THE BARON DRIVES
(_From the Bickerdike MS._)
On the day following the Inquest, the plot thickened. It became
really entertaining. One did not know whether to appear the more
scandalised or amused. On the one hand there was a certain
satisfaction in knowing that the last word was apparently not said in
what had seemed to be a perfectly straightforward affair, on the other
one’s sense of fitness had received a severe blow. In short, the
impeccable Cleghorn had been arrested, and was detained on suspicion.
I saw him go off in a fly in charge of a couple of policemen, and
never did hooked cod-fish on the Dogger Bank look more gogglingly
stupefied than he over the amazing behaviour of the bait he had
swallowed. Sir Calvin stormed, and blasphemed, and demanded to know if
the whole household of Wildshott was in a conspiracy to shame him and
tarnish his escutcheon; but his objurgations were received very
civilly and sensibly by the detective, who explained that he must act
according to his professional conscience, that detention did not
necessarily mean conviction, or even indictment, and that where a
sifting of the truth from the chaff imposed precautionary measures, he
must be free to take them, or abandon his conduct of the case.
Whereon the wrathful General simmered down, and contented himself only
with requesting sarcastically a few hours’ grace to settle his
affairs, when it came to be _his_ turn to wear the official bracelets.
And so, for the while, we were without a butler; nor could one, on
reviewing the evidence, be altogether surprised, perhaps, over that
deprivation. Certainly Cleghorn’s account of his own movements could
not be considered wholly satisfying or convincing, and he had admitted
his lack of any witness to substantiate it. It seemed incredible, with
a man of his substance and dignity; but is not the history of crime
full of such apparent contradictions? After all, he had had the same
provocation as the other man, and had departed, apparently, the same
way to answer it; and, as to his moral condition _after_ the event,
all testimony went to prove that it was worse than that of the Gascon.
Anyhow, this new development, however it was destined to turn out,
added fifty per cent. to the excitement of the business. Cleghorn! It
seemed inexpressibly comic.
As day followed day succeeding this terrific event, however
progressively other things might be assumed to be moving, no ground
was made in the matter of tracing out the dead girl’s origin or
connexions--and that in spite of the publicity given to the affair.
It was very strange, and I was immensely curious to know what could be
the reason. Her portrait was published in the _Police Gazette_, and
exhibited outside the various stations, but without result. I saw a
copy of it, and did not wonder. It had been reproduced, enlarged, it
seemed, from a tiny snapshot group, taken by one of the grooms, in
which she had figured quite inconspicuously, and was like nothing
human. I spoke to Ridgway about it, and he said it was the best that
could be done, that no other photograph of her could be traced, though
all the photographers in London had been applied to, and he owned
frankly that there seemed some mystery about the girl. I quite agreed
with him, and hinted that it was not the only one that remained to be
cleared up. He did not ask me what I meant, but I saw, by his next
remark, that he had understood what was in my mind.
“Why don’t you persuade him, sir,” he said, “to throw this business
off his chest, and get back to his old interests? He takes it too much
to heart.”
It was to Hugo he referred, of course, and I did not pretend to
misapprehend him. To tell the truth, I was a little smarting from my
friend’s treatment of me, and not in the mood to be indulgent of his
idiosyncrasies. I might have my suspicions as to his involvement in a
discreditable affair, but I had certainly not made him a party to
them, or even touched upon the subject of the scandal to him save with
the utmost delicacy and consideration. If he had chosen to give me his
confidence then and there, I would have honoured it; as it was, since
he showed no disposition to keep his promise to me made on the day of
the shoot, I considered myself as much at liberty to canvass the
subject as any one else who had heard, and formed his own conclusions,
from the doctor’s evidence. It was true that, to me at least, Hugh was
doing his best to give his case away by his behaviour. He seemed to
make little attempt to rally from the gloom with which the tragedy had
overcast him, but mooned about, silent, and aimless, as if for the
moment he had lost all interest in life. It was only that morning
that, moved by his condition, I had come at last to the resolution to
remind him of his promise, and get him to share with me, if he would,
the burden that was crushing his soul. His answer showed me at once,
however, the vanity of my good intentions. “Thanks, old fellow,” he
had said; “but a good deal has happened since then, and I’ve nothing
to confide.”
Now, that might be true, in the sense that the danger was past, and I
could have forgiven his reticence on the score of the loyalty it might
imply to a reputation passed beyond its own defence; but he went on
with some offensive remark about his regret in not being able to
satisfy my curiosity, and ended with a suggestion which, however
well-meaning it might have been, I considered positively insulting.
“You are wasting yourself here, old boy,” he said. “I’m not, truth to
tell, in the mood for much, and we oughtn’t to keep you. I feel that I
got you here under false pretences; but I couldn’t know what was going
to happen, could I? and so I won’t apologise. I think, I really think,
that, for the sake of all our feelings, it would be better if you
terminated your visit. You don’t mind my saying so, do you?”
“On the contrary, I mind very much,” I answered. “Have you forgotten
how, at considerable inconvenience to myself, I responded at once to
your invitation, and came down at a moment’s notice? The reason, as
you ought to know, Hugh, was pure regard for yourself and a desire to
help, and that desire is not lessened because I find you involved in a
much more serious business than I had anticipated.”
“O, if you put it in that way”--he began.
“I do put it in that way,” I said, “and I don’t take it very friendly
of you that you should talk of denying me a privilege which you were
ready enough to grant to that precious new Baron of yours--even
pressing him to stay.”
“It was not I who asked him,” he murmured.
“No,” I insisted, “I came to be helpful, and I am going to remain to
be helpful. I don’t leave you till I have seen this thing through.”
“Well,” he said very equivocally, “I hope that will be soon”--and he
left me to myself to brood over his ingratitude. I was sore with him,
I confess, and my grievance made me more unguarded perhaps in my
references to him than otherwise I should have been.
“I dare say he does,” I answered the detective; “but after all, I
suppose, it is his heart that is affected.”
He looked at me keenly.
“You mean, sir?”
“O! what _you_ mean,” I answered, “and that I can see that you mean.
What’s the good of our beating about the bush? My friend wouldn’t be
the first young fellow of his class to have got into trouble with a
good-looking servant girl.”
“No,” he said, “no,” in a hard sort of way. “They are not the kind to
bother about the consequences to others where their own gratification
is concerned. I’ve knocked up against some pretty bad cases in my
time. So, that’s what you gather from the medical report?”
“Partly from that; not wholly.”
“Ah! I dare say now, being on such friendly terms with Mr. Kennett,
you’ve been taken into his confidence?”
“Not directly; but in a way that invited me to form my own
conclusions. What then? It doesn’t affect this case, does it, except
in suggesting a possible motive for the crime on the part of some
jealous rival?”
“That’s it. It’s of no consequence, of course--except to the girl
herself--from any other point of view.”
His assurance satisfied me, and, taken by his sympathetic candour, I
could not refrain from opening my rankling mind to him a bit.
“The truth is,” I said, “that the moment I came down, I saw there was
something wrong with my friend. Indeed, he had written to me to imply
as much.”
“He was upset like, was he?” commented the detective.
“He was in a very odd mood,” said I--“an aggravated form of hysteria,
I should call it. I had never known him quite like it before, though,
as I dare say you have gathered, his temperament is an excitable one,
up and down like a see-saw. He talked of his dreaming of sitting on a
gunpowder barrel smoking a cigarette, and of the hell of an explosion
that was coming. And then there was his behaviour at the shoot the
next day.”
“I’ve heard something about it,” said Ridgway. “Queer, wasn’t it?”
“More than queer,” I answered. “I don’t mind telling you in confidence
that I had reason at one time to suspect him of playing the fool with
his gun, with the half intention--you know--an accident, and all the
bother ended. He swore not, when I tackled him about it; but I wasn’t
satisfied. I tried to get him to go home, leaving his gun with the
keeper, but he absolutely refused; and he refused again to part with
it when, in the afternoon, he finally did leave us, saying he was good
for nothing, and had had enough of it. If only then he had done what I
wanted him to do, and left his gun behind, this wretched business
might never have happened.”
“Ah!” said the detective, “he feels that, I dare say, and it doesn’t
help to cheer him up. Well, sir, I’d get him out, if I was
you--distract his thoughts, and make him forget himself. He won’t mend
what’s done by moping.”
“All very well,” I answered, “to talk about making him forget himself;
but when I’m forced to affect an ignorance of the very thing he wants
to forget--if we’re right--what am I to do? You might think that after
having had me down for the express purpose of advising him--as I have
no doubt was the case--in this scrape, he would take me more into his
confidence, and not at least resent, as seemingly he does, any
allusion to it.”
“Well, you see,” said the detective, “from his point of view the
scrape’s ended for him, and so there isn’t the same need for advice.
But I’d keep at it, if I was you, and after a time you may get him to
unburden himself.”
I had not much hope, after what had passed between us; but I held the
Sergeant’s recommendation in mind, and resolved to watch for and
encourage the least disposition to candour which might show itself on
my friend’s part. Perhaps I had gone a little further than I should
have in taking the detective into my confidence about a scandal which,
after all, was no more than surmise; but it was so patent to me that
his judgment ran, and must run, with my own, that it would have been
simply idle to pretend ignorance of a situation about which no two men
of intelligence could possibly have come to differing conclusions.
And, moreover, as Ridgway himself had admitted, true or not, the
incident had no direct bearing on the case.
These days at Wildshott, otherwise a little eventless for me as an
outsider, found a certain mitigation of their dullness in the
suspicion still kept alive in me regarding the Baron’s movements, and
in the consequent watchfulness I felt it my duty to keep on them. I
don’t know how it was, but I mistrusted the man, his secretiveness,
the company he kept, the mystery surrounding his being. Who was he?
Why did he play chess for half-crowns? Why had he come attended--as,
according to evidence, never before--by a ruffianly foreign
man-servant, ready, on the most trifling provocation, to dip his hands
in blood? That had been outside the programme, no doubt: men who use
dangerous tools must risk their turning in their hands; but what had
been his purpose in bringing the fellow? Throat-cutting? Robbery?--I
was prepared for any revelation. Abduction, perhaps: the Baron was for
ever driving about the country with Audrey in the little governess
cart. In the meanwhile, following that miscarriage of his master’s
plans, whatever they might be, Mr. Louis Victor Cabanis had been had
up before a full bench of magistrates, and, the police asking for time
in which to compact their evidence, had been remanded to prison for a
fortnight. The delay gave some breathing space for all concerned, and
was, I think, welcomed by every one but Hugo. I don’t know by what
passion of hatred of the slayer my friend’s soul might have been
agitated. Perhaps it was that, perhaps mere nervous tension; but he
appeared to be in a feverish impatience to get the business over. He
did not say much about it; but one could judge by his look and manner
the strained torment of his spirit. We were not a great deal together;
and mostly I had to make out my time alone as best I could.
Sometimes, in a rather pathetic way, he would go and play chess with
his father, a thing he had never dreamed of doing in his normal state.
I used to wonder if the General had guessed the truth, and how he was
regarding it if he had. According to all accounts, he had been no
Puritan himself in his younger days.
I have said that Audrey and the Baron were about a good deal together.
They were, and the knowledge troubled me so much that I made up my
mind to warn her.
“You appear to find his company very entertaining,” I said to her one
day. Audrey had a rather disconcerting way of responding to any
unwelcome question with a wide-eyed stare, which it was difficult to
undergo quite stoically.
“Do I?” she said presently. “Why?”
“You would hardly favour it so much otherwise, would you?”
“Perhaps not. You see I take the best there is. I can’t help it if
the choice is so limited.”
“That’s one for me. But never mind. I’m content he should do the
entertaining, if I can do the helpful.”
“To me, Mr. Bickerdike?”
“I hope so--a little. As Hugo’s friend I feel that I ought to have
some claim on your forbearance, not to say your good will. I think at
least that, on the strength of that friendship, you need not resent my
giving you a word of advice on a subject where, in my opinion, it’s
wanted.”
“I have a father and brother to look after me, Mr. Bickerdike.”
“I’m aware of it, Audrey; and also of the fact that--for reasons
sufficient of their own, no doubt--they leave you pretty much as you
like to go your own way. It may be an unexceptionable way for the most
part; but the wisest of us may occasionally go wrong from ignorance,
and then it is the duty--I dare say the thankless duty--of friendship
to interpose. You are very young, you know, and, one can’t help
seeing, rather forlornly situated----”
“Will you please to leave my situation alone, and explain what this is
all about?”
“Frankly, then--I offer this in confidence--I don’t think the Baron
very good company for you.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a little difficult to say. If you had more knowledge of the
world you would understand, perhaps. There’s an air about him of the
shady Continental adventurer, whose purpose in society, wherever he
may seek it, is never a disinterested purpose. He’s always, one may
be sure, after something profitable to himself--in one word, spoil.
What do we any of us know about the Baron, except that he plays chess
for money and consorts with doubtful characters? Your father knows, I
believe, little more than I do, and that little for me is summed up in
the word ‘suspect.’ One can’t say what can be his object in staying on
here when common decency, one would have thought, seeing the trouble
he has been instrumental in causing, should have dictated his
departure; but, whatever his object, it is not likely, one feels
convinced, to be a harmless one, and one cannot help fearing that he
may be practising on your young credulity with a view to furthering it
in some way. I wish you would tell me--will you?--what he talks to
you about.”
She laughed in a way which somehow nettled me. “Doesn’t it strike
you,” she said, “as rather cheek on the part of one guest in a house
to criticize the behaviour of another to his hostess?”
“O, if you take it in that way,” I answered, greatly affronted, “I’ve
nothing more to say. Your power of reading character is no doubt
immensely superior to mine.”
“Well, I don’t think yours is very good,” she answered; “and I don’t
see why the question of common decency should apply to him more than
to another.”
“Don’t you?” I said, now fairly in a rage: “then it’s useless to
prolong the discussion further. This is the usual reward of trying to
interpose for good in other people’s affairs.”
“Some people might call it prying into them,” she answered, and I
flung from her without another word. I felt that I really hated the
girl--intolerable, pert, audacious young minx; but my rebuff made me
more determined than ever to sift the truth out of this questionable
riddle, and face her insolent assurance with it at the proper time.