Death-Watch (25 page)

“Now remember what we decided last night. We decided that Ames was watching, and that he got into the house long before he rang the bell at exactly midnight. You recall that? To ring the bell, to have some excuse for coming to this house, was necessary in case he should be caught; he would have to go through with it, even if to keep from arousing suspicion. He was watching Eleanor—probably through these windows, which are on the ground floor. When he sees her leave at a quarter to twelve, in a heavy coat which indicates she will be absent for a while, he gets in, either through the open front door or by a simple matter of burgling one of these windows. We are not certain whether or not the accuser, Mrs. Steffins, told him of the secret panel; in any case, he would make a rapid search of the whole room to make sure of all his evidence.

“But,” said Hadley, with a soft, triumphant emphasis, “look at what happens even by Eleanor’s own testimony to us. In the ordinary course of things she would have gone up to Hastings on the roof and Ames would have got his evidence. But she reached the door upstairs—and discovered she didn’t have the key, which she had mislaid downstairs …”

“Blast your evidence!” growled Dr. Fell. “I’m afraid you’re right about her coming downstairs, as she said. But …”

“Ames unexpectedly hears her coming; you’ll notice,” put in Hadley, setting his foot on the creaky floor, “how they don’t have the thick carpet here at the back of the house, or in the hall here. He turns out the light and ducks for cover; under the bed, behind the door—you’ll have noticed they all open inwards—anywhere. She comes in to look for her mislaid key, finds it, and suddenly realizes that somebody’s been ransacking the room. The most skilful searcher can’t do it without leaving a trace, you know. Well, naturally, what does she do? Remembering that police officer, she goes instantly to her secret panel, and opens it to see …

“While her back is turned, Ames, quiet in his tennis shoes but not at all noiseless, gets out of the room. Not quickly enough. She’s not going to set up an alarm; she knows quite well it’s no burglar and that she’s utterly lost if an alarm is given. But this cobra of ours, who snatched the first convenient weapon when she was in danger at Gamridge’s, does now exactly what she did then! Right in front of her is the heavy, sharp clock-hand of the pair she stole for Christopher Paull, and the gloves she used to avoid getting wet paint on her fingers. And she snatches them.

“But what about Ames? That’s what I’m coming to. Have you realized his difficulty? He would probably have had time to duck out the front door and run for it. He wasn’t afraid of her. But the danger was—from his viewpoint, since he didn’t think anybody knew him for a detective—that she might believe he was a real burglar and set up an alarm. In case of capture, he could exonerate himself; but he would give the Force a nasty black eye for illegal methods, possibly get himself sacked, and certainly let his quarry know she was his quarry prematurely! He couldn’t afford capture. And, alarm or no alarm, the surest way to capture lay straight out that front door. He knew that just at that time, just at midnight, there would be a policeman making his round smack outside that door. And any copper who sees a seedy vagrant, in the full light of a street lamp, slipping out of a dark house at midnight …

“On the other hand, she might not have seen him at all. She might not even be positive of a burglar, since nothing was taken and (he hoped) nothing disturbed. In either event, to run was foolishness. His best course, and in fact his only course, was—well, gentlemen of the jury?” Hadley suggested.

Melson blinked.

“Eh? Yes, certainly,” he admitted. “His best course was to stand out on the doorstep boldly punching Boscombe’s bell.”

There was a pause. This time it was Hadley who chuckled. “Exactly. If the copper came along, there he was honestly ringing the bell for an appointment he could prove. If a wide-eyed woman rushed out: ‘Burglar, madam? Do you think if I had burgled your room I should be here ringing the bell? I saw somebody come out of here, I saw the door wide open, and I’ve been trying to rouse you.’ So there he stood, with the door wide open, waiting to see if she would come out. If she didn’t, it meant he hadn’t been seen. Then he could go straight in again, up to his appointment, and later have a shot at the interrupted search.”

Dr. Fell hitched his cloak round his shoulders.

“H’mf. Has the learned gentleman,” he said, “got any corroborative evidence for his Arsène Lupin episode?”

“The learned gentleman has. Don’t you remember for what a
long time
he kept punching that bell (as Hastings told us), even though he’d been told to come up straightaway? He was seeing if the coast was clear. Do you remember that you yourself found the front door
wide open
when you went up with the constable who spotted it? He’d have closed it, naturally, unless he wanted to make sure nobody charged down on him in the dark.

“Now let’s go back to our pet cobra. She’s come out into that dark hall with the knife and the gloves. And there the enemy is, silhouetted on the street lamp, ringing the doorbell and summoning aid. It must have been the most horrible moment she ever had. If she doesn’t act she’s caught. If she does act, she’s apt to be seen in the act of murder with a stolen clock-hand. She could risk killing him—stabbing him as a burglar who got in—if only he actually would get into the house. Or does she even dare risk that? She’s got to do something before there’s an answer to that bell. Now he’s coming in. Now he’s walking across the hall, while she’s back under the staircase. Now he starts upstairs—

“And she’s got him.”

Hadley ended with a sort of pounce and jerk in his words, clenching one fist. He looked at Melson as though every sentence were a blow to avenge the Force.

“Lastly,” he said, “and in case you accuse an old salt like myself of romancing, I’ll offer you the final, the absolute, the sealing proof. I’ll do that by explaining what you, Fell, tried to ridicule as ‘The Mystery of the Flying Glove.’ It only occurred to me when I examined that staircase a little while ago, and remembered something I was too blind to see before. But I can explain to you the flying glove and why it flew. Look at it.”

He took from his pocket the glove which Christopher Paull had said was lying in the upper hallway, and smoothed it out on his knee.

“Now imagine that you are in Eleanor Carver’s place, creeping up those stairs behind Ames. Instinctively she has taken both gloves, but she wears only one. In one hand she has glove and clock-hand; in the other the second glove, into the finger of which, with a gesture to get rid of it, she has dropped the key she has automatically kept from the first. On her left is the wall, on her right the banister rail. Got it?

“Right! At the second tread from the top—where the stains begin—she bears forward with her weight on Ames’s back and strikes. The weight carries him nearly to his knees. He instinctively throws up both hands; she throws up her free hand to keep her balance, automatically loosening her grip on the free glove. There is blood. His arm, jerked up, sends the loose glove spinning over the top handrail into the hall …”

Melson leaned forward.

“But, my God, man!” he cried, and the academic calm cracked to bits, “in that case her free hand must have been on the right-hand side!”

“And this,” said Hadley, “is the right-hand glove. Exactly. This is not the hand that gripped that knife. On this glove the only bloodstain is directly down the palm: a place it could never have been if the hand had been closed tightly round that steel shaft. Therefore—”

He brought his fist slowly down on the footboard of the bed. “—therefore you see why the angle of the blow carried Ames so much to the right. You understand the statement of the witnesses who saw the shop-walker murdered at Gamridge’s: ‘We were standing to the
right
of her at one side, when the shop-walker came past us and touched her arm. She reached over with her
other hand
and seized the carving knife.’ … It means, gentlemen, that the Gamridge murderess was left-handed. And, by the incontrovertible evidence before you, Eleanor Carver is left-handed too.”

He rose, went to the fireplace, and knocked out his pipe on the marble edge. Hadley took pride in himself as a relentless logician who was not above a crackle of drama. Smiling grimly, he leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece and looked at them.

“Any questions, gentlemen?” he enquired.

Dr. Fell started to say something, changed his mind, and said: “Not bad, Hadley. ‘What men and what horses against you shall bide, when the stars in their courses do fight on your side?’ Humph. Bucephalus has become Pegasus all of a sudden. Man, you talk fine! And yet somehow I’m always suspicious—highly suspicious—of those cases which depend on somebody’s being left-handed. It’s a little too easy … Just one question. If all this is true, then what becomes of the mysterious figure on the roof that Hastings saw: the figure with gilt paint on its hands? Do you think Hastings was lying?”

Hadley put down his pipe with the air of one who remembers something.

“The handkerchief!” he muttered. “By Jove! I’ve been carrying it about all morning, ever since I found you looking at watches with Carver.”

“What handkerchief?”

“Mrs. Steffins’s. I didn’t tell you, did I?” He took out of a separate envelope a crumpled cambric handkerchief thick with that substance which was cloying Melson’s very thoughts by this time. “No, don’t stare. This is only the gold oilpaint she used for her china and pottery painting. It has nothing to do with the other stuff. Preston found it shoved far down in the bottom of a laundry-bag in her room. But the stuff’s fresh; as fresh as last night.

“Our good friend Steffins was undoubtedly the watcher on the roof. She went up from her own room, which opens on that hidden staircase in Carver’s alcove, up the other staircase to investigate this romance on the roof which everybody else seems to have known about.

“Remember that she was fully dressed. Remember also that tube of paint I told you about?—the one squashed
at the top
, as though somebody had put a hand down on it. That’s exactly what happened, because it was dark. She went out of her room in the dark, and leaned on that tube of paint while she was blundering about. She wiped her hand on a handkerchief, not realizing how much she’d accumulated in the darkness, and tumbled up hastily to see the evil things on the roof. There she accidentally walked into Hastings at the height of the terror downstairs. The paint on her hand put the wind up him—he ran for the tree, with what results we know. She saw him fall and saw Lucia find him, over the edge of the roof; else how did she know he was in her room? (You remember she called our attention to it the instant I arrived.) Then she blundered downstairs, saw in the light how much paint she’d put on her hand, and had a wash. She shoved the handkerchief into the laundry-bag and prepared to have hysterics before all the high gods if anybody gave her a sinister look … Does that strike you as reasonable?”

Dr. Fell uttered a mysterious noise which might be interpreted as either agreement or dissent.

“But that,” the chief inspector went on, “is not my chief consideration now. I have stated the case of Rex
v
. Eleanor Carver. This morning you outlined a list of five points or questions in connection with the evidence, and I have answered every one of them. I have done this in spite of your sneering at all the visual evidence: the stolen articles in her possession, the hour-hand of the clock, the blood-stained gloves. I have provided not only concrete evidence, but motive, opportunity, and temperament of the accused; and I have provided the only explanation which satisfactorily fits
all
these conflicting facts. I therefore claim that the evidence leaves no reasonable doubt as to the guilt of Eleanor Carver. You have said you’ll tear my evidence to blue tatters, but you haven’t a fact to call your own. That, me lord and gentlemen,” said Hadley, with a broad smile, “is the case for the Crown. Now break it if you can.”

He mockingly sat down. And Dr. Fell, hitching his cloak about his shoulders, rose for the defense.

“M
E LORD,” SAID DR. FELL,
inclining his head absently towards the Krazy Kat on the mantelpiece, “and gentlemen of the jury.”

He cleared his throat with a rumbling noise like a battle cry. He hitched his cloak across his shoulders and took up a position facing the bed. With this cloak, and his heavy grey-streaked mop of hair disarranged, he looked rather like an over-fat barrister squaring himself for battle.

“Me lord and gentlemen,” he continued, settling his eyeglasses more firmly and looking over the tops of them. “To an unprejudiced listener, it might well seem that on every hand chance and coincidence have conspired to deliver over to my learned friend every corroborative fact and detail necessary for his case; whilst to me, on the other hand, they would appear to have delivered only what might be described in vulgar circles as a kick in the pants. His success in this respect is almost uncanny. He has only to seek for one clue, and he finds six. He has only to open his mouth to hazard a theory, and instantly somebody walks in that door and confirms it. I do not like this. I do not believe that even a really guilty person could leave
so much
damning evidence behind her if she strewed the pavement with clues from here to the Elephant and Castle. I persist in regarding this affair as a murder case and not a paperchase. And it is on a deduction drawn from this belief that I base my case.”

“Hear, hear!” said Hadley, encouragingly.

“And,” pursued Dr. Fell, imperturbably, “if my learned friend will consent to stow it and shut his fat head for a brief time, this defence I shall proceed to elaborate. To begin with. Gentlemen, it is a well-known rule in poultry-farming—”

“Now look here,” expostulated Hadley, getting up. “You can have all the latitude you like. But I object to your making a farce of this thing. In the first place, I haven’t time for jokes, and, even if I had, it seems to me pretty bad taste when a man has really been murdered and somebody’s life is concerned. If you have anything to say, say it; but at least have the decency to be serious.”