# The Viaduct Murder/Chapter 12

CHAPTER XII
A SEARCH WITH PIANO ACCOMPANIMENT
If Carmichael let his colleagues in for a late sitting, at least he made amends for it himself by unwontedly early rising. Reeves found him fully dressed when, pyjamaed himself, he set out for his morning bath.
"What on earth are you doing," he asked, "wandering about at this hour?"
"Well, you see," said Carmichael, "I had to go and clear up your room before the housemaid came in. Housemaids don't like chewing-gum on their boots." And with this partial explanation Reeves had to be satisfied till they sat down to smoke a pipe after breakfast in a secluded corner of the lounge.
"For Heaven's sake let's have an explanation," he urged. "There's a chewing-gum motif running through life at present which is worrying me more than I can say."
"I don't mind about that," said Gordon; "what worries me is Carmichael being up and dressed at half-past seven."
"Well, if you prefer it, let us put it this way," said Carmichael. "I had to get up early, Reeves, ​to unlock your room; otherwise the maid wouldn't have been able to tidy it for you."
"To unlock it? When did you lock it, then?"
"When I left it, to be sure, at twelve o'clock last night."
"What! Do you mean to say that Gordon and I sat there for a solid hour waiting for somebody to go into my room, when the door was locked all the time? Look here, Carmichael, if you've simply been pulling our legs⁠———"
"No, I have not been pulling your legs, if I apprehend rightly the meaning of that rather puzzling metaphor. You were waiting for somebody to try to get into your room; if he had tried, he would have found two muscular young men tackling him from behind, and the possibility of getting through the door would have had a merely academic interest."
"But I thought you said we were to catch him red-handed? Pretty good fools we should have looked if we had found that it was some guest who'd mistaken his room, or somebody who was wanting to borrow a pipe-cleaner!"
"I admit it. But then, you see, I had an intuition, almost amounting to a certainty, that the visitor who intruded upon your room does not come in through the door."
"Oh, he doesn't? Then you mean that Gordon and I were merely sacrificed to your peculiar sense of humour⁠—we weren't really doing any good? My word, Carmichael⁠———"
​"You are always too hasty in leaping to conclusions. You were doing a great deal of good by sitting up in the room opposite. You were convincing the mysterious gentleman that I expected him to come through the door. And it was that conviction which emboldened him to pay you a visit last night. I am sorry to have practised any deception on you two, but really it was the only means that occurred to me for inducing the gentleman behind the scenes to act as he did. And after all, I only made you sit up for an hour."
"An hour," said Gordon, "cannot be properly measured by the movements of a clock, an inanimate thing which registers time but doesn't feel it. Many things lengthen time; but three things above all, darkness, silence, and not smoking. The watch we kept last night was a fair equivalent for three hours over a fire with a pipe."
"Well, I apologize. But you will be glad to hear that the experiment succeeded. Somebody did come into your room last night, Reeves, and wandered all over it, though of course he found nothing that was of the slightest interest to him, because there was nothing to find."
"And how do you know all this?"
"That is where the chewing-gum comes in. Seccotine would have done: but chewing-gum is more certain. I do not profess to understand why people chew: my impression is that it is merely a kind of fidgeting. Those people who talk about the unconscious would probably tell you that all fidgeting is ​a form of 'compensation.' Observe that word, for it is the great hole in their logic. Their idea is that So-and-so does not murder his grandmother, but he does twiddle his thumbs. They will tell you, consequently, that twiddling your thumbs is a kind of compensation for not murdering your grandmother. But the whole strength of their case should rest on their ability to prove a connection between the two things, and instead of proving it you will find that they steadily assume it. However, as I was saying⁠—the peculiarity of van Beuren's special chewing-gum is this: that it can be drawn out to an almost indefinite length, and forms a thread of almost invisible fineness. If you stretch such threads, say, between one chair and another all over a room, as I did round your room, Reeves, last night, the great probability is that a casual visitor will walk into it and carry whole strands of it away with him, without noticing anything peculiar."
"What!" said Reeves, "you mean like Sherlock Holmes and the cigarette-ash on the carpet?"
"It was not one of Holmes' more original performances. He had been anticipated, in point of fact, by the prophet Daniel. You should read the story of Bel and the Dragon, Reeves."
"And now," said Gordon, "I suppose we proceed to the station, and take a good look at the trouser-ends of all our club-fellows as they wait for the London train?"
"Why, no. I do not think that method would be ​very fruitful. My idea was not to discover who it is that visits Reeves' room, but to make sure that there is somebody who does so, and that he does not come through the door."
"In fact, that he comes through the window?"
"No, my dear Gordon, it is not everybody who has your agility in negotiating windows. The windows in question are a good twenty feet from the ground; there is no drainpipe near them; and anyone who attempted to put a ladder up to them would leave traces among the begonias beneath which even a caddy would not find it difficult to follow up."
"Well, come on, don't be so mysterious. What is it? A secret passage?"
"That seems to be the only sensible solution. One does not, of course, expect a secret passage in a clubhouse. But then, you see, this is not like other clubhouses, and you, Reeves, must have been struck like myself by the significance of what Marryatt was saying last night."
"What was Marryatt saying last night?"
"Why, that the Oatviles were Catholics, nay, were noted Recusants, right up to the time of the third William. That means, of course, that they harboured priests; and you could not harbour priests within this distance of London without having a priests' hiding-hole. There was a man, his name escapes me at the moment, who made it his special business to go about constructing these hiding-holes. A priori, then, it is fairly certain that there must ​be some architectural secret about the old manor-house of the Oatviles. And perhaps in this case they ran to a secret passage."
"Reeves, my boy," said Gordon, "you'll have to keep this dark, or they'll be putting up the rent of your rooms."
Reeves still seemed a little dissatisfied. "But surely, Carmichael, while we were about it we could have kept watch in the room itself, and seen where the hiding-place is, and who comes out of it."
"We could have tried. But tell me: how much of our conversation does this gentleman overhear? And whereabouts in your room could you have hidden with any safety? Honestly, I don't believe he would have come out except while he knew that you and Gordon were busy watching the wrong side of the door."
"You're assuming, of course, that he can't have got in at the door by a duplicate key after Reeves and I went to bed?"
"I am not assuming that, I know it. I took the liberty of putting a bit of that useful chewing-gum across the lock of the door, and it was still undisturbed in the morning. Whereas the chewing-gum which stretched between the chairs had been ploughed up in every direction."
"As it is, though, we've still got to find the entrance to the passage."
"As you say. I thought we might spend a happy morning looking for it. Let's see, there is a piano in your rooms; do you play it?"
​"Very badly."
"That's exactly what we want."
"How do you mean?"
"Why, if you sit in your rooms playing the piano, the gentleman on the other side of the partition will probably assume that nothing much is happening. If you play it loudly, you will drown any little thumping noises we may happen to make. And if you play it very badly, the gentleman on the other side, if he is at all musical, will probably retreat to the utmost limits of his hiding-place."
"But look here," said Gordon, "we're not certain this man is the murderer. Is it quite humane⁠———"
"Oh, shut up," said Mordaunt Reeves. "You're right, Carmichael, as usual. What's wrong with starting now?"
Reeves, it must be confessed, did his part of the programme admirably. He even sang to his own accompaniment. When he got to "Land of Hope and Glory," Gordon asked if he might not have cotton-wool in his ears. He also expressed a fear that all the other residents would come in asking Reeves to stop. But fortunately it was a time of day at which the residents are either in London on business, or going round the links like sensible men.
Meanwhile, under cover of Reeves' barrage, the search was proceeding busily. "The ceiling," said Carmichael, "is out of the question. Even if there was a concealed trap-door in it, it would be too risky to let down ladders and pull them up again. Now, how about the floor? There's this felt under-​carpet⁠—I suppose that's nailed down all right, Reeves?"
"Well, nobody's been in a position to take liberties with the carpet, that's clear, and it goes right up to the edges of the floor, so I think we may rule the floor out too. Now, Gordon, you've four walls to choose from⁠—one with the door in it, one opposite with the windows in it, one with the fireplace in it, and one blank, where the bookcase stands. Which are you betting on?"
"I'm not betting on any. But I'm maintaining that the door wall is the one to search first, because we've only to open the door to see what thickness it is."
"There's something in that. Hullo! The door does stand in a bit of a recess. Where's that tape measure? A foot and a half⁠—hardly good enough, is it? You see, if you tap the panelling here the sound is quite dull, and that means there's brick behind the panelling. And there's something thicker than mere plaster on the passage side too. The mysterious gentleman can't be quite as thin as all that. No bulges in the wall, except of course that big oak chest. Do you know what's inside that chest, Reeves?"
was the reassuring, if not very metrical, reply.
"Then that does for the wall. Now, the window wall's thick; you can see that from the window recesses. On the other hand, it's got to carry the thickness of the outer wall, and the outer walls of Tudor buildings are generally pretty thick. Artillery, you see, had abolished the castle idea, but from force of habit they went on making their outside walls thick, because you never knew what might happen. And of course some of these brick houses did stand siege⁠—you know Aston Hall, I expect, in Birmingham. It sounds genuine when you tap it, doesn't it?"
"Yes," said Gordon, listening. "Besides, if you come to think of it, this house is pre-Reformation. There was no reason why they should want a secret passage in it when it was built. But when the bad times started, and they wanted a refuge for the priests, the man who came to build the hiding-place wouldn't play any tricks with a great solid outside wall. He would surely run up a false partition between two rooms."
"Admirable," said Carmichael. "It looks as if we should have to trespass on Reeves' neighbours. Reeves, who lives in the rooms next yours?"
"Good," said Gordon. "I'll step the rooms, shall I, while you step the passage? We hardly need the tape-measure yet."
"Better do both, if you won't mind; then the pace will be the same." And Carmichael busied himself in wandering round the room looking for cracks till Gordon reappeared. "Well," he said, "what news?"
"The fireplace wall, I fancy," said Gordon. "From the door of Colonel Steele's room to the door of this, walking down the passage, it takes twelve strides. Inside his room, I only take five strides to the wall. Inside this room, I take a bit over five strides to the same wall. Therefore there must be a thickness of about a pace and a half between Colonel Steele's room and Reeves'. Now one comes to think of it, he wouldn't hear Murdock's cello if there was that thickness the other side."
"A pace and a half? The priests must have been on the thin side. Yes, that would be it: there must be a length of about ten feet from the fireplace to the wall on the side of the fireplace opposite to the ​window. Somewhere in that ten feet we've got to find the spring."
"Good heavens!" said Gordon suddenly, "suppose there's a sliding panel."
"A man couldn't get through one of these panels⁠—not even you, Gordon, in your well-known human-cobra act," said Reeves, who had stopped singing for the moment.
"No, but a man might put his arm through it, and take the photograph away, and put another in its place, while the people in the room were closely occupied⁠—arranging their hands at bridge, for example."
"You've got it!" said Carmichael. "But why, why?" He and Gordon both went to the spot where the photograph had rested on the cornice two nights before. There was a crack near it, through which it might be possible for a man standing in the dark beyond to keep a watch on the inside of the room, but this crack seemed to hold no further secret. It was Gordon who eventually, fingering the little mouldings on the lower side of the cornice, found one which pushed upwards, acting as a sort of latch. A little tug at the remaining mouldings made the panel turn sideways and disclose a triangular opening of a few inches across, through which Reeves' vociferous rendering of "Annie Laurie" burst into the stillness of the priests' hiding-place.