Sir Charles turned on this new antagonist like a wounded bull. “But the odds were enormous against it!” he roared. “If it was a coincidence, it was the most incredible one in the whole course of my experience.”
“Ah, Sir Charles, but you’re prejudiced,” Mr. Bradley told him gently. “And you exaggerate dreadfully, you know. You seem to be putting the odds at somewhere round about a million to one. I should put them at six to one. Permutations and combinations, you know.”
“Damn your permutations, sir!” riposted Sir Charles with vigour. “And your combinations too.”
Mr. Bradley turned to Roger. “Mr. Chairman, is it within the rules of this club for one member to insult another member’s underwear? Besides, Sir Charles,” he added to that fuming knight, “I don’t wear the things. Never have done, since I was an infant.”
For the dignity of the chair Roger could not join in the delighted titters that were escaping round the table; in the interests of the Circle’s preservation he had to pour oil on these very seething waters.
“Bradley, you’re losing sight of the point, aren’t you? I don’t want to destroy your theory necessarily, Sir Charles, or detract in any way from the really brilliant manner in which you’ve defended it; but if it’s to stand its ground it must be able to resist any arguments we can bring against it. That’s all. And I honestly do think that you’re inclined to attach a little too much importance to the answers to those three questions. What do you say, Miss Dammers?”
“I agree,” Miss Dammers said crisply. “The way Sir Charles emphasised their importance reminded me at the time of a favourite trick of detective-story writers. He said, if I remember rightly, that if those questions were answered in the affirmative he knew that his suspect was guilty just as much as if he’d seen her with his own eyes putting the poison into the chocolates, because the odds against a coincidental affirmative to all three of them were incalculable. In other words he simply made a strong assertion, unsupported by evidence or argument.”
“And that is what detective-story writers do, Miss Dammers?” queried Mr. Bradley, with a tolerant smile.
“Invariably, Mr. Bradley. I’ve often noticed it in your own books. You state a thing so emphatically that the reader does not think of questioning the assertion. ‘Here,’ says the detective, ‘is a bottle of red liquid and here is a bottle of blue. If these two liquids turn out to be ink, then we know that they were purchased to fill up the empty inkpots in the library as surely as if we had read the dead man’s very thoughts.’ Whereas the red ink might have been bought by one of the maids to dye a jumper, and the blue by the secretary for his fountain-pen; or a hundred other such explanations. But any possibilities of that kind are silently ignored. Isn’t that so?”
“Perfectly,” agreed Bradley, unperturbed. “Don’t waste time on unessentials. Just tell the reader very loudly what he’s to think, and he’ll think it all right. You’ve got the technique perfectly. Why don’t you try your hand at it? It’s quite a paying game, you know.”
“I may one day. And anyhow I will say for you, Mr. Bradley, that your detectives do detect. They don’t just stand about and wait for somebody else to tell them who committed the murder, as the so-called detectives do in most of the so-called detective-stories I read.”
“Thank you,” said Mr. Bradley. “Then you actually read detective-stories, Miss Dammers?”
“Certainly,” said Miss Dammers, crisply. “Why not?” She dismissed Mr. Bradley as abruptly as she had answered his challenge. “And the letter itself, Sir Charles? The typewriting. You don’t attach any importance to that?”
“As a detail, of course it would have to be considered; I was only sketching out the broad lines of the case.” Sir Charles was no longer bull-like. “I take it that the police would ferret out pieces of conclusive evidence of that nature.”
“I think they might have some difficulty in connecting Pauline Pennefather with the machine that typed that letter,” observed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, not without tartness.
The tide of feeling had obviously set in against Sir Charles.
“But the motive,” he pleaded, now pathetically on the defensive. “You must admit that the motive is overwhelming.”
“You don’t know Pauline, Sir Charles—Lady Pennefather?” Miss Dammers suggested.
“I do not.”
“Evidently,” commented Miss Dammers.
“You don’t agree with Sir Charles’s theory, Miss Dammers?” ventured Mr. Chitterwick.
“I do not,” said Miss Dammers with emphasis.
“Might one enquire your reason?” ventured Mr. Chitterwick further.
“Certainly you may. It’s a conclusive one, I’m afraid, Sir Charles. I was in Paris at the time of the murder, and just about the very hour when the parcel was being posted I was talking to Pauline Pennefather in the foyer of the Opera.”
“What!” exclaimed the discomfited Sir Charles, the remnants of his beautiful theory crashing about his ears.
“I should apologise for not having given you this information before, I suppose,” said Miss Dammers with the utmost calmness, “but I wanted to see what sort of a case you could put up against her. And I really do congratulate you. It was a remarkable piece of inductive reasoning. If I hadn’t happened to know that it was built up on a complete fallacy you would have quite convinced me.”
“But—but why the secrecy, and—and the impersonation by the maid, if her visit was an innocent one?” stammered Sir Charles, his mind revolving wildly round
