Luncheon, not a particularly cheerful meal, was over. Mrs.
Phillimore's jewelled cigarette case lay on the table beside her, but
her cigarette had gone out in its amber holder, and her eyes were
furtively watching her fiancé as she chatted with Mr. Collyer, who sat
opposite.
Aubrey Todmarsh had taken his uncle's advice and pulled himself
together. He was talking much as usual now, but John Steadman watching
him from his seat opposite thought that his face looked queer and
strained. His eyes no longer seemed to see visions, but were bloodshot
and weary. His high cheekbones had the skin drawn tightly across them
to-day and gave him almost a Mongolian look; his usually sleek, dark
hair was ruffled across his forehead.
John Steadman had not hitherto felt particularly attracted by the
young head of the Community of St. Philip. Apart from the natural
contempt of the ordinary man for a conscientious objector, there
always to Steadman appeared something wild and ridiculous about
Todmarsh's visionary speeches and ideas. To-day, however, his
sympathies were aroused by the young man's obviously very great
disappointment over Hopkins's defection. He felt sorry for Mrs.
Phillimore too. The poor little widow was evidently sharing her
lover's depression, and, though she did her best to appear bright and
cheerful, was watching him anxiously while she talked to her hostess
or to Steadman himself.
It seemed to Steadman that he had never realized how protracted a meal
luncheon could be until to-day, and he was on the point of making some
excuse to Mrs. Bechcombe for effecting an early retreat when the
parlourmaid entered the room with two cards—on one of which a few
words were written—upon her silver salver.
Mrs. Bechcombe took them up with a murmured excuse. She glanced at
them carelessly, then her expression changed. She looked round in
indecision then turned to Steadman.
“I—I don't know what to do. That woman——”
The momentary lull in the conversation had passed; every one was
talking busily. Under cover of the hum, Steadman edged himself a
little nearer his hostess.
“What woman?”
For answer she handed him the larger of the two cards.
“Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke,” he read. He glanced at Mrs. Bechcombe.
“What does this mean?”
“That woman—I have always felt certain she was responsible for Luke's
death,” Mrs. Bechcombe returned incoherently. “Oh, yes”—as Steadman
made a movement of dissent—“if she did not actually kill him herself
she took her horrid diamonds to him and let the murderer know and
follow her. Oh, yes, I shall always hold her responsible. But to-day
you see she—I mean he—the man says their business is important.
Perhaps he has found out—something. What am I to do?”
“Why not ask them to come in here?” John Steadman suggested. “We are
all members of the family,” glancing round the room.
Mrs. Bechcombe hesitated. Aubrey Todmarsh sprang to his feet.
“I must go, Aunt Madeline. I have to see about bail for Hopkins, and
that he is legally represented. And, besides, I don't really feel that
I can stand any more to-day.”
His face was working as he spoke, and they all looked at him
sympathetically as he hurriedly shook hands with Mrs. Bechcombe. His
absorption in Hopkins's backsliding was so evidently of first
consideration, rendering him oblivious even of his fiancée. As for the
poor little Butterfly, her spirits, which had been gradually rising,
seemed to be finally damped by this last contretemps. She raised no
objection to her lover's abrupt departure, but sat silent and
depressed until the Carnthwackes were ushered into the room.
One glance was enough to show John Steadman that both the American and
his wife were looking strangely disturbed. They went straight up to
Mrs. Bechcombe.
“I am obliged to you, ma'am, for receiving us,” Carnthwacke began,
while his wife laid her hand on Aubrey Todmarsh's vacant chair as
though to steady herself.
“You said it was important,” Mrs. Bechcombe's manner was distant. She
did not glance at Mrs. Carnthwacke.
“So it is, ma'am, very important!” the American assented. “Sure thing
that, else I wouldn't have ventured to butt in this morning. Though if
I had gathered your guests were so numerous”—looking round
comprehensively and making a slight courteous bow to Steadman and
Collyer—“but I don't know. It is best that a thing of this importance
should be settled at once.”
As he spoke he was slowly removing the brown paper covering from a
small parcel he had taken from his breast pocket. Watching him
curiously Steadman saw to his amazement that when the contents were
finally extracted they appeared to be nothing more important than the
day's issue of an illustrated paper.
Carnthwacke spread it out. Then he looked back at Mrs. Bechcombe.
“I don't want to hurt your feelings, ma'am. And it may be that some
one else belonging to the house, perhaps that gentleman I saw down at
the Yard”—with a gesture in Steadman's direction—“would just look at
this picture.”
Steadman stepped forward. But Mrs. Bechcombe's curiosity had been
aroused. She leaned across.
“I will see it myself, please.”
Carnthwacke laid it on the table before the astonished eyes of the
company.
A glance showed John Steadman that the centre print was a quite
recognizable portrait of Luke Bechcombe. There were also pictures of
the offices in Crow's Inn, both inside and out, an obviously fancy
likeness of Thompson “the absconding manager,” and of Miss Cecily
Hoyle, the dead man's secretary.
Steadman half expected to find Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke figuring
largely, but so far as he could see there was nothing to account for
that lady's excessive agitation.
She passed her handkerchief over her lips now as she sat down sideways
on the chair that Tony Collyer placed for her, and he noticed that she
was trembling all over and that every drop of colour seemed to have
receded from her cheeks and lips. Her admirers on the variety stage
would not have recognized their idol now.
Carnthwacke cleared a space on the table and spread out his paper
carefully, smoothing out the creases with meticulous attention. Then
he pointed his carefully manicured forefinger at the portrait of Luke
Bechcombe in the middle.
“Would you call that a reasonably good picture of your late husband,
ma'am?”
Mrs. Bechcombe drew her eyebrows together as she bent over it.
“Yes, it is—very,” she said decidedly. “I should say unusually good
for this class of paper. It is copied from one of the last photographs
he had taken, one he sat for when we were staying with his sister in
the country. You remember, James?” appealing to the rector.
Mr. Collyer smiled sadly.
“Indeed I do. We were all sitting on the lawn and that friend of
Tony's, Leonard Barnes, insisted on taking us all. Poor Luke's was
particularly good. Why are you asking, Mr. Carnthwacke?”
Carnthwacke wagged his yellow forefinger reprovingly in the direction
of the rector.
“One moment, reverend sir. It may be, ma'am, that you have another
portrait of your lamented husband that you could let us glimpse?”
Mrs. Bechcombe hesitated a moment and glanced nervously at John
Steadman. In spite of all her preconceived notions, the American was
beginning to impress her. There was something in his manner,
restrained yet with a sinister undercurrent, that filled her with a
sense of some hitherto unguessed-at, unnamable dread. At last, moving
like a woman in a dream, she went across to the writing-table that
stood between the two tall windows overlooking the square, and
unlocking a drawer took out a cabinet photograph.
“There, that is the most recent, and I think the best we have. It was
taken at Frank and Burrows, the big photographers in Baker Street.”
“Allow me, ma'am.” Cyril B. Carnthwacke held out his hand. He studied
the photograph silently for a minute or two, laying it beside the
paper and apparently comparing the two. Everybody in the room watched
him with curious, interested eyes. His wife sat crouching against the
table, leaning over it, her handkerchief, crushed into a hard little
ball, pressed against her lips.
At last Carnthwacke laid both the portraits down together and stood up
with an air of finality.
“Mrs. Carnthwacke, I rather fancy the moment to speak has come. Now,
don't fuss yourself, but just tell these ladies and gentlemen what you
have to say simply, same way as you did to me.”
It seemed at first, as Mrs. Carnthwacke appeared to struggle for
breath and caught convulsively at her husband's hand, that she would
not be able to speak at all. But his firm clasp drew her up. The
magnetism of his gaze compelled her words.
“If that is Mr. Bechcombe,” she said very slowly, “that portrait, I
mean, and if it is a really good likeness of him, I can only say”—she
paused again and gulped something down in her throat—“that that is not
the man I saw at the office, not the man to whom I gave my diamonds.”
A tense silence followed this avowal—a silence that was broken at last
by a moan from Mrs. Bechcombe.
“What do you mean? What does she mean?”
There was another momentary silence, broken this time by John
Steadman. He had remained standing since the Carnthwackes came in, on
the other side of the table. He came round towards them now.
“I think you must give us a little further explanation, Mrs.
Carnthwacke,” he said courteously.
Mrs. Carnthwacke was pressing the little ball that had been her
handkerchief to her lips again. She turned from him with a quick
gesture as though to shut him, the other guests, the whole room, out
of her sight.
Her husband laid his hand on her shoulder, heavily yet with a certain
comfort in its very contact.
“That is all right, old girl. You just keep quiet and leave it to me.
She can't give you any explanation. That is just all she can say,” he
went on in a determined, almost a hostile voice. “As soon as she saw
that portrait, she knew, if that was Luke Bechcombe, that she never
saw him at all on the day of his death—that she gave the diamonds to
some one else, some one impersonating him.”
“And who,” inquired John Steadman in that quiet, lazy voice of his,
“do you imagine could have impersonated Luke Bechcombe?”
The American looked him squarely in the eyes.
“That's for you legal gentlemen to decide. It is not for me to come
butting in. But I can put you wise on one thing that stares one right
in the face, so to speak, that I can say before I quit. I don't guess
who it was who impersonated Luke Bechcombe, or where he came from or
how he got right there. But there is only one man it could have been,
and that is the murderer!”