The Skeleton in the Clock

while,'—I'm quoting, so note the 'a while,'—and she went in.”

'Then, and only then, did the governess and the boy come round the side of the house. Lord love a duck! For the precedin’ events, you could easily allow five minutes.

'But did the boy and the governess say the things, twenty years ago when it was fresh in mind, as Ricky Fleet said to me as well as to Jenny and Martin Drake? Including, for instance, that fancy touch about hearin' Dr. Laurier say, 'Get the tablecloth out of the hall?' So I asked Masters to check over their statements made to the local police.

'And they had said the same things. Therefore they were both tellin' a pack of lies. Q.E.D.'

Again HM. threw back the blue folder among the other papers.

'But there was another great big lie,' he went an, screwing up his face hideously, 'that the old man had to see through before the solution was so blazin' obvious. That lie has caused half the mystery in this case. It had to do with how Fleet was murdered.

'When I went up to have a look at that roof-top for the first time, I was stumped and flummoxed. I couldn't think of anything but colour. I talked more about colour than an interior decorator. Because I'd got my mind fixed on that pink flash.

'So I went to the front of the roof. And then this here venerable scalp did start to stir a bit with wheels workin' inside. I hadn't quite visualized the surroundings. Arthur Puckston had been over on that north gable, in a position to look at Fleet sideways — well sideways.

'It went like this: Puckston probably wrote the anonymous postcards; only a postcard mentioned the pink flash; Puckston had told lies in his statement to the police; Puckston looked sideways…

'The pink flash must have been that lurid-glowin' sky on something white or whitish. It must have moved, pretty sharply, or there wouldn't have been any flash. It couldn't have been up in the air, or Frew would have seen it But — stop a bit! — Puckston could see what Frew couldn't see: he could see behind Fleet and a part of the roof-floor. Down on the floor

'Now think! That look of intense pain or weakness, or both, which strikes the victim all of a sudden and holds him there for a second…'

'A sword!' interposed Stannard.

'Nol' said H.M. sharply. 'That's the one thing it couldn't have been, in spite of the tinge of steel in ail this case. Because. why?

'Because a sword or sharp blade would have meant blood. Because that's, the one thing mat couldn't be concealed. Remember, Fleet's body was lying smack in front of a number of witnesses. Lemme quote again; and I've been over it so much I can. quote from memory.'

H.M. closed his eyes.

Bert (the policeman) came out and seemed to argue with Dr. Laurier about who carried Sir George. Bert took his head in the cloth and Dr. Laurier took his legs. They carried…

H.M. sat up.

'Even if old Dr. Pierre Laurier had been up to hanky-panky, he couldn't have concealed any blood below the shoulders.

'Then bang! On Sunday night this feller-' H.M. pointed to Martin—'came weaving his way downstairs after a fall off that roof, and he tells me I ought to see 'young' Dr. Laurier if I wanted information about swordsmanship in remembering (hem!) my reincarnation. He mentioned a cut called the 'Low-high.'

'Now upstairs I'd got a book called The Cavaliers, which I'd been readin’. As I distinctly told Masters at the pub on Saturday, it was a book on swordsmanship. The 'Low-high' was a cut by which the trickster dropped down and cut viciously across the backs of both his opponent's legs just above the ankle.-And the only way anybody could have attacked George Fleet would have been round his feet or ankles under that six- inch parapet

'A sword wasn't used. But at the same moment I remembered what else was hangin' on the wall of the study upstairs. You,' he glared at Martin, 'must have seen for yourself. And I remembered Dr. Laurier in the rocking-chair.'

H.M. drew a deep breath.

'Y'see, this wasn't intended to be an impossible crime. Only one big whitewashed lie made it so. A twelve- year-old young 'un had been beaten too much by a father he hated. He was goin' to stalk his father just like a red Indian. Only he was goin' to kill him.

'He knew (he said so) his father was goin' up to that roof to watch the hunt when it came near. George Fleet always did. How did the twelve-year-old get up there? By a door, leadin' to the back garden, and a staircase going straight up there. Could he stalk the old devil, in all the excitement of the hunt without his father seein' him?

'Easy! And why? Because of field-glasses. 'Y’know, Masters kept goin' on at me and raving when I insisted there was only one thing I wanted to know: were they good field-glasses, nothing wrong or wonky about them?”

That would have been my question no matter how Fleet had been killed. Lord love a duck! Suppose you or I look through a pair of field-glasses, and the vision don't seem to come into focus when we fiddle with the wheel?

'Well, we get mad; we get a vague sort of idea there's something wrong with the scenery and turn 'em somewhere else. We look round. We take the glasses away from our eyes and examine 'em all ways. But, if they're good, we don't notice what's goin' on around us.

'Fleet didn't. That twelve-year-old maniac — with a certain boy's weapon you'll guess — crawled belly-flat like a red Indian under the ledge of the north wall, and then under the ledge of the east wall towards where his father was standing. Remember: not a soul looked round until shortly before Fleet fell. Once the boy was under that front ledge on the east side, nobody could see him; not even Puckston. I think Masters may have told a couple of you that people won't believe how small a space can hide a full-grown adult, let alone a small boy.

'I'd dismissed that possibility at first, because I kept thinkin' of somebody startin' a tussle with the legs or ankles of a powerful man like Fleet. And Masters never dreamed of a kid. But also remember: Ricky Fleet, as he'd told Stannard in the condemned cell at Pentecost, wasn't what you might call ordinary in another way. He could put-the-weight a distance of twenty seven feet three inches when he was eleven. A lot of grown men couldn't do that

'On he goes, just as crazy-excited as we've seen him on other occasions, with the music of the hunt to encourage him. The hounds were after the fox; he was after the wolf. He's carrying something out of the realm of sport but a nasty heavy weapon if you remember it's…'

'A cricket-bat!' Jenny whispered. 'He told us they'd given him a new cricket-bat that week!'

'And when it's new,' said H.M., 'it's the whitest of white ash. Don't see it as an ordinary cricket-bat: see the heavy broadness taperin' on each side to the very-narrow-rounded edge that's like the edge of a wooden blade.

'One hand, lyin' flat with his left arm under him, was all Ricky Fleet needed. It was the narrow blade of the bat. Out and back it went: flash! open and shut! It smashed across the back of Fleet's legs just above the ankle, the most painful of all places. It fractured the bone in both legs without drawin' a drop of blood. Fleet jerked in horrible pain; he couldn't stand straight, and—

'That's all. After the first thirty seconds or so, no witness (see testimony!) was studyin' that roof. They all looked down at the terrace, while the boy crawled back by way of the north ledge. But I'm bettin' he never thought anybody could see him at any time, except maybe God.

'You,' H.M. said to Martin. 'Burn it, you must have seen the row of cricket bats in Fleet's study! On Sunday night I remembered 'em; I remembered the 'Low-high' cut; I wanted to look it up in my book. And I remembered something else too: Or. Laurier, old Dr. Laurier, rocking back and forth before the skeleton-clock mutterin', ‘Would a man of honour have done it?'

'Done what? We know that after Fleet fell Dr. Laurier (quote) 'made as if he was examining all over Sir George.' He ordered the constable to take the head, in spite of an argument, and he took the legs. He was the old family friend, the one who cherished Aunt Cicely, and he knew all about the boy's psychopathic traits. He saw in a second this wasn't accident. Finally, remember, he was the police-surgeon,

'The awful creepin' danger was that the coppers, especially Scotland Yard, would tumble to the fracture at