“He fooled us all, then.”
“Not quite all of us,” said the Inspector cheerfully.
“You’re not a smoker, I take it?”
“I don’t smoke. No.”
“Don’t carry pencils around in your pockets?”
“Women have no pockets nowadays.”
“All right.
And what sort of clothing did Walter Somers wear that night?”
“His dinner jacket.”
“Black.
Now here’s what the microscope showed, Miss Bell.
That pencil had been carried in the pocket of a black suit; in the side pocket, where a man often carries a package of cigarettes.
There were bits of tobacco from cigarettes caught around the eraser, along with black filaments from the pocket.
Now, I’ve watched Walter Somers.
He doesn’t use a cigarette case; he carries his cigarettes in a paper packet in his right hand coat pocket.
And I don’t mind telling you that I’ve had that coat, and that this pocket bears out the facts.
He had that pencil there before he climbed that ladder.”
“Walter!”
I gasped.
“But I thought you said—”
“Not so fast,” he warned me.
“No, he didn’t kill Sarah Gittings, if your alibi for him is correct.
Although alibis are tricky things.
Still, three alibis are good and sufficient for anybody.
But look at the case against him!
“He gets his father to change his will in his favor.
The news leaks out, and he’s afraid it will get to Mrs. Somers and the good work will be undone.
So he kills Sarah Gittings for fear she’ll talk, and Florence Gunther because she’s trying to see you and tell you what she knows.
Then, later on—”
“He would never have lifted a hand against his father.”
“No?
Well, I daresay not.
Anyhow, he didn’t.
We have him checked for that night too.
But it’s a pity. It’s a perfect case otherwise.
But to get back to this pencil.
We have only two guesses; either he had had it in his pocket for some time, and substituted it for what he found on the skylight. Or he already suspected or knew what was there, took the pencil from your desk, and used the ladder to remove something which was damaging.”
“To him?”
“Not necessarily; but to some one.”
He sat back, thoughtfully.
“I’ve already said that this is a family matter, Miss Bell.
I’ve never seen a family more apparently united to frustrate justice and protect a criminal!
It’s disunited every other way, but when it comes to these murders it turns a solid front to the world.
Now, what was the purpose of that little drama on the hillside the other night?”
“To see if poor Jim Blake could have recognized somebody there,” I said defiantly.
“Precisely!
And Jim Blake keeping his mouth shut and ready to take what comes!
Who is he protecting?
Who is Joseph protecting?
He helps somebody out of that shaft, or at least to get out of the house.