# The Viaduct Murder/Chapter 5

CHAPTER V
ON THE RAILWAY
The afternoon seemed a compensation for yesterday; October sun glowed temperately over the links, with the air of a kind old gentleman producing sweetmeats unexpectedly. The rich but transient gold of summer evenings seemed hoarded in this summer of St. Luke; the air not over-charged with uneasy heat, but lucid and caressing; the leaves no longer in the shock of their summer finery, but dignified in the decayed gentility of their autumn gold. A perfect day for golf, such was the immediate impression of the Paston Oatvile mind; but to Reeves a second thought occurred—it was a bad day for following up the clues of a murder.
"It's all very well," he said to Gordon, "the visibility's good, and we shan't be interrupted by rain; but we can't get the atmosphere; the spiritual atmosphere, I mean, of yesterday's fog and drizzle. We shall see where a man fell down the embankment, but we shan't feel the impulse of that weeping depression which made him throw himself over, or made somebody else save him the trouble. We haven't got the mise-en-scène of a tragedy."
They climbed together, Gordon and he; a zigzag ​path up the side of the huge embankment, close to the club-house. When it reached the level of the line, it kept close to the trim hedge that marked the boundary of the railway's property, and so lasted till the very beginning of the viaduct, where it dived under the first arch at a precarious angle and came up the other side. It was a matter of common knowledge to the good-humoured porters of Paston Oatvile that the shortest way from that station to the neighbouring station of Paston Whitchurch was along the railway line itself—the shortest, because it avoided the steep dip into the valley. Accordingly, it was the habit of residents, if pressed for time, to follow this path up to the viaduct, then to break over the sacred hedge and walk over the railway bridge till a similar path was available on the Paston Whitchurch side. This local habit Reeves and Gordon now naturally followed, for it gave them access to the very spot from which, twenty-four hours before, a human body had been hurled down on to the granite buttress and the osier-bed that lay beneath.
"You see what I mean," said Reeves. "We can't, of course, tell what pace the train was going; they vary so much in the fog. But if, for the sake of argument, you take the force with which I throw this stone as the impetus of the train, you see how the curve of the slope edges it out to the right—there—and it falls either exactly on the buttress or next door to it. That's how I picture yesterday afternoon—the man takes a good jump—or gets a ​good shove, and falls just over the edge; there's nothing for him to catch on to; and between his own motion and the slope of the embankment he gets pitched on to the buttress. I don't know any place along this line where the drop comes so close. The coroner will call attention to that⁠—it's extraordinary the way coroners do draw attention to all the least important aspects of the case. I read a newspaper account once of a man who was killed by a motor-car just as he came out of church, and I'm blessed if the coroner didn't draw attention to the dangerous habit of standing about outside churches."
"I must say, the place seems made for something like this happening. Do you see how the line curves away from this side?"
"Why shouldn't it?"
"What I mean is, it would be very hard for anybody to see Brotherhood fall out of the train unless he was travelling in the same coach: the other coaches would be out of view (unless a man were leaning right out of the window), simply owing to the curve⁠—and of course a fog would make the job all the easier."
"By Jove, that's true. I must say, I stick to my murder theory, whatever the jury make of it. In fact, I hope they will bring in suicide, because then the police won't be fussing round all over the place. It looks to me like a murder, and a carefully planned one."
"I'd just like to try your stone-throwing trick ​once more. Look here, I'll lean over the edge and watch it fall. Only we shall want a bigger stone, if you can find one."
"All right. Only they're all little ones between the sleepers. I'll look along the bank a bit. I say, what the devil's this?"
It was a sight that on most days would have given little surprise to the pair; a common enough sight, indeed, down in the valley, but up here a portent. Caught in a clump of grass, some twenty yards down the line in the Paston Oatvile direction, was a golf-ball.
"That beats everything," declared Gordon. "I don't believe Carmichael on his worst day could slice a ball a hundred feet up in the air and lodge it in that clump."
Reeves was examining the trove intently. "I don't like this a bit," he said. "This is practically a new ball, not the sort of ball a man would throw away casually as he walked down the line. A Buffalo, I see⁠—dash it all, there are at least a dozen of us use those. Who'll tell us whether Brotherhood used them?"
"I say, steady on! You've got this murder business on the brain. How can you tell the ball hasn't been there weeks and weeks?"
"Very simply, because it happens to have snapped the stalk of this flower⁠—scabious, don't they call 'em⁠—which isn't dead yet. The ball was right on top when I found it. I'm hanged if that ball fell there more than twenty-four hours ago."
​"I say, we ought to be getting back to Oatvile if we're going to catch that train," said Gordon. "It's half-past four already, and we've got to take to the path before we come in sight of the signal-box. The signalman doesn't really mind, but he has to pretend to."
Gordon was one of those men who are always too early for trains. As a matter of fact they got into Paston Oatvile station before the 3.47 from London was signalled. The 4.50 from Paston Oatvile had to connect with it for the sake of passengers going on to Paston Whitchurch or Binver, and was still wandering up and down in a siding, flirting with a couple of milk-vans and apparently enjoying itself. The platform was nearly bare of passengers, a fact on which Reeves artfully commented to an apathetic porter.
"Not many travelling? You wait till the London train comes in, sir; there's always plenty in that as change here."
"I suppose it's the first train people can get away from business by, eh?"
"That's right, sir; there ain't nothing else stops here after the midday train. Of course there's the fast train to Binver, but that passes through 'ere. You travellin', sir?"
"Just to Binver. Hullo, there's the booking-office opening at last. D'you mind getting two firsts for Binver, Gordon? Very sad thing that, about Mr. Brotherhood," he went on to the porter.
"That's right, sir; very melancholy thing, sir." ​"I suppose you didn't see him get on to the train?"
"There's such a lot of 'em, sir, you don't notice 'em, not the ones that travel every day. And Mr. Brotherhood, 'e was a man as 'adn't many words for anybody. Though of course there's some as is different; d'you know Mr. Davenant, sir, up at the Hatcheries? He's a nice gentleman, that is, has a word for everybody. I seed 'im getting off of the London train, and 'e asked me after my bit of garden—nothing stuck-up about 'im. Excuse me, sir." And, as the London train swung into view, he proceeded up and down the platform making a noise something like Paston Oatvile, for the information of anybody who could not read notice-boards.
The London train was undeniably full to overflowing, and even when the Paston Oatvile residents had diminished the number, there were enough waiting for the Paston Whitchurch and Binver train to leave no compartment unoccupied. Even in their first-class carriage, it was only by luck that Reeves and Gordon managed to travel by themselves.
"I say," began Gordon, "why Binver? We don't want to go beyond Whitchurch, do we?"
"Oh, it's just an idea of mine. We can get a train back in time for dinner. Don't you come unless you'd like to. Steady, here we are." And they swept slowly past the scene they had just been viewing from the solid ground. Reeves opened the door a little as they passed, and threw out a fresh stone; he had the satisfaction of seeing it disappear ​exactly according to schedule. "Now," he said, "we've got a quiet quarter of an hour to spend before we get to Binver. And I'd be dashed glad if you'd tell me two things. First, how can anyone have planned and executed a murder in a third-class carriage on a train so infernally crowded as this one is?"
"They may have been travelling first. No one examines the tickets."
"But even so, look at the risks. We should have had that fat old party in here if I hadn't puffed smoke in her face, and there are very few firsts on the train. Our man took big chances, that's certain."
"And the other point?"
"Why did Davenant come up by this train yesterday? Of course you don't know the place as I do, but Davenant's a scratch player, and a bit of a local celebrity. Every child in the place knows that Davenant only comes down here for week-ends, and it's impossible to get a game with him except on Sunday. Why does he suddenly turn up on a Tuesday afternoon?"
"Well, I suppose he's a right to, hasn't he? I thought you were saying he has a cottage here?"
"Yes, but one's bound to notice every deviation from the normal when one's trying to trace causes. Look here, here's Whitchurch. Do you mind getting out and calling at the Hatcheries—that house, there—and finding out, on some excuse, when Davenant got there, and whether he's there now? ​You're not known, you see⁠—but be devilish tactful; we don't want to put anybody on his guard."
"Right-o! more lying necessary, I foresee. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive. So long, Sherlock, meet you at dinner."
Reeves' errand, it appeared when he got to Binver, was once more with the railway staff. He went up to a porter, and said, "Excuse me, does this train get cleared out here? I mean, if one leaves a thing in the carriage, would it be taken out here?"
"That's right, sir. Left Luggage Office is what you want."
"Well, this was only a paper book. I thought perhaps you people cleared them away for yourselves, like the newspapers."
"Ah, if it was a paper book, we 'aven't any orders to take that on to the Left Luggage Office. We takes those away, mostly; what might the name of your book be, sir?"
This was not at all the question Reeves wanted, but he was prepared for it. "It was The Sorrows of Satan, by Miss Corelli," he said. "I left it in one of these carriages yesterday."
"Well, sir, I cleaned out this train yesterday myself, and there wasn't no book of that name. A passenger must have taken it out with them most likely. There wasn't not but one book I found in those carriages, and you're welcome to that, sir; I've got it on the seat there." And he produced a ​repellent-looking volume entitled Formation of Character, by J. B. S. Watson.
Reeves was trembling with excitement, but it was clearly not a case for showing any enthusiasm. "Well, give you sixpence for it," he said, and the porter willingly agreed—he had guessed rightly that the sixpence would prove to be half-a-crown.
It was an agony dawdling back by a slow train to Paston Oatvile, knowing that he could not get at the cipher-document till he regained his rooms. Merely as a book, the thing seemed to lack thrill. It seemed hours before he reached the dormy-house, and yet Gordon had not returned. So much the better; he would be able to work out the fateful message by himself. It could not be a coincidence, though it had been a long shot to start with. A book of that length (so he had argued to himself) would have been the sort of book one reads in the train. Brotherhood would arrange to have a cipher-message sent him out of the book which he had constantly in his hands at the moment. He would be travelling with it; it was not on the body or by the side of the line; the murderer might not have thought of removing it. This, then, must be the book itself.
As he worked out the message he became less confident. It appeared to run as follows: "Hold and it thoughts with the I highest and to."
"Damn," said Mordaunt Reeves.