Jumping Jenny (12 page)

Roger took the other’s hand and examined the scratch. It was broad, but not deep.

“How did you get it, Colin?” he repeated.

“Och, man, what’s it matter?”

“I’d just like to know.”

Colin stared at him. “You’re very suspicious. What’s the idea?”

Roger laughed soothingly. “Just exercising my well-known powers. Whatever caused that scratch, my dear Colin, it wasn’t, for instance, a pin. Look at it for yourself.”

“Does it matter a tuppenny damn what caused it?”

“Not even a three-ha’penny one. It’s just my regrettable curiosity. Don’t tell me if it’s anything terribly private.”

“Why should it be private, you old rascal?”

“Well, it looks to me like a scratch from someone’s finger-nail. In fact, if I didn’t know you so well, Colin, I should say you had been making a nuisance of yourself to a lady, and got very properly scratched for your pains.”

Roger’s fly-fishing was rewarded.

“Well, it was nothing of the sort,” Colin said crossly, “and no one but a mind like yours would have thought it was. If you’re really so curious, I got it on a bit of broken glass.”

“And where have you been playing with broken glass?”

Colin grudgingly gave the commonplace particulars. He had broken a glass at the bar, and hidden the pieces under the table.

THE CASE AGAINST ROGER SHERINGHAM

“I accept your explanation, Colin,” Roger said judicially, leaning back against the railing that bordered the roof.

“The deuce you do, Roger. That’s very kind of you.”

“Don’t get heated. I was only thinking that men have been hanged before now, because their explanations weren’t accepted. Many, many men, Colin.”

“Have you brought me up here in the cold just to tell me that?”

“We’ll go into the sun-parlour, if you prefer it,” Roger said kindly.

“I do prefer it. I’ve reached the age when I appreciate comfort.” Colin Nicolson was an elderly and disillusioned twenty-eight.

They went down the steps to the sun-parlour, switched on the light, and found two chairs.

“Well now, what’s on your mind, Roger?” Colin asked when they were settled.

“Why should you think anything’s on my mind?”

“I know the signs. You’re like an old warhorse that smells the powder. Surely you’re not trying to twist this business into anything serious?”

“I should have thought,” Roger said mildly, “that it was quite serious enough already.”

“Huh!” Colin made a Scotch noise, expressive of any interpretation which its hearer might care to put on it.

Roger was minded to try a little experiment.

“No, of course not. I was just thinking on what small points these cases depend. One single piece of evidence is enough to turn an apparently obvious case of suicide into a still more obvious case of murder, or an accident into a suicide, or what you will. As a student of crime yourself, Colin, can you pick out the vital piece of evidence in this case?”

“Vital, you mean, for suicide?”

“Yes.”

Colin thought. “That she’d been talking about killing herself half the evening?”

“No, no, no. That’s evidence the other way, if anything. No, I mean material evidence.”

Colin pondered. “No, I’m blessed if I can.”

“Well, everyone just takes it for granted that it was suicide. Why I
know, I’ll tell you. Because there is a piece of evidence which does actually prove it was suicide, but which in all probability no one has consciously realised. They’ve seen it, and they’ve absorbed it, but because it was part of the general picture of suicide they just take it for granted. Like you, not one of them could put a name to it. Can’t you, Colin? It’s something perfectly obvious.”

“Do you mean the absence of any signs of violence?”

“No, but of course that is a point, too,” Roger had to concede.

“Well what is it, then?”

“Why, that chair on the ground below her, of course. You remember there was a chair lying on its side under the gallows?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the presence of that chair proves that she wasn’t lifted up into the noose, and it proves, too, that she did voluntarily put her own head in. Doesn’t it?”

“Yes, I see what you mean. Very interesting, Roger. Yes, that’s the important piece of evidence, without a doubt.”

Roger nodded, and lit a cigarette.

His experiment had been successful. The human mind is apt to accept what it thinks ought to exist with such decision that it will even construct and imprint on the memory perfectly detailed pictures the originals of which never, in fact, did exist at all. Colin without doubt had looked several times when they were on the roof just now at the gallows. Underneath the gallows was a fallen chair. That fallen chair was a necessary detail in a stage set for suicide. Colin therefore perfectly remembered it being there while he was administering first-aid to Mrs. Stratton twenty minutes ago. The picture was firmly printed on his brain: a gallows with only two figures instead of three, and a fallen chair on the ground beneath the third cross-beam. It was impossible that the chair could not have been there twenty minutes ago. Colin remembered its presence perfectly. He would swear, with complete sincerity, not merely that he thought the chair was there when he first came out on the roof, but that it actually was there.

And so would everyone else in the party.

Roger never had been troubled by the smallest doubt that the addition of the chair to the picture would be noticed by a single person.

“And you think,” Colin pursued, “that if the chair hadn’t been there, the case would have smelt of murder?”

“I’d put it a little more strongly than that. I should say that murder would have been perfectly obvious.” Roger was enjoying the irony of discussing fact as if it was wild hypothesis. It was a pity Colin could not appreciate the irony.

“Because she couldn’t possibly have got her neck into the noose without either being lifted up, or standing on something high enough?”

“Exactly. Do you agree?”

“Yes, I certainly do. This is very interesting, Roger.”

“It’s good exercise, to appreciate the importance of trifles,” Roger said cautiously.

“And that’s why you were so interested in my scratch?”

Roger laughed. If Colin only knew how near the wind he was sailing. …

“Well, we can say that it amused me, by way of exercise, to pretend to myself that the chair never had been there at all, and therefore it was a case of murder; and there were you with a nice scratch on your hand, just such as I might have been looking for on one of the party in that event.”

“Well, well. But what motive could I have had for making away with the unfortunate woman? There’s motive enough going about, I’ll grant you, but not in my case. I’d never met her before this evening.”

“But don’t you see, that’s precisely what would make the perfect murder,” Roger said with enthusiasm. “It’s motive, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, that really pins a murder on a certain individual. Without a motive, suspicion might never be directed towards him at all.”

“Without a motive there’d be no murder.” Colin was entering into the discussion with nearly as much interest as Roger himself, although to him it must have seemed almost preposterously academic.

“When I say without a motive, of course I mean without an apparent motive. But take this very instance. You apparently had no motive at all for Mrs. Stratton’s death. That is to say, no material motive. But need a motive always be material? What about a spiritual one?”

“Well, what about a spiritual one?” said Colin, rather aggressively.

“
De mortuis nil nisi verum.
I see no reason why one shouldn’t speak the truth about the dead. The woman was a pest. She was making a nuisance of herself to almost everyone she came in contact with, she was a real menace to the happiness of at least two people here tonight, and she was making her husband’s life a misery to him. There were only two things that could be done to stop her: shut her up in a mad-house, or polish her off. Unfortunately she wasn’t quite insane enough to be certifiable; therefore only the second alternative remains. But not one of the people who had a material motive for her removal had the moral guts to effect it.

“Along comes Colin Nicolson, judicial, sympathetic, strong-minded, clear-sighted enough to see right through shibboleths, and courageous enough to act on his own judgment. He knows that laws were made for man, but he knows too that some people put themselves outside those laws. He is socialistic enough to believe that the security of the majority demands the sacrifice of the individual. He is intelligent enough to realise that it is hardly possible that suspicion can ever fall on him, and that he is taking very little risk. He is sorry, of course, that what he conceives to be his duty should require of him anything so drastic, and he is sorry too for Mrs. Stratton; but he is a great deal more sorry for the people whose lives might be ruined if Mrs. Stratton is allowed to go on living. And so …”

“Well, well,” said Colin calmly. “But I’m not sure you’ve got my character so well. I’m afraid I’m not so noble as all that, Roger. It all sounded to me much more like you.”

“It did rather, didn’t it?” said Roger, not without surprise. “Anyhow, you see what I mean?”

“Oh, yes,” said Colin slowly. “I see that.”

He sat for a moment in thoughtful silence, and then lifted his stocky bulk to its feet.

“Going down again?” Roger asked.

“No, back in a minute.”

Colin went out of the sun-parlour and up on to the roof. Through the glass wall Roger saw him walk across the roof and come to a halt under the gallows. With his hands in his pockets, he seemed to be staring at the chair which had been the cause of all the talk. Then Roger saw him take a large white silk handkerchief out of his breast-pocket and thoroughly wipe over the back, rails and seat of the chair. After that he walked, in his unhurried way, back to the sun-parlour.

“What on earth…?” said Roger, in bewilderment not unmixed with apprehension.

Colin looked at him with some severity. “The trouble with you, Roger,” he said, “is that you talk a jolly sight too much.”

“Talk?”

“Yes. In the circumstances I should keep my mouth shut, if I were you. How on earth did you know I was safe? I might not have been.”

“My dear Colin, what on earth are you talking about? And what were you doing with that chair?”

“Wiping your finger-prints off,” Colin said calmly, “just in case you’d forgotten to do so yourself.”

“Wiping my …”

“Yes. You see, I happen to know that chair wasn’t under the gallows at all when we first came up on the roof. It was in the middle somewhere. I know, because I almost fell over it, and barked my shin rather nastily. If I were you, I wouldn’t tell anyone else you moved it. It might look fishy.”

“But I didn’t …”

“Yes you did, in so many words. I tell you, Roger, you talk too much. If I were you, I wouldn’t sound anyone else about suicide or murder. In fact, I wouldn’t say a word about the case at all. It’s too dangerous, man. Of course, I know you’ve probably got an urge to talk about it, but you must just shut it down. I won’t give you away, of course, and I suppose really it was a pretty good thing for you to have done; but you can’t bank on everyone else, you know.”

“I don’t think there was any risk, really,” Roger said feebly, somewhat taken aback by this severity and cursing himself for having under-estimated Colin’s shrewdness.

“No risk!” Colin snorted. “It’s all very well to talk of spiritual motives and no suspicion and all that, but if you think you can get away with murder without any risk, and then go boasting about it, you’ll soon find your own neck in the same place as you put Mrs. Stratton’s.”

“Is it the least good,” Roger said desperately, “for me to go on telling you that I did
not
murder Mrs. Stratton?”

“I’ll believe you, of course,” Colin said, without the least trace of credulity in his voice.

“Thank you, Colin,” Roger said bitterly.

“And in any case,” Colin added, “I told you I wouldn’t give you away.”

Roger began all over again.

“Well, anyhow,” Colin said judicially, “someone murdered her.”

“I know someone did! My goodness, I wish I’d never moved that blessed chair. This is what comes of trying to do someone a good turn.”

“Even in that case,” said Colin smugly, “it’s a pretty serious thing, you know, monkeying about with evidence.”

“But, dash it all, man, the woman deserved murdering! I know that in theory it’s a shocking thing to shield a murderer. But this case is exceptional. Who ever did such a good deed deserves shielding. You’d have done the same yourself.”

“I would not,” said Colin with decision. “I’ve told you I’ll hold my tongue, but that’s as far as I’d go. I wouldn’t fake the evidence. The game wouldn’t be worth the candle. I wouldn’t risk my neck to get other people out of their own troubles.”

“Risk your neck?”

“It would make me an accessory after the fact, wouldn’t it? And the legal penalty for that is the same as for murder. I suppose, by the way,” Colin added uneasily, “that I’m an accessory after some sort of fact now. Why on earth couldn’t you hold your tongue, Roger? I should never have guessed if you hadn’t given yourself away. I was a fool though, too, to let you know I had guessed.”

“But I keep on telling you I didn’t murder the woman!”

“I know you do,” said Colin. “And I keep on telling you that I won’t give you away.”

“Oh, hell!” said Roger.

There was an unhappy little silence.

“My dear Colin, you can’t possibly pretend there’s a
case
against me,” Roger said, almost plaintively.

“Do you want me to show you the case against you?”

“I’d love you to,” Roger said bitterly.

“Well, man, you told me the motive yourself. It was silly to pretend it was a motive for me, because it isn’t. I’m not nearly high-minded enough to take a risk like that for someone I hardly know. And I might add that I’m not officious enough, either, to meddle in other people’s affairs to such an extent as that. But you are, Roger, if you want me to be candid. You’re the most officious person I know, and the most self-confident. If anyone in this world could commit an entirely spiritual, altruistic, infernally officious murder, it’s you.”