“THAT THUNDERS IN THE INDEX”
Le Sage, in the course of a pleasant little drive with Audrey, asked
innumerable questions and answered none. This idiosyncrasy of his
greatly amused the young lady, who was by disposition frankly
outspoken, and whose habit it never was to consider in conversation
whether she committed herself or any one else. Truth with her was at
least a state of nature--though it might sometimes have worn with
greater credit to itself a little more trimming--and states of nature
are relatively pardonable in the young. A child who sees no indecorum
in nakedness can hardly be expected to clothe Truth.
“This Sir Francis,” asked the Baron, “he is an old friend of yours?”
“O, yes!” said Audrey; “quite an old friend.”
“And favourite?”
“Well, he seems one of us, you see. Don’t you like him yourself?”
“I suppose he and your brother are on intimate terms?”
“We are all on intimate terms; Hugh and Frank no more than Frank and
I.”
“And no less, perhaps; or perhaps not quite so much?”
“O, yes they are! What makes you think so?”
“Not quite so intimate, I will put it, as your brother and Mr.
Bickerdike?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. Hugh is great friends with them both.”
“Tell me, now--which would you rather he were most intimate with?”
“How can it matter to me?”
“You have a preference, I expect.”
“I certainly have; but that doesn’t affect the question. It was Hugh
you were speaking of, not me.”
“Shall I give your preference? It is for Mr. Bickerdike.”
“Well guessed, Baron. Am I to take it as a compliment to my good
taste?”
“He is a superior man.”
“Isn’t he? And always wishes one to know it, too.”
“Aha! Then the Baronet is the man?”
“How absurd you are! Do you value your friends by preference? Nobody
is the _man_, as you call it. Because I don’t much like Mr.
Bickerdike, it doesn’t follow that I particularly like anybody else.”
“Why don’t you like him?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps because he likes himself too much.”
“Conceited, is he?”
“Not quite that: a first-rate prig I should call him--always wanting
to appear cleverer than he really is.”
“Isn’t he clever?”
“O, yes! Clever after a sort; but frightfully obtuse, too. I wouldn’t
trust him with a secret. He’s so cocksure of himself that he’d always
be liable to give it away with his blessing. But I oughtn’t to speak
like that of him. He’s a great friend of Hugh’s, and he does really
like to help people, I think, only it must be in his own way and not
theirs. Do _you_ like him?”
“I am rather surprised that he and your brother should be on such
close terms of friendship.”
“Are you? Why?”
“Is not Mr. Hugo, now, without offence, a rather passionate,
self-willed young gentleman?”
“Very, I should say.”
“Balance and instability--there you are.”
“You mean they are not at all alike. I should have thought that was
the best reason in the world for their chumming. One of oneself is
quite enough for most people. Fancy the horror of being a Siamese
twin!”
“Is that why you and Sir Francis are on such good terms--because there
is nothing in common between you?”
“Isn’t there? What, for instance.”
“He presents himself to me, from what little I have seen and heard of
him, as a rather gentle, spiritual young man, with a taste for books
and the fine arts, and a preference in sport, if any, for angling. _In
aere piscari_.”
“What does that mean?”
“I should fancy him a fisherman, by choice, of ideas rather than of
streams.”
“And me, I suppose, a cross-tempered, empty-headed country hoyden, who
thinks of nothing but dogs and stables?” But she laughed as she bent
to Le Sage, looking mockingly into his smiling eyes. “M. le Baron,
what a character!”
“It is not of my giving,” he said. “A spirited Diana should have been
_my_ antithesis.”
“But why should you contrast us at all? Frank and I are not going to
live together.”
“You are bearing in mind, I hope,” he said, “that I promised your
father to be back at Wildshott by half-past two?”
“For chess again? What can you find in it?” She pulled up the pony,
and, halting in the road, determinedly faced her companion. “Do you
know you never answer anything that’s asked of you? Why don’t you?”
“I didn’t know I didn’t.”
“Don’t fib, sir.”
He chuckled aloud. “You are a frank young lady.” He took her slim left
hand between his cushiony palms, and patted it paternally. “When a
suspected man is arrested, my dear, the first warning he receives from
the police is that anything he says may be used in evidence against
him. Supposing we apply that rule to common converse? Then at least
we shall avoid self-committal.”
“But are we all, every one of us, suspected people?”
“One never knows what may lie in a question. For instance, you ask me
what can I find in chess. Very seeming innocent; but, O, the
suspicion it may embody!”
“What suspicion?”
“Why, that chess represents my poor wits, and that I live upon them.”
Audrey tinkled with laughter. “I never guessed I was such a serpent.
But I am afraid I was only thinking of the dullness of it. To sit for
ten minutes looking at a board, and then to move a pawn a single inch
on it! Ugh! By that time I should be screaming for ‘Grab.’”
“Let us play ‘Grab’ one night,” said the Baron gaily.
They drove on by the pleasant lanes, and presently came out into the
High road near Wildshott. As they passed the wicket in the hedge, a
gleam of something, quickly seen and quickly withdrawn among the green
beyond, caught Le Sage’s attention. He laid a hand on the reins,
suggesting a halt.
“Was that a private way to the house?” he asked. “--there, where the
little gate stood?”
Audrey told him yes. That it was called the Bishop’s Walk, and that he
might lift the latch and go by it if he pleased. She twinkled as she
spoke, and the Baron looked roguish.
“Inquisitive?” said he; “I admit it, if it is the word for an
inquiring mind. But not conceited, I hope. I am going to explore.”
He was out in the road, to the dancing relief of the governess-cart
springs, and waved _au revoir_ to his companion. She nodded, and drove
on, while he turned to go back to the wicket. He hummed as he went, a
little philandering French air, droning the words in a soft, throaty
way, and was still recalling them as he mounted the two steps from the
road, opened the gate, and passed through. His eyes, moving in an
immobile face, were busy all the time. “_Dites moi, belle
enchanteresse_,” he sang, “_Qui donc vous a donné vos yeux?_” just
above his breath and suddenly, at a few yards in, eighteen or twenty,
swerved from the close narrow track and stepped behind a beech-trunk.
And there was a girl hiding from view, her eyes wide, her forefinger
crooked to her lip.
“_Vos doux yeux, si pleins de tendresse_,” hummed M. le Baron, and
nodded humorously. “I thought I recognised you from the road.”
She did not flush up or exclaim “_Me!_” or exhibit any of the
offensive-defensive pertness of the ordinary housemaid surprised out
of bounds. She just stood looking at the intruder, a wonder on her
rosy lips, and Le Sage for his part returned her scrutiny at his
leisure. His impression of the night before he found more than
confirmed by daylight: she was a very Arcadian nymph, with a
sweet-briar complexion and eyes and hair of thyme and honey; shapely
as a doe, ineffably pretty. He wondered less than ever over Louis’s
infatuation.
And what was she doing here? Her head was bare; a light waterproof
veiled her official livery: it might be concluded without much
circumspection that a tryst was in the air.
“I am sorry,” said M. le Baron. “I did not come to be a spoil-sport. I
ought, perhaps, to have pretended to see nothing and pass by. But that
rudeness of my man last night sticks in my mind, and it occurred to me
to apologise for him.”
She laughed, with a tiny toss of her head. “Thank you, sir, but I can
look after myself.”
“So I perceive,” he said. “You tone very well with the trees. No eyes,
except perhaps the favoured ones, could possibly guess you were here.”
“Except yours, sir,” she said, with just a tiny sauce of irony.
“Except mine, of course,” he agreed; and left her to wonder why, if
she would.
“Well,” he said, after a smiling moment, “that was an unpardonable act
of Louis’s, only don’t visit it further on his head. I have wanted to
warn you, and here is my opportunity. He comes of a hot-blooded race,
and there’s no knowing----. But you can look after yourself; I will
take your word for it.”
He believed she could, though she made no further answer to assure
him; and, with a nod, he went on his way, taking up again the little
murmured burden of his song: “_Yeux, yeux,--Astres divins tombés des
cieux_.” “O, eyes!” he said. “Sweetest eyes were even seen! From what
heaven did you fall to flower in a housemaid’s face!” There was
something suggestive about the girl, more than her surprising
beauty--a “towniness,” a hint, both in speech and manner, of some
shrewd quality which was not of the soil. “When Lamia takes to country
service,” thought the Baron, “let more than rustic hearts look to
their locks!” With whom, he wondered, could be her assignation? What
if, after all, it were with Louis himself? Would that surprise him?
Perhaps not. Cabanis was a handsome and compelling fellow, and women,
like the Lord, could chasten whom they loved. But he devoutly hoped it
was not so; he desired no amorous complications in his train; and,
disturbed by the thought, he inquired for his valet the moment he
reached the house--only to learn that the man had gone out some time
before and had not yet returned. Somewhat disquieted, Le Sage entered
the hall, where he was met by his host.
“Ah, Baron!” hailed Sir Calvin. “Punctuality itself! Go into my
study, will you, and I’ll join you in a moment.”
The study was a comfortable room on the ground floor, with a large bay
window overlooking the gardens. Here the table for chess was set
ready, with a brace of high easy chairs and, handily contiguous, a
smoker’s cabinet. There were trophies of the chase and some good
sporting pictures on the walls, against them a couple of mahogany
bookcases containing well-bound editions of Alken, Surtees, and
others, and, let into an alcove of that one of them which included the
fireplace, a substantial safe. Le Sage knew it was there, though it
was hidden from sight behind a shallow curtain; and now, as he moved
humming about the room, his hands behind his back, his eyes
scrutinising a picture or two while he awaited his host’s coming, he
gravitated gradually toward its place of concealment. Arrived there,
he lifted very delicately, and still humming, the hem of the curtain,
just exposed the keyhole, and bent to examine it with singular
intentness. But a moment later, when the General entered, he was
contemplating a coaching print by Flavell over the mantelpiece.
“Indifferent art, I suppose you will admit,” he said. “But there is
something picturesquely direct about these old Sporting pieces.”
“Well, they suit me,” answered Sir Calvin, “because I understand them.
Red’s red and blue’s blue to me, and if any artist tells me they are
not, I’ve nothing to answer the fellow but that he’s a damned liar.”
Le Sage laughed--“What is the colour of a black eye, then?”--and they
settled down to their game. The General was a good player; all the
best of his mental qualifications--which were otherwise of the
standard common among retired officers of an overbearing, obstinate,
and undiscerning disposition--were displayed in his astute engineering
of his small forces. He was a tactical Napoleon in miniature when it
came to chess; he seemed to acquire then a reason and a dignity
inconspicuous in his dealings with living people. The chess-men could
not misrepresent him; their movements were his movements, and their
successes or failures his. If he lost, he had no one but himself he
could possibly blame, and his understanding of that condition seemed
to bring out the best in him. He was never choleric over the fortunes
of the game. For the rest, he was not a wise man, or an amenable man,
or anything but a typical despot of his class, having an inordinate
pride of family, which owed less than it should have to any moral
credit he had brought it in the past. In person he was a leanish,
clean-built soldier of fifty-five, with bullying eyebrows and a thick
blunt moustache of a grizzled blonde.
He and the Baron were very fond of devising problems, which they would
send up for solution to the _Morning Post_. They set to elaborating a
tough one now, a very difficult changed-mate two-mover, which kept
them absorbed and occupied over the board for a considerable time.
Indeed, a full hour and a half had passed before they had settled it
to their satisfaction; and then the Baron, taking a refreshing pinch
of Macuba, rose to his feet.
“That is it, my friend,” said he; “an economical B.P. at K. Knight 4,
and the thing is done.”
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed a quarter past four as he spoke,
and on the tinkling reverberation of its one stroke some one opened
the door. It was Hugo Kennett: the young man’s face was ghastly; his
hands shook; he came into the room hurriedly, as if overweighted with
some dreadful piece of intelligence.
“Good God, Hughie!” exclaimed his father, and rose, staring at the
boy, his eternal cigarette caught between his teeth.
The young soldier made an effort to speak; his breath fluttered
audibly in him like the leaf of a ventilator; his nerve seemed for the
moment gone utterly beyond his control.
“Steady, sir!” commanded the General; and his masterful tone had its
visible effect. “Now,” he said, after a rallying pause. “What is it?”
Hugh swallowed once or twice, and answered. Le Sage, observant of
him, could see what immense force he had to put upon himself to do so.
“The Bishop’s Walk! Can you come at once, sir? There’s been what looks
like a dreadful murder there.”
Sir Calvin never so much as blenched or exclaimed. One might at least
admire in him the self-possessed soldier, not to be rattled by any
sudden call upon his nerve.
“Murder!” he said. “Whose murder?”
The young man’s lips quivered; he looked physically sick.
“It’s one of the maids, sir. I saw her; I came upon her myself. I had
forgotten my gun, and went back to fetch it, and there she was lying
on her face, and----” He put his hands before his own face and
shuddered horribly.
“Look here,” said the father, “you must pull yourself together. This
won’t do at all. Baron, get me my hunting flask, if you’ll be so good.
It’s in the right-hand top drawer of my desk.”
He poured into the cup, with an unshaking hand, a full half gill of
liqueur brandy, and made his son drink it down. It wrought a measure
of effect; a tinge of colour came to Hugh’s cheek; his hurried
respirations steadied.
“Now,” said Sir Calvin, “try to be coherent. What do you mean by
forgetting your gun?”
“I mean, sir,”--he looked down; his features still twitched
spasmodically, “I mean--it was like this. I was no good at the shoot,
and I left it and came back by myself--came back by the Bishop’s Walk.
Just a little way inside, I stopped to light a cigarette, and rested
my gun against a tree and forgot it; but an hour later I remembered
that I had left it there, and went back to fetch it, and saw--O, it
was ghastly!”
“Steady, man! Was the girl there when you first entered the path?”
Le Sage listened for an answer in the affirmative, and could hardly
hear it when it came.
“And you stopped to light a cigarette?” The father looked keenly into
the son’s face. “You haven’t yet told us what girl, Hughie.”
The good liqueur was working. The young fellow lifted his head, a new
passionate expression in his eyes:--
“It was Annie, sir--that good-looking housemaid. You wouldn’t wonder
over my horror if you saw. He must have fired at short range, the
damned villain, and when she was turned from him. There is a hole in
her back that one could put--ah, I can’t tell you!”
M. le Baron exclaimed, “That would have been,” said he, speaking for
the first time, “between three and four, when you discovered the
body?”
“Just now,” answered Hugh, addressing his father. “I have come
straight from it. They are waiting for you, sir, to know what to do.”
“It was done with your gun? Is that the assumption?” suggested the
Baron.
“I don’t know,” replied the young man feverishly, again not to the
questioner. “I suppose so; I dare say. Both barrels are discharged,
and one I am pretty sure I left loaded. Are you coming, sir?”
Sir Calvin, frowning a stiff moment, moved to acquiesce. They all went
out together. At the entrance to the track a group of frightened
maid-servants stood white-lipped and whispering, afraid to penetrate
farther. One or two grooms and a couple of gardeners had already gone
in, and were awaiting about the body the arrival of their master. It
lay, face downwards, close beside the beech trunk behind which the
living girl had sought to hide herself from Le Sage. That stood at a
point in the winding path some twenty-five yards from the wicket, and
was nowhere remotely visible from the road. She might have been making
her way back to the house when she was fired on and shattered. It was
a pitiful, ugly sight; but death must have been instantaneous--that
was one comfort. Le Sage made the most of it to himself, though he was
really distressed and moved. “Poor eyes!” he thought, “_si pleins de
tendresse_: but an hour ago so beautiful, and now quenched in death.
So this was the tryst you kept! Why, it can hardly be cold yet about
your heart.”
Sir Calvin, stern and wrath, gave brief directions. A shutter was to
be brought, a doctor fetched from Longbridge by one servant, the
county police informed by another. He asked a short question or
two--one of his son. Was this the tree against which he had left his
gun leaning? Hugh answered no, while Le Sage listened. He had left it,
he said, propped against a smaller trunk, four or five yards nearer
the gate. He had had to pass the body to recover it, and had then
taken it home, and thrust it into the gun-room as he had hurried by to
raise an alarm. He spoke with extreme agitation, averting his eyes
from the dead girl; and, indeed, it was a sight to move a tougher
heart than his. Sir Calvin’s next question was to the group at large.
It was to ask if any one knew of any enemy the unfortunate victim had
raised against herself, or of any possible reason for the attack. But
no one knew or guessed, or, if he felt a suspicion, would have dared
to formulate it. It would have been too risky a venture at this stage
of the affair. Their master looked from face to face, and grunted and
spoke a warning word. If that were so, he said, let them avoid all
loose discussion of the matter until the police had taken it in hand.
It might, after all, prove no murder, but only an accident, the
perpetrator of which, terrified by the deed which he had unwittingly
committed, might be keeping silence only until assured that he could
tell the truth without danger to himself. Le Sage ventured to applaud
that suggestion, turning to Hugh to ask him if he did not think it a
quite reasonable one. But the young man refused to consider it; he was
very excited; it was murder, he said, gross, palpable, open, and it
was mere criminal sophistry to pretend to account for it on any other
theory. His father steadied him once more with a word, and the three
turned to go back to the house together as they had come, leaving the
men to follow with the body. On issuing from the copse they found the
little group of frightened sobbing women reinforced by Cleghorn. The
butler wore a cloth cap and a light overcoat. His face was the colour
of veal, and his lower jaw hung in a foolish incapable way.
“Ha, Cleghorn!” said his master. “This is a bad business.”
“It’s knocked me all of a heap, sir,” answered the man. His voice
shook and wheezed. “I’ve only this moment heard of it, sir.”
Hugo hung behind as they entered the hall. His father, steady as a
rock, marched on to his study, and was followed by M. le Baron. The
latter shut the door upon them.
“An ugly business,” he said.
“A cursed interruption to our game,” damned the General. He was
greatly incensed. That such a vulgar scandal should have come to
pollute the sacred preserves of Wildshott seemed to him the incredible
outrage.
“What am I to do?” he said. “What is the infernal procedure? There
will have to be an inquest, I suppose, and then----”
“And then to indict the murderer,” said Le Sage, answering the pause.
“You think it _is_ a murder?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know; I suppose so. It may prove a devil of a business to
find out. Ought we to have a detective?”
“These provincial police are excellent men, but their normal
training----. Still, it may prove a quite simple affair.”
“I have a feeling somehow that it won’t. I’d better write up to
Scotland Yard.”
“If you’re decided on it, why not apply? there is, or was, in the
neighbourhood the very man.”
“You mean that fellow Ridgway? By Jove, yes--a clever dog! I’ll motor
into Winton first thing to-morrow, and find out. In the
meantime--where’s Hugo?”
“I think I saw him go upstairs. I’ll have him sent to you, if you’ll
allow me. I was wanting to write some letters.”
He retreated, with a smile which left his face the moment he was
outside. Finding a servant, he gave her Sir Calvin’s message, and then
put a question of his own:--
“Do you know where my man is, my dear?”
“I think Mr. Cabanis is out, sir,” answered the girl. Her cheeks were
still mottled with the fright of things. “He went out some time ago.”
“O, to be sure! About three o’clock, wasn’t it?”
“Earlier than that, sir--directly after dinner in the servants’ hall.”
Her manner appeared a little odd, disordered; but that might have been
due to the shock they had all received.
“And he has not yet returned?” said the Baron cheerily. “Well, send
him to me the moment he comes in, if you will be so good.” And he
moved to mount the stairs, humming as he went. But again, though his
song was light, he turned a dark face to the wall.