‘What could she possibly have seen? My first thought was that she’d just seen her husband jumping out of the window, but the doctors’ testimony regarding time of death discredits that theory. A prankster wearing a carnival mask and leaving by the window? Impossible, for several reasons: Meadows and his fiancée didn’t hear any noises and they found the room empty only a couple of seconds later. Miss Blount even looked out of the window immediately and saw no one — which is confirmed by Francis and Paula Hilton, who were making their way towards that part of the manor. To cap it all, Redfern’s men examined the wall below the window and found no trace of any kind of acrobatics. On the other hand, they did find a secret passage….’
Like the adroit narrator he was, Hurst paused, and to his great delight he heard Alan Twist exclaim:
‘A secret passage! Well, well, well! I thought they only existed in novels. And where was it? In the fireplace?’
‘Just to the side. It’s effectively built in to the bookcase which spans the wall on either side of the chimney-breast. Part of the section to the right pivots open like a door and leads to an adjacent storage room containing old junk. The knob’s concealed behind a row of books. It was Brian who told us about it. ’
‘And you think that’s how the joker got out after frightening Mrs. Thorne….’
‘That’s what we thought, but our hopes went up in smoke. Once inside, we found dust everywhere, including the floorboards, but no footprints. The room hadn’t been visited for donkey’s years.
‘That leaves the testimony of Mrs. Thorne herself, you’re about to say,’ he continued, with thinly concealed irritation. ‘Dr. Meadows only authorised her to speak to us late in the afternoon. So we waited… fruitlessly. She remembered standing outside her husband’s study with Meadows and Miss Blount and knocking on the door. But after that, nothing, a black hole. Because she was still in a state of shock, we didn’t insist. Redfern has questioned her since then, but with no better result. According to Meadows, it’s quite possible — given the initial shock, followed by another in the form of the death of her husband — that she will never remember.’
Dr. Twist nodded his head in silence, then asked:
‘Did you ask her what she and her husband were quarrelling about? And why they left again so soon after coming back in?’
‘Yes, but without learning anything new. The subject of their dispute was Meadows. Thorne suspected him of making secret advances to his wife, who — according to Thorne again — did nothing to discourage him. In most people’s eyes, his suspicions were not justified. Apparently he had veritable fits of jealousy… “harder and harder to tolerate,” she confessed, with tears in her eyes. After the meal, Harris Thorne had gone up to his study and she had joined him a little later. Straight away, he reproached her for inviting Meadows and his fiancée… and they quarrelled about it until half past eight, when she finally succeeded in calming him down. She suggested they go out for some fresh air, which he didn’t object to, and they left together. But no sooner were they outside than he started again. She came back in, and you know the rest.
‘By the way, the study was thoroughly examined, without the slightest result. There was no trace of the liquid which had wet the carpet near the fireplace, so it was most likely water.’
Hurst ended his account by shrugging his shoulders and lighting a cigar.
‘The least you can say,’ said Alan Twist thoughtfully, ‘is that it’s all far from clear. If you go back to the death of Harvey Thorne, you could conclude that there’s
‘Are you thinking about some aquatic monster?’ thundered Hurst. ‘A creature with a body so translucent it’s not even visible?’
‘Straight out of a Scottish lake? No, my friend, that’s not what I said. I just stated the problem as it appears,’ he added, with an amused gleam behind his
‘Can you tell me what’s causing you to smile, Twist?’
The eminent detective regarded his friend amicably. His sparse hair — always carefully combed across his pink cranium — had a peculiar characteristic; once he began to see red, it invariably flopped down over his forehead, as it was doing now.
‘What makes me smile is your talent for getting involved in the most complicated cases. Usually, the problem is posed differently: an obvious case of murder where it is shown that nobody could have done it. Here, there’s no murder as such, but a “thing” which frightens people and disappears. A woman faints, a man throws himself out of a window… although murder can’t be excluded.’
