“Lastly, Mr. Sheringham made the point that the letter and wrapper were not destroyed, because the murderer thought they would not only not harm him but definitely help him. With that too I agree. But I do not draw the same deduction from it that Mr. Sheringham did. I should have said that this entirely confirms my theory that the murder is the work of a second-rate mind, because a first-rate mind would never consent to the survival of any clue which could be easily destroyed, however helpful it might be expected to prove, because he would know how often such clues, deliberately left to mislead, have actually led to the criminal’s undoing. And I would draw the subsidiary deduction that the wrapper and letter were not expected to be just generally helpful, but that there was some definite piece of misleading information contained in them. I think I know what that piece of information was.
“That is all the reference I have to make to Mr. Sheringham’s case.”
Roger lifted his bowed head, and Miss Dammers sipped again at her water.
“With regard to this matter of the respect Mr. Bendix had for his wife,” Mr. Chitterwick hazarded, “isn’t there something of an anomaly there, Miss Dammers? Because I understood you to say at the very beginning that the deduction you had drawn from that bet was that Mrs. Bendix was not quite so worthy of respect as we had all imagined. Didn’t that deduction stand the test, then?”
“It did, Mr. Chitterwick, and there is no anomaly.”
“Where a man doesn’t suspect, he will respect,” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming swiftly, before her Alicia could think of it.
“Ah, the horrid sepulchre under the nice white paint,” remarked Mr. Bradley, who didn’t approve of that sort of thing, even from distinguished dramatists. “Now we’re getting down to it. Is there a sepulchre, Miss Dammers?”
“There is,” Miss Dammers agreed, without emotion. “And now, as you say, Mr. Bradley, we’re getting down to it.”
“Oh!” Mr. Chitterwick positively bounced on his chair. “If the letter and wrapper could have been destroyed by the murderer … and Bendix wasn’t the murderer … and I suppose the porter needn’t be considered … Oh, I see!”
“I wondered when somebody would,” said Miss Dammers.
XVI
“From the very beginning of this case,” Miss Dammers proceeded, imperturbable as ever, “I was of the opinion that the greatest clue the criminal had left us was one of which he would have been totally unconscious: the unmistakable indications of his own character. Taking the facts as I found them, and not assuming others as Mr. Sheringham did to justify his own reading of the murderer’s exceptional mentality—” She looked challengingly towards Roger.
“Did I assume any facts that I couldn’t substantiate?” Roger felt himself compelled to answer her look.
“Certainly you did. You assumed for instance that the typewriter on which the letter was written is now at the bottom of the Thames. The plain fact that it is not, once more bears out my own interpretation. Taking the established facts as I found them, then, I was able without difficulty to form the mental picture of the murderer that I have already sketched out for you. But I was careful not to look for somebody who would resemble my picture and then build up a case against him. I simply hung the picture up in my mind, so to speak, in order to compare with it any individual towards whom suspicion might seem to point.
“Now, after I had cleared up Mr. Bendix’s reason for arriving at his club that morning at such an unusual hour, there remained so far as I could see only one obscure point, apparently of no importance, to which nobody’s attention seemed to have been directed. I mean, the engagement Sir Eustace had had that day for lunch, which must subsequently have been cancelled. I don’t know how Mr. Bradley discovered this, but I am quite ready to say how I did. It was from that same useful valet who gave Mrs. Fielder-Flemming so much interesting information.
“I must admit in this connection that I have advantages over the other members of this Circle so far as investigations regarding Sir Eustace were concerned, for not only did I know Sir Eustace himself so well but I knew his valet too; and you may imagine that if Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was able to extract so much from him with the aid of money alone, I myself, backed not only by money but by the advantage of a previous acquaintance, was in a position to obtain still more. In any case, it was not long before the man casually mentioned that four days before the crime Sir Eustace had told him to ring up Fellows’s Hotel in Jermyn Street and reserve a private room for lunchtime on the day on which the murder subsequently took place.
“That was the obscure point, which I thought it worth while to clear up if I could. With whom was Sir Eustace going to lunch that day? Obviously a woman, but which of his many women? The valet could give me no information. So far as he knew, Sir Eustace actually had not got any women at the moment, so intent was he upon the pursuit of Miss Wildman (you must excuse me, Sir Charles), her hand and her fortune. Was it Miss Wildman herself then? I was very soon able to establish that it wasn’t.
“Does it strike you that there is a reminiscent ring about this cancelled lunch-appointment on the day of the crime? It didn’t occur to me for a long time, but of course there is. Mrs. Bendix had a lunch-engagement for that day too, which was cancelled for some reason unknown on the previous afternoon.”
“Mrs. Bendix!” breathed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. Here was a juicy triangle.
Miss Dammers smiled faintly. “Yes, I won’t keep you on the tenterhooks, Mabel. From what Sir Charles told us I knew that Mrs. Bendix and
