“As a matter of fact this discovery of mine had a more disconcerting side still. On thinking over the case the idea had struck me that in the two matters of the notepaper and the method itself of the crime it was quite possible that the police, and everyone else, had been putting the cart before the horse. It had been taken for granted apparently that the murderer had first of all decided on the method, and then set about getting hold of the notepaper to carry it out.
“But isn’t it far more feasible that the notepaper should have been already there, in the criminal’s ownership, and that it was the chance possession of it which actually suggested the method of the crime? In that case, of course, the likelihood of the notepaper being traced to the murderer would be very small indeed, whereas in the other case there is always that possibility. Had that occurred to you for instance, Mr. President?”
“I must admit that it hadn’t,” Roger confessed. “And yet, like Holmes’s tricks, the possibility’s evident enough now it’s brought forward. I must say, it strikes me as being a very sound point, Bradley.”
“Psychologically, of course,” agreed Miss Dammers, “it’s perfect.”
“Thank you,” murmured Mr. Bradley. “Then you’ll be able to understand just how disconcerting that discovery of mine was. Because if there was anything in that point at all, anybody who had in his or her possession some old notepaper of Mason’s, with slightly discoloured edges, immediately became suspect.”
“Hr‑r‑r‑r‑mph!” Sir Charles cleared his throat forcibly by way of comment. The implication was obvious. Gentlemen don’t suspect their own sisters.
“Dear, dear,” clucked Mr. Chitterwick, more humanly.
Mr. Bradley went on to pile up the agony. “And there was another thing, which I could not overlook. My sister before she went in for her training as a secretary, had played with the idea of becoming a hospital nurse. She went through a short course in nursing as a young girl, and was always thoroughly interested in it. She would read not only books on nursing itself, but medical books too. Several times,” said Mr. Bradley solemnly, “I’ve seen her studying my own copy of Taylor, apparently quite absorbed in it.”
He paused again, but this time nobody commented. The general feeling was that this was getting really too much of a good thing.
“Well, I went home and thought it over. Of course it seemed absurd to put my own sister on the list of suspects, and at the very head of it too. One doesn’t connect one’s own circle with the idea of murder. The two things don’t mix at all. Yet I couldn’t fail to realise that if it had been anybody else in question but my sister I should be feeling quite jubilant over the prospect of solving the case. But as things were, what was I to do?
“In the end,” said Mr. Bradley smugly, “I did what I thought my duty and faced the situation. I went back to my sister’s house the next day and asked her squarely whether she had ever had any kind of relations with Sir Eustace Pennefather, and if so what. She looked at me blankly and said that up till the time of the murder she had never heard of the man. I believed her. I asked her if she could remember what she had been doing on the evening before the murder. She looked at me still more blankly and said that she had been in Manchester with her husband at that time, they had stayed at the Peacock Hotel, and in the evening had been to a cinema where they had seen a film called, so far as she could recall, Fires of Fate. Again I believed her.
“As a matter of routine precaution however I checked her statements later and found them perfectly correct; for the time of the posting of the parcel she had an unshakable alibi. I felt more relieved than I can say.” Mr. Bradley spoke in a low voice, with pathos and restraint, but Roger caught his eye as he looked up and there was a mocking glint in it which made the President feel vaguely uneasy. The trouble with Mr. Bradley was that one never quite knew with him.
“Having drawn a blank with my first ticket, then, I tabulated the conclusions I’d formed to date and set about considering the other points in the case.
“It then struck me that the Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard had been somewhat reticent about the evidence that night he addressed us. So I rang him up and asked him a few questions that had occurred to me. From him I learnt that the typewriter was a Hamilton No. 4, that is, the ordinary Hamilton model; that the hand-printed address on the cover was written with a fountain-pen, almost certainly an Onyx fitted with a medium-broad nib; that the ink was Harfield’s Fountain-Pen Ink; and that there was nothing to be learned from the wrapping-paper (ordinary brown) or the string. That there were no fingerprints anywhere we had been told.
“Well, I suppose I ought not to admit it, considering how I earn my living, but upon my soul I haven’t the faintest idea how a professional detective goes about a job of work,” said Mr. Bradley with candour. “It’s easy enough in a book, of course, because there are a certain number of things which the author wants found out and these he lets his detective discover, and no others. In real life, no doubt, it doesn’t pan out quite like that.
“Anyhow, what I did was to copy my own detectives’ methods and set about the business in as systematic a way as I could. That is to say, I made a careful list of all the available evidence, both as to fact and to character (and it was surprising how much
