The Reader Is Warned

H. M. muttered to himself. Then he looked up.

'Masters,' he said, 'this business is queerer than you think.'

'It can't be any queerer than I think,' said the chief inspector. 'Of course, remember one thing. We can't say for certain it was murder -'

'Oh, Masters, my son! Of course it was murder.'

'All the same -'

'Pennik says a man will die before eight o'clock. And a man does die before eight o'clock. Oh, my eye! Don't that nasty suspicious mind of yours, that wouldn't trust your own mother to fill the baby's bottle, at least have a twinge of curiosity about it?'

'All very well, sir,' said Masters, stubbornly. 'That's what the doctor said, and to a certain extent I agree. The question is, how can we prove it when there isn't a thing to show how Mr Constable died ? Wouldn't you allow, now, that as far as proving anything at all goes we're landed in the worst mess of our natural-born lives?'

H. M. lowered his defences.

'Uh-huh,' he admitted.

Getting to his feet, he began to lumber back and forth with his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat pockets and his corporation, ornamented with a large gold watch-chain, preceding him in splendour like the figure-head of a man-o'-war. If he had been reducing since Sanders saw him last, it was not apparent.

'All right, all right,' he growled. 'Let's argue this out, then. - Not that I'm takin' it up, mind!'

'Just as you like. But what,' said Masters persuasively, 'what would you say about our friend Pennik, now?'

H. M. stopped short.

‘No,' he said with some firmness. 'I'm not goin' to tell you what I think, if anything. I'm too worried, Masters. The thought of me dressed up in a robe and coronet - son, it's enough to make my flesh creep. If those hyena-souled bounders are really skulkin' in ambush just waitin' for another excuse so they can stick me into the House of Lords, I got to think of a way to circumvent 'em. No. I don't mind listening to what you know about this case, but you've got to tell me what you think.' Masters nodded.

'Fair enough, sir. To begin with, I'm a plain man, and I don't believe in miracles. Except the Biblical kind, which don't count. Now, I've been all over the facts with Superintendent Belcher; and Herman Pennik didn't commit this crime (if it is a crime) because he couldn't have. That's the first step. Next, who else can we definitely eliminate on the ground of alibis? Who else didn't do it?'

His pause was rhetorical.

'I didn't,' replied Sanders, as seemed to be expected of him. 'And Hilary Keen didn't. We can confirm each other because we were together.'

'That's established, son?' inquired H. M.

'Yes,' agreed Masters, 'that's all right. Very well, sir. Stands to reason! - if Mr Constable was murdered, he must have been murdered either by Mrs Constable or Mr Chase.'

'That's nonsense,' said Dr Sanders curtly.

Masters held up his hand.

'Just a moment, sir. Ju-ust a moment.' He turned to H. M. 'There's opportunity, you see. A blow to the body. A crack over the head. Even something that gave the old gentleman a nervous turn and killed him. Any of them could have been done either by his wife or Mr Chase. Neither of 'em has got an alibi. Eh?'

H. M. continued to pace.

'So far,' pursued Masters, 'we've accepted Mrs Constable's story about the old gentleman walking out of his bedroom and throwing a fit in the hall. Belcher accepted it. Colonel Willow accepted it. But is it true ? Dr Sanders didn't see the old gentleman until he was in the last stages of the fit just before he died. The lady could have hit him. The lady could have scared him. - Or, taking it the other way round,

Mr Chase could have hit him and nipped back to his room before anybody saw it.'

Here Masters lifted his finger weightily.

'What's next to be considered, sir? I'll tell you: motive. Who might have had a motive ? Pennik hadn't a motive, not what I'd call a motive; this talk about "scientific experiments" is bugaboo. Dr Sanders didn't have a motive. Miss Keen didn't have a motive. But what about Mr Chase and Mrs Constable?

'Mind, I'm only suggesting here. Mr Chase is a relative, they tell me. Also, from what they tell me, he seems to have been uncommon attentive to a gent old enough to be his father, and not his lively type at all. Is it just possible he gets a good slice of Mr Constable's money ? As for Mrs Constable - we-ll,' said Masters, with another broadly sceptical look. 'I shouldn't want all night with a wet towel round my head thinking of several reasons why she might have wanted out of the way a wealthy husband twenty years older than herself. Eh?’

'May I say something?' asked Sanders.

H. M. nodded, still without speaking.

'It's this. I have never in my life seen a woman more genuinely knocked over with grief than Mrs Constable was.'

'Oh, ah?' said the chief inspector.

'I don't give that as an opinion. I state it as a medical fact. I will take my oath she did not, and never could have, killed her husband. That woman nearly died on Friday night.'

'Of a broken heart?' inquired the chief inspector.

'If you want to put it like that. Masters, you can't fool a doctor with crocodile tears; and she didn't try. She was as genuinely shocked and scared by the death of her husband as Hilary Keen was genuinely shocked and scared by something in her room earlier on Friday night. It was a matter of physical symptoms with both of them.'

Sanders paused.

‘I tell you that before telling you something else, which you will probably find out anyway. It's better for you to hear it from me. On Friday night at about quarter to eight – this part of it you know - something frightened Hilary in the next room. She ran over to me, by way of the balcony outside both windows. When she came in at the window, she knocked over a lamp. Mr Constable heard the row and came down to see what was the matter. As he was leaving us, I said to him something like, " Nobody has tried to murder you so far, I imagine?" He said, "Not as yet. The scrap-book remains on its shelf."

'Wait! I didn't know what that remark meant, and I still don't. I can only tell you one other fact. Under Mrs Constable's bedside table where she probably writes at night, there are a couple of bookshelves; and in among the works of reference there does happen to be a large scrap-book labelled, New Ways of Committing Murder.'

Again there was a silence.

Masters looked very thoughtful.

'New ways of committing murder,' he mused, with rising excitement. 'You know, Doctor, I shouldn't be surprised, I shouldn't be at all surprised, if this may not give us just what we want. Eh, Sir Henry?'

'I dunno,’ said H. M. 'What frightened the gal ?'

'Eh?'

'I said, what frightened the gal ?' repeated H. M., pausing in his stumping walk and turning a face of exasperation. 'This Hilary Keen you've been talkin' about. Everybody seems to know she got a fright; but nobody seems to know what did it. Or even care what did it. Didn't your friend Belcher ask her about that?'

Masters chuckled, leafing back through his notebook.

'Oh yes, the superintendent asked her. He's got a nasty suspicious mind, if you like. He wanted to know what she was doing in Dr Sanders's room. She said she'd suddenly got the wind up, about Pennik's prediction and everything; she couldn't stand being alone any longer, so she ran next door to the doctor's room.' He hesitated. 'Nothing in that, is there?'

'Oh, Masters, my son! Why go by way of the balcony?' 'Well, there's that, of course.'

'There is. Balconies are messy and full of dirt. Climbin' through windows is messy and undignified. If you want company, why do that when all you've got to do is walk down a hall and open a door? Furthermore, she smashes a lamp and Sanders here says she was in a state borderin' on real collapse. It looks as though there must have been something or somebody between her and the door.'