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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75476 ***
+
+
+The Poisoned Chocolates Case
+
+by Anthony Berkeley
+
+Published in 1929 by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd
+Reprinted in 2016 by The British Library
+
+
+
+          To
+     S. H. J. Cox
+  because for once he
+    did not guess it
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+Roger Sheringham took a sip of the old brandy in front of him and
+leaned back in his chair at the head of the table.
+
+Through the haze of cigarette-smoke eager voices reached his ears from
+all directions, prattling joyfully upon this and that connected with
+murder, poisons and sudden death. For this was his own, his very own
+Crimes Circle, founded, organised, collected, and now run by himself
+alone; and when at the first meeting five months ago he had been
+unanimously elected its president, he had been as full of proud
+delight as on that never-to-be-forgotten day in the dim past when a
+cherub disguised as a publisher had accepted his first novel.
+
+He turned to Chief Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard who, as the
+guest of the evening, was sitting on his right, engaged, a little
+uneasily, with a positively enormous cigar.
+
+“Honestly, Moresby, without any disrespect to your own institution, I
+do believe that there’s more solid criminological genius in this room
+(intuitive genius, I mean; not capacity for taking pains) than
+anywhere in the world outside the _Sûreté_ in Paris.”
+
+“Do you, Mr. Sheringham?” said Chief Inspector Moresby tolerantly.
+Moresby was always kind to the strange opinions of others. “Well,
+well.” And he applied himself again to the lighted end of his cigar,
+which was so very far from the other that Moresby could never tell by
+mere suction at the latter whether the former were still alight or
+not.
+
+Roger had some grounds for his assertion beyond mere parental pride.
+Entry into the charmed Crimes Circle’s dinners was not to be gained by
+all and hungry. It was not enough for a would-be member to profess an
+adoration for murder and let it go at that; he or she had got to prove
+that they were capable of worthily wearing their criminological spurs.
+
+Not only must the interest be intense in all branches of the science,
+in the detection side, for instance, just as much as the side of
+criminal psychology, with the history of all cases of the least
+importance at the applicant’s finger-tips, but there must be
+constructive ability too; the candidate must have a brain and be able
+to use it. To this end, a paper had to be written, from a choice of
+subjects suggested by members, and submitted to the president, who
+passed on such as he considered worthy to the members in conclave, who
+thereupon voted for or against the suppliant’s election; and a single
+adverse vote meant rejection.
+
+It was the intention of the club to acquire eventually thirteen
+members, but so far only six had succeeded in passing their tests, and
+these were all present on the evening when this chronicle opens. There
+was a famous lawyer, a scarcely less famous woman dramatist, a
+brilliant novelist who ought to have been more famous than she was,
+the most intelligent (if not the most amiable) of living
+detective-story writers, Roger Sheringham himself, and Mr. Ambrose
+Chitterwick, who was not famous at all, a mild little man of no
+particular appearance who had been even more surprised at being
+admitted to this company of personages than they had been at finding
+him amongst them.
+
+With the exception of Mr. Chitterwick, then, it was an assembly of
+which any organiser might have been proud. Roger this evening was not
+only proud but excited too, because he was going to startle them; and
+it is always exciting to startle personages. He rose to do so.
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen,” he proclaimed, after the welcome of glasses
+and cigarette-cases drummed on the table had died away. “Ladies and
+gentlemen, in virtue of the powers conferred by you the president of
+our Circle is permitted to alter at his discretion the arrangements
+made for any meeting. You all know what arrangements were made for
+this evening. Chief Inspector Moresby, whom we are so glad to welcome
+as the first representative of Scotland Yard to visit us”—more
+drumming on the table—“Chief Inspector Moresby was to be lulled by
+rich food and sound wine into being so indiscreet as to tell us about
+such of his experiences as could hardly be given to a body of
+pressmen.” More and longer drumming.
+
+Roger refreshed himself with a sip of brandy and continued. “Now I
+think I know Chief Inspector Moresby pretty well, ladies and
+gentlemen, and the occasions are not a few on which I too have tried,
+and tried very hard, to lure him similarly into the paths of
+indiscretion; but never once have I succeeded. I have therefore little
+hope that this Circle, lure it never so cooingly, will succeed in
+getting from the Chief Inspector any more interesting stories than he
+would mind being published in _The Daily Courier_ to-morrow. Chief
+Inspector Moresby, I am afraid, ladies and gentlemen, is unlurable.
+
+“I have therefore taken upon myself the responsibility of altering our
+entertainment for this evening; and the idea that has occurred to me
+in this connection will, I both hope and believe, appeal to you very
+considerably. I venture to think that it is both novel and
+enthralling.” Roger paused and beamed on the interested faces around
+him. Chief Inspector Moresby, a little puce below the ears, was still
+at grips with his cigar.
+
+“My idea,” Roger said, “is connected with Mr. Graham Bendix.” There
+was a little stir of interest. “Or rather,” he amended, more slowly,
+“with Mrs. Graham Bendix.” The stir subsided into a still more
+interested hush.
+
+Roger paused, as if choosing his words with more care. “Mr. Bendix
+himself is personally known to one or two of us here. Indeed, his name
+has actually been mentioned as that of a man who might possibly be
+interested, if approached, to become a member of this Circle. By Sir
+Charles Wildman, if I remember rightly.”
+
+The barrister inclined his rather massive head with dignity. “Yes, I
+suggested him once, I think.”
+
+“The suggestion was never followed up,” Roger continued. “I don’t
+quite remember why not; I think somebody else was rather sure that he
+would never be able to pass all our tests. But in any case the fact
+that his name was ever mentioned at all shows that Mr. Bendix is to
+some extent at least a criminologist, which means that our sympathy
+with him in the terrible tragedy that has befallen him is tinged with
+something of a personal interest, even in the case of those who, like
+myself, are not actually acquainted with him.”
+
+“Hear, hear,” said a tall, good-looking woman on the right of the
+table, in the clear tones of one very well accustomed to saying “hear,
+hear” weightily at appropriate moments during speeches, in case no one
+else did. This was Alicia Dammers, the novelist, who ran Women’s
+Institutes for a hobby, listened to other people’s speeches with
+genuine and altruistic enjoyment, and, in practice the most staunch of
+Conservatives, supported with enthusiasm the theories of the Socialist
+party.
+
+“My suggestion is,” Roger said simply, “that we turn that sympathy to
+practical uses.”
+
+There was no doubt that the eager attention of his audience was
+caught. Sir Charles Wildman lifted his bushy grey brows, from under
+which he was wont to frown with menacing disgust at the prosecution’s
+witnesses who had the bad taste to believe in the guilt of his own
+client, and swung his gold-rimmed eye-glasses on their broad black
+ribbon. On the other side of the table Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, a short,
+round, homely-looking woman who wrote surprisingly improper and most
+successful plays and looked exactly like a rather superior cook on her
+Sunday out, nudged the elbow of Miss Dammers and whispered something
+behind her hand. Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick blinked his mild blue eyes
+and assumed the appearance of an intelligent nanny-goat. The writer of
+detective-stories alone sat apparently unmoved and impassive; but in
+times of crisis he was wont to model his behaviour on that of his own
+favourite detective, who was invariably impassive at the most exciting
+moments.
+
+“I took the idea to Scotland Yard this morning,” Roger went on, “and
+though they never encourage that sort of idea there, they were really
+unable to discover any positive harm in it; with the result that I
+came away with a reluctant, but nevertheless official permission to
+try it out. And I may as well say at once that it was the same cue
+that prompted this permission as originally put the whole thing into
+my head”—Roger paused impressively and glanced round—“the fact that
+the police have practically given up all hope of tracing Mrs. Bendix’s
+murderer.”
+
+Ejaculations sounded on all sides, some of dismay, some of disgust,
+and some of astonishment. All eyes turned upon Moresby. That
+gentleman, apparently unconscious of the collective gaze fastened upon
+him, raised his cigar to his ear and listened to it intently, as if
+hoping to receive some intimate message from its depths.
+
+Roger came to his rescue. “That information is quite confidential, by
+the way, and I know none of you will let it escape beyond this room.
+But it is a fact. Active inquiries, having resulted in exactly
+nothing, are to be stopped. There is always hope of course that some
+fresh fact may turn up, but without it the authorities have come to
+the conclusion that they can get no farther. My proposal is,
+therefore, that this Club should take up the case where the
+authorities have left it.” And he looked expectantly round the circle
+of upturned faces.
+
+Every face asked a question at once.
+
+Roger forgot his periods in his enthusiasm and became colloquial.
+
+“Why, you see, we’re all keen, we’re not fools, and we’re not (with
+apologies to my friend Moresby) tied to any hard-and-fast method of
+investigation. Is it too much to hope that, with all six of us on our
+mettle and working quite independently of each other, one of us might
+achieve some result where the police have, to put it bluntly, failed?
+I don’t think it’s outside the possibilities. What do you say, Sir
+Charles?”
+
+The famous counsel uttered a deep laugh. “’Pon my word, Sheringham,
+it’s an interesting idea. But I must reserve judgment till you’ve
+outlined your proposal in a little more detail.”
+
+“I think it’s a wonderful idea, Mr. Sheringham,” cried Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, who was not troubled with a legal mind. “I’d like to
+begin this very evening.” Her plump cheeks positively quivered with
+excitement. “Wouldn’t you, Alicia?”
+
+“It has possibilities,” smiled that lady.
+
+“As a matter-of-fact,” said the writer of detective-stories, with an
+air of detachment, “I’d formed a theory of my own about this case
+already.” His name was Percy Robinson, but he wrote under the
+pseudonym of Morton Harrogate Bradley, which had so impressed the more
+simple citizens of the United States of America that they had bought
+three editions of his first book on the strength of that alone. For
+some obscure psychological reason Americans are always impressed by
+the use of surnames for Christian, and particularly when one of them
+happens to be the name of an English watering-place.
+
+Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick beamed in a mild way, but said nothing.
+
+“Well,” Roger took up his tale, “the details are open to discussion,
+of course, but I thought that, if we all decide to make the trial, it
+would be more amusing if we worked independently. Moresby here can
+give us the plain facts as they’re known to the police. He hasn’t been
+in charge of the case himself, but he’s had one or two jobs in
+connection with it and is pretty well up in the facts; moreover he has
+very kindly spent most of the afternoon examining the dossier at
+Scotland Yard so as to be sure of omitting nothing this evening.
+
+“When we’ve heard him some of us may be able to form a theory at once;
+possible lines of investigation may occur to others which they will
+wish to follow up before they commit themselves. In any case, I
+suggest that we allow ourselves a week in which to form our theories,
+verify our hypotheses, and set our individual interpretations on the
+facts that Scotland Yard has collected, during which time no member
+shall discuss the case with any other member. We may achieve nothing
+(most probably we shall not), but in any case it will be a most
+interesting criminological exercise; for some of us practical, for
+others academical, just as we prefer. And what I think should be most
+interesting will be to see if we all arrive at the same result or not.
+Ladies and gentlemen, the meeting is open for discussion, or whatever
+is the right way of putting it. In other words: what about it?” And
+Roger dropped back, not reluctantly, into his seat.
+
+Almost before his trousers had touched it the first question reached
+him.
+
+“Do you mean that we’re to go out and act as our own detectives, Mr.
+Sheringham, or just write a thesis on the facts that the Chief
+Inspector is going to give us?” asked Alicia Dammers.
+
+“Whichever each one of us preferred, I thought,” Roger answered.
+“That’s what I meant when I said that the exercise would be practical
+for some of us and academic for others.”
+
+“But you’ve got so much more experience than us on the practical side,
+Mr. Sheringham,” pouted Mrs. Fielder-Flemming (yes, pouted).
+
+“And the police have so much more than me,” Roger countered.
+
+“It will depend whether we use deductive or inductive methods, no
+doubt,” observed Mr. Morton Harrogate Bradley. “Those who prefer the
+former will work from the police-facts and won’t need to make any
+investigations of their own, except perhaps to verify a conclusion or
+two. But the inductive method demands a good deal of inquiry.”
+
+“Exactly,” said Roger.
+
+“Police-facts and the deductive method have solved plenty of serious
+mysteries in this country,” pronounced Sir Charles Wildman. “I shall
+rely on them for this one.”
+
+“There’s one particular feature of this case,” murmured Mr. Bradley to
+nobody, “that ought to lead one straight to the criminal. I’ve thought
+so all the time. I shall concentrate on that.”
+
+“I’m sure I haven’t the remotest idea how one sets about investigating
+a point, if it becomes desirable,” observed Mr. Chitterwick uneasily;
+but nobody heard him, so it did not matter.
+
+“The only thing that struck me about this case,” said Alicia Dammers,
+very distinctly, “regarded, I mean, as a pure case, was its complete
+absence of any psychological interest whatever.” And without actually
+saying so, Miss Dammers conveyed the impression that if that were so,
+she personally had no further use for it.
+
+“I don’t think you’ll say that when you’ve heard what Moresby’s got to
+tell us,” Roger said gently. “We’re going to hear a great deal more
+than has appeared in the newspapers, you know.”
+
+“Then let’s hear it,” suggested Sir Charles, bluntly.
+
+“We’re all agreed, then?” said Roger, looking round as happily as a
+child who has been given a new toy. “Everybody is willing to try it
+out?”
+
+Amid the ensuing chorus of enthusiasm, one voice alone was silent. Mr.
+Ambrose Chitterwick was still wondering, quite unhappily, how, if it
+ever became necessary to go a-detecting, one went. He had studied the
+reminiscences of a hundred ex-detectives, the real ones, with large
+black boots and bowler hats; but all he could remember at that moment,
+out of all those scores of fat books (published at eighteen and
+sixpence, and remaindered a few months later at eighteen-pence), was
+that a real, _real_ detective, if he means to attain results, never
+puts on a false moustache but simply shaves his eyebrows. As a
+mystery-solving formula, this seemed to Mr. Chitterwick inadequate.
+
+Fortunately in the buzz of chatter that preceded the very reluctant
+rising of Chief Inspector Moresby, Mr. Chitterwick’s poltroonery went
+unnoticed.
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+Chief Inspector Moresby, having stood up and blushingly received his
+tribute of hand-claps, was invited to address the gathering from his
+chair and thankfully retired into that shelter. Consulting the sheaf
+of notes in his hand, he began to enlighten his very attentive
+audience as to the strange circumstances connected with Mrs. Bendix’s
+untimely death. Without reproducing his own words, and all the
+numerous supplementary questions which punctuated his story, the gist
+of what he had to tell was as follows:—
+
+
+On Friday morning, the fifteenth of November, Graham Bendix strolled
+into his club, the Rainbow, in Piccadilly, at about ten-thirty and
+asked if there were any letters for him. The porter handed him a
+letter and a couple of circulars, and he walked over to the fireplace
+in the hall to read them.
+
+While he was doing so another member entered the club. This was a
+middle-aged baronet, Sir Eustace Pennefather, who had rooms just round
+the corner, in Berkeley Street, but spent most of his time at the
+Rainbow. The porter glanced up at the clock, as he did every morning
+when Sir Eustace came in, and, as always, it was exactly half-past
+ten. The time was thus definitely fixed by the porter beyond any
+doubt.
+
+There were three letters and a small parcel for Sir Eustace, and he,
+too, took them over to the fireplace to open, nodding to Bendix as he
+joined him there. The two men knew each other only very slightly and
+had probably never exchanged more than half-a-dozen words in all.
+There were no other members in the hall just then.
+
+Having glanced through his letters, Sir Eustace opened the parcel and
+snorted with disgust. Bendix looked at him enquiringly, and with a
+grunt Sir Eustace thrust out the letter which had been enclosed in the
+parcel, adding an uncomplimentary remark upon modern trade methods.
+Concealing a smile (Sir Eustace’s habits and opinions were a matter of
+some amusement to his fellow-members), Bendix read the letter. It was
+from the firm of Mason & Sons, the big chocolate manufacturers, and
+was to the effect that they had just put on the market a new brand of
+liqueur-chocolates designed especially to appeal to the cultivated
+palates of Men of Taste. Sir Eustace being, presumably, a Man of
+Taste, would he be good enough to honour Mr. Mason and his sons by
+accepting the enclosed one-pound box, and any criticisms or
+appreciation that he might have to make concerning them would be
+esteemed almost more than a favour.
+
+“Do they think I’m a blasted chorus-girl,” fumed Sir Eustace, a
+choleric man, “to write ’em testimonials about their blasted
+chocolates? Blast ’em! I’ll complain to the blasted committee. That
+sort of blasted thing can’t blasted well be allowed here.” For the
+Rainbow Club, as every one knows, is a very proud and exclusive club
+indeed, with an unbroken descent from the Rainbow Coffee-House,
+founded in 1734. Not even a family founded by a king’s bastard can be
+quite so exclusive to-day as a club founded on a coffee-house.
+
+“Well, it’s an ill wind so far as I’m concerned,” Bendix soothed him.
+“It’s reminded me of something. I’ve got to get some chocolates
+myself, to pay an honourable debt. My wife and I had a box at the
+Imperial last night, and I bet her a box of chocolates to a hundred
+cigarettes that she wouldn’t spot the villain by the end of the second
+act. She won. I must remember to get them. It’s not a bad show. _The
+Creaking Skull_. Have you seen it?”
+
+“Not blasted likely,” replied the other, unsoothed. “Got something
+better to do than sit and watch a lot of blasted fools messing about
+with phosphorescent paint and pooping off blasted pop-guns at each
+other. Want a box of chocolates, did you say? Well, take this blasted
+one.”
+
+The money saved by this offer had no weight with Bendix. He was a very
+wealthy man, and probably had enough on him in actual cash to buy a
+hundred such boxes. But trouble is always worth saving. “Sure you
+don’t want them?” he demurred politely.
+
+In Sir Eustace’s reply only one word, several times repeated, was
+clearly recognisable. But his meaning was plain. Bendix thanked him
+and, most unfortunately for himself, accepted the gift.
+
+By an extraordinarily lucky chance the wrapper of the box was not
+thrown into the fire, either by Sir Eustace in his indignation or by
+Bendix himself when the whole collection, box, covering letter,
+wrapper and string, was shovelled into his hands by the almost
+apoplectic baronet. This was the more fortunate as both men had
+already tossed the envelopes of their letters into the flames.
+
+Bendix however merely walked over to the porter’s desk and deposited
+everything there, asking the man to keep the box for him. The porter
+put the box aside, and threw the wrapper into the waste-paper basket.
+The covering letter had fallen unnoticed from Bendix’s hand as he
+walked across the floor. This the porter tidily picked up a few
+minutes later and put in the waste-paper basket too, whence, with the
+wrapper, it was retrieved later by the police.
+
+These two articles, it may be said at once, constituted two of the
+only three tangible clues to the murder, the third of course being the
+chocolates themselves.
+
+Of the three unconscious protagonists in the impending tragedy, Sir
+Eustace was by far the most remarkable. Still a year or two under
+fifty, he looked, with his flaming red face and thickset figure, a
+typical country squire of the old school, and both his manners and his
+language were in accordance with tradition. There were other
+resemblances too, but they were equally on the surface. The voices of
+the country squires of the old school were often slightly husky
+towards late middle age, but it was not with whisky. They hunted, and
+so did Sir Eustace, with avidity; but the country squires confined
+their hunting to foxes, and Sir Eustace was far more catholic in his
+predatory tastes. Sir Eustace in short, without doubt, was a
+thoroughly bad baronet. But his vices were all on the large scale,
+with the usual result that most other men, good or bad, liked him well
+enough (except perhaps a few husbands here and there, or a father or
+two), and women openly hung on his husky words.
+
+In comparison with him Bendix was rather an ordinary man, a tall,
+dark, not unhandsome fellow of eight-and-twenty, quiet and somewhat
+reserved, popular in a way but neither inviting nor apparently
+reciprocating anything beyond a somewhat grave friendliness.
+
+He had been left a rich man on the death five years ago of his father,
+who had made a fortune out of land-sites, which he had bought up in
+undeveloped areas with an uncanny foresight to sell later, at never
+less than ten times what he had given for them, when surrounded by
+houses and factories erected with other people’s money. “Just sit
+tight and let other people make you rich,” had been his motto, and a
+very sound one it proved. His son, though left with an income that
+precluded any necessity to work, had evidently inherited his father’s
+tendencies, for he had a finger in a good many business pies just (as
+he explained a little apologetically) out of sheer love of the most
+exciting game in the world.
+
+Money attracts money. Graham Bendix had inherited it, he made it, and
+inevitably he married it too. The orphaned daughter of a Liverpool
+ship-owner she was, with not far off half-a-million in her own right
+to bring to Bendix, who needed it not at all. But the money was
+incidental, for he needed her if not her fortune, and would have
+married her just as inevitably (said his friends) if she had had not a
+farthing.
+
+She was so exactly his type. A tall, rather serious-minded,
+highly-cultured girl, not so young that her character had not had time
+to form (she was twenty-five when Bendix married her, three years
+ago), she was the ideal wife for him. A bit of a Puritan, perhaps, in
+some ways, but Bendix himself was ready enough to be a Puritan by then
+if Joan Cullompton was.
+
+For in spite of the way he developed later Bendix had sown as a youth
+a few wild oats in the normal way. Stage-doors, that is to say, had
+not been entirely strange to him. His name had been mentioned in
+connection with that of more than one frail and fluffy lady. He had
+managed, in short, to amuse himself, discreetly but by no means
+clandestinely, in the usual manner of young men with too much money
+and too few years. But all that, again in the ordinary way, had
+stopped with his marriage.
+
+He was openly devoted to his wife and did not care who knew it, while
+she too, if a trifle less obviously, was equally said to wear her
+heart on her sleeve. To make no bones about it, the Bendixes had
+apparently succeeded in achieving that eighth wonder of the modern
+world, a happy marriage.
+
+And into the middle of it there dropped, like a clap of thunder, the
+box of chocolates.
+
+“After depositing the box of chocolates with the porter,” Moresby
+continued, shuffling his papers to find the right one, “Mr. Bendix
+followed Sir Eustace into the lounge, where he was reading the
+_Morning Post_.”
+
+Roger nodded approval. There was no other paper that Sir Eustace could
+possibly have been reading but the _Morning Post_.
+
+Bendix himself proceeded to study _The Daily Telegraph_. He was rather
+at a loose end that morning. There were no board meetings for him, and
+none of the businesses in which he was interested called him out into
+the rain of a typical November day. He spent the rest of the morning
+in an aimless way, read the daily papers, glanced through the
+weeklies, and played a hundred up at billiards with another member
+equally idle. At about half-past twelve he went back to lunch to his
+house in Eaton Square, taking the chocolates with him.
+
+Mrs. Bendix had given orders that she would not be in to lunch that
+day, but her appointment had been cancelled and she too was lunching
+at home. Bendix gave her the box of chocolates after the meal as they
+were sitting over their coffee in the drawing-room, explaining how
+they had come into his possession. Mrs. Bendix laughingly teased him
+about his meanness in not buying her a box, but approved the make and
+was interested to try the firm’s new variety. Joan Bendix was not so
+serious-minded as not to have a healthy feminine interest in good
+chocolates.
+
+Their appearance, however, did not seem to impress her very much.
+
+“Kümmel, Kirsch, Maraschino,” she said, delving with her fingers among
+the silver-wrappered sweets, each bearing the name of its filling in
+neat blue lettering. “Nothing else, apparently. I don’t see anything
+new here, Graham. They’ve just taken those three kinds out of their
+ordinary liqueur-chocolates.”
+
+“Oh?” said Bendix, who was not particularly interested in chocolates.
+“Well, I don’t suppose it matters much. All liqueur-chocolates taste
+the same to me.”
+
+“Yes, and they’ve even packed them in their usual liqueur-chocolate
+box,” complained his wife, examining the lid.
+
+“They’re only a sample,” Bendix pointed out. “They may not have got
+the right boxes ready yet.”
+
+“I don’t believe there’s the slightest difference,” Mrs. Bendix
+pronounced, unwrapping a Kümmel. She held the box out to her husband.
+“Have one?”
+
+He shook his head. “No, thank you, dear. You know I never eat the
+things.”
+
+“Well, you’ve got to have one of these, as a penance for not buying me
+a proper box. Catch!” She threw him one. As he caught it she made a
+wry face. “Oh! I was wrong. These are different. They’re twenty times
+as strong.”
+
+“Well, they can bear at least that,” Bendix smiled, thinking of the
+usual anæmic sweetmeat sold under the name of chocolate-liqueur.
+
+He put the one she had given him in his mouth and bit it up; a burning
+taste, not intolerable but far too pronounced to be pleasant, followed
+the release of the liquid. “By Jove,” he exclaimed, “I should think
+they are strong. I believe they’ve filled them with neat alcohol.”
+
+“Oh, they wouldn’t do that, surely,” said his wife, unwrapping
+another. “But they are very strong. It must be the new mixture.
+Really, they almost burn. I’m not sure whether I like them or not. And
+that Kirsch one tasted far too strongly of almonds. This may be
+better. You try a Maraschino too.”
+
+To humour her he swallowed another, and disliked it still more.
+“Funny,” he remarked, touching the roof of his mouth with the tip of
+his tongue. “My tongue feels quite numb.”
+
+“So did mine at first,” she agreed. “Now it’s tingling rather. Well, I
+don’t notice any difference between the Kirsch and the Maraschino. And
+they do burn! I can’t make up my mind whether I like them or not.”
+
+“I don’t,” Bendix said with decision. “I think there’s something wrong
+with them. I shouldn’t eat any more if I were you.”
+
+“Well, they’re only an experiment, I suppose,” said his wife.
+
+A few minutes later Bendix went out, to keep an appointment in the
+City. He left his wife still trying to make up her mind whether she
+liked the chocolates or not, and still eating them to decide. Her last
+words to him were that they were making her mouth burn again so much
+that she was afraid she would not be able to manage any more.
+
+“Mr. Bendix remembers that conversation very clearly,” said Moresby,
+looking round at the intent faces, “because it was the last time he
+saw his wife alive.”
+
+The conversation in the drawing-room had taken place approximately
+between a quarter-past and half-past two. Bendix kept his appointment
+in the City at three, where he stayed for about half-an-hour, and then
+took a taxi back to his club for tea.
+
+He had been feeling extremely ill during his business-talk, and in the
+taxi he very nearly collapsed; the driver had to summon the porter to
+help get him out and into the club. They both described him as pale to
+the point of ghastliness, with staring eyes and livid lips, and his
+skin damp and clammy. His mind seemed unaffected, however, and once
+they had got him up the steps he was able to walk, with the help of
+the porter’s arm, into the lounge.
+
+The porter, alarmed by his appearance, wanted to send for a doctor at
+once, but Bendix, who was the last man to make a fuss, absolutely
+refused to let him, saying that it could only be a bad attack of
+indigestion and that he would be all right in a few minutes; he must
+have eaten something that disagreed with him. The porter was doubtful,
+but left him.
+
+Bendix repeated this diagnosis of his own condition a few minutes
+later to Sir Eustace Pennefather, who was in the lounge at the time,
+not having left the club at all. But this time Bendix added: “And I
+believe it was those infernal chocolates you gave me, now I come to
+think of it. I thought there was something funny about them at the
+time. I’d better go and ring up my wife and find out if she’s been
+taken like this too.”
+
+Sir Eustace, a kind-hearted man, who was no less shocked than the
+porter at Bendix’s appearance, was perturbed by the suggestion that he
+might in any way be responsible for it, and offered to go and ring up
+Mrs. Bendix himself as the other was in no fit condition to move.
+Bendix was about to reply when a strange change came over him. His
+body, which had been leaning limply back in his chair, suddenly heaved
+rigidly upright; his jaws locked together, the livid lips drawn back
+in a hideous grin, and his hands clenched on the arms of the chair. At
+the same time Sir Eustace became aware of an unmistakable smell of
+bitter almonds.
+
+Thoroughly alarmed now, believing indeed that Bendix was dying under
+his eyes, he raised a shout for the porter and a doctor. There were
+two or three other men at the further end of the big room (in which a
+shout had probably never been heard before in the whole course of its
+history) and these hurried up at once. Sir Eustace sent one off to
+tell the porter to get hold of the nearest doctor without a second’s
+delay, and enlisted the others to try to make the convulsed body a
+little more comfortable. There was no doubt among them that Bendix had
+taken poison. They spoke to him, asking how he felt and what they
+could do for him, but he either would not or could not answer. As a
+matter of fact, he was completely unconscious.
+
+Before the doctor had arrived, a telephone message was received from
+an agitated butler asking if Mr. Bendix was there, and if so would he
+come home at once as Mrs. Bendix had been taken seriously ill.
+
+At the house in Eaton Square matters had been taking much the same
+course with Mrs. Bendix as with her husband, though a little more
+rapidly. She remained for half-an-hour or so in the drawing-room after
+the latter’s departure, during which time she must have eaten about
+three more of the chocolates. She then went up to her bedroom and rang
+for her maid, to whom she said that she felt very ill and was going to
+lie down for a time. Like her husband, she ascribed her condition to a
+violent attack of indigestion.
+
+The maid mixed her a draught from a bottle of indigestion-powder,
+which consisted mainly of bicarbonate of soda and bismuth, and brought
+her a hot-water bottle, leaving her lying on the bed. Her description
+of her mistress’s appearance tallied exactly with the porter’s and
+taxi-man’s description of Bendix, but unlike them she did not seem to
+have been alarmed by it. She admitted later to the opinion that Mrs.
+Bendix, though anything but a greedy woman, must have overeaten
+herself at lunch.
+
+At a quarter past three there was a violent ring from the bell in Mrs.
+Bendix’s room.
+
+The girl hurried upstairs and found her mistress apparently in a
+cataleptic fit, unconscious and rigid. Thoroughly frightened now, she
+wasted some precious minutes in ineffectual attempts to bring her
+round, and then hurried downstairs to telephone for the doctor. The
+practitioner who regularly attended the house was not at home, and it
+was some time before the butler, who had found the half-hysterical
+girl at the telephone and taken matters into his own hands, could get
+into communication with another. By the time the latter did get there,
+nearly half-an-hour after Mrs. Bendix’s bell had rung, she was past
+help. Coma had set in, and in spite of everything the doctor could do
+she died in less than ten minutes after his arrival.
+
+She was, in fact, already dead when the butler telephoned to the
+Rainbow Club.
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+Having reached this stage in his narrative Moresby paused, for effect,
+breath and refreshment. So far, in spite of the eager interest with
+which the story had been followed, no fact had been brought out of
+which his listeners were unaware. It was the police investigations
+that they wanted to hear, for not only had no details of these been
+published but not so much as a hint had been given even as to the
+theory that was officially held.
+
+Perhaps Moresby had gathered something of this sentiment, for after a
+moment’s rest he resumed with a slight smile. “Well, ladies and
+gentlemen, I shan’t keep you much longer with these preliminaries, but
+it’s just as well to run through everything while we’re on it, if we
+want to get a view of the case as a whole.
+
+“As you know, then, Mr. Bendix himself did not die. Luckily for
+himself he had eaten only two of the chocolates, as against his wife’s
+seven, but still more luckily he had fallen into the hands of a clever
+doctor. By the time her doctor saw Mrs. Bendix it was too late for him
+to do anything; but the smaller amount of poison that Mr. Bendix had
+swallowed meant that its progress was not so rapid, and the doctor had
+time to save him.
+
+“Not that the doctor knew then what the poison was. He treated him
+chiefly for prussic acid poisoning, thinking from the symptoms and the
+smell that Mr. Bendix must have taken oil of bitter almonds, but he
+wasn’t sure and threw in one or two other things as well. Anyhow, it
+turned out in the end that he couldn’t have had a fatal dose, and he
+was conscious again by about eight o’clock that night. They’d put him
+into one of the club bedrooms, and by the next day he was
+convalescent.”
+
+At first, Moresby went on to explain, it was thought at Scotland Yard
+that Mrs. Bendix’s death and her husband’s narrow escape were due to a
+terrible accident. The police had of course taken the matter in hand
+as soon as the woman’s death was reported to them and the fact of
+poison established. In due course a District Detective Inspector
+arrived at the Rainbow Club, and as soon as the doctor would permit
+after Bendix’s recovery of consciousness held an interview with the
+still very sick man.
+
+The fact of his wife’s death was kept from him in his doubtful
+condition and he was questioned solely upon his own experience, for it
+was already clear that the two cases were bound up together and light
+on one would equally clarify the other. The Inspector told Bendix
+bluntly that he had been poisoned and pressed him as to how the stuff
+could have been taken: could he account for it in any way?
+
+It was not long before the chocolates came into Bendix’s mind. He
+mentioned their burning taste, and he mentioned having already spoken
+to Sir Eustace about them as the possible cause of his illness.
+
+This the inspector already knew.
+
+He had spent the time before Bendix came round in interviewing such
+people as had come into contact with him since his return to the club
+that afternoon. He had heard the porter’s story and he had taken steps
+to trace the taxi-man; he had spoken with the members who had gathered
+round Bendix in the lounge, and Sir Eustace had reported to him the
+remark of Bendix about the chocolates.
+
+The inspector had not attached very much importance to this at the
+moment, but simply as a matter of routine had questioned Sir Eustace
+closely as to the whole episode and, again as a matter of routine, had
+afterwards rummaged through the waste-paper basket and extricated the
+wrapper and the covering-letter. Still as a matter of routine, and
+still not particularly impressed, he now proceeded to question Bendix
+on the same topic, and then at last began to realise its significance
+as he heard how the two had shared the chocolates after lunch and how,
+even before Bendix had left home, the wife had eaten more than the
+husband.
+
+The doctor now intervened, and the inspector had to leave the
+sick-room. His first action was to telephone to his colleague at the
+Bendix home and tell him to take possession without delay of the box
+of chocolates which was probably still in the drawing-room; at the
+same time he asked for a rough idea of the number of chocolates that
+were missing. The other told him, nine or ten. The inspector, who on
+Bendix’s information had only accounted for six or seven, rang off and
+telephoned what he had learnt to Scotland Yard.
+
+Interest was now centred on the chocolates. They were taken to
+Scotland Yard that evening, and sent off at once to be analysed.
+
+“Well, the doctor hadn’t been far wrong,” said Moresby. “The poison in
+those chocolates wasn’t oil of bitter almonds as a matter of fact, it
+was nitrobenzene; but I understand that isn’t so very different. If
+any of you ladies or gentlemen have a knowledge of chemicals, you’ll
+know more about the stuff than I do, but I believe it’s used
+occasionally in the cheaper sorts of confectionery (less than it used
+to be, though) to give an almond-flavour as a substitute for oil of
+bitter almonds, which I needn’t tell you is a powerful poison too. But
+the most usual way of employing nitrobenzene commercially is in the
+manufacture of aniline dyes.”
+
+When the analyst’s preliminary report came through Scotland Yard’s
+initial theory of accidental death was strengthened. Here definitely
+was a poison used in the manufacture of chocolates and other sweets. A
+terrible mistake must have been made. The firm had been employing the
+stuff as a cheap substitute for genuine liqueurs and too much of it
+had been used. The fact that the only liqueurs named on the silver
+wrappings were Maraschino, Kümmel and Kirsch, all of which carry a
+greater or lesser flavour of almonds, supported this conception.
+
+But before the firm was approached by the police for an explanation,
+other facts had come to light. It was found that only the top layer of
+chocolates contained any poison. Those in the lower layer were
+completely free from anything harmful. Moreover in the lower layer the
+fillings inside the chocolate cases corresponded with the description
+on the wrappings, whereas in the top layer, besides the poison, each
+sweet contained a blend of the three liqueurs mentioned and not, for
+instance, plain Maraschino and poison. It was further remarked that no
+Maraschino, Kirsch or Kümmel was to be found in the two lower layers.
+
+The interesting fact also emerged, in the analyst’s detailed report,
+that each chocolate in the top layer contained, in addition to its
+blend of the three liqueurs, exactly six minims of nitrobenzene, no
+more and no less. The cases were a fair size and there was plenty of
+room for quite a considerable quantity of the liqueur-blend besides
+this fixed quantity of poison. This was significant. Still more so was
+the further fact that in the bottom of each of the noxious chocolates
+there were distinct traces of a hole having been drilled in the case
+and subsequently plugged up with a piece of melted chocolate.
+
+It was now plain to the police that foul play was in question.
+
+A deliberate attempt had been made to murder Sir Eustace Pennefather.
+The would-be murderer had acquired a box of Mason’s chocolate
+liqueurs; separated those in which a flavour of almonds would not come
+amiss; drilled a small hole in each and drained it of its contents;
+injected, probably with a fountain-pen filler, the dose of poison;
+filled the cavity up from the mixture of former fillings; carefully
+stopped the hole, and re-wrapped it in its silver-paper covering. A
+meticulous business, meticulously carried out.
+
+The covering letter and wrapper which had arrived with the box of
+chocolates now became of paramount importance, and the inspector who
+had had the foresight to rescue these from destruction had occasion to
+pat himself on the back. Together with the box itself and the
+remaining chocolates, they formed the only material clues to this
+cold-blooded murder.
+
+Taking them with him, the Chief Inspector now in charge of the case
+called on the managing director of Mason & Sons, and without informing
+him of the circumstances as to how it had come into his possession,
+laid the letter before him and invited him to explain certain points
+in connection with it. How many of these (the managing director was
+asked) had been sent out, who knew of this one, and who could have had
+a chance of handling the box that was sent to Sir Eustace?
+
+If the police had hoped to surprise Mr. Mason, the result was nothing
+compared with the way in which Mr. Mason surprised the police.
+
+“Well, sir?” prompted the Chief Inspector, when it seemed as if Mr.
+Mason would go on examining the letter all day.
+
+Mr. Mason adjusted his glasses to the angle for examining Chief
+Inspectors instead of letters. He was a small, rather fierce, elderly
+man who had begun life in a back street in Huddersfield, and did not
+intend any one to forget it.
+
+“Where the devil did you get this?” he asked. The papers, it must be
+remembered, had not yet got hold of the sensational aspect of Mrs.
+Bendix’s death.
+
+“I came,” replied the Chief Inspector with dignity, “to ask you about
+your sending it out, sir, not tell you about my getting hold of it.”
+
+“Then you can go to the devil,” replied Mr. Mason with decision. “And
+take Scotland Yard with you,” he added, by way of a comprehensive
+afterthought.
+
+“I must warn you, sir,” said the Chief Inspector, somewhat taken aback
+but concealing the fact beneath his weightiest manner, “I must warn
+you that it may be a serious matter for you to refuse to answer my
+questions.”
+
+Mr. Mason, it appeared, was exasperated rather than intimidated by
+this covert threat. “Get out o’ ma office,” he replied in his native
+tongue. “Are ye druffen, man? Or do ye just think you’re funny? Ye
+know as well as I do that that letter was never sent out from ’ere.”
+
+It was then that the Chief Inspector became surprised. “Not—not sent
+out by your firm at all?” he yammered. It was a possibility that had
+not occurred to him. “It’s—forged, then?”
+
+“Isn’t that what I’m telling ye?” growled the old man, regarding him
+fiercely from under bushy brows. But the Chief Inspector’s evident
+astonishment had mollified him somewhat.
+
+“Sir,” said that official, “I must ask you to be good enough to answer
+my questions as fully as possible. It’s a case of murder I’m
+investigating, and—” he paused and thought cunningly “—and the
+murderer seems to have been making free use of your business to cloak
+his operations.”
+
+The cunning of the Chief Inspector prevailed. “The devil ’e ’as!”
+roared the old man. “Damn the blackguard. Ask any questions thou
+wants, lad; I’ll answer right enough.”
+
+Communication thus being established, the Chief Inspector proceeded to
+get to grips.
+
+During the next five minutes his heart sank lower and lower. In place
+of the simple case he had anticipated it became rapidly plain to him
+that the affair was going to be very difficult indeed. Hitherto he had
+thought (and his superiors had agreed with him) that the case was
+going to prove one of sudden temptation. Somebody in the Mason firm
+had a grudge against Sir Eustace. Into his (or more probably, as the
+Chief Inspector had considered, her) hands had fallen the box and
+letter addressed to him. The opportunity had been obvious, the means,
+in the shape of nitrobenzene in use in the factory, ready to hand; the
+result had followed. Such a culprit would be easy enough to trace.
+
+But now, it seemed, this pleasant theory must be abandoned, for in the
+first place no such letter as this had ever been sent out at all; the
+firm had produced no new brand of chocolates, if they had done so it
+was not their custom to dispense sample boxes among private
+individuals, the letter was a forgery. But the notepaper on the other
+hand (and this was the only remnant left to support the theory) was
+perfectly genuine, so far as the old man could tell. He could not say
+for certain, but was almost sure that this was a piece of old stock
+which had been finished up about six months ago. The heading might be
+forged, but he did not think so.
+
+“Six months ago?” queried the Inspector unhappily.
+
+“About that,” said the other, and plucked a piece of paper out of a
+stand in front of him. “This is what we use now.” The Inspector
+examined it. There was no doubt of the difference. The new paper was
+thinner and more glossy. But the heading looked exactly the same. The
+Inspector took a note of the firm who had printed both.
+
+Unfortunately no sample of the old paper was available. Mr. Mason had
+a search made on the spot, but not a sheet was left.
+
+“As a matter of fact,” Moresby now said, “it had been noticed that the
+piece of paper on which the letter was written was an old one. It is
+distinctly yellow round the edges. I’ll pass it round and you can see
+for yourselves. Please be careful of it.” The bit of paper, once
+handled by a murderer, passed slowly from each would-be detective to
+his neighbour.
+
+“Well, to cut a long story shorter,” Moresby went on, “we had it
+examined by the firm of printers, Webster’s, in Frith Street, and
+they’re prepared to swear that it’s their work. That means the paper
+was genuine, worse luck.”
+
+“You mean, of course,” put in Sir Charles Wildman impressively, “that
+had the heading been a copy, the task of discovering the printers who
+executed it should have been comparatively simple?”
+
+“That’s correct, Sir Charles. Except if it had been done by somebody
+who owned a small press of their own; but that would have been
+traceable too. All we’ve actually got is that the murderer is someone
+who had access to Mason’s notepaper up to six months ago; and that’s
+pretty wide.”
+
+“Do you think it was stolen with the actual intention of putting it to
+the purpose for which it was used?” asked Alicia Dammers.
+
+“It seems like it, madam. And something kept holding the murderer up.”
+
+As regards the wrapper, Mr. Mason had been unable to help at all. This
+consisted simply of a piece of ordinary, thin brown paper, such as
+could be bought anywhere, with Sir Eustace’s name and address
+hand-printed on it in neat capitals. Apparently there was nothing to
+be learnt from it at all. The post-mark showed that it had been
+despatched by the nine-thirty p. m. post from the post office in
+Southampton Street, Strand.
+
+“There is a collection at 8.30 and another at 9.30,” Moresby
+explained, “so it must have been posted between those two times. The
+packet was quite small enough to go into the opening for letters. The
+stamps make up the right value. The post office was shut by then, so
+it could not have been handed in over the counter. Perhaps you’d care
+to see it.” The piece of brown paper was handed gravely round.
+
+“Have you brought the box too, and the other chocolates?” asked Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming.
+
+“No, madam. It was one of Mason’s ordinary boxes, and the chocolates
+have all been used for analysis.”
+
+“Oh!” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was plainly disappointed. “I thought there
+might be finger-prints on it,” she explained.
+
+“We have already looked for those,” replied Moresby without a flicker.
+
+There was a pause while the wrapper passed from hand to hand.
+
+“Naturally, we’ve made inquiries as to any one seen posting a packet
+in Southampton Street between half-past eight and half-past nine,”
+Moresby continued, “but without result. We’ve also carefully
+interrogated Sir Eustace Pennefather to discover whether he could
+throw any light on the question why any one should wish to take his
+life, or who. Sir Eustace can’t give us the faintest idea. Of course
+we followed up the usual line of inquiry as to who would benefit by
+his death, but without any helpful results. Most of his possessions go
+to his wife, who has a divorce suit pending against him; and she’s out
+of the country. We’ve checked her movements and she’s out of the
+question. Besides,” added Moresby unprofessionally, “she’s a very nice
+lady.
+
+“And as to facts, all we know is that the murderer probably had some
+connection with Mason & Sons up to six months ago, and was almost
+certainly in Southampton Street at some time between eight-thirty and
+nine-thirty on that particular evening. I’m very much afraid we’re up
+against a brick wall.” Moresby did not add that so were the amateur
+criminologists in front of him too, but he very distinctly implied it.
+
+There was a silence.
+
+“Is that all?” asked Roger.
+
+“That’s all, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby agreed.
+
+There was another silence.
+
+“Surely the police have a theory?” Mr. Morton Harrogate Bradley threw
+out in a detached manner.
+
+Moresby hesitated perceptibly.
+
+“Come along, Moresby,” Roger encouraged him. “It’s quite a simple
+theory. I know it.”
+
+“Well,” said Moresby, thus stimulated, “we’re inclined to believe that
+the crime was the work of a lunatic, or semi-lunatic, possibly quite
+unknown personally to Sir Eustace. You see . . .” Moresby looked a
+trifle embarrassed. “You see,” he went on bravely, “Sir Eustace’s life
+was a bit, well, we might say hectic, if you’ll excuse the word. We
+think at the Yard that some religious or social maniac took it on
+himself to rid the world of him, so to speak. Some of his escapades
+had caused a bit of talk, as you may know.
+
+“Or it might just be a plain homicidal lunatic, who likes killing
+people at a distance.
+
+“There’s the Horwood case, you see. Some lunatic sent poisoned
+chocolates to the Commissioner of Police himself. That caused a lot of
+attention. We think this case may be an echo of it. A case that
+creates a good deal of notice is quite often followed by another on
+exactly the same lines, as I needn’t remind you.
+
+“Well, that’s our theory. And if it’s the right one, we’ve got about
+as much chance of laying our hands on the murderer as—as—” Chief
+Inspector Moresby cast about for something really scathing.
+
+“As we have,” suggested Roger.
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+The Circle sat on for some time after Moresby had gone. There was a
+lot to discuss, and everybody had views to put forward, suggestions to
+make, and theories to advance.
+
+One thing emerged with singular unanimity: the police had been working
+on the wrong lines. Their theory must be mistaken. This was not a
+casual murder by a chance lunatic. Somebody very definite had gone
+methodically about the business of helping Sir Eustace out of the
+world, and that somebody had behind him an equally definite motive.
+Like almost all murders, in fact, it was a matter of _cherchez le
+motif_.
+
+On the exposition and discussion of theories Roger kept a firmly
+quelling hand. The whole object of the experiment, as he pointed out
+more than once, was that everybody should work independently, without
+bias from any other brain, form his or her own theory, and set about
+proving it in his or her own way.
+
+“But oughtn’t we to pool our facts, Sheringham?” boomed Sir Charles.
+“I should suggest that though we pursue our investigations
+independently, any new facts we discover should be placed at once at
+the disposal of all. The exercise should be a mental one, not a
+competition in routine-detection.”
+
+“There’s a lot to be said for that view, Sir Charles,” Roger agreed.
+“In fact, I’ve thought it over very carefully. But on the whole I
+think it will be better if we keep any new facts to ourselves after
+this evening. You see, we’re already in possession of all the facts
+that the police have discovered, and anything else we may come across
+isn’t likely to be so much a definite pointer to the murderer as some
+little thing, quite insignificant in itself, to support a particular
+theory.”
+
+Sir Charles grunted, obviously unconvinced.
+
+“I’m quite willing to have it put to the vote,” Roger said handsomely.
+
+A vote was taken. Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming voted for all
+facts being disclosed: Mr. Bradley, Alicia Dammers, Mr. Chitterwick
+(the last after considerable hesitation) and Roger voted against.
+
+“We retain our own facts,” Roger said, and made a mental note of who
+had voted for each. He was inclined to guess that the voting indicated
+pretty correctly who was going to be content with general theorising,
+and who was ready to enter so far into the spirit of the game as to go
+out and work for it. Or it might simply show who already had a theory
+and who had not.
+
+Sir Charles accepted the result with resignation.
+
+“We start equal as from now, then,” he announced.
+
+“As from the moment we leave this room,” amended Morton Harrogate
+Bradley, rearranging the set of his tie. “But I agree so far with Sir
+Charles’s proposition as to think that any one who can at this moment
+add anything to the Chief Inspector’s statement should do so.”
+
+“But can any one?” asked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.
+
+“Sir Charles knows Mr. and Mrs. Bendix,” Alicia Dammers pointed out
+impartially. “And Sir Eustace. And I know Sir Eustace too, of course.”
+
+Roger smiled. This statement was a characteristic meiosis on the part
+of Miss Dammers. Everybody knew that Miss Dammers had been the only
+woman (so far as rumour recorded) who had ever turned the tables on
+Sir Eustace Pennefather. Sir Eustace had taken it into his head to add
+the scalp of an intellectual woman to those other rather
+unintellectual ones which already dangled at his belt. Alicia Dammers,
+with her good looks, her tall, slim figure, and her irreproachable
+sartorial taste, had satisfied his very fastidious requirements so far
+as feminine appearance was concerned. He had laid himself out to
+fascinate.
+
+The results had been watched by the large circle of Miss Dammers’s
+friends with considerable joy. Miss Dammers had apparently been only
+too ready to be fascinated. It seemed that she was living entirely on
+the point of succumbing to Sir Eustace’s blandishments. They had
+dined, visited, lunched and made excursions together without respite.
+Sir Eustace, stimulated by the daily prospect of surrender on the
+following one, had exercised his ardour with every art he knew.
+
+Miss Dammers had then retired serenely, and the next autumn published
+a book in which Sir Eustace Pennefather, dissected to the last
+ligament, was given to the world in all the naked unpleasingness of
+his psychological anatomy.
+
+Miss Dammers never talked about her “art,” because she was a really
+brilliant writer and not just pretending to be one, but she certainly
+held that everything had to be sacrificed (including the feelings of
+the Sir Eustace Pennefathers of this world) to whatever god she
+worshipped privately in place of it.
+
+“Mr. and Mrs. Bendix are quite incidental to the crime, of course,
+from the murderer’s point of view,” Mr. Bradley now pointed out to
+her, in the gentle tones of one instructing a child that the letter A
+is followed in the alphabet by the letter B. “So far as we know, their
+only connection with Sir Eustace is that he and Bendix both belonged
+to the Rainbow.”
+
+“I needn’t give you my opinion of Sir Eustace,” remarked Miss Dammers.
+“Those of you who have read _Flesh and the Devil_ know how I saw him,
+and I have no reason to suppose that he has changed since I was
+studying him. But I claim no infallibility. It would be interesting to
+hear whether Sir Charles’s opinion coincides with mine or not.”
+
+Sir Charles, who had not read _Flesh and the Devil_, looked a little
+embarrassed. “Well, I don’t see that I can add much to the impression
+the Chief Inspector gave of him. I don’t know the man well, and
+certainly have no wish to do so.”
+
+Everybody looked extremely innocent. It was common gossip that there
+had been the possibility of an engagement between Sir Eustace and Sir
+Charles’s only daughter, and that Sir Charles had not viewed the
+prospect with any perceptible joy. It was further known that the
+engagement had even been prematurely announced, and promptly denied
+the next day.
+
+Sir Charles tried to look as innocent as everybody else. “As the Chief
+Inspector hinted, he is something of a bad lot. Some people might go
+so far as to call him a blackguard. Women,” explained Sir Charles
+bluntly. “And he drinks too much,” he added. It was plain that Sir
+Charles Wildman did not approve of Sir Eustace Pennefather.
+
+“I can add one small point, of purely psychological value,” amplified
+Alicia Dammers. “But it shows the dullness of his reactions. Even in
+the short time since the tragedy rumour has joined the name of Sir
+Eustace to that of a fresh woman. I was somewhat surprised to hear
+that,” added Miss Dammers drily. “I should have been inclined to give
+him credit for being a little more upset by the terrible mistake, and
+its fortunate consequences to himself, even though Mrs. Bendix was a
+total stranger to him.”
+
+“Yes, by the way, I should have corrected that impression earlier,”
+observed Sir Charles. “Mrs. Bendix was not a total stranger to Sir
+Eustace, though he may probably have forgotten ever meeting her. But
+he did. I was talking to Mrs. Bendix one evening at a first night (I
+forget the play) and Sir Eustace came up to me. I introduced them,
+mentioning something about Bendix being a member of the Rainbow. I’d
+almost forgotten.”
+
+“Then I’m afraid I was completely wrong about him,” said Miss Dammers,
+chagrined. “I was far too kind.” To be too kind in the dissecting-room
+was evidently, in Miss Dammers’s opinion, a far greater crime than
+being too unkind.
+
+“As for Bendix,” said Sir Charles rather vaguely, “I don’t know that I
+can add anything to your knowledge of him. Quite a decent, steady
+fellow. Head not turned by his money in the least, rich as he is. His
+wife too, charming woman. A little serious perhaps. Sort of woman who
+likes sitting on committees. Not that that’s anything against her
+though.”
+
+“Rather the reverse, I should have said,” observed Miss Dammers, who
+liked sitting on committees herself.
+
+“Quite, quite,” said Sir Charles hastily, remembering Miss Dammers’s
+curious predilections. “And she wasn’t too serious to make a bet,
+evidently, although it was a trifling one.”
+
+“She had another bet, that she knew nothing about,” chanted in solemn
+tones Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, who was already pondering the dramatic
+possibilities of the situation. “Not a trifling one: a grim one. It
+was with Death, and she lost it.” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was
+regrettably inclined to carry her dramatic sense into her ordinary
+life. It did not go at all well with her culinary aspect.
+
+She eyed Alicia Dammers covertly, wondering whether she could get in
+with a play before that lady cut the ground away from under her with a
+book.
+
+Roger, as chairman, took steps to bring the discussion back to
+relevancies. “Yes, poor woman. But after all, we mustn’t let ourselves
+confuse the issue. It’s rather difficult to remember that the murdered
+person has no connection with the crime at all, so to speak, but there
+it is. Just by accident the wrong person died; it’s on Sir Eustace
+that we have to concentrate. Now, does anybody else here know Sir
+Eustace, or anything about him, or any other fact bearing on the
+crime?”
+
+Nobody responded.
+
+“Then we’re all on the same footing. And now, about our next meeting.
+I suggest that we have a clear week for formulating our theories and
+carrying out any investigations we think necessary, that we then meet
+on consecutive evenings, beginning with next Monday, and that we now
+draw lots as to the order in which we are to read our several papers
+or give our conclusions. Or does any one think we should have more
+than one speaker each evening?”
+
+After a little talk it was decided to meet again on Monday, that day
+week, and for purposes of fuller discussion allot one evening to each
+member. Lots were then drawn, with the result that members were to
+speak in the following order: (1) Sir Charles Wildman, (2) Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, (3) Mr. Morton Harrogate Bradley, (4) Roger
+Sheringham, (5) Alicia Dammers, and (6) Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick brightened considerably when his name was announced as
+last on the list. “By that time,” he confided to Morton Harrogate,
+“somebody is quite sure to have discovered the right solution, and I
+shall therefore not have to give my own conclusions. If indeed,” he
+added dubiously, “I ever reach any. Tell me, how _does_ a detective
+really set to work?”
+
+Mr. Bradley smiled kindly and promised to lend Mr. Chitterwick one of
+his own books. Mr. Chitterwick, who had read them all and possessed
+most of them, thanked him very gratefully.
+
+Before the meeting finally broke up, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming could not
+resist one more opportunity of being mildly dramatic. “How strange
+life is,” she sighed across the table to Sir Charles. “I actually saw
+Mrs. Bendix and her husband in their box at the Imperial the night
+before she died. (Oh, yes; I knew them by sight. They often came to my
+first nights.) I was in a stall almost directly under their box.
+Indeed life is certainly stranger than fiction. If I could have
+guessed for one minute at the dreadful fate hanging over her, I—”
+
+“You’d have had the sense to warn her to steer clear of chocolates, I
+hope,” observed Sir Charles, who did not hold very much with Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming.
+
+The meeting then broke up.
+
+Roger returned to his rooms in the Albany feeling exceedingly pleased
+with himself. He had a suspicion that the various attempts at a
+solution were going to be almost as interesting to him as the problem
+itself.
+
+Nevertheless he was on his mettle. He had not been very lucky in the
+draw and would have preferred the place of Mr. Chitterwick, which
+would have meant that he would have the advantage of already knowing
+the results achieved by his rivals before having to disclose his own.
+Not that he intended to rely on others’ brains in the least; like Mr.
+Morton Harrogate Bradley he already had a theory of his own; but it
+would have been pleasant to be able to weigh up and criticise the
+efforts of Sir Charles, Mr. Bradley and particularly Alicia Dammers
+(to these three he gave credit for possessing the best minds in the
+Circle) before irrevocably committing himself. And more than any other
+crime in which he had been interested, it seemed to him, he wanted to
+find the right solution of this one.
+
+To his surprise when he got back to his rooms he found Moresby waiting
+in his sitting-room.
+
+“Ah, Mr. Sheringham,” said that cautious official. “Thought you
+wouldn’t mind me waiting here for a word with you. Not in a great
+hurry to go to bed, are you?”
+
+“Not in the least,” said Roger, doing things with a decanter and
+syphon. “It’s early yet. Say when.”
+
+Moresby looked discreetly the other way.
+
+When they were settled in two huge leather armchairs before the fire
+Moresby explained himself. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Sheringham, the
+Chief’s deputed me to keep a sort of unofficial eye on you and your
+friends over this business. Not that we don’t trust you, or think you
+won’t be discreet, or anything like that, but it’s better for us to
+know just what’s going on with a massed-detective attack like this.”
+
+“So that if any of us finds out something really important, you can
+nip in first and make use of it,” Roger smiled. “Yes, I quite see the
+official point.”
+
+“So that we can take measures to prevent the bird from being scared,”
+Moresby corrected reproachfully. “That’s all, Mr. Sheringham.”
+
+“Is it?” said Roger, with unconcealed scepticism. “But you don’t think
+it very likely that your protecting hand will be required, eh,
+Moresby?”
+
+“Frankly, sir, I don’t. We’re not in the habit of giving up a case so
+long as we think there’s the least chance of finding the criminal; and
+Detective-Inspector Farrar, who’s been in charge of this one, is a
+capable man.”
+
+“And that’s his theory, that it’s the work of some criminal lunatic,
+quite untraceable?”
+
+“That’s the opinion he’s been led to form, Mr. Sheringham, sir. But
+there’s no harm in your Circle amusing themselves,” added Moresby
+magnanimously, “if they want to and they’ve got the time to waste.”
+
+“Well, well,” said Roger, refusing to be drawn.
+
+They smoked their pipes in silence for a few minutes.
+
+“Come along, Moresby,” Roger said gently.
+
+The chief inspector looked at him with an expression that indicated
+nothing but bland surprise. “Sir?”
+
+Roger shook his head. “It won’t wash, Moresby; it won’t wash. Come
+along, now; out with it.”
+
+“Out with what, Mr. Sheringham?” queried Moresby, the picture of
+innocent bewilderment.
+
+“Your real reason for coming round here,” Roger said nastily. “Wanted
+to pump me, for the benefit of that effete institution you represent,
+I suppose? Well, I warn you, there’s nothing doing this time. I know
+you better than I did eighteen months ago at Ludmouth, remember.”
+
+“Well, what can have put such an idea as that into your head, Mr.
+Sheringham, sir?” positively gasped that much misunderstood man, Chief
+Inspector Moresby, of Scotland Yard. “I came round because I thought
+you might like to ask me a few questions, to give you a leg up in
+finding the murderer before any of your friends could. That’s all.”
+
+Roger laughed. “Moresby, I like you. You’re a bright spot in a dull
+world. I expect you try to persuade the very criminals you arrest that
+it hurts you more than it does them. And I shouldn’t be at all
+surprised if you don’t somehow make them believe it. Very well, if
+that’s all you came round for I’ll ask you some questions, and thank
+you very much. Tell me this, then. Who do _you_ think was trying to
+murder Sir Eustace Pennefather?”
+
+Moresby sipped delicately at his whisky-and-soda. “You know what I
+think, Mr. Sheringham, sir.”
+
+“Indeed I don’t,” Roger retorted. “I only know what you’ve told me you
+think.”
+
+“I haven’t been in charge of the case at all, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby
+hedged.
+
+“Who do you really think was trying to murder Sir Eustace
+Pennefather?” Roger repeated patiently. “Is it your own opinion that
+the official police theory is right or wrong?”
+
+Driven into a corner, Moresby allowed himself the novelty of speaking
+his unofficial mind. He smiled covertly, as if at a secret thought.
+“Well, Mr. Sheringham, sir,” he said with deliberation, “our theory is
+a useful one, isn’t it? I mean, it gives us every excuse for not
+finding the murderer. We can hardly be expected to be in touch with
+every half-baked creature in the country who may have homicidal
+impulses.
+
+“Our theory will be put forward at the conclusion of the adjourned
+inquest, in about a fortnight’s time, with reason and evidence to
+support it, and any evidence to the contrary not mentioned, and you’ll
+see that the coroner will agree with it, and the jury will agree with
+it, and the papers will agree with it, and every one will say that
+really, the police can’t be blamed for not catching the murderer this
+time, and everybody will be happy.”
+
+“Except Mr. Bendix, who doesn’t get his wife’s murder avenged,” added
+Roger. “Moresby, you’re being positively sarcastic. And from all this
+I deduce that you personally will stand aside from this general and
+amicable agreement. Do you think the case has been badly handled by
+your people?”
+
+Roger’s last question followed so closely on the heels of his previous
+remarks that Moresby had answered it almost before he had time to
+reflect on the possible indiscretion of doing so. “No, Mr. Sheringham,
+I don’t think that. Farrar’s a capable man, and he’d leave no stone
+unturned—no stone, I mean, that he _could_ turn.” Moresby paused
+significantly.
+
+“Ah!” said Roger.
+
+Having committed himself to this lamb, Moresby seemed disposed to look
+about for a sheep. He re-settled himself in his chair and recklessly
+drank a gill from his tumbler. Roger, scarcely daring to breathe too
+audibly for fear of scaring the sheep, studiously examined the fire.
+
+“You see, this is a very difficult case, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby
+pronounced. “Farrar had an open mind, of course, when he took it up,
+and he kept an open mind even after he’d found out that Sir Eustace
+was even a bit more of a daisy than he’d imagined at first. That is to
+say, he never lost sight of the fact that it _might_ have been some
+outside lunatic who sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace, just out of
+a general socialistic or religious feeling that he’d be doing a favour
+to society or Heaven by putting him out of the world. A fanatic, you
+might say.”
+
+“Murder from conviction,” Roger murmured. “Yes?”
+
+“But naturally what Farrar was concentrating on was Sir Eustace’s
+private life. And that’s where we police-officers are handicapped.
+It’s not easy for us to make enquiries into the private life of a
+baronet. Nobody wants to be helpful; everybody seems anxious to put a
+spoke in our wheel. Every line that looked hopeful to Farrar led to a
+dead end. Sir Eustace himself told him to go to the devil, and made no
+bones about it.”
+
+“Naturally, from his point of view,” Roger said thoughtfully. “The
+last thing he’d want would be a sheaf of his peccadilloes laid out for
+a harvest festival in court.”
+
+“Yes, and Mrs. Bendix lying in her grave on account of them,” retorted
+Moresby with asperity. “No, he was responsible for her death, though
+indirectly enough I’ll admit, and it was up to him to be as helpful as
+he could to the police-officer investigating the case. But there
+Farrar was; couldn’t get any further. He unearthed a scandal or two,
+it’s true, but they led to nothing. So—well, he hasn’t admitted this,
+Mr. Sheringham, and you’ll realise I ought not to be telling you; it’s
+to go no further than this room, mind.”
+
+“Good heavens, no,” Roger said eagerly.
+
+“Well then, it’s my private opinion that Farrar was driven to the
+other conclusion in self-defence. And the chief had to agree with it
+in self-defence too. But if you want to get to the bottom of the
+business, Mr. Sheringham (and nobody would be more pleased if you did
+than Farrar himself) my advice to you is to concentrate on Sir
+Eustace’s private life. You’ve a better chance than any of us there;
+you’re on his level, you’ll know members of his club, you’ll know his
+friends personally, and the friends of his friends. And that,”
+concluded Moresby, “is the tip I really came round to give you.”
+
+“That’s very decent of you, Moresby,” Roger said with warmth. “Very
+decent indeed. Have another spot.”
+
+“Well, thank you, Mr. Sheringham, sir,” said Chief Inspector Moresby.
+“I don’t mind if I do.”
+
+Roger was meditating as he mixed the drinks. “I believe you’re right,
+Moresby,” he said slowly. “In fact, I’ve been thinking along those
+lines ever since I read the first full account. The truth lies in Sir
+Eustace’s private life, I feel sure. And if I were superstitious,
+which I’m not, do you know what I should believe? That the murderer’s
+aim misfired and Sir Eustace escaped death for an express purpose of
+Providence: so that he, the destined victim, should be the ironical
+instrument of bringing his own intended murderer to justice.”
+
+“Well, Mr. Sheringham, would you really?” said the sarcastic Chief
+Inspector, who was not superstitious either.
+
+Roger seemed rather taken with the idea. “_Chance, the Avenger._ Make
+a good film title, wouldn’t it? But there’s a terrible lot of truth in
+it.
+
+“How often don’t you people at the Yard stumble on some vital piece of
+evidence out of pure chance? How often isn’t it that you’re led to the
+right solution by what seems a series of mere coincidences? I’m not
+belittling your detective-work; but just think how often a piece of
+brilliant detective-work which has led you most of the way but not the
+last vital few inches, meets with some remarkable stroke of sheer luck
+(thoroughly well-deserved luck, no doubt, but _luck_), which just
+makes the case complete for you. I can think of scores of instances.
+The Milsom and Fowler murder, for example. Don’t you see what I mean?
+Is it chance every time, or is it Providence avenging the victim?”
+
+“Well, Mr. Sheringham,” said Chief Inspector Moresby, “to tell you the
+truth, I don’t mind what it is, so long as it lets me put my hands on
+the right man.”
+
+“Moresby,” laughed Roger, “you’re hopeless.”
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+Sir Charles Wildman, as he had said, cared more for honest facts than
+for psychological fiddle-faddle.
+
+Facts were very dear to Sir Charles. More, they were meat and drink to
+him. His income of roughly thirty thousand pounds a year was derived
+entirely from the masterful way in which he was able to handle facts.
+There was no one at the bar who could so convincingly distort an
+honest but awkward fact into carrying an entirely different
+interpretation from that which any ordinary person (counsel for the
+prosecution, for instance) would have put upon it. He could take that
+fact, look it boldly in the face, twist it round, read a message from
+the back of its neck, turn it inside out and detect auguries in its
+entrails, dance triumphantly on its corpse, pulverise it completely,
+re-mould it if necessary into an utterly different shape, and finally,
+if the fact still had the temerity to retain any vestige of its
+primary aspect, bellow at it in the most terrifying manner. If that
+failed he was quite prepared to weep at it in open court.
+
+No wonder that Sir Charles Wildman, K.C., was paid that amount of
+money every year to transform facts of menacing appearance to his
+clients into so many sucking-doves, each cooing those very clients’
+tender innocence. If the reader is interested in statistics it might
+be added that the number of murderers whom Sir Charles in the course
+of his career had saved from the gallows, if placed one on top of the
+other, would have reached to a very great height indeed.
+
+Sir Charles Wildman had rarely appeared for the prosecution. It is not
+considered etiquette for prosecuting counsel to bellow, and there is
+scant need for their tears. His bellowing and his public tears were
+Sir Charles Wildman’s long suit. He was one of the old school, one of
+its very last representatives; and he found that the old school paid
+him handsomely.
+
+When therefore he looked impressively round the Crimes Circle on its
+next meeting, one week after Roger had put forward his proposal, and
+adjusted the gold-rimmed pince-nez on his somewhat massive nose, the
+other members could feel no doubt as to the quality of the
+entertainment in store for them. After all, they were going to enjoy
+for nothing what amounted to a thousand-guinea brief for the
+prosecution.
+
+Sir Charles glanced at the note-pad in his hand and cleared his
+throat. No barrister could clear his throat quite so ominously as Sir
+Charles.
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, in weighty tones, “it is not
+unnatural that I should have been more interested in this murder than
+perhaps any one else, for personal reasons which will no doubt have
+occurred to you already. Sir Eustace Pennefather’s name, as you must
+know, has been mentioned in connection with that of my daughter; and
+though the report of their engagement was not merely premature, but
+utterly without foundation, it is inevitable that I should feel some
+personal connection, however slight, with this attempt to assassinate
+a man who has been mentioned as a possible son-in-law to myself.
+
+“I do not wish to stress this personal aspect of the case, which
+otherwise I have tried to view as impersonally as any other with which
+I have been connected; but I put it forward more as an excuse than
+anything. For it has enabled me to approach the problem set us by our
+President with a more intimate knowledge of the persons concerned than
+the rest of you could have, and with, too, I fear, information at my
+disposal which goes a long way towards indicating the truth of this
+mystery.
+
+“I know that I should have placed this information at the disposal of
+my fellow-members last week, and I apologise to them wholeheartedly
+for not having done so; but the truth is that I did not realise then
+that this knowledge of mine was in any way germane to the solution, or
+even remotely helpful, and it is only since I began to ponder over the
+case with a view to clearing up the tragic tangle, that the vital
+import of this information has impressed itself upon me.” Sir Charles
+paused and allowed his resounding periods to echo round the room.
+
+“Now, with its help,” he pronounced, looking severely from face to
+face, “I am of opinion that I have read this riddle.”
+
+A twitter of excitement, no less genuine because obviously awaited,
+ran round the faithful Circle.
+
+Sir Charles whisked off his pince-nez and swung them, in a
+characteristic gesture, on their broad ribbon. “Yes, I think, in fact
+I am sure, that I am about to elucidate this dark business to you. And
+for this reason I regret that the lot has fallen upon me to speak
+first. It would have been more interesting perhaps had we been
+permitted to examine some other theories first, and demonstrate their
+falsity, before we probed to the truth. That is, assuming that there
+are other theories to examine.
+
+“It would not surprise me, however, to learn that you had all leapt to
+the conclusion to which I have been driven. Not in the least. I claim
+no extraordinary powers in allowing the facts to speak to me for
+themselves; I pride myself on no superhuman insight in having been
+able to see further into this dark business than our official solvers
+of mysteries and readers of strange riddles, the trained detective
+force. Very much the reverse. I am only an ordinary human being,
+endowed with no more powers than any of my fellow-creatures. It would
+not astonish me for an instant to be apprised that I am only following
+in the footsteps of others of you in fixing the guilt on the
+individual who did, as I submit I am about to prove to you beyond any
+possibility of doubt, commit this foul crime.”
+
+Having thus provided for the improbable contingency of some other
+member of the Circle having been so clever as himself, Sir Charles cut
+some of the cackle and got down to business.
+
+“I set about this matter with one question in my mind and one only—the
+question to which the right answer has proved a sure guide to the
+criminal in almost every murder that has ever been committed, the
+question which hardly any criminal can avoid leaving behind him,
+damning though he knows the answer must be: the question—_cui bono?_”
+Sir Charles allowed a pregnant moment of silence. “Who,” he translated
+obligingly, “was the gainer? Who,” he paraphrased, for the benefit of
+any possible half-wits in his audience, “would, to put it bluntly,
+_score_ by the death of Sir Eustace Pennefather?” He darted looks of
+enquiry from under his tufted eyebrows, but his hearers dutifully
+played the game; nobody undertook to enlighten him prematurely.
+
+Sir Charles was far too practised a rhetorician to enlighten them
+prematurely himself. Leaving the question as an immense query-mark in
+their minds, he veered off on another track.
+
+“Now there were, as I saw it, only three definite clues in this
+crime,” he continued, in almost conversational tones. “I refer of
+course to the forged letter, the wrapper, and the chocolates
+themselves. Of these the wrapper could only be helpful so far as its
+post-mark. The hand-printed address I dismissed as useless. It could
+have been done by any one, at any time. It led, I felt, nowhere. And I
+could not see that the chocolates or the box that contained them were
+of the least use as evidence. I may be wrong, but I could not see it.
+They were specimens of a well-known brand, on sale at hundreds of
+shops; it would be fruitless to attempt to trace their purchaser.
+Moreover any possibilities in that direction would quite certainly
+have been explored already by the police. I was left, in short, with
+only two pieces of material evidence, the forged letter and the
+post-mark on the wrapper, on which the whole structure of proof must
+be erected.”
+
+Sir Charles paused again, to let the magnitude of this task sink into
+the minds of the others; apparently he had overlooked the fact that
+his problem must have been common to all. Roger, who with difficulty
+had remained silent so long, interposed a gentle question.
+
+“Had you already made up your mind as to the criminal, Sir Charles?”
+
+“I had already answered to my own satisfaction the question I had
+posed to myself, to which I made reference a few minutes ago,” replied
+Sir Charles, with dignity but without explicitness.
+
+“I see. You had made up your mind,” Roger pinned him down. “It would
+be interesting to know, so that we can follow better your way of
+approaching the proof. You used inductive methods then?”
+
+“Possibly, possibly,” said Sir Charles testily. Sir Charles strongly
+disliked being pinned down.
+
+He glowered for a moment in silence, to recover from this indignity.
+
+“The task, I saw at once,” he resumed, in a sterner voice, “was not
+going to be an easy one. The period at my disposal was extremely
+limited, far-reaching enquiries were obviously necessary, my own time
+was far too closely engaged to permit me to make, in person, any
+investigations I might find advisable. I thought the matter over and
+decided that the only possible way in which I could arrive at a
+conclusion was to consider the facts of the case for a sufficient
+length of time till I was enabled to formulate a theory which would
+stand every test I could apply to it out of such knowledge as was
+already at my disposal, and then make a careful list of further points
+which were outside my own knowledge but which must be facts if my
+theory were correct; these points could then be investigated by
+persons acting on my behalf and, if they were substantiated, my theory
+would be conclusively proved.” Sir Charles drew a breath.
+
+“In other words,” Roger murmured with a smile to Alicia Dammers,
+turning a hundred words into six, “‘I decided to employ inductive
+methods.’” But he spoke so softly that nobody but Miss Dammers heard
+him.
+
+She smiled back appreciatively. The art of the written word is not
+that of the spoken one.
+
+“I formed my theory,” announced Sir Charles, with surprising
+simplicity. Perhaps he was still a little short of breath.
+
+“I formed my theory. Of necessity much of it was guesswork. Let me
+give an example. The possession by the criminal of a sheet of Mason &
+Sons’ notepaper had puzzled me more than anything. It was not an
+article which the individual I had in mind might be expected to
+possess, still less to be able to acquire. I could not conceive any
+method by which, the plot already decided upon and the sheet of paper
+required for its accomplishment, such a thing could be deliberately
+acquired by the individual in question without suspicion being raised
+afterwards.
+
+“I therefore formed the conclusion that it was the actual ability to
+obtain a piece of Mason’s notepaper in a totally unsuspicious way,
+which was the reason of the notepaper of that particular firm being
+employed at all.” Sir Charles looked triumphantly round as if awaiting
+something.
+
+Roger supplied it; no less readily for all that the point must have
+occurred to every one as being almost too obvious to need any comment.
+“That’s a very interesting point indeed, Sir Charles. Most ingenious.”
+
+Sir Charles nodded his agreement. “Sheer guesswork, I admit. Nothing
+but guesswork. But guesswork that was justified in the result.” Sir
+Charles was becoming so lost in admiration of his own perspicacity
+that he had forgotten all his love of long, winding sentences and
+smooth-rolling subordinate clauses. His massive head positively jerked
+on his shoulders.
+
+“I considered how such a thing might come into one’s possession, and
+whether the possession could be verified afterwards. It occurred to me
+at last that many firms insert a piece of notepaper with a receipted
+bill, with the words ‘With Compliments’ or some such phrase typed on
+it. That gave me three questions. Was this practice employed at
+Mason’s? Had the individual in question an account at Mason’s, or more
+particularly, to explain the yellowed edge of the paper, had there
+been such an account in the past? Were there any indications on the
+paper of such a phrase having been carefully erased?
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed Sir Charles, puce with excitement, “you
+will see that the odds against those three questions being answered in
+the affirmative were enormous. Overwhelming. Before I posed them I
+knew that, should it prove to be the case, no mere chance could be
+held responsible.” Sir Charles dropped his voice. “I knew,” he said
+slowly, “that if those three questions of mine were answered in the
+affirmative, the individual I had in mind must be as guilty as if I
+had actually watched the poison being injected into those chocolates.”
+
+He paused and looked impressively round him, riveting all eyes on his
+face.
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen, those three questions _were_ answered in the
+affirmative.”
+
+Oratory is a powerful art. Roger knew perfectly well that Sir Charles,
+out of sheer force of habit, was employing on them all the usual and
+hackneyed forensic tricks. It was with difficulty, Roger felt, that he
+refrained from adding “of the jury” to his “Ladies and gentlemen.” But
+really this was only what might have been expected. Sir Charles had a
+good story to tell, and a story in which he obviously sincerely
+believed, and he was simply telling it in the way which, after all
+these years of practice, came most naturally to him. That was not what
+was annoying Roger.
+
+What did annoy him was that he himself had been plodding on the scent
+of quite a different hare and, convinced as he had been that his must
+be the right one, had at first been only mildly amused as Sir Charles
+flirted round the skirts of his own quarry. Now he had allowed himself
+to be influenced by mere rhetoric, cheap though he knew it to be, into
+wondering.
+
+But was it only rhetoric that had made him begin to doubt? Sir Charles
+seemed to have some substantial facts to weave into the airy web of
+his oratory. And pompous old fellow though he might be, he was
+certainly no fool. Roger began to feel distinctly uneasy. For his own
+hare, he had to admit, was a very elusive one.
+
+As Sir Charles proceeded to develop his thesis, Roger’s uneasiness
+began to turn into downright unhappiness.
+
+“There can be no doubt about it. I ascertained through an agent that
+Mason’s, an old-fashioned firm, invariably paid such private customers
+as had an account with them (nine-tenths of their business of course
+is wholesale) the courtesy of including a statement of thanks, just
+two or three words typed in the middle of a sheet of notepaper. I
+ascertained that this individual had had an account with the firm,
+which was apparently closed five months ago; that is to say, a cheque
+was sent then in settlement and no goods have been ordered since.
+
+“Moreover I found time to pay a special visit myself to Scotland Yard
+in order to examine that letter again. By looking at the back I could
+make out quite distinct though indecipherable traces of former
+typewritten words in the middle of the page. These latter cut halfway
+down one of the lines of the letter and so prove that they could not
+have been an erasure from that; they correspond in length to the
+statement I expected; and they show signs of the most careful
+attempts, by rubbing, rolling and re-roughening the smoothed paper, to
+eradicate not only the typewriter-ink but even the actual indentations
+caused by the metal letter-arms.
+
+“This I held to be conclusive proof that my theory was correct, and at
+once I set about clearing up such other doubtful points as had
+occurred to me. Time was short, and I had recourse to no less than
+four firms of trustworthy inquiry-agents among whom I divided the task
+of providing the data I was seeking. This not only saved me
+considerable time, but had the advantage of not putting the sum-total
+of the information obtained into any hands but my own. Indeed I did my
+best so to split up my queries as to prevent any of the firms from
+even guessing what object I had in mind; and in this I am of the
+opinion that I have been successful.
+
+“My next care was the post-mark. It was necessary for my case that I
+should prove that my suspect had actually been in the neighbourhood of
+the Strand at the time in question. You will say,” suggested Sir
+Charles, searching the interested faces round him, and apparently
+picking upon Mr. Morton Harrogate Bradley as the raiser of this futile
+objection. “You will say,” said Sir Charles sternly to Mr. Bradley,
+“that this was not necessary. The parcel might have been posted quite
+innocently by an unwitting accomplice to whom it had been entrusted,
+so that the actual criminal had an unshakable alibi for that period;
+the more so as the individual to whom I refer was actually not in this
+country, so that it would be all the easier to request a friend who
+might be travelling to England to undertake the task of posting the
+parcel in this country and so saving the cost of the foreign postage,
+which on parcels is not inconsiderable.
+
+“I do not agree,” said Sir Charles to Mr. Bradley, still more
+severely. “I have considered that point, and I do not think the
+individual I have in mind would undertake such a very grave risk. For
+the friend would almost certainly remember the incident when she read
+of the affair in the papers, as would be almost inevitable.
+
+“No,” concluded Sir Charles, finally crushing Mr. Bradley once and for
+all, “I am convinced that the individual I am thinking of would
+realise that nobody else must handle that parcel till it had passed
+into the keeping of the post-office.”
+
+“Of course,” said Mr. Bradley academically, “Lady Pennefather may have
+had not an innocent accomplice but a guilty one. You’ve considered
+that, of course?” Mr. Bradley managed to convey that the matter was of
+no real interest, but as Sir Charles had been addressing these remarks
+directly to him it was only courteous to comment on them.
+
+Sir Charles purpled visibly. He had been priding himself on the
+skilful way in which he had been withholding his suspect’s name, to
+bring it out with a lovely plump right at the end after proving his
+case, just like a real detective story. And now this wretched
+scribbler of the things had spoilt it all.
+
+“Sir,” he intoned, in proper Johnsonian manner, “I must call your
+attention to the fact that I have mentioned no names at all. To do
+such a thing is most imprudent. Do I need to remind you that there is
+such a thing as a law of libel?”
+
+Morton Harrogate smiled his maddeningly superior smile (he really was
+a most insufferable young man). “Really, Sir Charles!” he mocked,
+stroking his little sleek object he wore on his upper lip. “I’m not
+going to write a story about Lady Pennefather trying to murder her
+husband, if that’s what you’re warning me against. Or could it
+possibly be that you were referring to the law of slander?”
+
+Sir Charles, who had meant slander, enveloped Mr. Bradley in a crimson
+glare.
+
+Roger sped to the rescue. The combatants reminded him of a bull and a
+gadfly, and that is a contest which it is often good fun to watch. But
+the Crimes Circle had been founded to investigate the crimes of
+others, not to provide opportunities for new ones. Roger did not
+particularly like either the bull or the gadfly, but both amused him
+in their different ways; he certainly disliked neither. Mr. Bradley on
+the other hand disliked both Roger and Sir Charles. He disliked Roger
+the more of the two because Roger was a gentleman and pretended not to
+be, whereas he himself was not a gentleman and pretended he was. And
+that surely is cause enough to dislike any one.
+
+“I’m glad you raised that point, Sir Charles,” Roger now said
+smoothly. “It’s one we must consider. Personally I don’t see how we’re
+to progress at all unless we come to some arrangement concerning the
+law of slander, do you?”
+
+Sir Charles consented to be mollified. “It is a difficult point,” he
+agreed, the lawyer in him immediately swamping the outraged human
+being. A born lawyer will turn aside from any other minor pursuit,
+even briefs, for a really knotty legal point, just as a born woman
+will put on her best set of underclothes and powder her nose before
+inserting the latter in the gas-oven.
+
+“I think,” Roger said carefully, anxious not to wound legal
+susceptibilities (it was a bold proposition for a layman to make),
+“that we should disregard that particular law. I mean,” he added
+hastily, observing the look of pain on Sir Charles’s brow at being
+asked to condone this violation of a _lex intangenda_, “I mean, we
+should come to some such arrangement as that anything said in this
+room should be without prejudice, or among friends, or—or not in the
+spirit of the adverb,” he plunged desperately, “or whatever the legal
+wriggle is.” On the whole it was not a tactful speech.
+
+But it is doubtful whether Sir Charles heard it. A dreamy look had
+come into his eyes, as of a Lord of Appeal crooning over a piece of
+red tape. “Slander, as we all know,” he murmured, “consists in the
+malicious speaking of such words as render the party who speaks them
+in the hearing of others liable to an action at the suit of the party
+to whom they apply. In this case, the imputation being of a crime or
+misdemeanour which is punishable corporeally, pecuniary damage would
+not have to be proved, and, the imputation being defamatory, its
+falsity would be presumed and the burden of proving its truth would be
+laid upon the defendant. We should therefore have the interesting
+situation of the defendant in a slander action becoming, in essence,
+the plaintiff in a civil suit for murder. And really,” said Sir
+Charles in much perplexity, “I don’t know what would happen then.”
+
+“Er—what about privilege?” suggested Roger feebly.
+
+“Of course,” Sir Charles disregarded him, “there would have to be
+stated in the declaration the actual words used, not merely their
+meaning and general inference, and failure to prove them as stated
+would result in the plaintiff being nonsuited; so that unless notes
+were taken here and signed by a witness who had heard the defamation,
+I do not quite see how an action could lie.”
+
+“Privilege?” murmured Roger despairingly.
+
+“Moreover I should be of the opinion,” said Sir Charles, brightening,
+“that this might be regarded as one of those proper occasions upon
+which statements, in themselves defamatory, and even false, may be
+made if from a perfectly proper motive and with an entire belief in
+their truth. In that case the presumption would be reversed and the
+burden would be on the plaintiff to prove, and that to the
+satisfaction of a jury, that the defendant was actuated by express
+malice. In that case I rather fancy that the court would be guided
+almost wholly by considerations of public expediency, which would
+probably mean that—”
+
+“Privilege!” said Roger loudly.
+
+Sir Charles turned on him the dull eye of a red-ink fiend. But this
+time the word had penetrated. “I was coming to that,” he reproved.
+“Now in our case I hardly think that a plea of public privilege would
+be accepted. As to private privilege, the limits are of course
+exceedingly difficult to define. It would be doubtful if we could
+plead successfully that all statements made here are matters of purely
+private communication, because it is a question whether this Circle
+does constitute, in actual fact, a private or a public gathering. One
+could,” said Sir Charles with much interest, “argue either way. Or
+even, for the matter of that, that it is a private body meeting in
+public, or, _vice versa_, a public gathering held in private. The
+point is a very debatable one.” Sir Charles swung his glasses for a
+moment to emphasise the extreme debatability of the point.
+
+“But I do feel inclined to venture the opinion,” he plunged at last,
+“that on the whole we might be justified in taking up our stand upon
+the submission that the occasion _is_ privileged in so far as it is
+concerned entirely with communications which are made with no _animus
+injuriandi_ but solely in performance of a duty not necessarily legal
+but moral or social, and any statements so uttered are covered by a
+plea of _veritas convicii_ being made within proper limits by persons
+in the _bona fide_ prosecution of their own and the public interest. I
+am bound to say however,” Sir Charles immediately proceeded to hedge
+as if horrified at having committed himself at last, “that this is not
+a matter of complete certainty, and a wiser policy might be to avoid
+the direct mention of any name, while holding ourselves free to
+indicate in some unmistakable manner, such as by signs, or possibly by
+some form of impersonation or acting, the individual to whom we
+severally refer.”
+
+“Still,” pursued the President, faint but persistent, “on the whole
+you do think that the occasion may be regarded as privileged, and we
+may go ahead and mention any name we like?”
+
+Sir Charles’s glasses described a complete and symbolical circle. “I
+think,” said Sir Charles very weightily indeed (after all it was an
+opinion which would have cost the Circle such a surprisingly round sum
+had it been delivered in chambers that Sir Charles need not be grudged
+a little weight in the delivering of it). “I think,” said Sir Charles,
+“that we might take that risk.”
+
+“Right-ho!” said the President with relief.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+“I dare say,” resumed Sir Charles, “that many of you will have already
+reached the same conclusion as myself, with regard to the identity of
+the murderer. The case seems to me to afford so striking a parallel
+with one of the classical murders, that the similarity can hardly have
+passed unnoticed. I refer of course, to the Marie Lafarge case.”
+
+“Oh!” said Roger, surprised. So far as he was concerned the similarity
+had passed unnoticed. He wriggled uncomfortably. Now one came to
+consider it, of course the parallel was obvious.
+
+“There too we have a wife, accused of sending a poisoned article to
+her husband. Whether the article was a cake or a box of chocolates is
+beside the point. It will not do perhaps to—”
+
+“But nobody in their sane senses still believes that Marie Lafarge was
+guilty,” Alicia Dammers interrupted, with unusual warmth. “It’s been
+practically proved that the cake was sent by the foreman, or whatever
+he was. Wasn’t his name Dennis? His motive was much bigger than hers,
+too.”
+
+Sir Charles regarded her severely. “I think I said, _accused_ of
+sending. I was referring to a matter of fact, not of opinion.”
+
+“Sorry,” nodded Miss Dammers, unabashed.
+
+“In any case, I just mention the coincidence for what it is worth. Let
+us now go back to resume our argument at the point we left it. In that
+connection, the question was raised just now,” said Sir Charles,
+determinedly impersonal, “as to whether Lady Pennefather may have had
+not an innocent accomplice but a guilty one. That doubt had already
+occurred to me. I have satisfied myself that it is not the case. She
+planned and carried through this affair alone.” He paused, inviting
+the obvious question.
+
+Roger tactfully supplied it.
+
+“How could she, Sir Charles? We know that she was in the South of
+France the whole time. The police investigated that very point. She
+has a complete alibi.”
+
+Sir Charles positively beamed at him. “She _had_ a complete alibi. I
+have destroyed it.
+
+“This is what actually happened. Three days before the parcel was
+posted Lady Pennefather left Mentone and went, ostensibly, for a week
+to Avignon. At the end of the week she returned to Mentone. Her
+signature is in the hotel-register at Avignon, she has the receipted
+bill, everything is quite in order. The only curious thing is that
+apparently she did not take her maid, a very superior young woman of
+smart appearance and good manners, to Avignon with her, for the
+hotel-receipt is for one person only. And yet the maid did not stay at
+Mentone. Did the maid then vanish into thin air?” demanded Sir Charles
+indignantly.
+
+“Oh!” nodded Mr. Chitterwick, who had been listening intently. “I see.
+How ingenious.”
+
+“Highly ingenious,” agreed Sir Charles, complacently taking the credit
+for the erring lady’s ingenuity. “The maid took the mistress’s place;
+the mistress paid a secret visit to England. And I have verified that
+beyond any doubt. An agent, acting on telegraphic instructions from
+me, showed the hotel-proprietor at Avignon a photograph of Lady
+Pennefather and asked whether such a person had ever stayed in the
+hotel; the man averred that he had never seen her in his life. My
+agent showed him a snapshot which he had obtained of the maid; the
+proprietor recognised her instantly as Lady Pennefather. Another
+‘guess’ of mine had proved only too accurate.” Sir Charles leaned back
+in his chair and swung his glasses in silent tribute to his own
+astuteness.
+
+“Then Lady Pennefather did have an accomplice?” murmured Mr. Bradley,
+with the air of one discussing _The Three Bears_ with a child of four.
+
+“An innocent accomplice,” retorted Sir Charles. “My agent questioned
+the maid tactfully, and learned that her mistress has told her that
+she had to go over to England on urgent business but, having already
+spent six months of the current year in that country, would have to
+pay British income-tax if she so much as set foot in England again
+that year. A considerable sum was in question, and Lady Pennefather
+suggested this plan as a means of getting round the difficulty, with a
+handsome bribe to the girl. Not unnaturally the offer was accepted.
+Most ingenious; most ingenious.” He paused again and beamed round,
+inviting tributes.
+
+“How very clever of you, Sir Charles,” murmured Alicia Dammers,
+stepping into the breach.
+
+“I have no actual proof of her stay in this country,” regretted Sir
+Charles, “so that from the legal point of view the case against her is
+incomplete in that respect, but that will be a matter for the police
+to discover. In all other respects, I submit, my case is complete. I
+regret, I regret exceedingly, having to say so, but I have no
+alternative: Lady Pennefather is Mrs. Bendix’s murderess.”
+
+There was a thoughtful silence when Sir Charles had finished speaking.
+Questions were in the air, but nobody seemed to care to be the first
+to put one. Roger gazed into vacancy, as if looking longingly after
+the spoor of his own hare. There was no doubt that, as matters stood
+at present, Sir Charles seemed to have proved his case.
+
+Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick plucked up courage to break the silence. “We
+must congratulate you, Sir Charles. Your solution is as brilliant as
+it is surprising. Only one question occurs to me, and that is the one
+of motive. Why should Lady Pennefather desire her husband’s death when
+she is actually in process of divorcing him? Had she any reason to
+suspect that a decree would not be granted?”
+
+“None at all,” replied Sir Charles blandly. “It was just because she
+was so certain that a decree would be granted that she desired his
+death.”
+
+“I—I don’t quite understand,” stammered Mr. Chitterwick.
+
+Sir Charles allowed the general bewilderment to continue for a few
+more moments before he condescended to dispel it. He had the orator’s
+feeling for atmosphere.
+
+“I referred at the beginning of my remarks to a piece of knowledge
+which had come into my possession and which had helped me materially
+towards my solution. I am now prepared to disclose, in strict
+confidence, what that piece of knowledge was.
+
+“You already know that there was talk of an engagement between Sir
+Eustace and my daughter. I do not think I shall be violating the
+secrets of the confessional if I tell you that not many weeks ago, Sir
+Eustace came to me and formally asked me to sanction an engagement
+between them as soon as his wife’s decree _nisi_ had been pronounced.
+
+“I need not tell you all that transpired at that interview. What is
+relevant is that Sir Eustace informed me categorically that his wife
+had been extremely unwilling to divorce him, and he had only succeeded
+in the end by making a will entirely in her favour, including his
+estate in Worcestershire. She had a small private income of her own,
+and he was going to make her such allowance in addition as he was
+able; but with the interest on the mortgage on his estate swallowing
+up nearly all the rent he was getting for it, and his other expenses,
+this could not be a large one. His life, however, was heavily insured
+in accordance with Lady Pennefather’s marriage settlements, and the
+mortgage on the estate was in the nature of an endowment policy, and
+lapsed with his death. He had therefore, as he candidly admitted, very
+little to offer my daughter.
+
+“Like myself,” said Sir Charles impressively, “you cannot fail to
+grasp the significance of this. According to the will then in
+existence, Lady Pennefather from being not even comfortably off would
+become a comparatively rich woman on her husband’s death. But rumours
+are reaching her ears of a possible marriage between that husband and
+another woman as soon as the divorce is complete. What is more
+probable than that when such an engagement is actually concluded, a
+new will will be made?
+
+“Her character is already shown in a strong enough light by her
+willingness to accept the bribe of the will as an inducement to
+divorce. She is obviously a grasping woman, greedy for money. Murder
+is only another step for such a woman to take. And murder is her only
+hope. I do not think,” concluded Sir Charles, “that I need to labour
+the point any further.” His glasses swung deliberately.
+
+“It’s uncommonly convincing,” Roger said, with a little sigh. “Are you
+going to hand this information over to the police, Sir Charles?”
+
+“I conceive that failure to do so would be a gross dereliction of my
+duty as a citizen,” Sir Charles replied, with a pomposity that in no
+way concealed how pleased he was with himself.
+
+“Humph!” observed Mr. Bradley, who evidently was not going to be so
+pleased with Sir Charles as Sir Charles was. “What about the
+chocolates? Is it part of your case that she prepared them over here,
+or brought them with her?”
+
+Sir Charles waved an airy hand. “Is that material?”
+
+“I should say that it would be very material to connect her at any
+rate with the poison.”
+
+“Nitrobenzene? One might as well try to connect her with the purchase
+of the chocolates. She would have no difficulty in getting hold of
+that. I regard her choice of poison, in fact, as on a par with the
+ingenuity she has displayed in all the other particulars.”
+
+“I see.” Mr. Bradley stroked his little moustache and eyed Sir Charles
+combatively. “Come to think of it, you know, Sir Charles, you haven’t
+really proved a case against Lady Pennefather at all. All you’ve
+proved is motive and opportunity.”
+
+An unexpected ally ranged herself beside Mr. Bradley. “Exactly!” cried
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “That’s just what I was about to point out
+myself. If you hand over the information you’ve collected to the
+police, Sir Charles, I don’t think they’ll thank you for it. As Mr.
+Bradley says, you haven’t proved that Lady Pennefather’s guilty, or
+anything like it. I’m quite sure you’re altogether mistaken.”
+
+Sir Charles was so taken aback that for a moment he could only stare.
+“_Mistaken?_” he managed to ejaculate. It was clear that such a
+possibility had never entered Sir Charles’s orbit.
+
+“Well, perhaps I’d better say—wrong,” amended Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,
+quite drily.
+
+“But my dear madam—” For once words did not come to Sir Charles. “But
+why?” he fell back upon, feebly.
+
+“Because I’m sure of it,” retorted Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, most
+unsatisfactorily.
+
+Roger had been watching this exchange with a gradual change of
+feeling. From being hypnotised by Sir Charles’s persuasiveness and
+self-confidence into something like reluctant agreement, he was
+swinging round now in reaction to the other extreme. Dash it all, this
+fellow Bradley had kept a clearer head after all. And he was perfectly
+right. There were gaps in Sir Charles’s case that Sir Charles himself,
+as counsel for Lady Pennefather’s defence, could have driven a
+coach-and-six through.
+
+“Of course,” he said thoughtfully, “the fact that before she went
+abroad Lady Pennefather may have had an account at Mason’s isn’t
+surprising in the least. Nor is the fact that Mason’s send out a
+complimentary chit with their receipts. As Sir Charles himself said,
+very many old-fashioned firms of good repute do. And the fact that the
+sheet of paper on which the letter was written had been used
+previously for some such purpose is not only not surprising, when one
+comes to consider; it’s even obvious. Whoever the murderer, the same
+problem of getting hold of the piece of notepaper would arise. Yes,
+really, that Sir Charles’s three initial questions should have
+happened to find affirmative answers, does seem little more than a
+coincidence.”
+
+Sir Charles turned on this new antagonist like a wounded bull. “But
+the odds were enormous against it!” he roared. “If it was a
+coincidence, it was the most incredible one in the whole course of my
+experience.”
+
+“Ah, Sir Charles, but you’re prejudiced,” Mr. Bradley told him gently.
+“And you exaggerate dreadfully, you know. You seem to be putting the
+odds at somewhere round about a million to one. I should put them at
+six to one. Permutations and combinations, you know.”
+
+“Damn your permutations, sir!” riposted Sir Charles with vigour. “And
+your combinations too.”
+
+Mr. Bradley turned to Roger. “Mr. Chairman, is it within the rules of
+this club for one member to insult another member’s underwear?
+Besides, Sir Charles,” he added to that fuming knight, “I don’t wear
+the things. Never have done, since I was an infant.”
+
+For the dignity of the chair Roger could not join in the delighted
+titters that were escaping round the table; in the interests of the
+Circle’s preservation he had to pour oil on these very seething
+waters.
+
+“Bradley, you’re losing sight of the point, aren’t you? I don’t want
+to destroy your theory necessarily, Sir Charles, or detract in any way
+from the really brilliant manner in which you’ve defended it; but if
+it’s to stand its ground it must be able to resist any arguments we
+can bring against it. That’s all. And I honestly do think that you’re
+inclined to attach a little too much importance to the answers to
+those three questions. What do you say, Miss Dammers?”
+
+“I agree,” Miss Dammers said crisply. “The way Sir Charles emphasised
+their importance reminded me at the time of a favourite trick of
+detective-story writers. He said, if I remember rightly, that if those
+questions were answered in the affirmative he knew that his suspect
+was guilty just as much as if he’d seen her with his own eyes putting
+the poison into the chocolates, because the odds against a
+coincidental affirmative to all three of them were incalculable. In
+other words he simply made a strong assertion, unsupported by evidence
+or argument.”
+
+“And that is what detective-story writers do, Miss Dammers?” queried
+Mr. Bradley, with a tolerant smile.
+
+“Invariably, Mr. Bradley. I’ve often noticed it in your own books. You
+state a thing so emphatically that the reader does not think of
+questioning the assertion. ‘Here,’ says the detective, ‘is a bottle of
+red liquid and here is a bottle of blue. If these two liquids turn out
+to be ink, then we know that they were purchased to fill up the empty
+inkpots in the library as surely as if we had read the dead man’s very
+thoughts.’ Whereas the red ink might have been bought by one of the
+maids to dye a jumper, and the blue by the secretary for his
+fountain-pen; or a hundred other such explanations. But any
+possibilities of that kind are silently ignored. Isn’t that so?”
+
+“Perfectly,” agreed Bradley, unperturbed. “Don’t waste time on
+unessentials. Just tell the reader very loudly what he’s to think, and
+he’ll think it all right. You’ve got the technique perfectly. Why
+don’t you try your hand at it? It’s quite a paying game, you know.”
+
+“I may one day. And anyhow I will say for you, Mr. Bradley, that your
+detectives do detect. They don’t just stand about and wait for
+somebody else to tell them who committed the murder, as the so-called
+detectives do in most of the so-called detective-stories I read.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Mr. Bradley. “Then you actually read
+detective-stories, Miss Dammers?”
+
+“Certainly,” said Miss Dammers, crisply. “Why not?” She dismissed Mr.
+Bradley as abruptly as she had answered his challenge. “And the letter
+itself, Sir Charles? The typewriting. You don’t attach any importance
+to that?”
+
+“As a detail, of course it would have to be considered; I was only
+sketching out the broad lines of the case.” Sir Charles was no longer
+bull-like. “I take it that the police would ferret out pieces of
+conclusive evidence of that nature.”
+
+“I think they might have some difficulty in connecting Pauline
+Pennefather with the machine that typed that letter,” observed Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, not without tartness.
+
+The tide of feeling had obviously set in against Sir Charles.
+
+“But the motive,” he pleaded, now pathetically on the defensive. “You
+must admit that the motive is overwhelming.”
+
+“You don’t know Pauline, Sir Charles—Lady Pennefather?” Miss Dammers
+suggested.
+
+“I do not.”
+
+“Evidently,” commented Miss Dammers.
+
+“You don’t agree with Sir Charles’s theory, Miss Dammers?” ventured
+Mr. Chitterwick.
+
+“I do not,” said Miss Dammers with emphasis.
+
+“Might one enquire your reason?” ventured Mr. Chitterwick further.
+
+“Certainly you may. It’s a conclusive one, I’m afraid, Sir Charles. I
+was in Paris at the time of the murder, and just about the very hour
+when the parcel was being posted I was talking to Pauline Pennefather
+in the foyer of the Opera.”
+
+“What!” exclaimed the discomfited Sir Charles, the remnants of his
+beautiful theory crashing about his ears.
+
+“I should apologise for not having given you this information before,
+I suppose,” said Miss Dammers with the utmost calmness, “but I wanted
+to see what sort of a case you could put up against her. And I really
+do congratulate you. It was a remarkable piece of inductive reasoning.
+If I hadn’t happened to know that it was built up on a complete
+fallacy you would have quite convinced me.”
+
+“But—but why the secrecy, and—and the impersonation by the maid, if
+her visit was an innocent one?” stammered Sir Charles, his mind
+revolving wildly round private aeroplanes and the time they would take
+from the _Place de l’Opéra_ to Trafalgar Square.
+
+“Oh, I didn’t say it was an innocent one,” retorted Miss Dammers
+carelessly. “Sir Eustace isn’t the only one who is waiting for the
+divorce to marry again. And in the interim Pauline, quite rightly,
+doesn’t see why she should waste valuable time. After all, she isn’t
+so young as she was. And there’s always a strange creature called the
+King’s Proctor, isn’t there?”
+
+Shortly after that the Chairman adjourned the meeting of the Circle.
+He did so because he did not wish one of the members to die of
+apoplexy on his hands.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was nervous. Actually nervous.
+
+She shuffled the pages of her notebook aimlessly, and seemed hardly
+able to sit through the few preliminaries which had to be settled
+before Roger asked her to give the solution which she had already
+affirmed, privately, to Alicia Dammers, to be indubitably the correct
+one of Mrs. Bendix’s murder. With such a weighty piece of knowledge in
+her mind one would have thought that for once in her life Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming had a really heaven-sent opportunity to be
+impressive, but for once in her life she made no use of it. If she had
+not been Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, one might have gone so far as to say
+that she dithered.
+
+“Are you ready, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming?” Roger asked, gazing at this
+surprising manifestation.
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming adjusted her very unbecoming hat, rubbed her
+nose (being innocent of powder, it did not suffer under this habitual
+treatment; just shone a little more brightly in pink embarrassment),
+and shot a covert glance round the table. Roger continued to gaze in
+astonishment. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was positively shrinking from the
+lime-light. For some occult reason she was approaching her task with
+real distaste, and a distaste at that quite out of comparison with the
+task’s significance.
+
+She cleared her throat, nervously. “I have a very difficult duty to
+perform,” she began in a low voice. “Last night I hardly slept.
+Anything more distasteful to a woman like myself it is impossible to
+imagine.” She paused, moistening her lips.
+
+“Oh, come, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” Roger felt himself impelled to
+encourage her. “It’s the same for all of us, you know. And I’ve heard
+you make a most excellent speech at one of your own first nights.”
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked at him, not at all encouraged. “I was not
+referring to that aspect of it, Mr. Sheringham,” she retorted, rather
+more tartly. “I was speaking of the burden which has been laid on me
+by the knowledge that has come into my possession, the terrible duty I
+have to perform in consequence of it.”
+
+“You mean you’ve solved the little problem?” enquired Mr. Bradley,
+without reverence.
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming regarded him sombrely. “With infinite regret,”
+she said, in low, womanly tones, “I have.” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was
+recovering her poise.
+
+She consulted her notes for a moment, and then began to speak in a
+firmer voice. “Criminology I have always regarded with something of a
+professional eye. Its main interest has always been for me its immense
+potentialities for drama. The inevitability of murder; the predestined
+victim, struggling unconsciously and vainly against fate; the
+predestined killer, moving first unconsciously too and then with full
+and relentless realisation, towards the accomplishment of his doom;
+the hidden causes, unknown perhaps to both victim and killer, which
+are all the time urging on the fulfilment of destiny.
+
+“Apart from the action and the horror of the deed itself, I have
+always felt that there are more possibilities of real drama in the
+most ordinary or sordid of murders than in any other situation that
+can occur to man. Ibsenish in the inevitable working out of certain
+circumstances in juxtaposition that we call fate, no less than
+Edgar-Wallacish in the _καθαρσις_ undergone by the emotions of the
+onlooker at their climax.
+
+“It was perhaps natural then that I should regard not only this
+particular case from something of the standpoint of my calling (and
+certainly no more dramatic twist could well be invented), but the task
+of solving it too. Anyhow, natural or not, this is what I did; and the
+result has terribly justified me. I considered the case in the light
+of one of the oldest dramatic situations, and very soon everything
+became only too clear. I am referring to the situation which the
+gentlemen who pass among us in these days for dramatic critics,
+invariably call the Eternal Triangle.
+
+“I had to begin of course with only one of the triangle’s three
+members, Sir Eustace Pennefather. Of the two unknown one must be a
+woman, the other might be woman or man. So I fell back on another very
+old and very sound maxim, and proceeded to _chercher la femme_. And,”
+said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, very solemnly, “I found her.”
+
+So far, it must be admitted, her audience was not particularly
+impressed. Even the promising opening had not stirred them, for it was
+only to be expected that Mrs. Fielder-Flemming would feel it her duty
+to emphasise her feminine shrinkings from handing a criminal over to
+justice. Her somewhat laborious sentences too, obviously learned off
+by heart for the occasion, detracted if anything from the interest of
+what she had to convey.
+
+But when she resumed, having waited in vain for a tributary gasp at
+her last momentous piece of information, the somewhat calculated
+tenseness of her style had given way to an unrehearsed earnestness
+which was very much more impressive.
+
+“I wasn’t expecting the triangle to be the hackneyed one,” she said,
+with a slight dig at the deflated remains of Sir Charles. “Lady
+Pennefather I hardly considered for a moment. The subtlety of the
+crime, I felt sure, must be a reflection of an unusual situation. And
+after all a triangle need not necessarily include a husband and wife
+among its members; any three people, if the circumstances arrange them
+so, can form one. It is the circumstances, not the three protagonists,
+that make the triangle.
+
+“Sir Charles has told us that this crime reminded him of the Marie
+Lafarge case, and in some respects (he might have added) the Mary
+Ansell case too. It reminded me of a case as well, but it was neither
+of these. The Molineux case in New York, it seems to me, provides a
+much closer parallel than either.
+
+“You all remember the details of course. Mr. Cornish, a director of
+the important Knickerbocker Athletic Club, received in his Christmas
+mail a small silver cup and a phial of bromo-seltzer, addressed to him
+at the club. He thought they had been sent by way of a joke, and kept
+the wrapper in order to identify the humorist. A few days later a
+woman who lived in the same boarding-house as Cornish complained of a
+headache and Cornish gave her some of the bromo-seltzer. In a very
+short time she was dead, and Cornish, who had taken just a sip because
+she complained of it being bitter, was violently ill but recovered
+later.
+
+“In the end a man named Molineux, another member of the same club, was
+arrested and put on trial. There was quite a lot of evidence against
+him, and it was known that he hated Cornish bitterly, so much so that
+he had already assaulted him once. Moreover another member of the
+club, a man named Barnet, had been killed earlier in the year through
+taking what purported to be a sample of a well-known headache powder
+which had also been sent to him at the club and, shortly before the
+Cornish episode, Molineux married a girl who had actually been engaged
+to Barnet at the time of his death; he had always wanted her, but she
+had preferred Barnet. Molineux, as you remember, was convicted at his
+first trial and acquitted at his second; he afterwards became insane.
+
+“Now this parallel seems to me complete. Our case is to all purposes a
+composite Cornish-cum-Barnet case. The resemblances are extraordinary.
+There is the poisoned article addressed to the man’s club; there is,
+in the case of Cornish, the death of the wrong victim; there is the
+preservation of the wrapper; there is, in Barnet’s case, the triangle
+element (and a triangle, you will notice, without husband and wife).
+It’s quite startling. It is, in fact, more than startling; it’s
+significant. Things don’t happen like that quite by chance.”
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming paused and blew her nose, delicately but with
+emotion. She was getting nicely worked up now, and so, in consequence,
+was her audience. If there were no gasps there was at any rate the
+tribute of complete silence till she was ready to go on.
+
+“I said that this similarity was more than startling, that it was
+significant. I will explain its particular significance later; at
+present it is enough to say that I found it very helpful also. The
+realisation of the extreme closeness of the parallel came as quite a
+shock to me, but once I had grasped it I felt strangely convinced that
+it was in this very similarity that the clue to the solution of Mrs.
+Bendix’s murder was to be found. I felt this so strongly that I
+somehow actually _knew_ it. These intuitions do come to me sometimes
+(explain them as you will) and I have never yet known them fail me.
+This one did not do so either.
+
+“I began to examine this case in the light of the Molineux one. Would
+the latter help me to find the woman I was looking for in the former?
+What were the indications, so far as Barnet was concerned? Barnet
+received his fatal package because he was purposing to marry a girl
+whom the murderer was resolved he should not marry. With so many
+parallels between the two cases already, was there—” Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming pushed back her unwieldy hat to a still more
+unbecoming angle and looked deliberately round the table with the air
+of an early Christian trying the power of the human eye on a
+doubtfully intimidated covey of lions—“_was there another here?_”
+
+This time Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was rewarded with several real and
+audible gasps. That of Sir Charles was quite the most audible, an
+outraged, indignant gasp that came perilously near to a snort. Mr.
+Chitterwick gasped apprehensively, as if fearing something like a
+physical sequel to the sharp exchange of glances between Sir Charles
+and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, those of the former positively menacing in
+their warning, those of the lady almost vocal with her defiance of it.
+
+The Chairman gasped too, wondering what a Chairman should do if two
+members of his circle, and of opposite sexes at that, should proceed
+to blows under his very nose.
+
+Mr. Bradley forgot himself so far as to gasp as well, in sheer,
+blissful ecstasy. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked as if she were to prove
+a better hand at bull-baiting than himself, but Mr. Bradley did not
+grudge her the honour so long as he was to be allowed to sit and hug
+himself in the audience. Not in his most daring toreador-like antics
+would Mr. Bradley have ever dared to postulate the very daughter of
+his victim as the cause of the murder itself. Could this magnificent
+woman really bring forward a case to support so puncturing an idea?
+And what if it should actually turn out to be true? After all, such a
+thing was conceivable enough. Murders have been committed for the sake
+of lovely ladies often enough before; so why not for the lovely
+daughter of a pompous old silk? Oh God, oh Montreal.
+
+Finally Mrs. Fielder-Flemming gasped too, at herself.
+
+Alone without a gasp sat Alicia Dammers, her face alight with nothing
+but an intellectual interest in the development of her fellow-member’s
+argument, determinedly impersonal. One was to gather that to Miss
+Dammers it was immaterial whether her own mother had been mixed up in
+the murder, so long as her part in it had provided opportunities for
+the sharpening of wits and the stimulation of intelligence. Without
+ever acknowledging her recognition that a personal element was being
+introduced into the Circle’s investigations, she yet managed to
+radiate the idea that Sir Charles ought, if anything, to be detachedly
+delighted at the possibility of such enterprise on the part of his
+daughter.
+
+Sir Charles however was far from delighted. From the red swelling of
+the veins on his forehead it was obvious that something was going to
+burst out of him in a very few seconds. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming leapt,
+like an agitated but determined hen, for the gap.
+
+“We have agreed to waive the law of slander here,” she almost
+squawked. “Personalities don’t exist for us. If the name crops up of
+any one personally known to us, we utter it as unflinchingly, in
+whatever connection, as if it were a complete stranger’s. That is the
+definite arrangement we came to last night, Mr. President, isn’t it?
+We are to do what we conceive to be our duty to society quite
+irrespective of any personal considerations?”
+
+For a moment Roger indulged his tremors. He did not want his beautiful
+Circle to explode in a cloud of dust, never again to be re-united. And
+though he could not but admire the flurried but undaunted courage of
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, he had to be content to envy it so far as Sir
+Charles was concerned, for he certainly did not possess anything like
+it himself. On the other hand there was no doubt that the lady had
+right on her side, and what can any President do but administer
+justice?
+
+“Perfectly correct, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” he had to admit, hoping
+his voice sounded as firm as he would have wished.
+
+For a moment a blue glare, emanating from Sir Charles, enveloped him
+luridly. Then, as Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, evidently heartened by this
+official support, took up her bomb again, the rays of the glare were
+switched again on to her. Roger, nervously watching the two of them,
+could not help reflecting that blue rays are things which should never
+be directed on to bombs.
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming juggled featly with her bomb. Often though it
+seemed about to slip through her fingers, it never quite reached the
+ground or detonated. “Very well, then. I will go on. My triangle now
+had the second of its members. On the analogy of the Barnet murder,
+where was the third to be found? Obviously, with Molineux as the
+prototype, in some person who was anxious to prevent the first member
+from marrying the second.
+
+“So far, you will see, I am not out of harmony with the conclusions
+Sir Charles gave us last night, though my method of arriving at them
+was perhaps somewhat different. He gave us a triangle also, without
+expressly defining it as such (perhaps even without recognising it as
+such). And the first two members of his triangle are precisely the
+same as the first two of mine.”
+
+Here Mrs. Fielder-Flemming made a notable effort to return something
+of Sir Charles’s glare, in defiant challenge to contradiction. As she
+had simply stated a plain fact however, which Sir Charles was quite
+unable to refute without explaining that he had not meant what he had
+meant the evening before, the challenge passed unanswered. Also the
+glare visibly diminished. But for all that (patently remarked Sir
+Charles’s expression) a triangle by any other name does _not_ smell so
+unsavoury.
+
+“It is when we come to the third member,” pursued Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, with renewed poise, “that we are at variance. Sir
+Charles suggested to us Lady Pennefather. I have not the pleasure of
+Lady Pennefather’s acquaintance, but Miss Dammers who knows her well,
+tells me that in almost every particular the estimate given us by Sir
+Charles of her character was wrong. She is neither mean, grasping,
+greedy, nor in any imaginable way capable of the awful deed with which
+Sir Charles, perhaps a little rashly, was ready to credit her. Lady
+Pennefather, I understand, is a particularly sweet and kindly woman;
+somewhat broad-minded no doubt, but none the worse for that; indeed as
+some of us would think, a good deal the better.”
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming encouraged the belief that she was not merely
+tolerant of a little harmless immorality, but actually ready to act as
+godmother to any particular instance of it. Indeed she went sometimes
+quite a long détour out of her way in order to propagate this belief
+among her friends. But unfortunately her friends would persist in
+remembering that she had refused to have anything more to do with one
+of her own nieces since the latter, on learning that her middle-aged
+husband kept, for purposes of convenience, a different mistress in
+each of the four quarters of England, and just to be on the safe side
+one in Scotland too, had run away with a young man of her own with
+whom she happened to be very devotedly in love.
+
+“Just as I differ from Sir Charles over the identity of the third
+person in the triangle,” went on Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, happily
+ignorant of her friends’ memories, “so I differ from him in the means
+by which that identity is to be established. We are at complete
+variance in our ideas regarding the very heart of the problem, the
+motive. Sir Charles would have us think that this was a murder
+committed (or attempted, rather) for gain; I am convinced that the
+incentive was, at any rate, a less ignoble one than that. Murder, we
+are taught, can never be really justifiable; but there are occasions
+when it comes dangerously near it. This, in my opinion, was one of
+them.
+
+“It is in the character of Sir Eustace himself that I see the clue to
+the identity of the third person. Let us consider it for a moment. We
+are not restricted by any considerations of slander, and we can say at
+once that, from certain points of view, Sir Eustace is a quite
+undesirable member of the community. From the point of view of a young
+man, for the sake of example, who is in love with a girl, Sir Eustace
+must be one of the very last persons with whom the young man would
+wish that girl to come into contact. He is not merely immoral, he is
+without excuse for his immorality, a far more serious thing. He is a
+rake, a spendthrift, without honour or scruples where women are
+concerned, and a man moreover who has already made a mess of marriage
+with a very charming woman and one by no means too narrow to overlook
+even a more than liberal allowance of the usual male peccadilloes and
+lapses. As a prospective husband for any young girl Sir Eustace
+Pennefather is a tragedy.
+
+“And as a prospective husband for a young girl whom a man loves with
+all his heart,” intoned Mrs. Fielder-Flemming very solemnly, “it is
+easy to conceive that, in that particular man’s regard, Sir Eustace
+Pennefather becomes nothing short of an impossibility.
+
+“And a man who _is_ a man,” added Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, quite mauve
+with intensity, “does not admit impossibilities.”
+
+She paused, pregnantly.
+
+“Curtain, Act I,” confided Mr. Bradley behind his hand to Mr. Ambrose
+Chitterwick.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick smiled nervously.
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+Sir Charles took the usual advantage of the first interval to rise
+from his seat. Like so many of us in these days by the time of the
+first interval (when it is not a play of Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s that
+is in question) he felt almost physically unable to contain himself
+longer.
+
+“Mr. President,” he boomed, “let us get this clear. Is Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming making the preposterous accusation that some friend
+of my daughter’s is responsible for this crime, or is she not?”
+
+The President looked somewhat helplessly up at the bulk towering
+wrathfully above him and wished he were anything but the President. “I
+really don’t know, Sir Charles,” he professed, which was not only
+feeble but untrue.
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming however was by now quite able to speak up for
+herself. “I have not yet specifically accused any one of the crime,
+Sir Charles,” she said, with a cold dignity that was only marred by
+the fact that her hat, which had apparently been sharing its
+mistress’s emotions, was now perched rakishly over her left ear. “So
+far I have been simply developing a thesis.”
+
+To Mr. Bradley Sir Charles would have replied, with Johnsonian scorn
+of evasion: “Sir, damn your thesis.” Hampered now by the puerilities
+of civilised convention regarding polite intercourse between the
+sexes, he could only summon up once more the blue glare.
+
+With the unfairness of her sex Mrs. Fielder-Flemming promptly took
+advantage of his handicap. “And,” she added pointedly, “I have not yet
+finished doing so.”
+
+Sir Charles sat down, the perfect allegory. But he grunted very
+naughtily to himself as he did so.
+
+Mr. Bradley restrained an impulse to clap Mr. Chitterwick on the back
+and then chuck him under the chin.
+
+Her serenity so natural as to be patently artificial, Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming proceeded to call the interval closed and ring up the
+curtain on her second act.
+
+“Having given you my processes towards arriving at the identity of the
+third member of the triangle I postulated, in other words towards that
+of the murderer, I will go on to the actual evidence and show how that
+supports my conclusions. Did I say ‘supports’? I meant, confirms them
+beyond all doubt.”
+
+“But what are your conclusions, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming?” Bradley asked,
+with an air of bland interest. “You haven’t defined them yet. You only
+hinted that the murderer was a rival of Sir Eustace’s for the hand of
+Miss Wildman.”
+
+“Exactly,” agreed Alicia Dammers. “Even if you don’t want to tell us
+the man’s name yet, Mabel, can’t you narrow it down a little more for
+us?” Miss Dammers disliked vagueness. It savoured to her of the
+slipshod, which above all things in this world she detested. Moreover
+she really was extremely interested to know upon whom Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming’s choice had alighted. Mabel, she knew, might look
+like one sort of fool, talk like another sort, and behave like a
+third; and yet really she was not a fool at all.
+
+But Mabel was determined to be coy. “Not yet, I’m afraid. For certain
+reasons I want to prove my case first. You’ll understand later, I
+think.”
+
+“Very well,” sighed Miss Dammers. “But do let’s keep away from the
+detective-story atmosphere. All we want to do is to solve this
+difficult case, not mystify each other.”
+
+“I have my reasons, Alicia,” frowned Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, and rather
+obviously proceeded to collect her thoughts. “Where was I? Oh yes, the
+evidence. Now this is very interesting. I have succeeded in obtaining
+two pieces of quite vital evidence which I have never heard brought
+forward before.
+
+“The first is that Sir Eustace was not in love with—” Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming hesitated; then, as the plunge had already been taken
+for her, followed the intrepid Mr. Bradley into the deeps of complete
+candour “—with Miss Wildman at all. He intended to marry her simply
+for her money—or rather, for what he hoped to get of her father’s
+money. I hope, Sir Charles,” added Mrs. Fielder-Flemming frostily,
+“that you will not consider me slanderous if I allude to the fact that
+you are an exceedingly rich man. It has a most important bearing on my
+case.”
+
+Sir Charles inclined his massive, handsome head. “It is hardly a
+matter of slander, madam. Simply one of taste, which is outside my
+professional orbit. I fear it would be a waste of time for me to
+attempt to advise you on it.”
+
+“That is very interesting, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” Roger hastily
+interposed on this exchange of pleasantries. “How did you discover
+it?”
+
+“From Sir Eustace’s man, Mr. Sheringham,” replied Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming not without pride. “I interrogated him. Sir Eustace
+had made no secret of it. He seems to confide most freely in his man.
+He expected, apparently, to be able to pay off his debts, buy a
+racehorse or two, provide for the present Lady Pennefather, and
+generally make a fresh and no doubt discreditable start. He had
+actually promised Barker (that is his man’s name) a present of a
+hundred pounds on the day he ‘led the little filly to the altar,’ as
+he phrased it. I am sorry to hurt your feelings, Sir Charles, but I
+have to deal with facts, and feelings must go down before them. A
+present of ten pounds bought me all the information I wanted. Quite
+remarkable information, as it turned out.” She looked round
+triumphantly.
+
+“You don’t think, perhaps,” ventured Mr. Chitterwick with an
+apologetic smile, “that information from such a tainted source might
+not be entirely reliable? The source seems so very tainted. Why, I
+don’t think my own man would sell me for a ten-pound note.”
+
+“Like master like man,” returned Mrs. Fielder-Flemming shortly. “His
+information was perfectly reliable. I was able to check nearly
+everything he told me, so that I think I am entitled to accept the
+small residue as correct too.
+
+“I should like to quote another of Sir Eustace’s confidences. It is
+not pretty, but it is very, very illuminating. He had made an attempt
+to seduce Miss Wildman in a private room at the Pug-Dog Restaurant
+(that, for instance, I checked later), apparently with the object of
+ensuring the certainty of the marriage he desired. (I am sorry again,
+Sir Charles, but these facts must be brought out.) I had better say at
+once that the attempt was unsuccessful. That night Sir Eustace
+remarked (and to his valet of all people, remember); ‘You can take a
+filly to the altar, but you can’t make her drunk.’ That, I think, will
+show you better than any words of mine just what manner of man Sir
+Eustace Pennefather is. And it will also show you how overwhelmingly
+strong was the incentive of the man who really loved her to put her
+for ever out of the reach of such a brute.
+
+“And that brings me to the second piece of my evidence. This is really
+the foundation stone of the whole structure, the basis on which the
+necessity for murder (as the murderer saw it) rested, and the basis at
+the same time of my own reconstruction of the crime. Miss Wildman was
+hopelessly, unreasonably, irrevocably infatuated with Sir Eustace
+Pennefather.”
+
+As an artist in dramatic effect, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was silent for
+a moment to allow the significance of this information to sink into
+the minds of her audience. But Sir Charles was far too personally
+preoccupied to be interested in significances.
+
+“And may one ask how you found _that_ out, madam?” he demanded,
+swelling with sarcasm. “From my daughter’s maid?”
+
+“From your daughter’s maid,” responded Mrs. Fielder-Flemming sweetly.
+“Detecting, I discover, is an expensive hobby, but one mustn’t regret
+money spent in a good cause.”
+
+Roger sighed. It was plain that, once this ill-fortuned child of his
+invention had died a painful death, the Circle (if it had not been
+completely squared by then) would be found to be without either Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming or Sir Charles Wildman; and he knew which of the two
+it would be. It was a pity. Sir Charles, besides being such an asset
+from the professional point of view, was the only leavening apart from
+Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick of the literary element; and Roger, who had
+attended a few literary parties in his earlier days, was quite sure he
+would not be able to face a gathering that consisted of nothing but
+people who made their livings by their typewriters.
+
+Besides, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming really was being a little hard on the
+old man. After all, it was his daughter who was in question.
+
+“I have now,” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, “established an overwhelming
+motive for the man who is in my mind to eliminate Sir Eustace. In fact
+it must have seemed to him the only possible way out of an intolerable
+situation. Let me now go on to connect him with the few facts allowed
+us by the anonymous murderer.
+
+“When the Chief Inspector the other evening permitted us to examine
+the forged letter from Mason & Sons I examined it closely, because I
+know something about typewriters. That letter was typed on a Hamilton
+machine. The man I have in mind has a Hamilton typewriter at his place
+of business. You may say that might be only a coincidence, the
+Hamilton being so generally used. So it might; but if you get enough
+coincidences lumped together, they cease to become coincidences at all
+and become certainties.
+
+“In the same way we have the further coincidence of Mason’s notepaper.
+This man has a definite connection with Mason’s. Three years ago, as
+you may remember, Mason’s were involved in a big lawsuit. I forget the
+details, but I think they brought an action against one of their
+rivals. You may remember, Sir Charles?”
+
+Sir Charles nodded reluctantly, as if unwilling to help his antagonist
+even with this unimportant information. “I ought to,” he said shortly.
+“It was against the Fearnley Chocolate Company for infringement of
+copyright in an advertisement figure. I led for Mason’s.”
+
+“Thank you. Yes, I thought it was something like that. Very well,
+then. This man was connected with that very case. He was helping
+Mason’s, on the legal side. He must have been in and out of their
+office. His opportunities for possessing himself of a piece of their
+notepaper would have been legion. The chances by which he might have
+found himself three years later in possession of a piece would be
+innumerable. The paper had yellowed edges; it must have been quite
+three years old. It had an erasure. That erasure, I suggest, is the
+remains of a brief note on the case jotted down one day in Mason’s
+office. The thing is obvious. Everything fits.
+
+“Then there is the matter of the post-mark. I agree with Sir Charles
+that we may take it for granted that the murderer, cunning though he
+is, and anxious though he might be to establish an alibi, would not
+entrust the posting of the fatal parcel to any one else. Apart from a
+confederate, which I am sure we may rule out of the question, it would
+be far too dangerous; the name of Sir Eustace Pennefather could hardly
+escape being seen, and the connection later established. The murderer,
+secure in his conviction that suspicion will never fall on himself of
+all people (just like all murderers that have ever been), gambles a
+possible alibi against a certain risk and posts the thing himself. It
+is therefore advisable, just to clinch the case against him, to
+connect the man with the neighbourhood of the Strand between the hours
+of eight-thirty and nine-thirty on that particular evening.
+
+“Surprisingly enough I found this task, which I had expected to be the
+most difficult, the easiest of all. The man of whom I am thinking
+actually attended a public dinner that night at the Hotel Cecil, a
+re-union dinner to be exact of his old school. The Hotel Cecil, I need
+not remind you, is almost opposite Southampton Street. The Southampton
+Street post-office is the nearest one to the Hotel. What could be
+easier for him than to slip out of his seat for the five minutes which
+is all that would be required, and be back again almost before his
+neighbours had noticed his action?”
+
+“What indeed?” murmured the rapt Mr. Bradley.
+
+“I have two final points to make. You remember that in pointing out
+the resemblance of this case to the Molineux affair, I remarked that
+this similarity was more than surprising, it was significant. I will
+explain what I meant by that. What I meant was that the parallel was
+far too close for it to be just a coincidence. This case is a
+deliberate _copy_ of that one. And if it is, there is only one
+inference. This murder is the work of a man steeped in criminal
+history—of a criminologist. And the man I have in mind _is_ a
+criminologist.
+
+“My last point concerns the denial in the newspaper of the rumoured
+engagement between Sir Eustace Pennefather and Miss Wildman. I learnt
+from his valet that Sir Eustace did not send that denial himself. Nor
+did Miss Wildman. Sir Eustace was furiously angry about it. It was
+sent, on his own initiative without consulting either of them, by the
+man whom I am accusing of having committed this crime.”
+
+Mr. Bradley stopped hugging himself for a moment. “And the
+nitrobenzene? Were you able to connect him with that too?”
+
+“That is one of the very few points on which I agree with Sir Charles.
+I don’t think it in the least necessary, or possible, to connect him
+with such a common commodity, which can be bought anywhere without the
+slightest difficulty or remark.”
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was holding herself in with a visible effort.
+Her words, so calm and judicial to read, had hitherto been spoken too
+with a strenuous attempt towards calm and judicial delivery. But with
+each sentence the attempt was obviously becoming more difficult. Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming was clearly getting so excited that a few more such
+sentences seemed likely to choke her, though to the others such
+intensity of feeling seemed a little unnecessary. She was approaching
+her climax, of course, but even that seemed hardly an excuse for such
+a very purple face and a hat that had now managed somehow to ride to
+the very back of her head where it trembled agitatedly in sympathy
+with its mistress.
+
+“That is all,” she concluded jerkily. “I submit that I have proved my
+case. This man is the murderer.”
+
+There was complete silence.
+
+“Well?” said Alicia Dammers impatiently. “Who is he, then?”
+
+Sir Charles, who had been regarding the orator with a frown that grew
+more and more lowering every minute, thumped quite menacingly on the
+table in front of him. “Precisely,” he growled. “Let us get out in the
+open. Against whom are these ridiculous insinuations of yours
+directed, madam?” One gathered that Sir Charles did not find himself
+in agreement with the lady’s conclusions, even before knowing what
+they were.
+
+“Accusations, Sir Charles,” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming squeaked correction.
+“You—you pretend you don’t know?”
+
+“Really, madam,” retorted Sir Charles, with massive dignity, “I’m
+afraid I have no idea.”
+
+And then Mrs. Fielder-Flemming became regrettably dramatic. Rising
+slowly to her feet like a tragedy queen (except that tragedy queens do
+not wear their hats tremblingly on the very backs of their heads, and
+if their faces are apt to go brilliant purple with emotion disguise
+the tint with appropriate grease paints), heedless of the chair
+overturning behind her with a dull, doom-like thud, her quivering
+finger pointing across the table, she confronted Sir Charles with
+every inch of her five-foot nothing.
+
+“Thou!” shrilled Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “Thou art the man!” Her
+outstretched finger shook like a ribbon on an electric fan. “The brand
+of Cain is on your forehead! Murderer!”
+
+In the silence of ecstatic horror that followed Mr. Bradley clung
+deliriously to the arm of Mr. Chitterwick.
+
+Sir Charles succeeded in finding his voice, temporarily mislaid. “The
+woman’s mad,” he gasped.
+
+Finding that she had not been shot on the spot, or even blasted by
+blue lightning from Sir Charles’s eyes, either of which possibilities
+it seemed that she had been dreading, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming proceeded
+rather less hysterically to amplify her charge.
+
+“No, I am not mad, Sir Charles; I am very, very sane. You loved your
+daughter, and with the twofold love that a man who has lost his wife
+feels for the only feminine thing left to him. You considered that any
+lengths were justified to prevent her from falling into the hands of
+Sir Eustace Pennefather—from having her youth, her innocence, her
+trust exploited by such a scoundrel.
+
+“Out of your own mouth I convict you. Already you’ve told us that it
+was not necessary to mention everything that took place at your
+interview with Sir Eustace. No; for then you would have had to give
+away the fact that you informed him you would rather kill him with
+your own hands than see your daughter married to him. And when matters
+reached such a pass, what with the poor girl’s infatuation and
+obstinacy and Sir Eustace’s determination to take advantage of them,
+that no means short of that very thing was left to you to prevent the
+catastrophe, you did not shrink from employing them. Sir Charles
+Wildman, may God be your judge, for I cannot.” Breathing heavily, Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming retrieved her inverted chair and sat down on it.
+
+“Well, Sir Charles,” remarked Mr. Bradley, whose swelling bosom was
+threatening to burst his waistcoat. “Well, I wouldn’t have thought it
+of you. Murder, indeed. Very naughty; very, very naughty.”
+
+For once Sir Charles took no notice of his faithful gadfly. It is
+doubtful whether he even heard him. Now that it had penetrated into
+his consciousness that Mrs. Fielder-Flemming really intended her
+accusation in all seriousness and was not the victim of a temporary
+attack of insanity, his bosom was swelling just as tumultuously as Mr.
+Bradley’s. His face, adopting the purple tinge that Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming’s was relinquishing, took on the aspect of the frog
+in the fable who failed to realise his own bursting-point. Roger,
+whose emotions on hearing Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s outburst had been so
+mixed as to be almost scrambled, began to feel quite alarmed for him.
+
+But Sir Charles found the safety-valve of speech just in time. “Mr.
+President,” he exploded through it, “if I am not right in assuming
+this to be a jest on this lady’s part, even though a jest in the worst
+possible taste, am I to be expected to take this preposterous nonsense
+seriously?”
+
+Roger glanced at Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s face, now set in flinty
+masses, and gulped. However, preposterous though Sir Charles might
+term it, his antagonist had certainly made out a case, and not a
+flimsy, unsupported case either. “I think,” he said, as carefully as
+he could, “that if it had been any one but yourself in question, Sir
+Charles, you would agree that a charge of this kind, when there is
+real evidence to support it, does at least require to be taken
+seriously so far as to need refuting.”
+
+Sir Charles snorted and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming nodded her head several
+times with vehemence.
+
+“If refuting is possible,” observed Mr. Bradley. “But I must admit
+that, personally, I am impressed. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming seems to me to
+have made out her case. Would you like me to go and telephone for the
+police, Mr. President?” He spoke with an air of earnest endeavour to
+do his duty as a citizen, however distasteful it might be.
+
+Sir Charles glared, but once more seemed bereft of words.
+
+“Not yet, I think,” Roger said gently. “We haven’t heard yet what Sir
+Charles has to answer.”
+
+“Well, I suppose we may as well _hear_ him,” conceded Mr. Bradley.
+
+Five pairs of eyes glued themselves on Sir Charles, five pairs of ears
+were strained.
+
+But Sir Charles, struggling mightily with himself, was silent.
+
+“As I expected,” murmured Mr. Bradley. “There is no defence. Even Sir
+Charles, who has snatched so many murderers from the rope, can find
+nothing to say in such a glaring case. It’s very sad.”
+
+From the look he flashed at his tormentor it was to be deduced that
+Sir Charles might have found plenty to say had the two of them been
+alone together. As it was, he could only rumble.
+
+“Mr. President,” said Alicia Dammers, with her usual brisk efficiency,
+“I have a proposal to make. Sir Charles appears to be admitting his
+guilt by default, and Mr. Bradley, as a good citizen, wishes to hand
+him over to the police.”
+
+“Hear, hear!” observed the good citizen.
+
+“Personally I should be sorry to do that. I think there is a good deal
+to be said for Sir Charles. Murder, we are taught, is invariably
+anti-social. But is it? I am of the opinion that Sir Charles’s
+intention, that of ridding the world (and incidentally his own
+daughter) of Sir Eustace Pennefather, was quite in the world’s best
+interests. That his intention miscarried and an innocent victim was
+killed is quite beside the point. Even Mrs. Fielder-Flemming seemed to
+be doubtful whether Sir Charles ought to be condemned, as a jury would
+certainly condemn him, though she added in conclusion that she did not
+feel competent to judge him.
+
+“I differ from her. Being a person of, I hope, reasonable
+intelligence, I feel perfectly competent to judge him. And I consider
+further that all five of us are competent to judge him. I therefore
+suggest that we do in fact judge him ourselves. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+could act as prosecutor; somebody (I propose Mr. Bradley) could defend
+him; and all five of us constitute a jury, the finding to be by
+majority in favour or against. We would bind ourselves to abide by the
+result, and if it is against him we send for the police; if it is in
+his favour we agree never to breathe a word of his guilt outside this
+room. May this be put to the meeting?”
+
+Roger smiled at her reprovingly. He knew quite well that Miss Dammers
+no more believed in Sir Charles’s guilt than he, Roger, did himself,
+and he knew that she was only pulling that eminent counsel’s leg; a
+little cruelly, but no doubt she thought it was good for him. Miss
+Dammers professed herself a strong believer in seeing the other side,
+and held that it would be a very good thing for the cat occasionally
+to find itself chased by the mouse; certainly therefore it was most
+salutary for a man who had prosecuted other men for their lives to
+find himself for once in the dock on just such a terrifying charge.
+Mr. Bradley, on the other hand, though he, too, obviously did not
+believe that Sir Charles was the murderer, mocked not out of
+conviction but because only so could he get a little of his own back
+against Sir Charles for having made more of a success of his life than
+Mr. Bradley was likely to do.
+
+Nor, Roger thought, had Mr. Chitterwick any serious doubts as to the
+possibility of Sir Charles being guilty, though he was still looking
+so alarmed at Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s temerity in suggesting such a
+thing that it was not altogether possible to say what he did think.
+Indeed Roger was quite sure that nobody entertained the least
+suspicion of Sir Charles’s innocence except Mrs. Fielder-Flemming—and
+perhaps, from the look of him, Sir Charles himself. As that outraged
+gentleman had pointed out, such an idea, looked at in sober
+reflection, was plainly the most preposterous nonsense. Sir Charles
+could not be guilty because—well, because he was Sir Charles, and
+because such things don’t happen, and because he obviously couldn’t
+be.
+
+On the other hand Mrs. Fielder-Flemming had very neatly proved that he
+was. And Sir Charles had not even attempted yet to prove that he
+wasn’t.
+
+Not for the first time Roger wished, very sincerely, that anybody were
+sitting in the presidential chair but himself.
+
+“I think,” he now repeated, “that before we take any steps at all we
+ought to hear what Sir Charles has to say. I am sure,” added the
+President kindly, remembering the right phrase, “that he will have a
+complete answer to all charges.” He looked expectantly towards the
+criminal.
+
+Sir Charles appeared to jerk himself out of the haze of his wrath. “I
+am really expected to defend myself against this—this hysteria?” he
+barked. “Very well. I admit I am a criminologist, which Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming appears to think so damning. I admit that I attended
+a dinner at the Hotel Cecil on that night, which it seems is enough to
+put the rope round my neck. I admit, since it appears that my private
+affairs are to be dragged into public, regardless of taste or decency,
+that I would rather have strangled Sir Eustace with my own hands than
+see him married to my daughter.”
+
+He paused, and passed his hand rather wearily over his high forehead.
+He was no longer formidable, but only a rather bewildered old man.
+Roger felt intensely sorry for him. But Mrs. Fielder-Flemming had
+stated her case too well for it to be possible to spare him.
+
+“I admit all this, but none of it is evidence that would have very
+much weight in a court of law. If you want me to prove that I did not
+actually send those chocolates, what am I to say? I could bring my two
+neighbours at the dinner, who would swear that I never left my seat
+till—well, it must have been after ten o’clock. I can prove by means
+of other witnesses that my daughter finally consented, on my
+representations, to give up the idea of marriage with Sir Eustace and
+has gone voluntarily to stay with relations of ours in Devonshire for
+a considerable time. But there again I have to admit that this has
+happened since the date of posting the chocolates.
+
+“In short, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming has managed, with considerable skill,
+to put together a _prima facie_ case against me, though it was based
+on a mistaken assumption (I would point out to her that counsel is
+never constantly in and out of his client’s premises, but meets him
+usually only in the presence of his solicitor, either at the former’s
+place of business or in his own chambers), and I am quite ready, if
+this meeting thinks it advisable, for the matter to be investigated
+officially. More, I welcome such investigation in view of the slur
+that has been cast upon my name. Mr. President, I ask you, as
+representing the members as a whole, to take such action as you think
+fit.”
+
+Roger steered a wary course. “Speaking for myself, Sir Charles, I am
+quite sure that Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s reasoning, exceedingly clever
+though it was, has been based as you say upon an error, and really, as
+a matter of mere probability, I cannot see a father sending poisoned
+chocolates to the would-be fiancé of his own daughter. A moment’s
+thought would show him the practical inevitability of the chocolates
+reaching eventually the daughter herself. I have my own opinion about
+this crime, but even apart from that I feel quite certain in my own
+mind that the case against Sir Charles has not really been proved.”
+
+“Mr. President,” cut in Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, not without heat, “you
+may say what you like, but in the interests of—”
+
+“I agree, Mr. President,” Miss Dammers interrupted incisively. “It is
+unthinkable that Sir Charles could have sent those chocolates.”
+
+“Humph!” said Mr. Bradley, unwilling to have his sport spoiled quite
+so soon.
+
+“Hear, hear!” Mr. Chitterwick, with surprising decision.
+
+“On the other hand,” Roger pursued, “I quite see that Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming is entitled to the official investigation which Sir
+Charles asks for, no less than is Sir Charles himself on behalf of his
+good name. And I agree with Sir Charles that she has certainly made
+out a _prima facie_ case for investigation. But what I should like to
+stress is that so far only two members out of six have spoken, and it
+is not outside possibility that such startling developments may have
+been traced out by the time we have all had our turn, that the one we
+are discussing now may (I do not say that it will, but it _may_) have
+faded into insignificance.”
+
+“Oho!” murmured Mr. Bradley. “What has our worthy President got up his
+sleeve?”
+
+“I therefore propose, as a formal motion,” Roger concluded,
+disregarding the somewhat sour looks cast on him by Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, “that we shelve the question regarding Sir Charles
+entirely, for discussion or report either inside or outside this room,
+for one week from to-day, when any member who wishes may bring it up
+again for decision, failing which it passes into oblivion for good and
+all. Shall we vote on that? Those in favour?”
+
+The motion was carried unanimously. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming would have
+liked to vote against it, but she had never yet belonged to any
+committee where all motions were not carried unanimously and habit was
+too strong for her.
+
+The meeting then adjourned, rather oppressed.
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+Roger sat on the table in Moresby’s room at Scotland Yard and swung
+his legs moodily. Moresby was being no help at all.
+
+“I’ve told you, Mr. Sheringham,” said the Chief Inspector, with a
+patient air. “It’s not a bit of good you trying to pump me. I’ve told
+you all we know here. I’d help you if I could, as you know”—Roger
+snorted incredulously—“but we’re simply at a dead end.”
+
+“So am I,” Roger grunted. “And I don’t like it.”
+
+“You’ll soon get used to it, Mr. Sheringham,” consoled Moresby, “if
+you take on this sort of job often.”
+
+“I simply can’t get any further,” Roger lamented. “In fact I don’t
+think I want to. I’m practically sure I’ve been working on the wrong
+tack altogether. If the clue really does lie in Sir Eustace’s private
+life, he’s shielding it like the very devil. But I don’t think it
+does.”
+
+“Humph!” said Moresby, who did.
+
+“I’ve cross-examined his friends, till they’re tired of the sight of
+me. I’ve cadged introductions to the friends of his friends, and the
+friends of his friends of his friends, and cross-examined them too.
+I’ve haunted his club. And what have I discovered? That Sir Eustace
+was not only a daisy, as you’d told me already, but a perfectly
+indiscreet daisy at that; the quite unpleasant type, fortunately very
+much rarer than women suppose, that talks of his feminine successes,
+with names—though I think that in Sir Eustace’s case this was simply
+through lack of imagination and not any natural caddishness. But you
+see what I mean. I’ve collected the names of scores of women, and they
+all lead—nowhere! If there is a woman at the bottom of it, I should
+have been sure to have heard of her by this time. And I haven’t.”
+
+“And what about that American case, which we thought such an
+extraordinary parallel, Mr. Sheringham?”
+
+“That was cited last night by one of our members,” said Roger
+gloomily. “And a very pretty little deduction she drew from it.”
+
+“Ah, yes,” nodded the chief inspector. “That would be Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, I suppose. She thinks Sir Charles Wildman is the
+guilty party, doesn’t she?”
+
+Roger stared at him. “How the devil did you know that? Oh! The
+unscrupulous old hag. She passed you the wink, did she?”
+
+“Certainly not, sir,” retorted Moresby with a virtuous air, as if half
+the difficult cases Scotland Yard solves are not edged in the first
+place along the right path by means of “information received.” “She
+hasn’t said a word to us, though I’m not saying it wouldn’t have been
+her duty to do so. But there isn’t much that your members are doing
+which we don’t know about, and thinking too for that matter.”
+
+“We’re being shadowed,” said Roger, pleased. “Yes, you told me at the
+beginning that we were to have an eye kept on us. Well, well. So in
+that case, are you going to arrest Sir Charles?”
+
+“Not yet, I think, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby returned gravely.
+
+“What do you think of the theory, then? She made out a very striking
+case for it.”
+
+“I should be very surprised,” said Moresby with care, “to be convinced
+that Sir Charles Wildman had taken to murdering people himself instead
+of preventing us from hanging other murderers.”
+
+“Less paying, certainly,” Roger agreed. “Yes, of course there can’t be
+anything in it really, but it’s a nice idea.”
+
+“And what theory are you going to put forward, Mr. Sheringham?”
+
+“Moresby, I haven’t the faintest idea. And I’ve got to speak to-morrow
+night, too. I suppose I can fake up something to pass muster, but it’s
+a disappointment.” Roger reflected for a moment. “I think the real
+trouble is that my interest in this case is simply academic. In all
+the others it has been personal, and that not only gives one such a
+much bigger incentive to get to the bottom of a case but somehow
+actually helps one to do so. Bigger gleanings in the way of
+information, I suppose. And more intimate sidelights on the people
+concerned.”
+
+“Well, Mr. Sheringham,” remarked Moresby, a little maliciously,
+“perhaps you’ll admit now that we people here, whose interest is never
+personal (if you mean by that looking at a case from the inside
+instead of from the outside), have a bit of an excuse when we do come
+to grief over a case. Which, by the way,” Moresby added with
+professional pride, “is precious seldom.”
+
+“I certainly do,” Roger agreed feelingly. “Well, Moresby, I’ve got to
+go through the distressing business of buying a new hat before lunch.
+Do you feel like shadowing me to Bond Street? I might afterwards walk
+into a neighbouring hostelry, and it would be nice for you to be able
+to shadow me in there too.”
+
+“Sorry, Mr. Sheringham,” said Chief Inspector Moresby pointedly, “but
+_I_ have some work to do.”
+
+Roger removed himself.
+
+He was feeling so depressed that he took a taxi to Bond Street instead
+of a ’bus, to cheer himself up. Roger, having been in London
+occasionally during the war-years and remembering the interesting
+habits cultivated by taxi-drivers during that period, had never taken
+one since when a ’bus would do as well. The public memory is
+notoriously short, but the public’s prejudices are equally notoriously
+long.
+
+Roger had reason for his depression. He was, as he had told Moresby,
+not only at a dead end, but the conviction was beginning to grow in
+him that he had actually been working completely on the wrong lines;
+and the possibility that all the labour he had put into the case had
+simply been time wasted was a sad one. His initial interest in the
+affair, though great, had been as he had just realised only an
+academic one, such as he would feel in any cleverly planned murder;
+and in spite of the contacts established with persons who were
+acquainted with various of the protagonists he still felt himself
+awkwardly outside the case. There was no personal connection somehow
+to enable him really to get to grips with it. He was beginning to
+suspect that it was the sort of case, necessitating endless inquiries
+such as a private individual has neither the skill, the patience nor
+the time to prosecute, which can really only be handled by the
+official police.
+
+It was hazard, two chance encounters that same day and almost within
+an hour, which put an entirely different complexion on the case to
+Roger’s eyes, and translated at last his interest in it from the
+academic into the personal.
+
+The first was in Bond Street.
+
+Emerging from his hat-shop, the new hat at just the right angle on his
+head, he saw bearing down on him Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer. Mrs.
+Verreker-le-Mesurer was small, exquisite, rich, comparatively young,
+and a widow, and she coveted Roger. Why, even Roger, who had his share
+of proper conceit, could not understand, but whenever he gave her the
+opportunity she would sit at his feet (metaphorically of course; he
+had no intention of giving her the opportunity to do so literally) and
+gaze up at him with her big brown eyes melting in earnest uplift. But
+she talked. She talked, in short, and talked, and talked. And Roger,
+who rather liked talking himself, could not bear it.
+
+He tried to dart across the road, but there was no opening in the
+traffic stream. He was cornered. With a gay smile that masked a
+vituperative mind he spoilt the angle of his beautiful new hat.
+
+Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer fastened on him gladly. “Oh, Mr. Sheringham!
+Just the very person I wanted to see. Mr. Sheringham, _do_ tell me. In
+the strictest confidence of course. _Are_ you taking up this dreadful
+business of _poor_ Joan Bendix’s death? Oh, don’t—_don’t_ tell me
+you’re not.” Roger tried to tell her that he had hoped to do so, but
+she gave him no chance. “Oh, aren’t you really? But it’s too dreadful.
+You ought, you know, you really _ought_ to try and find out who sent
+those chocolates to Sir Eustace Pennefather. I do think it’s naughty
+of you not to.”
+
+Roger, the frozen grin of civilised intercourse on his face, again
+tried to edge a word in; without result.
+
+“I was horrified when I heard of it. Simply horrified.” Mrs.
+Verreker-le-Mesurer registered horror. “You see, Joan and I were such
+_very_ close friends. Quite intimate. In fact we were at school
+together.—Did you say anything, Mr. Sheringham?”
+
+Roger, who had allowed a faintly incredulous groan to escape him,
+hastily shook his head.
+
+“And the awful thing, the truly _terrible_ thing is that Joan brought
+the whole thing on herself. Isn’t that appalling, Mr. Sheringham?”
+
+Roger no longer wanted to escape. “What did you say?” he managed to
+insert, again incredulously.
+
+“I suppose it’s what they call tragic irony,” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
+chattered happily. “Certainly it was tragic enough and I’ve never
+heard of anything so terribly ironical. You know about that bet she
+made with her husband, of course, so that he had to get her a box of
+chocolates and if he hadn’t Sir Eustace would never have given him the
+poisoned ones but would have eaten them and died himself, and from all
+I hear about him good riddance? Well, Mr. Sheringham—” Mrs.
+Verreker-le-Mesurer lowered her voice to a conspirator-like whisper
+and glanced about her in the approved manner. “I’ve never told any one
+else this, but I’m telling you because I know you’ll appreciate it.
+You _are_ interested in irony, aren’t you?”
+
+“I adore it,” Roger said mechanically. “Yes?”
+
+“Well—_Joan wasn’t playing fair!_”
+
+“How do you mean?” Roger asked, bewildered. Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
+was artlessly pleased with her sensation. “Why, she ought not to have
+made that bet at all. It was a judgment on her. A terrible judgment of
+course, but the appalling thing is that she did bring it on herself,
+in a way. I’m so terribly distressed about it. Really, Mr. Sheringham,
+I can hardly bear to turn the light out when I go to bed. I see Joan’s
+face simply looking at me in the dark. It’s awful.” And for a fleeting
+instant Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer’s face did for once really mirror the
+emotion she professed: it looked quite haggard.
+
+“Why oughtn’t Mrs. Bendix to have made the bet?” Roger asked
+patiently.
+
+“Oh! Why, because she’d seen the play before. We went together, the
+very first week it was on. She _knew_ who the villain was all the
+time.”
+
+“By Jove!” Roger was as impressed as Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer could
+have wished. “The Avenging Chance again, eh? We’re none of us immune
+from it.”
+
+“Poetic justice, you mean?” twittered Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer, to
+whom these remarks had been a trifle obscure. “Yes it was, in a way,
+wasn’t it? Though really, the punishment was out of all proportion to
+the crime. Good gracious, if every woman who cheats over a bet is to
+be killed for it, where would any of us be?” demanded Mrs.
+Verreker-le-Mesurer with unconscious frankness.
+
+“Umph!” said Roger tactfully.
+
+Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer glanced rapidly up and down the pavement, and
+moistened her lips. Roger had an odd impression that she was talking
+not as usual just for the sake of talking, but in some recondite way
+to escape from not talking. It was as if she was more distressed over
+her friend’s death than she cared to show and found some relief in
+babbling. It interested Roger also to notice that fond though she had
+probably been of the dead woman, she now found herself driven as if
+against her will to hint at blame even while praising her. It was as
+though she was able thus to extract some subtle consolation for the
+actual death.
+
+“But Joan Bendix of all people! That’s what I can’t get over, Mr.
+Sheringham. I should never have thought Joan _would_ do a thing like
+that. Joan was such a nice girl. A little close with money perhaps,
+considering how well-off she was, but that isn’t anything. Of course I
+know it was only fun, and pulling her husband’s leg, but I always used
+to think Joan was such a _serious_ girl, if you know what I mean.”
+
+“Quite,” said Roger, who could understand plain English as well as
+most people.
+
+“I mean, ordinary people don’t talk about honour, and truth, and
+playing the game, and all those things one takes for granted. But Joan
+did. She was always saying that this wasn’t honourable, or that
+wouldn’t be playing the game. Well, she paid herself for not playing
+the game, poor girl, didn’t she? Still, I suppose it all goes to prove
+the truth of the old saying.”
+
+“What old saying?” asked Roger, almost hypnotised by this flow.
+
+“Why, that still waters run deep. Joan must have been deep after all,
+I’m afraid.” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer sighed. It was evidently a grave
+social error to be deep. “Not that I want to say anything against her
+now she’s dead, poor darling, but—well, what I mean is, I do think
+psychology is so very interesting, don’t you, Mr. Sheringham?”
+
+“Quite fascinating,” Roger agreed gravely. “Well, I’m afraid I must
+be—”
+
+“And what does that man, Sir Eustace Pennefather, think about it all?”
+demanded Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer, with an expression of positive
+vindictiveness. “After all, he’s as responsible for Joan’s death as
+anybody.”
+
+“Oh, really.” Roger had not conceived any particular love for Sir
+Eustace, but he felt constrained to defend him against this charge.
+“Really, I don’t think you can say that, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer.”
+
+“I can, and I do,” affirmed that lady. “Have you ever met him, Mr.
+Sheringham? I hear he’s a horrible creature. Always running after some
+woman or other, and when he’s tired of her just drops her—biff!—like
+that. Is it true?”
+
+“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Roger said coldly. “I don’t know him at
+all.”
+
+“Well, it’s common talk who he’s taken up with now,” retorted Mrs.
+Verreker-le-Mesurer, perhaps a trifle more pink than the delicate aids
+to nature on her cheeks would have warranted. “Half-a-dozen people
+have told me. That Bryce woman, of all people. You know, the wife of
+the oil man, or petrol, or whatever he made his money in.”
+
+“I’ve never heard of her,” Roger said, quite untruthfully.
+
+“It began about a week ago, they say,” rattled on this red-hot
+gossiper. “To console himself for not getting Dora Wildman, I suppose.
+Well, thank goodness Sir Charles had the sense to put his foot down
+there. He did, didn’t he? I heard so the other day. Horrible man!
+You’d have thought that such a dreadful thing as being practically
+responsible for poor Joan’s death would have sobered him up a little,
+wouldn’t you? But not a bit of it. As a matter of fact I believe he—”
+
+“Have you seen any shows lately?” Roger asked in a loud voice.
+
+Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer stared at him, for a moment nonplussed.
+“Shows? Yes, I’ve seen almost everything, I think. Why, Mr.
+Sheringham?”
+
+“I just wondered. The new revue at the Pavilion’s quite good, isn’t
+it? Well, I’m afraid I must—”
+
+“Oh, don’t!” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer shuddered delicately. “I was
+there the night before Joan’s death.” (Can no subject take us away
+from that for a moment? thought Roger). “Lady Cavelstoke had a box and
+asked me to join her party.”
+
+“Yes?” Roger was wondering if it would be considered rude if he simply
+handed the lady off, as at rugger, and dived for the nearest opening
+in the traffic. “Quite a good show,” he said at random, edging
+restlessly towards the curb. “I liked that sketch, _The Sempiternal
+Triangle_, particularly.”
+
+“_The Sempiternal Triangle_?” repeated Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
+vaguely.
+
+“Yes, quite near the beginning.”
+
+“Oh! Then I may not have seen it. I got there a few minutes late, I’m
+afraid. But then,” said Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer with pathos, “I
+always do seem to be late for everything.” Roger noted mentally that
+the few minutes was by way of a euphemism, as were most of Mrs.
+Verreker-le-Mesurer’s statements regarding herself. _The Sempiternal
+Triangle_ had certainly not been in the first half-hour of the
+performance.
+
+“Ah!” Roger looked fixedly at an oncoming ’bus. “I’m afraid you’ll
+have to excuse me, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer. There’s a man on that
+’bus who wants to speak to me. _Scotland Yard!_” he hissed, in an
+impressive whisper.
+
+“Oh! Then—then does that mean you _are_ looking into poor Joan’s
+death, Mr. Sheringham? _Do_ tell me! I won’t breathe it to a soul.”
+
+Roger looked round him with a mysterious air and frowned in the
+approved manner. “Yes!” he nodded, his finger to his lips. “But not a
+word, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer.”
+
+“Of course not, I promise.” But Roger was disappointed to notice that
+the lady did not seem quite so impressed as he had hoped. From her
+expression he was almost ready to believe that she suspected how
+unavailing his efforts had been, and was a little sorry that he had
+taken on more than he could manage.
+
+But the ’bus had now reached them, and with a hasty “Good-bye” Roger
+swung himself on to the step as it lumbered past. With awful stealth,
+feeling those big brown eyes fixed in awe on his back, he climbed the
+steps and took his seat, after an exaggerated scrutiny of the other
+passengers, beside a perfectly inoffensive little man in a bowler-hat.
+The little man, who happened to be a clerk in the employment of a
+monumental mason at Tooting, looked at him resentfully. There were
+plenty of quite empty seats all round them.
+
+The ’bus swung into Piccadilly, and Roger got off at the Rainbow Club.
+He was lunching once again with a member. Roger had spent most of the
+last ten days asking such members of the Rainbow Club as he knew,
+however remotely, out to lunch in order to be asked to the club in
+return. So far nothing helpful had arisen out of all this wasted
+labour, and he anticipated nothing more to-day.
+
+Not that the member was at all reluctant to talk about the tragedy. He
+had been at school with Bendix, it appeared, and was as ready to adopt
+responsibility for him on the strength of this tie as Mrs.
+Verreker-le-Mesurer had been for Mrs. Bendix. He plumed himself more
+than a little therefore on having a more intimate connection with the
+business than his fellow-members. Indeed one gathered that the
+connection was even a trifle closer than that of Sir Eustace himself.
+Roger’s host was that kind of man.
+
+As they were talking a man entered the dining-room and walked past
+their table. Roger’s host became abruptly silent. The newcomer threw
+him an abrupt nod and passed on.
+
+Roger’s host leant forward across the table and spoke in the hushed
+tones of one to whom a revelation has been vouchsafed. “Talk of the
+devil! That was Bendix himself. First time I’ve seen him in here since
+it happened. Poor devil! It knocked him all to pieces, you know. I’ve
+never seen a man so devoted to his wife. It was a byword. Did you see
+how ghastly he looked?” All this in a tactful whisper that must have
+been far more obvious to the subject of it had he happened to be
+looking their way than the loudest bellowing.
+
+Roger nodded shortly. He had caught a glimpse of Bendix’s face and
+been shocked by it even before he learned his identity. It was haggard
+and pale and seamed with lines of bitterness, prematurely old. “Hang
+it all,” he now thought, much moved, “somebody really must make an
+effort. If the murderer isn’t found soon it will kill that chap too.”
+
+Aloud he said, somewhat at random and certainly without tact: “He
+didn’t exactly fall on your neck. I thought you two were such bosom
+friends?”
+
+His host looked uncomfortable. “Oh, well, you must make allowances
+just at present,” he hedged. “Besides, we weren’t _bosom_ friends
+exactly. As a matter of fact he was a year or two senior to me. Or it
+might have been three even. We were in different houses too. And he
+was on the modern side of course (can you imagine the son of his
+father being anything else?), while I was a classical bird.”
+
+“I see,” said Roger quite gravely, realising that his host’s actual
+contact with Bendix at school had been limited, at most, to that of
+the latter’s toe with the former’s hinder parts.
+
+He left it at that.
+
+For the rest of lunch he was a little inattentive. Something was
+nagging at his brain, and he could not identify it. Somewhere,
+somehow, during the last hour, he felt, a vital piece of information
+had been conveyed to him and he had never grasped its importance.
+
+It was not until he was putting on his coat half-an-hour later, and
+for the moment had given up trying to worry his mind into giving up
+its booty, that the realisation suddenly came to him unbidden, in
+accordance with its usual and maddening way. He stopped dead, one arm
+in his coat-sleeve, the other in act to fumble.
+
+“_By Jove!_” he said softly.
+
+“Anything the matter, old man?” asked his host, now mellowed by much
+port.
+
+“No, thanks; nothing,” said Roger hastily, coming to earth again.
+
+Outside the club he hailed a taxi.
+
+For probably the first time in her life Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer had
+given somebody a constructive idea.
+
+For the rest of the day Roger was very busy indeed.
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+The President called on Mr. Bradley to hold forth.
+
+Mr. Bradley stroked his moustache and mentally shot his cuffs.
+
+He had begun his career (when still Percy Robinson) as a
+motor-salesman, and had discovered that there is more money in
+manufacturing. Now he manufactured detective stories, and found his
+former experience of the public’s gullibility not unhelpful. He was
+still his own salesman, but occasionally had difficulty in remembering
+that he was no longer mounted on a stand at Olympia. Everything and
+everybody in this world, including Morton Harrogate Bradley, he
+heartily despised, except only Percy Robinson. He sold, in tens of
+thousands.
+
+“This is rather unfortunate for me,” he began, in the correct
+gentlemanly drawl, as if addressing an audience of morons. “I had
+rather been under the impression that I should be expected to produce
+as a murderer the most unlikely person, in the usual tradition; and
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming has cut the ground away from under my feet. I
+don’t see how I can possibly find you a more unlikely murderer than
+Sir Charles here. All of us who have the misfortune to speak after
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming will have to be content to pile up so many
+anti-climaxes.
+
+“Not that I haven’t done my best. I studied the case according to my
+own lights, and it led me to a conclusion which certainly surprised
+myself quite a lot. But as I said, after the last speaker it will
+probably seem to everybody else a dismal anti-climax. Let me see now,
+where did I begin? Oh, yes; with the poison.
+
+“Now the use of nitrobenzene as the poisoning agent interested me
+quite a lot. I find it extremely significant. Nitrobenzene is the last
+thing one would expect inside those chocolates. I’ve made something of
+a study of poisons, in connection with my work, and I’ve never heard
+of nitrobenzene being employed in a criminal case before. There are
+cases on record of its use in suicide, and in accidental poisoning,
+but not more than three or four all told.
+
+“I’m surprised that this point doesn’t seem to have struck either of
+my predecessors. The really interesting thing is that so few people
+know nitrobenzene as a poison at all. Even the experts don’t. I was
+speaking to a man who got a Science scholarship at Cambridge and
+specialised in chemistry, and he had actually never heard of it as a
+poison. As a matter of fact I found I knew a good deal more about it
+than he did. A commercial chemist would certainly never think of it as
+among the ordinary poisons. It isn’t even listed as such, and the list
+is comprehensive enough. Well, all this seems most significant to me.
+
+“Then there are other points about it. It’s used most extensively in
+commerce. In fact it’s the kind of thing that might be used in almost
+any manufacture. It’s a solvent, of quite a universal kind. We’ve been
+told that its chief use is in making aniline dyes. That may be the
+most important one, but it certainly isn’t the most extensive. It’s
+used a lot in confectionery, as we were also told, and in perfumery as
+well. But really I can’t attempt to give you a list of its uses. They
+range from chocolates to motor-car tyres. The important thing is that
+it’s perfectly easy to get hold of.
+
+“For that matter it’s perfectly easy to make too. Any schoolboy knows
+how to treat benzol with nitric acid to get nitrobenzene. I’ve done it
+myself a hundred times. The veriest smattering of chemical knowledge
+is all that’s wanted, and nothing in the way of expensive apparatus.
+Or, so far as that goes, it could be done equally by somebody without
+any chemical knowledge at all; that is, the actual process of making
+it. Oh, and it could be made quite secretly by the way. Nobody need
+even guess. But I think just a little chemical knowledge at any rate
+would be wanted, ever to set one about making it at all. At least, for
+this particular purpose.
+
+“Well, so far as the case as a whole was concerned, this use of
+nitrobenzene seemed to me not only the sole original feature but by
+far the most important piece of evidence. Not in the way that prussic
+acid is valuable evidence for the reason that prussic acid is so hard
+to obtain, because once its use was determined anybody could get hold
+of or make nitrobenzene, and that of course is a tremendous point in
+favour of it from the would-be murderer’s point of view. No, what I
+mean is that the sort of person who would ever think of employing the
+stuff at all ought to be definable within surprisingly narrow limits.”
+
+Mr. Bradley stopped a moment to light a cigarette, and if he was
+secretly pleased that his fellow-members showed the extent to which he
+had engaged their interest by not uttering a word until he was ready
+to go on, he did not divulge the fact. Surveying them for a moment as
+if inspecting a class composed entirely of half-wits, he took up his
+argument again.
+
+“First of all, then, we can credit this user of nitrobenzene with a
+minimum at any rate of chemical knowledge. Or perhaps I ought to
+qualify that. Either chemical knowledge, or specialised knowledge. A
+chemist’s assistant, for instance, who was interested enough in his
+job to read it up after shop-hours would fit the bill for the first
+case, and a woman employed in a factory where nitrobenzene was used
+and where the employees had been warned against its poisonous
+properties would do for an example of the second. There are two kinds
+of person, it seems to me, who might think of using the stuff as a
+poison at all, and the first kind is subdivided into the two classes
+I’ve mentioned.
+
+“But it’s the second kind that I think we are much more probably
+dealing with in this crime. This is a more intelligent sort of person
+altogether.
+
+“In this category the chemist’s assistant becomes an amateur dabbler
+in chemistry, the girl in the factory a woman-doctor, let us say, with
+an interest in toxicology, or, to get away from the specialist, a
+highly intelligent lady with a strong interest in criminology
+particularly on its toxicological side—just, in fact, like Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming here.” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming gasped indignantly and
+Sir Charles, though momentarily startled at the unexpected quarter
+from which was dealt this tit for the tats he had lately suffered at
+the gasping lady’s hands, emitted the next instant a sound which from
+anybody else could only have been described as a guffaw. “All of them,
+you understand,” continued Mr. Bradley with complete serenity, “the
+kind of people who might be expected not only to keep a Taylor’s
+Medical Jurisprudence on their shelves but to consult it frequently.
+
+“I agree with you, you see, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, that the method of
+this crime does show traces of criminological knowledge. You cited one
+case which was certainly a remarkable parallel, Sir Charles cited
+another, and I am going to cite yet a third. It is a regular jumble of
+old cases, and I am quite sure, as you are, that this is something
+more than a mere coincidence. I’d arrived at this conclusion myself,
+of criminological knowledge, before you mentioned it at all, and I was
+helped to it as well by the strong feeling that whoever sent those
+chocolates to Sir Eustace possesses a Taylor. That is a pure guess, I
+admit, but in my copy of Taylor the article on nitrobenzene occurs on
+the very next page after cyanide of potassium; and there seems to me
+food for thought there.” The speaker paused a moment.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick nodded. “I think I see. You mean, anybody deliberately
+searching the pages for a poison that would fulfil certain
+requirements. . . ?”
+
+“Exactly,” Mr. Bradley concurred.
+
+“You lay great stress on this matter of the poison,” Sir Charles
+remarked, almost genial. “Do you tell us that you think you’ve
+identified the murderer by deductions drawn from this one point
+alone?”
+
+“No, Sir Charles, I don’t think I can go quite so far as that. I lay
+so much stress on it because, as I said, it’s the only really original
+feature of the crime. By itself it won’t solve the problem, but
+considered in conjunction with other features I do think it should go
+a long way towards doing so—or at any rate provide such a check on a
+person suspected for other reasons as to turn suspicion into
+certainty.
+
+“Let’s look at it for instance in the light of the crime as a whole. I
+think the first thing one realises is that this crime is the work not
+only of an intelligent person but of a well-educated one too. Well,
+you see, that rules out at once the first division of people who might
+be expected to think of using nitrobenzene as the poisoning agent.
+Gone are our chemist’s assistant and our factory-girl. We can
+concentrate on our intelligent, well-educated person, with an interest
+in criminology, some knowledge of toxicology, and, if I’m not very
+much mistaken (and I very seldom am), a copy of Taylor or some similar
+book on his or her shelves.
+
+“That, my dear Watsons, is what the criminal’s singular choice of
+nitrobenzene has to tell me.” And Mr. Bradley stroked the growth on
+his upper lip with an offensive complacency that was not wholly
+assumed. Mr. Bradley took some pains to impress on the world how
+pleased he was with himself, but the pose was not without its
+foundation in fact.
+
+“Most ingenious, certainly,” murmured Mr. Chitterwick, duly impressed.
+
+“So now let’s get on with it,” observed Miss Dammers, not at all
+impressed. “What’s your theory? That is, if you’ve really got one.”
+
+“Oh, I’ve got one all right.” Mr. Bradley smiled in a superior manner.
+This was the first time he had succeeded in provoking Miss Dammers to
+snap at him, and he was rather pleased. “But let’s take things in
+their proper order. I want to show you how inevitably I was led to my
+conclusion, and I can only do that by tracing out my own footsteps, so
+to speak. Having made my deductions from the poison itself, then, I
+set about examining the other clues to see if they would lead me to a
+result that I could check by the other. First of all I concentrated on
+the notepaper of the forged letter, the only really valuable clue
+apart from the poison.
+
+“Now this piece of notepaper puzzled me. For some reason, which I
+couldn’t identify, the name of Mason’s seemed to strike a reminiscent
+note to me. I felt sure that I’d heard of Mason’s in some other
+connection than just through their excellent chocolates. At last I
+remembered.
+
+“I’m afraid I must touch here on the personal, and I apologise in
+advance, Sir Charles, for the lapse of taste. My sister, before she
+married, was a shorthand-typist.” Mr. Bradley’s extreme languor all of
+a sudden indicated that he felt this connection needed some defence
+and was determined not to give it. The next instant he gave it. “That
+is to say, her education put her on rather a different level from the
+usual shorthand-typist, and she was, in point of fact, a trained
+secretary.
+
+“She had joined an establishment run by a lady who supplied
+secretaries to business firms to take the places temporarily of girls
+in responsible positions who were ill, or away on holiday, or anything
+like that. Including my sister there were only two or three girls at
+the place, and the posts they went to only lasted as a rule for two or
+three weeks. Each girl would therefore have a good many such posts in
+the course of a year. However, I did remember distinctly that one of
+the firms to which my sister went while she was there was Mason’s, as
+temporary secretary to one of the directors.
+
+“This seemed to me possibly useful. It wouldn’t be likely that she
+could throw a sidelight on the murder, but at any rate she might be
+able to give me introductions to one or two members of Mason’s staff
+if necessary. So I went down to see her about it.
+
+“She remembered quite well. It was between three and four years ago,
+and she liked being there so much that she had thought quite seriously
+of putting in for a permanent secretaryship with the firm, should one
+be available. Naturally she hadn’t got to know any of the staff really
+well, but quite enough to give me the introductions if I wanted them.
+
+“‘By the way,’ I happened to say to her casually, ‘I saw the letter
+that was sent to Sir Eustace with the chocolates, and not only Mason’s
+name but the actual paper itself struck me as familiar. I suppose you
+wrote to me on it while you were there?’
+
+“‘I don’t know that I ever did that,’ she said, ‘but of course the
+paper was familiar to you. You’ve played paper-games here often
+enough, haven’t you? You know we always use it. It’s such a convenient
+size.’ Paper-games, I should explain, have always been a favourite
+thing in our family.
+
+“It’s funny how a connection will stick in the mind, but not the
+actual circumstances of it. Of course I remembered then at once. There
+was quite a pile of the paper, in one of the drawers of my sister’s
+writing-table. I’d often torn it into strips for our paper-games
+myself.
+
+“‘But how did you get hold of it?’ I asked her.
+
+“It seemed to me that she answered rather evasively, just saying that
+she’d got it from the office when she was working there. I pressed
+her, and at last she told me that one evening she was just on the
+point of leaving the office when she remembered that some friends were
+coming in after dinner at home. We should almost certainly play a
+paper-game of some kind, and we had run out of suitable paper. She
+hurried up the stairs again back to the office, dumped her
+attaché-case on the table and opened it, hastily snatched up some
+paper from the pile beside her typewriter, and threw it into the case.
+In her hurry she didn’t realise how much she’d taken, and that supply,
+which was supposed to tide us over one evening, had actually lasted
+for nearly four years. She must have taken something like half a ream.
+
+“Well, I went away from my sister’s house rather startled. Before I
+left I examined the remaining sheets, and so far as I could see they
+were exactly like the one on which the letter was typed. Even the
+edges were a little discoloured too. I was more than startled: I was
+alarmed. Because I ought to tell you that it had already occurred to
+me that of all the ways of going about the search for the person who
+had sent that letter to Sir Eustace, the one that seemed most hopeful
+was to look for its writer among the actual employees, or
+ex-employees, of the firm itself.
+
+“As a matter of fact this discovery of mine had a more disconcerting
+side still. On thinking over the case the idea had struck me that in
+the two matters of the notepaper and the method itself of the crime it
+was quite possible that the police, and every one else, had been
+putting the cart before the horse. It had been taken for granted
+apparently that the murderer had first of all decided on the method,
+and then set about getting hold of the notepaper to carry it out.
+
+“But isn’t it far more feasible that the notepaper should have been
+already there, in the criminal’s ownership, and that it was the chance
+possession of it which actually suggested the method of the crime? In
+that case, of course, the likelihood of the notepaper being traced to
+the murderer would be very small indeed, whereas in the other case
+there is always that possibility. Had that occurred to you for
+instance, Mr. President?”
+
+“I must admit that it hadn’t,” Roger confessed. “And yet, like
+Holmes’s tricks, the possibility’s evident enough now it’s brought
+forward. I must say, it strikes me as being a very sound point,
+Bradley.”
+
+“Psychologically, of course,” agreed Miss Dammers, “it’s perfect.”
+
+“Thank you,” murmured Mr. Bradley. “Then you’ll be able to understand
+just how disconcerting that discovery of mine was. Because if there
+was anything in that point at all, anybody who had in his or her
+possession some old notepaper of Mason’s, with slightly discoloured
+edges, immediately became suspect.”
+
+“Hr-r-r-r-mph!” Sir Charles cleared his throat forcibly by way of
+comment. The implication was obvious. Gentlemen don’t suspect their
+own sisters.
+
+“Dear, dear,” clucked Mr. Chitterwick, more humanly.
+
+Mr. Bradley went on to pile up the agony. “And there was another
+thing, which I could not overlook. My sister before she went in for
+her training as a secretary, had played with the idea of becoming a
+hospital nurse. She went through a short course in nursing as a young
+girl, and was always thoroughly interested in it. She would read not
+only books on nursing itself, but medical books too. Several times,”
+said Mr. Bradley solemnly, “I’ve seen her studying my own copy of
+Taylor, apparently quite absorbed in it.”
+
+He paused again, but this time nobody commented. The general feeling
+was that this was getting really too much of a good thing.
+
+“Well, I went home and thought it over. Of course it seemed absurd to
+put my own sister on the list of suspects, and at the very head of it
+too. One doesn’t connect one’s own circle with the idea of murder. The
+two things don’t mix at all. Yet I couldn’t fail to realise that if it
+had been anybody else in question but my sister I should be feeling
+quite jubilant over the prospect of solving the case. But as things
+were, what was I to do?
+
+“In the end,” said Mr. Bradley smugly, “I did what I thought my duty
+and faced the situation. I went back to my sister’s house the next day
+and asked her squarely whether she had ever had any kind of relations
+with Sir Eustace Pennefather, and if so what. She looked at me blankly
+and said that up till the time of the murder she had never heard of
+the man. I believed her. I asked her if she could remember what she
+had been doing on the evening before the murder. She looked at me
+still more blankly and said that she had been in Manchester with her
+husband at that time, they had stayed at the Peacock Hotel, and in the
+evening had been to a cinema where they had seen a film called, so far
+as she could recall, _Fires of Fate_. Again I believed her.
+
+“As a matter of routine precaution however I checked her statements
+later and found them perfectly correct; for the time of the posting of
+the parcel she had an unshakable alibi. I felt more relieved than I
+can say.” Mr. Bradley spoke in a low voice, with pathos and restraint,
+but Roger caught his eye as he looked up and there was a mocking glint
+in it which made the President feel vaguely uneasy. The trouble with
+Mr. Bradley was that one never quite knew with him.
+
+“Having drawn a blank with my first ticket, then, I tabulated the
+conclusions I’d formed to date and set about considering the other
+points in the case.
+
+“It then struck me that the Chief Inspector from Scotland Yard had
+been somewhat reticent about the evidence that night he addressed us.
+So I rang him up and asked him a few questions that had occurred to
+me. From him I learnt that the typewriter was a Hamilton No. 4, that
+is, the ordinary Hamilton model; that the hand-printed address on the
+cover was written with a fountain-pen, almost certainly an Onyx fitted
+with a medium-broad nib; that the ink was Harfield’s Fountain-Pen Ink;
+and that there was nothing to be learned from the wrapping-paper
+(ordinary brown) or the string. That there were no finger-prints
+anywhere we had been told.
+
+“Well, I suppose I ought not to admit it, considering how I earn my
+living, but upon my soul I haven’t the faintest idea how a
+professional detective goes about a job of work,” said Mr. Bradley
+with candour. “It’s easy enough in a book, of course, because there
+are a certain number of things which the author wants found out and
+these he lets his detective discover, and no others. In real life, no
+doubt, it doesn’t pan out quite like that.
+
+“Anyhow, what I did was to copy my own detectives’ methods and set
+about the business in as systematic a way as I could. That is to say,
+I made a careful list of all the available evidence, both as to fact
+and to character (and it was surprising how much there was when one
+came to tabulate it), and drew as many deductions as I could from each
+piece, at the same time trying to keep a perfectly open mind as to the
+identity of the person who was to hatch out from my nest of completed
+conclusions.
+
+“In other words,” said Mr. Bradley, not without severity, “I did _not_
+decide that Lady A or Sir Somebody B had such a good motive for the
+crime that she or he must undoubtedly have done it, and then twist my
+evidence to fit this convenient theory.”
+
+“Hear, hear!” Roger felt constrained to approve.
+
+“Hear, hear!” echoed in turn both Alicia Dammers and Mr. Ambrose
+Chitterwick.
+
+Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming glanced at each other and then
+hastily away again, for all the world like two children in a
+Sunday-school who have been caught doing quite the wrong thing
+together.
+
+“Dear me,” murmured Mr. Bradley, “this is all very exhausting. May I
+have five minutes’ rest, Mr. President, and half a cigarette?”
+
+The President kindly gave Mr. Bradley an interval in which to restore
+himself.
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+“I have always thought,” resumed Mr. Bradley, restored, “I have always
+thought that murders may be divided into two classes, closed or open.
+By a closed murder I mean one committed in a certain closed circle of
+persons, such as a house-party, in which it is known that the murderer
+is limited to membership of that actual group. This is by far the
+commoner form in fiction. An open murder I call one in which the
+criminal is not limited to any particular group but might be almost
+any one in the whole world. This, of course, is almost invariably what
+happens in real life.
+
+“The case with which we’re dealing has this peculiarity, that one
+can’t place it quite definitely in either category. The police say
+that it’s an open murder; both our previous speakers here seem to
+regard it as a closed one.
+
+“It’s a question of the motive. If one agrees with the police that it
+is the work of some fanatic or criminal lunatic, then it certainly is
+an open murder; anybody without an alibi in London that night might
+have posted the parcel. If one’s of the opinion that the motive was a
+personal one, connected with Sir Eustace himself, then the murderer is
+confined to the closed circle of people who have had relations of one
+sort or another with Sir Eustace.
+
+“And talking of posting that parcel, I must just make a diversion to
+tell you something really interesting. For all I know to the contrary,
+I might have seen the murderer with my own eyes, in the very act of
+posting it! As it happened, I was passing through Southampton Street
+that evening at just about a quarter to nine. Little did I guess, as
+Mr. Edgar Wallace would say, that the first act of this tragic drama
+was possibly being unfolded at that very minute under my unsuspecting
+nose. Not even a premonition of disaster caused me to falter in my
+stride. Providence was evidently being somewhat close with
+premonitions that night. But if only my sluggish instincts had warned
+me, how much trouble I might have saved us all. Alas,” said Mr.
+Bradley sadly, “such is life.
+
+“However, that’s neither here nor there. We were discussing closed and
+open murders.
+
+“I was determined to form no definite opinions either way, so to be on
+the safe side I treated this as an open murder. I then had the
+position that every one in the whole wide world was under suspicion.
+To narrow down the field a little, I set to work to build up the one
+individual who really did it, out of the very meagre indications he or
+she had given us.
+
+“I had the conclusions drawn already from the choice of nitrobenzene,
+which I’ve explained to you. But as a corollary to the good education,
+I added the very significant postscript: but not public-school or
+university. Don’t you agree, Sir Charles? It simply wouldn’t be done.”
+
+“Public-school men have been known to commit murders before now,”
+pointed out Sir Charles, somewhat at sea.
+
+“Oh, granted. But not in such an underhand way as this. The
+public-school code does stand for something, surely, even in murder.
+So, I am sure, any public-school man would tell me. This isn’t a
+gentlemanly murder at all. A public-school man, if he could ever bring
+himself to anything so unconventional as murder, would use an axe or a
+revolver or something which would bring him and his victim face to
+face. He would never murder a man behind his back, so to speak. I’m
+quite sure of that.
+
+“Then another obvious conclusion is that he’s exceptionally neat with
+his fingers. To unwrap those chocolates, drain them, re-fill them,
+plug up the holes with melted chocolate, and wrap them up in their
+silver paper again to look as if they’ve never been tampered with—I
+can tell you, that’s no easy job. And all in gloves too, remember.
+
+“I thought at first that the beautiful way it was done pointed
+strongly to a woman. However, I carried out an experiment and got a
+dozen or so of my friends to try their hands at it, men and women, and
+out of the whole lot I was the only one (I say it without any
+particular pride) who made a really good job of it. So it wasn’t
+necessarily a woman. But manual dexterity’s a good point to establish.
+
+“Then there was the matter of the exact six-minim dose in each
+chocolate. That’s very illuminating, I think. It argues a methodical
+turn of mind amounting to a real passion for symmetry. There are such
+people. They can’t bear that the pictures on a wall don’t balance each
+other exactly. I know, because I’m rather that way myself. Symmetry is
+synonymous with order, to my mind. I can quite see how the murderer
+came to fill the chocolates in that way. I should probably have done
+so myself. Unconsciously.
+
+“Then I think we can credit him or her with a creative mind. A crime
+like this isn’t done on the spur of the moment. It’s deliberately
+created, bit by bit, scene by scene, built up exactly as a play is
+built up. Don’t you agree, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming?”
+
+“It wouldn’t have occurred to me, but it may be true.”
+
+“Oh, yes; a lot of thought must have gone to the carrying of it
+through. I don’t think we need worry about the plagiarism from other
+crimes. The greatest creative minds aren’t above adapting the ideas of
+other people to their own uses. I do myself. So do you, I expect,
+Sheringham; so do you, no doubt, Miss Dammers; so do you at times, I
+should imagine, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. Be honest now, all of you.”
+
+A subdued murmur of honesty acknowledged occasional lapses in this
+direction.
+
+“Of course. Look how Sullivan used to adapt old church music, and turn
+a Gregorian chant into _A Pair of Sparkling Eyes_, or something
+equally unchantlike. It’s permissible. Well, there’s all that to help
+with the portrait of our unknown and, lastly, there must be present in
+his or her mental make-up the particular cold, relentless inhumanity
+of the poisoner. That’s all, I think. But it’s something, isn’t it?
+One ought to be able to go a fair way towards recognising our criminal
+if one ever ran across a person with these varied characteristics.
+
+“Oh, and there’s one other point I mustn’t forget. The parallel crime.
+I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned this. To my mind it’s a closer
+parallel than any we’ve had yet. It isn’t a well-known case, but
+you’ve all probably heard of it. The murder of Dr. Wilson, at
+Philadelphia, just twenty years ago.
+
+“I’ll run through it briefly. This man Wilson received one morning
+what purported to be a sample bottle of ale, sent to him by a
+well-known brewery. There was a letter with it, written apparently on
+their official notepaper, and the address-label had the firm’s name
+printed on it. Wilson drank the beer at lunch, and died immediately.
+The stuff was saturated with cyanide of potassium.
+
+“It was soon established that the beer hadn’t come from the brewery at
+all, which had sent out no samples. It had been delivered through the
+local express company, but all they could say was that it had been
+sent to them for delivery by a man. The printed label and the
+letter-paper had been forged, printed specially for the occasion.
+
+“The mystery was never solved. The printing-press used to print the
+letter-heading and label couldn’t be traced, though the police visited
+every printing-works in the whole of America. The very motive for the
+murder was never even satisfactorily ascertained. A typical open
+murder. The bottle arrived out of the blue, and the murderer remained
+in it.
+
+“You see the close resemblance to this case, particularly in the
+supposed sample. As Mrs. Fielder-Flemming has pointed out, it’s almost
+too good to be a coincidence. Our murderer _must_ have had that case
+in mind, with its (for the murderer) most successful outcome. As a
+matter of fact there was a possible motive. Wilson was a notorious
+abortionist, and somebody may have wanted to stop his activities.
+Conscience, I suppose. There are people who have such a thing. That’s
+another parallel with this affair, you see. Sir Eustace is a notorious
+evil-liver. And that goes to support the police view, of an anonymous
+fanatic. There’s a good deal to be said for that view, I think.
+
+“But I must get on with my own exposition.
+
+“Well, having reached this stage I tabulated my conclusions and drew
+up a list of conditions which this criminal of ours must fulfil. Now I
+should like to point out that these conditions of mine were so many
+and so varied that if anybody could be found to fit them the chances,
+Sir Charles, would not be a mere million to one but several million to
+one that he or she must be the guilty person. This isn’t just
+haphazard statement, it’s cold mathematical fact.
+
+“I have twelve conditions, and the mathematical odds against their all
+being fulfilled in one person are actually (if my arithmetic stands
+the test) four hundred and seventy-nine million, one thousand and six
+hundred to one. And that, mark you, is if all the chances were even
+ones. But they’re not. That he should have some knowledge of
+criminology is at least a ten to one chance. That he should be able to
+get hold of Mason’s notepaper must be more than a hundred to one
+against.
+
+“Well, taking it all in all,” opined Mr. Bradley, “I should think the
+real odds must be somewhere about four billion, seven hundred and
+ninety thousand million, five hundred and sixteen thousand, four
+hundred and fifty-eight to one. In other words, it’s a snip. Does
+every one agree?”
+
+Every one was far too stunned to disagree.
+
+“Right; then we’re all of one mind,” said Mr. Bradley cheerfully. “So
+I’ll read you my list.”
+
+He shuffled the pages of a little pocket-book and began to read:—
+
+        Conditions to be Filled by the Criminal.
+
+  1. Must have at least an elementary amount of chemical knowledge.
+  2. Must have at least an elementary knowledge of criminology.
+  3. Must have had a reasonably good education, but not public school
+     or University.
+  4. Must have possession of, or access to, Mason’s notepaper.
+  5. Must have possession of, or access to, a Hamilton No. 4
+     typewriter.
+  6. Must have been in the neighbourhood of Southampton Street,
+     Strand, during the critical hour, 8.30–9.30, on the evening
+     before the murder.
+  7. Must be in possession of, or had access to, an Onyx fountain-pen,
+     fitted with a medium-broad nib.
+  8. Must be in possession of, or had access to, Harfield’s
+     Fountain-Pen Ink.
+  9. Must have something of a creative mind, but not above adapting
+     the creations of others.
+ 10. Must be more than ordinarily neat with the fingers.
+ 11. Must be a person of methodical habits, probably with a strong
+     feeling for symmetry.
+ 12. Must have the cold inhumanity of the poisoner.
+
+“By the way,” said Mr. Bradley, stowing away his pocket-book again,
+“you see that I’ve agreed with you too, Sir Charles, that the murderer
+would never have entrusted the posting of the parcel to another
+person. Oh, and one other point. For purposes of reference. If anybody
+wants to see an Onyx pen, and fitted with a medium-broad nib as well,
+take a look at mine. And curiously enough it’s filled with Harfield’s
+Fountain-Pen Ink too.” The pen circulated slowly round the table while
+Mr. Bradley, leaning back in his chair, surveyed its progress with a
+fatherly smile.
+
+“And that,” said Mr. Bradley, when the pen had been restored to him,
+“is that.”
+
+Roger thought he saw the explanation of the glint that had appeared
+from time to time in Mr. Bradley’s eye. “You mean, the problem’s still
+to solve. The four billion chances were too much for you. You couldn’t
+find any one to fit your own conditions?”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Bradley, apparently most reluctant all of a sudden,
+“if you must know, I have found some one who does.”
+
+“You have? Good man! Who?”
+
+“Hang it all, you know,” said the coy Mr. Bradley, “I hardly like to
+tell you. It’s really too ridiculous.”
+
+A chorus of expostulation, cajolement, and encouragement was
+immediately directed at him. Never had Mr. Bradley found himself so
+popular.
+
+“You’ll laugh at me if I do tell you.”
+
+It appeared that everybody would rather suffer the tortures of the
+Inquisition than laugh at Mr. Bradley. Never can five people less
+disposed to mirth at Mr. Bradley’s expense have been gathered
+together.
+
+Mr. Bradley seemed to take heart. “Well, it’s very awkward. Upon my
+soul I don’t know what to do about it. If I can show you that the
+person I have in mind not only fulfils each of my conditions exactly,
+but also had a certain interest (remote I admit, but capable of proof)
+in sending those chocolates to Sir Eustace, have I your assurance, Mr.
+President, that the meeting will give me its serious advice as to what
+my duty is in the matter?”
+
+“Good gracious, yes,” at once agreed Roger, much excited. Roger had
+thought that he might be on the verge of solving the problem himself,
+but he was quite sure that he and Bradley had not hit upon the same
+solution. And if the fellow really had got some one . . . “Good Lord,
+yes!” said Roger.
+
+Mr. Bradley looked round the table in a worried way. “Well, can’t you
+see who I mean? Dear me, I thought I’d told you in almost every other
+sentence.”
+
+Nobody had seen whom he meant.
+
+“The only possible person, so far as I can see, who could ever be
+expected to fulfil all those twelve conditions?” said this harassed
+version of Mr. Bradley, dishevelling his carefully flattened hair.
+“Why, dash it, not my sister at all, but—but—but _me_, of course!”
+
+There was a stupefied silence.
+
+“D-did you say, _you_?” finally ventured Mr. Chitterwick.
+
+Mr. Bradley turned gloomy eyes on him. “Obviously, I’m afraid. I have
+more than an elementary knowledge of chemistry. I can make
+nitrobenzene and often have. I’m a criminologist. I’ve had a
+reasonably good education, but not public-school or University. I had
+access to Mason’s notepaper. I possess a Hamilton No. 4 typewriter. I
+was in Southampton Street itself during the critical hour. I possess
+an Onyx pen, fitted with a medium-broad nib and filled with Harfield’s
+ink. I have something of a creative mind, but I’m not above adapting
+the ideas of other people. I’m far more than ordinarily neat with my
+fingers. I’m a person of methodical habits, with a strong feeling for
+symmetry. And apparently I have the cold inhumanity of the poisoner.
+
+“Yes,” sighed Mr. Bradley, “there’s simply no getting away from it.
+_I_ sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace.
+
+“I must have done. I’ve proved it conclusively. And the extraordinary
+thing is that I don’t remember a single jot about it. I suppose I did
+it when I was thinking about something else. I’ve noticed I’m getting
+a little absent-minded at times.”
+
+Roger was struggling with an inordinate wish to laugh. However he
+managed to ask gravely enough: “And what do you imagine was your
+motive, Bradley?”
+
+Mr. Bradley brightened a little. “Yes, that was a difficulty. For
+quite a time I couldn’t establish my motive at all. I couldn’t even
+connect myself with Sir Eustace Pennefather. I’d heard of him of
+course, as anybody who’s ever been to the Rainbow must. And I’d
+gathered he was somewhat savoury. But I’d no grudge against the man.
+He could be as savoury as he liked so far as I cared. I don’t think
+I’d ever even seen him. Yes, the motive was a real stumbling-block,
+because of course there must be one. What should I have tried to kill
+him for otherwise?”
+
+“And you’ve found it?”
+
+“I think I’ve managed to ferret out what must be the real cause,” said
+Mr. Bradley, not without pride. “After puzzling for a long time I
+remembered that I had heard myself once say to a friend, in a
+discussion on detective-work, that the ambition of my life was to
+commit a murder, because I was perfectly certain that I could do so
+without ever being found out. And the excitement, I pointed out, must
+be stupendous; no gambling game ever invented can come anywhere near
+it. A murderer is really making a magnificent bet with the police, I
+demonstrated, with the lives of himself and his victim as the stakes;
+if he gets away with it, he wins both; if he’s caught, he loses both.
+For a man like myself, who has the misfortune to be extremely bored by
+the usual type of popular recreation, murder should be the hobby _par
+excellence_.”
+
+“Ah!” Roger nodded portentously.
+
+“This conversation, when I recalled it,” pursued Mr. Bradley very
+seriously, “seemed to me significant in the extreme. I at once went to
+see my friend and asked him if he remembered it and was prepared to
+swear that it took place at all. He was. In fact he was able to add
+further details, more damning still. I was so impressed that I took a
+statement from him.
+
+“Amplifying my notion (according to his statement), I had gone on to
+consider how it could best be carried out. The obvious thing, I had
+decided, was to select some figure of whom the world would be well
+rid, not necessarily a politician (I was at some pains to avoid the
+obvious, apparently), and simply murder him at a distance. To play the
+game, one should leave a clue or two, more or less obscure. Apparently
+I left rather more than I intended.
+
+“My friend concluded by saying that I went away from him that evening
+expressing the firmest intention of carrying out my first murder at
+the earliest opportunity. Not only would the practice make such an
+admirable hobby, I told him, but the experience would be invaluable to
+a writer of detective-stories such as myself.
+
+“That, I think,” said Mr. Bradley with dignity, “establishes my motive
+only too certainly.”
+
+“Murder for experiment,” remarked Roger. “A new category. Most
+interesting.”
+
+“Murder for jaded pleasure-seekers,” Mr. Bradley corrected him. “There
+is a precedent, you know. Loeb and Leopold. Well, there you have it.
+Have I proved my case, Mr. President?”
+
+“Completely, so far as I can see. I can’t detect a flaw in your
+argument.”
+
+“I’ve been at some pains to make it a good deal more water-tight than
+I ever bother to do in my books. You could argue a very nasty case
+against me in court on those lines, couldn’t you, Sir Charles?”
+
+“Well, I should want to go into it a little more closely, but at first
+sight, Bradley, I admit that so far as circumstantial evidence is
+worth (and in my opinion, as you know, it is worth everything), I
+can’t see room for very much doubt that you sent those chocolates to
+Sir Eustace.”
+
+“And if I said here and now that in sober truth I _did_ send them?”
+persisted Mr. Bradley.
+
+“I couldn’t disbelieve you.”
+
+“And yet I didn’t. But given time, I’m quite prepared to prove to you
+just as convincingly that the person who really sent them was the
+Archbishop of Canterbury, or Sybil Thorndike, or Mrs. Robinson-Smythe
+of The Laurels, Acacia Road, Upper Tooting, or the President of the
+United States, or anybody else in this world you like to name.
+
+“So much for proof. I built that whole case up against myself out of
+the one coincidence of my sister having a few sheets of Mason’s
+notepaper. I told you nothing but the truth. But I didn’t tell you the
+whole truth. Artistic proof is, like artistic anything else, simply a
+matter of selection. If you know what to put in and what to leave out
+you can prove anything you like, quite conclusively. I do it in every
+book I write, and no reviewer has ever hauled me over the coals for
+slipshod argument yet. But then,” said Mr. Bradley modestly, “I don’t
+suppose any reviewer has ever read one of my books.”
+
+“Well, it was a very ingenious piece of work,” Miss Dammers summed up.
+“And most instructive.”
+
+“Thank you,” murmured Mr. Bradley, with gratitude.
+
+“And what it all amounts to,” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming delivered a
+somewhat tart verdict, “is that you haven’t the faintest idea who is
+the real criminal.”
+
+“Oh, I know _that_, of course,” said Mr. Bradley languidly. “But I
+can’t prove it. So it’s not much good telling you.”
+
+Everybody sat up.
+
+“You’ve found some one else, in spite of the odds, to fit those
+conditions of yours?” demanded Sir Charles.
+
+“I suppose she must,” admitted Mr. Bradley, “as she did it. But
+unfortunately I haven’t been able to check them all.”
+
+“She!” Mr. Chitterwick caught him up.
+
+“Oh, yes, it was a woman. That was the most obvious thing about the
+whole case—and incidentally one of the things I was careful to leave
+out just now. Really, I wonder that’s never been mentioned before.
+Surely if there’s anything evident about this affair at all it is that
+it’s a woman’s crime. It would never occur to a man to send poisoned
+chocolates to another man. He’d send a poisoned sample razor-blade, or
+whisky, or beer like the unfortunate Dr. Wilson’s friend. Quite
+obviously it’s a woman’s crime.”
+
+“I wonder,” Roger said softly.
+
+Mr. Bradley threw him a sharp glance. “You don’t agree, Sheringham?”
+
+“I only wondered,” said Roger. “But it’s a very defendable point.”
+
+“Impregnable, I should have said,” drawled Mr. Bradley.
+
+“Well,” said Miss Dammers, impatient of these minor matters, “aren’t
+you going to tell us who did it, Mr. Bradley?”
+
+Mr. Bradley looked at her quizzically. “But I said that it wasn’t any
+good, as I can’t prove it. Besides, there’s a small matter of the
+lady’s honour involved.”
+
+“Are you resuscitating the law of slander, to get you out of a
+difficulty?”
+
+“Oh, dear me, no. I wouldn’t in the least mind giving her away as a
+murderess. It’s a much more important thing than that. She happens to
+have been Sir Eustace’s mistress at one time, you see, and there’s a
+code governing that sort of thing.”
+
+“Ah!” said Mr. Chitterwick.
+
+Mr. Bradley turned to him politely. “You were going to say something?”
+
+“No, no. I was just wondering whether you’d been thinking on the same
+lines as I have. That’s all.”
+
+“You mean the discarded mistress theory?”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Chitterwick uncomfortably, “yes.”
+
+“Of course. You’d hit on that line of research, too?” Mr. Bradley’s
+tone was that of a benevolent headmaster patting a promising pupil on
+the head. “It’s the right one, obviously. Viewing the crime as a
+whole, and in the light of Sir Eustace’s character, a discarded
+mistress, radiating jealousy, stands out like a beacon in the middle
+of it. That’s one of the things I conveniently omitted too from my
+list of conditions—No. 13, the criminal must be a woman. And touching
+on artistic proof again, both Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+practised it, didn’t they? Both of them omitted to establish any
+connection of nitrobenzene with their respective criminals, though
+such a connection is vital to both their cases.”
+
+“Then you really think jealousy is the motive?” Mr. Chitterwick
+suggested.
+
+“I’m absolutely convinced of it,” Mr. Bradley assured him. “But I’ll
+tell you something else of which I’m not by any means convinced, and
+that is that the intended victim really was Sir Eustace Pennefather.”
+
+“Not the intended victim?” queried Roger, very uneasily. “How do you
+make that out?”
+
+“Why, I’ve discovered,” said Mr. Bradley, dissembling his pride, “that
+Sir Eustace had had an engagement for lunch on the day of the murder.
+He seems to have been very secretive about it, and it was certainly
+with a woman; and not only with a woman, but with a woman in whom Sir
+Eustace was more than a little interested. I think probably not Miss
+Wildman, but somebody of whom he was anxious that Miss Wildman
+shouldn’t know. But in my opinion the woman who sent the chocolates
+knew. The appointment was cancelled, but the other woman might not
+have known that.
+
+“My suggestion (it’s only a suggestion, and I can’t substantiate it in
+any way at all except that it makes chocolates still more reasonable)
+is that those chocolates were intended not for Sir Eustace at all but
+for the sender’s rival.”
+
+“Ah!” breathed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.
+
+“This is quite a new idea,” complained Sir Charles.
+
+Roger had been hastily conning over the names of Sir Eustace’s various
+ladies. He had been unable to fit one before into the crime, and he
+was unable now; yet he did not think that any had escaped him. “If the
+woman you’re thinking of, Bradley, the sender,” he said tentatively,
+“really was a mistress of Sir Eustace, I don’t think you need worry
+about being too punctilious. Her name is almost certainly on the lips
+of the whole Rainbow Club in that connection, if not of every club in
+London. Sir Eustace is not a reticent man.”
+
+“I can assure Mr. Bradley,” said Miss Dammers with irony, “that Sir
+Eustace’s standard of honour falls a good deal short of his own.”
+
+“In this case,” Mr. Bradley told them, unmoved, “I think not.”
+
+“How is that?”
+
+“Because I’m quite sure that apart from my unconscious informant, and
+Sir Eustace, and myself, there is nobody who knows of the connection
+at all. Except the lady, of course,” added Mr. Bradley punctiliously.
+“Naturally it would not have escaped her.”
+
+“Then how did you find out?” demanded Miss Dammers.
+
+“That,” Mr. Bradley informed her equably, “I regret that I’m not at
+liberty to say.”
+
+Roger stroked his chin. Could there be another one of whom he had
+never heard? In that case, how would this new theory of his continue
+to stand up?
+
+“Your so close parallel falls to the ground, then?” Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming was stating.
+
+“Not altogether. But if it does, I’ve got another just as good.
+Christina Edmunds. Almost the same case, with the insanity left out.
+Jealousy-mania. Poisoned chocolates. What could be better?”
+
+“Humph! The mainstay of your last case, I gathered,” observed Sir
+Charles, “or at any rate the starting-point, was the choice of
+nitrobenzene. I suppose that, and the deductions you drew from it, are
+equally important to this one. Are we to take it that this lady is an
+amateur chemist, with a copy of Taylor on her shelves?”
+
+Mr. Bradley smiled gently. “That, as you rightly point out, was the
+mainstay of my _last_ case, Sir Charles. It isn’t of this one. I’m
+afraid my remarks on the choice of poison were rather special
+pleading. I was leading up to a certain person, you see, and therefore
+only drew the deductions which suited that particular person. However,
+there was a good deal of possible truth in them for all that, though I
+wouldn’t rate their probability quite as high as I pretended to do
+then. I’m quite prepared to believe that nitrobenzene was used simply
+because it’s so easy to get hold of. But it’s perfectly true that the
+stuff’s hardly known as a poison at all.”
+
+“Then you make no use of it in your present case?”
+
+“Oh, yes, I do. I still think the point that the criminal not so much
+used it as knew of it to use, is a perfectly sound one. The reason for
+that knowledge should be capable of being established. I stuck out
+before for a copy of some such book as Taylor as the reason, and I
+still do. As it happens this good lady _has_ got a copy of Taylor.”
+
+“She _is_ a criminologist, then?” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming pounced.
+
+Mr. Bradley leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling. “That,
+I should think, is very much open to question. Frankly, I’m puzzled
+over the matter of criminology. Myself, I don’t see that lady as an
+‘-ist’ of any description. Her function in life is perfectly obvious,
+the one she fulfilled for Sir Eustace, and I shouldn’t have thought
+her capable of any other. Except to powder her nose rather charmingly,
+and look extremely decorative; but all that’s part and parcel of her
+real _raison d’être_. No, I don’t think she could possibly be a
+criminologist, any more than a canary-bird could. But she certainly
+has a smattering of criminology, because in her flat there’s a whole
+bookshelf filled with works on the subject.”
+
+“She’s a personal friend of yours, then?” queried Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, very casually.
+
+“Oh, no. I’ve only met her once. That was when I called at her flat
+with a bran-new copy of a recently published book of popular murders
+under my arm, and represented myself as a traveller for the publisher
+soliciting orders for the book; might I have the pleasure of putting
+her name down? The book had only been out four days, but she proudly
+showed me a copy of it on her shelves already. Was she interested in
+criminology, then? Oh, yes, she simply adored it; murder was _too_
+fascinating, wasn’t it? Conclusive, I think.”
+
+“She sounds a bit of a fool,” commented Sir Charles.
+
+“She looks like a bit of a fool,” agreed Mr. Bradley. “She talks like
+a bit of a fool. Meeting her at a tea-fight, I should have said she
+_is_ a bit of a fool. And yet she carried through a really cleverly
+planned murder, so I don’t see how she can be a bit of a fool.”
+
+“It doesn’t occur to you,” remarked Miss Dammers, “that perhaps she
+never did anything of the sort?”
+
+“Well, no,” Mr. Bradley had to confess. “I’m afraid it doesn’t. I
+mean, a comparatively recent discarded mistress of Sir Eustace’s
+(well, not more than three years ago, and hope dies hard), who thinks
+no small champagne of herself and considers murder too fascinating for
+words. Well, really!
+
+“By the way, if you want any confirmatory evidence that she had been
+one of Sir Eustace’s lady-loves, I might add that I saw a photograph
+of him in her flat. It was in a frame that had a very wide border. The
+border showed the word ‘Your’ and conveniently cut off the rest. Not
+‘Yours,’ notice, but ‘Your.’ I think it’s a reasonable assumption that
+something quite affectionate lies under that discreet border.”
+
+“I have it from his own lips that Sir Eustace changes his mistresses
+as often as his hats,” Miss Dammers said briskly. “Isn’t it possible
+that more than one may have suffered from a jealousy-complex?”
+
+“But not, I think, have possessed a copy of Taylor as well,” Mr.
+Bradley insisted.
+
+“The criminological-knowledge factor seems to have taken the place in
+this case of the nitrobenzene factor in the last,” meditated Mr.
+Chitterwick. “Am I right in thinking that?”
+
+“Quite,” Mr. Bradley assured him kindly. “That, in my opinion, is the
+really important clue. It’s so emphasised, you see. We get it from two
+entirely different angles, the choice of poison and the reminiscent
+features of the case. In fact we’re coming up against it all the
+time.”
+
+“Well, well,” muttered Mr. Chitterwick, reproving himself as one might
+who had been coming up against a thing all the time and never even
+noticed it.
+
+There was a short silence, which Mr. Chitterwick imputed (quite
+wrongly) to a general condemnation of his own obtuseness.
+
+“Your list of conditions,” Miss Dammers resumed the charge. “You said
+you hadn’t been able to check all of them. Which does this woman
+definitely fulfil, and which haven’t you been able to check?”
+
+Mr. Bradley assumed an air of alertness. “No. 1, I don’t know whether
+she has any chemical knowledge. No. 2, I do know that she has at least
+an elementary knowledge of criminology. No. 3, she is almost certain
+to have had a reasonably good education (though whether she ever
+learnt anything is quite a different matter), and I think we may
+assume that she was never at a public-school. No. 4, I haven’t been
+able to connect her with Mason’s notepaper, except in so far as she
+has an account at Mason’s; and if that is good enough for Sir Charles,
+it’s good enough for me. No. 5, I haven’t been able to connect her
+with a Hamilton typewriter, but that ought to be quite easy; one of
+her friends is sure to have one.
+
+“No. 6, she could have been in the neighbourhood of Southampton
+Street. She tried to establish an alibi, but bungled it badly; it’s
+full of holes. She’s supposed to have been in a theatre, but she
+didn’t even get there till well past nine. No. 7, I saw an Onyx
+fountain-pen on her bureau. No. 8, I saw a bottle of Harfield’s
+Fountain-Pen Ink in one of the pigeon-holes of the bureau.
+
+“No. 9, I shouldn’t have said she had a creative mind; I shouldn’t
+have said that she had a mind at all; but apparently we must give her
+the benefit of any doubt there is. No. 10, judging from her face, I
+should say she was very neat with her fingers. No. 11, if she is a
+person of methodical habits she must feel it an incriminating point,
+for she certainly disguises it very well. No. 12, this I think might
+be amended, to ‘must have the poisoner’s complete lack of
+imagination.’ That’s the lot.”
+
+“I see,” said Miss Dammers. “There are gaps.”
+
+“There are,” Mr. Bradley agreed blandly. “To tell the truth, I know
+this woman must have done it because really, you know, she must. But I
+can’t believe it.”
+
+“Ah!” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, putting a neat sentence into one
+word.
+
+“By the way, Sheringham,” remarked Mr. Bradley, “you know the bad
+lady.”
+
+“I do, do I?” said Roger, apparently coming out of a trance. “I
+thought I might. Look here, if I write a name down on a piece of
+paper, do you mind telling me if I’m right or wrong?”
+
+“Not in the least,” replied the equable Mr. Bradley. “As a matter of
+fact I was going to suggest something like that myself. I think as
+President you ought to know who I mean, in case there is anything in
+it.”
+
+Roger folded his piece of paper in two and tossed it down the table.
+“That’s the person, I suppose.”
+
+“You’re quite right,” said Mr. Bradley.
+
+“And you base most of your case on her reasons for interesting herself
+in criminology?”
+
+“You might put it like that,” conceded Mr. Bradley.
+
+In spite of himself Roger blushed faintly. He had the best of reasons
+for knowing why Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer professed such an interest in
+criminology. Not to put too fine a point on it, the reasons had been
+almost forced on him.
+
+“Then you’re absolutely wrong, Bradley,” he said without hesitation.
+“Absolutely.”
+
+“You know definitely?”
+
+Roger suppressed an involuntary shudder. “Quite definitely.”
+
+“You know, I never believed she did it,” said the philosophical Mr.
+Bradley.
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+Roger was very busy.
+
+Flitting in taxis hither and thither, utterly regardless of what the
+clocks had to tell him, he was trying to get his case completed before
+the evening. His activities might have seemed to that artless
+criminologist, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer, not only baffling but
+pointless.
+
+On the previous afternoon, for instance, he had taken his first taxi
+to the Holborn Public Library and there consulted a work of reference
+of the most uninspiring description. After that he had driven to the
+offices of Messrs. Weall and Wilson, the well-known firm which exists
+to protect the trade interests of individuals and supply subscribers
+with highly confidential information regarding the stability of any
+business in which it is intended to invest money.
+
+Roger, glibly representing himself as a potential investor of large
+sums, had entered his name as a subscriber, filled up a number of the
+special enquiry forms which are headed Strictly Confidential, and not
+consented to go away until Messrs. Weall and Wilson had promised, in
+consideration of certain extra moneys, to have the required
+information in his hands within twenty-seven hours.
+
+He had then bought a newspaper and gone to Scotland Yard. There he
+sought out Moresby.
+
+“Moresby,” he said without preamble, “I want you to do something
+important for me. Can you find me a taximan who took up a fare in
+Piccadilly Circus or its neighbourhood at about ten minutes past nine
+on the night before the Bendix murder, and deposited same at or near
+the Strand end of Southampton Street? And/or another taxi who took up
+a fare in the Strand near Southampton Street at about a quarter-past
+nine, and deposited same in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly Circus?
+The second is the more likely of the two; I’m not quite sure about the
+first. Or one taxi might have been used for the double journey, but I
+doubt that very much. Do you think you can do this for me?”
+
+“We may not get any results, after all this time,” said Moresby
+doubtfully. “It’s really important, is it?”
+
+“Quite important.”
+
+“Well, I’ll try of course, seeing it’s you, Mr. Sheringham, and I know
+I can take your word for it that it is important. But I wouldn’t for
+any one else.”
+
+“That’s fine,” said Roger with much heartiness. “Make it pretty
+urgent, will you? And you might give me a ring at the Albany at about
+tea-time to-morrow, if you think you’ve got hold of my man.”
+
+“What’s the idea, then, Mr. Sheringham?”
+
+“I’m trying to break down a rather interesting alibi,” said Roger.
+
+He went back to his rooms to dine.
+
+After the meal his head was buzzing far too busily for him to be able
+to do anything else but take it for a walk. Restlessly he wandered out
+of the Albany and turned down Piccadilly. He ambled round the Circus,
+thinking hard, and paused for a moment out of habit to inspect with
+unseeing eyes the photographs of the new revue hanging outside the
+Pavilion. The next thing he realised was that he must have turned down
+the Haymarket and swung round in a wide circle into Jermyn Street, for
+he was standing outside the Imperial Theatre in that fascinating
+thoroughfare, idly watching the last of the audience crowding in.
+
+Glancing at the advertisements of _The Creaking Skull_, he saw that
+the terrible thing began at half-past eight. Glancing at his watch, he
+saw that the time was twenty-nine minutes past that hour.
+
+There was an evening to be got through somehow.
+
+He went inside.
+
+The night passed somehow, too.
+
+Early the next morning (or early, that is, for Roger; say half-past
+ten), in a bleak spot somewhere beyond the bounds of civilisation, in
+short in Acton, Roger found himself parleying with a young woman in
+the offices of the Anglo-Eastern Perfumery Company. The young woman
+was entrenched behind a partition just inside the main entrance, her
+only means of communication with the outer world being through a small
+window fitted with frosted glass. This window she would open (if
+summoned long and loudly enough) to address a few curt replies to
+importunate callers, and this window she would close with a bang by
+way of a hint that the interview, in her opinion, should now be
+closed.
+
+“Good morning,” said Roger blandly, when his third rap had summoned
+this maiden from the depths of her fastness. “I’ve called to—”
+
+“Travellers, Tuesdays and Friday mornings, ten to eleven,” said the
+maiden surprisingly, and closed the window with one of her best bangs.
+That’ll teach him to try and do business with a respectable English
+firm on a Thursday morning, good gracious me, said the bang.
+
+Roger stared blankly at the closed window. Then it dawned on him that
+a mistake had been made. He rapped again. And again.
+
+At the fourth rap the window flew open as if something had exploded
+behind it. “I’ve told you already,” snapped the maiden, righteously
+indignant, “that we only see—”
+
+“I’m not a traveller,” said Roger hastily. “At least,” he added with
+meticulousness, thinking of the dreary deserts he had explored before
+finding this inhospitable oasis, “at least, not a commercial one.”
+
+“You don’t want to sell anything?” asked the maiden suspiciously.
+Impregnated with all that is best in the go-ahead spirit of English
+business methods, she naturally looked with the deepest distrust on
+anybody who might possibly wish to do such an unbusinesslike thing as
+_sell_ her firm something.
+
+“Nothing,” Roger assured her with the utmost earnestness, impressed in
+his turn with the revolting vulgarity of such a proceeding.
+
+On these conditions it appeared that the maiden, though by no means
+ready to take him to her bosom, was prepared to tolerate him for a few
+seconds. “Well, what _do_ you want then?” she asked, with an air of
+weariness patiently, even nobly borne. From her tone it was to be
+gathered that very few people penetrated as far as that door unless
+with the discreditable intention of trying to do business with her
+firm. Just fancy—business!
+
+“I’m a solicitor,” Roger told her now, without truth, “and I’m
+enquiring into the matter of a certain Mr. Joseph Lea Hardwick, who
+was employed here. I regret to say that—”
+
+“Sorry, never heard of the gentleman,” said the maiden shortly, and
+intimated in her usual way that the interview had lasted quite long
+enough.
+
+Once more Roger got busy with his stick. After the seventh application
+he was rewarded with another view of indignant young English girlhood.
+
+“I’ve told you already—”
+
+But Roger had had about enough of this. “And now, young woman, let me
+tell _you_ something. If you refuse to answer my questions, let me
+warn you that you may find yourself in very serious trouble. Haven’t
+you ever heard of contempt of court?” There are times when some slight
+juggling with the truth is permissible. There are times, too, when
+even a shrewd blow with a bludgeon may be excused. This time was one
+of both.
+
+The maiden, though far from cowed, was at last impressed. “Well, what
+do you want to know then?” she asked, resignedly.
+
+“This man, Joseph Lea Hardwick—”
+
+“I’ve told you, I’ve never heard of him.”
+
+As the gentleman in question had enjoyed an existence of only two or
+three minutes, and that solely in Roger’s brain, his creator was not
+unprepared for this. “It is possible that he was known to you under a
+different name,” he said darkly.
+
+The maiden’s interest was engaged. More, she looked positively
+alarmed. She spoke shrilly. “If it’s divorce, let me tell you you
+can’t hang anything on _me_. I never even knew he was married.
+Besides, it isn’t as if there was a cause. I mean to say—well, at
+least—anyhow, it’s a pack of lies. I never—”
+
+“It isn’t divorce,” Roger hastened to stem the tide, himself scarcely
+less alarmed at these quite unmaidenly revelations. “It’s—it’s nothing
+to do with your private life at all. It’s about a man who was employed
+here.”
+
+“Oh!” The late maiden’s relief turned rapidly into indignation. “Well,
+why couldn’t you say so?”
+
+“Employed here,” pursued Roger firmly, “in the nitrobenzene
+department. You have a nitrobenzene department, haven’t you?”
+
+“Not that I’m aware of, I’m sure.”
+
+Roger made the noise that is usually spelt “Tchah! You know perfectly
+well what I mean. The department which handles the nitrobenzene used
+here. You are hardly prepared to deny that nitrobenzene _is_ used
+here, I hope? And extensively?”
+
+“Well, and what if it is?”
+
+“It has been reported to my firm that this man met his death through
+insufficient warning having been issued to the employees here about
+the dangerous nature of this substance. I should like—”
+
+“What? One of our men died? I don’t believe it. I should have been the
+first to know if—”
+
+“It’s been hushed up,” Roger inserted quickly. “I should like you to
+show me a copy of the warning that is hung up in the factory about
+nitrobenzene.”
+
+“Well, I’m sorry then, but I’m afraid I can’t oblige you.”
+
+“Do you mean to tell me,” said Roger, much shocked, “that no warning
+is issued at all to your employees about this most dangerous
+substance? They’re not even told that it is a deadly poison?”
+
+“I didn’t say that, did I? Of course they’re warned that it’s
+poisonous. Everybody is. And they’re most careful about the way it’s
+handled, I’m sure. It just happens that there isn’t a warning hung up.
+And if you want to know any more about it, you’d better see one of the
+directors. I’ll—”
+
+“Thank you,” said Roger, speaking the truth at last, “I’ve learned all
+I wanted. Good morning.” He retreated jubilantly.
+
+He retreated to Webster’s, the printers, in a taxi.
+
+Webster’s of course are to printing what Monte Carlo is to the
+Riviera. Webster’s, practically speaking, _are_ printing. So where
+more naturally should Roger go if he wanted some new notepaper printed
+in a very special and particular way, as apparently he did?
+
+To the young woman behind the counter who took him in charge he
+specified at great length and in the most meticulous detail exactly
+what he did want. The young woman handed him her book of specimen
+pieces and asked him to see if he could find a style there which would
+suit him. While he looked through it she turned to another customer.
+Not to palter with the truth, that young woman had been getting a
+little weary of Roger and his wants.
+
+Apparently Roger could not find a style to suit him, for he closed the
+book and edged a little along the counter till he was within the
+territory of the next young woman. To her in turn he embarked on the
+epic of his needs, and in turn too she presented him with her book of
+specimens and asked him to choose one. As the book was only another
+copy of the same edition, it is not surprising that Roger found
+himself no further forward.
+
+Once more he edged along the counter, and once more he recited his
+saga to the third, and last, young woman. Knowing the game, she handed
+him her book of specimens. But this time Roger had his reward. This
+book was one of the same edition, but it was not an exact copy.
+
+“Of course I’m sure you’ll have what I want,” he remarked garrulously
+as he flicked over the pages, “because I was recommended here by a
+friend who is really most particular. _Most_ particular.”
+
+“Is that so?” said the young woman, doing her best to appear extremely
+interested. She was a very young woman indeed, young enough to study
+the technique of salesmanship in her spare time; and one of the first
+rules in salesmanship, she had learned, was to receive a customer’s
+remark that it is a fine day with the same eager and respectful
+admiration of the penetrating powers of his observation as she would
+accord to a fortune-teller who informed her that she would receive a
+letter from a dark stranger across the water containing an offer of
+money, on her note of hand alone. “Well,” she said, trying hard, “some
+people are particular, and that’s a fact.”
+
+“Dear me!” Roger seemed much struck. “Do you know, I believe I’ve got
+my friend’s photograph on me this very minute. Isn’t that an
+extraordinary coincidence?”
+
+“Well, I never,” said the dutiful young woman.
+
+Roger produced the coincidental photograph and handed it across the
+counter. “There! Recognise it?”
+
+The young woman took the photograph and studied it closely. “So that’s
+your friend! Well, isn’t that extraordinary? Yes, of course I
+recognise it. It’s a small world, isn’t it?”
+
+“About a fortnight ago, I think my friend was in here last,” Roger
+persisted. “Is that right?”
+
+The young woman pondered. “Yes, it would be about a fortnight ago, I
+suppose. Yes, just about. Now this is a line we’re selling a good deal
+of just at present.”
+
+Roger bought an inordinate quantity of notepaper he didn’t want in the
+least, out of sheer lightness of heart. And because she really was a
+very nice young woman, and it was a shame to take advantage of her.
+
+Then he went back to his rooms for lunch.
+
+Most of the afternoon he spent in trying apparently to buy a
+second-hand typewriter.
+
+Roger was very particular that his typewriter should be a Hamilton No.
+4. When the salesmen tried to induce him to consider other makes he
+refused to look at them, saying that he had had the Hamilton No. 4 so
+strongly recommended to him by a friend, who had bought a second-hand
+one just about three weeks ago. Perhaps it was at this very shop? No?
+They hadn’t sold a Hamilton No. 4 for the last two months? How very
+odd.
+
+But at one shop they had; and that was odder still. The obliging
+salesman looked up the exact date, and found that it was just a month
+ago. Roger described his friend, and the salesman at once agreed that
+Roger’s friend and his own customer were one and the same.
+
+“Good gracious, and now I come to think of it,” Roger cried, “I
+actually believe I’ve got my friend’s photograph on me at this very
+minute. Let me see!” He rummaged in his pockets, and to his great
+astonishment produced the photograph in question.
+
+The salesman most obligingly proceeded to identify his customer
+without hesitation. He then went on, just as obligingly, to sell Roger
+the second-hand Hamilton No. 4 which that enthusiastic detective felt
+he had not the face to refuse to buy. Detecting, Roger was
+discovering, is for the person without official authority to back him,
+a singularly expensive business. But like Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, he
+did not grudge money spent in a good cause.
+
+He went back to his rooms to tea. There was nothing more to be done
+except await the call from Moresby.
+
+It came sooner than he expected.
+
+“Is that you, Mr. Sheringham? There are fourteen taxi-drivers here,
+littering up my office,” said Moresby offensively. “They all took
+fares from Piccadilly Circus to the Strand, or _vice versa_, at your
+time. What do you want me to do with ’em?”
+
+“Kindly keep them till I come, Chief Inspector,” returned Roger with
+dignity, and grabbed his hat. He had not expected more than three at
+the most, but he was not going to let Moresby know that.
+
+The interview with the fourteen was brief enough however. To each
+grinning man in turn (Roger deduced a little heavy humour on the part
+of Moresby before he arrived) Roger showed the photograph, taking some
+pains to hold it so that Moresby could not see it, and asked if he
+could recognise his fare. Not a single one could.
+
+Moresby dismissed the men with a broad grin. “That’s a pity, Mr.
+Sheringham. Puts a bit of a spoke in the case you’re trying to work
+up, no doubt?”
+
+Roger smiled at him in a superior manner. “On the contrary, my dear
+Moresby, it just about clinches it.”
+
+“It what did you say?” asked Moresby, startled out of his grammar.
+“What are you up to, Mr. Sheringham, eh?”
+
+“I thought you knew all that. Aren’t we being sleuthed?”
+
+“Well!” Moresby actually looked a shade out of countenance. “To tell
+you the truth, Mr. Sheringham, all your people seemed to be going so
+far off the lines that I called my men off; it didn’t seem worth while
+keeping ’em on.”
+
+“Dear, dear,” said Roger gently. “Fancy that. Well, it’s a small
+world, isn’t it?”
+
+“So what have you been doing, Mr. Sheringham? You’ve no objection to
+telling me that, I suppose?”
+
+“None in the least, Moresby. Your work for you. Does it interest you
+to know that I’ve found out who sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace?”
+
+Moresby eyed him for a moment. “It certainly does, Mr. Sheringham. If
+you really have.”
+
+“Oh, I have, yes,” said Roger very nonchalantly; even Mr. Bradley
+himself could not have spoken more so. “I’ll give you a report on it
+as soon as I’ve got my evidence in order.—It was an interesting case,”
+he added. And suppressed a yawn.
+
+“Was it now, Mr. Sheringham?” said Moresby, in a choked voice.
+
+“Oh, yes; in its way. But absurdly simple once one had grasped the
+really essential factor. Quite ridiculously so. I’ll let you have that
+report some time. So long, then.” And he strolled out.
+
+One cannot conceal the fact that Roger had his annoying moments.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+Roger called on himself.
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen, as the one responsible for this experiment, I
+think I can congratulate myself. The three members who have spoken so
+far have shown an ingenuity of observation and argument which I think
+could have been called forth by no other agency. Each was convinced
+before beginning to speak that he or she had solved the problem and
+could produce positive proof in support of such solution, and each, I
+think, is still entitled to say that his or her reading of the puzzle
+has not yet been definitely disproved.
+
+“Even Sir Charles’s choice of Lady Pennefather is perfectly arguable,
+in spite of the positive alibi that Miss Dammers is able to give to
+Lady Pennefather herself; Sir Charles is quite entitled to say that
+Lady Pennefather has an accomplice, and to adduce in support of that
+the rather dubious circumstances attending her stay in Paris.
+
+“And in this connection I should like to take the opportunity of
+retracting what I said to Bradley last night. I said that I knew
+definitely that the woman he had in mind could not have committed the
+murder. That was a mis-statement. I didn’t know definitely at all. I
+found the idea, from what I personally know of her, to be quite
+incredible.
+
+“Moreover,” said Roger bravely, “I have some reason to suspect the
+origin of her interest in criminology, and I’m pretty sure it’s quite
+a different one from that postulated by Bradley. What I should have
+said was, that her guilt of this crime was a psychological
+impossibility. But so far as facts go, one can’t prove psychological
+impossibilities. Bradley is still perfectly entitled to believe her
+the criminal. And in any case she must certainly remain on the list of
+suspects.”
+
+“I agree with you, Sheringham, you know, about the psychological
+impossibility,” remarked Mr. Bradley. “I said as much. The trouble is
+that I consider I proved the case against her.”
+
+“But you proved the case against yourself too,” pointed out Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming sweetly.
+
+“Oh, yes; but that doesn’t worry me with its inconsistency. That
+involves no psychological impossibility, you see.”
+
+“No,” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “Perhaps not.”
+
+“Psychological impossibility!” contributed Sir Charles robustly. “Oh,
+you novelists. You’re all so tied up with Freud nowadays that you’ve
+lost sight of human nature altogether. When I was a young man nobody
+talked about psychological impossibilities. And why? Because we knew
+very well that there’s no such thing.”
+
+“In other words, the most improbable person may, in certain
+circumstances, do the most unlikely things,” amplified Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming. “Well, I may be old-fashioned, but I’m inclined to
+agree with that.”
+
+“Constance Kent,” led Sir Charles.
+
+“Lizzie Borden,” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming covered.
+
+“The entire Adelaide Bartlett case,” Sir Charles brought out the ace
+of trumps.
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming gathered the cards up into a neat pack. “In my
+opinion, people who talk of psychological impossibilities are treating
+their subjects as characters in one of their own novels—they’re
+infusing a certain percentage of their own mental make-up into them
+and consequently never see clearly that what they think may be the
+impossible for themselves may quite well be the possible (however
+improbable) in somebody else.”
+
+“Then there is something to be said after all for the detective story
+merchant’s axiom of the most unlikely person,” murmured Mr. Bradley.
+“Good!”
+
+“Shall we hear what Mr. Sheringham’s got to say about the case now?”
+suggested Miss Dammers.
+
+Roger took the hint.
+
+“I was going on to say how interestingly the experiment had turned
+out, too, in that the three people who have already spoken happen each
+to have hit on a different person for the criminal. I, by the way, am
+going to suggest another, so even if Miss Dammers and Mr. Chitterwick
+each agree with one of us, that gives us four entirely different
+possibilities. I don’t mind confessing that I’d hoped something like
+that would happen, though I hardly looked for such an excellent
+result.
+
+“Still, as Bradley has pointed out in his remarks about closed and
+open murders, the possibilities in this case really are almost
+infinite. That, of course, makes it so much more interesting from our
+point of view. For instance, I began my own investigations from the
+point of view of Sir Eustace’s private life. It was there, I felt
+convinced, that the clue to the murder was to be found. Just as
+Bradley did. And like him, I thought that this clue would be in the
+form of a discarded mistress; jealousy or revenge, I was sure, would
+turn out to be the mainspring of the crime. Lastly, like him I was
+convinced from the very first glance at the business that the crime
+was the work of a woman.
+
+“The consequence was that I began work entirely from the angle of Sir
+Eustace’s women. I spent a good many not too savoury days collecting
+data, until I was convinced that I had a complete list of all his
+affairs during the past five years. It was not too difficult. Sir
+Eustace, as I said last night, is not a reticent man. Apparently I had
+not got the full list, for mine hadn’t included the lady whose name
+was not mentioned last night, and if there was one omission it’s
+possible there may be more. At any rate, it seems that Sir Eustace, to
+do him justice, did have his moments of discretion.
+
+“But now all that is really beside the point. What matters is that at
+first I was certain that the crime was the work not only of a woman,
+but of a woman who had comparatively recently been Sir Eustace’s
+mistress.
+
+“I have now changed all my opinions, _in toto_.”
+
+“Oh, really!” moaned Mr. Bradley. “Don’t tell me I was wrong all along
+the line.”
+
+“I’m afraid so,” said Roger, trying to keep the triumph out of his
+voice. It is a difficult thing, when one has really and truly solved a
+problem which has baffled so many excellent brains, to appear entirely
+indifferent about it.
+
+“I regret to have to say,” he went on, hoping he appeared humbler than
+he felt, “I regret to have to say that I can’t claim all credit for
+this change of view for my own perspicacity. To be quite honest, it
+was sheer luck. A chance meeting with a silly woman in Bond Street put
+me in possession of a piece of information, trivial in itself (my
+informant never for one moment saw its possible significance), but
+which immediately altered the whole case for me. I saw in a flash that
+I’d been working from the beginning on mistaken premises. That I’d
+been making, in fact, the particular fundamental mistake which the
+murderer had intended the police and everybody else to make.
+
+“It’s a curious business, this element of luck in the solution of
+crime-puzzles,” Roger ruminated. “As it happens I was discussing it
+with Moresby, in connection with this very case. I pointed out to him
+the number of impossible problems which Scotland Yard solves
+eventually through sheer luck—a vital piece of evidence turning up of
+its own accord so to speak, or a piece of information brought in by an
+angry woman because her husband happened to have given her grounds for
+jealousy just before the crime. That sort of thing is happening all
+the time. _The Avenging Chance_, I suggested as a title, if Moresby
+ever wanted to make a film out of such a story.
+
+“Well, The Avenging Chance has worked again. By means of that lucky
+encounter in Bond Street, in one moment of enlightenment it showed me
+who really had sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace Pennefather.”
+
+“Well, well, well!” Mr. Bradley kindly expressed the feelings of the
+Circle.
+
+“And who was it, then?” queried Miss Dammers, who had an unfortunate
+lack of dramatic feeling. For that matter Miss Dammers was inclined to
+plume herself on the fact that she had no sense of construction, and
+that none of her books ever had a plot. Novelists who use words like
+‘values’ and ‘reflexes’ and ‘Œdipus-complex’ simply won’t have
+anything to do with plots. “Who appeared to you in this interesting
+revelation, Mr. Sheringham?”
+
+“Oh, let me work my story up a little first,” Roger pleaded.
+
+Miss Dammers sighed. Stories, as Roger as a fellow-craftsman ought to
+have known, simply weren’t done nowadays. But then Roger was a
+best-seller, and anything is possible with a creature like that.
+
+Unconscious of these reflections, Roger was leaning back in his chair
+in an easy attitude, meditating gently. When he began to speak again
+it was in a more conversational tone than he had used before.
+
+“You know, this really was a very remarkable case. You and Bradley,
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, didn’t do the criminal justice when you
+described it as a hotch-potch of other cases. Any ideas of real merit
+in previous cases may have been borrowed, perhaps; but as Fielding
+says, in _Tom Jones_, to borrow from the classics, even without
+acknowledgment, is quite legitimate for the purposes of an original
+work. And this _is_ an original work. It has one feature which not
+only absolves it from all charge to the contrary, but which puts it
+head and shoulders above all its prototypes.
+
+“It’s bound to become one of the classical cases itself. And but for
+the merest accident, which the criminal for all his ingenuity couldn’t
+possibly have foreseen, I think it would have become one of the
+classical mysteries. On the whole I’m inclined to consider it the most
+perfectly-planned murder I’ve ever heard of (because of course one
+doesn’t hear of the even more perfectly-planned ones that are never
+known to be murders at all). It’s so exactly right—ingenious, utterly
+simple, and as near as possible infallible.”
+
+“Humph! Not so very infallible, as it turned out, Sheringham, eh?”
+grunted Sir Charles.
+
+Roger smiled at him.
+
+“The motive’s so obvious, when you know where to look for it; but you
+didn’t know. The method’s so significant, once you’ve grasped its real
+essentials; but you didn’t grasp them. The traces are so thinly
+covered, when you’ve realised just what is covering them; but you
+didn’t realise. Everything was anticipated. The soap was left lying
+about in chunks, and we all hurried to stuff our eyes with it. No
+wonder we couldn’t see clearly. It really was beautifully planned. The
+police, the public, the press—everybody completely taken in. It seems
+almost a pity to have to give the murderer away.”
+
+“Really, Mr. Sheringham,” remarked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “You’re
+getting quite lyrical.”
+
+“A perfect murder makes me feel lyrical. If I was this particular
+criminal I should have been writing odes to myself for the last
+fortnight.”
+
+“And as it is,” suggested Miss Dammers, “you feel like writing odes to
+yourself for having solved the thing.”
+
+“I do rather,” Roger agreed.
+
+“Well, I’ll begin with the evidence. As to that, I won’t say that I’ve
+got such a collection of detail as Bradley was able to amass to prove
+his first theory, but I think you’ll all agree that I’ve got quite
+enough. Perhaps I can’t do better than run through his list of twelve
+conditions which the murderer must fulfil, though as you’ll see I
+don’t by any means agree with all of them.
+
+“I grant and can prove the first two, that the murderer must have at
+least an elementary knowledge of chemistry and criminology, but I
+disagree with both parts of the third; I don’t think a good education
+is really essential, and I should certainly not rule out any one with
+a public-school or university education, for reasons which I’ll
+explain later. Nor do I agree with the fourth, that he or she must
+have had possession of or access to Mason’s notepaper. It was an
+ingenious idea of Bradley’s that the possession of the notepaper
+suggested the method of the crime, but I think it mistaken; a previous
+case suggested the method, chocolates were decided on (for a very good
+reason indeed, as I’ll show later) as the vehicle, and Mason’s as
+being the most important firm of chocolate manufacturers. It then
+became necessary to procure a piece of their notepaper, and I’m in a
+position to show how this was done.
+
+“The fifth condition I would qualify. I don’t agree that the criminal
+must have possession of or access to a Hamilton No. 4 typewriter, but
+I do agree that such possession must have existed. In other words, I
+would put that condition in the past tense. Remember that we have to
+deal with a very astute criminal, and a very carefully planned crime.
+I thought it most unlikely that such an incriminating piece of
+evidence as the actual typewriter would be allowed to lie about for
+anyone to discover. Much more probable that a machine had been bought
+specially for the occasion. It was clear from the letter that it
+wasn’t a new machine which had been used. With the courage of my
+deduction, therefore, I spent a whole afternoon making inquiries at
+second-hand typewriter-shops till I ran down the place where it had
+been bought, and proved the buying. The shopman was able to identify
+my murderer from a photograph I had with me.”
+
+“And where’s the machine now?” asked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming eagerly.
+
+“I expect, at the bottom of the Thames. That’s my point. This criminal
+of mine leaves nothing to chance at all.
+
+“With the sixth condition, about being near the post-office during the
+critical hour, of course I agree. My murderer has a mild alibi, but it
+doesn’t hold water. As to the next two, the fountain-pen and the ink,
+I haven’t been able to check them at all, and while I agree that their
+possession would be rather pleasing confirmation I don’t attach great
+importance to them; Onyx pens are so universal, and so is Harfield’s
+ink, that there isn’t much argument there either way. Besides, it
+would be just like my criminal not to own either of them but to have
+borrowed the pen unobtrusively. Lastly, I agree about the creative
+mind, and the neatness with the fingers, and of course with the
+poisoner’s peculiar mentality, but not with the necessity for
+methodical habits.”
+
+“Oh, come,” said Mr. Bradley, pained. “That was rather a sound
+deduction, I thought. And it stands to reason, too.”
+
+“Not to my reason,” Roger retorted.
+
+Mr. Bradley shrugged his shoulders.
+
+“It’s the notepaper I’m interested in,” said Sir Charles. “In my
+opinion that’s the point on which the case against any one must hang.
+How do you prove possession of the notepaper, Sheringham?”
+
+“The notepaper,” said Roger, “was extracted about three weeks ago from
+one of Webster’s books of sample notepaper-headings. The erasure would
+be some private mark of Webster’s, the price, for instance: ‘This
+style, 5s. 9d.’ There are three books at Webster’s, containing exactly
+the same samples. Two of them include a piece of Mason’s paper; from
+the third it’s missing. I can prove contact of my suspect with the
+book about three weeks ago.”
+
+“You can, can you?” Sir Charles was impressed. “That sounds pretty
+conclusive. What put you on the idea of the sample books?”
+
+“The yellowed edges of the letter,” Roger said, not a little pleased
+with himself. “I didn’t see how a bit of paper that had been kept in a
+pile could get its edges quite so discoloured as all that, so
+concluded that it must have been an isolated piece. Then it struck me
+that walking about London, one does see isolated pieces of notepaper
+stuck on a board in the windows of printing-firms. But this piece
+showed no drawing-pin holes or any other signs of having been fixed to
+a board. Besides, it would be difficult to remove it from a board.
+What was the next best thing? Obviously, a sample-book, such as one
+usually finds inside the same shops. So to the printers of Mason’s
+notepaper I went, and there, so to speak, my piece wasn’t.”
+
+“Yes,” muttered Sir Charles, “certainly that sounds pretty
+conclusive.” He sighed. One gathered that he was gazing wistfully in
+his mind’s eye at the diminishing figure of Lady Pennefather, and the
+beautiful case he had built up around her. Then he brightened. This
+time one had gathered that he had switched his vision to the figure,
+equally diminishing, of Sir Charles Wildman, and the beautiful case
+that had been built up around him too.
+
+“So now,” said Roger, feeling he could really put it off no longer,
+“we come to the fundamental mistake to which I referred just now, the
+trap the murderer laid for us and into which we all so neatly fell.”
+
+Everybody sat up.
+
+Roger surveyed them benignly.
+
+“You got very near seeing it, Bradley, last night, with your casual
+suggestion that Sir Eustace himself might not have been the intended
+victim after all. That’s right enough. But I go further than that.”
+
+“I fell in the trap, though, did I?” said Mr. Bradley, pained. “Well,
+what is this trap? What’s the fundamental mistake we all side-slipped
+into?”
+
+“Why,” Roger brought out in triumph, “that the plan had
+miscarried—that the wrong person had been killed!”
+
+He got his reward.
+
+“What!” said every one at once. “Good heavens, you don’t mean. . . ?”
+
+“Exactly,” Roger crowed. “That was just the beauty of it. The plan had
+_not_ miscarried. It had been brilliantly successful. The wrong person
+had _not_ been killed. Very much the right person was.”
+
+“What’s all this?” positively gaped Sir Charles. “How on earth do you
+make that out?”
+
+“Mrs. Bendix was the objective all the time,” Roger went on more
+soberly. “That’s why the plot was so ingenious. Every single thing was
+anticipated. It was foreseen that, if Bendix could be brought
+naturally into Sir Eustace’s presence when the parcel was being
+opened, the latter would hand the chocolates over to him. It was
+foreseen that the police would look for the criminal among Sir
+Eustace’s associates, and not the dead woman’s. It was probably even
+foreseen, Bradley, that the crime would be considered the work of a
+woman, whereas really, of course, chocolates were employed because it
+was a woman who was the objective.”
+
+“Well, well well!” said Mr. Bradley.
+
+“Then it’s your theory,” pursued Sir Charles, “that the murderer was
+an associate of the dead woman’s, and had nothing to do with Sir
+Eustace at all?” He spoke as if not altogether averse from such a
+theory.
+
+“It is,” Roger confirmed. “But first let me tell you what finally
+opened my eyes to the trap. The vital piece of information I got in
+Bond Street was this: _that Mrs. Bendix had seen that play_, _The
+Creaking Skull_, _before_. There’s no doubt about it; she actually
+went with my informant herself. You see the extraordinary
+significance, of course. That means that she already knew the answer
+to that bet she made with her husband about the identity of the
+villain.”
+
+A little intake of breath testified to a general appreciation of this
+information.
+
+“Oh! What a marvellous piece of divine irony.” Miss Dammers was
+exercising her usual faculty of viewing things from the impersonal
+aspect. “Then she actually brought her own retribution on herself. The
+bet she won virtually killed her.”
+
+“Yes,” said Roger. “The irony hadn’t failed to strike even my
+informant. The punishment, as she pointed out, was so much greater
+than the crime. But I don’t think,”—Roger spoke very gently, in a
+mighty effort to curb his elation—“I don’t think that even now you
+quite see my point.”
+
+Everybody looked inquiringly.
+
+“You’ve all heard Mrs. Bendix quite minutely described. You must all
+have formed a tolerably close mental picture of her. She was a
+straightforward, honest girl, making if anything (also according to my
+informant) almost too much of a fetich of straight dealing and playing
+the game. Does the making of a bet to which she already knew the
+answer, fit into that picture or does it not?”
+
+“Ah!” nodded Mr. Bradley. “Oh, very pretty.”
+
+“Just so. It is (with apologies to Sir Charles) a psychological
+impossibility. It really is, you know, Sir Charles; one simply can’t
+see her doing such a thing, in fun or out of it; and I gather that fun
+wasn’t her strong suit, by any means.
+
+“_Ergo_,” concluded Roger briskly, “she didn’t. _Ergo_, that bet was
+never made. _Ergo_, there never was such a bet. _Ergo_, Bendix was
+lying. _Ergo_, Bendix wanted to get hold of those chocolates for some
+reason other than he stated. And the chocolates being what they were,
+there was only one other reason.
+
+“That’s my case.”
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+When the excitement that greeted this revolutionary reading of the
+case had died down, Roger went on to defend his theory in more detail.
+
+“It _is_ something of a shock, of course, to find oneself
+contemplating Bendix as the very cunning murderer of his own wife, but
+really, once one has been able to rid one’s mind of all prejudice, I
+don’t see how the conclusion can possibly be avoided. Every item of
+evidence, however minute, goes to support it.”
+
+“But the motive!” ejaculated Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.
+
+“Motive? Good heavens, he’d motive enough. In the first place he was
+frankly—no, not frankly; secretly!—tired of her. Remember what we were
+told of his character. He’d sown his wild oats. But apparently he
+hadn’t finished sowing them, because his name has been mentioned in
+connection with more than one woman even since his marriage, usually,
+in the good old-fashioned way, actresses. So Bendix wasn’t such a
+solemn stick by any means. He liked his fun. And his wife, I should
+imagine, was just about the last person in the world to sympathise
+with such feelings.
+
+“Not that he hadn’t liked her well enough when he married her, quite
+possibly, though it was her money he was after all the time. But she
+must have bored him dreadfully very soon. And really,” said Roger
+impartially, “I think one can hardly blame him there. Any woman,
+however charming otherwise, is bound to bore a normal man if she does
+nothing but prate continually about honour and duty and playing the
+game; and that, I have on good authority, was Mrs. Bendix’s habit.
+
+“Just look at the _ménage_ in this new light. The wife would never
+overlook the smallest peccadillo. Every tiny lapse would be thrown up
+at him for years. Everything she did would be right and everything he
+did wrong. Her sanctimonious righteousness would be forever being
+contrasted with his vileness. She might even work herself into the
+state of those half-mad creatures who spend the whole of their married
+lives reviling their husbands for having been attracted by other women
+before they even met the girl it was their misfortune to marry. Don’t
+think I’m trying to blacken Mrs. Bendix. I’m just showing you how
+intolerable life with her might have been.
+
+“But that’s only the incidental motive. The real trouble was that she
+was too close with her money, and that too I know for a fact. That’s
+where she sentenced herself to death. He wanted it, or some of it,
+badly (it’s what he married her for), and she wouldn’t part.
+
+“One of the first things I did was to consult a Directory of Directors
+and make a list of the firms he’s interested in, with a view to
+getting a confidential report on their financial condition. The report
+reached me just before I left my rooms. It told me exactly what I
+expected—that every single one of those firms is rocky, some only a
+little but some within sight of a crash. They all need money to save
+them. It’s obvious, isn’t it? He’s run through all his own money, and
+he had to get more. I found time to run down to Somerset House and
+again it was as I expected: her will was entirely in his favour. The
+really important point (which no one seems to have suspected) is that
+he isn’t a good business-man at all; he’s a rotten one. And
+half-a-million . . . Well!
+
+“Oh, yes. There’s motive enough.”
+
+“Motive allowed,” said Mr. Bradley. “And the nitrobenzene? You said, I
+think, that Bendix has some knowledge of chemistry.”
+
+Roger laughed. “You remind me of a Wagner opera, Bradley. The
+nitrobenzene _motif_ crops up regularly from you whenever a possible
+criminal is mentioned. However, I think I can satisfy even you in this
+instance. Nitrobenzene as you know, is used in perfumery. In the list
+of Bendix’s businesses is the Anglo-Eastern Perfumery Company. I made
+a special, and dreadful, journey out to Acton for the express purpose
+of finding out whether the Anglo-Eastern Company used nitrobenzene at
+all, and, if so, whether its poisonous qualities were thoroughly
+recognised. The answer to both questions was in the affirmative. So
+there can be no doubt that Bendix is thoroughly acquainted with the
+stuff.
+
+“He might easily enough have got his supply from the factory, but I’m
+inclined to doubt that. I think he’d be cleverer than that. He
+probably made the stuff himself, if the process is as easy as Bradley
+told us. Because I happen to know that he was on the modern side at
+Selchester (that I heard quite by chance too), which presupposes at
+any rate an elementary knowledge of chemistry. Do you pass that,
+Bradley?”
+
+“Pass, friend nitrobenzene,” conceded Mr. Bradley.
+
+Roger drummed thoughtfully on the table with his finger-tips. “It was
+a well-planned affair, wasn’t it?” he meditated. “And so extremely
+easy to reconstruct. Bendix must have thought he’d provided against
+every possible contingency. And so he very nearly had. It was just
+that little bit of unlucky grit that gets into the smooth machinery of
+so many clever crimes: he didn’t know that his wife had seen the play
+before. He’d decided on the mild alibi of his presence at the theatre,
+you see, just in case suspicion should ever impossibly arise, and no
+doubt he stressed his desire to see the play and take her with him.
+Not to spoil his pleasure, she would have unselfishly concealed from
+him the fact that she had seen the play before and didn’t much want to
+see it again. That unselfishness let him down. Because it’s
+inconceivable that she would have turned it to her own advantage to
+win the bet he pretends to have made with her.
+
+“He left the theatre of course during the first interval, and hurried
+as far as he dare go in the ten minutes at his disposal, to post the
+parcel. I sat through the dreadful thing myself last night just to see
+when the intervals came. The first one fits excellently. I’d hoped he
+might have taken a taxi one way, as time was short, but if he did no
+driver of such taxis as did make a similar journey that evening can
+identify him. Or possibly the right driver hasn’t come forward yet. I
+got Scotland Yard to look into that point for me. But it really fits
+much better with the cleverness he’s shown all through, that he should
+have gone by ’bus or underground. Taxis, he’d know, are traceable. But
+if so he’d run it very fine indeed, and I shouldn’t be surprised if he
+got back to his box a few minutes late. The police may be able to
+establish that.”
+
+“It seems to me,” observed Mr. Bradley, “that we made something of a
+mistake in turning the man down from membership here. We thought his
+criminology wasn’t up to standard, didn’t we? Well, well.”
+
+“But we could hardly be expected to know that he was a practical
+criminologist rather than a mere theoretical one,” Roger smiled. “It
+was a mistake, though. It would have been pleasant to include a
+practical criminologist among our members.”
+
+“I must confess that I thought at one time that we did,” said Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, making her peace. “Sir Charles,” she added
+unnecessarily, “I apologise, without reserve.”
+
+Sir Charles inclined his head courteously. “Please don’t refer to it,
+madam. And in any event the experience for me was an interesting one.”
+
+“I may have been misled by the case I quoted,” said Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, rather wistfully. “It was a strangely close
+parallel.”
+
+“It was the first parallel that occurred to me, too,” Roger agreed. “I
+studied the Molineux case quite closely, hoping to get a pointer from
+it. But now, if I were asked for a parallel, I should reply with the
+Carlyle Harris case. You remember, the young medical student who sent
+a pill containing morphine to the girl Helen Potts, to whom it turned
+out that he had been secretly married for a year. He was by way of
+being a profligate and a general young rotter too. A great novel, as
+you know, has been founded on the case, so why not a great crime too?”
+
+“Then why, Mr. Sheringham,” Miss Dammers wanted to know, “do you think
+that Mr. Bendix took the risk of not destroying the forged letter and
+the wrapper when he had the chance?”
+
+“He very carefully didn’t do so,” Roger replied promptly, “because the
+forged letter and the wrapper had been calculated not only to divert
+suspicion from himself but actually to point away from him to somebody
+else—an employee of Mason’s, for instance, or an anonymous lunatic.
+Which is exactly what they did.”
+
+“But wouldn’t it be a great risk, to send poisoned chocolates like
+that to Sir Eustace?” suggested Mr. Chitterwick diffidently. “I mean,
+Sir Eustace might have been ill the next morning, or not offered to
+hand them over at all. Suppose he had given them to somebody else
+instead of Bendix.”
+
+Roger proceeded to give Mr. Chitterwick cause for his diffidence. He
+was feeling something of a personal pride in Bendix by this time, and
+it distressed him to hear a great man thus maligned.
+
+“Oh, really! You must give my man credit for being what he is. He’s
+not a bungler, you know. It wouldn’t have had any serious results if
+Sir Eustace had been ill that morning, or eaten the chocolates
+himself, or if they’d been stolen in transit and consumed by the
+postman’s favourite daughter, or any other unlikely contingency. Come,
+Mr. Chitterwick! You don’t imagine he’d send the poisoned ones through
+the post, do you? Of course not. He’d send harmless ones, and exchange
+them for the others on the way home. Dash it all, he wouldn’t go out
+of his way to present opportunities to chance.”
+
+“Oh! I see,” murmured Mr. Chitterwick, properly subdued.
+
+“We’re dealing with a very great criminal,” went on Roger, rather less
+severely. “That can be seen at every point. Take the arrival at the
+club, just for example—that most unusual early arrival (why this early
+arrival at all, by the way, if he isn’t guilty?). Well, he doesn’t
+wait outside and follow his unconscious accomplice in, you see. Not a
+bit of it. Sir Eustace is chosen because he’s known to get there so
+punctually at half-past ten every morning; takes a pride in it; boasts
+of it; goes out of his way to keep up the good old custom. So Bendix
+arrives at ten thirty-five, and there things are. It had puzzled me at
+the beginning of the case, by the way, to see why the chocolates had
+been sent to Sir Eustace at his club at all, instead of to his rooms.
+Now it’s obvious.”
+
+“Well, I wasn’t so far out with my list of conditions,” Mr. Bradley
+consoled himself. “But why don’t you agree with my rather subtle point
+about the murderer not being a public-school or University man,
+Sheringham? Just because Bendix happens to have been at Selchester and
+Oxford?”
+
+“No, because I’d make the still more subtle point that where the code
+of a public-school and University might influence a murderer in the
+way he murdered another man, it wouldn’t have much effect when a woman
+is to be the victim. I agree that if Bendix had been wanting to
+dispose of Sir Eustace, he would probably have put him out of the
+world in a nice, straightforward, manly way. But one doesn’t use nice,
+straightforward, manly ways in one’s dealings with women, if it comes
+to hitting them on the head with a bludgeon or anything in that
+nature. Poison, I fancy, would be quite in order. And there’s very
+little suffering with a large dose of nitrobenzene. Unconsciousness
+soon intervenes.”
+
+“Yes,” admitted Mr. Bradley, “that is rather too subtle a point for
+one of my unpsychological attributes.”
+
+“I think I dealt with most of your other conditions. As regards the
+methodical habits, which you deduced from the meticulous doses of
+poison in each chocolate, my point of course is that the doses were
+exactly equal in order that Bendix could take any two of the
+chocolates and be sure of having got the right amount of nitrobenzene
+into his system to produce the symptoms he wanted, and not enough to
+run any serious risk. That dosing of himself with the poison really
+was a master-stroke. And it’s so natural that a man shouldn’t have
+taken so many chocolates as a woman. He exaggerated his symptoms
+considerably, no doubt, but the effect on everybody was tremendous.
+
+“We must remember, you see, that we’ve only got his word for the
+conversation in the drawing-room, over the eating of the chocolates,
+just as we’ve only got his word for it that there ever was a bet at
+all. Most of that conversation certainly took place, however. Bendix
+is far too great an artist not to make all possible use of the truth
+in his lying. But of course he wouldn’t have left her that afternoon
+till he’d seen her take, or somehow made her take, at least six of the
+chocolates, which he’d know made up more than a lethal dose. That was
+another advantage in having the stuff in those exact six-minim
+quantities.”
+
+“In fact,” Mr. Bradley summed up, “our Uncle Bendix is a great man.”
+
+“He really is,” said Roger, quite solemnly.
+
+“You’ve no doubt at all that he is the criminal?” queried Miss
+Dammers.
+
+“None at all,” said Roger, astonished.
+
+“Um,” said Miss Dammers.
+
+“Why, have you?”
+
+“Um,” said Miss Dammers.
+
+The conversation then lapsed.
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Bradley, “let’s all tell Sheringham how wrong he is,
+shall we?”
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked tense. “I’m afraid,” she said in a hushed
+voice, “that he is only too right.”
+
+But Mr. Bradley refused to be impressed. “Oh, I think I can find a
+hole or two to pick at. You seem to attach a good deal of importance
+to the motive, Sheringham. Don’t you exaggerate? One doesn’t poison a
+wife one’s tired of; one leaves her. And really, I find some
+difficulty in believing (_a_) that Bendix should have been so set on
+getting hold of more money to pour down the drainpipe of his
+businesses as to commit murder for it, and (_b_) that Mrs. Bendix
+should have been so close as to refuse to come to her husband’s help
+if he really was badly pressed.”
+
+“Then I think you fail to estimate the characters of both of them,”
+Roger told him. “They were both obstinate as the devil. It was Mrs.
+Bendix, not her husband, who realised that his businesses _were_ a
+drainpipe. I could give you a list a yard long of murders that have
+been committed with far less motive than Bendix had.”
+
+“Motive allowed again, then. Now you remember that Mrs. Bendix had had
+a lunch appointment for the day of her death, which was cancelled.
+Didn’t Bendix know of that? Because if he did, would he have chosen a
+day for the delivery of the chocolates when he knew his wife wouldn’t
+be at home for lunch to receive them?”
+
+“Just the point I had thought of putting to Mr. Sheringham myself,”
+remarked Miss Dammers.
+
+Roger looked puzzled. “It seems to me a most unimportant point. If it
+comes to that, why should he necessarily want to give the chocolates
+to his wife at lunch-time?”
+
+“For two reasons,” responded Mr. Bradley glibly.
+
+“Firstly because he would naturally want to put them to their right
+purpose as soon as he possibly could, and secondly because his wife
+being the only person who can contradict his story of the bet, he
+would obviously want her silenced as soon as practicable.”
+
+“You’re quibbling,” Roger smiled, “and I refuse to be drawn. For that
+matter, I don’t see why Bendix should have known of his wife’s
+lunch-appointment at all. They were constantly lunching out, both of
+them, and I don’t suppose they took any particular care to inform each
+other beforehand.”
+
+“Humph!” said Mr. Bradley, and stroked his chin.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick ventured to raise his recently crushed head. “You
+really base your whole case on the bet, Mr. Sheringham, don’t you?”
+
+“And the psychological deduction I drew from the story of it. Yes, I
+do. Entirely.”
+
+“So that if the bet could be proved after all to have been made, you
+would have no case left?”
+
+“Why,” exclaimed Roger, in some alarm, “have you any independent
+evidence that the bet was made?”
+
+“Oh, no. Oh, dear me, no. Nothing of the sort. I was merely thinking
+that if any one did want to disprove your case, as Bradley suggested,
+it is the bet on which he would have to concentrate.”
+
+“You mean, quibbling about the motive, and the lunch-appointment, and
+such minor matters, is altogether beside the point?” suggested Mr.
+Bradley amiably. “Oh, I quite agree. But I was only trying to test his
+case, you know, not disprove it. And for why? Because I think it’s the
+right one. The Mystery of the Poisoned Chocolates, so far as I’m
+concerned, is at an end.”
+
+“Thank you, Bradley,” said Mr. Sheringham.
+
+“So three cheers for our sleuth-like President,” continued Mr. Bradley
+with great heartiness, “coupled with the name of Graham Reynard Bendix
+for the fine run he’s given us. Hip, hip—”
+
+“And you say you’ve definitely proved the purchase of the typewriter,
+and the contact of Mr. Bendix with the sample-book at Webster’s, Mr.
+Sheringham?” remarked Alicia Dammers, who had apparently been pursuing
+a train of thought of her own.
+
+“I do, Miss Dammers,” said Roger, not without complacence.
+
+“Would you give me the name of the typewriter-shop?”
+
+“Of course,” Roger tore a page from his notebook and copied out the
+name and address.
+
+“Thank you. And can you give me a description of the girl at Webster’s
+who identified the photograph of Mr. Bendix?”
+
+Roger looked at her a little uneasily; she gazed back with her usual
+calm serenity. Roger’s uneasiness grew. He gave her as good a
+description of Webster’s young woman as he could recall. Miss Dammers
+thanked him imperturbably.
+
+“Well, what are we going to do about it all?” persisted Mr. Bradley,
+who seemed to have adopted the rôle of showman for his President.
+“Shall we send a delegation to Scotland Yard consisting of Sheringham
+and myself, to break the news to them that their troubles are over?”
+
+“You are assuming that everybody agrees with Mr. Sheringham?”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“Isn’t it customary to put this sort of question to a vote?” suggested
+Miss Dammers coolly.
+
+“‘Carried unanimously,’” quoted Mr. Bradley. “Yes, do let’s have the
+correct procedure. Well, then, Sheringham moves that this meeting do
+accept his solution of the Poisoned Chocolates Mystery as the right
+one, and send a delegation of himself and Mr. Bradley to Scotland Yard
+to talk pretty severely to the police. I second the motion. Those in
+favour. . . ? Mrs. Fielder-Flemming?”
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming endeavoured to conceal her disapproval of Mr.
+Bradley in her approval of Mr. Bradley’s suggestion. “I certainly
+think that Mr. Sheringham has proved his case,” she said stiffly.
+
+“Sir Charles?”
+
+“I agree,” said Sir Charles, in stern tones, equally disproving Mr.
+Bradley’s frivolity.
+
+“Chitterwick?”
+
+“I agree too.” Was it Roger’s fancy, or did Mr. Chitterwick hesitate
+just a moment before he spoke, as if troubled by some mental
+reservation which he did not care to put into words? Roger decided
+that it was his fancy.
+
+“And Miss Dammers?” concluded Mr. Bradley.
+
+Miss Dammers looked calmly round the table. “I don’t agree at all. I
+think Mr. Sheringham’s exposition was exceedingly ingenious, and
+altogether worthy of his reputation; at the same time I think it quite
+wrong. To-morrow I hope to be able to prove to you who really
+committed this crime.”
+
+The Circle gaped at her respectfully.
+
+Roger, wondering whether his ears had not really been playing tricks
+with him, found that his tongue too utterly refused to work. An
+inarticulate sound oozed from him.
+
+Mr. Bradley was the first to recover himself. “Carried,
+non-unanimously. Mr. President, I think this is a precedent. Does
+anybody know what happens when a resolution is not carried
+unanimously?”
+
+In the temporary disability of the President, Miss Dammers took it
+upon herself to decide. “The meeting stands adjourned, I think,” she
+said.
+
+And adjourned the meeting found itself.
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+Roger arrived at the Circle’s meeting-room the next evening even more
+agog than usual. In his heart on hearts he could not believe that Miss
+Dammers would ever be able to destroy his case against Bendix, or even
+dangerously shake it, but in any event what she had to say could not
+fail to be of absorbing interest, even without its animadversions of
+his own solution. Roger had been looking forward to Miss Dammers’s
+exposition more than to that of any one else.
+
+Alicia Dammers was so very much a reflection of the age.
+
+Had she been born fifty years ago, it is difficult to see how she
+could have gone on existing. It was impossible that she could have
+become the woman-novelist of that time, a strange creature (in the
+popular imagination) with white cotton gloves, an intense manner, and
+passionate, not to say hysterical yearnings towards a romance from
+which her appearance unfortunately debarred her. Miss Dammers’s
+gloves, like her clothes, were exquisite, and cotton could not have
+touched her since she was ten (if she ever had been); tensity was for
+her the depth of bad form; and if she knew how to yearn, she certainly
+kept it to herself. Passion and purple, one gathered, Miss Dammers
+found quite unnecessary to herself, if interesting phenomena in lesser
+mortals.
+
+From the caterpillar in cotton gloves the woman-novelist has
+progressed through the stage of cook-like cocoondom at which Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming had stuck, to the detached and serious butterfly, not
+infrequently beautiful as well as pensive, whose decorative pictures
+the illustrated weeklies are nowadays delighted to publish.
+Butterflies with calm foreheads, just faintly wrinkled in analytical
+thought. Ironical, cynical butterflies; surgeon-butterflies thronging
+the mental dissecting-rooms (and sometimes, if we must be candid,
+inclined to loiter there a little too long); passionless butterflies,
+flitting gracefully from one brightly-coloured complex to another. And
+sometimes completely humourless, and then distressingly boring
+butterflies, whose gathered pollen seems to have become a trifle
+mud-coloured.
+
+To meet Miss Dammers and look at her classical, oval face, with its
+delicately small features and big grey eyes, to glance approvingly
+over her tall, beautifully dressed figure, nobody whose imagination
+was still popular would ever have set her down as a novelist at all.
+And that in Miss Dammers’s opinion, coupled with the ability to write
+good books, was exactly what a properly-minded modern authoress should
+hope to achieve.
+
+No one had ever been brave enough to ask Miss Dammers how she could
+hope successfully to analyse in others emotions which she had never
+experienced in herself. Probably because the plain fact confronted the
+enquirer that she both could and did. Most successfully.
+
+“We listened last night,” began Miss Dammers, at five minutes past
+nine on the following evening, “to an exceedingly able exposition of a
+no less interesting theory of this crime. Mr. Sheringham’s methods, if
+I may say so, were a model to all of us. Beginning with the deductive,
+he followed this as far as it would take him, which was actually to
+the person of the criminal; he then relied on the inductive to prove
+his case. In this way he was able to make the best possible use of
+each method. That this ingenious mixture should have been based on a
+fallacy and therefore never had any chance of leading Mr. Sheringham
+to the right solution, is rather a piece of bad luck than his fault.”
+
+Roger, who still could not believe that he had not reached the truth,
+smiled dubiously.
+
+“Mr. Sheringham’s reading of the crime,” continued Miss Dammers, in
+her clear, level tones, “must have seemed to some of us novel in the
+extreme. To me, however, it was perhaps more interesting than novel,
+for it began from the same starting-point as the theory on which I
+myself have been working; namely, that the crime had not failed in its
+objective.”
+
+Roger pricked up his ears.
+
+“As Mr. Chitterwick pointed out, Mr. Sheringham’s whole case rested on
+the bet between Mr. and Mrs. Bendix. From Mr. Bendix’s story of that
+bet, he draws the psychological deduction that the bet never existed
+at all. That is clever, but it is the wrong deduction. Mr. Sheringham
+is too lenient in his interpretation of feminine psychology. I began,
+I think I may say, with the bet too. But the deduction I drew from it,
+knowing my sister-women perhaps a little more intimately than Mr.
+Sheringham could, was that Mrs. Bendix was not quite so honourable as
+she was painted by herself.”
+
+“I thought of that, of course,” Roger expostulated. “But I discarded
+it on purely logical grounds. There’s nothing in Mrs. Bendix’s life to
+show that she wasn’t honest, and everything to show that she was. And
+when there exists no evidence at all for the making of the bet beyond
+Bendix’s bare word . . .”
+
+“Oh, but there does,” Miss Dammers took him up. “I’ve been spending
+most of to-day in establishing that point. I knew I should never
+really be able to shake you till I could definitely prove that there
+was a bet. Let me put you out of your agony at once, Mr. Sheringham.
+I’ve overwhelming evidence that the bet was made.”
+
+“You have?” said Roger, disconcerted.
+
+“Certainly. It was a point you really should have verified yourself,
+you know,” chided Miss Dammers gently, “considering its importance to
+your case. Well, I have two witnesses. Mrs. Bendix mentioned the bet
+to her maid when she went up to her bedroom to lie down, actually
+saying (like yourself, Mr. Sheringham) that the violent indigestion
+from which she thought herself to be suffering was a judgment on her
+for having made it. The second witness is a friend of my own, who
+knows the Bendixes. She saw Mrs. Bendix sitting alone in her box
+during the second interval, and went in to speak to her. In the course
+of the conversation Mrs. Bendix remarked that she and her husband had
+a bet on the identity of the villain, mentioning the character in the
+play whom she herself fancied. But (and this completely confirms my
+own deduction) Mrs. Bendix did _not_ tell my friend that she had seen
+the play before.”
+
+“Oh!” said Roger, now quite crestfallen.
+
+Miss Dammers dealt with him as tenderly as possible. “There were only
+those two deductions to be made from that bet, and by bad luck you
+chose the wrong one.”
+
+“But how did you know,” said Roger, coming to the surface for the
+third time, “that Mrs. Bendix had seen the play before? I only found
+that out myself a couple of days ago, and by the merest accident.”
+
+“Oh, I’ve known that from the beginning,” said Miss Dammers
+carelessly. “I suppose Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer told you? I don’t know
+her personally, but I know people who do. I didn’t interrupt you last
+night when you were talking about the amazing chance of this piece of
+knowledge reaching you. If I had, I should have pointed out that the
+agency by which anything known to Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer (as I see
+her) might become known to her friends too, isn’t chance at all, but
+certainty.”
+
+“I see,” said Roger, and sank for the third, and final, time. But as
+he did so he remembered one piece of information which Mrs.
+Verreker-le-Mesurer had succeeded, not wholly as it seemed but very
+nearly so, in withholding from her friends; and catching Mr. Bradley’s
+ribald eye knew that his thought was shared. So even Miss Dammers was
+not quite infallible in her psychology.
+
+“We then,” resumed that lady, somewhat didactically, “have Mr. Bendix
+displaced from his temporary rôle of villain and back again in his old
+part of second victim.” She paused for a moment.
+
+“But without Sir Eustace returning to the cast in his original star
+part of intended victim of the piece,” amplified Mr. Bradley.
+
+Miss Dammers rightly ignored him. “Now here, I think, Mr. Sheringham
+will find my case as interesting as I found his last night, for though
+we differ so vitally in some essentials we agree remarkably in others.
+And one of the points on which we agree is that the intended victim
+certainly was killed.”
+
+“What, Alicia?” exclaimed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “You think too that
+the plot was directed against Mrs. Bendix from the beginning?”
+
+“I have no doubt of it. But to prove my contention I must demolish yet
+another of Mr. Sheringham’s conclusions.
+
+“You made the point, Mr. Sheringham, that half-past ten in the morning
+was a most unusual time for Mr. Bendix to arrive at his club and
+therefore highly significant. That is perfectly true. Unfortunately
+you attached the wrong significance to it. His arrival at that hour
+doesn’t necessarily argue a guilty intention, as you assumed. It
+escaped you (as in fairness I must say it seems to have escaped every
+one else) that if Mrs. Bendix was the intended victim and Mr. Bendix
+himself not her murderer, his presence at the club at that convenient
+time might have been secured by the real murderer. In any case I think
+Mr. Sheringham might have given Mr. Bendix the benefit of the doubt in
+so far as to ask him if he had any explanation of his own to offer. As
+I did.”
+
+“You asked Bendix himself how it had happened that he arrived at the
+club at half-past ten that morning?” Mr. Chitterwick said in awed
+tones. This was certainly the way real detecting should be done.
+Unfortunately his own diffidence seemed to have prevented Mr.
+Chitterwick from doing any real detecting at all.
+
+“Certainly,” agreed Miss Dammers briskly. “I rang him up, and put the
+point to him. From what I gathered, not even the police had thought to
+put it before. And though he answered it in a way I quite expected, it
+was clear that he saw no significance in his own answer. Mr. Bendix
+told me that he had gone there to receive a telephone message. But why
+not have had the message telephoned to his home? you will ask.
+Exactly. So did I. The reason was that it was not the sort of message
+one cares about receiving at home. I must admit that I pressed Mr.
+Bendix about this message, and as he had no idea of the importance of
+my questions he must have considered my taste more than questionable.
+However, I couldn’t help that.
+
+“In the end I got him to admit that on the previous afternoon he had
+been rung up at his office by a Miss Vera Delorme, who plays a small
+part in _Heels Up!_ at the Regency Theatre. He had only met her once
+or twice, but was not averse from doing so again. She asked him if he
+were doing anything important the next morning, to which he replied
+that he was not. Could he take her out to a quiet little lunch
+somewhere? He would be delighted. But she was not quite sure yet
+whether she was free. She would ring him up the next morning between
+ten-thirty and eleven o’clock at the Rainbow Club.”
+
+Five pairs of brows were knitted.
+
+“I don’t see any significance in that either,” finally plunged Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming.
+
+“No?” said Miss Dammers. “But if Miss Delorme straightly denies having
+ever rung Mr. Bendix up at all?”
+
+Five pairs of brows unravelled themselves.
+
+“_Oh!_” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.
+
+“Of course that was the first thing I verified,” said Miss Dammers
+coolly.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick sighed. Yes, undoubtedly this was real detecting.
+
+“Then your murderer had an accomplice, Miss Dammers?” Sir Charles
+suggested.
+
+“He had two,” retorted Miss Dammers. “Both unwitting.”
+
+“Ah, yes. You mean Bendix. And the woman who telephoned?”
+
+“Well—!” Miss Dammers looked in her unexcited way round the circle of
+faces. “Isn’t it obvious?”
+
+Apparently it was not at all obvious.
+
+“At any rate it must be obvious why Miss Delorme was chosen as the
+telephonist: because Mr. Bendix hardly knew her, and would certainly
+not be able to recognise her voice on the telephone. And as for the
+real speaker . . . Well, really!” Miss Dammers looked her opinion of
+such obtuseness.
+
+“Mrs. Bendix!” squeaked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming catching sight of a
+triangle.
+
+“Of course. Mrs. Bendix, carefully primed by _somebody_ about her
+husband’s minor misdemeanours.”
+
+“The somebody being the murderer of course,” nodded Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming. “A friend of Mrs. Bendix’s then. At least,” amended
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming in some confusion, remembering that real friends
+seldom murder each other, “she thought of him as a friend. Dear me,
+this is getting very interesting, Alicia.”
+
+Miss Dammers gave a small, ironical smile. “Yes, it’s a very intimate
+little affair after all, this murder. Tightly closed, in fact, Mr.
+Bradley.
+
+“But I’m getting on rather too fast. I had better complete the
+destruction of Mr. Sheringham’s case before I build up my own.” Roger
+groaned faintly and looked up at the hard, white ceiling. It reminded
+him of Miss Dammers, and he looked down again.
+
+“Really, Mr. Sheringham, your faith in human nature is altogether too
+great, you know,” Miss Dammers mocked him without mercy. “Whatever
+anybody chooses to tell you, you believe. A confirmatory witness never
+seems necessary to you. I’m sure that if some one had come to your
+rooms and told you he’d seen the Shah of Persia injecting the
+nitrobenzene into those chocolates you would have believed him
+unhesitatingly.”
+
+“Are you hinting that somebody hasn’t told me the truth?” groaned the
+unhappy Roger.
+
+“I’ll do more than hint it; I’ll prove it. When you told us last night
+that the man in the typewriter shop had positively identified Mr.
+Bendix as the purchaser of a second-hand No. 4 Hamilton I was
+astounded. I took a note of the shop’s address. This morning, first
+thing, I went there. I taxed the man roundly with having told you a
+lie. He admitted it, grinning.
+
+“So far as he could make out, all you wanted was a good Hamilton No.
+4, and he had a good Hamilton No. 4 to sell. He saw nothing wrong in
+leading you to suppose that his was the shop where your friend had
+bought his own good Hamilton No. 4, because he had quite as good a one
+as any other shop could have. And if it eased your mind that he should
+recognise your friend from his photograph—well,” said Miss Dammers
+drily, “he was quite prepared to ease it as many times as you had
+photographs to produce.”
+
+“I see,” said Roger, and his thoughts dwelt on the eight pounds he had
+handed over to that sympathetic, mind-easing shopman in return for a
+Hamilton No. 4 he didn’t want.
+
+“As for the girl in Webster’s,” continued Miss Dammers implacably,
+“she was just as ready to admit that perhaps she might have made a
+mistake in recognising that friend of the gentleman who called in
+yesterday about some notepaper. But really, the gentleman had seemed
+so anxious she should that it would have seemed quite a pity to
+disappoint him, like. And if it came to that, she couldn’t see the
+harm in it not even now she couldn’t.” Miss Dammers’s imitation of
+Webster’s young woman was most amusing. Roger did not laugh heartily.
+
+“I’m sorry if I seem to be rubbing it in, Mr. Sheringham,” said Miss
+Dammers.
+
+“Not at all,” said Roger.
+
+“But it’s essential to my own case, you see.”
+
+“Yes, I quite see that,” said Roger.
+
+“Then that evidence is disposed of. I don’t think you really had any
+other, did you?”
+
+“I don’t think so,” said Roger.
+
+“You will see,” Miss Dammers resumed, over Roger’s corpse, “that I am
+following the fashion of withholding the criminal’s name. Now that it
+has come to my turn to speak, I am realising the advantages of this;
+but really, I can’t help fearing that you will all have guessed it by
+the time I come to my denouement. To me, at any rate, the murderer’s
+identity seems quite absurdly obvious. Before I disclose it
+officially, however, I should like to deal with a few of the other
+points, not actual evidence, raised by Mr. Sheringham in his argument.
+
+“Mr. Sheringham built up a very ingenious case. It was so very
+ingenious that he had to insist more than once on the perfect planning
+that had gone to its construction, and the true greatness of the
+criminal mind that had evolved it. I don’t agree,” said Miss Dammers
+crisply. “My case is much simpler. It was planned with cunning but not
+with perfection. It relied almost entirely upon luck: that is to say,
+upon one vital piece of evidence remaining undiscovered. And finally
+the mind that evolved it is not great in any way. But it _is_ a mind
+which, dealing with matters outside its usual orbit would certainly be
+imitative.
+
+“That brings me to a point of Mr. Bradley’s. I agree with him to the
+extent that I think a certain acquaintance with criminological history
+is postulated, but not when he argues that it is the work of a
+creative mind. In my opinion the chief feature of the crime is its
+servile imitation of certain of its predecessors. I deduced from it,
+in fact, the type of mind which is possessed of no originality of its
+own, is intensely conservative because without the wit to recognise
+the progress of change, is obstinate, dogmatic, and practical, and
+lacks entirely any sense of spiritual values. As one who am inclined
+to suffer myself from something of an aversion from matter, I sensed
+my exact antithesis behind the whole atmosphere of this case.”
+
+Everybody looked suitably impressed. As for Mr. Chitterwick, he could
+only gasp before these detailed deductions from a mere atmosphere.
+
+“With another point of Mr. Sheringham’s I have already inferred that I
+agree: that chocolates were used as the vehicle of the poison because
+they were meant to reach a woman. And here I might add that I am sure
+no harm was intended to Mr. Bendix himself. We know that Mr. Bendix
+did not care for chocolates, and it is a reasonable assumption that
+the murderer knew it too; he never expected that Mr. Bendix would eat
+any himself.
+
+“It is curious how often Mr. Sheringham hits the mark with small
+shafts, while missing it with the chief one. He was quite right about
+the notepaper being extracted from that sample-book at Webster’s. I’m
+bound to admit that the possession of the piece of notepaper had
+worried me considerably. I was at a complete loss there. Then Mr.
+Sheringham very handily presented us with his explanation, and I have
+been able to-day to destroy his application of it to his own theory
+and incorporate it in my own. The attendant who pretended out of
+innocent politeness to recognise the photograph Mr. Sheringham showed
+her, was able to recognise in earnest the one I produced. And not only
+recognise it,” said Miss Dammers with the first sign of complacence
+she had yet shown, “but identify the original of it actually by name.”
+
+“Ah!” nodded Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, much excited.
+
+“Mr. Sheringham made a few other small points, which I thought it
+advisable to-day to blunt,” Miss Dammers went on, with a return to her
+impersonal manner. “Because most of the small firms in which Mr.
+Bendix figures on the board of directors are not in a flourishing
+state, Mr. Sheringham deduced not only that Mr. Bendix was a bad
+business-man, with which I am inclined to agree, but that he was
+desperately in need of money. Once again Mr. Sheringham failed to
+verify his deduction, and once again he must pay the penalty in
+finding himself utterly wrong.
+
+“The most elementary channels of enquiry would have brought Mr.
+Sheringham the information that only a very small proportion of Mr.
+Bendix’s money is invested in these concerns, which are really a
+wealthy man’s toys. By far the greater part is still where his father
+left it when he died, in government stock and safe industrial concerns
+so large that even Mr. Bendix could never aspire to a seat on the
+board. And from what I know of him, Mr. Bendix is quite a big enough
+man to recognise that he is not the business-genius his father was,
+and has no intention of spending on his toys more than he can
+comfortably afford. The real motive Mr. Sheringham gave him for his
+wife’s death therefore completely disappears.”
+
+Roger bowed his head. For ever afterwards, he felt, would genuine
+criminologists point the finger of contempt at him as the man who
+failed to verify his own deductions. Oh, shameful future!
+
+“As for the subsidiary motive, I attach less importance to that but on
+the whole I am inclined to agree with Mr. Sheringham. I think Mrs.
+Bendix must have become a dreadful bore to her husband, who after all
+was a normal man, with a normal man’s reactions and scale of values. I
+should be inclined to think that she morally drove him into the arms
+of his actresses, in search of a little light companionship. I’m not
+saying he wasn’t deeply in love with her when he married her; no doubt
+he was. And he’d have had a naturally deep respect for her then.
+
+“But it’s an unfortunate marriage,” observed the cynical Miss Dammers,
+“in which the respect outstays its usefulness. A man wants a piece of
+humanity in his marriage-bed; not an object of deep respect. But I’m
+bound to say that if Mrs. Bendix did bore her husband before the end,
+he was gentleman enough not to show it. The marriage was generally
+considered an ideal one.”
+
+Miss Dammers paused for a moment to sip at the glass of water in front
+of her.
+
+“Lastly, Mr. Sheringham made the point that the letter and wrapper
+were not destroyed, because the murderer thought they would not only
+not harm him but definitely help him. With that too I agree. But I do
+not draw the same deduction from it that Mr. Sheringham did. I should
+have said that this entirely confirms my theory that the murder is the
+work of a second-rate mind, because a first-rate mind would never
+consent to the survival of any clue which could be easily destroyed,
+however helpful it might be expected to prove, because he would know
+how often such clues, deliberately left to mislead, have actually led
+to the criminal’s undoing. And I would draw the subsidiary deduction
+that the wrapper and letter were not expected to be just generally
+helpful, but that there was some definite piece of misleading
+information contained in them. I think I know what that piece of
+information was.
+
+“That is all the reference I have to make to Mr. Sheringham’s case.”
+
+Roger lifted his bowed head, and Miss Dammers sipped again at her
+water.
+
+“With regard to this matter of the respect Mr. Bendix had for his
+wife,” Mr. Chitterwick hazarded, “isn’t there something of an anomaly
+there, Miss Dammers? Because I understood you to say at the very
+beginning that the deduction you had drawn from that bet was that Mrs.
+Bendix was not quite so worthy of respect as we had all imagined.
+Didn’t that deduction stand the test, then?”
+
+“It did, Mr. Chitterwick, and there is no anomaly.”
+
+“Where a man doesn’t suspect, he will respect,” said Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming swiftly, before her Alicia could think of it.
+
+“Ah, the horrid sepulchre under the nice white paint,” remarked Mr.
+Bradley, who didn’t approve of that sort of thing, even from
+distinguished dramatists. “Now we’re getting down to it. Is there a
+sepulchre, Miss Dammers?”
+
+“There is,” Miss Dammers agreed, without emotion. “And now, as you
+say, Mr. Bradley, we’re getting down to it.”
+
+“Oh!” Mr. Chitterwick positively bounced on his chair. “If the letter
+and wrapper _could_ have been destroyed by the murderer . . . and
+Bendix wasn’t the murderer . . . and I suppose the porter needn’t be
+considered . . . Oh, _I_ see!”
+
+“I wondered when somebody would,” said Miss Dammers.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+“From the very beginning of this case,” Miss Dammers proceeded,
+imperturbable as ever, “I was of the opinion that the greatest clue
+the criminal had left us was one of which he would have been totally
+unconscious: the unmistakable indications of his own character. Taking
+the facts as I found them, and not assuming others as Mr. Sheringham
+did to justify his own reading of the murderer’s exceptional
+mentality—” She looked challengingly towards Roger.
+
+“Did I assume any facts that I couldn’t substantiate?” Roger felt
+himself compelled to answer her look.
+
+“Certainly you did. You assumed for instance that the typewriter on
+which the letter was written is now at the bottom of the Thames. The
+plain fact that it is not, once more bears out my own interpretation.
+Taking the established facts as I found them, then, I was able without
+difficulty to form the mental picture of the murderer that I have
+already sketched out for you. But I was careful not to look for
+somebody who would resemble my picture and then build up a case
+against him. I simply hung the picture up in my mind, so to speak, in
+order to compare with it any individual towards whom suspicion might
+seem to point.
+
+“Now, after I had cleared up Mr. Bendix’s reason for arriving at his
+club that morning at such an unusual hour, there remained so far as I
+could see only one obscure point, apparently of no importance, to
+which nobody’s attention seemed to have been directed. I mean, the
+engagement Sir Eustace had had that day for lunch, which must
+subsequently have been cancelled. I don’t know how Mr. Bradley
+discovered this, but I am quite ready to say how I did. It was from
+that same useful valet who gave Mrs. Fielder-Flemming so much
+interesting information.
+
+“I must admit in this connection that I have advantages over the other
+members of this Circle so far as investigations regarding Sir Eustace
+were concerned, for not only did I know Sir Eustace himself so well
+but I knew his valet too; and you may imagine that if Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming was able to extract so much from him with the aid of
+money alone, I myself, backed not only by money but by the advantage
+of a previous acquaintance, was in a position to obtain still more. In
+any case, it was not long before the man casually mentioned that four
+days before the crime Sir Eustace had told him to ring up Fellows’s
+Hotel in Jermyn Street and reserve a private room for lunch-time on
+the day on which the murder subsequently took place.
+
+“That was the obscure point, which I thought it worth while to clear
+up if I could. With whom was Sir Eustace going to lunch that day?
+Obviously a woman, but which of his many women? The valet could give
+me no information. So far as he knew, Sir Eustace actually had not got
+any women at the moment, so intent was he upon the pursuit of Miss
+Wildman (you must excuse me, Sir Charles), her hand and her fortune.
+Was it Miss Wildman herself then? I was very soon able to establish
+that it wasn’t.
+
+“Does it strike you that there is a reminiscent ring about this
+cancelled lunch-appointment on the day of the crime? It didn’t occur
+to me for a long time, but of course there is. Mrs. Bendix had a
+lunch-engagement for that day too, which was cancelled for some reason
+unknown on the previous afternoon.”
+
+“_Mrs. Bendix!_” breathed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. Here was a juicy
+triangle.
+
+Miss Dammers smiled faintly. “Yes, I won’t keep you on the
+tenterhooks, Mabel. From what Sir Charles told us I knew that Mrs.
+Bendix and Sir Eustace at any rate were not total strangers, and in
+the end I managed to connect them. Mrs. Bendix was to have lunched
+with Sir Eustace, in a private room, at the somewhat notorious
+Fellows’s Hotel.”
+
+“To discuss her husband’s shortcomings, of course?” suggested Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, more charitably than her hopes.
+
+“Possibly, among other things,” said Miss Dammers nonchalantly. “But
+the chief reason, no doubt was because she was his mistress.” Miss
+Dammers dropped this bombshell among the company with as little
+emotion as if she had remarked that Mrs. Bendix was wearing a
+jade-green taffeta frock for the occasion.
+
+“Can you—can you substantiate that statement?” asked Sir Charles, the
+first to recover himself.
+
+Miss Dammers just raised her fine eyebrows. “But of course. I shall
+make no statements that I can’t substantiate. Mrs. Bendix had been in
+the habit of lunching at least twice a week with Sir Eustace, and
+occasionally dining too, at Fellows’s Hotel, always in the same room.
+They took considerable precautions and used to arrive not only at the
+hotel but in the room itself quite independently of each other;
+outside the room they were never seen together. But the waiter who
+attended them (always the same waiter) has signed a declaration for me
+that he recognised Mrs. Bendix, from the photographs published after
+her death, as the woman who used to come there with Sir Eustace
+Pennefather.”
+
+“He signed a declaration for you, eh?” mused Mr. Bradley. “You must
+find detecting an expensive hobby too, Miss Dammers.”
+
+“One can afford one expensive hobby, Mr. Bradley.”
+
+“But just because she lunched with him . . .” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+was once more speaking with the voice of charity. “I mean, it doesn’t
+necessarily mean that she was his mistress, does it? Not, of course,
+that I think any the less of her if she was,” she added hastily,
+remembering the official attitude.
+
+“Communicating with the room in which they had their meals is a
+bedroom,” replied Miss Dammers, in a desiccated tone of voice.
+“Invariably after they had gone, the waiter informed me, he found the
+bedclothes disarranged and the bed showing signs of recent use. I
+imagine that would be accepted as clear enough evidence of adultery,
+Sir Charles?”
+
+“Oh, undoubtedly, undoubtedly,” rumbled Sir Charles, in high
+embarrassment. Sir Charles was always exceedingly embarrassed when
+women used words like “adultery” and “sexual perversions” and even
+“mistress” to him, out of business hours. Sir Charles was regrettably
+old-fashioned.
+
+“Sir Eustace, of course,” added Miss Dammers in her detached way, “had
+nothing to fear from the King’s Proctor.”
+
+She took another sip of water, while the others tried to accustom
+themselves to this new light on the case and the surprising avenues it
+illuminated.
+
+Miss Dammers proceeded to illuminate them still further, with powerful
+beams from her psychological searchlight. “They must have made a
+curious couple those two. Their widely differing scales of values, the
+contrast of their respective reactions to the business that brought
+them together, the possibility that not even in a common passion could
+their minds establish any point of real contact. I want you to examine
+the psychology of the situation as closely as you can, because the
+murder was derived directly from it.
+
+“What can have induced Mrs. Bendix in the first place to become that
+man’s mistress I don’t know. I won’t be so trite as to say I can’t
+imagine, because I can imagine all sorts of ways in which it may have
+happened. There is a curious mental stimulus to a good but stupid
+woman in a bad man’s badness. If she has a touch of the reformer in
+her, as most good women have, she soon becomes obsessed with the
+futile desire to save him from himself. And in seven cases out of ten
+her first step in doing so is to descend to his level.
+
+“Not that she considers herself at first to be descending at all; a
+good woman invariably suffers for quite a long time from the delusion
+that whatever she does, her own particular brand of goodness cannot
+become smirched. She may share a reprobate’s bed with him, because she
+knows that only through her body at first can she hope to influence
+him, until contact is established through the body with the soul and
+he may be led into better ways than a habit of going to bed in the
+daytime; but the initial sharing doesn’t reflect on her own purity in
+the least. It is a hackneyed observation but I must insist on it once
+more: good women have the most astonishing powers of self-deception.
+
+“I do consider Mrs. Bendix as a good woman, before she met Sir
+Eustace. Her trouble was that she thought herself so much better than
+she was. Her constant references to honour and playing the game, which
+Mr. Sheringham quoted, show that. She was infatuated with her own
+goodness. And so, of course, was Sir Eustace. He had probably never
+enjoyed the complaisance of a really good woman before. The seduction
+of her (which was probably very difficult) would have amused him
+enormously. He must have had to listen to hour after hour’s talk about
+honour, and reform, and spirituality, but he would have borne it
+patiently enough for the exquisite revenge on which he had set his
+heart. The first two or three visits to Fellows’s Hotel must have
+delighted him.
+
+“But after that it became less and less amusing. Mrs. Bendix would
+discover that perhaps her own goodness wasn’t standing quite so firm
+under the strain as she had imagined. She would have begun to bore him
+with her self-reproaches; bore him dreadfully. He continued to meet
+her there first because a woman, to his type, is always a woman, and
+afterwards because she gave him no choice. I can see exactly what must
+inevitably have happened. Mrs. Bendix begins to get thoroughly morbid
+about her own wickedness, and quite loses sight of her initial zeal
+for reform.
+
+“They use the bed now because there happens to be a bed there and it
+would be a pity to waste it, but she has destroyed the pleasure of
+both. Her one cry now is that she must put herself right with her own
+conscience either by running away with Sir Eustace on the spot, or,
+more probably, by telling her husband, arranging for divorce (for, of
+course, he will never forgive her, _never_), and marrying Sir Eustace
+as soon as both divorces are through. In any case, although she almost
+loathes him by now nothing else can be contemplated but that the rest
+of her life must be spent with Sir Eustace and his with her. How well
+I know that type of mind.
+
+“Naturally, to Sir Eustace, who is working hard to retrieve his
+fortunes by a rich marriage, this scheme has small appeal. He begins
+by cursing himself for having seduced the damned woman at all, and
+goes on to curse still more the damned woman for having been seduced.
+And the more pressing she becomes, the more he hates her. Then Mrs.
+Bendix must have brought matters to a head. She has heard about the
+Wildman girl affair. That must be stopped at once. She tells Sir
+Eustace that if he doesn’t break it off himself, she will take steps
+to break it off for him. Sir Eustace sees the whole thing coming out,
+his own appearance in a second divorce-court, and all hopes of Miss
+Wildman and her fortune gone for ever. Something has got to be done
+about it. But what can be done? Nothing short of murder will stop the
+damned woman’s tongue.
+
+“Well—it’s high time somebody murdered her anyhow.
+
+“Now I’m on rather less sure ground, but the assumptions seem to me
+sound enough and I can produce a reasonable amount of proof to support
+them. Sir Eustace decides to get rid of the woman once and for all. He
+thinks it over carefully, remembers to have read about a case, several
+cases, in some criminological book, each of which just failed through
+some small mistake. Combine them, eradicate the small mistake from
+each, and so long as his relations with Mrs. Bendix are not known (and
+he is quite certain they aren’t) there is no possibility of being
+found out. That may seem a long guess, but here’s my proof.
+
+“When I was studying him, I gave Sir Eustace every chance of plying
+his blandishments on me. One of his methods is to profess a deep
+interest in everything that interests the woman. Naturally therefore
+he discovered a profound, if hitherto latent, interest in criminology.
+He borrowed several of my books, and certainly read them. Among the
+ones he borrowed is a book of American poisoning cases. In it is an
+account of every single case that has been mentioned as a parallel by
+members of this Circle (except of course Marie Lafarge and Christina
+Edmunds).
+
+“About six weeks ago, when I got in one evening my maid told me that
+Sir Eustace, who hadn’t been near my flat for months, had called; he
+waited for a time in the sitting-room and then went. Shortly after the
+murder, having also been struck by the similarity between this and one
+or two of those American cases, I went to the bookshelf in my
+sitting-room to look them up. The book was not there. Nor, Mr.
+Bradley, was my copy of Taylor. But I saw them both in Sir Eustace’s
+rooms the day I had that long conversation with his valet.”
+
+Miss Dammers paused for comment.
+
+Mr. Bradley supplied it. “Then the man deserves what’s coming to him,”
+he drawled.
+
+“I told you this murder wasn’t the work of a highly intelligent mind,”
+said Miss Dammers.
+
+“Well, now, to complete my reconstruction. Sir Eustace decides to rid
+himself of his encumbrance, and arranges what he thinks a perfectly
+safe way of doing so. The nitrobenzene, which appears to worry Mr.
+Bradley so much, seems to me a very simple matter. Sir Eustace has
+decided upon chocolates as the vehicle, and chocolate liqueurs at
+that. (Mason’s chocolate liqueurs, I should say, are a favourite
+purchase of Sir Eustace’s. It is significant that he had bought
+several one-pound boxes recently.) He is searching, then, for some
+poison with a flavour which will mingle well enough with that of the
+liqueurs. He is bound to come across oil of bitter almonds very soon
+in that connection, actually used as it is in confectionery, and from
+that to nitrobenzene, which is more common, easier to get hold of, and
+practically untraceable, is an obvious step.
+
+“He arranges to meet Mrs. Bendix for lunch, intending to make a
+present to her then of the chocolates which are to come to him that
+morning by post, a perfectly natural thing to do. He will already have
+the porter’s evidence of the innocent way in which he acquired them.
+At the last minute he sees the obvious flaw in this plan. If he gives
+Mrs. Bendix the chocolates in person, and especially at lunch at
+Fellows’s Hotel, his intimacy with her must be disclosed. He hastily
+racks his brains and finds a very much better plan. Getting hold of
+Mrs. Bendix, he tells her some story of her husband and Vera Delorme.
+
+“In characteristic fashion Mrs. Bendix loses sight of the beam in her
+own eye on learning of this mote in her husband’s and at once falls in
+with Sir Eustace’s suggestion that she shall ring Mr. Bendix up,
+disguising her voice and pretending to be Vera Delorme, and just find
+out for herself whether or not he will jump at the chance of an
+intimate little lunch for the following day.
+
+“‘And tell him you’ll ring him up at the Rainbow to-morrow morning
+between ten-thirty and eleven,’ Sir Eustace adds carelessly. ‘If he
+goes to the Rainbow, you’ll be able to know for certain that he’s
+dancing attendance on her at any hour of the day.’ And so she does.
+The presence of Bendix is therefore assured for the next morning at
+half-past ten. Who in the world is to say that he was not there by
+purest chance when Sir Eustace was exclaiming over that parcel?
+
+“As for the bet, which clinched the handing over of the chocolates, I
+cannot believe that this was just a stroke of luck for Sir Eustace.
+That seems too good to be true. Somehow, I’m sure, though I won’t
+attempt to show how (that would be mere guesswork), Sir Eustace
+arranged for that bet in advance. And if he did, the fact in no way
+destroys my initial deduction from it, that Mrs. Bendix was not so
+honest as she pretended; for whether it was arranged or whether it
+wasn’t, the plain fact is left that it is dishonest to make a bet to
+which you know the answer.
+
+“Lastly, if I am to follow the fashion and cite a parallel case, I
+decide unhesitatingly for John Tawell, who administered prussic acid
+in a bottle of beer to his mistress, Sarah Hart, when he was tired of
+her.”
+
+The Circle looked at her admiringly. At last, it seemed, they really
+had got to the bottom of the business.
+
+Sir Charles voiced the general feeling. “If you’ve got any solid
+evidence to support this theory, Miss Dammers . . .” He implied that
+in that case the rope was as good as round Sir Eustace’s thick red
+neck.
+
+“Meaning that the evidence I’ve given already isn’t solid enough for
+the legal mind?” enquired Miss Dammers equably.
+
+“Psy—psychological reconstructions wouldn’t carry _very_ much weight
+with a jury,” Sir Charles took refuge behind the jury in question.
+
+“I’ve connected Sir Eustace with the piece of Mason’s notepaper,” Miss
+Dammers pointed out.
+
+“I’m afraid on that alone Sir Eustace would get the benefit of the
+doubt.” Sir Charles was evidently deprecating the psychological
+obtuseness of that jury of his.
+
+“I’ve shown a tremendous motive, and I’ve connected him with a book of
+similar cases and a book of poisons.”
+
+“Yes. Oh, quite so. But what I mean is, have you any real evidence to
+connect Sir Eustace quite definitely with the letter, the chocolates,
+or the wrapper?”
+
+“He has an Onyx pen, and the inkpot in his library used to be filled
+with Harfield’s Ink,” Miss Dammers smiled. “I’ve no doubt it is still.
+He was supposed to have been at the Rainbow the whole evening before
+the murder, but I’ve ascertained that there is a gap of half-an-hour
+between nine o’clock and nine-thirty during which nobody saw him. He
+left the dining-room at nine, and a waiter brought him a
+whisky-and-soda in the lounge at half-past. In the interim nobody
+knows where he was. He wasn’t in the lounge. Where was he? The porter
+swears he did not see him go out, or come in again; but there is a
+back way which he could have used if he wanted to be unnoticed, as of
+course he did. I asked him myself, as if by way of a joke, and he said
+that he had gone up to the library after dinner to look up a reference
+in a book of big-game hunting. Could he mention the names of any other
+members in the library? He said there weren’t any; there never were;
+he’d never seen a member in the library all the time he belonged to
+the club. I thanked him and rang off.
+
+“In other words, he says he was in the library, because he knows there
+would be no other member there to prove he wasn’t. What he really did
+during that half-hour, of course, was to slip out the back-way, hurry
+down to the Strand to post the parcel (just as Mr. Sheringham saw Mr.
+Bendix hurrying down), slip in again, run up to the library to make
+sure nobody was there, and then go down to the lounge and order his
+whisky-and-soda to prove his presence there later. Isn’t that more
+feasible than your vision of Mr. Bendix, Mr. Sheringham?”
+
+“I must admit that it’s no less so,” Roger had to agree.
+
+“Then you haven’t any solid evidence at all?” lamented Sir Charles.
+“Nothing that would really impress a jury?”
+
+“Yes, I have,” said Miss Dammers quietly. “I’ve been saving it up till
+the end because I wanted to prove my case (as I consider I have done)
+without it. But this is absolutely and finally conclusive. Will
+everybody examine these, please.”
+
+Miss Dammers produced from her bag a brown-paper-covered parcel.
+Unwrapping it, she brought to light a photograph and a quarto sheet of
+paper which looked like a typed letter.
+
+“The photograph,” she explained, “I obtained from Chief Inspector
+Moresby the other day, but without telling him the specific purpose
+for which I wanted it. It is of the forged letter, actual size. I
+should like everybody to compare it with this typed copy of the
+letter. Will you look at them first, Mr. Sheringham, and then pass
+them round? Notice particularly the slightly crooked s’s and the
+chipped capital H.”
+
+In dead silence Roger pored over the two. He examined them for a full
+two minutes, which seemed to the others more like two hours, and then
+passed them on to Sir Charles on his right.
+
+“There isn’t the slightest doubt that those two were done on the same
+machine,” he said soberly.
+
+Miss Dammers showed neither less nor more emotion than she had
+displayed throughout. Her voice carried exactly the same impersonal
+inflection. She might have been announcing her discovery of a match
+between two pieces of dress-material. From her level tone it could
+never have been guessed that a man’s neck depended on her words no
+less than on the rope that was to hang him.
+
+“You will find the machine in Sir Eustace’s rooms,” she said.
+
+Even Mr. Bradley was moved. “Then as I said, he deserves all that’s
+coming to him,” he drawled, with a quite impossible nonchalance, and
+even attempted a yawn. “Dear me, what a distressing bungler.”
+
+Sir Charles passed on the evidence. “Miss Dammers,” he said
+impressively, “you have rendered a very great service to society. I
+congratulate you.”
+
+“Thank you, Sir Charles,” replied Miss Dammers, matter-of-factly. “But
+it was Mr. Sheringham’s idea, you know.”
+
+“Mr. Sheringham,” intoned Sir Charles, “sowed better than he knew.”
+
+Roger, who had hoped to add another feather to his cap by solving the
+mystery himself, smiled in a somewhat sickly way.
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming improved the occasion. “We have made history,”
+she said with fitting solemnity. “When the whole police-force of a
+nation had failed, a woman has uncovered the dark mystery. Alicia,
+this is a red-letter day, not only for you, not only for this Circle,
+but for Woman.”
+
+“Thank you, Mabel,” responded Miss Dammers. “How very nice of you to
+say so.”
+
+The evidence passed slowly round the table and returned to Miss
+Dammers. She handed it on to Roger.
+
+“Mr. Sheringham, I think you had better take charge of these. As
+President, I leave the matter in your hands. You know as much as I do.
+As you may imagine, to inform the police officially myself would be
+extremely distasteful. I should like my name kept out of any
+communication you make to them, entirely.”
+
+Roger was rubbing his chin. “I think that can be done. I could just
+hand these things over to him, with the information where the machine
+is, and let Scotland Yard work the case up themselves. These, and the
+motive, with the evidence of the porter at Fellows’s Hotel of which I
+shall have to tell Moresby, are the only things that will really
+interest the police, I think. Humph! I suppose I’d better see Moresby
+to-night. Will you come with me, Sir Charles? It would add weight.”
+
+“Certainly, certainly,” Sir Charles agreed with alacrity.
+
+Everybody looked, and felt, very serious.
+
+“I suppose,” Mr. Chitterwick dropped shyly into all this solemnity, “I
+suppose you couldn’t put it off for twenty-four hours, could you?”
+
+Roger looked his surprise. “But why?”
+
+“Well, you know . . .” Mr. Chitterwick wriggled with diffidence.
+“Well—I haven’t spoken yet, you know.”
+
+Five pairs of eyes fastened on him in astonishment. Mr. Chitterwick
+blushed warmly.
+
+“Of course. No, of course.” Roger was trying to be as tactful as he
+could. “And—well, that is to say, you want to speak, of course?”
+
+“I have a theory,” said Mr. Chitterwick modestly. “I—I don’t _want_ to
+speak, no. But I have a theory.”
+
+“Yes, yes,” said Roger, and looked helplessly at Sir Charles.
+
+Sir Charles marched to the rescue. “I’m sure we shall all be most
+interested to hear Mr. Chitterwick’s theory,” he pronounced. “Most
+interested. But why not let us have it now, Mr. Chitterwick?”
+
+“It isn’t quite complete,” said Mr. Chitterwick, unhappy but
+persistent. “I should like another twenty-four hours to clear up one
+or two points.”
+
+Sir Charles had an inspiration. “Of course, of course. We must meet
+to-morrow and listen to Mr. Chitterwick’s theory, of course. In the
+meantime Sheringham and I will just call in at Scotland Yard and—”
+
+“I’d much rather you didn’t,” said Mr. Chitterwick, now in the deeps
+of misery. “Really I would.”
+
+Again Roger looked helplessly at Sir Charles. This time Sir Charles
+looked helplessly back.
+
+“Well—I suppose another twenty-four hours wouldn’t make _much_
+difference,” said Roger with reluctance. “After all this time.”
+
+“Not _very_ much difference,” pleaded Mr. Chitterwick.
+
+“Well, not very much difference certainly,” agreed Sir Charles,
+frankly puzzled.
+
+“Then have I your word, Mr. President?” persisted Mr. Chitterwick,
+very mournfully.
+
+“If you put it like that,” said Roger, rather coldly.
+
+The meeting then broke up, somewhat bewildered.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+It was quite evident that, as he had said, Mr. Chitterwick did not
+want to speak. He looked appealingly round the circle of faces the
+next evening when Roger asked him to do so, but the faces remained
+decidedly unsympathetic. Mr. Chitterwick, expressed the faces plainly,
+was being a silly old woman.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick cleared his throat nervously two or three times and
+took the plunge.
+
+“Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, I quite realise what you must be
+thinking, and I must plead for leniency. I can only say in excuse of
+what you must consider my perversity, that convincing though Miss
+Dammers’s clever exposition was and definite as her proofs appeared,
+we have listened to so many apparently convincing solutions of this
+mystery and been confronted with so many seemingly definite proofs,
+that I could not help feeling that perhaps even Miss Dammers’s theory
+might not prove on reflection to be not quite so strong as one would
+at first think.” Mr. Chitterwick, having surmounted this tall
+obstacle, blinked rapidly but was unable to recall the next sentence
+he had prepared so carefully.
+
+He jumped it, and went on a little. “As the one to whom has fallen the
+task, both a privilege and a responsibility, of speaking last, you may
+not consider it out of place if I take the liberty of summing up the
+various conclusions that have been reached here, so different in both
+their methods and results. Not to waste time however in going over old
+ground, I have prepared a little chart which may show more clearly the
+various contrasting theories, parallels, and suggested criminals.
+Perhaps members would care to pass it round.”
+
+With much hesitation Mr. Chitterwick produced the chart on which he
+had spent so much careful thought, and offered it to Mr. Bradley on
+his right. Mr. Bradley received it graciously, and even condescended
+to lay it on the table between himself and Miss Dammers and examine
+it. Mr. Chitterwick looked artlessly gratified.
+
+    Mr. Chitterwick’s Chart
+
+                              ANGLE OF           SALIENT
+ SOLVER         MOTIVE        VIEW               FEATURE
+ ---------------------------------------------------------------- . . .
+ Sir Charles    Gain          _Cui bono_         Notepaper
+  Wildman
+ Mrs. Fielder-  Elimination   _Cherchez la       Hidden triangle
+  Flemming                     femme_
+ Bradley (1)    Experiment    Detective-         Nitrobenzene
+                               novelist’s
+ Bradley (2)    Jealousy      Character of       Criminological
+                               Sir Eustace        knowledge of murderer
+ Sheringham     Gain          Character of       Bet
+                               Mr. Bendix
+ Miss Dammers   Elimination   Psychology of      Criminal’s
+                               all participants   character
+ Police         Conviction,   General            Material clues
+                 or lust of
+                 killing
+
+     Mr. Chitterwick’s Chart (continued)
+
+                     METHOD OF       PARALLEL
+ SOLVER              PROOF           CASE             CRIMINAL
+ ------------ . . . ---------------------------------------------------
+ Sir Charles         Inductive       Marie Lafarge    Lady Pennefather
+  Wildman
+ Mrs. Fielder-       Intuitive and   Molineux         Sir Charles
+  Flemming            Inductive                        Wildman
+ Bradley (1)         Scientific      Dr. Wilson       Bradley
+                      deduction
+ Bradley (2)         Deductive       Christina        Woman unnamed
+                                      Edmunds
+ Sheringham          Deductive and   Carlyle Harris   Bendix
+                      Inductive
+ Miss Dammers        Psychological   Tawell           Sir Eustace
+                      deduction                        Pennefather
+ Police              Routine         Horwood          Unknown fanatic
+                                                       or lunatic
+
+“You will see,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with a shade more confidence,
+“that practically speaking no two members have agreed on any one
+single matter of importance. The divergence of opinion and method is
+really remarkable. And in spite of such variations each member has
+felt confident that his or her solution was the right one. This chart,
+more than any words of mine could, emphasises not only the extreme
+openness, as Mr. Bradley would say, of the case before us, but
+illustrates another of Mr. Bradley’s observations too, that is how
+surprisingly easy it is to prove anything one may desire, by a process
+either of conscious or of unwitting selection.
+
+“Miss Dammers, I think,” suggested Mr. Chitterwick, “may perhaps find
+that chart especially interesting. I am not myself a student of
+psychology, but even to me it was striking to notice how the solution
+of each member reflected, if I may say so, that particular member’s
+own trend of thought and character. Sir Charles, for instance, whose
+training has naturally led him to realise the importance of the
+material, will not mind if I point out that the angle from which he
+viewed the problem was the very material one of _cui bono_, while the
+equally material evidence of the notepaper formed for him its salient
+feature. At the other end of the scale, Miss Dammers herself regards
+the case almost entirely from a psychological view-point and takes as
+its salient feature the character, as unconsciously revealed, of the
+criminal.
+
+“Between these two, other members have paid attention to psychological
+and material evidence in varying proportions. Then again the methods
+of building up the case against a suspected person have been widely
+different. Some of us have relied almost entirely on inductive
+methods, some almost wholly on deductive; while some, like Mr.
+Sheringham, have blended the two. In short, the task our President set
+us has proved a most instructive lesson in comparative detection.”
+
+Mr. Chitterwick cleared his throat, smiled nervously, and continued.
+“There is another chart which I might have made, and which I think
+would have been no less illuminating than this one. It is a chart of
+the singularly different deductions drawn by different members from
+the undisputed facts in the case. Mr. Bradley might have found
+particular interest in this possible chart, as a writer of
+detective-stories.
+
+“For I have often noticed,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick to the writers
+of detective-stories _en masse_, “that in books of that kind it is
+frequently assumed that any given fact can admit of only one single
+deduction, and that invariably the right one. Nobody else is capable
+of drawing any deductions at all but the author’s favourite detective,
+and the ones he draws (in the books where the detective is capable of
+drawing deductions at all which, alas, are only too few) are
+invariably right. Miss Dammers mentioned something of the kind one
+evening herself, with her illustration of the two bottles of ink.
+
+“As an example of what really happens therefore, I should like to cite
+the sheet of Mason’s notepaper in this case. From that single piece of
+paper the following deductions have at one time or another been drawn:
+
+ 1. That the criminal was an employee or ex-employee of Mason & Sons.
+ 2. That the criminal was a customer of Mason & Sons.
+ 3. That the criminal was a printer, or had access to a
+    printing-press.
+ 4. That the criminal was a lawyer, acting on behalf of Mason & Sons.
+ 5. That the criminal was a relative of an ex-employee of
+    Mason & Sons.
+ 6. That the criminal was a would-be customer of Webster’s, the
+    printers.
+
+“There have been plenty of other deductions of course from that sheet
+of paper, such as that the chance possession of it suggested the whole
+method of the crime, but I am only calling attention to the ones which
+were to point directly to the criminal’s identity. There are no less
+than six of them, you see, and all mutually contradictory.”
+
+“I’ll write a book for you, Mr. Chitterwick,” promised Mr. Bradley,
+“in which the detective shall draw six contradictory deductions from
+each fact. He’ll probably end up by arresting seventy-two different
+people for the murder and committing suicide because he finds
+afterwards that he must have done it himself. I’ll dedicate the book
+to you.”
+
+“Yes, do,” beamed Mr. Chitterwick. “For really, it wouldn’t be far
+from what we’ve had in this case. For example, I only called attention
+to the notepaper. Besides that there were the poison, the typewriter,
+the post-mark, the exactness of the dose—oh, many more facts. And from
+each one of them not much less than half-a-dozen different deductions
+have been drawn.
+
+“In fact,” Mr. Chitterwick summed up, “it was as much as anything the
+different deductions drawn by different members that proved their
+different cases.”
+
+“On second thoughts,” decided Mr. Bradley, “my detectives in future
+will be the kind that don’t draw any deductions at all. Besides, that
+will be so much easier for me.”
+
+“So with these few remarks on the solutions we have already heard,”
+continued Mr. Chitterwick, “which I hope members will pardon me, I
+will hurry on to my explanation of why I asked Mr. Sheringham so
+urgently last evening not to go to Scotland Yard at once.”
+
+Five faces expressed silent agreement that it was about time Mr.
+Chitterwick was heard on that point.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick appeared to be conscious of the thoughts behind the
+faces, for his manner became a little flurried.
+
+“I must first deal very briefly with the case against Sir Eustace
+Pennefather, as Miss Dammers gave it us last night. Without belittling
+her presentation of it in any way at all, I must just point out that
+her two chief reasons for fixing the guilt upon him seemed to me to be
+firstly that he was the type of person whom she had already decided
+the criminal must be, and secondly that he had been conducting an
+intrigue with Mrs. Bendix and certainly would have seemed to have some
+cause for wishing her out of the way—_if_ (but only if) Miss Dammers’s
+own view of the progress of that intrigue was the correct one.”
+
+“But the typewriter, Mr. Chitterwick!” cried Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,
+loyal to her sex.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick started. “Oh, yes; the typewriter. I’m coming to that.
+But before I reach it, I should like to mention two other points which
+Miss Dammers would have us believe are important material evidence
+against Sir Eustace, as opposed to the psychological. That he should
+be in the habit of buying Mason’s liqueur chocolates for his—his
+female friends hardly seems to me even significant. If every one who
+is in the habit of buying Mason’s liqueur chocolates is to be suspect,
+then London must be full of suspects. And surely even so unoriginal a
+murderer as Sir Eustace would seem to be, would have taken the
+elementary precaution of choosing some vehicle for the poison which is
+not generally associated with his name, instead of one that is. And if
+I may venture the opinion, Sir Eustace is not quite such a dunderhead
+as Miss Dammers would seem to think.
+
+“The second point is that the girl in Webster’s should have
+recognised, and even identified, Sir Eustace from his photograph. That
+also doesn’t appear to me, if Miss Dammers doesn’t mind my saying so,
+nearly as significant as she would have us believe. I have
+ascertained,” said Mr. Chitterwick, not without pride (here too was a
+piece of real detecting) “that Sir Eustace Pennefather buys his
+notepaper at Webster’s, and has done so for years. He was in there
+about a month ago to order a fresh supply. It would be surprising,
+considering that he has a title, if the girl who served him had not
+remembered him; it cannot be considered significant,” said Mr.
+Chitterwick quite firmly, “that she does.
+
+“Apart from the typewriter, then, and perhaps the copies of the
+criminological books, Miss Dammers’s case has no real evidence to
+support it at all, for the matter of the broken alibi, I am afraid,
+must be held to be neither here nor there. I don’t wish to be unfair,”
+said Mr. Chitterwick carefully, “but I think I am justified in saying
+that Miss Dammers’s case against Sir Eustace rests entirely and solely
+upon the evidence of the typewriter.” He gazed round anxiously for
+possible objections.
+
+One came, promptly. “But you can’t possibly get round that,” exclaimed
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming impatiently.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick looked a trifle distressed. “Is ‘get round’ quite the
+right expression? I’m not trying wilfully or maliciously to pick holes
+in Miss Dammers’s case just for amusement. You must really believe
+that. Please think that I am actuated only by a desire to bring this
+crime home to its real perpetrator. And with that end alone in view, I
+can certainly suggest an explanation of the typewriter evidence which
+excludes the guilt of Sir Eustace.”
+
+Mr. Chitterwick looked so unhappy at what he conceived to be Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming’s insinuation that he was merely wasting the Circle’s
+time, that Roger spoke to him kindly.
+
+“You can?” he said gently, as one encourages one’s daughter on drawing
+a cow, which if not much like a cow is certainly unlike any other
+animal on earth. “That’s very interesting, Mr. Chitterwick. How do you
+explain it then?”
+
+Mr. Chitterwick, responding to treatment, shone with pride. “Dear me!
+You can’t see it really? Nobody sees it?”
+
+It seemed that nobody saw it.
+
+“And yet the possibility of such a thing has been before me right from
+the beginning of the case,” crowed the now triumphant Mr. Chitterwick.
+“Well, well!” He arranged his glasses on his nose and beamed round the
+circle, his round red face positively aglow.
+
+“Well, what is the explanation, Mr. Chitterwick?” queried Miss
+Dammers, when it seemed that Mr. Chitterwick was going to continue
+beaming in silence for ever.
+
+“Oh! Oh, yes; of course. Why, to put it one way, Miss Dammers, that
+you were wrong and Mr. Sheringham was right, in your respective
+estimates of the criminal’s ability. That there was, in fact, an
+extremely able and ingenious mind behind this murder (Miss Dammers’s
+attempts to prove the contrary were, I’m afraid another case of
+special pleading). And that one of the ways in which this ingenuity
+was shown, was to arrange the evidence in such a way that if any one
+were to be suspected it would be Sir Eustace. That the evidence of the
+typewriter, in a word, and of the criminological books was, as I
+believe the technical word is, ‘_rigged_.’” Mr. Chitterwick resumed
+his beam.
+
+Everybody sat up with what might have been a concerted jerk. In a
+flash the tide of feeling towards Mr. Chitterwick had turned. The man
+_had_ got something to say after all. There actually was an idea
+behind that untimely request of the previous evening.
+
+Mr. Bradley rose to the occasion, and he quite forgot to speak quite
+so patronisingly as usual. “I say—dam’ good, Chitterwick! But can you
+substantiate that?”
+
+“Oh, yes. I think so,” said Mr. Chitterwick, basking in the rays of
+appreciation that were being shone on him.
+
+“You’ll be telling us next you know who did it,” Roger smiled.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick smiled back. “Oh, I know _that_.”
+
+“_What!_” exclaimed five voices in chorus.
+
+“I know that, of course,” said Mr. Chitterwick modestly. “You’ve
+practically told me that yourselves. Coming last of all, you see, my
+task was comparatively simple. All I had to do was to sort out the
+true from the false in everybody else’s statements, and—well, there
+_was_ the truth.”
+
+The rest of the Circle looked their surprise at having told Mr.
+Chitterwick the truth without knowing it themselves.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick’s face took on a meditative aspect. “Perhaps I may
+confess now that when our President first propounded his idea to us, I
+was filled with dismay. I had had no practical experience of
+detecting, I was quite at a loss as to how to set about it, and I had
+no theory of the case at all. I could not even see a starting-point.
+The week flew by, so far as I was concerned, and left me exactly where
+I had been at its beginning. On the evening Sir Charles spoke he
+convinced me completely. The next evening, for a short time, Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming convinced me too.
+
+“Mr. Bradley did not altogether convince me that he had committed the
+murder himself, but if he had named any one else then I should have
+been convinced; as it was, he convinced me that his—his discarded
+mistress theory,” said Mr. Chitterwick bravely, “must be the correct
+one. That indeed was the only idea I had had at all, that the crime
+might be the work of one of Sir Eustace’s—h’m!—discarded mistresses.
+
+“But the next evening Mr. Sheringham convinced me just as definitely
+that Mr. Bendix was the murderer. It was only last night, during Miss
+Dammers’s exposition, that I at last began to realise the truth.”
+
+“Then I was the only one who didn’t convince you, Mr. Chitterwick?”
+Miss Dammers smiled.
+
+“I’m afraid,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick, “that is so.”
+
+He mused for a moment.
+
+“It is really remarkable, quite remarkable, how near in some way or
+other everybody got to the truth of this affair. Not a single person
+failed to bring out at least one important fact, or make at least one
+important deduction correctly. Fortunately, when I realised that the
+solutions were going to differ so widely, I made copious notes of the
+preceding ones and kept them up to date each evening as soon as I got
+home. I thus had a complete record of the productions of all these
+brains, so much superior to my own.”
+
+“No, no,” murmured Mr. Bradley.
+
+“Last night I sat up very late, poring over these notes, separating
+the true from the false. It might perhaps interest members to hear my
+conclusions in this respect?” Mr. Chitterwick put forward the
+suggestion with the utmost diffidence.
+
+Everybody assured Mr. Chitterwick that they would be only too
+gratified to hear where they had stumbled inadvertently on the truth.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+Mr. Chitterwick consulted a page of his notes. For a moment he looked
+a little distressed. “Sir Charles,” he began. “Er—Sir Charles . . .”
+It was plain that Mr. Chitterwick was finding difficulty in
+discovering any point at all on which Sir Charles had been right, and
+he was a kindly man. He brightened. “Oh, yes, of course. Sir Charles
+was the first to point out the important fact that there had been an
+erasure on the piece of notepaper used for the forged letter. That
+was—er—very helpful.
+
+“Then he was right too when he put forward the suggestion that Sir
+Eustace’s impending divorce was really the mainspring of the whole
+tragedy. Though I am afraid,” Mr. Chitterwick felt compelled to add,
+“that the inference he drew was not the correct one. He was quite
+right too in feeling that the criminal, in such a clever plot, would
+take steps to arrange an alibi, and that there was, in fact, an alibi
+in the case that would have to be circumvented. But then again it was
+not Lady Pennefather’s.
+
+“Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” continued Mr. Chitterwick, “was quite right
+to insist that the murder was the work of somebody with a knowledge of
+criminology. That was a very clever inference, and I am glad,” beamed
+Mr. Chitterwick, “to be able to assure her that it was perfectly
+correct. She contributed another important piece of information too,
+just as vital to the real story underlying this tragedy as to her own
+case, namely that Sir Eustace was not in love with Miss Wildman at all
+but was hoping to marry her simply for her money. Had that not been
+the case,” said Mr. Chitterwick, shaking his head, “I fear, I very
+much fear, that it would have been Miss Wildman who met her death
+instead of Mrs. Bendix.”
+
+“Good God!” muttered Sir Charles; and it is perhaps as great a tribute
+as Mr. Chitterwick was ever to receive that the K.C. accepted this
+startling news without question.
+
+“That clinches it,” muttered Mr. Bradley to Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.
+“Discarded mistress.”
+
+Mr. Chitterwick turned to him. “As for you, Bradley, it’s astonishing
+how near you came to the truth. Amazing!” Mr. Chitterwick registered
+amazement. “Even in your first case, against yourself, so many of your
+conclusions were perfectly right. The final result of your deductions
+from the nitrobenzene, for instance; the fact that the criminal must
+be neat-fingered and of a methodical and creative mind; even, what
+appeared to me at the time just a trifle far-fetched, that a copy of
+Taylor would be found on the criminal’s shelves.
+
+“Then beyond the fact that No. 4 must be qualified to ‘must have had
+an opportunity of secretly obtaining a sheet of Mason’s notepaper,’
+all twelve of your conditions were quite right, with the exception of
+6, which does not admit of an alibi, and 7 and 8, about the Onyx pen
+and Harfield’s ink. Mr. Sheringham was right in that matter with his
+rather more subtle point of the criminal’s probable unobtrusive
+borrowing of the pen and ink. Which is exactly what happened, of
+course, with regard to the typewriter.
+
+“As for your second case—well!” Mr. Chitterwick seemed to be without
+words to express his admiration of Mr. Bradley’s second case. “You
+reached to the truth in almost every particular. You saw that it was a
+woman’s crime, you deduced the outraged feminine feelings underlying
+the whole affair, you staked your whole case on the criminal’s
+knowledge of criminology. It was really most penetrating.”
+
+“In fact,” said Mr. Bradley, carefully concealing his gratification,
+“I did everything possible except find the murderess.”
+
+“Well, that is so, of course,” deprecated Mr. Chitterwick, somehow
+conveying the impression that after all finding the murderess was a
+very minor matter compared with Mr. Bradley’s powers of penetration.
+
+“And then we come to Mr. Sheringham.”
+
+“Don’t!” implored Roger. “Leave him out.”
+
+“Oh, but your reconstruction was very clever,” Mr. Chitterwick assured
+him with great earnestness. “You put a new aspect on the whole affair,
+you know, by your suggestion that it was the right victim who was
+killed after all.”
+
+“Well, it seems that I erred in good company,” Roger said tritely,
+with a glance at Miss Dammers.
+
+“But you didn’t err,” corrected Mr. Chitterwick.
+
+“Oh?” Roger showed his surprise. “Then it was all aimed against Mrs.
+Bendix?”
+
+Mr. Chitterwick looked confused. “Haven’t I told you about that? I’m
+afraid I’m doing this in a very muddle-headed way. Yes, it is
+partially true to say that the plot was aimed against Mrs. Bendix. But
+the real position, I think, is that it was aimed against Mrs. Bendix
+and Sir Eustace jointly. You came very near the truth, Mr. Sheringham,
+except that you substituted a jealous husband for a jealous rival.
+Very near indeed. And of course you were entirely right in your point
+that the method was not suggested by the chance possession of the
+notepaper or anything like that, but by previous cases.”
+
+“I’m glad I was entirely right over something,” murmured Roger.
+
+“And Miss Dammers,” bowed Mr. Chitterwick, “was most helpful. _Most_
+helpful.”
+
+“Although not convincing,” supplemented that lady drily.
+
+“Although I’m afraid I did not find her altogether convincing,” agreed
+Mr. Chitterwick, with an apologetic air. “But it was really the theory
+she gave us that at last showed me the truth. For she also put yet
+another aspect on the crime, with her information regarding
+the—h’m!—the affair between Mrs. Bendix and Sir Eustace. And that
+really,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with another little bow to the
+informant, “was the foundation-stone of the whole business.”
+
+“I didn’t see how it could fail to be,” said Miss Dammers. “But I
+still maintain that my deductions from it are the correct ones.”
+
+“Perhaps if I may just put my own forward?” hesitated Mr. Chitterwick,
+apparently somewhat dashed.
+
+Miss Dammers accorded a somewhat tart permission.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick collected himself. “Oh, yes; I should have said that
+Miss Dammers was quite right in one important particular, her
+assumption that it was not so much the affair between Mrs. Bendix and
+Sir Eustace that was at the bottom of the crime, as Mrs. Bendix’s
+character. That really brought about her own death. Miss Dammers, I
+should imagine, was perfectly right in her tracing out of the
+intrigue, and her imaginative insight into Mrs. Bendix’s reactions—I
+think that is the word?” Mr. Chitterwick inquired diffidently of
+authority. “Mrs. Bendix’s reactions to it, but not, I consider, in her
+deductions regarding Sir Eustace’s growing boredom.
+
+“Sir Eustace, I am led to believe, was less inclined to be bored than
+to share the lady’s distress. For the real point, which happened to
+escape Miss Dammers, is that Sir Eustace was quite infatuated with
+Mrs. Bendix. Far more so than she with him.
+
+“That,” pronounced Mr. Chitterwick, “is one of the determining factors
+in this tragedy.”
+
+Everybody pinned the factor down. The Circle’s attitude towards Mr.
+Chitterwick by this time was one of intelligent expectation. Probably
+no one really thought that he had found the right solution, and Miss
+Dammers’s stock had not been appreciably lowered. But certainly it
+seemed that the man had at any rate got something to offer.
+
+“Miss Dammers,” proceeded the object of their attention, “was right in
+another point she made too, namely that the inspiration of this
+murder, or perhaps I should say the method of it, certainly came from
+that book of poisoning cases she mentioned, of which her own copy (she
+tells us) is at present in Sir Eustace’s rooms—planted there,” added
+Mr. Chitterwick, much shocked, “by the murderess.
+
+“And another useful fact she established. That Mr. Bendix had been
+lured (really,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick, “I can use no other word)
+to the Rainbow Club that morning. But it was not Mrs. Bendix who
+telephoned to him on the previous afternoon. Nor was he sent there for
+the particular purpose of receiving the chocolates from Sir Eustace.
+The fact that the lunch appointment had been cancelled was altogether
+outside the criminal’s knowledge. Mr. Bendix was sent there to be a
+witness to Sir Eustace receiving the parcel; that was all.
+
+“The intention was, of course, that Mr. Bendix should have Sir Eustace
+so connected in his mind with the chocolates that if suspicion should
+ever arise against any definite person, that of Mr. Bendix would be
+directed before long to Sir Eustace himself. For the fact of his
+wife’s intrigue would be bound to come to his knowledge, as indeed I
+understand privately that it has, causing him naturally the most
+intense distress.”
+
+“So that’s why he’s been looking haggard,” exclaimed Roger.
+
+“Without doubt,” Mr. Chitterwick agreed gravely. “It was a wicked
+plot. Sir Eustace, you see, was expected to be dead by then and
+incapable of denying his guilt, and such evidence as there was had
+been carefully arranged to point to murder and suicide on his part.
+That the police never suspected him (that is, so far as we know),
+simply shows that investigations do not always take the turn that the
+criminal expects. And in this case,” observed Mr. Chitterwick with
+some severity, “I think the criminal was altogether too subtle.”
+
+“If that was her very involved reason for ensuring the presence of Mr.
+Bendix at the Rainbow Club,” agreed Miss Dammers with some irony, “her
+subtlety certainly overreached itself.” It was evident that not only
+on the point of psychology did Miss Dammers not find herself ready to
+accept Mr. Chitterwick’s conclusions.
+
+“That, indeed, is exactly what happened,” Mr. Chitterwick pointed out
+mildly. “Oh, and while we are on the subject of the chocolates, I
+ought to add that the reason why they were sent to Sir Eustace’s club
+was not only so that Mr. Bendix might be a witness of their arrival,
+but also, I should imagine, so that Sir Eustace would be sure to take
+them with him to his lunch-appointment. The murderess of course would
+be sufficiently conversant with his ways to know that he would almost
+certainly spend the morning at his club and go straight on to lunch
+from there; the odds were enormous that he would take the box of Mrs.
+Bendix’s favourite chocolates with him.
+
+“I think we may regard it as an instance of the criminal’s habitual
+overlooking of some vital point that is to lead eventually to
+detection, that this murderess completely lost sight of the
+possibility that the appointment for lunch might be cancelled. She is
+a particularly ingenious criminal,” said Mr. Chitterwick with gentle
+admiration, “and yet even she is not immune from this failing.”
+
+“Who is she, Mr. Chitterwick?” ingenuously asked Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick answered her with a positively roguish smile.
+“Everybody else has withheld the name of the suspect till the right
+moment. Surely I may be allowed to do so too.
+
+“Well, I think I have cleared up most of the doubtful points now.
+Mason’s notepaper was used, I should say, because chocolates had been
+decided on as the vehicle and Mason’s were the only chocolate
+manufacturing firm who were customers of Webster’s. As it happened,
+this fitted very well, because it was always Mason’s chocolates that
+Sir Eustace bought for his—er—his friends.”
+
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked puzzled. “Because Mason’s were the only
+firm who were customers of Webster’s? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
+
+“Oh, I _am_ explaining all this badly,” cried Mr. Chitterwick in much
+distress, assuming all blame for this obtuseness. “It had to be some
+firm on Webster’s books, you see, because Sir Eustace has his
+notepaper printed at Webster’s, and he was to be identified as having
+been in there recently if the purloined piece was ever connected with
+the sample book. Exactly, in fact, as Miss Dammers did.”
+
+Roger whistled. “Oh, I see. You mean, we’ve all been putting the cart
+before the horse over this piece of notepaper?”
+
+“I’m afraid so,” regretted Mr. Chitterwick with earnestness. “Really,
+I’m very much afraid so.”
+
+Insensibly opinion was beginning to turn in Mr. Chitterwick’s favour.
+To say the least, he was being just as convincing as Miss Dammers had
+been, and that without subtle psychological reconstructions and
+references to “values.” Only Miss Dammers herself remained outwardly
+sceptical; but that, after all, was only to be expected.
+
+“Humph!” said Miss Dammers, sceptically.
+
+“What about the motive, Mr. Chitterwick?” nodded Sir Charles with
+solemnity. “Jealousy, did you say? I don’t think you’ve quite cleared
+up that yet, have you?”
+
+“Oh, yes, of course.” Mr. Chitterwick actually blushed. “Dear me, I
+meant to make that clear right at the beginning. I _am_ doing this
+badly. No, not jealousy, I’m inclined to fancy. Revenge. Or revenge at
+any rate so far as Sir Eustace was concerned, and jealousy as regards
+Mrs. Bendix. From what I can understand, you see, this lady is—dear
+me,” said Mr. Chitterwick, in distress and embarrassment, “this is
+very delicate ground. But I must trespass on it. Well—though she had
+concealed it successfully from her friends, this lady had been very
+much in love with Sir Eustace, and become—er—had become,” concluded
+Mr. Chitterwick bravely, “his mistress. That was a long time ago.
+
+“Sir Eustace was very much in love with her too, and though he used to
+amuse himself with other women it was understood by both that this was
+quite permissible so long as there was nothing serious. The lady, I
+should say, is very modern and broad-minded. It was understood, I
+believe, that he was to marry her as soon as he could induce his wife
+(who was quite ignorant of this affair) to divorce him. But when this
+was at last arranged, Sir Eustace found that owing to his extreme
+financial stringency, it was imperative that he should marry money
+instead.
+
+“The lady was naturally very disappointed, but knowing that Sir
+Eustace did not care at all for—er—was not really in love with Miss
+Wildman and the marriage would only be, so far as he was concerned,
+one of convenience, she reconciled herself to the future and, quite
+seeing Sir Eustace’s necessity, did not resent the introduction of
+Miss Wildman—whom indeed,” Mr. Chitterwick felt himself compelled to
+add, “she considered as quite negligible. It never occurred to her to
+doubt, you see, that the old arrangement would hold good, and she
+would still have Sir Eustace’s real love with which to content
+herself.
+
+“But then something quite unforeseen happened. Sir Eustace not only
+fell out of love with her. He fell unmistakably in love with Mrs.
+Bendix. Moreover, he succeeded in making her his mistress. That was
+quite recently, since he began to pay his addresses to Miss Wildman.
+And I think Miss Dammers has given us a true picture of the results in
+Mrs. Bendix’s case if not in that of Sir Eustace.
+
+“Well, you can see the position then, so far as this other lady was
+concerned. Sir Eustace was getting his divorce, marriage with the
+negligible Miss Wildman was now out of the question, but marriage with
+Mrs. Bendix, tortured in her conscience and seeing in divorce from her
+husband and marriage with Sir Eustace the only means of solving
+it—marriage with Mrs. Bendix, the real beloved, and even more eligible
+than Miss Wildman so far as the financial side was concerned, was to
+all appearances inevitable. I deprecate the use of hackneyed
+quotations as much as anybody, but really I feel that if I permit
+myself to add that hell has no fury like—”
+
+“Can you prove all this, Mr. Chitterwick?” interposed Miss Dammers
+coolly on the hackneyed quotation.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick started. “I—I think so,” he said, though a little
+dubiously.
+
+“I’m inclined to doubt it,” observed Miss Dammers briefly.
+
+Somewhat uncomfortable, under Miss Dammers’s sceptical eye, Mr.
+Chitterwick explained. “Well Sir Eustace, whose acquaintance I have
+been at some pains to cultivate recently . . .” Mr. Chitterwick
+shivered a little, as if the acquaintance had not been his ideal one.
+“Well, from a few indications that Sir Eustace has unconsciously given
+me . . . That is to say, I was questioning him at lunch to-day as
+adroitly as I could, my conviction as to the murderer’s identity
+having been formed at last, and he did unwittingly let fall a few
+trifles which . . .”
+
+“I doubt it,” repeated Miss Dammers bluntly.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick looked quite nonplussed.
+
+Roger hurried to the rescue. “Well, shelving the matter of proof for
+the moment, Mr. Chitterwick, and assuming that your reconstruction of
+the events is just an imaginative one. You’d reached the point where
+marriage between Sir Eustace and Mrs. Bendix had become inevitable.”
+
+“Yes; oh, yes,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with a grateful look towards his
+saviour. “And then of course, this lady formed her terrible decision
+and made her very clever plan. I think I’ve explained all that. Her
+old right of access to Sir Eustace’s rooms enabled her to type the
+letter on his typewriter one day when she knew he was out. She is
+quite a good mimic, and it was easy for her when ringing up Mr. Bendix
+to imitate the sort of voice Miss Delorme might be expected to have.”
+
+“Mr. Chitterwick, do any of us know this woman?” demanded Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming abruptly.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick looked more embarrassed than ever. “Er—yes,” he
+hesitated. “That is, you must remember it was she who smuggled Miss
+Dammers’s two books into Sir Eustace’s rooms too, you know.”
+
+“I shall have to be more careful about my friends in future, I see,”
+observed Miss Dammers, gently sarcastic.
+
+“An ex-mistress of Sir Eustace’s eh?” Roger murmured, conning over in
+his mind such names as he could remember from that lengthy list.
+
+“Well, yes,” Mr. Chitterwick agreed. “But nobody had any idea of it.
+That is— Dear me, this is very difficult.” Mr. Chitterwick wiped his
+forehead with his handkerchief, and looked extremely unhappy.
+
+“She’d managed to conceal it?” Roger pressed him.
+
+“Er—yes. She’d certainly managed to conceal the true state of matters
+between them, very cleverly indeed. I don’t think anybody suspected it
+at all.”
+
+“They apparently didn’t know each other?” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+persisted. “They were never seen about together?”
+
+“Oh, at one time they were,” said Mr. Chitterwick, looking in quite a
+hunted way from face to face. “Quite frequently. Then, I understand,
+they thought it better to pretend to have quarrelled and—and met only
+in secret.”
+
+“Isn’t it time you told us this woman’s name, Chitterwick?” boomed Sir
+Charles down the table, looking judicial.
+
+Mr. Chitterwick scrambled desperately out of this fire of questions.
+“It’s very strange, you know, how murderers never will let well alone,
+isn’t it?” he said breathlessly. “It happens so often. I’m quite sure
+I should never have stumbled on the truth in this case if the
+murderess had only left things as they were, in accordance with her
+own admirable plot. But this trying to fix the guilt on another
+person . . . Really, from the intelligence displayed in this
+case, she ought to have been above that. Of course her plot _had_
+miscarried. Been only half-successful, I should say. But why not
+accept the partial failure? Why tempt Providence? Trouble was
+inevitable—inevitable—”
+
+Mr. Chitterwick seemed by this time utterly distressed. He was
+shuffling his notes with extreme nervousness, and wriggling in his
+chair. The glances he kept darting from face to face were almost
+pleading. But what he was pleading for remained obscure.
+
+“Dear me,” said Mr. Chitterwick, as if at his wits’ end. “This is very
+difficult. I’d better clear up the remaining point. It’s about the
+alibi.
+
+“In my opinion the alibi was an afterthought, owing to a piece of
+luck. Southampton Street is near both the Cecil and the Savoy, isn’t
+it? I happen to know that this lady has a friend, another woman, of a
+somewhat unconventional nature. She is continually away on exploring
+expeditions and so on, usually quite alone. She never stays in London
+more than a night or two, and I should imagine she is the sort of
+woman who rarely reads the newspapers. And if she did, I think she
+would certainly not divulge any suspicion they might convey to her,
+especially concerning a friend of her own.
+
+“I have ascertained that immediately preceding the crime this woman,
+whose name by the way is Jane Harding, stayed for two nights at the
+Savoy Hotel, and left London, on the morning the chocolates were
+delivered, for Africa. From there she was going on to South America.
+Where she may be now I have not the least idea. Nor, I should say, has
+any one else. But she came to London from Paris, where she had been
+staying for a week.
+
+“The—er—criminal would know about this forthcoming trip to London, and
+so hurried to Paris. (I am afraid,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick
+uneasily, “there is a good deal of guess-work here.) It would be
+simple to ask this other lady to post the parcel in London, as the
+parcel postage is so heavy from France, and just as simple to ensure
+it being delivered on the morning of the lunch-appointment with Mrs.
+Bendix, by saying it was a birthday present, or some other pretext,
+and—and—must be posted to arrive on that particular day.” Mr.
+Chitterwick wiped his forehead again and glanced pathetically at
+Roger. Roger could only stare back in bewilderment.
+
+“Dear me,” muttered Mr. Chitterwick distractedly, “this is _very_
+difficult.—Well, I have satisfied myself that—”
+
+Alicia Dammers had risen to her feet and was unhurriedly picking up
+her belongings. “I’m afraid,” she said, “I have an appointment. Will
+you excuse me, Mr. President?”
+
+“Of course,” said Roger, in some surprise.
+
+At the door Miss Dammers turned back. “I’m so sorry not to be able to
+stay to hear the rest of your case, Mr. Chitterwick. But really, you
+know, as I said, I very much doubt whether you’ll be able to prove
+it.”
+
+She went out of the room.
+
+“She’s perfectly right,” whispered Mr. Chitterwick, gazing after her
+in a petrified way. “I’m quite sure I can’t. But there isn’t the
+faintest doubt. I’m afraid, not the faintest.”
+
+Stupefaction reigned.
+
+“You—you _can’t_ mean. . . ?” twittered Mrs. Fielder-Flemming in a
+strangely shrill voice.
+
+Mr. Bradley was the first to get a grip on himself. “So we did have a
+practising criminologist amongst us after all,” he drawled, in a
+manner that was never Oxford. “How quite interesting.”
+
+Again silence held the Circle.
+
+“So now,” asked the President helplessly, “what the devil do we do?”
+
+Nobody enlightened him.
+
+
+  The End
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Note
+
+This transcription follows the text of The British Library edition,
+published in 2016. However, the following errors have been corrected
+from the text:
+
+ * A mismatched quotation mark was repaired (Chapter VI).
+ * “unwieldly” was changed to “unwieldy” (Chapter VII).
+ * “appears to thinks” was changed to “appears to think”
+   (Chapter VIII).
+ * “Aways” was changed to “Always” (Chapter IX).
+ * “Masons’” was changed to “Mason’s” (Chapter XIII).
+ * “assumptions seems” was changed to “assumptions seem”
+   (Chapter XVI).
+
+All other seeming errors and unusual phrasings have been left
+unchanged.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75476 ***
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+</head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75476 ***</div>
+
+<figure>
+  <img id="coverpage" src="images/cover.jpg" alt="Book cover">
+</figure>
+
+<div class="section" id="titlepage">
+
+<h1>The Poisoned Chocolates Case</h1>
+<p class="authorprefix">by</p>
+<p class="author">Anthony Berkeley</p>
+
+<p class="publisher">Published in 1929 by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd</p>
+<p class="publisher">Reprinted in 2016 by The British Library</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="section" id="contents">
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<ul class="chapterlist">
+<li><a href="#ch01">Chapter I</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch02">Chapter II</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch03">Chapter III</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch04">Chapter IV</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch05">Chapter V</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch06">Chapter VI</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch07">Chapter VII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch08">Chapter VIII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch09">Chapter IX</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch10">Chapter X</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch11">Chapter XI</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch12">Chapter XII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch13">Chapter XIII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch14">Chapter XIV</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch15">Chapter XV</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch16">Chapter XVI</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch17">Chapter XVII</a></li>
+<li><a href="#ch18">Chapter XVIII</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="section" id="dedication">
+
+<p>To</p>
+<p class="dedicatee">S. H. J. Cox</p>
+<p>because for once he <br> did not guess it</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch01">
+
+<h2>Chapter I</h2>
+
+<p>Roger Sheringham took a sip of the old brandy in
+front of him and leaned back in his chair at the head of
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>Through the haze of cigarette-smoke eager voices reached his
+ears from all directions, prattling joyfully upon this and that
+connected with murder, poisons and sudden death. For this was his
+own, his very own Crimes Circle, founded, organised, collected,
+and now run by himself alone; and when at the first meeting five
+months ago he had been unanimously elected its president, he
+had been as full of proud delight as on that never-to-be-forgotten
+day in the dim past when a cherub disguised as a publisher had
+accepted his first novel.</p>
+
+<p>He turned to Chief Inspector Moresby of Scotland Yard who,
+as the guest of the evening, was sitting on his right, engaged, a
+little uneasily, with a positively enormous cigar.</p>
+
+<p>“Honestly, Moresby, without any disrespect to your own institution,
+I do believe that there’s more solid criminological genius in
+this room (intuitive genius, I mean; not capacity for taking pains)
+than anywhere in the world outside the <i lang="fr">Sûreté</i> in Paris.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you, Mr. Sheringham?” said Chief Inspector Moresby
+tolerantly. Moresby was always kind to the strange opinions of
+others. “Well, well.” And he applied himself again to the lighted
+end of his cigar, which was so very far from the other that
+Moresby could never tell by mere suction at the latter whether
+the former were still alight or not.</p>
+
+<p>Roger had some grounds for his assertion beyond mere parental
+pride. Entry into the charmed Crimes Circle’s dinners was not
+to be gained by all and hungry. It was not enough for a would-be
+member to profess an adoration for murder and let it go at that;
+he or she had got to prove that they were capable of worthily
+wearing their criminological spurs.</p>
+
+<p>Not only must the interest be intense in all branches of the
+science, in the detection side, for instance, just as much as the side
+of criminal psychology, with the history of all cases of the least
+importance at the applicant’s finger-tips, but there must be
+constructive ability too; the candidate must have a brain and be able
+to use it. To this end, a paper had to be written, from a choice of
+subjects suggested by members, and submitted to the president,
+who passed on such as he considered worthy to the members
+in conclave, who thereupon voted for or against the suppliant’s
+election; and a single adverse vote meant rejection.</p>
+
+<p>It was the intention of the club to acquire eventually thirteen
+members, but so far only six had succeeded in passing their tests,
+and these were all present on the evening when this chronicle
+opens. There was a famous lawyer, a scarcely less famous woman
+dramatist, a brilliant novelist who ought to have been more
+famous than she was, the most intelligent (if not the most amiable)
+of living detective-story writers, Roger Sheringham himself,
+and Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick, who was not famous at all, a mild
+little man of no particular appearance who had been even more
+surprised at being admitted to this company of personages than
+they had been at finding him amongst them.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of Mr. Chitterwick, then, it was an assembly
+of which any organiser might have been proud. Roger this
+evening was not only proud but excited too, because he was going
+to startle them; and it is always exciting to startle personages. He
+rose to do so.</p>
+
+<p>“Ladies and gentlemen,” he proclaimed, after the welcome
+of glasses and cigarette-cases drummed on the table had died
+away. “Ladies and gentlemen, in virtue of the powers conferred
+by you the president of our Circle is permitted to alter at his
+discretion the arrangements made for any meeting. You all know
+what arrangements were made for this evening. Chief Inspector
+Moresby, whom we are so glad to welcome as the first
+representative of Scotland Yard to visit us”—more drumming on the
+table—“Chief Inspector Moresby was to be lulled by rich food
+and sound wine into being so indiscreet as to tell us about such of
+his experiences as could hardly be given to a body of pressmen.”
+More and longer drumming.</p>
+
+<p>Roger refreshed himself with a sip of brandy and continued.
+“Now I think I know Chief Inspector Moresby pretty well, ladies
+and gentlemen, and the occasions are not a few on which I too
+have tried, and tried very hard, to lure him similarly into the paths
+of indiscretion; but never once have I succeeded. I have therefore
+little hope that this Circle, lure it never so cooingly, will succeed in
+getting from the Chief Inspector any more interesting stories than
+he would mind being published in <i>The Daily Courier</i> to-morrow.
+Chief Inspector Moresby, I am afraid, ladies and gentlemen, is
+unlurable.</p>
+
+<p>“I have therefore taken upon myself the responsibility of
+altering our entertainment for this evening; and the idea that has
+occurred to me in this connection will, I both hope and believe,
+appeal to you very considerably. I venture to think that it is both
+novel and enthralling.” Roger paused and beamed on the interested
+faces around him. Chief Inspector Moresby, a little puce
+below the ears, was still at grips with his cigar.</p>
+
+<p>“My idea,” Roger said, “is connected with Mr. Graham Bendix.”
+There was a little stir of interest. “Or rather,” he amended, more
+slowly, “with Mrs. Graham Bendix.” The stir subsided into a still
+more interested hush.</p>
+
+<p>Roger paused, as if choosing his words with more care. “Mr.
+Bendix himself is personally known to one or two of us here.
+Indeed, his name has actually been mentioned as that of a man who
+might possibly be interested, if approached, to become a member
+of this Circle. By Sir Charles Wildman, if I remember rightly.”</p>
+
+<p>The barrister inclined his rather massive head with dignity.
+“Yes, I suggested him once, I think.”</p>
+
+<p>“The suggestion was never followed up,” Roger continued.
+“I don’t quite remember why not; I think somebody else was
+rather sure that he would never be able to pass all our tests. But
+in any case the fact that his name was ever mentioned at all shows
+that Mr. Bendix is to some extent at least a criminologist, which
+means that our sympathy with him in the terrible tragedy that
+has befallen him is tinged with something of a personal interest,
+even in the case of those who, like myself, are not actually
+acquainted with him.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hear, hear,” said a tall, good-looking woman on the right of
+the table, in the clear tones of one very well accustomed to saying
+“hear, hear” weightily at appropriate moments during speeches,
+in case no one else did. This was Alicia Dammers, the novelist,
+who ran Women’s Institutes for a hobby, listened to other people’s
+speeches with genuine and altruistic enjoyment, and, in practice
+the most staunch of Conservatives, supported with enthusiasm
+the theories of the Socialist party.</p>
+
+<p>“My suggestion is,” Roger said simply, “that we turn that
+sympathy to practical uses.”</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt that the eager attention of his audience
+was caught. Sir Charles Wildman lifted his bushy grey brows,
+from under which he was wont to frown with menacing disgust
+at the prosecution’s witnesses who had the bad taste to believe in
+the guilt of his own client, and swung his gold-rimmed eye-glasses
+on their broad black ribbon. On the other side of the table Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, a short, round, homely-looking woman who
+wrote surprisingly improper and most successful plays and looked
+exactly like a rather superior cook on her Sunday out, nudged the
+elbow of Miss Dammers and whispered something behind her
+hand. Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick blinked his mild blue eyes and
+assumed the appearance of an intelligent nanny-goat. The writer
+of detective-stories alone sat apparently unmoved and impassive;
+but in times of crisis he was wont to model his behaviour on that
+of his own favourite detective, who was invariably impassive at
+the most exciting moments.</p>
+
+<p>“I took the idea to Scotland Yard this morning,” Roger went
+on, “and though they never encourage that sort of idea there, they
+were really unable to discover any positive harm in it; with the
+result that I came away with a reluctant, but nevertheless official
+permission to try it out. And I may as well say at once that it was
+the same cue that prompted this permission as originally put
+the whole thing into my head”—Roger paused impressively and
+glanced round—“the fact that the police have practically given up
+all hope of tracing Mrs. Bendix’s murderer.”</p>
+
+<p>Ejaculations sounded on all sides, some of dismay, some of
+disgust, and some of astonishment. All eyes turned upon Moresby.
+That gentleman, apparently unconscious of the collective gaze fastened
+upon him, raised his cigar to his ear and listened to it intently,
+as if hoping to receive some intimate message from its depths.</p>
+
+<p>Roger came to his rescue. “That information is quite confidential,
+by the way, and I know none of you will let it escape beyond
+this room. But it is a fact. Active inquiries, having resulted in exactly
+nothing, are to be stopped. There is always hope of course that
+some fresh fact may turn up, but without it the authorities have
+come to the conclusion that they can get no farther. My proposal
+is, therefore, that this Club should take up the case where the
+authorities have left it.” And he looked expectantly round the
+circle of upturned faces.</p>
+
+<p>Every face asked a question at once.</p>
+
+<p>Roger forgot his periods in his enthusiasm and became
+colloquial.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, you see, we’re all keen, we’re not fools, and we’re not
+(with apologies to my friend Moresby) tied to any hard-and-fast
+method of investigation. Is it too much to hope that, with all six of
+us on our mettle and working quite independently of each other,
+one of us might achieve some result where the police have, to put
+it bluntly, failed? I don’t think it’s outside the possibilities. What
+do you say, Sir Charles?”</p>
+
+<p>The famous counsel uttered a deep laugh. “ ’Pon my word,
+Sheringham, it’s an interesting idea. But I must reserve judgment
+till you’ve outlined your proposal in a little more detail.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think it’s a wonderful idea, Mr. Sheringham,” cried Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, who was not troubled with a legal mind. “I’d
+like to begin this very evening.” Her plump cheeks positively
+quivered with excitement. “Wouldn’t you, Alicia?”</p>
+
+<p>“It has possibilities,” smiled that lady.</p>
+
+<p>“As a matter-of-fact,” said the writer of detective-stories, with
+an air of detachment, “I’d formed a theory of my own about
+this case already.” His name was Percy Robinson, but he wrote
+under the pseudonym of Morton Harrogate Bradley, which had
+so impressed the more simple citizens of the United States of
+America that they had bought three editions of his first book
+on the strength of that alone. For some obscure psychological
+reason Americans are always impressed by the use of surnames
+for Christian, and particularly when one of them happens to be
+the name of an English watering-place.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick beamed in a mild way, but said
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” Roger took up his tale, “the details are open to discussion,
+of course, but I thought that, if we all decide to make the
+trial, it would be more amusing if we worked independently.
+Moresby here can give us the plain facts as they’re known to the
+police. He hasn’t been in charge of the case himself, but he’s had
+one or two jobs in connection with it and is pretty well up in the
+facts; moreover he has very kindly spent most of the afternoon
+examining the dossier at Scotland Yard so as to be sure of
+omitting nothing this evening.</p>
+
+<p>“When we’ve heard him some of us may be able to form a
+theory at once; possible lines of investigation may occur to others
+which they will wish to follow up before they commit themselves.
+In any case, I suggest that we allow ourselves a week in which to
+form our theories, verify our hypotheses, and set our individual
+interpretations on the facts that Scotland Yard has collected,
+during which time no member shall discuss the case with any
+other member. We may achieve nothing (most probably we shall
+not), but in any case it will be a most interesting criminological
+exercise; for some of us practical, for others academical, just as we
+prefer. And what I think should be most interesting will be to see
+if we all arrive at the same result or not. Ladies and gentlemen,
+the meeting is open for discussion, or whatever is the right way
+of putting it. In other words: what about it?” And Roger dropped
+back, not reluctantly, into his seat.</p>
+
+<p>Almost before his trousers had touched it the first question
+reached him.</p>
+
+<p>“Do you mean that we’re to go out and act as our own detectives,
+Mr. Sheringham, or just write a thesis on the facts that the
+Chief Inspector is going to give us?” asked Alicia Dammers.</p>
+
+<p>“Whichever each one of us preferred, I thought,” Roger
+answered. “That’s what I meant when I said that the exercise
+would be practical for some of us and academic for others.”</p>
+
+<p>“But you’ve got so much more experience than us on the
+practical side, Mr. Sheringham,” pouted Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+(yes, pouted).</p>
+
+<p>“And the police have so much more than me,” Roger countered.</p>
+
+<p>“It will depend whether we use deductive or inductive methods,
+no doubt,” observed Mr. Morton Harrogate Bradley. “Those
+who prefer the former will work from the police-facts and won’t
+need to make any investigations of their own, except perhaps to
+verify a conclusion or two. But the inductive method demands a
+good deal of inquiry.”</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly,” said Roger.</p>
+
+<p>“Police-facts and the deductive method have solved plenty
+of serious mysteries in this country,” pronounced Sir Charles
+Wildman. “I shall rely on them for this one.”</p>
+
+<p>“There’s one particular feature of this case,” murmured Mr.
+Bradley to nobody, “that ought to lead one straight to the criminal.
+I’ve thought so all the time. I shall concentrate on that.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sure I haven’t the remotest idea how one sets about investigating
+a point, if it becomes desirable,” observed Mr. Chitterwick
+uneasily; but nobody heard him, so it did not matter.</p>
+
+<p>“The only thing that struck me about this case,” said Alicia
+Dammers, very distinctly, “regarded, I mean, as a pure case, was
+its complete absence of any psychological interest whatever.” And
+without actually saying so, Miss Dammers conveyed the impression
+that if that were so, she personally had no further use for it.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t think you’ll say that when you’ve heard what Moresby’s
+got to tell us,” Roger said gently. “We’re going to hear a great deal
+more than has appeared in the newspapers, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then let’s hear it,” suggested Sir Charles, bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>“We’re all agreed, then?” said Roger, looking round as happily
+as a child who has been given a new toy. “Everybody is willing
+to try it out?”</p>
+
+<p>Amid the ensuing chorus of enthusiasm, one voice alone was
+silent. Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick was still wondering, quite unhappily,
+how, if it ever became necessary to go a-detecting, one went.
+He had studied the reminiscences of a hundred ex-detectives,
+the real ones, with large black boots and bowler hats; but all he
+could remember at that moment, out of all those scores of fat
+books (published at eighteen and sixpence, and remaindered a few
+months later at eighteen-pence), was that a real, <em>real</em> detective, if
+he means to attain results, never puts on a false moustache but
+simply shaves his eyebrows. As a mystery-solving formula, this
+seemed to Mr. Chitterwick inadequate.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately in the buzz of chatter that preceded the very
+reluctant rising of Chief Inspector Moresby, Mr. Chitterwick’s
+poltroonery went unnoticed.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch02">
+
+<h2>Chapter II</h2>
+
+<p>Chief Inspector Moresby, having stood up and blushingly
+received his tribute of hand-claps, was invited to
+address the gathering from his chair and thankfully retired into
+that shelter. Consulting the sheaf of notes in his hand, he began
+to enlighten his very attentive audience as to the strange
+circumstances connected with Mrs. Bendix’s untimely death. Without
+reproducing his own words, and all the numerous supplementary
+questions which punctuated his story, the gist of what he had to
+tell was as follows:—</p>
+
+<hr>
+
+<p>On Friday morning, the fifteenth of November, Graham Bendix
+strolled into his club, the Rainbow, in Piccadilly, at about ten-thirty
+and asked if there were any letters for him. The porter handed
+him a letter and a couple of circulars, and he walked over to the
+fireplace in the hall to read them.</p>
+
+<p>While he was doing so another member entered the club. This
+was a middle-aged baronet, Sir Eustace Pennefather, who had
+rooms just round the corner, in Berkeley Street, but spent most
+of his time at the Rainbow. The porter glanced up at the clock, as
+he did every morning when Sir Eustace came in, and, as always,
+it was exactly half-past ten. The time was thus definitely fixed by
+the porter beyond any doubt.</p>
+
+<p>There were three letters and a small parcel for Sir Eustace,
+and he, too, took them over to the fireplace to open, nodding to
+Bendix as he joined him there. The two men knew each other
+only very slightly and had probably never exchanged more than
+half-a-dozen words in all. There were no other members in the
+hall just then.</p>
+
+<p>Having glanced through his letters, Sir Eustace opened the
+parcel and snorted with disgust. Bendix looked at him enquiringly,
+and with a grunt Sir Eustace thrust out the letter which had been
+enclosed in the parcel, adding an uncomplimentary remark upon
+modern trade methods. Concealing a smile (Sir Eustace’s habits
+and opinions were a matter of some amusement to his fellow-members),
+Bendix read the letter. It was from the firm of Mason
+&amp; Sons, the big chocolate manufacturers, and was to the effect that
+they had just put on the market a new brand of liqueur-chocolates
+designed especially to appeal to the cultivated palates of Men of
+Taste. Sir Eustace being, presumably, a Man of Taste, would he
+be good enough to honour Mr. Mason and his sons by accepting
+the enclosed one-pound box, and any criticisms or appreciation
+that he might have to make concerning them would be esteemed
+almost more than a favour.</p>
+
+<p>“Do they think I’m a blasted chorus-girl,” fumed Sir Eustace,
+a choleric man, “to write ’em testimonials about their blasted
+chocolates? Blast ’em! I’ll complain to the blasted committee.
+That sort of blasted thing can’t blasted well be allowed here.” For
+the Rainbow Club, as every one knows, is a very proud and
+exclusive club indeed, with an unbroken descent from the Rainbow
+Coffee-House, founded in 1734. Not even a family founded by a
+king’s bastard can be quite so exclusive to-day as a club founded
+on a coffee-house.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it’s an ill wind so far as I’m concerned,” Bendix soothed
+him. “It’s reminded me of something. I’ve got to get some
+chocolates myself, to pay an honourable debt. My wife and I had
+a box at the Imperial last night, and I bet her a box of chocolates
+to a hundred cigarettes that she wouldn’t spot the villain by the
+end of the second act. She won. I must remember to get them.
+It’s not a bad show. <i>The Creaking Skull</i>. Have you seen it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not blasted likely,” replied the other, unsoothed. “Got something
+better to do than sit and watch a lot of blasted fools messing
+about with phosphorescent paint and pooping off blasted pop-guns
+at each other. Want a box of chocolates, did you say? Well, take
+this blasted one.”</p>
+
+<p>The money saved by this offer had no weight with Bendix.
+He was a very wealthy man, and probably had enough on him
+in actual cash to buy a hundred such boxes. But trouble is
+always worth saving. “Sure you don’t want them?” he demurred
+politely.</p>
+
+<p>In Sir Eustace’s reply only one word, several times repeated,
+was clearly recognisable. But his meaning was plain. Bendix
+thanked him and, most unfortunately for himself, accepted
+the gift.</p>
+
+<p>By an extraordinarily lucky chance the wrapper of the box
+was not thrown into the fire, either by Sir Eustace in his
+indignation or by Bendix himself when the whole collection, box,
+covering letter, wrapper and string, was shovelled into his hands
+by the almost apoplectic baronet. This was the more fortunate
+as both men had already tossed the envelopes of their letters
+into the flames.</p>
+
+<p>Bendix however merely walked over to the porter’s desk and
+deposited everything there, asking the man to keep the box for
+him. The porter put the box aside, and threw the wrapper into
+the waste-paper basket. The covering letter had fallen unnoticed
+from Bendix’s hand as he walked across the floor. This the porter
+tidily picked up a few minutes later and put in the waste-paper
+basket too, whence, with the wrapper, it was retrieved later by
+the police.</p>
+
+<p>These two articles, it may be said at once, constituted two of
+the only three tangible clues to the murder, the third of course
+being the chocolates themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Of the three unconscious protagonists in the impending tragedy,
+Sir Eustace was by far the most remarkable. Still a year or
+two under fifty, he looked, with his flaming red face and thickset
+figure, a typical country squire of the old school, and both his
+manners and his language were in accordance with tradition.
+There were other resemblances too, but they were equally on
+the surface. The voices of the country squires of the old school
+were often slightly husky towards late middle age, but it was not
+with whisky. They hunted, and so did Sir Eustace, with avidity;
+but the country squires confined their hunting to foxes, and Sir
+Eustace was far more catholic in his predatory tastes. Sir Eustace
+in short, without doubt, was a thoroughly bad baronet. But his
+vices were all on the large scale, with the usual result that most
+other men, good or bad, liked him well enough (except perhaps
+a few husbands here and there, or a father or two), and women
+openly hung on his husky words.</p>
+
+<p>In comparison with him Bendix was rather an ordinary man,
+a tall, dark, not unhandsome fellow of eight-and-twenty, quiet
+and somewhat reserved, popular in a way but neither inviting
+nor apparently reciprocating anything beyond a somewhat grave
+friendliness.</p>
+
+<p>He had been left a rich man on the death five years ago of
+his father, who had made a fortune out of land-sites, which he
+had bought up in undeveloped areas with an uncanny foresight
+to sell later, at never less than ten times what he had given for
+them, when surrounded by houses and factories erected with
+other people’s money. “Just sit tight and let other people make
+you rich,” had been his motto, and a very sound one it proved.
+His son, though left with an income that precluded any necessity
+to work, had evidently inherited his father’s tendencies, for he
+had a finger in a good many business pies just (as he explained a
+little apologetically) out of sheer love of the most exciting game
+in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Money attracts money. Graham Bendix had inherited it, he
+made it, and inevitably he married it too. The orphaned daughter
+of a Liverpool ship-owner she was, with not far off half-a-million
+in her own right to bring to Bendix, who needed it not at all. But
+the money was incidental, for he needed her if not her fortune,
+and would have married her just as inevitably (said his friends) if
+she had had not a farthing.</p>
+
+<p>She was so exactly his type. A tall, rather serious-minded,
+highly-cultured girl, not so young that her character had not had
+time to form (she was twenty-five when Bendix married her,
+three years ago), she was the ideal wife for him. A bit of a Puritan,
+perhaps, in some ways, but Bendix himself was ready enough to
+be a Puritan by then if Joan Cullompton was.</p>
+
+<p>For in spite of the way he developed later Bendix had sown
+as a youth a few wild oats in the normal way. Stage-doors, that is
+to say, had not been entirely strange to him. His name had been
+mentioned in connection with that of more than one frail and
+fluffy lady. He had managed, in short, to amuse himself, discreetly
+but by no means clandestinely, in the usual manner of young men
+with too much money and too few years. But all that, again in the
+ordinary way, had stopped with his marriage.</p>
+
+<p>He was openly devoted to his wife and did not care who knew
+it, while she too, if a trifle less obviously, was equally said to wear
+her heart on her sleeve. To make no bones about it, the Bendixes
+had apparently succeeded in achieving that eighth wonder of the
+modern world, a happy marriage.</p>
+
+<p>And into the middle of it there dropped, like a clap of thunder,
+the box of chocolates.</p>
+
+<p>“After depositing the box of chocolates with the porter,”
+Moresby continued, shuffling his papers to find the right one,
+“Mr. Bendix followed Sir Eustace into the lounge, where he was
+reading the <i>Morning Post</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger nodded approval. There was no other paper that Sir
+Eustace could possibly have been reading but the <i>Morning Post</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Bendix himself proceeded to study <i>The Daily Telegraph</i>. He
+was rather at a loose end that morning. There were no board
+meetings for him, and none of the businesses in which he was
+interested called him out into the rain of a typical November day.
+He spent the rest of the morning in an aimless way, read the daily
+papers, glanced through the weeklies, and played a hundred up
+at billiards with another member equally idle. At about half-past
+twelve he went back to lunch to his house in Eaton Square, taking
+the chocolates with him.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bendix had given orders that she would not be in to lunch
+that day, but her appointment had been cancelled and she too was
+lunching at home. Bendix gave her the box of chocolates after the
+meal as they were sitting over their coffee in the drawing-room,
+explaining how they had come into his possession. Mrs. Bendix
+laughingly teased him about his meanness in not buying her a box,
+but approved the make and was interested to try the firm’s new
+variety. Joan Bendix was not so serious-minded as not to have a
+healthy feminine interest in good chocolates.</p>
+
+<p>Their appearance, however, did not seem to impress her very
+much.</p>
+
+<p>“Kümmel, Kirsch, Maraschino,” she said, delving with her fingers
+among the silver-wrappered sweets, each bearing the name of
+its filling in neat blue lettering. “Nothing else, apparently. I don’t
+see anything new here, Graham. They’ve just taken those three
+kinds out of their ordinary liqueur-chocolates.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh?” said Bendix, who was not particularly interested in
+chocolates. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters much. All
+liqueur-chocolates taste the same to me.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, and they’ve even packed them in their usual
+liqueur-chocolate box,” complained his wife, examining the lid.</p>
+
+<p>“They’re only a sample,” Bendix pointed out. “They may not
+have got the right boxes ready yet.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t believe there’s the slightest difference,” Mrs. Bendix
+pronounced, unwrapping a Kümmel. She held the box out to her
+husband. “Have one?”</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. “No, thank you, dear. You know I never
+eat the things.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you’ve got to have one of these, as a penance for not
+buying me a proper box. Catch!” She threw him one. As he caught
+it she made a wry face. “Oh! I was wrong. These are different.
+They’re twenty times as strong.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, they can bear at least that,” Bendix smiled, thinking
+of the usual anæmic sweetmeat sold under the name of
+chocolate-liqueur.</p>
+
+<p>He put the one she had given him in his mouth and bit it up; a
+burning taste, not intolerable but far too pronounced to be pleasant,
+followed the release of the liquid. “By Jove,” he exclaimed,
+“I should think they are strong. I believe they’ve filled them with
+neat alcohol.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, they wouldn’t do that, surely,” said his wife, unwrapping
+another. “But they are very strong. It must be the new mixture.
+Really, they almost burn. I’m not sure whether I like them or not.
+And that Kirsch one tasted far too strongly of almonds. This may
+be better. You try a Maraschino too.”</p>
+
+<p>To humour her he swallowed another, and disliked it still more.
+“Funny,” he remarked, touching the roof of his mouth with the
+tip of his tongue. “My tongue feels quite numb.”</p>
+
+<p>“So did mine at first,” she agreed. “Now it’s tingling rather.
+Well, I don’t notice any difference between the Kirsch and the
+Maraschino. And they do burn! I can’t make up my mind whether
+I like them or not.”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t,” Bendix said with decision. “I think there’s something
+wrong with them. I shouldn’t eat any more if I were you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, they’re only an experiment, I suppose,” said his wife.</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later Bendix went out, to keep an appointment
+in the City. He left his wife still trying to make up her mind
+whether she liked the chocolates or not, and still eating them to
+decide. Her last words to him were that they were making her
+mouth burn again so much that she was afraid she would not be
+able to manage any more.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Bendix remembers that conversation very clearly,” said
+Moresby, looking round at the intent faces, “because it was the
+last time he saw his wife alive.”</p>
+
+<p>The conversation in the drawing-room had taken place approximately
+between a quarter-past and half-past two. Bendix kept
+his appointment in the City at three, where he stayed for about
+half-an-hour, and then took a taxi back to his club for tea.</p>
+
+<p>He had been feeling extremely ill during his business-talk, and
+in the taxi he very nearly collapsed; the driver had to summon the
+porter to help get him out and into the club. They both described
+him as pale to the point of ghastliness, with staring eyes and livid
+lips, and his skin damp and clammy. His mind seemed unaffected,
+however, and once they had got him up the steps he was able to
+walk, with the help of the porter’s arm, into the lounge.</p>
+
+<p>The porter, alarmed by his appearance, wanted to send for
+a doctor at once, but Bendix, who was the last man to make a
+fuss, absolutely refused to let him, saying that it could only be a
+bad attack of indigestion and that he would be all right in a few
+minutes; he must have eaten something that disagreed with him.
+The porter was doubtful, but left him.</p>
+
+<p>Bendix repeated this diagnosis of his own condition a few
+minutes later to Sir Eustace Pennefather, who was in the lounge
+at the time, not having left the club at all. But this time Bendix
+added: “And I believe it was those infernal chocolates you gave
+me, now I come to think of it. I thought there was something
+funny about them at the time. I’d better go and ring up my wife
+and find out if she’s been taken like this too.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Eustace, a kind-hearted man, who was no less shocked
+than the porter at Bendix’s appearance, was perturbed by the
+suggestion that he might in any way be responsible for it, and
+offered to go and ring up Mrs. Bendix himself as the other was
+in no fit condition to move. Bendix was about to reply when a
+strange change came over him. His body, which had been leaning
+limply back in his chair, suddenly heaved rigidly upright; his jaws
+locked together, the livid lips drawn back in a hideous grin, and
+his hands clenched on the arms of the chair. At the same time Sir
+Eustace became aware of an unmistakable smell of bitter almonds.</p>
+
+<p>Thoroughly alarmed now, believing indeed that Bendix was
+dying under his eyes, he raised a shout for the porter and a doctor.
+There were two or three other men at the further end of the big
+room (in which a shout had probably never been heard before in
+the whole course of its history) and these hurried up at once. Sir
+Eustace sent one off to tell the porter to get hold of the nearest
+doctor without a second’s delay, and enlisted the others to try to
+make the convulsed body a little more comfortable. There was
+no doubt among them that Bendix had taken poison. They spoke
+to him, asking how he felt and what they could do for him, but
+he either would not or could not answer. As a matter of fact, he
+was completely unconscious.</p>
+
+<p>Before the doctor had arrived, a telephone message was
+received from an agitated butler asking if Mr. Bendix was there,
+and if so would he come home at once as Mrs. Bendix had been
+taken seriously ill.</p>
+
+<p>At the house in Eaton Square matters had been taking much
+the same course with Mrs. Bendix as with her husband, though
+a little more rapidly. She remained for half-an-hour or so in the
+drawing-room after the latter’s departure, during which time she
+must have eaten about three more of the chocolates. She then
+went up to her bedroom and rang for her maid, to whom she
+said that she felt very ill and was going to lie down for a time.
+Like her husband, she ascribed her condition to a violent attack
+of indigestion.</p>
+
+<p>The maid mixed her a draught from a bottle of indigestion-powder,
+which consisted mainly of bicarbonate of soda and
+bismuth, and brought her a hot-water bottle, leaving her lying
+on the bed. Her description of her mistress’s appearance tallied
+exactly with the porter’s and taxi-man’s description of Bendix,
+but unlike them she did not seem to have been alarmed by it. She
+admitted later to the opinion that Mrs. Bendix, though anything
+but a greedy woman, must have overeaten herself at lunch.</p>
+
+<p>At a quarter past three there was a violent ring from the bell
+in Mrs. Bendix’s room.</p>
+
+<p>The girl hurried upstairs and found her mistress apparently
+in a cataleptic fit, unconscious and rigid. Thoroughly frightened
+now, she wasted some precious minutes in ineffectual attempts
+to bring her round, and then hurried downstairs to telephone for
+the doctor. The practitioner who regularly attended the house was
+not at home, and it was some time before the butler, who had
+found the half-hysterical girl at the telephone and taken matters
+into his own hands, could get into communication with another.
+By the time the latter did get there, nearly half-an-hour after Mrs.
+Bendix’s bell had rung, she was past help. Coma had set in, and in
+spite of everything the doctor could do she died in less than ten
+minutes after his arrival.</p>
+
+<p>She was, in fact, already dead when the butler telephoned to
+the Rainbow Club.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch03">
+
+<h2>Chapter III</h2>
+
+<p>Having reached this stage in his narrative Moresby
+paused, for effect, breath and refreshment. So far, in spite
+of the eager interest with which the story had been followed,
+no fact had been brought out of which his listeners were unaware.
+It was the police investigations that they wanted to hear,
+for not only had no details of these been published but not so
+much as a hint had been given even as to the theory that was
+officially held.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps Moresby had gathered something of this sentiment,
+for after a moment’s rest he resumed with a slight smile. “Well,
+ladies and gentlemen, I shan’t keep you much longer with these
+preliminaries, but it’s just as well to run through everything
+while we’re on it, if we want to get a view of the case as a
+whole.</p>
+
+<p>“As you know, then, Mr. Bendix himself did not die. Luckily
+for himself he had eaten only two of the chocolates, as against
+his wife’s seven, but still more luckily he had fallen into the hands
+of a clever doctor. By the time her doctor saw Mrs. Bendix it was
+too late for him to do anything; but the smaller amount of poison
+that Mr. Bendix had swallowed meant that its progress was not
+so rapid, and the doctor had time to save him.</p>
+
+<p>“Not that the doctor knew then what the poison was. He
+treated him chiefly for prussic acid poisoning, thinking from the
+symptoms and the smell that Mr. Bendix must have taken oil of
+bitter almonds, but he wasn’t sure and threw in one or two other
+things as well. Anyhow, it turned out in the end that he couldn’t
+have had a fatal dose, and he was conscious again by about eight
+o’clock that night. They’d put him into one of the club bedrooms,
+and by the next day he was convalescent.”</p>
+
+<p>At first, Moresby went on to explain, it was thought at Scotland
+Yard that Mrs. Bendix’s death and her husband’s narrow escape
+were due to a terrible accident. The police had of course taken
+the matter in hand as soon as the woman’s death was reported to
+them and the fact of poison established. In due course a District
+Detective Inspector arrived at the Rainbow Club, and as soon as
+the doctor would permit after Bendix’s recovery of consciousness
+held an interview with the still very sick man.</p>
+
+<p>The fact of his wife’s death was kept from him in his doubtful
+condition and he was questioned solely upon his own experience,
+for it was already clear that the two cases were bound up together
+and light on one would equally clarify the other. The Inspector
+told Bendix bluntly that he had been poisoned and pressed him
+as to how the stuff could have been taken: could he account for
+it in any way?</p>
+
+<p>It was not long before the chocolates came into Bendix’s mind.
+He mentioned their burning taste, and he mentioned having
+already spoken to Sir Eustace about them as the possible cause
+of his illness.</p>
+
+<p>This the inspector already knew.</p>
+
+<p>He had spent the time before Bendix came round in interviewing
+such people as had come into contact with him since
+his return to the club that afternoon. He had heard the porter’s
+story and he had taken steps to trace the taxi-man; he had spoken
+with the members who had gathered round Bendix in the lounge,
+and Sir Eustace had reported to him the remark of Bendix about
+the chocolates.</p>
+
+<p>The inspector had not attached very much importance to this
+at the moment, but simply as a matter of routine had questioned
+Sir Eustace closely as to the whole episode and, again as a matter
+of routine, had afterwards rummaged through the waste-paper
+basket and extricated the wrapper and the covering-letter. Still
+as a matter of routine, and still not particularly impressed,
+he now proceeded to question Bendix on the same topic, and
+then at last began to realise its significance as he heard how
+the two had shared the chocolates after lunch and how, even
+before Bendix had left home, the wife had eaten more than
+the husband.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor now intervened, and the inspector had to leave
+the sick-room. His first action was to telephone to his colleague
+at the Bendix home and tell him to take possession without delay
+of the box of chocolates which was probably still in the
+drawing-room; at the same time he asked for a rough idea of the number
+of chocolates that were missing. The other told him, nine or ten.
+The inspector, who on Bendix’s information had only accounted
+for six or seven, rang off and telephoned what he had learnt to
+Scotland Yard.</p>
+
+<p>Interest was now centred on the chocolates. They were taken
+to Scotland Yard that evening, and sent off at once to be analysed.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, the doctor hadn’t been far wrong,” said Moresby.
+“The poison in those chocolates wasn’t oil of bitter almonds
+as a matter of fact, it was nitrobenzene; but I understand that
+isn’t so very different. If any of you ladies or gentlemen have
+a knowledge of chemicals, you’ll know more about the stuff
+than I do, but I believe it’s used occasionally in the cheaper sorts
+of confectionery (less than it used to be, though) to give an
+almond-flavour as a substitute for oil of bitter almonds, which
+I needn’t tell you is a powerful poison too. But the most usual
+way of employing nitrobenzene commercially is in the
+manufacture of aniline dyes.”</p>
+
+<p>When the analyst’s preliminary report came through Scotland
+Yard’s initial theory of accidental death was strengthened. Here
+definitely was a poison used in the manufacture of chocolates and
+other sweets. A terrible mistake must have been made. The firm
+had been employing the stuff as a cheap substitute for genuine
+liqueurs and too much of it had been used. The fact that the
+only liqueurs named on the silver wrappings were Maraschino,
+Kümmel and Kirsch, all of which carry a greater or lesser flavour
+of almonds, supported this conception.</p>
+
+<p>But before the firm was approached by the police for an
+explanation, other facts had come to light. It was found that
+only the top layer of chocolates contained any poison. Those
+in the lower layer were completely free from anything harmful.
+Moreover in the lower layer the fillings inside the chocolate cases
+corresponded with the description on the wrappings, whereas
+in the top layer, besides the poison, each sweet contained a
+blend of the three liqueurs mentioned and not, for instance,
+plain Maraschino and poison. It was further remarked that no
+Maraschino, Kirsch or Kümmel was to be found in the two
+lower layers.</p>
+
+<p>The interesting fact also emerged, in the analyst’s detailed
+report, that each chocolate in the top layer contained, in
+addition to its blend of the three liqueurs, exactly six minims of
+nitrobenzene, no more and no less. The cases were a fair size and
+there was plenty of room for quite a considerable quantity of
+the liqueur-blend besides this fixed quantity of poison. This was
+significant. Still more so was the further fact that in the bottom
+of each of the noxious chocolates there were distinct traces of a
+hole having been drilled in the case and subsequently plugged up
+with a piece of melted chocolate.</p>
+
+<p>It was now plain to the police that foul play was in question.</p>
+
+<p>A deliberate attempt had been made to murder Sir Eustace
+Pennefather. The would-be murderer had acquired a box of
+Mason’s chocolate liqueurs; separated those in which a flavour of
+almonds would not come amiss; drilled a small hole in each and
+drained it of its contents; injected, probably with a fountain-pen
+filler, the dose of poison; filled the cavity up from the mixture
+of former fillings; carefully stopped the hole, and re-wrapped it
+in its silver-paper covering. A meticulous business, meticulously
+carried out.</p>
+
+<p>The covering letter and wrapper which had arrived with the
+box of chocolates now became of paramount importance, and
+the inspector who had had the foresight to rescue these from
+destruction had occasion to pat himself on the back. Together
+with the box itself and the remaining chocolates, they formed
+the only material clues to this cold-blooded murder.</p>
+
+<p>Taking them with him, the Chief Inspector now in charge of
+the case called on the managing director of Mason &amp; Sons, and
+without informing him of the circumstances as to how it had
+come into his possession, laid the letter before him and invited
+him to explain certain points in connection with it. How many of
+these (the managing director was asked) had been sent out, who
+knew of this one, and who could have had a chance of handling
+the box that was sent to Sir Eustace?</p>
+
+<p>If the police had hoped to surprise Mr. Mason, the result was
+nothing compared with the way in which Mr. Mason surprised
+the police.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, sir?” prompted the Chief Inspector, when it seemed as
+if Mr. Mason would go on examining the letter all day.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mason adjusted his glasses to the angle for examining
+Chief Inspectors instead of letters. He was a small, rather fierce,
+elderly man who had begun life in a back street in Huddersfield,
+and did not intend any one to forget it.</p>
+
+<p>“Where the devil did you get this?” he asked. The papers, it
+must be remembered, had not yet got hold of the sensational
+aspect of Mrs. Bendix’s death.</p>
+
+<p>“I came,” replied the Chief Inspector with dignity, “to ask
+you about your sending it out, sir, not tell you about my getting
+hold of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then you can go to the devil,” replied Mr. Mason with decision.
+“And take Scotland Yard with you,” he added, by way of a
+comprehensive afterthought.</p>
+
+<p>“I must warn you, sir,” said the Chief Inspector, somewhat
+taken aback but concealing the fact beneath his weightiest manner,
+“I must warn you that it may be a serious matter for you to refuse
+to answer my questions.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Mason, it appeared, was exasperated rather than intimidated
+by this covert threat. “Get out o’ ma office,” he replied
+in his native tongue. “Are ye druffen, man? Or do ye just think
+you’re funny? Ye know as well as I do that that letter was never
+sent out from ’ere.”</p>
+
+<p>It was then that the Chief Inspector became surprised. “Not—not
+sent out by your firm at all?” he yammered. It was a possibility
+that had not occurred to him. “It’s—forged, then?”</p>
+
+<p>“Isn’t that what I’m telling ye?” growled the old man, regarding
+him fiercely from under bushy brows. But the Chief Inspector’s
+evident astonishment had mollified him somewhat.</p>
+
+<p>“Sir,” said that official, “I must ask you to be good enough to
+answer my questions as fully as possible. It’s a case of murder I’m
+investigating, and—” he paused and thought cunningly “—and the
+murderer seems to have been making free use of your business
+to cloak his operations.”</p>
+
+<p>The cunning of the Chief Inspector prevailed. “The devil ’e
+’as!” roared the old man. “Damn the blackguard. Ask any
+questions thou wants, lad; I’ll answer right enough.”</p>
+
+<p>Communication thus being established, the Chief Inspector
+proceeded to get to grips.</p>
+
+<p>During the next five minutes his heart sank lower and lower.
+In place of the simple case he had anticipated it became rapidly
+plain to him that the affair was going to be very difficult indeed.
+Hitherto he had thought (and his superiors had agreed with
+him) that the case was going to prove one of sudden temptation.
+Somebody in the Mason firm had a grudge against Sir Eustace.
+Into his (or more probably, as the Chief Inspector had considered,
+her) hands had fallen the box and letter addressed to him.
+The opportunity had been obvious, the means, in the shape of
+nitrobenzene in use in the factory, ready to hand; the result had
+followed. Such a culprit would be easy enough to trace.</p>
+
+<p>But now, it seemed, this pleasant theory must be abandoned,
+for in the first place no such letter as this had ever been sent out at
+all; the firm had produced no new brand of chocolates, if they had
+done so it was not their custom to dispense sample boxes among
+private individuals, the letter was a forgery. But the notepaper on
+the other hand (and this was the only remnant left to support the
+theory) was perfectly genuine, so far as the old man could tell.
+He could not say for certain, but was almost sure that this was a
+piece of old stock which had been finished up about six months
+ago. The heading might be forged, but he did not think so.</p>
+
+<p>“Six months ago?” queried the Inspector unhappily.</p>
+
+<p>“About that,” said the other, and plucked a piece of paper
+out of a stand in front of him. “This is what we use now.” The
+Inspector examined it. There was no doubt of the difference. The
+new paper was thinner and more glossy. But the heading looked
+exactly the same. The Inspector took a note of the firm who had
+printed both.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately no sample of the old paper was available. Mr.
+Mason had a search made on the spot, but not a sheet was left.</p>
+
+<p>“As a matter of fact,” Moresby now said, “it had been noticed
+that the piece of paper on which the letter was written was an
+old one. It is distinctly yellow round the edges. I’ll pass it round
+and you can see for yourselves. Please be careful of it.” The bit
+of paper, once handled by a murderer, passed slowly from each
+would-be detective to his neighbour.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, to cut a long story shorter,” Moresby went on, “we had
+it examined by the firm of printers, Webster’s, in Frith Street, and
+they’re prepared to swear that it’s their work. That means the
+paper was genuine, worse luck.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean, of course,” put in Sir Charles Wildman impressively,
+“that had the heading been a copy, the task of discovering
+the printers who executed it should have been comparatively
+simple?”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s correct, Sir Charles. Except if it had been done by
+somebody who owned a small press of their own; but that would
+have been traceable too. All we’ve actually got is that the murderer
+is someone who had access to Mason’s notepaper up to six months
+ago; and that’s pretty wide.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you think it was stolen with the actual intention of putting
+it to the purpose for which it was used?” asked Alicia Dammers.</p>
+
+<p>“It seems like it, madam. And something kept holding the
+murderer up.”</p>
+
+<p>As regards the wrapper, Mr. Mason had been unable to help at
+all. This consisted simply of a piece of ordinary, thin brown paper,
+such as could be bought anywhere, with Sir Eustace’s name and
+address hand-printed on it in neat capitals. Apparently there was
+nothing to be learnt from it at all. The post-mark showed that it had
+been despatched by the nine-thirty <span class="sc">p. m.</span> post from the
+post office in Southampton Street, Strand.</p>
+
+<p>“There is a collection at 8.30 and another at 9.30,” Moresby
+explained, “so it must have been posted between those two times.
+The packet was quite small enough to go into the opening for
+letters. The stamps make up the right value. The post office was
+shut by then, so it could not have been handed in over the counter.
+Perhaps you’d care to see it.” The piece of brown paper was
+handed gravely round.</p>
+
+<p>“Have you brought the box too, and the other chocolates?”
+asked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.</p>
+
+<p>“No, madam. It was one of Mason’s ordinary boxes, and the
+chocolates have all been used for analysis.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh!” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was plainly disappointed. “I
+thought there might be finger-prints on it,” she explained.</p>
+
+<p>“We have already looked for those,” replied Moresby without
+a flicker.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause while the wrapper passed from hand to
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>“Naturally, we’ve made inquiries as to any one seen posting a
+packet in Southampton Street between half-past eight and half-past
+nine,” Moresby continued, “but without result. We’ve also carefully
+interrogated Sir Eustace Pennefather to discover whether he
+could throw any light on the question why any one should wish to
+take his life, or who. Sir Eustace can’t give us the faintest idea. Of
+course we followed up the usual line of inquiry as to who would
+benefit by his death, but without any helpful results. Most of his
+possessions go to his wife, who has a divorce suit pending against
+him; and she’s out of the country. We’ve checked her movements
+and she’s out of the question. Besides,” added Moresby
+unprofessionally, “she’s a very nice lady.</p>
+
+<p>“And as to facts, all we know is that the murderer probably
+had some connection with Mason &amp; Sons up to six months ago,
+and was almost certainly in Southampton Street at some time
+between eight-thirty and nine-thirty on that particular evening.
+I’m very much afraid we’re up against a brick wall.” Moresby did
+not add that so were the amateur criminologists in front of him
+too, but he very distinctly implied it.</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence.</p>
+
+<p>“Is that all?” asked Roger.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s all, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby agreed.</p>
+
+<p>There was another silence.</p>
+
+<p>“Surely the police have a theory?” Mr. Morton Harrogate
+Bradley threw out in a detached manner.</p>
+
+<p>Moresby hesitated perceptibly.</p>
+
+<p>“Come along, Moresby,” Roger encouraged him. “It’s quite a
+simple theory. I know it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said Moresby, thus stimulated, “we’re inclined to
+believe that the crime was the work of a lunatic, or semi-lunatic,
+possibly quite unknown personally to Sir Eustace. You see . . .”
+Moresby looked a trifle embarrassed. “You see,” he went on
+bravely, “Sir Eustace’s life was a bit, well, we might say hectic, if
+you’ll excuse the word. We think at the Yard that some religious
+or social maniac took it on himself to rid the world of him, so
+to speak. Some of his escapades had caused a bit of talk, as you
+may know.</p>
+
+<p>“Or it might just be a plain homicidal lunatic, who likes killing
+people at a distance.</p>
+
+<p>“There’s the Horwood case, you see. Some lunatic sent poisoned
+chocolates to the Commissioner of Police himself. That
+caused a lot of attention. We think this case may be an echo of it.
+A case that creates a good deal of notice is quite often followed
+by another on exactly the same lines, as I needn’t remind you.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, that’s our theory. And if it’s the right one, we’ve got
+about as much chance of laying our hands on the murderer
+as—as—” Chief Inspector Moresby cast about for something really
+scathing.</p>
+
+<p>“As we have,” suggested Roger.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch04">
+
+<h2>Chapter IV</h2>
+
+<p>The Circle sat on for some time after Moresby had
+gone. There was a lot to discuss, and everybody had views
+to put forward, suggestions to make, and theories to advance.</p>
+
+<p>One thing emerged with singular unanimity: the police had
+been working on the wrong lines. Their theory must be mistaken.
+This was not a casual murder by a chance lunatic. Somebody very
+definite had gone methodically about the business of helping Sir
+Eustace out of the world, and that somebody had behind him an
+equally definite motive. Like almost all murders, in fact, it was a
+matter of <i lang="fr">cherchez le motif</i>.</p>
+
+<p>On the exposition and discussion of theories Roger kept a
+firmly quelling hand. The whole object of the experiment, as he
+pointed out more than once, was that everybody should work
+independently, without bias from any other brain, form his or
+her own theory, and set about proving it in his or her own way.</p>
+
+<p>“But oughtn’t we to pool our facts, Sheringham?” boomed Sir
+Charles. “I should suggest that though we pursue our investigations
+independently, any new facts we discover should be placed
+at once at the disposal of all. The exercise should be a mental one,
+not a competition in routine-detection.”</p>
+
+<p>“There’s a lot to be said for that view, Sir Charles,” Roger
+agreed. “In fact, I’ve thought it over very carefully. But on the
+whole I think it will be better if we keep any new facts to
+ourselves after this evening. You see, we’re already in possession of
+all the facts that the police have discovered, and anything else we
+may come across isn’t likely to be so much a definite pointer to
+the murderer as some little thing, quite insignificant in itself, to
+support a particular theory.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles grunted, obviously unconvinced.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m quite willing to have it put to the vote,” Roger said
+handsomely.</p>
+
+<p>A vote was taken. Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+voted for all facts being disclosed: Mr. Bradley, Alicia Dammers,
+Mr. Chitterwick (the last after considerable hesitation) and Roger
+voted against.</p>
+
+<p>“We retain our own facts,” Roger said, and made a mental
+note of who had voted for each. He was inclined to guess that
+the voting indicated pretty correctly who was going to be content
+with general theorising, and who was ready to enter so far into
+the spirit of the game as to go out and work for it. Or it might
+simply show who already had a theory and who had not.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles accepted the result with resignation.</p>
+
+<p>“We start equal as from now, then,” he announced.</p>
+
+<p>“As from the moment we leave this room,” amended Morton
+Harrogate Bradley, rearranging the set of his tie. “But I agree so
+far with Sir Charles’s proposition as to think that any one who
+can at this moment add anything to the Chief Inspector’s
+statement should do so.”</p>
+
+<p>“But can any one?” asked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.</p>
+
+<p>“Sir Charles knows Mr. and Mrs. Bendix,” Alicia Dammers
+pointed out impartially. “And Sir Eustace. And I know Sir Eustace
+too, of course.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger smiled. This statement was a characteristic meiosis on
+the part of Miss Dammers. Everybody knew that Miss Dammers
+had been the only woman (so far as rumour recorded) who had
+ever turned the tables on Sir Eustace Pennefather. Sir Eustace had
+taken it into his head to add the scalp of an intellectual woman
+to those other rather unintellectual ones which already dangled
+at his belt. Alicia Dammers, with her good looks, her tall, slim
+figure, and her irreproachable sartorial taste, had satisfied his
+very fastidious requirements so far as feminine appearance was
+concerned. He had laid himself out to fascinate.</p>
+
+<p>The results had been watched by the large circle of Miss
+Dammers’s friends with considerable joy. Miss Dammers had
+apparently been only too ready to be fascinated. It seemed that
+she was living entirely on the point of succumbing to Sir Eustace’s
+blandishments. They had dined, visited, lunched and made
+excursions together without respite. Sir Eustace, stimulated by the
+daily prospect of surrender on the following one, had exercised
+his ardour with every art he knew.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers had then retired serenely, and the next autumn
+published a book in which Sir Eustace Pennefather, dissected to
+the last ligament, was given to the world in all the naked
+unpleasingness of his psychological anatomy.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers never talked about her “art,” because she was
+a really brilliant writer and not just pretending to be one, but she
+certainly held that everything had to be sacrificed (including the
+feelings of the Sir Eustace Pennefathers of this world) to whatever
+god she worshipped privately in place of it.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. and Mrs. Bendix are quite incidental to the crime, of
+course, from the murderer’s point of view,” Mr. Bradley now
+pointed out to her, in the gentle tones of one instructing a child
+that the letter A is followed in the alphabet by the letter B. “So
+far as we know, their only connection with Sir Eustace is that he
+and Bendix both belonged to the Rainbow.”</p>
+
+<p>“I needn’t give you my opinion of Sir Eustace,” remarked
+Miss Dammers. “Those of you who have read <i>Flesh and the Devil</i>
+know how I saw him, and I have no reason to suppose that he
+has changed since I was studying him. But I claim no infallibility.
+It would be interesting to hear whether Sir Charles’s opinion
+coincides with mine or not.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles, who had not read <i>Flesh and the Devil</i>, looked a
+little embarrassed. “Well, I don’t see that I can add much to the
+impression the Chief Inspector gave of him. I don’t know the man
+well, and certainly have no wish to do so.”</p>
+
+<p>Everybody looked extremely innocent. It was common gossip
+that there had been the possibility of an engagement between
+Sir Eustace and Sir Charles’s only daughter, and that Sir Charles
+had not viewed the prospect with any perceptible joy. It was
+further known that the engagement had even been prematurely
+announced, and promptly denied the next day.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles tried to look as innocent as everybody else. “As the
+Chief Inspector hinted, he is something of a bad lot. Some people
+might go so far as to call him a blackguard. Women,” explained
+Sir Charles bluntly. “And he drinks too much,” he added. It was
+plain that Sir Charles Wildman did not approve of Sir Eustace
+Pennefather.</p>
+
+<p>“I can add one small point, of purely psychological value,”
+amplified Alicia Dammers. “But it shows the dullness of his
+reactions. Even in the short time since the tragedy rumour has joined
+the name of Sir Eustace to that of a fresh woman. I was somewhat
+surprised to hear that,” added Miss Dammers drily. “I should have
+been inclined to give him credit for being a little more upset by
+the terrible mistake, and its fortunate consequences to himself,
+even though Mrs. Bendix was a total stranger to him.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, by the way, I should have corrected that impression earlier,”
+observed Sir Charles. “Mrs. Bendix was not a total stranger
+to Sir Eustace, though he may probably have forgotten ever meeting
+her. But he did. I was talking to Mrs. Bendix one evening at
+a first night (I forget the play) and Sir Eustace came up to me. I
+introduced them, mentioning something about Bendix being a
+member of the Rainbow. I’d almost forgotten.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then I’m afraid I was completely wrong about him,” said
+Miss Dammers, chagrined. “I was far too kind.” To be too kind
+in the dissecting-room was evidently, in Miss Dammers’s opinion,
+a far greater crime than being too unkind.</p>
+
+<p>“As for Bendix,” said Sir Charles rather vaguely, “I don’t know
+that I can add anything to your knowledge of him. Quite a decent,
+steady fellow. Head not turned by his money in the least, rich as
+he is. His wife too, charming woman. A little serious perhaps.
+Sort of woman who likes sitting on committees. Not that that’s
+anything against her though.”</p>
+
+<p>“Rather the reverse, I should have said,” observed Miss
+Dammers, who liked sitting on committees herself.</p>
+
+<p>“Quite, quite,” said Sir Charles hastily, remembering Miss
+Dammers’s curious predilections. “And she wasn’t too serious to
+make a bet, evidently, although it was a trifling one.”</p>
+
+<p>“She had another bet, that she knew nothing about,” chanted
+in solemn tones Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, who was already
+pondering the dramatic possibilities of the situation. “Not a
+trifling one: a grim one. It was with Death, and she lost it.” Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming was regrettably inclined to carry her dramatic
+sense into her ordinary life. It did not go at all well with her
+culinary aspect.</p>
+
+<p>She eyed Alicia Dammers covertly, wondering whether she
+could get in with a play before that lady cut the ground away
+from under her with a book.</p>
+
+<p>Roger, as chairman, took steps to bring the discussion back
+to relevancies. “Yes, poor woman. But after all, we mustn’t let
+ourselves confuse the issue. It’s rather difficult to remember that
+the murdered person has no connection with the crime at all, so
+to speak, but there it is. Just by accident the wrong person died; it’s
+on Sir Eustace that we have to concentrate. Now, does anybody
+else here know Sir Eustace, or anything about him, or any other
+fact bearing on the crime?”</p>
+
+<p>Nobody responded.</p>
+
+<p>“Then we’re all on the same footing. And now, about our next
+meeting. I suggest that we have a clear week for formulating our
+theories and carrying out any investigations we think necessary,
+that we then meet on consecutive evenings, beginning with next
+Monday, and that we now draw lots as to the order in which we
+are to read our several papers or give our conclusions. Or does any
+one think we should have more than one speaker each evening?”</p>
+
+<p>After a little talk it was decided to meet again on Monday, that
+day week, and for purposes of fuller discussion allot one evening
+to each member. Lots were then drawn, with the result that
+members were to speak in the following order: (1) Sir Charles
+Wildman, (2) Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, (3) Mr. Morton Harrogate
+Bradley, (4) Roger Sheringham, (5) Alicia Dammers, and (6) Mr.
+Ambrose Chitterwick.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick brightened considerably when his name was
+announced as last on the list. “By that time,” he confided to Morton
+Harrogate, “somebody is quite sure to have discovered the right
+solution, and I shall therefore not have to give my own conclusions.
+If indeed,” he added dubiously, “I ever reach any. Tell me,
+how <em>does</em> a detective really set to work?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley smiled kindly and promised to lend Mr. Chitterwick
+one of his own books. Mr. Chitterwick, who had read them all and
+possessed most of them, thanked him very gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>Before the meeting finally broke up, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming could
+not resist one more opportunity of being mildly dramatic. “How
+strange life is,” she sighed across the table to Sir Charles. “I actually
+saw Mrs. Bendix and her husband in their box at the Imperial the
+night before she died. (Oh, yes; I knew them by sight. They often
+came to my first nights.) I was in a stall almost directly under their
+box. Indeed life is certainly stranger than fiction. If I could have
+guessed for one minute at the dreadful fate hanging over her, I—”</p>
+
+<p>“You’d have had the sense to warn her to steer clear of chocolates,
+I hope,” observed Sir Charles, who did not hold very much
+with Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting then broke up.</p>
+
+<p>Roger returned to his rooms in the Albany feeling exceedingly
+pleased with himself. He had a suspicion that the various attempts
+at a solution were going to be almost as interesting to him as the
+problem itself.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless he was on his mettle. He had not been very lucky
+in the draw and would have preferred the place of Mr. Chitterwick,
+which would have meant that he would have the advantage of
+already knowing the results achieved by his rivals before having to
+disclose his own. Not that he intended to rely on others’ brains in
+the least; like Mr. Morton Harrogate Bradley he already had a theory
+of his own; but it would have been pleasant to be able to weigh up
+and criticise the efforts of Sir Charles, Mr. Bradley and particularly
+Alicia Dammers (to these three he gave credit for possessing the
+best minds in the Circle) before irrevocably committing himself.
+And more than any other crime in which he had been interested,
+it seemed to him, he wanted to find the right solution of this one.</p>
+
+<p>To his surprise when he got back to his rooms he found
+Moresby waiting in his sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, Mr. Sheringham,” said that cautious official. “Thought
+you wouldn’t mind me waiting here for a word with you. Not in
+a great hurry to go to bed, are you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not in the least,” said Roger, doing things with a decanter and
+syphon. “It’s early yet. Say when.”</p>
+
+<p>Moresby looked discreetly the other way.</p>
+
+<p>When they were settled in two huge leather armchairs before
+the fire Moresby explained himself. “As a matter of fact, Mr.
+Sheringham, the Chief’s deputed me to keep a sort of unofficial
+eye on you and your friends over this business. Not that we don’t
+trust you, or think you won’t be discreet, or anything like that,
+but it’s better for us to know just what’s going on with a
+massed-detective attack like this.”</p>
+
+<p>“So that if any of us finds out something really important, you
+can nip in first and make use of it,” Roger smiled. “Yes, I quite see
+the official point.”</p>
+
+<p>“So that we can take measures to prevent the bird from
+being scared,” Moresby corrected reproachfully. “That’s all, Mr.
+Sheringham.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is it?” said Roger, with unconcealed scepticism. “But you don’t
+think it very likely that your protecting hand will be required, eh,
+Moresby?”</p>
+
+<p>“Frankly, sir, I don’t. We’re not in the habit of giving up a case
+so long as we think there’s the least chance of finding the criminal;
+and Detective-Inspector Farrar, who’s been in charge of this one,
+is a capable man.”</p>
+
+<p>“And that’s his theory, that it’s the work of some criminal
+lunatic, quite untraceable?”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s the opinion he’s been led to form, Mr. Sheringham, sir.
+But there’s no harm in your Circle amusing themselves,” added
+Moresby magnanimously, “if they want to and they’ve got the
+time to waste.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, well,” said Roger, refusing to be drawn.</p>
+
+<p>They smoked their pipes in silence for a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>“Come along, Moresby,” Roger said gently.</p>
+
+<p>The chief inspector looked at him with an expression that
+indicated nothing but bland surprise. “Sir?”</p>
+
+<p>Roger shook his head. “It won’t wash, Moresby; it won’t wash.
+Come along, now; out with it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Out with what, Mr. Sheringham?” queried Moresby, the
+picture of innocent bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>“Your real reason for coming round here,” Roger said nastily.
+“Wanted to pump me, for the benefit of that effete institution
+you represent, I suppose? Well, I warn you, there’s nothing doing
+this time. I know you better than I did eighteen months ago at
+Ludmouth, remember.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, what can have put such an idea as that into your head,
+Mr. Sheringham, sir?” positively gasped that much misunderstood
+man, Chief Inspector Moresby, of Scotland Yard. “I came round
+because I thought you might like to ask me a few questions, to
+give you a leg up in finding the murderer before any of your
+friends could. That’s all.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger laughed. “Moresby, I like you. You’re a bright spot in
+a dull world. I expect you try to persuade the very criminals you
+arrest that it hurts you more than it does them. And I shouldn’t be
+at all surprised if you don’t somehow make them believe it. Very
+well, if that’s all you came round for I’ll ask you some questions,
+and thank you very much. Tell me this, then. Who do <em>you</em> think
+was trying to murder Sir Eustace Pennefather?”</p>
+
+<p>Moresby sipped delicately at his whisky-and-soda. “You know
+what I think, Mr. Sheringham, sir.”</p>
+
+<p>“Indeed I don’t,” Roger retorted. “I only know what you’ve
+told me you think.”</p>
+
+<p>“I haven’t been in charge of the case at all, Mr. Sheringham,”
+Moresby hedged.</p>
+
+<p>“Who do you really think was trying to murder Sir Eustace
+Pennefather?” Roger repeated patiently. “Is it your own opinion
+that the official police theory is right or wrong?”</p>
+
+<p>Driven into a corner, Moresby allowed himself the novelty of
+speaking his unofficial mind. He smiled covertly, as if at a secret
+thought. “Well, Mr. Sheringham, sir,” he said with deliberation,
+“our theory is a useful one, isn’t it? I mean, it gives us every excuse
+for not finding the murderer. We can hardly be expected to be
+in touch with every half-baked creature in the country who may
+have homicidal impulses.</p>
+
+<p>“Our theory will be put forward at the conclusion of the
+adjourned inquest, in about a fortnight’s time, with reason and
+evidence to support it, and any evidence to the contrary not
+mentioned, and you’ll see that the coroner will agree with it, and
+the jury will agree with it, and the papers will agree with it, and
+every one will say that really, the police can’t be blamed for not
+catching the murderer this time, and everybody will be happy.”</p>
+
+<p>“Except Mr. Bendix, who doesn’t get his wife’s murder
+avenged,” added Roger. “Moresby, you’re being positively sarcastic.
+And from all this I deduce that you personally will stand
+aside from this general and amicable agreement. Do you think
+the case has been badly handled by your people?”</p>
+
+<p>Roger’s last question followed so closely on the heels of his
+previous remarks that Moresby had answered it almost before he
+had time to reflect on the possible indiscretion of doing so. “No,
+Mr. Sheringham, I don’t think that. Farrar’s a capable man, and
+he’d leave no stone unturned—no stone, I mean, that he <em>could</em>
+turn.” Moresby paused significantly.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” said Roger.</p>
+
+<p>Having committed himself to this lamb, Moresby seemed
+disposed to look about for a sheep. He re-settled himself in his
+chair and recklessly drank a gill from his tumbler. Roger, scarcely
+daring to breathe too audibly for fear of scaring the sheep,
+studiously examined the fire.</p>
+
+<p>“You see, this is a very difficult case, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby
+pronounced. “Farrar had an open mind, of course, when he took
+it up, and he kept an open mind even after he’d found out that
+Sir Eustace was even a bit more of a daisy than he’d imagined
+at first. That is to say, he never lost sight of the fact that it <em>might</em>
+have been some outside lunatic who sent those chocolates to Sir
+Eustace, just out of a general socialistic or religious feeling that
+he’d be doing a favour to society or Heaven by putting him out
+of the world. A fanatic, you might say.”</p>
+
+<p>“Murder from conviction,” Roger murmured. “Yes?”</p>
+
+<p>“But naturally what Farrar was concentrating on was Sir
+Eustace’s private life. And that’s where we police-officers are
+handicapped. It’s not easy for us to make enquiries into the private
+life of a baronet. Nobody wants to be helpful; everybody seems
+anxious to put a spoke in our wheel. Every line that looked hopeful
+to Farrar led to a dead end. Sir Eustace himself told him to go
+to the devil, and made no bones about it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Naturally, from his point of view,” Roger said thoughtfully.
+“The last thing he’d want would be a sheaf of his peccadilloes
+laid out for a harvest festival in court.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, and Mrs. Bendix lying in her grave on account of them,”
+retorted Moresby with asperity. “No, he was responsible for her
+death, though indirectly enough I’ll admit, and it was up to him
+to be as helpful as he could to the police-officer investigating the
+case. But there Farrar was; couldn’t get any further. He unearthed
+a scandal or two, it’s true, but they led to nothing. So—well, he
+hasn’t admitted this, Mr. Sheringham, and you’ll realise I ought
+not to be telling you; it’s to go no further than this room, mind.”</p>
+
+<p>“Good heavens, no,” Roger said eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>“Well then, it’s my private opinion that Farrar was driven to
+the other conclusion in self-defence. And the chief had to agree
+with it in self-defence too. But if you want to get to the bottom
+of the business, Mr. Sheringham (and nobody would be more
+pleased if you did than Farrar himself) my advice to you is to
+concentrate on Sir Eustace’s private life. You’ve a better chance
+than any of us there; you’re on his level, you’ll know members
+of his club, you’ll know his friends personally, and the friends
+of his friends. And that,” concluded Moresby, “is the tip I really
+came round to give you.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s very decent of you, Moresby,” Roger said with warmth.
+“Very decent indeed. Have another spot.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, thank you, Mr. Sheringham, sir,” said Chief Inspector
+Moresby. “I don’t mind if I do.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger was meditating as he mixed the drinks. “I believe you’re
+right, Moresby,” he said slowly. “In fact, I’ve been thinking along
+those lines ever since I read the first full account. The truth lies
+in Sir Eustace’s private life, I feel sure. And if I were
+superstitious, which I’m not, do you know what I should believe? That
+the murderer’s aim misfired and Sir Eustace escaped death for an
+express purpose of Providence: so that he, the destined victim,
+should be the ironical instrument of bringing his own intended
+murderer to justice.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Mr. Sheringham, would you really?” said the sarcastic
+Chief Inspector, who was not superstitious either.</p>
+
+<p>Roger seemed rather taken with the idea. “<i>Chance, the Avenger.</i>
+Make a good film title, wouldn’t it? But there’s a terrible lot of
+truth in it.</p>
+
+<p>“How often don’t you people at the Yard stumble on some
+vital piece of evidence out of pure chance? How often isn’t it that
+you’re led to the right solution by what seems a series of mere
+coincidences? I’m not belittling your detective-work; but just think
+how often a piece of brilliant detective-work which has led you
+most of the way but not the last vital few inches, meets with some
+remarkable stroke of sheer luck (thoroughly well-deserved luck,
+no doubt, but <em>luck</em>), which just makes the case complete for you. I
+can think of scores of instances. The Milsom and Fowler murder,
+for example. Don’t you see what I mean? Is it chance every time,
+or is it Providence avenging the victim?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Mr. Sheringham,” said Chief Inspector Moresby, “to
+tell you the truth, I don’t mind what it is, so long as it lets me put
+my hands on the right man.”</p>
+
+<p>“Moresby,” laughed Roger, “you’re hopeless.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch05">
+
+<h2>Chapter V</h2>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Wildman, as he had said, cared more for
+honest facts than for psychological fiddle-faddle.</p>
+
+<p>Facts were very dear to Sir Charles. More, they were meat
+and drink to him. His income of roughly thirty thousand pounds
+a year was derived entirely from the masterful way in which he
+was able to handle facts. There was no one at the bar who could
+so convincingly distort an honest but awkward fact into carrying
+an entirely different interpretation from that which any ordinary
+person (counsel for the prosecution, for instance) would have put
+upon it. He could take that fact, look it boldly in the face, twist
+it round, read a message from the back of its neck, turn it inside
+out and detect auguries in its entrails, dance triumphantly on its
+corpse, pulverise it completely, re-mould it if necessary into an
+utterly different shape, and finally, if the fact still had the temerity
+to retain any vestige of its primary aspect, bellow at it in the
+most terrifying manner. If that failed he was quite prepared to
+weep at it in open court.</p>
+
+<p>No wonder that Sir Charles Wildman, K.C., was paid that
+amount of money every year to transform facts of menacing
+appearance to his clients into so many sucking-doves, each cooing
+those very clients’ tender innocence. If the reader is interested in
+statistics it might be added that the number of murderers whom
+Sir Charles in the course of his career had saved from the gallows,
+if placed one on top of the other, would have reached to a very
+great height indeed.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles Wildman had rarely appeared for the prosecution.
+It is not considered etiquette for prosecuting counsel to bellow,
+and there is scant need for their tears. His bellowing and his public
+tears were Sir Charles Wildman’s long suit. He was one of the
+old school, one of its very last representatives; and he found that
+the old school paid him handsomely.</p>
+
+<p>When therefore he looked impressively round the Crimes
+Circle on its next meeting, one week after Roger had put forward
+his proposal, and adjusted the gold-rimmed pince-nez on his
+somewhat massive nose, the other members could feel no doubt
+as to the quality of the entertainment in store for them. After
+all, they were going to enjoy for nothing what amounted to a
+thousand-guinea brief for the prosecution.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles glanced at the note-pad in his hand and cleared
+his throat. No barrister could clear his throat quite so ominously
+as Sir Charles.</p>
+
+<p>“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, in weighty tones, “it is not
+unnatural that I should have been more interested in this murder
+than perhaps any one else, for personal reasons which will no
+doubt have occurred to you already. Sir Eustace Pennefather’s
+name, as you must know, has been mentioned in connection with
+that of my daughter; and though the report of their engagement
+was not merely premature, but utterly without foundation, it is
+inevitable that I should feel some personal connection, however
+slight, with this attempt to assassinate a man who has been
+mentioned as a possible son-in-law to myself.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not wish to stress this personal aspect of the case, which
+otherwise I have tried to view as impersonally as any other with
+which I have been connected; but I put it forward more as an
+excuse than anything. For it has enabled me to approach the
+problem set us by our President with a more intimate knowledge
+of the persons concerned than the rest of you could have, and
+with, too, I fear, information at my disposal which goes a long
+way towards indicating the truth of this mystery.</p>
+
+<p>“I know that I should have placed this information at the
+disposal of my fellow-members last week, and I apologise to them
+wholeheartedly for not having done so; but the truth is that I
+did not realise then that this knowledge of mine was in any way
+germane to the solution, or even remotely helpful, and it is only
+since I began to ponder over the case with a view to clearing up
+the tragic tangle, that the vital import of this information has
+impressed itself upon me.” Sir Charles paused and allowed his
+resounding periods to echo round the room.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, with its help,” he pronounced, looking severely from
+face to face, “I am of opinion that I have read this riddle.”</p>
+
+<p>A twitter of excitement, no less genuine because obviously
+awaited, ran round the faithful Circle.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles whisked off his pince-nez and swung them, in a
+characteristic gesture, on their broad ribbon. “Yes, I think, in fact
+I am sure, that I am about to elucidate this dark business to you.
+And for this reason I regret that the lot has fallen upon me to speak
+first. It would have been more interesting perhaps had we been
+permitted to examine some other theories first, and demonstrate
+their falsity, before we probed to the truth. That is, assuming that
+there are other theories to examine.</p>
+
+<p>“It would not surprise me, however, to learn that you had all
+leapt to the conclusion to which I have been driven. Not in the
+least. I claim no extraordinary powers in allowing the facts to speak
+to me for themselves; I pride myself on no superhuman insight
+in having been able to see further into this dark business than
+our official solvers of mysteries and readers of strange riddles,
+the trained detective force. Very much the reverse. I am only an
+ordinary human being, endowed with no more powers than any
+of my fellow-creatures. It would not astonish me for an instant to
+be apprised that I am only following in the footsteps of others of
+you in fixing the guilt on the individual who did, as I submit I am
+about to prove to you beyond any possibility of doubt, commit
+this foul crime.”</p>
+
+<p>Having thus provided for the improbable contingency of some
+other member of the Circle having been so clever as himself, Sir
+Charles cut some of the cackle and got down to business.</p>
+
+<p>“I set about this matter with one question in my mind and
+one only—the question to which the right answer has proved
+a sure guide to the criminal in almost every murder that has
+ever been committed, the question which hardly any criminal
+can avoid leaving behind him, damning though he knows the
+answer must be: the question—<i>cui bono?</i>” Sir Charles allowed a
+pregnant moment of silence. “Who,” he translated obligingly,
+“was the gainer? Who,” he paraphrased, for the benefit of any
+possible half-wits in his audience, “would, to put it bluntly, <em>score</em>
+by the death of Sir Eustace Pennefather?” He darted looks of
+enquiry from under his tufted eyebrows, but his hearers
+dutifully played the game; nobody undertook to enlighten him
+prematurely.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles was far too practised a rhetorician to enlighten
+them prematurely himself. Leaving the question as an immense
+query-mark in their minds, he veered off on another track.</p>
+
+<p>“Now there were, as I saw it, only three definite clues in this
+crime,” he continued, in almost conversational tones. “I refer of
+course to the forged letter, the wrapper, and the chocolates themselves.
+Of these the wrapper could only be helpful so far as its post-mark.
+The hand-printed address I dismissed as useless. It could
+have been done by any one, at any time. It led, I felt, nowhere.
+And I could not see that the chocolates or the box that contained
+them were of the least use as evidence. I may be wrong, but I
+could not see it. They were specimens of a well-known brand,
+on sale at hundreds of shops; it would be fruitless to attempt to
+trace their purchaser. Moreover any possibilities in that direction
+would quite certainly have been explored already by the police. I
+was left, in short, with only two pieces of material evidence, the
+forged letter and the post-mark on the wrapper, on which the
+whole structure of proof must be erected.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles paused again, to let the magnitude of this task
+sink into the minds of the others; apparently he had overlooked
+the fact that his problem must have been common to all. Roger,
+who with difficulty had remained silent so long, interposed a
+gentle question.</p>
+
+<p>“Had you already made up your mind as to the criminal, Sir
+Charles?”</p>
+
+<p>“I had already answered to my own satisfaction the question
+I had posed to myself, to which I made reference a few minutes
+ago,” replied Sir Charles, with dignity but without explicitness.</p>
+
+<p>“I see. You had made up your mind,” Roger pinned him
+down. “It would be interesting to know, so that we can follow
+better your way of approaching the proof. You used inductive
+methods then?”</p>
+
+<p>“Possibly, possibly,” said Sir Charles testily. Sir Charles strongly
+disliked being pinned down.</p>
+
+<p>He glowered for a moment in silence, to recover from this
+indignity.</p>
+
+<p>“The task, I saw at once,” he resumed, in a sterner voice,
+“was not going to be an easy one. The period at my disposal
+was extremely limited, far-reaching enquiries were obviously
+necessary, my own time was far too closely engaged to permit
+me to make, in person, any investigations I might find advisable.
+I thought the matter over and decided that the only possible way
+in which I could arrive at a conclusion was to consider the facts
+of the case for a sufficient length of time till I was enabled to
+formulate a theory which would stand every test I could apply
+to it out of such knowledge as was already at my disposal, and
+then make a careful list of further points which were outside my
+own knowledge but which must be facts if my theory were correct;
+these points could then be investigated by persons acting on
+my behalf and, if they were substantiated, my theory would be
+conclusively proved.” Sir Charles drew a breath.</p>
+
+<p>“In other words,” Roger murmured with a smile to Alicia
+Dammers, turning a hundred words into six, “ ‘I decided to employ
+inductive methods.’ ” But he spoke so softly that nobody but Miss
+Dammers heard him.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled back appreciatively. The art of the written word is
+not that of the spoken one.</p>
+
+<p>“I formed my theory,” announced Sir Charles, with surprising
+simplicity. Perhaps he was still a little short of breath.</p>
+
+<p>“I formed my theory. Of necessity much of it was guesswork.
+Let me give an example. The possession by the criminal of a sheet
+of Mason &amp; Sons’ notepaper had puzzled me more than anything.
+It was not an article which the individual I had in mind might be
+expected to possess, still less to be able to acquire. I could not
+conceive any method by which, the plot already decided upon
+and the sheet of paper required for its accomplishment, such a
+thing could be deliberately acquired by the individual in question
+without suspicion being raised afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>“I therefore formed the conclusion that it was the actual ability
+to obtain a piece of Mason’s notepaper in a totally unsuspicious
+way, which was the reason of the notepaper of that particular firm
+being employed at all.” Sir Charles looked triumphantly round as
+if awaiting something.</p>
+
+<p>Roger supplied it; no less readily for all that the point must
+have occurred to every one as being almost too obvious to need
+any comment. “That’s a very interesting point indeed, Sir Charles.
+Most ingenious.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles nodded his agreement. “Sheer guesswork, I admit.
+Nothing but guesswork. But guesswork that was justified in the
+result.” Sir Charles was becoming so lost in admiration of his own
+perspicacity that he had forgotten all his love of long, winding
+sentences and smooth-rolling subordinate clauses. His massive
+head positively jerked on his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>“I considered how such a thing might come into one’s possession,
+and whether the possession could be verified afterwards. It
+occurred to me at last that many firms insert a piece of notepaper
+with a receipted bill, with the words ‘With Compliments’ or some
+such phrase typed on it. That gave me three questions. Was this
+practice employed at Mason’s? Had the individual in question an
+account at Mason’s, or more particularly, to explain the yellowed
+edge of the paper, had there been such an account in the past?
+Were there any indications on the paper of such a phrase having
+been carefully erased?</p>
+
+<p>“Ladies and gentlemen,” boomed Sir Charles, puce with excitement,
+“you will see that the odds against those three questions
+being answered in the affirmative were enormous. Overwhelming.
+Before I posed them I knew that, should it prove to be the case,
+no mere chance could be held responsible.” Sir Charles dropped
+his voice. “I knew,” he said slowly, “that if those three questions
+of mine were answered in the affirmative, the individual I had in
+mind must be as guilty as if I had actually watched the poison
+being injected into those chocolates.”</p>
+
+<p>He paused and looked impressively round him, riveting all
+eyes on his face.</p>
+
+<p>“Ladies and gentlemen, those three questions <em>were</em> answered
+in the affirmative.”</p>
+
+<p>Oratory is a powerful art. Roger knew perfectly well that Sir
+Charles, out of sheer force of habit, was employing on them all the
+usual and hackneyed forensic tricks. It was with difficulty, Roger
+felt, that he refrained from adding “of the jury” to his “Ladies
+and gentlemen.” But really this was only what might have been
+expected. Sir Charles had a good story to tell, and a story in which
+he obviously sincerely believed, and he was simply telling it in the
+way which, after all these years of practice, came most naturally
+to him. That was not what was annoying Roger.</p>
+
+<p>What did annoy him was that he himself had been plodding
+on the scent of quite a different hare and, convinced as he had
+been that his must be the right one, had at first been only mildly
+amused as Sir Charles flirted round the skirts of his own quarry.
+Now he had allowed himself to be influenced by mere rhetoric,
+cheap though he knew it to be, into wondering.</p>
+
+<p>But was it only rhetoric that had made him begin to doubt?
+Sir Charles seemed to have some substantial facts to weave into
+the airy web of his oratory. And pompous old fellow though
+he might be, he was certainly no fool. Roger began to feel
+distinctly uneasy. For his own hare, he had to admit, was a very
+elusive one.</p>
+
+<p>As Sir Charles proceeded to develop his thesis, Roger’s
+uneasiness began to turn into downright unhappiness.</p>
+
+<p>“There can be no doubt about it. I ascertained through an
+agent that Mason’s, an old-fashioned firm, invariably paid such
+private customers as had an account with them (nine-tenths of
+their business of course is wholesale) the courtesy of including a
+statement of thanks, just two or three words typed in the middle
+of a sheet of notepaper. I ascertained that this individual had
+had an account with the firm, which was apparently closed five
+months ago; that is to say, a cheque was sent then in settlement
+and no goods have been ordered since.</p>
+
+<p>“Moreover I found time to pay a special visit myself to Scotland
+Yard in order to examine that letter again. By looking at the back
+I could make out quite distinct though indecipherable traces of
+former typewritten words in the middle of the page. These latter
+cut halfway down one of the lines of the letter and so prove that
+they could not have been an erasure from that; they correspond
+in length to the statement I expected; and they show signs of the
+most careful attempts, by rubbing, rolling and re-roughening the
+smoothed paper, to eradicate not only the typewriter-ink but even
+the actual indentations caused by the metal letter-arms.</p>
+
+<p>“This I held to be conclusive proof that my theory was correct,
+and at once I set about clearing up such other doubtful points as
+had occurred to me. Time was short, and I had recourse to no
+less than four firms of trustworthy inquiry-agents among whom
+I divided the task of providing the data I was seeking. This not
+only saved me considerable time, but had the advantage of not
+putting the sum-total of the information obtained into any hands
+but my own. Indeed I did my best so to split up my queries as
+to prevent any of the firms from even guessing what object I
+had in mind; and in this I am of the opinion that I have been
+successful.</p>
+
+<p>“My next care was the post-mark. It was necessary for my
+case that I should prove that my suspect had actually been in
+the neighbourhood of the Strand at the time in question. You
+will say,” suggested Sir Charles, searching the interested faces
+round him, and apparently picking upon Mr. Morton Harrogate
+Bradley as the raiser of this futile objection. “You will say,” said Sir
+Charles sternly to Mr. Bradley, “that this was not necessary. The
+parcel might have been posted quite innocently by an unwitting
+accomplice to whom it had been entrusted, so that the actual
+criminal had an unshakable alibi for that period; the more so as
+the individual to whom I refer was actually not in this country, so
+that it would be all the easier to request a friend who might be
+travelling to England to undertake the task of posting the parcel in
+this country and so saving the cost of the foreign postage, which
+on parcels is not inconsiderable.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not agree,” said Sir Charles to Mr. Bradley, still more
+severely. “I have considered that point, and I do not think the
+individual I have in mind would undertake such a very grave risk. For
+the friend would almost certainly remember the incident when
+she read of the affair in the papers, as would be almost inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>“No,” concluded Sir Charles, finally crushing Mr. Bradley once
+and for all, “I am convinced that the individual I am thinking of
+would realise that nobody else must handle that parcel till it had
+passed into the keeping of the post-office.”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course,” said Mr. Bradley academically, “Lady Pennefather
+may have had not an innocent accomplice but a guilty one. You’ve
+considered that, of course?” Mr. Bradley managed to convey that
+the matter was of no real interest, but as Sir Charles had been
+addressing these remarks directly to him it was only courteous
+to comment on them.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles purpled visibly. He had been priding himself on the
+skilful way in which he had been withholding his suspect’s name,
+to bring it out with a lovely plump right at the end after proving
+his case, just like a real detective story. And now this wretched
+scribbler of the things had spoilt it all.</p>
+
+<p>“Sir,” he intoned, in proper Johnsonian manner, “I must call
+your attention to the fact that I have mentioned no names at all.
+To do such a thing is most imprudent. Do I need to remind you
+that there is such a thing as a law of libel?”</p>
+
+<p>Morton Harrogate smiled his maddeningly superior smile (he
+really was a most insufferable young man). “Really, Sir Charles!”
+he mocked, stroking his little sleek object he wore on his upper lip.
+“I’m not going to write a story about Lady Pennefather trying to
+murder her husband, if that’s what you’re warning me against. Or
+could it possibly be that you were referring to the law of slander?”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles, who had meant slander, enveloped Mr. Bradley
+in a crimson glare.</p>
+
+<p>Roger sped to the rescue. The combatants reminded him of a
+bull and a gadfly, and that is a contest which it is often good fun
+to watch. But the Crimes Circle had been founded to investigate
+the crimes of others, not to provide opportunities for new ones.
+Roger did not particularly like either the bull or the gadfly, but
+both amused him in their different ways; he certainly disliked
+neither. Mr. Bradley on the other hand disliked both Roger and
+Sir Charles. He disliked Roger the more of the two because Roger
+was a gentleman and pretended not to be, whereas he himself was
+not a gentleman and pretended he was. And that surely is cause
+enough to dislike any one.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m glad you raised that point, Sir Charles,” Roger now said
+smoothly. “It’s one we must consider. Personally I don’t see how
+we’re to progress at all unless we come to some arrangement
+concerning the law of slander, do you?”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles consented to be mollified. “It is a difficult point,”
+he agreed, the lawyer in him immediately swamping the outraged
+human being. A born lawyer will turn aside from any other minor
+pursuit, even briefs, for a really knotty legal point, just as a born
+woman will put on her best set of underclothes and powder her
+nose before inserting the latter in the gas-oven.</p>
+
+<p>“I think,” Roger said carefully, anxious not to wound legal
+susceptibilities (it was a bold proposition for a layman to make),
+“that we should disregard that particular law. I mean,” he added
+hastily, observing the look of pain on Sir Charles’s brow at being
+asked to condone this violation of a <i lang="la">lex intangenda</i>, “I mean,
+we should come to some such arrangement as that anything said
+in this room should be without prejudice, or among friends,
+or—or not in the spirit of the adverb,” he plunged desperately,
+“or whatever the legal wriggle is.” On the whole it was not a
+tactful speech.</p>
+
+<p>But it is doubtful whether Sir Charles heard it. A dreamy look
+had come into his eyes, as of a Lord of Appeal crooning over a
+piece of red tape. “Slander, as we all know,” he murmured, “consists
+in the malicious speaking of such words as render the party
+who speaks them in the hearing of others liable to an action at the
+suit of the party to whom they apply. In this case, the imputation
+being of a crime or misdemeanour which is punishable corporeally,
+pecuniary damage would not have to be proved, and, the
+imputation being defamatory, its falsity would be presumed and
+the burden of proving its truth would be laid upon the defendant.
+We should therefore have the interesting situation of the defendant
+in a slander action becoming, in essence, the plaintiff in a civil
+suit for murder. And really,” said Sir Charles in much perplexity,
+“I don’t know what would happen then.”</p>
+
+<p>“Er—what about privilege?” suggested Roger feebly.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course,” Sir Charles disregarded him, “there would have
+to be stated in the declaration the actual words used, not merely
+their meaning and general inference, and failure to prove them as
+stated would result in the plaintiff being nonsuited; so that unless
+notes were taken here and signed by a witness who had heard the
+defamation, I do not quite see how an action could lie.”</p>
+
+<p>“Privilege?” murmured Roger despairingly.</p>
+
+<p>“Moreover I should be of the opinion,” said Sir Charles,
+brightening, “that this might be regarded as one of those proper
+occasions upon which statements, in themselves defamatory, and even
+false, may be made if from a perfectly proper motive and with an
+entire belief in their truth. In that case the presumption would be
+reversed and the burden would be on the plaintiff to prove, and
+that to the satisfaction of a jury, that the defendant was actuated
+by express malice. In that case I rather fancy that the court would
+be guided almost wholly by considerations of public expediency,
+which would probably mean that—”</p>
+
+<p>“Privilege!” said Roger loudly.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles turned on him the dull eye of a red-ink fiend. But
+this time the word had penetrated. “I was coming to that,” he
+reproved. “Now in our case I hardly think that a plea of public
+privilege would be accepted. As to private privilege, the limits are
+of course exceedingly difficult to define. It would be doubtful if
+we could plead successfully that all statements made here are
+matters of purely private communication, because it is a question
+whether this Circle does constitute, in actual fact, a private or a
+public gathering. One could,” said Sir Charles with much interest,
+“argue either way. Or even, for the matter of that, that it is a
+private body meeting in public, or, <i>vice versa</i>, a public gathering
+held in private. The point is a very debatable one.” Sir Charles
+swung his glasses for a moment to emphasise the extreme
+debatability of the point.</p>
+
+<p>“But I do feel inclined to venture the opinion,” he plunged at
+last, “that on the whole we might be justified in taking up our
+stand upon the submission that the occasion <em>is</em> privileged in so
+far as it is concerned entirely with communications which are
+made with no <i lang="la">animus injuriandi</i> but solely in performance of a
+duty not necessarily legal but moral or social, and any statements so
+uttered are covered by a plea of <i lang="la">veritas convicii</i> being made
+within proper limits by persons in the <i>bona fide</i> prosecution of
+their own and the public interest. I am bound to say however,”
+Sir Charles immediately proceeded to hedge as if horrified at
+having committed himself at last, “that this is not a matter of
+complete certainty, and a wiser policy might be to avoid the direct
+mention of any name, while holding ourselves free to indicate
+in some unmistakable manner, such as by signs, or possibly by
+some form of impersonation or acting, the individual to whom
+we severally refer.”</p>
+
+<p>“Still,” pursued the President, faint but persistent, “on the
+whole you do think that the occasion may be regarded as
+privileged, and we may go ahead and mention any name we like?”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles’s glasses described a complete and symbolical circle.
+“I think,” said Sir Charles very weightily indeed (after all it was
+an opinion which would have cost the Circle such a surprisingly
+round sum had it been delivered in chambers that Sir Charles need
+not be grudged a little weight in the delivering of it). “I think,”
+said Sir Charles, “that we might take that risk.”</p>
+
+<p>“Right-ho!” said the President with relief.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch06">
+
+<h2>Chapter VI</h2>
+
+<p>“I dare say,” resumed Sir Charles, “that many of you
+will have already reached the same conclusion as myself,
+with regard to the identity of the murderer. The case seems to me
+to afford so striking a parallel with one of the classical murders,
+that the similarity can hardly have passed unnoticed. I refer of
+course, to the Marie Lafarge case.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh!” said Roger, surprised. So far as he was concerned the
+similarity had passed unnoticed. He wriggled uncomfortably.
+Now one came to consider it, of course the parallel was obvious.</p>
+
+<p>“There too we have a wife, accused of sending a poisoned
+article to her husband. Whether the article was a cake or a box
+of chocolates is beside the point. It will not do perhaps to—”</p>
+
+<p>“But nobody in their sane senses still believes that Marie
+Lafarge was guilty,” Alicia Dammers interrupted, with unusual
+warmth. “It’s been practically proved that the cake was sent by
+the foreman, or whatever he was. Wasn’t his name Dennis? His
+motive was much bigger than hers, too.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles regarded her severely. “I think I said, <em>accused</em> of
+sending. I was referring to a matter of fact, not of opinion.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sorry,” nodded Miss Dammers, unabashed.</p>
+
+<p>“In any case, I just mention the coincidence for what it is
+worth. Let us now go back to resume our argument at the point
+we left it. In that connection, the question was raised just now,”
+said Sir Charles, determinedly impersonal, “as to whether Lady
+Pennefather may have had not an innocent accomplice but a
+guilty one. That doubt had already occurred to me. I have satisfied
+myself that it is not the case. She planned and carried through this
+affair alone.” He paused, inviting the obvious question.</p>
+
+<p>Roger tactfully supplied it.</p>
+
+<p>“How could she, Sir Charles? We know that she was in the
+South of France the whole time. The police investigated that very
+point. She has a complete alibi.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles positively beamed at him. “She <em>had</em> a complete
+alibi. I have destroyed it.</p>
+
+<p>“This is what actually happened. Three days before the parcel
+was posted Lady Pennefather left Mentone and went, ostensibly,
+for a week to Avignon. At the end of the week she returned to
+Mentone. Her signature is in the hotel-register at Avignon, she has
+the receipted bill, everything is quite in order. The only curious
+thing is that apparently she did not take her maid, a very
+superior young woman of smart appearance and good manners, to
+Avignon with her, for the hotel-receipt is for one person only. And
+yet the maid did not stay at Mentone. Did the maid then vanish
+into thin air?” demanded Sir Charles indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh!” nodded Mr. Chitterwick, who had been listening intently.
+“I see. How ingenious.”</p>
+
+<p>“Highly ingenious,” agreed Sir Charles, complacently taking
+the credit for the erring lady’s ingenuity. “The maid took the
+mistress’s place; the mistress paid a secret visit to England. And I have
+verified that beyond any doubt. An agent, acting on telegraphic
+instructions from me, showed the hotel-proprietor at Avignon a
+photograph of Lady Pennefather and asked whether such a person
+had ever stayed in the hotel; the man averred that he had never
+seen her in his life. My agent showed him a snapshot which he
+had obtained of the maid; the proprietor recognised her instantly
+as Lady Pennefather. Another ‘guess’ of mine had proved only
+too accurate.” Sir Charles leaned back in his chair and swung his
+glasses in silent tribute to his own astuteness.</p>
+
+<p>“Then Lady Pennefather did have an accomplice?” murmured
+Mr. Bradley, with the air of one discussing <i>The Three Bears</i> with
+a child of four.</p>
+
+<p>“An innocent accomplice,” retorted Sir Charles. “My agent
+questioned the maid tactfully, and learned that her mistress has
+told her that she had to go over to England on urgent business
+but, having already spent six months of the current year in that
+country, would have to pay British income-tax if she so much as
+set foot in England again that year. A considerable sum was in
+question, and Lady Pennefather suggested this plan as a means
+of getting round the difficulty, with a handsome bribe to the girl.
+Not unnaturally the offer was accepted. Most ingenious; most
+ingenious.” He paused again and beamed round, inviting tributes.</p>
+
+<p>“How very clever of you, Sir Charles,” murmured Alicia
+Dammers, stepping into the breach.</p>
+
+<p>“I have no actual proof of her stay in this country,” regretted
+Sir Charles, “so that from the legal point of view the case against
+her is incomplete in that respect, but that will be a matter for the
+police to discover. In all other respects, I submit, my case is
+complete. I regret, I regret exceedingly, having to say so, but I have
+no alternative: Lady Pennefather is Mrs. Bendix’s murderess.”</p>
+
+<p>There was a thoughtful silence when Sir Charles had finished
+speaking. Questions were in the air, but nobody seemed to care
+to be the first to put one. Roger gazed into vacancy, as if looking
+longingly after the spoor of his own hare. There was no doubt
+that, as matters stood at present, Sir Charles seemed to have
+proved his case.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick plucked up courage to break the
+silence. “We must congratulate you, Sir Charles. Your solution is
+as brilliant as it is surprising. Only one question occurs to me, and
+that is the one of motive. Why should Lady Pennefather desire
+her husband’s death when she is actually in process of divorcing
+him? Had she any reason to suspect that a decree would not be
+granted?”</p>
+
+<p>“None at all,” replied Sir Charles blandly. “It was just because
+she was so certain that a decree would be granted that she desired
+his death.”</p>
+
+<p>“I—I don’t quite understand,” stammered Mr. Chitterwick.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles allowed the general bewilderment to continue for
+a few more moments before he condescended to dispel it. He had
+the orator’s feeling for atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>“I referred at the beginning of my remarks to a piece of
+knowledge which had come into my possession and which had
+helped me materially towards my solution. I am now prepared to
+disclose, in strict confidence, what that piece of knowledge was.</p>
+
+<p>“You already know that there was talk of an engagement
+between Sir Eustace and my daughter. I do not think I shall be
+violating the secrets of the confessional if I tell you that not many
+weeks ago, Sir Eustace came to me and formally asked me to
+sanction an engagement between them as soon as his wife’s decree
+<i>nisi</i> had been pronounced.</p>
+
+<p>“I need not tell you all that transpired at that interview. What
+is relevant is that Sir Eustace informed me categorically that
+his wife had been extremely unwilling to divorce him, and he
+had only succeeded in the end by making a will entirely in her
+favour, including his estate in Worcestershire. She had a small
+private income of her own, and he was going to make her such
+allowance in addition as he was able; but with the interest on the
+mortgage on his estate swallowing up nearly all the rent he was
+getting for it, and his other expenses, this could not be a large
+one. His life, however, was heavily insured in accordance with
+Lady Pennefather’s marriage settlements, and the mortgage on
+the estate was in the nature of an endowment policy, and lapsed
+with his death. He had therefore, as he candidly admitted, very
+little to offer my daughter.</p>
+
+<p>“Like myself,” said Sir Charles impressively, “you cannot fail
+to grasp the significance of this. According to the will then in
+existence, Lady Pennefather from being not even comfortably
+off would become a comparatively rich woman on her husband’s
+death. But rumours are reaching her ears of a possible marriage
+between that husband and another woman as soon as the divorce
+is complete. What is more probable than that when such an
+engagement is actually concluded, a new will will be made?</p>
+
+<p>“Her character is already shown in a strong enough light by
+her willingness to accept the bribe of the will as an inducement
+to divorce. She is obviously a grasping woman, greedy for money.
+Murder is only another step for such a woman to take. And
+murder is her only hope. I do not think,” concluded Sir Charles,
+“that I need to labour the point any further.” His glasses swung
+deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s uncommonly convincing,” Roger said, with a little sigh.
+“Are you going to hand this information over to the police, Sir
+Charles?”</p>
+
+<p>“I conceive that failure to do so would be a gross dereliction of
+my duty as a citizen,” Sir Charles replied, with a pomposity that
+in no way concealed how pleased he was with himself.</p>
+
+<p>“Humph!” observed Mr. Bradley, who evidently was not going
+to be so pleased with Sir Charles as Sir Charles was. “What about
+the chocolates? Is it part of your case that she prepared them over
+here, or brought them with her?”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles waved an airy hand. “Is that material?”</p>
+
+<p>“I should say that it would be very material to connect her at
+any rate with the poison.”</p>
+
+<p>“Nitrobenzene? One might as well try to connect her with
+the purchase of the chocolates. She would have no difficulty in
+getting hold of that. I regard her choice of poison, in fact, as
+on a par with the ingenuity she has displayed in all the other
+particulars.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see.” Mr. Bradley stroked his little moustache and eyed Sir
+Charles combatively. “Come to think of it, you know, Sir Charles,
+you haven’t really proved a case against Lady Pennefather at all.
+All you’ve proved is motive and opportunity.”</p>
+
+<p>An unexpected ally ranged herself beside Mr. Bradley.
+“Exactly!” cried Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “That’s just what I was
+about to point out myself. If you hand over the information
+you’ve collected to the police, Sir Charles, I don’t think they’ll
+thank you for it. As Mr. Bradley says, you haven’t proved that
+Lady Pennefather’s guilty, or anything like it. I’m quite sure you’re
+altogether mistaken.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles was so taken aback that for a moment he could
+only stare. “<em>Mistaken?</em>” he managed to ejaculate. It was clear that
+such a possibility had never entered Sir Charles’s orbit.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, perhaps I’d better say—wrong,” amended Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, quite drily.</p>
+
+<p>“But my dear madam—” For once words did not come to Sir
+Charles. “But why?” he fell back upon, feebly.</p>
+
+<p>“Because I’m sure of it,” retorted Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,
+most unsatisfactorily.</p>
+
+<p>Roger had been watching this exchange with a gradual change
+of feeling. From being hypnotised by Sir Charles’s persuasiveness
+and self-confidence into something like reluctant agreement, he
+was swinging round now in reaction to the other extreme. Dash
+it all, this fellow Bradley had kept a clearer head after all. And
+he was perfectly right. There were gaps in Sir Charles’s case that
+Sir Charles himself, as counsel for Lady Pennefather’s defence,
+could have driven a coach-and-six through.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course,” he said thoughtfully, “the fact that before
+she went abroad Lady Pennefather may have had an account
+at Mason’s isn’t surprising in the least. Nor is the fact that
+Mason’s send out a complimentary chit with their receipts.
+As Sir Charles himself said, very many old-fashioned firms of
+good repute do. And the fact that the sheet of paper on which
+the letter was written had been used previously for some such
+purpose is not only not surprising, when one comes to consider;
+it’s even obvious. Whoever the murderer, the same problem
+of getting hold of the piece of notepaper would arise. Yes,
+really, that Sir Charles’s three initial questions should have
+happened to find affirmative answers, does seem little more than a
+coincidence.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles turned on this new antagonist like a wounded
+bull. “But the odds were enormous against it!” he roared. “If it
+was a coincidence, it was the most incredible one in the whole
+course of my experience.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, Sir Charles, but you’re prejudiced,” Mr. Bradley told him
+gently. “And you exaggerate dreadfully, you know. You seem to
+be putting the odds at somewhere round about a million to one.
+I should put them at six to one. Permutations and combinations,
+you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Damn your permutations, sir!” riposted Sir Charles with
+vigour. “And your combinations too.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley turned to Roger. “Mr. Chairman, is it within the
+rules of this club for one member to insult another member’s
+underwear? Besides, Sir Charles,” he added to that fuming knight,
+“I don’t wear the things. Never have done, since I was an infant.”</p>
+
+<p>For the dignity of the chair Roger could not join in the
+delighted titters that were escaping round the table; in the interests
+of the Circle’s preservation he had to pour oil on these very
+seething waters.</p>
+
+<p>“Bradley, you’re losing sight of the point, aren’t you? I don’t
+want to destroy your theory necessarily, Sir Charles, or detract
+in any way from the really brilliant manner in which you’ve
+defended it; but if it’s to stand its ground it must be able to resist
+any arguments we can bring against it. That’s all. And I honestly
+do think that you’re inclined to attach a little too much
+importance to the answers to those three questions. What do you say,
+Miss Dammers?”</p>
+
+<p>“I agree,” Miss Dammers said crisply. “The way Sir Charles
+emphasised their importance reminded me at the time of a favourite
+trick of detective-story writers. He said, if I remember rightly,
+that if those questions were answered in the affirmative he knew
+that his suspect was guilty just as much as if he’d seen her with
+his own eyes putting the poison into the chocolates, because the
+odds against a coincidental affirmative to all three of them were
+incalculable. In other words he simply made a strong assertion,
+unsupported by evidence or argument.”</p>
+
+<p>“And that is what detective-story writers do, Miss Dammers?”
+queried Mr. Bradley, with a tolerant smile.</p>
+
+<p>“Invariably, Mr. Bradley. I’ve often noticed it in your own
+books. You state a thing so emphatically that the reader does not
+think of questioning the assertion. ‘Here,’ says the detective, ‘is
+a bottle of red liquid and here is a bottle of blue. If these two
+liquids turn out to be ink, then we know that they were purchased
+to fill up the empty inkpots in the library as surely as if we had
+read the dead man’s very thoughts.’ Whereas the red ink might
+have been bought by one of the maids to dye a jumper, and the
+blue by the secretary for his fountain-pen; or a hundred other
+such explanations. But any possibilities of that kind are silently
+ignored. Isn’t that so?”</p>
+
+<p>“Perfectly,” agreed Bradley, unperturbed. “Don’t waste time
+on unessentials. Just tell the reader very loudly what he’s to think,
+and he’ll think it all right. You’ve got the technique perfectly. Why
+don’t you try your hand at it? It’s quite a paying game, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“I may one day. And anyhow I will say for you, Mr. Bradley,
+that your detectives do detect. They don’t just stand about and
+wait for somebody else to tell them who committed the murder,
+as the so-called detectives do in most of the so-called
+detective-stories I read.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” said Mr. Bradley. “Then you actually read
+detective-stories, Miss Dammers?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly,” said Miss Dammers, crisply. “Why not?” She dismissed
+Mr. Bradley as abruptly as she had answered his challenge.
+“And the letter itself, Sir Charles? The typewriting. You don’t attach
+any importance to that?”</p>
+
+<p>“As a detail, of course it would have to be considered; I was
+only sketching out the broad lines of the case.” Sir Charles was no
+longer bull-like. “I take it that the police would ferret out pieces
+of conclusive evidence of that nature.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think they might have some difficulty in connecting Pauline
+Pennefather with the machine that typed that letter,” observed
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, not without tartness.</p>
+
+<p>The tide of feeling had obviously set in against Sir Charles.</p>
+
+<p>“But the motive,” he pleaded, now pathetically on the
+defensive. “You must admit that the motive is overwhelming.”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t know Pauline, Sir Charles—Lady Pennefather?”
+Miss Dammers suggested.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not.”</p>
+
+<p>“Evidently,” commented Miss Dammers.</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t agree with Sir Charles’s theory, Miss Dammers?”
+ventured Mr. Chitterwick.</p>
+
+<p>“I do not,” said Miss Dammers with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>“Might one enquire your reason?” ventured Mr. Chitterwick
+further.</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly you may. It’s a conclusive one, I’m afraid, Sir
+Charles. I was in Paris at the time of the murder, and just about
+the very hour when the parcel was being posted I was talking to
+Pauline Pennefather in the foyer of the Opera.”</p>
+
+<p>“What!” exclaimed the discomfited Sir Charles, the remnants
+of his beautiful theory crashing about his ears.</p>
+
+<p>“I should apologise for not having given you this information
+before, I suppose,” said Miss Dammers with the utmost calmness,
+“but I wanted to see what sort of a case you could put up against
+her. And I really do congratulate you. It was a remarkable piece of
+inductive reasoning. If I hadn’t happened to know that it was built
+up on a complete fallacy you would have quite convinced me.”</p>
+
+<p>“But—but why the secrecy, and—and the impersonation by the
+maid, if her visit was an innocent one?” stammered Sir Charles,
+his mind revolving wildly round private aeroplanes and the time they
+would take from the <i lang="fr">Place de l’Opéra</i> to Trafalgar Square.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I didn’t say it was an innocent one,” retorted Miss
+Dammers carelessly. “Sir Eustace isn’t the only one who is waiting
+for the divorce to marry again. And in the interim Pauline, quite
+rightly, doesn’t see why she should waste valuable time. After all,
+she isn’t so young as she was. And there’s always a strange creature
+called the King’s Proctor, isn’t there?”</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after that the Chairman adjourned the meeting of the
+Circle. He did so because he did not wish one of the members to
+die of apoplexy on his hands.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch07">
+
+<h2>Chapter VII</h2>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was nervous. Actually
+nervous.</p>
+
+<p>She shuffled the pages of her notebook aimlessly, and seemed
+hardly able to sit through the few preliminaries which had to be
+settled before Roger asked her to give the solution which she had
+already affirmed, privately, to Alicia Dammers, to be indubitably
+the correct one of Mrs. Bendix’s murder. With such a weighty
+piece of knowledge in her mind one would have thought that for
+once in her life Mrs. Fielder-Flemming had a really heaven-sent
+opportunity to be impressive, but for once in her life she made no
+use of it. If she had not been Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, one might
+have gone so far as to say that she dithered.</p>
+
+<p>“Are you ready, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming?” Roger asked, gazing
+at this surprising manifestation.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming adjusted her very unbecoming hat,
+rubbed her nose (being innocent of powder, it did not suffer
+under this habitual treatment; just shone a little more brightly
+in pink embarrassment), and shot a covert glance round the
+table. Roger continued to gaze in astonishment. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+was positively shrinking from the lime-light. For some
+occult reason she was approaching her task with real distaste,
+and a distaste at that quite out of comparison with the task’s
+significance.</p>
+
+<p>She cleared her throat, nervously. “I have a very difficult duty
+to perform,” she began in a low voice. “Last night I hardly slept.
+Anything more distasteful to a woman like myself it is impossible
+to imagine.” She paused, moistening her lips.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, come, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” Roger felt himself
+impelled to encourage her. “It’s the same for all of us, you know.
+And I’ve heard you make a most excellent speech at one of your
+own first nights.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked at him, not at all encouraged.
+“I was not referring to that aspect of it, Mr. Sheringham,” she
+retorted, rather more tartly. “I was speaking of the burden which
+has been laid on me by the knowledge that has come into my
+possession, the terrible duty I have to perform in consequence
+of it.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean you’ve solved the little problem?” enquired Mr.
+Bradley, without reverence.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming regarded him sombrely. “With infinite
+regret,” she said, in low, womanly tones, “I have.” Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming was recovering her poise.</p>
+
+<p>She consulted her notes for a moment, and then began to
+speak in a firmer voice. “Criminology I have always regarded with
+something of a professional eye. Its main interest has always been
+for me its immense potentialities for drama. The inevitability of
+murder; the predestined victim, struggling unconsciously and
+vainly against fate; the predestined killer, moving first unconsciously
+too and then with full and relentless realisation, towards
+the accomplishment of his doom; the hidden causes, unknown
+perhaps to both victim and killer, which are all the time urging
+on the fulfilment of destiny.</p>
+
+<p>“Apart from the action and the horror of the deed itself, I have
+always felt that there are more possibilities of real drama in the
+most ordinary or sordid of murders than in any other situation
+that can occur to man. Ibsenish in the inevitable working out of
+certain circumstances in juxtaposition that we call fate, no less
+than Edgar-Wallacish in the <i lang="el">καθαρσις</i> undergone by the emotions
+of the onlooker at their climax.</p>
+
+<p>“It was perhaps natural then that I should regard not only this
+particular case from something of the standpoint of my calling
+(and certainly no more dramatic twist could well be invented),
+but the task of solving it too. Anyhow, natural or not, this is
+what I did; and the result has terribly justified me. I considered
+the case in the light of one of the oldest dramatic situations, and
+very soon everything became only too clear. I am referring to the
+situation which the gentlemen who pass among us in these days
+for dramatic critics, invariably call the Eternal Triangle.</p>
+
+<p>“I had to begin of course with only one of the triangle’s three
+members, Sir Eustace Pennefather. Of the two unknown one
+must be a woman, the other might be woman or man. So I fell
+back on another very old and very sound maxim, and proceeded
+to <i lang="fr">chercher la femme</i>. And,” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, very
+solemnly, “I found her.”</p>
+
+<p>So far, it must be admitted, her audience was not particularly
+impressed. Even the promising opening had not stirred them, for
+it was only to be expected that Mrs. Fielder-Flemming would feel
+it her duty to emphasise her feminine shrinkings from handing
+a criminal over to justice. Her somewhat laborious sentences
+too, obviously learned off by heart for the occasion, detracted if
+anything from the interest of what she had to convey.</p>
+
+<p>But when she resumed, having waited in vain for a tributary
+gasp at her last momentous piece of information, the somewhat
+calculated tenseness of her style had given way to an unrehearsed
+earnestness which was very much more impressive.</p>
+
+<p>“I wasn’t expecting the triangle to be the hackneyed one,” she
+said, with a slight dig at the deflated remains of Sir Charles. “Lady
+Pennefather I hardly considered for a moment. The subtlety of
+the crime, I felt sure, must be a reflection of an unusual situation.
+And after all a triangle need not necessarily include a husband and
+wife among its members; any three people, if the circumstances
+arrange them so, can form one. It is the circumstances, not the
+three protagonists, that make the triangle.</p>
+
+<p>“Sir Charles has told us that this crime reminded him of the
+Marie Lafarge case, and in some respects (he might have added)
+the Mary Ansell case too. It reminded me of a case as well, but it
+was neither of these. The Molineux case in New York, it seems
+to me, provides a much closer parallel than either.</p>
+
+<p>“You all remember the details of course. Mr. Cornish, a director
+of the important Knickerbocker Athletic Club, received in his
+Christmas mail a small silver cup and a phial of bromo-seltzer,
+addressed to him at the club. He thought they had been sent
+by way of a joke, and kept the wrapper in order to identify
+the humorist. A few days later a woman who lived in the same
+boarding-house as Cornish complained of a headache and Cornish
+gave her some of the bromo-seltzer. In a very short time she
+was dead, and Cornish, who had taken just a sip because she
+complained of it being bitter, was violently ill but recovered later.</p>
+
+<p>“In the end a man named Molineux, another member of the
+same club, was arrested and put on trial. There was quite a lot of
+evidence against him, and it was known that he hated Cornish
+bitterly, so much so that he had already assaulted him once. Moreover
+another member of the club, a man named Barnet, had been killed
+earlier in the year through taking what purported to be a sample
+of a well-known headache powder which had also been sent to
+him at the club and, shortly before the Cornish episode, Molineux
+married a girl who had actually been engaged to Barnet at the
+time of his death; he had always wanted her, but she had preferred
+Barnet. Molineux, as you remember, was convicted at his first
+trial and acquitted at his second; he afterwards became insane.</p>
+
+<p>“Now this parallel seems to me complete. Our case is to all
+purposes a composite Cornish-cum-Barnet case. The resemblances
+are extraordinary. There is the poisoned article addressed
+to the man’s club; there is, in the case of Cornish, the death of
+the wrong victim; there is the preservation of the wrapper; there
+is, in Barnet’s case, the triangle element (and a triangle, you will
+notice, without husband and wife). It’s quite startling. It is, in fact,
+more than startling; it’s significant. Things don’t happen like that
+quite by chance.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming paused and blew her nose, delicately
+but with emotion. She was getting nicely worked up now, and
+so, in consequence, was her audience. If there were no gasps
+there was at any rate the tribute of complete silence till she was
+ready to go on.</p>
+
+<p>“I said that this similarity was more than startling, that it was
+significant. I will explain its particular significance later; at present
+it is enough to say that I found it very helpful also. The realisation
+of the extreme closeness of the parallel came as quite a shock to
+me, but once I had grasped it I felt strangely convinced that it was
+in this very similarity that the clue to the solution of Mrs. Bendix’s
+murder was to be found. I felt this so strongly that I somehow
+actually <em>knew</em> it. These intuitions do come to me sometimes
+(explain them as you will) and I have never yet known them fail
+me. This one did not do so either.</p>
+
+<p>“I began to examine this case in the light of the Molineux
+one. Would the latter help me to find the woman I was looking
+for in the former? What were the indications, so far as Barnet
+was concerned? Barnet received his fatal package because he
+was purposing to marry a girl whom the murderer was resolved
+he should not marry. With so many parallels between the two
+cases already, was there—” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming pushed back
+her unwieldy hat to a still more unbecoming angle and looked
+deliberately round the table with the air of an early Christian
+trying the power of the human eye on a doubtfully intimidated
+covey of lions—“<em>was there another here?</em>”</p>
+
+<p>This time Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was rewarded with several
+real and audible gasps. That of Sir Charles was quite the most
+audible, an outraged, indignant gasp that came perilously near
+to a snort. Mr. Chitterwick gasped apprehensively, as if fearing
+something like a physical sequel to the sharp exchange of glances
+between Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, those of the
+former positively menacing in their warning, those of the lady
+almost vocal with her defiance of it.</p>
+
+<p>The Chairman gasped too, wondering what a Chairman
+should do if two members of his circle, and of opposite sexes at
+that, should proceed to blows under his very nose.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley forgot himself so far as to gasp as well, in sheer,
+blissful ecstasy. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked as if she were to
+prove a better hand at bull-baiting than himself, but Mr. Bradley
+did not grudge her the honour so long as he was to be allowed
+to sit and hug himself in the audience. Not in his most daring
+toreador-like antics would Mr. Bradley have ever dared to postulate
+the very daughter of his victim as the cause of the murder
+itself. Could this magnificent woman really bring forward a case
+to support so puncturing an idea? And what if it should actually
+turn out to be true? After all, such a thing was conceivable enough.
+Murders have been committed for the sake of lovely ladies often
+enough before; so why not for the lovely daughter of a pompous
+old silk? Oh God, oh Montreal.</p>
+
+<p>Finally Mrs. Fielder-Flemming gasped too, at herself.</p>
+
+<p>Alone without a gasp sat Alicia Dammers, her face alight with
+nothing but an intellectual interest in the development of her
+fellow-member’s argument, determinedly impersonal. One was
+to gather that to Miss Dammers it was immaterial whether her
+own mother had been mixed up in the murder, so long as her part
+in it had provided opportunities for the sharpening of wits and
+the stimulation of intelligence. Without ever acknowledging her
+recognition that a personal element was being introduced into
+the Circle’s investigations, she yet managed to radiate the idea
+that Sir Charles ought, if anything, to be detachedly delighted
+at the possibility of such enterprise on the part of his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles however was far from delighted. From the red
+swelling of the veins on his forehead it was obvious that something
+was going to burst out of him in a very few seconds. Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming leapt, like an agitated but determined hen, for the gap.</p>
+
+<p>“We have agreed to waive the law of slander here,” she almost
+squawked. “Personalities don’t exist for us. If the name crops up
+of any one personally known to us, we utter it as unflinchingly,
+in whatever connection, as if it were a complete stranger’s. That
+is the definite arrangement we came to last night, Mr. President,
+isn’t it? We are to do what we conceive to be our duty to society
+quite irrespective of any personal considerations?”</p>
+
+<p>For a moment Roger indulged his tremors. He did not want
+his beautiful Circle to explode in a cloud of dust, never again to
+be re-united. And though he could not but admire the flurried
+but undaunted courage of Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, he had to be
+content to envy it so far as Sir Charles was concerned, for he
+certainly did not possess anything like it himself. On the other hand
+there was no doubt that the lady had right on her side, and what
+can any President do but administer justice?</p>
+
+<p>“Perfectly correct, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” he had to admit,
+hoping his voice sounded as firm as he would have wished.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment a blue glare, emanating from Sir Charles,
+enveloped him luridly. Then, as Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, evidently
+heartened by this official support, took up her bomb again, the
+rays of the glare were switched again on to her. Roger, nervously
+watching the two of them, could not help reflecting that blue rays
+are things which should never be directed on to bombs.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming juggled featly with her bomb. Often
+though it seemed about to slip through her fingers, it never quite
+reached the ground or detonated. “Very well, then. I will go on.
+My triangle now had the second of its members. On the analogy
+of the Barnet murder, where was the third to be found? Obviously,
+with Molineux as the prototype, in some person who was anxious
+to prevent the first member from marrying the second.</p>
+
+<p>“So far, you will see, I am not out of harmony with the conclusions
+Sir Charles gave us last night, though my method of arriving
+at them was perhaps somewhat different. He gave us a triangle
+also, without expressly defining it as such (perhaps even without
+recognising it as such). And the first two members of his triangle
+are precisely the same as the first two of mine.”</p>
+
+<p>Here Mrs. Fielder-Flemming made a notable effort to return
+something of Sir Charles’s glare, in defiant challenge to
+contradiction. As she had simply stated a plain fact however, which Sir
+Charles was quite unable to refute without explaining that he had
+not meant what he had meant the evening before, the challenge
+passed unanswered. Also the glare visibly diminished. But for all
+that (patently remarked Sir Charles’s expression) a triangle by any
+other name does <em>not</em> smell so unsavoury.</p>
+
+<p>“It is when we come to the third member,” pursued Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, with renewed poise, “that we are at variance.
+Sir Charles suggested to us Lady Pennefather. I have not the
+pleasure of Lady Pennefather’s acquaintance, but Miss Dammers
+who knows her well, tells me that in almost every particular the
+estimate given us by Sir Charles of her character was wrong. She
+is neither mean, grasping, greedy, nor in any imaginable way
+capable of the awful deed with which Sir Charles, perhaps a little
+rashly, was ready to credit her. Lady Pennefather, I understand, is
+a particularly sweet and kindly woman; somewhat broad-minded
+no doubt, but none the worse for that; indeed as some of us would
+think, a good deal the better.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming encouraged the belief that she was not
+merely tolerant of a little harmless immorality, but actually ready
+to act as godmother to any particular instance of it. Indeed she
+went sometimes quite a long détour out of her way in order to
+propagate this belief among her friends. But unfortunately her
+friends would persist in remembering that she had refused to have
+anything more to do with one of her own nieces since the latter,
+on learning that her middle-aged husband kept, for purposes of
+convenience, a different mistress in each of the four quarters of
+England, and just to be on the safe side one in Scotland too, had
+run away with a young man of her own with whom she happened
+to be very devotedly in love.</p>
+
+<p>“Just as I differ from Sir Charles over the identity of the third
+person in the triangle,” went on Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, happily
+ignorant of her friends’ memories, “so I differ from him in
+the means by which that identity is to be established. We are at
+complete variance in our ideas regarding the very heart of the
+problem, the motive. Sir Charles would have us think that this
+was a murder committed (or attempted, rather) for gain; I am
+convinced that the incentive was, at any rate, a less ignoble one
+than that. Murder, we are taught, can never be really justifiable;
+but there are occasions when it comes dangerously near it. This,
+in my opinion, was one of them.</p>
+
+<p>“It is in the character of Sir Eustace himself that I see the clue
+to the identity of the third person. Let us consider it for a moment.
+We are not restricted by any considerations of slander, and we can
+say at once that, from certain points of view, Sir Eustace is a quite
+undesirable member of the community. From the point of view
+of a young man, for the sake of example, who is in love with a
+girl, Sir Eustace must be one of the very last persons with whom
+the young man would wish that girl to come into contact. He is
+not merely immoral, he is without excuse for his immorality, a far
+more serious thing. He is a rake, a spendthrift, without honour
+or scruples where women are concerned, and a man moreover
+who has already made a mess of marriage with a very charming
+woman and one by no means too narrow to overlook even a
+more than liberal allowance of the usual male peccadilloes and
+lapses. As a prospective husband for any young girl Sir Eustace
+Pennefather is a tragedy.</p>
+
+<p>“And as a prospective husband for a young girl whom a man
+loves with all his heart,” intoned Mrs. Fielder-Flemming very solemnly,
+“it is easy to conceive that, in that particular man’s regard,
+Sir Eustace Pennefather becomes nothing short of an impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>“And a man who <em>is</em> a man,” added Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, quite
+mauve with intensity, “does not admit impossibilities.”</p>
+
+<p>She paused, pregnantly.</p>
+
+<p>“Curtain, Act I,” confided Mr. Bradley behind his hand to Mr.
+Ambrose Chitterwick.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick smiled nervously.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch08">
+
+<h2>Chapter VIII</h2>
+
+<p>Sir Charles took the usual advantage of the first
+interval to rise from his seat. Like so many of us in these
+days by the time of the first interval (when it is not a play of Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming’s that is in question) he felt almost physically
+unable to contain himself longer.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. President,” he boomed, “let us get this clear. Is Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming making the preposterous accusation that some
+friend of my daughter’s is responsible for this crime, or is she
+not?”</p>
+
+<p>The President looked somewhat helplessly up at the bulk
+towering wrathfully above him and wished he were anything
+but the President. “I really don’t know, Sir Charles,” he professed,
+which was not only feeble but untrue.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming however was by now quite able to
+speak up for herself. “I have not yet specifically accused any
+one of the crime, Sir Charles,” she said, with a cold dignity
+that was only marred by the fact that her hat, which had
+apparently been sharing its mistress’s emotions, was now perched
+rakishly over her left ear. “So far I have been simply
+developing a thesis.”</p>
+
+<p>To Mr. Bradley Sir Charles would have replied, with Johnsonian
+scorn of evasion: “Sir, damn your thesis.” Hampered now by the
+puerilities of civilised convention regarding polite intercourse
+between the sexes, he could only summon up once more the
+blue glare.</p>
+
+<p>With the unfairness of her sex Mrs. Fielder-Flemming promptly
+took advantage of his handicap. “And,” she added pointedly, “I have
+not yet finished doing so.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles sat down, the perfect allegory. But he grunted very
+naughtily to himself as he did so.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley restrained an impulse to clap Mr. Chitterwick on
+the back and then chuck him under the chin.</p>
+
+<p>Her serenity so natural as to be patently artificial, Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming proceeded to call the interval closed and ring up the
+curtain on her second act.</p>
+
+<p>“Having given you my processes towards arriving at the identity
+of the third member of the triangle I postulated, in other
+words towards that of the murderer, I will go on to the actual
+evidence and show how that supports my conclusions. Did I say
+‘supports’? I meant, confirms them beyond all doubt.”</p>
+
+<p>“But what are your conclusions, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming?”
+Bradley asked, with an air of bland interest. “You haven’t defined
+them yet. You only hinted that the murderer was a rival of Sir
+Eustace’s for the hand of Miss Wildman.”</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly,” agreed Alicia Dammers. “Even if you don’t want
+to tell us the man’s name yet, Mabel, can’t you narrow it down a
+little more for us?” Miss Dammers disliked vagueness. It savoured
+to her of the slipshod, which above all things in this world
+she detested. Moreover she really was extremely interested to
+know upon whom Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s choice had alighted.
+Mabel, she knew, might look like one sort of fool, talk like
+another sort, and behave like a third; and yet really she was
+not a fool at all.</p>
+
+<p>But Mabel was determined to be coy. “Not yet, I’m afraid. For
+certain reasons I want to prove my case first. You’ll understand
+later, I think.”</p>
+
+<p>“Very well,” sighed Miss Dammers. “But do let’s keep away
+from the detective-story atmosphere. All we want to do is to solve
+this difficult case, not mystify each other.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have my reasons, Alicia,” frowned Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,
+and rather obviously proceeded to collect her thoughts. “Where
+was I? Oh yes, the evidence. Now this is very interesting. I have
+succeeded in obtaining two pieces of quite vital evidence which
+I have never heard brought forward before.</p>
+
+<p>“The first is that Sir Eustace was not in love with—” Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming hesitated; then, as the plunge had already been
+taken for her, followed the intrepid Mr. Bradley into the deeps of
+complete candour “—with Miss Wildman at all. He intended to
+marry her simply for her money—or rather, for what he hoped to
+get of her father’s money. I hope, Sir Charles,” added Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming frostily, “that you will not consider me slanderous if
+I allude to the fact that you are an exceedingly rich man. It has a
+most important bearing on my case.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles inclined his massive, handsome head. “It is hardly
+a matter of slander, madam. Simply one of taste, which is outside
+my professional orbit. I fear it would be a waste of time for me
+to attempt to advise you on it.”</p>
+
+<p>“That is very interesting, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” Roger
+hastily interposed on this exchange of pleasantries. “How did
+you discover it?”</p>
+
+<p>“From Sir Eustace’s man, Mr. Sheringham,” replied Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming not without pride. “I interrogated him. Sir
+Eustace had made no secret of it. He seems to confide most freely
+in his man. He expected, apparently, to be able to pay off his debts,
+buy a racehorse or two, provide for the present Lady Pennefather,
+and generally make a fresh and no doubt discreditable start. He
+had actually promised Barker (that is his man’s name) a present
+of a hundred pounds on the day he ‘led the little filly to the altar,’
+as he phrased it. I am sorry to hurt your feelings, Sir Charles, but
+I have to deal with facts, and feelings must go down before them.
+A present of ten pounds bought me all the information I wanted.
+Quite remarkable information, as it turned out.” She looked round
+triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t think, perhaps,” ventured Mr. Chitterwick with an
+apologetic smile, “that information from such a tainted source might
+not be entirely reliable? The source seems so very tainted. Why,
+I don’t think my own man would sell me for a ten-pound note.”</p>
+
+<p>“Like master like man,” returned Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+shortly. “His information was perfectly reliable. I was able to
+check nearly everything he told me, so that I think I am entitled
+to accept the small residue as correct too.</p>
+
+<p>“I should like to quote another of Sir Eustace’s confidences.
+It is not pretty, but it is very, very illuminating. He had made an
+attempt to seduce Miss Wildman in a private room at the Pug-Dog
+Restaurant (that, for instance, I checked later), apparently with the
+object of ensuring the certainty of the marriage he desired. (I am
+sorry again, Sir Charles, but these facts must be brought out.) I had
+better say at once that the attempt was unsuccessful. That night
+Sir Eustace remarked (and to his valet of all people, remember);
+‘You can take a filly to the altar, but you can’t make her drunk.’
+That, I think, will show you better than any words of mine just
+what manner of man Sir Eustace Pennefather is. And it will also
+show you how overwhelmingly strong was the incentive of the
+man who really loved her to put her for ever out of the reach of
+such a brute.</p>
+
+<p>“And that brings me to the second piece of my evidence. This
+is really the foundation stone of the whole structure, the basis on
+which the necessity for murder (as the murderer saw it) rested,
+and the basis at the same time of my own reconstruction of the
+crime. Miss Wildman was hopelessly, unreasonably, irrevocably
+infatuated with Sir Eustace Pennefather.”</p>
+
+<p>As an artist in dramatic effect, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was
+silent for a moment to allow the significance of this information
+to sink into the minds of her audience. But Sir Charles was far too
+personally preoccupied to be interested in significances.</p>
+
+<p>“And may one ask how you found <em>that</em> out, madam?” he
+demanded, swelling with sarcasm. “From my daughter’s maid?”</p>
+
+<p>“From your daughter’s maid,” responded Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+sweetly. “Detecting, I discover, is an expensive hobby,
+but one mustn’t regret money spent in a good cause.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger sighed. It was plain that, once this ill-fortuned child of
+his invention had died a painful death, the Circle (if it had not
+been completely squared by then) would be found to be without
+either Mrs. Fielder-Flemming or Sir Charles Wildman; and he
+knew which of the two it would be. It was a pity. Sir Charles,
+besides being such an asset from the professional point of view,
+was the only leavening apart from Mr. Ambrose Chitterwick of
+the literary element; and Roger, who had attended a few literary
+parties in his earlier days, was quite sure he would not be able to
+face a gathering that consisted of nothing but people who made
+their livings by their typewriters.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming really was being a little hard
+on the old man. After all, it was his daughter who was in question.</p>
+
+<p>“I have now,” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, “established an
+overwhelming motive for the man who is in my mind to eliminate
+Sir Eustace. In fact it must have seemed to him the only possible
+way out of an intolerable situation. Let me now go on to connect
+him with the few facts allowed us by the anonymous murderer.</p>
+
+<p>“When the Chief Inspector the other evening permitted us
+to examine the forged letter from Mason &amp; Sons I examined it
+closely, because I know something about typewriters. That letter
+was typed on a Hamilton machine. The man I have in mind has
+a Hamilton typewriter at his place of business. You may say that
+might be only a coincidence, the Hamilton being so generally
+used. So it might; but if you get enough coincidences lumped
+together, they cease to become coincidences at all and become
+certainties.</p>
+
+<p>“In the same way we have the further coincidence of Mason’s
+notepaper. This man has a definite connection with Mason’s.
+Three years ago, as you may remember, Mason’s were involved
+in a big lawsuit. I forget the details, but I think they brought an
+action against one of their rivals. You may remember, Sir Charles?”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles nodded reluctantly, as if unwilling to help his
+antagonist even with this unimportant information. “I ought to,”
+he said shortly. “It was against the Fearnley Chocolate Company
+for infringement of copyright in an advertisement figure. I led
+for Mason’s.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you. Yes, I thought it was something like that. Very
+well, then. This man was connected with that very case. He was
+helping Mason’s, on the legal side. He must have been in and
+out of their office. His opportunities for possessing himself of a
+piece of their notepaper would have been legion. The chances
+by which he might have found himself three years later in
+possession of a piece would be innumerable. The paper had yellowed
+edges; it must have been quite three years old. It had an erasure.
+That erasure, I suggest, is the remains of a brief note on the case
+jotted down one day in Mason’s office. The thing is obvious.
+Everything fits.</p>
+
+<p>“Then there is the matter of the post-mark. I agree with Sir
+Charles that we may take it for granted that the murderer, cunning
+though he is, and anxious though he might be to establish an
+alibi, would not entrust the posting of the fatal parcel to any one
+else. Apart from a confederate, which I am sure we may rule out
+of the question, it would be far too dangerous; the name of Sir
+Eustace Pennefather could hardly escape being seen, and the
+connection later established. The murderer, secure in his conviction
+that suspicion will never fall on himself of all people (just like all
+murderers that have ever been), gambles a possible alibi against a
+certain risk and posts the thing himself. It is therefore advisable,
+just to clinch the case against him, to connect the man with the
+neighbourhood of the Strand between the hours of eight-thirty
+and nine-thirty on that particular evening.</p>
+
+<p>“Surprisingly enough I found this task, which I had expected
+to be the most difficult, the easiest of all. The man of whom I am
+thinking actually attended a public dinner that night at the Hotel
+Cecil, a re-union dinner to be exact of his old school. The Hotel
+Cecil, I need not remind you, is almost opposite Southampton
+Street. The Southampton Street post-office is the nearest one to
+the Hotel. What could be easier for him than to slip out of his seat
+for the five minutes which is all that would be required, and be
+back again almost before his neighbours had noticed his action?”</p>
+
+<p>“What indeed?” murmured the rapt Mr. Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>“I have two final points to make. You remember that in pointing
+out the resemblance of this case to the Molineux affair, I
+remarked that this similarity was more than surprising, it was
+significant. I will explain what I meant by that. What I meant was
+that the parallel was far too close for it to be just a coincidence.
+This case is a deliberate <em>copy</em> of that one. And if it is, there is
+only one inference. This murder is the work of a man steeped in
+criminal history—of a criminologist. And the man I have in mind
+<em>is</em> a criminologist.</p>
+
+<p>“My last point concerns the denial in the newspaper of the
+rumoured engagement between Sir Eustace Pennefather and
+Miss Wildman. I learnt from his valet that Sir Eustace did not
+send that denial himself. Nor did Miss Wildman. Sir Eustace was
+furiously angry about it. It was sent, on his own initiative without
+consulting either of them, by the man whom I am accusing of
+having committed this crime.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley stopped hugging himself for a moment. “And
+the nitrobenzene? Were you able to connect him with that too?”</p>
+
+<p>“That is one of the very few points on which I agree with Sir
+Charles. I don’t think it in the least necessary, or possible, to
+connect him with such a common commodity, which can be bought
+anywhere without the slightest difficulty or remark.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was holding herself in with a visible
+effort. Her words, so calm and judicial to read, had hitherto been
+spoken too with a strenuous attempt towards calm and judicial
+delivery. But with each sentence the attempt was obviously
+becoming more difficult. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was clearly
+getting so excited that a few more such sentences seemed likely to
+choke her, though to the others such intensity of feeling seemed
+a little unnecessary. She was approaching her climax, of course,
+but even that seemed hardly an excuse for such a very purple
+face and a hat that had now managed somehow to ride to the
+very back of her head where it trembled agitatedly in sympathy
+with its mistress.</p>
+
+<p>“That is all,” she concluded jerkily. “I submit that I have proved
+my case. This man is the murderer.”</p>
+
+<p>There was complete silence.</p>
+
+<p>“Well?” said Alicia Dammers impatiently. “Who is he, then?”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles, who had been regarding the orator with a frown
+that grew more and more lowering every minute, thumped quite
+menacingly on the table in front of him. “Precisely,” he growled.
+“Let us get out in the open. Against whom are these ridiculous
+insinuations of yours directed, madam?” One gathered that Sir
+Charles did not find himself in agreement with the lady’s
+conclusions, even before knowing what they were.</p>
+
+<p>“Accusations, Sir Charles,” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming squeaked
+correction. “You—you pretend you don’t know?”</p>
+
+<p>“Really, madam,” retorted Sir Charles, with massive dignity,
+“I’m afraid I have no idea.”</p>
+
+<p>And then Mrs. Fielder-Flemming became regrettably dramatic.
+Rising slowly to her feet like a tragedy queen (except that tragedy
+queens do not wear their hats tremblingly on the very backs of
+their heads, and if their faces are apt to go brilliant purple with
+emotion disguise the tint with appropriate grease paints), heedless
+of the chair overturning behind her with a dull, doom-like thud,
+her quivering finger pointing across the table, she confronted Sir
+Charles with every inch of her five-foot nothing.</p>
+
+<p>“Thou!” shrilled Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “Thou art the man!”
+Her outstretched finger shook like a ribbon on an electric fan.
+“The brand of Cain is on your forehead! Murderer!”</p>
+
+<p>In the silence of ecstatic horror that followed Mr. Bradley clung
+deliriously to the arm of Mr. Chitterwick.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles succeeded in finding his voice, temporarily mislaid.
+“The woman’s mad,” he gasped.</p>
+
+<p>Finding that she had not been shot on the spot, or even blasted
+by blue lightning from Sir Charles’s eyes, either of which possibilities
+it seemed that she had been dreading, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+proceeded rather less hysterically to amplify her charge.</p>
+
+<p>“No, I am not mad, Sir Charles; I am very, very sane. You
+loved your daughter, and with the twofold love that a man who
+has lost his wife feels for the only feminine thing left to him.
+You considered that any lengths were justified to prevent her
+from falling into the hands of Sir Eustace Pennefather—from
+having her youth, her innocence, her trust exploited by such a
+scoundrel.</p>
+
+<p>“Out of your own mouth I convict you. Already you’ve told us
+that it was not necessary to mention everything that took place
+at your interview with Sir Eustace. No; for then you would have
+had to give away the fact that you informed him you would rather
+kill him with your own hands than see your daughter married to
+him. And when matters reached such a pass, what with the poor
+girl’s infatuation and obstinacy and Sir Eustace’s determination
+to take advantage of them, that no means short of that very thing
+was left to you to prevent the catastrophe, you did not shrink from
+employing them. Sir Charles Wildman, may God be your judge,
+for I cannot.” Breathing heavily, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming retrieved
+her inverted chair and sat down on it.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Sir Charles,” remarked Mr. Bradley, whose swelling
+bosom was threatening to burst his waistcoat. “Well, I wouldn’t
+have thought it of you. Murder, indeed. Very naughty; very, very
+naughty.”</p>
+
+<p>For once Sir Charles took no notice of his faithful gadfly. It is
+doubtful whether he even heard him. Now that it had penetrated
+into his consciousness that Mrs. Fielder-Flemming really intended
+her accusation in all seriousness and was not the victim of a
+temporary attack of insanity, his bosom was swelling just as
+tumultuously as Mr. Bradley’s. His face, adopting the purple tinge that
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s was relinquishing, took on the aspect of
+the frog in the fable who failed to realise his own bursting-point.
+Roger, whose emotions on hearing Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s
+outburst had been so mixed as to be almost scrambled, began to
+feel quite alarmed for him.</p>
+
+<p>But Sir Charles found the safety-valve of speech just in time.
+“Mr. President,” he exploded through it, “if I am not right in
+assuming this to be a jest on this lady’s part, even though a jest
+in the worst possible taste, am I to be expected to take this
+preposterous nonsense seriously?”</p>
+
+<p>Roger glanced at Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s face, now set in
+flinty masses, and gulped. However, preposterous though Sir
+Charles might term it, his antagonist had certainly made out a
+case, and not a flimsy, unsupported case either. “I think,” he said,
+as carefully as he could, “that if it had been any one but yourself in
+question, Sir Charles, you would agree that a charge of this kind,
+when there is real evidence to support it, does at least require to
+be taken seriously so far as to need refuting.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles snorted and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming nodded her
+head several times with vehemence.</p>
+
+<p>“If refuting is possible,” observed Mr. Bradley. “But I must
+admit that, personally, I am impressed. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+seems to me to have made out her case. Would you like me to
+go and telephone for the police, Mr. President?” He spoke with
+an air of earnest endeavour to do his duty as a citizen, however
+distasteful it might be.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles glared, but once more seemed bereft of words.</p>
+
+<p>“Not yet, I think,” Roger said gently. “We haven’t heard yet
+what Sir Charles has to answer.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I suppose we may as well <em>hear</em> him,” conceded Mr.
+Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>Five pairs of eyes glued themselves on Sir Charles, five pairs
+of ears were strained.</p>
+
+<p>But Sir Charles, struggling mightily with himself, was silent.</p>
+
+<p>“As I expected,” murmured Mr. Bradley. “There is no defence.
+Even Sir Charles, who has snatched so many murderers from the
+rope, can find nothing to say in such a glaring case. It’s very sad.”</p>
+
+<p>From the look he flashed at his tormentor it was to be deduced
+that Sir Charles might have found plenty to say had the two of
+them been alone together. As it was, he could only rumble.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. President,” said Alicia Dammers, with her usual brisk
+efficiency, “I have a proposal to make. Sir Charles appears to be
+admitting his guilt by default, and Mr. Bradley, as a good citizen,
+wishes to hand him over to the police.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hear, hear!” observed the good citizen.</p>
+
+<p>“Personally I should be sorry to do that. I think there is a good
+deal to be said for Sir Charles. Murder, we are taught, is invariably
+anti-social. But is it? I am of the opinion that Sir Charles’s
+intention, that of ridding the world (and incidentally his own daughter)
+of Sir Eustace Pennefather, was quite in the world’s best interests.
+That his intention miscarried and an innocent victim was killed is
+quite beside the point. Even Mrs. Fielder-Flemming seemed to be
+doubtful whether Sir Charles ought to be condemned, as a jury
+would certainly condemn him, though she added in conclusion
+that she did not feel competent to judge him.</p>
+
+<p>“I differ from her. Being a person of, I hope, reasonable
+intelligence, I feel perfectly competent to judge him. And I consider
+further that all five of us are competent to judge him. I therefore
+suggest that we do in fact judge him ourselves. Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming could act as prosecutor; somebody (I propose Mr.
+Bradley) could defend him; and all five of us constitute a jury,
+the finding to be by majority in favour or against. We would
+bind ourselves to abide by the result, and if it is against him
+we send for the police; if it is in his favour we agree never to
+breathe a word of his guilt outside this room. May this be put to
+the meeting?”</p>
+
+<p>Roger smiled at her reprovingly. He knew quite well that
+Miss Dammers no more believed in Sir Charles’s guilt than he,
+Roger, did himself, and he knew that she was only pulling that
+eminent counsel’s leg; a little cruelly, but no doubt she thought
+it was good for him. Miss Dammers professed herself a strong
+believer in seeing the other side, and held that it would be a very
+good thing for the cat occasionally to find itself chased by the
+mouse; certainly therefore it was most salutary for a man who
+had prosecuted other men for their lives to find himself for once
+in the dock on just such a terrifying charge. Mr. Bradley, on the
+other hand, though he, too, obviously did not believe that Sir
+Charles was the murderer, mocked not out of conviction but
+because only so could he get a little of his own back against Sir
+Charles for having made more of a success of his life than Mr.
+Bradley was likely to do.</p>
+
+<p>Nor, Roger thought, had Mr. Chitterwick any serious doubts
+as to the possibility of Sir Charles being guilty, though he was
+still looking so alarmed at Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s temerity in
+suggesting such a thing that it was not altogether possible to
+say what he did think. Indeed Roger was quite sure that nobody
+entertained the least suspicion of Sir Charles’s innocence except
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming—and perhaps, from the look of him, Sir
+Charles himself. As that outraged gentleman had pointed out,
+such an idea, looked at in sober reflection, was plainly the most
+preposterous nonsense. Sir Charles could not be guilty because—well,
+because he was Sir Charles, and because such things don’t
+happen, and because he obviously couldn’t be.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand Mrs. Fielder-Flemming had very neatly
+proved that he was. And Sir Charles had not even attempted yet
+to prove that he wasn’t.</p>
+
+<p>Not for the first time Roger wished, very sincerely, that
+anybody were sitting in the presidential chair but himself.</p>
+
+<p>“I think,” he now repeated, “that before we take any steps at
+all we ought to hear what Sir Charles has to say. I am sure,” added
+the President kindly, remembering the right phrase, “that he will
+have a complete answer to all charges.” He looked expectantly
+towards the criminal.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles appeared to jerk himself out of the haze of his
+wrath. “I am really expected to defend myself against this—this
+hysteria?” he barked. “Very well. I admit I am a criminologist,
+which Mrs. Fielder-Flemming appears to think so damning. I
+admit that I attended a dinner at the Hotel Cecil on that night,
+which it seems is enough to put the rope round my neck. I admit,
+since it appears that my private affairs are to be dragged into
+public, regardless of taste or decency, that I would rather have
+strangled Sir Eustace with my own hands than see him married
+to my daughter.”</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and passed his hand rather wearily over his high
+forehead. He was no longer formidable, but only a rather
+bewildered old man. Roger felt intensely sorry for him. But Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming had stated her case too well for it to be possible
+to spare him.</p>
+
+<p>“I admit all this, but none of it is evidence that would have
+very much weight in a court of law. If you want me to prove that
+I did not actually send those chocolates, what am I to say? I could
+bring my two neighbours at the dinner, who would swear that I
+never left my seat till—well, it must have been after ten o’clock. I
+can prove by means of other witnesses that my daughter finally
+consented, on my representations, to give up the idea of marriage
+with Sir Eustace and has gone voluntarily to stay with relations
+of ours in Devonshire for a considerable time. But there again
+I have to admit that this has happened since the date of posting
+the chocolates.</p>
+
+<p>“In short, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming has managed, with considerable
+skill, to put together a <i>prima facie</i> case against me, though
+it was based on a mistaken assumption (I would point out to her
+that counsel is never constantly in and out of his client’s premises,
+but meets him usually only in the presence of his solicitor, either
+at the former’s place of business or in his own chambers), and I
+am quite ready, if this meeting thinks it advisable, for the matter
+to be investigated officially. More, I welcome such investigation in
+view of the slur that has been cast upon my name. Mr. President,
+I ask you, as representing the members as a whole, to take such
+action as you think fit.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger steered a wary course. “Speaking for myself, Sir Charles,
+I am quite sure that Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s reasoning, exceedingly
+clever though it was, has been based as you say upon an
+error, and really, as a matter of mere probability, I cannot see a
+father sending poisoned chocolates to the would-be fiancé of his
+own daughter. A moment’s thought would show him the practical
+inevitability of the chocolates reaching eventually the daughter
+herself. I have my own opinion about this crime, but even apart
+from that I feel quite certain in my own mind that the case against
+Sir Charles has not really been proved.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. President,” cut in Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, not without
+heat, “you may say what you like, but in the interests of—”</p>
+
+<p>“I agree, Mr. President,” Miss Dammers interrupted incisively.
+“It is unthinkable that Sir Charles could have sent those
+chocolates.”</p>
+
+<p>“Humph!” said Mr. Bradley, unwilling to have his sport spoiled
+quite so soon.</p>
+
+<p>“Hear, hear!” Mr. Chitterwick, with surprising decision.</p>
+
+<p>“On the other hand,” Roger pursued, “I quite see that Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming is entitled to the official investigation which Sir
+Charles asks for, no less than is Sir Charles himself on behalf of
+his good name. And I agree with Sir Charles that she has certainly
+made out a <i>prima facie</i> case for investigation. But what I should like
+to stress is that so far only two members out of six have spoken,
+and it is not outside possibility that such startling developments
+may have been traced out by the time we have all had our turn,
+that the one we are discussing now may (I do not say that it will,
+but it <em>may</em>) have faded into insignificance.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oho!” murmured Mr. Bradley. “What has our worthy
+President got up his sleeve?”</p>
+
+<p>“I therefore propose, as a formal motion,” Roger concluded,
+disregarding the somewhat sour looks cast on him by Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, “that we shelve the question regarding Sir Charles
+entirely, for discussion or report either inside or outside this room,
+for one week from to-day, when any member who wishes may
+bring it up again for decision, failing which it passes into oblivion
+for good and all. Shall we vote on that? Those in favour?”</p>
+
+<p>The motion was carried unanimously. Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+would have liked to vote against it, but she had never yet belonged
+to any committee where all motions were not carried
+unanimously and habit was too strong for her.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting then adjourned, rather oppressed.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch09">
+
+<h2>Chapter IX</h2>
+
+<p>Roger sat on the table in Moresby’s room at Scotland
+Yard and swung his legs moodily. Moresby was being no
+help at all.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve told you, Mr. Sheringham,” said the Chief Inspector, with
+a patient air. “It’s not a bit of good you trying to pump me. I’ve
+told you all we know here. I’d help you if I could, as you
+know”—Roger snorted incredulously—“but we’re simply at a dead end.”</p>
+
+<p>“So am I,” Roger grunted. “And I don’t like it.”</p>
+
+<p>“You’ll soon get used to it, Mr. Sheringham,” consoled
+Moresby, “if you take on this sort of job often.”</p>
+
+<p>“I simply can’t get any further,” Roger lamented. “In fact I
+don’t think I want to. I’m practically sure I’ve been working on the
+wrong tack altogether. If the clue really does lie in Sir Eustace’s
+private life, he’s shielding it like the very devil. But I don’t think
+it does.”</p>
+
+<p>“Humph!” said Moresby, who did.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve cross-examined his friends, till they’re tired of the sight
+of me. I’ve cadged introductions to the friends of his friends,
+and the friends of his friends of his friends, and cross-examined
+them too. I’ve haunted his club. And what have I discovered?
+That Sir Eustace was not only a daisy, as you’d told me already,
+but a perfectly indiscreet daisy at that; the quite unpleasant type,
+fortunately very much rarer than women suppose, that talks of
+his feminine successes, with names—though I think that in Sir
+Eustace’s case this was simply through lack of imagination and not
+any natural caddishness. But you see what I mean. I’ve collected
+the names of scores of women, and they all lead—nowhere! If
+there is a woman at the bottom of it, I should have been sure to
+have heard of her by this time. And I haven’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what about that American case, which we thought such
+an extraordinary parallel, Mr. Sheringham?”</p>
+
+<p>“That was cited last night by one of our members,” said
+Roger gloomily. “And a very pretty little deduction she drew
+from it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, yes,” nodded the chief inspector. “That would be Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, I suppose. She thinks Sir Charles Wildman is
+the guilty party, doesn’t she?”</p>
+
+<p>Roger stared at him. “How the devil did you know that? Oh!
+The unscrupulous old hag. She passed you the wink, did she?”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly not, sir,” retorted Moresby with a virtuous air,
+as if half the difficult cases Scotland Yard solves are not edged
+in the first place along the right path by means of “information
+received.” “She hasn’t said a word to us, though I’m not saying it
+wouldn’t have been her duty to do so. But there isn’t much that
+your members are doing which we don’t know about, and
+thinking too for that matter.”</p>
+
+<p>“We’re being shadowed,” said Roger, pleased. “Yes, you told
+me at the beginning that we were to have an eye kept on us. Well,
+well. So in that case, are you going to arrest Sir Charles?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not yet, I think, Mr. Sheringham,” Moresby returned gravely.</p>
+
+<p>“What do you think of the theory, then? She made out a very
+striking case for it.”</p>
+
+<p>“I should be very surprised,” said Moresby with care, “to be
+convinced that Sir Charles Wildman had taken to murdering
+people himself instead of preventing us from hanging other
+murderers.”</p>
+
+<p>“Less paying, certainly,” Roger agreed. “Yes, of course there
+can’t be anything in it really, but it’s a nice idea.”</p>
+
+<p>“And what theory are you going to put forward, Mr.
+Sheringham?”</p>
+
+<p>“Moresby, I haven’t the faintest idea. And I’ve got to speak
+to-morrow night, too. I suppose I can fake up something to pass
+muster, but it’s a disappointment.” Roger reflected for a moment.
+“I think the real trouble is that my interest in this case is simply
+academic. In all the others it has been personal, and that not only
+gives one such a much bigger incentive to get to the bottom of a
+case but somehow actually helps one to do so. Bigger gleanings in
+the way of information, I suppose. And more intimate sidelights
+on the people concerned.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, Mr. Sheringham,” remarked Moresby, a little maliciously,
+“perhaps you’ll admit now that we people here, whose
+interest is never personal (if you mean by that looking at a case
+from the inside instead of from the outside), have a bit of an
+excuse when we do come to grief over a case. Which, by the way,”
+Moresby added with professional pride, “is precious seldom.”</p>
+
+<p>“I certainly do,” Roger agreed feelingly. “Well, Moresby, I’ve
+got to go through the distressing business of buying a new hat
+before lunch. Do you feel like shadowing me to Bond Street? I
+might afterwards walk into a neighbouring hostelry, and it would
+be nice for you to be able to shadow me in there too.”</p>
+
+<p>“Sorry, Mr. Sheringham,” said Chief Inspector Moresby
+pointedly, “but <em>I</em> have some work to do.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger removed himself.</p>
+
+<p>He was feeling so depressed that he took a taxi to Bond Street
+instead of a ’bus, to cheer himself up. Roger, having been in
+London occasionally during the war-years and remembering the
+interesting habits cultivated by taxi-drivers during that period,
+had never taken one since when a ’bus would do as well. The
+public memory is notoriously short, but the public’s prejudices
+are equally notoriously long.</p>
+
+<p>Roger had reason for his depression. He was, as he had told
+Moresby, not only at a dead end, but the conviction was beginning
+to grow in him that he had actually been working completely
+on the wrong lines; and the possibility that all the labour he had
+put into the case had simply been time wasted was a sad one.
+His initial interest in the affair, though great, had been as he had
+just realised only an academic one, such as he would feel in any
+cleverly planned murder; and in spite of the contacts established
+with persons who were acquainted with various of the protagonists
+he still felt himself awkwardly outside the case. There was
+no personal connection somehow to enable him really to get to
+grips with it. He was beginning to suspect that it was the sort of
+case, necessitating endless inquiries such as a private individual
+has neither the skill, the patience nor the time to prosecute, which
+can really only be handled by the official police.</p>
+
+<p>It was hazard, two chance encounters that same day and almost
+within an hour, which put an entirely different complexion on the
+case to Roger’s eyes, and translated at last his interest in it from
+the academic into the personal.</p>
+
+<p>The first was in Bond Street.</p>
+
+<p>Emerging from his hat-shop, the new hat at just the right angle
+on his head, he saw bearing down on him Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer.
+Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer was small, exquisite, rich, comparatively
+young, and a widow, and she coveted Roger. Why, even Roger,
+who had his share of proper conceit, could not understand, but
+whenever he gave her the opportunity she would sit at his feet
+(metaphorically of course; he had no intention of giving her the
+opportunity to do so literally) and gaze up at him with her big
+brown eyes melting in earnest uplift. But she talked. She talked, in
+short, and talked, and talked. And Roger, who rather liked talking
+himself, could not bear it.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to dart across the road, but there was no opening in
+the traffic stream. He was cornered. With a gay smile that masked
+a vituperative mind he spoilt the angle of his beautiful new hat.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer fastened on him gladly. “Oh, Mr.
+Sheringham! Just the very person I wanted to see. Mr. Sheringham,
+<em>do</em> tell me. In the strictest confidence of course. <em>Are</em> you taking up
+this dreadful business of <em>poor</em> Joan Bendix’s death? Oh, don’t—<em>don’t</em>
+tell me you’re not.” Roger tried to tell her that he had hoped to
+do so, but she gave him no chance. “Oh, aren’t you really? But it’s
+too dreadful. You ought, you know, you really <em>ought</em> to try and
+find out who sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace Pennefather. I
+do think it’s naughty of you not to.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger, the frozen grin of civilised intercourse on his face, again
+tried to edge a word in; without result.</p>
+
+<p>“I was horrified when I heard of it. Simply horrified.” Mrs.
+Verreker-le-Mesurer registered horror. “You see, Joan and I were
+such <em>very</em> close friends. Quite intimate. In fact we were at school
+together.—Did you say anything, Mr. Sheringham?”</p>
+
+<p>Roger, who had allowed a faintly incredulous groan to escape
+him, hastily shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>“And the awful thing, the truly <em>terrible</em> thing is that Joan
+brought the whole thing on herself. Isn’t that appalling, Mr.
+Sheringham?”</p>
+
+<p>Roger no longer wanted to escape. “What did you say?” he
+managed to insert, again incredulously.</p>
+
+<p>“I suppose it’s what they call tragic irony,” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
+chattered happily. “Certainly it was tragic enough and I’ve
+never heard of anything so terribly ironical. You know about that
+bet she made with her husband, of course, so that he had to get
+her a box of chocolates and if he hadn’t Sir Eustace would never
+have given him the poisoned ones but would have eaten them
+and died himself, and from all I hear about him good riddance?
+Well, Mr. Sheringham—” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer lowered her
+voice to a conspirator-like whisper and glanced about her in the
+approved manner. “I’ve never told any one else this, but I’m telling
+you because I know you’ll appreciate it. You <em>are</em> interested in
+irony, aren’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“I adore it,” Roger said mechanically. “Yes?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well—<em>Joan wasn’t playing fair!</em>”</p>
+
+<p>“How do you mean?” Roger asked, bewildered. Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
+was artlessly pleased with her sensation. “Why, she
+ought not to have made that bet at all. It was a judgment on her.
+A terrible judgment of course, but the appalling thing is that she
+did bring it on herself, in a way. I’m so terribly distressed about
+it. Really, Mr. Sheringham, I can hardly bear to turn the light out
+when I go to bed. I see Joan’s face simply looking at me in the dark.
+It’s awful.” And for a fleeting instant Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer’s
+face did for once really mirror the emotion she professed: it looked
+quite haggard.</p>
+
+<p>“Why oughtn’t Mrs. Bendix to have made the bet?” Roger
+asked patiently.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! Why, because she’d seen the play before. We went
+together, the very first week it was on. She <em>knew</em> who the villain
+was all the time.”</p>
+
+<p>“By Jove!” Roger was as impressed as Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
+could have wished. “The Avenging Chance again, eh? We’re none
+of us immune from it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Poetic justice, you mean?” twittered Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer,
+to whom these remarks had been a trifle obscure. “Yes it was, in
+a way, wasn’t it? Though really, the punishment was out of all
+proportion to the crime. Good gracious, if every woman who
+cheats over a bet is to be killed for it, where would any of us be?”
+demanded Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer with unconscious frankness.</p>
+
+<p>“Umph!” said Roger tactfully.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer glanced rapidly up and down the
+pavement, and moistened her lips. Roger had an odd impression
+that she was talking not as usual just for the sake of talking, but
+in some recondite way to escape from not talking. It was as if
+she was more distressed over her friend’s death than she cared
+to show and found some relief in babbling. It interested Roger
+also to notice that fond though she had probably been of the
+dead woman, she now found herself driven as if against her
+will to hint at blame even while praising her. It was as though
+she was able thus to extract some subtle consolation for the
+actual death.</p>
+
+<p>“But Joan Bendix of all people! That’s what I can’t get over,
+Mr. Sheringham. I should never have thought Joan <em>would</em> do a
+thing like that. Joan was such a nice girl. A little close with money
+perhaps, considering how well-off she was, but that isn’t anything.
+Of course I know it was only fun, and pulling her husband’s leg,
+but I always used to think Joan was such a <em>serious</em> girl, if you know
+what I mean.”</p>
+
+<p>“Quite,” said Roger, who could understand plain English as
+well as most people.</p>
+
+<p>“I mean, ordinary people don’t talk about honour, and truth,
+and playing the game, and all those things one takes for granted.
+But Joan did. She was always saying that this wasn’t honourable,
+or that wouldn’t be playing the game. Well, she paid herself for
+not playing the game, poor girl, didn’t she? Still, I suppose it all
+goes to prove the truth of the old saying.”</p>
+
+<p>“What old saying?” asked Roger, almost hypnotised by this
+flow.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, that still waters run deep. Joan must have been deep
+after all, I’m afraid.” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer sighed. It was
+evidently a grave social error to be deep. “Not that I want to say
+anything against her now she’s dead, poor darling, but—well,
+what I mean is, I do think psychology is so very interesting, don’t
+you, Mr. Sheringham?”</p>
+
+<p>“Quite fascinating,” Roger agreed gravely. “Well, I’m afraid
+I must be—”</p>
+
+<p>“And what does that man, Sir Eustace Pennefather, think about
+it all?” demanded Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer, with an expression
+of positive vindictiveness. “After all, he’s as responsible for Joan’s
+death as anybody.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, really.” Roger had not conceived any particular love for Sir
+Eustace, but he felt constrained to defend him against this charge.
+“Really, I don’t think you can say that, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer.”</p>
+
+<p>“I can, and I do,” affirmed that lady. “Have you ever met him,
+Mr. Sheringham? I hear he’s a horrible creature. Always running
+after some woman or other, and when he’s tired of her just drops
+her—biff!—like that. Is it true?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m afraid I can’t tell you,” Roger said coldly. “I don’t know
+him at all.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it’s common talk who he’s taken up with now,” retorted
+Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer, perhaps a trifle more pink than the
+delicate aids to nature on her cheeks would have warranted.
+“Half-a-dozen people have told me. That Bryce woman, of all
+people. You know, the wife of the oil man, or petrol, or whatever
+he made his money in.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve never heard of her,” Roger said, quite untruthfully.</p>
+
+<p>“It began about a week ago, they say,” rattled on this red-hot
+gossiper. “To console himself for not getting Dora Wildman, I
+suppose. Well, thank goodness Sir Charles had the sense to put
+his foot down there. He did, didn’t he? I heard so the other day.
+Horrible man! You’d have thought that such a dreadful thing as
+being practically responsible for poor Joan’s death would have
+sobered him up a little, wouldn’t you? But not a bit of it. As a
+matter of fact I believe he—”</p>
+
+<p>“Have you seen any shows lately?” Roger asked in a loud voice.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer stared at him, for a moment nonplussed.
+“Shows? Yes, I’ve seen almost everything, I think. Why,
+Mr. Sheringham?”</p>
+
+<p>“I just wondered. The new revue at the Pavilion’s quite good,
+isn’t it? Well, I’m afraid I must—”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, don’t!” Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer shuddered delicately. “I
+was there the night before Joan’s death.” (Can no subject take us
+away from that for a moment? thought Roger). “Lady Cavelstoke
+had a box and asked me to join her party.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes?” Roger was wondering if it would be considered rude
+if he simply handed the lady off, as at rugger, and dived for the
+nearest opening in the traffic. “Quite a good show,” he said at
+random, edging restlessly towards the curb. “I liked that sketch,
+<i>The Sempiternal Triangle</i>, particularly.”</p>
+
+<p>“<i>The Sempiternal Triangle</i>?” repeated Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
+vaguely.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, quite near the beginning.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! Then I may not have seen it. I got there a few minutes
+late, I’m afraid. But then,” said Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer with
+pathos, “I always do seem to be late for everything.” Roger noted
+mentally that the few minutes was by way of a euphemism, as
+were most of Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer’s statements regarding
+herself. <i>The Sempiternal Triangle</i> had certainly not been in the first
+half-hour of the performance.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” Roger looked fixedly at an oncoming ’bus. “I’m afraid
+you’ll have to excuse me, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer. There’s a man
+on that ’bus who wants to speak to me. <em>Scotland Yard!</em>” he hissed,
+in an impressive whisper.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! Then—then does that mean you <em>are</em> looking into poor
+Joan’s death, Mr. Sheringham? <em>Do</em> tell me! I won’t breathe it to
+a soul.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked round him with a mysterious air and frowned
+in the approved manner. “Yes!” he nodded, his finger to his lips.
+“But not a word, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer.”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course not, I promise.” But Roger was disappointed to
+notice that the lady did not seem quite so impressed as he had
+hoped. From her expression he was almost ready to believe that
+she suspected how unavailing his efforts had been, and was a little
+sorry that he had taken on more than he could manage.</p>
+
+<p>But the ’bus had now reached them, and with a hasty “Good-bye”
+Roger swung himself on to the step as it lumbered past. With
+awful stealth, feeling those big brown eyes fixed in awe on his
+back, he climbed the steps and took his seat, after an exaggerated
+scrutiny of the other passengers, beside a perfectly inoffensive
+little man in a bowler-hat. The little man, who happened to be
+a clerk in the employment of a monumental mason at Tooting,
+looked at him resentfully. There were plenty of quite empty seats
+all round them.</p>
+
+<p>The ’bus swung into Piccadilly, and Roger got off at the Rainbow
+Club. He was lunching once again with a member. Roger had spent
+most of the last ten days asking such members of the Rainbow
+Club as he knew, however remotely, out to lunch in order to be
+asked to the club in return. So far nothing helpful had arisen out
+of all this wasted labour, and he anticipated nothing more to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Not that the member was at all reluctant to talk about the
+tragedy. He had been at school with Bendix, it appeared, and was
+as ready to adopt responsibility for him on the strength of this tie
+as Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer had been for Mrs. Bendix. He plumed
+himself more than a little therefore on having a more intimate
+connection with the business than his fellow-members. Indeed
+one gathered that the connection was even a trifle closer than
+that of Sir Eustace himself. Roger’s host was that kind of man.</p>
+
+<p>As they were talking a man entered the dining-room and
+walked past their table. Roger’s host became abruptly silent. The
+newcomer threw him an abrupt nod and passed on.</p>
+
+<p>Roger’s host leant forward across the table and spoke in the
+hushed tones of one to whom a revelation has been vouchsafed.
+“Talk of the devil! That was Bendix himself. First time I’ve seen
+him in here since it happened. Poor devil! It knocked him all to
+pieces, you know. I’ve never seen a man so devoted to his wife.
+It was a byword. Did you see how ghastly he looked?” All this in
+a tactful whisper that must have been far more obvious to the
+subject of it had he happened to be looking their way than the
+loudest bellowing.</p>
+
+<p>Roger nodded shortly. He had caught a glimpse of Bendix’s
+face and been shocked by it even before he learned his identity.
+It was haggard and pale and seamed with lines of bitterness,
+prematurely old. “Hang it all,” he now thought, much moved,
+“somebody really must make an effort. If the murderer isn’t found
+soon it will kill that chap too.”</p>
+
+<p>Aloud he said, somewhat at random and certainly without
+tact: “He didn’t exactly fall on your neck. I thought you two were
+such bosom friends?”</p>
+
+<p>His host looked uncomfortable. “Oh, well, you must make
+allowances just at present,” he hedged. “Besides, we weren’t <em>bosom</em>
+friends exactly. As a matter of fact he was a year or two senior
+to me. Or it might have been three even. We were in different
+houses too. And he was on the modern side of course (can you
+imagine the son of his father being anything else?), while I was
+a classical bird.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see,” said Roger quite gravely, realising that his host’s actual
+contact with Bendix at school had been limited, at most, to that
+of the latter’s toe with the former’s hinder parts.</p>
+
+<p>He left it at that.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest of lunch he was a little inattentive. Something was
+nagging at his brain, and he could not identify it. Somewhere,
+somehow, during the last hour, he felt, a vital piece of
+information had been conveyed to him and he had never grasped its
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>It was not until he was putting on his coat half-an-hour later,
+and for the moment had given up trying to worry his mind into
+giving up its booty, that the realisation suddenly came to him
+unbidden, in accordance with its usual and maddening way.
+He stopped dead, one arm in his coat-sleeve, the other in act to
+fumble.</p>
+
+<p>“<em>By Jove!</em>” he said softly.</p>
+
+<p>“Anything the matter, old man?” asked his host, now mellowed
+by much port.</p>
+
+<p>“No, thanks; nothing,” said Roger hastily, coming to earth
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the club he hailed a taxi.</p>
+
+<p>For probably the first time in her life Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer
+had given somebody a constructive idea.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest of the day Roger was very busy indeed.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch10">
+
+<h2>Chapter X</h2>
+
+<p>The President called on Mr. Bradley to hold forth.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley stroked his moustache and mentally shot his
+cuffs.</p>
+
+<p>He had begun his career (when still Percy Robinson) as a
+motor-salesman, and had discovered that there is more money
+in manufacturing. Now he manufactured detective stories, and
+found his former experience of the public’s gullibility not unhelpful.
+He was still his own salesman, but occasionally had difficulty
+in remembering that he was no longer mounted on a stand at
+Olympia. Everything and everybody in this world, including
+Morton Harrogate Bradley, he heartily despised, except only Percy
+Robinson. He sold, in tens of thousands.</p>
+
+<p>“This is rather unfortunate for me,” he began, in the correct
+gentlemanly drawl, as if addressing an audience of morons. “I
+had rather been under the impression that I should be expected
+to produce as a murderer the most unlikely person, in the usual
+tradition; and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming has cut the ground away
+from under my feet. I don’t see how I can possibly find you a more
+unlikely murderer than Sir Charles here. All of us who have the
+misfortune to speak after Mrs. Fielder-Flemming will have to be
+content to pile up so many anti-climaxes.</p>
+
+<p>“Not that I haven’t done my best. I studied the case according
+to my own lights, and it led me to a conclusion which
+certainly surprised myself quite a lot. But as I said, after the
+last speaker it will probably seem to everybody else a dismal
+anti-climax. Let me see now, where did I begin? Oh, yes; with
+the poison.</p>
+
+<p>“Now the use of nitrobenzene as the poisoning agent interested
+me quite a lot. I find it extremely significant. Nitrobenzene
+is the last thing one would expect inside those chocolates. I’ve
+made something of a study of poisons, in connection with my
+work, and I’ve never heard of nitrobenzene being employed in
+a criminal case before. There are cases on record of its use in
+suicide, and in accidental poisoning, but not more than three or
+four all told.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m surprised that this point doesn’t seem to have struck
+either of my predecessors. The really interesting thing is that so
+few people know nitrobenzene as a poison at all. Even the experts
+don’t. I was speaking to a man who got a Science scholarship at
+Cambridge and specialised in chemistry, and he had actually never
+heard of it as a poison. As a matter of fact I found I knew a good
+deal more about it than he did. A commercial chemist would
+certainly never think of it as among the ordinary poisons. It isn’t
+even listed as such, and the list is comprehensive enough. Well,
+all this seems most significant to me.</p>
+
+<p>“Then there are other points about it. It’s used most extensively
+in commerce. In fact it’s the kind of thing that might be used in
+almost any manufacture. It’s a solvent, of quite a universal kind.
+We’ve been told that its chief use is in making aniline dyes. That
+may be the most important one, but it certainly isn’t the most
+extensive. It’s used a lot in confectionery, as we were also told, and
+in perfumery as well. But really I can’t attempt to give you a list
+of its uses. They range from chocolates to motor-car tyres. The
+important thing is that it’s perfectly easy to get hold of.</p>
+
+<p>“For that matter it’s perfectly easy to make too. Any schoolboy
+knows how to treat benzol with nitric acid to get nitrobenzene.
+I’ve done it myself a hundred times. The veriest smattering of
+chemical knowledge is all that’s wanted, and nothing in the way
+of expensive apparatus. Or, so far as that goes, it could be done
+equally by somebody without any chemical knowledge at all; that
+is, the actual process of making it. Oh, and it could be made quite
+secretly by the way. Nobody need even guess. But I think just a
+little chemical knowledge at any rate would be wanted, ever to
+set one about making it at all. At least, for this particular purpose.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, so far as the case as a whole was concerned, this use of
+nitrobenzene seemed to me not only the sole original feature but
+by far the most important piece of evidence. Not in the way that
+prussic acid is valuable evidence for the reason that prussic acid is
+so hard to obtain, because once its use was determined anybody
+could get hold of or make nitrobenzene, and that of course is a
+tremendous point in favour of it from the would-be murderer’s
+point of view. No, what I mean is that the sort of person who
+would ever think of employing the stuff at all ought to be
+definable within surprisingly narrow limits.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley stopped a moment to light a cigarette, and if he
+was secretly pleased that his fellow-members showed the extent
+to which he had engaged their interest by not uttering a word
+until he was ready to go on, he did not divulge the fact. Surveying
+them for a moment as if inspecting a class composed entirely of
+half-wits, he took up his argument again.</p>
+
+<p>“First of all, then, we can credit this user of nitrobenzene
+with a minimum at any rate of chemical knowledge. Or perhaps
+I ought to qualify that. Either chemical knowledge, or specialised
+knowledge. A chemist’s assistant, for instance, who was interested
+enough in his job to read it up after shop-hours would fit the
+bill for the first case, and a woman employed in a factory where
+nitrobenzene was used and where the employees had been warned
+against its poisonous properties would do for an example of the
+second. There are two kinds of person, it seems to me, who
+might think of using the stuff as a poison at all, and the first kind
+is subdivided into the two classes I’ve mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>“But it’s the second kind that I think we are much more probably
+dealing with in this crime. This is a more intelligent sort of
+person altogether.</p>
+
+<p>“In this category the chemist’s assistant becomes an amateur
+dabbler in chemistry, the girl in the factory a woman-doctor, let us
+say, with an interest in toxicology, or, to get away from the specialist,
+a highly intelligent lady with a strong interest in criminology
+particularly on its toxicological side—just, in fact, like Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming here.” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming gasped indignantly and
+Sir Charles, though momentarily startled at the unexpected quarter
+from which was dealt this tit for the tats he had lately suffered
+at the gasping lady’s hands, emitted the next instant a sound which
+from anybody else could only have been described as a guffaw. “All
+of them, you understand,” continued Mr. Bradley with complete
+serenity, “the kind of people who might be expected not only
+to keep a Taylor’s Medical Jurisprudence on their shelves but to
+consult it frequently.</p>
+
+<p>“I agree with you, you see, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, that the
+method of this crime does show traces of criminological knowledge.
+You cited one case which was certainly a remarkable parallel,
+Sir Charles cited another, and I am going to cite yet a third. It is a
+regular jumble of old cases, and I am quite sure, as you are, that
+this is something more than a mere coincidence. I’d arrived at
+this conclusion myself, of criminological knowledge, before you
+mentioned it at all, and I was helped to it as well by the strong
+feeling that whoever sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace possesses
+a Taylor. That is a pure guess, I admit, but in my copy of Taylor
+the article on nitrobenzene occurs on the very next page after
+cyanide of potassium; and there seems to me food for thought
+there.” The speaker paused a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick nodded. “I think I see. You mean, anybody
+deliberately searching the pages for a poison that would fulfil
+certain requirements. . . ?”</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly,” Mr. Bradley concurred.</p>
+
+<p>“You lay great stress on this matter of the poison,” Sir Charles
+remarked, almost genial. “Do you tell us that you think you’ve
+identified the murderer by deductions drawn from this one point
+alone?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, Sir Charles, I don’t think I can go quite so far as that.
+I lay so much stress on it because, as I said, it’s the only really
+original feature of the crime. By itself it won’t solve the problem,
+but considered in conjunction with other features I do think it
+should go a long way towards doing so—or at any rate provide
+such a check on a person suspected for other reasons as to turn
+suspicion into certainty.</p>
+
+<p>“Let’s look at it for instance in the light of the crime as a whole.
+I think the first thing one realises is that this crime is the work not
+only of an intelligent person but of a well-educated one too. Well,
+you see, that rules out at once the first division of people who
+might be expected to think of using nitrobenzene as the poisoning
+agent. Gone are our chemist’s assistant and our factory-girl. We
+can concentrate on our intelligent, well-educated person, with
+an interest in criminology, some knowledge of toxicology, and,
+if I’m not very much mistaken (and I very seldom am), a copy of
+Taylor or some similar book on his or her shelves.</p>
+
+<p>“That, my dear Watsons, is what the criminal’s singular choice
+of nitrobenzene has to tell me.” And Mr. Bradley stroked the
+growth on his upper lip with an offensive complacency that was
+not wholly assumed. Mr. Bradley took some pains to impress on
+the world how pleased he was with himself, but the pose was not
+without its foundation in fact.</p>
+
+<p>“Most ingenious, certainly,” murmured Mr. Chitterwick, duly
+impressed.</p>
+
+<p>“So now let’s get on with it,” observed Miss Dammers, not
+at all impressed. “What’s your theory? That is, if you’ve really
+got one.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I’ve got one all right.” Mr. Bradley smiled in a superior
+manner. This was the first time he had succeeded in provoking
+Miss Dammers to snap at him, and he was rather pleased. “But
+let’s take things in their proper order. I want to show you how
+inevitably I was led to my conclusion, and I can only do that by
+tracing out my own footsteps, so to speak. Having made my
+deductions from the poison itself, then, I set about examining the
+other clues to see if they would lead me to a result that I could
+check by the other. First of all I concentrated on the notepaper
+of the forged letter, the only really valuable clue apart from the
+poison.</p>
+
+<p>“Now this piece of notepaper puzzled me. For some reason,
+which I couldn’t identify, the name of Mason’s seemed to strike
+a reminiscent note to me. I felt sure that I’d heard of Mason’s in
+some other connection than just through their excellent
+chocolates. At last I remembered.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m afraid I must touch here on the personal, and I apologise
+in advance, Sir Charles, for the lapse of taste. My sister, before she
+married, was a shorthand-typist.” Mr. Bradley’s extreme languor
+all of a sudden indicated that he felt this connection needed some
+defence and was determined not to give it. The next instant he
+gave it. “That is to say, her education put her on rather a different
+level from the usual shorthand-typist, and she was, in point of
+fact, a trained secretary.</p>
+
+<p>“She had joined an establishment run by a lady who supplied
+secretaries to business firms to take the places temporarily of
+girls in responsible positions who were ill, or away on holiday,
+or anything like that. Including my sister there were only two
+or three girls at the place, and the posts they went to only lasted
+as a rule for two or three weeks. Each girl would therefore have
+a good many such posts in the course of a year. However, I did
+remember distinctly that one of the firms to which my sister went
+while she was there was Mason’s, as temporary secretary to one
+of the directors.</p>
+
+<p>“This seemed to me possibly useful. It wouldn’t be likely that
+she could throw a sidelight on the murder, but at any rate she
+might be able to give me introductions to one or two members
+of Mason’s staff if necessary. So I went down to see her
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>“She remembered quite well. It was between three and four
+years ago, and she liked being there so much that she had thought
+quite seriously of putting in for a permanent secretaryship with
+the firm, should one be available. Naturally she hadn’t got to
+know any of the staff really well, but quite enough to give me
+the introductions if I wanted them.</p>
+
+<p>“ ‘By the way,’ I happened to say to her casually, ‘I saw the letter
+that was sent to Sir Eustace with the chocolates, and not only
+Mason’s name but the actual paper itself struck me as familiar. I
+suppose you wrote to me on it while you were there?’</p>
+
+<p>“ ‘I don’t know that I ever did that,’ she said, ‘but of course
+the paper was familiar to you. You’ve played paper-games here
+often enough, haven’t you? You know we always use it. It’s such a
+convenient size.’ Paper-games, I should explain, have always been
+a favourite thing in our family.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s funny how a connection will stick in the mind, but not
+the actual circumstances of it. Of course I remembered then at
+once. There was quite a pile of the paper, in one of the drawers
+of my sister’s writing-table. I’d often torn it into strips for our
+paper-games myself.</p>
+
+<p>“ ‘But how did you get hold of it?’ I asked her.</p>
+
+<p>“It seemed to me that she answered rather evasively, just saying
+that she’d got it from the office when she was working there. I
+pressed her, and at last she told me that one evening she was just
+on the point of leaving the office when she remembered that
+some friends were coming in after dinner at home. We should
+almost certainly play a paper-game of some kind, and we had run
+out of suitable paper. She hurried up the stairs again back to the
+office, dumped her attaché-case on the table and opened it, hastily
+snatched up some paper from the pile beside her typewriter, and
+threw it into the case. In her hurry she didn’t realise how much
+she’d taken, and that supply, which was supposed to tide us over
+one evening, had actually lasted for nearly four years. She must
+have taken something like half a ream.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I went away from my sister’s house rather startled.
+Before I left I examined the remaining sheets, and so far as I
+could see they were exactly like the one on which the letter
+was typed. Even the edges were a little discoloured too. I was
+more than startled: I was alarmed. Because I ought to tell you
+that it had already occurred to me that of all the ways of going
+about the search for the person who had sent that letter to Sir
+Eustace, the one that seemed most hopeful was to look for its
+writer among the actual employees, or ex-employees, of the
+firm itself.</p>
+
+<p>“As a matter of fact this discovery of mine had a more disconcerting
+side still. On thinking over the case the idea had struck me
+that in the two matters of the notepaper and the method itself
+of the crime it was quite possible that the police, and every one
+else, had been putting the cart before the horse. It had been taken
+for granted apparently that the murderer had first of all decided
+on the method, and then set about getting hold of the notepaper
+to carry it out.</p>
+
+<p>“But isn’t it far more feasible that the notepaper should have
+been already there, in the criminal’s ownership, and that it was
+the chance possession of it which actually suggested the method
+of the crime? In that case, of course, the likelihood of the
+notepaper being traced to the murderer would be very small indeed,
+whereas in the other case there is always that possibility. Had that
+occurred to you for instance, Mr. President?”</p>
+
+<p>“I must admit that it hadn’t,” Roger confessed. “And yet, like
+Holmes’s tricks, the possibility’s evident enough now it’s brought
+forward. I must say, it strikes me as being a very sound point,
+Bradley.”</p>
+
+<p>“Psychologically, of course,” agreed Miss Dammers, “it’s
+perfect.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” murmured Mr. Bradley. “Then you’ll be able to
+understand just how disconcerting that discovery of mine was.
+Because if there was anything in that point at all, anybody who
+had in his or her possession some old notepaper of Mason’s, with
+slightly discoloured edges, immediately became suspect.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hr-r-r-r-mph!” Sir Charles cleared his throat forcibly by way
+of comment. The implication was obvious. Gentlemen don’t
+suspect their own sisters.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear, dear,” clucked Mr. Chitterwick, more humanly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley went on to pile up the agony. “And there was
+another thing, which I could not overlook. My sister before she
+went in for her training as a secretary, had played with the idea of
+becoming a hospital nurse. She went through a short course in
+nursing as a young girl, and was always thoroughly interested in
+it. She would read not only books on nursing itself, but medical
+books too. Several times,” said Mr. Bradley solemnly, “I’ve seen her
+studying my own copy of Taylor, apparently quite absorbed in it.”</p>
+
+<p>He paused again, but this time nobody commented. The
+general feeling was that this was getting really too much of a
+good thing.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I went home and thought it over. Of course it seemed
+absurd to put my own sister on the list of suspects, and at the very
+head of it too. One doesn’t connect one’s own circle with the idea
+of murder. The two things don’t mix at all. Yet I couldn’t fail to
+realise that if it had been anybody else in question but my sister
+I should be feeling quite jubilant over the prospect of solving the
+case. But as things were, what was I to do?</p>
+
+<p>“In the end,” said Mr. Bradley smugly, “I did what I thought
+my duty and faced the situation. I went back to my sister’s house
+the next day and asked her squarely whether she had ever had any
+kind of relations with Sir Eustace Pennefather, and if so what. She
+looked at me blankly and said that up till the time of the murder
+she had never heard of the man. I believed her. I asked her if she
+could remember what she had been doing on the evening before
+the murder. She looked at me still more blankly and said that
+she had been in Manchester with her husband at that time, they
+had stayed at the Peacock Hotel, and in the evening had been to
+a cinema where they had seen a film called, so far as she could
+recall, <i>Fires of Fate</i>. Again I believed her.</p>
+
+<p>“As a matter of routine precaution however I checked her
+statements later and found them perfectly correct; for the time
+of the posting of the parcel she had an unshakable alibi. I felt
+more relieved than I can say.” Mr. Bradley spoke in a low voice,
+with pathos and restraint, but Roger caught his eye as he looked
+up and there was a mocking glint in it which made the President
+feel vaguely uneasy. The trouble with Mr. Bradley was that one
+never quite knew with him.</p>
+
+<p>“Having drawn a blank with my first ticket, then, I tabulated
+the conclusions I’d formed to date and set about considering the
+other points in the case.</p>
+
+<p>“It then struck me that the Chief Inspector from Scotland
+Yard had been somewhat reticent about the evidence that night
+he addressed us. So I rang him up and asked him a few questions
+that had occurred to me. From him I learnt that the typewriter
+was a Hamilton No. 4, that is, the ordinary Hamilton model; that
+the hand-printed address on the cover was written with a
+fountain-pen, almost certainly an Onyx fitted with a medium-broad nib;
+that the ink was Harfield’s Fountain-Pen Ink; and that there was
+nothing to be learned from the wrapping-paper (ordinary brown)
+or the string. That there were no finger-prints anywhere we had
+been told.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I suppose I ought not to admit it, considering how I
+earn my living, but upon my soul I haven’t the faintest idea how a
+professional detective goes about a job of work,” said Mr. Bradley
+with candour. “It’s easy enough in a book, of course, because there
+are a certain number of things which the author wants found out
+and these he lets his detective discover, and no others. In real life,
+no doubt, it doesn’t pan out quite like that.</p>
+
+<p>“Anyhow, what I did was to copy my own detectives’ methods
+and set about the business in as systematic a way as I could. That
+is to say, I made a careful list of all the available evidence, both as
+to fact and to character (and it was surprising how much there was
+when one came to tabulate it), and drew as many deductions as I
+could from each piece, at the same time trying to keep a perfectly
+open mind as to the identity of the person who was to hatch out
+from my nest of completed conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>“In other words,” said Mr. Bradley, not without severity, “I did
+<em>not</em> decide that Lady A or Sir Somebody B had such a good motive
+for the crime that she or he must undoubtedly have done it, and
+then twist my evidence to fit this convenient theory.”</p>
+
+<p>“Hear, hear!” Roger felt constrained to approve.</p>
+
+<p>“Hear, hear!” echoed in turn both Alicia Dammers and Mr.
+Ambrose Chitterwick.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming glanced at each other
+and then hastily away again, for all the world like two children in
+a Sunday-school who have been caught doing quite the wrong
+thing together.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear me,” murmured Mr. Bradley, “this is all very exhausting.
+May I have five minutes’ rest, Mr. President, and half a cigarette?”</p>
+
+<p>The President kindly gave Mr. Bradley an interval in which
+to restore himself.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch11">
+
+<h2>Chapter XI</h2>
+
+<p>“I have always thought,” resumed Mr. Bradley,
+restored, “I have always thought that murders may be
+divided into two classes, closed or open. By a closed murder I
+mean one committed in a certain closed circle of persons, such
+as a house-party, in which it is known that the murderer is limited
+to membership of that actual group. This is by far the commoner
+form in fiction. An open murder I call one in which the criminal
+is not limited to any particular group but might be almost any
+one in the whole world. This, of course, is almost invariably what
+happens in real life.</p>
+
+<p>“The case with which we’re dealing has this peculiarity, that
+one can’t place it quite definitely in either category. The police say
+that it’s an open murder; both our previous speakers here seem
+to regard it as a closed one.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a question of the motive. If one agrees with the police that
+it is the work of some fanatic or criminal lunatic, then it certainly
+is an open murder; anybody without an alibi in London that night
+might have posted the parcel. If one’s of the opinion that the
+motive was a personal one, connected with Sir Eustace himself,
+then the murderer is confined to the closed circle of people who
+have had relations of one sort or another with Sir Eustace.</p>
+
+<p>“And talking of posting that parcel, I must just make a diversion
+to tell you something really interesting. For all I know to the
+contrary, I might have seen the murderer with my own eyes, in
+the very act of posting it! As it happened, I was passing through
+Southampton Street that evening at just about a quarter to nine.
+Little did I guess, as Mr. Edgar Wallace would say, that the first
+act of this tragic drama was possibly being unfolded at that very
+minute under my unsuspecting nose. Not even a premonition
+of disaster caused me to falter in my stride. Providence was
+evidently being somewhat close with premonitions that night.
+But if only my sluggish instincts had warned me, how much
+trouble I might have saved us all. Alas,” said Mr. Bradley sadly,
+“such is life.</p>
+
+<p>“However, that’s neither here nor there. We were discussing
+closed and open murders.</p>
+
+<p>“I was determined to form no definite opinions either way, so
+to be on the safe side I treated this as an open murder. I then had
+the position that every one in the whole wide world was under
+suspicion. To narrow down the field a little, I set to work to build
+up the one individual who really did it, out of the very meagre
+indications he or she had given us.</p>
+
+<p>“I had the conclusions drawn already from the choice of
+nitrobenzene, which I’ve explained to you. But as a corollary to
+the good education, I added the very significant postscript: but
+not public-school or university. Don’t you agree, Sir Charles? It
+simply wouldn’t be done.”</p>
+
+<p>“Public-school men have been known to commit murders
+before now,” pointed out Sir Charles, somewhat at sea.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, granted. But not in such an underhand way as this.
+The public-school code does stand for something, surely, even
+in murder. So, I am sure, any public-school man would tell me.
+This isn’t a gentlemanly murder at all. A public-school man, if he
+could ever bring himself to anything so unconventional as murder,
+would use an axe or a revolver or something which would bring
+him and his victim face to face. He would never murder a man
+behind his back, so to speak. I’m quite sure of that.</p>
+
+<p>“Then another obvious conclusion is that he’s exceptionally
+neat with his fingers. To unwrap those chocolates, drain them,
+re-fill them, plug up the holes with melted chocolate, and wrap
+them up in their silver paper again to look as if they’ve never
+been tampered with—I can tell you, that’s no easy job. And all in
+gloves too, remember.</p>
+
+<p>“I thought at first that the beautiful way it was done pointed
+strongly to a woman. However, I carried out an experiment and
+got a dozen or so of my friends to try their hands at it, men and
+women, and out of the whole lot I was the only one (I say it
+without any particular pride) who made a really good job of it.
+So it wasn’t necessarily a woman. But manual dexterity’s a good
+point to establish.</p>
+
+<p>“Then there was the matter of the exact six-minim dose in each
+chocolate. That’s very illuminating, I think. It argues a methodical
+turn of mind amounting to a real passion for symmetry. There
+are such people. They can’t bear that the pictures on a wall don’t
+balance each other exactly. I know, because I’m rather that way
+myself. Symmetry is synonymous with order, to my mind. I can
+quite see how the murderer came to fill the chocolates in that way.
+I should probably have done so myself. Unconsciously.</p>
+
+<p>“Then I think we can credit him or her with a creative mind. A
+crime like this isn’t done on the spur of the moment. It’s deliberately
+created, bit by bit, scene by scene, built up exactly as a play
+is built up. Don’t you agree, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming?”</p>
+
+<p>“It wouldn’t have occurred to me, but it may be true.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes; a lot of thought must have gone to the carrying of it
+through. I don’t think we need worry about the plagiarism from
+other crimes. The greatest creative minds aren’t above adapting
+the ideas of other people to their own uses. I do myself. So do
+you, I expect, Sheringham; so do you, no doubt, Miss Dammers;
+so do you at times, I should imagine, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. Be
+honest now, all of you.”</p>
+
+<p>A subdued murmur of honesty acknowledged occasional
+lapses in this direction.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course. Look how Sullivan used to adapt old church
+music, and turn a Gregorian chant into <i>A Pair of Sparkling Eyes</i>,
+or something equally unchantlike. It’s permissible. Well, there’s
+all that to help with the portrait of our unknown and, lastly, there
+must be present in his or her mental make-up the particular cold,
+relentless inhumanity of the poisoner. That’s all, I think. But it’s
+something, isn’t it? One ought to be able to go a fair way towards
+recognising our criminal if one ever ran across a person with these
+varied characteristics.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, and there’s one other point I mustn’t forget. The parallel
+crime. I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned this. To my mind it’s a
+closer parallel than any we’ve had yet. It isn’t a well-known case,
+but you’ve all probably heard of it. The murder of Dr. Wilson, at
+Philadelphia, just twenty years ago.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll run through it briefly. This man Wilson received one morning
+what purported to be a sample bottle of ale, sent to him by a
+well-known brewery. There was a letter with it, written apparently
+on their official notepaper, and the address-label had the firm’s
+name printed on it. Wilson drank the beer at lunch, and died
+immediately. The stuff was saturated with cyanide of potassium.</p>
+
+<p>“It was soon established that the beer hadn’t come from the
+brewery at all, which had sent out no samples. It had been delivered
+through the local express company, but all they could say was
+that it had been sent to them for delivery by a man. The printed
+label and the letter-paper had been forged, printed specially for
+the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>“The mystery was never solved. The printing-press used to
+print the letter-heading and label couldn’t be traced, though the
+police visited every printing-works in the whole of America. The
+very motive for the murder was never even satisfactorily ascertained.
+A typical open murder. The bottle arrived out of the blue,
+and the murderer remained in it.</p>
+
+<p>“You see the close resemblance to this case, particularly in the
+supposed sample. As Mrs. Fielder-Flemming has pointed out, it’s
+almost too good to be a coincidence. Our murderer <em>must</em> have
+had that case in mind, with its (for the murderer) most successful
+outcome. As a matter of fact there was a possible motive. Wilson
+was a notorious abortionist, and somebody may have wanted to
+stop his activities. Conscience, I suppose. There are people who
+have such a thing. That’s another parallel with this affair, you see.
+Sir Eustace is a notorious evil-liver. And that goes to support the
+police view, of an anonymous fanatic. There’s a good deal to be
+said for that view, I think.</p>
+
+<p>“But I must get on with my own exposition.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, having reached this stage I tabulated my conclusions and
+drew up a list of conditions which this criminal of ours must fulfil.
+Now I should like to point out that these conditions of mine were
+so many and so varied that if anybody could be found to fit them
+the chances, Sir Charles, would not be a mere million to one but
+several million to one that he or she must be the guilty person.
+This isn’t just haphazard statement, it’s cold mathematical fact.</p>
+
+<p>“I have twelve conditions, and the mathematical odds against
+their all being fulfilled in one person are actually (if my
+arithmetic stands the test) four hundred and seventy-nine million, one
+thousand and six hundred to one. And that, mark you, is if all
+the chances were even ones. But they’re not. That he should have
+some knowledge of criminology is at least a ten to one chance.
+That he should be able to get hold of Mason’s notepaper must
+be more than a hundred to one against.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, taking it all in all,” opined Mr. Bradley, “I should think
+the real odds must be somewhere about four billion, seven hundred
+and ninety thousand million, five hundred and sixteen thousand,
+four hundred and fifty-eight to one. In other words, it’s a
+snip. Does every one agree?”</p>
+
+<p>Every one was far too stunned to disagree.</p>
+
+<p>“Right; then we’re all of one mind,” said Mr. Bradley
+cheerfully. “So I’ll read you my list.”</p>
+
+<p>He shuffled the pages of a little pocket-book and began to
+read:—</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+  <p class="head">Conditions to be Filled by the Criminal.</p>
+
+  <p>1. Must have at least an elementary amount of chemical
+     knowledge.</p>
+
+  <p>2. Must have at least an elementary knowledge of
+     criminology.</p>
+
+  <p>3. Must have had a reasonably good education, but not
+     public school or University.</p>
+
+  <p>4. Must have possession of, or access to, Mason’s
+     notepaper.</p>
+
+  <p>5. Must have possession of, or access to, a Hamilton No.
+     4 typewriter.</p>
+
+  <p>6. Must have been in the neighbourhood of Southampton
+     Street, Strand, during the critical hour, 8.30–9.30, on
+     the evening before the murder.</p>
+
+  <p>7. Must be in possession of, or had access to, an Onyx
+     fountain-pen, fitted with a medium-broad nib.</p>
+
+  <p>8. Must be in possession of, or had access to, Harfield’s
+     Fountain-Pen Ink.</p>
+
+  <p>9. Must have something of a creative mind, but not above
+     adapting the creations of others.</p>
+
+ <p>10. Must be more than ordinarily neat with the fingers.</p>
+
+ <p>11. Must be a person of methodical habits, probably with
+     a strong feeling for symmetry.</p>
+
+ <p>12. Must have the cold inhumanity of the poisoner.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>“By the way,” said Mr. Bradley, stowing away his pocket-book
+again, “you see that I’ve agreed with you too, Sir Charles, that the
+murderer would never have entrusted the posting of the parcel
+to another person. Oh, and one other point. For purposes of
+reference. If anybody wants to see an Onyx pen, and fitted with
+a medium-broad nib as well, take a look at mine. And curiously
+enough it’s filled with Harfield’s Fountain-Pen Ink too.” The pen
+circulated slowly round the table while Mr. Bradley, leaning back
+in his chair, surveyed its progress with a fatherly smile.</p>
+
+<p>“And that,” said Mr. Bradley, when the pen had been restored
+to him, “is that.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger thought he saw the explanation of the glint that had
+appeared from time to time in Mr. Bradley’s eye. “You mean, the
+problem’s still to solve. The four billion chances were too much
+for you. You couldn’t find any one to fit your own conditions?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said Mr. Bradley, apparently most reluctant all of a
+sudden, “if you must know, I have found some one who does.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have? Good man! Who?”</p>
+
+<p>“Hang it all, you know,” said the coy Mr. Bradley, “I hardly like
+to tell you. It’s really too ridiculous.”</p>
+
+<p>A chorus of expostulation, cajolement, and encouragement
+was immediately directed at him. Never had Mr. Bradley found
+himself so popular.</p>
+
+<p>“You’ll laugh at me if I do tell you.”</p>
+
+<p>It appeared that everybody would rather suffer the tortures of
+the Inquisition than laugh at Mr. Bradley. Never can five people
+less disposed to mirth at Mr. Bradley’s expense have been
+gathered together.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley seemed to take heart. “Well, it’s very awkward.
+Upon my soul I don’t know what to do about it. If I can show you
+that the person I have in mind not only fulfils each of my conditions
+exactly, but also had a certain interest (remote I admit, but
+capable of proof) in sending those chocolates to Sir Eustace, have
+I your assurance, Mr. President, that the meeting will give me its
+serious advice as to what my duty is in the matter?”</p>
+
+<p>“Good gracious, yes,” at once agreed Roger, much excited.
+Roger had thought that he might be on the verge of solving the
+problem himself, but he was quite sure that he and Bradley had
+not hit upon the same solution. And if the fellow really had got
+some one . . . “Good Lord, yes!” said Roger.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley looked round the table in a worried way. “Well,
+can’t you see who I mean? Dear me, I thought I’d told you in
+almost every other sentence.”</p>
+
+<p>Nobody had seen whom he meant.</p>
+
+<p>“The only possible person, so far as I can see, who could ever
+be expected to fulfil all those twelve conditions?” said this harassed
+version of Mr. Bradley, dishevelling his carefully flattened hair.
+“Why, dash it, not my sister at all, but—but—but <em>me</em>, of course!”</p>
+
+<p>There was a stupefied silence.</p>
+
+<p>“D‑did you say, <em>you</em>?” finally ventured Mr. Chitterwick.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley turned gloomy eyes on him. “Obviously, I’m
+afraid. I have more than an elementary knowledge of chemistry.
+I can make nitrobenzene and often have. I’m a criminologist.
+I’ve had a reasonably good education, but not public-school
+or University. I had access to Mason’s notepaper. I possess a
+Hamilton No. 4 typewriter. I was in Southampton Street itself
+during the critical hour. I possess an Onyx pen, fitted with a
+medium-broad nib and filled with Harfield’s ink. I have something
+of a creative mind, but I’m not above adapting the ideas
+of other people. I’m far more than ordinarily neat with my
+fingers. I’m a person of methodical habits, with a strong
+feeling for symmetry. And apparently I have the cold inhumanity
+of the poisoner.</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” sighed Mr. Bradley, “there’s simply no getting away from
+it. <em>I</em> sent those chocolates to Sir Eustace.</p>
+
+<p>“I must have done. I’ve proved it conclusively. And the extraordinary
+thing is that I don’t remember a single jot about it. I suppose
+I did it when I was thinking about something else. I’ve noticed
+I’m getting a little absent-minded at times.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger was struggling with an inordinate wish to laugh.
+However he managed to ask gravely enough: “And what do you
+imagine was your motive, Bradley?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley brightened a little. “Yes, that was a difficulty. For
+quite a time I couldn’t establish my motive at all. I couldn’t even
+connect myself with Sir Eustace Pennefather. I’d heard of him of
+course, as anybody who’s ever been to the Rainbow must. And I’d
+gathered he was somewhat savoury. But I’d no grudge against the
+man. He could be as savoury as he liked so far as I cared. I don’t
+think I’d ever even seen him. Yes, the motive was a real
+stumbling-block, because of course there must be one. What should I have
+tried to kill him for otherwise?”</p>
+
+<p>“And you’ve found it?”</p>
+
+<p>“I think I’ve managed to ferret out what must be the real
+cause,” said Mr. Bradley, not without pride. “After puzzling for
+a long time I remembered that I had heard myself once say to
+a friend, in a discussion on detective-work, that the ambition of
+my life was to commit a murder, because I was perfectly certain
+that I could do so without ever being found out. And the
+excitement, I pointed out, must be stupendous; no gambling game ever
+invented can come anywhere near it. A murderer is really making
+a magnificent bet with the police, I demonstrated, with the lives
+of himself and his victim as the stakes; if he gets away with it, he
+wins both; if he’s caught, he loses both. For a man like myself,
+who has the misfortune to be extremely bored by the usual type
+of popular recreation, murder should be the hobby <i>par excellence</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” Roger nodded portentously.</p>
+
+<p>“This conversation, when I recalled it,” pursued Mr. Bradley
+very seriously, “seemed to me significant in the extreme. I at once
+went to see my friend and asked him if he remembered it and was
+prepared to swear that it took place at all. He was. In fact he was
+able to add further details, more damning still. I was so impressed
+that I took a statement from him.</p>
+
+<p>“Amplifying my notion (according to his statement), I had
+gone on to consider how it could best be carried out. The
+obvious thing, I had decided, was to select some figure of whom
+the world would be well rid, not necessarily a politician (I was
+at some pains to avoid the obvious, apparently), and simply
+murder him at a distance. To play the game, one should leave a
+clue or two, more or less obscure. Apparently I left rather more
+than I intended.</p>
+
+<p>“My friend concluded by saying that I went away from him
+that evening expressing the firmest intention of carrying out
+my first murder at the earliest opportunity. Not only would
+the practice make such an admirable hobby, I told him, but the
+experience would be invaluable to a writer of detective-stories
+such as myself.</p>
+
+<p>“That, I think,” said Mr. Bradley with dignity, “establishes my
+motive only too certainly.”</p>
+
+<p>“Murder for experiment,” remarked Roger. “A new category.
+Most interesting.”</p>
+
+<p>“Murder for jaded pleasure-seekers,” Mr. Bradley corrected
+him. “There is a precedent, you know. Loeb and Leopold. Well,
+there you have it. Have I proved my case, Mr. President?”</p>
+
+<p>“Completely, so far as I can see. I can’t detect a flaw in your
+argument.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve been at some pains to make it a good deal more water-tight
+than I ever bother to do in my books. You could argue a
+very nasty case against me in court on those lines, couldn’t you,
+Sir Charles?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I should want to go into it a little more closely, but at
+first sight, Bradley, I admit that so far as circumstantial evidence
+is worth (and in my opinion, as you know, it is worth everything),
+I can’t see room for very much doubt that you sent those
+chocolates to Sir Eustace.”</p>
+
+<p>“And if I said here and now that in sober truth I <em>did</em> send them?”
+persisted Mr. Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>“I couldn’t disbelieve you.”</p>
+
+<p>“And yet I didn’t. But given time, I’m quite prepared to prove
+to you just as convincingly that the person who really sent them
+was the Archbishop of Canterbury, or Sybil Thorndike, or Mrs.
+Robinson-Smythe of The Laurels, Acacia Road, Upper Tooting, or
+the President of the United States, or anybody else in this world
+you like to name.</p>
+
+<p>“So much for proof. I built that whole case up against myself
+out of the one coincidence of my sister having a few sheets of
+Mason’s notepaper. I told you nothing but the truth. But I didn’t
+tell you the whole truth. Artistic proof is, like artistic anything
+else, simply a matter of selection. If you know what to put in
+and what to leave out you can prove anything you like, quite
+conclusively. I do it in every book I write, and no reviewer has ever
+hauled me over the coals for slipshod argument yet. But then,”
+said Mr. Bradley modestly, “I don’t suppose any reviewer has ever
+read one of my books.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it was a very ingenious piece of work,” Miss Dammers
+summed up. “And most instructive.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” murmured Mr. Bradley, with gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>“And what it all amounts to,” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming delivered
+a somewhat tart verdict, “is that you haven’t the faintest idea who
+is the real criminal.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I know <em>that</em>, of course,” said Mr. Bradley languidly. “But
+I can’t prove it. So it’s not much good telling you.”</p>
+
+<p>Everybody sat up.</p>
+
+<p>“You’ve found some one else, in spite of the odds, to fit those
+conditions of yours?” demanded Sir Charles.</p>
+
+<p>“I suppose she must,” admitted Mr. Bradley, “as she did it. But
+unfortunately I haven’t been able to check them all.”</p>
+
+<p>“She!” Mr. Chitterwick caught him up.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes, it was a woman. That was the most obvious thing
+about the whole case—and incidentally one of the things I was
+careful to leave out just now. Really, I wonder that’s never been
+mentioned before. Surely if there’s anything evident about this
+affair at all it is that it’s a woman’s crime. It would never occur to
+a man to send poisoned chocolates to another man. He’d send a
+poisoned sample razor-blade, or whisky, or beer like the unfortunate
+Dr. Wilson’s friend. Quite obviously it’s a woman’s crime.”</p>
+
+<p>“I wonder,” Roger said softly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley threw him a sharp glance. “You don’t agree,
+Sheringham?”</p>
+
+<p>“I only wondered,” said Roger. “But it’s a very defendable point.”</p>
+
+<p>“Impregnable, I should have said,” drawled Mr. Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said Miss Dammers, impatient of these minor matters,
+“aren’t you going to tell us who did it, Mr. Bradley?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley looked at her quizzically. “But I said that it wasn’t
+any good, as I can’t prove it. Besides, there’s a small matter of the
+lady’s honour involved.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you resuscitating the law of slander, to get you out of a
+difficulty?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, dear me, no. I wouldn’t in the least mind giving her away
+as a murderess. It’s a much more important thing than that. She
+happens to have been Sir Eustace’s mistress at one time, you see,
+and there’s a code governing that sort of thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” said Mr. Chitterwick.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley turned to him politely. “You were going to say
+something?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no. I was just wondering whether you’d been thinking
+on the same lines as I have. That’s all.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean the discarded mistress theory?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said Mr. Chitterwick uncomfortably, “yes.”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course. You’d hit on that line of research, too?” Mr.
+Bradley’s tone was that of a benevolent headmaster patting a
+promising pupil on the head. “It’s the right one, obviously. Viewing
+the crime as a whole, and in the light of Sir Eustace’s character, a
+discarded mistress, radiating jealousy, stands out like a beacon in
+the middle of it. That’s one of the things I conveniently omitted
+too from my list of conditions—No. 13, the criminal must be a
+woman. And touching on artistic proof again, both Sir Charles
+and Mrs. Fielder-Flemming practised it, didn’t they? Both of them
+omitted to establish any connection of nitrobenzene with their
+respective criminals, though such a connection is vital to both
+their cases.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then you really think jealousy is the motive?” Mr. Chitterwick
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m absolutely convinced of it,” Mr. Bradley assured him.
+“But I’ll tell you something else of which I’m not by any means
+convinced, and that is that the intended victim really was Sir
+Eustace Pennefather.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not the intended victim?” queried Roger, very uneasily. “How
+do you make that out?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why, I’ve discovered,” said Mr. Bradley, dissembling his pride,
+“that Sir Eustace had had an engagement for lunch on the day
+of the murder. He seems to have been very secretive about it,
+and it was certainly with a woman; and not only with a woman,
+but with a woman in whom Sir Eustace was more than a little
+interested. I think probably not Miss Wildman, but somebody of
+whom he was anxious that Miss Wildman shouldn’t know. But
+in my opinion the woman who sent the chocolates knew. The
+appointment was cancelled, but the other woman might not have
+known that.</p>
+
+<p>“My suggestion (it’s only a suggestion, and I can’t substantiate
+it in any way at all except that it makes chocolates still more
+reasonable) is that those chocolates were intended not for Sir
+Eustace at all but for the sender’s rival.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” breathed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.</p>
+
+<p>“This is quite a new idea,” complained Sir Charles.</p>
+
+<p>Roger had been hastily conning over the names of Sir Eustace’s
+various ladies. He had been unable to fit one before into the
+crime, and he was unable now; yet he did not think that any
+had escaped him. “If the woman you’re thinking of, Bradley, the
+sender,” he said tentatively, “really was a mistress of Sir Eustace,
+I don’t think you need worry about being too punctilious. Her
+name is almost certainly on the lips of the whole Rainbow Club
+in that connection, if not of every club in London. Sir Eustace is
+not a reticent man.”</p>
+
+<p>“I can assure Mr. Bradley,” said Miss Dammers with irony,
+“that Sir Eustace’s standard of honour falls a good deal short of
+his own.”</p>
+
+<p>“In this case,” Mr. Bradley told them, unmoved, “I think not.”</p>
+
+<p>“How is that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Because I’m quite sure that apart from my unconscious
+informant, and Sir Eustace, and myself, there is nobody who
+knows of the connection at all. Except the lady, of course,” added
+Mr. Bradley punctiliously. “Naturally it would not have escaped
+her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then how did you find out?” demanded Miss Dammers.</p>
+
+<p>“That,” Mr. Bradley informed her equably, “I regret that I’m
+not at liberty to say.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger stroked his chin. Could there be another one of whom
+he had never heard? In that case, how would this new theory of
+his continue to stand up?</p>
+
+<p>“Your so close parallel falls to the ground, then?” Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming was stating.</p>
+
+<p>“Not altogether. But if it does, I’ve got another just as good.
+Christina Edmunds. Almost the same case, with the insanity left
+out. Jealousy-mania. Poisoned chocolates. What could be better?”</p>
+
+<p>“Humph! The mainstay of your last case, I gathered,” observed
+Sir Charles, “or at any rate the starting-point, was the choice of
+nitrobenzene. I suppose that, and the deductions you drew from
+it, are equally important to this one. Are we to take it that this
+lady is an amateur chemist, with a copy of Taylor on her shelves?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley smiled gently. “That, as you rightly point out, was
+the mainstay of my <em>last</em> case, Sir Charles. It isn’t of this one. I’m
+afraid my remarks on the choice of poison were rather special
+pleading. I was leading up to a certain person, you see, and therefore
+only drew the deductions which suited that particular person.
+However, there was a good deal of possible truth in them for all
+that, though I wouldn’t rate their probability quite as high as I
+pretended to do then. I’m quite prepared to believe that nitrobenzene
+was used simply because it’s so easy to get hold of. But it’s
+perfectly true that the stuff’s hardly known as a poison at all.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then you make no use of it in your present case?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes, I do. I still think the point that the criminal not so
+much used it as knew of it to use, is a perfectly sound one. The
+reason for that knowledge should be capable of being established.
+I stuck out before for a copy of some such book as Taylor as the
+reason, and I still do. As it happens this good lady <em>has</em> got a copy
+of Taylor.”</p>
+
+<p>“She <em>is</em> a criminologist, then?” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming pounced.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley leaned back in his chair and gazed at the ceiling.
+“That, I should think, is very much open to question. Frankly, I’m
+puzzled over the matter of criminology. Myself, I don’t see that
+lady as an ‘-ist’ of any description. Her function in life is perfectly
+obvious, the one she fulfilled for Sir Eustace, and I shouldn’t
+have thought her capable of any other. Except to powder her
+nose rather charmingly, and look extremely decorative; but all
+that’s part and parcel of her real <i>raison d’être</i>. No, I don’t think
+she could possibly be a criminologist, any more than a canary-bird
+could. But she certainly has a smattering of criminology,
+because in her flat there’s a whole bookshelf filled with works
+on the subject.”</p>
+
+<p>“She’s a personal friend of yours, then?” queried Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, very casually.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no. I’ve only met her once. That was when I called at
+her flat with a bran-new copy of a recently published book of
+popular murders under my arm, and represented myself as a
+traveller for the publisher soliciting orders for the book; might I
+have the pleasure of putting her name down? The book had only
+been out four days, but she proudly showed me a copy of it on
+her shelves already. Was she interested in criminology, then? Oh,
+yes, she simply adored it; murder was <em>too</em> fascinating, wasn’t it?
+Conclusive, I think.”</p>
+
+<p>“She sounds a bit of a fool,” commented Sir Charles.</p>
+
+<p>“She looks like a bit of a fool,” agreed Mr. Bradley. “She
+talks like a bit of a fool. Meeting her at a tea-fight, I should have
+said she <em>is</em> a bit of a fool. And yet she carried through a really
+cleverly planned murder, so I don’t see how she can be a bit of
+a fool.”</p>
+
+<p>“It doesn’t occur to you,” remarked Miss Dammers, “that
+perhaps she never did anything of the sort?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, no,” Mr. Bradley had to confess. “I’m afraid it doesn’t. I
+mean, a comparatively recent discarded mistress of Sir Eustace’s
+(well, not more than three years ago, and hope dies hard), who
+thinks no small champagne of herself and considers murder too
+fascinating for words. Well, really!</p>
+
+<p>“By the way, if you want any confirmatory evidence that she
+had been one of Sir Eustace’s lady-loves, I might add that I saw a
+photograph of him in her flat. It was in a frame that had a very
+wide border. The border showed the word ‘Your’ and conveniently
+cut off the rest. Not ‘Yours,’ notice, but ‘Your.’ I think it’s
+a reasonable assumption that something quite affectionate lies
+under that discreet border.”</p>
+
+<p>“I have it from his own lips that Sir Eustace changes his
+mistresses as often as his hats,” Miss Dammers said briskly.
+“Isn’t it possible that more than one may have suffered from a
+jealousy-complex?”</p>
+
+<p>“But not, I think, have possessed a copy of Taylor as well,”
+Mr. Bradley insisted.</p>
+
+<p>“The criminological-knowledge factor seems to have taken the
+place in this case of the nitrobenzene factor in the last,” meditated
+Mr. Chitterwick. “Am I right in thinking that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Quite,” Mr. Bradley assured him kindly. “That, in my opinion,
+is the really important clue. It’s so emphasised, you see. We get it
+from two entirely different angles, the choice of poison and the
+reminiscent features of the case. In fact we’re coming up against
+it all the time.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, well,” muttered Mr. Chitterwick, reproving himself as
+one might who had been coming up against a thing all the time
+and never even noticed it.</p>
+
+<p>There was a short silence, which Mr. Chitterwick imputed
+(quite wrongly) to a general condemnation of his own obtuseness.</p>
+
+<p>“Your list of conditions,” Miss Dammers resumed the charge.
+“You said you hadn’t been able to check all of them. Which does
+this woman definitely fulfil, and which haven’t you been able to
+check?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley assumed an air of alertness. “No. 1, I don’t know
+whether she has any chemical knowledge. No. 2, I do know that
+she has at least an elementary knowledge of criminology. No. 3,
+she is almost certain to have had a reasonably good education
+(though whether she ever learnt anything is quite a different
+matter), and I think we may assume that she was never at a
+public-school. No. 4, I haven’t been able to connect her with
+Mason’s notepaper, except in so far as she has an account at
+Mason’s; and if that is good enough for Sir Charles, it’s good
+enough for me. No. 5, I haven’t been able to connect her with a
+Hamilton typewriter, but that ought to be quite easy; one of her
+friends is sure to have one.</p>
+
+<p>“No. 6, she could have been in the neighbourhood of
+Southampton Street. She tried to establish an alibi, but bungled
+it badly; it’s full of holes. She’s supposed to have been in a theatre,
+but she didn’t even get there till well past nine. No. 7, I saw
+an Onyx fountain-pen on her bureau. No. 8, I saw a bottle of
+Harfield’s Fountain-Pen Ink in one of the pigeon-holes of the
+bureau.</p>
+
+<p>“No. 9, I shouldn’t have said she had a creative mind; I shouldn’t
+have said that she had a mind at all; but apparently we must give
+her the benefit of any doubt there is. No. 10, judging from her
+face, I should say she was very neat with her fingers. No. 11, if she
+is a person of methodical habits she must feel it an incriminating
+point, for she certainly disguises it very well. No. 12, this I think
+might be amended, to ‘must have the poisoner’s complete lack
+of imagination.’ That’s the lot.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see,” said Miss Dammers. “There are gaps.”</p>
+
+<p>“There are,” Mr. Bradley agreed blandly. “To tell the truth, I
+know this woman must have done it because really, you know,
+she must. But I can’t believe it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, putting a neat sentence
+into one word.</p>
+
+<p>“By the way, Sheringham,” remarked Mr. Bradley, “you know
+the bad lady.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do, do I?” said Roger, apparently coming out of a trance. “I
+thought I might. Look here, if I write a name down on a piece of
+paper, do you mind telling me if I’m right or wrong?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not in the least,” replied the equable Mr. Bradley. “As a matter
+of fact I was going to suggest something like that myself. I think
+as President you ought to know who I mean, in case there is
+anything in it.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger folded his piece of paper in two and tossed it down the
+table. “That’s the person, I suppose.”</p>
+
+<p>“You’re quite right,” said Mr. Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>“And you base most of your case on her reasons for interesting
+herself in criminology?”</p>
+
+<p>“You might put it like that,” conceded Mr. Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of himself Roger blushed faintly. He had the best of
+reasons for knowing why Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer professed such
+an interest in criminology. Not to put too fine a point on it, the
+reasons had been almost forced on him.</p>
+
+<p>“Then you’re absolutely wrong, Bradley,” he said without
+hesitation. “Absolutely.”</p>
+
+<p>“You know definitely?”</p>
+
+<p>Roger suppressed an involuntary shudder. “Quite definitely.”</p>
+
+<p>“You know, I never believed she did it,” said the philosophical
+Mr. Bradley.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch12">
+
+<h2>Chapter XII</h2>
+
+<p>Roger was very busy.</p>
+
+<p>Flitting in taxis hither and thither, utterly regardless of what
+the clocks had to tell him, he was trying to get his case completed
+before the evening. His activities might have seemed to that
+artless criminologist, Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer, not only baffling
+but pointless.</p>
+
+<p>On the previous afternoon, for instance, he had taken his
+first taxi to the Holborn Public Library and there consulted a
+work of reference of the most uninspiring description. After
+that he had driven to the offices of Messrs. Weall and Wilson,
+the well-known firm which exists to protect the trade interests
+of individuals and supply subscribers with highly confidential
+information regarding the stability of any business in which it is
+intended to invest money.</p>
+
+<p>Roger, glibly representing himself as a potential investor of
+large sums, had entered his name as a subscriber, filled up a
+number of the special enquiry forms which are headed Strictly
+Confidential, and not consented to go away until Messrs. Weall
+and Wilson had promised, in consideration of certain extra
+moneys, to have the required information in his hands within
+twenty-seven hours.</p>
+
+<p>He had then bought a newspaper and gone to Scotland Yard.
+There he sought out Moresby.</p>
+
+<p>“Moresby,” he said without preamble, “I want you to do
+something important for me. Can you find me a taximan who
+took up a fare in Piccadilly Circus or its neighbourhood at about
+ten minutes past nine on the night before the Bendix murder,
+and deposited same at or near the Strand end of Southampton
+Street? And/or another taxi who took up a fare in the Strand near
+Southampton Street at about a quarter-past nine, and deposited
+same in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly Circus? The second is
+the more likely of the two; I’m not quite sure about the first. Or
+one taxi might have been used for the double journey, but I doubt
+that very much. Do you think you can do this for me?”</p>
+
+<p>“We may not get any results, after all this time,” said Moresby
+doubtfully. “It’s really important, is it?”</p>
+
+<p>“Quite important.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I’ll try of course, seeing it’s you, Mr. Sheringham,
+and I know I can take your word for it that it is important. But I
+wouldn’t for any one else.”</p>
+
+<p>“That’s fine,” said Roger with much heartiness. “Make it pretty
+urgent, will you? And you might give me a ring at the Albany at
+about tea-time to-morrow, if you think you’ve got hold of my
+man.”</p>
+
+<p>“What’s the idea, then, Mr. Sheringham?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m trying to break down a rather interesting alibi,” said
+Roger.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to his rooms to dine.</p>
+
+<p>After the meal his head was buzzing far too busily for him to be
+able to do anything else but take it for a walk. Restlessly he
+wandered out of the Albany and turned down Piccadilly. He ambled
+round the Circus, thinking hard, and paused for a moment out of
+habit to inspect with unseeing eyes the photographs of the new
+revue hanging outside the Pavilion. The next thing he realised was
+that he must have turned down the Haymarket and swung round
+in a wide circle into Jermyn Street, for he was standing outside the
+Imperial Theatre in that fascinating thoroughfare, idly watching
+the last of the audience crowding in.</p>
+
+<p>Glancing at the advertisements of <i>The Creaking Skull</i>, he saw
+that the terrible thing began at half-past eight. Glancing at his
+watch, he saw that the time was twenty-nine minutes past that
+hour.</p>
+
+<p>There was an evening to be got through somehow.</p>
+
+<p>He went inside.</p>
+
+<p>The night passed somehow, too.</p>
+
+<p>Early the next morning (or early, that is, for Roger; say
+half-past ten), in a bleak spot somewhere beyond the bounds
+of civilisation, in short in Acton, Roger found himself
+parleying with a young woman in the offices of the Anglo-Eastern
+Perfumery Company. The young woman was entrenched behind
+a partition just inside the main entrance, her only means of
+communication with the outer world being through a small
+window fitted with frosted glass. This window she would open (if
+summoned long and loudly enough) to address a few curt replies
+to importunate callers, and this window she would close with a
+bang by way of a hint that the interview, in her opinion, should
+now be closed.</p>
+
+<p>“Good morning,” said Roger blandly, when his third rap had
+summoned this maiden from the depths of her fastness. “I’ve
+called to—”</p>
+
+<p>“Travellers, Tuesdays and Friday mornings, ten to eleven,”
+said the maiden surprisingly, and closed the window with one of
+her best bangs. That’ll teach him to try and do business with a
+respectable English firm on a Thursday morning, good gracious
+me, said the bang.</p>
+
+<p>Roger stared blankly at the closed window. Then it dawned on
+him that a mistake had been made. He rapped again. And again.</p>
+
+<p>At the fourth rap the window flew open as if something had
+exploded behind it. “I’ve told you already,” snapped the maiden,
+righteously indignant, “that we only see—”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m not a traveller,” said Roger hastily. “At least,” he added
+with meticulousness, thinking of the dreary deserts he had
+explored before finding this inhospitable oasis, “at least, not a
+commercial one.”</p>
+
+<p>“You don’t want to sell anything?” asked the maiden suspiciously.
+Impregnated with all that is best in the go-ahead spirit of
+English business methods, she naturally looked with the deepest
+distrust on anybody who might possibly wish to do such an
+unbusinesslike thing as <em>sell</em> her firm something.</p>
+
+<p>“Nothing,” Roger assured her with the utmost earnestness,
+impressed in his turn with the revolting vulgarity of such a
+proceeding.</p>
+
+<p>On these conditions it appeared that the maiden, though by no
+means ready to take him to her bosom, was prepared to tolerate
+him for a few seconds. “Well, what <em>do</em> you want then?” she asked,
+with an air of weariness patiently, even nobly borne. From her
+tone it was to be gathered that very few people penetrated as far
+as that door unless with the discreditable intention of trying to
+do business with her firm. Just fancy—business!</p>
+
+<p>“I’m a solicitor,” Roger told her now, without truth, “and I’m
+enquiring into the matter of a certain Mr. Joseph Lea Hardwick,
+who was employed here. I regret to say that—”</p>
+
+<p>“Sorry, never heard of the gentleman,” said the maiden shortly,
+and intimated in her usual way that the interview had lasted quite
+long enough.</p>
+
+<p>Once more Roger got busy with his stick. After the seventh
+application he was rewarded with another view of indignant
+young English girlhood.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve told you already—”</p>
+
+<p>But Roger had had about enough of this. “And now, young
+woman, let me tell <em>you</em> something. If you refuse to answer my
+questions, let me warn you that you may find yourself in very
+serious trouble. Haven’t you ever heard of contempt of court?”
+There are times when some slight juggling with the truth is
+permissible. There are times, too, when even a shrewd blow with a
+bludgeon may be excused. This time was one of both.</p>
+
+<p>The maiden, though far from cowed, was at last impressed.
+“Well, what do you want to know then?” she asked, resignedly.</p>
+
+<p>“This man, Joseph Lea Hardwick—”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve told you, I’ve never heard of him.”</p>
+
+<p>As the gentleman in question had enjoyed an existence of only
+two or three minutes, and that solely in Roger’s brain, his creator
+was not unprepared for this. “It is possible that he was known to
+you under a different name,” he said darkly.</p>
+
+<p>The maiden’s interest was engaged. More, she looked positively
+alarmed. She spoke shrilly. “If it’s divorce, let me tell you
+you can’t hang anything on <em>me</em>. I never even knew he was married.
+Besides, it isn’t as if there was a cause. I mean to say—well, at
+least—anyhow, it’s a pack of lies. I never—”</p>
+
+<p>“It isn’t divorce,” Roger hastened to stem the tide, himself
+scarcely less alarmed at these quite unmaidenly revelations.
+“It’s—it’s nothing to do with your private life at all. It’s about a
+man who was employed here.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh!” The late maiden’s relief turned rapidly into indignation.
+“Well, why couldn’t you say so?”</p>
+
+<p>“Employed here,” pursued Roger firmly, “in the nitrobenzene
+department. You have a nitrobenzene department, haven’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Not that I’m aware of, I’m sure.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger made the noise that is usually spelt “Tchah! You know
+perfectly well what I mean. The department which handles the
+nitrobenzene used here. You are hardly prepared to deny that
+nitrobenzene <em>is</em> used here, I hope? And extensively?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, and what if it is?”</p>
+
+<p>“It has been reported to my firm that this man met his death
+through insufficient warning having been issued to the employees
+here about the dangerous nature of this substance. I should like—”</p>
+
+<p>“What? One of our men died? I don’t believe it. I should have
+been the first to know if—”</p>
+
+<p>“It’s been hushed up,” Roger inserted quickly. “I should like
+you to show me a copy of the warning that is hung up in the
+factory about nitrobenzene.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I’m sorry then, but I’m afraid I can’t oblige you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Do you mean to tell me,” said Roger, much shocked, “that no
+warning is issued at all to your employees about this most dangerous
+substance? They’re not even told that it is a deadly poison?”</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t say that, did I? Of course they’re warned that it’s
+poisonous. Everybody is. And they’re most careful about the way it’s
+handled, I’m sure. It just happens that there isn’t a warning hung
+up. And if you want to know any more about it, you’d better see
+one of the directors. I’ll—”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you,” said Roger, speaking the truth at last, “I’ve
+learned all I wanted. Good morning.” He retreated jubilantly.</p>
+
+<p>He retreated to Webster’s, the printers, in a taxi.</p>
+
+<p>Webster’s of course are to printing what Monte Carlo is
+to the Riviera. Webster’s, practically speaking, <em>are</em> printing. So
+where more naturally should Roger go if he wanted some new
+notepaper printed in a very special and particular way, as
+apparently he did?</p>
+
+<p>To the young woman behind the counter who took him in
+charge he specified at great length and in the most meticulous
+detail exactly what he did want. The young woman handed him
+her book of specimen pieces and asked him to see if he could
+find a style there which would suit him. While he looked through
+it she turned to another customer. Not to palter with the truth,
+that young woman had been getting a little weary of Roger and
+his wants.</p>
+
+<p>Apparently Roger could not find a style to suit him, for he
+closed the book and edged a little along the counter till he
+was within the territory of the next young woman. To her in
+turn he embarked on the epic of his needs, and in turn too she
+presented him with her book of specimens and asked him to
+choose one. As the book was only another copy of the same
+edition, it is not surprising that Roger found himself no further
+forward.</p>
+
+<p>Once more he edged along the counter, and once more he
+recited his saga to the third, and last, young woman. Knowing
+the game, she handed him her book of specimens. But this time
+Roger had his reward. This book was one of the same edition,
+but it was not an exact copy.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course I’m sure you’ll have what I want,” he remarked
+garrulously as he flicked over the pages, “because I was
+recommended here by a friend who is really most particular. <em>Most</em>
+particular.”</p>
+
+<p>“Is that so?” said the young woman, doing her best to appear
+extremely interested. She was a very young woman indeed, young
+enough to study the technique of salesmanship in her spare time;
+and one of the first rules in salesmanship, she had learned, was
+to receive a customer’s remark that it is a fine day with the same
+eager and respectful admiration of the penetrating powers of his
+observation as she would accord to a fortune-teller who informed
+her that she would receive a letter from a dark stranger across the
+water containing an offer of money, on her note of hand alone.
+“Well,” she said, trying hard, “some people are particular, and
+that’s a fact.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dear me!” Roger seemed much struck. “Do you know, I
+believe I’ve got my friend’s photograph on me this very minute.
+Isn’t that an extraordinary coincidence?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I never,” said the dutiful young woman.</p>
+
+<p>Roger produced the coincidental photograph and handed it
+across the counter. “There! Recognise it?”</p>
+
+<p>The young woman took the photograph and studied it closely.
+“So that’s your friend! Well, isn’t that extraordinary? Yes, of course
+I recognise it. It’s a small world, isn’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>“About a fortnight ago, I think my friend was in here last,”
+Roger persisted. “Is that right?”</p>
+
+<p>The young woman pondered. “Yes, it would be about a fortnight
+ago, I suppose. Yes, just about. Now this is a line we’re selling
+a good deal of just at present.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger bought an inordinate quantity of notepaper he didn’t
+want in the least, out of sheer lightness of heart. And because
+she really was a very nice young woman, and it was a shame to
+take advantage of her.</p>
+
+<p>Then he went back to his rooms for lunch.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the afternoon he spent in trying apparently to buy a
+second-hand typewriter.</p>
+
+<p>Roger was very particular that his typewriter should be a
+Hamilton No. 4. When the salesmen tried to induce him to
+consider other makes he refused to look at them, saying that he
+had had the Hamilton No. 4 so strongly recommended to him
+by a friend, who had bought a second-hand one just about three
+weeks ago. Perhaps it was at this very shop? No? They hadn’t sold
+a Hamilton No. 4 for the last two months? How very odd.</p>
+
+<p>But at one shop they had; and that was odder still. The obliging
+salesman looked up the exact date, and found that it was just
+a month ago. Roger described his friend, and the salesman at
+once agreed that Roger’s friend and his own customer were one
+and the same.</p>
+
+<p>“Good gracious, and now I come to think of it,” Roger cried,
+“I actually believe I’ve got my friend’s photograph on me at this
+very minute. Let me see!” He rummaged in his pockets, and to
+his great astonishment produced the photograph in question.</p>
+
+<p>The salesman most obligingly proceeded to identify his
+customer without hesitation. He then went on, just as obligingly,
+to sell Roger the second-hand Hamilton No. 4 which that
+enthusiastic detective felt he had not the face to refuse to buy.
+Detecting, Roger was discovering, is for the person without
+official authority to back him, a singularly expensive business.
+But like Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, he did not grudge money spent
+in a good cause.</p>
+
+<p>He went back to his rooms to tea. There was nothing more
+to be done except await the call from Moresby.</p>
+
+<p>It came sooner than he expected.</p>
+
+<p>“Is that you, Mr. Sheringham? There are fourteen taxi-drivers
+here, littering up my office,” said Moresby offensively. “They all
+took fares from Piccadilly Circus to the Strand, or <i>vice versa</i>, at
+your time. What do you want me to do with ’em?”</p>
+
+<p>“Kindly keep them till I come, Chief Inspector,” returned
+Roger with dignity, and grabbed his hat. He had not expected
+more than three at the most, but he was not going to let Moresby
+know that.</p>
+
+<p>The interview with the fourteen was brief enough however. To
+each grinning man in turn (Roger deduced a little heavy humour
+on the part of Moresby before he arrived) Roger showed the
+photograph, taking some pains to hold it so that Moresby could
+not see it, and asked if he could recognise his fare. Not a single
+one could.</p>
+
+<p>Moresby dismissed the men with a broad grin. “That’s a pity,
+Mr. Sheringham. Puts a bit of a spoke in the case you’re trying
+to work up, no doubt?”</p>
+
+<p>Roger smiled at him in a superior manner. “On the contrary,
+my dear Moresby, it just about clinches it.”</p>
+
+<p>“It what did you say?” asked Moresby, startled out of his
+grammar. “What are you up to, Mr. Sheringham, eh?”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought you knew all that. Aren’t we being sleuthed?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well!” Moresby actually looked a shade out of countenance.
+“To tell you the truth, Mr. Sheringham, all your people seemed
+to be going so far off the lines that I called my men off; it didn’t
+seem worth while keeping ’em on.”</p>
+
+<p>“Dear, dear,” said Roger gently. “Fancy that. Well, it’s a small
+world, isn’t it?”</p>
+
+<p>“So what have you been doing, Mr. Sheringham? You’ve no
+objection to telling me that, I suppose?”</p>
+
+<p>“None in the least, Moresby. Your work for you. Does it interest
+you to know that I’ve found out who sent those chocolates
+to Sir Eustace?”</p>
+
+<p>Moresby eyed him for a moment. “It certainly does, Mr.
+Sheringham. If you really have.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I have, yes,” said Roger very nonchalantly; even Mr.
+Bradley himself could not have spoken more so. “I’ll give you a
+report on it as soon as I’ve got my evidence in order.—It was an
+interesting case,” he added. And suppressed a yawn.</p>
+
+<p>“Was it now, Mr. Sheringham?” said Moresby, in a choked
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes; in its way. But absurdly simple once one had grasped
+the really essential factor. Quite ridiculously so. I’ll let you have
+that report some time. So long, then.” And he strolled out.</p>
+
+<p>One cannot conceal the fact that Roger had his annoying
+moments.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch13">
+
+<h2>Chapter XIII</h2>
+
+<p>Roger called on himself.</p>
+
+<p>“Ladies and gentlemen, as the one responsible for this experiment,
+I think I can congratulate myself. The three members who
+have spoken so far have shown an ingenuity of observation and
+argument which I think could have been called forth by no other
+agency. Each was convinced before beginning to speak that he or
+she had solved the problem and could produce positive proof in
+support of such solution, and each, I think, is still entitled to say
+that his or her reading of the puzzle has not yet been definitely
+disproved.</p>
+
+<p>“Even Sir Charles’s choice of Lady Pennefather is perfectly
+arguable, in spite of the positive alibi that Miss Dammers is able
+to give to Lady Pennefather herself; Sir Charles is quite entitled
+to say that Lady Pennefather has an accomplice, and to adduce
+in support of that the rather dubious circumstances attending
+her stay in Paris.</p>
+
+<p>“And in this connection I should like to take the opportunity
+of retracting what I said to Bradley last night. I said that I knew
+definitely that the woman he had in mind could not have committed
+the murder. That was a mis-statement. I didn’t know definitely
+at all. I found the idea, from what I personally know of her, to
+be quite incredible.</p>
+
+<p>“Moreover,” said Roger bravely, “I have some reason to suspect
+the origin of her interest in criminology, and I’m pretty
+sure it’s quite a different one from that postulated by Bradley.
+What I should have said was, that her guilt of this crime was a
+psychological impossibility. But so far as facts go, one can’t prove
+psychological impossibilities. Bradley is still perfectly entitled to
+believe her the criminal. And in any case she must certainly remain
+on the list of suspects.”</p>
+
+<p>“I agree with you, Sheringham, you know, about the psychological
+impossibility,” remarked Mr. Bradley. “I said as much. The
+trouble is that I consider I proved the case against her.”</p>
+
+<p>“But you proved the case against yourself too,” pointed out
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming sweetly.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes; but that doesn’t worry me with its inconsistency.
+That involves no psychological impossibility, you see.”</p>
+
+<p>“No,” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “Perhaps not.”</p>
+
+<p>“Psychological impossibility!” contributed Sir Charles robustly.
+“Oh, you novelists. You’re all so tied up with Freud nowadays
+that you’ve lost sight of human nature altogether. When I was
+a young man nobody talked about psychological impossibilities.
+And why? Because we knew very well that there’s no such thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“In other words, the most improbable person may, in certain
+circumstances, do the most unlikely things,” amplified Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming. “Well, I may be old-fashioned, but I’m inclined
+to agree with that.”</p>
+
+<p>“Constance Kent,” led Sir Charles.</p>
+
+<p>“Lizzie Borden,” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming covered.</p>
+
+<p>“The entire Adelaide Bartlett case,” Sir Charles brought out
+the ace of trumps.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming gathered the cards up into a neat pack.
+“In my opinion, people who talk of psychological impossibilities
+are treating their subjects as characters in one of their own
+novels—they’re infusing a certain percentage of their own mental
+make-up into them and consequently never see clearly that what
+they think may be the impossible for themselves may quite well
+be the possible (however improbable) in somebody else.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then there is something to be said after all for the detective
+story merchant’s axiom of the most unlikely person,” murmured
+Mr. Bradley. “Good!”</p>
+
+<p>“Shall we hear what Mr. Sheringham’s got to say about the
+case now?” suggested Miss Dammers.</p>
+
+<p>Roger took the hint.</p>
+
+<p>“I was going on to say how interestingly the experiment had
+turned out, too, in that the three people who have already spoken
+happen each to have hit on a different person for the criminal. I, by
+the way, am going to suggest another, so even if Miss Dammers
+and Mr. Chitterwick each agree with one of us, that gives us four
+entirely different possibilities. I don’t mind confessing that I’d
+hoped something like that would happen, though I hardly looked
+for such an excellent result.</p>
+
+<p>“Still, as Bradley has pointed out in his remarks about closed
+and open murders, the possibilities in this case really are almost
+infinite. That, of course, makes it so much more interesting from
+our point of view. For instance, I began my own investigations
+from the point of view of Sir Eustace’s private life. It was there,
+I felt convinced, that the clue to the murder was to be found. Just
+as Bradley did. And like him, I thought that this clue would be in
+the form of a discarded mistress; jealousy or revenge, I was sure,
+would turn out to be the mainspring of the crime. Lastly, like him
+I was convinced from the very first glance at the business that the
+crime was the work of a woman.</p>
+
+<p>“The consequence was that I began work entirely from the
+angle of Sir Eustace’s women. I spent a good many not too
+savoury days collecting data, until I was convinced that I had a
+complete list of all his affairs during the past five years. It was not
+too difficult. Sir Eustace, as I said last night, is not a reticent man.
+Apparently I had not got the full list, for mine hadn’t included
+the lady whose name was not mentioned last night, and if there
+was one omission it’s possible there may be more. At any rate, it
+seems that Sir Eustace, to do him justice, did have his moments
+of discretion.</p>
+
+<p>“But now all that is really beside the point. What matters is
+that at first I was certain that the crime was the work not only of
+a woman, but of a woman who had comparatively recently been
+Sir Eustace’s mistress.</p>
+
+<p>“I have now changed all my opinions, <i>in toto</i>.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, really!” moaned Mr. Bradley. “Don’t tell me I was wrong
+all along the line.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m afraid so,” said Roger, trying to keep the triumph out
+of his voice. It is a difficult thing, when one has really and truly
+solved a problem which has baffled so many excellent brains, to
+appear entirely indifferent about it.</p>
+
+<p>“I regret to have to say,” he went on, hoping he appeared
+humbler than he felt, “I regret to have to say that I can’t claim all
+credit for this change of view for my own perspicacity. To be quite
+honest, it was sheer luck. A chance meeting with a silly woman in
+Bond Street put me in possession of a piece of information, trivial
+in itself (my informant never for one moment saw its possible
+significance), but which immediately altered the whole case for
+me. I saw in a flash that I’d been working from the beginning on
+mistaken premises. That I’d been making, in fact, the particular
+fundamental mistake which the murderer had intended the police
+and everybody else to make.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s a curious business, this element of luck in the solution of
+crime-puzzles,” Roger ruminated. “As it happens I was discussing
+it with Moresby, in connection with this very case. I pointed out
+to him the number of impossible problems which Scotland Yard
+solves eventually through sheer luck—a vital piece of evidence
+turning up of its own accord so to speak, or a piece of information
+brought in by an angry woman because her husband happened
+to have given her grounds for jealousy just before the crime.
+That sort of thing is happening all the time. <i>The Avenging Chance</i>,
+I suggested as a title, if Moresby ever wanted to make a film out
+of such a story.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, The Avenging Chance has worked again. By means of
+that lucky encounter in Bond Street, in one moment of enlightenment
+it showed me who really had sent those chocolates to Sir
+Eustace Pennefather.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, well, well!” Mr. Bradley kindly expressed the feelings
+of the Circle.</p>
+
+<p>“And who was it, then?” queried Miss Dammers, who had
+an unfortunate lack of dramatic feeling. For that matter Miss
+Dammers was inclined to plume herself on the fact that she
+had no sense of construction, and that none of her books ever
+had a plot. Novelists who use words like ‘values’ and ‘reflexes’
+and ‘Œdipus-complex’ simply won’t have anything to do with
+plots. “Who appeared to you in this interesting revelation, Mr.
+Sheringham?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, let me work my story up a little first,” Roger pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers sighed. Stories, as Roger as a fellow-craftsman
+ought to have known, simply weren’t done nowadays. But then
+Roger was a best-seller, and anything is possible with a creature
+like that.</p>
+
+<p>Unconscious of these reflections, Roger was leaning back in
+his chair in an easy attitude, meditating gently. When he began
+to speak again it was in a more conversational tone than he had
+used before.</p>
+
+<p>“You know, this really was a very remarkable case. You and
+Bradley, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, didn’t do the criminal justice
+when you described it as a hotch-potch of other cases. Any ideas
+of real merit in previous cases may have been borrowed, perhaps;
+but as Fielding says, in <i>Tom Jones</i>, to borrow from the classics, even
+without acknowledgment, is quite legitimate for the purposes of
+an original work. And this <em>is</em> an original work. It has one feature
+which not only absolves it from all charge to the contrary, but
+which puts it head and shoulders above all its prototypes.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s bound to become one of the classical cases itself. And but
+for the merest accident, which the criminal for all his ingenuity
+couldn’t possibly have foreseen, I think it would have become
+one of the classical mysteries. On the whole I’m inclined to
+consider it the most perfectly-planned murder I’ve ever heard
+of (because of course one doesn’t hear of the even more
+perfectly-planned ones that are never known to be murders at all).
+It’s so exactly right—ingenious, utterly simple, and as near as
+possible infallible.”</p>
+
+<p>“Humph! Not so very infallible, as it turned out, Sheringham,
+eh?” grunted Sir Charles.</p>
+
+<p>Roger smiled at him.</p>
+
+<p>“The motive’s so obvious, when you know where to look for
+it; but you didn’t know. The method’s so significant, once you’ve
+grasped its real essentials; but you didn’t grasp them. The traces
+are so thinly covered, when you’ve realised just what is covering
+them; but you didn’t realise. Everything was anticipated. The
+soap was left lying about in chunks, and we all hurried to stuff
+our eyes with it. No wonder we couldn’t see clearly. It really was
+beautifully planned. The police, the public, the press—everybody
+completely taken in. It seems almost a pity to have to give the
+murderer away.”</p>
+
+<p>“Really, Mr. Sheringham,” remarked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.
+“You’re getting quite lyrical.”</p>
+
+<p>“A perfect murder makes me feel lyrical. If I was this particular
+criminal I should have been writing odes to myself for the last
+fortnight.”</p>
+
+<p>“And as it is,” suggested Miss Dammers, “you feel like writing
+odes to yourself for having solved the thing.”</p>
+
+<p>“I do rather,” Roger agreed.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I’ll begin with the evidence. As to that, I won’t say that
+I’ve got such a collection of detail as Bradley was able to amass
+to prove his first theory, but I think you’ll all agree that I’ve got
+quite enough. Perhaps I can’t do better than run through his list
+of twelve conditions which the murderer must fulfil, though as
+you’ll see I don’t by any means agree with all of them.</p>
+
+<p>“I grant and can prove the first two, that the murderer must
+have at least an elementary knowledge of chemistry and criminology,
+but I disagree with both parts of the third; I don’t think
+a good education is really essential, and I should certainly not
+rule out any one with a public-school or university education, for
+reasons which I’ll explain later. Nor do I agree with the fourth,
+that he or she must have had possession of or access to Mason’s
+notepaper. It was an ingenious idea of Bradley’s that the
+possession of the notepaper suggested the method of the crime, but I
+think it mistaken; a previous case suggested the method, chocolates
+were decided on (for a very good reason indeed, as I’ll show
+later) as the vehicle, and Mason’s as being the most important
+firm of chocolate manufacturers. It then became necessary to
+procure a piece of their notepaper, and I’m in a position to show
+how this was done.</p>
+
+<p>“The fifth condition I would qualify. I don’t agree that the
+criminal must have possession of or access to a Hamilton No. 4
+typewriter, but I do agree that such possession must have existed.
+In other words, I would put that condition in the past tense.
+Remember that we have to deal with a very astute criminal, and a
+very carefully planned crime. I thought it most unlikely that such
+an incriminating piece of evidence as the actual typewriter would
+be allowed to lie about for anyone to discover. Much more probable
+that a machine had been bought specially for the occasion. It
+was clear from the letter that it wasn’t a new machine which had
+been used. With the courage of my deduction, therefore, I spent
+a whole afternoon making inquiries at second-hand typewriter-shops
+till I ran down the place where it had been bought, and
+proved the buying. The shopman was able to identify my murderer
+from a photograph I had with me.”</p>
+
+<p>“And where’s the machine now?” asked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>“I expect, at the bottom of the Thames. That’s my point. This
+criminal of mine leaves nothing to chance at all.</p>
+
+<p>“With the sixth condition, about being near the post-office
+during the critical hour, of course I agree. My murderer has a mild
+alibi, but it doesn’t hold water. As to the next two, the fountain-pen
+and the ink, I haven’t been able to check them at all, and while
+I agree that their possession would be rather pleasing confirmation
+I don’t attach great importance to them; Onyx pens are so
+universal, and so is Harfield’s ink, that there isn’t much argument
+there either way. Besides, it would be just like my criminal not to
+own either of them but to have borrowed the pen unobtrusively.
+Lastly, I agree about the creative mind, and the neatness with the
+fingers, and of course with the poisoner’s peculiar mentality, but
+not with the necessity for methodical habits.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, come,” said Mr. Bradley, pained. “That was rather a sound
+deduction, I thought. And it stands to reason, too.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not to my reason,” Roger retorted.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>“It’s the notepaper I’m interested in,” said Sir Charles. “In
+my opinion that’s the point on which the case against any one
+must hang. How do you prove possession of the notepaper,
+Sheringham?”</p>
+
+<p>“The notepaper,” said Roger, “was extracted about three weeks
+ago from one of Webster’s books of sample notepaper-headings.
+The erasure would be some private mark of Webster’s, the price,
+for instance: ‘This style, 5s. 9d.’ There are three books at Webster’s,
+containing exactly the same samples. Two of them include a piece
+of Mason’s paper; from the third it’s missing. I can prove contact
+of my suspect with the book about three weeks ago.”</p>
+
+<p>“You can, can you?” Sir Charles was impressed. “That sounds
+pretty conclusive. What put you on the idea of the sample books?”</p>
+
+<p>“The yellowed edges of the letter,” Roger said, not a little
+pleased with himself. “I didn’t see how a bit of paper that had
+been kept in a pile could get its edges quite so discoloured as all
+that, so concluded that it must have been an isolated piece. Then it
+struck me that walking about London, one does see isolated pieces
+of notepaper stuck on a board in the windows of printing-firms.
+But this piece showed no drawing-pin holes or any other signs
+of having been fixed to a board. Besides, it would be difficult to
+remove it from a board. What was the next best thing? Obviously,
+a sample-book, such as one usually finds inside the same shops.
+So to the printers of Mason’s notepaper I went, and there, so to
+speak, my piece wasn’t.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” muttered Sir Charles, “certainly that sounds pretty
+conclusive.” He sighed. One gathered that he was gazing wistfully in
+his mind’s eye at the diminishing figure of Lady Pennefather, and
+the beautiful case he had built up around her. Then he brightened.
+This time one had gathered that he had switched his vision to
+the figure, equally diminishing, of Sir Charles Wildman, and the
+beautiful case that had been built up around him too.</p>
+
+<p>“So now,” said Roger, feeling he could really put it off no
+longer, “we come to the fundamental mistake to which I referred
+just now, the trap the murderer laid for us and into which we all
+so neatly fell.”</p>
+
+<p>Everybody sat up.</p>
+
+<p>Roger surveyed them benignly.</p>
+
+<p>“You got very near seeing it, Bradley, last night, with your
+casual suggestion that Sir Eustace himself might not have been
+the intended victim after all. That’s right enough. But I go further
+than that.”</p>
+
+<p>“I fell in the trap, though, did I?” said Mr. Bradley, pained.
+“Well, what is this trap? What’s the fundamental mistake we all
+side-slipped into?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why,” Roger brought out in triumph, “that the plan had
+miscarried—that the wrong person had been killed!”</p>
+
+<p>He got his reward.</p>
+
+<p>“What!” said every one at once. “Good heavens, you don’t
+mean. . . ?”</p>
+
+<p>“Exactly,” Roger crowed. “That was just the beauty of it. The
+plan had <em>not</em> miscarried. It had been brilliantly successful. The
+wrong person had <em>not</em> been killed. Very much the right person
+was.”</p>
+
+<p>“What’s all this?” positively gaped Sir Charles. “How on earth
+do you make that out?”</p>
+
+<p>“Mrs. Bendix was the objective all the time,” Roger went on
+more soberly. “That’s why the plot was so ingenious. Every single
+thing was anticipated. It was foreseen that, if Bendix could be
+brought naturally into Sir Eustace’s presence when the parcel
+was being opened, the latter would hand the chocolates over to
+him. It was foreseen that the police would look for the criminal
+among Sir Eustace’s associates, and not the dead woman’s. It was
+probably even foreseen, Bradley, that the crime would be considered
+the work of a woman, whereas really, of course, chocolates
+were employed because it was a woman who was the objective.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, well well!” said Mr. Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>“Then it’s your theory,” pursued Sir Charles, “that the murderer
+was an associate of the dead woman’s, and had nothing to
+do with Sir Eustace at all?” He spoke as if not altogether averse
+from such a theory.</p>
+
+<p>“It is,” Roger confirmed. “But first let me tell you what finally
+opened my eyes to the trap. The vital piece of information I
+got in Bond Street was this: <em>that Mrs. Bendix had seen that play</em>,
+<i>The Creaking Skull</i>, <em>before</em>. There’s no doubt about it; she
+actually went with my informant herself. You see the extraordinary
+significance, of course. That means that she already knew the
+answer to that bet she made with her husband about the identity
+of the villain.”</p>
+
+<p>A little intake of breath testified to a general appreciation of
+this information.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! What a marvellous piece of divine irony.” Miss Dammers
+was exercising her usual faculty of viewing things from the
+impersonal aspect. “Then she actually brought her own retribution on
+herself. The bet she won virtually killed her.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” said Roger. “The irony hadn’t failed to strike even my
+informant. The punishment, as she pointed out, was so much
+greater than the crime. But I don’t think,”—Roger spoke very
+gently, in a mighty effort to curb his elation—“I don’t think that
+even now you quite see my point.”</p>
+
+<p>Everybody looked inquiringly.</p>
+
+<p>“You’ve all heard Mrs. Bendix quite minutely described. You
+must all have formed a tolerably close mental picture of her.
+She was a straightforward, honest girl, making if anything (also
+according to my informant) almost too much of a fetich of straight
+dealing and playing the game. Does the making of a bet to which
+she already knew the answer, fit into that picture or does it not?”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” nodded Mr. Bradley. “Oh, very pretty.”</p>
+
+<p>“Just so. It is (with apologies to Sir Charles) a psychological
+impossibility. It really is, you know, Sir Charles; one simply can’t
+see her doing such a thing, in fun or out of it; and I gather that
+fun wasn’t her strong suit, by any means.</p>
+
+<p>“<i>Ergo</i>,” concluded Roger briskly, “she didn’t. <i>Ergo</i>, that bet
+was never made. <i>Ergo</i>, there never was such a bet. <i>Ergo</i>, Bendix
+was lying. <i>Ergo</i>, Bendix wanted to get hold of those chocolates
+for some reason other than he stated. And the chocolates being
+what they were, there was only one other reason.</p>
+
+<p>“That’s my case.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch14">
+
+<h2>Chapter XIV</h2>
+
+<p>When the excitement that greeted this revolutionary
+reading of the case had died down, Roger went on
+to defend his theory in more detail.</p>
+
+<p>“It <em>is</em> something of a shock, of course, to find oneself
+contemplating Bendix as the very cunning murderer of his own wife, but
+really, once one has been able to rid one’s mind of all prejudice, I
+don’t see how the conclusion can possibly be avoided. Every item
+of evidence, however minute, goes to support it.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the motive!” ejaculated Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.</p>
+
+<p>“Motive? Good heavens, he’d motive enough. In the first
+place he was frankly—no, not frankly; secretly!—tired of her.
+Remember what we were told of his character. He’d sown his
+wild oats. But apparently he hadn’t finished sowing them, because
+his name has been mentioned in connection with more than
+one woman even since his marriage, usually, in the good
+old-fashioned way, actresses. So Bendix wasn’t such a solemn stick
+by any means. He liked his fun. And his wife, I should imagine,
+was just about the last person in the world to sympathise with
+such feelings.</p>
+
+<p>“Not that he hadn’t liked her well enough when he married
+her, quite possibly, though it was her money he was after all the
+time. But she must have bored him dreadfully very soon. And
+really,” said Roger impartially, “I think one can hardly blame
+him there. Any woman, however charming otherwise, is bound
+to bore a normal man if she does nothing but prate continually
+about honour and duty and playing the game; and that, I have on
+good authority, was Mrs. Bendix’s habit.</p>
+
+<p>“Just look at the <i>ménage</i> in this new light. The wife would
+never overlook the smallest peccadillo. Every tiny lapse would
+be thrown up at him for years. Everything she did would be right
+and everything he did wrong. Her sanctimonious righteousness
+would be forever being contrasted with his vileness. She might
+even work herself into the state of those half-mad creatures who
+spend the whole of their married lives reviling their husbands for
+having been attracted by other women before they even met the
+girl it was their misfortune to marry. Don’t think I’m trying to
+blacken Mrs. Bendix. I’m just showing you how intolerable life
+with her might have been.</p>
+
+<p>“But that’s only the incidental motive. The real trouble was that
+she was too close with her money, and that too I know for a fact.
+That’s where she sentenced herself to death. He wanted it, or some
+of it, badly (it’s what he married her for), and she wouldn’t part.</p>
+
+<p>“One of the first things I did was to consult a Directory of
+Directors and make a list of the firms he’s interested in, with a
+view to getting a confidential report on their financial condition.
+The report reached me just before I left my rooms. It told me
+exactly what I expected—that every single one of those firms is
+rocky, some only a little but some within sight of a crash. They all
+need money to save them. It’s obvious, isn’t it? He’s run through
+all his own money, and he had to get more. I found time to run
+down to Somerset House and again it was as I expected: her will
+was entirely in his favour. The really important point (which no
+one seems to have suspected) is that he isn’t a good business-man
+at all; he’s a rotten one. And half-a-million . . . Well!</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes. There’s motive enough.”</p>
+
+<p>“Motive allowed,” said Mr. Bradley. “And the nitrobenzene?
+You said, I think, that Bendix has some knowledge of chemistry.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger laughed. “You remind me of a Wagner opera, Bradley.
+The nitrobenzene <i lang="fr">motif</i> crops up regularly from you whenever
+a possible criminal is mentioned. However, I think I can satisfy
+even you in this instance. Nitrobenzene as you know, is used in
+perfumery. In the list of Bendix’s businesses is the Anglo-Eastern
+Perfumery Company. I made a special, and dreadful, journey out
+to Acton for the express purpose of finding out whether the
+Anglo-Eastern Company used nitrobenzene at all, and, if so, whether its
+poisonous qualities were thoroughly recognised. The answer to
+both questions was in the affirmative. So there can be no doubt
+that Bendix is thoroughly acquainted with the stuff.</p>
+
+<p>“He might easily enough have got his supply from the factory,
+but I’m inclined to doubt that. I think he’d be cleverer than that.
+He probably made the stuff himself, if the process is as easy as
+Bradley told us. Because I happen to know that he was on the
+modern side at Selchester (that I heard quite by chance too), which
+presupposes at any rate an elementary knowledge of chemistry.
+Do you pass that, Bradley?”</p>
+
+<p>“Pass, friend nitrobenzene,” conceded Mr. Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>Roger drummed thoughtfully on the table with his finger-tips.
+“It was a well-planned affair, wasn’t it?” he meditated. “And so
+extremely easy to reconstruct. Bendix must have thought he’d
+provided against every possible contingency. And so he very
+nearly had. It was just that little bit of unlucky grit that gets into
+the smooth machinery of so many clever crimes: he didn’t know
+that his wife had seen the play before. He’d decided on the mild
+alibi of his presence at the theatre, you see, just in case suspicion
+should ever impossibly arise, and no doubt he stressed his desire
+to see the play and take her with him. Not to spoil his pleasure,
+she would have unselfishly concealed from him the fact that she
+had seen the play before and didn’t much want to see it again.
+That unselfishness let him down. Because it’s inconceivable that
+she would have turned it to her own advantage to win the bet he
+pretends to have made with her.</p>
+
+<p>“He left the theatre of course during the first interval, and
+hurried as far as he dare go in the ten minutes at his disposal, to
+post the parcel. I sat through the dreadful thing myself last night
+just to see when the intervals came. The first one fits excellently.
+I’d hoped he might have taken a taxi one way, as time was short,
+but if he did no driver of such taxis as did make a similar journey
+that evening can identify him. Or possibly the right driver hasn’t
+come forward yet. I got Scotland Yard to look into that point for
+me. But it really fits much better with the cleverness he’s shown all
+through, that he should have gone by ’bus or underground. Taxis,
+he’d know, are traceable. But if so he’d run it very fine indeed, and
+I shouldn’t be surprised if he got back to his box a few minutes
+late. The police may be able to establish that.”</p>
+
+<p>“It seems to me,” observed Mr. Bradley, “that we made
+something of a mistake in turning the man down from membership
+here. We thought his criminology wasn’t up to standard, didn’t
+we? Well, well.”</p>
+
+<p>“But we could hardly be expected to know that he was a
+practical criminologist rather than a mere theoretical one,” Roger
+smiled. “It was a mistake, though. It would have been pleasant to
+include a practical criminologist among our members.”</p>
+
+<p>“I must confess that I thought at one time that we did,” said
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, making her peace. “Sir Charles,” she
+added unnecessarily, “I apologise, without reserve.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles inclined his head courteously. “Please don’t refer
+to it, madam. And in any event the experience for me was an
+interesting one.”</p>
+
+<p>“I may have been misled by the case I quoted,” said Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, rather wistfully. “It was a strangely close
+parallel.”</p>
+
+<p>“It was the first parallel that occurred to me, too,” Roger
+agreed. “I studied the Molineux case quite closely, hoping to get
+a pointer from it. But now, if I were asked for a parallel, I should
+reply with the Carlyle Harris case. You remember, the young
+medical student who sent a pill containing morphine to the girl
+Helen Potts, to whom it turned out that he had been secretly married
+for a year. He was by way of being a profligate and a general
+young rotter too. A great novel, as you know, has been founded
+on the case, so why not a great crime too?”</p>
+
+<p>“Then why, Mr. Sheringham,” Miss Dammers wanted to know,
+“do you think that Mr. Bendix took the risk of not destroying the
+forged letter and the wrapper when he had the chance?”</p>
+
+<p>“He very carefully didn’t do so,” Roger replied promptly,
+“because the forged letter and the wrapper had been calculated
+not only to divert suspicion from himself but actually to point
+away from him to somebody else—an employee of Mason’s, for
+instance, or an anonymous lunatic. Which is exactly what they
+did.”</p>
+
+<p>“But wouldn’t it be a great risk, to send poisoned chocolates
+like that to Sir Eustace?” suggested Mr. Chitterwick diffidently. “I
+mean, Sir Eustace might have been ill the next morning, or not
+offered to hand them over at all. Suppose he had given them to
+somebody else instead of Bendix.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger proceeded to give Mr. Chitterwick cause for his diffidence.
+He was feeling something of a personal pride in Bendix by
+this time, and it distressed him to hear a great man thus maligned.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, really! You must give my man credit for being what
+he is. He’s not a bungler, you know. It wouldn’t have had any
+serious results if Sir Eustace had been ill that morning, or eaten
+the chocolates himself, or if they’d been stolen in transit and
+consumed by the postman’s favourite daughter, or any other
+unlikely contingency. Come, Mr. Chitterwick! You don’t imagine
+he’d send the poisoned ones through the post, do you? Of course
+not. He’d send harmless ones, and exchange them for the others
+on the way home. Dash it all, he wouldn’t go out of his way to
+present opportunities to chance.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! I see,” murmured Mr. Chitterwick, properly subdued.</p>
+
+<p>“We’re dealing with a very great criminal,” went on Roger,
+rather less severely. “That can be seen at every point. Take the
+arrival at the club, just for example—that most unusual early
+arrival (why this early arrival at all, by the way, if he isn’t guilty?).
+Well, he doesn’t wait outside and follow his unconscious accomplice
+in, you see. Not a bit of it. Sir Eustace is chosen because he’s
+known to get there so punctually at half-past ten every morning;
+takes a pride in it; boasts of it; goes out of his way to keep up the
+good old custom. So Bendix arrives at ten thirty-five, and there
+things are. It had puzzled me at the beginning of the case, by the
+way, to see why the chocolates had been sent to Sir Eustace at his
+club at all, instead of to his rooms. Now it’s obvious.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I wasn’t so far out with my list of conditions,” Mr.
+Bradley consoled himself. “But why don’t you agree with my
+rather subtle point about the murderer not being a public-school
+or University man, Sheringham? Just because Bendix happens to
+have been at Selchester and Oxford?”</p>
+
+<p>“No, because I’d make the still more subtle point that where
+the code of a public-school and University might influence a
+murderer in the way he murdered another man, it wouldn’t have much
+effect when a woman is to be the victim. I agree that if Bendix
+had been wanting to dispose of Sir Eustace, he would probably
+have put him out of the world in a nice, straightforward, manly
+way. But one doesn’t use nice, straightforward, manly ways in
+one’s dealings with women, if it comes to hitting them on the
+head with a bludgeon or anything in that nature. Poison, I fancy,
+would be quite in order. And there’s very little suffering with a
+large dose of nitrobenzene. Unconsciousness soon intervenes.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes,” admitted Mr. Bradley, “that is rather too subtle a point
+for one of my unpsychological attributes.”</p>
+
+<p>“I think I dealt with most of your other conditions. As regards
+the methodical habits, which you deduced from the meticulous
+doses of poison in each chocolate, my point of course is that the
+doses were exactly equal in order that Bendix could take any two
+of the chocolates and be sure of having got the right amount of
+nitrobenzene into his system to produce the symptoms he wanted,
+and not enough to run any serious risk. That dosing of himself
+with the poison really was a master-stroke. And it’s so natural that
+a man shouldn’t have taken so many chocolates as a woman. He
+exaggerated his symptoms considerably, no doubt, but the effect
+on everybody was tremendous.</p>
+
+<p>“We must remember, you see, that we’ve only got his word
+for the conversation in the drawing-room, over the eating of the
+chocolates, just as we’ve only got his word for it that there ever
+was a bet at all. Most of that conversation certainly took place,
+however. Bendix is far too great an artist not to make all possible
+use of the truth in his lying. But of course he wouldn’t have left
+her that afternoon till he’d seen her take, or somehow made her
+take, at least six of the chocolates, which he’d know made up
+more than a lethal dose. That was another advantage in having
+the stuff in those exact six-minim quantities.”</p>
+
+<p>“In fact,” Mr. Bradley summed up, “our Uncle Bendix is a
+great man.”</p>
+
+<p>“He really is,” said Roger, quite solemnly.</p>
+
+<p>“You’ve no doubt at all that he is the criminal?” queried Miss
+Dammers.</p>
+
+<p>“None at all,” said Roger, astonished.</p>
+
+<p>“Um,” said Miss Dammers.</p>
+
+<p>“Why, have you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Um,” said Miss Dammers.</p>
+
+<p>The conversation then lapsed.</p>
+
+<p>“Well,” said Mr. Bradley, “let’s all tell Sheringham how wrong
+he is, shall we?”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked tense. “I’m afraid,” she said in
+a hushed voice, “that he is only too right.”</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Bradley refused to be impressed. “Oh, I think I can
+find a hole or two to pick at. You seem to attach a good deal of
+importance to the motive, Sheringham. Don’t you exaggerate?
+One doesn’t poison a wife one’s tired of; one leaves her. And
+really, I find some difficulty in believing (<i>a</i>) that Bendix should
+have been so set on getting hold of more money to pour down
+the drainpipe of his businesses as to commit murder for it, and (<i>b</i>)
+that Mrs. Bendix should have been so close as to refuse to come
+to her husband’s help if he really was badly pressed.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then I think you fail to estimate the characters of both of
+them,” Roger told him. “They were both obstinate as the devil.
+It was Mrs. Bendix, not her husband, who realised that his
+businesses <em>were</em> a drainpipe. I could give you a list a yard long of
+murders that have been committed with far less motive than
+Bendix had.”</p>
+
+<p>“Motive allowed again, then. Now you remember that Mrs.
+Bendix had had a lunch appointment for the day of her death,
+which was cancelled. Didn’t Bendix know of that? Because if he
+did, would he have chosen a day for the delivery of the chocolates
+when he knew his wife wouldn’t be at home for lunch to receive
+them?”</p>
+
+<p>“Just the point I had thought of putting to Mr. Sheringham
+myself,” remarked Miss Dammers.</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked puzzled. “It seems to me a most unimportant
+point. If it comes to that, why should he necessarily want to give
+the chocolates to his wife at lunch-time?”</p>
+
+<p>“For two reasons,” responded Mr. Bradley glibly.</p>
+
+<p>“Firstly because he would naturally want to put them to their
+right purpose as soon as he possibly could, and secondly because
+his wife being the only person who can contradict his story of the
+bet, he would obviously want her silenced as soon as practicable.”</p>
+
+<p>“You’re quibbling,” Roger smiled, “and I refuse to be drawn.
+For that matter, I don’t see why Bendix should have known of his
+wife’s lunch-appointment at all. They were constantly lunching
+out, both of them, and I don’t suppose they took any particular
+care to inform each other beforehand.”</p>
+
+<p>“Humph!” said Mr. Bradley, and stroked his chin.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick ventured to raise his recently crushed head.
+“You really base your whole case on the bet, Mr. Sheringham,
+don’t you?”</p>
+
+<p>“And the psychological deduction I drew from the story of it.
+Yes, I do. Entirely.”</p>
+
+<p>“So that if the bet could be proved after all to have been made,
+you would have no case left?”</p>
+
+<p>“Why,” exclaimed Roger, in some alarm, “have you any
+independent evidence that the bet was made?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, no. Oh, dear me, no. Nothing of the sort. I was merely
+thinking that if any one did want to disprove your case, as Bradley
+suggested, it is the bet on which he would have to concentrate.”</p>
+
+<p>“You mean, quibbling about the motive, and the lunch-appointment,
+and such minor matters, is altogether beside the point?”
+suggested Mr. Bradley amiably. “Oh, I quite agree. But I was only
+trying to test his case, you know, not disprove it. And for why?
+Because I think it’s the right one. The Mystery of the Poisoned
+Chocolates, so far as I’m concerned, is at an end.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, Bradley,” said Mr. Sheringham.</p>
+
+<p>“So three cheers for our sleuth-like President,” continued Mr.
+Bradley with great heartiness, “coupled with the name of Graham
+Reynard Bendix for the fine run he’s given us. Hip, hip—”</p>
+
+<p>“And you say you’ve definitely proved the purchase of the
+typewriter, and the contact of Mr. Bendix with the sample-book
+at Webster’s, Mr. Sheringham?” remarked Alicia Dammers, who
+had apparently been pursuing a train of thought of her own.</p>
+
+<p>“I do, Miss Dammers,” said Roger, not without complacence.</p>
+
+<p>“Would you give me the name of the typewriter-shop?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course,” Roger tore a page from his notebook and copied
+out the name and address.</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you. And can you give me a description of the girl at
+Webster’s who identified the photograph of Mr. Bendix?”</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked at her a little uneasily; she gazed back with her
+usual calm serenity. Roger’s uneasiness grew. He gave her as good
+a description of Webster’s young woman as he could recall. Miss
+Dammers thanked him imperturbably.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, what are we going to do about it all?” persisted Mr.
+Bradley, who seemed to have adopted the rôle of showman for his
+President. “Shall we send a delegation to Scotland Yard consisting
+of Sheringham and myself, to break the news to them that their
+troubles are over?”</p>
+
+<p>“You are assuming that everybody agrees with Mr.
+Sheringham?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course.”</p>
+
+<p>“Isn’t it customary to put this sort of question to a vote?”
+suggested Miss Dammers coolly.</p>
+
+<p>“ ‘Carried unanimously,’ ” quoted Mr. Bradley. “Yes, do let’s
+have the correct procedure. Well, then, Sheringham moves that
+this meeting do accept his solution of the Poisoned Chocolates
+Mystery as the right one, and send a delegation of himself
+and Mr. Bradley to Scotland Yard to talk pretty severely to the
+police. I second the motion. Those in favour. . . ? Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming?”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming endeavoured to conceal her disapproval
+of Mr. Bradley in her approval of Mr. Bradley’s suggestion.
+“I certainly think that Mr. Sheringham has proved his case,” she
+said stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>“Sir Charles?”</p>
+
+<p>“I agree,” said Sir Charles, in stern tones, equally disproving
+Mr. Bradley’s frivolity.</p>
+
+<p>“Chitterwick?”</p>
+
+<p>“I agree too.” Was it Roger’s fancy, or did Mr. Chitterwick
+hesitate just a moment before he spoke, as if troubled by some
+mental reservation which he did not care to put into words? Roger
+decided that it was his fancy.</p>
+
+<p>“And Miss Dammers?” concluded Mr. Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers looked calmly round the table. “I don’t agree
+at all. I think Mr. Sheringham’s exposition was exceedingly
+ingenious, and altogether worthy of his reputation; at the same time
+I think it quite wrong. To-morrow I hope to be able to prove to
+you who really committed this crime.”</p>
+
+<p>The Circle gaped at her respectfully.</p>
+
+<p>Roger, wondering whether his ears had not really been playing
+tricks with him, found that his tongue too utterly refused to
+work. An inarticulate sound oozed from him.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley was the first to recover himself. “Carried,
+non-unanimously. Mr. President, I think this is a precedent. Does
+anybody know what happens when a resolution is not carried
+unanimously?”</p>
+
+<p>In the temporary disability of the President, Miss Dammers
+took it upon herself to decide. “The meeting stands adjourned,
+I think,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>And adjourned the meeting found itself.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch15">
+
+<h2>Chapter XV</h2>
+
+<p>Roger arrived at the Circle’s meeting-room the next
+evening even more agog than usual. In his heart on hearts
+he could not believe that Miss Dammers would ever be able to
+destroy his case against Bendix, or even dangerously shake it, but
+in any event what she had to say could not fail to be of absorbing
+interest, even without its animadversions of his own solution.
+Roger had been looking forward to Miss Dammers’s exposition
+more than to that of any one else.</p>
+
+<p>Alicia Dammers was so very much a reflection of the age.</p>
+
+<p>Had she been born fifty years ago, it is difficult to see how
+she could have gone on existing. It was impossible that she could
+have become the woman-novelist of that time, a strange creature
+(in the popular imagination) with white cotton gloves, an intense
+manner, and passionate, not to say hysterical yearnings towards
+a romance from which her appearance unfortunately debarred
+her. Miss Dammers’s gloves, like her clothes, were exquisite, and
+cotton could not have touched her since she was ten (if she ever
+had been); tensity was for her the depth of bad form; and if she
+knew how to yearn, she certainly kept it to herself. Passion and
+purple, one gathered, Miss Dammers found quite unnecessary to
+herself, if interesting phenomena in lesser mortals.</p>
+
+<p>From the caterpillar in cotton gloves the woman-novelist has
+progressed through the stage of cook-like cocoondom at which
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming had stuck, to the detached and serious
+butterfly, not infrequently beautiful as well as pensive, whose
+decorative pictures the illustrated weeklies are nowadays delighted
+to publish. Butterflies with calm foreheads, just faintly wrinkled in
+analytical thought. Ironical, cynical butterflies; surgeon-butterflies
+thronging the mental dissecting-rooms (and sometimes, if we
+must be candid, inclined to loiter there a little too long);
+passionless butterflies, flitting gracefully from one brightly-coloured
+complex to another. And sometimes completely humourless,
+and then distressingly boring butterflies, whose gathered pollen
+seems to have become a trifle mud-coloured.</p>
+
+<p>To meet Miss Dammers and look at her classical, oval face,
+with its delicately small features and big grey eyes, to glance
+approvingly over her tall, beautifully dressed figure, nobody whose
+imagination was still popular would ever have set her down as
+a novelist at all. And that in Miss Dammers’s opinion, coupled
+with the ability to write good books, was exactly what a
+properly-minded modern authoress should hope to achieve.</p>
+
+<p>No one had ever been brave enough to ask Miss Dammers
+how she could hope successfully to analyse in others emotions
+which she had never experienced in herself. Probably because the
+plain fact confronted the enquirer that she both could and did.
+Most successfully.</p>
+
+<p>“We listened last night,” began Miss Dammers, at five minutes
+past nine on the following evening, “to an exceedingly able exposition
+of a no less interesting theory of this crime. Mr. Sheringham’s
+methods, if I may say so, were a model to all of us. Beginning with
+the deductive, he followed this as far as it would take him, which
+was actually to the person of the criminal; he then relied on the
+inductive to prove his case. In this way he was able to make the
+best possible use of each method. That this ingenious mixture
+should have been based on a fallacy and therefore never had any
+chance of leading Mr. Sheringham to the right solution, is rather
+a piece of bad luck than his fault.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger, who still could not believe that he had not reached the
+truth, smiled dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Sheringham’s reading of the crime,” continued Miss
+Dammers, in her clear, level tones, “must have seemed to some
+of us novel in the extreme. To me, however, it was perhaps more
+interesting than novel, for it began from the same starting-point
+as the theory on which I myself have been working; namely, that
+the crime had not failed in its objective.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger pricked up his ears.</p>
+
+<p>“As Mr. Chitterwick pointed out, Mr. Sheringham’s whole case
+rested on the bet between Mr. and Mrs. Bendix. From Mr. Bendix’s
+story of that bet, he draws the psychological deduction that the bet
+never existed at all. That is clever, but it is the wrong deduction.
+Mr. Sheringham is too lenient in his interpretation of feminine
+psychology. I began, I think I may say, with the bet too. But the
+deduction I drew from it, knowing my sister-women perhaps a
+little more intimately than Mr. Sheringham could, was that Mrs.
+Bendix was not quite so honourable as she was painted by herself.”</p>
+
+<p>“I thought of that, of course,” Roger expostulated. “But I
+discarded it on purely logical grounds. There’s nothing in Mrs.
+Bendix’s life to show that she wasn’t honest, and everything to
+show that she was. And when there exists no evidence at all for
+the making of the bet beyond Bendix’s bare word . . .”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, but there does,” Miss Dammers took him up. “I’ve been
+spending most of to-day in establishing that point. I knew I should
+never really be able to shake you till I could definitely prove that
+there was a bet. Let me put you out of your agony at once, Mr.
+Sheringham. I’ve overwhelming evidence that the bet was made.”</p>
+
+<p>“You have?” said Roger, disconcerted.</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly. It was a point you really should have verified
+yourself, you know,” chided Miss Dammers gently, “considering its
+importance to your case. Well, I have two witnesses. Mrs. Bendix
+mentioned the bet to her maid when she went up to her bedroom
+to lie down, actually saying (like yourself, Mr. Sheringham) that
+the violent indigestion from which she thought herself to be
+suffering was a judgment on her for having made it. The second
+witness is a friend of my own, who knows the Bendixes. She saw
+Mrs. Bendix sitting alone in her box during the second interval,
+and went in to speak to her. In the course of the conversation
+Mrs. Bendix remarked that she and her husband had a bet on the
+identity of the villain, mentioning the character in the play whom
+she herself fancied. But (and this completely confirms my own
+deduction) Mrs. Bendix did <em>not</em> tell my friend that she had seen
+the play before.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh!” said Roger, now quite crestfallen.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers dealt with him as tenderly as possible. “There
+were only those two deductions to be made from that bet, and
+by bad luck you chose the wrong one.”</p>
+
+<p>“But how did you know,” said Roger, coming to the surface
+for the third time, “that Mrs. Bendix had seen the play before?
+I only found that out myself a couple of days ago, and by the
+merest accident.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I’ve known that from the beginning,” said Miss Dammers
+carelessly. “I suppose Mrs. Verreker-le-Mesurer told you? I don’t
+know her personally, but I know people who do. I didn’t interrupt
+you last night when you were talking about the amazing chance
+of this piece of knowledge reaching you. If I had, I should have
+pointed out that the agency by which anything known to Mrs.
+Verreker-le-Mesurer (as I see her) might become known to her
+friends too, isn’t chance at all, but certainty.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see,” said Roger, and sank for the third, and final, time. But
+as he did so he remembered one piece of information which Mrs.
+Verreker-le-Mesurer had succeeded, not wholly as it seemed but
+very nearly so, in withholding from her friends; and catching Mr.
+Bradley’s ribald eye knew that his thought was shared. So even
+Miss Dammers was not quite infallible in her psychology.</p>
+
+<p>“We then,” resumed that lady, somewhat didactically, “have
+Mr. Bendix displaced from his temporary rôle of villain and back
+again in his old part of second victim.” She paused for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>“But without Sir Eustace returning to the cast in his original
+star part of intended victim of the piece,” amplified Mr.
+Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers rightly ignored him. “Now here, I think, Mr.
+Sheringham will find my case as interesting as I found his last
+night, for though we differ so vitally in some essentials we agree
+remarkably in others. And one of the points on which we agree
+is that the intended victim certainly was killed.”</p>
+
+<p>“What, Alicia?” exclaimed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. “You think
+too that the plot was directed against Mrs. Bendix from the
+beginning?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have no doubt of it. But to prove my contention I must
+demolish yet another of Mr. Sheringham’s conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>“You made the point, Mr. Sheringham, that half-past ten in
+the morning was a most unusual time for Mr. Bendix to arrive at
+his club and therefore highly significant. That is perfectly true.
+Unfortunately you attached the wrong significance to it. His
+arrival at that hour doesn’t necessarily argue a guilty intention, as
+you assumed. It escaped you (as in fairness I must say it seems to
+have escaped every one else) that if Mrs. Bendix was the intended
+victim and Mr. Bendix himself not her murderer, his presence at
+the club at that convenient time might have been secured by the
+real murderer. In any case I think Mr. Sheringham might have
+given Mr. Bendix the benefit of the doubt in so far as to ask him
+if he had any explanation of his own to offer. As I did.”</p>
+
+<p>“You asked Bendix himself how it had happened that he arrived
+at the club at half-past ten that morning?” Mr. Chitterwick said in
+awed tones. This was certainly the way real detecting should be
+done. Unfortunately his own diffidence seemed to have prevented
+Mr. Chitterwick from doing any real detecting at all.</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly,” agreed Miss Dammers briskly. “I rang him up,
+and put the point to him. From what I gathered, not even the
+police had thought to put it before. And though he answered it
+in a way I quite expected, it was clear that he saw no significance
+in his own answer. Mr. Bendix told me that he had gone there to
+receive a telephone message. But why not have had the message
+telephoned to his home? you will ask. Exactly. So did I. The reason
+was that it was not the sort of message one cares about receiving
+at home. I must admit that I pressed Mr. Bendix about this
+message, and as he had no idea of the importance of my questions he
+must have considered my taste more than questionable. However,
+I couldn’t help that.</p>
+
+<p>“In the end I got him to admit that on the previous afternoon
+he had been rung up at his office by a Miss Vera Delorme, who
+plays a small part in <i>Heels Up!</i> at the Regency Theatre. He had
+only met her once or twice, but was not averse from doing so
+again. She asked him if he were doing anything important the next
+morning, to which he replied that he was not. Could he take her
+out to a quiet little lunch somewhere? He would be delighted. But
+she was not quite sure yet whether she was free. She would ring
+him up the next morning between ten-thirty and eleven o’clock
+at the Rainbow Club.”</p>
+
+<p>Five pairs of brows were knitted.</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t see any significance in that either,” finally plunged
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.</p>
+
+<p>“No?” said Miss Dammers. “But if Miss Delorme straightly
+denies having ever rung Mr. Bendix up at all?”</p>
+
+<p>Five pairs of brows unravelled themselves.</p>
+
+<p>“<em>Oh!</em>” said Mrs. Fielder-Flemming.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course that was the first thing I verified,” said Miss
+Dammers coolly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick sighed. Yes, undoubtedly this was real
+detecting.</p>
+
+<p>“Then your murderer had an accomplice, Miss Dammers?”
+Sir Charles suggested.</p>
+
+<p>“He had two,” retorted Miss Dammers. “Both unwitting.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, yes. You mean Bendix. And the woman who telephoned?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well—!” Miss Dammers looked in her unexcited way round
+the circle of faces. “Isn’t it obvious?”</p>
+
+<p>Apparently it was not at all obvious.</p>
+
+<p>“At any rate it must be obvious why Miss Delorme was chosen
+as the telephonist: because Mr. Bendix hardly knew her, and would
+certainly not be able to recognise her voice on the telephone. And
+as for the real speaker . . . Well, really!” Miss Dammers looked her
+opinion of such obtuseness.</p>
+
+<p>“Mrs. Bendix!” squeaked Mrs. Fielder-Flemming catching
+sight of a triangle.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course. Mrs. Bendix, carefully primed by <em>somebody</em> about
+her husband’s minor misdemeanours.”</p>
+
+<p>“The somebody being the murderer of course,” nodded Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming. “A friend of Mrs. Bendix’s then. At least,”
+amended Mrs. Fielder-Flemming in some confusion, remembering
+that real friends seldom murder each other, “she thought of
+him as a friend. Dear me, this is getting very interesting, Alicia.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers gave a small, ironical smile. “Yes, it’s a very
+intimate little affair after all, this murder. Tightly closed, in fact,
+Mr. Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>“But I’m getting on rather too fast. I had better complete the
+destruction of Mr. Sheringham’s case before I build up my own.”
+Roger groaned faintly and looked up at the hard, white ceiling.
+It reminded him of Miss Dammers, and he looked down again.</p>
+
+<p>“Really, Mr. Sheringham, your faith in human nature is
+altogether too great, you know,” Miss Dammers mocked him without
+mercy. “Whatever anybody chooses to tell you, you believe. A
+confirmatory witness never seems necessary to you. I’m sure that
+if some one had come to your rooms and told you he’d seen the
+Shah of Persia injecting the nitrobenzene into those chocolates
+you would have believed him unhesitatingly.”</p>
+
+<p>“Are you hinting that somebody hasn’t told me the truth?”
+groaned the unhappy Roger.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll do more than hint it; I’ll prove it. When you told us last
+night that the man in the typewriter shop had positively identified
+Mr. Bendix as the purchaser of a second-hand No. 4 Hamilton I
+was astounded. I took a note of the shop’s address. This morning,
+first thing, I went there. I taxed the man roundly with having told
+you a lie. He admitted it, grinning.</p>
+
+<p>“So far as he could make out, all you wanted was a good
+Hamilton No. 4, and he had a good Hamilton No. 4 to sell. He
+saw nothing wrong in leading you to suppose that his was the
+shop where your friend had bought his own good Hamilton No. 4,
+because he had quite as good a one as any other shop could have.
+And if it eased your mind that he should recognise your friend
+from his photograph—well,” said Miss Dammers drily, “he was
+quite prepared to ease it as many times as you had photographs
+to produce.”</p>
+
+<p>“I see,” said Roger, and his thoughts dwelt on the eight pounds
+he had handed over to that sympathetic, mind-easing shopman
+in return for a Hamilton No. 4 he didn’t want.</p>
+
+<p>“As for the girl in Webster’s,” continued Miss Dammers implacably,
+“she was just as ready to admit that perhaps she might have
+made a mistake in recognising that friend of the gentleman
+who called in yesterday about some notepaper. But really, the
+gentleman had seemed so anxious she should that it would have
+seemed quite a pity to disappoint him, like. And if it came to
+that, she couldn’t see the harm in it not even now she couldn’t.”
+Miss Dammers’s imitation of Webster’s young woman was most
+amusing. Roger did not laugh heartily.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m sorry if I seem to be rubbing it in, Mr. Sheringham,” said
+Miss Dammers.</p>
+
+<p>“Not at all,” said Roger.</p>
+
+<p>“But it’s essential to my own case, you see.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I quite see that,” said Roger.</p>
+
+<p>“Then that evidence is disposed of. I don’t think you really
+had any other, did you?”</p>
+
+<p>“I don’t think so,” said Roger.</p>
+
+<p>“You will see,” Miss Dammers resumed, over Roger’s corpse,
+“that I am following the fashion of withholding the criminal’s
+name. Now that it has come to my turn to speak, I am realising
+the advantages of this; but really, I can’t help fearing that you
+will all have guessed it by the time I come to my denouement.
+To me, at any rate, the murderer’s identity seems quite absurdly
+obvious. Before I disclose it officially, however, I should like to
+deal with a few of the other points, not actual evidence, raised
+by Mr. Sheringham in his argument.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Sheringham built up a very ingenious case. It was so very
+ingenious that he had to insist more than once on the perfect
+planning that had gone to its construction, and the true greatness
+of the criminal mind that had evolved it. I don’t agree,” said Miss
+Dammers crisply. “My case is much simpler. It was planned with
+cunning but not with perfection. It relied almost entirely upon
+luck: that is to say, upon one vital piece of evidence remaining
+undiscovered. And finally the mind that evolved it is not great in
+any way. But it <em>is</em> a mind which, dealing with matters outside its
+usual orbit would certainly be imitative.</p>
+
+<p>“That brings me to a point of Mr. Bradley’s. I agree with him to
+the extent that I think a certain acquaintance with criminological
+history is postulated, but not when he argues that it is the work
+of a creative mind. In my opinion the chief feature of the crime is
+its servile imitation of certain of its predecessors. I deduced from
+it, in fact, the type of mind which is possessed of no originality
+of its own, is intensely conservative because without the wit to
+recognise the progress of change, is obstinate, dogmatic, and
+practical, and lacks entirely any sense of spiritual values. As one
+who am inclined to suffer myself from something of an aversion
+from matter, I sensed my exact antithesis behind the whole
+atmosphere of this case.”</p>
+
+<p>Everybody looked suitably impressed. As for Mr. Chitterwick,
+he could only gasp before these detailed deductions from a mere
+atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>“With another point of Mr. Sheringham’s I have already
+inferred that I agree: that chocolates were used as the vehicle of
+the poison because they were meant to reach a woman. And here
+I might add that I am sure no harm was intended to Mr. Bendix
+himself. We know that Mr. Bendix did not care for chocolates, and
+it is a reasonable assumption that the murderer knew it too; he
+never expected that Mr. Bendix would eat any himself.</p>
+
+<p>“It is curious how often Mr. Sheringham hits the mark with
+small shafts, while missing it with the chief one. He was quite right
+about the notepaper being extracted from that sample-book at
+Webster’s. I’m bound to admit that the possession of the piece of
+notepaper had worried me considerably. I was at a complete loss
+there. Then Mr. Sheringham very handily presented us with his
+explanation, and I have been able to-day to destroy his application
+of it to his own theory and incorporate it in my own. The
+attendant who pretended out of innocent politeness to recognise the
+photograph Mr. Sheringham showed her, was able to recognise in
+earnest the one I produced. And not only recognise it,” said Miss
+Dammers with the first sign of complacence she had yet shown,
+“but identify the original of it actually by name.”</p>
+
+<p>“Ah!” nodded Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, much excited.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Sheringham made a few other small points, which I
+thought it advisable to-day to blunt,” Miss Dammers went on, with
+a return to her impersonal manner. “Because most of the small
+firms in which Mr. Bendix figures on the board of directors are
+not in a flourishing state, Mr. Sheringham deduced not only that
+Mr. Bendix was a bad business-man, with which I am inclined to
+agree, but that he was desperately in need of money. Once again
+Mr. Sheringham failed to verify his deduction, and once again he
+must pay the penalty in finding himself utterly wrong.</p>
+
+<p>“The most elementary channels of enquiry would have
+brought Mr. Sheringham the information that only a very small
+proportion of Mr. Bendix’s money is invested in these concerns,
+which are really a wealthy man’s toys. By far the greater part is
+still where his father left it when he died, in government stock
+and safe industrial concerns so large that even Mr. Bendix could
+never aspire to a seat on the board. And from what I know of
+him, Mr. Bendix is quite a big enough man to recognise that he
+is not the business-genius his father was, and has no intention of
+spending on his toys more than he can comfortably afford. The
+real motive Mr. Sheringham gave him for his wife’s death therefore
+completely disappears.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger bowed his head. For ever afterwards, he felt, would
+genuine criminologists point the finger of contempt at him as
+the man who failed to verify his own deductions. Oh, shameful
+future!</p>
+
+<p>“As for the subsidiary motive, I attach less importance to that
+but on the whole I am inclined to agree with Mr. Sheringham.
+I think Mrs. Bendix must have become a dreadful bore to her
+husband, who after all was a normal man, with a normal man’s
+reactions and scale of values. I should be inclined to think that
+she morally drove him into the arms of his actresses, in search of
+a little light companionship. I’m not saying he wasn’t deeply in
+love with her when he married her; no doubt he was. And he’d
+have had a naturally deep respect for her then.</p>
+
+<p>“But it’s an unfortunate marriage,” observed the cynical Miss
+Dammers, “in which the respect outstays its usefulness. A man
+wants a piece of humanity in his marriage-bed; not an object of
+deep respect. But I’m bound to say that if Mrs. Bendix did bore
+her husband before the end, he was gentleman enough not to
+show it. The marriage was generally considered an ideal one.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers paused for a moment to sip at the glass of
+water in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>“Lastly, Mr. Sheringham made the point that the letter and
+wrapper were not destroyed, because the murderer thought they
+would not only not harm him but definitely help him. With that
+too I agree. But I do not draw the same deduction from it that
+Mr. Sheringham did. I should have said that this entirely confirms
+my theory that the murder is the work of a second-rate mind,
+because a first-rate mind would never consent to the survival
+of any clue which could be easily destroyed, however helpful it
+might be expected to prove, because he would know how often
+such clues, deliberately left to mislead, have actually led to the
+criminal’s undoing. And I would draw the subsidiary deduction
+that the wrapper and letter were not expected to be just generally
+helpful, but that there was some definite piece of misleading
+information contained in them. I think I know what that piece
+of information was.</p>
+
+<p>“That is all the reference I have to make to Mr. Sheringham’s
+case.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger lifted his bowed head, and Miss Dammers sipped again
+at her water.</p>
+
+<p>“With regard to this matter of the respect Mr. Bendix had for
+his wife,” Mr. Chitterwick hazarded, “isn’t there something of an
+anomaly there, Miss Dammers? Because I understood you to say
+at the very beginning that the deduction you had drawn from that
+bet was that Mrs. Bendix was not quite so worthy of respect as
+we had all imagined. Didn’t that deduction stand the test, then?”</p>
+
+<p>“It did, Mr. Chitterwick, and there is no anomaly.”</p>
+
+<p>“Where a man doesn’t suspect, he will respect,” said Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming swiftly, before her Alicia could think of it.</p>
+
+<p>“Ah, the horrid sepulchre under the nice white paint,” remarked
+Mr. Bradley, who didn’t approve of that sort of thing, even from
+distinguished dramatists. “Now we’re getting down to it. Is there
+a sepulchre, Miss Dammers?”</p>
+
+<p>“There is,” Miss Dammers agreed, without emotion. “And
+now, as you say, Mr. Bradley, we’re getting down to it.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh!” Mr. Chitterwick positively bounced on his chair. “If the
+letter and wrapper <em>could</em> have been destroyed by the murderer . . .
+and Bendix wasn’t the murderer . . . and I suppose the porter
+needn’t be considered . . . Oh, <em>I</em> see!”</p>
+
+<p>“I wondered when somebody would,” said Miss Dammers.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch16">
+
+<h2>Chapter XVI</h2>
+
+<p>“From the very beginning of this case,” Miss Dammers
+proceeded, imperturbable as ever, “I was of the opinion
+that the greatest clue the criminal had left us was one of which
+he would have been totally unconscious: the unmistakable indications
+of his own character. Taking the facts as I found them, and
+not assuming others as Mr. Sheringham did to justify his own
+reading of the murderer’s exceptional mentality—” She looked
+challengingly towards Roger.</p>
+
+<p>“Did I assume any facts that I couldn’t substantiate?” Roger
+felt himself compelled to answer her look.</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly you did. You assumed for instance that the typewriter
+on which the letter was written is now at the bottom of
+the Thames. The plain fact that it is not, once more bears out my
+own interpretation. Taking the established facts as I found them,
+then, I was able without difficulty to form the mental picture of
+the murderer that I have already sketched out for you. But I was
+careful not to look for somebody who would resemble my picture
+and then build up a case against him. I simply hung the picture up
+in my mind, so to speak, in order to compare with it any individual
+towards whom suspicion might seem to point.</p>
+
+<p>“Now, after I had cleared up Mr. Bendix’s reason for arriving
+at his club that morning at such an unusual hour, there remained
+so far as I could see only one obscure point, apparently of no
+importance, to which nobody’s attention seemed to have been
+directed. I mean, the engagement Sir Eustace had had that day
+for lunch, which must subsequently have been cancelled. I don’t
+know how Mr. Bradley discovered this, but I am quite ready to
+say how I did. It was from that same useful valet who gave Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming so much interesting information.</p>
+
+<p>“I must admit in this connection that I have advantages over
+the other members of this Circle so far as investigations regarding
+Sir Eustace were concerned, for not only did I know Sir Eustace
+himself so well but I knew his valet too; and you may imagine
+that if Mrs. Fielder-Flemming was able to extract so much from
+him with the aid of money alone, I myself, backed not only by
+money but by the advantage of a previous acquaintance, was in
+a position to obtain still more. In any case, it was not long before
+the man casually mentioned that four days before the crime Sir
+Eustace had told him to ring up Fellows’s Hotel in Jermyn Street
+and reserve a private room for lunch-time on the day on which
+the murder subsequently took place.</p>
+
+<p>“That was the obscure point, which I thought it worth while
+to clear up if I could. With whom was Sir Eustace going to lunch
+that day? Obviously a woman, but which of his many women? The
+valet could give me no information. So far as he knew, Sir Eustace
+actually had not got any women at the moment, so intent was
+he upon the pursuit of Miss Wildman (you must excuse me, Sir
+Charles), her hand and her fortune. Was it Miss Wildman herself
+then? I was very soon able to establish that it wasn’t.</p>
+
+<p>“Does it strike you that there is a reminiscent ring about this
+cancelled lunch-appointment on the day of the crime? It didn’t
+occur to me for a long time, but of course there is. Mrs. Bendix
+had a lunch-engagement for that day too, which was cancelled for
+some reason unknown on the previous afternoon.”</p>
+
+<p>“<em>Mrs. Bendix!</em>” breathed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming. Here was a
+juicy triangle.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers smiled faintly. “Yes, I won’t keep you on the
+tenterhooks, Mabel. From what Sir Charles told us I knew that
+Mrs. Bendix and Sir Eustace at any rate were not total strangers,
+and in the end I managed to connect them. Mrs. Bendix was to
+have lunched with Sir Eustace, in a private room, at the somewhat
+notorious Fellows’s Hotel.”</p>
+
+<p>“To discuss her husband’s shortcomings, of course?” suggested
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming, more charitably than her hopes.</p>
+
+<p>“Possibly, among other things,” said Miss Dammers nonchalantly.
+“But the chief reason, no doubt was because she was his
+mistress.” Miss Dammers dropped this bombshell among the
+company with as little emotion as if she had remarked that Mrs.
+Bendix was wearing a jade-green taffeta frock for the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>“Can you—can you substantiate that statement?” asked Sir
+Charles, the first to recover himself.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers just raised her fine eyebrows. “But of course.
+I shall make no statements that I can’t substantiate. Mrs. Bendix
+had been in the habit of lunching at least twice a week with
+Sir Eustace, and occasionally dining too, at Fellows’s Hotel,
+always in the same room. They took considerable precautions
+and used to arrive not only at the hotel but in the room itself
+quite independently of each other; outside the room they
+were never seen together. But the waiter who attended them
+(always the same waiter) has signed a declaration for me that
+he recognised Mrs. Bendix, from the photographs published
+after her death, as the woman who used to come there with
+Sir Eustace Pennefather.”</p>
+
+<p>“He signed a declaration for you, eh?” mused Mr. Bradley. “You
+must find detecting an expensive hobby too, Miss Dammers.”</p>
+
+<p>“One can afford one expensive hobby, Mr. Bradley.”</p>
+
+<p>“But just because she lunched with him . . .” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+was once more speaking with the voice of charity. “I
+mean, it doesn’t necessarily mean that she was his mistress, does
+it? Not, of course, that I think any the less of her if she was,” she
+added hastily, remembering the official attitude.</p>
+
+<p>“Communicating with the room in which they had their meals
+is a bedroom,” replied Miss Dammers, in a desiccated tone of
+voice. “Invariably after they had gone, the waiter informed me,
+he found the bedclothes disarranged and the bed showing signs
+of recent use. I imagine that would be accepted as clear enough
+evidence of adultery, Sir Charles?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, undoubtedly, undoubtedly,” rumbled Sir Charles, in high
+embarrassment. Sir Charles was always exceedingly embarrassed
+when women used words like “adultery” and “sexual perversions”
+and even “mistress” to him, out of business hours. Sir Charles was
+regrettably old-fashioned.</p>
+
+<p>“Sir Eustace, of course,” added Miss Dammers in her detached
+way, “had nothing to fear from the King’s Proctor.”</p>
+
+<p>She took another sip of water, while the others tried to accustom
+themselves to this new light on the case and the surprising
+avenues it illuminated.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers proceeded to illuminate them still further,
+with powerful beams from her psychological searchlight. “They
+must have made a curious couple those two. Their widely differing
+scales of values, the contrast of their respective reactions to
+the business that brought them together, the possibility that not
+even in a common passion could their minds establish any point
+of real contact. I want you to examine the psychology of the
+situation as closely as you can, because the murder was derived
+directly from it.</p>
+
+<p>“What can have induced Mrs. Bendix in the first place to
+become that man’s mistress I don’t know. I won’t be so trite as
+to say I can’t imagine, because I can imagine all sorts of ways in
+which it may have happened. There is a curious mental stimulus
+to a good but stupid woman in a bad man’s badness. If she has
+a touch of the reformer in her, as most good women have, she
+soon becomes obsessed with the futile desire to save him from
+himself. And in seven cases out of ten her first step in doing so is
+to descend to his level.</p>
+
+<p>“Not that she considers herself at first to be descending at all;
+a good woman invariably suffers for quite a long time from the
+delusion that whatever she does, her own particular brand of
+goodness cannot become smirched. She may share a reprobate’s
+bed with him, because she knows that only through her body at
+first can she hope to influence him, until contact is established
+through the body with the soul and he may be led into better ways
+than a habit of going to bed in the daytime; but the initial sharing
+doesn’t reflect on her own purity in the least. It is a hackneyed
+observation but I must insist on it once more: good women have
+the most astonishing powers of self-deception.</p>
+
+<p>“I do consider Mrs. Bendix as a good woman, before she met
+Sir Eustace. Her trouble was that she thought herself so much
+better than she was. Her constant references to honour and
+playing the game, which Mr. Sheringham quoted, show that. She
+was infatuated with her own goodness. And so, of course, was
+Sir Eustace. He had probably never enjoyed the complaisance of
+a really good woman before. The seduction of her (which was
+probably very difficult) would have amused him enormously. He
+must have had to listen to hour after hour’s talk about honour,
+and reform, and spirituality, but he would have borne it patiently
+enough for the exquisite revenge on which he had set his heart.
+The first two or three visits to Fellows’s Hotel must have delighted
+him.</p>
+
+<p>“But after that it became less and less amusing. Mrs. Bendix
+would discover that perhaps her own goodness wasn’t standing
+quite so firm under the strain as she had imagined. She would
+have begun to bore him with her self-reproaches; bore him
+dreadfully. He continued to meet her there first because a woman, to
+his type, is always a woman, and afterwards because she gave him
+no choice. I can see exactly what must inevitably have happened.
+Mrs. Bendix begins to get thoroughly morbid about her own
+wickedness, and quite loses sight of her initial zeal for reform.</p>
+
+<p>“They use the bed now because there happens to be a bed there
+and it would be a pity to waste it, but she has destroyed the
+pleasure of both. Her one cry now is that she must put herself right
+with her own conscience either by running away with Sir Eustace
+on the spot, or, more probably, by telling her husband, arranging
+for divorce (for, of course, he will never forgive her, <em>never</em>), and
+marrying Sir Eustace as soon as both divorces are through. In any
+case, although she almost loathes him by now nothing else can
+be contemplated but that the rest of her life must be spent with
+Sir Eustace and his with her. How well I know that type of mind.</p>
+
+<p>“Naturally, to Sir Eustace, who is working hard to retrieve his
+fortunes by a rich marriage, this scheme has small appeal. He
+begins by cursing himself for having seduced the damned woman
+at all, and goes on to curse still more the damned woman for
+having been seduced. And the more pressing she becomes, the
+more he hates her. Then Mrs. Bendix must have brought matters
+to a head. She has heard about the Wildman girl affair. That
+must be stopped at once. She tells Sir Eustace that if he doesn’t
+break it off himself, she will take steps to break it off for him. Sir
+Eustace sees the whole thing coming out, his own appearance
+in a second divorce-court, and all hopes of Miss Wildman and
+her fortune gone for ever. Something has got to be done about
+it. But what can be done? Nothing short of murder will stop the
+damned woman’s tongue.</p>
+
+<p>“Well—it’s high time somebody murdered her anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>“Now I’m on rather less sure ground, but the assumptions
+seem to me sound enough and I can produce a reasonable
+amount of proof to support them. Sir Eustace decides to get rid of
+the woman once and for all. He thinks it over carefully, remembers
+to have read about a case, several cases, in some criminological
+book, each of which just failed through some small mistake.
+Combine them, eradicate the small mistake from each, and so
+long as his relations with Mrs. Bendix are not known (and he is
+quite certain they aren’t) there is no possibility of being found
+out. That may seem a long guess, but here’s my proof.</p>
+
+<p>“When I was studying him, I gave Sir Eustace every chance of
+plying his blandishments on me. One of his methods is to profess
+a deep interest in everything that interests the woman. Naturally
+therefore he discovered a profound, if hitherto latent, interest in
+criminology. He borrowed several of my books, and certainly
+read them. Among the ones he borrowed is a book of American
+poisoning cases. In it is an account of every single case that has
+been mentioned as a parallel by members of this Circle (except
+of course Marie Lafarge and Christina Edmunds).</p>
+
+<p>“About six weeks ago, when I got in one evening my maid told
+me that Sir Eustace, who hadn’t been near my flat for months,
+had called; he waited for a time in the sitting-room and then
+went. Shortly after the murder, having also been struck by the
+similarity between this and one or two of those American cases,
+I went to the bookshelf in my sitting-room to look them up. The
+book was not there. Nor, Mr. Bradley, was my copy of Taylor. But
+I saw them both in Sir Eustace’s rooms the day I had that long
+conversation with his valet.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers paused for comment.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley supplied it. “Then the man deserves what’s coming
+to him,” he drawled.</p>
+
+<p>“I told you this murder wasn’t the work of a highly intelligent
+mind,” said Miss Dammers.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, now, to complete my reconstruction. Sir Eustace decides
+to rid himself of his encumbrance, and arranges what he thinks a
+perfectly safe way of doing so. The nitrobenzene, which appears to
+worry Mr. Bradley so much, seems to me a very simple matter. Sir
+Eustace has decided upon chocolates as the vehicle, and chocolate
+liqueurs at that. (Mason’s chocolate liqueurs, I should say, are a
+favourite purchase of Sir Eustace’s. It is significant that he had
+bought several one-pound boxes recently.) He is searching, then,
+for some poison with a flavour which will mingle well enough
+with that of the liqueurs. He is bound to come across oil of
+bitter almonds very soon in that connection, actually used as it is
+in confectionery, and from that to nitrobenzene, which is more
+common, easier to get hold of, and practically untraceable, is an
+obvious step.</p>
+
+<p>“He arranges to meet Mrs. Bendix for lunch, intending to
+make a present to her then of the chocolates which are to come to
+him that morning by post, a perfectly natural thing to do. He will
+already have the porter’s evidence of the innocent way in which
+he acquired them. At the last minute he sees the obvious flaw in
+this plan. If he gives Mrs. Bendix the chocolates in person, and
+especially at lunch at Fellows’s Hotel, his intimacy with her must
+be disclosed. He hastily racks his brains and finds a very much
+better plan. Getting hold of Mrs. Bendix, he tells her some story
+of her husband and Vera Delorme.</p>
+
+<p>“In characteristic fashion Mrs. Bendix loses sight of the beam in
+her own eye on learning of this mote in her husband’s and at once
+falls in with Sir Eustace’s suggestion that she shall ring Mr. Bendix
+up, disguising her voice and pretending to be Vera Delorme, and
+just find out for herself whether or not he will jump at the chance
+of an intimate little lunch for the following day.</p>
+
+<p>“ ‘And tell him you’ll ring him up at the Rainbow to-morrow
+morning between ten-thirty and eleven,’ Sir Eustace adds carelessly.
+‘If he goes to the Rainbow, you’ll be able to know for certain
+that he’s dancing attendance on her at any hour of the day.’ And
+so she does. The presence of Bendix is therefore assured for the
+next morning at half-past ten. Who in the world is to say that he
+was not there by purest chance when Sir Eustace was exclaiming
+over that parcel?</p>
+
+<p>“As for the bet, which clinched the handing over of the
+chocolates, I cannot believe that this was just a stroke of luck
+for Sir Eustace. That seems too good to be true. Somehow,
+I’m sure, though I won’t attempt to show how (that would be
+mere guesswork), Sir Eustace arranged for that bet in advance.
+And if he did, the fact in no way destroys my initial deduction
+from it, that Mrs. Bendix was not so honest as she pretended;
+for whether it was arranged or whether it wasn’t, the plain fact
+is left that it is dishonest to make a bet to which you know
+the answer.</p>
+
+<p>“Lastly, if I am to follow the fashion and cite a parallel case, I
+decide unhesitatingly for John Tawell, who administered prussic
+acid in a bottle of beer to his mistress, Sarah Hart, when he was
+tired of her.”</p>
+
+<p>The Circle looked at her admiringly. At last, it seemed, they
+really had got to the bottom of the business.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles voiced the general feeling. “If you’ve got any solid
+evidence to support this theory, Miss Dammers . . .” He implied
+that in that case the rope was as good as round Sir Eustace’s thick
+red neck.</p>
+
+<p>“Meaning that the evidence I’ve given already isn’t solid
+enough for the legal mind?” enquired Miss Dammers equably.</p>
+
+<p>“Psy—psychological reconstructions wouldn’t carry <em>very</em> much
+weight with a jury,” Sir Charles took refuge behind the jury in
+question.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve connected Sir Eustace with the piece of Mason’s
+notepaper,” Miss Dammers pointed out.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m afraid on that alone Sir Eustace would get the benefit of
+the doubt.” Sir Charles was evidently deprecating the
+psychological obtuseness of that jury of his.</p>
+
+<p>“I’ve shown a tremendous motive, and I’ve connected him
+with a book of similar cases and a book of poisons.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes. Oh, quite so. But what I mean is, have you any real evidence
+to connect Sir Eustace quite definitely with the letter, the
+chocolates, or the wrapper?”</p>
+
+<p>“He has an Onyx pen, and the inkpot in his library used to be
+filled with Harfield’s Ink,” Miss Dammers smiled. “I’ve no doubt
+it is still. He was supposed to have been at the Rainbow the whole
+evening before the murder, but I’ve ascertained that there is a gap
+of half-an-hour between nine o’clock and nine-thirty during which
+nobody saw him. He left the dining-room at nine, and a waiter
+brought him a whisky-and-soda in the lounge at half-past. In the
+interim nobody knows where he was. He wasn’t in the lounge.
+Where was he? The porter swears he did not see him go out, or
+come in again; but there is a back way which he could have used
+if he wanted to be unnoticed, as of course he did. I asked him
+myself, as if by way of a joke, and he said that he had gone up to
+the library after dinner to look up a reference in a book of
+big-game hunting. Could he mention the names of any other members
+in the library? He said there weren’t any; there never were;
+he’d never seen a member in the library all the time he belonged
+to the club. I thanked him and rang off.</p>
+
+<p>“In other words, he says he was in the library, because he
+knows there would be no other member there to prove he wasn’t.
+What he really did during that half-hour, of course, was to slip out
+the back-way, hurry down to the Strand to post the parcel (just
+as Mr. Sheringham saw Mr. Bendix hurrying down), slip in again,
+run up to the library to make sure nobody was there, and then
+go down to the lounge and order his whisky-and-soda to prove
+his presence there later. Isn’t that more feasible than your vision
+of Mr. Bendix, Mr. Sheringham?”</p>
+
+<p>“I must admit that it’s no less so,” Roger had to agree.</p>
+
+<p>“Then you haven’t any solid evidence at all?” lamented Sir
+Charles. “Nothing that would really impress a jury?”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, I have,” said Miss Dammers quietly. “I’ve been saving it
+up till the end because I wanted to prove my case (as I consider I
+have done) without it. But this is absolutely and finally conclusive.
+Will everybody examine these, please.”</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers produced from her bag a brown-paper-covered
+parcel. Unwrapping it, she brought to light a photograph and a
+quarto sheet of paper which looked like a typed letter.</p>
+
+<p>“The photograph,” she explained, “I obtained from Chief
+Inspector Moresby the other day, but without telling him the
+specific purpose for which I wanted it. It is of the forged letter,
+actual size. I should like everybody to compare it with this typed
+copy of the letter. Will you look at them first, Mr. Sheringham,
+and then pass them round? Notice particularly the slightly crooked
+s’s and the chipped capital H.”</p>
+
+<p>In dead silence Roger pored over the two. He examined them
+for a full two minutes, which seemed to the others more like two
+hours, and then passed them on to Sir Charles on his right.</p>
+
+<p>“There isn’t the slightest doubt that those two were done on
+the same machine,” he said soberly.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers showed neither less nor more emotion than
+she had displayed throughout. Her voice carried exactly the
+same impersonal inflection. She might have been announcing
+her discovery of a match between two pieces of dress-material.
+From her level tone it could never have been guessed that a man’s
+neck depended on her words no less than on the rope that was
+to hang him.</p>
+
+<p>“You will find the machine in Sir Eustace’s rooms,” she said.</p>
+
+<p>Even Mr. Bradley was moved. “Then as I said, he deserves
+all that’s coming to him,” he drawled, with a quite impossible
+nonchalance, and even attempted a yawn. “Dear me, what a
+distressing bungler.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles passed on the evidence. “Miss Dammers,” he said
+impressively, “you have rendered a very great service to society.
+I congratulate you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, Sir Charles,” replied Miss Dammers,
+matter-of-factly. “But it was Mr. Sheringham’s idea, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Sheringham,” intoned Sir Charles, “sowed better than
+he knew.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger, who had hoped to add another feather to his cap by
+solving the mystery himself, smiled in a somewhat sickly way.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming improved the occasion. “We have
+made history,” she said with fitting solemnity. “When the whole
+police-force of a nation had failed, a woman has uncovered the
+dark mystery. Alicia, this is a red-letter day, not only for you, not
+only for this Circle, but for Woman.”</p>
+
+<p>“Thank you, Mabel,” responded Miss Dammers. “How very
+nice of you to say so.”</p>
+
+<p>The evidence passed slowly round the table and returned to
+Miss Dammers. She handed it on to Roger.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Sheringham, I think you had better take charge of
+these. As President, I leave the matter in your hands. You know
+as much as I do. As you may imagine, to inform the police
+officially myself would be extremely distasteful. I should like
+my name kept out of any communication you make to them,
+entirely.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger was rubbing his chin. “I think that can be done. I could
+just hand these things over to him, with the information where
+the machine is, and let Scotland Yard work the case up themselves.
+These, and the motive, with the evidence of the porter at Fellows’s
+Hotel of which I shall have to tell Moresby, are the only things
+that will really interest the police, I think. Humph! I suppose I’d
+better see Moresby to-night. Will you come with me, Sir Charles?
+It would add weight.”</p>
+
+<p>“Certainly, certainly,” Sir Charles agreed with alacrity.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody looked, and felt, very serious.</p>
+
+<p>“I suppose,” Mr. Chitterwick dropped shyly into all this solemnity,
+“I suppose you couldn’t put it off for twenty-four hours,
+could you?”</p>
+
+<p>Roger looked his surprise. “But why?”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you know . . .” Mr. Chitterwick wriggled with diffidence.
+“Well—I haven’t spoken yet, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>Five pairs of eyes fastened on him in astonishment. Mr.
+Chitterwick blushed warmly.</p>
+
+<p>“Of course. No, of course.” Roger was trying to be as tactful as
+he could. “And—well, that is to say, you want to speak, of course?”</p>
+
+<p>“I have a theory,” said Mr. Chitterwick modestly. “I—I don’t
+<em>want</em> to speak, no. But I have a theory.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, yes,” said Roger, and looked helplessly at Sir Charles.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles marched to the rescue. “I’m sure we shall all be
+most interested to hear Mr. Chitterwick’s theory,” he pronounced.
+“Most interested. But why not let us have it now, Mr. Chitterwick?”</p>
+
+<p>“It isn’t quite complete,” said Mr. Chitterwick, unhappy but
+persistent. “I should like another twenty-four hours to clear up
+one or two points.”</p>
+
+<p>Sir Charles had an inspiration. “Of course, of course. We
+must meet to-morrow and listen to Mr. Chitterwick’s theory,
+of course. In the meantime Sheringham and I will just call in at
+Scotland Yard and—”</p>
+
+<p>“I’d much rather you didn’t,” said Mr. Chitterwick, now in the
+deeps of misery. “Really I would.”</p>
+
+<p>Again Roger looked helplessly at Sir Charles. This time Sir
+Charles looked helplessly back.</p>
+
+<p>“Well—I suppose another twenty-four hours wouldn’t make
+<em>much</em> difference,” said Roger with reluctance. “After all this time.”</p>
+
+<p>“Not <em>very</em> much difference,” pleaded Mr. Chitterwick.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, not very much difference certainly,” agreed Sir Charles,
+frankly puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>“Then have I your word, Mr. President?” persisted Mr.
+Chitterwick, very mournfully.</p>
+
+<p>“If you put it like that,” said Roger, rather coldly.</p>
+
+<p>The meeting then broke up, somewhat bewildered.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch17">
+
+<h2>Chapter XVII</h2>
+
+<p>It was quite evident that, as he had said, Mr. Chitterwick
+did not want to speak. He looked appealingly round the circle
+of faces the next evening when Roger asked him to do so, but
+the faces remained decidedly unsympathetic. Mr. Chitterwick,
+expressed the faces plainly, was being a silly old woman.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick cleared his throat nervously two or three times
+and took the plunge.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, I quite realise what you
+must be thinking, and I must plead for leniency. I can only say in
+excuse of what you must consider my perversity, that convincing
+though Miss Dammers’s clever exposition was and definite as her
+proofs appeared, we have listened to so many apparently convincing
+solutions of this mystery and been confronted with so many
+seemingly definite proofs, that I could not help feeling that perhaps
+even Miss Dammers’s theory might not prove on reflection to be
+not quite so strong as one would at first think.” Mr. Chitterwick,
+having surmounted this tall obstacle, blinked rapidly but was unable
+to recall the next sentence he had prepared so carefully.</p>
+
+<p>He jumped it, and went on a little. “As the one to whom has
+fallen the task, both a privilege and a responsibility, of speaking
+last, you may not consider it out of place if I take the liberty of
+summing up the various conclusions that have been reached here,
+so different in both their methods and results. Not to waste time
+however in going over old ground, I have prepared a little chart
+which may show more clearly the various contrasting theories,
+parallels, and suggested criminals. Perhaps members would care
+to pass it round.”</p>
+
+<p>With much hesitation Mr. Chitterwick produced the chart on
+which he had spent so much careful thought, and offered it to
+Mr. Bradley on his right. Mr. Bradley received it graciously, and
+even condescended to lay it on the table between himself and
+Miss Dammers and examine it. Mr. Chitterwick looked artlessly
+gratified.</p>
+
+<figure id="chart-image">
+  <img src="images/chart.svg" alt="Mr. Chitterwick’s Chart, rendered sideways">
+  <figcaption><a href="#chart-table">[view unturned version]</a></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>“You will see,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with a shade more
+confidence, “that practically speaking no two members have agreed
+on any one single matter of importance. The divergence of
+opinion and method is really remarkable. And in spite of such
+variations each member has felt confident that his or her solution
+was the right one. This chart, more than any words of mine
+could, emphasises not only the extreme openness, as Mr. Bradley
+would say, of the case before us, but illustrates another of Mr.
+Bradley’s observations too, that is how surprisingly easy it is to
+prove anything one may desire, by a process either of conscious
+or of unwitting selection.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Dammers, I think,” suggested Mr. Chitterwick, “may
+perhaps find that chart especially interesting. I am not myself a
+student of psychology, but even to me it was striking to notice
+how the solution of each member reflected, if I may say so,
+that particular member’s own trend of thought and character.
+Sir Charles, for instance, whose training has naturally led him
+to realise the importance of the material, will not mind if I
+point out that the angle from which he viewed the problem
+was the very material one of <i>cui bono</i>, while the equally material
+evidence of the notepaper formed for him its salient feature. At
+the other end of the scale, Miss Dammers herself regards the
+case almost entirely from a psychological view-point and takes
+as its salient feature the character, as unconsciously revealed,
+of the criminal.</p>
+
+<p>“Between these two, other members have paid attention to
+psychological and material evidence in varying proportions. Then
+again the methods of building up the case against a suspected
+person have been widely different. Some of us have relied almost
+entirely on inductive methods, some almost wholly on deductive;
+while some, like Mr. Sheringham, have blended the two. In short,
+the task our President set us has proved a most instructive lesson
+in comparative detection.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick cleared his throat, smiled nervously, and
+continued. “There is another chart which I might have made, and
+which I think would have been no less illuminating than this one.
+It is a chart of the singularly different deductions drawn by
+different members from the undisputed facts in the case. Mr. Bradley
+might have found particular interest in this possible chart, as a
+writer of detective-stories.</p>
+
+<p>“For I have often noticed,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick to the
+writers of detective-stories <i>en masse</i>, “that in books of that kind
+it is frequently assumed that any given fact can admit of only
+one single deduction, and that invariably the right one. Nobody
+else is capable of drawing any deductions at all but the author’s
+favourite detective, and the ones he draws (in the books where
+the detective is capable of drawing deductions at all which, alas,
+are only too few) are invariably right. Miss Dammers mentioned
+something of the kind one evening herself, with her illustration
+of the two bottles of ink.</p>
+
+<p>“As an example of what really happens therefore, I should
+like to cite the sheet of Mason’s notepaper in this case. From that
+single piece of paper the following deductions have at one time
+or another been drawn:</p>
+
+<ol>
+  <li>That the criminal was an employee or ex-employee of
+      Mason &amp; Sons.</li>
+  <li>That the criminal was a customer of Mason &amp; Sons.</li>
+  <li>That the criminal was a printer, or had access to a
+      printing-press.</li>
+  <li>That the criminal was a lawyer, acting on behalf of
+      Mason &amp; Sons.</li>
+  <li>That the criminal was a relative of an ex-employee of
+      Mason &amp; Sons.</li>
+  <li>That the criminal was a would-be customer of
+      Webster’s, the printers.</li>
+</ol>
+
+<p>“There have been plenty of other deductions of course from that
+sheet of paper, such as that the chance possession of it suggested
+the whole method of the crime, but I am only calling attention
+to the ones which were to point directly to the criminal’s identity.
+There are no less than six of them, you see, and all mutually
+contradictory.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’ll write a book for you, Mr. Chitterwick,” promised Mr.
+Bradley, “in which the detective shall draw six contradictory
+deductions from each fact. He’ll probably end up by arresting
+seventy-two different people for the murder and committing
+suicide because he finds afterwards that he must have done it
+himself. I’ll dedicate the book to you.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes, do,” beamed Mr. Chitterwick. “For really, it wouldn’t be
+far from what we’ve had in this case. For example, I only called
+attention to the notepaper. Besides that there were the poison, the
+typewriter, the post-mark, the exactness of the dose—oh, many
+more facts. And from each one of them not much less than
+half-a-dozen different deductions have been drawn.</p>
+
+<p>“In fact,” Mr. Chitterwick summed up, “it was as much as
+anything the different deductions drawn by different members
+that proved their different cases.”</p>
+
+<p>“On second thoughts,” decided Mr. Bradley, “my detectives
+in future will be the kind that don’t draw any deductions at all.
+Besides, that will be so much easier for me.”</p>
+
+<p>“So with these few remarks on the solutions we have already
+heard,” continued Mr. Chitterwick, “which I hope members will
+pardon me, I will hurry on to my explanation of why I asked Mr.
+Sheringham so urgently last evening not to go to Scotland Yard
+at once.”</p>
+
+<p>Five faces expressed silent agreement that it was about time
+Mr. Chitterwick was heard on that point.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick appeared to be conscious of the thoughts
+behind the faces, for his manner became a little flurried.</p>
+
+<p>“I must first deal very briefly with the case against Sir Eustace
+Pennefather, as Miss Dammers gave it us last night. Without belittling
+her presentation of it in any way at all, I must just point out
+that her two chief reasons for fixing the guilt upon him seemed
+to me to be firstly that he was the type of person whom she had
+already decided the criminal must be, and secondly that he had
+been conducting an intrigue with Mrs. Bendix and certainly would
+have seemed to have some cause for wishing her out of the way—<em>if</em>
+(but only if) Miss Dammers’s own view of the progress of that
+intrigue was the correct one.”</p>
+
+<p>“But the typewriter, Mr. Chitterwick!” cried Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming, loyal to her sex.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick started. “Oh, yes; the typewriter. I’m coming
+to that. But before I reach it, I should like to mention two other
+points which Miss Dammers would have us believe are important
+material evidence against Sir Eustace, as opposed to the
+psychological. That he should be in the habit of buying Mason’s liqueur
+chocolates for his—his female friends hardly seems to me even
+significant. If every one who is in the habit of buying Mason’s
+liqueur chocolates is to be suspect, then London must be full of
+suspects. And surely even so unoriginal a murderer as Sir Eustace
+would seem to be, would have taken the elementary precaution
+of choosing some vehicle for the poison which is not generally
+associated with his name, instead of one that is. And if I may
+venture the opinion, Sir Eustace is not quite such a dunderhead
+as Miss Dammers would seem to think.</p>
+
+<p>“The second point is that the girl in Webster’s should have
+recognised, and even identified, Sir Eustace from his photograph.
+That also doesn’t appear to me, if Miss Dammers doesn’t mind my
+saying so, nearly as significant as she would have us believe. I have
+ascertained,” said Mr. Chitterwick, not without pride (here too
+was a piece of real detecting) “that Sir Eustace Pennefather buys
+his notepaper at Webster’s, and has done so for years. He was in
+there about a month ago to order a fresh supply. It would be
+surprising, considering that he has a title, if the girl who served him
+had not remembered him; it cannot be considered significant,”
+said Mr. Chitterwick quite firmly, “that she does.</p>
+
+<p>“Apart from the typewriter, then, and perhaps the copies of
+the criminological books, Miss Dammers’s case has no real evidence
+to support it at all, for the matter of the broken alibi, I am
+afraid, must be held to be neither here nor there. I don’t wish to
+be unfair,” said Mr. Chitterwick carefully, “but I think I am
+justified in saying that Miss Dammers’s case against Sir Eustace rests
+entirely and solely upon the evidence of the typewriter.” He gazed
+round anxiously for possible objections.</p>
+
+<p>One came, promptly. “But you can’t possibly get round that,”
+exclaimed Mrs. Fielder-Flemming impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick looked a trifle distressed. “Is ‘get round’
+quite the right expression? I’m not trying wilfully or maliciously
+to pick holes in Miss Dammers’s case just for amusement. You
+must really believe that. Please think that I am actuated only by a
+desire to bring this crime home to its real perpetrator. And with
+that end alone in view, I can certainly suggest an explanation of
+the typewriter evidence which excludes the guilt of Sir Eustace.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick looked so unhappy at what he conceived to be
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming’s insinuation that he was merely wasting
+the Circle’s time, that Roger spoke to him kindly.</p>
+
+<p>“You can?” he said gently, as one encourages one’s daughter on
+drawing a cow, which if not much like a cow is certainly unlike any
+other animal on earth. “That’s very interesting, Mr. Chitterwick.
+How do you explain it then?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick, responding to treatment, shone with pride.
+“Dear me! You can’t see it really? Nobody sees it?”</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that nobody saw it.</p>
+
+<p>“And yet the possibility of such a thing has been before me
+right from the beginning of the case,” crowed the now triumphant
+Mr. Chitterwick. “Well, well!” He arranged his glasses on his nose
+and beamed round the circle, his round red face positively aglow.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, what is the explanation, Mr. Chitterwick?” queried
+Miss Dammers, when it seemed that Mr. Chitterwick was going
+to continue beaming in silence for ever.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh! Oh, yes; of course. Why, to put it one way, Miss Dammers,
+that you were wrong and Mr. Sheringham was right, in your
+respective estimates of the criminal’s ability. That there was, in
+fact, an extremely able and ingenious mind behind this murder
+(Miss Dammers’s attempts to prove the contrary were, I’m afraid
+another case of special pleading). And that one of the ways in
+which this ingenuity was shown, was to arrange the evidence in
+such a way that if any one were to be suspected it would be Sir
+Eustace. That the evidence of the typewriter, in a word, and of
+the criminological books was, as I believe the technical word is,
+‘<i>rigged</i>.’ ” Mr. Chitterwick resumed his beam.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody sat up with what might have been a concerted
+jerk. In a flash the tide of feeling towards Mr. Chitterwick had
+turned. The man <em>had</em> got something to say after all. There
+actually was an idea behind that untimely request of the previous
+evening.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley rose to the occasion, and he quite forgot to speak
+quite so patronisingly as usual. “I say—dam’ good, Chitterwick!
+But can you substantiate that?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes. I think so,” said Mr. Chitterwick, basking in the rays
+of appreciation that were being shone on him.</p>
+
+<p>“You’ll be telling us next you know who did it,” Roger smiled.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick smiled back. “Oh, I know <em>that</em>.”</p>
+
+<p>“<em>What!</em>” exclaimed five voices in chorus.</p>
+
+<p>“I know that, of course,” said Mr. Chitterwick modestly.
+“You’ve practically told me that yourselves. Coming last of all,
+you see, my task was comparatively simple. All I had to do was
+to sort out the true from the false in everybody else’s statements,
+and—well, there <em>was</em> the truth.”</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the Circle looked their surprise at having told Mr.
+Chitterwick the truth without knowing it themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick’s face took on a meditative aspect. “Perhaps
+I may confess now that when our President first propounded his
+idea to us, I was filled with dismay. I had had no practical
+experience of detecting, I was quite at a loss as to how to set about
+it, and I had no theory of the case at all. I could not even see a
+starting-point. The week flew by, so far as I was concerned, and
+left me exactly where I had been at its beginning. On the evening
+Sir Charles spoke he convinced me completely. The next evening,
+for a short time, Mrs. Fielder-Flemming convinced me too.</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Bradley did not altogether convince me that he had
+committed the murder himself, but if he had named any one
+else then I should have been convinced; as it was, he convinced
+me that his—his discarded mistress theory,” said Mr. Chitterwick
+bravely, “must be the correct one. That indeed was the only idea
+I had had at all, that the crime might be the work of one of Sir
+Eustace’s—h’m!—discarded mistresses.</p>
+
+<p>“But the next evening Mr. Sheringham convinced me just
+as definitely that Mr. Bendix was the murderer. It was only last
+night, during Miss Dammers’s exposition, that I at last began to
+realise the truth.”</p>
+
+<p>“Then I was the only one who didn’t convince you, Mr.
+Chitterwick?” Miss Dammers smiled.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m afraid,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick, “that is so.”</p>
+
+<p>He mused for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>“It is really remarkable, quite remarkable, how near in some
+way or other everybody got to the truth of this affair. Not a single
+person failed to bring out at least one important fact, or make
+at least one important deduction correctly. Fortunately, when I
+realised that the solutions were going to differ so widely, I made
+copious notes of the preceding ones and kept them up to date each
+evening as soon as I got home. I thus had a complete record of
+the productions of all these brains, so much superior to my own.”</p>
+
+<p>“No, no,” murmured Mr. Bradley.</p>
+
+<p>“Last night I sat up very late, poring over these notes, separating
+the true from the false. It might perhaps interest members to
+hear my conclusions in this respect?” Mr. Chitterwick put forward
+the suggestion with the utmost diffidence.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody assured Mr. Chitterwick that they would be only
+too gratified to hear where they had stumbled inadvertently on
+the truth.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter" id="ch18">
+
+<h2>Chapter XVIII</h2>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick consulted a page of his notes. For
+a moment he looked a little distressed. “Sir Charles,” he
+began. “Er—Sir Charles . . .” It was plain that Mr. Chitterwick
+was finding difficulty in discovering any point at all on which Sir
+Charles had been right, and he was a kindly man. He brightened.
+“Oh, yes, of course. Sir Charles was the first to point out the
+important fact that there had been an erasure on the piece of
+notepaper used for the forged letter. That was—er—very helpful.</p>
+
+<p>“Then he was right too when he put forward the suggestion
+that Sir Eustace’s impending divorce was really the mainspring
+of the whole tragedy. Though I am afraid,” Mr. Chitterwick felt
+compelled to add, “that the inference he drew was not the correct
+one. He was quite right too in feeling that the criminal, in such a
+clever plot, would take steps to arrange an alibi, and that there was,
+in fact, an alibi in the case that would have to be circumvented.
+But then again it was not Lady Pennefather’s.</p>
+
+<p>“Mrs. Fielder-Flemming,” continued Mr. Chitterwick, “was
+quite right to insist that the murder was the work of somebody
+with a knowledge of criminology. That was a very clever inference,
+and I am glad,” beamed Mr. Chitterwick, “to be able to assure her
+that it was perfectly correct. She contributed another important
+piece of information too, just as vital to the real story underlying
+this tragedy as to her own case, namely that Sir Eustace was not in
+love with Miss Wildman at all but was hoping to marry her simply
+for her money. Had that not been the case,” said Mr. Chitterwick,
+shaking his head, “I fear, I very much fear, that it would have been
+Miss Wildman who met her death instead of Mrs. Bendix.”</p>
+
+<p>“Good God!” muttered Sir Charles; and it is perhaps as great
+a tribute as Mr. Chitterwick was ever to receive that the K.C.
+accepted this startling news without question.</p>
+
+<p>“That clinches it,” muttered Mr. Bradley to Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming. “Discarded mistress.”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick turned to him. “As for you, Bradley, it’s
+astonishing how near you came to the truth. Amazing!” Mr. Chitterwick
+registered amazement. “Even in your first case, against yourself,
+so many of your conclusions were perfectly right. The final result
+of your deductions from the nitrobenzene, for instance; the fact
+that the criminal must be neat-fingered and of a methodical and
+creative mind; even, what appeared to me at the time just a trifle
+far-fetched, that a copy of Taylor would be found on the
+criminal’s shelves.</p>
+
+<p>“Then beyond the fact that No. 4 must be qualified to ‘must
+have had an opportunity of secretly obtaining a sheet of Mason’s
+notepaper,’ all twelve of your conditions were quite right, with
+the exception of 6, which does not admit of an alibi, and 7 and 8,
+about the Onyx pen and Harfield’s ink. Mr. Sheringham was right
+in that matter with his rather more subtle point of the criminal’s
+probable unobtrusive borrowing of the pen and ink. Which is
+exactly what happened, of course, with regard to the typewriter.</p>
+
+<p>“As for your second case—well!” Mr. Chitterwick seemed
+to be without words to express his admiration of Mr. Bradley’s
+second case. “You reached to the truth in almost every particular.
+You saw that it was a woman’s crime, you deduced the outraged
+feminine feelings underlying the whole affair, you staked your
+whole case on the criminal’s knowledge of criminology. It was
+really most penetrating.”</p>
+
+<p>“In fact,” said Mr. Bradley, carefully concealing his gratification,
+“I did everything possible except find the murderess.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, that is so, of course,” deprecated Mr. Chitterwick,
+somehow conveying the impression that after all finding the
+murderess was a very minor matter compared with Mr. Bradley’s
+powers of penetration.</p>
+
+<p>“And then we come to Mr. Sheringham.”</p>
+
+<p>“Don’t!” implored Roger. “Leave him out.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, but your reconstruction was very clever,” Mr. Chitterwick
+assured him with great earnestness. “You put a new aspect on the
+whole affair, you know, by your suggestion that it was the right
+victim who was killed after all.”</p>
+
+<p>“Well, it seems that I erred in good company,” Roger said
+tritely, with a glance at Miss Dammers.</p>
+
+<p>“But you didn’t err,” corrected Mr. Chitterwick.</p>
+
+<p>“Oh?” Roger showed his surprise. “Then it was all aimed
+against Mrs. Bendix?”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick looked confused. “Haven’t I told you about
+that? I’m afraid I’m doing this in a very muddle-headed way. Yes,
+it is partially true to say that the plot was aimed against Mrs.
+Bendix. But the real position, I think, is that it was aimed against
+Mrs. Bendix and Sir Eustace jointly. You came very near the truth,
+Mr. Sheringham, except that you substituted a jealous husband
+for a jealous rival. Very near indeed. And of course you were
+entirely right in your point that the method was not suggested
+by the chance possession of the notepaper or anything like that,
+but by previous cases.”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m glad I was entirely right over something,” murmured
+Roger.</p>
+
+<p>“And Miss Dammers,” bowed Mr. Chitterwick, “was most
+helpful. <em>Most</em> helpful.”</p>
+
+<p>“Although not convincing,” supplemented that lady drily.</p>
+
+<p>“Although I’m afraid I did not find her altogether convincing,”
+agreed Mr. Chitterwick, with an apologetic air. “But it was really
+the theory she gave us that at last showed me the truth. For she also
+put yet another aspect on the crime, with her information
+regarding the—h’m!—the affair between Mrs. Bendix and Sir Eustace.
+And that really,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with another little bow to
+the informant, “was the foundation-stone of the whole business.”</p>
+
+<p>“I didn’t see how it could fail to be,” said Miss Dammers. “But
+I still maintain that my deductions from it are the correct ones.”</p>
+
+<p>“Perhaps if I may just put my own forward?” hesitated Mr.
+Chitterwick, apparently somewhat dashed.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dammers accorded a somewhat tart permission.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick collected himself. “Oh, yes; I should have said
+that Miss Dammers was quite right in one important particular,
+her assumption that it was not so much the affair between Mrs.
+Bendix and Sir Eustace that was at the bottom of the crime, as
+Mrs. Bendix’s character. That really brought about her own death.
+Miss Dammers, I should imagine, was perfectly right in her tracing
+out of the intrigue, and her imaginative insight into Mrs. Bendix’s
+reactions—I think that is the word?” Mr. Chitterwick inquired
+diffidently of authority. “Mrs. Bendix’s reactions to it, but not, I
+consider, in her deductions regarding Sir Eustace’s growing boredom.</p>
+
+<p>“Sir Eustace, I am led to believe, was less inclined to be bored
+than to share the lady’s distress. For the real point, which happened
+to escape Miss Dammers, is that Sir Eustace was quite infatuated
+with Mrs. Bendix. Far more so than she with him.</p>
+
+<p>“That,” pronounced Mr. Chitterwick, “is one of the
+determining factors in this tragedy.”</p>
+
+<p>Everybody pinned the factor down. The Circle’s attitude
+towards Mr. Chitterwick by this time was one of intelligent
+expectation. Probably no one really thought that he had found the right
+solution, and Miss Dammers’s stock had not been appreciably
+lowered. But certainly it seemed that the man had at any rate got
+something to offer.</p>
+
+<p>“Miss Dammers,” proceeded the object of their attention,
+“was right in another point she made too, namely that the
+inspiration of this murder, or perhaps I should say the method of it,
+certainly came from that book of poisoning cases she mentioned,
+of which her own copy (she tells us) is at present in Sir Eustace’s
+rooms—planted there,” added Mr. Chitterwick, much shocked,
+“by the murderess.</p>
+
+<p>“And another useful fact she established. That Mr. Bendix had
+been lured (really,” apologised Mr. Chitterwick, “I can use no
+other word) to the Rainbow Club that morning. But it was not
+Mrs. Bendix who telephoned to him on the previous afternoon.
+Nor was he sent there for the particular purpose of receiving the
+chocolates from Sir Eustace. The fact that the lunch appointment
+had been cancelled was altogether outside the criminal’s
+knowledge. Mr. Bendix was sent there to be a witness to Sir Eustace
+receiving the parcel; that was all.</p>
+
+<p>“The intention was, of course, that Mr. Bendix should have
+Sir Eustace so connected in his mind with the chocolates that if
+suspicion should ever arise against any definite person, that of
+Mr. Bendix would be directed before long to Sir Eustace himself.
+For the fact of his wife’s intrigue would be bound to come to his
+knowledge, as indeed I understand privately that it has, causing
+him naturally the most intense distress.”</p>
+
+<p>“So that’s why he’s been looking haggard,” exclaimed Roger.</p>
+
+<p>“Without doubt,” Mr. Chitterwick agreed gravely. “It was a
+wicked plot. Sir Eustace, you see, was expected to be dead by then
+and incapable of denying his guilt, and such evidence as there
+was had been carefully arranged to point to murder and suicide
+on his part. That the police never suspected him (that is, so far as
+we know), simply shows that investigations do not always take
+the turn that the criminal expects. And in this case,” observed
+Mr. Chitterwick with some severity, “I think the criminal was
+altogether too subtle.”</p>
+
+<p>“If that was her very involved reason for ensuring the presence
+of Mr. Bendix at the Rainbow Club,” agreed Miss Dammers
+with some irony, “her subtlety certainly overreached itself.” It
+was evident that not only on the point of psychology did Miss
+Dammers not find herself ready to accept Mr. Chitterwick’s
+conclusions.</p>
+
+<p>“That, indeed, is exactly what happened,” Mr. Chitterwick
+pointed out mildly. “Oh, and while we are on the subject of the
+chocolates, I ought to add that the reason why they were sent to
+Sir Eustace’s club was not only so that Mr. Bendix might be a witness
+of their arrival, but also, I should imagine, so that Sir Eustace
+would be sure to take them with him to his lunch-appointment.
+The murderess of course would be sufficiently conversant with his
+ways to know that he would almost certainly spend the morning
+at his club and go straight on to lunch from there; the odds were
+enormous that he would take the box of Mrs. Bendix’s favourite
+chocolates with him.</p>
+
+<p>“I think we may regard it as an instance of the criminal’s
+habitual overlooking of some vital point that is to lead eventually
+to detection, that this murderess completely lost sight of the
+possibility that the appointment for lunch might be cancelled. She is a
+particularly ingenious criminal,” said Mr. Chitterwick with gentle
+admiration, “and yet even she is not immune from this failing.”</p>
+
+<p>“Who is she, Mr. Chitterwick?” ingenuously asked Mrs.
+Fielder-Flemming.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick answered her with a positively roguish smile.
+“Everybody else has withheld the name of the suspect till the right
+moment. Surely I may be allowed to do so too.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, I think I have cleared up most of the doubtful points
+now. Mason’s notepaper was used, I should say, because chocolates
+had been decided on as the vehicle and Mason’s were the only
+chocolate manufacturing firm who were customers of Webster’s.
+As it happened, this fitted very well, because it was always Mason’s
+chocolates that Sir Eustace bought for his—er—his friends.”</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming looked puzzled. “Because Mason’s
+were the only firm who were customers of Webster’s? I’m afraid
+I don’t understand.”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, I <em>am</em> explaining all this badly,” cried Mr. Chitterwick in
+much distress, assuming all blame for this obtuseness. “It had to
+be some firm on Webster’s books, you see, because Sir Eustace
+has his notepaper printed at Webster’s, and he was to be identified
+as having been in there recently if the purloined piece was
+ever connected with the sample book. Exactly, in fact, as Miss
+Dammers did.”</p>
+
+<p>Roger whistled. “Oh, I see. You mean, we’ve all been putting
+the cart before the horse over this piece of notepaper?”</p>
+
+<p>“I’m afraid so,” regretted Mr. Chitterwick with earnestness.
+“Really, I’m very much afraid so.”</p>
+
+<p>Insensibly opinion was beginning to turn in Mr. Chitterwick’s
+favour. To say the least, he was being just as convincing as Miss
+Dammers had been, and that without subtle psychological
+reconstructions and references to “values.” Only Miss Dammers herself
+remained outwardly sceptical; but that, after all, was only to be
+expected.</p>
+
+<p>“Humph!” said Miss Dammers, sceptically.</p>
+
+<p>“What about the motive, Mr. Chitterwick?” nodded Sir Charles
+with solemnity. “Jealousy, did you say? I don’t think you’ve quite
+cleared up that yet, have you?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, yes, of course.” Mr. Chitterwick actually blushed. “Dear
+me, I meant to make that clear right at the beginning. I <em>am</em> doing
+this badly. No, not jealousy, I’m inclined to fancy. Revenge. Or
+revenge at any rate so far as Sir Eustace was concerned, and
+jealousy as regards Mrs. Bendix. From what I can understand, you
+see, this lady is—dear me,” said Mr. Chitterwick, in distress and
+embarrassment, “this is very delicate ground. But I must trespass
+on it. Well—though she had concealed it successfully from her
+friends, this lady had been very much in love with Sir Eustace, and
+become—er—had become,” concluded Mr. Chitterwick bravely,
+“his mistress. That was a long time ago.</p>
+
+<p>“Sir Eustace was very much in love with her too, and though
+he used to amuse himself with other women it was understood by
+both that this was quite permissible so long as there was nothing
+serious. The lady, I should say, is very modern and broad-minded.
+It was understood, I believe, that he was to marry her as soon as
+he could induce his wife (who was quite ignorant of this affair) to
+divorce him. But when this was at last arranged, Sir Eustace found
+that owing to his extreme financial stringency, it was imperative
+that he should marry money instead.</p>
+
+<p>“The lady was naturally very disappointed, but knowing that
+Sir Eustace did not care at all for—er—was not really in love with
+Miss Wildman and the marriage would only be, so far as he was
+concerned, one of convenience, she reconciled herself to the
+future and, quite seeing Sir Eustace’s necessity, did not resent the
+introduction of Miss Wildman—whom indeed,” Mr. Chitterwick
+felt himself compelled to add, “she considered as quite negligible.
+It never occurred to her to doubt, you see, that the old arrangement
+would hold good, and she would still have Sir Eustace’s real
+love with which to content herself.</p>
+
+<p>“But then something quite unforeseen happened. Sir Eustace
+not only fell out of love with her. He fell unmistakably in love with
+Mrs. Bendix. Moreover, he succeeded in making her his mistress.
+That was quite recently, since he began to pay his addresses to
+Miss Wildman. And I think Miss Dammers has given us a true
+picture of the results in Mrs. Bendix’s case if not in that of Sir
+Eustace.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, you can see the position then, so far as this other lady
+was concerned. Sir Eustace was getting his divorce, marriage with
+the negligible Miss Wildman was now out of the question, but
+marriage with Mrs. Bendix, tortured in her conscience and seeing
+in divorce from her husband and marriage with Sir Eustace the
+only means of solving it—marriage with Mrs. Bendix, the real
+beloved, and even more eligible than Miss Wildman so far as the
+financial side was concerned, was to all appearances inevitable. I
+deprecate the use of hackneyed quotations as much as anybody,
+but really I feel that if I permit myself to add that hell has no
+fury like—”</p>
+
+<p>“Can you prove all this, Mr. Chitterwick?” interposed Miss
+Dammers coolly on the hackneyed quotation.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick started. “I—I think so,” he said, though a
+little dubiously.</p>
+
+<p>“I’m inclined to doubt it,” observed Miss Dammers briefly.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhat uncomfortable, under Miss Dammers’s sceptical
+eye, Mr. Chitterwick explained. “Well Sir Eustace, whose
+acquaintance I have been at some pains to cultivate recently . . .”
+Mr. Chitterwick shivered a little, as if the acquaintance had not
+been his ideal one. “Well, from a few indications that Sir Eustace
+has unconsciously given me . . . That is to say, I was questioning
+him at lunch to-day as adroitly as I could, my conviction as to
+the murderer’s identity having been formed at last, and he did
+unwittingly let fall a few trifles which . . .”</p>
+
+<p>“I doubt it,” repeated Miss Dammers bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick looked quite nonplussed.</p>
+
+<p>Roger hurried to the rescue. “Well, shelving the matter of
+proof for the moment, Mr. Chitterwick, and assuming that your
+reconstruction of the events is just an imaginative one. You’d
+reached the point where marriage between Sir Eustace and Mrs.
+Bendix had become inevitable.”</p>
+
+<p>“Yes; oh, yes,” said Mr. Chitterwick, with a grateful look
+towards his saviour. “And then of course, this lady formed her
+terrible decision and made her very clever plan. I think I’ve explained
+all that. Her old right of access to Sir Eustace’s rooms enabled her
+to type the letter on his typewriter one day when she knew he
+was out. She is quite a good mimic, and it was easy for her when
+ringing up Mr. Bendix to imitate the sort of voice Miss Delorme
+might be expected to have.”</p>
+
+<p>“Mr. Chitterwick, do any of us know this woman?” demanded
+Mrs. Fielder-Flemming abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick looked more embarrassed than ever. “Er—yes,”
+he hesitated. “That is, you must remember it was she who
+smuggled Miss Dammers’s two books into Sir Eustace’s rooms
+too, you know.”</p>
+
+<p>“I shall have to be more careful about my friends in future, I
+see,” observed Miss Dammers, gently sarcastic.</p>
+
+<p>“An ex-mistress of Sir Eustace’s eh?” Roger murmured,
+conning over in his mind such names as he could remember from
+that lengthy list.</p>
+
+<p>“Well, yes,” Mr. Chitterwick agreed. “But nobody had any idea
+of it. That is— Dear me, this is very difficult.” Mr. Chitterwick
+wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, and looked extremely
+unhappy.</p>
+
+<p>“She’d managed to conceal it?” Roger pressed him.</p>
+
+<p>“Er—yes. She’d certainly managed to conceal the true state of
+matters between them, very cleverly indeed. I don’t think anybody
+suspected it at all.”</p>
+
+<p>“They apparently didn’t know each other?” Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+persisted. “They were never seen about together?”</p>
+
+<p>“Oh, at one time they were,” said Mr. Chitterwick, looking in
+quite a hunted way from face to face. “Quite frequently. Then, I
+understand, they thought it better to pretend to have quarrelled
+and—and met only in secret.”</p>
+
+<p>“Isn’t it time you told us this woman’s name, Chitterwick?”
+boomed Sir Charles down the table, looking judicial.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick scrambled desperately out of this fire of questions.
+“It’s very strange, you know, how murderers never will let
+well alone, isn’t it?” he said breathlessly. “It happens so often. I’m
+quite sure I should never have stumbled on the truth in this case
+if the murderess had only left things as they were, in accordance
+with her own admirable plot. But this trying to fix the guilt on
+another person . . . Really, from the intelligence displayed in this
+case, she ought to have been above that. Of course her plot <em>had</em>
+miscarried. Been only half-successful, I should say. But why not
+accept the partial failure? Why tempt Providence? Trouble was
+inevitable—inevitable—”</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chitterwick seemed by this time utterly distressed. He
+was shuffling his notes with extreme nervousness, and wriggling
+in his chair. The glances he kept darting from face to face were
+almost pleading. But what he was pleading for remained obscure.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear me,” said Mr. Chitterwick, as if at his wits’ end. “This
+is very difficult. I’d better clear up the remaining point. It’s about
+the alibi.</p>
+
+<p>“In my opinion the alibi was an afterthought, owing to a piece
+of luck. Southampton Street is near both the Cecil and the Savoy,
+isn’t it? I happen to know that this lady has a friend, another woman,
+of a somewhat unconventional nature. She is continually away on
+exploring expeditions and so on, usually quite alone. She never
+stays in London more than a night or two, and I should imagine
+she is the sort of woman who rarely reads the newspapers. And if
+she did, I think she would certainly not divulge any suspicion they
+might convey to her, especially concerning a friend of her own.</p>
+
+<p>“I have ascertained that immediately preceding the crime this
+woman, whose name by the way is Jane Harding, stayed for two
+nights at the Savoy Hotel, and left London, on the morning the
+chocolates were delivered, for Africa. From there she was going
+on to South America. Where she may be now I have not the least
+idea. Nor, I should say, has any one else. But she came to London
+from Paris, where she had been staying for a week.</p>
+
+<p>“The—er—criminal would know about this forthcoming trip
+to London, and so hurried to Paris. (I am afraid,” apologised
+Mr. Chitterwick uneasily, “there is a good deal of guess-work
+here.) It would be simple to ask this other lady to post the parcel
+in London, as the parcel postage is so heavy from France, and
+just as simple to ensure it being delivered on the morning of the
+lunch-appointment with Mrs. Bendix, by saying it was a birthday
+present, or some other pretext, and—and—must be posted to
+arrive on that particular day.” Mr. Chitterwick wiped his forehead
+again and glanced pathetically at Roger. Roger could only stare
+back in bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>“Dear me,” muttered Mr. Chitterwick distractedly, “this is <em>very</em>
+difficult.—Well, I have satisfied myself that—”</p>
+
+<p>Alicia Dammers had risen to her feet and was unhurriedly
+picking up her belongings. “I’m afraid,” she said, “I have an
+appointment. Will you excuse me, Mr. President?”</p>
+
+<p>“Of course,” said Roger, in some surprise.</p>
+
+<p>At the door Miss Dammers turned back. “I’m so sorry not to
+be able to stay to hear the rest of your case, Mr. Chitterwick. But
+really, you know, as I said, I very much doubt whether you’ll be
+able to prove it.”</p>
+
+<p>She went out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>“She’s perfectly right,” whispered Mr. Chitterwick, gazing after
+her in a petrified way. “I’m quite sure I can’t. But there isn’t the
+faintest doubt. I’m afraid, not the faintest.”</p>
+
+<p>Stupefaction reigned.</p>
+
+<p>“You—you <em>can’t</em> mean. . . ?” twittered Mrs. Fielder-Flemming
+in a strangely shrill voice.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Bradley was the first to get a grip on himself. “So we did
+have a practising criminologist amongst us after all,” he drawled,
+in a manner that was never Oxford. “How quite interesting.”</p>
+
+<p>Again silence held the Circle.</p>
+
+<p>“So now,” asked the President helplessly, “what the devil do
+we do?”</p>
+
+<p>Nobody enlightened him.</p>
+
+<p class="finis">The End</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="section" id="chart-table">
+
+<h2 class="appendix">Appendix: <br> Mr. Chitterwick’s Chart, unturned</h2>
+
+<table class="chart">
+<caption><a href="#chart-image">[back to Chapter XVII]</a></caption>
+<tr>
+<th>Solver</th>
+<th>Motive</th>
+<th>Angle of View</th>
+<th>Salient Feature</th>
+<th>Method of Proof</th>
+<th>Parallel Case</th>
+<th>Criminal</th>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="separator" colspan=7>&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Sir Charles Wildman</td>
+<td>Gain</td>
+<td><i>Cui bono</i></td>
+<td>Notepaper</td>
+<td>Inductive</td>
+<td>Marie Lafarge</td>
+<td>Lady Pennefather</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Mrs. Fielder-Flemming</td>
+<td>Elimination</td>
+<td><i>Cherchez la femme</i></td>
+<td>Hidden triangle</td>
+<td>Intuitive and Inductive</td>
+<td>Molineux</td>
+<td>Sir Charles Wildman</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Bradley (1)</td>
+<td>Experiment</td>
+<td>Detective-novelist’s</td>
+<td>Nitrobenzene</td>
+<td>Scientific deduction</td>
+<td>Dr. Wilson</td>
+<td>Bradley</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Bradley (2)</td>
+<td>Jealousy</td>
+<td>Character of Sir Eustace</td>
+<td>Criminological knowledge of murderer</td>
+<td>Deductive</td>
+<td>Christina Edmunds</td>
+<td>Woman unnamed</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Sheringham</td>
+<td>Gain</td>
+<td>Character of Mr. Bendix</td>
+<td>Bet</td>
+<td>Deductive and Inductive</td>
+<td>Carlyle Harris</td>
+<td>Bendix</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Miss Dammers</td>
+<td>Elimination</td>
+<td>Psychology of all participants</td>
+<td>Criminal’s character</td>
+<td>Psychological deduction</td>
+<td>Tawell</td>
+<td>Sir Eustace Pennefather</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>Police</td>
+<td>Conviction, or lust of killing</td>
+<td>General</td>
+<td>Material clues</td>
+<td>Routine</td>
+<td>Horwood or lunatic</td>
+<td>Unknown fanatic</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="section" id="transcriber">
+
+<h2>Transcriber’s Note</h2>
+
+<p>This transcription follows the text of The British Library edition,
+published in 2016. However, the following errors have been corrected
+from the text:</p>
+
+<ul>
+  <li>A mismatched quotation mark was repaired (Chapter VI).</li>
+  <li>“unwieldly” was changed to “unwieldy” (Chapter VII).</li>
+  <li>“appears to thinks” was changed to “appears to think”
+      (Chapter VIII).</li>
+  <li>“Aways” was changed to “Always” (Chapter IX).</li>
+  <li>“Masons’ ” was changed to “Mason’s” (Chapter XIII).</li>
+  <li>“assumptions seems” was changed to “assumptions seem” (Chapter XVI).</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>All other seeming errors and unusual phrasings have been left
+unchanged.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75476 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
diff --git a/75476-h/images/chart.svg b/75476-h/images/chart.svg
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
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@@ -0,0 +1,103 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>
+<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1" viewBox="0 0 960 1536">
+  <title>Mr. Chitterwick’s Chart</title>
+  <g style="font-size:24px;font-family:serif;stroke:none"
+     transform="rotate(90 480,480)">
+
+    <line x1="24" y1="144" x2="1512" y2="144" stroke="#000"/>
+
+    <text x="24" y="120">SOLVER</text>
+    <text x="24" y="192">Sir Charles</text>
+      <text x="24" y="216">Wildman</text>
+    <text x="24" y="288">Mrs. Fielder-</text>
+      <text x="24" y="312">Flemming</text>
+    <text x="24" y="384">Bradley (1)</text>
+    <text x="24" y="480">Bradley (2)</text>
+    <text x="24" y="576">Sheringham</text>
+    <text x="24" y="672">Miss</text>
+      <text x="24" y="696">Dammers</text>
+    <text x="24" y="768">Police</text>
+
+    <text x="240" y="120">MOTIVE</text>
+    <text x="240" y="192">Gain</text>
+    <text x="240" y="288">Elimination</text>
+    <text x="240" y="384">Experiment</text>
+    <text x="240" y="480">Jealousy</text>
+    <text x="240" y="576">Gain</text>
+    <text x="240" y="672">Elimination</text>
+    <text x="240" y="768">Conviction, or</text>
+      <text x="240" y="792">lust of killing</text>
+
+    <text x="456" y="96">ANGLE OF</text>
+      <text x="456" y="120">VIEW</text>
+    <text x="456" y="192" style="font-style:italic">Cui bono</text>
+    <text x="456" y="288" style="font-style:italic">Cherchez la</text>
+      <text x="456" y="312" style="font-style:italic">femme</text>
+    <text x="456" y="384">Detective-</text>
+      <text x="456" y="408">novelist’s</text>
+    <text x="456" y="480">Character of</text>
+      <text x="456" y="504">Sir Eustace</text>
+    <text x="456" y="576">Character of</text>
+      <text x="456" y="600">Mr. Bendix</text>
+    <text x="456" y="672">Psychology of</text>
+      <text x="456" y="696">all participants</text>
+    <text x="456" y="768">General</text>
+
+    <text x="672" y="96">SALIENT</text>
+      <text x="672" y="120">FEATURE</text>
+    <text x="672" y="192">Notepaper</text>
+    <text x="672" y="288">Hidden</text>
+      <text x="672" y="312">triangle</text>
+    <text x="672" y="384">Nitrobenzene</text>
+    <text x="672" y="480">Criminological</text>
+      <text x="672" y="504">knowledge of</text>
+      <text x="672" y="528">murderer</text>
+    <text x="672" y="576">Bet</text>
+    <text x="672" y="672">Criminal’s</text>
+      <text x="672" y="696">character</text>
+    <text x="672" y="768">Material clues</text>
+
+    <text x="888" y="96">METHOD OF</text>
+      <text x="888" y="120">PROOF</text>
+    <text x="888" y="192">Inductive</text>
+    <text x="888" y="288">Intuitive and</text>
+      <text x="888" y="312">Inductive</text>
+    <text x="888" y="384">Scientific</text>
+      <text x="888" y="408">deduction</text>
+    <text x="888" y="480">Deductive</text>
+    <text x="888" y="576">Deductive</text>
+      <text x="888" y="600">and Inductive</text>
+    <text x="888" y="672">Psychological</text>
+      <text x="888" y="696">deduction</text>
+    <text x="888" y="768">Routine</text>
+
+    <text x="1104" y="96">PARALLEL</text>
+      <text x="1104" y="120">CASE</text>
+    <text x="1104" y="192">Marie Lafarge</text>
+    <text x="1104" y="288">Molineux</text>
+    <text x="1104" y="384">Dr. Wilson</text>
+    <text x="1104" y="480">Christina</text>
+      <text x="1104" y="504">Edmunds</text>
+    <text x="1104" y="576">Carlyle Harris</text>
+    <text x="1104" y="672">Tawell</text>
+    <text x="1104" y="768">Horwood</text>
+
+    <text x="1320" y="120">CRIMINAL</text>
+    <text x="1320" y="192">Lady</text>
+      <text x="1320" y="216">Pennefather</text>
+    <text x="1320" y="288">Sir Charles</text>
+      <text x="1320" y="312">Wildman</text>
+    <text x="1320" y="384">Bradley</text>
+    <text x="1320" y="480">Woman</text>
+      <text x="1320" y="504">unnamed</text>
+    <text x="1320" y="576">Bendix</text>
+    <text x="1320" y="672">Sir Eustace</text>
+      <text x="1320" y="696">Pennefather</text>
+    <text x="1320" y="768">Unknown</text>
+      <text x="1320" y="792">fanatic or</text>
+      <text x="1320" y="816">lunatic</text>
+
+    <text x="648" y="888" style="font-style:italic">Mr. Chitterwick’s Chart</text>
+
+  </g>
+</svg>
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diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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+++ b/README.md
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #75476 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75476)