Uncle John took a pull at his tankard and placed it carefully on the floor. His voice echoed in the silent room as he spoke.
“That,” he said, “was the whole trouble. As a reader of detective stories I know all about the murder done in the room where only the victim could have been—all bolts fastened on the inside—and where every suspect has a seemingly perfect alibi. This case was the exact opposite of the closed box mystery. Here anyone could have done the murder and we had to make up our minds as to which people, out of the odd two thousand attendin’ this Congress, could have done it.
“Once we swept away the red herrin’s, the glassful of cyanide, the broken dropper, and so on, and discovered how the murder had been committed, we saw that it narrowed the suspects down to those who were intimate enough with Porter to be asked to take a drop of blood from his ear, and who also knew that he intended to work there durin’ the lunch hour. Now, those who knew that Porter intended to work in the demonstration room were Swartz, Andrew Blake, Mary Lewis, Peter Hatton, the two assistants, and, presumably, Silver. Of these there was only one person who could not have committed the murder as originally planned, and that person was Andrew Blake. If you want to know the reason for this, I can supply it in the form of a question—would any of you allow anyone but a doctor or surgeon to perform an operation on you?”
He looked round at this triumphantly and we shook our heads slowly. I felt rather as if I was eavesdropping, listening to myself being discussed in the third person.
“No, of course you wouldn’t. Well, can you imagine Porter asking Andrew, whom he knew to be a journalist, to help him in a scientific experiment? Of the remainder, Swartz was a doubtful quantity. He had a reason for killin’ Porter and, by his own account, he had the opportunity. The murderer had obviously made arrangement to get hold of Porter alone and Swartz hadn’t done this—how was he to know that Powys wouldn’t come lookin’ for him?
“That left Peter Hatton, Silver and Mary Lewis. Peter admitted that he had knocked out Porter, and I considered that, if he did a murder, it would most likely be one of the blunt-instrument variety. But he could not be completely eliminated, as the method might be a display of cleverness, to put us off his track. However, I put him aside for the time bein’ and concentrated on Silver and Mary Lewis.
“Either of them seemed to fulfil the necessary requirements. Silver was Porter’s only real friend and would, no doubt, know all about his plans, and part of his loose alibi confirmed this. The janitor heard him chattin’ with Porter as he left. The mere fact that in this absolute welter of alibiless people, one person should have an alibi made me suspicious of him—though it should also ha’ made me suspicious o’ meself.
“However, I did not think that I should fix upon one suspect more than another, so giving Silver one star on my list I moved on to look at Mary Lewis. Perhaps I am prejudicial as I have never liked her very much, but I looked over her case very carefully and, I think, without lettin’ me prejudice rule me.
“Of all the suspects it seemed to me that she was the most likely. She worked with Porter, therefore she would know that he was workin’ on a new noncoagulant and he would be quite likely to ask her to help him in an experiment. She would also know that he was bringing his materials with him and probably intended to give a demonstration when he had fixed them up.
“Then, again, I could not understand the undercurrent of familiarity that ran between her and Porter. While I was puzzling over this I suddenly remembered the case of Madeleine Smith—that’s the Notable Trial clue I gave you, Inspector. I wondered whether, by any chance, Porter could a taken the place of the unfortunate young Frenchman.
“I must admit that I was going rather far in assumin’ that this was indeed the cause of the whole affair, but I assumed it, as I might say, for the sake of argument, and the fragments began to fit into place like those bits you never expect to fit into a jigsaw puzzle.
“There is no need for me to reconstruct the crime again. You all heard what I said to her. Well, by this time I had a pretty sound idea of the murderer, but I had no way of proving my case.”
He drank the rest of his beer and rang the bell to order more. When he had wiped the froth of the new tankard from his moustache he went on.
“Then, of course, you arrested Andrew and I was too damn clever. I put you on to Swartz instead of Mary Lewis and Swartz died. This was to a great extent my fault. If I had not wished to keep the murderer to myself until I was certain I might have prevented it.
“When I found Swartz’s body I realised that he must have found some clue which had escaped my attention and the murderer must have taken fright. I went back over everything and remembered the red herrin’s. Among these fish a sheet of paper stood out clearly. I decided that I had better see it and see if the clue lay there. I remembered that Andrew had given me two hints without realisin’ it. He had told me that Swartz had sent a cable to America and that there had been two cases of an oddity in taste that mornin’, the only two which Swartz’s assistant had encountered.
“Now, as we know, Porter had worked in America with Swartz, when he was originally playin’ about with his taste-testin’, so that Swartz would, presumably, have some idea of his tastin’ peculiarities. We knew, or assumed, that the paper had been filled up at random by the murderer, but it occurred to me that Swartz would have immediately said that the paper was a random effort and so have destroyed the effect of the stage settin’.”
He looked over at the inspector. “When I went to your office this morning, I copied out the tastes of Silver and Mary Lewis and one odd one, just for the sake of safety. Then I sent Andrew to get a copy of Swartz’s cable, while I interviewed Swartz’s assistant. He told me that they juggled with the order of the glasses, so that memory could play no part in someone’s tastes if he went through the experiment again, and he gave me the key to the lists I had collected.
“Andrew had managed to persuade,” he emphasised the word gently, “the Western Union people to give him the cable and so, with that and my copies of the forms, I came back here and put in some hard work. The result of this was that I found that Mary’s tastes coincided with those on the form by Porter’s body, and it didn’t seem likely that someone had filled the form up by accident. I don’t like coincidences and so I assumed that Mary had filled the form herself.”
The inspector was looking puzzled so my uncle heaved himself out of the couch and lumbered over to the table. He ruffled the papers and pulled out a sheet which he laid out flat. We leaned over the table and looked at it.
Uncle John picked up a pencil and scribbled on the back of an envelope as he spoke. “In this plan the tick is the correct answer, while X stands for Porter’s taste, and P is the taste on both Mary Lewis’s paper and on the sheet found beside Porter’s body. You will notice one striking peculiarity about this. She tastes all “sours” as sweet. Well, Andrew here did exactly the same, which surprised Swartz’s assistant, who told me this afternoon that the chances against someone having that peculiarity and the other variations exactly the same was nearly astronomical. Andrew, for instance, in spite o’ it, tasted nearly all the others right.”
He laid down the pencil and lowered himself into the sofa. He scowled fiercely at the inspector. “Oh, I know that’s not much use as evidence, but I didn’t see that there was much chance of getting more, so I arranged this little play for you, hopin’ that I could manage to get some sort of admission or even an attack upon myself, that would bolster up what I had already found. I couldn’t see a jury followin’ that bit of paper. You remember what happened to Madeleine Smith. She got off on a nonproven which has been described as a verdict of ‘Guilty but don’t do it again.’ Well, as there is no such verdict in England, Mary Lewis might have got ‘Not guilty,’ and I have little doubt but that, if she got tired of Peter, she’d a poisoned him too.”
He pulled out his pipe and stuck it in his mouth. “Well, since you see where we are, and everything seems to be for the
best in this worst of all possible worlds, and any other cliches you like, how about one more pint before we disperse for the night. Humph?”
About the Author
RUTHVEN CAMPBELL TODD (1914–1978) was a Scottish-born poet, scholar, art critic, and fantasy novelist who wrote a series of detective novels under the name R. T. Campbell.
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Unholy Dying Page 17