“I wonder,” said Gordon.
XVIII
The Holmes Method
When they met at breakfast next morning, Gordon was in a chastened mood.
“I was thinking over our ideas last night in bed, and I see that it’s all a washout. The thing doesn’t work.”
“Doesn’t work?”
“No, there are two snags which seem to me hopeless. Look here, if Brotherhood was chucked off the 4:50 from Paston Oatvile, one can understand why Davenant should have got the wind up. He may have seen the thing happen; or he may have seen Brotherhood get in at Oatvile and found he wasn’t in the train when it got to Whitchurch—that might make him think there was something wrong, even if he’d really nothing to do with it. But if Davenant came back on the 4:50, and Brotherhood had been chucked off the earlier train, how did Davenant know anything about it? He would hear nothing, till he heard that we had found a dead body on the lines, and even then we weren’t certain till next day whose body it was. Why did Davenant disappear, in that case, and hide in a very uncomfortable passage?”
“I thought of that. But you forget, Davenant was just coming back from an interview with Miss Rendall-Smith. He had probably seen her off on the three o’clock, and seen Brotherhood get into it. He comes down to the Hatcheries with the definite idea of remonstrating with Brotherhood; his first act, therefore, is to call at Brotherhood’s house, and ask for him. He gathers, in the course of Mrs. Bramston’s opening address, that Brotherhood has never turned up at all. Clearly, then, Brotherhood has either committed suicide or (more probably) vanished. In either case he has disappeared, and Davenant is afraid that he himself or (worse) Miss Rendall-Smith may be involved in the inquiry. It may be all right, of course, but there is danger. So he hits upon a very ingenious plan—going back to the secret passage in which he played as a child, and overhearing, as one does overhear in the Club, all the local gossip. Safe from observation, he can form his conclusions and mature his plans. He lies low until the moment at which he realizes that Miss Rendall-Smith is involved in the inquiry; and then by two incautious actions he gives himself away.”
“Well, I suppose all that’s possible. But here’s the other snag, which is even worse: that copy of Momerie’s Immortality, with the marks at the side which clearly betrayed Brotherhood’s ownership, was found at Paston Oatvile in the 3:47 from London. Now, how did Brotherhood manage to leave his book in the 3:47 if he didn’t travel in it?”
“That’s true. But mightn’t it be a blind? Remember, we’re dealing with an extraordinarily clever criminal. He faked the ticket; he faked the watches; he faked the sleeper-coupon: mayn’t he have managed to fake Brotherhood’s train-literature as well?”
“We’re dealing with a clever man, but not with one who’s clever enough to come up here by the three o’clock, simultaneously leaving a book lying about in the 3:47.”
“No, that’s true; it does seem difficult. But there must be some explanation, mustn’t there? Wait a minute … I know! When Carmichael got that book from the porter, the porter said he had taken it off that train. But a porter, when he says ‘off the 3:47’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘off the 3:47 on Tuesday’—the day you are asking about. The 3:47 is to him a single entity which renews itself from day to day. He took that book off the train on Monday, depend upon it. Brotherhood left Momerie in the train when he came down on the Monday afternoon; consequently, Brotherhood probably never read the cipher that would have warned him of his danger. It wasn’t till Friday that Carmichael made inquiries about the book, and of course by that time the porter wouldn’t be able to remember, even if he tried, which day it was that the book was found.”
“There’s sense in that. I don’t like it, though, I’m hanged if I do.”
The hour after breakfast on Sunday was an hour of suspended animation in Paston Oatvile dormy-house. Very few of the members ever went to church, and fewer than ever this week, when several of them had “kept a roller” (in Oxford parlance) by attending Brotherhood’s funeral. On the other hand, it was not considered good form to start on the morning round until the padre had set out for the half-past nine service. Until that moment you smoked, read the Sunday papers, and in general tried to cultivate the air of a man in two minds as to whether he should go to church or no. The weather prospects were anxiously forecast; the political situation was greeted with apoplectic comments from the older members, and the Club acrostician went to and fro eliciting items of expert knowledge from anybody who was available. The atmosphere was one of Sabbath peace, yet the kind of peace that can only be secured by preparing for golf. Gordon had decided to take a rest from detection, and was intending to go round with Carmichael: Mordaunt Reeves was determined not to touch a club until the Links Mystery should be solved.
“If it comes to that,” said Reeves, as they went upstairs, “have you considered this side of the question? A book cipher is ordinarily prearranged between the two parties. Now, in this one it is very unlikely that it was prearranged, for the message looks as if it came from an enemy. Therefore the message could only be sent by someone who knew that Brotherhood was reading Momerie’s Immortality at the moment—knew, in fact, that the book was close to his hand. Well, how could Davenant know all that? He had not seen Brotherhood, he had not travelled with him—how was he to know that
