One friend in that path shall be
To secure my step from wrong;
One to count night day for me,
Patient through the watches long,
Serving most with none to see.
_A Serenade at the Villa._
Nothing could well look blacker than did the case to Henry Fowler. He
could see no way out of it. Had the boy been found at the foot of the
cliffs, a verdict of accidental death could so easily have been
returned; but here, and with the marks of violence plainly visible on
the body, the presumption seemed terribly strong.
He stood with head sunk upon his chest, feeling beaten down, degraded,
stricken. Over and over in his mind did he turn the circumstances to see
if there would be enough evidence to justify the coroner in committing
Elaine for trial.
Absolute proof of her guilt would not, he thought, be possible; the
night had been so wild, the spot so lonely. But the very fact of
standing to take her trial on such a charge would be more than enough to
blast the young girl's future. Supposing she had to go through life
stigmatised as one acquitted of murder merely because the jury did not
see enough evidence to convict? The thought was literally agony to his
large, gentle heart. Was this to be the fate of Alice's daughter? He
stood as one accused in his own eyes of culpable neglect; in some way
such a culmination should have been avoided--he should have been able to
watch over Elaine better than he had done.
Claud gently recalled him to the present by asking what was to be done
with the body.
Rousing himself, he gave directions for it to be carried to Edge
Willoughby; and then fell afresh into a fit of despair, realising how
terribly imminent it all was.
"When will the inquest take place?" asked Mr. Percivale, approaching
him.
"The day after to-morrow--I cannot delay it longer; you have forty-eight
hours in which to accomplish your purpose," returned Henry, with a
bitter laugh quite unlike him.
"Forty-eight hours," repeated the stranger, steadily. "One can do a
great deal in that time."
He remained standing, in the perfect quietness of attitude which seemed
habitual to him, his eyes fixed on the rude niche, hollowed in the
ground, where the boy's corpse had lain.
"He was not robbed," he said, after a moment.
"Robbed? No! She was not clever enough for that," cut in Ottilie, with
her harsh sneer. "Had she possessed wit enough to rifle his pockets and
fling his watch into a thicket, she would have stood a better chance."
"Miss Brabourne is, perhaps, not so well versed in the science of these
matters as you seem to be, madam," was the mild answer. "Yet, if she
possessed cunning enough to conceive the plan of murdering her brother
for his fortune, it would seem consistent to credit her also with
cunning enough to do all in her power to avert suspicion; to me, it
amounts to a moral impossibility that any young lady in her right mind
should perpetrate such a deed, and then walk quietly home without so
much as making up a single falsehood to shield herself."
"Murderers, especially inexperienced ones, are never consistent,"
returned Mrs. Orton, furiously, "as you would know, if you knew anything
at all of the matter."
"Ottilie, Ottilie, come away, for goodness sake--it is snobbish to get
up a row," urged her husband, in low tones; and, taking her by the arm,
he led her unwillingly away from the scene of conflict.
Claud and Percivale were left confronting each other.
"The valley will have a pretty ghastly celebrity attaching to it after
this," remarked the former, removing his straw hat to pass his
handkerchief over his hot brow. "This is the second mysterious affair
within one summer."
"The second!" echoed Percivale, keenly, turning his eyes upon him full
of awakened interest.
"Yes; and with points of similarity too. Each victim had been attacked
from behind, and beaten with a heavy stick; there was no robbery in
either case, and Miss Elsa Brabourne in the former case, oddly enough,
was the person to discover the insensible victim. Whether the incident
unconsciously influenced her, whether as is the case sometimes,
according to newspapers, the ease with which one crime had been
committed suggested another, I cannot of course say----"
"Was the man killed?"
"No; he recovered: but had no idea as to who was his assailant. We had
down a detective----"
"English detectives are no use at all, or I would telegraph for the
entire force," replied Percivale. "I believe I shall get to the bottom
of this matter more surely by myself. I have already formulated a
theory. You say the criminal was never discovered?"
"No; never even had a clue worth calling a clue."
"Then surely the same idea at once occurs to you as to me, that both
these murders are the work of one hand."
Claud was silent.
"I had not thought of it," he said at last.
"No; because your mind is full of a preconceived idea; and nothing is
more fatal to the discovery of the truth. Let me show you what I mean. I
suppose there is no room at all for the absurd supposition that Miss
Brabourne was concerned in crime number one?"
"None whatever. She was out walking with her maid, and they found Mr.
Allonby lying insensible by the roadside. He had been first stunned by a
blow on the head, then so severely beaten that the bone of one arm was
broken."
"And not robbed?"
"No; except for a most absurd circumstance--one which mystified us all
more than anything. He had his dinner with him--he was making a sketch,
I should tell you; an artist--and this dinner was packed for him by Mrs.
Clapp, of the Fountain Head, in a pudding-basin, tied round with a blue
and white handkerchief. After the murder the basin and handkerchief were
missing, nor could they be found, though careful search was made. The
detective could offer no solution of this part of the business."
"What solution did he offer of the rest of the transaction?"
"He felt certain it must be the result of some private grudge; the
attack was such a vicious one--as if the one idea had been to kill--to
wreak vengeance."
"What time of day was this done?" asked Percivale, who was following
every word with close interest.
"As near as possible at five o'clock, one evening towards the end of
June. The time can be fixed pretty conclusively, for when Miss Brabourne
and her maid passed the place shortly before, he was alive, seated on a
camp-stool; on their return he was lying in the grass, motionless."
"And was there any inhabitant of the village likely to bear the artist a
grudge?"
"Impossible! He was an utter stranger."
"Did anyone see a stranger pass through? Let me know the circumstances
more accurately. Describe the scene of the occurrence."
Claud eagerly complied, supplying Mr. Percivale with every detail, and
doing it with the intelligent accuracy which was part of his nature. The
other listened closely, questioning here and there, and finally gave his
conclusion with calm conviction.
"Every word you utter convinces me that for a stranger of any sort to
penetrate into the valley, track Mr. Allonby's whereabouts, and vanish
without leaving a trace, taking with him a pudding-basin as a memento of
his vengeance, amounts to a moral impossibility. It is absurd. You say,
too, that Mr. Allonby has no idea himself on the subject--says he has no
enemies--is as much in the dark as anyone?"
"Yes, and I believe him: he is a thoroughly simple-minded, honest
fellow."
"Then it stands to reason, in my opinion, that the murderer is an
inhabitant of Edge Valley."
"But then," cried Claud, "you take away any possibility of a motive!"
"Exactly; and, granting for the sake of argument that Miss Brabourne did
_not_ murder her brother, what motive have we here?"
Claud was silent.
"The way you argue is this," went on Percivale, "you know of a
powerfully strong motive for the murder of this poor boy, and you feel
bound to accept the theory because, if it be not so, you are at a loss
to account for the thing on any other grounds. You say--there must be a
very forcible reason to incite to murder. I answer you--here is a crime,
committed in this very village, not three months back, fresh in
everyone's memory, alike in many salient points, and, as far as we can
learn, utterly without purpose. If one mysterious deed can be committed
in this valley, why not two? Why is the homicide to stop short? If he
has managed to dispose of a full-grown man on the high-road in broad
daylight, he will make short work of a delicate little boy, out by
himself on the cliffs in the twilight."
"But," urged Claud, "you are assuming that these outrages are committed
simply for the sake of killing--with no motive but slaughter. They must
then be the work of a maniac, of some one not in his right mind!"
"Exactly. That is the very same conclusion which I have arrived at. Do
you know of any such in the village?"
"No, I don't. I am certain there is no such person," answered Claud,
hopelessly.
"He may very likely exist without anyone's suspecting it," rejoined
Percivale. "You know a man may suffer from one special form of mania and
be absolutely sane on every other point. If we could leave the discovery
to time, he must inevitably betray himself, sooner or later; but we have
to run him to earth in eight-and-forty hours. Let us see if the spots
selected give us any clue. How far from where we are now standing was
Mr. Allonby attacked?"
"In quite the opposite direction--nearly four miles from here. Starting
from Edge Willoughby, you would turn to your right and strike inland to
get to Poole Farm; you would turn to your left and walk along the shore
to get here."
"I see. That does not help us much; yet the criminal should have some
hiding place within convenient distance one would think. Unless it be
some one so completely beyond the pale of suspicion that his goings and
comings excited no attention whatever. Is there no village idiot here?
They indulge in one in most out-of-the-way spots like this?"
"Oh, yes, there is Saul Parker, an epileptic boy; but he is out of the
question."
"Why out of the question?" asked Percivale, persistently.
"Why, because--because--my good sir, why are _you_ out of the question,
the thing is just as absurd," answered Claud, almost crossly.
"Is it? I wonder," said Percivale, thoughtfully. "We shall soon see, if
you can answer a few more of my questions for me. To begin--_I_ am out
of the question because it can be proved that I was not in Edge Valley
at the time either crime was committed. Can you say as much for this
Saul Parker?"
"No, of course he was in the place at the time, but the whole idea is
absurd. He is gentle, tractable, most beautiful in face, and sat to Miss
Allonby as a model for a picture Mr. Fowler now has----"
"Where was he at the time Mr. Allonby was attacked?" coolly continued
his interrogator.
"Where was he? I----" a sudden memory burst upon Claud of Mrs.
Battishill's kitchen when he first beheld it.
"He was in the kitchen of Poole Farm," he answered, triumphantly, "for I
saw him there myself. I think that proves the _alibi_ all right."
"Did you see him there before or after the attempted murder?"
"After--naturally."
"Ah!... where does this Saul Parker live?"
"He lives with his mother in a cottage on the Quarry Road. She is the
widow of a quarry-man."
"It was along the Quarry Road, I think, that Miss Brabourne and her
brother went to the cliff yesterday? I wish you would kindly take me
back to the village that way. I should like to see the idiot, foolish as
you think my theory sounds. Is he very small and puny?"
"Oh, no--a great fellow, taller than I am," admitted Claud, with a
vague, vague wonder growing in him as to whether, after all, the
stranger had chanced upon the truth of what had baffled them all this
summer.
And--the absurdity of the idea!
Even as this sentiment crossed his mind, he could not help owning that,
though he could reiterate that it was absurd, he could give no
substantial reasons for his opinion. Everyone would have thought it
absurd--anyone in Edge Valley to whom the suggestion had been made would
have passed it by with a contemptuous laugh. The idiot was probably the
only person in the whole place whose goings and comings were never
challenged--who wandered in and out as he listed, now in this farm
kitchen, now in that, kindly tolerated for the sake of his beautiful
face and his affliction. It was of little use to question him.
"Where have 'ee been, my lad? Haow's yer moother?" or any other like
civility. A soft smile or a gurgling laugh would be the only response at
times, or, if mischievously inclined, he might give an answer which was
not the true one.
Yet, now that Claud began to think over what he knew of the boy....
His intense aversion to strangers was one point in his character which
rose to immediate remembrance. He recalled Wynifred's story of how she
had caught him in the act of throwing a stone at Mr. Haldane when his
back was turned; and Clara Battishill's complaints of his cruelty were
also fresh in his memory.
But Godfrey he knew to be the special terror of Saul's life, and the
object of his untold hatred. Godfrey set his bull-dog at the idiot,
laughed at him, bullied him--one blow from that heavy cudgel which Saul
habitually dragged after him would be more than enough to avenge his
wrongs on the frail boy. And yet--and yet----
Somehow, Elsa's guilt seemed painfully obvious. Her embarrassment, her
confusion of the night before--how were they to be accounted for? Was
there any other solution possible? Her untruthful equivocation as to
where she had been--what else could it portend?
This idea about Saul was, after all, too wild and far-fetched. How could
he have been guilty of the attack on Osmond without the Battishills
being aware of the fact?
No; the theory was ingenious, but, in his opinion, it would not hold
water. He said so, aloud, after a long interval of silence.
"I shall at all events see if facts fit in at all with it," said
Percivale, quietly. "Drowning men catch at straws, you know." Pausing a
moment he then added, almost reverently:
"If that beautiful woman is arraigned for this crime--if she has ever to
stand in the dock to answer to the charge of fratricide, or even
manslaughter, I shall feel all the rest of my life though as if I were
stained, shamed, degraded from my rightful post of helper to the
oppressed. I feel as though I could cut through armies single-handed
sooner than see Frederick Orton's wife triumph over the youth and
helplessness of Miss Brabourne."
He hesitated over the name, breathing it softly, as a devotee might name
a patron saint.
"You know something of the Ortons?" asked Claud.
"By reputation--yes," returned Percivale, with the air of one who does
not intend to say more.
Had he chosen, he could have edified his companion with an account of
how, last summer, at Oban, Mrs. Orton had determined, by hook or by
crook, to become acquainted with the mysterious owner of the _Swan_, of
whom no one knew more than his name, his unsociable habits, and his
somewhat remarkable appearance; and how she prosecuted this design with
so much vigor that he was obliged to intimate to her, as unequivocably
as is possible from a gentleman to a lady, that he declined the honor of
her acquaintance.
He said nothing of this, however; evidently, whatever his merits or his
failings, he was a very uncommunicative person.
As if by mutual consent, they moved slowly along together, their faces
turned back towards Edge Valley. Suddenly it occurred to Claud that he
was due at Ardnacruan in six hours' time. There was nothing for it but
to drive into Stanton and telegraph; no consideration should induce him
to leave the scene of action in the present unforeseen and agitated
aspect of affairs. He must implore Fowler to keep him a few days
longer--which request that good fellow would grant, he knew how
willingly.
As these thoughts crossed his mind, Henry approached them, his kind face
furrowed and drawn with pain in a manner piteous to behold. Laying a
hand on Mr. Cranmer's arm, he said, brokenly,
"Claud, my lad, you're not thinking of leaving me to-day?"
A rush of sympathy filled the young man's heart. Never before had Mr.
Fowler made use of his Christian name.
"No, my dear fellow, of course I shall stay," he said, at once. "If only
I thought I could be of any comfort to you----"
"You can--you are. But I am selfish--your friends will be expecting
you----"
"I will drive into Stanton and send a telegram, if I may have the trap.
Perhaps there might be some business I could do for you?"
"One or two things, lad, if you would. I feel mazed. I can't think
clearly. Let me see----"
"I'll think for you," said Claud, slipping his arm into his; "and,
first, I am going to take you straight home to have a glass of wine and
some food. You are positively faint from exhaustion."
"You must come too," said Mr. Fowler, to Percivale.
"Thanks."
The young man turned slowly round towards them.
During the few foregoing sentences he had been gazing out seawards, with
folded arms.
"On second thoughts," he said to Claud, "I think that, before making the
inquiries I speak of, I will see Miss Brabourne--if I can."