The bed creaked as he got up, and its noise gave him one last thought. Sinking to his knees, he took the candle and held it underneath the bed. Last time it had been bare; this time, he saw with a start, it was not. He reached into the far corner to see what had been hurled back there—a dark indistinct object—and pulled it out to find his fingers bloody and a long wet knife in his hand.
Chapter 35
At that moment Exeter walked in the door. Lenox looked up at him and held out the knife, as if he were presenting him with something as innocuous as a glass of wine.
“I’ve found the weapon.”
If Lenox was expecting applause for his discovery, he was sorely mistaken in his estimation of Exeter.
The man seemed to get even larger. He didn’t speak straightaway but stepped into the room and paced back and forth on a tight line.
“This looks very black against you, Lenox,” he said, dropping his standard politeness.
Lenox sighed, realizing what was going through Exeter’s mind.
“Exeter,” he said, “I don’t want to be short with you, but you’ll vex me terribly if you don’t stop being an ass.”
“Very black indeed,” said the Inspector.
Lenox sighed again. “I’ll explain it, then. For the past ten minutes, I’ve been in the kitchen, inspecting the body with my friend McConnell. Do you really think that if I had committed a murder and successfully hidden the weapon in plain sight of several other people, I would be so daft as to come back into the
There was a cloud of doubt on the large man’s brow, but he came back. “That might have occurred to you only after you put the knife in here. Perhaps you’re getting it back now. Or perhaps you wanted to be found, finding it. Many murderers call in the body.”
“You think me that stupid, Exeter? My heavens, I was called to the stairwell from the party, and from the instant I got there was among people.” He waved a hand. “This is nonsense, and we’re wasting time. Here is the weapon used to murder Jack Soames.” He laid it gently on the desk.
“I suppose you’re right,” said Exeter finally. “Can’t be too careful, though, Mr. Lenox.”
“Quite all right. Now, shall we get to work?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“You ought to send two constables to the fourth floor. I can’t tell you why, but you may trust me. My own brother is there now.”
“Why?”
“As I said, I can’t tell you.”
“Afraid we can’t do it, then.” Exeter looked as if he got some happiness from denying the request, after having been shown up.
Inwardly, Lenox sighed. “Please, Exeter. Remember. The credit will be yours. We have to work together.” Together, indeed.
For a moment Exeter pondered this new tack. “All right,” he said. “The fourth floor?”
“Yes. I think the murderer escaped through this window. I’ll check outside for signs of him, though I doubt there will be any.”
“And what shall I do?”
“The force has the manpower I don’t, all the bobbies upstairs with Barnard. If I were you—though I’m sure you’ve thought of it already—I’d assemble the guests who are still here and ask them what they saw. Get ten or twelve men, if you can. This is now a double murder case, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Two men to the fourth floor, and ten questioning the people upstairs? Probably in the line of what I should have done, the questioning upstairs.”
“Yes. You’re acting very sensibly, Exeter. And perhaps, if you like, you should have the constables who question the guests look at their wrists and their shoes for blood or dirt. Particularly their shoes. It’s a wet night, but the guests all entered directly from their carriages. They should have clean shoes, unless they went through this window.”
Exeter, feeling a part of the plan now, said, “Very well. But you must share anything you know with us.”
“As always,” said Lenox. “Now go. Quickly, man, quickly. I’ll take this knife to McConnell. He’ll be able to examine it.”
Exeter left, and on his way out began barking at his subordinates.
Lenox walked down the hall to the wide kitchen and presented McConnell with the knife.
“See if this is the murder weapon,” he said, and smiled at the doctor’s astonished look. “I’ll return as shortly as I can.”
He went up the servants’ stairs and passed as quietly as he could to the front door, avoiding all conversation. Then he went outside, pulled his collar up, and counted down the lower windows, which opened onto the street, until he found Prue’s. He stopped about ten feet from it. Here was the area to examine.
There was a great deal of brilliant light coming through the upper windows because of the ball, and he could see the sidewalk very clearly. The last few coachmen were the only people outside, and they were huddled in the small shelter between the broughams and carriages, smoking and talking. Lenox was alone.
He began by looking at the windowsill. He had glanced over it on the inside of Prue Smith’s room and seen nothing but the old scuffs, a probable result, he thought, of Bartholomew Deck’s late visits. On the outside were the same scuffs, but he saw something he thought might be new: a very slight black scuff, of the kind a black shoe might have made when it scraped against the sill. Perhaps there had been poor traction on the slippery sidewalk, and the person bolting from the room had stepped hard with his back foot, coming outside. Every man present tonight, of course, would be wearing well-polished evening shoes. It was very little. But it lent credence to the idea that somebody had recently come through the window.
The cobblestones were wet, but unfortunately they didn’t betray anything. There was no rock dislodged, no further black scuffs, and certainly no footprints. Lenox could see that his own faint footprint disappeared the moment he lifted his shoe.
There was nothing else in the area. He walked fifty yards in either direction on the sidewalk and saw no marks or objects; then he went back and walked through again, looking very carefully, and occasionally stooping to the ground, and on this second go-through he did find a yellowish leaf of a rather odd shape. He would have ignored it if it hadn’t been very near the window. There were no trees in the area, but it could easily have been trammeled to and fro until it had made a journey of several blocks. And yet it didn’t appear hard-used or stepped on, and though it was clearly nothing, Lenox put it in his jacket pocket.
Now this was a disappointing blow. He had hoped against hope for something conclusive. Still, there was the black scuff, which looked fresh and seemed to bear out his idea of an escape through Prue Smith’s room.
But here again he was disappointed, when he thought it through. The person who had killed Soames had known Prue’s room; it was too big a coincidence to think that a stranger would have randomly picked her door out of a dozen others, including many nearer the stairs. Yes, it seemed conclusive. But there you ran against a wall. The only person absolutely certain to know Prue’s room was Claude, because he had been behind closed doors with the girl. Even Barnard might not remember precisely which one was hers. But it happened that Claude was the one person entirely free of suspicion in this instance. Edmund had been firm: Claude Barnard had never left his sight.
Lenox refused to give in, however. He went inside and checked with McConnell again; yes, it was the same knife that had killed Soames; yes, anybody of any stature could have used it; no, it had no particular provenance. Anybody might have bought it at any store that carried such things, probably one of the Army and Navy Cooperative Stores around the city. In storybooks, Lenox thought, it would have had some definite origin: a curved Indian knife with a ruby in the hilt, or something of the sort. He laughed as he walked back up the stairs. He noticed that the
