"Are you hinting that somebody hasn't told me the truth?" groaned the unhappy Roger.
"I'll do more than hint it; I'll prove it. When you told us last night that the man in the typewriter shop had positively identified Mr. Bendix as the purchaser of a second - hand No. 4 Hamilton I was astounded. I took a note of the shop's address. This morning, first thing, I went there. I taxed the man roundly with having told you a lie. He admitted it, grinning.
"So far as he could make out, all you wanted was a good Hamilton No. 4, and he had a good Hamilton No. 4 to sell. He saw nothing wrong in leading you to suppose that his was the shop where your friend had bought his own good Hamilton No. 4, because he had quite as good a one as any other shop could have. And if it eased your mind that he should recognise your friend from his photograph - well," said Miss Dammers drily, "he was quite prepared to ease it as many times as you had photographs to produce."
"I see," said Roger, and his thoughts dwelt on the eight pounds he had handed over to that sympathetic, mind - easing shopman in return for a Hamilton No. 4 he didn't want.
"As for the girl in Webster's," continued Miss Dammers implacably, "she was just as ready to admit that perhaps she might have made a mistake in recognising that friend of the gentleman who called in yesterday about some notepaper. But really, the gentleman had seemed so anxious she should that it would have seemed quite a pity to disappoint him, like. And if it came to that, she couldn't see the harm in it not even now she couldn't." Miss Dammers's imitation of Webster's young woman was most amusing. Roger did not laugh heartily.
"I'm sorry if I seem to be rubbing it in, Mr. Sheringham," said Miss Dammers.
"Not at all," said Roger.
"But it's essential to my own case, you see."
"Yes, I quite see that," said Roger.
"Then that evidence is disposed of. I don't think you really had any other, did you?"
"I don't think so," said Roger.
"You will see," Miss Dammers resumed, over Roger's corpse, "that I am following the fashion of withholding the criminal's name. Now that it has come to my turn to speak, I am realising the advantages of this; but really, I can't help fearing that you will all have guessed it by the time I come to my denouement. To me, at any rate, the murderer's identity seems quite absurdly obvious. Before I disclose it officially, however, I should like to deal with a few of the other points, not actual evidence, raised by Mr. Sheringham in his argument.
"Mr. Sheringham built up a very ingenious case. It was so very ingenious that he had to insist more than once on the perfect planning that had gone to its construction, and the true greatness of the criminal mind that had evolved it. I don't agree," said Miss Dammers crisply. "My case is much simpler. It was planned with cunning but not with perfection. It relied almost entirely upon luck: that is to say, upon one vital piece of evidence remaining undiscovered. And finally the mind that evolved it is not great in any way. But it is a mind which, dealing with matters outside its usual orbit, would certainly be imitative.
"That brings me to a point of Mr. Bradley's. I agree with him to the extent that I think a certain acquaintance with criminological history is postulated, but not when he argues that it is the work of a creative mind. In my opinion the chief feature of the crime is its servile imitation of certain of its predecessors. I deduced from it, in fact, the type of mind which is possessed of no originality of its own, is intensely conservative because without the wit to recognise the progress of change, is obstinate, dogmatic, and practical, and lacks entirely any sense of spiritual values. As one who am inclined to suffer myself from something of an aversion from matter, I sensed my exact antithesis behind the whole atmosphere of this case." Everybody looked suitably impressed. As for Mr. Chitterwick, he could only grasp before these detailed deductions from a mere atmosphere.
"With another point of Mr. Sheringham's I have already inferred that I agree: that chocolates were used as the vehicle of the poison because they were meant to reach a woman. And here I might add that I am sure no harm was intended to Mr. Bendix himself. We know that Mr. Bendix did not care for chocolates, and it is a reasonable assumption that the murderer knew it too; he never expected that Mr. Bendix would eat any himself.
"It is curious how often Mr. Sheringham hits the mark with small shafts, while missing it with the chief one. He was quite right about the notepaper being extracted from that sample - book at Webster's. I'm bound to admit that the possession of the piece of notepaper had worried me considerably. I was at a complete loss there. Then Mr. Sheringham very handily presented us with his explanation, and I have been able today to destroy his application of it to his own theory and incorporate it in my own. The attendant who pretended out of innocent politeness to recognise the photograph Mr. Sheringham showed her, was able to recognise in earnest the one I produced. And not only recognise it," said Miss Dammers with the first sign of complacence she had yet shown, "but identify the original of it actually by name."
"Ah!" nodded Mrs. Fielder - Flemming, much excited.
"Mr. Sheringham made a few other small points, which I thought it advisable today to blunt," Miss Dammers went on, with a return to her impersonal manner. "Because most of the small firms in which Mr. Bendix figures on the board of directors are not in a flourishing state, Mr. Sheringham deduced not only that Mr. Bendix was a bad business - man, with which I am inclined to agree, but that he was desperately in need of money. Once again Mr. Sheringham failed to verify his deduction, and once am he must pay the penalty in finding himself utterly wrong.
"The most elementary channels of enquiry would have brought Mr. Sheringham the information that only a very small proportion of Mr. Bendix's money is invested in these concerns, which are really a wealthy man's toys. By far the greater part is still where his father left it when he died, in government stock and safe industrial concerns so large that even Mr. Bendix could never aspire to a seat on the board. And from what I know of him, Mr. Bendix is quite a big enough man to recognise that he is not the business - genius his father was, and has no intention of spending on his toys more than I he can comfortably afford. The real motive Mr. Sheringham gave him for his wife's death therefore completely disappears."
Roger bowed his head. For ever afterwards, he felt, would genuine criminologists point the finger of contempt at him as the man who failed to verify his own deductions. Oh, shameful future!
"As for the subsidiary motive, I attach less importance to that but on the whole I am inclined to agree with Mr. Sheringham. I think Mrs. Bendix must have become a dreadful bore to her husband, who after all was a normal man, with a normal man's reactions and scale of values. I should be inclined to think that she morally drove him into the arms of his actresses, in search of a little light companionship. I'm not saying he wasn't deeply in love with her when he married her; no doubt he was. And he'd have had a naturally deep respect for her then.
"But it's an unfortunate marriage," observed the cynical Miss Dammers, "in which the respect outstays its usefulness. A man wants a piece of humanity in his marriage - bed; not an object of deep respect. But I'm bound to say that if Mrs. Bendix did bore her husband before the end, he was gentleman enough not to show it. The marriage was generally considered an ideal one."
Miss Dammers paused for a moment to sip at the glass of water in front of her.
"Lastly, Mr. Sheringham made the point that the letter and wrapper were not destroyed, because the murderer thought they would not only not harm him but definitely help him. With that too I agree. But I do not draw the same deduction from it that Mr. Sheringham did. I should have said that this entirely confirms my theory that the murder is the work of a second - rate mind, because a first - rate mind would never consent to the survival of any clue which could be easily destroyed, however helpful it might be expected to prove, because he would know how often such clues, deliberately left to mislead, have actually led to the criminal's undoing. And I would draw the subsidiary deduction that the wrapper and letter were not expected to be just generally helpful, but that there was some definite piece of misleading information contained in them. I think I know what that piece of information was.