Escapade (43 page)

“Fascinating,” said Inspector Marsh. He smiled, “But just who was this so-called assassin? And who was his conspirator?”

“A more interesting question,” said the Great Man, “at the moment, is
what were they doing out by the old mill
? Why meet
there
? And to this, I am pleased to say, I have discovered the answer.” 

He narrowed his eyes again. “I believe that it was there, at the old mill, that these two, over a period of time, planned their conspiracy. It is there that they
practiced
the technique by which they very nearly succeeded in deceiving us all.”

“Oh really?” said Marsh.

The Great Man ignored him. “I examined the old mill with my associate, Mr. Beaumont. On the floor inside it we found the remains of a fire. Not a fire of weeds and brush, such as might have been built by some passing tramp”—he glanced at me, underlining the point—“but a fire that had been constructed of pieces of lumber. And why lumber?”

He cocked his head. “Suppose you take a piece of lumber and you saw it neatly in half. Suppose you create a small hollow in one of these halves, and that, within the hollow, you place a live cartridge. You have, previously, removed the slug from the cartridge and crimped shut the opening. Suppose you then carefully glue the halves of lumber back together. Now suppose you place this piece of lumber into a tire. W^hat will happen? At some point, when the heat of the fire at last reaches the cartridge, it will explode. As a consequence of its explosion, some ash may be expelled from the fire itself. Much like the ash that Mr. Beaumont and I found on the floor of the old mill. And much like the ash that was found on the floor of the Earl’s bedroom. It is obvious to me that our two conspirators experimented with lumber and cartridge there at the mill, until they discovered exactly the proper combination of both to suit their nefarious purposes.

He turned to Doyle. “It was not our entrance into the room, Sir Arthur, that blew ashes from the fireplace. It was the eruption of a cartridge, hidden within a piece of firewood.

Doyle was frowning. “But no one found a spent cartridge in the fireplace.”

“Ah,” said the Great Man. “But no one ever looked for it. We did not, because the fire was still burning when we arrived. Superintendent Honniwell and his men did not, because the Superintendent was more interested in currying favor with Lord Purleigh. Afterward, of course, the cartridge was removed.”

“By whom, exactly?” asked Marsh.

At the moment, Doyle was more interested in
how
than
whom
. He said, “You’re telling us that when Carson heard the shot fired, the Earl was already—”

“Dead, yes!” said the Great Man. “Several minutes before that shot, perhaps as much as half an hour, using the hidden stairway, the murderer had entered the room with the revolver. A single shot was fired, muffled by a cushion, perhaps, and the Earl was dead.”

“But according to Superintendent Honniwell,” said Doyle, “there were powder burns near the wound. Would these have been present if the pistol had been fired through a cushion?”

“Mr. Beaumont assures me that this is possible, so long as the muzzle of the weapon is brought close to the point of impact of the bullet. It is possible, too, that the autopsy will detect threads of fabric in the wound, thus substantiating my statement.”

“And the murderer,” said Doyle, “then wiped his fingerprints from the weapon, and placed on it the fingerprints of the Earl.” 

“The murderer did so,” said the Great Man. “Correct. And then, after carefully putting the piece of lumber in the fire, probably off to the side, so as to postpone the explosion, the murderer left. And came down to the drawing room, to join us all in tea.”

“And who
is
this murderer of yours?” asked Marsh. “Who
are
these conspirators?”

“Who?” said the Great Man. “Is that not
patently obvious
, Inspector Marsh? They must be two people who knew that if they were seen together, and intimate, their plan would be foiled. One of them, at least, must know Maplewhite, must know its hidden tunnels and passageways. And one of them must be of a stature small enough, slight enough, to be mistaken at a distance, by a woman suffering from nearsightedness, for a young boy. There are no young boys at Maplewhite, ghostly or otherwise.” He turned to face the audience. “Therefore, the two conspirators must be Lady Purleigh and Dr. Auerbach.”

The audience made a ragged hissing sound, like a large beast drawing breath. Lady Purleigh looked puzzled. Dr. Auerbach looked alarmed. Lord Bob looked poleaxed, and he stared at the Great Man with his mouth open. Inspector Marsh stood up from his chair. “This is preposterous,” he said. “Dr. Auerbach was seen in Purleigh. He walked back from there to Maplewhite. He couldn’t possibly have got here by the time that shot was fired.”

I took a look at Sergeant Meadows. He was still leaning against the wall.

The Great Man smiled. “Had you investigated thoroughly,
Inspector
, you would have learned that a bicycle was stolen in Purleigh yesterday. Mr. Beaumont learned this from the local constable, Dubbins. Riding a bicycle, using pathways through the woods, pathways detailed for him by Lady Purleigh, Dr. Auerbach easily reached the old mill before one o’clock. The bicycle is no doubt resting at the bottom of the millpond. And had you investigated further, you would have telephoned the University of Leeds, as I did today, and learned that Dr. Auerbach was not in Devon, but in Edinburgh. Where I telephoned and spoke with him.” He pointed his finger. “
That
man is not Dr. Auerbach.’

The little bald-headed man sprang from his chair and darted for the drawing room doors, running in front of Miss Turner and Mrs. Allardyce. Miss Turner put out her leg. He snagged his foot on it, swung his arms forward as though he were reaching for a trapeze, and went sailing over the coffee table. By the time he landed, I was on top of him with the Colt. I yanked him to his feet. He squirmed like a polliwog until I stuck the pistol in his ear.

Other people were up, too—Sir David, Mrs. Allardyce. Mrs. Corneille was rising.

But the Great Man wasn’t finished. He turned back to Marsh. “And the reason,
Inspector Marsh
, that you did not investigate thoroughly, as you should have done, is that you are a most thoroughly incompetent Inspector Marsh.” He turned to the audience and smiled. “Ladies and gentlemen, permit me to introduce a man who is almost as inept a policeman as he is a magician.” He held out his arm. “I give you Chin Soo!”

This was the signal. The drawing room doors burst open and what seemed like a hundred cops tumbled in, some in uniform, some not. One of them was Superintendent Honniwell. One of them was an angry-looking man who turned out later to be the real Inspector Marsh. Over against the wall, “Sergeant Meadows” reached into his coat pocket, but Doyle was ready and he grabbed the man’s hand with his own left and he popped him a very good right on the point of his chin and the man went crashing to the floor.

IT TOOK A few days to get everything straightened out. The key, as the Great Man liked to put it, was Moseley.

Carl Moseley was the man who had been impersonating Dr. Auerbach. Questioned by Honniwell and Marsh, he broke.

A journalist and an unsuccessful playwright, he had met Lady Purleigh in London a year ago, among a group of people who lived in Bloomsbury. It was there, he said, a month or so later, that their affair had begun. One member of the group, a poet named Sybil Prescott-Vane, knew about the affair and let Lady Purleigh and Moseley use her home for their London rendezvous. Her testimony, at the trial, was damaging to both of them.

Lady Purleigh and Moseley had seen each other whenever she went to London, and twice he had visited Maplewhite, both times traveling out there with other members of the Bloomsbury group. They met in his room, or out by the old mill. In both cases, Lady Purleigh used the secret passageways and tunnels. Moseley said that Lady Purleigh had known about the tunnels for some time.

According to Moseley, the original plan had been to kill Lord Bob. Lady Purleigh, he said, didn’t want any part of Lord Bob’s proletarian golfing club, and didn’t really want any part of Lord Bob either. She did want Moseley, said Moseley. The plan was changed during his most recent visit to Maplewhite, when the late Earl wandered into Moseley’s bedroom while he was amorously engaged” with Lady Purleigh. This was the same night the Earl made a grab for a woman named Dora Carrington. The Earl, who was pretty much a loony by then, agreed not to reveal what he'd seen, so long as Lady Purleigh didn’t interfere with his sport .

That cooked the Earl, as far as Lady Purleigh was concerned. She wasn’t, she’d told Moseley (according to Moseley), going to gain control of Maplewhite “only to have it ripped from my hands by a drooling sex fiend.” This didn’t sit too well with the jury, either.

She and Moseley worked out another plan—kill the Earl, and let Lord Bob take the blame. Even if he were never tried for the murder, she was sure she could get him locked up as a nut case.

Moseley had met Dr. Auerbach in Vienna, while he was doing an article about psychoanalysis, and he knew that Auerbach was in Edinburgh now. It was his idea to shave his head and wear a false beard, which made him nearly Auerbach’s double. At the trial, the prosecutor asked him what would have happened if the Edinburgh police had talked to the real doctor. Moseley said he’d mentioned exactly that to Lady Purleigh, and she’d said that in that case “we should take care of Dr. Auerbach.”

Moseley admitted to firing the shot that missed Miss Turner. As the Great Man said, he thought he’d killed her. He also admitted to a rough time an hour later, when he “examined” her, as Dr. Auerbach. It was then he realized that she was nearsighted, and that she hadn’t recognized him and Lady Purleigh. She didn’t volunteer anything about ghosts, and he didn’t ask.

Lady Purleigh, he said, refused to believe that Miss Turner was no threat. It was Lady Purleigh who had stabbed the dagger into Miss Turner’s bed. Moseley, so he claimed, came running after her, using the secret passageway, and dragged her back to her room. In the excitement, both of them had forgotten to retrieve the knife.

The autopsy on the Earl’s body had proved that he hadn’t committed suicide. As the Great Man had predicted, traces of fabric were found in the fatal wound. Moseley and Lady Purleigh hadn’t counted on that. No one ever found the cushion that had been used to muffle the sound of the shot. Moseley said that Lady Purleigh burned it.

And it was Lady Purleigh, said Moseley, who had actually fired the pistol. While her husband was off talking to MacGregor, organizing his posse of tenant farmers, she used the secret passage to go up the Earl’s room. She brought along the cushion and the chunk of lumber with the prepared cartridge inside it. According to

Moseley, she killed the old man, put the chunk of lumber into fireplace, and then come downstairs to join the others at tea. She knew when Lord Bob would be coming back—he was always punctual, as Cecily had told me—and she knew he would have no real alibi for the time the shot was fired.

Lady Purleigh’s lawyer tried to shift the blame to Moseley. But Moseley had been in plain sight all afternoon. Lady Purleigh hadn’t. She was the only one who could’ve gone up to that room.

From the time she was arrested, Lady Purleigh calmly denied everything. During the trial, Lord Bob told the newspapers that she’d never do such things, had never known about the secret passageways. He was convincing, but I think he realized that she had known, and that she had done all the rest.

They were both convicted. Moseley was hanged. Lady Purleigh is still in prison, serving a life sentence. Lord Bob has given up the idea of a golfing club, and he doesn’t give weekend parties anymore.

As for Chin Soo, his real name was Archibald Crubbs and he was English. He’d been an acrobat, a contortionist, and, for a while, a Shakespearean actor before he sailed to America and made his name as a magician. “Sergeant Meadows” was actually a man named Peter Collinson, an old friend of Crubbs’s and a former cop who still had connections to Scotland Yard. As Doyle had suggested, Chin Soo had learned on Wednesday, from the newspaper article, that Doyle would be going to Maplewhite for the weekend. Chin Soo assumed, and correctly, that Houdini would also be there. He and Collinson had been staying in Cumbermoorleigh, a village not far from Purleigh, since Thursday.

When the two of them learned that Inspector Marsh would be arriving at Maplewhite on Sunday morning, they brought down a couple of thugs from London, and they all waylaid him. Marsh and his real sergeant, Maynard Vine, spent most of Sunday trussed up in a barn about ten miles south of Maplewhite, guarded by the thugs. They were only discovered because Miss Turner, doing a pretty good imitation of Lady Purleigh’s voice, telephoned the Amberly police and demanded that they start looking for them.

The police wanted to move in on the phony Marsh right away, but Lady Purleigh’s voice carried a lot of weight with Superintendent Honniwell, even when it wasn’t really hers. Miss Turner persuaded them to listen to the Great Man.

Crubbs and Collinson were tried and convicted for kidnapping and for impersonating a police officer, which in England is almost as serious. Both of them were sent to Dartmoor, but while their train was on its way to the prison, they disappeared in what the English newspapers called “the most audacious escape of the century.” Neither one of them was ever seen again.

It’s a good word, audacious. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used it that Sunday afternoon, after all the excitement had died down, to describe Chin Soo. “It was audacious of him, really, wasn’t it? Pretending to be a policeman while an actual police investigation was going on. Wasn’t he the least bit bothered by the notion that Scotland Yard would be expecting reports from the real Inspector Marsh? Didn’t he realize that Honniwell might return here at any moment from Amberly? The Amberly police are still examining the rifle and the pistol. The autopsy on the Earl has yet to be performed. How could he possibly put himself in such a position?”