“Well they might be,” muttered Mr. Clemens. I thought he was about to go on, but Lestrade stepped forward and took charge again.
“You were in this chair, then,” he said. “And the young gentleman was to your left? Would you sit there, sir? And Mr. Twain, would you please go to where you sat last night.”
I sat down next to Martha, followed by Mr. Clemens, who took a seat two places to my left and put his corncob pipe (still unlit) on the table in front of him. While I had not paid close attention to the exact seating arrangements the night before, I was sure the three of us were now in the same places.
“Very good,” said Lestrade. “Now, we’ll write the names of the rest of the party on slips of paper, and Coleman will match them to their seats.”
This process took only a short time. Martha wrote out the names—I was somehow pleased to note that her handwriting was legible as well as graceful—and handed them to Sergeant Coleman to place around the table. It was only a matter of minutes before there were slips of paper in front of the remaining chairs.
“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Lestrade. “But are you certain where the doctor sat? His body had already been moved when I got here.”
“He was second or third to my left, I think,” said Martha, though she didn’t sound entirely certain.
“That sounds right,” said Mr. Clemens. “He was pretty much straight across from me.”
“Let’s see, then,” said Lestrade, moving to the side of the table they’d suggested. He looked down and said, “This is about right. There’s a bloodstain on the carpet between these two chairs, so he must have been in one of them.”
“It depends on which direction he was shot from,” Sergeant Coleman pointed out. “If we could determine exactly where he was, that would give us a better idea which of the others shot him.”
“Good thinking, Sergeant, but you’ve missed the main point,” said Lestrade, with a smug expression. Coleman bowed his head, looking chastened.
“I reckon you’re going to tell us what that is,” said Mr. Clemens. “Of are you going to keep it up your sleeve to spring on the suspect when you get to court?”
“Oh, I don’t mind telling you at all,” said Lestrade. He pointed toward the door. “Whichever of these chairs the doctor sat in, he was directly facing that spy hole over there, and the door to the outer room. Any decent marksman could have potted him from that distance.”
“What, in pitch darkness?” said Mr. Clemens, turning to look over his shoulder at where Lestrade had pointed. “If Annie Oakley’s in town, maybe she could have hit him from there, but I’d bet against anybody else pulling off that shot.”
“Yes, and the bullet would have had to pass directly between two other people at the table,” I said, looking in the same direction. “Your marksman would have had to be completely confident of his aim—or not care at all whether he hit the wrong person. I frankly don’t believe it.”
Lestrade scoffed at our objections. “It doesn’t matter whether you believe it. If the fellow had been standing, he’d have a clean line of sight over the heads of the people on this side of the table,” he said, pointing to the spy hole again.
“That’s assuming he knew where his target was going to sit,” said Mr. Clemens, pointing to the far side of the table where the doctor had sat. “Nobody told any of us what place to take, so there’s no way he could have known it in advance. Hell, we can’t even figure it out right now, and we saw the whole thing less than twenty-four hours ago.”
“That’s where Mr. McPhee took a hand in the proceedings,” said Lestrade, walking around to our side of the table. “He saw everyone seated before he turned out the lights and left the room, so he could point out exactly where the victim was. And if the shooter had time earlier that day to inspect the room, he’d have had a very good idea where to aim to hit a person in any given seat.”
“Surely you can’t believe that!” said Martha McPhee. “Edward and I were together the entire day.”
“Perhaps it was the day before, then,” Lestrade said. “Or the day before that. Can you swear you were with your husband every minute of every day since you rented the flat? I thought not,” he said as Martha silently shook her head. There was fear in her eyes, now.
Lestrade turned to Coleman. The chief inspector was all but crowing, now. “I think this erases any doubt that McPhee was an accomplice to the murderer. He let the killer in, he helped him spot his victim, and he aided his getaway. We’ll keep after McPhee until he fingers the man who pulled the trigger.”
“Yes, Chief Inspector,” said Coleman, who had been hanging on to his superior’s words. “But I wonder—how come none of the others heard the report, or saw the flash of the muzzle?”
Lestrade waved away the question. “They’ve all said there was enough racket to drown out a shot. McPhee most likely made some extra noises to cover up the sound of the weapon—he had the noisemakers right at hand. As for the flash, it’s probably just our bad luck that nobody was looking directly that way—half of them had their backs to it, in any case. The others likely had their eyes closed or their heads turned the wrong direction—probably toward Mrs. McPhee. And that reminds me.” He turned and pointed a finger toward Martha.
“I haven’t enough evidence to arrest you, Mrs. McPhee—not enough yet, that is,” he said. “But I promise you will be watched very closely. Any attempt to leave the city will force me to place you under detention.”
“On what grounds, sir?” Martha held her chin straight up. There
