“The trouble is that Brinkman is, according to his lights, an honest man. And he hated the idea of the Euthanasia money going to the Bishop. I was a godsend to him; here was a nice, stupid man, briefed to defend the thesis of suicide. As soon as I came, he tried to take me out for a walk in the gorge.”
“Why in the gorge?” asked the Bishop.
The three taps as they were found in the morning
“So that I should find the letter. Yesterday he did manage to take me to the gorge, and actually drew my attention to the ledge. I saw a bit of paper there, but it never occurred to me to wonder what it was. Poor Brinkman! He must have thought me an ass!”
“But why didn’t he get the letter himself, and bring it to us? Or leave it lying about?”
“That was the maddening thing, the poor little man just couldn’t reach it. The wind of Monday night had blown it a bit further away, I suspect. Of course, he could have gone out with a step-ladder, or rolled stones up to stand on. But, you see, you were watching him, and I’m pretty sure he knew you were watching him. He thought it best to lead us on, lead me on rather, and make me find out the envelope for myself. When he’d drawn me right across the trail of it, and I’d failed to see it, he was in despair. He decided that he must bolt after all. It was too horrible a position to be here under observation, and fearing arrest at any moment. If he were arrested, you see, he must either tell a lie, and land himself in suspicion, or tell the truth, and see the Euthanasia money fall into Catholic hands.
“He ordered a car from the garage to meet the train which arrives at Chilthorpe at 8.40. He determined to meet it on the way to the station. I don’t think the thought of the car lying at the garage, with the ‘sangwiches’—I mean the sandwiches—and the whisky on board, occurred to him for a moment. He is an honest man. But on his way to meet the car he would go through the gorge, and make sure that he was followed; he would draw attention to the document, and then disappear from the scene. He had not much luggage; he had only to clear up a few papers, mostly belonging to Mottram. Among these was the unsigned will which had been drawn up, ready for Mottram’s signature, on the Monday night. This he burned; it could be no use to anybody now. He burned it standing at the window, and the last, unburnt piece escaped from his fingers, and fluttered down through a second window into the room below—this room, which had been Mottram’s. That was your find, Leyland. And the odd thing is that it was through this absurd detail that I got onto the track of the whole thing; because one of my patience cards fluttered down through a ground-floor window; and as I was carrying it upstairs I realized that was how the scrap of paper came to be lying about in Mottram’s room. Then I began wondering what the will was, and why Brinkman should have been burning it, and suddenly the whole truth began to sketch itself in my mind, just as I’ve been telling it you.
“Brinkman had bad luck to the last. I dropped that card just after he started out with his despatch-box; he saw that I’d disappeared from the window, and supposed, with delight, that I was following him. With delight, for of course I was the one man who was interested in proving the death to be suicide. He went back to the cache in the gorge, leading me (as he supposed) all the way; then he waited for a flash of lightning, and jumped up so as to draw attention to the envelope. As he came down again he looked round, and, in the last rays of the lightning flash, saw that it was Eames, not I, who was following him. Eames—the one man who would certainly make away with the precious document! But there was no time to be lost; he could hear the taxi already on the hill. He ran round to the road, leaped on board the taxi, and, in desperation, sent a note to me by the taxi-man telling me to make Eames shew me what he had found. I don’t know where Brinkman is now, but I rather hope he gets clear.”
“Amen to that,” said Leyland; “it would be uncommonly awkward for us if we found him. What on earth could we charge him with? You can’t hang a man for turning the wrong gas-tap by mistake.”