But the point at issue, as it came out during the preliminary hearings, was not that Brill wouldn’t have driven slowly, but that Amadon couldn’t have peddled his bike any faster. On the morning of the murder there had been a breakdown on the railway line, so there was no train, and in fact it was for this reason that Mr. Glendale decided not to go to the office. He lived in a modern Tudor house in a group of similar atrocities that the builders called May Hill, and it was on the London Road, too — about halfway between Littlehurst and Brighton. He always took the 8:35, which got him to his office at 8:55. He was a stickler for punctuality, and his staff was never late, and this included the morning of the murder.
You must keep in mind that this was in 1911 when motor cars were comparatively rare. There were no buses that you could hop on from village to village in those days, and if Amadon had secretly hired or borrowed a car for that one morning, it would not have remained a secret for long once the case became a cause célèbre.
The motives for murdering Aloysius Glendale have no particular bearing on the outcome. With Amadon it was the case of the last straw. For years he had worked hard and conscientiously, but Glendale had never advanced him higher than Assistant Manager, and any increases in salary had been rare — and grudgingly bestowed. Glendale, you see, was somewhat unlovable, too, and he took advantage of the fact that avaricious men hate to give up the security of their jobs. “Oh, I’m sure you wouldn’t want to leave us after all this time, J. J.,” he’d say, with an infuriating smile, and poor Amadon’s fellow-workers would wonder if he might not at last have reached the breaking point.
Then finally, to cap it all, Glendale sacked Amadon for some trifling error. It was incredibly malicious, because Amadon was almost at retirement age, and it meant that he would lose his pension. Amadon knew that with Glendale out of the way, the firm would not take any action against him during the period of reorganization.
Brill’s case was simpler: he had been systematically looting the firm’s cash account, and Glendale had just found out. Glendale would certainly have prosecuted, but if he were dead the loss could perhaps be concealed for long enough to make it good. Like most spendthrifts, Brill was the eternal optimist.
Anyway, on the evening of the crime, Glendale’s body was discovered by his housekeeper; he had been stabbed to death. She had taken her day off, and had not even known that he had not gone to the office. The police surgeon couldn’t place the exact time of the murder — merely that it had been some time that morning between 6:30 and 9:30 A.M. But there was a witness — and everything depended on him. He was the local vicar, who had been pruning his grape arbor. His house was directly behind Glendale’s, and he saw both suspects come up — separately — by the back lane.
He said that it seemed surreptitious, because the natural thing would have been to approach from the front — the London Road was in that direction. The Vicar was aware that they both used the London Road going to and from work.
The trouble though, was that while the Vicar was a reliable witness and quite positive on one point, he was unfortunately completely unsure on another. He was certain of the identities of the two callers, and that they came more than half an hour apart. But he couldn’t remember which came first!
A preliminary hearing is not conducted with quite the same formalities as a trial, and there is a greater leaway in cross-examination; but the Vicar couldn’t be shaken. He was as sure Amadon and Brill were there at different times as he was positive he could not remember which came first. It was an impasse.
Both suspects claimed they rang Glendale’s bell and got no answer. Both admitted hanging around for a few minutes, but both insisted they had never set foot inside Glendale’s house. Then the motives came out, and each had to admit the fact that Glendale’s death was to his advantage — or would have been. But which one was the murderer?
If only the police surgeon had been able to pinpoint the time of death more exactly, things would have been clearer, but then an unexpected witness turned up. It was Glendale’s brother, John, and he had left England the day of the crime and had gone to France, where he had not seen any English papers. He got back a week or so later, heard the news, and immediately got in touch with the police.
Aloysius Glendale, the brother stated, must have been killed before 8:20 in the morning. The day before the crime, the two brothers had had luncheon together in Brighton, and Aloysius had asked John to phone him early the next morning at home, before he left for the office. I forget now what the phone call was all about, but the point is it was important to Aloysius, and he was waiting for the call.
John phoned at 8:20 and got no answer. He tried again five minutes later on the chance that his brother had been out of earshot of the phone, but no one picked up the receiver. He remembered that it was the housekeeper’s day off, and assumed his brother had forgotten the call and had taken an earlier train. He himself had to catch a train to Dover to take a steamer across the Channel, so he didn’t have time to wait and call Aloysius’s office, which he might otherwise have done.
The indictment was procured at once on the basis of this new evidence — against Brill, who had the fast car. The early bird had been caught this time, and newspaper editorials pontificated about one crime leading to a more heinous crime. Some of them even went so far as to suggest that crime was a by product of driving a fast car, in which they were perhaps more prophetic than we realized at the time.
Brill passionately denied his guilt — but it did no good. Fast cars get to places sooner than push-bikes, and while a car can be driven slowly, a bicycle can only be peddled at a certain maximum speed. Amadon was released, and I took the Flying Scotsman from Edinburgh, where I happened to be, the moment I read the news about Glendale’s brother, and his evidence.
I went straight to the Brighton police and told them they had the wrong man. They referred me to the Prosecutor — and you, Jenks, can close your mouth again. You’re looking just like the Prosecutor — indignant and completely sure of yourself. I might add that I had to explain it to him three times before it sank in. “But, my dear sir,” he kept saying, “you’re asking me to believe that because something goes slower it gets there sooner!”
I told him that under the particular set of circumstances that pertained, this was indeed true. “How long,” I asked him, “does it take to ride a bicycle nine miles? Even though the London Road is somewhat downhill toward the sea, it would be well over forty minutes, wouldn’t it?”
“But that’s precisely the point!” he said. “Brill could do it in fifteen minutes in that car of his — from his place in Littlehurst to Glendale’s house in May Hill!”
“I’m not talking about that nine miles,” I said. “I refer to the nine miles between May Hill and Brighton — where both suspects arrived at approximately 9 A.M. at the office. This means that for Amadon to get to Brighton at 9:00, he must have left May Hill at least as early as 8:20.
“Brill, on the other, hand, could have left May Hill as late as a quarter to, and since the Vicar is positive they were there at least half an hour apart, that is precisely what happened. All it means is that Amadon left his own house first — not that Brill got to Glendale’s house first. You’re all timing it from the wrong end.”
Well, the Prosecutor finally got the idea, and for the rest of the day he was explaining it to various people involved, who in turn explained it to others. It eventually became the subject of a national debate, with the British public divided into those who understood and those who remained to be convinced. In time practically everyone was.