Evil under the Moon

It was the 29^th of June 1927. Deep in the Devon countryside the Harcourt family were making the most of a pleasant sunny afternoon in the beautiful gardens of their ancestral home, Harcourt Manor. Suddenly everything went dark.

“What’s happening?”

“What is this? I can’t see anything.”

“It must be the solar eclipse!”

“No, that’s not due to happen for another hour.”

“I don’t understand what is going on. They said on the wireless that the solar eclipse wasn’t due to happen till 4pm.”

“But it is only just after 3. Those scientist chappies must have made a mistake.”

Suddenly there was a loud thud and a scream of pain.

“What was that?”

“Who’s there?”

“What’s happening?”

As the moon moved away from the sun gradually more light fell on the croquet lawn. The assembled group could see a body in the middle of the lawn. They knew at once that it was Lord Harcourt and could see that he had been hit over the head by a croquet mallet. None of the assembled party was a doctor but if any of them had been they would have been able to certify that Lord Harcourt would never play croquet again as he was now as dead as a dodo. But who had struck the fatal blow? And why did the eclipse happen an hour earlier than everyone expected?

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In the local police station Inspector Gough was enjoying a cup of tea as he completed the paperwork for a recent case of a missing cat. It had been one of the most tricky cases of his long career and had required all his detective skills to reach a satisfactory outcome.

Suddenly the phone rang. He answered it straightaway.

“Gough. Lord Harcourt dead? I will be there in 25 minutes.”

Gough picked up the special notebook he reserved for his most important cases and headed for the door. He knew this case would be even more difficult than the case of the missing cat.

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On arrival at Harcourt Manor the Inspector and his uniformed colleagues inspected the murder scene and carried out a search of the surrounding areas. They then gathered together the suspects in the library ready for them to be quizzed.

“Inspector,” said Lady Harcourt, “you surely can’t imagine that my husband was killed by one of the people in this room. Why on earth would one of his family want to murder him? It must have been an intruder and almost certainly a foreigner.”

“Lady Harcourt, I am most sorry for your loss,” replied the Inspector, “but it is my job to pursue every avenue in my search for the perpetrator of this heinous act. Did anybody see anything at all?”

“How could we, you utter fool?” interjected Lord Harcourt’s son, Milton. “It was pitch dark. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. Whatever wicked intruder carried out this awful crime must have been secreted in the rhododendrons waiting for his opportunity to strike. When the eclipse happened an hour earlier than expected he must have jumped out and done the deed. Rather than interrogating us you should be checking under the rhododendrons to find suspicious footprints.”

“Sir, my fellow officers and I have inspected all the ground under the rhododendrons but there were no footprints, suspicious or otherwise, anywhere to be found.”

“I don’t believe it!” said Milton. “Perhaps the intruder was hiding in the summer house and then dashed across the lawn as soon as it went dark.”

“Sir, we have also carefully examined all the ground between the summer house and the croquet lawn and there are no footprints and nothing else that suggests that an intruder committed this murder.

“In that case,” continued Milton, getting more and more worked up, "the intruder must have been submerged in the ornamental pond in the rose garden and then….”

“Darling,” interrupted Lady Harcourt, “you are forgetting that the rose garden is three quarters of a mile away and the pond has been drained for its annual cleaning.”

Inspector Gough was growing impatient.

“Enough. I need you all to think carefully. Who was on the croquet lawn when the eclipse happened?”

Lady Harcourt replied, “Myself, my son, Milton, and my daughter, Arabella, who you may have noticed is in a wheelchair and so could hardly have hit her own father over the head with a croquet mallet. Nobody else. Nobody else.”

“Oh mummy,” said, “why do you always assume that just because I am in a wheelchair that I couldn’t have murdered daddy? Even if I hadn’t managed to do it myself, I could have been working with an accomplice or I could have paid somebody to do it.”

“Oh do shut up darling!” snapped Lady Harcourt.

“So there was nobody else there? What about members of the staff?”

“Of course, a couple of the servants were nearby. Hudson, our butler, who has been with us for about 20 years. I would trust him with my life. And one of the parlour maids, either Daisy or Margaret. I can’t remember which one. I think it was the ugly one.”

“It was Daisy,” said Hudson, trying to be helpful as always.

“So Hudson,” asked the Inspector, “did you see anything suspicious this afternoon?”

“Inspector, I didn’t want to mention it to either Lord or Lady Harcourt because I didn’t want to worry them unnecessarily but we did have a very suspicious caller at the front door at about 2 o’clock. I think he was probably Italian. He asked me if I wanted to buy an antique salt and pepper set.”

“Did anybody else see this suspicious caller?” asked the Inspector but everyone shaked their heads.

Suddenly the grandfather clock struck 5 o’clock. Inspector Gough looked at his own watch. It was reading 6 o’clock. He thought for a moment and then had a quiet word in the ear of his police sergeant. The sergeant dashed out of the door.

“Ladies and gentlemen, while my sergeant is carrying out an important task I will need you all to show me your watches. I do apologise for the intrusion into your privacy but this is a vital part of our investigation.”

Within a few minutes the sergeant had returned. He caught the inspector’s eye and shook his head. The inspector looked round at the assembled suspects and then approached Hudson.

“So Hudson, can you explain to me why your wristwatch is showing a different time from every other clock and wristwatch in the building?”

“Well Inspector, I don’t know. I suppose my watch is running fast. That is why it is wrong. Yes, that must be it. That’s the explanation. There’s usually a simple explanation.”

“I put it to you that there is a very simple explanation. Every other clock and watch in this house is showing the wrong time because in the night somebody went round the house putting all the clocks back by one hour. That person wanted to take advantage of an eclipse happening before everyone was expecting it in order to cover up the terrible crime he was planning to commit. That person is the murderer of Lord Harcourt. And the only watch that the murderer did not need to change was his own. He needed to know the actual time so that he could take advantage of the eclipse.”

Everybody looked at Hudson. His lip was quivering and he was finding it hard to hold back the tears.

“And no doubt,” continued the Inspector, “we will find your fingerprints all over the murder-weapon.”

“No, I was wearing gloves. I just took that stupid croquet mallet and bashed him over the head as hard as I could. I thought it was the perfect crime. But I just made one stupid mistake.”

“But Hudson,” asked Lady Harcourt, “why? Why on earth did you do this awful deed?”

“He had it coming to him. Almost ten years I’ve been working for him at his beck and call, night and day slaving away never once being offered a raise or any time off. As soon as I heard about this solar eclipse on the wireless I knew it was an opportunity that I couldn’t miss.”

“Oh Hudson,” said Lady Harcourt, “how could you? After all we have done for you!”

As his sergeant handcuffed Hudson, Inspector Gough made his concluding remarks, “As it says in the book of Ecclesiastes, ‘I have seen another evil under the sun, and it weighs heavily on mankind’. Well this was a case of evil under the moon. And this afternoon it was the croquet mallet that weighed heavily on this particular man, rather than mankind in general.”

“Oh Inspector, how can we ever thank you?” said Lady Harcourt.

“A cup of tea would be nice.”

“Of course. Hudson….oh now we don’t have a butler I’m afraid that might be rather difficult.”

“Don’t worry Lady Harcourt. I can have a cup of tea back at the police station. And I might even treat myself to a slice of sponge cake.”