XIII
Pursued
Leyland had determined to devote the next day to making inquiries about the man in the punt. Bredon, who had decided to take things easily, contented himself with looking through Leyland’s notes of his preliminary information about the case; some of which may as well be here transcribed for the reader’s benefit.
Relations living.—(1) Mrs. Charles Burtell, now Haverford; has m. Julius Haverford, 513, 24th Street West, Idaho, an American lawyer. Has lived in U.S. ever since her marriage; Nigel B. used to go over there during summer holidays and vacations. Is now travelling on the Continent of Europe, address not known.
(2) Mrs. Coolman, sister of John Burtell (grandfather), widow of James Coolman, Lancashire business man who left her v. well off. Address, Brimley House, Wallingford. No will known to exist; she was childless, so that D. and N. Burtell are nearest relatives. Has not seen them since infancy, but takes an interest in them. Unfortunately is now v. ill, and Dr. will not hear of her being interviewed.
No other surviving relatives of any importance.
Motives of disappearance.—(1) By death of D., N. stands to gain £50,000 free of encumbrance, + expectations from “Aunt Alma,” i.e. Mrs. Coolman.
(2) D. might evade creditors by successful disappearance; but this only possible by secret arrangement with N., who would be treated as heir. This v. improbable, since D. notoriously on bad terms with N.
(3) Origin of this bad feeling not exactly traceable, but certainly increased by discreditable love affair eighteen months ago. The two cousins rivals; N. apparently successful, but woman committed suicide (drugs). Consult records of inquest.
(4) Possibly D. merely wished to slip out of society (heavy drug taker). But circs. seem unnecessarily elaborate.
Personal characteristics—D. is reputed slow, lazy, and unimaginative; fond of low friends. Talks French well. Bets and gambles considerably. N. gives himself out Bolshevist, etc.; some brains, talent for acting; Bohemian pose (?); friends say not to be taken seriously.
Next destinations.—D. apparently expected to return to London flat, where letters were to await arrival. N.’s letters were to be forwarded to same address. Did N. mean to stay in London with D.? No other address given to Oxford lodgings; luggage only marked (railway label) “Paddington.”
Possibility of murder by persons unknown.—It does not appear D. had any violent or bitter enemies. No one had any motive for killing him except N. Add, however, the possibility of someone interested in Mrs. Coolman’s money. Mrs. C. has a protégé, E(dward?) Farris, orphaned son of friends, who has been brought up by and lived with her. Some chance that she may have left property to him by will; perhaps contingently; if so, he might have motive for disposing of (one or both) Burtell cousins. (N.B. Letter from Mrs. C. to D., found among his papers in London, expresses strong desire for D. and N. to be reconciled, since they were reported to her as having quarrelled. Perhaps significant.)
Leyland had, of course, jotted down other notes, but these, for the most part, would be no news to the reader. Bredon, as he read, admired both the thoroughness of his method and the directness of his mind; you could see Leyland’s suspicions leaping up (he said to himself) like the little numbers on an automatic cash register. Then his thoughts turned to Mr. Quirk, his solitary companion at the inn. What did Mr. Quirk suspect, what did he wish it to be thought he suspected? It would be interesting, if it were in any way possible, to sound Mr. Quirk on the subject, without giving away (in Leyland’s absence) their discoveries on the island, and the doubts which those discoveries had corroborated or suggested. Perhaps, after all, an appeal to the man’s vanity was simplest. Anyhow, it would be no harm trying. He went down into the “Inglenook Room,” shuddering as he passed under that inscription. Mr. Quirk was not there, but a smoking cigarette-end, and a novel carelessly laid aside page-downwards, proved that he had only just left it. Bredon picked up the novel, wondering what volume in the limited and old-fashioned library of the Gudgeon would have appealed to the American’s tastes. It was Warren’s Ten Thousand a Year. “Yes,” said Bredon to himself, “that clinches it.”
Mr. Quirk himself entered a moment or two later. “Ah, Mr. Quirk,” said Bredon, “I was just running through some notes of the case which Leyland made, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind my mentioning one fact which might help us to solve our little difficulty of yesterday. Did you know that the Burtell cousins had a great-aunt who was very much concerned about their rumoured dislike of each other? And that only a little over a week ago she was urging them to a reconciliation?”
“Why,” said Mr. Quirk, “that’s a very interesting fact; but as far as my observation goes, what we do in life is one thing and what our great-aunts want us to do is another.”
“I agree. But this great-aunt was in some ways out of the common. She was very rich, and she had nobody else to leave her money to—nobody in the family, at any rate. Further, since her name was Alma, I think it’s a safe guess that the year of her birth was not much later than 1854.”
“You mean that her testamentary dispositions were on the way to becoming a practical problem. Why, that’s so. And you think these young men kind of faked their river trip so as to give auntie the idea they were old school chums.”
“Well, it’s at least possible. Now, suppose that they have a quarrel. From all that one hears of them, nothing is more likely. Supposing, on the last day of their trip, that the elder, Derek, said he couldn’t bear it any longer—got off the canoe before their night stage was reached, and went off to an inn by himself. The younger would have no impulse to call him back; he goes on to their arranged destination; and then, on his way up to the hotel, he has a sudden doubt. What if Aunt Alma—she lives not very far from Oxford—should make inquiries about their trip, and find that after all they finished up in two separate hotels? Is it worth running the risk, when a comparatively little ingenuity will create the impression that two travellers spent the night there?”
“I should be the first to compliment you, Mr. Bredon, on your very remarkable piece of analysis. But if you ask me, I think it would need some more powerful motive than that to account for the young man’s behaviour. I’ve studied the records of crime a good deal; and it’s my conviction that people don’t resort to desperate shifts unless they’re in desperate situations. Now, when you find this kind of juggling going on on the very eve of a great fatality, doesn’t it suggest itself to you, as it suggests itself to me, that that fatality was foreseen, and that the juggling was practised in an effort to avoid it?”
“Yes; that’s sound; that’s quite sound. Don’t invoke coincidence if you can help it. You think Derek Burtell knew he had enemies on his track? As far as I know, we’ve no record of any such enemies existing.”
“That young man seems to have lived in the Bohemian world a deal more than was good for him. It isn’t likely that the police have got a full record of all the embroglios he may have been involved in. And it’s to be remembered he was a very rich man besides that.”
“Only in prospect. To murder him before he was twenty-five would be killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.”
“That’s so. And yet it’s not at all impossible that some gang of crooks were after him, with the idea of murdering or kidnapping him and then personating him to get the money. You may not be aware, Mr. Bredon, that in our country kidnapping is almost a recognized means of getting your living. But I can’t say; it may have been that, it may have been a private vendetta. But it seems to me when a man pretends to sleep in a particular place, and then sends another man there to personate him, it means that man’s going in peril of his life, and he’s anxious to sleep anywhere else except just there.”
“It’s a very interesting idea of yours. But suppose it’s true, why should his cousin consent to put himself in such a position of danger? Surely the odds were that the murderer would do him in by mistake.”
“I’ve thought of that, and I’ll tell you how it seems to me—he didn’t know just how close these people were on his track. He didn’t think they were near enough to do him any harm that night; but he wanted to leave a false trail behind him. He wanted them to go on tracking that canoe down the river, when he himself had left it and skipped off to London or wherever he reckoned he’d be safe.”
“But he did rejoin the canoe next day—at least, unless all our evidence is incorrect.” Bredon thought for a moment of Mr. Carmichael, and his theory of the soap dummy.
“That’s just what complicates the thing; but I’ve two ways of explaining that. Either he changed his mind—heard some news which made that precaution seem unnecessary; or, more probably than that, he was playing a game of double bluff, if you understand what I mean. These are pretty cute fellows (he’d say to himself) and it’s not likely they’d be taken in by an old dodge like this. If they come here and make inquiries, they’ll tumble to it soon enough that I didn’t really sleep here; they’ll think I’ve tried to give them the slip and gone off to London. Meanwhile, the old canoe is good enough for me. So he joined the canoe again next morning.”
“Crooks seem to have very complicated processes of thought by your account of them. But I dare say you’re right. And you think that in reality the pursuit was far closer than poor Burtell thought? So that the very next day they caught him up and did for him?”
“That would be my idea. They must have been extraordinarily close on his tracks, shadowing him all the time—they didn’t show up, you see, until his cousin had left the canoe.”
“But there’s another thing—granted that Nigel Burtell ran no danger from his cousin’s pursuers, wasn’t there a worse danger still, the danger of his being mistaken for their accomplice?”
“Their accomplice? I don’t just see how there’d be any great danger of that.”
“Why, juries are only human. Here is this young man, his cousin’s only companion—the moment he leaves the boat, the cousin gets murdered. When his cousin fails to turn up at the rendezvous, he shows a suspicious anxiety as to what may have become of him. He himself, it is to be observed, has been careful to cover his tracks by an alibi. All that business at Millington Bridge shows that he was aware of the danger which hung over his cousin’s head; and what steps has he taken to avert it? On the contrary, he has quietly walked out of the way, so as to let the murderers have their chance. If it is murder, he is the sole beneficiary of the murder; if it is kidnapping, the kidnappers can get no further with their plans unless they manage to squeeze him. Doesn’t all that build up rather a heavy case against young Nigel?”
“Why, yes, in the abstract. But, the way justice works, you can’t incriminate a man as an accomplice unless you catch the principals. You’ll have to catch them first, and then confront him with them. And here’s this besides, he may have a trump card up his sleeve which we know nothing about. We shan’t hear of that until we find him; and where is he? You’ll excuse my giving the impression of kind of criticizing your excellent police, but don’t they attach any significance to his disappearance? A man who’s got an alibi like his doesn’t want to arouse suspicion by making tracks for South America.”
“You mean that the murderers—”
“I say nothing about murder. I only say that these two cousins have disappeared, one after the other, and old man Burtell’s legacy is going to God knows who. Isn’t it natural to calculate that if we can catch the men who’ve mislaid one, we might catch the men who’ve mislaid both?”
“I doubt if Leyland’s thought of that. I should mention it to him certainly, if I were you. But Nigel’s disappearance had the air of being a deliberate performance. He took his ticket for one train and then hopped on to another.”
“Say, you don’t know much about crooks if you think they can’t hustle a man on a platform the way he’ll think he’s getting into the right train when he’s getting into the wrong one. Why, I’ve read of a case where they changed the labels on a coach merely to get hold of one man. But then, you seem to be making a dead set to fix the blame on this unfortunate Nigel. If he slips into a wrong train, you make out that he’s trying to dodge the police. If he’s got murderers on his track, and knows it, why shouldn’t he be just trying to dodge them?”
“Yes, you do make it all hang together. Mind you, I think you’re arguing too much from your experience on the other side. It seems to me that English criminals haven’t usually the cleverness, or the powers of combination, to bring off a coup of this kind.”
“Who said they were English? Haven’t I read that this Derek Burtell was brought up in the South of France? Mind you, it’s with the greatest possible deference that I make all these suggestions; I’m only a humble amateur.”