A BAD MOVE.
Two days afterward the great gates of Levallion Castle were opened wide
to let out the funeral of the man who had been poisoned in his own
house. Behind the hearse, before the long rows of country neighbors
who came because they must and the flocking poor who came because the
dead man had been good to them, walked the new Lord Levallion as chief
mourner--and people stared as they saw Sir Thomas Annesley walking at
his side. Sir Thomas, whose sister was a murderess, and lying in jail
awaiting her committal for trial at the assizes.
“I wonder the boy can hold up,” said Lord Chayter to his companion. “I
honestly believe she didn’t do it, though!” But when asked who did, he
was silent.
Long and speechlessly the new Lord Levallion stood by his cousin’s
grave. If there were men who would have spoken to him they dared not do
it, so hard and hostile was his face. He turned without seeming to see
his neighbors or the parson at his elbow; and to the surprise of every
one drove off in the opposite direction from Levallion Castle.
He was not needed there, Levallion’s lawyer was in charge, and would
remain so till it pleased Adrian Gordon to come back. There was no
will to read, nothing to keep the heir from taking up his immediate
residence. Except that his wife’s settlements and jointure were secured
to her. Lord Levallion had arranged nothing. That consolation legacy to
Adrian had never been made--or needed.
But all that was the last thing in Adrian’s head as he drove to the
station from that ghastliest thing on earth, the funeral of a murdered
man.
In the last two days he had ransacked the village, but of a Mrs. Murray
no one had ever heard. The landlord of the raw new bungalows had gone
away; the caretaker gave a description of Miss Brown, the defaulting
tenant, which did not tally in any respect with Hester Murray, except
that Miss Brown had yellow hair.
Bad as Hester might be, he had never known her to drink; and the
village girl who had waited on the tenant of the bungalow swore that
two days out of three her mistress would drink herself into a heavy
sleep. She said, also, that Miss Brown never left the house except to
go into the garden; that at night, from her cottage near-by--for she
had never slept in the house--she had always seen the drawing-room lit
up till all hours. And it was clear her story was true, for none of the
village people had ever laid eyes on the levanting tenant during all
the three months she had lived in the bungalow.
“That disposes of Hester,” Adrian said to himself. “She could never
have lived cooped up like that. She’d have scoured the country for
exercise.”
Levallion’s lawyer, too, poohpoohed the idea, as he furnished Mrs.
Murray’s present address in London.
“She could not have been here, or his lordship would have mentioned it
in his instructions to me. I was to pay quarterly to her account in the
Starr Street branch of Lloyd’s Bank, five hundred a year, so long as
she observed his lordship’s conditions of never going within a hundred
miles of any of his country houses, or approaching him or his wife in
any way, personally or by letters. I received those instructions one
morning, and the next had a letter from Mrs. Murray herself, from a
London address and posted in London. I think you may set aside all
thought of her having been down here. Lord Levallion would have made no
terms with her in that case, I am convinced. Three days afterward she
drew her money and I made it my business to ascertain her whereabouts.
She and her boy were at the address she had written from--Starr Street,
Paddington.”
And to Starr Street Adrian was going, in hopes that if Hester Murray
and the woman Tommy had seen were one and the same, he could terrify it
out of her. For he owed her a long score.
It was pouring rain and pitch-dark when he found her number in
the shabby street, a strange dwelling for a woman who had had the
best house in Eaton Place. If he had any thought that she would
not see him, he was mistaken; for he had barely entered the sordid
lodging-house sitting-room when she came in, small, pretty, dainty as
usual, but with something so unaccustomed in her dress that he started.
“Adrian!” she said prettily. “This is kind of you,” and she pretended
not to see that he made no motion to take her outstretched hand. She
sat down, not sure what had brought him, his own business or another’s.
In spite of herself, her heart thumped.
“I didn’t come to be kind,” he said coolly. “But what’s the matter with
you? Is Murray dead?” For she was dressed in new widow’s mourning,
incongruously expensive for 15 Starr Street.
“No,” she answered quietly. “Levallion! And I--loved him.”
Some emotion she could not control convulsed her face.
“Your truthfulness with him showed it!” brutally. “But I fail to see
why you wear widow’s weeds.”
“Because, in my own eyes, I am his widow,” she said. “You know that!
Have you come here to insult me when I am heart-broken--or why?”
And to his astounding eyes there were the ravages of fearful grief in
her face. But he was in no mood for pity.
“How dared you tell Lady Levallion, before her marriage,” he said--and
it was not what she had expected--“that ‘Mrs. Gordon’ was my wife?”
“Because Sylvia Annesley made me, threatened me. And I did it in
ignorance. If I had known what I was doing, do you think I would have
stirred a finger to help Levallion to marry--to marry!” bitterly.
“I suppose not. Well, it’s some small comfort to think you ruined
yourself! Were you trying to undo your work by passing yourself off as
Miss Brown, at Levallion?”
But the sudden question never jarred her; she had been ready for it,
since, for all she knew, Levallion might have told him. Her wide eyes
opened innocently as she stared at him, and all the while it was
sweeping over her acute brain that he was speaking by guesswork.
“I don’t know what you mean!” she cried, in her clear, high voice. “I
know nothing about any Miss Brown.”
“Will you come down there and tell the caretaker you don’t?” quietly.
“Yes,” said Hester Murray, just as quietly; “if you can make me
understand what you mean. Caretaker of what? and what has he to do with
me? I have not been at Levallion Castle for three years, and you know
it.”
“You’ve been living within a mile of it all summer!”
Pale as a sheet, she stood up in front of him.
“Are you mad?” she said. “Would I--I that he discarded, shamed, ruined,
go near him and his new--wife? Whoever your Miss Brown was, she was not
I! I’ve been ill, poor, starving, nearly dying, till Levallion heard of
it and sent me money.”
“Have you been here all summer, then?” unconvinced.
He terrified her till she could scarcely answer him, and if she did not
satisfy him she was ruined. She shook her head.
“I’ve been in France, Boulogne,” she said. “In a pension; you can write
and ask them.” And thanked Heaven she dared to play the desperate card,
though only yesterday she had loathed the means that put it into her
hand.
“Day before yesterday--the last few days?” doggedly.
“I’ve been here. Oh, Adrian! Why are you asking me such questions? If I
had been at Levallion, could I have stayed away from--him?”
Her low, broken voice, her puzzled misery, were perfect; and yet the
man disbelieved in her because he knew her to be a liar.
“Do you expect me to believe it was not you who lived at Levallion,
in that bungalow behind the village, all summer?” he said. “Because I
think it was.”
“It was not I. And if it had been, it is none of your affair.”
Her change of tone startled him. He did not realize he had made a
mistake when he said “think,” instead of “know.”
“Here,” she said, and she wrote an address on a bit of paper. “Write to
Boulogne and ask. And now tell me what your Miss Brown has been doing
that you should think I was she?”
Her face was haggard as she waited for the answer, yet something in it
warned Gordon that to answer her would be sheer madness.
“Hester,” he said quietly, “has it occurred to you that it is I now who
am Lord Levallion? What do you expect me to do about your allowance?”
Something cunning flashed into her eyes, and was gone.
“I have not asked you for money,” she returned. “And--I don’t think I
will.”
“If you want it, you had better stay here till you hear from me. Do you
understand?”
“Unless you hear from me--first,” she said slowly. And he could not
understand the mixture of triumph and fright that was in her face.
“What do you mean? You’re powerless,” he cried sharply.
“Yes.” And for his life he did not know whether it was an assent or a
question. He caught back the threat that was on his lips and went out.
In the street he called himself every sort of fool. As if it had been
written on the black, rainy sky, he saw that he had betrayed his
suspicion of her and she had cleared herself and then defied him. He
had accomplished absolutely nothing of what he meant to do.
“She means mischief,” he said to the depths of his umbrella. “She’s
going to do something.”
But just what Mrs. Murray had in her power never entered his brain.