“It was a very good notion to hop up on to the bridge,” he said. “An empty boat means very little; he hasn’t been seen to land on either bank, and he’s walked off the bridge without walking on to it, so to speak. He’s got twenty-four hours’ start; his mustaches will disappear, and then he will disappear. I think there is every hope of his escape.”
“Hope?” repeated March, and stopped sculling for an instant.
“Yes, hope,” repeated the other. “To begin with, I’m not going to be exactly consumed with Corsican revenge because somebody has killed Hook. Perhaps you may guess by this time what Hook was. A damned blood-sucking blackmailer was that simple, strenuous, self-made captain of industry. He had secrets against nearly everybody; one against poor old Westmoreland about an early marriage in Cyprus that might have put the duchess in a queer position; and one against Harker about some flutter with his client’s money when he was a young solicitor. That’s why they went to pieces when they found him murdered, of course. They felt as if they’d done it in a dream. But I admit I have another reason for not wanting our Hungarian friend actually hanged for the murder.”
“And what is that?” asked his friend.
“Only that he didn’t commit the murder,” answered Fisher.
Harold March laid down the oars and let the boat drift for a moment.
“Do you know, I was half expecting something like that,” he said. “It was quite irrational, but it was hanging about in the atmosphere, like thunder in the air.”
“On the contrary, it’s finding Hugo guilty that’s irrational,” replied Fisher. “Don’t you see that they’re condemning him for the very reason for which they acquit everybody else? Harker and Westmoreland were silent because they found him murdered, and knew there were papers that made them look like the murderers. Well, so did Hugo find him murdered, and so did Hugo know there was a paper that would make him look like the murderer. He had written it himself the day before.”
“But in that case,” said March, frowning, “at what sort of unearthly hour in the morning was the murder really committed? It was barely daylight when I met him at the bridge, and that’s some way above the island.”
“The answer is very simple,” replied Fisher. “The crime was not committed in the morning. The crime was not committed on the island.”