A Shadow on the Wall
In the twenty hours or so at his disposal Inspector Birch had been
busy. He had telegraphed to London a complete description of Mark in
the brown flannel suit which he had last been seen wearing; he had made
inquiries at Stanton as to whether anybody answering to this
description had been seen leaving by the 4.20; and though the evidence
which had been volunteered to him had been inconclusive, it made it
possible that Mark had indeed caught that train, and had arrived in
London before the police at the other end had been ready to receive
him. But the fact that it was market-day at Stanton, and that the
little town would be more full than usual of visitors, made it less
likely that either the departure of Mark by the 4.20, or the arrival of
Robert by the 2.10 earlier in the afternoon, would have been
particularly noticed. As Antony had said to Cayley, there would always
be somebody ready to hand the police a circumstantial story of the
movements of any man in whom the police were interested.
That Robert had come by the 2.10 seemed fairly certain. To find out
more about him in time for the inquest would be difficult. All that was
known about him in the village where he and Mark had lived as boys bore
out the evidence of Cayley. He was an unsatisfactory son, and he had
been hurried off to Australia; nor had he been seen since in the
village. Whether there were any more substantial grounds of quarrel
between the two brothers than that the younger one was at home and
well-to-do, while the elder was poor and an exile, was not known, nor,
as far as the inspector could see, was it likely to be known until Mark
was captured.
The discovery of Mark was all that mattered immediately. Dragging the
pond might not help towards this, but it would certainly give the
impression in court to-morrow that Inspector Birch was handling the
case with zeal. And if only the revolver with which the deed was done
was brought to the surface, his trouble would be well repaid.
“Inspector Birch produces the weapon” would make an excellent headline
in the local paper.
He was feeling well-satisfied with himself, therefore, as he walked to
the pond, where his men were waiting for him, and quite in the mood for
a little pleasant talk with Mr. Gillingham and his friend, Mr.
Beverley. He gave them a cheerful “Good afternoon,” and added with a
smile, “Coming to help us?”
“You don’t really want us,” said Antony, smiling back at him.
“You can come if you like.”
Antony gave a little shudder.
“You can tell me afterwards what you find,” he said. “By the way,” he
added, “I hope the landlord at ‘The George’ gave me a good character?”
The Inspector looked at him quickly.
“Now how on earth do you know anything about that?”
Antony bowed to him gravely.
“Because I guessed that you were a very efficient member of the Force.”
The inspector laughed.
“Well, you came out all right, Mr. Gillingham. You got a clean bill.
But I had to make certain about you.”
“Of course you did. Well, I wish you luck. But I don’t think you’ll
find much at the pond. It’s rather out of the way, isn’t it, for
anybody running away?”
“That’s just what I told Mr. Cayley, when he called my attention to the
pond. However, we shan’t do any harm by looking. It’s the unexpected
that’s the most likely in this sort of case.”
“You’re quite right, Inspector. Well, we mustn’t keep you. Good
afternoon,” and Antony smiled pleasantly at him.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“Good afternoon,” said Bill.
Antony stood looking after the Inspector as he strode off, silent for
so long that Bill shook him by the arm at last, and asked him rather
crossly what was the matter.
Antony shook his head slowly from side to side.
“I don’t know; really I don’t know. It’s too devilish what I keep
thinking. He can’t be as cold-blooded as that.”
“Who?”
Without answering, Antony led the way back to the garden-seat on which
they had been sitting. He sat there with his head in his hands.
“Oh, I hope they find something,” he murmured. “Oh, I hope they do.”
“In the pond?”
“Yes.”
“But what?”
“Anything, Bill; anything.”
Bill was annoyed. “I say, Tony, this won’t do. You really mustn’t be so
damn mysterious. What’s happened to you suddenly?”
Antony looked up at him in surprise.
“Didn’t you hear what he said?”
“What, particularly?”
“That it was Cayley’s idea to drag the pond.”
“Oh! Oh, I say!” Bill was rather excited again. “You mean that he’s
hidden something there? Some false clue which he wants the police to
find?”
“I hope so,” said Antony earnestly, “but I’m afraid—” He stopped short.
“Afraid of what?”
“Afraid that he hasn’t hidden anything there. Afraid that—”
“Well?”
“What’s the safest place in which to hide anything very important?”
“Somewhere where nobody will look.”
“There’s a better place than that.”
“What?”
“Somewhere where everybody has already looked.”
“By Jove! You mean that as soon as the pond _has_ been dragged, Cayley
will hide something there?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“But why afraid?”
“Because I think that it must be something very important, something
which couldn’t easily be hidden anywhere else.”
“What?” asked Bill eagerly.
Antony shook his head.
“No, I’m not going to talk about it yet. We can wait and see what the
Inspector finds. He may find something—I don’t know what—something that
Cayley has put there for him to find. But if he doesn’t, then it will
be because Cayley is going to hide something there to-night.”
“What?” asked Bill again.
“You will see what, Bill,” said Antony; “because we shall be there.”
“Are we going to watch him?”
“Yes, if the Inspector finds nothing.”
“That’s good,” said Bill.
If it were a question of Cayley or the Law, he was quite decided as to
which side he was taking. Previous to the tragedy of yesterday he had
got on well enough with both of the cousins, without being in the least
intimate with either. Indeed, of the two he preferred, perhaps, the
silent, solid Cayley to the more volatile Mark. Cayley’s qualities, as
they appeared to Bill, may have been chiefly negative; but even if this
merit lay in the fact that he never exposed whatever weaknesses he may
have had, this is an excellent quality in a fellow-guest (or, if you
like, fellow-host) in a house where one is continually visiting. Mark’s
weaknesses, on the other hand, were very plain to the eye, and Bill had
seen a good deal of them.
Yet, though he had hesitated to define his position that morning in
regard to Mark, he did not hesitate to place himself on the side of the
Law against Cayley. Mark, after all, had done him no harm, but Cayley
had committed an unforgivable offence. Cayley had listened secretly to
a private conversation between himself and Tony. Let Cayley hang, if
the Law demanded it.
Antony looked at his watch and stood up.
“Come along,” he said. “It’s time for that job I spoke about.”
“The passage?” said Bill eagerly.
“No; the thing which I said that I had to do this afternoon.”
“Oh, of course. What is it?”
Without saying anything, Antony led the way indoors to the office.
It was three o’clock, and at three o’clock yesterday Antony and Cayley
had found the body. At a few minutes after three, he had been looking
out of the window of the adjoining room, and had been surprised
suddenly to find the door open and Cayley behind him. He had vaguely
wondered at the time why he had expected the door to be shut, but he
had had no time then to worry the thing out, and he had promised
himself to look into it at his leisure afterwards. Possibly it meant
nothing; possibly, if it meant anything, he could have found out its
meaning by a visit to the office that morning. But he had felt that he
would be more likely to recapture the impressions of yesterday if he
chose as far as possible the same conditions for his experiment. So he
had decided that three o’clock that afternoon should find him once more
in the office.
As he went into the room, followed by Bill, he felt it almost as a
shock that there was now no body of Robert lying there between the two
doors. But there was a dark stain which showed where the dead man’s
head had been, and Antony knelt down over it, as he had knelt
twenty-four hours before.
“I want to go through it again,” he said. “You must be Cayley. Cayley
said he would get some water. I remember thinking that water wasn’t
much good to a dead man, and that probably he was only too glad to do
anything rather than nothing. He came back with a wet sponge and a
handkerchief. I suppose he got the handkerchief from the chest of
drawers. Wait a bit.”
He got up and went into the adjoining room; looked round it, pulled
open a drawer or two, and, after shutting all the doors, came back to
the office.
“The sponge is there, and there are handkerchiefs in the top right-hand
drawer. Now then, Bill, just pretend you’re Cayley. You’ve just said
something about water, and you get up.”
Feeling that it was all a little uncanny, Bill, who had been kneeling
beside his friend, got up and walked out. Antony, as he had done on the
previous day, looked up after him as he went. Bill turned into the room
on the right, opened the drawer and got the handkerchief, damped the
sponge and came back.
“Well?” he said wonderingly.
Antony shook his head.
“It’s all different,” he said. “For one thing, you made a devil of a
noise and Cayley didn’t.”
“Perhaps you weren’t listening when Cayley went in?”
“I wasn’t. But I should have heard him if I could have heard him, and I
should have remembered afterwards.”
“Perhaps Cayley shut the door after him.”
“Wait!”
He pressed his hand over his eyes and thought. It wasn’t anything which
he had heard, but something which he had seen. He tried desperately
hard to see it again.... He saw Cayley getting up, opening the door
from the office, leaving it open and walking into the passage, turning
to the door on the right, opening it, going in, and then—What did his
eyes see after that? If they would only tell him again!
Suddenly he jumped up, his face alight. “Bill, I’ve got it!” he cried.
“What?”
“The shadow on the wall! I was looking at the shadow on the wall. Oh,
ass, and ten times ass!”
Bill looked uncomprehendingly at him. Antony took his arm and pointed
to the wall of the passage.
“Look at the sunlight on it,” he said. “That’s because you’ve left the
door of that room open. The sun comes straight in through the windows.
Now, I’m going to shut the door. Look! D’you see how the shadow moves
across? That’s what I saw—the shadow moving across as the door shut
behind him. Bill, go in and shut the door behind you—quite naturally.
Quick!”
Bill went out and Antony knelt, watching eagerly.
“I thought so!” he cried. “I knew it couldn’t have been that.”
“What happened?” said Bill, coming back.
“Just what you would expect. The sunlight came, and the shadow moved
back again—all in one movement.”
“And what happened yesterday?”
“The sunlight stayed there; and then the shadow came very slowly back,
and there was no noise of the door being shut.”
Bill looked at him with startled eyes.
“By Jove! You mean that Cayley closed the door afterwards as an
afterthought—and very quietly—so that you couldn’t hear?”
Antony nodded.
“Yes. That explains why I was surprised afterwards when I went into the
room to find the door open behind me. You know how those doors with
springs on them close?”
“The sort which old gentlemen have to keep out draughts?”
“Yes. Just at first they hardly move at all, and then very, very slowly
they swing to— well, that was the way the shadow moved, and
subconsciously I must have associated it with the movement of that sort
of door. By Jove!” He got up, and dusted his knees. “Now, Bill, just to
make sure, go in and close the door like that. As an afterthought, you
know; and very quietly, so that I don’t hear the click of it.”
Bill did as he was told, and then put his head out eagerly to hear what
had happened.
“That was it,” said Antony, with absolute conviction. “That was just
what I saw yesterday.” He came out of the office, and joined Bill in
the little room.
“And now,” he said, “let’s try and find out what it was that Mr. Cayley
was doing in here, and why he had to be so very careful that his friend
Mr. Gillingham didn’t overhear him.”