Silver stood up and spoke harshly. “I don’t think you can expect me to agree with your estimate of poor Ian. I know a lot of people didn’t like him, but then a lot of people who are jealous of someone who is cleverer and more successful than they are themselves hide their jealousy by pretending that they do not like that person as a man. If ever a man suffered from this, Ian did. He knew exactly what he wanted and that is something so rare that when they encounter it people are frightened as well as jealous. They accused him of stealing the ideas of better men when he suggested some line of work to someone and then carried it to a successful conclusion after the other had failed. Was that stealing? No, I tell you. He was taking what was rightfully his, and no one could disprove his claims to his own property. I was his best friend and we worked together for a long time, and not once during that period did I find him trying to take more than his share of the credit for any line of work. I tell you that and I should know if anyone knows.”
Professor Stubbs sucked on his pipe and spoke quietly. “Don’t you think, Silver, that we’ve had about enough of this attempted white-washin’ of the late Dr. Porter? You know that his reputation was, as the sayin’ is, none too savoury, and he did nothin’ to redeem it by bein’ murdered. You know that he stole from you as he stole from everyone else with whom he came in contact. I won’t weep any tears over Porter—if I did they would be crocodile’s tears, whatever these may be. But Swartz was one of my friends and I don’t like losin’ my friends in this way. I don’t like it at all. In fact, I may tell you that I feel quite revengeful about it, and I’m not a man who’s much given to feelin’ that way. I am goin’ to see that the neck of the person who murdered Swartz is snapped if I have to do it myself.”
Silver sneered, “Oh yes, Stubbs, we all know you’d make a great detective. It’s about the only thing you haven’t tried. You’ll tire of it fairly soon, though, just as you’ve tired of everything else. You are always the potentially brilliant man who would do something really great if he was not so lazy! Laziness covers a multitude of sins, and in your case you hide your lack of originality behind the excuse of ‘can’t be bothered.’ Go ahead then, playing at being a hero with a cloak and swordstick, and then when you find yourself stuck you can always say you couldn’t summon up enough energy to find the evidence you wanted, but that you know the murderer, and you’ll wrap the name of the murderer up in swaddling clothes of mystery so that none but yourself will know who it is you mean and only a few will realise that you have not the slightest idea of the murderer’s identity, but are merely playing mystery man.”
Looking at Silver over the tops of his glasses, Professor Stubbs half-closed his eyes as he replied, “You know, Silver, there’s a good deal of truth in what you say. I didn’t realise that you knew me so well.” He laughed softly and swung round toward the door, which had opened once more to admit Peter.
“They shouldn’t be long, Professor Stubbs,” he said, keeping his eyes steadfastly turned from the body on the floor. “The inspector said we weren’t to touch it.” He paused, gazing at Silver. “Pretty ghastly, isn’t it? First Porter and then poor old Swartz, who was a damned decent fellow and pretty clever. I’d like to get my fingers on the swine that did it.”
Silver nodded and grated, “So would I.” He looked down at his thin arms and added, “Not that I could do much if I did find him.”
There was silence in the room for several minutes after this, no one appearing anxious to leave in case the police put some interpretation upon their departure and wish to escape being interviewed. Professor Stubbs stood beside the body of Swartz, blowing clouds of smoke from his pipe and rocking backward and forward on his heels. On his stool Silver sat, pulling letters out of his pockets, reading them and replacing them, while Peter sat down at his microscope and made some pretense of examining a dead fly which he found near the windowsill, moving it about on the slide carefully with his steel needle.
The inspector’s lips were closed in a tight line as he examined the body of Dr. Swartz and then made room for his assistants and for Dr. Flanagan. He looked at Professor Stubbs sharply, “You found him, did you, Professor? Well, I’ll deal with these others first, and then I’ll hear what you have to say.” He fixed his eyes pointedly upon the broken lock of the cupboard, and then beckoned Peter to follow him down to the far end of the room, out of earshot of the others.
“Dr. Hatton, have you been working here all morning? Yes? Yet you never thought of looking into that cupboard. Did you notice that someone had snapped the key off short in the lock? No? Don’t you think that’s strange?”
With the air of one about to explain the mysteries of life to a child, Peter answered him very gently. “I don’t think it the least strange, Inspector. This is not my room and was merely lent to me to do some work. I have been here before and I know that the owner of this room, Dr. Fielding, keeps his overall and an old jacket in that cupboard. I don’t know about you, Inspector Hargrave, but when I find myself alone in a friend’s room I am not in the habit of looking into their private drawers and cupboards, nor do I feel inclined to rifle the pockets of any jackets or coats that they leave lying about. Of course, if I was a policeman I might behave in a different way, but then I don’t know whether policemen carry their public manners into their private lives.”
Inspector Hargrave’s lips tightened even more than before and white lines appeared on his cheeks at the corner of his mouth. Opening his lips to the extent of a narrow slit, he ground out, “Dr. Hatton, I must ask you to treat my questions seriously. I do not suppose that I need to remind you that I am only doing my duty.”
“All right, old cock,” replied Peter cheerfully, “I’ll try to answer your questions if you’ll try not to be so damned offensive. I resented your innuendo that I was in the habit of poking into things that do not concern me. No, I noticed nothing out of the ordinary in here, but then I wouldn’t in any case, as this is not my room. The person to ask about that is Dr. Fielding.”
“When did you see Dr. Swartz last and did his behaviour strike you as being perfectly normal?”
Resisting the temptation to say that he had last seen Swartz a few moments previously and that he had looked anything but normal, Peter answered him seriously, “At about a quarter to ten last night. I was at a meeting and he was there. When I saw him rise to go before the end, I looked at my watch and saw that it was time that I too left. I walked along the corridor with him, and we spoke about the meeting we had just attended. Now I come to think of it, I suppose he was rather more excited than he usually appeared, but I suppose I put that down to the fact that it had been a very good meeting and several people had made suggestions which might repay further investigation and I assumed, that just as I had, he had thought of something he wanted to try out. I left him at the cloak-room, as I wanted to brush my hair before my appointment. Yes, I suppose he must have had an appointment with someone, but he didn’t say anything to me about it. Is that all right?”
The inspector nodded his head vaguely and said, “That’ll do for the present, but I may need to ask you a few questions later on and I hope you’ll hold yourself in readiness to answer them. You can go now. No, I’m sorry, but this room will have to be kept locked until we’ve finished with it, so you’ll need to do your work somewhere else. Yes, I’ll tell the officer in charge that you have my permission to come in and collect any odds and ends you need when you’ve found another place in which to work. You’ll show him what you’re taking and give him a list of them, won’t you? That’s all, thank you, Doctor.”
Peter wandered down the room and spoke to Professor Stubbs, “We’re all for it. That inspector chap doesn’t believe anything we say. We’re all to hold ourselves in readiness for further questioning.” He mimicked the inspector’s tone. The professor grunted and his eyes twinkled. “We’ve found his murder suspect and now he’s been murdered. Don’t be too hard on him. He must be beginnin’ to wonder whether he’s the leader or the tail-end of a Caucus r
ace.”
Silver’s voice was jarring away at the far end of the room, like a broken gramophone record. “I just came in a few minutes ago, looking for Dr. Fielding. The last time I saw Dr. Swartz was, as far as I remember, about lunchtime yesterday. I spent the afternoon and evening in my room in the hostel, correcting the proofs of a book.”
The inspector leaned forward. “So that’s all you know, Professor Silver?” Silver snarled spitefully, “I’m not pretending to give you advice, Inspector, but don’t you think that Stubbs there knows too much about this murder? He’s very dramatic about it, saying Swartz was a friend of his, but I noticed that he did not worry much about the death of Ian Porter, of whom he was jealous.”
In his mind, Inspector Hargrave toned down the snarl, discounting most of it as personal spite, but he made a reservation that it did seem a little bit odd that the professor should know so much about the hiding place of Swartz’s body. He dismissed Silver abruptly, warning him that he might be needed again and asking him to find Dr. Fielding if possible; then he called to the professor, who came stumping across the room, beaming genially.
“You will understand, Professor,” the opening was tentative, “that I have to satisfy both my private inquisitiveness and my official curiosity. I want you, if you don’t mind, to tell me exactly how you came to find Dr. Swartz’s body and what, in the first place, made you start looking for him. All the information we had this morning was that he had disappeared and that the evidence, for which you yourself were largely responsible, pointed to him as the killer of Dr. Porter.”
The professor gave a hoot like a startled owl. “My dear fellow, I told you last night that I could make out as good a case against myself if you wanted to hear it. I was merely tryin’ to show you that anyone of us could have committed the murder while Andrew Blake was incapable of it. I did not mean you to suspect Swartz, for I did not think that he had killed Porter, though his motive was undoubtedly the most direct and the easiest for the ordinary person to understand. I chose him merely as an example, because I could make a fairly convincin’ case out of my head. Convincin’, that is, provided you do not look at it too closely.
“When you told me this morning that Swartz had disappeared, I, realisn’ that he was not the murderer, was immediately afraid that somethin’ had happened to him, for, in addition, I knew that he had some clue as to the identity of the murderer. He didn’t tell me but you only had to look at him to see that he was nursin’ some secret, and it didn’t seem to be likely that it was about anythin’ else. If he knew the murderer, or somethin’ about him and the murderer knew this, well, it looked as though he might have got into trouble of some sort.
“When you look at the murder of Porter you will see that really it is not an extremely original method; what makes it look so is that the stage settin’, chosen mostly for its convenience, is strange. I had my doubts as to whether the murderer would have sufficient brains to change his method and so, acting on the assumption that only the immediate stage settin’ would be different, I started to look in case he had managed to murder Dr. Swartz. When I came into this room and saw that a key had been neatly snapped off in the lock of that cupboard, I was suspicious, as I don’t like coincidences, and so I smashed the door open with the butt end of a Bunsen burner.”
The inspector did not seem to be very satisfied with this up-the-airy-mountain description of Professor Stubbs’s adventures in detection, but he was forced to be content with it, for the professor, ignoring his gesture of the lifted hand, was strolling back to where the doctor was at work on Swartz’s body. “Same old poison, Joe,” he boomed, “how was it done this time?”
Dr. Flanagan turned his head. “You old scoundrel,” he remarked amicably, “I’d be willing to bet that, so far as we can tell without a postmortem, you know as much about it as I do. Come on, now, give us a lecture on how the poison was administered.”
With suspicious readiness, Professor Stubbs started, in a rumbling undertone that gradually grew to a roar. “All right, Joe, you’ve asked for it. I’ll tell you what I think happened. The murderer, havin’ decided that Swartz would have to be removed, made an appointment with him in this room. The reason that Swartz would have to be eliminated was obviously that he knew, or nearly knew, who the murderer was, and so there was no doubt that he would be suspicious. Swartz would not be likely to sit down on a chair to have a drop of blood drawn from his ear, for that, I think, was what the original plan required from Porter, so some other method of pacifying him had to be found.
“If you will look around this room, sooner or later your eye will come to rest on a vast bottle, with a prominent label, ‘Ether.’ No doubt our friend the murderer, lookin’ round this room, noted the bottle and made plans accordingly. Now if you look at the electric light switch you will see that it is not in the usual place, but about six feet along the wall.
“Think, gentlemen, for a moment. You come into a dark room, or a room which has been darkened by the use of these convenient close-fittin’ black blinds, and you feel for the electric light switch, runnin’ your hand along the wall until you find it. All this time you keep your body pressed against the wall, as you cannot help being afraid of trippin’ over somethin’, particularly if you know you are in someone’s workroom, and that one breakage may result in the destruction of several years’ work.
“The murderer realised this and the plans were laid accordingly. I think that the murderer came up here some time before Swartz was due, and set the stage, placin’, let us say, a stool here, where it was far enough inside the room to be invisible in the weak light filtered from the passage.”
He walked heavily across the room and picked up one of the bench stools and placed it carefully, about three feet to the side of the door, and about two and a half feet from the wall.
“Then the murderer soaks a large pad in ether and sits down to wait for the steps in the passage that will act as a warnin’ of the victim’s approach. When the distant patter of the footsteps is heard—you have all noticed how your own steps echo in these corridors?—the murderer prepares and mounts the stool, probably quite calmly, as by this time the terrors will have passed and their place been taken by an icy determination to see the affair through, as Swartz’s death appears to be an absolute necessity.
“Swartz enters the room and the change from even the faint light of the passage to the complete darkness of the room bewilders him for a moment. Remember, he is suspicious, but in the belief that the poisoner rarely resorts to violence and hearin’ nothin’, he pulls himself together and runs his hand around the wall in search of the electric light switch, moving further and further from the door. The murderer, with eyes accustomed to the dark, can see him clearly against the light. When his back is fully turned he suddenly feels two arms close round his neck and the throttling pad pressed over his mouth and nose.
“Naturally, he struggles with all his strength, and he was no weaklin’, but his opponent has the advantage of havin’ taken him both by surprise and from the back, and until you are attacked from behind by someone who is determined to kill you, you can have no idea how difficult it is to dislodge your unwelcome passenger. Imagine the struggle with Swartz fightin’ for his life, in a frantic panic, while that pad is continually pressed over his nose and mouth and those beastly sickly fumes are chokin’ him. I don’t think that it was altogether the ether, but probably a combination of that and suffocation, but eventually Swartz would cease from strugglin’ and would become unconscious. Then the murderer would, no doubt, pour more ether on the pad and finish the job of anaesthetisin’ his victim. Do you agree with me, Joe? I think this will agree with the condition of the nose and mouth, don’t you?”
The little doctor bent down again and pointed out the roughening of the skin to the police officers, remarking, “I don’t think there’s much doubt that it happened some way like that.” The inspector nodded wisely, and Professor Stubbs held up his hand to show that he wished to get on with his lecture.
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“I have already pointed out that our murderer is not a very original person, but merely works on the stage settin’ or if you prefer it, on a large canvas, where the details are slashed in after the main outline, without very much regard as to whether they are pertinent or not. The murderer had cyanide and was determined to use it whether it was necessary or not, and here all that was needed was to batter poor Swartz over the head with one of these stools.
“Swartz was lyin’ there unconscious and the murderer wished to pour poison into him. If you look around this room again you will see that there are plenty of funnels that would do the job admirably, but no, that is too simple for our murderer who is, we may say, the possessor of a perverted sense of humour. When you think of Swartz the first thing you remember is that corncob pipe which was never used for its natural purpose—for smokin’—but which was just something to chew. That was the thing the murderer remembered and it seemed to be a good idea to use the corncob as a funnel, so it was carefully inserted in Swartz’s mouth and the cyanide was poured down it.
“Then our pleasant little friend shoved the body in that cupboard, locked the door and snapped off the key and probably went home to a good night’s rest, in the fond belief that something attempted something done had, indeed, earned a night’s repose. That, gentlemen, is roughly what I believe to have happened in this room at about ten o’clock last night.”
He stood looking at the men in a semi-circle round him, as if waiting for contradiction or emendation of his theory, but no one said anything, though one or two heads nodded like those of papier-mâché mandarins. After a moment the professor went to the door and opened it.
Unholy Dying Page 13