Marsh smiled. “Is it not patently obvious, ladies and gentlemen, who fired that rifle? And is it not patently obvious at whom the rifle was being fired? It was aimed at Lord Purleigh, of course. And it was fired by his father.”
“ Rubbish! ” said Lord Bob. “See here, Marsh-”
Marsh smiled. “All the weapons in the collection were the Earl’s. The Earl knew how to use them. He knew, too, that his son intended to remove him, ignominiously, from his own home. And he took the one course that, to his damaged brain, seemed appropriate. He attempted to murder his own son. He made his way down to the Great Hall, loaded the Winchester rifle-”
“What perfect rubbish!” Lord Bob was half out of his seat. Lady Purleigh reached for him and he turned to her, his face red. She murmured something and he sat back, shaking his head. “But it’s rubbish, Alice. Codswollop!”
“And he proceeded outside,” continued Marsh, “and concealed himself in the woods by the formal garden. And when he saw his son return to Maplewhite on his motor bicycle, the Earl fired at him. Fortunately for Lord Purleigh, the Earl missed.”
Lord Purleigh’s brows were raised. “The old swine would never miss a shot like that!”
Marsh paid no attention. “Lord Purleigh understood, of course, what his father had done. He knew who had fired that rifle. And he now knew that his father was even more unbalanced than he had believed. Perhaps-and here I speculate-perhaps he realized how nakedly this unbalance might be revealed in any enquiry, any attempt to institutionalize the Earl. And perhaps, too, he was angered by the attempt on his life. Whatever the truth, later that day, while everyone was in the drawing room, Lord Purleigh removed a Smith and Wesson revolver from the Great Hall, used the secret passageway to enter his father’s room, and he killed him.”
“What?” said Lord Bob. He looked more confused than angry.
“Only Lord Purleigh was absent from the drawing room at the time of the murder,” said Marsh. “Only Lord Purleigh had an opportunity to kill the Earl. And only Lord Purleigh had a motive. His father’s death would remove not only an embarrassment, but also an actual threat to his own life. And it would, of course, bring him his father’s entire inheritance.”
“This is sheer nonsense.” It was the Great Man, up on his feet, his head raised high. “I will listen to no more of this.”
Across the room, Sergeant Meadows leaned away from the wall. Marsh glanced at him, shook his head slightly. Meadows leaned back and Marsh turned to the Great Man. “Do you have some other explanation, Mr. Houdini?”
“I have the explanation.”
Marsh smiled. “Then I shall gladly, if temporarily, surrender the floor.” He sat down and looked up at the Great Man with the same theatrical interest he’d shown in the Earl’s bedroom.
The Great Man put his hands behind his back and he glanced slowly around the room. “We have been presented here at Maplewhite,” he finally announced, “with a series of totally baffling events.”
Then the Great Man said, and pretty much word for word, the same things he’d said when he was explaining how he figured out the secret passageway. That the baffling events had baffled even him. That he’d finally realized they were a lot like mediocre magic tricks. “Now,” he said, “in order to understand the mechanics of a successful magic trick, we must begin with no preconceptions whatever.”
Marsh rolled his eyes. Delicately.
The Great Man looked around the room again, as though to make sure that everyone was still following. “Yesterday afternoon, while Miss Turner was horseback riding, she saw what she believed to be a pair of ghosts under a willow tree, near the old mill. Why did she believe them to be ghosts? Her preconceptions. She had been told that a pair of ghosts often had been seen under that tree, a woman and a young boy. And, when she saw two individuals standing there, her preconceptions led her to believe that these were they. She is an intelligent and resourceful woman, but she is not a trained observer. And, perhaps most important, she was not wearing her spectacles at the time. Without them, she is extremely nearsighted. Is that not true, Miss Turner?”
Heads swiveled. “Yes,” she said. Her voice was strong and clear. Beside her, Mrs. Allardyce frowned.
Inspector Marsh yawned, pretending to hide it behind his hand.
The Great Man nodded. He turned back to the audience. “But these were not ghosts that Miss Turner saw. What she saw were the two people who were conspiring to murder Lord Purleigh.
A rustling sound rippled through the audience.
“And, of course,” said the Great Man, “they saw her. So far as they knew, she had recognized them. And for these two to be recognized together would have meant disaster for them both.
He glanced around again. “They acted swiftly. Together they returned to Maplewhite, using a tunnel that runs from the mill to a concealed pantry beside the kitchen. From there, one of them ran to the Great Hall and snatched the Winchester rifle. Perhaps this individual loaded the weapon at that time. Perhaps the two of them had planned ahead, for emergencies, and the weapon was already loaded. No matter. It would have been a matter of seconds only to ready the rifle. Taking the weapon, this individual ran back into the hidden pantry and used the other tunnel, the freight tunnel, to emerge outside the formal garden. From nearby, a clear shot was available at Miss Turner, when she appeared.”
The Great Man frowned. “This individual was fortunate. Had Miss Turner known how, she could have returned to the house by a more direct route. But she was unaware of this. And then her horse, bolting, led her past the path she had originally followed. And then she struck her head on the limb of a tree and she was ejected from the animal. She remained unconscious for a time. All of this assisted the would-be assassin. When Miss Turner finally did appear, under the tree by the walkway, the assassin was more than ready. He fired. One shot, and one shot only. Why should he fire another? He saw Miss Turner fall from her horse, and he assumed he had hit her. ”
“Fascinating,” said Inspector Marsh. He smiled, “But just who was this so-called assassin? And who was his conspirator?”
“A more interesting question,” said the Great Man, “at the moment, is what were they doing out by the old mill? Why meet there? And to this, I am pleased to say, I have discovered the answer.”
He narrowed his eyes again. “I believe that it was there, at the old mill, that these two, over a period of time, planned their conspiracy. It is there that they practiced the technique by which they very nearly succeeded in deceiving us all.”
“Oh really?” said Marsh.
The Great Man ignored him. “I examined the old mill with my associate, Mr. Beaumont. On the floor inside it we found the remains of a fire. Not a fire of weeds and brush, such as might have been built by some passing tramp”-he glanced at me, underlining the point-“but a fire that had been constructed of pieces of lumber. And why lumber?”
He cocked his head. “Suppose you take a piece of lumber and you saw it neatly in half. Suppose you create a small hollow in one of these halves, and that, within the hollow, you place a live cartridge. You have, previously, removed the slug from the cartridge and crimped shut the opening. Suppose you then carefully glue the halves of lumber back together. Now suppose you place this piece of lumber into a tire. W^hat will happen? At some point, when the heat of the fire at last reaches the cartridge, it will explode. As a consequence of its explosion, some ash may be expelled from the fire itself. Much like the ash that Mr. Beaumont and I found on the floor of the old mill. And much like the ash that was found on the floor of the Earl’s bedroom. It is obvious to me that our two conspirators experimented with lumber and cartridge there at the mill, until they discovered exactly the proper combination of both to suit their nefarious purposes.
He turned to Doyle. “It was not our entrance into the room, Sir Arthur, that blew ashes from the fireplace. It was the eruption of a cartridge, hidden within a piece of firewood.