Comes a Stranger

by E. R. Punshon

Bobby did not answer, but the troubled look on his features grew more marked. Olive had become very pale. After a pause she almost whispered:

  “Bobby, you can’t mean… you can’t… not Miss Kayne, that’s too awful.”

  He took her hand in both his and held it, speaking very gently:

  “Dearest love,” he said, “I’ve to follow the truth where it leads, no matter where it leads. If you are going to marry a policeman, you mustn’t forget that. But,” he added more lightly, “don’t jump to conclusions; that’s about the first thing we are taught, never to jump to conclusions.” After another pause, he said: “I can’t get it straight. Don’t you worry, Olive. Nothing certain yet by a long way. Look here, don’t you think you really ought to clear out of this? It’s not the sort of thing to be mixed up in if you can help it?”

  “I am staying with Miss Kayne,” Olive answered. “She’s my friend and that’s all that matters.”

  She was looking straight at him, with something of anger and defiance in her expression, that changed suddenly as a flush spread over her pale cheeks and she looked away, for she had seen the admiration, the love, and the approval in his eyes.

  It was time by now, and more than time, for Bobby to return to the little police station that had become such a centre of hustling activity, that existed now in a state of perpetual siege, with eager-eyed reporters swarming about it, like flappers round a film star. First he saw Olive on her way back to the Lodge, and then he went on to the police station, where he found Killick in some excitement over a fresh bit of information that had just arrived. Someone had come forward to identify Virtue as having been one of those in the library some weeks previously, when had been broken the glass of the case containing one of the library’s most cherished treasures—the Glastonbury Psalter.

  “What’s more,” said Killick excitedly, “he don’t attempt to deny it—we’ve had him in and he owned up he was there. Gives a pretty clear lead, don’t it? That was a try-on that didn’t come off, and the whole thing adds up to attempted theft of some of the old stuff there that’s worth thousands of pounds—to them as thinks so. The Major’s very bucked.”

  “Has Virtue been held?” Bobby asked.

  “No,” admitted the superintendent with slightly diminished enthusiasm. “He wouldn’t own up to anything except that he was in the library that day. He refused to say anything more, said he understood it was our job to prove it was him broke the glass, and he could swear he wasn’t anywhere near at the moment, and there was a girl ran round by where he was standing could swear to his being on the other side of the library when they all heard the smash. Then he said he was a business man in good standing and he wasn’t a thief. Perhaps he isn’t, but you know how crazy these collectors are, everyone knows that. Anyhow, we can’t hold him on it, except for malicious damage if we had proof. He meant to pinch the Psalms thing all right, if he got the chance, but you can’t send a man up on intention. It’s a clear lead, though.”

  “Any report in from America?” Bobby asked.

  “Well, yes, there is,” answered Killick, his enthusiasm dropping another point or two. “Cable from the Grand Rapids police, a bit snotty, too. Don’t half like one of their prominent citizens being run in here. Family’s communicating with the American Ambassador. Broad hint to us to watch our step. Well-known and respected Michigan citizen and all that sort of thing—they seem to have money to blow in on cables over there. Confirms, too, that one of the Virtue family disappeared on a European trip, and a sort of hint that if we had got busy about that at the time, it would have been a whole lot smarter of us. All very well, but prominent American citizen and all, he was there when a pass was made at that what-d’ye-call it thing, and that’s a pointer we can’t drop. Some of these collectors will give any amount of money for mouldy old stuff you and me would chuck on the dust heap.”

  “Yes, that’s so,” agreed Bobby with more fervour than he felt, for he could not imagine anyone in the world blind to the loveliness of that old manuscript with its lettering, its illustration, its exquisite border of birds and foliage in which the spring itself seemed eternally to laugh. He added:—“Things do seem to be falling a bit into place. I got a glimmer of light at tea just now on what perhaps may lie behind it all.”

  He went on to tell Killick what he had gathered from Olive’s conversation. Killick told him to put it in a report. He pointed out, however, that they had known before that Mr. Broast had returned from London by the last train the night before and had left again for town by the first train this morning. His errand there, Killick remarked, was, of course, of no interest to them, no importance at all. All that mattered was the fact that he had gone, and the times of his arrival and departure, which seemed well established by independent evidence. A man arriving at Mayfield from town at 11.35 p.m. had a fairly sound alibi for a murder committed in such circumstances at such a distance. It seemed clear, for instance, that the attention of the murdered man had been attracted in the first place by earth thrown against the study window by some secret visitor, and it seemed clear again that that must have happened sometime well before half past eleven, since afterwards, Sir William had had to leave the house and proceed as far as the spot where the murder took place. Of course, there was no proof that the thrower of the earth against the study window and the murderer were the same person, but it was difficult to suppose anything else. As for Miss Kayne, when her name was mentioned, Killick laughed a little.

  “No, no,” he said, “I can’t see a fat old lady like her cutting capers of this sort.” He smiled again. Evidently before his eyes there was no such vision as that which had so impressed itself on Bobby’s imagination. He went on: “Besides, why should she? It’s all her property, isn’t it? Kayne and Winders were only trustees.”

  To that there was no answer; and as for the receipt of the box of forget-me-nots, Killick’s only comment was a broad grin and a warning to Bobby to mind what he was about with the village flappers.

  There being nothing else to attend to at the moment Bobby went out again to make a little private investigation of his own, for he was anxious to assure himself that Mrs. Somerville was a trustworthy person, that, for example, she really had had two small hand towels stolen, and had not merely mislaid them, and that, too, her statement of the hour at which she had returned home on the night of the murder of Nat Kayne was really accurate. Unimportant points, perhaps, but such minor matters have a way of concealing major significance.

  However, the verification of the second of these two minor points had to be postponed, for Mrs. Payne, the neighbour with whom Mrs. Somerville had been on the evening of Nat Kayne’s murder, was away, visiting a married daughter expecting an addition to her family. But Bobby was able to establish two other details; first, that Mrs. Payne had no wireless, probably the only person in the village without that adjunct to the amenities—and the noises—of modern life, and, secondly, that Mrs. Somerville was the kind of housewife who turned out every room from top to bottom at frequent intervals, tracking down with grim determination every grain of dust within the four walls of her home.

  Both facts he thought interesting, and tucked them away in his mind for future consideration, and then, as he was walking back to the police station, he came face to face with Miss Perkins, returning home apparently after a small shopping expedition, as she carried a paper bag or two in her hands.

  “Oh, that’s luck,” he said, “I was rather hoping to meet you.”

  She looked a little startled, even afraid, he thought, and her pale eyes from behind their heavy glasses flashed at him a sudden, intent, and questioning look.

  “Oh, yes; oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, pulling open her handbag, which was provided with one of the popular zip fasteners.

  “Major Harley was asking for you,” Bobby went on.

  “Yes,” she said, fumbling in her bag.

  “About the pistol you told us you saw, the small one,” Bobby explained. “You remember? You described it as sm
all and flat, it was in a drawer of Mr. Broast’s writing table.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, “yes.” She produced from her bag the handkerchief she had apparently been fumbling for, and put it to her eyes. “I’m so sorry,” she said, “but it’s all so Dreadful, isn’t it?”

  A few more questions Bobby put her she answered clearly and simply, describing the little two-two automatic quite plainly, though she would insist on calling it a revolver. Bobby, who had an exact mind, tried to explain the difference between the two types of weapons, but this she seemed incapable of taking in, in spite of the clear description she gave of the pistol she said she had seen. Another remark of hers made Bobby realize that she still believed Mr. Broast had returned the previous night by the six o’clock train, as he originally intended, and not by the last train, as was in fact the case. Indeed she looked as if she thought Bobby must be mistaken in what he said.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she protested with her usual inane giggle, “but I’m sure that’s what he said, and he’s always so Particular, and there was a light in his room, too, last night, about nine.”

  “Are you sure of that?” Bobby asked.

  “Oh, yes, indeed, at least, I mean to say, I think I am.”

  “Do you mean you saw Mr. Broast himself?”

  “Oh, no, just that there was a light in his room, like there always is, when he’s there, because he always gets his letters ready, so I can type them first thing in the morning, and I wondered if he had brought the Trial Tennyson back with him he had been to see, because it’s so Interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” agreed Bobby absently, for he was wondering if this new piece of information broke the Broast alibi.

  In these days of cars and motor-cycles, great distances can be covered with great ease. If the modern man cannot yet be in two different places at the same time, he can at any rate be in two different places in extraordinarily swift succession. Anyhow, Mr. Broast’s movements in town would now have to be checked with even greater care, and then Bobby remembered, too, that Olive had remarked on the early hour at which Miss Kayne had retired the previous evening—about nine, Olive said. She had said, too, that Miss Kayne had gone into the librarian’s room for a moment or two, or, possibly, Miss Perkins had mistaken the window. That, however, Miss Perkins would not admit for a moment.

  “Oh, no,” she said, “I’m quite sure, ever so sure.”

  It occurred to Bobby to wonder why she had returned to the Lodge after her work was over, and he was about to put that question to her, though indeed he knew that when there was a pressure of work she sometimes came back late to try to finish it, when quite calmly she dropped a bombshell that drove everything else out of his head.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she said, “but I do wonder if you’ve ever thought, and of course, it isn’t Slander, because why shouldn’t they? or Libel, or anything like that, is it? but I do wonder if perhaps Miss Kayne and Mr. Broast aren’t married?”

  CHAPTER XXI

  THE TRIAL TENNYSON

  Bobby merely gaped, too astonished at this suggestion even to say a word. Such an idea had never entered his mind. He had only thought of Miss Kayne as an enormous, fat old woman, of Mr. Broast as a withered, dried up old stick of a scholar. True, Olive had told him that Miss Kayne talked of some far off, distant romance in her life, but even that had failed to bring before him a picture of her as a young girl with such dreams as young girls have. Much less had he ever conceived the dried up old scholar as having also once been young, or ever thought that in his veins, too, as in Miss Kayne’s, had at one time run the hot and careless blood of youth, that indeed for both of them there had been a time when ginger was still hot in the mouth. No one is born fat and old, no one comes into the world a dried up old scholar with a heart pumping ink, not blood. In this youth of theirs the two of them had been thrown into close companionship. Miss Kayne had apparently in her girlhood seen scarcely anyone else, except her father’s friends of his own age. Was it perhaps love letters from Mr. Broast, concealed in the first place from her father’s eyes, of which she had confided the secret hiding place to Olive? Perhaps Mr. Broast had written for her verses of which he was now ashamed, thinking they would damage his reputation as a serious scholar, while Miss Kayne cherished tender memories of them and a belief in their beauty she thought the world should be allowed a chance to admire as well. That might explain the secrecy shown. She dared not publish them now in face of Mr. Broast’s objections, but hoped that in coming years a posthumous fame might be won for him—for her, too, perhaps as the Beatrice to his Dante.

  Fantastic in a way, perhaps, and yet conceivable enough in the light of this suggestion Miss Perkins had just dropped.

  Bobby remembered, too, those odd clauses in the will governing the disposition of the library, clauses that did now seem to suggest old Mr. Kayne had had some grounds for fearing the unsuitable marriage so carefully provided against. If Mr. Broast were, in fact, the person most specially aimed at by those clauses, then it seemed to Bobby that an entirely new set of circumstances came into consideration.

  It was perhaps the extreme surprise Bobby’s expression showed that now produced from Miss Perkins a faint giggle that reminded him of her presence.

  “What gave you that idea?” he asked.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry, it’s only just what I thought,” she answered, with yet another of those nerve-trying giggles of hers. “I suppose I oughtn’t to have said anything, ought I? Of course, I don’t Know, because how could I? and I don’t think now they’re very fond of each other either, but then that’s so Usual, isn’t it? I mean, when you’re married, and I’m sure she’s afraid of him, I mean to say, anyone can see that, can’t they? and why is she? if he’s only the librarian and she could send him away whenever she wanted, only not if he’s her Husband, could she? at least, not very well.”

  “I suppose not,” agreed Bobby, trying to adjust his ideas to this new suggestion. “Noticed anything else?” he asked.

  “Oh no,” she answered, “I’m so sorry, only I mean to say I simply couldn’t Help, because of course I don’t Listen. I wouldn’t Think of such a thing, only it wasn’t my fault Mr. Broast was almost Shouting at Miss Kayne. Bullying her, and I thought: Why, the horrid way he talks to her you would think they were married, and then it came over me just like a flash of lightning that’s what it was.”

  Bobby asked a few more questions, but obtained no more information. The little typists had no actual facts to go on, apparently, but the more Bobby thought it over the more he felt that quite possibly she had hit upon the truth. There is Biblical authority, he reminded himself, for the belief that things hidden from the wise are sometimes revealed to the foolish. Clever people are apt to confuse their minds by the multitude of their ideas, while the simple folk see only the one that is sometimes, though not always, the truth.

  Yet, even if Miss Kayne and Mr. Broast were man and wife, bound by a secret marriage, how did that affect the sole question before the police, the identity of the murderer?

  Could it be that Knowledge of the secret marriage had somehow only now reached the two trustees, and that they had been murdered to prevent their taking action on it? But there was nothing they could have done except by acquiring a greater power of interference, to insist on a stricter supervision, a more careful control, and that would have been largely, if not entirely, offset, by the superior position and authority Broast would gain as acknowledged husband of the owner. The Courts, if appealed to, would almost certainly take the view that Mr. Broast was a quite suitable person: in view of his high standing as a scholar, a very suitable person indeed. Highly improbable they would exercise the powers they might have thought it proper to use if Miss Kayne—Mrs. Broast was she, really?—had married some heedless young spendthrift or indeed anyone unsuitable for a position of trust in connection with what was almost a national possession.

  No motive for a double murder, Bobby told himself, in any knowledge of any such marria
ge having reached the trustees.

  He thanked Miss Perkins for her suggestion, remarked doubtfully that he did not see how the marriage was any-one else’s business, dropped a hint he hoped would be effective against repeating the story, received Miss Perkins’s fervent declaration that she would never even Think of such a thing, only it was Different when it was the police, wasn’t it? and then, leaving her, made his way back to the police station. Killick had gone, but Major Harley was still there, brooding over some of the other reports that had come in that day, and when Bobby asked to see him and repeated Miss Perkins’s story, he looked half puzzled, half amused.

  “It may be true,” he agreed, “but I don’t see what we can do. It doesn’t seem to affect the investigation. There’s no suggestion of this being a crime of passion or jealousy.” He paused to smile as he thought of such words in connection with that gross, ponderous old woman—like a good many other people he always thought of her as old, though in fact she was nearly a decade younger than he was. He went on:—“We could ask them, of course, if they are married, but if they told us to mind our own business, I don’t know what we could say. We may have to put it to them, but I would like to think it over first. Surprising, of course. Had any more gifts of flowers, by the way, from any more lady admirers?”

  “No, sir,” answered Bobby soberly.

  It was too late now for any more work to be done that day, and Bobby went back for supper to the Wynford Arms, accompanied on the way by an escort of journalists, who were very friendly and jolly and asked him no questions at all, and invited him to have a drink, and now and again made some outrageous suggestion or another in the hope that Bobby would contradict it, and so be led into a general discussion from which the intelligent journalistic mind might at least garner a hint or two to be dished up next morning as “Exclusive to—” whatever national newspaper it happened to be.

  But Bobby had been there before, and much as he liked the company of newspaper men, with all the information they possess they are so careful not to print in their papers, he had adopted the simple plan of listening to all they had to say with no other comment than: “Well, now, you do surprise me.” So presently the newspaper men gave him up as a bad job, told him the latest scandalous story about a Cabinet Minister, made him a fresh offer of a drink to show there was no ill feeling, and then allowed him to depart to eat his supper in peace.