“Observe again. Two men know that one asked the other the time. Why, then, is the subsequent utilising of that incident to be attributed to only one of them? Clearly it can apply equally to both!
“Here again the evidence which has been used against Deacon can be used at least equally well against Digby-Coates.
“This clock business, I say, is only further proof of the great ingenuity of Digby-Coates. It was the cleverest stroke of all. Deacon innocently, naturally, asks him the time. At once Digby-Coates, having already made up his mind that to-night was the night, is seized with an idea whose brilliance is surprising even to himself. Deacon, the man he has already chosen as scapegoat, is playing into his hands.
“Suppose (I can see his mind working) that he slew Hoode just on the hour, and then made sure, after the clock in the study had struck, that its works, though undamaged, would not go on working, and then moved the hands back till they stood at 10.45. The disorder of the striking when the clock was set going again would reveal to investigators the fact that the hands had been moved and that the clock had stopped not before the hour but after it. Why, these investigators, would ask, had the hands been moved to that particular place—10.45? Soon they would find out—he, clever fellow! helping them without seeming to—that at this moment on the night of the crime Deacon had asked him the time. ‘Ah-ha!’ would say the investigators, ‘Mr. Deacon, to whom so much else points, has been trying to make alibis for himself!’
“But how, he thinks, can he carry out this great, this wonderful scheme? Ah, yes! Let him put himself in Deacon’s place; let him think what Deacon would do if he was killing Hoode. If he stopped the clock, he wouldn’t draw too much attention to it, so—so—ah, yes!—he would try to make it look as if there had been a struggle and would derange the tidy room accordingly!
“That, I am convinced, is the way Digby-Coates reasoned. To put it briefly, he had to arrange the study to look, not as if a struggle had really taken place, but as if some one had tried their best to make it look like that. That is to say, while giving the air of a genuine attempt to mislead, he must yet make sure that investigators were not, in fact, misled; the first thing, for instance, that he had to do was to ensure that attention was drawn to the clock, but in such a way as to make it seem that endeavours had been made to draw attention from it.
“Clever, you must admit. Clever as hell! And successful, as those who have followed the case must know. He got the effect he wanted—that of a man who had tried to mislead. The police know that ‘struggle’ scene for a fake. But I hope I have shown that it was a double fake. If you think I have imbued my criminal with more ingenuity than any murderer would possess, remember that I, too, am a man, and therefore a potential murderer. Remember also something of which I have given more tangible proof—the finger-print game he played on Deacon. Remember that it was through him that the police first learnt of the money Hoode had drawn from his bank, and the fact that at 10.45 on the night of the murder Deacon had asked him the time! Remember that this business of the clock and the ‘struggle’ is like that of the silk cord—nothing without what I have described in the earlier parts of this report, but with it a great deal.
“And now for that alibi.
“That the murderer was in the study after the clock there—which, by the way, was correct by the other clocks in the house, had struck eleven, is proved by the fact of the striking of that clock being one hour behind.
“Miss Hoode entered the study and found the body at about ten minutes past eleven.