The Rasp

by Philip MacDonald

  ‘That the murderer was in the study after the clock there—which, by the way, was correct by the other clocks in the house—had struck eleven, is proved by the fact of the striking of that clock being one hour behind.

  ‘Miss Hoode entered the study and found the body at about ten minutes past eleven.

  ‘The murderer, then, left the study at some time between two minutes past the hour at the earliest and ten minutes past.

  ‘So soon as I was certain that the murderer was Digby-Coates, I saw that before my case against him was complete I must disprove his alibi; also I realised that this could best be done by ascertaining much more definitely at what time he left the study to climb back up the wall and into his room. That eight minutes between eleven-two and eleven-ten was too wide a margin to work in.

  ‘The more I pondered this task the more removed from possibility seemed its completion. Then, by the grace of God, there emerged, in circumstances which need not be set down here, a new witness whose evidence put me in possession of exactly the information I needed.

  ‘This witness is Robert Belford, a manservant, and therefore a permanent member of the Hoode household. He is a highly-strung little man, and refrained at first from telling what he knew through very natural fear of being himself suspected of the murder of his master.

  ‘Before Belford’s emergence I had come to the conclusion—though I could not see then how this was going to help—that the acceptance of the old butler—Poole—as a perfectly trustworthy witness had been a mistake. I discovered, you see, that he suffers from that inconvenient disorder hay-fever.

  ‘When in the throes of a seizure he can neither see, hear nor speak; is conscious, in fact, of nothing save discomfort. That these seizures last sometimes for as long as a minute and a half I can swear to from having watched the old man struggle with one.

  ‘Immediately after my discovery of the existence in him of this ailment, I questioned Poole; with the result that at last he remembered having suffered a paroxysm on the night of the murder at some time during that part of the evening before the murder when his master was in the study and the rest of the house was quiet. He had not remembered the incident until I asked him. His memory, as he says, is not what it was, and in any case the event was not sufficiently out of the ordinary to have stayed in his head after all the emotions of that crowded night.

  ‘But it was during, or rather at the beginning, of that minute and a half or two minutes during which the old man could do nothing but cough and sneeze and choke and gasp with his head between his knees, that Belford—the new witness—had entered the study—by the door!

  ‘When he got into the room he saw immediately the body of his master. In one horrified second (I have said that he is an intensely nervous, highly-strung little man) he took it all in; corpse, disorder, and all the other details of that brilliant and messy crime. And there was, he swears, no one else in the room. The only place in which a man could have hidden would have been the alcove at the far end of the room, but the curtains which, as a rule, cut that off from view, were on that night drawn aside.

  ‘Belford, after that one great second of horror, fled. As he closed the door behind him, he noticed that Poole, in his little room across the hall, was still wrestling with his paroxysm. Belford retreated. He was terrified that this dreadful crime he had seen might be laid at his door were he seen coming from the room. It was, to say the least, unusual that he should enter the study when his master was working there. Nobody, he felt, would believe him if he told them that he had gone there to ask a favour of the dead man. He crept up the dark hall and crouched on the stairs.

  ‘His position was directly under the clock which hangs there; and here you have the reason for what has possibly seemed meticulousness on my part in describing this minor incident. He became aware, without thinking, of what that clock said. He stared up at it blankly. But, as often happens, his mechanical action impressed itself on his memory. He swears—nothing will shake his evidence—that the time was five minutes past eleven.

  ‘There you have it. Digby-Coates, as I have shown, cannot have left the study before eleven-two. At some point between eleven-four and eleven-five Belford finds the study empty of life.

  ‘I split the difference and took eleven-three as the time at which Digby-Coates left the study—by the window. He must have been, I argued, snugly back in his room by four minutes past at the latest. He is still an active and very powerful man, and the climb could not have taken him long.

  ‘Having, after hearing what Belford had to tell me, thus been enabled to know at least a part of the time which must prove a weak spot in the alibi, I reviewed that itself. Before I do so, here, however, there is one more point which I must settle. It concerns the hay-fever of the aged Mr Poole. As the attack of this malady which let Belford into the study unobserved failed to stay in his memory, it might be thought that he may have had another attack, enabling another man to enter the study without being seen. That idea, which is sure to be entertained, is, I submit, of no value. One attack is ordinary enough; but the old man tells me that he has been “better lately”. Two of these painful seizures would have stayed in his mind. Besides, there is the silk rope and other evidence to prove descent by the wall. Also, the crime was obviously premeditated, and no murderer of such skill as Hoode’s would rely upon the hay-fever of an aged butler, even if he knew of its existence.

  ‘Now for the facts of the alibi. It will be remembered that Digby-Coates had, on the night of the murder, retired to his own sitting-room at a few minutes after ten. The night was hot. He opened the window to its fullest extent; also flung the door open. This was (I use his own words, spoken at the inquest) “in order to get the benefit of any breeze there might be”. Further, since he “wished to be alone in order to go through some important papers”, he pinned upon that open door a notice: “Busy—do not disturb”.

  ‘After he had gone to his room, the first incident with which we need concern ourselves occurred at 10.45, when Deacon made that famous request for the time. At that moment Digby-Coates was pacing the room, and Deacon, disregarding or not seeing the notice on the door, put his question from the passage.

  ‘About seven minutes later, Belford, walking down the passage, saw Digby-Coates standing in the doorway.

  ‘The next we hear is from Elsie Syme, one of the housemaids, who “saw Sir Arthur sitting in his big chair by the window” as she passed his door. (The quotation is from her reply to a question of Superintendent Boyd’s.) So far as can be ascertained, this was not more than five minutes after Belford had passed by—making the time about 10.57.

  ‘Next comes another housemaid, Mabel Smith, who had been working in the linen-closet, which is opposite the door of Deacon’s room. She said that returning from the journey she had made downstairs (and by forgetting which she had furnished Deacon with that false alibi which he rather foolishly tried to make use of) she had noticed Sir Arthur “sitting in his room”. The time then, as guessed by the girl and more definitely confirmed by Elsie Syme, who knew what time she had left the servants’ hall, was between eleven and one minute past.

  ‘Next comes Belford again. You remember that he entered the study at a point between three and four minutes past eleven. On his way there from the upper part of the house he passed Digby-Coates’s room and “saw Sir Arthur by the window”. Since he went straight to the study, the time at which he passed Digby-Coates’s door cannot have been earlier than 11.03.

  ‘After this we have Elsie Syme again. This time she is on her way to bed. Passing along the passage she again “saw Sir Arthur sitting by the window”. The time in this instance is a little harder to get at, but cannot have been more than six minutes past the hour.

  ‘Last we have the evidence of old Poole, who, after entering the study on hearing Miss Hoode scream, immediately fled to fetch his dead master’s friend. He found Sir Arthur sitting with a book, his arm-chair pulled close up to the open window. This, since Miss Hoode entered the st
udy at approximately ten minutes past eleven, was probably at 11.13 or thereabouts.

  ‘That is the alibi, and a very good one it is, too—too good. It was, of course, never recognised as being an alibi, since Digby-Coates was never suspected by police or public as being the murderer; but the very fact of its being there (it trickled out mixed up with unimportant and verbose evidence, and was very cleverly referred to by Digby-Coates himself on every possible occasion) must have had its subconscious effect. (I should perhaps, explain here that, as Digby-Coates was never suspected and the alibi was therefore the nebulous but effective thing I have described, the times I have given were not mentioned otherwise than generally: such exactitude as appears above is the result of Superintendent Boyd’s and my own questioning, of which more later.)

  ‘I have shown that according to the witnesses, none of whom I could suspect of anything but honesty, Digby-Coates was seen there in his room at times which made it impossible, that he should have done the murder. Yet I knew he was the murderer. Therefore some at least of these witnesses who had sworn to seeing him were mistaken.

  ‘I had, then, to find out (a) which witnesses were thus in error, and (b) how they had been induced to make their common mistake.

  ‘I got at (a) like this: (if the way seems long and roundabout, remember that it is far more difficult to find things out than to understand, when told, how they were so found out):

  ‘Digby-Coates, I reasoned, must have begun his preparations immediately after Belford saw him standing in the doorway of his room at eight minutes to eleven. To descend the wall; to enter the study; to hold Hoode in chaffing conversation for a moment to allay his curiosity regarding the unusual method of entry; to kill him; to reassemble the wood-rasp; to set the “struggle” scene; arrange the clock; to climb back up the wall again; and all as noiseless as you please, cannot have taken him less than eight minutes at the very least. As I have shown, he was in all probability back in his room by four minutes past the hour (if not earlier) and it will be seen, therefore, that he must have begun descent of the wall by four minutes to at the latest.

  ‘The witnesses I was after, therefore, were those who thought they had seen him between four minutes to and four minutes past the hour.

  ‘Of these, as you can see from my statement of the alibi, Elsie Syme is the first, Mabel Smith the second, and Belford the third. (Elsie Syme, it is true, might be considered as barely coming within my rough-and-ready time limit, but you must remember that all the times I fixed were calculations and not stop-watch records.)

  ‘Separately, I questioned the three servants. It was not an easy task. I had to handle them gently, and I had to impress upon them the vital necessity to forget the conversation as soon as they had left me. I think I managed it.

  ‘Their answers to my first important question were the same, though each was with me alone when I put it.

  ‘I said: “You say you saw Sir Arthur at such and such a time in his room on the night of the murder, and that he was sitting in his chair and that that chair was by the window. Are you certain of this?”

  ‘They said: “Yes, sir,” and said it emphatically.

  ‘I played my trump card. I played it in some fear; if the answers were not what I expected, my case fell.

  ‘I said: “Now tell me: exactly how much of Sir Arthur did you see? What parts of him, I mean.”

  ‘They goggled.

  ‘I tried again: “Was the chair that big arm-chair? And was it facing the window with its back to the door?”

  ‘“Yes, sir,” they said.

  ‘I said: “Then all you saw of Sir Arthur was—”

  ‘They replied, after some further help but with conviction, that all they had seen was the top of his head, part of his trousers, and the soles of his shoes. Belford, who is an intelligent man, expanded his answer by saying: “You see, sir, we’re all so used-like to seein’ Sir Arthur sittin’ like that and in that chair as we just naturally thinks as how we’d seen all on ’im that night.” Which, I think, is as lucid an explanation of the mistake as could well be given.

  ‘I must explain here how I came in possession of this trump card of mine. It was through two casual observations, which at first never struck me as bearing in any way upon the matter I was investigating. The first was the annoying, almost impossible tidiness of Digby-Coates’s hair. It did not appear to be greased or pomaded in any way, and yet I never saw it other than as if he had just brushed it, and with care. The second was his curious trick of sitting on the edge of a chair with his feet thrust first backwards through the gateway formed by the front legs and then outwards until each instep is pressed against the back of each of those front legs. It is a trick most boys have, but it is unusual to find it persisting in a man of middle-age. Digby-Coates does not, of course, always sit like that, but frequently.

  ‘What changed these two chance observations—the sort of thing one idly notices about any man of one’s acquaintance without really thinking about them—into perhaps the most important minor step in my case was a glimpse I had of Digby-Coates from the very point from which the servants who made his alibi had seen him. He was sitting as they had seen him sit (though I did not know this until I questioned them) in the big arm-chair, which was facing the window. All I could see from the passage was the long, solid back of the chair, the top of the well-tended head; six inches of each trouser leg, and the soles of two shoes. On the open door was a notice: “Busy—Please do not disturb”.

  ‘The scene was, in fact, a replica of what I had gathered it to be on the night of the murder. I fell to thinking, and suddenly the most annoying pieces of my jigsaw puzzle fell into place. I went in and spoke to him. I looked, more carefully than ever before, at his head, and came to the conclusion that he was bald, but wore the most skilfully made toupé I had ever seen. I remembered that he had told me that he never used a valet. I pictured him—he is the type—as one to whom the thought that anyone else knew how unsavoury he appeared minus hair was abhorrent.

  ‘When I discovered the toupé, I knew that I could smash the alibi if only the unknowing alibi-makers gave me, honestly, the answers I wanted.

  ‘As you know, they did. I consider the matter clear, but I know it. Perhaps I had better show what Digby-Coates did that night; how he set his stage and played out his one-act show.

  ‘He retires to his room, knowing that Hoode is in his study, Deacon busy or, as often of late, out, Miss Hoode and Mrs Mainwaring in their beds, and some of the servants, as he wishes them, moving about the house—he has studied their movements and knows that on this night of the week there is work to do which keeps them later than usual. Luckily for him, the night is hot. It gives the necessary excuse for leaving his door as well as his window open. Upon that open door—which is not back against the wall, but only half open—he places a notice: “Busy—Please do not disturb”.

  ‘(Observe the cunning of this notice. He had, I found from the servants, placed such a notice on the open door on two previous occasions. This, I am sure, he had done for a two-fold reason: (i) to see whether it would really keep out intruders, and (ii) to ensure, when eventually he placed it there on the night he chose for the killing of Hoode, that though the household were not become sufficiently accustomed to it to avoid a glance at it and subsequently into the room, the sight of the notice was yet familiar enough to ensure that it was not remarkable as being without precedent. He had, you see, for the sake of his alibi, to make certain that people passing (i) would look into his room; (ii) would not come in; and (iii) would not think the notice anything out of the ordinary.)

  ‘Having placed his notice he draws his arm-chair up to its familiar position facing the window. Then he has to wait. Sometimes he sits. Sometimes, the waiting too hard upon even such nerves as his, he paces the room.

  ‘All goes well. Everyone, everything, plays into his hands. The very man he has chosen to incriminate draws the noose, by that request for time, tighter round his own neck. The leaden-footed minutes, wh
at with this incident, that of Belford, and the increasing certainty of success, begin to pass more swiftly. People go their ways past his door but do not enter.

  ‘At last it is time. He gets his knotted rope, secures it to the leg of the carpenter’s bench Hoode has had fitted for him. The bench is clamped to the floor; no doubt but that it can stand the strain.

  ‘Now, with a wary eye upon the door, he takes from its hiding-place the replica of the toupé which is on his head, pads it out with a handkerchief, and sets it on top of a pile of books on the seat of the chair. The pile is just of the height to show the hair over the chair-back to one looking into the room from the passage. He knows, he has tested it many times. (He may, possibly, have used the half-wig from his head. But I think not. He must have had more than one; and he would not wish to have anything unusual in his appearance when he faced Hoode. The difficulty of explaining as a joke his entrance by the window would be sufficient.)

  ‘A pair of dress trousers pinned to the chair, the lower ends of the legs slightly padded and twisted one round each of the chair’s front legs, and a pair of patent-leather shoes set at the right angle, complete the picture.

  ‘(So simple as to sound comic, isn’t it? But if one thinks, one can see that in that simplicity lies that same touch of genius which characterises the whole of the other arrangements of the crime. To utilise his own little tricks, such as that way he had of sitting on a chair like a nervous schoolboy, that is genius. He knew that all they could have seen of him from that doorway, if he had really sat in his favourite position in that chair, would have been the top of his head, the ends of his trousers, and his shoes. He knew also that they were so accustomed to seeing only hair, trousers, and shoes when he was really there, that if they saw hair, trousers, and shoes they would be prepared to swear they had seen him.)

  ‘When the time comes, at last, he drops his rope of silk from the window and descends, his heart beating high with exultation. The moment he has waited for, schemed for, gloated over, will be with him at the end of that short journey…Some minutes later he returns by the same precarious stair.