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“Damned ingenious,” said Colonel Brammington, “but conjectural.”
“I know. We are only halfway through the case. It has changed its complexion with Oates’s arrest of Legge for assault. We’ve only been here some thirty hours, you see. If we can check the time Legge appeared in the public bar with the time he left the private one, and all that dreary game, we shall be a step nearer. But dismiss all this conjecture and we still have the facts. We still know that only Legge controlled the flight of the dart.”
“Yes.”
“The next day was the fatal one. Legge stayed out of sight all day. Late in the afternoon, he left it as late as possible, and just before the others came in, he went down to the bar with a razor-cut on his chin and asked Abel for some iodine. Abel got the box out of the corner cupboard and gave it to Legge. Legge returned it a few minutes later. He had dabbed iodine on his chin. He had also substituted, for the iodine bottle in the box, the iodine bottle he had taken from the bathroom. This he had doctored with prussic acid from the rat-hole. By this really neat manœuvre he got Abel to do the dirty work and accounted for any prints of his own that might afterwards be found on the bottle. In the evening Legge had a perfectly genuine appointment in Illington. At about five o’clock the storm broke, and I think that, like a good villain, Mr. Legge made plans to the tune of thunder off-stage. The storm was a fair enough reason for staying indoors. The failing lights were propitious. The Pomeroys both told him he couldn’t get through the tu
Alleyn paused.
“I’m afraid this is heavy going,” he said. “I won’t be much longer. Watchman, when hit, pulled out the dart and threw it into the floor. When Oates called for the dart Legge obligingly found it on the floor behind the table, but not before Oates — who’s a sharp fellow, Nick — has, as he says, spotted it alaying there. You throw those darts down as often as you like and I’ll guarantee they stick in. And moreover we’ve statements from them all that it did stick in. All right. The lights had been wavering on and off throughout the evening. Before Watchman died they went off. There was a horrid interval during which Watchman made ghastly noises, everybody tramped about on broken glass, and Cubitt felt somebody’s head butt against his legs. Miss Moore, she told me, heard somebody click the light to make sure it would stay off. He then dived down to find the tell-tale iodine bottle and plant the i
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“In order that we should think exactly what we did think. ‘Why,’ we cried, ‘there was Legge, finding the dart, with every opportunity to wipe it clean, and he didn’t! It couldn’t be Legge!’ Legge’s plan, you see, depended on the theory of accident. He made it clear that he could have done nothing to the dart beforehand.”
“Then,” said the Colonel, “if the rest of this tarradiddle, forgive me my dear fellow, is still in the air, we yet catch him on the point of the dart.”
“I think so. I explained to Harper this afternoon that I thought it better not to make an arrest at once. We realized that our case rested on a few facts and a mass of dubious conjecture. Fox and I pretended to despise conjecture and we hoped to collect many more bits of evidence before we fired point-blank. We still hope to get them before Legge comes up for assault and battery. We hope, in a word, to turn conjecture into fact. Until this evening I also hoped to get more from Legge himself, and, by George, I nearly got a dose of prussic acid. He must have slipped into the tap-room and put his last drop of poison in the decanter. He must also have had that last drop hidden away in a bottle somewhere, ever since he murdered Watchman. Not on his person for he was searched, and not in his room. Perhaps in his new room at Illington, perhaps in a cache somewhere outside the pub. Some time after Harper had searched his room, Legge got rid of a small glass dropper with a rubber top. If he used it to draw prussic acid from the rat-hole, he must have cleaned and filled it with his lotion, emptied it, and restored it to its place on his dressing-table. If he also used it to do his work with the decanter, he got rid of it this afternoon together with whatever vessel housed the teaspoonful of prussic acid. We’ll search for them both.”
Alleyn paused and looked round the circle of attentive faces. He raised a long finger.
“If we could find so much as the rubber top of that dropper,” he said, “hidden away in some unlikely spot, then it would be good-bye conjecture and welcome fact!”
iii
“A needle,” cried Colonel Brammington, after a long pause, “a needle in a haystack of gigantic proportions.”
“It’s not quite so bad as that. It rained pretty heavily during the lunch-hour. Legge hasn’t changed his shoes and he hasn’t been out in them. They’re slightly stained and damp. He crossed the yard several times, but he didn’t get off cobblestones. The paths and roads outside the pub are muddy. He’s therefore either thrown the bottle and dropper from the window or got rid of them in the house or garage.