Afternoon Tea Mysteries, Volume Two: A Collection of Cozy Mysteries (Four thrilling novels in one volume!)

by Marion Bryce

  It was by the merest chance that I was looking at Gregory Hall, as the lawyer gave this answer.

  It required no fine perception to understand the look of relief and delight that fairly flooded his countenance. To be sure, it was quickly suppressed, and his former mask of indifference and preoccupation assumed, but I knew as well as if he had put it into words, that he had trembled lest Miss Lloyd had been disinherited before her uncle had met his death in the night.

  This gave me many new thoughts, but before I could formulate them, I heard the coroner going an with his questions.

  “Did Mr. Crawford visit you last evening?”

  “Yes; he was at my house for perhaps half an hour or more between eight and nine o’clock.”

  “Did he refer to the subject of changing his will?”

  “He did. That was his errand. He distinctly stated his intention of making a new will, and asked me to come to his office this morning and draw up the instrument.”

  “But as that cannot now be done, the will in favor of Miss Lloyd still stands?”

  “It does,” said Mr. Randolph, “and I am glad of it. Miss Lloyd has been brought up to look upon this inheritance as her own, and while I would have used no undue emphasis, I should have tried to dissuade Mr. Crawford from changing his will.”

  “But before we consider the fortune or the will, we must proceed with our task of bringing to light the murderer, and avenging Mr. Crawford’s death.”

  “I trust you will do so, Mr. Coroner, and that speedily. But I may say, if allowable, that you are on the wrong track when you allow your suspicions to tend towards Florence Lloyd.”

  “As your opinion, Mr. Randolph, of course that sentiment has some weight, but as a man of law, yourself, you must know that such an opinion must be proved before it can be really conclusive.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Mr. Randolph, with a deep sigh. “But let me beg of you to look further in search of other indications before you press too hard upon Miss Lloyd with the seeming clues you now have.”

  I liked Mr. Randolph very much. Indeed it seemed to me that the men of West Sedgwick were of a fine class as to both intellect and judgment, and though Coroner Monroe was not a brilliant man, I began to realize that he had some sterling qualities and was distinctly just and fair in his decisions.

  As for Gregory Hall, he seemed like a man free from a great anxiety. Though still calm and reserved in appearance, he was less nervous, and quietly awaited further developments. His attitude was not hard to understand. Mr. Crawford had objected to his secretary’s engagement to his niece, and now Mr. Crawford’s objections could no longer matter. Again, it was not surprising that Mr. Hall should be glad to learn that his fiancée was the heiress she had supposed herself to he. Even though he were marrying the girl simply for love of her, a large fortune in addition was by no means to be despised. At any rate, I concluded that Gregory Hall thought so.

  As often happened, Parmalee read my thoughts. “A fortune-hunter,” he murmured, with a meaning glance at Hall.

  I remembered that Mr. Carstairs, at the inn had said the same thing, and I thoroughly believed it myself.

  “Has he any means of his own?”

  “No,” said Parmalee, “except his salary, which was a good one from Mr. Crawford, but of course he’s lost that now.”

  “I don’t feel drawn toward him. I suppose one would call him a gentleman and yet he isn’t manly.”

  “He’s a cad,” declared Parmalee; “any fortune hunter is a cad, and I despise him.”

  Although I tried to hold my mind impartially open regarding Mr. Hall, I was conscious of an inclination to despise him myself. But I was also honest enough to realize that my principal reason for despising him was because he had won the hand of Florence Lloyd.

  I heard Coroner Monroe draw a long sigh.

  Clearly, the man was becoming more and more apprehensive, and really dreaded to go on with the proceedings, because he was fearful of what might be disclosed thereby.

  The gold bag still lay on the table before him; the yellow rose petals were not yet satisfactorily accounted for; Miss Lloyd’s agitation and sudden loss of consciousness, though not surprising in the circumstances, were a point in her disfavor. And now the revelation that Mr. Crawford was actually on the point of disinheriting his niece made it impossible to ignore the obvious connection between that fact and the event of the night.

  But no one had put the thought into words, and none seemed inclined to.

  Mechanically, Mr. Monroe called the next witness on his list, and Mrs. Pierce answered.

  For some reason she chose to stand during her interview, and as she rose, I realized that she was a prim little personage, but of such a decided nature that she might have been stigmatized by the term stubborn. I had seen such women before; of a certain soft, outward effect, apparently pliable and amenable, but in reality, deep, shrewd and clever.

  And yet she was not strong, for the situation in which she found herself made her trembling and unstrung.

  When asked by the coroner to tell her own story of the events of the evening before, she begged that he would question her instead.

  Desirous of making it as easy for her as possible, Mr. Monroe acceded to her wishes, and put his questions in a kindly and conversational tone.

  “You were at dinner last night, with Miss Lloyd and Mr. Crawford?”

  “Yes,” was the almost inaudible reply, and Mrs. Pierce seemed about to break down at the sad recollection.

  “You heard the argument between Mr. Crawford and his niece at the dinner table?”

  “Yes.”

  “This resulted in high words on both sides?”

  “Well, I don’t know exactly what you mean by high words. Mr. Crawford rarely lost his temper and Florence never.”

  “What then did Mr. Crawford say in regard to disinheriting Miss Lloyd?”

  “Mr. Crawford said clearly, but without recourse to what may be called high words, that unless Florence would consent to break her engagement he would cut her off with a shilling.”

  “Did he use that expression?”

  “He did at first, when he was speaking more lightly; then when Florence refused to do as he wished he said he would go that very evening to Mr. Randolph’s and have a new will made which should disinherit Florence, except for a small annuity.”

  “And what did Miss Lloyd reply to this threat?” asked the coroner.

  “She said,” replied Mrs. Pierce, in her plaintive tones, “that her uncle might do as he chose about that; but she would never give up Mr. Hall.”

  At this moment Gregory Hall looked more manly than I had yet seen him.

  Though he modestly dropped his eyes at this tacit tribute to his worthiness, yet he squared his shoulders, and showed a justifiable pride in the love thus evinced for him.

  “Was the subject discussed further?” pursued the coroner.

  “No; nothing more was said about it after that.”

  “Will the making of a new will by Mr. Crawford affect yourself in any way, Mrs. Pierce?”

  “No,” she replied, “Mr. Crawford left me a small bequest in his earlier will and I had reason to think he would do the same in a later will, even though he changed his intentions regarding Florence.”

  “Miss Lloyd thoroughly believed that he intended to carry out his threat last evening?”

  “She didn’t say so to me, but Mr. Crawford spoke so decidedly on the matter, that I think both she and I believed he was really going to carry out his threat at last.”

  “When Mr. Crawford left the house, did you and Miss Lloyd know where he was going?”

  “We knew no more than he had said at the table. He said nothing when he went away.”

  “How did you and Miss Lloyd spend the remainder of the evening?”

  “It was but a short evening. We sat in the music-room for a time, but at about ten o’clock we both went up to our rooms.”

  “Had Mr. Crawford returned then?”
<
br />   “Yes, he came in perhaps an hour earlier. We heard him come in at the front door, and go at once to his office.”

  “You did not see him, or speak to him?”

  “We did not. He had a caller during the evening. It was Mr. Porter, I have since learned.”

  “Did Miss Lloyd express no interest as to whether he had changed his will or not?”

  “Miss Lloyd didn’t mention the will, or her engagement, to me at all. We talked entirely of other matters.”

  “Was Miss Lloyd in her usual mood or spirits?”

  “She seemed a little quiet, but not at all what you might call worried.”

  “Was not this strange when she was fully expecting to be deprived of her entire fortune?”

  “It was not strange for Miss Lloyd. She rarely talks of her own affairs. We spent an evening similar in all respects to our usual evening when we do not have guests.”

  “And you both went upstairs at ten. Was that unusually early for you?”

  “Well, unless we have guests, we often go at ten or half-past ten.”

  “And did you see Miss Lloyd again that night?”

  “Yes; about half an hour later, I went to her room for a book I wanted.”

  “Miss Lloyd had not retired?”

  “No; she asked me to sit down for awhile and chat.”

  “Did you do so?”

  “Only for a few moments. I was interested in the book I had come for, and I wanted to take it away to my own room to read.”

  “And Miss Lloyd, then, did not seem dispirited or in any way in an unusual mood?”

  “Not that I noticed. I wasn’t quizzing her or looking into her eyes to see what her thoughts were, for it didn’t occur to me to do so. I knew her uncle had dealt her a severe blow, but as she didn’t open the subject, of course I couldn’t discuss it with her. But I did think perhaps she wanted to be by herself to consider the matter, and that was one reason why I didn’t stay and chat as she had asked me to.”

  “Perhaps she really wanted to discuss the matter with you.”

  “Perhaps she did; but in that case she should have said so. Florence knows well enough that I am always ready to discuss or sympathize with her in any matter, but I never obtrude my opinions. So as she said nothing to lead me to think she wanted to talk to me especially, I said good-night to her.”

  VIII. FURTHER INQUIRY

  “Did you happen to notice, Mrs. Pierce, whether Miss Lloyd was wearing a yellow rose when you saw her in her room?”

  Mrs. Pierce hesitated. She looked decidedly embarrassed, and seemed disinclined to answer. But she might have known that to hesitate and show embarrassment was almost equivalent to an affirmative answer to the coroner’s question. At last she replied,

  “I don’t know; I didn’t notice.”

  This might have been a true statement, but I think no one in the room believed it. The coroner tried again.

  “Try to think, Mrs. Pierce. It is important that we should know if Miss Lloyd was wearing a yellow rose.”

  “Yes,” flared out Mrs. Pierce angrily, “so that you can prove she went down to her uncle’s office later and dropped a piece of her rose there! But I tell you I don’t remember whether she was wearing a rose or not, and it wouldn’t matter if she had on forty roses! If Florence Lloyd says she didn’t go down-stairs, she didn’t.”

  “I think we all believe in Miss Lloyd’s veracity,” said Mr. Monroe, “but it is necessary to discover where those rose petals in the library came from. You saw the flowers in her room, Mrs. Pierce?”

  “Yes, I believe I did. But I paid no attention to them, as Florence nearly always has flowers in her room.”

  “Would you have heard Miss Lloyd if she had gone down-stairs after you left her?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Pierce, doubtfully.

  “Is your room next to hers?”

  “No, not next.”

  “Is it on the same corridor?”

  “No.”

  “Around a corner?”

  “Yes.”

  “And at some distance?”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Pierce’s answers became more hesitating as she saw the drift of Mr. Monroe’s questions. Clearly, she was trying to shield Florence, if necessary, at the expense of actual truthfulness.

  “Then,” went on Mr. Monroe, inexorably, “I understand you to say that you think you would have heard Miss Lloyd, had she gone down-stairs, although your room is at a distance and around a corner and the hall and stairs are thickly carpeted. Unless you were listening especially, Mrs. Pierce, I think you would scarcely have heard her descend.”

  “Well, as she didn’t go down, of course I didn’t hear her,” snapped Mrs. Pierce, with the feminine way of settling an argument by an unprovable statement.

  Mr. Monroe began on another tack.

  “When you went to Miss Lloyd’s room,” he said, “was the maid, Elsa, there?”

  “Miss Lloyd had just dismissed her for the night.”

  “What was Miss Lloyd doing when you went to her room?”

  “She was looking over some gowns that she proposed sending to the cleaner’s.”

  The coroner fairly jumped. He remembered the newspaper clipping of a cleaner’s advertisement, which was even now in the gold bag before him. Though all the jurors had seen it, it had not been referred to in the presence of the women.

  Recovering himself at once, he said quietly “Was not that rather work for Miss Lloyd’s maid?”

  “Oh, Elsa would pack and send them, of course,” said Mrs. Pierce carelessly. “Miss Lloyd was merely deciding which ones needed cleaning.”

  “Do you know where they were to be sent?”

  Mrs. Pierce looked a little surprised at this question.

  “Miss Lloyd always sends her things to Carter & Brown’s,” she said.

  Now, Carter & Brown was the firm name on the advertisement, and it was evident at once that the coroner considered this a damaging admission.

  He sat looking greatly troubled, but before he spoke again, Mr. Parmalee made an observation that decidedly raised that young man in my estimation.

  “Well,” he said, “that’s pretty good proof that the gold bag doesn’t belong to Miss Lloyd.”

  “How so?” asked the coroner, who had thought quite the contrary.

  “Why, if Miss Lloyd always sends her goods to be cleaned to Carter & Brown, why would she need to cut their address from a newspaper and save it?”

  At first I thought the young man’s deduction distinctly clever, but on second thought I wasn’t so sure. Miss Lloyd might have wanted that address for a dozen good reasons. To my mind, it proved neither her ownership of the gold bag, nor the contrary.

  In fact, I thought the most important indication that the bag might be hers lay in the story Elsa told about the cousin who sailed to Germany. Somehow that sounded untrue to me, but I was more than willing to believe it if I could.

  I longed for Fleming Stone, who, I felt sure, could learn from the bag and its contents the whole truth about the crime and the criminal.

  But I had been called to take charge of the case, and my pride forbade me to call on any one for help.

  I had scorned deductions from inanimate objects, but I resolved to study that bag again, and study it more minutely. Perhaps there were some threads or shreds caught in its meshes that might point to its owner. I remembered a detective story I read once, in which the whole discovery of the criminal depended on identifying a few dark blue woollen threads which were found in a small pool of candle grease on a veranda roof. As it turned out, they were from the trouser knee of a man who had knelt there to open a window. The patent absurdity of leaving threads from one’s trouser knee, amused me very much, but the accommodating criminals in fiction almost always leave threads or shreds behind them. And surely a gold-mesh bag, with its thousands of links would be a fine trap to catch some threads of evidence, however minute they might be.

  Furthermore I decided to probe further into that
yellow rose business. I was not at all sure that those petals I found on the floor had anything to do with Miss Lloyd’s roses, but it must be a question possible of settlement, if I went about it in the right way. At any rate, though I had definite work ahead of me, my duty just now was to listen to the forthcoming evidence, though I could not help thinking I could have put questions more to the point than Mr. Monroe did.

  Of course the coroner’s inquest was not formally conducted as a trial by jury would be, and so any one spoke, if he chose, and the coroner seemed really glad when suggestions were offered him.

  At this point Philip Crawford rose.

  “It is impossible,” he said, “not to see whither these questions are tending. But you are on the wrong tack, Mr. Coroner. No matter how evidence may seem to point toward Florence Lloyd’s association with this crime, it is only seeming. That gold bag might have been hers and it might not. But if she says it isn’t, why, then it isn’t! Notwithstanding the state of affairs between my brother and his niece, there is not the shadow of a possibility that the young woman is implicated in the slightest degree, and the sooner you leave her name out of consideration, and turn your search into other channels, the sooner you will find the real criminal.”

  It was not so much the words of Philip Crawford, as the sincere way in which they were spoken, that impressed me. Surely he was right; surely this beautiful girl was neither principal nor accessory in the awful crime which, by a strange coincidence, gave to her her fortune and her lover.

  “Mr. Crawford’s right,” said Lemuel Porter. “If this jury allows itself to be misled by a gold purse and two petals of a yellow rose, we are unworthy to sit on this case. Why, Mr. Coroner, the long French windows in the office were open, or, at least, unfastened all through the night. We have that from the butler’s testimony. He didn’t lock them last night; they were found unlocked this morning. Therefore, I hold that an intruder, either man or woman, may have come in during the night, accomplished the fatal deed, and departed without any one being the wiser. That this intruder was a woman, is evidenced by the bag she left behind her. For, as Mr. Crawford has said, if Miss Lloyd denies the ownership of that bag, it is not hers.”