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"Carfax Abbey," Methuen, London, 1928
RAPHAEL GOMEZ looked at his watch and said, 'Now, Warren, we've talked for more than an hour without getting any further. Let us come to business. This is Monday. I give you three days—till Thursday night—to fulfil your part of the contract. If I do not have a letter or a telegram before Thursday night—well—the axe will fall. You know what that means.'
'Fifteen—forty,' cried a fresh, girlish voice from the tennis-court outside the open window.
'Those young people will be coming in to tea directly,' continued the speaker; 'you clearly understand?'
'I've done my part. You wanted to have us as your nearest neighbour so that you would have a clear field with my girl. I agreed, and bought that old ruin of yours on purpose. If you fail with her it's not my fault. I gave you a monopoly; it's up to you now.'
Gomez flushed angrily. 'You've been six months playing with bricks and mortar at the Abbey and still you can't give me a date for what you call my "monopoly." No, I'm sick and tired of waiting. I give you three days.'
'That's a threat. What do you mean to do?'
'I'll tell you what I mean to do. On Friday I shall go to a certain Government department that you know of. I shall tell them that it has come to my knowledge that Mr. Joshua Warren, the inventor and the manufacturer and the Government contractor during the war for the Warren binocular lens, did, in the autumn of 1917, sell the secret of his invention to a certain agent in Spain for a sum out of all proportion to its commercial value, without taking any steps to satisfy himself that the purchaser was not an agent for a Government that was at war with this country. In other words, that he was trading with the enemy in a commodity that was to be used against this country in the field.'
'Game—and set,' cried the same voice from the garden; 'and now what about tea?'
'Carried with acclamation,' said a male voice.
The players had retired into the house, for now the girl was heard in the hall. 'Where's Father? Let's come and drag him out to tea. Father!'
Warren rose, stifling his indignation. He would fain have got rid of his visitor, but the visitor showed no intention of going. He followed his host into the drawing-room.
'Ah, here he is, this recluse of a father of mine,' said a bright, fair-haired girl, who was dispensing the tea. She was proceeding to chaff Warren when her eye fell upon his companion. Her manner froze. In order to cover her discomfiture she fell back upon introductions. 'Daddy, you don't know Miss Amy Winter. Mr. Bernard Thring you do know, and I think you know his sister, but in case you've forgotten her, let me present you to Miss Pamela Thring.'
She drew forward one of the other players—a tall, slender girl of twenty-four. Though she had not opened her lips, by some subtle magnetism she had become the central figure in the room. Her brother, who was two years older, seemed many years younger in wisdom and understanding. He was a typical young civil servant with the self-confidence and ease of manner that seems natural to clerks in the Foreign Office.
The third young woman was older. In her eyes there was a hard look, as if she had drunk deep from the cup of experience and was beginning to find a bitter taste in the dregs of it. She was vivacious and good-looking, but it was evident that she owed the brilliance of her complexion to her make-up box. She was trying hard to engage Mr. Warren in conversation; refusing to be daunted by his taciturnity, she gave him a humorous description of the play during the last set in order to provoke her late antagonists into protest.
If Mr. Raphael Gomez, the self-invited guest, felt that he was being slighted, he did not show it. He drew as near as he could to Kathleen Warren's tea-table and seemed to propose himself as a purveyor of bread and butter and cake to the company. He was a sleek and rather over-dressed Hebrew of middle age, with a growing presence beneath his waistcoat that clouded the brow of a certain tailor in Conduit Street whenever he dropped in to be measured. 'We have your measure, sir,' the good man would murmur, 'but let me just run the tape round the waistband.'
He seemed to weigh heavy upon the spirits of the little party. Conversation began to flag until at last Kathleen, who had been talking vivaciously to Pamela Thring, challenged her to a single. 'While these greedy people are digesting their tea. Come on, Pam.'
'May we?' said Pamela, turning to her host, and as he nodded to her, the two took themselves off. With the disappearance of Kathleen Warren, Gomez became restless. No one had invited him into the garden; no one seemed to want him, least of all Warren, who had not addressed a single word to him since they had left the library. He rose and said:
'Well, I must be going. You know where to find me?'
'In Throgmorton Street.'
'No, no, I shall be down in the country—you know where—to-morrow, and shall stay there over the week-end.'
He bowed to the two young people and went out; in a moment he was back at the door. 'There's one thing I forgot to say, Warren. Come and see me to the door.' Warren rose with surly acquiescence and the two young people were left alone.
'Now, Bernard, swallow your tea like a good boy and find a quiet corner for us somewhere in the house. I have a tale to unfold to you.'
'The others will be coming to look for us.'
The girl went to the window. 'No, they won't. They're playing serious tennis, and your sister is knocking spots out of poor Kitty. Come along.'
Thring led the way into the smoking-room; it was one of those large houses in Hampstead that were built in imitation of a country-house. 'No one ever comes in here.'
'You seem to know your way about.'
'Yes, I often come here.'
'Sit down there and listen. I'm in trouble.'
'You're always in trouble, Amy.'
'I am; but this time it is serious, and I don't know who to go to except you. I'm being blackmailed.'
'Are you serious?'
'Yes, deadly serious; but if you're going to take the high moral line, I've done. I won't tell you another word.'
'Of course not. We all do silly things at some time, and if you didn't do them you wouldn't be Amy Winter.'
'Shut up, Bernard. Well, I did do a silly thing. You remember I went off to Normandy last year all on my own in my little two-seater? I had a lovely time, but I met an Italian painter in the hotel at Rouen, and, like a fool, I let him talk nonsense to me. He seemed quite nice; I let him paint me, and now the creature is blackmailing me.'
'I shall understand the situation better, Amy, when you put in all the things you have left out. You let the creature paint you. There's no material for blackmail in that.'
The girl flushed under her make-up. 'I wrote some letters—in answer to some silly letters from him.'
'Which you tore up, while he kept yours. That's a very old story. Were yours very—compromising?'
'I'm afraid so. And, you know, if he does what he threatens to do—show them to my mother—it will kill her. She didn't want me to go off alone at all.'
'Why did you?'
'I can't understand myself. I suppose it is the love of adventure. I must have had an explorer among my ancestors.'
'But it's only one kind of adventure.'
'I know. You see, by taking me abroad all those years when I was small poor mother had me taught to speak French like a native. It amuses me to air the accomplishment, and when foreigners begin to cast sheep's eyes at me I can't resist the fun of seeing how far they will go. Now, Bernard, I've never told this weakness of mine to any living soul but you, because I know I can trust you: you know I'm not bad really. What am I to do?'
'I shall want the man's name and address and the blackmailing letter that he wrote to you before I can do anything.'
'Can you do anything? Oh, you are a brick! It will be a tremendous load off my mind. The letter's at home, but you shall have it. If you can free me from this scoundrel I shall have learned a lesson that will last me all my life.'
'Until you meet another fascinating artist of the Latin race.'
'Amy, where are you? She's beaten me.' It was Kathleen calling through the house.
'Promise you won't tell any one, Bernard. I can trust you?' whispered Amy.
Bernard nodded silently.
'Oh, here you are! I've been looking for you everywhere.' Kathleen stood in the open doorway. After a pause, in a rather cold little voice, she said, 'I hope I'm not interrupting you.' All the tennis news with which she was bursting seemed to have frozen on her lips. She knew that Amy Winter and the Thrings had been friends since childhood, when they first began spending their holidays together at the French seaside, but she wished Bernard and Amy weren't quite so friendly.
'How went the singles?' said Bernard. 'We were just coming out.'
There was still daylight for another set, but Kathleen pronounced that it was too dark, and there was nothing for the others but to take their leave.
'I shall carry the memory of this afternoon to Paris,' said Amy Winter; 'you know, I'm off to Paris on Thursday?'
Gloom descended upon the Hampstead house whenever it was left to itself. When Kathleen Warren's mother was alive in the days before Joshua Warren had made money, life at home had been different. It was she who had forestalled every domestic storm; who had soothed away her husband's worries and kept his uneasy nerves in quietude. In those days he had been a playmate to his little girl, and if he had been eccentric, and had always shown a childish greed for money, it had not affected the happiness of his family. Working as an optician on a weekly wage—and working well; and later, when he had opened a shop and prospered in it, his piety had always been turned to one end—petitions to the Deity for money. It was a harmless obsession, and when he knelt by his bedside and cried aloud, 'Oh, Lord, grant me an annuity, and if Thou dost not know what an annuity is, it is ten thousand a year paid quarterly in advance,' his wife had not thought it worth while to reason with him. When in the turmoil of the war, and after it, he had grown rich, there were cynics who said that they were not surprised—the Powers above had yielded because they were weary of him.
His wife had never liked his association with Raphael Gomez, though everything that her husband touched at his suggestion turned to money. And then the mother, who had been more than mother to Kathleen, died, and all the human side of Joshua Warren died with her. The accumulation of wealth became an obsession with him, and at each acquisition his temper had grown more suspicious and difficult.
Kathleen was accustomed to his bouts of silence at meals. For a few moments she persevered bravely in the effort to make conversation, but it was like talking to a dead wall. There was something new in the grim set of his lips, and when the silent meal came to an end, the door had shut behind the servants, and he spoke for the first time, she shivered, knowing from his manner that in some way she had offended him.
'I don't like these friends of yours, Kitty.'
She gazed at him in astonishment. 'Which of them, Dad? I thought you liked them all—unless you mean Amy Winter; you had never seen her before.'
'Pshaw! I shouldn't know her by sight if she came to-morrow. It's not the women I'm speaking of—it's the young men.'
'There's only one, Dad. You can't mean Mr. Thring. You used to like him.' She had flushed to the roots of her hair.
'I do mean this very same "Mister Thring,"' he said, mimicking her. 'What is he always hanging about the house for? If he's hunting a fortune he'll have a rude awakening one of these days.'
She knew him in these moods and let him run on.
'I can't understand you modern girls. It's time that you were thinking about getting married. I ask you to be civil to a particular friend of mine—a man who would be just the thing for you—and you haven't a word to say to him.' She saw the signal of rising passion: a vein over his temple began to swell and throb; his voice was rising to a crow. 'In my own house too! I can't get my daughter to be civil to my friends. When I invited Mr. Gomez to tea this afternoon' (Gomez would have opened his eyes at this description of his welcome) 'you looked at him as if he were some slimy sort of insect. Oh, you needn't look so innocent. I was watching you. Now, look here, my girl, Mr. Gomez is coming again—again and again—and I'll stand no nonsense. You've got to be polite to him, and, what's more, if ever he asks you to be his wife you've got to say "Yes."'
'Daddy!'
'Well, what's the matter with the man? He's got the regulation number of eyes and arms and legs, I suppose.'
'But I don't like him.'
'What does that matter? How many women like the men they marry? It's just a contract—like any other matter of business.' He waved his arm with a sweep to indicate the unimportance of her point of view. 'I don't happen to like my wine merchant, but I like his wine, and so I deal with him. Now this man Gomez——'
The girl shuddered. 'I've never seen a man I dislike so much. I wouldn't trust him with a dog. Daddy, it would be better for us both to come to an understanding. Never, under any circumstances, could I think of marrying him.'
Her father gripped the arm of his chair and leaned forward. He looked like a man on the verge of an apoplectic seizure. 'We will come to an understanding. You've got to marry him to save your father—to save us both—from ruin. Do you understand?'
The girl was stung to courage! She asked the question coldly, 'Why, Daddy? Explain yourself.'
'I'm not going into details. It's enough for you to know that if I cannot send him a favourable answer before Thursday night we shall be ruined.'
'I'm sorry, Daddy.'
'And you still say "No"?' He was in a white fury now and she shrank from him. She slipped from her chair and went towards the door.
'I can never say anything else, Daddy.'
'Come back, you little fool, and sit down.'
'If you don't mind, I think I'll go to bed. Good night.'
The door closed upon her. The face of Joshua Warren was not good to look upon at that moment; in his present temper he knew that he would not be master of himself if he went to his daughter's room. He rose heavily and rang the bell.
BERNARD THRING stood for a moment at the gate with his hand upon the latch. It was to be the most momentous interview of his life. In five minutes he was to be delirious with happiness or so miserable that he did not dare to think ahead. He knew that he was greatly daring. He loved Kathleen Warren with all that was in him, and he had no right to love her! What Foreign Office clerk with next to nothing beyond his pay as a junior has the right to love any girl? But it had come to this, that he had proposed and had been accepted, and she was waiting upstairs for the verdict of her father. He must go through with it. At that hour he knew that Mr. Warren would be at home, and he went up the carriage drive with the faltering confidence of one who is leading an assault upon a well-defended stronghold.
Mr. Warren was at home. If Mr. Thring would wait a moment the butler would ascertain whether he would see him.
The door of the study was open and he heard a harsh voice giving orders.
'See that the car is tuned up and have her ready to-morrow to take me down to the Abbey. Have her round at nine.'
The chauffeur ejected himself from the room like a missile from a catapult, and Bernard found himself facing the artillery. His manners had never failed him. Mr. Warren's, on the other hand, failed him with increasing frequency. Bernard had often been his guest, yet he did not rise nor invite him to sit down. He glared balefully at him for a moment and took up his pen. It was not an encouraging reception.
'I have asked you for this interview, Mr. Warren,' began Bernard in a voice that he scarcely recognized as his own, 'because I love Kathleen and I have spoken to her. She—she says she cares for me, and now I want to ask you for your consent.'
'My consent to what?'
'To our marriage.'
An unpleasant light began to glow in Warren's eyes.
'I suppose that you would not have come to me unless you had the means for marrying?'
'Oh, not yet, Mr. Warren. I did not mean that. I wanted you to agree to our engagement.'
'What is your salary at the Foreign Office?'
'Not very much, I am afraid. I am a junior, but I am supposed to have prospects and I have a small allowance besides.'
'I see! Say a total of three hundred a year and prospects. Now, look here, young man; I don't want to say anything offensive, but I put it to you that you would not have thought of coming to me with this story if you had not an idea that I should provide the rest. In short, you are a fortune-hunter—that's what they call you in the books—a fortune-hunter!'
The young man started to his feet, and Warren began to raise his voice to a bullying tone.
'Yes, that's what you are. I suppose that you gentlemen in the Foreign Office spend your spare time in looking up likely heiresses and then you draw lots as to which of you shall make love to them.' Bernard bit his lips hard in order to maintain silence; and then: 'Well, you have come to the wrong house this time. You had better look for another on the list, and leave us alone. When I was your age I had less than you have. I made it all by my own work, but I didn't make it for some young fellow to come along and spend it for me.' He was edging his visitor towards the door.
'You have no right to say this to me, Mr. Warren!'
The older man's voice rose to a scream. 'No right, you say! No right to tell you the truth about yourself! No right to forbid you to enter my house!'
Bernard had the door open now and the menacing voice was carried to every part of the house.
'I'll show you whether I have got a right or not! I'll show you what will happen if you ever dare to come to this house again! Out you go, and be damned to you!'
Bernard abandoned the position and made for the front door, thereby confusing a listening maid, who retreated to the dining-room. But even then Warren's tirade of empty abuse continued.
'You can go and tell the other fellows in the Foreign Office what I have said. Tell them to go out and get an honest living before they try the short-cut to money. Tell them——' The front door slammed upon the rest.
Bernard had never seen Mr. Warren in this state before, though Kathleen had often hinted to him that fits of ill-temper were growing upon him. To Bernard he seemed insane, and perhaps Kathleen had been right when she traced his disorder to the death of his wife and his sudden acquisition of money.
Kathleen, looking down upon the drive, watched her lover go. There was no need to tell her what had passed. The quickness of his walk, the swing of his shoulders told their own tale. As usual, her father had been gross and insulting, and the rage caused by his insults was evident in every movement of Bernard's stride. She was not long left in doubt. Her door opened and her father came bursting in. It was not his way to declaim to the empty air. He wanted always a victim to be sacrificed to his ill-humour.
'He has gone, that young fool,' he said. 'I hunted him out and he won't come here again in a hurry.'
'Oh, Daddy!'
'Yes. I suppose you know all about it and connived with him, the mean little fortune-hunter.'
Kathleen covered her ears and Warren became explosive.
'No, you have got to hear the truth this time. He has heard it and so must you. No doubt these Foreign Office whippersnappers drew lots for you, and this one had the luck. Seems to have played his cards very well. Probably he was counting up the settlements you were to have. I left him in no doubt about them.' Kathleen began to sob, which was just what he wanted. 'Next time one of these young fellows makes love to you, you will find it better to take your father into your confidence. I don't like underhand doings in this house.'
On he raved for ten minutes in this strain until he had talked himself out. He slammed the door and left her.
Kathleen felt that it would be impossible to sit down to dinner tête-à-tête with her father in his present humour. There was a telephone in her room; she rang up the Thrings to propose herself to dinner, for she must know from Bernard's own lips what had passed at the fateful interview. It was Pamela who replied: 'Of course come to dinner. Bernard doesn't get home until nearly eight, but you'll have plenty of time for talking to him, so come as early as you can and give me a look in.'
Stopping in the hall for a moment to tell the butler that she was going out and would not be home to dinner, she made for the tube station, feeling secure only when she was seated in the train; there at least her father could not overtake her.
The little house in Chelsea felt like a harbour of refuge. Pamela noticed her agitation, but forbore to ask her any questions. Following the example of all who came to Pamela for advice, it was Kathleen herself who opened the story of her troubles. 'I suppose that Bernard has taken you into his confidence, Pam.'
'Not entirely; he never does unless he is in trouble; but I've guessed.'
'That we are——'
'That he's very much in love with a little person that I'm in love with myself. I don't know any more than that.'
'Pam, I've been going through a most awful time, and I'm afraid, poor boy, that he has too. You know that he came up to Hampstead this afternoon to see my father?'
'No. What happened?'
'Oh, you'd better let him tell you himself. Father was worse than usual; but that's not the worst. He wants me to marry some one else—a man I can't bear the sight of—says that unless I do we shall be ruined.'
'Is he—well—quite himself?'
'No, I'm quite sure he's not. If you'd heard him raving at me this afternoon after Bernard had left you'd have no doubt. He could be heard all over the house. He used to be so different, so nice to me when Mother was alive and we were poor people. I suppose it was poor Mother's death that's changed him. He's not well, you know.'
'Isn't he buying a place in the country?'
'Yes, Carfax Abbey. I thought that the restoration and furnishing would cure him, and I encouraged him. Lots of people laughed at him; said that he was remodelling a ruin after the manner of the new millionaire, but it is a passion with him.'
'What is the place like?'
'Oh, every one says that it's haunted.'
Pamela's eyes began to glow; her weakness was curiosity about the occult. 'Ghosts, you mean?'
'Yes, so they say, and the place is under a curse. The altar in the chapel was desecrated by Cromwell's soldiers, and one of the monks who tried to defend it was murdered within the altar rails. They say that misfortune has overtaken any one who slept under its roof even for one night ever since. In the eighteenth century there was a long list of owners who came to grief. Just after the Armistice, Campbell Mainwaring, the oil magnate, bought the place and was beginning to restore it when he lost everything in the oil slump; and then, you know, he had that accident out shooting—they called it an accident, but every one believes that it was suicide. I don't know why Father chose that particular house. For two or three years he has had this passion to be among what they call the "landed gentry," just when the landed gentry themselves are trying to escape from the land. He knows nothing of farming, gardening, or sport, and he always thinks that the people who do know are cheating him.'
At that moment they heard Bernard's latch-key in the door. Mrs. Thring, who was fast becoming a confirmed invalid, had her dinner in bed; and when Pamela had gone upstairs with the tray, her brother related what had passed at the fateful interview as well as he could remember it. 'Now, what are we to do?' he concluded.
'The only difference need be that you mustn't come to the house. Father would insult you if you did, and I couldn't bear that; but we can go on meeting as if nothing had happened. Things must come right in the end.'
Pamela returned and they resolved themselves into a council of three. It was nearly eleven when the guest took her leave to return to Hampstead under the escort of her fiancé. He left her at the gate, where he was out of sight of the house, but lingered to hear the front door close behind her. A few minutes later he heard the high, crowing voice of the father. He was in a rage, for Bernard caught the words, 'At this time of night,' and then the door slammed.
Kathleen had counted upon her father keeping his regular hours. It was his habit, after assuring himself that no member of the household was still abroad, to go round the house to see every fastening and to bolt the front door and put it on the chain. This ceremony was performed always at half-past ten, and it was an unwritten law that any one who came in after that hour should be responsible for the security of the front door. But on this night it suited his malevolent humour to lock his daughter out, and so he had bolted the front door and sat up to wait for her.
He began to rail at her at once for keeping late hours. 'I tell you,' he went on with rising anger, 'that it's not respectable for a young girl to be out till nearly midnight. Where have you been?'
'Daddy! It's not nearly midnight. I've been dining out at Chelsea and I couldn't get back before.'
'Who have you been dining with? Tell me that. No, you needn't tell me: I can guess it. You've been dining with that young quill-driver from the Foreign Office, and I'll make another guess—he brought you home, and then sneaked off from that gate because he wasn't man enough to come to the front door.'
Kathleen flushed with indignation and said with some dignity, 'Yes, I have been dining with the Thrings, and Mr. Thring did see me home—naturally.'
'Well, then, for the future you will understand that I forbid you to go to Chelsea or to meet him again in any other part of London.'
'I'm sorry, Daddy, but I cannot give you any promise of that kind.'
The father became inarticulate with rage. 'You defy me?' he shouted.
'I don't defy you, but I'm of age, and I am free to make my own friends.'
He raised his hand as if to strike her, and then, with a gurgling sound in his throat, he reeled, clutched at the arm of a Queen Anne chair, and fell heavily on the parquet floor, dragging the chair over on him.
KATHLEEN fell on her knees beside her father. Her heart was beating wildly, but she was still mistress of herself. She remembered that the first thing to do in a case of seizure was to loosen the patient's collar. His face had assumed a death-like pallor now; his mouth was open and a little foam had formed about his lips; he was breathing stertorously. She was still fumbling with his collar when he opened his eyes. In his helplessness, all the passions that had raged in both of them during the last few moments were forgotten, and a great wave of tenderness surged up in her. 'Poor little Daddy,' she murmured; now you must lie quite still while I telephone for the doctor.
His hard features relaxed into something like a smile; he shook his head. 'No,' he said, speaking with difficulty; 'I won't have a doctor. I shall be all right directly. Help me up to bed.'
But he was so helpless that that task was beyond her. 'Lie quite still, Daddy,' she whispered. 'I am going to get Burrows to help me.'
When she was back with the butler, collar-less and but half awake, she found him sitting up. He was almost able to rise without help, but he leaned heavily on their arms while they were getting him upstairs.
'Now, I'm going to leave you to Burrows; he'll put you to bed, but I'll leave my door open, and you must promise to call me if you want anything.'
Her father must have dropped off to sleep almost immediately. She heard Burrows go downstairs; she heard her father snoring loudly; and presently she herself dropped off to sleep.
When she awoke and lay recalling the events of the past day with a sense of brooding anxiety it was past nine. Her maid had been in with her hot water but had not awakened her. In her waking moments she had heard the whirr of a car. She rang for her maid and asked her to find out how Mr. Warren was. The girl seemed surprised.
'The master, miss? Oh, he seemed quite well. He's just gone off in the car.'
'Alone?'
'Oh, no, miss. Lamson was driving.'
'Does any one know where he was going?'
'Well, miss,' simpered the girl, 'I happened to be downstairs when the master was giving his orders yesterday. I heard him say, "Have the car ready to take me down to the Abbey."'
'Are you quite sure? He said nothing to me about going down to Carfax.'
'Oh, yes, miss. Lamson himself told me that he wouldn't be in to dinner because the old man—I mean, because the master was taking him down to the Abbey, and he said like as not he'd get no dinner at all, unless he asked for it. You know how he talks, that Lamson, miss.'
It was ten o'clock—too late to catch Bernard before he left for the Foreign Office. There was nothing for it but to ring him up at the office and tell him of her interview with her father, of his sudden illness, and of her anxiety about his journey to the Abbey. She was put on to his room at once; a man replied, 'No, I'm afraid you can't speak to Mr. Thring to-day; he's on leave.'
'On leave?'
'Yes,' laughed the voice, 'we do take leave sometimes even in the Foreign Office: we're so hard-worked, you know. Will you leave a message? He's my stable companion.'
'Thanks very much, but I'll ring him up to-morrow.'
She rang up the little house in Chelsea, and Pamela replied, 'Oh, you're too late for Bernard; he's started for the office.'
'But I've just been on to the Foreign Office, and they say that he's away on leave for the day.'
'He said nothing about it at breakfast-time. Surely they must be wrong. But stop, Kitty, I can easily find out from the garage. If he's taken his car I suppose they're right. Cut off and I'll ring you up in less than five minutes.'
She was recalled almost immediately to learn from Pamela that Bernard had taken his car out immediately after breakfast. The people at the garage knew nothing about his destination, but he had had the petrol tank filled up to the brim. 'I can't understand the boy,' added Pamela; 'he's never gone off like this before in his life.'
Kathleen passed an uneasy morning. Bernard's mysterious departure, her father's imprudent journey filled her mind, and the worst was that she could do nothing until they came back.
Just before luncheon the double knock of a telegraph boy took Burrows to the door. He brought a telegram on the salver and stopped at the door. 'It's a prepaid reply telegram, miss, for Mr. Warren.'
'What had I better do, do you think?'
'Well, miss, the boy's waiting, and I don't suppose that Mr. Warren will be back before the office closes. Hadn't you better open it, miss? It may be nothing of consequence.'
She tore it open and read:
LETTER RECEIVED. CAN YOU COME BEARSTEAD TWO O'CLOCK.
The message was unsigned; it had been despatched from Oldbury.
'Where is Bearstead, Burrows?'
'I don't know, miss, but I seem to have heard the name. Lamson could tell us, but he's away.'
'Well, there's no signature, so I can't send an answer. You'd better send the boy away.'
She puzzled long over the wording of this telegram. The sender, she thought, must be one of her father's intimates; otherwise he would have signed it. Oldbury is the post-town for Carfax Abbey, so Bearstead must be some place near the Abbey. She would forward the telegram to Carfax. It was now one o'clock: it ought to be delivered there by three. Burrows went off with it at once. There was nothing now left to do but to wait.
Tea-time had long passed. Warren had never missed dinner at eight o'clock for as long as Kathleen could remember. She rang for Burrows. 'I want you to go round to the garage and see whether there is any sign of the car. Mr. Warren might have sent it back, and you know what Lamson is—he would never think of telling us.'
'Shall we wait dinner, miss?'
'Yes, of course. They may only have been delayed on the road by a puncture.'
But there was no sign of the car at the garage. Kathleen went to the telephone and rang up the Thrings' house, only to learn that Bernard was not yet back and that they did not know when to expect him. All the foundations of Kathleen's little world seemed to be giving way together. She sent for Burrows again to take counsel as to what could be done towards getting news of the car and its occupants.
'It is odd that Mr. Warren should not have telegraphed if he had had a breakdown.'
'If you will allow me to say so, miss, I should wait before you do anything. If Mr. Warren were to come in—and he might be in at any moment—he'd be annoyed if he found that we'd been making inquiries.'
And so they waited—waited until the dinner-hour was long past; waited until past ten, and when hope seemed to be extinguished a car drove up to the door. Bell and knocker were applied together; there were voices in the hall; Burrows threw open the library door and said, 'Lamson, miss.'
If Lamson was bursting with news he did not show it. He stood in the doorway with his cap in his hand, waiting to be questioned. He was a Yorkshireman, bred first to stable-boy and then, when cars began to invade the country-side and the days of carriage horses seemed numbered, he had gone to the bottom rung in a big garage in Doncaster to learn the mysteries of cars, feeling sure that he could master them, since, as he said, 'You can lift up the bonnet to get at their insides, and you can't do that with a horse.' He had been driving for a year when the war came; he joined up in the first hundred thousand, and in natural consequence, since he could drive and do road repairs, he found himself driving a brigadier about the mud craters that were called roads in Flanders. His Yorkshireman's caution had brought him unscathed to the Armistice, and his general's recommendation had won him a chauffeur's livery.
'Where is Mr. Warren?' exclaimed Kathleen, her nerves on edge.
'That's exactly what I've come to tell you, miss; but I think, miss, I'd better begin at the beginning.'
'He's safe? Tell me that.'
'Ah, miss, you mustn't get uneasy right at the start; it puts me off, it does. Now miss, as I was saying, we left the house at nine o'clock——'
'Is my father well?'
'Now, now, miss, I'm coming to that. Just let me tell you everything in my own way and it'll all come right. We left the house at nine o'clock for the Abbey, miss. It was a beautiful morning and the engine running sweetly. You know the turn into that lane just short of Oldbury—just beyond where the A.A. scout stands.'
'You had an accident?'
'No, no, miss—we don't have accidents, not when I'm driving. I just mentioned the corner just as one might mention any other feature in the road.'
'You can go on with the story afterwards. Tell me where Mr. Warren is.'
'I'm coming to that, miss.' He smoothed the air before him with his hand, as if he was stroking a spaniel's head, and he drawled on: 'Well, as I was saying, miss, we were down at the Abbey five minutes after eleven. The master went in and was there for two hours or more. Then he came out and he says, "Lamson, what about your lunch?" "I don't know, sir," says I, "but you'll be wanting lunch too." "Pshaw!" he says, just like that. "Pshaw! I don't want any lunch. You go and get yours in Oldbury if you can't get it nearer," and he slips three shillings into my hand.'
'Tell me this, Lamson. Will my father be back this evening?'
'No, miss, not this evening; but I'm just coming to that.'
'Is he ill?'
'No, miss; but, really, you had better let me get on. The master went back into the building and I started up for Oldbury. I'd a good lunch, miss, and a little before four I was back again at the Abbey.'
'Where was my father?'
'Oh, he'd stayed there, and, of course, I wouldn't think of disturbing him. 'Twas my place to wait till he came out.'
Kathleen was ready to cry with vexation, but she knew that she must let him talk himself out. 'Go on,' she said, 'but please come to the point.'
'Well, miss, I stayed there until that telegraph boy came along. He came up to the car and he says, "Warren, Carfax Abbey, Oldbury. Who's he?" I said, "You'll find him inside;" but he didn't find him. He came back to me and he says, "There ain't no bell." A silly sort of boy he was. So I took the telegram myself and went with him. Well, it's a mighty big place, that Abbey. We must have walked half a mile—up staircases, along passages, into rooms—fifty of them at least—making noise enough to raise any one within half a mile, but the master never came out. "'Ere," I says, "you leave the telegram with me. I'm his man," I says. And so he did.'
Kathleen showed her impatience, and he held up his hand with a calming gesture. 'Wait a moment, miss, I'm coming to the point. As soon as that boy had gone off on his bike I remembered the chapel. I wandered about quite a lot before I found it, and when I did it was nearly dark. "Are you there, sir?" I said. "Here's a telegram." Not a sound. I went in, thinking that he'd gone out by another door, and then, miss—Now, miss, you must brace yourself up a bit for what I'm going to tell you. We've got to look facts in the face, haven't we?'
'Go on. What did you find?'
'Well, I found him—the master. Lying on the stone floor he was, and looking awful. I spoke to him; he didn't answer, so down I knelt beside him and struck a match. His mouth was open, but I couldn't see that he was breathing, and when I touched his hand it was cold as ice.'
'Do you mean——'
'That's just what I do mean, miss. Of course I went for help. I drove to Oldbury in under six minutes. Not knowing where to find a doctor, I went to the police and told them. They sent their own doctor with me in the car. He made an examination, and said that the poor gentleman was dead, just as I'd thought myself. As we were driving back he asked me a funny question, the doctor did. "Was that the first time you'd been in the chapel?" he said. "Yes," I said, "and I had a job to find it." "Um," he said, "drive me to the police station." Then, miss, the Superintendent took a statement from me; that took over an hour, and he asked me a lot of questions. "We shall want you for the inquest," he said.'
'The inquest?'
'Yes, miss. And he'll be sending one of his men up to see you, miss, before they fix the date. I think that's all I have to tell you, miss. Oh, I forgot one thing: one of the cylinders is missing, and I haven't a sparking plug about the place. Master used to get them special.' He had run down like a clock in need of winding.
Stunned by the blow, Kathleen had almost forgotten his presence. Thank you, Lamson,' she said at last. 'That will do.'
'Thank you, miss.'
He spun round on his heel and met Burrows in the hall. 'You've been a long time,' said Burrows.
'Of course I have. I had to break it to her gently.'
DETECTIVE-SERGEANT EDWARD MANNERING lived with his growing family at No. 7, The Dyke, Oldbury, a red-brick cottage of an age when the decorative arts were not an obsession with builders. It had been his afternoon off duty, which, according to his wont, he had devoted to fishing in the canal. When, for the first time, he took his eldest son Thomas with him he must have known that he would be in for a strenuous evening, for Mrs. Mannering, with the cares of the household on her shoulders, disapproved of the pursuit.
'It isn't as if you ever brought home any fish that a body could eat: I had to give your last little lot to the cat; and now, just when Tommy's getting to be of an age to do something useful, you take him out and teach him to waste his time with a worm on the end of a hook.'
The husband smiled at her, and the smile made her worse. 'You know, Ted, you can be a fool sometimes, and it's growing on you. What I'm afraid of is that the children may take after you.'
At this he smiled again, for he had found by long experience that silence in the domestic circle was his trump card.
'Yes, you may laugh, but I tell you that if there was a few more crimes in the neighbourhood that would keep you busy, and keep you away from that smelly canal, it would be better for you and all concerned.'
At that moment her ear caught the ting of a bicycle bell descending the Dyke towards their house, which was the last in the row. He also had heard it. 'It would be just my luck,' he said, 'if this was a message from the Chief just as I was thinking of going to bed.'
A sharp knock on the door confirmed his fears.
'Sergeant in?' said a young constable, coming into the light. 'Ah, there you are, Sergeant. The Chief wants you.'
'At this time of night. What's happened?'
'Some toff out Carfax way been done in, so they say. Anyway, they've brought the body along to the mortuary, and the Chief's been on the telephone to Aylesbury ever since he got the doctor's report. He wants to talk to you bad, does the Chief.'
'Right!' sighed the detective. 'Tell him I'll be round as soon as I've got my things together and lighted my lamp.'
He found the superintendent at his desk, though it was past ten o'clock.
'I'm sorry to call you in on your afternoon off duty, but I've got a job here that'll take you all your time. It may turn out to be a murder.'
He related his knowledge of the case as he had heard it from the chauffeur, but he added that there were suspicious circumstances about the case.
'Now,' he said, 'I'm going to turn over to you all the papers and effects that were found on the body. You'll take a constable with you and go out to Carfax Abbey as soon as you can. Make a thorough search and carry out any inquiries suggested by the papers.'
'Do you mean to-night, sir?'
'No, you want daylight. You'd better go through the papers now, then get back to bed and take young Forsyth with you first thing to-morrow morning. Inspector Ruggles tells me that he made a chalk mark around the body before he moved it from the chapel, but it was too late to make any search of the floor, so there will be a lot of footmarks leading to and from the door. He assures me that they were careful not to tread anywhere but in a direct line. Here are the keys; you'd better report progress verbally each evening.'
'Very good, sir. When is the inquest to be?'
'As late as we can get the coroner to call it. Probably it will be Friday or Saturday.'
Detective-Sergeant Mannering's forte was not the deciphering of papers. His method was to read them through, jotting down any names and addresses that he encountered as material for inquiries, but the papers found in Joshua Warren's pockets contained very few names and addresses; his engagement book generally referred to individuals by initials. It was not until he came to the last few entries that he stiffened into attention. Under Monday the eleventh, four days before, he came across this entry: 'Gomez called with ult.' What did 'ult' stand for?
'Ultimo?' That did not make sense. 'Ultimate?' What did that mean? 'Ultimatum?' That at least did make sense.
On Tuesday there was this entry: 'Kicked young Thring out of the house.' That certainly was a second starting-point for inquiry; and, finally, there was the telegram with the prepaid reply form and the dead man's address at Hampstead.
With this nebulous kind of material in his mind Detective-Sergeant Mannering sought his couch, prepared to allow his partner to talk herself to sleep while he revolved plans for the morrow. The cultivation of this art of detachment had led to his promotion—that and the practice of watching his float in the canal, where the fish left him free for reflection.
Meanwhile Kathleen was too much stunned by the news to be able to think. She knew not what the morrow would bring forth to her. All her life she had been dependent upon her father. She knew nothing of business; even housekeeping had been carried on over her head. He had treated her as a child, too young to be entrusted even with the engagement of a servant, and now that he was gone she was helpless. She knew that in her heart she had been in fear of this catastrophe for a long time. In the presence of death how small a matter seemed the outbursts of temper of the past few days. She remembered her father only as the uncouth playmate of hers who used to invent games for her and tease and pet her by turns in those bygone days. She was awake to see the pale daylight growing in her room, and she had to wait until the hour when she could ring up her friends in Chelsea and settle with them what she was to do. She knew that the Thrings were down to breakfast at half-past eight.
The demeanour of her maid, who called her, showed that Lamson's tongue had not been idle: she came in as if she was entering a sick-room and expected her young mistress to spend the day in bed existing upon beef-tea or chicken-broth. Evidently it appeared to her as scarcely decent that she should bring the morning tea as usual.
On the stroke of half-past eight Kathleen was at the telephone. Bernard's voice replied to her.
'Bernard! A dreadful thing has happened. Daddy is dead.'
'What!'
'He motored down to the Abbey yesterday and didn't come back. Late last night Lamson came back with the car and told me that Daddy had died suddenly in the Abbey chapel. No one was with him; he found him lying there.'
'My darling, how awful! I'm so sorry for you. What can I do?'
'I must go down. I must see him again before—I can't go alone.'
'Of course not. I'll take you down in my car. Just give me time to run round to the office on the way and get leave for the day and I'll be with you.'
Carfax Abbey lies three or four miles south of the main road to Oxford and can only be approached by a narrow lane that runs through sheep pastures. Like other monasteries, Carfax was built at the bottom of a valley because the monks liked to be near the water. It lay buried among the trees on the banks of a meandering stream.
When they were clear of the London traffic, Kathleen told her companion about the telegram that she had forwarded, and asked him whether he knew of a place called Bearstead. 'You see, Bernard, the wording of the telegram implies that it was sent by some one who had just had a letter from Daddy, and I can't think who it can be.'
'Well, we won't worry about that now; we'll find out when we get to Oldbury.'
Presently they swung out of the tarred road down a narrow lane which wound among pastures for a mile or two.
'Is that the Abbey?' asked Thring, pointing towards a Queen Anne building on the rising ground beyond.
'No, I don't know the name of the house or who lives there. I asked Father, but he didn't seem interested in the subject. You see, they are our nearest neighbours. I have only been to the Abbey once before.'
A few hundred yards brought them in sight of the Abbey. It was a fourteenth-century building, restored in execrable taste by some Georgian architect, but still bearing traces of antiquity. Thring scarcely looked at it; his attention was fixed upon two bicycles standing against the wall.
Kathleen led the way. The front door was not locked; it opened into a vast, galleried hall encumbered with packing-cases. She turned through a doorway on the left, through ruinous cloisters into the chapel, the part of the Abbey which had been least touched by the vandal hand of the restorer.
They were not alone there: two men were kneeling on the flagstones before the altar rails, the one a rather stout, florid man with a reading glass in his hand; the other a younger man holding a two-foot rule. A notebook was lying on the floor between them.
'Two foot eight and a quarter inches as near as I can make it,' said the younger, and then, hearing a movement at the door, he turned round. 'Who's this?' he hissed in the ear of his companion.
The florid man rose stiffly to his feet. 'Yes, mum? Were you looking for any one?'
'I'm Miss Warren.'
'Oh, I beg your pardon, miss. We are police officers from Oldbury. I was coming up myself to see you in London.'
'Where is my father?'
'You know what's happened, miss?'
'Yes, but I want to see him.'
'Well, miss, you'll have to go to the mortuary at Oldbury; they moved him there last night. Excuse me, miss, but who is this gentleman?'
Bernard intervened. 'My name is Thring—Bernard Thring. I'm a friend, but no relation.' He did not notice the slight start with which the sergeant heard the name.
'By the way, Sergeant,' continued Bernard, 'is there a place called Bearstead anywhere about here?'
'Why do you ask, sir, may I inquire?'
'Because Miss Warren opened a telegram making an appointment with Mr. Warren at Bearstead yesterday afternoon.'
'Yes, sir, Bearstead's the house over there; you must have noticed it as you drove up.'
'You mean the house on the hill,' said Kathleen. 'Who lives there?'
'The gentleman is called Mr. Raphael Gomez.'
The young couple exchanged glances. 'If I had known that,' whispered Kathleen, 'I would have refused ever to live here, so near to that horrible man.'
'I'll tell you what I'll do,' said the sergeant, after a moment's reflection. 'I'll drop what I'm doing here and take you both along to see Superintendent Laurence in Oldbury. I think he has one or two questions to ask you, and he may want statements taken. You see, miss, there'll have to be an inquest.'
'Can't that be avoided?' said Thring, below his breath. 'It'll be a dreadful ordeal for this lady.'
'I'm afraid not, sir, but the superintendent will be able to tell you all that better than I can. Now, Forsyth, you can pack those things up and we'll slip along to Oldbury on our bikes.'
Crawling behind the bicycles the car was guided to a new red-brick building. The sergeant led the way upstairs and knocked at a door.
With a wave of the hand he went in, shutting it behind him. The two waited in the passage for what seemed an interminable time, and then the sergeant reappeared.
'This way, please,' he said, as if he were ushering them into stalls at a theatre.
They found themselves in a neat little office before a young-looking superintendent with a cropped moustache, who looked at them gravely with a pair of very bright eyes. His desk was clear of papers, his blotting-pad immaculate. There was a place for everything and everything, even down to the pen, was in its place.
'Sit down, Miss Warren. Sit down, Mr. Thring. This is a very sad, sad business. I suppose that Mr. Warren's chauffeur brought you the news.'
As Kathleen did not answer, Bernard said, 'Yes, and I drove Miss Warren down this morning in order that she might see the—the body.'
'Quite right, sir. That can be arranged. They have told you, Miss Warren, that there will have to be an inquest? I think the coroner would like to have it on Saturday if you can be here. May I ask you, Miss Warren, whether your father had complained of illness?'
'Yes, he had a fainting fit on Tuesday evening. I was astonished when I heard that he had started for the Abbey yesterday.'
'Before that was he in his usual health?'
'Well, I am not sure. Lately he has been very excitable.'
'Now, Miss Warren, would you prefer to go to the mortuary alone, or with this gentleman?'
'Alone,' said Kathleen faintly.
'Then in that case I will ask my detective-sergeant to take you there.' He called in Sergeant Mannering and whispered a few words to him.
'This way, miss,' said the detective.
Bernard was following her out when the superintendent called him back. 'One moment, sir, I have a word or two to say to you. Have you known the deceased gentleman long?'
'For some weeks.'
'And you knew him well, sir?'
'Fairly well.'
'And you were always on good terms with him? Never had a quarrel or anything of that sort?'
'Well, my last interview with him was not very pleasant.'
'Indeed, sir? On what day was that?'
'The day before yesterday.'
'I think I might tell you, Mr. Thring, something that I did not like to say to the young lady. I've had a report from the surgeon who examined the body. He called in a second opinion which confirms his own. There were marks upon it—finger-marks on the throat—which show that he met his death by violence.'
BERNARD THRING heard Superintendent Laurence's communication with horror which passed into incredulity. 'Surely,' he said, 'the doctor must be mistaken. Mr. Warren is much more likely to have died from a second seizure like that of the previous day.'
The superintendent made no reply, but after a moment he said, 'I don't think that I have your address, sir.'
Bernard Thring gave it.
'And your profession?'
'I'm a clerk in the Foreign Office.'
'Ah, and you were at the Foreign Office yesterday?'
'No. As a matter of fact, I had a day's leave yesterday.'
The bright eyes of the superintendent searched his face and noted his embarrassment, but he asked no more questions. After a short silence he said, 'Thank you, Mr. Thring; you must be anxious to take the young lady home. If you find a favourable opportunity, you might prepare her by breaking the news of the manner of her father's death, because it would be a shock if she heard it for the first time at the inquest.'
'I suppose I shan't be wanted at the inquest? I cannot give any material evidence.'
'Oh, yes, undoubtedly you will be wanted as a witness.'
Bernard waited by the car for ten minutes before Kathleen Warren returned from the mortuary. She looked very pale and broken, but she turned to thank Sergeant Mannering quite naturally and took her seat in the car without assistance.
'You ought to have lunch,' said her companion. 'Shall we stop here for it?'
'No, thank you, Bernard. I want to get home as soon as I can.'
For the first few miles neither spoke, for Kathleen was stunned by what she had just seen, and the vision of that cold, hard face, strangely softened by the hand of death, was still before her eyes. Bernard was turning over in his mind how he could tell her of the manner of her father's death. At last, laying his hand upon her arm, he said, 'I did feel for you so much, poor Kitty; it must have been dreadful, but it was better for you to go there alone.'
His words, or perhaps his touch, broke down the little barrier of self-restraint, and she burst into tears, sobbing quietly to herself.
'You know, Kitty,' he went on, you have to go through this horrible business of the inquest; you will need all your courage; happily you have lots of it. That superintendent man told me something about the tragedy which he did not like to tell you, but as it will all come out at the inquest it is much better that you should be prepared to hear it beforehand. Are you strong enough to hear it now?'
Kathleen stopped crying. 'Of course, I want to know everything. Tell me.'
'Well, it is this. The doctor who examined your father found marks upon him.'
'Marks! What do you mean?'
'Finger-marks—of some other man. He thinks that your father was throttled by some one, and it was that that killed him.'
The girl looked at him with wide-open eyes all misty with tears. 'You mean that he was—murdered?'
'That is what the superintendent implied, but I believe that the doctor made a mistake.'
'How awful! Poor, poor Daddy!' and she began to sob again.
Meanwhile, Detective-Sergeant Mannering had not been idle. After a hurried dinner at which Mrs. Mannering did all the talking, her conversation consisting of a catalogue of domestic misfortunes which were proper to lay at his door, he patted the budding angler on the head, let him oil the wheels of his cycle, and rode off for Carfax Abbey, calling for Constable Forsyth on the way. There were still some hours of daylight when the two men got to work. Up to that point they had found two rather doubtful footprints which they believed had not been made by the dead man: they were caked impressions on the sawdust that had been scattered.
Inch by inch they were extending their circle of search among the litter and the straw. The daylight was beginning to fade when the young constable pounced upon a black object which was propped into a vertical position by straw and waste paper ankle high. 'What's this?' he said, holding it up.
Mannering examined it under his reading glass with great care. 'There's no dust on it,' he said, 'so it hasn't been here many hours. It's a crocodile leather case such as gentlemen keep their stamps and visiting-cards and such-like in. But there's nothing in it but this photograph of a young lady, and it's not the photograph of Miss Warren. Now, what would a gentleman of the deceased's age be doing carrying round a photograph of a young lady?—that is a young man's trick. Besides,' he added, taking out his tape measure, 'it was lying thirteen feet or more from the body. Get your chalk out, Forsyth, and draw a ring round the spot.'
With this rather meagre harvest from their search the two men cycled back to Oldbury, where Sergeant Mannering reported his find to the superintendent, who turned the photograph over and over in his hand.
'It's not much to go upon,' he said, 'but one never knows. The photographer's name is Bindley. I don't know the name, but I suppose he keeps books and can tell you who the lady is. You'd better take it up with you to London to-morrow, and when you've done your inquiries in Hampstead, you'll have time to slip down to Oxford Street with the photograph.'
Kathleen Warren rose next morning with a heavy heart. She had scarcely come downstairs when Burrows entered. 'Please, miss, there's a person at the door asking to see you. He gave me this card.'
'"Detective-Sergeant Mannering, Buckinghamshire Police." Need I see him, Burrows?'
'Well, miss, I suppose it would scarcely do to send him away. I've shown him into the library, miss.'
Sergeant Mannering wore his dark Sunday suit, in which the creases were conspicuous. He carried his felt hat in his hand, but in deference to what he believed to be the fashion in the metropolis, he wore a white slip in his waistcoat and a pair of spats a size too large for his feet.
'Miss Warren,' he said, 'can I have a few minutes' private conversation with you?'
'Certainly. Won't you sit down?'
'Thank you, miss.' It cannot be said that Detective-Sergeant Mannering shone in personal interviews with the 'quality'. His strong suit was observation and deduction. Once established in a chair, the power of speech seemed to have left him. He fanned himself gently with his hat. At last he said, 'Superintendent Laurence wished me to see you, miss, to tell you what has been done. The coroner's inquest will be at eleven o'clock on Saturday morning at Oldbury and the coroner would like you to attend.'
'Will I have to give evidence?' asked Kathleen in dismay.
'Yes, miss, there's no getting round it; you're the nearest relative of the deceased. But it will be only formal evidence—no cross-examination, and the coroner's a very nice gentleman.'
'What do you mean by formal evidence?'
'Well, miss, the coroner will ask you your father's age and his state of health, and perhaps a question or two as to whether he's had anything to worry him lately—any little difference with anybody—little things like that. No doubt you'll be legally represented, miss—by your solicitor, I mean. If I were you, miss, I would telephone to the gentleman now and arrange for him to be there. And, by the way, miss, I suppose you would have no objection to my having an interview with one or two of the servants?'
'Certainly. I'll go and telephone to my solicitor at once,' said Kathleen, glad of an excuse for escaping from him.
As soon as she was gone and Sergeant Mannering had opened the door to assure himself that she was not listening outside, his awkwardness vanished. He rang the bell and asked Burrows a few questions, which that gentleman parried with unnecessary caution. Plainly he was afraid of committing himself.
The sergeant then asked if Miss Warren had a maid, and learning that she was within call, requested that she should be sent to him. He prided himself on his skill in eliciting information from females, even from his own wife.
'I want to ask you a question, miss,' he said when Parker appeared. 'How many people in this household knew that Mr. Warren was going down to Carfax Abbey?'
The maid had never been questioned by a detective before; she imagined that reticence or prevarication would mean imprisonment for the rest of her natural life. She gasped and prepared to unburden her soul.
'Well, sir, I know the chuffer knew, because he was sent for, and as he came out I was taking a gentleman—young Mr. Thring it was, the one that's keeping company with Miss Kathleen—I was taking him into the master's room. And as the chuffer come out I heard the master say as plain as I'm talking to you, sir, "Get the car ready," he said, "to go down to the Abbey."'
'Then you also knew he was going down to the Abbey?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And then Mr. Thring went in?'
'Yes, sir, he did, and he came out quick, and the master after him.'
'They had words?'
'That they did, sir. At least, the master did. You could have heard him all over the house, sir. One couldn't help hearing him.'
'You didn't hear what it was about?'
'No, sir, but I could guess. It was about Miss Kathleen; I've no doubt of that, sir.'
'Have you had any reporters here?'
'Have we not, sir? One after another they've been, and sometimes two together. But I've given the same answer to them all: Miss Warren is not well enough to see them. Two photographers came and took the house, and one of them had the cheek to come into the garden to get a better view. I could do nothing to stop him, because as like as not I would have been took and had my picture in the papers. What would my dad have said with my picture mixed up with an inquest? I'd never have heard the end of it.'
'Quite right. One has to look ahead, and for that one must have brains. You must have more than your share of them, miss, to have kept this place so long. Poor Mr. Warren wasn't an angel of sweetness and light by all accounts.'
'That he was not, sir. If he wasn't dead I could tell you of scenes in this house that wouldn't be believed. He had the temper of a fiend; though, of course, we must not speak evil of the dead.'
'Of course not. Mr. Thring seems to have had a taste of the poor man's temper on Tuesday.'
'That he had, sir, and all because he wanted to marry Miss Kathleen. Mr. Warren called him a fortune-hunter—a "damned little fortune-hunter" were his very words. It isn't his fault that Miss Kathleen is an heiress; and when two people love each other, why should they be stopped from marrying, is what I say? And such a nice young gentleman, too.'
Sergeant Mannering pulled out his watch. If he was to see the photographer in Oxford Street before the dinner hour he must leave at once. 'Thank you, miss,' he said to Parker. 'I don't think that I'll trouble any of your colleagues this morning, but I'll come back later in the day.'
The young lady who received him at Bindley's in Oxford Street was a regular reader of the Family Friend, and, deciding in her mind that he was a prospective bridegroom who wished to provide his young lady with a souvenir over which her eye would dwell admiringly in his absence, received him with arch sympathy. It was the slip in his waistcoat and the spats that seemed to clinch the matter.
'No, not to-day, miss, thank you. I've called to ask for a private interview with the head of the firm, if you'll be good enough to take in my card.'
Her eyes grew round and tragic when she read the superscription. What had Mr. Bindley been doing, she wondered? But her visitor was abrupt, and he brushed aside her tentative inquiry as to the nature of the business. She disappeared into the studio, and presently returned with a flustered little man, hair on end, wiping blackened fingers on a duster. She had dug him out of the dark room where plates were in the fixing bath, and his attention was divided between his visitor and his plates. He was in quite a small way of business.
Sergeant Mannering took the photograph from his pocket-book and explained the nature of his business, thereby relieving Mr. Bindley from the fear that some act, known only to his Maker and himself, had been found out.
'You see, sir,' he explained in a flutter, 'it is a principle in our business not to divulge the name of our customers, but of course——'
'Then, Mr. Bindley, you'd rather be summoned as a witness at the inquest at Oldbury on Saturday?'
'Oh, no, sir. I quite see that the case is exceptional, and I'm sure that the young lady in question would see it in that light. Miss Hawkins, be good enough to look at the photograph and see whether you can identify the features. If not, you must go through the books. I suppose, sir, that it wouldn't suit you to call some time next week?'
Sergeant Mannering said that it would not.
The searching of the books by Miss Hawkins was a matter of time and labour. She worked on the principle of elimination. Taking the 'Misses' first, she murmured to herself: 'I remember her. It's not Miss Pringle; Miss Galsworthy? No, she was stoutish. Miss Wickerstead? No, that's the lady that made all the fuss.'
Then Sergeant Mannering relieved her of the engagement book and, starting from three months before, he put her through a cross-examination of her recollection of her employer's clients.
In the end Mr. Bindley himself reappeared and made a fruitful suggestion. 'Wasn't it that young lady who drove up in a car and went away on foot—that nice young lady who didn't mind being kept waiting and said that she would leave me to suggest the pose?'
'Yes, that's the one! Oh, I think I can find her all right,' and after fluttering the pages, with the pencil sticking out of her mouth like a cigarette, Miss Hawkins laid a fat forefinger on one of the entries and pushed the book over to Sergeant Mannering. If he had ever been tempted to betray emotion it would have been then, for he read, 'Miss Pamela Thring, 20, Royal Avenue, Chelsea.'
'DO you keep a record of the number of prints you take from a negative, Mr. Bindley?'
'Certainly we do. I'll tell you our rule. First we submit proofs to the customer, and she selects those she likes best; we print just the number she wants and charge her for them. Look up the ledger, Miss Hawkins, and see how many prints that lady had. Six? Well then, six it was.'
'But you might print a few more on spec sometimes?'
'Never,' said Mr. Bindley emphatically. 'Wasting good paper and good chemicals that would be. Besides, we're not at liberty to dispose of prints without the customer's sanction—not if she's paid for the negative. No, sir, six was the number, and she's never had any others.'
'When was she photographed?'
'A matter of three months ago.'
With that Sergeant Mannering took his leave, for he had other inquiries to make and a train to catch at Paddington.
'I hope you won't be wanting me as a witness,' said Mr. Bindley anxiously. 'I shouldn't like that.'
'Not at present, at any rate. I can't speak about the future because I don't know.'
Mr. Bindley went back to his dark room. Miss Hawkins found that the novelette which she kept under the counter had lost its savour. Real life, she thought, was far more exciting than fiction. She was on the threshold of tragedy, for it couldn't be anything so tame as a burglary: there must be a murder in it.
No. 20, Royal Avenue, Chelsea, was a modest little house, built originally to garnish the avenue which was to run from Chelsea Hospital to the Palace of Kensington. The plan was abandoned and the avenue got no farther than the King's Road. They are tiny houses erected when good materials were cheap and builders did not scamp their jobs.
Sergeant Mannering took a taxi in order to catch the Thring family at home in their luncheon hour. He sent in his card and was received by Miss Thring in a little back room behind the dining-room, furnished as a library with a telephone standing on a three-legged table.
'You wish to see me?' said Pamela Thring, looking him frankly in the eyes. She glanced at his card. 'I don't think that I've ever had an interview with a detective in my life.' Having shut the door behind her, she sat down in one of the leather arm-chairs, motioning to her visitor to do the same. He complied by perching himself on the extreme edge of the chair and fanning himself gently with his hat. Then he drew forth the photograph and gave it to her. 'Is that your photograph, Miss Thring?'
'Yes,' she said in astonishment. 'Where did you get it?'
'I'll tell you in a moment, but I want to ask you one or two questions. How many of these photographs did you get from the photographer?'
'Let me see. I think it was six.'
'Have you any of them here?'
'One which is in my mother's room, I gave the other five away.'
'You remember who you gave them to?'
'Yes, they were all relations or great friends. But why do you ask?'
'Well, miss, it's like this. That photograph you have in your hand was found in the chapel at Carfax Abbey close to the body of Mr. Warren. No doubt you heard of his death.'
'Yes, I did, but I think that's easily accounted for, because his daughter is my great friend and I gave her one of the photographs.'
'Ah,' said her visitor reflectively, 'how can we find out if she has it still?'
'That's quite easy. I'll ring her up and ask her.' She went to the telephone and called for the number in Hampstead. Is that you, Burrows? I want to speak to Miss Warren ... Is that you, Kathleen? I want to ask you something. You remember that photo I gave you in the summer—the one you liked; have you got it still?'
'Of course I have.'
'Sure?'
'You doubting Thomas! I always have it on the table by my bed. Why do you ask?'
'Oh, I'll tell you when we meet. It's not important. Have you got any further with your plans?'
On this momentous subject Kitty had much to say. To Sergeant Mannering, sitting on the edge of his chair, her communications resembled the rather querulous sound of a bee imprisoned under a wineglass.
'All right. I'll come up to-morrow,' said Pamela, closing the conversation. She turned to her visitor, saying, 'No, Miss Warren has her copy in the house at Hampstead; it can't be hers.'
'It's rather important to account for them all. I wonder whether you would bring down Mrs. Thring's copy and show it to me.'
'Certainly. I shan't be a minute.'
A faint smile began to form about the mouth of Mr. Mannering; he thought that many minutes would be spent in a vain search for the missing photograph. But the smile faded when he heard her light step upon the stairs.
'Here it is,' she said, displaying the photograph in a silver frame, 'but my mother wouldn't let me take it until I promised that she should have it back.'
'Quite so; I wouldn't think of taking it. May I ask whether your brother had one of them?'
'No, the only copy we have in the house is the one I've just shown you.'
'Well, if you will kindly give me the names and addresses of those who have the other four I will call upon them.'
'I think it would be better if I found out for you whether they still have them. They might not understand a visit from the police.'
Thereupon, Pamela Thring and her visitor entered into a covenant. She was to see, if possible with her own eyes, every copy, and let him know at once if any were missing, and who had last been in possession of it. On her side she undertook to let no one into the secret: it was to be a confidential matter between them both.
Sergeant Mannering had another important inquiry to make. He had ascertained from the telegraph office at Oldbury that the sender of the telegram to the dead man was Raphael Gomez of Bearstead Manor, and he had been informed by telephone that the gentleman would be found in his city office in Throgmorton Street. He went by Underground to the city, where, after the usual skirmishing with underlings, he was ushered into the Presence.
He was not in the least impressed by the Turkey carpet and the mahogany furniture, for he had to deal with a man whose name and accent and complexion proclaimed him to be a foreigner whom every healthy-minded Briton refuses to treat seriously. Mr. Raphael Gomez, enthroned behind his spotless writing-table might bully his staff, but he had the foreigner's awe of police functionaries, and his manner was deferential and even cringing.
'What can I do for you, Sergeant?'
'My superintendent has asked me to put one or two questions to you, sir, concerning a telegram alleged to have been sent by you to the late Mr. Warren last Wednesday at Hampstead. I have the telegram here.'
Gomez put on his glasses with deliberation and read the telegram. 'Yes, Sergeant, that is my telegram, as well as I can recollect it.'
'Did Mr. Warren come to Bearstead?'
'No, he did not. I waited for him all the afternoon. I was shocked when I read of his sudden death.'
'You did not go down to the Abbey during the afternoon?' He was looking straight at Gomez as he put the question.
'No, why should I? I did not know that he was to be at Carfax that day.'
'Your telegram begins "Letter received." May I see his letter, Mr. Gomez?'
'I would show it to you with pleasure if I had kept it, but I make a practice of destroying private letters. I tore it up. You see, Mr. Warren and I were friends of very old standing, and when he wrote me a little note merely saying that he would like to see me there was nothing in it to keep. We did a little business together sometimes, and I suspect that the object was to talk over one of his investments.'
'I see,' said his visitor slowly; 'and you knew from his letter that he was to be in the neighbourhood that afternoon: otherwise, of course, you would not have suggested his coming all that way on a trivial matter.'
'Oh, he thought nothing of running down from town to see me. You see, Sergeant, when people seem to want to see one they don't mind putting themselves out, whereas I,' he added with a nervous little laugh, 'would have minded very much having to go all the way to London.'
'At any rate, you did not go down to the Abbey?'
'No, I did not.'
Sergeant Mannering pulled out his notebook and affected to consult it. 'Ah, there is one other question that I was instructed to ask you, sir. I think that you took some sort of ultimatum to Mr. Warren on the Monday before his death?'
'An ultimatum? What do you mean?'
'Well, sir, we have the deceased gentleman's diary, and it contains an entry to that effect—"Gomez called with ult."'
'"Gomez called with ult." Certainly, I did call on the Monday and I stayed to tea, but "ult?" Oh, now I have it! What a funny misunderstanding! "Ult" stands for the ultramarine he had asked me to get for him for touching up the draperies of the Madonna frescoed on the chapel wall. You must have noticed the figure with the faded blue robe on the wall above the altar. It was a special blue that would resist damp, and when I told him of it he begged me to get a tube of it for his restorer to try.'
'Thank you, Mr. Gomez. My superintendent's compliments, and he would like you to attend the inquest at Oldbury Town Hall next Saturday at eleven.'
'At the inquest? But how can I help?'
'He thinks that the coroner may have some questions to put to you, sir.'
There remained one more interview before Sergeant Mannering could catch his train at Paddington: he had to put certain questions to Lamson, the chauffeur, which the police were not in a position to put when he reported the tragedy at the police station. He reached Hampstead by train and went to the tradesmen's entrance. Lamson appeared, wiping his mouth; he had scarcely finished his tea, but an invitation from a detective-sergeant to absorb another kind of liquid refreshment at his expense was not lightly to be declined.
'You know the neighbourhood better than I do, Mr. Lamson; you'd better lead the way.
When they were snugly seated in an inner room at 'The Travellers', and Lamson had called for what he liked and the waiter had undertaken that they should not be interrupted by other thirsty souls, Mannering opened the business. 'What I like about you, Lamson, is that you're a man that never talks. I can see it in your face.' The gross flattery went home. 'And you're an observant kind of man, I should say—one who takes note of things when he passes them on the road.' Lamson began to purr.
'I don't know about that, Mr. Mannering. If I do keep my eyes open, I suppose it's second nature.'
'If I asked you how many cars of a certain make you passed that morning I'd lay odds that you have it stored somewhere in that memory of yours. You know, they say that a good memory goes with grey eyes, and yours are grey.'
'Well,' said Lamson, screwing up the organs in question, 'I dare say that my memory's as good as other people's.'
'Better, for how many people, except perhaps a few in your profession, could say offhand how many Austin cars they'd passed on the road to Oldbury? And, talking of cars, Lamson, what's your opinion of the Essex car? I've a friend that's gone dotty over them.'
'For a light car they're all right. You meet a lot of them on the road. It's funny your speaking of Essex cars—a gentleman friend of Miss Warren's brought his round to me the other day to be tuned up.'
'Ah, you mean Mr. Thring? Yes, I've heard that he has one. Did you meet many of them on Wednesday morning?'
'Three or four—two coming this way and the others we overtook; and then——'
'Yes? You met another of them after you left the main road?'
'How do you know that?'
'Oh, one gets to pick up things here and there. It was an Essex.'
'It was, but it wasn't Mr. Thring's, if you mean that.'
'Sure?'
'Of course I'm sure. I took particular note, because, you see, he met me as I was driving back from my dinner in Oldbury and the lane's narrow, and there he was full out, swaying from side to side and driving like hell! I had to sound my hooter and pull almost into the ditch, and then he only missed me by an inch.'
'What did he look like—the driver?'
'I hadn't time to notice him. He was alone; that's all I know. I had my eyes on the wing of his car. But it wasn't Mr. Thring—that I can swear to. Besides——'
'Yes?'
'Well, I shouldn't have been surprised to meet Mr. Thring in that lane on Wednesday, because, you see, we'd overtaken his car on the way down. But it wasn't him.'
EVERY one knows the sordid procedure of a coroner's inquest—the filing out of the jury to view the body; the marshalling of the witnesses by the coroner's officer, some of them in mourning and all painfully self-conscious; the ghoulish attention to business of the coroner; the police atmosphere of this ancient court; the determination of one or two jurymen to display their intelligence.
The Thrings met Kathleen and her solicitor at Paddington and they travelled down together. Lamson was in the same train. It was a depressing journey, and Pamela regretted that they had not gone down by car, for no one feels called upon to talk when motoring. When she found that they were expected to sit in a row in the stuffy waiting-room at the town hall she suggested that they should walk up and down outside until they were called.
'Henry Lamson!' shouted the coroner's officer from the steps.
'Yes, sir,' responded the Chauffeur, breaking away from a couple of policemen with whom he was conversing. It was his first experience in the witness-box, and he was under the illusion common to most inexperienced witnesses that he was expected to say as much as possible. The coroner, a rather pompous retired solicitor, had to cut him short more than once while he was describing his journey down and his visit to Oldbury for lunch. He was proceeding to tell the jury what he had for lunch when the coroner became testy. Then, in chastened mood, he described the finding of the body. 'And then, sir, and gentlemen of the jury, of course I drove back to Oldbury and went straight to the police. I thought it best.' Superintendent Laurence rose from his seat below the coroner and whispered to him.
'Did any one except the telegraph boy come to the Abbey while you were there?'
'No, sir.'
'When you were driving back to the Abbey from Oldbury did you meet any one coming from the direction of the Abbey?'
'Well, sir, there was the car.'
'What kind of car?'
'It was an Essex car, driven by a gentleman, but you know, sir, it wasn't Mr. Thring.'
'Nobody asked you whether it was Mr Thring,' said the coroner sternly.
'No, sir, but, you see, as Mr. Thring has an Essex car, I was afraid that you and the gentlemen of the jury might jump to wrong conclusions.'
'Answer my questions as shortly as you can. Did you take note of the driver? Would you know him again if you saw him?'
'No, sir.' Lamson had turned sulky.
'Did any one besides yourself know that the deceased was going to Carfax Abbey that day?'
'I can't tell you that, sir.'
'You can stand down.'
The two doctors were the next witnesses. They described minutely the marks that they had found on the dead man's throat. He had been seized by powerful fingers and the throat had been violently compressed. In reply to the coroner's question, they said that in a healthy man the degree of violence would not in itself have been sufficient to cause death, but the deceased was not a healthy man. He was, indeed, in such a state of health that any shock, even the slamming of a door on his thumb, might have been sufficient to have killed him; but in their opinion the shock was caused by the assault. There was an extensive bruise on the back of the head, but this, they thought, had been caused by falling backward on the tiled floor at the moment of death. They had found no other injury on the body: the deceased had not died from strangulation.
On the coroner's invitation the jury consulted in whispers as to what questions they should put. A bald little man with a fierce moustache cleared his throat and began to demonstrate his intelligence to his fellow-jurymen.
'Do you think, doctor, that the deceased could have caused the marks by clutching at his own throat?'
'No. The position of the marks showed without a doubt that they were made by another person.'
'What I mean is, doctor, that if a slight shock was enough to cause death and the deceased felt death coming, it would be quite natural to clutch at his throat. Any of us would do the same under the circumstances. And the shock might come from anything—finding that the contractor had made a mess of the decorations in the chapel, or something like that.'
'I think I can say positively that the marks were not self-inflicted.'
The little man sat down. He was a rival builder who had failed to obtain the contract for the repairs and alterations of the Abbey.
'Kathleen Warren,' shouted the coroner's officer. Pamela and Bernard Thring came into the court with her, and Pamela whispered, 'Don't be nervous, Kitty; you have only to answer the coroner's questions quite shortly.'
The reporters took up their pencils, and one of them, armed with a camera, slipped out to wait for her on the steps. She was pale, but quite calm, and her beauty and the pathos of her situation plainly had its effect upon the jury. After the usual formal evidence of her relationship to the dead man, the coroner questioned her about his state of health.
'Had you noticed any change in your father during the last few weeks?'
'Yes; he had become very nervy and irritable.'
'Did you ascribe that to his state of health, or had he any business worries?'
'I thought at first that he had worries—indeed, I know that he had—and I think that they told on his health.'
'Business worries?'
'In a way, yes. He thought that one of his acquaintances intended to ruin him; that he had him in his power.' The reporters were writing at top speed.
'Who was this acquaintance?'
'Must I give his name?'
'You may write it down for the information of the jury. They, of course, can be trusted not to divulge it. Give the witness a pencil and paper.'
She wrote the name; the coroner read it and called Superintendent Laurence to his desk. After a whispered conversation the paper was passed to the jurymen, who craned their heads over it and exchanged significant glances.
'When did you first come to know of this?'
'On Tuesday—the day before his death. The person whose name I have written down for you had been with him on Monday, and when telling me about the visit on Tuesday he had a fainting fit.'
'Was a doctor called in?'
'No, he had a prejudice against doctors and refused to let me send for one.'
'Thank you, Miss Warren. I need not trouble you any more.'
'Now, gentlemen,' said the coroner, turning to the jury, 'you have heard all the direct evidence in this case. The witness Lamson has told you that a telegram was delivered at the Abbey after the death of the deceased. It seems to have been sent to the deceased's address in London and to have been forwarded to him at the Abbey by his daughter.' He read the telegram. 'We do not know that this telegram has any bearing on the death, but it is possible that, in view of the evidence of the daughter about her father's business worries and so forth, you may like to hear the evidence of the person who sent it. I understand that he is here.' The heads of the jurymen came together, and the foreman stood up and intimated that it was just what the jury would like to hear.
'Call Raphael Gomez,' said the coroner shortly.
If there was what reporters call a 'sensation in court', it was shared by the jurymen, who had not forgotten the name written down by Kathleen. One of them had the honour of purveying fish to the owner of Bearstead, and another, who had been refused the honour of purveying poultry, was insistent that the witness should be called and the truth dragged out of him.
Mr. Gomez was not in court; his name went echoing down the corridors, and when all eyes were fixed expectantly on the door he made his appearance—sleek, well-fed, and ingratiating, but wearing an assumed air of bewilderment, as who should say, 'I am obeying the summons, but heaven only knows why I am called.' He was duly sworn, not in the Jewish manner, but the Christian. He gave his profession and his address, and then looked blankly at the coroner.
'You knew the deceased well, I think, Mr. Gomez?'
'Yes, he was a friend of very old standing.'
'You transacted business for him?'
'Occasionally, but not very often. He bought Carfax Abbey from me, and from time to time he came to me for advice.'
'Did you send him this telegram last Wednesday in answer to a letter of his?'
'Yes.'
'Please explain to the jury the circumstances under which you sent it.'
With an admirable air of frankness Mr. Gomez turned to his fishmonger. 'Mr. Warren had written me a short note asking me when he could see me. I think that he wanted to take my advice, but he did not go into details in his letter.'
'Have you the letter?'
'No, sir. I never keep private letters.'
'And you don't know what he wanted to see you about?'
'No—unless it was in connexion with some proposed investment.'
'You were at his house in London on Monday?'
'As a guest, yes. He invited me to tea.'
'I have his diary before me. The entry for Monday is "Gomez called with ult." What does that mean?'
The witness smiled. 'I can't imagine. It is true that I brought him two tubes of ultramarine for touching up the frescoes in the chapel at the Abbey, but that was scarcely worth an entry in his diary.'
'You gave him no sort of ultimatum?'
The witness laughed with restraint. 'Yes, sir, I did. I told him that if he delayed giving me my tea I should go and get it round the corner.' Eleven of the twelve jurymen joined in the general laughter at this witticism.
'It has been suggested, Mr. Gomez, that the deceased was, or thought he was, in your power.'
'If that is so, sir, he must have been suffering from delusions. I know that he has not been well lately.'
'I must put one more question to you. Having had no reply to your telegram, did you go down to the Abbey on Wednesday afternoon?'
'No, sir, I did not, I stayed at home waiting for him.'
'I suppose,' said the coroner, turning to the jury, 'you have no questions to ask?'
There was a brief consultation. The poulterer rose from his seat, blinking furiously.
'How much did the deceased gentleman pay you for the Abbey?' he said. But the coroner intervened.
'That is not a relevant question. Thank you, Mr. Gomez; that is all.'
The poulterer subsided and engaged in a whispered altercation with his neighbours.
Meanwhile, Superintendent Laurence was in consultation with the coroner. He turned over a page of the diary and pointed to an entry. 'Very well,' said the coroner at last; 'I'll call him. Bernard Thring!'
Bernard stepped into the box more mystified even than the last witness. He gave his profession as a civil servant, and said that he had known the dead man for three or four months.
'Did you notice anything about his state of health?'
'No, sir; he was rather nervous and irritable sometimes, but I did not know that he was ill.'
'On the day before his death you had an interview with him?'
'Yes.'
'Was it a pleasant interview?'
'On my side, quite.'
'But not on his? What was your difference about?'
'That has no bearing on this inquiry, sir.'
'I repeat my question to you,' said the coroner sternly.
'And I, sir, must decline to answer. Of course, if it had any bearing at all on the subject of this inquest I should answer readily.' The court rustled audibly, and a juryman, with the glazed eyes of a man struggling with sleep, started violently into consciousness.
'You must answer my questions,' said the coroner, flushing. A man sitting in the front row stood up.
'Mr. Coroner, I am here to represent the families of the late Mr. Warren and Mr. Thring. With all respect——'
'Your name, sir?'
'Henry Croft, of Messrs. Stoddart and Croft, Lincoln's Inn Fields. I submit, sir, that until it has been proved that he was at Carfax Abbey on the day of Mr. Warren's death any questions as to his movements are outside the scope of this inquiry and he is entitled to decline to answer them.' The face of the coroner was suffused; he disliked London solicitors, and he feared them because they knew too much.
'Have you ever been to Carfax Abbey?' he asked, turning to the witness.
'Not until after Mr. Warren's death. I drove Miss Warren there in my car.'
'What is your car?'
'An Essex.'
'Did any one take your car out on Wednesday?'
'Yes, I took it out myself.'
'In this direction?'
'I decline to say. It has no bearing on this inquiry.'
The coroner came as near to losing his temper as a judicial officer can without loss of dignity. 'Do you mean, sir, that you refuse to assist the jury to arrive at their verdict? Where did you go in your car on Wednesday?'
Bernard Thring was quite cool and courteous. 'I decline to say.'
THE officer presiding over the most ancient court in England had never been so defied by a witness before. The dignity of which he was superconscious had been outraged in his own town before twelve of his fellow-citizens with whom he rubbed shoulders every day in the street. It was not to be expected that his charge to the jury should reflect nothing of his ruffled feelings. He was a man who had been born without a sense of humour.
'You have before you, gentlemen, medical evidence showing that the death of the deceased was due to violence, which means that some person entered, or was concealed, in the Abbey chapel between the time when the chauffeur, Lamson, drove off to Oldbury at about two o'clock and four o'clock, when he entered the chapel with a telegram; that Lamson met an Essex car, with no occupant but the driver coming at high speed from the direction of the Abbey; that the deceased was in a precarious state of health, and that in consequence of his malady he was subject to fits of rage—rage perhaps occasioned by quite trivial circumstances. A telegram was dispatched to him that afternoon making an appointment at Bearstead, which, as you know, is quite close to the Abbey, but Mr. Gomez, the sender of the telegram, has explained his reason for sending it, and you may safely ignore that part of the evidence.
'You have listened to the evidence of one person who had a quarrel with the deceased two days before his death, who possesses an Essex car. He has taken the strange course of refusing to say whether he was, or was not, in the neighbourhood of the Abbey that day: admits that he was out in his car, but declines to say where he went. In all my experience, gentlemen—an experience of many years—it is the first time I have had before me a witness who has refused to give evidence that might have an important bearing on the subject of this inquest. He has treated this court with scant respect. Nevertheless, your duty and mine is plain. We have to determine the cause of death, and if you think that the death resulted from violence and that the evidence is not sufficient to fix the identity of the person who used that violence, your duty is to record a verdict in accordance with the evidence and to leave it to others'—here he looked significantly at the back of Superintendent Laurence's head—'to establish that identity. We do not know the motive for the attack; we do know that it was not robbery, for none of the property which the deceased carried about with him was missing. There must have been some other motive, but that again is for that other authority to establish. If you take that view, gentlemen, your verdict will be that the deceased met his death by violence at the hands of a person unknown. Gentlemen, consider your verdict.'
Heads went together again. Apparently, the jurymen were discussing some addition to their verdict. At last the foreman rose and intimated that they had arrived at the verdict suggested to them, but that they desired to add the following rider: 'It is to be regretted that one of the witnesses refused to give his evidence.' After some verbal amendment the coroner accepted it.
The reporters now became the busiest people about the court. They were lying in wait for each witness as he came out. Bernard Thring and his party hurried through them to a cab and made straight for the station. They declined to be drawn into conversation, but Gomez was more communicative. 'That was curious evidence,' he said to one of them, 'about the Essex car, wasn't it? If I had an Essex car, like Mr. Thring, I shouldn't have declined to say where I went with it, would you?' He trusted that he had made a good impression on the Press by his readiness to talk to them and his genial manner as he stepped into his car, but as soon as he was clear of the town he let himself subside into the cushions and a greenish pallor grew upon his face as he surveyed the future. For him it was black with danger and despair. One hope only could save him. Come what might, he must make Kathleen Warren his wife.
When the cab was paid off the little party of three found that they had to wait twenty minutes for a train to Paddington. They paced the platform.
'Kitty,' said Pamela, 'I must congratulate you on the way you gave your evidence. It was splendid. I wish I could say the same for you, Bernard. That coroner was a pompous little man, I admit, but really it wasn't worth while to take offence. Why didn't you say where you went?'
And as Bernard made no reply, Kathleen looked quickly at him. 'Yes, Bernard, why didn't you?' she said.
'The little man was enough to irritate any one. I didn't choose to tell him.'
'Well, you can tell us,' said his sister.
'We shall have the whole thing in the papers to-morrow, and people are sure to ask. We must have an answer. Where did you go?'
There was a long silence. The two girls looked at him and at each other in astonishment.
'What a mystery about nothing!' Pamela at last. 'Where did you go?'
'I'm afraid, Pam, I must give you the same answer that I gave to the coroner.'
Pamela had never seen him in this mood. She knew that this curt refusal would create misunderstanding between the two lovers, but there was nothing to be done until she could have her brother to herself and bring him to reason. She turned quickly to Kathleen.
'I suppose, Kitty, that Mr. Stoddart is taking all the details off your hands—I mean about the funeral?'
'Yes, Mr. Croft spoke to me about it in the court. We decided to bury poor Daddy beside my mother in the Hampstead cemetery. The funeral is to be on Monday. He told me that that dreadful Gomez man had asked him for the time and place. I'm afraid that he means to be there.'
'Would you like us to come—to be near you, I mean?'
'I should like you to come,' she replied, with the faintest accent on the pronoun. Already, then, thought Pamela, the misunderstanding had begun.
The journey back was a nightmare; Bernard buried his nose in an evening paper and scarcely opened his lips until the train slowed down for the terminus. Then he said, 'I suppose that you'll go straight home, Pam, while I'm taking Kitty back to Hampstead?'
'Oh, no,' said Kathleen; 'don't trouble to come with me—a taxi will take me home in ten minutes.'
'But I want to come.' The train had pulled up and, to cut the discussion short, Bernard hailed a taxi and held the door open for her. She protested no more, and he got in beside her. She waved to Pamela as they passed her making for the Underground.
Kathleen began to speak at once. 'Now, Bernard, that we're alone, I want you to tell me where you did go on Wednesday. Don't be mysterious. It's not idle curiosity. Surely you can tell me.'
The young man remained silent. She went on. 'Do you remember saying that there would never be any secrets between us? If you went for a run in the car, as they said you had, you must remember where you went.' Still his lips remained closed.
'Bernard,' she persisted, 'I have always trusted you. If you are going to have secrets from me when this awful trouble has come upon me it will be more than I can bear. I have no secrets from you. Tell me.'
'I cannot tell you,' he said at last. 'It's not my secret. Surely you can trust me.'
They were nearing Hampstead: in two or three minutes the taxi would pull up at her door.
'I shall not ask you whose secret it is. I hate secrets and deception of every kind. I see that I am to be left to bear my trouble alone. Well, I can do it, but—I expected more from you.'
The taxi pulled up. She opened the door and took out her purse.
'No, Kitty; this is my taxi. I'm going to take it on.'
'So you can. I'm only paying for this journey.' The garden gate closed and she was gone.
It was past dinner-time when Pamela heard her brother's latch-key in the door. She met him in the hall and noticed that his face was drawn and haggard.
'I'm sorry to be late, Pam. I came on from Hampstead by tube.'
'How was Kitty?'
'She seemed all right: Look here, I think I'd better come in to dinner as I am or they'll be grumbling downstairs.'
It was a dreary dinner for them both, for while the parlour-maid was moving in and out they could not talk of what possessed both their minds, and they knew one another too well to find a refuge in small talk, but when they came to dessert and were safe from interruption, Pamela said, 'Are you going to the funeral on Monday?'
'No.'
'Not to be with Kitty? Surely you ought to go.'
He looked up sharply. 'Does she want me to?'
'She did not say so, but——'
'No, I am not going. In any case, I couldn't take another day's leave from the office. I've taken two already this week.'
'Ah, yes. I forgot Wednesday. Bernie, dear, we've never had any secrets, you and I. Won't you take me into your confidence? You know you can trust me. Where did you go on Wednesday?'
The young man's face hardened like a mask.
'It is no use asking me that, Pam. It isn't my secret. If it were I would tell you. That coroner and those police whispering at his elbow made me feel positively sick.'
She knew him in this mood, with his lower jaw set square. It was useless to try persuasion with him until the fit of obstinacy had passed. She went upstairs to her mother.
Early next morning Pamela was called to the telephone. It was a message from Kathleen Warren asking her to come to Hampstead and talk things over. Pamela had a slender hope that the interview would clear the air between the lovers, but it was to learn that her friend was as obstinate as her brother and that the breach between them was wider than she had supposed. Until Bernard was ready to take her into his confidence Kathleen would not see him again. Matters had come to this, and on this there was no shaking her resolve. They discussed business. Mr. Stoddart was her father's executor. He would advance as much money as was required to keep up the house, and he was calling to take Kathleen down to the funeral next day. She had decided to give up the Hampstead house, which was much too large for her, and move into a modest flat with one or two of the servants. All work on the Abbey would be suspended and the place advertised for sale. That was as far as she had got in her plans for the future.
'I suppose that you will be very well off.'
'Mr. Stoddart has read the will. He seemed to think so, but what is the good of that to me now?' And when Pamela rose to go, she added in a voice that she tried to keep steady, 'You will telephone at once if he is ill or anything?' So that, whatever clouds there were now between the two, Pamela knew that Bernard was quite sure of the heart of the one being he cared for.
Before she left it was settled that she should attend the funeral with Kathleen on the following morning.
It was a dismal ceremony. They two and Stoddart, the lawyer, were the only mourners, but among the assemblage was the overdressed figure of Raphael Gomez, who had brought with him in his car an enormous wreath inscribed 'From a sincere friend'. Kathleen averted her eyes from him in disgust. There was a crowd of the curious drawn by the sensation of watching the funeral of a man who had been murdered. The newspapers were responsible for this, for the inquest had taken place in a dull week. Photographs of the Abbey and even of the interior of the 'haunted' chapel had appeared in the illustrated page, and the Daily Post had opened its columns to correspondents to discuss the possibility of murder by a disembodied spirit. 'The police appear to be following a clue which they think will lead them to a living assassin, but if the perpetrator of the Abbey murder was a monk who was slain three centuries ago the English criminal courts will be powerless.' After this irrefutable statement the writer went on to give highly-coloured details of the misfortunes that had pursued each of the lay owners of the Abbey since the date of the sacrilege of the Roundheads, with an account taken from the lips of an old woman who professed to have seen the ghost.
On Pamela's return to Chelsea she found a visitor waiting for her: it was Detective-Sergeant Mannering, sitting stiffly on an oak chest in the hall with his felt hat on his knees. He rose and bowed to her, and when Mr. Mannering bowed there was no mistaking the gesture: the salutation was hinged at the hip joints. Unnerved as she was by the recent ceremony, Pamela felt that he was the last man in the world that she desired to see.
'May I have a word with you, miss?' he began.
'Please come in here.' She led him into a little writing-room and shut the door behind them.
'I called at the Foreign Office this morning hoping to see your brother, but he was too much engaged to see me. May I ask you first whether you have had any success in your inquiries about that photograph?'
'Not yet. I haven't had time.'
'Well, miss, I dare say that you can help me with another matter. This letter-case, miss'—he pulled out of his pocket the crocodile skin letter-case in which the photograph had been found—'have you ever seen one like that before?'
'Oh, yes, you see them on the counter of every shop. I bought one the other day to give to my brother for Christmas.'
'It is a little unfortunate, miss, that Mr. Thring was so reticent at the inquest. It made a painful impression upon the coroner. I suppose that he has taken you into his confidence?'
'No, he has not. I wish he had. It would have saved us all a great deal of trouble. My brother is as anxious as you are that this terrible tragedy should be cleared up. If he declines to tell us where he was on Wednesday he must have some good reason.'
'I hope not, miss.'
'What do you mean?'
'It might be awkward if it turned out that he was at Carfax Abbey, miss.'
Pamela recoiled in horror and surprise, but she recovered herself immediately.
'At Carfax Abbey? Why should he go there? He had never been there in his life till Thursday.'
To Mr. Mannering it seemed that the moment for firing his heavy gun had arrived.
He fanned himself with his hat.
'I must ask you to explain yourself,' said Pamela. 'Do you suggest that there is a suspicion against my brother, or what do you mean?'
'I mean, miss, that we know what road Mr. Thring took with his car. It was the main road to Oldbury. At about half-past eleven on Monday morning the number of his car was taken down by one of the scouts just before the branch road that leads to Carfax Abbey.'
FOR Pamela it was the worst moment she had ever known. It was clear now that Bernard, the brother to whom she was devoted, was suspected by the police and the public of murder—of the murder of his future father-in-law—and all because of his obstinacy and a distorted sense of honour. Until now, as far as she knew, he had had no secrets from her; it was incomprehensible that he should risk his entire happiness and even his liberty for a whim. She racked her brains to guess what his reason could be. The idea that he could be compromised with a woman she dismissed at once. Who, outside a few men at his office and his club, were his friends that she did not know? Which of their friends lived near Oldbury or beyond? There were the Winters, but what sort of secret could there be about dull, middle-aged people like the Winters, and why should they want to see Bernard?
Pamela Thring was not the sort of girl to sit down under misfortune and worry herself into illness. Since her father's death she had lived in Chelsea with her mother and brother. She had attended the Slade School until the illness of her mother threw the burden of housekeeping with slender means upon her young shoulders. With more than her share of the good looks and intelligence of the family, by some subtle magic of personality she had become the repository of many of her friends' secrets. Perhaps it was the direct gaze of grey eyes of unfathomable depth and the certitude of sympathy and wise counsel; perhaps the musical voice and the bright, rebellious hair that she refused to crop in obedience to a passing fashion. If she had weaknesses her friends had never found them out; it was much to say for a girl of twenty-four. Now she was to have a new burden thrust upon her. Bernard had either to clear himself of suspicion or, if he would not, she must do it for him. Alone she was helpless. To whom could she turn? Among her friends was one to whom she knew that she could always go for advice and help. Edmund Meredith, a barrister with a growing junior practice, had fallen into the habit of dining with the Thrings almost every Sunday when he was in town, neither hosts nor guest quite knowing why. He was nearing forty and therefore immeasurably younger than Bernard Thring at twenty-seven, but he was a lonely man to whom an ever-widening circle of acquaintances in London made no appeal.
He was one of those unhappy people who was born shy, and though his profession forced him to live the weakness down in public, in his private life it made him the ideal friend for one or two people, and no more. Perhaps he owed his professional success in some measure to his shyness, for, having no temptation to accept invitations, he burned the midnight electricity in mastering his briefs.
Why had he not come to dine with them last Sunday? As soon as Sergeant Mannering had left her she rung up his flat. A strange voice replied and told her that Mr. Meredith had met with a motor accident and was at a hospital in the country.
'Is it serious?' asked Pamela with a sinking heart.
'No, miss. He telegraphed yesterday for some clothes. I went down and saw him. He is better, but he is a good deal cut about the face, and the doctor told me that he had had a slight concussion and was unconscious when they brought him in. But he was quite able to talk. I am to go down to-morrow to bring him up to town.'
'How did it happen?'
'I don't know, miss. A motorist found him lying by the roadside with his car on top of him. They thought that he must have driven into the ditch, miss.'
So that avenue of hope was closed to her. She remembered with wonder that her heart had stopped beating at the words 'met with a motor accident', and that a great weight was lifted afterwards when she learned that he was better. But enough of Mr. Meredith; there was no one else whom she cared to consult; she must set about the task of clearing her brother alone and unaided. It was altogether monstrous that he should be under any suspicion, and if he would only speak he could clear himself at once; but he would not, and there was now nothing to do but to run the real culprit to ground. She had at least as good a chance of succeeding as the police, who were busy running a false scent. All they had to go upon were the coincidences that Bernard had had a quarrel with the dead man; that he knew that Warren was going to Carfax; that he was out in his car the same day; the car was seen not far from Carfax and he refused to say where he had been. Yes, she must undertake the work unaided, but where was she to begin?
She had a vague plan of starting on her quest at the Abbey itself. Of course, the police had gone carefully over the ground there, but Sergeant Mannering had not impressed her as a genius, and it was quite possible that they had overlooked something. But nothing could be done without the keys, and Kathleen Warren was the only person with authority to demand them from the police. Bernard's number had been taken by an A.A. scout, That scout must have taken hundreds of numbers that day. He might be prevailed upon to let her copy the list; he might even have seen one of the cars turn out of the main road towards Carfax. At any rate, she would thus become possessed of a complete list of the car-owners on the high road to the west, and that would be something.
But first there was this question about her photograph. Until that was cleared up the police would give her no rest. Besides, it might be a clue, and it would not take her long to trace every copy. With those that she had given to her mother and Kathleen accounted for, there remained four people to question—her uncle, Henry Merton; her aunt, Mrs. Collinson; Alice Sutro; and Mrs. Manning. It was useless to speculate how one of her photographs could have got into an organ-builder's packing-case; she must spend the afternoon in calling upon each of them to satisfy herself that they had not parted with their copies. Mrs. Manning was her mother's contemporary and her godmother, a childless widow who consoled herself with strange pets. One never knew what one would meet in her front hall—a Siamese cat with a twisted tail, a hairless dog, or a flying phalanger. Pamela had drawn the line at one only of her pets—a half-bred wolf who, with blood-curdling growls and a rising of the fur along the length of his spine, displayed his fangs to every visitor. It was idle for her godmother to assure her that he meant nothing; he was no actor.
Mrs. Manning was at home, surrounded by padded baskets full of live-stock. Pamela inquired after the wolf and learned that he could be seen at the Zoo. 'He was all right with me,' said his mistress, 'but a silly man came to tea and was afraid of him, the one thing which Castor never forgave.'
'And Castor ate him?'
'No, don't be silly! He only tore his trousers, and the man made a fuss about it! So Castor had to go. You'll stay to tea, my dear.'
'Thanks, no. I have to go on,' said Pamela, looking round the room for her photograph. Then, desperately, 'Do you remember that photograph of me I gave you? I wonder whether you would lend it to me to have it copied.'
'My dear, it's in my bedroom. Run up and get it. Of course you shall have it.'
Pamela ran upstairs and there was the photograph, framed on the mantelpiece. She left it where it was and explained to her godmother that an unframed photograph would be better. She knew of another copy.
The afternoon was still young. Her uncle had a flat in Berkeley Square. Here she was disappointed. Mr. Merton was in Paris, and his man could not say when he would be back. 'I wanted to borrow a photograph of myself which I gave him,' faltered Pamela. 'Do you know where it is?'
'No, miss. Mr. Merton has no photographs in his room, and I don't know that I have ever seen any photographs. All his things are locked up.'
Mrs. Collinson lived in one of the big houses in Queen's Gate that had not been converted into flats. Pamela trusted that it was not one of the afternoons when her aunt had a drawing-room meeting, for she was the patroness of cranks—medical, religious, and social. She believed herself to be too intellectual for the older order of good works, and mission enterprise filled her worthy heart with disgust. The fad must be new and daring if it was to find a home in Queen's Gate.
As she neared the door her heart sank, for in Queen's Gate there would not be a rank of waiting cars at five o'clock unless a meeting was in progress at her aunt's house. Moreover, the front door was standing open and the hall had been converted into a cloak-room. She asked for Mrs. Collinson, and learned that the meeting was drawing to a close, if she cared to wait.
A speaker upstairs appeared to be delivering her peroration; she had a high and piercing voice and held forth with a devastating fluency, but after a veritable dam-burst of words there was applause. She had ended, and at that very moment Alice Sutro herself came running down the stairs.
'My dear Pamela! Oh, what you have missed! I was roped in, and I longed to have somebody to hold my hand. I sat through it all alone—all that torrent of drivel—for an hour, and I dared not laugh.'
'Come into the dining-room. I want to talk to you. It's quite a trivial matter, Alice—only to ask you whether you still have that photograph I gave you. Hark! They're coming down. I'll tell you why I want to know some other time.'
'Of course I have it, framed in the place of honour in my sitting-room. And you don't know how often I am asked who that lovely face belongs to.'
'Don't talk nonsense.'
'I never do. But you mustn't miss the procession of animals coming out of the Ark. Let's peep at them through a crack in the door.' In truth it was a weird procession of the people in London who were interested in the 'Psychology of the Vedas'. They almost justified the irreverent remark of Alice Sutro that the Botanical Gardens was the proper place for them; the Zoo, she said, was too lively. When the last of them had departed and her aunt had seen the exuberant lecturer to the bottom of the stairs Pamela emerged from her hiding-place.
'My dear child! You're too late! You really are naughty. I sent you a card for the lecture and had a seat all ready for you, and you turn up when it's all over. Besides, it was one of the most interesting addresses I have ever listened to.' She embarked upon a lengthy discourse on the Psychology of the Vedas. Pamela had not the heart to cut her short, but she broke in at last, 'I'm going to ask you a quite irrelevant question, Aunt. Do you remember that photograph I gave you; have you got it still?'
Mrs. Collinson looked vague; it was such a long stride from the Vedas to photographs. 'Now, let me see,' she said; 'oh, yes, I'm sure I've got it.'
'It's a silly question to ask, but may I see it?'
'Of course you may if I can find it, my dear; but you know what it is with the house turned upside down for a meeting.'
'Yes, Aunt, but I'll look if you tell me where.'
'Well, all the photographs go into that drawer, the third from the top. They'll be bringing in tea directly. I'll go and change while you're looking for it.'
And there, nearly at the bottom of the drawer, she found it. So it lay now with her uncle, and in order that no time should be lost she wrote a letter to his flat to be forwarded, asking for the loan of the photograph.
Pamela went home well satisfied with her afternoon's work, but there were other things to do. She must get from Kathleen an order for the keys of Carfax Abbey, which were now in the possession of the Buckinghamshire police. She must find out from her exactly what she knew about the relations between her father and Gomez. She rang up the house in Hampstead and proposed herself to dinner. She found her friend less depressed than she expected. She was full of her plans for the next few weeks. As soon as they were left alone, Pamela opened the real object of her visit. 'Have the police given you back the keys of the Abbey?'
'No, not yet. I haven't asked for them. Do you think I ought to?'
'I do. They must have finished all their investigations, and you have to make arrangements for selling the place. If I were you I should write a letter demanding the keys, and then, Kitty, you might lend them to me for a day or two.'
'To you?' said the other girl in surprise.
'Yes. I have become passionately interested in the mystery, and though it sounds very foolish, I have an idea that if I go to work I may be able to clear it up.'
Then and there Kitty sat down and wrote a letter at Pamela's dictation to the police superintendent at Oldbury desiring him to hand over the keys of the Abbey to the bearer.
'Now, Kitty, if you can bear to talk about it, I want you to repeat what your father told you about Mr. Gomez. Did he say that he was in his power?'
'Not exactly. He said that unless he could convince him that I would consent to marry him we should be ruined.'
'What could that mean? Was your father not as rich as people thought?'
'That was the explanation that I accepted until Mr. Stoddart came here, but he tells me that Father was very well off indeed, and that, after paying the death duties, I shall have a far bigger income than even he expected. No, unless Father was suffering from delusions, Gomez must have had some other hold upon him. Probably we shall never know what it was. And, you know, Pamela, the man is still worrying me to marry him. I can't imagine why, because I've scarcely been civil to him.'
When Pamela rose to go, Kathleen kissed her and said, 'You'll come and see me as often as you can, won't you? And if you find out anything, you won't keep secrets from me.'
'No, you can trust me for that. It isn't a family failing.'
It took Pamela Thring three days' hard work to run to ground the A.A. scout who had given Bernard's number to the police. It was wasted labour. The man was polite and ready to help in every way but one. He would give his list of cars that passed him on that fatal day to no one without orders from his chief.
'You can't even tell me how many Essex cars passed you that day?'
'No, madam, I can tell you nothing without orders.'
'But you told the police.'
'Yes, madam, because I had orders to give them every information.'
She went to bed that night with a heavy heart. She was making no progress.
Among the letters that she found beside her plate at breakfast next morning was one in the handwriting of her uncle. The letter was characteristic of that easy-going bachelor.
My Dear Girl—(he wrote from the 'Crillon')—
Of course you shall have the photograph on condition you return it to me. It is one of my most cherished possessions, but heaven only knows where it is. It is in some drawer, I think. I take it out from time to time to gaze on your classic features, but I always put it back in a different place. I expect to be home in about three weeks, and if you'll remind me I will have a good hunt for it. You may count upon its not being lost. I always put it back in a place of safety. It's ages since I've seen you. Why don't you run over here and spend a fortnight with me?
Your affectionate uncle
H. Merton.
To a person as vague as the writer a waste-paper basket would be a 'place of safety' and the contents of waste-paper baskets were probably sold as waste-paper to packers and furniture dealers.
THAT afternoon Kathleen Warren was feeling more cheerful than she had been for several days. She had just had another interview with her trustee, Mr. Stoddart, Mr. Croft's senior partner. He was the antithesis of the trustee she had pictured. He was middle-aged, it was true, but he bore his middle age with youth and spirit and seemed to know instinctively the kind of life a ward would like to live. He approved of everything she had done and told her not to worry about money; he would allow her as much as she wanted provided she did not break in upon her capital and, crowning triumph, strongly advised her to keep a car. 'I shan't worry you, my dear, but I am always there if you want help or advice. You will have your own banking account and cheque-book. You will have plenty of begging letters, and if I were in your place I should do one of two things: put them in the waste-paper basket or send them to your trustee, who will send them back to you with advice pencilled on the corner. Now I must be off.' And that was all.
Her cheerful mood was not destined to last. At half-past four the sympathetic Parker ran in and, approaching her mistress, whispered tensely, 'Mr. Bernard Thring.' Kathleen was allowed no time to consider whether she would receive him: he was on the heels of the maid. They shook hands.
'I have come because you did not answer my letter.'
'Did it need an answer?'
'Kitty, I've been in torture for days. Don't hurt me. Surely we can be as we were. You must have things for me to do—things in which a man can help. Let us forget all this awful time and look only at the future.'
'It is the future that I do look at—a future clouded at the outset by secrets between us. I have none.'
'Nor I from you—none of my own, I mean. Other people's secrets are not mine. Surely you can understand.'
'I don't understand, but I can guess. I suppose it is some woman, and if you prefer to become guardian of some other woman's secret——'
'If you knew who it was and what it was you would be the first to approve. Surely you can trust me that far.'
'When you tell me and no one else where you were on that afternoon I shall not annoy you with questions. As things are, I think it will be better for both of us not to meet.'
'Is that final, Kitty?' The girl made no answer; she was very pale, and anyone less blind would have seen that she was very near the breaking point.
'I see, Kitty,' he went on bitterly. 'You won't answer my letter, but I am to understand the answer from your own lips. You don't want to see me any more because I put a promise that I made before everything. If I had made it to you what would you have thought of me if I broke it? I haven't deserved this, Kitty.'... And then, after a pause in the hope that she would speak, 'Good-bye.' She bowed her head and did not see him go, nor did he hear the despairing little cry, 'Bernard,' that might have saved them both much suffering.
Bernard reached the hall just as another guest was being admitted. He was carrying an enormous bouquet. Through the open door a heavy Daimler could be seen at the gate. For the moment he did not recognize this smiling, sleek person and he passed him, but his mind flashed back to the tennis-party and the inquest. He remembered the man in the witness-box: it was Gomez, the man with whom Mr. Warren had an appointment, the man who wished to marry Kathleen.
What could she be thinking of to let a creature like that call upon her?
But Kathleen had no intention of letting him call upon her. The butler, who knew Mr. Gomez as an honoured guest of Mr. Warren, was in doubt. He left him standing in the hall while he went to 'see whether Miss Warren was at home.' That young lady left him in no doubt on that point, and Mr. Gomez deposited his flowers and his card and drove off in his car, not in the least rebuffed. Then, having the rest of the day to herself, Kathleen locked herself into her bedroom and spent it in tears.
It was Pamela Thring's darkest hour. That day she had had another visit from Sergeant Mannering. 'Those photographs, miss,' he said. 'Did you get any further with them?'
Pamela told him that all were accounted for except one given to her uncle, who had written from Paris assuring her that he had it safely, but that he could not say exactly where he could lay his hands upon it.
'You don't think, miss, that Mr. Merton could have lent his copy to your brother?'
'I'm quite sure of that.' But her heart sank, for it was now evident that, in the minds of the police, suspicion had centred upon Bernard, and who could tell whether some new tittle of evidence might not turn the scale and give them courage to arrest him. Already, as she knew, his position at the Foreign Office had become almost intolerable. No one said anything to him about the case, but there was suspicion and disquiet in the air ever since the sensational papers had given prominence to what happened at the inquest. He was looking like a ghost, and at home he scarcely opened his lips.
Pamela felt helpless against suspicions that could be dissipated entirely if only she had the key to the mystery. While she was pondering over her helplessness she was called to the telephone. She recognized the voice with a beating heart.
'They told me you were in hospital after a motor accident.'
'So I was for two or three days. Then they let me come home. It was nothing; the poor car felt it more than I did. May I inflict myself at dinner to-night?'
'What have we in the house?' thought the anxious housewife, but her voice replied, 'Why, of course, and you must tell us all about your accident.'
'There is nothing much to tell. I was driving back from Oxford. I must have crashed into something, though I don't remember it, and I woke up in a hospital ward.'
Things had shaped themselves fortunately. Bernard had told her at breakfast that he was dining out; her mother was not well enough to come down; she would have Edmund Meredith to herself. Bernard had just left the house when he was announced. Officially in Chelsea he was Mrs. Thring's friend because he had helped her to straighten out her affairs after her husband's sudden death, but she had long reconciled herself to his assumption of the part of elder brother to her two children—a role that suited him perfectly.
In person he was dark and strong, with thick black hair already streaked with grey. No one would have called him good-looking until they noticed the brightness and intelligence of his eyes. His silence and gravity, except when he found himself in congenial company, had often excited wonder that a man so heavy in heart should be so successful at the Bar, though a large part of his practice was in chambers.
Pamela had half expected to see a change in him—perhaps half-healed scars on the face. He was a little thinner, a little tired, but that was all that a serious accident had left behind it. He looked round the room.
'Mother is so sorry. They won't let her come down. Bernard could not escape a dinner engagement, so I'm afraid you'll have to put up with me this evening.'
His eyes smiled satisfaction; he was always bad at pretty speeches. Dinner was announced. The hostess decided to say nothing about her plans while the maid was flitting in and out. As they crossed the hall she said, 'You know, I hope, that you are to be victimized this evening. After dinner I want your advice, and you have got to listen to a long and boring story. You see what you've let yourself in for?'
'I do indeed,' he said, with dancing eyes. 'I'm to play the elder brother, am I?'
'Yes, you are to play the elder brother.'
All through dinner they talked of other things—of the hitch in his practice due to his absence. Fortunately, the man who shared his chambers and his clerk between them had kept things going as well as they could. But there were arrears, and for the first few days he had found it difficult to concentrate on his briefs.
'I suppose you ought to be taking a complete holiday.'
'So my doctor man told me, but he saw me this morning and withdrew his embargo. Apparently, I am as fit as ever I was. The headaches have gone and briefs are rolling in. The fact is that I rather like the grind of it.'
'You are incorrigible: otherwise I should have talked to you of the danger of overdoing things.'
At last they were left alone. He pushed back his chair and said, 'Well? I'm listening.'
'You have heard of the death of Mr. Warren at Carfax Abbey, of course?'
'Warren? Carfax Abbey? No, I can't say that I have.'
'The papers have been full of it: Kathleen Warren's father, you know. Oh, I forgot your accident. You haven't seen the papers for days.'
'I have skimmed The Times for the last few days, but that is all.'
'Then I must begin at the beginning.'
Thereupon she related all that had happened, encouraged by the expression of tense interest in his eyes when she came to the suspicion that rested on her brother.
'The county police must be more than ordinarily stupid to fasten suspicion upon any one on such slender grounds. Surely Bernard can be induced to say where he was?' She shook her head.
'He says that it is not his secret; that is all I can get out of him.'
'A quixotic sense of honour, I suppose.'
'Yes.'
'And you want me to help in clearing him?'
'I want you to advise me how to begin.'
He was silent for a long time, thinking with his brow knitted in a frown. 'I think that we had better work together,' he said at last.
'I did not dare to ask that. What about your work?'
He pulled out a tiny engagement-book and studied it.
'I can give you the whole of to-morrow and most of Tuesday. On Wednesday I am tied up by a conference. On Thursday I have a tiresome case in court. Friday and Saturday I shall take "off." It will be a holiday. The poor old car is on the scrap-heap, but she was insured and I've got a new one; it can run us down to—did you say Carfax Abbey? Where is it?'
'In Buckinghamshire.'
'Then I'll call for you at ten.'
The parlour-maid looked in.
'She wants to clear away,' explained Pamela. 'Shall we go into the drawing-room?'
Meredith looked at his watch. 'Great heavens! It's a quarter to eleven. It is time I was cleared away too. I've kept you up and I've got work to do at home.' He collected his things in the hall. 'Good night, and thank you ever so much for coming to me when you are in a tight place.'
Pamela said nothing, but her hand lingered in his for the fraction of a second. He was so strong and helpful, this man friend of hers. Her sense of obligation was too great for words.
As the door closed upon him the telephone began to ring. 'You're wanted, miss,' said the parlour-maid.
'Who can want me at this time of night?' thought Pamela as she went to the receiver.
'Is that you, Pamela? Kathleen speaking. You've heard, of course?'
'Heard what?'
'That our engagement is broken off.'
'Broken off? Oh, Kitty, how could you?'
'It wasn't I, Bernard left a note for me this evening. I suppose I should have expected it, but it seems so cruel, Pamela, and I don't know what to do.' The wire transmitted even the sob that broke her voice.
'Listen, Kitty. Would you like me to come round? Can you give me a bed? You can? Then expect me in less than half an hour.' She replaced the receiver and called to the parlour-maid. 'Charlotte, will you ring up the rank and get me a taxi while I pack a few things. I am going to the Warrens at Hampstead for the night. Tell Mrs. Thring in the morning, but say nothing to Mr. Bernard if he asks where I am.'
KATHLEEN WARREN herself opened the door, the servants having all gone to bed. She was in an emotional state, her face stained with tears and her breath coming quick. She flung herself into Pamela's arms and began to sob; in her hand was Bernard's letter. Pamela caressed her hair and soothed her as she would a frightened child.
'It was all my fault,' the girl kept repeating through her sobs. 'What can I do? What can I do?'
'Let me read the letter, darling.'
It was, as she expected, a letter of wounded pride from a man who considers himself deeply injured. Perhaps he was really acting from the highest altruistic motives in setting his fiancée free from an engagement with a man who was under suspicion of being concerned in causing the death of her father. Pamela hoped that these were his motives. But it was the familiar weakness of his sex to play the injured hero to the women who love them, and they do not play it when there is a danger that they may be taken at their word. The only redeeming point in the letter was the evidence that the writer was deeply in love and therefore that the breach might easily be healed.
'What can I do?' sobbed the girl in her arms.
'Do nothing, darling. Do not answer the letter, and, above all, do not see him. Everything will come right. You can safely leave that to me.'
'You are a darling, Pamela. With you, somehow, I feel quite safe,' cried the girl through her tears.
'Now, Kitty, sit down and let us talk for five minutes, and then we must both go to bed. I am starting to-morrow with a friend of mine to clear Bernard.'
Pamela was glad to find Kathleen more cheerful when she left her in the morning. Meredith was full of questions on the way down—chiefly about Gomez.
'I didn't know of his existence till the other day, when I met him at their house. Kathleen Warren told me that she disliked the man. She herself knew nothing about him except that he was at Lloyds and that her father wanted her to marry him, but since her father's death she has learned a good deal more from her solicitor. It seems that Gomez was the owner both of Bearstead and Carfax Abbey. He sold the Abbey to Mr. Warren on the understanding that Kathleen was not to be told that he would be their nearest neighbour.'
'You mean that it was a kind of plot between the two men?'
'Yes. There are no other neighbours, and they hoped that when Kathleen was buried in the country, seeing Gomez nearly every day, she would forget my brother. Mr. Warren was to put pressure on her day after day and Gomez was to do the rest. I fancied that Mr. Warren was under some sort of money obligation to the man, and the marriage would have cancelled it. At any rate, on the night before his death Mr. Warren told her that unless she consented to marry Gomez they would be ruined. But now it appears that Mr. Warren was very well off.'
'That is very interesting. You told me that Warren had an appointment with Gomez on the afternoon of his death. What was that about?'
'We don't know. The sale of the Abbey had been completed. It couldn't have been about the house.'
'I wonder—I wonder whether there was an element of blackmail about the business. Warren had made his money quickly; most men who do that have episodes in their lives that they want to hide, and if Gomez knew something—Your brother chose a bad moment for approaching his future father-in-law. And yet,' he went on, thinking aloud, 'Gomez had a strong motive for keeping Mr. Warren alive.'
'Unless they quarrelled——'
'Ah! Unless they quarrelled. Was Warren a hot-tempered man?'
'I never saw him in a temper, but according to Bernard he had the temper of a fiend if any one ventured to oppose him. I know that he bullied his daughter, and she bore it like an angel. I suppose that he was not always like that; she seemed fond of him in spite of it.'
'It may have been due to his illness. You say that the house is haunted?'
'Yes, according to the papers—by a monk who had been murdered while defending the chapel from desecration. Oh! I forgot; you were ill and didn't see the papers.'
'Let me make a confession. Ever since I was a child ghost stories have had a fascination for me. I should have tried to help you in any case, but it was the suggestion of the occult that made me keen. If it hadn't been for the finger-marks on the throat I should have sifted the possibility of Warren having seen something that caused his death from shock.'
The girl glanced at him with sudden interest. With his firm jaw and grave, thoughtful face he seemed the last man in the world to believe in the occult.
'Do you mean that you believe in houses being haunted?'
'I don't know that I believe anything. I keep an open mind—that is all. We must be getting near Oldbury according to that dial.'
'Isn't that the town straight ahead?'
'Yes. Now for the police!'
The superintendent knew his visitor's name and saw him at once, while Pamela Thring stayed in the car, since the name of Thring coupled with that of Carfax Abbey was not to be mentioned at Oldbury Police Station.
'I have come to apply for the key of Carfax Abbey, Superintendent. Here is a letter addressed to you by the present owner, Miss Warren.'
Superintendent Laurence read the letter and knit his brow. 'I don't want to make unnecessary difficulties, Mr. Meredith. If I did I could say that Miss Warren is not the owner, and I must have a letter from her trustees. We have taken the trouble to inspect the late Mr. Warren's will: all the property is vested in trustees until the young lady is twenty-five. To speak quite frankly, I don't want to part with the key until the case is cleared up.'
'I doubt very much whether you have power to detain it.'
'Not against the wishes of the legal owners—the trustees; but they have made no demand for it.'
'I speak with little knowledge of the case, but surely in a fortnight you have searched the house from top to bottom?'
'That is so, and if I knew why Miss Warren wants you to have the key I might waive the point of law. I suppose that I should be quite wrong if I thought that you wanted the key to carry out a sort of police investigation of your own, Mr. Meredith?'
Meredith laughed. 'I am not a private inquiry agent, Superintendent, but I confess that the case interests me. I want to visit the place and see what I can for myself. I can promise you two things: I shall publish nothing about it, and if I should stumble upon any new fact I should bring it at once to you.'
That satisfied Superintendent Laurence. As he was unlocking his safe, he said, 'Speaking in confidence, Mr. Meredith, we are not making much progress. At this stage I don't like to ask for help from London. My Chief likes us to do our washing at home. So, if you do notice anything new—and a fresh eye sometimes sees things that others miss—I hope you won't forget us. That is the key of the front door.'
Meredith drove the car from Oldbury to Carfax without much help from his companion. They spoke but little, for neither knew the way. Fortunately, they met a farmer's boy, who agreed, in expectation of a tip, to mount the footboard and act as guide. When they had passed through the stone gateway and the Abbey lay before them, he pointed out Bearstead on the hill above, pocketed his half-crown and left them. They drew up the car in the shade of a huge cedar and unlocked the front door. Every empty unoccupied house has the same smell, compound of damp and stagnant air and packing straw. Some of the huge packing-cases had been opened; in the monks' refectory, now the dining-room, a modern copy of a refectory table and a great sideboard had been unpacked and dragged to their places, as if the furnishers had abandoned their work for lack of instructions.
'It happened in the chapel; I wonder where it is,' whispered Pamela, leading the way through the hall, past the grand staircase, where she found a door with the key in the lock. It gave on to a walled open space encumbered with heaps of carved stone overgrown with grass and weeds, the ruins of the ancient cloister. A paved way led along the wall to another door, which stood ajar. It was the north door of the chapel. She pushed it open and went in. The chapel had been a ruin, gutted of its carved oak stalls, its gallery, and its altar rail. It was a small Gothic structure with a vaulted stone roof. Little remained of its fine stained glass or of the fresco paintings, but Warren had given his architect a free hand and had taken extraordinary interest in the restoration, as if he intended it to be a thank-offering for the good things of this world which had come to him as an answer to his nightly prayer. No attempt had been made to replace the missing windows; such of the stained glass as had been recovered was in its place and transparent leaded glass filled the gaps. The walls had been cleaned and the frescoed saints could faintly be distinguished against the white stone background. The organ loft, of carved oak, was a copy from the gallery of a chapel of the same period, and the stalls had been faithfully reconstructed from a model made up of pieces of carved lumber that had been found in outhouses and stables. Some of the furniture had not yet been unpacked. The floor was cumbered with great packing-cases, many of them bearing the labels of an organ-builder. A beginning had been made with setting up the pulpit on its stone plinth; a case was open, straw was scattered about, and the carving of the sounding-board obtruded from its wrappings. A new altar rail of beaten iron was in its place; the gate stood open; the stone altar and reredos had been untouched since a monk lost his life in defending it from desecration. It was just in front of the rail that the owner of the Abbey had been found dead. The actual position of the body was drawn in chalk, and there were two chalk circles nearer to the altar gate. That part of the paved floor was swept clean; the packing straw, several inches deep, formed a circle round the stage of the tragedy.
Pamela turned to whisper to her companion and started: she was alone. She ran to the open door and found him leaning against the wall of the cloister with his eyes closed.
'Aren't you coming in?' she asked; and then, noticing his attitude, she said, 'I'm afraid that you are not feeling well.'
Meredith pulled himself together with an effort. 'I am all right now. Since my accident I have had fits of giddiness sometimes, but they always give me warning. I shan't upset the car. You were in the chapel? Let us go in.'
She looked at him keenly. His voice was very shaky and he had turned pale.
'No, Mr. Meredith, I am quite sure that you are not well enough to do anything yet. You ought to lie down. Come with me into the house. I know that some of the furniture has been unpacked. We'll find a sofa somewhere.'
He allowed himself to be persuaded. In the drawing-room Pamela found a sofa, dusted it, and, wheeling it with its back to the light, told her companion to lie down on it. He obeyed her like a child. 'Now, lie quite still till I come for you. Go to sleep if you can.'
Her first idea was to telephone for a doctor, and she ran feverishly from room to room in the hope of finding an instrument. There was none. She crept back to the drawing-room to see how her patient was. He was already asleep, with one arm hanging loose to the ground and with his face, drawn and weary, towards her. She felt a surge of almost maternal feeling as she looked at him, lying ill and helpless: he who had always seemed so strong and independent. But since he was asleep and his breathing was regular there was no need of a doctor. It was better to leave him where he was and try to make headway alone. She returned to the chapel.
There were the chalk-marks indicating the spot where the body was found. Whoever he was, she thought, the man who killed Mr. Warren had reached the altar rail. Did Mr. Warren find him in the chapel when he came? If so, he must have had a duplicate key, for she could see no other entrance. The west door, under the organ loft, had been walled up. He must have followed Mr. Warren in, but with what motive? Not robbery: the dead man's money and valuables were untouched. Revenge? Mr. Warren must have had enemies; no one can make a fortune without trampling on other people. But how could a vengeful enemy know that he was coming to the Abbey that day? He could have found him any day in Hampstead. Unless—One man did know: Gomez. But a sleek, overfed, overdressed Portuguese Jew is not the kind of man who would commit a murder with naked hands. If he wanted Warren out of the way he would have taken other measures: hired a man perhaps to do it. Then suddenly she remembered that Gomez was not the only man who knew. There was the chauffeur and her own brother.
It was time to look at her patient. She found him wide awake and sitting up. He was on his feet as soon as he saw her. 'I'm afraid that I've been asleep,' he said, 'and we came here to work. It's scandalous.'
'I believe that I have covered every bit of the ground. I am sure that I've searched more thoroughly even than the police. And it's time to be thinking about lunch.'
'Good heavens! I must have been asleep for hours. Where shall we lunch? If I had had any sense I should have brought a luncheon-basket in the car. I'm afraid that there's nothing for it but Oldbury.'
At luncheon in the hotel they discussed their next step. Meredith was himself again. He listened attentively to Pamela's reasoning—that Warren's assailant had followed him into the chapel and had not been there when he arrived, and to her suggestion that the motive for the attack had been revenge.
'If he followed him in as you say, why do you rule out Gomez?'
'Only because Mr. Gomez had a strong motive for keeping Mr. Warren alive.'
'I don't think that revenge was the motive. A man bent on killing from revenge takes good care to be armed. You told me that the dead man had a violent temper; the medical evidence showed that he was in such a state of health that a slight shock would have been enough to kill him. My theory is that it was a sudden quarrel, and he was just as likely to quarrel with Gomez as any one else. I think that our next step is to clear up Gomez's movements that afternoon. According to his statement he never left his house. If we find that he lied and that he went down to the Abbey we shall be getting warm.'
'Yes, but how shall we set about that?'
'That is where I come in. Mr. Gomez does not know me. If you agree I propose to impersonate the innocent tourist this very afternoon while you play about at the Abbey.'
'I wish I could come with you.'
'So do I, but it would cramp my style. I promise to report faithfully all my adventures while you are standing guard over the car.'
Pamela watched him making for the bridge and saw him climbing the farm road to Bearstead. Then she returned to the chapel. Her eyes were as good as those of the police. Suppose that they had missed something. The light was not very good; she went down on her knees and began to turn over the straw. The place was uncannily quiet. She paused for a moment: a rustle among the straw made her leap to her feet with a gasp of horror. It was only a famished rat which scurried away with a flirt of its naked tail. Pamela Thring was not exempt from the weakness of her sex when rats were concerned—a horror born of skirts under which rats might seek asylum—but when she undertook a job she did it thoroughly. She found nothing. The chapel oppressed her with foreboding. She quitted it for the drawing-room, but instead of taking the direct route down the north side of the cloister, she went straight on as if to make a tour of the quadrangle.
Building stone old and new littered the pavement, leaving but a narrow passage between the blocks, and, as she glanced from right to left among the grey stones, her eyes caught a crumpled scrap of paper among the mason's litter. It was clean and free from dust. She picked it up and found that it was a letter in an envelope addressed to 'Raphael Gomez, Esq., Bearstead Manor, Oldbury' and the postmark was 'London, N.W., September 12th'—the day before Mr. Warren's death. The letter had been opened, but she had scruples about reading other people's letters. How did it get there, unless Mr. Gomez himself had visited the Abbey since the tragedy? He had sworn at the inquest that he had never left his own grounds on that fatal afternoon. She would show it to Mr. Meredith and be guided by his advice.
Meanwhile, why was he so long? What was happening? Her heart had never failed her yet, and now, because a man who was little more than an acquaintance might be ill and in danger, she felt her nerves giving way. Because, if Mr. Meredith failed, who was she to turn to? Of course that was the explanation. Having settled this to her satisfaction, she was free to feel as anxious as she liked.
It must be the house—this great deserted house with a curse upon it. She had moved to the drawing-room, which was a shade less depressing than the rest, and even there she felt she must scream if she stayed any longer. From time to time the old timbers cracked as if to remind her that the days even of piles of masonry like this were numbered. She could bear it no longer; she would go and sit in the car.
Before she reached the front door she heard a quick step on the gravel. He was coming back safe and sound.
'First my apologies for having left you so long. Why, what's the matter? You look so pale.'
'Nothing. Let us go to the car.'
'Have you—have you seen something?'
'Nothing, but I am so glad you are back. Tell me what you did.'
'Shall I start the car first?'
'No, tell me now.'
'Well, you may congratulate me. Gomez was lying.'
'YES,' said Meredith, 'when Gomez said that he did not go down to the Abbey that afternoon he lied, and he has been trying to cover up his lie ever since.' There was a note of elation in his voice that was infectious.
'You want to hear how I found out? It was more by good luck than good management. I followed the farm track till I came to a small field. There I found a man wheeling turnips in a barrow. He put down his barrow and stared at me. Then he left it and came up. "You'll excuse me, sir," he said, "but I think we've met before. You are Mr. Meredith, the famous lawyer. You defended my brother at the Old Bailey when they charged him with grievous bodily harm on that policeman. Surely you remember defending William Parish, and you got him off, you did, and I had the honour of shaking you by the hand. Lord! But it was a fine speech you made; it fair knocked the judge and jury off their feet." I searched my memory for William Parish. I had some excuse, for it was five years since I polluted the fount of justice: it was in the days when I was glad to take a dock brief at one pound thirteen and six. The grateful brother, I found, wanted to talk, and so I began to lay out my ignorance on the table, which wasn't large enough to hold all that I did not know. What was the big house down in the hollow? Carfax Abbey. Hadn't I heard that name before? I thought I had read about it lately in the newspapers. What was it about now? The murder of Mr. Warren? Yes, that was it.
'My friend had been bottling up a great secret for days; he wanted to unburden himself to some one he could trust. Not to the police—his brother's experiences had cured him of any misplaced confidence in them. He began by telling me all about the ghost, though he got his English history a little mixed; and about the murder and the inquest. When I asked him for his theory he pretended to shut up like a clasp-knife, but he nodded and winked as an invitation to me to press him further. "I don't know who it was, but there's those that do know and won't say." "Who do you mean?" I said. "Ah, sir, that would be telling; but what would you think of it if a party swore at the inquest that he'd never been near the Abbey that afternoon and you'd seen him with your own eyes not only going down there, but watched him go in and seen him come out double-quick and sneak up home along that hedge? What would you think?" "I'd think he was a liar," I said; "but who was it?" "Well, it was a party living within a mile of where we're standing—him that gave evidence at the inquest. That's who it was."
'I didn't like to press him further, but I have got his name—Charles Parish—and I am satisfied that he was speaking the truth. As to the time, it was the early afternoon—that is to say, a few minutes after half-past three when he saw Gomez coming back along the hedge. If Gomez swore at the inquest that he never went to the Abbey that afternoon he committed perjury, but we should have to look carefully at the coroner's notes before we could say that.'
'Yes, it is one man's word against another's. What is the next step?'
'Oh, we can't let matters rest as they are. I mean to have a confession from Gomez before I've done with him,' said Meredith grimly, and Pamela, looking at the determined lines of his face, was glad that she was not standing in Gomez's shoes. 'And now tell me what you have been doing.'
'Well, I searched the floor of the chapel inch by inch and found nothing. Look at my hands.'
'So you are disappointed?'
'Not at all. I found something, only it wasn't in the chapel, and it may be of no importance at all. I went the other way round the cloister, and between two stones among the rubbish I found this.'
Meredith turned the letter over in his hand, examining the postmark. 'There's a letter in the envelope. You've read it?'
'No, I thought I'd keep it for you.'
'I think we ought to read it in case it was from Warren.'
'Very well. You know best.'
He took out the letter and knit his brow over it. Then he said, 'Before I read you the letter, tell me, was not Gomez questioned about a letter at the inquest, and did he not say that he had destroyed it?'
'Yes, it was the letter from Mr. Warren asking for an appointment.'
'Then your discovery is the most important that has yet been made, for Gomez has committed perjury. This is the letter: I'll read it to you.'
'Dear Gomez,
'You'll do no good by rushing things. I've had it out with K., and she took the bit in her teeth. I can't put it all in a letter, but I'll run down to the Abbey to-morrow, and if you want further details I'll come and see you. You threatened me yesterday and gave me till Thursday. If you do as you threatened, of course, the whole thing is off, and I think that you may have reason to regret it afterwards. Two can play at the game of telling tales, and I may be driven to say what I know about the 'Maverick.' I've been playing square with you, and if you do the dirty by me, look out.
'Yours
'J.W.'
'What's it all mean?'
'What is Miss Warren's Christian name? Kathleen? Then K. stands for Miss Warren. J. W. is, of course, Joshua Warren: it would be easy to prove his handwriting. Gomez has threatened Warren with exposure. I dare say he had many things to hide: these men have. Warren was trying to force his daughter to marry Gomez and to consent before Thursday. She refused and he hoped to postpone the exposure by the interview he asks for, but he knew of some shady transaction of Gomez's and could not resist the luxury of threatening him in turn. It was a kind of reciprocal blackmail. A pretty pair they were!'
'How disgusting!'
'Yes, but how important for us. Gomez committed perjury not once, but twice, at the inquest, and with this letter and the information I got from our friend with the turnips I ought to have quite a fruitful interview. I wish I hadn't promised the superintendent to keep him informed of any finds we made. I think we'll have to wait a few hours.'
'Yes, I think we've done enough for to-day. You have work to-morrow and you must go to it fresh. Let us go home.'
'I should like to go on, but I want to know something more about Mr. Gomez's past record than we can find out here; so back to London we'll go.'
It was Sergeant Mannering's afternoon off duty, and it followed that he had betaken himself with his first-born to the bank of the canal, with a full-grown and a half-grown fishing rod, with floats and gut complete. They had also with them an obese fishing basket, in which their luncheon would have been carried if Mrs. Mannering had not put her foot down firmly. 'You can play what tricks you like with your stomach, but Thomas does not leave the house without a good dinner inside him.' Her parting words were to wish them luck 'because the cat's had no dinner'.
Thomas was the aptest of pupils; he knew to a hair the length of worm's tail that should be hanging free from the hook and the exact behaviour of the float before the moment arrived for striking. It was a very pleasant afternoon for them both. They did not converse—anglers are not given to that weakness—but they had already consigned five bony little fish to the basket when Thomas, who knew every constable by sight, exclaimed, 'There's Parkinson, and he's coming for you, Dad.'
For Constable Parkinson, defying the traffic rules as constables are free to do, was riding his bicycle straight in their direction. He brought a message from the Chief effectually putting an end to his colleague's 'afternoon off'. 'The Chief wants you, Sergeant,' was all he said.
And so Thomas was left sadly to pack up the gear while his father hastened home for his bicycle. Thomas resolved that afternoon that, come what might, he would never be a policeman.
'Sorry to have to call you back, Mannering. It's about that Abbey case. You've a rival in the field. Ever heard of Mr. Edmund Meredith?'
'The counsel, do you mean, sir?'
The superintendent nodded.
'Why, yes, sir. It was him that defended Pickersgill at the Reading Assizes and cross-examined me for more than half an hour.'
'Well, he's on the Abbey job now. You'll find him a dangerous rival. He got the keys from me this morning on a letter from Miss Warren, and he's down there now searching for evidence.'
'It's a funny thing for a barrister to be doing, sir.'
'Oh, he's there as a member of the public, but as it's your case I think you'd better slip along and see what he's doing; else he'll be giving us a wipe in the eye.'
'Thank you, sir, I will.'
'Stop a moment. I haven't heard lately what progress you're making.'
'Well, sir, for the moment we're at a standstill. I hope to be able to trace that photograph to young Mr. Thring. We've accounted for five out of the six, and there's been a letter from Mr. Thring's uncle in Paris to say that the sixth's locked up in his flat. When he comes back he'll produce it; but that sixth photograph didn't walk into the Abbey by itself, and it's my belief that Mr. Thring dropped it there during the struggle with the deceased Warren. I was going to consult you about the case, sir, but as the papers have dropped it for the time, and you had so much on hand, I thought we might wait a bit and see what turned up.'
'Then you still think it was Thring? Only there isn't enough evidence yet to put before the Director of Public Prosecutions; we mustn't make a mistake, you understand.'
'That's so, sir.'
'Very well, you'd better slip along to the Abbey.'
And while he was 'slipping along' he met a car containing two acquaintances—Edmund Meredith and Miss Thring.
'Take care,' said Pamela to her companion, 'that man on the bicycle is the policeman who came to see me. Don't run over him.'
The episode about her photograph was the one piece of evidence she had kept from Meredith, because of her promise.
Sergeant Mannering slowed down and dismounted. He was a philosopher, and when the luck turned against him he did not whine nor curse. Hoping for a favourable turn of the wheel, he went back to the bosom of his family, and if he thought at all about Meredith's incursion into his domain, it was to hope that he would find a dead wall in front of him and stick in future to his own profession.
To Pamela Thring the next two days were days of fever. Her little social duties were neglected; her longing was to be doing something in her quest, but without Edmund Meredith to help her she was powerless. She had to meet her brother at breakfast and at dinner, and to keep up an appearance of conversation on indifferent topics. He was suffering acutely—that she could see—but, of course, she told him nothing of her efforts to clear him. One evening, just as she was going up to her mother, he called her back.
'Have you seen Kitty lately, Pam?'
'I saw her two days ago.'
'Was she—was she well?'
'Yes, but she's terribly worried by business.'
'She hasn't answered my letters. Do you think—that if I called she would see me?'
'All depends upon how much you are able to tell her. Bernie, old boy, it's no good our beating about the bush, is it? If you can tell her where you were that afternoon I am sure that everything will come right, but don't put it off too long.'
Bernard's face darkened. 'What do you mean by too long?'
'What I mean is that if you leave things too long as they are it may be too late.'
The young man stood silent for a moment and then left the room. Pamela heard the front door shut behind him. It was clear that he did not mean to clear up the mystery.
She had had no word from Meredith. Immersed as he was in his legal work she had not expected it, and she did not know whether they were to continue their quest on Thursday or not; but on Wednesday she was called to the telephone. She knew the voice—a deep and clear voice which even the telephone could not obscure, 'What will you say to me if I propose myself to dinner this evening? I have something to tell you. Will you be alone?'
And she remembered, with a sudden bound of the heart, that her brother had announced that morning that he was dining out. 'Yes, do come—as early as you can and stay as late as your work will let you.'
'If you'll let me off dressing I'll be with you in twenty minutes.'
She let him off dressing, but two minutes later she found herself in her own room before the glass with a tea-gown in either hand, uncertain which she should don in his honour, and deciding upon the black because it seemed to become her best.
She was in the drawing-room when the taxi drove up, and she counted it for righteousness that she did not fly down the stairs to meet him, but allowed him to be ushered upstairs in the prosaic way. He was beaming with quiet delight as he took her hand, and glanced approvingly at the tea-gown, which set off her delicate beauty.
'I've made a discovery and I couldn't let it wait till to-morrow, when we go down to Oldbury for our field day, don't we?'
'I'm ready, but don't keep me in suspense. What is your discovery?'
'Well, I've got the life-history of Mr. Raphael Gomez, for one thing, but that wouldn't interest you. Up to a point he was very successful in business. He made a great deal of money during, and after, the war; but then all his speculations seemed to go wrong, and my discovery is that his firm, so far from being prosperous as it pretends, is on the verge of bankruptcy.'
PUNCTUAL to the minute, Meredith's car drew up at the Thrings' door. Pamela was ready for him, and in a few minutes they were on the broad road to the west.
'Did you sleep over what I told you last night?' said Meredith.
'I did, but still I don't understand what motive Gomez can have had for attacking Mr. Warren. If he wanted to marry Kathleen in order to save himself from bankruptcy, and Mr. Warren was putting pressure on his daughter, his interest would have been to keep him alive.'
'I agree, but as I read the evidence there must have been a violent quarrel in which Warren was the aggressor, and in defending himself Gomez took his antagonist by the throat and—well, caused his death. And now I want your advice. My instinct is to go down to Bearstead to-day, call upon Gomez, and tax him with having been down to the Abbey chapel that afternoon. I believe that I should jolt him into an admission.'
'Am I the person to advise you?'
'Yes. You have seen Gomez; you know me. If I succeed you will have cleared your brother of all suspicion.'
'Of course you will succeed,' she said, 'but I am not sure——'
'Not sure of what?'
'Whether it is the wisest course. If Mr. Gomez admitted that he had gone down to the Abbey to look for Mr. Warren it does not prove him guilty.'
His face fell. 'Then on the whole you advise me not to see him.'
'No, I don't. The real use of asking advice is to learn what one really wants to do. I see that your heart is set upon making Mr. Gomez confess; you had better do it.'
'You seem to know by instinct what is in my heart. Yes, I confess I want to do it. I have found out that he is always at Bearstead on Thursdays.'
'Then you scarcely want me.'
'Yes, I do. You bring me luck.'
Of course I'll come. You can drop me in a field or a wood somewhere on the way.'
'Or at the Abbey.'
'No, not there. It's a horrid place to be alone in.'
'Then anywhere you like. I don't suppose the business will take more than half an hour.'
'Have you thought out your interview?' she asked.
'No. Only on quite general lines. I shall send in my card, and if he makes difficulties I shall pencil a few lines on it saying that I must see him on a matter of urgent importance. I know that he will see me then.'
'And how will you begin?'
'I shall tell him that I have called about Mr. Warren's death, and then be guided entirely by what he says.'
'I wish I could be hidden behind a curtain. I should love to hear you do it.'
'I should be on my mettle then. There, isn't that Bearstead?'
They were nearing a little wood. 'Put me down here,' said Pamela.
'But you will be so cold. The wood looks damp and uncomfortable.'
She insisted. 'You are not to think of me till the interview is over, or you'll hurry things. Good-bye and good luck!'
She watched the car out of sight and then she sat down on a fallen tree to think. It was on her mind that she had had to withhold from Edmund Meredith one part of the evidence that might be vital—her photograph that had been picked up on the very scene of the tragedy—and all because of that foolish promise that she had made to a detective. It was not fair to engage so busy a man upon a case that did not concern him personally and then withhold from him something that might have provided a short-cut to the solution. How did that photograph get there? No doubt it was the copy given to her charming but irresponsible uncle; no doubt it had left his flat by way of the waste-paper basket. But how had it found its way into the packing-straw used by an organ-builder in Norwich? There were coincidences in real life, but surely never such a coincidence as this. Then and there she resolved to write again to her uncle.
Her mind reverted to the interview then taking place. She pictured Edmund Meredith's face, and wondered what he would say to her if he thought that she was keeping anything back. Under his cross-examination she would be constrained to bare her inmost soul.
At that moment Edmund Meredith was in his element. He had sent in his card and the servant returned at once to show him into the library, which smelt strongly of cigars. In a few moments a quick, rather soft footstep, suggesting a large cat, caught his ear; the door opened noiselessly and Gomez was in the room. He turned to look back into the hall before closing the door. He looked young for forty, though good living had played tricks with his figure and his neck was thickening.
'Mr. Edmund Meredith?' he said, reading from the card he held in his hand.
'Mr. Gomez, I have called upon a very confidential matter—a matter of great importance. I am glad that you have been able to see me.'
'Yes?' faltered Gomez. 'Shall we sit down?'
Meredith knew the value of sitting a few inches higher than the man he was to question. Gomez sank into a comfortable arm-chair, but he, rejecting the chair that was offered to him, moved to a stiff writing-chair which he turned round with its back to the light.
'Excuse me,' he said, 'but I hate armchairs. May I sit here? I dare say you have guessed what has brought me here, Mr. Gomez; it is about the tragedy that took place in Carfax Abbey on the thirteenth of September.'
Gomez changed colour, and swallowed audibly before replying.
'I do not quite understand who you are, Mr. Meredith.'
'Oh, I am not an official of any kind. I am a friend of the Warren family, and I have come to you as the one person who can throw some light on the mystery of Mr. Warren's death.'
Gomez swallowed again. Evidently he was considering whether he would gain anything by bringing the interview to an end. He decided to put on a bold front, to which his blanched face and trembling voice gave no support.
'No doubt you read my evidence at the inquest, sir. I can say nothing more than I said then. I wish I could.'
'But in your evidence you said that you had an appointment with Mr. Warren at this house that afternoon; that he did not come and you never went to the Abbey.'
'Yes.'
'Your memory betrayed you, Mr. Gomez; you did go to the Abbey, and if you wish it I will tell you which path you followed and how you came back. There is an eyewitness.'
'I don't know what you mean, sir. Bring the witness here and confront him with me. I say that it is a lie. Why should I go to the Abbey?'
'You went out at twenty minutes past three and crossed the stream by the bridge; you came back twenty minutes later, but this time you did not cross the bridge: you came back under cover of the hedge. What I want you to tell me is what happened at the Abbey?'
'Are you accusing me of murdering one of my best friends? This is intolerable.'
'Are you right in so describing Mr. Warren? Would it not be more correct to call him a party to a certain contract which he did not carry out?'
Gomez dropped the mantle of outraged innocence and stared at his visitor. 'I don't know what you mean, sir.'
'I mean the understanding respecting his daughter. Things had not gone quite smoothly between you latterly.'
Gomez gulped once or twice, and his eyes seemed to bulge from his head. By some means this man had become possessed of secrets that he thought were safely locked away. As he said nothing Meredith went on smoothly.
'You said just now that I suspected you of murder, but to tell you what I know to be the fact—that you went down to the Abbey that afternoon—is not to accuse you of murder. I want you to tell me what you saw when you went there. That is all.'
Still Gomez remained silent, and his silence was a promising sign.
'For instance, you may have found Mr. Warren in conversation with a stranger; you may even have seen the struggle that caused his death; or you may have failed to find him there at all. You will have to tell me before I leave this room, because at this moment another man is under suspicion—an entirely innocent man—and only you can clear him.'
As Gomez persisted in his silence, Meredith took a new line.
'Now, Mr. Gomez, I don't want to hurry you, but if you decline to tell me anything, I think it right that I should tell you what would happen. You gave evidence on oath before the coroner, and your evidence on three vital points was untrue—first, that you did not go down to the Abbey; second, that you had destroyed the letter that Mr. Warren wrote to you when he asked for an interview; and third, that the word "ult" in Mr. Warren's diary meant ultramarine—some paint that you were getting for him. But his letter—the letter you say you destroyed—shows quite clearly that you were holding over him a threat of exposure unless his daughter married you.'
An olive pallor had overspread the countenance of Gomez; he was clutching the arms of his chair. In some way this man must have possessed himself of Warren's letter; perhaps that curious man might have kept a copy of it.
His implacable visitor continued: 'I have taken the trouble to have the law looked up as regards evidence given before the coroner. To make a false statement on oath before him is perjury, and of course punishable in the criminal courts. My car is standing at your door; in ten minutes I can meet Superintendent Laurence at Oldbury and tell him all I know of your relations with the dead man and leave him to do the rest. Perhaps I ought to have done this at first without coming to you, but I thought you would be willing to help us. I must waste no more time.' He left his seat and began to move towards the door.
'Stop,' said Gomez desperately. 'If you tell these ridiculous stories to the police you may ruin me, and—well, I've never done you any harm. What do you want me to say?'
'I've told you. I want you to say what you found when you went down to the Abbey.'
'Well, I did go. Warren was to have been here at two o'clock. He did not come. He wasted hours at the Abbey every time he came. I thought he must be there, so I went.'
'What did you find?'
'If I tell you will you undertake that it shall be a secret between you and me?'
'No. I make no conditions of any kind. What did you find?'
'If you make no promise I shall say no more.'
'Very well, Mr. Gomez, then we will waste no more words. I could have proved that you went to the Abbey without your telling me.'
'You are going to the police?'
'Yes.'
'Well, a car was standing at the door. I found Warren in the chapel with a man. Warren was shouting at him in a rage. Just as I came to the door they closed. The man had his back to me. I could not see what he was doing, but I saw Warren fall on his back. I thought that the man had stabbed him. I didn't want to be mixed up in the business, so I turned back and came away. I don't think that either of them saw me.'
'And the man?'
'He was a biggish man, well dressed. I never saw his face, but as I was crossing the park I heard a car starting and a man—it must have been the same—drove off at full speed.'
'That is the whole truth?'
'The absolute truth. I was a fool ever to say that I did not leave the house. I know it now.'
'If I write out your statement you will sign it?'
'No, certainly not. I will put nothing in writing.'
'So that if it suits you to go back on your statement it will be your word against mine?'
'Take it as you like. I will put nothing in writing.'
'Very well, Mr. Gomez, and on my side I shall feel perfectly free to make use of your statement if I think it necessary. Good day.'
To Pamela Thring waiting in the wood the hum of a motor on that unfrequented road brought a sense of relief. No doubt it was Edmund Meredith, flushed with triumph, for it did not occur to her that he could ever fail.
The car drew up and Meredith greeted her with a smile.
'You succeeded, of course.'
'Yes, I succeeded. He confessed to visiting the Abbey, but of course he stopped short of the whole truth. Such a man would.'
What did he say?'
'He told me an incredible story—that he found Warren struggling with an unknown man whose face he did not see; that he saw Warren fall to the ground, and then he ran home for fear of being brought into the business—the only part of his story that I can believe.'
'Did he explain how the man got there?'
'He said that there was a car standing at the door. The man jumped in and went off at full speed.'
'Then he must be able to describe him.'
'One would think so, but he said that the man had his back to him, and that when the car drove off he was half-way across the park. It is an unconvincing story, and as he admits having committed perjury at the inquest no jury would believe him.'
'One part of his story must be true—what he said about the car, because Lamson says he met a car going at top speed when he was coming back from Oldbury. What will you do now?'
'There is only one thing to do, I think—tell the police what he said and let them deal with it. I want your advice before I do anything.'
'But if his story should be true—if there was another man it would not clear Bernard.'
'There could not have been another man. How could he have got access to the chapel? Mr. Warren had the only key. Besides, what object could another man have? No, we are close to Oldbury. Unless you see a strong objection I think we ought to go straight to the police station and tell the superintendent.'
Pamela was silent.
'I feel that you do not agree with me.'
'If you want my advice I will give it. Let us do nothing to-day. I want to make you a real success. Part of Mr. Gomez's story was true; we may still discover something that would clear Bernard. Let us think the whole thing over and go down to the Abbey once again. You see, even if Gomez committed perjury, as he did, it does not prove him guilty of killing Mr. Warren.'
'Tell me this. Are you arguing from reason—in which case we are on even ground—or from intuition—in which case I will cry "Kamerad." For when women resort to intuition they take an unfair advantage of us mere men.'
'Well, if you will have it, I feel it in my bones that if we do anything precipitate we shall be sorry for it afterwards.'
'That's quite enough for me. Jump in; we shall be back in town in time for a late lunch.'
While they were on the road he said, 'I haven't another free day before next Wednesday. Will that suit you?'
They made their plans for Wednesday and then the talk languished. Secretly he was disappointed at her apparent lack of enthusiasm for his success. For some time past he had reconciled himself to the knowledge that he was deeply in love. It was a humiliating discovery for a man of his independent character to find himself deferring to her judgment, trying to win her interest, feeling himself immeasurably inferior to a slip of a girl. And she regarded him with the calm, friendly gaze that she gave to every one she met; perhaps a little less friendly and calm towards him than to many of the others. He was her mother's friend, that was all. What would she say if he screwed up his courage to tell her that he loved her, that she was the one perfect woman in the world, and that he wanted her to be his wife? At that thought his heart beat wildly. There was a scarcely perceptible constraint, a barrier erected by their own thoughts, between them when they parted. Both were conscious of it. Pamela was allowed no time for thought when she reached home. Her brother met her in the hall, all his depression gone.
'You're back at last, Pam. I want to talk to you. Come in here.'
'What has happened? Good news or bad?
'Good, but I want your advice badly. You're in Kitty's confidence and can tell me what to do. I'm now free to tell the whole world where I was on that Wednesday.'
'Where were you?'
'At King's Brenton.'
IN the Hôtel St. James in Paris the Drinkwaters were giving a modest tea-party to their French and English acquaintances. To Amy Winter, who could have been dragged to a tea-party in England only by wild horses, it was one of those functions that must not be missed, because the Drinkwaters were reputed to cultivate only the best French people, and Amy Winter spent much of her life abroad in attempting to do the same. The guests numbered nearly a dozen; the tea came from Mrs. Drinkwater's own tea-merchant in London; the hotel waiters did the rest. There were introductions in deference to the French guests, and Amy Winter found herself in the clutches of a maiden lady with long teeth, apparently a poor relation of the Drinkwaters, who spent this mortal life in endeavouring to save her soul. The theme of her conversation was the rector of her parish in Somerset and the enormous influence he exercised upon the poor of both sexes.
She had an unsympathetic listener, but that mattered little as long as she had a listener of any kind; and so, resigned for the moment to her fate, Amy Winter assumed what she believed to be the proper expression, and opened both her ears to the scraps of conversation that floated to her across the room. They did not appear to be more exciting than the adventures of the Rector of Eversleigh, until she heard in the shrill, hard voice of a recent arrival from London something about Carfax Abbey. Where had she heard that name before? Ah, now she remembered: it was to be Kitty Warren's new home.
The lady with the shrill voice dallied with the Unseen Powers. She was relating to an elderly French couple with a title the sinister history of the Abbey. 'And when they found him there, lying dead, with bruises all over his throat, naturally they said, "Of course it was the ghost of the murdered monk!"'
'Do you mean,' said the Frenchman, 'that the English police believed that?'
'Oh, I don't know about them. I'm talking of the newspapers. There have been hundreds and hundreds of letters to the papers about it.'
'And you, mademoiselle, who do you believe did it?'
'Well, if it wasn't the ghost of the murdered monk, then it was this Foreign Office clerk, Bernard Thring.'
Amy's companion was on the threshold of her dramatic point when the Rector of Eversleigh was confronted with a damsel who presented herself for confirmation with a painted face. 'My dear, he took her into the vestry and produced a towel and soap, and even then she would not wash it off.'
'How splendid!' said Amy irrelevantly. 'Forgive me if I leave you, but I see the Comtesse de Béranger beckoning to me. I'll be back in a moment.'
She made swiftly for the group and addressed the new arrival from across the Channel. 'I couldn't help hearing some of what you were saying. I haven't seen an English paper for weeks. I adore mysteries. Do tell me about Carfax Abbey. I think I know some of the people.'
'Do you? Then you can tell us what we all want to know. What could have been the motive?'
'The motive for what?'
'For the murder of this man Warren.'
'Mr. Warren murdered? How awful! I was at his house only two days before I left England.'
'Do you hear that?' said the lady turning to her hostess. 'Here is some one who can tell us all about the Mystery of Carfax Abbey.'
Amy Winter found herself the centre of a widening group. Even the lady with the long teeth had joined it.
'But I know nothing. I happen to know the people—that is all.'
Her hostess gave her a short summary of the case, not omitting to say that Mr. Bernard Thring, of the Foreign Office, had stubbornly refused to say where he was on the day of the murder.
'And no one can understand,' added the lady with the strident voice, 'why the police haven't arrested him. Then we should know the truth. There must be some underhand influence at work.'
'Why should every one pitch upon that unfortunate man?' asked Mr. Drinkwater. 'For my part I should have wanted to know more about the movements of the Portuguese man who lived next door—Gomez, I think they called him.'
'When did it happen?' asked Amy Winter, but no one, as it seemed, could fix the date.
'It was a few weeks ago—that was all they could remember.'
'I know Mr. Thring quite well. He is the last man in the world to be mixed up in a case of this kind, and if he were he would be the first to tell the truth about it. What is the evidence against him?'
'It doesn't amount to much after all,' said her host. 'The guilty man had an Essex so has Thring, and Thring's car was seen on the main road about four miles away. He had had some sort of a quarrel with the murdered man the day before, and he knew that he would be at the Abbey, and now he won't say where he was that day. That is all there is against him, and you couldn't hang a dog on that.'
'I remember the date now,' said a girl on the outer edge of the circle. 'It was the day before we crossed, because I remember Father talking about it in the train. And we crossed on the fourteenth of September.'
'So did I, and yet I never saw it,' said Amy. She rose abruptly and said to her hostess, 'You won't mind if I leave you so early. This news has quite upset me. You see, the people concerned are my oldest friends and I haven't written a line to any of them to condole.' She slipped away as unobtrusively as she could, regardless of the flood of talk she must have let loose behind her. Instead of going home to her flat she went straight to Cook's office on the corner and took her ticket by the night boat. She had just time to pack.
With all her selfishness, Amy was good-hearted and affectionate, a creature of impulse and mood. If a friend was in trouble she was ready to take immense pains to help her out; even, it was whispered with a smile, to offer to nurse them when they were ill, an offer never known to have been accepted, for to be nursed by Amy would have been to sign one's own death-warrant: the medicine bottles would have been mixed and liniment administered as a soothing draught.
Leaving her luggage in the cloak-room at Victoria, she had taxied to Hampstead, paying the driver two shillings more than the fare. She burst in upon Kathleen impetuously.
'My darling, forgive me! I did not know. How was it?'
'Didn't you see the papers, Amy? They were full of it.'
'I never read the papers, dearest. They are all politics, and politics bore me stiff.'
'They found him dead in the chapel at Carfax.'
'You must have wondered why I didn't write. I heard of it for the first time at a tea-party in Paris yesterday afternoon. I took the night boat. Have they caught the man?'
'No.'
'Idiots! They must have had some clue—some one they suspected?'
'That is the worst part of it. They do suspect some one. Oh, it is awful.'
'Who?'
'Bernard!'
'My poor darling! It all sounds like a bad dream. But why on earth should they suspect Bernard?'
'Because he won't account for his movements that day. He says that it is not his secret—that he is bound in honour not to tell.'
'And what difference has it made—between you two, I mean.'
Tears filled Kathleen's eyes. 'It has made us both miserable, I have only seen him once since and we have broken the engagement.'
Amy Winter jumped up from her chair and threw her arms round the girl as if to protect her. 'What madness! What utter lunacy! Bernard is a brick, and you go and ruin both your lives for a trifle. I've been a fool, too, but never such a fool as that. Well, confession is good for the soul, so here goes. Bernard was with me that Wednesday.'
'With you!' exclaimed Kathleen, in astonishment.
'Yes. Listen, you shall hear the whole of my lurid past, and if you never want to speak to me again I can't help it. You remember that I went to Normandy last summer. Well, there I met, among other people, an Italian painter who danced divinely and talked poetry by the yard. He did a sketch of me and raved about my looks and generally made an idiot of himself. I let him run on; he amused me, and in the end he made love to me, confiding to me in a burst of confidence that he had a wife already. Like a fool, I had written letters to him, and then one morning there came a letter saying that he was "on the rocks." Would I help him? I didn't answer it. A day or two before that day when I was here for tennis came another letter threatening that if I did not send him money he would have to apply to my mother, who would admit the claim that he had on me. Sheer blackmail it was, very thinly disguised. It would have killed poor Mother. For a day and a half I ran round in circles, wondering what I should do, and I met Bernard here. I knew him for a real good sort—a man of honour—and they're not too common nowadays, and as he was in the Foreign Office I knew he must know heaps of people, and he could have my Italian blackmailer, "warned off the Turf." So I spoke to him. He gave me lots of good advice and said that he would see what he could do. The next day he telegraphed proposing himself to lunch with us at King's Brenton on Wednesday. He came and I gave him the letter. He took it away with him and set the machinery going. At any rate, that was the end of my Italian painter as far as I was concerned. I bound Bernard to secrecy from everybody, and especially from you.'
'From me?'
'Yes, I wanted you of all people to think well of me, and I was thoroughly ashamed of myself.'
It was Kathleen's turn now to comfort this self-sufficient young woman who had paid so dearly for her freedom and modernity. She could afford to be generous to one who had lifted such a load from her.
'And now what?' said the girl, looking up at her, shamefaced. 'Shall I write to Bernard relieving him from his promise? Or will you tell him that I've made a clean breast of it?'
Kathleen thought for a minute. 'Yes,' she said, 'I would rather that you wrote—quite shortly—just a line to say that he is now free to tell me where he was that Wednesday. Not a word to say that you have seen me and that I know.'
'Right!' said the girl. 'I'll write by to-night's post and you'll see him here tomorrow. But what about me? I suppose I must never darken your door again?'
'Not this door, Amy, but the oftener you darken the door of my new flat the more I shall love you.'
The two kissed one another with fervour, and the most demonstrative was Amy Winter, she who had waged unrelenting war upon sentiment.
It was the letter from Amy Winter that Bernard held in his hand when his sister returned from Carfax. 'Read it,' he said.
'Amy Winter! I never thought of her. Why should she bind you to secrecy?'
'Well, through her own fault she was in a mess—I needn't bother you with details—but through a pal of mine in the Embassy I got her out of it. She made me promise solemnly never to tell any one—Kitty least of all—anything about it, and I consented, never thinking, of course, of the trouble it would land me in. Now, thank God, she has written me this. I want your advice. If I ask Kitty to see me she may refuse. You are sure to know. Is it too late?'
Pamela would have smiled if she had not seen the misery in his face.
'It's not too late, old boy. That I am certain of. If I were you I should telephone and ask her simply to let you come.'
'Thanks! You're a brick, Pam, and I've been a beast,' he said over his shoulder as he hurried to the telephone. 'Hampstead 3092—quickly, please. Can I speak to Miss Warren ... Kitty, is that you?... Yes, it's me, Bernard. May I come? I've something very important to tell you!... Now?... Oh, thank you!'
Nothing encouraging had been said—Pamela was sure of that—and yet her brother turned to her, rejuvenated and transfigured, as if the troubles of the world had been lifted suddenly from his shoulders.
AMONG the letters waiting for Edmund Meredith at his chambers on Monday morning was one from a firm of solicitors at Oldbury. It was as follows:
DEAR SIR,
We understand that you have been making certain inquiries at Bearstead Manor and that you have had an interview with its owner, Mr. Raphael Gomez. We are instructed to inform you that if you can make it convenient to call at this office by appointment at an early date we shall be in a position to give you additional information which you may consider important.
Yours faithfully
LONGWOOD & WILSON, p.p. H.W.
The light of battle flamed in his eye as he read it. Gomez, he thought, must have resolved to show fight and he was using a country firm of solicitors to wield his weapons; but on reflection he discarded this theory. Gomez had made certain admissions to him, but it was not actionable to call upon a gentleman and listen to his confession. Perhaps he hoped that his solicitors could prevent the disclosure.
In any case the matter seemed worth pursuing. He looked at his engagement-book—an application in Chambers at eleven; a conference with solicitors at three. That could be postponed. If the Master sat punctually and his was the first case; if there were no blocks in the traffic he could catch the twelve-fifty at Paddington and be in Oldbury by two.
He telegraphed to the solicitors asking for an appointment at three that afternoon, telephoned to postpone his conference, and prepared for his journey.
All having gone as he hoped, he walked from Oldbury Station to the solicitors' office, where he was received by a young man, the junior partner, who treated him, as a rising barrister, with unnecessary deference, and at once unfolded his tale.
'I understand that you called at Bearstead Hall last week and had an interview with the owner, Mr. Raphael Gomez.'
'That is so.'
'I do not know the nature of that interview. I know only its result. Immediately after you had gone Mr. Gomez sent for his farmhand, a man of the name of Parish, and dismissed him on the ground that he had been making mischief, and, after handing him a month's wages, ordered him to vacate his cottage within two days. Parish has occupied that cottage for twenty-seven years. All his children were born there long before Mr. Gomez purchased the property. He has an invalid wife.'
'May I ask for whom you are acting?'
'I am coming to that. It happens that Parish and his family are very popular with the staff at Bearstead Hall, and his children are protégés of the rector and his wife. The rector called upon Mr. Gomez to intercede for Parish; he found him implacable and vindictive. He declined to discuss the reason for the eviction, saying simply that he wanted the cottage for others. On this the rector turned to Mrs. Whiskard, the wife of a large landowner in the parish, to see whether a cottage could be found for the man. It seems that Mr. Whiskard does not hit things off with Mr. Gomez, and he was only too glad to take up the case. He brought Parish to us, and it was from Parish that we first heard of your two visits to Bearstead.'
'Two visits?'
'Yes: the first when you saw Parish alone, the second when you had an interview with his employer. It is assumed in Mr. Gomez's household that Parish is being evicted solely on account of what he told you and that you gave his name to Mr. Gomez as your informant in the interview on the occasion of your second visit.'
'That is not so.'
'So I thought. Mr. Gomez must have put two and two together. It seems, however, that the servants at Bearstead have been talking and have told Parish of certain corroborative facts, and for this purpose I have sent for Parish, who is probably now in my waiting-room if you care to see him.'
'I shall be very glad to see him in your presence, but before we go any further I should like to understand why Gomez has done anything so foolish. Surely the servants' gossip will reach the police, and it was to Mr. Gomez's interest that they should know of nothing that cast a doubt upon the evidence that he gave at the inquest.'
'I can give you no explanation. Probably he acted upon impulse—vindictive impulse—and did not know that his household would side with his victim. He has run away from the trouble and is now in London.'
'May I ask how you propose to deal with the case. I suppose Gomez acted within his legal rights?'
'Yes, but legal rights are not always safe ground to go upon. We have appealed to his humanitarian instinct on paper, but we have taken care that the instinct of self-preservation shall not be overlooked. You understand me, I think?'
'Quite, and from my small knowledge of the gentleman I fancy that you will find the second instinct quite highly developed. Now shall we have Parish in?'
The evicted cowman was attired in his black Sunday suit, which imparted a certain stiffness to his gait. He greeted the unwilling author of his troubles with respectful effusion, having, poor man, a conviction that he would restore him to his cottage and his cows.
'Is this the gentleman you told me about. Parish?' began Mr. Wilson.
'Yes, it was you I told, wasn't it, Mr. Meredith—about the master going down to the Abbey that afternoon? Yes, well, I know a bit more now than I did that day. He went down there right enough. Didn't I see him with my own eyes? But what I didn't know the day I saw you was that I wasn't the only one. Mr. Bull—that's the butler up at the Manor—he saw him too, and yet there he was ringing his bell at a quarter to four to make them think that he'd never left his room by the window, though two of us seen him do it.'
'Has any one told the police?' asked Meredith.
'Not as I know of, sir. Now that these gentlemen have taken charge of my affairs every one is looking to them to see justice done.'
'I think, Mr. Wilson, that it would be well for you to take a statement from Mr. Parish now on what he told me at our first interview and the additional details he has just given us. If you could induce the man Bull to come here and make a signed statement before you it might afterwards be useful. I hope to be down here next Saturday morning, and if you will allow me I will call here to learn if there have been any developments.'
Mr. Wilson nodded, being preoccupied with the business of getting Parish out of the room. Having walked three miles into Oldbury, he seemed determined to have full value for his exertions and he had taken root in his chair. Mr. Wilson was a man of resource: he touched a bell and whispered to the clerk who appeared. 'Certainly, sir. No difficulty at all. As a matter of fact, the kettle's on the boil.'
'Now, Mr. Parish, you are thirsty after your walk, I know. If you will step into the clerk's office they will make you a nice cup of tea.'
Parish rose briskly to his feet; he had not had his walk for nothing!
'Now, Mr. Meredith,' said the solicitor when they were alone. I should like to have your advice as to what we can do for Parish. He has to vacate his cottage next Monday unless Mr. Gomez gives way. You have seen the gentleman and are in a position to judge how pressure can be brought to bear on him.'
This appeal put Meredith in a difficulty. He knew from past experience the particular pressure that would be effective, but to use it now when he had almost proof enough to bring the man to justice and clear Pamela's brother would be to bring all his work to nothing.
'I feel that I am not the proper person to advise you. If what Parish has told us this afternoon is true our objects in the case are not the same. Mine is to bring this man Gomez to justice in connexion with the death of Mr. Warren at Carfax Abbey; yours is to get him to abandon the persecution of this man Parish. He has had a fright; he may sell Bearstead and Parish may be engaged by the new owner, or he may find another job. You can perhaps frighten Gomez, but I want to keep myself perfectly free to act as I think right.'
They parted on friendly terms, the solicitor undertaking to have the statements of Parish and the butler ready for him on Saturday morning.
Meredith had bought an evening paper mechanically to read on his journey back to town, but he did not read it. He had to think out his course. If he consulted Pamela, according to his first impulse, he felt sure that that wise and cautious head would advise him to wait, whereas every moment lost would give Gomez time to cover up his tracks. Nevertheless, he had resisted the impulse to call upon the police superintendent at Oldbury and tell him what he knew. Deep down in his consciousness he knew that within forty-eight hours he would be telling Pamela Thring everything and listening to her advice even if he did not take it, and this was what he did.
On the following morning his clerk had laid a new brief on his table. He read it mechanically without giving his mind to it, and then took up the telephone receiver. Pamela Thring's clear voice answered him. 'You know that we are going down to Carfax together to-morrow. Well, things have happened since I saw you and I want your advice. If I come round to a late tea this evening shall I be thrown out? Really? And shall I find you alone about six? Good, then I shall be there.'
With that load off his mind he devoted an hour's undivided attention to the 'statement of claim' under his new brief and to clearing up arrears of the previous afternoon. He was a very quick worker, and he had that rare quality of calm nerves and robust health without which few men succeed at the Bar. The shock of his accident was wearing off, and in spite of the break caused by his convalescence, his practice seemed to be growing amazingly. All the fears he had had that other men would filch his practice from him while he was soldiering as a volunteer on the outbreak of war had proved to be falsified. It had returned to him threefold. He was well enough off to marry. Would he ever have the courage to tempt his fortune by speaking to the one woman of his dreams?
He arrived punctually at six and found Pamela before a steaming urn. 'I could scarcely wait to hear your news,' she said. He gave her a faithful account of his visit to Oldbury.
'And now, as usual, I have come to you for advice. The most effective way to clear your brother of all suspicion would be to denounce Gomez to the police. It will be for them to complete the case against him. The evidence may not be sufficient to convict him of manslaughter, but it is quite enough to convict him of perjury at the inquest. What do you think?'
'Do you really want my advice? Your mind is made up?'
'I really want it.'
'Well, my instinct is against going to the police. I have a feeling that you will regret it afterwards. Besides, it will do no good to that poor man with the funny name. Mr. Gomez would never take him back even if he cleared himself of the charge.' And as Edmund Meredith remained silent she went on: 'I know that you must think me wanting in pluck. To tell you the truth, I have to guard against a silly feeling that I don't want you to do anything you may be sorry for later.' He shot a glance at her and she hastened to water down the force of her confession. 'You see, I dragged you into this business, and I had no right to go to so busy a man. You are just at the turning-point of your career. If you made a mistake in a case that is bound to have a great deal of publicity surely it would damage your practice.'
'I don't care about that if it is a matter of duty.'
'I know, but the word "duty" is saddled with all sorts of burdens. The things one wants to do are often discovered to be duties—I don't mean in your mind, but in the minds of all of us—and often they have unpleasant consequences.'
'You frighten me.'
'Why?'
'Because it can't be healthy for any one to have so much human wisdom bottled up in one small head.'
'No, I'm not wise. Like most women, I live by instinct and impulse, and I'm not really to be taken seriously. I have often wondered why you come to me for advice.'
'Shall I tell you?' At the change in his voice and the light in his eyes she took alarm.
'No, don't tell me. It would be very bad for me. I'll tell you what we will do. We'll think it over to-night, and if to-morrow you are of the same mind then I will say nothing. We can call at the police station on the way to the Abbey, tell them everything, and then go on to the chapel and settle the question as to whether another man could have been in the building when Mr. Warren unlocked the door.' Having settled the hour of starting Meredith rose.
'I had news for you, and your adventures at Oldbury nearly drove it out of my head. My brother's movements on the day of Mr. Warren's death are now cleared up. The person he went to see relieved him of his promise of secrecy. He motored to a house beyond Oldbury on an unpleasant job that was not of his seeking. He behaved very well, got the people out of a scrape, and kept his promise to told his tongue. It is an enormous relief to us all to know the truth.'
'Good! But how is he to be cleared publicly except by running Gomez to ground?'
'Oh, he doesn't care two straws what people think, now that all is made right between him and Kathleen Warren. He's in an idiotic state of happiness and quite unfit to be at large.'
'Don't you care what people think either?'
'Not much, I'm afraid, as long as the work that we have done together is not spoiled.'
'For me it is too late to stop. I must see the thing through. Will you let me?'
'Of course, I am as obstinate as you are.'
NO taxi had ever crawled from Chelsea to Hampstead so slowly as that which Bernard Thring had hailed in King's Road. It seemed as old as its driver, who must have served his apprenticeship in a 'growler' before taxis were invented. At last they were in the very street and he had not thought what to say to the girl who had received him so coldly when he saw her last. He was free now to tell her everything, and that would help him through. It did not occur to him that Amy Winter, who had unwittingly brought so much trouble upon them both, might have taken that duty upon herself. Financially the interview was to cost him dear, for in his preoccupation he dashed from the taxi to the front door without stopping to pay the driver, who was quite content to wait while his clock was ticking up the shillings.
Burrows was welcoming and confidential. 'Miss Kathleen is expecting you, sir; in the drawing-room.' It was a delicate attention that he did not announce him. It was a very different Kathleen who rose to meet him—a shy and repentant Kathleen who wanted forgiveness, if he had had the wit to notice it. He assumed, instead, that they were to begin where they left off. He shook hands awkwardly.
'It is awfully good of you to see me, Kitty. You know I told you that I was not free to tell you where I was on that dreadful day—that it was not my secret. Well, I've just had a letter absolving me of my promise. I was at King's Brenton.'
'The Winters?' said Kathleen innocently. She wanted to have the luxury of hearing his version of the story.
'Amy wanted to consult me about some business abroad and thought that as I was in the F. O. I could get it settled for her.'
'And did you?'
'I believe so.'
'What sort of business was it, Bernard? I didn't know that the Winters had any property abroad.'
'It was a claim for damages or something. The man hadn't a leg to stand on. Some of these claims go perilously near blackmail.' Kathleen Warren suppressed a smile and put out her hand to the young man.
'I'm so glad,' she said.
And then there was an awkward silence. At last Bernard, in desperation, said, 'Kitty, am I—are we—I mean are we just the same as we were—before all this happened?'
'What about your letter?' She held it out to him.
'Forget that I ever wrote it,' he said, tearing it into small pieces. He looked at her, even now not quite sure. 'Then is everything all right now?'
'That is for you to say,' she murmured demurely.
And that was how she found herself in his arms again, pressed close to him as if he feared that some new nightmare would come to take her from him.
'I've heaps to tell you, Bernard,' she said when he would let her speak. 'You know that I am giving up this house and that I've taken a flat much nearer to you?'
'Pamela told me.'
'She's wonderful. She has been my mainstay all through this. Through her I've had news of you. You don't know, Bernard, what a wise little sister you've got.'
'Yes, she's a brick. I've seen little of her these last days. She has some mysterious business with Edmund Meredith. They motor off in the morning, and when I question her as to where they have been she laughs and tells me to mind my own business.' Kathleen pricked up her ears, scenting another family romance. Pamela had told her vaguely that she was working with a friend to solve the mystery of her father's death and so clear Bernard of suspicion, but that was all.
'I think I can guess where they go,' was all she said.
They talked long that evening, for they were on the old footing again, with the difference that the shadow of an unsympathetic father no longer stood between them. It was balm to Bernard to find himself consulted about every little detail of her plans.
'I shall have to tell my trustee that I'm engaged,' she said gaily.
'Will he mind?'
'Not a bit. He's a model trustee—ready to agree to anything I suggest. He will be much relieved to know that I've a man to look after me. He thinks that all girls are anxieties.'
'Kitty, the last time I came here I met that Portuguese in the hall groaning under a load of flowers. It was all I could do to restrain myself from kicking him.'
'Quite unnecessary, I refused to see him; I don't know what he did with his flowers. I can't bear the man, and he knows it. Now we are talking of him, Bernard, oughtn't you to tell the police where you were that day? When we last saw them they had some absurd ideas in their heads about you.'
'Let them think what they like. Where I went is no business of theirs. Besides, if I told them they would assume that I turned from the high road to visit Carfax on my way back.'
'No, I only thought—Let's talk of something else.'
Talk they did, but neither spoke of what was uppermost in the minds of both—when they should take the irreparable step.
On Wednesday morning Pamela Thring woke to find Chelsea wrapped in a blanket of white fog. It was one of those days that go to make dividends for electric light companies, when London goes to its daily work by artificial light and trains crawl into the terminus to a salute of exploding fog-signals. On such a day it was hopeless to expect Edmund Meredith, for the days were short, and even if he succeeded in getting his car to Chelsea, they would arrive at Carfax too late to do anything. He was sure to telephone, she thought.
But he did not telephone. At nine o'clock the car drove up and she heard his voice in the hall.
'How did you get here?' she asked in amazement.
'On four Dunlop tyres. How else?'
'But are we going?'
'Why not? It's a Thames fog. After the first five miles we shall be in sunshine. I promised to be here at nine.' He stopped.
'You're afraid of my driving?'
'Afraid? When I'm with you! How absurd you are!'
'Then put on your hat and let us be off. I'll have to go rather slow for the first mile or so.'
While they were standing in the doorway the postman came up.
'You're late, Postman,' said Pamela.
'Yes, miss; I was lucky to get here at all in this pea-souper.' He handed her a letter, which she slipped into the pocket of her big coat.
Meredith's diagnosis of the weather proved to be correct. Very soon after they had cleared Brentford the fog grew thin and diaphanous, their head-lights were switched off, and they drove into pale winter sunshine. They were now able to talk.
'I did as you advised. I slept on it, and this morning I am more than ever convinced that we ought to call at Oldbury Police Station on the way.'
Pamela sighed. 'Very well, if you are convinced I will say no more.'
He seemed relieved. She was busy with her own thoughts. Presently she said, 'Your driving through that fog was a wonderful performance. Have you quite got over the effects of your accident?'
'Yes; I thought I should have lost my nerve driving, but I don't notice any difference, except that perhaps I go more gingerly on slippery roads. The thing that worries me is that I can't seem to remember exactly how the accident happened, where I was, or, in fact, anything about that day at all. I suppose that is the result of concussion. As a matter of fact, during the last day or two I seemed to remember scraps of a bad dream—the sudden swerve of the car and the hurtling through the air, as one dreams of falling over a precipice—and several scraps of what was obviously nightmare, but I couldn't take hold of it.'
'I shouldn't worry if I were you. It's perfectly natural, really, after such a bad accident.'
They were silent for a while. Then, reading from a milestone, he said, 'Oldbury, six miles. Are you sure that you do not mind calling at the police station? Would you rather we did it on the way back?'
'No, let us get it over. I won't come in, if you don't mind.'
'No, if you won't be cold sitting in the car I think I'd better take the sole responsibility.'
They drove first to the solicitors' office. Mr. Wilson had been faithful to his word: he had the statements of Parish and the butler ready, signed and witnessed. The latter bore out what Parish had said. They stopped the car a few doors short of the police station, and Meredith, having seen that his companion was warmly wrapped up, walked into the station and asked for an interview with the superintendent. To his great relief he learned that he was in his office.
'What name shall I say?' asked the constable.
'Mr. Edmund Meredith.'
He was immediately taken to the austere little office that smelt of new paint and soft soap.
A young constable was passing the car. Pamela leaned out. 'Do you think I could see Sergeant Mannering, just for a moment?'
'The detective-sergeant, miss? I'll call him. What name shall I say? Miss Thring? Certainly, miss,' and in a moment the burly frame of Mannering blocked the pavement.
'Oh, Sergeant Mannering, I want to tell you something that you will be pleased to hear. My brother has accounted for all his movements that Wednesday.'
Sergeant Mannering did not appear to be as pleased as she had expected, but he said, 'I'm very glad to hear it, miss. Where did he go?'
'To King's Brenton in Hampshire. He lunched there with some friends, so he has plenty of witnesses.'
'Why didn't he say so at first, miss, if I may ask?'
'Because he had made a promise not to say. It was a great pity, of course.'
'And the photograph, miss?'
'No further news, I'm sorry to say. I've written again to my uncle in Paris. I suppose that you are very busy?'
'Well, miss, now that this Carfax case seems to be clearing up I don't know that I am. The fact is, miss, that it's my afternoon off duty.'
'Then don't let me keep you,' said Pamela in real concern. 'You must need every holiday you can get. How are you going to spend it?'
Mannering's face relaxed. 'Down on the canal, miss, I think, with my little nipper—teaching him to fish.'
'Then good-bye and good sport!' Mannering went off heavily in the direction of the Dyke and Pamela settled herself in the cushions, prepared for a long wait. Seeking warmth, her hand went mechanically into the pocket of her motoring coat and found the forgotten letter which the postman had given her just before leaving. She saw with a start that it bore a French stamp and was addressed in the handwriting of her uncle. She tore it open.
My Dear Pamela (he wrote),
I must make a clean breast of it! That photograph of your classic features had quite gone out of my head when I got your letter. I took it (the head I mean) between my hands and rocked it gently to and fro—it always does its thinking better in that way. Then, with a flash everything became clear as the noonday. I knew the photograph was safe: I told you so. The fact is that a friend of mine, whom I think you know, was dining with me in Berkeley Square one evening, and seeing it in the place of honour on my mantelpiece, he begged it from me. It was very forward of him, but he was so near tears that I relented and parted with it on loan, with strict injunctions not to deprive me of it for too long. As I think I told you, I've been inconsolable ever since. I'll write to him if you like. I forget his address, but his name is Edmund Meredith and he practises the law.
Your sorrowing uncle
Henry Merton.
'I THINK that we have met before, sir,' said Superintendent Laurence to Meredith. Are you not the gentleman who called for the key of Carfax Abbey? I thought so. Well, have you discovered anything?'
'I think I have. That is why I am here to-day.' Thereupon he told him of his interview with Gomez; how he had confessed that his evidence at the inquest was false, how both Parish and the butler had confirmed his confession that he did go down to the Abbey, and how Miss Thring had found in the cloisters the letter which he swore he had destroyed. 'Here is the letter, Superintendent; you will see in it evidence that Gomez had given some sort of ultimatum to Warren, and therefore he committed another act of perjury when he tried to explain away the abbreviation "ult."'
The superintendent listened to the whole story without a word, keeping his unnaturally bright eyes on the speaker. When he had read the letter and the statements he said:
'What you tell me is very serious, Mr. Meredith. I shall have to consult my chief constable about it. I suppose that Mr. Gomez is still at Bearstead?'
'No. I am told that as soon as he had discharged Parish and ordered him to leave his cottage he left for London.'
'That complicates matters. If he had been there I should have gone myself to see him. I suppose that the other gentleman, Mr. Thring, is still unwilling to account for his movements?'
'I believe not. He has told his family where he was. It was miles away from Carfax, though he did pass along the main road in his car both going and coming.'
'It's a pity that he did not say so at first. It would have saved everybody a great deal of trouble. From what you tell me, Mr. Gomez's defence would be that there is proof only that he went to the Abbey and saw a third person struggling with the deceased. Beyond that there is nothing very tangible.'
'I agree; but the fact that he committed perjury at the inquest will go against him with the jury.'
'You yourself, sir? Do you feel convinced that he was actually the guilty person?'
'I do; otherwise I should not have felt it my duty to come here this morning.'
'Ah!' said the superintendent thoughtfully. 'Still, it would never do to institute a prosecution against a man in Mr. Gomez's position and fail. My chief constable will probably take the opinion of the Director of Public Prosecutions. On the other hand, he may take your view and act upon the evidence at once. In that case you will be required as a witness. I must take a note of your address and get you to repeat your statement in the presence of my shorthand clerk. It won't delay you ten minutes. He is wonderfully quick.'
He touched a bell and a young constable appeared with a shorthand notebook. 'Sit down, Philpotts. Now, Mr. Meredith.'
Edmund Meredith dictated his statement without a pause in the narrative, without a superfluous word and without an omission. When he had finished he said, 'Head the statement, please, "Statement of Edmund Meredith, Barrister-at-Law, Fountain Court, Temple."'
There was a note of respect in the manner of the superintendent when he said, 'I wish that all the statements I have to read were as clear and concise as yours, sir. You must have had more experience of juries than I have.'
'They make mistakes sometimes, but on the whole they can be trusted to do a rough sort of justice. Generally they take a common-sense view of their cases.'
They talked for a time while the clerk was typing out the statement. The superintendent had heard all about Parish's eviction, though not the reason for it. 'There is a lot of sympathy with the man,' he said; 'but the fact is, Mr. Gomez has always been unpopular in the district, though he subscribes liberally to all the local funds. The gentry have never taken to him, for one thing. As one of them said the other day, "He's too oily and effusive in his manners to be honest;"; but the farmers and labourers don't like him either—I can't say why—except that he is a foreigner by name and appearance.'
The clerk returned with the typed statement, which Meredith read over and signed. 'Well, sir. I am very much obliged to you for all you have done. If anything further comes to your knowledge, remember that I shall always be glad to see you.'
They shook hands and Meredith went out to find Pamela and the car.
Pamela had but just time to cram the letter back into her pocket. The full import of her uncle's communication had not yet occurred to her.
'Well?' she said.
'That's well over. It is nearly one o'clock and you've had no lunch. I propose that we go and lunch at the "Crown" and drive on to the Abbey afterwards. You must be freezing.'
'Not a bit. Your car is the warmest place in the world on a cold day.'
As soon as the waiter had taken their order she said, 'What did the police say?'
'I did most of the talking. I dictated a written statement and left my address.'
'Are they going to arrest him?'
'They did not know. They have got to consult the chief constable at Aylesbury first.'
'Did they think the evidence sufficient?'
'The superintendent put his finger on the weak spots. He asked me one rather odd question—whether I myself felt convinced of the man's guilt.'
'What did you say?'
'That unless I was humanly sure I should not have felt it my duty to come to him.'
And as she made no reply he went on, 'I know you disapprove.'
'I have said nothing.'
'No, but I feel it, and because I have such a deep belief in your sound judgment I want you to tell me why.'
'How can any woman say why she feels this or that. She does not use her reason, but her impulse. That is why it is absurd in any man to come to a woman for advice. Fortunately he seldom takes it.'
'Is that quite fair?'
'No, I am exaggerating, but if you want me to tell you really how I feel about the case I will tell you. I feel a presentiment that you will be sorry afterwards, and, well, I should hate that you of all people should make a mistake.'
After lunch, when they were nearing the Abbey, Meredith asked, 'What are we going to do when we arrive?'
'I have the keys of the house and the chapel. I propose that we divide forces. One of us will go right round the walls of the chapel inside and the other outside, looking for any possible entrance besides the main doorway. If we find one it may explain some of these stories about the chapel being haunted by the ghost of the murdered monk.'
'Which will you take—the inside or the out?'
'I'll take the inside. I want to see the ghost.'
'Very well, I'll spend a happy afternoon among the tombs.'
They drew up the car and Pamela went in, saying gaily over her shoulder that she would call him when the ghost appeared.
THE light was already failing when Meredith made his way round the east side of the house towards the waste ground behind which had been the monastic cemetery. He was glad to be alone. It was to be their last visit to Carfax—perhaps the last time he would be alone with her. Now, this very afternoon, he must speak or hold his peace for ever. And yet, was it fair? If she refused him—and how could she or any other woman care for a man such as he—on what terms could they drive back to town together? No, obviously it was not fair, and yet—He stopped irresolute. Of course she would refuse him; he was a fool ever to lift his eyes so high. He ran over in his mind the little things in her speech that had made him hopeful; her interest in his success, her fears of his failure. All these were consistent with the terms of brother and sister into which they seemed to have drifted. Suddenly he remembered that he had been sent to the cemetery with a purpose. He approached the wall of the chapel and began to scrutinize the masonry, but his mind was preoccupied with what was enshrined on the other side of the wall. His Pamela was there. She belonged to no age or country. She was a type of the perfect woman, of whom a few are born in every century! An ancient chapel was a fit shrine for her. What was she thinking of while he was trying to gather courage enough to drag her down to earth? If telepathy had communicated her thoughts they would have been disturbing.
Her first act on entering the chapel had been to fulfil her part in the plan. She went methodically round the building, feeling with her hand behind the packing-cases where they obstructed free passage. There was a doorway at the west end, but it was secured by heavy bolts firmly rusted into their sockets. She found another door leading into the old sacristy, and this was open, but she satisfied herself that there was no access to the sacristy except from the chapel itself. A feeling of awe kept her from entering the sanctuary, but she went round behind it and found no door. Her task was done. She sat down on a packing-case close to the scene of the tragedy and tried to think out some new solution of the mystery. Try how she would she came back to that unlucky photograph. Edmund Meredith must have dropped it in Carfax Abbey. How otherwise could the photograph have been brought there? True, he might have lost it, and the person who found it might have gone to the Abbey and dropped it there. That was a contingency that she must inquire into at once.
So ran her thoughts as she sat there in the dusk waiting for him to come to her while he was setting out upon a strange adventure in the cemetery. The space was buried under a crop of nettles and docks which had choked the stone slabs out of sight. Here and there the top of a stone appeared above the vegetation like a solitary rock in a green sea, and among these was one more ornate than the others—a hut-shaped construction of carved stone that looked as if it had been intended for the tomb of an abbot. He set out first on an inspection of the chapel wall. He found no trace of a door in its whole length, and the windows were unbroken. It was growing dark; there would just be light enough to decipher an inscription. He stumbled over graves and forced his way through brambles to the moss-grown stones that he had pictured as the abbot's tomb. It was elaborately carved, but he could see no trace of an inscription on its walls. The western end was panelled in stone, and here too no lettering could be seen. There remained the eastern end. This was closed by a wrought-iron gate, falling to pieces with rust, and, to his great surprise, it was standing open. It seemed far deeper than the length of the building, a yawning throat of blackness. The old exploring instinct of his boyhood took hold of him. True, Pamela Thring was waiting for matches, and in a moment he had passed the gate and was sliding down a steep incline of soft earth that had filtered in with the rains, obliterating the steps that lay beneath. A close, fetid atmosphere exhaled from the wet earth and moss. He stopped short, feeling suffocated. His heart was beating wildly. Was it the smell that called up this unreal sense of having seen the place before? Was he going to faint? In that case he had better get out of the place in time. He turned and struck a match, and at his feet a burnt match was lying.
It was not his: the only match he had struck was between his finger and thumb. Some one had been there before him. Lighting another match, he stooped to look at the earth, in which there was a clearly marked footprint, but it had not been made that day, for the surface was dry and caked. And yet the footprint he had just made, which was next to it, was so like in shape and size that he would have found it difficult to distinguish between them. He turned again and shaded the burning match with his hand to see how far the tunnel went. Some distance—he could not see the end, and it was a vaulted tunnel with a level floor. A bat flew past his head, brushing his cheek with its wing. Again that curious sensation of having stood in this same place came over him. It was an eerie place; he would never have another opportunity of exploring it. Go forward he must, or he would regret it all his days.
On the level he wanted no matches. The tunnel was six feet from floor to vault, and he could guide himself with a hand on either wall.
Step by step he went forward in the dark until, with that mysterious sense which we develop in the dark, he felt that he was facing a dead wall. He struck another match and found that the tunnel turned sharply to the right at a point where the vaulting came low with very massive blocks of stone. A few feet more and he made out a flight of steps—a circular staircase radiating from a slender central column. It was too narrow for a man of his build; his shoulders were almost wedged in it as he forced his way up. At the top he expected to find a door barring his way. In that case he had his retreat open.
There was no door. His head came into sharp contact with the stone vault, and again he had the curious sensation of having struck his head just in that way before. It must have been in a dream; all seemed so unreal. In that dream, he remembered, he put out his right hand and found the wall open; he did so and the wall was open. He had only to follow his hand.
Within the chapel Pamela sat waiting. Her companion was taking his time over a very simple duty, she thought. She was listening for a footfall in the cloister, but as she listened another sound caught her ear. It was a faint, muffled sound that came from the direction of the altar, as if some heavy body, like a sack, was being dragged over the stone floor. She was not naturally superstitious; but this sound was not such as rats could produce. She felt a cold tremor in her back; her heart almost ceased to beat. The light was so faint now that she could scarcely see the altar, save as a grey mass set in a frame of black gloom. Suddenly part of the background seemed to move, to take shape, to detach itself from the rest, to come swiftly forward, straight at her. It was the ghost of the murdered monk, of course, and for the first time in her life since she was a little child afraid of being left alone in the dark she screamed and fell half-fainting on the flag-stones.
MEREDITH had found himself standing between walls. He had stepped forward a pace or two and the wall on his left fell away. There was just light enough to see that he was beside the altar. The hole he had emerged from was roofed by the altar stone. And there beyond the rails sat Pamela Thring. He had only to go to her, to speak to her from where he stood. But he could not speak. The atmosphere of the chapel, the altar on his left, the pale light filtering through the windows had numbed him as if he was staggering under a physical blow; for through the mist of his lost memory a shaft of burning light had flashed. He was standing in the place where he had stood before, and in the place of Pamela was another human creature, heavy and coarse and rude; and something had happened. What was it? He passed a hand over his forehead in an effort to remember.
A shriek of terror pierced his tortured brain like a sword. He reeled for support against the altar, with every limb paralysed; for now everything came back to him. For thirty seconds he was living in the past, stricken dumb with the horror of that afternoon when curiosity had led him down that subterranean passage into this chapel. And then a moan from the figure crouching on the pavement, there before the altar railing, brought him suddenly to himself. It was the girl who meant all the world to him in need of help. In a flash he was beside her and had his arm round her.
'Pamela, it's only me,' he said, raising her. 'Have I frightened you? I'm so sorry.'
He helped her to a seat on the packing-case.
'I have never made such a fool of myself before! What will you think of me?'
'I had given you a shock. It was quite natural.'
'I thought you were the monk,' she said, half laughing. 'How did you get in? I could find no door.'
'By an underground passage under the altar.'
'Ah, then a man could have got in that day.'
'Listen! I have had a terrible shock. The tunnel, the chapel, and your cry have struck a chord in my memory. It is as if part of my mind had been a blank and it has now been filled in.'
'Tell me,' she said with quick-coming breath.
'When I tell you, you will shrink from me.' Her answer was to edge a little closer to him. His voice sounded like one speaking a long way off. 'I had been down to my college at Oxford for Gaudy Day. I had an afternoon to spare. I meant to wander off the main roads and look at old country houses. I think I have told you that my dream has always been to make enough money to buy one of those Tudor manor-houses which are still to be had very little altered since they were built. I remember leaving the main road, because I saw a house on the rising ground a mile or so to the southward. I became involved in a network of lanes. I should have turned back if I had not caught sight of this Abbey half buried in trees. It looked uninhabited. I drove straight up. There was no bell and my raps on the door were unheard. So I began to go round the house. My first discovery was this gem of a chapel. I was in an old burying-ground, overgrown with weeds, stumbling over stone slabs and tombs buried in undergrowth. And there I came upon what I took to be a tomb of some person of importance. It was a beautiful little shrine of carved stone; the iron gate was unlocked. I went in and lighted a match. I found that the ground sloped down to a vaulted gallery, which I followed to see where it led. At the end was a little stone staircase which brought me where you saw me just now, behind the altar. It was growing dusk, and when I came out to examine the building I found a man there.
'At first he did not see me. He was stooping over an open packing-case, feeling the contents with his hands. I shuffled a foot in order not to startle him, but I fancy that I gave him a pretty bad fright. He saw me and collapsed on the case with his mouth open and his eyes bulging from his head. I suppose—like you—he thought I was the ghost.
'"I hope you will forgive me," I began, but he would listen to no apology. He turned on me and called me every name he could think of—"burglar" and "thief" were the least offensive of them. It was useless to try to mollify a man in such a rage, and as the torrent of abuse continued, I got annoyed and went forward to explain myself. As I did so he ran at me. I put up my hands to keep him off and told him not to be a fool. He was foaming at the mouth with rage. "You break into my house," he shouted; "how do I know that your pockets aren't full of my things. Turn them out and let me see." I thought that I had to do with a lunatic, and I said, "If you go on like this you'll have a fit. Do try to calm yourself and listen to what I have to say."
'He went on shouting, "Turn out your pockets, you scoundrel, or I'll turn them out for you."
'"You will do nothing of the sort," I said. With that he ran at me, pushed his hand into my breast pocket and tore out my letter case and papers. This was too much. I got him by the throat and held him at arm's length, but just as he lifted his fist to strike me in the face he suddenly grew limp and collapsed at my feet—there.' He pointed to a flag-stone just in front of them and stopped, shaking with emotion.
'Go on,' said Pamela softly.
'Have you ever seen a dead man? It is a pitiful sight. He looks so puny and shrunken and helpless. I knelt down beside him and propped up his head, trying to believe that it was only a fainting-fit, but when I found that I could not bring him to I rushed out through the door he had left open and let myself out of the front door to find a doctor. I drove as I had never driven before, making for the main road, where I knew I must find some one to direct me to a doctor. And now my memory becomes confused. I drove for what seemed like hours, and then I remember skidding at a corner where I had put on my brakes to negotiate the turn. I think I remember flying through the air, but nothing else until I woke up in a hospital ward.'
'And my photograph?
'Your photograph?'
'Yes, the one you had.'
'How did you know that I had one? Yes, I had it and carried it always with me until that day. If it was not picked up on the scene of my accident I should have said that it was torn out of my pocket here where we are sitting.'
'That is where the police found it, and I've been trying to trace it ever since. All the copies were accounted for except the copy I gave to my uncle—Henry Merton—and only an hour or two ago I heard from him to say that he had given it to you. I could not tell you about the photograph before because the police had bound me to secrecy.'
'Pamela, what must you think of me?'
'I think of you as I always did. You have nothing to regret—nothing to be ashamed of. I only wish that I had been able to restore your memory—sooner.' There were tears in her voice.
His arm was still round her. He drew her closer to him.
'Pamela, it is no use my keeping silent any longer. You know it already. I love you, and I cannot go on living without you. I know that I've no right to tell you with this shadow hanging over me, but I can't help it.'
She said nothing, but she let her cheek rest on his shoulder.
'You must have known it,' he persisted. 'You knew that I always came to you for advice. It is you that has made everything worth while.'
She put her hand in his. Suddenly she broke from him. 'Mr. Gomez,' she cried. 'What are we to do about him?'
'Good God! I had quite forgotten him.'
'They may be arresting him at this moment.'
'No, there is time, I think. But we ought to start for Oldbury at once. Are you ready, Pamela?'
'Yes, but what are you going to say?'
'I am going to tell the superintendent the whole story as we know it.' She sighed, and, after waiting for her to speak, he went on. 'I was a fool not to take your advice. You warned me that I should be sorry afterwards if I went to the police about Gomez. There is only one thing to do now—to make a clean breast of the whole business! Why are you so silent?'
'I was thinking,' and as they were getting into the car she said, 'I want you to do something for me.'
'I'll do anything.'
'It isn't a very big thing. When we get to the police station I want you to reverse the position of this morning—you to stay in the car while I see the superintendent. I can explain things to him that you cannot, and when I have seen him you will find him better prepared to listen to your story.'
'What will you say to him?'
'Leave that to me. I shall not compromise you by anything I say.'
'Speaking quite frankly, I don't like it. I got myself into this mess against your advice and I ought to get myself out of it in my own way.'
'You said you would do anything I asked.'
'So I will, and I know that whatever you do will be done well, but——'
'Well, here is Oldbury and there is no time to change our programme.'
It was thus that Pamela Thring found herself facing Superintendent Laurence in his office.
Pamela went straight to the point. 'Mr. Meredith called this morning to give you some information about Mr. Gomez.'
The superintendent's brow clouded. He did not approve of discussing police matters with strangers.
'Have you taken any steps yet, may I ask?
'The proper steps have been taken, miss.'
'You haven't arrested Mr. Gomez?' cried Pamela in real alarm. 'I have come to tell you that he isn't guilty. The whole mystery of Mr. Warren's death is cleared up.'
'Indeed? Who was guilty then?'
'No one was morally guilty at all. Mr. Warren was the aggressor, and the person who laid hold of him acted in self-defence. I am going to bring him upstairs to see you, but before you see him I want you to hear the whole story.'
Thereupon she related the tracing of her photograph to a friend who had just come out of hospital after a motor accident which had produced concussion of the brain and, as she discovered afterwards, loss of memory; the visit to the chapel with this friend who, on the shock of seeing the place, had recovered his memory and was able to give a detailed account of what happened when Mr. Warren lost his life.
'This you had better hear from his own lips and you will judge whether he is speaking the truth.'
'It is an extraordinary story.'
'I know it is, but you will be able to check it at every point. You can see the doctor who attended him after his accident; a dozen people can tell you about Mr. Warren's ill-temper; you have heard what Mr. Gomez said that he saw when he went down to the Abbey that afternoon.'
'What is your friend's name?'
Pamela expected the question and was on her feet before it came. 'I'll send him up to you,' she said over her shoulder.
In a minute the door opened and Edmund Meredith came in.
'Mr. Meredith,' said the superintendent. ''I am sorry, but I am afraid I cannot see you just now. I am expecting some one.'
'Miss Thring told me that you were expecting me, Superintendent.'
'I am afraid I do not understand. Nothing has yet been done regarding Mr. Gomez on the information you gave me this morning. Miss Thring was to send to me the man concerned in the death of Mr. Warren.'
'Well, I am the man concerned.'
IN his astonishment Superintendent Laurence forgot to sit down.
'You, Mr. Meredith? You must be dreaming.'
'I have been dreaming ever since my accident, but to-day I have come to my senses. I think that Miss Thring has explained the circumstances under which I lost and recovered my memory. I am now going to tell you exactly what happened in Carfax chapel.' Thereupon he related his meeting with Warren as he had told it to Pamela Thring.
'Then Mr. Gomez was not very wide of the mark in what he told you, Mr. Meredith.'
'That is so. I have put you to a great deal of unnecessary trouble in coming to you this morning.'
'Never mind about that. I shall telephone to the chief constable to cancel my report. The question is regarding yourself. On your own confession which you will put into writing and sign, you are guilty technically of manslaughter, and I suppose that I ought to charge you.'
'I am quite prepared for that.'
'But I doubt whether any jury would convict you, unless the prosecution were able to produce other evidence, and I doubt still more whether the Director of Public Prosecutions would care to undertake the case. The coroner's jury returned an open verdict, I think. Now, Mr. Meredith, I want you to take a seat at this table and write out your statement while I have a word with the chief constable over the telephone.'
'Won't it be quicker if I dictate it to your shorthand clerk?'
'Much quicker, but at this stage I prefer to keep the matter confidential between us two and Miss Thring. We shan't talk, and others might.'
So Edmund Meredith began to write. He wrote fast, but there were many pages to be written, and he had uncomfortable visions of Pamela freezing in the car. No one came to interrupt him. There seemed to be a conspiracy to leave him to himself until his task was done, and it took more than an hour. When he had written the last word he rang the bell and asked the clerk for the superintendent.
'You must have thought that I had forgotten you, sir, but I have only just finished telephoning. I had to speak first to the hospital authorities. They had to look up your case. Fortunately, the doctor was able to speak to me. He certifies that you were suffering from concussion and loss of memory, which is quite a common result of concussion. Then I had a long talk with the chief constable at Aylesbury. Subject to the written reports bearing out what I told him on the telephone, he is prepared to take all responsibility for not proceeding further with the case. You will see now why I did not want you to dictate your report. If at any time the case had to be reopened we have your address. Is that your report? No, I won't read it now. I should like to add, sir, that I am very glad personally that the case has ended as it has.' They shook hands.
It was nearly seven o'clock when Meredith rejoined Pamela in the car. 'You must be starving. I am so sorry, but they would not let me come any sooner.'
'I'm quite warm and happy. I know all about it.'
'By intuition?'
'No, that nice superintendent with the bright eyes came out to tell me at every stage. He told me that he had set you at his table to write out your statement, and he condescended to discuss the case with me. It was by the merest luck that he did not arrange to interview Mr. Gomez this evening. But what really matters is that no one will ever know, and your practice at the Bar won't be affected. There is, of course, Kathleen to think of, but I do not see that she would gain anything by knowing.'
'Let us dine here and drive up to town after dinner. It can't be darker than it is now.'
Dining at another table was a man whose face he knew. It was Mr. Wilson, the solicitor who had charge of Parish's case. He appeared not to see Edmund Meredith, but as soon as the waiter had departed he made an excuse to his companion and came over to their table, bowing awkwardly to Pamela.
'Excuse me, Mr. Meredith; I thought you would like to know that the man Parish is not to leave his cottage. The gentleman has given way.'
'You frightened him?'
'Some one did. He is advertising Bearstead for sale, and he does not intend to return to the place. In fact, both Bearstead and Carfax are in the market, but the owner of Carfax will be lucky if there is an offer.'
Not until they were well on the road to London did Meredith return to what was uppermost in his mind.
'I have never thanked you for getting me out of this mess.'
'I did nothing. I should never have forgiven myself if you had come to harm through our adventures together.'
'You did everything, Pamela. I suppose there is no hope for me?'
'Hope? What do you mean?'
He told her what he meant and had her answer, given frankly and simply. When he set her down at her door they had come to a perfect understanding.
'Good night, Pamela, dearest. You know, don't you, that you have made me the happiest man in the world?'
'Good night, Edmund,' she said, shyly using his name for the first time.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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