Proof at Last
Reeves went to sit in Gordon’s room when he got back; his own was apt
to be a port of call for stray comers, and he wanted this to be a
_tête-à-tête_.
“I wish to God,” he started, “that I’d never been dragged into this
beastly thing at all.”
“Getting a brain-storm over it? Much better take to golf again;
there’s no sense in worrying over a problem that won’t be solved.”
“I have solved it.”
“What!”
“I have solved it, and I wish to God I hadn’t. Look here, Gordon, I
know who it was who came into my rooms and took out my Shakespeare. It
was Marryatt.”
“Yes, but you don’t mean——”
“It was Marryatt who took out my Shakespeare; he wanted to look up a
quotation for his evening sermon. I know what you’ll say—it was
somebody else who took the Momerie. But it wasn’t; I’ve been into
Marryatt’s room, and I found it there.”
“Good Lord! Lying about?”
“It was on his table, but entirely covered with papers—I thought,
purposely. I didn’t like doing it, but I felt the obvious thing was to
look through those papers on Marryatt’s table. Among them was a
postcard from Brotherhood, dated a week ago, thanking him for the gift
of a copy of Momerie’s _Immortality_.”
“But, look here, the thing’s impossible! Marryatt, I mean, Marryatt
isn’t the least the sort of person——”
“Yes, I know all that. I’ve thought of all that. But just look at the
facts. There’s not the least doubt it was Marryatt who came into my
room, yesterday afternoon, I suppose. He came in, no doubt, for the
pipe-cleaner or for the Shakespeare quotation—I don’t grudge him
either. Then he must have seen the Momerie on the shelf, and I suppose
couldn’t help taking it; he didn’t feel safe as long as the thing was
in my hands. He is, of course, just the height Carmichael mentioned;
he does smoke Worker’s Army Cut; his pipes always are foul.”
“Yes, but he may have wanted the Momerie for anything.”
“Why did he never tell me he’d taken it? Look here, you’ve got to face
the facts. Let me marshal them for you; you can imagine I’ve been
thinking them out pretty furiously. First, Marryatt had a reason for
disliking Brotherhood.”
“For disliking him, yes; but not for wanting to murder him.”
“Of course to you and me it wouldn’t seem so; we don’t know the
clerical temper from the inside. After all, Marryatt has a hard time
of it in any case, trying to knock a little piety out of these
villagers. What must he think of the man who comes and tries to take
away what beliefs they’ve got?”
“All right, go on. Of course, it’s quite impossible.”
“Next point: it was Marryatt who gave Brotherhood that Momerie book.
Brotherhood, of course, took it up to London with him in the train on
Monday, but is it likely that anybody would notice it particularly?
The one man who knew for certain that it was in his possession was the
man who had given it to him.”
“But did Marryatt know anything about Brotherhood’s connection with
Miss Rendall-Smith—about his promise to her?”
“We’ll come to that presently. It doesn’t arise yet, if you consider
the actual wording of the cipher-message. What it said was, ‘You will
perish if you go back upon your _faith_’—I now read that as a purely
theological message, and I know of only one man in the neighbourhood
who would have been likely to send such a message.”
“You seem to be pressing words rather far.”
“Next point: Marryatt did travel by the three o’clock train on
Tuesday. He made no secret of the fact; he told us about it—why?
Precisely because he had arranged the murder so as to look as if it
was connected with the 3.47: the three o’clock train was his alibi,
and he was determined to get his alibi well rubbed in. Don’t you
remember, just before we found the body, the discussion we all had in
the smoking-room about crime, and how Marryatt said it was very
important for the criminal to behave naturally in company, so as to
establish his alibi? Well, that’s what he was doing at the moment.”
“I’d forgotten his saying that.”
“It doesn’t do to forget these things. You’ve probably forgotten that
it was Marryatt who started the whole subject, by saying it was the
kind of afternoon when one would want to murder somebody. You see, he
couldn’t get the subject out of his mind, and he thought the easiest
way to get it off his chest was to start talking about murder, quite
naturally, in an abstract sort of way.”
“You’re making him out a pretty cool customer.”
“He was, up to a point. Remember, he started out on a round, knowing
that the body of his victim lay under the railway arch. Only at the
third tee his nerve deserted him, and he pulled his drive.”
“Yes, but hang it all, anybody——”
“I’m only mentioning the fact; I don’t say there was necessarily
anything significant about it. Anyhow, I sliced mine, and so we came
to find Brotherhood’s body. And that was too much for him; you will
remember that at the moment he was quite unnerved. We had to send him
off to fetch Beazly—and he wasn’t half glad to go. After that,
remember, right up to the time of the inquest, he was in a state of
pitiful agitation. He explained that by telling us that he was nervous
about whether he’d be allowed to bury Brotherhood or not; but when you
come to think of it, does that account for the extraordinary
excitement and nervousness he showed about the whole thing? Anyhow,
the jury found suicide—and remember, he always wanted us to believe it
was suicide—and immediately his trouble vanished. He seemed to lose
interest in the business from then on.
“But over one thing he did give himself away. Do you remember, when
Carmichael produced that photo of Miss Rendall-Smith, Marryatt
professed not to know who it was? Now, I fancy there are aspects of
the case here which we haven’t been able to trace yet. But on the face
of it, it was curious that Marryatt, who has lived here for quite a
long time and knows all the clerical society round here, shouldn’t
know the daughter of the man who used to be Rector of Binver. For some
reason, he preferred not to be in the know. He said he’d take it over
to Binver and identify it. He took it over: it was early-closing day,
and Campbell’s studio must really have been shut. But Marryatt comes
back with some lame story about Campbell not being shut after all; and
he tells us, not only whom the photograph represents, but the whole
life-story of the lady into the bargain. I say, he made a mistake
there. We ought to have been suspicious.
“We were not suspicious; he came and played bridge in my room the same
night. It gave him a very nasty turn when, as we all thought, the
photograph altered its appearance. He was completely unstrung; and the
form his nerves took was an intense desire that we should drop the
inquiry altogether. He had begun to grow superstitious, as so many
murderers do. But he made the best use he could of it, by trying to
shut down our investigations on the strength of it. That failed, but
something even better turned up—Davenant’s hiding in the secret
passage. By the way, I’m pretty well convinced, though I can’t prove
it, that it was Marryatt and not Davenant who took away the copy of
that paper, with the cipher on it. Of course, when we found Davenant,
it not only concealed the fact that he had taken away the cipher, but
also turned the suspicion into quite a different channel.
“Here, I must admit, Marryatt shows up badly. He saw an innocent man
accused, and he took no action to exculpate him. On the contrary, he
stated to me quite emphatically his belief in Davenant’s guilt. But we
mustn’t judge him hardly; he may have meant—he may still mean, for all
we know, to come forward if Davenant is found guilty. Meanwhile,
there’s one more piece of evidence which I understand now, though it
has bothered us a good deal. You remember the thing we call the
‘washing-list,’ the words we found on the back of the anonymous
letter?”
“Yes, rather. What about it?”
“Well, it clearly wasn’t part of the cipher, was it?”
“Probably not—one can’t be certain, but it didn’t look like it.”
“Well then, you’ve got to choose, it seems to me, between two
possibilities. One is that this sheet of paper—it’s only a half-sheet
in any case—was blank until the cipher was written on it. Then it
passed into Brotherhood’s possession, and Brotherhood, looking about
for a piece of paper to jot down a list on, found this one and used
it.”
“That’s what I’d assumed.”
“In that case, it’s hard to see any special significance about the
list, isn’t it? It’s not in Brotherhood’s writing, apparently; but of
course if he wrote it in the train, it’s possible that his handwriting
would be untraceable.”
“What’s the other possibility?”
“Why, just the other way round. That the list, whatever its meaning
may be, was written on that piece of paper first. And then the
murderer, wanting to send the cipher message to Brotherhood, took up
that piece of paper at random to write it on, without noticing that
there were already four words pencilled on the back.”
“That’s possible, certainly.”
“Well, don’t you see, in that case the list becomes very important,
because it was written not by Brotherhood but by the murderer, and it
may accidentally give us a clue to the murderer’s character.
“A rather obscure clue. As far as I remember all it said was Socks,
Vest, Hem, Tins.”
“Yes, but look here: do you remember my asking whether those words
were written on the paper, right at the edge of the paper, before or
after the sheet was torn in half? Well, my own belief has always been
that those are only parts of words, and that the other half, possibly
with a lot more writing as well, was lost to us when the sheet was
torn.”
“And you’ve restored the full words?”
“I think I have. I’m just going to write it out for you.” And, after
scribbling for a moment, he put before Gordon two sheets of paper;
one, which was blank, partly covered the other, so as to hide part of
what had been written on it.
“Well, that’s all correct,” said Gordon: “Socks, Vest, Hem, Tins, all
present. Do you want me to guess the other halves of the words—the
first half, I suppose, in each case? Because I give you fair warning
that I have never guessed a riddle in my life.”
Reeves took away the upper sheet of paper, and made Gordon read again.
“Hassocks, Harvest, Anthem, Mattins—well, I’m blowed! You ought to be
given a fountain-pen for this sort of thing.”
“But seriously, isn’t it almost certain that those were the words of
the original, before the sheet was torn in half? What connected them,
of course, we can’t say. But they’re all ecclesiastical words—at
least, you can say that ‘harvest’ is an ecclesiastical word at this
time of the year, with harvest festivals coming on. Could such a sheet
of paper have been lying about and been taken up carelessly anywhere
but in a clergyman’s rooms? And honestly, doesn’t that clinch the case
against Marryatt?”
“Well, it certainly looks as if one would like to ask Marryatt a few
questions. Though, mark you, I refuse to believe that Marryatt laid
hands on Brotherhood.”
“We can’t ask him questions. We must put him to a test.”
“What sort of a test?”
“Well, surely the stick might come in handy there. If we could somehow
confront him with it suddenly, and see how he takes it—I believe they
do that sort of thing in America.”
“Carmichael, I fancy, would tell you that the system was originally
Danish.”
“Why Danish?”
“Really, Reeves, what is the use of all your researches into _Hamlet_,
if you don’t realize that your present idea is just what Hamlet does
to the King and Queen when the Players come on? I think, you know,
it’s rather a dangerous method, because it’s so easy to suggest things
to a person’s mind when they’re not there already. But this I will
say, if Marryatt recoils from the sight of that stick which you picked
up this afternoon, or shows any trace of confusion when he sees it,
then—I won’t say I’ll be prepared to regard Marryatt as guilty, but
I’ll be prepared to ask him for an explanation.”
“Well, Sadducee, have it your own way. We’ll put that stick and the
golf-ball lying out prominently in my room. At dinner we’ll ask
Marryatt to come along afterwards. We’ll go out of dinner early, and
get into the secret passage. From there we can watch and see what
happens when he comes in.”
“Don’t you think it would be a mistake to ask him in? It might somehow
put him on his guard. . . . Yes, I know, I can make sure that he comes
into your room without being asked. Leave that part to me, and stand
by as soon as dinner’s over. We can go up into the passage by the
billiard-room end.”