The Judas Window

the family honour.

'Still only theories, d'ye see: so let's look at what she did durin' those mysterious seventeen minutes between 6.15 and 6.32. At 6.30 (she says) she came downstairs after having finished packin' the bags. Here I'll ask you to follow the testimony she gave at the trial, because it was exactly the same testimony she gave the police a long time ago - when I studied it with uncommon close care, like everybody else's testimony. She says she packed a small valise for herself and a large suitcase for Uncle Spencer, and then down she came.

'Now right here is an interestin' bit from Dyer's testimony which fits into that. Dyer returns and finds her standin' in front of the study door - in front of the study door, mark'ee. She flies info a wailin' frenzy, tells him that the fellers inside the study are killing each other, and orders him to run next door after Fleming. At this time, says Dyer, 'she fell over a. big suitcase belonging to Dr Spencer Hume'.

'I rather wondered what that suitcase was doin' back in the passage that leads to the study. The main staircase in that house - you've seen it, Ken - is towards the front. It'd mean that she walked downstairs with the bags; and, intendin' to go to the study to say good-bye to Avory, she walked back into the little passage still carryin' the bags -or at least, you notice, the suitcase. What's the game? When people come downstairs with a couple of bags, my experience is that they always plump 'em down at the foot of the stairs where they'll be convenient for the front door. People don't go to the trouble of luggin' 'em to the back ' of the house and walkin' about with them firmly clutched While they say good-bye.

'Right here I began to get a strange, burnin' sensation at the back of the brain. I began to see things. I wrote a question-mark on my time-schedule opposite Amelia Jordan's activities. Just what did I know, so far, about the murder? For my certain beliefs as opposed to the police's, I knew that (a) Hume had been killed with an arrow fired from a cross-bow through the Judas window, and the cross-bow had been missin' from the shed ever since that night; (b) Amelia was the only person who had been alone in the house for seventeen minutes; (c) Amelia was found near the study door in the inexplicable lovin' company of a large suitcase, which nobody seems to have heard of since that time; and then there fell into my obtuseness the fact that (d) Uncle Spencer's fine tweed suit had been missin' out of the house since that night.

‘Wow! We even know when that suit was found missin'. Directlv after the discovery of the murder, you'll observe, Randolph Fleming conceives the idea of takin' the prisoner's finger-prints. Dyer mentions that there's an ink-pad upstairs in the pocket of Spencer's suit. Dyer flies up to get it - and the suit's gone. Dyer can't understand it, and comes downstairs in a weird state of perplexity. But where was the suit? If everyone hadn't been rattled off balance by the discovery of a murder, where's the first place you'd have thought the suit must be? Hey?' There was a silence.

'I know,' said Evelyn. 'You'd know it must have been packed.'

'Sure,' agreed H.M., spitting out smoke and glowering. 'A certain woman had just finished packin' a bag for the owner of that suit. Uncle was goin' into the country for the week-end. Well, what the jumpin' blazes is the first thing you think of shovin' into a suitcase for a man who is goin' to do that? A tweed sports suit, my England.

'Follow this not-too-complicated line of thought. At 6.39, you'll see by your table, Fleming asks Amelia to go to the hospital and get Spencer. At the very same time and in the very same breath, he tosses out the idea of takin' the finger-prints. If only, he says, they had an ink-pad. Dyer mentions the one in the golf-suit, and goes to get it. Mind you, as you'll see in the table, the woman is still there. She hears this. Why, therefore, don't she up and say: 'It's no good going up and looking for that suit; I've got it in the suitcase right out in the passage'? (Even if she's taken the ink-pad out of the suit before packin' it, she'd say: 'Don't look in the suit; I've put the ink-pad in such-and-such another place.') In either event, why don't she speak up? She can't have forgotten she packed it so recently; and she's a severely practical soul who's learned to think of everything in Avory Hume's employ. But she says nothin'. Why?

'You notice something else. Not only is the suit missing at this time - but it continues missing. It never turns up at all. Add to this fact the knowledge that a pair of red Turkish slippers (remembered because they're so conspicuous) are also missing; and you begin to see that the whole ruddy suitcase has disappeared.

'That's another why. Do we know of anything else that's vanished as well? We smackin' well do! A crossbow has also vanished. Let's see: a stump cross-bow, but with a very broad head? It'd be much too big, say, to go into a little valise ... but it would fit very neatly into a suitcase, and out of sight.'

H.M.'s cigar had gone out, and he drew at it querulously. Privately, I thought this business was among the best bits he had ever done; but I hesitated to say so, for he would only bask woodenly and delight his soul obscurely with more mystification.

'Go on,' I said. 'You didn't drop any hint to us that Miss Jordan was guilty until your closing speech in court; but you must have your way; so go on.'

'Assumin',' said H.M., with as close to a look of pleasure as he could get, 'assumin’ for the sake of argument that the cross-bow was stowed away in that suitcase, you have a good reason why the woman didn't sing out and tell Dyer the golf-suit wasn't upstairs. She'd hardly tell him to open the suitcase and find the cross-bow. She'd hardly open it herself in the presence of anyone else. Quite to the contrary, what would she do? Dyer was goin' upstairs after the suit. She'd think - you can lay a small wager on this - that as soon as he discovered the absence of the suit it'd be all up. The cat would come out of the bag with a reverberatin' yowl. Dyer would think of the obvious thing. He'd say: 'Please, miss, will you open the suitcase and let us have that ink-pad?' Consequently, she would have to get that suitcase out of the house in a blazin' hurry. Fortunately, she had a magnificent excuse to leave the house: she was going for the doctor. Fleming was in the study, Dyer was upstairs: she could snatch up the suitcase and get away to the car without bein' observed.

'So far I thought I was treadin' over pretty safe ground. But -'

'Please wait a bit,' interposed Evelyn, frowning. 'There's one thing I don't understand here, and I've never understood. What did you think was in the suitcase? I mean, aside from Uncle Spencer's clothes?'

'Something like this,' said H.M. 'One cross-bow. One cut-glass decanter. One syphon partly emptied. One bottle of stuff to destroy the smell of whisky. Probably one screwdriver, and certainly two tumblers.'

'I know. That's what I mean. Why did Avory Hume or anyone else need to have a lot of stuff carried out of the house or stowed away? Why did they have to have two decanters? Wouldn't it have been easier to have emptied the drugged whisky out of the ordinary decanter, rinsed it, and filled it up with ordinary stuff? Wouldn't it be easier to rinse out the glasses and put them back? And if you simply put a syphon of soda on a shelf in the pantry, what would be suspicious about this? - I don't say anything about the cross-bow, because that wasn't Hume's idea; it was the murderer's; but what about the rest of it?'

H.M. gave a ghostly chuckle.

'Ain't you forgettin',' he enquired, 'that originally there was nobody in the scheme except Avory and Spencer?' ‘Well?'

'Consider the little pictures we draw,' said H.M., gesturing with his dead cigar. 'Dyer knows nothin' about the scheme. Neither does Amelia Jordan. The good Reginald Answell will walk in, and be closeted in the study with Avory. Between that time and the time Reginald is discovered as a gibberin' loony, how can Avory leave the study} Either Dyer or Jordan will be in the house all the time; Jordan will be there while Dyer goes out after the car, Dyer will be there while Jordan drives off after Spencer. You see it now? Avory couldn't dash out to the kitchen, empty the whisky, rinse the decanter, fill it up again, and walk back - with his guest lyin' unconscious in an open room, and one of his witnesses watchin’ him rinse the decanter. You can't do that when there's someone in the house, particularly someone on the alert for trouble: as Dyer was warned to be and as the woman certainly was. Similarly, Avory can't rinse the tumblers, wipe 'em, and put 'em back. He can't go shovin' syphons into pantries. He's got to lie low in that study. That's why I said, and emphasized: only two people were in the scheme to begin with.

'We'd better deal with that part of the business, and tie it up with my growin' consciousness that Amelia was guilty. As originally planned, Avory had his sideboard all set; duplicates of decanters and glasses in the sideboard underneath, ready to be changed for the others. Lord love a duck, keep one concrete fact in mind. It's this: in Avory's scheme, he had no intention whatever of callin' in thepolice! There wasn't goin' to be any fine-tooth-comb search of the room or even the house. He only meant to fool his own little witnesses, his private witnesses, who wouldn't pry at all. All he had to do in the world was simply to shove decanter, syphon, glasses, and mint-extract into the bottom of the sideboard - and lock the sideboard doors. He could then get rid of the stuff after a dazed Reginald had been led away gibberin’. Don't you remember (see Mottram's notes on the