“It’s only fair to Inspector Armadale to tell you that he suspected Marden immediately. What I’m going to give you is merely the case as it presented itself to me.”
Armadale looked slightly flustered by this tribute to his perspicacity. He glanced suspiciously at the Chief Constable, but Sir Clinton’s face betrayed no ironical intention.
“He may be pulling my leg again,” the Inspector reflected, “but at least it’s decent of him to go out of his way to say that. It’s true enough, but not exactly in the way that they’ll understand it.”
“Marden had a very complete story to tell us. He’d come to the door of the museum with a parcel which Foss had sent him to post. He’d found the address was incomplete and came back to get Foss to finish it. He stayed outside the door and he heard a quarrel between Maurice and Foss, ending in a struggle. When he burst into the room, Maurice was disappearing at the other end and Foss was dead on the floor. Then Marden slipped on the parquet, fell against a showcase, cut his hand, and tied it up in his handkerchief. Then he gave the alarm.
“The parcel with the incomplete address was the first thing that interested me. We opened it and we found in it a cheap wristwatch in perfect condition, apparently. The Inspector tried it for fingerprints. There weren’t any of any sort, either on the watch or the box in which it was enclosed. That seemed a bit rum to us both.
“The only thing that seemed to fit the case was this. Suppose Marden wanted to keep an eye on Foss. This parcel would give him an excuse of bursting in on his employer at any moment. Assume that Marden himself had made up the parcel and that Foss had nothing to do with it. It was wrapped up in paper on which the address was written. You know how one writes on a parcel—not the least like one’s normal handwriting if the paper is crumpled a bit in the wrapping-up. That would make a bit of rough forgery of Foss’s writing fairly easy. Further, if by any chance the parcel fell into the hands of the police—as actually happened—there was nothing inside to show that Foss hadn’t wrapped it up himself. Nobody else’s fingermarks were on it at all. It had been wrapped up with gloved hands. And the contents were innocent enough: only a watch being sent to a watchmaker to be regulated, perhaps. If it had been a letter, then to carry the thing through properly they’d have had to forge Foss’s writing all the way through, in order to make it look genuine if it happened to be opened.
“But if that theory were adopted, a lot followed from it. First and foremost, it meant that Marden was the boss and his nominal employer was an underling in the gang, who would have to back up any story that Marden liked to tell. Secondly, it pointed to the fact that Marden didn’t trust Foss much. He wanted an excuse to get at Foss at any moment—which is hardly in the power of a simple valet. When he thought Foss needed watching, all he had to do was to trot up with his little parcel, just to let Foss see that he was under observation. Thirdly, this dodge was worked at a crucial stage in the game—when the replicas were being exchanged for the Leonardo medallions. Doesn’t that suggest that Marden didn’t trust Foss very much? It looks as if Marden was none too sure that he’d get a square deal from Foss once the real medallions had changed hands. Am I right in my guesses, Inspector?”
“They didn’t trust Foss to play straight, sir. Brackley was quite open about that.”
“And it was Brackley’s idea? The parcel, I mean. It looks as if it came from his mint.”
“He said so, sir. Foss knew nothing about it, of course. It was a surprise for him. They knew he’d have to pretend he knew all about it when Marden brought it to him.”
“That finishes the parcel,” Sir Clinton continued. “But it had suggested one or two things, as you see. The most important thing, from my point of view, was that this gang was not exactly a band of brothers. Two of them suspected the third. Possibly the split was even more extensive.
“The next thing was the valet’s story. According to him, Maurice stabbed Foss, after a quarrel which Marden couldn’t overhear clearly. Unfortunately for that tale, the blow that killed Foss was a powerful one. What Marden didn’t know was that Maurice had sprained his wrist that morning. I doubt if a sprained wrist could have achieved that stab. There was no proof, of course; but it seemed just a little doubtful. Then Marden said that from the door he couldn’t catch the words of the quarrel, although the voices were angry in tone. I tried the experiment myself later; and it’s perfectly easy to overhear what’s said in the museum from the position Marden said he was in. So that was a deliberate lie. On that basis, one could eliminate most of Marden’s tale as being under suspicion.
“What really happened in the museum? Maurice is gone, Foss is dead, Marden won’t tell. One has just to reconstruct the thing as plausibly as one can. My impression—it’s only conjecture—is this. Marden was listening at the door and he could see some parts of the room, since the door was ajar. Foss had succeeded in substituting one replica for a real medallion. To get Maurice’s eye off him, he asked to see the Muramasa sword. Maurice went to get it, leaving Foss at his rubbing—visible to Maurice all the time. Foss made the exchange of the second replica at that moment. Maurice came back with the Muramasa
