“Remember, finally, that the body of Serena Hobart was found on the terrace a little to the left of the open window. And now, Lieutenant Minnoch, the final move is yours.”
Minnoch’s eye fastened on one member of that group. In a loud voice he said:
“Horace Dinsmore, alias Malcolm Townsend, I arrest you for the murder of Serena Hobart. I must warn you that anything you say will be taken down in writing and can be used against you at your trial.”
*The presence of these brackets has been stressed with a special footnote on page 80.
20
PENNY, THE ONLY woman among seven persons assembled in the library at Delys Hall three nights later, addressed their master of ceremonies.
“Please, Mr. Bethune!” she begged.
In a carved chair at the head of the long table sat Gilbert Bethune. Ranged behind one side of the table, facing east, sat Ira Rutledge, Lieutenant Minnoch, and Gregory Winwood of the Arkwright Company. Ranged behind the other side, facing west, sat Dave Hobart, Jeff Caldwell, and Penny Lynn. Softly illumined by the glow of the yellow-shaded lamp, they looked like a board meeting at which Uncle Gil was presiding.
“Please, Mr. Bethune!” repeated Penny. “You’ll tell us all about that dreadful gadget, won’t you? The one with a wire stretching to the batteries of the doorbell? The one so cleverly hidden, in the air space between the walls, that any person replacing the batteries would never suspect it was there? The one you alone discovered?”
Uncle Gil, cigar in hand, contemplated the lamp and spoke from behind a smoke-cloud.
“The one I discovered, my dear?” he said gently. “You give me far too much credit.”
“But—!”
“Without the least pretense to scientific ability or scientific knowledge, I felt only that an electrical device of some sort must in some way be attached to an iron bracket, in all probability the bracket nearest that open window. Lacking help from Mr. Winwood, a Georgia Tech graduate with much enthusiasm for such matters, I should never have known how our device operated or could operate. Mr. Winwood found and explained the trap. He has so drilled me in explaining it, as though I were getting up my case for a jury, that I am almost parrot-perfect. Let’s try to summarize.”
Uncle Gil was silent for a moment, inhaling deeply.
“You’ve all seen that iron fleur de lys,” he went on, “which has a square shaft projecting from the wall. This shaft fits easily in a porcelain insulating ‘bushing’ (do I use the correct term, sir?) through the wall. The front face of the ‘bushing’ is hidden by the flange of the fleur de lys; this one can’t be distinguished from any like fleur de lys in the row. When the bracket is grasped and slightly pulled, its shaft moves outwards only an eighth of an inch, but that’s enough. The other end of the shaft extends through the wall into the air space we find between every outer wall and the rooms behind it on both floors.
“This inner end of the shaft carries a hard rubber piece which will cause a small electric switch to close when the shaft is pulled. The switch connects a wire leading from the house doorbell batteries to the primary winding of a Ruhmkorff coil also concealed in the air space. Do I speak accurately, Mr. Winwood?”
The sharp-faced little man answered at once. He had a voice as sharp as his face, but he was far from being without humor.
“If I were inclined to be pedantic,” he replied, “I should insist that you refer to the battery rather than the batteries. The three dry cells of this mechanism are in fact only cells of a single battery. But it’s become popular usage to call them batteries, so I allow it. Therefore we are safe in saying—”
“We are, are we?” Dave burst out.
Dave, seeming more hounded or haunted than ever, had been sitting with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. Now he peered up.
“Not so fast, anybody!” he protested. “As far as science is concerned, I’m more than an ignoramus and want to be no better. But what in Satan’s name is a ‘Ruhmkorff coil’? ”
Uncle Gil made a polite gesture towards the technical adviser, who cleared his throat.
“The Ruhmkorff coil, sometimes also called a spark coil,” said Gregory Winwood, “is used to produce a high voltage from some low-voltage source, such as a small battery of dry cells. Four of these provide the ignition for Mr. Ford’s Model T, which he has now ceased to manufacture.
“To activate the mechanism in this house, as the chairman of our board was about to say a moment ago, the high-tension terminal of the coil is attached to the inner shaft of the fleur de lys. When the bracket is pulled, even lightly, whoever has gripped it will receive a very painful shock. The shock is not lethal and leaves no mark, having so brief a pulse; but the victim on that narrow ledge must inevitably pitch over. Finally, the inventor of the trap has supplied a spring which returns the shaft to its normal position once pressure has been released, opening the switch and cutting off the current. We have now come round in full circle from topics mechanical to topics personal, so I return you to the chairman of the board.”
He inclined his head towards Uncle Gil, who frowned and took up the tale.
“Let’s go back a little,” Uncle Gil suggested. “Having suspected an electrical device of some kind, even before calling in Mr. Winwood we had to ask ourselves where such a device could have been installed, when it was installed, and who installed it.
“The most probable time, I thought, would have been just after the advent of electric power in 1907. Once the official workmen had finished their wiring, the unofficial workman had a clear field; air spaces were available since 1882. The person who installed it was someone of deviously ingenious mind, skilled at using his hands and with the requisite technical knowledge.”
Dave pressed his hands over his eyes.
“Requisite technical knowledge, eh? ‘I’ll cross it, though it blast me!’ You’re talking about my old man, aren’t you?”
“It seemed inescapable, Dave. I knew Harald Hobart had studied engineering. To learn it was electrical engineering confirmed the trend of this thought. I now hazard a conjecture for which there is no evidence at all. He prepared his trap but did not yet connect it, against some future day when it might be needed.
“On other points we do have evidence. In 1910 he became involved in rivalry for control of Danforth & Co. with Thad Peters, favorite in-law of the Vaubans. The trap was needed, or he thought it was. How would he approach his prey? ‘If I could find Commodore Hobart’s hidden gold,’ he would say, ‘I need never trouble myself or you or any other person on earth. They’ve been looking in the wrong direction for access to that hoard. They’ve been looking for access inside the house; real access is from outside.
“‘Provided I had the courage to walk along the ledge outside the principal guest bedroom, I could put my hand on a fortune. But I can’t do it; I can’t bear heights, as everybody knows.’ Whereas, he suggested, if a noted athlete lent assistance …”
“I mustn’t be too hard on murderers, must I?” Dave said. “Since my own father seems to have been a murderer—!”
“I like to think he had no such intent,” said Gilbert Bethune. “It’s a long drop from that ledge, but it should not have killed a young man in prime physical condition. I don’t think your father believed it would kill. But it would hurt Peters a little and scare him badly. Peters, with the physical courage to walk that ledge, might well lack the moral courage to resist Harald Hobart any longer; he would yield; he would give Harald what Harald wanted. Not a pretty story, though a much more human story.
“By unforeseen chance, then, the victim broke his neck. What happened next?
“Though there had been a single cry from outside the house, Peters must seem to have died inside. The instigator of this plot worked entirely alone; he did not even share a bedroom with his wife. Last Friday night, Dave, I believe you yourself showed by a trick fall on the staircase that someone rolling downstairs makes almost no noise. Is that right?”
“Absolutely right!
But—”
“Peters’s body was dragged into the house. Heavy silverware, deliberately dropped, provided false evidence of what seemed to happen. Afterwards a conscience-stricken plotter covered his tracks. He forbade his son to mention even what had apparently occurred. In later years he would allow no examination of the premises.”
Here Ira Rutledge intervened.
“One who asked to examine these premises,” he queried, “being the smooth-faced skulker who did use Harald’s trap with homicidal purpose?”
“Oh, yes. With homicidal purpose from the start. Townsend-Dinsmore had much charm, as so many murderers have had. He had considerable power over women, or at least over some women. All this hid the utter callousness of his tribe.”
“And yet, Gil, it still seems incredible that the man you knew as Malcolm Townsend should really have been the Rev. Horace Dinsmore. Come, now! A Boston clergyman!”
Uncle Gil pointed with the cigar.
“Unthinkable but true,” he replied. “The Rev. Clarence Richeson, who murdered his mistress and then emasculated himself in jail, was also a Boston clergyman.”
“In addition to being an ordained minister,” Ira remained stubborn, “Townsend-Dinsmore or Dinsmore-Townsend was a professor at highly respectable Mansfield College.”
“And Dr. Parkman was a professor at Harvard. But they hanged him just the same.”
“They won’t execute this murderer,” cried Penny, “after that awful business night before last. Townsend was Dinsmore, as we’ve got good reason to know now. I know I oughtn’t to butt in; I know I ought to keep still and be good.” She appealed to Uncle Gil. “But how did you know he was Dinsmore, or that he must have been the one who killed Serena?”
Gilbert Bethune meditated.
“Let’s return to your journey downriver by the Bayou Queen, and to some rather curious behavior on the part of Kate Keith. Mrs. Keith is fond of male company; she will find it where she can. To all persons, male or female, she is forever friendly, forever obliging, as she was aboard the steamboat. But one thing she would not do: she would not invite anyone to her stateroom. On the first night, I am informed, Dave invited her into his room for a brief visit with Dave and Jeff. She excused herself in haste and almost ran; it was as though she had something on her mind.
“Several days later young Saylor asked her if she wouldn’t invite all of you to her room for a drink. Though she provided the liquor (she had gone ashore and bought a bottle), she carried that bottle to a public lounge so that it could be poured there.
“When I remembered the attention she paid to Captain Josh Galway, as though persuading him of something and keeping him persuaded, I could not help wondering whether there might have been another paying stowaway who remained a stowaway throughout the whole journey. In that event, we had a better explanation than Jeff’s for the despairing cry of Captain Josh, ‘How many of ’em? Dear God in heaven, how many of ’em?’"
“Townsend in Kate’s room?” demanded Jeff. “But how could you have suspected Townsend? And in what way did any of this affect Serena?”
“Perpend; you will see in a moment. Townsend, outwardly, did not appear on the scene until Saturday morning. He came here in a taxi, professing to have reached New Orleans by train. Serena and Townsend, each gave you to understand, had never met before. You discovered the loss of Commodore Hobart’s log; Townsend instantly opened his brief-case to show he hadn’t taken it.”
“And that was suspicious, Uncle Gil?”
“Oh, no!”
“Well, what was suspicious?”
“The four who were there, you and Serena and Townsend and Dave, afterwards had lunch. It was a buffet lunch, at which each person served himself and only coffee appeared on the board. Then, presently, you had tea. Serena, presiding, asked you whether you took tea with lemon or with milk. After serving you, without a further word of any kind she prepared cups for the other two. She would have known, of course, how to serve her own brother. But the same question she had asked you she would also have asked a total stranger,” Uncle Gil shot out the words, “if in fact he had been a total stranger.”
“Good for you, sir!” crowed Lieutenant Minnoch. “You’re under way now; keep rollin’!”
“Yet I need not roll with undue haste.” Uncle Gil’s eye sought Penny. “That same evening, Jeff, this young lady phoned you at the office of Rutledge & Rutledge. Mrs. Keith had turned up after dinner; and, as though she had known Townsend before, carried him off to a night club.
“Another link, you see. If Mrs. Keith had been hiding a stowaway in her room on the steamboat, Townsend might perhaps have been the man.”
“Was that what Saylor suspected. Uncle Gil?” Jeff cut in. “And why Saylor went all out to question Captain Josh?”
“Saylor suspected the presence of a stowaway, yes. He never suspected Townsend of anything, and neither did Dave. But what did I suspect, your stumbling would-be sleuth?
“On Sunday morning, Dave,” again Uncle Gil’s gaze shifted, “you had a talk with Jeff. After dinner on Saturday night, it seemed, some woman had spoken to you of Townsend and called him very attractive. Penny Lynn had departed, after finding Townsend pleasant but not unduly impressive. The woman could only have been Serena, who by tea-table evidence knew Townsend at least pretty well.
“Supposing her to have known him more than pretty well, where could they have met? There was a possibility here: only a possibility, but it existed. Both Harald Hobart and his daughter had been in the habit of visiting the family of a surgeon, Dr. Ramsay, at Bethesda, Maryland. Bethesda is so close to Washington as to be a kind of suburb. And Townsend lived in Washington, where Dave went to see him.”
“I hardly did see the so-and-so when I got there!” Dave fumed. “He was in and out; he was all over the place. We talked by phone, mostly; I wasn’t dead sure I could recognize him when he turned up here on Saturday.”
“In Washington, Dave, you hadn’t a chance. This murderous Don Juan had been keeping two women on the string, Serena and Kate Keith, without either woman knowing the passion of the other. In Washington he devoted himself to Serena, who also had gone there. What a pity you didn’t meet her!
“Well!” Uncle Gil pursued. “If at some time in the past Townsend could have met Serena, he could also have met Serena’s father for a different kind of relationship. Harald Hobart, when on a quiet spree, would drop all defenses and confide in a stranger what he wouldn’t have whispered to his closest kin. Townsend, the friendly fellow everybody trusted, could have learned of the electrical device in the wall.
“I must not too much anticipate the evidence. On the famous Saturday afternoon before the murder that night, however, bear in mind that Townsend prowled alone through this house while the others were differently occupied. He found the trap behind a wall panel in the southeast corner of Serena’s bedroom, and reset its mechanism to work again.
“At this moment I would direct your attention to Sunday afternoon, when I questioned Townsend at Mrs. Keith’s. I did not think this architectural amateur had located Commodore Hobart’s hidden gold, and I was right; he never concerned himself with the gold. I did repeat Commodore Hobart’s warning about distrusting surfaces, which ended with the reference to the Gospel According to St. Matthew, seventh chapter and seventh verse. Without hesitation Townsend quoted that verse in full, remarking that odd bits of memory will stick at the back of the mind.
“So they will. And yet an odd idea had just leaped into my own mind. Any devoted Bible reader might have remembered that passage as being part of the Sermon on the Mount. At the same time, who but a parson could instantly have spotted the verse and quoted it word for word?”
“A parson?”
Uncle Gil surveyed them all.
“There had been mention of only one parson, Dr. Dinsmore of Boston, co-heir to the Hobart estate if both Dave and Serena were dead. Absurd, no doubt? Still, before dismissing the notion as utterly fantastic, I must ask myself whether this remote c
lergyman-professor, himself wealthy in his own right, could by any wild chance be the architectural amateur called Malcolm Townsend.
“Townsend commenced lecturing only last fall. But he had taken that trail, under the banner of a large Madison Avenue bureau, at a time when academic duties would have prevented the Rev. Horace Dinsmore from gallivanting over the country as a speaker.
“So it would be quite impossible; it must be ruled out. Unless …
“Mr. Rutledge there, who investigated the Rev. Horace, had told me several facts about him. The Rev. Horace became a full professor at Mansfield College in 1919. Reckoning from 1919, an important date, the year 1926 to 1927 would have been his seventh and therefore … therefore, Jeff, would have been what?”
“His sabbatical,” Jeff almost yelled. “He would have been free to do as he liked between about mid-June of ’26 to about mid-September of ’27! Yes, Uncle Gil?”
“Though technically possible, it still seemed most unlikely. And yet Townsend, answering my questions at Mrs. Keith’s, was less than candid.
“He had told his New York publisher that he took up lecturing reluctantly because it interfered with spending so much time abroad. Now an authority on any given subject may and often does speak free of charge to some learned society, at the occasional dinner here and there, at almost any time. But the same man’s professional services are required, by a big outfit like Major Pond, Inc. (as I thought then, and later confirmed with a phone call to New York) only through fall and winter up to the end of March; never in any other season. Whereas Townsend, either slipping up or thinking it didn’t matter, swore to me he travelled abroad only in summer: the very time he had no lecture platform.
“Yes, it was less than candid; he had been telling lies to somebody. Though it failed to show any connection with the Rev. Horace Dinsmore, and that prospect remained unlikely, it had to be investigated.
“Already we had a good line of investigation. Here at the Hall on Saturday night, before Mrs. Keith arrived to hale away Townsend, the four of them had occupied themselves with taking indoor photographs by flash bulb.
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