“I go by the evidence of Polegate and young Chacewater,” said Sir Clinton, with a faint parody of the Inspector’s manner. “They were taken by surprise when the light went out, although they expected it to be extinguished at 11.45 p.m.”
“Oh, have it your own way, sir, if you lay any stress on the point,” conceded the Inspector. “Make it 11.44 or 11.45; it’s all the same, so far as I’m concerned.”
Armadale seemed slightly ruffled by his chief’s method of approaching the subject. Sir Clinton turned to another side of the matter.
“I suppose you say the crime has been committed in the museum?” he inquired.
The Inspector looked at him suspiciously.
“You’re trying to pull my leg, sir. Of course, it was committed in the museum.”
Sir Clinton’s tone became apologetic.
“I keep forgetting that we’re not talking about the same thing, perhaps. Of course, the theft of the replicas was committed in the museum. We’re quite in agreement there.”
He threw away his cigarette, selected a fresh one, and lighted it before continuing.
“And on that basis, I suppose there’s no mystery about the next query in the rhyme: ‘How done?’”
“None whatever, in my mind,” the Inspector affirmed. “Polegate could take what he wanted, once the light was out.”
Sir Clinton did not dispute this point.
“Of course,” he said. “And now for the next query: ‘With what motive?’ Where do you stand in that matter, Inspector?”
But here Armadale evidently felt himself on sure ground.
“Polegate’s a rackety young fool, sir. This is where local knowledge comes in. He’s got no common sense—always playing practical jokes. He’s been steadily muddling away the money his father left him. I shouldn’t be surprised if he’s hard up. That’s the motive.”
“And you think he’d steal from his oldest friends?”
“Every man has his price,” retorted the Inspector, bluntly. “Put on the screw hard enough in the way of temptation, and any man’ll fall for it.”
“Rather a hard saying that, Inspector; and perhaps a trifle too sweeping.” Sir Clinton turned on Armadale suddenly. “What would be your price, now, if I asked you to hush up this case against young Polegate? Put a figure on it, will you?”
Armadale flushed angrily at the suggestion; then, seeing that he had been trapped, he laughed awkwardly.
“Nobody knows even their own price till it’s put on the table, Sir Clinton,” he countered, with a certain acuteness.
The Chief Constable turned away from the subject.
“You’re depending on there being a fair chance of Polegate getting away with the medallions without being suspected. But when young Chacewater and Miss Rainhill were in the scheme as well as Polegate, suspicion was sure to light on him when the medallions vanished. The other two were certain to tell what they knew about the business.”
Inspector Armadale glanced once more at his notebook in order to refresh his memory of the rhyme.
“That really comes under the final head: ‘Who in the deed did share?’” he pointed out.
“Pass along to the next caravan, then, if you wish,” Sir Clinton suggested. “What animals have you in the final cage?”
The Inspector seemed to deprecate his flippancy.
“It’s been very cleverly done,” he said, seriously. “You objected that suspicion was bound to fall on young Polegate; and so it would have done, if he hadn’t covered his tracks so neatly. He’s set everyone on the hunt for a gang at work, or at least for an outside criminal. Now I believe it was a one-man show from the start, worked from the inside. Polegate planned the practical joke—that gave him his chance. Then he forced himself forward as the fellow who was to do the actual stealing—and that let him get his hands on the medallions while young Chacewater held the keeper up for him. Without the hold-up of the keeper, the thing was a wash-out. The joke helped young Polegate to enlist innocent assistance.”
“But still suspicion would attach to him,” Sir Clinton objected.
“Yes, except for a false trail,” the Inspector agreed. “But he laid a false trail. Instead of waiting for the switch to be pulled out, he fired his shot from the bay, extinguished the light and then rushed out of the bay and went for the medallions.”
“Well?” said Sir Clinton in an encouraging tone.
“When he’d smashed the glass of the case, he took out the whole six medallions, and not merely three of them as he told you he’d done.”
“And then?”
“He pocketed the replicas and stuck the real things under the case with plasticine. Then he continued the false trail by bolting out of the house. He was the man in white. When he got clear of the people who were chasing him, he came back to the house again, ready to play his part as an innocent practical joker. And he had his tale ready, of how someone was beside him at the case, wearing a Pierrot costume. That stamped the notion of an outside gang on everybody’s mind. Both sets of medallions had gone. He—the innocent practical joker—could have produced the replicas from his pocket and sworn they were all that the gang had left in the case by the time he got to it.”
“And . . .?”
“And then, a few days later, he’d have managed to get into the museum on some excuse—he’s a friend of the family—and he’d have had no difficulty in taking the real medallions from under the case where he’d left them. He’d have to take the chance that they’d been overlooked. The false trail would help in that. He’d hardly expect a close search of the museum after the man in white had got clear away. And by running the business on these lines, he’d avoid any chance of being caught with the stuff actually in his pocket at any time.”
“But in that case, why did he hand over the real things to me like a lamb as soon as I challenged him?”
The inspector was ready for this.
“Because as soon as he came into the museum last night, he found that you apparently knew everything—or a good deal more than he’d counted on. Anyhow, he didn’t know how much you knew; and he felt he’d got into a tight corner. He just let the whole thing slide and made up his mind to get out before things got too hot. So he pretended that so far as he was concerned, the practical joke was the thing; and he gave up the real medallions and kept the replicas in his pocket.”
“Why? He might as well have given up the lot.”
“No,” the Inspector contradicted. “He’d got to keep the false trail going, for otherwise there would have been awkward questions as to why he diverged from the prearranged programme. I mean the shooting out of the light, the lies about the man in white, and so forth. So he stuck to the replicas and made out that there was an outsider mixed up in the affair. But thanks to the practical joke, the outsider had missed the real stuff; and Polegate was really the saviour of the Leonardo set.”
Sir Clinton seemed to be pondering over Armadale’s version of the affair. At last he gave his own view.
“A jury wouldn’t look at that evidence,” he pointed out.
“I don’t suppose they would,” Armadale admitted. “But there may be more to come yet.”
“I expect so,” Sir Clinton agreed.
He rose as he spoke, and, followed by the Inspector, went down to the edge of the lakelet.
“No luck yet?” he inquired.
“None, sir. It’s a very difficult bottom to work a grapnel over. It sticks three times out of four.”
Sir Clinton watched the line of the drag which they were making.
“It’ll take a while to cover the ground at this rate,” he commented, noting the smallness of the area they had searched up to that moment.
As he turned away from the water-side, he noticed Cecil Chacewater approaching round the edge of the lakelet, and leaving the Inspector to superintend the dragging, he walked over to meet the newcomer. As he came near, he could see that Cecil’s face was sullen and downcast.