Unfolding his handkerchief again, the rector wiped his forehead. His eyes seemed to watch for a trap. Anger was growing now....
"You'd better turn me loose, Inspector," he said, suddenly. "Don't you think we've had enough foolery? This man is either trying to play a joke, or ..."
"Here comes Sir Benjamin with the man you say is your uncle," remarked Dr. Fell. "I think we had all better go back to my house. And then I'll show you how he did it. In the meantime-Inspector!"
"Yes, sir?"
"You have the search warrant?' "Yes, sir."
"Send the rest of your men down to search the rectory, and come with us."
Saunders moved slightly. His eyes were reddish round the lids, and had an expression like marbles. He still wore his steady smile.
"Move over," Dr. Fell ordered, composedly. "I'll sit beside you. Oh, and by the way! - I shouldn't keep fiddling with that handkerchief, if I were you. Your constant use of a handkerchief is too well known. We found one of 'em in the hiding-place in the well, and I rather imagined the initials stood for Thomas Saunders instead of Timothy Starberth. The last word old Timothy said before he died was `handkerchief.' He saw to it ' that a clue was left behind, even beside that manuscript."
Saunders, moving over to make room, calmly spread the handkerchief out on his knee so that it was in full view. Dr. Fell chuckled.
"You don't still insist your name is Thomas Saunders, do you?" he enquired. A motion of his cane indicated Sir Benjamin coming towards them with the tall brown man carrying the large valise. Piercing across the open space, a high and querulous voice was complaining:
"-about what the devil this means. I had some friends to visit, and I wrote Tom not to meet me until Thursday; then he cabled me to the boat to come down here directly, on a matter of life or death, and specified trains, and-"
"I sent the cable," said Dr. Fell. "It's a good thing I did. Our friend would have disappeared by Thursday. He had already persuaded Sir Benjamin to urge him to disappear.
The tall man stopped short, pushing back his hat.
"Listen," he said, with a sort of wild patience. "Is everybody stark, raving mad? First Ben won't talk sense, and now - who are you?"
"No, no. That's not the question," Dr. Fell corrected: "The question is, who is this?" He touched Saunders' arm. "Is it your nephew?"
"Oh, hell!" said Mr. Robert Saunders.
"Get into the car, then. Better sit up beside the driver, and he'll tell you."
In went the inspector on the other side of Saunders.
Rampole and Dorothy sat on the small seats, and Robert Saunders up with Sir Benjamin. The rector only remarked:
"A mistake can be proved, of course. But such a mistake is very different from a murder charge. You can prove no murder charge, you know."
He had got rather white. Sitting with his knee almost touching the rector's, Rampole felt a little quiver of repulsion and almost of fear. The bulbous blue eyes were still wide open, the mouth hung somewhat loose. You could hear his breathing. A deadly quiet hung in the tonneau. Dusk bad come on rapidly, and the wheels sang with the word "killer."
Then Rampole saw that the inspector had unobtrusively folded his pistol under one arm, and that its barrel was against the rector's side.
Down the lane to Yew Cottage, wild bumping, and Sir Benjamin was still talking in the front seat... They had just stopped before the house when Robert Saunders sprang out. His long arm reached into the tonneau.
He said: "You dirty swine, where is he? What did you do to Tom?"
The inspector seized his wrist. "Steady, sir. Steady. No violence."
"He claims to be Tom Saunders? He's a damned liar. He- I'll kill him. I-"
Without haste, Inspector Jennings pushed him away from the car door as it was opened. They were all around the rector now. With his tonsure and fluff of yellow hair, he looked like a decaying saint; he kept trying to smile. They escorted him into the house, where Dr. Fell was lighting lamps in the study. Sir Benjamin pushed the rector down into a chair.
"Now, then-" he began.
"Inspector," said Dr. Fell, gesturing with the lamp, "you'd better search him. I think he's wearing a moneybelt."
"Keep away-!" Saunders said. His voice was growing high. "You can't prove anything. You'd better keep away!"
His eyes were opened wide. Dr. Fell put the lamp down beside him, so that it shone on his sweating face.
"Never mind, then," the doctor said, indifferently. "No
good searching him, Inspector.... Saunders, do you want to make a statement?"
"No. You can't prove anything."
As though he were reaching after a piece of paper to take down a statement, Dr. Fell drew open the drawer of his study table. Rampole followed the movement of his hand. The others did not see it, because they were looking at Saunders; but the rector was hungrily following every gesture the doctor made.
There was paper in the drawer. There was also the doctor's old-fashioned derringer pistol. It had been broken open, so that the chambers lay exposed; and as the lamp, light gleamed on it, Rampole saw that there was just one cartridge in the breech. Then the drawer closed.
Death had come into the room now.
"Sit down, gentlemen," urged Dr. Fell. Saunders' blank eyes were still on the closed drawer. The doctor glanced over at Robert Saunders, who was standing with a stupid expression on his brown face and his fists clenched. "Sit down, gentlemen. I must tell you how he did these murders, if he refuses to tell, himself. It isn't a pretty story. If you, Miss Starberth, would care to withdraw . . . ?"
"Please go," said Rampole, in a low voice. "I'll go along."
"No!" she cried, and he knew that she was fighting down hysteria. "I've stood it so far. I won't go. You can't make me. If he did it, I want to know. .."
The rector had recovered himself, though his voice was husky.
"By all means stay, Miss Starberth," he boomed. "You are the one with a right to hear this madman's story. He can't tell you - he, or anybody else, can't tell you how I could be sitting with him in this very house - and still throw your brother off the balcony of the Governor's Room."
Dr. Fell spoke loudly and sharply. He said:
"I didn't say you threw him from the balcony. He was never thrown from the balcony at all."
There was a silence. Dr. Fell leaned against the mantelpiece, one arm stretched along it and his eyes half shut. He went on, thoughtfully:
"There are several reasons why he wasn't. When you found him, he was lying on his right side. And his right hip was broken. But his watch, in the watch-pocket of his trousers, was not only unbroken, but still kept ticking without a flaw. A drop of fifty feet - it can't be done, you know. We will come back to that watch in a moment.
"Now, on the night of the murder it rained heavily. It rained, to be exact, from just before eleven o'clock until precisely one. The next morning, when we went up to the Governor's Room, we found the iron door to the balcony standing open. You remember? Martin Starberth was, presumably, murdered about ten minutes to twelve. The door, presumably also, was open then, and remained open. An hour's heavy rain, we must assume, drove in at that door. Certainly it drove against the window - a much smaller space, and choked with ivy. The next morning there were large rain-water pools under the window. But not a drop of rain had come in at the door; the floor around it was dry, gritty, and even dusty.
"In other words, gentlemen," the doctor said, calmly, "the door had not been opened until after one o'clock, after the rain had stopped. It didn't blow open; it is so heavy that you can barely wrench it out. Somebody opened it afterwards, in the middle of the night, to set his stage."
Another pause. The rector sat stiffly upright. The lamplight showed a twitching nerve beside his cheekbone.
"Martin Starberth was a very heavy smoker," continued Dr. Fell. "He was frightened, and nervous, and he had been smoking steadily all that day. In a vigil of the sort he had to undergo it is not too far fetched to believe that he wo
uld have smoked even more heavily during his wait.... A full cigarette-case and matches were found on his body. There was not one single cigarette-stub on the floor of the Governor's Room."
The doctor spoke leisurely. As though his recital had given him an idea, he produced his own pipe.
"Undoubtedly, however, there had been somebody in the Governor's Room. And just there is where the murderer's plan miscarried. Had they gone according to schedule, there would have been no necessity for a wild dash across the meadow when the light went out. We should have waited, and found Martin's body after a decently long interval, when he did not reappear. But-remark this, as Mr. Rampole has - the light went out just ten minutes too soon.
"Now it was fortunate that the murderer, in smashing Martin's hip to simulate a fall from the balcony, did not smash Martin's watch. It was running, and it had the right time. Let us suppose (for the sake of a hypothesis) that it had really been Martin waiting in the Governor's Room. When his vigil was ended, he would have switched off his lamp and gone home. He would have known, at ten minutes to twelve, that his time was not yet up. But, if there were somebody else keeping vigil in his place, and this somebody's watch happened to be ten minutes fast...?"
Sir Benjamin Arnold got up from his chair like a man groping blindly.
"Herbert-" he said.
"We knew that Herbert's watch was just ten minutes fast," the doctor said. "He ordered the housemaid to set the grandfather clock; but she discovered that it was wrong, and left the other clocks as they were. And while Herbert was keeping the vigil for the cousin who was too frightened to do it, his cousin was already lying with his neck broken in the Hag's Nook."
"But still I don't see how-" Sir Benjamin paused bewilderedly.
The telephone in the hall rang with a suddenness that made them all jump.
"You'd better answer it, Inspector," suggested the doctor; "it's probably your men phoning here from the rectory.
Saunders had risen now. His fleshy jowls had the look of a sick dog's. He started to say. "Most preposterous! Most -" in a way that sounded horribly as though he were burlesquing his usual voice. Then he stumbled against the edge of the chair and sat down again....
They could bear Inspector Jennings talking in the hall.
Presently he came back into the study, with an even more wooden face.
"It's all up, sir," he said to Dr. Fell. "They've been down in the cellar. The motor-bicycle is broken in bits and buried there. They've found a Browning pistol, a pair of gardener's gloves, some valises full of-"
Sir Benjamin said, incredulous, "You swine "
"Wait!" cried the rector. He had gotten to his feet again, his hand moving like some one scratching at a door. "You don't know the story. You don't know anything - just guesses - part of it"
"I don't know this story," snarled Robert Saunders, "and I've kept quiet long enough. I want to know about Tom. Where is he? Did you kill him, too? How long have you been posing here?"
"He died!" the other said, desperately. "I had nothing to do with it. He died. I swear to God I never did anything to him. I just wanted quiet, and peace, and respect, and I took his place...."
Aimless fingers were fumbling in the air. "Listen. All I want is a little time to think. I only want to sit here and close my eyes. You caught me so suddenly. . Listen. I'll write you out everything, the whole story, and you'd never know it if I didn't. Not even you, Doctor. If I sit down here, now, and write it, will you promise to stop?"
He was almost like a huge and blubbering child. Looking at him narrowly, Dr. Fell said:
"I think you'd better let him, Inspector. He can't get away. And you can walk about the lawn, if you like."
Inspector Jennings was impassive. "Our instructions from Sir William, sir, at the Yard, were to take orders from you. Very well."
The rector drew himself up. Again that weird burlesque of his old mannerisms. "There is – ah -only one other thing. I must insist that Dr. Fell explain certain things to me, as I can explain certain things to you. In view of our past-friendship, will you be so good as to sit down here with me a few moments when the others have gone?"
A protest was almost out of Rampole's mouth. He was going to say, "There's a gun in that drawer!-" when he saw that Dr. Fell was looking at him. The lexicographer was casually lighting his pipe beside the fireplace, and his squinted eyes were asking for silence over the flame of the match....
It was almost dark now. A furious and wildly threatening Robert Saunders had to be led out by the inspector and Sir Benjamin. Rampole and the girl went out into the dim hallway. The last thing they saw was the doctor still lighting his pipe, and Thomas Saunders, his chin up and his expression indifferent, reaching towards the writing-table... .
The door closed.
Chapter 18
STATEMENT
6:15 P.M.
FOR Inspector Jennings, or whom it may concern: I have heard the whole story now, from Dr. Fell, and he has heard mine. I am quite composed. It vaguely occurs to me that on legal documents one is supposed to put down "of sound mind," or some such terms, but I trust I shall be forgiven if I do not adhere strictly to the prescribed form. I do not know it.
Let me try to be frank. This is easy, inasmuch as I shall shoot myself when I have finished writing. For a moment I had entertained the idea of shooting Dr. Fell during our talk a few minutes ago. However, there was only one bullet in the pistol. When I confronted him with it, he made a gesture of a rope being put about his neck; and upon reflection I could easily perceive that such a clean exit is better than hanging, so I put away the weapon. I hate Dr. Fell, I confess I genuinely hate him, for having exposed me, but I must think of my own welfare above all others, and I have no wish to be hanged. They say it is very painful, and I could never bear pain with fortitude.
To begin with, let me say in all justice to myself, as a last word, that I think the world has shabbily used me. I am not a criminal. I am a man of education and parts; an ornament, I believe, to any society in which I move. This has been partly my consolation. My real name I will not give, nor too much of my background, lest it should be traced: but I was actually, at one time, a student of theology. My dismissal from a certain seminary was due to unfortunate circumstances - such circumstance as may involve any young man of robust and healthy nature who is not enervated by worship from the appeal of a pretty girl. That I had stolen money I do to this day deny, or that I had attempted to place the blame on another of my fellow students.
My parents, not understanding, refused to sympathize. I could not help thinking even then that the world has a shabby treatment for its most favored sons. Let me be brief: I could not obtain employment. My gifts were such that I could have advanced rapidly had I had the opportunity, but I got no opportunities, save menial ones. I borrowed money from an aunt (she is dead now; in pace requiescat!); I went about the world, I knew poverty-yes, and for one day I was hungry-and I grew weary. I wished to settle down, to be comfortable, to be respected, to use my powers, and to taste the sweets of ease.
On a liner from New Zealand, something more than three years ago, I met young Thomas Audley Saunders. He told me that the influence of a certain Sir Benjamin Arnold, an old friend of his uncle's who had never seen the nephew, had obtained him this new and splendid position. Knowing theology well, I became his friend on the long voyage. I need not dwell on it. The poor fellow died shortly after he reached England. It was only then that the thought occurred to me that I should disappear and a new Thomas Saunders should appear at Chatterham. I did not fear discovery. I knew enough of his history to take his place, and his uncle never left Auckland. I should have to keep up a correspondence, of course, but by typing my infrequent letters and practising the signature on Saunders' passport until I had an excellent imitation, I was safe from discovery. He had been educated at Eton, but his collegiate and theological courses were taken at St. Boniface's in New Zealand, and it was unlikely that I should come upon an old friend.
The life,
while pleasant and pastoral, was hardly stimulating. I was a gentleman, but-like all others - I wished to be a rich and roving gentleman. It was necessary, however, to keep a curb upon my appetites so that my sermons might be really instructive and sincere; I say with pride that I kept the parish accounts straight, and only once-on pain of severe necessity, when a serving-girl of the county threatened scandal for being attacked - did I tamper with these. But I wish to live a more pleasant life; say, in continental hotels, with many servants and a fling at amorousness now and then.
In my talk with Dr. Fell. I have learned that he knows almost everything. I had made the same deductions from old Anthony Starberth's diary - which Mr. Timothy Starberth kindly showed me-as Dr. Fell made over three years later. I determined that there must be money hidden in the well at the Hag's Nook. If it were negotiable-jewels or bullion, say - I could presently resign and disappear.
I need not dwell on this part. Chance, vile chance, entered again. Why does God permit such things? I had found the cache, and to my delight it proved to be precious stones. Through my earlier experiences I was aware of a trustworthy man in London who could engineer sales at Antwerp in a most satisfactory fashion.... I dislike that word "engineer." It destroys what some have been so kind as to call the Addisonian purity of my prose style; but let it stand.... Let me say again, I found the stones. I estimated that their value might be conservatively placed at about five thousand pounds.
It was (I remember it distinctly) the afternoon of the eighteenth of October when I made this discovery. As I was on my knees in the hiding-place, prying open the iron box which contained these stones; and shielding my candle from outside observation, I thought that I heard a noise in the well outside. I was just in time to see the rope quivering, and a thin leg disappear from the mouth of the opening, and I heard Mr. Timothy Starberth's unmistakable laugh. Undoubtedly he had noticed something amiss in the well. He had climbed down, seen me at work, and was now going up to laugh. I may here say that he had always a most inexplicable dislike, nay, hatred, for the church and all holy things, and his attitude had at times amounted almost to blasphemy. He, of all people, could work me the most harm. Even if he had not seen my find (and I did not doubt he had) his mirth at finding me thus employed would wreck all my hopes.
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