“That put a different complexion on the whole case. It was evidently essential to get hold of that supply immediately. If the murderer had drawn a private stock from the pot, we couldn’t help that. If he had just used enough to poison his darts, then we could stop further supplies by confiscating the pot. So I packed you and Wendover off to secure it.”
“Wendover being to watch me, I suppose?” Ardsley put in with a grim smile.
“I won’t deny it. You’d have done the same in my place,” Sir Clinton pointed out.
“Why didn’t you come yourself?” Wendover inquired.
“Because I’d something else on hand that had to be done in a hurry. I must confess frankly that I’d nothing definite to go on. It was mere intuition, if you like; or you can call it a case of taking precautions against eventualities which one doesn’t expect to occur. It was rather like the business of Ariadne’s clue—a long shot which might come off. And I thought it had more chance of bearing fruit. These poisoned darts were clues of a sort. They were also weapons. So if the murderer got a chance of grabbing them, I thought he might be tempted. But I wasn’t going to let him have the real things, not likely. I gave him a substitute, quite similar in appearance, but really quite harmless. Then if he tried any more of his games, the chances were that he’d use the darts I gave him; and do no great harm with them. Even if he had one or two deadly darts left, he’d be sure to mix the lot together, and that reduced the risk of poison in a dart chosen at random from the mixture of deadly and harmless ones.
“So, when we were passing through the village, I got you to drop me, Wendover; and I bought some darts, drilled them like the deadly ones, faked them to match with Condy’s fluid, put some litmus in so as to make my lot easily recognisable by a simple test, and then I was ready. Incidentally, I think I got the reputation of being quite mad. I needed a tin to keep the deadly darts in—I wasn’t going to have them loose in my pocket—and I had to leave the real tin for the murderer to pick up if he wanted. So I sent out for some Navy Cut, used the tins for the lethal darts, and staggered the sergeant down there by presenting him with the tobacco. He’s still puzzling over it, I guess.
“You know what happened next. I left the sham darts on the mantelpiece of the museum purposely; and the murderer lifted them. Now as Ardsley didn’t touch them—he went out of the room in front of me and they were still lying there—and as Wendover wasn’t the murderer, that left only you, Stenness, and Miss Hawkhurst, young Hawkhurst and Ernest Shandon, as possible thieves. If the tin vanished, then I had got down to pretty narrow limits.”
“I see you’d ruled me out by that time,” Ardsley said.
“Oh, practically,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Of course my convictions were quite fluid still. I was quite prepared to reconsider things at any time. The next point was to go over the alibis as well as I could. Wendover gave me a hand with that. Once one got into that matter, it was clear enough that the only possible suspects were yourself, Stenness, young Hawkhurst, you, Ardsley—because I knew nothing about your doings that day—and finally, somebody with a bicycle. But once you bring in the bicycle, Ernest Shandon’s alibi falls to bits. I’ll show you how.
“This is my reconstruction of the murders in the Maze: I don’t say it’s correct in every detail—only the main outlines are really important. Ernest Shandon went off with Miss Hawkhurst in the car. I suspect that he knew his brothers were going to the Maze that afternoon. He’d already taken his bicycle along and concealed it in a little plantation near the East Gate; and he’d hidden the airgun there as well.
“He got off the car at the East Gate, walked along the road quickly, and got through the hedge into the plantation. He took out his bicycle and the airgun and pedalled as hard as he could go for the Maze. His one risk was meeting someone on the road. If he’d done that, he’d have had to postpone his affair until another day. He met no one—it’s a road hardly anyone walks on, I believe. He got to the Maze, went in to his loophole commanding Helen’s Bower. There he saw someone whom he took to be Neville Shandon. I suspect that he had the Hackleton case at the back of his mind during the planning; and he meant to make it appear that Neville had been killed on that account. You know yourselves what a troublesome false trail it turned out to be at the start.
“My belief is that he was sweating like a pig owing to his sprint up to the Maze—you must remember that his whole alibi depended on the time factor and he hadn’t a moment to waste. Very likely his nose was greasy and he had trouble with his glasses. You remember they were always going askew or falling off? However it happened, he didn’t recognise Roger from behind, and he shot him first of all. He shot him in the neck; and I am led to suppose that Roger didn’t cry out, because the heavy dose of curare paralysed his vocal muscles almost immediately.
“Then, as Roger fell, Ernest recognised that he’d blundered. He’d killed the wrong man; and the Hackleton business wouldn’t
