Afternoon Tea Mysteries, Volume One: A Collection of Cozy Mysteries (Three thrilling novels in one volume!)

by Anne Austin

  “Your sympathies are with the innocent. That is well; now come with me, I have another innocence to show you, and after you have seen it tell me whether innocence living or innocence dead has the most claim upon your pity and regard.” And before I realized what she was doing, she had led me across the room to a window, from which she hastily pulled aside the curtain that hung across it.

  The sight that met my eyes was like a dream of fairyland let into the gloom and terror of a nightmare. The window overlooked the conservatory, and the latter being lighted, a vision of tropical verdure and burning blossoms flashed before us. But it was not upon this wealth of light and color that the gaze rested in the fullest astonishment and delight. It was upon two figures seated in the midst of these palm-trees and cacti, whose faces, turned the one towards the other, made a picture of love and joy that the coldest heart must feel, and the most stolid view with delight. It was the bridegroom and his bride, Mr. Harrington and the beautiful Agnes Pollard.

  I felt the hand that lay upon my arm tremble.

  “Have you the heart to dash such happiness as that?” murmured a voice in my ear.

  Was it Mrs. Pollard speaking? I had never heard such a tone as that from her before. Turning, I looked at her. Her face was as changed as her voice; there was not only softness in it but appeal. It was no longer Mrs. Pollard who stood beside me, but the mother.

  “She has never made a mistake,” continued this terrible being, all the more terrible to me now that I saw capabilities of feeling in her. “She is young and has her whole life before her. If you pursue the claims of justice as you call them, her future will be wrecked. It is no fool she has married but a proud man, the proudest of his race. If he had known she had for a brother one whom his own country had sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, he would not have married her had his love been ten times what it is. It was because her family was honored and could bestow a small fortune upon her in dowry that he braved his English prejudices at all. What then do you think would be the result if he knew that not only was her brother a convict, but her mother—” She did not finish, but broke in upon herself with a violence that partook of frenzy. “He would first ignore her, then hate her. I know these Englishmen well.”

  It was true. The happiness or misery of this young creature hung upon my decision. A glance at her husband’s face made this evident. He would love her while he could be proud of her; he would hate her the moment her presence suggested shame or opprobrium.

  My wily antagonist evidently saw I was impressed, for her face grew still softer and her tone more insinuating.

  “She was her father’s darling,” she whispered. “He could never bear to see a frown upon her face or a tear in her eye. Could he know now what threatened her do you think he would wish you to drag disgrace upon her head for the sake of justice to a being who is dead?”

  I did not reply. The truth was I felt staggered.

  “See what an exquisite creature she is,” the mother now murmured in my ear. “Look at her well—she can bear it—and tell me where in the world you will find beauty more entrancing or a nature lovelier and more enticing?”

  “Madam,” said I, turning upon her with a severity the moment seemed to deserve, “In a den of contamination, amid surroundings such as it will not do for me to mention even before her who could make use of them to destroy the innocence that trusted in her, there lies the dead body of one as pure, as lovely, and as attractive as this; indeed her beauty is more winning for it has not the stamp of worldliness upon it.”

  The mother before me grew livid. Her brows contracted and she advanced upon me with a menacing gesture almost as if she would strike me. In all my experience of the world and of her I had never seen such rage; it was all but appalling. Involuntarily I raised my hand, in defence.

  But she had already remembered her position and by a violent change now stood before me calm and collected as of old.

  “You have been injured by me and have acquired the right to insult me,” cried she. Then as I made no move, said: “It is not of the dead we were speaking. It was of her, Samuel Pollard’s child. Do you intend to ruin her happiness or do you not? Speak, for it is a question I naturally desire to have settled.”

  “Madam,” I now returned, edging away from that window with its seductive picture of youthful joy, “before I can settle it I must know certain facts. Not till I understand how you succeeded in enticing her from her home, and by what means you transferred her into the care of the vile woman who took your place, will I undertake to consider the possibility of withholding the denunciation which it is in my power to make.”

  “And you expect me to tell—” she began.

  “Every thing,” I finished, firmly.

  She smiled with a drawing in of her lips that was feline. Then she glared; then she looked about her and approached nearer to me by another step.

  “I wish I could kill you,” her look said. “I wish by the lifting of my finger you would fall dead.” But her lips made use of no such language. She was caught in the toils, and lioness as she was, found herself forced to obey the will that ensnared her.

  “You want facts; well, you shall have them. You want to know how I managed to induce Miss Merriam to leave the house where my husband had put her. It is a simple question. Was I not her grandfather’s wife, and could I not be supposed to know what his desires were concerning her?”

  “And the second fact?”

  She looked at me darkly.

  “You are very curious,” said she.

  “I am,” said I.

  Her baleful smile repeated itself.

  “You think that by these confessions I will place myself in a position which will make it impossible for me, to press my request. You do not understand me, sir. Had I committed ten times the evil I have done, that would not justify you in wantonly destroying the happiness of the innocent.”

  “I wish to know the facts,” I said.

  “She went with me to a respectable eating house,” Mrs. Pollard at once explained. “Leave her to eat her lunch, I went to a place near by, where the woman you saw, met me by appointment, and putting on the clothes I had worn, went back for the girl in my stead. As I had taken pains not to raise my veil except just at the moment when I wanted to convince her I was her natural guardian, the woman had only to hold her tongue to make the deception successful. That she did this is evident from the result. Is there any thing more you would like to know?”

  “Yes,” I replied, inwardly quaking before this revelation of an inconceivable wickedness, yet steadily resolved to probe it to the very depths. “What did you hope to gain by this deliberate plan of destruction? The girl’s death, or simply her degradation?”

  The passion in this woman’s soul found its vent at last.

  “I hoped to lose her; to blot her out of my path—and hers,” she more gently added, pointing with a finger that trembled with more than one fierce emotion, at the daughter for whom she had sacrificed so much. “I did not think the girl would die; I am no murderess whatever intimation you may make to that effect. I am simply a mother.”

  A mother! O horrible! I looked at her and recoiled. That such a one as this should have the right to lay claim to so holy a title and asperse it thus!

  She viewed my emotion but made no sign of understanding it. Her words poured forth like a stream of burning liquid.

  “Do you realize what this girl’s living meant? It meant recognition, and consequently disgrace and a division of our property, the loss of my daughter’s dowry, and of all the hopes she had built on it. Was I, who had given to Samuel Pollard the very money by means of which he had made his wealth, to stand this? Not if a hundred daughters of convicts must perish.”

  “And your sons?”

  “What of them?”

  “Had they no claim upon your consideration. When you plunged them into this abyss of greed and deceit did no phantom of their lost manhood rise and confront you with an unanswerable reproach?”

&n
bsp; But she remained unmoved.

  “My sons are men; they can take care of themselves.”

  “But Dwight—”

  Her self-possession vanished.

  “Hush!” she whispered with a quick look around her. “Do not mention him. I have sent him away an hour ago but he may have come back. I do not trust him.”

  This last clause she uttered beneath her breath and with a spasmodic clutch of her hand which showed she spoke involuntarily. I was moved at this. I began to hope that Dwight at least, was not all that his mother would have him.

  “And yet I must speak of him,” said I, taking out the letter he had written to Miss Merriam. “This letter addressed to one you have so successfully destroyed seems to show that he returns your mistrust.”

  She almost tore it out of my hands.

  “When was this letter received?” she asked, reading it with burning eyes and writhing lips.

  “The day after Miss Grace left her home.”

  “Then she never saw it?”

  “No.”

  “Who has seen it?”

  “Myself and you.”

  “No one else?”

  “No one but the writer.”

  She laughed.

  “We will destroy it,” she said; and deliberately tore it up.

  I stooped and picked up the fragments.

  “You forget,” said I, “this letter may be called for by the coroner. It is known that I took it in charge.”

  “I might better have burnt it,” she hissed.

  “Not so, I should then have had to explain its loss.”

  Her old fear came back into her eyes.

  “Now I have merely to give it up and leave it to Mr. Dwight Pollard to explain it. He doubtless can.”

  “My son will never betray his mother.”

  “Yet he could write this letter.”

  She frowned.

  “Dwight has his weakness,” said she.

  “It is a pity his weakness did not lead him to send this letter a few hours sooner.”

  “That is where his very weakness fails. He struggles because he knows his mother partly, and fails because he does not know her wholly.”

  “And Guy?”

  “He knows me better.”

  The smile with which this was said was the culminating point in a display of depravity such as I had never beheld, even in hovels of acknowledged vice. Feeling that I could not endure much more, I hastened to finish the interview.

  “Madam,” said I, “by your own acknowledgment you deserve neither consideration nor mercy. What leniency I then show will be for your daughter alone, who, in so far as I can see, is innocent and undeserving of the great retribution which I could so easily bring upon this family. But do not think because I promise to suppress your name from the account I may be called upon to give the coroner, that your sin will be forgotten by Heaven, or this young girl’s death go unavenged. As sure as you are the vilest woman I ever met, will suffering and despair overtake you. I do not know when, and I do not know by what means, but it will be bitter when it comes, and the hand of man will not be able to save you.”

  But it was as if I had not spoken. All she seemed to hear, all, at least, that she paid the least attention to, was the promise I had made.

  “You are decided, then, upon secrecy?” she asked.

  “I am decided upon saying nothing that will bring your name into public notice.”

  Her proud manner immediately returned. You would have thought she had never suffered a humiliation.

  “But how will you account for your interest in this young person?”

  “By telling a portion of the truth. I shall say that my attention was called to her by a letter from Mr. Pollard requesting me to hunt her up and take care of her after he was dead. I shall not say he called her his grandchild unless I am positively forced to do so, nor will I mention the treatment I have received at your hands.”

  “And the woman you saw?”

  “Is your business. I have nothing to do with her.”

  The shadow which till this moment rested upon her haughty brow, cleared away. With a quick gesture, from which she could not entirely exclude a betrayal of triumph, she dropped the curtain across that charming picture of bridal felicity by which she had won so much, and turning upon me with all the condescension of a conqueror, she exclaimed:

  “I once did you an injustice, Mr. Barrows, and called you a name that was but little complimentary to your cloth. Allow me to make such amends as I can and call you what you most surely are—the most generous and least vindictive of men.”

  This was intolerable. I made haste to leave the room.

  “Mrs. Pollard,” said I, “no amenities can take place between us. From this hour on we are strangers, till the time conies when we shall appear before the judgment-seat of God. In that day, neither you nor I can hold back one iota of the truth. Think of this, and repent your part in this awful tragedy of sin, if you can.” And I turned away toward the door.

  But just as I was about to open it, it swung slowly aside, and in the frame-work made by the lintels, I saw Guy Pollard standing with a quiet look of inquiry on his face.

  “Mother,” said he, in the calmest and most courteous of tones, “shall I let this gentleman pass?”

  The reply came in accents equally calm and courteous:

  “Certainly, my son.”

  And Guy Pollard made me a deep bow, and drew softly aside from my path.

  I had been within an inch of my death, but it scarcely ruffled me.

  XXVII. Reparation

  If hearts are weak, souls should at least be strong.

  I will be brief, for my short date of breath

  Is not so long as is a tedious tale.

  —ROMEO AND JULIET.

  Let me hasten to the end.

  When I told Mrs. Pollard that I would suppress that portion of the truth which connected her name with this fatal affair, I did not of course mean that I would resort to any falsehood or even prevarication. I merely relied upon the improbability of my being questioned close enough to necessitate my being obliged to reveal the astounding facts which made this matter a destructive one for the Pollards. And I was right in my calculations. Neither socially, nor at the formal inquiry before the coroner, was any question raised of relationship between the dead girl and the family in S——; and this fact, taken with the discreet explanations accorded by Dwight Pollard of his father’s, and afterwards of his own interest in her, as shown in the letter which he had sent to her address, is the reason why this affair passed without scandal to the parties concerned.

  But not without results for deep down in the heart of one person an influence was at work, destined ere long to eventuate in the tragedy to which these lines are the clue. Remorse deep as my nature and immovable as my sin, has gotten hold upon me, and nothing short of death, and death in the very shape from which I fled in such a cowardly manner, will ever satisfy my soul or allay that burning sense of shame and regret which makes me fear the eye of man and quake at the thought of eternal justice.

  For in a final interview with Dwight Pollard I have become convinced that, however unprincipled his brother might be, it was with no intention of carrying out his threats that he plunged me into the vat on that fatal night; that, recognizing the weakness in me, he had resorted to intimidation to ensure his ends; and that all the consequences which followed might have been averted, if I had but remained true to my trust.

  Being a Christian minister, and bound by my creed and faith to resist the devil and face the wrath of men, my dereliction in this regard acquires an importance not to be measured by the ordinary standard of law or social usage. For, when I failed to support my principles under trial, Christian faith was betrayed and the avowed power of God put to mockery and shame. I go, therefore, to the death I then shunned, deliberately, conscientiously, determinedly. For the sake of God, for the sake of honor, for the sake of those higher principles which it should be the glory of men t
o sustain at all risk and in every furnace of affliction, I lay down youth, love, and life, confident that if in so doing I rob one sweet soul of its happiness, I sow anew in other hearts the seed of that stern belief in God and the requirements of our faith which my cowardly act must have gone so far to destroy.

  May God accept the sacrifice in the spirit in which I perform it, and in His gracious mercy make light, not the horrors of the pit into which I am about to descend, but the heart of him who must endure them. Whether long or short, they will be such as He sends me, and the end must be peace.

  XXVIII. Two or One

  How all the other passions fleet to air,

  As doubtful thoughts and rash embrac’d despair,

  And shuddering fear, and green-ey’d jealousy.

  O love, be moderate; allay thy ecstasy.

  —MERCHANT OF VENICE.

  I had finished it; the last line had been read, and I sat in a maze of astonishment and awe. What my thoughts were, what my judgment upon this astounding act of self-destruction for conscience sake, it will not interest you to know. In a matter so complicated with questions of right and wrong, each man must feel for himself, and out of his own nature adjudge praise, or express censure; I, Constance Sterling, shall do neither; I can only wonder and be still.

  One point, however, in this lengthy confession I will allude to, as it involves a fact. Mr. Barrows says that he goes to his death, the same death from which he fled when he yielded to the threats of Guy Pollard and gave up the will. He expected, therefore, to find the vat dry, and looked forward to hours, if not days, of long-drawn suffering in a spot devoid of warmth, light, water, and food. His injunction to Ada in that last letter of his—not to make any move to find him for ten days—favors this idea, and proves what his expectations were.

  But, by the mercy of God, the vat had been half filled with water in the interim which had elapsed between his first and last visit to the mill, and the prison thus becoming a cistern, he must have come to his end in a few moments after his fatal plunge. It was the one relief which a contemplation of this tragedy brought to my overwrought mind.