Smallbone Deceased

The Crown, on the advice of its Law Officers, preferred only one charge against Miss Cornel; the murder of Marcus Smallbone. To this charge, despite the strongest persuasion of her advisers, Miss Cornel pleaded guilty. After a formal hearing, therefore, Mr. Justice Arbuthnot pronounced the sentence of death. It was then represented to the Home Secretary that although the available evidence as to the prisoner’s state of mind—her fanatical attachment to her late employer and the lack of any motive of personal gain in her crime—were not sufficient to support a plea of unbalance of mind, they might properly be considered in relation to the Crown’s prerogative of mercy. The Home Secretary, after due consideration, commuted the sentence to one of penal servitude for life.

On the day that he announced his decision, three conversations of interest took place.

II

“Did you ever think that Sergeant Cockerill might have done those murders?” asked Bohun.

“Originally, he was fairly high up on my list,” admitted Inspector Hazlerigg. “Why?”

“It’s academic now, of course. But he had a motive—much the same sort of motive as Miss Cornel had, actually. You knew he used to be Abel’s batman.”

“Yes. We’d dug down as far as that.”

“Did you know he was left-handed?”

“I most certainly did not,” said Hazlerigg, considerably startled. “Are you sure?”

“Perhaps left-handed is rather a strong way of putting it. I mean that he’s a man who does a two-handed job by holding the object in his right hand and making the movements with his left. A right-handed man usually does it the other way about.”

“When did you notice this?”

“I noticed it,” said Bohun, “when he came into my room on the Tuesday or the Wednesday—it was almost my first day in the office—and started mending a chair for me.”

“I see.”

“Then again, he had plenty of very good opportunities.”

“Quite so. Might I ask when you decided that he was not a murderer?”

“When I heard him sing,” said Bohun. “The fellow’s an artist. No one who sings Bach like that could kill a man with a piece of picture-wire. That’s a commercial, utilitarian way of killing. An artist would have too much respect for the beauty of the human neck. He might shoot a man in a fine frenzy, or stab him with a stiletto, or—you’re laughing at me.”

“Don’t stop,” said Hazlerigg. “It’s a pleasure to listen to you. You know, you’d get on famously with our modern school. Pickup is always lecturing me on their theories. They think that all detection should be a combination of analysis and hypnosis.”

“It’s all very well for you to laugh,” said Bohun crossly, “but if you think it’s nonsense, what were you doing at that concert? I saw you.”

“If you really want to know,” said Hazlerigg, “I was doing something which might have been done a good deal sooner. I was finding out how Sergeant Cockerill spent his Saturday mornings.”

“How he spent—”

“Yes. Did it never seem to you to be rather an odd arrangement that he should appear at the office for a few minutes at half-past nine or ten, then disappear for two or three hours, and turn up again at twelve-thirty. How did you suppose he spent the middle of the morning?”

“I don’t think I ever really gave it a thought,” said Bohun. “But I can see you’re longing to tell me. What did he do?”

“Well, as a matter of fact,” said Hazlerigg, “he used to rehearse. But I found there was a little more to it than that. One of his neighbours, who was also in the choir, used to give him a lift in his car, and wait for him afterwards and take him home. A Colonel Lincoln. A very respectable man and an unimpeachable witness. He used to park his car in New Square whilst Cockerill locked up. He says Cockerill never kept him waiting more than two minutes.”

“That sounds pretty conclusive,” agreed Bohun.

“I was fairly certain, even before that,” said Hazlerigg. “That was only corroboration. As I frequently said, the sheet anchor of my faith all along was the conviction that the same person must have done both killings. Now I agree that on the face of it Cockerill could quite easily have killed Smallbone. But he could never have killed Miss Chittering.”

“Well, do you know, it just occurred to me to wonder,” said Bohun. “It’s true that Mason, the porter, was with him when he was approaching the building—”