The Red House Mystery (17 page)

"Oh,—this was only quite lately?"

"Last week, Mr. Gillingham. I spoke just in time."

"Ah!" said Antony, under his breath. He had been waiting for it.

He would have liked now to have gone away, so that he might have thought
over the new situation by himself; or, perhaps preferably, to have
changed partners for a little while with Bill. Miss Norbury would hardly
be ready to confide in a stranger with the readiness of a mother, but he
might have learnt something by listening to her. For which of them had
she the greater feeling, Cayley or Mark? Was she really prepared to
marry Mark? Did she love him or the other—or neither? Mrs. Norbury was
only a trustworthy witness in regard to her own actions and thoughts;
he had learnt all that was necessary of those, and only the daughter now
had anything left to tell him. But Mrs. Norbury was still talking.

"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.

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?"