“But over one thing he did give himself away. Do you remember, when Carmichael produced that photo of Miss Rendall-Smith, Marryatt professed not to know who it was? Now, I fancy there are aspects of the case here which we haven’t been able to trace yet. But on the face of it, it was curious that Marryatt, who has lived here for quite a long time and knows all the clerical society round here, shouldn’t know the daughter of the man who used to be Rector of Binver. For some reason, he preferred not to be in the know. He said he’d take it over to Binver and identify it. He took it over: it was early-closing day, and Campbell’s studio must really have been shut. But Marryatt comes back with some lame story about Campbell not being shut after all; and he tells us, not only whom the photograph represents, but the whole life-story of the lady into the bargain. I say, he made a mistake there. We ought to have been suspicious.
“We were not suspicious; he came and played bridge in my room the same night. It gave him a very nasty turn when, as we all thought, the photograph altered its appearance. He was completely unstrung; and the form his nerves took was an intense desire that we should drop the inquiry altogether. He had begun to grow superstitious, as so many murderers do. But he made the best use he could of it, by trying to shut down our investigations on the strength of it. That failed, but something even better turned up—Davenant’s hiding in the secret passage. By the way, I’m pretty well convinced, though I can’t prove it, that it was Marryatt and not Davenant who took away the copy of that paper, with the cipher on it. Of course, when we found Davenant, it not only concealed the fact that he had taken away the cipher, but also turned the suspicion into quite a different channel.
“Here, I must admit, Marryatt shows up badly. He saw an innocent man accused, and he took no action to exculpate him. On the contrary, he stated to me quite emphatically his belief in Davenant’s guilt. But we mustn’t judge him hardly; he may have meant—he may still mean, for all we know, to come forward if Davenant is found guilty. Meanwhile, there’s one more piece of evidence which I understand now, though it has bothered us a good deal. You remember the thing we call the ‘washing-list,’ the words we found on the back of the anonymous letter?”
“Yes, rather. What about it?”
“Well, it clearly wasn’t part of the cipher, was it?”
“Probably not—one can’t be certain, but it didn’t look like it.”
“Well then, you’ve got to choose, it seems to me, between two possibilities. One is that this sheet of paper—it’s only a half-sheet in any case—was blank until the cipher was written on it. Then it passed into Brotherhood’s possession, and Brotherhood, looking about for a piece of paper to jot down a list on, found this one and used it.”
“That’s what I’d assumed.”
“In that case, it’s hard to see any special significance about the list, isn’t it? It’s not in Brotherhood’s writing, apparently; but of course if he wrote it in the train, it’s possible that his handwriting would be untraceable.”
“What’s the other possibility?”
“Why, just the other way round. That the list, whatever its meaning may be, was written on that piece of paper first. And then the murderer, wanting to send the cipher message to Brotherhood, took up that piece of paper at random to write it on, without noticing that there were already four words pencilled on the back.”
“That’s possible, certainly.”
“Well, don’t you see, in that case the list becomes very important, because it was written not by Brotherhood but by the murderer, and it may accidentally give us a clue to the murderer’s character.
“A rather obscure clue. As far as I remember all it said was Socks, Vest, Hem, Tins.”
“Yes, but look here: do you remember my asking whether those words were written on the paper, right at the edge of the paper, before or after the sheet was torn in half? Well, my own belief has always been that those are only parts of words, and that the other half, possibly with a lot more writing as well, was lost to us when the sheet was torn.”
“And you’ve restored the full words?”
“I think I have. I’m just going to write it out for you.” And, after scribbling for a moment, he put before Gordon two sheets of paper; one, which was blank, partly covered the other, so as to hide part of what had been written on it.
“Well, that’s all correct,” said Gordon: “Socks, Vest, Hem, Tins, all present. Do you want me to guess the other halves of the words—the first half, I suppose, in each case? Because I give you fair warning that I have never guessed a riddle in my life.”
Reeves took away the upper sheet of paper, and made Gordon read again.
“Hassocks, Harvest, Anthem, Mattins—well, I’m blowed! You ought to be given a fountain-pen for this sort of thing.”
“But seriously, isn’t it almost certain that those were the words of the original, before the sheet was torn in half? What connected them, of course,
