The chief inspector here turned to Graham Coombe. “I hope your valuable volumes of astrology turned up, sir.”
Susan Coombe replied for her brother.
“Those books were relegated to the attics a month ago. Graham has these lapses of memory. He was peevish because the things turned out to be quite valueless.”
Grahame Coombe grinned. “Quite right, my dear. I admit it. My lapses stick out like organ stops, to use your illuminating analogy on another occasion.”
“Ah,” said Miss Coombe, by no means abashed. “Graham is referring to my original effort of deduction—that Miss Delareign was the responsible party.”
Ashton Vale laughed. “If it’s permitted to say so, Miss Coombe, I thought that you were just the person to evolve the subtle scheme which helped Gardien out of this world. You see I was anti-suffragist in the bad old days. I know just what women are capable of in a good cause.”
Graham Coombe turned to Vale with his puckish grin.
“I thought you’d done it, Vale. Your look of scientific inquiry when you pushed your nose round the door of the telephone-room spoke volumes.”
“And the chief inspector nearly hypnotised me into thinking I’d done it myself in a moment of aberration,” put in Geoffrey Manton, “only I should never have had the originality to think out such an ingenious scheme as that trick with the bureau. If it hadn’t been for the fuse…”
“If,” put in Macdonald. “There’s so often an ‘if.’ The unexpected, the margin of error—and a subtle scheme miscarries. It’s not the modern science of detection nor the organisation of Scotland Yard that penetrates a problem. It’s the emergence of some small detail which was not foreseen in the assessment of chances.”
“Then you consider that if the fuse had not occurred, Gardien’s death would have passed as an accident?” asked Coombe, and Macdonald replied:
“Possibly. The more imponderable evidence which was not sufficiently considered was this. The very circumstances of the Treasure Hunt sharpened the wits of the searchers. Because we had been dealing with verbal subtleties all the evening, our wits were attuned to the cross-word method, anagrams and reversals and so forth. In any other circumstances the peculiarities of certain names might not have revealed themselves.” He took a sheaf of papers out of his pocket and handed some to Coombe.
“Those are the clues of the Treasure Hunt, which helped me not at all. This is the list of the Treasure Seekers—and these names made clues.”
FINIS
These Names Make Clues Page 23