“Amplifying my notion (according to his statement), I had gone on to consider how it could best be carried out. The obvious thing, I had decided, was to select some figure of whom the world would be well rid, not necessarily a politician (I was at some pains to avoid the obvious, apparently), and simply murder him at a distance. To play the game, one should leave a clue or two, more or less obscure. Apparently I left rather more than I intended.
“My friend concluded by saying that I went away from him that evening expressing the firmest intention of carrying out my first murder at the earliest opportunity. Not only would the practice make such an admirable hobby, I told him, but the experience would be invaluable to a writer of detective-stories such as myself.
“That, I think,” said Mr. Bradley with dignity, “establishes my motive only too certainly.”
“Murder for experiment,” remarked Roger. “A new category. Most interesting.”
“Murder for jaded pleasure-seekers,” Mr. Bradley corrected him. “There is a precedent, you know. Loeb and Leopold. Well, there you have it. Have I proved my case, Mr. President?”
“Completely, so far as I can see. I can’t detect a flaw in your argument.”
“I’ve been at some pains to make it a good deal more watertight than I ever bother to do in my books. You could argue a very nasty case against me in court on those lines, couldn’t you, Sir Charles?”
“Well, I should want to go into it a little more closely, but at first sight, Bradley, I admit that so far as circumstantial evidence is worth (and in my opinion, as you know, it is worth everything), I can’t see room for very much doubt that you sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace.”
“And if I said here and now that in sober truth I did send them?” persisted Mr. Bradley.
“I couldn’t disbelieve you.”
“And yet I didn’t. But given time, I’m quite prepared to prove to you just as convincingly that the person who really sent them was the Archbishop of Canterbury, or Sybil Thorndike, or Mrs. Robinson-Smythe of The Laurels, Acacia Road, Upper Tooting, or the President of the United States, or anybody else in this world you like to name.
“So much for proof. I built that whole case up against myself out of the one coincidence of my sister having a few sheets of Mason’s notepaper. I told you nothing but the truth. But I didn’t tell you the whole truth. Artistic proof is, like artistic anything else, simply a matter of selection. If you know what to put in and what to leave out you can prove anything you like, quite conclusively. I do it in every book I write, and no reviewer has ever hauled me over the coals for slipshod argument yet. But then,” said Mr. Bradley modestly, “I don’t suppose any reviewer has ever read one of my books.”
“Well, it was a very ingenious piece of work,” Miss Dammers summed up. “And most instructive.”
“Thank you,” murmured Mr. Bradley, with gratitude.
“And what it all amounts to,” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming delivered a somewhat tart verdict, “is that you haven’t the faintest idea who is the real criminal.”
“Oh, I know that, of course,” said Mr. Bradley languidly. “But I can’t prove it. So it’s not much good telling you.”
Everybody sat up.
“You’ve found someone else, in spite of the odds, to fit those conditions of yours?” demanded Sir Charles.
“I suppose she must,” admitted Mr. Bradley, “as she did it. But unfortunately I haven’t been able to check them all.”
“She!” Mr. Chitterwick caught him up.
“Oh, yes, it was a woman. That was the most obvious thing about the whole case—and incidentally one of the things I was careful to leave out just now. Really, I wonder that’s never been mentioned before. Surely if there’s anything evident about this affair at all it is that it’s a woman’s crime. It would never occur to a man to send poisoned chocolates to another man. He’d send a poisoned sample razor-blade, or whisky, or beer like the unfortunate Dr. Wilson’s friend. Quite obviously it’s a woman’s crime.”
“I wonder,” Roger said softly.
Mr. Bradley threw him a sharp glance. “You don’t agree, Sheringham?”
“I only wondered,” said Roger. “But it’s a very defendable point.”
“Impregnable, I should have said,” drawled Mr. Bradley.
“Well,” said Miss Dammers, impatient of these minor matters, “aren’t you going to tell us who did it, Mr. Bradley?”
Mr. Bradley looked at her quizzically. “But I said that it wasn’t any good, as I can’t prove it. Besides, there’s a small matter of the lady’s honour involved.”
“Are you resuscitating the law of slander, to get you out of a difficulty?”
“Oh, dear me, no. I wouldn’t in the least mind giving her away as a murderess. It’s a much more important thing than that. She happens to have been Sir Eustace’s mistress at one time, you see, and there’s a code governing that sort of thing.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Chitterwick.
Mr. Bradley turned to him politely. “You were going to say something?”
“No, no. I was just wondering whether you’d been thinking on the same lines as I have. That’s all.”
“You mean the discarded mistress theory?”
“Well,” said Mr. Chitterwick uncomfortably, “yes.”
“Of course. You’d hit on that line of research, too?” Mr. Bradley’s tone was that of a benevolent headmaster patting a promising pupil on the head. “It’s the right one, obviously. Viewing the crime as a whole, and in the light of Sir Eustace’s character, a discarded mistress, radiating jealousy, stands out like a beacon in the middle of it. That’s one of the things I conveniently omitted too from my list of conditions—No. 13, the criminal must be a woman. And touching on artistic proof again, both Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming practised it, didn’t they? Both of them omitted to establish any connection of nitrobenzene with their respective criminals, though such a connection is vital to both their cases.”
“Then you really think jealousy is the motive?” Mr. Chitterwick suggested.
“I’m absolutely convinced of it,” Mr. Bradley assured him. “But I’ll tell
