|
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 27
"Well, it's just a question of where people happen to keep their
keys. You go up to your bedroom, and perhaps you like to lock
your door in case anybody comes wandering in when you've only got
one sock and a pair of braces on. Well, that's natural enough.
And if you look round the bedrooms of almost any house, you'll
find the keys all ready, so that you can lock yourself in at a
moment's notice. But downstairs people don't lock themselves in.
It's really never done at all. Bill, for instance, has never
locked himself into the dining-room in order to be alone with the
sherry. On the other hand, all women, and particularly servants,
have a horror of burglars. And if a burglar gets in by the
window, they like to limit his activities to that particular
room. So they keep the, keys on the outside of the doors, and
lock the doors when they go to bed." He knocked the ashes out of
his pipe, and added, "At least, my mother always used to."
"You mean," said Bill excitedly, "that the key was on the outside
of the door when Mark went into the room?"
"Well, I was just wondering."
"Have you noticed the other rooms the billiard-room, and library,
and so on?" said Cayley.
"I've only just thought about it while I've been sitting out
here. You live here haven't you ever noticed them?"
Cayley sat considering, with his head on one side.
"It seems rather absurd, you know, but I can't say that I have."
He turned to Bill. "Have you?"
"Good Lord, no. I should never worry about a thing like that."
"I'm sure you wouldn't," laughed Antony. "Well, we can have a
look when we go in. If the other keys are outside, then this one
was probably outside too, and in that case well, it makes it more
interesting."
Cayley said nothing. Bill chewed a piece of grass, and then
said, "Does it make much difference?"
"It makes it more hard to understand what happened in there.
Take your accidental theory and see where you get to. No
instinctive turning of the key now, is there? He's got to open
the door to get it, and opening the door means showing his head
to anybody in the hall--his cousin, for instance, whom he left
there two minutes ago. Is a man in Mark's state of mind,
frightened to death lest he should be found with the body, going
to do anything so foolhardy as that?"
"He needn't have been afraid of me," said Cayley.
"Then why didn't he call for you? He knew you were about. You
could have advised him; Heaven knows he wanted advice. But the
whole theory of Mark's escape is that he was afraid of you and of
everybody else, and that he had no other idea but to get out of
the room himself, and prevent you or the servants from coming
into it. If the key had been on the inside, he would probably
have locked the door. If it were on the outside, he almost
certainly wouldn't."
"Yes, I expect you're right," said Bill thoughtfully. "Unless he
took the key in with him, and locked the door at once."
"Exactly. But in that case you have to build up a new theory
entirely."
"You mean that it makes it seem more deliberate?"
"Yes; that, certainly. But it also seems to make Mark out an
absolute idiot. Just suppose for a moment that, for urgent
reasons which neither of you know anything about, he had wished
to get rid of his brother. Would he have done it like that?
Just killed him and then run away? Why, that's practically
suicide--suicide whilst of unsound mind. No. If you really
wanted to remove an undesirable brother, you would do it a little
bit more cleverly than that. You'd begin by treating him as a
friend, so as to avoid suspicion, and when you did kill him at
last, you would try to make it look like an accident, or suicide,
or the work of some other man. Wouldn't you?"
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|