THE THIN END OF A CLUE
Edmund Grosse later on in the morning strolled down to the stables. He
had been there the day before, but he had still something to say to the
stud-groom, an old friend of his, who had the highest respect for the
baronet's judgment.
Edmund loved a really well-kept stable, where hardly a straw escapes
beyond the plaited edges, where the paint is renewed and washed to the
highest possible pitch of cleanliness, and where a perpetual whish of
water and clanking of pails testify to a constant cleaning of
cobblestone yard and flagged pavement.
In the middle of Groombridge Castle stable-yard there was an oval of
perfect turf, and that was surrounded by soft, red gravel; then came
alternate squares of pavement and cobble-stones, on to which opened the
wide doors of coach-houses and stables and harness-rooms, and the back
gate of the stud-groom's house.
An old, white-haired, ruddy-faced man standing on the red gravel smiled
heartily when Sir Edmund appeared. The man was in plain clothes, with a
very upright collar and a pearl horseshoe-pin in his tie; his figure was
well-built, but showed unmistakably that his knees had been fixed in
their present shape by constant riding.
He touched his hat.
"How's the mare to-day, Akers?" asked Sir Edmund.
"Nicely, nicely; it's a splendid mash that, Sir Edmund. Old Hartley gave
me the recipe for that. He was stud-groom here longer than I have been,
in the old lord's day. He had hoped to have had his son to follow him,
but the lad got wild, and it couldn't be."
The old man sighed, and changed the conversation. "Will you come round
again, sir?"
"Yes," said Edmund; "I don't mind if I do. But you've got a son of your
own about the stable, haven't you?" he asked, as they turned towards the
other side of the yard.
"I had two, Sir Edmund," was the brief and melancholy answer. "Jimmy's
here, but the lad I thought most on, he went and enlisted in the war,
and he couldn't settle down again after that. Jimmy, he'll never rise to
my place--it would not be fair, and I wouldn't let his lordship give it
a thought--but the other one might have done it."
Sir Edmund felt some sympathy for the stay-at-home, whom he knew. "He
seems a cheerful, steady fellow."
"He's steady enough, and he's cheerful enough," said his father, in a
tone of great contempt; "but the other lad had talent--he had talent."
Both men had paused in the interest of their talk.
"My eldest son, Thomas, of whom I'm speaking, went to the war in the
same ship as General Sir David Bright, and there's a thing I'd like to
tell you about that, Sir Edmund. It never came into my head how curious
a thing it was till yesterday--last night, I may say. Lady Rose
Bright's lady's-maid come in with Lady Groombridge's lady's-maid to see
my wife, and you'll excuse me if I do repeat some woman's gossip when
you see why I do it. Well, the long and short of it was that it seems
Lady Rose Bright has been left rather close as to fortune for a lady in
her position, and the money's all gone off elsewhere. Then the maid
said, Sir Edmund--whether truly or not I don't know, naturally--that
there had been hopes that another will might be sent home from South
Africa, but that nothing came of it. I felt, so to speak, puzzled while
I was listening, and afterwards my wife says to me while we were alone,
she says, 'Wasn't it our Thomas when he was on board ship wrote that he
had put his name to a paper for Sir David Bright?'--witnessing, you'll
understand she meant by that, sir--'and what's become of that paper I
should like to know,' says she. So she up and went to her room and took
out all Thomas's letters, and sure enough it was true."
Akers paused, and then very slowly extracted a fat pocket-book from his
tight-fitting coat, and pulled out a letter beautifully written on thin
paper. He held it with evident respect, and then, after a preparatory
cough, he began to read:
"'I was sent for to-day, and taken up with another of our regiment to
the state cabins by Sir David Bright's servant, and asked to put my name
to a paper as witness to Sir David Bright's signature, and so I did.'"
Akers stopped, and looked across his glasses at Sir Edmund.
"I don't know if you will remember Sir David's servant, Sir Edmund; he
was killed in the same battle as Sir David was, poor fellow. A big man
with red hair--a Scotchman--you'd have known that as soon as he opened
his mouth. He'd have chosen my boy from having known him here, in all
probability."
"Yes, yes," said Grosse impatiently; "but how do you know that what he
witnessed was a will?"
"Well, of course, I don't know, Sir Edmund, and of course the boy didn't
know what was in the paper he witnessed; but the missus will have it
that that paper was a will, and there'll be no getting it out of her
head that the right will has been lost. I was wondering about it when I
see you come into the yard, and I thought I'd just let you see the lad's
letter. It could do no harm, and it might do good."
Edmund had been absolutely silent during this narrative, with his eyes
fixed on the stud-groom's face.
"And where is Thomas now?" he asked, in a low voice.
"He's in North India somewhere, Sir Edmund, but that is his poor
mother's trouble; we've not had a line from him these three months."
"Oh, I'll find him for you," said Edmund, and he was just going to ask
what regiment Thomas was in when they were disturbed by the appearance
of Billy emerging from the hunters' stable, and Edmund Grosse felt an
unwarrantable contempt for a young man who dawdles away half the morning
in the stable.
"Should I find you at six o'clock this evening?" he asked, in a low
voice, of the stud-groom; and having been satisfied on that point, he
strolled off and left Billy to talk of the horses.
Edmund Grosse felt for the moment as if the missing will were in his
grasp, and he was quite sure now that he had never doubted its
existence. What he had just heard was the very first thing approaching
to evidence in favour of his own theory, which he had hitherto built up
entirely on guess-work. Of course, the paper might have been some
ordinary deed, some bit of business the General had forgotten to
transact before starting. But, if so, he felt sure that it must have
been business unknown to the brothers Murray, as they had discussed with
Grosse every detail of Sir Edmund's affairs. One thing was certain: it
would be quite as difficult after this to drive out of Edmund Grosse's
head the belief that this paper was a will as it would be to drive it
out of the head of Mrs. Akers.
Edmund was in excellent spirits at luncheon. In the afternoon he drove
with Lady Groombridge and Rose and Molly to see a famous garden some
eight miles off, the owners of which were away in the South. The
original house to which the gardens belonged had been replaced by a
modern one in Italian style at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
It was not interesting, and Lady Groombridge gave a sniff of contempt as
she turned her back on it and her attention, and that of her friends, to
the far more striking green walls beyond the wide terraced walk on the
south side of the building.
In the midst of ordinary English country scenery, these gardens had been
set by a great Frenchman who had caught the strange secret of the
romance of utterly formal hedges. He could make of them a fitting
framework for the glories of a court, or for sylvan life in Merrie
England. There were miles of hedges; not yew, hornbeam had been chosen
for this green, tranquil country. At one spot many avenues of hedges met
together as if by accident, or by some rhythmic movement; it was a
minuet of Nature's dancing, grown into formal lines but not
petrified--every detail, in fact, alive with green leaves. If you stood
in the midst of this meeting of the ways, the country round outside,
seen in vistas between the hedges, was curiously glorified, more
especially on one side where the avenues were shortened. There one saw
larger glimpses of fields and woods and bits of common-land that seemed
wonderfully eloquent of freedom and simplicity, nature and husbandry.
But if you had not seen those glimpses through the lines of strange,
stately, regal dignity--the lines of those mighty hedges--you would not
have been so startled by their charm. That was the triumph of the genius
of Lenôtre: he had seen that, framed in the sternest symbols of rule and
order, one could get the freshest joy in the pictures of Nature's
untouched handiwork. On the west side the avenues of hedges disappeared
into distant vistas of wood, one only ending in a piece of most formal
ornamental water. I don't know how it was, but it was difficult not to
be infected by a curious sense of orgy, of human beings up to their
tricks--love tricks, drinking and eating--perhaps murdering tricks--all
done in some impish fantastic way, between those long hedges or behind
them. If there were not something going on down one avenue you looked
into, it was happening in another.
Somewhat of all this Edmund said to Molly as they strolled between the
hedges which reached far above his head, but she felt that he was
absent-minded while he did so. He had planned for himself a walk and a
talk with Rose, but he had reckoned without his hostess, who had shown
so unmistakably that she intended him to amuse Molly that it would have
been discourteous to have done anything else. He had felt rather cross
as he saw Lady Groombridge and Rose turn down one of the longest walks,
one that seemed indeed to have no ending at all, with an air of
finality, as if their _tête-à-tête_ were to be as long as the path
before them, and as secret as the hedges could keep it. He would never
have come out driving with three women if he had not hoped to get a talk
alone with Rose. He told himself that Rose's avoidance of him was
becoming quite an affectation, and after all, he asked himself, what had
he done to be treated like this?
"Why, if I were trying to make love to her she could not be more absurd!
The only time after our first walk here that we have been alone she made
Miss Dexter join us, and as the girl would not stay Rose found she must
write letters."
As soon as he had made up his mind that he would show Rose what nonsense
it all was, he could and did--not without the zest of pique--turn his
attention to Molly.
"Lady Groombridge doesn't frame well here, does she?" he said, smiling.
"Rather a shock at that date--the tweed skirt and the nailed boots and
the felt hat."
"Yes; but Lady Rose floats down between the hedges as if she had a long
train, only she hasn't," laughed Molly. "The hem of her garment never
touches the earth, as a matter of fact. I wonder how it is done."
"You are right," said Edmund; "and, do you know another thing about
Rose?--whatever she wears she seems to be in white."
"I know," answered Molly. "I see what you mean."
"It may be," said Edmund, "because she always wore white as a young
girl. I remember the day when David Bright first saw her she was in
white." Edmund had for a moment forgotten entirely why he should not
have mentioned David Bright. If Molly could have read his mind at the
next moment she would have seen that he was expressing a most fervent
wish that he had never met her. How little he had gained, or was likely
to gain, from her, and how stupid and tiresome, if not worse, was this
appearance of friendship. He felt this much more strongly on account of
the morning's discovery, and he was determined to keep on neutral
ground.
"Have you ever seen Versailles?" he asked.
"No; I have seen absolutely nothing out of England except India, when I
was a small child."
There it was again! He could not let her give him any confidences about
India or anything else.
"Well, the hedges at Versailles don't impress me half as much as these
do, and yet these are not half so well known. There's more of nature
here, and they are not so self-contained. At Versailles the Court and
its gardens were the world, and nature a tapestry hanging out for a
horizon; here it is amazing how the frame leads one's eyes to the great,
beautiful world outside. I never saw meadows and woods look fairer than
from here."
They were silent; and in the silence Grosse heard shouting and then saw
a huge dog dragging a chain, rushing along the avenue towards them,
while louder shouts came from the opposite direction.
"We must run," he said very quietly, "there's something wrong with it;"
and two men, still calling and waving their arms, appeared at the end
nearest the house. Edmund took Molly by the arm, and they ran to meet
the men.
"Get the lady over the kitchen-garden wall!" shouted one who held a gun,
and as they came to the end of the hedge on their left they saw a wall
at right angles to it about five feet high. Molly looked for any sort of
footing in the bricks for one second, and then she felt Grosse lift her
in his arms, and deposit her on the top of the wall. She rolled over on
the other side into a strawberry bed in blossom. She heard a gun fired
as she jumped to her feet, and a second shot followed.
"He's dead, sir," she heard a voice say. "I'll open the gate for the
lady."
And then a garden gate a few yards off was opened inward, and Molly
walked to meet the man whom she supposed to be a head gardener. She
thanked him and went through the gate, to find Edmund, with a very white
face, leaning back on a stone bench built into the wall.
"The gentleman strained himself a bit," said the gardener, in a tone of
apology to Molly. "I can't think how he come to break his chain"--he
meant the dog this time. "I've said he ought to be shot long ago; now
they'll believe me. Why, he bit off the porter's ear at the station when
he first come, and he was half mad with rage to-day."
"I'm all right," said Edmund, with a kindly smile to the horribly
distressed Molly. She went up to him with a gentle, tender anxiety on
her face that betrayed a too strong feeling, only he was just faint
enough not to notice it.
"It's nothing, child," he said in the fatherly tone that to Molly meant
so far too much. "The merest rick. I forgot, in the hurry, to think how
high I was lifting you, and I also forgot that there might be cucumber
frames on the other side!"
"I wouldn't have said 'over the garden wall,' sir, if there had been,"
said the gardener with a smile, as he offered a glass of water that had
been fetched by the other man, whose coat and gaiters proclaimed him
unmistakably a keeper.
"A fine dog, poor fellow," said Edmund to the latter.
The keeper shook his head. "I don't deny it, sir, but there are fine
lions and fine bears, too, sir, that are kept locked up in the
Zoölogical Gardens." Evidently the gardener and the keeper were of one
opinion in this matter.
Presently Sir Edmund was so clearly all right that the men, after being
tipped and having all their further offers of help refused, went away.
Edmund and Molly were left alone.
"How well you run!" he said, smiling.
"Yes; even without a ferocious dog behind me I can run fairly well," she
said. "But I wish you had let me get over that wall alone. And I wish
they could have spared that splendid animal."
"After all, he would have been shot whether we had been there or not,"
said Edmund. "My only bad moment was listening for the crash of broken
glass and thinking that you were cut to pieces."
"You are sure that you have not hurt yourself?" Her grey eyes were large
with anxiety.
Edmund, laughing, held up his hand, which was bleeding.
"I see I have sustained a serious injury of which I was not aware in the
excitement of the crisis."
Molly examined his hand with a professional air. Edmund let her wash it
with her handkerchief dipped in the glass of water, and bind it with his
own. Her touch was light and skilful, and it would have been absurd to
refuse to let her do it. But, as holding his wrist she raised it a
little higher to turn her bandage under it, her small, lithe, thin hand
was close to his face, and he gave it the slightest kiss.
Any girl who had been abroad would have taken it as little more than the
merest politeness, but to Molly it came as a surprise. A glow of quick,
deep joy rose within her; her cheeks did not blush, for this was a
feeling too peaceful, too restful for blushes or any sort of discomfort.
"This young lady can run like a deerhound," said Edmund, "and bandage
like a surgeon."
"But that's about all she can do," laughed Molly. "Ah! there"--she could
not quite hide the regret in her voice--"there are Lady Groombridge and
Lady Rose."