“Don’t interrupt, woman! This is a case of suicide with complications, and dashed ingenious ones. In the first place, we noticed that entry in the visitors’ book. That’s an attempt to make it look as if he expected a long stay here, before he went to bed. Actually, through not studying the habits of the Wilkinsons, he overshot himself there—a little too ingenious. We know that when he did that he was simply trying to lead us up the garden; but we were too clever for him.”
“Let me merely mention the fact that it was I who spotted that entry. But pray proceed.”
“Then he did two quite irreconcilable things: he took a sleeping draught and he asked to be called early. Now, a man who’s on a holiday, and is afraid he won’t sleep, doesn’t make arrangements to be called early in the morning. We know that he took the sleeping draught so as to die painlessly; and as for being called early in the morning it was probably so as to give the impression that his death was quite unpremeditated. He took several other precautions for the same reason.”
“Such as?”
“He wound up his watch. Leyland noticed that, but he didn’t notice that it was an eight-day watch. A methodical person winds up his eight-day watch on Sunday; once more, Mottram was a tiny bit too ingenious. Then he put the studs out ready in his shirt. Very few people when they’re on holiday take the trouble to do that. Mottram did because he wanted us to think that he meant to get up the next morning in the ordinary way.”
“And the next article?”
“The window. A murderer, not taking any risks, would shut the window, or see that it was shut, before he turned the gas on. A man going to bed in the ordinary way would either shut it completely or else open it to its full extent, where the hasp catches, so that in either case it shouldn’t bang during the night. Mottram left his window ajar, not enough open to let the gas escape much. But he knew that in the morning the door would have to be knocked in, and with that sudden rush of air the window would swing open. Which is exactly what happened.”
“I believe he wrote and told you about all this beforehand.”
“Silence, woman! He left a shocker by his bedside, to make us think that he went to bed at peace with all the world. In real life, if you take a dose you don’t read yourself to sleep as well. Besides, if he had been wanting to read in bed he would have brought the standard lamp over to his bedside so as to put it out last thing. Further, he had a letter ready written, or rather half-written, which he left on the blotting-pad. But he hadn’t written it there—he wrote it downstairs. I found the place where he had blotted it on the pad in the dining-room. Another deliberate effort to suggest that he had gone to sleep peacefully, leaving a job half-finished. And then, of course, there was the match.”
“You mean he only struck it to give the impression that he’d lit the gas, but didn’t really light it? I’m getting the hang of the thing, aren’t I? By the way, he couldn’t have lit another match and thrown it out of the window?”