'And now, please, Tony, will you tell me all about it?'
Iris was lying on a sofa, and the valiant November sunshine was making a brave show outside the windows of Little Priors.
Anthony looked across at Colonel Race who was sitting on the window-sill, and grinned engagingly:
'I don't mind admitting, Iris, that I've been waiting for this moment. If I don't explain to someone soon how clever I've been, I shall burst. There will be no modesty in this recital. It will be a shameless blowing of my own trumpet with suitable pauses to enable you to say 'Anthony, how clever of you' or 'Tony, how wonderful' or some phrase of a like nature. Ahem! The performance will now begin. Here we go.
'The thing as a whole looked simple enough. What I mean is, that it looked like a clear case of cause and effect. Rosemary's death, accepted at the time as suicide, was not suicide. George became suspicious, started investigating, was presumably getting near the truth, and before he could unmask the murderer he was, in his turn, murdered. The sequence, if I may put it that way, seems perfectly clear.
'But almost at once we came across some apparent contradictions. Such as: A. George could not be poisoned. B. George was poisoned. And: A. Nobody touched George's glass. B. George's glass was tampered with.
'Actually I was overlooking a very significant fact – the varied use of the possessive case. George's ear is George's ear indisputably because it is attached to his head and cannot be removed without a surgical operation! But by George's watch, I mean the watch that George is wearing – the question might arise whether it is his or maybe one lent him by someone else. And when I come to George's glass, or George's teacup, I begin to realise that I mean something very vague indeed. All I actually mean is the glass or cup out of which George has lately been drinking – and which has nothing to distinguish it from several other cups and glasses of the same pattern.
'To illustrate this, I tried an experiment. Race was drinking tea without sugar, Kemp was drinking tea with sugar, and I was drinking coffee. In appearance the three fluids were of much the same colour. We were sitting round a small marble-topped table among several other round marble-topped tables. On the pretext of an urgent brainwave I urged the other two out of their seats and out into the vestibule, pushing the chairs aside as we went, and also managing to move Kemp's pipe which was lying by his plate to a similar position by my plate but without letting him see me do it. As soon as we were outside I made an excuse and we returned, Kemp slightly ahead. He pulled the chair to the table and sat down opposite the plate that was marked by the pipe he had left behind him. Race sat on his right as before and I on his left – but mark what happened – a new A. and B. contradiction! A. Kemp's cup has sugared tea in it. B. Kemp's cup has coffee in it. Two conflicting statements that cannot both be true – But they are both true. The misleading term is Kemp's cup. Kemp's cup when he left the table and Kemp's cup when he returned to the table are not the same.
'And that, Iris, is what happened at the Luxembourg that night. After the cabaret, when you all went to dance, you dropped your bag. A waiter picked it up – 'a' waiter, not the waiter attending on that table who knew just where you had been sitting – but a waiter, an anxious hurried little waiter with everybody bullying him, running along with a sauce, and who quickly stooped, picked up the bag and placed it by a plate – actually by the plate one place to the left of where you had been sitting. You and George came back first and you went without a thought straight to the place marked by your bag – just as Kemp did to the place marked by his pipe. George sat down in what he thought to be his place, on your right. And when he proposed his toast in memory of Rosemary, he drank from what he thought was his glass but was in reality your glass – the glass that can quite easily have been poisoned without needing a conjuring trick to explain it, because the only person who did not drink after the cabaret, was necessarily the person whose health was being drunk!
'Now go over the whole business again and the set-up is entirely different! You were the intended victim, not George! So it looks, doesn't it, as though George is being used – what, if things had not gone wrong, would have been the story as the world would see it? A repetition of the party a year ago – and a repetition of – suicide! Clearly people would say, a suicidal streak in that family! Bit of paper which has contained cyanide found in your bag. Clear case! Poor girl has been brooding over her sister's death. Very sad – but these rich girls are sometimes very neurotic!'
Iris interrupted him. She cried out: 'But why should anyone want to kill me? Why? Why?'
'All that lovely money, angel. Money, money, money! Rosemary's money went to you on her death. Now suppose you were to die – unmarried. What would happen to that money? The answer was it would go to your next of kin – to your aunt, Lucilla Drake. Now from all accounts of the dear lady, I could hardly see Lucilla Drake as First Murderess. But is there anyone else who would benefit? Yes, indeed. Victor Drake. If Lucilla has money, it will be exactly the same as Victor having it – Victor will see to that! He has always been able to do what he likes with his mother. And there is nothing difficult about seeing Victor as First Murderer. All along, from the very start of the case, there had been reference to Victor, mentions of Victor. He has been in the offing, a shadowy, unsubstantial, evil figure.'
'But Victor's in the Argentine! He's been in South America for over a year.'
'Has he? We're coming now to what has been said to be the fundamental plot of every story. 'Girl meets Boy!' When Victor met Ruth Lessing, this particular story started. He got hold of her. I think she must have fallen for him pretty badly. Those quiet, level-headed, law-abiding women are the kind that often fall for a real bad lot.
'Think a minute and you'll realise that all the evidence for Victor's being in South America depends on Ruth's word. None of it was verified because it was never a main issue! Ruth said that she had seen Victor off on the S.S. Cristobal before Rosemary's death! It was Ruth who suggested putting a call through to Buenos Aires on the day of George's death – and later sacked the telephone girl who might have inadvertantly let out that she did no such thing.
'Of course it's been easy to check up now! Victor Drake arrived in Buenos Aires by a boat leaving England the day after Rosemary's death a year ago. Ogilvie, in Buenos Aires , had no telephone conversation with Ruth on the subject of Victor Drake on the day of George's death. And Victor Drake left Buenos Aires for New York some weeks ago. Easy enough for him to arrange for a cable to be sent off in his name on a certain day – one of those well-known cables asking for money that seemed proof positive that he was many thousands of miles away. Instead of which –'
'Yes, Anthony?'
'Instead of which,' said Anthony, leading up to his climax with intense pleasure, 'he was sitting at the next table to ours at the Luxembourg with a not so dumb blonde!'
'Not that awful looking man?'
'A yellow blotchy complexion and bloodshot eyes are easy things to assume, and they make a lot of difference to a man. Actually, of our party, I was the only person (apart from Ruth Lessing) who had ever seen Victor Drake – and I had never known him under that name! In any case I was sitting with my back to him. I did think I recognised, in the cocktail lounge outside, as we came in, a man I had known in my prison days – Monkey Coleman. But as I was now leading a highly respectable life I was not too anxious that he should recognise me. I never for one moment suspected that Monkey Coleman had had anything to do with the crime – much less that he and Victor Drake were one and the same.'
'But I don't see now how he did it?'
Colonel Race took up the tale.
'In the easiest way in the world. During the cabaret he went out to telephone, passing our table. Drake had been an actor and he had been something more important – a waiter. To assume the make-up and play the part of Pedro Morales was child's play to an actor, but to move deftly round a table, with the step and gait of a waiter, filling up the champagne glasses, needed the definite knowledge and technique of a man who had actually been a waiter. A clumsy action or movement would have drawn your attention to him, but as a bona fide waiter none of you noticed or saw him. You were looking at the cabaret, not noticing that portion of the restaurant's furnishings – the waiter!'
Iris said in a hesitating voice: 'And Ruth?'
Anthony said: 'It was Ruth, of course, who put the cyanide paper in your bag – probably in the cloak-room at the beginning of the evening. The same technique she had adopted a year ago – with Rosemary.'
'I always thought it odd,' said Iris, 'that George hadn't told Ruth about those letters. He consulted her about everything.'
Anthony gave a short laugh.
