possible suspects everybody who could come from that direction.- That's a sweepin' sort of idea, you see. I couldn't do it just yet. It would force me back on the theory that John had come home and killed her, because apparently he was the only one who fitted the facts. Every fact fitted; but, burn me, I wouldn't accept John's guilt!
'There were several reasons why I wouldn't, aside from the pretty thin one I told you when I was sketchin' the theory before. To begin with, the idea that a man who's rushin' home with a murder already on his conscience; puzzlin' frantic plans to escape arrest; full of terror at what he's already done, and shakin' in every joint for fear they'll catch him; — well, is it likely that such a man, near on nervous prostration, will do the murderous job that was done on Tait?
'I doubted that. I also doubted it from this factor: that the murder occurred too soon after the time John had apparently got back. Y'see what I mean? He's not in a murderous rage with Tait. On the contrary, he thinks she'll be in a murderous rage with him, and he's nervous about that. Well, the car is heard coming into the drive at ten minutes past three. The murder takes place at fifteen minutes past. Is it reasonable to suppose that he'll rush up and kill her (especially as he hasn't got the slightest idea she's in his room) simply off-hand, with no reason, instantly after he returns? Neither of 'em could have had much of a chance to say anything whatever. Does any part of that sound like the conduct of John Bohun, who confessedly thought he had just killed Canifest?'
'Steady, sir,' interposed Bennett. 'Suppose he hadn't known Marcia was married. And Canifest, who had been told by Emery, in turn told him. Mightn't he have been exactly in that rage when he returned?'
H. M. took away the hand with which he was shading his glasses.
'Now!' he said. 'Now you're hittin' on a point that began to strike me pretty strongly. Point is, why should he? He was the woman's lover. There was no talk of marriage between them; never had been. Not only did he accept that status, dye see, but he helped her jolly Canifest along in the hope of marriage. If he'd really had any objections to the idea, and didn't know she was already married, wouldn't he have said in either case, 'Look here, do you mean business by Canifest?' And if any jealousy of a mere husband came into it, he'd have had a devilish sight more jealousy of a wealthy, powerful man like Canifest than some inconspicuous figure who was always content to keep in the background. Not havin' any aspirations towards bein' her husband, and content to be the preferred stock, why should he flare into a wild fury about a husband at all? I thought to myself, `Rage, hey? This thing don't sound like the rage of a lover who finds his mistress is married; that's rather thin stuff. It does sound devilish like a husband who's suddenly discovered his wife has a genuine lover.''
'You mean Emery really didn't know-?'
'Wait a bit, son. We're only lookin' at the evidence as yet. That's what struck me. As I say, I was sittin' and thinkin', and there jumped up another thing I didn't like. What about this mysterious figure with blood on its hand, blunderin' round in the gallery and runnin' into Louise Carewe. How did they happen to run into each other? You know by this time that little Louise, with too much of a sleeping-drug turned wrongways, had put a huntin' crop into her pocket and was goin' down to the pavilion to mess up Tait's face (you could tell it was drug-fog because she intended to walk straight out through that snow in thin slippers) — she was goin' out there when she collapsed. How did this killer run into her? Surely, he could have ducked back somewhere, and would have done that, with that damnin' evidence in his hands; if — if he had known where he was goin'. If, in other words, he hadn't been blunderin' around in the dark in search of a place to wash his hands, and didn't know the house at all.
'That wasn't evidence either, but suddenly I remembered something that was. Emery was the only person in the whole lot who wouldn't believe Tait had been murdered at the pavillion. Don't you remember? Rainger had to yell at him over the 'phone, insistently repeatin': `At the pavilion, at the pavilion, I tell you.' Even then he thought Rainger was only drunk. And, when he spoke to us, he still said it was nonsense! — In a blindin' afterthought it came to me that of all the dead give-aways I've ever heard mumbled out by a guilty person, that was one of the most blazin'.
'So I thought, `Here, now! What have you got? You've got a lot of indications, and things you think are indications.
You've got a theoretical locked door leadin' to the gallery, so that the murderer came from another direction. But you don't believe it was Bohun. You've got a theoretical man who don't know the house, who came from outside, who had a car. You've got a practical flesh-and-blood man who fulfills these requirements and also declares the woman was not murdered at the pavilion.'
'Now, what are the objections to that? First objection, which seemed so strong as to put the whole thing out of court, is this: How could Emery, rushing down in the middle of the night to a house he didn't know, unerringly pick out the room where this woman was — especially as she hadn't intended to be in that room at all?
'For a second, that was a poser. And then it struck me that this apparent difficulty might, just might, be the answer to the riddle of the whole murder! Here's Tait, waitin' for Bohun up in that room, not darin' to go back to the pavilion. But John had been told to go down to the pavilion when he came back; she supposed he would, and wanted to head him off. Suppose he went down there, discovered she'd disappeared, and maybe raised a row… Well? If you were in her position, what would you have done?
After a long silence Katharine said:
'I suppose I should have waited at the window until I heard his car come in. Then I might have gone down to the side door and called to him that I was in his room…'
She stopped.
'Uh-huh,' said H. M., nodding sombrely. 'And, I think you've noticed, the roof of the porte-cochere hides the whole drive except the end of it leadin' down to the stables. I tested that out and looked for myself. From King Charles's Room, you can't see any except a very little of the drive. Hey? You hear a car come in. You're, expectin' a car, and you don't suppose that in a lonely community at three o'clock in the mornin' any car will come in but the one you're expectin'. Right. So in your very fetchin' negligee you either lean out the window and whisper, or sneak down to the staircase-door and whisper to a supposed John Bohun that you're not at the pavilion at all; you're in his room. Listen!'
He flicked open the blue sheets.
'On my oath here, and as I hope to answer for it before God, I never meant to kill her. I never thought Carl was right. I only thought I had to go down to that place and see for myself, or I'd go crazy. It happened like this. When I was in that hospital after I had ate (sic) that candy with the poison in it, Carl came to me and said, `Well, I've proved to you Canifest is their angel, so now if you got any guts at all you'll walk over and tell him you're married to her. Great Christ, he says, is everybody going to make a sucker out of you? Are you ever going to act like a man? This guy Bohun,' he said, and then he told me all over again what he'd told me before, only I didn't believe it. She swore it wasn't true; she always swore it wasn't true. She said, if I let her alone to have her career, she'd never in the world look at another man except me.
'And Carl said, 'Do you know why he's taking her down to this place in the country?' And he said, 'Well, if I didn't believe it, all I had to do was go down and see for myself.' He said to go down there late. He said to surprise everybody. He said she'd be in that marble house out at the back, and all I had to do would be walk around the grounds, and I'd see it. Then he said to go down there, and they'd be there; both of them would be there…
'And I couldn't rest, I couldn't do anything until I did. But I was having a lot of trouble with my car, because the fan-belt was loose and the engine would get so hot; and I think the radiator leaked or something like that…'
'Did you notice,' said H. M., looking up sharply, 'how the bonnet of that car was smoking when we saw it in the drive next day?'
'So I came in the drive, and I noticed my car didn't make any tracks afterwards, because there's trees so close over it that there wasn't much snow at all. And I stopped the car in that driveway under the roof. And I was wondering where this marble-house place was that they were talking about, and I saw the engine shooting up steam again. So I thought I'd get out and stick some snow in to cool it. And I got out and took off that big heavy silverthing that's on top of the radiator cap. It was hotter than hell, but I had my gloves on. And it was dark there, but all of a sudden I heard somebody whisper out behind me, up on the porch..'
'Now use a little imagination,' said H. M. rather curtly.
'Even then she didn't know who it was. I kept my head down. And I didn't know where I was going, but I just followed her. And we went up some steps with her ahead, and everything was dark and she kept talking, until we got up to the bedroom and she turned around and saw who I was.
'I didn't know what I was doing. I hit her, and hit her again with that thing in my hand. I don't know how many times I hit her.
