They sniffed. It was.
Ellery squared his shoulders. “Look here,” he croaked. They looked. “We’re on the verge of a particularly unpleasant death. I don’t know what the human animal is supposed to do, how he’s supposed to act in a crisis like this, when the last hope is gone, but I know this: I for one refuse to sit still like a gagged sacrifice and pass out in silence.” He paused. “We haven’t long, you know.”
“Aw, shut up,” snarled Smith. “We’ve had enough of your damn gab.”
“I’m afraid not. You’re the type, old friend, who loses his head at the last moment and goes about bashing his brains out against the nearest wall. I’ll thank you to remember that you’ve a certain amount of sheer pride to live up to.” Smith blinked and lowered his eyes. “As a matter of fact,” continued Ellery, coughing, “now that you’ve chosen to engage in conversation, there’s a little mystery connected with your obese majesty I very earnestly desire to clear up.”
“Me?” mumbled Smith.
“Yes, yes. We’re in the last confessional, you see, and I should think you wouldn’t want to meet your slightly astigmatic Maker before making a clean breast of things.”
“Confessing what?” snapped the fat man, bridling.
Ellery eyed the others cautiously. They were sitting up now, listening and for the moment interested. “Confessing that you’re a damned blackguard.”
Smith struggled to his feet, clenching his fists. “Why, you—”
Ellery strode over to him and, placing his hand on the man’s fleshy chest, pushed. Smith collapsed with a crash on his box. “Well?” said Ellery, standing over him. “And are we to fight like wild beasts at the last, too, Smith, old chap?”
The fat man licked his lips. Then he jerked his head up and cried defiantly: “Well, and why not? We’ll all be roast meat in a little while anyway. Sure I blackmailed her.” His lips sneered. “Fat lot of good it’ll do you now, you damn meddling noseybody!”
Mrs. Carreau had stopped crying. She sat up straighter and said quietly: “He’s been blackmailing me for sixteen years.”
“Marie — don’t,” begged Miss Forrest.
She waved her hand. “It doesn’t matter now, Ann. I—”
“He knew the secret of your sons, didn’t he?” murmured Ellery.
She gasped. “How did you know?”
“That doesn’t matter now, either,” he said a little bitterly.
“He was one of the physicians in attendance at their — their birth...”
“You dirty fat hog,” growled the Inspector with a flicker of anger in his eyes. “I’d like to smash your fat face in—”
Smith cursed weakly.
“Discredited, thrown out of his profession since,” said Miss Forrest savagely. “Malpractice. Of course! He came up here, trailed us to Dr. Xavier’s, managed to see Mrs. Carreau alone—”
“Yes, yes,” sighed Ellery. “We know all the rest.” He looked up at the door above their heads. There was only one course, he knew; he must keep them interested, boiling, frightened — anything so long as they did not think of that blazing horror roaring over their heads. “I’d like to tell you a — story,” he said.
“Story?” muttered Dr. Holmes.
“The story of the most remarkable case of stupid deception I have ever encountered.” Ellery sat down on the first step; he coughed a little and his bloodshot eyes flickered. “Before I tell my little tale, isn’t there someone here who, like Smith, has a confession to make?”
There was silence. He searched their faces slowly, one by one.
“Stubborn to the last, I see. Well, then, I’ll dedicate my last — the next few moments to the job.” He massaged his bare neck and looked up at the little bulb, “I say stupid deception. The reason I say it is that the whole thing was as incredible and fantastic a plot as was ever conceived and perpetrated by an unbalanced mind. Under ordinary circumstances it shouldn’t have fooled me for an instant. As it was, it took me some time to realize how utterly far-fetched it was.”
“What was?” said Mrs. Xavier harshly.
“The ‘clues’ left in the dead hands of your husband and your brother-in-law, Mrs. Xavier,” murmured Ellery. “After a while I came to see that they were impossible. They were much too subtle to have emanated from the thoughts of dying men. Too subtle and too complicated. Their very subtlety is what made their use by the murderer stupid. They flew in the face of the normal. As a matter of fact, if not for the fortuitous appearance of myself upon the scene in all probability their intended meaning would never have been penetrated. I say this not in a spirit of egotism, but because in a way my own mind is as warped as the mind of the murderer. I have the tortuous mind. And so, fortunately, has the murderer.” He paused and sighed. “As I say, then, after a while I suspected the validity of the clues, and after another while — here, thinking — I discarded them. And in a flash I saw the whole dismal thing, the whole dismal and clever and stupid and astounding thing.”
He paused again, moving his tongue in his dry mouth. The Inspector was staring at him in bewilderment.
“What on earth are you talking about?” croaked Dr. Holmes.
“This, Doctor. Where we first went off the track was in our blind assumption that this case presented only one instance of a frame-up — Mark Xavier’s frame-up of Mrs. Xavier; in our assumption that the knave-of-diamonds clue in Dr. Xavier’s murder really had been left by Dr. Xavier.”
“You mean, El,” demanded the Inspector, “that the lawyer didn’t find a half-jack in his brother’s hand that night in the study?”
“Oh, he found the half-jack all right,” said Ellery wearily, “and that’s the crux of the matter. Mark also assumed that his brother John had left the half-jack as a clue to the murderer. It was, like ours, an utterly false assumption.”
“But how could you know that?”
“By a fact I’ve just recollected. Dr. Holmes after examining the body of his colleague stated that Dr. Xavier had been a diabetic, that because of his pathological condition rigor mortis had set in very early, in a matter of minutes rather than hours. We knew that Dr. Xavier had died at about one o’clock in the morning. Mark Xavier had found the body at two-thirty. By that time rigor had long been complete, then. Now Dr. Xavier’s right hand was clenched, holding the six of spades, when we found the body in the morning, and the left hand was spread out on the desk, flat, palm down, fingers stiff and straight. But if rigor had set in a few minutes after death, then those hands must have been in that same condition when Mark Xavier found the body an hour and a half after his brother died!”
“Well?”
“But don’t you see?” cried Ellery. “If Mark Xavier found his brother’s right hand clenched and the left hand rigidly flat, then he could not unclench the right hand or clench the left without breaking the stiff dead fingers or leaving clear signs of the enormous pressure necessary to be exerted. If he had to manipulate the dead hands, he had also to leave them as they were. There’s no question, then, but that Mark found John’s right hand clenched and left hand unclenched, as we found them. Now we know that Mark substituted the six of spades for the jack of diamonds. In what hand therefore must the jack of diamonds have been when Mark made the substitution?”
“Why, the right, the clenched hand, of course,” muttered the Inspector.
“Exactly. The jack of diamonds was in Dr. Xavier’s right hand; all Mark had to do was go through the same procedure you yourself went through, dad, when you took the six out of the dead man’s hand; that is, merely separate the stiff clenched fingers sufficiently to make the card drop out. Then he inserted the six and forced the fingers back the infinitesimal fraction of an inch into the clutching position. He simply couldn’t have found the jack in John’s left hand, for that would mean that he would have had to unclench the left hand and leave it flat against the desk — impossible without, as I say, leaving brutal signs of the act, which did not exist upon examination of the body.”