Black Widow

by S. Fowler Wright

  There still remained—he must not forget that—the possibility of some revelation from Redwin which would put him definitely upon the murderer’s track. But it was not a possibility which gave him much pleasure or much hope. He was prepared, in the first place, for the promised information proving to be no more than an accusation of some criminal evasion of income tax liability, such as he supposed had formed the substance of the communication to Messrs. Forbes and Fisher, which had led to his being shown the door of their respectable offices. But he thought it unlikely, for several reasons, that it could be that and no more.

  He did not dismiss the probability that fear of exposure and possible prosecution on such an accusation might cause men of exceptional emotional instability to put an end to their lives. But he did not think the proposition that Sir Daniel had done so from such a cause, and in the manner of his death, was worth serious consideration. Nor did he suppose, either, that Redwin would have such an opinion, nor that he would be anxious to communicate it to the police. It was far more likely that he desired to fix the guilt of murder upon someone against whom he had a real or imagined cause of animosity, as he was known to have against Lady Denton, who therefore became the most probable target for the attack.

  But the very fact of this admitted animosity would render it necessary to consider any suggestion he might make, or evidence he might offer, in a very critical spirit; and the known character of the man would further discount it in the judgment of an impartial mind. The contemptuous insolence of the manner in which it had been promised rendered the Inspector additionally unwilling to avail himself of it, if he could obtain it—supposing it to be of a valid kind—from a cleaner source, and by his own deductions or investigations.

  A combination of these motives, more or less consciously recognized, joined with a natural desire for action, where its direction was not otherwise clearly indicated, to suggest to his mind that he should do that about which he had hesitated at the breakfast table, and ask Lady Denton a direct question as to what Redwin might have against any inmate of Bywater Grange, apart from the alleged taxation irregularity, of which Mr. Wheeler had told him already.

  He recognized that it would be, under a variety of possible circumstances, a mistaken method to question potentially guilty persons in such a way as to forearm them against attack, but, under those with which he now dealt, he decided that it was not only defensible, but might be considered the one most consonant with the best traditions of the service to which he belonged. He saw also that Lady Denton’s reaction to such questioning, and the nature of her replies, even though they might be of a generally negative character, would be of a possible value in estimating the veracity of whatever statement the man might subsequently make.

  It is only fair to the Inspector to consider these arguments at their true value, in the light of the position as he then knew it to be, rather than to judge them in the light of subsequent consequences, some of which would remain unknown to himself, even after he had brought the investigation to a conclusion satisfactory to the official mind, and had become busy with other things.

  He decided to question Lady Denton further at lunch, and dozed pleasantly in the increasing warmth of the morning sun, and the natural consequence of a restless night.

  CHAPTER XXII.

  The lunch gong, sounding musically over the lawn, caused the Inspector to wake to a startled consciousness that his morning doze had been somewhat longer and sounder than was entirely creditable to a detective officer in the midst of an investigation that he had failed to solve. He went hurriedly into the house, and, not yet feeling entirely awake, was soon seated at the luncheon table at Lady Denton’s right, and with her brother-in-law opposite to him, as they had been at the first dinner three days before.

  He was not surprised to observe that, while Adelaide Denton retained her usual serenity, Gerard was obviously sulky and ill at ease in his presence. It was surprising, rather, after the ordeal of the previous evening, and he being what he was, that he should have come to the table at all. The Inspector could not know that a sharp word from Lady Denton had been needed to bring him unwillingly to his place, after the unwelcome intelligence that he was spending the morning beside the lawn, and would presumably be in for the midday meal. The expression on Gerard’s face, and the constraint which Lady Denton endeavoured vainly to break with some remarks of a light inconsequence, reminded him of the assurance of his unpopularity which he had received from her at the earlier meal. It was a condition arising too frequently in the course of his investigations, being, indeed, inevitable, from the nature of the work that he had to do. He had learnt before now that, if he were to allow himself to be too sensitive to such atmosphere, he would be unfit for the office he held. He subdued a momentary inclination to defer the subject upon his mind, till he should be able to speak to Lady Denton alone, as he reflected that Gerard was inferior to herself both in discretion and self-control, and that his reaction to the conversation might possibly be the more illuminating of the two.

  “I wonder,” he said, addressing himself directly to Lady Denton, after one of the longer pauses between the efforts of conversation which she would make, and which had quickly died, like a plant in a shallow soil, “whether you could give me any further help as to what Mr. Redwin may have in mind. He has given me a rather insolent assurance that if I cannot discover who is responsible for Sir Daniel’s death by next Monday afternoon, he will give information at that time which will enable me to do so.”

  Watching narrowly as he said this, he observed no more than that Gerard Denton’s face assumed the look of stubborn sulkiness which was his habitual attitude toward the subject of his brother’s death. His eyes fell to his plate. He thought, but was less than sure, that Lady Denton became slightly paler as he mentioned the late secretary’s name. Her brows met in a little frown, though she puzzled over the problem he had put before her. In the moment’s pause before she replied, he added, “I’ve no idea what it can be, and he’s not a man whose word I should take for sixpence unless it were supported in other ways, but it’s interesting that he should profess that he can solve the problem.”

  “It would he a great relief if he could,” Lady Denton replied, “but I can’t say I’m very hopeful of anything coming from him. I don’t see how he could. He’s not likely to say he had anything to do with it himself. It’s most likely to be no more than a theory he’s worked out in his own mind, and—well, the kind of theory that would be likely from such a man.”

  “You mean it would be malicious?”

  “I think you can be quite sure about that. It’s about the only thing you could be sure of in anything coming from that direction. I should say that he would try to make out that I murdered my husband myself, if he thought he could get anyone to believe such an improbable tale.”

  Her voice, as she said this, was cool and level, and her eyes met his in an open way, but yet he had the impression that she sometimes gave that she was not speaking without reserve. Rather, that it was with a cool deliberate boldness that she outfaced an accusation that she would rather speak with her own lips than have whispered behind her back.

  He thought also that Gerard experienced some emotion, whether of wonder or consternation, which he controlled with difficulty as he heard her, but this was of an uncertain significance.

  Beyond that, he felt that his actual question had not been very explicitly answered, and he added: “I don’t suppose you’re far wrong about that. But, anyway, there’s nothing of which you know to suggest what line he’s likely to take?”

  There was a second’s pause, and then she answered, with the same clear deliberation as before: “No, there’s nothing except that suggestion about the taxes that Mr. Wheeler told you before. And that’s almost too silly for words. But you never know with a man like he is.”

  “Well,” the Inspector concluded, “I must just wait, and hear what he’s got to say. I dare say it won’t be much.” He added, with an evident sincerity, and
to the satisfaction of those who heard: “I’d give something to put that man in his proper place.” And his tone left no doubt of where it would be likely to be.

  He felt that he had said all he could, and to no great result, in which he was widely wrong, and he let a subject drop which neither of his table companions showed any disposition to keep alive. He mentioned casually that he would be out during the afternoon, having resolved to give Mr. Fisher a call, on the theory that a good huntsman should not abandon the chase because the game is scarce or the scent poor. He gained nothing by that call, beyond the information that Mr. Wheeler had kept his word, and Lady Denton’s money—to the amount of £15,000—had been advanced to the support of her late husband’s account, and, as it were, in bold assertion that he had neither died by his own hand, nor been murdered by her.

  But Lady Denton, stretched in apparent idleness on her couch, with the excuse of headache for the quiet of a darkened room, was using her brains to a more momentous and immediate issue. She got up to refresh herself with tea at the usual hour, and then wrote a short note, which she subsequently motored to Wickfield to post there with her own hand, and returned in a recovered quietude of mind for the evening meal.

  It was a serenity which had been shaken at lunchtime to an extent which it had been very hard to control, for at that time the vague fears of the last two days had come to a definite head, as the Inspector mentioned the promise—or threat—to her that Redwin had made. She had been forced by his final question to a denial which, she saw, would be subject to very adverse interpretation if the truth—or even as much of the truth regarding those letters as she had thought it wise to confide to Mr. Wheeler’s sympathetic ears—should be disclosed in a hostile way.

  Yet with an instant only for decision, and with Gerard hearing all that was said, denial, explicit and absolute, had seemed the safer, and almost the only, possible choice. She had relied—she might rely still—upon the difficulty that Redwin must find in any version of events which would involve her in a motive for the crime which was so near to being attributed to her, without inculpating himself to an almost equal criminality. She relied also, to a less extent, upon the difficulty he might have in proving any charge that he could contrive to make while keeping his own actions clean. But she found insufficient reassurance in that, for she was clear-minded enough to see that a mere theory of motive, falling far short of proof, might be enough to induce the issuing of the warrant which would place her in a criminal dock—might even make the final difference in the minds of a jury in whom reluctance to convict an attractive woman on evidence of so circumstantial a nature might be balanced precariously against the difficulty of postulating any other person who could have committed the crime.

  But what was done was done. It was too late to alter, and of no avail to regret. She might have chosen badly or well, but she must now stake all on the denial that she had made. Only, she saw that Mr. Wheeler must know; and, vaguely, she felt some hope that he would not be slow or impotent to come to her aid. Finally she had written this note:

  Dear Mr. Wheeler,

  You will be interested to know that Mr. Redwin has promised to give Inspector Pinkey some information on Monday afternoon next which, if he is to be believed, will lead to the discovery of the cause of Sir Daniel’s death.

  You will judge whether, or in what way, he will be likely to keep his promise.

  It will, of course, be a great relief if the matter can be cleared up, but I own I have little confidence in anything coming from such a source, or expectation that it can be based on any­thing better than his animosity toward those who discovered his dishonesty and caused his dismissal.

  But you will judge these matters far better than I. I just thought that I ought to let you know what is happening here.

  Sincerely,

  Adelaide Denton

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  After all, it was the blindness of chance (or predestined fate) which played the decisive card, when it gave Mr. Wheeler occasion to look in at his office on Saturday morning, which it was not his habit to do. He glanced through some opened letters which had been placed on his desk in readiness for his Monday morning attention, and at two which had been left unopened, being marked “personal” on the envelopes. One of these he threw down as being well able to wait his leisure. The other, which bore the Wickfield postmark, and a crest on the flap which he knew well, he opened.

  When he had done this, he sat down to think, and read the letter again. As he did so, he whistled to himself in an unprofessional manner, as he was too addicted to doing. He knew quite well how Sir Daniel had died, ever since he had asked Lady Denton a question about a drawer. He saw the peril in which she stood now.

  He admired the coolness and address with which she faced the net of circumstances which had closed upon her. The letter itself—which told all he needed to know, and yet could do her no harm into whoever’s hand it might fall—did it not make him wish that fate had led her to be on his own staff, rather than wasted her in idle affluence as Sir Daniel’s wife? But without his aid, for which she so clearly appealed, he doubted whether the qualities he admired could be sufficient to save her now.

  After a few minutes’ thought, he rang for a clerk, and told him to ask Mr. Ashfield if he would kindly spare him a few minutes.

  Mr. Ashfield was the firm’s managing clerk, and, as often happens in such offices, had two-thirds of the responsibility and four-fifths of the work of the firm on his own shoulders.

  Mr. Ashfield promptly came, and was met with Mr. Wheeler’s customary geniality.

  “Morning, Ashfield. Thought you’d be here. Wish you’d take a bit more time off than you do. Mr. Romer coming in today?”

  “No, sir, he rarely does come in on Saturday morning now.”

  “Well, who does?” Mr. Wheeler was quite content that the instructions he was about to give should not come to the ears of the conveyancing partner, a man punctilious for the etiquette of the profession and all the usages of the law. “Bedford here?”

  “Yes, sir, I think he is.”

  “Then send him to me. And I say, Ashfield: this goes no further. I want Bedford personally till Tuesday morning, perhaps more or less.”

  “Yes, sir, I understand.” So he did. Bedford was to be employed in some way which would not appear in the firm’s diary, or be set out in its bills of costs—and there was not the least occasion for Mr. Romer’s mind to be worried as to what it might be.

  A moment later Bedford came into the room. Picked up on a race course, where he had done Mr. Wheeler a valuable and unlooked-for service, he was a small, plump, middle-aged man with a good-humoured expression, but weasel’s eyes. He had been with the firm for over four years now as enquiry agent, process server, and for any business, generally of an outside character, requiring shrewdness or observation. There seemed to be little of the ways or haunts or personalities of the criminal world that he did not know.

  “Bedford,” Mr. Wheeler said, “I hope your wife isn’t expecting you home tonight.”

  “No, sir, not particular, sir.”

  No one knew whether Bedford had a wife, or a home, or, indeed, anything about his private affairs. He opposed a cheerful blankness to any personal question. What he was instructed to do he did cheerfully and efficiently, and those things were sometimes of a rather surprising kind. What he was paid he took in the same spirit, and on that score he had no reason for complaint, for the business that went through Mr. Wheeler’s office was often of very remunerative kinds, and good service was rewarded with a wide-open hand.

  “That,” Mr. Wheeler replied, “is a good thing for her. I want you to do a little job for me at Beacon’s Cross. I dare say it will take you the weekend, but I don’t know, and I shan’t ask, so long as it gets done.

  “There’s a man there, staying at the Station Inn. His name’s Redwin. He’s a thief and a blackmailer, and I dare say a few other things of the same kind. But that doesn’t concern us. You’d better not know a
nything more about him before you arrive, and then you’ll learn what you do in a natural way. I don’t mean that any harm’s to come to him. I needn’t say that to you. But he’s not to be there on Monday. He’s to be ‘gone, no address,’ and if he leaves his hotel bill unpaid, I shan’t blame you for that. But he’s got to go, and I never want to know how.”

  “No, sir, you wouldn’t want to know that. Is it a case where I can spend what I think best?”

  “Money,” Mr. Wheeler answered deliberately, “doesn’t matter at all. But I don’t know that you’ll find it the right way. I shouldn’t say he’s a poor man.”

  “Would a dying mother be any good, sir?”

  “No, I shouldn’t say he’s that sort. And besides, I don’t want him back on the next day.”

  “No, sir. I see, sir. I’d better look up the trains.”

  “You won’t fail to do this?”

  “No, sir, of course not, sir.”

  Mr. Wheeler went to his private safe. He counted out ten ten-pound notes.

  “These,” he said, “are for yourself. They are not, of course, to be used in the case. What you have to spend will be in pound notes. I don’t need to say that.”

  “No, sir, you don’t need to say that.”

  “Have you got enough of your own?”

  “Yes, sir, thank you, sir. I’ll let you know what I spend when I get back.”

  Bedford went to consult the timetable, and Mr. Wheeler, after reading Lady Denton’s letter again, put a match to a laid fire in the grate and used it to assist in kindling the wood. The envelope went the same way. He departed to his weekend golf with an easy mind, and the consciousness that a good deed had been put in hand.

  Two hours later Mr. Bedford alighted from a third-class carriage at Beacon’s Cross Station, and with a cheerful and yet thoughtful countenance, strolled round the district until the hour of opening enabled him to enter the Silver Trout, which is a small but quite respectable public house almost opposite to the Station Inn.