“In other words,” said Mr. Bradley, not without severity, “I did not decide that Lady A or Sir Somebody B had such a good motive for the crime that she or he must undoubtedly have done it, and then twist my evidence to fit this convenient theory.”
“Hear, hear!” Roger felt constrained to approve.
“Hear, hear!” echoed in turn both Alicia Dammers and Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick.
Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming glanced at each other and then hastily away again, for all the world like two children in a Sunday-school who have been caught doing quite the wrong thing together.
“Dear me,” murmured Mr. Bradley, “this is all very exhausting. May I have five minutes’ rest, Mr. President, and half a cigarette?”
The President kindly gave Mr. Bradley an interval in which to restore himself.
XI
“I have always thought,” resumed Mr. Bradley, restored, “I have always thought that murders may be divided into two classes, closed or open. By a closed murder I mean one committed in a certain closed circle of persons, such as a house-party, in which it is known that the murderer is limited to membership of that actual group. This is by far the commoner form in fiction. An open murder I call one in which the criminal is not limited to any particular group but might be almost anyone in the whole world. This, of course, is almost invariably what happens in real life.
“The case with which we’re dealing has this peculiarity, that one can’t place it quite definitely in either category. The police say that it’s an open murder; both our previous speakers here seem to regard it as a closed one.
“It’s a question of the motive. If one agrees with the police that it is the work of some fanatic or criminal lunatic, then it certainly is an open murder; anybody without an alibi in London that night might have posted the parcel. If one’s of the opinion that the motive was a personal one, connected with Sir Eustace himself, then the murderer is confined to the closed circle of people who have had relations of one sort or another with Sir Eustace.
“And talking of posting that parcel, I must just make a diversion to tell you something really interesting. For all I know to the contrary, I might have seen the murderer with my own eyes, in the very act of posting it! As it happened, I was passing through Southampton Street that evening at just about a quarter to nine. Little did I guess, as Mr. Edgar Wallace would say, that the first act of this tragic drama was possibly being unfolded at that very minute under my unsuspecting nose. Not even a premonition of disaster caused me to falter in my stride. Providence was evidently being somewhat close with premonitions that night. But if only my sluggish instincts had warned me, how much trouble I might have saved us all. Alas,” said Mr. Bradley sadly, “such is life.
“However, that’s neither here nor there. We were discussing closed and open murders.
“I was determined to form no definite opinions either way, so to be on the safe side I treated this as an open murder. I then had the position that everyone in the whole wide world was under suspicion. To narrow down the field a little, I set to work to build up the one individual who really did it, out of the very meagre indications he or she had given us.
“I had the conclusions drawn already from the choice of nitrobenzene, which I’ve explained to you. But as a corollary to the good education, I added the very significant postscript: but not public-school or university. Don’t you agree, Sir Charles? It simply wouldn’t be done.”
“Public-school men have been known to commit murders before now,” pointed out Sir Charles, somewhat at sea.
“Oh, granted. But not in such an underhand way as this. The public-school code does stand for something, surely, even in murder. So, I am sure, any public-school man would tell me. This isn’t a gentlemanly murder at all. A public-school man, if he could ever bring himself to anything so unconventional as murder, would use an axe or a revolver or something which would bring him and his victim face to face. He would never murder a man behind his back, so to speak. I’m quite sure of that.
“Then another obvious conclusion is that he’s exceptionally neat with his fingers. To unwrap those chocolates, drain them, refill them, plug up the holes with melted chocolate, and wrap them up in their silver paper again to look as if they’ve never been tampered with—I can tell you, that’s no easy job. And all in gloves too, remember.
“I thought at first that the beautiful way it was done pointed strongly to a woman. However, I carried out an experiment and got a dozen or so of my friends to try their hands at it, men and women, and out of the whole lot I was the only one (I say it without any particular pride) who made a really good job of it. So it wasn’t necessarily a woman. But manual dexterity’s a good point to establish.
“Then there was the matter of the exact six-minim dose in each chocolate. That’s very illuminating, I think. It argues a methodical turn of mind amounting to a real passion for symmetry. There are such people. They can’t bear that the pictures on a wall don’t balance each other exactly. I know, because I’m rather that way myself. Symmetry is synonymous with order, to my mind. I can quite see how the murderer came to fill the chocolates in that way. I should probably have done so myself.
