Trial and Error

by Anthony Berkeley

  “Yes, so I imagined. You spotted it then, did you? What made you suspicious?”

  “Well,” said Mr Chitterwick a little uncomfortably, “he’d said he’d only been there in the dark, but he knew the way far too well. Then the gaps in the bushes were too plain, and the footprints, too; the scoring on the fence was too fresh, and the twigs too newly broken. . ..”

  “He’d prepared the way?”

  Mr Chitterwick nodded. “After I left him the evening before, I imagine, just as the police suggested.”

  “And that second bullet?”

  Mr Chitterwick blushed. “Counsel for the police explained that at the trial, too, didn’t he?”

  “You mean, the explanation was correct?”

  “I’m afraid it was.”

  “In fact,” said Furze,”every single thing that counsel said was correct. The police were right in their ideas about our friend in every single particular?”

  “In every single particular,” confirmed Mr Chitterwick unhappily.

  The two men stared at each other.

  Then suddenly they simultaneously laughed.

  “But they couldn’t convince the jury?” said Furze.

  “No indeed, I’m glad to say,” said Mr Chitterwick.

  Furze took a sip of claret.

  “Well, I must say, Chitterwick, you’ve got a nerve. I wouldn’t have thought it of you.”

  “In what way?”

  “Why, faking evidence yourself. And getting away with it. That wrist watch . . . masterly! Did you have much trouble in persuading Mrs Palmer to agree?”

  “None,” admitted Mr Chitterwick. “She—she’d already been very helpful in the matter of that bullet in the flower bed, you see. Er—Todhunter himself arranged that.”

  “Fired it, you mean? But no, the police had the revolver.”

  “Oh, it had been fired right enough, but a very long time before. Mrs Palmer merely dated it later. And the bullet being lead, you see, hadn’t rusted; so no one could prove her story untrue.”

  “Most reprehensible thing, perjury.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she didn’t commit perjury,” said Mr Chitterwick, rather shocked. “There would have been a mental reservation.”

  “And the wrist watch. I suppose you scratched the initials?”

  “No, Mrs Palmer did. We thought her hand would be lighter. Er—of course Miss Norwood had never given it to him.”

  “Of course not. And then you hid it. Well, I repeat, I wouldn’t have believed it of you. It was a terrible risk.”

  “Yes, but I had to, you see,” Mr Chitterwick explained earnestly. “The man was innocent. It was terrible. I do believe they’d have kept him there all his life. And he couldn’t speak, any more than Todhunter could. Besides, it would have been a shocking thing if Todhunter had had to die with the knowledge that his sacrifice had been largely in vain and that Palmer would have to spend his life in prison.”

  “Todhunter knew Palmer was innocent?”

  “Oh yes. That was what worried him so.”

  “He knew who really did it?”

  “I think he must have done. And I’m sure he admired her for it.”

  “The empty punt,” said Furze thoughtfully.

  “Yes, that’s how she went. And I think she must have had on a pair of trousers. I believe,” said Mr Chitterwick diffidently, “that trousers are quite a usual article nowadays in the feminine wardrobe.”

  “How many people know the truth?”

  “I think only three, besides ourselves. Mr and Mrs Palmer, and of course—”

  “Palmer did know, then?”

  “Oh, he must have done. From the beginning. There was the question of the revolver, you see.”

  “Yes, I always thought there was something fishy about the revolver. I still don’t see why Palmer took it round to the flat that morning.”

  “Oh, but he didn’t.” Mr Chitterwick leaned across the table in his earnestness. “He’d taken it round there several days before. He didn’t know he’d done so, though. You see, what happened was that Mrs Palmer began to feel very upset and anxious about the complications with Miss Norwood. She knew her husband was a man of—er—a somewhat violent disposition, and she thought it best to get the revolver out of his way, just in case. So she rang up her sister and asked if she would take charge of it and then did it up in a parcel and sent it round by her husband, telling him that it was some unimportant domestic article. It was only when the news arrived that Miss Norwood had been shot that he looked for it and found it missing. When he heard where it had gone, he hurried round to the flat at once.”

  “Oh, that’s why he went there so early?”

  “Yes indeed. And I think he knew then who had shot Miss Norwood. Luckily he didn’t lose his head, and just told his sister and mother to hold out at all odds that they had been together in the flat all Sunday evening. As it turned out, the police accepted their story.”

  “And Todhunter tried to exchange the revolvers in order to get hold of the really fatal weapon and leave the Farroway family with the innocent one, just as Bairns said?”

  “Exactly; though of course he could not explain that to Palmer. Dear me, I’m afraid Palmer sadly misjudged him. Naturally he thought Todhunter an interfering busybody. It was not until almost the end that he realized what our friend had really been doing.”

  “And on that visit Todhunter established some sort of understanding with Mrs Farroway?”

  “Undoubtedly he must have done so. Indeed, she had intimated as much to me. She knew he was trying to help, though of course she did not know till much later that he was ready to go to such lengths.”

  “Why was Palmer allowed to stand trial?”

  “Well, really, no one thought he would be convicted. And it was his own wish. After all, he realised that it was his own foolish conduct which had been responsible for Miss Norwood’s death, and he was very properly determined to shield the true assassin well, right up to the hilt, I suspect. . . Not,” added Mr Chitterwick, “that she was at all willing to be shielded. I think the family must have had a great deal of trouble to induce her to stay silent. Her one idea was to come forward with the truth. Er—I had a very difficult scene with her myself.”

  “You?”

  “Yes indeed. I visited her one evening. I had to tell her plainly that I knew the truth and that she must let Todhunter do as he wished. I’m afraid I had to put it on very highfalutin grounds,” said Mr Chitterwick guiltily, “before I could get her to agree. I—er—I think I said something about his having set his heart on doing more good by his death, in saving a valuable life for the service of others, than he had ever been able to do alive. Even so, it was touch and go.” Mr Chitterwick sighed heavily in recollection of that awkward half-hour.

  “Well, well.” Furze twiddled the stem of his wineglass. “I suppose we shall never know the whole truth of it. That detective sergeant, for instance. I was quite sorry for him in the box. I suppose he was perfectly right? When he examined Todhunter’s revolver, it never had been fired?”

  “No, of course not. Dear me,” said Mr Chitterwick, “there’s no doubt that bluff can pay. Our friend put up a quite incredible one; but he got away with it in the end.”

  “Thanks to a sentimental jury. He wouldn’t have done, if I’d been on it,” Furze smiled. “By the way, he really did throw away the fatal bullet?”

  “Oh yes. That was the only suggestion Bairns made that was incorrect. He threw it into the river that same evening. That action, of course, saved the whole situation. If the bullet had been found, there would never have been any doubt as to which revolver killed the woman. Luckily Todhunter realised that at the time; though he didn’t, of course, know then who the killer had been. It was most fortunate.”

  “You approve then,” Furze asked quizzically, “of Todhunter’s action? You think it right to cheat justice?”

  “Oh dear, but what is justice?” Mr Chitterwick looked very uncomfortable. “They say murder can never be
justified. But can’t it? Is human life so valuable that it is better to preserve a pestilential nuisance alive rather than bring happiness to a great many persons by eliminating one? We discussed something like that at Todhunter’s dinner that night, you know. It’s a difficult question. A terrible question. Todhunter did not shirk it. I can’t say I don’t think he was right.”

  “But do you believe that he really would have shot the woman himself, when it came to the last, final, irrevocable moment?”

  “Who can say? I think myself that he probably might not have done. But it all depends. If one can so believe in the justice of one’s intentions as to work up into a kind of exaltation . . . I suppose that’s how these things are done . . . for they are done . . . Huey Long . . .” Mr Chitterwick broke off, looking much distressed.

  “Chitterwick,” said Furze, “who did shoot Ethel May Binns?”

  Mr Chitterwick started violently. “God bless my soul, don’t you know?” he asked, horrified. “I thought . . . dear me, I must have given things away . . . betrayed confidences . . . oh dear.”

  “I won’t say I haven’t got my ideas,” Furze answered slowly. “But no, I can’t say I know.”

  “Well, neither do I,” Mr Chitterwick answered with defiant untruth. “It would be best not to know, don’t you agree? We may have our views of right and wrong, but if anyone ever deserved to die, it was Jean Norwood; if anyone ever did have a right to kill, it was the person who killed her, and if ever a death was justified by results, it was that one. And we are the only people who suspect the truth. Don’t you think that’s how we should leave it—at unvoiced suspicion?”

  “I think,” said Furze, “that you’re probably right.” Mr Chitterwick drew a deep breath of relief. Felicity Farroway’s secret must surely be safe now.