She gulped as Doctor Morelle halted suddenly and pointed to a long, dark shape, hardly discernible in the deep shadow of a tree just off the drive. They crossed to it. It was the car described by the garage-hand as the one in which he had seen Mrs. Latimer driving away. It had been backed up to the tree and its long black bonnet was pointing towards the gates of the drive.
The bonnet was still quite warm under the Doctor’s touch. A scarf lay on the driver’s seat and he picked it up. A faint, remembered fragrance rose from it, bringing to Miss Frayle’s mind as she bent forward and sniffed the memory of that tall, glamorous woman in the superlative coat.
She glanced quickly at Doctor Morelle, a sudden, unreasonable irritation nagging at her as he held on to the scarf. But his pale, austere face was unreadable. His thin mouth was shadowed, the keen eyes veiled.
Hood, meanwhile, had been nosing around beside him. He turned to Doctor Morelle, his face set and grim.
“Don’t like it. Too damned quiet. I want to find the lake, but I don’t want to be seen.” He nodded towards the car. “Obviously she’s here. She picked up the Baron and brought him along. They’re in it together. But who fired those shots?” He shrugged irritably. “Maybe it was poachers.”
“I cannot subscribe to the theory that poachers would use revolvers in their unlawful pursuits. And although it was difficult to judge the exact direction of those revolver-shots, I suggest it was within the grounds.” His arm made a sweeping gesture.
“All right,” the other agreed. “But we can assume Mrs. L. and the Baron are here. That’s clear enough from the car. Maybe they had a quarrel over the loot and blazed away at each other, and that’s what we heard!” He shook his head sadly. “Sounds terrible, doesn’t it!”
“What loot, Inspector?” Miss Frayle asked.
He grinned broadly. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “What I’m trying to say is that frankly I don’t care a brass farthing if she’s got a bazooka and he’s got anti-tank artillery—I’m going to find the lake!”
“Are you aware of the lake’s exact situation?” the Doctor queried.
“Do you know where it is?” the other countered. “If you do, you might save me the trouble of mooching round——”
“It is my intention to gain access to the house,” was the grim reply. “From there we should be in a position to view the grounds over a wide area.”
He set off towards the house without deigning to glance back to see if the others were following. Miss Frayle hurried in his wake. Hood rubbed his chin, muttering: “I must be a bit jumpy or I’d have thought of that myself!”
The Doctor kept to the overgrown grass of the park, using the shadows as much as possible as he approached the terrace. The others followed close on his heels. None of them quite knew what danger lay ahead of them, but a sense of foreboding hung heavily on the atmosphere.
Since the second shot there had not been another sound. The silence was vast, with an emptiness that almost seemed to ring. In that silence Miss Frayle could hear the quick beat of her heart.
As they approached the house, its melancholy was even more apparent. The steps of the terrace were crumbling, the stones cracked and overgrown with coarse grass and multitudinous weeds. A loose flagstone caused Miss Frayle to stumble, and she gasped at the rattle the stone made.
A short flight of wide, shallow steps led up to the pillared doorway. The once white doors were dusty and grimed, deeply shadowed in the recess. The door opened at the Doctor’s touch with what seemed to Miss Frayle a ghostly creak.
The hall ahead appeared a ghostly cavern, its limits lost in a gloom emphasized rather than relieved by the shafts of moonlight filtering through spacious windows. At the far end could dimly be discerned a stairway mounting in a tall slender curve into the darkness.
Doctor Morelle led the way forward. The floor was bare parquet, yet their footsteps were quiet in the thick dust which lay upon it. Miss Frayle had the uneasy feeling she was intruding upon the old house.
On their right, folding doors were rolled back upon a dim room, hardly more than a deeper shadow in the shadows of the hall, but hinting at a promise of grandeur from the faint, dusty gleam of a crystal chandelier. Beyond it were the outlines of three french windows, the moonlight flooding in, leading out to that part of the terrace which ran along the side of the house.
It would not have surprised Miss Frayle in the least to have heard the phantom strains of a Viennese waltz or a prim minuet. As she followed the Doctor, it seemed to her that from the shadows might materialize elegant shapes clad in satin coats and taffeta gowns, treading a stately measure.
It was quite evident Doctor Morelle entertained no such romantic and whimsical fancies. There was a decisive briskness about him as he turned into the gloomy room, a questing air, as of one approaching the end of a search.
It was evidently the drawing-room. The carpet had been taken up and the furniture was shrouded in dust-sheets accentuating its ghostly aspect. But, despite its pervading sense of decay, there lingered an echo of past grandeur and elegance.
Doctor Morelle crossed to the nearest window, the others, except Miss Frayle, close on his heels. For some reason, perhaps because she was still caught up in her romantic fancies of the past, Miss Frayle hesitated on the threshold, staring about her. Then she started after the Doctor. Suddenly she halted, gaping in the direction of the window at the far end of the room.
As if rooted to the spot, Miss Frayle continued to stare. She tried to speak, but no sound came. Her eyes riveted to a moonlit patch on the floor, she heard Doctor Morelle engaged with Hood and the other detective before the near window, and heard the Inspector utter a grunt of satisfaction.
The Doctor glanced back with an exclamation of annoyance, as he beheld Miss Frayle fixedly engrossed upon a problem of her own.
“At this juncture, my dear Miss Frayle, it should not be necessary for me to inform you that your attention here might be of some . . .”
His biting tone trailed off as he turned and followed the direction of her wide-eyed gaze.
“Oh . . .!” she gasped at length and, with a supreme effort, pointed dramatically.
Outstretched before the window, the moonlight pouring down on her, lay Mrs. Latimer. One arm was outflung, her face waxen, her lips dark and reposed. Her eyes were closed. A foot or two away from her, a small revolver glittered balefully.
Chapter Thirty-Nine – The Man In The Shadow
“Kindly control yourself, Miss Frayle!” Doctor Morelle snapped ominously. “By this time you should be accustomed to the unusual and macabre. I have no time to waste on hysterics or fainting attacks. Pull yourself together!”
His voice acted upon her like a bucket of cold water. She gasped and spluttered, then said breathlessly:
“I’m all right, Doctor. It was the shock, seeing her like that. . . .”
She grasped the arm of a covered chair near by to steady herself, while Doctor Morelle knelt by the inert figure, the other two men joining him quickly. Miss Frayle muttered tremulously:
“It always seems to be me who finds them!”
“She’s dead all right,” Inspector Hood was saying, his voice puzzled. “But not a mark on her. What d’you say, Doctor?”
Doctor Morelle rose slowly to his feet. His face, shadowed as he gazed down at the limp body of Mrs. Latimer, seemed strangely set and inscrutable. In a voice so low the others scarcely heard, he pronounced: “A woman of wit and despair. Natural causes. She died of heart-failure.”
“Heart-failure!”
“Death ensued within the last fifteen minutes—I should estimate within a few moments of our hearing the second shot.”
Hood’s gaze fell on the small revolver. He whipped out his handkerchief and picked it up carefully.
“The second shot,” he growled, still perplexed. “What you getting at? You just said she died of natural causes.” He lifted the revolver, sniffed and exclaimed: “This has just been fired!”
“Precis
ely.”
Miss Frayle stared at the Doctor. Did she discern an unwonted gentleness in his voice? A faint smile played about his lips, enigmatic as ever, yet, it seemed to her, holding a faint melancholy. She frowned and compressed her lips. She was about to speak when he answered Hood.
“I was aware upon meeting her that she suffered from an acutely morbid condition of the heart. Had she consulted me, it would have been my duty, in fact, to warn her if she wished to preserve her life she must at all costs relinquish her mode of life, avoid every kind of excitement. In brief, retire into what would have been for her complete obscurity.”
Miss Frayle said, her voice unusually snappy:
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
“Mrs. Latimer did not elect to consult me as a physician. In any case, had I offered her my advice, I doubt if she would have heeded it. She was equally well aware of her danger——”
“Her fainting attacks!” Miss Frayle exclaimed. “That’s how you knew she’d have those things in her hand-bag when she fainted at the flat. . . .”
He nodded.
“Although she realized she was risking her life, she could not give up. There was too much at stake.”
“What?” Hood queried. “What was at stake?”
“What else but a fortune? Look.”
They followed the direction of his pointing finger. The french windows were wide open upon the terrace. Beyond, tangled and overgrown, the lawn stretched into the silver and the shadows. And beyond the stretch of lawn, something shimmered. It was a small, ornamental lake, its surface gleaming where the moonlight struck it, and purplish-black where the shadows of a semicircle of dark trees fell across it.
“By God!” Inspector Hood shouted. “That’s it! The Purple Lake!”
He stared down at the revolver he still grasped.
“She must have fired it,” he muttered. “Yes, that’d be it. She was standing here by the window——” He broke off. “But who was she shooting at? The Baron?”
“Baron Xavier?” Miss Frayle asked. “Why ever should she be shooting at him?”
“The old story of thieves falling out. Eh, Doctor?”
Doctor Morelle gave a little shrug.
“Why should we waste time in conjecture when the solution may be so near?”
He stepped through on to the terrace.
Hood instructed the plain-clothes men to remain behind, then followed the Doctor. Miss Frayle refrained from glancing again at the lifeless figure at her feet. The strain was beginning to tell on her. She was glad when she stood out on the open terrace, though the night air was cold.
Doctor Morelle remained motionless for a moment at the head of the shallow steps leading down to the lawn. Though it was neglected and overgrown, Miss Frayle did not find it difficult to imagine its beauty on a summer’s day, with the flower-beds in full bloom, smooth and velvet green stretching to the semicircular balustrade at the edge of the lake.
“Come on,” Hood grunted. “Let’s see what the lake can tell us.”
Down the steps to the lawn he went, moving quickly in his eagerness. The grass was tangled and almost knee-high.
Doctor Morelle had paused, frowning slightly, and glanced back at the house. By now they were half-way between the terrace and the lake. Miss Frayle followed the Doctor’s glance. She wondered what had brought that puzzled expression to his face. She kept close to him, the heavy, cold silence which surrounded them causing her a curious uneasiness.
Hood had halted and awaited the Doctor impatiently. It seemed as if for a moment the whole world was in suspense, that time had ceased. Then a faint rustle sounded near by. Miss Frayle’s eyes widened, she pressed one clenched hand against her mouth and, with the other, gripped Doctor Morelle’s arm. A low, eerie cry sounded suddenly, echoing out from the dark background of trees. A ghostly white shape soared out.
“Blinking owl!” Hood grumbled. “Come on!”
But Doctor Morelle gave a little hissing exclamation. Hood paused, riveted by the Doctor’s intent attitude. Suddenly there came a gasp, a moan that was hardly more than a whisper.
“Over there!” Hood breathed.
Where flower-beds had bloomed long ago, an ancient beech-tree flung a black shadow across the lawn. It was from here, almost in line with where they were standing, that the noise had come.
They hurried towards the place, Doctor Morelle moving with rapid, raking strides, his face now dark and anticipatory. Hitherto he had trod stealthily, but now he appeared heedless of being heard.
He spoke sharply, so that Miss Frayle jumped; his voice was so loud in comparison with the whispers in which they had conversed ever since their arrival at the old house.
“Have you a torch, Inspector? It would simplify matters if you were to produce it.”
Hood obliged, and the beam cut a white swathe through the blackness.
“Permit me to borrow it.”
The Doctor flashed the light over the tangled grass. A faint path showed through the tangle, as if something had been dragged through the grass, leaving a trail. Flashing the torch ahead, Doctor Morelle followed the trail. Then suddenly he gave an exclamation of satisfaction and Miss Frayle cried out involuntarily:
“Another one!”
Two or three yards ahead of them, almost hidden in the thick grass, a figure sprawled face downwards. As the light from the torch shone on it, it gave that faint moan which they had heard before.
“It’s a man!” Miss Frayle cried unnecessarily.
“Take this,” the Doctor snapped, pushing the torch towards her. Then he and Hood were beside the prone man. Doctor Morelle turned him over gently.
Miss Frayle directed the white beam on to the face of Baron Xavier.
Chapter Forty – Doctor Morelle’s Manoeuvre
The Baron’s eyes were closed, his face ghastly, but there was no mistaking his young, good-looking features. Another faint moan escaped his lips.
“Well, well!” Hood commented with satisfaction. “So it looks as if Mrs. Latimer got him first!”
Baron Xavier was unconscious. The torch showed blood on Doctor Morelle’s hands as he gently unfastened the Baron’s coat. A widening patch of blood darkened his shirt.
“Bring the light closer, Miss Frayle.”
The Doctor ripped the shirt away, examining the wound intently, then made a pad and bound it into place by the expedient of ripping the shirt into lengths. He worked quickly and deftly. Over his shoulder he told Hood:
“He will survive this. Bullet lodged above the heart. Lost a good deal of blood, no doubt due to the exertion of attempting to crawl away from his assailant.”
Hood bent his head in agreement. “Anyhow, we finally caught up with him—hullo!” He stooped suddenly and picked up a nickel-plated revolver the movement of the torch revealed lying in the grass.
“It’s a .38,” he muttered. He snapped open the breech. “And one round fired. Just recently, too. Accounts for the other shot we heard. Humph! Whole set-up speaks for itself. We’ll get the full story from him later, but it’s clear enough what happened. He and the woman came down here together. Then she took a pot at him. In other words, Mrs. L. double-crossed him, or he——”
Doctor Morelle straightened and interrupted him.
“It would be advisable to convey him to the hospital at Haywards Heath forthwith. I suggest you send your man for your car. It can drive up to the terrace and we can transfer Baron Xavier to it. We do not wish to risk undue delay.”
Miss Frayle threw the inert figure a sympathetic glance while Inspector Hood gave a shout for the officer in the house, who came on the run. He received his instructions and went off. Doctor Morelle pulled out his cigarette-case and the Inspector produced his pipe which he proceeded to fill.
He studied the Doctor quizzically in the flame of his cigarette-lighter. In the yellow glow the aquiline sombre features showed no elation, no triumph at finding Baron Xavier. He murmured:
“I fear, my dear Hood, your reasoning
is not altogether accurate.”
Miss Frayle had moved uneasily from one foot to the other and said in a shaky voice: “I didn’t realize how terribly tired I am. Can I sit down somewhere?”
The Doctor shot her a swift, sardonic look.
“You will find the grass somewhat damp; it will be more prudent for you to remain standing.”
She sighed and drooped. There were a lot of questions she wanted to ask, but she was too exhausted. She had hardly known what to expect, but she hadn’t anticipated this, at any rate. It seemed such an anti-climax. Doctor Morelle seemed not in the least surprised at the dramatic discovery of Baron Xavier.
She glanced at Inspector Hood. He, too, seemed subdued, as if the end of his long and patient chase had proved somewhat of an anti-climax for him also.
He put into words what she felt too fatigued to express.
“If you don’t think much of my reasoning, Doctor, what’s your own idea? I must say you led us here as if the Baron was the very man you expected to find.”
“I expected to find him in the vicinity,” was the smooth reply. “There were traces of blood on the trampled grass where he fell which evidently escaped your attention. Since he had been wounded, yet was not there, it was clear he must have removed himself elsewhere. Tracks led towards the shadow of the tree—with the rest you are acquainted.”
“All right, all right,” Hood sighed. “But what’s your theory? I’ve given you my idea and you say it’s wrong——”
“The car awaits us,” the Doctor broke in, as they heard the police-car pulled up at the steps of the terrace.
The still unconscious Baron Xavier was carried to the car. As Miss Frayle trailed after the others, the sense of anti-climax continued. The stealthy approach to the house, the amazing discovery of Mrs. Latimer, the silence that had hemmed them in, everyone’s carefully lowered voices. Now this sudden, almost casual, manner in which they were returning with Baron Xavier seemed somehow out of keeping with what had happened before, with yet the eerie and dramatic atmosphere still remaining.
Menace for Dr. Morelle Page 22