When the door had closed behind her he threw himself back in his chair.
“Well, that puts a noose round Oakley’s neck all right!”
Miss Silver coughed delicately.
“Mrs. Tote will not swear that the person she saw in the court was Mr. Oakley.”
She sustained the full impact of a formidable frown.
“She heard Carroll address him as Oakley-she’ll swear to that.”
“That is not quite the same thing. Mr. Carroll may have been mistaken. In fact the final point you so skilfully elicited from Mrs. Tote confirms Mr. Oakley’s story. He explains his presence in the court by saying that he thought someone was calling him and hastened in the direction from which he believed the sound to come.”
Lamb gave a short annoyed laugh.
“And isn’t that just what he had to say? Carroll has shouted his name-anyone may have heard him. He’s got to put some kind of a gloss on it, so he uses it to account for his going round to that side of the house.”
With his frowning gaze upon Miss Silver, he was struck by the birdlike quality of her regard, the head a little on one side, the eyes very bright. He had seen her look like that before, and it meant something. In fact, the bird with its eye on a highly promising worm.
“If I might just put that question to Mr. Pearson, Chief Inspector-”
“It won’t keep?”
“I believe not.”
He jerked round in his chair.
“Ring, Frank!”
Pearson came in all agog. His nerves had received a severe shock, but he was being a good deal buoyed up by the fact that it was entirely due to his zeal that the police had arrived in time to arrest the murderer upon the very scene of his crime. That the circumstances of this case would provide him with the most interesting reminiscences, he was already aware. But this solace could not entirely prevent a nostalgic yearning for a future in which two murders would have become merely the subject of a tale. As he was subsequently to put it to his wife, “It’s all very well when it’s a has-been as you might say, but very upsetting to the nerves when it’s going on and you don’t know who’s going to be the next corpse.” Since murders do not commonly take place in the presence of two police officers, to say nothing of one of them being a Chief Inspector, he found the study a very comfortable place, and would have been quite willing to stay there all night.
Miss Silver’s words were therefore rather a disappointment.
“I only want to ask you one question, Mr. Pearson.”
He assumed the butler.
“Yes, madam?”
“When you came through the hall after locking up, did you put any wood on the fire?”
If anyone had been watching Frank Abbott he would have been observed to start.
“Oh, no, madam-I shouldn’t do that.”
“So I supposed. Did you notice the condition of the fire?”
“It is part of my duty to do so, as you might say. I wouldn’t go upstairs and leave a big fire, or anything that might fall out.”
“And the fire was low?”
“Three or four bits lying flat and quite charred through.”
“And you have put no wood on since?”
“Oh, no, madam.”
“Or anyone else?”
“No one has had the opportunity-not since the alarm was given.”
Miss Silver turned a look of extreme gravity upon the Chief Inspector.
“When I came downstairs after the murder I noticed a heavy crooked log at the back of the fire. It was not there when we all retired just before ten o’clock. When you began to speak about the weapon used in tonight’s murder, the fire as I had seen it when I went upstairs and as I saw it when I came down again came very strongly to my thought. At first it only seemed that there was some incongruity, but whilst you were talking to Sergeant Abbott I became aware that this extra piece of wood might very well be the missing weapon. I can only hope that the smouldering ash has not been hot enough to destroy possible evidences.”
Before she had finished speaking Frank Abbott was at the door.
Chapter XXXIV
Ten minutes later Lamb said, “Well, Miss Silver, we are very much obliged to you. There’s no doubt we’ve got the weapon. Fortunately Oakley must have been in too much of a hurry to do more than pitch that log in on the back of the fire without waiting to see where it landed. If it hadn’t rolled off what was left of the fire it would probably have caught. As it is, there’s no mistake about what it was used for.”
“Oakley?” Miss Silver coughed in rather a definite manner. “Mr. Oakley, Chief Inspector?”
He stared. Frank Abbott gave a slight start.
Miss Silver was knitting rapidly. She said,
“If that log was the weapon, Mr. Oakley was not the murderer. It is not possible.”
She got a grunt and a curt “Your reasons?”
“When Mr. Pearson came to tell me of the telephone conversation he had just overheard he mentioned that he had been shutting up the house. Every window on the ground floor was shut and fastened, every door locked and bolted-your men can confirm this. Even apart from the question of how Mr. Oakley could have left the house completely shut up after disposing of the weapon as you suggest, we are faced with another problem. Mr. Carroll did leave the house. He left it after it had been shut up for the night-since Pearson saw him going upstairs when he himself had finished locking up. He must have come down again. He must have opened some door or window in order to leave the house. Yet no door or window was found to be open or unlatched. Someone inside the house must have shut Mr. Carroll out. Is it not natural to suppose that it was the murderer? Mr. Oakley could not have done it.”
There was a pause. Lamb’s surface irritation was all gone. His mind, slower than Miss Silver’s, but eminently competent and impartial, bent itself to weighing the arguments she had used. He did not allow himself to be hurried. He knew his own pace and kept to it. In the end he said,
“That’s right-it wasn’t Oakley-he couldn’t have done it.” He spoke as to an equal, quite without rancour, and continued in the same tone. “Any idea who did do it?”
She said gravely, “Someone who knew that Mr. Oakley was coming over.”
He whistled.
“How do you make that out?”
“I think it follows. I feel sure that the murderer knew of the telephone conversation between Mr. Oakley and Mr. Carroll- I think it quite apparent.”
Lamb’s eyes bulged.
“You’re not going to tell me you think it’s Pearson! I can’t swallow that.”
Miss Silver smiled.
“I shall not ask you to do so. We know that Pearson was listening to the first of the two conversations, the one which was terminated by Mr. Carroll. He did not, however, hear the second, when Mr. Oakley rang up to say that he was coming over. I considered it practically certain that there would be a second extension, to Mr. Porlock’s bedroom, and I have ascertained that this is the case. Now consider for a moment. Mr. Carroll had been playing upon the nerves and upon the fears of the whole company. How tightly strained must the murderer’s nerves have been-how intensely he must have been wondering whether Mr. Carroll really had any hold over him, and how he meant to use it. The party begins to separate for the night. He sees Mr. Carroll enter the study and shut the door. He may even hear him calling the exchange. Do you not think that he would wonder whether Mr. Carroll was about to impart his information to the police? If he could slip into Mr. Porlock’s room he could listen in on the extension and find out. I suggest that this instrument should be examined for fingerprints without delay. If they correspond-and I think they will correspond -with the prints taken early this evening from the mantelpiece in the hall and from the panelled side of the staircase, there will be a good deal of support for my theory.”
“Whose prints do you expect to find?”
Miss Silver shook her head.
“Pray allow me to continue. The murderer hears Mr. Oakley say that he is coming over. I think it possible, in fact probable, that he only reached the extension in time to hear this second conversation. He would have had to get upstairs and watch for an opportunity of penetrating into Mr. Porlock’s room.”