The Hand in the Dark
to adopt. I will go over the case in detail, and then you will see for
yourself the conclusions I have formed, and understand how I have
arrived at them.
"In the first place, the greatest problem of this murder is the apparent
lack of motive. There seems to be no reason why this young lady should
have been killed. She had only recently been married, and, apparently,
married happily, to a wealthy young man of good family, who was very
much in love with her. It is obvious that money difficulties have
nothing to do with the crime. Her husband is the only son of a wealthy
father, and he is able to give his wife everything that a woman needs
for her happiness and comfort. She is cherished, petted, and loved, and
has a beautiful home. Who, therefore, had an object in putting an end to
this young woman's life in her own home, in circumstances and conditions
attended with the utmost possibility of discovery and capture? The
perpetrator of the deed must have acted from some very strong motive or
impulse to venture into a country-house full of people, at a time when
everybody was indoors, in order to kill his victim.
"In a seemingly purposeless murder like this, a certain amount of
suspicion gathers round the other members of the household. Human nature
being what it is, one should never take anything for granted, but should
always be on the watch for hidden motives. But in this case the members
of the household, with the exception of Miss Heredith, were downstairs
in the dining-room at the time the murder was committed. Miss Heredith
left the room a few minutes before the shot was heard. You will recall
that she volunteered that statement to us this morning. It occurred to
me at the time that that may have been bluff to put us off the scent.
Clever criminals often do that kind of thing. My suspicions against her
were strengthened by the additional fact that Miss Heredith did not like
her nephew's wife. She masked the fact beneath a well-bred semblance of
grief and horror, but it was plain as a pikestaff to me. But, after
thinking over all the circumstances, I came to the conclusion that she
had nothing whatever to do with it."
"Such a possibility is inconceivable," exclaimed Captain Stanhill. "A
lady like Miss Heredith would never commit murder."
"It was not for that reason that I excluded her from suspicion," replied
Merrington drily. "The points against her were really very damaging. She
was out of the dining-room when the scream was heard, and when the
others rushed out of the dining-room on hearing the shot, the first
thing they saw was Miss Heredith descending the staircase of the wing in
which her nephew's wife had been murdered. Fortunately for Miss
Heredith, she was almost at the bottom of the staircase when she was
seen. The guests streamed out of the dining-room directly the shot was
heard, therefore it is impossible that Miss Heredith could have shot
Violet Heredith and then reached the bottom of the stairs so quickly.
She is able to establish an alibi of time, by, perhaps, half a minute.
"As all the members of the house party were in the dining-room at the
time, it is clear that they had nothing to do with the actual commission
of the crime. The next thing is the servants, and they also can be
excluded from suspicion. When we examined them this morning they were
all able to prove, more or less conclusively, that they were engaged in
their various duties at the time the murder was committed. The point is
that not one of them was upstairs in the left wing of the house when
Mrs. Heredith was shot.
"My original impression that the murder was not committed by a native of
the district has been deepened by our afternoon's investigations. Where,
then, are we to look for the murderer? To answer that question, in part,
let us first consider _how_ the murder was committed, and try and
reconstruct the circumstances in which the murderer must have entered
and left the house.
"Caldew thinks that the murderer entered the house by scaling the
bedroom window, and made his exit by the same means. He bases that view
on Miss Heredith's belief that the window was closed when she was in the
bedroom before dinner. After the murder was committed the window was
found open. But Miss Heredith's statement about the closed window does
not amount to very much. She does not actually know whether the window
was open or shut, because the window curtains were completely drawn at
the time she was in the room. Those curtains are so thick and heavy that
they would keep out the air whether the window was open or shut, and
account for the stuffy atmosphere in a room which had been occupied all
day.
"I do not regard the open window as a clue one way or the other. The one
thing we must not lose sight of is that nobody can say definitely when
it was opened. It may have been opened by Mrs. Heredith herself before
Miss Heredith came into the room, or the murderer may have flung it open
and escaped from the room that way after committing the murder.
Personally, I do not think that he did, but I am not prepared altogether
to exclude the possibility of his having done so. But I am convinced
that he did not enter the bedroom by scaling the outside wall and
getting in through the window. In the first place, there are no marks of
any kind on the window sill or the window catch. There is not very much
one way or another in the absence of marks on the sill or even on the
catch, supposing the window was locked. The murderer might have opened
the catch from outside without leaving a mark--I have known the trick to
be done--and he might have got into the room without leaving any marks
on the sill, particularly if he wore rubber boots. But, what is far more
important, there are no marks on the wall outside, or any disturbance or
displacement of the Virginia creeper which covers a portion of the wall,
to suggest that the murderer climbed up to the room that way. I think it
is certain that if he had done so he would have left his marks on the
one or the other. The wall is of a soft old brickwork which would
scratch and show marks plainly, and the Virginia creeper would break
away. In any case, as I said this morning, it would barely sustain the
weight of a boy, or a very slight girl. Finally, there are no marks of
footsteps approaching the wall in the garden outside.
"The question of entry is naturally of great importance, and that was
why I questioned the butler this morning whether the blinds were drawn
in the dining-room last night. At that time, before I had had an
opportunity of making my subsequent investigations, I deemed it possible
that the murderer might have entered from outside by the window. In that
case he would have had to pass the dining-room windows to reach the
bedroom window, and might have been seen by one of the guests in the
dining-room. It would be dark at the time, but last night was a very
clear one, and his form might have been discerned flitting past the
dining-room windows. But the absence of footprints in the gravel, and
more particularly, in the soft yielding earth beneath the bedroom
window, is conclusive proof to me that he did not get into the room that
way.
"Did he escape by the window? That question is more difficult to answer.
It is quite possible that it might have been done without injury, but it
is a desperate feat to leap from an upstairs window in the dark. The
murderer was in desperate straits, and for that reason we must not rule
out the possibility that he did so. But if the leap was made through the
window, my argument about the absence of footprints in the soft garden
soil underneath the window comes in with additional force. A person
leaping from such a height, even in stocking feet or rubber boots, would
be certain to leave the impress of the drop, in footmarks or heelmarks,
in the soil where he landed.
"Caldew's principal reason for believing that the murderer escaped by
the window was based on the point that there was no other avenue of
escape possible. We can only speculate as to what happened in the
bedroom immediately before the murder was committed, but Caldew's theory
is that Mrs. Heredith saw the murderer approaching her, and screamed for
help. That scream hurried the murderer's movements. The scream was sure
to arouse the household, and it left the murderer with the smallest
possible margin of time in which to shoot Mrs. Heredith and make escape
by the window. An attempt to escape down the front staircase meant
running into the arms of the inmates of the dining-room rushing
upstairs. The only other exit from that wing of the house was the
disused back staircase, and that was found locked when it was searched
after the murder. Therefore, according to Caldew, the murderer escaped
by the window because there was no other way out.
"That theory is plausible enough on the surface, but only on the
surface. For the same reason that establishes Miss Heredith's innocence,
the murderer could not have escaped by running down the staircase,
because there was not sufficient time to get past the people who had
been alarmed by the scream. But if the murderer was a man, it is just
possible that he might have darted out of the bedroom and dropped over
the balusters, before the dining-room door was opened, getting clear
away without being seen by anybody--not even by Miss Heredith. An
examination of the staircase of the left wing has convinced me that this
feat was possible. The staircase has a very sharp turn in the middle,
which has the effect of hiding the top of the staircase from the bottom,
and the bottom from the top. The leap is not so dangerous as the one
from the window, because it is not so high. It is probably six feet
less, allowing for the flooring beneath and the higher window opening
above. The spot by the foot of the staircase where the murderer might
have dropped is well screened, even from the view of anybody near the
bottom of the staircase, by some tall tree shrubs in tubs, and some
armour.
"But there is another and likelier way by which the murderer might have
escaped. I saw the possibility of it as soon as I examined the upstairs
portion of the wing in which the murder had been committed. There are
several places where the murderer could have hidden until chance
afforded the opportunity of escape. He would avoid seeking shelter in
any of the adjoining bedrooms, because he would realize that they would
be searched immediately the murder was discovered, but there are
excellent temporary places of concealment behind the tapestry hangings,
or in the thick folds of the heavy velvet curtains at the entrance to
the corridor, or in the small press or wardrobe which is built right
over the head of the stairs. Suppose that the murderer, after firing the
shot, dashed out into the corridor with the idea of escaping down the
stairs. He hears the guests coming upstairs, and realizes that he is too
late. He instinctively looks round for some place to hide, sees the
curtains, and slips behind them. From their folds he watches the guests
troop along the corridor to the murdered woman's bedroom. He could touch
them as they passed, but they cannot see him. Then, while they are all
congregated round the doorway of Mrs. Heredith's bedroom, he emerges on
the other side of the curtains, slips down the staircase, and gets out
of the house without meeting anybody."
"But all the guests did not go upstairs," observed Captain Stanhill, who
was following his companion's remarks with close attention. "Some stayed
in the dining-room. Tufnell, the butler, made that quite clear when you
were examining him this morning."
"Yes--a few hysterical females cowering and whimpering with fear as far
away from the door as possible," retorted Merrington contemptuously.
"The butler made that clear also."