Comes a Stranger

by E. R. Punshon

“Well, now then, about this morning—you were out early? Posting another letter on the quiet for fear it should be seen by the police?”

  “On this occasion, I was actuated by no such motive,” answered Mr. Adams sedately. “My mind has been much occupied by recent events, and I had decided to seek an interview with the unfortunate gentleman whose demise we must deplore and whose murderer I am no less desirous than yourself to see brought to a severe and condign judgement.”

  “Oh, you are, are you?” growled the Major blinking a little. He was beginning to have an air of knowing that he was waging a hopeless fight.

  “Rather early for a call, wasn’t it?” he asked.

  “In the very remarkable circumstances prevailing,” Mr. Adams explained, “I was inclined to think that the usual conventions of society might not unreasonably be set aside. I was well aware the interview might lead to disagreements of a marked character.”

  The Major stared. Killick gave a little gasp. Bobby leaned so heavily on the point of his pencil that it broke off. Mr. Adams again seemed serenely unaware of the effect produced. He appeared to be making these admissions without in any way realizing their significance. Once more he declined to be more explicit.

  “Sir William,” he explained, “having met with so tragic and melancholy an end, I am precluded, at any rate for the present, from entering into details.”

  “Very well,” said the Major. “I remind you again that what you say may be used in evidence, if necessary. I ask you another question. How did you happen to find the body? The spot where it was is quite out of the way for anyone going from the village to Highfields?”

  “I was not,” observed Mr. Adams thoughtfully, “contemplating with any pleasure the interview I had felt it necessary to seek with Sir William, a violent and hasty-tempered person. I have a marked constitutional objection to scenes of violence, much heightened by the extremely unpleasant, indeed loathsome and even disgusting experiences I was force to endure in France, for reasons I never clearly apprehended. I even wondered whether to go through with my intention. It was in order to obtain time for further consideration that instead of proceeding direct to my destination I turned aside into the field in which I discovered the body of our unfortunate friend.”

  The Major fired off another series of questions. He learned nothing more. Finally he gave it up. He said:

  “Mr. Adams, you will be called as a witness at the inquest. I advise you to consider your position very seriously. I advise you to secure legal assistance. At present it seems as though it may be suggested that you were the first to find the body because you alone knew where to look for it.”

  “It is an aspect of this unfortunate affair I have not overlooked,” confessed Mr. Adams. “It has indeed been present very clearly to my mind. The suspicion is unjust, though not, I admit, in all respects unreasonable. You may be sure I shall continue to give it my most careful consideration, as also your valued suggestion that I should secure legal advice.”

  That concluded the interview, and when Adams had gone the Major wiped a forehead damp with perspiration and said “Ouf”. Then he turned to Killick and Bobby and said:—

  “Well, what do you make of all that?”

  “Sweat it out of him in time,” said Killick. “Give him a gruelling. What he wants is to be on oath with a good smart man having a go at him.”

  The Major agreed that that was probably the best way of dealing with Adams, and then sent for Virtue, who was in waiting.

  Virtue agreed at once that he visited Sir William the previous evening, that high words had passed between them. But he insisted that the dispute had not been important.

  “It was like this,” Virtue said. “I told him you fellows weren’t satisfied with what I saw in the library, and as he was a trustee I asked him to back me up about having a search made. I told him you said there were no grounds for insisting on one so would he agree. He seemed to resent the idea. Lost his temper about it. That’s all.”

  Afterwards he returned to the inn and went presently to his room and to bed as usual. But as Major Harley remarked wearily there was no evidence he stayed there. From most bedrooms in most houses it would be easy for any one who wished to do so to leave and to return unseen.

  With Virtue’s dismissal after an interview almost as unsatisfactory as that with Mr. Adams, teatime arrived, and Bobby decided to go to the Wynton Arms, being not without hope that there he might find Olive, of whom he had not so far had a glimpse all day. As he was going out, a gloomy Constable Mills, returned limpingly to duty and much harassed by all these happenings, said to him:—

  “As if we hadn’t got enough on hand as it is, here’s Mrs. Somerville complaining that two of her hand towels were stolen last night. Seems to think we ought to stop everything and go chasing after her towels. I told her we had two murders on our hands—two hand towels indeed,” grumbled Constable Mills.

  Bobby said vaguely that it was too bad, and hurried along to the inn, where he found for once his luck was in and Olive waiting for him, very quiet and silent, though, under the weight of this new tragedy.

  “Miss Kayne wants you to go and see her as soon as you can,” she told Bobby.

  “What for?” he asked. “How is she now?”

  “I can’t make her out,” Olive answered slowly. “When I told her about this new awful thing happening to Sir William, she said something about that was two, but two wasn’t all. She wouldn’t say what she meant only if you were as clever as I said you were, then you ought to know. After that, I couldn’t get another word from her. She sits there, doing nothing, just as if she were waiting…”

  “Waiting? what for?” Bobby asked quickly.

  “I don’t know. It’s only what I feel. The way she sits—and, well, listens. I don’t know if she knows something, but I’m sure there’s something she expects. She was out last night herself quite late.”

  “Alone?”

  “I think it was to meet Mr. Broast. He had been in town all day, he got back very late.”

  “Yes, I know,” Bobby said moodily, remembering the theory that had been put forward that Broast had been to town to prepare for flight or concealment, had returned to commit the murder, and now this morning had put his escape plans into execution.

  “I heard someone talking under my window,” Olive went on, “and I got out of bed to see who it was, and I could see Miss Kayne and Mr. Broast standing talking near the house. He must have come back by the last train and she was waiting for him, I suppose.”

  “What time was that?”

  “About twelve it must have been. I asked her this morning why she had been out so late. She wouldn’t say, but she told me to tell you.”

  “To tell me?” repeated Bobby frowningly. He found himself wondering if that had been meant as defiance, as a challenge. “She gets about by herself all right,” he remarked.

  “Oh, yes, when she wants to,” agreed Olive, “though sometimes she pretends she can’t.”

  One of the maids attached to the inn tea-rooms came up. She was carrying a small box.

  “It came this afternoon,” she told Bobby. “It was in your room waiting so I brought it down.”

  Bobby thanked her and took the package. It had been posted in Mayfield and he noticed that it was addressed in block capitals. When he opened it he found within a number of freshly-picked forget-me-nots.

  “Who are they from?” asked Olive.

  Bobby made no answer but sat staring at them with a gloomy and a thoughtful air.

  CHAPTER XX

  MISS PERKINS WONDERS

  “You’ve made a conquest,” Olive said presently, but though she spoke in jest, her voice was heavy, her eyes, too, were dark and oppressed with thought.

  To both of them those small and lovely flowers, shining up from the cardboard box they had come in, brought in some way they did not understand a message of foreboding, as of some dark crisis approaching, as of evil happenings still to come to pass. Bobby put the lid back in pla
ce with a quick, nervous gesture. It was almost as though he hoped in that way to shut up something he had fear of, to prevent thus its escape into the world. It was not like him. Olive, watching, looked on uneasily. The picture in both their minds was that of Miss Kayne, seated and silent, waiting for something that somehow she had long expected, perhaps because she herself had given to it that first impetus from which these happenings had ensued, in her eyes black hatred of that great library which more than once had been described as a source of pride even to the nation itself. Bobby said:

  “What’s she got against the library? It’s hers, it’s magnificent, it’s one of the finest things going? What’s wrong with it?”

  Olive did not answer. Her fingers were plucking nervously at the folds of her skirt. Bobby said:

  “There’s a bed of forget-me-nots in the Lodge garden, behind the seat where the view is, under the trees there.”

  “Forget-me-nots are everywhere,” Olive said.

  Bobby had the impression that she did not wish to think that these came from the Lodge garden. After a long pause, when she saw how carefully Bobby was examining the address label, she added:

  “It’s the Mayfield postmark, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, posted last night,” Bobby agreed. “Not much chance to find out who did the posting. We can try, of course, and we shall have to find out if anyone from here went to Mayfield yesterday. That might possibly give us a lead.”

  “No one from the Lodge,” Olive said quickly. “I can tell you that. Miss Kayne hasn’t been anywhere for ages—oh, except Mr. Broast, and he was in town. He went again to-day.”

  “Are you sure? about yesterday, I mean. He went off early this morning, didn’t he? But about yesterday? Is it certain he was in town?”

  “Well, he rang up twice. I had to put him through to Miss Perkins. She was there all day anyhow, and so were the maids, and so was I and Miss Kayne—Briggs, too.”

  “Do you know where he was speaking from?”

  “He said he was at that big book shop at the corner of Mayfair Square. I forget the name. They have an important antiquarian book department.”

  “It’ll be easy to check that,” Bobby said. “He’s a well known man in the book trade. They’ll be sure to remember if he was there. Did he ring up from there both times?”

  “I don’t think he said where he was the second time. He said he had been delayed and wouldn’t be back till the last train, and Miss Perkins needn’t wait. She had gone home by then, so that didn’t matter.”

  “Do you know if he has any special reason just now for going up to town, both yesterday and to-day?”

  “I think it’s some book, autographed copy or something, that they wanted his opinion on because they think it may be forged. Of course, he is almost the greatest expert in the world about that.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Bobby, “I suppose so. He had come back by that last train then when you saw him and Miss Kayne together?”

  “I don’t know, I thought so. You could find that out, couldn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes, easily,” Bobby agreed. “He’s well known, someone at the station is pretty sure to remember. The last train’s due about half past eleven, isn’t it? If he walked home, and he hadn’t the car, and there’s no ’bus at that time, it would take him nearly an hour—three quarters, anyhow, even if he hurried.”

  “Oh, yes, quite that,” Olive agreed.

  “Seems to let him out, as far as this last business is concerned,” Bobby mused. “Not quite perhaps. It’ll have to be gone into. He might have had a car parked, a bicycle perhaps, not very probable on the face of it. Have to be gone into, though. Miss Kayne must have been waiting up for him. Did she say she meant to?”

  “No. She always goes to bed early. Last night it was earlier than usual—before nine, I think, I’m not sure exactly. I went early, too. I think everyone was feeling tired out. The maids, too. It’s all been so awful. Everyone’s glad to get to bed and think one day is done and perhaps to-morrow will be better.”

  “Miss Kayne must have come down again? Most likely she hadn’t actually been to bed, then?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t go straight to her room. When I went up about nine she was sitting in Mr. Broast’s room. The door was open and I spoke to her. She wasn’t doing anything. She was just sitting there, brooding.”

  “Yes,” Bobby said, and seemed to see the old, fat, monstrous woman sitting there like some ancient goddess meditating thoughts of doom. “Did she answer when you spoke?”

  “She said something about wondering how Mr. Broast had got on, and it was very worrying and difficult because he had to say whether something or another was genuine or not. I don’t know why it was specially worrying this time. He is always being asked for his opinion. I suppose it’s why she waited up.”

  “Did she stop in Mr. Broast’s room?”

  “No. She asked me to help her out of the chair, and I did and she went to her own room.”

  “You didn’t hear her go down stairs again?”

  “No. I don’t suppose anyone would. She can get about very quietly when she wants to.”

  Bobby reflected again that an alibi seemed indicated for Mr. Broast; if, that is, his movements were confirmed on inquiry. But apparently none for Miss Kayne herself. Nothing to show where she had been or how she had occupied herself between the hour when she had retired, ostensibly to bed, and the hour when Olive had seen her talking to Broast in the garden at midnight, long after the hour when a man had died, shot through and through seven time over.

  Again a vision came to him, no longer of a woman waiting and passive, but darkly active, slipping, huge, gross, and agile, silently through the night, on her way to keep a rendezvous where one at the meeting place would be death.

  He remembered those huge, shapeless marks, footprints perhaps, made in the flower bed near the study window at Highfields. He remembered he had seen Miss Kayne wearing huge, shapeless shoes, almost like carpet slippers, on her swollen feet. Clearly, too, he remembered how she said that once she had committed, a murder never suspected even, never discovered. Had that boast been true? Was it to be made good once yet again? Or had it been, not boast of a past achievement but rather vaunting anticipation?

  He felt the problem was for the present at least altogether beyond him. But one thing he made quite clear to Olive, in the plainest possible language. Olive must go back to London at once. There was danger in this quiet, peaceful village. Peril, and who could tell where it would strike next? After all, Olive was in business, wasn’t she? A business woman? She had a hat shop, and very clearly that shop required the attention of its owner. One could not, Bobby pointed out earnestly, expect assistants or a manager to take the same interest as the proprietor. She must go and see about it at once. Immediately. The business might be going to rack and ruin. Probably was. Bobby made all that perfectly clear.

  Unfortunately Olive made it equally clear she was going to do nothing of the kind.

  “Miss Kayne was father’s friend and she is mine, too,” Olive said. “She was awfully good to me when I was a tiny. I’m not going to leave her in the midst of all this trouble. Of course,” she added meekly, but not altogether as if she meant it, “when we are married I shall have to do exactly what you tell me—like all the other wives. Obey. But not till then, so don’t expect it.”

  Nor from that position was she to be moved, and when he talked once more of danger, she said nothing, but put out her hand to his with a quick and sudden look that made him realize one reason why she would not go was that she, too, thought that there was danger was past and over, she did not mean to be very far away.

  He tried to argue a little, but soon realized he might as well save his breath. She listened patiently but with a patience as impenetrable as the patience of eternity. He gave it up presently and said:

  “Miss Kayne didn’t tell you why she had come downstairs again, did she? Was it just to meet Mr. Broast? That wasn’t usual, was it?”
>
  “No. She’s been so strange lately. She said a day or two ago:—‘I knew her again the moment I saw her.’ She wouldn’t say who. She said over again she knew her at once, but I couldn’t make out who she meant. I suppose you can’t wonder at her being strange when things like this are happening. She was worrying about the forged book or whatever it is, and Mr. Broast having to go to town to examine it. I can’t think why. She said he might buy it for the library. I shouldn’t have expected her to care if every book they have turned out forged. I don’t see what there’s to worry about over the chance of his buying something else says is a fake. Anyhow, I told her Mr. Broast would be sure to know.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said yes, Broast would know. She said that twice over, and then she gave me a funny sort of look and she went away. If he does make a mistake and buy a fake for once, what’s it matter?”

  “Perhaps she might think other things in the library were fakes, too?”

  “Good gracious, Bobby,” said Olive, beginning to laugh, “why Mr. Broast—well, I should just like to hear anyone tell him he wouldn’t know a fake a mile off. Murder would happen then all right. At least, unless he just lay down and died from the shock.” She added more seriously: “Bobby, you may be quite sure. Mr. Broast would no more mistake a fake for the genuine article than you would mistake a football for a cricket bat.”

  “I see,” Bobby said slowly, though a vague, a faint suspicion was beginning to stir, as it were, in his mind.

  “It was a very early copy of youthful poems by Tennyson that friends of his printed privately,” Olive explained. “Very rare, only copy known, all that sort of thing. Mr. Broast bought it for the library after he had examined it very carefully, he said, so that shows you what he thought. He paid £100 for it, he told Miss Kayne.”

  “Stiff price,” Bobby remarked, though absently, for his thoughts were still busy. He said, half to himself:—“She would know where the two-two automatic was kept if he had it.”

  “What do you mean?” Olive asked quickly.