“Who was to fire the shot then? Did he have an accomplice?”
“No, no. I told you, he was experimenting with remote control. In fact, before leaving the Grange that day he spent quite a long time in that downstairs cloakroom, much longer than would have been required in the normal course of nature, as Mrs. Manciple noticed; but of course she would never have mentioned so indelicate a matter if I hadn’t dragged it out of her. Actually, of course, Mason was rigging up the gun. He had it pointing out of the window with a string around the trigger attached to one of Manciple’s spring traps.
“We’ll never know exactly how the gun was supported, because Mrs. Manciple tidied up the cloakroom and put everything away before I realized the significance of it. One thing is clear, however. Those traps work off a burning fuse. As Mason left the cloakroom, he lit the fuse. He knew exactly how much time that would give him before the trap sprang and fired the gun. I imagine that he intended the gun to fall back into the cloakroom; he could easily enough have found an excuse to go in there afterward and tidy everything up. But as it happened, he must have found it necessary to prop up the gun with something solid, another box or a book, perhaps. So, when the gun jumped backward with the recoil, it hit against this solid object and fell forward instead and out of the window. Mason hadn’t counted on that.”
“He hadn’t counted on killing himself, either,” said Sir John. “What went wrong?”
“Aunt Dora,” said Henry.
“Aunt Dora?”
“I think,” said Henry, “that Mason was genuinely fond of the old lady. In any case it was no part of his plan that anybody should get hurt, let alone killed. He had the hood of the car open; he was snugly protected behind it, just waiting for the shot, when Aunt Dora came out of the house and down the steps, waving her pamphlets at him. Mason must have been appalled. She was walking directly through the line of fire only a few feet from the gun. Mason knew that she was deaf and wouldn’t hear if he called to her. There was no way of stopping her except by signs, and that meant coming out into the open himself. She told me that when he saw her coming, he ran out from behind the car, obviously alarmed and waving his arms at her. He was trying to warn her to go back. Mercifully, she stopped, but he had no time to get back into shelter before the gun went off. And so he was killed — accidentally. The fact that the single bullet got him through the head and killed him outright was just simple bad luck.”
There was a silence, and then Sir John said, “Are you sure of all this, Tibbett?”
“As sure as I can be. I found the remains of Mason’s booby trap in the cloakroom, even though it had been tidied up quite innocently by Mrs. Manciple — she’s used to clearing up the mess that the Major makes in there with his traps and tennis balls. The shot was definitely fired through that window, and nobody was or could have been in there at the time. Mason had only just come out, and the only two people in the house were Mrs. Manciple and the Bishop. She was in the hall, telephoning to her grocer and in full view of the cloakroom door; and the Bishop was upstairs, and came down immediately after the shot had been fired.”
“So Violet herself was the only person who could have fired the shot deliberately, was she?” said Sir John.
“I suppose that would have been just possible, but very far-fetched,” said Henry. “I’ve checked with Mr. Rigley, the grocer, and he confirms that she was speaking to him when she suddenly said she must ring off as her aunt was calling her. Of course, he can’t pin down the time to within a couple of minutes, but, in any case, she still had the telephone in her hand when the Bishop came downstairs.”
“So that’s that.” Sir John sighed with unambiguous relief. “All over and done with. Just an accident, the result of a stupid trick which misfired. Literally. No mystery, after all.”
“On the contrary,” said Henry.
“What do you mean?”
“There are two mysteries,” said Henry, “which may or may not be connected. The first is why was Raymond Mason so keen on buying Cregwell Grange? The second, who killed Dora Manciple, and why?”
Sir John made a small, impatient gesture. “I’ve told you. Mason wanted to join the ranks of the landed gentry. The man was nothing more nor less than a jumped-up nouveau-riche…”
“I wonder,” said Henry, “just how rich he was.”
“How rich?” Sir John laughed shortly. “Rolling in money.”
There was a short pause and then Henry said, “Did you ever pay him any gambling debts, Sir John?”
“I — I just happened to be lucky in my few little flutters.”
“Yet you owed Mason three thousand pounds.”
“So you said before, and I say that it’s a monstrous lie. I have never dreamed of gambling in that sort of money. And in any case, if I had owed Mason money, why did he never ask for it?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Henry. He leaned forward. “Look here, Sir John. I know this is a painful subject for you, but I must get to the bottom of it. You’re not the only person to have had one of these special accounts, you know, and I want to know how they were worked. It may be important.” He paused. “You say you’re not a great betting man, but surely you take enough interest to know how much money you’ve staked, and whether or not the horse has won and at what odds. You must know your position with Mason, at least approximately. Or else the files that he kept must be complete works of fiction.”
There was a long silence. Sir John lit his pipe with a great deal of unnecessary attention to detail. At last he said, “Well, Tibbett, it was like this. Mason was in a position to get the very best inside information — red-hot tips from trainers and owners and so forth. Very often at the last moment. Of course, occasionally I would fancy a horse very strongly and I’d put a few pounds on him, win or lose. But more often than not, Mason would telephone me and say that he expected to have some good things for a certain meeting that day. ‘Just tell me how much you’re prepared to stake,’ he’d say. ‘Ten, twenty, fifty pounds? You name it. Then trust me to invest it right for you. I’m guaranteeing nothing, of course, but I think I can say you’re not likely to lose.’ ”
“And you didn’t?”
“Once or twice I’d be a couple of pounds down, but more often he’d do extremely well for me. He’d come along the next day with my winnings in cash, anything up to a couple of hundred. Naturally, he always gave me a full account of which horses he’d backed for me, the odds, and so on.”
“I see,” said Henry. “And what did you do in return?”
“In return? I don’t know what you mean, Tibbett. Nothing whatsoever. It was a perfectly straightforward business arrangement.”
“Except, of course, that you felt in honor bound to invite him to dinner, and to introduce him to…”
“He was a neighbor,” said Sir John in furious embarrassment. “Couldn’t be rude.”
“All the same, without that inducement I don’t believe you’d have allowed him to set foot inside your house. By the way, did you keep a record of these transactions, which horses he’d backed for you?”
“Good Lord, no. Why should I? It was all perfectly simple and innocent.”
Henry sighed. “It was all perfectly simple and innocent from your point of view, Sir John,” he said. “I don’t doubt that. The fact remains that Mason wasn’t a simple or innocent person. He told you one story, and he gave you money. In his office, on the other hand, he kept a file which showed a very different picture — that you had lost heavily and owed him a considerable sum. If it had come to a showdown, you’d have been in a very awkward position indeed. Your unsupported word against Mason’s records kept in black and white. And I know that there are some people who regard unpaid gaming debts as even more shameful than unpaid bills. I’ve never been able to understand why, but there it is.”