No more riddle now, evolved at last.
The Pope, R. Browning.
I saw then the second point. Was Godfrey the watcher in the street? I began to consider what I knew about him, and how far this might be a correct hypothesis. He was, I was sure, for some reason afraid of me. I knew he was a dealer in precious stones, and it’s common knowledge that profession is doing very badly indeed, owing to the slump. Godfrey answered the description of the watcher which you two had given me. One tiny little bit of information dropped into place there, like the missing piece of a jig-saw puzzle. Godfrey had been late for his tea-party; he’d been expected at 4.30, but hadn’t arrived till just before five. His appearance had immediately preceded the murder. Had he been Mr. Hetherington’s visitor, could he have gone across the road, given some signal that the coast was clear, and gone in to his tea-party and his alibi? At first this did not seem possible, for the time given by Henry for his arrival, and that time was corroborated by the rest of the family, who went by Mrs. Dutton’s clock, did not allow of sufficient margin. Their time fixed Henry’s entry at between ten or five minutes before five. Mr. Hetherington’s visitor called, and left his front door less than five minutes before the hour. It seemed he could not have been the watcher, for, according to this, the watcher was up at Mr. Hetherington’s door at the moment when Henry was safely in his aunt’s flat.
“Henry knew the importance of the time, and he even knew his aunt’s clock was slow. He had rung up early that morning to fix the hour for the tea-party, and had inquired of Mrs. Dutton, who spoke to him on the telephone, what time it was by her clock, making the pretext that his own watch had stopped and he was wanting to catch his train. He utilized this difference in the times to strengthen his own alibi, making his entry to Mrs. Dutton’s sitting-room appear to have been made before five.
“In reality he had left Mr. Hetherington just before the hour, dashed down to the hotel call box, put through his call, and come back a few minutes after five. George, summoned by him, went up to the flat, and the fall came at ten past five. When ultimately I discovered that clock was slow, I was sure of my ground.”
He glanced at his auditors, who were listening intently.
“But, Inspector,” said Ainslie, “what reason had Godfrey for his actions? How came he to be involved in such a ghastly business? How did you trace his complicity?”
“At first I’d only speculation,” replied Woods, “then gradually I got more facts. Of course, you must bear in mind that Godfrey never contemplated murder. The original plan must have been for robbery. Godfrey would stand for that, and I doubt if Fordham ever let fall any hint of anything worse.
“Godfrey and Fordham had known each other for some time. How Fordham originally persuaded Godfrey to help him, we’ll never quite know. It may have been something to do with Mrs. Fordham. Godfrey had been in love with her before either of them married, and he’d proposed and been refused. He’d gone on being friends with her and her husband, and he may have wanted to make her life easier. You’ll have noticed for yourselves, perhaps, that though he must, of course, have watched her leave Simon Ewing’s flat that night and recognized who she was, he never breathed a word. He must have wanted to save her from being involved in the affair. She was the last person to have seen Mr. Ewing alive, and that made things awkward for her.
“Be that as it may, whatever induced him to do so, he did try to help the Fordhams. A couple of years ago, when he was prosperous and they weren’t, he’d put his name to a bill for Fordham. When that couldn’t be met this winter, owing to Fordham’s more desperate position, it happened that Godfrey’s own financial position had changed very much for the worse. He couldn’t meet the call, and a crash meant exposure of his difficulties and probably ruin. He was up against a wall, and no doubt Fordham knew how to work on this. No one liked Simon Ewing, and everyone felt he ought to have done more to help his only relations.
“In any case, we know now that these two planned the robbery with the idea that once Fordham had secured the jewels, Godfrey would know how to dispose of them. It may seem extraordinary to you that men of good position should plan anything of the sort, but I assure you that if people are really desperate there’s hardly anything they won’t bring themselves to do in the end. At first, of course, it’s just a sort of wish that crosses their minds—’If I only had some of that stuff lying idle up there! It does no good to anyone and it would save me’—then it becomes a definite desire developing into a determination, and the real nature and consequences of the action are blurred and almost lost sight of.
“Now once they’d decided on seeking this way out of their difficulties, they had to arrange everything most carefully. They arranged to dress alike as far as practicable, in the first place. Then they fixed the day of the tea-party and the attack on Nurse Edwards, which was carried out by Godfrey, who lay in wait for her round the corner, knowing her usual time for her outing. George had an alibi for that early period, and for what they thought would be the time when the watching had to be done in the street. Godfrey, of course, had his alibi for the actual time of the robbery. He would be at the party in Mrs. Dutton’s flat. By getting up the tea-party, he made it easy for him to be in the street beforehand, in case, by ill luck, anyone recognized him, and he also made sure of one other important thing, namely that the Dutton household would be occupied in their own rooms, and not be coming in and out of their flat at the all-important time.”
“How did they arrange for Fordham to know when the coast was clear?” put in Hetherington.
“He’d been at intervals during the past month to that big billiard saloon in the High Street, always at about 4 o’clock or earlier. Once or twice he’d been rung up there, under the name of Clutton. We’ve traced these calls and found that they were made from Godfrey’s office. This got the people there accustomed to fetching him to the telephone. On the night in question, as soon as Godfrey knew the coast was clear, he dashed down the street to the call box that was put in just by the hotel, not a minute away. He was ringing up from there when Dr. Ainslie went home. It didn’t take Fordham more than two minutes to come round. Godfrey must have waited in the box, seen him pass, and then followed up Clevedon Street and gone in to Mrs. Dutton.”
“Yes,” said Ainslie, “I suppose that time-table was bound to work out. But, Inspector, however much you guessed of all this, you hadn’t any clear proof.”
“No, but I had other lines to work on. The time factor gave me the idea as to the conception of the crime. Then I had one other definite fact to take into account. These rings were missing. I’d not much hope the man would be fool enough to try and dispose of them in the ordinary way through shops and pawnbrokers. He might later on, through Godfrey, but it wasn’t greatly to be expected. Still, I thought I’d probably get at the truth through the Godfrey end. I suspected those big diamonds would pass into his hands. I was really on their track when I went back to Clevedon St. that afternoon. I wanted to go and have another look upstairs. I thought Fordham might, as an alternative, have tried at the last moment to hide those rings up there, where they’d be found when the furniture was moved out. It would be thought the murderer had put them there, and never had the time or opportunity to go back for them before he was disturbed by Godfrey and Nurse Edwards’s entry. That would remove the risk he ran as long as he had them in his possession, and at the same time, as heir, he would inherit them if they were found.
“That was what I’m sure, in fact, he meant to do. The marks on the end of the cabinet were not there when I first went up. I looked most carefully all round the room, as I felt it would be my last visit. I found no trace of the rings, and no marks of any sort anywhere. The marks were there, and obviously fresh, when we found Mrs. Fordham’s body. She hadn’t made them; there was no tool on her, and nothing left in the room which might have been used. I knew too, and the medical evidence confirmed it, that she hadn’t been holding those rings in her hand during life, they’d been put there after death.
“I guessed she must have gone up there, and surprised her husband in the act of trying to conceal those rings. That splinter in the cabinet showed where he had been trying to push them behind there, on the top of the wainscot edge. He’d tried first to undo a cabinet so as to conceal the rings inside, I imagine, but failed, as he daren’t tamper with the lock; when he got the seal loosened he saw it was too risky a job, so he tried a simpler place. He probably put them down beside him while he began to poke with his knife at the place where the cabinet met the wainscot. When she came in, she’d have a direct view of the hearth, and the cabinet, and of him. She would see what he was up to, and I expect saw the rings at once.
“Of course that gave him away completely. Everyone knew by then that whoever had got those rings had murdered Mr. Ewing. I expect his face and his attitude made his guilt perfectly obvious to her. I’m afraid she showed him what she realized, and he, without any hesitation, silenced her.”
For a moment the inspector stopped. Neither of his companions spoke. They knew that the scene he reconstructed in such quiet, controlled tones had taken place only a few yards from where they sat. They visualized the young wife’s entry into the flat she thought empty—the sight of her husband crouching down on the hearth by the cabinet, the rings, perhaps, glittering beside him—his glance up as the door opened, the pause while each took in the other’s attitude and knowledge, and then the swift advance upon the woman, her short struggle, and its end.
Dr. Ainslie gave a deep sigh. “Poor thing. She hadn’t a chance, she was so slight and delicate. It must have been soon over.”
Woods nodded, rather grimly. “It was. I know that. Mr. Hetherington here looked out of his window and saw her go in just before half-past three. Fordham was in that pub round the corner, having a stiff drink, by a quarter to four.”
For a moment he left that brief statement to sink in. Then, with a lightening of his tone, went on:
“I saw at once the implications of this second crime. The details really revealed a great deal.
“Mrs. Fordham had been thrown on the sofa, and suffocated there. That, to me, implied that the murderer wished to have no repetition of the noise made by Mr. Ewing’s fall. That, in turn, showed he knew all the details of the first crime, and he knew there were people below who’d come up this time if they heard any noise at all.
“I soon discovered that Mrs. Fordham had been expected at the flat at 4 o’clock. Miss Godfrey knew all about that. I traced the proposed visit to the dentist, and heard she’d cancelled it at 3.15, and saw at once that she had come unexpectedly early, had gone straight upstairs, and, arriving at about 3.30 instead of at 4, interrupted someone who was trying to hide those rings. Who had been expecting her to arrive at 4 o’clock? Her husband and Miss Godfrey.
“Miss Godfrey wasn’t either the murderer or the watcher in Mr. Ewing’s case, so I knew at once this second crime was Fordham’s. After the rings were tested, his fingerprints were found on one of them, on the inside of the jade. He’d closed her hand over the outside, and I suppose was too flustered to think he might have left a print of his own on the inside.
“We had a complete case against him now. I could prove he’d handled those rings, had indeed pushed them into his wife’s hand. I’d dug out his fraud on his employer. I could piece together my facts, and I’d enough to hang him. I still hadn’t quite enough though, I feared, to get Godfrey.
“I’d nothing very definite against him. Just his money difficulties, his connexion with Fordham, and I hoped, his resemblance to the watcher. It wasn’t quite enough.
“I believed, if we took Fordham in front of Godfrey, he might give himself away, or, knowing himself done for, Fordham might accuse him.
“I felt it was the best plan I could hit on, so I arranged it, as you know. I got Fordham there; I got him to call on you, Mr. Hetherington, so that you should see him ringing at your door much as you’d seen the watcher. You came across and assured me he wasn’t the man you’d seen before. I’d had a man outside to tell me when Godfrey turned the corner of the street. As soon as I got his signal—you remember the knock that came at the door—I went in to make the arrest of Fordham. Godfrey, who had been brought to the house by a telephone message we sent, came in the mistaken belief that he must see Fordham at once, as something had gone wrong, arrived to find the police in the very act of securing his accomplice by force. He realized what it all meant, knew his chances of Fordham keeping him out of it were very slight, and preferred to end it in his own way.”
After a brief silence, in which all three reflected on the slow development of the double crime, Woods went on:
“So you see how I could, after the second crime, reconstruct the stages in the whole affair. First the planning of the robbery, then the mischances which turned it to murder, then the catastrophe of the second death. Godfrey, of course, must have been utterly appalled at the dreadful way it all turned out.
“I think we can tell now, pretty well, what was done. First they considered how to get the money needed to save them both, and they evolved the idea of stealing the jewellery.
“Their plan was simple and bold. Fordham would go up, in the absence of Nurse, and ring. He would probably persist, call out perhaps, until his uncle let him in. He’d make, possibly, a last effort to get a loan or gift from the old man, and he’d fail. Then he’d pretend to leave. He could be sure his uncle wouldn’t get up and let him out. He might slam the front door, as an act in keeping with the scene. He wouldn’t go out, however; he’d slip upstairs to the empty room, where he knew the box was kept. If that box had been in its usual place, all might have been different. As you know, Mr. Ewing had moved the box that very afternoon, taking advantage of his niece visiting him in the nurse’s absence. Fordham found the box gone; he was desperate; he was always of a violent disposition. He may have meant, when he went back to the drawing room, to take it by force, and trust to his uncle not denouncing him, but I expect he never even stopped to think. He meant to have that stuff, and when he found it moved, he went to get it from his uncle. He struck the old man down just before the nurse arrived back. The nurse came ringing at the door—he daren’t risk her coming in, going straight to that room, and finding him there. He killed the old man, and dashed up to the empty room, as you know, then bluffed his way out and away.
“Godfrey probably never envisaged what had happened. He must have hoped, when he saw Fordham come from the bedroom, that he’d simply got to cover the tracks of a burglary. What he felt later, we can only tell from what he did—decided his position was unendurable, and took his own life.”
“How had Fordham got into the flat the second time?” inquired Hetherington, who had been listening intently.
“He’d got duplicate keys. He’d been given one set by the police, and that set he handed to his wife. He’d had another set made—we haven’t traced where, but we found them after the arrest in one of his drawers. If we’d challenged his possession earlier, he could always have said he’d found them in his uncle’s flat, and we couldn’t have proved anything against that.”
“If he had got away safely with the jewellery, wouldn’t his uncle have suspected him?”
“Not necessarily. That was where Godfrey came in. As a dealer he’d have unique opportunities of getting rid of the stones and breaking up the ornaments. I don’t think it would ever have been traced. Mr. Ewing would probably not have discovered the theft for weeks or months, for he practically never looked at the contents of the box. By that time he would almost certainly have changed his nurse, once at least, if not more often. He never kept one very long. Suspicion would have fallen on the nurse. He would never have suspected George hadn’t left the flat that evening.”
“H’m, well, that sounds plausible certainly,” said Ainslie. “And I suppose, anyway, a desperate man will take desperate risks.”
“Yes,” answered Woods. “And you know only one thing put their plans wrong. If Mrs. Fordham had never gone in to visit her uncle, it would all have been over and done with an hour earlier. The nurse would have come back to an empty flat. Godfrey wouldn’t have had to go up with her, Fordham would have found the box, for the old man couldn’t fetch it down himself, and so it all would have gone right instead of wrong.”
“Ah, yes!” said Hetherington, “you’re right, I imagine. Time turned against them. It’s usually the test of everything in this world.”