In effect —” he began.

  “Well! You say Mrs. Neill did this. Why did she do it? Because Sir Maurice knew something about her which was also known to Toby Lawes, since Toby had just finished telling her about it over the telephone?”

  “In a sense it is true….”

  “Consider. I telephone to you in the middle of the night and I say, ‘M. Goron, the examining magistrate has just told me you are a German spy and are going to be shot.’ Do you immediately walk out and kill the examining magistrate, to prevent leakage of a secret already known to me? Similarl
y! If it were anything against Mrs. Neill’s character, would she be likely to creep across the street and murder the father of her fiancé without so much as asking for a word of explanation?”

  “Woman,” said M. Goron weightily, “is incalculable.”

  “But surely not as incalculable as all that?” This time M. Goron took a slower, longer measurement of the hall as he paced it. His head was down, and he fumed. Several times he began to speak, but checked himself. At last he spread out his hands in exasperation.

  “My friend,” he cried, “you try to persuade me flat against the evidence!”

  “Yet one has doubts?”

  “One,” the prefect confessed, “sometimes has doubts.”

  “You are still going to arrest her?”

  M. Goron was astonished. “Naturally! There is no question but that the examining magistrate will order it. Unless, of course —” his eye had a sardonic twinkle, “— my good friend the doctor can demonstrate her innocence within the next few hours. Tell me. Have you a theory about this?”

  “In a way, I have a theory.”

  “Which is?”

  Again Dermot looked him straight in the eyes.

  “It seems to me almost certain,” he replied, “that the murder was committed by some member of this ‘pleasant’ Lawes family.”

  XI

  IT REQUIRED A GREAT deal to startle the prefect of police of La Bandelette. This did it. His eyes seemed to bulge as he stared back at his companion. After a pause, as though gestures alone would suffice for such an incredible proposition, he pointed his finger inquiringly at the closed door of the drawing room.

  “Yes,” said Dermot. “I mean just that.”

  M. Goron cleared his throat.

  “You wished, I think, to see the room where the crime was committed. Come with me, and you shall see it. Until then —” he made a frantic pantomime of calling for silence, “— not another word!”

  And M. Goron swept round and led the way up the stairs. Dermot could hear him groaning.

  The hall on the floor above was also dark until M. Goron switched on the lights. He indicated the door of the study, at the front. Tall and white-painted, it was a door to riddles; it might become a door to terror. Bracing himself, Dermot laid hold of the metal handle, and pushed it open.

  A blur of twilight lay beyond. Fitted carpet, like that of the study, is rare in French houses; this carpet was so thick that the bottom of the door clung to it and scraped the nap as it swung. Dermot’s mind registered the fact as he groped to the left of the door after a light switch.

  There were two light switches, one above the other. When he pressed the first, it kindled the desk-lamp in its green-glass shade, on the flat-topped table desk. When he pressed the second, the central chandelier with its flashing prisms, a sort of glass castle, sprang into blaze.

  He saw a square room, its wood-panelled walls glistening white. Immediately opposite him were the two long windows, steel shutters now closed. In the wall to (his) left was the heavy white marble mantelpiece. Against the wall to his right stood the table desk, its swivel-chair pushed a little way out. The spindly gilt-and-brocade chairs, the little round-topped gilt table in the center, stood out colorfully against gray carpet. All round the walls, except where one or two bookcases broke their line, glass-fronted curio cabinets reflected back the glitter of the chandelier. At any other time their exhibits would have intrigued him.

  The room was stuffy. It smelled strongly of some cleaning fluid, like the smell of death itself.

  Dermot walked over to the desk.

  Yes: much cleaning had been done here. Old blood stains, now rust-brown, remained only on the desk blotter and on the large writing pad where Sir Maurice Lawes had been making notes just before his death.

  No traces of the shattered snuff-box remained. A magnifying glass, a jeweler’s lens, pens, ink, and other desk-materials were scattered over the blotter, under the light of the green-glass lamp. Dermot glanced at the writing pad, beside which a gold fountain-pen had dropped from its owner’s hand. The writing on the pad was headed in very large, ornamental, neat lettering, “Snuff-box, shaped like a watch, once the property of the Emperor Napoleon I.” Then, in small but meticulously neat copperplate script, it went on:

  This snuff-box was presented to Bonaparte by his father-in-law, the Emperor of Austria, at the birth of Napoleon’s son, the King of Rome, March 20th, 1811. The case measures 2¼4 inches in diameter. It is bound in gold; the dummy watch-stem is of gold; the watch-numerals and hands are made of small diamonds, with Bonaparte’s crest, the letter “N” in the centre of—

  Here the writing ended in two splashes of blood.

  Dermot whistled. “This thing,” he said, “must have been enormously valuable!”

  “Valuable?” the prefect almost screamed. “Haven’t I told you?”

  “Yet it was smashed.”

  “As you see, dear doctor.” M. Goron pointed. “I also told you it was of curious shape. As you will see by the writing, it was shaped like a watch.”

  “What sort of watch?”

  “An ordinary watch!” M. Goron fished out his own and held it up. “In point of fact, the members of the family tell me, when Sir Maurice first showed it to them they thought it was a watch. It opened out … so. Kindly note the nicks in the wood on the desk where the murderer’s blows went wild.”

  Dermot put down the note pad.

  While the prefect watched him in an agony of doubt, he turned round and looked across the room at the stand of fire irons beside the marble mantelpiece. Over this mantelpiece hung a bronze medallion profile of the Emperor Napoleon. The poker with which the crime had been committed was now missing from the stand of fire irons. Dermot measured distances with his eye. His mind clashed and rang with half-formed ideas, out of which there emerged at least one inconsistency in the evidence given by M. Goron.

  “Tell me,” he said. “Is any member of the Lawes family afflicted with bad eyesight?”

  “Ah, my God!” cried M. Goron, and threw up his hands. “The Lawes family! Always the Lawes family! Look here.” He grew more subdued. “We are alone now. Nobody can hear us. Will you tell me why you are so positive that one of them must have murdered the old man?”

  “I persist in my question. Is any of the family afflicted with bad eyesight?”

  “That, dear doctor, I can’t say.”

  “But it should be easy to find out?”

  “Undoubtedly!” M. Goron hesitated. His eyes narrowed. “You were thinking,” he suggested, and made the motion of one who strikes with a poker, “that the murderer must have had bad eyesight to miss a target like a human head with some of his blows?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Dermot made a slow tour of the room, peering into the glass cases. Some of the exhibits stood in lonely splendor, others were ticketed with neat cards in the same tiny copperplate writing. Though he had no knowledge of collecting beyond some acquaintance with precious stones, it would have been apparent to anyone that this hodge-podge contained a large quantity of merely interesting junk mixed with a number of genuinely fine items.

  There was porcelain, there were fans, reliquaries, an extraordinary clock or two, a rack of Toledo rapiers, and one case (grim and dingy amid delicate knick-knacks) devoted to relics obtained at the demolition of old Newgate prison. In the bookcases Dermot noted that a greater part of the books were technical works dealing with the identification of jewels.

  “To continue?” persisted M. Goron.

  “There was one other bit of evidence you mentioned,” said Dermot. “You told me that, though nothing had been stolen, a diamond-and-turquoise necklace had been taken from one of the cabinets. You found it, slightly bloodstained, lying on the floor under the cabinet.”

  M. Goron nodded, and tapped a bulbous glass cabinet immediately to the left of the door. Like the others, this cabinet was not locked. Its front swung smoothly open at the touch of M. Goron’s finger. The shelves inside were made of gla
ss. Occupying the place of honor in the center, against a background of dark-blue velvet tilted up so as to be seen better, the necklace burned with shifting fires against the prism-dazzle of the chandelier.

  “It has been replaced, and wiped clean,” M. Goron said. “By tradition, this necklace was worn by Madame de Lamballe, the favorite of Queen Marie-Antoinette, when Madame was hacked to death by the mob outside the prison of La Force.—Sir Maurice Lawes had a curious taste for the gruesome, don’t you think?”

  “Someone has a curious taste for the gruesome.”

  M. Goron chuckled. “You observe what stands beside it?”

  “It looks,” said Dermot, glancing to the left of the necklace, “like a music-box on little wheels.”

  “It is a music-box on little wheels. And, faith, it was bad judgment to put that music-box on a glass shelf. I remember, the day following the crime, when we were examining this room with the dead man still sitting in his chair, that the commissaire of police opened this case. His hand struck the music-box. It fell on the floor….”

  Again M. Goron pointed to the box, a very heavy one of wood on whose dingy tin sides were painted faded scenes of what Dermot recognized as the American Civil War.

  “The music-box landed on its side. It began to play John Brown’s Body. You have heard the tune?” The prefect whistled a few bars of it. “Its effect, I assure you, was remarkable. M. Horatio Lawes angrily flies out and tells us not to touch his father’s collection. M. Benjamin Phillips says somebody must have been playing the music-box recently; since he, a mechanician of talent, repaired it and wound it up only a few days before, and now it runs down after playing a stave or two. Can you imagine such a commotion over a small point of the sort.”

  “Yes, I think I can. As I told you earlier today, this is a characteristic crime.”

  “Ah!” M. Goron leaped to attention. “I know you did. It would interest me very much to hear why you said that.”

  “Because,” answered Dermot, “this is a domestic crime. A cozy, comfortable, hearth-rug murder of the sort which almost always originates at home.”

  M. Goron passed an unsteady hand across his forehead. He glanced round him as though seeking inspiration.