Patricia Wentworth - Wicked Uncle

Miss Silver gave her slight cough.

“What about the switch?”

“Wiped clean. And that’s one of the most damning bits of evidence against Carroll. A switch like that ought to have been a perfect smother of everybody’s fingerprints. It was as clean as a whistle. Why should anyone have wiped it? Well, there’s only one answer to that, and only one person who had a motive for doing it-the person who turned out the lights. If it was Carroll-and I don’t see that anyone else was in a position to reach that switch-then Carroll is the murderer. So much for him. Now we come to Tote. Porlock was blackmailing him over activities on the black market. One of our leading operators. He was by all accounts very angry. Now, as you will have gathered, Tote wasn’t one of the party who went out to play the charade. He stayed behind in the drawing-room with Porlock, Miss Masterman, Justin Leigh, and Dorinda Brown. What we don’t know is whether he went on staying behind after the others came out to do audience in the dark hall. He says he did. Nobody else says anything at all. Gregory Porlock was last out of the room. He was the only person who would know for certain whether Tote followed him. He could have followed him. He could have marked him with the luminous paint. Everyone in the party knew the pot was standing handy in the cloakroom. And he could have crossed the hall without being seen and lurked behind the service door until the charade was over and everyone was moving about. Then he would only have needed to open the door a very little way in order to put out the lights. Of course there’s no proof that he did anything of the sort-that switch has an absolute crisscross of fingerprints. And when Leigh turned on the lights from over by the outer door, Tote was in the open drawing-room doorway, apparently about to emerge into the hall. Look at the plan.”

Miss Silver coughed and said,

“Very interesting.”

Frank Abbott went on.

“But Tote could have done it. At the service door he was in a position to see the luminous mark on Porlock’s back. That is to say, he was slightly behind him, the door being at the back of the hall in prolongation of the line of the stair. Like Carroll he could have worn a glove, or he could have wiped the dagger. After that he had only to reach the drawing-room door, open it, and turn round so as to look as if he was coming out. He could have done it on his head.”

“My dear Frank!” Miss Silver’s tone reproved the slang.

He threw her a kiss.

“We’re getting along nicely-two murderers in about three minutes. Here comes a third. Shakespearean, isn’t it? First, Second, and Third Murderers. Enter the rather saturnine Mr. Masterman, a gloomy cove who looks the part to a T, which murderers generally don’t. Porlock was probably blackmailing him too. Our chief eavesdropper, Pearson, only got away with an intriguing fragment about a missing will, but I should say there was something in it. We’ve been busy on the telephone, and it transpires that Masterman and his sister came in for a packet about three months ago from an old cousin who boarded with them. Nothing extraordinary about that, but the death was sudden, and there was apparently some local talk, reinforced by the fact that, whereas Masterman has been spending in a big way, the sister has gone about looking like death and wearing out shabby old clothes. They were, I gather, tolerably hard up until they came in for fifty thousand apiece under the old cousin’s will. Connecting this with what Pearson overheard, it looks as if Cousin Mabel might have made a second will and been tidied out of the way-or perhaps only the will. Now, to consider Masterman as Third Murderer. I don’t think there’s much doubt that Porlock was blackmailing him. He was in the charade, with ample opportunity for picking up a spot of luminous paint-probably on a handkerchief. He had every opportunity of marking Porlock, easy access to the switch by the hearth, and no need to wipe off his prints, since he was known to have turned on the lights there at the close of the charade. Say he put them out again as soon as he saw Porlock turn back from the foot of the stairs. He had only to cross the hall until he was behind him, strike him down, and get over to the other side of the hearth. All quite easy-and, as you are about to observe, unsupported by a single shred of evidence.”

Miss Silver coughed, and said thoughtfully,

“That is not what I was about to say. But pray go on.”

He gave her a sharp glance. It met with no response. He did as he was told.

“Now for Miss Lane. She was undoubtedly being blackmailed, and she is a very fine, upstanding, handsome young woman who wouldn’t take at all kindly to it. Pearson only heard something enigmatic about a bracelet. If she was being blackmailed about that she pulled a fast one on the late Gregory-see description of her bounding into the drawing-room and displaying a very handsome bracelet and telling everyone how marvellous Greg had been to get it back for her after she had lost it. Well, he didn’t contradict her, but we’ve come across the bill for the bracelet. He paid a pretty price for it. It wasn’t true, what Pearson heard him tell her, that the bracelet was fully described in the bill-it wasn’t. But we got on to the jeweller, and he said it was sold to him in November by Miss Moira Lane. Gives you something to think about, doesn’t it? But on the whole, I don’t know about Moira. I don’t see how she could have turned out the lights without upsetting Masterman’s fingerprints, for one thing.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“A woman could raise or depress a switch without touching more than a very small portion of the surface, and if it were done with the fingernail, there would be no print.”

Frank sat up with a jerk.

“You’ve got it! Anyone could have done it with a fingernail! What a dolt I am! I never thought about it. I’ve been trying to see how anyone except Masterman could have handled that switch, and there’s the answer, right under my nose!” He spread out a hand and frowned at five well kept nails, then suddenly relaxed. “It was under the Chief’s nose too-but perhaps we won’t rub that in. Well, Moira Lane could have done it, and so-and a great deal more likely-could Martin Oakley.”

Miss Silver fixed him with an intelligent eye.

“The statements you have given me to read do not include one from Mrs. Oakley.”

“No, I kept that back. We saw Martin Oakley and her maid yesterday, but we didn’t see her until this morning.”

“Her maid? Had she anything to say?”

There was a sparkle of malice in his eyes.

“Only that Mrs. Oakley committed bigamy when she married Oakley-the first husband being Glen Porteous alias Gregory Porlock.”

“Dear me!”

Frank produced another of his typewritten sheets.

“She listened to a conversation between her mistress and Porlock on Wednesday afternoon. You’d better read my notes.”

When she had done so she looked up gravely and said,

“So he was blackmailing her too.”

“Undoubtedly. She doesn’t admit it-she doesn’t admit anything. She just cries and says, ‘Please don’t tell Martin.’ I wish you could have been there, because you would probably have known whether she was putting on an act. She’s one of those little fluffy women-brain apparently left out. I say apparently, because the Chief says he’s met that sort before, and you can’t always tell. He swears they have an instinct for putting on a scene. I expect you would have been able to tell whether it was genuine or not. And it’s important, because everything turns on whether she told Martin Oakley that Glen Porteous had turned up and was blackmailing her. If she did, he had all the motive any jury could want. If she didn’t, he hadn’t any motive at all. Porlock was his friend and they were doing business together. He simply hadn’t got a motive-if Mrs. Oakley held her tongue. She says she did. Martin Oakley says she did, but then of course he would. I may say that he put up a most convincing show-dumbfounded astonishment, resentment, anger, and, at the end something as near a breakdown as you’d get in a man of his type. If he was putting it on he’s an uncommon good actor. As far as the physical side of it goes, he could have turned off the lights, and he could have stabbed Porlock just as any one of the group round the hearth could have done. And that brings us to Mrs. Oakley.”