“I suppose, later on, you’d better take Peter Hay’s fingerprints. It’s only a precaution, for I don’t think we’ll need them; but we may as well have them on record. There’s nothing more for us to do here at present so far as I can see.”
He led the way out of the cottage. The constable locked the door, pocketed the key, produced a bicycle from behind the house, and cycled off in haste down the avenue.
Sir Clinton led his companions round to the back of the cottage; but an inspection of the dead man’s menagerie yielded nothing which interested any of them, so far as the matter in hand was concerned.
“Let’s sit down on the seat here,” the chief constable suggested, as they returned to the front garden. “We’ll have to wait for these people from the hotel; and it won’t do any harm to put together the facts we’ve got, before we pick up anything further.”
“You’re sure it isn’t a mare’s nest then?” Armadale inquired cautiously.
“I’m surprised that Dr. Rafford didn’t go a bit further with his ideas,” Sir Clinton returned indifferently. “In any case, there’s the matter of that Foxhills’ silver to be cleared up now.”
IV
What Happened in the Night
Sir Clinton took out his cigarette-case and handed it to his companions in turn.
“Let’s have the unofficial view first,” he suggested. “What do you make of it all, squire, in the light of the classics?”
Wendover shook his head deprecatingly.
“It’s hardly fair to start with the amateur, Clinton. According to the classical method, the police always begin; and then, when they’ve failed ingloriously, the amateur steps in and clears the matter up satisfactorily. You’re inverting the order of Nature. However, I don’t mind telling you what I think are the indisputable points in the affair.”
“The very things we want, squire,” declared Sir Clinton gratefully. “Indisputable points will be no end of use to us if the case gets into court. Proceed.”
“Well, to begin with, I think these marks on his wrists and round about his ankles show that he was tied up last night. The wrist-marks are deeper than the marks on the shins; and that’s more or less what one would expect. The ligatures would rest on the bare flesh in the case of the wrists; but at the ankles the cloth of his trousers and his socks would interpose and make the pressure less direct.”
Inspector Armadale nodded approvingly, as though his opinion of Wendover had risen a little.
“Suppose that’s correct, then,” Wendover continued, “it gives the notion of someone attacking Peter Hay and tying him up. But then Peter Hay wasn’t a normal person. He suffered from high blood-pressure, the doctor told us; and he’d had one or two slight strokes. In other words, he was liable to congestion of the brain if he overexerted himself. Suppose he struggled hard, then he might quite well bring on an attack; and then his assailant would have a corpse on his hands without meaning to kill him at all.”
Armadale nodded once more, as though agreeing to this series of inferences.
“If the assailant had left the body tied up, then the show would have been given away,” Wendover proceeded, “so he untied the bonds, carried the corpse—outside, and arranged it to look as if death had been caused by a heart attack.”
He paused, and Sir Clinton put a question.
“Is that absolutely all, squire? What about the silver in the drawer, for instance.”
Wendover made a vague gesture.
“I see nothing to connect the silver with this affair. The assailant may have been after it, of course, and got so frightened by the turn things took that he simply cleared out without waiting for anything. If I’d gone to a place merely to rob a man, I don’t think I’d wait to rob him if I saw a chance of being had up on a murder charge. I’d clear out while I was sure I was safe from discovery.”
“Nothing further, then? In that case, inspector, it’s your turn to contribute to the pool.”
Armadale had intended to confine himself strictly to the evidence and to put forward no theories; but the chance of improving on the amateur’s results proved too much of a temptation, as Sir Clinton had anticipated.
“There’s not much doubt that he was tied up,” the inspector began. “The marks all point that way. But there was one thing that Mr. Wendover didn’t account for in them. The marks on the legs were on the front only—there wasn’t a mark on the back of the legs.”
He halted for a moment and glanced at Wendover with subdued triumph.
“So you infer?” Sir Clinton inquired.
“I think he was tied up to something so that his legs were resting against it at the back and the bands were round the legs and the thing too. If it was that way, then the back of the legs wouldn’t have any marks of the band on them.”
“Then what was he tied up to?” asked Wendover.
“One of the chairs inside the cottage,” the inspector went on. “If he’d been sitting in the chair, with each leg tied to a leg of the chair, you’d get just what we saw on the skin.”
Sir Clinton acquiesced with a nod.
“Anything more?” he asked.
“I’m not quite through,” Armadale continued. “Assume he was tied up as I’ve explained. If it had been a one-man job, there would have been some signs of a struggle—marks on his wrists or something of that sort. Peter Hay seems to have been a fairly muscular person, quite strong enough to put up some sort of show if he got a chance; certainly he’d have given one man enough trouble to leave some marks on his own skin.”
“More than one man, then?” Sir Clinton suggested.
“Two, at least. Suppose one of them held him in talk while the other took him by surprise, and you get over the
