The Mystery At Lover's Cave

Inspector Moresby was evidently having a busy day. He did not put in an appearance at lunch, and when Roger and Anthony strolled down to the sea-level to smoke their post-prandial pipes there was still no sign of him. Anthony surmised vaguely that his investigations must be covering a larger field than their own.

Anthony had plenty of time for his surmises, for ever since their return to the inn Roger had lapsed into a highly unaccustomed state of taciturnity. To his cousin’s efforts to make conversation or discuss their discoveries of the morning he replied with only a brief word or grunt. Anthony, who was not always so tactless as he appeared, realised that his mind was busy with some knotty problem connected with the case, and was content to leave him to his meditations. They scrambled out to their usual rock and composed themselves to smoke in silence.

It was nearly three-quarters of an hour before Roger volunteered any clue as to what was puzzling him. “I’m sure,” he said abruptly, “that this information of the landlady’s ought to give us a pointer to the truth, if we could only interpret it correctly.”

“You mean, about Mrs. Vane’s visit and their quarrel?” Anthony enquired.

“No, no,” Roger said with unusual testiness. “That doesn’t give us anything fresh. It’s natural enough for her to have visited him, and we’d gathered already that they were on bad terms. No, about those pipes.”

“Oh! But I don’t see how they come in.”

“Well, after all,” observed Roger sarcastically, “a pipe does play rather a leading part in the affair, doesn’t it?”

“What on earth are you talking about?” asked Anthony blankly.

Roger stared at him for a moment and then laughed. “Oh, sorry! I was forgetting that you don’t know anything about that. And you mustn’t ask me either, because I’m under the most fearful oaths of secrecy. Anyhow, a pipe does play a leading part—but don’t tell Moresby I told you.”

“Mum’s the word,” agreed Anthony cheerfully. “All right, carry on, then. You’ll get to the bottom of it, Roger, if you work your grey matter hard enough.”

“Thank you, Anthony,” Roger murmured. “I do need a little encouragement, it’s true.” He relapsed into his brown study.

Anthony sat on the rock till it became too hard to sit on any longer, then he removed his shoes and socks, tucked up his trousers and began to wander further afield. Anthony was growing up.

High overhead an aeroplane made its appearance, sweeping a vast circle in the blue sky. The drone of its engine reached their ears as a muffled hum.

“Wonder if that’s Woodthorpe’s bus,” Anthony called out, seeing his cousin’s eyes following the tiny speck across space.

“Woodthorpe’s?” said Roger absently. “Didn’t know he’d got one.”

“So Margaret told me. He was in the Air Force during the war, and now he keeps a bus of his own. They’re rolling in money, of course.”

“Lucky devils,” remarked Roger mechanically.

Anthony found a small crab under a flat stone and the conversation lapsed.

It was another half-hour before Roger again broke the silence. He rose from his cramped position and made his way over to Anthony, jumping agilely from rock to rock and refilling his pipe as he went.

“Look here, Anthony,” he said, “is there absolutely no way of getting hold of Margaret this afternoon? There’s something I particularly want to ask her.”

“I don’t think there is,” Anthony replied doubtfully. “I wanted to take her out in the car, as a matter of fact, but she said she couldn’t possibly manage it; far too busy.”

“She’s gone into Sandsea, you said?”

“Yes.”

Roger frowned. “What an infernal nuisance! It’s a point I badly want to clear up.”

“What is it?”

“I wanted to ask her whether by any remote chance Mrs. Vane had expressed any intention before her death of going away in the near future.”

“Well, it’s funny you should say that, sir,” replied Anthony humorously, “because as a matter of fact I do know. She had. What’s the great idea?”

“She had, had she?” Roger demanded eagerly. “Did Margaret tell you?”

“She mentioned it once, I remember; just casually. Mrs. Vane hadn’t been away this summer, and she was going to stay with some friends for the twelfth.”

“The twelfth, eh?” Roger made a rapid calculation. “Then she’d have gone about a fortnight ago. Excellent! Anthony, I do believe I’m on the track of something.”

“I say, are you really?” Anthony’s enthusiasm was all that the most exacting detective could have required. “Mean you’ve solved the whole thing?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that,” Roger said modestly. “But I do think I’m beginning to see daylight. I’ve got a rather stupendous idea, at any rate, and things seem to be fitting into it rather neatly.”

“What is it?”

“Oh, you mustn’t ask me that yet. I shall have to chew it over a lot more before I can make a connected and logical story of it. Besides, the best detectives always hold up their brilliant solutions for the most effective moment (surely you know that), and I refuse to think that an audience of Anthony Walton, two green crabs and a limpet would be in the least effective.”

“Well, hurry up and think it out properly,” said Anthony, ignoring this pleasantry. “You know we all want to see this damned business cleared up once and for all.”

“Then let’s go back and have our tea. And after that, if you’ll leave me to myself for a couple of hours, I’ll see what can be done.”

Inspector Moresby had still not returned to the inn when they got there, as the landlord informed them on Roger’s enquiry. Roger wondered uneasily what exactly he might be up to; feeling as he did that he himself was on the verge of the truth he had no wish that anybody should forestall him in crossing it.

Throughout tea he chattered incessantly about nothing at all, explaining on Anthony’s remonstrance that he wished to clear his brain of all stale notions in order to approach the problem afterward with an entirely fresh mind.

As soon as they had finished he took his pipe down once more to the rocks, and sternly forbade Anthony to come within half-a-mile of him.

More than the stipulated two hours had passed before he climbed once more up to the little path along the face of the cliff and thence to the top of the headland where Anthony, bored beyond tears with his own company but far too eager to risk missing his cousin’s return, was anxiously waiting.

“Well?” demanded the latter at once, hurrying forward. “Any luck?”

“Not so much luck, Anthony, as brilliance,” Roger replied with pardonable pride. “Yes, I think I’ve solved this little problem, as Holmes would have said if he’d been here instead of me.”

“Who’s the murderer, then?”

“Can you possess your soul in patience a little longer? I don’t want to spoil a good story, but it’s such a long and complicated one that I don’t want to have to tell it twice over. If you can wait till Moresby arrives I can kill two birds with one stone.”

“But he may be ages,” Anthony grumbled.

“Well, give me till half-way through supper,” said Roger, “and if he isn’t back by then I’ll promise to give you an outline of it in advance.” And with that Anthony had to be content.

“By Jove,” Roger resumed, as they walked back to the inn. “By Jove, I do hope Moresby hasn’t been working along this line himself. He’s such a reticent devil, I never know what’s in his mind; he’ll spill a fact or two occasionally, but never a theory—that is, not without some ulterior motive. Yes, if this idea hasn’t occurred to him already, I fancy I’ve got a little shock in store for Inspector Moresby.”

“Is the solution quite—quite unexpected, then?”

“Entirely, so far as I know—or at any rate, by me. Then I suddenly caught a glimpse of things from a fresh angle, and all the facts proceeded to arrange themselves in the neatest way possible.”

“You’ll be able to convince the inspector, I suppose? He’s a bit of a sceptical devil.”

“He is that,” Roger agreed with feeling. “But I don’t see how I can fail to convince even him. The facts ought to do that for themselves. Of course the solution isn’t capable of cast-iron proof, that’s the only trouble; but if it comes to that, what solution that depends only on circumstantial evidence ever can be? And proof hasn’t necessarily got to be cast-iron, it only needs to be reasonably convincing; and that mine certainly is.”