“This is asking a lot of you, but, after all, you know me well enough to be reasonably certain that I am less of a fool than most. So, if you agree with my conclusions as set out in the report, please arrange this. Whether you agree or not, ring me up, before seven tonight, at my pub in Marling (Greyne 29). If I am not there leave a message: ‘All right’ or ‘Nothing doing,’ as the case may be. Whichever your answer is, I will ring you up when I have received it.
“My main reason—or one of my main reasons—for doing all this work was to do Hastings’s little paper, The Owl, a good turn. The report is really for them, though I don’t know when and to what extent you will allow them to publish it. But I rely on you to see that The Owl gets as much journalistic fat as it can digest. No other paper must hear a whisper until you’ve allowed Hastings to make a scoop out of the ‘Dramatic New Developments.’
Coming to the end of this letter, Mr. Egbert Lucas had whistled beneath his breath, instructed his secretary that on no account was he to be disturbed, and had settled down—he has the most comfortable chair in the Yard—to read the typewritten report.
Unfolding it, he murmured: “Unexpected chap, Gethryn. This ought to be interesting.”
He read:—
“The Murder Of John Hoode
“Upon the morning of the 20th of August, 192‒, I drove to the village of Marling in Surrey. By 9:30 a.m. I had gained admission to the house Abbotshall.
“Owing to circumstances which need not be set down here, and also, in a great measure, to the courtesy and assistance of Superintendent Boyd of Scotland Yard, I was able from the beginning to pursue unhampered my own investigations. The result of these I give below.
“(For reasons which must, I think, be obvious, I have divided this report into four parts. Also, I would point out that, for reasons equally evident, the steps in my deduction, reasoning—call it what you will—are not necessarily given here in their chronological order.)
I
“Immediately upon my arrival at Abbotshall, I spoke at some length with Superintendent Boyd, who gave me the history of the affair as obtained by him through close questioning of the inmates. It appeared then that with the exception of the butler, these one and all had alibis, complete in some cases and in others as nearly so as could be expected of persons who had not known beforehand that they were like to be accused of murder. (Later, of course, it was revealed—see reports of the inquest—that Mr. Archibald Deacon’s alibi did not exist in fact.)
“Superintendent Boyd and I at once agreed that to suspect the alibiless Poole (the butler) was folly. He had been, obviously and by common report, devoted to his master. Moreover, he is physically incapable—even were he out of his mind—of dealing such blows as caused the death of the murdered man.
“After our conversation, Superintendent Boyd and I together made an examination of the study, the room in which the murder was done. Together we came to the following conclusions,1 all of which were explained by the superintendent in his evidence at the inquest. Since, therefore, these points are by this common knowledge, I will not go into the processes by which they were arrived at, but will merely enumerate them as follows:—
“(i) That when Hoode was struck, either by the first or all the blows, he was seated at his table.
“(ii) That the appearance of the room had been carefully arranged to convey the impression that a struggle had taken place.
“(iii) That the murderer was well known to Hoode, and was, in all probability, an inmate of the house.
“(iv) That the murderer had worn gloves for most of the time during which he was in the study, there being no fingerprints anywhere except on the wood-rasp.
“(v) That the blows which killed Hoode must have had tremendous strength behind them.
“(vi) That, in all probability, the murderer entered by the window. (I fully endorsed, at that stage of the inquiry, the opinion of the Police that Poole’s evidence was reliable.)
“It will be seen that the cumulative implication of these six points tends to strengthen considerably the case against Deacon, which even without them is by no means weak circumstantially. It is now, therefore, that the keynote of my report must come.
“I met and spoke with Deacon for the first time on the afternoon of the day I arrived at Abbotshall. It needed but three minutes with him to convince me that here was a man who had not been, was not, and never could be a murderer. I cannot defend this statement with logic. It was simply conviction. Like this: In a party of, say, twelve persons there will be eleven about none of whom I could say definitely: ‘That
