The Bishop’s voice quavered a little at certain points in this recital; it was difficult not to be affected by the laborious efforts of a pen untrained in language to do justice to the writer’s friendly intentions. “I’m very sorry indeed for the poor fellow,” the Bishop said. “The older we grow, the more tender we must become toward the strange vagaries of the human conscience. That’s not the letter of a man, whose mind is unhinged. And yet, what is one to make of a conscience so strangely misformed? However, I didn’t come here to talk about all that. You’ll see for yourselves that, although the writer recommends my keeping it dark, he places me under no obligation to do so—he would have put me in an uncommonly awkward position if he had. As it is, I’ve had no hesitation in reading it to you, and shall have no hesitation in producing it, if necessary, before a court of law. It seems that our legacy, after all, was only a castle in Spain.”
“The poor dear!” said Angela. “And it’s bad luck on you, Mr. Leyland. Did you realize, My Lord, that Mr. Leyland had just succeeded in persuading us all that Mr. Brinkman had murdered Mr. Mottram by letting in gas from the room above?”
“Well, thank God it was nothing as bad as that!” said the Bishop. “At least this letter will help us to take a kindlier view of him.”
“It would be a very singular and, I had almost said, a diverting circumstance, if both things could have happened at once,” said Mr. Pulteney, “if, while Mottram was busy poisoning himself with his own gas down below, Brinkman was at the same moment, in complete ignorance, feeding him with an extra supply of gas from above. It would be a somewhat knotty problem, in that case, to decide whether we were to call it suicide or murder. However,” he added with a little bow to the Bishop, “we have a competent authority with us.”
“Oh, don’t ask me, sir,” protested the Bishop, “I should have to consult my Canon Penitentiary. He would tell me, I fancy, that the act of murder in this case inflowed into the act of suicide, but I am not sure that would help us much.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Eames, “Mr. Bredon could tell us what view the Indescribable would take of such a case.”
“They would be hard put to it,” said Bredon. “Fortunately, there is no question of any such doubt here. For Leyland’s suggestion of murder was only based on the impossibility of suicide, in view of the gas being turned off. Whereas Mr. Pulteney’s ingenious suggestion has all the difficulties in it which Leyland was trying to avoid.”
“I’m hanged if I can make head or tail of it,” said Leyland. “It’s like a nightmare, this case; every time you think you’ve found some solid ground to rest on, it sinks under your feet. I shall begin to believe in ghosts soon. And what are we to make of the message itself? Might I see the envelope, My Lord? … Thank you. Well, it’s clear that Brinkman wasn’t putting the letter up on the ledge; he was taking it down. It’s so weather-stained that it must clearly have been there the best part of a week. Now, why on earth was Brinkman so anxious to take the letter away with him? For the letter proved it was suicide, and that’s precisely what he wanted to have proved.”
“Brinkman may not have known what was in the letter,” suggested Eames.
“He may have thought the thousand pounds were in it,” suggested Pulteney, “waiting there as a surprise present for the Bishop. I am no acrobat myself, but I believe I could jump pretty high if you gave me that sum to aspire to.”
“I wonder if Brinkman did know?” said Leyland. “Of course if he did he was an accessory before the fact to Mottram’s suicide. And that might make him anxious for his own position—but it doesn’t ring true, that idea.”
“Might I see the letter itself?” asked Bredon. “It sounds impolite, I know; but I only want to look at the way in which it’s written. … Thank you, My Lord. … It’s rather a suggestive fact, isn’t it, that this letter was copied?”
“Copied?” asked the Bishop. “How on earth can you tell that?”
“I am comparing it in my mind’s eye with the letter we found lying about in Mottram’s bedroom, half-finished. Mottram wrote with difficulty; his thoughts didn’t flow to his pen. Consequently, in that letter to the Pullford Examiner you will find that only the last sentence at the bottom of the page has been blotted when the
