The Holmes Method
When they met at breakfast next morning, Gordon was in a chastened
mood.
“I was thinking over our ideas last night in bed, and I see that it’s
all a wash-out. The thing doesn’t work.”
“Doesn’t work?”
“No, there are two snags which seem to me hopeless. Look here, if
Brotherhood was chucked off the 4.50 from Paston Oatvile, one can
understand why Davenant should have got the wind up. He may have seen
the thing happen; or he may have seen Brotherhood get in at Oatvile
and found he wasn’t in the train when it got to Whitchurch—that might
make him think there was something wrong, even if he’d really nothing
to do with it. But if Davenant came back on the 4.50, and Brotherhood
had been chucked off the earlier train, how did Davenant know anything
about it? He would hear nothing, till he heard that we had found a
dead body on the lines, and even then we weren’t certain till next day
whose body it was. Why did Davenant disappear, in that case, and hide
in a very uncomfortable passage?”
“I thought of that. But you forget, Davenant was just coming back from
an interview with Miss Rendall-Smith. He had probably seen her off on
the three o’clock, and seen Brotherhood get into it. He comes down to
the Hatcheries with the definite idea of remonstrating with
Brotherhood; his first act, therefore, is to call at Brotherhood’s
house, and ask for him. He gathers, in the course of Mrs. Bramston’s
opening address, that Brotherhood has never turned up at all. Clearly,
then, Brotherhood has either committed suicide or (more probably)
vanished. In either case he has disappeared, and Davenant is afraid
that he himself or (worse) Miss Rendall-Smith may be involved in the
inquiry. It may be all right, of course, but there is danger. So he
hits upon a very ingenious plan—going back to the secret passage in
which he played as a child, and overhearing, as one does overhear in
the Club, all the local gossip. Safe from observation, he can form his
conclusions and mature his plans. He lies low until the moment at
which he realizes that Miss Rendall-Smith is involved in the inquiry;
and then by two incautious actions he gives himself away.”
“Well, I suppose all that’s possible. But here’s the other snag, which
is even worse: that copy of Momerie’s _Immortality_, with the marks at
the side which clearly betrayed Brotherhood’s ownership, was found at
Paston Oatvile in the 3.47 from London. Now, how did Brotherhood
manage to leave his book in the 3.47 if he didn’t travel in it?”
“That’s true. But mightn’t it be a blind? Remember, we’re dealing with
an extraordinarily clever criminal. He faked the ticket; he faked the
watches; he faked the sleeper-coupon: mayn’t he have managed to fake
Brotherhood’s train-literature as well?”
“We’re dealing with a clever man, but not with one who’s clever enough
to come up here by the three o’clock, simultaneously leaving a book
lying about in the 3.47.”
“No, that’s true; it does seem difficult. But there must be some
explanation, mustn’t there? Wait a minute . . . I know! When
Carmichael got that book from the porter, the porter said he had taken
it _off that train_. But a porter, when he says ‘off the 3.47’ doesn’t
necessarily mean ‘off the 3.47 on Tuesday’—the day you are asking
about. The 3.47 is to him a single entity which renews itself from day
to day. He took that book off the train on Monday, depend upon it.
Brotherhood left Momerie in the train when he came down on the Monday
afternoon; consequently, Brotherhood probably never read the cipher
that would have warned him of his danger. It wasn’t till Friday that
Carmichael made inquiries about the book, and of course by that time
the porter wouldn’t be able to remember, even if he tried, which _day_
it was that the book was found.”
“There’s sense in that. I don’t like it, though, I’m hanged if I do.”
The hour after breakfast on Sunday was an hour of suspended animation
in Paston Oatvile dormy-house. Very few of the members ever went to
church, and fewer than ever this week, when several of them had “kept
a roller” (in Oxford parlance) by attending Brotherhood’s funeral. On
the other hand, it was not considered good form to start on the
morning round until the padre had set out for the half-past nine
service. Until that moment you smoked, read the Sunday papers, and in
general tried to cultivate the air of a man in two minds as to whether
he should go to church or no. The weather prospects were anxiously
forecast; the political situation was greeted with apoplectic comments
from the older members, and the Club acrostician went to and fro
eliciting items of expert knowledge from anybody who was available.
The atmosphere was one of Sabbath peace, yet the kind of peace that
can only be secured by preparing for golf. Gordon had decided to take
a rest from detection, and was intending to go round with Carmichael:
Mordaunt Reeves was determined not to touch a club until the Links
Mystery should be solved.
“If it comes to that,” said Reeves, as they went upstairs, “have you
considered this side of the question? A book cipher is ordinarily
prearranged between the two parties. Now, in this one it is very
unlikely that it was prearranged, for the message looks as if it came
from an enemy. Therefore the message could only be sent by some one
who knew that Brotherhood was reading Momerie’s _Immortality_ at the
moment—knew, in fact, that the book was close to his hand. Well, how
could Davenant know all that? He had not seen Brotherhood, he had not
travelled with him—how was he to know that his thoughts would
instinctively turn towards that particular book? For Davenant, it’s
impossible. What we want to find is somebody who knew that Brotherhood
would have access to that particular book at that particular moment.”
“Let’s have another look at the book, anyway. Carmichael said that it
was obviously Brotherhood’s copy, because of the queries and things in
the margin, but we haven’t even verified that yet.”
They were met by an almost uncanny repetition of Reeves’ experience
two days before. He had put the paper-bound volume—he was positive
that he had put it—in a particular place on his shelves. It was not
there, and no amount of search in his rooms could discover it. In
despair they sent for Carmichael, to know if for any reason of his own
he had resumed possession of what, after all, was his book. He knew
nothing of the disappearance; and was inclined to suspect deliberate
theft. “You see,” he said, “we never proved that it was Davenant who
took away that cipher. We suspected him, of course, when we found that
he had been hiding in the secret passage; the exchange of photographs
can only be put down to him. But it’s perfectly possible that the
cipher was taken away by somebody who simply walked in at the
door—somebody who is still in a position to walk in at the door and
steal your books, Reeves.”
“And that somebody isn’t Davenant. Davenant, poor fellow, is under
lock and key.”
“It’s a rum thing about that cipher,” said Gordon. “When we’ve got it
it doesn’t seem to help us in the least, but whenever we want to get
at it, it always seems that the important document has disappeared.”
“It’s getting on my nerves,” admitted Reeves. “Seems to me I can’t
leave my room without something queer turning up.”
“Look here, Carmichael,” said Gordon, “this is where you come in. Get
out your stethoscope and go down on all-fours and find clues for us.”
“I am afraid that a person entering a room and taking a book away does
not commonly leave very much mark on the surroundings. Let’s take a
look round, by all means—it’s Sunday, after all, and the housemaid
won’t have been dusting. Maids, you will notice, always polish the
grates on Sunday but do not dust the rooms; why, I cannot say.
Whereabouts did you put the book, Reeves?”
“On that shelf there, the top but one.”
“It was natural for you to put it there, because it’s within your
reach. But you’re tall—I wonder if the other gentleman was shorter? I
think a chair would be useful here. . . . Thank you. Yes, he was a
good deal shorter. He had to stand on tip-toe to reach the book, and
balanced himself, as we all do in such circumstances, by resting the
four finger-tips of his left hand on the edge of the shelf beneath. In
that way, you see, he could get the forefinger of his right hand on
the top of the book. I should say he was a man of about Gordon’s
height.”
“Unmasked!” cried Gordon, recoiling dramatically. “Send for the Black
Maria; I’ll go quiet.”
“I was about to observe, my dear Gordon, that I attach no suspicion to
you, because you have unusually long arms for your height. But this
man, on the usual calculations, would be about your height, or a
little smaller. Now, I wonder if he poked about in the other shelves
at all? Most people, when they are looking for a book, take out one or
two of the other books in mere inadvertent curiosity. Extraordinary
the fascination that books have. I am told that Whitewell, at Oxford,
loses twenty pounds’ worth of books a year by theft, as the result of
letting people prowl round his shop at their pleasure. Ah! Reeves,
your room is an excellent subject for the detective.”
“Why mine, particularly?”
“Because you are a man of such tidy habits.”
“Tidy!” protested Gordon. “Look at those letters on the table.”
“Pernickety would perhaps have been the just word. You are the sort of
man who cannot leave a thing lying on the floor, he must pick it up.
Consequently, you are the kind of man who always keeps his books on a
dead level: some people do, some don’t. Now, if this Shakespeare had
been protruding like that yesterday, you would have noticed it and
pushed it in.”
“I suppose I should.”
“Your visitor has not the same type of mind. He pushed in the two
volumes on each side when he took it out, and then he put it back
without driving it home, so to speak. Now, let’s see if we can find
which part he was reading. Ordinarily, as you doubtless know, if you
open a book at random it will open at the page where it was last
shut—that is, if it has been held open some little time . . . If that
principle applies here, our unknown friend has been reading
_Hamlet_—‘To be or not to be’ comes on this page.”
“A rather banal taste,” suggested Gordon. “You can’t get much out of
that.”
“It suggests at least that he was a seriously minded person, and not
all our fellow-residents are that. By the way, I suppose there is no
chance that the secret passage is still being used?”
“Hardly. You see, it made me nervous, so I put that settee in front of
it.”
“One could push that out,” suggested Gordon.
“But not put it back in position again once you were inside the
passage. No, I think it must be a member of the club (just possibly a
servant) we are looking for, who stands about five foot four and has
sombre tastes in literature. Has he left any other traces? The
fireplace is the only hope. Ah! He seems to me to treat you rather
familiarly, Reeves—he has borrowed a pipe-cleaner and used it.” And
Carmichael, stooping, picked one out of the fireplace. “Did you have a
fire yesterday?”
“No, life was too hurried. But I had one the day before.”
“Then your grate was cleaned yesterday morning, not this morning. This
pipe-cleaner is very dirty, which shows that your visitor did not,
like yourself, wrap up his tobacco in those irritating little circles
of paper which destroy all the taste. Gordon, you use them too, don’t
you? This was a stranger, then, though not necessarily the same who
took the book. I think he came here yesterday, not this morning.”
“Why?”
“Because the first pipe of the day is seldom foul; it has dried in the
night. This was thoroughly foul. Of course, if the person who used
this pipe-cleaner was the person who took the book, it’s obvious he
did not come in with any felonious intentions, or he would hardly have
made himself so much at home.”
“But that might have been a sudden idea.”
“Of course. But I should be careful how you accuse people of theft
merely because their pipes are newly cleaned. Let us just see if he
emptied out his pipe first; if it was a plain tobacco, it will have
left a dottle. . . . Yes, here it is—as I feared, the inevitable
Worker’s Army Cut; half the Club smokes that. No, I’m afraid we can’t
put the handcuffs on anybody just yet. But, of course, you might find
an excuse for going round your friends’ rooms and looking for the lost
book.”
“During evening church,” suggested Gordon, cynically, it is to be
feared, for the function did not noticeably attract the Club members.
“Well, it all wants thinking out. You and Gordon had better go and
play your round, while I see if I can make anything of it.”