by A. A. Milne
"Girls are so foolish, Mr. Gillingham," she was saying. "It is fortunate that they have mothers to guide them. It was so obvious to me from the beginning that dear Mr. Ablett was just the husband for my little girl. You never knew him?"
Antony said again that he had not seen Mr. Ablett.
"Such a gentleman. So nice-looking, in his artistic way. A regular Velasquez—I should say Van Dyck. Angela would have it that she could never marry a man with a beard. As if that mattered, when—" She broke off, and Antony finished her sentence for her.
"The Red House is certainly charming," he said.
"Charming. Quite charming. And it is not as if Mr. Ablett's appearance were in any way undistinguished. Quite the contrary. I'm sure you agree with me?"
Antony said that he had never had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Ablett.
"Yes. And quite the centre of the literary and artistic world. So desirable in every way."
She gave a deep sigh, and communed with herself for a little. Antony was, about to snatch the opportunity of leaving, when Mrs. Norbury began again.
"And then there's this scapegrace brother of his. He was perfectly frank with me, Mr. Gillingham. He would be. He told me of this brother, and I told him that I was quite certain it would make no difference to my daughter's feelings for him.... After all, the brother was in Australia."
"When was this? Yesterday?" Antony felt that, if Mark had only mentioned it after his brother's announcement of a personal call at the Red House, this perfect frankness had a good deal of wisdom behind it.
"It couldn't have been yesterday, Mr. Gillingham. Yesterday—" she shuddered, and shook her head.
"I thought perhaps he had been down here in the morning."
"Oh, no! There is such a thing, Mr. Gillingham, as being too devoted a lover. Not in the morning, no. We both agreed that dear Angela—Oh, no. No; the day before yesterday, when he happened to drop in about tea-time."
It occurred to Antony that Mrs. Norbury had come a long way from her opening statement that Mark and Miss Norbury were practically engaged. She was now admitting that dear Angela was not to be rushed, that dear Angela had, indeed, no heart for the match at all.
"The day before yesterday. As it happened, dear Angela was out. Not that it mattered. He was driving to Middleston. He hardly had time for a cup of tea, so that even if she had been in—"
Antony nodded absently. This was something new. Why did Mark go to Middleston the day before yesterday? But, after all, why shouldn't he? A hundred reasons unconnected with the death of Robert might have taken him there.
He got up to go. He wanted to be alone—alone, at least, with Bill. Mrs. Norbury had given him many things to think over, but the great outstanding fact which had emerged was this: that Cayley had reason to hate Mark,—Mrs. Norbury had given him that reason. To hate? Well, to be jealous, anyhow. But that was enough.
"You see," he said to Bill, as they walked back, "we know that Cayley is perjuring himself and risking himself over this business, and that must be for one of two reasons. Either to save Mark or to endanger him. That is to say, he is either whole-heartedly for him or whole-heartedly against him. Well, now we know that he is against him, definitely against him."
"But, I say, you know," protested Bill, "one doesn't necessarily try to ruin one's rival in love."
"Doesn't one?" said Antony, turning to him with a smile.
Bill blushed.
"Well, of course, one never knows, but I mean—"
"You mightn't try to ruin him, Bill, but you wouldn't perjure yourself in order to get him out of a trouble of his own making."
"Lord! no."
"So that of the two alternatives the other is the more likely."
They had come to the gate into the last field which divided them from the road, and having gone through it, they turned round and leant against it, resting for a moment, and looking down at the house which they had left.
"Jolly little place, isn't it?" said Bill.
"Very. But rather mysterious."
"In what way?"
"Well, where's the front door?"
"The front door? Why, you've just come out of it."
"But isn't there a drive, or a road or anything?"
Bill laughed.
"No; that's the beauty of it to some people. And that's why it's so cheap, and why the Norburys can afford it, I expect. They're not too well off."
"But what about luggage and tradesmen and that kind of thing?"
"Oh, there's a cart-track, but motor-cars can't come any nearer than the road" he turned round and pointed "up there. So the week-end millionaire people don't take it. At least, they'd have to build a road and a garage and all the rest of it, if they did."
"I see," said Antony carelessly, and they turned round and continued their walk up to the road. But later on he remembered this casual conversation at the gate, and saw the importance of it.
Chapter XVI - Getting Ready for the Night
*
What was it which Cayley was going to hide in that pond that night? Antony thought that he knew now. It was Mark's body.
From the beginning he had seen this answer coming and had drawn back from it. For, if Mark had been killed, it seemed such a cold-blooded killing. Was Cayley equal to it? Bill would have said "No," but that was because he had had breakfast with Cayley, and lunch with him, and dinner with him; had ragged him and played games with him. Bill would have said "No," because Bill wouldn't have killed anybody in cold blood himself, and because he took it for granted that other people behaved pretty much as he did. But Antony had no such illusions. Murders were done; murder had actually been done here, for there was Robert's dead body. Why not another murder?
Had Mark been in the office at all that afternoon? The only evidence (other than Cayley's, which obviously did not count) was Elsie's. Elsie was quite certain that she had heard his voice. But then Bill had said that it was a very characteristic voice—an easy voice, therefore, to imitate. If Bill could imitate it so successfully, why not Cayley?
But perhaps it had not been such a cold-blooded killing, after all. Suppose Cayley had had a quarrel with his cousin that afternoon over the girl whom they were both wooing. Suppose Cayley had killed Mark, either purposely, in sudden passion, or accidentally, meaning only to knock him down. Suppose that this had happened in the passage, say about two o'clock, either because Cayley had deliberately led him there, or because Mark had casually suggested a visit to it. (One could imagine Mark continually gloating over that secret passage.) Suppose Cayley there, with the body at his feet, feeling already the rope round his neck; his mind darting this way and that in frantic search for a way of escape; and suppose that suddenly and irrelevantly he remembers that Robert is coming to the house at three o'clock that afternoon—automatically he looks at his watch—in half an hour's time.... In half an hour's time. He must think of something quickly, quickly. Shall he bury the body in the passage and let it be thought that Mark ran away, frightened at the mere thought of his brother's arrival? But there was the evidence of the breakfast table. Mark had seemed annoyed at this resurrection of the black sheep, but certainly not frightened. No; that was much too thin a story. But suppose Mark had actually seen his brother and had a quarrel with him; suppose it could be made to look as if Robert had killed Mark—
Antony pictured to himself Cayley in the passage, standing over the dead body of his cousin, and working it out. How could Robert be made to seem the murderer, if Robert were alive to deny it? But suppose Robert were dead, too?
He looks at his watch again. (Only twenty-five minutes now.) Suppose Robert were dead, too? Robert dead in the office, and Mark dead in the passage how does that help? Madness! But if the bodies were brought together somehow and Robert's death looked like suicide?.... Was it possible?
Madness again. Too difficult. (Only twenty minutes now.) Too difficult to arrange in twenty minutes. Can't arrange a suicide. Too difficult.... Only nineteen minutes....
And
then the sudden inspiration! Robert dead in the office, Mark's body hidden in the passage—impossible to make Robert seem the murderer, but how easy to make Mark! Robert dead and Mark missing; why, it jumped to the eye at once. Mark had killed Robert—accidentally; yes, that would be more likely—and then had run away. Sudden panic.... (He looks at his watch again. Fifteen minutes, but plenty of time now. The thing arranges itself.)
Was that the solution, Antony wondered. It seemed to fit in with the facts as they knew them; but then, so did that other theory which he had suggested to Bill in the morning.
"Which one?" said Bill.
They had come back from Jallands through the park and were sitting in the copse above the pond, from which the Inspector and his fishermen had now withdrawn. Bill had listened with open mouth to Antony's theory, and save for an occasional "By Jove!" had listened in silence. "Smart man, Cayley," had been his only comment at the end.
"Which other theory?"
"That Mark had killed Robert accidentally and had gone to Cayley for help, and that Cayley, having hidden him in the passage, locked the office door from the outside and hammered on it."
"Yes, but you were so dashed mysterious about that. I asked you what the point of it was, and you wouldn't say anything." He thought for a little, and then went on, "I suppose you meant that Cayley deliberately betrayed Mark, and tried to make him look like a murderer?"
"I wanted to warn you that we should probably find Mark in the passage, alive or dead."
"And now you don't think so?"
"Now I think that his dead body is there."
"Meaning that Cayley went down and killed him afterwards after you had come, after the police had come?"
"Well, that's what I shrink from, Bill. It's so horribly cold-blooded. Cayley may be capable of it, but I hate to think of it."
"But, dash it all, your other way is cold-blooded enough. According to you, he goes up to the office and deliberately shoots a man with whom he has no quarrel, whom he hasn't seen for fifteen years!"
"Yes, but to save his own neck. That makes a difference. My theory is that he quarrelled violently with Mark over the girl, and killed him in sudden passion. Anything that happened after that would be self-defense. I don't mean that I excuse it, but that I understand it. And I think that Mark's dead body is in the passage now, and has been there since, say, half-past two yesterday afternoon. And to-night Cayley is going to hide it in the pond."
Bill pulled at the moss on the ground beside him, threw away a handful or two, and said slowly, "You may be right, but it's all guess-work, you know."
Antony laughed.
"Good Lord, of course it is," he said. "And to-night we shall know if it's a good guess or a bad one."
Bill brightened up suddenly.
"To-night," he said. "I say, to-night's going to be rather fun. How do we work it?"
Antony was silent for a little.
"Of course," he said at last, "we ought to inform the police, so that they can come here and watch the pond to-night."
"Of course," grinned Bill.
"But I think that perhaps it is a little early to put our theories before them."
"I think perhaps it is," said Bill solemnly.
Antony looked up at him with a sudden smile.
"Bill, you old bounder."
"Well, dash it, it's our show. I don't see why we shouldn't get our little bit of fun out of it."
"Neither do I. All right, then, we'll do without the police to-night."
"We shall miss them," said Bill sadly, "but 'tis better so."
There were two problems in front of them: first, the problem of getting out of the house without being discovered by Cayley, and secondly, the problem of recovering whatever it was which Cayley dropped into the pond that night.
"Let's look at it from Cayley's point of view," said Antony. "He may not know that we're on his track, but he can't help being suspicious of us. He's bound to be suspicious of everybody in the house, and more particularly of us, because we're presumably more intelligent than the others."
He stopped for a moment to light his pipe, and Bill took the opportunity of looking more intelligent than Mrs. Stevens.
"Now, he has got something to hide to-night, and he's going to take good care that we aren't watching him. Well, what will he do?"
"See that we are asleep first, before he starts out."
"Yes. Come and tuck us up, and see that we're nice and comfortable."
"Yes, that's awkward," said Bill. "But we could lock our doors, and then he wouldn't know that we weren't there."
"Have you ever locked your door?"
"Never."
"No. And you can bet that Cayley knows that. Anyway, he'd bang on it, and you wouldn't answer, and then what would he think?"
Bill was silent; crushed.
"Then I don't see how we're going to do it," he said, after deep thought. "He'll obviously come to us just before he starts out, and that doesn't give us time to get to the pond in front of him."
"Let's put ourselves in his place," said Antony, puffing slowly at his pipe. "He's got the body, or whatever it is, in the passage. He won't come up the stairs, carrying it in his arms, and look in at our doors to see if we're awake. He'll have to make sure about us first, and then go down for the body afterwards. So that gives us a little time."
"Y-yes," said Bill doubtfully. "We might just do it, but it'll be a bit of a rush."
"But wait. When he's gone down to the passage and got the body, what will he do next?"
"Come out again," said Bill helpfully.
"Yes; but which end?"
Bill sat up with a start.
"By Jove, you mean that he will go out at the far end by the bowling-green?"
"Don't you think so? Just imagine him walking across the lawn in full view of the house, at midnight, with a body in his arms. Think of the awful feeling he would have in the back of the neck, wondering if anybody, any restless sleeper, had chosen just that moment to wander to the window and look out into the night. There's still plenty of moonlight, Bill. Is he going to walk across the park in the moonlight, with all those windows staring at him? Not if he can help it. But he can get out by the bowling green, and then come to the pond without ever being in sight of the house, at all."
"You're right. And that will just about give us time. Good. Now, what's the next thing?"
"The next thing is to mark the exact place in the pond where he drops whatever he drops."
"So that we can fish it out again."
"If we can see what it is, we shan't want to. The police can have a go at it to-morrow. But if it's something we can't identify from a distance, then we must try and get it out. To see whether it's worth telling the police about."
"Y-yes," said Bill, wrinkling his forehead. "Of course, the trouble with water is that one bit of it looks pretty much like the next bit. I don't know if that had occurred to you.
"It had," smiled Antony. "Let's come and have a look at it."
They walked to the edge of the copse, and lay down there in silence, looking at the pond beneath them.
"See anything?" said Antony at last.
"What?"
"The fence on the other side."
"What about it?"
"Well, it's rather useful, that's all."
"Said Sherlock Holmes enigmatically," added Bill. "A moment later, his friend Watson had hurled him into the pond."
Antony laughed.
"I love being Sherlocky," he said. "It's very unfair of you not to play up to me."
"Why is that fence useful, my dear Holmes?" said Bill obediently.
"Because you can take a bearing on it. You see—"
"Yes, you needn't stop to explain to me what a bearing is."
"I wasn't going to. But you're lying here," he looked up "underneath this pine-tree. Cayley comes out in the old boat and drops his parcel in. You take a line from here on to the boat, and mark it off on the fence there. Say it's the fifth post from the e
nd. Well, then I take a line from my tree we'll find one for me directly and it comes on to the twentieth post, say. And where the two lines meet, there shall the eagles be gathered together. Q.E.D. And there, I almost forgot to remark, will the taller eagle, Beverley by name, do his famous diving act. As performed nightly at the Hippodrome."
Bill looked at him uneasily.
"I say, really? It's beastly dirty water, you know."
"I'm afraid so, Bill. So it is written in the book of Jasher."
"Of course I knew that one of us would have to, but I hoped, well, it's a warm night."
"Just the night for a bathe," agreed Antony, getting up. "Well now, let's have a look for my tree."
They walked down to the margin of the pond and then looked back. Bill's tree stood up and took the evening, tall and unmistakable, fifty feet nearer to heaven than its neighbours. But it had its fellow at the other end of the copse, not quite so tall, perhaps, but equally conspicuous.
"That's where I shall be," said Antony, pointing to it. "Now, for the Lord's sake, count your posts accurately."
"Thanks very much, but I shall do it for my own sake," said Bill with feeling. "I don't want to spend the whole night diving."
"Fix on the post in a straight line with you and the splash, and then count backwards to the beginning of the fence."
"Right, old boy. Leave it to me. I can do this on my head."
"Well, that's how you will have to do the last part of it," said Antony with a smile.
He looked at his watch. It was nearly time to change for dinner. They started to walk back to the house together.
"There's one thing which worries me rather," said Antony. "Where does Cayley sleep?"
"Next door to me. Why?"
"Well, it's just possible that he might have another look at you after he's come back from the pond. I don't think he'd bother about it in the ordinary way, but if he is actually passing your door, I think he might glance in."
"I shan't be there. I shall be at the bottom of the pond, sucking up mud."
"Yes.... Do you think you could leave something in your bed that looked vaguely like you in the dark? A bolster with a pyjama-coat round it, and one arm outside the blanket, and a pair of socks or something for the head. You know the kind of thing. I think it would please him to feel that you were still sleeping peacefully."
