“The point is the date.”
“The date?”
“The date at the top. 12/1/65.”
“Why, that’s wrong,” said Jo suddenly. “It’s January, not December.”
“Correct. The letter was left on the salver the morning of January twelfth — 1/12/65. The writer reversed the numerals for the month and day. Why? In the United States we write the month numeral first, always, then the day numeral. It’s in England that they do it the opposite way.
“Who in this household has been living in England for years? Who uses the Anglicism ‘trunk call’ for ‘long distance’? Who says ‘lift’ for ‘elevator,’ ‘Chief Constable’ for ‘Chief of Police’, ‘chemist’ instead of ‘druggist’ or ‘pharmacist’?
“Ellen, of course. Ellen, who wrote this ‘threatening’ letter to herself.”
Ellen was glaring at Ellery as if he had turned into a monster from outer space. “No! I didn’t!”
But Ellery ignored her. “And why should Ellen have written a threatening letter to herself? Well, what was the effect the letter produced? It made her look as though she were next in line to be murdered — by implication, therefore, innocent of the killing of Godfrey.
“This was doubly indicated by the clumsy poisoning attempt on herself — an evident phony. She never meant to drink more than a few sips. The whole hot chocolate episode was designed to make that ‘threat’ look good.”
Now his eyes found Ellen’s and locked.
“Why should you want to make yourself look innocent, Ellen? The innocent don’t have to make themselves look innocent. Only the guilty—”
“Are you accusing we?” Ellen shrieked. “Of stabbing my own father to death?” She looked about wildly. “Chris, Jo — you can’t believe — Mum!”
But Ellery drove ahead without mercy. “The clue points directly to you, Ellen, and only to you. Of course, if you’ve anything to say that puts a different complexion on all this, I advise you to say it now.”
Ellery kept her gaze pinned down like a butterfly specimen. She began to tremble. And as she did so, he suddenly said in the kindest of voices, “Don’t be afraid any more, Ellen. You see, I know what you know. All I want you to do is to speak out, to tell us what you know.”
And she did, her story rushing out. “I was up the night father was murdered — couldn’t sleep for some reason. It was long past midnight. While I was in the upstairs hall, on my way down to the kitchen for a snack... I happened to see somebody sneak out of father’s room. I was sure he saw me. I was afraid to tell...”
“And who was it you saw, Ellen?”
“It was... it was...” And her arm shot out — “...it was Wolcott Thorp!”
Ellery went early to his room, packed his suitcases, and slipped like the Arab silently away, leaving behind a bread-and-butter note. He did not check back in to the Hollis, the savor having gone out of Wrightsville; but he had a couple of hours to kill before plane time, and he killed them, appropriately, at police headquarters.
“Ellery!” Chief Newby greeted him, rising and seizing his hand. “I was hoping you’d drop in. I never did get to thank you properly. That was a slick scene you put on last night. You told a real whopper.”
“I may have told,” said Ellery soberly, “several.”
“You said you knew what Ellen knew.”
“Oh, that. Yes, of course. But I had to get her to talk; I was reasonably certain that was what she was holding back. And that letter business—”
“Did you really think she wrote that letter?”
“Not for a moment. Except for psychos, murderers don’t admit their killings — even in disguised handwritings — at a time when they’re not even suspected. And Ellen’s Britishness was so blatant that anyone could have used the British dating system to frame her. So although I knew she hadn’t written that threatening letter to herself, I accused her of it last night to frighten her into putting the finger on Thorp.
“Thorp, of course, was the one who wrote the letter. He counted on my spotting the Anglicism and pinning it on Ellen for the reason I gave — that double whammy about if-she-wants-us-to-think-she’s innocent-she-must-be-guilty. And if I hadn’t spotted it, he could always have called it to my attention.
“It may even be that Thorp originally designed the frame-up letter to be used by him in the event Ellen did talk and accused him of what she’d seen. The trouble was, even when Ellen kept her mouth shut, Thorp had second thoughts. That poisoned chocolate business wasn’t an attempt on Ellen’s part to make herself look innocent, as I mendaciously suggested last night in putting the pressure on her; it was a genuine attempt by Thorp to shut her mouth before she could open it. He expected us — if it had succeeded — to accept it as a suicide-confession.”
“Incidentally,” said the Chief, “you said you knew it was Thorp—”
“A slight exaggeration. I had reason to suspect Thorp, but I had no proof — not an iota; and I was afraid another attack on Ellen might succeed.”
“But why,” asked the Chief, “would a man like Thorp murder his best friend in cold blood? He’s confessed to the killing, but we haven’t been able to get a word out of him about motive. It certainly can’t be that measly twenty thousand Godfrey was leaving him.”
Ellery sighed. “The collector breed are a strange lot, Newby. In spite of what he told Godfrey, Thorp probably didn’t consider himself too old to go on that expedition to West Africa; he must have been waiting desperately for years for what he thought was going to be a hundred thousand dollars to finance the trip. When he learned that Godfrey’s carelessness had caused it to shrink to only one-fifth of that, he flipped. That expedition was the dream of his life. Is there anyone we can come to hate more than the loved one who disappoints and frustrates us?”
Newby held up his hand as Ellery rose. “Wait a minute! What made you suspect Thorp in the first place? It must be something fancy I missed.”
Ellery did not display pride. His Wrightsville triumphs too often felt like defeats. Perhaps it was because he loved the old town, and it had been his lot to clean up her filth.
“Nothing fancy, Newby. The dreariest kind of slip on Thorp’s part. When you and I first went to the house, they told us in detail what had gone on at the discovery of the body. The line of previous action was very clear. Margaret Caswell rushed out of Godfrey’s bedroom, crying out that the old man was — mark the word — dead. They all rushed upstairs except Thorp, who went to the downstairs phone, called Dr. Farnham, then called you here at headquarters. And what did Thorp tell you? That Mumford had been found, not merely dead, but murdered. Why should Thorp have leaped to the conclusion that the old man’s death was unnatural unless he already knew it?
“You know, Newby,” Ellery said with a half smile that apologized in advance, “Wolcott Thorp would have been far, far better off if he’d followed his own advice and — forgive me — kept mum.”
Saki (H. H. Munro)
Circumstantial Evidence[1]
“Saki,” the pseudonym of H. H. Munro, was born in Burma, raised in Devonshire, and in his late teens was taken by his father to Prance, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In his early twenties he served a stint with the Burma police, and then went to London to write. He earned a living as a newspaperman, writing political sketches, and was a foreign correspondent in the Balkans, Russia, and Paris. In his late thirties he returned to London, this time to write seriously — after his own fashion. When World War I exploded in Europe, he enlisted and proved himself an excellent soldier. He was killed in action in 1916.
1
Copyright 1930 by The Viking Press, Inc., renewed; reprinted by permission of Brandt & Brandt; originally titled “Dusk.”