“Did he express his surprise that his brother should be in England?”
“I think he was always afraid that he would turn up one day.”
“Yes .... You didn’t hear any conversation between the brothers when they were in the office together?”
“No. I happened to go into the library just after Mark had gone in, and I was there all the time.”
“Was the library door open?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Did you see or hear the last witness at all?”
“No.”
“If anybody had come out of the office while you were in the library, would you have heard it?”
“I think so. Unless they had come out very quietly on purpose.”
“Would you call Mark a hasty-tempered man?”
Cayley considered this carefully before answering.
“Hasty-tempered, yes,” he said. “But not violent-tempered.”
“Was he fairly athletic? Active and quick?”
“Active and quick, yes. Not particularly strong.”
“Yes .... One question more. Was Mark in the habit of carrying any considerable sum of money about with him?”
“Yes. He always had one 100 pound note on him, and perhaps ten or twenty pounds as well.”
“Thank you, Mr. Cayley.”
Cayley went back heavily to his seat. “Damn it,” said Antony to himself, “why do I like the fellow?”
“Antony Gillingham!”
Again the eager interest of the room could be felt. Who was this stranger who had got mixed up in the business so mysteriously?
Antony smiled at Bill and stepped up to give his evidence.
He explained how he came to be staying at ‘the George’ at Waldheim, how he had heard that the Red House was in the neighbourhood, how he had walked over to see his friend Beverley, and had arrived just after the tragedy. Thinking it over afterwards he was fairly certain that he had heard the shot, but it had not made any impression on him at the time. He had come to the house from the Waldheim end and consequently had seen nothing of Robert Ablett, who had been a few minutes in front of him. From this point his evidence coincided with Cayley’s.
“You and the last witness reached the French windows together and found them shut?”
“Yes.”
“You pushed them in and came to the body. Of course you had no idea whose body it was?”
“No.”
“Did Mr. Cayley say anything?”
“He turned the body over, just so as to see the face, and when he saw it, he said, ‘Thank God.’”
Again the reporters wrote “Sensation.”
“Did you understand what he meant by that?”
“I asked him who it was, and he said that it was Robert Ablett. Then he explained that he was afraid at first it was the cousin with whom he lived—Mark.”
“Yes. Did he seem upset?”
“Very much so at first. Less when he found that it wasn’t Mark.”