“You see the advantages? First of all, the only theft would be one of the replicas, which no one cared much about. Second, the date of the real theft would be left doubtful. And third, this plan gave them any amount of time to dispose of the real things before any suspicions were aroused at all, as regards the genuine Leonardos. My impression is that they had a market for them: some scoundrelly collector who’d pay high to have the Leonardos even if he couldn’t boast publicly that he had them.”
“That’s correct, sir,” the Inspector interposed. “Brackley had a market, but he wouldn’t tell me who the collector was.”
Joan rose from her chair, crossed the room to a small table, and solemnly came back with a tray.
“Have some whisky and soda,” she suggested to Sir Clinton.
“You find the tale rather dry?” he inquired solicitously. “Life’s like that, you know. Inspector Armadale really needs this more than I do. He’s been a long time out in the cold up yonder. I’ll take some later on, if you don’t mind.”
Joan presented the tray to the Inspector, who helped himself.
Sir Clinton waited till he was finished with the siphon and then continued, addressing himself to Joan:
“Perhaps the story has lacked feminine interest up to this point. We’ll hurry on to the day when you, Maurice, and Foss had your talk on the terrace. Down below was Foss’s motor, serving two purposes. It was there if they had to make a bolt, should things go wrong. It also allowed the chauffeur, making a fake repair, to watch what went on in the museum. I gather that he meant to keep an eye on his confederates.
“At that moment, Foss had the three replicas in his pocket; and he was looking for some excuse to carry out the exchange. He led the conversation on to Japanese swords and so forth. I suspect Brackley supplied the basis for that matter, enough to allow Foss to make a show of information. Then Foss brought up the subject of his ‘poor man’s collection’ of rubbings. I’ve no doubt he forced a card there—induced Maurice to offer to let him take rubbings of the medallions. That would be child’s play to an ex-conjurer with a smart tongue. He got his way, anyhow.
“But then came a complication he hadn’t expected. You, Joan, got interested in this taking of rubbings. I admit it was hard lines on the poor fellow. It was the last thing he could have anticipated.”
“Thanks for the compliment!” Joan interjected, ironically.
“Well, it wasn’t in the plan, anyhow,” Sir Clinton went on. “It meant an extra pair of eyes to deceive when the exchange was made; and as the exchange was the crucial move in the whole scheme, your company—strange to say—was not appreciated. In fact, you made Mr Foss nervous. He wasn’t quite as cool as he could have wished; and my reading of the situation is that he bungled his first attempt at the substitution and had to prolong the agony by pretending to take a second rubbing of the first medallion he got into his hands.
“He had more luck with his second attempt, even with your eagle eyes on him; and he stowed away Medallion Number One in one of the special concealed pockets which he had in his clothes. But he desired intensely to be relieved of your company; and he proceeded to draw your attention to someone calling you. Of course that voice existed solely in his own imagination. But it was quite as effective as a real voice in getting you to leave the museum; and then there was one onlooker the less to bother him in his sleight-of-hand.”
Sir Clinton paused to light a cigarette before continuing. Inspector Armadale, laying down his paper, turned to the Chief Constable as though expecting at this point to hear something which he did not already know.
“The next stage is one of pure conjecture,” Sir Clinton went on. “Foss is dead, and I haven’t had any opportunity of interrogating the other actor: Marden.”
Inspector Armadale smiled grimly at the way in which the Chief Constable evaded any reference to the valet’s murder.
“Possibly Inspector Armadale has a note or two on the matter,” Sir Clinton pursued, “but even if he has, it can only be something like ‘what the soldier said,’ for Brackley could have merely second-hand evidence at the best. Take the case as the Inspector and I found it. Foss was dead, stabbed with the Muramasa sword. On its handle we found the finger-prints of Maurice, and no others. Under Foss’s body we found an undischarged automatic pistol with his finger-prints on the butt. We noticed curious pockets in Foss’s clothes; but they were empty. And we found no trace of any of the medallions about the place. Maurice was non est inventus—we could see no sign of him. Marden had cut his hand in a fall against one of the cases. He’d wrapped it up with his handkerchief in a rough sort of way. The case containing the Muramasa sword was open, and the sheath was lying in it, empty, of course.
“It’s only fair to Inspector Armadale to tell you that he suspected Marden immediately. What I’m going to give you is merely the case as it presented itself to me.”
Armadale looked slightly flustered by this tribute to his perspicacity. He glanced suspiciously at the Chief Constable, but Sir Clinton’s face betrayed no ironical intention.
“He may be pulling my leg again,” the Inspector reflected, “but at least it’s decent of him to go out of his way to say that. It’s true enough, but not exactly in the way that they’ll understand it.”
“Marden had a very complete story to tell us. He’d come to the door of the museum with a parcel which Foss had sent him to post. He’d found the address was incomplete and came back to get Foss to finish it. He stayed outside the door and he heard a quarrel between Maurice and Foss, ending in a struggle. When he burst into the room, Maurice was disappearing at the other end and Foss was dead on the floor. Then Marden slipped on the parquet, fell against a show-case, cut his hand, and tied it up in his handkerchief. Then he gave the alarm.
“The parcel with the incomplete address was the first thing that interested me. We opened it and we found in it a cheap wrist-watch in perfect condition, apparently. The Inspector tried it for finger-prints. There weren’t any of any sort, either on the watch or the box in which it was enclosed. That seemed a bit rum to us both.
“The only thing that seemed to fit the case was this. Suppose Marden wanted to keep an eye on Foss. This parcel would give him the excuse of bursting in on his employer at any moment. Assume that Marden himself had made up the parcel and that Foss had nothing to do with it. It was wrapped up in paper on which the address was written. You know how one writes on a parcel—not the least like one’s normal handwriting if the paper is crumpled a bit in the wrapping-up. That would make a bit of rough forgery of Foss’s writing fairly easy. Further, if by any chance the parcel fell into the hands of the police—as actually happened—there was nothing inside to show that Foss hadn’t wrapped it up himself. Nobody else’s finger-marks were on it at all. It had been wrapped up with gloved hands. And the contents were innocent enough: only a watch being sent to a watch-maker to be regulated, perhaps. If it had been a letter, then to carry the thing through properly they’d have had to forge Foss’s writing all the way through, in order to make it look genuine if it happened to be opened.
“But if that theory were adopted, a lot followed from it. First and foremost, it meant that Marden was the boss and his nominal employer was an underling in the gang, who would have to back up any story that Marden liked to tell. Secondly, it pointed to the fact that Marden didn’t trust Foss much. He wanted an excuse to get at Foss at any moment—which is hardly in the power of a simple valet. When he thought Foss needed watching, all he had to do was to trot up with his little parcel, just to let Foss see that he was under observation. Thirdly, this dodge was worked at a crucial stage in the game—when the replicas were being exchanged for the Leonardo medallions. Doesn’t that suggest that Marden didn’t trust Foss very much? It looks as if Marden was none too sure that he’d get a square deal from Foss once the real medallions had changed hands. Am I right in my guesses, Inspector?”