“You admit it to us.”
“Yes, yes. Haven’t I said so? But there are some things not even you seem to know.”
“Won’t you tell us them, Mr. Woodman, just to make our story complete?” said Ellery. “Remember that we are proposing to let you go. We are taking some risks in doing that.”
“Not for my sake, I’ll be bound. But I don’t mind telling you. What do you want to know?”
“How the murders were actually done.”
“Oh, I have no objection to telling you. Indeed, I flatter myself the thing was rather prettily arranged.”
Woodman had almost regained his outward composure and spoke with some of his accustomed assurance.
“I went into the garden of Liskeard House, just as you said, by the coach-yard. I have no idea how you discovered that. Then I went straight up the back stairs to Prinsep’s room. No one saw me go upstairs, I take it, or you would have mentioned the fact. I found Prinsep at his table writing. I laid him out with a big blow on the back of the head.”
“With what weapon?”
“With a sand-bag. Then it has not been found? I threw it out afterwards on to the roof of the stables out of sight. Then, as I wasn’t sure if he was dead, I made sure with a knife I found lying on the table. It belonged, I knew, to George Brooklyn. I don’t know how it got there. It wasn’t part of my plan. I finished him off with that, and went out on to the landing. Just then I heard some one coming upstairs. It was George Brooklyn. Until that moment I had no definite intention of killing George that night. I meant to leave signs which would show that George and Walter had conspired to kill Prinsep. I had put a handkerchief of George’s under the body. George’s coming just then was deuced awkward. I had no time to clear away the traces, and I had somehow to prevent him from entering the room. So I met him on the landing and told him that Prinsep was in the garden and wanted him to go down. He went down the back stairs with me like a lamb. It was then it occurred to me that, as he had seen me up in Prinsep’s room, I should have to kill him too. I led him over towards the temple and let him get a few paces in front. Then I seized the club from the Hercules statue and smashed his head in from behind. After that I had to consider how to cover my tracks. I dragged the body into the temple entrance, fetched Prinsep’s coat and hat and walked up and down the garden, as you know. Then I went up again to Prinsep’s room, and sent off that telephone message and arranged things there, leaving George’s handkerchief under the body and Walter’s stick in the room. I had already dropped the ferrule in the garden, and a note in Prinsep’s writing, making an appointment for the garden. He had sent it to me the previous day. George had left his hat and overcoat on the landing. I had intended to slip out unobserved somehow; but seeing the coat and hat gave me an idea. I put them on, and walked out as George Brooklyn, thus throwing every one wrong, as I thought, about the time of the murders. All the rest you seem to know.”