After he struggled for a moment, he turned back to me and said, “There’s a padlock on it, damn the luck. Let me back down a minute.”
Back on the ground, he brushed himself off with his hands, then said, “We’ll have to go over the wall. Can you climb it by yourself after you help me get in?”
“I should be able to manage,” I said, looking at the obstacle. Nearly even with the top of my head, it would be easy enough for me to get over. Then, after a moment’s thought: “But why do both of us have to go in? I could do it more quickly and easily by myself than the two of us can—besides, you’re likely to ruin your suit, climbing over garden walls.”
“It’s too late to worry about that, I reckon,” he said, casting a rueful look at his formerly clean pants and overcoat. Despite his brushing, they already showed signs of moss stain and brick dust where his knees and belly had scraped against the wall and gate. Mrs. Clemens would not be happy. “Besides, two pairs of eyes will be better than one—if somebody comes outside and catches you, I’ll have a better chance of arguing us out of the pinch than you would alone. I guess I’m ready. Boost me up.”
With a little straining and a couple of choice epithets, he was soon straddling the top of the wall, puffing a little bit. “The coast is clear,” he said. “Follow me.” He beckoned with his arm, then dropped over the other side.
I removed my hat and coat and tossed them over the wall, then pulled myself up and quickly vaulted over. Once inside, I saw a small vegetable plot (now past its season, and grown up in weeds), and two crabapple trees still bearing a handful of late fruit. Mr. Clemens pointed. “Look,” he whispered. Following his finger, I spotted a wooden stepladder lying in the weeds along the left-hand wall.
“I don’t think that’s tall enough to reach the second story,” I said. I retrieved my coat and hat.
“It doesn’t have to reach the whole way,” he argued. “If an agile fellow could get a good grip on that ledge, he could pull himself up to it.”
“In the dark, and carrying a gun? I wouldn’t want to try it, and I’m in better condition than most,” I said, looking at the stretch. I might not be quite in the form I had kept up when playing football at Yale, but I had not slipped far from it.
“Well, maybe you’re right,” said Mr. Clemens, looking at the ledge again. “Let’s take a look below those windows, and see if there are any marks that look like they’re from a ladder. That’s what we came for, anyhow.”
Together we headed toward the building. I was conscious of the dozens of windows, in this and the neighboring buildings, from which we were clearly visible. In a sense, this gave me some encouragement; if the killer climbed a ladder from the garden, as Mr. Clemens postulated, someone might have seen him despite the darkness and gloomy weather the previous evening. On the other hand, I had a guilty awareness that anyone looking out one of these windows in the last few minutes would have seen two men clambering over a wall into a garden where they clearly did not belong. At any moment, I expected someone to challenge us, and I found myself trying to decide whether, if caught, it would be wiser to run away, or to stand my ground and let my employer try his powers of persuasion.
Mr. Clemens interrupted my train of thought. “Now, which window would have been the one he used?”
I craned my neck up at the building and pointed. “The apartment was to the right when we came up the stairs, so it’d be that one, wouldn’t it? The window closer to the center of the building.”
“Yes, that looks about right,” he said. He knelt down to inspect the turf where a ladder would have had to rest to reach that part of the building, and I bent down to look over his shoulder.
The ground, though not quite muddy, was still damp, and soft enough for me to feel it give under my feet as I had leapt down from the top of the wall. As far as I could see, the ground bore no impression at all, of a ladder or anything else. After a brief inspection, Mr. Clemens straightened up and said, “Well, if anybody used a ladder here, it wasn’t last night. I reckon that finishes that theory—not that I’m all that sorry to see it exploded.”
“Nor am I,” I said. “An assassin from outside would be ten times harder to find than someone from the group at the sitting. I am just as glad not to have to expand our field of inquiry to the entire population of London.”
“I guess that’s a blessing of sorts,” said Mr. Clemens. “It still leaves us trying to figure out how Parkhurst was shot, and who might have had reason to do it.”
“We haven’t really looked at that last question at all,” I said. “I haven’t any idea at all who his enemies were, if he had any—I suppose he must have, unless the shooting was a pure accident, or the murderer meant to kill someone else and missed his target.”
“If that’s the case, then the original target is still in danger,” said my employer. “We need to visit the other people at that séance—I reckon I can get most of them to talk. Somebody must know who had a grudge against the doctor—somebody besides the one who killed him, that is. I don’t expect the murderer to come right out and brag about killing him, the way gunfighters used to in Nevada. London society’s not quite as quick to set up a killer as a hero.”
“Good Lord, I should hope not,” I said.
