The Eight of Swords

Depping. That he went to the Guest House prepared with rubber gloves. That he left Depping locked out on the balcony, pretending that the key was lost; that he made Depping come up through the front door to provide an alibi… Is that correct?'

'Fair enough,' said Hugh. 'What then?'

Morgan replied quietly: 'Only that the accomplice was nothing of the kind, and had at first not the slightest intention of killing Depping.'

'But, look here-'

'J. R.'s objection is perfectly sound. It's convincing, and it's true. Depping would never have suggested to anybody hereabouts that they assist him in a murder; or even have hinted at an unsavory past, until… Wait a bit. But there would have been any number of harmless people in this vicinity quite willing to assist Depping in what they thought was a lark.'

Burke snorted. 'A lark! You've an odd notion of the people in your circle, my boy, if you think they're addicted—'

'Have you forgotten the poltergeist?' said Morgan.

After a silence he went on steadily:

'Somebody was willing to cut up that row with the vicar, and probably enjoyed it. I should have enjoyed it, personally… I still insist that several people could have been drawn in to assist Depping, unwittingly, if they had been persuaded it was a show of that sort. It wouldn't be hard to spin up a tale that would plant an unconscious confederate in that study. Depping meant to go out and kill Spinelli. But the accomplice didn't know that.'

'In that case,' said Donovan, who was trying to hold hard to reason, 'what becomes of the plot to kill Depping? What about the rubber gloves — and the key that accomplice pretended to have lost — and—?'

'They are all suppositions,' said Morgan coolly.

Hugh peered at him. 'Good God, man, I know they are! They're your suppositions. What happens to them now?'

'Put it this way. Depping, in disguise, was locked out. He was locked out for an obvious reason which doesn't seem to have occurred to anybody: that the accomplice really couldn't find the key. Depping had sneaked out the front door of the house intending to return by the balcony. But he had forgotten the key— left it behind in his other clothes, and it couldn't be found. Meantime, Depping can't wait in the rain. He conceives the idea that he can get in through the front door, if the other person will blow out the fuses…'

'How?' demanded Hugh. 'I thought we'd agreed about the buttonhook. Nobody with bare hands would have tried blowing the fuses like that.'

'Certainly not. But it could have propped against that low socket, and pushed in to make a contact…'

'With what?'

'With the sole of a tennis shoe,' said Morgan, and struck another match. 'We mustn't be too sure of those rubber gloves, you know. And thus we destroy the only basis for believing that the accomplice intended to kill Depping… with the sole of any ordinary tennis shoe.'

Donovan searched his mind for a suitable observation, and eyed his host with malevolence. 'Nuts!' he said violently, after some consideration. 'Nuts!'

Patricia let out a protesting gurgle.

'I say, Hank, it won't do!' she insisted. 'I thought you said that, after Mr. Depping was shot, the murderer got out the balcony door, and the door was left open… If that's so, and the murderer really couldn't find the key, how did he get out that way?'

Morgan was afire with his new idea. He went stalking up and down, banging into the table in the gloom, and bumping against chairs indiscriminately.

'As simple as that!' he almost shouted. 'Ha. Ha. Of course. When his accomplice can't find the key, Depping is hopping mad. Depping is hop…'m. Let the euphony pass. He comes upstairs in his disguise. He does exactly what you yourself would have done under the circumstances. 'Are you blind?' he says. 'Look here, you fathead!'—or words to that effect, however Depping would have phrased it. He goes in and finds the key himself, and produces it before the other person's eyes. In moments of great emotional stress, that's precisely the sort of silly thing a person would do. Can't you see Depping, wet to the skin, nervous, vicious; with his loud clothes and his wig coming askew; standing there shaking the key before the other person? Even with the murder of Spinelli on his mind…'

'I don't know whether you are aware of it,' said Hugh with great politeness, 'but Spinelli happens to be alive.'

'Which,' said Morgan, 'Depping didn't know. He thought Spinelli's body was safe in the river… Murch told me what happened at the Chequers last night. Depping didn't know his attempt was a failure. And what then?'

Morgan's voice sank. 'Now he has the accomplice utterly at his mercy. I can see Depping with that little smirk he used to have — remember it? — on his face, and the stoop of his shoulders, and his hands rubbing together. He goes into the bathroom and painstakingly removes his disguise. He brushes his hair and puts on other clothes. His accomplice is still mystified; but he has been promised an explanation, after the clothes and evidences have been destroyed. Presendy Depping sits down, facing the other person, and smiles again.

' 'I have killed a man,' he says in that dry voice of his. 'You will never dare betray me, because I have made you accessory before and after the fact.''

Morgan's voice had unconsciously fallen into an imitation. Hugh had never heard Depping's voice; but it was just such a one as he would have believed Depping to have possessed — level, thin, harsh, and edged with malice. The man had suddenly become alive here in the dusk: a puzzle and a monstrosity, rubbing his hands together. Donovan could see him sitting up stiff in his leather chair, with a candle burning on the desk before him, and the storm roaring outside. He could see the long furrowed face, the grizzled hair, the dry leer out of the eyes.

Across from him sat X…

'You know how he repressed himself when he was with us,' Morgan went on abruptly. 'You could feel it. You knew he hated us, that he was thinking differently, and his mind was boiling the whole time. He'd got his new life; but he could never get used to it. That was why he went on those drinking sprees.

'I don't know what there had been in his past life. But I think that murder had probably been one of the least of his offenses. I think he sat there and carefully explained to his accomplice what he had been, and what he was; that all his spite came out; and that he pointed out carefully how the accomplice was caught. He couldn't be betrayed, or Depping would swear both of them were concerned in the murder. What the confederate had thought a lark was really a crime that put him at Depping’s mercy. Depping displayed the pistol, laid it on the table. And I think something was said — I don't know what; this is only a guess — that made one of our nice, harmless, inoffensive community go slightly insane. Maybe it was the way Depping smirked and moved his head. I don't know, but I could have killed him, myself, more than once. I think one of our harmless community found an excuse to get behind Depping — snatched up the gun from the table, and-'

'Don't!' cried Patricia out of the dark. 'Don't say that! You almost sound as though you'd been there!..'

Morgan lowered his head. He seemed to catch sight of his wife, who was huddled back silently into the deck chair. Moving across, he sat down beside her and said in a matter-of-fact voice:

'What price horrors? Actually, what we all want is another cocktail. Wait till I get the lights on, and another bowl of ice, and I’ll mix a new shaker…'

'You don't get out of it,' said Hugh grimly, 'so easily as that.'

'No. No,' the other replied in a reflective voice, 'I didn't suppose I should. Well, the only question is: Which one of us would old Depping select for his lark?'

The implication of his remark was setting slowly into all their minds when, with only a preliminary grunt, J. R. Burke spoke out. He said in a meditative voice:

'I dare say I’m obstructing justice.'

'Obstructing-?'

'Don't mind obstructing justice, I don't,' growled J. R. 'Officious, that's what the police are. Ought to be a law against it. Still — if Gideon Fell thinks all this, got to tell it. Young fella, you think there was an accomplice, do you? What time do you think this accomplice came to see Depping at the Guest House?'

Morgan peered at him oddly. 'I don't know. Any time after Depping's dinner tray was taken up; half-past eight to nine o'clock, maybe.'

'Humph. Well, you're wrong.'