Seeing is Believing

'I thought so,' said Rich. 'Thick rubber round the handle. And it's pretty dark by that little table. When Mrs. Fane picked it up, she felt the rubber and even her subconscious mind told her it was the same toy dagger she expected it to be. So she didn't hesitate to obey the order.' He balanced the knife in his palm. 'Even the weight wouldn't tell her any different. Somebody's got a lot to answer for.'

'You mean-'

'I mean,' said Rich, putting the knife on the floor and getting up, 'that I can't be held responsible. Not this time. Someone exchanged a harmless dagger for a real one, and got Mrs. Fane to kill her husband without knowing what she was doing.' He pressed a hand to his pink forehead. 'It's odd. It's devilish odd. We know the murderer. But we don't know the guilty person.'

There was a silence.

'But how could anybody have exchanged the daggers?' wondered Ann Browning. 'Eh?'

'I said,' repeated Ann in a small but clear voice, 'how could anybody have exchanged the daggers?'

They all turned to look at her.

For the first time they became conscious of her as a personality, because in these events she had (they remembered) not cried out, or whimpered, or fainted, or done anything they might have expected.

She was rather pale, and she had pushed her chair farther back from Arthur's body: no more. Her slim fingers plucked at the arms of the chair.

'You see—' She stopped as though confused, but presently went on. 'The last person to touch the dagger was Mr. Fane himself. Wasn't it?'

Again there was a silence.

'It was,' Sharpless said abruptly.

'He was sitting there,' pursued Ann, puckering up her face, 'with the revolver and the dagger in his hands. It was a rubber dagger then. Because I remember him twisting it back and forth.'

The memory of everyone present moved back into the past, recalling images.

'That's true,' admitted Rich, with the same abruptness. 'I saw him do it myself.'

'Then you—' Ann looked at Rich—'told him to put the revolver and the dagger on that little table. He got up, and went to the table, and put them down, and came back here.

But not one of the rest of us has been anywhere near that table since.'

The recollection was so clear, the fact so undeniable, that no one spoke. They all turned to look at the table, which was in the middle of the room at least twelve feet away from the huddled group round the easy chair.

Ann hesitated, moistening her pink lips. 'Please. I don't want you to think I'm intruding, or speaking up when I shouldn't. But look.

'None of us left this semi-circle where we were standing or sitting. We stayed where we were, even when Vicky was out of the circle herself and going to the other end of the room. Dr. Rich didn't follow her: he stayed here too. We could all see each other all of the time. Nobody went near that table. None of us could have exchanged the daggers.'

Once more the long pause stretched out….

'That's true!' Sharpless exploded. 'It's as true as gospel!'

Rich managed a smile, a heavy, uneasy twist of a smile.

'You're quite a detective, Miss Browning,' he observed, and the color rose in her face. 'I can't help agreeing. It is true. And in that case…'

Ann frowned.

'Well, you see, in that case it means that somebody who wasn't in the room must have sneaked in and —'

She paused. As her eyes moved round, they rested on Hubert Fane; and her expression became frightened.

'So,' observed Dr. Rich thoughtfully.

Hubert Fane had one hand on the back of a chair. He looked like a man on whom the fates are playing dirty tricks much faster and more unreasonably than any human being ever deserved.

'Please don't think—!' began Ann.

Hubert cleared his throat.

'Your delicacy, Miss Browning,' he said, 'fills me with ecstasy. At the same time, I. am capable of taking a bint. Madam, I did not kill my nephew. I think I can give you my solemn assurance that he was the last person in the world I wished to see dead. It is true that I was obliged to leave the room. But, apart from the fact that I was talking to a grasping bookmaker named—'

'Wait!' urged Ann.

She put her finger-tips to her forehead.

'You don't mind?' she asked Hubert.

Hubert gestured the courteous assent of a man who, privately, would like to put her across his knee and wallop her.

'You couldn't have exchanged those daggers before you went out of the room,' said Ann. 'Because the same thing applies to you as applies to the rest of us. You never went near that table at any time. When you were called out of the room, I remember watching you. You never left the semi-circle before you walked straight out of the room after Daisy.'

'That also,' agreed Sharpless, 'is true.'

'Sir. Madam. I thank you. But—'

'But,' said Ann, 'I don't see how you — oh, please! — you or anybody else could have got in here to do it afterwards. Or to do it at any time, if it comes to that.'

Dr. Richard Rich appeared to be considerably taken aback by the rush with which this quiet girl had gathered up the proceedings in her own hands.

'Nobody could have got in at any time? I don't follow that.'

'Well… for instance, the door.'

'Yes?'

'It's almost on top of us,' said Ann. 'It creaks badly no matter how you try to open it. Could anyone have come in there, walked past die light clear across to that table on a bare hardwood floor, changed the daggers, and walked out again, without our seeing him?'

They envisaged this.

'No,' said Sharpless. 'It's impossible. Besides, I'll swear nobody did.'

Rich massaged his head. 'But the windows?' he suggested.

'That floor!' cried Ann. 'And the drawn curtains! And-'

With a cluck of his tongue as though in realization, Sharpless strode across to the windows. As soon as he reached the section of the floor anywhere near the windows, the resulting creaks and cracks made him pause.

He looked at the white curtains, smoothly drawn and undisturbed. He pushed them aside on one window, and put his head out.

'This window,' he reported, 'is eight feet up from the ground. Has anybody got an electric torch?'

Hubert Fane fetched one out of a drawer in the telephone table. Sharpless switched it on, and swept its beam outside.

'Eight feet up,' he said, 'and there's an unmarked flower-bed underneath. Nobody even climbed up here, much less disturbed those curtains, climbed in, and got twelve or fifteen feet across hell's own squeaky floor to the table — all without being seen or heard. It's just impossible. Come and look for yourselves.'

He switched off the torch. He turned round from the window and ran a hand through his hair. The tall black- and-scarlet devil seemed to have become a much bewildered and harassed young man.

'But we didn't do it,' he protested.

'No.' Rich's voice was sharp. 'We can be certain we didn't do it. Any of us. We can — what's the word? — give each other an alibi.'

'But somebody changed the daggers!'

'How?' asked Ann.

'You don't suppose—' Sharpless hesitated—'you don't suppose Fane did it himself?'

'When,' inquired Rich, 'he knew he was going to he stabbed with it? And, in fact, insisted on this when I