‘Thank you.’
The next witness was Miss Leila Garland, who confirmed the evidence of Mrs Lefranc with respect to the cipher letters. This naturally led to an inquiry into the relations between Miss Garland and Mr Alexis, from which it transpired that their acquaintance had been conducted on a footing of rigid, and even Victorian, propriety; that Mr Alexis had been terribly distressed when Miss Garland had put an end to the friendship; that Mr Alexis was not by any means a likely person to commit suicide; that (on the other hand) Miss Garland had been terribly upset to think of his having done anything rash on her account; that Miss Garland had never heard of anybody called Feodora, but did not, of course, know what follies Mr Alexis might not have committed in a despairing mood after the termination of their friendship; that Miss Garland had not so much as set eyes on Mr Alexis for ever so long and could not imagine why anybody should think this terrible business had anything to do with her. With regard to the letters, Miss Garland had thought that Mr Alexis was being blackmailed, but could produce no evidence to prove this.
It now became obvious that nothing on earth could keep Mrs Weldon out of the witness-box. Attired in near-widow’s weeds, she indignantly protested against the suggestion that Alexis could possibly have made away with himself on Leila’s account, or on any account whatever. She knew better than anybody that Alexis had had no genuine attachment to anyone but herself. She admitted that she could not explain the presence of the portrait signed ‘Feodora’, but asserted vehemently that, up to the last day of his life, Alexis had been radiant with happiness. She had last seen him on the Wednesday night, and had expected to see him again on the Thursday morning at the Winter Gardens. He had not arrived there, and she was perfectly sure that he must have been lured away to his death by some designing person. He had often said that he was afraid of Bolshevik plots, and in her opinion, the police ought to look for Bolsheviks.
This outburst produced some effect upon the jury, one of whom rose to inquire whether the police were taking any steps to comb out suspicious looking foreigners residing in, or hanging about, the vicinity. He himself had observed a number of disagreeable-looking tramps on the road. He also noticed with pain that at the very hotel where Alexis had worked, a Frenchman was employed as a professional dancer, and that there were also a number of foreigners in the orchestra at the Winter Gardens. The dead man was also a foreigner. He did not see that naturalisation papers made any difference. With two million British-born workers unemployed, he thought it a scandalous thing that this foreign riff-raff was allowed to land at all. He spoke as an Empire Free-Trader and member of the Public Health Committee.
Mr Pollock was then called. He admitted having been in the neighbourhood of the Grinders reef with his boat at about two o’clock on the day of the death, but insisted that he had been out in deep water and had seen nothing previous to Harriet’s arrival on the scene. He was not looking in that direction; he had his own business to attend to. As to the nature of that business he remained evasive, but nothing could shake his obstinate assertion of complete ignorance. His grandson Jem (having now returned from Ireland) briefly confirmed this evidence, but added that he himself had surveyed the shore with a glass at, he thought, about 1.45. He had then seen someone on the Flat-Iron rock, either sitting or lying down, but whether dead or alive he could not say.
The last witness was William Bright, who told the story about the razor in almost exactly the same terms that he had used to Wimsey and the police. The coroner, glancing at a note handed up to him by Umpelty, allowed him to finish what he had to say, and then asked:
‘You say this happened at midnight on Tuesday, 16 June?’
‘Just after midnight. I heard the clock strike shortly before this man came up to me.’
‘How was the tide at the time?’
For the first time, Bright faltered. He glanced about him as though he suspected a trap, licked his lips nervously, and replied:
‘I know nothing about tides. I don’t belong to this part of the country.’
‘But you mentioned, in your very moving account of this interview, the noise made by the sea lapping against the wall of the Esplanade. That suggests, does it not, that the tide was then full?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Would you be surprised to learn that at midnight on the 16th of this month the tide was actually at the lowest point of the ebb?’
‘I may have sat there longer than I thought.’
‘Did you sit there for six hours?’
No answer.
‘Would it surprise you to know that the sea never comes up to the wall of the Esplanade except at the top of the spring tides which, on that particular date, would occur at about six o’clock in the evening?’
‘I can only say that I must have been mistaken. You must allow for the effects of a morbid imagination.’
‘You still say that the interview took place at midnight?’
‘Yes; I am confident about that.’
The coroner dismissed Mr Bright with a warning to be more careful with statements he made in court, and recalled Inspector Umpelty with an inquiry into Bright’s movements and character.
He then summed up the evidence. He did not attempt to disguise his own opinion, which was that deceased had taken his own life. (Incoherent protest from Mrs Weldon.) As to why he should have done so, it was not the jury’s business to speculate. Various motives had been suggested, and the jury must bear in mind that deceased was a Russian by birth, and therefore excitable, and liable to be overcome by feelings of melancholy and despair. He himself had read a great deal of Russian literature and could assure the jury that suicide was of frequent occurrence among the members of that unhappy nation. We who enjoyed the blessing of being British might find that difficult to understand, but the jury could take it from him that it was so. They had before them clear evidence of how the razor came into the hands of Alexis, and he thought they need not lay too much stress on Bright’s error about the tide. Since Alexis did not shave, what could he have needed a razor for, unless to commit suicide? He (the coroner) would, however, be perfectly fair and enumerate the one or two points which seemed to throw doubt on the hypothesis of suicide. There was the fact that Alexis had taken a return-ticket. There was the passport. There was the belt full of gold. They might perhaps think that the deceased had contemplated fleeing the country. Even so, was it not likely that he had lost heart at the last moment and taken the shortest way out of the country and out of life itself? There was the odd circumstance that the deceased had apparently committed suicide in gloves, but suicides were notoriously odd. And there was, of course, the evidence of Mrs Weldon (for whom they must all feel the deepest sympathy) as to the deceased’s state of mind; but this was contradicted by the evidence of William Bright and Mrs Lefranc.
In short, here was a man of Russian birth and temperament, troubled by emotional entanglements and by the receipt of mysterious letters, and obviously in an unstable condition of mind. He had wound up his worldly affairs and procured a razor. He had been found in a lonely spot, to which he had obviously proceeded unaccompanied, and had been found dead, with the fatal weapon lying close under his hand. There were no footprints upon the sand but his own, and the person who had discovered the body had come upon it so closely after the time of the death as to preclude the possibility of any murderer having escaped from the scene of the crime by way of the shore. The witness Pollock had sworn that he was out in deep water at the time when the death occurred, and had seen no other boat in the neighbourhood, and his evidence was supported by that of Miss Vane. Further, there was no evidence that anybody had the slightest motive for doing away with the deceased, unless the jury chose to pay attention to the vague suggestions about blackmailers and Bolsheviks, which there was not an atom of testimony to support.
Wimsey grinned at Umpelty over this convenient summary, with its useful suppressions and assumptions. No mention of clefts in the rock or of horseshoes or of the disposal of Mrs Wel
don’s money. The jury whispered together. There was a pause. Harriet looked at Henry Weldon. He was frowning heavily and paying no attention to his mother, who was talking excitedly into his ear.
Presently the foreman rose to his feet – a stout person, who looked like a farmer.
‘We’re all agreed, for certain sure,’ he said, ‘as deceased come to his death by cutting of his throat, and most of us thinks he took his own life; but there’s some’ (he glared at the Empire Free-Trader) ‘who will have it as it was Bolsheviks.’
‘A majority verdict is sufficient,’ said the coroner, ‘Am I to understand that the majority is for suicide?’
‘Yes, sir. I told you so, Jim Cobbley,’ added the foreman, in a penetrating whisper.
‘Then your verdict is that deceased came to his end by cutting his own throat.’
‘Yes, sir.’ (A further consultation.) ‘We should like to add as we think the police regulations about foreigners did ought to be tightened up, like, deceased being a foreigner and suicides and murders being unpleasant in a place where so many visitors come in the summer.’
‘I can’t take that,’ objected the harassed coroner. ‘Deceased was a naturalised Englishman.’
‘That don’t make no difference,’ said the juror, sturdily. ‘We do think as the regulations ought to be tightened up none the more for that, and that’s what we all say. Put it down, sir, as that’s our opinion.’
‘There you are,’ said Wimsey, ‘that’s the breed that made the Empire. When empire comes in at the door, logic goes out at the window. Well, I suppose that’s all. I say, Inspector.’
‘My lord?’
‘What are you doing with that scrap of paper?’
‘I don’t quite know, my lord. Do you think there’s anything to be made of it?’
‘Yes; send it up to Scotland Yard and ask them to get the photographic experts on to it. You can do a lot with coloured screens. Get hold of Chief Inspector Parker – he’ll see that it’s put into the right hands.’
The Inspector nodded.
‘We’ll do that. It’s my belief there’s something for us in that bit of paper, if we could only get at it. I don’t know when I’ve seen a queerer business than this. It looks just about as clear a case of suicide as you could wish, if it wasn’t for one or two things. And yet, when you look into those things separately, they seem to melt away, like. There’s that Bright. I thought we’d got him on one point, anyhow. But there! I’ve noticed that these landsmen, nine times out of ten, haven’t the least notion whether the tide’s in or out or where it is. I think he was lying; so do you – but you couldn’t expect a jury to hang a man for murder on the ground that he didn’t know High Water from Low Water. We’ll try to keep an eye on the fellow, but I don’t see how we’re going to detain him. The verdict’s suicide (which suits us well enough in a way), and if Bright wants to move on, we can’t stop him. Not unless we offer to pay for his board and lodging for an indefinite period, and that wouldn’t suit the rate-payers. He’s got no settled address, and seeing what his business is, we can’t hardly expect it. We’ll get out a general call to have him kept under observation, but that’s about all we can do. And of course, he’ll change his name again.’
‘Isn’t he on the dole?’
‘No.’ The Inspector snorted. ‘Says he’s got an independent spirit. That’s a suspicious circumstance in itself, I should say. Besides – he’ll be claiming this reward from the Morning Star and won’t need any dole for a bit. But we can’t force him to stay in Wilvercombe at his own expense, reward or no reward.’
‘Get hold of Mr Hardy, and see if the paper can’t hold the reward up a bit. Then, if he doesn’t turn up to claim it, we’ll know for a certainty that there’s something wrong with him. A contempt for money, Inspector, is the root – or at any rate, the very definite sign – of all evil.’
The Inspector grinned.
‘You and me think alike, my lord. There’s something fishy about a bloke that doesn’t take all he can get. Right you are. I’ll speak to Mr Hardy. And I’ll try and fix up with Bright to hang on here a couple of days. If he’s up to anything queer, he won’t try to bolt for fear of looking suspicious.’
‘It’ll look much more suspicious if he consents to stay.’
‘Yes, my lord – but he won’t reason that way. He won’t want to make trouble. He’ll stay for a bit, I daresay. Fact is, I was thinking, if we could pull him in over some other little matter . . . I don’t know, but he’s a slippery looking customer, and I shouldn’t wonder but what we might find some excuse or other to detain him on.’ He winked.
‘Framing him, Inspector?’
‘Good lord, no, my lord. Can’t do that, in this country. But there’s lots of little things a man may do in the way of breaking the law. There’s street-betting, and drunk and disorderly, and buying stuff after closing-hours and so on – little odds-and-ends that come in handy at times.’
‘My conscience!’ said Wimsey. ‘First time I’ve heard a good word for Dora! Well, I must be getting along. Hullo, Weldon! I didn’t know you were there.’
‘Funny business, all this.’ Mr Weldon waved his hand vaguely. ‘Lot of silly stuff people do talk, eh? You’d think the whole thing was plain as pie, but here’s my mother still talking about Bolsheviks. Take more than a coroner’s verdict to keep her quiet. Women! You can talk yourself black in the face reasoning with ’em and all they do is to go on bleating the same silly nonsense. You can’t take any account of what they say, can you?’
‘They’re not all alike.’
‘So they say. But that’s all part of this equality nonsense. Now, take Miss Vane. Nice girl, and all that, and decent-looking when she takes the trouble to put her clothes on –’
‘What about Miss Vane?’ demanded Wimsey, sharply. Then he thought: ‘Damn being in love! I’m losing my lightness of touch.’ Weldon merely grinned.
‘No offence,’ he said. ‘I only meant – take that evidence of hers. How’s a girl like that to be expected to know about blood and all that – see what I mean? Women always get that idea of blood running about all over the place. Always reading novels. “Wallowing in gore.” That kind of stuff. No good trying to persuade ’em. They see what they think they ought to see. Get me?’
‘You seem to have studied feminine psychology,’ said Wimsey, gravely.
‘Oh, I know women pretty well,’ said Mr Weldon, with solemn satisfaction.
‘You mean,’ went on Wimsey, ‘that they think in clichés.’
‘Eh?’
‘Formulae. “There’s nothing like a mother’s instinct.” “Dogs and children always know.” “Kind hearts are more than coronets.” “Suffering refines the character” – that sort of guff, despite all evidence to the contrary.’
‘Ye-es,’ replied Mr Weldon. ‘What I mean is, you know, they think a thing ought to be so, and so they say it is so.’
‘Yes; I grasped that that was what you meant.’ Wimsey thought that if ever human being had the air of repeating a formula without a clear idea of its meaning, Mr Weldon was that human being; yet he pronounced the magic words with a kind of pride, taking credit to himself for a discovery.
‘What you really mean,’ went on Wimsey, ‘is, I take it, that we can’t rely on Miss Vane’s evidence at all? You say: She hears a shriek, she finds a man with his throat cut and a razor beside him; it looks as though he’d that moment committed suicide, therefore she takes it for granted that he has that moment committed suicide. In that case the blood ought to be still flowing. Therefore she persuades herself that it was still flowing. Is that it?’
‘That’s it,’ said Mr Weldon.
‘Therefore the jury bring in a verdict of suicide. But you and I, who know all about women, know that the evidence about the blood was probably wrong, and that therefore it may quite well have been murder. Is that it?’
‘Oh, no – I don’t mean that,’ protested Mr Weldon. ‘I feel perfectly certain it was suicide.’
; ‘Then what are you grumbling at? It seems so obvious. If the man was murdered after two o’clock, Miss Vane would have seen the murderer. She didn’t see the murderer. Therefore it was suicide. The proof of the suicide really depends on Miss Vane’s evidence, which shows that the man died after two o’clock. Doesn’t it?’
Mr Weldon grappled for some moments with this surprising piece of logic, but failed to detect either the petitio elenchi, the undistributed middle or the inaccurate major premiss which is contrived to combine. His face cleared.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Yes. I see that. Obviously it must have been suicide, and Miss Vane’s evidence proves that it was. So she must be right after all.’
This was a syllogistic monstrosity even worse than the last, thought Wimsey. A man who could reason like that could not reason at all. He constructed a new syllogism for himself.
The man who committed this murder was not a fool.
Weldon is a fool.
Therefore Weldon did not commit this murder.
That appeared to be sound, so far as it went. But what was Weldon bothering about, in that case? One could only suppose that he was worried over having no perfect alibi for two o’clock. And indeed that was worrying Wimsey himself. All the best murderers have alibis for the time of the murder.
Then, suddenly, illumination came flooding, stabbing across the dark places of his mind like a searchlight. And, good God! if this was the true solution, Weldon was anything but a fool. He was one of the subtlest criminals a detective had ever encountered. Wimsey studied Weldon’s obstinate profile – was it possible? Yes, it was possible – and the scheme might quite well have been successful, if only Harriet Vane had not turned up with her evidence.
Work it out this way; see how it looked. Weldon had murdered Alexis at the Flat-Iron at two o’clock. He had had the mare tethered ready somewhere, and, after leaving the Feathers at 1.30, he had gone down the Lane and got to horse without a moment’s delay. Then he must have ridden hell-for-leather. Suppose he had somehow managed to do four miles in twenty-five minutes. That would leave him half a mile from the Flat-Iron at two o’clock. No, that would not do. Strain it a little farther. Let him start from Hinks’s Lane at 1.32 and let him wallop a steady nine miles an hour out of the mare – that would almost do it. Let him, in any case, be within five minutes’ quick walk of the rock at 1.55. Then what? He sends the mare home. Five minutes before Harriet woke, he could send the bay mare galloping back along the sands. Then he walks. He reaches the Flat-Iron at two o’clock. He kills. He hears Harriet coming. He hides in the cleft of the rock. And meanwhile, the bay mare has either run home, or, possibly, has reached the lane by the cottages and run up it, or –