The Man in the Brown Suit

Kilmorden Castle
.
I counted off on my fingers the people on whom it behoved me to keep watch.
Setting aside my visitor of the night before, but promising myself that I would discover
him on board before another day had passed, I selected the following persons as worthy of
my notice:
(1) Sir Eustace Pedler. He was the owner of the Mill House, and his presence on the
Kilmorden Castle
seemed something of a coincidence.
(2) Mr. Pagett, the sinister-looking secretary, whose eagerness to obtain Cabin 17 had
been so very marked. N.B.—Find out whether he had accompanied Sir Eustace to Cannes.
(3) The Rev. Edward Chichester. All I had against him was his obstinacy over Cabin 17,
and that might be entirely due to his own peculiar temperament. Obstinacy can be an
amazing thing.
But a little conversation with Mr. Chichester would not come amiss, I decided. Hastily
tying a handkerchief round my hair, I went up on deck again, full of purpose. I was in luck.
My quarry was leaning against the rail, drinking beef tea. I went up to him.
“I hope you’ve forgiven me over Cabin 17,” I said, with my best smile.
“I consider it unchristian to bear a grudge,” said Mr. Chichester coldly. “But the purser
had distinctly promised me that cabin.”
“Pursers are such busy men, aren’t they?” I said vaguely. “I suppose they’re bound to

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forget sometimes.”
Mr. Chichester did not reply.
“Is this your first visit to South Africa?” I inquired conversationally.
“To South Africa, yes. But I have worked for the last two years amongst the cannibal
tribes in the interior of East Africa.”
“How thrilling! Have you had many narrow escapes?”
“Escapes?”
“Of being eaten, I mean?”
“You should not treat sacred subjects with levity, Miss Beddingfeld.”
“I didn’t know that cannibalism was a sacred subject,” I retorted, stung.
As the words left my lips, another idea struck me. If Mr. Chichester had indeed spent the
last two years in the interior of Africa, how was it that he was not more sunburnt? His skin
was as pink and white as a baby’s. Surely there was something fishy there? Yet his manner
and voice were so absolutely 
it
. Too much so, perhaps. Was he—or was he not—just a
little like a 
stage
clergyman?
I cast my mind back to the curates I had known at Little Hampsley. Some of them I had
liked, some of them I had not, but certainly none of them had been quite like Mr. Chichester.
They had been human—he was a glorified type.
I was debating all this when Sir Eustace Pedler passed down the deck. Just as he was
abreast of Mr. Chichester, he stooped and picked up a piece of paper which he handed to
him, remarking, “You’ve dropped something.”
He passed on without stopping, and so probably did not notice Mr. Chichester’s
agitation. I did. Whatever it was he had dropped, its recovery agitated him considerably. He
turned a sickly green, and crumpled up the sheet of paper into a ball. My suspicions were
accentuated a hundredfold.
He caught my eye, and hurried into explanations.
“A—a—fragment of a sermon I was composing,” he said with a sickly smile.
“Indeed?” I rejoined politely.
A fragment of a sermon, indeed! No, Mr. Chichester—too weak for words!
He soon left me with a muttered excuse. I wished, oh, how I wished, that I had been the
one to pick up that paper and not Sir Eustace Pedler! One thing was clear, Mr. Chichester
could not be exempted from my list of suspects. I was inclined to put him top of the three.
After lunch, when I came up to the lounge for coffee, I noticed Sir Eustace and Pagett

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sitting with Mrs. Blair and Colonel Race. Mrs. Blair welcomed me with a smile, so I went
over and joined them. They were talking about Italy.
“But it 
is
misleading,” Mrs. Blair insisted. “
Aqua calda
certainly 
ought
to be cold water
—not hot.”
“You’re not a Latin scholar,” said Sir Eustace, smiling.
“Men are so superior about their Latin,” said Mrs. Blair. “But all the same I notice that
when you ask them to translate inscriptions in old churches they can never do it! They hem
and haw, and get out of it somehow.”
“Quite right,” said Colonel Race. “I always do.”
“But I love the Italians,” continued Mrs. Blair. “They’re so obliging—though even that
has its embarrassing side. You ask them the way somewhere, and instead of saying ‘first to
the right, second to the left’ or something that one could follow, they pour out a flood of
well-meaning directions, and when you look bewildered they take you kindly by the arm and
walk all the way there with you.”
“Is that your experience in Florence, Pagett?” asked Sir Eustace, turning with a smile to
his secretary.
For some reason the question seemed to disconcert Mr. Pagett. He stammered and
flushed.
“Oh, quite so, yes—er quite so.”
Then with a murmured excuse, he rose and left the table.
“I am beginning to suspect Guy Pagett of having committed some dark deed in Florence,”
remarked Sir Eustace, gazing after his secretary’s retreating figure. “Whenever Florence or
Italy is mentioned, he changes the subject or bolts precipitately.”
“Perhaps he murdered someone there,” said Mrs. Blair hopefully. “He looks—I hope I’m
not hurting your feelings, Sir Eustace—but he does look as though he might murder
someone.”
“Yes, pure Cinquecento! It amuses me sometimes—especially when one knows as well
as I do how essentially law-abiding and respectable the poor fellow really is.”
“He’s been with you some time, hasn’t he, Sir Eustace?” asked Colonel Race.
“Six years,” said Sir Eustace with a deep sigh.
“He must be quite invaluable to you,” said Mrs. Blair.
“Oh, invaluable! Yes, quite invaluable.” The poor man sounded even more depressed, as
though the invaluableness of Mr. Pagett was a secret grief to him. Then he added more
briskly: “But his face should really inspire you with confidence, my dear lady. No self-

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respecting murderer would ever consent to look like one. Crippen, now, I believe, was one
of the pleasantest fellows imaginable.”
“He was caught on a liner, wasn’t he?” murmured Mrs. Blair.
There was a slight rattle behind us. I turned quickly. Mr. Chichester had dropped his
coffee cup.
Our party soon broke up; Mrs. Blair went below to sleep and I went out on deck. Colonel
Race followed me.
“You’re very elusive, Miss Beddingfeld. I looked for you everywhere last night at the
dance.”
“I went to bed early,” I explained.
“Are you going to run away tonight too? Or are you going to dance with me?”
“I shall be very pleased to dance with you,” I murmured shyly. “But Mrs. Blair—”
“Our friend, Mrs. Blair, doesn’t care for dancing.”
“And do you?”
“I care for dancing with you.”
“Oh!” I said nervously.
I was a little afraid of Colonel Race. Nevertheless I was enjoying myself. This was better
than discussing fossilized skulls with stuffy old professors! Colonel Race was really just my
ideal of a stern silent Rhodesian. Possibly I might marry him! I hadn’t been asked, it is true,
but, as the Boy Scouts say, Be Prepared! And all women, without in the least meaning it,
consider every man they meet as a possible husband for themselves or their best friend.
I danced several times with him that evening. He danced well. When the dancing was
over, and I was thinking of going to bed, he suggested a turn round the deck. We walked
round three times and finally subsided into two deck chairs. There was nobody else in sight.
We made desultory conversation for some time.
“Do you know, Miss Beddingfeld, I think I once met your father? A very interesting man
—on his own subject, and it’s a subject that has a special fascination for me. In my humble
way, I’ve done a bit in that line myself. Why, when I was in the Dordogne region—”
Our talk became technical. Colonel Race’s boast was not an idle one. He knew a great
deal. At the same time, he made one or two curious mistakes—slips of the tongue, I might
almost have thought them. But he was quick to take his cue from me and to cover them up.
Once he spoke of the Mousterian period as succeeding the Aurignacian—an absurd mistake
for one who knew anything of the subject.
It was twelve o’clock when I went to my cabin. I was still puzzling over those queer

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discrepancies. Was it possible that he had “got the whole subject up” for the occasion—that
really he knew nothing of archaeology? I shook my head, vaguely dissatisfied with that
solution.
Just as I was dropping off to sleep, I sat up with a sudden start as another idea flashed
into my head. Had 
he
been pumping 
me?
Were those slight inaccuracies just tests—to see
whether I really knew what I was talking about? In other words, he suspected me of not
being genuinely Anne Beddingfeld.
Why?

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