'He's driven back from town. He thinks he's killed Canifest, and the only thing that will save him is to lie about the time he reached home. That is, if he can somehow prove that he did reach home at the same time he must have killed Canifest in London; if he can prove an alibi by having somebody swear he was here and not in London when Canifest died; that'll save him. That's simple, ain't it? He's got to get that alibi. It's burnin' in his mind all the time he rides hell-for-leather out here. Fix it! Fix it, somehow! So that wild, nervous, irresolute feller who don't know his own mind from one minute to the next he comes home, walks up here, and finds Marcia Tait dead in his room!
'Look here, do you wonder much at his behavior this mornin'? Here he was, caught between two hangmen as neat as you please. Now if he fakes an alibi, and says he couldn't have been with Canifest because he was here, he's got a dead woman in his room to account for. If he admits the time he got home, they may hang him for Canifest's death. Whichever way he looks, there's a hemp collar swingin' at the end of it. He don't know who killed Tait. He don't even know how she got here, or anything about it. What he does know is that he's in a hell of a mess, and he's got to see a way out so that he won't swing for either crime.
'Could he, for instance, carry her back to her own room and pretend she'd been murdered there? Then he could swear to a faked time at which he got home; and maybe get somebody to back him up. Where was she supposed to sleep? He remembers: the pavilion. Did she go out there? He's got to find out, and there's nobody awake to tell him. He also remembers: a riding-engagement for this morning.
'The thing to do is find out. Now here's where the grain of truth in Rainger's theory enters. He dresses in riding-clothes, so that if she really has slept at the pavilion (as he believes), he'll have a good excuse for `finding' her early in the morning. He wakes up the butler, who tells him she's out there and that horses are ordered for seven o'clock. Good God! There's where the ticklish, dangerous skatin' on ice comes in. The stables are in sight of the pavilion and even the door of the pavilion! If he delays until quite daylight, somebody bringin' those horses out may see him go down with the body… On the other hand, if he can take her in there a few minutes, just a few minutes beforehand; if he can put her in the bedroom, and then walk back to the front door of the pavilion; then stand there until he sees somebody at the stables, whom he'll hail as though he were just goin' in for the first time to `find' her — then he's safe.'
H. M. stabbed out with his finger. 'Do you understand the burnt matches now? He carried her in there and put her on the floor a few minutes before Jim Bennett unexpectedly arrived on the scene: so few minutes that his tracks were still fresh. It was growing daylight, but not quite daylight (I carefully asked that nephew of mine about it) and Bohun had to be able to see clearly to set his stage for the fake murder! Got it now? He didn't dare switch on a light in the room. A large window faced directly towards the stables, where people were already up. If a light flashed on in that room, sorta sudden and inexplicable-like, a few minutes before Bohun claimed he walked into the pavilion for the first time. why, somebody would have seen it and wondered why.'
'Hold on, sir!' said Bennett. 'There was a blind on that window — a Venetian blind. Couldn't he simply have lowered the blind?'
H. M. blinked at him.
'Do you think, my amiable dotard,' he growled, 'they wouldn't have seen the light just the same? Didn't you and me ourselves see a light, through those slits in the Venetian blind, when Willard turned one on this afternoon in the drawin'-room? Y'know, it's a funny thing how every one of the answers to all these questions had been repeated before our eyes to sorta help us along. Quit interruptin', will you? Dammit, I'm in full stride and enjoyin' myself..
'He struck matches while he tipped things over, smashed glasses, took off the woman's fur coat and stowed away her galoshes in the closet where I went lookin' for 'em. He didn't have anything to simulate a weapon with, although he tried to make it seem like the poker. I could tell it wasn't; no blood or hair. He put her on the floor after a couple of minutes of crazy work. Then he went to the door, saw Locker over across the way; hailed him; strolled back, uttered a rather unnecessary yell which didn't sound like Bohun at all and made me suspicious to begin with. Rushin' back to the door, he meets Jim Bennett comin' down the lawn…
'By the way, I hear he had blood on his hands then. Didn't that seem fishy to you, son — sticky blood, although the woman had been murdered some hours before? It didn't mean he'd killed her. It meant he'd heavily yanked or disturbed the body somehow, such as he wouldn't have done merely by examinin' it; he'd disturbed clots and released something, although the heart had stopped pumpin' and it wasn't fresh-'
Somebody cried out. H. M. glanced at them as though he held a whip.
'Then,' he went on heavily, 'he was ready. The feller was clever in everything but one. He forgot about the snow. Do you wonder he was shaken up when Jim Bennett pointed it out; and he yelled out that it didn't mean anything? Do you see why he could afford to laugh when Willard suggested Tait's murder at the pavilion meant an assignation there last night? An assignation, lads, yet the blind wasn't even pulled down on a towerin' window! hadn't that feature struck anybody's boarding-house mind? Never mind. He thought he'd covered everything up. Now he could announce to everybody that he'd arrived home here a good deal earlier than he actually had. He could say he didn't kill Canifest because he was here before the time 'Canifest was knocked off. '
Maurice Bohun began to laugh; a thin, malicious laughter that convulsed his shoulders.
'Quite, Sir Henry,' he said. 'But I should fancy — in fact I do fancy — that's exactly where your theory comes crashing down. Most interesting! You proclaim the spotless innocence of my brother. You say he did all these things for one express purpose. That purpose had two parts: the first, which I concede you readily, was to shift Marcia's body so that he would not be thought guilty by having it found in his room. But the second part-to lie about the time he had actually arrived home — utterly destroys your whole case. He did not lie about the time he arrived home. In fact, what you have done is to build up a brilliant and almost unanswerable case against my poor brother as the murderer. He arrived at shortly after three o'clock. Just a few minutes afterwards, by medical testimony, Marcia was murdered. Well?'
'Exactly,' said H. M. 'That's what makes me absolutely certain, son, that he didn't commit the murder.'
'What? I do not think, Sir Henry,' said Maurice, suddenly checking his rage, 'this is precisely the time for talking nonsense. '
'Oh, it ain't nonsense. Just look at it for a minute. Here's a man whose double motive is to prove that he didn't kill Canifest and he didn't kill Tait? Hey? He wants to do the one by makin' his arrival here earlier than it actually was, and the other by movin' the body. H'm. All right. If he really did kill Tait, then he knew when she died: that's not a very far-fetched assumption. Then why the blazes does he want to make the time he says he arrived here so nearly coincide with the time the woman was murdered? — carefully makin' it just a little earlier than she was killed? That's an incredibly fatheaded way of bringin' suspicion back to him, especially as after a car-drive from London a matter of twenty minutes or half-an-hour won't matter so much! Why did he say roughly three o'clock? Why didn't he make it earlier, and provide an alibi for both victims? — You instantly reply, 'Because Thompson heard him come in, and he couldn't lie.' That won't wash. He told his story long before he knew that, by a chance nobody in the world could anticipate, Thompson was awake with the toothache and could check up on him. He told that story deliberately, because…”
'Shall I read you a telegram?' inquired H. M.
'A telegram? What telegram?'
'From Canifest. I got it just before dinner. It's interestin' And this is what it says.' H. M. drew the folded paper from his inside pocket. 'I asked him, as a matter of fact, what time John Bohun had called on him at his home last night.
`WENT HOME,' said Canifest, `JUST AFTER MORNING EDITION OF GLOBE-JOURNAL WENT TO PRESS, PRECISELY TWO FORTY-FIVE A.M. FOUND CALLER IN QUESTION WAITING AT SIDE DOOR AND TOOK HIM TO MY DEN. DO NOT KNOW WHAT TIME HE LEFT DUE TO HEART ATTACK YOU MAY UNDERSTAND, BUT AM CERTAIN NOT EARLIER THAN THREE-THIRTY.' '
H. M. tossed the slip of paper on the table.
'He said three o'clock,' snapped H. M., 'because he thought it was a safe time to admit he'd arrived here. As a matter of fact he didn't get here until an hour or two afterwards.:'
'But somebody got here!' shouted Willard. 'Somebody drove in at ten minutes past three! Who was it?'
'The murderer,' said H. M. 'He's played in every bit of luck on the globe; he's been shielded by every trick of luck that nature and fate and craziness could invent; he's fooled us in front of our very eyes, but grab him, Masters!'
The voice ripped across the room as somebody flung open the door to the gallery. The door to the staircase
