Trent Intervenes

by E. C. Bentley

  ‘I know slightly,’ Trent remarked, ‘a man called Selby, a solicitor, who was with Lady Aviemore just after her husband’s death.’

  Lord Aviemore said that he remembered Mr Selby. He said it with such a total absence of expression of any kind that the subject of Selby was killed instantly; and he did not resume that of the tragedy of the woman whom the world remembered still as Lillemor Wergeland.

  It was a few months later, when the portrait of Lord Aviemore was to be seen at the show of the N.S.P.P., that Trent received a friendly letter from Arthur Selby. After praising the picture, Selby went on to ask if Trent would do him the favour of calling at his office by appointment for a private talk. ‘I should like’ (he wrote), ‘to put a certain story before you, a story with a problem in it. I gave it up as a bad job long ago, myself, but seeing your portrait of A. reminded me of your reputation as an unraveller.’

  Thus it happened that, a few days later, Trent found himself alone with Selby in the offices of the firm in which that very capable, somewhat dandified lawyer was a partner. They spoke of the portrait, and Trent told of the strange exaltation with which his sitter had spoken of the dead lady. Selby listened rather grimly.

  ‘The story I referred to,’ he said, ‘is the Aviemore story. I acted for the countess when she was alive. I was with her at the time of her suicide. I am an executor of her will. In the strictest confidence, I should like to tell you that story as I know it, and hear what you think about it.’

  Trent was all attention; he was deeply interested, and said so. Selby, with gloomy eyes, folded his arms on the broad writing-table between them, and began.

  ‘You know all about the accident,’ he said. ‘I will start with the 15th of March, when Lord Aviemore and his son were buried in the cemetery at Taormina. That was before I came on the scene. Lady Aviemore had already discharged all the servants except her own maid, with whom she was living at the Hotel Cavour. There, as I gathered afterwards, she seldom left her rooms. She was undoubtedly overwhelmed by what had happened, though she seems never to have lost her grip on herself. Her brother-in-law, the present Lord Aviemore, had come out to join her. He had only just returned from Canada’—Selby raised a finger and repeated slowly—‘from Canada, you will remember. He had gone out to get ideas about the emigration prospect, I understand. He remained at the hotel, meaning to accompany Lady Aviemore home when she should feel equal to the journey.

  ‘It was not until the 18th that we received a long telegram from her, asking us to send someone representing the firm to her at Taormina. She stated that she wished to discuss business matters without delay, but did not yet feel able to travel. At the cost of some inconvenience, I went out myself, as I happen to speak Italian pretty well. You understand that Lady Aviemore, who already possessed considerable means of her own, came into a large income under her husband’s will.’

  ‘She was a client who could afford to indulge her whims,’ Trent observed. ‘If you were already her adviser, she probably expected you to come.’

  ‘Just so. Well, I went out to Taormina, as I say. On my arrival Lady Aviemore saw me, and told me quite calmly that she was acquainted with the provisions of her late husband’s will, and that she now wished to make her own. I took her instructions, and prepared the will at once. The next day, the British Consul and I witnessed her signature. You may remember, Trent, that when the contents of her will became public after her death, they attracted a good deal of attention.’

  ‘I don’t think I heard of it,’ Trent said. ‘If I was giving myself a holiday at the time, I wouldn’t know much about what was going on.’

  ‘Well, there were some bequests of jewellery and things to intimate friends. She left £2,000 to her brother, Knut Wergeland, of Myklebostad in Norway, and £100 to her maid, Maria Krogh, also a Norwegian, who had been with her a long time. The whole of the rest of her property she left to her brother-in-law, the new Lord Aviemore, unconditionally. That surprised me, because I had been told that he had disapproved bitterly of the marriage, and hadn’t concealed his opinion from her or anyone else. But she never bore malice, I knew; and what she said to me at Taormina was that she could think of nobody who would do so much good with the money as her brother-in-law. From that point of view she was justified. He is said to spend nine-tenths of his income on charities of all sorts, and I shouldn’t wonder if it was true. Anyhow, she made him her heir.’

  ‘And what did he say to it?’

  Selby coughed. ‘There is no evidence that he knew anything about it before her death. No evidence,’ he repeated slowly. ‘And when told of it afterwards he showed precious little feeling of any kind. Of course, that’s his way. But now let me get on with the story. Lady Aviemore asked me to remain to transact business for her until she should leave Taormina. She did so on the 27th of March, accompanied by Lord Aviemore, myself, and her maid. To shorten the railway journey, as she told us, she had planned to go by boat first to Brindisi, then to Venice, and so home by rail. The boats from Brindisi to Venice all go in the daytime, except once a week, when a boat from Corfu arrives in the evening and goes on about eleven. She decided to get to Brindisi in time to catch that boat. So that was what we did; had a few hours in Brindisi, dined there, and went on board about ten o’clock. Lady Aviemore complained of a bad headache. She went at once to her cabin, which was a deck-cabin, asking me to send someone to collect her ticket at once, as she wanted to sleep as soon as possible and not be awakened again. That was soon done. Shortly before the boat left, the maid came to me on her way to her own quarters and told me her mistress had retired. Soon after we were out of the harbour, I turned in myself. At that time Lord Aviemore was leaning over the rail on the deck onto which Lady Aviemore’s cabin opened, and some distance from the cabin. There was nobody else about that I could see. It was just beginning to blow, but it didn’t trouble me, and I slept very well.

  ‘It was a quarter to eight next morning when Lord Aviemore came into my cabin. He was fearfully pale and agitated. He told me that the countess could not be found; that the maid had gone to her cabin to call her at seven-thirty and found it empty.

  ‘I got up in a hurry, and went with him to the cabin. The dressing-case she had taken with her was there, and her fur coat and her hat and her jewellery-case and her handbag lay on the berth, which had not been slept in. The only other thing was a note, unaddressed, lying open on the table. Lord Aviemore and I read it together. After the inquiry at Venice, I kept the note. Here it is.’

  Selby unfolded and handed over a sheet of thin ruled paper, torn from a block. Trent read the following words, written in a large, firm, rounded hand:

  ‘Such an ending to such a marriage is far worse than death. It was all my fault. This is not sorrow, it is complete destruction. I have been kept up till now only by the resolution I took on the day when I lost them, by the thought of what I am going to do now. I take my leave of a world I cannot bear any more.’

  There followed the initials ‘L. A.’ Trent read and reread the pitiful message, so full of the awful egotism of grief, then he looked up in silence at Selby.

  ‘The Italian authorities found that she had met her death by drowning. They could not suppose anything else—nor could I. But now listen, Trent. Soon after her death I got an idea into my head, and I have puzzled over the affair a lot without much result. I did find out a fact or two, though; and it struck me the other day that if I could discover something, you could probably do much better.’

  Trent, still studying the paper, ignored this tribute. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what is your idea, Selby?’

  Selby, evading the direct question, said, ‘I’ll tell you the facts I referred to. That sheet, you see, is torn from an ordinary ruled writing-pad. Now I have shown it to a friend of mine who is in the paper business. He has told me that it is a make of paper never sold in Europe, but sold very largely in Canada. Next, Lady Aviemore never was in Canada. And there was no paper-pad in her dressing-case or anywhere in the cabin. Neither was
there any pen or ink, or any fountain pen. The ink, you see, is a pale sort of grey ink.’

  Trent nodded. ‘Continental hotel ink, in fact. This was written in a hotel, then—probably the one where you had dinner in Brindisi. You could identify her writing, of course.’

  ‘Except that it seems to have been written with a bad pen—a hotel pen, no doubt—it is her usual handwriting.’

  ‘Any other exhibits?’ Trent asked after a brief silence.

  ‘Only this.’ Selby took from a drawer a woman’s handbag of elaborate bead-work. ‘Later on, when I saw Lord Aviemore about the disposal of her valuables and personal effects, I mentioned that there was this bag, with a few trifles in it. “Give it away,” he said. “Do what you like with it.” Well,’ Selby went on, smoothing the back of his head with an air of slight embarrassment, ‘I kept it. As a sort of memento—what? The things in it don’t mean anything to me, but you have a look at them.’ He turned the bag out upon the writing-table. ‘Here you are—handkerchief, notes and change, nail-file, keys, powder-thing, lipstick, comb, hairpins—’

  ‘Four hairpins.’ Trent took them in his hand. ‘Quite new ones, I should say. Have they anything to tell us, Selby?’

  ‘I don’t see how. They’re just ordinary black hairpins—as you say, they look too fresh and bright to have been used.’

  Trent looked at the small heap of objects on the table. ‘And what’s that last thing—the little box?’

  ‘That’s a box of Ixtil, the anti-seasick stuff. Two doses are gone. It’s quite good, I believe.’

  Trent opened the box and stared at the pink capsules. ‘So you can buy it abroad?’

  ‘I was with her when she bought it in Brindisi, just before we went on board.’

  Again Trent was silent a few moments. ‘Then all you discovered that was odd was this about the Canadian paper, and the note having obviously been prepared in advance. Queer enough, certainly. But going back before that last day or two—all through the time you were with Lady Aviemore, did nothing come under your notice that seemed strange?’

  Selby fingered his chin. ‘If you put it like that, I do remember a thing that I thought curious at the time, though I never dreamed of its having anything to do—’

  ‘Yes, I know, but you asked me here to go over the thing properly, didn’t you? That question of mine is one of the routine inquiries.’

  ‘Well, it was simply this. A day or two before we left Sicily I was standing in the hotel lobby when the mail arrived. As I was waiting to see if there was anything for me, the porter put down on the counter a rather smart-looking package that had just come—done up the way they do it at a really first-class shop, if you know what I mean. It looked like a biggish book, or box of chocolates, or something; and it had French stamps on it, but the postmark I didn’t notice. And this was addressed to Mlle Maria Krogh—you remember, the countess’s maid. Well, she was there waiting, and presently the man handed it to her. Maria went off with it, and just then her mistress came down the big stairs. She saw the parcel, and just held out her hand for it, and Maria passed it over as if it was a matter of course, and Lady Aviemore went upstairs with it. I thought it was quaint if she was ordering goods in her maid’s name; but I thought no more of it, because Lady Aviemore decided that evening about leaving the place, and I had plenty to attend to. And if you want to know,’ Selby went on, as Trent opened his lips to speak, ‘where Maria Krogh is, all I can tell you is that I took her ticket in London for Christiansand, where she lives, and where I sent her legacy to her, which she acknowledged. Now then!’

  Trent laughed at the solicitor’s tone, and Selby laughed too. His friend walked to the fireplace, and pensively adjusted his tie. ‘Well, I must be off,’ he announced. ‘How about dining with me on Friday at the Cactus? If by that time I’ve anything to suggest about all this, I’ll tell you. You will? All right, make it eight o’clock.’ And he hastened away.

  But on the Friday he seemed to have nothing to suggest. He was so reluctant to approach the subject that Selby supposed him to be chagrined at his failure to achieve anything, and did not press the matter.

  It was six months later, on a sunny afternoon in September, that Trent walked up the valley road at Myklebostad, looking farewell at the mountain far ahead, the white-capped mother of the torrent that roared down a twenty-foot fall beside him. He had been a week in this remote backwater of Europe, seven hours by motorboat from the nearest place that ranked as a town. The savage beauty of that watery landscape, where sun and rain worked together daily to achieve an unearthly purity in the scene, had justified far better than he had hoped his story that he had come there in search of matter for his brush. He had worked and he had explored, and had learnt as much as he could of his neighbours. It was little enough, for the postmaster, in whose house he had a room, spoke only a trifle of German, and no one else, as far as he could discover, had anything but Norwegian, of which Trent knew no more than what could be got from a traveller’s phrase-book. But he had seen every dweller in the valley, and he had paid close attention to the household of Knut Wergeland, the rich man of the valley, who had the largest farm. He and his wife, elderly and grim-faced peasants, lived with one servant in an old turf-roofed steading not far from the post office. Not another person, Trent was sure, inhabited the house.

  He had decided at last that his voyage of curiosity to Myklebostad had been ill-inspired. Knut and his wife were no more than a thrifty peasant pair. They had given him a meal one day when he was sketching near the place, and they had refused with gentle firmness to take any payment. Both had made on him an impression of complete trustworthiness and competency in the life they led so utterly out of the world.

  That day, as Trent gazed up to the mountain, his eye was caught by a flash of sunlight against the dense growth of birches running from top to bottom of the steep cliff that walled the valley to his left. It was a bright blink, about half a mile from where he stood; it remained steady, and at several points above and below he saw the same bright appearance. He perceived that there must be a wire, and a well-used wire, led up the precipitous hill-face among the trees. Trent went on towards the spot on the road whence the wire seemed to be taken upwards. He had never been so far in this direction until now. In a few minutes he came to the opening among the trees of a rough track leading upwards among rocks and roots, at such an angle that only a vigorous climber could attempt it. Close by, in the edge of the thicket, stood a tall post, from the top which a wire stretched upwards through the branches in the same direction as the path.

  Trent slapped the post with a resounding blow. ‘Heavens and earth!’ he exclaimed. ‘I had forgotten the saeter!’

  And at once he began to climb.

  A thick carpet of rich pasture began where the deep birch-belt ended at the top of the height. It stretched away for miles over a gently sloping upland. As Trent came into the open, panting after a strenuous forty-minute climb, the heads of a score of browsing cattle were sleepily turned towards him. Beyond them wandered many more; and two hundred yards away stood a tiny hut, turf-roofed.

  This plateau was the saeter; the high grass-land, attached to some valley farm. Trent had heard long ago, and never thought since, of this feature of Norway’s rural life. At the appointed time, the cattle would be driven up by an easier detour to the mountain pastures for their summer holiday, to be attended there by some peasant—usually a young girl—who lived solitary with the herd. Such wires as that he had seen were kept bright by the daily descent of milk-churns, let down by a line from above, received by a farmhand at the road below.

  And there, at the side of the hut, a woman stood. Trent, as he approached, noted her short, rough skirt and coarse, sack-like upper garment, her thick grey stockings and clumsy clogs. About her bare head her pale-gold hair was fastened in tight plaits. As she looked up on hearing Trent’s footfall, two heavy silver earrings dangled about the tanned and careworn face of this very type of the middle-aged peasant women of the region.
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  She ceased her task of scraping a large cake of chocolate into a bowl, and straightened her tall body. Smiling, with lean hands on her hips, she spoke in Norwegian, greeting him.

  Trent made the proper reply. ‘And that,’ he added in his own tongue, ‘is a large part of all the Norwegian I know. Perhaps, madam, you speak English.’ Her light blue eyes looked puzzlement, and she spoke again, pointing down to the valley. He nodded; and she began to talk pleasantly in her unknown speech. From within the hut she brought two thick mugs; she pointed rapidly to the chocolate in the bowl, to himself and herself.

  ‘I should like it of all things,’ he said. ‘You are most kind and hospitable, like all your people. What a pity it is we have no language in common!’ She brought him a stool and gave him the chocolate cake and a knife, making signs that he should continue the scraping; then within the hut she kindled a fire of twigs and began to boil water in a black pot. Plainly this was her dwelling, the roughest Trent had ever seen. He could discern that on two small shelves were ranged a few pieces of chipped earthenware. A wooden bed-place, with straw and two neatly folded blankets, filled a third of the space in the hut. All the carpentering was of the rudest. From a small chest in a corner she drew a biscuit-tin, half full of flat cakes of stale rye bread. There seemed to be nothing else in the tiny place but a heap of twigs for fuel.

  She made chocolate in the two mugs, and then, at Trent’s insistence in dumb show, she sat on the only stool at a rude table outside the hut, while her guest made a seat of an upturned milking-pail. She continued to talk amiably and unintelligibly, while he finished with difficulty the half of a bread-cake.