The Incredible Crime

by Lois Austen-Leigh

  “No,” said Mrs. Heale, “I don’t see that in the least. In fact, I am quite certain neither Ben nor John would harm anyone.”

  “You’re an awful good wife, Laura!” exclaimed Prudence. “You let your husband do a thing like this without talking to him about it; when he praises my riding to hounds and you know it’s really only a form of praising his own, you see it, and don’t comment on it, and you’ve such unbounded trust in him!”

  “Oh, my dear,” said Laura, “it’s havin’ your own man and the right one at that. I only wish you—”

  “Yes,” interrupted Prudence, “I know what you are going to say, but I’m much better as I am.”

  “It would be much better for you,” said Mrs. Heale firmly, “to have one man whom you had to spoil, instead of being spoiled by many, as you are.”

  “Thank you for that,” laughed Prudence. “Well, if you can, tell your one man whom you spoil outrageously that next time he goes out smuggling he had better not give himself away by whistling…and don’t ask me any more about it, as I’m not going to tell you.”

  Mrs. Heale tucked Prudence’s arm a little firmer to her side, then she said: “You know, Prue, you’re absolutely made for a smuggler; I’ve always known it, your beautiful face, your ladylike and refined appearance, my dear; you’ve a fine position in Cambridge, and you’ve very wild blood, and no one can keep a secret better than you! And don’t ask me any more about it, for I’m not going to tell you.”

  Miss Pinsent came away with a much higher opinion of Mrs. Heale’s intellect than heretofore.

  Chapter XXIV

  By the time Prudence got back to the Hall it was tea-time. She went to the library to find the old room flooded by a strong yellow light from the stormy sunset without, the putty-coloured river curving between flats of gleaming yellow, as vivid as the sky itself. The farm buildings and ricks on the opposite shore stood out dark and mysterious against the stormy sky; the reeds and saltings made smudges of brown among the glistening waters, and a flock of wild duck swirled and circled above it all.

  Dunning came in with the tea. “It’s a stormy sunset, miss, and if I’m not mistaken, it’s going to blow hard before morning.”

  “I see the glass has dropped,” replied Prudence.

  “Yes, miss, it always goes down for wind here.”

  “Does it?” said Prudence. “I have sometimes been tempted to wonder if the glass bears any relation whatever to the weather.”

  Dunning would have liked to pursue the subject and prove Miss Pinsent wrong to his own satisfaction, but the entrance of his master made him abstain and retire.

  “Your friends have arrived, Prudence,” said Wellende. “I have sent Stevens off with an invitation to them to dine to-night.”

  “That’s very good of you,” said Prudence. “I think you will like them, at least Thomas and Mr. Maryon; the third man I don’t know.”

  “Skipwith is an entomologist, isn’t he?”

  “Well done!” exclaimed Prudence. “You brought that word out fine, you did!”

  “Contrary to a very general superstition,” remarked Lord Wellende blandly; “they give you an excellent education at Eton, and I haven’t forgotten it all yet!”

  “I am the last to deny it,” laughed Prudence, “but you didn’t get a scientific education, not when you were there, anyhow.”

  “Tell me,” said her cousin. “He’s a professor, isn’t he? And does one address him as Professor? I never know these things.”

  “Not out of Cambridge, anyhow. In Cambridge it would be correct, of course; some like it, but most are indifferent.”

  “Oh, I know, some men stand on their dignity and some don’t; but, anyhow, you don’t use it away from Cambridge?”

  “No,” said Prudence. “But talking of such things, now that appellation of ‘squire.’ There’s old Mr. Saltlande of Saltlandes, everyone calls him squire, all his people.”

  “He is the Squire of Saltlandes,” said Wellende.

  “Yes, but what constitutes being a squire?”

  “Owning all or most of the parish, I should think,” replied Wellende, after a pause.

  “It’s more than that, you’ve got to have owned it for a few generations,” said Prudence. “Now I know a man who always speaks of himself as the squire, and once spoke to me of his grandson as ‘the little squire.’ It was on the tip of my tongue to say I had no idea it was an hereditary title, but I forbore,” with a reminiscent sigh.

  “Cheer up, Prue,” said Ben, “you’ll always get that sort everywhere. I know people who always speak of their wives as Mrs. So-and-so.”

  “I wish I was as tolerant of that sort of thing as you, Ben.”

  “Oh, well, women notice those things more than men do,” said Lord Wellende, charitably and untruthfully.

  “Well, anyhow, you’ll like Thomas; everyone does. I always think he’s a specimen of the best sort of University don, keen about everything.”

  “What, games too?”

  “I should rather think so; and a tremendous hard worker who makes other people work. Why, I’ll just tell you. I went to stay with him and his wife in Wales, and Thomas is keen on walking, so we walked. Now I don’t like walking—I can’t do it, and don’t like it—but I found myself walking; I reminded myself I wasn’t his wife, I was a free, independent woman, but I somehow still went on walking, and I suppose I should be walking still if Thomas hadn’t decided to turn back.”

  “I like the sound of that man.”

  “He is what is called a ‘force,’” said Miss Pinsent, pulling down the corners of her mouth.

  The three men from the boat arrived in good time for dinner, all a little ill at ease. Skipwith and Maryon, because there are few things that make an Englishman feel more awkward than knowing he is not dressed right, and it was wrong to eat their dinner in such surroundings as Wellende Old Hall in old flannels rather than dress clothes. No such scruples troubled McDonald. In his case it was the company to which he was unaccustomed. Both he and Maryon were intensely curious to see the man who was suspected of smuggling drugs; the man whose doings and habits were of such interest to far-away Scotland Yard.

  Maryon pictured to himself a slightly dissolute, weak-faced degenerate. McDonald imagined a haughty nobleman. They were both confounded when they found themselves shaking hands with a tall man in a shabby smoking-suit, a courteous, kindly gentleman with a certain indescribable and innate dignity, not handsome, perhaps, but an out-of-door face, with singularly beautiful grave, blue-grey eyes, who welcomed them with a quiet voice and unassuming manner. McDonald said “Pleased to meet you” at each introduction. Lord Wellende did not appear to hear. Prudence looked pained.

  The talk at dinner was chiefly about their voyage, and Skipwith gave McDonald his meed of praise.

  “Did you get a pilot to come up the river without much difficulty?” asked Lord Wellende.

  “We had to wait about a bit,” said Skipwith. “They told us the bar was always changing.”

  “The pilot told me,” said McDonald, “there was a lady who came from here who constantly took your lordship’s motor-boat out without a pilot. Would it be you?” turning to Prudence.

  “Yes,” said she. “I only go out when it’s safe, and a motor-boat is so very much easier than sailing.”

  McDonald looked at her with added interest, and proceeded to ask a good many questions about the boat, all of which Prudence answered readily enough.

  After the servants had set the dessert and left the room, Professor Skipwith turned to his host and said: “This house of yours is a perfect setting for ghosts, of which I hear from Prudence you are the proud possessor.”

  Lord Wellende pushed the port towards Skipwith. “Help yourself, and pass it on. Oh, yes, we have our ghosts, but if you ask me I think they are chiefly rats.”

  “Don’t spoil it by sayi
ng that,” said Maryon. “You must own up to ghosts in such a place as this.”

  “And I expect his lordship’s family smuggled, too, in the old days,” added McDonald, looking keenly at Wellende and not failing to notice Prudence’s slight rise of colour.

  “Yes,” said Wellende, then turning to Skipwith he said: “Prudence tells me you want to see how the water comes up under the house; we will go down to the cellars later on.”

  Prudence left the men and took herself off to the library, where not very long after she was joined by Thomas and Maryon.

  “What have you done with the others?” she said.

  “Your cousin has taken McDonald to show him some early flint instruments he has,” replied Thomas. “That chap is about the best informed I ever came across, there doesn’t seem to be any subject that he hasn’t a bowing acquaintance with; comes of being a sort of policeman, I suppose.”

  “A what?” exclaimed Prudence, in a startled tone, a colour she was quite unable to control mounting to her face.

  “Yes, Prue,” laughed Thomas, quite mistaking the real cause of her agitation, “think of it, you’ve sat down to dinner with just an ordinary policeman, rubbed elbows with him, so to speak. What do you think of that?”

  “Do be serious; of course he’s not an ordinary policeman,” said Prudence, regaining her composure. “It’s very interesting; I was wondering during dinner what he was, he has such a keen, intelligent face.”

  “Yes, that’s all very well, but you know his keen, intelligent face doesn’t excuse various little things about him, does it?” said Thomas, laughing openly at Prudence. “For instance, his constantly saying ‘your lordship’ to our host; that’s a sin too bad to—”

  “Oh, don’t be tiresome, you’re doing your best to annoy me, and very soon you’ll succeed. What is the man really?”

  “Never mind, Prue,” said Thomas consolingly, “it’s not as bad as it might be, he’s quite a high-up chap at Scotland Yard having a holiday.”

  Now Maryon, who had been examining a picture, happened to look up just as Skipwith blurted out the information that McDonald was a policeman, and he caught the first fleeting expression on Miss Pinsent’s face. It was not annoyance, as Skipwith thought; Maryon had not served four years in the Secret Service for nothing. It was terror—sheer, unadulterated terror—that had shown for a second in her face. It was very quickly gone, and her mounting colour was the result of shock, not annoyance.

  Maryon felt a little stunned at the discovery. In these peaceful, refined surroundings that look had no place. It could only mean one thing, and that was, that Miss Pinsent knew of something that was going on which made her horribly afraid of having a policeman about, and in spite of all appearances, of all probabilities, he knew this must be true.

  He left the other two sparring together, and pretended to be absorbed in the pictures while he thought it out. McDonald must be made to go; he, Maryon, was not in the Secret Service now, and whatever was going on, he was not going to be the means of introducing a spy in the guise of a friend. But it would be difficult to get rid of him. He couldn’t let him know he thought there was something wrong; how then could he be got rid of? He could do two things, though. Watch McDonald himself, and warn Miss Pinsent.

  “Yes,” he said, as though it cost him an effort to take his attention off the really fine pictures, “McDonald is a detective all right, and one of the smartest in the world I suppose. He’s on a holiday, he came to me and said he wanted one badly, and I asked Skipwith if he might come with us.”

  “By the by, he’s not by any chance that chap you were describing in the Combination Room the other day that was only known as a number?”

  “Yes,” said Maryon shortly, “that’s the fellow.”

  Skipwith whistled.

  “Don’t talk to him about his work,” went on Maryon, “he hates it”; then turning to Prudence, “he’s about the best man Scotland Yard has, and I wonder if that sort can ever take a real holiday. I’ll be bound he’s noticed far more in this house than either Skipwith or I. Take the dinner, I know the butler’s face but I never looked at the footman.”

  “I didn’t even know there was one,” said Skipwith, “and I am sure I shouldn’t know either again.”

  “I’ll bet you anything McDonald automatically looked at them both, and everything else as well,” with a laugh.

  The boating party made an early departure. They were to shoot duck at dawn, and Lord Wellende had invited them to lunch. As they walked down to the jetty to their dinghy, Skipwith said:

  “There you have the ideal country gentleman, and, by God! What a glorious house!”

  The other two agreed.

  “What price scented hair and decadence, McDonald?” said Maryon. “McDonald and I,” he said to Skipwith, “thought we should find an effete nobleman with scented hair. Why, did you hear him say at dinner one of his under-gardeners always cut his hair?”

  “No, I didn’t catch that,” said Skipwith, “but it would be quite in keeping. I somehow got the idea he was a bit of an ass, I don’t know how, but he certainly is not: a charming fellow.”

  “He’s no ass, that man, whatever else he may be,” said McDonald feelingly. Maryon looked at him as though to speak, but thought better of it.

  Meanwhile the cousins stood over the library fire.

  “What do you suppose Mr. McDonald’s profession is, Ben?”

  “Haven’t an idea; I thought him a very pleasant and able fellow.”

  “He’s a very high-up detective at Scotland Yard.”

  Lord Wellende, who was pushing a log farther on to the fire, did not speak for a moment. When he did, he said:

  “Is that a fact, or only a guess?”

  “Oh, it’s a fact. Mr. Maryon was telling us after dinner; he says he’s very great indeed, and wanted a holiday, and that’s why he’s here, so Mr. Maryon said.”

  “Well,” said Lord Wellende easily, “we must see that he gets plenty of sport.”

  Chapter XXV

  Next day, according to arrangement, the boat party turned up for lunch at the Hall. They had had good sport and brought some of their bag along with them. It was a cold day, and the housekeeper had thoughtfully provided hot soup to begin the meal. No servants were kept in the dining-room for lunch; Ben and Dr. Heale, who had looked in on parish business, waited on the party. The talk at lunch was almost entirely on sport of different kinds. McDonald described bear-shooting in the Rockies, much to the interest of his host.

  The following day hounds were meeting at a reasonable distance from the Hall, and the duck-shooters all decided that they would go to the meet and get a little exercise.

  “In that case,” said Dr. Heale, “you had better all finish up with me for a high tea; my house will be on your way home.”

  This kind invitation was accepted, and it was further settled that the day after that they would lunch at Wellende again.

  “By that time,” said Heale with a grin, “I should think you would all be ready for a bath. I am not going to offer it you; we’ve only one bath-room, but Wellende here has half a dozen.” They all agreed laughingly that they would be glad of a wash, “though a good layer of dirt on top is a wonderful thing for keeping out the cold.”

  “Yes,” said Skipwith, “if I have a good wash on Friday I shouldn’t be at all surprised if I caught cold. I am not sure that I won’t let well alone!”

  “If you won’t wash, Thomas, you shan’t come here to lunch any more,” said Prudence.

  On this they appealed to Lord Wellende, but he laughingly upheld Prudence.

  “I saw a most shocking sight, hunting, on Monday,” said Heale. “Some girl was powdering her disgusting little nose by the covert side.”

  “I don’t see much in that,” said Prudence; “you see them do it everywhere, in the street, in the train.”

 
; “Yes, but by the covert side, I ask you; it really quite shocked me!”

  Professor Skipwith looked at Dr. Heale with somewhat the same expression of interest with which he would have regarded a new insect. “I know what you mean—much what you would feel if you saw a chap light a cigarette during the sermon.”

  “Yes, but that, as a churchwarden, I could have stopped.”

  “The same sort of feeling you would have, Thomas, if you saw a young lady powder her nose while doing a tripos paper,” said Prudence, amid a general laugh.

  So it came about that Skipwith, Maryon, and McDonald, all unaccustomed to it, spent a day with the hounds, and when they finished up with tea at the Heales’ they were still full of the glamour of the sport. They had heard the lady pack in full cry on a burning scent, and for a time it had made them all young and supple again, and taken ten years off their ages.

  Skipwith, who had run the mile many years ago at school, found himself going as he didn’t know he had it in him to go. McDonald, who had put this sort of thing by with younger days in the force, always in good training, kept pace with him, and a good pace too, and Maryon was not going to be outdone.

  At tea-time, after taking a long drink, Professor Skipwith put down his cup and said: “Wasn’t there something in some song about ‘the sound of his horn would wake me from the dead ’?”

  “Not quite that,” said Dr. Heale; “‘the sound of his horn brought me from my bed, and the cry of his hounds which he oft-times led, and Peel’s view holloa would waken the dead…’”

  “That’s it. Do you know, I’m a scientific University don, but I felt that feeling to-day; there’s something magnetic in the cry of hounds.”

  Mrs. Heale turned to him a face of beaming approval. “I knew you were all of you real good sportin’ men when I first saw you,” she said. “There’s the right stuff in you, not like some I’ve come across,” and her face darkened as she thought of Temple; “and you’re a Professor, aren’t you? Prudence told me so.”