“Where did you get all this from?”
“From the wire. From the enlarged photograph of the neck, which you so rudely threw back at me a moment ago.” Dr. Bland laid the photograph on the table again and ran the tip of his finger along some of the north-bank tributaries of the Colorado. “Observe,” he said, “how all the creases on the right are drawn backwards—that is, towards the spine. That means that when the murderer started to pull, he held the right handle of his machine steady, and excited the actual pressure with his left hand. No other explanation will fit. Now for an ordinary, right-handed man, the tendency would have been just the opposite. He would have held steady with the left hand and done the pulling with the right. Cast your mind back to the last time you pulled a tight cork out of a bottle of old port—”
“Yes, I think I see what you mean.”
Hazlerigg went through the motions of garrotting an imaginary victim, whilst the pathologist watched and nodded his approval.
“One other thing, doctor. You say ‘he’ and ‘him’ and ‘the man’. Is that certain? Could it have been a woman?”
“Certainly. A man or a woman. Using this little weapon all you need is the initial surprise, and a certain amount of luck. Consider now. I am going to strangle you.” He pushed the inspector into the late Abel Horniman’s office chair. “You have no cause to suspect me. Right? I am standing quietly behind you. I put my hands round your throat. What do you do? Ah—as I thought. You put your own hands up and try to tear away my fingers. You find it difficult because, strong as you are, you’re sitting down, your knees are under the desk, and you can’t use your weight. But not impossibly difficult. You catch one of my little fingers and bend—all right—all right—you needn’t be too realistic. You manage to break my grip. If you are a man and I am a woman you’d probably break out quite easily. But consider the murderer who is using a wire loop. It’s strong, and it’s as sharp as a cheese-cutter, and it’s an inch into your neck before you know what’s happening. You can’t shout. You’re half paralysed with the shock of the attack and there’s nothing to catch hold of. That’s the crux of it. You can’t get so much as the tip of a finger between the wire and your neck. Yes, yes. I think a woman could kill a man with a weapon like that.”
VI
Hazlerigg had a word with Bohun before he left the office that evening.
He summed things up, principally for his own comfort and edification.
“Abel Horniman is out,” he said. “That’s a pity, because he was our number one candidate. He was the man who ought to have committed this murder. He was the man who might have had every reason for removing Smallbone. But he didn’t do it.”
He paused for a moment; then went on: “I don’t say that we could get up in court and prove that it was impossible for him to have done it. It’s difficult to prove a negative. I suppose he might have crept out of bed in the middle of the night and made his way to Lincoln’s Inn. He might have got in without attracting attention, let himself into the office and killed Smallbone, though I can’t imagine how he’d have got him there unnoticed. It’s theoretically possible. But so improbable that I intend to disregard it. It’s my experience that in real life criminals tend to do their jobs the easiest way. Not the most difficult or the most picturesque. They don’t haul the corpses to the top of Nelson’s Column or exhibit them in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s. Not unless they are mad.”
As Hazlerigg said this he contemplated for a moment the uncomfortable spectre which must haunt all policemen. He thought of Chief Inspector Aspinall and Inspector Hervey scouring the Midlands for a man who specialised in the murder of six-year-old girls. A man who might be a clerk or a labourer. A lay preacher or a lawyer or a Lord Mayor. A kindly father, an indulgent elder brother, a rational man for twenty-nine days out of thirty. And on the thirtieth—a creature, in the hunting of whom there was no logic and in the hanging of whom no satisfaction.
He shook his head angrily. “I’ll believe in a madman if I have to,” he said. “Not till then. Good night.”
“Good night,” said Bohun.
He walked home across the darkening square, his mind astir with alarming fancies.
Chapter Six —Friday— Preliminary Enquiries
But above all, those judicious Collectors of bright parts and flowers and observanda’s are to be nicely dwelt on; by some called the sieves and boulters of learning; tho’ it is left undetermined, whether they dealt in pearls or Meal; and consequently whether they are more value to that which passed thro’ or what staid behind.
Swift: Tale of a Tub
I
“Bohun seems to spend a lot of his time chattering to that policeman,” said Mr. Birley.
“Which policeman?” It seemed to Mr. Craine that the office was full of policemen. Already he had been forced to postpone visits from one ducal and two lesser clients.
“The one who asks all the questions.”
“Oh, yes. The chief inspector.”
“Chief inspector? I don’t think the fellow’s even a gentleman.” Mr. Birley himself had been to Sherborne.
“Oh, well,” said Mr. Craine, tolerantly, “I expect the fact is that he—er—rose from the ranks: or whatever they do in the police force. We mustn’t mind his questions. He’s got his job to do.”
“I don’t mind him doing his job,” said Mr. Birley. “It’s Bohun spending all day chattering to him. If he wants advice why doesn’t he come to me? Bohun can’t know much about things. He only joined us this week.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“We don’t pay him a large salary for him to spend all his time chattering with policemen.”
“Of course not,” said Mr. Craine. “I’ll have a word with him about it. By the way, let me see, what do we pay him?”
“Four hundred and fifty a year,” said Mr. Birley without a blush.
II
“The trouble with you,” said Inspector Hazlerigg, “is that you read too many detective stories.”
He pivoted slowly round in the Horniman swivel-chair.
“How do you make that out?” said Bohun.
“Admit,” said Hazlerigg, “that you expect me to spend my time sitting here asking a million questions. Occasionally moving round the office in a catlike manner, popping up unexpectedly when people are talking to each other, stooping to pick up minute scraps of paper and invisible threads of wool; all the time smoking a foul pipe or playing on a mouth organ or quoting Thucydides in order to establish a character for originality with the book reviewers—”
“Well—”
“Then, at the end of about seventy-five thousand words I shall collect you all into this room, and inaugurate a sort of verbal game of grandmother’s steps, creeping up behind each of the suspects in turn and saying Boo! to them in order to make them jump. At the end of which, when everybody is exhausted, including the reader, I shall produce a revolver, confess that I committed the crime, and shoot myself in front of you all.”
“Well,” said Bohun, “omitting the melodramatic conclusion, isn’t that just about how it’s done?”
“As a practical method of detection,” said Hazlerigg, “it would be about as much use as leaving an open creel beside a trout stream and expecting the fish to jump into it.” He scratched his nose thoughtfully, watched a small girl teasing a cat on the other side of New Square, and went on: “So far as I’ve found out, there are only two ways of fishing for men. One is to drop a grenade into the water: you might call that fishery by shock. The drawback is that you haven’t always a grenade of the appropriate size and power ready to your hand. The other method is more laborious but just as certain. You weave a net. And you drag it across the pool, backwards and forwards. You won’t get everything at first, but if your mesh is fine enough and you drag deeply enough, everything must come up in the end.”