Murder in the maze

by J. J. Connington

“Quite true—once you’ve got your facts,” Sir Clinton agreed. “Now let’s take the facts in the order that they presented themselves. The things I saw when I was called to the Maze were plain enough. An airgun had been used to fire poisoned darts. Roger Shandon had been hit in the shoulders and the neck; Neville Shandon had been struck rather lower down in the body. There had been no attempt at robbery, except for the tearing away of the sheet of notes in Neville’s hand. Loopholes had been cut in the hedge, evidently beforehand—for no one would start cutting loopholes with his victim a few yards away. A box of darts had been spilt at the loophole from which Roger Shandon was shot. The murderer had managed to dodge either Miss Forrest or young Torrance, or both of them, as he made his way out of the Maze. Finally, my dog proved that the murderer had followed a very round-about track in leaving the Maze. He got out near the river bank. He went across to a clump of trees, on one of which there was a mark about three feet off the ground. Then he had gone across the grass to the road. And when he reached the road, his trail stopped short.”

“Yes,” Wendover interjected, “you talked a lot of rot about the murderer getting into his private aeroplane and flying away, I remember.”

Sir Clinton smiled slightly.

“I was near enough for all practical purposes, as you’ll see, Squire. Now we come to what I thought it reasonable to infer from the facts. First of all, an air-gun can be fired by either a man or a woman, so the weapon didn’t even suggest the sex of the criminal. The poison was obviously going to be a good clue; for it made the crime abnormal, so to speak; and the more uncommon the method is in a murder, the more you limit the possibilities in the identity of the murderer. Next, it was clear enough that Roger had been shot while he was sitting in his chair with his back to the murderer. In that position, only his shoulders and neck would be exposed as targets and it was there that he was hit. Neville, on the other hand, had been shot from the front or slightly to the side. That suggested the possibility that Roger might have been killed in mistake for Neville, whereas Neville could not have been mistaken for Roger, since the murderer, shooting from the front or side, could see his face as he fired.”

“Did you lay much stress on that in your mind?” Stenness asked.

“Not much at the time. It suggested that Roger might have been killed first of all, by mistake, and that Neville was the man the murderer was really after. But alone, it amounted to very little. Then comes the fact that nothing seemed to have been removed from either body, except the notes torn out of Neville’s hand. Of course, I’d been following the Hackleton case; and it was clear enough that Neville Shandon might have been put out of the way to keep him from examining Hackleton. That’s been done before—remember how Maître Labori was shot in the back as he was going into Court to examine General Mercier during the Dreyfus case. I merely docketed that in my memory and kept an open mind on the point. I hadn’t enough data to make it worth while doing more.

“The next point was the discovery of the loopholes. That established premeditation—the crime had been thought out and prepared for beforehand. And that meant, further, that the murderer was someone who knew that one or other of the Shandons was likely to be in the Maze that afternoon or at least at some time thereabouts. That looked like a local criminal at first sight. But one has to be judicial; and it was clear enough that a premeditated crime might have been preceded by a good deal of quiet spying; and thus an outsider might have got to know the Shandons’ habits. One couldn’t lay much stress on that.”

“So at that point you didn’t know whether the Hackleton case came in or not?” Stenness asked.

“No. I simply kept an open mind on the point. Now the next thing was the box of darts which Skene found scattered about. That was easy enough to read. The murderer must have fumbled while he was shooting Roger—because the box was at Roger’s loophole. He was in a deadly hurry, or he’d have picked them up then. Evidently he’d something else to do in a hurry and he meant to come back for the darts. Isn’t it clear enough that when he’d shot Roger, he saw the face after he’d fired; and he realised he’d hit the wrong man. Neville had still to be reckoned with—and it looks to me as if the murderer had counted on Neville being in the Maze just then. I expect he had private information. So he grabbed three darts from the ground and rushed off to finish Neville, which he did. Neville may have been alarmed by something, which would account for his standing up when he was shot at. Then the murderer proposes to go back for his lost darts. But now he finds someone else in the Maze. He hears voices. Probably he finds his road back to Helen’s Bower blocked by these strangers. So he runs as hard as he can to get rid of his air-gun, which is the deadly evidence against him. But he gets into difficulties in avoiding these unknown people in the Maze and it takes him some time to get out.”

“Did you suspect anyone in particular at that point?” Wendover interrupted.