Mr. Flexen studied the photographs and the report which stated this fact
with a lively interest and a growing sense of its great importance. For
one thing, it settled the question of suicide for good and all. Lord
Loudwater had worn no glove.
Also, it strengthened the case against the mysterious woman. She had
come, apparently, from a distance, and probably in a motor-car. If she
had driven herself down, she would be wearing gloves. Also, only a woman
would be likely to be wearing gloves on a warm summer night. Indeed,
coming from a distance by train, or car, she would certainly wear gloves.
She would not dream of coming to an interview, with a man with whom she
had been intimate and whom she wished to bend to her will, with hands
dirtied by a journey.
If that gloved hand had not been the hand of the mysterious woman, then
the murder had been premeditated, and the murderer or murderess had put
on gloves with the deliberate purpose of leaving no finger-prints.
It _was_ the woman. In all probability it was the woman.
Then Mr. Flexen's sub-conscious mind began to jog his intellect.
Somewhere in his memory there was a fact he had noted about gloves, and
that fact was now important in its bearing on the case. He set about
trying to recall it to his mind. He was not long about it. Of a sudden he
remembered that he had been a trifle surprised to perceive that Colonel
Grey had been carrying gloves when he had found him in the rose-garden
with Lady Loudwater.
His surprise had passed quickly enough. He had decided that the life in
the trenches had not weakened Colonel Grey's habit, as a fastidious man
about town, of taking care of his hands. He remembered, too, that at his
first interview with him he had observed that his hands were uncommonly
well shaped and well kept.
He did not suppose that Colonel Grey had come to the Castle on the
night of the murder wearing gloves with the deliberate intention of
killing Lord Loudwater without leaving finger-prints. But suppose that,
as he came away from a distressing interview with Lady Loudwater, the
knife on the library table had caught his eye and his gloves had been
in his pocket?
Mr. Flexen took out his pipe, lit it, and moved to an easy-chair to let
his brain work more easily. He tabulated his facts.
Colonel Grey had gone through the library window at about twenty
minutes past ten.
Hutchings had gone through the library window at half-past ten.
The mysterious woman had gone through the library window at about ten
minutes to eleven.
She came out of the library window at about a quarter-past eleven after a
violent quarrel with Lord Loudwater.
Colonel Grey came out of the library window at about twenty-five minutes
past eleven, after a distressing interview with Lady Loudwater,
apparently in a very bad temper.
James Hutchings had come out of the library window at about half-past
eleven, also, if William Roper might be believed, furious.
Lady Loudwater had come through the library window at a quarter to
twelve, and gone back through it at five minutes to twelve.
Each of the last three had passed within fifteen feet of Lord Loudwater,
dead or alive, both on entering and on coming out of the Castle. The
mysterious woman had actually been in the smoking-room with him.
If Lady Loudwater's statement that she heard her husband snoring at five
minutes to twelve were to be accepted, neither Colonel Grey, Hutchings,
nor the mysterious woman could have committed the murder--unless always
one of them had returned later and committed it. That possibility must
be borne in mind.
But Mr. Flexen did not accept her statement. If he were to accept it, she
herself at once became the most likely person to have committed the
crime. It was always possible that she had. She certainly had the best
reasons of any one, as far as he knew, for committing it.
The evidence of Mr. Manley about the time at which he heard Lord
Loudwater snore was of the first importance. But how to get it out of
him? Mr. Flexen had a strong feeling that not only would Mr. Manley
afford no help to bring the murderer of Lord Loudwater to justice, but,
that owing to the vein of Quixotry in his nature, he was capable of
helping the murderer to escape. That he could do. He had only to declare
that he heard Lord Loudwater snore at twelve o'clock to break down the
case against any one of the four persons between whom the crime obviously
lay. Mr. Flexen had a shrewd suspicion that Mr. Manley would fail to
remember at what time he had last heard Lord Loudwater's snores till the
police had set about securing the conviction of one of the possible
murderers. Then, when the case of the police against the murderer was
revealed, he would come forward and break it down. He had decided that
Mr. Manley was a sentimentalist, and he knew well the difficulty of
dealing with sentimentalists. Moreover, Mr. Manley was animated by a
grudge against the murdered man. Mr. Flexen could quite conceive that he
might presently be regarding perjury as a duty; he had had experience of
the queer way in which the mind of the sentimentalist works.
It appeared to him that everything depended on his finding the
mysterious woman.
That afternoon Elizabeth Twitcher determined to go to see James
Hutchings. She had not seen him since their interview on the night of the
murder. In the ordinary course she would not have dreamt of going to him
after that interview, for it had left them on such a footing that further
advances, repentant advances, must come from him. But there were pressing
reasons why she should not wait for him to make the advances which he
would in ordinary circumstances have made after his sulkiness had abated.
All her fellow-servants and all the villagers, who were not members of
the Hutchings family, were assured that he had murdered Lord Loudwater.
Three of the maids, who were jealous of her greater prettiness, had with
ill-dissembled spitefulness congratulated her on having dismissed him
before the murder; her mother had also congratulated her on that fact.
Elizabeth Twitcher was the last girl in the world to desert a man in
misfortune, and, considering James Hutchings' temper, she could only
consider the murder a misfortune. Besides, she had been very fond of him;
she was very fond of him still, and the fact that he was in great
trouble was making him dearer to her.
Moreover, every one who spoke to her about him told her that he was
looking miserable beyond words. Her heart went out to him.
None the less, she did not go to see him without a struggle. She felt
that he ought to come to her. However, her pride had been beaten in that
struggle by her fondness and her pity--even more by her pity.
When she knocked at the door of his father's cottage James Hutchings
himself opened it, and his harassed, hang-dog air settled in her mind for
good and all the question of his guilt. She was not daunted; indeed, a
sudden anger against Lord Loudwater for having brought about his own
murder flamed up in her. Like every one else who had known him, she could
feel no pity for him.
James Hutchings showed no pleasure whatever at the sight of her. Indeed,
he scowled at her.
"Come to gloat over me, have you?" he growled bitterly.
"Don't be silly!" she said sharply. "What should I want to do a thing
like that for? Is your father in?"
"No; he isn't," said James Hutchings sulkily, but his eyes gazed at
her hungrily.
He showed no intention of inviting her to enter. Therefore she pushed
past him, walked across the kitchen, sat down in the window-seat, and
surveyed him.
He shut the door, turned, and gazed at her, scowling uncertainly.
Then she said gently: "You're looking very poorly, Jim."
"I didn't think you'd be the one to tell of my being in the Castle that
night!" he cried bitterly.
"It wasn't me," she said quietly. "It was that little beast, Jane
Pittaway. She heard us talking in the drawing-room."
"Oh, that was it, was it?" he said more gently. Then, scowling again, he
cried fiercely:
"I'll wring her neck!"
"That's enough of that!" she said sharply. "You've talked a lot too much
about wringing people's necks. And a lot of good it's done you."
"Oh, I know you believe I did it, just like everybody else. But I tell
you I didn't. I swear I didn't!" he cried loudly, with a vehemence which
did not convince her.
"Of course you didn't," she said in a soothing voice. "But what are you
going to do if they try to make out that you did? What are you going to
tell them?"
He gazed at her with miserable eyes and said in a miserable voice: "God
knows what I'm to tell them. It isn't a matter of telling them. It's how
to make 'em believe it. These people never believe anything; the police
never do."
She gazed at him thoughtfully, with eyes compassionate and full of
tenderness. They were a balm to his unhappy spirit.
The hardness slowly vanished from his face. It became merely troubled. He
walked quickly across the room, dropped into the seat beside her and put
an arm round her.
"You're a damned sight too good for me, Lizzie," he said in a gentler
voice than she had ever heard him use before, and he kissed her.
"Poor Jim!" she said. And again: "Poor Jim!"
He trembled, breathing quickly, and held her tight.
After a while he regained control of himself, and sat upright. But he
still held her tightly to him with his right arm.
They began to discuss his plight and how he might best defend himself.
She was fully as fearful as he. But she did not show it. She must cheer
him up, and she kept insisting that the police could not fix the murder
on him, that they had nothing to go upon. If they had, they would have
already arrested him. Certainly they knew what the servants and the
village people were saying. But that was just talk. There wasn't any
evidence; there couldn't be any evidence.
Her support and encouragement put a new spirit into him. He had been so
alone against the world. His own family, though they had loudly and
fiercely protested his innocence to their friends and enemies in the
village, had not expressed this faith in him to him.
Indeed, his father had expressed their real belief, when he said to him
gloomily: "I always told you that damned temper of yours would get you
into trouble, Jim."
Then Elizabeth gave him his tea. After it they talked calmly with an
actual approach to cheerfulness till it was time for her to return to the
Castle to dress Olivia's hair for dinner. Then she would have it that he
should escort her back to the Castle. She declared, truly enough, that he
was doing himself no good by moping at the cottage, that people would say
that he dare not show himself. He _must_ hold his head up.
She insisted also that they should take the long way round, through the
village; that people should see them together. She insisted that he
should look cheerful, and talk to her all the length of the village
street. The looking cheerful helped to lighten his spirit yet more. As
they went through the village she kept looking up at him in an
affectionate fashion and smiling.
The village was, indeed, taken aback. It had made up its mind that James
Hutchings was a pariah to be shunned. It was not only taken aback, it was
annoyed. It had no wish that its belief that James Hutchings had
murdered Lord Loudwater should be in any way unsettled.
Mrs. Roper, the mother of William Roper and a lifelong enemy of the
Hutchings family, summed up the feeling of her neighbours about the
behaviour of James Hutchings and Elizabeth.
"Brazen, I call it," she said bitterly.
Before they reached the Castle, Elizabeth had come to feel that during
the last three days James Hutchings had changed greatly, and for the
better. She had an odd fancy that murdering his master had improved his
character; the fear of the police had softened him. Not once did he try
to domineer over her. That domineering had been the source of their not
infrequent quarrels, for she was not at all of a temper to endure it.
Olivia and Grey had again spent their afternoon in the pavilion in the
East wood. Their bearing at times had been oddly like that of Elizabeth
and James Hutchings. Now and again they had lapsed from their absorption
in one another into a like fearfulness. But, unlike Elizabeth and James
Hutchings, neither of them said a word about the murder of Lord
Loudwater. But both of them seemed a little less under a strain than they
had been. This new factor of a quarrel with an unknown woman seemed to
open a loophole. Olivia's colouring had lost some of its warmth; the
contours of her face were less rounded. Grey had manifestly taken a step
backwards in his convalescence; his face was thinner, even a little
haggard; there was a somewhat strained watchfulness in his eyes.
They could not tear themselves away from the pavilion till the last
moment, and he walked back with her as far as the shrubbery on the edge
of the East lawn, and there they parted after she had promised to meet
him there that evening at nine.
As Olivia came into her sitting-room Elizabeth and James Hutchings came
to the back door of the Castle. She did not say good-bye at once; of set
purpose, she lingered talking to him that the other servants might
understand clearly that her attitude to him was definitely fixed.
But at last she held out her hand and said: "I must be getting along to
her ladyship, or she'll be waiting for me."
James Hutchings looked round, considered the coast sufficiently clear,
caught her to him, kissed her, and said huskily: "You're just a
ministering angel, Lizzie, and there's more sense in your little finger
than in all my fat head. I'm feeling a different man, and I'll baulk
them yet."
"Of course you will, Jim," said Elizabeth, and she opened the door.
"Lord, how I wish I was coming in with you--back in my old place! I
should be seeing you most of the time," he said wistfully.
Elizabeth stopped short, flushing, and looked at him with suddenly
excited eyes.
At his words a great thought had come into her mind.
"Wait a minute, Jim. Wait till I come back," she said somewhat
breathlessly, and, leaving the door open, she hurried down the passage.
She hurried up to her room, took off her hat, and hurried to Olivia. She
found her in her sitting-room looking through an evening paper to learn
if any new fact about the murder had come to light.
"If you please, your ladyship, James Hutchings has come to ask if your
ladyship would like him to come back for the time being till you've got
suited with another butler," said Elizabeth in a rather breathless voice.
Olivia looked at Elizabeth's flushed, excited and hopeful face,
and smiled.
"Why, have you and James made it up, Elizabeth?" she said.
"Yes, m'lady," said Elizabeth, and the flush deepened in her cheeks.
"Then go and tell him to come back, by all means," said Olivia.
"Thank you, m'lady," said Elizabeth, in accents of profound gratitude,
and she ran out of the room.
Olivia smiled and then she sighed. It was pleasant to have given
Elizabeth such obviously keen pleasure. She never dreamed that Elizabeth
and James Hutchings were under the same strain of fear and anxiety as
she herself, and that she had given them great help in their trouble, for
Elizabeth saw that the return of James Hutchings to his situation would
give the wagging tongues full pause.
James Hutchings was dumbfounded on receiving the message. He stared at
Elizabeth with his mouth open.
"Be quick, Jim. Get your clothes and be back in time to wait on her
ladyship at dinner," said Elizabeth.
James Hutchings came out of his stupor.
"Why, L-L-Lizzie, you must let me p-p-put up our b-b-banns tomorrow," he
stammered.
"Be off!" said Elizabeth, stamping her foot. "We can talk about
that later."
When she came from her bath Olivia sent Elizabeth to tell Holloway that
she would dine with Mr. Flexen and Mr. Manley that evening. She had a
sudden desire to see more of Mr. Flexen, to weigh him as an antagonist.
Mr. Flexen was somewhat surprised to receive the information; then,
considering the terms on which Olivia had been with her husband, he found
her action natural enough. After all, she was not a woman of the middle
class, bound to make a pretence of grieving for a wholly unamiable bully.
Also, he was pleased: to dine with so charming a creature as Olivia would
be pleasant and stimulating. In the course of the evening his wits might
rise to the solution of his problem. Moreover, it would be odd if he did
not gain a further, valuable insight into her character.
He was yet more surprised to find James Hutchings, still rather pale and
haggard, but quite cool and master of himself, superintending the
waiting of Wilkins and Holloway at dinner. Also, he liked the way in
which he spoke to Olivia and looked at her. To Mr. Flexen, James
Hutchings had the air of the authentic faithful dog. He was inclined to
a better opinion of him.
Plainly, too, Olivia had learned that tongues were wagging against him,
and had taken this way of checking them. It was a generous act. At the
same time, he could very well believe that Olivia might, unconsciously of
course, be on the side of the murderer of such a husband.
Thanks to Mr. Manley's invaluable sense of what was fitting, there was no
constraint about the dinner. He had decided that they were three people
of the world dining together, and the fact that there had been a murder
in the house three days before and a funeral in the morning should not be
allowed to impair their proper nonchalance. At the same time, decorum
must be preserved; there must be no laughter.
Accordingly he took the conversation in hand, and kept it in hand. Mr.
Flexen was somewhat astonished at the ability with which he did it; now
and again he felt as if, personally, he were performing feats on the
loose wire, but that, thanks to Mr. Manley, he was not going to fall off.
They talked of the usual subjects on which people who have not a large
circle of common acquaintances fall back. They all three abused the
politicians with perfect sympathy; they abused the British drama with
perfect sympathy; with no less perfect sympathy they abused the Cubists
and the Vorticists and the New Poets. Mr. Flexen had an odd feeling that
they were behaving with entire naturalness and propriety; that their real
interest was in the politicians, the British drama, the Cubists, the
Vorticists and the New Poets, and not at all in the fate of the murderer
of the late Lord Loudwater. After a while he found himself vying
earnestly with Mr. Manley in an effort to display himself as a man of at
least equal insight and intelligence.
Olivia did not talk much herself. She never did. But she displayed a
quickness of understanding and soundness of judgment which stimulated
them. All the while she was watching and weighing Mr. Flexen. He never
once perceived it. Plainly enough, the talk did her good. She had come
to dinner looking, Mr. Flexen thought, rather under the water. Before
long she was looking, as she had resolved to look, her usual self. When,
at a few minutes to nine, she left them, she was looking the most
charming and sympathetic creature in the world, and, what was more, a
creature without a care.
When the door closed behind her, she seemed to have taken with her a good
deal of the brightness of the room. Mr. Flexen dropped back into his
chair and frowned. In the silence which fell he wondered. Plainly she was
free enough from care now.
"But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire--"
Then Mr. Manley said, in a tone almost insolent: "If you think she
murdered that red-eyed bull in a china shop, you're wrong. She didn't."
Mr. Flexen did not resent his tone. Indeed, before he could speak, it
flashed on him that if she had done so, and Justice was depending on him
himself to bring her to it, it was depending on a somewhat frail reed. He
liked Mr. Manley for his readiness to fight for her cause.
He laughed gently and said: "I wasn't thinking so. I was only wondering."
Then his eyes on Mr. Manley's face turned very keen, and he said: "I
believe you know a good deal more about the affair than I do, if you
liked to speak."
It seemed to him that for a moment Mr. Manley's desire to make himself
valued struggled with his desire to be accurate.
Then the young man shook his head and said in a tone of surprise: "But
what nonsense! You know so much more about it than I do. Why, you must
have all the threads in your hands by now. I never even dreamt of the
_Daily Wire's_ mysterious woman."
"Not quite all--yet. But they're coming all right," said Mr. Flexen, with
a confidence he was far from feeling.
James Hutchings, coming into the room to fetch cigarettes for Olivia,
interrupted them.
"I'm glad to see you back again, Hutchings," said Mr. Manley in a tone of
hearty congratulation. "Your going away for a trifle after all the years
you've been here was a silly business."
"Thank you, sir," said Hutchings gratefully.
When Hutchings had gone, Mr. Flexen said: "It's all very well your
talking, but it was you who suggested that Lady Loudwater was a woman of
strong primitive emotions with a strain of Italian blood in her."
"I never suggested for a moment that she was a woman of _primitive_
emotions," Mr. Manley protested with some vehemence.
"But the emotions of all women are primitive," said Mr. Flexen.
"Not the emotion excited in them by beauty," said Mr. Manley with
chivalrous warmth. "And, hang it all! Does she look like a woman to
commit murder?"
"Not on her own account, certainly," said Mr. Flexen.
"And on whose account should she commit murder?" cried Mr. Manley.
Mr. Flexen shrugged his shoulders.
"I said you knew ten times as much about the business as I do," said Mr.
Manley in a tone of triumph.