# The Viaduct Murder/Chapter 19

CHAPTER XIX
MORDAUNT REEVES TALKS TO HIMSELF
For some time after they had left, Mordaunt Reeves sat in his armchair hunting that most difficult of quarries, an intellectual inspiration. Merely artistic inspiration greets us when it wills, at the sight of a flower or of two lovers in a lane⁠—we cannot chase it or make it come to our call. A merely intellectual problem can be solved by willpower, by sitting down to it with a wet towel round your head. But there are moments in an intellectual inquiry when inspiration can only come to us from dogged envisaging of the facts. Such was the point at which Reeves found himself; his clues were sufficient to exonerate, in his own mind at least, the arrested Davenant; they were not yet positive enough to mark out any victim who could be substituted. "A golf-ball," he kept saying to himself, "a golf-ball by the side of the railway line, a few yards behind the spot from which the murdered man fell. It must have something to do with it, but where, where does it fit in?" At last, weary of cudgelling his brains over the unlighted grate, he seized his cap and strode out into the air. Half of set purpose, half under the fasci​nation of his thoughts, he found himself climbing once more the steep path that led up the railway embankment and on to the forbidden precincts of the line.
St. Luke's summer still held; the comparative silence of man's Sabbath conspired with the autumn stillness of nature⁠—the sunshine quiet that is disturbed no longer by clicking grasshoppers, nor yet by cawing rooks⁠—to hush the countryside. Far below him he could see the golfers at their orisons, fulfilling, between hope and fear, the daily cycle of their existence. Gordon and Carmichael were at the third tee now; he could have waved to them. Carmichael always made too much business about addressing the ball. Over there was the neglected house, itself radiating the silence of a forgotten past. All else was drowsing; he alone, Mordaunt Reeves, strode on relentlessly in pursuit of crime.
He threw himself down at full length on the bank, just beneath the line. "Now," he said, talking to himself out loud, "you are in the fast train from London to Binver, Mordaunt Reeves. It has stopped only once at a station, Weighford; probably oftener outside stations, because it is a foggy day and the trains get through slowly, with little fog-signals going off at intervals. If you fired a pistol at a fellow-passenger, it would probably be mistaken for a fog-signal by the people in the next carriage. Is that worth thinking of, I wonder? No, there must have been traces of a wound if a wound had been made, and it would have come out ​at the inquest. So you can't get much further that way, my dear.
"There is somebody in the train you badly want to murder. You want to murder him today, because his bankruptcy has just been declared, and if he is found dead people will think it is suicide. You have warned him to look out for himself⁠—I wonder why you did that? But of course you must have done it on Monday so as to give him a chance to save himself. . . . No, that won't do, because you didn't know anything about his bankruptcy before Tuesday. . . . But the message reached him on Tuesday morning. That is to say, you have a motive for killing him which is probably quite unconnected with his bankruptcy, which is not known about at present⁠—certainly kind Mr. Davenant does not know about it. He is not coming by this train, he is waiting till the 3.47. You sent this man a message on Monday, containing a cipher which depended on a book which was in his possession, which you knew was in his possession⁠—did you, perhaps, give him that book? It will be a nuisance to you later on, when it is found, and you will want to steal it.
"Meanwhile, the train is steaming on, and you must do something; you must get on with the murder. Is he in the same carriage, or in a different one? And if it's a different one, is there a corridor between? Let's see, there's a corridor on the three o'clock train, but it doesn't connect with the slip that comes off at Binver. Probably you are in the Binver slip, because the railway people always try ​to shove one into that. I am sure you were in the slip, not in the corridor part of the train, because later on you are going to execute certain complicated manoeuvres over a dead man's body, and it would be dangerous to do that if a man might look in and say 'Tickets please' at any moment. No, you must be in the slip, and unless you are in the same carriage, there is no connection between you and him except along the footboard. That is rather hard to climb along while the train is going; but of course in the fog it may not be going just at this moment. It may be being held up by those signals that are connected with the Paston Whitchurch goods siding, those you see over there⁠—at least, no, you do not see them because of the fog.
"But are you in the same carriage? You might have the decency to tell me that. Preferably not, because people saw you getting in, and people might remember afterwards that you got into the same carriage with him. Besides, you are choosing for the murder a part of the line where it curves, and curves away from the side where you are going to throw the man out. Why did you choose that particular part, unless you wanted to do something in the way of climbing along the footboard? I think you are in a different carriage. And you've got to murder somebody who is next door. Now, it's no good telling me that you're going to climb along the footboard and attack him, because he would certainly ring the communication cord if you did.
"He is alone in his first-class carriage, and you ​are alone in yours. Possibly he is asleep, but if so you've no means of knowing. You might, of course, bore a hole between the two carriages⁠—and then? Put a cobra through, like the 'Speckled Band,' to make him jump out of the train, or to kill him as he sits there? Not very probable, I think; cobras are so difficult to buy, as you rightly observe, without attracting suspicion. Or could you let loose some poisonous gas through the hole? That is a really bright idea; I give you ninety percent for it, only I hardly think a very practicable solution, my dear Reeves, if you don't mind my saying so. You would look such a fool getting into the train with a couple of oxygen cylinders, or a large balloon. No, you can't do anything with holes in the partition. To do anything, you must be leaning out of the window. If anything is to be done, you must both be leaning out of the window.
"Of course people do lean out of the window when the train stops and there isn't a station there. But you can't be certain that your man will look out: and people generally look out in the direction in which the train is curving: they can see more that way. And you could only make him look out⁠—steady on! Keep steady, Reeves! Oh yes, you could certainly do that: thank you very much indeed; the whole thing becomes a good deal clearer. And then you hit him a good smack on the head, that stuns him anyhow, with a stick. That must have made you rather noticeable, because people don't take sticks up to London much⁠—strong sticks, ​I mean. It would have to be⁠—well, I'm blessed!"
And in another moment Reeves was scrambling down the bank, precipitous as it was, to a clump of rank grass some ten feet below. Half-hidden in this he had seen, and now painfully secured, a large knotted stick such as may be carried by a peaceable man, but undoubtedly would come in useful in a scrap. It might be coincidence of course, but that seemed too good to be true. And yet, was it not also too good to be true that he, nearly a week after the event, should be holding between his hands the very weapon, undiscovered hitherto, which had begun the assault? There was no name on it. There was no blood on it, nor any mark of violence. And yet it could undoubtedly have given a stunning blow without breaking or showing signs of the contact.
The next point was to get his treasure home, and this was not so easy as it sounds. He did not dare to carry it openly with him to the dormy-house; if the murderer really lived there he might easily catch sight of the stick and take the alarm. To carry a stick up your trousers-leg makes you a marked man at once. He left it concealed in the bushes a little way from the dormy-house, and went to fetch his golf-bag, in which he bestowed it upside down, and so smuggled it unobserved to his room.
Gordon and Carmichael were properly thrilled by the discovery, but were not very helpful in making suggestions for its use. Carmichael said that he might take the stick to Brotherhood's grave and ​see if it bled there, but added that this test was no longer used, he believed, in the detective world. On the whole, it seemed best to hide it away, taking no risks with stray visitors, and keep it until suspicion was thrown on some definite person⁠—then it might come in handy. Meanwhile, Reeves thought he had now sufficient grounds for optimism about his case to justify him in a Sunday afternoon call on Miss Rendall-Smith. This time, Gordon refused to accompany him, and he went over in his own car, though he was careful to garage it at the hotel, for fear the sight of it might have painful memories for his hostess. There was no mistaking the eagerness and anxiety of the tone in which she asked for news. Reeves, with an indiscretion which he would have been the first to criticize a week ago, told her all his suspicions and all his hopes.
"You're a genius, Mr. Reeves," she said when he had finished.
"I'm afraid it's Carmichael that does all the clever work," he admitted. "Only it's so difficult to get him to keep up his interest in any subject, he always branches off to something else."
"It's most exasperating to think that I must actually have been on the same train with my husband, and not noticed anything," said Miss Rendall-Smith. "Now, let's see, which part of the train did I come on? Oh, it was the corridor part, I know, because I remember finding I had got into a smoker, and changing my carriage while the train was going. I was rather early for the train, so of course I ​shouldn't have seen anybody getting into the Binver slip behind."
"Did Davenant by any chance see you off?"
"Yes, he did."
"What sort of journey did you have?"
"Oh, we crawled. You know what this line is when there's a fog on. I never can see why there should be any danger, but we stopped at nearly all the signals. And now you mention it, I remember we did stop just at that curve of the line, a little way before Paston Whitchurch."
"You didn't see anybody you knew getting out of the train at Binver?"
"No, I didn't notice anybody. But then, I had to go to the Parcels Office about something, so I didn't go out with the crowd. Oh, it's maddening to think I've been so little use."
"Never mind, I dare say it might have put us off on a false scent if you had seen anybody."
"Mr. Reeves, I think I ought to tell you one other thing, though I dare say you will think it is just my fancy. I have a sort of feeling that I am being watched."
"Being watched?"
"Yes. When I took the train to come over to you yesterday, it was rather empty, as these Saturday trains are, and I noticed one of my fellow-passengers, a man who was quite a stranger to me. The curious thing was that he came back from Oatvile by the same train too, and I'm nearly certain, ​although this may have been just fancy, that I saw the same man watching me from the other side of the street when I went out this morning to go to church."
"This is rather serious. Do you know of anybody who had a grudge against you as well as against your husband?"
"Honestly, I can't think of anybody; you see, our lives have lain so far apart lately. No, I think it's probably just a coincidence; I was only going to suggest that, if I saw this man again, perhaps I might telephone to you?"
"Please do. Just send me word that you've seen him again and I'll come over straight in my car. Then perhaps we shall be able to have a better look at him."
Reeves drove away very thoughtful. Was it possible that the same enemy who had murdered her husband was on the widow's track too? Or was she psychic, and did echoes of the dead man's personality follow her? Certainly one might have expected Brotherhood to rest unquietly in his grave. His grave⁠—would some fresh inspiration come to Reeves, perhaps, if he paid a visit to the grave in Paston Oatvile churchyard? He was half ashamed of the thought, and yet⁠ . . . it could do no harm. The evening was a fine one; there was no need to be back early at the dormy-house. Instead of taking the London road, which was the shortest way home, he struck out along the winding country lane ​that connected the two Pastons. In a few minutes he had drawn up at the lychgate, and was finding his way among the gravestones.
The sudden gasp of a harmonium surprised him⁠—of course, they were at evening service. What was that tune? "Nearer, my God, to Thee," wasn't it? He went up to the porch; it is an almost irresistible temptation to listen when sound comes out from a building into the open. . . . Yes, that was the hymn, most rustically sung by a congregation that sounded chiefly female, but with the one inevitable male voice dominating all, very loud and tuneless. Here in the porch you got a sort of quintessential effect of Sunday evening service in a country church: the smell of oil lamps, a glimpse of ugly deal pews, Sunday clothes, tablets on the wall in memory of dead virtues and hypocrisies. Yes, it was finishing now:
and then the penetrating Amen for which the best efforts of the singers seemed to have been reserved. There was a rustle and a shuffling as the erect forms ​became sedentary, and then, with sudden clearness, Marryatt's voice giving out the text.
There was no doubt what Marryatt was at⁠—it seemed a very embarrassing theme he had chosen. He was working up his congregation to derive a lesson from the tragic suddenness of Brotherhood's end; in the midst of life, he reminded his hearers, they were in death; thence he would proceed to refute Brotherhood's own arguments of less than a fortnight ago as to the survival of human personality. It was a thoughtful sermon, but on sufficiently obvious lines. "We see around us a great deal of carelessness, a great deal of indifference, a great deal of positive unbelief, and we ask ourselves, do we not? whether after all the lessons we learned at our mother's knee were not just old wives' fables, good for us when we were children, but something that manhood would outgrow. We ask ourselves, do we not? whether after all the story of our life will be continued elsewhere, whether after all there is a crown to be gained. And we persuade ourselves, perhaps, or think we have persuaded ourselves, that there is nothing beyond, nothing eternal that we can strive for. Death will be a quiet sleep, to just and to unjust alike, nothing but a sleep. And then the old questioning comes back to us:
But Mordaunt Reeves heard no more of the sermon. He was back in his car, on the road to the dormy-house, and as he drove he talked to himself once more: "'To be or not to be'⁠—well, I'm damned!"