“I won’t be greedy,” I said. Then an idea struck me. “Do you think that man’s sudden belligerence might have had something to do with your asking for Mulligan? Snooping around, as Tony Parkhurst might have put it?”
“That crossed my mind,” said Mr. Clemens, with a nod. “But that Harry was giving us the evil eye before I ever mentioned Mulligan or McPhee. He was mad at us for being prosperous-looking foreigners, that’s all. He’s no more mixed up in the murder than the Throckmorton brothers.”
“Good Lord,” I said, remembering McPhee’s old Arkansas cronies. “I certainly hope he hasn’t brought them along with him.”
“Coals to Newcastle, as they say over here,” said Mr. Clemens. “Not even Ed’s fool enough to pay those bullies’ way across the ocean when he can go to any corner bar in London and find their like. There’s no shortage of illiterate apes ready to do a little rough work, anywhere in the world. If you’re not too picky, you can get a whole crew of ’em for not much more than beer money.”
“That makes sense,” I agreed. I took a sip of my drink, then said, “I wish the rest of this case made half as much sense. We’ve ended today with twice as many suspects as we began with, and we still haven’t the foggiest notion of how the doctor was killed.”
“You’re coming at it from the wrong angle, Wentworth,” said Mr. Clemens. He started to take a sip of his drink, then realized that his glass was empty, and made a face. He stood up and went over to the sideboard, where the bottle was sitting, then continued as he poured. “We started off without any idea who might want to kill the man, or what for. Now we’ve got a barge load of suspects, most of ’em with first-rate motives. If that ain’t progress, I don’t know what is.” He put another two fingers of whisky in his glass, then shot me an inquiring look.
I shook my head, declining the drink, then said, “I’d be far happier if the killer had murdered the doctor in the middle of a railway station, in front of a thousand witnesses. Or almost anyplace else where you and I didn’t have to get mixed up in it. There must be a hundred more convenient places to murder someone.”
“I doubt the doctor would have considered any of ’em convenient,” said Mr. Clemens. He took a sip of his drink, still standing by the sideboard. “But you’re right, in a way, Wentworth. Whoever did this went to a good bit of trouble. I’d say that’s one of our main clues. This murder took too much planning to pull it off. I reckon that’s why Lestrade has Ed in the clink—the killer obviously had advance knowledge of how things were supposed to go that night, and Lestrade figures Ed must have tipped him off.”
“In that case, shouldn’t he be trying to find out which of the suspects knew McPhee before the séance?”
“Hell, it looks like everybody except the victim knew him—or knew Martha, which amounts to the same thing,” said my employer. “You don’t think they got that crowd there by putting an advertisement in the newspapers, do you?”
“Tony Parkhurst doesn’t seem to have known McPhee,” I pointed out. “And I’d doubt the victim’s partner, Dr. Ashe, did, either—at least, not unless we can find some connection.”
“Well, we’ll talk to Dr. Ashe,” said Mr. Clemens. “We can fish around for that connection then. But I think it’s more important to talk to the other people in that room—they’re the ones who had the best opportunity to shoot the fellow. And they had the best chance to see or hear whoever did it. I’m especially interested in finding out what Sir Denis DeCoursey has to say.”
“Why, I would have thought he and his wife were the least likely suspects of all,” I said. I put down my empty glass on the table next to the well-padded armchair I was in. I felt tired enough to fall asleep right where I sat. “Or are you interested in him because he’s reputed to be a sharpshooter?”
He walked over to an armchair and perched on the arm, holding his drink, before answering. “Reason enough, don’t you think? Tony thought of him right away when he learned he’d been there, and Villiers suggested he might have done it, too—though I doubt he meant it seriously. But I’ve got a better reason to see him. Back in New Orleans, when we had two people killed by poison, we talked to a woman who knew all about herbs and poisons. Now we’ve had somebody shot—why don’t we talk to a firearms expert? Maybe he can tell us how to shoot a gun and keep it from going bang.”
“You keep coming back to that,” I said, yawning. “But why didn’t he offer some explanation at the time? We were all commenting on how we hadn’t heard the gunshot. You’d think he’d have said something then.”
“We’ll ask him that,” Mr. Clemens said. “Lestrade’s probably not going to ask it, so we get that job. Luckily, my name opens a few doors—even in England.”
Another thought crept up from the back of my sleepy mind. “What if Tony Parkhurst’s right, and Sir Denis is the murderer?”
He muttered something in reply, but I didn’t hear it clearly. In fact, I heard nothing at all until I realized he had his hand on my shoulder and was saying, “Wentworth? Are you awake?”
“I suppose I am,” I said, blinking at the light. “But I think it’s time for me to take my hot water upstairs and soak my bruises—and try not to fall asleep in the tub. It’s been a long day.”
“That’s the truth,” said my employer. “And unless I miss my guess, tomorrow will be even longer. Try to get some sleep, and we’ll see what we can do when the sun’s up again.”
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