The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  “It is a beautiful impression,” the inspector remarked, as he examined it with the aid of my pocket-lens, while I prepared to operate on the reverse of the coin. “As good as the original. You seem rather a dab at this sort of thing, Doctor. I wonder if you would mind doing another pair for me?”

  Of course, I complied gladly; and when the inspector departed a few minutes later he took with him a couple of excellent wax impressions to console him for the necessity of parting with the original.

  As soon as he was gone, I proceeded to execute a plan that had already formed in my mind. First, I packed the two wax impressions very carefully in lint and bestowed them in a tin tobacco—box, which I made up into a neat parcel and addressed it to Dr. Thorndyke. Then I wrote him a short letter giving him the substance of my talk with Inspector Follett and asking for an appointment early in the following week to discuss the situation with him. I did not suppose that the wax impressions would convey, even to him, anything that would throw fresh light on this extraordinarily obscure crime. But one never knew. And the mere finding of the coin might suggest to him some significance that I had overlooked. In any case, the new incident gave me an excuse for reopening the matter with him.

  I did not trust the precious missive to the maid, but as soon as the letter was written I took it and the parcel in my own hands to the post, dropping the letter into the box but giving the parcel the added security of registration. This business being thus dispatched, my mind was free to occupy itself with pleasurable anticipations of the projected visit to Highgate on the morrow and to deal with whatever exigencies might arise in the course of the Saturday-evening consultations.

  CHAPTER VI

  MARION D’ARBLAY AT HOME

  Most of us have, I imagine, been conscious at times of certain misgivings as to whether the Progress of which we hear so much has done for us all that it is assumed to have done, whether the undoubted gain of advancing knowledge has not a somewhat heavy counterpoise of loss. We moderns are accustomed to look upon a world filled with objects that would have made our forefathers gasp with admiring astonishment, and we are accordingly a little puffed up by our superiority. But the museums and galleries and ancient buildings sometimes tell a different tale. By them we are made aware that the same ‘rude forefathers’ were endowed with certain powers and aptitudes that seem to be denied to the present generation.

  Some such reflections as these passed through my mind as I sauntered about the ancient village of Highgate, having arrived in the neighbourhood nearly an hour too early. Very delightful the old village was to look upon, and so it had been even when the mellow red brick was new and the plaster on the timber houses was but freshly laid; when the great elms were saplings and the stage-wagon with its procession of horses rumbled along the road which now resounds to the thunder of the electric tram. It was not Time that had made beautiful its charming old houses and pleasant streets and closes, but fine workmanship guided by unerring taste.

  At four o’clock precisely, by the chime of the church dock, I pushed open the gate of Ivy Cottage, and as I walked up the flagged path, read the date, 1709, on a stone tablet let into the brickwork. I had no occasion to knock, for my approach had been observed, and as I mounted the threshold the door opened and Miss D’Arblay stood in the opening.

  “Miss Boler saw you coming up the Grove,” she explained, as we shook hands. “It is surprising how much of the outer world you can see from a bay window. It is as good as a watch-tower.” She disposed of my hat and stick and then preceded me into the room to which the window appertained, where, beside a bright fire. Miss Boler was at the moment occupied with a brilliantly-burnished copper kettle and a silver teapot. She greeted me with an affable smile and as much of a bow as was possible under the circumstances, and then proceeded to make the tea with an expression of deep concentration.

  “I do like punctual people,” she remarked, placing the teapot on a carved wooden stand. “You know where you are with them. At the very moment when you turned the corner, sir, Miss Marion finished buttering the last muffin and the kettle boiled over. So you won’t have to wait a moment.”

  Miss D’Arblay laughed softly. “You speak as if Dr. Gray had staggered into the house in a famished condition, roaring for food,” said she.

  “Well,” retorted Miss Boler, “you said ‘tea at four o’clock,’ and at four o’clock the tea was ready and Dr. Gray was here. If he hadn’t been, he would have had to eat leathery muffins, that’s all.”

  “Horrible!” exclaimed Miss D’Arblay. “One doesn’t like to think of it; and there is no need to as it hasn’t happened. Remember that this is a gate-legged table, Dr. Gray, when you sit down. They are delightfully picturesque, but exceedingly bad for the knees of the unwary.”

  I thanked her for the warning and took my seat with due caution. Then Miss Boler poured out the tea and uncovered the muffins with the grave and attentive air of one performing some ceremonial rite.

  As the homely, simple meal proceeded, to an accompaniment of desultory conversation on everyday topics, I found myself looking at the two women with a certain ill-defined surprise. Both were garbed in unobtrusive black, and both, in moments of repose, looked somewhat tired and worn. But in their manner and the subjects of their conversation they were astonishingly ordinary and normal. No stranger, looking at them and listening to their talk, would have dreamed of the tragedy that overshadowed their lives. But so it constantly happens. We go into a house of mourning and are almost scandalized by its cheerfulness, forgetting that whereas to us the bereavement is the one salient fact, to the bereaved there is the necessity of taking up afresh the threads of their lives. Food must be prepared even while the corpse lies under the roof, and the common daily round of duty stands still for no human affliction.

  But, as I have said, in the pauses of the conversation when their faces were in repose, both women looked strained and tired. Especially was this so in the case of Miss D’Arblay. She was not only pale, but she had a nervous, shaken manner which I did not like. And as I looked anxiously at the delicate, pallid face, I noticed, not for the first time, several linear scratches on the cheek and a small cut on the temple.

  “What have you been doing to yourself?” I asked. “You look as if you have had a fall.”

  “She has,” said Miss Boler in an indignant tone. “It is a marvel that she is here to tell the tale. The wretches!”

  I looked at Miss D’Arblay in consternation. “What wretches?” I asked.

  “Ah! indeed!” growled Miss Boler. “I wish I knew. Tell him about it. Miss Marion.”

  “It was really rather a terrifying experience,” said Miss D’Arblay, “and most mysterious. You know Southwood Lane and the long, steep hill at the bottom of it?” I nodded, and she continued: “I have been going down to the studio every day on my bicycle, just to tidy up, and of course I went by Southwood Lane. It is really the only way. But I always put on the brake at the top of the hill and go down quite slowly because of the cross—roads at the bottom. Well, three days ago I started as usual and ran down the Lane pretty fast until I got on the hill. Then I put on the brake; and I could feel at once that it wasn’t working.”

  “Has your bicycle only one brake?” I asked.

  “It had. I am having a second one fixed now. Well, when I found that the brake wasn’t acting, I was terrified. I was already going too fast to jump off, and the speed increased every moment. I simply flew down the hill, faster and faster, with the wind whistling about my ears and the trees and houses whirling past like express trains. Of course, I could do nothing but steer straight down the hill; but at the bottom there was the Archway Road with the trams and buses and wagons. I knew that if a tram crossed the bottom of the Lane as I reached the road, it was practically certain death. I was horribly frightened.

  “However, mercifully the Archway Road was clear when I flew across it, and I steered to run on down Muswell Hill Road, which is nearly in a line with the Lane. But suddenly I saw a steam ro
ller and a heavy cart, side by side and taking up the whole of the road. There was no room to pass. The only possible thing was to swerve round, if I could, into Wood Lane. And I just managed it. But Wood Lane is pretty steep, and I flew down it faster than ever. That nearly broke down my nerve; for at the bottom of the Lane is the wood—the horrible wood that I can never even think of without a shudder. And there I seemed to be rushing towards it to my death.”

  She paused and drew a deep breath, and her hand shook so that the cup which it held rattled on the saucer.

  “Well,” she continued, “down the Lane I flew with my heart in my mouth and the entrance to the wood rushing to meet me. I could see that the opening in the hurdles was just wide enough for me to pass through, and I steered for it. I whizzed through into the wood and the bicycle went bounding down the steep, rough path at a fearful pace until it came to a sharp turn; and then I don’t quite know what happened. There was a crash of snapping branches and a violent shock, but I must have been partly stunned, for the next thing that I remember is opening my eyes and looking stupidly at a lady who was stooping over me. She had seen me fly down the Lane and had followed me into the wood to see what happened to me. She lived in the Lane and she very kindly took me to her house and cared for me until I was quite recovered; and then she saw me home and wheeled the bicycle.”

  “It is a wonder you were not killed outright!” I exclaimed.

  “Yes,” she agreed, “it was a narrow escape. But the odd thing is that, with the exception of these scratches and a few slight bruises, I was not hurt at all; only very much shaken. And the bicycle was not damaged a bit.”

  “By the way,” said I, “what had happened to the brake?”

  “Ah!” exclaimed Miss Boler. “There you are. The villains!”

  Miss D’Arblay laughed softly. “Ferocious Arabella!” said she. “But it is really a most mysterious affair: Naturally, I thought that the wire of the brake had snapped. But it hadn’t. It had been cut.”

  “Are you quite sure of that?” I asked.

  “Oh, there is no doubt at all,” she replied. “The man at the repair shop showed it to me. It wasn’t merely cut in one place. A length of it had been cut right out. And I can tell within a few minutes when it was done; for I had been riding the machine in the morning and I know the brake was all right then. But I left it for a few minutes outside the gate while I went into the house to change my shoes, and when I came out, I started on my adventurous journey. In those few minutes someone must have come along and just snipped the wire through in two places and taken away the piece.”

  “Scoundrel!” muttered Miss Boler; and I agreed with her most cordially.

  “It was an infamous thing to do,” I exclaimed, “and the act of an abject fool. I suppose you have no idea or suspicion as to who the idiot might be?”

  “Not the slightest,” Miss D’Arblay replied. “I can’t even guess at the kind of person who would do such a thing. Boys are sometimes very mischievous, but this is hardly like a boy’s mischief.”

  “No,” I agreed; “it is more like the mischief of a mentally defective adult; the sort of half-baked larrikin who sets fire to a rick if he gets the chance.”

  Miss Boler sniffed. “Looks to me more like deliberate malice,” said she.

  “Mischievous acts usually do,” I rejoined; “but yet they are mostly the outcome of stupidity that is indifferent to consequences.”

  “And it is of no use arguing about it,” said Miss D’Arblay, “because we don’t know who did it or why he did it, and we have no means of finding out. But I shall have two brakes in future and I shall test them both every time I take the machine out.”

  “I hope you will,” said Miss Boler; and this closed the topic so far as conversation went, though I suspect that, in the interval of silence that followed, we all continued to pursue it in our thoughts. And to all of us, doubtless, the mention of Churchyard Bottom Wood had awakened memories of that fatal morning when the pool gave up its dead. No reference to the tragedy had yet been made, but it was inevitable that the thoughts which were at the back of all our minds should sooner or later come to the surface. They were in fact brought there by me, though unintentionally; for, as I sat at the table, my eyes had strayed more than once to a bust—or rather a head, for there were no shoulders—which occupied the centre of the mantelpiece. It was apparently of lead and was a portrait, and a very good one, of Miss D’Arblay’s father. At the first glance I had recognized the face which I had first seen through the water of the pool. Miss D’Arblay, who was sitting facing it, caught my glance and said: “You are looking at that head of my dear father. I suppose you recognized it?”

  “Yes, instantly. I should take it to be an excellent likeness.”

  “It is,” she replied; “and that is something of an achievement in a self-portrait in the round.”

  “Then he modelled it himself?”

  “Yes, with the aid of one or two photographs and a couple of mirrors. I helped him by taking the dimensions with callipers and drawing out a scale. Then he made a wax cast and a fireproof mould and we cast it together in type-metal, as we had no means of melting bronze. Poor Daddy! How proud he was when we broke away the mould and found the casting quite perfect!”

  She sighed as she gazed fondly on the beloved features, and her eyes filled. Then, after a brief silence, she turned to me and asked:

  “Did Inspector Follett call on you? He said he was going to.”

  “Yes; he called yesterday to show me the things that he had found in the pond. Of course they were not mine, and he seemed to have no doubt—and I think he is right—that they belonged to the—to the—”

  “Murderer,” said Miss Boler.

  “Yes. He seemed to think that they might furnish some kind of clue, but I am afraid he had nothing very clear in his mind. I suppose that coin suggested nothing to you?”

  Miss D’Arblay shook her head. “Nothing,” she replied. “As it is an ancient coin, the man may be a collector or a dealer—”

  “Or a forger,” interposed Miss Boler.

  “Or a forger. But no such person is known to us. And even that is mere guess-work.”

  “Your father was not interested in coins, then?”

  “As a sculptor, yes, and more especially in medals and plaquettes. But not as a collector. He had no desire to possess; only to create. And so far as I know, he was not acquainted with any collectors. So this discovery of the inspector’s, so far from solving the mystery, only adds a fresh problem.”

  She reflected for a few moments with knitted brows; then, turning to me quickly, she asked: “Did the inspector take you into his confidence at all? He was very reticent with me, though most kind and sympathetic. But do you think that he, or the others, are taking any active measures?”

  “My impression,” I answered reluctantly, “is that the police are not in a position to do anything. The truth is that this villain seems to have got away without leaving a trace.”

  “That is what I feared,” she sighed. Then with sudden passion, though in a quiet, suppressed voice, she exclaimed: “But he must not escape! It would be too hideous an injustice. Nothing can bring back my dear father from the grave; but if there is a God of Justice, this murderous wretch must be called to account and made to pay the penalty of his crime.”

  “He must,” Miss Boler assented in deep, ominous tones, “and he shall; though God knows how it is to be done.”

  “For the present,” said I, “there is nothing to be done but to wait and see if the police are able to obtain any fresh information; and meanwhile to turn over every circumstance that you can think of; to recall the way your father spent his time, the people he knew and the possibility in each case that some cause of enmity may have arisen.”

  “That is what I have done,” said Miss D’Arblay. “Every night I lie awake, thinking, thinking; but nothing comes of it. The thing is incomprehensible. This man must have been a deadly enemy of my father’s. He must have hated him
with the most intense hatred; or he must have had some strong reason, other than mere hatred, for making away with him. But I cannot imagine any person hating my father and I certainly have no knowledge of any such person; nor can I conceive of any reason that any human creature could have had for wishing for my father’s death. I cannot begin to understand the meaning of what has happened.”

  “But yet,” said I, “there must be a meaning. This man—unless he was a lunatic, which he apparently was not—must have had a motive for committing the murder. That motive must have had some background, some connexion with circumstances of which somebody has knowledge. Sooner or later those circumstances will almost certainly come to light and then the motive for the murder will come into view. But, once the motive is known, it should not be difficult to discover who could be influenced by such a motive. Let us, for the present, be patient and see how events shape; but let us also keep a constant watch for any glimmer of light, for any fact that may bear on either the motive or the person.”

  The two women looked at me earnestly and with an expression of respectful confidence of which I knew myself to be wholly undeserving.

  “It gives me new courage,” said Miss D’Arblay, “to hear you speak in that reasonable, confident tone. I was in despair, but I feel that you are right. There must be some explanation of this awful thing; and if there is, it must be possible to discover it. But we ought not to put the burden of our troubles on you, though you have been so kind.”