Murder in the Mews - Agatha Christie [73]
‘The murderer,’ said Poirot, ‘went out through the window. I will show you how.’
He repeated his manoeuvres with the window.
‘You see?’ he said. ‘That was how it was done! From the first I could not consider it likely that Sir Gervase had committed suicide. He had pronounced egomania, and such a man does not kill himself.
‘And there were other things! Apparently, just before his death, Sir Gervase had sat down at his desk, scrawled the word SORRY on a sheet of note-paper and had then shot himself. But before this last action he had, for some reason or other altered the position of his chair, turning it so that it was sideways to the desk. Why? There must be some reason. I began to see light when I found, sticking to the base of a heavy bronze statuette, a tiny sliver of looking-glass…
‘I asked myself, how does a sliver of broken looking-glass come to be there? — and an answer suggested itself to me. The mirror had been broken, not by a bullet, but by being struck with the heavy bronze figure. That mirror had been broken deliberately.
‘But why? I returned to the desk and looked down at the chair. Yes, I saw now. It was all wrong. No suicide would turn his chair round, lean over the edge of it, and then shoot himself. The whole thing was arranged. The suicide was a fake!
‘And now I come to something very important. The evidence of Miss Cardwell. Miss Cardwell said that she hurried downstairs last night because she thought that the second gong had sounded. That is to say, she thought that she had already heard the first gong.
‘Now observe, if Sir Gervase was sitting at his desk in the normal fashion when he was shot, where would the bullet go? Travelling in a straight line, it would pass through the door, if the door were open, and finally hit the gong!
‘You see now the importance of Miss Cardwell’s statement? No one else heard the first gong, but, then, her room is situated immediately above this one, and she was in the best position for hearing it. It would consist of only one single note, remember.
‘There could be no question of Sir Gervase’s shooting himself. A dead man cannot get up, shut the door, lock it and arrange himself in a convenient position! Somebody else was concerned, and therefore it was not suicide, but murder. Someone whose presence was easily accepted by Sir Gervase, stood by his side talking to him. Sir Gervase was busy writing, perhaps. The murderer brings the pistol up to the right side of his head and fires. The deed is done! Then quick, to work! The murderer slips on gloves. The door is locked, the key put in Sir Gervase’s pocket. But supposing that one loud note of the gong has been heard? Then it will be realized that the door was open, not shut, when the shot was fired. So the chair is turned, the body rearranged, the dead man’s fingers pressed on the pistol, the mirror deliberately smashed. Then the murderer goes out through the window, jars it shut, steps, not on the grass, but in the flower-bed where footprints can be smoothed out afterwards; then round the side of the house and into the drawing-room.’
He paused and said:
‘There was only one person who was out in the garden when the shot was fired. That same person left her footprints in the flower-bed and her fingerprints on the outside of the window.’
He came towards Ruth.
‘And there was a motive, wasn’t there? Your father had learnt of your secret marriage. He was preparing to disinherit you.’
‘It’s a lie!’ Ruth’s voice came scornful and clear. ‘There’s not a word of truth in your story. It’s a lie from start to finish!’
‘The proofs against you are very strong, madame. A jury may believe you. It may not!’
‘She won’t have to face a jury.’
The others turned — startled. Miss Lingard was on her feet. Her face altered. She was trembling all over.
‘I shot him. I admit it! I had my reason. I — I’ve been waiting for some time. M. Poirot is quite right. I followed him in here. I had taken the pistol out of the drawer earlier. I stood beside him talking about the book — and I shot him. That was