Appleby Talking by Michael Innes Page A

know that she has made history in forensic medicine? I suppose not.”
    The sergeant sighed. “It’s been neat enough,” he said, “–and something quite beyond our range, I must admit. But how did you first tumble to it’s being Emilia?”
    “It was because she changed her mind about whom to blame. At first she had resolved to plant it on Othello simply as the likeliest person. ‘ And why did you murder her, too? ’ she had asked him. But later on she told a story that pointed to either Bianca or her own husband, Iago. Desdemona, she said, had been alive and weeping when she looked through the curtain at the bed-head. And that, of course, let Othello out, as he had no subsequent opportunity for the murder.
    “I asked myself what this change of front meant. Was it simply that Emilia had no grudge against Othello, and altered her story in order to implicate her unfaithful husband whom she now hated? Somehow, I didn’t think it was that. And then I recalled a gesture she had made. Do you remember? It was when Othello revealed that she was accustomed to draw back the curtain behind the bed and speak to Desdemona before going on-stage.”
    The sergeant considered. “I seem to remember her hand going to her bodice. I thought it a bit theatrical – the conventional gesture of an agitated woman.”
    Appleby shook his head. “It wasn’t quite that. What you saw was a hand flying up to where something should be – something that was now lost. And that something was a handkerchief. I saw the truth in a flash. She had lost a handkerchief – a tear-soaked handkerchief – while smothering Desdemona. And my guess was confirmed seconds later when she made her change of front and declared that she had seen Desdemona alive and weeping. For of course her story came from a sudden feeling that she must account for the presence of the handkerchief beside the corpse.”
    “I see.” The sergeant shook his head. “It was clever enough. But dangerous, as being an unnecessary lie.”
    “It was fatal, as it turned out. But first I saw several things come together. A man may weep, but he won’t weep into a small cambric handkerchief. Emilia showed signs of weeping, whereas another suspect, Bianca, was entirely self-controlled. So what had happened was pretty clear. Emilia had discovered her husband’s infidelity and had been under strong stress of emotion. She had snatched up the handkerchief – Othello’s magic handkerchief – while perhaps running to her dressing-room, and there she had wept into it. When her call came she thrust it into her bodice. Later, when she yielded to an overwhelming impulse and smothered Desdemona, the handkerchief was lost in the struggle, and the body rolled on top of it.
    “But how could all this be proved? Perhaps, as those people said, it couldn’t be, and we should never get further than suspicion. But there was one chance – one chance of proving that Emilia had lied.
    “A substantial proportion of people are what physiologists call secretors. And this means, among other things, that there is something special about their tears. From their tears, just as well as from their blood, you can determine their blood-group. Well, I had Desdemona’s blood on one handkerchief and I had tears on another. I went straight to your local Institute of Medical Research. And they told me what I hoped to learn. From a person of Desdemona’s blood-group those tears could not have come .”
    The sergeant sighed again. “Yes,” he said, “it’s neat – very neat indeed.”
    “And we shall certainly learn, as soon as the law allows us to make a test, that the tears could have been Emilia’s. And as Bianca, who has allowed herself to be blood-grouped, is ruled out equally with Desdemona, the case is clear.”
    And Appleby rose. “Incidentally, there is a moral attached to all this.”
    “A moral?”
    “The moral that one savage old critic declared to be all there is to learn from Shakespeare’s play.