‘Actually, I thought there was something fishy about the whole situation, myself,’ said the inspector, with an assurance which fooled nobody.
‘There is one thing in this dark and sinister tale which did make me smile,’ said Alan Twist. ‘Francis succeeded so brilliantly in terrifying his sister that she secretly changed her will in favour of Brian, hoping in that way to appease the vengeful ghost. I take great pleasure in imagining how he felt when the terms of the new will were announced. Be that as it may, he did achieve almost all he was aiming for. His sister was half dead with fright and it only remained to administer the final blow. After all that’s been said, you can probably guess what the “thing” was that finally killed her. Mr. Nolan, it’s your turn to speak, because you were the first to understand.’
28
Patrick cleared his throat, emptied his glass, and began:
‘I was indeed the first to understand, but I can’t take much credit. On that Monday evening, at around half — past eight — in other words, an hour and a half before Sarah’s death — I was coming back from London when I happened to see Francis coming out of the Blounts’ garden. He was pushing a wheelbarrow containing a corpse… a rather special one. I also need to tell you that, a few weeks earlier, I happened to see him coming out of an establishment specialising in refrigeration equipment, but he didn’t see me.’
‘He’d frozen Harris Thorne’s corpse!’ exclaimed the chief superintendent in astonishment.
People shifted uneasily in their seats.
‘Exactly. And it was that corpse which he brought into Harris’s old study and placed in front of the fireplace. Can you imagine the devastating shock that Sarah suffered upon seeing her late husband on the same spot where he’d died a year earlier? Let me remind you that the lamp on the desk was lit: Francis must have placed it in such a way as to maximise the effect. And a corpse which had been thawing out for over an hour. He didn’t even need to splash any water to wet the carpet. In theory, he couldn’t be absolutely certain that the scene would cause his sister to have a heart attack, but given all the conditioning he’d subjected her to, any other outcome would be hard to imagine.’
‘It’s monstrous,’ declared Redfern. ‘Absolutely monstrous.’
‘The bastard,’ said Meadows with gritted teeth.
The others were quiet. Bessie, horrified, took Paula in her arms. The murderer’s wife, shaking uncontrollably, appeared about to be sick. Patrick watched her, powerless to do anything. She caught his stare and pulled herself together, ready to hear the rest of his story.
‘What is certain, however, is that the murder, as Dr. Twist has said, had been planned for a long time. For there’s no doubt that Harris Thorne had been frozen just after being placed in the family vault. But how and where? Francis had quickly realised that the Blounts’ abandoned workshop would be an ideal hiding-place. Furthermore, it contained a huge chest filled with sawdust and wood shavings, material often used to prevent water pipes from freezing, and therefore excellent for insulation. Inside the chest, he constructed a smaller one from planks, in which he placed the corpse. He packed the space around the corpse with dry ice — frozen carbon dioxide— which stays in a solid state at lower temperatures than water ice. At higher temperatures, it turns into a gas which is also a good insulator. It’s manufactured by the Cope Refrigerating Company, where I was investigating a case of adultery and where I saw Francis. I think he used to travel there once or twice a week?’
The question was addressed to Paula, who nodded vaguely.
‘Ah! I forgot: you all know the effects of carbon dioxide gas. The workshop had to be aerated. It wasn’t an accident that the glass in several of the workshop’s windows had been smashed. Even so, Bessie, your grandfather suffered ill effects the one time he decided to go in there, do you remember?’
‘Yes, and I remember—.’
‘That Francis almost fainted when he heard your grandfather had gone out there,’ interrupted Paula. Her eyes filled with tears. Redfern served her a port and refilled the others’ glasses in an attempt to calm things down. After filling his pipe, Dr. Twist picked up the narrative:
‘There’s still the mystery of the double appearance of Harris Thorne after Sarah’s funeral, but first let’s finish with the events on the night of the murder. At half past eight, Francis obviously wasn’t in the study as he claimed, because at that very moment he was transporting the corpse from the Blounts’ workshop to the manor, where he almost certainly placed it in the storage room adjacent to the study. At nine o’clock, Mrs. Hilton, you take him a cup of coffee — which I assume he’d requested at the start of the evening, for that specific time?’ Paula nodded silently. ‘Very well. You realise that it was important that someone confirm that, at that moment, there was nothing suspect about the room…. After that, you both go down to the salon. Between nine-twenty and nine-thirty, you leave Sarah all alone: you, Mrs. Hilton, to make some more coffee, and Francis supposedly to go to the game room. But, in reality, he slips out and uses those ten minutes — more than enough time--to transfer Harris’s corpse from the storage room into the study, in front of the fireplace. At ten o’clock, Sarah goes up to the “cursed room.” Francis, far from being in the game room as he later claimed, has been lurking in wait and follows his sister furtively at a distance, not only to observe whether the “operation” goes according to plan, but also to dispose of the body after the fatal moment. Cathy Restarick observing Sarah collapse was most definitely not foreseen, but the impromptu moment doesn’t actually affect the plan. How does he get rid of Harris’s corpse afterwards? It’s impossible to say with certainty. I think he must have thrown it out of the window after the maid left — just as he’d done a year earlier — and rushed down the stairs and out of the service door to hide it behind a bush, before hastening back to the game room. I also believe he put it in the boot of his car when he went to alert Meadows a little later, so he could drop it in a safer spot before putting it back where it was supposed to be: in its coffin.
‘All in all — with the exception of the changes to his sister’s will — you could say that everything has gone according to plan, up until the day of Sarah’s funeral last Friday. That’s when he gets the shock of his life: the dead man he’s just resuscitated has been seen by Patrick Nolan! What are his feelings at that moment? It’s not hard to imagine. There are a thousand questions teeming in his bewildered mind. Is someone amusing themselves by playing the role of the dead man, just as he’d done himself several times? No, that’s ridiculous. An extraordinary coincidence? Hard to believe. What he’s most worried about is the crypt getting searched. If anyone should find the “fresh” corpse of Harris Thorne, that could put investigators on his track. Incidentally, there’s no way to tell whether a body’s been frozen or not. Possibly he didn’t know that. But, in any case, if they did guess it had been, that simply couldn’t be helped. On the other hand, it was absolutely vital to eliminate all traces of the conservation operation in the Blounts’ workshop, the simplest and surest way being to set fire to it. Which he does that same night.’ Twist shot a discreet glance at Paula. ‘There’s nothing to indicate that he realised Brian was in there when he threw the match through the window.’