The Red House Mystery
“One of the housemaids,” explained Cayley. “You didn’t hear what she
told the Inspector? Of course, as I told Birch, girls of that class
make things up, but he seemed to think she was genuine.”
“What was it?” said Bill.
Cayley told them of what Elsie had heard through the office door that
afternoon.
“You were in the library then, of course,” said Antony, rather to
himself than to the other. “She might have gone through the hall
without your hearing.”
“Oh, I’ve no doubt she was there, and heard voices. Perhaps heard those
very words. But—” He broke off, and then added impatiently, “It was
accidental. I know it was accidental. What’s the good of talking as if
Mark was a murderer?” Dinner was announced at that moment, and as they
went in, he added, “What’s the good of talking about it at all, if it
comes to that?”
“What, indeed?” said Antony, and to Bill’s great disappointment they
talked of books and politics during the meal.
Cayley made an excuse for leaving them as soon as their cigars were
alight. He had business to attend to, as was natural. Bill would look
after his friend. Bill was only too willing. He offered to beat Antony
at billiards, to play him at piquet, to show him the garden by
moonlight, or indeed to do anything else with him that he required.
“Thank the Lord you’re here,” he said piously. “I couldn’t have stood
it alone.”
“Let’s go outside,” suggested Antony. “It’s quite warm. Somewhere where
we can sit down, right away from the house. I want to talk to you.”
“Good man. What about the bowling-green?”
“Oh, you were going to show me that, anyhow, weren’t you? Is it
somewhere where we can talk without being overheard?”
“Rather. The ideal place. You’ll see.”
They came out of the front door and followed the drive to the left.
Coming from Woodham, Antony had approached the house that afternoon
from the other side. The way they were going now would take them out at
the opposite end of the park, on the high road to Stanton, a country
town some three miles away. They passed by a gate and a gardener’s
lodge, which marked the limit of what auctioneers like to call “the
ornamental grounds of the estate,” and then the open park was before
them.
“Sure we haven’t missed it?” said Antony. The park lay quietly in the
moonlight on either side of the drive, wearing a little way ahead of
them a deceptive air of smoothness which retreated always as they
advanced.
“Rum, isn’t it?” said Bill. “An absurd place for a bowling green, but I
suppose it was always here.”
“Yes, but always where? It’s short enough for golf, perhaps,
but—Hallo!”
They had come to the place. The road bent round to the right, but they
kept straight on over a broad grass path for twenty yards, and there in
front of them was the green. A dry ditch, ten feet wide and six feet
deep, surrounded it, except in the one place where the path went
forward. Two or three grass steps led down to the green, on which there
was a long wooden bench for the benefit of spectators.
“Yes, it hides itself very nicely,” said Antony. “Where do you keep the
bowls?”
“In a sort of summer house place. Round here.”
They walked along the edge of the green until they came to it—a low
wooden bunk which had been built into one wall of the ditch.
“H’m. Jolly view.”
Bill laughed.
“Nobody sits there. It’s just for keeping things out of the rain.”
They finished their circuit of the green—“Just in case anybody’s in the
ditch,” said Antony—and then sat down on the bench.
“Now then,” said Bill, “We are alone. Fire ahead.”
Antony smoked thoughtfully for a little. Then he took his pipe out of
his mouth and turned to his friend.
“Are you prepared to be the complete Watson?” he asked.
“Watson?”
“Do-you-follow-me-Watson; that one. Are you prepared to have quite
obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me
chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your own
two or three days after I have made them myself—all that kind of thing?
Because it all helps.”
“My dear Tony,” said Bill delightedly, “need you ask?” Antony said
nothing, and Bill went on happily to himself, “I perceive from the
strawberry-mark on your shirt-front that you had strawberries for
dessert. Holmes, you astonish me. Tut, tut, you know my methods. Where
is the tobacco? The tobacco is in the Persian slipper. Can I leave my
practice for a week? I can.”
Antony smiled and went on smoking. After waiting hopefully for a minute
or two, Bill said in a firm voice:
“Well then, Holmes, I feel bound to ask you if you have deduced
anything. Also whom do you suspect?”
Antony began to talk.
“Do you remember,” he said, “one of Holmes’s little scores over Watson
about the number of steps up to the Baker Street lodging? Poor old
Watson had been up and down them a thousand times, but he had never
thought of counting them, whereas Holmes had counted them as a matter
of course, and knew that there were seventeen. And that was supposed to
be the difference between observation and non-observation. Watson was
crushed again, and Holmes appeared to him more amazing than ever. Now,
it always seemed to me that in that matter Holmes was the ass, and
Watson the sensible person. What on earth is the point of keeping in
your head an unnecessary fact like that? If you really want to know at
any time the number of steps to your lodging, you can ring up your
landlady and ask her. I’ve been up and down the steps of the club a
thousand times, but if you asked me to tell you at this moment how many
steps there are I couldn’t do it. Could you?”
“I certainly couldn’t,” said Bill.
“But if you really wanted to know,” said Antony casually, with a sudden
change of voice, “I could find out for you without even bothering to
ring up the hall-porter.”
Bill was puzzled as to why they were talking about the club steps, but
he felt it his duty to say that he did want to know how many they were.
“Right,” said Antony. “I’ll find out.”
He closed his eyes.
“I’m walking up St. James’ Street,” he said slowly. “Now I’ve come to
the club and I’m going past the
smoking-room—windows—one—two—three—four. Now I’m at the steps. I turn
in and begin going up them. One—two—three—four—five—six, then a broad
step; six—seven—eight—nine, another broad step; nine—ten—eleven.
Eleven—I’m inside. Good morning, Rogers. Fine day again.” With a little
start he opened his eyes and came back again to his present
surroundings. He turned to Bill with a smile. “Eleven,” he said. “Count
them the next time you’re there. Eleven and now I hope I shall forget
it again.”
Bill was distinctly interested.
“That’s rather hot,” he said. “Expound.”
“Well, I can’t explain it, whether it’s something in the actual eye, or
something in the brain, or what, but I have got rather an uncanny habit
of recording things unconsciously. You know that game where you look at
a tray full of small objects for three minutes, and then turn away and
try to make a list of them. It means a devil of a lot of concentration
for the ordinary person, if he wants to get his list complete, but in
some odd way I manage to do it without concentration at all. I mean
that my eyes seem to do it without the brain consciously taking any
part. I could look at the tray, for instance, and talk to you about
golf at the same time, and still get my list right.”
“I should think that’s rather a useful gift for an amateur detective.
You ought to have gone into the profession before.”
“Well, it is rather useful. It’s rather surprising, you know, to a
stranger. Let’s surprise Cayley with it, shall we?”
“How?”
“Well, let’s ask him—” Antony stopped and looked at Bill comically,
“let’s ask him what he’s going to do with the key of the office.”
For a moment Bill did not understand.
“Key of the office?” he said vaguely. “You don’t mean—Tony! What do you
mean? Good God! do you mean that Cayley—But what about Mark?”
“I don’t know where Mark is—that’s another thing I want to know—but I’m
quite certain that he hasn’t got the key of the office with him.
Because Cayley’s got it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite.”
Bill looked at him wonderingly.
“I say,” he said, almost pleadingly, “don’t tell me that you can see
into people’s pockets and all that sort of thing—as well.”
Antony laughed and denied it cheerfully.
“Then how do you know?”
“You’re the perfect Watson, Bill. You take to it quite naturally.
Properly speaking, I oughtn’t to explain till the last chapter, but I
always think that that’s so unfair. So here goes. Of course, I don’t
really know that he’s got it, but I do know that he had it. I know that
when I came on him this afternoon, he had just locked the door and put
the key in his pocket.”
“You mean you saw him at the time, but that you’ve only just remembered
it—reconstructed it—in the way you were explaining just now?”
“No. I didn’t see him. But I did see something. I saw the key of the
billiard-room.”
“Where?
“Outside the billiard-room door.”
“_Out_side? But it was inside when we looked just now.”
“Exactly.”
“Who put it there?”
“Obviously Cayley.”
“But—”
“Let’s go back to this afternoon. I don’t remember noticing the
billiard-room key at the time; I must have done so without knowing.
Probably when I saw Cayley banging at the door I may have wondered
subconsciously whether the key of the room next to it would fit.
Something like that, I daresay. Well, when I was sitting out by myself
on that seat just before you came along, I went over the whole scene in
my mind, and I suddenly saw the billiard-room key there—outside. And I
began to wonder if the office-key had been outside too. When Cayley
came up, I told you my idea and you were both interested. But Cayley
was just a shade too interested. I daresay you didn’t notice it, but he
was.”
“By Jove!”
“Well, of course that proved nothing; and the key business didn’t
really prove anything, because whatever side of the door the other keys
were, Mark might have locked his own private room from the inside
sometimes. But I piled it on, and pretended that it was enormously
important, and quite altered the case altogether, and having got Cayley
thoroughly anxious about it, I told him that we should be well out of
the way for the next hour or so, and that he would be alone in the
house to do what he liked about it. And, as I expected, he couldn’t
resist it. He altered the keys and gave himself away entirely.”
“But the library key was still outside. Why didn’t he alter that?”
“Because he’s a clever devil. For one thing, the Inspector had been in
the library, and might possibly have noticed it already. And for
another—” Antony hesitated.
“What?” said Bill, after waiting for him to go on.
“It’s only guesswork. But I fancy that Cayley was thoroughly upset
about the key business. He suddenly realized that he had been careless,
and he hadn’t got time to think it all over. So he didn’t want to
commit himself definitely to the statement that the key was either
outside or inside. He wanted to leave it vague. It was safest that
way.”
“I see,” said Bill slowly.
But his mind was elsewhere. He was wondering suddenly about Cayley.
Cayley was just an ordinary man—like himself. Bill had had little jokes
with him sometimes; not that Cayley was much of a hand at joking. Bill
had helped him to sausages, played tennis with him, borrowed his
tobacco, lent him a putter.... and here was Antony saying that he
was—what? Well, not an ordinary man, anyway. A man with a secret.
Perhaps a—a murderer. No, not a murderer; not Cayley. That was rot,
anyway. Why, they had played tennis together.
“Now then, Watson,” said Antony suddenly. “It’s time you said
something.”
“I say, Tony, do you really mean it?”
“Mean what?”
“About Cayley.”