“But it was a plant, if Brinky put it there.”
“Yes, but isn’t it too obviously a plant? So obviously, I mean, that you couldn’t expect anybody, even Leyland, to think for a moment that it was genuine? Can Brinkman really have thought that Leyland wouldn’t see through it?”
“But if he didn’t think so—”
“Double bluff, my good woman, double bluff. I can tell you, crime is becoming quite a specialized profession nowadays. Don’t you see that Brinkman argued to himself like this: ‘If I leave an obviously faked clue lying about like this, Leyland will immediately think that it is a faked clue, used by one criminal to shove off the blame on another. Who the criminals are, or which is which, doesn’t matter. It will convince him that there has, after all, been a murder. And it will disguise from him the fact that it was suicide.’ Of course all that’s making Brinkman out to be a pretty smart lad. But I fancy he is a pretty smart lad. And I read that piece of paper as a bit of double bluff, meant to harden the ingenious Leyland in his belief that the suicide was a murder.”
“Ye‑es. It’ll look pretty thin before a jury, won’t it?”
“Don’t I know that it’ll look thin before a jury? Especially as, on my showing, Brinkman was prepared to let suspicion of murder rest on himself rather than admit it was suicide. But it does give us a motive. There’s no doubt that Brinkman is a fanatical anti-clerical, and would do anything to prevent Mottram’s money going to a Catholic diocese. … I say, what’s that?”
A sudden sneeze, an unmistakable sneeze, had come from somewhere immediately behind them. In a twinkling Bredon had rushed round to the other side of the wall. But there was nobody there.
XVII
Mysterious Behaviour of the Old Gentleman
Bredon and his wife looked at one another in astonishment. It was impossible that the funeral should yet be over; impossible, surely, that Brinkman, whose place in the pageant was such a prominent one, should have absented himself from the ceremony unnoticed. There was no doubt as to the path which the self-betrayed listener must have taken. From behind the wall, there was a gap in a privet-hedge, and through this there was a direct and speedy retreat to the back door of the inn. The inn itself, when they went back to it, was as silent as the grave—indeed, the comparison forced itself upon their minds. It was as if the coffin from upstairs had taken all human life away with it when it went on its last journey, leaving nothing but the ticking of clocks and the steaming of a kettle in the kitchen to rob solitude of its silence. Outside the sun still shone brightly, though there was a menacing bank of cloud coming up from the south. The air felt breathless and oppressive; not a door could bang, not a window rattle. The very flies on the windowpanes seemed drowsy. The Bredons passed from room to room, in the vain hope of discovering an intruder; everywhere the same loneliness, the same stillness met them. Bredon had an odd feeling as if they ought, after all, to be at the funeral; it was so like the emptiness of his old school when everybody was out of doors except himself on a summer day.
“I can’t stand much of this,” he said. “Let’s go down toward the churchyard, and see if we can meet them coming back. Then at least we shall be in a position to know who wasn’t here.”
The expedition, however, proved abortive; they met Eames almost on the doorstep, and down the street figures melting away by twos and threes from the churchyard showed that the funeral was at an end. “I say, come in here,” said Bredon. “I want to talk things over a bit, Mr. Eames.” And the three retired into that “best room” where tea had been laid on the afternoon of the Bredons’ arrival. “You’ve just come back from the funeral?”
“This moment. Why?”
“Can you tell us for certain who was there? Was Brinkman there, for example?”
“Certainly. He was standing just next me.”
“And Mr. Simmonds from the shop—do you know him by sight?”
“He was pointed out to me as the chief mourner. I had a word with him afterward. But why all this excitement about the local celebrities?”
“Tell him, Miles,” said Angela. “He may be able to throw some light on all this.” And Bredon told Eames of the strange eavesdropping that went on behind the mill-house wall; something, too, of the suspicions which he and Leyland entertained, and the difficulty they both found in giving any explanation of the whole tragedy.
“Well, it’s very extraordinary. Pulteney, of course didn’t go after all—”
“Pulteney didn’t go?”
“No; didn’t you hear him say, soon after luncheon, that his good resolutions had broken down, and that he wasn’t going to the funeral after all? I thought it rather extraordinary at the time.”
“You mean his sudden change of plan?”
“No, the reason he gave for it. He said the afternoon was too tempting, and he really must go out fishing.”
“Is that a very odd reason for Pulteney? He’s an incalculable sort of creature.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t happen to be true. Can’t you feel the thunder in the air? If you can’t, the fishes can, And when there’s thunder in the air they won’t rise. Pulteney knows that as well as I do.”
“Would you know his rod if you saw it?”
“Yes, I was looking at it with him just before luncheon.”
“Come on.” They went out into the front hall, and Eames gave a quick glance round. “Yes, that’s it, in the corner. He’s no more out fishing than you or I.”
“Edward!” said Angela as they returned to the best room. “To think it was my Edward all the time.”
“Oh, don’t rag, Angela;
