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“I beg your pardon?” York said at last. Then, as Monk drew in his breath to repeat his words, York held up his hand. “No-no, that is not necessary. I heard you. I just failed for a moment to believe my ears. If this is some elaborate trick, Mr. Monk”-he dropped the courtesy of using his rank-“then I shall hold you in contempt of court.”
At last Brancaster stepped in. “Perhaps, my lord, it would be best if Commander Monk were to tell us, as briefly as possible, exactly what the evidence was, so the jurors may interpret it for themselves?”
York had no possible course but to agree. He did so reluctantly.
“Proceed. But if you stray off the point I shall stop you and rule you out of order. Do you understand?”
“Yes, my lord,” Monk swallowed his dislike and turned back to face Brancaster. He must recount this in exactly the right sequence, or York would stop him before he reached the end. He considered for a moment leaving Hester out of the account, because he could not give any good reason why she should have been there, but being caught in any kind of evasion would be dangerous.
“I took my wife with me when I went to Abel Taft’s home,” he said straightaway. “I knew the search would be faster with two people, and her medical skill might prove useful if we discovered anything unusual. Also a woman can read the meaning in certain domestic arrangements that a man might miss.”
“And did you discover such things?” Brancaster said swiftly, to forestall any interruption from York, or even Wystan, although Wystan seemed as interested as the jurors, who were grasping every word.
“Very little,” Monk replied. “What we did find dismissed everything else from thought.”
“Money?” Brancaster asked innocently.
“Paintings,” Monk answered. “Framed so as to conceal the artists’ signatures. Experts are examining them now, but there seems to be a very considerable collection of good paintings disguised as copies. Their value, if authentic, would be enough to live on, more than comfortably, for thirty or forty years if sold judiciously over time.”
“Does the value about equal the money that has not been accounted for?” Brancaster questioned.
Wystan stood up. “While this theft was well detected on Commander Monk’s part, my lord, it is a long way short of murder. Unless he is somehow suggesting that Taft killed his wife over the paintings? I don’t see any evidence whatsoever to indicate such a thing.”
“Your point is well taken,” York replied. “If that were so, it might relieve Rathbone of the moral guilt of causing the Taft family’s deaths, although even that seems to be questionable. You are not advancing your case, Mr. Brancaster.” He smiled thinly, a faint, bitter satisfaction.
Brancaster’s cheeks colored with anger. “My lord,” he said between his teeth. “If we might allow Commander Monk to complete the account of what he found …”
“Then get on with it!” York snapped. “You are trying the court’s patience.”
Without replying to him Brancaster made a small gesture with his hands, inviting Monk to continue.
“One of the larger paintings, an almost life-size portrait of a man, swung away from the wall in the upstairs study,” he said a trifle too quickly. “Behind it was a panel that, when pushed in, revealed a space containing a ladder up into the attic …”
The gallery rustled. Every juror leaned forward. Even Wystan turned in his seat to stare at Monk more intently.
Monk bit his lip to stop himself from smiling. “Naturally I went up, and my wife came with me. We found ourselves in a large space with a few of the things we would expect to see-empty boxes, a trunk or two. It was the second, smaller room that mattered. There was a door into it, and as soon as we opened that, we saw the contraption.”
There was not a sound in the entire courtroom.
“Contraption?” Brancaster asked huskily.
“A pistol on a table held steady by two weights. Tied to its trigger was a wire, which passed through a ring in the ceiling, and was attached at the other end to a tin can with a very small hole in the bottom,” Monk explained. “It is difficult to describe it so as to make its purpose clear, but the moment we saw it we understood. It was a device created so that as the water dripped out of the can, the can became lighter, slowly rising to the point where the cord went slack, thus releasing the trigger and firing the gun. The can was empty when we arrived, and we found the bullet in the far wall. The water that had dripped out had been caught by a container beneath the can, and had evaporated. And the window was wedged open.”
Brancaster affected confusion. He shook his head fractionally.
“Are you saying that Taft arranged this extraordinary piece of machinery to shoot himself?”
“No, sir. As the medical examiner would testify, it seems Mr. Taft and his entire family were already dead, possibly for a couple of hours, when this gun went off. Because the window was open the sound of it could be heard by the neighbors, whose houses were approximately fifty feet away. The purpose of the shot was to establish the time of Mr. Taft’s death-wrongly.”
“I see!” Brancaster’s face lit up. “So it was to mislead the police as to the time of Taft’s death, presumably so whoever killed him could prove that he was elsewhere at that precise moment?”
“Exactly,” Monk agreed. “The police are now considering it to be murder of all four members of the family, Taft himself included.”
There were gasps from almost everyone in the court, even several of the jurors.
Brancaster cleared his throat.
“And whom do they suspect, Commander Monk?”
