Lord Edgware Dies

‘Of those four, the one that interested me most was Miss Carroll. She wore glasses, she was in the house that night, she had already been inaccurate in her evidence owing to her desire to incriminate Lady Edgware, and she was also a woman of great efficiency and nerve who could have carried out such a crime. The motive was more obscure-but after all, she had worked with Lord Edgware some years and some motive might exist of which we were totally unaware.

‘I also felt that I could not quite dismiss Geraldine Marsh from the case. She hated her father-she had told me so. She was a neurotic, highly-strung type. Suppose when she went into the house that night she had deliberately stabbed her father and then coolly proceeded upstairs to fetch the pearls. Imagine her agony when she found that her cousin whom she loved devotedly had not remained outside in the taxi but had entered the house. 

‘Her agitated manner could be well explained on these lines. It could equally well be explained by her own innocence, but by her fear that her cousin really had done the crime. There was another small point. The gold box found in Miss Adams’ bag had the initial D in it. I had heard Geraldine addressed by her cousin as “Dina”. Also, she was in a pensionnat in Paris last November and might possibly have met Carlotta Adams in Paris.

‘You may think it fantastic to add the Duchess of Merton to the list. But she had called upon me and I recognized in her a fanatical type. The love of her whole life was centred on her son, and she might have worked herself up to contrive a plot to destroy the woman who was about to ruin her son’s life.

‘Then there was Miss Jenny Driver-’

He paused, looking at Jenny. She looked back at him, an impudent head on one side.

‘And what have you got on me?’ she asked.

‘Nothing, Mademoiselle, except that you were a friend of Bryan Martin’s-and that your surname begins with D.’

‘That’s not very much.’

‘There’s one thing more. You have the brains and the nerve to commit such a crime. I doubt if anyone else had.’

The girl lit a cigarette. 

‘Continue,’ she said cheerfully.

‘Was M. Martin’s alibi genuine or was it not? That was what I had to decide. If it was, who was it Ronald Marsh had seen go into the house? And suddenly I remembered something. The good-looking butler at Regent Gate bore a very marked resemblance to M. Martin. It was he whom Captain Marsh had seen. And I formed a theory as to that. It is my idea that he discovered his master killed. Beside his master was an envelope containing French banknotes to the value of a hundred pounds. He took these notes, slipped out of the house, left them in safe keeping with some rascally friend and returned, letting himself in with Lord Edgware’s key. He let the crime be discovered by the housemaid on the following morning. He felt in no danger himself, as he was quite convinced that Lady Edgware had done the murder, and the notes were out of the house and already changed before their loss was noticed. However, when Lady Edgware had an alibi and Scotland Yard began investigating his antecedents, he got the wind up and decamped.’

Japp nodded approvingly.

‘I still have the question of the pince-nez to settle. If Miss Carroll was the owner then the case seemed settled. She could have suppressed the letter, and in arranging details with Carlotta Adams, or in meeting her on the evening of the murder, the pince-nez might have inadvertently found their way into Carlotta Adams’ bag.

‘But the pince-nez were apparently nothing to do with Miss Carroll. I was walking home with Hastings here, somewhat depressed, trying to arrange things in my mind with order and method. And then the miracle happened!

‘First Hastings spoke of things in a certain order. He mentioned Donald Ross having been one of thirteen at table at Sir Montagu Corner’s and having been the first to get up. I was following out a train of thought of my own and did not pay much attention. It just flashed through my mind that, strictly speaking, that was not true. He may have got up first at the end of the dinner, but actually Lady Edgware had been the first to get up since she was called to the telephone. Thinking of her, a certain riddle occurred to me-a riddle that I fancied accorded well with her somewhat childish mentality. I told it to Hastings. He was, like Queen Victoria, not amused. I next fell to wondering who I could ask for details about M. Martin’s feeling for Jane Wilkinson. She herself would not tell me, I knew. And then a passer-by, as we were all crossing the road, uttered a simple sentence.

‘He said to his girl companion that somebody or other “should have asked Ellis”. And immediately the whole thing came to me in a flash!’ 

He looked round.

‘Yes, yes, the pince-nez, the telephone call, the short woman who called for the gold box in Paris. Ellis, of course, Jane Wilkinson’s maid. I followed every step of it-the candles-the dim light-Mrs Van Dusen-everything. I knew!’

Chapter 30. The Story