I
“So we were cast for the parts of the two mugs.”
Ian Mackellon voiced his disillusionment in a tone which made Macdonald chuckle.
“Few men like to feel that they have been fooled,” said the latter, “and Aberdonians like it less than most. You needn’t feel so bitter about it. Your presence was requested in the studio on that particular evening because you and Mr. Cavenish were obviously reliable, law-worthy and conscientious men. No police inspector worth his salt could have suspected either of you of corruption. Therein was your value.”
Macdonald was sitting in the studio, where he had acceded to Mackellon’s request for an exposition of the “Cardinal Crime,” as Mackellon called it. Sitting opposite one another across a chess-board, Cavenish and Mackellon listened.
“I think I’ll tell you the story from the detective’s point of view,” said Macdonald, and Cavenish put in gravely:
“We shall be indebted to you, Chief Inspector. It is good of you to spare us the time.”
Macdonald caught a glint of humour in Mackellon’s hazel eyes, and responded to that.
“Don’t be too grateful,” he said. “Mackellon will admit that all true Scots like talking—on occasion. We’re silent on occasion, especially when we have a job to do, but we talk all right at times. I’m through with a job of work, and I can relax a while—and talk.”
He puffed at his pipe for a moment and then began:
“I had the bare facts: an old man had been shot at close quarters in his bed. An empty cash-box and a pistol lay on the floor. A Canadian soldier had been arrested on the spot, and the Special Constable who arrested him said that the soldier had made a bee-line for this studio, as though for a deliberate reason. I sent the camera and fingerprint men into the house to do their job, and then I came in here to consider the assembled company. You remember my own entry on to this stage, I expect.”
Mackellon laughed. “I shall never forget it. I liked the manner in which you summed us all up.”
“It was an interesting occasion,” said Macdonald. “I quite understood why Mr. Verraby had felt that the party looked strange—capable of anything, as he expressed it. Delaunier, in his scarlet trappings, was so dramatic. Manaton so very much the temperamental painter, and the studio so bizarre in effect that the resulting impression was operatic, something far removed from the average of everyday experience. What struck me most was the contrast in type of the two pairs of men I saw there. Two were artists: two were reliable, hard-headed, and, it seemed to me, conscientious citizens.”
Mackellon put a word in here: “Are artists never reliable, or hard-headed, or conscientious?”
“Of course they are,” replied Macdonald, “but in this case, I summed up Manaton as being unstable: it was true that he behaved well and spoke reasonably, but it seemed to me that he made a deliberate effort, as though he were controlling himself with an end in view. It mattered to him that the impression he should make on me was a good one, though he hadn’t cared, apparently, to thus impress the special constable. Thinking it over afterwards, I found myself wondering if Manaton were drunk—quietly, unostentatiously drunk.”
Mackellon nodded. “Drunk—or doped. When he had drunk enough whisky to make most men insensible, I have heard Manaton talk and argue much more lucidly than when he was sober.”
Macdonald went on: “Delaunier was an actor: he acted deliberately, and it was difficult to judge the man behind the acting. Well, I saw Bruce Manaton’s portrait. It was good—very good it seemed to me. I had just heard of Delaunier. I knew this—neither of the two was successful, an unknown painter, an obscure actor—but both men with energy and ability. In addition there was Manaton’s sister—reserved, cold, steady, and determined to say nothing at all. She watched, and waited—a difficult person to assess. Quite obviously, being Bruce Manaton’s sister, and at the same time being a woman of sensibility and orderliness, she must have had a hard life. Sisters of men like Bruce Manaton do have hard lives, if they try to retain their self-respect, as Rosanne Manaton did.” Macdonald paused: “I’m being long-winded over this, but I’m interested in my own recapitulation here. I saw this studio, and the kitchen there. I saw the efforts of one person to uphold the niceties and decencies of life—cleanliness, orderliness, grace—and on the other hand, squalor. The brother did not mind squalor. He was used to it. The sister was not.”
Cavenish spoke here, in his sober, conscientious way.
“I’m glad you saw all that. I did. Rosanne Manaton has struggled against heavy odds, but she never complained and never gave in.”
“Well, there it was,” said Macdonald. “I took your evidence: it amounted to the fact that you four men had been in the studio, within sight of one another, the whole evening. Delaunier was most emphatic over this: he even recapitulated the chess moves. However, during the evening’s sitting, Delaunier had moved about the studio occasionally—the chess players were used to that and took no notice. Also there was a lay figure on the floor. I merely noted the possibilities. Miss Manaton had looked inside the studio several times: she had also been outside to inspect the black-out. She had nothing to say—and the key of Mr. Folliner’s house was on the kitchen table.” Again Macdonald paused, and then went on: “I needn’t stress all the details of our search in the house: the outstanding facts were the pistol—old Folliner’s own—an empty cash-box, and a postcard from Neil Folliner saying he was calling to see his uncle that evening. The postcard I regarded as exhibit A. It dated the crime. The old man was shot that evening because his nephew was coming, and that nephew could act as scapegoat. It was an assumption on my part, but it was right. The man who left the postcard for us to find over-acted. It was a mistake. The first thing I asked myself was, ‘Who could have got hold of that postcard?’ The answers were obvious—Mrs. Tubbs, or the studio tenants. Very often in these days, when inexperienced people are delivering mails, letters for separate addresses may get delivered into one and the same letter-box. It was quite probable that the studio people could take letters from the new postman—or postwoman—and obtain both the studio mail and that for the house. It did look to me as though the studio people could have got hold of that postcard, while it was very improbable that Verraby could have. Another point about that postcard.” He turned to Cavenish. “You remember that I asked you to write down exactly what Neil Folliner had said while he was in the studio. I asked Mackellon to do the same thing. You both wrote down that Neil Folliner had said ‘I wrote to uncle and told him I was coming this evening.’ Bruce Manaton stated that Folliner had said ‘I sent uncle a postcard’—so somebody in the studio knew about that postcard.”
Mackellon nodded. “Yes,” he said. “It’s points like that give a liar away. I’ve always maintained that it’s very difficult to lie consistently and to get away with it.”
Macdonald nodded. “That’s quite true: it’s also true that it is on little points that a liar trips up. Well, here are two small points. Mrs. Tubbs had left the key of Mr. Folliner’s house in the studio not once but several times. An impression of it could have been made very easily. The studio people could have got hold of Neil Folliner’s postcard. Next, to get on with Mrs. Tubbs’ evidence. I liked Mrs. Tubbs—liked her at once and whole-heartedly. She will always embody for me the spirit which makes the wizened little Cockney one of the grandest characters in the world.”
Mackellon nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ve often thought it’s Mrs. Tubbs who’s really beating Hitler. He doesn’t understand Mrs. Tubbs. You can call that sentiment if you like, but it’s true.”
“It’s true enough,” said Macdonald soberly. “Now Mrs. Tubbs had been keeping that old man alive because she couldn’t bear to think of him starving. I’ve Neil Folliner’s evidence that that is true—it wasn’t made up by Mrs. Tubbs. She would not have done that if she had suspected that the old man was wealthy. She knew he was a skinflint, and she said that she made him pay her something when he had got tenants in the studio. That was just: Mrs. Tubbs struck me as having her own clear ideas of justice, and not bad ideas either. I did not think it probable that she had kept an old man from starving in order to rob him and kill him: neither did I believe that she knew he was wealthy and had spread the news abroad among her own friends. She called him ‘the poor old misery,’ and that was her attitude to him, an attitude of compassion, and it rang true. Now Mrs. Tubbs told me one or two interesting things en passant, and one of the most interesting was that the previous tenant of the studio, a man named Stort, had painted a picture of old Mr. Folliner with his hands clutching money which he was counting over. ‘I did it from memory, Ma,’ said Stort—and Mrs. Tubbs resented the familiarity of that word ‘Ma’! She did not know how much interested I was in her recital. How had Stort seen old Folliner so that he could paint that picture from memory, and how had he got the idea of him counting money like a miser? Incidentally, I’ve got that painting to show in court—Reeves ran it to earth for me. Here is a photograph of it.”
Macdonald showed them the reproduction of “Peep-Show,” Mackellon exclaimed aloud:
“Good Lord! How did he get the detail?”
Macdonald replied, “The detail is absolutely accurate. That is a picture of old Folliner sitting up in his own bed, and it was painted by a man with an accurate memory. Stort saw old Folliner sitting up in bed counting his money, not once but many times.”
Macdonald then recounted how it was possible to see into Mr. Folliner’s bedroom from the gallery window of the studio.
“Of course, I’m putting the fact of finding the picture and of discovering the means of ‘peeping’ out of order in the time sequence of my own investigation, but Mrs. Tubbs told me about the picture on the evening of the murder.”
Mackellon smiled. “In fact your thoughts were directed more and more towards the studio.”
Macdonald nodded. “Yes. I saw ever more clearly the value of the two incorruptible witnesses. As I heard Delaunier say later ‘the evidence stands.’ I won’t weary you with an account of my interview with Mr. Verraby. Concerning him, at least, I felt in agreement with Manaton when he said ‘We did not like him.’ I’ll leave him out for the moment. Jenkins worked well into the night examining deceased’s papers—and I did a lot of thinking. The next morning I saw Neil Folliner, and I then examined the house in detail in daylight. Three points of interest emerged: one was the existence of some portraits on the walls of the sitting-room. These portraits had been painted out very carefully and were obliterated: one was the existence of a decrepit grandfather clock, minus its weights and chains: one was the view of the studio roof from the first floor of the house, showing a collapsed flag pole and some yards of cord flapping around the studio walls and roof close by the disused chimney-pot.”
Cavenish put out a protesting hand. “This is where I get lost,” he said. “I’ve followed all your previous argument, and followed it with intense interest, but the three points you have just mentioned baffle me completely. I’m no good at puzzles.”
“If you had been doing my job, you would have asked yourself just the same questions as I did,” said Macdonald. “Obviously the first question was: Who was the murderer? Next, what had happened to the contents of his cash-box? As Inspector Jenkins worked through Mr. Folliner’s papers, it became increasingly evident that a large amount of money had disappeared.”
Ian Mackellon put in a word here. “Obviously one wondered about that,” he said. “Assuming that the suspects were Neil Folliner and Mr. Verraby, as we did assume at first, it seemed plain that they would not have risked keeping the loot on them. They would have had to hide it somewhere.”
Macdonald nodded. “That was it. Now I did not limit my suspicions to Young Folliner and Verraby—for reasons I have told you in part. I suspected that the secret lay somewhere in the studio party, improbable though that may have seemed. The point was: where was the loot? I guessed that it would not be in any obvious place: it also seemed certain that only a very short time could have been spent on concealing it. How could a man secrete a large bundle of bank notes so that they could escape an expert search? I have known valuables concealed in a container like a thermos flask and sunk in a cistern—but that method was not used. Certainly not burying, nor the dug-out. Well, there was a disused chimney, as you can see for yourselves. It is blocked this end, but the wide cowl of the chimney was open. There was cord—from the flag post—and the weights of the grandfather clock were missing. It seemed to me that with time to fix a pulley in the chimney-pot, if the weights from the clock were attached to one end of the line and put inside the chimney-pot, those weights would be capable of hoisting up a packet attached to the other end of the line and pulling that packet into hiding inside the chimney-pot. It’s the grandfather clock idea, the weights do the work. Mechanically, it’s a simple contrivance. The pulley is fixed in the chimney and the weights will run down and hoist up a lesser weight than themselves: a sufficient over-plus of cord is necessary to have a length of line to secure outside the chimney-pot, so that it is possible to recover the package inside by hauling on the line.”
Mackellon nodded. “Yes, I follow that idea all right; though I should never have tumbled to it because the weights of the grandfather clock were missing.”
“Neither did I, not in that way,” replied Macdonald. “Detection isn’t based on brilliant flashes of intuition—at least, mine isn’t. It’s based on a reconstruction of possibilities. If you assume that somebody has hidden something, the only thing to do is to consider every conceivable hiding place at their disposal, as though one had to hide the object oneself. Well, that clears the ground a little. Now I’m going back to the beginning, to the studio party. Bearing in mind that the latch-key could have been obtained by any member of that party on previous occasions, and that a postcard had been mentioned, the next problem was which member or members of that party could have done the dirty work. Of course there was Miss Manaton, but if she had been guilty I don’t think she would have stated that she had been outside. It wasn’t necessary for her to say so. There was no other evidence to show that she had been outside. She could have said ‘I was in the kitchen all the time, except when I was in the studio,’ and there would have been no means of disproving that statement. No. If the studio party were involved, I thought it much more probable that something much more subtle had been evolved. The situation appealed to me. Here were four men, all of them stating that they had been in the studio from 7.30 onwards in each other’s company. Now the very fact that two of those men were reliable conscientious citizens made me more than ever inquisitive. It seemed so plain that the chess players had been imported to give a feeling of confidence to the investigator: they were unimpeachable. It was a clever idea.”
Mackellon wriggled.
“Confound you, don’t rub it in,” he protested. “I’ve admitted that we were mugs—just plain mugs, done by a confidence trick.”
Macdonald chuckled. “I enquired into your bona fides later, that I admit, but the situation as I saw it was this. The two of you had been playing chess. Neither of you could have left the chess-board without it being obvious to your partner, to the painter, and to the sitter. Four men conspiring together?—and four ill-assorted men at that? I thought not. Next, could the painter have absented himself for ten minutes without the chess players noticing? Again, I thought not. Bruce Manaton stood in front of that canvas, occasionally moving back to get a fresh focus, occasionally speaking to his model. He was directly in Mackellon’s line of vision. He must have been there all the time. Finally, there was Delaunier.”
“And we assured you that Delaunier was in here the whole time,” said Cavenish.
“No. As a matter of fact, you were both very conscientious in your evidence,” said Macdonald. “You did not pretend that you had had your eyes on Delaunier all the time: you said—and I realised that it was true—that you had been concentrating on your game. Delaunier is a chess player himself: he had played with both of you. He knew that you were players who concentrated on your game—and I know that a good game of chess can absorb the attention of the players utterly. Delaunier counted on this fact. He knew that you took no notice of him when he moved in the intervals of his posing: he also knew that you would be vaguely aware of the Cardinal’s scarlet figure sitting in that chair. Delaunier took a risk—and it came off. Once, during that sitting, he got up to stretch, moved behind the easel as though to examine the drawing, took off his scarlet robe and with Manaton’s help slipped it on the lay figure. In another moment that scarlet-clad lay figure was safely in the Spanish chair, the Cardinal’s hat upon its head. The risk had been justified: the two chess players had their eyes glued to their board, their minds intent on their game to the exclusion of all else. Probably the two players made a conscious effort to ignore the movements of the painter and his model: they were aware of the scarlet-clad figure, of the painter’s occasional comment; the sitting went on, the chess game went on. Within ten minutes—at the outside—Delaunier was back in his place. He must have felt very satisfied. He had planned carefully, and his plan had worked.”
Cavenish sighed, but Mackellon said: “Of course I ought to kick myself round and round the room. This trick was played under our very noses, and we never tumbled to it. We just played chess.”
Macdonald replied: “You’ve got to remember that Delaunier counted upon the qualities he knew in you two men. He knew you concentrated on your game. It was as though he knew that whatever you did, you would do it thoroughly. He chose for his witnesses two men of acknowledged integrity, thoughtful, hard-working fellows, whose habit was to concentrate on one thing at a time. You must admit that it was clever of him.”
“Oh, clever—yes,” said Mackellon. “It’s the sort of cleverness I shall never forget.”
“Don’t let it embitter you,” said Macdonald, “and while we are here, let us re-enact the game. Reeves is here to pose in the Cardinal’s scarlet. I will be the painter. Will you and Cavenish try to continue your game? Black to move and mate in four moves. I know that it’s impossible for you to lose yourselves in the game as you did that night, but you can keep your eyes on the board, and Cavenish can do his best to avoid being beaten in four moves. Will you try it?”
“We will,” said Mackellon. “Check to your king, Cavenish.”
II
A scarlet-clad figure sat again in the high-backed chair. Macdonald stood at the easel. “Chin up: to the right a little,” he said.
The Cardinal got up. “A rest, my friend,” he proclaimed. He moved behind the easel. Mackellon, his eyes on the board, murmured “check.” Cavenish moved his hand to interpose his knight between his king and the attacking bishop, and then hesitated. A scarlet blur moved across the platform and became part of the pattern—easel, tall chair, posing figure. The “painter” said “Further round—head up… right.”
“Check,” murmured Mackellon again, sweeping away the knight. There was a dead silence. The “painter” stood at his easel. Mackellon bent forward over the board with a gleam in his hazel eyes, and Cavenish pondered with upraised hand as though he were in the presence of a miraculous apparition. Then, abruptly, he seized his one remaining piece, a bishop, moved it diagonally right up the board and took Mackellon’s attacking queen.
“Damn!” said the latter abruptly. “I’m not thinking of what I’m doing. It’s…”
“Gentlemen,” said Macdonald, “will you kindly give me your attention now.”
Cavenish chuckled. “You’ve saved my game, Chief Inspector. For the one and only time in our acquaintance I’ve caught Mackellon napping.”
“And what about my demonstration?” asked Macdonald.
Ian Mackellon laughed as he looked round. Reeves was sitting in the Cardinal’s chair again, and the lay figure was on the floor behind the easel.
“Yes,” said Mackellon. “You win, Chief Inspector. Even under those conditions I did not realise the imposture. I was aware of the movement, but it didn’t convey anything to me. So easily can one be fooled.”
III
Macdonald sat again beside the chess-board.
“So you see it was quite possible, given those particular conditions. I pondered over it for a long time, and I tried to fit other pieces into the jig-saw assuming that Delaunier was the real culprit, with Bruce Manaton as accessory. There were the smeared-out portraits on the walls of number 25: These had undoubtedly been painted by Stort, the previous tenant of this studio. It seemed to me that one of those pictures might well have been a portrait of Delaunier or of Manaton, and that they had been obliterated to avoid the police seeing them and drawing conclusions from them.”
Mackellon gave an exclamation: “But Delaunier knew Stort. I heard him say so long ago when I first knew him. I reminded him—Delaunier—of that fact when he came to see Cavenish the other evening.”
“Did you?” said Macdonald. “You couldn’t have guessed what would be the results of that reminder. Delaunier knew, in his own heart, that Stort was a danger to him. It was through Stort that Delaunier knew of old Folliner’s habit of counting his treasure when he was safe in bed. Your mention of Stort brought that danger closer. As soon as he had left you that evening Delaunier went and found Stort at his favourite pub, stood him enough drinks to make him half-drunk, and then went back with him to Harrow on the Metropolitan Railway. They were in an empty compartment, and when the train stopped outside the station, Delaunier opened the carriage door on the wrong side of the train, and Stort stepped out, or was pushed out, on to the live rail.”
“Oh Lord!” said Mackellon softly. “One should never say anything…”
“It’s not human nature not to say anything,” said Macdonald. “Don’t worry over that, it would have happened, in all probability, without your prompting. Incidentally, I wasted valuable time over tracing Listelle, only to learn later he had been killed in an air raid. I was having Delaunier watched, though he didn’t know it. He came straight back here: he probably realised that things were going awry—and the rest followed.”
Cavenish sat looking down at the chess men. “I suppose Delaunier—and Manaton—planned it just for the money, the miser’s hoard,” he said.
“Yes, in the main, though there’s more to it than that,” said Macdonald. “When Jenkins had finished going through old Folliner’s papers, he found records of Albert Folliner’s marriage in 1893. His wife left him not much more than a year later, taking her infant son with her. We have evidence from an old retired chemist nearby that Folliner’s son came to see his father when the son was about twenty years of age, and there are letters to the father from the son, asking for financial assistance, at the same period. The son was on the stage—and the name he had taken was André Delaunier.”
“Full circle,” said Cavenish. “It’s a ghastly story, but one finds it difficult to be sorry for either of them, the father or the son.”
“The actual relationship has nothing to do with the actual detection,” said Macdonald. “It was discovered after things had come to a head. The most interesting thing in the detecting part was working out the possibility of the studio party—the actual relevance of the evidence given by trustworthy witnesses. Bruce Manaton had been a drug-addict at one time, the associate of other degenerates. His sister saved him from going under completely, and tried to pull him up and keep him going, but he was an embittered and disappointed man. Delaunier was also unsuccessful in his profession, and he made one last desperate throw to try to obtain his father’s wealth. He worked out the scheme, and Manaton was accessory. Delaunier had a key of the house: he went in, shot the old man, seized the contents of the cash-box, put them in a waterproof case, fastened it to the cord and let the previously arranged weights do the job of hauling the bundle into safe-keeping in the chimney. Then he came in here, resumed his scarlet trappings and his pose—and you continued to play chess.”
“What about the sound of the shot?” asked Mackellon.
Macdonald laughed. “I don’t know. I never believed that anyone in here noticed it. I know that there were fog signals being let off that night at the entrance to the tunnels. Considering that old Folliner’s room was both shuttered and curtained, I think it probable that the shot was no more noticeable than the fog signals. Delaunier’s insistence on having heard it was pre-arranged and over-acted. It drew attention to himself by insisting that he was on the stage, so to speak—in here—when the shot was heard.” Macdonald paused, and then added: “I’m not giving evidence here, and my opinion is worth no more than any other witnesses. I think it probable that Rosanne Manaton heard the shot when she was outside: she may even have heard Delaunier pass her in the dark. That was why she ran away—to avoid giving evidence. She knew that if Delaunier was involved, her brother was involved, too. When she left here that evening, she went into hiding with a friend out at Great Missenden. Fortunately her evidence isn’t necessary: Delaunier has provided enough evidence and to spare. He killed Bruce Manaton before my eyes.”
“Thank God he did,” said Cavenish slowly. “One day Rosanne will be able to put all this horror behind her.”
There was silence, and then Mackellon asked suddenly:
“Did you suspect us—Cavenish and myself—of being in the plot?”
“No, never,” replied Macdonald. “I was quite sure all the time that Delaunier had chosen you for a part, and he made no mistake in choosing his players. You were two incorruptible witnesses. With you giving evidence, he felt absolutely safe.”
“Two honest mugs,” said Mackellon sadly, and Macdonald rose to his feet and laughed a little.
“Have it your own way. If I’m not dreaming, your king is in check to your opponent’s bishop.” He turned to Cavenish.
“Good luck!—and happy days in future.”
“Thank you, very much indeed,” replied Cavenish.
And on that note of gratitude from the older of his “incorruptible witnesses,” Macdonald left the studio.
The end