"It isn't every day, you know," the doctor explained, apologetically, "that a man gets the opportunity to write the story of his own murder."
He looked round the circle, leaning heavily on one cane, his big left shoulder hunched high. The broad ribbon on his eyeglasses hung almost perpendicular to the floor. A wheezing pause….
"1 don't need to tell you that Timothy Starberth was a strange man. But I wonder if any of you appreciate just how strange? You knew his bitterness, his rather satanic humours, his exquisite appreciation of this sort of jest; in many respects — you'll agree-he was a throwback to old Anthony himself. But you possibly didn't think he would conceive of a thing like this.
"Like what?" asked the chief constable, in a curious voice. Dr. Fell raised his cane to point.
"Somebody murdered him," he answered. "Somebody killed him and left him in the Hag's Nook. In the Hag's Nook — remember that! The murderer thought he was dead. But he lived a good many hours after that. And there you have the point of the joke.
"He could have denounced the man who killed him, of course. But that would have been too easy, don't you see? Timothy didn't want him to get off so lightly. So he wrote out the whole story of his own murder. He arranged that it should be sealed up and put — where? In the safest place of all. Behind key-locks, and letter-locks, and (best of all) in a place where nobody would suspect it-in the vault of the Governor's Room.
"For two whole years, you see — until Martin's opening of that vault on his birthday — everybody should still think he died by accident. Everybody, that is, but the murderer. He would take pains to get the knowledge conveyed to the murderer that this document was there! There was the joke. For two years the murderer would be safe, and suffering the tortures of the damned. Every year every month, every day would narrow down the time when, inexorably, that story should come to light. Nothing could prevent it. It was like a death-sentence — slowly coming on. The murderer couldn't get at it. The only way he could have reached that damning paper would have been to blow the vault down with a charge of nitro-glycerin which would have taken the roof off the whole prison-not a very practical way out. It may sound feasible for a skilful cracksman, and in the city of Chicago; but it isn't very practical for an ordinary human being in an English village. Even in the doubtful event that you know something about cracking safes, you can't go playing about with burglar's tools and importing high explosives into Chatterham without exciting considerable comment. In simple terms, the murderer was powerless. So can you conceive of the exquisite agony he has undergone, as Timothy meant him to?"
Sir Benjamin, jarred thoroughly, shook his fist in the air.
"Man," he said, "you — you're-this is the insanest-! You've no evidence he was murdered! You―"
"Oh, yes I have," said Dr. Fell.