“That may not be the case,” Inspector Baynes said. “Mr. Lester has informed me that the cook, maids, and serving staff were dismissed after dinner. They all live in the village and were gone long before Mr. Cubitt was murdered. The security men room together in a cottage behind the house and they say that neither of them left the cottage last night. The drivers who brought you from Heathrow are rooming above the garage and they alibi one another. They also say that none of their cars left the house last night and no one saw a car leave after the last of the staff drove off.”
“Are you looking for the drawing?” Altamont asked the inspector.
“I’ve got my men searching the house. If we find the Paget we may find the murderer.”
“The drawing may not be in the house,” Ronald said. “If no one drove away after the murder then the Paget must be close at hand, which means it is either in the house …”
“Or somewhere on the moor where your phantom stashed it,” Baynes said.
Ronald’s brow furrowed. “I’ve just had a very troubling thought,” he said. “If the staff, the drivers, and the security men are accounted for, the killer has to be one of us.”
Baynes nodded. “My thought exactly. Do any of you have alibis?”
The men looked at one another. Then all of them shook their heads.
“Something just occurred to me, Inspector,” Robert Altamont said.
“Yes, Mr. Altamont,” Baynes said.
“Peter, Bill, Ronald, and I may not have alibis but none of us could have committed the murder.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Hilton was shot to death.”
Baynes nodded.
“Then we couldn’t have killed him. When we arrived, Hilton’s security men searched us and our luggage. None of us had a gun on him or in his bags.”
“An interesting point,” Baynes conceded.
He turned to the butler. “Mr. Lester, are guns kept in the manor house?”
“Yes, sir. I have a pistol and so do the members of the security team. Then there are hunting rifles.”
Baynes sighed. “All right, I’ll have one of the boys from the lab go with you. I want every gun accounted for and tested. And I guess I’d better send a search party onto the moor. Will someone please describe the drawing?”
Phillip Lester had set out tea and snacks in the dining room and Inspector Baynes and Ronald bumped into each other there.
“Have you found anything?” Ronald asked. The inspector shook his head.
“We’ve searched all over Cubitt Hall and the moor and we haven’t found the Paget or the murder weapon. And none of the guns Mr. Lester turned over could have fired the shot that killed Mr. Cubitt. Unfortunately, there are a number of bogs and sinkholes on the moor into which the murder weapon and the drawing could have been dropped. If the murderer disposed of them there we have no chance of recovering them.”
“The killer may have disposed of his weapon on the moor,” Ronald said, “but he’d never leave the Paget there.”
“What makes you say that?” Baynes asked.
“Sequestering the Paget on the moor would risk exposure to the elements and damage to the drawing.
“You might if discovery of the drawing could lead to your incarceration for life for murder.”
“You’re not a collector, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“Then it will be impossible for you to understand the reverence we collectors have for objects we desire. Trust me, Inspector, that drawing is not on the moor. It is somewhere in this house, unless …”
Ronald’s brow furrowed. Then his eyes widened and he whispered, “Oh, my God!”
“What are you thinking?” Baynes asked.
Ronald turned to the inspector. “Have you recovered the bullet that killed Hilton?”
“Yes.”
“Is it a soft-nosed revolver bullet that mushroomed on impact?” Ronald asked.
Baynes’s mouth gaped open. “How did you know that?”
“Elementary, my dear Baynes,” Ronald answered with a wide smile.
“Huh?”
“Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I need one more piece of information and I’ll be able to tell you who killed Hilton Cubitt and the location of the Paget.”
Altamont and Escott protested at having to spend another day at Cubitt Hall but Inspector Baynes insisted. He had phoned an urgent request to police contacts in the States. Baynes received the information he needed just after dinner and gave it to Ronald Adair. Half an hour later, Baynes had Escott, Lester, Burns, and Altamont rounded up and brought to the library where they took their places, once again.
“I wish I could take credit for cracking this case,” Baynes said, “but the honor belongs to Mr. Adair. So I’m going to let him tell you what he figured out.”
The others cast suspicious glances at Ronald as he stood and took his place next to the inspector.
“It was the bullet that killed Mr. Cubitt that led me to the solution to this puzzling mystery. Hilton was killed with a revolver bullet. I asked the inspector if it was soft nosed and had mushroomed on impact. He confirmed this fact.”
Ronald noticed that Altamont’s brow furrowed first and Escott’s a moment later.
“Does that description sound familiar, gentlemen?” Ronald asked his fellow Baker Street Irregulars.
“ ‘The Adventure of the Empty House,’ ” Escott blurted out.
“Exactly, Bill. In that story, Colonel Sebastian Moran tries to assassinate Sherlock Holmes with an air gun. The weapon was constructed for Professor Moriarty, Holmes’s archenemy, by Von Herder, a blind German mechanic. In the story, Doyle writes that ‘the revolver bullet had mushroomed out as soft-nosed bullets will.’ ”
“You’re saying Cubitt was killed with an air gun?” Altamont asked incredulously.
“Something like it,” Ronald answered.
“But you were all searched,” Lester said. “How was the gun brought into the house?”
“No one searched you,” Escott said.
Ronald laughed. “No, no, Bill. The butler didn’t do it. The weapon used to kill Hilton Cubitt was concealed in Peter Burns’s cane.”
Burns looked astonished. “I don’t know whether to laugh or get angry, Ronald.” He held out his cane. “Feel free to inspect this as much as you wish. I assure you it’s quite solid.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that. What I do doubt is that the cane you are using is the same one you carried on the evening we arrived at Cubitt Hall. I am exactly five foot eleven and you are taller, but when we met outside the front door I looked directly into your eyes because you had to bend down to lean on your cane.”
Burns looked puzzled. “Where is this going?”
“Inspector Baynes is six feet tall, Peter. When we were first questioned in the library I noticed that you were eye-to-eye with the inspector, but it didn’t dawn on me that this might be important until I realized that Hilton Cubitt was murdered with a variant of an air gun. That’s when I realized that there had to be two canes and the one with the concealed gun was shorter. I’m guessing that the real cane was concealed in the lining of your duffel bag.”
Burns looked completely befuddled. “I don’t know what to say. If the gun was in a phony cane I brought here, where is it now?”
“Buried in a bog in the moor along with the Paget,” Ronald answered.
“My God, Ronald, are you insane? I would never destroy that drawing.”
“You would if it was a fake. Bill, Robert, and I have more than enough money to have bought the Paget if it was real. We would have no reason to steal it. And if we did, we would know that our luggage would be searched when we left so we couldn’t get it out of the house. And we would never leave it outside on the moor where it would be prey to some of the world’s most foul weather.
“But none of us would have any compunction about destroying a fake Paget. And that is what you sold to Hilton. He depended on you to verify its authenticity before paying millions to your accomplice, Chester Doran.
