It was the day of Godfrey Pavely's funeral, and more than one present at
the great gathering observed, either to themselves or aloud to some
trusted crony or acquaintance, that the banker would certainly have been
much gratified had he seen the high esteem in which he was held by both
the gentle and simple of the surrounding neighbourhood.
Even Lord St. Amant was a good deal impressed by the scene. Every blind
in the High Street was down--a striking mark of respect indeed towards
both the dead banker and his widow. Apart from that fact, the town
looked as if it was in the enjoyment of a public holiday, but even that
was in its way a tribute. The streets were full of people, and round the
entrance to the churchyard was a huge crowd. As for the churchyard
itself, it was overflowing, and presented a remarkable rather than a
touching scene. Only a few of the town-folk were still allowed to be
buried in the mediaeval churchyard which lay just off the High Street, so
a funeral actually taking place there was a very rare event.
The circumstances of Mr. Pavely's death had been so strange that the
local paper had printed a verbatim report of the inquest, as well as a
very flowery account of the departed, who had been, it was explained, so
true and so loyal a townsman of Pewsbury. Yet, even so, there were those
present at his funeral who muttered that Mr. Pavely had met his death
just as might have been expected, through his love of money. It was
also whispered that the job in which this queer foreigner had been
associated with the banker had not been of the most reputable kind. This
Fernando Apra--every one knew his queer name because of the big
reward--had wanted to raise money for a kind of glorified gambling hell;
that was the long and the short of it, after all, so much the shrewder
folk of Pewsbury had already found out, reading between the lines of the
evidence offered at the inquest.
In an official sense the chief mourners were two distant cousins of
Godfrey Pavely--men with whom he had quarrelled years ago--but in a
real, intimate sense, the principal mourners were old Mr. Privet, Lord
St. Amant, who, though he was so fond of travel, never neglected the
duties entailed by his position in the county, and last but by no means
least Mr. Oliver Tropenell, who, as every one present was well aware,
had during the last few months become the one intimate friend of the
dead man. Among the women there were several who knew that at this very
moment Mrs. Pavely was being comforted by Mr. Oliver Tropenell's mother,
a lady who stood high in public esteem, and with whom Mrs. Pavely as a
girl, had spent much of her youth, and from whose house, picturesque
Freshley Manor, she had been married to the man whom they were now
engaged in burying.
Another person present who aroused even more interest among the good
folk of Pewsbury than either Lord St. Amant or Oliver Tropenell, was
Mrs. Winslow.
The older townspeople looked at Katty with a good deal of rather excited
sympathy, for they remembered the gossip and talk there had been about
pretty Katty Fenton and the dead man, and of how unkind old Mrs. Pavely,
now dead many a year, had shown herself to the lovely, motherless girl.
There were even some there who whispered that poor Godfrey Pavely had
again become very fond of his first love--and that, too, when they were
both old enough to know better! But these busybodies were not encouraged
to say the little they knew. These are things--natural human
failings--which should be forgotten at a man's funeral.
Mrs. Winslow did not look unreasonably upset. There were no tears in her
bright brown eyes, and her black frock, sable plumed hat, and beautiful
black furs, intensified the brilliant pink and white of her complexion.
Indeed, many of the people who gazed at Katty that day thought they had
never seen her looking so attractive. The world belongs to the
living--not to the dead, and poor Godfrey Pavely, with his big,
prosperous one-man business, and his almost uncanny cleverness in the
matter of making money, belonged henceforth very decidedly to the past.
So it was that among the men and women who stared with eager curiosity
and respectful interest at the group of mourners, several noticed that
Mr. Oliver Tropenell seemed to pay special attention to Mrs. Winslow.
Once he crossed over, and stood close to her for a minute or two by the
still open grave, and his dark handsome face showed far more trace of
emotion than did hers.
After the funeral, Lord St. Amant dropped Mrs. Winslow at the gate of
Rosedean, and, on parting with Katty, he patted her hand kindly, telling
himself that she was certainly a very pretty woman. Lord St. Amant,
like most connoisseurs in feminine beauty, preferred seeing a pretty
woman in black.
"You must try and forget poor Godfrey Pavely," he said feelingly.
He was startled and moved by the intensity with which she answered
him:--"I wish I could--but I can't. I feel all the time as if he was
there, close to me, trying to tell me something! I believe that he was
murdered, Lord St. Amant."
"I'm sure you're mistaken. You must never think that!"
"Ah, but I do think so. I'm certain of it!"
* * * * *
Following the old custom, Godfrey Pavely's will was to be read after his
burial, and Laura had written to Lord St. Amant asking him if he would
be present.
In the great dining-room of The Chase, a dining-room still lined with
the portraits of Mrs. Tropenell's ancestors, were two tables, one large
long table which was never used, and a round table in the bow-window.
To-day it was about the big table that there were gathered the five men
and the one woman who were to be present at the reading of the will.
Laura was the one woman. The men were Godfrey Pavely's lawyer, the dead
man's two cousins--who had perhaps a faint hope of legacies, a hope
destined to be disappointed, Oliver Tropenell, present as Laura Pavely's
trustee, and Lord St. Amant, who had been a trustee to her marriage
settlement.
Laura, in her deep black, looked wan, sad and tired, but perfectly calm.
All the men there, with one exception, glanced towards her now and
again with sympathy. The exception was Oliver Tropenell. He had shut her
out, as far as was possible, from his mind, and he seemed hardly aware
of her presence. He stared straight before him, a look of rather
impatient endurance on his face--not at all, so argued Lord St. Amant to
himself, the look of a man from whose path a hitherto impassable
obstacle has just been removed.
Though rather ashamed of letting his mind dwell on such thoughts at such
a time, Lord St. Amant told himself that Mrs. Tropenell had doubtless
been mistaken as to what she had confided to him on his return from
abroad. Mothers are apt to be jealous where only sons are concerned, and
Letty--his dear, ardent-natured friend Letty--had always been romantic.
Lord St. Amant was confirmed in this view by the fact that that very
morning Mrs. Tropenell had told him that Oliver was going back to Mexico
almost at once. To her mind it confirmed what she believed to be true.
But her old friend and some-time lover had smiled oddly. Lord St. Amant
judged Oliver by himself--and he had always been a man of hot-foot
decisions. It was inconceivable to him that any lover could act in so
cold-blooded, careful a fashion as this. No, no--if Oliver cared for
Laura as his mother believed he cared, he would not now go off to the
other end of the world, simply to placate public opinion.
To those who had known the man, Godfrey Pavely's will contained only one
surprise, otherwise it ran on the most conventional lines. Practically
the whole of his very considerable fortune was left, subject to Laura's
life interest--an interest which lapsed on re-marriage--in trust for his
only child.
The surprise was the banker's substantial legacy to Mrs. Winslow. That
lady was left Rosedean, the only condition attaching to the legacy being
that, should she ever wish to sell the little property, the first offer
must be made to Alice Pavely's trustees. Also, rather to the
astonishment of some of those present, it was found that the will had
only been made some two months ago, and the lawyer who read it out was
aware that in some important particulars it had been modified and
changed. In the will made by Godfrey Pavely immediately after his
marriage he had left his wife sole legatee. After Alice was born the
banker had naturally added a codicil, but he had still left Laura in a
far greater position of responsibility in regard to the estate than in
this, his final will.
After the will had been read, Lord St. Amant spent a few moments alone
with Laura. He felt he had a rather disagreeable task before him, and he
did not like disagreeable tasks. Still he faced this one with
characteristic courage.
"I've been asked by Sir Angus Kinross to undertake a rather unpleasant
duty, my dear Laura--that of persuading you to withdraw the reward you
are offering for the discovery of Fernando Apra. He points out that if
Apra's story is true, it might easily mean that you would simply be
giving a present of a thousand pounds to the person who killed your
husband."
Laura heard him out without interruption. Then she shook her head. "I
feel it is my duty to do it," she said in a low voice. "Katty, who was
Godfrey's greatest friend, says he would have wished it--and I think
she's right. It isn't going to be paid out of the estate, you know. _I_
will pay it--if ever it is earned."
She went on painfully. "I am very unhappy, Lord St. Amant. Godfrey and I
were not suited to one another, but still I feel that I was often
needlessly selfish and unkind."
Lord St. Amant began to see why Oliver Tropenell was going back to
Mexico so soon.
PART THREE