The Viaduct Murder

Marryatt (that was the clergyman, yes; I see you are a proper reader for a detective-story) rose once more and took a good look at the weather. The fog was lifting, but the rain still fell pitilessly. “I shouldn’t wonder,” he said, “if we had some showers before nightfall.”

“It’s a curious thing,” said Carmichael, “that the early Basque poets always speak of the night not as falling but as rising. I suppose they had a right to look at it that way. Now, for myself⁠—”

Marryatt, fortunately, knew him well enough to interrupt him. “It’s the sort of afternoon,” he said darkly, “on which one wants to murder somebody, just to relieve one’s feelings.”

“You would be wrong,” said Reeves. “Think of the footmarks you’d be bound to leave behind you in mud like this. You would be caught in no time.”

The view from the third tee was one which even a golfer might pause to admire. Let the Wordsworthian say what he will, railways ennoble our landscape; they give to our unassuming valleys a hint of motive and destination. More especially, a main line with four tracks pillowed on a sweep of tall embankment, that cannot cross a meandering country stream without a stilt-walk upon vast columns of enduring granite, captivates, if not the eye, at least the imagination. Such was the railway that stretched far into the distance, paralleling the course of your drive on the right: such was the great viaduct, some hundred feet ahead of you, that spanned laboriously, over four giant arches, the little river Gudgeon, most insignificant of streams. Shallow and narrow it ran, fringed by willow-herb and meadowsweet, a paddling-place for cows and for unoccupied caddies. Here and there it threw out a patch of osiers⁠—one in particular, that nestled at the foot of the railway-arches, was especially dreaded by golfers. In front, just visible above the railway where it receded northwards, were the thatched and tiled roofs of Paston Whitchurch, the next station down the line. To the right lay the old house, in its melancholy grandeur, behind it the village and church of Paston Oatvile. A superb avenue of elms connected the old house with the road between the two villages. The sun had newly come out, showing grass the greener and earth the browner for the late rain; elemental scents of turf and furrow greeted its restoration.

It may be doubted whether Mordaunt Reeves was particularly sensitive to such influences; if he was, it may have been this distraction which made him slice his drive.

He strolled over to look at it again just as the last trump was led.

“Good God!”

The others turned, in all the irritation of an interrupted train of thought, to find him staring at the photograph as if in horror. Then he stepped quickly across to the lamp, and turned it sideways so as to throw the light full on the wall. And then they too turned a little pale. The photograph had smiled.

There was, to be sure, only the faintest flicker of a smile on the lips; you could not give any formula of it or trace the lines of it. And yet it was the simultaneous impression of these four men that the whole character, the whole impression of the face before them had changed while they had played three hands of bridge. The whole face was indefinably more human and more beautiful; but you could not say why.

“Oh, for God’s sake let’s give the beastly thing up!” cried Marryatt. “It doesn’t do to meddle with these things; one doesn’t know what one’s up against.

The passage was startlingly high, having the whole height of the outer room. It was so narrow that you instinctively edged sideways along it, though there was just room to walk breast-forward and avoid contact with the cobweb-matted walls. It began to descend almost immediately, by a series of wooden steps; and by a rough calculation Gordon made out that they were below the level of Reeves’ floor by the time they had reached the parallel of Reeves’ inner wall. At this point they had to stoop, a circumstance which rather confused their plan of campaign; and it was clear that this part of the hiding-place was substracted, not from the thickness of the walls but from the depth of the floor. There was a sharp turn to the right, which showed that they were now following the course of the passage which led past Reeves’ room. The dust on the floor of the passage was thick and fine, easily showing the traces of confused, but recent, human footprints.

Quite suddenly the passage opened out to the left, and at the same time a very meagre ray of light from outside attracted their attention. They found a chamber some seven feet square, with a tiny squint to let in the light, from some unnoticeable chink in the brickwork of the outer wall. The height of this chamber was still such that a full-grown man could not stand up without stooping, but the presence of light and air made it contrast agreeably with the passage outside.

“And if it was put there, it was put there to create a false impression, obviously. Now, let’s see; what false impression could you create by putting a ticket in a dead man’s pocket? That he was travelling on a different day⁠—of course, that’s possible.”

“Yes, but that wasn’t it: I mean, it wasn’t on Monday that he was killed. Because he was seen going up on Tuesday morning; they said that at the inquest.”

“Good, then that’s excluded. Or you might create the impression that he was travelling third when he was really travelling first. But that would be useless, wouldn’t it, because lots of people on this line travel first on a third-class ticket when the trains are crowded, and this train was. Or you might create the impression that he was travelling, when he wasn’t really travelling at all. But Brotherhood clearly was, because he came up from London all right. The only other false impression would be that his destination was different from what it really was. But dash it all, his ticket was for Paston Whitchurch, and he was killed⁠—Oh, good Lord!”

“What’s the matter?”

“What fools we’ve been! Don’t you see that if the man was really pitched out of the three o’clock from London, which doesn’t stop between Weighford and Binver, a ticket for Paston Whitchurch would disguise the fact that he came by that train, and make everybody think he came in the later one⁠—the 4: from Paston Oatvile?”