House in Charlton Crescent (13 page)

“Y—es.” Bruce paused and hesitated, then he said slowly, “In spite of the doctor's evidence and also the fact that I know the modern young woman is athletic, I have always doubted the possibility of that blow's having been struck by a woman, inspector.”

The inspector looked at him.

“I fancy that an athletic girl of to-day could strike home just as swiftly and just as surely as a man.”

“Well, it may be so,” Cardyn acknowledged reluctantly. “But I should not call either of the two girls in this case—Miss Fyvert and Miss Balmaine—particularly athletic.”

“Miss Fyvert plays hockey and cricket and tennis, takes fencing lessons and rides to hounds. She is no weakling,” commented the inspector dryly. “As for Miss Balmaine, she has lived all her life in Australia until the last few months, for the most part at a sheep farm, miles from civilization. That fact speaks for itself.”

“Y—es,” Bruce acquiesced. “Nevertheless, inspector, I feel quite sure that neither of these girls killed Lady Anne. Miss Fyvert, of course, is out of the question—the idea is so absurd as to be almost farcical. And I do not, in spite of various suspicious happenings, I cannot believe Margaret Balmaine guilty!”

“No?” The inspector's eyes were watching the younger man's face with a curious expression in their keen depths. Then, taking his pocket- book from his breast pocket, he carefully extracted a bank-note and held it out to Cardyn. “Do you know what this is?”

“A fifty-pound bank-note,” replied Cardyn, glancing at it in surprise. “Do you mean that—”

“It is one of the notes given in payment for the pearls by Messrs. Spagnum and Thirgood's manager to the supposed Lady Anne Daventry. The first we have traced so far. It was paid to her dressmaker by—whom do you think?”

“Miss Balmaine, suppose,” Bruce said quietly. “That is what you mean, is it not?”

“Not quite,” said the inspector, a note of triumph creeping into his voice. “This note was paid to Madame Benoit by Miss Dorothy Fyvert in part payment of her account, which account had been running on for several years. Madame says that she had of late been very pressing for at least something on account, as her own liabilities were great. Another thread of the clue leading to Miss Dorothy Fyvert!”

“Clue—clue!” Bruce Cardyn repeated contemptuously. “If all the clues in the world led to Dorothy Fyvert I should still believe her innocent. As for this”—flicking the note contemptuously—“it is no clue at all. It may have been given to Miss Fyvert by Miss Balmaine, or by anybody. Probably it was a present from Lady Anne herself, for I am coming round to the opinion that the old lady sold her pearls and then pretended to have lost them.”

“So that is your opinion, is it?” the inspector questioned dryly. “Well, well, time will show. Now, Mr. Cardyn, we have a busy day or two before us. This house is to be closed and placed in the hands of caretakers as soon as possible. As you know by Lady Anne's will, her brother has the right to select what furniture of hers he pleases up to the value of two hundred pounds, the rest passes to Mr. John Daventry, the jewels and Lady Anne's personal belongings are left to Miss Fyvert, though a codicil gives certain jewels to Miss Margaret Balmaine. Now, Mr. Fyvert and Mr. Daventry have decided that with a few exceptions the furniture shall be sold and the house placed in an agent's hands as soon as possible and either sold or let on a long lease. Mr. Daventry goes down to the Keep to-morrow and Mr. Fyvert and his nieces and Miss Balmaine will leave for North Coton at the end of the week. The servants are to be discharged at once. They will have their legacies and Mr. Daventry will give them a month's board and wages. Then, when the house is empty, our opportunity will come in. You and I will be able to do something, Mr. Cardyn.”

“I don't know!” Bruce Cardyn took a few steps up the room then turned as if he had come to a sudden resolution. “If we have not discovered the murderer when the people are in the house I don't think we shall do much when it is empty. But, in any case, inspector, it is my intention to give up this case.”

“Really! May I ask why?” The inspector took up a position with his back to the fire, throwing a lightning glance from time to time from beneath his bushy eyebrows at Cardyn.

“Well, in the first place, I am not really any use,” Cardyn said, his voice growing determined. “I do not know whether it is by your orders, inspector, but any independent investigation attempt is at once suppressed by the police. I am reduced to watching you at your work and becoming a sort of chorus—a Watson to your Sherlock Holmes, don't you know. Now that won't suit me. I came here, engaged by Lady Anne Daventry herself, to make her life safe and to discover her would-be assassin. How lamentably I failed you know as well as do. But acknowledging my failure I see now that I ought to have retired from the case, not stayed on as your assistant or factotum, whichever you like to call it.”

“So now you want to leave me to finish the case, suppose.”

“Yes. I mean to leave the case in the hands of the regular police. My partner is already grumbling at my long absence.”

“Just so!” The inspector came a step nearer. “Suppose I say that you shall not go—that you shall stay and help us just as long as I choose, Mr. Bruce Cardyn?”

Cardyn flushed hotly.

“I cannot imagine anything so absurdly inconceivable.”

“Can you not?” A change came into the inspector's voice. It grew suddenly stern and harsh. “And yet I say it now. I tell you that if you attempt to give up this case, I will have you instantly arrested for the murder of Lady Anne Daventry. You will stay with me and act as my assistant or factotum, as you term it, until I release you. Now, do you understand?” His steel-grey eyes were fixed gimlet-like upon the young man's face, as though they would wrest every secret his brain contained from him.

For a moment Bruce Cardyn stared at him in speechless stupefaction. Then the hot colour that anger had brought to his face during the first part of the inspector's speech paled suddenly. He became white, lurid, corpse-like. Only his eyes met the inspector's honestly enough, but with something— was it horror or fear or anguish, or some subtler emotion compounded of all three?—looking out of their tortured depths.

He moistened his lips, he tried to speak, but at first no words would come.

“You mean—you mean—what do you mean?” he stuttered at last.

The Ferret's eyes watched him mercilessly, missing not one detail, not one iota of the misery in his face. Then the inspector came close up to him.

“Now you shall hear what I mean,” the grim voice went on. He stuck his face forward and whispered a few words in the young man's ear. “Now I think you know what I mean—and what other people will call you if I speak aloud—now you will realize why you will stay here as the Watson to my Sherlock Holmes, until I give you permission to return to your inquiry office—to retire from the case.”

The papers were full of the inquest on Lady Anne Daventry. There were sensational headlines on the front pages, developments were expected hourly. The inspector's remarks about the finger-prints were quoted everywhere. John Daventry's evidence was given almost verbatim.

A great pile of the morning papers lay on the breakfast table in that house in Charlton Crescent. A hurried perusal of them was being rapidly made by John Daventry, while the raucous cries of the street vendors, floating in through the open window, could be heard from the Bayswater Road.

“Finger-Print Test!” “Clues in the Hands of the Police!”

At last with an exclamation of rage Daventry strode to the window and banged it down.

The only other occupant of the room, the rector of North Coton, looked up in mild surprise from his breakfast.

“Dear me, John, what is the matter?”

“Matter?” echoed Daventry in exasperated accents. “Didn't you hear those confounded newsboys in the streets just now?”

“I am afraid I was not taking any notice of them,” confessed the rector. “You see, my dear John, that is a fault I am afraid we priests are very prone to, inattention. We have so schooled ourselves, I might almost say as a duty, to abstract ourselves from our earthly surroundings when we are composing our sermons that it becomes almost second nature.”

In spite of his wrath Daventry grinned wickedly. “I have taught myself to abstract my thoughts when I am listening to 'em, I know.”

The rector's mild smile did not decrease.

“That is the sort of thing the rising generation thinks funny, I believe. Never mind, my dear John, time will bring you wisdom. And now, to change the subject. Personally I think that it is a mistake in talking so much of the five people in the room when my dear departed sister was murdered, and implying, or saying as some of them do say in so many words, that the murderer was to be found among you. The very idea would be ludicrous if the occasion was not so serious. The doors were open, and anyone might have come in and snatched up the dagger and—and used it and got away again. To say nothing of the man at the window—” 

“Damn!” said John Daventry suddenly and heartily.

“My dear John!” The rector looked shocked.

“I beg your pardon, sir.” Daventry pushed back his chair and going over to the mantelpiece took a cigarette from his case and lighted it. “But when I think of that blighter lose my temper. If he hadn't got up to the window with his clamps or whatever the things are he wears, Aunt Anne would have been alive now. Do you suppose anyone would have got into the room and stabbed her if we had all been sitting round at tea?”

“Of course they could not,” agreed Mr. Fyvert. “I see you hold the theory of the Cat Burglar, John.”

“What other theory is there to hold?” Daventry questioned. “The fellow was there safe enough. They tell me he couldn't have got up from the terrace, because there were detectives planted all about the garden below. Well, if those bally brutes in the garden were no better than their master in the house, don't think they would have done much to interfere with the Cat Burglar.”

“I don't know—I don't know.” The rector, having finished his breakfast, folded his hands over his slightly prominent waistcoat and looked at Daventry with friendly interest. “I have formed no theory at all myself. I am content to think of it as a terrible and mysterious happening, and to leave it at that, until all is revealed in due time.”

“I tell you what, Mr. Fyvert, I have woke up two or three times in a night sometimes lately, and have seen the whole blasted thing—the scaffold and all the thingumajigs, you know, and feel that I have had a good breakfast—tea and toast and an egg—the poor beggars always do, you know. And I'm there all tied up and blindfolded. My God! I went over the trenches times enough, but this— And when I think of the poor wretches that have faced it—and women too—my Lord, but it won't bear thinking about.” He ended with a strong shudder, and turning his face to the mantelpiece rested his arms on the high wooden shelf and laid his head upon his hands.

Mr. Fyvert looked at him with pitying wonder.

“My dear John, this is nerves, you know—nothing but nerves! You must make up your mind not to give way to it. It is a good thing you are going down to the Keep. In the country and away from this house you will soon look upon things in a different light.”

“I don't know what sort of a light the folks at the Keep will regard me in,” retorted Daventry. “They liked Aunt Anne down there, you know. They knew her before the boys died and she became crabby and crotchety. I would go abroad—big game shooting or something of that sort—but that fellow Furnival gave me a hint that if I tried to get out of reach in any way I should be arrested at once.”

“I am inclined to think that Inspector Furnival exceeds his duty,” observed Mr. Fyvert, stroking his clean-shaven chin. “He said something of the same kind to the girls this morning.”

“The girls!” thundered Daventry, staring at him. “Do you mean Dorothy and Margaret?”

“Oh, do not shout so, my dear John. It goes through my head,” the rector said, putting his hand to his brow. “I quite agree with you—the idea is preposterous. He was speaking more particularly to Margaret, I think. She was speaking of returning to Australia. I fancy that since my poor sister's death she has felt that she would rather go home to her old friends. One cannot wonder at it. But Furnival warned her that neither she nor any of the witnesses would be allowed to get out of communication with the police.”

“Then I should think he does indeed exceed his duty,” uttered Daventry explosively. “Of course if the police have reason to think that anybody committed a crime they can arrest him or her as the case may be. But I am blessed if they can keep the whole lot of us dangling round while they try to manufacture evidence against us. I shall consult my solicitor as soon as I get back to the Keep. I don't put any faith in these jumped-up johnnies here myself.”

“I think you will be quite wise,” the rector approved. “I suppose you know that Margaret is anxious to realize her share of what was left her by my sister.”

“No, I didn't know. But I think—” Daventry was beginning, when he was interrupted.

Soames came in with a pile of letters that had come in by the second post.

“Might I speak to you, gentlemen, for a minute?” he said, looking inquiringly from one to the other.

There was no doubt that the tragedy of his mistress's death had told terribly upon Soames and was still telling upon him. He looked years older than the bland and portly butler who had taken the cakes in to that memorable tea-party.

“I wanted to ask you in the first place, gentlemen, if the house is to be closed from to-morrow, what is to become of my silver? Is it to go to the bank?”

“No. Nothing is to be taken from the house but your own personal belongings, I understand from Inspector Furnival,” the rector of North Coton answered him, while Daventry stared moodily into the fire.