House in Charlton Crescent

by Annie Haynes

  “I changed it, Dorothy. But I did not mean to do you any harm. I did not think the loss of the pearls would be discovered for ages, perhaps not in Lady Anne’s lifetime. And then it would have been thought that she had disposed of them herself. If it had not been for those tiresome girls asking to see them that afternoon that is how it would have been, and there would have been no bother at all.”

  “Poor Aunt Anne!” said Dorothy softly. “I wish she had not found out. It troubled her last moments. But she knows all about it now, Margaret. And—I think we may be sure—she understands.”

  “Oh, I don’t know—we don’t know anything.” With a quick sob Margaret Balmaine tore herself from the other’s embrace.

  With his heart in his eyes Bruce Cardyn watched the girl he loved, the pity in her eyes deepening, only the trembling of her lips, her varying colour showing how deeply she was moved. Once he turned towards her impetuously as though to protect her, stand by her. But in a second he checked the impulse and waited.

  The inspector was glancing from one to the other sharply. Not one change in their expression escaped him. But his eyes rested last and longest on Margaret Balmaine.

  “If there were to be any bother, though,” he went on suavely, “you preferred Miss Fyvert to face it sooner than do so yourself. That we all understand, Miss Balmaine. Now it is my painful duty to arrest you for the theft of Lady Anne Daventry’s pearls. A taxi is waiting with a couple of officers. But if you will walk quietly downstairs and through the hall with me no one will know anything about it and there need be no unpleasantness.”

  “Arrested!” Margaret Balmaine swayed.

  Dorothy sprang to her side again.

  “This is not right, inspector,” she cried passionately. “You are exceeding your orders. You—believe the pearls are mine now, and will not have anyone prosecuted for taking them. You cannot, you dare not take Miss Balmaine away. I will send for her cousin, Mr. John Daventry—you will see that he—”

  “Mr. John Daventry is on his way here,” said the inspector, glancing at his watch. “I phoned him as soon as I saw the way things were going, and got an answer. He is coming up in his car. As for the pearls, we received instructions from Lady Anne Daventry herself—those instructions were confirmed by her only acting executor, the Rev. and Hon. Augustus Fyvert. I am afraid that even your subsequent inheritance gives you no power to alter them, Miss Fyvert.”

  “You are taking an unfair advantage,” Dorothy said hotly. “We ought to have had some one here to take our part—to—”

  “Miss Fyvert,” the inspector said gravely, “you must not blame me for what I am doing. I have no choice in the matter, and very soon you will understand that.”

  “I shall not,” Dorothy said stoutly. “I shall always blame you—I will never forgive you if you arrest Margaret. If she goes with you will come too. I shall tell the magistrate—”

  “No,” said the inspector firmly. “No one must come with me but my prisoner.”

  “No,” said Margaret Balmaine suddenly. “You cannot come with me, Dorothy. You must not link your young life with my miserable lot. Soon you will learn the worst there is to know about me, and, when you do, will you forgive and pity your poor unhappy Margaret?” She stooped and catching the other girl’s hand pressed her lips to it lingeringly. Then she glanced at the inspector. “I am ready,” she said simply. “I will come—only be as quick as you can.”

  Cardyn stepped to the door quickly.

  “If I can help you, will you let me for the sake of one who was very dear to us both?” he said to her quietly.

  She paused and the inspector waited behind, Dorothy watching them in puzzled amazement.

  “You know?” she said simply. “I—I sometimes thought you did.”

  “Naturally!” he assented. “Because Maisie—”

  A sudden light broke over her face.

  “Of course! I have been blind all this time. Now I see. You are Maisie’s brother!”

  He bent his head. “And for her sake, because she loved you and I know how hard life is for women, let me do anything I can for you.”

  “Help David if you can,” she whispered. “Nobody can help me. Only—just believe me—living, I would never have robbed Maisie.”

  “I am sure you would not,” he assented. He held her hand for a moment in his firm clasp, then, dropping it, stood back.

  “Good-bye,” she whispered. Tell Dorothy—”

  She went out, her small golden head held high. The inspector followed closely. Glancing round, Cardyn saw that two men stood further down the passage, that two others were waiting near. They were all in plain clothes, but Cardyn’s quick eyes recognized them at once as Inspector Furnival’s subordinates. He felt a passing touch of wonder that, the inspector’s preparations had been so extensive and so thorough. The arrest of one girl like Margaret Balmaine scarcely seemed to call for such strong measures.

  But just then he had not time to think of anyone but Dorothy. He went back to her. She was standing as he had left her, near the table opposite the door. He thought she looked terribly ill, worse even than she had in those dreadful days when Maureen was missing. But to his unutterable joy she turned to him now in her trouble. She stretched out her hands to him.

  “Tell me how we can help her!”

  “The first thing to do is to engage a lawyer for her defence,” Bruce answered slowly. “Then, if, as the inheritrix and actual owner of the pearls you plead for her at the trial, her sentence may be lightened. I am afraid it is useless to think of her getting off altogether.”

  Dorothy interrupted him with a cry of protest.

  “It must not—it cannot go to trial. It must be stopped. John’s cousin—the old Squire’s granddaughter. I think I must be going out of my mind. And—and I was forgetting. You are Balmaine Cardyn—she is your sister and you are letting her go to prison without saying a word to help her! Oh, it is monstrous! monstrous!”

  “I should say monstrous too,” Cardyn agreed taking the girl’s cold hand in his and noting the relief in her eyes as she heard his words. “But—”

  “There are no buts,” she interrupted him passionately. “I tell you it is monstrous! That you, her brother, should not do anything—lose anything to get her off.”

  “Yes.” Cardyn felt the fingers he still held firmly move, try to detach themselves from his, but he would not release them. Instead he pressed them until his clasp became almost painful. “Dorothy! I wish it had fallen to anyone but myself to tell you—to break to you—” He stopped short to find words in which to tell her what he knew she had never imagined.

  Some of his nervousness communicated itself to Dorothy. She looked at him with eyes in which there lurked an unutterable dread.

  “Bruce,” she said, using his Christian name for the first time, “don’t tell me that you—that anybody thinks—that Aunt Anne—”

  “No, no!” he said reassuringly. “I do not think—as far as I know—there is no reason to connect her with Lady Anne’s death at all.”

  “Then what do you mean?” questioned Dorothy. “I—please let me know the worst at once. I don’t think I can bear much more,” her voice trembling.

  “The girl whom you have known as Margaret Balmaine has no claim to the name at all,” Bruce Cardyn said steadily. “She is not my sister, she is not old Squire Daventry’s granddaughter, but an impostor who successfully deceived poor Lady Anne. An actress known as Daisy Melville.”

  CHAPTER XXV

  Dorothy tore her hands from Cardyn’s.

  “It is not true! She is Margaret Balmaine. Do you think she could have lived with us all this time and none of us have found out?”

  “I think it is quite possible,” Bruce said steadily. “The facts prove that it is so. The real Margaret Balmaine—Dorothy, you must remember, naturally I knew that this girl was an impostor as soon as I heard Lady Anne mention her name.”

  “But where is your sister? Why is she not here?”

  “My
sister—the real Margaret Balmaine—is dead.” Bruce paused a moment. “She was on the stage for a short time and this girl who took her name and stole her papers was a great friend of hers. She acted as Daisy Melville.”

  His words, the certainty of his tone, carried conviction home to Dorothy.

  “Then, why,” she demanded, “didn’t you say so at once? Do you think it was honest to let her remain in Lady Anne Daventry’s house, knowing that she was an impostor?”

  “Perhaps it was not,” Cardyn conceded slowly. “But I was in a difficult position. The impostor was firmly established there; I could offer no proof that she was not what she seemed except my bare word. And you must remember that was there in my professional capacity at Lady Anne Daventry’s request, to endeavour to safeguard her life and to discover the secret murderer. I may say at once that when I realized that Miss Balmaine was an impostor I at once formed the opinion that she might be the guilty person, an opinion that was strengthened by the discovery that she was carrying on an intrigue with David Branksome, my predecessor.”

  Dorothy shivered a little, recalling her own early instinctive shrinking from Margaret Balmaine, a shrinking repugnance that she had almost forgotten of late.

  “Yes, yes, I see,” she murmured. “But you said—it was not she who—that you did not think that it was she who—who stabbed Aunt Anne.”

  “I said I was not aware that anything had been discovered to connect her with the crime,” Cardyn corrected.

  “As I am,” Dorothy said bitterly. “Mr. Cardyn, tell me truly, you don’t really believe this preposterous story of Inspector Furnival’s that one of us—of those five people in the room really murdered Aunt Anne?”

  Bruce Cardyn’s eyes looked away from her and wandered round the room, rested on the table against which Margaret Balmaine had so lately stood.

  “I do not know,” he said slowly. “I never have known. I hope not.”

  “Oh, it is dreadful—dreadful!” Dorothy said passionately. “Nobody is ever sure of anything and one doubts everybody—even oneself. There are times when I wake up in the night and ask myself whether this horror can possibly be true. There are times again when I ask myself over and over again who could have killed Aunt Anne, and I think and think and think until I doubt every one—even myself. You know Inspector Furnival thinks I did it because I wanted money.” Her voice broke.

  “You poor child!” Cardyn caught her hands in his. “He does not think—no sane person could possibly think—that you knew anything—that you could possibly be even remotely concerned with anything so terrible. It is just—can’t you see that it is only because the inspector is bound to make inquiries about every one of us—that you are brought into the question at all. Otherwise nobody would ever have dreamed of—”

  “Oh, yes! Indeed he would—the inspector would,” Dorothy said positively. “He would have found that letter of mine all the same and he would have said I had killed her to inherit the jewels. I can’t think why he cannot realize—cannot believe that it was—it must have been—an outsider. Don’t you think it was that Cat Burglar?” There was some new quality in her tone as she glanced anxiously at Cardyn.

  He avoided her glance. “I do not see how the Cat Burglar could have got to the window.”

  “But you know he did! Don’t you think he was guilty?” persisted Dorothy.

  Thus driven, Cardyn had to speak out plainly.

  “No, I do not. I never have thought it was the Cat Burglar.”

  Meeting his eyes Dorothy shivered from head to foot. Was some new horror coming upon her? She tore her hands from his clasp and crossing over to the window laid her aching head against the cool wood of the frame.

  “I wish I had died with Aunt Anne,” she said bitterly.

  Cardyn followed her after a minute’s pause.

  “Dear, you have been very brave so far through this sad time. You must be brave a little longer for the sake of those who love you.”

  His tone, his words brought a little measure of comfort to Dorothy. Despise his profession as she might, there were times when she could not forget that he was the hero who had saved her from the fire, whose memory she had secretly cherished until Inspector Furnival’s words had rudely awakened her from her dream.

  She gave a little sob. “You say a little longer, but it goes on day after day, week after week, month after month—why shouldn’t it be for year after year? We can none of us do anything, we can none of us think of anything else.”

  “I wish I could help you—’’ Cardyn was beginning when the door opened again and Mr. Fyvert looked in. His broad, mild face looked troubled.

  “Dorothy, my child, will you go to your aunt? She seems very unwell to-night, and—er—don’t say anything to her about this new trouble regarding Margaret. I have told her she has been called out to see some friends. That is quite enough until we know more.”

  “Yes, Uncle Augustus.” Dorothy hesitated a moment, glanced from her uncle to Cardyn, opened her lips as if to speak, then, changing her mind, went quickly out of the room.

  The rector stood aside, then he closed the door carefully and came across to Bruce, walking with a silent cat-like tread, curious in so large a person.

  “The inspector writes to me that the mystery surrounding my poor sister’s death is to be solved to-night. He tells me to come round to her house in Charlton Crescent and to bring you with me. ‘At once,’ he says in his note; at least”—referring to a paper he produced—“he says ‘as soon as you get this.’ And this was brought to me a minute or two ago by a man in plain clothes whom I conceived to be a detective.”

  “Then we had better start at once,” Cardyn said quietly.

  It was noticeable that he did not ask to see the inspector’s note, neither did Mr. Fyvert offer to show it to him.

  Mr. Fyvert indeed preserved a silence most unusual for him. He did not speak again until they were getting into their taxi. Then he said, his pompous tones unusually subdued:

  “I—er—conclude that when Inspector Furnival speaks of—er—that terrible mystery being solved, he has discovered the murderer?”

  “It seems probable,” Bruce assented.

  “I presume that it has turned out to be the Cat Burglar after all,” Mr. Fyvert went on. “Or some member of the criminal classes who had concealed himself in the house for the purpose of robbery and—er—rushed in when you were all looking out of the window. I must say incline to the latter theory myself.”

  He turned inquiringly to Bruce, who bent his head, with a murmured assent, looking the while supremely uncomfortable.

  Mr. Fyvert glanced at him curiously, but he did not speak again as the taxi glided swiftly up to the house in Charlton Crescent. As they entered the Crescent Cardyn saw that there were men in plain clothes at both ends and also near Lady Anne Daventry’s door. Was an arrest to be effected here and now he asked himself, and even his dark face paled as he pictured the scene that might be coming.

  Mr. Fyvert, of course, noticed nothing, but as they went up the steps and the door was opened for them by a strange man he looked round uneasily The inspector met them in the hall.

  “I am glad you could come, Mr. Fyvert. It is best that one of the family should—understand.”

  “Quite so! Though I can’t say that I do understand at all at present,” the rector said plaintively. “What, for instance, has become of that unhappy girl who called herself Margaret Balmaine?”

  “She and her lover, or her husband, as we have good reason to think he is—David Branksome—will be brought before the magistrates in the morning charged with stealing the late Lady Anne’s pearls,” the inspector said gruffly. “Come this way, please, Mr. Fyvert, and you, Mr. Cardyn.”

  He opened the library door and ushered them in, and with a murmured apology stepped back into the hall.

  “Well, really, I cannot understand—” Mr. Fyvert was beginning helplessly. “I cannot understand—”

  Almost as he spoke another taxi drove up
and in a very few minutes Inspector Furnival reappeared.

  “This way, please, Mr. Soames,” he said in his most genial tones as he ushered three men into the room.

  Two of them were tall and upstanding and looked as if they would have been more at home in uniform—the one between them Bruce stared at and then rubbed his eyes and stared again. But for the inspector’s words he would not have recognized the once consequential, imposing-looking butler of the late Lady Anne Daventry in this bent, prematurely-aged man. The Soames whom Cardyn had seen a hundred times in this very room had always walked in a slow, dignified fashion, shoulders well drawn up and in, figure a little protruding beneath his waistcoat. This Soames tottering in between the two police officers seemed to have shrunk visibly, his cheeks had fallen in, his eyes, turning miserably from side to side, refused to meet any of those amazed ones fixed upon him.

  He slunk past Mr. Fyvert, who stepped forward as if to intercept him, and shrank like a dumb animal into the darkest part of the room.

  The rector of North Coton turned his astonished eyes upon Inspector Furnival.

  “What does this mean, inspector? My poor sister trusted Soames implicitly.”

  “Ah! Many of us do trust people implicitly, and many of us find ourselves let down pretty badly,” the inspector remarked enigmatically. “But very soon we shall know more, Mr. Fyvert. We are expecting one more arrival and then we will set to work.”

  “One more arrival!” echoed Mr. Fyvert. “Whom do you mean?”

  The inspector held up his hand. The hoot of a private car was heard as it turned into the Crescent. Another moment and it had stopped before the door of the house they were in. In the silence induced by the inspector’s upheld hand, they heard some one spring out of the car and run up the steps. The bell and knocker were sounded together and a moment later the door was thrown open and a tall man stood on the threshold.