‘No!’ said Alice, her face drained of colour. ‘But why, Papa, why?’
‘That should be clear to everyone,’ said Probert. ‘I saw the man lying dead in front of me and there was the chance of avoiding the odium of a murder investigation in my house, so as soon as the current was switched off I pocketed the handkerchief. I burned it later. That’s all it was.’
‘I don’t think so, sir,’ said Cribb.
‘Are you contradicting me?’ said Probert, more as an inquiry than a challenge.
‘We’ve got to establish the truth, sir. You say you didn’t want a murder investigated in your house, but what made you think of murder? A pocket handkerchief isn’t usually classed as a lethal weapon.’
‘It was attached to the positive terminal of the transformer,’ Probert pointed out.
‘I don’t doubt that, sir. What I doubt is whether that should have suggested murder to you at that particular moment. It would still look more like an accident to me. But perhaps murder was in your mind.’
‘Father!’ said Alice. ‘He has no right to speak to you like that!’
Dr Probert was looking too uncomfortable by far to take issue over Sergeant Cribb’s rights. He silenced Alice by limply waving his hand. ‘Sergeant, I am not sure how it has happened, but you seem to have me against a wall. If you want my full confession to the murder of Peter Brand I am ready to give it to you, but I should prefer not to do so in front of these people who are my friends and family.’
‘Father!’ cried Alice. ‘It can’t be true! It isn’t true!’ She ran to Probert and caught him by the arm. ‘Say it isn’t true!’
‘Go upstairs to your mother and tell her as gently as you can,’ said Probert.
Cribb put up his hand. ‘Before you do that, miss, there’s something you must say to your father. I want you to tell him in your own words-so that he can see you’re telling the gospel truth-that you are not the murderer of Peter Brand.’
‘Are you serious?’ said Alice.
‘Never more serious, miss. Your father believes you arranged to kill Brand to silence him over a certain matter arising from your visits to a hat-shop. On the night of the seance he couldn’t fail to notice that you were collaborating with Brand by tapping the table and claiming to be touched by spirit hands. He concluded that you were being blackmailed by the medium, and when the body was discovered he assumed you were responsible. He picked up the handkerchief, thinking to divert suspicion from you. Unless you can dissuade him, he is now about to make a false confession in order, as he believes, to save you from the hangman’s rope. It’s an admirable gesture, and I’m sure we all applaud him for it, but I hope you can convince him that it isn’t necessary. Constable Thackeray here doesn’t take kindly to copying out statements only to tear ’em up.’
Alice had listened with an expression of disbelief growing into astonishment and finally awe. She shook her head slowly, temporarily unable to find words.
Miss Crush filled the breach. ‘It would be rather extravagant to murder somebody because of something that happened in a hat-shop.’
‘It’s utterly incredible!’ said Alice. ‘Papa, you didn’t really believe this, did you? I agreed to help Peter Brand in the seance to stop him making mischief in the family, but I’ve explained all that. You know why I changed my clothes there.’ She gripped her father’s arm and studied his face, searching for some sign of comprehension.
He avoided her eyes. ‘I know that you have accounted for your behaviour, Alice, but that conversation took place on Sunday, remember. On Saturday night, when I saw him dead, I could only think that you must have arranged it in some way. You have always been a strong-headed girl. I saw the handkerchief and I understood how it had been done.’
‘But Peter Brand didn’t bother me to that extent!’ cried Alice. ‘It was to protect you from embarrassment that I did what he asked me to do at the seance. It was no reason for killing him. If I had felt strongly about it I should have asked William to give him a thrashing.’
‘By Jove, yes!’ said Nye enthusiastically. ‘The bounder deserved it. It’s a damned shame he isn’t around now, or I’d alter the shape of his nose.’
‘Don’t provoke the departed,’ said Miss Crush, wagging her finger at Nye.
‘Papa,’ said Alice. ‘You do see how ridiculous your suspicions were, don’t you?’
‘I need to sit down,’ said Dr Probert. ‘Constable, do you mind?’ Thackeray sprang out of the chair with surprising agility for a corpse and slipped to the back of the group, well out of Captain Nye’s range. Probert took his place. ‘Yes, my dear. I believe you. But somebody must have put that handkerchief there, and for a good reason.’
Cribb caught Jowett’s eye. ‘Would you like to explain, sir?’
‘Now that you have started, you might as well continue, Sergeant,’ said the inspector, as if the whole thing bored him.
‘If you insist, sir. Well, we know how Peter Brand came to be electrocuted and we know that somebody must have arranged it. A handkerchief doesn’t fall two feet behind a chair and wind itself around a terminal. We can also tell when it was done.’
‘It must have been after the first interruption,’ said Strathmore. ‘We all went into the study to calm Brand down after the footsteps-which we now know to have been Professor Quayle’s-had broken his concentration. That was when the handkerchief must have been put down. When we resumed, we had normal readings on the galvanometer for a few minutes, and then he must have realised that the handkerchief was on the floor and reached out to pick it up, with fatal consequences.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Cribb. ‘That’s exactly how I see it.’
Strathmore smiled. ‘I believe I remarked before that as investigators we are two of a kind, Sergeant.’
‘So you did, sir. There it is, then. Scotland Yard and the Life After Death Society agree how and when the crime was committed. And once you’ve got the “how” and the “when”, the “who” is easier to find.’
‘But any one of us could have attached the end of the handkerchief to the transformer,’ said Alice. ‘It would not have been a conspicuous action by candlelight, and in so much confusion.’
‘Quite right, miss. So we have to find a way to determine who is most likely to have done it.’
‘A motive,’ said Captain Nye.
‘That’s important, yes, sir, but I had something else in mind. Motives are helpful, but when everybody has a motive you can’t rely on them alone.’
‘What do you mean-“everybody”?’ said Nye. ‘I’d like to know what motive you could ascribe to me. I had no interest in doing away with that nasty little table-tapping mountebank.’
‘It’s not necessary to go into the question of motives,’ Cribb firmly explained.
‘Quite right too,’ concurred Miss Crush.
‘I expect he thought you might have been moved to do it on my account,’ Alice suggested to her fiance.
Nye beamed. ‘That hadn’t occurred to me.’
‘And you do have an ungovernable temper,’ added Alice.
‘Leaving motives aside, then,’ Cribb quickly said, ‘it’s part of a detective’s job to make deductions from the circumstances of a crime. The circumstances here are quite exceptional, because they show that the murder depended on events nobody could have predicted. For Peter Brand to die by electrocution there had to be a wet handkerchief which he would be obliged to reach for, and the purpose of that handkerchief was a secret known only to Brand; there had to be a damp patch on the carpet where his feet made contact, so that the current would pass through his body to earth-and that, in case you have forgotten, was provided by Dr Probert accidentally kicking over the bowl of salt solution; and there had to be an opportunity to put the handkerchief in position-and that only came about by chance because of Professor Quayle’s interruption, when Brand stopped the seance and would not continue until we calmed him down.’
‘It begins to sound more like an accident than a deliberate act,’ said Strathmore.