"And where's the machine now?" asked Mrs. Fielder - Flemming eagerly.
"I expect at the bottom of the Thames. That's my point. This criminal of mine leaves nothing to chance at all.
"With the sixth condition, about being near the post - office during the critical hour, of course I agree. My murderer has a mild alibi, but it doesn't hold water. As to the next two, the fountain - pen and the ink, I haven't been able to check them at all, and while I agree that their possession would be rather pleasing confirmation I don't attach great importance to them; Onyx pens are so universal, and so is Harfield's ink, that there isn't much argument there either way. Besides, it would be just like my criminal not to own either of them but to have borrowed the pen unobtrusively. Lastly, I agree about the creative mind, and the neatness with the fingers, and of course with the prisoner's peculiar mentality, but not with the necessity for methodical habits."
"Oh, come," said Mr. Bradley, pained. "That was rather a sound deduction, I thought. And it stands to reason, too."
"Not to my reason," Roger retorted. Mr. Bradley shrugged his shoulders. "It's the notepaper I'm interested in," said Sir Charles. "In my opinion that's the point on which the case against any one must hang. How do you prove possession of the notepaper, Sheringham?"
"The notepaper," said Roger, "was extracted about three weeks ago from one of Webster's books of sample notepaper - headings. The erasure would be some private mark of Webster's, the price, for instance: 'This style, 5s. gd.' There are three books at Webster's, containing exactly the same samples. Two of them include a piece of Mason's paper; from the third it's missing. I can prove contact of my suspect with the book about three weeks ago."
"You can, can you?" Sir Charles was impressed. "That sounds pretty conclusive. What put you on the idea of the sample books?"
"The yellowed edges of the letter," Roger said, not a little pleased with himself. " I didn't see how a bit of paper that had been kept in a pile could get its edges quite so discoloured as all that, so concluded that it must have been an isolated piece. Then it struck me that walking about London, one does see isolated pieces of notepaper stuck on a board in the windows of printing - firms. But this piece showed no drawing - pin holes or any other signs of having been fixed to a board. Besides, it would be difficult to remove it from a board. What was the next best thing? Obviously, a sample - book, such as one usually finds inside the same shops. So to the printers of Mason's notepaper I went, and there, so to speak, my piece wasn't."
"Yes," muttered Sir Charles, "certainly that sounds pretty conclusive." He sighed. One gathered that he was gazing wistfully in his mind's eye at the diminishing figure of Lady Pennefather, and the beautiful case he had built up around her. Then he brightened. This time one had gathered that he had switched his vision to the figure, equally diminishing, of Sir Charles Wildman, and the beautiful case that had been built up around him too.
"So now," said Roger, feeling he could really put it off no longer, "we come to the fundamental mistake to which I referred just now, the trap the murderer laid for us and into which we all so neatly fell."
Everybody sat up. Roger surveyed them benignly. "You got very near seeing it, Bradley, last night, with your casual suggestion that Sir Eustace himself might not have been the intended victim after all. That's right enough. But I go further than that."
"I fell in the trap, though, did I?" said Mr. Bradley, pained. "Well, what is this trap? What's the fundamental mistake we all side - slipped into? " "Why," Roger brought out in triumph, "that the plan had miscarried - that the wrong person had been killed!"
He got his reward. "What!" said every one at once. "Good heavens, you don't mean . . .? "
"Exactly," Roger crowed. "That was just the beauty of it. The plan had not miscarried. It had been brilliantly successful. The wrong person had not been killed. Very much the right person was."
"What's all this?" positively gaped Sir Charles. "How on earth do you make that out? "
"Mrs. Bendix was the objective all the time," Roger went on more soberly. "That's why the plot was so ingenious. Every single thing was anticipated. It was foreseen that, if Bendix could be brought naturally into Sir Eustace's presence when the parcel was being opened, the latter would hand the chocolates over to him. It was foreseen that the police would look for the criminal among Sir Eustace's associates, and not the dead woman's. It was probably even foreseen, Bradley, that the crime would be considered the work of a woman, whereas really, of course, chocolates were employed because it was a woman who was the objective."
'"Well, well well!" said Mr. Bradley.
"Then it's your theory," pursued Sir Charles, "that the murderer was an associate of the dead woman's, and had nothing to do with Sir Eustace at all?" He spoke as if not altogether averse from such a theory.
"It is," Roger confirmed. "But first let me tell you what finally opened my eyes to the trap. The vital piece of information I got in Bond Street was this: that Mrs. Bendix had seen that play, The Creaking Skull, before. There's no doubt about it; she actually went with my informant herself. You see the extraordinary significance, of course. That means that she already knew the answer to that bet she made with her husband about the identity of the villain."
A little intake of breath testified to a general appreciation of this information.
"Oh! What a marvellous piece of divine irony." Miss Dammers was exercising her usual faculty of viewing things from the impersonal aspect. "Then she actually brought her own retribution on herself. The bet she won virtually killed her."
"Yes," said Roger. "The irony hadn't failed to strike even my informant. The punishment, as she pointed out, was so much greater than the crime. But I don't think," - Roger spoke very gently, in a mighty effort to curb his elation - "I don't think that even now you quite see my point."
Everybody looked inquiringly. "You've all heard Mrs. Bendix quite minutely described. You must all have formed a tolerably close mental picture of her. She was a straightforward, honest girl, making if anything (also according to my informant) almost too much of a fetish of straight dealing and playing the game. Does the making of a bet to which she already knew the answer, fit into that picture or does it not?"
"Ah!" nodded Mr. Bradley. "Oh, very pretty."
"Just so. It is (with apologies to Sir Charles) a psychological impossibility. It really is, you know, Sir Charles; one simply can't see her doing such a thing, in fun or out of it; and I gather that fun wasn't her strong suit, by any means.
"Ergo," concluded Roger briskly, "she didn't. Ergo, that bet was never made. Ergo, there never was such a bet. Ergo, Bendix was lying. Ergo, Bendix wanted to get hold of those chocolates for some reason other than he stated. And the chocolates being what they were, there was only one other reason.
"That's my case."
CHAPTER XIV
WHEN the excitement that greeted this revolutionary reading of the case had died down, Roger went on to defend his theory in more detail.
"It is something of a shock, of course, to find oneself contemplating Bendix as the very cunning murderer of his own wife, but really, once one has been able to rid one's mind of all prejudice, I don't see how the conclusion can possibly be avoided. Every item of evidence, however minute, goes to support it."