Christopher Quarles: College Professor and Master DetectiveBrebner, Percy James
General
Christopher Quarles: College Professor and Master Detective
Brebner, Percy James
College teachers -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories
"I thought a dog had helped, Wigan; that was my theory," said Quarles
as we went back to town. "I noted that a dog had trodden on the
polished skirting near the study sofa. Miss Wickham might have had a
dog, that is why I questioned the housemaid so closely to make sure
she entered the house quite alone. When we were brought in contact
with Marsh I suspected Mrs. Seligmann. Those glasses I wear sometimes
are curious, acting like opera-glasses, and they enabled me to see a
portrait of Mrs. Seligmann standing back on a corner table, and,
moreover, that it was signed. Marsh evidently knew her well; was in
love with her, perhaps, and she with him. My saying that he had first
been to River Mansions in the morning was guesswork, but by his not
denying it, the fact was established that the papers must have come
into his possession, or why should he have gone there? He must have
known that Miss Wickham usually went away on Saturday or Sunday and
did not return till late on Monday. I argued that Mrs. Seligmann might
have sent them, and that Marsh suspected this, hence his visit to Miss
Wickham to make certain. It may be true that he did not know she was
going to Seligmann on Saturday night, and if he heard from the porter
that she had left town on Saturday afternoon he would know that the
papers could not have come from her. He would hear from the porter
that she had returned in the small hours of Sunday morning, and when,
later in the day, he read of the murder he would not know what to
think. It is also possible, Wigan, that Seligmann expected his wife to
call for him that night. That their motor had broken down on the way
up to town makes it even probable. I went to Maidenhead to see if Mrs.
Seligmann had a dog, a savage brute who would attack at her command,
savage but small. The great brute in the yard did not fit my theory.
God knows I didn't suspect the real truth. Strange that I should have
felt that I was in a forest, stranger still that Zena should speak of
Pan. I don't explain, Wigan, I can't, but it has happened--a return of
the human to wild and awful atavism. She meant to kill, to rid herself
of the man who was in her way. The human in her used the stiletto or
hatpin, the animal in her used claws. She will be called mad, and so
she is in one sense, but not in another; nor was it murder in the true
sense of the word. The wild wolf does not murder; he kills because he
must. Even the dog recognized an enemy of whom he was afraid. The
beast was not ill, but cowed, and snapped at her as you heard the
chauffeur say. Had she had her way with me to-day, I should have
looked like poor Seligmann."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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