XXXVIII

“There are bloodstains on the stairs,” said Carver, “and on the garden path outside. There is also the mark of car wheels which have evidently been backed from the lane where Lander usually kept his car, but beyond that, all trace is lost.”

He looked at Tab and Tab looked at him.

“What do you think?” asked Tab quietly.

“I am not putting my thoughts into words,” said the Inspector, “and I tell you honestly, Tab, that I’d rather have that confession of Lander’s⁠—wild and incoherent as it is⁠—than I’d have Lander himself.”

Dawn was breaking, and Ursula had come down to make them coffee, a silent but absorbed listener.

“It is perfectly certain that Lander came here,” said Carver. “He destroyed the telephone connection, he made an entrance by the window in the sitting-room, and he went upstairs. You heard nothing, Miss Ardfern?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “I am not a very light sleeper, but I am sure if there had been any kind of struggle outside my door, I should have heard.”

“It all depends on who controlled the struggle,” said Carver drily. “My own belief is⁠—however, that is nothing to do with the matter. There is the fact that Lander’s hat was found in the roadway, Lander came here, his car marks are distinguishable, and that Lander himself has gone. Turner heard nothing?”

“Nothing,” she said. “That isn’t remarkable; he sleeps at the back of the house, in a room opening from the kitchen. Does the confession tell you much?”

“A whole lot,” said Carver emphatically, “and with Tab’s explanation as to how the key was put back on the table, the thing is as clear as daylight. It seems that Lander has for years been planning to get his uncle’s money, and his scheme was hurried when he learnt⁠—probably from the old man’s lips when he was staying with him⁠—that Trasmere intended leaving his money away from the family. Whilst Rex Lander was a guest at Mayfield, he must have taken the revolver which was undoubtedly Trasmere’s property, and I have an idea that he took something else.”

“I can tell you what it was,” said Ursula quietly. “He took away with him some Mayfield notepaper.”

Tab looked at her in astonishment.

“Why should he do that, Ursula?”

She did not answer him at once, because here Carver interposed a question.

“How long have you known, Miss Ardfern, that Lander was the murderer of Jesse Trasmere?”

Tab expected her to say that she did not know it at all, and that the news had come in the nature of a shock. Instead:

“I knew he was the murderer the day that Tab told me about the will Mr. Trasmere had left.”

“But why?” asked Tab.

“Because,” said Ursula, “Mr. Trasmere could not read or write English!”

The full significance of the simple statement came more quickly to Carver than to Tab.

“I see. I’ve known the will was a fake all the time,” he said, “but I thought it was just a forgery, and that Lander had imitated the writing of the letters that used to come for him from the old man.”

“They never came from the old man, Mr. Lander wrote them himself,” said the girl. “I rather think he wrote them with the intention of establishing the authenticity of the signature when the will was discovered. He had guessed the old gentleman’s secret. Mr. Trasmere was very sensitive on the point. He used to complain that although he could write and read Chinese without any difficulty⁠—in fact, I have learnt since that he was scholarly in that direction⁠—he could not write two words of English. That is the principal explanation as to why he employed me for his secretary, and why he must have somebody upon whom he could place the utmost reliance, and on whom he had some sort of pull.”

“Do you mean to tell me that Rex was writing letters to himself?” asked Tab incredulously.

She nodded.

“There is no doubt at all,” she said. “When you told me Mr. Trasmere had left a will in his own handwriting, I nearly fainted. I knew then just what had happened, who was the murderer and why Mr. Trasmere had been murdered.”

Carver rubbed his unshaven chin.

“I wish I could find Lander,” he said half to himself.

“How long did Rex have this idea?”

Tab broke the silence which followed.

“For years, ever since⁠—” he hesitated.

“Ever since he first saw me?” said the girl miserably.

“Before then. There was another lady upon whom he set his heart,” replied Carver. “Lander, as I say, had to hurry up his scheme when he found that the money was going to be left away. He was only waiting his opportunity. The plan had been completed to the smallest detail. He had practiced with the key trick assiduously, and he decided to put the plan into operation on the day the murder was committed. He knew that his uncle generally spent his Saturday afternoons in the vault, that the doors leading to the vault would be open. His first job was to get rid of the servant. By some means he discovered that Walters was a crook: I have an idea that there was a time when Lander was an industrious student of crime, and I seem to remember somebody telling me that he used to spend hours at the Megaphone library and made himself very unpopular in consequence.”

Tab nodded.

“That is where he might have become acquainted with Walters, or Felling, though I am not going to dogmatise on the subject. It is sufficient that he found that Walters was a convicted thief, and that on the afternoon of the murder he sent a telegram (which I have been able to trace) to Walters, telling him the police were coming for him at three. From the moment he saw that telegram delivered, and he must have been watching, to the moment that Walters left the house, Lander was somewhere handy. As soon as he saw the door opened, and Walters came out, he made his appearance. When Walters had gone, he went into the house, passed down the steps into the passage, and found, as he had expected, his uncle working at the table, probably checking some money that had come in during the week⁠—a favourite occupation of his. Without warning he shot the old man dead. Then, looking round for the key, he found that it was not, as he had expected, in the lock, but on the chain about Trasmere’s neck. He broke the chain and took out the key, which was bloodstained. He had a pin and thread ready which he fastened to the centre of the table, put the other end through the keyhole after threading the key, pulled the door to, locked it, and drew on the slack in exactly the same way as you saw and described, Tab.

“I noticed one little bloodstain near the bottom of the door when I first inspected the cell, but could not make head or tail of it. Nor could I understand the appearance of a tiny piece of grit in the ward of the key. Both these mysteries have been solved. When the key was back on the table, he pulled out the pin, removed it from the cotton, which he put back in his pocket, and by some mischance, dropped the pin in the passageway.”

There was another long pause, and then:

“Where is he now?” asked Carver irritably.

The only man who could have supplied him with exact information was at that moment sleeping peacefully on a hard and narrow bed.