THE FORMAL MYSTERY
What can be said about John Dickson Carr that has not already been said hundreds of times before? He is one of the three or four acknowledged masters of the formal mystery story, a positive genius at concocting “impossible crime” situations, an MWA Grand Master Award winner in 1962, and the recipient of an MWA Anniversary Award in 1970 commemorating his fortieth year of professional writing. These are just a few highlights of a most distinguished career—a career which continues today with an occasional novel and a monthly column of mystery-book reviews for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. “The Silver Curtain,” one of his early stories featuring The Department of Queer Complaints, is a typical Carr story: ingenious, baffling, plausible, and very well-written indeed. - B.P.
The croupier’s wrist moved with such fluent ease as to seem boneless. Over the green baize its snaky activity never hesitated, never wavered, never was still. His rake, like an enormous butter-pat, attracted the cards, flicked them up, juggled them, and slid them in a steady stream through the slot of the table.
No voice was raised in the Casino at La Bandelette. There was much casualness; hardly any laughter. The tall red curtains and the padded red floors closed in a sort of idle concentration at a dozen tables. And out of it, at table number six, the croupier’s monotone droned on.
“Six mille. Banco? Six mille. Banco? Banco?”
“Banco,” said the young Englishman across the table. The cards, white and grey, slipped smoothly from the shoe. And the young man lost again.
The croupier hadn’t time to notice much. The people round him, moving in hundreds through the season, were hardly human beings at all. There was a calculating machine inside his head; he heard its clicks, he watched the run of its numbers, and it was all he had time for. Yet so acutely were his senses developed that he could tell almost within a hundred francs how much money the players at his table still retained. The young man opposite was nearly broke.
(Best be careful. This perhaps means trouble.)
Casually, the croupier glanced round his table. There were five players, all English, as was to be expected. There was the fair-haired girl with the elderly man, obviously her father, who had a bald head and looked ill; he breathed behind his hand. There was the very heavy, military-looking man whom someone had addressed as Colonel March. There was the fat, sleek, swarthy young man with the twisty eyebrows (dubious English?), whose complacency had grown with his run of luck and whose wallet stuffed with mille notes lay at his elbow. Finally, there was the young man who lost so much.
The young man got up from his chair.
He had no poker face. The atmosphere about him was so desperately embarrassed that the fair-haired girl spoke.
“Leaving, Mr. Winton?” she asked.
“Er—yes,” said Mr Winton. He seemed grateful for that little help thrown into his disquiet. He seized at it; he smiled back at her. “No luck yet. Time to get a drink and offer up prayers for the next session.”
(Look here, thought Jerry Winton, why stand here explaining? It’s not serious. You’ll get out of it, even if it does mean a nasty bit of trouble. They all know you’re broke. Stop standing here laughing like a gawk, and get away from the table. He looked into the eyes of the fair-haired girl and wished he hadn’t been such an ass.)
“Get a drink,” he repeated.
He strode away from the table with (imagined) laughter following him. The sleek young man had lifted a moon-face and merely looked at him in a way that roused Jerry Winton’s wrath.
Curse La Bandelette and baccara and everything else.
“There,” reflected the croupier, “is a young man who will have trouble with his hotel. Banco? Six mille. Banco?”
In the bar, which adjoined the casino rooms, Jerry Winton crawled up on one of the high stools, called for an Armagnac, and pushed his last hundred-franc note across the counter. His head was full of a row of figures written in the spidery style of France. His hotel bill for a week would come to-what? Four, five, six thousand francs? It would be presented tomorrow, and all he had was his return ticket to London by plane.
In the big mirror behind the bar a new image emerged from the crowd. It was that of the fat, sleek, oily-faced young man who had cleaned up such a packet at the table, and who was even now fingering his wallet lovingly before he put it away. He climbed up on a stool beside Jerry. He called for mineral water: how shrewd and finicky-crafty these expert gamblers were! He relighted the stump of a cigar in one comer of his mouth.
Then he spoke.
“Broke?” he inquired off-handedly.
Jerry Winton glared at his reflection in the mirror. “I don’t see,” he said, with a slow and murderous choosing of words, “that that’s anybody’s business except mine.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said the stranger, in the same unpleasantly off-handed tone. He took several puffs at his cigar; he drank a little mineral water. He added: “I expect it’s pretty serious, though? Eh?”
“If the matter,” said Jerry, turning round, “is of so much interest to you: no, it’s not serious. I have plenty of money back home. The trouble is that this is Friday night, and I can’t get in touch with the bank until Monday.” Though this was quite true, he saw the other’s fishy expression grow broader. “It’s a damned nuisance, because they don’t know me at the hotel. But a nuisance is all it is. If you think I’m liable to go out in the garden and shoot myself, stop thinking it.”
The other smiled sadly and fishily, and shook his head. “You don’t say? I can’t believe that, now can I?”
“I don’t care what you believe.”
“You should care,” said his companion, unruffled. As Jerry slid down from the stool, he reached out and tapped Jerry on the arm. “Don’t be in such a rush. You say you’re a boy Croesus. All right: you’re a boy Croesus. I won’t argue with you. But tell me: how’s your nerve?”
“My what?”
“Your nerve. Your courage,” explained his companion, with something like a sneer.
Jerry Winton looked back at the bland, self-assured face poised above the mineral water. His companion’s feet were entangled with the legs of the bar stool; his short upper lip was lifted with acute selfconfidence; and a blank eye jeered down.
“I thought I’d ask,” he pursued. “My name is Davos, Ferdie Davos. Everybody knows me.” He swept his hand towards the crowd. “How’d you like to make ten thousand francs?”
“I’d like it a whole lot. But I don’t know whether I’d like to make it out of any business of yours.”
Davos was unruffled. “It’s no good trying to be on your dignity with me. It don’t impress me and it won’t help you. I still ask: how would you like to make ten thousand francs? That would more than cover what you owe or are likely to owe, wouldn’t it? I thought so. Do you or don’t you want to make ten thousand francs?”
“Yes, I do,” Jerry snarled back.
“All right. See a doctor.”
“What?”
“See a doctor,” Davos repeated coolly. “A nerve tonic is what you want: pills. No, I’m not wise-cracking.” He looked at the clock, whose hands stood at five minutes to eleven. “Go to this address—listen carefully while I tell you—and there’ll be ten thousand in it for you. Go to this address in about an hour. No sooner, no later. Do your job properly, and there may be even more than ten thousand in it for you. Number two, Square St Jean, Avenue des Phares, in about an hour. We’ll see how your nerve is then.”
La Bandelette, “the fillet,” that strip of silver beach along the channel, is full of flat-roofed and queerly painted houses which give it the look of a town in a Walt Disney film. But the town itself is of secondary consideration. The English colony, which is of a frantic fashionableness, lies among great trees behind. Close to the Casino de la Forêt are three great hotels, gay with awning and piling sham Gothic turrets into the sky. The air is aromatic; open carriages clop and jingle along broad avenues; and the art of extracting money from guests has become so perfected that we find our hands going to our pockets even in sleep.
This sleep is taken by day. By night, when La Bandelette is sealed up except for the Casino, the beam of the great island lighthouse sweeps the streets. It dazzles and then dies, once every twenty seconds. And, as Jerry Winton strode under the trees towards the Avenue of the Lighthouses, its beam was beginning to be blurred by rain.
Square St. Jean, Avenue des Phares. Where? And why?
If Davos had approached him in any other way, Jerry admitted to himself, he would have paid no attention to it. But he was annoyed and curious. Besides, unless there were a trick in it, he could use ten thousand francs. There was probably a trick in it. But who cared?
It was the rain that made him hesitate. He heard it patter in the trees, and deepen to a heavy rustling, as he saw the signboard pointing to the Avenue des Phares. He was without hat or coat. But by this time, he meant to see the thing through.
Ahead of him was a street of fashionable villas, lighted by mere sparks of gas. An infernally dark street. Something queer, and more than queer, about this. Total strangers didn’t ask you how strong your nerves were, and then offer you ten thousand francs on top of it, for any purpose that would pass the customs. Which was all the more reason why…
Then he saw Davos.
Davos did not see him. Davos was ahead of him, walking fast and with little short steps along the dim street. The white beam of the lighthouse shone out overhead, turning the rain to silver; and Jerry could see the gleam of his polished black hair and the light tan topcoat he was now wearing.
Pulling up the collar of his dinner jacket, Jerry followed.
A few yards farther on, Davos slackened his pace. He peered round and up. On his left was the entrance to a courtyard, evidently the Square St. Jean. But to call it a “square” was a noble overstatement; it was only a cul-de-sac some twenty feet wide by forty feet deep.
Two of its three sides were merely tall, blank brick walls. The third side, on the right, was formed of a tall flat house all of whose windows were closely shuttered. But there was at least a sign of life about the house. Over its door burned a dim white globe, showing that there was a doctor’s brass nameplate beside the door. A sedate house with blue-painted shutters in the bare cul-de-sac—and Davos was making for it.
All this Jerry saw at a glance. Then he moved back from the cul-de-sac. The rain was sluicing down on him, blurring the dim white globe with shadow and gleam. Davos had almost reached the doctor’s door. He had paused, as though to consider or look at something; and then…
Jerry Winton later swore that he had taken his eyes off Davos only for a second. This was true. Jerry had, in fact, glanced back along the Avenue des Phares behind him, and was heartened to see the figure of a policeman some distance away. What made him look quickly back again was a noise from the cul-de-sac, a noise that was something between a cough and a scream, bubbling up horribly under the rain; and afterwards the thud of a body on asphalt.
One moment Davos had been on his feet. The next moment he was lying on his side on the pavement, and kicking.
Overhead, the beam of the lighthouse wheeled again. Jerry, reaching Davos in a run of half a dozen long strides, saw the whole scene picked out by that momentary light. Davos’s fingers still clutched, or tried to clutch, the well-filled wallet Jerry had last seen at the casino. His tan topcoat was now dark with rain. His heels scraped on the pavement, for he had been stabbed through the back of the neck with a heavy knife whose polished-metal handle projected four inches. Then the wallet slipped out of his fingers, and splashed into a puddle, for the man died.
Jerry Winton looked, and did not believe his own eyes. Mechanically he reached down and picked up the wallet out of the puddle, shaking it. He backed away as he heard running footfalls pound into the cul-de-sac, and he saw the flying waterproof of a policeman.
‘Halt there!’ the law shouted in French. The policeman, a dim shape under the waterproof, pulled up short and stared. After seeing what was on the pavement, he made a noise like a man hit in the stomach.
Jerry pulled his wits together and conned over his French for the proper phrases.
“His—this wallet,” said Jerry, extending it.
“So I see.”
“He is dead.”
“That would appear obvious,” agreed the other, with a kind of snort. “Well! Give it to me. Quick, quick, quick! His wallet.”
The policeman extended his hand, snapping the fingers. He added: “No stupidities, if you please! I am prepared for you.”
“But I didn’t kill him.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“Man, you don’t think—?”
He broke off. The trouble was that it had happened too rapidly. Jerry’s feeling was that of one who meets a super-salesman and under whirlwind tactics is persuaded to buy some huge and useless article before he realizes what the talk is all about.
For here was a minor miracle. He had seen the man Davos stabbed under his eyes. Davos had been stabbed by a straight blow from behind, the heavy knife entering in a straight line sloping a little upward, as though the blow had been struck from the direction of the pavement. Yet at the same time Davos had been alone in an empty cul-de-sac as bare as a biscuit-box.
“It is not my business to think,” said the policeman curtly. “I make my notes and I report to my commissaire. Now!” He withdrew into the shelter of the dimly lit doorway, his wary eye fixed on Jerry, and whipped out his notebook. “Let us have no nonsense. You killed this man and attempted to rob him. I saw you.”
“No!”
“You were alone with him in this court. I saw as much myself.”
“Yes, that is true.”
“Good; he admits it! You saw no one else in the court?”
“No.”
“Justement. Could any assassin have approached without being seen?”
Jerry, even as he saw the bleak eye grow bleaker, had to admit that this was impossible. On two sides were blank brick walls; on the third side was a house whose door or windows, he could swear, had not opened a crack. In the second’s space of time while he looked away, no murderer could have approached, stabbed Davos, and got back to cover again. There was no cover. This was so apparent that Jerry could not even think of a reasonable lie. He merely stuttered.
“I do not know what happened,” he insisted. “One minute he was there, and then he fell. I saw nobody.” Then a light opened in his mind. “Wait! That knife there—it must have been thrown at him.”
Rich and sardonic humor stared at him from the doorway. “Thrown, you say? Thrown from where?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Jerry. The light went out. Again he stared at blank brick walls, and at the house from whose sealed front no knife could have been thrown.
“Consider,” pursued his companion, in an agony of logic, “the position of the knife. This gentleman was walking with his back to you?”
“Yes.”
“Good; we progress.” He pointed. “The knife enters the back of his neck in a straight line. It enters from the direction where you were standing. Could it have been thrown past you from the entrance to the court?”
“No. Impossible.”
“No. That is evident,” blared his companion. “I cannot listen to any more stupidities. I indulge you because you are English, and we have orders to indulge the English. But this goes beyond reason! You will go with me to the Hotel de Ville. Look at the notecase in his hand. Does be offer it to you and say: ‘Monsieur, honor me by accepting my notecase’?”
“No. He had it in his own hand.”
“He had it in his own hand, say you. Why?”
“I don’t know.”
Jerry broke off, both because the story of his losses at the Casino must now come out with deadly significance, and because they heard the rattle of a door being unlocked. The door of the doctor’s house opened; and out stepped the fair-haired girl whom Jerry had last seen at the Casino.
Beside the door the brass name-plate read Dr. Edouard Hébert, with consulting hours inscribed underneath, and an aggressive Speaks English. Behind the girl, craning his neck, stood a bristly middle-aged man of immense dignity. His truculent eyeglasses had a broad black ribbon which seemed to form a kind of electrical circuit with the ends of his brushed-up moustache.
But Jerry Winton was not looking at Dr. Hébert. He was looking at the girl. In addition to a light fur coat, she now wore a cream-colored scarf drawn over her hair; she had in one hand a tiny box, wrapped in white paper. Her smooth, worried face, her long, pale-blue eyes, seemed to reflect the expression of the dead man staring back at her from the pavement.
She jerked back, bumping into the policeman. She put her hand on Dr. Hébert’s arm. With her other hand she pointed sharply to Davos.
“That’s the man!” she cried.
M. Goron, prefect of Police, was a comfortable man, a round, catlike amiable sort of man, famous for his manners. Crime, rare in La Bandelette, distressed him. But he was also an able man. At one o’clock in the morning, he sat in his office at the town hall examining his fingernails and creaking back and forth in a squeaky swivel chair whose noise had begun to get on Jerry Winton’s nerves.
The girl, who for the tenth time had given her name as Eleanor Hood, was insistent.
“M. Goron!”
“Mademoiselle?” said the prefect politely, and seemed to wake out of a dream.
Eleanor Hood turned round and gave Jerry Winton a despairing look.
“I only wish to know,” she urged, in excellent French, “why we are here, Dr. Hébert and I. And Mr. Winton too, if it comes to that.” This time the look she gave Jerry was one of smiling companionship: a human sort of look, which warmed that miscreant “But as for us—why? It is not as though we were witnesses. I have told you why I was at Dr. Hébert’s house.”
“Mademoiselle’s father,” murmured M. Goron.
“Yes. He is ill. Dr. Hébert has been treating him for several days, and he had another attack at the Casino tonight. Mr. Winton will confirm that.”
Jerry nodded. The old boy at the table, he reflected, had certainly looked ill.
“I took my father back to our hotel, the Brittany, at half past eleven,” the girl went on, speaking with great intensity. “I tried to communicate with Dr. Hébert by telephone. I could not reach him. So I went to his house; it is only a short distance from the hotel. On the way I kept seeing that man—the man you call Davos. I thought he was following me. He seemed to be looking at me from behind every tree. That is why I said, ‘That’s the man,’ when I saw him lying on the pavement with his eyes open. His eyes did not even blink when the rain struck them. It was a horrible sight. I was upset. Do you blame me?”
M. Goron made a sympathetic noise.
“I reached Dr. Hébert’s house at perhaps twenty minutes to twelve. Dr. Hébert had retired, but he consented to go with me. I waited while he dressed. We went out, and on the door step we found—what you know. Please believe that is all I know about it.”
She had a singularly expressive voice and personality. She was either all anxiety or all persuasiveness, fashioning the clipped syllables. When she turned her wrist, you saw Davos lying in the rain and the searchlight wheeling overhead.
Then she added abruptly in English, looking at Jerry: “He was a nasty little beast; but I don’t for a moment believe you killed him.”
“Thanks. But why?”
“I don’t know,” said Eleanor simply. “You just couldn’t have!”
“Now there is logic!” cried M. Goron, giving his desk an admiring whack.
M. Goron’s swivel chair creaked with pleasure. There were many lights in his office, which smelt of creosote. On the desk in front of him lay Davos’s sodden wallet and (curiously) the tiny round box, wrapped in a spill of paper, which Eleanor Hood had been carrying.
M. Goron never spoke to Jerry, never looked at him; ignored him as completely and blandly as though he were not there.
“But,” he continued, growing very sober again, “you will forgive me, mademoiselle, if I pursue this matter further. You say that Dr. Hébert has been treating your father?”
“Yes.”
M. Goron pointed to the small box on the table. “With pills, perhaps?”
“Ah, my God!” said Dr. Hébert, and slapped his forehead tragically.
For several minutes, Jerry had been afraid that the good doctor would have an apoplectic stroke. Dr. Hébert had indicated his distinguished position in the community. He had pointed out that physicians do not go out in the middle of the night on errands of mercy, and then get dragged off to police stations; it is bad for business. His truculent eyeglasses and moustache bristling, he left off his stiff pacing of the room only to go and look the prefect in the eye.
“I will speak,” he said coldly, from deep in his throat.
“As monsieur pleases.”
“Well, it is as this lady says! Why are we here? Why? We are not witnesses.” He broke off and slapped at the shoulders of his coat as though to rid himself of insects. “This young man here tells us a story which may or may not be true. If it is true, I do not see why the man Davos should have given him my address. I do not see why Davos should have been knifed on my doorstep. I did not know the man Davos, except as a patient of mine.”
“Ah!” said the prefect. “You gave him pills, perhaps?”
Dr. Hébert sat down.
“Are you mad on the subject of pills?” he inquired, with restraint. “Because this young man—” again he looked with disfavor at Jerry, “—tells you that Davos made some drunken mention of ‘pills’ at the Casino tonight, is that why you pursue the subject?”
“It is possible.”
“It is ridiculous,” said Dr. Hébert. “Do you even question my pills on the desk there? They are for Miss Hood’s father. They are ordinary tablets, with digitalin for the heart. Do you think they contain poison? If so, why not test them?”
“It is an idea,” conceded M. Goron.
He picked up the box and removed the paper.
The box contained half a dozen sugar-coated pellets. With great seriousness M. Goran put one of the tablets into his mouth, tasted it, bit it, and finally appeared to swallow it.
“No poison?” asked the doctor.
“No poison,” agreed M. Goron. The telephone on his desk rang. He picked it up, listened for a moment with a dreamy smile, and replaced it. “Now this is really excellent!” He beamed, rubbing his hands. “My good friend Colonel March, of the English police, has been making investigations. He was sent here when a certain form of activity in La Bandelette became intolerable both to the French and English authorities. You perhaps noticed him at the casino tonight, all of you?”
“I remember,” said Jerry suddenly. “Very large bloke, quiet as sin.”
“An apt description,” said the prefect.
“But—” began Dr. Hébert.
“I said ‘all of you,’ Dr. Hébert,” repeated the prefect. “One small question is permitted? I thank you. When mademoiselle telephoned to your house at eleven-thirty tonight, you were not there. You were at the casino, perhaps?”
Dr. Hébert stared at him.
“It is possible. But—”
“You saw M. Davos there, perhaps?”
“It is possible.” Still Dr. Hebert stared at him with hideous perplexity. “But, M. Goron, will you have the goodness to explain this? You surely do not suspect either mademoiselle or myself of having any concern with this business? You do not think that either mademoiselle or I left the house at the time of the murder?”
“I am certain you did not.”
“You do not think either mademoiselle or myself went near a door or a window to get at this accursed Davos?”
“I am certain you did not,” beamed the prefect.
“Well, then?”
“But there, you see,” argued M. Goron, lifting one finger for emphasis, “we encounter a difficulty. We are among thorns. For this would mean that M. Winton must have committed the murder. And that,” he added, looking at Jerry, “is absurd. We never for a moment believed that M. Winton had anything to do with this; and my friend Colonel March will tell you why.”
Jerry sat back and studied the face of the prefect, wondering if he had heard right. He felt like an emotional punching bag. But with great gravity he returned the prefect’s nod as a sergent de ville opened the door of the office.
“We will speak English,” announced M. Goron, bouncing up. “This is my friend Colonel March.”
‘‘Evening,” said the colonel. His large, speckled face was as bland as M. Goron’s; his fists were on his hips. He looked first at Eleanor, then at Jerry, then at Dr. Hébert. “Sorry you were put to this inconvenience, Miss Hood. But I’ve seen your father, and it will be all right. As for you, Mr. Winton, I hope they have put you out of your misery?”
“Misery?”
“Told you you’re not headed for Devil’s Island, or anything of the sort? We had three very good reasons for believing you had nothing to do with this. Here is the first reason.”
Reaching into the pocket of his dinner-jacket, he produced an article which he held out to them. It was a black leather notecase, exactly like the one already on M. Goron’s desk. But whereas the first was stuffed with mille notes, this one had only a few hundred francs in it
“We found this second notecase in Davos’s pocket,” said Colonel March.
He seemed to wait for a comment, but none came.
“Well, what about it?” Jerry demanded, after a pause.
“Oh, come! Two notecases! Why was Davos carrying two notecases? Why should any man carry two notecases? That is my first reason. Here is my second.”
From the inside pocket of his coat, with the air of a conjurer, he drew out the knife with which Davos had been stabbed.
A suggestive sight. Now cleansed of blood, it was a long, thin, heavy blade with a light metal handle and crosspiece. As Colonel March turned it round, glittering in the light, Jerry Winton felt that its glitter struck a chord of familiarity in his mind: that a scene from the past bad almost come back to him: that, for a swift and tantalizing second, he had almost grasped the meaning of the whole problem.
“And now we come to my third reason,” said Colonel March. “The third reason is Ferdie Davos. Ferdie was a hotel thief. A great deal too clever for us poor policemen. Eh, Goron? Though I always told him he was a bad judge of men. At the height of the summer season, at hotels like the Brittany and the Donjon, he had rich pickings. He specialized in necklaces; particularly in pearl necklaces. Kindly note that.”
A growing look of comprehension had come into Eleanor Hood’s face. She opened her mouth to speak, and then checked herself.
“His problem,” pursued Colonel March, “was how to smuggle the stolen stuff over to England, where he had a market for it. He couldn’t carry it himself. In a little place like La Bandelette, Goron would have had him turned inside out if he had as much as taken a step towards Boulogne. So he had to have accomplices. I mean accomplices picked from among the hordes of unattached young men who come here every season. Find some young fool who’s just dropped more than he can afford at the tables; and he may grab at the chance to earn a few thousand francs by a little harmless customs bilking. You follow me, Mr. Winton?”
“You mean I was chosen—?”
“Yes.”
“But, good lord, how? I couldn’t smuggle a pearl necklace through the customs if my life depended on it.”
“You could if you needed a tonic,” Colonel March pointed out. “Davos told you so. The necklace would first be taken to pieces for you. Each pearl would be given a thick sugar-coating, forming a neat medicinal pill. They would then be poured into a neat bottle or box under the prescription of a well-known doctor. At the height of the tourist rush, the customs can’t currycomb everybody. They would be looking for a pearl-smuggler: not for an obviously respectable young tourist with stomach trouble.”
Eleanor Hood, with sudden realization in her face, looked at the box of pills on M. Goron’s desk.
“So that is why you tasted my pills!” she said to the prefect of police, who made deprecating noises. “And kept me here for so long. And—”
“Mademoiselle, I assure you!” said M. Goron. “We were sure there was nothing wrong with those pills!” He somewhat spoiled the gallant effect of this by adding: “There are not enough of them, for one thing. But, since you received them from Dr. Hébert after office hours, you had to be investigated. The trick is neat, hein? I fear the firm of Hebert and Davos have been working it for some time.”
They all turned to look at Dr. Hébert.
He was sitting bolt upright, his chin drawn into his collar as though he were going to sing. On his face was a look of what can only be called frightened skepticism. Even his mouth was half-open with this effect, or with unuttered sounds of ridicule.
“We were also obliged to delay you all,” pursued M. Goron, “until my men found Madame Fley’s pearls, which were stolen a week ago, hidden in Dr. Hébert’s surgery. I repeat: it was a neat trick. We might never have seen it if Davos had not incautiously hinted at it to M. Winton. But then Davos was getting a bit above himself.” He added: “That, Colonel March thinks, is why Dr. Hébert decided to kill him.”
Still, Dr. Hébert said nothing.
It was, in fact, Jerry Winton who spoke. “Sir, I don’t hold any brief for this fellow. I should think you were right. But how could he have killed Davos? He couldn’t have!”
“You are forgetting,” said Colonel March, as cheerfully as though the emotional temperature of the room had not gone up several degrees, “you are forgetting the two notecases. Why was Davos carrying two notecases?”
“Well?”
“He wasn’t,” said Colonel March, with his eye on Hébert. “Our good doctor here was, of course, the brains of the partnership. He supplied the resources for Ferdie’s noble front. When Ferdie played baccara at the Casino, he was playing with Dr. Hébert’s money. And, when Dr. Hébert saw Ferdie at the Casino tonight, he very prudently took away the large sum you saw in Ferdie’s notecase at the tables. When Ferdie came to the doctor’s house at midnight, he had only his few hundred francs commission in his own notecase, which was in his pocket.
“You see, Dr. Hébert needed that large sum of money in his plan to kill Ferdie. He knew what time Ferdie would call at his house. He knew Mr. Winton would be close behind Ferdie. Mr. Winton would, in fact, walk into the murder and get the blame. All Dr. Hébert had to do was take that packet of mille notes, stuff them into another notecase just like Ferdie Davos’s, and use it as a trap.”
“A trap?” repeated Eleanor.
“A trap,” said Colonel March.
“Your presence. Miss Hood,” he went on, “gave the doctor an unexpected alibi. He left you downstairs in his house. He went upstairs to ‘get dressed.’ A few minutes before Davos was due to arrive, he went quietly up to the roof of his house—a flat roof, like most of those in La Bandelette. He looked down over the parapet into that cul-de-sac, forty feet below. He saw his own doorstep with the lamp burning over it. He dropped that notecase over the parapet, so that it landed on the pavement before his own doorstep.
“Well?” continued Colonel March. “What would Davos do? What would you do, if you walked along a pavement and saw a notecase bulging with thousand-franc notes lying just in front of you?”
Again, Jerry Winton saw that dim cul-de-sac. He heard the rain splashing; he saw it moving and gleaming past the door-lamp, and past the beam of the lighthouse overhead. He saw the jaunty figure of Davos stop short as though to look at something—
“I imagine,” Jerry said, “that I’d bend over and pick up the notecase.”
“Yes,” said Colonel March. “That’s the whole sad story. You would bend over so that your body was parallel with the ground. The back of your neck would be a plain target to anybody standing forty feet up above you, with a needle-sharp knife whose blade is much heavier than the handle. The murderer has merely to drop that knife: stretch out his fingers and drop it. Gravity will do the rest.
“My friend, you looked straight at that murder, and you never saw it. You never saw it because a shifting, gleaming wall of rain, a kind of silver curtain, fell across the door-lamp and the beam of the lighthouse. It hid the fall of a thin, long blade made of bright metal. Behind that curtain moved invisibly our ingenious friend Dr. Hébert, who, if he can be persuaded to speak—”
Dr. Hébert could not be persuaded to speak, even when they took him away. But Eleanor Hood and Jerry Winton walked home through the summer dawn, under a sky colored with a less evil silver; and they had discovered any number of mutual acquaintances by the time they reached the hotel.