There was a silence. Dr. Fell leaned against the mantelpiece, one arm stretched along it and his eyes half shut. He went on, thoughtfully:
"There are several reasons why he wasn't. When you found him, he was lying on his right side. And his right hip was broken. But his watch, in the watch-pocket of his trousers, was not only unbroken, but still kept ticking without a flaw. A drop of fifty feet — it can't be done, you know. We will come back to that watch in a moment.
"Now, on the night of the murder it rained heavily. It rained, to be exact, from just before eleven o'clock until precisely one. The next morning, when we went up to the Governor's Room, we found the iron door to the balcony standing open. You remember? Martin Starberth was, presumably, murdered about ten minutes to twelve. The door, presumably also, was open then, and remained open. An hour's heavy rain, we must assume, drove in at that door. Certainly it drove against the window — a much smaller space, and choked with ivy. The next morning there were large rain-water pools under the window. But not a drop of rain had come in at the door; the floor around it was dry, gritty, and even dusty.
"In other words, gentlemen," the doctor said, calmly, "the door had not been opened until after one o'clock, after the rain had stopped. It didn't blow open; it is so heavy that you can barely wrench it out. Somebody opened it afterwards, in the middle of the night, to set his stage."
Another pause. The rector sat stiffly upright. The lamplight showed a twitching nerve beside his cheekbone.
"Martin Starberth was a very heavy smoker," continued Dr. Fell. "He was frightened, and nervous, and he had been smoking steadily all that day. In a vigil of the sort he had to undergo it is not too far fetched to believe that he would have smoked even more heavily during his wait…. A full cigarette-case and matches were found on his body. There was not one single cigarette-stub on the floor of the Governor's Room."
The doctor spoke leisurely. As though his recital had given him an idea, he produced his own pipe.
"Undoubtedly, however, there had been somebody in the Governor's Room. And just there is where the murderer's plan miscarried. Had they gone according to schedule, there would have been no necessity for a wild dash across the meadow when the light went out. We should have waited, and found Martin's body after a decently long interval, when he did not reappear. But-remark this, as Mr. Rampole has — the light went out just ten minutes too soon.
"Now it was fortunate that the murderer, in smashing Martin's hip to simulate a fall from the balcony, did not smash Martin's watch. It was running, and it had the right time. Let us suppose (for the sake of a hypothesis) that it had really been Martin waiting in the Governor's Room. When his vigil was ended, he would have switched off his lamp and gone home. He would have known, at ten minutes to twelve, that his time was not yet up. But, if there were somebody else keeping vigil in his place, and this somebody's watch happened to be ten minutes fast…?"
Sir Benjamin Arnold got up from his chair like a man groping blindly.