Cayley Quotes

Mr. Cayley, the master’s cousin, was a surprise; and, having given a little exclamation as she came suddenly upon him, she blushed, and said, “Oh, I beg your pardon, sir, I didn’t see you at first,” and he looked up from his book and smiled at her. An attractive smile it was on that big ugly face.

“Such a gentleman, Mr. Cayley,” she thought to herself as she went on, and wondered what the master would do without him.

“All I knew was that one didn’t ask questions about him.”

Antony couldn’t help feeling a thrill of excitement as he followed Cayley’s example, and put his face close up to the glass. For the first time he wondered if there really had been a revolver shot in this mysterious room. It had all seemed so absurd and melodramatic from the other side of the door.

“Who is it?” said Antony. “Robert Ablett.” “Oh!” said Antony. “I thought his name was Mark,” he added, more to himself than to the other. “Yes, Mark Ablett lives here. Robert is his brother.” He shuddered, and said, “I was afraid it was Mark.” “Was Mark in the room too?” “Yes,” said Cayley absently. Then, as if resenting suddenly these questions from a stranger, “Who are you?”

“Mark is my cousin. I mean, Mark is the brother I know best.”

“I will stay if I can be of any help.” “Please do. You see, there are women. It will be rather painful. If you would—” He hesitated, and gave Antony a timid little smile, pathetic in so big and self-reliant a man. “Just your moral support, you know. It would be something.”

“You must make allowances for me, Mr. Gillingham. You see, I’ve known Mark for a very long time. But, of course, you’re quite right, and I’m merely being stupid.”

Antony laughed. “Oh, well, I notice things, you know. I was born noticing.”

“He says that no doubt you would prefer, the house-party having been broken up in this tragic way, to leave as soon as possible.” He gave a pleasant apologetic little smile and went on, “I am putting it badly, but what he means, of course, is that you must consult your own feelings in the matter entirely, and please make your own arrangements about ordering the car for whatever train you wish to catch. There is one this evening, I understand, which you could go by if you wished it.”

“I was only about twelve at the time. The sort of age when you’re told not to ask questions.”

“Perhaps what might seem wicked to a clergyman might seem only wild to a man of the world.”

“Mark Ablett never talked about him?” “Hardly ever. He was very much ashamed of him, and—well, very glad he was in Australia.”

“They’d never liked each other as boys. There was never any affection between them. I don’t know whose fault it was in the first place—if anybody’s.”

“I should hardly call it ‘reasonable’ to lose your head,” said Antony, getting up from his chair and coming towards them.

“I think, Mr. Cayley, it would be better if I saw the servants alone. You know what they are; the more people about, the more they get alarmed. I expect I can get at the truth better by myself.”

The guests had said good-bye to Cayley, according to their different manner. The Major, gruff and simple: “If you want me, command me. Anything I can do—Good-bye”; Betty, silently sympathetic, with everything in her large eyes which she was too much overawed to tell; Mrs. Calladine, protesting that she did not know what to say, but apparently finding plenty; and Miss Norris, crowding so much into one despairing gesture that Cayley’s unvarying “Thank you very much” might have been taken this time as gratitude for an artistic entertainment.

“What’s the good of talking about it at all, if it comes to that?” “What, indeed?” said Antony, and to Bill’s great disappointment they talked of books and politics during the meal.

No, not a murderer; not Cayley. That was rot, anyway. Why, they had played tennis together.

There seemed to be no doubt now that Cayley was a villain. Bill had never been familiar with a villain before. It didn’t seem quite fair of Cayley, somehow; he was taking rather a mean advantage of his friends.

Cayley says that you will amuse me, but so far you have not made me laugh once. You must try and be more amusing when you have finished your breakfast.

Bill continued his breakfast with a slightly bewildered air. He did not know that Cayley was smoking a cigarette outside the windows behind him; not listening, perhaps; possibly not even overhearing; but within sight of Antony, who was not going to take any risks. So he went on with his breakfast, reflecting that Antony was a rum fellow, and wondering if he had dreamed only of the amazing things which had happened the day before.

But since his evidence was given for his own ends, it was impossible that it could be treated as the evidence of an impartial and trustworthy onlooker.

Cayley’s qualities, as they appeared to Bill, may have been chiefly negative; but even if this merit lay in the fact that he never exposed whatever weaknesses he may have had, this is an excellent quality in a fellow-guest (or, if you like, fellow-host) in a house where one is continually visiting. Mark’s weaknesses, on the other hand, were very plain to the eye, and Bill had seen a good deal of them.

Yet, though he had hesitated to define his position that morning in regard to Mark, he did not hesitate to place himself on the side of the Law against Cayley. Mark, after all, had done him no harm, but Cayley had committed an unforgivable offence. Cayley had listened secretly to a private conversation between himself and Tony. Let Cayley hang, if the Law demanded it.

“By Jove! You mean that as soon as the pond has been dragged, Cayley will hide something there?” “Yes, I’m afraid so.” “But why afraid?” “Because I think that it must be something very important, something which couldn’t easily be hidden anywhere else.”

“What did he want to shut the door for?” said Bill. “That’s what I don’t understand. You couldn’t have seen him, anyhow.” “No. So it follows that I might have heard him. He was going to do something which he didn’t want me to hear.” “By Jove, that’s it!” said Bill eagerly. “Yes; but what?” Bill frowned hopefully to himself, but no inspiration came.

“He came in here in order to open the window. He shut the door so that I shouldn’t hear him open the window. He opened the window. I came in here and found the window open. I said, ‘This window is open. My amazing powers of analysis tell me that the murderer must have escaped by this window.‘”

What is he to do? He does the natural thing, the thing which Mark would always do in such circumstances. He consults Cayley, the invaluable, inevitable Cayley.”

“Good Cayley. Faithful Cayley! Mark’s courage comes back. Cayley will explain all right. Cayley will tell the servants that it was an accident. He will ring up the police. Nobody will suspect Cayley—Cayley has no quarrel with Robert.”

He was facing the secret door; if it opened he would see it. At any moment now it might open. Bill dropped into a chair and thought. Antony must be warned. Obviously. But how? How did one signal to anybody? By code. Morse code. Did Antony know it? Did Bill know it himself, if it came to that? He had picked up a bit in the Army—not enough to send a message, of course. But a message was impossible, anyhow; Cayley would hear him tapping it out. It wouldn’t do to send more than a single letter. What letters did he know? And what letter would convey anything to Antony?.... He pulled at his pipe, his eyes wandering from Cayley at his desk to the Reverend Theodore Ussher in his shelf. What letter? C for Cayley.

“We must be devilishly inconvenient for him, hanging about the house. Any moment he can get, when we’re definitely somewhere else, must be very useful to him.”

“I never liked him, never!” “Never liked——?” said Antony, bewildered. “That cousin of his—Mr. Cayley.”

“I never liked him,” said Mrs. Norbury firmly. “Never.” However, thought Antony to himself, that didn’t quite prove that Cayley was a murderer.

“You see,” he said to Bill, as they walked back, “we know that Cayley is perjuring himself and risking himself over this business, and that must be for one of two reasons. Either to save Mark or to endanger him. That is to say, he is either whole-heartedly for him or whole-heartedly against him. Well, now we know that he is against him, definitely against him.”

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.

Can’t arrange a suicide. Too difficult.

“I suppose you meant that Cayley deliberately betrayed Mark, and tried to make him look like a murderer?”

“Well, that’s what I shrink from, Bill. It’s so horribly cold-blooded. Cayley may be capable of it, but I hate to think of it.”

My theory is that he quarrelled violently with Mark over the girl, and killed him in sudden passion. Anything that happened after that would be self-defense.

“Let’s look at it from Cayley’s point of view,” said Antony. “He may not know that we’re on his track, but he can’t help being suspicious of us.

He’s bound to be suspicious of everybody in the house, and more particularly of us, because we’re presumably more intelligent than the others.

Cayley seemed very fond of them that night. After dinner was over, he suggested a stroll outside. They walked up and down the gravel in front of the house, saying very little to each other, until Bill could stand it no longer. For the last twenty turns he had been slowing down hopefully each time they came to the door, but the hint had always been lost on his companions, and each time another turn had been taken.

Cayley’s business would make no noise, give no sign, to attract the most wakeful member of the household, so long as the household was really inside the house. But if he wished to reassure himself about his guests, he would have to wait until they were far enough on their way to sleep not to be disturbed by him as he came up to reassure himself. So it amounted to the same thing, really. He would wait until they were asleep.

He picked up the bag from between his feet, leant over the nose of the boat, and rested it lightly on the water for a moment. Then he let go. It sank slowly. He waited there, watching; afraid, perhaps, that it might rise again.

For a long time, as it seemed to the watchers, he stood there, very big, very silent, in the moonlight. At last he seemed satisfied. Whatever his secret was, he had hidden it; and so with a gentle sigh, as unmistakable to Antony as if he had heard it, Cayley turned away and vanished again as quietly as he had come.

He gave his evidence carefully, unemotionally—the lies with the same slow deliberation as the truth. Antony watched him intently, wondering what it was about him which had this odd sort of attractiveness. For Antony, who knew that he was lying, and lying (as he believed) not for Mark’s sake but his own, yet could not help sharing some of that general sympathy with him.

Cayley went back heavily to his seat. “Damn it,” said Antony to himself, “why do I like the fellow?”

To live on terms of intimate friendship with a man whom you hate is dangerous work for your friend.

Perhaps it is as well that we have died out.

We might have been friends in another world—you and I, and I and she.

Don’t let Bill think too badly of me. He is a good fellow; look after him. He will be surprised. The young are always surprised. And thank you for letting me end my own way. I expect you did sympathize a little, you know.

Yes, I kept him outwardly decent; and perhaps now I was becoming like the cannibal who keeps his victim in good condition for his own ends.

I used to gloat over Mark, thinking how utterly he was mine to ruin as I pleased, financially, morally, whatever way would give me most satisfaction.

“To be called an artist was what he longed for most. Now I knew that I had him.”

He had only to deceive Miss Norris and the other guests; I had to deceive the world.

Can you imagine the feelings of a ‘murderer’ who has (as he thinks) planned for every possibility, and is then confronted suddenly with an utterly new problem?

There was a time when I hoped that there might be a happy future for me, not at the Red House, not alone. Perhaps it was never more than an idle day-dream, for I am no more worthy of her than Mark was.

“I am lonely to-night without Mark. That’s funny, isn’t it?”

“I couldn’t help liking Cayley in a kind of way, you know.”

“He’s a clever devil. If you hadn’t turned up just when you did, he would never have been found out.”

“It was decent of you to give him a chance. I’m glad you did.”