“Surprisingly enough I found this task, which I had expected to be the most difficult, the easiest of all. The man of whom I am thinking actually attended a public dinner that night at the Hotel Cecil, a reunion dinner to be exact of his old school. The Hotel Cecil, I need not remind you, is almost opposite Southampton Street. The Southampton Street post-office is the nearest one to the Hotel. What could be easier for him than to slip out of his seat for the five minutes which is all that would be required, and be back again almost before his neighbours had noticed his action?”
“What indeed?” murmured the rapt Mr. Bradley.
“I have two final points to make. You remember that in pointing out the resemblance of this case to the Molineux affair, I remarked that this similarity was more than surprising, it was significant. I will explain what I meant by that. What I meant was that the parallel was far too close for it to be just a coincidence. This case is a deliberate copy of that one. And if it is, there is only one inference. This murder is the work of a man steeped in criminal history—of a criminologist. And the man I have in mind is a criminologist.
“My last point concerns the denial in the newspaper of the rumoured engagement between Sir Eustace Pennefather and Miss Wildman. I learnt from his valet that Sir Eustace did not send that denial himself. Nor did Miss Wildman. Sir Eustace was furiously angry about it. It was sent, on his own initiative without consulting either of them, by the man whom I am accusing of having committed this crime.”
Mr. Bradley stopped hugging himself for a moment. “And the nitrobenzene? Were you able to connect him with that too?”
“That is one of the very few points on which I agree with Sir Charles. I don’t think it in the least necessary, or possible, to connect him with such a common commodity, which can be bought anywhere without the slightest difficulty or remark.”
Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was holding herself in with a visible effort. Her words, so calm and judicial to read, had hitherto been spoken too with a strenuous attempt towards calm and judicial delivery. But with each sentence the attempt was obviously becoming more difficult. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was clearly getting so excited that a few more such sentences seemed likely to choke her, though to the others such intensity of feeling seemed a little unnecessary. She was approaching her climax, of course, but even that seemed hardly an excuse for such a very purple face and a hat that had now managed somehow to ride to the very back of her head where it trembled agitatedly in sympathy with its mistress.
“That is all,” she concluded jerkily. “I submit that I have proved my case. This man is the murderer.”
There was complete silence.
“Well?” said Alicia Dammers impatiently. “Who is he, then?”
Sir Charles, who had been regarding the orator with a frown that grew more and more lowering every minute, thumped quite menacingly on the table in front of him. “Precisely,” he growled. “Let us get out in the open. Against whom are these ridiculous insinuations of yours directed, madam?” One gathered that Sir Charles did not find himself in agreement with the lady’s conclusions, even before knowing what they were.
“Accusations, Sir Charles,” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming squeaked correction. “You—you pretend you don’t know?”
“Really, madam,” retorted Sir Charles, with massive dignity, “I’m afraid I have no idea.”
And then Mrs. Fielder-Flemming became regrettably dramatic. Rising slowly to her feet like a tragedy queen (except that tragedy queens do not wear their hats tremblingly on the very backs of their heads, and if their faces are apt to go brilliant purple with emotion disguise the tint with appropriate grease paints), heedless of the chair overturning behind her with a dull, doom-like thud, her quivering finger pointing across the table, she confronted Sir Charles with every inch of her five-foot nothing.
“Thou!” shrilled Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “Thou art the man!” Her outstretched finger shook like a ribbon on an electric fan. “The brand of Cain is on your forehead! Murderer!”
In the silence of ecstatic horror that followed Mr. Bradley clung deliriously to the arm of Mr. Chitterwick.
Sir Charles succeeded in finding his voice, temporarily mislaid. “The woman’s mad,” he gasped.
Finding that she had not been shot on the spot, or even blasted by blue lightning from Sir Charles’s eyes, either of which possibilities it seemed that she had been dreading, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming proceeded rather less hysterically to amplify her charge.
“No, I am not mad, Sir Charles; I am very, very sane. You loved your daughter, and with the twofold love that a man who has lost his wife feels for the only feminine thing left to him. You considered that any lengths were justified to prevent her from falling into the hands of Sir Eustace Pennefather—from having her youth, her innocence, her trust exploited by such a scoundrel.
“Out of your own mouth I convict you. Already you’ve told us that it was not necessary to mention everything that took place at your interview with Sir Eustace. No; for then you would have had to give away the fact that you informed him you would rather kill him with your own hands than see your daughter married to him. And when matters reached such a pass, what with the poor
