'So I asked myself, `Here,' I said, `let's take that as a workin' hypothesis; is there anything to support it?' It'd prove, for instance, that Joseph was very far from being the idiot he pretended, and assumin' the colors of a dangerous character, if we could prove it.
'Look at his story again. He said that Darworth was nervous about being attacked by somebody in that circle. We had it from everybody's testimony that Darworth wasn't nervous at all about goin' out to keep a vigil in that house; that whatever it was he feared didn't seem to come from here; but let that pass.... What I. knew, as I told you, was Darworth's plan: the confederate who was to stage a fake attack on him. Therefore, if the confederate were a member of that circle in the front room, was it likely that he'd deliberately have asked Joseph to keep on the watch? God love us, gents, Joseph might 'a' seen the confederate, raised a row, and the beans upset again! On whichever side you looked at Joseph's story, it was equally dubious. But it was precisely the story he might have told, to protect himself, if he had been that confederate; if he had murdered Darworth instead of assisting him; and he
had shot morphine into himself after the murder to provide an alibi.
'Keep starin' at that rather sinister-lookin' person now, and examine the second reason why we didn't suspect him -the statement that he was only Darworth's Front, to take the blame in case of mishaps. Again, who suggested that to us? Only McDonnell, who'd been investigatin', and Joseph who admitted it. And we accepted it - my hat, how meekly we accepted it! We believed Joseph simply walked about in a daze, while Darworth did all the work and the lad knew nothin'.
'But then I remembered the stone flower-box.'
The smoke of our pipes and cigars mingled in a haze with the steam of the punch-bowl. Beyond the glow of the desk-lamp, H.M.'s face was sardonic in gloom. A late taxi honked on the Embankment, sharp in the silence of the morning. Halliday leaned forward.
'That's what I want to know about!' Halliday said. 'That flower-box that dropped out of the ceiling or somewhere, and damn near smashed my head. Masters talked very easily and grandly about what a stale trick it was. Right-ho. But the stale trick nearly finished me, and if it was that swine Joseph - or Glenda Darworth - if she did
it—“
'Sure she did, son,' said H.M., with a heavy gesture. 'Ladle me out some more of Father Flaherty's medicine, will you? Umph. Ha. Thanks.... Now, cast your mind back to that time. You and Ken and Masters were standin' over dose to the side of the staircase, weren't you? In fact, you had your back to it. Right. And up came the Major here, and Ted Latimer, and Joseph a little way behind them. So? Tell me: what was the floor made of?'
'The floor? Stone. Stone or brick; stone, I think.'
'Uh-huh. But I mean the part you were standin' on then, at the back of the hall where the old flooring hadn't been taken up? Heavy boards, hey? Pretty loose; made the staircase rattle?'
'Yes,' I said. 'I remember how they squeaked when Masters took a step.'
'And the landing of the staircase was just over young Halliday's head, hey? And there was a handrail? Quite, quite. It's the old Anne Robinson trick. Haven't you ever noticed, in an old hall with a shaky stair, how if you accidentally tread on the right board connected with the staircase, the stair will shake, and the handrail of a landing will tremble? Now if a heavy weight had been balanced across that handrail so that a hair-line shake would turn its equilibrium-?”
After a silence he went on:
'Ted and the Major, son, were ahead of you; they'd gone on. Joseph was following a few paces behind. And he didn't tread on the right board by accident....
'The more you sort of scrutinize old Joseph, the less he begins to look like an unfortunate marionette dancin' on wires without knowing what goes on. Look at him!
There he is, very skinny and not tall for a young man; in fact, you'd consider him small. There are the fine wrinkles in his neck, his hair cropped short and colored red, his freckles and his snub nose and rather too broad mouth; there's his thin dead voice like a boy's; and above all - I want you to remember this - his loud check suits, always distinguishable at a distance. Very much like a kid, weighing maybe ninety pounds....
'And then there was a curious thing which Masters noticed just before the stone flower-box dropped; any of the rest o' you see it? He was makin' funny motions with his hands, as though he were brushin' and touching his face, and he stopped when they turned a light on him....”
'So I thought, 'Look here, is it possible that this is any sort of disguise?' You see, he'd just been out in the rain without a hat. And I wondered if he might be afraid....'
'Well?'
'Well, say - that his freckles might wash off,' replied H.M. 'That was only the basis of an idea, still hazy. But I was sittin' and thinkin', and I remembered that tree in the yard. You know the tree? Masters said that a very agile person could easily have got from the top of the wall to the tree, and from the tree to the little house. And McDonnell pointed out how rotten the tree was, and showed a broken branch where it'd been tested.... So it might have broken, under a person of normal weight. I say it might, son, because Masters accepted that statement too. But there was only one person in the whole house light enough to have climbed that tree without breaking it: the innocent `boy', Joseph.
'Now, would Joseph have had the skill and agility to do that; or to shoot straight enough through that window to inflict exactly those wounds? What becomes of this stupid, drug-ridden child now? All I suspect, for the moment, is that he's not what he pretends to be; and pretty definitely there's a disguise of some sort. I ask myself, `Look here,' I say, `while that popcorn is rattlin' around in the tin, look at something else. What's this feller's motive, if he did kill Darworth? He's working with Darworth to befoozle old Lady Benning and her crowd - why does he depart from the plan and shoot Darworth, which seems rather a fat-headed thing to do? 'Twasn't an accident; those last two bullets were intended to make mutton of the whiskery crook. Why kill the source of his income? The only one who inherits any of Darworth's money is his wife....'
'Wife! You'd be surprised what a revelation started to show glimmers in the old man's mind.. Let's see, what was Darworth's purpose in staging this show? He might have told a confederate it was to proclaim the truth of occultism to the world; to make his name reverberate... but it wasn't. Oh, no. 'By God,' says I to myself, `he was after the Latimer girl. He was goin' to propose marriage to her. But he's got a wife in Nice - a sharp, hard-headed wench who's frozen him into marriage at just the right time; who knows a deal too much about the past hanky- panky. How is she goin' to take all this? '
H.M.'s pipe described a curious motion in the air, as though he were sleepily tracing out somebody's features.
'Provocative-lookin' gal, by her pictures. Thin, very. Age thirty-odd; time for little wrinkles, but not many. Not tall, but 'ud look tall on high heels. You fellers married? Ever notice how small your wives looked the first time you saw 'em without them heels? Um. Funny, too, how a mass o' black hair changes the expression of a face, or what cosmetics do to it. First I thought, 'Burn me, I'd advise that gal to be awful damn careful. Because why? Because our smilin' Darworth has already disposed of one wife, by poison or throat-cuttin' or whatnot, and if he's got his heart clean set on orange blossoms again - well, if I were the wife, I'd look under beds now and then, and stay away from side-streets after dark.'' H.M. gave a long sniff. Then his eyes fixed on us. “Unless,” I said to myself, 'I simply beat him to it!''
He pointed his pipe at us.
'Did somebody tell you how Glenda Watson started her career at the age of fifteen? In a travelin' circus and side-show; ah, you heard it, did you? I'd be very much surprised to hear that negotiating a wall and a tree, or the use of a middle-caliber firearm, would cause her a great deal of difficulty.... A versatile gel, and what a woman! She's got talents, and she's got It, or they wouldn't have fallen for her when Darworth's money wangled her a lead in the actin' company at Nice. She had to destroy the sex-appeal during the months she played Joseph; but she didn't play him long at a time.... Pity to keep her hair cut short and dyed; but she had a very luxuriant black wig to replace her real hair when she went out to take the air. Remember the mysterious woman who was seen goin' in and out of Magnolia Cottage? You see, there was one conquest she had to complete as Glenda Darworth, and
that—“
'This is all very well!' exploded Major Featherton, 'but it doesn't get us farther. Dammit, there's one difficulty, I repeat, you can't get over. She had an alibi; she was directly under the eye of a reliable man all the time she might have been out killing Darworth in the stone house. . . . You can't get around that solid fact. What's more, we
