Death-Watch (26 page)

Dr. Fell removed his eyeglasses. Then he dropped his judicial manner and spoke very quietly.

“You don’t see it, do you? You won’t believe me if I tell you I was never more desperately serious in my life? I am trying to keep that girl from being arrested, if nothing worse—and, incidentally, save your own official head—in the only way you’ll understand it—by showing you what you’re up against. I’m no authority on law. But I do know a good deal about lawyers and their methods. And I’ll show you what a man like Gordon-Bates or Sir George Carnahan, if they brief him, would do to your poor old case when you presented it. I may be wrong. But God knows I was never more practical.”

“Very well. Carry on, then,” muttered Hadley. He seemed uneasy.

“It is a well-known rule in poultry-farming,” resumed Dr. Fell, his voice trumpeting out again as he squared himself, “to avoid two errors which have since become axiomatic, thus: (a) Do not put all your eggs in one basket, and (b) Do not count your chickens before they are hatched. The prosecution has done both, which is a fatal bloomer. The prosecution has made its two charges interchangeable. If this woman killed Evan Manders, she also killed George Ames. If this woman killed George Ames, she also killed Evan Manders. Each charge is built on the other and is a part of it. We have only to throw a reasonable doubt on one of them, and we therefore discredit both.

“For example, we have this glove, the right-hand glove. The prosecution states that this glove could not have been worn on the hand that stabbed Ames. From the wound, as we saw, there was an effusion of blood which would have saturated it; whereas on this glove there is not only a very small blood-stain, but a stain placed in such a position that my learned friend flatly states it could not have been there had this hand held the weapon. Good! My learned friend produces evidence definitely to show that the Gamridge murderess was left-handed. Since Eleanor Carver in killing Ames must have struck with the left-hand glove, then the two killers are one and the same.

“That,” said Dr. Fell expansively, and nodded his big head, “is what I call putting all the eggs into one basket. Whereas this”— he lumbered over to the panel in the wall, opened the shoe-box, took out the left-hand glove, and, whirling round, flung it on the bed. “This is what I call counting chickens before they are hatched. There is the glove which the prosecution alleges must have been used in the murder. But examine it, gentlemen, and you will find not one single spot or speck of blood upon it. My learned friend states that the blow could not possibly have been struck without a quantity of blood. Therefore—by the prosecution’s own reasoning—we prove (1) that Eleanor Carver is not left-handed like the Gamridge murderess, and (2)
that in the murder of Inspector Ames neither of these gloves could have been used at all.
”

Hadley rose from his seat as though in a process of astral levitation. He seized the glove from the bed and stared at Dr. Fell…

“We wish all this to be understood,” the doctor thundered, “because this time the prosecution is jolly well not going to have it both ways. At this late date my learned friend is not going to say that he meant something else, and that the right-hand glove was really used, after all. He himself proved that it wasn’t. And I have proved the impossibility of left-handedness. If the free right-hand glove got a splash of blood when it was several feet away from the wound, then—to put it mildly—we must demand that the prosecution show us at least some microscopic trace on the hand that made the wound. There is none. Therefore Eleanor Carver didn’t kill Ames. Therefore she wasn’t the left-handed woman who stabbed Evan Manders. And those gloves, the only real
personal
evidence against her, must be disregarded when the prosecution’s whole case crashes down under the weight of its own logic.”

To show he was far from finished, Dr. Fell added, “Ahem!” as he took out the red bandanna to mop his forehead. Then he beamed.

“Stop a bit,” said Hadley, with dogged quietness. “Perhaps I’ve betrayed myself—a bit. Maybe in the excitement of building up a case (which was only a skeleton outline, as I told you) I may have gone a little too far. But these other pieces of real evidence …”

“Me lord and gentlemen,” pursued Dr. Fell, thrusting the bandanna back into his pocket. “So instantly is the prosecution adopting the attitude I prophesied it would, that I need not point out how damaged its case has become. But let me proceed. The other side itself has proved she did not use the gloves. But one was found near the body, and another behind that panel. If she did not put them there, it follows that somebody else did—with the sole purpose of getting her hanged—and this I shall attempt to prove.

“In considering these other ‘pieces of real evidence’ against her, I shall first deal with the Gamridge murder. As somebody has mentioned, I have outlined five points to be considered in connection with these two crimes … Harrumph. Gimme that envelope, Melson. So … And, when I come to discuss them, I shall ask leave to take them backwards.”

He looked about suspiciously over his glasses, but there was no hint of a jeer. Hadley sat with the glove in his hand, chewing at the stem of a dead pipe.

“Since we have disproved the charge of left-handedness, the only definite one, what remains to connect Eleanor Carver with the Gamridge murderess? That she was probably a blonde (one says a brunette, but let that pass), that she was young, and that she wore clothes common to most women. This rouses my amazement, not to say my mirth. In other words, it is the very
indefiniteness
of the description which you use to prove it was Eleanor Carver. You say that the murderess must have been a certain women solely on the grounds that there are so many other women in London who look like her. It is as though you said John Doe was infallibly guilty of the Leeds scarf murder because the man seen sneaking away from the scene of the crime might just as well have been somebody else. Second, you have Eleanor’s own admission that she was at Gamridge’s that afternoon; which does not sound like the admission either of a murderess or of Eleanor Carver as you have painted her character as a murderess. But I will tell you what it does sound like. It sounds like the effort of somebody who knew she was there that afternoon; who noted the superficial resemblance to her in the newspaper accounts and knew there could be no positive identification; who read a description of the stolen articles and saw that, with one exception, they could not positively be identified, either—to saddle her with the crime.”

“Hold on!” interposed Hadley. “This is getting fantastic. Granting that the witnesses couldn’t positively identify her, we
have
the stolen articles. There they are in front of you.”

“You think they’re unique?”

“Unique?”

“You have a bracelet and a pair of ear-rings. Do you think that you couldn’t walk into Gamridge’s at this moment and buy twenty exact duplicates of those two articles? They’re not unique; they’re turned out in lots of which no individual bracelet or ring could be absolutely identified as the one stolen on the twenty-seventh of August. You wouldn’t think of arresting every woman you saw wearing one of them. No, my boy. There is only one of the stolen articles that could be identified beyond doubt—namely, the seventeenth-century watch of Carver’s in the Gamridge display. That is unique. That, and that alone, would infallibly point to Eleanor Carver. And it is very significant,” said Dr. Fell, “that it is the only one of the stolen articles you have not got.”

Hadley put his hands to his forehead.

“Do you expect me to believe,” he demanded, “that two exact duplicates of the stolen articles happened to be hidden behind that panel by accident?”

“Not by accident. By deliberate design. I am gradually trying to show my learned friend,” snapped Dr. Fell, bringing his fist down on the mantel-shelf, “that all the coincidences which trip and befog us have not been coincidences at all. Everything led to it. Eleanor’s kleptomaniac tendencies were well known; that was what gave the murderer the idea. He (or she) saw a chance all planned in the Gamridge crime. The loose description of the killer fitted Eleanor; Eleanor was at the store; Eleanor could prove no alibi. But it required a lot of evidence. That was why the person behind this whole damnable design tried to add to it by pinching the Maurer skull-watch out of Boscombe’s box. Boscombe was intended to believe she had stolen it—because this devil knew Boscombe would cover her up. You were intended to believe she had stolen it—because you would not believe any story Boscombe told to account for its disappearance. And both of you tumbled straight into the trap. Now, let’s go on with these ‘real pieces of evidence’ you have against her. I’ve pointed out that the only real piece of evidence, the unique watch that really could damn Eleanor, is missing. Why is it missing? Surely if somebody wanted to put the blame on Eleanor that watch would be the one thing he (or she) would be absolutely certain to ‘plant’ behind the panel. But it isn’t there. And the only tenable hypothesis to account for its absence—whether you still think Eleanor guilty, or whether you believe in my own theory—is that nobody put it there
because nobody had it to put there.

“I asked you in my fifth point,” thundered Dr. Fell, looking at the envelope in his hand, “about that. Melson’s note reads: ‘The department-store murderer did not steal a watch belonging to Carver when the theft must have been easier at home, but took the dangerous risk of stealing it out of a display in a crowded department store.’ Well, why? Surely it’s obvious. The mad impulse did not come over a woman in this house to steal a watch they all must have seen dozens of times before. The mad impulse came to somebody else. The mad impulse came, in fact, to some woman who does not live in this house; some woman of whom we have probably never heard; some woman we may probably never hear of in her hidden namelessness among eight million people! That is the department-store killer. The devil in this house merely used her crime; used it as a lead to spin up the insufficient evidence against Eleanor to bring the police on Eleanor’s track, and then murdered the police officer who had been summoned amid faked evidence that should send Eleanor to the scaffold for both crimes!”

Hadley was so excited that he hurled his briefcase on the floor and faced Dr. Fell wildly.

“I don’t believe it!” he shouted. “This is some of your damned rhetoric. It’s sheer theory, and rotten theory at that. You can’t prove it! You can’t accuse somebody you can’t even prove exists! You—”

“Have I got you on the run?” asked Dr. Fell, grimly. “At least I think you’re worried. Why don’t you look at that bracelet and that skull-watch and see if there’s a single fingerprint on the whole polished surface of either? You say Eleanor thought that panel was safe: then there’ll be dozens of her prints on both, if that’s true. But it’s not. There won’t be any at all—that was one thing the evidence-faker couldn’t manage. Man, do you understand now why you had only to seek for one clue to find six? Do you understand why you had only to open your mouth to hazard a theory, and somebody walked in that door and confirmed it? Then you know why this case frightened me and why I can believe in evil spirits. There’s a real evil spirit here, who hates that girl with a patient, deadly, brilliant guile, hates her as a galley-slave hated the whip-master and failure hates success. The whole design was to weave a rope for her neck and crack that neck, as somebody would like to do between two hands … Now shall I go on, or are you afraid to hear my case?”

“You still can’t prove—” began Hadley, but not loudly. He picked up his briefcase and his voice was growing thoughtful.

“Go on,” said Melson, whose dogged hand kept on making notes.

Dr. Fell, wheezing heavily, stood looking from one to the other of them, his face more red and his thumb hooked in the armhole of his vast waistcoat. Beyond him the grey light through the windows showed the dreariness of sky and back yard. He went on more quietly:

“So, in taking those five points backwards, I come to the fourth. That is the recurring, vexing question of why both clock-hands were stolen and why they were not stolen when the clock was exposed. I will tell you why it was done. It was done because all evidence had to point to Eleanor as the murderer of Ames. Merely to steal one clock-hand did not point to anybody. But the hour-hand, the superfluous hand which could not be used as a weapon and whose removal was a pure waste of time—it had to be found in Eleanor’s possession, as clear evidence of the thief. This also, but to a greater extent, was the reason for waiting until Wednesday night to steal the hands. It seems to have occurred to nobody here that the thief waited until Wednesday night because not until then had the clock been
painted with gilt.

“Hasn’t my learned friend realized the utter simplicity of that? The whole case is a track of gilt paint! It was meant to be. Where would have been your evidence against Eleanor as Ames’s murderer if it had not been for those gold smears ostentatiously plastered over a pair of her gloves, one of them hidden behind the panel, and the other thrown down not too ostentatiously close to the dead man? And, if you care for further confirmation, consider that matter of the key. The real murderer had to steal that key from her. That little key, gentlemen, was the most important thing in the whole plan, because the plan would have been impossible without it. Eleanor was required to turn in early, and would have no alibi for any night you might choose—
unless
she went up to see her lover on the roof. That must be made impossible. She must be trapped without being able to get through that door. And, when the murderer had no further use for the key, it was returned to the finger of the glove to score another crushing point against her.”

Hadley interposed with some haste:

“Admitting all this for a second … which I don’t, mind; but admitting it as a hypothesis … then what about the gloves? Hang it! The more I think of it the more I realize how much depends on those gloves! You seem to have proved that neither one of ’em was used—”

“H’mf, yes. That bothers you, don’t it, hey?” The doctor chuckled, and then became very grave. “But the fact is I’m not telling you what did happen. I’m only telling you what didn’t. No, no. It’s not yet time for me to indicate to you who the real murderer is.”