“He said he’d probably be going down. But that’s all right, he’d been packing up for some time. I suppose he’s got a home address where you could get at him?”
“Lost Luggage Office, Paddington, that’s all the address he’s got. At least, that’s where his trunks have gone to. But where he is, God knows; he may be in Weymouth by now, or Bath, or Bristol, or Newport, or Cardiff, or Swansea; he’s gone, anyhow.”
“Disappeared too, by Gad,” said Bredon.
“These things do run in families,” suggested Angela helpfully. “In our family, we’re always appearing when we’re not wanted to, witness Uncle Robert. What makes you so certain, Mr. Leyland, that the young man is seeing his own country first?”
“We can stop him if he tries the mail-boat to Rosslare. But I don’t suppose he has. South Wales is a wonderful place for disappearing—a network of towns, and all the trains crowded, and the local police spending their whole time looking out for labour troubles. Anyhow, it’s too late now to do anything but go back on his tracks a bit.”
“You seem to have hunted us down pretty successfully,” said Angela. “Who told you we were here? I thought we were most frightfully incognito. Unless Uncle Robert gave us away, of course.”
“Well, you see, I’d been studying up this case a bit beforehand. I knew it would come to us in the long run. And in hunting out the dossier of the Burtell family, it didn’t take long before I came across the Indescribable. So I knew Bredon would be on the case, and would have got two or three days’ start of me—these lucky devils of amateurs always do. So I thought I’d come straight here and find out if he’d any tips for an old comrade-in-arms.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Bredon, “you’re welcome to any information I’ve got. I suppose I know as much about this job as anybody. But the curse of the thing is, I know too much; I know enough to make it a sight more complicated than it looks. You want to get on the trail of Nigel Burtell. Well, all I can tell you is that as far as I can see Nigel Burtell had no hand in his cousin’s disappearance. He wasn’t there; he simply wasn’t on the map.”
“How do you make that out?”
“Why, somebody paddled the canoe downstream, or towed it, or got it downstream somehow, over a mile before it was scuttled. If somebody hadn’t, the canoe could never have got down as far as it did—even assuming that it would drift straight, which most canoes don’t; they nose into the bank and out again. Getting the canoe that far downstream would take at least a quarter of an hour. And by a quarter of an hour after the canoe left the lock, Nigel Burtell was at Shipcote Station, or close to it. Therefore it was not Nigel who brought the canoe downstream. If it wasn’t Nigel, it must either have been his cousin—and in that case Nigel was not a murderer; or else it was some third person; and if so, that third person, not Nigel, is responsible, somehow, for Derek Burtell’s disappearance. Do you get me?”
“I get you. But that depends on the alibi being good. Have you found out whether the train was up to time? And whether Nigel Burtell really caught it? He’s a bit slippy, you know, with trains. That’s how he got off today.”
“Yes, by the way, how was that?”
“Well, of course, the county police had just enough sense to keep him under observation. When he went to the station, one of their men followed him. He took a ticket to London, had his luggage labelled Paddington, all but a handbag he carried, and got into a coach on the fast train, twelve fifty-two. He put his bag down on the seat, and stood waiting about on the platform. The man who was watching him took a carriage just behind him—same corridor. Just as they were beginning to shut the doors, Burtell bought a paper and strolled into his compartment, as cool as you please. He must have walked straight up the corridor, forward, dodged out at the other end, and tucked himself away somewhere just as the train was starting. When the train had gone, he strolled through the barrier, bought a ticket to Swindon, picked up a second handbag which he’d left lying about, and took the one-five—Swindon and Weymouth train. All that, of course, we only found out afterwards. The man next door didn’t notice his absence for a bit, then had to search the whole train for him, finally got off at Reading. By that time it was too late to do anything. It wasn’t a very bright trick, but it was well carried out—played his part to the life. Mayn’t he have done something clever over that journey from Shipcote?”
“Well, you can test the alibi for yourself. I couldn’t go round interviewing porters and people. It’s a pretty one-horse sort of station, Shipcote, and I dare say they’ll remember as far back as Monday. But it’s dead certain he arrived here in a taxi that morning before eleven o’clock. Where did he get that taxi, if not at Oxford? And how did he get from Shipcote to Oxford, if not by train—the nine-fourteen train? I believe you’ll be barking up the wrong tree there.”
“But hang it all, look at the motive—a cool fifty thousand! And look at this sudden disappearance! You can’t not suspect Nigel Burtell.”
“I’ve been doing nothing else for the last week. You don’t know all the facts yet.” And Bredon proceeded to outline the lock-keeper’s disclosures, while Angela went upstairs and fetched the photographs. “Now,” he concluded, “you’ll see that I had some ground for suspecting young Nigel. It wasn’t mere Scotland Yard officiousness. Who could possibly be
