The Judas Window

plan) that the key to the sideboard doors was actually found in his pocket?

'But when Amelia stepped into the scheme, she had no intention of leavin' it at that She was goin' to kill him. And that meant the police in. And all those incriminatin' souvenirs couldn't merely be left in the sideboard; they had to be got out of the house, or the blame wouldn't be fastened on the wrong feller who was lyin' unconscious.'

‘I liked her,' said Evelyn suddenly. 'Oh, dash it all! -I mean -'

'Listen,' said H.M.

He pulled open the drawer of the desk. Taking out one of those terrible blue-bound folders I had seen often enough before (this one had not been there long enough to accumulate dust), he flipped it open.

'You know she died at St Bartholomew's last night,’ he' said. 'You also know she made a statement before she died; the papers have been full enough of it. Here's a copy. Now listen to a paragraph or two.

I worked for him for fourteen years. I did more than that; I drudged for him. But I did not mind that, because for a long time I thought I loved him. I thought that when his wife died he would marry me, but he did not. I had had other offers of marriage, too; but I turned them all down, because I thought he would marry me. And he never said a word about it; he said he would always be faithful to his wife's memory. But there was nothing else to do, so I stayed on at the house.

' 'I knew that in his will he had left me five thousand pounds. It was the only thing in the world I had to look forward to. Then we learned that Mary was going to get married. All of a sudden he told me this mad idea that he was going to change that will, and to put every penny he had into trust for a son that was not even born. The horrible part was that I suddenly saw he meant it. I could not have stood that, and I did not mean to stand for it.

''... of course I knew all about what he and Spencer and Dr Tregannon were going to, do. I knew about it from the beginning, though Avory did not know I knew; he thought women should not be concerned with things like that, and he would not have told me. There is something else I must tell you, and it is that I like Mary very much. I never would have killed Avory and tried to put the blame on Mr Caplon Answell; this Reginald Answell was blackmailing Mary and I thought he would get what he deserved if I put the blame on him. How was I to know it was not the right man?'

'That's true,' growled H.M. 'It's a good half of the reason why she broke down with brain-fever when she found what she'd done.'

'But she didn't own up afterwards,' said Evelyn. 'She swore there in court that old Avory had been after Jim Answell all the time.'

'She was protectin' the family,' said H.M. 'Does that sound very rummy to you? No, I think you understand. She was protectin' the family as well as protectin' herself.'

'I did not say anything at all to Avory, about my knowing of his scheme, until just about a quarter of an hour before I killed him. When Dyer had gone out of the house to get the car, I came downstairs with the bags. I went straight to the study door and knocked, and I said: 'I know you've got him in there drugged with brudine; but there's nobody else in the house, so open this door and let me help you.'

'The odd part of it was that he did not seem terribly surprised. He needed support, too: it was the first crooked thing he had ever done, and when he came to do it he had to lean on me. Well, it was the first crooked thing I had ever done too, but I was much better at it than he was. That was how I was able to make him do what I said.

'I told him he was a very foolish man to think that, when Captain Answell - that is who I thought it was - when Captain Answcll woke up, he would not make a terrible fuss and demand to have the house searched. I said Mr Fleming would be there, and Mr Fleming was just the man to insist on searching the house for glasses or syphons or things. He knew that was true, and it frightened him. It is about seven years, I think, since I have been in love with Avory; and right then I hated him.

'I said that I had my valise outside, and I was going to the country in a few minutes. I said I would take all the things along, and get rid of them. He agreed to that.

'We put that automatic in the man's pocket - he was lying on the floor - and we tried to pour some stuff down his throat. I was afraid we had choked him. After we had given the arrow a pull and dragged it down, and cut Avory's hand to make it look real ... Avory was not a coward, though I should have been afraid to have that done ... we had to put finger-prints on it. The hardest part was for me to get the arrow out into the hall now without him suspecting anything. This is how I did it. The decanter and glasses and things were all out there already. I pretended to hear Dyer coming back, and I ran out of the room holding the arrow by the tip, and cried out to him to bolt the door quick. He did it without thinking, because he was an old man and not used to such work.

'Then I had to hurry. I had already put the cross-bow in the dark hall; I meant to take it back to the shed after I had finished. And the thread was already inside the knob on the door...'

H.M. tossed the blue-bound sheets on his desk.

'The worst of it bein’ he said, 'that, just as she had finished her work, she did hear Dyer comin' back. That was the trouble, I suspected at the time she hadn't allowed for the delay in persuadin' and arguin' with old Avory, and she cut it too fine. Just as she finished sealin' up the door again (with Avory Hume's gloves, which we found in that suitcase), up comes Dyer. She had no intention of shovin' away the cross-bow in the suitcase. The thing to do was take it back to the shed, where nobody'd suspect it But she hadn't time now. She hadn't even time to disengage the piece of feather from the windlass. Burn me, what was she goin' to do with that bow? In thirty seconds more, Dyer will be there and see everything.

',That was what caused me the trouble at the start, and nearly sent me wrong. She had a little valise and a big suitcase, and both of 'em were back there in the hall. What she intended to do, of course, was to put the other preparations in her own valise, disposing of 'em later, and take the cross-bow back to the shed: the best course. But - Dyer appearin' too soon - the bow had to go into Spencer's suitcase; it was too big to fit into the smaller bag.

'It made me suspect (for a long time) that Spencer himself must certainly be concerned in the murder. Hey? She's used his suitcase. When the whole week-end kit suddenly disappears, and later Spencer makes no row about it-‘

'He certainly didn't,' I said. 'On the afternoon of the first day of the trial, he went out of his way to declare he'd sent the golf-suit to the cleaner's.'

'Well, I assumed that he must be tangled up in the murder,' said H.M. plaintively. 'And possibly that he and our friend Amelia planned the whole show together: Spencer carefully preparin' an alibi at the hospital. We've now got the reconstruction of the story up to the time Amelia runs out of the house, to drive to St Praed's after Spencer; and that whole run of dirty work looked almighty likely.

'But I was sittin' and thinkin', and one thing bothered me badly. She had nipped out of the house with that suitcase, and she couldn't very well bring it back again - on that night, at least - in case anybody got suspicious or still; happened to be whistlin' for ink-pads. She had to dispose of it somehow, and to do it in a snappin'-of-your- fingers time; for she had to go direct to the hospital and fetch back Uncle Spencer. If she and Spencer had been concerned together in the murder, you'd have thought she'd have left the suitcase at the hospital: where he would have a room or at least a locker of his own. But that didn't happen. As you see from my note on the time-schedule, the hall porter saw her arrive and drive away with

Spencer, and no suitcase was handed out. Then where the blazes did it go? She couldn't chuck it in the gutter or hand it to a blind beggar; and gettin' rid of a suitcase full of dangerous souvenirs (even temporarily) is a devilish difficult trick. There's only one thing that could have been done, in the very limited time the schedule shows you she took. When you're at St Praed's Hospital in Praed Street, as you know and as has been pointed out to you even if you didn't, you're smack up against Paddington Station. It could have been put into the Left-Luggage Department. This was inevitable, my lads. It had to be.

'Now here was (possibly) a bit of luck. I thought of it 'way back in February. Since the night of the murder, Amelia had been flat on her back with a bad case of brain-fever, and hadn't been allowed out. At that time she still hadn't come out. She couldn't have gone to reclaim the case. As I say, logically the damned suitcase had to be there-

'Well, like the idiot boy, I went there; and it was. You know what I did. I took along my old pal Dr Parker and Shanks the odd-jobs man; I wanted them to be witnesses of the find as well as examiners of it. For I couldn't stop