“I WONDER, sir,” said Polton, as the hour approached I for the arrival of our two visitors, “how we had better arrange the room. Don’t want it to look too much like a committee meeting. But there’s rather a lot of us for a confidential talk.”
“It isn’t so particularly confidential,” I replied. “If there are any secrets to be revealed, they are not Moxdale’s. He didn’t pose as a dead man. The deception was Haire’s.”
“That’s true, sir,” Polton rejoined with evident relief. “Still, I think I won’t make myself too conspicuous, as he may regard me as an outsider.”
The plan that he adopted seemed to me to have exactly the opposite effect to that intended, for, having arranged four chairs around the fireplace with a couple of small tables for wine and cigars, he placed a microscope and some trays of slides on the large table, drew up a chair and prepared to look preoccupied.
At eight o’clock precisely our visitors arrived, and, as I admitted them, I glanced with natural curiosity at “the deceased”, and was impressed rather favourably by his appearance. He was a good-looking man, about five feet nine or ten in height, broad-shouldered, well set-up, and apparently strong and athletic; with a pleasant, intelligent face, neither dark nor fair, a closely-cropped dark moustache and clear grey eyes. He greeted me with a friendly smile, but I could see that, in spite of Polton’s artful plans, he was a little taken aback by the size of the party, and especially by the apparition of Polton, himself; seated necromantically behind his microscope.
But Thorndyke soon put him at his ease, and, when the introductions had been effected (including “Mr. Polton, our technical adviser”), we took our seats and opened the proceedings with informal and slightly frivolous conversation.
“We should seem to be quite old acquaintances, Mr. Moxdale,” said Thorndyke, “seeing that I have had the honour of testifying to a coroner’s jury as to the cause of your death. But that sort of acquaintanceship is rather one-sided.”
“Yes,” Moxdale agreed, “it is a queer position. I come back to England to find myself the late Mr. Moxdale and have to introduce myself as a resurrected corpse. It is really quite embarrassing.”
“It must be,” Thorndyke agreed, “and not to you alone; for, since you have resigned from the role of the deceased, you have put on us the responsibility of finding a name for your understudy. But the inspector tells us that you can give us some help in our search.”
“Well,” said Moxdale, “it is only a guess, and I may be all abroad. But there was someone in that house when it was burned, and, as I was not that someone, I naturally ask myself who he could have been. I happen to know of one person who might have been there, and I don’t know of any other. That’s the position. Perhaps there isn’t much in it, after all.”
“A vulgar saying,” Blandy remarked, “has it that half a loaf is better than no bread. A possible person is at least something to start on. But we should like to know as much as we can about that person. What can you tell us?”
“Ah!” said Moxdale, “there is the difficulty. I really know nothing about Mr. O’Grady. He is little more than a name to me, and only a surname at that. I can’t even tell you his Christian name.”
“That makes things a bit difficult,” said Blandy, “seeing that we have got to trace him and find out whether he is still in existence. But at any rate, you have seen him and can tell us what he was like.”
“Yes, I have seen him — once, as I told you — and my recollection of him is that he was a strongly-built man about five feet nine or ten inches high, medium complexion, grey eyes, dark hair and moustache and no beard. When I saw him, he was wearing a black jacket, striped trousers, grey overcoat, and a light — brown soft felt hat.”
“That is quite a useful description,” said Blandy, “for excluding the wrong man, but not so useful for identifying the right one. It would apply to a good many other men; and the clothes were not a permanent feature. You told me about your meeting with him. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind repeating the account for Dr. Thorndyke’s benefit.”
“It was a chance meeting,” said Moxdale. “I happened to be in the neighbourhood of Soho one day about lunch-time and it occurred to me to drop in at a restaurant that Haire had introduced me to; Moroni’s in Wardour Street. I walked down to the further end of the room and was just looking for a vacant table when I caught sight of Haire, himself; apparently lunching with a man who was a stranger to me. As Haire had seen me, I went up to him and shook hands, and then, as I didn’t know his friend, was going off to another table when he said: “Don’t go away, Cecil. Come and take a chair at this table and let me introduce you to my friend, O’Grady. You’ve heard me speak of him and he has heard me speak of you.’
“Accordingly, as O’Grady stood up and offered his hand, I shook it and sat down at the table and ordered my lunch; and in the interval before it arrived we chatted about nothing in particular, especially O’Grady, who was very fluent and had a rather pleasant, taking manner. By the time my food was brought, they had finished their lunch, and, having got their bills from the waiter, settled up with him. Then O’Grady said: “Don’t let me break up this merry party, but Time and Tide, you know — I must be running away. I am glad to have had the pleasure of meeting you, Moxdale, and turning a mere name into a person.’
“With this he got up and put on his overcoat and hat — I noticed the hat particularly because it was rather a queer colour — and when he had shaken hands with me, he said to Haire, just as he was turning to go: “‘Don’t forget our little business on Thursday. I shall call for you at eleven o’clock to the tick, and I shall bring the stuff with me. Better make a note of the time. So long.’ and with a smile and a wave of the hand to me, he bustled away.
“When he had gone, I remarked to Haire that O’Grady seemed to be rather a pleasant, taking sort of fellow. He smiled grimly and replied: “‘Yes, he is a plausible rascal, but if you should happen to meet him again, I advise you to keep your pockets buttoned. He is remarkably plausible.’
“I tried to get him to amplify this statement, but he didn’t seem disposed to pursue the subject and presently he looked at his watch and then he, too, took his departure. That is the whole story, and there isn’t much in it excepting the date of the appointment. The Thursday referred to would be the fourteenth of April, and that, I understand, is the day on which Haire started for Dublin.”
“You say, you understand,” said Thorndyke. “Have you not seen the account of the inquest?”
“No. But Mr. Home, my solicitor, has given me a summary of it with all the material facts, including my own untimely decease. But I needn’t have said I understand, because I happen to know.”
“That Mr. Haire did start on that day?” Thorndyke queried.
“Yes. I actually saw him start.”
“That is interesting,” said Blandy. “Could you give us the particulars?”
“With pleasure,” replied Moxdale “It happened that on that day — or rather that night — I was starting for the South of France. I had left my luggage in the cloak-room at Victoria, earlier in the day, as I had some calls to make, and when I had done all my business, I strolled to Wardour Street and dropped in at Moroni’s for a late dinner or supper. And there I found Haire, who had just come in on the same errand. He was taking the night train for Holyhead, and as I was travelling by the night train to Folkestone, we both had plenty of time. So we made our dinner last out and we dawdled over our coffee until it was past ten o’clock. Then Haire, who had a heavy suit-case with him, said he thought he would take a taxi across to Euston, so, when we had paid our bills, we went out together to look for a cab. We found one disengaged in Shaftesbury Avenue, and, when Haire had put his suit-case inside, he called out ‘Euston’ to the driver, got in, said ‘good-night’ to me and off he went.”
“Did he say whether O’Grady had kept his appointment?” Thorndyke asked.
“He just mentioned that he had called. Nothing more; and of course I asked no questions.”
“You seemed to think,” said Thorndyke, “that the body that was found after the fire might be that of O’Grady. What made you think that?”
“Well, really,” Moxdale replied, “I hardly know. It was just an idea, suggested, I suppose, by the fact that O’Grady went to the rooms and I didn’t know of anybody else. I thought it possible that Haire might have let him use the rooms while he was away, as O’Grady lives out of town — somewhere Enfield way.”
The inspector looked dissatisfied. “Seems rather vague,” he remarked. “You were telling me some thing about a suspicion of blackmailing. Could you give us some particulars on that subject?”
“My dear Inspector,” exclaimed Moxdale, “I haven’t any particulars. It was just a suspicion, which I probably ought not to have mentioned, as I had nothing definite to go upon.”
“Still,” Blandy persisted, “you must have had some reasons. Is Haire a man who could be blackmailed?”
“That I can’t say. He isn’t a pattern of all the virtues, but I know of nothing that a blackmailer could fix on. And he is my cousin, you know. I think what raised the suspicion was the peculiar relations between the two men. They were a great deal together, but they were not really friends. Haire seemed to me to dislike O’Grady intensely, and I gathered from chance remarks that he let drop that O’Grady had got a good deal of money out of him from time to time. In what way I never knew. It may have been in the form of loans, but if not, it would rather look like blackmail.”
There was a short silence. Then Blandy, dropping his oily manner for once, said, rather brusquely:
“Now, Mr. Moxdale, you have suggested that the burned body might have been that of O’Grady. You have told us that O’Grady was in those rooms on the fourteenth of April, and you have suggested that O’Grady was blackmailing Haire. Now I put it to you that what you really suspect is that, on that day, Haire made away with O’Grady and concealed his body in the rooms.”
Moxdale shook his head. “I never suspected any thing of the kind. Besides, the thing wasn’t practicable. Is it likely that he would have gone off to Ireland leaving the body in his rooms?”
“You are not forgetting the fire,” Blandy reminded him.
“I don’t see that the fire has anything to do with it. Haire couldn’t foresee that someone would set his rooms on fire at that particularly opportune moment.”
“But that is precisely what he did foresee,” said Thorndyke. “That fire was not an accident. It was carefully prepared and started by a timing mechanism on a prearranged date. That mechanism was discovered and reconstructed by our colleague, Mr. Polton.”
The statement was, no doubt, a startling one, but its effect on Moxdale was beyond what I should have expected. He could not have looked more horrified if he had been accused of setting the mechanism himself.
“So you see,” Thorndyke continued, “that Haire is definitely implicated; and, in fact, the police are prepared to arrest him on charges connected with both the fire and the body.”
“Yes,” said the inspector, “but the trouble is that we have no photograph or any sufficient description by which to identify him.”
“Speaking of identification,” said Thorndyke, “we learn that his teeth are rather peculiar in appearance. Can you tell us anything about them?”
Moxdale looked distinctly uncomfortable at this question, though I could not imagine why. However, he answered, somewhat hesitatingly: “Yes, they are rather queer-looking teeth; as if they were stained by tobacco. But it isn’t tobacco-staining, because I remember that they were just the same when he was a boy.”
Having given this answer, he looked from Blandy to Thorndyke, and, as neither asked any further question, he remarked, cheerfully: “Well, I think you have squeezed me pretty dry; unless there is something else that you would like me to tell you.”
There was a brief silence. Then Thorndyke said in a very quiet, matter-of-fact tone: “There is one other question, Mr. Moxdale. I have my own opinion on the subject, but I should like to hear your statement. The question is, What made you go to Dublin after you had killed Mr. Haire?”
A deathly silence followed the question. Moxdale was thunder-struck. But so were we all. Blandy sat with dropped jaw, staring at Thorndyke, and Polton’s eyes seemed ready to start from their sockets. At length, Moxdale, pale as a corpse, exclaimed in a husky voice:
“I don’t understand you, sir. I have told you that I saw Mr. Haire start in a taxi for Euston.”
“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “But at the moment when you saw Mr. Haire get into the cab, his dead body was lying in his rooms.”
Moxdale remained silent for some moments. He seemed completely overwhelmed; and, watching him, I saw that abject terror was written in every line of his face. But he made one more effort. “I assure you, sir,” he said, almost in a whisper, “that you have made some extraordinary mistake. The thing is monstrous. You are actually accusing me of having murdered my cousin!”
“Not at all,” replied Thorndyke. “I said nothing about murder. I referred simply to the physical fact that you killed him. I did not suggest that you killed him feloniously. I am not accusing you of a crime. I merely affirm an act.”
Moxdale looked puzzled and yet somewhat reassured by Thorndyke’s answer. But he was still evasive. It seems,” said he, “that it is useless for me to repeat my denial.”
“It is,” Thorndyke agreed. “What I suggest is that you give us a plain and truthful account of the whole affair.”
Moxdale looked dubiously at the inspector and said in a half-interrogative tone: “If I am going to be charged with having compassed the death of my cousin it seems to me that the less I say, the better.”
The inspector, thus appealed to, suddenly recovered his self-possession, even to the resumption of his smile; and I could not but admire the quickness with which he had grasped the position. “As a police officer,” he said, “I am not permitted to advise you. I can only say that if you choose to make a statement you can do so; but I have to caution you that any statement that you may make will be taken down in writing and may be used in evidence against you. That doesn’t sound very encouraging; but I may remind you that you are, at present, not charged with any offence, and that a statement made voluntarily in advance is more effective than the same statement made in answer to a charge.”
“And I,” said Thorndyke, “not being a police officer, may go farther and suggest that a statement may possibly obviate the necessity for any charge at all. Now, come, Mr. Moxdale,” he continued, persuasively, taking from his pocket a foolscap envelope,” I will make you a proposal. In this envelope is a signed statement by me setting forth briefly my reconstruction, from evidence in my possession, of the circumstances of Mr. Haire’s death. I shall hand this envelope to the inspector. Then I suggest that you give us a straight forward account of those circumstances. When he has heard your account, the inspector will open the envelope and read my statement. If our two statements agree, we may take it that they are both true. If they disagree, we shall have to examine the discrepancies. What do you say? I advise you, strongly, to give us a perfectly frank statement.”
The persuasive and even friendly tone in which Thorndyke spoke evidently made a considerable impression on Moxdale, for he listened attentively with a thoughtful eye on the speaker, and when Thorndyke had finished he reflected awhile, still keeping his eyes fixed on my colleague’s face. At length, having made up his mind, he said, with something like an air of relief: “Very well, sir, I will take your advice. I will give you a full and true account of all that happened on that dreadful day, suppressing nothing.”
He paused for a few moments to collect his thoughts and then continued: “I think I should begin by telling you that my cousin stood to gain four thousand ............