Endless Clues
There is no surer soporific than sleeping over a problem, no more
fallacious method of attempting a solution. After murmuring to himself
three times, “Let’s see; there was something about watches,” Mordaunt
Reeves fell into a sleep which anybody but a psychoanalyst would have
called dreamless. He woke in the morning with a strong resolution to
do the ninth in four, which melted through lazy stages of
half-awareness into the feeling that there was something else to do
first. The adventures of yesterday, the duties of to-day, returned to
him. He was already nearly dressed when he remembered that he had
decided on the rôle of a _Daily Mail_ reporter for his morning’s
investigation, and grimly set himself to remove again the bulging
knickerbockers and the hypocritical garters of his kind. Dressy they
might be, but they were not Fleet Street. His memories of the
reporter’s wardrobe were, it must be confessed, somewhat disordered,
and he was greeted in the breakfast-room with flippant inquiries
whether he had gone into mourning for the Unknown Passenger.
He found Gordon already at table with Marryatt—Marryatt in the high
clerical collar which was irreverently known to his intimates as “New
every morning.”
“Well, how are you feeling?” he asked. “You looked rather chippy
yesterday. However, I suppose it brings a job of work your way.”
“Confound it,” said Marryatt, “that’s the trouble. The jury at the
inquest are bound to bring in suicide; and then I can’t bury the man
in the churchyard, and all the villagers will say I refused out of
spite, because the poor old chap used to give these atheist lectures
on the village green.”
“Rot!” said Gordon; “if they do find suicide, they’ll certainly say he
was of unsound mind.”
“Yes,” echoed Reeves, “if they do bring in suicide.”
“But surely you can’t doubt it,” urged Marryatt energetically. “The
man’s just gone bankrupt, and it was an ugly case, from what I hear;
several innocent people who’d been fools enough to believe in him left
in the cart. At the same time, the smash came very suddenly, and that
makes it unlikely that anybody could want to murder the man so soon.
Oh, you’ll find it’s suicide right enough.”
“Well,” said Reeves a little stiffly, “we’re going to do our best to
find out between us. I’ve the greatest respect for the police as a
body, but I don’t think they’re very good at following up clues. When
I was in the Military Intelligence one was constantly putting material
at the disposal of the police which they were too supine or too stupid
to use.”
“Well, good luck to your sleuthing; but mark my words, you’ll find it
was suicide. I’m going to play a round now to try and take my mind off
the thing, but I don’t believe I shall be able to drive at the third
after—after what we saw yesterday.”
Left to themselves, Mordaunt Reeves and Gordon arranged that they
would meet again at luncheon and report on the morning’s
investigations.
“And look here,” said Reeves, “it’s a belief of mine that one wants to
cover the ground oneself if one’s to visualize the setting of a crime
properly. So I vote that after lunch we stroll down to the railway and
take a look at the top of that viaduct, and then take the 4.50 from
Paston Oatvile to Paston Whitchurch so as to picture the whole thing
exactly as it happened.” And so they parted, Reeves walking to
Brotherhood’s bungalow, close to Paston Whitchurch station, while
Gordon mounted a motor-bicycle and set out for Binver, a sleepy market
town of some importance as a railway junction, about twelve miles off.
Mr. Brotherhood’s housekeeper, Mrs. Bramston, had something of the
airs of a landlady. She spoke painfully correct English, far more
terrible than the native cockney which it half revealed and half
concealed. She commenced where others began, closed doors where others
shut them, and recollected instead of remembering. Her final
consonants were all sibilant, and seemed to form part of the
succeeding word. She was a merciless and largely irrelevant talker,
and the opportunity of a stranger’s visit delighted her,
self-importance easily triumphing over any regret she may have felt
for the apparently deceased. She had no doubt that Reeves was a
reporter, but it is probable that she would have opened out quite as
readily if he had announced himself as the piano-tuner.
“From the _Daily Mail_? To be sure, sir. I’m always fond of looking at
a paper myself, and as for the _Daily Telegraph_, I simply revel in
it. Called about poor Mr. Brotherood, I suppose; well, there isn’t
much doubt what’s come to him, poor soul. . . . Not Mr. Brotherood at
all? Don’t you delude yourself, young man; that’s him, sure enough.
The police, they wanted me to go and look at the corpse; but I didn’t
hardly like to; battered they say it was, something shocking. His
clothes? Of course they were his clothes; you don’t think he’d want to
be putting somebody else’s clothes on to commit suicide in, do you?
That’s the same as he always wore; plain black coat and grey striped
trousers, just the same as it was in the papers. . . . What tailor he
went to? No, I couldn’t rightly say that; though I’ve had the folding
of them many a time; very neat man he was, Mr. Brotherood, in his
personal habits. Oh, I dare say there’s others as have clothes like
his, only you see the way I look at it is, if the clothes were _on_
Mr. Brotherood, then it’s Mr. Brotherood’s clothes they’ll be, that’s
the way I look at it.
“A single gentleman? Yes, a single gentleman he was, single and
singular, if you’ll pardon the _jeu de mots_. Very singular in his
habits. Every Saturday off he’d go, just the same as it was in the
papers, and where he went to is more than I can say, though I’ve been
looking after him the best part of a year now. Every afternoon from
Monday to Saturday he’d come home by the five o’clock train, and then
he’d go for his round of golf, and I’d have a bit of cold supper ready
for him when he came home. . . .
“No, I can’t say that I’ve noticed anything strange about him of late.
You see, he was always a very reserved gentleman, Mr. Brotherood was;
very silent, if you understand what I mean, in conversation.” (Reeves
felt that this was probably a characteristic common to most of Mrs.
Bramston’s interlocutors.) “Time and again he’s said to me would I
mind leaving him now because he’d got a great deal to do. I recollect
about a fortnight ago he did seem rather put out about not being able
to find his overcoat when he went out to deliver his address to the
villagers; but I found it for him. . . . No, it isn’t much more than
two months ago since he commenced exhorting. I never could see what he
did it for; not that I go to church myself, but you see the way I look
at it is if people want to go to church why not let them go to church?
Live and let live, that’s what I say. I shouldn’t call myself a
religious woman, mind you, but I like to see everyone go their own
way, and not leave tracts. Miss Frobisher she used to come here with
tracts, but I said to her, ‘Miss Frobisher,’ I said, ‘you’re wasting
your time leaving tracts here,’ and so she was. . . .
“Mad, sir? Oh dear no, not what you could call mad. Of course we all
have our own little ways, haven’t we, sir? and as I was telling you,
Mr. Brotherood was singular, but not demented; I should never have
stopped with Mr. Brotherood had he been demented. . . . Suicide? Of
course it was suicide; and there’s some say Mr. Marryatt won’t bury
him in holy ground, don’t they? Well, you take my word for it, Mr.
Brotherood wouldn’t mind about a little thing like that. Some people
seem not to mind _what_ happens to them once they’re gone: Mr.
Bramston was like that, while he was spared to me; never seemed to
mind if we were to take a spade and bury him in the back garden,
that’s the way _he_ looked at it. But of course, I wouldn’t have that,
and he was buried properly in holy ground, Mr. Bramston was, and the
minister recited the service over him beautiful. . . . What, must you
be going already, sir? Well, I’m sure it’s been a great privilege to
me to afford you information. Good morning, sir.”
This is an abridged account of the interview, but it contains all the
material disclosures made by Mrs. Bramston. Reeves found himself
pitying the coroner who would have to face and to stem that seething
torrent of conversation. He came back to the dormy-house to find that
it was already nearly time for luncheon, and Gordon was waiting for
him, returned from his errand at Binver.
“Well, have you found out anything?” asked Gordon.
“Yes,” said Reeves, “I’ve found a wife for Carmichael. I’ve found a
woman who could give him a stroke a hole at back-chat.” And he
launched into a description of Mrs. Bramston’s voluminous utterance
and her insignificant contribution to the solving of the mystery.
“Had you any better luck?” he went on.
“Acting upon instructions received, I proceeded first of all to the
offices of Messrs. Masterman, Formby and Jarrold, Solicitors. It’s one
of those jolly old Queen Anne houses facing on the High Street; with a
flagged walk up to the front door and blue gates that need painting—or
rather, it would spoil them if you did. It’s been turned into an
office, and the inside is all musty and smells of decaying paper. The
mustiest thing there was the old clerk I went up to and asked if I
could see Mr. Masterman. And he said, ‘I’m afraid not, sir; Mr.
Masterman is dead.’”
“Dead? How? When?”
“My very words. And the old gentleman said, ‘About twenty-three years
ago. Would you like to see Mr. Jarrold?’ Well, that did me in rather,
because even if old Masterman did bequeath his handkerchiefs to
Jarrold, it isn’t likely that old Jarrold would be still using them,
though they would about match his furniture if he did.”
“How did you get out of it? You were rather badly placed.”
“I was, and I cursed you pretty freely. However, I extricated myself
without any heart-to-heart talks with Mr. Jarrold. I just said, ‘I’m
so sorry, I must have made some mistake; this is _Doctor_ Masterman’s
house, isn’t it?’ That killed two birds with one stone, I eluded
suspicion and also got directed to the other Masterman house, a big
house, the man said, at the other end of the water-meadow behind the
church.”
“So you went on there?”
“No; it occurred to me that a man who lived in a house that size
probably kept a man-servant or two, and it was up to me to personate
one of them. So I went round to the Binver Steam Laundry, where I’m
not known personally; and said I was from Dr. Masterman’s, and could
they be kind enough to inform Dr. Masterman as to what action they
intended taking about the twelve last handkerchiefs that hadn’t come
back from the wash. That sounds risky, but it wasn’t really, because
all men think they’ve more clothes at the wash than they really have.
The lady in charge was quite patient and kind, obviously well
accustomed to that sort of complaint; she said all Dr. Masterman’s
handkerchiefs had been sent back. Fortunately I bluffed, and insisted
upon a search; after a bit she came and put into my hands a pile of
handkerchiefs, which I took away with me. There were five of them,
four Mastermans and a Brotherhood.”
“Oh! That rather looks as if——”
“Exactly; it looks as if we ought to have recognized the touch of the
Binver Steam Laundry. In fact, it would be very suspicious in these
parts if you found a dead man wearing one of his own handkerchiefs.
Well, there seemed no point in keeping any of them, so I dropped the
lot into Masterman’s letter-box. Unusual, perhaps, but I felt it would
save explanations.”
“Well, I’m sure we’re all very grateful to Mr. Gordon for his splendid
work among the Mastermen. But it begins to look as if we were left
very much where we were. We still don’t even know who the corpse was.”
There was a knock at the door, and the unwelcome figure of Carmichael
obtruded itself. “Sorry if I interrupt,” he said, “but I thought you
might be interested in this poor fellow we found yesterday. My caddie
this morning was giving me the latest news. It’s extraordinary how
these caddies pick up everything except one’s ball.”
“What news?” gasped Reeves.
“Well, it seems that Brotherhood was insured at one of these American
offices. And they’re a great deal more particular than our own
Insurance people. And after all they’re right to be: one’s so apt to
think of the Insurance Company as a set of sharks, when in reality
they are only protecting the interests of their policy-holders.”
“Granted,” said Gordon. “Proceed.”
“Well, as soon as they heard of the bankruptcy and then saw the news
in the morning paper about the Links Tragedy, the Insurance Company
pricked up its ears. Apparently, in the actuarial world, bankruptcy
followed by alleged suicide is a matter of daily occurrence, and they
have their suspicions. That is why I say they are quite within their
rights when they insist upon registering a man by his birth-marks
before they insure him. It’s an extraordinary thing about birth-marks;
we really know nothing about them——”
“Nor want to,” said Reeves, “for the time being. What happened?”
“I was just telling you. A man came down from the Insurance Company to
identify the corpse; and my caddie heard about it from——”
“Heard what?”
“Why, that it _is_ Brotherhood. They recognized him from the
birth-mark.”
“So that’s that,” said Mordaunt Reeves, a little bitterly. “Trust the
Insurance people not to make a mistake. I confess that, after the
handkerchief clue failed, I had begun to think it must be Brotherhood
who was dead. I suppose your caddie didn’t happen to mention whether
it was suicide or murder?”
“He assumed it to be suicide; but not, I think, with any inside
information. Of course, it was a foggy day. Did you know that, as a
matter of statistics, there are more suicides in November than in any
other month?”
“I will make a note of the fact,” said Mordaunt Reeves.