“You surely don’t… Go on,” said Colonel Brammington.

“I entirely agree that, ruling out Legge, — and assuming that the whole arrangement of the business was an attempt to implicate Legge, — Cubitt, Miss Darragh, Will Pomeroy and Miss Moore must be counted out, since they have all declared that Legge was unable to meddle with the darts. Our case rests on a different assumption.”

“Here, wait a bit,” cried the Colonel. “No. All right. Go on.”

“Abel Pomeroy and Parish were the only ones openly to accuse Legge. Abel Pomeroy was particularly vehement in his insistence that Legge deliberately killed Watchman. He came up to London to tell me about it.”

“Old Pomeroy was my earlier choice.”

“Yes, sir. To return to the brandy. For the reason I have given you, and for reasons that I hope to make clear, we are persuaded that there was no cyanide in the brandy. We are certain that cyanide was put on the dart after, and not before, it pierced Watchman’s finger. Otherwise it would have been removed by the trial throw into the cork board or, if there was any trace left, possibly washed off by the blood that flowed freely from Watchman’s finger and with which the dart was greatly stained. The cyanide was found on the point of the dart. Watchman, we think, was poisoned, not by the dart nor by the brandy. How, then?”

“But my dear fellow, there was no cyanide in the iodine bottle. They found the bottle. There was no cyanide.”

“None. Now here, sir, we have a bit of evidence that is new to you. I feel sure that if you’d had it earlier to-day, it would have made a difference in your view of the case. We have found out that within a few hours of the murder, a bottle of iodine disappeared from the bathroom cupboard upstairs.”

Colonel Brammington stared a little wildly at Alleyn, made as if to speak, and evidently thought better of it. He waved his hand.

“The bottle of iodine that was originally in the down-stairs first-aid box,” Alleyn continued, “was an entirely innocent bottle, with Abel’s prints on it and only his. Legge’s prints were added when he borrowed this bottle to doctor a cut on his chin. Abel gave it to him. Now that innocent and original bottle is, I consider, the one that was found under the settle. All that is left of the bottle Abel Pomeroy used, when he poured iodine into Watchman’s wound, is represented, or so we believe, by the surplus amount of glass Mr. Harper swept up from the floor and by the small misshapen fragments we found in the ashes.”

“Hah!” ejaculated the Colonel. “Now I have you. A lethal bottle, taken from the bathroom and infected, was substituted for the innocent bottle in the first-aid box. Only Abel Pomeroy’s prints were found on the cupboard door and so on. Abel Pomeroy himself took the bottle from the box and himself poured the iodine into the wound. Splendid!”

“Exactly, sir,” said Alleyn.

“Well, Alleyn, I readily abandon my second love. I return, chastened, to my first love. How will you prove it?”

“How indeed! We hope that an expert will be able to tell us that the fragments of glass are, in fact, of the same type as that used for iodine bottles. That’s not much, but it’s something, and we have got other strings to our bow.”

“What’s his motive?”

“Whose motive, sir?”

“Old Pomeroy’s.”

Alleyn looked at him apologetically.

“I’m sorry, sir. I hadn’t followed you. Abel Pomeroy had no motive, as far as I know, for wishing Watchman dead.”

“What the hell d’you mean.”

“I didn’t think Abel Pomeroy was strictly your first love, sir. May I go on? You see, once we accept the iodine theory, we must admit that the murderer knew Watchman would be wounded by the dart. Nobody knew that, sir, but Legge.”

ii

It took the second half of the last bottle of Treble Extra to mollify the Chief Constable, but he was mollified in the end.

“I invited it,” he said, “and I got it. In a sense, I suppose I committed the unforgivable offence of failing to lead trumps. Legge was trumps. Go on, my dear Alleyn. Expound. Is it Locke who says that it is one thing to show a man he is in error and another to convince him of the truth? You have shown me my error. Pray reveal the whole truth.”

“From the first,” said Alleyn, “it seemed obvious that Legge was our Man. Mr. Harper realized that, and so, sir, did you. This afternoon I told Harper that Fox and I had arrived at the same conclusion. You asked me not to give you our theory before, but before and after you came into Illington, we discussed the whole thing. Harper was for arresting him there and then, and I, mistakenly perhaps, thought that we should give him more rope. I thought that on our evidence, which rests so much upon conjecture, we would not establish a prima-facie case.”

“What is your evidence beyond the tedious — well, go on.”

“As we see it,” said Alleyn, “Legge planned the whole affair to look like accident. No doubt he hoped that it would go no further than the inquest. His behaviour has been consistent with the theory of accident. He has shown us a man overwrought by the circumstance of having unwittingly killed someone. That describes his behaviour after Watchman died, at the inquest, and subsequently. He chanced everything on the accident theory. It is easy, now, to say he took an appalling risk, but he very nearly got away with it. If old Abel hadn’t raised such a dust about the good name of his public house, and if Mr. Nark and others had not driven Harper, here, to fury, you might very well have got no further. Legge’s motive was the one we have recognized: It harks back to the days when he was Montague Thringle and stood his trial for large-size embezzlement, and all the rest of it. At least three, of the enormous number of people he ruined, committed suicide. There was the usual pitiful list of old governesses and retired clerks. A shameful affair. Now, in defending Lord Bryonie, Watchman was able to throw almost the entire blame on Legge, or Thringle as I suppose we must learn to call him. Let him be Legge for the moment. Watchman made a savage attack on Legge, and it was in no small measure due to him that Legge got such a heavy sentence. He had an imperial and moustaches in those days, and had not turned grey. His appearance was very greatly changed when he came out of gaol. After various vicissitudes in Liverpool and London, he came down here, suffering from a weak chest and some complaint of the ear, for which he uses a lotion and a dropper. Harper found the dropper when he searched Legge’s room on the morning after Watchman died. It’s not there now.”

“That’s right,” said Harper heavily.

“Legge got on well in Illington and Ottercombe. He’d got his philatelic job, and he was treasurer to a growing society. We shall inspect the books of the Coombe Left Movement. If he has not yet fallen into his old ways, on a smaller scale, it is, I am sure, only because the funds at his disposal are not yet large enough. All was going like clockwork until, out of a clear sky, came Watchman in his car. That collision of theirs must have given Legge an appalling shock. Watchman didn’t recognize him, though, and later while Legge sat unseen in the tap-room, he overheard Watchman tell Parish of the collision and say, as Parish admitted he said, that he did not know the man who ran into him. But before Legge could go out that night, Watchman came across and tried to make friends with him. Legge doesn’t seem to have been very responsive but he stuck it out. The rat-poisoning party returned and Legge’s skill with darts was discussed. Legge took up Watchman’s bet and won. I think it must have amused him to do that. Now, it was soon after this that Watchman began to twit Legge about his job and his political opinions. I’ve gone over the events of this first evening with the witnesses. Though they are a bit hazy, they agree that Watchman’s manner was offensive. He ended by inviting Legge to a game of Round-the-Clock and the manner of the invitation was this: he said, ‘Have you ever done time, Mr. Legge?’ I think that throughout the whole evening Watchman, having recognized Legge, played cat-and-mouse with him. I knew Watchman. He has a curious feline streak of cruelty in him. I think it must have been then that Legge made up his mind Watchman had recognized him. Legge went into the public bar for a time. I believe he also went into the garage and sucked up cyanide in the little dropper he used for his lotion. Just, as they say, ‘in case’!”