Again Dermot, who had been bending forward, leaned back in the wicker chair.
“This is catastrophe coming out of nowhere. Atwood won’t get his wife back now, as he’s firmly convinced he can do. He won’t have his soft life any longer. No: he’ll go back to prison. If you can imagine him roaming through those gardens, past the cages of wild beasts, you can imagine something of what went on in his mind. Out of the blue, a monstrous injustice, he’ll be taken back to prison.
“Unless…
“He didn’t know Sir Maurice Lawes in the sense of being acquainted with him. But he knew quite a lot about the habits of the household at the Villa Bonheur. Remember, he lived here for several years.
“He had seen for himself that Sir Maurice, after the rest of the family had retired, was in the habit of sitting up alone in the study. From across the street he had seen into the study many times, just as Eve herself had. He knew the lay-out of the study, whose curtains were not closed in warm weather. He knew where Sir Maurice sat, where the door was, where the fire irons hung. Best of all, he had in his possession a key to the front door of Eve’s house which—remember?—also fitted the front door of the Villa Bonheur.”
Benjamin Phillips meditatively scratched his forehead with the stem of his pipe.
“I say. Evidence can point both ways, can’t it?”
“It can. It does.” Dermot hesitated. “The next part won’t be pleasant hearing for any of you. Do you honestly want it?”
“Go on!” cried Eve.
“If he acted, he had to act at once to shut Sir Maurice’s mouth forever. He reasoned, rightly, that Sir Maurice wouldn’t mention this to anybody until Atwood had ‘got out of town,’ if only to avoid an open scandal. But, even so, he must have an iron-clad alibi to protect him in the event of a slip. While he walked in the garden, his cleverness and his conceit worked out the plan of the alibi in ten minutes. You will see in a moment what it was.
“He knew everybody’s grooves of habit. He was hanging about the rue des Anges when your party returned from the theatre. Eve went to her villa, the rest of you to yours. He waited patiently until the rest of you had retired; until all your lights were out, except the light in those uncurtained study windows. He didn’t mind the open curtains. They formed a part of his scheme.”
Though Janice was white to the lips, she could not help asking a question.
“What about the danger of being seen from one of the houses across the street?”
“Which house across the street?” asked Dermot.
“I—I see,” said Eve. “My curtains are always drawn. And the villas on either side are unoccupied, as late in the season as this.”
“Yes,” said Dermot. “So Goron told me. We return to the ingenious Mr. Atwood. He was ready to act. Using his key, he opened the front door of Sir Maurice’s house….”
“At what time?”
“At about twenty minutes to one.”
Dermot’s cigarette had burnt itself to a yellowing stump. He dropped it on the ground, and set his heel on it.
“My guess is that he had brought along some weapon to use, some equally silent weapon, in case there was no poker among the fire irons. But he needn’t have worried. The poker was there. From what he later told Eve herself, we know that he was aware of Sir Maurice’s deafness. He opened the door, caught up the poker, and approached his victim from behind. There sat the old man, immersed in a study of the new treasure. A writing pad in front of him bore, in very large ornamental letters, the words ‘SNUFF-BOX, shaped like a watch.’
“The murderer lifted his arm, and struck. Once having struck, he went berserk.”
In imagination Eve, who knew Ned Atwood, saw the thing done.
“One of the blows, perhaps by accident but more probably by design, smashed the costly-looking trinket. Atwood must have wondered what he had broken. Staring up at him, always, were those large words ‘SNUFF-BOX,’ — the first words would undoubtedly strike his eye,—from a stained but legible writing pad. They made a deep impression on him, as we shall see. And now for the most important part!”
Dermot turned to Eve.
“What sort of suit was Atwood wearing that night?”
“A—a fuzzy, roughish kind of dark suit. I don’t know what the material’s called.”
“Yes,” agreed Dermot. “That’s it. When he smashed the snuff-box, a tiny chip of it flew wide and caught in his coat. He never noticed it. Later, it was accidentally transferred to your white lace negligée when he put his arms round you during that episode in the bedroom.
“You never noticed it either. In fact, you were willing to swear it had never been there, and to think in all honesty that somebody must have planted it on you. But the truth is much simpler. That’s all there is to it.” He looked at Janice and Uncle Ben. “I hope the sinister chip of agate does not seem quite so mysterious now?
“But I am getting ahead of myself. I have been telling you this as we later reconstructed it, not as the case first presented itself to me. When Goron first told me about it, it seemed more than probable that the murderer must have been a member of the Lawes family. You can’t resent that, because you’ve thought of it yourselves.
“I was puzzled a little by certain circumstances in Eve’s first, very brief recital to Goron at the Villa Bonheur that first afternoon. But it wasn’t until late the same night—when she told me her full story over omelettes at Papa Rousse’s—that my wits woke up out of stupor, and the ghost of an idea took shape, and I realized we had been looking in the wrong direction. You understand that part of it now.”
Eve shivered.
“Yes. I understand it only too well.”
“For clearness to these people here, let’s reconstruct. Atwood arrived at your house at a quarter to one, letting himself in with that invaluable key….”
“He was practically glassy-eyed,” cried Eve, “and I thought he’d been drinking. What’s more, he was under some kind of mental strain and almost in tears. I’d never seen Ned quite like that before. It scared me. It was worse than any of his drinking-bouts. But he hadn’t been drinking.”
“No,” said Dermot. “He had just come from killing a man. Killing a man like that was a little too much even for Ned Atwood’s self-assurance. He had left the Villa Bonheur, slipped away to the Boulevard du Casino, loitered there a minute or two, and then returned to the opposite villa as though he were entering the street for the first time. He was now all ready to prepare his alibi.
“But never mind that. Take only the evidence as we’ve seen it. He burst in on you. He began to talk about the Lawes family, and the old man sitting across the street. Finally, having reduced you to a state of wild nerves, he pulled back the window-curtain and started to look out. You switched off the light. Now! Repeat to me again, verbatim, what you two said during the next minute.”
Eve closed her eyes.
“I said, ‘Is Maurice Lawes still up? Is he?’
“Ned said, ‘Yes, he’s still up. But he’s not paying any attention. He’s got a magnifying glass, and he’s looking at some kind of snuff-box thing.—Hold on?
“I said, ‘What is it?
“Ned said, ‘There’s somebody with him, but I can’t see who it is.’
“I said, ‘Toby, probably. Ned Atwood, will you come away from that window?’ ”
Drawing a deep breath, feeling only too clearly the recollection of that hot dim bedroom in the night quiet, Eve opened her eyes.
“That’s all,” she added.
“But did you yourself,” insisted Dermot, “look out of the window at any time?”
“No.”
“No; you took his word for it.” Dermot turned to the others. “Now the startling thing there, the surprise like a blow in the face, was what Atwood claimed to have seen. If he saw anything at all, he saw from fifty feet away a small object which looked exactly like a watch. Yet he sang out unhesitatingly and called it a “snuff-box thing.” In fact, this clever gentleman gave himself aw
ay. He couldn’t have known that. He couldn’t have known it, that is, unless there was a very sinister explanation of why he knew it.
“But notice what he does next!
“Instantly he starts in attempting to convince Eve that she has looked out of the window with him,—that she has seen Sir Maurice alive and well, holding a magnifying glass, with a sinister shadow hovering over him.
“He does it by suggestion. He does it repeatedly, as you could see if you had a transcript of the evidence before you. It is always, ‘Do you remember what we saw?’ Here is a woman very susceptible to the power of suggestion, as a brother psychologist once told her and as I noted for myself. Her nerves are unstrung; she is ready to see anything. Then, once the impression is there, the curtains on the window are swept aside and she is shown Sir Maurice’s dead body.
“That was where I woke up.
“The whole purpose of this game was to convince her she had seen something which she had not seen: that is, Sir Maurice alive while Atwood was with her.
“Atwood was the murderer. This was his plan. And, except for one thing, it would have succeeded. He did convince her. She quite sincerely believed she had seen Sir Maurice alive in his study, as she had seen him on so many other nights, in the same posture. She told Goron so at their first interview in my presence. If the snuff-box had been an ordinary snuffbox, and had looked like one, this very intelligent Mr. Atwood would have got away with it.”
Dermot brooded, his elbow on the arm of the chair, and his chin on his fist.
“Dr. Kinross,” Janice observed softly, “that’s rather clever.”
“Clever? Of course he was clever! The fellow obviously knew the history of crime backwards. He was so quick to drag in the Lord William Russell case that anybody must have suspected…”
“No: I mean your reading of it.”
Dermot laughed. He was not very proud of himself at the best of times, and his laughter had a wryness which affected his throat like bitter medicine.
“That? Anybody could have seen that. There are certain women who seem born to be—victimized by swine.
“For now you can see all the cross-currents which confused us. Toby Lawes blundered into the plan, wearing brown gloves. It was manna from heaven. Atwood was both astounded and delighted, if Eve has described his behavior correctly to me. It provided the last realistic touch which made him safe.
“You see now what the end of his game was to be? He never intended to figure publicly in the business at all, if he could help it. He must keep out of the way. There was, on the surface, nothing to connect him with Sir Maurice. The less said about that, the better. But, in the event of any slip-up, there was his alibi all prepared: ready to be dragged out of an unwilling woman, over whom he was convinced he had complete ascendancy, and all the more convincing an alibi because it was a discreditable one.
“That, of course, was why he told the story about being ‘hit by a car’ when he collapsed at the hotel later. He wasn’t going to mention the matter at all, unless he had to. And he never for an instant imagined he was badly hurt.
“But that was what upset his whole plan. First, he was accidentally pushed into a fall that gave him concussion of the brain. Second, the vindictive Yvette intervened, with a game of her own to play. Atwood, naturally, never intended to have any suspicion whatever directed towards Eve. It was the last thing he ever could have anticipated. While he lay unconscious with concussion, he would have been horrified to learn what was going on.”
“Then it really was Yvette,” Janice interrupted, “who slammed the door and locked Eve out of the house?”
“Oh, yes. About Yvette, we can only guess. She is a Norman peasant; she refuses to say anything; and all Vautour’s efforts can’t beat a word out of her. It seems likely that she knew nothing about the murder when she locked Eve out. She knew Atwood was there. And she was trying to create a scandal, so that your pious brother would perhaps break off the marriage.
“But Yvette, I repeat, is a Norman peasant. When she saw to her own astonishment that Eve Neill had become involved in a suspicion of murder, she never hesitated and never lost face. She joined in the prosecution with zeal. She pushed that charge for all it was worth. It was an even better way of breaking off the marriage. She had no concern with right or wrong; her concern was to get her sister Prue married to Toby.
“This was the state of mix-up, then, on the night when I visited the rue de la Harpe, found the two necklaces, and heard Eve’s full story—which showed who the murderer was. Once you had grasped that, it wasn’t difficult to think back. It wasn’t difficult to fit in the other pieces of evidence.
“The question was: what was Atwood’s motive for murder? The answer clearly lay in Sir Maurice’s prison work, described by his wife and daughter, and elaborated by that little story about Finisterre. Could I verify my theory? Easily! If Atwood were wanted by the police, or even if he had ever committed a crime at all under any name, his fingerprints would be on file in the Records Department at Scotland Yard.”
Uncle Ben whistled.
“Oh, ah!” he muttered, and sat up. “Got it! That flying trip of yours to London…?”
“We couldn’t move until I knew. I got Atwood’s prints, unnoticed, by visiting his room at the hotel, taking his pulse, and pressing his fingers on the silver back of my watch. It seemed appropriate to use a watch. And, God knows, the duplicates of those prints were easily found in the Records Department. In the meantime …”
“The apple-cart had been upset again,” supplied Eve, and began to laugh in spite of herself.
“They arrested you, yes,” said Dermot. His face darkened. “But I can’t see, even yet, that it was so very damned funny.”
He turned to the others.
“When she gave me the account in detail she was so tired that her inner mind—the subconscious we all make so much fun of—spoke out and told a truth she wasn’t aware of herself. She hadn’t actually looked out of the window with Atwood and seen Sir Maurice alive, as it was easy to deduce from the very words she spoke. She had never even set eyes on the snuff-box. It was Atwood who put the words into her mouth.
“I couldn’t joggle her memory or try to start counter-suggestions. What she said was just what I wanted. It showed Atwood’s guilt as plain as print. I told her to tell her story to Goron exactly as she had told it to me. Once that was on the record, and I could get my proof of Atwood’s motive to back it up, it would be possible to go ahead and explain my case.
“But I hadn’t allowed for the strength of Atwood’s suggestion in her mind, or Goron and Vautour’s Gallic energy. In speaking to them, she told Atwood’s story and didn’t give the words verbatim….”
Eve protested:
“I couldn’t help it! They—they kept a light on me, and kept dancing about like jumping-jacks. And you weren’t there to lend moral support….”
A curious expression crossed Janice’s face as she looked first at Eve and then at Dermot. Both of them showed a sharp, momentary, almost angry confusion.
“Consequently,” Dermot rushed on, “they woke up. Only they took Atwood’s slip and applied it to her. Oho? Nobody has ever told her anything about Sir Maurice’s new treasure, eh? She hasn’t heard it described? No, certainly not. Then how does she know that the watch is really a snuff-box? After that, every word of attempted explanation sounded like guilt. She was haled off to chokey with all horns blowing; and I arrived just in time to figure as the villain of the piece myself.”
“I see,” said Uncle Ben. “First bad luck down, then good luck up. Like a ruddy pendulum. Because Atwood recovered consciousness.”
“Yes,” said Dermot grimly, “Atwood recovered consciousness.”
There was a vertical line between his eyebrows, pinched together at ugly memory.
“He was eager to testify that Toby was the man in the brown gloves, and complete our case. Very eager! It meant, at one stroke, getting his wife back as he planned, and sending his rival to prison.
You wouldn’t have thought, would you, that a fellow with an injury like that could get up out of bed, dress himself, and go across town to see Vautour? But he did. He insisted on it.”
“And you didn’t stop him?”
“No,” said Dermot, “I didn’t stop him.”
After a pause Dermot went on:
“He died in the doorway of Vautour’s office. He collapsed, and fell down in the passage and died, before the turn of the searchlight had time to leave him. He died of being discovered.”
The sun had gone at the turn of the afternoon. The garden, where a few birds bickered, was turning cool.
“And our noble Toby …” began Janice. She paused, and showed a flush of anger when Dermot laughed.
“I don’t think you understand your brother.”
“Of all the swinish tricks I ever heard of in my life —!”
“He’s not in any sense a swine. He’s a perfectly ordinary case (if you’ll excuse my saying so) of arrested development.”
“Meaning?”
“Mentally and emotionally, he’s still fifteen years old. That’s all. He honestly can’t see that it could be a crime to steal from his own father. His ideas of sexual morality might have come straight from the fourth form of his old school.
“There are plenty of Tobys in this world. Often they get on well enough. They’re looked on as rocks of staunchness, models of solidity, until a real crisis comes along: then the schoolboy-man without imagination or nerves goes to pieces. He’s a good fellow to play golf or have a drink with. But I doubt whether he’d make the best possible husband for … well, leave it at that.”
“I wondered —” Uncle Ben began, and stopped.
“Yes?”
“I was worried. When Maurice came back from that walk of his—all upset, shaking, that sort of thing—he spoke to Toby. He didn’t say anything about Atwood, did he?”
“No,” answered Janice. “I thought of that too. That’s why I thought he may have found out something about Toby, do you see? I asked Toby, after we’d heard everything. All Daddy said was, ‘I’ve seen somebody today, son,’ meaning Atwood, evidently, ‘and I’ll talk to you about it later.’ Toby was petrified. He thought Prue Latour was starting to make real trouble. So he went clean up in the air and decided to pinch the necklace that night.”
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