The net result of it all is that there are strong grounds for suspicion against him, but no real proof that one could put confidently before a jury.
Possibly he might be bluffed. I’ll try it.
Written some time after the explosion at Markfield’s house
One might put it down as a drawn game. We failed to hang Markfield, for the explosion killed him on the spot. Luckily, the effects were extraordinarily localised, and Flamborough and I got off alive, though badly damaged temporarily.
Markfield, one has to admit, was too clever for us at the last. From what a chemist has since told me, tetranitromethane detonates with extraordinary violence in presence of triethylamine, though it is perfectly safe to handle under normal conditions. Markfield had about half a pound or more of tetranitromethane in his conical flask; in his dropping funnel he had alcohol, or some other harmless liquid, colourless like triethylamine; and in his stoppered bottle he had triethylamine itself. While he talked to us, he ran the alcohol into the tetranitromethane—a perfectly harmless operation. Then, when he saw the game was up, he ran the funnel empty and refilled it from the bottle. As we saw it, this was simply a preparation for continuing the experiment which we had already found to be harmless; but in practice it meant that he had only to turn his tap and mix the two liquids in order to get his explosion. He staged it so well that neither Flamborough nor I spotted what he was after.
The house was a perfect wreck, they tell me: doors and windows blown out, ceilings down, walls cracked. The room we were in was completely gutted by the explosion; and Markfield was torn in pieces. I didn’t see it, of course. The next thing I remember was waking up in a nursing home. Possibly it was cheap at the price of getting rid of Markfield. He was a good specimen of the callous murderer. The only soft spot in him seems to have been his passion for Yvonne Silverdale.
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The Case with Nine Solutions
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