The Red House Mystery
Antony waved to the poster.
“Oh, that? Last Christmas. It was rather fun.”
Antony began to laugh to himself.
“Were you good?”
“Rotten. I don’t profess to be an actor.”
“Mark good?”
“Oh, rather. He loves it.”
“Rev. Henry Stutters—Mr. Matthew Cay,” read Antony.
“Was that our friend Cayley?”
“Yes.”
“Any good?”
“Well, much better than I expected. He wasn’t keen, but Mark made him.”
“Miss Norris wasn’t playing, I see.”
“My dear Tony, she’s a professional. Of course she wasn’t.”
Antony laughed again.
“A great success, was it?”
“Oh, rather!”
“I’m a fool, and a damned fool,” Antony announced solemnly. “And a
damned fool,” he said again under his breath, as he led Bill away from
the poster, and out of the yard into the road. “And a damned fool. Even
now—” He broke off and then asked suddenly, “Did Mark ever have much
trouble with his teeth?”
“He went to his dentist a good deal. But what on earth—”
Antony laughed a third time.
“What luck!” he chuckled. “But how do you know?”
“We go to the same man; Mark recommended him to me. Cartwright, in
Wimpole Street.”
“Cartwright in Wimpole Street,” repeated Antony thoughtfully. “Yes, I
can remember that. Cartwright in Wimpole Street. Did Cayley go to him
too, by any chance?”
“I expect so. Oh, yes, I know he did. But what on earth—”
“What was Mark’s general health like? Did he see a doctor much?”
“Hardly at all, I should think. He did a lot of early morning exercises
which were supposed to make him bright and cheerful at breakfast. They
didn’t do that, but they seemed to keep him pretty fit. Tony, I wish
you’d—”
Antony held up a hand and hushed him into silence.
“One last question,” he said. “Was Mark fond of swimming?”
“No, he hated it. I don’t believe he _could_ swim. Tony, are you mad,
or am I? Or is this a new game?”
Antony squeezed his arm.
“Dear old Bill,” he said. “It’s a game. What a game! And the answer is
Cartwright in Wimpole Street.”
They walked in silence for half a mile or so along the road to Woodham.
Bill tried two or three times to get his friend to talk, but Antony had
only grunted in reply. He was just going to make another attempt, when
Antony came to a sudden stop and turned to him anxiously.
“I wonder if you’d do something for me,” he said, looking at him with
some doubt.
“What sort of thing?”
“Well, it’s really dashed important. It’s just the one thing I want
now.”
Bill was suddenly enthusiastic again.
“I say, have you really found it all out?”
Antony nodded.
“At least, I’m very nearly there, Bill. There’s just this one thing I
want now. It means your going back to Stanton. Well, we haven’t come
far; it won’t take you long. Do you mind?”
“My dear Holmes, I am at your service.”
Antony gave him a smile and was silent for a little, thinking.
“Is there another inn at Stanton—fairly close to the station?”
“The ‘Plough and Horses’—just at the corner where the road goes up to
the station—is that the one you mean?”
“That would be the one. I suppose you could do with a drink, couldn’t
you?”
“Rather!” said Bill, with a grin.
“Good. Then have one at the ‘Plough and Horses.’ Have two, if you like,
and talk to the landlord, or landlady, or whoever serves you. I want
you to find out if anybody stayed there on Monday night.”
“Robert?” said Bill eagerly.
“I didn’t say Robert,” said Antony, smiling. “I just want you to find
out if they had a visitor who slept there on Monday night. A stranger.
If so, then any particulars you can get of him, without letting the
landlord know that you are interested—”
“Leave it to me,” broke in Bill. “I know just what you want.”
“Don’t assume that it was Robert—or anybody else. Let _them_ describe
the man to you. Don’t influence them unconsciously by suggesting that
he was short or tall, or anything of that sort. Just get them talking.
If it’s the landlord, you’d better stand him a drink or two.”
“Right you are,” said Bill confidently. “Where do I meet you again?”
“Probably at ‘The George.’ If you get there before me, you can order
dinner for eight o’clock. Anyhow we’ll meet at eight, if not before.”
“Good.” He nodded to Antony and strode off back to Stanton again.
Antony stood watching him with a little smile at his enthusiasm. Then
he looked round slowly, as if in search of something. Suddenly he saw
what he wanted. Twenty yards farther on a lane wandered off to the
left, and there was a gate a little way up on the right-hand side of
it. Antony walked to the gate, filling his pipe as he went. Then he lit
his pipe, sat on the gate, and took his head in his hands.
“Now then,” he said to himself, “let’s begin at the beginning.”
It was nearly eight o’clock when William Beverley, the famous
sleuth-hound, arrived, tired and dusty, at ‘The George,’ to find
Antony, cool and clean, standing bare-headed at the door, waiting for
him.
“Is dinner ready?” were Bill’s first words.
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll just have a wash. Lord, I’m tired.”
“I never ought to have asked you,” said Antony penitently.
“That’s all right. I shan’t be a moment.” Half-way up the stairs he
turned round and asked, “Am I in your room?”
“Yes. Do you know the way?”
“Yes. Start carving, will you? And order lots of beer.” He disappeared
round the top of the staircase. Antony went slowly in.
When the first edge of his appetite had worn off, and he was able to
spare a little time between the mouthfuls, Bill gave an account of his
adventures. The landlord of the “Plough and Horses” had been sticky,
decidedly sticky—Bill had been unable at first to get anything out of
him. But Bill had been tactful; lorblessyou, how tactful he had been.
“He kept on about the inquest, and what a queer affair it had been, and
so on, and how there’d been an inquest in his wife’s family once, which
he seemed rather proud about, and I kept saying, ‘Pretty busy, I
suppose, just now, what?’ and then he’d say, ‘Middlin’,’ and go on
again about Susan—that was the one that had the inquest—he talked about
it as if it were a disease—and then I’d try again, and say, ‘Slack
times, I expect, just now, eh?’ and he’d say ‘Middlin’’ again, and then
it was time to offer him another drink, and I didn’t seem to be getting
much nearer. But I got him at last. I asked him if he knew John
Borden—he was the man who said he’d seen Mark at the station. Well, he
knew all about Borden, and after he’d told me all about Borden’s wife’s
family, and how one of them had been burnt to death—after you with the
beer; thanks—well, then I said carelessly that it must be very hard to
remember anybody whom you had just seen once, so as to identify him
afterwards, and he agreed that it would be ‘middlin’ hard,’ and then—”
“Give me three guesses,” interrupted Antony. “You asked him if he
remembered everybody who came to his inn?”
“That’s it. Bright, wasn’t it?”
“Brilliant. And what was the result?”
“The result was a woman.”
“A woman?” said Antony eagerly.
“A woman,” said Bill impressively. “Of course I thought it was going to
be Robert—so did you, didn’t you?—but it wasn’t. It was a woman. Came
quite late on Monday night in a car—driving herself—went off early next
morning.”
“Did he describe her?”
“Yes. She was middlin’. Middlin’ tall, middlin’ age, middlin’ colour,
and so on. Doesn’t help much, does it? But still—a woman. Does that
upset your theory?”
Antony shook his head.
“No, Bill, not at all,” he said.
“You knew all the time? At least, you guessed?”
“Wait till to-morrow. I’ll tell you everything to-morrow.”
“To-morrow!” said Bill in great disappointment.
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing to-night, if you’ll promise not to ask
any more questions. But you probably know it already.”
“What is it?”
“Only that Mark Ablett did not kill his brother.”
“And Cayley did?”
“That’s another question, Bill. However, the answer is that Cayley
didn’t, either.”
“Then who on earth—”
“Have some more beer,” said Antony with a smile. And Bill had to be
content with that.
They were early to bed that evening, for both of them were tired. Bill
slept loudly and defiantly, but Antony lay awake, wondering. What was
happening at the Red House now? Perhaps he would hear in the morning;
perhaps he would get a letter. He went over the whole story again from
the beginning—was there any possibility of a mistake? What would the
police do? Would they ever find out? Ought he to have told them? Well,
let them find out; it was their job. Surely he couldn’t have made a
mistake this time. No good wondering now; he would know definitely in
the morning.
In the morning there was a letter for him.
CHAPTER XXI.
Cayley’s Apology
“My Dear Mr. Gillingham,
“I gather from your letter that you have made certain discoveries which
you may feel it your duty to communicate to the police, and that in
this case my arrest on a charge of murder would inevitably follow. Why,
in these circumstances, you should give me such ample warning of your
intentions I do not understand, unless it is that you are not wholly
out of sympathy with me. But whether or not you sympathize, at any rate
you will want to know—and I want you to know—the exact manner in which
Ablett met his death and the reasons which made that death necessary.
If the police have to be told anything, I would rather that they too
knew the whole story. They, and even you, may call it murder, but by
that time I shall be out of the way. Let them call it what they like.
“I must begin by taking you back to a summer day fifteen years ago,
when I was a boy of thirteen and Mark a young man of twenty-five. His
whole life was make-believe, and just now he was pretending to be a
philanthropist. He sat in our little drawing-room, flicking his gloves
against the back of his left hand, and my mother, good soul, thought
what a noble young gentleman he was, and Philip and I, hastily washed
and crammed into collars, stood in front of him, nudging each other and
kicking the backs of our heels and cursing him in our hearts for having
interrupted our game. He had decided to adopt one of us, kind Cousin
Mark. Heaven knows why he chose me. Philip was eleven; two years longer
to wait. Perhaps that was why.
“Well, Mark educated me. I went to a public school and to Cambridge,
and I became his secretary. Well, much more than his secretary as your
friend Beverley perhaps has told you: his land agent, his financial
adviser, his courier, his—but this most of all—his audience. Mark could
never live alone. There must always be somebody to listen to him. I
think in his heart he hoped I should be his Boswell. He told me one day
that he had made me his literary executor—poor devil. And he used to
write me the absurdest long letters when I was away from him, letters
which I read once and then tore up. The futility of the man!
“It was three years ago that Philip got into trouble. He had been
hurried through a cheap grammar school and into a London office, and
discovered there that there was not much fun to be got in this world on
two pounds a week. I had a frantic letter from him one day, saying that
he must have a hundred at once, or he would be ruined, and I went to
Mark for the money. Only to borrow it, you understand; he gave me a
good salary and I could have paid it back in three months. But no. He
saw nothing for himself in it, I suppose; no applause, no admiration.
Philip’s gratitude would be to me, not to him. I begged, I threatened,
we argued; and while we were arguing, Philip was arrested. It killed my
mother—he was always her favourite—but Mark, as usual, got his
satisfaction out of it. He preened himself on his judgment of character
in having chosen me and not Philip twelve years before!