This was the subject of an argument which was carried on far into the night.

  ‘And with the case turned upside down,’ Rampole pointed out, ‘where do we go now for a motive? That’s the crux of the whole business. There’s no motive that could connect both Grimaud and Fley with the murderer! By the way, what’s become of your wild theories last night, that the guilty person must be either Pettis or Burnaby?’

  ‘Or the funny-faced blonde,’ she corrected, with a certain emphasis on the term. ‘I say, you know, what bothers me most is that overcoat changing colour and disappearing and all the rest of it. It seems to lead straight back to that house, or does it?’ She brooded. ‘No, I’ve changed my mind altogether. I don’t think Pettis or Burnaby can be implicated. I don’t even think the blonde is. The possible murderer, I’m certain now, can be narrowed down to two other people.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s either Drayman or O’Rourke,’ she said, firmly, and nodded. ‘You mark my words.’

  Rampole stifled a strong protest. ‘Yes, I’d thought of O’Rourke,’ he admitted. ‘But you’re picking him for just two reasons. First because he’s a trapeze man, and you associate a flying escape of some sort with the way this thing was done. But, so far as I can see, it’s impossible. Second and more important, you’re picking him for the reason that he doesn’t seem to have any connection with this case at all; that he’s standing around for no good reason, and that’s always a suspicious sign. Isn’t that so?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Then Drayman . . . yes, Drayman might have been the only one who could now be associated with both Grimaud and Fley in the past. That’s a point! H’m. Also, nobody saw him during the whole evening from dinner time until a much later hour – eleven o’clock, anyhow. But I don’t believe he’s guilty. Tell you what: let’s make a rough time-table of last night’s events to get this thing straightened out. We’ll put in everything, from before dinner on. It’ll have to be a very rough time-table, with a lot of guessing on smaller points. We don’t know much definitely except the time of the actual murders and a few statements leading up to them, but we can make a stab at it. Our times before dinner are vague too. But let’s say . . .’

  He took out an envelope and wrote rapidly.

  (About) 6:45

  Mangan arrives, hangs his coat in the hall closet, and sees a black overcoat hanging there.

  (About) 6:48

  (give her three minutes) Annie comes from the dining-room, switches off the light in the hall closet left burning by Mangan, and sees no overcoat at all.

  (About) 6:55

  (this is not specified, but we know it was before dinner), Mme Dumont looks into the hall closet and sees a yellow overcoat.

  ‘I arrange it like that,’ said Rampole, ‘because presumably in the very brief time between Mangan’s hanging up his own coat and going away with the light left on, Dumont didn’t rush out to look in there before Annie came to turn the light off.’

  The girl’s eyes narrowed. ‘Oo, wait! How do you know that? I mean, if the light wasn’t on, how did she see a yellow coat at all?’

  There was a pause while they looked at each other. Rampole said:

  ‘This is getting interesting. And, if it comes to that, why did she look in there, anyhow? The point is this: If the sequence of times can be established at what I’ve written, that’s reasonable. First, there’s a black coat, which Mangan sees. Well, then somebody swipes the black coat just after Mangan goes – for what reason we don’t know – and Annie sees nothing. Later the coat is replaced with a light tweed one. That sounds all right. But,’ he cried, stabbing out with his pencil, ‘if it worked the other way around, then either somebody is lying or the whole thing is impossible. In that case it doesn’t matter what time Mangan arrived, because the whole business must have taken place in a matter of minutes or even seconds. See it? Boyd gets there, hangs his coat up, and walks away. Out comes Dumont, looks in, and walks away. Along comes Annie immediately afterwards, turns out the light, and she goes. In that short flash a black overcoat has first turned yellow and then disappeared. Which is impossible.’

  ‘Well done!’ said the other, beaming. ‘Then which one was lying? I suppose you’ll insist it wasn’t your friend—’

  ‘I certainly will. It’s the Dumont woman, I’ll bet you anything you like!’

  ‘But she’s not guilty. That’s been proved. Besides, I like her.’

  ‘Don’t mix me up, now,’ Rampole urged. ‘Let’s go on with this time-table and see if we can discover anything else. Haa! Where were we? Yes. Dinner we’ll put at seven o’clock, because we know it was over at seven-thirty. Hence—

  7:30

  Rosette G. and Mangan go to drawing-room.

  7:30

  Drayman goes upstairs to his room.

  7:30

  E. Dumont – where she goes is not known, except that she remains in the house.

  7:30

  Mills goes to downstairs library.

  7:30

  Grimaud joins Mills in downstairs library, tells him to come upstairs about 9:30, since he expects a visitor then.

  ‘Whoa! Here’s a snag. I was just going to write that then Grimaud goes on to the drawing-room, and tells Mangan the visitor is expected at ten o’clock. But that won’t do, because Rosette knew nothing about it, and yet she was with Mangan! The trouble is, Boyd didn’t say exactly when he was told that. But it isn’t important – Grimaud might have taken him aside or something like that. Similarly, we don’t know when Madame Dumont was told to expect the visitor at nine-thirty; probably earlier. It amounts to the same thing.’

  ‘Are you sure it does?’ enquired Dorothy, searching after cigarettes. ‘H’m! Well, carry on.’

  (About) 7:35

  Grimaud goes up to his study.

  7:35

  to 9:30 no developments. Nobody moves. Heavy snow.

  (About) 9:30

  snow stops.

  (About) 9:30

  E. Dumont collects coffee-tray from Grimaud’s study. Grimaud remarks that visitor will probably not come that night. E. Dumont leaves study just as—

  9:30

  Mills comes upstairs.

  ‘I don’t think anything noticeable happened in the next interval. Mills was upstairs, Drayman in his room, and Rosette and Boyd in the front room with the radio on . . . Wait! I’m forgetting something. A little while before the door-bell rang, Rosette heard a thud from somewhere out in the street, as though somebody had fallen off a high place . . .’

  ‘How did she hear that if they had the radio on?’

  ‘Apparently it wasn’t playing loudly enough to—Yes, it was, though. It made such a racket they could hardly hear the fake “Pettis’s” voice. But put that in order:

  9:45

  Door-bell rings.

  9:45

  to 9:50. E. Dumont goes to answer door; speaks to visitor (failing to recognize voice). She receives card, shuts the door on him, examines card and finds it blank, hesitates, and starts upstairs . . .

  9:45

  to 9:50. Visitor, after E. D. has started upstairs, gets inside somehow, locks Rosette G. and Boyd M. in front room, answers their hail by imitating the voice of Pettis—’

  ‘I don’t like to keep on interrupting you,’ cut in Dorothy. ‘But doesn’t it seem to have taken them a terribly long time to sing out and ask who the caller was? I mean, would anybody wait so long? If I were expecting a visitor like that, I know I should have piped up, ‘Hullo! who is it?’ as soon as I heard the door open.’

  ‘What are you trying to prove? Nothing? Sure of that? Don’t be so hard on the blonde! It was some time before they expected anybody, remember – and that sniff of yours indicates prejudice. Let’s continue, with the still inclusive times of nine forty-five to nine-fifty, the interval between the moment X entered the house and the moment he entered Grimaud’s study:

  9:45

  to 9:50. Visitor follows E. Dumont upstairs, overtakes her in upper hall. He takes off cap and pulls down coat collar, but does not remove mask. Grimaud comes to the door, but does not recognize visitor. Visitor leaps inside and door is slammed. (This is attested by both E. Dumont and S. Mills.)

  9:50

  to 10:10. Mills watches door from end of hall; Dumont watches same door from staircase landing.

  10:10

  Shot is fired.

  10:10

  to 10:12 Mangan in front room finds door to hall locked, on the inside.

  10:10

  to 10:12. E. Dumont faints or is sick, and gets to her room. (N. B. Drayman, asleep in his room, does not hear shot.)

  10:10

  to 10:12. Mangan in front room finds door to hall locked, attempts to break it and fails. He then jumps out window, just as—

  10:12

  We arrive outside; front door unlocked; we go up to study.

  10:12

  to 10:15. Door is opened with pliers, Grimaud found shot.

  10:15

  to 10:20. Investigation, ambulance sent for.

  10:20

  Ambulance arrives. Grimaud removed. Rosette goes with him in ambulance. Boyd M., at orders from Hadley, goes downstairs to telephone police.

  ‘Which,’ Rampole pointed out with some satisfaction, ‘absolutely clears both Rosette and Boyd. I don’t even need to set down minute times there. The ambulance-men coming upstairs, the doctor’s examination, the body taken down to the ambulance – all that in itself would have taken at least five minutes if they’d moved fast enough to slide down the banisters with that stretcher. By God! it’s as plain as print when you write it out! It would have taken a good deal longer before they could get to the nursing-home . . . and yet Fley was shot in Cagliostro Street at just ten twenty-five! Now, Rosette did ride over with the ambulance. Boyd was in the house when the ambulance-men arrived, because he came upstairs with them and went down after them. There’s a fairly perfect alibi.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t need to think I’m so anxious to convict them! – especially Boyd, who’s rather nice what little I’ve seen of him.’ She frowned. ‘That’s always granting your guess that the ambulance didn’t arrive at Grimaud’s before ten-twenty.’

  Rampole shrugged. ‘If it did,’ he pointed out, ‘then it flew over from Guilford Street. It wasn’t sent for before ten-fifteen, and even so it’s something like a miracle that they had it at Grimaud’s in five minutes. No, Boyd and Rosette are out of it. Besides, now that I remember, she was at the nursing-home – in the presence of witnesses – when she saw the light in the window of Burnaby’s flat at ten-thirty. Let’s put the rest into the record and exonerate anyone else we can.

  10:20

  to 10:25. Arrival and departure of ambulance with Grimaud.

  10:25

  Fley shot in Cagliostro Street.

  10:20

  to (at least) 10:30. Stuart Mills remains with us in study, answering questions.

  10:25

  Madame Dumont comes into study.

  10:30

  Rosette, at nursing-home, sees a light in the window of Burnaby’s flat.

  10:25

  to 10:40. Madame Dumont remains with us in the study.

  10:40

  Rosette returns from nursing-home.

  10:40

  Arrival of police at Hadley’s call.’

  Rampole, sitting back to run his eye down the scrawl, drew a long flourish under the last item.

  ‘That not only completes our time-table as far as we need to go,’ he said, ‘but it unquestionably adds two more to our list of innocents. Mills and Dumont are out. Rosette and Boyd are out. Which accounts for everybody in the house except Drayman.’

  ‘But,’ protested Dorothy, after a pause, ‘it’s getting even worse tangled up. What happens to your brilliant inspiration about the overcoat? You suggested somebody was lying. It could only have been either Boyd Mangan or Ernestine Dumont; and both are exonerated. Unless that girl Annie—But that won’t do, will it? Or it shouldn’t.’

  Again they looked at each other. Wryly he folded up his list and put it into his pocket. Outside, the night wind whirled by in a long blast, and they could hear Dr Fell blundering round his cubbyhole behind the closed door.

  Rampole overslept the next morning, partly from exhaustion and partly because the following day was so overcast that he did not open his eyes until past ten o’clock. It was not only so dark that the lights were on, but a day of numbing cold. He had not seen Dr Fell again last night, and, when he went downstairs to breakfast in the little back dining-room, the maid was indignant as she set out bacon and eggs.

  ‘The doctor’s just gone up to have a wash, sir,’ Vida informed him. ‘He was up all night on them scientific things, and I found him asleep in the chair in there at eight o’clock this morning. I don’t know what Mrs Fell will say, indeed I don’t. Superintendent Hadley’s just got here, too. He’s in the library.’

  Hadley, who was impatiently knocking his heels against the fender as though he were pawing the floor, asked for news with some eagerness.

  ‘Have you seen Fell?’ he demanded. ‘Did he go after those letters? And if so—?’

  Rampole explained. ‘Any news from you?’

  ‘Yes, and important news. Both Pettis and Burnaby are out. They’ve got cast-iron alibis.’

  Wind whooped past along Adelphi Terrace, and the long window-frames rattled. Hadley continued to paw the hearth rug. He went on: ‘I saw Burnaby’s three card-playing friends last night. One, by the way, is an Old Bailey judge; it’d be pretty difficult to drag a man into court when the judge on the bench can testify to his innocence. Burnaby was playing poker on Saturday night from eight o’clock to nearly half-past eleven. – And this morning Betts has been round to the theatre where Pettis said he saw the play that night. Well, he did. One of the bar-attendants at the theatre knows him quite well by sight. It seems that the second act of the show ends at five minutes past ten. A few minutes afterwards, during the interval, this attendant is willing to swear he served Pettis with a whisky-and-soda in the bar. In other words, he was having a drink at just about the exact moment Grimaud was shot nearly a mile away.’

  ‘I expected something like that,’ said Rampole, after a silence. ‘And yet, to hear it confirmed . . . I wish you’d look at this.’

  He handed over the time-table he had made last night. Hadley glanced over it.

  ‘Oh yes. I sketched out one of my own. This is fairly sound; especially the point about the girl and Mangan, although we can’t swear too closely to time in that respect. But I think it would hold.’ He tapped the envelope against his palm. ‘Narrows it down, I admit. We’ll have another go at Drayman. I phoned the house this morning. Everybody was a bit hysterical because they’ve brought the old man’s body back to the house, and I couldn’t get much out of Rosette except that Drayman was still only half-conscious and under morphia. We—’

  He stopped as they heard the familiar, lumbering step with the tap of the cane, which seemed to have hesitated just outside the door as though at Hadley’s words. Then Dr Fell pushed open the door. There was no twinkle in his eye when he wheezed in. He seemed a part of the heavy morning, and a sense of doom pervading that leaden air.

  ‘Well?’ prompted Hadley. ‘Did you find out what you wanted to know from those papers?’

  Dr Fell fumbled after, found, and lit his black pipe. Before he answered he waddled over to toss the match into the fire. Then he chuckled at last, but very wryly.

  ‘Yes, I found out what I wanted to know. – Hadley, twice in my theories on Saturday night I unintentionally led you wrong. So wrong, with such a monstrous and dizzying stupidity, that if I hadn’t saved my self-respect by seeing the truth of this thing yesterday, I should have deserved the last punishment reserved for fools. Still, mine wasn’t the only blunder. Chance and circumstance made an even worse blunder, and they’ve combined to make a terrifying, inexplicable puzzle out of what is really only a commonplace and ugly and petty murder-case. Oh, there was shrewdness to the murderer; I admit that. But – yes, I’ve found out what I wanted to know.’

  ‘Well? What about the writing on those papers? What was on those papers?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Dr Fell.

  There was something eerie in the slow, heavy way he spoke the word.

  ‘You mean,’ cried Hadley, ‘that the experiment didn’t work?’

  ‘No, I mean that the experiment did work. I mean that there was nothing on those papers,’ boomed Dr Fell. ‘Not so much as a single line or scrap or shred of handwriting, not so much as a whisper or pothook of the deadly secrets I told you on Saturday night we might find. That’s what I mean. Except – well, yes. There were a few bits of heavier paper, rather like thick cardboard, with one or two letters printed there.’

  ‘But why burn letters unless—?’

  ‘Because they weren’t letters. That’s just it; that’s where we went wrong. Don’t you see even yet what they were? . . . Well, Hadley, we’d better finish this up and get the whole mess off our minds. You want to meet the Invisible Murderer, do you? You want to meet the damned ghoul and hollow man who’s been walking through our dreams? Very well; I’ll introduce you. Got your car? Then come along. I’m going to see if I can’t extract a confession.’

  ‘From—?’

  ‘From somebody at Grimaud’s house. Come on.’

  Rampole saw the end looming, and was afraid of it, without an idea in his whirling head as to what it might be. Hadley had to spin a half-frozen engine before the car would start. They were caught in several traffic blocks on the way up, but Hadley did not even curse. And the quietest of all was Dr Fell.