The Red House MysteryMilne, A. A. (Alan Alexander)
General
The Red House Mystery
Milne, A. A. (Alan Alexander)
Detective and mystery stories; England -- Fiction
They had come to the gate into the last field which divided them from
the road, and having gone through it, they turned round and leant
against it, resting for a moment, and looking down at the house which
they had left.
“Jolly little place, isn’t it?” said Bill.
“Very. But rather mysterious.”
“In what way?”
“Well, where’s the front door?”
“The front door? Why, you’ve just come out of it.”
“But isn’t there a drive, or a road or anything?”
Bill laughed.
“No; that’s the beauty of it to some people. And that’s why it’s so
cheap, and why the Norburys can afford it, I expect. They’re not too
well off.”
“But what about luggage and tradesmen and that kind of thing?”
“Oh, there’s a cart-track, but motor-cars can’t come any nearer than
the road”—he turned round and pointed—“up there. So the week-end
millionaire people don’t take it. At least, they’d have to build a road
and a garage and all the rest of it, if they did.”
“I see,” said Antony carelessly, and they turned round and continued
their walk up to the road. But later on he remembered this casual
conversation at the gate, and saw the importance of it.
CHAPTER XVI.
Getting Ready for the Night
What was it which Cayley was going to hide in that pond that night?
Antony thought that he knew now. It was Mark’s body.
From the beginning he had seen this answer coming and had drawn back
from it. For, if Mark had been killed, it seemed such a cold-blooded
killing. Was Cayley equal to it? Bill would have said “No,” but that
was because he had had breakfast with Cayley, and lunch with him, and
dinner with him; had ragged him and played games with him. Bill would
have said “No,” because Bill wouldn’t have killed anybody in cold blood
himself, and because he took it for granted that other people behaved
pretty much as he did. But Antony had no such illusions. Murders were
done; murder had actually been done here, for there was Robert’s dead
body. Why not another murder?
Had Mark been in the office at all that afternoon? The only evidence
(other than Cayley’s, which obviously did not count) was Elsie’s. Elsie
was quite certain that she had heard his voice. But then Bill had said
that it was a very characteristic voice—an easy voice, therefore, to
imitate. If Bill could imitate it so successfully, why not Cayley?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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