by Annie Haynes
“Help yourself, inspector; they are first-rate Havanas. Well,” watching his smoke curling upwards, “how much do you know?”
Inspector Furnival hesitated. The situation required careful handling.
“We know the identity of the lady who visited the flat on the night of the murder,” he began tentatively at last. “We know that while she was inside you were watching from the shelter of a doorway opposite; we know that after she had come out you entered the block of flats, and that it must have been very near the time the fatal shot was fired. The pistol found in the room has been identified as your property.”
Sir Anthony’s start was not lost on the keen-witted detective, but there came no other answer. Inspector Furnival sat back in his chair and waited.
“Well, sir?” the detective said at last.
Sir Anthony took his cigar from his mouth. “Well?” he echoed with a slight weary smile. “There does not seem much more to be said, does there, inspector?”
The interest in the detective’s eyes grew keener, he leaned forward and watched Sir Anthony’s face closely.
“You mean, sir—”
Sir Anthony shrugged his shoulders. “There does not seem to me to be much to say, inspector! You have got your facts all very pat—well, there is nothing for you to do but to act upon them, I should imagine.”
Something in his tone, some faint contemptuous menace made the detective momentarily wince.
“I have told you my reading of the facts, sir, won’t you help me?”
“How can I?” Sir Anthony parried. “You couldn’t expect it, you know, inspector. But I thought there was a certain formality, a little warning that was always given by the police to a suspect, before they questioned him. I fancied he was always told that what he said would be taken down in writing and might be used in evidence against him. You are not so generous as your confrères, inspector!”
The inspector stood up and buttoned his coat. “If you take it that way, sir, there is no more to be said. I came to ask your help. If you refuse to give it me—”
“You will have to fall back upon Scotland Yard’s plan,” Sir Anthony finished, a resolute touch of lightness in his tone, though his deep-set eyes were sombre. “Understand, inspector, you will find me here when you want me. I shall not run away, I assure you.”
“No, I think you are too wise for that, sir,” the detective’s tone was grim: “I knew you could help me; I thought you would. I may have taken an unprofessional course, but I think the circumstances justified it. I hope you may not regret your refusal to be frank with me later on.” He moved a step backwards, a little nearer the leather screen as he spoke.
“I hope I shall not,” Sir Anthony responded imperturbably. “The law does not force a man to incriminate himself, you know, inspector.”
“I know, and I tell you that I believe you could not only free yourself from every shadow of suspicion, if you chose, but could also help us materially to discover the real criminal.” Inspector Furnival’s tone was clear and distinct; he looked straight into the strong impassive face of the man in front of him. “But that won’t avail us much when instructions come down from Scotland Yard, to apply for a warrant for the arrest of Sir Anthony Carew for the murder in Abbey Court.”
Sir Anthony bent his head in acquiescence. “I know you mean well, inspector. Many thanks for your good intentions. I am sure—”
“Stop!” the voice rang out imperiously, the leather screen was pushed aside and fell to the floor. Sir Anthony’s face went white beneath its tan. A curious satisfied gleam shone for a moment in the detective’s eyes, as a tall, slim figure, in a light dressing-gown rose, and steadied itself tremblingly against the high back of a chair. “Stop!” the clear voice commanded again.
“Judith!” Sir Anthony exclaimed hoarsely. He went forward quickly. “What is it, dear? Why are you here? Come, let me take you back to your room—to Paul.”
“No!” Judith put his hands aside decidedly, she held tightly to the high chair in front of her, her eyes glanced, not at the face of the man she loved, but past him at the lynx-eyed detective. “You will not apply for a warrant for the arrest of Sir Anthony Carew for the Abbey Court murder,” she said in a high unnatural voice. “Because he is innocent. I killed the man who was known as C. Warden, in the Abbey Court flat.”
Sir Anthony caught her rigid figure roughly in his arms. “You are mad, Judith! You do not know what you are saying! Your night of watching, your grief, have turned your brain.”
His face was grey; the expression was changed now into one of terrible overwhelming fear. He tried to draw his wife to the door, but she resisted him, she freed herself resolutely, and turned again to the detective.
“I—I killed the man,” she cried feverishly. “Are you taking it down? Don’t you understand?”
“Not quite, Lady Carew,” replied the plain-spoken detective. “Why should you kill this man?”
Judith put her hand to her throat, she would not look at her husband’s agonized face.
“He—I had known him in the past”—her breath caught in cruel gasps between each word—“I thought he was dead, but he met me and threatened me. He ordered me to come to his flat that night. Then when I got there he insulted me—he—” She paused, her hands clenching.
“Judith, Judith! for pity’s sake,” Sir Anthony put himself between her and the detective. “For Paul’s sake, for my sake, for the sake of all that is past, be silent.”
But even Anthony himself had receded into the background of her mind. Judith looked at him with dull, non-seeing eyes.
“I had taken one of my husband’s revolvers, to protect myself with, and—I shot him—Warden—with it.” She finished with a hoarse sob. “That is all. Now—now, you can arrest me—not Sir Anthony.”
The detective bowed. “I have no warrant to arrest anyone at present,” he said stolidly. His eyes were downcast, but there was a gleam of triumph between their heavy lids. “When I hear definitely from Scotland Yard—”
“Ah! Yes, I see,” Judith said unsteadily. She swayed with a little sobbing moan.
Sir Anthony sprang forward and caught her as she fell. He placed her on the couch. Then, he turned and faced the detective—merciful unconsciousness had come to his aid; the situation was in his hands now.
“Of course you know that Lady Carew was raving,” he said hoarsely. “The night of watching we have had with the child, the anxiety has been too much for her. She has imagined—”
Inspector Furnival let his eyes stray to the unconscious form on the couch. “I told you that the identity of Warden’s visitor was known to us, sir.”
Sir Anthony drew himself up. “You told me the inferences you had drawn from the circumstances as you knew them. You were right; I followed Lady Carew; I waited till she came out, then I went into the flat. I quarrelled with Warden, I threatened to horse-whip him, he closed with me and in our struggle the pistol went off. You know the rest, and now, you must do your worst inspector. You will understand that I am anxious that Lady Carew’s name should be kept out of the affair as much as possible.”
The detective permitted himself to smile. “Not much chance of keeping her ladyship’s name out of it as matters stand, sir. We should have been more likely to do so if you had been as I asked you to be, open with me from the first.”
“Umph!” Sir Anthony straightened his broad shoulders. He cast one glance behind him at the couch, then he turned again to the inspector. “I shall plead guilty, you understand. So—well—you will not have much difficulty.”
The inspector met his gaze fully.
“No! I suppose not, sir. Under the circumstances I must leave my man Barker in the house. Later on when I have heard from Scotland Yard, I will—”
“You will make the arrest,” Sir Anthony finished. “I understand. You will find me ready, inspector!”
CHAPTER XXVIII
“Six, seven!” It was the clock striking from the little church on the hill. Judith ope
ned her eyes and looked about her vaguely, the oppression on her brain prevented her from thinking coherently, from realizing what had happened. For a time she lay motionless; then something roused the dormant memory, the hazel eyes grew dark and troubled, the curved lips twitched. Slowly Judith raised herself in bed, and gazed round the room fearfully. Every detail of that terrible scene in the study up to the moment she fainted was coming back to her, was being mentally reproduced with the fidelity and the accuracy of a photograph. She hardly knew what she expected to see as she glanced from the closed door leading to Sir Anthony’s apartments, to the open one of her own dressing-room, but she asked herself pitifully, was it usual to leave people alone who had confessed to having committed a murder?
What had been passing downstairs while she was unconscious? She was oppressed by a vague, horrible fear—the terror that had made her take upon herself the responsibility for Cyril Stanmore’s death hung over her and paralysed her. The detective had been about to arrest Anthony—what if he had disbelieved her, what if already Anthony was in prison?
She pulled herself to the side of the bed and slipped out. Her limbs felt strangely weak and heavy, almost as if they did not belong to her; holding by the furniture she made her way slowly to the other end of the room. The dressing-room was empty.
She did not forget the impulse that had bidden her to take the crime in the Abbey Court flat on her own shoulders. Anthony had been driven mad by jealousy and anger; her responsibility was as great as though her hand had fired the fatal shot. It was her guilty silence that had led to the whole catastrophe. It was right that the punishment should fall upon her!
She went up to her dressing-table mechanically and smoothed her hair. Her eyes wandered over its luxurious plenishings, and rested on the photograph of Anthony in its big silver frame. But though she looked at the old familiar surroundings she felt a curious sense of detachment. She had done with all those things, life was over for her. Only one thing remained now—death. As she thought of death a strange fascination stole over her. It was the only way out of the tangle in which she had become involved. Perhaps, when she was dead, in time Anthony would grow to think more kindly of her—perhaps even if she died now, they would hush things up, Paul would never hear his mother’s story. She caught at this last thought feverishly. Yes! That was the only thing she could do now for the sake of the two she loved. She must die—now, to-night—before the keen-eyed detective came to take her away to be pilloried in a criminal court.
But how was she to die? She looked round the room despairingly. Assuredly there was no means of taking her life here. There might be pistols in Anthony’s room, but the communication door was locked. Then, like an inspiration, there recurred to her wandering mind a memory of the cool waters of Heron’s Moat. That would scarcely be death surely, to sink softly in the clear limpid ripples.
She went across to her wardrobe and drew out a dark loose cloak that would cover her all over, and a garden hat. Then she hesitated. There was a door in her dressing-room that was never used, concealed from view by a hanging cabinet; the key of it was in her possession.
If the detective was having the other door watched, he would never think of this; and from it she could make her way to the back part of the house.
She unlocked the door, then paused again. Dazed and weary though she was, it seemed to her that she must leave some word of farewell for her husband. She went back to her writing-table, and took a pencil and a sheet of paper and wrote quickly:
“I do not ask for forgiveness, Anthony, for it seems to me that forgiveness is well-nigh impossible, but, if ever in the years to come you give a thought to the unhappy woman who was once your wife, try and think of her as kindly as you can for the sake of the first golden days of our love. Tell our boy as little as may be of me, only that his mother loved him very dearly, and that she is dead. I go now to make the only expiation possible for my sin; for it has been my sin all along. When you married me I let you think I was an innocent girl. I did not tell you that five years previously I had been married to Cyril Stanmore, the man who, as C. Warden, died in the Abbey Court flat. My life with him was a veritable hell; he was a libertine, a gambler, and I was his decoy, that was all. The climax came. I refused to obey some particularly degrading command of his, and he told me that our marriage was no marriage, that I was no wife of his! That night I left him! In my hour of direst need I met Canon Rankin. He and his wife were kindness itself to me and I stayed with them until I came to Heron’s Carew as Peggy’s governess. I had seen Cyril Stanmore’s death in the papers. I never doubted that he was dead until he spoke to me outside St. Peter’s, on the day of Geraldine Summerhouse’s wedding. The rest you know. Life has been one long torture to me since then, and the prospect of rest is very sweet. I dare not ask for pardon from you whom I have so deeply wronged, my dearly loved husband, but I pray you to think in the future as kindly as you can of your poor lost Judith.”
Tears from her eyes fell and blotted the paper; more than once she pressed it to her lips. At least Anthony would see it, his hands would touch it, when she would be lying still beneath the water of the Heron’s Moat. Then with another lingering look round the room, at the inanimate things that had been so familiar and so dear, she opened the little door behind the hanging cabinet, and went out into the passage.
She listened a minute, there was no sound of any living presence to be heard. She went down slowly by the servants’ staircase, meeting no one by the way. As she reached the side entrance at the bottom, she paused, and looked towards the green baize door that gave access to the front part of the house. If only, herself unseen, she could look upon Anthony’s face once more, if she could hear his dear voice. Then, with a gesture of despair she passed out and drew the door to behind her. Outside it was growing dusk, the grass in the park was heavy with dew as she crossed to the Home Wood.
It was very strange to her to think that she was treading that familiar path for the last time. She opened the little wicket that led into the private path into the Home Wood, and walked on more quickly now, looking neither to the right nor left. She took no heed of a rustle among the undergrowth as she passed; she did not hear stealthy steps creeping behind her at a distance. She saw only Anthony’s face that seemed to smile on her, Paul’s baby hands that were beckoning her on. So—only so—could she atone! The Heron’s Moat looked a thing of mystery when at last she came to it; the twilight was closing in, the water was dark and turbid, not smiling and limpid as when the sun shone on it.
She left the path and walked round the edge of the pool more slowly. Where should she throw herself in? Then she remembered that from the opposite side, in the daylight through an opening among the trees it was possible to catch a glimpse of Heron’s Carew. Perhaps even tonight, if they had lighted up… At any rate she would go to her last long sleep with her feet turned towards the home she loved. She put up one last prayer for her dear ones as she hesitated on the brink. “Help them to forget; oh, help them to forget.”
For herself—for pardon for the act, she was about to do, she did not pray, it seemed to her so natural, so inevitable a thing—God, in His heaven would understand! He would know she could do nothing else. A life for a life, that had been His ordinance of old.
She sprang forward, the dark waters closed over her head; she sank, rose struggling helplessly, since she was young, and, when the earnest purpose of her was dimmed, the strong firm limbs struggled against their fate. All the past was rising before her too: her life at the convent, that terrible year when she had been Stanmore’s wife, dear memories of her and Anthony’s love. Mingling with the noise and the roaring of the water in her ears there was another sound, a great shouting.
But it was growing dimmer, she ceased to struggle, she was sinking again, deeper and deeper, right into eternity.
CHAPTER XXIX
“A gentleman to see you, sir.”
“A gentleman to see me. Didn’t I tell you I was engaged?” Mr. Lennox, alias Inspect
or Furnival, looked up angrily.
But his words came too late. The little rosy-cheeked maidservant was already standing back to allow the tall man behind her to pass in.
“Not too much engaged to spare me a few minutes, I hope,” a familiar voice said pleasantly.
With a quick exclamation Furnival started to his feet. “Mr. Lawrence, sir! I had no idea—”
“No idea I was in the neighbourhood,” the new-comer finished for him with a smile. “Well, I was not until ten minutes ago, when I arrived at the station. I have come down from the chief, Furnival. He is getting impatient.”
“So I gathered, sir.” The inspector frowned as he looked at the papers on the table before him, and pulled his red beard thoughtfully.
His visitor smiled a little as he watched him. Mr. Frank Lawrence was a well-known figure in the Criminal Investigation Department. Though his only official recognized position was that of junior secretary to the chief, he was rapidly becoming a power to be reckoned with by virtue of his quick brain, of his almost uncanny power of seeing the right path to be pursued through the many intricate problems presented to the department. In person he was rather above the middle height, of slim build, with slightly rounded shoulders, and a keen, dark face with a high Roman nose, on which a pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses were perched.
“Yes; the chief is anxious to hurry things up a bit,” he went on easily. “Going to ask me to sit down, inspector? Thanks!” sinking down lazily into the chair which Furnival with a word of apology drew forward.
“Have you seen this paragraph in one of the evening papers, inspector? I met with it on my way down. It may interest you. This is the sort of thing that makes the chief mad.” He handed the paper to Furnival, who read it slowly: