The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne (most popular ebook readers txt) 📕

and self-reliant a man. “Just your moral support, you know. It would be something.”

“Of course.” Antony smiled back at him, and said cheerfully, “Well, then, I’ll begin by suggesting that you should ring up the police.”

“The police? Y-yes.” He looked doubtfully at the other. “I suppose—”

Antony spoke frankly.

“Now, look here, Mr.—er—”

“Cayley. I’m Mark Ablett’s cousin. I live with him.”

“My name’s Gillingham. I’m sorry, I ought to have told you before. Well now, Mr. Cayley, we shan’t do any good by pretending. Here’s a man been shot—well, somebody shot him.”

“He might have shot himself,” mumbled Cayley.

“Yes, he might have, but he didn’t. Or if he did, somebody was in the room at the time, and that somebody isn’t here now. And that somebody took a revolver away with him. Well, the police will want to say a word about that, won’t they?”

Cayley was silent, looking on the ground.

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking, and believe me I do sympathize with you, but we can’t be children about it. If your cousin Mark Ablett was in the room with this”—he indicated the body—“this man, then—”

“Who said he was?” said Cayley, jerking his head up suddenly at Antony.

“You did.”

“I was in the library. Mark went in—he may have come out again—I know nothing. Somebody else may have gone in—”

“Yes, yes,” said Antony patiently, as if to a little child. “You know your cousin; I don’t. Let’s agree that he had nothing to do with it. But somebody was in the room when this man was shot, and—well, the police will have to know. Don’t you think—” He looked at the telephone. “Or would you rather I did it?”

Cayley shrugged his shoulders and went to the telephone.

“May I—er—look round a bit?” Antony nodded towards the open door.

“Oh, do. Yes.” He sat down and drew the telephone towards him. “You must make allowances for me, Mr. Gillingham. You see, I’ve known Mark for a very long time. But, of course, you’re quite right, and I’m merely being stupid.” He took off the receiver.

Let us suppose that, for the purpose of making a first acquaintance with this “office,” we are coming into it from the hall, through the door which is now locked, but which, for our special convenience, has been magically unlocked for us. As we stand just inside the door, the length of the room runs right and left; or, more accurately, to the right only, for the left-hand wall is almost within our reach. Immediately opposite to us, across the breadth of the room (some fifteen feet), is that other door, by which Cayley went out and returned a few minutes ago. In the right-hand wall, thirty feet away from us, are the French windows. Crossing the room and going out by the opposite door, we come into a passage, from which two rooms lead. The one on the right, into which Cayley went, is less than half the length of the office, a small, square room, which has evidently been used some time or other as a bedroom. The bed is no longer there, but there is a basin, with hot and cold taps, in a corner; chairs; a cupboard or two, and a chest of drawers. The window faces the same way as the French windows in the next room; but anybody looking out of the bedroom window has his view on the immediate right shut off by the outer wall of the office, which projects, by reason of its greater length, fifteen feet further into the lawn.

The room on the other side of the bedroom is a bathroom. The three rooms together, in fact, form a sort of private suite; used, perhaps, during the occupation of the previous owner, by some invalid, who could not manage the stairs, but allowed by Mark to fall into disuse, save for the living-room. At any rate, he never slept downstairs.

Antony glanced at the bathroom, and then wandered into the bedroom, the room into which Cayley had been. The window was open, and he looked out at the well-kept grass beneath him, and the peaceful stretch of park beyond; and he felt very sorry for the owner of it all, who was now mixed up in so grim a business.

“Cayley thinks he did it,” said Antony to himself. “That’s obvious. It explains why he wasted so much time banging on the door. Why should he try to break a lock when it’s so much easier to break a window? Of course he might just have lost his head; on the other hand, he might—well, he might have wanted to give his cousin a chance of getting away. The same about the police, and—oh, lots of things. Why, for instance, did we run all the way round the house in order to get to the windows? Surely there’s a back way out through the hall. I must have a look later on.”

Antony, it will be observed, had by no means lost his head.

There was a step in the passage outside, and he turned round, to see Cayley in the doorway. He remained looking at him for a moment, asking himself a question. It was rather a curious question. He was asking himself why the door was open.

Well, not exactly why the door was open; that could be explained easily enough. But why had he expected the door to be shut? He did not remember shutting it, but somehow he was surprised to see it open now, to see Cayley through the doorway, just coming into the room. Something working sub-consciously in his brain had told him that it was surprising. Why?

He tucked the matter away in a corner of his mind for the moment; the answer would come to him later on. He had a wonderfully retentive mind. Everything which he saw or heard seemed to make its corresponding impression somewhere in his brain; often without his being conscious of it; and these photographic impressions were always there ready for him when he wished to develop them.

Cayley joined him at the window.

“I’ve telephoned,” he said. “They’re sending an inspector or some one from Middleston, and the local police and doctor from Stanton.” He shrugged his shoulders. “We’re in for it now.”

“How far away is Middleston?” It was the town for which Antony had taken a ticket that morning—only six hours ago. How absurd it seemed.

“About twenty miles. These people will be coming back soon.”

“Beverley, and the others?”

“Yes. I expect they’ll want to go away at once.”

“Much better that they should.”

“Yes.” Cayley was silent for a little. Then he said, “You’re staying near here?”

“I’m at ‘The George,’ at Woodham.”

“If you’re by yourself, I wish you’d put up here. You see,” he went on awkwardly, “you’ll have to be here—for the—the inquest and—and so on. If I may offer you my cousin’s hospitality in his—I mean if he doesn’t—if he really has—”

Antony broke in hastily with his thanks and acceptance.

“That’s good. Perhaps Beverley will stay on, if he’s a friend of yours. He’s a good fellow.”

Antony felt quite sure, from what Cayley had said and had hesitated to say, that Mark had been the last to see his brother alive. It didn’t follow that Mark Ablett was a murderer. Revolvers go off accidentally; and when they have gone off, people lose their heads and run away, fearing that their story will not be believed. Nevertheless, when people run away, whether innocently or guiltily, one can’t help wondering which way they went.

“I suppose this way,” said Antony aloud, looking out of the window.

“Who?” said Cayley stubbornly.

“Well, whoever it was,” said Antony, smiling to himself. “The murderer. Or, let us say, the man who locked the door after Robert Ablett was killed.”

“I wonder.”

“Well, how else could he have got away? He didn’t go by the windows in the next room, because they were shut.”

“Isn’t that rather odd?”

“Well, I thought so at first, but—” He pointed to the wall jutting out on the right. “You see, you’re protected from the rest of the house if you get out here, and you’re quite close to the shrubbery. If you go out at the French windows, I imagine you’re much more visible. All that part of the house—” he waved his right hand—“the west, well, north-west almost, where the kitchen parts are—you see, you’re hidden from them here. Oh, yes! he knew the house, whoever it was, and he was quite right to come out of this window. He’d be into the shrubbery at once.”

Cayley looked at him thoughtfully.

“It seems to me, Mr. Gillingham, that you know the house pretty well, considering that this is the first time you’ve been to it.”

Antony laughed.

“Oh, well, I notice things, you know. I was born noticing. But I’m right, aren’t I, about why he went out this way?”

“Yes, I think you are.” Cayley looked away—towards the shrubbery. “Do you want to go noticing in there now?” He nodded at it.

“I think we might leave that to the police,” said Antony gently. “It’s—well, there’s no hurry.”

Cayley gave a little sigh, as if he had been holding his breath for the answer, and could now breathe again.

“Thank you, Mr. Gillingham,” he said.