The Lady in Black
The sea broke raging upon the foot of the cliff under a good breeze;
the sun flooded the land with life from a dappled blue sky. In this
perfection of English weather Trent, who had slept ill, went down
before eight o’clock to a pool among the rocks, the direction of which
had been given him, and dived deep into clear water. Between vast grey
boulders he swam out to the tossing open, forced himself some little
way against a coast-wise current, and then returned to his refuge
battered and refreshed. Ten minutes later he was scaling the cliff
again, and his mind, cleared for the moment of a heavy disgust for the
affair he had in hand, was turning over his plans for the morning.
It was the day of the inquest, the day after his arrival in the place.
He had carried matters not much further after parting with the American
on the road to Bishopsbridge. In the afternoon he had walked from the
inn into the town, accompanied by Mr. Cupples, and had there made
certain purchases at a chemist’s shop, conferred privately for some
time with a photographer, sent off a reply-paid telegram, and made an
enquiry at the telephone exchange. He had said but little about the
case to Mr. Cupples, who seemed incurious on his side, and nothing at
all about the results of his investigation or the steps he was about to
take. After their return from Bishopsbridge, Trent had written a long
dispatch for the _Record_ and sent it to be telegraphed by the proud
hands of the paper’s local representative. He had afterwards dined with
Mr. Cupples, and had spent the rest of the evening in meditative
solitude on the veranda.
This morning as he scaled the cliff he told himself that he had never
taken up a case he liked so little, or which absorbed him so much. The
more he contemplated it in the golden sunshine of this new day, the
more evil and the more challenging it appeared. All that he suspected
and all that he almost knew had occupied his questing brain for hours
to the exclusion of sleep; and in this glorious light and air, though
washed in body and spirit by the fierce purity of the sea, he only saw
the more clearly the darkness of the guilt in which he believed, and
was more bitterly repelled by the motive at which he guessed. But now
at least his zeal was awake again, and the sense of the hunt quickened.
He would neither slacken nor spare; here need be no compunction. In the
course of the day, he hoped, his net would be complete. He had work to
do in the morning; and with very vivid expectancy, though not much
serious hope, he awaited the answer to the telegram which he had shot
into the sky, as it were, the day before.
The path back to the hotel wound for some way along the top of the
cliff, and on nearing a spot he had marked from the sea level, where
the face had fallen away long ago, he approached the edge and looked
down, hoping to follow with his eyes the most delicately beautiful of
all the movements of water—the wash of a light sea over broken rock.
But no rock was there. A few feet below him a broad ledge stood out, a
rough platform as large as a great room, thickly grown with wiry grass
and walled in steeply on three sides. There, close to the verge where
the cliff at last dropped sheer, a woman was sitting, her arms about
her drawn-up knees, her eyes fixed on the trailing smoke of a distant
liner, her face full of some dream.
This woman seemed to Trent, whose training had taught him to live in
his eyes, to make the most beautiful picture he had ever seen. Her face
of southern pallor, touched by the kiss of the wind with colour on the
cheek, presented to him a profile of delicate regularity in which there
was nothing hard; nevertheless the black brows bending down toward the
point where they almost met gave her in repose a look of something like
severity, strangely redeemed by the open curves of the mouth. Trent
said to himself that the absurdity or otherwise of a lover writing
sonnets to his mistress’s eyebrow depended after all on the quality of
the eyebrow. Her nose was of the straight and fine sort, exquisitely
escaping the perdition of too much length, which makes a conscientious
mind ashamed that it cannot help, on occasion, admiring the tip-tilted.
Her hat lay pinned to the grass beside her, and the lively breeze
played with her thick dark hair, blowing backward the two broad
bandeaux that should have covered much of her forehead, and agitating a
hundred tiny curls from the mass gathered at her nape. Everything about
this lady was black, from her shoes of suede to the hat that she had
discarded; lustreless black covered her to her bare throat. All she
wore was fine and well put on. Dreamy and delicate of spirit as her
looks declared her, it was very plain that she was long-practised as
only a woman grown can be in dressing well, the oldest of the arts, and
had her touch of primal joy in the excellence of the body that was so
admirably curved now in the attitude of embraced knees. With the
suggestion of French taste in her clothes, she made a very modern
figure seated there, until one looked at her face and saw the glow and
triumph of all vigorous beings that ever faced sun and wind and sea
together in the prime of the year. One saw, too, a womanhood so unmixed
and vigorous, so unconsciously sure of itself, as scarcely to be
English, still less American.
Trent, who had halted only for a moment in the surprise of seeing the
woman in black, had passed by on the cliff above her, perceiving and
feeling as he went the things set down. At all times his keen vision
and active brain took in and tasted details with an easy swiftness that
was marvellous to men of slower chemistry; the need to stare, he held,
was evidence of blindness. Now the feeling of beauty was awakened and
exultant, and doubled the power of his sense. In these instants a
picture was printed on his memory that would never pass away.
As he went by unheard on the turf the woman, still alone with her
thoughts, suddenly moved. She unclasped her long hands from about her
knees, stretched her limbs and body with feline grace, then slowly
raised her head and extended her arms with open, curving fingers, as if
to gather to her all the glory and overwhelming sanity of the morning.
This was a gesture not to be mistaken: it was a gesture of freedom, the
movement of a soul’s resolution to be, to possess, to go forward,
perhaps to enjoy.
So he saw her for an instant as he passed, and he did not turn. He knew
suddenly who the woman must be, and it was as if a curtain of gloom
were drawn between him and the splendour of the day.
During breakfast at the hotel Mr. Cupples found Trent little inclined
to talk. He excused himself on the plea of a restless night. Mr.
Cupples, on the other hand, was in a state of bird-like alertness. The
prospect of the inquest seemed to enliven him. He entertained Trent
with a disquisition upon the history of that most ancient and once busy
tribunal, the coroner’s court, and remarked upon the enviable freedom
of its procedure from the shackles of rule and precedent. From this he
passed to the case that was to come before it that morning.
“Young Bunner mentioned to me last night,” he said, “when I went up
there after dinner, the hypothesis which he puts forward in regard to
the crime. A very remarkable young man, Trent. His meaning is
occasionally obscure, but in my opinion he is gifted with a clearheaded
knowledge of the world quite unusual in one of his apparent age.
Indeed, his promotion by Manderson to the position of his principal
lieutenant speaks for itself. He seems to have assumed with perfect
confidence the control at this end of the wire, as he expresses it, of
the complicated business situation caused by the death of his
principal, and he has advised very wisely as to the steps I should take
on Mabel’s behalf, and the best course for her to pursue until effect
has been given to the provisions of the will. I was accordingly less
disposed than I might otherwise have been to regard his suggestion of
an industrial vendetta as far-fetched. When I questioned him he was
able to describe a number of cases in which attacks of one sort or
another—too often successful—had been made upon the lives of persons
who had incurred the hostility of powerful labour organizations. This
is a terrible time in which we live, my dear boy. There is none
recorded in history, I think, in which the disproportion between the
material and the moral constituents of society has been so great or so
menacing to the permanence of the fabric. But nowhere, in my judgement,
is the prospect so dark as it is in the United States.”
“I thought,” said Trent listlessly, “that Puritanism was about as
strong there as the money-getting craze.”
“Your remark,” answered Mr. Cupples, with as near an approach to humour
as was possible to him, “is not in the nature of a testimonial to what
you call Puritanism—a convenient rather than an accurate term; for I
need not remind you that it was invented to describe an Anglican party
which aimed at the purging of the services and ritual of their Church
from certain elements repugnant to them. The sense of your observation,
however, is none the less sound, and its truth is extremely well
illustrated by the case of Manderson himself, who had, I believe, the
virtues of purity, abstinence, and self-restraint in their strongest
form. No, Trent, there are other and more worthy things among the moral
constituents of which I spoke; and in our finite nature, the more we
preoccupy ourselves with the bewildering complexity of external
apparatus which science places in our hands, the less vigour have we
left for the development of the holier purposes of humanity within us.
Agricultural machinery has abolished the festival of the Harvest Home.
Mechanical travel has abolished the inn, or all that was best in it. I
need not multiply instances. The view I am expressing to you,” pursued
Mr. Cupples, placidly buttering a piece of toast, “is regarded as
fundamentally erroneous by many of those who think generally as I do
about the deeper concerns of life, but I am nevertheless firmly
persuaded of its truth.”
“It needs epigrammatic expression,” said Trent, rising from the table.
“If only it could be crystallized into some handy formula, like ‘No
Popery’, or ‘Tax the Foreigner’, you would find multitudes to go to the
stake for it. But you were planning to go to White Gables before the
inquest, I think. You ought to be off if you are to get back to the
court in time. I have something to attend to there myself, so we might
walk up together. I will just go and get my camera.”
“By all means,” Mr. Cupples answered; and they set off at once in the
ever-growing warmth of the morning. The roof of White Gables, a surly
patch of dull red against the dark trees, seemed to harmonize with
Trent’s mood; he felt heavy, sinister, and troubled. If a blow must
fall that might strike down that creature radiant of beauty and life
whom he had seen that morning, he did not wish it to come from his
hand. An exaggerated chivalry had lived in Trent since the first
teachings of his mother; but at this moment the horror of bruising
anything so lovely was almost as much the artist’s revulsion as the
gentleman’s. On the other hand, was the hunt to end in nothing? The
quality of the affair was such that the thought of forbearance was an
agony. There never was such a case; and he alone, he was confident,
held the truth of it under his hand. At least, he determined, that day
should show whether what he believed was a delusion. He would trample
his compunction underfoot until he was quite sure that there was any
call for it. That same morning he would know.
As they entered at the gate of the drive they saw Marlowe and the
American standing in talk before the front door. In the shadow of the
porch was the lady in black.
She saw them, and came gravely forward over the lawn, moving as Trent
had known that she would move, erect and balanced, stepping lightly.
When she welcomed him on Mr. Cupples’s presentation her eyes of
golden-flecked brown observed him kindly. In her pale composure, worn
as the mask of distress, there was no trace of the emotion that had
seemed a halo about her head on the ledge of the cliff. She spoke the
appropriate commonplace in a low and even voice. After a few words to
Mr. Cupples she turned her eyes on Trent again.
“I hope you will succeed,” she said earnestly. “Do you think you will
succeed?”
He made his mind up as the words left her lips. He said, “I believe I
shall do so, Mrs. Manderson. When I have the case sufficiently complete
I shall ask you to let me see you and tell you about it. It may be
necessary to consult you before the facts are published.”
She looked puzzled, and distress showed for an instant in her eyes. “If
it is necessary, of course you shall do so,” she said.
On the brink of his next speech Trent hesitated. He remembered that the
lady had not wished to repeat to him the story already given to the
inspector—or to be questioned at all. He was not unconscious that he
desired to hear her voice and watch her face a little longer, if it
might be; but the matter he had to mention really troubled his mind, it
was a queer thing that fitted nowhere into the pattern within whose
corners he had by this time brought the other queer things in the case.
It was very possible that she could explain it away in a breath; it was
unlikely that any one else could. He summoned his resolution.
“You have been so kind,” he said, “in allowing me access to the house
and every opportunity of studying the case, that I am going to ask
leave to put a question or two to yourself—nothing that you would
rather not answer, I think. May I?”
She glanced at him wearily. “It would be stupid of me to refuse. Ask
your questions, Mr. Trent.”
“It’s only this,” said Trent hurriedly. “We know that your husband
lately drew an unusually large sum of ready money from his London
bankers, and was keeping it here. It is here now, in fact. Have you any
idea why he should have done that?”
She opened her eyes in astonishment. “I cannot imagine,” she said. “I
did not know he had done so. I am very much surprised to hear it.”
“Why is it surprising?”
“I thought my husband had very little money in the house. On Sunday
night, just before he went out in the motor, he came into the
drawing-room where I was sitting. He seemed to be irritated about
something, and asked me at once if I had any notes or gold I could let
him have until next day. I was surprised at that, because he was never
without money; he made it a rule to carry a hundred pounds or so about
him always in a note-case. I unlocked my escritoire, and gave him all I
had by me. It was nearly thirty pounds.”
“And he did not tell you why he wanted it?”
“No. He put it in his pocket, and then said that Mr. Marlowe had
persuaded him to go for a run in the motor by moonlight, and he thought
it might help him to sleep. He had been sleeping badly, as perhaps you
know. Then he went off with Mr. Marlowe. I thought it odd he should
need money on Sunday night, but I soon forgot about it. I never
remembered it again until now.”
“It was curious, certainly,” said Trent, staring into the distance. Mr
Cupples began to speak to his niece of the arrangements for the
inquest, and Trent moved away to where Marlowe was pacing slowly upon
the lawn. The young man seemed relieved to talk about the coming
business of the day. Though he still seemed tired out and nervous, he
showed himself not without a quiet humour in describing the pomposities
of the local police and the portentous airs of Dr Stock. Trent turned
the conversation gradually toward the problem of the crime, and all
Marlowe’s gravity returned.
“Bunner has told me what he thinks,” he said when Trent referred to the
American’s theory. “I don’t find myself convinced by it, because it
doesn’t really explain some of the oddest facts. But I have lived long
enough in the United States to know that such a stroke of revenge, done
in a secret, melodramatic way, is not an unlikely thing. It is quite a
characteristic feature of certain sections of the labour movement
there. Americans have a taste and a talent for that sort of business.
Do you know _Huckleberry Finn?_”
“Do I know my own name?” exclaimed Trent.
“Well, I think the most American thing in that great American epic is
Tom Sawyer’s elaboration of an extremely difficult and romantic scheme,
taking days to carry out, for securing the escape of the nigger Jim,
which could have been managed quite easily in twenty minutes. You know
how fond they are of lodges and brotherhoods. Every college club has
its secret signs and handgrips. You’ve heard of the Know-Nothing
movement in politics, I dare say, and the Ku Klux Klan. Then look at
Brigham Young’s penny-dreadful tyranny in Utah, with real blood. The
founders of the Mormon State were of the purest Yankee stock in
America; and you know what they did. It’s all part of the same mental
tendency. Americans make fun of it among themselves. For my part, I
take it very seriously.”
“It can have a very hideous side to it, certainly,” said Trent, “when
you get it in connection with crime—or with vice—or even mere luxury.
But I have a sort of sneaking respect for the determination to make
life interesting and lively in spite of civilization. To return to the
matter in hand, however; has it struck you as a possibility that
Manderson’s mind was affected to some extent by this menace that Bunner
believes in? For instance, it was rather an extraordinary thing to send
you posting off like that in the middle of the night.”
“About ten o’clock, to be exact,” replied Marlowe. “Though, mind you,
if he’d actually roused me out of my bed at midnight I shouldn’t have
been very much surprised. It all chimes in with what we’ve just been
saying. Manderson had a strong streak of the national taste for
dramatic proceedings. He was rather fond of his well-earned reputation
for unexpected strokes and for going for his object with ruthless
directness through every opposing consideration. He had decided
suddenly that he wanted to have word from this man Harris—”
“Who is Harris?” interjected Trent.
“Nobody knows. Even Bunner never heard of him, and can’t imagine what
the business in hand was. All I know is that when I went up to London
last week to attend to various things I booked a deck-cabin, at
Manderson’s request, for a Mr. George Harris on the boat that sailed on
Monday. It seems that Manderson suddenly found he wanted news from
Harris which presumably was of a character too secret for the
telegraph; and there was no train that served; so I was sent off as you
know.”
Trent looked round to make sure that they were not overheard, then
faced the other gravely, “There is one thing I may tell you,” he said
quietly, “that I don’t think you know. Martin the butler caught a few
words at the end of your conversation with Manderson in the orchard
before you started with him in the car. He heard him say, ‘If Harris is
there, every moment is of importance.’ Now, Mr. Marlowe, you know my
business here. I am sent to make enquiries, and you mustn’t take
offence. I want to ask you if, in the face of that sentence, you will
repeat that you know nothing of what the business was.”
Marlowe shook his head. “I know nothing, indeed. I’m not easily
offended, and your question is quite fair. What passed during that
conversation I have already told the detective. Manderson plainly said
to me that he could not tell me what it was all about. He simply wanted
me to find Harris, tell him that he desired to know how matters stood,
and bring back a letter or message from him. Harris, I was further
told, might not turn up. If he did, ‘every moment was of importance’.
And now you know as much as I do.”
“That talk took place _before_ he told his wife that you were taking
him for a moonlight run. Why did he conceal your errand in that way, I
wonder.”
The young man made a gesture of helplessness. “Why? I can guess no
better than you.”
“Why,” muttered Trent as if to himself, gazing on the ground, “did he
conceal it—from Mrs. Manderson?” He looked up at Marlowe.
“And from Martin,” the other amended coolly. “He was told the same
thing.”
With a sudden movement of his head Trent seemed to dismiss the subject.
He drew from his breast-pocket a letter-case, and thence extracted two
small leaves of clean, fresh paper.
“Just look at these two slips, Mr. Marlowe,” he said. “Did you ever see
them before? Have you any idea where they come from?” he added as
Marlowe took one in each hand and examined them curiously.
“They seem to have been cut with a knife or scissors from a small diary
for this year from the October pages,” Marlowe observed, looking them
over on both sides. “I see no writing of any kind on them. Nobody here
has any such diary so far as I know. What about them?”
“There may be nothing in it,” Trent said dubiously. “Any one in the
house, of course, might have such a diary without your having seen it.
But I didn’t much expect you would be able to identify the leaves—in
fact, I should have been surprised if you had.”
He stopped speaking as Mrs. Manderson came towards them. “My uncle
thinks we should be going now,” she said.
“I think I will walk on with Mr. Bunner,” Mr. Cupples said as he joined
them. “There are certain business matters that must be disposed of as
soon as possible. Will you come on with these two gentlemen, Mabel? We
will wait for you before we reach the place.”
Trent turned to her. “Mrs. Manderson will excuse me, I hope,” he said.
“I really came up this morning in order to look about me here for some
indications I thought I might possibly find. I had not thought of
attending the—the court just yet.”
She looked at him with eyes of perfect candour. “Of course, Mr. Trent.
Please do exactly as you wish. We are all relying upon you. If you will
wait a few moments, Mr. Marlowe, I shall be ready.”
She entered the house. Her uncle and the American had already strolled
towards the gate.
Trent looked into the eyes of his companion. “That is a wonderful
woman,” he said in a lowered voice.
“You say so without knowing her,” replied Marlowe in a similar tone.
“She is more than that.”
Trent said nothing to this. He stared out over the fields towards the
sea. In the silence a noise of hobnailed haste rose on the still air. A
little distance down the road a boy appeared trotting towards them from
the direction of the hotel. In his hand was the orange envelope,
unmistakable afar off, of a telegram. Trent watched him with an
indifferent eye as he met and passed the two others. Then he turned to
Marlowe. “A propos of nothing in particular,” he said, “were you at
Oxford?”
“Yes,” said the young man. “Why do you ask?”
“I just wondered if I was right in my guess. It’s one of the things you
can very often tell about a man, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so,” Marlowe said. “Well, each of us is marked in one way or
another, perhaps. I should have said you were an artist, if I hadn’t
known it.”
“Why? Does my hair want cutting?”
“Oh, no! It’s only that you look at things and people as I’ve seen
artists do, with an eye that moves steadily from detail to
detail—rather looking them over than looking at them.”
The boy came up panting. “Telegram for you, sir,” he said to Trent.
“Just come, sir.”
Trent tore open the envelope with an apology, and his eyes lighted up
so visibly as he read the slip that Marlowe’s tired face softened in a
smile.
“It must be good news,” he murmured half to himself.
Trent turned on him a glance in which nothing could be read. “Not
exactly news,” he said. “It only tells me that another little guess of
mine was a good one.”