Death-Watch (34 page)

“I asked you, and you showed it couldn’t have been a forgery because Ames took it to the Yard himself. I then asked you, ‘Was he above juggling facts a bit, if he thought he did it in a good cause?’ And you agreed that he wasn’t.”

“But,” demanded Melson, “why should he have juggled the facts in writing to his own superiors?”

“I’ll show you by telling you what happened. Boscombe realizes that he has now a perfect plant for both fake murder and real murder. Fake murder, because months ago—for the pure pleasure of torturing Stanley—he has already mentioned to Stanley the hazy plan of a killing for amusement, which he probably never meant to carry on with. (You notice Hastings never heard mention of it but once.) And real murder, because the stage is set for killing Ames in such a way that Eleanor shall be hanged.

“There is Ames, in his disguise, already watching everybody at the public-house because he has had no definite accusation from ‘Stanley’ and he is waiting for Stanley to appear in person. And instead there comes to him—Boscombe. He says to Ames, ‘I know who you are; I am a friend of Stanley’s, and he sent me here.’ Ames naturally says: ‘What have
you
got to do with it? Why doesn’t Stanley come himself?’ Boscombe replies, ‘You fool, several of them have guessed you’re a police officer. If anybody sees Stanley with you, or gets a hint of it, the fat will be in the fire. I’m the person Stanley referred to, who saw those stolen articles in the woman’s possession.’ He then pitches the yarn exactly as we have it in Ames’s report—with one exception. ‘I’ll get you into the house right enough,’ he says, ‘but, in the event we don’t get the proof and I get into trouble for telling you this, you have got to cover me up. You have got to tell even your superiors, in case I should be laying the foundations for a libel charge, that the man who told you this was
not
the man—I, Calvin Boscombe—who helped you get into the house. If we do find the proof, I shall certainly admit being both. Otherwise, I must have my alibi in black and white … or I refuse to help you at all. This is your big case; it means the promotion and pay and everything else if you pull it off. What I ask you is merely nominal, but I insist on it.’

“Well, what could Ames do? He had nothing whatever to lose, by agreeing, and he stood to forfeit everything if he refused. A thin excuse, it was; but he believed it—and he died.

“So they arranged that on Thursday night—Thursday night, as in any plan Boscombe devised, because the house would be locked up early in Mrs. Gorson’s absence and there would be no servants to notice stray visitors from the area—Ames should creep up in the dark to Boscombe’s room,
and meet Stanley.
The last touch of reality should be added when Ames, if he were hanging about the house, should at an earlier time see Stanley go in; and he’d got it impressed on that none-too-clever brain of his that he must at no time speak to Stanley. Well, Ames was never to reach Boscombe’s room alive.

“In the meantime, Boscombe had been preparing his evidence against Eleanor. A purchased bracelet and ear-rings, even the skullwatch, wouldn’t be enough. He must use a pair of gloves apparently belonging to her—but what else that would point straight to Eleanor? Then he had his best inspiration of all in Paull’s difficulty—the clock-hands.”

“Stop a bit,” put in Melson. “That’s a snag, isn’t it? How did Boscombe learn about it? When Paull talked to Eleanor, either down on the front steps or in the cab, Boscombe couldn’t possibly have overheard it! How did he learn?”

“Through Paull’s own character. I had a little word with young Christopher tonight. Paull acted exactly as we could have pictured he would. You noticed, probably, that the one person in the house for whom Boscombe had a half-contemptuous tolerance was Paull? Paull amused him, and he could preen his vanity by contrast. Paull, moreover, rather liked Boscombe. He wanted to borrow money— the obvious person to borrow it from was Boscombe, who was rich—but he didn’t dare face him …”

“Got it!” said Hadley, softly. “As a last resort, when he was leaving the house that morning, he suddenly thought it might be
easier if he wrote
to Boscombe what he didn’t have the nerve to ask—”

“Yes. And Boscombe met him, wormed out the difficulty, and quickly got him out of the way with a cash surety of silence. That was the man to whom Paull wrote the note. If he didn’t have to broach the subject to Boscombe face to face, open the ball, he was willing to meet him after Boscombe knew the difficulty. Not an uncommon occurrence, I believe.

“So we come to the last act. Boscombe and Stanley are in the former’s room on Thursday night, waiting for the victim. All about Boscombe are the trappings of the fake murder, the trappings he doesn’t need. In his bedroom are the trappings he does need.

“On Wednesday night he had stolen the clock-hands, wearing gloves of Eleanor’s sort. Man, hadn’t you realized all along—hadn’t you seen standing out in glory—the glaringly evident fact that Boscombe is the only man in that house with hands small enough to have put on those gloves? A dozen times you’ve seen his small, delicate hands, which didn’t have to go
clear
into the gloves, but only far enough to avoid getting the paint on himself when he removed the clock-hands. One glove, along with the minute-hand and the rest of the evidence, was secreted behind the panel on Thursday, while Eleanor was away at work. He knew he was safe; he knew that in Eleanor’s instinctive, deep-rooted dread of the wall-panel she hadn’t used it in years. And on Thursday night the trappings he did need, the hour-hand and the right-hand glove, were ready in his bedroom.”

“Are you trying to tell me,” demanded Hadley, “that the glove was used, after all?”

“I am.”

“But, blast it! You yourself proved that neither of those gloves—”

“Haven’t you got it a trifle mixed?” enquired Dr. Fell, wrinkling his brow. “I seem to remember that
you
proved it; indeed, as I kept on repeating time after time, it was you who demonstrated it. I don’t recall ever saying off my own bat that the right-hand glove wasn’t used. All I said was that the left-hand glove, in your ingenious and admirable false solution, was not the one we were looking for … Naturally, my boy, I didn’t dare intimate that right was right, so to speak. In your state of mind, it would have been too dangerous. So long as you could prove Eleanor guilty, you would have been quite willing to make her ambidextrous.”

“Then you used false evidence,” Hadley said, slowly, and squinted down his pencil, “to prove—”

“The truth. Right you are,” the doctor agreed, cheerfully. “But then we’ve both been doing it straight along … Let me show you by a little experiment. You try it, Melson; I don’t want this beggar to cheat. Take this paper-cutter; it’s quite sharp. Now go over to that sofa and drive it down hard through one of the cushions; they’re stuffed with feathers. Never mind, I’ll be responsible to the hotel. As soon as you’ve struck, jerk away, not because you don’t want, hum, feathers on your glove, but because you don’t want them on your clothes. Like Boscombe.
Now
!”

Melson, hoped nobody would ever take a photograph of him doing this, struck savagely and jerked away.

“Right,” said Dr. Fell, affably. “What did you do instantly, as soon as the knife descended?”

“I opened my hand. There’s a feather—”

“And that, Hadley, is why there was blood on the palm of the glove and nowhere else; not a great deal, because, except in the case of a severed artery, men don’t bleed profusely at the very second of a blow. Your theory would only have been correct if the murderer had withdrawn the weapon from the wound with fist still tightly clenched about it; but not otherwise.

“Let us, then, clear up the last difficulty—why Boscombe wasn’t seen leaving his chair by the man at the skylight, and why Hastings was willing to swear he saw him there all the time. It explains itself, if you study the evidence.

“First think of what Boscombe intended Stanley to see so that Stanley could swear to his presence. Mark first the very exceptional height, breadth, and depth of that blue chair. Now, where was the chair? Remember what Hastings said he could see, from his position on the roof: ‘I could see just the right-hand side of the chairback as it faced the door.’ In other words, the patch of moonlight was so arranged as to fall just partly down one side of the back and arm, while most of it towards the left (imagining yourself looking down at it) was in shadow. What did Hastings make a point of saying, over and over, when he had looked down for the first time— months ago? That somebody was sitting in the chair; that it was Stanley, but he couldn’t be sure of this because he could only see a part of the man’s head over the back of the chair; above all, that the only thing he could see of Stanley was the man’s hand opening and shutting on the chair-arm. You remember how he emphasized that? “Now, on Thursday night imagine Stanley peering through the crack in the screen. Most of the chair was in dense shadow; and
all
of the front of it was, because the moonlight would blacken it with the chair’s own shadow—all except the outside of the wing and arm. Very well. Stanley was to see Boscombe sit down in that chair when the lights went out. Then what was he to see? What was the one thing that, so hypnotized Hastings that night, the thing he dwelt on … ?”

“The moonlight shining on the pistol,” replied Hadley, “presumably the hand holding it … yes, the hand … and, by God! now that I come to think of it, how absolutely
still and steady
it was!”

“Exactly. A section of that was what Stanley was supposed to see. Hastings got a better view, but he couldn’t see anything more by the very nature of the arrangements. And, by the force of his own testimony, he cannot swear he saw Boscombe in that chair—even though he thinks he did. Remember this: Stanley, six feet two or three, sat in that chair the first night Hastings overheard them talking, and he saw only a part of the top of Stanley’s head! Of Stanley, proportionately broad, he could see past the wing only one hand on the arm of the chair. If it was too big for the gigantic Stanley, it must have swallowed the diminutive Boscombe. Then by the nature of Hastings’ own testimony he could at most have seen the gun and perhaps part of the ‘hand.’

“Boscombe slipped to the left out of the chair, in that dense darkness and in his black pyjamas. How he managed the gun business we do not know at this moment, because he will have disposed of that evidence—but I can guess. Do you remember, Melson, when we first went into his room last night? I, in all innocence, made a move over as though I were going to sit down in the only chair I have ever seen that is almost big enough to allow me relaxation. Boscombe, for no apparent reason, shot over and sat down ahead of me. There was something pushed down in the side of it below the cushion, that is why—something like a bootjack to hold the gun rigid, and draped over the butt of the pistol one of those glaring white cotton gloves of the bogus murder. He needed only a moment to adjust it, while he leaned out of the chair sideways and made a covering shadow with his own body, and a moment to take it away again. Hastings, by the way, did hear the
rustle
as he either left or came back to the chair, and did hear his hard breathing; you remember? But it is not to be wondered that Hastings admired the immovable and extraordinary steadiness of his hand.

“Boscombe didn’t really need all that nonsense. Stanley would probably have been willing to swear to his presence through the sheer suggestion of saying that he sat down and remained hidden. It was silly, childish, and horrible—like Boscombe. It was inevitable— for Boscombe.

“So our whey-faced killer slid round to the left, went to the back of the room, followed the rear wall right to his bedroom. He had plenty of time. He had told Ames to ring the bell; to wait, and, if he got no answer in a couple of minutes, to come on upstairs. Boscombe was ready. The moonlight streaming into his bedroom windows gave him light enough to find the prepared clock-hand and the real glove. He was out through the panel, he had struck and vanished and returned; and his alibi was complete. He took no chance of interruption. He chose twelve o’clock—because Eleanor, even in the unlikely event of her going up to the roof, never went up before twelve-fifteen. In both assumptions he was wrong that night; she went up, and she went up before twelve-fifteen. But if luck was against Boscombe in that respect, it favoured him in that she went up first about a quarter to twelve; and then again, after a thorough hunt for the missing key, a few minutes after the murder; just in time to incur suspicion as he intended.

“Finally, having blocked the passage from the landing end by stealing the key, he had already made sure it was blocked from the roof-end. The broken bolt was put in order and bolted. If Eleanor could not wander up, Hastings could not wander down to see why she didn’t. He left nothing to chance; he foresaw even eventualities he didn’t believe would arise; he held his thousand threads, glorying in his ability never to mishandle one. He was playing a dozen chess games at once, and delighting in it. He was nimble, brilliant, over-ingenious, and unsuccessful, and it does not pain me deeply to think that he will hang.”

Hadley drew a deep breath and shut his notebook. The fire was growing lower; again rain had begun to fall; and Melson was already wondering how this brief interlude would have affected his work on Burnet.

“Yes, I fancy that’s all,” said the chief inspector, taking up his glass again. “Except—what you did this afternoon and this evening …”

“I tried to obtain tangible evidence. Good God! I had nothing whatever against the man! There’s a secret panel in his bedroom by which he could get out into the hall; well, what of it? He could have laughed at me. Two witnesses would have sworn, however unwillingly, that he was in the chair all the time. His alibi was unbreakable, yet I had to break it.

“In deference to you, I attempted milder methods first. There was a slight chance that somebody at Gamridge’s jewellery counter would remember a man buying duplicates of the stolen articles. I sent two of your men on that lead—but it was a weak one. Even if he is ever identified as a man who bought a bracelet and ear-rings, he will strengthen his
apparent
defence of Eleanor (Lord, he was clever in that!) by simply saying they were for her. We think he’s gallantly trying to defend her still, when they’re not the articles at all, and there you are … My last mild lead was the ‘Stanley’ letter. If it had been a letter to Boscombe rubbed out with liquid eraser, I hoped that a microphotographic treatment would bring out the effaced writing and show: ‘Dear Boscombe: Here are the books you want,’ or whatever the real letter might have been. We might have had him then! I drove to an old French friend of mine who lives at Hampstead, used to be associated with Bencolin at the Prefecture in Paris, and still dabbles in criminology. He tested it. We raised vague words on the letter—enough to prove Stanley’s innocence in writing the bogus letter if the worst came to the worst—but nothing pointing to Boscombe.