The magic casket
like to find out who that someone is. So we begin by ascertaining
where any possible persons may have been at a quarter to nine this
evening.”
Ponting smiled like an infuriated cat.
“So you think me a possible person, do you?” said he.
“Everyone is a possible person,” Miller replied blandly, “especially
when he is known to have uttered threats.”
The reply sobered Ponting considerably. For a few moments he sat,
looking reflectively at the superintendent; then, in comparatively
quiet tones, he said:
“I have been working here since six o’clock. You can see the stuff for
yourself, and I can prove that it has been written since six.”
The superintendent nodded, but made no comment, and Ponting gazed at
him fixedly, evidently thinking hard. Suddenly he broke into a harsh
laugh.
“What is the joke?” Miller inquired stolidly.
“The joke is that I have got another alibi--a very complete one. There
are compensations in every evil. I told you I had been interrupted in
my work already this evening. It was those fools next door, the
Barnetts--cousins of mine. They are musicians, save the mark! Variety
stage, you know. Funny songs and jokes for mental defectives. Well,
they practise their infernal ditties in their rooms, and the row comes
into mine, and an accursed nuisance it is. However, they have agreed
not to practise on Thursdays and Fridays--my busy nights--and usually
they don’t. But to-night, just as I was in the thick of my writing, I
suddenly heard the most unholy din; that idiot, Fred Barnett, bawling
one of his imbecile songs--‘When the pigs their wings have folded,’
and balderdash of that sort--and the other donkey accompanying him on
the clarinet, if you please! I stuck it for a minute or two. Then I
rushed round to their flat and raised Cain with the bell and knocker.
Mrs. Fred opened the door, and I told her what I thought of it. Of
course she was very apologetic, said they had forgotten that it was
Thursday and promised that she would make her husband stop. And I
suppose she did, for by the time I got back to my rooms the row had
ceased. I could have punched the whole lot of them into a jelly, but
it was all for the best as it turns out.”
“What time was it when you went round there?” asked Miller.
“About five minutes past nine,” replied Ponting. “The church bell had
struck nine when the row began.”
“Hm!” grunted Miller, glancing at Thorndyke. “Well, that is all we
wanted to know, so we need not keep you from your work any longer.”
He rose, and being let out with great alacrity, stumped down the
stairs, followed by Thorndyke and me. As we came out into the street,
he turned to us with a deeply disappointed expression.
“Well,” he exclaimed, “this is a suck in. I was in hopes that we had
pounced on our quarry before he had got time to clear away the traces.
And now we’ve got it all to do. You can’t get round an alibi of that
sort.”
I glanced at Thorndyke to see how he was taking this unexpected check.
He was evidently puzzled, and I could see by the expression of
concentration in his face that he was trying over the facts and
inferences in new combinations to meet this new position. Probably he
had noticed, as I had, that Ponting was wearing a tweed suit, and that
therefore the shreds of clothing from the fence could not be his
unless he had changed. But the alibi put him definitely out of the
picture, and, as Miller had said, we now had nothing to give us a
lead.
Suddenly Thorndyke came out of his reverie and addressed the
superintendent.
“We had better put this alibi on the basis of ascertained fact. It
ought to be verified at once. At present we have only Ponting’s
unsupported statement.”
“It isn’t likely that he would risk telling a lie,” Miller replied
gloomily.
“A man who is under suspicion of murder will risk a good deal,”
Thorndyke retorted, “especially if he is guilty. I think we ought to
see Mrs. Barnett before there is any opportunity of collusion.”
“There has been time for collusion already,” said Miller. “Still, you
are quite right, and I see there is a light in their sitting-room, if
that is it, next to Ponting’s. Let us go up and settle the matter now.
I shall leave you to examine the witness and say what you think it
best to say.”
We entered the building and ascended the stairs to the Barnetts’ flat,
where Miller rang the bell and executed a double knock. After a short
interval the door was opened and a woman looked out at us
inquisitively.
“Are you Mrs. Frederick Barnett?” Thorndyke inquired. The woman
admitted her identity in a tone of some surprise, and Thorndyke
explained: “We have called to make a few inquiries concerning your
neighbour, Mr. Ponting, and also about certain matters relating to
your family. I am afraid it is a rather unseasonable hour for a visit,
but as the affair is of some importance and time is an object, I hope
you will overlook that.”
Mrs. Barnett listened to this explanation with a puzzled and rather
suspicious air. After a few moments’ hesitation, she said:
“I think you had better see my husband. If you will wait here a moment
I will go and tell him.” With this, she pushed the door to, without
actually closing it, and we heard her retire along the lobby,
presumably to the sitting-room. For, during the short colloquy, I had
observed a door at the end of the lobby, partly open, through which I
could see the end of a table covered with a red cloth.
The “moment” extended to a full minute, and the superintendent began
to show signs of impatience.
“I don’t see why you didn’t ask her the simple question straight out,”
he said, and the same question had occurred to me. But at this point
footsteps were heard approaching, the door opened, and a man
confronted us, holding the door open with his left hand, his right
being wrapped in a handkerchief. He looked suspiciously from one to
the other of us, and asked stiffly:
“What is it that you want to know? And would you mind telling me who
you are?”
“My name is Thorndyke,” was the reply. “I am the legal adviser of the
Reverend Charles Meade, and these two gentlemen are interested
parties. I want to know what you can tell me of Mr. Ponting’s recent
movements--to-day, for instance. When did you last see him?”
The man appeared to be about to refuse any conversation, but suddenly
altered his mind, reflected for a few moments, and then replied:
“I saw him from my window at his--they are bay-windows--about
half-past eight. But my wife saw him later than that. If you will come
in she can tell you the time exactly.” He led the way along the lobby
with an obviously puzzled air. But he was not more puzzled than I, or
than Miller, to judge by the bewildered glance that the superintendent
cast at me, as he followed our host along the lobby. I was still
meditating on Thorndyke’s curiously indirect methods when the
sitting-room door was opened; and then I got a minor surprise of
another kind. When I had last looked into the room, the table had been
covered by a red cloth. It was now bare; and when we entered the room
I saw that the red cover had been thrown over a side table, on which
was some bulky and angular object. Apparently it had been thought
desirable to conceal that object, whatever it was, and as we took our
seats beside the bare table, my mind was busy with conjectures as to
what that object could be.
Mr. Barnett repeated Thorndyke’s question to his wife, adding: “I
think it must have been a little after nine when Ponting came round.
What do you say?”
“Yes,” she replied, “it would be, for I heard it strike nine just
before you began your practice, and he came a few minutes after.”
“You see,” Barnett explained, “I am a singer, and my brother, here,
accompanies me on various instruments, and of course we have to
practise. But we don’t practise on the nights when Ponting is
busy--Thursdays and Fridays--as he said that the music disturbed him.
To-night, however, we made a little mistake. I happen to have got a
new song that I am anxious to get ready--it has an illustrative
accompaniment on the clarinet, which my brother will play. We were so
much taken up with the new song that we all forgot what day of the
week it was, and started to have a good practise. But before we had
got through the first verse, Ponting came round, battering at the door
like a madman. My wife went out and pacified him, and of course we
shut down for the evening.”
While Mr. Barnett was giving his explanation, I looked about the room
with vague curiosity. Somehow--I cannot tell exactly how--I was
sensible of something queer in the atmosphere of this place; of a
certain indefinite sense of tension. Mrs. Barnett looked pale and
flurried. Her husband, in spite of his volubility, seemed ill at ease,
and the brother, who sat huddled in an easy-chair, nursing a
dark-coloured Persian cat, stared into the fire, and neither moved nor
spoke. And again I looked at the red table-cloth and wondered what it
covered.
“By the way,” said Barnett, after a brief pause, “what is the point of
these inquiries of yours? About Ponting, I mean. What does it matter
to you where he was this evening?”
As he spoke, he produced a pipe and tobacco-pouch and proceeded to
fill the former, holding it in his bandaged right hand and filling it
with his left. The facility with which he did this suggested that he
was left-handed, an inference that was confirmed by the ease with
which he struck the match with his left hand, and by the fact that he
wore a wrist-watch on his right wrist.
“Your question is a perfectly natural one,” said Thorndyke. “The
answer to it is that a very terrible thing has happened. Miss
Millicent Fawcett, who is, I think, a connexion of yours, met her
death this evening under circumstances of grave suspicion. She died,
either by her own hand or by the hand of a murderer, a few minutes
before nine o’clock. Hence it has become necessary to ascertain the
whereabouts at that time of any persons on whom suspicion might
reasonably fall.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Barnett. “What a shocking thing!”
The exclamation was followed by a deep silence, amidst which I could
hear the barking of a dog in an adjacent room, the unmistakable sharp,
treble yelp of a Pekinese. And again I seemed to be aware of a strange
sense of tension in the occupants of this room. On hearing Thorndyke’s
answer, Mrs. Barnett had turned deadly pale and let her head fall
forward on her hand. Her husband had sunk on to a chair, and he, too,
looked pale and deeply shocked, while the brother continued to stare
silently into the fire.
At this moment Thorndyke astonished me by an exhibition of what
seemed--under the tragic circumstances--the most outrageous bad
manners and bad taste. Rising from his chair with his eyes fixed on a
print which hung on the wall above the red-covered table, he said:
“That looks like one of Cameron’s etchings,” and forthwith stepped
across the room to examine it, resting his hand, as he leaned forward,
on the object covered by the cloth.
“Mind where you are putting your hand, sir!” Fred Barnett called out,
springing to his feet.
Thorndyke looked down at his hand, and deliberately raising a corner
of the cloth, looked under. “There is no harm done,” he remarked
quietly, letting the cloth drop; and with another glance at the print,
he went back to his chair.
Once more a deep silence fell upon the room, and I had a vague feeling
that the tension had increased. Mrs. Barnett was as white as a ghost
and seemed to catch at her breath. Her husband watched her with a
wild, angry expression and smoked furiously, while the
superintendent--also conscious of something abnormal in the atmosphere
of the room--looked furtively from the woman to the man and from him
to Thorndyke.