Epilogue

[Admin]

Oh, most lame and impotent conclusion! —Othello

“COME in.”

Appleby spoke the words not by way of summons but as the beginning of an explanation. It was after breakfast, and everybody was in the library. Even Rushout and Moody were present---their arrival at Urchins having been hastened by a telephone call.

“Come in. Almost as soon as I heard the words, of course, I ought to have begun wondering what Lewis Packford was up to. For consider. His summer-house presented simply a blank wall on the side by which I approached it. So he couldn’t possibly have spotted me---and indeed when I walked in he was clearly completely surprised. He assured me moreover that he was quite out of contact with either Englishmen or English women. No doubt one might argue that, hearing a knock on a door, a man will instinctively call out in his own language. But that simply wouldn’t be true in the particular circumstances of the case. Packford had fluent Italian, and he had been settled there at Garda for a good part of the summer. So you may put it this way. What would the reasonable inference have been if Packford had called out Herein?”

There was a moment’s silence in the library, and then Edward Packford spoke a shade impatiently. “One could be pretty sure that he was expecting a German, of course.”

“Precisely. His calling out in English was, admittedly, not so completely definitive as that. But at least it suggests a strong probability that your brother was expecting a visit from an Englishman.”

“Or from an American.” Limbrick, who had taken up a position from which he could glower offensively at Moody, made this suggestion with animus.

“Quite so. And Packford was certainly expecting somebody. Once or twice he looked at his watch in a way that wasn’t wholly civil; and when I left him he was hurrying back to that summer-house like a man with an appointment. Thinking it over afterwards, I came to the conclusion that he had agreed to meet somebody quietly there either before one evening hour or after another one. That happened to make it possible for him to give me dinner at tolerable leisure---and to produce quite a lot of talk which later events have shown to be highly significant in itself. But even while talking he was distrait at times. So I didn’t find it difficult to accept Room’s later suggestion that I had chanced to pay my call on Packford on the very evening that something extremely important was happening.” Appleby paused. “In fact Room’s suggestion fitted in with my own sense of the whole incident. What was later to puzzle me a good deal was why Room made it.”

“Puzzling conduct,” Ruth Packford said, “appears to have been Mr. Room’s forte. That, and howling bad taste. Whether he was a rascal or not, I don’t know---and I don’t greatly care. But to make his death a kind of grotesque echo of Lewis’s was disgusting.”

Alice nodded approvingly. “I quite agree with that, I must say. Leaving the same message---about the long farewell, I mean---was in bad taste. It wasn’t a thing a gentleman would do.”

“I suppose,” Edward Packford asked, “that the handwriting will prove to be authentically Room’s?”

“I’m quite sure it will.” Appleby spoke with authority. “He had been annotating some legal documents, so I’ve been able to make a comparison. Room wrote the scrawl we found last night.”

“Echoing what my brother wrote?”

Appleby shook his head. “Your brother never wrote anything of the sort. Both these messages were written by Room.”

+++

There was a baffled silence. And it was Ruth’s mind which first got to work effectively on Appleby’s announcement. “In other words,” she said, “Lewis was never by way of saying farewell to anybody or anything?”

“Precisely. I had to consider, of course, the possibility that he had been killed immediately after writing something merely designed to announce that he was solving his difficult matrimonial situation---if that’s the right word for it---by packing up and clearing out. The suitcase which turned up in his car seemed for a time to support that interpretation. But the suitcase was Alice’s work. I am inclined to think that, during the period of total loss of memory which she has described, she visited Packford in this room and suggested flight, Then, still in the same dissociated state, she packed a suitcase for him and hid it in his car, together with a little travelling case of her own. I’ve already explained this hypothesis to Alice, and she doesn’t disagree with it. All this, of course, wasn’t a confusion upon which Room could have been reckoning at all. But it was otherwise with the simple arrival of the two ladies at Urchins and the crisis which that produced. Room certainly engineered that. It was an essential part of his plan. Or rather it was an essential part of one of his plans. For he had a great belief in keeping things flexible. It was a trait which emerged in my first conversation with him. You might call it his Napoleon complex. That in turn was a reflex of his vanity. And these elements are at the heart of the case.”

“Are we to understand, then,” Canon Rixon asked, “that this unfortunate solicitor was throughout prosecuting some criminal design? This is shocking, indeed.”

“You are to understand, for a start, that he planned an elaborate, foolish and conceited hoax.”

“A hoax?” Edward Packford’s voice was sharp, and he had swung round on Appleby. “Just what do you mean by that?”

“You will understand what I mean presently. And it is better, I think, to speak of a hoax than of a fraud---at least in the first instance. But let me go back to Garda. I left your brother, so to speak, expecting an English visitor---and concealing the fact of that expectation from a casual caller in the person of myself. Well, yesterday I discovered---and in rather an odd way—that that English visitor had almost certainly been Room himself. You will agree, I think, that your brother had rather a simple sense of humour, and was moreover fond of repeating his little jokes?”

Edward nodded. “Perfectly true.”

“When I called on him, he happened to remark upon the decoration of his summer-house. There were wall-paintings of a somewhat insipid erotic cast. He referred to them as amorous shrimps, and added that there was no vice in them. When I happened, in this connection, to repeat the phrase ‘amorous shrimps’ to Room, Room at once, in speaking of your brother, used the phrase ‘no vice in him’ to me. The associative link was unmistakable. Room too had heard that joke from your brother in the summer-house. But Room had implicitly denied ever having visited your brother at Garda. He had simply corresponded with him, and arranged for the transfer of £1000—the sum required, according to Room’s story, to buy some valuable book or document from an impoverished nobleman of Verona. It became clear to me that this impoverished nobleman was moonshine. Room had invented him; and had persuaded your brother that he, Room, was acting as an intermediary in delicate negotiations.”

There was silence again---oddly broken by a burst of rather harsh laughter from Rushout. “Is this leading up to the proposition that the supposed annotations by Shakespeare in that Ecatommiti are a fake---a forgery?”

“Certainly it is. Room was a bit of a scholar and a bit of a palaeographer. And Lewis Packford---Mr. Packford here has told me---used rather to laugh at Room’s pretentions, and indeed to make fun of him generally. With a man of Room’s temperament, that was a dangerous thing to do. And Room furthermore possessed a dangerous accomplishment: he had made himself into a brilliant forger. Not, of course, of his clients’ signatures on cheques, or anything of that sort; but simply in the field of literary and antiquarian investigation. The history of scholarship is oddly full of that sort of thing; and there are all degrees of the impulse. The learned joke about Bogdown, if I may venture to say so, is a sort of first-cousin to it.”

Canon Rixon raided a mildly protesting hand at this. “My dear Sir John, I consider that remark to be contentious. But proceed.”

“Room, then, determined on a shattering hoax at Packford’s expense. On the one hand, he counted on his own quite exceptional skill; and on the other, on what may be called a sanguine streak in his proposed victim. He told me that he regarded Packford as credulous. Even so, his proposed deception was a great gamble. But then he admired gambles. He told me that too. And he particularly admired the gambler who will double his stake at a crisis. The relevance of that will appear a little later.”

+++

Appleby paused to look round his auditory. With the exception of Alice, who had clearly given up trying to grasp what it was all about, they were as attentive as any actor or lecturer could wish. Moody, who had perhaps been hurried over his breakfast, was covertly swallowing one of Dr. Cahoon’s pills. But nobody else moved.

“The hoax might have worked. As we all now know, Packford went so far as to write a letter to Professor Rushout, stating his conviction that he had found an incomparably important body of marginalia by Shakespeare. And he dropped various hints about it to other people now in this library. The time had come for Room to disclose the truth, and set the whole learned world laughing at Lewis Packford’s gullibility. Unfortunately Room had, at quite an early stage, allowed himself one of those swift changes of plan he was so proud of. He had admitted a simple profit motive into his enterprise, and collected from his victim a large sum of money---ostensibly to hand over to the impoverished Veronese nobleman. This, when you come to think of it, was really a hopeless and pitiable muddle at the start. For it would only be for so long as the authenticity of the marginalia went virtually unquestioned that there would be no danger of investigations which would ultimately expose the whole Veronese story as a fraud. Room could, of course, have handed back the £1000 at the moment of exploding his hoax. But clearly he didn’t want to. So he thought again, and changed his strategy once more.”

Again Appleby paused, and again for a moment nobody moved. But then Limbrick struck a match and lit a cigarette. “I can’t see,” he said easily, “that you aren’t possibly making all this up. About the spuriousness, I mean, of the marginalia in the Ecatommiti. Let us admit that Room was in Italy. But he may genuinely have been acting as a go-between, in relation to a genuine nobleman owning a genuine Shakespearian treasure. So far, you have been importing the notion of forgery simply on the strength of your own reading of Room’s character.”

Appleby nodded. “There’s some truth in that. If I were a barrister, presenting this material in court, I should have to begin by ordering my entire material much more carefully. As it is. I’m assuming things that can only appear incontestable a little later on, when the rest of the evidence is fitted into place. You’ll find that’s to say, that matters to which I shall presently come are not reconcilable with the assumption that the marginalia are genuine.”

At this Rushout took it upon himself to nod judiciously. “So far,” he said, “your case at least possesses what I’d call internal coherence. And I’m prepared myself to believe the damned stuff is bogus. If only”---he sighed---“because it’s too good to be true.”

“Very well. And I’ve now come to a point at which Room, as I conceive the matter, began to evolve a really formidable battery of alternative plans. He had found out about the embarrassing matrimonial dilemma which his client and victim had fallen into. Mr. Packford here had advised his brother to take legal advice, and so Lewis Packford had told Room the story. Room’s instinct would be to exploit it in some way. And in one set of eventualities, he saw, a descent by the ladies upon Urchins might afford a useful element of confusion. So he communicated with them anonymously, and saw to it that they presented themselves here virtually simultaneously. He himself came down to Urchins at the same time.”

Edward Packford raised his head at this. “Did he? We certainly knew nothing about it.”

“I understand that it was your brother’s invariable habit to spend an hour or two alone in this library before going to bed. Room had no need to announce himself. On a summer evening, he could simply walk in by the french window. And that is what he did.”

“Intending murder?”

“Almost certainly not. Indeed, I’m not positively certain that he intended to confront your brother at all. It seems to me conceivable that he simply intended to slip into the house and conceal himself. The plan at this time in the forefront of his mind was probably theft. And that is where Mr. Moody comes in.

“Huh?” This was the first sound that Moody had uttered.

“The position, remember, was this. Lewis Packford had possessed himself of these supposed marginalia by Shakespeare. He had informed Professor Rushout about them, and he had dropped hints to other people. Packford, of course, was a great name in this particular field of learning, and his opinion would carry much weight. When, however, the marginalia were eventually given to the world, they would almost certainly be questioned, debated and eventually exposed. That was no longer what Room desired, or looked forward to as other than thoroughly inconvenient. Rut if he could possess himself of the Cintio again---steal it, in fact---he could dispose of it to that sort of collector who doesn’t object to clandestine acquisitions, and who indeed has rather a fancy for them. Mr. Moody certainly falls into that category. He has a fancy for possessing remarkable things that nobody knows about. He told me so himself. Isn’t that right, Mr. Moody?”

Moody considered this question sombrely for a moment. “Huh,” he said.

“Quite so. And let us notice that Mr. Moody would be paying a substantial sum for the marginalia on the strength of the conviction which Lewis Packford had arrived at about it, while at the same time being unable, in the nature of the case, to call in further expert opinion by way of corroboration. Room, then, had a lot to gain by simply walking off with the Cintio if he could lay his hands on it.”

Professor Prodger, who had for some time given the appearance of slumbering within the recesses of his venerable beard, was prompted to speech by this. “But that mightn’t be easy---eh? That mightn’t be easy, at all. Even if he had the advantage of knowing the precise book he was looking for. Am I right, Rixon? Limbrick, would you agree with me?”

Appleby nodded. “That is obviously true. And there is no doubt that Room did in fact have an interview with Lewis Packford here in the library. And there is equally little doubt that Packford produced the Cintio. Room’s simplest way of finding out where it was kept would be to contrive this. Unfortunately he found out something else as well. Perhaps you can guess what that was.”

“That Lewis knew the truth, after all?” It was Ruth Packford who asked this. She had been following Appleby with absolute concentration.

“Certainly that he knew a great deal of the truth. Your husband, that is to say, had detected the fact of forgery. He had done so, it may be, only within the preceding few hours; and without doubt he had, so far, communicated his discovery to no one. There seems a high probability that Room had underestimated his victim’s intelligence right from the start. Packford had indeed been bowled over by the magnitude of the supposed find, so that for a time his critical faculties were in abeyance. But from the first I believe that doubts and suspicions were gnawing at his mind---even without his being at all consciously aware of it. The drift of our conversation at Garda seems to me highly significant now. He talked about the technique of literary forgery---old paper, a chemically correct ink and so forth---and also about its psychology: forgery sometimes starting as a joke, gratifying an impulse to laugh up one’s sleeve, being particularly attractive to those who have reason to suppose themselves patronised or looked down upon. Very obscurely, in fact, his mind was groping after the basis of the whole deception which was being launched against him at that very moment. And now some more minute study of his find had flashed on him the truth that it was spurious.”

“And you think,” Ruth asked, “that he taxed Room there and then?”

“No, I don’t. I think his first supposition was that both he and Room had been equally the victims of an imposture. But you see the crisis with which Room suddenly found himself confronted. Once Packford had communicated his revised opinion to Professor Rushout, or anybody of the sort, the Cintio would become virtually valueless. So there was no point in stealing it. And, whether he stole it or not, Lewis Packford would certainly conduct an investigation as a consequence of which he himself could scarcely escape exposure. Nor would he then be able to plead that he had been devising a harmless and even salutary hoax. For the cold fact would be that he had fabricated a false document, invented a false provenance for it, and sold it for a large sum of money. Things were turning very awkward for him. It was incumbent upon him, therefore, to bring one of his reserve plans into operation. Fortunately he had---or believed himself to have---a Napoleonic genius in that direction.”

+++

“And so,” Edward Packford asked, “we come to murder?”

“And so we come to murder---and to a little more forgery. It is obvious that, if your brother died there and then, with the fact of his final discovery of the spuriousness of the marginalia undisclosed, Room could still do very well. He could walk off with the Cintio, just as he had already proposed. Later, Professor Rushout would certainly make public the fact that Packford had believed himself to be in possession of important Shakespeare marginalia; there would be a vain hunt for the missing volume; and Room would have something pleasingly notorious to peddle to Mr. Moody on the quiet.”

“Huh.”

“And already the way was paved for this alternative operation. Acute domestic embarrassment had been, so to speak, dumped on the doorstep of Urchins that very afternoon. If Lewis Packford was given the appearance of committing suicide there and then, there would be a ready-made motive. So Room shot him, and scrawled that note. He had, of course, put in a lot of time perfecting his command of Packford’s handwriting. I think it likely that he was ingenious enough to use a particularly slow-drying ink---in the hope that the first person brought to the spot by the shot would notice this apparently incontestable piece of additional evidence.”

There was a scrape of a match as Limbrick lit another cigarette. “And this,” he said, “is the point at which your whole case. Sir John, turns to sheer nonsense. You say that Room committed murder and ingeniously disguised it as suicide. But everybody knows that he was later virtually the only person to declare that it was murder. Do you maintain that he was simply putting up a crazy double bluff?”

Appleby shook his head. “Not quite that. The Napoleonic change of plan had a fatal attraction for Room simply, one may say, for its own sake. It cropped up in his conversation in a way that clearly indicated an obsession. But there was, at the same time, a rational basis for this very hazardous second---or third--- thought, when he embarked upon it. And this again concerns our American friend, Mr. Moody, who has so kindly come along this morning.”

Limbrick blew out a cloud of cigarette-smoke. “Huh,” he said impudently.

“Huh?” Moody eyed Limbrick aggressively. Then, perhaps warned by some interior spasm, he reached for his pills again. “Huh,” he said.

“The point was this,” Appleby went on. “The Cintio had appeared obscurely, and it had been changing hands obscurely. If it had left in its wake, so to speak, nothing more serious than a suicide, Mr. Moody or some similar purchaser might have risked coming out into the open with it, after all. Once it was heard about, it would almost certainly be examined by experts, and the danger of its being proved a fake would be very real---so that once more Room might be booked for trouble. Murder is a different matter. Once any strong suspicion that Packford had been murdered got abroad---once it was known that the police were seriously pursuing the possibility, and so forth---then it would become a very dubious and dangerous possession indeed, and its new owner would almost certainly keep quiet about it. Hence Room’s new attitude. He lay in wait for me---I can now see---after Packford’s funeral, and began airing a theory of murder and robbery. Indeed he had already begun on that line with my colleague Cavill---expressing his conviction, for instance, that the message on the post-card was a forgery. Later he was to assure me that it was a brilliant forgery---which is a pretty enough instance of the operation of his very large conceit. And of course it was Room who got yesterday’s evening papers to turn Packford’s death into a sensation and reveal that I had come down to investigate. Perhaps he knew, by the time he did this, that Mr. Moody had actually arrived in England. And here, incidentally, we come to a yet more compelling reason for Room’s turning Packford’s death into murder. There’s just nothing that Mr. Moody likes better than that sort of thing. He has a remarkable collection of more or less blood-streaked relics. Isn’t that so, Mr. Moody?”

“Huh?” Moody considered for a moment, and then appeared to resolve on speech. “Sure,” he said.

“And the collection is growing all the time?”

“Sure. I can get those things when I want them. I can get most anything when I want it.”

“Exactly. That, if I may say so, is a most succinct statement of your position. And when you read in the English papers last night a lot of stuff about Lewis Packford’s having been murdered, you wanted his Cintio even more than you wanted it before?”

“Sure. That’s only sense, isn’t it?”

“Of course it is.” Appleby nodded with conviction. “In addition to all those scribblings by Shakespeare, the book would have this further associational interest. I believe that’s the term. And now we’re almost finished with Room. But not quite.”

Canon Rixon shook his head. “And, meantime, the wretched man is finished with us. I am bound to say I think it’s to his credit. The Archbishop would no doubt disagree with me. And of course theological considerations must not be ignored. Still, Room has, so to speak, taken himself off before a great deal of horrible degradation in courts of law. I admire his courage.”

Appleby was silent for a moment. “I at least admire his cleverness---and the less reluctantly, perhaps, because it was, in a last analysis, of such a crack-brained sort. One can’t, in my line of territory, afford to admire anything at all in a really tiptop and thoroughly capable criminal. But those on the lunatic fringe one can extend a little charity to, even when their cleverness has drawn them into horrible crime. But that’s by the way. I now come to the second stage of my investigation.”

+++

“You certainly seem disposed to give us good measure.” Edward Packford had risen to his feet and strolled to the window. Now he was surveying the whole company with a speculative eye. “There’s more to come? Something more lies behind Room’s taking the course he did?”

“What lies behind it,” Limbrick said, “is presumably the good Sir John’s chasing him up---chasing him up with what I myself would still describe as a wonderfully convincing fantasy. Perhaps Room judged it so convincing that he didn’t see much hope in the mere fact of its being a high-class policeman’s fairy-tale. And that would be too bad.”

Alice, who had continued mute during the further intricacies of Appleby’s exposition, was suddenly prompted to make a purely human remark. “All this would be a little less bad,” she said to Limbrick, “if you kept your bloody mouth shut.”

“I thoroughly agree.” Prodger sat up so suddenly that a couple of startled moths flew out of his beard. “Limbrick, having been humiliatingly exposed in reprehensible courses not many hours ago, ought in mere decency to be silent.” He turned to Alice. “Nor, my dear young woman, need you blush at so legitimate a use of the resources of the vulgar tongue. Sir John, proceed.”

“Thank you. Well, the final stage of the affair turns on the fact that Room liked, as he expressed it to me, to be ready for all eventualities. Even, apparently, for tolerably unlikely ones. He may have got wind of the fact that Mr. Moody---whose reputation and habits I discovered to be well known to him---was in this country. But when Room returned to Urchins yesterday with Packford’s will and so forth, he can surely have seen only a remote chance of Moody’s actually being here or in the neighbourhood. Nevertheless Room was prepared for that, as for other things. He brought two suit-cases with him.”

“So he did.” Ruth Packford nodded. “I noticed them when we collected him from the railway station.”

“Quite so. And you may have noticed something more. They were twin suit-cases.” Appleby smiled grimly. “And that is something which no Napoleon should provide himself with.”

“Do you mean, ” Rushout asked curiously, “because they can get muddled up?”

“Just that. But now I must say something about Mrs. Husbands. I see she isn’t here in the library, so I can begin with a well-deserved compliment. Amid all these alarms, the household over which she presides continues to run very smoothly.”

Rixon nodded emphatically. “I quite agree. If the cook, for example, has been discomposed at any time, the circumstance has never been allowed to impinge upon our host’s table. And that is truly admirable, we shall all agree.”

Appleby nodded. “It is more immediately relevant to my own argument, however, that the house-maiding seems to remain equally efficient. My own suit-case was unpacked for me in the most orthodox way. But Room’s was not.”

Edward Packford came back from the window and sat down again. “I’m afraid,” he said mildly, “that it’s too late to apologise to him. But is the circumstance highly relevant?”

“As it happens, it is. Yesterday evening, and by mere chance, I became aware of Mrs. Husbands coming out of what later revealed itself as Room’s bedroom. She came out as if anxious not to be seen doing so. That was rather odd. But much odder was the fact that she appeared to be in a state of shock, and even perhaps terror. I resolved to investigate the matter as soon as I had an opportunity. It was thus that I later came upon Room preparing to go to bed. I had a conversation with him, which I found interesting in several particulars. But much more interesting was something I simply saw as soon as I opened the door. Room was standing by one of his suit-cases, and fishing out a pair of pyjamas. Why hadn’t this job been done for him, as it had been done for me? There was an obvious answer. He had forgotten to unlock the suitcase containing his clothes. But this could scarcely in itself have had a shattering effect upon Mrs. Husbands, who had presumably been going round the house to see that everything of that sort had been attended to. There must be some other explanation. And that other explanation was clear. Room had failed to unlock the right suit-case simply because he had in fact unlocked the wrong one. It contents had been unpromising, and the housemaid had retired baffled. But Mrs. Husbands had investigated. And she had come upon something that completely shattered her. To put the point crudely, she did a little covert rummaging among Room’s possessions---and her action was the proximate cause of Room’s death.”

Edward Packford had stood up again. “It seems to me,” he said seriously, “that this is a very grave statement. If the matter is to be taken further now, I think Mrs. Husbands should be present. Shall I fetch her?”

For a fraction of a second Appleby hesitated. Then he nodded. “Yes, do,” he said.

Edward moved to the door. “I presume,” he asked, “that you have already had some talk with her about this queer development?”

“I had some talk with her very shortly after Room’s death.”

“And she admitted finding something shattering---I think that was your word---in the suit-case which Room had so rashly unlocked?”

“She did.”

Edward nodded. “She ought not have rummaged. I’m surprised at her. Still, if it helps to clear things up ---as you seem to think it does---nobody’s going to blame the lady. I’ll find her right away.”

Edward left the library, and there was a long silence. It was broken---rather nervously---by Rushout. “You say that Moody’s being here was an eventuality for which this unfortunate and bloody-minded solicitor had arrived prepared. And you have spun us this yarn about a right and a wrong suit-case. I take it he had brought the Cintio back with him? It was what Mrs. Husbands stumbled on?”

“He had certainly brought the Cintio back with him.” Appleby spoke out of what appeared to be a profound and sombre abstraction.

“Then I must say he had a nerve. He was proposing, if the opportunity offered, actually to do a deal with Moody here on the spot?”

“Just that. When I told him that Mr. Moody would be around in the morning. Room said very happily that in that case he’d make bold to stop at Urchins a little longer than he had intended to. He and Moody, he said, would certainly have a chat.” Appleby smiled faintly. “He was wrong about that.”

“I can only repeat: he had a nerve.”

There was a long, awkward silence. Then Appleby appeared to rouse himself. “A nerve? Well, yes. He drew my attention to the fact that the faking of a suicide for Lewis Packford had been a palpable false step, likely to direct investigation into a very narrow field: that of persons who could conceivably bring off the forgery on that postcard. Or words to that effect. He was a bold criminal, without a doubt.”

“Edward must be having difficulty in finding Mrs. Husbands.” Ruth spoke casually---but with one hand she was nervously tapping the arm of her chair.

“Yes,” Appleby said.

Limbrick made to light another cigarette, and then appeared to think better of it. Alice’s broadside had shaken him. Alice herself appeared to be uneasy---which was no doubt the reason why Canon Rixon had taken once more to a fatherly patting of her hand. Prodger was perhaps asleep. Moody was glancing about the library---warily, but at the same time with the assurance of a man who gets most anything he wants. And then the door opened and Mrs. Husbands came in.

She was alone. She shut the door behind her, and looked round the room. She was carrying a book in an ancient leather binding. She walked up to Ruth and put the book down on a table beside her. “Mr. Packford,” she said, in a strained voice, “asked me to give you this. He asked me to say that of course it is yours---and that he is sorry it isn’t worth much.”

Ruth glanced at the book, and then swiftly from Mrs. Husbands to Appleby. “But where is he?” she asked. “Where is Edward?”

Nobody had a reply. And then, in the instant’s silence, in some distant part of the house, there rang out a single pistol-shot.

Alice was the first to spring to her feet. “What is it?” she cried. “What was that?”

Appleby too rose. “I am afraid,” he said quietly, “that it is another long farewell. The last.”

+++

It was a couple of hours later, and Appleby and Ruth Packford were alone in the garden.

“You let him go and do it,” she said. “I think I admire that---taking the responsibility, I mean, of letting him go. But I suppose that, in a policeman, it wasn’t quite regular. You ought to have arrested him. And the endless horrors ought to have followed. Do they hang people nowadays? I forget.”

Appleby made no reply. They walked on. The morning was faintly autumnal, and already sycamore and chestnut leaves were falling on the fringes of the lawn. “I wonder,” Appleby said, “what happens to this place now? Is it all tied up, so that some distant Packford has to be found to take it over? Or does it come to you?”

“Room would know.” Ruth made a long pause. “Why did he kill Lewis? It was madness. It was an absurdity.”

“Yes, it was. And the only real answer is that he thought it clever. Of course he was going to make money out of Moody, and all that. But it was his own cleverness he was in love with.”

“And Edward?”

“He was devoted to Lewis. I remember, early on, a sudden fire in him when he said he wished he had been here when Lewis was killed. He meant that the mere intensity of his feeling would have directed him to be killed. And he said something even more revealing about his having a flair for summary justice. Or something of the sort. But one must realise---if one is to get the simple moral issues of this ghastly business straight---that Edward Packford committed precisely as grave a crime as Room. He fancied himself as an embodiment of justice. Or, if you prefer it, he fancied himself as a public executioner. He judged Room, and he put Room to death. Well, he had no business to. He was a murderer. He would have been a murderer, even if his motive hadn’t been, in actual fact, vitiated and corrupt.”

“You mean that Edward had a profit motive, as well as a notion of executing justice?”

“Certainly he had. He was going to kill two birds with one stone---and feather his own nest on the proceeds.” Appleby’s voice had an unwonted hardness. “He was lucky to be let blow his own brains out. And there’s an end to it.”

“Very well. There’s an end of it. But there are still things I don’t understand.”

“Not many, I imagine. You see, Room had with him in that second suit-case what you might call his whole bag of tricks. Mrs. Husbands may have seen the Cintio---but I doubt whether it would have conveyed much to her. What she certainly did see---as she admitted to me finally last night---was a notebook of Room’s. It contained, jotted down in his hand, a number of appropriate Shakespeare quotations which might have been useful as last messages. Mrs. Husbands opened the thing straight on Farewell, a long farewell. No wonder that she was staggered. She went straight to Edward and told him of her discovery. He went at once to Room’s bedroom and found not only the notebook but the Cintio. This, I believe, was while I was having some talk with Alice. When I subsequently saw Edward, he was a changed man. He had realised almost the whole truth about his brother’s death. And presently he was to glimpse a tremendous temptation.”

“The Cintio?”

“Yes. Remember that Urchins isn’t at all flourishing, and that he was left with the task of keeping it up without his brother’s purely personal fortune, which comes to you. It was an inconvenient sort of inheritance. The precise nature of the book---Cintio’s Ecatommiti with its marginalia---was real news to him; and he at once understood its value. He also knew about Moody, who would give an enormous sum for such a thing even if it had to remain an absolutely secret part of his collection. Moreover he felt---Edward felt---that justice required that he, Edward, should have it. Edward, as we have seen, was very strong on justice. It’s what’s killed him.”

Ruth shivered. “Yes,” she said, “I see that. But, you know, he’d only have had to ask me for the damned book. Wouldn’t he know that?”

“Apparently not. His case was---these were his own words to me---that you were entitled to anything you had a reasonable expectation of. And that didn’t include this enormously valuable discovery of his brother’s. So he avenged his brother and stole from him---or from you---in one and the same act. He killed Room, left on his table the ripped-out page from the notebook, and made off with the Ecatommiti. He still didn’t know, of course, that it was a forgery. And even when that disconcerting truth broke on him this morning, he still thought he was all right. It was only when he learnt I had got Mrs. Husbands’ story that he realised it was all up with him.”

Ruth shook her head. She looked dazed and weary. They turned back towards the house. “At least it’s over,” she said. “A ghastly story. Is there a moral to it?”

Appleby thought for a moment. “There’s no moral. There’s only a caution.”

“And that is?”

“When you’re in the middle of Italy, think twice when a voice calls ‘Come in.’ ”

THE END