“What if the doctor was tricked into taking a prearranged seat?” asked Lestrade. “Then the assassin could simply fire at a known position. Trick shooters can hit a target blindfold.”
“Sure, I’ve seen Annie Oakley do that,” said Mr. Clemens. “But she knows exactly where those targets are before she puts the blindfold on. We sat down pretty much at random that night—I even offered to trade chairs with Martha, to see if she might have had anything special rigged to her seat, and she was willing to let me sit anywhere I wanted. So that idea’s got a couple of strikes against it.”
“I see where you’re going,” said Mrs. Parkhurst. “Only those of us who were in the room when the lights were still on could know for certain who occupied which seat. So the killer must have been one of us here—how dreadful!” She looked around at the others at the table with genuine worry.
“McPhee was here when the lights were on,” growled Lestrade. “He could have told somebody in the other room.”
“You’re still barking up the wrong tree,” said Mr. Clemens. “There’s still another wrinkle to the story, one I didn’t figure out until just a few minutes ago. You see, knowing where the target is is only the first step to hitting it. You still have to aim the gun and pull the trigger.”
“Now, that’s instructive,” said Lestrade, with a sneer. “I thought you were going to tell us that your clever murderer had somehow concocted a weapon that aims and fires itself.”
“That might work in Jules Verne’s books,” said Mr. Clemens. “But we don’t have to worry about that here. No, what I’m saying is that the killer had to have both hands free.”
“But that’s impossible,” said his daughter Susy. “All of us were holding hands with our neighbors on either side . . .” Then she paused, and looked around the table and said, “Oh, my!”
“Yes, I think you see it,” said Mr. Clemens.
“Well, I don’t,” said Lestrade. “Either the killer was holding hands or he wasn’t. I don’t see what you can make from that.”
“My father means that the killer had not one but two accomplices,” said Susy Clemens, looking around the room. “One person on each side who wouldn’t say anything about the circle being broken right before the doctor died. So now we have to find three people . . . but how are we going to do that?”
I saw what the problem was. The killer had to trust the people on both sides of him not to reveal him to the rest of us. I knew who had held both my hands at the séance, and certainly Mr. Clemens knew whose hands he held—and could trust both of them to notice and report any such irregularity. That meant that Martha McPhee, who held my hand, was not the shooter, nor was Sir Denis, who held Mrs. Clemens’s other hand. Presumably the dead man had not shot himself . . .
I snapped out of these thoughts as I noticed the others at the table looking around and making similar calculations of guilt, drawing from knowledge I did not possess. If my employer was correct, three of them had been in league to murder the doctor. But which three?
Cedric Villiers was the first to break the silence. “Damned brilliant of you, Clemens,” he said. He leaned forward and peered ’round the circle at the others. “Thus begins a delicious game of Whom Do You Trust? It will be amusing to watch everyone writhe in anticipation. Of course, both my neighbors will testify that I held their hands the entire time, so I won’t bother to offer that defense for myself.”
“Two of the three married couples had a third relative present,” said Lestrade. Now his face had an alert look, as my employer’s hypothesis sank in. “Mrs. Parkhurst had her sister along.” He stared significantly at the widow and Mrs. Donning. Then he turned toward my employer. “Not to forget that you, Mr. Twain, were here not only with your wife and daughter, but with your secretary. In fact, the five foreigners at the table were all sitting together.” I could almost see his mind beginning to calculate his next move.
“Both of which make me and my family and my secretary look like prime suspects,” said Mr. Clemens.
“Yes, if you remember that the victim didn’t shoot himself,” said Lestrade. “And he sat with his wife to one side.”
“Don’t be so certain he didn’t shoot himself,” said Villiers, his smirk back in place. “How do you know Cornelia wouldn’t agree to let go Dr. Parkhurst’s hand if she’d known he was going to shoot himself?”
“Or perhaps she connived with you to shoot him, Villiers,” said Tony Parkhurst, a nasty look on his face. “Unless I’m badly mistaken about you and her, she had every reason to think she could trust you—”
“Anthony!” said his mother, beginning to sob. “Cruel to the last! You know I loved your father.”
“I know you’d say so to anybody who didn’t know better,” said her son. “I drew a different conclusion.”
“You apologize to your mother,” drawled Mr. Clemens. “It just so happens you’re wrong, and I can prove it.”
“I may apologize if you can prove it,” said Tony Parkhurst. “Perhaps Cedric the Great is the killer, over there. Perhaps he was in league with dear doting Hannah and our little medium, you know—she’s his protégée, after all, and perhaps her silly old husband hasn’t heard about Cedric’s long line of conquests among the spiritualistically inclined ladies.”
“That’s a better theory,” said Mr. Clemens, stepping away from the table and leaning forward on the back of his seat. “Still wrong, but I guess I can excuse it because you don’t know Martha McPhee. She’d have talked way before now. Accomplices can
