With Robert Redmayne free to visit Bendigo at any time, "Doria" would obviously be a danger; for, though a man of little perception—noisy dolt easily enough hoodwinked—there remained strong likelihood that he must recognize me in the Italian "Doria." And the more so that we had now renewed our former friendship. But let Robert Redmayne be reduced to silence, let Robert Redmayne vanish, and I should be safe enough as "Giuseppe Doria" with the old sailor!
From this determination: to obliterate Robert before going to Bendigo, the inevitable means appeared. A week before Robert Redmayne died, every stage of the journey had been planned.
What was the first step? An entreaty from Jenny that I should shave my beard! She begged again and again and appealed to Robert, who supported her. I withstood them until the day of his destruction. Upon that morning I appeared without it and they congratulated me. Other trifling preliminaries there were. On one occasion, when my wife rode down to Plymouth with her uncle on his motor bicycle, she left him to do some shopping and, visiting Burnell's the theatrical costumer, she purchased a red wig for a woman. At home again she transferred it into a red wig for a man. Meantime I had made a pair of large mustaches, helping myself when Mrs. Gerry, our landlady, was out of the way to hair from the brush of one of her stuffed foxes, whose colour exactly resembled the rufous adornments of Robert Redmayne. That was all I wanted. The rest of my disguise would go to the quarry on the person of Robert himself.
But other things went to the quarry also, for I had to look far ahead. When we started on his motor cycle, after tea, to do some work at the bungalow, I took a handbag containing my costume as Giuseppe Doria—a plain, blue serge suit, coat, waistcoat and trousers and yachtsman's cap. I also carried a tool—the little instrument with which I murdered the three Redmaynes. It resembled the head of a butcher's pole-axe, of great weight with the working end sharpened. I made it in a forge at Southampton and it lies to-day under the waters of Como. My bag I had taken on previous occasions to the quarry, with a bottle of whisky and glasses, so Robert thought it not strange that I should do so again.
We started for Foggintor and it was still broad daylight when we got there. I had already studied the quarry and determined on Robert Redmayne's resting-place. You will find him—and the suit of clothes I was wearing that evening—in the moraine, where it opens fanwise from the cliff above and spreads into the bottom beneath. On the right, at its base, water eternally drips from the ledges of the granite and here, two feet beneath the surface, he doubtless still lies. The falling water smooths the slope and the earth descends daily to increase the volume of granite sand and gravel above him. The drip must swiftly have washed away any trace of my handiwork and, even with these directions, it may be hard to find him.
Arrived at the bungalow, Robert's first demand was a bath in the quarry pool. To this I had accustomed him and we stripped and swam for ten minutes. You will perceive the value of this operation. His clothes were ready for me without speck or blemish; and when we returned from the pool into the shelter of the bungalow it was a naked man I smote and dropped with one blow of my formidable weapon. His back was turned and the pole-axe head went through his skull like butter. He was dead before I cut his throat, put on my shoes and hastened, naked, to the moraine with a spade.
I opened the grave under the falling water and dug two feet into the loose stuff, for that was deep enough. Then I carried him and my clothes from the bungalow, interred them, heaped back the soil and left the eternal percolations from above to do the rest. By the following morning it had demanded very keen eyes to discover any disturbance at that spot even had search been instituted at Foggintor. But I did not desire a search and my subsequent measures prevented it. A Ganns might have discovered clues, no doubt; a Brendon was more easily deluded.
I stood now free of the vital object in a murder—the corpse, and it remained for me to create the false appearance of reality with which these operations have always been so successfully enshrouded. I donned Redmayne's clothes. We were men nearly of a size and they fitted closely enough, though too large in detail. I then adjusted my wig and mustaches, drew Robert's cap over my head—it was too large, but that mattered not. I next obtained the sack, touched it in blood and put into it my handbag and a mass of fern and litter to fill it out. Then I fastened it behind the motor bicycle—an unwieldy object designed to create the necessary suspicion.
There was now nothing of either Redmayne or myself left at Foggintor. The gloaming had long thickened to darkness when I went my way and laid the trail through Two Bridges, Postbridge and Ashburton to Brixham. Once only was I bothered—at the gate across the road by Brixham coast-guard station; but I lifted the motor bicycle over it and presently ascended to the cliffs of Berry Head. Fate favoured me in details, for, despite the hour, there were witnesses to every step of the route; I even passed a fisher lad, descending from the lighthouse for a doctor, where no witness might have been hoped for or expected. Thus my course was followed and each stage of the long journey correctly recorded.
On the cliff I emptied my sack, cast its stuffing to the winds, fastened my handbag to the bicycle, thrust the bloodstained sack into a rabbit hole, where it could not fail to be discovered, and then returned to Robert Redmayne's lodging at Paignton. There a telegram had already been sent informing the landlady of his return that night. The place and its details I had gleaned from Redmayne himself; therefore I knew where he kept his machine and, having put it in its shed, entered the house about three o'clock with his latchkey and ate the ample meal left for his consumption. Only a widow and her servant occupied the dwelling and they slept soundly enough.