“Accordingly, as O’Grady stood up and offered his hand, I shook it and sat down at the table and ordered my lunch; and in the interval before it arrived we chatted about nothing in particular, especially O’Grady, who was very fluent and had a rather pleasant, taking manner. By the time my food was brought, they had finished their lunch, and, having got their bills from the waiter, settled up with him. Then O’Grady said: “Don’t let me break up this merry party, but Time and Tide, you know—I must be running away. I am glad to have had the pleasure of meeting you, Moxdale, and turning a mere name into a person.’
“With this he got up and put on his overcoat and hat—I noticed the hat particularly because it was rather a queer colour—and when he had shaken hands with me, he said to Haire, just as he was turning to go: “‘Don’t forget our little business on Thursday. I shall call for you at eleven o’clock to the tick, and I shall bring the stuff with me. Better make a note of the time. So long,’ and with a smile and a wave of the hand to me, he bustled away.
“When he had gone, I remarked to Haire that O’Grady seemed to be rather a pleasant, taking sort of fellow. He smiled grimly and replied: “‘Yes, he is a plausible rascal, but if you should happen to meet him again, I advise you to keep your pockets buttoned. He is remarkably plausible.’
“I tried to get him to amplify this statement, but he didn’t seem disposed to pursue the subject and presently he looked at his watch and then he, too, took his departure. That is the whole story, and there isn’t much in it excepting the date of the appointment. The Thursday referred to would be the fourteenth of April, and that, I understand, is the day on which Haire started for Dublin.”
“You say, you understand,” said Thorndyke. “Have you not seen the account of the inquest?”
“No. But Mr. Home, my solicitor, has given me a summary of it with all the material facts, including my own untimely decease. But I needn’t have said I understand, because I happen to know.”
“That Mr. Haire did start on that day?” Thorndyke queried.
“Yes. I actually saw him start.”
“That is interesting,” said Blandy. “Could you give us the particulars?”
“With pleasure,” replied Moxdale “It happened that on that day—or rather that night—I was starting for the South of France. I had left my luggage in the cloak-room at Victoria, earlier in the day, as I had some calls to make, and when I had done all my business, I strolled to Wardour Street and dropped in at Moroni’s for a late dinner or supper. And there I found Haire, who had just come in on the same errand. He was taking the night train for Holyhead, and as I was travelling by the night train to Folkestone, we both had plenty of time. So we made our dinner last out and we dawdled over our coffee until it was past ten o’clock. Then Haire, who had a heavy suitcase with him, said he thought he would take a taxi across to Euston, so, when we had paid our bills, we went out together to look for a cab. We found one disengaged in Shaftesbury Avenue, and, when Haire had put his suitcase inside, he called out ‘Euston’ to the driver, got in, said ‘good-night’ to me and off he went.”
“Did he say whether O’Grady had kept his appointment?” Thorndyke asked.
“He just mentioned that he had called. Nothing more; and of course I asked no questions.”
“You seemed to think,” said Thorndyke, “that the body that was found after the fire might be that of O’Grady. What made you think that?”
“Well, really,” Moxdale replied, “I hardly know. It was just an idea, suggested, I suppose, by the fact that O’Grady went to the rooms and I didn’t know of anybody else. I thought it possible that Haire might have let him use the rooms while he was away, as O’Grady lives out of town—somewhere Enfield way.”
The inspector looked dissatisfied. “Seems rather vague,” he remarked. “You were telling me some thing about a suspicion of blackmailing. Could you give us some particulars on that subject?”
“My dear Inspector,” exclaimed Moxdale, “I haven’t any particulars. It was just a suspicion, which I probably ought not to have mentioned, as I had nothing definite to go upon.”
“Still,” Blandy persisted, “you must have had some reasons. Is Haire a man who could be blackmailed?”
“That I can’t say. He isn’t a pattern of all the virtues, but I know of nothing that a blackmailer could fix on. And he is my cousin, you know. I think what raised the suspicion was the peculiar relations between the two men. They were a great deal together, but they were not really friends. Haire seemed to me to dislike O’Grady intensely, and I gathered from chance remarks that he let drop that O’Grady had got a good deal of money out of him from time to time. In what way I never knew. It may have been in the form of loans, but if not, it would rather look like blackmail.”
There was a short silence. Then Blandy, dropping his oily manner for once, said, rather brusquely:
“Now, Mr. Moxdale, you have suggested that the burned body might have been that of O’Grady. You have told us that O’Grady was in those rooms on the fourteenth of April, and you have suggested that O’Grady was blackmailing Haire. Now I put it to you that what you really suspect is that, on that day, Haire made away with O’Grady and concealed his body in the rooms.”
Moxdale shook his head. “I never suspected any thing of the kind. Besides, the thing wasn’t practicable. Is it likely that he would have gone off to Ireland leaving the body in his rooms?”
“You are not forgetting the fire,” Blandy reminded him.
“I don’t see that the fire has anything to do with it. Haire couldn’t foresee that someone would set his rooms on fire at that particularly opportune moment.”
“But that is precisely what he did foresee,” said Thorndyke. “That fire was not an accident. It was carefully prepared and started by a timing mechanism on a pre-arranged date. That mechanism was discovered and reconstructed by our colleague, Mr. Polton.”
The statement was, no doubt, a startling one, but its effect on Moxdale was beyond what I should have expected. He could not have looked more horrified if he had been accused of setting the mechanism himself.
“So you see,” Thorndyke continued, “that Haire is definitely implicated; and, in fact, the police are prepared to arrest him on charges connected with both the fire and the body.”
“Yes,” said the inspector, “but the trouble is that we have no photograph or any sufficient description by which to identify him.”
“Speaking of identification,” said Thorndyke, “we learn that his teeth are rather peculiar in appearance. Can you tell us anything about them?”
Moxdale looked distinctly uncomfortable at this question, though I could not imagine why. However, he answered, somewhat hesitatingly: “Yes, they are rather queer-looking teeth; as if they were stained by tobacco. But it isn’t tobacco-staining, because I remember that they were just the same when he was a boy.”
Having given this answer, he looked from Blandy to Thorndyke, and, as neither asked any further question, he remarked, cheerfully: “Well, I think you have squeezed me pretty dry; unless there is something else that you would like me to tell you.”
There was a brief silence. Then Thorndyke said in a very quiet, matter-of-fact tone: “There is one other question, Mr. Moxdale. I have my own opinion on the subject, but I should like to hear your statement. The question is, What made you go to Dublin after you had killed Mr. Haire?”
A deathly silence followed the question. Moxdale was thunder-struck. But so were we all. Blandy sat with dropped jaw, staring at Thorndyke, and Polton’s eyes seemed ready to start from their sockets. At length, Moxdale, pale as a corpse, exclaimed in a husky voice:
“I don’t understand you, sir. I have told you that I saw Mr. Haire start in a taxi for Euston.”
“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “But at the moment when you saw Mr. Haire get into the cab, his dead body was lying in his rooms.”
Moxdale remained silent for some moments. He seemed completely overwhelmed; and, watching him, I sa
w that abject terror was written in every line of his face. But he made one more effort. “I assure you, sir,” he said, almost in a whisper, “that you have made some extraordinary mistake. The thing is monstrous. You are actually accusing me of having murdered my cousin!”
“Not at all,” replied Thorndyke. “I said nothing about murder. I referred simply to the physical fact that you killed him. I did not suggest that you killed him feloniously. I am not accusing you of a crime. I merely affirm an act.”
Moxdale looked puzzled and yet somewhat reassured by Thorndyke’s answer. But he was still evasive. It seems,” said he, “that it is useless for me to repeat my denial.”
“It is,” Thorndyke agreed. “What I suggest is that you give us a plain and truthful account of the whole affair.”
Moxdale looked dubiously at the inspector and said in a half-interrogative tone: “If I am going to be charged with having compassed the death of my cousin it seems to me that the less I say, the better.”
The inspector, thus appealed to, suddenly recovered his self-possession, even to the resumption of his smile; and I could not but admire the quickness with which he had grasped the position. “As a police officer,” he said, “I am not permitted to advise you. I can only say that if you choose to make a statement you can do so; but I have to caution you that any statement that you may make will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence against you. That doesn’t sound very encouraging; but I may remind you that you are, at present, not charged with any offence, and that a statement made voluntarily in advance is more effective than the same statement made in answer to a charge.”
“And I,” said Thorndyke, “not being a police officer, may go farther and suggest that a statement may possibly obviate the necessity for any charge at all. Now, come, Mr. Moxdale,” he continued, persuasively, taking from his pocket a foolscap envelope,” I will make you a proposal. In this envelope is a signed statement by me setting forth briefly my reconstruction, from evidence in my possession, of the circumstances of Mr. Haire’s death. I shall hand this envelope to the inspector. Then I suggest that you give us a straight forward account of those circumstances. When he has heard your account, the inspector will open the envelope and read my statement. If our two statements agree, we may take it that they are both true. If they disagree, we shall have to examine the discrepancies. What do you say? I advise you, strongly, to give us a perfectly frank statement.”
The persuasive and even friendly tone in which Thorndyke spoke evidently made a considerable impression on Moxdale, for he listened attentively with a thoughtful eye on the speaker, and when Thorndyke had finished he reflected awhile, still keeping his eyes fixed on my colleague’s face. At length, having made up his mind, he said, with something like an air of relief: “Very well, sir, I will take your advice. I will give you a full and true account of all that happened on that dreadful day, suppressing nothing.”
He paused for a few moments to collect his thoughts and then continued: “I think I should begin by telling you that my cousin stood to gain four thousand pounds by my death if I should die before my uncle, Harold Moxdale.”
“We knew that,” said Blandy.
“Ah! Well, then, there is another matter. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but the truth is that Haire was an unscrupulous rascal—a downright bad man.”
“We knew that, too,” said Blandy, “when we learned that he had set fire to the house.”
“Then I need not dwell on it; but I may add that he had a deep grudge against me for being the more favoured beneficiary of my uncle’s will. In fact, his jealousy had induced a really virulent hatred of me which was apt to break out at times, though we usually preserved outwardly decent relations.
“And now to come to the actual incident. I am the part proprietor of a sort of international trade directory and I do a good deal of the canvassing for advertisements, particularly in France. I live out at Surbiton and only go to the office occasionally. Now, a few days before the disaster—the eleventh of April, I think it was—I had a letter from Haire telling me that he was making a business trip to Dublin to try to arrange some agencies and suggesting that he should do some business for me at the same time. I wasn’t very keen, as I knew that I was not likely to see any of the money that he might collect. However, I agreed, and eventually arranged to meet him on the fourteenth, on which day I proposed to start by a night train for the South of France. He suggested that he should call for me at my office at half-past four, that we should have some tea and then go to his rooms to talk things over.
“In due course, he turned up at the office; I finished my business, took my bag, and went with him to some tea-rooms, where we had a leisurely tea, and we then went on to his rooms, which we reached about ten minutes to six. As we passed the entrance of the business premises, I saw a man standing just inside, and he saw us, too, for he called out ‘good evening’ to Haire, who returned his greeting, addressing him as Mr. Green; and it struck me that Mr. Green looked rather hard at me, as if he thought he recognized me. Then Haire opened the street door with his latch-key and conducted me up the stairs to the first-floor where he opened the door of his rooms with another latch-key, which looked like a Yale.
“Now, all the time that I had been with Haire, and especially at the tea-rooms, I had been aware of something rather queer in his manner; a suggestion of suppressed excitement, and he seemed nervous and jumpy. But when we got inside his rooms and he had shut the door, it grew much more marked; so much so that I watched him rather closely, noticing that he appeared restless and flustered, that there was a wild look in his eyes and that his hands were trembling quite violently.
“I didn’t like the look of him at all, and I don’t mind admitting that I began to get the wind up; for I couldn’t forget that four thousand pounds, and I knew that poor old Uncle Harold was in a bad way and might die at any moment. But he was not dead yet. There was still time for me to die before him. So I kept an eye on Haire and held myself in readiness in case he really meant mischief.
“But he nearly had me, after all. He had given me a list of the Dublin firms to look at, and, while I was reading it, he got behind me to look over my shoulder. Suddenly, he made a quick move and I felt him slip a noose of soft cord over my head. I was only just in time to thrust my right hand up inside the noose when he pulled it tight. But, of course, he couldn’t strangle me while my hand was there, and, seeing that, he made violent efforts to drag it away while I struggled for my life to keep hold of the noose.
“It was a horrible business. Haire was like a mad man. He tugged and wrenched at the cord, he clawed at me with his free hand, he kicked me and drove his knee into my back while I hung on for dear life to the noose. By degrees I worked round until I faced him, and tried to grab his arm with my left hand while he tugged with all his might at the cord. Then we began to gyrate round the room in a kind of hideous waltz, each pounding at the other with his free hand.
“At last; in the course of our gyrations, we collided with a chair, and he fell backwards on the seat with me on top of him, his head overhanging the seat and my left hand at his throat. When we fell, the whole of my weight must have been on that left hand, for it slid under his chin and thrust it violently upwards. And as his chin went up, I felt and heard a faint click; his head fell loosely to one side, and, in a moment, his grasp on the cord relaxed. For an instant or two his arms and legs moved with a sort of twitching motion, then he lay quite still.
“Cautiously, I picked myself up and looked down at him. He was sprawling limply across the chair, and a glance at his face told me that he was dead. Evidently, the sudden drive of my left hand had broken his neck.
“Shaken as I was, I drew a deep breath of relief. It had been a near thing. An instant’s hesitation with my right hand and I should now have been lying with blackening face and starting eyes and the fatal noose secured tightly around my neck. It was a horrible thought. Only by a hair’s-breadth had I escaped. Still, I had escape
d; and now I was free of that peril for ever.
“But my relief was short-lived. Suddenly, I realized that, if I had escaped one danger, I was faced by another. Haire was dead; but it was my hand that had brought about his death. Who was to know that I had not murdered him? Very soon, relief gave way to alarm, alarm to panic. What was I to for my own safety? My first impulse was to rush out and seek a policeman; and that is what I ought to have done. But I dared not. As I took off the noose and held it in my hand, it seemed to whisper a terrible warning of what might yet befall me.
“Suppose I were just to steal away and say nothing to anyone of what had happened. Haire lived alone. No one ever came to his rooms. It might be months before the body should be discovered. Why not go away and know nothing about it? But, no; that wouldn’t do. Mr. Green had seen me enter the rooms and perhaps he knew who I was. When the body was found, he would remember that I had been with Haire the last time he was seen alive.
“I sat down with my back to the corpse and thought hard, trying to decide what I should do. But for a while I could think of no reasonable plan. The figure of Mr. Green seemed to block every way of escape. Suddenly, my wandering gaze lighted on the list of Dublin firms lying where I had dropped it. I looked at it idly for a few moments; then, in a flash, I saw a way of escape.
“Haire had intended—so he had told me—to start for Ireland that very night. Well, he should start—by proxy. The people whom he was going to call on were strangers, for he had never been in Dublin before. I would make those calls for him, announcing myself by his name and presenting his card. Thus Haire would make an appearance in Dublin, and that appearance could be cited as evidence that he was alive on that day. Then, when at some later date, his body should be found, it would be beyond question that he must have died at some time after his return from Ireland. My connection with his death would have disappeared and I could snap my fingers at Mr. Green.
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 262