by Annie Haynes
“An hour ago,” she said steadily, “I was in Lount Wood.”
“In Lount Wood?” the man’s eyes fell guiltily. “Peggy, what do you mean?”
“I think you know,” the girl said quietly, “I saw you—you were not alone.”
“You would not blame me for a few minutes’ idle talk Peggy, I overtook the girl and these Frenchwomen always try to entangle you—”
Peggy gave him one contemptuous glance. “I was there when you came,” she said icily, “I was sketching the Three Beeches, I saw you meet her.”
“You saw us meet!” For a moment the man had the grace to look disconcerted, then he made a desperate effort to recover his usual manner, to brazen it out. “It was only a little idle flirtation, Peggy. I was a fool and worse, I acknowledge it, but a thing like that does not affect my feeling for you. That—”
Peggy’s slight contemptuous glance did not alter.
“Does it not?” she questioned icily. “I had hoped the contrary, for I must confess the knowledge that you could make appointments with my sister-in-law’s dismissed maid, that you could walk with her, kiss her—Ah, you did not know I saw that—has altered my feeling towards you entirely.”
She drew the glittering circlet from the third finger of her left hand, and held it out to him.
“Will you take this, please?”
He let her put the ring in his hand. “You loved me once, Peggy,” he said imploringly. “You will again; you will let me give you back the ring.”
“Never!” the girl exclaimed with sudden fire. “I was flattered by your attentions when we first met, Lord Chesterham. I liked you, but I never loved in the true sense of the word. I know that now, never at all.”
“And who has made you so wise now?” he sneered. “But I need not ask, it is your good friend, Stephen Crasster, of course.”
For a moment Peggy went very white; her great brown eyes blazed back their scorn at him, then the colour flowed slowly back to her cheeks, she held her small head very high.
“Stephen has never said a word of love to me,” she said slowly. “Not a word. But it may be that from his chivalry I have learned the difference between love and what passes as love with such men as you.”
“Have you really?” Chesterham laughed recklessly. His eyes were glittering, his face was red and puffy, the restraint that had marked his relations with Peggy was disappearing. “Ah, well, I am not going to lose you, my pretty Peggy; if you do not come to me for love, you shall for fear.”
“Fear!” Peggy echoed disdainfully. The courage of her ancestors sounded in the thrill of her sweet young voice, she drew up her long, slim throat. “Do you imagine that I am afraid of you—of anything that you can do?”
“Not for yourself,” Chesterham said slowly. As his bloodshot eyes wandered over the tall svelte figure, the charming riante face, the sullen anger in them changed to an unwilling admiration. “But for those you love.”
“Those I love,” Peggy said blankly. “What do you mean?” shrinking a little as if some cold wind touched her.
“Those you love,” Chesterham repeated deliberately. “You would do a great deal to save them from danger, it may be from death itself, wouldn’t you, Peggy? You would even for their sakes keep your promise to me,” with a laugh that drove the colour from Peggy’s cheeks once more.
“Will you explain yourself?” she said. “You are talking in riddles. If there is anything in your words beyond a mere empty threat you must be more definite, please.”
“It is no mere empty threat,” he said slowly. “A word from me would bring disgrace and ruin upon Heron’s Carew. Such disgrace and ruin as you have never dreamed of. It is for you, Peggy, to say whether that word shall be spoken.”
Something in his tone carried the conviction home to Peggy that he was not speaking without foundation, and for the moment her brave young spirit quailed.
“I have said that you must be more explicit,” she found herself saying in a dull, level voice that did not sound in the least like her own. “Disgrace and ruin are strange words to use in connexion with Heron’s Carew.”
Chesterham pulled his long moustache; his eyes watched her in a savage underhand fashion. “A word from me would send your sister-in-law to prison—it might even be to the scaffold itself—would bring such a terrible disaster upon Heron’s Carew as you have never dreamed of.”
Peggy gathered up her courage in both hands. She looked him in the face fully, contemptuously.
“It is a lie!” she said very deliberately. “Will you kindly allow me to pass? I have nothing more to say to you.”
“But I have something to say to you,” Chesterham said grimly. He bent forward and caught her slender wrists in a grip of iron. “You can go to your sister-in-law; you can tell her what I say; I will give you a week to think it over, and then, unless you keep your promise to me, I shall speak and the blow will fall.”
Peggy did not speak, she only looked up at him with big, wide-opened eyes in which there lay something of the anguish of a wild trapped thing; then made her way gropingly across the lawn to the house.
A mist seemed to rise up before her and all the pleasant familiar surroundings. The scene she had witnessed in the Lount Wood earlier in the day had shocked her, had completed the tearing of the veil from her eyes that Chesterham’s own words with regard to Stephen Crasster had begun, but it had not prepared her for the crass cowardliness, the depth of moral turpitude this interview with the man she once thought she loved had revealed.
From her window she saw Chesterham walk across the lawn to his car, and then, with a curt word to his chauffeur, drive out of the gate.
She had hardly had time to realize the meaning of his threats against Judith; that he should have any power to carry them into effect was impossible, she told herself. Yet Judith had altered so strangely, so terribly of late. The girl remembered her own misgivings, her fear that something was wrong between Judith and Anthony, her certainty that ill-health alone would not account for everything. Her doubt became a certainty that Chesterham’s words held a key to the mystery. Not that Peggy believed that Judith’s silence veiled any guilty secret. She trusted her sister-in-law too well to think that; but she did fancy that Judith’s past might hold some mystery, innocent enough in itself, Out of which Chesterham was trying to make capital. One thing grew clearer out of the chaos in which Peggy’s mind was enveloped—the only person who could help her now was Judith.
At this hour Judith was pretty sure to be found at home and alone. She would go to her. Peggy caught up her hat, and without giving herself time to change her mind set off through the Home Wood to Heron’s Carew. Judith was not on the lawn; Peggy found her in the morning-room, lying back on the couch among her cushions, looking white and wan.
She started up with a cry of alarm as she saw her young sister-in-law’s face.
“What is wrong, Peggy?”
“Nothing much, I hope; but that is what I have come to you to find out,” the girl answered vaguely, as she put her arms round Judith and made her lie back. “It may be that everything is right instead of wrong,” she went on, while Judith waited, watching her with a nameless fear, her breath coming and going in soft gasps. “I have broken off my engagement with Lord Chesterham.”
“You have broken off your engagement to Lord Chesterham!” Judith echoed; then, to Peggy’s consternation, she burst into tears. “Oh, it is because I am so glad, Peggy,” she sobbed. “So glad; he is a bad man; I don’t like him, I am afraid of him.”
“Yes,” said Peggy softly, taking Judith’s hands in hers, and chafing them against her warm young cheek.
“Why didn’t you tell me so before, Judith?”
“Oh, it wouldn’t have been any use,” Judith said beneath her breath. “You wouldn’t listen to Anthony or to Stephen.”
“No,” Peggy said, still keeping the cold hands against her cheek. “But I think I should have listened to you, Judith, if you had told me everything.”
&nb
sp; “Told you everything?” Judith tore her hands away, she raised herself on one elbow and stared at the girl. “What do you mean?”
Peggy pressed her soft red lips to the pale cheek. “If you had told me all you knew of Chesterham. Do you know that when I told him just now that all was over between us, that I could not marry him, he said that I must, for your sake. That if I did not he would bring some terrible trouble upon you—upon Heron’s Carew?”
Judith sat as if she had been turned to stone; her face was marble white, while all her tortured soul seemed to look out of her straining, burning eyes.
“What trouble?” she said hoarsely. “Did he tell you?”
Peggy hesitated a minute, but it seemed to her that perfect frankness was the only thing that could save them now. “He spoke of trouble that would end in open disgrace, in prison—even on the scaffold itself.”
“Ah!” Judith drew a long breath.
From beneath her long lashes Peggy’s brown eyes watched her very lovingly. “He says he will keep silence only if I marry him. Judith, what am I to do? What are we to do?”
Judith did not answer. She sat motionless, only her eyes altered. Very gradually the light of a great decision dawned in them. At last she moved; very slowly she raised herself to her feet; she held out her hand to Peggy.
“Come!” she whispered. “Come, Peggy.”
“Where?” Peggy looked at her with a new-born awe, in which some fear mingled. “What are you going to do, Judith?”
“What I ought to have done long ago,” Judith said slowly with her stiff lips. “I am going to take you to Anthony, to tell him everything—so that you must not be sacrificed.”
Filled with fear, she hardly knew of what, Peggy tried to hold her back.
“Wait, Judith, wait. Let us think.”
But Judith would not pause. Her cold hand gripped the girl’s insistently. “Come!”
As they passed into the hall they heard a sob on the staircase. Some one came swiftly towards them. “Oh, my lady—my lady, Master Paul!”
Peggy felt the poor mother’s form stiffen. “What is it?” Judith cried wildly. “Speak, woman, speak! What is wrong with him?”
“My lady, we are afraid it is convulsions,” the woman faltered. “If your ladyship would come at once.”
CHAPTER XXV
Talgarth was a pleasant old-fashioned house. Tradition had it that it had been built out of the stones from the walls of the convent that had stood close by, and that had been pillaged and destroyed by the orders of the eighth Henry. For the past twenty years Squire Hunter, from whom Stephen Crasster bought Talgarth, had not had money to keep the old place up, and it had acquired a forlorn, neglected look. Stephen Crasster had projected wide-spreading improvements, but the tidings of Peggy’s engagement had taken the heart out of him.
Inspector Furnival found Stephen in the library when, in response to repeated invitations, he walked over to Talgarth one summer evening.
Crasster sprang up in surprise as “Mr. Lennox” was announced.
“Why, inspector, this is a welcome surprise,” he said, shaking hands cordially. “I have been looking over the notes of a case and trying to make up my mind about it. You are just in the nick of time to give me some help with it.”
“Well, I don’t know that I shall be of much assistance, sir. It seems to me that my brain is pretty well addled.” The inspector laughed as he took the chair that Crasster indicated opposite to his own. “As a matter of fact I have come up hoping that you would let me talk over one or two little matters with you—things that are puzzling me a bit.”
“Are they in connection with the Abbey Court case?” Crasster’s face had grown suddenly grave. His hand, as he resumed his seat, beat a restless tattoo on the arm of his chair. “Well, inspector, what is it? Anything fresh?”
“Well, it is and it isn’t, sir,” the inspector replied enigmatically. He drew out his notebook, and, extracting an envelope, handed it to Stephen. “This came by this morning’s post.”
Stephen looked at it curiously. It was addressed to Mr. Lennox at the Carew Arms, in odd-looking handwriting—one that sloped backwards and was evidently disguised.
“Well?” he said at last inquiringly. “What sort of a communication is this, inspector? One would say at first sight that your correspondent did not wish to be identified.”
The inspector smiled. “Precisely the case, I fancy, sir. However, will you read the enclosure?”
Crasster made an involuntary movement of distaste as he drew out the thin oblong sheet of paper, and saw the crooked misshapen writing inside:
“If Inspector Furnival wishes to inquire into Lady Carew’s antecedents he will be able to get all the information he requires from Canon Rankin of St. Barnabas’ Vicarage, Chelsea. The Canon might also be questioned with regard to a mysterious visitor who came in one day this spring. These hints may be more useful to Inspector Furnival than anything he will obtain from the maid, Célestine, and they are offered for his consideration by a well-wisher.”
Stephen read the rancorous words over twice, then he flicked the paper on the table contemptuously.
“From Célestine herself?” he hazarded.
The inspector smiled as he shook his head. “No, Célestine hasn’t discovered my real business yet. That paper was bought in Chesterham village, sir. I made it my business as soon as this epistle arrived to go round all the little shops in the neighbourhood and discover, if possible, where it was purchased. I ran it to earth at an old dame’s in Chesterham village. I laid in a stock of it myself, and the old lady was quite pleased, and said she would have to order extra supplies, as it was quite wonderful how the gentry were taking to it.”
Stephen raised his eyebrows. “Gentry?” he questioned gently.
The inspector laughed. “She said that a lady who was staying at General Wilton’s a week or two ago came in one afternoon and bought a whole box.”
“You surely don’t mean—” said Stephen.
Inspector Furnival nodded. “Lady Palmer, sir. There can’t be any question about that. I have compared the writing too, with a specimen of hers that I managed to get, and I don’t feel any doubt at all that it is hers. My mind might not have gone straight to her, though, but for Célestine,” he added candidly. “She told me one day how Lady Palmer was always asking her questions about Lady Carew, and now she is a widow, and none too well off, and Sir Anthony has come into the title and estates, nothing would suit Lady Palmer better than to get rid of Lady Carew. Do you take me, sir?”
Crasster did not answer for a minute. He sat looking at the paper; at last he raised his eyes.
“How could Lady Palmer have become possessed of the information that this note presupposes?”
The inspector shrugged his shoulders. “It is impossible to say, sir, otherwise than that probably Célestine on her dismissal from Heron’s Carew did not hold her tongue. However, that is neither here nor there. I brought this note to you to show you that our time is short. Something will have to be done soon.”
Stephen got up and threw open the window as though the atmosphere stifled him.
“The woman must be a perfect fiend!”
The inspector smiled as one tolerant of the idiosyncrasies of the weaker sex.
“Ah, well, sir, when jealousy gets hold of a woman! There is something else I have got to show you, Mr. Crasster.” He drew a small package done up in brown paper from his pocket and began to open it. When at last the inspector laid the opened paper upon the table, he turned. “There sir.”
Stephen leaned forward eagerly; then as he saw the object lying in the midst of such careful unfolding, he looked amazed. “Why, what is this, inspector? Surely nothing but an ordinary latch-key.”
The inspector gazed at it almost affectionately; then he turned and glanced sharply at the other man’s interested face.
“It is Mr. C. Warden’s latch-key, sir, found in his pocket after death.”
“Oh!” Stephen looked puzzle
d. “I remember; it was among the contents of his pocket. But I don’t see what you are doing with it now, inspector. Where does it come in?”
Inspector Furnival smiled quietly, not ill-pleased.
“Well, I think it will ultimately form an important link in our chain of evidence, sir. If you will examine it a little more closely I think you will come to the same conclusion.”
Crasster picked up a magnifying glass, and laying the key on the table bent over it a minute or two without speaking. At last he looked up.
“I see particles of wax adhering to the wards.”
Inspector Furnival nodded as he looked at him. “The inference being that some one had an impression in wax taken of the key, or lock, or both?”
“Of—of—course.” Stephen sprang to his feet in his excitement. “Then this clears Lady Carew. It proves—”
“Nothing,” the inspector said curtly.
Crasster standing up now on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire-place, glanced at the other man’s expressionless face.
“It proves nothing except that another person, probably not Warden himself, had taken means to procure a key to the flat,” the inspector went on after a pause. “It would count for nothing in comparison with the weight of evidence against Lady Carew. And yet it does give us a loophole—”
“We must work it up,” Stephen exclaimed eagerly. “It gives me real hope, Furnival. My heart has been as heavy as lead these last few days, though I knew there wasn’t—there couldn’t be—anything in your theories. With this we shall clear both Sir Anthony and Lady Carew yet.”
“We may implicate Sir Anthony, it seems to me, sir,” the inspector said slowly. “For anything we know yet, sir.
“Implicate Sir Anthony!” Crasster stared at him.
“I said, for anything we know yet,” the detective corrected. “It may be that Sir Anthony found out where her ladyship was going, and provided himself beforehand with the means of getting into the flat, and ascertaining what went on during her interview with Warden. Mind, I don’t say this is my view of the case, but it is one which has found some belief at headquarters. My chief is not inclined to believe in the possibility of any third person being mixed up in the affair.”