The Brooklyn murders

by G. D. H. Cole

“Again, I say that you are talking absolute nonsense. But, if it pleases you, pray continue this fairy tale.”

Joan took up the story. “You walked across to Liskeard House, and entered the garden through the coach-yard shortly before it was locked for the night. I will pass over what you did next; but at a time shortly before half-past eleven—probably about a quarter-past—you put on John Prinsep’s hat and coat and walked up and down the garden, imitating his lameness, in a spot where you could be seen from the back of the theatre. You then went upstairs to John’s room, and delivered, imitating my stepfather’s voice, a false telephone message purporting to come from him to his club in Pall Mall. Next you put on George’s hat and coat, and dressed in them walked out of the front door in such a way that the servants, seeing you at a distance, readily mistook you for George. Am I right, so far?”

“I am listening, my dear Joan, because I had better hear the whole of this wild story that something—or some one”—here he turned and glared at Ellery—“has put into your head. But, of course, the whole thing is monstrous.”

“You need not blame Mr. Ellery. He and I have worked it all out together, and we can prove all we say. I should have mentioned that before leaving Liskeard House you arranged the scene of the murders so as to make it seem, first of all, that John and George had killed each other. Under John’s body you placed a blood-stained handkerchief belonging to George, and you also left one of George’s knives sticking in the body. You killed George with a weapon which, as you well knew, had on it John’s finger-marks. Of course you wore gloves, and therefore left no marks which could be identified as your own. The finger-marks on the club with which George was killed were made by John earlier in the day when he showed you the club before dinner. They were defaced, but not obliterated, by the marks made later by your gloved hands. Is that correct?”

“Of course it is not correct. It is a parcel of lies, the whole lot of it.”

“Really, Mr. Woodman,” said Ellery, “you will find that the whole story is remarkably convincing to others, if not to you. Let me give you an account of the objects you had in view. You knew that it was physically impossible for John and George to have killed each other; but by leaving the signs as you did you hoped to create the impression that either might have killed the other. Your main object, however, was not to create suspicion against either of these two, but to incriminate another person, whom you desired to remove for reasons of your own. You therefore faked the telephone message I have mentioned; and you also left Walter Brooklyn’s stick in John Prinsep’s room. You also detached the ferrule from the stick with your penknife, and left the ferrule in the garden on the spot where George was murdered. By actual murder you had already, on Tuesday night, removed two of the three persons who stood between you and Sir Vernon’s fortune. You hoped that, by means of the clues which you provided, the law would do your work in removing the third. I will not ask you whether this is true. We know it.”

Woodman shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, if you know it,” he said, “of course there is nothing for me to say.”

“You left Liskeard House wearing George’s hat and overcoat. These you took back to the hotel, and stowed away in a handbag for the night. You went out the next morning carrying the handbag, which you brought to this office. At lunch-time you took it with you. I do not know where you lunched, but you went into the cloak-room of the Avenue Restaurant, as if you were going to lunch there, and left the hat and coat hanging on a peg. You hoped that it would be impossible to trace them to you. They have been traced.”

During Ellery’s last speech Woodman’s forced calm had first showed some sign of breaking. But he pulled himself together with an effort. “I must say you have laid this plot very carefully,” he said.

“Unfortunately, not only have you been traced,” Joan went on, “but you were unwise enough not to notice, when you left the coat, that it lacked a button. You left that button deep down in the corner of the bag which is now in that cupboard over there.”