The Doors Open Read Online Free PDF

CBA. The same letters but the other way round, you see.”
    “If I may say so,” said Mr Legate, “you did very well. You must have a natural aptitude for observation. After all, by your account you only saw the papers for a few seconds.”
    He leaned back in his chair, looked at Paddy directly, and without any change in his tone of voice, said, “What’s worrying you?”
    “Two things,” said Paddy. “I’ll finish my story and you’ll see them for yourself.”
    “The light in the front window,” suggested Mr Legate, when he had done.
    “That’s one of them. The Inspector thinks that Britten must have left it on, by mistake, when he went to the office in the morning. Now I know that’s not possible.”
    “Expound,” said Mr Legate.
    “I know his house as well as I know my own. Literally. All those buildings in Sunset Avenue were poured from the same mould. The room which the light came from is the long front living-room. A drawing-room and dining-room combined. It runs into the kitchen at the back – there’s a sliding partition and a serving hatch between them. Apart from the entrance hall, and a few cupboards and closets, that makes up the whole of the ground floor. Now the next thing. When I saw the light I saw it as a chink of light between the two curtains. The curtains were drawn. Tell me how a man can come down in the morning and leave the curtains drawn and the light on in his breakfast-room. And even if he skips breakfast there are ninety-nine things which he would have wanted to fetch before going to the office. And even if his breakfast was just a cup of coffee in the kitchen, you can see through into the other room, as I explained.”
    “Yes. I’m not saying you’re wrong. But suppose he came down early – left the house before it was light. He’d have the electric light on for breakfast. He might leave it on when he went.”
    “No good,” said Paddy. “We caught the same train for town – on that and every morning.”
    “Then you’re suggesting–?”
    “ Someone turned on the light that night. Maybe Mr Britten himself. Well, at any rate that would dispose of the accident theory. But it goes further. I should say, practically, that it would dispose of any idea of suicide, too.”
    Mr Legate looked up at him quietly and then resumed his study of the blotting-pad.
    “You know how it is,” Paddy went on – “When you come home with a skinful. At least – I take it you’re not a teetotaller.”
    “You may assume that I have all the ordinary vices,” said Mr Legate with a fractional smile. “Carry on.”
    “Well, then – imagine Mr Britten reaching home in the condition in which I left him – and the night air wouldn’t have improved matters – it’s a dollar to a dime he would have gone straight to sleep – possibly without even going through the formality of undressing first. Would he have got up, gone out into the bitter night and chucked himself into the river? Not Pygmalion likely. The first thing he’d have known would have been the morning sun, a raging thirst and a head like something halfway between a pneumatic drill and an electric toaster.”
    “I see you speak from experience,” said Mr Legate. “Now let me see if I’ve got this quite straight,” he went on. “Mr Britten lived alone? Quite so. Did his own housework, I take it. A woman came in every weekend? I see. So that his house would normally be empty from the time he left for the office until the time he got back.”
    “Certainly – and during the daytime my mother would have noticed any visitor. Those houses practically look down each other’s throats.”
    “Very well. And from your knowledge of the structure of his house you say that it’s not possible to come down in the morning and leave the curtains drawn and the light on in the living-room without noticing it.”
    “It’s not impossible,” said Paddy slowly. “But I think it’s so improbable that it calls for some alternative