firmly.
'The first one,' he said, 'is initialled K.B., so I imagineer-well, it's yours,' Stone added non-dramatically, and looked at me. He got a fresh start after the anti-climax. 'It reads… by damn!'
'Carry on, son,' urged H.M., with evil jocularity.
'It reads this way:
''The murderer: Henry Bowers.
'The motive: money. We are forced to the conclusion that Paul Hogenauer, with his knowledge of engraving, printing, and inks second to none in the world, had been a member of the Willoughby gang. This was why (as everyone agrees) he went in such fear of the police. When the police were closing in on Willoughby, Hogenauer knew it, and knew that he must run for it out of the country. This is why he needed two thousand pounds, and made a proposition to betray L. falsely. It is a mistake to assume that all the Willoughby money was found at the Willoughby plant. A good part of it must have been at Hogenauer's villa.'
Here Stone paused, and turned over to the other side of the sheet. Stone cleared his throat, and cast an eye towards H.M. before he went on:
''But Bowers did not know what Hogenauer was doing. Bowers thought that the small sums he had found in the house were real money. He believed Hogenauer to be half mad, and capable of such oversights. Then Bowers came upon a packet of ?100 notes, of the same sort as that later found in the newspaper. The sum amounted to a thousand pounds or more, enough to tempt a stronger head than Bowers's. He murdered Hogenauer to get it. And this is proved by the fact that here — before us — Bowers only broke down, and grew hysterical, when he was told that the ?100 note was counterfeit. It was to cover himself up that he lied about Hogenauer's large bank-balance, and lied about hearing Antrim's voice in the house.'
'That's all,' observed Stone, shaking the slip as though to demonstrate this. 'It begins a new sentence, but breaks off'
'You didn't give us a chance to finish,' I said to H.M. 'Bowers had the best opportunity of all. He was here in the hall of this house and heard Antrim prescribe bromide. He could have come back here in the hired car that night, burgled the house_ '
'Whoa!' said H.M. 'Steady, now. We can't go beyond what's written down in the papers. Next case.'
Stone had the air of a man opening prize-packages. He took the second slip and exhibited it to everyone.
'This, he explained, 'is in a woman's handwriting, so I judge it's Miss Cheyne's. Across the top, heavily underscored, she's got the name, `Elizabeth Antrim.'
''This case hasn't got anything to do with counterfeit money. She did it. She's been living a dull life in a dull place with a dull G.P., and she's not the lass to stand dullness. She's her father's daughter. Last week she learned that her father was dead and she was heiress to a substantial fortune.
Now she could cut loose. She did it to get rid of her husband. She gave Hogenauer strychnine and then fooled about with the bottles so it would be assumed somebody had switched them. Who? Well, she made those marks on the inside of the window herself, just so Dr. Antrim would fall into the trap and she could prove the marks must have been made inside. And it worked: Also, her going to Hogenauer's apparently to keep him from drinking the poison, was another neat little alibi. She's like that. I know this is true.
Stone put down the paper with indulgence, but he clucked his tongue.
'I know it's true, too,' Evelyn announced fiercely. 'You're all going star-gazing after the most horribly complicated reasons and actions-people coming in and out of windows or playing sleight-of-hand tricks with bottles. The plain truth is that there wasn't either a change of bottles or a burglar. And I defy you to answer me.'
'Still — ' muttered H.M. The invisible fly had come back to bother him again. 'It's the simplest solution, granted. But in that case, what becomes of Bower's story that somebody visited Hogenauer behind a locked door, and that Hogenauer kept addressin' the person as `Antrim'? Do you think that it was really Mrs. Antrim, and that Hogenauer was a kind of sinister Man in the Case? Wow! Poor old Hogenauer in a crime of passion don't seem easy in his role. Or do you agree half-and-half with Ken, and say that Mrs. A. bribed Bowers to say that her husband was there?'
'H'm,' murmured Evelyn thoughtfully.
H.M. shook his head. 'I told you that whichever way you looked at it, the motivation was goin' to be weak. According to this, Mrs. A. is bored with her husband. So she up and kills somebody else, hopin' that the husband will hang; she commits a double murder whose only certain victim is somebody who has nothin' to do with her. No, no, wench; it's too roundabout. I don't deny husbands and wives have killed each other. But, if they've got to that point of marital asphyxiation, they're burnin' far too much with impatience to be anything else than simple and direct. Unless you can produce a reason why Hogenauer was dragged into this at all, it won't do… We've got two opposites. Your solution is sound on mechanics, but weak on motive. Ken's solution is sound on motive, but weak on mechanics. Or is it? I say, Ken: if Bowers did the dirty work, how did he do it?'
I reflected.
'As a suggestion, Bowers knew Hogenauer had been given a small bottle of bromide. He drove back here in the hired car, after he had deposited Hogenauer at home, in order to pinch some poison — any poison — to doctor the bromide. He got in through the window'
H.M. opened his eyes. 'The surgery window? Then it was actually broken outside, accordin' to you? But, here! As Antrim himself pointed out, why does an outsider choose that window when it'd be much simpler to crack the French one?'
Here was a point which (to my simple mind, in any case) seemed to have been too much muddled with mere words. I said:
'Because he was an outsider. Because he didn't know anything about the house. How should he know anything about the house, or what windows were apt to stick? He walked round the house: and there was a window. He opened the catch from outside with a knife and broke the catch. As for the scratches on the window- sill, which everybody seems to think were made from inside — why shouldn't they have been made from inside? Why shouldn't they have been made when the burglar climbed out?
'Right you are, then. He climbs in. He's looking for a poison, any poison. He finds strychnine neatly labelled. I don't suppose Bowers is a chemist, but anybody knows what strychnine is. He notes that it's the same white powdery stuff as the bromide. So he conceives the idea of substituting it for the stuff Hogenauer has taken away, and pretending it came from here. There's Antrim's bromide container on the shelf in front of Bowers, with a quarter of an ounce gone. So he fills it up with a quarter of an ounce of?'
'Ahhh! Of what? If he didn't come prepared, with what?'
'What about ammonium bromide? Same crystals, and there's bound to be a bottle of it in here. What about common table salt, even? I've got an idea,' said the Compleat Detective, 'that an analysis of that container would have interesting results.'
'Rubbish!' said Evelyn.
All the same, she looked impressed. H.M. continued to tap his pencil on the head of the skull, with a steady ticking which was beginning to get on my nerves. I know it must have been getting on Serpos's nerves. Since Stone had begun to read those papers, Serpos had not said a word. The whisky was wearing off; his nerves were as raw as the blue stubble on his chin; his long collarless neck gave him the look of a clerical dinosaur; and his eyes had begun to water. From the second I had spoken I knew he had recognized me, and he was watching.
Tap, tap, tap went H.M.'s pencil sleepily, tap, tap, tap.
The rain was slackening, and you could hear it distinctly. 'Next case,' said H.M.
'I refuse to read it,' snapped Stone. 'Refuse to read it? Here! Why?'
'Because it's an outrage,' retorted Stone. He got up on his stubby legs with the paper held behind him and his arm crooked; from lack of sleep and the strain, he was a trifle pale. 'Because it's an outrage, that's why. Because it practically accuses me'
'Of murder, son?'
'Eh? Oh, hell, no! You didn't think-?' Stone stopped. 'No. But it practically says my story about L. being dead is a lie; that L. isn't dead; that L. committed these murders after all… '
'And what do you think yourself?' asked H.M. gently.
Tap, tap, tap on the polished skull, tap, tap, tap.
When Stone took off his pince-nez, it gave his eyes a bleary and caved-in expression, and showed the red
