The Problem of the Green Capsule

by John Dickson Carr

  “I have the best of reasons for knowing,” she informed them. “Oh, it isn’t a question of observation, my observation! I can prove it. Easily. Of course the clock was right. But what difference does it make anyway?”

  “It might make all the difference,” said Major Crow, “to the alibi of somebody who wasn’t here.”

  “Joe Chesney,” murmured Professor Ingram, and whistled. “I beg your pardon,” he added formally.

  As once before he had been able to reach everyone with the flick of a smile, so he now (evidently by a slip of the tongue) reached everyone with a flick of something else altogether. Elliot wondered how the dictionary defined the word “suggestion.” Whatever else it might be, it was a stirring of the water.

  “Uncle Joe?” cried Marjorie. “What about him?”

  “Go on with the questions,” invited the professor, and gave her a reassuring grin.

  Elliot, after making a quick note, decided to increase the tempo.

  “We can thrash out these things later, if you don’t mind. Just give me the answers as briefly as you can. Next: What was the height of the person who entered by the French window?”

  “Six feet,” replied Marjorie instantly. “Anyway, he was just the same height as Wilbur, and we all know Wilbur’s height Just the same height as Wilbur and Uncle J—” She stopped.

  “Six feet is about right,” decided Harding, after reflection. “If anything I’d have said a bit more than that, but it may have been the effect of that wild-looking hat.”

  Professor Ingram cleared his throat.

  “Nothing, I know,” he said, “is more exasperating than to be constantly contradicted over these points——”

  And under his quiet exterior it was clear that tempers were getting ready to boil clear up to the roof. To this extent had the waters of suggestion been stirred. Marjorie’s eyes were extraordinarily bright.

  “Oh, I can’t stand this! Surely you’re not going to tell us he was short and fat?”

  “No, my dear. Easy now.” Professor Ingram looked at Elliot. “Inspector, here is the answer. The person who came in by that window was about five feet nine inches tall—about the height, say, of Mr. Harding or myself. Or else (mark this) he was a man of six feet walking with his knees bent under that long coat to suggest a somewhat shorter person. In any case, his height was roughly five feet nine.”

  There was a silence.

  Major Crow, who had fitted on a pair of shell-rimmed spectacles which somewhat destroyed his military appearance, wiped a hand across his forehead. He had been making notes on the back of an envelope.

  “Look here—” he began.

  “Yes?”

  “Now I ask you,” said the Chief Constable with angry reasonableness, “I ask you, man to man, what kind of an answer is that? Either he was five feet nine inches, or else possibly he might have been six feet. Look here, Ingram. It strikes me you’re the one who’s been planting notions in everybody’s head. Wherever it’s possible to contradict somebody, you’ve contradicted ’em. Would you like to hear the score so far?”

  “With pleasure.”

  “Well, you all agree that there was a two-pound chocolate-box on the table, and that the first of the two objects Chesney picked up was a pencil. But look at the test of it. I’ve scored my own questions.”

  He flung the envelope across to Professor Ingram, who inspected it and then passed round the following remarkable document:

  What was the colour of the chocolate-box? Miss Wills: It was green.

  Mr. Harding: It was blue.

  Prof. Ingram: It was both.

  What was the second object Chesney picked up? Miss Wills: A pen.

  Mr. Harding: A pencil.

  Prof. Ingram: A blow-pipe dart.

  What was the time? Miss Wills: Midnight.

  Mr. Harding: About midnight.

  Prof. Ingram: One minute to 12.

  How tall was the bloke in the hat? Miss Wills: Six feet.

  Mr. Harding: Six feet.

  Prof. Ingram: Five feet nine.

  “The only rough agreement there,” Major Crow went on, “is about the time. And that’s probably the most thoroughly wrong of the lot.”

  Professor Ingram got to his feet.

  “I don’t think I quite understand you, Major,” he said. “You ask me, as an expert witness, to tell you what really happened. You expect discrepancies. You want to find discrepancies. And then for some reason you seem annoyed with me when I point them out to you.”

  “I know, and that’s all very well,” argued Major Crow, pointing the envelope at him. “But what about that business of the chocolate-box? A box may be green or it may be blue; but it ruddy well can’t be both, and that’s what you say it is. Now it may interest you to know”—here, despite Elliot’s and Bostwick’s frantic signals, he tossed police discretion overboard—“it may interest you to know that the box in that room is blue. Blue flowers on it. And the only other object on that table is a flattish pencil. There’s no sign of any second object: either a pen, or another pencil, or a blow-pipe dart. One blue box of chocolates; one pencil; nothing else. May I ask what you’ve got to say to that?”

  Professor Ingram sat down again, wearing a satirical smile.

  “Only,” he said, “that, given half a chance, I shall explain it in just one moment”

  “All right, all right,” growled Major Crow, lifting his hands as though he were beginning a salaam. “Have it your own way, and explain when you like; I’ll retire. Carry on, Inspector. Sorry I butted in. It’s your show.”

  And during the next few minutes, Elliot began to feel that their disputes were at an end. The next two questions and half of the following one were answered with almost complete agreement. These questions, with regard to the goblin from the French window, were: Describe this person’s costume. What was he carrying in his right hand? Describe this object. Describe his actions.

  Out of it emerged a picture of that grotesque dummy-figure which seemed to have made so powerful an impression on them all. From top-hat through brown wool muffler, sunglasses, raincoat, and black trousers with evening-shoes, not a detail was missed by anyone. Each person correctly described the black bag, painted with the white letters R. H. Nemo, M.D., and carried in the visitor’s right hand. The only new detail was that the visitor had been wearing rubber gloves.

  This unanimity disturbed and puzzled Elliot, until he remembered that all of the witnesses had had more than a fair opportunity to study the costume. Most of Nemo’s properties, including the black wig, had been flung down outside the office window. The witnesses had not only seen them during the performance. They had seen them afterwards, when they went out to look for Wilbur Emmet.

  Yet, even so, they had missed nothing of the visitor’s actions on the stage. The figure of the black-blind Nemo, bowing and nodding under his own huge shadow in the white light, seemed to fill the screen of their minds like a nightmare. They described this entrance. They described how, at an incautious jeer of George Harding’s from the audience, Nemo had turned round and looked at them. They described how he had put down his bag on the table, turning his back to them. They then told how he had gone to the right of the table, taken a pill-box out of his pocket, extracted a capsule, and——

  But where in all the raving blazes was the clue?

  That was what Elliot wanted to know. He was nearly at the end of the list, and so far he could see nothing to give him a lead. There had been contradictions among the witnesses, yes; but how would these help?

  “We’re getting on,” he told them. “So we’ll wind up this question. Did he remove anything from the table?”

  Three voices spoke almost at once.

  “No,” said Marjorie.

  “No,” said George Harding.

  “Yes,” said Professor Ingram.

  In the uproar that followed, Harding spoke firmly. “Sir, I’ll swear he didn’t. He never touched that table. He——”

  “Of course he didn’t,”
said Marjorie. “Besides, what could he have removed? The only thing that seems to be gone is one pen—or pencil, or blow-pipe dart, whatever you two call it—and I know he didn’t take that. Uncle Marcus put it down on the blotter in front of him. And that thing in the top-hat never went near the blotter in front of Uncle Marcus. So what could he have removed?”

  Professor Ingram called for silence. He looked a trifle grim now.

  “That,” he said, “is what I have patiently been trying to tell you. To be specific: He removed a green-flowered box of Henrys’ Chocolate Caramels, and for it he substituted the blue-flowered box of Henrys’ Chocolate Peppermint Creams which is there now. You wanted the literal truth. There you are. Don’t ask me how he did it! When he put down his black bag on the table, he put it down in front of the green box. When he took the bag away again, and walked out of the room, the box on the table was blue. I repeat: Don’t ask me how he switched the boxes. I am not a conjuror. But I think that the answer to the problem of several very ugly poisonings is contained in that little action. I suggest you exercise your wits on it. I also trust that this removes some of Major Crow’s doubts as to my sanity or good faith; and, before any more tempers are lost this evening, can anyone oblige me with a cigarette?”

  Chapter VIII

  THE BOX OF TRICKS

  Whether or not Professor Ingram got his cigarette Elliot never knew. For the explanation of some of this sleight-of-hand had suddenly come to him.

  “Excuse me; back in a moment,” he said. And, moving round the piano, he went out through one of the French windows.

  As an afterthought he closed the thick velvet curtains behind him. It was colder here, in the narrow aisle of grass between the house and the spectral yellow chestnut trees. It was also darker, now that some lights were dimmed and only an ordinary bulb burned in the office. He felt the effect of that dead hour of the night when flesh and bone seem brittle. He also thought he heard a bell ringing faintly somewhere. But he paid no attention to it, for his attention was concentrated on Dr. Nemo’s properties lying outside the office windows.

  That black satchel——

  Now he knew why its appearance had seemed vaguely familiar. Larger than a doctor’s medicine-case, though of much the same shape, and yet not large enough for an ordinary valise. Such a bag was one of the exhibits on display in the Black Museum at Scotland Yard.

  He knelt down by the bag, which stood near the hat and the raincoat. It was of varnished leather, and looked new. Dr. Nemo’s name had been painted on the side, rather crudely, with a stencil. Using his handkerchief, Elliot opened the bag. Inside was a two-pound box of Henrys’ Chocolate Caramels, designed with bright green flowers.

  “That’s got it,” he said aloud.

  This bag was the Shop-Thief’s Friend. He picked it up and looked at the bottom. Originally used for conjuring entertainment, its principle had been adopted by the gentry who raid department-stores, jewelers, any shop in which valuable goods are exposed openly.

  You enter a shop, carrying this innocent-looking bag. You put it down casually on the counter, while you looked at something else. But you put the bag down over what you wanted to steal. The bottom was equipped with the conjuror’s “spring-grip” device, which snapped up into the bag what lay underneath. You then—having made no suspicious move of any sort—picked up your bag and left the shop.

  Dr. Nemo’s genial course became clear. He had entered the office, put his bag on the table, and, when doing so, had turned his back to the audience. He had put down the spring-grip bag not in front of the green box, but on top of it. The bag would deal with much heavier objects than a comparatively small and light chocolate-box. In the deep pocket of his raincoat he had a blue box of chocolate peppermints. Either while bending over to put down the bag, or when bending over to pick it up again, he had slipped the other box behind the satchel under cover of turning his back. Before an already be-dazzled and flurried audience, it would require no great skill. And all this had been done with Marcus Chesney’s aid, at Marcus Chesney’s direction, as a part of Marcus Chesney’s scheme to trick the witnesses wherever they turned their eyes…

  But how did this fact help towards a solution of this crime, or of the crime at the sweet-shop? Did it mean that at Mrs. Terry’s one whole box of chocolates had been substituted for another?

  “Hoy!” whispered a voice.

  Elliot jumped. It was a hoarse voice, whispering firecely, and it came from directly above his head. He peered up, to see Dr. Joseph Chesney’s face looking down at him from a window on the floor above. Doctor Joe was leaning so far out of the window that Elliot wondered whether that great weight would come tumbling down like a laundry-bag.

  “Are you all deaf down there?” whispered Doctor Joe. “Don’t you hear the doorbell ringing? Why don’t somebody answer it? It’s been ringing for five minutes. Curse it all, I can’t do everything. I’ve got a patient here——”

  Elliot woke up. That, of course, would be the police-surgeon, the photographer and fingerprint-man, who had to be summoned from twelve miles away.

  “And—hoy!” roared Doctor Joe.

  “Yes?”

  “Send Marjorie up here, will you? He’s calling for her.”

  Elliot looked up quickly. “Is he conscious? Could I see him?”

  A rusty, hairy fist, its loose sleeve dangling, was shaken at him from the window. Illuminated from below, Doctor Joe’s gingery beard had an aspect almost Mephistophelian.

  “No, my lad, he’s not conscious; not in the way you mean. And you can’t see him to-night, or to-morrow, or maybe for weeks or months or years. Got that? And send Marjorie up here. These maids are no good. One of ’em drops things, and the other’s hiding in bed. Oh, for God’s sake——!”

  The head was withdrawn.

  Very slowly Elliot gathered up Dr. Nemo’s properties. The distant ringing had ceased. A chilly wind was beginning to stir at the turn of the night; it moved in the tattered leaves; it brought up from the earth the rich scent and decay of autumn; and then, as at the insistence of the breeze or the opening of a door, it brought another and sweeter odour. It was like the faint scent which seemed to pervade the house itself. Then Elliot remembered, somewhere close, half an acre of greenhouses in the darkness. It was the scent of the peach tree, the almond tree, whose fruit ripens between July and November, the almond tree of bitter almonds, haunting Bellegarde.

  He carried Dr. Nemo’s properties into the office as the office door (to the hall) opened, and Superintendent Bostwick brought in two newcomers whom he introduced as Dr. West and Sergeant Matthews. Major Crow followed them. Matthews was given the routine instructions as to fingerprints and photographs, and Dr. West bent over Marcus Chesney’s body.

  Major Crow looked at Elliot.

  “Well, Inspector?” he asked. “Why did you decide to dash off all of a sudden? And what did you find?”

  “I’ve found how the chocolate-boxes were exchanged, sir,” said Elliot, and explained.

  The other was impressed. “Neat,” he conceded. “Devilish neat. But even so—look here, where did Chesney get a trick bag like that?”

  “You can buy them at some of the magical supply houses in London.”

  “You mean he sent away specially for it?”

  “Looks like it, sir.”

  Major Crow went over and inspected the bag. “Which would mean,” he reflected, “that he’s had this performance in mind for some little time. You know, Inspector”—he seemed to resist an impulse to give the bag a hearty kick—“the more and more we go on, the more and more important this confounded show becomes; and the less and less it seems to help us. Where are we? What have we got? Wait! Are there any more questions in Chesney’s list?”

  “Yes, sir. Three more.”

  “Then go in there and get on with it,” said the Chief Constable, giving a bitter glance towards the closed double-doors. “But before you go, I want to ask you whether you’ve noticed something that’s struck me particular
ly in all this flummery.”

  “Yes?”

  Major Crow took up his stance. He extended a bony wrist and forefinger as though he were uttering a denunciation. “There’s some jiggery-pokery about that clock,” he declared.

  They looked at it Dr. West had turned on the blazing white light so as to look at the body, and again the derisive white face of the clock, with its brass trimmings and marble frame, stared back at them from the mantelpiece. The time was twenty minutes to two.

  “Hullo! I’ve got to get home,” observed Major Crow suddenly. “But anyway—look at it. Suppose Chesney altered that clock? He could have done it before the show. Then, when the show was over (you remember?) he closed those double-doors on them, and didn’t go into the Music Room until Ingram rapped on the doors and told him to come out for a curtain-call. During that time he could have altered the clock back to the right time, couldn’t he?”

  Elliot was doubtful.

  “I suppose he could, sir. If he wanted to.”

  “Of course he could. Nothing easier.” Major Crow went to the mantelpiece, edging in behind the dead man’s chair. He turned the clock round, bumping it a little, until its back was towards them. “You see those two gadgets? One is the key you wind the clock by. The other is the head of the little pin you twist round to alter the position of the hands—hullo!”

  He stared, bending closer, and Elliot joined him. There, true enough, was the small brass key in the back of the clock. But where the other pin or spindle should have been there was only a tiny round hole.

  “It’s been broken off,” said Elliot, “and broken off inside the outer case of the clock.”

  He bent closer. Inside the microscopic hole he could just see a microscopic bright stump, and there was a fresh scratch round the hole on the somewhat grimy metal back of the clock.

  “It’s been damaged recently,” he explained. “That’s probably what Miss Wills meant when she said she was certain the clock was right. You see, sir? Until a clockmaker gets at this, nobody can alter the position of the hands even if he tries to.”