‘I suspect the post-mortem will show the thrust clipped through the heart’s right ventricle and into the lung — that would explain the quantity of blood expelled onto the desk-top. It also explains why Lord Hull was able to scream before he died, and that’s what did for Mr. Jory Hull.’
‘How so?’ Lestrade asked.
‘A locked room is a bad business unless you intend to pass murder off as suicide,’ I said, looking at Holmes. He smiled and nodded at this maxim of his. ‘The last thing Jory would have wanted was for things to look as they did . . . the locked room, the locked windows, the man with a knife in him where the man himself never could have put it. I think he had never foreseen his father dying with such a squawl. His plan was to stab him, burn the new will, rifle the desk, unlock one of the windows, and escape that way. He would have entered the house by another door, resumed his seat under the stairs, and then, when the body was finally discovered, it would have looked like robbery.’
‘Not to Hull’s solicitor,’ Lestrade said.
‘He might well have kept his silence, however,’ Holmes mused, and then added brightly, ‘I’ll bet our artistic friend intended to add a few tracks, too. I have found that the better class of murderer almost always likes to throw in a few mysterious tracks leading away from the scene of the crime.’ He uttered a brief, humorless sound that was more bark than laugh, and then looked back from the window nearest the desk to Lestrade and me. ‘I think we all agree it would have seemed a suspiciously convenient murder, under the circumstances, but even if the solicitor spoke up, nothing could have been proved.’
‘By screaming, Lord Hull spoiled everything,’ I said, ‘as he had been spoiling things all his life.
The house was roused. Jory must have been in a total panic, frozen to the spot the way a deer is by a bright light. It was Stephen Hull who saved the day . . . or Jory’s alibi, at least, the one, which had him sitting on the bench under the stairs when his father was murdered. Stephen rushed down the hall from the music room, smashed the door open, and must have hissed at Jory to get over to the desk with him, at once, so it would look as if they had broken in togeth — ‘
I broke off, thunderstruck. At last I understood the glances, which had been flashing between Holmes and Lestrade. I understood what they must have seen from the moment I showed them the trick-hiding place: it could not have been done alone. The killing, yes, but the rest . . .
‘Stephen said he and Jory met at the study door,’ I said slowly. ‘That he, Stephen, burst it in and they entered together, discovered the body together. He lied. He might have done it to protect his brother, but to lie so well when one doesn’t know what has happened seems . . . seems
. . . ‘
‘Impossible,’ Holmes said, ‘is the word for which you are searching, Watson.’
‘Then Jory and Stephen went in on it together,’ I said. ‘They planned it together . . . and in the eyes of the law, both are guilty of their father’s murder! My God!’
‘Not both of them, my dear Watson,’ Holmes said in a tone of curious gentleness. ‘All of them.’
I could only gape.
He nodded. ‘You have shown remarkable insight this morning, Watson; you have, in fact, burned with a deductive heat I’ll wager you’ll never generate again. My cap is off to you, dear fellow, as it is to any man who is able to transcend his normal nature, no matter how briefly. But in one way you have remained the same dear chap you’ve always been: while you understand how good people can be, you have no understanding of how black they may be.’
I looked at him silently, almost humbly.
‘Not that there was much blackness here, if half of what we’ve heard of Lord Hull was true,’
Holmes said. He rose and began to pace irritably about the study. ‘Who testifies that Jory was with Stephen when the door was smashed in? Jory, naturally.
Stephen, naturally. But there are two other faces in this family portrait. One belongs to William, the third brother. Do you concur, Lestrade?’
‘Yes,’ Lestrade said. ‘If this is the straight of the matter, William also had to be in on it. He said he was halfway down the stairs when he saw the two of them go in together, Jory a little ahead.’
‘How interesting!’ Holmes said, eyes gleaming. ‘Stephen breaks in the door — as the younger and stronger of course he must — and so one would expect simple forward momentum would have carried him into the room first. Yet William, halfway down the stairs, saw Jory enter first.
Why was that, Watson?’
I could only shake my head numbly.
‘Ask yourself whose testimony, and whose testimony alone, we can trust here. The answer is the only witness who is not part of the family: Lord Hull’s man, Oliver Stanley. He approached the gallery railing in time to see Stephen enter the room, and that is just as it should have been, since Stephen was alone when he broke it in. It was William, with a better angle from his place on the stairs, who said he saw Jory precede Stephen into the study. William said so because he had seen Stanley and knew what he must say. It boils down to this, Watson: we know Jory was inside this room. Since both of his brothers testify he was outside, there was, at the very least, collusion. But as you say, the smooth way they all pulled together suggests something far more serious.’
‘Conspiracy,’ I said.
‘Yes. Do you recall my asking you, Watson, if you believed all four of them simply walked wordlessly out of that parlor in four different directions after they heard the study door locked?’
‘Yes. Now I do.’
‘The four of them.’ He looked briefly at Lestrade, who nodded, and then back at me. ‘We know Jory had to have been up and off and about his business the moment the old man left the parlor in order to reach the study ahead of him, yet all four of the surviving family — including Lady Hull
— say they were in the parlor when Lord Hull locked his study door. The murder of Lord Hull was very much a family affair, Watson.’
I was too staggered to say anything. I looked at Lestrade and saw an expression on his face I had never seen there before nor ever did again; a kind of tired sickened gravity.
‘What may they expect?’ Holmes said, almost genially.
‘Jory will certainly swing,’ Lestrade said. ‘Stephen will go to jail for life. William Hull may get life, but will more likely get twenty years in Wormwood Scrubs, a kind of living death.’
Holmes bent and stroked the canvas stretched between the legs of the coffee-table. It made that odd hoarse purring noise. ‘Lady Hull,” Lestrade went on, ‘may expect to spend the next five years of her life in Beechwood Manor, more commonly known to the inmates as Poxy Palace . . .
although, having met the lady, I rather suspect she will find another way out. Her husband’s laudanum would be my guess.’
‘All because Jory Hull missed a clean strike,’ Holmes remarked, and sighed. ‘If the old man had had the common decency to die silently, all would have been well. Jory would, as Watson says, have left by the window, taking his canvas with him, of course . . . not to mention his trumpery shadows. Instead, he raised the house. All the servants were in, exclaiming over the dead master. The family was in confusion. How shabby their luck was, Lestrade! How close was the constable when Stanley summoned him?’
‘Closer than you would believe,’ Lestrade said. ‘Hurrying up the drive to the door, as a matter of fact. He was passing on his regular rounds, and heard a scream from the house. Their luck was shabby.’
‘Holmes,’ I said, feeling much more comfortable in my old role, ‘how did you know a constable was so nearby?’
‘Simplicity itself, Watson. If not, the family would have shooed the servants out long enough to hide the canvas and ‘shadows.’ ‘
‘Also to unlatch at least one window, I should think,’ Lestrade added in a voice uncustomarily quiet.
‘They could have taken the canvas and the shadows,’ I said suddenly.
Holmes turned toward me. ‘Yes.’
Lestrade raised his eyebrows.
‘It came down to a choice,’ I said to him. ‘There was time enough to burn the new will or get rid of the hugger-mugger . . . this would have been just Stephen and Jory, of course, in the moments after Stephen burst in the door. They — or, if you’ve got the temperature of the characters right, and I suppose you do, Stephen — decided to burn the will and hope for the best.