|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 105
Antony laughed and apologized.
"Sorry, Bill. I felt like that suddenly. Just for the last
half-hour; just to end up with. I'll tell you everything now.
Not that there's anything to tell, really. It seems so easy when
you know it--so obvious. About Mr. Cartwright of Wimpole Street.
Of course he was just to identify the body."
"But whatever made you think of a dentist for that?"
"Who could do it better? Could you have done it? How could you?
You'd never gone bathing with Mark; you'd never seen him
stripped. He didn't swim. Could his doctor do it? Not unless
he'd had some particular operation, and perhaps not then. But
his dentists could--at any time, always--if he had been to his
dentist fairly often. Hence Mr. Cartwright of Wimpole Street."
Bill nodded thoughtfully and went back again to the letter.
"I see. And you told Cayley that you were telegraphing to
Cartwright to identify the body?"
"Yes. And then of course it was all up for him. Once we knew
that Robert was Mark we knew everything."
"How did you know?"
Antony got up from the breakfast table and began to fill his
pipe.
"I'm not sure that I can say, Bill. You know those problems in
Algebra where you say, 'Let x be the answer,' and then you work
it out and find what x is. Well, that's one way; and another
way, which they never give you any marks for at school, is to
guess the answer. Pretend the answer is 4--well, will that
satisfy the conditions of the problem? No. Then try 6; and if 6
doesn't either, then what about 5?--and so on. Well, the
Inspector and the Coroner and all that lot had guessed their
answer, and it seemed to fit, but you and I knew it didn't really
fit; there were several conditions in the problem which it didn't
fit at all. So we knew that their answer was wrong, and we had
to think of another--an answer which explained all the things
which were puzzling us. Well, I happened to guess the right one.
Got a match?"
Bill handed him a box, and he lit his pipe.
"Yes, but that doesn't quite do, old boy. Something must have
put you on to it suddenly. By the way, I'll have my matches
back, if you don't mind."
Antony laughed and took them out of his pocket.
"Sorry .... Well then, let's see if I can go through my own mind
again, and tell you how I guessed it. First of all, the
clothes."
"Yes?"
"To Cayley the clothes seemed an enormously important clue. I
didn't quite see why, but I did realize that to a man in Cayley's
position the smallest clue would have an entirely
disproportionate value. For some reason, then, Cayley attached
this exaggerated importance to the clothes which Mark was wearing
on that Tuesday morning; all the clothes, the inside ones as well
as the outside ones. I didn't know why, but I did feel certain
that, in that case, the absence of the collar was unintentional.
In collecting the clothes he had overlooked the collar. Why?"
"It was the one in the linen-basket?"
"Yes. It seemed probable. Why had Cayley put it there? The
obvious answer was that he hadn't. Mark had put it there. I
remembered what you told me about Mark being finicky, and having
lots of clothes and so on, and I felt that he was just the sort
of man who would never wear the same collar twice." He paused,
and then asked, "Is that right, do you think?"
"Absolutely," said Bill with conviction.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|