The Notched Hairpin (18 page)

“You're right. You're right on two of your points,” he allowed, looking across at me with his head quizzically on one side—a way he has of looking when he does not want to appear surprised at someone else's acumen. “The third point, however, you overlook.”

And, having once more put himself back into the saddle of superiority, he continued, “The bow itself had pretty surely been properly repaired as lately as the nineteenth century, perhaps even later. It was that—as we have been told the dealer said at the auction where it was last bought—that spoiled its value for any museum or any real collector of antiques. You are naturally not a careful student of that epoch—the last century—which for you has neither the charm of antiquity nor the interest of modernity. It lies in that dark valley called the out-of-date. But for me it will always be my home of first memories. And I recall, when looking through that very accurate and often amusing history of mores, the volumes of the London charivari,
Punch
, with which we used to beguile not unprofitably pre-cinema evenings, that when that paper was almost radical, it had a cartoon censuring the young Queen Victoria because she and her ladies were charged with having seated themselves in a kind of grandstand and thence to have shot at driven deer. And since, as you have demonstrated to us, they could not draw a long bow, and the sporting guns of that day had enough ‘kick' and made sufficient noise to provoke female vapors and bruise ‘lily shoulders,' the royal and titled ladies are shown shooting with this silent but lethal weapon, the crossbow.

“So you see, with a weapon of such precision and force, from such a coign of vantage and seclusion, shooting right down on the … prey, as sportsmen do from concealed platforms in the jungle, why, the whole thing was so near a certainty that it was, as we say, foolproof. You simply had to put yourself in place; look down the stock and barrel of your weapon; see your line of sight kept true for you by the sighting hole cut in the arbor roof; see the white coat showing up, and showing just where the heart lay (and, I would add, with the face of the man about to be … to be executed mercifully hidden from you); and then all you had to say was, ‘It does not hurt, Petus,' and press the trigger. Then you return the paper knife to its owner, from whom you had borrowed it when you placed the Suetonius on his side table while he was fussing at this other table about his chocolate, the drink that was to prove his viaticum.”

“But,” once again as a fact finder I insisted on full information, “you've described a weapon of such force with this monster steel spring; you've said it couldn't be drawn by hand. You've got still to explain how the … man loaded it.”

“That,” he replied, picking up the roof repairer's wire stretcher, “that was the final clue. This is the actual type of lever used to string these smaller bows—the bigger had a crank. All I needed now was to find the bow itself. Of course, whoever used it would destroy it at once. Indeed, his speed to get rid of the greater clue kept him from doing the same with this stretcher, though it should not have awakened any suspicion in anyone's mind, for its purpose and how it got on the roof were both known. It was pretty safe to leave it up there. Hence we visit the garden, and naturally all was gone of the bow itself but the spring. And that was so looted, and its temper so gone in the fire, that it also would be safe from suspicion should it be found. You would have been supported by any investigator in your theory that it was the spring of some old Bath chair. No other conclusion would have been possible—unless all the other evidence had not pointed to its real purpose and aim.”

Mr. M. paused, and there was the longest silence we had yet endured. The shadows were beginning to draw across the garden. It was getting cold, and I felt a whole gaggle of huge gray geese going over my grave.

After some time Mr. Mycroft remarked to me, “There was only one small point I would like to note here. Now that I have brought back your mind to the incinerator from which I know you winced, you will recall the old empty packages of
Gold Flake
cigarettes that lay around the mouth of the furnace?”

“That put—” it was Millum speaking at last, “the last golden nail in my coffin!”

“No,” replied Mr. M., “no, I would not call it your coffin. I'd call it your husk. It cracked your shell out of which you'll now have to make a breakaway—for I mean to give you one. Anyhow, now we can go back to the real interest in all human action—not means, but motive—motive, without which we often can't find even the means. I can see the role that opportunity—what we call a queer run of chances—played with you. ‘O Opportunity thy guilt is great!'

“But what I see further is that you stood, you didn't budge until with Opportunity there came up its great and subtle ally, Casuistry. It was the suggestion-temptation that, after all, the blow would not really be felt, that the dispatch need not hurt—it was that, wasn't it, that suddenly made you resolve to try, that was your trigger that fired you to your deed. You remember a little while back I said there was a point here that gave me hope? I thought at this point of my tracking (and now I'm sure) that I detected a double motive, a double motive in the use of the Petus passage that had first served its purpose by rousing you and provoking you to the brink of action. No doubt it seemed desperately necessary that every possible suggestion and clue should be left about to persuade the philosophic police that there was adequate provocation to suicide at that moment—as Sankey sat within bow shot. But also I believed, and believe, there was a hope, a wish by the bowman, to point out not only to the police and himself but even to Sankey that death by heart-stabbing was painless. Muddled, you say? Certainly. For that's what makes for the real mystery of murder—muddled motives. There was the wish to be out of an intolerable situation and, blended inextricably with it, as our motives always are when under tension, the wish to believe that no wrong is really being done—indeed, that one is doing a service to the obstacle itself as it is pushed over the edge out of the way. Muddled, yes. Of course, Sankey might never reach the passage as he read—you might not be able to let him have the time to do so—and, in fact, you didn't. Besides, his only possible weapon has been taken from him. Petus is not simply to be told that stabbing doesn't hurt, he is to be stabbed. To save him further trouble of making up his mind he is to be flung out of the body. Precisely, precisely! don't you see, the whole thing is a perfect example of the psychology of confusion, of murderer and murderee inextricably involved.”

He turned once more to Millum. “You would employ what is called in China ‘the happy dispatch.' And you would do it by means so easy, so light, that Shakespeare marvels that so much of consequence, and with such power of pain as a human soul, can be let out of its prison with nothing more than what you would use, a bare bodkin.' And the bodkin, you see, with its long delicate handle and its shorter lance head, might suggest a model of that dagger which in the Middle Ages was called a misericord, an instrument of mercy with which to release from life one who had lost honor, lost the fight, and could now only suffer.

“Well, before taking the risk and having this strange unsatisfying success, it is a pity that you did not come to me. I think we could have managed the whole affair. Not that I think we could have done much with Sankey. I judge that was a case where a higher court would have had to handle the problem—some complexes refuse any form of reduction that we can employ in this life. But as to you, I can say, though it is late, it's not too late. That you've been given this second chance—considering the risks you took and also that in Inspector Sark you had against you one of the best detective minds in Britain—shows, I think, that you were meant to go on till you solve this problem. I'm no sentimentalist. I believe in justice and only venture to differ from the law when it follows its own idea of rigid consistency. So now, as I stand for justice, I must act!”

At that I started up. “What! Are you going to call the police after all?”

All Millum said was, “I'm ready. The case, as you see, is out of my hands.”

Then Mr. Mycroft said slowly, “I arrest you.”

Then, as though to be more precise, “I should say, I have arrested you. For that is what arrest is—it is not judging people, but leaving that to a higher authority. But it is, in the name of that authority, telling them to stop, to wait, to prepare their case and consider their future. So I have arrested you. You have been brought to a standstill, and I don't see how, placed as you now are, you can do anything more. You are at a dead center. Adding your physical death to this wouldn't make things any better. We are always saying two blacks don't make a white, but the law, which is so fond of wise saws and modern instances, never seems to have heard of that one. So, as I have brought you to this pass and can see that you can't do anything about it, but equally can't be left where you are, I must do something about it. I don't see any way out of it (or believe me I would take it) than for us to take it together. I must and will go surety for you.”

Turning quickly to me, he said, “Mr. Silchester, I wonder whether you would go and talk with Jane. I find that I shall have to take this house if it is at all suitable, for I shall have to spend the summer down here detained by the development of a case. You are a much better judge than I as to whether the house would be suitable for us. Would you, therefore, go and look it over? And if you come to the conclusion that you would also wish to spend the summer down here with me, I shall find that as useful an alliance, I believe, as I have in the past—unexpected as our contributions to each other's interests generally are.”

And with that drop of subacid put in at the close of his compliment—as bees put formic acid in their honey—I was sent off to wait like a junior while the elders talked. But though I felt at the beginning I was just being got rid of, when I found Jane I must say I found some pleasure in cutting Mr. M. out in her good graces. She was far better company than I had suspected, having really a good natural wit. Several times she broke out into loud laughter at my remarks and had to own that she had ‘really quite forgotten herself.' So by the time we had seen the whole of the house—and it was worth seeing, every part being most expensively furnished and as equally well kept—the dusk had begun to fall fast, and guide and explorer were mutually won over.

On going down I thought Mr. M. might think I had been too long, but when I reached the garden, now moonlit and looking much more romantic than sinister, there were the two M.'s walking up and down like old friends who had just met after a long separation. They were actually arm in arm, a liberty which Mr. M. has never taken with me.

Within a week we were settled. By some odd accident—Mr. M. says it is not uncommon in men like that because of an unconscious fear that the very thing may increase the closeness of death—Sankey had never made a will since he was at college. Then, as he was about to make a journey into Anatolia, he was told by his lawyer that he ought, to save possible trouble, make a brief will against contingencies. So he had scrawled half a sheet of paper and had had the hotel boots- and the desk-reception clerk sign it as witnesses. But it was quite valid, and the lawyer had rung through to say that they were holding it, and what did Mr. Millum want to do about it, for he was sole beneficiary under the will, and the lawyer was the executor.

So Mr. Millum provisionally was able to tell us that we could move in as soon as we liked, and I must say I found Mr. Millum quite an asset.

It's said that two's company, three's none. But it's not true when two companions are really as far apart as Mr. M. and I—the scientist and the artist. I used to call Mr. Millum the hyphen, for his gift, which was mainly that of a collector and an antiquarian, neatly linked the two extremes on which Mr. M. and I stood. Gradually, too, I noticed he had a nickname, or title, for Mr. M. He used to call him Mr. P.O. When he had got into the way of doing that pretty regularly, I stopped him one day when Mr. M. was out of the way and asked him what he meant by it—for I didn't want to be laughed at for not being able to see some obvious point and manifest relevance.

“P.O.,” I remarked, “stands, I understand, for post office in all customary abbreviations by initials—a habit I dislike, but one which seems to delight the alphabetically rudimentary mind of our present bureaucrats. But that attribute of office applied to Mr. M. seems to me singularly inept. For a post office distributes the mail and other information sent to it. I cannot imagine a worse receptacle into which to put information you wished distributed than the mind of Mr. Mycroft. Granted that his ear hears most things, his mouth gives less away than ever did Elwin, the classic eighth-century miser.”

I thought that opening was pretty good and would show I was no ignoramus for not having found out what the real meaning of the appellation could be.

“Yes,” said Mr. Millum with courteous agreement, “yes, I agree that no title for our honored friend could fit more oddly than that of post office. And of all ministries, that of postmaster general is the last I would imagine his taking—though, if he did, I believe our postal service would be improved, for a more varied and competent mind I never met.”

“Yes, yes,” I intervened, “I think I can appreciate his powers as well as any man, and even the blind spots he has at times don't make me underrate the keenness of his insights at others. But if not post office, what can P.O. mean? That was my question::

Mr. Millum hesitated a little longer this time but, seeing I was not to be put off, continued, “I agree that it is a good thing that Mr. Mycroft has not got the distributive mind, as you happily put it. Considering that my life is in his hands and yours, you will have no doubt that I agree it is a good thing that he is not interested in publicity. And please never forget that I remember my debt. Though I know people of your caliber of discretion carry it so far that some things are never mentioned even among ourselves. Forgive me for doing so, but the opportunity being given by you, I felt I might take it.”