Read Online The Problem of the Green Capsule by John Dickson Carr - Free Book Online

annoyed when the capsule was shoved into his mouth. It’s likely that his instructions to Emmet were to pretend to give him the pill, and he would pretend to swallow it. But the real murderer pushed it down his throat, that’s all. To avoid breaking up the show, Mr. Chesney didn’t make any audible protest.” Elliot shook his head. “And I’ll be very much surprised if in that list of questions he prepared we don’t find some such question as—‘How long did it take me to swallow the capsule?’ or the like.”
    Major Crow was impressed.
    “By Jove, that’s reasonable enough!” he admitted, with a gleam of relief. Then exasperation and bewilderment flooded out everything else. “But look here, Inspector—even so—to do that—my God, are we dealing with a lunatic?”
    “Looks like it, sir.”
    “Let’s face it,” said Major Crow. “A lunatic, or whatever fancy name we want to call it, from this house.”
    “Ah,” murmured Bostwick. “Go on!”
    The Chief Constable spoke mildly. “To begin with, how would an outsider know they were going to arrange an observation test here to-night? They didn’t know it themselves until dinner; and it’s unlikely that an outsider would have been hanging about these windows so conveniently afterwards to overhear what Chesney and Emmet were arranging. It’s even more unlikely that an outsider in dress trousers and evening shoes would be hanging about on the one particular night when they were going to dress for dinner. I admit none of this is conclusive; it’s only suggestive. But—you see the difficulty?”
    “I do,” returned Elliot grimly.
    “If somebody in this house did it, who could have done it? Joe Chesney was out on a case; if he didn’t leave the case until midnight, he’s certainly out of it. Wilbur Emmet was nearly killed by the real murderer. There’s nobody else except a couple of maids and a cook, who could hardly qualify. The only other alternative—yes, I know this sounds fantastic—but there’s only one other possibility. This would mean that the murderer was one of the three persons who were supposed to be watching the show in this room. It would mean that this person crept out of here in the dark, coshed poor Emmet, put on the clothes, gave Chesney a poisoned pill, and crept back in here before the lights went up.”
    “No, sir, it doesn’t sound likely,” agreed Elliot dryly.
    “But what else have we got?”
    Elliot did not reply.
    He knew that they must not theorise now. Until the postmortem, they could not even say with definiteness how Marcus Chesney had died, except that it had probably been by one of the cyanides in the prussic acid group. But the Chief Constable’s final possibility had already occurred to him.
    He looked round the Music Room. It was about fifteen feet square, panelled in grey picked out with gilt. The French windows were closed in with heavy velvet curtains of a dark grey colour. As for furniture, the room contained only the grand piano, the radio-gramophone, a tall Boule cabinet beside the door to the hall, four light arm-chairs upholstered in brocade, and two footstools. Thus the centre was comparatively clear; and a person—if he took care to avoid the grand piano by the windows—could cross the room in the dark without bumping into anything. The carpet, they had already seen, was so thick as to prevent any footstep being heard.
    “Yes,” said the Chief Constable. “Test it.”
    The electric switch was behind the Boule cabinet beside the door to the hall; Elliot pressed it down, and darkness descended like an extinguishing-cap. The lights had been so bright that a ghost-pattern of the electric candles in the chandelier still wove and shrank in front of Elliot’s eyes in the dark. Even with the curtains open, it was impossible to distinguish anything against the overcast sky outside. There was a faint rattle of rings as someone drew the curtains close.
    “I’m waving my hands,” came the Chief