The Red House Mystery by A. A. Milne (best electronic book reader .TXT) 📖

Antony couldn’t help feeling a thrill of excitement as he followed Cayley’s example, and put his face close up to the glass. For the first time he wondered if there really had been a revolver shot in this mysterious room. It had all seemed so absurd and melodramatic from the other side of the door. But if there had been one shot, why should there not be two more?—at the careless fools who were pressing their noses against the panes, and asking for it.

“My God, can you see it?” said Cayley in a shaking voice. “Down there. Look!”

The next moment Antony saw it. A man was lying on the floor at the far end of the room, his back towards them. A man? Or the body of a man?

“Who is it?” said Antony.

“I don’t know,” the other whispered.

“Well, we’d better go and see.” He considered the windows for a moment. “I should think, if you put your weight into it, just where they join, they’ll give all right. Otherwise, we can kick the glass in.”

Without saying anything, Cayley put his weight into it. The window gave, and they went into the room. Cayley walked quickly to the body, and dropped on his knees by it. For the moment he seemed to hesitate; then with an effort he put a hand on to its shoulder and pulled it over.

“Thank God!” he murmured, and let the body go again.

“Who is it?” said Antony.

“Robert Ablett.”

“Oh!” said Antony. “I thought his name was Mark,” he added, more to himself than to the other.

“Yes, Mark Ablett lives here. Robert is his brother.” He shuddered, and said, “I was afraid it was Mark.”

“Was Mark in the room too?”

“Yes,” said Cayley absently. Then, as if resenting suddenly these questions from a stranger, “Who are you?”

But Antony had gone to the locked door, and was turning the handle. “I suppose he put the key in his pocket,” he said, as he came back to the body again.

“Who?”

Antony shrugged his shoulders.

“Whoever did this,” he said, pointing to the man on the floor. “Is he dead?”

“Help me,” said Cayley simply.

They turned the body on to its back, nerving themselves to look at it. Robert Ablett had been shot between the eyes. It was not a pleasant sight, and with his horror Antony felt a sudden pity for the man beside him, and a sudden remorse for the careless, easy way in which he had treated the affair. But then one always went about imagining that these things didn’t happen—except to other people. It was difficult to believe in them just at first, when they happened to yourself.

“Did you know him well?” said Antony quietly. He meant, “Were you fond of him?”

“Hardly at all. Mark is my cousin. I mean, Mark is the brother I know best.”

“Your cousin?”

“Yes.” He hesitated, and then said, “Is he dead? I suppose he is. Will you—do you know anything about—about that sort of thing? Perhaps I’d better get some water.”

There was another door opposite to the locked one, which led, as Antony was to discover for himself directly, into a passage from which opened two more rooms. Cayley stepped into the passage, and opened the door on the right. The door from the office, through which he had gone, remained open. The door, at the end of the short passage was shut. Antony, kneeling by the body, followed Cayley with his eyes, and, after he had disappeared, kept his eyes on the blank wall of the passage, but he was not conscious of that at which he was looking, for his mind was with the other man, sympathizing with him.

“Not that water is any use to a dead body,” he said to himself, “but the feeling that you’re doing something, when there’s obviously nothing to be done, is a great comfort.”

Cayley came into the room again. He had a sponge in one hand, a handkerchief in the other. He looked at Antony. Antony nodded. Cayley murmured something, and knelt down to bathe the dead man’s face. Then he placed the handkerchief over it. A little sigh escaped Antony, a sigh of relief.

They stood up and looked at each other.

“If I can be of any help to you,” said Antony, “please let me.”

“That’s very kind of you. There will be things to do. Police, doctors—I don’t know. But you mustn’t let me trespass on your kindness. Indeed, I should apologise for having trespassed so much already.”

“I came to see Beverley. He is an old friend of mine.”

“He’s out playing golf. He will be back directly.” Then, as if he had only just realized it, “They will all be back directly.”

“I will stay if I can be of any help.”

“Please do. You see, there are women. It will be rather painful. If you would—” He hesitated, and gave Antony a timid little smile, pathetic in so big and self-reliant a man. “Just your moral support, you know. It would be something.”

“Of course.” Antony smiled back at him, and said cheerfully, “Well, then, I’ll begin by suggesting that you should ring up the police.”

“The police? Y-yes.” He looked doubtfully at the other. “I suppose—”

Antony spoke frankly.

“Now, look here, Mr—er—”

“Cayley. I’m Mark Ablett’s cousin. I live with him.”

“My name’s Gillingham. I’m sorry, I ought to have told you before. Well now, Mr. Cayley, we shan’t do any good by pretending. Here’s a man been shot—well, somebody shot him.”

“He might have shot himself,” mumbled Cayley.

“Yes, he might have, but he didn’t. Or if he did, somebody was in the room at the time, and that somebody isn’t here now. And that somebody took a revolver away with him. Well, the police will want to say a word about that, won’t they?”

Cayley was silent, looking on the ground.

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking, and believe me I do sympathize with you, but we can’t be children about it. If your cousin Mark Ablett was in the room with this”—he indicated the body—“this man, then—”

“Who said he was?” said Cayley, jerking his head up suddenly at Antony.

“You did.”

“I was in the library. Mark went in—he may have come out again —I know nothing. Somebody else may have gone in—”

“Yes, yes,” said Antony patiently, as if to a little child. “You know your cousin; I don’t. Let’s agree that he had nothing to do with it. But somebody was in the room when this man was shot, and—well, the police will have to know. Don’t you think—” He looked at the telephone. “Or would you rather I did it?”

Cayley shrugged his shoulders and went to the telephone.

“May I—er—look round a bit?” Antony nodded towards the open door.

“Oh, do. Yes.” He sat down and drew the telephone towards him. “You must make allowances for me, Mr. Gillingham. You see, I’ve known Mark for a very long time. But, of course, you’re quite right, and I’m merely being stupid.” He took off the receiver.

Let us suppose that, for the purpose of making a first acquaintance with this “office,” we are coming into it from the hall, through the door which is now locked, but which, for our special convenience, has been magically unlocked for us. As we stand just inside the door, the length of the room runs right and left; or, more accurately, to the right only, for the left-hand wall is almost within our reach. Immediately opposite to us, across the breadth of the room (some fifteen feet), is that other door, by which Cayley went out and returned a few minutes ago. In the right-hand wall, thirty feet away from us, are the French windows. Crossing the room and going out by the opposite door, we come into a passage, from which two rooms lead. The one on the right, into which Cayley went, is less than half the length of the office, a small, square room, which has evidently been used some time or other as a bedroom. The bed is no longer there, but there is a basin, with hot and cold taps, in a corner; chairs; a cupboard or two, and a chest of drawers. The window faces the same way as the French windows in the next room; but anybody looking out of the bedroom window has his view on the immediate right shut off by the outer wall of the office, which projects, by reason of its greater length, fifteen feet further into the lawn.

The room on the other side of the bedroom is a bathroom. The three rooms together, in fact, form a sort of private suite; used, perhaps, during the occupation of the previous owner, by some invalid, who could not manage the stairs, but allowed by Mark to fall into disuse, save for the living-room. At any rate, he never slept downstairs.

Antony glanced at the bathroom, and then wandered into the bedroom, the room into which Cayley had been. The window was open, and he looked out at the well-kept grass beneath him, and the peaceful stretch of park beyond; and he felt very sorry for the owner of it all, who was now mixed up in so grim a business.

“Cayley thinks he did it,” said Antony to himself. “That’s obvious. It explains why he wasted so much time banging on the door. Why should he try to break a lock when it’s so much easier to break a window? Of course he might just have lost his head; on the other hand, he might—well, he might have wanted to give his cousin a chance of getting away. The same about the police, and—oh, lots of things. Why, for instance, did we run all the way round the house in order to get to the windows? Surely there’s a back way out through the hall. I must have a look later on.”

Antony, it will be observed, had by no means lost his head.

There was a step in the passage outside, and he turned round, to see Cayley in the doorway. He remained looking at him for a moment, asking himself a question. It was rather a curious question. He was asking himself why the door was open.

Well, not exactly why the door was open; that could be explained easily enough. But why had he expected the door to be shut? He did not remember shutting it, but somehow he was surprised to see it open now, to see Cayley through the doorway, just coming into the room. Something working subconsciously in his brain had told him that it was surprising. Why?

He tucked the matter away in a corner of his mind for the moment; the answer would come to him later on. He had a wonderfully retentive mind. Everything which he saw or heard seemed to make its corresponding impression somewhere in his brain; often without his being conscious of it; and these photographic impressions were always there ready for him when he wished to develop them.

Cayley joined him at the window.

“I’ve telephoned,” he said. “They’re sending an inspector or some one from Middleston, and the local police and doctor from Stanton.” He shrugged his shoulders. “We’re in for it now.”

“How far away is Middleston?” It was the town for which Antony had taken a ticket that morning—only six hours ago. How absurd it seemed.

“About twenty miles. These people will be coming back soon.

“Beverley, and the others?”

“Yes. I expect they’ll want to go away at once.”

“Much better that they should.”

“Yes.” Cayley was silent for a little. Then he said, “You’re staying near here?”

“I’m at ‘The George,’ at Waldheim.”

“If you’re by yourself, I wish you’d put up here. You see,” he went on awkwardly, “you’ll have to