White Priory Murders

CHAPTER NINETEEN The Reflection of the Murderer

"Ho ho," said H. M., looking round him with something like a leer. "You think the old man's a ravin' lunatic, hey? His lunacy's goin' to catch a murderer, though, before any one of you leaves this room. Don't anybody move. I suggest you sorta get comfortable, though, because you'll feel better while I'm tellin' you about it."

Blinking in his nearsighted way, he wandered over to the big chair behind the table and sat down. Then he took out his black pipe.

"That's it, get chairs 'for the ladies, Jimmy. Miss Carewe needs one. Now, ma'am, take it easy. -You others, shut up!" He turned savagely as Maurice came forward in a cold rage.

"What I'm doin'," he continued almost affably, "is broadening the whole field again after you'd narrowed it down. I'll let you sorta guess for yourselves, before I prove it, which person in the house came into this room and smashed in Tait's head with. Humph. No; we won't mention the weapon just yet.

"Now we've already heard two very interestin' theories about how the murderer worked. Both of 'em happened to be wrong. But the interest lay in the occasional glimmer of reason and truth that appeared in each and had just sufficient plausibility to lead the guesser in the wrong direction. I been sittin' and thinkin' about this thing, and, burn me, the longer I sit and think the more it occurs to me as a miracle that nobody thought of an obvious explanation which would have avoided all the hocus-pocus and camel-swallowin' of the other two.

"So here's what I mean to do. I'm goin' to hold a little class in what I'll call Imaginative Common Sense. I got another witness besides myself to a certain thing that happened a few minutes ago; so I needn't worry about bein' able to hang the murderer, and I can make this killer squirm a little while I ask my class questions. Ho ho. First, then, I'm goin' simply to state a few clear facts which everybody knows and everybody admits. Second, in case you haven't tumbled to it by that time, I'll state my suggested explanation. Third, nil support if by plagiarizin' the few good wild words of truth from the other two explanations, and complete the pie with a little deduction of my own.

"Um. Now lemme see." With the pipe upside down in his. mouth, he drowsily held up his blunt fingers and checked them off. "Quite a little time before midnight last night, Tait began to get nervous and impatient, and began to ask to be taken out to the pavilion. That's admitted, ain't it? She was taken out there at a little past midnight, and was even more impatient. When Willard went out for a sociable chat a bit afterwards, she shooed him out. Point o' fact, as Masters reported it to me, Willard said that she went several times into the drawin'-room of the pavilion and looked out the front windows. Hey?"

"Quite," said Willard dryly. "But don't you think this restating of facts has become a bit monotonous by this time?"

"Uh-huh. Burn me, that's what makes me despair of your intellects) I think that at one place John Bohun said his appointment with Canifest was early in the evening, and at another place he said it was at ten o'clock. Now, we won't argue about that. We'll say the appointment (at the newspaper office) was at the rather later instance of ten o'clock. You still don't seem to get it through your heads that, even if it was as late as that, by all rights he should have been back here by midnight at the latest! We're lookin' at it from Tait's viewpoint, who never has been kept waitin' by anybody and don't intend to start it now. We're lookin' at it from the viewpoint of a woman whose life-and-death interests are centered in the news Bohun'll bring back from, town, and who ain't likely to be in a patient mood. If you'll admit she was restless at half past eleven and at midnight, how restless do you think she would have been at half-past twelve? And another half-hour passes, until one o'clock, and still he's not appeared. What's her state of mind then?

"But I won't diverge yet from statin' facts. We know, don't we, that you, can see the windows of this room-the back windows of this room-?' he pointed with his pipe, "from the pavilion? Uh-huh. We also know that several times, while Willard was with her, she ran into the front room of the pavilion to look out? Quite. Finally, we know that at one o'clock, when she must 'a' been a bit furious with impatience, a light went on in this room."

Maurice, who was sitting bolt upright in a narrow chair, jabbed his stick against the floor. He said gently: "Most extraordinary. Surely you know that it has no significance? Surely you know that the light was turned on only by Thompson, who put it on for John's return when he set out sandwiches and prepared the room?"

"Sure I know it," agreed H. M. "Thompson told me. But how was Tait goin' to know that? Here's a man she's waitin' for, who is already an hour overdue. A light goes on in his room. But does he come down to see her, as he's supposed to do as soon as he returns? No. On the contrary, my lad, this light continues to burn strongly and brightly; and for another half-hour a woman who's already got the wind up pretty thoroughly is still required to wait while nobody shows”

"Now I ain't stretchin' the roseate limits of probability when I picture Tait's mental workings. She knew John wouldn't simply have come home and forgot all about her, when their joint futures rested on the news he was to bring from London. She'd decide it was probably bad news, and John hadn't the nerve to come down and tell her. But whatever she decided, I think you'll agree she had to know.

"And, gettin' back to obvious facts, we come to the not very surprisin' information that at half-past one the dog begins barkin' and a mysterious woman is seen runnin' round the lawn.

"As I say, I was sittin' and thinkin', and it struck me that under the circumstances the likeliest person to be goin' on a visit that night was Tait herself. Trouble was, all you lads stared myopically from the house to the pavilion, and refused to look the other way. You even refused to look the other way when all the suspected women in this house had an alibi. I don't ask you to believe this for a minute, till I offer you proof; but that was the possibility that struck me first off. Because it was a matter of tolerable simplicity, d’ye see, for her to visit this room absolutely unobserved. She could come up the lawn. She could go through the lower staircase door (which she knew was unlocked, because she'd seen Miss Bohun unlock it for John while they were all here lookin' at the stairs earlier in the night); she could walk up here and confront John. How did she know," inquired H. M., raising his voice a little, "that John wasn't here?"

Nobody moved or spoke. H. M. ruffled his hands across his head; scowled, and settled deeper in the chair just after his dull eyes flickered round the motionless group.

"That's simple enough, ain't it? Get out of your heads the collected rubbish of people who were makin' theories merely to hang other people; and consider what the most natural course of events must have been. I began to see Tait, crazy with fear or waiting or both, pulling on a fur coat over her negligee — you thought quickly enough of how Miss Carewe could 'a' done the same thing-getting into a pair of galoshes, and slippin' up there secretly for news. But I said to myself, 'Here! Would she have wanted to raise a row and maybe get people curious? What about that dog?' Then I discovered, not only that the dog wasn't out at its kennel when she first went to the pavilion, but that it hadn't been loose all afternoon and in fact she knew nothing about any dog at all. Why should she? She and the whole party went down there; no dog barked. The rest went back up; Willard, a stranger, came down again and returned; but still no dog barked. Why should she imagine there'd be a rumpus if she sneaked quietly up to see John?

"So I saw her startin' up, and gettin' the fright of a lifetime when halfway up she suddenly hears a big and dangerous Alsatian bust out after her! Children, what would you think if you heard a thing like that; when you didn't know the dog was chained on a runway wire and couldn't get loose, but simply heard it coming after you? That woman must 'a' been petrified, because she don't know which way to go. She don't know whether to run back, or run forward, or stand still. Probably she did a little of all three. And if that don't correspond exactly to the movements of the shape Mrs. Thompson saw, it'll surprise me a whole lot. Well, she still hesitates. Nothin' happens, but she don't dare run back to the pavilion, because the barking's behind her. Then she sees Miss Bohun open the little door to the porch, look out, and go back again. She don't know what that means, but she's got to have sanctuary. So she risks a run up the lawn, while the snow is still fallin' thickly, gets inside the door, and creeps up that staircase."

He pointed. A horrible suspicion was beginning to stir in Bennett's mind; but he forced it back. Somebody in the group jumped a little, because just then there was a sound of somebody's footstep down on the stairs.

"Who's down there now?" Jervis Willard asked quietly.

"There's a dead man down there," said H. M., "for one thing. I don't have to tell one of you that. You know who it is? It's Rainger, Carl Rainger. No, don't anybody move! — You're all afraid to, because the innocent ones are thinkin' I'll think them guilty if they do. Sit quiet, and remember that Rainger was strangled in here this afternoon.

"Last night Tait sneaked up those stairs (this is my theory); like that footstep you hear now, only that's the police waitin' for somebody like Jack Ketch in Punch-and-Judy. She came into this room, and found nobody here. Then she didn't know what to think, and began to realize John mightn't have returned after all. Well, what was she goin' to do? She didn't want anybody to know of her presence here; she was too crafty to advertise any hanky-panky with John. And if she's found in John's room in a fetchin' state of undress at half past one in the morning… hey?

`But this is what I want to emphasize-she didn't dare go back. Would you go back if you thought a man-eatin' dog was ready to fly out after you; would you walk into that danger again when you'd just got over the shock of encounterin' it a minute ago and thought you'd achieved a miraculous escape? This place was safety; John was bound to come here sometime. She'd take one precaution. I want you to think of what that precaution might be while I go on.”

"While I go on to prove that she stayed here," said H. M., suddenly bringing the palm of his big hand down on the table.

"You've had a look at that pavilion. You've had your attention called to the fires. There were two fires, one in the drawin'-room and one in the bedroom, made by Thompson before twelve o'clock. Everybody agrees, so there'll be no fightin' or dark glares when I repeat it, that she never used the drawin'-room at all last night: each person was entertained in the other room. You don't keep the fire goin' strong in a room you don't use. Admittin', then, that she used the bedroom, we know that she hadn't turned in and gone to sleep. She was killed about a quarter past three.

"So what have we got? We got two very small fires, which we can prove by the quantity of ash you saw yourself, burnin' exactly the same length of time-you saw that they were the same. We're asked to believe that for three and a half hours a very small fire in the bedroom was sufficient to keep comfortable a pampered hot-house orchid like Tait in a literal ice-house of a pavilion on a snowy December night while it was never replenished, but stayed the same as the one in the other room. We're asked to believe that she was snugly drinkin' port with the murderer at a quarter past three, sittin' at her ease in negligee before the blaze of a fire which actually must have been ashes an hour before that time.

"It don't require much brain-rackin' to see that those fires stayed the same, and went out about the same time, because she wasn't in the pavilion at all.”

"Whereat, before examin' other things in the room, I found myself hoppin' back to another fact I'd already heard. This piece of evidence screamed at you; so loudly that some fathead did notice it and promptly proceeded to put a farfetched meanin' to it when the real one was much handier. I mean the mysterious figure in the gallery at some time after three o'clock, who smeared Miss Carewe's hand with blood. The theorist was quite right in propoundin' the question, `Why, since there was water at the pavilion, did the fool murderer come all the way up to the house before washin' his hands?'

"Then the theorist goes star-gazin' for his answer, with some complicated tommyrot about the figure being a myth and an even more intricate tale, wholly unsubstantiated, about an attack on Tait with a huntin' crop. Whereas the real answer was, `The murderer didn't come back from the pavilion. He killed Tait here.' Which is simple, and true. I said to myself, `Sure, he was goin' out to the bathroom after water; because,' I said to myself, `didn't Masters tell me that there wasn't any water in this room, and they hadda send out for a bowl when John Bohun shot himself here this morning?' "

Silence. The vivid memory returned to Bennett. But Maurice was sitting forward now; his shoulders hunched up, and his voice going into a batlike squeak.

"I thank you," he said, "for your graceful compliments. But I think I begin to see what you are driving at. You are still accusing — you come back round in the circle, don't you? You accuse my brother John of this murder?"

He struggled to his feet and stood shaking. H. M. leaned forward.

"No," rumbled H. M., "I don't. Not necessarily. But you're gettin' warm, Bohun. You're skirtin' near the truth of the impossible situation at last. Speak up! By God, it's almost penetrated now. What happened?"

The little man moved forward and leaned on the table. His, eyes seemed to narrow and contract. Maurice said:

"John returned with his bad news, and found her in this room. He thought he had killed Canifest; he was in a fury and desperate; he did not care what happened to him; and, when she flew out at him as she would, he went fully amok and killed her.”

"Then," Bohun went on, "he began to realize his position. Nobody had seen him kill Canifest; he might escape that. But if Marcia's body were found in his room, he knew that he had no chance whatever of escaping the rope. The only chance for safety lay in waiting until daylight, in carrying her body out to the pavilion, in setting up false evidence at the pavilion to indicate that she had been murdered there, and in finding her body himself… That's it! That's it! He did kill her after all!"

Slowly H. M. pulled himself up out of his chair.

"I said, son, that you were gettin' warm," he snapped, "and in that last part of it you ring a crashin' bull's-eye. There, fatheads, is the explanation part of it-of the impossible situation. Are you beginnin' to see it?

"Do you understand now why John's nerve completely broke this morning, and he came up here and shot himself? What broke his nerve? Think back, like Masters told me. John was in the dinin'-room with two or three of you. And he went over to the window. And what did he see? Speak up!"

Again the memory smashed back on Bennett.

"He saw," said Bennett, in a voice he did not recognize, "he saw Potter examining and measuring those tracks of his in the snow, because Rainger had said. "

"Because of Rainger's explanation. Uh-huh. And he asked Masters what Potter was doin'. So Masters, with a sinister leer whose effectiveness Masters didn't know even then replied, `Only making measurements of your tracks in the snow.' Why did that break John's nerve? Not because of Rainger's elaborate bunkum of a theory. But because John had carried a dead woman down to that pavilion in early morning, and he thought they were on to him! There you are. No fancy claptrap of playin' pranks with hocussed tracks, that's been makin' your brains dizzy all along. Merely a big and powerful man carryin' a body down to the pavilion through snow that was too shallow to show the deep imprint of two weights. Rainger said one true thing. He said it couldn't have been done without discovery if the snow had been deeper. It couldn't; the tracks would have sunk in too deeply. But with a little plaster of snow… are you beginnin' to see why those tracks were so sharply and heavily printed, like Potter said, and also why they'd dragged a good deal at the toes?"

H. M. had lost his woodenness. His voice smashed across the silent room.

"Didn't I tell you that somebody had smashed a decanter and a couple of glasses on the hearthstone; deliberately smashed 'em, to make it look like there'd been a struggle there? Well, didn't you wonder why? It was to offer proof she'd been killed at the pavilion.

"Now I'm very slowly and painstakingly goin' to tell you what he did. He didn't kill the woman. He found her dead when he got here. And in this tale you'll probably see the dead glarin' evidence that'll tell you who did kill her. Go back to the beginning of it all.

"She left that pavilion, turnin' off the lights; she came up here, as I've told you, and was afraid to go back because of the dog. Now in the tale I'll leave a single cloud of blackness straight in the middle; the cloud of blackness that hides the murderer who finds her here and beats her head in. The murderer leaves her here — maybe on that bed," he pointed: "maybe anywhere. We pass the cloud of blackness to the end of the story, when John Bohun comes into it.”

"He's driven back from town. He thinks he's killed Canifest, and the only thing that will save him is to lie about the time he reached home. That is, if he can somehow prove that he did reach home at the same time he must have killed Canifest in London; if he can prove an alibi by having somebody swear he was here and not in London when Canifest died; that'll save him. That's simple, ain't it? He's got to get that alibi. It's burnin' in his mind all the time he rides hell-for-leather out here. Fix it! Fix it, somehow! So that wild, nervous, irresolute feller who don't know his own mind from one minute to the next he comes home, walks up here, and finds Marcia Tait dead in his room!

"Look here, do you wonder much at his behavior this mornin'? Here he was, caught between two hangmen as neat as you please. Now if he fakes an alibi, and says he couldn't have been with Canifest because he was here, he's got a dead woman in his room to account for. If he admits the time he got home, they may hang him for Canifest's death. Whichever way he looks, there's a hemp collar swingin' at the end of it. He don't know who killed Tait. He don't even know how she got here, or anything about it. What he does know is that he's in a hell of a mess, and he's got to see a way out so that he won't swing for either crime.

"Could he, for instance, carry her back to her own room and pretend she'd been murdered there? Then he could swear to a faked time at which he got home; and maybe get somebody to back him up. Where was she supposed to sleep? He remembers: the pavilion. Did she go out there? He's got to find out, and there's nobody awake to tell him. He also remembers: a riding-engagement for this morning.

"The thing to do is find out. Now here's where the grain of truth in Rainger's theory enters. He dresses in riding-clothes, so that if she really has slept at the pavilion (as he believes), he'll have a good excuse for `finding' her early in the morning. He wakes up the butler, who tells him she's out there and that horses are ordered for seven o'clock. Good God! There's where the ticklish, dangerous skatin' on ice comes in. The stables are in sight of the pavilion and even the door of the pavilion! If he delays until quite daylight, somebody bringin' those horses out may see him go down with the body… On the other hand, if he can take her in there a few minutes, just a few minutes beforehand; if he can put her in the bedroom, and then walk back to the front door of the pavilion; then stand there until he sees somebody at the stables, whom he'll hail as though he were just goin' in for the first time to `find' her — then he's safe."

H. M. stabbed out with his finger. "Do you understand the burnt matches now? He carried her in there and put her on the floor a few minutes before Jim Bennett unexpectedly arrived on the scene: so few minutes that his tracks were still fresh. It was growing daylight, but not quite daylight (I carefully asked that nephew of mine about it) and Bohun had to be able to see clearly to set his stage for the fake murder! Got it now? He didn't dare switch on a light in the room. A large window faced directly towards the stables, where people were already up. If a light flashed on in that room, sorta sudden and inexplicable-like, a few minutes before Bohun claimed he walked into the pavilion for the first time. why, somebody would have seen it and wondered why."

"Hold on, sir!" said Bennett. "There was a blind on that window — a Venetian blind. Couldn't he simply have lowered the blind?"

H. M. blinked at him.

"Do you think, my amiable dotard," he growled, "they wouldn't have seen the light just the same? Didn't you and me ourselves see a light, through those slits in the Venetian blind, when Willard turned one on this afternoon in the drawin'-room? Y'know, it's a funny thing how every one of the answers to all these questions had been repeated before our eyes to sorta help us along. Quit interruptin', will you? Dammit, I'm in full stride and enjoyin' myself..

"He struck matches while he tipped things over, smashed glasses, took off the woman's fur coat and stowed away her galoshes in the closet where I went lookin' for 'em. He didn't have anything to simulate a weapon with, although he tried to make it seem like the poker. I could tell it wasn't; no blood or hair. He put her on the floor after a couple of minutes of crazy work. Then he went to the door, saw Locker over across the way; hailed him; strolled back, uttered a rather unnecessary yell which didn't sound like Bohun at all and made me suspicious to begin with. Rushin' back to the door, he meets Jim Bennett comin' down the lawn…

"By the way, I hear he had blood on his hands then. Didn't that seem fishy to you, son — sticky blood, although the woman had been murdered some hours before? It didn't mean he'd killed her. It meant he'd heavily yanked or disturbed the body somehow, such as he wouldn't have done merely by examinin' it; he'd disturbed clots and released something, although the heart had stopped pumpin' and it wasn't fresh-"

Somebody cried out. H. M. glanced at them as though he held a whip.

"Then," he went on heavily, "he was ready. The feller was clever in everything but one. He forgot about the snow. Do you wonder he was shaken up when Jim Bennett pointed it out; and he yelled out that it didn't mean anything? Do you see why he could afford to laugh when Willard suggested Tait's murder at the pavilion meant an assignation there last night? An assignation, lads, yet the blind wasn't even pulled down on a towerin' window! hadn't that feature struck anybody's boarding-house mind? Never mind. He thought he'd covered everything up. Now he could announce to everybody that he'd arrived home here a good deal earlier than he actually had. He could say he didn't kill Canifest because he was here before the time 'Canifest was knocked off. "

Maurice Bohun began to laugh; a thin, malicious laughter that convulsed his shoulders.

"Quite, Sir Henry," he said. "But I should fancy — in fact I do fancy — that's exactly where your theory comes crashing down. Most interesting! You proclaim the spotless innocence of my brother. You say he did all these things for one express purpose. That purpose had two parts: the first, which I concede you readily, was to shift Marcia's body so that he would not be thought guilty by having it found in his room. But the second part-to lie about the time he had actually arrived home — utterly destroys your whole case. He did not lie about the time he arrived home. In fact, what you have done is to build up a brilliant and almost unanswerable case against my poor brother as the murderer. He arrived at shortly after three o'clock. Just a few minutes afterwards, by medical testimony, Marcia was murdered. Well?"

"Exactly," said H. M. "That's what makes me absolutely certain, son, that he didn't commit the murder."

"What? I do not think, Sir Henry," said Maurice, suddenly checking his rage, "this is precisely the time for talking nonsense. "

"Oh, it ain't nonsense. Just look at it for a minute. Here's a man whose double motive is to prove that he didn't kill Canifest and he didn't kill Tait? Hey? He wants to do the one by makin' his arrival here earlier than it actually was, and the other by movin' the body. H'm. All right. If he really did kill Tait, then he knew when she died: that's not a very far-fetched assumption. Then why the blazes does he want to make the time he says he arrived here so nearly coincide with the time the woman was murdered? — carefully makin' it just a little earlier than she was killed? That's an incredibly fatheaded way of bringin' suspicion back to him, especially as after a car-drive from London a matter of twenty minutes or half-an-hour won't matter so much! Why did he say roughly three o'clock? Why didn't he make it earlier, and provide an alibi for both victims? — You instantly reply, 'Because Thompson heard him come in, and he couldn't lie.' That won't wash. He told his story long before he knew that, by a chance nobody in the world could anticipate, Thompson was awake with the toothache and could check up on him. He told that story deliberately, because…”

"Shall I read you a telegram?" inquired H. M.

"A telegram? What telegram?"

"From Canifest. I got it just before dinner. It's interestin' And this is what it says." H. M. drew the folded paper from his inside pocket. "I asked him, as a matter of fact, what time John Bohun had called on him at his home last night.

`WENT HOME," said Canifest, `JUST AFTER MORNING EDITION OF GLOBE-JOURNAL WENT TO PRESS, PRECISELY TWO FORTY-FIVE A.M. FOUND CALLER IN QUESTION WAITING AT SIDE DOOR AND TOOK HIM TO MY DEN. DO NOT KNOW WHAT TIME HE LEFT DUE TO HEART ATTACK YOU MAY UNDERSTAND, BUT AM CERTAIN NOT EARLIER THAN THREE-THIRTY.' "

H. M. tossed the slip of paper on the table.

"He said three o'clock," snapped H. M., "because he thought it was a safe time to admit he'd arrived here. As a matter of fact he didn't get here until an hour or two afterwards.:'

"But somebody got here!" shouted Willard. "Somebody drove in at ten minutes past three! Who was it?"

"The murderer," said H. M. "He's played in every bit of luck on the globe; he's been shielded by every trick of luck that nature and fate and craziness could invent; he's fooled us in front of our very eyes, but grab him, Masters!"

The voice ripped across the room as somebody flung open the door to the gallery. The door to the staircase banged open at the same time, and Inspector Potter plunged through at the same time that Masters appeared in the other. Masters said with quiet and deadly formality:

"Herbert Timmons Emery, I arrest you for the murder of Marcia Tait and Carl Rainger. I have to warn you that anything"

The lank sandy haired figure stared only for a second before it dodged under the hand that had descended on its shoulder. It whirled a chair at Potter's legs; ducked again, while still crying something, and plunged down the staircase door. Potter caught a piece of a coat and then a leg. He should not have tripped the man up. They heard the cry out of the dark, and then the crash. Then there was silence while a white-faced Potter got up shakily on the landing, and they saw him peering down into the dark.