Evelyn turned on him, flaming.
'You shut your head!' she said fiercely. 'How was he to know it? Wouldn't you have done just what he did? I admit he dropped a brick, but was it his fault? That letter '
Inspector Murchison was cautious. 'That letter-hurrum, well, it explains a good deal, miss,' he said, and you could a!most hear the echo of Humphrey Masters's voice.
'It explains the whole damn sheebang,' Stone announced off-handedly. 'Where are all your mysterious spy- plots now? It's just like what Keppel wrote here: it's two elderly gentlemen playing a nonsensical game. What do you say, Blake?'
'I say it's not as simple as that. What sort of explanation have we got after all?'
'What sort of explanation?'
'Yes. There's an explanation of a series of peculiar contradictions in the physical evidence, a string of queernesses like the string of cuff-links. The oddities are accounted for. We know why some books were missing from a shelf, why furniture was changed in a room, why lights flickered round a flower-pot turned upside down. Well? Where does it get us after all? Remember, there's still the fact that someone poisoned Hogenauer. Why? If all this is true — why? No L. No spy-plot. But why did Hogenauer mention L., and why did he want two thousand pounds for betraying his identity? What good would two thousand pounds be to him in forwarding an experiment like this? Then there's the question of the counterfeit money.'
'What money?'
I explained, briefly. 'Whereupon Serpos steals the money and does a bunk, on the same evening that Hogenauer is poisoned. But in a newspaper in Hogenauer's scullery is a counterfeit ?100 note. Was Hogenauer tied up into the gang, somehow? Go on: swear at H.M. all you like. But I'd be willing to bet he's playing a much deeper game than any of us could guess.'
Murchison drew a vast breath and shook himself.
'Well, that's neither here nor there. My job, right now-' He looked towards the door, scowling. 'Mess! Ruddy mess, that's what it is! And I-well, I assisted, in a manner of speaking. There's only one consolation. The end of the business isn't here. The end of the business is back in Torquay. Someone there gave Hogenauer the poison, and Hogenauer gave it to Dr. Keppel. There can't be any investigation., from this end. All we've got to do is pick up the pieces. Point is, Mr. Blake, what do you intend to do?'
'Ring up H.M at Torquay and report: with feeling. Then our part of the business is finished. Afterwards-'
'Yes?'
I faced it. 'That depends entirely on you. Officially, you've got us. In two places tonight I've been the first to discover a body! I must be wanted rather badly. On the other hand, H.M. promised protection. If we've walked into the frying pan with you, we're past hope. But, if you've talked to Stone, you must know that we're supposed to be in London to be married at eleven-thirty to-morrow morning.'
Murchison regarded us with a heavy and sleepy smile.
'If what the governor says about you is true,' he remarked, with a sudden come-down from his official manner when he nodded towards Stone, 'you haven't had a decent bit of luck since you left Torquay. And you haven't officially `discovered this body,' he jerked his head, 'yet. But I want you to understand my position. I'm not the Chief Constable. I'm not even the superintendent. I'm a common-or-garden detective-inspector with none too brilliant a record at that. I can't turn you loose, officially, and let you get back to London, even if you could find a way back at this time in the morning. It's certain you can't stay in Bristol, for there'll be a big whoop when this news goes to headquarters. But there is one thing I can do: I can put you in a police-car and send you back to Torquay. Then it's their business. What they see fit to do I can't say. You're wanted as witnesses by the Chief Constable there, and that's all I know about it. Follow me?'
There was a pause.
recited Evelyn ecstatically.
'Ken, we may be going back in the other direction, but it's the only thing that can save us; and we'll be at that wedding yet! I say, thanks most awfully. You've pulled us through.'
'Thank him, Miss Cheyne,' grunted Murchison, and nodded towards Stone. 'He seems to have taken a fancy to you. Is everything agreed? Right. I'll go down and discover the body now. You three had better stay here, and keep in the background as much as possible. No, wait; you'd better come along with me, Mr. Blake. You'll have to get through to Torquay before a crowd gathers, and there's a telephone in Dr. Keppel's rooms.'
We went out into the dim corridor, closing the door behind us. Down by the cut-glass lamp at the stairs, a mysterious and furtive head first poked itself round and then dodged back in singularly ghostly fashion. Murchison first whistled. and then ran after it. It turned out to be the head of the night-porter, who was sheepish. From him Murchison procured the pass-key and opened the door of Keppel's sittingroom.
There was a light-switch at the left of the door. Once the chandelier was illuminated in that large white- papered room with the etchings on the walls, it had lost most of its terror. It was still bleak. The little corpse in the chair was still grotesque enough. But we had learned the explanation and dug the core out of the mystery: there could now be room for pity. Murchison closed the door and stood with his back against it.
'H'm,' he said.
'Poor devil,' he added, after a pause.
'Yes. It's the unnecessary thing. The superfluous murder '
Murchison weighed something in his hand. He nodded towards a door in the left-hand wall, beside the white-marble mantelpiece.
'That goes to the bedroom,' he said. 'The telephone's in there. But about this ‘unnecessary'- I dunno. Yes, I dare say it was. But there's something I can't quite get through my head. A lot of us have heard of Sir Henry Merrivale; I know I have. And I can't help feeling he's got a whole lot more up his sleeve than the governor,' he nodded vaguely back in a direction which represented Stone's presence, 'seems to think. You've said it yourself. A lot of ordinary details are explained, like cuff-links and missing books and moved furniture; and they turn out to be the easiest of the lot to explain. It's Hogenauer's other behaviour that's hardest to explain. If he was a harmless old dodderer doing nothing more than a spot of crystal-gazing, why should anybody want to murder him?'
'The Punch and Judy murders,' I said. 'All the alarms and excursions, all the high hocus-pocus of spy-doings, have turned out to be no more real than a child's Punch and Judy puppet show. There is no `L.' There is no — '
Sharply and stridently in those quiet rooms, a telephone rang.
You could almost imagine that a ghostly tingling and echo came from the glass and bottle on the little round table. Murchison went over quickly and threw back the portiere on the door to the bedroom. He did not even bother to turn on a light. The telephone stood on a little stand just inside, to the left of the door.
'Yes,' he said, more as a statement than as a question.
It was so still that I could hear a soft voice murmuring in the receiver, although I could distinguish no words. Murchison stood half in shadow and half in light, one shoulder humped; his big, rather bovine face was turned to the sitting-room, and his eyes were blank.
Then he spoke. 'Who is this speaking?… Yes, he's dead. Yes, he was poisoned…. Who is this speaking?' Without altering his dull tone, he put his hand over the mouthpiece and spoke softly to me. 'Get hold of that porter. Tell him to go downstairs like hell and get the clerk on the switchboard and find out where this call's coming from. I'll try to hold him until-'
The night-porter was not far away from the door; he almost tumbled through when I opened it. Fortunately he had caught no glimpse of the figure in the chair inside. But he seemed to understand, did slow-moving Frank; Frank made remarkable time to the lift, and I heard it humming downstairs as I went back into Keppel's rooms. Murchison was still speaking softly to the telephone. He had the air of one who, gently and with gloved hands, is trying to draw out a nest of wasps.
'If this is a joke, I haven't got any more time to talk with you…. Don't gobble. Who are you? Who is this, then?'
By one of those curious gear-changes or volcanic disturbances along the telephone system, there was in the receiver a violent sort of plop which seems to split your ear-drum. Murchison moved the receiver away from his ear. I was close to him. I could distinctly hear the soft voice which crept out of the receiver.
'This is L. speaking,' it said. 'Would you like to know the truth about the money?'
