The Murderer
"Would you like to know who the murderer really is?" asked H.M., looking round our group with calm ferocity.
The wind was blowing the curtains at the French window, and a whirl of rain spattered in; but none of us noticed it. Whether or not he was guilty, I will admit that Serpos never lost his nerve. His long-chinned, blue-chinned face was turned a little sideways: he looked like a parody of himself: but his voice did not raise or waver.
"So I worked in a bank," he said. "And that proves I know good money from bad. That proves I know it inevitably, by smell or sixth sense, even when the forger is so expert as Willoughby. My good friend, I can drive a car. But I cannot take it to pieces and put it back together again. You, my friend, are the head of an Intelligence Department. But this does not of itself presuppose intelligence, as I think has been demonstrated. By the way, is this an accusation?"
H.M. pointed his pencil.
"Oh, that depends. You say you never visited Hogenauer's house. Then how does it happen that a £100 counterfeit note, which never left Willoughby's big bundle until you scooped the lot, was found in Hogenauer's house to-night?"
Serpos opened his mouth, and shut it again. He looked like a man under a net. "It is the first I had heard of it," he replied. "That is, if it is true; which I am inclined to doubt."
"Ever meet Dr. Albert Keppel?"
"Never. I've heard of him. I never met him."
"Then how did it happen that you telephoned to his hotel at one-thirty tonight, and said you were L., and asked whether the party at the other end of the wire — a police inspector — would like to know the truth about the money?"
Very slowly Serpos glanced round the group. His thin chest did not seem so much to heave as to shake. But not a person in our group moved: Stone, in his white suit, was leaning forward, holding to the edge of the desk; Evelyn had her eyes half closed, but she was not leaning forward; and H.M. remained solid as ever.
"He wouldn't dare," said Serpos, abruptly and cryptically. His breath seemed to hurt him. "I do not understand how it is, but you have me answering your questions whether I like or not. This is absurd. I made no telephone call. Who says I did?"
"Dr. Antrim says you did." "Then I deny it."
"Well, let's just test out somethin'," growled H.M. He reached across and picked up the telephone on the desk. "I'm goin' to make a call, or try to. It won't matter much who I ring up, but for the sake of argument let's try the Cabot Hotel at Bristol. Anybody know the number? Never mind. The Exchange will get it if I give the name. Humph. Exchange!"
Jiggling the hook, he bellowed into the mouthpiece after his usual fashion. Usually there is some inner activity about a telephone, like an uneasy stomach. There was none this time.
"Exchange!" howled H.M., letting off steam at something inoffensive. Only the rain answered him. He sat back with an expression which might have been satisfaction. "Uh-huh," he said in a colourless voice. "Have a go at it if you like. But I think you'll find out that the wires have been cut. Very neat. Sergeant, you might hop outside and see."
Into Evelyn's face had come a look as though she saw a theory rent in pieces.
"Then," she said, "then, after all, Antrim couldn't have heard him telephoning-?"
"You've all been very curious about these sheets and what's written on 'em," said H.M., picking up the prescriptionblanks from the desk. "It's now time to see what you all think about who's guilty. Right. Here!" He turned to Stone. "You got the oratorical manner. You read 'em out one by one. Read mine last, as respect due to the old man; but read your own next to last. I think Mr. Serpos is goin' to find it very interesting."
Sergeant Davis had left the door partly open when he went out, and there was a draught between door and window: which may have made the light slips flutter in Stone's hands. Stone adjusted his pince-nez more firmly.
"The first one," he said, "is initialled K.B., so I imagineer-well, it's yours," Stone added non-dramatically, and looked at me. He got a fresh start after the anti-climax. "It reads… by damn!"
"Carry on, son," urged H.M., with evil jocularity.
"It reads this way:
"'The murderer: Henry Bowers.
"The motive: money. We are forced to the conclusion that Paul Hogenauer, with his knowledge of engraving, printing, and inks second to none in the world, had been a member of the Willoughby gang. This was why (as everyone agrees) he went in such fear of the police. When the police were closing in on Willoughby, Hogenauer knew it, and knew that he must run for it out of the country. This is why he needed two thousand pounds, and made a proposition to betray L. falsely. It is a mistake to assume that all the Willoughby money was found at the Willoughby plant. A good part of it must have been at Hogenauer's villa.'
Here Stone paused, and turned over to the other side of the sheet. Stone cleared his throat, and cast an eye towards H.M. before he went on:
"'But Bowers did not know what Hogenauer was doing. Bowers thought that the small sums he had found in the house were real money. He believed Hogenauer to be half mad, and capable of such oversights. Then Bowers came upon a packet of £100 notes, of the same sort as that later found in the newspaper. The sum amounted to a thousand pounds or more, enough to tempt a stronger head than Bowers's. He murdered Hogenauer to get it. And this is proved by the fact that here — before us — Bowers only broke down, and grew hysterical, when he was told that the £100 note was counterfeit. It was to cover himself up that he lied about Hogenauer's large bank-balance, and lied about hearing Antrim's voice in the house.'
"That's all," observed Stone, shaking the slip as though to demonstrate this. "It begins a new sentence, but breaks off"
"You didn't give us a chance to finish," I said to H.M. "Bowers had the best opportunity of all. He was here in the hall of this house and heard Antrim prescribe bromide. He could have come back here in the hired car that night, burgled the house_ "
"Whoa!" said H.M. "Steady, now. We can't go beyond what's written down in the papers. Next case."
Stone had the air of a man opening prize-packages. He took the second slip and exhibited it to everyone.
"This, he explained, "is in a woman's handwriting, so I judge it's Miss Cheyne's. Across the top, heavily underscored, she's got the name, `Elizabeth Antrim.'
"'This case hasn't got anything to do with counterfeit money. She did it. She's been living a dull life in a dull place with a dull G.P., and she's not the lass to stand dullness. She's her father's daughter. Last week she learned that her father was dead and she was heiress to a substantial fortune.
Now she could cut loose. She did it to get rid of her husband. She gave Hogenauer strychnine and then fooled about with the bottles so it would be assumed somebody had switched them. Who? Well, she made those marks on the inside of the window herself, just so Dr. Antrim would fall into the trap and she could prove the marks must have been made inside. And it worked: Also, her going to Hogenauer's apparently to keep him from drinking the poison, was another neat little alibi. She's like that. I know this is true.
Stone put down the paper with indulgence, but he clucked his tongue.
"I know it's true, too," Evelyn announced fiercely. "You're all going star-gazing after the most horribly complicated reasons and actions-people coming in and out of windows or playing sleight-of-hand tricks with bottles. The plain truth is that there wasn't either a change of bottles or a burglar. And I defy you to answer me."
"Still — " muttered H.M. The invisible fly had come back to bother him again. "It's the simplest solution, granted. But in that case, what becomes of Bower's story that somebody visited Hogenauer behind a locked door, and that Hogenauer kept addressin' the person as `Antrim'? Do you think that it was really Mrs. Antrim, and that Hogenauer was a kind of sinister Man in the Case? Wow! Poor old Hogenauer in a crime of passion don't seem easy in his role. Or do you agree half-and-half with Ken, and say that Mrs. A. bribed Bowers to say that her husband was there?"
"H'm," murmured Evelyn thoughtfully.
H.M. shook his head. "I told you that whichever way you looked at it, the motivation was goin' to be weak. According to this, Mrs. A. is bored with her husband. So she up and kills somebody else, hopin' that the husband will hang; she commits a double murder whose only certain victim is somebody who has nothin' to do with her. No, no, wench; it's too roundabout. I don't deny husbands and wives have killed each other. But, if they've got to that point of marital asphyxiation, they're burnin' far too much with impatience to be anything else than simple and direct. Unless you can produce a reason why Hogenauer was dragged into this at all, it won't do… We've got two opposites. Your solution is sound on mechanics, but weak on motive. Ken's solution is sound on motive, but weak on mechanics. Or is it? I say, Ken: if Bowers did the dirty work, how did he do it?"
I reflected.
"As a suggestion, Bowers knew Hogenauer had been given a small bottle of bromide. He drove back here in the hired car, after he had deposited Hogenauer at home, in order to pinch some poison — any poison — to doctor the bromide. He got in through the window"
H.M. opened his eyes. "The surgery window? Then it was actually broken outside, accordin' to you? But, here! As Antrim himself pointed out, why does an outsider choose that window when it'd be much simpler to crack the French one?"
Here was a point which (to my simple mind, in any case) seemed to have been too much muddled with mere words. I said:
"Because he was an outsider. Because he didn't know anything about the house. How should he know anything about the house, or what windows were apt to stick? He walked round the house: and there was a window. He opened the catch from outside with a knife and broke the catch. As for the scratches on the window-sill, which everybody seems to think were made from inside — why shouldn't they have been made from inside? Why shouldn't they have been made when the burglar climbed out?
"Right you are, then. He climbs in. He's looking for a poison, any poison. He finds strychnine neatly labelled. I don't suppose Bowers is a chemist, but anybody knows what strychnine is. He notes that it's the same white powdery stuff as the bromide. So he conceives the idea of substituting it for the stuff Hogenauer has taken away, and pretending it came from here. There's Antrim's bromide container on the shelf in front of Bowers, with a quarter of an ounce gone. So he fills it up with a quarter of an ounce of?'
"Ahhh! Of what? If he didn't come prepared, with what?"
"What about ammonium bromide? Same crystals, and there's bound to be a bottle of it in here. What about common table salt, even? I've got an idea," said the Compleat Detective, "that an analysis of that container would have interesting results."
"Rubbish!" said Evelyn.
All the same, she looked impressed. H.M. continued to tap his pencil on the head of the skull, with a steady ticking which was beginning to get on my nerves. I know it must have been getting on Serpos's nerves. Since Stone had begun to read those papers, Serpos had not said a word. The whisky was wearing off; his nerves were as raw as the blue stubble on his chin; his long collarless neck gave him the look of a clerical dinosaur; and his eyes had begun to water. From the second I had spoken I knew he had recognized me, and he was watching.
Tap, tap, tap went H.M.'s pencil sleepily, tap, tap, tap.
The rain was slackening, and you could hear it distinctly. "Next case," said H.M.
"I refuse to read it," snapped Stone. "Refuse to read it? Here! Why?"
"Because it's an outrage," retorted Stone. He got up on his stubby legs with the paper held behind him and his arm crooked; from lack of sleep and the strain, he was a trifle pale. "Because it's an outrage, that's why. Because it practically accuses me"
"Of murder, son?"
"Eh? Oh, hell, no! You didn't think-?" Stone stopped. "No. But it practically says my story about L. being dead is a lie; that L. isn't dead; that L. committed these murders after all… "
"And what do you think yourself?" asked H.M. gently.
Tap, tap, tap on the polished skull, tap, tap, tap.
When Stone took off his pince-nez, it gave his eyes a bleary and caved-in expression, and showed the red mark across the bridge of his nose. He rubbed his eyes, and then replaced the glasses. He did. not look at his own slip of paper. But he went round the desk behind H.M., circled entirely around the desk, and stopped before Serpos's chair. His grimy white suit looked as dingy as the dawn that was coming through the windows, and as our own bedraggled appearances against it. But he stopped before Serpos's chair, and two clever men faced each other.
"I think that's your man," Stone said.
"Do you, now?" inquired Serpos, studying him.
"I wrote it down a while ago," Stone went on, "and, when this young fellow said a certain thing, I got a hunch that I knew was true. That was why I asked you if I could add something to my explanation; get me? I won't read it to you. I'll tell it to you.
"I'm from the States. Willoughby's in my line. I'd heard of Cash-Down Willoughby. I never ran across him. But, when this young fellow said something about his habits with money, I remembered something else. I remembered a counterfeiter by the name of Shell Fields, who used to operate in the Middle West about sixty years ago. He ran a counterfeiting plant. He had a gang to shove the queer for him. He didn't trust 'em. He liked to keep money on tap. And so he doped out a scheme to do it — so his own gang would never know where he kept his money — so the police themselves wouldn't, if they nabbed him. He hid his money in a place where nobody on God's green earth would ever look for it,
He hid it in his own counterfeiting plant.
"See?" asked Stone, with a sort of toiling lucidity. "Like that old Poe thing; what's-its-name? The most obvious place. Money stacked up against the wall, open to view in a counterfeiter's hang-out..’
"He'd take a bundle of twenty-dollar bills, maybe. Or fifty-dollar bills. Twenty in a bundle, with a band around them. The first three would be counterfeits on each side of the bundle, like a sandwich. Nobody would look further, after seeing they were rotten counterfeits. And inside the sandwich there'd be fourteen real honest-to-God bills. That's what Willoughby did right here in England. And you were the only one who saw through it."
For the first time Serpos's expression began to change. It may have been the effect of the muddy dawn on his face, but I do not think it was altogether that. Stone spoke with the same toiling lucidity, now fast and eager. The light of the lamp over the desk seemed even more uncannily bright on his face, on all our faces, when Stone turned towards H.M.
"No, I'm a liar," Stone said. "You saw through it, too. That was why you asked him He'd have known it was counterfeit money. He wouldn't have stolen it unless it was real. He thought it was real. But he had to be sure. So friend Serpos, he just makes sure. Great-goddelmighty, I can see everything! He takes specimens of all of it, he sneaks them out of the safe, and takes them to the great authority on the stuff-Hogenauer. Hogenauer tells him it's genuine. But Hogenauer won't take a cut of the profits and keep his mouth shut. Hogenauer's too honest. Hogenauer's been like a cat on hot bricks for fear the police will throw him out of the country. So Hogenauer's going to get in the good graces of l the police by telling the truth about this `counterfeit' stuff, the stuff the police think is counterfeit " Stone stopped, as though in a mighty uplift of understanding. "And that's why," he added, "friend Serpos has got to kill him."
Against the noise of the dying rain, we were aware of a new sound: which was silence. H.M. had ceased to tap his pencil on the skull. Stone turned towards him. Also we became aware-which Stone seemed to sense as well-that all through the night H.M. had been managing dark affairs after his own fashion. And now he had ceased to tap on the skull.
"You agree with me," said Stone, "don't you?"
"Me?" said H.M. He' scowled and seemed to wake from dozing. "Oh yes. More or less. I mean, I agree with you all except on one point."
Here Serpos (as though on a spring) got up from his chair. He pushed his hands out in front of him, and sheer exhaustion made his speech incoherent. "You can never say I did it," he insisted. "Nobody is going to say I did it. It's not true. You fools, you colossal fools, don't you see who really did do it? I'll tell. I don't care. I — "
Somewhere in the quiet house heavy feet were banging and pounding, drawing nearer as though with a message. The door to the hall opened; the combination of dingy daylight and bright lamplight made an ineffectual mask of Sergeant Davis's face.
"Sir" he said, and breathed with his tongue between his teeth as though he had bitten it. "Sir, there's something wrong. There-"
"Is there, son?" rumbled H.M. quietly. "Take it easy, now."
"It's Colonel Charters, sir. The-the maid — I don't know — the maid tells me he got into the car — and drove away hell-for-leather over half an hour ago — with Mrs. Charters and certain things "
It was Evelyn who pounced on the desk and picked up the sheet scrawled in blue penciling with H.M.'s hand. I think, although I am not sure of it, that she read it aloud; but the words seem before my mind in print rather than in voice.
"'You're the murderer, Charters,' that writing seemed to echo; `and I'm letting you read this because you won't take a hint and because I want you to get away. They say poisoning is the meanest and lowest crime in the sight of the law; but, God help me, Charters, I can't do it to an old friend. Don't you see, they'll all be on to you to-morrow morning as soon as they've had a chance to look at that "counterfeit" money that only yourself has handled so far? I can't stop them. But I can give you an hour to get clear if you go now; and if you cut the 'phone wires and disable the cars you'll have more. Besides, you're not so bad, Charters. You wouldn't fasten the crime on living people, who could suffer, when it would have been easy. You only swore it was a dead man. Worse things have been done. Worse things will be done again. H.M.'
The rain had ceased. In the weird and changing lights, a faint flicker of sunlight came up over the sea and began to sweep the cobwebs out of the room. We could even hear the drag and murmur of the surf. H.M. sat with his hand shading his eyes; and even when we spoke to him he did not take it away.
"He's a clever man," said H.M. "I hope, and I believe, that he'll get away."