This didn’t seem quite the moment for going into his lordship’s reasons for disbelief. Kirk told Sellon he was a young fool to go rambling away like that, and that everybody was ready to believe him so long as he was telling the truth. And he’d better go to bed and try and wake up more sensible; he’d frightened his wife quite enough as it was, and here it was close on 10 o’clock (Crumbs! and the Chief Constable’s report not written yet!); he would be over in the morning and would see him before the inquest.
‘You’ll have to give evidence, you know,’ said Kirk, ‘but I’ve seen the coroner and maybe he won’t press you too hard, on account of the investigation being in progress.’
Sellon only put his head in his hands, and Kirk, really feeling that there was little to be done with him in this state, left him. As he went out, he said what cheering things he could to Mrs Sellon, and advised her not to fidget her husband with too many questions, but to let him rest and try to keep in good heart.
All the way back to Broxford, his mind was churning over his new ideas. He couldn’t get out of his head that picture of Sellon, standing at Martha Ruddle’s cottage door, waiting-
There was only one thing that gave him comfort-a comfort altogether irrationaclass="underline" that one curious sentence, ‘If his lordship won’t believe me, then nobody else will.’ There was no reason why Wimsey should believe Sellon, if it came to that-there was no sense in it at all-but it had sounded, well, genuine. He could hear again Sellon’s desperate cry: ‘Don’t you go, my lord! My lord, you’ll believe me!’ Kirk, rummaging the filing-cabinet of his mind, found words which seemed to him apt. Thou hast appealed unto Caesar; unto Caesar thou shalt go. But Caesar had disallowed the appeal.
Not till Kirk, weary and patient, was writing out his report to the Chief Constable did the great illumination come upon him. He stopped, pen in hand, staring at the wall. Something like an idea, that was. And he’d been on to it before, as near as nothing, only he hadn’t properly followed it up. But, of course, it explained everything. It explained Sellon’s statement and exonerated him; it explained how he had seen the clock from the window; it explained how Noakes came to be killed behind locked doors; it explained why the body hadn’t been robbed; and it explained the murder-explained it right away. Because, Kirk told himself with triumph, there had never been any murder!
Wait a bit, thought the Superintendent, figuring the thing out in his careful way; mustn’t go too fast. There’s a big snag at the start. How can we get over that, I wonder?
The snag was that, to make the theory work, one had to assume that the cactus had been removed from its place. Kirk had already dismissed this idea as silly; but he hadn’t seen then what a lot it would explain. He had gone so far as to have a word with Crutchley, among the chrysanthemums, just as he left Talboys. He had managed the inquiry pretty well, he thought. He had been careful not to ask straight out: ‘Did you put the cactus back before you left?’ That would have drawn attention to a point which was at present a secret between himself and his lordship. He didn’t want any tails about that to get round to Sellon before he himself confronted him with it in his own way. So he had merely pretended to have mis-remembered what Crutchley had said about his final interview with Noakes. It took place in the kitchen? Yes. Had either of them gone back into the sittingroom after that? No. But he thought Crutchley said he was watering them plants at the time. No, he’d finished watering the plants and was putting back the steps. Oh! then Kirk had got that wrong. Sorry. He just really wanted to get at how long the altercation with Noakes had lasted. Had Noakes been there while Crutchley was seeing to the plants? No, be was in the kitchen. But didn’t Crutchley take the plants out to the kitchen to water them? No, he watered them just where they were, and wound the clock and came out with the steps, and it wasn’t till he’d done that that Noakes gave him his day’s money and the argument started. It hadn’t lasted more’n maybe ten minutes or so-not the argument. Well, possibly fifteen. Six o’clock was rightly Crutchley’s time to stop work-he charged five bob for an eight-hour day, barrin’ time off for lunch. Kirk apologised for his mistake: the step-ladder had confused him; he had thought Crutchley meant he needed the step-ladder to get the hanging plants out of their pots. No; the step-ladder was to get up to water them, same as he’d done this morning they was above his head-and to wind the clock, like he said. That was all. It was quite ordinary, him using the stepladder, he always did, and put it back in the kitchen afterwards. ‘You ain’t tryin’ to make out,’ added Crutchley, a little belligerently, ‘as I stood on them steps with a ’ammer to cosh the old bird over the ’ead?’ That was an ingenious idea nobody had yet thought of. Kirk replied that he wasn’t thinking anything particular; only trying to get the times clear in his head. He was glad to have given the impression that his suspicions were directed to the stepladder.
Unfortunately, then, he couldn’t begin by substantiating that the cactus had been out of its pot at 6.20. But now suppose Noakes had taken it out himself for some purpose or the other. What purpose? Well, it was difficult to say. But suppose Noakes had seen something wrong with it-a spot of mildew, maybe, or whatever these ugly things suffered from. He might have taken it down to wipe it or-But he could have done that easy enough, standing on the steps or, as he was so tall, on a chair. Not good enough. What other things could happen to plants? Well, they might become pot-bound. Kirk didn’t know whether that happened to cactuses (or was it cacti?), but suppose you wanted to look and see if its roots were growing out through the bottom of the pot. You’d have to take it out for that. Or tap the pot to see if-no; it had been given water. But wait! Noakes hadn’t seen Crutchley do that. He might have suspected Crutchley was neglecting it. Perhaps he felt at the top and it didn’t seem wet enough, and then-Or, more likely, he thought it was being over-watered. These spiky cactus affairs didn’t like too much damp. Or did they? It was annoying not to know their habits; Kirk’s own gardening was of the straightforward flowerbed-and-kitchen-stuff variety.
Anyhow, it wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility that Noakes had removed the cactus for some purpose of his own. You couldn’t prove he hadn’t. Say he did. All right. Then, at 9 o’clock, up comes Sellon, and sees Noakes coming into the parlour… Here Kirk paused to consider again. If Noakes was coming for the 9.30 news as usual, be was before his time. He came in (said Sellon) and looked at the clock. The dead man had worn no watch, and Kirk had taken it for granted that he had come in merely to see how near it was to the news-bulletin time. But he might also have been meaning to put the cactus back and come in a bit early on that account. That was all right. He comes in. He thinks, Now, have I got time to fetch that there plant in from the scullery, or wherever it is, before the news comes on? He looks at the clock. Then Joe Sellon taps at the window-and he comes over. They have their talk and Joe goes away. The old boy fetches in his plant and gets up on a chair or something to put it back. Or maybe be gets the steps. Then, while he’s doing that, he sees it’s getting on for half-past nine, and that flurries him a bit. He leans over too far, or the steps slip, or he ain’t careful getting down, and over he goes backwards and gives his bead a crack on the floor-or, better still, on the corner of the settle. He’s knocked out. Then presently he comes to, puts away the chair or the steps or whatever it was and after that-well, after that, we know what happened to him. So there you are. Simple as pie. No cutting or stealing keys or hiding blunt instruments or telling lies-nothing at all but a plain accident and everybody telling the truth.