Leyland’s Account of It All
“Of course, as to the motive,” went on Leyland, “I am not absolutely
sure that I can point to a single one. But a combination of motives is
sufficient, if the motives are comparatively strong ones. On the
whole, I am inclined to put the thousand pounds first. For a rich man,
Mottram did not pay his secretary very well; and at times, I
understand, he talked of parting with him. Brinkman knew that the sum
was in Mottram’s possession, for it was he himself who cashed the
cheque at the bank. It was only a day or two before they came down
here. On the other hand, I doubt if Brinkman knew where the money was;
plainly Mottram didn’t trust him very much, or he wouldn’t have taken
the trouble to sew the money in the cushions of the car. When I first
found the cache, I assumed that Brinkman knew of its existence, and
that was one of the reasons why I felt so certain that he would make
straight for the garage. Now, I’m more inclined to think he fancied he
would find the money among Mottram’s effects, which he must have hoped
to examine in the interval before the arrival of the police.”
“Then you don’t think the Euthanasia had anything to do with it after
all?” asked Bredon.
“I wouldn’t say that. There’s no doubt that Brinkman was a rabid
anti-clerical—Eames was talking to me about that—and I think it’s
quite likely he would have welcomed, in any case, an opportunity of
getting Mottram out of the way provided that the death looked like
suicide. The appearance of suicide would have the advantage, as we
have all seen, that the Indescribable wouldn’t pay up. But he wanted,
in any case, to give the murder the appearance of suicide, in order to
save his own skin.”
“Then you think both motives were present to his mind?”
“Probably. I suppose there is little doubt that he knew of the danger
to Mottram’s health, and the consequent danger, from his point of
view, that the money would go to the Pullford Diocese. But I don’t
think that motive would have been sufficient, if he hadn’t reckoned on
getting away with a thousand pounds which didn’t belong to him.”
“Well, let’s pass the motive,” said Bredon. “I’m interested to hear
your account of the method.”
“Our mistake from the first has been that of not accepting the facts.
We have tried to fit the facts into our scheme, instead of letting the
facts themselves guide us. From the first we were faced with what
seemed to be a hopeless contradiction. The locked door seemed to make
it certain that Mottram was alone when he died. The fact that the gas
was turned off seemed to make it clear that Mottram was _not_ alone
when he died. There was ground for suspecting either suicide or
murder; the difficulty was to make the whole complex of facts fit into
either view. We had made a mistake, I repeat, in not taking the facts
for our guide. The door was locked; that is a fact. Therefore Mottram
was alone from the time he went to bed until the time when the door
was broken in. And at the time when the door was broken in the gas was
found turned off. Somebody must have turned it off, and in order to do
so he must have been in the room. There was only one person in the
room—Mottram. Therefore it was Mottram who turned the gas off.”
“You mean in his last dying moments?”
“No, such a theory would be fantastic. Mottram clearly turned the gas
off in the ordinary way. Therefore, now, mark this, it was not the gas
in Mottram’s room which poisoned Mottram.”
“But hang it all, if it wasn’t in his room”——
“When I say that, I mean it was not the gas which turned on and off in
Mottram’s room. For that gas was turned off. Therefore it must have
been some independent supply of gas which poisoned him.”
“Such as?”
“Doesn’t the solution occur to you yet? The room, remember, is very
low, and the window rather high up in the wall. What is to prevent a
supply of gas being introduced from outside and from above?”
“Good Lord! You don’t mean you think that Brinkman”——
“Brinkman had the room immediately above. Since his hurried departure,
I have had opportunities of taking a better look round it. I was
making some experiments there early this morning. In the first place,
I find that it is possible for a man leaning out of the window in
Brinkman’s room to control with a stick the position of the window in
Mottram’s room—provided always that the window is swinging loose. He
can ensure at will that Mottram’s window stands almost shut, or almost
fully open.”
“Yes, I think that’s true.”
“I find, further, that Brinkman’s room, like Mottram’s, was supplied
with a double apparatus, with a bracket on the wall and with a movable
standard lamp. But whereas the main tap in Mottram’s room was near the
door, and the tube which connected the gas with the standard lamp was
meant to allow the lamp to be put on the writing-table, in Brinkman’s
room it was the other way. The main tap was near the window, and the
tube which connected it with the standard lamp was meant to allow the
lamp to be placed at the bedside. The main tap in Brinkman’s room is
barely a yard from the window. And the tube of the standard lamp is
some four yards long.
“When Mottram went to bed, Brinkman went up to his room. He knew that
Mottram had taken a sleeping draught; that in half an hour or so he
would be asleep, and unconscious of all that went on. So, leaving a
prudent interval of time, Brinkman proceeded as follows. He took the
tube off from the foot of the standard lamp; that is quite an easy
matter. Then he took the tube to the window. With a walking-stick he
slightly opened Mottram’s window down below—it had been left ajar. And
through the opening thus made he let down the tube till the end of it
was in Mottram’s room. Then, with the walking-stick, he shut the
window again, except for a mere crack which was needed to let the tube
through. Then he turned on the guide-tap which fed his standard lamp,
and the gas began to flow through into Mottram’s room. That coil of
tube was a venomous serpent, which could poison Mottram in his sleep,
behind locked doors, and be removed again without leaving any trace
when its deadly work was done.
“Whether it was through carelessness on Brinkman’s part, or whether it
was owing to the wind, that the window swung right open and became
fixed there, I don’t know. In any case, it did not make much
difference to his plans. He had now succeeded in bringing off the
murder, and in a way which it would have been hard for anybody to
suspect. But there was one more difficulty to be got over: In order to
remove the suspicion of murder, and to make the suspicion of suicide
inevitable, it was necessary to turn on the gas in Mottram’s room.
Now, there was no implement Brinkman could employ which would enable
him to reach Mottram’s gas-tap. He depended, therefore, on bluff. He
made sure that he would be summoned by the Boots when the locked door
forbade entrance. He would force his way in with the Boots; he would
make straight for the tap, and _pretend_ to turn it off. Would anybody
doubt that it was he who had turned it off? The room was full of gas
fumes, and even a man of more intelligence than the Boots would
naturally leap to the conclusion that the gas _must_ have been on, in
order to account for the fumes.
“His plan, you see, was perfect in its preparations. It was an
unexpected interference that prevented its coming off. When Brinkman
was telling you the story, he pretended that it was he who saw Dr.
Ferrers outside, and suggested calling him in. Actually it was the
Boots, according to the story he himself tells, who drew attention to
the presence of Dr. Ferrers and suggested his being called in. This
point, which was of capital importance, was slurred over at the
inquest because nobody saw the bearing of it. Brinkman did not want
Dr. Ferrers to be there; yet the suggestion was too reasonable to be
turned down. Brinkman stationed himself with his shoulder close to the
lock, while Ferrers leant his weight against the door at the other
end, nearest the hinges. Assuming that the lock would give, Brinkman
could rush into the room first and go through the motions of turning
off the gas without attracting suspicion.
“Actually, it was the hinges which gave. Dr. Ferrers, realizing that
the gas must be turned off in order to clear the air, ran straight to
the tap over the _débris_ of the broken door before Brinkman could get
at it. And Ferrers naturally exclaimed in surprise when he found the
tap already turned off. The Boots heard his exclamation; Brinkman’s
plan had fallen through. There was nothing for it but to pretend that
the tap was a loose one, and that Dr. Ferrers had himself turned it
off without noticing it. That was the story, Bredon, which he put up
to you. We know that it was a lie.”
“I don’t quite see,” said Bredon, “how all this works in with the
sandwiches and whisky. In the motor, I mean. What was the idea of
them?”
“Well, Brinkman’s original idea must clearly have been flight. That
was, I take it, when he realized the difficulty which had been created
for him by his failure to reach the gas first. It must have been
before I arrived that he made these preparations—stored the motor with
food and painted out the number-plate at the back. I’ve had him under
pretty careful observation ever since I came here. But that was
Tuesday afternoon, and I have no doubt that his preparations had been
made by then.”
“And why didn’t he skip?”
“I think he was worried by my arrival. You see, he tried to palm off
the suicide story on me, and I didn’t fall to it. If he skipped, he
would confirm me in my conviction that there had been a murder, and,
although he himself might get off scotfree, it would mean that your
Indescribable people would have to pay up to the Bishop of Pullford.
He couldn’t stand the idea of that. He preferred to hang about here,
trying to convince you, because you were already half-convinced, that
the case was one of suicide and that the company was not liable.”
“In fact, he just waited for the funeral, and then made off?”
“No, he waited until he thought he wasn’t watched. It’s a rum
business, shadowing a man; you don’t want him to see exactly who is
shadowing him, or where the man is who is shadowing him; but you do,
very often, want him to know that he is shadowed, because that makes
him lose his head and give himself away. Now, Brinkman didn’t know
what I suspected and didn’t, I think, know about my two men at the
_Swan_. But I contrived to let him see that he was under observation,
and that it wasn’t safe for him to go far out of my sight. It’s an old
game: you give a man that impression, and then you suddenly let on
that he is free—for the moment at any rate. He seizes his chance, and,
with luck, you catch him. He really thought yesterday evening that you
were the only person watching the front of the house. But he was
clever enough, confound him, to see that there might be danger for him
in the garage. So he rang up, ordering a car to meet the 8.40 at
Chilthorpe Station, and then made his arrangements—uncommonly good
ones—for boarding the car en route. And nobody’s to blame, exactly,
but I gravely fear that the murderer has got off scotfree.”
As if in confirmation of his words, the maid came in with a telegram.
He opened it and crushed it in his hand. “As I thought,” he said;
“they searched the train at the terminus and didn’t find their man.
They may watch the ports, but I doubt if they’ll get him now. It’s a
rotten business.”
“I don’t think you’ve explained everything,” said Bredon, “I mean,
about Brinkman’s movements after the murder. Indeed, I know for a fact
that you haven’t explained everything; partly because you don’t know
everything. But I think your account of Brinkman’s movements that
night is extraordinarily ingenious, and I only wish it were true. I
wish it were true, I mean, because it would have brought us up, for
once in our lives, against a really clever criminal. But, you see,
there’s one thing which is fatal to all your theory. You haven’t
explained why the gas-tap showed the mark where Mottram turned it on
and didn’t show the mark where Mottram turned it off.”
“Oh, yes, I admit that’s puzzling. Still, one can imagine
circumstances”——
“One can imagine circumstances, but one can’t fit them onto the facts.
If the gas had been quite close to Mottram’s bed, and he had had a
stick by his side, he might have turned off the tap with the stick;
I’ve known slack men do that. But the gas wasn’t near enough for that.
Or, again, if Mottram had gone to bed in gloves, he might have turned
off the tap with gloves on; but he didn’t. The tap was stiff; it was
stiff both when you turned it on and when you turned it off; and there
must, in reason, have been some slight trace left if that gas was
turned off by a man’s naked fingers. Therefore it wasn’t turned off by
a man’s naked fingers. Therefore it wasn’t turned off by Mottram, or
by anybody who had any business to turn it off. It was turned off by
somebody who had a secret end to serve in doing so.”
“You mean a criminal end?”
“I didn’t say that. I said a secret end. Your view doesn’t explain
that; and because it doesn’t explain that, although I think you’ve
told us an extraordinarily ingenious story, I don’t think it’s worth
forty pounds. . . . Hullo! What’s this arriving?”
The taxi from the garage had drawn up outside the inn’s door, and was
depositing some passengers who had obviously come by the early morning
train from Pullford. They were not left in doubt for long; the
coffee-room door was opened, and, with “Don’t get up, please” written
all over his apologetic features, the Bishop of Pullford walked in.
Eames followed behind him.
“Good-morning, Mr. Bredon. I’m so sorry to disturb you and your
friends at breakfast like this. But Mr. Eames here has been telling me
about your alarums and excursions last night, and I thought probably
there would be some tired brains this morning. Also, I felt it was
important to tell you all I know, because of Mr. Brinkman’s hurried
departure.”
Bredon hastily effected the necessary introductions. “You know
something, then, after all?”
“Oh, you mustn’t think I’ve been playing you false, Mr. Bredon. The
evidence I’m referring to only came to hand last night. But such as it
is, it’s decisive; it proves that poor Mottram met his death by
suicide.”