“Personally, I’m waiting to see what it is before I start wondering whether it’s true. But I’ll tell you this much. I believe the late Mr. Quirk was right when he said that it’s no good trying to prove Nigel was the murderer’s accomplice until we can find the murderer. Unless we do that, Nigel will always be able to profess ignorance of what happened. His alibi, you see, remains good. A canoe with a hole that size in it can’t have drifted downstream in the given time; therefore it was propelled downstream; Nigel didn’t do that, because he was on the nine-fourteen train; therefore somebody else did it; either Derek Burtell, still alive, or else a third person. And that third person must be found before we can definitely prove how Derek died, or indeed (for that matter) whether Derek is dead.”
“I never quite see why you lay so much stress on the question of the boat’s drifting. Surely even without that the alibi would be good—look at the time it must have taken, even if Derek was already dead, to photograph his corpse and lug it up on to the island.”
“I’m not so sure. It was quick work, of course, but the train, you found, wasn’t actually dead on time. I’ll tell you what, when we’ve heard Nigel Burtell’s story, we might do worse than spend part of tomorrow trying to reconstruct the thing. We’ll go up to Shipcote Lock, and you can act as the dummy corpse while I see how long it takes to do the trick.”
“I was thinking of going and asking for an interview with Mr. Farris.”
“No need. He can’t afford to bolt, anyhow. Hullo, Angela, how’s the patient?”
XIX
The Story Nigel Told
Nigel’s trouble proved to be something more serious than a common fainting-fit. It was a heart attack, which demanded a visit from the doctor, and its inevitable sequel—the prescription of “a few days in bed.” Leyland was delighted at this turn of affairs. He had an intense horror of making unnecessary arrests, of putting suspects in prison and letting them out again with apologies. Nothing was so repellent to his professional pride. Yet it would have been difficult to avoid taking out a warrant against Nigel, so clever had been his manoeuvres, so widely had his description been circulated. In bed, and with his clothes removed under some hospital pretext, Nigel was as good as arrested; the invalid is, for all practical purposes, a jailbird. It was not, however, till the morning after his seizure that he was allowed to give any account of himself.
“I think I ought to warn you, Mr. Burtell,” Leyland began, “that, though no arrest has been made, I mean to make notes of your story, and shall be prepared to produce them in case of emergency.”
“Yes, rather,” said the sick man. “I’m hanged if I know whether I’m a criminal or not, you see. The situation has got so complicated. I think I should find it easiest if you just let me tell the story my own way, and don’t interrupt me till afterwards.
“You know, of course, that Derek and I weren’t on very good terms. There was a woman—but I expect you’ve heard all about that. Anyhow, I was rather surprised at getting a visit from him the other day, suggesting that I should go out with him in a canoe up the river. He explained why; Aunt Alma, he said, was beginning to sit up and take notice of the fact that she had great-nephews, and was wishing that we could hit it off better. If I was willing, he would come down to Oxford and meet me; I would have a boat ready, and we would go up to Cricklade, making the best of a bad job, and tell Aunt Alma about it afterwards. I agreed, only I was doubtful about being able to finish the journey before my Viva. He pointed out that I could go ashore anywhere I liked, if we were pressed for time. Actually, I had made a mistake about my Viva, and expected it a day earlier than it came.
“It was a queer journey, one way and another, but there’s no need to describe it in detail. For a good deal of the time, Derek wasn’t worth talking to; he’d brought some of his drug with him, the silly ass, and he took it at intervals. Once he let me try some, and it pretty well laid me out—beastly, I thought it. But, what was much more important, in the course of the journey he explained to me a plan he’d got for saving his financial position, with or without Aunt Alma. He was sick of London, he said, and the fellows he met in London; he wanted to emigrate somewhere, and start afresh. Only he’d no intention of starting penniless; and that’s what he’d have to do if things went on as they were. But why shouldn’t he, instead of emigrating in the ordinary way, simply manage to disappear? If he did that, his death would be presumed after a time, and the beastly Insurance Company would have to pay up; the fifty thousand would remain safely in the family.
“Only, as he explained to me with some candour, a confederate was necessary to the plan, and that confederate had got to be myself. In three years’ time the fifty thousand would come to me, and I could borrow in the meanwhile on the strength of it. He suggested, then, that he should disappear, and I should automatically become my grandfather’s heir; we were to go halves in all the profits that resulted. He didn’t (he was kind enough to explain) trust me a yard. But this agreement, once made, I should necessarily have to keep; if I tried to play him false, he could simply reappear and, with some loss of dignity, expose me. He intimated that this was my only
