Dr. Morelle Meets Murder. Ernest Dudley
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struck him with the brass candlestick which he saw on the table in the office.”
He paused, as if collecting his thoughts for a final paragraph, which would place the whole matter in perspective.
“As we are now aware,” he went on, “my theory proved correct. The wife implicated Foster, the man whom we heard simulating inebriety as he returned to the hotel....”
During the latter part of this piece of dictation, Miss Frayle had shown signs of increasing excitement. She had dropped her pencil, much to Doctor Morelle’s irritation since he had to stop dictation while she hunted on the floor for it. Now she burst in with the query that had been hovering at the back of her mind for some minutes past.
“But how,” she asked, “did Mrs. Holt give herself away to you in the first case?”
Doctor Morelle frowned portentously. “That, my dear Miss Frayle, I should have thought was obvious enough to the meanest intelligence,” he said.
“Perhaps you will explain?”” Miss Frayle asked in her sweetest tones.
“Very well.” With a sigh of resignation Doctor Morelle went on. “And it might perhaps be as well to include this also in your shorthand notes of the case,” he said. “You will recall my reference to the heavy candlestick, which was on the desk in the hotel office?”
Miss Frayle nodded quickly.
“Mrs. Holt declared that she had kicked her foot against it when she had entered the office,” the Doctor continued. “It had therefore presumably been on the floor. She also stated that no other person had been present between her finding her husband and our arrival on the scene. Therefore she must have picked up the candlestick and placed it on the desk herself. I trust that you can follow the line of my argument up to this point, Miss Frayle?”
“Perfectly,” Miss Frayle remarked with considerable satisfaction.
“Good. You will also recall that when I subsequently examined it to confirm that it was the actual weapon with which the crime had been committed, I found that it bore no fingerprints whatsoever. Mrs. Holt was not, of course, wearing gloves—she had not been out of doors the whole evening—and the only question to be settled was who had cleaned the fingerprints off the candlestick, and why?”
“I think I see,” Miss Frayle murmured.
“Pray let me finish my logical construction!” Doctor Morelle snapped. “The answer was obvious enough. Mrs. Holt or someone else must have removed the fingerprints—because the candlestick bore the imprint of that other person’s fingers as well as her own! That other person was, in fact, the murderer. When once I had reached that point, the remainder was abundantly clear.”
Miss Frayle sat up in her chair, eyes wide open with admiration. Her spectacles slipped forward on her nose and she pushed them back with a gesture that Doctor Morelle found irritatingly familiar.
“How perfectly marvellous of you to have worked all that out!” she exclaimed. “I am quite sure that if I had thought about it for an age, I should never—”
The Doctor held up a commanding hand.
“Purely a ratiocinative process,” he snapped. “When once the central fact had been grasped, the remainder followed logically and inevitably. And,” he added, “do refrain from goggling at me through your spectacles in that way! You know how irritating I have always found your astigmatic—” He broke off suddenly. He had forgotten that Miss Frayle was by way of being merely a volunteer on this occasion. “I—I beg your pardon, my dear Miss Frayle,” he said. “For a moment I thought that you—er—were back—”
Miss Frayle laughed outright.
“Doctor Morelle, it was wonderful!” she exclaimed. “Just like old times! And when Miss Grimshaw comes back—well, I shall feel quite lost to be away from this study!”
“Miss Grimshaw—er Miss Grimshaw—” And for the first time in his long career, Doctor Morelle seemed completely at a loss for words.
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