Tanner continued his surmises. Assuming he was correct so far, Austin would inevitably be faced with a very terrible temptation. If his father should die without altering his will, it would mean £150,000 to himself. £150,000! Quite a respectable sum of money! There would then be no question of love in a cottage with Miss Drew. He could give her all those things which men delight to give women. And the irritation of the constant unpleasantness with Sir William would be gone. The more Tanner considered the matter, the more powerful he felt this temptation would have been. Many a stronger man than Austin seemed to be had succumbed to less.
Then coming down to details. The murderer had unquestionably known his way about Luce Manor. He had either gone to the library by the side door, and there committed the crime, carrying the body down to the boathouse, or, more probably, he had devised some scheme to make Sir William go there of his own accord. He had also taken the particular oars belonging to the boat used. All the knowledge necessary for this Austin of course possessed.
But more suspicious than that, Austin by his own showing had actually taken a boat down the river on that night, and the hours of leaving and returning were such that he would just have had time to reach the Luce Manor boathouse, commit the murder, and return the boat to the club. Of course, he had claimed to have an alibi for this period, but alibis could be faked, and the very readiness and apparent completeness of this seemed to Tanner slightly indicative of prearrangement.
There was then the question of the oars. This also had a suspicious look. At first Tanner had accepted without question the boatman’s theory that the boat and oars had become separated in the upper channel and had passed down to the falls through different arches of the road bridge. Indeed, his own inspection of the place had led him to the same conclusion. And this losing of the oars had seemed to explain adequately enough how the accident happened.
But when it was shown that the affair was not an accident at all, the matter of the oars took on a very different complexion. Evidently it was part of the plant—deliberately arranged to create the very impression it had produced. And Tanner now saw that the murderer had overreached himself. Sir William might easily have lost one oar, but he would not have let both go. And it was very unlikely, even if he had dropped both, that they would have separated far enough from the boat to have taken the other archway. Here again one might have done so, but not both. No, Tanner was driven to the conclusion that the boat must have been sent adrift close to the Luce Manor bank of the river, while the oars were taken over to the opposite side in another boat, and there thrown overboard. And Austin had had such a boat down the river that night.
Lastly, and most suggestive of all was Austin’s start and look of fear, when the Coroner had announced the adjournment of the inquest. It was true he had accounted for his apprehension. An investigation might bring up the question of the alibi in which, as he was unable to prove its truth, no credence might be placed, leaving him in an awkward position. But was this a satisfactory explanation? Were these consequences not too remote to be seen with such immediate clearness as to cause an actual start? Did it not involve too instantaneous a perception of the facts? The Inspector thought so.
But he saw as he still smoked and pondered, that it was equally possible that his whole conclusions were erroneous. Austin unquestionably might be, as he pictured himself, the innocent victim of the real murderer’s plant.
His thoughts turned to Cosgrove Ponson. Here was another man who had an interest in Sir William’s death. And from what Mr. Arbuthnot had said, his interest might be quite as strong, or even stronger, than Austin’s. When a man about town who had been living a rather fast life got into financial difficulties, he was not usually very squeamish as to how he extricated himself. £75,000 to a man perhaps faced with ruin would be worth taking a risk for. And if Cosgrove had become hardened enough to commit the crime, he would probably not have jibbed at making the plant to throw the suspicion on Austin. Tanner concluded that if Austin’s alibi held, his next work must be the investigation of Cosgrove’s life as well as his movements on the night of the murder.
His whole cogitations therefore simply brought him back to the point from which he had started. Before he did anything else, every point of Austin’s alibi must be gone into with the most meticulous care.
Accordingly, having refilled his pipe, he set himself to go over in detail the story Austin Ponson had told him of his movements on the night of the murder. He wished not only to be clear in his own mind as to the sequence of events, but to make a list of the points upon which he could reasonably hope to obtain confirmatory evidence.
Austin, according to his own statement, left the pavilion of the Halford boat club at about . He rowed to the Old Ferry, sat there for about ten minutes, until the maid arrived with the note, then walked to the Abbey and
