Mordaunt Reeves talks to Himself
For some time after they had left, Mordaunt Reeves sat in his
arm-chair hunting that most difficult of quarries, an intellectual
inspiration. Merely artistic inspiration greets us when it wills, at
the sight of a flower or of two lovers in a lane—we cannot chase it or
make it come to our call. A merely intellectual problem can be solved
by will-power, by sitting down to it with a wet towel round your head.
But there are moments in an intellectual inquiry when inspiration can
only come to us from dogged envisaging of the facts. Such was the
point at which Reeves found himself; his clues were sufficient to
exonerate, in his own mind at least, the arrested Davenant; they were
not yet positive enough to mark out any victim who could be
substituted. “A golf-ball,” he kept saying to himself, “a golf-ball by
the side of the railway line, a few yards behind the spot from which
the murdered man fell. It must have something to do with it, but
where, where does it fit in?” At last, weary of cudgelling his brains
over the unlighted grate, he seized his cap and strode out into the
air. Half of set purpose, half under the fascination of his thoughts,
he found himself climbing once more the steep path that led up the
railway embankment and on to the forbidden precincts of the line.
St. Luke’s summer still held; the comparative silence of man’s Sabbath
conspired with the autumn stillness of nature—the sunshine quiet that
is disturbed no longer by clicking grasshoppers, nor yet by cawing
rooks—to hush the countryside. Far below him he could see the golfers
at their orisons, fulfilling, between hope and fear, the daily cycle
of their existence. Gordon and Carmichael were at the third tee now;
he could have waved to them. Carmichael always made too much business
about addressing the ball. Over there was the neglected house, itself
radiating the silence of a forgotten past. All else was drowsing; he
alone, Mordaunt Reeves, strode on relentlessly in pursuit of crime.
He threw himself down at full length on the bank, just beneath the
line. “Now,” he said, talking to himself out loud, “you are in the
fast train from London to Binver, Mordaunt Reeves. It has stopped only
once at a station, Weighford; probably oftener outside stations,
because it is a foggy day and the trains get through slowly, with
little fog-signals going off at intervals. If you fired a pistol at a
fellow-passenger, it would probably be mistaken for a fog-signal by
the people in the next carriage. Is that worth thinking of, I wonder?
No, there must have been traces of a wound if a wound had been made,
and it would have come out at the inquest. So you can’t get much
further that way, my dear.
“There is somebody in the train you badly want to murder. You want to
murder him to-day, because his bankruptcy has just been declared, and
if he is found dead people will think it is suicide. You have warned
him to look out for himself—I wonder why you did that? But of course
you must have done it on Monday so as to give him a chance to save
himself. . . . No, that won’t do, because you didn’t know anything
about his bankruptcy before Tuesday. . . . But the message reached him
on Tuesday morning. That is to say, you have a motive for killing him
which is probably quite unconnected with his bankruptcy, which is not
known about at present—certainly kind Mr. Davenant does not know about
it. He is not coming by this train, he is waiting till the 3.47. You
sent this man a message on Monday, containing a cipher which depended
on a book which was in his possession, which you knew was in his
possession—did you, perhaps, give him that book? It will be a nuisance
to you later on, when it is found, and you will want to steal it.
“Meanwhile, the train is steaming on, and you must do something; you
must get on with the murder. Is he in the same carriage, or in a
different one? And if it’s a different one, is there a corridor
between? Let’s see, there’s a corridor on the three o’clock train, but
it doesn’t connect with the slip that comes off at Binver. Probably
you are in the Binver slip, because the railway people always try to
shove one into that. I am sure you were in the slip, not in the
corridor part of the train, because later on you are going to execute
certain complicated manœuvres over a dead man’s body, and it would be
dangerous to do that if a man might look in and say ‘Tickets please’
at any moment. No, you must be in the slip, and unless you are in the
same carriage, there is no connection between you and him except along
the footboard. That is rather hard to climb along while the train is
going; but of course in the fog it may not be going just at this
moment. It may be being held up by those signals that are connected
with the Paston Whitchurch goods siding, those you see over there—at
least, no, you do not see them because of the fog.
“But are you in the same carriage? You might have the decency to tell
me that. Preferably not, because people saw you getting in, and people
might remember afterwards that you got into the same carriage with
him. Besides, you are choosing for the murder a part of the line where
it curves, and curves away from the side where you are going to throw
the man out. Why did you choose that particular part, unless you
wanted to do something in the way of climbing along the footboard? I
think you are in a different carriage. And you’ve got to murder
somebody who is next door. Now, it’s no good telling me that you’re
going to climb along the footboard and attack him, because he would
certainly ring the communication cord if you did.
“He is alone in his first-class carriage, and you are alone in yours.
Possibly he is asleep, but if so you’ve no means of knowing. You
might, of course, bore a hole between the two carriages—and then? Put
a cobra through, like the Speckled Band, to make him jump out of the
train, or to kill him as he sits there? Not very probable, I think;
cobras are so difficult to buy, as you rightly observe, without
attracting suspicion. Or could you let loose some poisonous gas
through the hole? That is a really bright idea; I give you 90 per
cent. for it, only I hardly think a very practicable solution, my dear
Reeves, if you don’t mind my saying so. You would look such a fool
getting into the train with a couple of oxygen cylinders, or a large
balloon. No, you can’t do anything with holes in the partition. To do
anything, you must be leaning out of the window. If anything is to be
done, you must both be leaning out of the window.
“Of course people do lean out of the window when the train stops and
there isn’t a station there. But you can’t be certain that your man
will look out: and people generally look out in the direction in which
the train is curving: they can see more that way. And you could only
make him look out—steady on! Keep steady, Reeves! Oh yes, you could
certainly do that: thank you very much indeed; the whole thing becomes
a good deal clearer. And then you hit him a good smack on the head,
that stuns him anyhow, with a stick. That must have made you rather
noticeable, because people don’t take sticks up to London much—strong
sticks, I mean. It would have to be—well, I’m blessed!”
And in another moment Reeves was scrambling down the bank, precipitous
as it was, to a clump of rank grass some ten feet below. Half-hidden
in this he had seen, and now painfully secured, a large knotted stick
such as may be carried by a peaceable man, but undoubtedly would come
in useful in a scrap. It might be coincidence of course, but that
seemed too good to be true. And yet, was it not also too good to be
true that he, nearly a week after the event, should be holding between
his hands the very weapon, undiscovered hitherto, which had begun the
assault? There was no name on it. There was no blood on it, nor any
mark of violence. And yet it could undoubtedly have given a stunning
blow without breaking or showing signs of the contact.
The next point was to get his treasure home, and this was not so easy
as it sounds. He did not dare to carry it openly with him to the
dormy-house; if the murderer really lived there he might easily catch
sight of the stick and take the alarm. To carry a stick up your
trousers-leg makes you a marked man at once. He left it concealed in
the bushes a little way from the dormy-house, and went to fetch his
golf-bag, in which he bestowed it upside down, and so smuggled it
unobserved to his room.
Gordon and Carmichael were properly thrilled by the discovery, but
were not very helpful in making suggestions for its use. Carmichael
said that he might take the stick to Brotherhood’s grave and see if it
bled there, but added that this test was no longer used, he believed,
in the detective world. On the whole, it seemed best to hide it away,
taking no risks with stray visitors, and keep it until suspicion was
thrown on some definite person—then it might come in handy. Meanwhile,
Reeves thought he had now sufficient grounds for optimism about his
case to justify him in a Sunday afternoon call on Miss Rendall-Smith.
This time, Gordon refused to accompany him, and he went over in his
own car, though he was careful to garage it at the hotel, for fear the
sight of it might have painful memories for his hostess. There was no
mistaking the eagerness and anxiety of the tone in which she asked for
news. Reeves, with an indiscretion which he would have been the first
to criticize a week ago, told her all his suspicions and all his
hopes.
“You’re a genius, Mr. Reeves,” she said when he had finished.
“I’m afraid it’s Carmichael that does all the clever work,” he
admitted. “Only it’s so difficult to get him to keep up his interest
in any subject, he always branches off to something else.”
“It’s most exasperating to think that I must actually have been on the
same train with my husband, and not noticed anything,” said Miss
Rendall-Smith. “Now, let’s see, which part of the train did I come on?
Oh, it was the corridor part, I know, because I remember finding I had
got into a smoker, and changing my carriage while the train was going.
I was rather early for the train, so of course I shouldn’t have seen
anybody getting into the Binver slip behind.”
“Did Davenant by any chance see you off?”
“Yes, he did.”
“What sort of journey did you have?”
“Oh, we crawled. You know what this line is when there’s a fog on. I
never can see why there should be any danger, but we stopped at nearly
all the signals. And now you mention it, I remember we did stop just
at that curve of the line, a little way before Paston Whitchurch.”
“You didn’t see anybody you knew getting out of the train at Binver?”
“No, I didn’t notice anybody. But then, I had to go to the Parcels
Office about something, so I didn’t go out with the crowd. Oh, it’s
maddening to think I’ve been so little use.”
“Never mind, I dare say it might have put us off on a false scent if
you had seen anybody.”
“Mr. Reeves, I think I ought to tell you one other thing, though I
dare say you will think it is just my fancy. I have a sort of feeling
that I am being watched.”
“Being watched?”
“Yes. When I took the train to come over to you yesterday, it was
rather empty, as these Saturday trains are, and I noticed one of my
fellow-passengers, a man who was quite a stranger to me. The curious
thing was that he came back from Oatvile by the same train too, and
I’m nearly certain, although this may have been just fancy, that I saw
the same man watching me from the other side of the street when I went
out this morning to go to church.”
“This is rather serious. Do you know of anybody who had a grudge
against you as well as against your husband?”
“Honestly, I can’t think of anybody; you see, our lives have lain so
far apart lately. No, I think it’s probably just a coincidence; I was
only going to suggest that, if I saw this man again, perhaps I might
telephone to you?”
“Please do. Just send me word that you’ve seen him again and I’ll come
over straight in my car. Then perhaps we shall be able to have a
better look at him.”
Reeves drove away very thoughtful. Was it possible that the same enemy
who had murdered her husband was on the widow’s track too? Or was she
psychic, and did echoes of the dead man’s personality follow her?
Certainly one might have expected Brotherhood to rest unquietly in his
grave. His grave—would some fresh inspiration come to Reeves, perhaps,
if he paid a visit to the grave in Paston Oatvile churchyard? He was
half ashamed of the thought, and yet . . . it could do no harm. The
evening was a fine one; there was no need to be back early at the
dormy-house. Instead of taking the London road, which was the shortest
way home, he struck out along the winding country lane that connected
the two Pastons. In a few minutes he had drawn up at the lych-gate,
and was finding his way among the grave-stones.
The sudden gasp of a harmonium surprised him—of course, they were at
evening service. What was that tune? “Nearer, my God, to Thee,” wasn’t
it? He went up to the porch; it is an almost irresistible temptation
to listen when sound comes out from a building into the open. . . .
Yes, that was the hymn, most rustically sung by a congregation that
sounded chiefly female, but with the one inevitable male voice
dominating all, very loud and tuneless. Here in the porch you got a
sort of quintessential effect of Sunday evening service in a country
church: the smell of oil lamps, a glimpse of ugly deal pews, Sunday
clothes, tablets on the wall in memory of dead virtues and
hypocrisies. Yes, it was finishing now:
So with my waking thoughts
Bright with Thy praise,
Out of my stony griefs
Beth-hel I’ll rai-haise.
So by my woes to be
Nearer, my God, to Thee,
Nea-rer-er to Thee——
and then the penetrating Amen for which the best efforts of the
singers seemed to have been reserved. There was a rustle and a
shuffling as the erect forms became sedentary, and then, with sudden
clearness, Marryatt’s voice giving out the text.
There was no doubt what Marryatt was at—it seemed a very embarrassing
theme he had chosen. He was working up his congregation to derive a
lesson from the tragic suddenness of Brotherhood’s end; in the midst
of life, he reminded his hearers, they were in death; thence he would
proceed to refute Brotherhood’s own arguments of less than a fortnight
ago as to the survival of human personality. It was a thoughtful
sermon, but on sufficiently obvious lines. “We see around us a great
deal of carelessness, a great deal of indifference, a great deal of
positive unbelief, and we ask ourselves, do we not? whether after all
the lessons we learned at our mother’s knee were not just old wives’
fables, good for us when we were children, but something that manhood
would outgrow. We ask ourselves, do we not? whether after all the
story of our life will be continued elsewhere, whether after all there
is a crown to be gained. And we persuade ourselves, perhaps, or think
we have persuaded ourselves, that there is nothing beyond, nothing
eternal that we can strive for. Death will be a quiet sleep, to just
and to unjust alike, nothing but a sleep. And then the old questioning
comes back to us:
To sleep—perchance to dream; aye, there’s the rub!
For, in that sleep of death, what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause
And so we see that our difficulties are not so easily disposed of;
that it is not so easy for us, after all, to get the better of our
alarms. . . .”
But Mordaunt Reeves heard no more of the sermon. He was back in his
car, on the road to the dormy-house, and as he drove he talked to
himself once more: “‘To be or not to be’—well, I’m damned!”