“I’m afraid,” said Leyland, “that’s not the way we go to work. The force, I mean. It’s quite true Brinkman is not the man I have under suspicion at the moment, but I’m only working on a theory, and that theory may prove to be a false one. I’m not certain of it yet, and I should have to be certain of it before I acquitted Brinkman.”
“But, hang it all, look at the question of motive. Simmonds, I grant you, had a reasonable motive for wanting to make away with his uncle. He had grounds for thinking that his uncle’s death would mean a clear half-million to him. He had quarrelled with his uncle, and thought he had been treated badly. He disapproved of his uncle, and regarded him as a bloodsucker. The fact that Mottram was down at Chilthorpe was an excellent opportunity, and a rare opportunity, for young Simmonds to get at him. Seldom the time and the place and the hated one all together. But your Brinkman, as far as we can see, was only affected by the death in the sense that he has lost a good job and has now to look out for another one, with no late employer to supply him with testimonials. Personally, I believe Brinkman did know about the alteration in the will; at least he knew about the uncertainty of Mottram’s health. Can you suppose that, even if Simmonds offered to go halves with him, he would consent to be an accomplice in what might prove a wholly unnecessary crime?”
“You’re assuming too much. We don’t know yet that Brinkman has no financial interest in the affair. Look here—this is far-fetched, I grant you, but it’s not impossible: Everybody says Mottram had no family; whose word have they for that except his own? Where did he pick up Brinkman? No one knows. Why did he want a secretary? There was some talk of writing a history of Pullford, but nothing ever came of it. Why, then, this curious interest which Mottram takes in Brinkman? I don’t say it’s likely, but I say it’s possible that Brinkman is Mottram’s son by a clandestine marriage. If that’s so, and if Brinkman didn’t know about the codicil, he may himself be the next of kin who is preparing to step into the half-million. And a clever man—Brinkman is a clever man—might find it convenient to get Mottram out of the way, and get some one else to do it for him. He is afraid that Mottram will live to be sixty-five, and the policy will leave no benefits behind it. Or he is afraid that Mottram is going to make a new will. What does he do? Why, he goes to Simmonds, and points out to him that as the next of kin he would score by putting Mottram through it. Simmonds does so, all unsuspecting; and here’s Brinkman, only waiting to step in and claim the half-million on the strength of his mother’s marriage-lines!”
“You’re too confoundedly ingenious. Things don’t happen like that.”
“Things have happened like that before now, and with less than half a million to give grounds for them. No, I’m not going to leave Brinkman out of my calculations, and therefore I’m not going to take him into my confidence. But this eavesdropping of his does give us a very important chance, and we’re going to use it.”
“I don’t quite see how.”
“That’s because you’re not a professional, and you don’t know the way things are done in the force. The outside public doesn’t, and we don’t mean it to. We don’t show our workings. But half, or say a third at least, of the big businesses we clear up are cleared up by bluff, by leading the suspected man on and encouraging him to give himself away. Sometimes it isn’t a very pretty business, of course; we have to use agents who are none too scrupulous. But here we’ve got a ready-made chance of bluffing our man, and bluffing him into betraying himself.”
“How, exactly?”
“You and I are going to meet again in that mill-house. And we are going to talk about it openly beforehand, so that we can be jolly sure Brinkman will creep up behind and listen to us. And when we’ve got him comfortably fixed there listening to us, you and I are going to lead him up the garden. We are going to make him overhear something which is really meant for his ears, though he thinks it’s meant for anybody’s ears rather than his own.”
“Oh, I see—a fake conversation. I say, I’m not much of an actor. Angela would do it far better than I should.”