'" Look here," said Sam. " I’m coming to Six Ashes impersonating somebody or other; I'm going to get that jewellery; and you're going to help me." The already-harassed Middlesworth was rather desperate. "I'm not going to sponsor you," said Middlesworth. "When you disappear with the jewellery they'll know I was implicated; I'd just as soon you blew the gaff about the other thing. So I'm ruddy well not going to sponsor you."
'"Maybe not,'‘ says Sam coolly. "But you're going to help me, and first of all you're going to tell me everything about this district and its people." So the background unrolled itself to this clever, pouncing Mr De Villa. Richard
Markham, wildly in love with Lesley Grant. Engagement imminent! Engagement certain! Young man a writer of sensational imaginative plays dealing with the minds of. murderers, especially poisoners...
'Sam constructed his scheme with slickness and ease. He took this cottage. And with dazzling cheek he introduced himself, under terms of the deepest secrecy, to the Chief Constable of the county as Sir Harvey Gilman.
"Then came the garden-party. News of the engagement of Lesley Grant to Richard Markham was winging through the place: even, assisted by Mrs Rackley, news of the invitation to dinner for Friday night. At the garden-party where he played fortune-teller, Sam decided it was time to act.
'What the self-confident Sam didn't realize was that in Hugh Middlesworth he was dealing with a man every bit as intelligent as himself. And Middlesworth was sick and desperate. He'd thought the past was forgotten: but De Villa turned up out of it. Here was this albatross round his neck, likely to continue there. Always threatening! Always disturbing his sleep! Always a nightmare, absent or present, always threatening respectability...'
Again Dr Fell, in some discomfort, coughed loudly as he glanced away from Lesley.
' Can't you understand that feeling, Miss Grant?'
'Yes,' said Lesley. And she shivered.
'Middlesworth decided’ Dr Fell said simply, 'that De Villa was going to die. And Middlesworth very nearly got the opportunity to kill him just after the garden-party on Thursday afternoon. Now watch the events take form!'
Adjusting his eyeglasses, spilling much cigar-ash, Dr Fell took the typewritten confession and ran his fingers down its lines. His lips moved growlingly as he searched for the proper place. Then he read aloud from it.
'... De Villa so upset Miss Grant in the fortune-teller's tent that she screamed and pulled the trigger of the rifle when Major Price happened to joggle her arm. I'm sure it was an accident.'
' It was an accident!' cried Lesley.
'... I saw at once De Villa had only got a flesh-wound. But he fainted from shock, and everybody thought he was dying. I saw how I could kill the swine then, if only I could get him alone. That's why I sneaked the rifle into my golf-bag and kept the bag slung over my shoulder when Major Price and I carried him to the car. I meant to take him home, put him under an anaesthetic, extract the real bullet, and fire one from the same rifle which should kill him. People would think it was the same bullet, the result of an accident...'
'And they ruddy well would have!' said Dick Markham.
'... but it was no good, it wouldn't work, because I couldn't get rid of Major Price no matter what I said. So I had to think of something else.'
Dr Fell weighed the confession in his hand, and then put it down beside him on the sofa.
'And,' Dr Fell commented, 'he did think of something else. The real scheme was handed to him - handed to him on a plate - while he and Dick Markham and Sam De Villa sat here in this very room on Thursday night. Sam was telling the terrible story of the notorious poisoner, and laying plans to snaffle that safe full of jewels. Middlesworth sat quietly by. But someone suggested how he could kill De Villa and get away with it'
'Who suggested it to him?' asked Dick.
' Sam De Villa himself.'
'Sam De Villa?'
'So Middlesworth says. Will you cast your mind back to that scene?'
It was very easy to recreate: De Villa in the easy-chair, with the light of the tan-shaded lamp shining down. Middlesworth silent and thoughtful in the basket-chair drawing at an empty pipe. The summer night outside the windows, rustling, with the rough flowered curtains not quite drawn close. And the very thoughtfulness of Middles-worth's face returned with ugly clarity now,
'You were violently discussing the mystery of locked, sealed rooms,' pursued Dr Fell. 'De Villa remarked,a propos the bullet fired at him through the tent, that you couldn't have such a thing as a locked room when a bullet-hole appeared in the wall. Is that correct?' 'Yes!'
'Shortly afterwards Middlesworth heard a noise outside. He got up, went to the window, threw back the curtains, and looked out. Then he drew his head back - and stood staring at that window, with his back to you, as though something had just occurred to him. Is that correct too?'
'Yes.'
'Well?' prompted Dr Fell gently. 'When Middlesworth looked at the window, what did he see ?'
With some effort Dr Fell hoisted himself to his feet. He lumbered across to the window, still locked, where the clean-drilled bullet-hole showed in the lower pane below and to one side of the metal catch.
Dr Fell pointed to it
'Colonel Pope, as we know, always used to fasten gauze screens to these windows - sometimes the upper, sometimes the lower part - using drawing-pins to fasten the screens there. Consequently, what do we find? We find, as Earnshaw has been so fond of pointing out, innumerable tiny little holes made by the points of drawing-pins. We find those little pin-pricks peppered all over the wooden frame of the window. Is that clear?'
'Naturally! But...'
'You could push another drawing-pin into the frame anywhere, couldn't you? And, when it was plucked out again, the mark it left would never be noticed?'
'Of course not But...'
'Middlesworth,' said Dr Fell, 'had a double inspiration. I will now tell you exactly what he did.
'He could be morally certain Sam De Villa would take a large dose of luminal before going to bed. So he left this cottage and drove you home in his car, showing alarm only when you mentioned whisky, and asking you for God's sake not to get drunk...'
‘Why?'
'Because he vitally needed you in his plan. Middlesworth then drove home himself, and made certain preparations. Who would be the likeliest person to have a hypodermic syringe at hand? A medical man. We discovered in the Sodbury Cross poisoning case that prussic acid can be distilled from separately non-poisonous elements; but who would be the likeliest person to have the acid ready at hand? A medical man. These particular preparations, however, did not concern him at the moment. He had other things to attend to first.
'At shortly past midnight, when Six Ashes was asleep,' Dr Fell picked up the confession, and put it down again, 'he walked slowly out to this cottage once more.
'The house was dark. He had no trouble getting in: the place was not locked, and a window would always have served if it had been. He found Sam De Villa, as he expected, in a drugged sleep upstairs in the bedroom. So far, excellent!
'He came into this sitting-room, where he switched on the light. He set about arranging the room - notably that big easy-chair where Hadley is sitting now - exactly as he wanted it for the events that were to happen at daybreak next morning. He closed both windows, but drew back the curtains widely from both.
'You see, of course, what his next move was? Middlesworth, carrying that Winchester 61 rifle, walked across the lane, climbed over the stone wall opposite, worked out his position carefully, and then - time still shortly past midnight - he fired a bullet through this window into a lighted, empty room.