I glanced over my shoulder as we bucketed round a turn past Salisbury. Evelyn sat in the tonneau, tentatively poking H.M. in the chest like a cash register. Evelyn was beaming in the morning light; her dark hair blown out in the wind, her eyes aglow like her brownish-gold skin; and she made a sort of triumphant gesture as I turned round.
'But, Ken,' she said, 'I tell you something's got to be done! He won't wake up; he simply won't. And I've got to hear the story of what happened, all about it and everything about it, or I don't think I could get married in peace. He-'
From the front seat beside me, Stone spoke. Stone was with us. Evelyn had sworn by all her gods that he must be present at our wedding, no matter what happened; and he had been carried off yelping. What his daughter in Bristol thought of these goings-on, I do not know, and I hope I shall not soon have the oportunity of hearing her opinions. Throughout this journey he had sat in a state of dull horror, holding to the door with one hand and to his hair with the other, as we shot onward; and all the while he poured forth a stream of monotonous, low-voiced, acid commentary.
'You missed that cow,' he observed critically. 'I'm sorry to see you're off your game; just two inches more to the right, and you'd have got her. If only you'd had your eyes on the road, I'm certain you couldn't have missed. What's the use in going up over the bank? Why don't you go clear up and cut across that field? Gaaa! I don't think you take those corners fast enough. I feel like a ball in a roulettewheel. What's the matter with the old geezer back there, anyway? Maybe he's a Yogi. Stick a pin in him and find out.'
'It's not that,' I said. 'He's not asleep, actually. The point is, he doesn't want to tell us about this case because he can't. He tumbled on the solution by a stroke of luck; and, since he can't give us any good reasons, he's shamming sleep so that he can pretend..’
'You oughta be ashamed of yourself!' howled a familiar voice, blasting my ear-drum from behind. That hat tumbled down and H.M. tumbled up. It was good to hear that tone of voice, because it meant that his worries had become dim and that he was back to grousing again. All the same, we were past Basingstoke before we could get him to speak. And it was not altogether grousing. He sat with his ploughshare chin in his hand, his hat tilted over his eyes, at the winding road.
'Y'see,' he said, 'it's a much queerer business than you think. To begin with, in a case which you seem to think consists mostly in wild adventurin' and extraneous details, there were no extraneous details. Every little thing along the road that you picked up and threw away was a part of the pattern — was as necessary to the pattern as a clue in a paper-chase. A kit of burglar's tools, a mistake in a phone conversation, a counterfeit note, a knife, each was a brick in a solid kind of house that you thought was only a Tower of Babel. I make one exception: and, burn me, that exception had to be the murders! Without the murders, we could still have explained the problem. Without the murders, we could still have had a murder case. Does it sound rummy? It is. Listen.
'First I want you to think of Charters himself. I want you to see a greyish, ascetic kind of face, and a petulant manner, and a stew and fret over little things, and a feeling that all the good things of life have passed him by; and, behind it all, a sort of gentlemanly hatred. He was gettin' old. In a manner of speakin', he was shelved; the War Department hadn't any use for him any longer. He wasn't a rich man, as he told you himself; he was on the thin edge of poverty. He was not only tired; he was resentful, too. Once he was in great doings, and he commanded as much power as well, another person did, d'ye see? But now he wanted money and sun and warmth and sea and comfort, and other countries where he could relax his old bones and be respected. That was why he lived out of town by the sea. That was why he built his little house like a tropical bungalow. That was why he committed murder.
'But I'd better start at the beginnin', where I picked up the case, and show you how it went. When Charters came to me with his tale of how Hogenauer had approached him and offered to tell who L. was for two thousand pounds, was I deceived? Sure I was. Why shouldn't I be? What reason had I to doubt him? He'd even taken advantage of the rumour that L. was in this country. The reason why he came to me we'll discuss in a minute; I'm takin' this in order, just as it unrolled….
'There was just one thing that bothered me. I don't mean it made me doubt Charters; but only that it bothered me like blazes. For everything Charters had quoted Hogenauer as saying was, as I told you, just exactly contrary to everything I'd ever known about Hogenauer in my life. Nobody ever stepped so clean out of character. If there's one thing we ever knew about Paul H., it was his shy and almost painful honesty. Yet he offered to betray L. he offered to betray L. for money, and Hogenauer never in his life cared a rap for money. Invention, hey? What invention? He was never mechanically minded. Why did he need the money?
'Well, I was sittin' and thinkin' and I said to myself: `Look here, how do you know Hogenauer ever made any such offer at all?' Back came the answer: `Because Charters told you so.' Which stumped me, children; because I believed Charters. Y'see, what it did do was to make me suspicious of Hogenauer; it was why I laid my plans so carefully; it was why I gave Ken all them instructions which caused you so much mirth later on.
'All right. We come to the evening when Ken gets his instructions, along with a set o' burglar's tools (provided by Charters), and starts out for Moreton Abbot: just after Antrim has come in with some disturbin' if meaningless news about a bottle o' poison that disappeared.
'Charters had been telling me a lot about the Willoughby case. Willoughby'd been shot dead resisting arrest, and wasn't there to tell his story. Charters informed me that they'd got all the counterfeit money, which had been safely locked up in Charters's safe since then — all in his hands, mind — and he informed me about the forthcomin' inquest to be held on Willoughby. Charters was goin' before the inquest to describe how Willoughby had died, and exhibit some of the counterfeit money in evidence. The rest of the slush? Oh, well; it could be burnt; the Chief Constable would dispose of it and account for it to the Exchequer. The Chief Constable would provide a set of numbers of the bogus notes….
'At this point, Charters opened his safe to show me an exhibit or two. And he discovered that the slush had been stolen — by Serpos.
'Y'know, that made my head reel. I wasn't far from bein' physically dizzy, and now you understand why. It wasn't merely that Serpos (by Charters's own story) had worked in a bank. But here was Serpos, who lived in the house, worked in the house, and next to Charters himself was closest to the case: and Serpos stole the fake money. Was he away at the time?' How is that goin' to prevent him from knowin' about it? If a big criminal case has spouted up like a geyser right in your back garden, if a man's been shot on your door-step and a sackful of counterfeit money is shoved away in a safe in your own livin'-room, then the mere fact that you were takin' a holiday at Eastbourne when it happened won't prevent you from hearin' something about it.
'Oh no. I said to myself: `Here! Is it possible —‘
'And then I observed how Charters was carryin' on when he discovered this theft. He was pretty cut up. He wasn't concerned with Hogenauer's 'spy-plots' now; he was dead set on nabbin' Serpos straightaway. Nabbin' him, you understand — but bein' careful not to charge him with theft. You see now, Ken, why you were arrested and shoved in clink at Moreton Abbot? Because there was a mix-up, and nobody was certain which car Serpos had stolen when he did a bunk. And Charters couldn't afford to risk Serpos gettin' away. So he simply issued orders to arrest the drivers of both cars.
'On top of that came your telephone-call informin' us that Hogenauer was poisoned, and the circumstances of it. That was interestin' enough, but a more interestin' circumstance preceded it. It happened before you had said one word of what happened in Hogenauer's house, or described anything there. Remember? Charters answered the telephone. You started off with a wrangle: you told him how you'd busted out of prison, without even mentionin' Hogenauer's name, and Charters took you up sharp. Think, nowl Do you remember what he said?'
We were nearing the Great West Road, which would take us straight into London traffic, and I kept my eyes ahead.
'His exact words, so far as I can remember,' I said, 'were, `You won't have a chance now to have a look at Hogenauer's house, or in the big desk, or'”
'Or in the big desk. Uh-huh. That's it. He was pretty upset, son, but he shouldn't 'a' made that slip. What desk? He'd sworn to us that he was never in Hogenauer's house at all; that he'd never even spoken to Hogenauer at all except on the occasion when Hogenauer came to him with the proposition. He even made a pretence of tryin' to remember what the address of Hogenauer's house was. But — how did he know about the big desk? That's the speech of a man who's been in Hogenauer's back parlour. Is it possible (says I to myself) that Charters may merely have learned about the big desk from Sergeant Davis, who'd looked through the back parlour window: who may have seen it, and reported it to Charters? But you looked through both windows, Ken, and you couldn't see
