“And then we have the mysterious disappearance of Halliday. I have no doubt that the cause of his death could be established beyond doubt if an autopsy could be carried out, but as I’ve equally no doubt that the unfortunate Halliday lies on the floor of the Barents Sea this can never be possible. But it is my belief-and this, again, is but conjecture-that he died not from any form of food poisoning but because he had a nightcap from a poisoned whisky bottle that was intended for me.” I looked at Mary Stuart: huge eyes and parted lips in a white shocked face, but I was the only one who saw it.
I pulled down the collar of my duffle coat and showed them the impressively large and impressively multicoloured bruise on the left-hand side of my neck.
“This, of course, could have been self-inflicted. Or maybe I just slipped somewhere and banged myself. Or take this odd business of the smashed radio. Somebody with an aversion to radios perhaps and suchlike outwards manifestations of what we choose to call progress or someone who found the Arctic just too much for him and had to take it out on something-you know, the equivalent of going cafard in the desert.
“So far, nothing but conjecture. An extraordinary and even more extraordinarily unconnected series of violent and tragic mishaps, one might claim, Coincidence is an accepted part of life. But not, surely, Coincidence multiplied to the nth degree like this, that would have to lie at the very farthest bounds of possibility. I think you would admit that if we could prove the existence, beyond any doubt, of a carefully premeditated and carefully executed crime, then the other violent happenings must cease to be regarded as conjectural coincidences and considered as being what they then would be, deliberately executed murders in pursuit of some goal that can’t yet even be guessed at but must be of overwhelming importance!’
They weren’t admitting anything, or, at least, if they were admitting anything to themselves they weren’t saying it out loud, but I think it was really a case of their minds having stopped working, not all their minds, there had to be one exception, probably more.
“And we have this one proven crime,” I went on. “The rather clumsily executed murder of Michael Stryker which was at the same time an attempt, and not a very clever attempt, to frame young Allen here for something he never did. I don’t think the murderer had any special ill-will towards Allen, well, no more than he seems to have for the general run of mankind: he just wanted to divert any possible suspicion from himself. I think if you’d all had time enough to think about it you’d have come to the eventual conclusion that Allen couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it: with a doctor in the house, if you’ll excuse the phrase, he hadn’t a hope in hell.
“Allen says he has no recollection at all about what happened. I believe him absolutely. He’s sustained a severe blow on the back of the head-the scalp is open to the bone. How he escaped a fractured skull, far less concussion, I can’t imagine. It certainly must have rendered him unconscious for a considerable period. Which leads one to assume that this assailant was still in excellent shape after what was clearly this coup-de-gi-dee. Are we to assume then that Allen, after having been knocked senseless, immediately leapt up and smote his assailant hip and thigh? That doesn’t make any kind of sense at all. What does make sense, what is the only answer, is that the unknown crept up behind Allen and laid him out, not with his hands but with some heavy and solid object-probably a stone, there’s more than enough lying around. Having done this he proceeded to cut the unconscious Allen up about the face, ripped his coat and tore off a couple of buttorls-all to give the very convincing impression that he’d been in a fight.
“The same thing, but this time on a lethal scale, happened to Stryker. I’m convinced that it was no accident that Allen was merely knocked unconscious while Stryker was killed-our friend, who must be a bit of an expert in such matters, knew just how much weight to bring to bear in each case, by no means as easy a matter as you might think. Then this ghoul, in a stupid attempt to create the impression that Stryker had been the other party to the fight, proceeded to rough up Stryker’s face as he had done Allen’s: I leave it to you to form your own estimate of just how evil must be the mind of a man who will deliberately set about mutilating the face of a dead man.”
I left them for a little to form their own estimates. For the most part they looked neither sick nor revolted: their reactions were mainly of shock and minds still consciously fighting against comprehension. No glances were exchanged, no eyes moved: their eyes were only for me.
“Stryker had a split upper lip, a tooth missing, and a reddish rough mark on his temple which I think must have been caused by another stone, very probably all the injuries were inflicted in this fashion to avoid any telltale marking of the hands or knuckles. Had those injuries been sustained in the course of a fight there would have been extensive bleeding and fairly massive bruising: there were no signs of either because Stryker was dead and circulation had ceased before those wounds were caused. To complete what he thought would be a most convincing effect, the murderer then closed the dead man’s hand round one of the buttons torn from Allen’s coat. Incidentally, there were no signs whatever of the churned up snow one would have expected to find at the scene of a fight: there were two sets of tracks leading to the place where Stryker lay, one set leading away. No fuss, no commotion, just a quick if not particularly clean dispatch.” I sipped some more of Otto’s Scotch-it must have come from his own private supply for it was excellent stuff-then asked in my best lecturer’s fashion: “Are there any questions?”
Predictably, there were none. They were all clearly far too busy asking themselves questions to have any time to put any to me.
I went on: “I think you’d agree, then, that it now seems extremely improbable that any of the four previous deaths were the results of innocent coincidence. I think that only the most gullible and the most naive would now be prepared to believe that those deaths were unconnected and not the work of the same agent. So what we have is, in effect, a mass murderer. A man who is either mad, a pathological killer, or a vicious and evil monster who finds it essential to murder with what can be only an apparent indiscrimination in order to achieve God knows what murky ends. He may, it is possible, be all three of those at once. Whatever he is or whoever he is, he’s in this cabin now. I wonder which one of you it is?”
For the first time their eyes left me as they looked quickly and furtively at one another as if in the ludicrous hope that they might by this means discover the identity of the killer. None of them examined one another as closely as I observed them all over the rim of my glass, if one pair of eyes remained fixed on mine it could only be because its owner knew who the murderer was and didn’t have to bother to look around: but I knew, even as I watched them, that I had no real foundation for any such hope, the murderer may have been no great shakes at physiology but he was far too clever to walk into what, for an intelligent man with five deaths on his conscience, must have been a very obvious trap indeed. I was certain that there wasn’t a pair of eyes before me that didn’t flicker surreptitiously around the cabin. I waited patiently until I had their combined attention again.
“I have no idea who this murderous fiend may be,” I said, “but I think I can with certainty say who it isn’t. Counting the absent Miss Haynes, there are twenty-two of us in this cabin: to nine of those I cannot see that any suspicion can possibly attach.”
“Merciful God!” Goin muttered. “Merciful God! This is monstrous, Dr. Marlowe, unbelievable. One of us here, one of the people we know, one of our friends has the blood of five people on his hands? It can’t be! It just can’t be!”
“Except that you know that it must be,” I said. Goin made no reply. “To begin with, I myself am in the clear, not because I know I am-we could all claim that-but because two hostile acts have been committed against my person, one of which was intended to be lethal. Further, I was bringing in Mr. Smith here when Stryker was killed and Allen injured.” This last was the truth but not the whole truth but only the killer himself would know that and as he was already on to me his opinion was unimportant because he couldn’t possibly voice it. “Mr. Smith is in the clear because not only was he unconscious at the time, he was a nearly fatal victim of the poisoner’s activities and its hardly likely that he would go around poisoning himself.”