“And that’s all she knows, so far?”
“No, at the end of lunch she heard you, Miles, saying that you’d give me half an hour to talk things over. So when she saw us stealing down to the now familiar trysting-place by the mill—she hadn’t gone to the funeral—she followed us and listened again. And, to her horror, she realized from what you said that all her lying had failed to do its work. Leyland still believed, believed more than ever, that her young man was the criminal. Her anxiety put her off her guard, and a sudden sneeze gave her away. She didn’t dare go back to the house; she hid in the privet-hedge.”
“And the long and short of it is,” suggested Leyland, “that her story is no evidence at all. Simmonds may be as guilty or as innocent as you like; she knew nothing about it. Can she give any account of Simmonds’s movements on the night of the murder?”
“Well, she says she had to be in the bar up to closing time, and then she slipped round to the back door, where he was waiting for her, and stood there talking to him.”
“For how long?”
“She says it might have been a quarter of an hour, or it might have been three quarters of an hour; she really couldn’t say.”
“That sounds pretty thin.”
“How impossible you bachelors are! Miles, can’t you explain to him? Oh, well, I suppose it’s no use; you couldn’t possibly understand.”
“It’s certainly rather an unfortunate circumstance for Simmonds that, just at the moment the gas was turned on in Mottram’s room, he was indulging in a kind of ecstasy which may have lasted a quarter of an hour, or may have lasted three quarters.”
“Meanwhile,” said Bredon, “I hope you realize that your own case against Simmonds is considerably weakened? You were trying to make out, if you remember, that Simmonds murdered Mottram and burned the will, knowing that the will cut him out of his inheritance. But since we have learned to discredit the testimony of ‘Raight-ho,’ we have no evidence that Simmonds ever knew anything about the will, or had ever so much as heard of the Euthanasia policy.”
“That’s true. And it’s also true that these last discoveries have made me more inclined to suspect Brinkman. I shall have to keep my eye on Simmonds, but for the time being Brinkman is the quarry we must hunt. It’s Brinkman’s confession I look forward to for the prospect of those forty pounds.”
“Well, if you can catch Brinkman and make him confess, you’re welcome to them. Or even if Brinkman does himself in somehow, commits suicide rather than face the question, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt, and we’ll treat it as murder. Meanwhile, if you will excuse me, I think I’ve just time to lay out that patience before supper.”
“Oh, he’s hopeless,” said Angela.
XIX
How Leyland Spent the Evening
Bredon was not allowed to escape so easily. Leyland insisted that their plans must be settled at once, before supper time. “You see,” he said, “we’ve got to make rings round Brinkman, and he’s got to fancy that he is not under observation. That’s going to be a difficult job. But it’s made easy for us, rather, by the fact that Friday night is cinema night in Chilthorpe.”
“A cinema at Chilthorpe!” protested Mr. Pulteney. “Good God!”
“Yes, there’s a sort of barn out behind the rectory, and one of these travelling shows comes round once a week or once a fortnight. It’s extraordinary how civilization has developed, isn’t it? My idea was this: our friend the barmaid is to come in at supper, and ask us if we shall be wanting anything for the night, and whether she can go out. The Boots, she will say quite truthfully, is going to the cinema, and she wants to do the same. Mrs. Davis will be kept busy at the bar. Therefore there will be nobody to attend to the bell if we ring—she will ask us whether we mind that.”
“Machiavellian!” said Mr. Pulteney.
“Then somebody—you, Mrs. Bredon, for choice—will suggest our making up a party for the cinema. Your husband will refuse, because he wants to stay at home playing patience.”
“Come, I like this scheme,” said Bredon. “It seems to me to be all on the right lines. I only hope that you will allow me to be as good as my word.”
“That’s all right; I’m coming to that. The rest of us will consent to accompany Mrs. Bredon; Brinkman, presumably, will refuse. Soon after supper—the performance is at eight—we will all leave the house in the direction of the cinema, which is fortunately the opposite direction from the garage.”
“And have I got to sit through an evening performance in the barn?” asked Angela.
“Why, no; I want you and Mr. Eames to make your way back to the inn, by turning off along the lane which leads to the old mill; then you can come in quietly by the privet-hedge at the back. Then I want you, Mr. Eames, to wait about in the passage which leads to the bar, dodging down the cellar stairs if Brinkman comes to the bar to have a fortifier on his way. I hope your reputation will not suffer from these movements. You will keep your eye on the front of the house, in case Brinkman goes out that way.”
“He’s a fool if he does,” said Bredon. “In the first place, it’s a shorter way to the garage to take
