They went up the lift in two parties: Sir Angus Kinross, the house
agent, and the two men from Scotland Yard; then Lord St. Amant and Katty
Winslow alone.
As they were going up, he said kindly, "Are you sure you are wise in
doing this? I fear--I fear the worst, Mrs. Winslow!"
With dry lips she muttered, "Yes, so do I. But I would rather come all
the same. I'll wait outside the door."
Poor Katty! She was telling herself that it was surely
impossible--_impossible_ that Godfrey Pavely should be dead.
Though his vitality had always been low, he had been intensely
individual. His self-importance, his egoism, his lack of interest in
anything but himself, Katty, and the little world where he played so
important a part--all that had made him a forceful personality,
especially to this woman who had possessed whatever he had had of heart
and passionate feeling. She had felt of late as if he were indeed part
of the warp and woof of her life, and deep in her scheming mind had
grown a kind of superstitious belief that sooner or later their lives
would become one.
The thought that he might be lying dead in this great new building
filled her with a sort of sick horror. There seemed something at once so
futile and so hideously cruel about so stupid an accident as that
described in the Portuguese financier's letter.
They stepped out on to a top landing, from which branched off several
narrow corridors. The agent led the way down one of these. "Room No. 18?
This must be it--this _is_ it! Look, there are the two keyholes!"
The younger and the brawnier of the two plainclothes detectives came
forward. "If you'll just stand aside, gentlemen, for a minute or two,
we'll soon get this door open. It's quite an easy matter."
He opened his unobtrusive-looking, comparatively small bag. There was a
sound of wrenching wood and metal, and then the door swung backwards
into the room together with a thick green velvet curtain fixed along the
top of the door on a hinged rod.
A flood of wintry sunshine, thrown by the blinking now setting sun of a
London January afternoon, streamed into the dark passage, and Sir Angus
Kinross strode forward into the room, Lord St. Amant immediately behind
him.
Katty shrank back and then placed herself by the wall of the passage.
She put her hand over her eyes, as if to shut out a dreadful sight, yet
all there was to see was an open door through which came a shaft of
pallid wintry afternoon light.
For a space of perhaps thirty seconds, Sir Angus's trained eyes and mind
took in what he supposed to be every detail of the oblong room
overlooking the now bare tree tops of the Green Park. He noted that the
office furniture was extremely good--first-rate of its kind. Also that
the most prominent thing in the room was an American roll-top desk of an
exceptionally large size.
Placed at right angles right across the office, this desk concealed
nearly half the room.
In the corner behind the door was a coat stand, on which there hung a
heavy, fur-lined coat, and a silk hat. On the floor was a thick carpet.
The only unbroken space of wall was covered by a huge diagram map of
what looked like a piece of sea shore.
One peculiar fact also attracted the attention of the Commissioner of
Police. Both the windows overlooking the Park were wide open, fixed
securely back as far as they would go: and on the window seats,
comfortably, nay luxuriously, padded, and upholstered in green velvet,
there now lay a thick layer of grime, the effect of the fog and rain of
the last fortnight. As they stood within the door, in spite of those
widely opened windows, there gradually stole on the senses of the four
men there, a very curious odour, an odour which struck each of them as
horribly significant.
Yet another thing Sir Angus noted in that quick, initial glance; this
was that the blind of the narrow window which gave on to the street side
of Duke House was drawn down, casting one half of the room in deep
shadow.
He turned, and addressing Lord St. Amant in a very low voice, almost in
a whisper, he said: "I think we shall find what we have come to seek
over there, behind that desk."
Walking forward, he edged round by the side of the big piece of walnut
wood furniture.
Then he started back, and exclaimed under his breath, "Good God! How
horrible!"
He had thought to see a body lying at full length on the carpet, but
what he did see, sitting upright at the desk, was a stark, immobile
figure, of which the head, partly blown away, was sunk forward on the
breast....
Great care had been taken to wedge the dead man securely back in the
arm-chair, and a cursory glance, in the dim light in which that part of
the room was cast, would have given an impression of sleep, not of
death.
He beckoned to Lord St. Amant. "Come over here," he whispered, "you
needn't go any nearer. Do you recognise that as being the body of
Godfrey Pavely?"
And Lord St. Amant, hastening forward, stared with a mixture of
curiosity and horror at the still figure, and answered, "Yes. I--I think
there's no doubt about it's being Pavely."
"Perhaps you'd better go and tell Mrs. Winslow. Get her away as quick as
you can. I must telephone at once for one of our doctors."
Lord St. Amant turned without a word, and made his way through the still
open door into the queer, rather dark passage.
Katty's face was still full of the strain and anguish of suspense, but
she knew the truth by now. Had nothing been found, some one would have
come rushing out at once to tell her so. Three or four minutes had
elapsed since she had heard the sudden hush, the ominous silence, which
had fallen over them all, in there.
Her lips formed the words: "Then--they've found him?"
And Lord St. Amant nodded gravely. "It looks as if that Portuguese chap
had told the simple truth."
"The moment that I read the letter this morning I _knew_ that it was
true," she muttered. Then, "I suppose I'd better go away now? They don't
want me here."
She began walking towards the lift, and Lord St. Amant, following, felt
very sorry for her. "Look here," he said earnestly, "I'm sure you don't
wish to go straight back to poor Laura Pavely? Why should you? 'Twould
only rack you. I suppose----" He stopped a moment, and she looked up at
him questioningly.
"Yes, Lord St. Amant--what is it you suppose?"
Katty spoke in a cold, hard voice--all her small affectations had fallen
away from her.
"I suppose," he said, "that Laura knew very little of your friendship
with poor Godfrey Pavely?"
And she answered, again in that hard, cold voice, "Yes, Laura did know,
I think, almost everything there was to know. She didn't care--she
didn't mind. Laura has no feeling."
As he made no reply to that, she went on, rather breathlessly, and with
sudden passion, "You think that I'm unfair--you think that Laura really
cares because she looked so shocked and miserable this morning? But
that's just what she was--_shocked_, nothing else. What is a piece of
terrible, _terrible_ bad luck for me, is good--very good luck for
Laura!"
There was such concentrated bitterness in her tone that Lord St. Amant
felt repelled--repelled as well as sorry.
But all he said was: "Would you like to go back to my rooms for an hour
or two? They're quite near here."
"No, I'd rather face Laura now, at once. After all, I shall have to see
her some time. I'm bound to be her nearest neighbour for a while, at any
rate."
* * * * *
Late that same night the awful news was broken to Mrs. Tropenell by her
son. He had sent a message saying he would be down by the last train,
and she had sat up for him, knowing nothing, yet aware that something
had happened that morning which had sent Laura and Katty hurrying up to
town.
Perhaps because the news he told was so unexpected, so strange, and to
them both of such vital moment, the few minutes which followed Oliver's
return remained stamped, as if branded with white hot iron, on the
tablets of Mrs. Tropenell's memory.
When she heard his firm, hurried footsteps outside, she ran to let him
in, and at once, as he came into the house, he said in a harsh, cold
voice: "Godfrey Pavely is dead, mother. A foreigner with whom he had
entered into business relations shot him by accident. The man wrote to
Laura a confession of what he had done. She got the letter this morning,
took it up to London to the police--the best thing she could do--and
Pavely's body was found at the place indicated, a business office."
As Oliver spoke, in quick, jerky sentences, he was taking off his
greatcoat, and hanging up his hat.
She waited till he had done, and then only said: "I've got a little
supper ready for you, darling. I sent the servants off to bed, so I'm
alone downstairs."
Oliver sighed, a long, tired sigh of relief--relief that his mother had
asked no tiresome, supplementary questions. And she saw the look of
strain, and of desperate fatigue, smooth itself away, as he followed
her into their peaceful dining-room.
She sat with him, and so far commanded her nerves as to remain silent
while he ate with a kind of hungry eagerness which astonished her.
He turned to her at last, and for the first time smiled a rather wry
smile. "I was very hungry! This is my first meal to-day, and I seem to
have lived in the train. I was up at York--we thought there was a clue
there. I think I told you that over the telephone? Then I came back."
She broke in gently, "To be met with this awful news, Oliver?"
He looked at her rather strangely, and nodded.
"Have you seen Laura?" she ventured.
"Yes, just for a moment. But, mother? She's horribly unhappy. I--I
expected her to be glad."
"Oliver!"
There was a tone of horror, more, of reprobation, in Mrs. Tropenell's
low voice.
Oliver Tropenell was staring straight before him. "Surely one would have
expected her to be glad that the suspense was over? And now I ask
myself----" and indeed he looked as if he was speaking to himself and
not to her--"if it would have been better for Laura if that--that fellow
had been left to rot there till he had been discovered, two months,
three months, perchance four months hence."
"My dear," she said painfully, "what do you mean exactly? I don't
understand."
"Pavely's body was found in an empty office, and if the man who shot him
hadn't written to Laura--well, of course the body would have remained
there till it had occurred to some one to force open the door of the
room, and that might not have happened for months."
"I'm very glad that Laura was told now," said Mrs. Tropenell firmly.
"The suspense was telling on her far more than I should have expected it
to do. Katty, too, became a very difficult element in the situation. I
don't think there's much doubt that poor Katty was very fond of
Godfrey."
He muttered: "Mean little loves, mean little lives, mean little
souls--they were well matched!"
Then he got up.
"Well, mother, I must be off to bed now, as I have to get up early and
go into Pewsbury. Laura, who's staying on in town, asked me to come down
and tell those whom it concerned, the truth. She wants you to tell
Alice. I said I thought you'd have the child here for a while."
"Certainly I will. She's been here all to-day, poor little girl."
"Do you really think she's to be pitied, mother?"
She hesitated, but his stern face compelled an answer.
"I don't think that Godfrey would have got on with Alice later on--when
she grew to woman's estate. But now, yes, I do think the child's to be
deeply pitied. It will be a painful, a terrible memory--that her father
died like that."
"I can't see it! A quiet, merciful death, mother--one that many a man
might envy." He waited a few moments, then went on: "Of course there
will be an inquest, and I fear Laura will almost certainly have to give
evidence, in order to prove the receipt of that--that peculiar letter."
"Have you got a copy of the letter?" asked Mrs. Tropenell rather
eagerly.
Her son shook his head. "No, the police took possession of it. But I've
seen it of course."
They were both standing up now. He went to the door, and held it open
for her. And then, with his eyes bent on her face, he asked her a
question which perhaps was not as strange as it sounded, between those
two who were so much to one another, and who thought they understood
each other so well.
"Mother," he said slowly, "I want to ask you a question.... How long in
England does an unloving widow mourn?"
"A decent woman, under normal conditions, mourns at least a year," she
answered, and a little colour came into her face. Then, out of her great
love for him, she forced herself to add, "But that does not bar out a
measure of friendship, Oliver. Give Laura time to become accustomed to
the new conditions of her life."
"How long, mother?"
"Give her till next Christmas, my dear."
"I will."
He put his arms round her. "Mother!" he exclaimed, "I love you the
better for my loving Laura. Do you realise that?"
"I will believe it if you tell me so, Oliver."
He strode off, hastened up the staircase without looking round again,
and she, waiting below, covered her face with her hands. A terrible
sense of loneliness swept over and engulfed her; for the first time
there was added a pang of regret that she had not joined her life to
that of the affectionate hedonist who had been her true, devoted friend
for so long.