“Clever, you must admit. Clever as hell! And successful, as those who have followed the case must know. He got the effect he wanted—that of a man who had tried to mislead. The police know that ‘struggle’ scene for a fake. But I hope I have shown that it was a double fake. If you think I have imbued my criminal with more ingenuity than any murderer would possess, remember that I, too, am a man, and therefore a potential murderer. Remember also something of which I have given more tangible proof—the fingerprint game he played on Deacon. Remember that it was through him that the police first learnt of the money Hoode had drawn from his bank, and the fact that at 10:45 on the night of the murder Deacon had asked him the time! Remember that this business of the clock and the ‘struggle’ is like that of the silk cord—nothing without what I have described in the earlier parts of this report, but with it a great deal.
“And now for that alibi.
“That the murderer was in the study after the clock there—which, by the way, was correct by the other clocks in the house, had struck eleven, is proved by the fact of the striking of that clock being one hour behind.
“Miss Hoode entered the study and found the body at about ten minutes past eleven.
“The murderer, then, left the study at some time between two minutes past the hour at the earliest and ten minutes past.
“So soon as I was certain that the murderer was Digby-Coates, I saw that before my case against him was complete I must disprove his alibi; also I realised that this could best be done by ascertaining much more definitely at what time he left the study to climb back up the wall and into his room. That eight minutes between eleven-two and eleven-ten was too wide a margin to work in.
“The more I pondered this task the more removed from possibility seemed its completion. Then, by the grace of God, there emerged, in circumstances which need not be set down here, a new witness whose evidence put me in possession of exactly the information I needed.
“This witness is Robert Belford, a manservant, and therefore a permanent member of the Hoode household. He is a highly-strung little man, and refrained at first from telling what he knew through very natural fear of being himself suspected of the murder of his master.
“Before Belford’s emergence I had come to the conclusion—though I could not see then how this was going to help—that the acceptance of the old butler—Poole—as a perfect trustworthy witness had been a mistake. I discovered, you see, that he suffers from that inconvenient disorder hay-fever.
“When in the throes of a seizure he can neither see, hear nor speak; is conscious, in fact, of nothing save discomfort. That these seizures last sometimes for as long as a minute and a half I can swear to from having watched the old man struggle with one.
“Immediately after my discovery of the existence in him of this ailment, I questioned Poole; with the result that at last he remembered having suffered a paroxysm on the night of the murder at some time during that part of the evening before the murder when his master was in the study and the rest of the house was quiet. He had not remembered the incident until I asked him. His memory, as he says, is not what it was, and in any case the event was not sufficiently out of the ordinary to have stayed in his head after all the emotions of that crowded night.
“But it was during, or rather at the beginning, of that minute and a half or two minutes during which the old man could do nothing but cough and sneeze and choke and gasp with his head between his knees, that Belford—the new witness—had entered the study—by the door!
“When he got into the room he saw immediately the body of his master. In one horrified second (I have said that he is an intensely nervous, highly-strung little man) he took it all in; corpse, disorder, and all the other details of that brilliant and messy crime. And there was, he swears, no one else in the room. The only place in which a man could have hidden would have been the alcove at the far end of the room, but the curtains which, as a rule, cut that off from view, were on that night drawn aside.
“Belford, after that one great second of horror, fled. As he closed the door behind him, he noticed that Poole, in his little room across the hall, was still wrestling with his paroxysm. Belford retreated. He was terrified that this dreadful crime he had seen might be laid at his door were he seen coming from the room. It was, to say the least, unusual that he should enter the study when his master was working there. Nobody, he felt, would believe him if he told them that he had gone there to ask a favour of the dead man. He crept up the dark hall and crouched on the stairs.
“His position was directly under the clock which hangs there; and here you have the reason for what has possibly seemed meticulousness on my part in describing this minor incident. He became aware, without thinking, of what that clock said. He stared up at it blankly. But, as often happens, this mechanical action impresses itself on his memory. He swears—nothing will shake his evidence—that the time was five minutes past eleven.
“There you have it. Digby-Coates, as I
