The Bradmoor Murder

by Melville Davisson Post

  “But she was profoundly disappointed that we did not find seared hoofprints on the wall. They must be there. We had not looked close enough! She wished to be carried out in her chair, so that she could examine it herself. She stuck to her theory. Of course, she could be persuaded out of her details—her amplifications of the thing. But she held stoutly to one fact—she had heard the Devil leap off into the sea!

  “I put some of the best men from the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard on it at once; and they gave it up. Of course, we tried to get at it by the usual method of elimination. One had to consider every theory and see how it fitted the facts. How could anyone have murdered Bradmoor when it was impossible to get out of the room after having done it, or to get into the room if Bradmoor had himself locked the door?

  “And how could the man have taken his own life?

  “There was no weapon to be found; his right hand was clutched around a fishing rod; and his left hand was full of flies—with a bright-colored one between the thumb and finger. These things must have been in his hand before his death, and at the time of his death, for they were still clutched in his convulsed fingers.

  “The wound was hideous. The man must have died instantly. He could not have moved after the thing happened. Every nerve must have been paralyzed. It was clearly beyond reason to formulate any theory which would have depended upon any movement of the man after the wound was made. The surgeons simply laughed at the idea.

  “He could not have moved after the bullet struck him; and there he sat with his fishing tackle gripped in his hands. There could not have been anything else in his hands; and as I have said, there was no weapon.

  “I don’t think we omitted anything in our efforts to get at a solution of the mystery.

  “Everybody in the country about was put in inquisition. There had been no one in the neighborhood of the house on that afternoon. We knew the names of each person, and his mission, who traveled the road that afternoon. We knew every motor car that went over it, and every workman that walked along it. We knew where every man, woman and child in the community was that afternoon. There was simply no clew to an assassin.… And there was no explanation.”

  Sir Godfrey Simon’s eyes batted again.

  “Except mine,” he said.

  Marquis laughed. “Or Dunn’s—the Stone God stumping down out of the mountain; or the old woman’s theory. The country accepted that. It was even more popular than the theory Sir Godfrey advances.

  “We have had a variety of mysteries at Scotland Yard during my time as Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, and from Mayne’s time down; but the Mystery of the Letts, the Rising Sun postcard, or the affair of the Chinese Embassy were nothing to this.

  “In every other mystery with which we have been concerned, there was always some possible explanation. One could make a hypothesis that did not outrage the human understanding; but one could not form a hypothesis in this case that did not outrage it.

  “Now, that is an appalling thing when you stop to think about it! The human mind is very clever, very ingenious. When you present a mysterious case, it will furnish you with some solution; but it can’t furnish a solution for this case.

  “Arrange the facts before you, and try it!

  “A man is found dead in a locked room; there is no weapon; the fingers of both of his hands are gripped about objects that could have had nothing to do with his death. There is no way into, or out of, the room. There is a great, ragged hole in his chest. The sound of the shot is heard; and there you are.

  “If you can formulate an explanation, you will be cleverer than the whole of England. There is nothing that the British public loves like a mystery; and when the details of one are given to them, every individual in the kingdom sits down to formulate an explanation. You can’t stop him—it’s an obsession. It’s like a puzzle. He goes on doggedly until he gets a solution. That’s the reason why, when Scotland Yard wishes to remove a mystery from public notice, it gives out a solution. The whole interest of the country lies in solving the mystery; once solved, it is forgotten.

  “But even our best experts could not give out an explanation in this case; we wished to do so because we wished to keep the thing quietly in our hands until we could work it out. But we could not put out a solution; there wasn’t any!”

  He paused in the narrative, and selected a cigarette from an open box on the table but did not at once light it.

  “When it became certain,” he went on, “that no assassin could be connected with this incomprehensible tragedy, we turned back upon the details of the only witness who was able to furnish us any fact whatsoever. But with every day’s delay, and with each complication of the matter, the old woman’s story had become more involved. It was so decked out with fanciful imaginings that it became difficult to realize that the whole extravaganza was pure fancy, outside of two evidences.

  “These two evidences stood alone as the only concrete features in the case; one, that she had heard a sound, which could have been the explosion of a weapon; that she took it for the back-fire of a motor car at some distance away indicated that it was a loud explosive sound.

  “This fact seemed to be unquestioned.

  “Bradmoor had been killed by a shot, and the sound of the shot had been heard. Of this we were certain; but that something had leaped off into the water was an evidence more in doubt. We were convinced that the woman had heard the sound of the shot that killed the old Duke, but we were by no means convinced that she had heard a splash in the water. That element of her story seemed always too closely associated with her theory—that the whole tragedy was at the hand and instigation of the Devil. Around that idea she presently built up her fantastic explanation.

  “With every interrogation of her, she became more elaborate, more profuse in her details, and more extravagant in her assurance. She had heard the Devil leap into the sea. It was not a heavy splash—such as the body of a man would make; it could not have been the body of a man. It was a thin, slight, sharp splash, precisely what the slender body of a Devil’s imp would make as it leaped lightly from the edge of the window into the water—its pointed feet descending, its arm up.”

  Henry Marquis laughed!

  “She had every detail of it now. It must have given her an immense interest in life. Imagine that startling melodrama cutting into the monotony of uneventful days in a padded chair by a window. And from being a neglected and forgotten derelict, she was presently the heroine of a vivid romance, a person of importance to the countryside. The cottage was crowded, and she had the glory of a story-teller of Bagdad.

  “The result was, of course, that she presently became useless so far as any further inquiry was concerned. That was clear. She was of value to us for two facts only—and one of them in doubt. That she had heard the shot was certain. We felt we could depend on that; but the splash was likely fancy. And the more we considered that element of the case, the more we were convinced that this was one of the colored details requisite to her theory.

  “There was no ledge to the window. There was no way in which an assassin could have climbed there in order to leap off into the sea after the crime had been committed. There was no place beyond that window from which the shot could have been fired. There was only the open sea lying beyond it.

  “Of course, there were improbabilities suggested—one of them was that the shot had been fired from the high mast of a sailing ship; but there had been no sailing ship on that afternoon. The officials of the Coast Service were able to assure us of that; they kept a record of everything. No sailing ship had been on the open sea on that afternoon inside of this point.

  “Of course, we considered everything.

  “Some crank sent us an anonymous letter, saying that the shot had been fired from an airplane, or a seaplane; and we looked into that. But there had been no such craft in the neighborhood on that afternoon. So those possibilities were excluded. They were so unlikely that it seemed almost absurd to inqui
re into them. But when you stop to think about it, they were the only theories that in any way indicated a rational solution of the matter; and that they were not the solution, there was, as it happened, conclusive evidence. There had been no sailing ship, and no aircraft, near the place on that afternoon.”

  Marquis paused again. He lighted his cigarette at one of the candles on the table, drew the smoke through it an instant, and then came back to his narrative.

  “I have been giving you this case in extended detail,” he said, “because I am trying to make you realize the difficulties that it presented, and how carefully those difficulties were considered. I wish you to understand, as we presently came to understand, how incapable the thing was of any solution. We returned again and again to it, as I have returned here in my narrative again and again to it, because we were constantly assailed with the belief that we had overlooked something. There must be some evidences that had escaped us—a way into that room, or a way out of it, by which an assassin could have encompassed Bradmoor’s death. But we got no further. There was no way into that room, nor any way out of it, and there was no way from above it in which an assassin could have killed Bradmoor; and yet there he was, shot to death in his chair!”

  Henry Marquis laughed. It was an ironical chuckle of a laugh.

  “The butler’s mother was the only person with a theory, and by Heaven, there were evidences to support it. She assembled them and fitted them together. She convinced the countryside. The very impossible things we found connected with the irrational explanations of the matter, were the strongest evidences of her theory.

  “One had to consider them, no matter how practical one was.

  “The very fact that we were able to show that old Bradmoor could not have been killed by any human agency of which we had any knowledge, proved, as she pointed out, that he could have been killed by a supernatural agency only. Certainly only a Devil’s imp could leave no marks on a wall, and could leap off, disappearing into the sea. Besides, Bradmoor had been afraid of the Devil!”

  Henry Marquis hesitated a moment. He broke the cigarette in his fingers into fragments, crumbling them on the table.

  “Now, there,” he said, “one came upon a series of evidences that had to be admitted. Bradmoor had been noticed to act queerly for some time. It was only after his death that the various trivial instances were precisely recalled, and fitted together. But they had been beyond doubt observed, and, now when they were connected up, they took on an unquestioned significance.

  “The man had been afraid of something!

  “He would lock himself into his room at night; he never sat long in one position; he would not stand before a window, nor sit with his back to an open door. It was recalled that he had been clever with an explanation of these idiosyncrasies—extremely clever. It was a draft he avoided before an open door. Or his eyes were sensitive to the strong light of a window; or he was nervous—too many pipes—he must find a milder tobacco, and so forth.

  “The explanations covered the peculiarities while the man was living, and there was nothing to create a suspicion of some unusual motive; but after his death they became signboards that all pointed in one direction—the morale of the man had been gradually breaking down under an increasing monomania of fear!

  “These evidences were all bright-colored threads for the Devil theory. Bradmoor had been afraid of the Devil! And he had not been afraid without a reason! The butler’s mother had a fine, lurid theory that pleased the countryside.”

  Henry Marquis suddenly smote the table with his hand.

  “But it could not be considered by us. There is only one thing of which I am absolutely certain, and that is that the supernatural does not exist. This is a physical world. Every problem in it has an explanation. The Devil is a myth.

  “There was one thing only to do now,” he pursued, “and that was to go back over the man’s life to see if it contained any adventure that might be in any way connected with the tragedy. We began to investigate his life.”

  The face of Sir Godfrey Simon beyond him at the table lifted unmoving, like a mask:

  “There is where you made a mistake,” he said; “it was not enough to go back over Bradmoor’s life; you had to go farther than that.”

  “Farther than Bradmoor’s life?” Marquis interrogated. “How could we go farther than that? What was farther than his life?”

  A faint smile appeared on Sir Godfrey Simon’s face, but he made no reply.

  Henry Marquis was annoyed.

  “You mean the curse that killed Bradmoor!”

  “Precisely that,” replied Sir Godfrey, his face unmoving.

  “If you had come to me, I could have predicted what would happen to Bradmoor. He could not escape it.”

  Marquis interrupted.

  “Then you knew it was going to kill Bradmoor?”

  “Surely,” he said. “Had it not killed his father and his grandfather?”

  “But his grandfather was drowned on the Northwest Coast,” continued Marquis. “He was shooting brant, and the plug came out of the boat.”

  “Some one pulled the plug out,” replied Sir Godfrey.

  “And his father fell from the steeple of the chapel here.”

  Again that vague smile, like a bit of sun on a painted image’s face.

  “Did he fall?”

  Henry Marquis swore under his breath. “Damn it, man,” he said, “you are a companion for the butler’s mother, only the old woman is more satisfactory; she gives an explanation with her theory, and you never give an explanation. If you know what killed old Bradmoor, why don’t you tell us how it killed him?”

  Sir Godfrey Simon looked calmly across the table at the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard. The mask of his face had now the expression of a man of experience regarding the futile chatter of a child.

  “Marquis,” he said, “you sometimes profoundly annoy me. Because one understands one feature of a matter, does it also follow that one must understand equally every other feature of it? I have made this explanation until I am monotonously weary of it: I know what killed the old Duke; I do not know how it killed him. You do not see the interest in this case as I see it. The interest to me lies exclusively in the fact that it did kill him. I am not concerned about the means it took. I don’t care. I am not interested. That is for you to find out, if you care.”

  He took up the glass of whisky beside him, tasted it, and put it down again. He acted to me like an amused man, at a quarrel among children.

  “If you find out how the old Duke was killed, you will see that I am right—if you ever find out.”

  Marquis shrugged his shoulders. He turned again to me and said:

  “We finally reached the dead point. There was no solution to the thing!”

  II

  Lord Dunn now took up the narrative. He had been silent in his chair, moved back from the table. He had lighted a cigar, and enjoyed it while Henry Marquis had been talking; but he enjoyed it like a bookmaker. It was tilted at a rakish angle in his mouth; and he blew the smoke about him like a stableboy. He now took the cigar out of his mouth, and threw it into the fireplace.

  “But there was something in his life,” he declared.

  “It was the last exploration old Bradmoor undertook, the one that used up the remnant of his fortune. I mean that terrible push into the Lybian Desert. He was too old to undertake it, and he was too poor. It broke him down in every direction. The man came out a wreck—a worse wreck than we realized; one could see the physical evidences on him.”

  He made a big, awkward gesture with his hands, precisely like a bookmaker rejecting a bet.

  “I don’t ask anyone to believe it,” he said. “I don’t know that I believe it. I judge, in fact, that I don’t believe it. Of course, it’s a crazy notion; but this whole business is full of crazy notions—nothing but damned crazy notions.”

  He paused to light another big cigar.

  “Anyway, I know the facts, a
nd what happened. I know them better than any other living person, because I considered that expedition before Bradmoor did. The German came to me first; then he went to the old Duke. I was not interested in the Lybian Desert just then. Deserts don’t amuse me. Women go through them and write books about it. I was going into Yucatan, so I sent the German to Bradmoor.

  “I could not determine whether he was a liar, building on some facts, or whether he had been with Rohlfs’ expedition. You know about that—or has everything that happened before the Great Mad War been forgotten? Rohlfs persuaded Kaiser Wilhelm to fit him out with an expedition to explore the plateau of the Lybian Desert. Rohlfs had a theory that the country now desert had been once well watered—the theater of an immense civilization, antedating the later civilizations of which we have any knowledge. He got the professors to back him up. They prepared a monograph for him, and it was published everywhere.

  “Rohlfs persuaded the Kaiser to send him in.

  “Of course, we don’t know how much bluff the Germans were putting up. It is possible that the Kaiser was merely taking a look at Egypt, and the English possessions beyond it, and that the expedition was a scouting party. That would be an explanation of the wide publicity given to the monograph the professors put out, and the money the German Government spent on the expedition. But I don’t believe that was Rohlfs’ motive. I think Rohlfs was really on the trail of a civilization, and that he was sincere about it.

  “Anyhow, the expedition went in, and everybody knows what happened to it, and where it broke down. Rholfs went on with a fragment of what he could get together, and he found some evidences of what he expected to find—not a civilization like that of the Egyptian Nile, but something more like what I found in Yucatan. At least, that’s the story the German came to me with. I mean Slaggerman. He turned up here, a sort of roustabout on a North German Lloyd ship; and he hunted me up.

  “I suppose he saw the name in the newspapers.