“Suppose somebody had gone up there in the evening and had chiselled one of the statues off its base. The broken marble could be heaved over into the little lake and the bare pedestal would be left for the fugitive.”
“I ought to have thought of that,” Michael interjected. “It’s so obvious when you think of it. But I didn’t think of anything like that at the time.”
“My impression then,” Sir Clinton continued, “was that the man in white had white tights on under his Pierrot dress. His face and hands were whitened, also; so that as soon as he stripped off his jacket and trousers, he was sufficiently statuelike to pass muster in that light. His eyes would have given him away in daylight; but under the moon he’d only got to shut them and you’d hardly notice his whitened eyelashes. In the few moments that you left him, while the cordon was being formed, he took off his Pierrot things, wrapped them round the weight he’d used in breaking the case’s glass, and pitched the lot over the balustrade. That would account for the splash that was heard.”
Sir Clinton paused to light a cigarette.
“That theory seemed to fit most of the evidence, as you see. It explained why they’d chosen that particular place for the disappearing trick; and it accounted for the splash as well. Further, it suggested that there was a third man in the gang: the man who smashed down the real statue. They’d leave that bit of work to the last moment for fear of the damage being seen accidentally beforehand. Now Foss was at the masked ball, so it wasn’t he. The man in white might need all his powers in that race, so it was unlikely that he’d been up there on a heavy bit of manual labour just then, for the shifting of that statue, even in pieces, can have been no light affair. That suggested the use of a third confederate. But I’m no wild enthusiast for theories. I simply noted the coincidence that this theory demanded three men and that Foss’s party contained three men: himself, the valet, and the chauffeur.
“Now, for reasons which I’ll give you immediately, it seemed likely that this affair was only a first step in a more complicated plan. On the spur of the moment, I decided it was worth while taking a hand. So I got a patrol set round the spinney and issued orders that no one was to go up to the terrace until I’d been over the ground. I took good care that every one knew about this; and I took equally good care not to go there myself. I rather advertised the thing, in fact. That was to assure the fellows that no one had seen the empty pedestal. They were pretty certain to rout about for information; and they’d hear on all sides that no one had been up to the terrace. That left the thing open for them to try again if they wanted to.
“Another thing confirmed my notions. When the Inspector was dragging the lake, he got a largish piece of marble out of it. That fitted in with the view that the broken statue was down in the water in fragments, hidden by the weeds. It all fitted fairly well, you see.
“Then came another bit of evidence—two bits, in fact. The village drunkard put abroad some yarn about seeing a White Man in the woods; and a little girl saw a Black Man. That might have been mere fancy. Or it might have been true enough. When the hunters had gone, the pseudo-statue would come down off his pedestal. Suppose he wandered off into the wood and was seen by old Groby. There’s your White Man. But he couldn’t possibly get back to the house in white tights. He’d want to get in as quietly as possible. What about a set of black tights under the white ones? When he took off the white ones, he’d be next door to invisible among shadows; and he’d be able to sneak in through a window in the servants’ wing—in the shadow of the house—fairly inconspicuously. Perhaps that’s how it happened.”
“That was it,” the Inspector confirmed, looking up from a sheet of paper which he was consulting from time to time.
Sir Clinton acknowledged the confirmation but refused to lay much stress on the point.