They stared at each other as they tried to adjust themselves to the alteredsituation.
“It couldn’t be anyone else,” said Bobby. “He was the only person whohad the chance.”
“Unless, as we said, there were two photographs.”
“We agreed that that wasn’t likely. If there had been two photographsthey’d have tried to identify him by means of both of them—not only one.”
“Anyway, that’s easily found out,” said Frankie. “We can ask the police.
We’ll assume for the moment that there was just the one photograph, theone you saw that you put back again in his pocket. It was there when youleft him, and it wasn’t there when the police came, therefore the only per-son who could have taken it away and put the other one in its place wasthis man Bassington-ffrench. What was he like, Bobby?”
Bobby frowned in the effort of remembrance.
“A sort of nondescript fellow. Pleasant voice. A gentleman and all that. Ireally didn’t notice him particularly. He said that he was a stranger downhere—and something about looking for a house.”
“We can verify that, anyway,” said Frankie. “Wheeler & Owen are theonly house agents.” Suddenly she gave a shiver. “Bobby, have youthought? If Pritchard was pushed over—Bassington-ffrench must be theman who did it. .?.?.”
“That’s pretty grim,” said Bobby. “He seemed such a nice pleasant sort offellow. But you know, Frankie, we can’t be sure he really was pushedover.”
“You have been all along.”
“No, I just wanted it to be that way because it made things more excit-ing. But now it’s more or less proved. If it was murder everything fits in.
Your unexpected appearance which upsets the murderer’s plans. Your dis-covery of the photograph and, in consequence, the need to put you out ofthe way.”
“There’s a flaw there,” said Bobby.
“Why?” You were the only person who saw that photograph. As soon asBassington-ffrench was left alone with the body he changed the photo-graph which only you had seen.”
But Bobby continued to shake his head.
“No, that won’t do. Let’s grant for the moment that that photograph wasso important that I had to be ‘got out of the way,’ as you put it. Sounds ab-surd but I suppose it’s just possible. Well, then, whatever was going to bedone would have to be done at once. The fact that I went to London andnever saw the Marchbolt Weekly Times or the other papers with the photo-graph in it was just pure chance—a thing nobody could count on. Theprobability was that I should say at once, ‘That isn’t the photograph I saw.’
Why wait till after the inquest when everything was nicely settled?”
“There’s something in that,” admitted Frankie.
“And there’s another point. I can’t be absolutely sure, of course, but Icould almost swear that when I put the photograph back in the deadman’s pocket Bassington-ffrench wasn’t there. He didn’t arrive till aboutfive or ten minutes later.”
“He might have been watching you all the time,” argued Frankie.
“I don’t see very well how he could,” said Bobby slowly. “There’s reallyonly one place where you can see down to exactly the spot we were.
Farther round, the cliff bulges2 and then recedes3 underneath4, so that youcan’t see over. There’s just the one place and when Bassington-ffrench didarrive there I heard him at once. Footsteps echo down below. He mayhave been near at hand, but he wasn’t looking over till then—I’ll swear.”
“Then you think that he didn’t know about your seeing the photo-graph?”
“I don’t see how he could have known.”
“And he can’t have been afraid you’d seen him doing it—the murder, Imean—because, as you say, that’s absurd. You’d never have held yourtongue about it. It looks as though it must have been something else alto-gether.”
“Only I don’t see what it could have been.”
“Something they didn’t know about till after the inquest. I don’t knowwhy I say ‘they.’ ”
“Why not? After all, the Caymans must have been in it, too. It’s probablya gang. I like gangs.”
“That’s a low taste,” said Frankie absently. “A single-handed murder ismuch higher-class. Bobby!”
“Yes?”
“What was it Pritchard said—just before he died? You know, you toldme about it that day on the links. That funny question?”
“ ‘Why didn’t they ask Evans?’ ”
“Yes. Suppose that was it?”
“But that’s ridiculous.”
“It sounds so, but it might be important, really. Bobby, I’m sure it’s that.
Oh, no, I’m being an idiot—you never told the Caymans about it?”
“I did, as a matter of fact,” said Bobby slowly.
“You did?”
“Yes. I wrote to them that evening. Saying, of course, that it was prob-ably quite unimportant.”
“And what happened?”
“Cayman wrote back, politely agreeing, of course, that there was noth-ing in it, but thanking me for taking the trouble. I felt rather snubbed.”
“And two days later you got this letter from a strange firm bribing5 youto go to South America?”
“Yes.”
“Well,” said Frankie, “I don’t know what more you want. They try thatfirst; you turn it down, and the next thing is that they follow you roundand seize a good moment to empty a lot of morphia into your bottle ofbeer.”
“Then the Caymans are in it?”
“Of course the Caymans are in it!”
“Yes,” said Bobby thoughtfully. “If your reconstruction6 is correct, theymust be in it. According to our present theory, it goes like this. Dead manX is deliberately7 pushed over cliff—presumably by BF (pardon these ini-tials). It is important that X should not be correctly identified, so portraitof Mrs. C is put in his pocket and portrait of fair unknown removed. (Whowas she, I wonder?)”
“Keep to the point,” said Frankie sternly.
“Mrs. C waits for photographs to appear and turns up as grief-strickensister and identifies X as her brother from foreign parts.”
“You don’t believe he could really have been her brother?”
“Not for a moment! You know, it puzzled me all along. The Caymanswere a different class altogether. The dead man was—well, it sounds amost awful thing to say and just like some deadly old retired8 Anglo-Indian,but the dead man was a pukka sahib.”
“And the Caymans most emphatically weren’t?”
“Most emphatically.”
“And then, just when everything has gone off well from the Caymans’
point of view—body successfully identified, verdict of accidental death,everything in the garden lovely—you come along and mess things up,”
mused9 Frankie.
“ ‘Why didn’t they ask Evans?’ ” Bobby repeated the phrase thoughtfully.
“You know, I can’t see what on earth there can be in that to put the windup anybody.”
“Ah! that’s because you don’t know. It’s like making crossword10 puzzles.
You write down a clue and you think it’s too idiotically simple and thateveryone will guess it straight off, and you’re frightfully surprised whenthey simply can’t get it in the least. ‘Why didn’t they ask Evans?’ must havebeen a most frightfully significant phrase to them, and they couldn’t real-ize that it meant nothing at all to you.”
“More fools they.”
“Oh, quite so. But it’s just possible they thought that if Pritchard saidthat, he might have said something more which would also recur11 to you indue time. Anyway, they weren’t going to take chances. You were safer outof the way.”
“They took a lot of risk. Why didn’t they engineer another ‘accident?’ ”
“No, no. That would have been stupid. Two accidents within a week ofeach other? It might have suggested a connection between the two, andthen people would have begun inquiring into the first one. No, I thinkthere’s a kind of bald simplicity12 about their method which is really ratherclever.”
“And yet you said just now that morphia wasn’t easy to get hold of.”
“No more it isn’t. You have to sign poison books and things. Oh! ofcourse, that’s a clue. Whoever did it had easy access to supplies ofmorphia.”
“A doctor, a hospital nurse, or a chemist,” suggested Bobby.
“Well, I was thinking more of illicitly13 imported drugs.”
“You can’t mix up too many different sorts of crime,” said Bobby.
“You see, the strong point would be the absence of motive14. Your deathdoesn’t benefit anyone. So what will the police think?”
“A lunatic,” said Bobby. “And that’s what they do think.”
“You see? It’s awfully15 simple, really.”
Bobby began to laugh suddenly.
“What’s amusing you?”
“Just the thought of how sick- making it must be for them! All thatmorphia—enough to kill five or six people—and here I am still alive andkicking.”
“One of Life’s little ironies16 that one can’t foresee,” agreed Frankie.
“The question is—what do we do next?” said Bobby practically.
“Oh! lots of things,” said Frankie promptly17.
“Such as .?.?. ?”
“Well—finding out about the photograph—that there was only one, nottwo. And about Bassington-ffrench’s house hunting.”
“That will probably be quite all right and aboveboard.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Look here, Frankie, think a minute. Bassington-ffrench must be abovesuspicion. He must be all clear and aboveboard. Not only must there benothing to connect him in any way with the dead man, but he must have aproper reason for being down here. He may have invented house huntingon the spur of the moment, but I bet he carried out something of the kind.
There must be no suggestion of a ‘mysterious stranger seen in the neigh-bourhood of the accident.’ I fancy that Bassington-ffrench is his own nameand that he’s the sort of person who would be quite above suspicion.”
“Yes,” said Frankie thoughtfully. “That’s a very good deduction18. Therewill be nothing whatever to connect Bassington- ffrench with AlexPritchard. Now, if we knew who the dead man really was—”
“Ah, then it might be different.”
“So it was very important that the body should not be recognized —hence all the Cayman camouflage19. And yet it was taking a big risk.”
“You forget that Mrs. Cayman identified him as soon as was humanlypossible. After that, even if there had been pictures of him in the papers(you know how blurry20 these things are) people would only say: ‘Curious,this man Pritchard, who fell over a cliff, is really extraordinarily21 like Mr.
X.’ ”
“There must be more to it than that,” said Frankie shrewdly. “X musthave been a man who wouldn’t easily be missed. I mean, he couldn’t havebeen the sort of family man whose wife or relations would go to the policeat once and report him missing.”
“Good for you, Frankie. No, he must have been just going abroad or per-haps just come back (he was marvellously tanned—like a big-game hunter—he looked that sort of person) and he can’t have had any very near rela-tions who knew all about his movements.”
“We’re deducing beautifully,” said Frankie. “I hope we’re not deducingall wrong.”
“Very likely,” said Bobby. “But I think what we’ve said so far is fairlysound sense—granted, that is, the wild improbability of the whole thing.”
Frankie waved away the wild improbability with an airy gesture.
“The thing is—what to do next,” she said. “It seems to me we’ve got threeangles of attack.”
“Go on, Sherlock.”
“The first is you. They’ve made one attempt on your life. They’ll prob-ably try again. This time we might get what they call ‘a line’ on them. Us-ing you as a decoy, I mean.”
“No thank you, Frankie,” said Bobby with feeling. “I’ve been very luckythis time, but I mightn’t be so lucky again if they changed the attack to ablunt instrument. I was thinking of taking a great deal of care of myself inthe future. The decoy idea can be washed out.”
“I was afraid you’d say that,” said Frankie with a sigh. “Young men aresadly degenerate22 nowadays. Father says so. They don’t enjoy being un-comfortable and doing dangerous and unpleasant things any longer. It’s apity.”
“A great pity,” said Bobby, but he spoke23 with firmness. “What’s thesecond plan of campaign?”
“Working from the ‘Why didn’t they ask Evans?’ clue,” said Frankie. “Pre-sumably the dead man came down here to see Evans, whoever he was.
Now, if we could find Evans—”
“How many Evanses,” Bobby interrupted, “do you think there are inMarchbolt?”
“Seven hundred, I should think,” admitted Frankie.
“At least! We might do something that way, but I’m rather doubtful.”
“We could list all the Evanses and visit the likely ones.”
“And ask them—what?”
“That’s the difficulty,” said Frankie.
“We need to know a little more,” said Bobby. “Then that idea of yoursmight come in useful. What’s No. 3?”
“This man Bassington-ffrench. There we have got something tangible24 togo upon. It’s an uncommon25 name. I’ll ask Father. He knows all thesecounty family names and their various branches.”
“Yes,” said Bobby. “We might do something that way.”
“At any rate, we are going to do something?”
“Of course we are. Do you think I’m going to be given eight grains ofmorphia and do nothing about it?”
“That’s the spirit,” said Frankie.
“And besides that,” said Bobby, “there’s the indignity26 of the stomachpump to be washed out.”
“That’s enough,” said Frankie. “You’ll be getting morbid27 and indecentagain if I don’t stop you.”
“You have no true womanly sympathy,” said Bobby.
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收听单词发音
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1
riddle
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| n.谜，谜语，粗筛；vt.解谜，给…出谜，筛，检查，鉴定，非难，充满于；vi.出谜 | |
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2
bulges
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| 膨胀( bulge的名词复数 )； 鼓起； （身体的）肥胖部位； 暂时的激增 | |
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3
recedes
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的第三人称单数 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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4
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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5
bribing
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| 贿赂 | |
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6
reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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7
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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8
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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9
mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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10
crossword
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| n.纵横字谜，纵横填字游戏 | |
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11
recur
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| vi.复发，重现，再发生 | |
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12
simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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13
illicitly
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| 违法地，不正地 | |
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14
motive
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| n.动机，目的；adv.发动的，运动的 | |
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15
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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16
ironies
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| n.反语( irony的名词复数 )；冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事；嘲弄 | |
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17
promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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18
deduction
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| n.减除，扣除，减除额；推论，推理，演绎 | |
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19
camouflage
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| n./v.掩饰，伪装 | |
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20
blurry
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| adj.模糊的；污脏的，污斑的 | |
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extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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degenerate
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| v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者 | |
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23
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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24
tangible
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| adj.有形的，可触摸的，确凿的，实际的 | |
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uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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26
indignity
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| n.侮辱，伤害尊严，轻蔑 | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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