THE WOMAN IN THE CASE?
There was no call during the long watches of the night, no untoward
happenings of any sort. Cleek, sleeping with one eye open, rose now and
again and crept silent-footed out into the passage, doing a little bit
of listening in upon his own account. But nothing of any moment
happened. And so when at length the house was astir, and the sound of
servants with their brushes and brooms began to make their usual
early-morning clamour, he shook himself awake, got to his feet, and went
off into the bathroom, where Ross Duggan's safety-razor worked wonders
with his over-night beard, and a wash under the cold-water tap still
more.
Returning, he stopped at the door of that chamber of tragedy where the
one-time master of all this vast inheritance of stone and moorland lay,
Death wiping from his aged face every line and leaving it as smooth as a
child's.
"I want to have a little poke round for myself," he told the constable
on duty outside the door, who instantly let him in, as became a
representative of Scotland Yard. "You might send someone up to the Inn
of the Three Fishers with this note, and see that it gets delivered
immediately into the hands of a chap named Dollops. It's important."
"Very good, sir."
"And in the meantime, I'll see that no one enters this room, I promise
you. Inspector Petrie himself will be around presently. And
Superintendent Narkom should be with us at twelve o'clock or
thereabouts."
Left alone, therefore, in the early morning sunlight of that perfect
June day, Cleek made his way into the still room, closed the door behind
him, and then, glancing up, caught sight of the stolid back of the
constable on duty outside of the courtyard window, and not being wishful
to enter into conversation with him, began to poke about of his own
accord.
But the room held little or no clues for him to go upon. Not in the
first rough glance, at any rate. Over by the window, where it had stood
upon the previous day, when Maud Duggan had shown it to him, stood the
spinning wheel, innocently incongruous indeed in this room of Death. He
gave it a casual glance, and then turned to the desk-top where a pile of
papers lay scattered in some disarray upon its leather surface.
Cleek ran his fingers quickly through these, glancing at each of them in
turn.
"He was just about to alter the will, was he? Well, if that were so, the
will should be here now--and it isn't," he said to himself, with
suddenly upflung brows. "Queer thing! Unless someone put it away. I'll
try the drawers. There should be no secrets from a detective, my poor
misguided friend, and if the drawers don't answer to my fingers, I'm
going to search your pockets for the key--though to steal from the dead
is a ghoulish business at the best of times.... Hello, hello! Locked, of
course! Brrrh! I don't fancy the task at all, but I mean to have my
little look-in before any of the other members of the family get
downstairs for their breakfast. So here goes."
Still mentally talking to himself, Cleek went over to the Thing that had
once been Sir Andrew Duggan, and plunged his hands in the trousers'
pockets without more ado. A bunch of keys rewarded the search. He ran
them over adroitly in his fingers; chose one which he thought would fit
the lock of the drawers, found it didn't fit, chose another, and this
time was more successful. For the top left-hand drawer of that
handsomely carved desk slid noiselessly open for him, stopped
automatically, and gave a funny little click. In a moment he had slid
down on his knees beside that gruesome figure which so impeded his
progress, and slipped his fingers up under the drawer (which was half
full of papers and so allowed him to do so), touched something which
felt like a button, and _was_ a button. Then the drawer came forward in
his hand, and revealed at back of it another one, which at a touch of
that button had dropped its front panel so that it formed a pigeon-hole.
As he peered into the recesses of this, he saw a bundle of yellowed
papers tied about with a faded piece of pink ribbon, and immediately
drew them forth into the light.
"Whew! What a beastly dust! Well, I've met this kind of a desk before,
so fortunately you're no closed book to me, my friend," he apostrophized
it, as a powder of dust flew over his fingers as he touched the packet.
"Here's something which wants looking into, so I'll appropriate it now,
and have a squint at it later. Secretive old chap he was, then! With his
secret drawers and all! Looks like a bundle of old love-letters to all
intents and purposes, but written on paper that one would hardly have
called suitable for such tender epistles. Commonest kind of
note-paper--village note-paper." He drew a sheet from the packet and
held it up to the light. "And with a water-mark of a crown and
anchor.... Hello! bit of an illiterate lady, wasn't she, who penned
these lines! For the spelling's pretty shaky. And signed _Jeannette_....
H'm. Some pretty little amour which has held such savour as to be
preserved in this form until after death--poor old fellow! Well, I'll
look into it later. Couldn't have been from the first Lady Duggan, for
_her_ name was Edith. Miss Duggan herself told me that. And ...
Jeannette! Now, I wonder...."
But what he wondered was never recorded at that time, for just then came
the sound of a soft footstep upon the hall without, the rattle of a
door-handle and the gentle opening of the door itself; and Cleek had
just time to whisk away the packet, and assume an appearance of stolid
nonchalance, when someone came into the room on silently shod feet,
stepped a few paces forward, and then, seeing him, gave out a little
shriek and shut her two hands over her breast spasmodically.
"Oh!--_how_ you startled me!" gave out Lady Paula breathlessly, as she
recognized who the intruder was. "What can you be doing here, Mr.
Deland? The police ... this awful tragedy."
Cleek bowed and came toward her with outstretched hand.
"My dear Lady Paula," he said suavely, "I represent the police myself.
I happen to have taken up criminology many years ago, and came up here
to Scotland upon a little holiday. This terrible thing that has happened
brought me immediately here to do my duty and to give what little help
I could to you all in your bereavement. And so here I am. I beg of
you, don't stay in this apartment now. It is no place for a
lady--particularly a lady so highly strung and nervous as yourself."
"But how--did you ever--come to hear about it?" she demanded, stepping
back a pace or two, with her eyes carefully avoiding that Thing which
lay huddled there before them--mute reminder of all the terrors that had
happened the night before. "How could you have known, Mr. Deland----"
"I mentioned the fact of my profession to your stepdaughter yesterday,
and she immediately summoned me here. And, of course, I came. Anything
which I can do...."
"Thank you. But there is nothing--nothing! I came in now because last
night I--dropped my handkerchief, and it was one which I very much
value, because my dear husband gave it to me upon the anniversary of our
wedding-day. Duchesse lace, Mr. Deland, and with my name embroidered
across the corner. And I knew, if the police found it, that I--I should
never get it back again. Everything, you see, becomes a clue, doesn't
it? But it seems not to be here."
Her agitation was very apparent, and Cleek mentally registered the fact
that the excuse was a tame one, and utterly untrue.
"No," he said, "it isn't here, Lady Paula. And, as you say, if it were,
I could not give it to you. Go back to your room, I beg, and lie down.
You look ghastly pale; and after breakfast I shall have need of your
help, believe me. So go, please. And leave me to this gruesome vigil
alone.... Oh, by the way, do you happen to remember, during last
night's many and terrible happenings, whether the will which Sir Andrew
was about to alter (I have the facts of the case, you see, from Miss
Duggan herself) was put away by any member of the family? Because it
isn't here, you know."
He swept his hand out across the desk-top in an expressive gesture. Her
face flushed rosily, and something like a startled light, half of
gladness, half of fear, showed in her wide, velvety eyes. But she shook
her head.
"It was never touched--to my knowledge," she said emphatically. "And I
happen to remember that fact, for in the confusion of everything that
followed, when we were looking at my poor, poor husband, it fell to the
ground, and Maud picked it up again and laid it over there, under those
other things that my husband had been looking into. I noted the fact,
even in my despair, as one does note these little trivial things in the
midst of a great trouble, Mr. Deland. But it _was_ there-- I am
positive. And you can't find it now?"
"No, Lady Paula."
"Oh! Then undoubtedly Maud has hidden it away somewhere, in case I might
_steal_ it, I suppose, and so do her precious brother out of his
inheritance, if such a thing were possible."
The venom in her voice was like the bite of a serpent--positively
poisonous, and Cleek gave her a quick, keen look.
"Hardly that, Lady Paula. And--well, I don't happen to be well up on
these matters at all, the law, y'know, and all that--only the law of
criminals, and that's an altogether different thing. No doubt one of the
family has put it away. It will turn up in time. Now, please go away
before the rest of the constables arrive. You will want every atom of
your strength to see this appalling thing through, believe me, and
therefore I insist that you harbour it."
She smiled up at him sadly, and turned upon her heel, her trailing pink
negligee whisking across the thickly carpeted floor like the tail of
some sinuous snake, weighted as it was with one heavy beaded tassel.
"Very well--if you wish," she said quietly, with an arch glance at him;
but as she went something white fluttered to the ground in the wake of
her, and Cleek, waiting until she had gone, closed the door softly, and
then bent down and whisked it up.
It was a handkerchief--a mere wisp of gossamer, with Duchesse lace edge,
and the name _Paula_ written in embroidery across one corner of its
fragile square.
A little twisted smile flitted across his face as he looked at it, and
then suddenly his mouth went grim. This was obviously the handkerchief
in question--and she had had it upon her person every moment of the
time! So _that_ excuse was a false one, from the start-out. Then, too,
a woman who could look archly at another man over her own husband's dead
body was surely no woman at all, but a harpy in woman's guise. It was
ghoulish, horrible!... And if the excuse were false, what did she come
for--in the early hours of the morning, when servants were only just
astir in the other wing of the house, and she knew that there was that
dead Thing who had been her husband to be confronted? Would a woman face
a murdered man for a mere handkerchief?... She would lose a thousand
such sooner, from what _he_ knew of the feminine sex.
No, there was some other reason, and that a secret one. Was it the will?
But that was already gone. Was it to remove some distinguishing clue
which she feared might be found to connect _her_ with this crime?
What was it?