Have His Carcase

Work it out this way see how it looked. Weldon had murdered Alexis at the Flat-Iron at two o’clock. He had had the, mare tethered ready somewhere, and, after leaving the Feathers at 1.30, he had gone down the Lane and got to horse without a moment’s delay. Then he must have ridden hell-for-leather. Suppose he had somehow managed to do four miles in twenty-five minutes. That would leave him half a mile from the Flat-Iron at two o’clock. No, that would not do. Strain it a little farther. Let him start from Hinks’s Lane at 1.32 and let him wallop a steady nine miles an hour out of the mare — that would, almost do it. Let him, in any ease, be within five minutes quick walk of the rock at 1.55 Then what? He sends the mare home. Five minutes before Harriet woke, he could send the bay mare galloping back along the sands. Then he walks. He reaches the Flat-Iron at two’ o’clock. He kills. He hears Harriet coming. He hides in the cleft of the rock. And meanwhile, the bay mare has either run home, or, possibly, has reached the lane by the cottages and run up it, or Never mind the mare; she got back to her own field and stream somehow. The times were tight; the whole thing seemed absurdly elaborate, but it was not an absolute impossibility as he had thought at first. Suppose it had been so. Now, if Harriet had not been there, what would have happened? In a few hours the tide would have covered the body. Pause there, Morocco. If Weldon was the murderer, he would not want the body lost. He would want his mother to know that Alexis was dead. Yes; but under ordinary circumstances the body would have turned up sooner. It was the violent south-west wind and the three hundred sovereigns that had combined to keep the body hidden. And the body had been found, even so. Well, then. If Harriet had not found the body when she did, there would — have been nothing to show that the death had not occurred earlier — say between 11 and 1.30—the period for which there was the alibi. In fact, the victim’s arrival at that early hour at Darley Halt made it look much more likely that the earlier hour was the right one. Why should you tempt your victim to a lonely spot at, I1.30 a.m. and then wait two and a half hours before polishing him off — except in order to create a presumption that you had really killed him earlier? And then, too, there was that crusty pair, Pollock and his grandson, with their grudging evidence that they had seen Alexis ‘lying down’ on the Flat-Iron at 1.45. They must be in it too. That was it. That must be it. The murder was meant to look like a morning murder — and that was why there had been that curious insistence on the alibi and the journey to Wilvercombe. ‘Always suspect the man with the cast-iron alibi’ was not that the very first axiom in the detective’s book of rules? And here it was — the cast-iron alibi which really was cast-iron; meant to be scrutinised; meant to stand every test — as how should it not, for it was truth! It looked queer — because it was intended to look queer. It was asking, clamouring for investigation. It existed simply and solely to distract attention from the crucial hour of two o’clock. And if only Harriet had not come upon that freshly slain corpse, how well the plan might have succeeded. But Harriet had been there, and the whole structure had collapsed under the shock of her evidence. That must have been a blow indeed. No wonder Weldon was doing his best to discredit that awkward testimony as to the time of the death. He knew better than anyone that death at two o’clock was no, proof of suicide, whatever it might appear to a coroners jury. He was not stupid; he was shamming stupid and doing it damned well.

Wimsey was vaguely aware that Weldon was bidding him good-bye in some form of — words — or other. He. let him go readily, eagerly. He wanted to think’ this thing over.

A little concentration in the privacy of his own room brought him to a point from which he could begin to work forward with some assurance.

The original scheme had been smashed to pieces by Harriet’s evidence. What would Weldon do next?

He might do nothing. That would be the safest way; of all. He might rely on the coroner’s verdict and trust that the police and Wimsey and Harriet and everybody else would accept it. But would he have the deadly courage; to do that? He might — unless he knew of something in that cipher document which might prove the suicide to be murder. If so, or if he lost his head — then he would have to fall back on his second line of defence, which, would, be, what? Undoubtedly, an alibi for two o’clock — the real time of the murder.

What had he actually said about this? Wimsey looked up his notes, to which he had added considerably of late. Weldon had vaguely mentioned a, possible witness, a man unknown who had been passing through Darley and had asked him the time.