Sir Clinton paused to light a cigarette before continuing. Inspector Armadale, laying down his paper, turned to the Chief Constable as though expecting at this point to hear something which he did not already know.
“The next stage is one of pure conjecture,” Sir Clinton went on. “Foss is dead, and I haven’t had any opportunity of interrogating the other actor: Marden.”
Inspector Armadale smiled grimly at the way in which the Chief Constable evaded any reference to the valet’s murder.
“Possibly Inspector Armadale has a note or two on the matter,” Sir Clinton pursued, “but even if he has, it can only be something like ‘what the soldier said,’ for Brackley could have merely second-hand evidence at the best. Take the case as the Inspector and I found it. Foss was dead, stabbed with the Muramasa sword. On its handle we found the finger-prints of Maurice, and no others. Under Foss’s body we found an undischarged automatic pistol with his finger-prints on the butt. We noticed curious pockets in Foss’s clothes; but they were empty. And we found no trace of any of the medallions about the place. Maurice was non est inventus—we could see no sign of him. Marden had cut his hand in a fall against one of the cases. He’d wrapped it up with his handkerchief in a rough sort of way. The case containing the Muramasa sword was open, and the sheath was lying in it, empty, of course.
“It’s only fair to Inspector Armadale to tell you that he suspected Marden immediately. What I’m going to give you is merely the case as it presented itself to me.”
Armadale looked slightly flustered by this tribute to his perspicacity. He glanced suspiciously at the Chief Constable, but Sir Clinton’s face betrayed no ironical intention.
“He may be pulling my leg again,” the Inspector reflected, “but at least it’s decent of him to go out of his way to say that. It’s true enough, but not exactly in the way that they’ll understand it.”
“Marden had a very complete story to tell us. He’d come to the door of the museum with a parcel which Foss had sent him to post. He’d found the address was incomplete and came back to get Foss to finish it. He stayed outside the door and he heard a quarrel between Maurice and Foss, ending in a struggle. When he burst into the room, Maurice was disappearing at the other end and Foss was dead on the floor. Then Marden slipped on the parquet, fell against a show-case, cut his hand, and tied it up in his handkerchief. Then he gave the alarm.
“The parcel with the incomplete address was the first thing that interested me. We opened it and we found in it a cheap wrist-watch in perfect condition, apparently. The Inspector tried it for finger-prints. There weren’t any of any sort, either on the watch or the box in which it was enclosed. That seemed a bit rum to us both.
“The only thing that seemed to fit the case was this. Suppose Marden wanted to keep an eye on Foss. This parcel would give him the excuse of bursting in on his employer at any moment. Assume that Marden himself had made up the parcel and that Foss had nothing to do with it. It was wrapped up in paper on which the address was written. You know how one writes on a parcel—not the least like one’s normal handwriting if the paper is crumpled a bit in the wrapping-up. That would make a bit of rough forgery of Foss’s writing fairly easy. Further, if by any chance the parcel fell into the hands of the police—as actually happened—there was nothing inside to show that Foss hadn’t wrapped it up himself. Nobody else’s finger-marks were on it at all. It had been wrapped up with gloved hands. And the contents were innocent enough: only a watch being sent to a watch-maker to be regulated, perhaps. If it had been a letter, then to carry the thing through properly they’d have had to forge Foss’s writing all the way through, in order to make it look genuine if it happened to be opened.
“But if that theory were adopted, a lot followed from it. First and foremost, it meant that Marden was the boss and his nominal employer was an underling in the gang, who would have to back up any story that Marden liked to tell. Secondly, it pointed to the fact that Marden didn’t trust Foss much. He wanted an excuse to get at Foss at any moment—which is hardly in the power of a simple valet. When he thought Foss needed watching, all he had to do was to trot up with his little parcel, just to let Foss see that he was under observation. Thirdly, this dodge was worked at a crucial stage in the game—when the replicas were being exchanged for the Leonardo medallions. Doesn’t that suggest that Marden didn’t trust Foss very much? It looks as if Marden was none too sure that he’d get a square deal from Foss once the real medallions had changed hands. Am I right in my guesses, Inspector?”
“They didn’t trust Foss to play straight, sir. Brackley was quite open about that.”
“And it was Brackley’s idea? The parcel, I mean. It looks as if it came from his mint.”
