“Arthur Hawkhurst caused me some thought, though. Stenness gave me a hint about his attack of sleepy sickness. He came in with an air-gun in his hand. He seemed an irresponsible sort of boy. But that was all. There’s a big chasm between that and homicidal mania. I simply docketed him in my memory and left the matter there.”
At this point Sir Clinton seemed to find his narrative growing more interesting to himself. He pulled himself up in his chair and glanced round his audience before taking up the next part of his subject.
“Ernest Shandon was the final figure—for, of course, I dismissed Miss Hawkhurst at once. Now at first sight, friend Ernest was an unattractive fellow. First, he was obviously callous in the extreme. He didn’t seem sorry about his brothers’ deaths; his sore toe bulked far more prominently in his conversation. That seemed a bit grotesque to me at the time. It stuck in my memory on that account alone. Then, second, he seemed absolutely selfish. His ego seemed to be the only thing that really interested him. He wanted his tea; and he meant to have it, too. That seemed a bit abnormal, though one can’t hang a man for wanting his tea, of course. Third, he gave me the impression of being one of the dullest and stupidest men that one could wish to meet. Altogether, one would say, there wasn’t much to be got out of a person of that type: dull, selfish, callous, and stupid. And yet, if you look back now, you’ll see that the whole basis of the Shandon tragedies lies in just those qualities. It’ll be quite clear when we come to it.
“I’ve pointed out that my difficulty was to fix as soon as possible whether this was ‘an inside job’ or one carried through by an outsider. Also, quite possibly there might be more trouble at Whistlefield. Now I’d taken particular care to note that the murderer knew the Maze thoroughly. So as a wild shot I dropped the hint about Ariadne’s clue—the thread which would guide a man through the Maze if he didn’t know it very well. I flung that down casually. I hadn’t really much hope of doing much with it; for I hardly believed in further trouble then. But it would do no harm, so I dropped the suggestion in presence of some of the possible criminals.”
“H’m! Now I begin to see some light,” Wendover commented.
“The next point was the nature of the poison,” Sir Clinton went on. “The local doctor suggested you, Ardsley, as an expert; so I went over at once to get your views. Once I knew it was curare, I felt I’d got something definite enough to go on. That isn’t common stuff. Of course you probably had a stock yourself; and I didn’t feel inclined to interfere with you. I thought it fairly clear that if you had gone on the murder tack you’d have avoided a stuff which could be traced to you directly. So I asked about any other local source, and you put me on to the pot in the Whistlefield museum.
“That put a different complexion on the whole case. It was evidently essential to get hold of that supply immediately. If the murderer had drawn a private stock from the pot, we couldn’t help that. If he had just used enough to poison his darts, then we could stop further supplies by confiscating the pot. So I packed you and Wendover off to secure it.”
“Wendover being to watch me, I suppose?” Ardsley put in with a grim smile.
“I won’t deny it. You’d have done the same in my place,” Sir Clinton pointed out.
“Why didn’t you come yourself?” Wendover inquired.