by Annie Haynes
“Hopkins! Oh, Aubrey!”
“Hopkins!” he repeated. “He—he is my right hand, you know, Uncle James. I—I would have staked my life on Hopkins.”
The clergyman pushed a chair up to his nephew.
“Sit down, my dear boy. What is this about Hopkins? I remember him well. Has he—?”
“He has been away for a few days’ holiday. He said his sister was ill and he must go to see her. In the early hours of this morning”—Todmarsh’s voice grew increasingly husky—“he was arrested with two other men breaking into Sir Thomas Wreford’s house, Whistone Hall in the New Forest. I—I can’t believe it!” His head fell forward on his hands.
Mrs. Phillimore drew a long breath, and for a moment nobody spoke. Then the rector said slowly:
“My dear boy, I can hardly believe this is true. Is there no possibility of a mistake? A false report or something of that kind?”
Aubrey shook his head.
“No. The telegram came from Wreford Hall Post Office—Hopkins sent it himself to me at the Community House and it was brought to me here.”
“Dear, dear! I wish I could help. But you must remember, my dear Aubrey, that we workers for others must be prepared to meet trouble and disappointment, ay, even in those of whom we have felt most sure.” The rector laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Pull yourself together, my dear Aubrey. Remember the many signal causes of thankfulness that have been granted to you. The many other lives that you have brightened and saved from shame.”
“How can I tell who will be the next?” Todmarsh groaned. “I tell you, I would have staked my life on Hopkins.”
“We cannot answer for our brothers, any of us,” Mr. Collyer went on. “But now, my boy, you must make an effort. You must think of your Aunt Madeleine, of Mrs. Phillimore.”
There was a moment’s silence, then Todmarsh raised his head.
“You are right. You always do me more good than anyone else, Uncle James. But here I am keeping you all waiting. I beg your pardon, Aunt Madeleine. And after lunch there is much to be done. I must see about getting Hopkins bailed out.”
“Where is Hopkins?” questioned Anthony, taking part in the conversation for the first time.
“At a place called Burchester,” Aubrey answered. “I fancy it is quite a small place. Probably it is the nearest police court to Whistone Hall.”
“Whistone Hall, in the New Forest, you said, didn’t you?” Anthony went on. “Is it near Burford, do you know?”
He hardly knew what made him ask the question. John Steadman glanced at him sharply.
Aubrey Todmarsh turned a surprised face towards him.
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about the place. And I never heard of Burford.”
CHAPTER XIV
Luncheon, not a particularly cheerful meal, was over. Mrs. Phillimore’s jewelled cigarette case lay on the table beside her, but her cigarette had gone out in its amber holder, and her eyes were furtively watching her fiancée as she chatted with Mr. Collyer, who sat opposite.
Aubrey Todmarsh had taken his uncle’s advice and pulled himself together. He was talking much as usual now, but John Steadman watching him from his seat opposite thought that his face looked queer and strained. His eyes no longer seemed to see visions, but were bloodshot and weary. His high cheekbones had the skin drawn tightly across them to-day and gave him almost a Mongolian look, his usually sleek, dark hair was ruffled across his forehead.
John Steadman had not hitherto felt particularly attracted by the young head of the Community of St. Philip. Apart from the natural contempt of the ordinary man for a conscientious objector, there always to Steadman appeared something wild and ridiculous about Todmarsh’s visionary speeches and ideas. To-day, however, his sympathies were aroused by the young man’s obviously very great disappointment over Hopkins’s defection. He felt sorry for Mrs. Phillimore too. The poor little widow was evidently sharing her lover’s depression, and, though she did her best to appear bright and cheerful, was watching him anxiously while she talked to her hostess or to Steadman himself.
It seemed to Steadman that he had never realized how protracted a meal luncheon could be until to-day, and he was on the point of making some excuse to Mrs. Bechcombe for effecting an early retreat when the parlourmaid entered the room with two cards—on one of which a few words were written—upon her silver salver.
Mrs. Bechcombe took them up with a murmured excuse. She glanced at them carelessly, then her expression changed. She looked round in indecision then turned to Steadman.
“I—I don’t know what to do. That woman—”
The momentary lull in the conversation had passed; every one was talking busily. Under cover of the hum, Steadman edged himself a little nearer his hostess.
“What woman?”
For answer she handed him the larger of the two cards.
“Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke,” he read. He glanced at Mrs. Bechcombe. “What does this mean?”
“That woman—I have always felt certain she was responsible for Luke’s death,” Mrs. Bechcombe returned incoherently. “Oh, yes”—as Steadman made a movement of dissent—“if she did not actually kill him herself she took her horrid diamonds to him and let the murderer know and follow her. Oh, yes, I shall always hold her responsible. But to-day you see she—I mean he—the man says their business is important. Perhaps he has found out—something.”
“What am I to do?”
“Why not ask them to come in here?” John Steadman suggested. “We are all members of the family,” glancing round the room.
Mrs. Bechcombe hesitated. Aubrey Todmarsh sprang to his feet.
“I must go, Aunt Madeleine. I have to see about bail for Hopkins, and that he is legally represented. And, besides, I don’t really feel that I can stand any more to-day.”
His face was working as he spoke, and they all looked at him sympathetically as he hurriedly shook hands with Mrs. Bechcombe. His absorption in Hopkins’s backsliding was so evidently of first consideration, rendering him oblivious even of his fiancée. As for the poor little Butterfly, her spirits, which had been gradually rising, seemed to be finally damped by this last contretemps. She raised no objection to her lover’s abrupt departure, but sat silent and depressed until the Carnthwackes were ushered into the room.
One glance was enough to show John Steadman that both the American and his wife were looking strangely disturbed. They went straight up to Mrs. Bechcombe.
“I am obliged to you, ma’am, for receiving us,” Mr. Cyril B. Carnthwacke began, while his wife laid her hand on Aubrey Todmarsh’s vacant chair as though to steady herself.
“You said it was important,” Mrs. Bechcombe’s manner was distant. She did not glance at Mrs. Carnthwacke.
“So it is, ma’am, very important!” the American assented. “Sure thing that, else I wouldn’t have ventured to butt in this morning. Though if I had gathered your guests were so numerous”—looking round comprehensively and making a slight courteous bow to Steadman and Collyer—“but I don’t know. It is best that a thing of this importance should be settled at once.”
As he spoke he was slowly removing the brown paper covering from a small parcel he had taken from his breast pocket. Watching him curiously Steadman saw to his amazement that when the contents were finally extracted they appeared to be nothing more important than the day’s issue of an illustrated paper.
Cyril B. Carnthwacke spread it out. Then he looked back at Mrs. Bechcombe.
“Sure I don’t want to hurt your feelings, ma’am. And it may be that some one else belonging to the house, perhaps that gent I saw down at the Yard”—with a gesture in Steadman’s direction—“would just look in this picture.”
Steadman stepped forward. But Mrs. Bechcombe’s curiosity had been aroused. She leaned across.
“I will see it myself, please.”
Cyril B. Carnthwacke laid it on the table before the astonished eyes of the company. A glance showed John Steadman that t
he centre print was a quite recognizable portrait of Luke Bechcombe. There were also pictures of the offices in Crow’s Inn, both inside and out, an obviously fancy likeness of Thompson “the absconding manager,” and of Miss Cecily Hoyle, the dead man’s secretary.
Steadman half expected to find Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke figuring largely, but so far as he could see there was nothing to account for that lady’s excessive agitation.
She passed her handkerchief over her lips now as she sat down sideways on the chair that Tony Collyer placed for her, and he noticed that she was trembling all over and that every drop of colour seemed to have receded from her cheeks and lips. Her admirers on the variety stage would not have recognized their idol now.
Cyril B. Carnthwacke cleared a space on the table and spread out his paper carefully, smoothing out the creases with meticulous attention. Then he pointed his carefully manicured forefinger at the portrait of Luke Bechcombe in the middle.
“Would you call that a reasonably good picture of your late husband, ma’am?”
Mrs. Bechcombe drew her eyebrows together as she bent over it.
“Yes, it is—very,” she said decidedly. “I should say unusually good for this class of paper. It is copied from one of the last photographs he had taken, one he sat for when we were staying with his sister in the country. You remember, James?” appealing to the rector.
Mr. Collyer smiled sadly.
“Indeed I do. We were all sitting on the lawn and that friend of Tony’s, Leonard Barnes, insisted on taking us all. Poor Luke’s was particularly good. Why are you asking, Mr. Carnthwacke?”
Cyril B. Carnthwacke wagged his yellow forefinger reprovingly in the direction of the rector.
“One moment, reverend sir. It may be, ma’am, that you have another portrait of your lamented husband that you could let us glimpse?”
Mrs. Bechcombe hesitated a moment and glanced nervously at John Steadman. In spite of all her preconceived notions, the American was beginning to impress her. There was something in his manner, restrained yet with a sinister undercurrent, that filled her with a sense of some hitherto unguessed at unnamable dread. At last, moving like a woman in a dream, she went across to the writing-table that stood between the two tall windows overlooking the square, and unlocking a drawer took out a cabinet photograph.
“There, that is the most recent, and I think the best we have. It was taken at Frank and Burrows, the big photographers in Baker Street.”
“Allow me, ma’am.” Cyril B. Carnthwacke held out his hand. He studied the photograph silently for a minute or two, laying it beside the paper and apparently comparing the two. Everybody in the room watched him with curious, interested eyes. His wife sat crouching against the table, leaning over it, her handkerchief, crushed into a hard little ball, pressed against her lips.
At last Mr. Carnthwacke laid both the portraits down together and stood up with an air of finality.
“Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke, I rather fancy the moment to speak has come. Now, don’t fuss yourself, but just tell these ladies and gentlemen what you have to say simply, same way as you did to me.”
It seemed at first, as Mrs. Carnthwacke appeared to struggle for breath and caught convulsively at her husband’s hand, that she would not be able to speak at all. But his firm clasp drew her up. The magnetism of his gaze compelled her words.
“If that is Mr. Bechcombe,” she said very slowly, “that portrait, I mean, and if it is a really good likeness of him, I can only say”—she paused again and gulped something down in her throat—“that that is not the man I saw at the office, not the man to whom I gave my diamonds.”
A tense silence followed this avowal—a silence that was broken at last by a moan from Mrs. Bechcombe.
“What do you mean? What does she mean?”
There was another momentary silence, broken this time by John Steadman. He had remained standing since the Carnthwackes came in, on the other side of the table. He came round towards them now.
“I think you must give us a little further explanation, Mrs. Carnthwacke,” he said courteously.
Mrs. Carnthwacke was pressing the little ball that had been her handkerchief to her lips again. She turned from him with a quick gesture as though to shut him, the other guests, the whole room, out of her sight.
Cyril B. Carnthwacke laid his hand on her shoulder, heavily yet with a certain comfort in its very contact.
“That is all right, old girl. You just keep quiet and leave it to me. She can’t give you any explanation. That is just all she can say,” he went on in a determined, almost a hostile voice. “As soon as she saw that portrait, she knew, if that was Luke Bechcombe, that she never saw him at all on the day of his death—that she gave the diamonds to some one else, some one impersonating him.”
“And who,” inquired John Steadman in that quiet, lazy voice of his, “do you imagine could have impersonated Luke Bechcombe?”
The American looked him squarely in the eyes.
“Sure, that’s for you legal gentlemen to decide. It is not for me to come butting in. But I can put you wise on one thing that stares one right in the face, so to speak, that I can say before I quit. I don’t guess who it was who impersonated Luke Bechcombe, or where he came from or how he got right there. But there is only one man it could have been, and that is the murderer!”
CHAPTER XV
He looked from one to another as he spoke and as he met John Steadman’s glance his grey eyes were as hard as steel and his thin lips were drawn and pinched together like a trap.
The horror in his hearers’ faces grew and strengthened. Mrs. Bechcombe alone tried to speak; she leaned forward; in some inscrutable fashion her figure seemed to have shrunk in the last few minutes. She looked bent and worn and old, ten years older than Luke Bechcombe’s handsome wife had done. Her face was white and rigid and set like a death-mask. Only her eyes, vivid, burning, looked alive. No sound came from her parted lips for a moment, then with a hoarse croak she threw up her hands to her throat as though she would tear the very words out:
“What was he like?”
Mrs. Carnthwacke cast one glance at her and began to tremble all over, then she clutched violently at her husband’s hand.
“It—it is easier to say that he wasn’t like that portrait,” she confessed, “than to tell you what he really was like. He gave me the impression that he was a bigger man; his beard too was not neat and trimmed like that—short, stubbly and untidy-looking. His hair grew low down on his forehead. That—that man’s hair,” pointing with shaking fingers to the paper portrait, “grows far back. He is even a little bald. I don’t know that I can point out any other differences, but the two faces are not a bit alike really. Oh, if I had only known Mr. Bechcombe by sight this dreadful thing might never have happened! She leaned back in her chair trembling violently.”
Cyril B. Carnthwacke placed himself very deliberately between her and the rest of the room. His clasp of her cold hands tightened.
“Now, now, be a sensible girl!” he admonished, giving her a little shake as he spoke, yet with a very real tenderness in his gruff tones. “Quit crying and shaking and just say what you have to say as quietly as possible. Nobody can hurt you for that. And if they do try to, they will have to reckon with Cyril B. Carnthwacke. Now, sir.” He looked at John Steadman. “I guess there will be other questions you will have to ask, and it may be as well to get as much as we can over at once.”
The barrister cleared his throat.
“I am afraid it will be impossible to do that here. The very first thing to be done is to inform Scotland Yard of Mrs. Carnthwacke’s tragic discovery.”
The American bent over his wife for a minute then drew aside.
“I guess it will have to be as the gentleman says, Mrs. Carnthwacke. Now just as plain as you can put it, and remember that Cyril B. Carnthwacke is standing beside you.”
Mrs. Carnthwacke drew one of her hands from his and passed her handkerchief over her parched lips. Then she looke
d at Steadman.
It seemed to him that it was only by a supreme effort that she became articulate at all.
“I knocked at the door—I knew how to find it, Mr. Bechcombe had told me how on the phone. Down the passage to the right, past the clerks’ office. It—it wasn’t opened at once—I heard some one moving about rather stumblingly, and I was just going to knock again when the door was opened, and—” She stopped, shivering violently.
“Now then, now then!” admonished her husband. “You just quit thinking of what you are wise about now, and tell us just what took place as quickly as you can.”
Mrs. Carnthwacke appeared anxious to obey him.
“He—he opened the door, the man I—I told you about. ‘Come in, Mrs. Carnthwacke,’ he said. I never doubted its being Mr. Bechcombe—why should I? He knew my name and my errand. Certainly I thought he had an unpleasant voice, husky—not like what I had heard when I rang him up. But he said he had a cold.” She stopped again.
This time John Steadman interposed.
“Now the details of your interview you have told us before—”
“Ever so many times,” she sobbed. “I can’t say anything but what I told you at the inquest.”
“But, now that this extraordinary new light has been thrown upon everything, do you recollect anything—anything that may help us? You know the veriest trifles sometimes provide the most successful clues—a mark on hands or face, for example.”
“There wasn’t any,” Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke answered, shaking visibly. “Or if there was, I didn’t see it. But my eyesight isn’t what it was, and the room was very dark, so I couldn’t see very well.”
“Dark! I shouldn’t call it a dark room,” contradicted John Steadman. “And the day was a clear one, I know.”
“The room itself mightn’t be dark,” Mrs. Carnthwacke said obstinately. “But the blinds were drawn partly down and that heavy screen before the window nearest the desk would darken any room.”
“Screen!” John Steadman repeated in a puzzled tone. “I have seen no screen near the window.”