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

James Funnell, the constable, two men were leaning arm in arm against the
railings and one man was talking."
"Then you think that ЧЧ"
"At the hour when James Funnell heard Holy Trinity clock striping half-past two
Aaron Coluen was already dead. Look how simple the whole thing is," he added
eagerly, "and how easy after that easy, but oh, dear me! how wonderfully, how
stupendously clever. As soon as James Funnell has passed on, John Ashley, having
opened the gate, lifts the body of Aaron Cohen in his arms and carries him
across the Square. The Square is deserted, of course, but the way is easy
enough, and we must presume that Ashley had been in it before. Anyway, there was
no fear of meeting any one.
"In the meantime Hatherell has left the club: as fast as his athletic legs can
carry him he rushes along Oxford Street and Portland Place. It had been arranged
between the two miscreants that the Square gate should be left on the latch.
"Close on Ashley's heels now, Hatherell too cuts across the Square, and reaches
the further gate in good time to give his confederate a hand in disposing the
body against the railings. Then, without another instant's delay, Ashley runs
back across the gardens, straight to the Ashton Club, throwing away the keys of
the dead man, on the very spot where he had made it a point of being seen and
heard by a passer-by.
"Hatherell gives his friend six or seven minutes' start, then he begins the
altercation which lasts two or three minutes, and finally rouses the
neighbourhood with cries of 'Murder' and report of pistol in order to establish
that the crime was committed at the hour when its perpetrator has already made
out an indisputable alibi."
"I don't know what you think of it all, of course," added the funny creature as
he fumbled for his coat and his gloves, "but I call the planning of that murder
Ч on the part of novices, mind you Ч one of the cleverest pieces of strategy I
have ever come across. It is one of those cases where there is no possibility
whatever now of bringing the crime home to its perpetrator or his abettor. They
have not left a single proof behind them; they foresaw everything, and each
acted his part with a coolness and courage which, applied to a great and good
cause, would have made fine statesmen of them both.
"As it is, I fear, they are just a pair of young blackguards, who have escaped
human justice, and have only deserved the full and ungrudging admiration of
yours very sincerely."
He had gone. Polly wanted to call him back, but his meagre person was no longer
visible through the glass door. There were many things she would have wished to
ask of him Ч what were his proofs, his facts? His were theories, after all, and
yet, somehow, she felt that he had solved once again one of the darkest
mysteries of great criminal London.