“Prove it?”
“Yes, from the other watch, the stomach-watch. Don’t you remember it was still going when we found it, only an hour fast? Well, the reason why it was an hour fast was that the murderer, at 3:54 on Tuesday afternoon, deliberately took it out of the pocket and turned it on to 4:54.”
“You mean …”
“I mean that the murderer naturally assumed it would stop, like the wristwatch. And if it had stopped, it would have registered 4:54, like the wristwatch. But by the accident of its not stopping, we can prove what the murderer did!”
“I say, this is a day! but I feel as if there was something else we were held up over about the time—oh yes. Look here, we’ve now got to explain why Brotherhood ordered himself a sleeper for Wednesday, although one would have expected him to want to clear out on Tuesday. Our explanation, you see, was that coming to Paston Whitchurch on the 4:50 would make it too late for him to get a sleeper that night. But apparently we were wrong, because he came on the three o’clock from London; and I remember, when I looked it up in the timetable, I found he could have caught his train at Crewe—going on from Binver, of course.”
“Yes, that’s true. Still, it’s only a subsidiary point. Let’s see … the sleeper had originally been dated for the Thursday, hadn’t it; and then Thursday had been scratched out and Wednesday put instead?”
“Yes, but it was no good supposing that was a fraud. Because Thursday wouldn’t be any more probable than Wednesday—in fact, less.”
“Yes; it’s confoundedly queer. I suppose he couldn’t possibly—Gordon, what date was the Wednesday?”
“The 17th.”
“It was? Then the Tuesday would be the 16th, and the Thursday the 18th.”
“My dear Reeves! How on earth …”
“Child’s play, my dear Gordon. No, but look here, it’s serious. Don’t you see that if there’s one day of the week whose name can be easily changed to another it’s Tuesday, which you can always change to Thursday? And that if there’s one number which can be easily changed it’s 6, which you can always change to 8?”
“Yes, but this wasn’t a change of …”
“Oh, don’t you see? The sleeper was for Tuesday the 16th, the day of the murder. Brotherhood meant to go straight from Binver. The murderer found this sleeper-coupon in his pocket, and saw a golden opportunity of clinching his faked evidence about the trains. He could have destroyed the document, of course—it was dangerous to him, because it proved that Brotherhood was really on the fast train. But he could do better by faking that too; changing Tuesday into Thursday and 16 into 18. Look here, how easy it is to do … There! Very little risk of detection there. But there was just a slight risk of detection, and this man wasn’t taking any risks, So, having changed Tuesday the 16th into Thursday the 18th, he deliberately crossed out Thursday the 18th, and wrote in ‘Wednesday’ the ‘17th.’ Double bluff, that is. People don’t look for two corrections where they can see that there’s one.”
“I say, this murderer is some fellow!”
“Some fellow, but that fellow’s name isn’t Davenant. Don’t you see, we’ve got the porter’s word for it that Davenant came up from London by the later train, the 3:47. And Miss Rendall-Smith can also witness that he took the later train. So that, long before Davenant had got as far as Paston Oatvile—actually, when he was only seven minutes out of London—Brotherhood was falling down that embankment. And where’s your conviction now?”
“Quite true—if we’re right. But it is only circumstantial evidence, isn’t it? We’ve proved our own case more plausible than the case against Davenant, but we haven’t shown that the case against Davenant is impossible. However, if we’re right, one thing is pretty clear—that the murder was a deliberate one, deeply and carefully planned. And we’ve got to find somebody who had the motive and the opportunity to carry out this very elaborate scheme.”
“I know. The police will never look at our objections until they lead us to find the real man. The police always want to have a victim.”
“And we can’t show, can we, that it was impossible for Davenant to throw a man out of the 4:50 train?”
“We can show it’s improbable. Remember how crowded the 4:50 always is, how crowded it was on the day when you and I travelled by it. The three o’clock train from London, of course, wouldn’t be a bit crowded; people haven’t started getting away from business by then—it’s only for ladies who have been up to shop. One could secure privacy even in a third-class carriage on that train.”
“But it’s only circumstantial evidence still.”
“There are two other things we want to get to work on; the washing-list, as we called it, though I’m pretty certain it’s nothing of the kind, which we found on the back of the cipher, and the golf-ball which we found beside the line.”
“We want a theory, too, about the cipher. I wonder if Davenant admits that he wrote that cipher? You see, it will be apt to tell against him. He knew that Brotherhood had made a promise, and was threatening to break it. So that the police will attach importance to a document which tells him that he will perish if he goes back upon his faith.”
“Yes, if they find out about it. But do you suppose the police have read that cipher? I very much doubt it.”
“Aren’t you going to tell them about it?”
“I don’t think so. I know what you’ll say, you’ll say that one should always tell the truth. But it isn’t an easy thing, telling the truth. I know what the truth is—namely that Davenant is innocent. I know, therefore, that this post card was a side-issue, irrelevant to the true explanation. If I show the police the meaning of the cipher, it will fortify them in what I know to be a false
