The detective was silent for a moment, his dark scrutinizing eyes fixed on the speaker’s face, as if he were pondering some significance, to him, in the answer.
‘What became of the written character?’ he asked presently.
‘I returned it to her, sir. It is customary to do so.’
‘In case she should want to use it again? That being so, I should have thought she would have kept it?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But you have not come across it?’
‘It may be in her boxes. I have not looked.’
‘You and I must overhaul those boxes, Mrs Bingley. Did you think, now, of making any inquiries about this Mrs Wilson?’
‘No, it would have been useless; she had already sailed for New Zealand.’
‘Do you remember her address?’
‘She wrote, so far as I can recollect, from the Savoy Hotel.’
Sergeant Ridgway took an envelope from his pocket, and making a note on the back of it, returned it into keeping.
‘Well, you can leave that to me,’ he said, and, resting his right elbow in the palm of the other hand, softly caressed his chin, bending an intent look on his witness.
‘Now, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I want to ask you a particular question. Has Annie Evans’s conduct, while in this service, always continued to justify you in your first good opinion of her?’
‘Always,’ answered the housekeeper with emphasis. ‘She was a thoroughly good straightforward girl, and during the short time she was here I have never had any trouble with her that was of her own procuring.’
‘Will you tell me quite what you mean by that?’
‘Well, sir, she could not help being pretty and admired, and if it led to some quarrels among the men on her account, the blame was theirs, and never in the smallest degree to be charged to her conduct with them. She always did her best to keep them at a distance.’
‘O, quarrels, were there? Can you tell me of any particular quarrel, now?’
‘I could—’ began the housekeeper, and stopped.
‘Come, Mrs Bingley,’ said her master. ‘You must speak out without fear or favour.’
‘I know it, sir,’ said the housekeeper, distressed. ‘I will try to do my duty.’
‘Hey!’ cried the General. ‘Of course you must. You wouldn’t want to risk hanging the wrong man? What particular quarrel—hey?’
‘It was between Mr Cleghorn and the Baron’s gentleman, sir.’
‘Cleghorn, eh? Great Scott! Was he sweet on the girl?’
‘I think for some time he had greatly admired her, sir. And then Mr Cabanis came; and being a young man, with ways different from ours—’ again she hesitated.
‘Out with it!’ cried Sir Calvin. ‘Don’t keep anything back.’
‘On the night before—before the deed,’ said the housekeeper, with an effort, ‘Annie had come down into the kitchen, I was told, red with fury over Mr Cabanis having tried to kiss her. She had boxed his ears for him, she said, and he had looked murder at her for it. He came down himself later on, I understand, and there was a fine scene between the two men. It was renewed the next day at dinner, when Annie wasn’t there, and in the end, after having come to blows and been separated, they both went out, Cabanis first, and Mr Cleghorn a little later. That is the truth, sir, and now may I go?’
I think we were all sorry for the Baron; it appeared so obvious whither the trend of the detective’s inquiries must henceforth carry him. But he sat quite quiet, with only a smile on his face.
‘Louis is not vindictive,’ was the sole thing he contented himself with saying.
Sir Calvin turned to the detective. ‘Do you need Mrs Bingley any more?’
‘Not for the present,’ answered the Sergeant, and the housekeeper left the room. I had expected from him, on her disappearance, some significant look or gesture, betokening his acceptance of the inevitable conclusion; but he made no such sign, and merely resumed his business conduct of the case. He knew better than we, no doubt, that in crime the most obvious is often the most unreliable.
‘We must find the girl’s relations, if possible, Sir Calvin,’ he said. ‘You can leave that to me, however. What I would advise, if her boxes yield no clue, would be an advertisement in the papers.’
An examination of some of the servants ensued upon this; but beyond the fact of their supplying corroborative testimony as to the quarrel, their evidence was of little interest, and I omit it here. The Baron disappeared during the course of the inquiry, so secretively that I think I was the only one who noticed his going. At the end the detective expressed a desire to examine the scene of the crime. If one of us, he said, would conduct him there, he would be satisfied and would ask no more. He did not want a crowd. I ventured to volunteer, and was accepted. Sir Calvin had looked towards his son; but Hugh, with reason sufficient, had declined to go. He had sat throughout the inquiry, after giving his own evidence, perfectly still, and with a sort of white small smile on his lips. Thinking my own thoughts, I was sorry for him.
The Sergeant and I made for the coppice. Passing the constable at the gun-room door, he nodded to him. ‘That’s a poor thing inside,’ he said, as we went on. ‘What a lot of trouble she’d save if she could speak! Well, I suppose that him that did it thinks she’s got her deserts.’
‘I hope he’ll get his,’ I answered.’
‘Ah!’ he agreed,’ I hope he will.’ We turned a bend as we came near the fatal beech-tree and there was the Baron before us!
The detective stopped with a smart exclamation, then went on slowly.
‘Doing a little amateur detective work on your own, sir?’ he asked sarcastically.
‘I was considering, my friend,’ answered the Baron. ‘It becomes interesting to me, you see, since my man is involved.’
‘Who said he was involved, sir?’
‘Ah! Who, now? You can see very distinctly, Sergeant, where the body lay—just the one ugly token. No signs of a struggle, I think; and the ground too hard to have left a trace of footprints. But I won’t disturb you at your work.’
‘I wouldn’t, sir,’ said the detective pretty bluntly. ‘You can undertake, I fancy, to leave it all to me.’
‘I’m sure I can,’ answered the Baron pleasantly, and he went, off towards the house, humming softly to himself a little French air.
‘Who is he?’ asked the detective, when the odd creature was out of hearing.
‘I know little more about him than you do,’ I answered; ‘and Sir Calvin’s acquaintance with him is, I think, almost as casual as my own. We both met him abroad at different times. He may be a person of distinction, or he may be just an adventurer for all I know to the contrary.’
‘Well,’ said the officer, ‘whoever he is, I don’t want him meddling in my business, and I shall have to tell Sir Calvin so.’
‘Do,’ I said. ‘Chess is the Baron’s business, and it’s that that he’s here for.’
But I kept my private suspicions, while duly noting as much as might or might not be implied in Le Sage’s curious interest in the scene of the crime. No doubt the last thing he had expected was our sudden descent upon him there.
CHAPTER VIII
AN ENTR’ACTE
JAKE was a boy of imagination, though one would never have thought it to look at his jolly rubicund face and small sturdy form. The very gaiters on his stout calves, spruce and workmanlike, would have precluded any such idea. His master, Sir Francis Orsden—the son of one of whose gamekeepers he was—would never, though a young man of imagination himself, have guessed in Jake a kindred spirit. Yet, when Sir Francis played on the organ in the little church at Leighway, and Jake blew for him, it was odds which of the two brought the more inspiration to his task. Sir Francis would practise there occasionally, and bring the boy with him, because Jake was dogged and strong of muscle, and not easily tired. He never knew what secret goad to endurance the small rascal possessed in his imagination. The business in hand-blowing was to watch a plummet�
�s rise and fall: you pumped for the fall and slackened for the rise. That was the hard prose of it; but Jake knew a better way. He would imagine himself blowing up a fire with a bellows. When a full organ was needed, he had to blow like the devil to keep the plummet down, and then the fire roared under his efforts; otherwise, a gentle purring glow was easily stimulated. At another time he would be filling a bucket at a well for a succession of thirsty horses, and would so nicely time the allowance for each that the bucket was descending again on the very point of its being sucked dry. Or he would be the landlord of the Bit and Halter, dozing over his parlour fire, nodding, nodding down in little jerks, and then recovering himself with an indrawn rising sigh. Sometimes, when the music was very liquid, he would work a beer engine—one or two good pulls, and then the upward flow through the syphon; sometimes he would fish, and, getting a bite, pull in. These make-believes greatly ameliorated the tedium of his office by importing a sense of personal responsibility into it. It was not so much the music he had to keep going as his fancy of the moment.
One morning he was blowing for his master—and pretending, rather gruesomely, to be an exhausted swimmer struggling for a few strokes, and then relaxing and drifting until agonised convulsively to fresh efforts—when he became aware of a young lady standing by him and amusedly watching his labours. Jake ducked, even in the process of pumping, and Miss Kennett put a finger to her lips. She was quite a popular young lady among the villagers, whom she treated on terms of sociability which her father would strongly have disapproved had he known. There was nothing of Touchstone’s rosy Audrey about Miss Kennett, but there was a good deal of the graceful and graceless rebel. Grievance, mutely felt, had thrown her into another camp than that of her order.
Sir Francis played on, unconscious of his listener; until presently, with a whispered ‘Give it me, Jacob,’ the young lady appropriated the pump-handle and began herself to inflate the lungs of the music. The change did not make for success; her strokes, femininely short and quick, raced against the rising plummet, and presently gave out altogether at a critical moment of full pressure. The wind went from the pipes in a dismal whine; Miss Kennett sat back on the pump-handle in a fit of helpless laughter, and Sir Francis came dodging round the organ in a fume.
‘Great Scott!’ he exclaimed; and the asperity in his face melted into an amiable grin.
‘My mistake,’ said Audrey. ‘Do go on!’
‘How did you know I was here?’
‘I didn’t; but I heard someone grinding the organ, and came in to see.’
‘Jake,’ said his master, ‘Miss Kennett is going to blow for me, so you can cut along.’
The boy touched his forehead, secured his cap, and departed.
‘A good youngster,’ said Sir Francis.
‘I love him,’ said Audrey.
‘Ah!’ sighed the young Baronet, ‘lucky Jake!’
‘Frank, don’t be tiresome. Do you really want me to blow for you? No, not for ever. I know you are going to say it, and it would simply be silly. If I am going to stop here, you must talk sense.’
‘I have hardly said anything yet.’
‘Well, don’t say it. Sit down and play.’
‘I don’t want to play: I want to be serious. Why am I so obnoxious to you, Audrey?’
‘Now I shall go.’
‘No. Do be patient. Really, you know, you have never yet said, in so many words, why you won’t marry me.’
‘Yes I have. It is because I couldn’t possibly call myself Audrey Orsden of Audley.’
‘Well, if you will be flippant.’
She stood looking at him a moment. ‘I didn’t mean to be flippant, Frank—nothing but kind. Shall we go a walk together? It’s such a lovely morning. Only you must promise.’
‘I think I know what you mean by kind, Audrey—kind in forbearing. Very well, I will promise.’
He stowed his music away, and they went out together—out through the green and shadowed churchyard, with its old headboards and epitaphs. There was one to a merry maid dead at sixteen, whose thoughtless laughter had served some mortuary rhymster for a theme on the perishableness of sweet things, with an earnest recommendation to the Christian to be wise while he might—as if wisdom lay in melancholy. There was a fine opportunity for drawing a moral; but Sir Francis did not draw it. Perhaps he thought he would rather have marriage as a jest than no wife at all.
Soon they were outside the village and making for the free Downs. Audrey was always at her best and frankest on the Downs.
‘I had wanted to speak to you,’ said her companion. ‘Is it really true that our friend the Baron’s man has been arrested in connexion with this horrible affair?’
‘Yes, it is quite true. Poor Baron! I am not allowed to know much about it all; but it seems that everything points to this Louis being the culprit. He went out on the afternoon of the murder with the express purpose of seeking Annie, and did not come home till long afterwards. The police have taken him into custody on suspicion.’
‘It must be awkward for you all, having the Baron for a guest.’
‘It is, in a way; but we can’t very well ask him to go elsewhere while his man is in peril. He offered; but papa wouldn’t hear of it. He said the best thing for them both was to go on playing chess.’
‘How’s Hugo?’
‘He’s all right. Why shouldn’t he be?’
‘I don’t know. Only he struck me as being upset about something on that day we shot together.’
‘Well, he doesn’t give me his confidence, you know.’
‘No, I know. Poor Audrey!’
‘Why do you call me poor Audrey?’ asked the girl angrily. ‘I don’t want your pity, or anybody’s.’
‘You don’t want anything of mine, I’m sure; and yet it’s all there for your acceptance—every bit.’
‘Is this keeping your promise? No, I don’t. I want what I want, and it’s nothing that you can give me.’
‘Not my whole love and submission, Audrey?’
She flounced her shoulder, and seemed as if about to leave him, but suddenly thought better of it, and faced him resolutely.
‘It’s that, Frank, though you don’t seem to understand it. I don’t want any man’s submission! I want his mastership, if I want him at all.’ Her eyes softened, and she looked at him pityingly.’ I hate to pain you, dear; but I can’t marry you. You have a thousand good qualities; you are gentle and true and just and honourable, and you have a mind to put my poor little organ to shame. Why you should possibly want me, I can’t tell; but I’m very sure of one thing—that I am wise in disappointing you. We should be the brass and the earthenware pots, Frank, and you would be the one to be broke. I know it. You are a poet, and I am the very worst of prose. You have a right to despise me, and I have a right—not to despise you, but to see what you are not—from my point of view.’
‘That is to say, a sportsman,’ he replied.
‘You know I could never pretend to any sympathy with your real tastes—books and music and musty old prints, and all that sort of thing.’
He laughed. ‘Well, I shall try again.’
His persistence goaded her to cruelty.
‘If you want to know the truth, I like a man to be a man, as my brother is.’
His face twitched and sobered. ‘And I am not one.’
‘Why do you make me say these things?’ she cried resentfully. ‘You drive me to it, and then take credit, I suppose, for your larger nature.’
‘I take credit for nothing,’ said he. ‘My account with you is all on the debit side. Audrey, dear, please forgive me for having broken my word. It shall be the last time.’
‘I believe it has been the first,’ she said, with a rather quivering lip. ‘I will say that for you, Frank. Your word is your bond. Now do let us talk about something else. I came out to get rid of all that horrible atmosphere, of police, and detectives, and suspicions about everybody and everything, and this is my reward. The inquest is taking place this very da
y, and how glad I shall be when the whole sick business is over, and the poor thing decently buried, words can’t say. Now, one, two, three, and let us race for that clump.’
CHAPTER IX
THE INQUEST
THE Bit and Halter was seething with excitement. Its landlord, Joe Harris, selected foreman of the jury about to sit on the poor remains of that which, five days earlier, had been the living entity known as Annie Evans, had all the bustling air of a Master of the Ceremonies at some important entertainment. The tap overflowed as on an auction day—occasion most popular for bringing together from near and far those birds of prey to whom a broken home or a bankrupt farm stock offers an irresistible attraction. Here it was another sort of calamity, but the moral was the same. It turned upon that form of Epicurism which consists in watching comfortably from an auditorium the agonies of one’s martyred fellow-creatures in the arena. There are sybarites of that complexion who, if they cannot be in at the death, will go far to be in at the burying.
The case, both from its local notoriety and the agreeable mystery which surrounded it, had aroused pretty widespread interest. Speculation as to its outcome was rife and voluble. Quite a pack of vehicles stood congregated in the road, and quite a crowd of their owners in and about the inn enclosure. Each known official visage, as it appeared, was greeted with a curious scrutiny, silent until the newcomer had passed, and then rising garrulous in the wake of his going. There was no actual ribaldry heard, but plenty of rather excited jocularity, with odds given and taken on the event. If the poor shattered voiceless thing, which lay so quietly in its shell in an outhouse awaiting the coming verdict, could only once have pleaded in visible evidence for itself, surely the solemnity of that mute entreaty for peace and forgetfulness would have found its way even to those insensate hearts. But charity is as much a matter of imagination as of feeling, and many an unobtrusive need in the world fails of its relief through the lack of that penetrative vision in the well-meaning. Our souls, it may be, are not to be measured within the limits of our qualities.
The Mystery of the Skeleton Key Page 7
