`But this is what I want to emphasize-she didn't dare go back. Would you go back if you thought a man-eatin' dog was ready to fly out after you; would you walk into that danger again when you'd just got over the shock of encounterin' it a minute ago and thought you'd achieved a miraculous escape? This place was safety; John was bound to come here sometime. She'd take one precaution. I want you to think of what that precaution might be while I go on.”
"While I go on to prove that she stayed here," said H. M., suddenly bringing the palm of his big hand down on the table.
"You've had a look at that pavilion. You've had your attention called to the fires. There were two fires, one in the drawin'-room and one in the bedroom, made by Thompson before twelve o'clock. Everybody agrees, so there'll be no fightin' or dark glares when I repeat it, that she never used the drawin'-room at all last night: each person was entertained in the other room. You don't keep the fire goin' strong in a room you don't use. Admittin', then, that she used the bedroom, we know that she hadn't turned in and gone to sleep. She was killed about a quarter past three.
"So what have we got? We got two very small fires, which we can prove by the quantity of ash you saw yourself, burnin' exactly the same length of time-you saw that they were the same. We're asked to believe that for three and a half hours a very small fire in the bedroom was sufficient to keep comfortable a pampered hot-house orchid like Tait in a literal ice-house of a pavilion on a snowy December night while it was never replenished, but stayed the same as the one in the other room. We're asked to believe that she was snugly drinkin' port with the murderer at a quarter past three, sittin' at her ease in negligee before the blaze of a fire which actually must have been ashes an hour before that time.
"It don't require much brain-rackin' to see that those fires stayed the same, and went out about the same time, because she wasn't in the pavilion at all.”
"Whereat, before examin' other things in the room, I found myself hoppin' back to another fact I'd already heard. This piece of evidence screamed at you; so loudly that some fathead did notice it and promptly proceeded to put a farfetched meanin' to it when the real one was much handier. I mean the mysterious figure in the gallery at some time after three o'clock, who smeared Miss Carewe's hand with blood. The theorist was quite right in propoundin' the question, `Why, since there was water at the pavilion, did the fool murderer come all the way up to the house before washin' his hands?'
"Then the theorist goes star-gazin' for his answer, with some complicated tommyrot about the figure being a myth and an even more intricate tale, wholly unsubstantiated, about an attack on Tait with a huntin' crop. Whereas the real answer was, `The murderer didn't come back from the pavilion. He killed Tait here.' Which is simple, and true. I said to myself, `Sure, he was goin' out to the bathroom after water; because,' I said to myself, `didn't Masters tell me that there wasn't any water in this room, and they hadda send out for a bowl when John Bohun shot himself here this morning?' "
Silence. The vivid memory returned to Bennett. But Maurice was sitting forward now; his shoulders hunched up, and his voice going into a batlike squeak.
"I thank you," he said, "for your graceful compliments. But I think I begin to see what you are driving at. You are still accusing — you come back round in the circle, don't you? You accuse my brother John of this murder?"
He struggled to his feet and stood shaking. H. M. leaned forward.
"No," rumbled H. M., "I don't. Not necessarily. But you're gettin' warm, Bohun. You're skirtin' near the truth of the impossible situation at last. Speak up! By God, it's almost penetrated now. What happened?"
The little man moved forward and leaned on the table. His, eyes seemed to narrow and contract. Maurice said:
"John returned with his bad news, and found her in this room. He thought he had killed Canifest; he was in a fury and desperate; he did not care what happened to him; and, when she flew out at him as she would, he went fully amok and killed her.”
"Then," Bohun went on, "he began to realize his position. Nobody had seen him kill Canifest; he might escape that. But if Marcia's body were found in his room, he knew that he had no chance whatever of escaping the rope. The only chance for safety lay in waiting until daylight, in carrying her body out to the pavilion, in setting up false evidence at the pavilion to indicate that she had been murdered there, and in finding her body himself… That's it! That's it! He did kill her after all!"
Slowly H. M. pulled himself up out of his chair.
"I said, son, that you were gettin' warm," he snapped, "and in that last part of it you ring a crashin' bull's-eye. There, fatheads, is the explanation part of it-of the impossible situation. Are you beginnin' to see it?
"Do you understand now why John's nerve completely broke this morning, and he came up here and shot himself? What broke his nerve? Think back, like Masters told me. John was in the dinin'-room with two or three of you. And he went over to the window. And what did he see? Speak up!"
Again the memory smashed back on Bennett.
"He saw," said Bennett, in a voice he did not recognize, "he saw Potter examining and measuring those tracks of his in the snow, because Rainger had said. "
"Because of Rainger's explanation. Uh-huh. And he asked Masters what Potter was doin'. So Masters, with a sinister leer whose effectiveness Masters didn't know even then replied, `Only making measurements of your tracks in the snow.' Why did that break John's nerve? Not because of Rainger's elaborate bunkum of a theory. But because John had carried a dead woman down to that pavilion in early morning, and he thought they were on to him! There you are. No fancy claptrap of playin' pranks with hocussed tracks, that's been makin' your brains dizzy all along. Merely a big and powerful man carryin' a body down to the pavilion through snow that was too shallow to show the deep imprint of two weights. Rainger said one true thing. He said it couldn't have been done without discovery if the snow had been deeper. It couldn't; the tracks would have sunk in too deeply. But with a little plaster of snow… are you beginnin' to see why those tracks were so sharply and heavily printed, like Potter said, and also why they'd dragged a good deal at the toes?"
H. M. had lost his woodenness. His voice smashed across the silent room.
"Didn't I tell you that somebody had smashed a decanter and a couple of glasses on the hearthstone; deliberately smashed 'em, to make it look like there'd been a struggle there? Well, didn't you wonder why? It was to offer proof she'd been killed at the pavilion.
"Now I'm very slowly and painstakingly goin' to tell you what he did. He didn't kill the woman. He found her dead when he got here. And in this tale you'll probably see the dead glarin' evidence that'll tell you who did kill her. Go back to the beginning of it all.
"She left that pavilion, turnin' off the lights; she came up here, as I've told you, and was afraid to go back because of the dog. Now in the tale I'll leave a single cloud of blackness straight in the middle; the cloud of blackness that hides the murderer who finds her here and beats her head in. The murderer leaves her here — maybe on that bed," he pointed: "maybe anywhere. We pass the cloud of blackness to the end of the story, when John Bohun comes into it.”
"He's driven back from town. He thinks he's killed Canifest, and the only thing that will save him is to lie about the time he reached home. That is, if he can somehow prove that he did reach home at the same time he must have killed Canifest in London; if he can prove an alibi by having somebody swear he was here and not in London when Canifest died; that'll save him. That's simple, ain't it? He's got to get that alibi. It's burnin' in his mind all the time he rides hell-for-leather out here. Fix it! Fix it, somehow! So that wild, nervous, irresolute feller who don't know his own mind from one minute to the next he comes home, walks up here, and finds Marcia Tait dead in his room!