Piecing it Together
If the general accommodation at the Paston Oatvile dormy-house cannot
be described as cloistral, it must be admitted that the rooms in it
where you can claim privacy are not much better than cells. Mordaunt
Reeves, however, had done something to turn his apartments into a
civilized dwelling-place; there were pictures which did not illustrate
wings, and books devoted to other subjects than the multitudinous
possibilities of error in playing golf. Gordon and he had each a
comfortable arm-chair, each a corner of the fire-place to flick his
cigarette-ash into, when they met that evening to talk over the
possibilities of the situation as it had hitherto developed.
“Everybody,” said Reeves, “if you notice, has already started treating
an assumption as if it were a fact. They all say it was Brotherhood we
found lying there; they all say he committed suicide because he had
just gone bankrupt. Now, as a matter of fact, we don’t know that it
was Brotherhood at all. He has not been heard of, but there hasn’t
been much time to hear of him; and nothing is more probable than that
a man who has gone bankrupt should skip without leaving any traces.”
“Yes, but somebody’s dead; you’ve got to find a gap somewhere in the
ranks of Society to match our corpus.”
“Still, that’s mere negative arguing. And there are several points
that tell against its being Brotherhood. In the first place, that
ticket. Brotherhood goes up and down every day; do you mean to tell me
he hasn’t got a season? Second point, if it was Brotherhood there’s an
odd coincidence—he died within ten minutes’ walk of his own bungalow;
why there, any more than anywhere else on the line?”
“It’s a coincidence that Brotherhood should be killed so near his own
bungalow. But the murder, whether we like it or not, has been
committed just there, so I don’t see why it shouldn’t be him as much
as anybody else. However, go on.”
“Third point, the handkerchief. Why should Brotherhood be carrying
somebody else’s handkerchief?”
“If it comes to that, why should somebody else be carrying
Brotherhood’s correspondence?”
“Oh, Brotherhood is mixed up in it somehow right enough. We shall see.
Next point to be considered, was it accident, suicide, or murder?”
“You can cut out accident, surely. That would be a
coincidence—somebody carrying Brotherhood’s letter to fall out of the
train by mere accident just where Brotherhood lives.”
“Very well, for the present we’ll ask Murder or Suicide? Now, I’ve
several arguments against suicide. First, as I told you, the hat. He
wasn’t alone when he fell out of the carriage, or who threw the hat
after him?”
“There was no mark in the hat, was there?”
“Only the maker’s; that’s the irritating thing about this business.
Hats, collars, shirts, people buy them at a moment’s notice and pay
cash for them, so there’s no record in the books. And watches—of
course you don’t have a watch sent, you take it with you, to save the
danger of carriage by post. I’ll try all those tradesmen if the worst
comes to the worst; probably the police have already; but I bet
nothing comes of it.”
“What’s your next argument against suicide?”
“The ticket. That extra four bob would have got him a first instead of
a third. Now, a man who means to commit suicide doesn’t want four bob,
but he does want to be alone.”
“But the suicide might have been an impulse at the last moment.”
“I don’t believe it. The place where he fell was just the one place
about here where he was bound to kill himself, not merely maim
himself. That looks like preparation.”
“All right. Any more?”
“No, but I think that’s enough to go on with. The probability I’m
going to bet on is murder.”
“You’re up against coincidence again, though, there. Why should
somebody happen to murder Brotherhood on the very day he went
bankrupt?”
“You _will_ go on assuming that it is Brotherhood. Supposing, just for
the sake of argument, that Brotherhood has saved a nest-egg for
himself, and is skipping to avoid his creditors—what better way of
throwing people off the scent than by a pretended suicide?”
“That is, by pitching a total stranger down the viaduct.”
“I didn’t say a total stranger. Suppose it were somebody in pursuit of
him, or somebody he suspected of pursuing him?”
“But he couldn’t be sure that the face would get mangled like that. It
was only one chance in a thousand that the body should scrape down all
along that buttress on its face.”
“He may simply have wanted to kill the man, without hoping that the
corpse would be mistaken for him. After all, we’ve got to explain the
ticket; a man who takes a single ticket down here is almost certainly
not a resident here—the half-fare is so cheap. A spy, tracking him, or
somebody he takes to be a spy tracking him. He stuns the man while
he’s not looking, and then pitches him out. He’s desperate, remember.”
“Well, it seems to hang together that way.”
“But I’m not at all sure that’s the right way. I’m not at all sure
that Brotherhood isn’t the murderee, and the murderer somebody
unknown—such a murder might be connected with a bankruptcy, a ruined
creditor, for example.”
“And how are you going to look for the murderer if that’s so?”
“You’re going to help me. We’re going to have a little detective
holiday, and leave the game alone for a bit. Of course we must find
out all about Brotherhood first—it’s extraordinary how little people
seem to know about him. I asked four men in the Club whether he wore a
wrist-watch or not: two couldn’t remember, one said he did, and one
swore he didn’t. But there must be some servant who looks after his
bungalow for him; so I’m going there to-morrow to pump them.”
“Introducing yourself as Mr. S. Holmes of Baker Street, or how?”
“No, I shall be the _Daily Mail_ reporter—unless I run into the real
article on the mat. Now, would you mind following up the Masterman
clue?”
“What Masterman clue?”
“There are only two Mastermans in the Telephone Directory. A man
dressed like that would be sure to have a telephone.”
“But I thought you’d made up your mind it wasn’t a local person at
all, because of the ticket?”
“I know, it’s probably a wild-goose chase, but it’s the best we can do
on that tack. Both are at Binver; one’s a solicitor and one a doctor.
I’ll give you the addresses.”
“And I’m to go to them and ask them what kind of handkerchiefs they
use? Or should I meet them accidentally and say, Excuse me, sir, could
you lend me a handkerchief, I’ve left mine at home?”
“Well, you can find out whether they’re dead, anyhow.”
“And if they’re still alive?”
“Well, scout around somehow. Do anything that occurs to you. This
business ought to be rather fun, if we exercise a little ingenuity.”
“Meanwhile, let’s have another look at those documents. We don’t seem
to have made much out of them, and that’s a fact.”
They sat for several minutes in silence, re-reading the copy Reeves
had made of the anonymous letter. It was undated; the address was in
printed capitals; it had been post-marked in London at starting, and
at Paston Whitchurch on arrival. The content of the message was a mere
series of numbers, as follows:
8 7 5
18 4 7
21 2 3
25 6 4
31 4 8
74 13 9
92 29 7
97 5 3
113 17 13
10 12 13
“Unless they’re sums of money,” said Gordon, “I can’t make head or
tail of it all. And if they were sums of money, it would be a queer
way to arrange the spacing.”
“Wait one moment,” said Reeves, “I believe I’ve got the idea of it.”
He put his hand to his forehead. “Yes, that does it. It’s a cipher, of
course, otherwise there’d be something to explain what it’s all about.
It will be a book cipher; the first figure gives you the page, the
second the line, and the third the word in the line. How’s that?”
“That’s devilish ingenious,” admitted Gordon, “but you can hardly
prove it.”
“I can practically prove it,” said Reeves. “Look here, the man wanted
to spell out a message in ten words. There was a book, arranged upon
somehow beforehand. The first few words were ordinary words, that you
could find anywhere on any page: and naturally, to save himself and
the other man trouble in counting, he took them from the top of the
page, so you get lines 7, 4, 2, 6, and 4 of pages 8, 18, 21, 25 and
31. The sixth word he wanted was an obscure sort of word, perhaps even
a proper name. He had to go right on to page 74, and even then he
could only find his word on the 13th line of it. Then the next two
words came easy, comparatively, but the ninth word was a brute, he
couldn’t find it till page 113, and on the 17th line at that. And by
that time he’d got nearly to the end of the book—a book, then, of only
120 pages or so probably; a paper edition, I suspect—so he had to go
back to the beginning again, which he hadn’t meant to do.”
“Bravo!” said Gordon. “Have another injection of cocaine.”
“The curse of the thing is,” said Mordaunt Reeves, “that with a book
cipher you can’t possibly guess the message unless you’ve got the
book. I think we shall have to establish the identity before we get
any further on that tack. Let’s have a look at the letter now.”
The letter was a curt official communication from the Railway Company,
only the details being filled in in ink, the rest a mere printed form:
London Midland and Scottish Railway.
10. 10. 19XY.
Dear Sir,
I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter of 9th instant and have
given orders for a berth to be reserved in the sleeping car attached
to the 7.30 train on Thursday (corrected to Wednesday) the 18th
(corrected to 17th) of October to Glasgow. I note that you will join
the train at Crewe.
S. Brotherhood Esq.
“These corrections are rummy,” said Reeves. “I wonder if perhaps
Brotherhood’s letter corrected itself in a postscript? You see,
assuming that Brotherhood was skipping, it’s all right for him to go
to Glasgow—rather ingenious, in fact—but why shouldn’t he travel
to-night, the sixteenth, instead of to-morrow night?”
“He couldn’t get away early enough. Or could he? Got a Bradshaw?”
Gordon proceeded to look up the trains with an irritating
thoroughness, while Reeves danced with impatience—there is no
impatience like that engendered by watching another man look up
Bradshaw. “That’s all right,” said Gordon at last. “In order to catch
the Scottish train at Crewe he’d have had to take that earlier train,
the one Marryatt came up by, and get out at Binver. He took the 3.47,
I suppose, because he couldn’t get away sooner. Perhaps, if we’re
right in thinking he wanted to skip, he was going to go across country
by car to-morrow and confuse his tracks a bit.”
“The thing doesn’t look like skipping quite as much as it did. For
Heaven’s sake let’s beware of prejudicing the case. Anyhow, he meant
to make for Glasgow on the Wednesday night—that’s to-morrow night,
isn’t it? Now let’s have one more look at that silly list that was on
the back of the anonymous letter.”
The list had been copied almost in facsimile, for it was very short.
It ran
Socks
vest
hem
tins—
at least, that was the general impression it gave, but the writing was
so spidery as to make it very doubtful which precise letter each of
the strokes represented.
“I suppose it must be a shopping-list of some sort. If one could make
that last word ‘ties’ it would read better,” said Gordon.
“But even so you wouldn’t have hems in a shopping-list.”
“It might be ham.”
“But one doesn’t buy ham at the hosier’s.”
“And why did he write at the edge of the paper like that?”
“If it comes to that, who was the he? It’s not Brotherhood’s
writing—I’ve verified that from the club book. I fancy this goes
pretty deep. Look here, here’s a bit of detection for you. That sheet
has been torn off at the left-hand side, hasn’t it? Now, was it torn
off before or after the writing was put on it?”
“Before, surely. Otherwise the initial letters wouldn’t be so
complete; he’d have been certain to tear across them.”
“I’m not so sure. Who writes so close to the edge of a piece of paper
as that? Remember, I copied the thing down exactly, and each word was
close up against the tear.”
“I don’t quite see what difference it makes, anyhow,” objected Gordon.
“More than you think, perhaps. I shouldn’t wonder if this bit of paper
turned up trumps, when we’ve thought it over a bit more. But there’s
one thing that fairly beats me.”
“What’s that?”
“Those two watches. It doesn’t seem to me to make any sense. Well,
we’d better get to bed and sleep over it.”