DEEP LANE
Mr. Fransemmery brought his story to an end with a force and emphasis
worthy of a judicial utterance, and Blick, who was now busily
occupied with suggestions of a surprising sort, nodded assent to his
concluding remarks. But Mrs. Braxfield, in spite of her obvious
agitation, showed a dogged disinclination to accept Mr. Fransemmery’s
premise.
“That’s all very well, Mr. Fransemmery,” she said after a pause.
“You’re a lawyer, and ought to know! But it’s all ifs and buts! If,
as you say, Guy Markenmore married Myra Halliwell, and if they had a
child, a son, and if that son’s alive—well, then, of course, he
succeeds his father—or his grandfather, for as far as I’m aware,
there’s nobody knows which died first, Sir Anthony or his elder
son—in the title and estates. But—it’s all if!—if—if—if! I don’t
believe Guy Markenmore ever married that girl—not I! He may have
taken her away with him, and they may have lived together in London,
and there may be a child—but all that doesn’t prove any marriage,
Mr. Fransemmery!”
“What about the inscription on the tombstone, Mrs. Braxfield?”
suggested Mr. Fransemmery. “My informant saw it!—and I take Margaret
Hilson to be a truthful woman.”
“I’m not saying anything against Margaret Hilson,” retorted Mrs.
Braxfield. “A decent enough woman! And I don’t deny that she may have
seen such an inscription. But that proves nothing. Anybody could so
describe anybody else—especially in a London cemetery, and who’d be
the wiser! There’ll have to be more evidence than that forthcoming,
Mr. Fransemmery, before it’s proved that all you’ve told is
true—marriage lines, and birth certificate, and so on.”
“All that will doubtless be brought forward, ma’am,” replied Mr.
Fransemmery. “We shall hear more, I’m convinced—much more! Somebody
must know.”
“And you say you advised Margaret Hilson to go and tell this tale to
Lawyer Chilford?” asked Mrs. Braxfield. “At once?”
“At once!” answered Mr. Fransemmery. “Matters of that sort can’t be
allowed to wait. I think Margaret Hilson will already have seen Mr.
Chilford—she spoke of going down to his house early this evening.”
“Then they’ll know at the Court,” observed Mrs. Braxfield with a
frown. “Chilford would be sure to go there and tell them as soon as
he got to know.”
“They may know—by now,” asserted Mr. Fransemmery. “But whether they
know tonight or tomorrow, Mrs. Braxfield, what is certain is that
this matter will have to be fully investigated. And if I may give you
a little advice, ma’am, in the capacity of a neighbour who wishes you
well, I should counsel you to wait a little before you send your
daughter to Markenmore Court as Lady Markenmore. She may, you know,
be only Mrs. Harry Markenmore. Count twenty, ma’am!”
With this Mr. Fransemmery, nodding at Mrs. Braxfield with the warning
expression of a sage counsellor, rose to take his leave; his Airedale
terrier, hitherto sleeping with one eye open under the table, rose
too; accompanied by Blick they sallied out into the night; dark, save
for the light of stars, for the moon had not yet risen. In silence
they threaded the garden paths of Woodland Cottage and emerged upon
the open hill-side.
“Queer revelations!” muttered Blick at last as they paced slowly
across the close-cropped turf. “I gather that you believe this story
about Guy Markenmore’s marriage?”
“I do!” replied Mr. Fransemmery firmly. “Putting everything
together—I do! The woman from whom I got my information today,
Margaret Hilson, is the sort of person that makes an ideal
witness—you know what I mean. The sort that tells just what she
knows, doesn’t want to add or subtract, embellish or disfigure, gives
a plain affirmation or an equally plain negative; the sort, in fact,
that hasn’t the imagination necessary to a deviation from truth. I
have no doubt whatever that she gave me a plain, unvarnished account
of what happened during her two visits to London, nor any that she
saw the grave and the inscription she describes. And as to the
probabilities of the marriage—well, Mr. Blick, I am, perhaps, a bit
of an old gossip!—anyway, I like to talk to the country people about
their affairs, though I hope I am not a Paul Pry. I like to hear of
their little comedies and tragedies—I take a sympathetic interest in
them. Now, long before I heard this story from Mrs. Hilson, I had
heard of Myra Halliwell and her disappearance, and I had had a hint
from one or two old people in the village that it might not be
unconnected with Guy Markenmore. So—I was not unduly surprised at
what Mrs. Hilson told me.”
“I wonder if Myra’s sister—the woman at the Dower House—knows
anything about it?” said Blick.
“Daffy, as they call her—I wonder, too,” answered Mr. Fransemmery.
“I think not, though. Daffy—whose correct name is Daphne—has been
away in India for three years with Mrs. Tretheroe, and has only
recently returned. Of course she may. But if she does, you may be
certain she’ll soon let it be known!”
“She looks,” remarked Blick thoughtfully, “like a woman who’s got a
good many secrets. Secretive!—very much so. Well, it’s an odd
business, sir! And as you unfolded your story to Mrs. Braxfield I
began to speculate on its possible relation to my particular
business—naturally!”
“In what way, now?” asked Mr. Fransemmery.
“Well, first of all,” replied Blick. “An obvious question: Has this
anything to do with Guy Markenmore’s murder?”
“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Fransemmery. “Has it, indeed. A very big
question, my good sir, and a remarkably difficult one to answer.”
“Another,” continued Blick. “Mrs. Tretheroe told us at the inquest
that she and Guy Markenmore had renewed their old love-affairs when
they met last Monday night, and had agreed to get married at once.
Now, I’d like to know this: Did Guy Markenmore tell her that he’d
been married before, lost his wife, and had a son living?”
“Did he, indeed?” said Mr. Fransemmery. “I wonder? But—who knows?”
“If he did,” Blick went on, “why didn’t she divulge that fact at the
inquest? If she knew it, why did she conceal it?”
“Aye—why?” muttered Mr. Fransemmery. “Why?”
“And if Guy Markenmore didn’t tell her—the woman he was going to
marry!—why didn’t he?” said Blick. “Did he or didn’t he? It strikes
me, sir, that there’s a good deal that’s of high importance in that!”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” agreed Mr. Fransemmery. “But then, between you
and me, there’s a good deal else that I’ve wondered about ever since
I heard Mrs. Tretheroe’s evidence!”
“What, for instance?” asked Blick.
“Nothing, in any particular instance,” replied Mr. Fransemmery. “I
have wondered, generally, if Mrs. Tretheroe told all she might have
told; if she was candid, open, ingenuous, truthful. Between
ourselves, I think she’s a vain, selfish, silly woman—and as stupid
as such a woman always is!”
“Stupidity of that sort is very often allied with a good deal of
cunning, isn’t it, though?” suggested Blick. “She’s struck me—what
bit I’ve seen of her—as the sort of woman who could play a game.”
“I shouldn’t wonder!” agreed Mr. Fransemmery.
“Then, the question for me is—is she playing any game now, and if
so, what is it?” said Blick. “And has von Eckhardstein anything to do
with it?”
“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Fransemmery. “That’s still another question!”
“Nice mystery altogether!” muttered Blick.
“Black as this lane, my friend,” said Mr. Fransemmery, as they
descended into the deep and narrow cutting which, high-banked and
tortuous, wound its way upward to the summit of the downs between The
Warren and Woodland Cottage. “And you’ll want something more than
starlight by which to find your way in it! Up to now, I believe,
you’ve scarcely got hold of the ghost of a clue?”
“Got no more than a very slender thread, which mayn’t be a thread at
all,” answered Blick, thinking of the information that Lansbury had
given him. “No!—so far, Mr. Fransemmery, I’ve very little, indeed,
to work on. I—what’s your dog up to?”
The Airedale terrier, who had preceded the two men into the darkness
of the lane, had run on before them to the spot whereat he had shown
inordinate signs of restlessness and curiosity when Mr. Fransemmery
was on his way to Mrs. Braxfield. He was now whimpering again, and as
they came near the bushes, they heard him tearing and scratching at
the soil; the whimpering presently changed to growling.
“Now I shouldn’t wonder if that is a badger!” remarked Mr.
Fransemmery. “I have had an idea that there were badgers, or a
badger, in this lane, and hereabouts, for some time; I fancied that I
detected footprints in the loose, sandy soil. If only I had a
lantern, I could soon tell, for a badger’s burrow is easily
distinguishable from a fox’s hole.”
Blick put a hand in his coat pocket and produced something which,
under pressure of his fingers, gave a sharp metallic click, followed
by a steady glare of light.
“There you are!” he said. “Electric torches are better than lanterns.
Where is he?”
Mr. Fransemmery forced aside the bushes behind which the Airedale was
busy, and revealed him at work, digging furiously at a cavity in the
bank. The terrier turned his head, blinked at the light, and went on
with his task more eagerly. Mr. Fransemmery sniffed.
“Pho!” he exclaimed. “A badger, certainly! No mistaking the rank
odour—quite different to that of a fox. But he won’t be there now,
my boy! Badgers go abroad soon after it’s dark, on the search for
roots, and insects, and frogs, and the larvae of wasps and bees. Come
away, Tinker!”
But the Airedale went on digging, and Blick watched him with
interest, keeping the glare of his electric torch on the mouth of the
burrow.
“Good hand at excavation!” he said. “He’s thrown some stuff out
already. He’d soon be deep into the bank at that rate if—hello!”
He suddenly stooped forward, pushed the dog aside and from the
gravelly soil and loose sand that he had thrown up dragged forth an
object which shone bright in the glare of the torch. With a sharp
exclamation he held it up to Mr. Fransemmery.
“Look at that!” said Blick.
Mr. Fransemmery looked—and recoiled.
“Good Heavens!” he exclaimed. “A revolver!”
Blick straightened himself, and holding his find in his left hand,
turned the full light of the electric torch on it.
“A Webley-Fosbery automatic pistol,” he said. “And—new! And thrown
in there not so long ago! Mr. Fransemmery!—what if we’ve found the
thing that caused Guy Markenmore’s death? I shouldn’t wonder!”
Mr. Fransemmery backed away into the lane.
“Is—is that loaded?” he asked nervously. “I beg you to be careful,
my dear sir! I have the greatest horror——”
“You hold the torch,” interrupted Blick. “I’ll be careful: I know all
about firearms.” He handed the electric torch to his companion, and
with both hands free began to examine the mechanism of the automatic
pistol. “Nothing in it,” he announced presently. “Not a single
cartridge! But look you here, sir—this has not been in there long!
Not a speck of rust—all bright, clean, fresh——”
“The sand is very dry,” said Mr. Fransemmery, glancing at the mouth
of the burrow. “And the gravel, too. Perhaps——”
“No!” said Blick. “If that had been there long, there’d have been at
any rate some show of rust, at least a speck or two on the metal.
Talk about luck! I feel inclined to give your dog a silver collar!”
“You attach great importance to this?” suggested Mr. Fransemmery.
“The greatest!” exclaimed Blick. “I should just think so! Why!—we’re
within half a mile of the place where Guy Markenmore was shot dead
with a pistol of some sort, and here is a pistol, an automatic
pistol, which has obviously been thrown—quite recently—into a hole
in the bank, behind bushes, in a lonely lane! Important? My dear
sir!—it’s a clue!”
“We are close to my house,” observed Mr. Fransemmery. “Let us go
there and consider the matter more fully. Bless me!—what a very
remarkable discovery! It does, indeed, need deep and precise
attention.”
“It’ll get it!” said Blick grimly. “First material clue I’ve struck.”
Mr. Fransemmery led the way to his house. At his door they were met
by the trim parlourmaid.
“Mr. Chilford is waiting for you in the library, sir,” she said. “I
told him I didn’t know how long you’d be out, but he said he must
wait.”
Blick pulled Mr. Fransemmery’s sleeve as they entered the hall.
“Not a word about the automatic pistol!” he whispered. “Don’t want
that to get out at all, yet. Look here—Chilford mightn’t want my
presence; shall I go?”
“No; come in,” said Mr. Fransemmery. “I want you to come in. I’ll
tell him that you know all about this Hilson business. Ah, Chilford!”
he went on, as they entered the library, where the solicitor,
evidently full of thought, sat staring at the fire. “I know what’s
brought you here—I expected it! You’ve had Margaret Hilson to see
you—she’d tell you she’d seen me already. Well, Mr. Blick is fully
conversant with her story, so——”
Chilford looked from one to the other.
“Something more than Margaret Hilson’s story brought me here,
Fransemmery,” he answered. “I’ve seen her, of course—she called on
me late this afternoon. I didn’t know what to think of her story,
exactly, as long as it was just hers, unsupported. But since seven
o’clock, this evening, I’ve known it to be true—in every detail!”
“You have?” exclaimed Mr. Fransemmery. “How now?”
Chilford waved a hand towards the window from which, had it not been
night and the blinds drawn, they would have looked across the park to
Markenmore Court.
“The successor to the title and estates is down there!” he said. “A
boy of six!—quite unaware of what he’s come into!”
Mr. Fransemmery glanced at Blick, and saw that what he himself was
thinking about was also in the detective’s thoughts—the question
raised by Mrs. Braxfield as to marriage or no marriage.
“You’re sure, then, of his right?” he said, turning to Chilford.
“But—how has he turned up? This is something unexpected, isn’t it?”
“Hadn’t the ghost of a notion that any such development would occur,”
answered Chilford. “Nobody ever suggested to me that Guy Markenmore
had been married—I always understood that he never had! And when
that woman, Margaret Hilson, came to me this evening, just after I’d
returned from my office, with the story she’d already told you, I was
more than a little amazed. But I know her for a decent, respectable
woman, not at all likely to invent fairy-tales, nor, for that matter,
to tell what she didn’t believe to be true, and when I’d heard her, I
began to think there might be, well, something in it. And do you
know, Fransemmery, she hadn’t left my house half an hour when there
drove up from Selcaster railway station a well-known London
solicitor, Quillamane, of Bedford Row, who brought with him a lady
and a small boy, and a story agreeing entirely with that which I’d
just listened to. What’s more,” concluded Chilford, with a dry laugh
and a wink at Mr. Fransemmery, “he brought full documentary proofs of
all that he had to tell. Pooh!—the thing’s quite clear. There’s a
Sir Guy Markenmore in Markenmore Court tonight!—and he’s six years
old!”
“Then Guy Markenmore did marry Myra Halliwell?” said Mr. Fransemmery.
“He did!—when they both left here,” answered Chilford. “And they
lived very quietly, Clapham or Tooting or Wandsworth way, at first.
Later, she lived there alone—he was a good deal away from her, and
had a West End flat. She died—but there’s the boy. Quillamane knows
the whole thing—has all the papers, marriage certificates, birth
certificates, everything: he has been in Guy’s confidence all along.
When the child’s mother died, the child was placed in the hands of
Quillamane’s sister, who’s now with him at the Court—they’re all
there: I took them up, myself.”
“And Harry Markenmore and his sister—how did they take it?” asked
Mr. Fransemmery.
“To tell you the truth, they took it like bricks!” replied Chilford.
“They didn’t turn a hair, either of ’em, and to do them justice, they
immediately began to make much of the youngster. But I say!—I reckon
I know who’ll be furious about it! Why, I heard that Harry Markenmore
has secretly married Poppy Wrenne, with her mother’s knowledge!”
“That’s so!” said Mr. Fransemmery. “The marriage took place in
London, three months ago, in the mother’s presence.”
“Then Madam Braxfield will be the angriest woman in Christendom when
she hears of this!” exclaimed Chilford. “Of course, she was hoping
that Guy was dead long since, and nobody’d ever heard of him for
seven years, and that Harry would get the title, and Poppy be my Lady
Markenmore! Well—that’s knocked on the head! Queer business! and
Quillamane tells me there may be more. It turns out that Guy, who’d
made a regular pot of money in his business doings, all left, of
course, to the youngster by a recent will, wanted to give Markenmore
Court absolutely to his brother and sister, and was going to take
steps to hand it over as soon as he succeeded. But the estates are
entailed! This child gets everything! Interesting, isn’t it,
Fransemmery, from a lawyer’s point of view?”
“From that point—very,” agreed Mr. Fransemmery. “Complicated, too.”
He was wondering if Chilford wanted to expatiate on the intricacies
of the situation, and hoping he didn’t, for he himself felt in no
humour for discussing legal questions. But Chilford presently went
away and Blick, after a whispered word with Mr. Fransemmery, went
with him. Together, they walked towards the village, on the outskirts
of which Chilford lived.
“Any luck in your line yet, young man?” asked Chilford, before they
parted.
“Precious little!” replied Blick.
“As mysterious a case as ever I heard of!” exclaimed Chilford. “Not a
ray of light on it!”
Blick left him at the cross-roads and turned into the Sceptre.
Remembering Crawley, and not averse to a friendly chat before
retiring, he looked into the bar-parlour and asked for him.
Grimsdale, reading a paper behind his bar, shook his head.
“Never been back, Mr. Blick,” he answered. “He ordered his dinner for
seven o’clock, but he didn’t come in for it. Ain’t set eyes on him
since he went out just after breakfast; I suppose he’s altered his
mind and gone elsewhere. Don’t signify, neither—he paid his bill!”