The Case of the Gilded Fly (12 page)

A sort of round-table conference, involving an initial summing-up of the case, now took place. And the next object to which they turned their attention was the gun.

‘Well now, Spencer,' said the Inspector, leaning back in his chair with a sigh, ‘what about fingerprints?'

But Nigel interrupted before the Sergeant could speak. ‘I think,' he said, ‘I can tell you where the gun came from.' And he recounted the incident at the party, and his discovery that the gun was missing. ‘Of course,' he concluded, ‘I've no means of telling for certain whether that's the same one, but if you get on
to
the owner he'll know.'

‘Ah, thank you, sir,' said the Inspector. ‘That's very helpful – very helpful indeed. Although,' he added somewhat suspiciously, ‘I don't quite see what made you go back to see if the gun was gone.'

Nigel felt somewhat ridiculous, and thanked his stars that he had a cast iron alibi for the time of the murder. He muttered something about an impulse.

‘A sudden impulse – quite so,' said the Inspector, making an unnecessary note on the subject. ‘We all act from such impulses upon occasion,' he continued pedantically, with the air of one who has propounded a metaphysical theory of startling originality and importance. ‘Now, what time would it have been when you went back and found that the gun was gone?'

‘Let's see now – I left Nicholas in the corridor about 1.30,' said Nigel. ‘And I can't have spent more than ten minutes or so undressing. Say 1.40.'

‘1.40 a.m. approximately,' repeated the Inspector, making another note. ‘And the name of the owner of the gun – the gentleman who gave the party?'

‘Captain Peter Graham.'

‘Ah, yes. Elbow!' the Inspector called to the constable on duty at the door. ‘Ring up the “Mace and Sceptre”, will you, and ask Captain Graham if he'd be so kind as to step over here some time during the evening, as soon as he can conveniently manage.' Elbow vanished on this mission. ‘Now, Spencer,' said the Inspector, relaxing again. ‘The fingerprints.'

‘Yes, sir. A few old prints on the barrel and chambers, which
of course I haven't been able to identify. Nothing on the cartridges. And nothing on the butt and trigger except the prints of the young lady's right hand: thumb on the trigger, fingers round the back and the right side of the butt.'

‘That's a curious arrangement, isn't it?' asked Sir Richard.

‘Not if you come to think of it, sir,' said the Inspector. He picked up the gun and pointed it at his forehead, holding it round the back of the butt and with his thumb on the trigger. ‘Only comfortable way to hold it, really, if you're going to shoot yourself as she apparently did.'

‘Were there any prints on the hammer?' asked Fen. ‘Any indication that the gun had been cocked, that is?'

‘Well, sir, it's a bit difficult. There's a sort of criss-cross pattern on the hammer which doesn't take prints. But I think I can safely say it hasn't been touched.' Fen nodded and became gloomy.

‘Anything else in the room?' asked the Inspector.

‘A lot of old marks which I suppose belong to whoever lives in here.' The Sergeant looked about him with distaste, as though he expected to see some bearded hermit, indescribably filthy, cavorting in a corner. ‘The girl's prints on both doorknobs, on the drawers of the desk in here, and on the drawers of the chest of drawers by the window in the bedroom.'

‘H'm. It appears she must have been looking for something. There are such things as gloves, of course,' the Inspector added rather obviously. ‘But apart from the business of the ring, which I grant you is queer, it looks up to now like a pretty plain case of suicide.'

‘No, no, Inspector,' said Fen, who had been gazing reflectively at an unattractive Modigliani which was hanging on the wall near him, ‘I'm afraid I can't agree.'

The Inspector looked at him gloomily for a moment. Then he said: ‘Well, sir?' in a longsuffering voice.

‘Everything militates against it. Leaving aside for a moment the question of why the girl should have wanted to commit suicide in any case, why she didn't leave a suicide note, why she should have chosen a singularly unattractive bedroom not belonging to her to do it in, and why, moreover, she should have interrupted herself in the middle – not at the end, mind – of a
particularly intensive search to do it – you remember one of the drawers was still open –'

‘Well, sir,' the Inspector put in, ‘isn't it possible that she came across the gun in that very drawer – we don't know who took it – and shot herself on an impulse, as it were?'

‘I don't say it's impossible; but I think it's extremely unlikely. Anyway, look at the material evidence. And use your common sense,' Fen added somewhat frantically. ‘Oh Lord! Look – wait a moment and I'll show you what I mean.' And he rushed out of the room and returned a minute later with his wife. After she had greeted the Inspector with a slow, pleasant smile, Fen seized up the gun and handed it to her, saying:

‘Dolly, would you mind committing suicide for a moment?'

‘Certainly,' Mrs Fen remained unperturbed at this alarming request, and took the gun in her right hand, with her forefinger on the trigger; then she pointed it at her right temple.

‘There!' said Fen triumphantly.

‘Shall I pull the trigger?' asked Mrs Fen.

‘By all means,' he said absently, but Sir Richard surged up from his chair crying hoarsely: ‘Don't! It's loaded!' and snatched the gun away from her. She smiled at him. ‘Thank you, Sir Richard,' she said benignly, ‘but Gervase is hopelessly forgetful, and I shouldn't have dreamed of doing such a thing. Is that all I can do for you gentlemen?'

The Inspector nodded dumbly, and glared at Fen, who remained unmoved by the incident.

‘Very well then,' said Mrs Fen. ‘In that case, Gervase, I'm going home now. Try not to be late, and don't disturb the children when you come in.' She bestowed an approving smile on each of them in turn, and went.

Fen cut Sir Richard's expostulations short by saying: ‘You see what I mean? Try it with any woman you like, and they'll all do the same thing.
^a
The other way is psychologically impossible, though I agree that abstractly one wouldn't think it so; and someone has obviously been a little too clever. Besides, look at the weight of the thing, and the comparatively big leverage you have to put on the trigger. Try and pull it when you're holding
the thing in the position suggested by the prints, and you'll find you have the devil of a job. And then think of yourself committing suicide in that laborious and nerve-racking manner, and you'll realize it's hopelessly improbable. The only way to eliminate the difficulty would be to cock the gun, which makes the trigger into a hair trigger. And as Spencer has told us, that simply wasn't done.'

That's right, sir,' said Spencer, seeming to feel that something was expected of him.

‘Well, sir,' said the Inspector, who was beginning to look unhappy, ‘I agree with that, as far as it goes. But what else?'

‘Then, of course, there's the ring. Can you in your wildest imaginings suppose that anyone is going to commit suicide with a ring in that foully uncomfortable position on the hand in which they're holding the gun? Of course not Suicides invariably take the utmost pains to make themselves comfortable. So quite obviously, for heaven knows what purpose, someone crammed that ring on to the girl's finger after she was dead, and someone in very much of a hurry, too, if I'm not mistaken.

‘And finally, there's the fact that the girl was
kneeling
when she was shot; kneeling by the chest of drawers, which as you saw is rather a low one.'

The Inspector leaned forward. ‘How do you make that out?'

‘Look at the position of the body, man. If she'd been standing when she was shot, one leg might have been doubled up under her by the fall, but not both of them, neatly folded up like that. And then consider the effect of the impact of a heavy-calibre bullet on a person kneeling: they'd be thrown brusquely back with the knees as pivot. I asked the doctor to see if the tendons of the knees were strained, and lo, they were.
Et voilà.'

Nigel gaped, the Inspector looked even more unhappy, and Sir Richard nodded. ‘Good for you, Gervase,' he said. ‘Well, where do we go from here?'

‘Accident?' suggested Nigel tentatively.

The Inspector, relieved at this fortunate manifestation of an intelligence lower than his own, regarded him with disdain.

‘
Hardly
, sir,' he said. ‘The bullet entered horizontally, remember. It would have to be a pretty fantastic set of circumstances.'

‘If the circumstances weren't fantastic, accidents wouldn't happen,' Nigel persisted doggedly, not liking to think of the third possibility. ‘People take ordinary precautions.'

‘No, Nigel, it won't do,' said Fen, ‘there's no evidence for it at all.' Nigel relapsed into a mild fit of sulks.

‘And that,' said Sir Richard thoughtfully, ‘leaves us with just one thing.'

There was an uneasy, silence at his words. It was broken by the Inspector suddenly banging excitedly on the table and saying:

‘But, good heavens, it can't be that either! This man Williams says that nobody followed the girl in here from outside. No one came down from your room, Professor –'

‘Here, wait a minute!' Nigel interrupted. ‘Someone did. Robert Warner came down here to the lavatory two or three minutes before we heard the shot.'

‘Um,' was the Inspector's only reaction to this intelligence.

‘Yes, exactly, Inspector,' said Sir Richard. ‘No one could possibly have shot the girl and done all that faking in the half-minute or so before Williams came in, or for that matter even in the minute-and-a-half before we arrived. Besides, I'm sure Warner's alibi is genuine. I heard him pull the plug as we were coming downstairs, and he unbolted the door and came out just as we reached the bottom.'

Nigel grunted agreement.

‘There was no one hidden in the room when we arrived, and even if anyone had been waiting here when the girl came in, he couldn't have got away again afterwards.'

Nigel had a third idea. ‘The window,' he said, unabashed by two previous failures.

‘Ye-es,' said the Inspector dubiously. ‘You mean whoever did it would conceal himself in here early on, kill the girl, wait until he saw Williams coming in, and then, with the guard outside removed, as it were, pop out again. But it would be devilish risky.'

‘And it still doesn't get you over the difficulty that he'd have
no time to do the faking,' added Sir Richard. Nigel sighed, and ventured no further ideas.

‘However,' said the Inspector, ‘it's worth looking into a bit more closely. Anyone getting out of the window would certainly have left marks. Apart from that, I don't quite know –'

‘Suicide,' said Sir Richard, ‘we've agreed is most unlikely, because of the ring, and the fact that the girl was kneeling, and the whole business about the gun; quite apart from the problem of why she should elect to do it here. Accident practically impossible. And murder, apparently, quite impossible. So the only conclusion is –'

‘The only conclusion is,' put in the Inspector, ‘that the thing never happened at all.
Quia
,' he added gloomily, with a sudden recollection of his schooldays, ‘
absurdum est
.'

Who can tell what thief or foe,

In the covert of the night,

For his prey will work my woe,

Or through wicked foul despite?

Campion

‘Well,' said Sir Richard resolutely, ‘that means there's something we've missed. We shall have to go ahead and find out what it is, that's all.'

The Inspector sighed. A cast-iron suicide case had vanished to the winds, and he envisaged much tedium in the near future. He merely said: ‘Where do we begin, then, apart from routine investigation of times and so on, from the porter and this man Williams?'

‘Investigation, like charity, begins at home,' said Fen tediously.

‘As far as I can see,' continued the Inspector, ‘we shall have to discover who, if anyone, had a motive for killing the girl, and put them through it.'

‘Wouldn't it be better to keep an open mind?' suggested Sir Richard. ‘After all, we don't
know
she was murdered.'

‘Well, sir,' said the Inspector a trifle impatiently, ‘what other basis do you think we should take?'

Sir Richard stared at him as though he had just emerged from a cocoon, but refrained from producing an answer, for the very good reason that he could think of none.

‘I think that's a very good idea, Inspector,' put in Fen drowsily. ‘But not in this dreary hole, for heaven's sake. Let's go back to my room.'

‘Isn't this Mr Warner up there?'

‘Oh Lord, yes. Well, suppose we take Williams and the porter down here, and then go up and deal with Warner, and get rid of him, and have the other two up there afterwards.'

‘Mr Fellowes and Mr Barclay: that seems reasonable.' The Inspector manifested a guarded approval. ‘But I'm not sure it
isn't better to question witnesses in the more uncomfortable surroundings.'

‘True in a way,' said Fen even more drowsily. ‘But if they're telling any lies, they're far more likely to relax and elaborate them and make them obvious from the depths of an armchair. What a dismal business it all is!' he concluded in a rather surprised tone.

‘Then there's another thing,' said the Inspector. ‘The next of kin must be informed. Has the girl any relations here in Oxford?'

Nigel remembered Helen for the first time that evening. The two sisters were so dissimilar, and moreover had got on so badly together, that it was not surprising he had forgotten the relationship between them. His heart sank. ‘There's a sister,' he blurted out. ‘Helen. She works at the rep. too.'