The Mystery of the Skeleton Key

by Bernard Capes

  Q. And you credited that wonderful story?

  A. I believed it implicitly.

  Q. Well, indeed, sir! Did he appear overcome by the news which had greeted him on his return?

  A. He appeared stupefied—that is the word.

  Q. Did he comment on it at all?

  A. If you mean in the self-incriminating sense, he did not.

  Q. In what sense, then?

  A. He cursed the assassin capable of destroying so sweet a paragon of womanhood. (Laughter.)

  Q. Very disinterested of him, I’m sure. Thank you, sir; that will suffice.

  Counsel sitting down, Mr Redstall, for Sir Calvin, rose to put a question or two to the witness:

  Q. You have never had reason, M. le Baron, to regard the prisoner as a vindictive man?

  A. Never. Impulsive, yes.

  Q. And truthful?

  A. Transparently so—to a childish degree.

  Q. He would have a difficulty in dissembling?

  A. An insuperable difficulty, I should think.

  Dr Harding, of Longbridge, was the last witness called. He deposed to his having been summoned to the house on the afternoon of the murder, and to having examined the body within an hour and a half of its first discovery in the copse. The cause of death was a gunshot wound in the back, from a weapon fired at short range. Practically the whole of the charge had entered the body in one piece. Death must have been instantaneous, and must have occurred, from the indications, some two hours before his arrival; or, approximately, at about 3.30 o’clock. The wound could not possibly have been self-inflicted, and the position of the gun precluded any thought of accident. He had since, assisted by Dr Liversidge of Winton, made a post-mortem examination of the body. Asked if there was anything significant in the deceased’s condition, his answer was yes.

  This completed the evidence, at the conclusion of which, and of some remarks by the Coroner, the jury, after a brief consultation among themselves, brought in a verdict that the deceased died from a gunshot wound deliberately inflicted by the prisoner Louis Victor Cabanis, in a fit of revengeful passion; which verdict amounting to one of wilful murder, the prisoner was forthwith, on the Coroner’s warrant, committed to the County gaol, there to await his examination before the magistrates on the capital charge. The jury further—being local men—added a rider to their verdict respectfully commiserating Sir Calvin on the very unpleasant business which had chosen to select his grounds for its enactment; and with that the proceedings terminated.

  CHAPTER X

  AFTERWARDS

  The Inquest was over, the provisional verdict delivered, and all that remained for the time being was to put the poor subject of it straightway to rest under the leafless trees in Leighway churchyard. It was done quietly and decently the morning after the inquiry, with some of her fellow-servants attending, and Miss Kennett to represent the family; and so was another blossom untimely fallen, and another moral—a somewhat ghastly one now—furnished for the reproof of the too hilarious Christian.

  Audrey, coming back from the sad little ceremony, met Le Sage walking by himself in the grounds. The Baron looked serious and, she thought, dejected, and her young heart warmed to his grief. She went up to him, and, putting her hands on his sleeve, ‘I am so sorry,’ she said, ‘so very, very sorry.’

  He smiled at her kindly, then took her hand and drew it under his arm.

  ‘Let us walk a little way, and talk,’ he said; and they strolled on together. ‘Poor Louis!’ he sighed.

  ‘It is not true, is it, Baron?’

  ‘I don’t think it is, my dear. But the difficulty is to prove that it isn’t.’

  ‘How can it be done?’

  ‘At the expense only, I am afraid, of finding the real criminal.’

  ‘Have you any idea who that is?’

  He laughed; actually laughed aloud.

  ‘Have I not had enough of cross-examination?’

  ‘I could not help wondering why, as I have been told, you confessed to the warning you gave the poor girl.’

  ‘About the danger of tempting hot blood, and so forth?’

  ‘Yes, that.’

  ‘It was the truth.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  He put a finger to his lips, glancing at her with some solemnity.

  ‘You were not going to say that it is my way to repress the truth?’

  ‘No,’ answered the girl, with a little flush; ‘but only not to blurt it out unnecessarily.’

  ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘take my word for it that I always speak the truth.’

  ‘O! I only meant to say—’ she began; but he stopped her.

  ‘What would you do if a question were put to you which, for some reason of expediency, or good-feeling, you did not wish to answer?’

  ‘I am afraid I should fib.’

  ‘Try my plan, and answer it with another question. It saves a world of responsibility. That is a secret I confide to you. An answer may often be interpreted into an innuendo which is as false to the speaker’s meaning as it is unjust to its subject. I love truth so much that I would not expose it to that misunderstanding. In this instance, to have left the truth for someone else to discover might have cast suspicion on us both, thereby darkening the case against Louis. But, in general, not to answer is surely not to lie?’

  ‘No, I suppose not, Baron’—she thought a little— ‘I wonder if you would answer me just one question?’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Do you put any faith in that talk about there having been another man on the hill besides Cleghorn?’

  He did not reply for awhile, but went softly patting the hand on his arm. Presently he looked up.

  ‘If I were to say yes, I should not speak the truth, and if I were to say no, I should not speak the truth. So I follow my bent, and you will not be offended with me. Are you going to take me for a drive today, I ask?’

  ‘Certainly, if you wish it.’

  ‘What a question! I can answer that without a scruple. I wish it with such fervour, seeing my companion, as my years may permit themselves. Where shall we go?’

  ‘You shall choose.’

  ‘Very well. Then we will go north by the Downs, that we may take the great free air into our lungs, and realise the more sympathetically the condition of my poor Louis.’

  ‘O, don’t! It would kill me to be in prison. Baron, you are going to stop with us, are you not, until the trial is over?’

  ‘Both you and your father are very good. I may have, however, to absent myself for a short time presently. We will see. In the meanwhile I am your grateful Baron.’ He took vast snuff, making his eyes glisten, and somehow she liked him for it.

  ‘I shall be glad,’ she said, ‘when that detective goes. One will feel more at peace from the squalor of it all.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I do not think he means to go just yet.’

  ‘Not? Why not?’

  ‘Ah! that is his secret.’

  ‘But what can he have to do now?’

  ‘You must ask him, not me. All I can tell you is that he considers his work here not yet finished; in fact, from words I heard him let fall to your father this morning, little more than just begun.’

  ‘How very strange! What can it mean?’

  ‘Let us hazard a conjecture that he is not wholly satisfied with the evidence against my Louis. It would be a happy thought for me.’

  ‘O, yes, wouldn’t it! But—I wonder.’

  ‘What do you wonder?’

  ‘If the question of that other figure on the hill is puzzling him too.’

  Le Sage laughed. ‘Well, we are permitted to wonder,’ he said, and, humming a little tune, changed the subject to one of topography, and the situation of various places of interest in the neighbourhood.

  Audrey was perplexed about him. That he felt, and felt deeply, not only the unhappy position of the prisoner, but the disturbance which he himself had been the innocent means of introducing into the house,
she could not doubt; yet the patent genuineness of this sentiment was unable, it seemed, wholly to deprive him of that constitutional serenity, even gaiety, habitual to his nature. It was as if he either could not, or would not, realise the black gravity of the affair; as if, almost, holding the strings of it in his own hands, he could afford to give this or that puppet a little tether before reining it in to submit to his direction. And then she thought how this impression was probably all due to that unanswering trick of his which they had just been discussing, and which might very well seem to inform his manner with a significance it did not really possess or intend. She left him shortly, being called to some duty in the house, and he continued his saunter alone, an aimless one apparently, but gradually, after a time, assuming a definite direction. It took him leisurely down the drive, out by the lodge gates into the road as far as the fatal wicket, and so once more into the Bishop’s Walk. Going unhurried along the track, he suddenly saw the detective before him.

  The Sergeant, bent over, it seemed, in an intent observation of the ground, was fairly taken off his guard. He showed it, as he came erect, in a momentary change of colour. But the little shock of surprise was mastered as soon as felt: self-possession is not long or easily yielded by one trained in self-resourcefulness.

  ‘Were you wanting me, sir?’ he said; ‘because, if not—’

  ‘Because, if not,’ took up the Baron, wagging his head cheerfully, ‘what am I doing here, interrupting you at your business?’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s you have said it, not I.’

  ‘So your business is not yet over, Sergeant? Am I to borrow any hope for my man from that?’

  ‘Was it the question, sir, you were looking for me to answer?’

  ‘Excellent! My own way of meeting an awkward inquiry.’

  ‘What do you mean by awkward?’

  ‘Why, you won’t answer me, of course. What sensible detective would, and give away his case? Still, I am justified in assuming that there is something in the business which, so far, does not satisfy you; and I build on that.’

  ‘O! you do, do you?’ He rubbed his chin grittily, pulling down his well-formed lower jaw, and stood for a moment or two speculatively regarding the face before him. ‘I wonder now,’ he said suddenly, ‘if you would answer a question I might put to you?’

  ‘I’ll see, my friend. Chance it.’

  ‘What made you so interested in this business before even your man was charged on suspicion?’

  ‘You allude—?’

  ‘I allude to my finding you already on the spot here when I came down to make my own examination of it.’

  ‘Surely I have no reason to hide what I have already admitted in public? I was uneasy about Louis.’

  ‘And wanted to look and see, perhaps, if he’d left any evidences of his guilt behind him?’

  ‘I admit I was anxious to assure myself that there were no such evidences.’

  ‘And you did assure yourself?’

  Quite.’

  ‘You found nothing suspicious?’

  ‘Nothing whatever to connect with his presence here.’

  ‘Found nothing at all?’

  ‘Yes, I did: I found this.’

  The Baron took from a pocket a common horn coat-button, and handed it to the other, who received it and turned it over in silence.

  ‘I picked it up,’ said Le Sage, ‘near the tree where the gun had stood.’

  ‘Why,’ said the detective, looking up rather blackly, ‘didn’t you produce this at the Inquest?’

  ‘I never supposed for the moment it could be of any importance.’

  ‘H’mph!’ grunted the Sergeant, and after a darkling moment, put the button into his own pocket. ‘I don’t know; it may or may not be; but you should have told me about it, sir. For the present, by your leave, I’ll take charge of the thing. And now, if you’ve nothing more to show me—’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Then I should like to get on with my work, if it’s all the same to you.’

  ‘And I with my walk,’ said the Baron, and he tripped jauntily away.

  CHAPTER XI

  THE BARON DRIVES

  (From the Bickerdike MS.)

  ON the day following the Inquest, the plot thickened. It became really entertaining. One did not know whether to appear the more scandalised or amused. On the one hand there was a certain satisfaction in knowing that the last word was apparently not said in what had seemed to be a perfectly straightforward affair; on the other one’s sense of fitness had received a severe blow. In short, the impeccable Cleghorn had been arrested, and was detained on suspicion. I saw him go off in a fly in the charge of a couple of policemen, and never did hooked cod-fish on the Dogger Bank look more gogglingly stupefied than he over the amazing behaviour of the bait he had swallowed. Sir Calvin stormed, and blasphemed, and demanded to know if the whole household of Wildshott was in a conspiracy to shame him and tarnish his escutcheon; but his objurgations were received very civilly and sensibly by the detective, who explained that he must act according to his professional conscience, that detention did not necessarily mean conviction, or even indictment, and that where a sifting of the truth from the chaff imposed precautionary measures, he must be free to take them, or abandon his conduct of the case. Whereon the wrathful General simmered down, and contented himself only with requesting sarcastically a few hours’ grace to settle his affairs, when it came to be his turn to wear the official bracelets.

  And so, for the while, we were without a butler; nor could one, on reviewing the evidence, be altogether surprised, perhaps, over that deprivation. Certainly Cleghorn’s account of his own movements could not be considered wholly satisfying or convincing, and he had admitted his lack of any witness to substantiate it. It seemed incredible, with a man of his substance and dignity; but is not the history of crime full of such apparent contradictions? After all, he had had the same provocation as the other man, and had departed, apparently, the same way to answer it; and, as to his moral condition after the event, all testimony went to prove that it was worse than that of the Gascon. Anyhow, this new development, however it was destined to turn out, added fifty per cent to the excitement of the business. Cleghorn! It seemed inexpressibly comic.

  As day followed day succeeding this terrific event, however progressively other things might be assumed to be moving, no ground was made in the matter of tracing out the dead girl’s origin or connexions—and that in spite of the publicity given to the affair. It was very strange, and I was immensely curious to know what could be the reason. Her portrait was published in the Police Gazette, and exhibited outside the various stations, but without result. I saw a copy of it, and did not wonder. It had been reproduced, enlarged, it seemed, from a tiny snapshot group, taken by one of the grooms, in which she had figured quite inconspicuously, and was like nothing human. I spoke to Ridgway about it, and he said it was the best that could be done, that no other photograph of her could be traced, though all the photographers in London had been applied to, and he owned frankly that there seemed some mystery about the girl. I quite agreed with him, and hinted that it was not the only one that remained to be cleared up. He did not ask me what I meant, but I saw, by his next remark, that he had understood what was in my mind.

  ‘Why don’t you persuade him, sir,’ he said, ‘to throw this business off his chest, and get back to his old interests? He takes it too much to heart.’

  It was to Hugo he referred, of course, and I did not pretend to misapprehend him. To tell the truth, I was a little smarting from my friend’s treatment of me, and not in the mood to be indulgent of his idiosyncrasies. I might have my suspicions as to his involvement in a discreditable affair, but I had certainly not made him a party to them, or even touched upon the subject of the scandal to him save with the utmost delicacy and consideration. If he had chosen to give me his confidence then and there, I would have honoured it; as it was, since he showed no disposition to keep his promise to me made on the day of the shoot
, I considered myself as much at liberty to canvass the subject as anyone else who had heard, and formed his own conclusions, from the doctor’s evidence. It was true that, to me at least, Hugh was doing his best to give his case away by his behaviour. He seemed to make little attempt to rally from the gloom with which the tragedy had overcast him, but mooned about, silent and aimless, as if for the moment he had lost all interest in life. It was only that morning that, moved by his condition, I had come at last to the resolution to remind him of his promise, and get him to share with me, if he would, the burden that was crushing his soul. His answer showed me at once, however, the vanity of my good intentions. ‘Thanks, old fellow,’ he had said; ‘but a good deal has happened since then, and I’ve nothing to confide.’

  Now, that might be true, in the sense that the danger was past, and I could have forgiven his reticence on the score of the loyalty it might imply to a reputation passed beyond its own defence; but he went on with some offensive remark about his regret in not being able to satisfy my curiosity, and ended with a suggestion which, however well-meaning it might have been, I considered positively insulting.

  ‘You are wasting yourself here, old boy,’ he said. ‘I’m not, truth to tell, in the mood for much, and we oughtn’t to keep you. I feel that I got you here under false pretences; but I couldn’t know what was going to happen, could I? and so I won’t apologise. I think, I really think, that, for the sake of all our feelings, it would be better if you terminated your visit. You don’t mind my saying so, do you?’

  ‘On the contrary, I mind very much,’ I answered. ‘Have you forgotten how, at considerable inconvenience to myself, I responded at once to your invitation, and came down at a moment’s notice? The reason, as you ought to know, Hugh, was pure regard for yourself and a desire to help, and that desire is not lessened because I find you involved in a much more serious business than I had anticipated.’