The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne (libby ebook reader txt) 📕

What was it which Cayley was going to hide in that pond that night? Antony thought that he knew now. It was Mark’s body.

From the beginning he had seen this answer coming and had drawn back from it. For, if Mark had been killed, it seemed such a cold-blooded killing. Was Cayley equal to it? Bill would have said “No,” but that was because he had had breakfast with Cayley, and lunch with him, and dinner with him; had ragged him and played games with him. Bill would have said “No,” because Bill wouldn’t have killed anybody in cold blood himself, and because he took it for granted that other people behaved pretty much as he did. But Antony had no such illusions. Murders were done; murder had actually been done here, for there was Robert’s dead body. Why not another murder?

Had Mark been in the office at all that afternoon? The only evidence (other than Cayley’s, which obviously did not count) was Elsie’s. Elsie was quite certain that she had heard his voice. But then Bill had said that it was a very characteristic voice —an easy voice, therefore, to imitate. If Bill could imitate it so successfully, why not Cayley?

But perhaps it had not been such a cold-blooded killing, after all. Suppose Cayley had had a quarrel with his cousin that afternoon over the girl whom they were both wooing. Suppose Cayley had killed Mark, either purposely, in sudden passion, or accidentally, meaning only to knock him down. Suppose that this had happened in the passage, say about two o’clock, either because Cayley had deliberately led him there, or because Mark had casually suggested a visit to it. (One could imagine Mark continually gloating over that secret passage.) Suppose Cayley there, with the body at his feet, feeling already the rope round his neck; his mind darting this way and that in frantic search for a way of escape; and suppose that suddenly and irrelevantly he remembers that Robert is coming to the house at three o’clock that afternoon—automatically he looks at his watch—in half an hour’s time …. In half an hour’s time. He must think of something quickly, quickly. Shall he bury the body in the passage and let it be thought that Mark ran away, frightened at the mere thought of his brother’s arrival? But there was the evidence of the breakfast table. Mark had seemed annoyed at this resurrection of the black sheep, but certainly not frightened. No; that was much too thin a story. But suppose Mark had actually seen his brother and had a quarrel with him; suppose it could be made to look as if Robert had killed Mark—

Antony pictured to himself Cayley in the passage, standing over the dead body of his cousin, and working it out. How could Robert be made to seem the murderer, if Robert were alive to deny it? But suppose Robert were dead, too?

He looks at his watch again. (Only twenty-five minutes now.) Suppose Robert were dead, too? Robert dead in the office, and Mark dead in the passage how does that help? Madness! But if the bodies were brought together somehow and Robert’s death looked like suicide? …. Was it possible?

Madness again. Too difficult. (Only twenty minutes now.) Too difficult to arrange in twenty minutes. Can’t arrange a suicide. Too difficult …. Only nineteen minutes ….

And then the sudden inspiration! Robert dead in the office, Mark’s body hidden in the passage—impossible to make Robert seem the murderer, but how easy to make Mark! Robert dead and Mark missing; why, it jumped to the eye at once. Mark had killed Robert—accidentally; yes, that would be more likely—and then had run away. Sudden panic …. (He looks at his watch again. Fifteen minutes, but plenty of time now. The thing arranges itself.)

Was that the solution, Antony wondered. It seemed to fit in with the facts as they knew them; but then, so did that other theory which he had suggested to Bill in the morning.

“Which one?” said Bill.

They had come back from Jallands through the park and were sitting in the copse above the pond, from which the Inspector and his fishermen had now withdrawn. Bill had listened with open mouth to Antony’s theory, and save for an occasional “By Jove!” had listened in silence. “Smart man, Cayley,” had been his only comment at the end.

“Which other theory?”

“That Mark had killed Robert accidentally and had gone to Cayley for help, and that Cayley, having hidden him in the passage, locked the office door from the outside and hammered on it.”

“Yes, but you were so dashed mysterious about that. I asked you what the point of it was, and you wouldn’t say anything.” He thought for a little, and then went on, “I suppose you meant that Cayley deliberately betrayed Mark, and tried to make him look like a murderer?”

“I wanted to warn you that we should probably find Mark in the passage, alive or dead.”

“And now you don’t think so?”

“Now I think that his dead body is there.”

“Meaning that Cayley went down and killed him afterwards after you had come, after the police had come?”

“Well, that’s what I shrink from, Bill. It’s so horribly cold-blooded. Cayley may be capable of it, but I hate to think of it.”

“But, dash it all, your other way is cold-blooded enough. According to you, he goes up to the office and deliberately shoots a man with whom he has no quarrel, whom he hasn’t seen for fifteen years!”

“Yes, but to save his own neck. That makes a difference. My theory is that he quarrelled violently with Mark over the girl, and killed him in sudden passion. Anything that happened after that would be self-defense. I don’t mean that I excuse it, but that I understand it. And I think that Mark’s dead body is in the passage now, and has been there since, say, half-past two yesterday afternoon. And to-night Cayley is going to hide it in the pond.”

Bill pulled at the moss on the ground beside him, threw away a handful or two, and said slowly, “You may be right, but it’s all guesswork, you know.”

Antony laughed.

“Good Lord, of course it is,” he said. “And to-night we shall know if it’s a good guess or a bad one.”

Bill brightened up suddenly.

“To-night,” he said. “I say, to-night’s going to be rather fun. How do we work it?”

Antony was silent for a little.

“Of course,” he said at last, “we ought to inform the police, so that they can come here and watch the pond to-night.”

“Of course,” grinned Bill.

“But I think that perhaps it is a little early to put our theories before them.”

“I think perhaps it is,” said Bill solemnly.

Antony looked up at him with a sudden smile.

“Bill, you old bounder.”

“Well, dash it, it’s our show. I don’t see why we shouldn’t get our little bit of fun out of it.”

“Neither do I. All right, then, we’ll do without the police to-night.”

“We shall miss them,” said Bill sadly, “but ‘tis better so.”

There were two problems in front of them: first, the problem of getting out of the house without being discovered by Cayley, and secondly, the problem of recovering whatever it was which Cayley dropped into the pond that night.

“Let’s look at it from Cayley’s point of view,” said Antony. “He may not know that we’re on his track, but he can’t help being suspicious of us. He’s bound to be suspicious of everybody in the house, and more particularly of us, because we’re presumably more intelligent than the others.”

He stopped for a moment to light his pipe, and Bill took the opportunity of looking more intelligent than Mrs. Stevens.

“Now, he has got something to hide to-night, and he’s going to take good care that we aren’t watching him. Well, what will he do?”

“See that we are asleep first, before he starts out.”

“Yes. Come and tuck us up, and see that we’re nice and comfortable.”

“Yes, that’s awkward,” said Bill. “But we could lock our doors, and then he wouldn’t know that we weren’t there.”

“Have you ever locked your door?”

“Never.”

“No. And you can bet that Cayley knows that. Anyway, he’d bang on it, and you wouldn’t answer, and then what would he think?”

Bill was silent; crushed.

“Then I don’t see how we’re going to do it,” he said, after deep thought. “He’ll obviously come to us just before he starts out, and that doesn’t give us time to get to the pond in front of him.”

“Let’s put ourselves in his place,” said Antony, puffing slowly at his pipe. “He’s got the body, or whatever it is, in the passage. He won’t come up the stairs, carrying it in his arms, and look in at our doors to see if we’re awake. He’ll have to make sure about us first, and then go down for the body afterwards. So that gives us a little time.”

“Y-yes,” said Bill doubtfully. “We might just do it, but it’ll be a bit of a rush.”

“But wait. When he’s gone down to the passage and got the body, what will he do next?”

“Come out again,” said Bill helpfully.

“Yes; but which end?”

Bill sat up with a start.

“By Jove, you mean that he will go out at the far end by the bowling-green?”

“Don’t you think so? Just imagine him walking across the lawn in full view of the house, at midnight, with a body in his arms. Think of the awful feeling he would have in the back of the neck, wondering if anybody, any restless sleeper, had chosen just that moment to wander to the window and look out into the night. There’s still plenty of moonlight, Bill. Is he going to walk across the park in the moonlight, with all those windows staring at him? Not if he can help it. But he can get out by the bowling green, and then come to the pond without ever being in sight of the house, at all.”

“You’re right. And that will just about give us time. Good. Now, what’s the next thing?”

“The next thing is to mark the exact place in the pond where he drops whatever he drops.”

“So that we can fish it out again.”

“If we can see what it is, we shan’t want to. The police can have a go at it to-morrow. But if it’s something we can’t identify from a distance, then we must try and get it out. To see whether