Time Is a Liar by Stephen Barr

Do you like puzzles? Then this unusual murder story should delight you — and make you put on your Thinking Cap. And if, after you have read the story and mulled it over, you still have any doubts (large or small), why we’ll be happy to forward your query to the author. One thing we insist on: we won’t try to explain it!

Jenks was standing at the windows in the smoking room of the Regent’s, looking out at the rain, smugly. Jenks is a young man who will bet on anything. The Regent’s is one of London’s older dubs, though very small, and it is perhaps the most disputatious.

By and large its members are not betting men, but Jenks never had any trouble in getting a wager. Any assertion made in the Regent’s is certain to be challenged, if not contradicted outright, and since Jenks was always making positive assertions he was frequently able to promote a bet. On this occasion he had made and won a bet in absentia, so to speak.

During the previous two days he and another member had been in Birmingham, and on the Monday — today was Wednesday — they had spent the evening in a pub there. At nine o’clock the B.B.C. weather report had come on, and the weather man predicted rain for the next afternoon. He was talking about London, of course, and said that a band of wet weather was approaching the British Isles from the northwest. Birmingham is a hundred miles northwest of London, and consequently Birmingham would get it first. It was due in London, the weather man said, at approximately mid-afternoon — around three P.M. Jenks’s friend pricked up his ears at this.

“I think we’d better shove off a bit earlier than we planned tomorrow,” he said. “Say about eleven — I hate driving in the rain. These cold fronts, or whatever they are, seem to travel about thirty miles an hour, so that ought to put us just ahead of it.”

“Yes, but not always,” Jenks said. “Sometimes they move faster.”

“Oh, I think that’s very unusual—” the friend began.

“I’ll bet you a quid the rain gets here at least an hour earlier than you expect,” Jenks interrupted, and after a short debate the other agreed to the bet. Jenks won, because when they got up the next morning at nine, it was already pouring.

Since Jenks enjoys argument — I think that’s why he joined the Regent’s — he had just brought up the subject of the bet. “You see,” he said, “it did start raining here at about three yesterday, didn’t it?” A couple of members nodded grudgingly. “Well then,” Jenks continued, “Bill, here (Bill was his companion in Birmingham) just underrated the speed of arrival of the cold front.”

“Low-pressure area,” one of the members hastened to correct him.

“Well, whatever it was, it was going a lot faster than Bill estimated, and the result was—”

“I’m afraid you’re entirely mistaken,” a gentle voice broke in. It was Dr. Sylvan Moore, our oldest member.

“How can you say that?” Jenks demanded indignantly. “I won the bet, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but not for the reasons you suppose,” Dr. Moore said, “It wasn’t going faster — it was going slower!”

There was silence in the smoking room at this. The members of the Regent’s may challenge most assertions, but not if they are palpably fantastic — they suspect a catch. However, it was too much for Jenks. “Are you trying to tell me that something gets there sooner because it’s slower?” he said weakly.

“Certainly,” Dr. Moore replied.

I know (Dr. Moore went on) that it’s hard to credit, but if you will bear with me a few minutes I can make it clear to you.

I don’t suppose you would remember the arrest and subsequent trial of the murderer of Aloysius Glendale? No, that would be before your time. Prewar — the first World War... The affair was a nine-day wonder because it was absolutely certain the murderer was one of two suspects — but no one could prove which. Both suspects were employees of Glendale’s — one was named Tony Brill, a young bounder who lived beyond his means, and the other was Glendale’s assistant, named J. J. Amadon. Amadon was also an unpleasant man — he was miserly to a point of absurdity.

Their difference is best illustrated by the way the two men got to and from work. Glendale’s office was in Brighton, and the two suspects lived in Littlehurst, which is a village about eighteen miles north of Brighton, on the London Road. There is, of course, a railway that they could have commuted on, but owing to their respective characters neither of them used it except in very bad weather.

In Amadon’s case it was the money: to save the fare he rode a bike which took him a good hour and a half. Tony Brill, on the other hand, had a car — a two-seater Gardiner, which he could ill afford — and he drove it as fast as he could, so his trip was a matter of a bit over half an hour. In those days and on those roads thirty miles an hour was considered a pretty fair clip, and anyway it had the added advantage of allowing him to sleep later. Time, you understand, was the all-important element in this case, and while it was conceivably possible that for once Brill had driven very, very slowly, it was extremely unlikely and out of character.

But the point at issue, as it came out during the preliminary hearings, was not that Brill wouldn’t have driven slowly, but that Amadon couldn’t have peddled his bike any faster. On the morning of the murder there had been a breakdown on the railway line, so there was no train, and in fact it was for this reason that Mr. Glendale decided not to go to the office. He lived in a modern Tudor house in a group of similar atrocities that the builders called May Hill, and it was on the London Road, too — about halfway between Littlehurst and Brighton. He always took the 8:35, which got him to his office at 8:55. He was a stickler for punctuality, and his staff was never late, and this included the morning of the murder.

You must keep in mind that this was in 1911 when motor cars were comparatively rare. There were no buses that you could hop on from village to village in those days, and if Amadon had secretly hired or borrowed a car for that one morning, it would not have remained a secret for long once the case became a cause célèbre.

The motives for murdering Aloysius Glendale have no particular bearing on the outcome. With Amadon it was the case of the last straw. For years he had worked hard and conscientiously, but Glendale had never advanced him higher than Assistant Manager, and any increases in salary had been rare — and grudgingly bestowed. Glendale, you see, was somewhat unlovable, too, and he took advantage of the fact that avaricious men hate to give up the security of their jobs. “Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to leave us after all this time, J. J.,” he’d say, with an infuriating smile, and poor Amadon’s fellow-workers would wonder if he might not at last have reached the breaking point.

Then finally, to cap it all, Glendale sacked Amadon for some trifling error. It was incredibly malicious, because Amadon was almost at retirement age, and it meant that he would lose his pension. Amadon knew that with Glendale out of the way, the firm would not take any action against him during the period of reorganization.

Brill’s case was simpler: he had been systematically looting the firm’s cash account, and Glendale had just found out. Glendale would certainly have prosecuted, but if he were dead the loss could perhaps be concealed for long enough to make it good. Like most spendthrifts, Brill was the eternal optimist.

Anyway, on the evening of the crime, Glendale’s body was discovered by his housekeeper; he had been stabbed to death. She had taken her day off, and had not even known that he had not gone to the office. The police surgeon couldn’t place the exact time of the murder — merely that it had been some time that morning between 6:30 and 9:30 A.M. But there was a witness — and everything depended on him. He was the local vicar, who had been pruning his grape arbor. His house was directly behind Glendale’s, and he saw both suspects come up — separately — by the back lane.

He said that it seemed surreptitious, because the natural thing would have been to approach from the front — the London Road was in that direction. The Vicar was aware that they both used the London Road going to and from work.

The trouble though, was that while the Vicar was a reliable witness and quite positive on one point, he was unfortunately completely unsure on another. He was certain of the identities of the two callers, and that they came more than half an hour apart. But he couldn’t remember which came first!

A preliminary hearing is not conducted with quite the same formalities as a trial, and there is a greater leaway in cross-examination; but the Vicar couldn’t be shaken. He was as sure Amadon and Brill were there at different times as he was positive he could not remember which came first. It was an impasse.

Both suspects claimed they rang Glendale’s bell and got no answer. Both admitted hanging around for a few minutes, but both insisted they had never set foot inside Glendale’s house. Then the motives came out, and each had to admit the fact that Glendale’s death was to his advantage — or would have been. But which one was the murderer?

If only the police surgeon had been able to pinpoint the time of death more exactly, things would have been clearer, but then an unexpected witness turned up. It was Glendale’s brother, John, and he had left England the day of the crime and had gone to France, where he had not seen any English papers. He got back a week or so later, heard the news, and immediately got in touch with the police.

Aloysius Glendale, the brother stated, must have been killed before 8:20 in the morning. The day before the crime, the two brothers had had luncheon together in Brighton, and Aloysius had asked John to phone him early the next morning at home, before he left for the office. I forget now what the phone call was all about, but the point is it was important to Aloysius, and he was waiting for the call.

John phoned at 8:20 and got no answer. He tried again five minutes later on the chance that his brother had been out of earshot of the phone, but no one picked up the receiver. He remembered that it was the housekeeper’s day off, and assumed his brother had forgotten the call and had taken an earlier train. He himself had to catch a train to Dover to take a steamer across the Channel, so he didn’t have time to wait and call Aloysius’s office, which he might otherwise have done.

The indictment was procured at once on the basis of this new evidence — against Brill, who had the fast car. The early bird had been caught this time, and newspaper editorials pontificated about one crime leading to a more heinous crime. Some of them even went so far as to suggest that crime was a by product of driving a fast car, in which they were perhaps more prophetic than we realized at the time.

Brill passionately denied his guilt — but it did no good. Fast cars get to places sooner than push-bikes, and while a car can be driven slowly, a bicycle can only be peddled at a certain maximum speed. Amadon was released, and I took the Flying Scotsman from Edinburgh, where I happened to be, the moment I read the news about Glendale’s brother, and his evidence.

I went straight to the Brighton police and told them they had the wrong man. They referred me to the Prosecutor — and you, Jenks, can close your mouth again. You’re looking just like the Prosecutor — indignant and completely sure of yourself. I might add that I had to explain it to him three times before it sank in. “But, my dear sir,” he kept saying, “you’re asking me to believe that because something goes slower it gets there sooner!”

I told him that under the particular set of circumstances that pertained, this was indeed true. “How long,” I asked him, “does it take to ride a bicycle nine miles? Even though the London Road is somewhat downhill toward the sea, it would be well over forty minutes, wouldn’t it?”

“But that’s precisely the point!” he said. “Brill could do it in fifteen minutes in that car of his — from his place in Littlehurst to Glendale’s house in May Hill!”

“I’m not talking about that nine miles,” I said. “I refer to the nine miles between May Hill and Brighton — where both suspects arrived at approximately 9 A.M. at the office. This means that for Amadon to get to Brighton at 9:00, he must have left May Hill at least as early as 8:20.

“Brill, on the other, hand, could have left May Hill as late as a quarter to, and since the Vicar is positive they were there at least half an hour apart, that is precisely what happened. All it means is that Amadon left his own house first — not that Brill got to Glendale’s house first. You’re all timing it from the wrong end.”

Well, the Prosecutor finally got the idea, and for the rest of the day he was explaining it to various people involved, who in turn explained it to others. It eventually became the subject of a national debate, with the British public divided into those who understood and those who remained to be convinced. In time practically everyone was.

In the interim the police collared Amadon — who might have got away except that he was waiting for an especially cheap boat to take him to Argentina. Brill got off — only to be rearrested and arraigned for grand larceny. He knew he was innocent of the murder, of course, but he kept telling everybody at the prison who would listen to him that it didn’t make sense. His car must have got to Glendale’s house before that stupid push-bike — and since your mouth is open again, Jenks, I’ll return to your bet about the weather.

Like the Prosecutor and the police, you timed it from the wrong end. All that the B.B.C. weather man predicted was when the rain would arrive in London: he said at 3 P.M. and that’s when it did get here. Now, if it was traveling at about thirty miles an hour, it would have to be over Birmingham a little before noon to get to London in three hours. But if, on the other hand, it was traveling slower — say fifteen miles an hour — it would have taken over six hours to go the hundred miles to London, and consequently must have been at Birmingham six hours beforehand. Nine in the morning, in fact.

That’s three hours sooner than expected, and it’s the result of moving slower. It merely means you didn’t know where it was at the broadcast time — you only knew when it would get to London.

The thing appears to be confusing you, so as it’s nearly time for luncheon I think I shall have a glass of port — while you all think it over.