The Bradmoor Murder Read Free Page A

depended upon any movement of the man after the wound was made. The surgeons simply laughed at the idea.
    â€œHe could not have moved after the bullet struck him; and there he sat with his fishing tackle gripped in his hands. There could not have been anything else in his hands; and as I have said, there was no weapon.
    â€œI don’t think we omitted anything in our efforts to get at a solution of the mystery.
    â€œEverybody in the country about was put in inquisition. There had been no one in the neighborhood of the house on that afternoon. We knew the names of each person, and his mission, who traveled the road that afternoon. We knew every motor car that went over it, and every workman that walked along it. We knew where every man, woman and child in the community was that afternoon. There was simply no clew to an assassin.… And there was no explanation.”
    Sir Godfrey Simon’s eyes batted again.
    â€œExcept mine,” he said.
    Marquis laughed. “Or Dunn’s—the Stone God stumping down out of the mountain; or the old woman’s theory. The country accepted that. It was even more popular than the theory Sir Godfrey advances.
    â€œWe have had a variety of mysteries at Scotland Yard during my time as Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, and from Mayne’s time down; but the Mystery of the Letts, the Rising Sun postcard, or the affair of the Chinese Embassy were nothing to this.
    â€œIn every other mystery with which we have been concerned, there was always some possible explanation. One could make a hypothesis that did not outrage the human understanding; but one could not form a hypothesis in this case that did not outrage it.
    â€œNow, that is an appalling thing when you stop to think about it! The human mind is very clever, very ingenious. When you present a mysterious case, it will furnish you with some solution; but it can’t furnish a solution for this case.
    â€œArrange the facts before you, and try it!
    â€œA man is found dead in a locked room; there is no weapon; the fingers of both of his hands are gripped about objects that could have had nothing to do with his death. There is no way into, or out of, the room. There is a great, ragged hole in his chest. The sound of the shot is heard; and there you are.
    â€œIf you can formulate an explanation, you will be cleverer than the whole of England. There is nothing that the British public loves like a mystery; and when the details of one are given to them, every individual in the kingdom sits down to formulate an explanation. You can’t stop him—it’s an obsession. It’s like a puzzle. He goes on doggedly until he gets a solution. That’s the reason why, when Scotland Yard wishes to remove a mystery from public notice, it gives out a solution. The whole interest of the country lies in solving the mystery; once solved, it is forgotten.
    â€œBut even our best experts could not give out an explanation in this case; we wished to do so because we wished to keep the thing quietly in our hands until we could work it out. But we could not put out a solution; there wasn’t any!”
    He paused in the narrative, and selected acigarette from an open box on the table but did not at once light it.
    â€œWhen it became certain,” he went on, “that no assassin could be connected with this incomprehensible tragedy, we turned back upon the details of the only witness who was able to furnish us any fact whatsoever. But with every day’s delay, and with each complication of the matter, the old woman’s story had become more involved. It was so decked out with fanciful imaginings that it became difficult to realize that the whole extravaganza was pure fancy, outside of two evidences.
    â€œThese two evidences stood alone as the only concrete features in the case; one, that she had heard a sound, which could have been the explosion of a weapon; that she took it for the back-fire