Chapter VI.The Movements of Mr. Davenant

Chapter VI.The Movements of Mr. DavenantGordon felt that he was in a favourable position for inquiring into the whereabouts of the mysterious Mr. Davenant. He was himself little known at Paston Whitchurch, since he had only been a month at the dormy-house, and his walks abroad had not carried him much farther than the links. On the other hand, he knew a good deal, from club gossip, about the habits of Mr. Davenant. The Hatcheries was not one of the red-tile-and-rough-cast monuments with which a modern architect had improved the scenery in the neighbourhood of the links; it was a substantial cottage where, in grander days, the home fisherman of Paston Oatvile Park used to live, and look after all that was liquid in the property. It was now occupied permanently by a morose gentleman called Sullivan, who acted as green-keeper to the Club and did a little market gardening at home, and occasionally (that is, during the week-ends) by the scratch player and mystery man, Mr. Davenant. Legally speaking, the cottage was Davenant’s property and Sullivan was the caretaker; actually, it would be a clearer account of the position to say that Sullivan rented the cottage from Davenant, and Davenant, every week-end, became the lodger of his own tenant.It was, then, as a member of the Club that Gordon must approach his interview with Mr. Sullivan, and he was not left much choice of disguises or of excuses. He decided that on the whole bluff would pay best. Accordingly, as soon as Sullivan opened the door in answer to his ring, he began:“Did Mr. Davenant leave any message for me this morning before he left?”“What’s that?”“I met Mr. Davenant yesterday on the platform, and tried to make some arrangements with him about having a game next Sunday, and he said he’d leave a note for me at the dormy-house, but it isn’t there, so I thought perhaps he’d left it here instead. Did he say anything to you about it?”“He did not. It’s not since Monday morning I’ve set eyes on Mr. Davenant.”“But he was here yesterday, surely?”“He was not.”“That’s very extraordinary, because I met him on the train, and I certainly understood him to say he was coming here. Could he possibly have been staying at the Club-house?”“He might.”“Well, I’m sorry to have troubled you. Good evening.”Gordon had the definite impression that when Sullivan came to the door he was not simply answering the bell; there had been no time for him to hear the bell—he had been going out anyhow. There was a thick hedge at the end of the path which led to the Hatcheries; and behind this hedge, I am sorry to say, Gordon concealed himself. He was the most placid and regular of men, but the ardour of the hunt was beginning to lay hold of him. It was only about a minute and a half later that Sullivan came out, carrying a small bag, and took the path that led to the links. For a moment the watcher thought of shadowing him, then decided that it would be silly. If he went over the golf-links, the open ground would make it quite impossible to follow without being noticed; besides, the links would be full of people whom he knew, and he might easily get delayed. He resolved suddenly on a still more heroic course. Nobody else lived in the cottage—why not try to force an entrance while Sullivan was out, and satisfy himself on circumstantial evidence whether Davenant had really been in the cottage or not?Breaking into a house is, as a rule, a difficult proceeding, even if it is your own and you know the ropes. To break into a stranger’s house, when you are not even certain whether a dog is kept; is a still more heroic affair. The door had locked itself; the ground-floor windows were shut and snibbed. The only chance seemed to be crawling up the roof of a little outhouse and through an open window on the first floor; a bathroom window, to judge by the ample sponge which was drying on the sill. With rubber on his shoes, Gordon made a fairly good job of the outhouse roof. The window was a more serious proposition; it was very narrow, and encumbered on the inside by an array of little bottles. It is easy to put your head and shoulders through such a window, but that means a nose-dive on to the floor. To put your legs through first is to court the possibility of promiscuous breakage. Very carefully Gordon removed all fragile objects out of range, and then with extreme discomfort squeezed his legs through the opening. Even so, there was a moment at which he felt his back must necessarily break, when he was just half-way through. Landing at last without misfortune, he set out quickly on a tour of the silent cottage.It was only Davenant’s part of the house that interested him—the bathroom, a bedroom, a small dining-room, and a study. They all bore the marks of recent inhabitation; but was this anything to go by? Davenant, in any case, would not be expected back for a week, and Sullivan did not strike Gordon as the kind of man who would be inclined to tidy up on Monday when Friday would do just as well. The bed, indeed, was made; but the grate in the study had not been cleared of cigarette-ends; the dining-room table was bare, but Monday’s paper was still lying across a chair, as if thrown down at random. On the whole the evidence pointed to Monday as the day of departure; Monday, not Tuesday, appeared on a tear-off calendar; a letter which had arrived on Monday evening was still waiting in the hall; and there were no clothes left in the dirty-clothes basket. Such an authority did Gordon feel himself to be on the subject of washing since his experiences at Binver that he investigated equally the clothes which had come back from the wash, and the list which accompanied them. And here was a curious phenomenon; the list referred to two collars, two handkerchiefs, and a pair of socks as having been disgorged by the Binver authorities, but none of these seemed to have crystallized in real life. “Binver is doing itself proud,” murmured Gordon to himself, “or could it possibly be——” He went and looked in the bathroom again: there was the sponge all right, which seemed to insist that Davenant kept a duplicate series of what the shops call toilet accessories; but where was the razor, the shaving soap, the tooth-brush? It seemed, after all, as if Davenant had packed for the week instead of leaving a duplicate week-end set behind him. But—Good Lord! This was still more curious. There was no soap in the bathroom, although there were traces of its presence still discernible. Surely no one packing after a week-end in the country took the soap with him? The face-towel, too, was gone; yet the face-towel was distinctly mentioned in the washing-list. No, decidedly there was something wrong about Davenant’s exit.Another curious thing—there was every evidence that Davenant was a smoker, and yet not a cigarette, not a pipe, not an ounce of tobacco left in the study. Of course, it was possible that Sullivan was very tidy and put them away somewhere, or that he was dishonest, and treated them as perquisites. But once more Gordon had the impression that Davenant had packed like a man who is leaving his base, not like a man who has just week-ended at a Saturday-to-Monday cottage. Like a man going abroad, even, or why did he take the soap with him? One piece of supplementary evidence was to be found in the study. A large and highly ornamented photograph frame stood on the writing-table there; but it had no photograph in it, and the back was unfastened, as if the portrait had been recently and suddenly removed. If circumstantial evidence went for anything, it seemed clear that when Davenant left the house last—apparently on Monday—he left it in the spirit of a man who does not expect to return immediately, and carries all his immediate needs with him.So far the investigation had proceeded, when Gordon happened to look out of a front window, and was discomposed by observing that Sullivan was coming back already down the lane. There was no time to be lost; he hastily ran downstairs and out at the front door. It would be taking a considerable risk to trust to the mazes of the back garden, and he decided to make for the hedge. But before he could reach it, Sullivan turned the corner into the garden-path and confronted him.“I’m so sorry,” he said, on the inspiration of the moment, “but could you tell me what Mr. Davenant’s address is? I shall have to write to him, and this is the only address they’ve got up at the Club.”“Mr. Davenant left no address,” said Sullivan, and, try as he would, Gordon could not determine whether there was suspicion in his tone. However, the awkward corner was turned, and it was with some feeling of self-congratulation that he made his way back to the dormy-house.He came back to find Reeves closeted with Marryatt and Carmichael, to whom he was explaining the whole story of their adventures. “I hope you won’t think it a breach of confidence,” was his explanation, “but the last disappointment I’ve had has made me feel that we must be on the wrong tack somewhere; and it’s no good for us two to try and correct each other. It’s like correcting the proofs of a book; you must get an outsider in to do it. So I thought, as Marryatt and Carmichael were with us at the start, it would be best to take them fully into our confidence, and make a foursome of it.”“Delighted,” said Gordon. “I’ve been prospecting a bit, but I can’t say I’ve got much forrarder.”“Did you ask whether Davenant was there yesterday?”“Yes, I interviewed Sullivan on the subject, and he said ‘No.’ ”“That I can’t believe,” said Carmichael.“Why, what about it?” asked Gordon, a little ruffled.“I’m sure Sullivan didn’t say ‘No.’ Have you never observed that an Irishman is incapable of saying yes or no to a plain question? If you say, Has the rain stopped, he won’t say Yes, or No; he’ll say, It has, or It hasn’t. The explanation of that is a perfectly simple one: there is no native word for either in Irish, any more than there is in Latin. And that in its turn throws a very important light on the Irish character——”“Oh, go and throw an important light on your grandmother’s ducks,” said Reeves. “I want to hear about this interview. Was he telling the truth, d’you think?”“From his manner, I thought not. So, when his back was turned, I made bold to enter the house and take a look round for myself.” And he described the evening’s entertainment in detail.“By Jove, you are warming to the part,” said Marryatt. “I should like to see you get run in by the police, Gordon.”“You say,” Reeves interrupted, “that you don’t think he was there yesterday, on the Tuesday, that is, because he hadn’t taken the letter away. He went off, then, on Monday, but when he went off he took with him all that a man normally takes with him if he’s going to sleep in a different house that night, plus a piece of soap and a towel, which are not things one usually carries about in one’s luggage?”“That’s the best I can make of it,” said Gordon. “And the photograph—it might be an accident, of course, but I feel convinced that he put that in his luggage at the last moment.”“And that’s frightfully important,” said Reeves, “because it obviously means that on Monday, before anything happened to Brotherhood, Davenant was reckoning on leaving home for some little time; and not returning immediately to wherever it is he lives ordinarily, because he must keep collars and things there. But he also thought he might be away for some longish time, or he wouldn’t have worried to take the photograph with him. What was the frame like?”“Quite modern; no maker’s name on it.”“I’m afraid that means the murder must have been a premeditated one,” put in Marryatt. “I hope it’s not uncharitable to say so, but I never did like Davenant. I don’t think I’m ordinarily a person of very narrow religious views, and I’ve known Romans that were quite easy to get on with. But Davenant was a person of quite ungovernable temper, you must remember that.”“His ungovernable temper would be much more important,” objected Gordon, “if the murder were not a premeditated one.”“But it’s not only that,” persisted Marryatt. “To me, there was always something sinister about him; he had fits of melancholy, and would rail at the people and the politicians he didn’t like in a way that was almost frightening. Surely I’m not alone in that impression?”“What did Davenant look like?” asked Carmichael suddenly.“Good Lord,” said Reeves, “you ought to remember that well enough. You must have met him down here pretty well every week-end, and he was quite well known.”“Oh yes,” explained Carmichael. “I know what he looked like. I’m only asking you to see ifyouremember. If you were asked in a witness-box, what would you say Davenant looked like?”“Well,” said Reeves, rather taken aback, “I suppose one would certainly say he was very dark. Very dark hair, I mean, and a great deal of it, so that it made the rest of his face rather unnoticeable. What I generally notice about a man is his eyes, and I never got much impression of Davenant’s, because he nearly always wore those heavy horn-rimmed spectacles. And then of course he was a rattling good player. If he murdered Brotherhood, as Marryatt seems positive he did, I can tell you one motive that I can’t accept for his doing it. He wasn’t jealous of Brotherhood’s golf. Poor old Brotherhood was about as rotten as Davenant is good.”“It’s very extraordinary to me,” said Carmichael, “that you should say all that, and yet not have arrived at the obvious fact about this mystery. The root fact, I mean, which you have to take into account before you start investigating the circumstances at all. You simply haven’t seen that fact, although it’s right under your nose. And that’s a very curious thing, the way you can look at a complex of facts ninety-nine times, and only notice the point of them the hundredth time. The phenomenon of attention——”“Oh, cut it out,” said Gordon; “whatisthe fact we haven’t noticed?”“Oh, that,” said Carmichael lightly, “merely that Brotherhood is Davenant, and Davenant is Brotherhood.”

Gordon felt that he was in a favourable position for inquiring into the whereabouts of the mysterious Mr. Davenant. He was himself little known at Paston Whitchurch, since he had only been a month at the dormy-house, and his walks abroad had not carried him much farther than the links. On the other hand, he knew a good deal, from club gossip, about the habits of Mr. Davenant. The Hatcheries was not one of the red-tile-and-rough-cast monuments with which a modern architect had improved the scenery in the neighbourhood of the links; it was a substantial cottage where, in grander days, the home fisherman of Paston Oatvile Park used to live, and look after all that was liquid in the property. It was now occupied permanently by a morose gentleman called Sullivan, who acted as green-keeper to the Club and did a little market gardening at home, and occasionally (that is, during the week-ends) by the scratch player and mystery man, Mr. Davenant. Legally speaking, the cottage was Davenant’s property and Sullivan was the caretaker; actually, it would be a clearer account of the position to say that Sullivan rented the cottage from Davenant, and Davenant, every week-end, became the lodger of his own tenant.

It was, then, as a member of the Club that Gordon must approach his interview with Mr. Sullivan, and he was not left much choice of disguises or of excuses. He decided that on the whole bluff would pay best. Accordingly, as soon as Sullivan opened the door in answer to his ring, he began:

“Did Mr. Davenant leave any message for me this morning before he left?”

“What’s that?”

“I met Mr. Davenant yesterday on the platform, and tried to make some arrangements with him about having a game next Sunday, and he said he’d leave a note for me at the dormy-house, but it isn’t there, so I thought perhaps he’d left it here instead. Did he say anything to you about it?”

“He did not. It’s not since Monday morning I’ve set eyes on Mr. Davenant.”

“But he was here yesterday, surely?”

“He was not.”

“That’s very extraordinary, because I met him on the train, and I certainly understood him to say he was coming here. Could he possibly have been staying at the Club-house?”

“He might.”

“Well, I’m sorry to have troubled you. Good evening.”

Gordon had the definite impression that when Sullivan came to the door he was not simply answering the bell; there had been no time for him to hear the bell—he had been going out anyhow. There was a thick hedge at the end of the path which led to the Hatcheries; and behind this hedge, I am sorry to say, Gordon concealed himself. He was the most placid and regular of men, but the ardour of the hunt was beginning to lay hold of him. It was only about a minute and a half later that Sullivan came out, carrying a small bag, and took the path that led to the links. For a moment the watcher thought of shadowing him, then decided that it would be silly. If he went over the golf-links, the open ground would make it quite impossible to follow without being noticed; besides, the links would be full of people whom he knew, and he might easily get delayed. He resolved suddenly on a still more heroic course. Nobody else lived in the cottage—why not try to force an entrance while Sullivan was out, and satisfy himself on circumstantial evidence whether Davenant had really been in the cottage or not?

Breaking into a house is, as a rule, a difficult proceeding, even if it is your own and you know the ropes. To break into a stranger’s house, when you are not even certain whether a dog is kept; is a still more heroic affair. The door had locked itself; the ground-floor windows were shut and snibbed. The only chance seemed to be crawling up the roof of a little outhouse and through an open window on the first floor; a bathroom window, to judge by the ample sponge which was drying on the sill. With rubber on his shoes, Gordon made a fairly good job of the outhouse roof. The window was a more serious proposition; it was very narrow, and encumbered on the inside by an array of little bottles. It is easy to put your head and shoulders through such a window, but that means a nose-dive on to the floor. To put your legs through first is to court the possibility of promiscuous breakage. Very carefully Gordon removed all fragile objects out of range, and then with extreme discomfort squeezed his legs through the opening. Even so, there was a moment at which he felt his back must necessarily break, when he was just half-way through. Landing at last without misfortune, he set out quickly on a tour of the silent cottage.

It was only Davenant’s part of the house that interested him—the bathroom, a bedroom, a small dining-room, and a study. They all bore the marks of recent inhabitation; but was this anything to go by? Davenant, in any case, would not be expected back for a week, and Sullivan did not strike Gordon as the kind of man who would be inclined to tidy up on Monday when Friday would do just as well. The bed, indeed, was made; but the grate in the study had not been cleared of cigarette-ends; the dining-room table was bare, but Monday’s paper was still lying across a chair, as if thrown down at random. On the whole the evidence pointed to Monday as the day of departure; Monday, not Tuesday, appeared on a tear-off calendar; a letter which had arrived on Monday evening was still waiting in the hall; and there were no clothes left in the dirty-clothes basket. Such an authority did Gordon feel himself to be on the subject of washing since his experiences at Binver that he investigated equally the clothes which had come back from the wash, and the list which accompanied them. And here was a curious phenomenon; the list referred to two collars, two handkerchiefs, and a pair of socks as having been disgorged by the Binver authorities, but none of these seemed to have crystallized in real life. “Binver is doing itself proud,” murmured Gordon to himself, “or could it possibly be——” He went and looked in the bathroom again: there was the sponge all right, which seemed to insist that Davenant kept a duplicate series of what the shops call toilet accessories; but where was the razor, the shaving soap, the tooth-brush? It seemed, after all, as if Davenant had packed for the week instead of leaving a duplicate week-end set behind him. But—Good Lord! This was still more curious. There was no soap in the bathroom, although there were traces of its presence still discernible. Surely no one packing after a week-end in the country took the soap with him? The face-towel, too, was gone; yet the face-towel was distinctly mentioned in the washing-list. No, decidedly there was something wrong about Davenant’s exit.

Another curious thing—there was every evidence that Davenant was a smoker, and yet not a cigarette, not a pipe, not an ounce of tobacco left in the study. Of course, it was possible that Sullivan was very tidy and put them away somewhere, or that he was dishonest, and treated them as perquisites. But once more Gordon had the impression that Davenant had packed like a man who is leaving his base, not like a man who has just week-ended at a Saturday-to-Monday cottage. Like a man going abroad, even, or why did he take the soap with him? One piece of supplementary evidence was to be found in the study. A large and highly ornamented photograph frame stood on the writing-table there; but it had no photograph in it, and the back was unfastened, as if the portrait had been recently and suddenly removed. If circumstantial evidence went for anything, it seemed clear that when Davenant left the house last—apparently on Monday—he left it in the spirit of a man who does not expect to return immediately, and carries all his immediate needs with him.

So far the investigation had proceeded, when Gordon happened to look out of a front window, and was discomposed by observing that Sullivan was coming back already down the lane. There was no time to be lost; he hastily ran downstairs and out at the front door. It would be taking a considerable risk to trust to the mazes of the back garden, and he decided to make for the hedge. But before he could reach it, Sullivan turned the corner into the garden-path and confronted him.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, on the inspiration of the moment, “but could you tell me what Mr. Davenant’s address is? I shall have to write to him, and this is the only address they’ve got up at the Club.”

“Mr. Davenant left no address,” said Sullivan, and, try as he would, Gordon could not determine whether there was suspicion in his tone. However, the awkward corner was turned, and it was with some feeling of self-congratulation that he made his way back to the dormy-house.

He came back to find Reeves closeted with Marryatt and Carmichael, to whom he was explaining the whole story of their adventures. “I hope you won’t think it a breach of confidence,” was his explanation, “but the last disappointment I’ve had has made me feel that we must be on the wrong tack somewhere; and it’s no good for us two to try and correct each other. It’s like correcting the proofs of a book; you must get an outsider in to do it. So I thought, as Marryatt and Carmichael were with us at the start, it would be best to take them fully into our confidence, and make a foursome of it.”

“Delighted,” said Gordon. “I’ve been prospecting a bit, but I can’t say I’ve got much forrarder.”

“Did you ask whether Davenant was there yesterday?”

“Yes, I interviewed Sullivan on the subject, and he said ‘No.’ ”

“That I can’t believe,” said Carmichael.

“Why, what about it?” asked Gordon, a little ruffled.

“I’m sure Sullivan didn’t say ‘No.’ Have you never observed that an Irishman is incapable of saying yes or no to a plain question? If you say, Has the rain stopped, he won’t say Yes, or No; he’ll say, It has, or It hasn’t. The explanation of that is a perfectly simple one: there is no native word for either in Irish, any more than there is in Latin. And that in its turn throws a very important light on the Irish character——”

“Oh, go and throw an important light on your grandmother’s ducks,” said Reeves. “I want to hear about this interview. Was he telling the truth, d’you think?”

“From his manner, I thought not. So, when his back was turned, I made bold to enter the house and take a look round for myself.” And he described the evening’s entertainment in detail.

“By Jove, you are warming to the part,” said Marryatt. “I should like to see you get run in by the police, Gordon.”

“You say,” Reeves interrupted, “that you don’t think he was there yesterday, on the Tuesday, that is, because he hadn’t taken the letter away. He went off, then, on Monday, but when he went off he took with him all that a man normally takes with him if he’s going to sleep in a different house that night, plus a piece of soap and a towel, which are not things one usually carries about in one’s luggage?”

“That’s the best I can make of it,” said Gordon. “And the photograph—it might be an accident, of course, but I feel convinced that he put that in his luggage at the last moment.”

“And that’s frightfully important,” said Reeves, “because it obviously means that on Monday, before anything happened to Brotherhood, Davenant was reckoning on leaving home for some little time; and not returning immediately to wherever it is he lives ordinarily, because he must keep collars and things there. But he also thought he might be away for some longish time, or he wouldn’t have worried to take the photograph with him. What was the frame like?”

“Quite modern; no maker’s name on it.”

“I’m afraid that means the murder must have been a premeditated one,” put in Marryatt. “I hope it’s not uncharitable to say so, but I never did like Davenant. I don’t think I’m ordinarily a person of very narrow religious views, and I’ve known Romans that were quite easy to get on with. But Davenant was a person of quite ungovernable temper, you must remember that.”

“His ungovernable temper would be much more important,” objected Gordon, “if the murder were not a premeditated one.”

“But it’s not only that,” persisted Marryatt. “To me, there was always something sinister about him; he had fits of melancholy, and would rail at the people and the politicians he didn’t like in a way that was almost frightening. Surely I’m not alone in that impression?”

“What did Davenant look like?” asked Carmichael suddenly.

“Good Lord,” said Reeves, “you ought to remember that well enough. You must have met him down here pretty well every week-end, and he was quite well known.”

“Oh yes,” explained Carmichael. “I know what he looked like. I’m only asking you to see ifyouremember. If you were asked in a witness-box, what would you say Davenant looked like?”

“Well,” said Reeves, rather taken aback, “I suppose one would certainly say he was very dark. Very dark hair, I mean, and a great deal of it, so that it made the rest of his face rather unnoticeable. What I generally notice about a man is his eyes, and I never got much impression of Davenant’s, because he nearly always wore those heavy horn-rimmed spectacles. And then of course he was a rattling good player. If he murdered Brotherhood, as Marryatt seems positive he did, I can tell you one motive that I can’t accept for his doing it. He wasn’t jealous of Brotherhood’s golf. Poor old Brotherhood was about as rotten as Davenant is good.”

“It’s very extraordinary to me,” said Carmichael, “that you should say all that, and yet not have arrived at the obvious fact about this mystery. The root fact, I mean, which you have to take into account before you start investigating the circumstances at all. You simply haven’t seen that fact, although it’s right under your nose. And that’s a very curious thing, the way you can look at a complex of facts ninety-nine times, and only notice the point of them the hundredth time. The phenomenon of attention——”

“Oh, cut it out,” said Gordon; “whatisthe fact we haven’t noticed?”

“Oh, that,” said Carmichael lightly, “merely that Brotherhood is Davenant, and Davenant is Brotherhood.”

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