Man with the Dark Beard

by Annie Haynes

  When he spoke it was very deliberately. “Naturally I should wish to do anything my wife asked me. Does this mean that you have changed your mind, Hilary?”

  “I will marry you if you will save Basil Wilton,” she replied tonelessly.

  “Suppose that I do defend him and cannot get him off – it, as far as I have read the evidence in the papers, looks as though it might be beyond the power of mortal man to do – what would you say to me then, Hilary?”

  Hilary clasped her hands.

  “Oh, but you will – you must. People are saying that you are the only man who can get Basil off. Dad used to say that you could make a jury believe that black was white.”

  “Ah! He thought too much of me.” Skrine’s face was curiously contorted.

  He turned, as though the very mention of his dead friend was too much for his self-control. He began to walk up and down the room, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent as if in thought. Hilary watched him miserably, catching her breath every now and then in long drawn sobs.

  At last he came to a standstill beside her.

  “If I did give all my energies to getting Wilton off – for I warn you that it is an almost impossible task that you set me, Hilary, one that will tax my strength to the utmost – and if I succeed, what guarantee have I that you will keep your promise, that, Wilton being free, you will not throw me over for him?”

  Hilary drew herself up. “You will have my word.”

  “Yes.” Skrine turned from her beseeching eyes and resumed his walk to the end of the room and back. Through the open window beside her Hilary heard the sound of voices. Fee was being taken out to the garden, Miss Lavinia with him. Both were speaking in low tones, as though some doom overhung the house.

  Hilary watched with unseeing eyes, hardly knowing what she was looking at, her whole being absorbed in the one thought of Basil Wilton’s danger. More than once Skrine looked at her. When at last he spoke it was from the other end of the room.

  *“Yes, Hilary, I will defend Wilton. I think I can promise you that I will get him off – at any rate I will do my best – if you will let me announce the engagement and forthcoming marriage now.”

  A hot touch of crimson streaked Hilary’s white cheeks.

  “I will marry you if you save Basil,” she echoed. “But what guarantee shall I have that you will when I have bound myself?”

  “My word – as you said just now. My word that I will do my best,” Sir Felix said gravely. “More it is not in the power of man to promise.”

  Hilary threw out her hands.

  “Oh, you must – you must. If you do – I –”

  “You will want to marry him, I am afraid. Hilary, I will do my very utmost to save Wilton if you give me your word of honour to marry me the day after the trial. If you do not – well” – he shrugged his shoulders – “I shall leave Wilton to his fate. And that fate will be – death.”

  Hilary’s face turned ghastly, then flushed hotly crimson, back again to white.

  “You give me no choice. I cannot help myself. I will marry you at once after the trial if – if you get Basil off. I shall always remember that you – that you –” she gasped.

  “Hilary, you have conquered!” Skrine interrupted. “Heaven forbid that I should take advantage of your – your trouble. Promise to marry me – some day – and I will trust you to keep your word. I will defend Wilton, and Fee shall go to Dr. Blathwayte’s home for his cure. What do you say?”

  “I don’t know –” Hilary hesitated.

  When she was a child she had been fond of Skrine, but her affection for him had not grown deeper as the years rolled by. Lately, in these few months since her father’s death, since she had been in his guardianship, a new element of fear seemed to have crept into their relationship. But now – now she told herself, that she had no choice, false and treacherous though he had shown himself, she could not let Basil Wilton meet a shameful death when a word of hers might save him. She held out her hand.

  “I – I will trust you too. I will marry you – when you have saved Basil, Sir Felix.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “You know that Sir Felix Skrine offered to defend Wilton?”

  The inspector nodded.

  “It won’t do him any harm, if it does not do him any good,” he returned enigmatically.

  “You have not heard the latest, then,” Harbord went on. “Wilton has refused to be defended by him and has chosen Arnold Westerham instead.”

  “I am glad to hear it.”

  Harbord stared. “I should have thought the mere fact that Skrine was Bastow’s closest friend would have some effect on the jury.”

  “Dare say it would,” Stoddart growled. “Juries – or the folks that serve on them – are mostly fools.”

  “Quite!” Harbord agreed. “But Sir Felix Skrine would hardly defend Wilton if he thought he was guilty, especially since Skrine is engaged to Miss Bastow.”

  “Eh – what?” the inspector interrupted.

  “What is that you’re saying? Skrine is not engaged to Miss Bastow.”

  “He is!” Harbord said positively. “Didn’t you know?”

  “I did not!” the inspector said emphatically. “I always took it for granted that she was sweet on Wilton.”

  “Not much good being sweet on him when he had married Miss Houlton.”

  “Well, no, it was not. That’s a fact. And young women do change their minds nowadays,” the inspector said thoughtfully. “Always did for that matter. But I would not give much for her chance of marrying Skrine.”

  The two men were in the inspector’s office at Scotland Yard. The inspector had been down in the country on some mysterious business for the last day or two, and on his return to town this morning had been met by Harbord with the foregoing piece of information.

  The Hawksview Mansions Case was coming on at the Michaelmas Assizes, to be held in a fortnight. Basil Wilton had appeared before the magistrates and had been charged with murdering his wife, and had in due course been committed for trial. The coroner’s inquest that had sat upon poor Iris Wilton’s body had returned a verdict of “Wilful Murder against Basil Wilton.” Public opinion, never too charitable, had long since decided that Wilton was guilty not only of murdering his wife, but also of killing Dr. Bastow. In most quarters Wilton’s trial was looked upon as a mere formality, and many people opined that he might have been hanged without it.

  “Ruthven is to be the judge,” Harbord went on. “I expect he will pretty well turn Wilton inside out. I suppose he will give evidence himself, sir?”

  “Oh, I suppose so,” Stoddart acquiesced, “if the trial comes on. But I doubt whether he can tell us anything we don’t know already.”

  Harbord opened his eyes. “If the trial comes on, sir?”

  “It will, if the real murderer is not discovered before the time,” the inspector said irritably. “Basil Wilton is not guilty, Harbord.”

  “I have doubted it myself sometimes,” the younger detective said thoughtfully. “But the evidence is very strong against him. The question of the time is so difficult. According to the medical evidence Mrs. Wilton died within a few minutes of Wilton’s leaving the flat, either a few minutes before or a few minutes after. That brings it rather close. If he is not guilty, who is?”

  “You know as well as I do that the defence is not called upon to answer that question,” Stoddart said, standing up and reaching for his hat. “If Wilton can be proved innocent, it does not matter to the defence who is guilty.”

  Harbord glanced keenly at his superior.

  “Sometimes I have fancied that you have some definite suspicion, sir.”

  The inspector met his eyes squarely.

  “Have you none?” he asked meaningly.

  Harbord considered a minute.

  “If sometimes a hazy suspicion has crossed my mind, I have no proof whatever.”

  “Ah! That,” said the inspector, “is a very different matter.”

  As the last word l
eft his lips there was a tap at the door.

  “A lady, sir, wants to speak to you. Leastways she said she must see the officer in charge of the Hawksview Mansions Case. Quite the lady, sir, but she wouldn’t give her name. Said you wouldn’t know it.”

  “There,” the inspector said quickly, “she is probably mistaken. Ask her to walk in, Miles.”

  Harbord looked puzzled.

  “Who can it be?”

  “Probably the maid at the flat. Maids and ladies look all alike nowadays with their silk stockings and shingled heads. Miles would not know the difference. I dare say that girl did not tell us all she knew.”

  “They will get it out of her at the trial,” Harbord began, just as the constable ushered in a tall woman whom both men knew at once to be a stranger to them.

  Little as could be seen of her face with the black hat pulled low over it, and the collar of her coat turned up high all round, the detectives recognized at once that Miles’s description had been correct enough. This was unmistakably a lady.

  She looked from one to the other.

  “You are in charge of the Hawksview Mansions Case?”

  Stoddart bowed.

  “I am, madam. If you have anything to tell us –”

  “I should have preferred to see you alone,” the newcomer said in a clear, musical voice.

  “Mr. Harbord is my trusted assistant, madam.”

  The inspector drew forward a chair. She took it with a word of thanks.

  “I have come here this morning, inspector, because I understand that Basil Wilton is supposed to have killed Dr. Bastow and then to have murdered his wife in order to get her money and marry Miss Bastow.”

  “That is one theory, I believe, madam,” the inspector assented. “But we are here to deal with facts, not theories.”

  “Well, it is to disprove this theory which I hear constantly put forward that I am here today,” the stranger went on. “Basil Wilton did not kill Dr. Bastow.”

  The interest in the detective’s eyes deepened, grew absorbed.

  “You can prove that, madam? If you can tell us who –”

  “Ah, no, I can’t do that. But I can tell you that Basil Wilton was in the surgery copying out a prescription when the doctor was murdered.”

  “And how do you know that?” the inspector questioned sharply. “Were you with him as a patient?”

  “No,” said the visitor calmly. “I was not a patient. I was Dr. Bastow’s parlourmaid.” The inspector looked at her.

  “You are –?”

  “Mary Anne Taylor,” she finished.

  “Are you aware,” the inspector said as he took the seat opposite her on the other side of his desk, “that you have been searched for, advertised for?”

  “Quite! But it did not suit me to come forward until I knew that an innocent person was accused. Then – then I had to. There were reasons before why –”

  “It will save time, I think, if I tell you at once that we know that you are Mrs. Carr,” the inspector said very deliberately.

  “You know that!” Mrs. Carr was obviously completely taken aback at first, but she speedily recovered herself. “Then possibly you can understand that, having been accused of murder once, it seemed all important to get away from a house in which another murder had been committed. I felt certain that I should be suspected. No story of mine would be believed. But I always knew that I must come forward if an innocent person was accused, no matter what; the personal risk involved might be.”

  “Well, now that you have come forward your testimony does not appear to carry us much further,” the inspector remarked quietly. “You are probably aware that medical testimony can never do more than fix approximately the time at which Dr. Bastow’s death took place. Therefore it is no use telling us that Basil Wilton was in the surgery when Dr. Bastow was murdered, unless you can tell us just when it took place.”

  “Exactly,” Mrs. Carr agreed. “And it is precisely for that reason that I am here to-day. I believe that what I have to tell you will fix the time at which Dr. Bastow died.”

  The inspector leaned forward in his favourite attitude, his arms on the table, the tips of his fingers joined together.

  “Will you tell us what you mean, please, Mrs. Carr?”

  “Certainly.” Mrs. Carr hesitated a moment, as if a little doubtful how to begin, then with a quick glance at Stoddart she went on. “On the night of the doctor’s death an old man called at, as near as I can fix it, a quarter to nine. I showed him into the surgery to Mr. Wilton, for the doctor never saw anyone so late except by appointment. Mr. Wilton had just come in and I heard him speak to the man. Then, I had had an important business letter that morning, and I was particularly anxious to post the answer to it myself. It was already written. The pillar box was only at the end of the road, and I thought there would be no harm in running out as far as that. I should be practically in sight of the door all the time, and it was most unusual for anyone to ring at that time. I slipped out.”

  “One moment,” the inspector interrupted, “did you leave the front door ajar?”

  “Certainly not. I went back by the area.”

  The inspector nodded. “I see. Well, will you go on, please?”

  “As I was about to close the door,” Mrs. Carr proceeded, “I saw a tall man coming down the road, walking very quickly. The thought came to me that he might be coming for the doctor, so I slipped back and waited. Somewhat to my surprise he neither came to the house nor passed by. I was just wondering what had become of him when I heard the garden door close softly. That door, as you know, inspector, is just level, a little further on along the road, with the front door at which I was standing. Then I concluded that the man I had seen was only one of the doctor’s intimate friends whom he sometimes admitted that way. I waited there a few minutes just to see whether they wanted anything, and while I stood there I heard a sound, quite a low sound.

  “I attached no importance to it then, concluding that Mr. Wilton had knocked over something in the surgery. He was not a very careful young man. Now I feel sure that it was the shot that killed Dr. Bastow. At last I concluded it would be safe to run out with my letter. I hurried rather, for I was afraid of being wanted while I was away. The pillar box is on the opposite side of the road to Dr. Bastow’s, and I was just about to cross back when I saw a woman come out of the doctor’s garden with her back to me, and go off very quickly in the opposite direction. I didn’t see her face, but by her walk and dress I knew her to be Miss Houlton, the doctor’s secretary.”

  “What of the man?” the inspector questioned sharply.

  Mrs. Carr shook her head.

  “I saw no more of him. But he must have been just up there when I heard the bang.”

  “Can you give us any description of him?” Stoddart asked.

  “He was tall.” Mrs. Carr’s voice altered indefinably. Glancing at her, the inspector came to the conclusion that her eyes looked frightened. “And he stooped. There was only the light from the street lamps, you know, inspector, and it is gas, not electricity, in Park Road, so that I could not give any better description.”

  “And Miss Houlton?” the inspector said abruptly. “Where does she come in?”

  “I can’t tell,” Mrs. Carr said in a puzzled tone. “She must have known who was guilty. And I can’t help thinking that she knew or guessed something beforehand.”

  “What!” She had certainly succeeded in astonishing the inspector. “An accessory before the fact! Impossible!”

  “Well, I don’t know. But, when it was found that nobody could get into the consulting-room, I remembered that the garden door had been unlocked earlier in the evening, and thought it might still be open, so I ran round to see whether we could get in that way. But, though the garden gate was unfastened, the door into the consulting-room was locked. Then I went to the window. Sometimes it was open a little way at the top, and if it had been so that night I could have pushed it up and got in. However, it was not; but, much to my surpri
se, the curtain on the right side and the blind were so arranged that you could see straight into the room. Now I had drawn the curtains and blinds myself earlier in the evening, and I knew there was nothing of that kind then. It seemed to me that they must have been arranged on purpose.”

  “Quite!” The inspector nodded. “But why by Miss Houlton?”

  “Well, I don’t think anyone else had much opportunity. Miss Houlton would go in to see if there were any letters to answer probably. No one else went into the consulting-room except myself unless Miss Bastow or Miss Priestley had wished to speak to the doctor, and they wouldn’t have altered the curtains. Besides, as they stated at the inquest, neither of them did go in that evening. The doctor did not like being interrupted when he was busy with his research work, as he had been all that week.”

  “What about Basil Wilton?”

  “He did go in occasionally, of course. But I think he was exceptionally busy in the surgery that day. And besides, as we have all heard, the doctor had dismissed Mr. Wilton. He would not go in if he could help it. And if he had meant to shoot the doctor he would not have arranged the curtains so that he could be seen., No. I have always thought that by one of the two who were in the garden – the tall man or. Miss Houlton – that spy-hole had been arranged either that the doctor could be shot through it, or so that the other could watch what was done. They must have been accomplices, it seems to me.”

  “Possibly.” The inspector drummed with his fingers more energetically on the table and stared at them in silence. Then he raised his head and gave Mrs. Carr one of those sharp penetrating glances of his. “Now one or two questions, please. Why do you imagine that Basil Wilton married Miss Houlton? Was it because through that spy-hole she had seen him shoot Dr. Bastow and blackmailed him?”

  “No, I am sure it was not,” Mrs. Carr said at once. “Mr. Wilton was still occupied with his patient when I came back. He let him out a few minutes later. As to why he married Miss Houlton –” She shrugged her shoulders.

  “Well, the doctor had refused to allow the engagement with his daughter, and Miss Houlton and Mr. Wilton had always been rather friendly. I have often come upon them talking together. I suppose she caught him on the rebound. Any more questions, inspector?”