“That seems reasonable enough,” Wendover conceded.
“Now bear in mind the Alvington money-sense,” Sir Clinton pursued. “Suppose the intrigue leaked out and either Barratt or Mrs. Callis insisted on a divorce. If Mrs. Callis brought a case against Callis, she would retain her own private income and Callis would be no great catch financially. And if Mrs. Barratt came into court as either respondent or co-respondent, old Mrs. Alvington would change her will again and make sure that Mrs. Barratt never saw a penny of her money. Divorce, then, in any form, meant financial stringency for both Callis and Mrs. Barratt. And Mrs. Barratt had already had more than enough experience of that condition. But if you exclude divorce as a solution then the only other course open is the removal of both Barratt and Mrs. Callis. That course was the one that evidently recommended itself as the best way of cutting the knot.”
“So they laid their heads together and evolved this scheme?” asked Wendover.
“They decided on murder,” corrected Sir Clinton, “but when it came to planning the business, Callis was the leading spirit and Mrs. Barratt merely followed and took his orders.”
“How do you make that out?” demanded Wendover in surprise.
“Look at the whole business of the substituted pistol barrels,” said Sir Clinton. “That was the keystone of the affair. You must admit it was planned by a fire-arms expert. Callis was au fait with pistols. Mrs. Barratt knew nothing about their technique; she would never have hit on a notion like that. On the face of it, Callis was the planner of the murder episode, and he had the major part of the work to do in carrying it out. The woman merely helped him where necessary.”
Rufford seemed to have been thinking of something else for a moment or two; and the trend of his thoughts betrayed itself when he spoke.
“Now, I see something that puzzled me, sir. All through the affair, when I happened to have a suspicion of Callis, one thing always put me off again, and that was the genuine way he protested about his wife’s innocence. That rang absolutely true. Now, of course, I see that it was true. No one knew better than himself that there was no intrigue between his wife and Barratt. He could afford to be genuine there.”
“Quite so,” agreed Sir Clinton. “But to continue what I was saying before. The Kerrison murder furnishes another proof that Callis was the planner and Mrs. Barratt merely the helper. Not that it matters a rap, really. As an accessory before the fact in both cases, she’s liable to the full penalty, even if she wasn’t present when the actual murders were done. But I don’t think that she was the dominant partner in any of them. Callis was the leading spirit.”
“He must have been mad keen on the woman,” said Rufford. “But even yet, I don’t see how Kerrison’s death came into the business. Why had they to put a finish to him?”
“The Kerrison case is easier than the other one,” Sir Clinton explained. “Do you remember what happened when we interviewed him? He blurted out that the ‘suicide pact’ had surprised him. He’d never suspected Barratt of any intrigue. In fact, he went the length of saying: ‘I was very much mistaken and I frankly admit it. I judged too hastily.’ Look back, now, and you see at once what this admitted mistake was. He’d suspected all along the intrigue between Callis and Mrs. Barratt; and he was thunderstruck to find that Barratt and Mrs. Callis were guilty, as the suicide pact business seemed to prove. I don’t think I’d have noticed that point, but for two things. First, Kerrison was the last person to admit a mistake unless it was a glaring one. These fanatics never confess that they’re wrong unless the evidence is incontrovertible, and not even then in some cases. Second, I’d already spotted the substitution business, and I was on the look-out for anything which fitted in with it, as Kerrison’s remarks did.”
“I never noticed that bit of his talk,” Rufford confessed frankly. “He was obviously not quite in his right mind over the Great Pyramid and the rest of it, sir, and I didn’t pay much attention to what he said. But I see the point now.”
“The next thing is that Kerrison wrote to Callis about some church business, and Callis happened to spot that the watermark on Kerrison’s note-paper was the same as the one on the anonymous letter: ‘Watch your wife . . .’ It didn’t take a smart lad like Callis very long to put two and two together and satisfy himself that these two letters on the AVIAN WOVE note-paper were written by the same person—Kerrison. And Kerrison was dangerous. He was a loose-tongued creature, as these two slander actions had proved up to the hilt. At any moment he might blab something about the Callis intrigue with Mrs. Barratt, which he obviously suspected when he wrote that anonymous letter to Barratt. And that would have brought down the whole house of cards at once, if we had got hold of it, as Callis saw immediately. So the only thing to do was to knock out Kerrison before he had a chance to let the cat out of the bag. I’ll say this for Callis, he must be a quick thinker and a swift worker, for he managed to kill two birds with one stone that very night.
“He rang up Kerrison and asked him to come down that evening to Fern Bank, making some church business his excuse, no doubt. And, although I can’t prove it, I’m certain that he asked Kerrison to bring back the pistol he’d borrowed to shoot those cats. Meanwhile, Callis had got in touch with Mrs. Barratt and completed the other half of his arrangements. She went off to visit the Mallards in Windsor Drive. When she left them, about nine-thirty, she walked along the road and, with the key she had, opened the Alvington garage and took out Arthur’s blue car. As Callis had arranged to visit the Alvingtons that night and go through their books, both of the brothers would be at home and the car was sure to be in the garage. She got it out, and took it to a rendezvous close to Callis’s house.
“Meanwhile Kerrison turned up at Fern Bank about nine o’clock. Callis told us that, and here I’m sure he stuck closely to the truth. He tackled Kerrison about the anonymous letter, just as he explained to us; and he put him into a blue funk by the threat of a third action—for libel over the anonymous letter. Then he dictated an apology which Kerrison was forced to write down. And here, once again, in comes the old substitution process. Here’s the letter. You see it begins: ‘I confess that I wrote an anonymous letter reflecting on the character of one of my friends . . .” Kerrison would understand that this meant Callis himself. But Callis represented to me that what he really wanted was to clear his wife’s name and that ‘one of my friends’ was Mrs. Callis. That was meant to put us finally oh the wrong track and to clinch the substitution hypothesis.”
“Damned ingenious,” Wendover admitted rather sourly.
“I told you he was a quick thinker,” said Sir Clinton. “I’ve no doubt that he got the pistol from Kerrison before the row began. Not that he was afraid of trouble in that way, but for another reason. But let’s go on. Having got the confession written to his dictation, he rang up Mrs. Barratt to make sure that she had gone off to play her part by securing the car; and also to support the yarn he was going to tell us. After that, he dismissed Kerrison, who went off to take his bus home. As soon as he was off the premises, Callis went hot-foot to the rendezvous. Mrs. Barratt handed over the blue car to him and went back to Granville Road to borrow that tea and so establish that she wasn’t near the Hermitage when the smash took place.
“Callis drove hell-for-leather to the bus stop at the end of the road leading to the Hermitage; and he waited there in the blue car until Kerrison’s bus came up and his victim got out. Then he did the trick and silenced Kerrison once and for all. After that, he drove back to the Alvingtons’ place, put the car in quietly, locked the door with Mrs. Barratt’s key, and got off home as quick as he could. He landed there in time to beat his maid by a short head, and he gave her some orders about breakfast, just to fix in her memory the fact that he was in the house when she arrived.”
“He’d certainly tangled things up very neatly,” Wendover admitted. “He’d no car of his own, just then, owing to the smash-up in Granby Holt; so on the face of things he’d lost the power of quick movement. That blo
cked out the possibility of his going to Windsor Drive and collecting the Alvington car himself. There wasn’t time to do that and still get to the bus stop at the Hermitage in time to intercept Kerrison. On that basis, I’d ruled Callis out. And as Mrs. Barratt could prove she was in Granville Road just about the time of the motor-smash at the Hermitage, I ruled her out also. I was backing one of the Alvingtons as the criminal in that affair. He’s a clever devil, as you say. But what was the point about the pistol?”
“I can’t prove anything about the pistol,” Sir Clinton pointed out. “But when we searched the Hermitage, we found no pistol. What Callis was driving at is fairly obvious. He meant to suggest that Kerrison had murdered those two in the bracken-patch and left the borrowed pistol beside the bodies. That was a possible line of defence for him if it came to a trial; and the rifling-marks on the bullets in the dead cats would support the argument, since these shots were undoubtedly fired by Kerrison and the marks were identical with those on the bullets used in the murders. With Kerrison dead and the pistol missing that would have been quite a good tale for his barrister to throw at a jury.”
The Chief Constable took another cigarette from his case and lighted it before continuing. He turned to Wendover.
“Remember Peter Diamond’s parlour game and the twenty-one clues? he asked. “I think I’ve managed to weave every one of them into this reconstruction, and they all seem to fall neatly into place, don’t they? I’ve even thrown in a solution of the Kerrison affair, for good measure. Now it’s time we turned to business. I’ll swear information formally now. You’ll sign and seal two warrants, one for Callis and one for Mrs. Barratt. Then we’ll hand the warrants over to someone to make the actual arrests. You’d like to see to that yourself, inspector, wouldn’t you? It seems a fair division of labour amongst the three of us.”
THE END
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J. J. Connington (1880–1947)
Alfred Walter Stewart, who wrote under the pen name J. J. Connington, was born in Glasgow, the youngest of three sons of Reverend Dr Stewart. He graduated from Glasgow University and pursued an academic career as a chemistry professor, working for the Admiralty during the First World War. Known for his ingenious and carefully worked-out puzzles and in-depth character development, he was admired by a host of his better-known contemporaries, including Dorothy L. Sayers and John Dickson Carr, who both paid tribute to his influence on their work. He married Jessie Lily Courts in 1916 and they had one daughter.
By J. J. Connington
Sir Clinton Driffield Mysteries
Murder in the Maze (1927)
Tragedy at Ravensthorpe (1927)
The Case with Nine Solutions (1928)
Mystery at Lynden Sands (1928)
Nemesis at Raynham Parva (1929)
(a.k.a. Grim Vengenace)
The Boathouse Riddle (1931)
The Sweepstake Murders (1931)
The Castleford Conundrum (1932)
The Ha-Ha Case (1934)
(a.k.a. The Brandon Case)
In Whose Dim Shadow (1935)
(a.k.a. The Tau Cross Mystery)
A Minor Operation (1937)
Murder Will Speak (1938)
Truth Comes Limping (1938)
The Twenty-One Clues (1941)
No Past is Dead (1942)
Jack-in-the-Box (1944)
Common Sense Is All You Need (1947)
Supt Ross Mysteries
The Eye in the Museum (1929)
The Two Tickets Puzzle (1930)
Novels
Death at Swaythling Court (1926)
The Dangerfield Talisman (1926)
Tom Tiddler’s Island (1933)
(a.k.a. Gold Brick Island)
The Counsellor (1939)
The Four Defences (1940)
An Orion ebook
Copyright © The Professor A. W. Stewart Deceased Trust 1941, 2013
The right of J. J. Connington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook first published in Great Britain in 2013
by Orion
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper St Martin’s Lane
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK company
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4719 0618 3
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
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The Twenty-One Clues Page 30