The room had suddenly gone quite still. Only the muted noise of people shifting uncomfortably in their seats and the soft patter of a long-anticipated rain against the window disturbed the quiet. Finally, and again predictably, the silence was broken by Mrs. Dunning.
"I told you, Karl. There would be some sort of deviant sexual practice behind all of this. It's those boarding schools, you know. They are veritable breeding grounds of vice and corruption. I don't suppose they can help themselves, poor mites. Why, in the States, we would never ship our young-"
But even her husband, in his gentle way, seemed to have heard enough. "Do be quiet, Constance. That's not what he means at all. Is it, Inspector?"
"No, of course not. No, indeed it is not. The inflatable doll-shall we give her a name, Sir James? 'Alibi,' perhaps? Yes, well. Because this alibi doll was not in use for some irregular or perverted practice-at least, not in the usual sense of that term. Nor as part of an undergraduate prank, which kind of thing has gone on here for ages. 'She' was there as a placeholder for Lexy. Lexy, who had already been dead some long minutes. Lexy, whose mortal body already lay near the boathouse."
Sir James spluttered into speech. "You must be mad. Lexy and I had been divorced for years. All passion spent on my side, I assure you. Why, then, would I engage in such a preposterous performance as you are suggesting? In order to kill someone who meant nothing to me? You are mad, I say."
St. Just, whose eye seemed to be caught by something outside the window, did not reply immediately. When he turned, a look of the utmost exhaustion etched his handsome features. He said:
"She meant nothing to you, that is true. But what was new, what had changed, was that you finally meant nothing to her. She had at last outgrown her juvenile attachment to you. At last, she had dropped the torch she had carried for so long. Suddenly, she was no longer willing to do whatever you asked of her, in her desperate need to be loved and admired. Just as bad-for you-once her infatuation faded, she began taking a closer look at her financial affairs vis-a-vis you. More to the point, you took a closer look at those finances. The case had altered. And so she had to be killed."
James Bassett cast his eyes about the room, looking in vain for support. He only found wide-eyed incredulity. "You're mad," he repeated.
"At first I thought the fact you two were distant cousins played into this," said St. Just. "That there might be some family inheritance that could not be altered by the divorce. You know, some form of entailment, so common amongst the titled families. Or perhaps there was some stock you had held in common, once worthless, now worth millions. Her canny way with a portfolio-I thought that might have something to do with this. Perhaps you were jealous of what she'd done with her share? Perhaps there was an option due to expire and if she exercised that option, it could mean your ruin, because of some lingering loophole in the divorce papers?
"But no, we found nothing like that in going over your finances and legal filings, or hers. No business partnership in common, no lingering ties of family inheritance.
"Still, looking at the current situation from a different angle: Could it be that far from mooning about over James, as you were all used to seeing her do, Lexy had in fact chosen this weekend to finally dump him? She was moving on, and a lot of details she had been neglecting, she finally began paying attention to.
"Now, Sir James must have known this day would come, but in the past it hadn't mattered so much to him. It hadn't mattered at all, in fact. He had money; his wife had money. But one day he woke up to find his portfolio larded with one bad investment after another-as so many of us have done lately, albeit on a smaller scale, given the state of the economy. But in Sir James' case, these percentage losses amounted to enormous sums. So, the case had indeed altered. And about the same time, his wealthy ex-wife was cutting him loose-emotionally-at last."
St. Just turned to the topic of his speech.
"The tragedy, for you, Sir James, was that Lexy was over you. She was free of you. It was rather a final turn of the screw, wasn't it? Geraldo here was a fling, a symbol, if you like-she was at least trying to enjoy herself, choosing one of the world's best-known ladies' men to finally kick over the traces."
Geraldo acknowledged the compliment with a grave bow of his head. Even playboys, apparently, had standards of greatness.
"Well, that's a jolly interesting theory, Inspector," said Sir James. "I killed Lexy because I've had rather a bad run in the stock market? Who, as you say, has not watched their stocks plummet lately? You have no evidence of motive whatsoever. Really, what has this country come to?"
"I wonder that myself," said St. Just quietly, just a trace of menace in his voice. A wiser man would have paid attention to the menace.
"I have half a dozen witnesses or more who give me an alibi," Sir James ploughed ahead. "Doll, indeed. You'd be laughed out of court. Where's this doll then? Where's your evidence?"
"I'm so glad you asked," said St. Just. "We'll get to that in a minute. Right now, I'm talking about your motive. As I say, the divorce papers on file revealed nothing of interest. And I assumed that the success of your books, and one in particular, meant that any problems you may have had in recent years were mitigated-years your investments were performing badly, both yours and your wife's. Your wife, to whose money you've had frequent recourse nonetheless to maintain your extravagant way of life. One wonders how soon even India, devoted as she is, would have tired of propping you up?"
India looked away, but not quickly enough to hide a fleetingly guilty look. St. Just sighed. Again addressing Sir James, he said:
"'We were children together once,'" you said of Lexy. "That wasn't strictly true-Lexy was the child, you were several years older. But to a romantic like Lexy, old friendships meant everything. Everyone spoke of her dog-like devotion to you, but only one of you-the Reverend Otis-recognized that what was in her sad eyes was not love, nor even mourning for a lost love, but a sort of pity. Pity for you. She had stopped wanting you at last. She, I believe, had finally recognized the man you were."
"You believe." Sir James practically shouted his contempt. "I repeat, where's your proof?"
"And I'll repeat that I'm very glad you asked and I'll get to that in a minute. Now, what was strange about your finances was this: About the time the money should have begun to roll in from your book, with talk of its being made into a film and so on, the money just continued to roll out. That could have been explained by a delay in paying the royalties-I understand publishers wait to see the level of returns on a book before issuing a cheque to its author. All right, that made sense, but where was the advance for this famous book? Oh, wait, that's right! The advance would have been paid years ago, because you sold the book to this publisher years ago. But…what about those royalty cheques? When might you expect to see some cash for your efforts-cash over and above the advance monies? Well, I'm happy to say that a call to your publisher set us straight."
St. Just's eyes narrowed, as if scanning a far horizon. He's going in for the kill, thought Sergeant Fear, fairly bristling with anticipation.
"We had a most pleasant chat today with someone in the accounting office of your publisher, didn't we, Sergeant Fear? I spoke with Mrs. Pennyfinger, a helpful and extremely competent woman who's been employed by your publisher for many years. She told me your now-famous book had been published and promptly 'sank without a trace'-her exact words. She told me you didn't even earn out your small advance. But then, some time later, the book developed a cult following on the Internet, a completely unforeseen circumstance. Well, not completely unforeseen, because the publisher had retained the rights to come out with a reprint of the book, which they promptly did. A large reprint, at that. And even that print run was not enough to meet demand, because the book was going to be made into a film now-the Reverend Otis knew about that from his reading of a newsletter about the publishing industry. How ironic for you: A book that met universally with seawalls of indifference suddenly becomes a bestseller.
"Now, you might all be thinking what a lucky man Sir James was, to have life breathed into his creation a second time. But here is where it got interesting. Mrs. Pennyfinger told the police that payment had started going out some months ago, but your name, Sir James, was not on the cheques issued by the publisher. Instead, the royalties were going to the person to whom lifetime rights had been legally assigned: your wife at the time, Lexy. Now known, of course, as Lexy Laurant.
"And who had made this momentous decision, and who had signed the paperwork? You yourself, Sir James."