WHAT THE CIPHER MEANT
Tyberton Castle was less than an hour’s drive from Hereford by motor.
I had to conceal my knowledge of the neighbourhood from Tarleton, who
left the arrangements in my hands, and question the man who waited on
us at breakfast as if I were entirely ignorant of where the Castle lay,
and how to reach it.
“No breakfast, no man,” was a favourite maxim of the physician’s, and
he did full justice to the fresh trout, the kidneys and bacon, and the
new-laid eggs put before us, while I had to force myself to swallow a
few mouthfuls. However, the meal was over at last, and at ten o’clock
we were seated in the car provided by the hotel, speeding along the
road I had last trodden backward with despair in my heart.
It seemed to me that every tree was eloquent and that every cottage
on the way remembered me, and wondered at my coming back. As we came
near the village I was tempted to shrink back in my corner of the car
and hide my face, lest the villagers should recognize it and greet me.
I had to tell myself that the real test would come presently. I had
never crossed the threshold of the Castle; I had never ventured into
the park in the daytime; but there is no such thing as privacy on the
country-side; every hedge has eyes and ears; and it was certain that
my comings and goings had been watched, and that every child on the
Earl of Ledbury’s estate and every servant in his house knew more about
me than his lordship did.
Tarleton was delighted with the scenery. What pleased him still more
was the absence of all traffic. We did not meet one vehicle in the
road, except a farmer’s cart.
“This is the least-known beauty spot in England,” he cried with
enthusiasm. “Those hills yonder must be in Radnorshire, a county whose
existence I have always doubted. This is the old Welsh March, where the
Britons stayed the Saxon advance at last, and kept their freedom in
Wild Wales. What a contrast between this and Tarifa Road, Chelsea!”
The reminder came just in time. I had been on the point of telling him
that King Arthur’s tomb stood on the crest of one of the hills that
overlooked the Golden Valley. I bit my lip, thankful that I hadn’t
betrayed myself.
We went through the sleepy village, bringing out one or two women with
babies in their arms to their garden gates. Then we turned into the
park and saw the rabbits scampering to the right and left as we crossed
the fern-covered slopes.
“This is a true ‘haunt of ancient peace,’” murmured the consultant
wistfully. “This is the sort of place I want to end my days in. And we
have come to disturb it, perhaps to bring disaster and disgrace. I
should be glad if we could turn back now and go away again.”
I turned to him expectantly. His words had echoed my own thoughts so
closely that I half hoped to find him ready to act upon them. But the
frown on his brow and the stern set of his mouth told me that I was
deluding myself.
The car drew up at the main entrance to the Castle. The ivy-clad ruins
to which the building owed its name were almost screened from view by
the huge red-brick front of a dull edifice dating from the reign of
George the Second. The mansion had been put up out of ostentation at
a cost from which the estate had never recovered, and every Earl of
Ledbury since had cursed his ancestor’s extravagance. I know that the
present Earl found it hard to pay the interest on his mortgages, and
that he lived in one corner of the vast house, leaving long corridors
and whole suites of rooms to the spiders and rats.
We got out, and Sir Frank Tarleton gave his card and mine to the
man who came down the steps to receive us. His suit of black was
threadbare, and his coat looked as if it had been thrust on hastily at
the sound of our approach.
“Please take our cards to Lady Violet Bredwardine, and ask her ladyship
if we can see her in private, on urgent business.”
The servant stared at the message. His eyes wandered from Tarleton to
me, and I thought there was a vague recognition in them when they met
mine. But his manner was respectful and demure.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I believe her ladyship is out. I will inquire if
you wish.”
He seemed to be hesitating whether to ask us inside. Sir Frank seized
on the opening.
“I shall be glad if you will find out when she is likely to be in. Her
ladyship is staying in the Castle, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, sir.” The answer was given readily.
“We have come down from London on purpose to see her. They told us at
Grosvenor Place that her ladyship had come here--I think it was on
Wednesday.”
The man bowed. “That is quite right, sir. Her ladyship arrived on
Wednesday evening.”
I stole an anxious glance at my chief. It was a complete confirmation
of the Inspector’s report. If Lady Violet had arrived at the Castle in
the evening, she could not have been back in town the same night. The
alibi stood firm.
Tarleton drew out his watch as though to consult it before deciding
what to do next. Suddenly he snapped out, “There is no mistake, I
suppose? Her ladyship couldn’t have been in London on Wednesday night?”
The man was taken off his guard, and if he had been lying he could
hardly have failed to show some confusion. But the only feeling he
manifested was one of resentment at the question.
“I’m positive of what I say, sir. But her ladyship hasn’t authorized me
to answer questions about her movements.”
The consultant put on the air of a man who has made a slip.
“No, no; of course not. I meant to ask her ladyship herself.” He turned
to me. “What do you say, Cassilis? Shall we wait inside, or shall we go
for a stroll and come back again?”
I had laid my plans in the expectation that Lady Violet would be out,
and I was ready with a suggestion. I made it with my heart in my mouth.
“I think one of us ought to wait here, Sir Frank. The other might walk
round the park, and perhaps meet Lady Violet.”
Sir Frank seemed to find the proposal quite natural.
“Very good. I shall be glad to stretch my legs for an hour, so I’ll
leave you here and come back again.”
This was an unforeseen check. I had been so sure of being the one to go
out into the grounds, if I could effect the separation, that I hadn’t
thought of the alternative. My only chance now was to slip out as soon
as Tarleton’s back was turned. I looked at the servant, and fancied
that his eye rested on me with a more friendly air than on my companion.
“Would you like to wait inside, sir?” he asked.
I hesitated. But I had to choose between trusting him and trusting the
chauffeur who had driven us out from Hereford; and he had impressed me
favourably. I followed him into the Castle, while Tarleton moved off
down an avenue of beeches in the park.
The servant brought me through a dreary hall full of old suits of
armour and ancient high-backed chairs, but lacking in those little
touches of modern comfort that are needed to make such a place
home-like and attractive to the eye. He opened a door towards the
inner end, and ushered me into a gloomy library, fitted up with great
bookcases that looked as if they were never opened, stuffed with huge
leather-bound volumes of the kind that no human being any longer wants
to read. The whole room reminded me of the fairy tale of the Sleeping
Beauty in the Wood. It seemed to breathe of the eighteenth century,
as though its life had been arrested then, and no one had trodden the
faded carpet or taken down one of the dusty tomes for a hundred long
years since.
The manservant had taken up a silver plate as we passed through the
hall, and laid our cards on it. He now asked, “Shall I take these cards
to his lordship, sir?”
He must have seen me start at the question. I put my hand into my
pocket, searching his face carefully the while.
“There is no occasion for that,” I said. “Our business with her
ladyship is private, and she may not wish his lordship to be troubled
with it.” I took out a note before adding, “Perhaps you remember my
face?”
The man looked pleased. His chances of adding to his wages can’t have
been very many in that lonely mansion. It seemed to me, moreover, that
he was genuinely attached to his young mistress.
“Why, yes, sir. I did have a thought as I had seen you here before. You
were staying at the Moorfield Farm, if I rec’lect rightly, sir, three
years ago or might be four.”
I nodded, and the piece of paper passed silently from my hand to his.
“I’ve come to do a service to Lady Violet, if I can,” I told him. “Her
ladyship knows I am coming, and she has gone out to meet me. I want you
to let me out at the back of the Castle, so that I can join her; and
say nothing to the friend who has come with me, or anybody else.”
He gave me a quick look of intelligence. “I understand, sir.”
He led the way out of the library again, and along a corridor still
more deserted and dismal than the hall. It ended at a locked and barred
door which he unfastened with some effort.
“This is the way into the ruins,” he explained. “You can pass out
from them into a path that leads through the home meadows up to the
Moorfield Farm. It’s a public footpath, and if anyone sees you they’ll
think you’ve been exploring the ruins from outside.”
Nothing could have suited better with my plans. I knew the path, and
knew that at a certain point another diverged from it and led through a
well-remembered wood to the barn where I had asked Violet Bredwardine
to meet me.
I passed out into the Castle grounds and clambered over the crumbling
walls and fallen stones till I found myself on the path. And now every
step became tragical. I was treading on the ashes of the fire in which
two hearts had been scorched and branded with a mark that could never
be effaced. The grass beside the narrow footway seemed to be stained
with blood. I drew my breath in pain as I mounted the slope towards the
lonely little farm-house in which I had passed the most glorious and
the most miserable hours of my life. When I came to the gate into the
wood, I stopped and leant upon it panting, and hardly able to proceed.
The wood was haunted by ghosts more dreadful to me than any spirits
of the dead; the ghosts of passion and of pain, the ghosts of love
and hatred, of that most terrible of all hatred which is born of love
betrayed.
I shuddered as I thrust open the gate and stepped beneath the trees. A
sombre fir drooped like a weeping willow over one spot where the way
was crossed by a trickling spring that plunged and disappeared down
a steep gully choked with brambles and dark ferns. But there was a
worse point than that to pass. A tall beech sent out its roots on to
the path, and on the smooth rind of its trunk were cut two initial
letters entwined--a V and B. The very knife that had scored them there
lay in my pocket; I had never parted with it. What madness had tempted
me to blazon our secret to the inquisitive country-side? I had used
one precaution: I had cut the proclamation of our love on the side of
the trunk that was hidden from the public way. Now, when I reached
the tree, I forced a passage through the undergrowth to see how time
and weather had dealt with that vain memorial. A bitter shock awaited
me. Every vestige of the monogram had been destroyed by deep cuts and
slashes in the bark. Only a confused web of scars and scratches marked
the place. The tree’s wounds seemed to reproduce the wounds upon two
hearts.
My head drooped as I dragged myself up the rest of the ascent, and came
out of the wood on the open hillside. The view was exquisite. The hills
of three fair counties stretched away to the horizon, and at their feet
the silver Wye clasped the rich cornfields and pastures in its shining
arms. But the whole prospect was darkened over for my eyes by an
invisible cloud. I turned to the spot where, scarcely a hundred yards
away, there rose out of the bracken the high gray walls of the forsaken
barn.
Its desolation seemed symbolical. When it was built centuries ago
the surrounding land had borne crops worth harvesting instead of the
thin grass and waste of bracken that now surrounded it on all sides.
Tradition spoke of a time not remote when the hill swarmed with folk
engaged in tilling the hard soil. Their ruined cottages still lined
the lanes that crept along the crest, and peeped out of the sheltered
nooks. The virgin prairies of the New World had tempted some of them
away; others had migrated to the mining valleys whose smoke could
almost be seen from where I stood.
So the gray ancient barn stood empty, its wooden doors dangling
helpless from their rusty staples, and the wind whistling through the
narrow slits that showed like the arrow holes of a Norman keep. I made
my way across the standing bracken that rose up to my shoulders, and
gained the open doorway. But there was no one within. A solitary sheep
started up from the litter of chaff that strewed the floor, and bounded
out through an opening in the opposite wall, leaving me alone.
And now I began to repent that I had named as the meeting-place the
spot where we had parted in such misery those three years ago. I turned
with a pang from the scene, and advanced slowly towards the brow of the
hill. Just below the crest, seated on a moss-covered stone beside a
spring, I found her.
Violet Bredwardine rose and stood where she was, more like a statue
than a living woman. Her light ringlets, breaking from beneath a
quaint straw helmet, surrounded her face like a halo, and made it seem
more than ever like the face of the child angel she had seemed to me
when I saw her first. Even then there had been a wistful look in her
innocent blue eyes, as though the child angel had lost her way in this
troubled earth of ours, and was seeking pitifully for some escape. And
I dreamt--in my madness I had dreamt--that I could offer her the help
she needed, and change the sadness of her life into joy.
I strode towards her, all the old, passionate impulses of the past
flooding my heart like wine, and cried, “Violet!”
She shrank back as if I had struck her and the soft eyes flashed with
anger.
“How dare you! How dare you ask me to meet you like this?”
I stopped ashamed. In an instant my sudden emotion was chilled. I felt
myself a criminal facing my judge.
“Forgive me,” I stammered. “I was obliged to speak to you before you
saw Sir Frank Tarleton. I had to explain to you who he was and what he
was going to ask you.”
She interrupted me with a gesture of scorn. She pointed to the roof of
the barn, just visible over the crest of the slope from where we stood.
“How dared you ask me to meet you _there_? Was there no other place?”
Her voice shook. “How could you be so brutal? To remind me! To drag me
back to the one spot on earth that I was trying to forget!”
The reproach pierced me like a knife. She was right. What was I but a
brute? What else is any man in dealing with the mystery of a woman’s
heart--with those delicate fibres which our rude touch so often bruises
and rends unawares?
I could have thrown myself at her feet and begged her to trample the
life out of me. But there would have been no reparation in that; there
was none in anything that I could think of doing. It was a case of
least said soonest mended. I had to leave the wound I had given her to
heal itself, and meanwhile try to render her the only service that was
in my power.
“You can say nothing to me that I don’t deserve, nothing that is
severe enough,” I answered. “I can only plead that I was distracted by
anxiety, on your account.”
The indignation in her face turned to terror.
“What do you mean? You wrote to me that I had nothing more to fear.”
“I said, nothing more to fear from Dr. Weathered. That was all I
thought it safe to put in a letter. And when I wrote it I hoped that
I could protect you from any further trouble. But other things have
happened since. There are complications in the case that I couldn’t
explain without seeing you, and Sir Frank Tarleton has come down here
to see if you can throw light on them.”
“Sir Frank Tarleton? Who is he?”
“He is the principal medical adviser to the Home Office. I am his
assistant.”
“But I don’t understand!” She stared at me in natural wonder. “Why
should he be mixed up in it? Have you told him anything?”
“Nothing; you may be assured of that. But I must tell you what has
happened. Weathered is dead.”
“Dead.” The blue eyes expanded for a moment in a gleam of relief,
almost of exultation. The instant after they froze dreadfully.
“Bertrand! You killed him!” she whispered.
I shook my head earnestly.
“No. I should have killed him, if there had been no other way to
save you from him. And I don’t believe any honest man or woman would
have blamed me if I had. But it wasn’t necessary. My only object was
to destroy the record of your confession, the statement that had
placed you in his power. All I did was to drug him enough to make him
insensible, and take his keys. When I left the Club at three o’clock in
the morning he was still alive. He was found dead where I left him two
hours afterwards.”
Violet hardly seemed to be listening. Her eyes were still fixed on me
like two blue stones.
“You did it,” she repeated dully. “You killed him--for my sake!”
Even in the midst of the intense strain those last three words thrilled
me with secret joy. Heaven forgive me for wishing for an instant that
they were true. I could have brought myself to accept the terrible
possibility which had been haunting me ever since the voice of
Inspector Charles had told me through the telephone that Weathered was
a corpse, the possibility that I had administered a fatal dose. But I
saw that Violet was on the verge of breaking down. For her sake, far
more than for my own, I must banish that theory from the field.
“No,” I assured her again. “That is out of the question. Sir Frank
Tarleton is the greatest living authority on poisons, and he has been
engaged for the last three days in trying to ascertain the cause of
death. I have been by his side the whole time, assisting him, and I
know that his suspicions point in another direction altogether.”
I broke off to catch her in my arms as she swayed forward. I was just
in time. I laid her gently on the moss and sprinkled her face with
water from the spring, the sweet face that I would have given all I
possessed to sprinkle with kisses instead. Luckily the collapse was
only momentary. While I was still bending over her she opened her lips
to say, “Go on. Tell me everything.”
I waited till she had recovered strength enough to sit up. It would
have done harm to wait longer. It was necessary for her to know exactly
how matters stood.
“Dr. Weathered had other victims beside you, and other enemies beside
me. The police are on the trail of some of them and Sir Frank has
obtained an important clue which may lead us to the true cause of
death. But meanwhile notice has been attracted to the costume in which
I went to the Domino Club that night.”
Violet began to look frightened.
“The one I lent you?--you ought to have destroyed it!” she said
excitedly.
“It is very fortunate I didn’t,” I returned soothingly. “It has come
out that it was the costume you generally wore; and you remember that
was why you lent it to me, so that Weathered should think I was you.
Anyhow, it has been traced to you, and if you couldn’t produce it you
would be called on to account for its disappearance. Do you see that?”
“Yes, I see that. But surely if they know the costume was mine they
must believe that I was there that night. My God, do they suspect me of
the murder?”
I was agonized by her terror.
“They know you to be innocent. Your innocence has been proved,” I cried
out fiercely. “You have what the law calls an alibi; you were more
than a hundred miles away when the crime was committed--if there was
a crime. Good heavens, Violet, can you believe that I shouldn’t have
given myself up to justice the very moment it was necessary to clear
you?”
Her expression softened more than I could have hoped.
“I know that, Bertrand,” she said in a low voice. “Only I don’t
understand why you are here. What does Sir Frank Tarleton want with me?”
“He wanted two things. One was to make sure that you really were here
on Wednesday night. He is now quite satisfied of that. The other is to
ask you if you can explain something that has puzzled us in Weathered’s
appointment-book. Whenever your name appears it is followed by a
number, and we don’t know why.”
Violet lowered her eyes with a frown.
“He gave me that number to sign my letters by when I wrote to him. He
told me that it would help me to write more freely if I used a number
instead of a name.”
I started in alarm. “But why should you need that? What were the
letters about?”
The poor girl’s eyes still refused to meet mine.
“He made me tell him the whole story in letters. He said that was the
only way to get it off my mind.”
I clenched my teeth together to keep myself from uttering a word. The
doctor’s safe had been opened and his case-book destroyed uselessly.