by Annie Haynes
“How could she get there—” Arthur was beginning, and as he spoke four men with a stretcher passed them and made their way to the stricken oak.
Dr. Grieve turned to them, and Sir Arthur watched them with fascinated eyes as they carefully raised the body and laid it on the stretcher. As they moved off on their way to the village mortuary, followed by the police superintendent, Dr. Grieve looked round.
“Who would have thought there was that great hollow in the old Lovers’ Oak, Sir Arthur?” he said.
The young man raised himself with a start and glanced across; the proud old tree that had been for years the delight and the trysting-place of Lockford sweethearts presented a sorry spectacle now. One great branch had been torn from the parent tree and lay maimed and broken on the ground, and the big hollow right down the great trunk was plainly visible. Standing there with its gaping, open wound it looked like an accusing witness of the crime and of the secret which the hand of Heaven had brought to light.
“I suppose that if we had ever thought about it at all we might have guessed that it would be hollow.”
“Somebody knew, anyhow,” the doctor said grimly. “Well, well, poor thing, her troubles are over!”
Garth Davenant moved forward to the tree and examined it, the policeman left in charge walking round with him.
“Who could it have been? How was it done? He must have been a pretty strong man to get her up there alone,” Arthur remarked.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
“As to how it was done it is impossible to say at present; there will have to be an autopsy.”
Sir Arthur’s bewilderment and horror seemed to increase.
“For a woman to be done to death outside the Manor, with a houseful of people, as you may say, within earshot, seems to be incredible!”
“Yes, it does!” the doctor assented. “I’m not so sure that it was outside the house, either, mind you, Sir Arthur,” he added significantly.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, so far as I can see there is nothing to indicate that she had left the house when she came by her death—nothing at this first cursory examination, you understand. She had on her house shoes and her indoor uniform. She could not have gone far out of the house in such a fashion, if indeed she went at all.”
Even by the uncertain light of the lanterns, the old man could see that Sir Arthur’s face was white to the lips.
“That could not be, doctor,” he said passionately, answering the meaning underlying the speech. “I tell you that it was absolutely impossible that such a deed could have been done in our house.”
“What about the screams Miss Dorothy heard?” the old man inquired meaningly. “I am afraid that everything points to the poor thing’s being made away with inside the Manor House on the night of the 6th of June.”
“I do not believe it,” asserted Sir Arthur emphatically. “I can’t imagine that anybody could be killed in a few minutes in the small library. Besides, you see what is implied in your theory, doctor—the murderer must have been in the house.”
“An inmate for the time being, certainly,” the doctor acquiesced. “But do not call it my theory, Sir Arthur. I shall be only too delighted if a different deduction can be drawn from the facts.”
“I will have a different deduction drawn if I have anything to do with it,” Arthur said quickly. “I shall telegraph to town first thing in the morning for the best detective to be had. Garth, I say,” raising his voice, “do stop looking at that tree and come here and see what you think of this idea of Dr. Grieve’s. He says he believes that this—this atrocious thing was done in the Manor—in the house itself. What do you say to that?”
“Now, now, my dear sir,” the doctor remonstrated as he struggled into his overcoat, “please do not put words into my mouth. I said that I saw no indications of her having been outside the Manor that night in her dress. Neither did I.”
“Which means exactly what I said,” retorted Sir Arthur hotly. “What do you think, Garth?”
Davenant did not answer for a moment; his face looked haggard and strained.
“I—I hardly know what to think,” he said at last, pausing between each word, while his eyes wandered restlessly back to the Lovers’ Oak. “In fact, I fancy I have been far too much shocked by the whole affair to have formed any very definite ideas as yet. Are you waiting longer, doctor? There seems to be nothing to stay for.” The policemen were dispersing the loiterers, who in awestricken groups were wending their way homewards.
“Nothing!” Dr. Grieve turned with the two young men.
Garth held his cigar-case towards him.
“Please help yourself, doctor.”
“No thanks. Not to-night!” Dr. Grieve’s manner was brusque.
Davenant looked at him in some surprise.
“Why, doctor, I have heard you say that a smoke was the best thing for the nerves.”
“Yes,” the old man said gruffly as they reached the waiting conveyances, and he prepared to get into his brougham, “but I don’t feel like it now, Mr. Davenant. I dare say I shall have a whiff of pipe before I turn in.”
“Obstinate old man!” Arthur ejaculated as he and Garth drove off. “Now he will put into people’s heads that this horrible deed was done in the Manor, which, as I tell him, is an impossibility. If that notion is to get about there is no knowing what harm may be done to Hilda, just as she is recovering too. She has such a sensitive nature, poor girl; and my mother—But how could it have been done, Garth? Do you think she stepped out of doors and some wandering tramp—”
“I don’t imagine so,” Garth said shortly. “But—Good heavens!”
A sudden turn in the road had brought them within sight of Mrs. Marston’s cottage, and by the light of the moon, which was now shining brightly, they could see a group of villagers surrounding the old woman at the garden-gate.
As Garth pulled up the horse there was a chorus of exclamation, but one weak, quavering voice made itself heard above the rest.
“Mr. Garth! Mr. Garth, you will have heard—”
With a muttered word or two of apology, Garth threw the reins to Arthur and jumped out.
“I have heard, nurse”—going back to the name of his childish days—“and I cannot tell you how grieved I am for you.”
“They have killed her—my Mary!” the poor woman wailed. “I knew that—my dreams had told me. She has been so near me all this time; and now they have carried her past the cottage—her own little home—and they’ve took her to the mortuary, and they say I’m not to see her—not me, her mother. I will, for all of them!” and she made a few steps forward.
Garth put his arm round her; then he turned to Arthur.
“Drive on, Hargreave, please, and send the cart back for me; I must stay a while here.”
As Arthur touched the whip and the horse started he saw that, clinging to his arm as he bent his tall head to hers, the old woman was letting Garth lead her home.
Chapter Twenty
LOCKFORD Street presented an unwonted appearance; at every cottage door the inhabitants were standing in twos and threes discussing this dreadful deed that had been done in their midst. Round the Hargreave Arms quite a crowd assembled, while inside the accommodation of the long room known locally as the club-room was taxed to the uttermost by all those whose position entitled them to be present.
The inquest was to be opened that day, and public interest in the proceedings was at fever heat. The progress of the jury across to the mortuary to view the body had been watched with interest by a crowd of onlookers, and their different appearance as they emerged was freely commented upon. Now, however, a fresh rumour was going round—one that for exciting public attention had eclipsed all previous reports.
Sam Grooms, the youth with whom the rumour apparently originated, was for the time being the centre of attention, and even the advent of the closed carriages from the Manor containing Lady Laura and her daughter passed almost unnoticed.
“I don’t believe it, Sam Grooms. He’d never go for to do a thing of that sort.”
“Believe it or not, as you like,” was the response of Mr. Samuel Grooms, a clumsy hobbledehoy just passing out of his teens. “I don’t say as it’s true. I had it from Jim Levett, him as is own cousin to Constable Jones.”
“What was it as he said?” this from a new-comer to the group.
“Why, he would have it as there was a note found in her pocket from Mr. Garth Davenant asking her to slip out and meet him outside the Manor that night.”
There was a subdued sound of horror.
“If he did ask her to meet him it don’t prove as he had anything to do with what followed,” remarked one voice, bolder than the rest.
Meanwhile in the club-room matters were progressing. Evidence of identity was given both by Dr. Grieve and by the dentist whom poor Mary Marston had employed, and was further corroborated by the marks on her clothes and by her dressmaker. Questioned as to the cause of death, Dr. Grieve, who had conducted the autopsy in conjunction with two well-known surgeons, gave it as his opinion that death had undoubtedly resulted from suffocation, though proof of this was difficult to obtain.
Sir Arthur was seated beside the Coroner, while Garth Davenant, who was accompanied by the family solicitor, had placed himself near the reporters’ table. He was looking unwontedly pale as he listened to the evidence.
In the landlady’s private sitting-room Mavis, awaiting her turn to be called as a witness, was pacing up and down in a state of intense nervous excitement, while Lady Laura lay back on the couch and tearfully inhaled smelling salts.
“I can’t realize it, Mavis,” she repeatedly exclaimed.
The girl’s hands were tightly locked together, her brown eyes looked strained, the pupils were intensely dilated.
One report which had been communicated to her that morning by an officious housemaid Mavis had so far contrived to keep from her mother. It was that a letter from Garth Davenant, supposed to be of an incriminating character, had been found upon the dead woman, but her own nerves had been terribly upset by the rumour. Unutterably as she had dreaded having to give her evidence, she yet felt now as though, if the moment were delayed long, the tension would be too much for her, and it was with a sigh of relief that she greeted her brother when he came to fetch them.
Arthur was secretly relieved.
“That is plucky, Mavis,” he said approvingly as he gave his arm to his mother. “Keep up your courage, dear, it will soon be over.”
Way was made for them through the crowded room, and chairs were provided for both, but there was still a period of waiting.
Superintendent Stokes was giving his evidence with regard to the articles found on the body; the formal list had just been completed when Sir Arthur had left the room.
As the superintendent was about to leave the witness-box one of the jurymen leaned forward.
“You say that in the pocket, one pencil, one gold-plated thimble, one handkerchief marked ‘M. MARSTON,’ and one letter were found. Is it possible to decipher the letter?”
“Certainly. The paper is discoloured and stained, but the writing is perfectly legible.”
The juror looked at the Coroner.
“Would it not be well to have the letter put in now? It might help us in the matter—we should know what questions to put.”
The Coroner hesitated.
“I had thought of reserving it to a later stage of the proceedings; but if the jury wish—”
There was a pause; the jury conferred, and then the foreman spoke.
“We are agreed that it should be put in now, sir.”
The Coroner gave a resigned shrug of his shoulders as he ordered the production of the letter, and his clerk, taking the sadly-discoloured note in his hand, began to read it in his loud, unsympathetic tones:
“Wednesday night.
Dear Mary,
Will you come out and speak to me? I shall not keep you more than a few moments.
Yours,
G.D.”
A subdued murmur ran through the room, followed by a prolonged hush during which every one turned to look at Garth Davenant, whose expression had not altered, and whose countenance remained as impassive as ever beneath their scrutiny.
When the note had been handed to the jury for their inspection, and, after turning it about, the foreman had inquired whether anyone had been asked to identify the writing, before the Superintendent could reply, Garth Davenant rose in his place.
“I think it may save time,” he said in his clear impassive tones, “if I state at once that I wrote that note to the deceased, Mary Marston.”
The jury appeared profoundly impressed, and the Coroner, a man who had known the Davenants all his life, glanced keenly at the young man over the top of his spectacles.
“Do I understand, Mr. Davenant, that you admit having asked this young woman to come out and speak to you on the night of Wednesday the 6th of June last?”
“Certainly not!” Garth’s voice was as firm and clear as ever. “I stated that I wrote the note produced.”
“This note is dated Wednesday night,” the Coroner went on more severely, “and we know that she disappeared on the night of Wednesday, the 6th of June.”
“That note was written to her the week before when she was at her mother’s cottage.” Garth leaned forward and glanced at it. “It is most unfortunate that the day of the week should happen to be the same as that on which she disappeared, and that I should neither have dated nor directed it more definitely.”
“Most unfortunate!” the Coroner echoed. “That is all for the present, Mr. Davenant. You will have an opportunity later of giving, on oath, an account of the affair. Call Miss Mavis Hargreave.”
As Mavis rose for one instant Garth looked towards her, and their glances met; and then Garth sat down, quivering in every nerve in spite of his unmoved exterior. How could she bear this terrible ordeal to which her love and faith in him were about to be exposed, he marvelled, and he shaded his eyes with his hand as he heard her low, clear tones answering the Coroner’s questions.
After that first swift glance she looked away from her lover, away from the crowded room, straight at the Coroner, a fatherly old man whom she had often met out at dinner. The first formal question gave her time to recover herself and to collect her thoughts, and she gave her account of that evening of the 6th of June and of Nurse Marston’s anxiety to speak to her mother, clearly and lucidly.
When she had finished the Coroner studied his notes a moment.
“I think I must ask you, Miss Hargreave, when you last saw Mr. Garth Davenant that night?”
Mavis’s colour rose, but she retained her self-possession.
“He said good night to me in the morning-room before I went upstairs.”
“Ah!” The Coroner looked at his plan of Hargreave Manor attentively. “That would be the room here,” laying his finger upon it. “The door is close to that of the small library.”
“Yes, but not to the one that we went in by,” Mavis said quickly. “There are two doors, one leading into the smaller drawing-room; we went in by that; the other was not opened.”
“I see.” But the Coroner’s grave face indicated clearly to those who knew him that in his opinion Mavis was strengthening the case against her lover. “One more question, Miss Hargreave. I believe you saw the tobacco-pouch that we have been told was found in the small library. Did you recognize it as the one which you had worked for Mr. Garth Davenant?”
“I am quite sure it was not."
There was a pause, and the Coroner looked at his notes again.
“May I ask why you are so positive, Miss Hargreave? We have been told that you stated it was very like the one you gave Mr. Davenant.”
“Exactly. I believe it was very like,” Mavis replied with spirit. “But it was much dirtier than Mr. Davenant would have made a present from me. Besides”—holding up her head proudly and speaking very distinctly—“I am qu
ite sure that it was not the same, because Mr. Garth Davenant told me so, and I know that I can rely upon his word.”
Then for a moment Garth looked up, his eyes full of a passionate gratitude, and as Mavis smiled at him across the crowded room his heart swelled with a glad thankfulness. Mavis would not fail him whatever happened.
“Very natural, and—ahem!—a very creditable feeling, my dear young lady, I am sure,” said the Coroner, “but you will understand that it is not evidence.”
“Can you tell us anything of the disappearance of this pouch, Miss Hargreave?” asked the foreman.
“Nothing at all,” Mavis replied decisively. “I knew nothing of it until I heard my brother mention it.”
It was evident that no more was to be learned from Mavis. The Coroner intimated that he had finished and the girl stepped down.
It was Lady Laura’s turn next, but her evidence was purely formal, being confined merely to describing how Nurse Marston had requested an interview, and, after having had the small library appointed for such interview, failed to put in an appearance.
Then there was a stir of expectation through the room when Garth Davenant was called.
“It is my duty to tell you, Mr. Davenant,” said the Coroner, “that you are not compelled to give evidence, and also to warn you that whatever you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you.”
The significance of his words was unmistakable. A sort of electric thrill ran through his hearers. Garth alone appeared unmoved; not one muscle of his face altered as he acknowledged the warning with a grave bow, and his tone was firm as he said: “I should prefer to give my evidence, sir.”
“You remember the events of the Wednesday, the 6th of June?” the Coroner began when the witness had been duly sworn.
“I do.”
“Will you relate them to us in so far as they bear upon this case.”
Garth paused a moment.
“In the morning, hearing from Dr. Grieve that a nurse was required at the Manor and that there might be a difficulty in procuring one at the local hospital, I suggested Mary Marston, who, I happened to know, was at her home in the village and was unemployed.”