Fox nodded. “That’s sensible. I’ll make it as brief as I can, but there’s a lot to it.”
Luke, his bloodshot eyes wide at Jordan, squeaked, “He was on the boat!”
“Sure he was on the boat. Don’t start butting in, Luke, let’s get it over.” Fox’s eyes had not left Jordan. “Here are the bald details of the inference. Ten days ago, your plans being perfected, you sent an anonymous letter to Thorpe, threatening his life. You worded it so as to make it appear that it had been sent by a man who had been financially ruined by Thorpe, a man who lunched at the club he did. You did that to guide suspicion in that direction and also to establish the supposition that the man who killed Arnold thought he was killing Thorpe. You mailed the letter on Monday. The following Thursday you went for a trip on your boat. You knew of course that Thorpe would spend the weekend at the cottage in New Jersey with your daughter. Sunday night you anchored your boat at some deserted strip of beach on the Connecticut shore — I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the same spot where I embarked Luke and Kester and Thorpe yesterday — rowed ashore, stole a car somewhere and drove to the bungalow — probably on the road along the woods back of it, since Grant and his niece saw no car — sneaked through the woods, shot Arnold through the window, drove back to where your boat was, or near there, went back on board, crossed the sound to the Long Island shore, anchored, got into your bunk and slept. Maybe you slept; sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t. Any comment?”
“No,” said Jordan contemptuously. “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
“I think myself,” Fox agreed, “it would be better to wait till I’ve finished. Before proceeding to more bald details, I’ll turn some light on a few of those. You had no desire or intention of harming Thorpe; it was Arnold you were after. You had no expectation of ever being remotely associated with the affair in the mind of any one. There were only four people in the world who knew that there was any connection whatever between you and Ridley Thorpe; Luke Wheer, Vaughn Kester, your daughter and Thorpe himself; and they were all people who would not divulge that connection. So your natural expectation was that all you would ever hear about the murder of Corey Arnold would be what you would read in the papers whenever you saw fit to go ashore and get some. It must have been the nastiest shock of your life, yesterday afternoon, when I floated alongside and you saw who was sitting in my boat. Wasn’t it?”
Fox shook his head. “Excuse me. Don’t try to answer yet. You handled that situation marvelously. To be sure, I wasn’t expecting anything suspicious, but I always have my eyes open and you didn’t betray yourself by the slightest flicker. The negotiations were completed, and Luke and Kester and I left. Then, at some moment prior to the time when it had been agreed you and Thorpe would go ashore, you had a second shock. Probably, I imagine, while you were steering the boat to Port Jefferson. Thorpe emerged from the cabin with a revolver in his hand. ‘Look here, Jordan,’ he said — I can hear him saying it — ‘I was poking around in there and found this in a drawer. I hate guns and I never carry one, but good gracious, somebody’s trying to kill me and I’m going to protect myself. I’ll just borrow this until I get one of my own.’ And he stuck it in his pocket. Wasn’t that the way it happened?”
Fox shook his head again. “Excuse me. That shock must have been almost as bad as the first one. It was the gun you had killed Arnold with. You had seen no necessity for disposing of it, since there hadn’t been one chance in a million that you would ever be connected with the crime and after our arrival with Thorpe you had had no opportunity to ditch the gun. Of course you tried to talk him out of taking it, but what Thorpe wanted he took and you couldn’t make your objections too strong for fear of arousing suspicion.
“But you were certainly on a spot. If any faint suspicion should arise, Thorpe had in his possession evidence that would convict you like that” — Fox snapped his fingers — “of murder. You must have been very uncomfortable at my house last night. With the fears of a guilty conscience aroused, some remark I made may even have led you to think that I already suspected you, though I certainly didn’t. I’m not very proud of the fact that I didn’t really suspect you at all until I looked at the writing on those pads downstairs. Your best defense against the threat of disaster was to get the gun back from Thorpe, but you didn’t know how to go about it. But your fear forced you to do something, to erect some barrier against suspicion and you had devised a pretty good one. I admit you fooled me completely with that early morning trip to your daughter’s apartment. I should have suspected you then, hearing you tell about her giving you a biscuit and tea, but your calculations were sound. You figured that by running away from my place before sunrise, ostensibly for the purpose of talking with your daughter in order to make sure that Thorpe hadn’t committed the murder himself — to make sure that you weren’t furnishing an alibi for a murderer — you would render yourself immune to suspicion; and it worked. I underestimated you. After that trick, I even passed over your remark about a biscuit and tea— What is it, Kester?”
“Nothing,” said the secretary shortly. “Only the inference you’re building against Jordan seems to be more elaborate than the one you tried on me and a good deal more mystifying. What the devil have a biscuit and tea got to do with it?”
“Everything,” Fox declared. “No American would ever speak of a biscuit and tea, but an Englishman would. Before that even, I should have known that Jordan’s an Englishman, since I heard him say he had been purser on the Cedric, which is a British ship, but he had himself insulated.”
Fox’s eyes were not leaving Jordan. Jordan apparently was meeting them, but his own were so deep under the jutting brows, so narrow behind the crinkled leathery lids, that they left their expression to be guessed at.
“Then,” Fox told him, “I brought you here to Maple Hill myself. I suppose you were on the edge of panic. You had expected to be quietly on your boat, untroubled and utterly unsuspected, during the hullabaloo over Arnold’s murder and here you were right in the thick of it. You had begun to be afraid of me. My sudden appearance at your daughter’s apartment, so soon after your own arrival there, had alarmed you — quite needlessly, for I hadn’t expected to see you there. Worst of all, Thorpe still had the gun and he knew it was yours. That was your most acute danger, Thorpe’s knowledge that that gun belonged to you, and circumstances conspired to tempt you with an opportunity of removing that danger. You were sitting on the side terrace and men came and disturbed you. You wanted to be alone, to decide whether to take any action and if so, what. You went to the back of the house where the cars were parked and the gun lying on the seat of Jeffrey Thorpe’s car caught your eye.
“The sight of that gun made your blood pump. You knew Thorpe was in the library on the opposite side of the house from the side terrace, for I had told you so. The windows would certainly be open and the notion of shooting through an open window wasn’t a new one for you. You knew there were plenty of available suspects around — the son and daughter, Luke and Kester, Grant and his niece, a group of business associates. But you were not in enough of a panic to abandon caution. You thought it over before touching the gun. A man firing a gun seldom leaves recognizable fingerprints, but particles of burnt powder lodge in his skin and can invariably be detected. It wouldn’t do to use your own handkerchief. You looked around and on the seat of my sedan you found the blue scarf which Miss Grant had left there. Making sure that you were not observed, you took it, and then you took the gun. You were clever enough to wipe the metal parts of the gun, for if any fingerprints were found on it suspicion would be directed against one person and it might be that that one person would have an unshakable alibi; besides, suspicion should be dispersed. Equipped, you strolled to the other side—”