Mr. Beverley Moves On
“Good Lord!” said Bill, as he put down the letter.
“I thought you’d say that,” murmured Antony.
“Tony, do you mean to say that you knew all this?”
“I guessed some of it. I didn’t quite know all of it, of course.”
“Good Lord!” said Bill again, and returned to the letter. In a moment
he was looking up again. “What did you write to him? Was that last
night? After I’d gone into Stanton?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say? That you’d discovered that Mark was Robert?”
“Yes. At least I said that this morning I should probably telegraph to
Mr. Cartwright of Wimpole Street, and ask him to—”
Bill burst in eagerly on the top of the sentence. “Yes, now what was
all that about? You were so damn Sherlocky yesterday all of a sudden.
We’d been doing the thing together all the time, and you’d been telling
me everything, and then suddenly you become very mysterious and private
and talk enigmatically—is that the word?—about dentists and swimming
and the ‘Plough and Horses,’ and—well, what was it all about? You
simply vanished out of sight; I didn’t know what on earth we were
talking about.”
Antony laughed and apologized.
“Sorry, Bill. I felt like that suddenly. Just for the last half-hour;
just to end up with. I’ll tell you everything now. Not that there’s
anything to tell, really. It seems so easy when you know it—so obvious.
About Mr. Cartwright of Wimpole Street. Of course he was just to
identify the body.”
“But whatever made you think of a dentist for that?”
“Who could do it better? Could _you_ have done it? How could you? You’d
never gone bathing with Mark; you’d never seen him stripped. He didn’t
swim. Could his doctor do it? Not unless he’d had some particular
operation, and perhaps not then. But his dentist could—at any time,
always—if he had been to his dentist fairly often. Hence Mr. Cartwright
of Wimpole Street.”
Bill nodded thoughtfully and went back again to the letter.
“I see. And you told Cayley that you were telegraphing to Cartwright to
identify the body?”
“Yes. And then of course it was all up for him. Once we knew that
Robert was Mark we knew everything.”
“How _did_ you know?”
Antony got up from the breakfast table and began to fill his pipe.
“I’m not sure that I can say, Bill. You know those problems in Algebra
where you say, ‘Let _x_ be the answer,’ and then you work it out and
find what _x_ is. Well, that’s one way; and another way, which they
never give you any marks for at school, is to guess the answer. Pretend
the answer is 4—well, will that satisfy the conditions of the problem?
No. Then try 6; and if 6 doesn’t either, then what about 5?—and so on.
Well, the Inspector and the Coroner and all that lot had guessed their
answer, and it seemed to fit, but you and I knew it didn’t really fit;
there were several conditions in the problem which it didn’t fit at
all. So we knew that their answer was wrong, and we had to think of
another—an answer which explained all the things which were puzzling
us. Well, I happened to guess the right one. Got a match?”
Bill handed him a box, and he lit his pipe.
“Yes, but that doesn’t quite do, old boy. Something must have put you
on to it suddenly. By the way, I’ll have my matches back, if you don’t
mind.”
Antony laughed and took them out of his pocket.
“Sorry.... Well then, let’s see if I can go through my own mind again,
and tell you how I guessed it. First of all, the clothes.”
“Yes?”
“To Cayley the clothes seemed an enormously important clue. I didn’t
quite see why, but I did realize that to a man in Cayley’s position the
smallest clue would have an entirely disproportionate value. For some
reason, then, Cayley attached this exaggerated importance to the
clothes which Mark was wearing on that Tuesday morning; all the
clothes, the inside ones as well as the outside ones. I didn’t know
why, but I did feel certain that, in that case, the absence of the
collar was unintentional. In collecting the clothes he had overlooked
the collar. Why?”
“It was the one in the linen-basket?”
“Yes. It seemed probable. Why had Cayley put it there? The obvious
answer was that he hadn’t. Mark had put it there. I remembered what you
told me about Mark being finicky, and having lots of clothes and so on,
and I felt that he was just the sort of man who would never wear the
same collar twice.” He paused, and then asked, “Is that right, do you
think?”
“Absolutely,” said Bill with conviction.
“Well, I guessed it was. So then I began to see an x which would fit
just this part of the problem—the clothes part. I saw Mark changing his
clothes; I saw him instinctively dropping the collar in the
linen-basket, just as he had always dropped every collar he had ever
taken off, but leaving the rest of the clothes on a chair in the
ordinary way; and I saw Cayley collecting all the clothes
afterwards—all the visible clothes—and not realizing that the collar
wasn’t there.”
“Go on,” said Bill eagerly.
“Well, I felt pretty sure about that, and I wanted an explanation of
it. Why had Mark changed down there instead of in his bedroom? The only
answer was that the fact of his changing had to be kept secret. When
did he change? The only possible time was between lunch (when he would
be seen by the servants) and the moment of Robert’s arrival. And when
did Cayley collect the clothes in a bundle? Again, the only answer was
‘Before Robert’s arrival.’ So another x was wanted—to fit those three
conditions.”
“And the answer was that a murder was intended, even before Robert
arrived?”
“Yes. Well now, it couldn’t be intended on the strength of that letter,
unless there was very much more behind the letter than we knew. Nor was
it possible a murder could be intended without any more preparation
than the changing into a different suit in which to escape. The thing
was too childish. Also, if Robert was to be murdered, why go out of the
way to announce his existence to you all—even, at the cost of some
trouble, to Mrs. Norbury? What did it all mean? I didn’t know. But I
began to feel now that Robert was an incident only; that the plot was a
plot of Cayley’s against Mark—either to get him to kill his brother, or
to get his brother to kill him—and that for some inexplicable reason
Mark seemed to be lending himself to the plot.” He was silent for a
little, and then said, almost to himself, “I had seen the empty brandy
bottles in that cupboard.”
“You never said anything about them,” complained Bill.
“I only saw them afterwards. I was looking for the collar, you
remember. They came back to me afterwards; I knew how Cayley would feel
about it.... Poor devil!”
“Go on,” said Bill.
“Well, then, we had the inquest, and of course I noticed, and I suppose
you did too, the curious fact that Robert had asked his way at the
second lodge and not at the first. So I talked to Amos and Parsons.
That made it more curious. Amos told me that Robert had gone out of his
way to speak to him; had called to him, in fact. Parsons told me that
his wife was out in their little garden at the first lodge all the
afternoon, and was certain that Robert had never come past it. He also
told me that Cayley had put him on to a job on the front lawn that
afternoon. So I had another guess. Robert had used the secret
passage—the passage which comes out into the park between the first and
second lodges. Robert, then, had been in the house; it was a put-up job
between Robert and Cayley. But how could Robert be there without Mark
knowing? Obviously, Mark knew too. What did it all mean?”
“When was this?” interrupted Bill. “Just after the inquest—after you’d
seen Amos and Parsons, of course?”
“Yes. I got up and left them, and came to look for you. I’d got back to
the clothes then. Why did Mark change his clothes so secretly?
Disguise? But then what about his face? That was much more important
than clothes. His face, his beard—he’d have to shave off his beard—and
then—oh, idiot! I saw you looking at that poster. Mark acting, Mark
made-up, Mark disguised. Oh, priceless idiot! Mark was Robert....
Matches, please.”
Bill passed over the matches again, waited till Antony had relit his
pipe, and then held out his hand for them, just as they were going into
the other’s pocket.
“Yes,” said Bill thoughtfully. “Yes.... But wait a moment. What about
the ‘Plough and Horses’?” Antony looked comically at him.
“You’ll never forgive me, Bill,” he said. “You’ll never come
clue-hunting with me again.”
“What do you mean?”
Antony sighed.
“It was a fake, Watson. I wanted you out of the way. I wanted to be
alone. I’d guessed at my x, and I wanted to test it—to test it every
way, by everything we’d discovered. I simply _had_ to be alone just
then. So—” he smiled and added, “Well, I knew you wanted a drink.”
“You _are_ a devil,” said Bill, staring at him. “And your interest when
I told you that a woman had been staying there—”
“Well, it was only polite to be interested when you’d taken so much
trouble.”
“You brute! You—you Sherlock! And then you keep trying to steal my
matches. Well, go on.”
“That’s all. My _x_ fitted.”
“Did you guess Miss Norris and all that?”
“Well, not quite. I didn’t realize that Cayley had worked for it from
the beginning—had put Miss Norris up to frightening Mark. I thought
he’d just seized the opportunity.”
Bill was silent for a long time. Then, puffing at his pipe, he said
slowly, “Has Cayley shot himself?”
Antony shrugged his shoulders.
“Poor devil,” said Bill. “It was decent of you to give him a chance.
I’m glad you did.”
“I couldn’t help liking Cayley in a kind of way, you know.”
“He’s a clever devil. If you hadn’t turned up just when you did, he
would never have been found out.”
“I wonder. It was ingenious, but it’s often the ingenious thing which
gets found out. The awkward thing from Cayley’s point of view was that,
though Mark was missing, neither he nor his body could ever be found.
Well, that doesn’t often happen with a missing man. He generally gets
discovered in the end; a professional criminal; perhaps not—but an
amateur like Mark! He might have kept the secret of _how_ he killed
Mark, but I think it would have become obvious sooner or later that he
_had_ killed him.”
“Yes, there’s something in that.... Oh, just tell me one thing. Why did
Mark tell Miss Norbury about his imaginary brother?”
“That’s puzzled me rather, too, Bill. It may be that he was just doing
the Othello business—painting himself black all over. I mean he may
have been so full of his appearance as Robert that he had almost got to
believe in Robert, and had to tell everybody. More likely, though, he
felt that, having told all of you at the house, he had better tell Miss
Norbury, in case she met one of you; in which case, if you mentioned
the approaching arrival of Robert, she might say, ‘Oh, I’m certain he
has no brother; he would have told me if he had,’ and so spoil his
joke. Possibly, too, Cayley put him on to it; Cayley obviously wanted
as many people as possible to know about Robert.”
“Are you going to tell the police?”
“Yes, I suppose they’ll have to know. Cayley may have left another
confession. I hope he won’t give me away; you see, I’ve been a sort of
accessory since yesterday evening. And I must go and see Miss Norbury.”
“I asked,” explained Bill, “because I was wondering what I should say
to—to Betty. Miss Calladine. You see, she’s bound to ask.”
“Perhaps you won’t see her again for a long, long time,” said Antony
sadly.
“As a matter of fact, I happen to know that she will be at the
Barringtons. And I go up there to-morrow.”
“Well, you had better tell her. You’re obviously longing to. Only don’t
let her say anything for a day or two. I’ll write to you.”
“Righto!”
Antony knocked the ashes out of his pipe and got up.
“The Barringtons,” he said. “Large party?”
“Fairly, I think.”
Antony smiled at his friend.
“Yes. Well, if any of ’em _should_ happen to be murdered, you might
send for me. I’m just getting into the swing of it.”