Her voice dropped to a husky whisper.
‘What I venture to suggest happened next is that – if I can phrase it this way – the armchair suddenly stood up on its hind legs.’
Everybody in the library gasped in unison. It was almost as though she had spoken in italics, almost as though they could feel the hairs stand up on the napes of their necks, almost as though those hairs, too, were in italics.
As for Chief-Inspector Trubshawe, he was scrutinising the novelist with a queer expression on his face, an expression intimating that his irritation at her unorthodox methods, as also at the torrential verbosity with which she had been exposing them, had now capitulated to unconditional admiration for the results they had produced.
‘You don’t mean …?’ he said.
‘I do mean,’ she replied calmly. ‘The murderer had concealed himself or herself inside the armchair. That’s undoubtedly why Gentry’s body had been pushed up against the door – to make it even harder for anyone to break in and so gain for X a few more valuable seconds in which to conceal himself.
‘Hunched inside that armchair, having already committed the murder, it was X, don’t you see, not Raymond, who was responsible for the blood-curdling scream we all heard. For his plan to work, it was essential to call our immediate attention to the crime.
‘Then, as soon as the coast was clear, Roger and Don having quit the attic to let us know what they’d discovered, he – or, I repeat yet again, she – quickly and quietly clambered out of the chair, patted everything back into place, stepped over Gentry’s body and nipped down to the hallway.
‘Given the pandaemonium reigning in that hallway, it would have been child’s play for him or her to mingle unobserved with the rest of us. Et voilà!’
There was the briefest of pauses. Then Trubshawe spoke again.
‘May we know,’ he asked, ‘how you arrived at that – I do have to say – very persuasive conclusion?’
‘Easy,’ said Evadne Mount. ‘I told you that I sat down on the armchair. I also told you that that was when it hit me. I even added, to be extra-helpful, the word “literally”.
‘The fact is, when I did sit down, the bottom of the chair instantly gave way under me – so much so that my own rear end hit the floor with an embarrassingly hefty thud. But even as I was feeling a very foolish old biddy indeed, my two stockinged legs slicing the air like a pair of scissors, I knew I’d found the solution. And once I’d managed to extricate myself, I set to examining the insides of that chair. As I expected, the whole thing had been hollowed out so that, like some monstrous glove puppet, it could actually accommodate a crouching human body. And that, I realised, was how and where the murderer was concealed.’
‘Very neat,’ murmured the Chief-Inspector. ‘Very, very neat.’
‘Do you mean X for having devised such a method,’ enquired Evadne Mount, ‘or me for having discovered it?’
Trubshawe smiled.
‘Both, I guess. But hold on,’ he added, a new idea occurring to him. ‘You said that the instant you knew how it was done, you also knew who’d done it. What did you mean by that?’
‘Oh, Inspector, now there you do disappoint me. I really believed you at least would understand the most significant implication of my discovery.’
‘Well,’ he answered, ‘I must be stupid – I am retired, you know – but I don’t.’
In the ensuing silence a clear young voice rang out.
‘I think I do,’ said Selina.
‘Then why don’t you share your thoughts with us, my dear?’ the novelist said benignly.
‘We-ell … it strikes me this way. We – I mean, Mummy and Daddy’s house-party – we all got here only two days ago, Ray, Don and I last of all. If what you say is correct, then none of us could have been the murderer because none of us would have had either the time or the opportunity to scoop out that armchair or whatever it was the murderer did to it.’
Evadne Mount beamed at her with the gratified air of a school-mistress congratulating an especially smart pupil.
‘Right first time, Selina!’ she cried. ‘Yes, it’s absolutely true. Once I realised how incredibly well prepared Gentry’s murder must have been, how far in advance it had to be set up, I knew that not one of you – I should say, not one of us – could have committed the crime.
‘No, the only person who could have done it was somebody who was here already. Somebody who saw and heard everything yet said nothing or next to nothing. Somebody who is among us now yet not among us. Somebody who is present yet almost transparent.’
Her eyes narrowed behind the glinting pince-nez. Then, in what can only be described as an eerily silent voice, she said:
‘You know who you are. Why don’t you speak up for yourself?’
On hearing that question, I decided, without an instant’s hesitation, to do what she asked. For I understood – indeed I think I’d understood ever since I’d failed to kill the Colonel – that it was all over for me.
Chapter Fifteen
‘Farrar!?’ Mary ffolkes half-whispered, half-shrieked.
It’s amazing how foolish you feel, standing in front of a group of people, people you’re personally acquainted with, clenching a revolver in your fist and forcing yourself to cry ‘Hands up!’ or some-such corny line as though you were in a third-rate play or picture-show. From the moment I rose from my chair in the library it was as much as I could do to keep from giggling.
Mary ffolkes continued to stare at me in disbelief, her hands twitching, her eyelids flickering nervously.
‘You, Farrar? You tried to kill Roger?’
I no longer had any reason to hold back. It came as an immense relief to be able to open up at last. It felt good to speak in the first person again. If I’d said so little during the past twelve hours, it wasn’t that I’m the taciturn type by nature, just that I’d had to be exceptionally careful not to give myself away.
‘Yes, Mrs ffolkes,’ I replied, ‘I tried to kill Roger.’
I strained to keep my voice as matter-of-fact as possible.
‘You see,’ I explained, ‘the advantage of my position in your household was that, if I wasn’t upstairs, everyone assumed I must be downstairs, and vice versa. So no one ever really missed me. When your husband sent me down to find out what was happening in the kitchen, I hung about for ten minutes or so, standing at the big bay window and pretending to listen to the servants’ chatter. Then I saw the Colonel walk past the monkey-puzzle tree. I slipped out of the house, caught up with him, shot him and returned before anyone, upstairs or downstairs, had time to notice I’d been gone.’
I now addressed Trubshawe.
‘I’m truly sorry, old man, about Tobermory, but you yourself realised I couldn’t allow him to live. When the Colonel fell, he set up such a howling …’
‘But I don’t understand,’ said Mary ffolkes. ‘I don’t understand.’
The poor uncomprehending woman looked at Selina, at Evadne Mount, at the Rolfes, at seemingly everyone but me, as though the solution to the mystery might be reflected on their faces instead of mine. She reminded me of the one guest at a dinner party who hasn’t ‘got’ an off-colour joke which has everyone else splitting their sides and is hoping that, if she peers into their eyes for long enough, it’s bound to dawn on her at last.