by Molly Thynne
“I’d accept any alibi you like to offer if it was authentic, Mr. Leslie,” answered Brace soberly.
That the whole business was awkward Leslie had been slowly realizing ever since his first interview with the Sergeant, but there was that in Brace’s voice now that, for the first time, gave him a feeling of real apprehension.
“I’d give you one like a shot if I could,” he answered quickly.
Brace moved the lantern so that the light fell full on Leslie’s face.
“Have you seen Miss Allen lately?” he asked suddenly.
Leslie, dazzled by the glare of the lantern and bewildered by the inconsequence of the question, hesitated.
“Miss Allen? I saw her in the village yesterday—no, the day before. Why?”
“Did she say anything about expecting a visitor?”
Leslie blinked and turned his face away from the blinding light.
“She said she was expecting her sister, a Mrs. Something-or-other. She mentioned the name, but I’ve forgotten it.”
“You wouldn’t recognize the lady if you saw her?”
“I shouldn’t think so, unless she’s some one I’ve met in some other part of the world. I’ve never seen her here, if that’s what you mean.”
“Doesn’t often stay with her sister, eh?”
“I don’t think so. Miss Allen didn’t say much about her, but, from what she did say, I gathered that they were not very intimate. She mentioned that she’d proposed herself and seemed rather surprised at it.”
He saw no reason to repeat Miss Allen’s actual words. That elderly and very downright spinster had spoken with her usual incisive frankness. “What Tina’s up to, I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Some mischief, I’ll be bound, and possibly crooked mischief at that. I don’t trust her. She’s got some good reason for wanting to spend a week with her old sister. I told her she could stay as long as she liked, provided she didn’t try to ride my horses. She’s got a seat like a sack of potatoes; and as for her hands! Luckily scented cigarettes and a chair by the fire are more in her line.”
The wind had dropped and, for the first time for three days, a fine rain was falling. As they left the barn they heard the sound of a car making its way up the lane.
“That’ll be the doctor, I expect,” said Brace, obviously relieved. “After that we shall be able to get away to our beds.”
The doctor met them at the door. After a few words of explanation on both sides he hurried into the sitting-room and knelt down beside the body, drawing off his thick driving-gloves as he did so. His hands were cold and he seemed to have some difficulty in freeing them from the stiff leather. As he pulled at the gloves his quick eyes scanned the body, taking in all the details of its appearance. Leslie, who was standing immediately opposite to him, was struck with the keen alertness of his glance and revised his opinion of him then and there. Gregg had always struck him as rather a stupid person and he made a mental note of the fact that, until you have seen a man at his job, it is wiser not to pass judgment on him.
Gregg parted the hair over the side of the head as Brace had done.
“Good Lord! Shot!” he ejaculated.
Leslie noticed that the hands with which he unfastened the woman’s dress to make a further examination were not quite steady, and again decided that he had never done the man justice. He was evidently genuinely moved at the sight of the pitiful figure before him.
“Can you arrive at any conclusion as to how long she’s been dead?” asked Brace when he had finished his examination.
“Difficult to say with such a cursory examination, but, roughly, four or five hours would cover it.”
“Not longer?”
“I don’t think so. I shouldn’t like to say within an hour or so. Not more than six hours, certainly.”
“Would death be instantaneous?”
“Almost certainly. Shot in the temple. Who killed her?”
He swung round, still on his knees, and looked up at the Sergeant.
Brace answered with another question as sharp as his own.
“You don’t admit the possibility of suicide?”
“Quite possible. For a left-handed woman. The wound’s on the wrong side.”
“On the wrong side for a right-handed person,” commented Brace. “But we’ve no reason to think that she was right-handed.”
Gregg rose to his feet and dusted the knees of his trousers.
“Probably was. Most women are,” he said slowly.
He bent down and examined the hands carefully.
“She wrote with her right hand, anyway,” he said. “Look at this.”
There were faint stains, evidently of ink, on the first and second fingers of the right hand.
“One to you, Doctor,” conceded Brace good-humouredly. “Apart from that, it was a good shot of yours. There’s no weapon.”
“Who found her?”
“Mr. Leslie here. Whoever did it seems to have got away.”
Brace looked sharply at Leslie.
“A nasty jar, eh? Feel all right?”
“Quite, thanks. But it’s a beastly business and I wish it had happened anywhere else.”
“Ever seen the lady, Doctor?” asked Brace.
Gregg scrutinized the delicate features of the unfortunate woman.
“No friend of mine,” he said curtly. “Any idea who she is?”
“Gunnet here has recognized her as a lady staying with Miss Allen, of Greycross. Thinks she’s her sister.”
Leslie’s exclamation of horrified astonishment was drowned by Gregg.
“Good God!” he shouted. “Not Miss Allen’s sister!”
“I’m afraid so, from what Gunnet says. However, we shall know soon enough.”
Gregg seemed aghast at the discovery.
“Miss Allen’s sister!” he repeated. “It’s impossible! Why, they’re as different as chalk from cheese.”
“There’s a difference in age, too. But Gunnet saw her in the village this morning.”
Gregg picked up his coat.
“Well, it’s a queer world,” he said reflectively. “You’ll want me, I suppose, for the inquest. Are you moving her?”
The Sergeant nodded.
“Gunnet’s gone down to fetch a van from the village and we’ll get her over to Whitbury to-night. I’m going on from here to see Miss Allen. It’s not a job I’m hankering after, to tell you the truth.”
“Want me to come along?” asked Gregg. “I might be needed, but I doubt it. She’s a strong-minded woman, Miss Allen, and I shouldn’t say hysterics were much in her line.”
“I’d be grateful if you would, all the same. It’s not a pleasant thing to have to tell a lady.”
Gregg nodded.
“Righto,” he said. “It’s all in the day’s work.”
They went back to the kitchen and sat by the fire, talking desultorily while they waited for Gunnet and the van. Leslie produced drinks and did his best to join naturally in the conversation, but he was ill at ease. He found himself wondering what was passing in Gregg’s mind. Was he, too, curious as to what part Leslie had played in this tragic drama? Leslie tried to visualize the whole thing from the point of view of a casual observer, and failed. Already he was too deeply entangled in this gruesome business to see it in its right proportions.
He was thankful when Gunnet arrived with the van and a stretcher to bear away the corpse. Brace and the doctor left five minutes later in Gregg’s little two-seater. It seemed to Leslie that there was an unusual warmth in Gregg’s voice as he bid him good night. He had never liked the doctor, but he felt grateful to him now, for his hearty handshake came hot on the heels of Brace’s last words as he climbed into the car.
“I must ask you to hold yourself at the disposal of the police until further notice, Mr. Leslie.”
CHAPTER III
“How long is it since you have seen Cynthia, Mr. Fayre?”
Lady Staveley’s fine eyes were alight with amusement as she turned them on
her guest. He had just alluded to Lady Cynthia Bell as “a demure little thing” and was now discussing his tea-cake with the serenity of one quite unaware that he has been guilty of an incredible misstatement.
Allen Fayre, better known to his friends as “Hatter,” a nickname he had somehow managed to collect in his unregenerate Oxford days, paused for reflection.
“Quite twelve years, I should think. She was a leggy little thing of about eight when I last set eyes on her.”
Lady Staveley gave a soft gurgle of amusement.
“She’s leggy still! All these modern girls are, you know, but I’m afraid you’ll find that the demureness has evaporated. She’s decidedly what the children’s old nurse used to call ‘a cure’ now.”
Hatter Fayre caught the mirth in her voice and responded to it. When he smiled it was easy to see how he had come by the network of fine wrinkles at the corners of his keen grey eyes and why the old Oxford nickname had persisted through all the long years of his exile in India, for a nickname, unless it is an unkind one, rarely sticks to a man who is not beloved of his friends.
“I do seem to be a bit of a back number!” he admitted ruefully. “Girls occasionally were demure, you know, in my day.”
“I’m fond of Cynthia,” went on his hostess thoughtfully. “But she sometimes makes me rejoice that my peck of troubles are all sons.”
Fayre turned to his other neighbour.
“What do you say, Sybil? You know Lady Cynthia, don’t you?”
Lady Kean, who had been listening to the discussion in silence, shot a languid glance of derision at her hostess.
“Eve’s a cat,” she said. “She’s only trying to assert her independence. Cynthia can twist her round her little finger. She twists us all, I think, except perhaps Edward. He’s untwistable.”
Sir Edward Kean, catching the sound of his name, strolled towards them.
“What about Edward?” he asked, smiling down on his wife from his great height. “Something flattering, I hope.”
To Fayre, deeply interested in these old friends from whom he had been separated for so long, there was nothing he had come across since his return to England more surprising or touching than Kean’s attitude towards his wife. Fayre and Sybil Kean had known each other since their nursery days; had played together as children in the country and had foregathered again later in London. Kean had come into both their lives later, at a time when he was a struggling young barrister and Fayre was cramming for the Indian Civil. When Sybil Lane, as she was then, fell madly in love with her first husband, a handsome guardsman, married and was carried off by him to Malta, Fayre had a suspicion that Kean was badly hit. Certainly he had remained single and had developed a capacity for work which, according to his friends, was almost demoniacal. To Fayre, far away in India, had come, first the news of the death of Sybil’s husband, killed in the first year of the War, and second the report of her marriage to Kean five years later, and now he was back in England for good, picking up old threads once more and keenly interested to see how time had dealt with the friends of his youth. For a week, now, they had been at Staveley together, and what he had seen there had both saddened and touched him.
To the outside observer it would seem that Kean had at last achieved the two great ambitions of his life. He had married the woman of his choice and a knighthood had already set the seal on his fame as the most brilliant counsel of his day. But to Fayre, who had known Sybil Kean too well in the past to be deceived by appearances, his absolute devotion to his invalid wife seemed little short of tragic in its intensity. For Sybil Kean was of the kind that does not forget. Her husband’s death had come near to killing her; for weeks she lay hovering between life and death, only to emerge with her health shattered and an empty life before her. When, at last, Kean’s insistence was rewarded and he persuaded her to marry him, she gave him all she had to give, a sympathy and understanding such as has fallen to the lot of few men and a rare loyalty. But her health had grown steadily worse and Fayre, on first seeing her after the lapse of years, had been appalled at the change in her.
He had often wondered, during the long hours on shipboard, how these two would run in double harness and, curiously enough, his fears had been all for Sybil. For even in his youth Kean had been hard, as hard perhaps on himself as on others, in the pursuit of his aims, a man who did not make allowances and expected none. His judgments were ruthless and pitilessly exact and he had carved his way, with neither influence nor money to help him, by sheer strength of personality and an amazing brilliance both of mind and speech. When addressing a jury he used sentiment with a skill that is only shown by those whose perceptions are never blurred by emotion and he was a cruel cross-examiner. Kean, the lawyer, had been no surprise to Fayre, who had watched him in the first stages of his career, but Kean, the husband, had come as a revelation. To Fayre, the tenderness and consideration he showed towards his wife was almost incredible, until he remembered that, even in his youth, Kean had always been a man of one idea. Then he had sacrificed everything, sleep, diversion, even food, to his work, his whole being concentrated on achieving success in the career he had chosen, and now an influence even stronger than ambition had come into his life and he had given himself up to it with that complete absorption that was so characteristic of him. And the pity of it was that all his devoted care, backed by the luxury with which he was now able to surround her, did not serve to strengthen Sybil Kean’s frail hold on life.
Fayre’s kindly heart was troubled as he watched these two: Sybil Kean, incredibly slender and still beautiful, in spite of her forty years, lying half buried in the cushions of a huge armchair, and Kean standing over her, his height accentuated by his habit of standing with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched, dark and saturnine, his face alight with amusement at something his wife had just said.
“When do you get back, Edward?” asked Lady Staveley.
“Thursday, at latest, if you can really put up with me for a little longer. I’ll try to get through to you to-morrow; I shall know better then.”
“Meanwhile I shall have Sybil to myself for a couple of days. On the whole, I think I’m glad you’re going, Edward!”
Kean laughed.
“Make her behave herself, and if that minx, Cynthia, arrives in the middle of the night, as she no doubt will, keep her out of Sybil’s room, will you? They haven’t met for at least a month and she’ll want to tell her the story of her life.”
“You must admit that it’s a good story,” murmured Lady Kean from the depths of the big chair.
“It will keep,” said her husband dryly, “till breakfast to-morrow morning. I must go now, if I’m to catch the five-forty.”
“What time do you get in?” asked his wife as he bent over her.
“Six-twenty to-morrow morning. A barbarous time.”
“Make them give you a good breakfast before you go on to Chambers.”
“You’ll be all right?” Fayre heard him murmur.
“Of course. Run now, or you’ll miss it. I wish it wasn’t such a vile day. Listen to the wind!”
“Excellent weather for traveling. Good-by.”
He was gone, and soon afterwards Lady Kean disappeared with her hostess and Fayre was taken off by Lord Staveley to the billiard-room.
After dinner that night he gravitated as usual to Sybil Kean’s side. For a long time they discussed old friends and Fayre gradually became well posted in all that had happened during his absence.
“Tell me about Cynthia,” he said at last. “What is she like now. You’ve all been rather mysterious about her, you know.”
Sybil Kean glanced at him. There was the same spark of amusement in her eyes that he had surprised in Lady Staveley’s.
“I wonder how you’ll like her,” she said thoughtfully. “I believe you are rather old-fashioned, Hatter. She’s a very perfect specimen of the modern girl, plus extreme good looks and a charm that’s quite her own. She manages her elders perfectly, when she takes t
he trouble; when she doesn’t, she just goes her own way and entirely ignores us.”
“She sounds a minx,” remarked Fayre dryly.
“Oh, no, she isn’t! Besides, there are no minxes nowadays, my dear. She’s very affectionate, very loyal, and with an excellent head on her shoulders. When I say she ignores us, I simply mean that she considers her own judgment quite as good as ours and goes by it. I’m not at all sure she isn’t right.”
“Which means that she’ll ride for a fall one of these days and get it and then her elders will have to pick her up and see to the damage.”
Lady Kean’s eyes were very thoughtful.
“I wonder. The new generation is better able to look after itself than any of us are willing to admit. If she does come a toss, which is more than possible, I’m inclined to think she will pick herself up and say nothing about it. She’s got more grit than I ever had, Hatter.”
“Nonsense!” Fayre began explosively; but she interrupted him.
“It’s true,” she went on, her voice half whimsical, half sad. “I never stood up to life and it broke me. If I had, I should not be the useless creature I am today. Cynthia will fight like a little tiger and come out at the end, scarred perhaps, but probably a wiser and better woman than she was before. There’s something gallant about her. …”
Her voice trailed off and he knew she was thinking of the past.
“Useless creature is grossly inaccurate,” he said gruffly. “No one who has seen you with Edward could call you that.”
She turned on him eagerly.
“Do you think he’s happy?” she asked with an insistence that surprised him. “He gives so much and I seem to have so little to offer in return.”
“You are everything to him,” he answered with conviction. “I have never seen a man so changed. I believe he’s younger now at heart than he was when I first knew him.”
“His capacity for work is still inhuman. If he hadn’t got nerves like steel he would have broken down long ago. I feel frightened about him sometimes. He’s so incapable of half-measures. Sometimes I think these very strong people are really the weakest. Their hold on things is so tremendous that when they lose them …”
