'You know, this really was a very remarkable case. You and Bradley, Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, didn't do the criminal justice when you described it as a hotch - potch of other cases. Any ideas of real merit in previous cases may have been borrowed, perhaps; but as Fielding says, in Tom Jones, to borrow from the classics, even without acknowledgment, is quite legitimate for the purposes of an original work. And this is an original work. It has one feature which not only absolves it from all charge to the contrary, but which puts its head and shoulders above all its prototypes.
'It's bound to become one of the classical cases itself. And but for the merest accident, which the criminal for all his ingenuity couldn't possibly have foreseen, I think it would have become one of the classical mysteries. On the whole I'm inclined to consider it the most perfectly - planned murder I've ever heard of (because of course one doesn't hear of the even more perfectly - planned ones that are never known to be murders at all). It's so exactly right - ingenious, utterly simple, and as near as possible infallible.'
'Humph! Not so very infallible, as it turned out, Sheringham, eh?' grunted Sir Charles.
Roger smiled at him. 'The motive's so obvious, when you know where to look for it; but you didn't know. The method's so significant, once you've grasped its real essentials; but you didn't grasp them. The traces are so thinly covered, when you've realised just what is covering them; but you didn't realise. Everything was anticipated. The soap was left lying about in chunks, and we all hurried to stuff our eyes with it. No wonder we couldn't see clearly. It really was beautifully planned. The police, the public, the press - everybody completely taken in. It seems almost a pity to have to give the murderer away.'
'Really, Mr. Sheringham,' remarked Mrs. Fielder - Flemming. 'You're getting quite lyrical.'
'A perfect murder makes me feel lyrical. If I was this particular criminal I should have been writing odes to myself for the last fortnight.'
'And as it is,' suggested Miss Dammers, 'you feel like writing odes to yourself for having solved the thing.'
'I do rather,' Roger agreed. 'Well, I'll begin with the evidence. As to that, I won't say that I've got such a collection of details as Bradley was able to amass to prove his first theory, but I think you'll all agree that I've got quite enough. Perhaps I can't do better than run through his list of twelve conditions which the murderer must fulfil, though as you'll see I don't by any means agree with all of them.
'I grant and can prove the first two, that the murderer must have at least an elementary knowledge of chemistry and criminology, but I disagree with both parts of the third; I don't think a good education is really essential, and I should certainly not rule out any one with a public - school or university education, for reasons which I'll explain later. Nor do I agree with the fourth, that he or she must have had possession of or access to Mason's note - paper. It was an ingenious idea of Bradley's that the possession of the notepaper suggested the method of the crime, but I think it mistaken; a previous case suggested the method, chocolates were decided on (for a very good reason indeed, as I'll show later) as the vehicle, and Mason's as being the most important firm of chocolate manufacturers. It then became necessary to procure a piece of their notepaper, and I'm in a position to show how this was done.
'The fifth condition I would qualify. I don't agree that the criminal must have possession of or access to a Hamilton No. 4 typewriter, but I do agree that such possession must have existed. In other words, I would put that condition in the past tense. Remember that we have to deal with a very astute criminal, and a very carefully planned crime. I thought it most unlikely that such an incriminating piece of evidence as the actual typewriter would be allowed to lie about for anyone to discover. Much more probably that a machine had been bought specially for the occasion. It was clear from the letter that it wasn't a new machine which had been used. With the courage of my deduction, therefore, I spent a whole afternoon making inquiries at secondhand typewriter - shops till I ran down the place where it had been bought, and proved the buying. The shopman was able to identify my murderer from a photograph I had with me.'
'And where's the machine now?' asked Mrs. Fielder - Flemming eagerly.
'I expect at the bottom of the Thames. That's my point. This criminal of mine leaves nothing to chance at all.
'With the sixth condition, about being near the post - office during the critical hour, of course I agree. My murderer has a mild alibi, but it doesn't hold water. As to the next two, the fountain - pen and the ink, I haven't been able to check them at all, and while I agree that their possession would be rather pleasing confirmation I don't attach great importance to them; Onyx pens are so universal, and so is Harfield's ink, that there isn't much argument there either way. Besides, it would be just like my criminal not to own either of them but to have borrowed the pen unobtrusively. Lastly, I agree about the creative mind, and the neatness with the fingers, and of course with the prisoner's peculiar mentality, but not with the necessity for methodical habits.'
'Oh, come,' said Mr. Bradley, pained. 'That was rather a sound deduction, I thought. And it stands to reason, too.'
'Not to my reason,' Roger retorted. Mr. Bradley shrugged his shoulders. 'It's the notepaper I'm interested in,' said Sir Charles. 'In my opinion that's the point on which the case against any one must hang. How do you prove possession of the notepaper, Sheringham?'
'The notepaper,' said Roger, 'was extracted about three weeks ago from one of Webster's books of sample notepaper - headings. The erasure would be some private mark of Webster's, the price, for instance: 'This style, 5s. gd.' There are three books at Webster's, containing exactly the same samples. Two of them include a piece of Mason's paper; from the third it's missing. I can prove contact of my suspect with the book about three weeks ago.'
'You can, can you?' Sir Charles was impressed. 'That sounds pretty conclusive. What put you on the idea of the sample books?'
'The yellowed edges of the letter,' Roger said, not a little pleased with himself. ' I didn't see how a bit of paper that had been kept in a pile could get its edges quite so discoloured as all that, so concluded that it must have been an isolated piece. Then it struck me that walking about London, one does see isolated pieces of notepaper stuck on a board in the windows of printing - firms. But this piece showed no drawing - pin holes or any other signs of having been fixed to a board. Besides, it would be difficult to remove it from a board. What was the next best thing? Obviously, a sample - book, such as one usually finds inside the same shops. So to the printers of Mason's notepaper I went, and there, so to speak, my piece wasn't.'
'Yes,' muttered Sir Charles, 'certainly that sounds pretty conclusive.' He sighed. One gathered that he was gazing wistfully in his mind's eye at the diminishing figure of Lady Pennefather, and the beautiful case he had built up around her. Then he brightened. This time one had gathered that he had switched his vision to the figure, equally diminishing, of Sir Charles Wildman, and the beautiful case that had been built up around him too.
'So now,' said Roger, feeling he could really put it off no longer, 'we come to the fundamental mistake to which I referred just now, the trap the murderer laid for us and into which we all so neatly fell.'
Everybody sat up. Roger surveyed them benignly. 'You got very near seeing it, Bradley, last night, with your casual suggestion that Sir Eustace himself might not have been the intended victim after all. That's right enough. But I go further than that.'
'I fell in the trap, though, did I?' said Mr. Bradley, pained. 'Well, what is this trap? What's the fundamental mistake we all side - slipped into? ' 'Why,' Roger brought out in triumph, 'that the plan had miscarried - that the wrong person had been killed!'
He got his reward. 'What!' said every one at once. 'Good heavens, you don't mean . . .? '
'Exactly,' Roger crowed. 'That was just the beauty of it. The plan had not miscarried. It had been brilliantly successful. The wrong person had not been killed. Very much the right person was.'
'What's all this?' positively gaped Sir Charles. 'How on earth do you make that out? '
'Mrs. Bendix was the objective all the time,' Roger went on more soberly. 'That's why the plot was so ingenious. Every single thing was anticipated. It was foreseen that, if Bendix could be brought naturally into Sir Eustace's presence when the parcel was being opened, the latter would hand the chocolates over to him. It was foreseen that the police would look for the criminal among Sir Eustace's associates, and not the dead woman's. It was probably even foreseen, Bradley, that the crime would be considered the work of a woman, whereas really, of course, chocolates were employed because it was a woman who was the objective.'
''Well, well well!' said Mr. Bradley.
'Then it's your theory,' pursued Sir Charles, 'that the murderer was an associate of the dead woman's, and had nothing to do with Sir Eustace at all?' He spoke as if not altogether averse from such a theory.
