Noah’s Flood
Same day. 8.30 P.M.
And now we know that the Chief Constable has left the direct handling
of the case to Salt, under a discreet supervision from afar. Wise of
the Constable, since he had no hope of reaching the storm-bound house!
By chance at the bottom landing I met Millicent Mertoun. I thought her
more lovely than ever, though the terrors of the day before had
altered her cheeks to something like the hue of wax. But her
inexpressible dark eyes glowed with undimmed fascination. She smiled,
courageously, I imagined.
“It’s terrible, isn’t it, Mr. Bannerlee, to have to eat when
everything is so awful? But I’m hungry, really. I couldn’t take a bite
last night.”
I sympathized.
“Have you heard anyone speak of finding a scarab, quite a small
scarab?”
“I’ve just come down myself this morning, you see; so, of course— But
perhaps I can help you look for it. Whereabouts do you think you lost
it?”
“It’s not mine—it’s Paula’s. She won’t tell anybody about it, of
course, because it’s so unimportant compared with . . . She’s troubled
about it, though. It’s an heirloom, I believe, from someone of her
family who was in Egypt.”
“I shall have a look for it, I assure you.”
“I’m afraid it’s no use looking, thanks, unless someone’s just
happened to pick it up. It was a tiny scarab, set in a ring, and it
probably came loose outdoors.”
“Outdoors!”
“Yes, she didn’t notice it was gone until after—after—”
“I see. Well, Miss Mertoun, I’ll let you know in case anyone mentions
such a thing.”
“Oh, thank you. But don’t say I told you.”
The straggling procession into the breakfast-room was not merely a
subdued but even a sorry lot. Dismay and hunger both had been at work
on most of us. Few, I believe, had slept. I myself had, but it was a
sleep tossed and pulled by past and future. Food, however, worked its
customary melioration, and when at ten o’clock we were summoned to
meet Salt in the conservatory, scarcely anyone looked the worse for
the mental battering of the day before. I suppose Crofts Pendleton was
actually the hardest hit.
It transpired that Salt had already been about the grounds,
rain-infested as they were. Insulated in rubber, he had examined the
site of Cosgrove’s death, seen the canvas-covered axe, and made a tour
of the immediate environs of the house. Already, too, he had concluded
an intensive search in Cosgrove’s room and among his belongings, and
to that room the unlucky Irishman’s body had lately been conveyed,
which relieved some of the gloom in the Hall of the Moth. Now, with
the Coroner of few words seated beside him, the Superintendent stood
watchfully in the sinus of the piano while we filed into the
undertakers’ Elysium. The servants were already standing hangdog along
the wall.
“I’ll have to interview each of you separately, ladies and gentlemen,”
Salt announced. “But I must really get acquainted a bit with you
first, and have your names down. So, if you please, I’ll just ask each
of you in turn to tell who you are and what brought you—I mean what
association you’ve had with Mr. Pendleton here.”
At this moment Blenkinson took the centre of the stage without a cue.
“If I may hinterpose, sir, I ’ave in my pocket a very comprehensive
document, I may call it, which will simplify your task considerably.”
“What’s that, for God’s sake?” exclaimed Crofts.
I am sure that the butler never had so many heads looking at him
before, but with the coolest air he produced from his tail-pocket a
sheaf of papers, and smoothed them lovingly.
Blenkinson was balancing a pince-nez on the bridge of his nose. “With
your permission, sir, I will read. Hm! Hrrum!” He teed off and began.
It proved that the butler the evening before had assumed the rôles of
despot and inquisitor in the world below stairs, and had then been my
serious rival for honours in composition. Blenkinson read loudly in a
high, thin voice, a woeful torture to the ear, his eyes behind the
pince-nez bulging whenever he licked his thumb to turn the page. The
screed he unfolded to the gaping company began with a preamble and
concluded with a peroration, and must have been a couple of thousand
words long. It was a vindication of the servants’ hall against base
suspicion in the matter of the late demise of Sean Cosgrove.
The evidence was in a sort of interlocking system. From the time
Crofts had dismissed his court of inquiry after luncheon, until the
hideous laugh that emanated from we don’t know where, the whole
baker’s dozen of servants were accounted for and quite removed, I
should say, from the province of investigation.
The boy Toby had been outside the kitchen entry peeling potatoes and
onions all afternoon, on promise, vain, as it proved, of being let off
at night for semi-bucolic revelry in New Aidenn. With him for half the
time were Jael and Em, the maids, who according to the condensed
economy of the house always joined in the “parin’s and dishin’s.” When
released from knives and vegetable-baskets, they resorted to the room
of their companion Harmony, whom they awoke from snores, and the trio
proceeded to improve the afternoon with gossip. Rosa and Ruth Clay
could testify to the earlier snoring of Harmony; under the eye of
Blenkinson they had then prepared tea, had early wheeled the
tea-table, minus tea and hot water, into the Hall, and had gone to the
stables for a bit of genteel chat with Morgan. From then until the
catastrophe they vouched for him, as well as for the other stablemen,
who were moving about, momently in and out of sight, over one hundred
feet from the place of Cosgrove’s death. The jealous eye of Ardelia
Lacy, too, herself seen in and seeing from Alberta Pendleton’s window,
corroborated the Clays; she had come down and was sipping tea in the
kitchen at the moment of the attack upon Cosgrove. Soames polishing
silver until he answered my ring, and old Finlay pottering about in
the flower-beds, were amply vindicated. Even Hughes the keeper was
accounted for in Blenkinson’s compendium, for there was plenty of
evidence that he had been in his room mending a refractory gun for
three solid hours.
That gives a faint idea of the method of Blenkinson’s “document”; it
does not begin to do justice to the detail and close-meshed cogency of
it. The servants, severally and individually, are out of the
investigation. For my part, I never for a moment considered the
implication of any of them could be other than mad.
Blenkinson, however, had done more. He had unearthed one or two bits
of evidence that may be valuable. Of these I shall relate one, leaving
the other until the problem occurred of checking Cosgrove’s
whereabouts after he followed Miss Lebetwood from the Hall of the
Moth.
Very early indeed yesterday morning Jael, polishing the kettle, sat at
the window by the door leading from the kitchen along the passage to
the servants’ rooms. In her carefreeness she was singing a measure,
when her eye caught movement in the kitchen-garden near the chicken
yard. A strange man, “shaped like a lump,” was prowling there. She
opened the window, shouted warning to the stables; the invader uttered
a short heathenish exclamation and ran away toward the head of the
Vale. The men later found his footmarks in a carrot-bed.
Strange to say, there had been no inclination on the part of the
servants to assign the attributes of Parson Lolly to this interloper.
Perhaps the fact that he left footprints robs him of the distinction.
Instantly, however, I recognized in him the gorilla-man I had
encountered in the twilight when entering the Vale for the first time.
Probably Jael saw him seeking breakfast.
Blenkinson concluded with a peroration the essence of eloquence,
pleased with himself as an old stager applauded on his return at sixty
in the part of Romeo. For our lively buzz showed that the butler had
stimulated us out of our moroseness, made us forget ourselves, even in
that rainy, melancholy morning.
“Priceless,” I heard Belvoir chuckle, and our harassed host unbent so
far as to smile, whereas Lib Dale forgot the solemnity of the occasion
in open chortling. Lord Ludlow muttered something about “probably a
stickit minister.” As for the servants, they seemed to be in a stupor
of admiration.
Whatever Salt may have thought of Blenkinson’s taking evidence behind
his back he kept it to himself. Reaching over, he grasped the document
about to disappear into the coat-tail pocket once more, and placed it
in his own inner pocket instead.
“Very interestin’,” he remarked. “Now I’m fully informed on that
subject. I could pick out every one of you,” he said to the servants,
“when Mr. Blenkinson here alluded to you. You’re all excused for the
present.” He turned to the guests. “But I’m not clear yet about all of
you ladies and gentlemen. You first, Mr. Pendleton, though. How long,
now, have you owned this place? I seem to recall it’s about two
years.”
“It is, just.”
“And did you know Mr. Watts that was here before you?”
“No, Superintendent, I did not. The House was an unsold portion of old
Watts’ estate. It must have been five years after his death that I
negotiated for it. . . . Wish to God I hadn’t heard of it,” he
appended under his breath.
“That was all my fault, old fellow,” consoled Alberta Pendleton.
“This furniture and the pictures, now, eh?”
“Everything came with the House. Library of books, tooled-leather
style—storerooms full of odd stuff, costumes and furniture, crocks
mostly—but we did find a fine Buhl bureau buried among some stacks of
Victorian newspapers, and dragged it out. There was a little of
everything in the attics. He must have been a prime scholar and
collector, old Watts.”
“A little of everything, you say? What do you mean, Mr. Pendleton?”
“Cheese-parings and candle-ends: trash, you know. Some queer pieces
though. Old Watts must have rowed for his college, or with some club,
when he was a youngster. There were oars and other boating
paraphernalia in one of the rooms—so much of it we expected to find a
shell entombed. I ran across equipment there for a parlour
magician—quite elaborate. We were hoping Doctor Aire would give us a
show with it only yesterday. And—well, I’ll take you through the lot,
if you like.”
“Yes, please.” Salt addressed Alberta. “_You_ hadn’t known Mr. Watts?
You spoke just now—your fault, you said—”
“Oh, no; I meant that Crofts bought the place because I preferred it
to any other we inspected. It was so out-of-the-way.” She drew the
silk scarf about her shoulders closer, as if she were cold. “But that
makes it all the more horrible now.”
“Who were the solicitors?”
Crofts told him.
“And by the way, Mr. Pendleton, what is your line of business? You,
er, are in business, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” answered our host briefly. “Drugs. Manchester.”
I knew that after this preliminary survey, the Superintendent would
interview us separately on the events of the fatal afternoon.
He chose to commence with Maryvale. Salt held the door open for the
man of business to pass through, entered himself, and carefully closed
the door. It was with a kind of misgiving that I watched them
disappear, for now began the really crucial part of the investigation,
the ascertainment of precise times and places, the attrition of fact
against fact, and the weighing of hypotheses. And I was not at all
sure that I fancied Salt, any more than I had last night in the beat
of the rain.
The rain continued. The servants had gone, of course, and now the
taciturn Coroner departed to catch up sleep in Crofts’ room; so we
were an intimate group once more. But the blight of cheerlessness had
fallen on us again, and mystery reached its wings of fear about us.
The mutter and hiss of rain sometimes redoubled at the vast windows,
sometimes sank to a whisper, and those windows from their very size,
seemed to admit a darker darkness. Hardly a word was spoken, and that
not always heeded.
It was a quarter of an hour before Salt appeared with Maryvale. The
official tugged at his border of beard with somewhat dubious
expression. It was not hard to imagine that Maryvale had proved an
unsatisfactory answerer, now that this strange, detached fit was upon
him. Salt nodded to Alberta Pendleton, who passed through the doorway.
Maryvale without a word took the piano-seat she had vacated, and began
softly to play his sequences of brooding, atonic chords.
The inquiry progressed behind the closed door. Some of us Salt
detained only a couple of minutes, persons who could merely verify,
but not add to the information already at his disposal; others were
with him twenty minutes or more. Among these I was.
“I don’t think—ah, yes, now I seem to remember. You’re the gentleman
who had a nasty fall or something. Well now, do you mind tellin’ me
how you happened to get here, and if you know anything about this
case?”
I suppose that I was able to tell him more than anyone else. I decided
then to give my information without stint, since it was not the sort
of thing that could possibly benefit mankind by concealment, and it
might even speed Salt on the track of his theory. I recounted every
incident I have here set down: the search for St. Tarw’s devotional
site, the bull, the gorilla-man, the menagerie-keeper, the winking
window, his Lordship in the armoury, and whatever else did not merely
coincide with other evidence. I did _not_, however, allude to this
diary. Salt, by the way, did me the great honour of hearkening without
gasp or demur to my story of the tall, bulgy man with the Paul
Pry-Schubert umbrella.
In the end he reverted to the matter of the saint’s oratory. “This
ruin or something you were lookin’ for, now. Maybe I could give you a
feeler for findin’ it.”
I said that he was very kind, that when I set forth from London the
task had seemed dubious, and now the death of Cosgrove had driven my
hobby well-nigh out of my mind.
“You’ll soon get over that, I expect,” he encouraged heartily. “Now,
I’m none of your experts on old stones or old codgers, of course, and
I never did hear of the party you mention, but when I was a boy I had
a good share of climbin’—aye, and of fallin’—in Aidenn Forest. I can
mind once runnin’ across something that sounds like your whatnot. By
gummy, sir, if I don’t think I could guide you there yet!”
And forthwith he gave me a series of directions, which he insisted I
take down. However interested I should have been in these two days
ago, now among grimmer things the project of finding the oratory seems
trivial, seems superfluous. But I jotted down what he told me, thanked
him, and returned to the conservatory.
The spark of speech had been fanned into life during my absence. They
were talking of the events of the day before—what else could they?—but
they had happened upon a particular and engrossing phase. No longer,
as all last evening, did they repeat to each other what they
themselves had done; they had been over that so many times, all to no
purpose. When, like me, each had given his account of the afternoon,
it was evident that none of them could possibly have been concerned in
the death of Cosgrove, or even could have seen the manner of it.
Where, as a fact, had they been after the moment of the Irishman’s
disappearance through the shrubs among which Paula Lebetwood had fled?
Well, no one had remained long in the House. The Pendletons and the
Belvoirs, together with Mrs. Bartholomew, had formed a party for a
walk and had gone south. Avoiding the road, they had made their way
through park-like portions of the estate all the way to the bridge, to
marvel at the volume of Aidenn Water there. Far in the distance beyond
the bridge, they had seen the road-mender working his long hours.
Ludlow and Miss Mertoun had struck off for a stroll where Aidenn Water
makes considerable of a bend beneath the western hills. Bob Cullen,
feeling wretched after his dismissal by Lib, had gone alone the
opposite way, kicking a disgusted trail in the turf past the stables
and on beyond to where the steeply-wooded slope of Whimble Hill
commenced. After her departure in dudgeon from the armoury (and from
Doctor Aire and me) Lib had gone outside to look vainly about the
grounds for Bob, then had come in to find Miss Lebetwood, but had
encountered me on the stairs instead. Dr. Aire, having washed
his hands free of gardener’s loam, immediately went out, chanced
upon Maryvale in the tiny grove of cypress trees, and sauntered
up the Vale with him. The men turned off the path to approach the
eighteenth-century summer-house, upon whose rotting steps they sat for
a half an hour. Incidentally, they saw me wandering toward the
deserted farm of the sisters Delambre, and saw me returning therefrom.
Oxford had spent the most peaceful afternoon of all: seating himself
in the shade of the gate-house to smoke a cigarette, he had gone to
sleep in good earnest. Awakened by a sound, he discovered Miss
Mertoun, Ludlow, and Belvoir amusing themselves by turning the winch
of the drawbridge. Belvoir, having left his wife and the others below
for a brisk walk back along the stream, had met Miss Mertoun and his
Lordship, and had suggested the pastime. By now Bob Cullen had made a
broad circuit of the House, and stood aloof somewhat churlishly,
refusing to be beguiled by the action of the drawbridge.
My report of my own doings, told at breakfast, and including as it
needs must the impossible bone, had met a polite but agnostic
reception. The table had lapsed into nervous silence. Ludlow, tapping
his pince-nez on one knee crossed over the other, stared out the
eastern window with a crinkly smile.
“The mystic bone!” he murmured ironically. (The epithet has stuck.)
“What are you suggesting, Lord Ludlow?” I asked brusquely, for my
feathers were perhaps a little ruffled.
“I should say you needed to have your sight examined.”
“It has been, recently, and pronounced excellent.”
“Then why not consult our friend Doctor Aire, professionally? He has
had something to do with mental cases.”
I was going to retort when Alberta’s even tones admonished me “not to
notice his nonsense or he’d get vain”; so I let it go at that.
As for Miss Lebetwood’s hour before the tragedy, she had soon relaxed
her pace among the strawberry trees, and the wave of anger had ebbed
away. She found herself nearby the tennis court. Feeling, she said,
very much ashamed of her lack of self-control, she postponed returning
to the House as long as possible, and began to search industriously
for some of the lost tennis balls. She failed to recover a single one,
and at length, noticing that the planted grove was becoming thick with
twilight, and glancing at her wrist-watch, she realized that she must
hasten back to the House unless she were to miss tea, and appear more
ungracious than ever. She did not, of course, know of the plan to
rehearse “Noah’s Flood,” for neither Cosgrove nor anyone else had she
seen. Aire had spied her just emerging from the thickets to the lawn.
From the time of her outburst against him, she was not to see her
betrothed again until, when half-way across the lawn a few rods above
the gate-house, she saw him kneeling, as she thought, and dying, as it
proved, beside the small tower.
All this, certainly, was threadbare to tell by this morning; backward
and forward the courses had been traced until there was disgust at the
_resultlessness_ of it all. But now I returned from Salt to find a new
problem had arisen in the company. Miss Lebetwood (who with Millicent
Mertoun was now engaging in the last of Salt’s private conferences)
had said that since Cosgrove had not found her by the tennis court, it
was extremely unlikely that he had ever looked for her at all; and
once she had uttered these words, every person in the conservatory was
acutely aware what a _non sequitur_ yawning lies in the seemingly
harmless assumption that because a man stares hard and plunges into
some bushes he is of necessity searching for something beyond those
bushes. Well then, what _had_ Cosgrove been doing, and where, from
leaving the Hall until receiving his death-blow by the tower?
In vain we attempted to make out for him an itinerary which would
account for the afternoon. All that the united company could supply
was one fact sandwiched between two uncertainties, and even that fact
had been offered by the servants’ hall. I may record the items thus:
First uncertainty: Doctor Aire, who left me alone in the armoury a
good quarter of an hour after Cosgrove departed from the Hall, says
that before seeing Maryvale, he caught a glimpse of what may have
been a human face among some dogwood shrubs a little to the right of
the cypress grove. But whether it was Cosgrove’s face, or that of an
intruder, or “the prodigious Parson’s” (who is so familiar that he
seems no intruder), or whether it was no face at all, Aire refuses
to commit himself. He seems rather inclined to believe himself the
victim of an illusion. The scientific mind, I suppose. (Query—Could
_this_ have been the gorilla-man? If so, we have the first evidence
to substantiate any definite person’s presence about the time and
place of Cosgrove’s death.)
Fact, from Wheeler, the youthful chauffeur, via Blenkinson’s
document: Cosgrove beckoned to Wheeler from behind a corner of the
garage at about ten minutes past four. Answering the signal, Wheeler
had been conducted to a place out of sight among the decaying
stonework. (Stables and garage occupy part, but not all the site of
the ruined south-east portion of the castle.) “I want no one to
overhear us,” said the Irishman, “and I want you to keep eternally
silent about what I am going to say.” For emphasis he placed a pound
note in Wheeler’s hand. “There will be five more for you at the end
of my stay here if you do what I bid you and hold your tongue.”
Wheeler swore eternal fidelity, and Cosgrove gave his orders. “It’s
almost nothing I want. To-night there will be a foolish
entertainment in the House, and everyone will have the costume of an
animal. The costumes, I know, are in the storerooms on the second
floor. Now, I have a friend who must enter the House to me without
anyone being the wiser. He can come in during the mummery if he has
the appearance of an animal, and I want you to see that he finds his
costume. You know my room?” Wheeler said he did not, and Cosgrove
explained that he occupied the room next the inner conservatory
wall. “The tower there juts out corresponding to the one on the
other side between the Hall of the Moth and the conservatory. At a
quarter past nine I shall drop the costume from the tower window; it
will be an extra progeny for the elephant, or some such vanity. I
want you to be on hand from the time I mentioned until my friend
comes a little later, and I want you to see that he gets into the
costume and into the Hall, where the performance begins about ten.
My friend will also come beneath my window, but I shall no longer be
in my room; so you must be there to meet him.” Wheeler guaranteed
satisfaction, and was sure that he and Cosgrove had not been seen
during this colloquy. (Nor had they been, but they had been heard.
Morgan, overhauling a saddle in a harness-closet just beyond the
wall, could verify the tones of the men’s voices, but had
distinguished none of the sense. In vain, later, he tried to wrest
Wheeler’s secret from him.)
Second uncertainty: Belvoir believes, but is not prepared to swear,
that just as he and Miss Mertoun and the Baron approached the
gate-house from the direction of Aidenn Water, he saw Cosgrove on
the lawn. Two things make Belvoir doubt if he actually did see the
Irishman or not. First, he was talking about and thinking about
something else at the time, and the sight was no more than a surface
impression, so to speak, on his mind. Furthermore, he may have been
tricked by the twilight, for the huge shadow of the gate-house
reached across the lawn just there, even ascending the wall of the
House part way. If he saw the Irishman in the shadow, the image must
have been extremely vague, for not only is the distance considerable
from where the three were walking, but Cosgrove, it must be borne in
mind, was wearing a black coat and dark blue breeches. Belvoir is
extremely uneasy on the prongs of his dilemma. (Those with him saw
nothing.) Asked what position Cosgrove was in, he answers curiously
enough that if he saw the Irishman at all, he had lifted the canvas
cover part way and was regarding the unexplainable battle-axe.
But I came past soon afterwards, between then and the time Belvoir and
his party reached the tower—and there was no Cosgrove staring at a
battle-axe then! What does Belvoir’s evidence imply, if it is
evidence? Did the axe leap up and smite him while he gazed, and was he
lying there unnoticed by me when I returned from the cottage of the
sisters Delambre? And that “friend” of Cosgrove’s, who was to come at
a little after a quarter past nine—did he arrive so soon? Precious
little he could have done to harm the Irishman at the appointed time.
If only Wheeler had kept the tryst in the storm, instead of forgetting
it completely in the horror of the night until Blenkinson nagged it
into his memory again! Was this “friend” the same whose indeterminate
face Doctor Aire had perhaps seen, perhaps not? To ask these questions
is to realize how vain they are! Yet if we are to know the obscure,
impalpable limbo of truth that lies behind this man’s death, must we
not know the answers?
The click of the door-lock startled us in the midst of almost lively
discussion. Paula Lebetwood and her friend re-entered the
conservatory, and Salt stood on the threshold with a thin sheet of
bluish paper in his hand. The American girl was paler than before,
and, I thought, exercising great self-restraint. While she took her
seat beside me, I could see the tremors pass along her throat with
each breath. But her eyes were staring at the Superintendent, and my
glance followed hers.
Salt said, “This paper, I expect, is Mr. Cosgrove’s Will and
Testament.” He held it up for us to grasp at; it was a single
translucent page, a tiny thing to dictate the disposal of great
riches. “With Miss Lebetwood’s permission—I mean by her request—I’m
goin’ to read it to you.”
“One moment,” darted in his Lordship as Salt was about to begin
without taking breath: “don’t you know that it is highly irregular to
read a copy of a Will until all the legatees—”
“You’ll see why, sir, in a minute. Besides, this is sure to be the
original of the Will, and all the heirs happen to be present!”
“Eh?”
“There’s not much to it, you might say, sir. And Miss Lebetwood
particularly wants there to be no misunderstanding.”
Forthwith, in that zone of awe, he read the instrument, dated two
months ago. It contained fewer than two hundred words. I do not know
which to admire most, the clear-cut terseness of it, or the hard
cynical sense of its incidental comments, such as, “my body to be
buried as soon as possible after my death and as near as practicable
to the place of my death, with the least emolument to lawyers,
priests, and undertakers.” And withal, according to those of us who
have scanned the law most thoroughly, the Will is adamant to any who
may attempt to break it.
As for its sense, it devises Cosgrove’s entire fortune to Miss
Lebetwood “for her own absolute use and benefit without exception,
limitation, reservation or condition, forever.” Cosgrove’s brother,
mentioned as having self-denied a share in the estate, is made sole
executor. Rather pathetic, those words:
“IRELAND DELIVERED is the cross in whose sign I would conquer; but
should I die, without me I know the good work can never go on.
Therefore to her who is, or is to be, my dearest helpmeet and sharer
of these the Lord’s bounties, best fit to use them wisely, I
bequeath all my worldly goods.”
Salt gave us a few breaths to absorb the shock of this overpowering
disclosure. I was almost clean stupefied, but I confess that a feeling
of despondency came over me at that moment. It was not, of course,
that I grudged Paula Lebetwood the fortune _for herself_. But I had
supposed, in what brief moments I had thought of it, that Cosgrove’s
money would have gone to fight Cosgrove’s good fight, even though a
losing one. The lines of that fine poem recurred to me:
“They went forth to battle but they always fell:
Their eyes were set above the sullen shields.”
No, that had not been this Irishman’s philosophy; the great cause must
wait now for the next great man.
The women had instantly begun to crowd about Miss Lebetwood with
exclamations of surprise and pleasure, a flutter of congratulation
which must have been an ordeal for the American girl.
Salt extracted from a side pocket an envelope whose flap he loosened
with a pencil. He made the round of the room so that each of us could
see what was inside. “Paper-ash, this is sure to be. It was all there
was in Mr. Cosgrove’s grate. Not a word legible, but one or two blank
bits didn’t get burned, as you see. . . . Now, there’s no paper like
that anywhere in the house; Mr. Pendleton will go surety for it. It’s
different paper from the ‘Lochinvar’ bit. I was wonderin’ if any of
you ladies and gentlemen had some like it—could explain the note,
perhaps.”
But not even Eve Bartholomew could help the Superintendent now.
Salt turned to Crofts. “It couldn’t have been in the post, you say?”
Crofts answered doggedly, “Cosgrove never got any mail.”
“For a man who never got any mail, he had a tidy bit of mysterious
correspondence. Well, I see I shall have to wait a bit before I find
what little secret was here.” He looked at his large silver watch.
“Thank you very much, all. I don’t think I’ll need to trouble any of
you again soon; so I’ll just take this opportunity to give you a
suggestion, and maybe a bit o’ reassurance. There are a good many
folks we haven’t located that must have somethin’ to do with this
case. You all know about Sir Brooke—Mortimer, I think it is; well, I’m
telegraphin’ for full particulars of him from wherever he came from,
and havin’ a look-out made for him. There are two men Mr. Bannerlee
ran across the night he came that I want to find, and also it seems
that those Frenchwomen, the Delambres, aren’t on their patch of land.
Through one of these outside channels, we’ll come upon a solution. And
that means simply routine police work. However, if I were you, I’d not
go about separately very far from the House, and just for precaution’s
sake you might lock your doors and windows. No alarm, you
understand—only you’ll feel safer. Doctor Niblett will hold the
inquest as soon as possible. I shall probably be here a good bit for
the next few days, and I trust, with the kind permission of Mr.
Pendleton, that you will not end your visits until I am certain-sure
you can’t assist me.”
“Only too glad, Superintendent to have them all stay until you’ve
cornered the brute,” said Crofts between his teeth. Then, becoming
expansive, he looked about with a satisfied air. “Well, I’m beginning
to think this won’t be a Scotland Yard case after all. And it’s one of
those outsiders surely. Crazy to think it could be any of us.”
Suddenly a strange voice was in the room. “And I, Mr. Pendleton,
believe in the possible implication of everyone here, including
myself.” Paula Lebetwood said the words, unlike any speech we had
heard from her lips, a terribly controlled utterance, toneless, as if
some insentient thing had spoken. She stood up. The tremor of her
throat was still.
“Of yourself, dearest?” cried Miss Mertoun. “How awful to say such a
thing!”
“Of yourself!” echoed half a dozen voices.
She was looking straight ahead, sightlessly. “Isn’t it too clear for
words? Can’t you understand how _I_ feel?—how I have felt all these
weeks? It rests on me, don’t you see? How can I ever touch a cent that
was his until his killer has paid for his death? Oh, I’ve felt it ever
since he told me—told me he was going to make his Will—” Her eyes
darkened, and the first tinge of feeling came into her voice:
bitterness. “I was a fool. I should have told him—then.”
Miss Mertoun came over, leaned her cheek against Paula’s, recalling to
me that first scene by the tower on the lawn. “Paula, _dearest_.”
Gently she pressed the American girl back into her seat, soothed her
with soft little speeches, almost made her smile.
Suddenly Mrs. Bartholomew lifted her head, an expression of
penetrative power on her face, as if she were probing beyond the realm
of sense. She made a quick outreaching gesture with her hands,
withdrew them, clasped them in her lap. She began to speak once, but
checked herself. Then:
“I have the eeriest feeling, but it is strong, so _strong_!”
“What feeling do you mean?” asked Alberta Pendleton with bated breath.
Eve Bartholomew’s eyes were shining wide. “That Sir Brooke is _here_,
_now_, among us!”
She stirred us. We pitied her then, in silence. Whatever he had been
to her, or she to him—
She turned to the window close beside her. “This flood may end
to-morrow, but it’s the act of Providence all the same!”
“Oh, come, Mrs. Bartholomew,” protested Belvoir’s soft voice. “It’s
deuced inconvenient; no two ways about that. We may have to take
spades and bury our poor friend here on the spot if it keeps up.”
“That was his wish, wasn’t it?” she retorted. “I say this sundering
flood has been our one blessing. How shall the guilty escape now, if
he is not one of us? And if he _is_ one of us—” Her eyes beneath that
lustrous black hair shone like gems in a mine. “If he _is_, he will
betray himself before the flood goes down!”
“Bravo!” exclaimed Lord Ludlow. “Madam, I applaud you. You have
feeling, and I respect you for it.”
Miss Lebetwood raised her voice to the man across the room. “That
sounds like an indictment of me, sir.”
“Never!”
The American went on. “I suppose I seem to have no grief, no feeling.
I am passionless; oh, yes! I tell you I am devoted to only one thing,
the finding of the murderer. My task commences to-day, this hour, now.
I see by the look on all your faces, and one of them still may be a
murderer’s face, that you are shocked. No, I have sorrow; I am not
hard-hearted, save for a purpose. I have sorrow—you will never know
how much—but I must get it behind me.”
The easy tones of Superintendent Salt intervened. “Miss, I wouldn’t
feel so. Everyone is heartily takin’ your part. Why you should think
otherwise I don’t know. And have no doubt of one thing: we shall get
at the heart of this mystery soon.”
“We must,” said Eve Bartholomew. “The innocent suffer as well as the
guilty.”
“I am now going to make a careful inspection of the House,” said Salt.
“I got the lay of the land before turnin’ in last night, but now,
ladies and gentlemen, I shall take the liberty of lookin’ through your
rooms. Mr. Pendleton, I particularly want to see those store-places
Mr. Cosgrove evidently had a fancy for, and the cellars. Plenty of
cellars, of course?”
“Plenty. And a sub-cellar no one’s been in since before we bought the
property.”
“Have you any idea what’s down there?”
“How should I know? Nothing, I suppose. And anyhow, the trap-covers
are locked with padlocks and sealed with an inch of dust.”
“Ah, well,” said Salt good-naturedly, “I don’t think I’ll make you
sweep ’em off and unlock ’em. Only take me where they are.”
Again while he and Pendleton made their way from the conservatory, I
was assailed with doubt concerning the confident Salt. Was he to
fumble the case after all? For it seemed to me in trying to resolve an
enigma so baffling, no opening ought to be ignored. And the
Superintendent was, to say the least, eclectic, when he chose not to
enter the sub-cellars.
A hand was laid on my shoulder. I looked up, and was held by those
eyes with their unsearchable gleam, Maryvale’s.
“How will they ever solve this riddle and set this wrong aright, if
they forget the spanning and roofing of the waters, and the deathless
arm?”
“I do not understand you, Mr. Maryvale.”
“What were Sir Pharamond’s words? ‘Let traitors beware!’ Mr.
Bannerlee, remember, sir, that they never found the arm of Sir
Pharamond—and his tomb in old Aidenn Church attests it.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“Oh, Gilbert has a theory all his own,” laughed Belvoir in a friendly
manner. “It has absolute novelty to recommend it, and artistic value.
It’s the artistic side that appeals to you, isn’t it, Gilbert?”
“Truth appeals to me as well.”
“Well, really—truth!”
“What is your theory, Mr. Maryvale?” I asked with an attempt to
disregard the twinges of apprehension that I felt in his presence.
“I have no theory: I have the key.”
“Gilbert means that the corporeal, material, substantial right arm of
Sir Pharamond Kay, builder of the castle which now is Highglen House,
has risen from its cerements and laid a certain party low. Isn’t that
about it, Gilbert?”
“It is all you need to know.”
“But what’s that about the proof being in Old Aidenn Church?”
Belvoir gave a sly chuckle. “Go there some afternoon and have a look
for yourself, Mr. Bannerlee. Old Aidenn is only three miles beyond New
Aidenn, and both of ’em happen to be as old as Doomsday.”
“It’s as sound, anyhow, as Crofts’ idea that a murderer couldn’t
escape from Aidenn Vale,” remarked Aire.
For my part, I looked first at Maryvale’s stooped retreating bulk, and
then at the other two men, who solemnly looked at me. We did not
speak, but the same thought must have been in all of us. The servants
might understandably be shy of strange forms in the dark, but what was
to become of _us_, if we began gravely to discuss wee grey-bearded men
with voices like honey, or pixies perched on toadstools?
Young Bob Cullen had strayed to the window, was watching the
raindrops, now meandering slowly, now darting down the pane.
“Talk about Noah’s Flood,” he growled.
“Forty days he had of it,” mused Lib Dale. “If this keeps up forty
minutes more, I’ll be dotty. Oh, look!”
The whole conservatory thrilled with light. A golden-green path lay
shimmering across the lawn. It had ceased to rain.