The Red House Mystery, A. A. Milne [that summer book .TXT] 📗
- Author: A. A. Milne
- Performer: 0486401294
Book online «The Red House Mystery, A. A. Milne [that summer book .TXT] 📗». Author A. A. Milne
“Yes. Mark never seemed quite happy unless he had Cayley doing something for him. He was quite lost and helpless without him. And, funnily enough, Cayley seemed lost without Mark.”
“He was fond of him?”
“Yes, I should say so. In a protective kind of way. He’d sized Mark up, of course his vanity, his self-importance, his amateurishness and all the rest of it but he liked looking after him. And he knew how to manage him.”
“Yes …. What sort of terms was he on with the guests—you and Miss Norris and all of them?”
“Just polite and rather silent, you know. Keeping himself to himself. We didn’t see so very much of him, except at meals. We were here to enjoy ourselves, and well, he wasn’t.”
“He wasn’t there when the ghost walked?”
“No. I heard Mark calling for him when he went back to the house. I expect Cayley stroked down his feathers a bit, and told him that girls will be girls ….—Hallo, here we are.”
They went into the inn, and while Bill made himself pleasant to the landlady, Antony went upstairs to his room. It appeared that he had not very much packing to do, after all. He returned his brushes to his bag, glanced sound to see that nothing else had been taken out, and went down again to settle his bill. He had decided to keep on his room for a few days; partly to save the landlord and his wife the disappointment of losing a guest so suddenly, partly in case he found it undesirable later on to remain at The Red House. For he was taking himself seriously as a detective; indeed, he took himself seriously (while getting all the fun out of it which was possible) at every new profession he adopted; and he felt that there might come a time after the inquest, say when he could not decently remain at The Red House as a guest, a friend of Bill’s, enjoying the hospitality of Mark or Cayley, whichever was to be regarded as his host, without forfeiting his independent attitude towards the events of that afternoon. At present he was staying in the house merely as a necessary witness, and, since he was there, Cayley could not object to him using his eyes; but if, after the inquest, it appeared that there was still work for a pair of independent and very keen eyes to do, then he must investigate, either with his host’s approval or from beneath the roof of some other host; the landlord of “The George,” for instance, who had no feelings in the matter.
For of one thing Antony was certain. Cayley knew more than he professed to know. That is to say, he knew more than he wanted other people to know he knew. Antony was one of the “other people”; if, therefore, he was for trying to find out what it was that Cayley knew, he could hardly expect Cayley’s approval of his labours. It would be “The George,” then, for Antony after the inquest.
What was the truth? Not necessarily discreditable to Cayley, even though he were hiding something. All that could be said against him at the moment was that he had gone the longest way round to get into the locked office and that this did not fit in with what he had told the inspector. But it did fit in with the theory that he had been an accessory after the event, and that he wanted (while appearing to be in a hurry) to give his cousin as much time as possible in which to escape. That might not be the true solution, but it was at least a workable one. The theory which he had suggested to the inspector was not.
However, there would be a day or two before the inquest, in which Antony could consider all these matters from within The Red House. The car was at the door. He got in with Bill, the landlord put his bag on the front seat next to the chauffeur, and they drove back.
“Do You Follow Me, Watson?”
Anthony’s bedroom looked over the park at the back of the house. The blinds were not yet drawn while he was changing his clothes for dinner, and at various stages of undress he would pause and gaze out of the window, sometimes smiling to himself, sometimes frowning, as he turned over in his mind all the strange things that he had seen that day. He was sitting on his bed, in shirt and trousers, absently smoothing down his thick black hair with his brushes, when Bill shouted an “Hallo!” through the door, and came in.
“I say, buck up, old boy, I’m hungry,” he said.
Antony stopped smoothing himself and looked up at him thoughtfully.
“Where’s Mark?” he said.
“Mark? You mean Cayley.”
Antony corrected himself with a little laugh. “Yes, I mean Cayley. Is he down? I say, I shan’t be a moment, Bill.” He got up from the bed and went on briskly with his dressing. “Oh, by the way,” said Bill, taking his place on the bed, “your idea about the keys is a wash-out.”
“Why, how do you mean?”
“I went down just now and had a look at them. We were asses not to have thought of it when we came in. The library key is outside, but all the others are inside.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You devil, I suppose you did think of it, then?”
“I did, Bill,” said Antony apologetically.
“Bother! I hoped you’d forgotten. Well, that knocks your theory on the head, doesn’t it?”
“I never had a theory. I only said that if they were outside, it would probably mean that the office key was outside, and that in that case Cayley’s theory was knocked on the head.”
“Well, now, it isn’t, and we don’t know anything. Some were outside and some inside, and there you are. It makes it much less exciting. When you were talking about it on the lawn, I really got quite keen on the idea of the key being outside and Mark taking it in with him.”
“It’s going to be exciting enough,” said Antony mildly, as he transferred his pipe and tobacco into the pocket of his black coat. “Well, let’s come down; I’m ready now.”
Cayley was waiting for them in the hall. He made some polite inquiry as to the guest’s comfort, and the three of them fell into a casual conversation about houses in general and The Red House in particular.
“You were quite right about the keys,” said Bill, during a pause. He was less able than the other two, perhaps because he was younger than they, to keep away from the subject which was uppermost in the minds of them all.
“Keys?” said Cayley blankly.
“We were wondering whether they were outside or inside.”
“Oh! oh, yes!” He looked slowly round the hall, at the different doors, and then smiled in a friendly way at Antony. “We both seem to have been right, Mr. Gillingham. So we don’t get much farther.”
“No.” He gave a shrug. “I just wondered, you know. I thought it was worth mentioning.”
“Oh, quite. Not that you would have convinced me, you know. Just as Elsie’s evidence doesn’t convince me.”
“Elsie?” said Bill excitedly. Antony looked inquiringly at him, wondering who Elsie was.
“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 Waldheim, 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 beach 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
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