Books: The Red House Mystery
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A. A. Milne >> The Red House Mystery
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"Rather not.
"So we've got to carry on secretly for a bit. It's the only
way." He smiled and added, "And it's much more fun."
"Rather!" Bill chuckled to himself.
"Very well. Where does the secret passage begin?"
CHAPTER XI
The Reverend Theodore Ussher
"There's one thing, which we have got to realize at once," said
Antony, "and that is that if we don't find it easily, we shan't
find it at all."
"You mean that we shan't have time?"
"Neither time nor opportunity. Which is rather a consoling
thought to a lazy person like me."
"But it makes it much harder, if we can't really look properly."
"Harder to find, yes, but so much easier to look. For instance,
the passage might begin in Cayley's bedroom. Well, now we know
that it doesn't."
"We don't know anything of the sort," protested Bill.
"We--know for the purposes of our search. Obviously we can't go
tailing into Cayley's bedroom and tapping his wardrobes; and
obviously, therefore, if we are going to look for it at all, we
must assume that it doesn't begin there."
"Oh, I see." Bill chewed a piece of grass thoughtfully.
"Anyhow, it wouldn't begin on an upstairs floor, would it?"
"Probably not. Well, we're getting on."
"You can wash out the kitchen and all that part of the house,"
said Bill, after more thought. "We can't go there."
"Right. And the cellars, if there are any."
"Well, that doesn't leave us much."
"No. Of course it's only a hundred-to-one chance that we find
it, but what we want to consider is which is the most likely
place of the few places in which we can look safely."
"All it amounts to," said Bill, "is the living-rooms downstairs
dining-room, library, hall, billiard-room and the office rooms."
"Yes, that's all."
"Well, the office is the most likely, isn't it?"
"Yes. Except for one thing."
"What's that?"
"Well, it's on the wrong side of the house. One would expect the
passage to start from the nearest place to which it is going.
Why make it longer by going under the house first?"
"Yes, that's true. Well, then, you think the dining-room or the
library?"
"Yes. And the library for choice. I mean for our choice. There
are always servants going into dining-rooms. We shouldn't have
much of a chance of exploring properly in there. Besides,
there's another thing to remember. Mark has kept this a secret
for a year. Could he have kept it a secret in the dining-room?
Could Miss Norris have got into the dining-room and used the
secret door just after dinner without being seen? It would have
been much too risky."
Bill got up eagerly.
"Come along," he said, "let's try the library. If Cayley comes
in, we can always pretend we're choosing a book."
Antony got up slowly, took his arm and walked back to the house
with him.
The library was worth going into, passages or no passages.
Antony could never resist another person's bookshelves. As soon
as he went into the room, he found himself wandering round it to
see what books the owner read, or (more likely) did not read, but
kept for the air which they lent to the house. Mark had prided
himself on his library. It was a mixed collection of books.
Books which he had inherited both from his father and from his
patron; books which he had bought because he was interested in
them or, if not in them, in the authors to whom he wished to lend
his patronage; books which he had ordered in beautifully bound
editions, partly because they looked well on his shelves, lending
a noble colour to his rooms, partly because no man of culture
should ever be without them; old editions, new editions,
expensive books, cheap books, a library in which everybody,
whatever his taste, could be sure of finding something to suit
him.
"And which is your particular fancy, Bill?" said Antony, looking
from one shelf to another. "Or are you always playing
billiards?"
"I have a look at 'Badminton' sometimes," said Bill.
"It's over in that corner there." He waved a hand.
"Over here?" said Antony, going to it.
"Yes." He corrected himself suddenly.--"Oh, no, it's not. It's
over there on the right now. Mark had a grand re-arrangement of
his library about a year ago. It took him more than a week, he
told us. He's got such a frightful lot, hasn't he?"
"Now that's very interesting," said Antony, and he sat down and
filled his pipe again.
There was indeed a "frightful lot" of books. The four walls of
the library were plastered with them from floor to ceiling, save
only where the door and the two windows insisted on living their
own life, even though an illiterate one. To Bill it seemed the
most hopeless room of any in which to look for a secret opening.
"We shall have to take every blessed book down," he said, "before
we can be certain that we haven't missed it."
"Anyway," said Antony, "if we take them down one at a time,
nobody can suspect us of sinister designs. After all, what does
one go into a library for, except to take books down?"
"But there's such a frightful lot."
Antony's pipe was now going satisfactorily, and he got up and
walked leisurely to the end of the wall opposite the door.
"Well, let's have a look," he said, "and see if they are so very
frightful. Hallo, here's your 'Badminton.' You often read that,
you say?"
"If I read anything."
"Yes." He looked down and up the shelf. "Sport and Travel
chiefly. I like books of travel, don't you?"
"They're pretty dull as a rule."
"Well, anyhow, some people like them very much," said Antony,
reproachfully. He moved on to the next row of shelves. "The
Drama. The Restoration dramatists. You can have most of them.
Still, as you well remark, many people seem to love them. Shaw,
Wilde, Robertson--I like reading plays, Bill. There are not many
people who do, but those who do are usually very keen. Let us
pass on."
"I say, we haven't too much time," said Bill restlessly.
"We haven't. That's why we aren't wasting any. Poetry. Who
reads poetry nowadays? Bill, when did you last read 'Paradise
Lost'?"
"Never."
"I thought not. And when did Miss Calladine last read 'The
Excursion' aloud to you?"
"As a matter of fact, Betty--Miss Calladine--happens to be jolly
keen on what's the beggar's name?"
"Never mind his name. You have said quite enough. We pass on."
He moved on to the next shelf.
"Biography. Oh, lots of it. I love biographies. Are you a
member of the Johnson Club? I bet Mark is. 'Memories of Many
Courts' I'm sure Mrs. Calladine reads that. Anyway, biographies
are just as interesting as most novels, so why linger? We pass
on." He went to the next shelf, and then gave a sudden whistle.
"Hallo, hallo!"
"What's the matter?" said Bill rather peevishly.
"Stand back there. Keep the crowd back, Bill. We are getting
amongst it. Sermons, as I live. Sermons. Was Mark's father a
clergyman, or does Mark take to them naturally?"
"His father was a parson, I believe. Oh, yes, I know he was."
"Ah, then these are Father's books. 'Half-Hours with the
Infinite' I must order that from the library when I get back.
'The Lost Sheep,' 'Jones on the Trinity,' 'The Epistles of St.
Paul Explained.' Oh, Bill, we're amongst it. 'The Narrow Way,
being Sermons by the Rev. Theodore Ussher' hal-LO!"
"What is the matter?"
"William, I am inspired. Stand by." He took down the Reverend
Theodore Ussher's classic work, looked at it with a happy smile
for a moment, and then gave it to Bill.
"Here, hold Ussher for a bit."
Bill took the book obediently.
"No, give it me back. Just go out into the hall, and see if you
can hear Cayley anywhere. Say 'Hallo' loudly, if you do."
Bill went out quickly, listened, and came back.
"It's all right."
"Good." He took the book out of its shelf again. "Now then, you
can hold Ussher. Hold him in the left hand so. With the right
or dexter hand, grasp this shelf firmly so. Now, when I say
'Pull,' pull gradually. Got that?"
Bill nodded, his face alight with excitement.
"Good." Antony put his hand into the space left by the stout
Ussher, and fingered the hack of the shelf. "Pull," he said.
Bill pulled.
"Now just go on pulling like that. I shall get it directly. Not
hard, you know, but just keeping up the strain."
His fingers went at it again busily.
And then suddenly the whole row of shelves, from top to bottom,
swung gently open towards them.
"Good Lord!" said Bill, letting go of the shelf in his amazement.
Antony pushed the shelves back, extracted Ussher from Bill's
fingers, replaced him, and then, taking Bill by the arm, led him
to the sofa and deposited him in it. Standing in front of him,
he bowed gravely.
"Child's play, Watson," he said; "child's play."
"How on earth--"
Antony laughed happily and sat down on the sofa beside him.
"You don't really want it explained," he said, smacking him on
the knee; "you're just being Watsonish. It's very nice of you,
of course, and I appreciate it."
"No, but really, Tony."
"Oh, my dear Bill!" He smoked silently for a little, and then
went on, "It's what I was saying just now a secret is a secret
until you have discovered it, and as soon as you have discovered
it, you wonder why everybody else isn't discovering it, and how
it could ever have been a secret at all. This passage has been
here for years, with an opening at one end into the library, and
at the other end into the shed. Then Mark discovered it, and
immediately he felt that everybody else must discover it. So he
made the shed end more difficult by putting the croquet-box
there, and this end more difficult by--" he stopped and looked at
the other "by what, Bill?"
But Bill was being Watsonish.
"What?"
"Obviously by re-arranging his books. He happened to take out
'The Life of Nelson' or 'Three Men in a Boat,' or whatever it
was, and by the merest chance discovered the secret. Naturally
he felt that everybody else would be taking down 'The Life of
Nelson' or 'Three Men in a Boat.' Naturally he felt that the
secret would be safer if nobody ever interfered with that shelf
at all. When you said that the books had been re-arranged a year
ago just about the time the croquet-box came into existence; of
course, I guessed why. So I looked about for the dullest books I
could find, the books nobody ever read. Obviously the collection
of sermon-books of a mid-Victorian clergyman was the shelf we
wanted."
"Yes, I see. But why were you so certain of the particular
place?"
"Well, he had to mark the particular place by some book. I
thought that the joke of putting 'The Narrow Way' just over the
entrance to the passage might appeal to him. Apparently it did."
Bill nodded to himself thoughtfully several times. "Yes, that's
very neat," he said. "You're a clever devil, Tony."
Tony laughed.
"You encourage me to think so, which is bad for me, but very
delightful."
"Well, come on, then," said Bill, and he got up, and held out a
hand.
"Come on where?"
"To explore the passage, of course."
Antony shook his head.
"Why ever not?"
"Well, what do you expect to find there?"
"I don't know. But you seemed to think that we might find
something that would help."
"Suppose we find Mark?" said Antony quietly.
"I say, do you really think he's there?"
"Suppose he is?"
"Well, then, there we are."
Antony walked over to the fireplace, knocked out the ashes of his
pipe, and turned back to Bill. He looked at him gravely without
speaking.
"What are you going to say to him?" he said at last.
"How do you mean?"
"Are you going to arrest him, or help him to escape?"
"I--I--well, of course, I--" began Bill, stammering, and then
ended lamely, "Well, I don't know."
"Exactly. We've got to make up our minds, haven't we?"
Bill didn't answer. Very much disturbed in his mind, he walked
restlessly about the room, frowning to himself, stopping now and
then at the newly discovered door and looking at it as if he were
trying to learn what lay behind it. Which side was he on, if it
came to choosing sides--Mark's or the Law's?
"You know, you can't just say, 'Oh er hallo!' to him," said
Antony, breaking rather appropriately into his thoughts.
Bill looked up at him with a start.
"Nor," went on Antony, "can you say, 'This is my friend Mr.
Gillingham, who is staying with you. We were just going to have
a game of bowls.'"
"Yes, it's dashed difficult. I don't know what to say. I've
been rather forgetting about Mark." He wandered over to the
window and looked out on to the lawns. There was a gardener
clipping the grass edges. No reason why the lawn should be
untidy just because the master of the house had disappeared. It
was going to be a hot day again. Dash it, of course he had
forgotten Mark. How could he think of him as an escaped
murderer, a fugitive from justice, when everything was going on
just as it did yesterday, and the sun was shining just as it did
when they all drove off to their golf, only twenty-four hours
ago? How could he help feeling that this was not real tragedy,
but merely a jolly kind of detective game that he and Antony were
playing?
He turned back to his friend.
"All the same," he said, "you wanted to find the passage, and now
you've found it. Aren't you going into it at all?"
Antony took his arm.
"Let's go outside again," he said. "We can't go into it now,
anyhow. It's too risky, with Cayley about. Bill, I feel like
you--just a little bit frightened. But what I'm frightened of I
don't quite know. Anyway, you want to go on with it, don't you?"
"Yes," said Bill firmly. "We must."
"Then we'll explore the passage this afternoon, if we get the
chance. And if we don't get the chance, then we'll try it
to-night."
They walked across the hall and out into the sunlight again.
"Do you really think we might find Mark hiding there?" asked
Bill.
"It's possible," said Antony. "Either Mark or--" He pulled
himself up quickly. "No," he murmured to himself, "I won't let
myself think that not yet, anyway. It's too horrible."
CHAPTER XII
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."
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