"Orczy, Baroness - The Regent's Park Murder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Orczy Baroness)

Hatherell, of course, you mean. So did every one else at once. The friend, weak
and willing, committing a crime on behalf of his cowardly, yet more assertive
friend who had tempted him to evil. It was a good theory; and was held pretty
generally, I fancy, even by the police.
"I say 'even' because they worked really hard in order to build up a case
against young Hatherell, but the great difficulty was that of time. At the hour
when the policeman had seen the two men outside Park Square together, Walter
Hatherell was still sitting in the Harewood Club, which he never left until
twenty minutes to two. Had he wished to waylay and rob Aaron Cohen he would not
have waited surely till the time when presumably the latter would already have
reached home.
"Moreover, twenty minutes was an incredibly short time in which to walk from
Hanover Square to Regent's Park without the chance of cutting across the
squares, to look for a man, whose whereabouts you could not determine to within
twenty yards or so, to have an argument with him, murder him, and ransack his
pockets. And then there was the total absence of motive."
"But ЧЧ"said Polly meditatively, for she remembered now that the Regent's Park
murder, as it had been popularly called, was one of those which had remained as
impenetrable a mystery as any other crime had ever been in the annals of the
police.
The man in the corner cocked his funny birdlike head well on one side and looked
at her, highly amused evidently at her perplexity.
"You do not see how that murder was committed?" he asked with a grin.
Polly was bound to admit that she did not.
"If you had happened to have been in Mr. John Ashley's predicament," he
persisted, "you do not see how you could conveniently have done away with Mr.
Aaron Cohen, pocketed his winnings, and then led the police of your country
entirely by the nose, by proving an indisputable alibi?"
"I could not arrange conveniently," she retorted, "to be in two different places
half a mile apart at ono and the same time."
"No! I quite admit that you could not do this unless you also had a friend ЧЧ"
"A friend? But you say ЧЧ"
"I say that I admired Mr. John Ashley, for his was the head which planned the
whole thing, but he could not have accomplished the fascinating and terrible
drama without the help of willing and able hands."
"Even then ЧЧ" she protested.
"Point number one," he began excitedly, fidgeting with his inevitable piece of
string. "John Ashley and his friend Walter Hatherell leave the club together,
and together decide on the plan of campaign. Hatherell returns to the club, and
Ashley goes to fetch the revolver Ч the revolver which played such an important
part in the drama, but not the part assigned to it by the police. Now try to
follow Ashley closely, as he dogs Aaron Cohen's footsteps. Do you believe that
he entered into conversation with him? That ho walked by his side? That he asked
for delay? No! He sneaked behind him and caught him by the throat, as the
garrotters used to do in the fog. Cohen was apoplectic, and Ashley is young and
powerful. Moreover, he meant to kill ЧЧ"
"But the two men talked together outside the Square gates," protested Polly,
"one of whom was Cohen, and the other Ashley."
"Pardon me," he said, jumping up in his seat like a monkey on a stick, "there
were not two men talking outside the Square gates. According to the testimony of