John Dickson Carr - [Gideon Fell 09] by To Wake the Dead

Author:To Wake the Dead
Format: epub
Published: 2013-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

The Solution According to Fiction

A WINTER evening, when there is good food behind plate glass, money in the pocket, and a warmth of light to be seen on snow from inside, may be considered the best of all times for argument Christopher Kent, entering the Restaurant des Epicures in Lisle Street at seven o'clock that evening, was ready for all of them. It had been a long day—which, for him, only began when Hadley and Dr. Fell finished their questioning at the Royal Scarlet Hotel.

The most important business had been the establishing of his own alibi for the night before, and the cashing of a cheque to bring him to the surface again. The first was not difficult; the second enabled him to pour largesse on the clubmen at the coffee-stall who swore to it, and to redeem his suit-case from the landlady in Commercial Road, East. Once his alibi was beyond question, Superintendent Had¬ley became genial and almost talkative. Kent was accumu¬lating facts, facts, facts. He felt somewhat surprised at this: facts had never before been a great concern of his. But, relaxing under the ministrations of the barber, and spending a fine hour steaming in the Turkish baths at the Imperial, he began to tabulate the discoveries for refer-ence.

1. The writing-printing in red ink on the "quiet" sign, which might have been so promising a clue, ended in nothing. It was so much printing and so little writing that it

had to be classified as the former; and could never be identified.

2.The two sets of finger-prints found in the room were his own and Jenny's. Since the room had been cleaned and dusted by the maid just before Jenny moved into it,

there were few old prints beyond smudges. Wrayburn, evidently by accident the first time and design the second, had left no prints at all.

3. Wrayburn was proved to have been speaking on the phone between midnight and three minutes past. Hadley, nothing if not thorough, set half a dozen persons to speak anonymously over the wire to Billings, the night-porter, and Billings had again identified Wrayburn's voice at once.

4. There was nothing wrong with the clocks, and no possibility of tampering with them. They were all electric clocks, with glass fronts which did not come off; all were operated on Greenwich time from a central switch. If Dan had seen the figure in uniform outside Jenny's door at two minutes past twelve, the time was exactly two min¬utes past twelve and no other.

5. Nothing, so far as could be ascertained, was missing from Jenny's possessions. Melitta Reaper went through them and said she was certain of this. There were several good pieces of costume jewellery in Jenny's trunk, in ad¬dition to £30 in notes in her handbag and travellers' cheques for £400 on the Capital Counties bank. But there was no silver or loose change whatever in her hand¬bag.

6. The batch of small folded cards, bearing the room-numbers of each guest, had in fact been handed to Dan.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.