Wimsey, grinned at Umpelty over this convenient summary, with its useful suppressions and assumptions. No mention of clefts in the rock or of horseshoes or of the disposal of Mrs Weldon’s money. The jury whispered together. There was a pause. Harriet looked at Henry Weldon. He was frowning heavily and paying no attention to his mother, who was talking excitedly into his ear.
Presently the foreman rose to his feet a stout person, who looked like a farmer.
‘We’re all agreed, for certain sure,’ he said, ’as deceased come to his death by cutting of his throat, and most of us thinks he took his own life; but there’s some (he glared at the Empire Free-Trader) ‘who will have it as it was Bolsheviks.’
‘A majority verdict is sufficient,’ said the coroner, ‘Am I to understand that the majority is for suicide?’
‘Yes, sir, I told you so, Jim Cobble’,’ added the foreman, in a penetrating whisper.
‘Then your verdict is that deceased came to his end by cutting his own throat.’
‘Yes, sir.’ (A further consultation;) ‘We should like to add as we think the police regulations about: foreigners did ought to be tightened up, like, deceased being a foreigner and suicides and murders being unpleasant in a place where so many visitors come in the summer.’
‘I can’t take that,’ objected the harassed coroner. ‘Deceased was a naturalised Englishman.’
‘That don’t make no difference,’ said the juror, sturdily.
‘We do think as the regulations ought to be tightened up none the more for that, and that’s what we all say. Put it down, sir, as that’s our opinion.’
‘There you are,’ said Wimsey, ‘that’s the breed that made the Empire. When empire comes in at the door, logic goes out at the window. Well, I suppose that’s all. I say, Inspector.’
‘My lord?’
‘What are you doing with that scrap of paper?’
‘I don’t quite now, my lord. Do you think there’s anything to be made of it?’
‘Yes; send it up to Scotland Yard and ask them to get the photographic experts on to it. You can do a lot with coloured screens. Get hold of Chief Inspector Parker — he’ll see that it’s put into the right hands.’
The Inspector nodded.
‘We’ll do that. It’s my belief there’s something for us in that bit of paper, if we could only get at it. I don’t know when I’ve seen a queerer business than this. It looks just about as clear a case of suicide as you could wish, if it wasn’t for one or two things. And yet, when you look into those things separately, they seem to melt away, like. There’s that Bright. I thought we’d got him on one point, anyhow. But there! I’ve noticed, that these landsmen, nine times out of ten, haven’t the least notion whether the tide’s in or out or where it is. I think he was lying; so do you — but you couldn’t expect a jury to hang a man for murder on the ground that he didn’t know High Water from Low Water.
We’ll try to keep an eye on the fellow, but I don’t see how we’re going to detain him. The verdict’s suicide; (which suits us well enough in a way), and if Bright wants ‘to move on, we can’t stop him. Not unless we offer to pay for his board and lodging for an indefinite period, and that wouldn’t suit; the rate-payers. He’s got no settled address, and seeing what, his business is, we can’t hardly expect it. We’ll get out a general call to, have him kept under observation, but that’s about all we can do. And of course, he’ll change his name again.’
‘Isn’t he on the dole?’
‘No.’ The Inspector snorted. ‘Says he’s got an independent spirit. That’s a suspicious circumstance in itself, I should say. Besides — he’ll be claiming this reward from the Morning Star and won’t need any doles for a bit. But we can’t force him to stay in Wilvercombe, at his own expense, reward or no reward.’
‘Get hold of Mr Hardy, and see if’ the paper can’t hold the reward up a bit. Then, if he doesn’t turn up to claim it, we’ll know: for a certainty that there’s something wrong with him. A contempt for money, Inspector, is the root — or at any rate, the very definite sign of all evil.’
The Inspector grinned.
‘You and me think alike, my lord. There’s something fishy about a bloke that doesn’t take all he can get. Right you are. I’ll speak to Mr Hardy. And I’ll try and fix up with Bright to hang on here a couple of days. If he’s up to anything queer, he won’t try to bolt for fear of looking suspicious.
‘It’ll look much more suspicious if he consents to stay.’
‘Yes, my lord but he won’t reason that way. He won’t want to make trouble. He’ll stay for a bit, I daresay. Fact is, I was thinking, if we could pull him in over some other little matter I don’t know, but-he’s a slippery looking customer, and I shouldn’t wonder but what we might find some excuse or other to detain him on.’ He winked.
‘Framing him, Inspector?’
‘Good lord, no, may lord. Can’t do that in this country.
But there’s lots of little things a man may do in the way of breaking the law. There’s street-betting, and drunk and disorderly, and buying stuff after closing-hours and so on — little odds-and-ends that come in handy at times.’
‘My conscience!’ said Wimsey ‘First time I’ve heard a good word for Dora! Well, I must be getting along. Hullo, Weldon! I didn’t know you were there.’
‘Funny business, all this.’ Mr Weldon waved his hand vaguely. ‘Lot of silly stuff people do talk, eh? You’d think the whole thing was plain as pie, but here’s my mother still talking about Bolsheviks. Take more than a coroner’s verdict to keep her quiet. Women! You can talk yourself black in the face reasoning with ’em and all they do is to go on bleating the same silly nonsense. You can’t take any account of what they say, can you?’
‘They’re not all alike.’
‘So they say. But that’s all part of this equality nonsense. Now take Miss Vane. Nice girl, and all that, and decent looking when she takes the trouble to put her clothes on
‘What about Miss Vane?’’ demanded Wimsey, sharply. Then he thought: ‘Damn being in love! I’m losing my lightness of touch.’ Weldon merely grinned.
‘No offence,’ he said. ‘I only meant — take that evidence of hers. How’s a girl like that to be expected to know about blood and all that — see what I mean? Women always get that idea of blood running about all over the place. Always reading novels. “Wallowing in gore.?’ That kind of stuff.’ No good trying to persuade ’em. They see what they think they ought to see. Get me?’
‘You seem to have studied feminine psychology,’ said Wimsey, gravely.
‘Oh, I know women pretty well; said Mr Weldon, with solemn satisfaction.
‘You mean.,’ went on Wimsey, ‘that they think in cliches.’
‘Eh?’
‘Formulae. “There’s nothing like a mother’s instinct.”
“Dogs and children always know.”
“Kind hearts are more than coronets.”
“Suffering refines the character”—that sort of guff, despite all evidence to the contrary.’
Ye-es,’ replied Mr Weldon. ‘What I mean is, you know, they think a thing ought to be so, and so they say it is so’
‘Yes; I grasped that that was what you meant.’ Wimsey thought that if ever human being had the air of repeating a formula without a clear idea of its meaning, Mr Weldon was that human being; yet he pronounced the magic words with a kind of pride, taking credit to himself for a discovery.
‘What you really mean,’ went on Wimsey, is; I take it, that we can’t rely on Miss Vane’s evidence at all? You say She hears a shriek, she finds a man with his throat, cut and a razor beside him; it looks as though he’d that moment committed suicide, therefore she takes it for granted that he has that moment committed suicide. In that case the blood ought to be still flowing. Therefore she persuades herself that it was still flowing. Is that it?’
That’s it,’ said Mr Weldon.
Therefore the jury bring in a verdict of suicide. But you and I, who know
all about women, know that the evidence about the blood was probably wrong, and that therefore it may quite well have been murder. Is that it?’
‘Oh, no — I don’t mean that,’ protested Mr Weldon. ‘I feel perfectly certain it was suicide.’
Then what are you grumbling at? It seems so obvious. If the man was murdered after two. o’clock, Miss Vane would have seen the murderer. She didn’t see the murderer. Therefore it was suicide. The proof of the suicide really depends on Miss Vane’s evidence, which shows that the man died after two o’clock. Doesn’t it?’
Mr Weldon grappled for some moments with this surprising piece of logic, but failed to detect either the petitio eleuchi, the undistributed middle or the inaccurate major premiss which is contrived to combine. His face cleared.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Yes. I see that. Obviously it must have been suicide, and Miss Vane’s evidence proves that it was. So she must be right after all.’
This was a syllogistic monstrosity even worse than the last, thought Wimsey. A, man who could reason like that could not reason at all: He constructed a new syllogism for himself.
The man who committed this murder was not a fool.
Weldon is a fool.
Therefore Weldon did not commit this murder.
That appeared to be sound, so far as it went. But what was Weldon bothering about, in that case? One could only suppose that he was worried over having no perfect alibi for two o’clock. And indeed that was worrying Wimsey himself. All the best murderers have alibis for the time of the murder.
Then, suddenly, illumination came flooding, stabbing across the dark places of his mind like a searchlight. And, good God! if this was the true solution, Weldon; was anything but a fool. He was one of the subtlest criminals a detective had ever encountered. Wimsey studied Weldon’s obstinate profile — was it possible? Yes, it was possible — and the scheme might quite well have been successful, if only Harriet Vane had not turned up with her evidence.
Work it out this way see how it looked. Weldon had murdered Alexis at the Flat-Iron at two o’clock. He had had the, mare tethered ready somewhere, and, after leaving the Feathers at 1.30, he had gone down the Lane and got to horse without a moment’s delay. Then he must have ridden hell-for-leather. Suppose he had somehow managed to do four miles in twenty-five minutes. That would leave him half a mile from the Flat-Iron at two o’clock. No, that would not do. Strain it a little farther. Let him start from Hinks’s Lane at 1.32 and let him wallop a steady nine miles an hour out of the mare — that would, almost do it. Let him, in any ease, be within five minutes quick walk of the rock at 1.55 Then what? He sends the mare home. Five minutes before Harriet woke, he could send the bay mare galloping back along the sands. Then he walks. He reaches the Flat-Iron at two’ o’clock. He kills. He hears Harriet coming. He hides in the cleft of the rock. And meanwhile, the bay mare has either run home, or, possibly, has reached the lane by the cottages and run up it, or Never mind the mare; she got back to her own field and stream somehow. The times were tight; the whole thing seemed absurdly elaborate, but it was not an absolute impossibility as he had thought at first. Suppose it had been so. Now, if Harriet had not been there, what would have happened? In a few hours the tide would have covered the body. Pause there, Morocco. If Weldon was the murderer, he would not want the body lost. He would want his mother to know that Alexis was dead. Yes; but under ordinary circumstances the body would have turned up sooner. It was the violent south-west wind and the three hundred sovereigns that had combined to keep the body hidden. And the body had been found, even so. Well, then. If Harriet had not found the body when she did, there would — have been nothing to show that the death had not occurred earlier — say between 11 and 1.30—the period for which there was the alibi. In fact, the victim’s arrival at that early hour at Darley Halt made it look much more likely that the earlier hour was the right one. Why should you tempt your victim to a lonely spot at, I1.30 a.m. and then wait two and a half hours before polishing him off — except in order to create a presumption that you had really killed him earlier? And then, too, there was that crusty pair, Pollock and his grandson, with their grudging evidence that they had seen Alexis ‘lying down’ on the Flat-Iron at 1.45. They must be in it too. That was it. That must be it. The murder was meant to look like a morning murder — and that was why there had been that curious insistence on the alibi and the journey to Wilvercombe. ‘Always suspect the man with the cast-iron alibi’ was not that the very first axiom in the detective’s book of rules? And here it was — the cast-iron alibi which really was cast-iron; meant to be scrutinised; meant to stand every test — as how should it not, for it was truth! It looked queer — because it was intended to look queer. It was asking, clamouring for investigation. It existed simply and solely to distract attention from the crucial hour of two o’clock. And if only Harriet had not come upon that freshly slain corpse, how well the plan might have succeeded. But Harriet had been there, and the whole structure had collapsed under the shock of her evidence. That must have been a blow indeed. No wonder Weldon was doing his best to discredit that awkward testimony as to the time of the death. He knew better than anyone that death at two o’clock was no, proof of suicide, whatever it might appear to a coroners jury. He was not stupid; he was shamming stupid and doing it damned well.
Wimsey was vaguely aware that Weldon was bidding him good-bye in some form of — words — or other. He. let him go readily, eagerly. He wanted to think’ this thing over.
A little concentration in the privacy of his own room brought him to a point from which he could begin to work forward with some assurance.
The original scheme had been smashed to pieces by Harriet’s evidence. What would Weldon do next?
He might do nothing. That would be the safest way; of all. He might rely on the coroner’s verdict and trust that the police and Wimsey and Harriet and everybody else would accept it. But would he have the deadly courage; to do that? He might — unless he knew of something in that cipher document which might prove the suicide to be murder. If so, or if he lost his head — then he would have to fall back on his second line of defence, which, would, be, what? Undoubtedly, an alibi for two o’clock — the real time of the murder.
What had he actually said about this? Wimsey looked up his notes, to which he had added considerably of late. Weldon had vaguely mentioned a, possible witness, a man unknown who had been passing through Darley and had asked him the time.
Of course, yes. He had suspected this witness already that stock character of detective fiction the man who asks the time. Wimsey laughed. Now he felt sure about it. Everything was provided for and the way discreetly paved for the production of this useful witness in case of necessity. Now that the morning alibi had failed to draw the enemy’s fire, the two o’clock alibi would be pushed to the front. Only, this time it would not be cast-iron. It would be a fake. Quite a good fake, very likely, but undoubtedly a fake. And then the shades of the prison-house would begin to close, darkly and coldly over the figure of Mr Henry Weldon.
‘If it were done when it is done, then it were — Weldon,’ said his lordship to himself. ‘If I’m right, then that two o’clock witness will turn up pretty quickly now. And if he does turn up, I’ll know I’m right’
Which was logic after the manner of Mr Weldon.
Chapter XXII. The Evidence Of The Mannequin
‘All honest men, good Melchior, like thyself—
For that thou art, I think, upon my life—
Believe the too.’
— Torrisrnond
Saturday, 27 June;, Sunday, 28 June
HARRIET VANE found herself comfortable enough in the quarters of the late Paul Alexis. A polite letter from her literary agent asking ‘whether the new book would be available for publication in the autumn’—had driven her back to the problem of the town-clock, but she found herself giving it a very divided attention. Compared with the remarkable tangle of the Alexis affair, the plot seemed to be thin and obviou
s, while the ape-like Robert Templeton began to display a tiresome tendency to talk like Lord Peter Wimsey. Harriet continually found herself putting her work aside—‘to clear’ (as though it were coffee). Novelists who have struck a snag in the working-out of the plot are rather given to handing the problem over in this way to the clarifying action of the sub-conscious. Unhappily, Harriet’s sub-conscious had other coffee to clear and refused quite definitely to deal with the matter of the town-clock. Under such circumstances it is admittedly useless to ask the conscious to take any further steps. When she ought to have been writing, Harriet would sit comfortably in an armchair, reading a volume taken from. Paul Alexis’ book shelf, with the idea of freeing the sub-conscious for its job.
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