As if in confirmation of his words, the maid came in with a telegram. He opened it and crushed it in his hand. “As I thought,” he said; “they searched the train at the terminus and didn’t find their man. They may watch the ports, but I doubt if they’ll get him now. It’s a rotten business.”
“I don’t think you’ve explained everything,” said Bredon, “I mean, about Brinkman’s movements after the murder. Indeed, I know for a fact that you haven’t explained everything; partly because you don’t know everything. But I think your account of Brinkman’s movements that night is extraordinarily ingenious, and I only wish it were true. I wish it were true, I mean, because it would have brought us up, for once in our lives, against a really clever criminal. But, you see, there’s one thing which is fatal to all your theory. You haven’t explained why the gas-tap showed the mark where Mottram turned it on and didn’t show the mark where Mottram turned it off.”
“Oh, yes, I admit that’s puzzling. Still, one can imagine circumstances—”
“One can imagine circumstances, but one can’t fit them onto the facts. If the gas had been quite close to Mottram’s bed, and he had had a stick by his side, he might have turned off the tap with the stick; I’ve known slack men do that. But the gas wasn’t near enough for that. Or, again, if Mottram had gone to bed in gloves, he might have turned off the tap with gloves on; but he didn’t. The tap was stiff; it was stiff both when you turned it on and when you turned it off; and there must, in reason, have been some slight trace left if that gas was turned off by a man’s naked fingers. Therefore it wasn’t turned off by a man’s naked fingers. Therefore it wasn’t turned off by Mottram, or by anybody who had any business to turn it off. It was turned off by somebody who had a secret end to serve in doing so.”
“You mean a criminal end?”
“I didn’t say that. I said a secret end. Your view doesn’t explain that; and because it doesn’t explain that, although I think you’ve told us an extraordinarily ingenious story, I don’t think it’s worth forty pounds. … Hullo! What’s this arriving?”
The taxi from the garage had drawn up outside the inn’s door, and was depositing some passengers who had obviously come by the early morning train from Pullford. They were not left in doubt for long; the coffee-room door was opened, and, with “Don’t get up, please” written all over his apologetic features, the Bishop of Pullford walked in. Eames followed behind him.
“Good morning, Mr. Bredon. I’m so sorry to disturb you and your friends at breakfast like this. But Mr. Eames here has been telling me about your alarums and excursions last night, and I thought probably there would be some tired brains this morning. Also, I felt it was important to tell you all I know, because of Mr. Brinkman’s hurried departure.”
Bredon hastily effected the necessary introductions. “You know something, then, after all?”
“Oh, you mustn’t think I’ve been playing you false, Mr. Bredon. The evidence I’m referring to only came to hand last night. But such as it is, it’s decisive; it proves that poor Mottram met his death by suicide.”
XXIV
Mottram’s Account of It All
“Rapid adjustment of the mental perspective,” said Mr. Pulteney, “is an invaluable exercise, especially at my age. But I confess there is a point at which the process becomes confusing. Are we now to understand that Mr. Brinkman, so far from being a murderer, is simply an innocent man with a taste for motoring late at night? I have no doubt there is a satisfactory explanation of it all, but it looks to me as if there had been an absence of straightforwardness on somebody’s part.”
“Possibly on that of Mr. Eames,” said the Bishop. “I have to confess, on his behalf, that he has been concealing something, and to take the blame for his conduct—if blame attaches to it—unreservedly upon myself. However, I do not think that any earlier disclosure could have helped forward the cause of justice; and I have lost no time in putting it all before you.”
“You mean that letter which was left about in the gorge,” suggested Bredon, “addressed to the Bishop of Pullford? With a confession of suicide in it?”
“Goodness, Mr. Bredon, you seem to know as much about it as I do myself! Well, that is the long and short of it. When Mr. Eames was with you last night, Mr. Leyland, he told you that he had followed Brinkman along the gorge, and that Brinkman had disappeared in a motor. He did not tell you that, halfway through the gorge, he saw Brinkman leaping up under a ledge in the rock, as if to put something on it or take something down from it. The something which he was putting up or taking
