"You didn't notice any suspicious characters come to your station that afternoon or evening?" asked the superintendent.
The ticket-collector replied that nothing of that sort had been seen, and he presently went away. And Brereton, after an unimportant word or two, went away too, certain by that time that the death of Stoner had some sinister connexion with the murder of Kitely.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE SCRAP BOOK
Brereton went back to his friend's house more puzzled than ever by the similarity of the entries in Kitely's memoranda and in Stoner's pocket-book. Bent had gone over to Norcaster that afternoon, on business, and was not to be home until late in the evening: Brereton accordingly dined alone and had ample time to reflect and to think. The reflecting and the thinking largely took the form of speculating—on the fact that certain terms and figures which had been set down by Kitely had also been set down by Stoner. There were the initials—M. & C. There was a date—if it was a date—81. What in Kitely's memorandum the initials S. B. might mean, it was useless to guess at. His memorandum, indeed, was as cryptic as an Egyptian hieroglyph. But Stoner's memorandum was fuller, more explicit. The M. & C. of the Kitely entry had been expanded to Mallows and Chidforth. The entry "fraud" and the other entries "Wilchester Assizes" and the supplementary words, clearly implied that two men named Mallows and Chidforth were prosecuted at Wilchester Assizes in the year 1881 for fraud, that a sum of £2,000 was involved, which was never recovered, that Mallows and Chidforth, whoever they were, were convicted and were sentenced to two years' imprisonment. So much for Stoner's memorandum. But did it refer to the same event to which Kitely made reference in his memorandum? It seemed highly probable that it did. It seemed highly probable, too, that the M. & C. of Kitely's entry were the Mallows & Chidforth of Stoner's. And now the problem narrowed to one most serious and crucial point—were the Mallows and Chidforth of these references the Mallalieu and Cotherstone of Highmarket.
Speculating on this possibility, Brereton after his solitary dinner went into Bent's smoking-room, and throwing himself into a chair before the fire, lighted his pipe and proceeded to think things out. It was abundantly clear to him by that time that Kitely and Stoner had been in possession of a secret: it seemed certain that both had been murdered by some person who desired to silence them. There was no possible doubt as to Kitely's murder: from what Brereton had heard that afternoon there seemed to be just as little doubt that Stoner had also been murdered. He had heard what the local medical men had to say—one and all agreed that though the clerk had received injuries in his fall which would produce almost instantaneous death he had received a mortal blow before he fell. Who struck that blow? Everything seemed to point to the fact that the man who struck it was the man who strangled Kitely—a man of great muscular power.
Glancing around the room as he sat in a big easy chair, his hands behind his head, Brereton's eyes fell suddenly on Kitely's legacy to Windle Bent. The queer-looking old volume which, because of its black calf binding and brass clasp, might easily have been taken for a prayer-book, lay just where Bent had set it down on his desk when Christopher Pett formally handed it over—so far as Brereton knew Bent up to now had never even opened it. And it was with no particular motive that Brereton now reached out and picked it up, and unsnapping the clasp began idly to turn over the leaves on which the old detective had pasted cuttings from newspapers and made entries in his crabbed handwriting. Brereton believed that he was idly handling what Pett had jocosely described the book to be—a mere scrap-book. It never entered his head that he held in his hands almost the whole solution of the mystery which was puzzling him.
No man knows how inspiration comes to him, and Brereton never knew how it was that suddenly, in the flash of an eye, in the swiftness of thought, he knew that he had found what he wanted. Suggestion might have had something to do with it. Kitely had written the word Scrap-book on the first blank page. Afterwards, at the tops of pages, he had filled in dates in big figures—for reference—1875—1879—1887—and so on. And Brereton suddenly saw, and understood, and realized. The cryptic entry in Kitely's pocket-book became plain as the plainest print. M. & C. v. S. B. cir. 81:—Brereton could amplify that now. Kitely, like all men who dabble in antiquarian pursuits, knew a bit of Latin, and naturally made an occasional airing of his knowledge. The full entry, of course, meant M. &. C. vide (=see) Scrap-Book circa (=about) 1881.