The Clock Struck One

by Fergus Hume

"The week is not yet over, Mr. Joad," she said coldly; "till the end of it you have no right to ask me such a question. Good-bye for the present; I am going out on my bicycle."

This was an excuse. Confident that Joad had altered the clock, on the chance that she would hear it during her sleepless nights, she was confident also that for such reason, and for a more terrible one, he had been in the house on the night of the murder.

"He put on the clock so as to prove an alibi," she thought, wheeling her bicycle down the path to the gate. "If he killed Edermont at twelve o'clock--the right time when it struck one--he would have ample opportunity of getting back to his cottage through the postern. I quite believe that he was with Pride at one o'clock; but I also believe he was in the study at twelve."

She had proved to her own satisfaction that Joad could have been in the house; she wished to discover if he had killed Edermont. The assassin had committed the crime to obtain the manuscript containing the story of her guardian's life. If Joad were guilty, that manuscript would be in his possession. This was why Dora excused herself on a plea of riding her bicycle. She was determined to search Joad's cottage, and find out if the manuscript was hidden there.

With this intent she hid the bicycle behind the hedge on the other side of the road, and went to the cottage. There was plenty of time for her to search, as Joad took his mid-day meal in the Red House and never returned to his house until nine at night. She had the whole day at her disposal, and determined to search in every corner for the manuscript she believed he had hidden. If she found it, she would then be able to prove Allen guiltless and Joad guilty. It would be a magnificent revenge on her part. The man would be caught in his own trap.

It can be easily guessed by what steps Dora had arrived at this conclusion--the chance remark of Pallant anent the possibility of the clock being wrong; the chance explanation of Meg which proved that the clock was an hour fast on the morning after the murder had taken place; the memory of her own remark to Joad about her sleepless nights; and the conclusion that the old man had put the clock wrong for purposes of his own. The inference to be drawn from these facts was that Joad had been in the house on the night of the second of August. If he had been in the house, it was probable that he had killed Edermont, since Allen and Lady Burville, the only other people who had been present at the same hour, were innocent. It had been proved by sundry scraps of evidence that the murder had been committed to obtain possession of the manuscript. Therefore, if Joad were guilty, he must have hidden the fruits of his crime. Where? In the cottage, without doubt.

The front door of the cottage was locked, so Dora went round to the back. She knew that Joad was in the habit of hiding the key of the back door under the water-butt, and sure enough she found it there. To open the door and pass into his study was the work of a moment. So here she was in the stronghold of the enemy. But where was the manuscript?

The room was not very large, and lined on all four sides with books. A writing-desk, littered with papers, stood before the single window, and a few chairs were scattered round. There were also a horsehair sofa, a small sideboard of varnished deal, three or four china ornaments, and a little clock on the mantelpiece. The floor was covered with straw matting, but what the pattern of the paper was like no one could tell, for it was hidden completely by the books. The whole apartment looked penurious in the extreme and very untidy. Books lay on chairs and sofas, and the fireplace was filled with torn-up letters, newspapers, and hastily scribbled manuscripts.

"The books first," decided Dora, after a look at this chaos.

There was no need to go through them one by one, for dust lay thickly upon bindings and shelves. She had only to glance to see those which had been disturbed within the last few weeks. Those that had been taken down she examined carefully, but could find no trace of the manuscript. She looked on the top of the bookcase, went down on her knees to search the lower shelves, and still found nothing. At the end of an hour Dora had gone through the whole library of Joad, but had come across no trace of the wished-for paper. He had hidden it--always presuming that it was in his possession--more cunningly than she had thought.