The Red House Mystery

by A. A. Milne

  Elsie's evidence, however, seemed to settle the point. Mark had gone into the office to see his brother; Elsie had heard them both talking; and then Antony and Cayley had found the body of Robert.... and the Inspector was going to drag the pond.

  But certainly Elsie's evidence did not prove anything more than the mere presence of Mark in the room. "It's my turn now; you wait." That was not an immediate threat;—it was a threat for the future. If Mark had shot his brother immediately afterwards it must have been an accident, the result of a struggle, say, provoked by that "nasty-like" tone of voice. Nobody would say "You wait" to a man who was just going to be shot. "You wait" meant "You wait, and see what's going to happen to you later on." The owner of the Red House had had enough of his brother's sponging, his brother's blackmail; now it was Mark's turn to get a bit of his own back. Let Robert just wait a bit, and he would see. The conversation which Elsie had overheard might have meant something like this. It couldn't have meant murder. Anyway not murder of Robert by Mark.

  "It's a funny business," thought Antony. "The one obvious solution is so easy and yet so wrong. And I've got a hundred things in my head, and I can't fit them together. And this afternoon will make a hundred and one. I mustn't forget this afternoon."

  He found Bill in the hall and proposed a stroll. Bill was only too ready. "Where do you want to go?" he asked.

  "I don't mind much. Show me the park."

  "Righto."

  They walked out together.

  "Watson, old man," said Antony, as soon as they were away from the house, "you really mustn't talk so loudly indoors. There was a gentleman outside, just behind you, all the time."

  "Oh, I say," said Bill, going pink. "I'm awfully sorry. So that's why you were talking such rot."

  "Partly, yes. And partly because I do feel rather bright this morning. We're going to have a busy day."

  "Are we really? What are we going to do?"

  "They're going to drag the pond—beg its pardon, the lake. Where is the lake?"

  "We're on the way to it now, if you'd like to see it."

  "We may as well look at it. Do you haunt the lake much in the ordinary way?"

  "Oh, no, rather not. There's nothing to do there."

  "You can't bathe?"

  "Well, I shouldn't care to. Too dirty."

  "I see.... This is the way we came yesterday, isn't it? The way to the village?"

  "Yes. We go off a bit to the right directly. What are they dragging it for?"

  "Mark."

  "Oh, rot," said Bill uneasily. He was silent for a little, and then, forgetting his uncomfortable thoughts in his sudden remembrance of the exciting times they were having, said eagerly, "I say, when are we going to look for that passage?"

  "We can't do very much while Cayley's in the house."

  "What about this afternoon when they're dragging the pond? He's sure to be there."

  Antony shook his head.

  "There's something I must do this afternoon," he said. "Of course we might have time for both."

  "Has Cayley got to be out of the house for the other thing too?"

  "Well, I think he ought to be."

  "I say, is it anything rather exciting?"

  "I don't know. It might be rather interesting. I daresay I could do it at some other time, but I rather fancy it at three o'clock, somehow. I've been specially keeping it back for then."

  "I say, what fun! You do want me, don't you?"

  "Of course I do. Only, Bill don't talk about things inside the house, unless I begin. There's a good Watson."

  "I won't. I swear I won't."

  They had come to the pond—Mark's lake—and they walked silently round it. When they had made the circle, Antony sat down on the grass, and relit his pipe. Bill followed his example.

  "Well, Mark isn't there," said Antony.

  "No," said Bill. "At least, I don't quite see why you know he isn't."

  "It isn't 'knowing,' it's 'guessing,'" said Antony rapidly. "It's much easier to shoot yourself than to drown yourself, and if Mark had wanted to shoot himself in the water, with some idea of not letting the body be found, he'd have put big stones in his pockets, and the only big stones are near the water's edge, and they would have left marks, and they haven't, and therefore he didn't, and oh, bother the pond; that can wait till this afternoon. Bill, where does the secret passage begin?"

  "Well, that's what we've got to find out, isn't it?"

  "Yes. You see, my idea is this."

  He explained his reasons for thinking that the secret of the passage was concerned in some way with the secret of Robert's death, and went on:

  "My theory is that Mark discovered the passage about a year ago the time when he began to get keen on croquet. The passage came out into the floor of the shed, and probably it was Cayley's idea to put a croquet-box over the trap-door, so as to hide it more completely. You know, when once you've discovered a secret yourself, it always seems as if it must be so obvious to everybody else. I can imagine that Mark loved having this little secret all to himself and to Cayley, of course, but Cayley wouldn't count and they must have had great fun fixing it up, and making it more difficult for other people to find out. Well then, when Miss Norris was going to dress-up, Cayley gave it away. Probably he told her that she could never get down to the bowling-green without being discovered, and then perhaps showed that he knew there was one way in which she could do it, and she wormed the secret out of him somehow."

  "But this was two or three days before Robert turned up."

  "Exactly. I am not suggesting that there was anything sinister about the passage in the first place. It was just a little private bit of romance and adventure for Mark, three days ago. He didn't even know that Robert was coming. But somehow the passage has been used since, in connection with Robert. Perhaps Mark escaped that way; perhaps he's hiding there now. And if so, then the only person who could give him away was Miss Norris. And she of course would only do it innocently not knowing that the passage had anything to do with it."

  "So it was safer to have her out of the way?"

  "Yes."

  "But, look here, Tony, why do you want to bother about this end of it? We can always get in at the bowling-green end."

  "I know, but if we do that we shall have to do it openly. It will mean breaking open the box, and letting Cayley know that we've done it. You see, Bill, if we don't find anything out for ourselves in the next day or two, we've got to tell the police what we have found out, and then they can explore the passage for themselves. But I don't want to do that yet."

  "Rather not.

  "So we've got to carry on secretly for a bit. It's the only way." He smiled and added, "And it's much more fun."

  "Rather!" Bill chuckled to himself.

  "Very well. Where does the secret passage begin?"

  Chapter XI - The Reverend Theodore Ussher

  *

  "There's one thing, which we have got to realize at once," said Antony, "and that is that if we don't find it easily, we shan't find it at all."

  "You mean that we shan't have time?"

  "Neither time nor opportunity. Which is rather a consoling thought to a lazy person like me."

  "But it makes it much harder, if we can't really look properly."

  "Harder to find, yes, but so much easier to look. For instance, the passage might begin in Cayley's bedroom. Well, now we know that it doesn't."

  "We don't know anything of the sort," protested Bill.

  "We—know for the purposes of our search. Obviously we can't go tailing into Cayley's bedroom and tapping his wardrobes; and obviously, therefore, if we are going to look for it at all, we must assume that it doesn't begin there."

  "Oh, I see." Bill chewed a piece of grass thoughtfully. "Anyhow, it wouldn't begin on an upstairs floor, would it?"

  "Probably not. Well, we're getting on."

  "You can wash out the kitchen and all that part of the house," said Bill, after more thought. "We can't go there."

>   "Right. And the cellars, if there are any."

  "Well, that doesn't leave us much."

  "No. Of course it's only a hundred-to-one chance that we find it, but what we want to consider is which is the most likely place of the few places in which we can look safely."

  "All it amounts to," said Bill, "is the living-rooms downstairs dining-room, library, hall, billiard-room and the office rooms."

  "Yes, that's all."

  "Well, the office is the most likely, isn't it?"

  "Yes. Except for one thing."

  "What's that?"

  "Well, it's on the wrong side of the house. One would expect the passage to start from the nearest place to which it is going. Why make it longer by going under the house first?"

  "Yes, that's true. Well, then, you think the dining-room or the library?"

  "Yes. And the library for choice. I mean for our choice. There are always servants going into dining-rooms. We shouldn't have much of a chance of exploring properly in there. Besides, there's another thing to remember. Mark has kept this a secret for a year. Could he have kept it a secret in the dining-room? Could Miss Norris have got into the dining-room and used the secret door just after dinner without being seen? It would have been much too risky."

  Bill got up eagerly.

  "Come along," he said, "let's try the library. If Cayley comes in, we can always pretend we're choosing a book."

  Antony got up slowly, took his arm and walked back to the house with him.

  The library was worth going into, passages or no passages. Antony could never resist another person's bookshelves. As soon as he went into the room, he found himself wandering round it to see what books the owner read, or (more likely) did not read, but kept for the air which they lent to the house. Mark had prided himself on his library. It was a mixed collection of books. Books which he had inherited both from his father and from his patron; books which he had bought because he was interested in them or, if not in them, in the authors to whom he wished to lend his patronage; books which he had ordered in beautifully bound editions, partly because they looked well on his shelves, lending a noble colour to his rooms, partly because no man of culture should ever be without them; old editions, new editions, expensive books, cheap books, a library in which everybody, whatever his taste, could be sure of finding something to suit him.

  "And which is your particular fancy, Bill?" said Antony, looking from one shelf to another. "Or are you always playing billiards?"

  "I have a look at 'Badminton' sometimes," said Bill.

  "It's over in that corner there." He waved a hand.

  "Over here?" said Antony, going to it.

  "Yes." He corrected himself suddenly.—"Oh, no, it's not. It's over there on the right now. Mark had a grand re-arrangement of his library about a year ago. It took him more than a week, he told us. He's got such a frightful lot, hasn't he?"

  "Now that's very interesting," said Antony, and he sat down and filled his pipe again.

  There was indeed a "frightful lot" of books. The four walls of the library were plastered with them from floor to ceiling, save only where the door and the two windows insisted on living their own life, even though an illiterate one. To Bill it seemed the most hopeless room of any in which to look for a secret opening.

  "We shall have to take every blessed book down," he said, "before we can be certain that we haven't missed it."

  "Anyway," said Antony, "if we take them down one at a time, nobody can suspect us of sinister designs. After all, what does one go into a library for, except to take books down?"

  "But there's such a frightful lot."

  Antony's pipe was now going satisfactorily, and he got up and walked leisurely to the end of the wall opposite the door.

  "Well, let's have a look," he said, "and see if they are so very frightful. Hallo, here's your 'Badminton.' You often read that, you say?"

  "If I read anything."

  "Yes." He looked down and up the shelf. "Sport and Travel chiefly. I like books of travel, don't you?"

  "They're pretty dull as a rule."

  "Well, anyhow, some people like them very much," said Antony, reproachfully. He moved on to the next row of shelves. "The Drama. The Restoration dramatists. You can have most of them. Still, as you well remark, many people seem to love them. Shaw, Wilde, Robertson—I like reading plays, Bill. There are not many people who do, but those who do are usually very keen. Let us pass on."

  "I say, we haven't too much time," said Bill restlessly.

  "We haven't. That's why we aren't wasting any. Poetry. Who reads poetry nowadays? Bill, when did you last read 'Paradise Lost'?"

  "Never."

  "I thought not. And when did Miss Calladine last read 'The Excursion' aloud to you?"

  "As a matter of fact, Betty—Miss Calladine—happens to be jolly keen on what's the beggar's name?"

  "Never mind his name. You have said quite enough. We pass on."

  He moved on to the next shelf.

  "Biography. Oh, lots of it. I love biographies. Are you a member of the Johnson Club? I bet Mark is. 'Memories of Many Courts' I'm sure Mrs. Calladine reads that. Anyway, biographies are just as interesting as most novels, so why linger? We pass on." He went to the next shelf, and then gave a sudden whistle. "Hallo, hallo!"

  "What's the matter?" said Bill rather peevishly.

  "Stand back there. Keep the crowd back, Bill. We are getting amongst it. Sermons, as I live. Sermons. Was Mark's father a clergyman, or does Mark take to them naturally?"

  "His father was a parson, I believe. Oh, yes, I know he was."

  "Ah, then these are Father's books. 'Half-Hours with the Infinite' I must order that from the library when I get back. 'The Lost Sheep,' 'Jones on the Trinity,' 'The Epistles of St. Paul Explained.' Oh, Bill, we're amongst it. 'The Narrow Way, being Sermons by the Rev. Theodore Ussher' hal-LO!"

  "What is the matter?"

  "William, I am inspired. Stand by." He took down the Reverend Theodore Ussher's classic work, looked at it with a happy smile for a moment, and then gave it to Bill.

  "Here, hold Ussher for a bit."

  Bill took the book obediently.

  "No, give it me back. Just go out into the hall, and see if you can hear Cayley anywhere. Say 'Hallo' loudly, if you do."

  Bill went out quickly, listened, and came back.

  "It's all right."

  "Good." He took the book out of its shelf again. "Now then, you can hold Ussher. Hold him in the left hand so. With the right or dexter hand, grasp this shelf firmly so. Now, when I say 'Pull,' pull gradually. Got that?"

  Bill nodded, his face alight with excitement.

  "Good." Antony put his hand into the space left by the stout Ussher, and fingered the hack of the shelf. "Pull," he said.

  Bill pulled.

  "Now just go on pulling like that. I shall get it directly. Not hard, you know, but just keeping up the strain."

  His fingers went at it again busily.

  And then suddenly the whole row of shelves, from top to bottom, swung gently open towards them.

  "Good Lord!" said Bill, letting go of the shelf in his amazement.

  Antony pushed the shelves back, extracted Ussher from Bill's fingers, replaced him, and then, taking Bill by the arm, led him to the sofa and deposited him in it. Standing in front of him, he bowed gravely.

  "Child's play, Watson," he said; "child's play."

  "How on earth—"

  Antony laughed happily and sat down on the sofa beside him.

  "You don't really want it explained," he said, smacking him on the knee; "you're just being Watsonish. It's very nice of you, of course, and I appreciate it."

  "No, but really, Tony."

  "Oh, my dear Bill!" He smoked silently for a little, and then went on, "It's what I was saying just now a secret is a secret until you have discovered it, and as soon as you have discovered it, you wonder why everybody else isn't discovering it, and how it could ever have been a secret at all. This passage h
as been here for years, with an opening at one end into the library, and at the other end into the shed. Then Mark discovered it, and immediately he felt that everybody else must discover it. So he made the shed end more difficult by putting the croquet-box there, and this end more difficult by—" he stopped and looked at the other "by what, Bill?"

  But Bill was being Watsonish.

  "What?"

  "Obviously by re-arranging his books. He happened to take out 'The Life of Nelson' or 'Three Men in a Boat,' or whatever it was, and by the merest chance discovered the secret. Naturally he felt that everybody else would be taking down 'The Life of Nelson' or 'Three Men in a Boat.' Naturally he felt that the secret would be safer if nobody ever interfered with that shelf at all. When you said that the books had been re-arranged a year ago just about the time the croquet-box came into existence; of course, I guessed why. So I looked about for the dullest books I could find, the books nobody ever read. Obviously the collection of sermon-books of a mid-Victorian clergyman was the shelf we wanted."

  "Yes, I see. But why were you so certain of the particular place?"

  "Well, he had to mark the particular place by some book. I thought that the joke of putting 'The Narrow Way' just over the entrance to the passage might appeal to him. Apparently it did."

  Bill nodded to himself thoughtfully several times. "Yes, that's very neat," he said. "You're a clever devil, Tony."

  Tony laughed.

  "You encourage me to think so, which is bad for me, but very delightful."

  "Well, come on, then," said Bill, and he got up, and held out a hand.

  "Come on where?"

  "To explore the passage, of course."

  Antony shook his head.

  "Why ever not?"

  "Well, what do you expect to find there?"

  "I don't know. But you seemed to think that we might find something that would help."

  "Suppose we find Mark?" said Antony quietly.

  "I say, do you really think he's there?"

  "Suppose he is?"

  "Well, then, there we are."