Lock that door. After we're all nice and comfortable, I intend to tell you what did happen.
'I'll take the girl's word for it that she did what she said. But she never went down to that pavilion, even though she intended to. I don't say she killed Marcia Tait, I don't say she didn't. All I'll say is that she collapsed in the gallery, with too much veronal inside, and didn't go down.'
During the silence Willard said: 'Look here, are you mad? You say she didn't go down to the pavilion, and still you say Louise might be guilty. Good Lord, talk sense) If she didn't go down there, she certainly isn't guilty.'
'Oh, I dunno. That's what I wanted to tell you.
Y'see, fatheads, Marcia Tait was murdered in this room.'
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Reflection of the Murderer
'Ho ho,' said H. M., looking round him with something like a leer. 'You think the old man's a ravin' lunatic, hey? His lunacy's goin' to catch a murderer, though, before any one of you leaves this room. Don't anybody move. I suggest you sorta get comfortable, though, because you'll feel better while I'm tellin' you about it.'
Blinking in his nearsighted way, he wandered over to the big chair behind the table and sat down. Then he took out his black pipe.
'That's it, get chairs 'for the ladies, Jimmy. Miss Carewe needs one. Now, ma'am, take it easy. -You others, shut up!' He turned savagely as Maurice came forward in a cold rage.
'What I'm doin',' he continued almost affably, 'is broadening the whole field again after you'd narrowed it down. I'll let you sorta guess for yourselves, before I prove it, which person in the house came into this room and smashed in Tait's head with. Humph. No; we won't mention the weapon just yet.
'Now we've already heard two very interestin' theories about how the murderer worked. Both of 'em happened to be wrong. But the interest lay in the occasional glimmer of reason and truth that appeared in each and had just sufficient plausibility to lead the guesser in the wrong direction. I been sittin' and thinkin' about this thing, and, burn me, the longer I sit and think the more it occurs to me as a miracle that nobody thought of an obvious explanation which would have avoided all the hocus-pocus and camel-swallowin' of the other two.
'So here's what I mean to do. I'm goin' to hold a little class in what I'll call Imaginative Common Sense. I got another witness besides myself to a certain thing that happened a few minutes ago; so I needn't worry about bein' able to hang the murderer, and I can make this killer squirm a little while I ask my class questions. Ho ho. First, then, I'm goin' simply to state a few clear facts which everybody knows and everybody admits. Second, in case you haven't tumbled to it by that time, I'll state my suggested explanation. Third, nil support if by plagiarizin' the few good wild words of truth from the other two explanations, and complete the pie with a little deduction of my own.
'Um. Now lemme see.' With the pipe upside down in his. mouth, he drowsily held up his blunt fingers and checked them off. 'Quite a little time before midnight last night, Tait began to get nervous and impatient, and began to ask to be taken out to the pavilion. That's admitted, ain't it? She was taken out there at a little past midnight, and was even more impatient. When Willard went out for a sociable chat a bit afterwards, she shooed him out. Point o' fact, as Masters reported it to me, Willard said that she went several times into the drawin'-room of the pavilion and looked out the front windows. Hey?'
'Quite,' said Willard dryly. 'But don't you think this restating of facts has become a bit monotonous by this time?'
'Uh-huh. Burn me, that's what makes me despair of your intellects) I think that at one place John Bohun said his appointment with Canifest was early in the evening, and at another place he said it was at ten o'clock. Now, we won't argue about that. We'll say the appointment (at the newspaper office) was at the rather later instance of ten o'clock. You still don't seem to get it through your heads that, even if it was as late as that, by all rights he should have been back here by midnight at the latest! We're lookin' at it from Tait's viewpoint, who never has been kept waitin' by anybody and don't intend to start it now. We're lookin' at it from the viewpoint of a woman whose life- and-death interests are centered in the news Bohun'll bring back from, town, and who ain't likely to be in a patient mood. If you'll admit she was restless at half past eleven and at midnight, how restless do you think she would have been at half-past twelve? And another half-hour passes, until one o'clock, and still he's not appeared. What's her state of mind then?
'But I won't diverge yet from statin' facts. We know, don't we, that you, can see the windows of this room- the back windows of this room-?' he pointed with his pipe, 'from the pavilion? Uh-huh. We also know that several times, while Willard was with her, she ran into the front room of the pavilion to look out? Quite. Finally, we know that at one o'clock, when she must 'a' been a bit furious with impatience, a light went on in this room.'
Maurice, who was sitting bolt upright in a narrow chair, jabbed his stick against the floor. He said gently: 'Most extraordinary. Surely you know that it has no significance? Surely you know that the light was turned on only by Thompson, who put it on for John's return when he set out sandwiches and prepared the room?'
'Sure I know it,' agreed H. M. 'Thompson told me. But how was Tait goin' to know that? Here's a man she's waitin' for, who is already an hour overdue. A light goes on in his room. But does he come down to see her, as he's supposed to do as soon as he returns? No. On the contrary, my lad, this light continues to burn strongly and brightly; and for another half-hour a woman who's already got the wind up pretty thoroughly is still required to wait while nobody shows”
'Now I ain't stretchin' the roseate limits of probability when I picture Tait's mental workings. She knew John wouldn't simply have come home and forgot all about her, when their joint futures rested on the news he was to bring from London. She'd decide it was probably bad news, and John hadn't the nerve to come down and tell her. But whatever she decided, I think you'll agree she had to know.
'And, gettin' back to obvious facts, we come to the not very surprisin' information that at half-past one the dog begins barkin' and a mysterious woman is seen runnin' round the lawn.
'As I say, I was sittin' and thinkin', and it struck me that under the circumstances the likeliest person to be goin' on a visit that night was Tait herself. Trouble was, all you lads stared myopically from the house to the pavilion, and refused to look the other way. You even refused to look the other way when all the suspected women in this house had an alibi. I don't ask you to believe this for a minute, till I offer you proof; but that was the possibility that struck me first off. Because it was a matter of tolerable simplicity, d’ye see, for her to visit this room absolutely unobserved. She could come up the lawn. She could go through the lower staircase door (which she knew was unlocked, because she'd seen Miss Bohun unlock it for John while they were all here lookin' at the stairs earlier in the night); she could walk up here and confront John. How did she know,' inquired H. M., raising his voice a little, 'that John wasn't here?'
Nobody moved or spoke. H. M. ruffled his hands across his head; scowled, and settled deeper in the chair just after his dull eyes flickered round the motionless group.
'That's simple enough, ain't it? Get out of your heads the collected rubbish of people who were makin' theories merely to hang other people; and consider what the most natural course of events must have been. I began to see Tait, crazy with fear or waiting or both, pulling on a fur coat over her negligee — you thought quickly enough of how Miss Carewe could 'a' done the same thing-getting into a pair of galoshes, and slippin' up there secretly for news. But I said to myself, 'Here! Would she have wanted to raise a row and maybe get people curious? What about that dog?' Then I discovered, not only that the dog wasn't out at its kennel when she first went to the pavilion, but that it hadn't been loose all afternoon and in fact she knew nothing about any dog at all. Why should she? She and the whole party went down there; no dog barked. The rest went back up; Willard, a stranger, came down again and returned; but still no dog barked. Why should she imagine there'd be a rumpus if she sneaked quietly up to see John?
'So I saw her startin' up, and gettin' the fright of a lifetime when halfway up she suddenly hears a big and dangerous Alsatian bust out after her! Children, what would you think if you heard a thing like that; when you didn't know the dog was chained on a runway wire and couldn't get loose, but simply heard it coming after you? That woman must 'a' been petrified, because she don't know which way to go. She don't know whether to run back, or run forward, or stand still. Probably she did a little of all three. And if that don't correspond exactly to the movements of the shape Mrs. Thompson saw, it'll surprise me a whole lot. Well, she still hesitates. Nothin'
