“His odd habit of opening his study window to callers, Pons.”
“Exactly, Parker. I will refer to the window again in a moment but something immediately struck me about the situation. You will recall, Parker, that I told you that the figure of the apparition could be seen only through the central pane of the turret window. If the figure had appeared at the side windows it would have been obliterated by the reflection of the room lights on the glass. That was of the utmost significance.”
“Significance, Pons?”
“Of course, Parker. It told me at once that the ‘phantom’ could only have been someone who was familiar with the room; in other words, someone who had already been inside the house. That narrowed down the possibilities considerably.”
“Brilliant, Mr Pons,” said Balfour, open admiration on this face.
My companion shook his head.
“Elementary to a trained investigator, Mr Balfour. To return to the window. This seemed to me to be the crux of the matter and I soon discovered a number of very interesting points. One was the patent window lock and the fact that the window glass itself intervened between the murderer and his victim. I came to the following conclusion and though it is not now provable I am convinced it is the true explanation. The night of your uncle’s death Sherlock came here in his motor vehicle and left it on the remote road beyond the farm. It was a bitterly cold night and there would have been no-one about.
He wore the same costume as on the night of his death, carrying the mask in his pocket. He saw the light in your uncle’s study and tapped on the glass.”
“Your uncle drew back the curtains, opened the window and spoke to the doctor. On some pretext Sherlock withdrew into the darkness, donned the mask and came back into the light to fire the air pistol that originally belonged to the Mackney boy.”
Pons turned to Inspector Cunliffe.
“As we have already seen, Inspector, Sherlock had adapted the weapon to fire sharpened darts; small pieces of wood like splinters which were coated in a substance which rendered the victim unconscious in a short space of time. He then drew the window down, automatically locking it.”
“I got on to this only through Mrs Bracegirdle mentioning that her employer had a cut upon his neck. I instantly surmised it to be a small wound or puncture, and the idea of a dart came into my mind. Sherlock removed it on arrival, of course.”
Pons turned to the housekeeper.
“I am not, of course, blaming Mrs Bracegirdle for this but her cleaning the wound immediately erased my initial suspicions of Sherlock as my mind was already in that direction and I wondered why he would not have reported such a puncture. Of course, I had already established that the window could be closed and locked noiselessly and the same was obviously true from outside the house. Sherlock had time to draw the window down and automatically lock it before the nephew ran in.”
“I see, Pons!” I interjected. “He got in his car and quickly drove home, only to be summoned back to Bredewell House.”
“Exactly, Parker. Then, with great cold-bloodedness, he sent Mrs Bracegirdle and Mr Balfour out of the room while he supposedly revived the dying man, only to give him a lethal injection.”
“There is no doubt about that,” said Inspector Cunliffe. “The County Analyst tells me that there was a quantity of a deadly poison found in the remains, which had undoubtedly been administered intravenously.”
Mrs Bracegirdle had listened with an ashen face and now she turned toward Pons, her eyes seeking his face.
“But what was the point of all this, Mr Pons?”
“You forget that Dr Sherlock was Mr Boldigrew’s oldest friend. Greed and desperation had distorted his nature. It is as clear as day. The doctor was the chief beneficiary of the will in the event of Mr Balfour’s demise. No doubt he had played on Mr Boldigrew’s fears over the past few years by saying he had heart disease and had gained an ascendancy over him.”
Young Balfour shuddered.
“It is absolutely horrible, Mr Pons. I would have rather given up the money than have all this happen.”
My companion shook his head.
“Your sentiments do you credit, Mr Balfour, but we must take the world as we find it. It is a very imperfect one.”
“And poor Mr Sainsbury?” put in Mrs Bracegirdle.
“Murdered by Sherlock because he alone knew that the doctor was the beneficiary of the will,” said Pons. “It was obvious that he wished to tell me something but that the doctor, guessing what was in the wind, found him alone in his office, knocked him on the head and set the place on fire.”
The Inspector nodded grimly.
“The Sainsbury post-mortem has established skull damage, despite the heat of the fire. Sainsbury’s secretary has told us Sherlock had an appointment with him earlier that morning, though she did not see him at the office.”
“Of course,” went on Solar Pons, “the fact that Sherlock was the ultimate beneficiary in the event of Mr Balfour’s death would have come out eventually. But as you know, if Mr Balfour had been murdered in the same way as his uncle, the will would not have been published for a year or so, as is the normal custom. It is my belief that Sherlock would have been agreeably surprised at the news and as Sainsbury was safely out of the way and the copies of the will in his office destroyed, there would have been no-one to suspect him.”
“It was a good thing you put me on to Somerset House, Mr Pons,” said Inspector Cunliffe.
Mrs Bracegirdle turned a worried face to Pons.
“I am afraid I have misled you, Mr Pons, with my suspicions regarding Mr Ram Dass. I am so ashamed now.”
Solar Pons chuckled.
“It was a natural assumption to make, Mrs Bracegirdle. But one completely unsupported by the facts. It took only a brief interview with the gentleman concerned to eliminate him entirely from my inquiries.”
“Why was that, Pons? He looked extremely suspicious to me.”
“That is because you were entirely superficial in your approach, Parker.”
I must have looked nonplussed because my companion smiled winningly.
“Oh, come, Parker, it is not so very difficult, Mr Dass was a rather strange, colourful character in the district. Sherlock evidently banked on him being a prime suspect if murder was ever suspected, as he and the Boldigrew estate had already had a boundary dispute. I largely discounted this possibility even before we visited Mr Dass but I had to eliminate him from our inquiries. What possible motive could he have had? Money is one of the most powerful motives known to mankind. Yet Dass could not possibly benefit by Boldigrew’s death. And people rarely murder over relatively trivial boundary disputes and as I had already learned that the two men had had no personal contact in the matter I swiftly put the possibility from my mind.”
Solar Pons turned back to the Inspector.
“We had already established that Dass had nothing to do with the man who lost money in the Indian speculation, so I had to turn elsewhere for my culprit. Dr Sherlock was the only man who was in a position to pull the strings in the case; he was Boldigrew’s oldest friend and knew most about him; he had performed the post-mortem; and, most importantly, he had the opportunity to purloin both the mask and the air-pistol from his own waiting room as my interview with Mrs Mackney made clear. The only thing missing was the motive and I saw my way to that with the death of Sainsbury, a check with Somerset House revealing the identity of the beneficiary.”
“It. was a clever plot,” Inspector Cunliffe observed. “The air pistol had been cunningly adapted to fire the darts.”