In the Fog
“Hullo, Marryatt, is that you?”
“Yes; who’s speaking?”
“It’s about Brotherhood. You’ll guess before I’ve finished who it is
speaking, so I’d better tell you at once; it’s Reeves. I am going to
talk to you for about ten minutes through this tube, and you’ll see
for yourself as I go along that it’s to your own interest to hear me
out to the end. I’ve chosen this way of speaking to you purposely, so
as to save you the embarrassment of an interview. But, of course, it’s
no good your trying to interrupt, because I shouldn’t hear if you did.
“I have managed to trace your movements during this last week pretty
exactly, and I’m going to describe them to you, so that you can see
how much I know, and how little use it is for you to try and put up
any denial. Of course, I may make little mistakes about the details,
but I think you’ll find that there is not much wrong.
“I can understand you not liking Brotherhood; few of us did. But while
the rest of us simply disliked him, you hated him. Whether you hated
him before he began giving his atheist lectures I don’t know. I dare
say there was a quarrel beforehand and that was what made him give the
lectures. Anyhow, when he started trying to undermine the beliefs of
your parishioners, your hatred reached such a pitch that you
determined to do away with him. I am not going to moralize about all
that; I suppose you felt at the time that you were doing God’s work,
and you fortified yourself with precedents from the Bible. To you,
perhaps, it was like crushing some noxious insect. I’m not going to
argue morality.
“One characteristic scruple detained you. You did not shrink from
undoing God’s work by destroying the material body of the man you
hated, but you trembled for the prospects of his soul if his life was
thus suddenly brought to an end. You decided that you must warn him of
the danger he ran, but how were you to warn him without risk of
discovery? You sent him a present of a book about immortality; that
seemed natural enough, as it was the subject he had been lecturing
about. Then, anonymously, you sent him a message which consisted only
of figures, yet so arranged that a clever man like Brotherhood could
see that the figures were a cipher, and that this book was the key to
the cipher. The message you sent ran, ‘You will perish if you go back
upon your faith.’ Then you felt you had warned him sufficiently. As a
matter of fact, he left the book in the train on Monday, and therefore
your warning, which reached him on Tuesday, was in any case too late.
“Your alibi was brilliantly thought out beforehand. You went up to
London, being careful to tell us all that you were going. You took
with you no weapon except a heavy stick. But you had a powerful ally
in the grey fog which hung over the railway line that day; the fog
which made the movements of the trains slow, their timing uncertain,
their carriages almost invisible from each other. You had chosen your
day well. You knew, I take it, beforehand that Brotherhood’s
bankruptcy would soon be public property; you took good care, anyhow,
to inform yourself of the fact when you got up to Town. That meant
that the way was clear for you; the murder would be interpreted as
suicide.
“You went up by the same train as Brotherhood; you took care to come
back by the same train. You shadowed him, I suppose—easy work for you
to do that unseen in the grey fog. You saw him enter a carriage which
was (I think) the last of a coach. That was probably a disappointment
to you, because you could not take the one immediately behind. No
matter, you took the one immediately in front instead. Each travelled
first, and each was alone in his carriage; it was not difficult to
secure that in such weather, on such an unfrequented train. The
whistle blew, and you went out into the fog.
“You could do nothing on the first stage of your journey; it was
necessary for you to reach ground that you knew; you could not be
certain, in the fog, that the blow would be fatal if you struck it
elsewhere. You waited till the train got to the beginning of the
Paston Oatvile viaduct, and there, as you expected, it was held up by
the signals. That meant that you were just at the beginning of the
viaduct, so that a body falling over must necessarily go to its
destruction. It meant also, owing to the curve, that the other coaches
were all but out of sight from yours; in any case, you were hardly
visible in the fog.
“Then it was that you took out of your pocket a golf-ball—a golf-ball
of a very common kind, by which you could not be traced. Leaning out
of the window on the left-hand side of the train, you threw the ball
backwards, in such a way as to hit the further window of Brotherhood’s
carriage, the window on the side furthest from the engine, I mean.
Your idea was that the ball, bouncing off with considerable speed,
would fall into the valley below, where of course it would arouse no
suspicion if it were found. As a matter of fact, it lodged at the top
of the viaduct and was there found by me.
“Brotherhood was startled at the noise, and, as you had hoped, he put
his head out of the window. As you had hoped, he looked backwards in
doing so, because it was the back window that the ball had hit. At
that moment you brought down your stick with a violent blow over his
skull, and he must have fallen doubled up over the window-frame.
“It was not difficult, with the train stationary and the fog all
around you, to climb along the foot-board, still on the left-hand side
of the train. You had to be quick, though, for the train might move on
at any moment. You removed his season-ticket, and substituted a
third-class ticket for Paston Whitchurch. The train you were on did
not stop at Paston Whitchurch; the ticket, then, would make people
think that Brotherhood had fallen from the slow train that went past
later. You changed the time of his watch, in order to confirm this
impression. You put a wrist-watch on him, registering the same time,
so as to make assurance doubly sure. There you over-reached yourself;
there is no need to explain how.
“All this you did while your victim, I suppose, still breathed. And
still the train was held up by the signals. There was time to search
the pockets. Your cipher-letter was still in his pocket; you thought
there was no need to destroy that, because its secret could not be
penetrated. You forgot that on the back of the sheet of note-paper on
which you sent the cipher message you had jotted down some references
to anthems, mattins, and so on, which helped me ultimately to trace
the crime to you. You also found a coupon for a sleeping-carriage;
that, too, you did not destroy, but you altered the dates, because
your quick brain saw that a sleeping-carriage coupon for Tuesday would
not have been held by a man travelling in the later train, the 4.50.
“Then you took the living body and heaved it out of the
carriage-window, over the viaduct. That was just as the train started,
or when it had already started; it was a moment later that you saw you
had left the dead man’s hat in the rack, and threw that over too. One
thing you allowed to fall over without meaning to—the stick with which
you inflicted the first wound; it slipped, I suppose, from your hand:
certainly it was found just on the edge of the viaduct, a few feet
down the embankment. When you reached Binver you came straight back to
us, and were careful to tell us that you had come back by the three
o’clock train.
“You have had some bad moments since then—when I sliced my drive into
the osiers, and found the body, and you had to look at your victim;
when your superstitious fears made you think that a photograph had
come to life; when you saw on my shelves, and stole from them, the
very copy of Momerie’s _Immortality_ which you had given to
Brotherhood: when, finally, you came into my room last night, and saw
in front of you the stick with which the crime was committed. But what
should have caused you more horror is the fact than an Innocent man,
Davenant, is awaiting trial on the charge of murder, and you have
taken no steps, so far, to exculpate him. That I cannot understand,
but I hope you meant to do so; certainly you will have to do so.
“I want you to write out a full confession of these facts, and to
bring it to my room to sign it; I will witness it, and Gordon, to whom
the facts themselves are already known. After that, you are free to go
where you will. Respect for your cloth and for our friendship makes
this the only possible course for us. Your confession will not be made
public unless that is the only way of saving Davenant from execution
or a life sentence. Of course, we are taking a considerable risk
ourselves——”
The door of the steward’s office swung open, and Carmichael came in,
saying as he turned the corner, “Hullo, Reeves, have you heard that
Davenant has confessed? Oh, sorry, I didn’t see you were telephoning.”