‘ON the evening of May 5,’ Gore said quietly, ‘you left this cottage on foot at five o’clock and arrived at the house of your friends, the Taits, on the outskirts of Guildford, at six. You dined there, and left at half past eight, saying that you had to walk most of the way back to reach here by eleven. The distance is about nine miles—uphill most of it.
‘Two and a half hours was a reasonable allowance. And as you explained to the Taits, no bus ran westward along the Hog’s Back to help you between 7 and 9 P.M. Off you went then at eight thirty—and, so far as is actually known, you reached this cottage a little before eleven.
‘Of course you didn’t walk, though—either to Guildford, or back from it. You have a motorcycle and a clever brain. I needn’t guess exactly how you kept the motorcycle in the background, from the Taits in Guildford and the housekeeper and the head gardener here. But I’m quite sure you managed it, quite simply.
‘You got back about nine. That gave you ample time to complete your preparations—if they had not already been completed. You had only to make sure that the two servants, who never probably entered the drawing-room in the evening, were safely out of the way at the end of the garden. You went into the drawing-room, made a pretext of some sort for disturbing Lady Gaul, got behind her, and stabbed her.
‘You smeared your ingenious forgery of Mr Arling’s handwriting with blood—or was it already smeared? Probably you also dabbed one of Sir Maurice’s handkerchiefs with blood then. You put his cigarette holder with a half smoked cigarette of his special brand, in an ash tray beside Lady Gaul, and then you switched on the lights—or were they on all the time? Of course, nothing could be seen from the road. That would have been a risk—but a small one.
‘Then you went to the telephone, rang up Mr Arling’s house, and produced an imitation of Lady Gaul’s voice good enough to pass muster with Mr Arling’s butler—who, by the way, had, I rather think, drank more than was good for him that evening, and had been sleeping it off, his master being out. At any rate, he delivered your message to Mr Arling at ten o’clock, and Mr Arling came up to the Oast House and found what you had left for him to find. I don’t know where you were hidden—but the blinds were up.
‘You could have seen every movement of Mr Arling’s from outside. But more probably you were inside. You saw him put your forgery No. 1 into his pocket, and then rush out of the room. You had known just what Mr Arling would do—you had forgery No. 2 ready—bloodstains and all. You jammed it into Lady Gaul’s hand and cleared off.
‘You probably went to where your motorcycle was hidden, probably among the gorse somewhere on the heath. You lay low there until about quarter of eleven. Then you walked out on to the road and arrived here, on foot for anyone who wanted to see you doing it.
‘I don’t know when you put the piece of the handkerchief and the knife in that rabbit hole. Probably very early next morning. You would recover your motorcycle from its hiding place then, too. Then—this morning you left those guiding pieces for someone to find. Quite clever of you to select a rabbit hole on the path by which the children go across the heath to school.
‘I’m still wondering about the fire? Did that wire fuse accidentally—or did you help it?’
Spain paid no attention to the question.
‘Go on,’ he said, curiously. ‘Where did I blunder? Did I blunder—or is this just guesswork?’
‘Just guesswork. But you did blunder. You used a quite unnecessary adjective this morning—the adjective Sophoclean. Unfortunately for you, I came upon that adjective as I was glancing through the pages of one of your friend, Mr Furlonger’s novels. That struck me as odd.
‘I asked you if Furlonger was a nom de plume. You took just a little too long to say that it wasn’t. That was a blunder, too. Because it started me just guessing quite seriously about you and your motorcycle. I couldn’t very well ask you to hang yourself. So I went back to London and saw Mr Silas Furlonger’s publishers.
‘They also told me that his real name was Ferdinand Miler—which would have been a keen disappointment if they hadn’t described his personal appearance with perhaps unkind accuracy. They passed me on to Messrs Wright, his literary agents. I found Mr Wright an extraordinary kind-hearted and sympathetic person—quite unfitted, I should have thought, to be a literary agent. He told me all about Ferdinand Miler and his books.
‘“Very original, very clever” he said, “but absolute failures.” He told me also about the plays which had not been produced, and the poems and stories and essays which could not be sold.
‘But I had to keep on just guessing until Mr Wright told me of Ferdinand Miler’s worst failure. His wife left him, I understand—for someone who could feed her—a scoundrel, no doubt—but he did feed her—for a while. Then she came back to you—I believe?’
‘I was living on half a crown a week, then. Why should she stay?’
There was a silence.
‘Then you discovered that Sir Maurice Gaul wanted a secretary. You contrived to get the post—by representing yourself as Mr Spain who had already acted as secretary to another literary man—Mr Silas Furlonger, whose real name was Ferdinand Miler?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well—at that point I had to jump to a conclusion. One nearly always has to in this job. I wanted the why of the thing. So I put one foot on Failure who had lost everything—even the little fortune had given him—and the other foot on Success who had everything—and I jumped.
‘I don’t know how much envy, how much hatred, how much despair made of Maurice Gaul for you an incarnation of Success—always there before you, sleek, prosperous, self-satisfied—an infuriation from morning to night. But—if I had been you, that is how he would have seemed to me. Am I right?’
‘Quite,’ Spain shrugged. ‘After all—how deplorably obvious.’
‘By the way—that fused wire—?’
‘I had luck with that.’
‘Another little blunder,’ mused Gore, ‘was that accurate little summary of Arling’s character. But your attitude with regard to Sir Maurice was admirably thought out. I’m afraid I must ring up Mortfield police station now.’
‘Well,’ the secretary said. ‘I am willing to pay. Every chance was in my favour—Gaul’s absence, the servants’ outing, everything. But I forgot that there are people in the world who regard the adjective Sophoclean as unusual.’
‘Lots of us are very stupid,’ said Gore grimly. ‘Perhaps that’s why we sometimes succeed.’
THE END