The Weight of the Evidence Read Free Page A

that, on the present showing, simple accident is no more than a faint theoretical possibility.’
    ‘In other words: murder. Someone got this meteorite up to the store-room at the top of the tower, waited until Pluckrose was in position below, and then tipped it out of the window.’
    Appleby nodded. ‘Say it looks like murder. And now comes something odd. Actually there are – I think you said four?’
    ‘Four.’
    ‘There are four of these store-rooms, one on top of another. And, although not much used, the clerk of works and the head porter check through them once a year. They last did this, as it happens, about three weeks ago. And there was no meteorite. Nothing odd in that. But what is a trifle queer is that there was quite a number of things which would have served equally well. For instance, in the uppermost room but one there was a small steel safe and two deed boxes and a stone cannon-ball and a cast-iron sink. And a dozen miniature reinforced-concrete pillars used by people who study something called the Strength of Materials.’
    Hobhouse puffed tobacco smoke approvingly. ‘Very nice, Mr Appleby. A good memory is the most important thing a detective officer can have, if you ask me.’
    ‘Umph,’ said Appleby.
    ‘Well, it may be different in London, I don’t know. But you’ve got to the queer part now, all right. There was no need to haul up this meteorite affair at all. Any of those things lying around would have served. The meteorite was a mere wanton freak, like. You agree, sir?’ Hobhouse’s glance was swift and shrewd.
    ‘Dear me, no. That’s to be in altogether too much of a hurry – lager or no lager.’ Appleby frowned absently at a clout-clutching, sharp-nosed Aphrodite across the room. ‘Perhaps there was little premeditation and the fellow didn’t go up and make an inspection first. He just bundled himself and the meteorite into the hoist, knowing nothing of the safe and the sink and what-not. Or, again, we may be going astray through thinking of quite the wrong type of person. You agree?’
    Hobhouse shook a tolerant head. ‘Now, now, there’s no call to go trying to catch each other out. I don’t follow you, I freely admit.’
    ‘The meteorite didn’t come straight from space. We know that because it was cold and because it shows faint traces of vegetable growth – a lichen or something of the sort. Now, the sort of person we tend to have in mind as the criminal – a scholar or scientist – would at once understand the conclusiveness of evidence of this sort. So, with a little reflection, would ordinary educated people like ourselves. But an uneducated man? Might he not believe that by possessing himself of, and using, this meteorite he was cunningly contriving an almost conclusive appearance of simple misadventure? Might he not, in fact, believe that he was constructing the most irrefrangible of alibis? For no man can be accused of loitering suspiciously in the neighbourhood of Mars or Saturn.’
    Hobhouse chuckled. ‘Nor of Venus, for that matter – in just that sense.’ He put down his pipe. ‘You’ve hit on a very important notion there,’ he added soberly.
    ‘Possibly – or possibly there may be nothing in it. And now consider the topographical layout of the affair.’ Appleby looked at the plan. ‘What’s this thing in the middle of the Wool Court – an aspidistra?’
    ‘A coconut palm,’ said Hobhouse solemnly.
    ‘Rubbish.’
    ‘Actually it’s a fountain. To me, it gives a distinctly watery effect. But I dare say leafy might be applied to it too.’ Hobhouse, now on very good terms with the officer from London, chuckled comfortably. ‘And these things in the angle of the wall are deck-chairs.’
    ‘Indisputably. What we have, then, is a corner of the ground floor of the main building. It’s like a fat L turned the wrong way round. On the inner side of this is a thin L which represents a corridor. And inside that, again, is the Wool Court and its