Sir Benjamin's mouth assumed a tight mysterious smile.
"Put it this way," he urged. "Did you actually see this murderer throw him over? Did you see him fall?"
"No, as a matter of fact, we didn't, Sir Benjamin," put in the rector, who evidently felt he had been neglected long enough. He looked thoughtful. `But then we wouldn't have, you know. It was very dark and raining hard, and the light was out. I am of the opinion that he could have been thrown over even while the light was on. You see… here's where the light was, on the table. The broad end of the lamp is here, meaning that the beam was directed on the safe. Six feet to the other side, where the balcony door is, and a person would have been in complete darkness.
The chief constable drew up his shoulders and stabbed one long finger into the palm of his head.
"What I am trying to establish, gentlemen, is this: There may have been a murderer. But that murderer did not necessarily creep in here, smash him over the head, and pitch him down to his death; I mean, there may not have been two people on the balcony at all…. What about a death-trap?"
"Ah!" muttered Dr. Fell, hunching his shouders. "Well―"
"You see, gentlemen," Sir Benjamin went on, turning to the others in an agony of verbal precision, "I mean — At least two Starberths have met their deaths off that balcony before this one. Now suppose there were something about that balcony — a mechanism — eh?"
Rampole turned his eyes towards the balcony door. Beyond the torn ivy he could see a low stone wall, balustraded, suggestive. The very room seemed to grow darker and more sinister.
"I know," he nodded. "Like the stories. I remember one I read when I was a kid, and it made a powerful impression on me. Something about a chair bolted to the floor in an the dark, the bed with the descending canopy, the piece of furniture with the poisoned needle in it, the clock that fires a bullet or sticks you with a knife, the gun inside the safe, the weight in the ceiling, the bed that exhales the deadly gas when the heat of your body warms it, and all the rest of 'em… probable or improbable. And I confess," said Dr. Fell, with relish, "that the more improbable they are, the better I like 'em. I have a simple melodramatic mind, gentlemen, and I would dearly love to believe you. Have you ever seen 'Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street'? You should. It was one of the original thriller plays, well known in the early eighteen-hundreds; all about a devilish barber's chair which dropped you into the cellar so that the barber could cut your throat at his leisure. But―"
"Hold on!" said Sir Benjamin irritably. "All this just means, then, that you think the notion is too far-fetched?"