Macleod was well aware that he had been speaking of Stella Nelson. He
must speak now or——
“I am not prepared to say,” was his compromise, but Andy had gone too
far and risked too much to allow his enemy to break off action.
“You either know such a girl or you do not. There was either a quarrel
between your uncle and yourself or there was no such quarrel. I am
speaking to you as the police officer in charge of these investigations
and I want the truth.”
His voice was harsh, menacing. Arthur Wilmot was no fighter.
“I was a little distracted that morning,” he said grudgingly, “I didn’t
know what I was saying. There was no woman and no quarrel.”
Slowly Andy drew a note-book from his pocket and wrote down the words,
and the other watched him in a cold and growing fury.
“Thank you,” said Andy. “I won’t trouble you again.”
He went out without another word and left behind him a man who now, at
least, had murder in his heart.
“Mr. Macleod!”
Andy, at the end of the path, turned. Wilmot was behind him.
“I suppose there is no reason why I shouldn’t visit the house now. I am
my uncle’s heir-at-law and there are certain preparations that have to
be made for his funeral.”
“The only thing is that for the moment I do not want you to go into the
long room. I have kept that undisturbed until after the inquest.”
He went across and spoke to the police sergeant in charge.
“It will be quite in order, Mr. Wilmot. I have told the sergeant to
admit you.”
Andy took certain phenomena for granted. He was neither surprised
nor amused to have discovered the tell-tale woman’s hat in Wilmot’s
room. The man’s embarrassment had been as eloquent as his explanation
had been feeble. “One of the servants” did not quite accord with
the statement he had made, only a few seconds earlier, that none of
Wilmot’s household staff ever went into that particular room unless
they were sent for. Wilmot was a bachelor—no better, no worse, perhaps,
than the generality of well-off bachelors—though it was a little
surprising that he brought his indiscretions to Beverley Green, where
servants were notorious gossips. Yet it did not seem quite like Arthur
Wilmot.
He called at the Nelsons. He would have gone there every day and
remained all day if his own wishes governed. As it was, he usually
consulted Scottie in the early hours of the morning, usually in the
very centre of the village green.
Stella received him. Her father was in the studio working against the
failing light and the girl was enthusiastic, for Kenneth Nelson had
started a new picture, and the obliging Scottie was his principal model.
“It will be useful to have a real good picture of Scottie available,”
said Andy heartlessly. “When I want him in the future, I’ll send my
hounds to the Academy to study him.”
“But he’ll never do wrong again,” said she, horrified at the thought.
“He was telling me that he had given up his old life and that nothing
would ever tempt him to steal.”
Andy smiled.
“I shall be glad if he does,” he said, and changed the topic. “Do you
know Arthur Wilmot very well, Stella?”
Her impulse was to say very well.
“I thought I did. Evidently I don’t. Why?”
“Do you know whether he has any girl friends or relations?”
She shook her head.
“The only relation I know was his uncle and a very old aunt. Do you
mean, does he have people staying with him? I’ve never known him to
entertain people except the aunt, whom I think is dead now. He doesn’t
ever have bachelor parties. Why?”
“I wondered,” he said, and she smiled, but became serious instantly.
“I don’t know what is happening. Have you found any—any clue? The place
has been crowded with reporters. One of them came here and asked me if
I could give him any details about Mr. Merrivan’s daily life. Did he
go to church, was he a quiet man, and things like that. I told him I
didn’t know much about him. He was easily satisfied.”
Andy drew a long breath.
“Thank heaven Downer wasn’t amongst them. Who is Downer? He is a
reporter, the toughest of the whole bunch, and not as easily satisfied
as your caller. And he wouldn’t have asked such crude questions.
He’d have talked art to your father, and been in the studio admiring
Pygmalion and discussing colour values and atmosphere and movement and
all the other jargon of the studio—and when he had gone he would have
left you with an uneasy feeling that you had said much more than you
ought to have said, not about old masters, but Mr. Merrivan’s private
life.”
She never took her eyes from his face when he was speaking. For his
part, he never looked too long at her, for fear he would gather her
into his arms and not let her go.
“You must know an awful lot of people. I don’t mean that they’re
‘awful’—I mean—you know what I mean. I had no idea you were
like you are. The man Downer, for instance, and people like the
professor—Scottie. I called him ‘Scottie’ quite inadvertently and he
seemed tremendously pleased. There is nothing new?”
“Except that Dane found your ring. Do you usually scatter diamond rings
over the countryside?”
She was not at all perturbed.
“I threw it away, I don’t remember where. Are you going? You have only
been here a minute and you haven’t seen father or the picture.”
“I have been here long enough to scandalise the neighbourhood,” he
said. “Do you realise that I cannot visit you unless I call on almost
everybody on some excuse or other? I make myself a nuisance a dozen
times a day in order—well, to see you.”
She went with him to the door.
“I wish you’d come and dust the hall-room again,” she said softly.
“And I—I wish we were at the second golf hut,” he said fervently.
She laughed. He heard the sound of it as he went down the path.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THE BED DRAWER
It was no exaggeration to say that since his uncle’s death Arthur
Wilmot had lived under a strain that he thought at times would drive
him mad. Neither his character nor his training fitted him for the
ordeal through which he was passing. He had inherited from his mother,
a highly-strung, nervous woman, that weakness of resistance which
had made a surrender to the emotions of the moment seem natural and
proper. Restraint, other than the restraint imposed by fear, he no more
applied to the inclinations of maturity than he had to the tantrums of
childhood. That Stella for one had not known him in his true character
was entirely due to his confidence that the friendship between them
would, in his own time, develop as he might direct. She did not know
that their relationship had progressed on his side with the greatest
caution. If in its earlier and longer period he had not given her
the slightest hint that he was in love with her, it was because he
had consciously avoided the compromising of his life. He thought he
was acting “fairly.” He told himself as much. He honestly believed
that in the course of their friendship she had offered him certain
opportunities for guiding their relationship into a closer one, and
when he had at last decided that she was made for him, and he had, in
carefully chosen words, explained his intentions, her prompt refusal
came in the nature of a thunderbolt from a clear sky.
His vanity did not allow him to believe that her answer was final. He
treated her rejection lightly, knowing (and saying) that women are
a little perverse and illogical on such occasions. After a further
rejection it pleased him to assume an attitude of gentle resignation,
a rôle which enabled him to return to the subject without any violent
interruption of their intercourse.
Then came the tremendous moment when he had attempted to carry by
assault all that he had failed to win by patience and blandishment. And
the lash of her tongue, her studied contempt, her sheer indifference to
his fine feelings, had produced the effect which high and unscalable
peaks have upon mountaineers. Whether he loved her or hated her was not
important; he loved himself very dearly, and, seeing himself robbed of
something he desired, he gave to its object so great a value that life
without its attainment seemed not worth while.
The coming of Andy Macleod, the frequent visits he paid to the Nelsons,
the gossip that ran from servant to servant, these pushed him to the
border-line of dementia. And to this was added the burden of his
uncle’s death and the knowledge that suspicion might attach to himself.
Third of the causes of his agony of mind was the uncertainty of his own
material future. His uncle had financed him. What provision had he
made for him in his will? Was there a will at all? He had been called
into consultation both with Mr. Merrivan’s lawyer and with Inspector
Dane, and no mention had been made of the discovery of such a document.
Arthur was asked by both whether he knew of any safe deposit or other
hiding-place where papers might be hidden. He had said “No,” yet once
his uncle, in an expansive moment, had taken him into his bedroom and
showed him such a place as the police were seeking.
When he asked Dane or Andy whether “anything had been found,” he had
this in his mind. It was strange that Darius Merrivan should have shown
it to him at all. They were not intimates, and Arthur often wondered
why his uncle should have made such generous advances to him for
investment in a business, the nature of which he never asked. That was
the curious thing—Darius never asked, and once, when Arthur Wilmot, a
little shamefaced, was on the point of advancing information, the elder
man had cut him short.
He had never asked for interest or mentioned the money, and this
circumstance had been the basis of his belief that Merrivan intended
leaving his considerable fortune to him on his death.
His uncle had once asked him to keep secret the fact that he was
married. But he would hardly have paid so heavily for a silence which
the request of a relation would impose, particularly as the manner in
which the marriage had ended had been so scandalous.
Arthur Wilmot waited until he saw Andy vanish into the hedges towards
Nelsons, then crossed over to his uncle’s house.
“Mr. Macleod said that you might be coming over, Mr. Wilmot,” said the
sergeant. “I suppose he told you that he doesn’t want you to go into
the long room?”
Wilmot nodded and passed up the stairs.
Three of Mr. Merrivan’s servants had been sent home. They were all
natives of Beverley and were available for the inquest. Two others
Arthur had taken into his own establishment. They refused to sleep in
the murder house, though they worked there during the day.
He went straight to Merrivan’s bedroom. At any moment Andy could learn
that he had taken immediate advantage of the permission and might
return to supervise his search. He stood at the open door listening to
make sure that the sergeant had not followed him up, then, crossing
the room, he knelt at the foot of the bed. He gripped the carved rose
that marked the juncture of the sides with the stout footpost and
screwed it quickly to the left. There was a click, he tugged, and a
shield-shaped drawer came out. There were a number of papers, a small
roll of banknotes fastened about with a rubber band, and a flat case
containing a paper of some kind. He pushed them into his inside pocket,
closed the drawer, and turned the carved rose. Was there another
drawer behind the shield on the second footpost? He walked to the door
and listened. Down below he heard the sergeant sneeze and went back to
the bed. But here rose and shield were immovable. They were part of
the solid embellishments of the furniture. He was trembling violently,
anxious to get back to his own room, and yet fearful that his agitation
would be visible to the observant police officer.
Looking in a mirror, he saw that his face was chalk-like in its pallor,
and rubbed his cheeks vigorously. To give himself time to recover his
composure he went from room to room, and at last descended the stairs,
his knees shivering.
“Find anything, sir?” The sergeant, sitting in the hall in a
comfortable arm-chair, looked up from his newspaper.
“Nothing at all. I am afraid I am a little overcome by the——”
The quaver in his voice was not assumed.
“I quite understand, sir,” said the sympathetic policeman. “This is
my first murder case in twenty years’ service. Mr. Macleod is used to
’em, being a doctor, too. Lord! The cold-blooded way he talks of things
gives me the creeps!”
Arthur locked the door of his room when he got in, pulled down the
blinds, and switched on the lights. Then he emptied the contents of his
pocket. It only needed a glance to see that a will was not one of his
finds, unless—— He pulled out the folded paper which the leather case
held. It was a certificate of marriage. His uncle’s? No, it certified
the marriage of Hilda Masters, her occupation described as parlourmaid,
with John Severn, student. The marriage was thirty years old. Arthur
was puzzled. Why had his uncle taken the trouble to preserve the
evidence of a serving maid’s marriage? He read the document carefully,
thinking he might find some clue. It had been celebrated at St. Paul’s
Church, Marylebone, London, and his uncle did not figure in the
document, even as a witness. Yet this certificate must have possessed
an exceptional value to the dead man. All thoughts of the will were
driven from his mind by the discovery he made when he examined the next
of his finds.
They were two bills of exchange, one for seven hundred and another for
three hundred, drawn in favour of Abraham Selim, and were signed by
Kenneth Nelson. He turned them over for the signature of the acceptor,
and found, as he had expected, the name of his uncle.
The two bills were pinned together, and attached was a slip of paper,
and in Merrivan’s handwriting: “These acceptances are forgeries. Due
24th. of June.”
Forgeries! Wilmot’s eyes narrowed. Did Stella know? Was that the reason
she had gone to Darius Merrivan’s house on the night of the 23rd.? She
knew! That was the hold Merrivan had over her. That was why he was so
sure that she would marry him. In some mad, drunken moment Kenneth
Nelson, hard-pressed for money, had given two bills with forged
acceptances into Merrivan’s possession.
He whistled softly. He could not take it in yet. Idly he examined the
money. It was for a very large sum, and he breathed more quickly as
he put it into his own note-case. Here was something at any rate. A
legacy, and not inconsiderable. The other papers were long lists of
securities. His uncle had written a beautiful copperplate, and they
were easy to follow. Against each line was a letter. These could wait.
He locked them and the certificate in a wall safe, and devoted his
evening to speculations.
At half-past ten he went out. The summer after-glow still lingered in
the sky; the night was very still. He could hear voices from a garden
on the far side of the green.
The lights were burning in Stella’s hall. He must risk meeting Andrew
Macleod; more than this, must risk the enquiries which would start at
the point where he produced the bills of exchange.
Stella was alone, however. She blocked the doorway when she recognised
the caller.
“Can I see you, Stella? I won’t keep you very long.”
“You can see me now, Mr. Wilmot,” she said, “and I hope you will be
very brief.”
“I cannot tell you here,” he said, checking his sudden anger, “unless
you want everybody to hear what I am saying.”
But she was adamantine.
“I can’t ask you in. I’m being unusually kind in speaking to you at
all.”
“Oh, you are, are you?” he said furiously. “Perhaps you’ll think I’m
unusually kind, too, before I’m finished!”
She tried to close the door upon him, but he was too quick for her. His
foot was an immovable wedge.
She was angry now.
“I shall call my father,” she said.
“Do,” he returned. “I’d like him to identify my uncle’s signature on
two bills of exchange drawn in favour of Abraham Selim.”
He did not hear through his own speech the gasping intake of her
breath, but the pressure on the door suddenly relaxed. She had fallen
back against the wall, her hands at her side, her head drooped.
“Come in,” she said huskily.
Arthur Wilmot entered victoriously. He waited until she moved into the
hall-room, then he followed and put his Homburg hat on the table with
the air of one who was taking possession of her very soul.
She sat down and looked across at him. The table lamp was between them,
and its shade hid her eyes, but he saw her quivering mouth and swelled
with gratification.
“Your father forged the name of the acceptor,” he said, dispensing with
the preamble he had planned.
“May I see the—the things?” she asked.
He unfolded them on the table.
“Yes, they were like those,” she said listlessly. “I don’t know very
much about these things, but they looked like—I suppose the two I took
were—dummies. He manufactured them just to fool me. I thought they were
real.”
“You went to see him on Sunday night?” he accused. “I saw you go in,
I saw you come flying out. You went to get those bills. He gave you
fakes.”
He asked her a question which made her feel physically ill. He was so
foul, so foul!
“Then you stole them, but the old man fooled you! Of course he fooled
you. You don’t suppose that he’d allow you to get the better of him?
What are you going to do about it?”
She did not answer.
“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do. You are going to be sensible
and marry me. This damned detective doesn’t mean anything. He is only
a policeman. You’ve got some self-respect left, haven’t you? You’re
soiled by knowing a man like that. I’ll give you these as a wedding
present. There will be trouble if you don’t! These are legally mine
now. I inherit my uncle’s bad debts, and I’ll put Mr. Kenneth Nelson
where he belongs. I can do it. Look! My uncle wrote on this paper,
‘These acceptances are forgeries.’ That is all the evidence that is
required. Stella!”
He came round the table towards her with outstretched hands, but she
had risen from her chair and was backing away from him.
“All right. Sleep on it. I’ll come to you to-morrow. You can’t tell
Macleod without telling him that your father’s a thief. He couldn’t
stomach that. He’s done his best to keep you out of mischief, but he’d
have to move against your father. Be sensible, Stella.”
He stood at the door, peering towards the shadows where she stood. When
he closed the door he was smiling. Smiling, he reached out to pull open
the gate, and a big hand came suddenly over his mouth and he was pulled
violently backwards. Before he could understand what had happened,
somebody was gripping his throat with one hand and searching his pocket
with the other.
Then he was jerked to his feet, and he saw the fierce gleam of
spectacled eyes.
“You talk about this and you’re in trouble—hell-sure! Go and tell
Macleod. He’ll search your house to-night. Where did you get those
bills anyway? And what else did you get?”
“Give me back those—papers,” quavered Wilmot.
Scottie grinned unpleasantly.
“Go, tell the police,” he said, “and see if they can get ’em back.”
Arthur Wilmot went home. He was no fighter.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
THE INQUEST
“A good deed,” said Scottie sententiously, “brings its own reward, and
I am merely acting in consonance with all the high-class literature
I’ve read, dealing with reformed criminals. I’m not sure that
‘consonance’ is the word, but it sounds right. In my last prison they
ran a line of fiction dealing exclusively with the good deeds of old
lags that had been saved from a life of shame and misery by the smile
of a child. Sometimes she was the governor’s daughter and sometimes
the chaplain’s sister, and her age varied from nine to nineteen. But
she was always rescued from drowning by the hook—generally when he was
on his way to commit an even more hideous crime. And the memory of her
blue eyes turned him from his career, and he lived happily ever after.
The end!”
“You’re only—talking—to stop me—from getting hysterical,” gasped Stella.
There was a new litter of ashes on the hearth; they still smoked.
“You shouldn’t have burnt the pin,” said Scottie, and picking it out,
hot as it was, thrust it into the edge of his waistcoat. “Burnt paper
is just burnt paper, but supposing Will _does_ run to the police and
tells a story of two bills that were pinned together, and suppose they
find the burnt pin—well, that would look as if he were telling the
truth, and I should hate that.”
“You heard everything?” she said, dabbing her eyes.
“Mostly,” confessed Scottie. “I was in the garden when he was talking
to you on the step. And he left the front door open, so I heard—most
of the things. That man isn’t, from a professional point of view, a
crook. It would take five years’ hard learning to make him anything
like a professional. He’s all nerves. And he’s talkative. Everybody
round here is that way. You’re looking at me, Miss Nelson, with a sort
of doubtful expression. Perhaps you think I’m in that class, too. I am,
but my conversation is backed by knowledge. I admit it. You can’t go
round the world as I’ve been, all through Canada and the United States,
Australia, to South Africa, _and_ the islands, without acquiring
knowledge which an occasional sojourn in jug helps you to consolidate.”
“I’m going up to my room, Mr.—Scottie. I haven’t thanked you, have I? I
must tell Mr. Macleod.”
Scottie shook his head violently.
“You mustn’t do that, miss. It would put him in a hole. My experience
of the police has taught me two things—what they want to know and what
they don’t want to know. It is fatal to make a mistake on either side.”
He was right. She hadn’t the strength to argue. This last shock had
exhausted her reserves. She just wanted to go away and be quiet. She
did not give another thought to Arthur Wilmot. He was with the ashes on
the hearth.
“Good-night and thank you.”
“Pleasant dreams,” said Scottie, and did not look up from the book he
was reading until she was gone.
Then he carefully brushed up the ashes of paper, carried them to the
kitchen, and mixed them in a glass with water. This he poured away, and
washed and dried the glass.
“Would that one’s past could be washed away as easily,” said Scottie
poetically.
* * * * *
There came to Beverley Green the next morning, and long after the
vanguard of the reporting army had struck their tents, a clever,
middle-aged newspaper man who was attached to no particular journal,
but had the _entrée_ to all. He was in the most exact sense a gleaner
of news, for he found his harvest among the stubble—tiny ears of news
thinly scattered. Sometimes his gleaning gave him a poor return for his
labour, but often the yield dwarfed the hastily-gathered sheaf of the
earlier harvester.
He had the true news conscience, which means that all things were
subservient to the truth, whoever was hurt or whatever interests
were jeopardised by the telling. His methods presented the problem
in ethics over which the metaphysician and the moralist have for
ever disagreed. To secure the truth he would lie and cheat, and, if
necessary, steal. He would betray a confidence as light-heartedly as
he would order his breakfast. The solemn pledge to observe secrecy
was part of his equipment. The majority of his fellows—more honest
men—despised him, and made no secret of their dislike. But they
admitted that he was a great news man, and expressed their wishes that
they too had been born without a sense of decency.
He was a short, coarse-featured man, who wore powerful pince-nez and
who smoked cigars from getting up to lying down. Normally, he looked
bad-tempered and discontented, and was, in consequence, spoken of
as “repulsive.” He could be almost anything that complimented his
_vis-à-vis_, and in this quality lay his power, and, for the victim,
his danger.
It is on record that he talked theology to the Bishop of Grinstead for
three hours and never made a false move, before the bishop, by way of
illustrating some point, told him the inside story of the Rev. Stoner
Jelph and why he resigned his living. Of course, the bishop did not
mention Mr. Jelph by name. He was, in the simple prelate’s argument,
a hypothetical X. But Downer (which was the reporter’s name) had the
story, and printed it. He did not mention names either, but he left no
doubt as to who he was writing about.
Andy was the first to see Downer arrive. He had been expecting his
advent ever since the day of the murder. The reporter came straight to
him.