Eustace put in abruptly, “I’ve always been against Amy’s practice of engaging local servants. It’s bound to make for trouble. You can trust this fellow downstairs to make the worst of a bad job.”
Miles observed, “He’s got his work cut out, if you stop and think for a minute. Half his case will depend on what he can compel the library to tell him. The rest he hopes to get from us.”
His remark deflected the trend of Brand’s thought. Instantly self-forgetful, his imagination presented him with a picture of the silent, intent man, separated from themselves only by a partition of plaster and wood, invoking the aid of inanimate objects to solve the problem that had been deliberately tangled and twisted by men, who regarded him as an interloper, an intruder on their privacies—an enemy, in short. Where would he start? On what would he base his conclusions? How differentiate between the significant and the trivial? What, for instance, would he make of the open window, of the forged document, of the ashes in the grate? Might he conceivably set them together in a pattern that was neither the truth nor the lie that Brand had offered him, but some version of the crime totally dissimilar to anything that had passed through his (the murderer’s) mind? For the first time, Brand saw himself pitted against this man alone. It was to be a battle of wits between them, and if he could fabricate and distort evidence, this other also could keep his own counsel. They would presently face one another, each ignorant of the other’s moves and counterplots, of the line upon which he worked, to that extent moving in the dark. The pitfalls on his own road now appeared to him with astonishing clarity, as he reflected, with some dismay, that his was not the only intelligence capable of setting snares and laying false clues.
Brooding thus, he paid no heed to his companions until Richard’s voice, saying, at first with insistence and then with impatience, “Brand, the police want to see you,” roused him from his thoughts.
5
As he entered the library, Brand directed a keen glance towards the man who was about to examine him. He discerned no outstanding characteristics, none of that gimlet-eyed alertness for which he had been prepared, no sign of any intention to fasten on to his lightest word and turn it to ill account. The man facing him was cool and non-committal. He asked the simple questions regarding his interview with his father that Brand had anticipated.
Brand matched his coolness with an appearance of unconcern. His answers slipped from him as easily and with as little effort as though he were conducting a normal conversation at his club (supposing him to have been a member of such an institution). Presently Ross said, “About that window, Mr. Gray? I suppose your father didn’t open it while you were in the room?”
“No,” said Brand, who was prepared upon this point also. “It was shut when I left him.”
“You can’t think of any reason why he should have opened it?”
“None. Is there a suggestion that he did open it?”
“Who else?” asked Ross blandly.
“There seemed some feeling in my brother’s mind this morning that an entry might have been forced from outside.”
“When?”
“After I left the room, I suppose.”
“But you met Mr. Moore coming downstairs.”
“Then after he also had left the library.”
Ross shook his head. “I think you can dismiss that notion from your mind. Are you aware at what hour it began to snow?”
“I don’t remember.” He suspected a trap here, and an admission might involve him in explanations that would begin the weaving of that mesh of suspicion, crystallising into an accusation against himself, that he must at all costs avoid.
“It happens that I do. The snow began at 11.15. If, as you say, you did not leave the library until nearly a quarter to twelve, and Mr. Moore succeeded you here, an interloper must have put in an appearance after midnight. By that time the roads were heavy with snow. I can vouch for that, because, as a Catholic, I went over to Nunhead for the Midnight Mass. It meant starting at eleven o’clock, as, of course, it was necessary to walk, and at a quarter past, quite unexpectedly, the snow began. When I came out of church at one o’clock, it was thick enough to make unpleasant walking. Anyone entering the room by the window, as you suggest—although opening a casement from the outside, without leaving marks on the frame, is a difficult thing to do—must have left marks of snow on the carpet. And, as you probably have realised, there were none. No, I doubt if the window played any considerable part in the affair. One more thing. When Mr. Gray made out his cheque on your behalf, did he take it—the book, I mean—from the safe?”
Here Brand, had he realised it, was on more dangerous ground. Behind that casual enquiry was a whole wealth of vigilance. But Brand only said, “No. I didn’t even know he had a safe. At least, I did wonder sometimes, but I never located it.”
“Among the books,” Murray told him. “Very neatly concealed.”
“That’s typical of him, isn’t it? Why on earth hide it? Did he think he’d have all the family at it if he let ’em know where it was?”
“He was apparently a cautious man,” was Ross’s equally cautious response.
Brand nodded. “Whereabouts was it?”
“Behind the Hakluyt’s Voyages. You know where they were?”
“I’m afraid I’ve never taken much interest in my father’s books. Where were they?”
“There were two sets; that’s what attracted my attention. One in the recess near the fireplace and the other in the shelves by the door. Fake, of course, the second lot.”
Brand frowned. “It seems more reasonable that the fake ones should be in the recess. Then he could indulge his secrecy to his heart’s content.”
“Oh, they were,” agreed
