Slowly, the little drawing-room was dissolving into shadow; the last glow from the west had climbed to touch the shoulders of Whistler’s Anne Dillon by the piano and disappeared; the blue and silver nocturnes, the early pointillist Copes, the hot and flashing Dillons were swimming together on the walls. A cooler breeze stirred at the open window, whispered through a great bowl of flowers, caused somebody to slip timidly from the window-seat to a warmer place. And Gott’s voice talked on, remote, growing colder…
‘If Sir Richard Nave, I say, did not have a brother – a brother who like himself practices medicine – he would be unsuspected still.
‘He invited suspicion. I believe that he knew his own craziness; that the sporting chance he gave represented his own sane self, looking with his own scientific ruthlessness at his own growing madness and endeavouring to ensure that the madman should not escape. Perhaps that is too subtle, too much one of the quiddities of his own craft. We shall never know. And I do not forget that in a legal sense Nave is not mad, is very far from mad; I don’t deny that in the last issue he is not a criminal lunatic, but a criminal.
‘He invited suspicion in a series of displays, not insinuating his motive cryptically but declaring his identity almost outright. These displays – I mean, of course, the messages – were investigated diligently enough. But that very diligence tended to hide the key they contained. The questions Mr Appleby asked about the messages were: When? and How? When were they sent? In what manner? Which one of the possibly suspect persons could have contrived this message and that? There was, of course, another question: Why the messages? But the answer seemed so obvious that one didn’t pause over this aspect long. The messages were simply the showman-criminal’s way of announcing his purpose. Hamlet, revenge! That was the first message – the one sent to Mr Crispin at the House of Commons – and there seems nothing to pause over. It is simple and appropriate, conjoining menace and the projected play. Next Lord Auldearn’s message is seen, in the light of later events, to add to this a grim dramatic appropriateness; in the car that brought him beneath the walls of Scamnum were found Lady Macbeth’s words on another. fated victim:
The raven himself is hoarser,
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements.
The next message, that to Mr Gylby, was a couple of lines from Titus Andronicus – lines which did no more than reiterate the idea of revenge:
And in their ears tell them my dreadful name,
Revenge, which makes the foul offender quake.
“Foul offender” gave perhaps something more. Nevertheless it was at this message, I think, that Mr Appleby paused to ask a very acute question: Why all these messages? They were not all equally effective; why should this criminal, so careful of his effects, send as many as five messages of varying effectiveness? Mr Appleby’s answer was certainly accurate: the diversity of messages was a challenge. The criminal was saying in effect: “See how many messages I can send – each in a different way – and get away with.” But there was another question besides the question: Why so many messages? There was the question: Why just these messages?
‘And this question should have become clamant with the next message – the message that came through Dr Bunney’s philological box: I will not cry Hamlet Revenge. The method of delivering the message was effective but the message itself seems pointless. What point, again in the light of subsequent events, could be thought to attach to that recantation? And at this stage I must say that I am ashamed of myself. My mind failed to go at once to the source of this message. And with a sort of obstinacy with which Professor Malloch, perhaps, will sympathize, I avoided looking it up. I didn’t see the matter as significant and I wasn’t going to be beaten over something I certainly new. Actually, the phrase I will not cry Hamlet Revenge comes from Rowland’s The Night Raven. The fact came back to me in the instant that I happened to glance at Nave’s telegram – a telegram he had despatched through the police this morning, putting off a patient. Commonly one signs a telegram with one’s surname only; but because Nave has a brother, also a practising physician, he has a different habit. And I looked at the signature ‘R Nave’ and saw the anagram at once.’
There was a little pause. Peter Marryat, too enthralled to be diffident, called out: ‘I say – please – what’s an anagram?’
‘When you take the letters constituting “R Nave”,’ said Gott soberly, ‘and form from them the word “Raven”, you make an anagram. In other words, Nave had – if in the rather tortuous way that is characteristic of the modern medical psychologist’s mind – set his signature to two of the original five messages – indeed to three. The raven was hoarser; The Night Raven was quoted; and the second passage from Macbeth – the one that came through the radio-gramophone in the night – was cut off by me just before it spoke – if not actually of the raven again – of the crow and the rooky wood. When Mr Appleby told me this evening that a sixth message had been received I was able to guess the very words. For there was one message, the most pat of all, that had not come – a passage in which the raven and revenge and Hamlet are all bound up together. Most of you will remember what I mean – Hamlet’s exclamation in the play-scene: The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge. Mr Appleby had half-expected a further message. And these words of Hamlet’s were actually spoken to him over the telephone a few hours ago – and spoken, as the man in the house-exchange was able to tell him, from Nave’s own room. When Mr Appleby hurried up there he found Nave’s own Shakespeare beside the telephone and open at the page. And a fraction of an inch below the line in question treatment revealed the fresh imprint of the index finger of Nave’s right hand. Which was the end – or all but the end – of the affair. There was something in Nave, I repeat, that would not let the murderer get away. He gave the police their clue and then, when they appeared to be making no headway, he gave it them again. The croaking raven doth bellow for revenge.’
Gott stirred in his chair. ‘I said all but the end of the case. Even at this stage there was a snag. But before I come to that let me put briefly what I think occurred, and bring in some important matters which I haven’t yet mentioned: for instance the iron cross.
‘But for the iron cross there might, I believe, have been no murders. And but for the iron cross there would not have been that hitch to the affair in its aspect as something presented to the audience. But I must begin at the beginning.
‘Here, then, is Lord Auldearn, a veritable symbol of a certain old order of things. He is, I say, a statesman, a philosopher, and a theologian. His writings are famous; to be found on most thoughtful people’s shelves – including I know, Mr Appleby’s. And here again is Sir Richard Nave, another typical figure – a scientist, a hard-boiled nominalist, an aggressive atheist – as many of you know who have conversed with him – and a lifelong condemner of superstition, priests, priest craft, and all the rest of it. What then happens? Does Nave decide to make away with this symbol of all that stands against him? I think not. But he does something else. Partly from some necessity of his own inner nature and partly – I have suggested – worked upon by the ideological terrorisms of our time, he begins to weave a fantasy of destruction round the figure of Auldearn. Two phrases of his stick in my head – I think they were spoken with reference to crime stories and crime films: “a healthy resolving of suppressed criminal tendencies in fantasy” and “safety-valves”. Now it may be possible that inventing imaginary crimes is a “healthy resolving” and the rest of it – I don’t know. But what Nave did was something different: he began envisaging a crime against a real person whom he really hated. To imagine that that was a safety-valve was just bad psychology. And the moment came when the impulse stepped outside the borders of fantasy and began to actualize itself – actualized itself by degrees.
‘This is what I meant by saying that the murder was, in a sense, not premeditated. Even when the messages were sent the position was no m
ore than this: that the fantasy had got ominously out of hand. I don’t know when Nave provided himself with a revolver, but it would be to that action that I should point if I had to indicate the moment at which unreason got the upper hand. He was arming himself against eventualities.
‘But – as I have said – he didn’t mean to shoot Auldearn; the revolver was a precaution. What held him, and now impelled him forward, was the unique dramatic opportunity, the opportunity to confront Auldearn in the very character of Nemesis and kill him in the moment that he was calling in vain for help. I think he meant to stab Auldearn, just as Bose was stabbed; to stab him, and leave the body for Hamlet to find. It was a compelling fantasy; you may say that the circumstances were conspiring to unbalance him finally. But even yet it might have remained fantasy merely and the messages a harmless folly that would never have been explained. It was the arrival of the cross that was fatal.
‘Here, ready to hand on the faldstool, was to stand a heavy iron cross. To what a terrific power would the representative, the ritual power of the act be raised if he should snatch up this symbol and with it dash out his victim’s brains! So he abandoned whatever dagger he had meant to use – but the revolver he retained against emergency.
‘Why, then, did the plan miscarry? Why the shot? Ideally, it would have been possible to arrive at the answer – and in consequence to get very near to the identity of the criminal – on the strength of two things I have mentioned: an overheard conversation; and the hat that was not Happy Hutton’s hat. Briefly, Mr Appleby found a hat in Lord Auldearn’s room and concluded it was not Auldearn’s because it was bigger than Auldearn’s other hats. But there is a certain condition in which one’s new hat will be bigger than one’s old: it is if one happens to suffer from Paget’s disease.’
If Gott relished the odd turn his narrative was taking he gave no sign. His voice flowed on without emphasis. ‘Lord Auldearn was gravely ill. But why was there such passion behind a technical diagnostic discussion between Nave and Dr Biddle – a conversation overheard by Mr Appleby and myself in the hall? I can remember what they said. “Clearly the localized form,” Nave said, “Leontiasis Ossium.” And Dr Biddle replied “Leontiasis fiddlestick…simple generalized Paget’s.” And over that Nave was passionately angry. Why? Well, I need not and cannot be technical. Put it this way. What, in effect, Nave was saying was, “At the moment I was going to strike my rather rusty general medicine came back to me; I saw that I was proposing to crack a morbidly thick, morbidly hard, and ivory-like skull: as I couldn’t risk failing to kill I dropped the cross and shot instead.” And what Dr Biddle replied was, in effect, “You were wrong; the skull was certainly abnormally thick; but it was far from being abnormally hard – rather the reverse.” In other words, Nave used the revolver as he did, and in doing so marred his intended effect, because, suddenly becoming conscious of Auldearn’s morbid condition, more precise knowledge failed him in the sort of lightning diagnosis he then made. He supposed himself to be in the act of hitting at something like a billiard-ball. Actually it was not so; he might have hit out effectually enough. And his vanity was injured by the mistake. Dr Biddle tells me that if Nave’s general medicine had not been distinctly in disrepair he would have recognized the significance of Auldearn’s bowed walk and other symptoms long ago.
‘This matter of the changed plan is the most remarkable feature of the case. It is the one point at which the criminal came up against the unexpected and the one point at which he might have been caught on ground – so to speak – other than that which he voluntarily gave away. The right man – an acute medical jurist, I suppose – hearing this technical conversation in the hall, might just conceivably have got somewhere on the strength of it. At any rate, it is the point at which the sheerly bizarre is most evident in the case; in telling a story for effect one would stop at it. Nevertheless, there is another matter of some importance that I must explain.
‘Even with all this there was a snag – a hitch in the case against Nave. Mr Appleby, you remember, had got to a stage in his investigations at which he had ruled out the possibility of single-handed crime. Reviewing the events linked up with Auldearn’s death in relation to what was known and provable about people’s movements, he found that nobody could have dope everything. The murderer must have had an accomplice. Had Nave, then, an accomplice? The sort of crime which we are imputing to him – a crime actualizing a private fantasy – is not the sort of crime in which one would expect conspiracy. What, then, was the exact position? It could not be shown that Nave was unable to send any of the messages. It could not be shown that he was unable to murder Auldearn. It could not be shown that he was unable to murder Bose. But it could be conclusively shown that he was unable to attack Dr Bunney. At the moment that attack was made Nave was talking with Lady Elizabeth, Mr Appleby, and myself in the hall; It would seem at first logical to look for the accomplice that Nave must have bad. But he had no accomplice.
‘Consider the relationship of all these events on which Mr Appleby was relying in his eliminative process. The messages, plainly, hold together among themselves and cohere with Auldearn’s murder. Unmistakably, the person who sent them was directly concerned in that murder. Next take the death of Mr Bose. Of that only one explanation was found to be reasonably tenable: he was killed because he knew something about Auldearn’s killing. But now we come to the attack on Dr Bunney.
‘Was this attack, equally with the other events, bound up with the original murder? The accepted version took it that this was so. At breakfast this morning Mr Clay happened to suggest that Bunney’s apparatus, being a phonetic instrument of unusual precision, might hold a clue. It might be possible to identify the voice which, carefully disguised, had delivered through it the message I will not cry Hamlet Revenge. And at this – it was suggested – the murderer took alarm and shortly afterwards attacked Dr Bunney in order to obtain the potentially incriminating cylinder. To support this interpretation is the fact that after the attack the cylinder in question, indexed as “The curious message”, was found to have disappeared. But it has to be asked whether this is the only conceivable explanation of the attack on Bunney, whether it is the best explanation one can suggest, whether it is a good, or even possible explanation. Why, for instance, half-murder a man in order to filch from his room something that might have been stolen without violence? There was plenty of time for such a theft between Mr Clay’s remark at breakfast and Bunney’s going to his room. Well, I think it can be shown that the attack upon Bunney was no part of the murderer’s work, nor of an accomplice’s; that it belongs to another affair altogether.
‘It is common knowledge now that the events we have experienced have been complicated by an alarm of espionage. Lord Auldearn had in his possession an important paper, the safety of which was feared for. Actually, the paper was not in danger; nevertheless, the alarm was not baseless. Spies – and spies indeed seeking that paper – there have been amongst us; their possible activities formed that grave preoccupation of Mr Appleby’s of which I spoke. They were ineffective, however, at their job; they had nothing to do with the murders; and they have been thought of as having dropped out of the story. But they do make this one and not altogether ineffective appearance at the end. For the attack on Dr Bunney represents their last attempt to get the paper.
‘Let me ask two questions. Exactly how was Bunney attacked? He was hit on the head from behind in a darkish corridor outside his room. Where was this paper when he was attacked? In Mr Appleby’s pocket. Please look at Mr Appleby.’
Electric lights snapped on. Everybody stared at Appleby. It was an eminently successful if slightly flamboyant effect that Gott had allowed himself at the end of his recital.
‘You see what I mean at once. The first thing I casually mentioned to Mr Appleby when speaking of Bunney was the fact of a certain resemblance to himself. And the same thing, Mr Appleby tells me; misled Rauth, the steward, this morning. The spies, then, g
uessing that the document had been transferred to Mr Appleby’s possession, made one last throw. But the person they thought was Mr Appleby going to Bunney’s room to investigate the business of the cylinder was actually Bunney himself. And when they found that their plan had miscarried they very adroitly stole the “curious message” cylinder, thus removing suspicion of the attack from themselves and transferring it to the murderer. With the realization of this simple sequence of events Nave’s last defence breaks down.’
A long silence in the little drawing-room was presently broken by an advancing tinkling sound from without.
‘Ah,’ said the Duke. ‘Whisky? Well – come, come.’
PART FOUR: EPILOGUE
What, has this thing appear’d again tonight?
1
‘Yes, they’ve gone all right,’ said Noel, peering through. ‘And very naturally too. It’s all settled now except for the chaplain’s final snuffle over the fallen infidel.’
‘Get on!’ said Diana fiercely. And she thrust Noel before her into the hall.
Gott stared at Appleby. ‘You mean you would have held your hand? You didn’t find it convincing?’
Appleby wandered restlessly – oddly expectantly – about the room. ‘There was no holding my hand when you’d spilt Sandford all that. And, of course, it was convincing – overwhelmingly so. Only, my dear Giles, you were having it all your own way. One thing was lacking?
‘That being?’
‘A competent criminal lawyer to laugh you out of court.’ Appleby’s tone was dry but without rancour.
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