“A blind. Davenant was to look as if he were packing up to go away, so he must take some clothes with him, not merely the shaving things.”
“But the towel and the soap? Surely they were not necessary to complete the illusion?”
“No, they are even more significant. Davenant—don’t you remember?—had rather darker eyebrows than Brotherhood. Quite easily done, of course, with paint. But you want something to wash it off with; and there are no corridors on the slow trains.”
“Yes, but look here,” objected Reeves, “why did he want to take all these things away with him on Monday?—it was on Tuesday he was timed to disappear—or rather, actually on Wednesday: his sleeper was for Wednesday.”
“I don’t think he meant to sleep the Tuesday night at the Hatcheries. He had transferred his base somewhere else—to London, I suppose—and his visit to Paston Whitchurch, on the pretext of picking up something he had left behind, was merely meant to establish, in our eyes, the fact that he was a different man from Brotherhood.”
“There’s one more thing, though,” said Marryatt; “I’m afraid it’s a kind of professional objection. Is it possible that a man who was really an atheist would be at the pains to go over every Sunday to Mass at Paston Bridge? Davenant, you see, was very regular about that. Or, granted that he was really a Catholic, could he bring himself to get up and preach atheist doctrines on the village green?”
Carmichael pulled a wry face. “I’m afraid, Marryatt, you are altogether too confiding. Don’t you see that he was a Catholic, and was doing the work of his own Church by turning the villagers against you and your doctrines? Don’t you see that if he managed to make atheists of your people, it would be all the easier for the priest at Paston Bridge to make Romans of them?”
“In fact,” said Gordon, “what it comes to is this: we have got to look for a criminal still; but it’s no use looking for Davenant?”
“You would be chasing a phantom,” said Carmichael.