“My dear Frank!”
He nodded emphatically.
“Don’t take any notice of her. She was brought up modest-a Victorian failing. You can take it from me that as far as she is concerned the human race is glass-fronted. She looks right through the shop-window into the back premises and detects the skeleton in the cupboard. So next time you think of committing a crime you’d better give her a wide berth. You have been warned. It is only the fact that I have a perfectly blameless conscience that enables me to meet her eye.”
Miss Silver pulled at her pale pink ball… “My dear Frank, I really do wish you would stop talking nonsense. Pray, what is it that you wish me to tell you?”
“Well, I should very much like to know whether Carroll was bluffing-all that talk of his about what he might have seen when the lights came on. There’s no doubt that he was very advantageously placed. From the top of those stairs-well, three steps from the top, which comes to very much the same thing- he would be looking right down on all those people round the hearth. If there was anything to see, he’d have seen it all right. But was there anything? If there was, what was it?”
Miss Silver coughed in a gentle, thoughtful manner.
“I think that there was something. I have given some consideration to what it may have been. There is no possibility that Mr. Carroll could have seen the blow struck, or the removal of fingerprints from the handle of the dagger. After hearing Mr. Porlock call out and fall, Mr. Leigh had to push Miss Dorinda back against the wall and then feel his way along it to the front door and turn on the lights. The murderer had ample time to wipe the handle of the dagger and remove it from the vicinity of the corpse. I think there is only one thing which Mr. Carroll could have seen. In stabbing Mr. Porlock, the sleeve of Mr. Masterman’s dinner-jacket came in contact with the luminous paint with which he had marked his victim. He would not notice it until he had gained the position where he intended to be found when the lights came on. But once there, he might very naturally glance down at his hand and arm and see in the darkness a faint glow from the smear of paint. To try and remove the smear would be instinctive. If the lights went on whilst he was rubbing the edge of his sleeve, this is what Mr. Carroll may have seen, and I think he was too clever not to draw his own deductions. You will remember that Mr. Masterman subsequently took the opportunity of brushing against Miss Lane, who had some of the paint on her sleeve, and that he then drew everyone’s attention to the fact that he had stained his cuff. Now this stain was right on the edge of the cloth sleeve and nowhere else. It would be very difficult to acquire a stain of this sort by brushing against a lady in a light frock-so difficult that I cannot believe it happened. Whereas it would, I think, be extremely difficult for a man to stab someone up to the hilt in the middle of a luminous patch without getting some of the paint on the edge of a shirt cuff or coat sleeve. I have asked everyone whether there was anything noticeable about Mr. Masterman’s dinner-jacket. Four of them, including Mr. Leigh, remarked that the sleeves were too long, practically hiding the shirt cuff. This would account for the smear being on the cloth.”
Justin Leigh said, “That’s very interesting, Miss Silver. But if Carroll thought Masterman was the murderer, why didn’t he blackmail him instead of going for Oakley?”
Miss Silver shook her head. There was some suggestion that a pupil was not being quite as bright as she expected.
“Did Mr. Carroll strike you as a courageous person? He did not make at all that impression upon me.”
Justin gave a half laugh.
“Oh, no.”
“I do not think that he would have approached anyone whom he knew to be a murderer directly. He would certainly not have gone to meet Mr. Masterman in that deserted courtyard but Mr. Oakley was a different matter. Like everyone else, Mr. Carroll had seen Mrs. Oakley on her knees beside the dead man and heard her call him Glen. He could hardly fail to guess at Mr. Oakley’s state of mind, or to suspect that he might be terribly afraid of his wife having some part in the crime. He was prepared to play upon those fears. He rang up, dropped his malicious hint, and rang off again. When Mr. Oakley rang, him up and said he was coming over, Mr. Carroll must have felt confident of success. That his purpose was blackmail is certain from the words overheard by Mrs. Tote when Masterman, pretending to be Oakley, said, ‘It might be worth your while to keep a still tongue. Come down and talk it over.’ Mr. Carroll laughed and came. That was his moment of triumph. But the triumphing of the wicked is short.”
Justin said, “Yes, you’re right-it would have been like that. Very satisfying. It all fits in. Well, we’re all off tomorrow, but I hope it isn’t goodbye. You’ll come and see us when we’re married?”
She smiled graciously.
“It will be a pleasure to which I shall look forward. It is always delightful to look forward. As Lord Tennyson says,
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!”
There was a slightly awed silence. Dorinda produced rather a shy smile, but Frank Abbott rose to the occasion. There was laughter in his voice, but it was the laughter of real affection. He leaned over and kissed Miss Silver’s hand, knitting-needles and all.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “Pure gold doesn’t rust.”
Patricia Wentworth
Born in Mussoorie, India, in 1878, Patricia Wentworth was the daughter of an English general. Educated in England, she returned to India, where she began to write and was first published. She married, but in 1906 was left a widow with four children, and returned again to England where she resumed her writing, this time to earn a living for herself and her family. She married again in 1920 and lived in Surrey until her death in 1961.
Miss Wentworth’s early works were mainly historical fiction, and her first mystery, published in 1923, was The Astonishing Adventure of Jane Smith. In 1928 she wrote The Case Is Closed and gave birth to her most enduring creation, Miss Maud Silver.
