“When Mottram went to bed, Brinkman went up to his room. He knew that Mottram had taken a sleeping draught; that in half an hour or so he would be asleep, and unconscious of all that went on. So, leaving a prudent interval of time, Brinkman proceeded as follows. He took the tube off from the foot of the standard lamp; that is quite an easy matter. Then he took the tube to the window. With a walking-stick he slightly opened Mottram’s window down below—it had been left ajar. And through the opening thus made he let down the tube till the end of it was in Mottram’s room. Then, with the walking-stick, he shut the window again, except for a mere crack which was needed to let the tube through. Then he turned on the guide-tap which fed his standard lamp, and the gas began to flow through into Mottram’s room. That coil of tube was a venomous serpent, which could poison Mottram in his sleep, behind locked doors, and be removed again without leaving any trace when its deadly work was done.
“Whether it was through carelessness on Brinkman’s part, or whether it was owing to the wind, that the window swung right open and became fixed there, I don’t know. In any case, it did not make much difference to his plans. He had now succeeded in bringing off the murder, and in a way which it would have been hard for anybody to suspect. But there was one more difficulty to be got over: In order to remove the suspicion of murder, and to make the suspicion of suicide inevitable, it was necessary to turn on the gas in Mottram’s room. Now, there was no implement Brinkman could employ which would enable him to reach Mottram’s gas-tap. He depended, therefore, on bluff. He made sure that he would be summoned by the Boots when the locked door forbade entrance. He would force his way in with the Boots; he would make straight for the tap, and pretend to turn it off. Would anybody doubt that it was he who had turned it off? The room was full of gas fumes, and even a man of more intelligence than the Boots would naturally leap to the conclusion that the gas must have been on, in order to account for the fumes.
“His plan, you see, was perfect in its preparations. It was an unexpected interference that prevented its coming off. When Brinkman was telling you the story, he pretended that it was he who saw Dr. Ferrers outside, and suggested calling him in. Actually it was the Boots, according to the story he himself tells, who drew attention to the presence of Dr. Ferrers and suggested his being called in. This point, which was of capital importance, was slurred over at the inquest because nobody saw the bearing of it. Brinkman did not want Dr. Ferrers to be there; yet the suggestion was too reasonable to be turned down. Brinkman stationed himself with his shoulder close to the lock, while Ferrers leant his weight against the door at the other end, nearest the hinges. Assuming that the lock would give, Brinkman could rush into the room first and go through the motions of turning off the gas without attracting suspicion.
“Actually, it was the hinges which gave. Dr. Ferrers, realizing that the gas must be turned off in order to clear the air, ran straight to the tap over the debris of the broken door before Brinkman could get at it. And Ferrers naturally exclaimed in surprise when he found the tap already turned off. The Boots heard his exclamation; Brinkman’s plan had fallen through. There was nothing for it but to pretend that the tap was a loose one, and that Dr. Ferrers had himself turned it off without noticing it. That was the story, Bredon, which he put up to you. We know that it was a lie.”
“I don’t quite see,” said Bredon, “how all this works in with the sandwiches and whisky. In the motor, I mean. What was the idea of them?”
“Well, Brinkman’s original idea must clearly have been flight. That was, I take it, when he realized the difficulty which had been created for him by his failure to reach the gas first. It must have been before I arrived that he made these preparations—stored the motor with food and painted out the numberplate at the back. I’ve had him under pretty careful observation ever since I came here. But that was Tuesday afternoon, and I have no doubt that his preparations had been made by then.”
“And why didn’t he skip?”
“I think he was worried by my arrival. You see, he tried to palm off the suicide story on me, and I didn’t fall to it. If he skipped, he would confirm me in my conviction that there had been a murder, and, although he himself might get off scotfree, it would mean that your Indescribable people would have to pay up to the Bishop of Pullford. He couldn’t stand the idea of that. He preferred to hang about here, trying to convince you, because you were already half-convinced, that the case was one of suicide and that the company was not liable.”
“In fact, he just waited for the funeral, and then made off?”
“No, he waited until he thought he wasn’t watched. It’s a rum business, shadowing a man; you don’t want him to see exactly who is shadowing him, or where the man is who is shadowing him; but you do, very often, want him to know that he is shadowed, because that makes him lose his
