“Yes, he must be careful not to soliloquize too much.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s time you went to bed; I won’t be more than half an hour or so.”
“Not beyond closing time, in other words? Gosh, what a man! Well, walk quietly, and don’t wake Edward.”
Bredon found Leyland still in the bar parlour, listening patiently to the interminable theorizings of the oldest inhabitant. “That’s how it was, you see. Tried to turn off the gars, and didn’t turn it off proper, that’s what he did. He didn’t think to lay hands on himself, stands to reason he didn’t. What for should he, and him so rich and all? Mark you, I’ve known Mottram when he wasn’t no higher than that chair yonder, not so much he wasn’t; and I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen suicides put away too, I have; I recollect poor Johnny Pillock up at the tollhouse; went mad he did, and hung himself off of a tree the same as if it might be from the ceiling yonder. Ah! There wasn’t no gars in them days. Good night, Mr. Warren, and pleasant dreams to you; you mind them stairs in your front garden. Yes, powerful rich Mottram he was,” and so on without cessation or remorse. It was nearly closing time before Bredon managed to drag the policeman away and warn him that there were others (it appeared) besides themselves who were interested in the secret of the upstairs room.
VII
From Leyland’s Notebook
“Now that I have put that fiver on with Bredon, I begin to doubt my own conclusions. That is the extraordinary effect of having a ‘will to believe.’ As long as you have no prejudices in the case, no brief to maintain, you can form a theory and feel that it is a mathematical certainty. Directly you have a reason for wanting to believe the thing true that same theory begins to look as if it had all sorts of holes in it. Or rather, the whole theory seems fantastic—you have been basing too much on insufficient evidence. Yesterday I was as certain that the case was one of murder as I am certain of my own existence. Today I am developing scruples. Let me get it all down on paper, anyhow; and I shall be able to show my working to Bredon afterward, however the case turns out.
“There is one indication which is absolutely vital, absolutely essential: that is the turning off of the tap. That is the pinpoint of truth upon which any theory must rest. I don’t say it’s easy to explain the action; but it is an action, and the action demands an agent. The fact that the gas was tampered with would convince me of foul play, even if there were no other direct indications. There are such indications.
“In the first place, the window: If the window had stood all night as it was found in the morning, wide open and held by its clasp, there could have been no death. Pulteney tells me that there was a strong east wind blowing most of the night, and you can trust a fisherman to be accurate in these matters. The window, then, like the gas, had been deliberately arranged in an artificial position between Mottram’s death and the arrival of the rescue party. If the death had been accidental, the window would have been shut and remained shut all night. You do not leave a window half open, with nothing to fix it, on a windy night. If it had been a case of suicide, it is equally clear that the window would have remained shut all night. If you are proposing to gas yourself you do not take risks of the window blowing open and leaving you half-asphyxiated. There is only one explanation of the open window, as there is of the gas-tap: and that explanation involves the interference of a person or persons unknown.
“Another direct indication is the match found in the grate. Bredon’s suggestion that this match was used by the maid earlier in the evening is quite impossible; there was a box on the mantelpiece, which would be plainly visible in daylight, and it was not one of those matches that was used. It was a smaller match, of a painfully ordinary kind; Brinkman uses such matches, and Pulteney, and probably every smoker within miles around. Now, the match was not used to light the gas. It would have been necessary to light the gas in two places, and the match would have burned some little way down the stem, whereas this one was put out almost as soon as it was lit. It must have been used, I think, to light the gas in the passage outside, but of this I cannot be sure. It was thrown carelessly into the grate because, no doubt, the nocturnal visitor assumed as a matter of course that others like it would already have been thrown into the grate. As a matter of fact, Mottram must have thrown the match he lit the gas with out of the window: I have not found it.
“From various indications, it is fairly clear that Mottram did not foresee his end. Chief among these is the order which he gave that he was to be woken early in the morning. This might of course be bluff; but if so it was a very heartless kind of bluff, for it involved the disturbing of the whole household with the tragic news in the small hours, instead of leaving it to transpire after breakfast. And this leads us on to another point, which Bredon appears to have overlooked: A man who wants to be woken up early in the morning does not take a sleeping draught overnight. It follows that Mottram did not really take the sleeping draught.
