‘Was there any untoward incident, other than Mr. O’Hara’s extraordinary adventure, on the day of the race?’ Mrs. Bradley asked, turning to Gascoigne.
‘Not that I heard of. But I didn’t see any of the others during the run. At least, not to speak to. We were pretty close at the finish, but I was running my hardest then, and wouldn’t have had much breath to spare for gossip.’ He paused for a moment, laughed, and very soon added, ‘But there was plenty of chance at dinner for the men to swop stories, and I didn’t hear of anything unexpected.’
‘There was that fellow, though, that I took to be you,’ said O’Hara.
‘Oh, but that must have been Firman, as we said. You must have spotted him after he’d decided to give up.’
‘Yes, I know. Still, it doesn’t altogether fit in with the rest of his story. His uncle doesn’t live in that direction, and he was hanging round that farm in his car next day.’
‘And it couldn’t have been any of the others, because they were all in a bunch for the whole of the run. We know that.’
‘Who were these others? Were they all particular friends of yours? And were they members of your University?’ Mrs. Bradley enquired.
‘It’s nothing to do with the Varsity,’ Gascoigne explained. ‘It’s an athletic club. They don’t bar anyone so long as he can run a bit and pays his subscription and isn’t a bounder. I expect you know the sort of thing. We joined while school was evacuated during the war, and now turn out when we can.’
‘Ah,’ said Mrs. Bradley, scanning the plaintiffs narrowly, and ignoring most of their remarks, ‘and what interpretation are we to put upon the word “bounder,” I wonder?’
The cousins exchanged glances ; then Gascoigne said :
‘Rotter, I suppose. I don’t know quite how one’s…’ he smiled ‘one’s aunts would interpret the word. I meant that anybody can join, and they keep him in unless they find they don’t like him, and then they bung him out. That’s all there is to it. Unless you’re a bounder you’re welcome for as long as you like.’
‘Does it ever happen that a member is asked to resign?’
‘Hardly ever, but they did give a miss last year to a fellow who pinched money from the dressing-rooms. It’s awkward, you see, if the fellows can’t leave their loose change in their trousers’ pockets. Then there was a chap just before the war who was blackballed for dirty running.’
‘It was more dirty temper than dirty running, I think,’ put in O’Hara. ‘At least, that’s what I was told. He used to spike fellows round the bend behind the water jump—very malicious, I believe. Two other clubs complained to the secretary, and chaps don’t complain about that sort of thing for nothing. I mean, anybody is liable to get spiked if there’s manoeuvring for position going on, especially in a tight race and with a big field. Fellows get boxed in, you know—it’s all tactics in the longer races unless you’ve got the legs of the rest of them, and even then you’ve got to keep your wits about you. But with this chap it was a bit nasty, apparently, so he came off the books. Can’t have bad blood between one club and another. Ruins the whole thing. The committee were quite right to sack him.’
‘Does the club wear a uniform?’
‘Not for cross-country running. We turn out in any old shorts and vests. We wear club colours for athletics matches in the summer when one can keep nice and clean. Ours is an apple green band on a white running-vest, and we wear white shorts.’
‘Very tasty, very sweet,’ observed Laura, who was following the narrative with great interest.
‘If it had been an orange band, I suppose you two wouldn’t have joined,’ Mrs. Bradley remarked. ‘Was your secretary one of the hounds in this cross-country run on Saturday?’
‘Oh, yes, He’s dead keen, you know. A fellow called Shoesmith, a bank-clerk. Very decent.’
‘Can you give my secretary his address?’
Laura took down the address, and then Mrs. Bradley continued:
‘I had better take you point by point through your story. Let us begin at the beginning. You took a different direction from the rest of the hounds at Cuchester, I believe, Mr. O’Hara?’
‘Yes. They turned off to the left through the town, and I kept straight on to the amphitheatre and then went up to the fort.’
‘You believed you would more easily catch up with your cousin that way?’
‘I hoped to be able to spot him, and give the others the tip, but I wasn’t lucky.’
‘This man with the car seems interesting. Were you surprised when he stopped you?’
‘Yes and no. I mean that strangers do take an interest in cross-country running, and they do quite often offer gratuitous advice. Sometimes, of course, it’s useful, and we have no rule against accepting it.’
‘I was interested in the form of words he used. Granted the circumstances, they seem rather striking.’
‘I didn’t notice anything in particular.’
‘Did you not? You used almost the same words when you reported the conversation you had with the woman at the door of this mysterious farm. You remember? About being late? It was the repetition of that remark by the woman which made what the man said significant. And now why do you suppose the man took you in the car?’
‘To hold the body on the back seat, I imagine, and to help lift it out when we got to wherever it was that we were making for.’
‘Couldn’t the woman have held the body on the seat? After all, the driver was expecting to meet someone else up there on the hill. He called out to someone, you said. ’
‘Yes. He called to someone named Con. And I suppose the woman could have held the body, although it was frightfully heavy. Still, she could have managed. I suppose there was some reason why she had to remain at the farm.’
‘Yes, I think you are right. It might be useful to know what that reason was, might it not? Now, you left the car when you heard the driver call out to this man he was to meet, and you gained the impression that the car had travelled a long way from the farm. Yet when you went back there on Sunday morning, you discovered that it was not so very far, after all. What do you make of that now?’
‘I don’t know what to make of it, except that it was to give me the impression I got—that the distance we had travelled was considerable. And that’s fishy, too.’
‘The Engineer’s Thumb,’ said Laura, an encyclopaedia of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
‘Yes, but why?’ asked Mrs. Bradley. ‘Why should he want to deceive you about the distance? It may equally well have been that the driver knew he had time to spare between leaving the farm and contacting this man Con. He had to get you away from the farm, I think, as soon as he could, for he must have realized that the first man had made a mistake and had sent him the wrong assistant. The woman was left behind, I have little doubt, to warn the right man when he turned up.’
‘You think the fellow in the car near the hill-fort had been sent to direct someone on to the farm, then?’ demanded Gascoigne.
‘It seems likely,’ Mrs. Bradley answered. ‘On the face of it— but we have not much evidence yet—it seems as though he mistook Mr. O’Hara for another of the runners. You said just now, Mr. O’Hara, that you saw another runner in front of you and supposed him to be Mr. Gascoigne. But it is now shown, by Mr. Gascoigne’s own account of the matter, that this lone runner could not have been he. The inference is that it was Mr. Firman—unless, of course, it was somebody quite unconnected with the club. I suppose it is not impossible that a solitary enthusiast should have been running over this county on Saturday afternoon?’
‘Not impossible, but rather unlikely,’ said Gascoigne.
‘And more than a bit of coincidence, surely?’ suggested O’Hara.