The Judas Window

'I had to safeguard myself. If I wrote only the first part of the letter, you would take it into court, and it might help to save Answell - a murderer. So I had to ensure that you did not take it into court.'

'Oh,' said H.M. in a different tone. 'I see. You deliberately shoved that lie in so that we wouldn't dare use it as evidence?'

Dr Hume waved this aside, and became more calm.

'At considerable risk to myself, Sir Henry, I came here. That was in order to get as much information as I received. Fair play, eh? Surely that is fair? What I wish to know is my legal position in this matter. In the first place, I hold a certificate testifying to my illness yesterday -'

'From a doctor who's goin' to be struck off the register.'

'But who is not yet so discredited,' replied the other. 'If you insist on applying technicalities, I must use them as well. I was actually in attendance this morning, you know. In the second place, the Crown have waived their intention to call me as a witness; and their case is closed.'

'Sure. Still, the defence hasn't closed the case. And you can still be called as a witness: it won't matter for which side.'

Spencer Hume put down his cigarette carefully on the edge of the table. He folded his hands.

'Sir Henry, you will not call me as a witness. If you do, I will blow your whole case sky-high in just five seconds.'

'Oh-ho? So we're doin' a little arguing about compounding a felony, now, are we?' Hume's face tightened, and he looked round quickly at us; but H.M. had only a gleam of benevolent wickedness in his dull eye. 'Never mind,' H.M. went on. 'I'm pretty unorthodox, not to say twisty. Have you got the incredible, stratospheric cheek to threaten you'll go into the box and tell your story about seein' the murder done, if I dare to pull you out of retirement? Wow! Honest, son, I really admire you.'

'No,' said Hume calmly. 'I need only tell a plain truth.'

'Comin' from you -'

'No, that will not do,' said the other, and raised one finger with a critical air. 'It was established this morning, you know, that this is not a court of morals. Because Mary went the way of all flesh, it is no reason why her testimony about a murder should be discredited. Because I intended bloodlessly and painlessly to put a blackmailer where he belonged (a much less heinous offence to British ears, I assure you), that is no reason why my testimony about a murder should be discredited.'

'Uh-huh. If you hate blackmailers so much, why try a spot of blackmail on me now?'

Dr Hume drew a deep breath. 'I honestly and sincerely am not. I merely tell you - don't call me as a witness.’

Your whole case has been based on a missing piece of feather. You have repeatedly and even monotonously thundered at every witness: "Where is that piece of feather?"' 'Well?'

'I've got it’ said Dr Hume simply. 'And here it is’

Again he took out his cigarette-case. From under a line of cigarettes he carefully pulled out a piece of blue feather, some inch and a quarter long by an inch broad. He put it on the table with equal care.

'You'll notice’ he continued, during the heavy silence while H.M.'s face remained as impassive as ever, 'that the edges are a bit more ragged than those on the other piece. But I think they'll fit fairly well. Where was this piece of the feather? God love you, I had it, of course. I picked it up off the floor of the study on the night of the murder. It was no instinct for clues; it was simply an instinct of tidiness. And why didn't I show it to anyone? I can see you getting ready to ask that. My good fellow, do you know the only person who has ever been at all interested in this feather? That's you. The police weren't interested in it. The police never thought greatly about it - like myself. To be quite honest, I forgot all about it. But, if that feather is submitted in evidence, you will readily see the result. Have I convinced you?'

'Yes’ said H.M., with a broad and terrifying grin. 'At last you have. You've convinced me you really did know about the Judas window after all’

Spencer Hume rose rather quickly to his feet, and his hand knocked to the floor the cigarette on the edge of the table. With an instinct of tidiness he had automatically put his foot on it when there was another knock-on the door. This time the door opened more precipitately. Randolph Fleming, ducking under the low lintel, brought his aggressive red moustache into the room - and stopped in mid-sentence.

'I say, Merrivale, they tell me that you – hullo!'

As though disconcerted at being put off his stride,

Fleming stood staring at the doctor. In his own quiet way he was as great a dandy as Spencer Hume: he wore a soft grey hat whose angle just escaped being rakish, and carried a silver-headed stick. His withered jowls swelled out as he regarded Spencer; he hesitated, with an embarrassed air, and ended by making sure that the door was closed behind him.

'Here, hang it!' he said gruffly. 'I thought you had -'

'Cut and run for it?' supplied H.M.

Fleming compromised with a blurred statement' to Spencer Hume over his shoulder: 'Look here, won't you get into a lot of trouble if you turn up now?' Then he faced H.M. in an evident mood to get something off his mind.

'First, like to say this. I'd like to say no offence; I don't hold it against you for pitching into me yesterday in court. That's your business, and all in the day's work. Lawyers and liars, eh? Always has been. Ha, ha, ha I But here's what I want to know. They say - for some reason I don't understand - I may be called as a witness for your side as well. What's up?'

'No,' said H.M. T think there'll be a clear enough identification from Shanks. Even if you do get asked anything, it'll only be a matter of form. I got a cross-bow I want to get identified as belongin' to Avory Hume. Shanks should be able to do that pretty well.'

'The odd-jobs man?' muttered Fleming, and brushed up his moustache with the back of his gloved hand. 'Look here, would you mind telling me -'

'Not at all,' said H.M., as the other hesitated.

'Not to put too fine a point on it,' said Fleming, 'do you still think poor Hume was killed with a cross-bow?'

‘I always did think so.'

Fleming considered this carefully. 'I don't admit anything to go back on my opinion,' he pointed out, after a glowering look. 'But I thought I was bound to tell you one thing. I tried some experiments last night, just by way of making sure. And it could be done. It could be done, provided the distance was short enough. I don't say it was, but it could be. Another thing -'

'Get it off your chest, son,' suggested H.M. He glanced over at the doctor, who was sitting very quietly, and making noises as though he were trying to clear a dry throat without having the sounds become too audible.

'I tried it out three times - shooting arrows from a crossbow, I mean,' insisted Fleming, with an illustrative gesture. 'The guide-feather does tend to get stuck in the teeth of the windlass, unless you're damned careful. Once it stuck and pulled the whole feather off the shaft of the arrow when the bow was released. Another time it cut the feather in half - kkk! - like that. Like the one you showed us in court. Mind you,' he wagged his finger, 'not, as I say, that I'd take back one word I said. But things like that worry me. I'm damned if they don't. I can't help it. I thought to myself: If there's anything fishy in this, I ought to tell 'em about it. Only decent. If you think I like coming here and telling you, you're off your chump; but I'm going to warn the Attorney-General about it too. Then it's off my mind. But still, between ourselves, what did happen to that infernal piece of feather?'

For a short time H.M. looked at him without speaking. On the table, almost hidden by the dishes, lay the piece of blue feather Spencer Hume had put there. Spencer made a quick movement as Fleming spoke, but H.M. forestalled him. Scooping up the feather, H.M. put it on the back of his hand and held it out as though he were going to puff at it.

'It's a very rummy thing about that,' remarked H.M., without looking at Spencer. 'We were just discussin' the point as you came in. Do you think, for instance, that this could be the missin' piece?'

'Where'd you find it?'

'Well ... now. That's one of the points under debate. But, as an expert on the subject, would you just look at this little joker and decide whether it could be the one we want?'

Fleming took it gingerly and rather suspiciously. After, a suspicious look between H.M. and Spencer, he carried the feather to the window and examined it in a better light. Several times his sharp little eyes moved round during his examination.

'Rubbish!' he said abruptly.

'What's rubbish, son?'

'This is. I mean, any idea that this is the other part of the feather.'

Spencer Hume drew a folded handkerchief out of his breast-pocket, and, with an inconspicuous kind of gesture, he began to rub it round his face as though he were polishing that face to a brighter shine than it already had. Something in the expression of his eyes, something that conveyed doubt or misery, was familiar. I had seen just that expression somewhere before, and recently. It was too vivid for me to forget the slide of eyes or hands; but why was it so familiar?

'So?' asked H.M. softly. 'You'd say pretty definitely it couldn't be, eh? Why not?'

'This is a turkey-feather. I told you - or rather you got it out of me - that poor old Hume didn't use anything except goose-feathers.'

'Is there much difference?'

'Is there much difference! Ho!' said Fleming, giving a fillip to the brim of his hat. 'If you go into a restaurant and order turkey, and they serve you goose instead, you're going to know the difference, aren't you? Same with these feathers.' A new thought appeared to strike him. 'What's going on here, anyhow?'

'That's all right,' grunted H.M., and continued without inflection: 'We were just havin’ a bit of a private conference. We -'

Fleming drew himself up. 'I had no intention of staying,' he said with dignity. 'I came here to get something off my mind. Now I've done it, my conscience is clear again and I don't deny I shall take some pleasure in saying good day. I'll only say that there seems to be something infernally queer going on hereabouts. By the way, doctor. If I do manage to see the Attorney-General, shall I tell him you're back and ready to testify?'

'Tell him anything you like,' Spencer answered quietly.

Fleming hesitated, opening his mouth as though he were bedevilled to the edge of an outburst; then he nodded with ponderous gravity, and made for the door. Although he did not know it, it was his own presence which had disturbed the room in a manner we could not analyse. H.M. got up and stood looking down at Spencer Hume.

'Aren't you rather glad you didn't go into court?' he asked quite mildly. 'Set your mind at rest. I'm not goin' to call you as a witness. In your present frame of mind, I wouldn't dare. But right here, strictly among ourselves, you faked that evidence, didn't you?'

The other studied this. 'I suppose you could call it that, in a way.'

'But why the blazes did you fake it?'

'Because Answell is guilty,' said the other.

And then I knew what the expression of his eyes reminded me of: it reminded me of James Answell himself, and of the same trapped sincerity with which Answell had faced accusations. It made even H.M. blink. H.M. gravely made a gesture which I could not interpret; he kept his eyes fixed on Spencer as he did so.

'The Judas window means nothin' to you?' he insisted, with another incomprehensible gesture at which Spencer peered doubtfully.

'I swear it does not'

'Then listen to me,' said H.M. 'You've got two courses open to you. You can clear out. Or you can go to court this afternoon. If Walt Storm's waived you as a witness, and if you've really got a medical certificate for yesterday, you can't be arrested unless Balmy Rankin cuts up awful rough - which I don't think he will. If I were you, I'd go to court. You may hear something that will interest you, and will make you want to speak out. But you ought to know where the real piece of feather, the genuine one, is now. There are two parts of that missin' piece. Half of the missin' piece is stuck in the teeth of a cross-bow that I'm goin' to produce in court. The other half was left in the Judas window. If I see the tide startin' to swing against me, I warn you I'll put you into the box no matter how dangerous you are. But I don't think that'll be necessary. That's all I've got to say, because I'm goin' back now.'

We followed him out, leaving Spencer sitting by the table with the dying firelight red on his face, pondering. It was at this time yesterday that we had first heard of the Judas window. Before an hour had passed it was to be shown in all its hidden obviousness; it was to loom as large and practical as a sideboard, though of slightly different dimensions: and it was to swallow up Courtroom Number One. For the moment we knew only that the room was locked.

On the landing Evelyn seized H.M.'s arm. 'There's one thing at least,' she said through her teeth, 'you can tell. One little question that's so easy it never occurred to met to think of it before -'

'Uh-huh. Well?' enquired H.M.

'What is the shape of the Judas window?'

'Square,' said H.M. promptly. 'Mind that step.'

XVI

IPut On This Dye Myself

'SHALL be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.' 'Ar,' said the witness.

The witness did not chew gum; but the continual restless movement of his jaws, the occasional sharp clicking sound he made with his tongue to emphasize a point, gave the impression that he was occupied with an exhaustless wad of it. He had a narrow, suspicious face, which alternately expressed good nature and defiance; a very thin neck; and hair which seemed to be the colour and consistency of liquorice. When he wished to be particularly emphatic, he would jerk his head sideways in speaking, as though he were doing a trick with the invisible chewing-gum; and turn his eye sternly on the questioner. Also, his tendency to address everyone except H.M. as 'your lordship' may have been veiled awe - or it may have been a sign of the budding Communist tendencies indicated by the curl of his lip and the hammer-and-sickle design in his militant tie.

H.M. plunged in.

'Your full name's Horace Carlyle Grabell, and you live at 85 Benjamin Street, Putney?'

'That's right,' agreed the witness with cheerful defensiveness, as though he were daring anyone to doubt this.

'Did you use to work in the block of service-flats in Duke Street, D'Orsay Chambers, where the accused lives?'

'That's right.'

'What was your job there?'

'I was an Extra Cleaner-Up.'

'What's an Extra Cleaner-Up, exactly?'

'It's like this. It's the mess they makes, that the chambermaids don't like. When their ash-trays gets full, they empties 'em into the waste-paper baskets. They sticks their old razor-blades anywhere they can, to get 'em out of sight. They leaves things about - well, you know what I mean. Extra Cleaner-Up, especially when there was parties.'

'Were you working there round about the 3rd of January last?'

'On that date,' corrected Horace Carlyle Grabell, with a pounce. 'On that date, I was.'

'Yes. Did you know the deceased, Mr Hume?'

'I hadn't the honour of his personal acquaintance -'

'Just confine yourself to answering the question,' said the judge sharply.

'Very good, your Lordship,' said the witness smoothly, and his jaw extended at the same time his upper lip drew away from his teeth. 'I was about to say: except once when we got very matey, and he gave me ten pounds to keep my mouth shut about his being a thief.'

Several times before a recorder would have had the opportunity of writing the word 'sensation'. This one, which could hardly be called a full-fledged sensation, since nobody knew what it meant, was all the more pronounced because of the casual way in which Grabell spoke. The judge slowly took off his spectacles, disengaging them from under his tie-wig, folded them up, and contemplated him.

'You quite understand what you are saying?' enquired Mr Justice Rankin.

'Oh, very good, your Lordship.'

'I wished to make sure of that. Proceed, Sir Henry.'

'We'll try to make certain of it, my lord,' growled H.M. 'Now then. How'd you come to know the deceased so well by sight?'

'I used to work at another place - not far away. Every week, Saturday mornings, they used to take the week's takings up to the Capital Counties Bank in a leather bag. I went along; kind of a bodyguard, you see; not that it was ever needed. The deceased, he didn't actually do nothing; I mean, he didn't take the money across the counter or nothing. He would just come out of that little door at the back of the bank, and stand with his hands behind his back, and nod to Mr Perkins who brought the money, like as if he was giving his blessing to it.'

'How many times d'ye think you saw him there?'

'Oh, umpteen.'

'A dozen, do you think?'

'More'n that,' insisted the witness, shaking his head sceptically and drawing the air through a hollow tooth. 'Every Saturday for six months or so.'

'Now, where were you on the morning of Friday, January 3rd, last?'

'Cleaning out the dustbin in 3c’ answered Grabell promptly. 'That's Mr Answell's flat.' He made a sign of quick and saturnine friendliness towards the prisoner, pushing his fist under his own chin as though to keep it up; and instantly checked this with an air of portentous solemnity.

'Where's the dustbin?'

'In the kitchenette.'

'This kitchenette opens into the dining-room?'

'Same as usual,' agreed Grabell.

*Was the door closed between?'

'Yes. Or very near. Just a crack.'

'What'd you see or hear then?'

'Well, I wasn't making much noise. While I was standing in the kitchenette, I heard the door of the dining-room open - that's the other door to the dining-room, leading to the little entry. I thought: '"Ullo!" Because Mr Answell wasn't expected back. I peeped through and see a man coming into the dining-room, walking very soft and quick. You could tell he was up to no good. The blinds was all drawn in the dining-room, too. First he gave a tap on all the walls, like as if he was looking for a safe. Then he started to open the drawers in the sideboard. What he took out I didn't know first going-off, because his back was to me. Then he went over and raised the blind to get a better look. I saw who he was, and I saw what he'd got in his hand.'

'Who was it?'

'This deceased, Mr Hume.'

'And what had he got in his hand?' asked H.M. in a louder voice.

'Captain Answell's gun, that you've got down on the table there.'

'Hand it up to the witness. Take a closer look, and make sure it's the one the deceased took out of that sideboard on Friday morning.'

'That's the one,' said the witness, reeling off the serial number of the pistol before it was put into his hand. He pulled out the clip and snapped it back again, turning round the automatic in a way that made the nearest woman juryman shy back. 'Why, I had to unload it meself once, when they was getting gay at a party.'

'Tell us what happened after you saw Mr Hume?'

'Couldn't believe my own eyes, that's what. He got out a little notebook, and compared something in it, careful as careful; then he stowed away the gun in his pocket. Well, that was too much. I walked out quick and said: "Hullo." I'd got no call to be respectful to a chap who was there to steal. It gave him a turn, though he tried not to show it. He turned round with his hands behind his back and his eyebrows pulled down - trying to look like Napoleon, I dare say. He said: "Do you know who I am?" I said: "Yes; and I also know you've just pinched Captain Answell's gun." He said not to be ridiculous; he said it was a joke. I know that tone some of the nobs takes when they've done the dirty and try to carry it off, I know it; and that's why I knew he knew it. Why, there was that time Lord Borefastleigh got caught flat with the ace, king and jack of trumps in his waistcoat pocket -'

'You will omit that,' said the judge.

"Very good, your Lordship. I said: "Joke or not, you're going down to the manager and explain why you've just pinched Captain Answell's gun." Then he got much quieter. He said: "All right; but do you know which side your bread is buttered on?" I said: "I don't know about that, guv'nor; considering as I've never seen any butter in me life." He said, in a way I'll bet he didn't talk at the bank: "There's a quid in it for you if you keep your mouth shut about this." I thought I'd just see what he was up to, and I said: "I know what that is, guv'nor; that's margerine; and I've had plenty of that on me bread." He said: "Very well; ten pounds, and that's my limit." So he went away with the gun.'

'Did you take the ten pounds?' enquired the judge.

'Yes, your Lordship, I did,' answered Grabell, with defiant querulousness. 'What would you have done?'

'It is not a matter on which I dare pass judgment,' said Mr Justice Rankin. 'Go on, Sir Henry.'

'He went away with the gun.' H.M. wagged his head. 'And what did you do after that?'

‘I knew he was up to no good, so I thought I'd better warn Captain Answell about it.' -

'Oh? Did you warn Captain Answell about it?'

'Yes. Not that he's good for as much as a bob; but I thought it was my duty to, that's all.'

"When did you warn him?'

'I couldn't do it then, him being away in the country. But he turned up unexpected the next day -'

'Uh-huh. So, after all, he was in London on the Saturday of the murder, was he?' said H.M. He allowed a pause, taking the other's movement of the jaws, carried almost to the point of making a face, for a reply. 'When did you see him?'

"Bout ten minutes past six on Saturday evening. He drove into the place behind the block of flats, where they park the cars. There was nobody else about, so I told him Mr Hume had been there the day before and pinched his gun.'

'What did he say?'

'He looked queer for a minute; thoughtful-like; then he said: "Thanks; that'll be very useful," and up and handed me half a crown. Then he turned the car round and whizzed out of there.'

'Now listen to me, son. The pistol that was found in the accused's pocket - that gun - the gun he's supposed to have taken with him on Saturday night to use on Mr Hume - was actually stolen out of the flat on Friday by Mr Hume himself? Is that right?'

'That's as true as God made little apples,' retorted the witness, leaning out of the box in response to H.M.'s pointed finger.

H.M. sat down.

Grabell might have been an insolent and garrulous witness, but these facts themselves made an enormous impression. We knew, however, that a tussle was coming. The antagonism which sprang up between this witness and Sir Walter Storm was apparent before the Attorney-General had uttered a word. Owing to the Londoner's instinctive awe and reverence before a red robe, which represents a hazy conception of Law-cum-Empire and things deeply rooted, Grabell had shown towards the judge a submissiveness approaching humility. Towards the prosecution he held no such views. They evidently represented to him someone who was merely out to do you down. Grabell must have gone into the box with an eye on them, and ready to bristle. This was not soothed by Sir Walter's - entirely unintentional - lofty stare.

'Ah ... Grabell. You tell us you accepted ten pounds from Mr Hume?'

'Yes.'

'Do you think it was an honourable act for you to accept it?'

'Do you think it was an honourable act for 'im to offer it?'

'Mr Hume's habits are not, I think, in question -'

"Well then, they ought to be. You're trying to hang that poor devil there because of 'em.'

The Attorney-General suddenly must have looked so dangerous that the witness drew back a little. 'Do you know what contempt of court is, Grabell?'

'Yes.'

'In case you do not, my lord may have to make it quite clear to you. To avoid any unpleasant consequences, I must tell you that your business here is to answer my questions - nothing else. Do I make myself understood?'

Grabell, rather pale, looked as though he were straining at a leash; but he jerked his head and made no comment.

'Very well. I am glad you appreciate that.' Sir Walter set his papers in order. T should deduce,' he pursued, with-a sidelong glance at the jury, 'that you are a follower of the doctrines of Karl Marx?'

'Never heard of him.'

'Are you a Communist?'

'That's as may be.'

'Have you not made up your mind? - Did you, or did you not, accept a bribe from Mr Hume?'

'Yes. But I went directly and told Captain Answell afterwards.'

'I see. Your "honour rooted in dishonour stands". Is that what you wish us to believe? Do you wish us to believe that you are all the more trustworthy because you were twice unfaithful to a trust?'

"Ere, what's all this?' cried the witness, staring round.

'You tell us that round about January 3rd you were employed at D'Orsay Chambers, Duke Street. Are you not employed there now?'

'No ... I left.'

'You left: why?'

Silence.

'Were you dismissed?' 'You could call it that, yes.' 'So you were dismissed. Why?' 'Answer the question,' said the judge sharply. 'I didn't get on with the manager, and they were overstaffed.'

'Did the manager give you a reference when you left?' 'No.'

'But if you had left for the reasons you tell us, he must have given you a character, mustn't he?'

Sir Walter Storm had not been prepared for this witness. But, with the knowledge of long experience, he knew exactly where to attack without having any actual information to draw on.

'You tell us that on Friday morning, January 3rd, you were "cleaning out the dustbin" in the prisoner's flat?'

'Yes.'

'How long had Mr Answell and Captain Answell been away?'

"Bout a fortnight, maybe.'

'About a fortnight. Why, then, was it necessary to clean out the dustbin, if they had been away for so long?' 'They might have come back.'

'Yet a moment ago you informed my learned friend that no one was expected back. Did you not?' 'It had to be done sometime.'

'It had not been done by anyone during those entire two weeks?' 'No - that is -'

'I put it to you that the dustbin would have been cleaned when the occupants went away?'

'Yes, but I had to make sure. Look here, your Lordship ...'

'You further tell us,' pursued the Attorney-General, leaning both hands on the desk and settling his shoulders, 'that, when you went in to do this, all the blinds were drawn and you made very little noise?'

'Yes.'

'Are you accustomed to cleaning out the dustbin in darkness?'

'Look 'ere! I never thought of it -'

'Or being careful to make no noise to disturb anyone in an empty flat? I put it to you that - if you actually were in the flat at the time you say - it was for a purpose other than cleaning out the dustbin?'

'It was not.'

'Then you never went into the flat at all?'

'Yes, I did, if you'd let me get in a word edgeways; and what I'm telling you is that old Hume was there, and he stole that gun, so help me!'

'Let us see if there is anything else that may help us. There is, I believe, a hall-porter at D'Orsay Chambers?'

"Yes.’

'Will you accept my statement that this porter, when questioned by the police, testified he had not seen anyone resembling the deceased in D'Orsay Chambers on Friday or at any other time?'

'Maybe not. He came in by the back stairs -'

'Who came in by the back stairs?'

'Mr Hume. Anyway, that's how he went out, because I saw him go.'

'Did you offer any of this information to the police at the time?'

'No; how could I? I wasn't there. I left my job the next day-' ‘You left the next day?'

'I had been under notice for a month, yes, and that was Saturday. Besides, I didn't know it was important.'

'Apparently not. There would appear to be a curious notion among several persons as to what may or may not have been important then, but is very important now,' said Sir Walter dryly. 'When you say you saw Captain Answell in the car-park, was there any other person there who could substantiate the statement?'

'Nobody but Captain Answell himself. Why don't you ask him?'

Mr Justice Rankin intervened. 'The witness's remark, though out of order,' he said with some asperity, 'would seem pertinent. Is Captain Answell in court? Considering that a part of the evidence depends on information that he may be able to give ...'

H.M. surged up with a sort of ferocious affability. 'My lord, Captain Answell is goin' to appear as a witness for the defence. You needn't trouble to send for him. He's been under subpoena for a long, long time; and we'll see that he is here, though I'm not sure he'll be a very willin' witness for his own side.'

('What on earth is all this?' Evelyn asked in a whisper. 'You heard the fellow say himself he wasn't to be called as a witness. He must have known he'd be subpoenaed! What is happening?')

It was undoubtedly some trick on H.M.'s part: H.M. being determined to be the old maestro if it choked him. Beyond that nothing was known.

'I have no more questions to ask this witness,' said Sir Walter Storm abruptly.

'Call Joseph George Shanks,' said H.M.

While Grabell was going out of the box, and Joseph George Shanks was going into it, a consultation went on among the counsel for the Crown. The prosecution was in a strange and horned position. They must fight this through. That James Answell had been the victim of a mistake: that Hume had planned a trap for Reginald: even that Hume had stolen the pistol: was now being pushed towards a certainty. But these were details which did not, for everything that was said, in the least demonstrate the innocence of the prisoner. I remembered the words in the summing-up of a great jurist at anothercause celebre: 'Members of the jury, there is some circumstantial evidence which is as good and conclusive as the evidence of eye-witnesses ... If I might give you an illustration: supposing you have a room with one door, and a closed window, and a passage leading from that door. A man comes up the passage, goes through the door into the room, and finds another man standing with a pistol, and on the floor a dead man: the circumstantial evidence there would be almost conclusive, if not conclusive.'

We had just such a situation here. The prisoner had still been found in a locked room. The circumstantial evidence of the fact was still conclusive. No doubt had been cast on the central point, which was the only real point at issue. However damaged the case for the prosecution had become, Sir Walter Storm must finish this course.

I was recalled by H.M.'s voice.

'Your name's Joseph George Shanks, and you were odd-jobs man at number 12 Grosvenor Street?'

'Yessir,' said the witness. He was a little, broad man, so much like a dwarfed model of John Bull that his Sunday-best clothes sat oddly on him. Two polished knives of white collar stabbed his neck: they seemed to keep his voice light from the effort of keeping his neck high.

'How long did you work there?'

'Ah,' said the other, considering. 'Six years, more or less, I should think.'

'What were your duties, mostly?'

'Mostly keeping Mr Hume's archery things in order; any repairs to 'em; things like that.'

'Take a look at this arrow, which was used to kill the deceased' - the witness carefully wiped his hands on the seat of his Sunday trousers before accepting it - 'and tell the jury whether you've seen it before.'

'You-bet-I-have, sir. I fastened the feathers on. I remember this one. Dye's a mite dark for the kind I meant.'

'You often fastened the deceased's special kind of feathers to the arrows? And dyed the guide-feather? Mr Fleming told us that yesterday.'

'I did that, sir.'

'Now, supposin' I showed you a little piece of feather,' pursued H.M. with argumentative persuasiveness, 'and I asked you to tell me definitely whether it was the piece of feather missing from the middle, there ... could you do that?'

'If it was off this feather, I could, sir. Besides, it 'ud fit.'

'It would. But - just to take a different sort of question for a minute - you worked in that little workshop or shed in the back garden, didn't you?'

'I'm sure I didn't mean to press you, sir,' said the witness generously. 'What was that? Ah. Yes, I did.'

'Did he keep any cross-bows there?'

The stir of creaking that went through the room affected Shanks with a pleasant sense of importance. He relaxed, and leaned his elbows on the rail of the box. Evidently some stern eye was watching over his conduct from the spectators' gallery lover our heads; for he seemed to become sensible of the impropriety of his posture, and straightened up hastily.

'He did, sir. Three of them. Fine nasty-looking things.'

'Where'd he keep 'em?'

'In a big box, sir, like a big tool-box with a handle. Under the carpenter's bench.' The witness blinked with a painful effort at concentration.

'Tell me: did you go down to that shed on the morning of Sunday, January 5th, the day after the murder?'

'Yes, sir. I know it was Sunday, but even so, considering -'

'Did you notice anything different in the shed?'

'I did, sir. Somebody'd been at that tool-box, or what I call a tool-box. It's directly under the bench, you see, sir; and there's shavings and dust (falls on it, like a coating, you see, sir; and so if you loo'k at it you can tell right away, without thinking anything of it, if someone has been at it.'

'Did you look in the box?'

'Yes, sir, of course. And one of the cross-bows were not there.'

'What'd you do when you found this out?'

'Well, sir, of course I spoke to Miss Mary about it; but she said not to bother about such things, considering; and so I didn't.'

'Could you identify that cross bow, if you saw it again?' 'I could, sir.'

From his own hidden lair (which he kept jealously guarded) H.M. made a gesture to Lollypop. There was produced a weapon very similar in appearance to the cross-bow H.M. had used yesterday for the purposes of illustration. It was perhaps not quite so long, and had a broader head; steel studs were set in a line down the stock, and there was a little silver plate let into it.

'Is this, the cross-bow?' said; H.M.

'That's it; yes, sir. Here's even Mr Hume's name engraved on the little plate.'

'Look at the drum of the windlass there, where you'll see the teeth. Just tell me if there's somethin' caught in there - ah, you got itl Take it out. Hold it over so the jury can see. What is it?' j

'It's a bit of feather, sir, blue feather.'

Sir Walter' Storm was on 'his feet. He was not amused now; only grave, heavy and polite.

'My lord, are we to assume that this is being suggested as the mysterious piece of feather about which so many questions have been asked?’

'Only a part of it, milord,' grunted H.M. 'If it's examined, we'll see that there's still a little bit of it missin’. Not much. Only a piece about a quarter by half an inch square. But enough. That, we're suggestin', is the second piece. There are three of them. One's yet to come.' After the amenities, he turned back to the witness. 'Could you say definitely whether or not the piece you've got in your hand came off that broken guide-feather on the arrow?'

'I think I could, sir,' said the witness, and blinked.

'Just look at it, then, and tell us.'

While Shanks screwed up his eyes and hunched his shoulders over it, therewas a sound of shuffling or sliding in court. People were frying surreptitiously to rise and get a look. The prisoner, his face sharper now and less muddled, was also staring at it; but he seemed as puzzled as anyone else.

'Ah, this is right, sir,' declared Shanks. 'It come off here.'

'You're sure of that, now? I mean, one part of a broken feather might be deceptive, mightn't it? Even if it's a goose-feather, and even if it's got a special kind of dye on it, can you still identify it as comin' from that particular arrow?'

'This one I can; yes, indeed, yes. I put on this dye myself. I put it on with a brush, like paint. That's what I meant by saying it fitted. There's a slip in the paint here that makes a lighter mark in the blue like a question-mark. You can see the upper part of the question-mark, but the little dot and part of the tail I don't see ...'

"Would you swear,' said H.M. very gently, 'would you swear that the part of feather you see stickin' in that crossbow came from the feather on the arrow in front of you?'

'I would indeed, sir.'

'For the moment,' said H.M., 'that's all.'

The Attorney-General got up with a suavity in which there was some impatience. His eye evidently made Shanks nervous.

'The arrow you have there bears the date 1934, I think. Does that mean you prepared the arrow, or dyed it, in 1934?.

'Yes, sir. About the spring, it would be.'

'Have you ever seen it since, close enough to examine it? What I mean is this: After winning the annual wardmote in 1934, Mr Hume hung that arrow on the wall of his study?'

'Yes, sir.'

'During all that time since, have you ever been close enough to examine it since?'

'No, sir, not until that gentleman' - he nodded towards H.M. - 'asked me to look at it a month ago.'

'Oh I But from 1934 until then you had not actually looked at the arrow?'

'That's so, sir.'

'During that time you must, I presume, have handled and prepared a good many arrows for Mr Hume?' 'Yes, sir.'

'Hundreds, should you say?'

'Well, sir, I shouldn't quite like to go as far as that.' Just try to give an approximate number. Would it be fair to say that you had handled or prepared over a hundred arrows?'

‘Yes, sir, it might be that. They use an awful lot.'

'I see. They use "an awful lot". Do you tell us, then, that out of over a hundred arrows, over a space of years, you can infallibly identify one arrow on which you put dye in 1934? I remind you that you are upon oath.'

At this tremendous reminder, the witness cast an eye up at the public gallery as though for support. 'Well, sir, you see, it's my job -'

'Please answer the question. Out of over a hundred arrows, over a space of years, can you infallibly identify one on which you put dye in 1934?'

'I shouldn't like to say, sir, may I go to he - may I be - that is, to say everything should happen to me -'

'Very well,' said the Attorney-General, who had got his effect. 'Now -'

'But I'm sure of it just the same, mind I'

'Though you cannot swear to it. I see. Now,' continued the other, picking up some flimsy typewritten sheets, T have here a copy of the prisoner's statement to the police. (Please hand this across to the witness.) Will you take that statement, Mr Shanks, and read out the first paragraph for us?'

Shanks, startled, took the paper with an automatic gesture. First he blinked at it in the same doubtful way he had shown before. Then he began to fumble in his pockets, without apparent result while the delay he was giving the court evidently preyed worse and worse on his mind, until such a gigantic pause upset him completely.

'I can't seem to find my specs, sir. I'm afraid that without my specs -'

'Do I understand,' said the other, who had rightly interpreted that blinking of the eyes, 'that without your spectacles you cannot read the statement?'

'It's not exactly to say I can't, sir; but -

'Yet you can identify an arrow on which you put dye in 1934?' asked Sir Walter Storm - and sat down.

This time H.M. did roar up for re-examination, girded for war. But his questions were short.

'How many times did Avory Hume win the annual competitions?'

'Three times, sir.'

'The arrow was a special prize on those occasions, wasn't it?' 'Yes, sir.'

'So it wasn't just "one out of over a hundred", was it? It was a special thing, a keepsake?' 'Yes, sir.'

'Did he show you the arrow, and call your attention to it, after he'd won the first-shot competition?' 'Yes, sir.'

'Ha,' said H.M., lifting his robe in order to hitch up his trousers. 'That will do. No, not that way out, son; that's the judge's bench; the warder'Il show you.' He waited until Shanks had been taken away, and then he got up again.

'Call Reginald Answell,' said H.M.

XVII

'At the Opening of the Window -'

REGINALD ANSWELL was not exactly under escort: when the warder took charge of him, and led him to the box, he seemed a free man. But just behind him I saw a familiar figure whose name eluded me until I remembered Sergeant-Major Carstairs, who guards the entrance to H.M.'s lair at Whitehall. On the sergeant-major's face was the sinister look of a benevolent captor.

Again you could hear the rustle of the wind in trees of scandal; every eye immediately tried to find Mary Hume as well, but she was not in court. Reginald's long and bony face was a little pale, but very determined. I remember thinking then that he looked a tricky customer, and had better be handled as such - whatever H.M. had in mind. But this may have been due to a surge of dislike caused by the slight (manufactured) wave in his dark-yellow hair, or the cool gaze of self-possession oh his features: the latter more than the former. He took the oath in a clear, pleasant voice.

H.M. seemed to draw a deep breath. It was to be wondered, in view of the wiles that lay beneath the surface, whether H.M. would find himself cross-examining his own witness.

'Your name is Reginald Wentworth Answell; you have no residence, but when you're in London you live at D'Orsay Chambers, Duke Street?'

'Yes.'

‘I want you to understand,' said H.M., folding his arms, 'that you're not obliged to answer any questions which will incriminate you - about any activities.' He paused. 'This question, however, won't incriminate you. When the police talked to you about your general movements on the evenin' of January 4th, did you tell 'em the whole truth?'

'The whole truth, no.'

'Are you ready to tell the truth now, under oath?'

'I am,' said Reginald with great apparent sincerity. His eyes dickered; there is no other way to describe it.

'Were you in London early in the evenin' on January 4th?'

'I was. I drove from Rochester, and arrived at D'Orsay Chambers a few minutes past six o'clock.'

It was possible that H.M. stiffened a little, and an odd air of tensity began to grow again. H.M. tilted his head on one side.

'So-o? I understood it was ten minutes past six o'clock. Wasn't it?'

'I am sorry. It was a little earlier than that. I distinctly remember the clock in the dashboard of my car.' 'Had you intended to see the deceased that night?' 'Yes. Socially.'

'When you got to D'Orsay Chambers, did you see the witness Horace Grabell?' 'I did.'

'Did he tell you about the deceased's visit to your flat on Friday?' 'He did.’

'Did he tell you the deceased had taken your pistol, and gone away with it?' 'He did.'

'And what did you do then?'

'I could not understand it, but I did not like it. So I thought I had better not see Mr Hume after all. I went away. I - drove round a bit, and - and before long I left town. I - did not return until later.'

H.M. sat down rather quickly. There had been a curious intonation in that 'before long'; H.M. had seemed to catch it, for we all did. And Sir Walter Storm was very quick to rise.

'You tell us, Captain Answell,' began the Attorney-General, 'that you "drove round a bit", and "before long" you left town. How long?'

'Half an hour or a little more, perhaps.' 'Half an hour? As long as that?' 'Yes. I wanted to think.' 'Where did you drive?' Silence.

'Where did you drive, Captain Answell? I must repeat my question.'

'I drove to Mr Hume's house in Grosvenor Street,' answered the witness.

For a second the implications of this did not penetrate into our minds. Even the Attorney-General, whatever his thoughts might have been, hesitated before he went on. The witness's air of pale candour was that of the 'engaging' Reginald Answell I had seen yesterday. -

'You drove to Mr Hume's house, you say?'

'Yes. I hoped you would not ask that.' He looked briefly towards the prisoner, who was staring at him. 'I told them I could do him no good. I understood I was not to be called as a witness.'

'You understand that it is your business to tell the truth? Very well. Why did you go to Mr Hume's house?'

'I don't know exactly. I thought it was a queer show, a very queer show. I did not intend to go in; I only intended to cruise past, wondering what was - was up.'

'At what time did you arrive at the house?' demanded the Attorney-General. Even Sir Walter Storm could not keep his voice quite level, in wondering himself what was up.

'At ten minutes past six.'

The judge looked up quickly. 'One moment, Sir Walter ...' He turned his little eyes on the witness. 'If you arrived there at ten minutes past six, that must have been at the same time as the prisoner?'

'Yes, my lord. As a matter of fact, I saw him go in.'

There are, I suppose, no degrees of a man's being motionless. Yet I had never seen H.M. convey such a mere impression of absolute stillness as he did then. He was sitting with a pencil in his hand, enormous under his black gown: and he did not even seem to breathe. In the dock, James Answell's chair suddenly scraped. The prisoner made a curious, wild gesture, like a boy beginning to put up his hand in a class-room, and then he checked himself.

'What did you do then?' asked the Attorney-General.

'I did not know what to do. I wondered what was happening, and why Jim was there. He had not spoken about coming here when I saw him last at Frawnend. I wondered if it concerned me, as having been a suitor of Miss Hume's. For what I did,' said the witness, drawing himself up, 'I do not apologize. Any human being would have done the same. I knew that there was an open passage leading down between Mr Hume's house and the house next door -'

Sir Walter Storm (be it recorded) seemed forced to clear his throat. He was not now like a man either examining or cross-examining, but one trying to get at the truth.

'Had you ever been to the house before, Captain Answell?'

'Yes, several times, although I had never met Mr Hume. I had been there with Miss Hume. Mr Hume did not approve of our acquaintanceship.'

'Go on, please.'

‘I -I -'

'You hear what counsel tells you,' said the judge, looking at him steadily. 'Continue your story.'

'I had heard a great deal of Mr Hume's "study" from Miss Hume. I knew that if he entertained Jim anywhere, it would be there. I walked down the passage beside the house - with no motive in mind, I swear, except to get near them. Some way down the passage, on the right-hand side, I found a short flight of steps leading up to a glass-panelled door with a lace curtain over it. The door looks into the little passage outside Mr Hume's study. As I looked through the curtain, I saw the butler - who was taking Jim there - knock on the study door.'

The change in the air was as though a draught had begun to blow and scatter papers on counsel's table. 'What did you do then?' 'I - waited.' 'Waited?'

'Outside the door. I did not know quite what to do.' 'How long did you wait?'

'From about ten or twelve minutes past six until a little later than half-past six, when they broke in.'

'And you,' demanded Sir Walter, pointing, 'you, like others, have made no mention of this to anyone until this moment?'

'No. Do you think I wanted them to hang my cousin?'

'That is not a proper reply,' snapped the judge.

'I beg your Lordship's pardon. I - put it that I was afraid of the interpretation which would be placed on it.'

Sir Walter lowered his head a moment. 'What did you see while you were outside the glass-panelled door?'

'I saw Dyer come out about fifteen minutes past six. I saw Miss Jordan come down about half-past six, and knock at the door. I saw Dyer return then, and heard her call out to Dyer that they were fighting. And the rest of -'

'One moment. Between six-fifteen, when Dyer left the study, and six-thirty, when Miss Jordan came downstairs, did you see anyone approach the study door?'

‘I did not.'

'You had a good view of it?'

'Yes, the little passage has no light; but there was a light in the main hall.'

'From where you were standing outside that door -hand the witness up a plan - could you see the windows of the room?'

'Yes. They were immediately to my left, as you can see.'

'Did anyone approach those windows at any time?' 'No.'

'Could anyone have approached those windows without your knowledge?'

'No. I am sorry. I suppose I incur penalties for not telling this -'

I make a pause here, for there was a similar kind of blankness in the room. We have heard much of last-minute witnesses for the defence. This one, though called for the defence, was a last-minute witness for the prosecution who put the rope firmly round the prisoner's neck. James Answell's face was a colour it had not been at any time during the trial; and he was staring at his cousin in a vague and puzzled way.

But there was another kind of pause or change as well - that is, if it did not exist only in my own prejudiced mind. Up to this time, sallow-faced and stiff-lipped Reginald , had seemed (in a quiet way) inspired. He compelled belief. He brought to this case what it had heretofore lacked: an eyewitness to support circumstantial evidence. It may have been a certain turn in his last sentence. 'I suppose I shall incur penalties for not telling this -' which gave a slightly different glimpse. It did not last long. But it was as though a cog had failed to mesh, or a shutter had been drawn aside, or the same glutinous quality of hypocrisy had appeared in his speech which had appeared once before. The man was lying: I felt convinced of that. More, you could see he had gone into the box with the deliberate intention of lying in just that way. He had made an obvious attempt to draw Sir Walter Storm's attack –

But surely H.M. knew that? H.M. must have been prepared for it? At the moment H.M. was sitting in the same quiet way, his fists at his temples. And the point was its effect, not on H.M., but on the jury.

'I have no more questions,' said Sir Walter Storm. He seemed puzzled.

H.M. roused himself to a re-examination which was really a cross-examination of his own witness. And when H.M. did get up, he used words that are not common at the Old Bailey, and have not been since the days of Serjeant Arabin. But there was not only violence in it; there was a sort of towering satisfaction which made him seem about a foot taller.

‘I’ll give you just two seconds’ said H.M., 'to admit that you had an attack of delirium tremens, and that everything you said in that examination was a lie.'

'You will retract that, Sir Henry,' said the judge.-'You are entitled to question the witness on any matters that have arisen out of Sir Walter's cross-examination; but you will express yourself in a proper manner.'

'If yrludship pleases,' said H.M. 'It'll be understood why I'm takin' this line when I do question ... Captain " Answell, do you want to retract any statement you've made?'

'No. Why should I?'

'All right,' said H.M. with massive unconcern. 'You saw all this through the glass panel of the door, did you?' 'Yes.'

'Was the door open ?' 'No. I didn't go inside.'

'I see. Aside from the night of January 4th, when was the last time you visited that house?'

'Nearly a year ago, it may have been.'

'Uh-huh. I thought so. But didn't you hear Dyer testify yesterday that the door with the glass panel, the old door, had been removed six months ago; and they substituted an ordinary solid wooden door? If you got any doubts on the matter, look up the official surveyor's report - it's one of the exhibits here - and see what he has to say about it. What do you have to say about it?'

The witness's voice seemed to come out of a gulf. 'The - the door may have been open -'

'That's all,' said H.M. curtly. 'At the conclusion of our evidence, my lord, I'm goin' to suggest that somethin' is done about this.'

To say that the blow was a staggerer would be to put the matter mildly. A witness had come out of the void to testify to James Answell's certain guilt, and, just eight seconds later, he was caught in flat perjury. But that was not the most important point. It was as though a chemical change had affected the sympathies of the jury. For the first time I saw some of them honestly looking at the prisoner, and that is the beginning of all sympathy. The word 'frame-up' was in the air as palpably as though it had been spoken. If H.M. had expected Reginald to play a trick like that, it could have been no more effective. And the sympathy was mounting. If H.M. had expected ... ?

'Call your next witness. Sir Henry,' said the judge mildly.

'My lord - if the Attorney-General's got no objection -I'd like to ask for one of the Crown's witnesses to be recalled. It's merely for the purpose of identifyin' some articles I'd like to put in in evidence; and it could be done best by a member of the household whose knowledge of the articles has been established.'

'I have no objection, my lord,' said Sir Walter Storm, who was surreptitiously mopping his forehead with a handkerchief.

'Very well. Is the witness in court?'

'Yes, my lord. I'd like to have Herbert William Dyer recalled.'

We had not time to reflect over each new twist of this infernal business when Dyer entered the box. But the prisoner was sitting up, and his eyes were shining. The grave Dyer, as neat as yesterday if in slightly less sombre clothes, bent his grizzled forehead attentively. By this time Lollypop was busy arranging near the table a series of exhibits mysteriously swathed in brown paper. H.M.'s first move was to display a brown tweed suit with plus-fours - a golf-suit. Evelyn and I looked at each other.

'Ever see this suit before?' questioned H.M. 'Hand it up to him.'

'Yes, sir,' said Dyer, after a pause. 'It is a golf-suit belonging to Dr Spencer Hume.'

'Dr Hume not bein' within call, I presume you can identify it? So. Is that the suit you were lookin' for on the night of the murder?'

‘It is.'

'Now just feel in the right-hand coat pocket. What do you find there?'

'An ink-pad and two rubber stamps,' said Dyer, producing them.

'Is that the ink-pad you were lookin' for on the night of the murder?' 'It is.'

'Good. We got some other stuff here,' continued H.M. off-handedly: 'laundry, and a pair of Turkish slippers, and the like; but that'd be out of your province. We can get it properly identified by Miss Jordan. But tell me if you can identify this?'

This time there was produced a large oblong suitcase of black leather, having the initials stamped in gold on the flap beside the handle.

'Yes, sir,' replied Dyer, stepping back a little. 'It is undoubtedly Dr Hume's. I believe it is the one Miss Jordan packed for Dr Hume on the night of the - circumstance. Both Miss Jordan and I forgot all about it; or at least -she having been very ill afterwards; and, when she asked me what had happened to it, I could not remember. I have not seen it since.'

'Yes. But here's just one more thing that you're the one to identify. Look at this cut-glass decanter, stopper and all. You'll see it's full of whisky except for about two drinks poured out. Ever see it before?'

For a moment I thought H.M. had got hold of one of the prosecution's own exhibits. The decanter he produced was indistinguishable from the one the Crown had put in evidence. Evidently Dyer thought so too.

'It looks -' said the witness. 'It looks like the decanter which Mr Hume kept on the sideboard in the study. Like - that other -'

'It does. It was meant to. Between those two, could you swear which was which?' 'I'm afraid not, sir.'

'Take one in each hand. Can you swear that my decanter, in your right hand, is not the real one you bought from Hartley's of Regent Street; and that the first exhibit, in your left hand, ain't a copy in inferior glass?'

'I do not know, sir.'

'No more questions.'

Three witnesses then passed in rapid succession, being not more than five minutes in the box among all of them. Mr Reardon Hartley, of the firm of Hartley and Son, Regent Street, testified that what H.M. called 'my’ decanter was the original one supplied by him to Mr Hume; the prosecutor's exhibit was a copy which Avory Hume had bought on Friday afternoon, January 3rd. Mr Dennis Moreton, analytical chemist, testified to having examined the whisky in 'my' decanter, and to having discovered in. it one hundred and twenty grains of brudine, a derivative of scopolamine. Dr Ash ton Parker, Professor of Applied Criminology at the University of Manchester, gave the real evidence of the three.

‘I examined the cross-bow there, which I was told belonged to Avory Hume. In the groove down the centre of the cross-bow, evidently used for the reception of a missile - here,' said Dr Parker, indicating, 'the microscope showed flakes of what I believed to be dry paint. I judged that these flakes had been rubbed off owing to the sudden friction when some wooden missile was fired from the bow. Under analysis, the paint was ascertained to be a substance known as "X-varnish", used exclusively by Messrs Hardigan, who sold to the deceased the arrow in question. I present an affidavit to that effect.

'The arrow here was - ah - kindly lent to me by Detective-Inspector Mottram. Here the microscope showed along the shaft of the arrow signs that flakes of paint had been chipped in an irregular line from it.

'In the teeth of the windlass on the cross-bow I found the piece of blue feather which you see there now. This I compared to the broken feather on the end of the arrow. The two pieces made up a complete feather, except for an irregular bit which was missing. I have here photomicrographs of the two pieces, enlarged ten times. The joinings in the fibre of the feather can be seen clearly, and leave no doubt in my own mind that they came from the same feather.'

'In your opinion, had the arrow been fired from this cross-bow?'

'In my opinion, it unquestionably had.'

This was hard hitting. Under cross-examination, Dr Parker acknowledged the scientific possibility of an error; it was as far as he would go.

'And I acknowledge, my lord,' said H.M. in reply to a question from the bench, 'that so far we've not shown where this cross-bow or the other articles came from, or what happened to the missin' piece of feather. We'll remedy that now. Call William Cochrane.'

('Who on earth is that?' whispered Evelyn. H.M. had said once before that you would no more cause a commotion in Balmy Rankin's court than you would cause one on a chess-board; but the curiosity of the court had now reached to as flaming a pitch as it could go. It was stimulated still more by the quietly dressed elderly man who took the oath.)

'Your full name?'

'William Rath Cochrane.'

'What's your profession, Mr Cochrane?'

'I am the manager of the Left-Luggage Department at Paddington Station - the Paddington terminus of the Great Western Railway.'

'I think we all know the process,' rumbled H.M., 'but I'll just go over it here. If you want to leave a bag or a parcel or the like for a few hours, you hand it across a counter, and you get back a written slip that allows you to claim the parcel again?'

'That is right.'

'Can you tell the date and the time of day when the parcel was handed in?'

'Oh, yes. It is on the ticket.'

'Now, suppose,' said H.M. argumentatively, 'a parcel is handed in, and nobody comes to claim it. What happens to the parcel?'

'It depends on how long it has been left there. If it seems to have been left there indefinitely, it is transferred to a storage-room reserved for that purpose. If it is not claimed at the end of two months, it may be sold and the proceeds devoted to railway charities; but we make every effort to find the proper owner.'

'Who is in charge of this department?'

'I am. That is to say, it is under my direction.'

'On February 3rd, last, did anybody come to your office and enquire about a suitcase which had been left there at a certain definite time on a certain definite date?'

'Yes. You did,' replied the witness with a shadow of a smile.

'Was there anyone else present?'

'Yes, two others whom I now know to be Dr Parker and Mr Shanks.'

'A week after we had been there, did another person - another person in this case - also call and enquire about it?'

'Yes; a man who gave the name of -'

'Never mind the name,' said H.M. hastily. 'That's not our business. But about the first people who asked for it. Did you open the suitcase in their presence?'

'Yes, and I was convinced that the suitcase belonged to one of them,' said Cochrane, looking hard at H.M. 'The contents of the suitcase, not usual contents, were described before the suitcase was opened.'

H.M. indicated the big black-leather suitcase inscribed with Spencer Hume's initials. 'Will you look at that and tell us whether it's the suitcase?'

'It is.'

'I'd also like you to identify some other articles that were in the suitcase at the time. Hand them up as I indicate. That?' It was the golf-suit. 'Yes. These?' An -assortment of wearing apparel, including a pair of gaudy red-leather slippers. 'This?' Up went the decanter H.M. had put in in evidence, the decanter containing drugged whisky from which two drinks were gone. 'This?'

'This was a syphon of soda-water with its contents depleted perhaps two, inches. Next came a pair of thin gloves in whose lining the name Avory Hume had been written in indelible ink. Next came a small screw-driver. Next, in order, two drinking-glasses and a small bottle of mint extract.

'Finally, was this cross-bow in the suitcase?' demanded H.M.

'It was. It just fitted in comfortably.' 'Was this piece of feather caught in the teeth of the windlass?'

'Yes, my attention was called to it. It is the same one.'

'Uh-huh. At a certain time of night on Saturday, January 4th, then, a certain person came there and left the suitcase?'

‘Yes.'

'Could that person be identified, if necessary?' 'Yes, one of my attendants thinks he remembers, because -' 'Thank you; that's all.'

For a brief space of time Sir Walter Storm hesitated, risen just half-way to his feet.

'No question,' said the Attorney-General.

The whispering of released breath was audible. Mr Justice Rankin, whose wrist seemed tireless, continued steadily to write. Then he made a careful full-stop, and looked up. H.M. was glaring round the court-room.

'My lord, I've got one last witness. That's for the purpose of demonstratin' an alternative theory as to how a murderer got in and out of a locked room.'

('Oh, Lord, here we go I' whispered Evelyn.) 'This witness,' continued H.M., rubbing his forehead reflectively, 'has been right here in court since the beginnin' of the trial. The only trouble is, it can't talk. Therefore I'm bound to do a bit of explaining. If there's any objection to this, I can always do it in my closin' speech. But since a couple o' words of explanation will' tend to produce another actual bit of evidence - another exhibit for the defence - I'd like the court's indulgence if I say that our evidence can't be completed without it.'

'We have no objection to my learned friend's proposal, my lord.'

The judge nodded. H.M. remained silent for what seemed a very long time.

'I see Inspector Mottram is at the solicitors' table,' said H.M., while Mottram's heavy face turned round abruptly. 'I'll just ask him to oblige me by pullin' out one of the Crown's own pieces of evidence. We've had shown here the steel shutters on the windows of the study, and the big oak door as well. Let's have the door out again ...

'The inspector - and all policemen here too - will have heard of a little dingus called The Judas Window. It's supposed to be confined exclusively to gaols. The "Judas window" is in the doors of cells. It's the little square opening, with a panel over it, through which coppers in general can look in and inspect the prisoner without being seen themselves. And it has a good deal of application to the case.'

'I do not understand you, Sir Henry,' said the judge sharply. 'There is no "Judas window", as you call it, in the door there before us.'

'Oh, yes there is,' said H.M....

'Me lord,' he went on, 'there's a Judas window in nearly every door, if you just come to think of it. I mean that every door has got a knob. This door has. And, as I've pointed out to several people, what a whackin' big knob it is’

'Suppose you took the knob off that door; what'd you find? You'd find a steel spindle, square in shape, runnin' through a square hole - like a Judas window. At each end of this, a knob is attached by means of a little screw through a hole in each end of the spindle. If you took everything out, you'd End in the door an opening - in this case, as we'll see, an opening that must be nearly half an inch square. If you don't realize just how big a space half an inch can be, or how much you can see when you look through it, we'll try to indicate it in just a minute. That's why I objected to the word "sealed".

'Now, suppose you're goin' to prepare this simple little mechanism in advance. From the outside of the door, you unscrew the knob from the spindle. You notice that there's a very small screw-driver contained in the suitcase that was left at Paddington Station; so I'll just ask the Inspector to do it for us now. Ah! That gives you, in the end of the spindle, a little hole where the screw had been. Through this hole you tie tightly a very heavy length of black thread, with a good length of slack. Then you take your finger and push the spindle through its hole to the other side of the door, the inner side of the door. There's now only one knob - the one inside the door - fastened to the spindle; on the other end is attached your length of thread, and you're paying out the slack. Whenever you want the spindle and knob back up again, you simply pull the thread and up it comes. The weight of the knob inside the door is sufficient to make it hang down dead straight, so you've got no difficulty in gettin' the square spindle back in the square hole; it comes up in a straight line and slides in as soon as the edge of the spindle crosses the edge of the Judas window. As soon as it's back in again, you jerk off your thread; you put the outside knob of the door back on the spindle again; you screw it up again ... It's heart-breakin'ly simple, but the door is now apparently sealed.

'Again suppose you'd prepared the mechanism in advance, with the thread already twined. Somebody is in that room with the door bolted. You start to work your mechanism. The feller inside don't notice anything until he suddenly sees the knob and spindle beginnin' to be lowered a little way into the room. You want him to see it. In fact, you begin to talk to him then through the door. He wonders what the - he wonders what is goin' on. He walks towards the door. He bends down, as anyone will when wantin' to look close at a knob. As he bends forward - a target only three feet away from your eye, where you can't miss -'

'My lord,' cried Sir Walter Storm, 'we are willing to grant all liberties, but we must protest against this argument in -'

'- with your arrow balanced in the opening,' said H.M., 'you fire through the Judas window.'

There was a sort of thunderous pause, while Inspector Mottram stood with the screw-driver in his hand.

'My lord, I've had to say it,' said H.M. apologetically, 'in order to make clear what I'm goin' to show you. Now, that door has been in the possession of the police ever since the night of the murder. Nobody could 'a' tampered with it; it's just as it was ... Inspector, have you unscrewed one knob from that spindle? So. Will you sort of tell my lord and the jury what there seems to be tied to the hole in the spindle?'

'Please speak up,' said Mr Justice Rankin. 'I cannot see from here!'

Inspector Mottram's voice rose, a ghostly kind of effect, in the silence. I am not likely to forget him standing there under the glow of the yellow light, with the oak panelling, and the yellow furniture, and the tiers of people who were now frankly standing up. Even the white wigs and black gowns of counsel had reared up furtively to obscure our view. At the core of all this, as though in a spotlight under the white dome of the Old Bailey, Inspector Mottram stood looking from the screw-driver to the spindle.

'My lord,' he said, 'there appears to be a piece of black thread tied to the hole in the spindle, and then wound a few lengths round -'

The judge made a note in his careful handwriting.

'I see. Proceed, Sir Henry.'

'And next, Inspector,' pursued H.M., 'just push the spindle through with your finger - use the point of the screw-driver if it's more convenient - and take the whole thing out. Ah, that's got it We want to see the Judas window, and ... ah, you've found somethin', haven't you? There's somethin' lodged in the opening between the spindle and the Judas window, stuck there? Quick, what is it?'

Inspector Mottram straightened up from inspecting something, in the palm of his hand.

'It would appear,' he said carefully, 'to be a small piece of blue-coloured feather, about a quarter of an inch, triangular in shape, evidently torn off something -'

Every board in the hardwood floor, every bench, every chair seemed to have its own separate creaking. At my side Evelyn suddenly sat down again, expelling her breath.

'And that, my lord,' said H.M. quite mildly, 'together with the identification of the last piece of feather, will conclude the evidence for the defence. Bah!'

XVIII

'The Verdict of You All

4.15 p.m.-4.32 p.m. From the Closing Speech for the Defence, by Sir Henry Merrivale

'... and so, in what I've just spoken to you about, I've tried to outline what we'll call the outlying phases of this case. You have been told, and I think you believe, that this man was the victim of a deliberate frame-up. You have heard now that, far from taking a pistol to that house, he was goin' to see the one man in the world he wanted most to please. You have heard the details that twisted up everything he said to an extent that will make me, for one, walk warily henceforward. That frame-up has been concealed and elaborated by several people -notably one you heard speak right up before you, and in his own malice try to send this man to the rope. That's a pretty thought to take with you when you consider your verdict.

'But you have nothing to do with pity or sympathy. Your business is justice, plain justice, and that's all I'm asking for. Therefore I'm goin' to submit that the whole point of this case depends on two things: a piece of feather and a cross-bow.

'The Crown ask you to believe that this man - with no motive - suddenly grabbed an arrow down from the wall and stabbed Avory Hume. It's a simple case, and makes a simple issue. Either he did do that, or he didn't. If he did do that, he's guilty. If he unquestionably did not do it, he's unquestionably innocent.

'Take first the feather. When Dyer left the prisoner in that study, alone with Avory Hume, the feather was on the arrow - all of it - intact. That's a simple fact which hasn't been disputed by anyone, and the Attorney-General will acknowledge it to you. When the door was unbolted, and Dyer and Mr Fleming went into that room, half that feather was gone from the arrow. They searched the room immediately, and the feather was not there: that's also a simple fact. Inspector Mottram searched the room, and the feather was not there, and that's a simple fact too. All this time, you remember, the accused had not left the study.

'Where was the feather? The only suggestion the police can make is that it was unconsciously carried away in the prisoner's clothes. Now, I submit to you simply that this couldn't possibly be true. There are two reasons. First of all, you saw it demonstrated here that two people could not possibly tear that feather - in a struggle - in the way it was torn; therefore there wasn't any struggle, and what becomes of the prosecution's case on that score alone? Second, and even more important, we know where the feather actually was.

'You've heard it testified by the manager of the Left-Luggage Department at Paddington that a certain person - not the prisoner - left a suitcase at the station early in the evening of January 4th. (In any case, the prisoner was not in a position to go on any errands, having been under the eye of the police from the time the murder was discovered until the followin' morning.) That suitcase contained the cross-bow you've seen; and stuck into the teeth of the windlass was a big part of the missing piece of feather.

'We can't doubt, I think, that this was a part of the feather on the arrow. You've seen micro-photographs in which you can compare every detail, you've heard it identified by the man who attached it to the arrow: in short - as in other things in this case - you've been able to see and decide for yourselves. Well, how did that feather get there? How does this fact square with the prosecution's theory that the prisoner dragged down the arrow and used it as a dagger? That's the picture, I submit, you've got to keep in your minds. If he stabbed the deceased, there are a lot of things I'll submit with my hand on my heart that he didn't do it. He didn't tear the feather apart with a power beyond him. He didn't shove one end of it into the teeth of a crossbow. He assuredly didn't put the whole apparatus into Spencer Hume's suitcase - which, you recall, was not even packed or brought downstairs until six-thirty.

'Just a word about that suitcase. I'll suggest to you that in itself it destroys any reasonable doubt of this man's innocence. I'm not suggestin' that Miss Jordan packed a week-end cross-bow among the collar-studs and the slippers. No; I mean that it was standin' downstairs in the hall, and someone used it. But how does this apply to the prisoner? The suitcase was packed and brought downstairs at six-thirty. From that time until the time the three witnesses entered the study, it was always under somebody's eye. Did the prisoner leave the study at any time? He did not. You've heard that too frequently -especially from the prosecution. Did he approach the suitcase, to put in a cross-bow or a decanter or anything else (which, I suggest, were already somewhere else waiting to be put in)? Did he, in short, have anything to do with the suitcase? He did not have an opportunity before the crime was discovered, and he most certainly didn't have an opportunity afterwards.

'Why, burn me — HURRUM — members of the jury, I'll call your attention to another point. Part of the missin' feather is in a suitcase which, we can decide, James Answell's ghost didn't take to Paddington Station. But there's another part of that feather. You know where it was, and is. You saw it there. It was in what, for the sake of convenience, I've called the Judas window. Still keepin' in mind the prosecution's belief that Answell used the arrow as a dagger, how does this square with the presence of the feather in the Judas window?

'It doesn't. There's no doubt the feather is there. There's no doubt it got there at the time of the murder. Inspector Mottram, as you've heard, took away that door on the night of the murder, and has kept it at the police-station ever since. From the time the murder was discovered to the time Inspector Mottram took the door away, there was always somebody in the study; so the feather couldn't have landed there at any time except the time of the murder. Only a minute ago you saw Professor Parker recalled to the witness-box; you heard him identify this feather as undoubtedly the last missin' piece; and he told you why he thought so. It is the feather, then, and it was there. Well, how does my learned friend say it got there? Now, I'm not here to toss dull ridicule at a group of men like Counsel for the Crown, who've conducted their case with scrupulous fairness towards the accused, and given the defence all the latitude we could hope for. But what can I say? Just fix your minds on the stupefyin' suggestion that James Answell wildly arose and killed Avory Hume, and at the same time a bit of feather off that arrow managed to get into that hole that supports the knob-spindle in the door. Can you think of any reason for it, however ingenious, that doesn't become mere roar-in' comedy?

'You've already heard reasons why the prisoner could not conceivably have come near the cross-bow or the suitcase; in fact, it's never been suggested that he has. The same, in general, applies to the feather in the door and the little mechanism of thread on the spindle. That little mechanism. I think you'll agree, was prepared beforehand. Answell had never been in the house before in his life. That little mechanism was meant to work only from outside, to let the knob down from the other end. Answell was inside the room, with the door bolted. As I say, merely to ridicule is useless; but I'm convinced that the more you think of it the more out of question it will become, or you're a greater group of fat-hea - URR -or you're not the intelligent English jury I know you are.

'Still, the feather was there. It got there somehow; and it's not exactly a common place to find one. I'll venture to suggest that you could go home to-night and take the knobs out of all the doors in your own house: and all down the street through your neighbours' houses: and still you wouldn't End a feather in the Judas window. I'll further venture to suggest that there's only one set of circumstances in which you could find both the feather and the thread-mechanism in the Judas window. It's got nothing to do with an arrow snatched down from the wall to stab, except in so far as a drugged man inside could be used as a scapegoat. That set of circumstances is the one I hinted at a while ago: someone who stood outside that bolted door, and fired an arrow into Avory Hume's heart when the murderer was almost close enough to touch him with it.

'With your indulgence, then, I'm goin' to outline to you the way in which we believe the crime was really committed; and I'll try to show you how the facts that have been produced support it and bear against the prosecution's case.

'But, before I do, there's one thing I feel I must face. You can't disregard a beetle on the back of your neck or an unexplained statement in a court of law. Members of the jury, yesterday afternoon you heard the prisoner tell a great big thundering lie: the only lie he has told in this room: a lie that he was guilty. Mebbe he didn't say it under oath; mebbe you were inclined then to believe it all the more because he didn't. But you know now why it was told. Mebbe he didn't care then whether or not he convicted himself; others, you observe, have been tryin' hard enough to do it for him. But you'll judge whether you think the worse or the better of him for saying what he did. And the time has come now when I can stand up and accuse my own client of falsehood. For he said he stabbed Avory Hume with an arrow, whose feather broke off in the struggle. Unless you believe that statement, you cannot and you dare not return a verdict of guilty; and that statement you cannot and you dare not believe; and I will tell you why.

'Members of the jury, the way in which we believe this crime was really committed

4.32 p.m.-4.55 pjn.

From the Closing Speech for the Crown, by Sir Walter Storm

'... thus my learned friend need have no fear. I shall not ask you to wait until my lord addresses you before you learn this: If you are dissatisfied with the story of the prosecution, the prosecution have thereby failed to make out their case and it is your duty to return a verdict of not guilty. I do not think that any of you, having heard my opening speech in this case, could labour under any misapprehension as to that point. I put it before you, then, that the burden of the proof was on the prosecution, as I trust I shall always do when it becomes my duty to lay such a case before a jury.

'But it is likewise my duty to stress against the prisoner such of the material facts as constitute evidence. Facts: as I said in my opening speech. Facts: as I have said all along. Therefore I must ask you, dispassionately: how many of the material facts in this case have been altered or disproved?

'My learned friend has attempted well and eloquently to explain; but I must submit to you that he cannot explain away.

'What remains? It is a fact that the prisoner was found with a loaded pistol in his pocket. He denies that he took this pistol to the house; and what is there to corroborate his denial? There is the testimony of the witness Grabell. You have heard that witness in the box: you have heard his replies to my questions: you have observed his demeanour. He, and he alone, claims to have seen the deceased at D'Orsay Chambers on Friday morning. How did a stranger in those flats escape the attention of every other attendant? How is the deceased presumed to have gained access to the prisoner's flat? How, in fact, did Grabell come conveniently to be cleaning out a dustbin in darkness, when he himself acknowledges that the dustbin would have been cleaned out a fortnight before? Grabell - whose notion of honour and truthfulness you have been able to judge - is the sole witness to this. Is there any other witness who can give even second-hand corroboration to the alleged theft of the pistol by Avory Hume? There is Reginald Answell. But here I confess I am on difficult ground. Members of the jury, I must tell you frankly that, when he told you that story from which you were supposed to infer the prisoner's guilt, I did not believe him. He was (in fact) a witness for the prosecution; and I did not believe him. You will have been able to decide whether or not my learned friend disposed of his testimony in a court where - whether for the prosecution or for the defence - we will not avail ourselves of lies. But it is Reginald Answell, this same witness, who testifies to his conversation with Grabell about the pistol. If we believe that a man has borne false witness in the last part of his testimony, shall we therefore believe that he has borne true witness in the first part of it?’

'If the prisoner did in fact take that pistol to Mr Hume's house, there is premeditation. And I suggest to you that he did.’

'What other facts remain? There are the prisoner's finger-prints on the arrow. Such things are stubborn. They are marks. They remain. They show beyond doubt that the prisoner's hand was round the arrow - whether or not, as my learned friend has suggested, the finger-prints were placed on the arrow by others while the prisoner was unconscious.

'And what is the evidence as to this alleged unconsciousness, this alleged drugging, on which all deductions from the finger-prints must rest? If you refuse to believe that the prisoner was drugged, then, obviously, I must submit to you that the finger-prints are the most vital evidence in the case. The evidence, then? A decanter similar to the first, filled with drugged whisky, is produced from a suitcase discovered in the Left-Luggage Department at Paddington Station, along with a syphon from which some soda-water is drawn. Doubtless there are many decanters resembling it in London; but I put it before you that what I should like to see is some evidence that the accused had drunk any drugged whisky - or any whisky at all. On the contrary, you have heard from the divisional police surgeon that (in his opinion) the prisoner had taken no drug at all. In all fairness I must tell you that the witness who was to have testified to this as well, Dr Spencer Hume, is missing: and is inexplicably missing: but we cannot say that the two circumstances are connected until we have heard Dr Hume. That is what I mean by a fact.’

'You heard at the time the insinuations that were directed towards Dr Stocking. Despite this, I do not think that an opinion given by a man of Dr Stocking's long experience at St Praed's Hospital should be taken too lightly.

'And other facts? You have heard the witness Dyer's testimony of remarks made by the prisoner to the deceased. "I did not come here to kill anyone unless it becomes absolutely necessary"; which now appears with the emendation by the prisoner: "I did not come here to steal the spoons," and is stressed by my learned friend. You will note that all of Dyer's other statements appear to be accepted by my learned friend, even with an accent of welcome, since much of his evidence depends on them. But he will not accept this one. What are we to believe from that? Is Dyer a witness who tells a truth at one o'clock and a falsehood at five minutes past one?

'You understand the fashion, members of the jury, in which I ask you to look at this case. Having made this clear, let me now go over the evidence point by point, line by line, from the beginning ...

which must bring us, as I have tried to do point by point, to the end of the evidence. Now, as to the suggestions put forward concerning the cross-bow and the

triple-feather - this counterblast of which the prosecution had no warning. That the prosecution had no warning was quite legal and ethical, of course; the defence is rightly reserved, though it is customary for the defence to be informed as to the lines on which the prosecution means to proceed. As to the cross-bow and the triple-feather (I say), it is neither my purpose nor my intention to pass comment now. You have heard the evidence for the Crown which it was my duty to lay before you. How the piece of feather - if indeed it is a piece of feather from the arrow before you - how this curious fragment got into the spindle-hole of the door, I do not know. How the other piece of feather - with the same implied reservation - got into the teeth of the cross-bow, I do not profess to know. I say: "It is there"; and no more. If you believe that these and other matters weigh in the favour of the accused, it is your duty to let your verdict be influenced by them. You cannot convict this man unless you are perfectly clear beyond all reasonable doubt that the case we have outlined points with almost irresistible emphasis to the conclusion that he is guilty. Of course, the last word lies with my lord; and I have little doubt that he will tell you -'

4.55 p.m.-5.so p.m. From the Summing-up, by Mr Justice Rankin

"... and as you know, members of the jury, we have here a case of circumstantial evidence. Now the real test of the value of circumstantial evidence is this: does it exclude every reasonable possibility? I can even put it higher: does it exclude all other theories or possibilities? If you cannot put the evidence against the accused man beyond a probability and nothing more, then it is impossible for you to say you are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that the charge is established. There is no muddledom about that; the law there is as plain as a pikestaff. A man cannot be convicted of any crime, least of all murder, merely on probabilities: unless they are so strong as to amount to a reasonable certainty. If you have other possibilities, you cannot come to the decision that the charge is made out. The question is not: who did this crime? The question is did the prisoner do it? You have heard at some length the evidence in this case, you have heard the speeches of counsel, and it is now my task to make some survey of the evidence. You will remember that you are the judges of the facts; I am not the judge of the facts at all; and you must bear this in mind if I seem to omit or overstress any matter contrary to your view.

'Let us take what may be called the relevant facts from the beginning. Much has been said at the beginning concerning the demeanour of the accused man. As you know, testimony about the look of a man - whether he seemed happy, whether he seemed agitated - is permitted here. You must therefore give it due consideration. But I must tell you that I think it unwise to put too high a value on such statements. You have probably found that it is not always reliable in the affairs of ordinary life. In judging the demeanour of a person, you must suppose that his reactions to a given happening - tragic, peculiar, or even commonplace - will invariably be the same as your own; and I do not need to tell you of the dangers attending that. Taking the facts that have been outlined to you, then ...

'...I think, therefore, that this case boils down, not to a question of fact alone but to the interpretation of fact. An arithmetic-book cannot consist of all answers and no sums. A case of this sort cannot consist of all effects and no causes: it is the causes that are under debate. The two original matters you must decide are: first, had Avory Hume formed any plot to drug Captain Answell, arrange the false trappings to suggest a felonious attack on him by Captain Answell, and put Captain Answell under detention as a madman? Second, was the prisoner mistaken for Captain Answell?

‘I have just indicated to you my reasons for thinking that there is good evidence in favour of both these things. You have heard Dr Peter Quigley, an agent of the International Medical Council, as to words he states he heard the deceased speak. The deceased is quoted as saying that he meant to get possession of Captain Answell's pistol: that he meant to invite Captain Answell to his home: that he meant to administer brudine in a drink of whisky and soda: that he meant to get rid of such evidence afterwards: that he meant to create the signs of an apparent struggle: that he meant Captain Answell's finger-prints to be found on an arrow, and the pistol to be found in Captain Answell's pocket. I have quoted to you supplementary evidence which seems to me to make this a reasonable possibility. Do you believe that this happened? If you do not, you will decide accordingly: it is a matter entirely for you. But if you do believe it, you will only be led into a muddle by any talk of "facts".

'Did the deceased mean that a pistol should be found in the pocket of the man he was entertaining? If he did, I think we cannot hold against the prisoner the "fact" that it was actually found there. If he meant to administer drugged whisky, getting rid of the evidence later, and if he succeeded in doing this, I' think we cannot hold it against the prisoner that the plan actually succeeded. If he meant finger-prints to be found on the arrow - and if you believe he succeeded in planting them there - then finger-prints are only what we should expect to find. If (to give you an example) A is accused of stealing B's wallet, and the wallet is found in A's pocket, the fact itself would not weigh with you if you were convinced that C put it there.

'In this reading of the evidence, I confess I can see no motive for murder on the part of the prisoner. Indeed, none is suggested except the fact of Mr Hume's antagonism towards him; and, if you believe this reading, the antagonism did not exist. Without motive or weapon, the prisoner arrives at the house. You have heard evidence which has been construed as the sign of a quarrel in the study, and which you must consider carefully. But if every matter relied on as circumstantial is equally consistent both with the guilt and the innocence of the prisoner, the multiplication of those instances may not take you any further in coming to a conclusion of guilt

'Taking first the testimony of the individual witnesses ...

'... Finally, members of the jury, there is the question whose determining must be the crux of your decision: was the deceased man killed by an arrow held in the hand of the prisoner?

'If the prisoner took the arrow and wilfully stabbed the deceased man with it, he is guilty of murder. On the one hand, you have his finger-prints on the arrow, and the circumstance that door and windows were bolted on the inside. On the other hand, you have the indications with which I have already dealt, and you have an alternative explanation with whose evidence I can deal now. We have heard that, when the prisoner was left alone in the study with Mr Hume, the guide-feather on the shaft of the arrow was intact. You have heard that, when a search of the room was made immediately after the discovery of the crime, a piece of feather some inch and a quarter long by an inch square was missing. Neither Mr Fleming nor Dyer found it. It was not found by Inspector Mottram. The suggestion made by the prosecution is that it had lodged in the prisoner's clothing.

'The question now before us is not so much: what happened to the missing piece of feather? The question before us may be put more accurately: do the two pieces of feather produced by the defence-one from a cross-bow, the other from an opening supporting the spindle in the door - constitute what we want? Do they belong to the feather on the arrow used to commit this crime? Are they one feather? If you decide that they are not - or, more properly, that neither of the two pieces belongs to the original - then they do not concern us. The circumstances in which they were found are curious, no doubt; but that is none of our business. On the other hand, if you are satisfied that either or both of them belonged to the original feather, it is difficult not to think that this in itself constitutes a reasonable doubt of the case for the prosecution.

'I confess I do not altogether understand the suggestion, of the prosecution here. In my notes I find the suggestion that the first piece of feather, that in the cross-bow, was not a part of the original one; but I have had no further illumination as regards this. Let us take the evidence as it has been presented, and see whether it may not lead irresistibly to the conclusion that -'

5.8Op-m.-5.s6

p.m.

From the Record of the Shorthand Writer, by Mr John Keyes

The jury, after six minutes' retirement, returned into court.

The Clerk of Arraigns: Members of the jury, are you agreed upon your verdict?

The Foreman of the Jury: We are.

The Clerk of Arraigns: Do you find the prisoner guilty, or not guilty of murder?

The Foreman of the Jury: Not guilty.

The Clerk of Arraigns: You say he is not guilty, and that is the verdict of you all.

The Foreman of the Jury: It is.

Mr Justice Rankin: James Caplon Answell, the jury, after considering the evidence, have found you not guilty of murder. It is a verdict in which I thoroughly concur. It remains only for me to tell you that you are a free man, and to wish you Godspeed. - The prisoner is discharged.

Notes: Broad grin on Attorney-General's face; he seemed to want this. Old Merrivale standing up and raving and cursing like blazes: can't imagine why: his man's free. Prisoner being handed his hat; can't seem to find his way out. People pressing up to him: including that girl. (???) Gallery wild with delight. 'And e'en the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer!'

5-45pm -From the History of the Old Bailey

In Court-room Number One they were turning out the lights. Two warders, looking very unlike policemen without their helmets, seemed to be alone in a deserted schoolroom. The noise of a vast shuffling was dying away outside the doors; a few echoes came back, as though the echoes moved slowly and hung there. Up on the glass roof the rain was pattering steadily, and you could now hear it with great distinctness. There was a click: one cornice-row of lights vanished, so that the oak panels and the white stone above took duller colours. Two more clicks, and the room was nearly dark. The noise of the rain seemed louder; so did the noise of the warders' footsteps on uncertain hardwood; and their heads moved like high shadows. You could barely see the high, pointed backs of the judges' chairs, and the dull gold of the Sword of State. The vestibule door creaked in the gloom as one of the warders pushed it open.

"Ere, stop a bit,' said the other suddenly. His voice also had an echo. 'Don't close it. There's somebody left behind.'

'You seeing ghosts?'

'No. I mean it. Sitting over there - end of that bench -behind the dock. Here Hoy'

He might have been seeing ghosts in a house built on the bones of Newgate. Under the greyish-black light, a figure was sitting alone and hunched up at the end of the bench. It did not move, even at the startling echo of the warder's hail. The warder clumped over towards that figure.

'Now then I' he said, with a sort of tolerant impatience. 'You'll 'ave to -'

The hunched figure did not look up, but it spoke. 'I -don't know if I can. I've just drunk something.' 'Drunk something?'

'Some kind of disinfectant. I thought I could face it, but I can't. I - I feel horrible. Can I get to a hospital?'

'Joe!' said the warder sharply. 'Come here and lend a hand!'

'You see, I killed him. That was why I drank the stuff.' 'Killed who, ma'am?'

'I killed poor Avory. But I'm sorry I killed him; I've always been sorry. I wanted to die, if it didn't hurt so much. My name is Amelia Jordan.'

EPILOGUE

What Really Happened

'ALL I'm saying,' observed Evelyn, 'is that I thought the Attorney-General made the strongest speech of all of you. Even at the last minute 1 was afraid he might swing it. That man impressed me enormously: I don't care who knows it: and -'

'Ho, ho,' said H.M. 'So that's what you thought, hey? No, my wench. Walt Storm's a much better lawyer than that. I won't say he did it deliberately, but he put it all up so the judge could knock it down. It was as neat a trick of feedin' lines, or arrangin' your chin for the punch, as I've ever seen. He tumbled too late to the fact that the chap wasn't guilty. He might 'a' thrown up his brief; but I wanted the business carried on so it could be proved up to the hilt - with the full story of the crime. So you saw the spectacle of an intelligent man tryin' to make brickbats without straw. It sounded awful impressive, but it didn't mean a curse.'

We were sitting, on a boisterous March night, in H.M.'s office up all the flights of stairs of the building overlooking the Embankment, H.M., after having been engaged in brewing whisky-punch (in commemoration, he said, of the Answell case), sat with his feet on the desk and the gooseneck lamp pushed down. There was a good fire, and Lolly pop sat by the table in the window corner, evidently making up some accounts. H.M., with the smoke of a cigar getting into his eye and the steam of whisky-punch getting into his nose, was alternately chuckling and strangling.

'Not,' declared H.M., 'that there was ever any doubt about the verdict -'

'You thought not?' said Evelyn. 'Have you any recollection of what you did? When they brought back that verdict, and the court adjourned, someone came to congratulate you, and accidentally knocked a book off your desk. You stood there and you cursed and swore and gibbered for two minutes by the clock -'

'Well, it's always more comfortin' when you get that kind of case off your mind,' growled H.M. 'I had a few shots still in the locker; but, somewhat to mix the metaphors, you're nervous about a race even if you're dead certain the favourite's comin' in. Y'see, I had to fight it through. I had to get it on so I could make my closin' speech, and I thought a few hints in that speech would have a salutary effect on the real murderer -'

'Amelia Jordan!' I said. We were silent for a short time, while H.M. contemplated the end of his cigar, growled, and ended by taking a gulp of whisky-punch. 'So you knew she was guilty all the time?'

'Sure, son. And if necessary I could 'a' proved it. But I had to get the feller in the dock acquitted first. I couldn't say she was guilty in court. I wrote on that little time-schedule I gave you that there was only one person who could 'a' committed the murder.'

'Well?'

'I'll talk about it,' said H.M., shifting in his chair, 'because it's such a bleedin' relief not to be governed by any rules in my talk.

'Now, I don't have to retrace the course entirely. You know just about everything up to the time Jim Answell drinks his drugged whisky and tumbles over in Hume's study. You know everything, in fact, except what seem to me pretty solid reasons for believin' a certain person was guilty.

'Back at the beginnin' of the case I had the lunacy-plot part of it worked out straightaway, as I told you. How the murder was done, if Answell didn't do it, beat me to blazes. Then Mary Hume made that suggestion - that the thing her feller hated most in prison was the Judas window - and I woke up to the startlin' possibility of a Judas window in every door. I walked up and down, like Satan. I looked at it all round. Then I sat down and made out that time-table; and the whole thing began to unroll.

'As I first saw the business, there were only two persons concerned in the scheme to nobble Reginald Answell: Avory and Spencer. I still think that. It was pretty evident, though, that someone had found out about that scheme, and insisted on comin' into it at the last moment.

'Why? Looky here! If the Judas window was used to do the murder, the murderer must have been workin' with Avory Hume. The murderer must 'a' been at least close enough to know what was going on in the study. It must have been the murderer who carried away an extra decanter - I've made a query about that decanter in my time-table - so that it shouldn't be found by the police. All that implies co-operation with Avory. Someone was in on the plot: someone carried it just so far:, and then someone used it neatly to kill the old man.

'Who? Of course, first of all you'd have plumped for Uncle Spencer, since he undoubtedly was a confederate in the plot. But that won't do; at least, as regards Uncle Spencer's committin' the murder with his own hand. He's got a really remarkable alibi, vouched for by half the staff of a hospital.

'Who else, then? It's a remarkable thing, y'know, how the mere certainty of another confederate in the business narrows down the field. Avory Hume was a man with few friends and no intimates, except his own family. He was a great family man. If he went to the extent of confidin' that scheme to someone not necessary to it - even confidin' it under pressure - it must be someone very close to him.

'You understand, at this point I was just sittin' and thinkin'; I'd got no more than an idea to roll about. Someone close to him, says I. Now, while it was theoretically possible for an outsider to have sneaked in and done it (like Fleming, to take an example), still this looked very doubtful. Fleming wasn't an intimate; he wasn't even a close friend, as you can easily tell from the way they speak of each other. Furthermore, an outsider would have had to sneak past a battery of watchful eyes composed of Dyer and Amelia Jordan, one of whom was in the house all the time. Still grantin' that it's possible, take the other theory and see where it leads.

'It leads to the belief that the other confederate must 'a' been either Amelia Jordan or Dyer. That's so simple that it takes a long time before it can fully penetrate. But it pretty certainly wasn't Dyer. I'll say nothin' of my own belief that the painfully respectable Dyer was the last person that the painfully respectable Mr Hume would admit to a peep at any family skeletons from inside the cupboard. As a witness to Captain Reginald's gibberin' lunacy, yes. As a colleague, no. And that it couldn't have been Dyer is clear from the time-table.

'Like this: I'd already come to the conclusion, from reasons you know, that Hume was murdered with that arrow fired from a cross-bow. Somebody had to wait until Jim Answell was under the influence of the drug. Somebody had then to go into the study with Hume, assist in pourin' mint-extract down an unconscious man's throat, and get the other decanter and syphon out. Somebody had to make a pretext for takin' the arrow out of the room. Somebody had to get Hume to bolt the door; how Hume was to be persuaded to do this, with the arrow still outside the door, I didn't know. Somebody had to work the mechanism of the Judas window. Somebody had to kill Hume, close up the window, dispose of the cross-bow and the decanter, and generally tidy up. You follow that?

'Well, Dyer let Jim Answell into the house at 6.10. (Established.) It was three minutes at least before Answell took that drugged drink in the study, and longer than that before it hit him over the brain. (Established by Answell himself.) Dyer left the house at 6.15. (Established by me; I put into the right-hand column of my time-table, where I've put only absolutely unquestionable facts, that he got to the garage at 6.18; and, as he himself correctly said at the trial, the garage is a three or four minutes' walk away.) Is it possible to think that in the space of a minute and a half he went through all the hocus-pocus necessitated by Avory Hume's murder? It IS not. The time-element makes it impossible.

'Which brought me up against the revealin' fact that Amelia Jordan was the only person who was known to be alone in the house with Hume and an unconscious man. And she was alone there for seventeen minutes, until Dyer returned with the car at 6.32.

'Oho? Think about this woman for a minute. How would she fulfil the specifications for somebody who'd horned into the plot? She'd been livin' with the Humes for fourteen years: fourteen years, my children, which is certainly enough to qualify her as a member of the family. She was, or seemed to be on the surface, fanatically devoted to Avory. When she got excited - as you noticed she did at the trial - she called him by his first name, which was more than anybody except his own brother had the nerve to do. She was in a position to find out a good deal of what was goin' on in that house. If Avory had to confide his design to anybody, the likeliest person seemed to be a practical, swift-workin', hard-workin' woman who'd been there long enough to grow up in the closed circle of the family honour.

'Still only theories, d'ye see: so let's look at what she did durin' those mysterious seventeen minutes between 6.15 and 6.32. At 6.30 (she says) she came downstairs after having finished packin' the bags. Here I'll ask you to follow the testimony she gave at the trial, because it was exactly the same testimony she gave the police a long time ago - when I studied it with uncommon close care, like everybody else's testimony. She says she packed a small valise for herself and a large suitcase for Uncle Spencer, and then down she came.

'Now right here is an interestin' bit from Dyer's testimony which fits into that. Dyer returns and finds her standin' in front of the study door - in front of the study door, mark'ee. She flies info a wailin' frenzy, tells him that the fellers inside the study are killing each other, and orders him to run next door after Fleming. At this time, says Dyer, "she fell over a. big suitcase belonging to Dr Spencer Hume".

'I rather wondered what that suitcase was doin' back in the passage that leads to the study. The main staircase in that house - you've seen it, Ken - is towards the front. It'd mean that she walked downstairs with the bags; and, intendin' to go to the study to say good-bye to Avory, she walked back into the little passage still carryin' the bags -or at least, you notice, the suitcase. What's the game? When people come downstairs with a couple of bags, my experience is that they always plump 'em down at the foot of the stairs where they'll be convenient for the front door. People don't go to the trouble of luggin' 'em to the back ' of the house and walkin' about with them firmly clutched While they say good-bye.

'Right here I began to get a strange, burnin' sensation at the back of the brain. I began to see things. I wrote a question-mark on my time-schedule opposite Amelia Jordan's activities. Just what did I know, so far, about the murder? For my certain beliefs as opposed to the police's, I knew that (a) Hume had been killed with an arrow fired from a cross-bow through the Judas window, and the cross-bow had been missin' from the shed ever since that night; (b) Amelia was the only person who had been alone in the house for seventeen minutes; (c) Amelia was found near the study door in the inexplicable lovin' company of a large suitcase, which nobody seems to have heard of since that time; and then there fell into my obtuseness the fact that (d) Uncle Spencer's fine tweed suit had been missin' out of the house since that night.

‘Wow! We even know when that suit was found missin'. Directlv after the discovery of the murder, you'll observe, Randolph Fleming conceives the idea of takin' the prisoner's finger-prints. Dyer mentions that there's an ink-pad upstairs in the pocket of Spencer's suit. Dyer flies up to get it - and the suit's gone. Dyer can't understand it, and comes downstairs in a weird state of perplexity. But where was the suit? If everyone hadn't been rattled off balance by the discovery of a murder, where's the first place you'd have thought the suit must be? Hey?' There was a silence.

'I know,' said Evelyn. 'You'd know it must have been packed.'

'Sure,' agreed H.M., spitting out smoke and glowering. 'A certain woman had just finished packin' a bag for the owner of that suit. Uncle was goin' into the country for the week-end. Well, what the jumpin' blazes is the first thing you think of shovin' into a suitcase for a man who is goin' to do that? A tweed sports suit, my England.

'Follow this not-too-complicated line of thought. At 6.39, you'll see by your table, Fleming asks Amelia to go to the hospital and get Spencer. At the very same time and in the very same breath, he tosses out the idea of takin' the finger-prints. If only, he says, they had an ink-pad. Dyer mentions the one in the golf-suit, and goes to get it. Mind you, as you'll see in the table, the woman is still there. She hears this. Why, therefore, don't she up and say: "It's no good going up and looking for that suit; I've got it in the suitcase right out in the passage"? (Even if she's taken the ink-pad out of the suit before packin' it, she'd say: "Don't look in the suit; I've put the ink-pad in such-and-such another place.") In either event, why don't she speak up? She can't have forgotten she packed it so recently; and she's a severely practical soul who's learned to think of everything in Avory Hume's employ. But she says nothin'. Why?

'You notice something else. Not only is the suit missing at this time - but it continues missing. It never turns up at all. Add to this fact the knowledge that a pair of red Turkish slippers (remembered because they're so conspicuous) are also missing; and you begin to see that the whole ruddy suitcase has disappeared.

'That's another why. Do we know of anything else that's vanished as well? We smackin' well do! A crossbow has also vanished. Let's see: a stump cross-bow, but with a very broad head? It'd be much too big, say, to go into a little valise ... but it would fit very neatly into a suitcase, and out of sight.'

H.M.'s cigar had gone out, and he drew at it querulously. Privately, I thought this business was among the best bits he had ever done; but I hesitated to say so, for he would only bask woodenly and delight his soul obscurely with more mystification.

'Go on," I said. 'You didn't drop any hint to us that Miss Jordan was guilty until your closing speech in court; but you must have your way; so go on.'

'Assumin',' said H.M., with as close to a look of pleasure as he could get, 'assumin’ for the sake of argument that the cross-bow was stowed away in that suitcase, you have a good reason why the woman didn't sing out and tell Dyer the golf-suit wasn't upstairs. She'd hardly tell him to open the suitcase and find the cross-bow. She'd hardly open it herself in the presence of anyone else. Quite to the contrary, what would she do? Dyer was goin' upstairs after the suit. She'd think - you can lay a small wager on this - that as soon as he discovered the absence of the suit it'd be all up. The cat would come out of the bag with a reverberatin' yowl. Dyer would think of the obvious thing. He'd say: "Please, miss, will you open the suitcase and let us have that ink-pad?" Consequently, she would have to get that suitcase out of the house in a blazin' hurry. Fortunately, she had a magnificent excuse to leave the house: she was going for the doctor. Fleming was in the study, Dyer was upstairs: she could snatch up the suitcase and get away to the car without bein' observed.

'So far I thought I was treadin' over pretty safe ground. But -'

'Please wait a bit,' interposed Evelyn, frowning. 'There's one thing I don't understand here, and I've never understood. What did you think was in the suitcase? I mean, aside from Uncle Spencer's clothes?'

'Something like this,' said H.M. 'One cross-bow. One cut-glass decanter. One syphon partly emptied. One bottle of stuff to destroy the smell of whisky. Probably one screwdriver, and certainly two tumblers.'

'I know. That's what I mean. Why did Avory Hume or anyone else need to have a lot of stuff carried out of the house or stowed away? Why did they have to have two decanters? Wouldn't it have been easier to have emptied the drugged whisky out of the ordinary decanter, rinsed it, and filled it up with ordinary stuff? Wouldn't it be easier to rinse out the glasses and put them back? And if you simply put a syphon of soda on a shelf in the pantry, what would be suspicious about this? - I don't say anything about the cross-bow, because that wasn't Hume's idea; it was the murderer's; but what about the rest of it?'

H.M. gave a ghostly chuckle.

'Ain't you forgettin',' he enquired, 'that originally there was nobody in the scheme except Avory and Spencer?' ‘Well?'

'Consider the little pictures we draw,' said H.M., gesturing with his dead cigar. 'Dyer knows nothin' about the scheme. Neither does Amelia Jordan. The good Reginald Answell will walk in, and be closeted in the study with Avory. Between that time and the time Reginald is discovered as a gibberin' loony, how can Avory leave the study} Either Dyer or Jordan will be in the house all the time; Jordan will be there while Dyer goes out after the car, Dyer will be there while Jordan drives off after Spencer. You see it now? Avory couldn't dash out to the kitchen, empty the whisky, rinse the decanter, fill it up again, and walk back - with his guest lyin' unconscious in an open room, and one of his witnesses watchin’ him rinse the decanter. You can't do that when there's someone in the house, particularly someone on the alert for trouble: as Dyer was warned to be and as the woman certainly was. Similarly, Avory can't rinse the tumblers, wipe 'em, and put 'em back. He can't go shovin' syphons into pantries. He's got to lie low in that study. That's why I said, and emphasized: only two people were in the scheme to begin with.

'We'd better deal with that part of the business, and tie it up with my growin' consciousness that Amelia was guilty. As originally planned, Avory had his sideboard all set; duplicates of decanters and glasses in the sideboard underneath, ready to be changed for the others. Lord love a duck, keep one concrete fact in mind. It's this: in Avory's scheme, he had no intention whatever of callin' in thepolice! There wasn't goin' to be any fine-tooth-comb search of the room or even the house. He only meant to fool his own little witnesses, his private witnesses, who wouldn't pry at all. All he had to do in the world was simply to shove decanter, syphon, glasses, and mint-extract into the bottom of the sideboard - and lock the sideboard doors. He could then get rid of the stuff after a dazed Reginald had been led away gibberin’. Don't you remember (see Mottram's notes on the plan) that the key to the sideboard doors was actually found in his pocket?

'But when Amelia stepped into the scheme, she had no intention of leavin' it at that She was goin' to kill him. And that meant the police in. And all those incriminatin' souvenirs couldn't merely be left in the sideboard; they had to be got out of the house, or the blame wouldn't be fastened on the wrong feller who was lyin' unconscious.'

‘I liked her,' said Evelyn suddenly. 'Oh, dash it all! -I mean -'

'Listen,' said H.M.

He pulled open the drawer of the desk. Taking out one of those terrible blue-bound folders I had seen often enough before (this one had not been there long enough to accumulate dust), he flipped it open.

'You know she died at St Bartholomew's last night,’ he' said. 'You also know she made a statement before she died; the papers have been full enough of it. Here's a copy. Now listen to a paragraph or two.

I worked for him for fourteen years. I did more than that; I drudged for him. But I did not mind that, because for a long time I thought I loved him. I thought that when his wife died he would marry me, but he did not. I had had other offers of marriage, too; but I turned them all down, because I thought he would marry me. And he never said a word about it; he said he would always be faithful to his wife's memory. But there was nothing else to do, so I stayed on at the house.

' "I knew that in his will he had left me five thousand pounds. It was the only thing in the world I had to look forward to. Then we learned that Mary was going to get married. All of a sudden he told me this mad idea that he was going to change that will, and to put every penny he had into trust for a son that was not even born. The horrible part was that I suddenly saw he meant it. I could not have stood that, and I did not mean to stand for it.

'"... of course I knew all about what he and Spencer and Dr Tregannon were going to, do. I knew about it from the beginning, though Avory did not know I knew; he thought women should not be concerned with things like that, and he would not have told me. There is something else I must tell you, and it is that I like Mary very much. I never would have killed Avory and tried to put the blame on Mr Caplon Answell; this Reginald Answell was blackmailing Mary and I thought he would get what he deserved if I put the blame on him. How was I to know it was not the right man?"

'That's true,' growled H.M. 'It's a good half of the reason why she broke down with brain-fever when she found what she'd done.'

'But she didn't own up afterwards,' said Evelyn. 'She swore there in court that old Avory had been after Jim Answell all the time.'

'She was protectin' the family,' said H.M. 'Does that sound very rummy to you? No, I think you understand. She was protectin' the family as well as protectin' herself.'

'I did not say anything at all to Avory, about my knowing of his scheme, until just about a quarter of an hour before I killed him. When Dyer had gone out of the house to get the car, I came downstairs with the bags. I went straight to the study door and knocked, and I said: "I know you've got him in there drugged with brudine; but there's nobody else in the house, so open this door and let me help you."

'The odd part of it was that he did not seem terribly surprised. He needed support, too: it was the first crooked thing he had ever done, and when he came to do it he had to lean on me. Well, it was the first crooked thing I had ever done too, but I was much better at it than he was. That was how I was able to make him do what I said.

'I told him he was a very foolish man to think that, when Captain Answell - that is who I thought it was - when Captain Answcll woke up, he would not make a terrible fuss and demand to have the house searched. I said Mr Fleming would be there, and Mr Fleming was just the man to insist on searching the house for glasses or syphons or things. He knew that was true, and it frightened him. It is about seven years, I think, since I have been in love with Avory; and right then I hated him.

'I said that I had my valise outside, and I was going to the country in a few minutes. I said I would take all the things along, and get rid of them. He agreed to that.

'We put that automatic in the man's pocket - he was lying on the floor - and we tried to pour some stuff down his throat. I was afraid we had choked him. After we had given the arrow a pull and dragged it down, and cut Avory's hand to make it look real ... Avory was not a coward, though I should have been afraid to have that done ... we had to put finger-prints on it. The hardest part was for me to get the arrow out into the hall now without him suspecting anything. This is how I did it. The decanter and glasses and things were all out there already. I pretended to hear Dyer coming back, and I ran out of the room holding the arrow by the tip, and cried out to him to bolt the door quick. He did it without thinking, because he was an old man and not used to such work.

'Then I had to hurry. I had already put the cross-bow in the dark hall; I meant to take it back to the shed after I had finished. And the thread was already inside the knob on the door...'

H.M. tossed the blue-bound sheets on his desk.

'The worst of it bein’ he said, 'that, just as she had finished her work, she did hear Dyer comin' back. That was the trouble, I suspected at the time she hadn't allowed for the delay in persuadin' and arguin' with old Avory, and she cut it too fine. Just as she finished sealin' up the door again (with Avory Hume's gloves, which we found in that suitcase), up comes Dyer. She had no intention of shovin' away the cross-bow in the suitcase. The thing to do was take it back to the shed, where nobody'd suspect it But she hadn't time now. She hadn't even time to disengage the piece of feather from the windlass. Burn me, what was she goin' to do with that bow? In thirty seconds more, Dyer will be there and see everything.

",That was what caused me the trouble at the start, and nearly sent me wrong. She had a little valise and a big suitcase, and both of 'em were back there in the hall. What she intended to do, of course, was to put the other preparations in her own valise, disposing of 'em later, and take the cross-bow back to the shed: the best course. But - Dyer appearin' too soon - the bow had to go into Spencer's suitcase; it was too big to fit into the smaller bag.

'It made me suspect (for a long time) that Spencer himself must certainly be concerned in the murder. Hey? She's used his suitcase. When the whole week-end kit suddenly disappears, and later Spencer makes no row about it-‘

'He certainly didn't,' I said. 'On the afternoon of the first day of the trial, he went out of his way to declare he'd sent the golf-suit to the cleaner's.'

'Well, I assumed that he must be tangled up in the murder,' said H.M. plaintively. 'And possibly that he and our friend Amelia planned the whole show together: Spencer carefully preparin' an alibi at the hospital. We've now got the reconstruction of the story up to the time Amelia runs out of the house, to drive to St Praed's after Spencer; and that whole run of dirty work looked almighty likely.

'But I was sittin' and thinkin', and one thing bothered me badly. She had nipped out of the house with that suitcase, and she couldn't very well bring it back again - on that night, at least - in case anybody got suspicious or still; happened to be whistlin' for ink-pads. She had to dispose of it somehow, and to do it in a snappin'-of-your-fingers time; for she had to go direct to the hospital and fetch back Uncle Spencer. If she and Spencer had been concerned together in the murder, you'd have thought she'd have left the suitcase at the hospital: where he would have a room or at least a locker of his own. But that didn't happen. As you see from my note on the time-schedule, the hall porter saw her arrive and drive away with

Spencer, and no suitcase was handed out. Then where the blazes did it go? She couldn't chuck it in the gutter or hand it to a blind beggar; and gettin' rid of a suitcase full of dangerous souvenirs (even temporarily) is a devilish difficult trick. There's only one thing that could have been done, in the very limited time the schedule shows you she took. When you're at St Praed's Hospital in Praed Street, as you know and as has been pointed out to you even if you didn't, you're smack up against Paddington Station. It could have been put into the Left-Luggage Department. This was inevitable, my lads. It had to be.

'Now here was (possibly) a bit of luck. I thought of it 'way back in February. Since the night of the murder, Amelia had been flat on her back with a bad case of brain-fever, and hadn't been allowed out. At that time she still hadn't come out. She couldn't have gone to reclaim the case. As I say, logically the damned suitcase had to be there-

'Well, like the idiot boy, I went there; and it was. You know what I did. I took along my old pal Dr Parker and Shanks the odd-jobs man; I wanted them to be witnesses of the find as well as examiners of it. For I couldn't stop this case from comin' up for trial now. In the first place it was a month under way. In the second and more important place, d'you know what I'd have had to say to the authorities? The old man (never very popular with the Home Secretary or the D.P.P.) would have had to go swaggerin' in and say: "Well, boys, I got some instructions for you. I want this indictment quashed for the followin' reasons: Amelia Jordan is lyin'. Spencer Hume is lyin'. Reginald Answell is lyin'. Mary Hume has been lyin'. In short, nearly every person in the whole ruddy case has been lyin' except my client." Would they have believed me? Question yourselves closely, my fat-heads. I had to put that whole crowd under oath: I had to have a fair field and swords on the green: I had to have, in short, justice. There's my reason; and also the reason for my mysteriousness about it.

'You know where I went to get my witnesses, and why, But one thing still bothered me, and it bothered me up to the second day of the trial. Was Spencer Hume concerned in the dirtier deal of the murder, or wasn't he?

'Here's what I mean. I snaffled the suitcase. But it'd been at Paddington since the night of the murder. Now, if Amelia and Spencer were workin' together, surely she'd have told him to go and reclaim it quickly before some inquisitive feller nosed inside? She hadn't been delirious with fever for over a month. It wasn't until a week after my own visit that a man - not Spencer - came and made fumblin' enquiries about it.

'Sometimes I thought one thing, sometimes another: until the evenin' of the first day of the trial I began to get a glimmer. Spencer ran away; but he wrote to Mary, swearin' he actually saw the crime committed by Jim Answell. That letter had a ring of truth that Spencer never got into any of his quotations. Yet I knew it must have been a lie, until (bang) I saw what it was. Through this case, a vision of simple innocence has been presented by Amelia Jordan. A vision of moustache-twistin' craft has been presented by Spencer. Uncle Spencer's trouble is that he is too innocent. He honestly shouldn't be allowed loose. For fourteen years he's believed every word that's been spoken by that simple and practical woman: perhaps he'd had a right to. She told him she had actually seen Answell commit the crime, and he believed it. That's all. Don't you realize that that man really believes in all the soundin' platitudes he spouts? Her course had been simple. She told him she joined with Avory in the little plot, and had taken his (Spencer's) suitcase to stow away the decanter, the glasses and the rest of the trappings. She told him she'd had to dispose of that suitcase - into the river, she says here in her statement - and he'd have to get used to the loss. For, if the properties had been found in his bag, he would certainly get into serious trouble. Not a word about the cross-bow, of course. So Spencer shut up. He wouldn't even betray her to the extent of sayin', in his letter to Mary, that his information wasn't first-hand. I think we've misjudged Uncle Spencer. His chivalry was too much.'

'But look here!' I protested. 'Who was the man who did go to Paddington Station - apparently a week after you did - and asked about the suitcase? You asked the manager about that in the witness-box. I remember, because it threw me off. I was certain a man had committed the murder. Who went to Paddington?'

'Reginald Answell,' said H.M. in a satisfied tone.

'What?'

'Our Reginald,' continued H.M. with ferocious tenderness, 'is goin' to serve a couple of years for perjury; you knew that? - Well, he went into the witness-box and swore he had practically seen the murder committed. I wanted him to testify. If he tried any funny business (as I rather hoped he would), I could nail him to the wall quicker than flick a tiddley-wink; and there wasn't enough evidence to indict him for blackmail. Oh, yes. I told him, d'ye see, that the subpoena he'd received was only a matter of form, and he probably wouldn't be called at all. Naturally I didn't want him to run away like Spencer - as he smackin' well would have if I'd let him know I intended to bring up the subject of blackmailin' Mary Hume. So he went smoothly, and tried to repay the compliment by doin' me down. As a result, he'll serve two years for perjury. But the beautiful and glorious and cussed part of it is that, except for the triflin’ detail of the person in question, what he said was true: to all intents and purposes, he really did see the murder done.'

'What?'

'Sure. He didn't know I knew everything about the interview he had with Grabell - I mean about his knowledge of the pistol Hume pinched - right up until the second day of the trial. He was pretty sick with me already for bringin' up the blackmail question while he sat right at the solicitors' table; so he rounded on me. But the first part of what he said was quite true. He did go down the passage between the houses; he was in Grosvenor Street after all. He did go up the steps to the side door. If you'll remember Mottram's notes written on the plan of the rear of the house, you'll remember that door was found unlocked -'

'But, damn it all, you yourself proved that he couldn't have seen anything through a wooden door -'

'And you're still forgettin' something,' urged H.Nt. gently. 'You're forgettin' two glasses of whisky.'

'Two glasses of whisky?'

'Yes. Avory Hume poured out two drinks, one for himself that he didn't touch (not wantin' to drink brudine), and the other for his guest, who drank only half of it You've also heard how Amelia Jordan later packed up those glasses in a suitcase. Well, I can tell you one thing she didn't do: she didn't put two drinks of whisky in a suitcase. She had to empty 'em. But there wasn't a sink at hand, and she didn't want to open the windows in case the locked room should be disturbed. So she simply unlocked the side door, opened it, and tossed out the contents of the glasses, thereby -'

'Thereby?'

'Givin' a way in to Reginald, who was prowlin'. You remember what he said when I fired the point about the glass door at him? He turned a little green, and said: "The door may have been open", which was quite true. The door was open. He didn't even notice what kind of door it was; he simply remembered the old glass door, and mentioned that because he didn't want to admit he'd stuck his nose into the house. How much he saw, I don't know. I doubt very much that he saw the murder committed. But he must have seen enough to give him a handle for blackmail on the person of Amelia Jordan, and he knew very well there was somethin' fishy about that suitcase. The trouble was, the suitcase had disappeared and he didn't know where. Until he did know - until he could find out - he was stuck between Mephistopheles and deep water. It's pretty hard to determine what went on in Reginald's mind, or bow far he approached Amelia. She was so bedevilled that I began to be sorry for her; but they weren't goin' to hang my client because of that. 1 thought it'd be very salutary, however, for her to see the evidence in court. I knew it would be very salutary to put Reginald into the witness-box and make that swine squirm on a hotter griddle than he'd ever dreamed of. Finally, it pleases and soothes me to know that he'll serve a long stretch in clink for tellin' what was, in essentials, the perfect truth.'

We stared at H.M. as he gobbled whisky-punch. He had wanted to be the old maestro; and, by all the gods, you had to admit he was.

'I am inclined to suspect,' said Evelyn, 'that you are a disgrace to all the splendid traditions of the fairness of English law. But, since we're all among friends -'

'Yes, I s'pose so,' admitted H.M. reflectively. I technically broke the law when I got my burglar pal, Shrimp Calloway, to break into Inspector Mottram's police-station one fine night and make sure my deductions were right about the piece of feather bein' in the Judas window. It'd never have done to go to court and get my great big beautiful dramatic effect spoiled by the lack of a feather. ... But still, there it is. The old man likes to see the young folks have a good time; and I rather think Jim Answell and Mary Answell are goin' to be just as happily married as you and your wench there. So why the blazes, burn it all, have you got to pick on me?'

He gobbled whisky-punch again, and lit his dead cigar.

'So our Reginald was laid by the heels,' I said, 'all by perverting the pure rules of justice; and I begin to suspect that Jim Answell was acquitted by a trick; and the whole thing moves by ... by what the devil is it?'

'I can tell you,' said H.M. quite seriously. 'The blinkin' awful cussedness of things in general.'