Philip MacDonald – The Maze (страница 2)

PREFACE

I HAVE given this book the subtitle of ‘An Exercise in Detection’.

I have used the word ‘exercise’ deliberately; I mean it to be an exercise not only upon my part, but upon the part of any reader who may have the tenacity to get through it. In Parts Two, Three and Four of the book—the actual evidence of the witnesses upon the first time of their calling and the summing up of the Coroner—is contained all the information upon which Gethryn has to work. In other words, you, the reader, and he, the detective, are upon an equal footing. You know just as much as and no more than he knows. He knows just as much as and no more than you. He finds out: could you have found out without his help?

I should like to emphasise that although, for the sake of ‘balance’ and of avoiding tediousness, part of the evidence (that is, the re-examination and re-examination of the witnesses) has been omitted, none of this evidence was anything except repetitive. Gethryn, in fact, was not supplied with this repetitive evidence, as is shown by the note to him from Lucas. What Gethryn had is what you have. From what you have he made his deductions.

I have frequently been annoyed—as any reader of the analytical type of detective fiction must have been annoyed—by books in which the detective holds an unfair advantage over the reader in that he has opportunities which the reader cannot share. He may, for instance, in Chapter II ‘dash up to London and spend two hours there.’ And then the reader, not having been allowed to see what the detective did during those two hours in London, is at a disadvantage. Again, in Chapter XVII, the detective may suddenly, in a foully offhand and altogether offensive manner, ‘pick some small object off the ground’ which he puts in his waistcoat pocket and doesn’t say anything more about until Chapter XXIII, when it forms the basis upon which his whole case is founded. Again the reader has been subjected to the most dastardly unfair play!

In this book I have striven to be absolutely fair to the reader. There is nothing—nothing at all—for the detective that the reader has not had. More, the reader has had his information in exactly the same form as the detective—that is, the verbatim report of evidence and question.

This is a fair story. If you get the right answer—not merely a ‘guessed’ answer, but an answer for which you are prepared to put forward reasons—then you are as good at this job as A. R. Gethryn. If you don’t, you are not. In either case I think you should be satisfied—unless, of course, you find the whole business too impossibly easy, in which case you ought—if you are not indeed already one—to become a really big noise at Scotland Yard.

PHILIP MACDONALD

1932

PART ONE

LETTER DATED 14th JULY, 193– FROM ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER SIR EGBERT LUCAS, C.I.D., TO LIEUT.-COL. ANTHONY RUTHVEN GETHRYN

SCOTLAND YARD,

14th July, 193–

MY DEAR GETHRYN,

It is with a good deal of diffidence that I approach you, remembering our conversation before you left England for this holiday. You said that upon no account were you going to ‘inaugurate, contemplate or elucidate crime or any minor or major misdemeanours!’ You also said, I believe, that you were not going to read any English newspapers while you were out of England. Be that as it may, I am worrying you. I would like you to understand, however, that the fact that I am worrying you is due only partly to my own inclination. Charters himself, Pike and Jordan—and, this morning, even Bunter—have all brought pressure to bear upon me. I suggested to Charters that if he wanted to worry you he should do it himself. But he wasn’t having any. And so, as usual, I’m left to do the dirty work. It may be very pleasant to be the First Commissioner of Police. It’s certainly very pleasant to be an ordinary Police Constable. But who would be an Assistant Commissioner?

I feel that I’m taking an unconscionably long time to get down to brass tacks. That’s probably due to the fact that I’m dictating this letter and also to the fact that I’m nervous about its reception when I remember my promise to you of a few weeks back. However, here goes:

Since you’ve been away there has happened—near Kensington Gore of all unlikely places!—a case which is the most extraordinary within my fairly long experience and also, I am told, within the thirty-five years’ experience of old Jordan. Certainly in all my knowledge—official and private, actual and literary—there has never been anything quite like it.

In Kensington, on the night of the 11-12th July, a man was killed. He met his death, abiding by all the canons of the best ‘mystery fiction’ in his study. It is certain beyond all possibility of doubt that he was murdered. It also seems certain beyond all possibility of doubt that he met his death at the hands of a person who was, for the time being at least, resident beneath his roof. There were, besides the murdered man, ten people sleeping in the house on the night of his death. One of them must surely have done it! But it has proved quite impossible for us to fix upon this one person. This doesn’t look good for the police. Moreover, it is intensely annoying to any person of intelligence. Having been with the case since it began a few weeks ago—which seem like ten years—I can most earnestly vouch for this. I felt—and still feel—as I used to feel as a child when I went to Maskelyne and Cook’s. I can still feel the appalling, stifling, impotent irritation of the Irish peasant priest faced with the question: ‘If God is omnipotent, can He make a stone so heavy that He can’t lift it?’

What we want you to do is to look at the papers we have on the case and just see if you can spot anything which we may have overlooked. I think it is hopeless. But I also think—knowing you as I do—that the chance is worth taking even at the risk of drawing down upon myself a sulphurous rebuke.

I had originally intended to write this letter and ask your permission to send you the papers (verbatim report of inquest, etc.). On maturer thought, however, I have decided to enclose copies of these herewith, for it has struck me that your answer to a request as to whether one might send papers would be useless, whereas your reaction to a bundle of papers might well be one of sufficient curiosity at least to make you read them through. And if you do read them through I am convinced that the sheer complexity of an apparently simple business will decoy you into spending thought upon it—and that, after all, is what we really want.

With all my respects to your wife and admiration to your small son,

Yours very sincerely,

E. LUCAS

PART TWO

VERBATIM REPORT OF EVIDENCE GIVEN AT THE CORONER’S INQUEST HELD UPON THE BODY OF MAXWELL BRUNTON, DECEASED (1st DAY)

I

L.I. 84833 SERGEANT GEORGE CRAWLEY,

METROPOLITAN POLICE

WHAT is your full name?

George Crawley.

Now, will you please take the oath.

I swear by Almighty God that what I shall say in evidence in this Court shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

You are a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police Force?

Yes. L.I. 84833. Full-Sergeant George Crawley.

Would you please tell the Court, Sergeant, the circumstances under which you were called to 44 Rajah Gardens in the early morning of Thursday last, the twelfth of July.

I was going round the beats. I had just spoken to the constable in charge of the Baroness Gardens—Stukeley Road beat, and was walking on to my next point, going through the northern end of Rajah Gardens, when a man ran out of one of the houses and hailed me. Time 2.40 a.m. He told me he was a servant at Number 44, Mr Maxwell Brunton’s. He was agitated and made a rambling statement which I had some difficulty in following. He was dressed in a dressing gown and slippers. On the doorstep there was a gentleman in evening dress. He said he was Mr Brunton’s secretary, and he himself had just made the discovery that Mr Brunton was dead in his study. I asked to see the room, and this gentleman, Mr Harrison, said he would take me up. There were a number of the other inmates of the house gathered round in the hall. I asked them to stay where they were until sent for. I also sent the manservant, Jennings, to fetch the constable on the beat and told him to let me know when he arrived.

I then mounted the stairs with Mr Harrison, who took me to the deceased’s study. This is a room at the western side of the house. It is a room which has been built out over the area which lies below, beside the passage leading through from the street to the gardens belonging to the block. There is only one door to this study. This door faces you as you go down the corridor after turning left from the landing …

One moment, Sergeant. Have the police any plans of this house? Perhaps the jury might like to see them.

Yes, sir. One was put in with the other Police papers. I think it was marked Number 6 on the docket.