By which Train?
He met Marryatt on his way upstairs—Marryatt looking pained, as he
always did when bad news went round.
“I must congratulate you on your driving, Reeves. It’s all over the
Club. But when I think of that poor fellow Davenant—I wonder now, do
you think perhaps the jury will find Davenant was insane? Why do we
always assume it’s a madman’s act to take one’s own life, when it’s
surely a far more desperate thing to take anybody else’s? Did you
think, from what you saw of Davenant, that he was in mental health?”
“My dear Marryatt,” said Reeves, “you’re jumping to conclusions again.
The police have arrested Davenant, because his movements since the
time of the murder have been suspicious, and he has got to account for
them. But there isn’t any positive case against him as far as I know.”
“I’m afraid the facts are only too clear,” said Marryatt, shaking his
head. “A man doesn’t conceal himself so carefully unless there’s a
guilty conscience behind it. But I still ask myself, was it a sane
man’s act?”
Reeves was a little disappointed to find the assumption of Davenant’s
guilt so universal. People, he felt, were confoundedly illogical. He
went to look for Carmichael, in the hope that he might have some new
illuminating theories, but Gordon discouraged him.
“Carmichael says he’s sick of the whole thing, and he’s going back to
golf. He speaks quite vindictively of Davenant, and really, I think,
wants to see him hanged for not having been Brotherhood after all.
It’s an odd thing, human nature.”
“Well, look here, Gordon, I’ve been seeing Miss Rendall-Smith, and
she’s been giving me a whole lot of information. Come and sit in my
room for a bit, and let me get it clear; then we can think the case
out all over again.”
Gordon was not impressed by the recital of Miss Rendall-Smith’s
disclosures. “It seems to me,” he said, “that every word of that makes
the case against Davenant stronger instead of weaker. The one thing we
had still to look for was a motive, and here’s a motive ready-made.
Davenant had every temptation to want Brotherhood out of the way; it
would rid the world of a worm, and leave the course clear for him to
marry the widow. I hope she won’t go and tell all that story to the
counsel for the defence.”
“But what impressed me,” objected Reeves, “was this—nobody knew more
clearly than Miss Rendall-Smith what temptation Davenant had had to
commit the murder, and yet nobody could have been more positive about
Davenant’s innocence. What I mean is this: isn’t the strength of the
_prima facie_ evidence for his guilt the strongest possible test of
her belief in Davenant’s innocence?”
“_Credo quia impossibile_, you mean? Well, personally, I don’t attach
very much importance to the lady’s feelings.”
“I think that’s very inconsistent of you, Gordon. Only the other day
you were saying you would rather trust the evidence of people than the
evidence of things.”
“But her feelings aren’t evidence. I’m willing enough to trust in what
she knows about Davenant; but I’m not willing to trust in what she
says she thinks she has persuaded herself to think she knows about
Davenant. And that is about the correct description, I should say, for
a woman’s intuition.”
“Oh, come! You must have a little more imagination than that.”
“Well, look here, she says she trusts her intuitions, and wants you to
trust them. She says she always does trust them and they never fail
her. Now, this is the woman who, with her eyes open, went and married
a dirty little sharper like Brotherhood. If women’s intuitions were
worth anything, wouldn’t she have had an intuition which told her she
was throwing herself away on a nasty little worm?”
“Well, let’s leave her intuitions alone. I want to start out with an
absolutely unbiassed mind, with no presumption for Davenant or against
him. And I want you to help me to go through all the evidence we
collected, and see if we can’t make sense out of it somehow. Because
we haven’t done that yet, Davenant or no Davenant.”
“You mean you want to do some thinking aloud, while I sit opposite you
and say ‘My dear Reeves! How on earth . . .’ from time to time? All
right; start away.”
“Well, look here, what was the most incongruous thing we found, when
we examined Brotherhood’s body?”
“You mean me to say the two watches. To my mind it’s the fact of his
having a ticket. Because he surely had a season?”
“He did. I went and asked specially at the booking-office. But of
course he might have left his at home by mistake.”
“Yes, but that won’t really do. Because on a line like this, surely,
the porters know most of the season-ticket holders by heart? And the
odds are that if he’d said, ‘I’ve left my season at home,’ the porter
would have touched his cap and said, ‘Right you are, sir.’ Now,
knowing that possibility, that all-but-certainty, was Brotherhood fool
enough to go and book before he left London? As far as I remember, the
tickets on this line aren’t examined till you change or till you go
out of the station.”
“You’re right. There’s something that looks devilish wrong about that.
Well, how did the ticket get there, then?”
“It looks, surely, as if it was put there after the man was dead.”
“And if it was put there, it was put there to create a false
impression, obviously. Now, let’s see; what false impression could you
create by putting a ticket in a dead man’s pocket? That he was
travelling on a different day—of course, that’s possible.”
“Yes, but that wasn’t it: I mean, it wasn’t on Monday that he was
killed. Because he was seen going up on Tuesday morning; they said
that at the inquest.”
“Good, then that’s excluded. Or you might create the impression that
he was travelling third when he was really travelling first. But that
would be useless, wouldn’t it, because lots of people on this line
travel first on a third-class ticket when the trains are crowded, and
this train was. Or you might create the impression that he was
travelling, when he wasn’t really travelling at all. But Brotherhood
clearly was, because he came up from London all right. The only other
false impression would be that his destination was different from what
it really was. But dash it all, his ticket was for Paston Whitchurch,
and he was killed—Oh, good Lord!”
“What’s the matter?”
“What fools we’ve been! Don’t you see that if the man was really
pitched out of the three o’clock from London, which doesn’t stop
between Weighford and Binver, a ticket for Paston Whitchurch would
disguise the fact that he came by that train, and make everybody think
he came in the later one—the 4.50 from Paston Oatvile?”
“By Gad, that sounds more promising. Then the murderer could prove an
alibi by showing that he travelled on the three o’clock, eh?”
“That would be about the size of it. Let’s see, had we any other
reason for assuming the 4.50 train?”
“The watch—the wrist-watch, that is. It had stopped at 4.54.”
“You mean that it stopped at a moment when its hands were pointing to
4.54. But obviously it would be the simplest thing in the world to
fake a watch. And—I say, Gordon, we can prove it!”
“Prove it?”
“Yes, from the other watch, the stomach-watch. Don’t you remember it
was still going when we found it, only an hour fast? Well, the reason
why it was an hour fast was that the murderer, at 3.54 on Tuesday
afternoon, deliberately took it out of the pocket and turned it on to
4.54.”
“You mean . . .”
“I mean that the murderer naturally assumed it would stop, like the
wrist-watch. And if it had stopped, it would have registered 4.54,
like the wrist-watch. But by the accident of its not stopping, we can
prove what the murderer did!”
“I say, this is a day! but I feel as if there was something else we
were held up over about the time—oh yes. Look here, we’ve now got to
explain why Brotherhood ordered himself a sleeper for Wednesday,
although one would have expected him to want to clear out on Tuesday.
Our explanation, you see, was that coming to Paston Whitchurch on the
4.50 would make it too late for him to get a sleeper that night. But
apparently we were wrong, because he came on the three o’clock from
London; and I remember, when I looked it up in the time-table, I found
he could have caught his train at Crewe—going on from Binver, of
course.”
“Yes, that’s true. Still, it’s only a subsidiary point. Let’s
see . . . the sleeper had originally been dated for the Thursday,
hadn’t it; and then Thursday had been scratched out and Wednesday put
instead?”
“Yes, but it was no good supposing _that_ was a fraud. Because
Thursday wouldn’t be any more probable than Wednesday,—in fact, less.”
“Yes; it’s confoundedly queer. I suppose he couldn’t possibly—Gordon,
what date was the Wednesday?”
“The 17th.”
“It was? Then the Tuesday would be the 16th, and the Thursday the
18th.”
“My dear Reeves! How on earth . . .”
“Child’s play, my dear Gordon. No, but look here, it’s serious. Don’t
you see that if there’s one day of the week whose name can be easily
changed to another it’s Tuesday, which you can always change to
Thursday? And that if there’s one number which can be easily changed
it’s 6, which you can always change to 8?”
“Yes, but this wasn’t a change of . . .”
“Oh, don’t you see? The sleeper was for Tuesday the 16th, the day of
the murder. Brotherhood meant to go straight from Binver. The murderer
found this sleeper-coupon in his pocket, and saw a golden opportunity
of clinching his faked evidence about the trains. He could have
destroyed the document, of course,—it was dangerous to him, because it
proved that Brotherhood was really on the fast train. But he could do
better by faking that too; changing Tuesday into Thursday and 16 into
18. Look here, how easy it is to do . . . There! Very little risk of
detection there. But there was just a slight risk of detection, and
this man wasn’t taking any risks, So, having changed Tuesday the 16th
into Thursday the 18th, he deliberately crossed out Thursday the 18th,
and wrote in ‘Wednesday’ the ‘17th.’ Double bluff, that is. People
don’t look for two corrections where they can see that there’s one.”
“I say, this murderer is some fellow!”
“Some fellow, but that fellow’s name isn’t Davenant. Don’t you see,
we’ve got the porter’s word for it that Davenant came up from London
by the later train, the 3.47. And Miss Rendall-Smith can also witness
that he took the later train. So that, long before Davenant had got as
far as Paston Oatvile—actually, when he was only seven minutes out of
London—Brotherhood was falling down that embankment. And where’s your
conviction now?”
“Quite true—if we’re right. But it is only circumstantial evidence,
isn’t it? We’ve proved our own case more plausible than the case
against Davenant, but we haven’t shown that the case against Davenant
is impossible. However, if we’re right, one thing is pretty clear—that
the murder was a deliberate one, deeply and carefully planned. And
we’ve got to find somebody who had the motive and the opportunity to
carry out this very elaborate scheme.”
“I know. The police will never look at our objections until they lead
us to find the real man. The police always want to have a victim.”
“And we can’t show, can we, that it was impossible for Davenant to
throw a man out of the 4.50 train?”
“We can show it’s improbable. Remember how crowded the 4.50 always is,
how crowded it was on the day when you and I travelled by it. The
three o’clock train from London, of course, wouldn’t be a bit crowded;
people haven’t started getting away from business by then—it’s only
for ladies who have been up to shop. One could secure privacy even in
a third-class carriage on that train.”
“But it’s only circumstantial evidence still.”
“There are two other things we want to get to work on; the
washing-list, as we called it, though I’m pretty certain it’s nothing
of the kind, which we found on the back of the cipher, and the
golf-ball which we found beside the line.”
“We want a theory, too, about the cipher. I wonder if Davenant admits
that he wrote that cipher? You see, it will be apt to tell against
him. He knew that Brotherhood had made a promise, and was threatening
to break it. So that the police will attach importance to a document
which tells him that he will perish if he goes back upon his faith.”
“Yes, if they find out about it. But do you suppose the police have
read that cipher? I very much doubt it.”
“Aren’t you going to tell them about it?”
“I don’t think so. I know what you’ll say, you’ll say that one should
always tell the truth. But it isn’t an easy thing, telling the truth.
I know what the truth is—namely that Davenant is innocent. I know,
therefore, that this post card was a side-issue, irrelevant to the
true explanation. If I show the police the meaning of the cipher, it
will fortify them in what I know to be a false impression. Therefore,
aren’t I serving the best interests of truth if I sit on the cipher
and say nothing about it?”
“I wonder,” said Gordon.