“Of course it isn’t correct, sir; but you’ll admit that’s what it looks like. It is quite possible for a man who has committed a murder to be murdered himself as he leaves the scene of his crime; but it’s stark, staring nonsense for the man whom he has killed to get up, as if he were alive and well, and come after his murderer with a club. To say nothing of laying himself out again neatly afterwards. No, that won’t wash. Yet the evidence both ways is thoroughly good evidence.”
“We can agree, inspector, that these two men did not kill each other. But it remains possible, even probable, on the evidence you have so far secured, that one of them did kill the other, and was then himself killed by some third person unknown, possibly a witness of the first crime bent on exacting retribution. How does that strike you?” The superintendent thrust his hands deep into his pockets and leant back in his chair with a satisfied look, as if he had scored a point.
Inspector Blaikie’s face, however, hardly became less doleful. “Yes, that’s possible,” he said; “but unfortunately there is absolutely nothing to show which set of circumstantial clues ought to be accepted and which discarded in that case. We do not know which of the two men was killed first. When Brooklyn went to see Prinsep, did he murder him then and there in the study, or did Prinsep decoy his visitor into the garden by means of the note we have found, and there kill him? Either theory fits some of the facts: neither fits them all. I don’t know which to think, or which to work on as a basis. The evidence we have probably points in the right direction in one of the cases, and in the wrong direction in the other; but how are we to tell which is right and which is wrong? There is nothing to lay hold of.”
“What about the medical evidence as to the time of death? Does that throw any light on the case?”
“None whatever, unfortunately. In both instances the doctors agree that death almost certainly took place at some time between 10.30 and 12 o’clock. But they say it is impossible to time the thing any more accurately than that.”
“Come, that seems at least to narrow the field of inquiry. When were each of these men last seen alive?”
The inspector referred to his notes. “John Prinsep was seen at 10.30 by the servant, Winter, who went to fetch his letters for the post. He was seen in the garden at some time between 11 o’clock and 11.15 by the caretaker at the Piccadilly Theatre, Jabez Smith, and also, I have since ascertained, by a dresser named Laura Rose about the same time. No one seems to have seen him later than about 11.15. His body was found in his study this morning at ten minutes past eight by the maid, Sarah Plenty, and seen immediately afterwards by the household servants, William Winter and Peter Morgan.”
“And George Brooklyn?”
“He was seen at about a quarter to eleven by Winter and other servants, when he called at Liskeard House and went up by himself to John Prinsep’s room. He was seen again, by Winter and two other servants, leaving the house at about 11.30. He did not go home to his hotel, and neither his wife nor any one else I have been able to discover saw him again. His body was discovered at 9.30 this morning in the garden of Liskeard House by his cousin, Joan Cowper.”
“That certainly does not seem to help us very much. In the case of Prinsep, he may have died any time after 11.19. Brooklyn was still alive at 11.30.”