Mottram’s Account of It All
“Rapid adjustment of the mental perspective,” said Mr. Pulteney, “is
an invaluable exercise, especially at my age. But I confess there is a
point at which the process becomes confusing. Are we now to understand
that Mr. Brinkman, so far from being a murderer, is simply an innocent
man with a taste for motoring late at night? I have no doubt there is
a satisfactory explanation of it all, but it looks to me as if there
had been an absence of straightforwardness on somebody’s part.”
“Possibly on that of Mr. Eames,” said the Bishop. “I have to confess,
on his behalf, that he has been concealing something, and to take the
blame for his conduct—if blame attaches to it—unreservedly upon
myself. However, I do not think that any earlier disclosure could have
helped forward the cause of justice; and I have lost no time in
putting it all before you.”
“You mean that letter which was left about in the gorge,” suggested
Bredon, “addressed to the Bishop of Pullford? With a confession of
suicide in it?”
“Goodness, Mr. Bredon, you seem to know as much about it as I do
myself! Well, that is the long and short of it. When Mr. Eames was
with you last night, Mr. Leyland, he told you that he had followed
Brinkman along the gorge, and that Brinkman had disappeared in a
motor. He did not tell you that, half way through the gorge, he saw
Brinkman leaping up under a ledge in the rock, as if to put something
on it or take something down from it. The something which he was
putting up or taking down was, I make no doubt, the document which I
now hold in my hand. Mr. Eames found it after Brinkman had left, and,
seeing that it was addressed to me with an intimation that it was
private and confidential, thought it best to carry it straight to me
without informing you of its existence. I understood him to say that
he did not mention its existence to you, Mr. Bredon, either.”
“Nor did I,” put in Eames.
“How jolly of you, Mr. Eames,” said Angela. “You can’t think what a
lot of trouble we’ve been having with my husband; he thinks he knows
all about the mystery, and he won’t tell us; isn’t it odious of him?
And I’m so glad to think that you managed to keep him in the dark
about something.”
“Not entirely,” protested Bredon. “Cast your eye over that, Mr.
Eames.” And a document was handed, first to Eames, then to the rest of
the company, which certainly seemed to make Eames’s caution
unnecessary. It was a plain scrap of paper, scrawled over in pencil
with the handwriting of a man who is travelling at thirty-five miles
an hour over bumpy roads in a badly sprung car. All it said was, “Make
Eames shew you what he found in the gorge. I thought it was you. F.
Brinkman.”
“Ah!” said the Bishop. “Brinkman, it seemed, had some doubt as to the
fate of a document which got into the hands of the Catholic
authorities. Poor fellow, he was always rather bitter about it.
However, here we are, Mr. Bredon, owning up like good boys. It was to
put that very document into your hands that I came down this morning.
But I think Mr. Eames was quite right in holding that the document,
with such a superscription, ought to be handed over to me direct,
without any mention even of its existence to a third party.”
“I for one,” put in Leyland, “applaud his action. I do not believe in
all these posthumous revelations; I prefer to respect the confidence
of the dead. But I understand that Your Lordship is prepared to let us
see the contents of the letter after all?”
“Certainly. I think poor Mottram’s last directions were influenced
simply by consideration for my own feelings in the matter. I have no
hesitation myself in making it public. Shall I read it here and now?”
In deference to a chorus of assent, the Bishop took out the enclosure
of the envelope and prepared to read. “I ought to say by way of
preface,” he explained, “that I knew poor Mottram’s handwriting well
enough, and I feel fully convinced that this is a genuine autograph of
his, not a forgery. You will see why I mention that later on. This is
how the letter runs:
“‘My dear Lord Bishop:
“‘Pursuant to our conversation of Thursday evening last, it will be
within your Lordship’s memory that upon that occasion I asserted the
right of a man, in given circumstances, to take his own life,
particularly when same was threatened by an incurable and painful
disease. This I only mentioned casually, when illustrating the
argument I was then trying to put forward, namely that the end
justifies the means, even in a case where said means are bad,
provided said ends are good. I note that your Lordship is of the
contrary opinion, namely that said end does not justify said means.
I am, however, confident that in a concrete case like the present
your Lordship will be more open to conviction _re_ this matter, as
it is a case where I am acting to the best of my lights, which, your
Lordship has often told me, is all that a man can do when in
doubtful circumstances.
“‘I regret to have to inform your Lordship that, interviewing
recently a specialist in London _re_ my health, said specialist
informed me that I was suffering from an incurable disease. I have
not the skill to write the name of it; and as it is of an unusual
nature, maybe it would not interest your Lordship to know it. The
specialist was, however, of the decided opinion that I could not
survive more than two years or thereabouts; and that in the interim
the disease would give rise to considerable pain. It is therefore my
intention, in pursuance of the line of argument which I have already
done my best to explain to your Lordship, to take my own life, in
circumstances which will be sufficiently public by the time this
reaches you.
“‘I have not, as your Lordship knows, any firm religious
convictions. I believe that there is a future life of some kind, and
that we shall all be judged according to our opportunities and the
use we made of same. I believe that God is merciful, and will make
allowances for the difficulties we had in knowing what was the right
thing to do and in doing it. But I have been through some hard
times, and maybe not always acted for the best. Being desirous,
therefore, of making my peace with God, I have taken the liberty of
devising some of the property of which I die possessed to your
Lordship personally, to be used for the benefit of the diocese of
Pullford. Said property consisting of the benefits accruing from the
Euthanasia policy taken out by me with the Indescribable Insurance
Company. And so have directed my lawyers in a will made by me
recently.
“‘I believe that your Lordship is a man of God, and anxious to do
his best for his fellow-citizens in the town of Pullford. I believe
that the money will serve a good end, although I do not agree with
what your Lordship teaches. I feel sure that your Lordship will
realize the desirability of keeping this letter private, and not
letting it be known that I took my own life. The insurance company
would probably refuse to pay the claim if I was supposed to have
died by my own hand, that being their rule in such cases, except
where the deceased was of unsound mind, which is not the case, me
being in full possession of all my faculties. If, however, the
preparations which I have made should eventuate successfully, it
will not be supposed by the coroner’s jury that I took my own life,
and the claim will be paid accordingly. Your Lordship will realize
that this is only fair, since (1) in taking my own life I am only
anticipating the decree of nature by a few months, and (2) the
object to which I have devised the money is not the selfish
enjoyment of a few persons, but the spiritual benefit of a large
number, mostly poor. I am writing this, therefore, for your
Lordship’s own eyes, and it has no need to be made public. I am
quite sure that God will forgive me what I am doing if it is at all
wrong, for I am afraid to suffer pain and am doing my best to
bequeath my money in such a way that same will be used for good
purposes. With every gratitude for the kindness I have always
received at the Cathedral House, though not of the same religion, I
remain,
“‘Your Lordship’s obedient servant,
“‘J. Mottram.’”
The Bishop’s voice quavered a little at certain points in this
recital; it was difficult not to be affected by the laborious efforts
of a pen untrained in language to do justice to the writer’s friendly
intentions. “I’m very sorry indeed for the poor fellow,” the Bishop
said. “The older we grow, the more tender we must become toward the
strange vagaries of the human conscience. That’s not the letter of a
man, whose mind is unhinged. And yet, what is one to make of a
conscience so strangely misformed? However, I didn’t come here to talk
about all that. You’ll see for yourselves that, although the writer
_recommends_ my keeping it dark, he places me under no obligation to
do so—he would have put me in an uncommonly awkward position if he
had. As it is, I’ve had no hesitation in reading it to you, and shall
have no hesitation in producing it, if necessary, before a court of
law. It seems that our legacy, after all, was only a castle in Spain.”
“The poor dear!” said Angela. “And it’s bad luck on you, Mr. Leyland.
Did you realize, My Lord, that Mr. Leyland had just succeeded in
persuading us all that Mr. Brinkman had murdered Mr. Mottram by
letting in gas from the room above?”
“Well, thank God it was nothing as bad as that!” said the Bishop. “At
least this letter will help us to take a kindlier view of him.”
“It would be a very singular and, I had almost said, a diverting
circumstance, if both things could have happened at once,” said Mr.
Pulteney, “if, while Mottram was busy poisoning himself with his own
gas down below, Brinkman was at the same moment, in complete
ignorance, feeding him with an extra supply of gas from above. It
would be a somewhat knotty problem, in that case, to decide whether we
were to call it suicide or murder. However,” he added with a little
bow to the Bishop, “we have a competent authority with us.”
“Oh, don’t ask me, sir,” protested the Bishop, “I should have to
consult my Canon Penitentiary. He would tell me, I fancy, that the act
of murder in this case inflowed into the act of suicide, but I am not
sure that would help us much.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Eames, “Mr. Bredon could tell us what view the
Indescribable would take of such a case.”
“They would be hard put to it,” said Bredon. “Fortunately, there is no
question of any such doubt here. For Leyland’s suggestion of murder
was only based on the impossibility of suicide, in view of the gas
being turned off. Whereas Mr. Pulteney’s ingenious suggestion has all
the difficulties in it which Leyland was trying to avoid.”
“I’m hanged if I can make head or tail of it,” said Leyland. “It’s
like a nightmare, this case; every time you think you’ve found some
solid ground to rest on, it sinks under your feet. I shall begin to
believe in ghosts soon. And what are we to make of the message itself?
Might I see the envelope, My Lord? . . . Thank you. Well, it’s clear
that Brinkman wasn’t putting the letter up on the ledge; he was taking
it down. It’s so weather-stained that it must clearly have been there
the best part of a week. Now, why on earth was Brinkman so anxious to
take the letter away with him? For the letter proved it was suicide,
and that’s precisely what he wanted to have proved.”
“Brinkman may not have known what was in the letter,” suggested Eames.
“He may have thought the thousand pounds were in it,” suggested
Pulteney, “waiting there as a surprise present for the Bishop. I am no
acrobat myself, but I believe I could jump pretty high if you gave me
that sum to aspire to.”
“I wonder if Brinkman did know?” said Leyland. “Of course if he did he
was an accessory before the fact to Mottram’s suicide. And that might
make him anxious for his own position—but it doesn’t ring true, that
idea.”
“Might I see the letter itself?” asked Bredon. “It sounds impolite, I
know; but I only want to look at the way in which it’s written. . . .
Thank you, My Lord. . . . It’s rather a suggestive fact, isn’t it,
that this letter was copied?”
“Copied?” asked the Bishop. “How on earth can you tell that?”
“I am comparing it in my mind’s eye with the letter we found lying
about in Mottram’s bedroom, half-finished. Mottram wrote with
difficulty; his thoughts didn’t flow to his pen. Consequently, in that
letter to the _Pullford Examiner_ you will find that only the last
sentence at the bottom of the page has been blotted when the ink was
wet. The rest of the page had had time to dry naturally, while Mottram
was thinking of what to say next. But this letter of yours, My Lord,
has been written straight off, and the blotting process becomes more
and more marked the further you get down the page. I say, therefore,
that Mottram had already composed the letter in rough, and when he set
down to this sheet of paper he was copying it straight down.”
“You’re not suggesting that Brinkman dictated the letter?”
asked Leyland. “Of course that would open up some interesting
possibilities.”
“No, I wasn’t thinking of that. I was only thinking it was rather a
cold-blooded way for a suicide to write his last letter. But it’s a
small point.”
“And meanwhile,” said Leyland, “I suppose you’re waiting for me to
fork out those forty pounds?”
“What!” said the Bishop, “you have a personal interest in this, Mr.
Bredon? Well, in any case you have saved your company a larger sum
than that. I’m afraid you will have to write and tell them that it was
suicide, and the claim does not urge.”
“On the contrary, My Lord,” said Bredon, knocking out his pipe
thoughtfully into the fireplace, “I’m going to write to the company
and tell them that the claim has got to be paid, because Mottram met
his death by accident.”