IX
Nigel Goes Down
Angela came down to breakfast to find her husband bending over a map, on which he seemed to be underlining in pencil various inns or villages along the river, and measuring the distances between them with a halfpenny. “It’s a good game,” she said, “but rather early in the morning for it.”
“What game?”
“Thought you might be playing shove-halfpenny. What are you at, anyhow?”
“It may be news to you that a halfpenny is an inch in diameter.”
“Thank you. Don’t tell me how many thruppenny bits will go on a half-crown, or I shall scream. Yes, I knew you were measuring distances. Some womanly intuition told me so. But what’s the idea, particularly?”
“I thought we’d take the motor out today, and try some of these places along the river to see where it was the Burtell cousins stopped on their trip. We might be able to collect some reminiscences of them—whether, for example, there was a third person with them at any stage of their journey. You know, I’m beginning to want a third person badly.”
“Are you going to have beer at all these pubs? It looks to me as if I should have to drive home.”
“Heaven help the woman, she talks as if you could go into a pub and order beer at any hour of the day you like. No, we’ve got to think up some reason for visiting these places and asking questions. What shall it be?”
“Give your name as Carmichael, and say you want to look in the bathroom to see if any of the soap’s missing.”
“Don’t rag. This is the sort of lie you are generally rather good at thinking up.”
“Don’t flatter, and don’t put the corner of the map in the marmalade. You could, of course, arm yourself with a set of cheap railway-guides or something of that sort, and pretend to be travelling them—ask them to put one in the commercial room. But you wouldn’t get much out of them that way. No, I think you’ll have to tell a little of the truth, Miles dear. I think we must pretend that the Burtells left something behind—say a camera; we know they had a camera with them. In decency they’ll have to let us go up into the bedroom and look round for it. Or in the coffee-room, at places where they stopped for luncheon. You’ll have to be just a friend of Nigel Burtell’s, and you happen to be motoring in this part of the country. You’re not quite certain which pubs they stopped at, because Nigel Burtell couldn’t remember all the names himself. Wouldn’t something like that do? Of course you can have a drink as well, when it isn’t closing-time.”
This, eventually, was the plan of campaign adopted. It would be tedious to record their researches in detail. Bredon had argued out their probable stages with some accuracy, assuming, with justice, that on the morning of Derek’s disappearance they had come from the nearest inn above Shipcote, that at Millington Bridge. Everywhere the impressions left behind them were those of an ordinary pleasure tour; nothing remarkable was recorded about their behaviour. The only exception was at Millington Bridge itself, at which they had arrived late after a long day on the river, about ten o’clock, and had not wanted an evening meal.
“Very late they was, and it was your speaking of the camera put me in mind of it; because the first gentleman came up and he said have you got two rooms, and I said yes, but you’re late, you know, we don’t ordinarily take in people so late; where’s the other gentleman? Oh, he says, he left his camera behind in the canoe, and he’s gone back to fetch it, in case it should rain in the night. And rain it did, too, regular downpour. I’ll go up to my room, he says, for I’m dog-tired, and the other gentleman won’t be more than ten minutes or so. It wasn’t hardly that, not hardly five minutes, before I heard the second knock, and as soon as I saw someone with a camera standing outside. Oh, I says, you’re the other gentleman; you’ll be in Number Three. So Lizzy showed him the way upstairs, and that’s the room the camera should have been in if it had been left behind. Let’s see, that was the gentleman that had his breakfast in bed; left it on a tray on the mat, I did. Number Two came down to breakfast, and it was him as paid the bill; I see him go off myself, but whether he had the camera with him or no I couldn’t really say. The other gentleman must have gone on earlier, for I never saw him go off, and of course it would be more likely he took the camera with him. I did both the rooms myself, after they’d gone, and it isn’t likely I should have failed to overlook anything, is it?”
Bredon, who was alert for any indication, suggested afterwards that it sounded as if the two cousins might have quarrelled, since they neither reached nor left the inn together; but he agreed with Angela that this was very little result to derive from their morning’s inquiries. “It’s all very well,” he said, “but we must do something. If the fellow’s still alive, he’s stealing a march on us all the time, and may be God knows where by now. Besides, one of the papers has been suggesting to its readers that they should all take their holiday on the Thames, and lend a hand with searching; they’ll be all over the place by tomorrow.”
It was at about six that evening, when they were sitting out on the lawn by the river, that a visitor was announced for Bredon. He had scarcely had time to rise from his chair when the visitor followed in person.
“Leyland!” cried Bredon. “Are the police beginning to take the thing seriously, then?”
“Yes, too late, as usual. How are you, Mrs. Bredon? And, as usual the county police didn’t call in Scotland Yard until they had made an utter mess of the thing themselves. Let your man get away, give him four hours’ start, and then call in the Yard—that’s the way it’s done.”
“Let what man get away?”
“Why, this Burtell.”
“Which Burtell? Nigel?”
“That’s the one.”
“Nigel Burtell? But I saw him yesterday.”
“It would have been a good deal more interesting to me if you’d seen him today. Did he say anything yesterday about leaving Oxford?”
“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 interested in having a photograph of Derek Burtell’s corpse, except the man who stood to win a legacy by his death, if that death could be proved?”
“Yes, that sounds all right. … And, if you come to think of it, how could he be such a fool as to drop those films out of his pocket? He must have valued them a good deal. Looks much more as if he’d planted them out in that hedge on purpose.”
“Yes, I thought of that too,” said Bredon. “And so nicely packed away in a watertight cover. You mean, I suppose, he wanted some stranger to find those films by accident, and hand them over to the police, so that the police should have evidence of the death?”
“That would have to be it. Though, mind you, it’s pretty poor evidence of the death. And quite unnecessary evidence, if only the body had been found. Did Nigel Burtell not expect the body to be found? Did he spirit it away somewhere? And if so, why on earth should he?”
“Yes, but we’re going ahead too fast. We’re speculating about Nigel’s motives when, as far as we can see, it can’t have been Nigel.”
“What about his alibi at the other end? He arrived here at eleven, or thereabouts; why shouldn’t he have gone up river, brought off the murder, come back again, and sat down on this very lawn with his watch in his hand, wondering when dear Derek was going to turn up?”
“I know, I know. But it would be pretty risky. Anybody might have come out on to the lawn, and noticed his absence. There were some men camping on the opposite bank, who might see him going away and remember seeing it. If he went along the towpath, he had to pass a whole encampment of boy scouts. Finally, I may remark that he hadn’t paid for his ginger-beer. I got that fact out of the barmaid. And somehow, if you order your drinks and don’t pay for them, all inns have a curious way of noticing it when you leave the premises.”
“Still, it’s worth looking into. Even if Nigel Burtell had no motive, who else could it be? Who else was there about, to come under suspicion?”
“There were lots of other people about. The folk at Spinnaker Farm, for example, and the lock-keeper, Mr. Burgess, though he is not one of your strong, silent men. He is a man of words rather than action.”
“Yes, but what conceivable reason could casual strangers like that have had for murdering one of the Burtells?”
“If you knew Nigel Burtell better, you’d know that any stranger might easily be impelled to kill him at sight. Still, the other one need not have been so revolting. I admit the difficulty. But, you know, it seems to me there is evidence that a third party somehow comes into the case.”
“What evidence?”
“Why, the old lady at Spinnaker Farm was positive that she’d seen somebody hurrying through that morning to catch the train. Now, that somebody wasn’t Derek Burtell.”
“Why shouldn’t it have been Derek Burtell, disappearing?”
“Because he hadn’t time to get there. He hadn’t had time to paddle a mile downstream; and I don’t believe in his coming across country, because his heart was so rotten he wouldn’t have dared to swim the weir stream.”
“He might have crossed at the weir bridge.”
“Exactly, but then, being in a hurry, he would have taken the direct path to the station, the same path Nigel took. There would be no earthly object in wandering round by way of Spinnaker Farm. And there’s the same difficulty in supposing that it was Nigel Burtell who passed through Spinnaker Farm. He had just time to do it, but what motive had he? It was bang out of his way.”
“Couldn’t he have gone out of his way deliberately, so as to plant out those films on a spot where he was supposed not to have been?”
“Yes, but why just there? Why go the whole way round, at the risk of missing his train, when he could have cut through the hedge at any point, and finished up via Spinnaker Farm, dropping the films just outside it, and so making sure that they would be found first thing? It doesn’t really work, you know, as a motive. But look here, you’d better try Spinnaker Farm; I couldn’t question the old lady, you see, because I’d no locus standi.”
“I’m going to try Spinnaker Farm, and a whole lot of other places besides. No, thanks, I mustn’t stop to dine. I’m making my headquarters at Oxford, because I want to be able to dash away in any direction at short notice. But I’ll look in tomorrow some time. By Gad, Bredon, I wish I could always pick your brains like this.”