The Mystery of the Skeleton Key

by Bernard Capes

  ‘He was never himself again after that accident,’ answered the designer. ‘All your tenderness, your care, your disinterested help could do no more than earn for him a little respite from a sentence already pronounced. He was virtually a dying man when you last left him, Monsieur. The light of your healing presence withdrawn, the shadow came out and was visible to me. Ah, but he would talk of you often and often, and of how you had smoothed the bitter way for him. He confided in you much: he told you his little history?’

  ‘Something of it, Ribault.’

  ‘It was the history of a brave man, Monsieur: of patient merit eternally struggling against adversity; of conscious power having to submit itself to necessity. There was that in him could he but have indulged it—ah, if you had only seen!’

  ‘Seen what, my poor friend?’

  ‘Monsieur, he died in June; but before he died, he drew in pastel on that wall, on that bare wall, a face that was like the fine blossom of the aloe, crowning and vindicating with its immortal beauty the harsh and thorny ugliness of those long necessitous years. It was his testament, his swan-song. Less than its perfection would have made a smaller artist; and it was produced by him from memory, as he sat there dying in his chair.’

  ‘From a memory of whom, Ribault?’

  ‘I will tell you. One day, shortly before his death, there had come to see him a step-brother of his, an Englishman, of whom I had never heard nor he spoken. He had a lady with him, this brother, one of the most beautiful you could picture, and her loveliness entered into Jean’s heart. He could not forget it; he had no ease from it until his art came to dispossess him of its haunting. I watched him at work; it was marvellous: the wall broke into song and flower under my eyes. That was the man, Monsieur; that was the man; it was his own soul blossoming; and, having done what he must, he grew once more at peace. Two days later he was dead.’

  ‘I see no face on the wall, Ribault.’

  ‘Alas, no, Monsieur! Alas, alas, no! When he returned, this strange relation, this vandal, after his brother’s death, to arrange for the funeral and dispose of his effects, he saw the drawing and he denounced it. He did more: in his anger he seized a cloth, and, before I could interpose, that miracle, that dream, was but a featureless smudge upon the wall. And even then he would not be satisfied until the last rainbow tints had vanished.’

  The frown on M. le Baron’s brow was again darkening its habitual placidity.

  ‘What excuse had the man to offer for an act so outrageous?’ he demanded warmly.

  The designer shrugged his shoulders. ‘What excuse but of the jealous and coarse-grained! He said that the lady’s permission should have been asked first; that anyhow the artist being dead it could not matter, and that he had no idea of leaving the portrait there to become the cynosure of common eyes. He was a hard man, Monsieur, and we came to words.’

  The visitor grunted. ‘M. Ribault, what was the name of this Goth?’

  ‘It was the name of my friend, Monsieur.’

  ‘What! Christian and surname the same?’

  ‘Precisely one, Monsieur. They were beaux-frères, no more. With such it may be.’

  ‘Indubitably. And the lady’s name?’

  ‘I could show you sooner than pronounce it. It was written by Jean under the portrait.’

  ‘But the portrait is lost!’

  ‘Nevertheless, it is not altogether forgotten. Before it was destroyed I had borrowed a camera from a friend and achieved a reproduction of it. Alas, Monsieur! but a cold shadow of the original—a sadness, a reflection, but, such as it is, a record I would not willingly let perish.’

  The Baron’s brow was smoother again; his eyes had recovered their good humour.

  ‘But this is interesting, my friend,’ he said. ‘Might I be permitted to see it?’

  ‘Who sooner!’ cried the designer. ‘Monsieur has only to command.’

  He went to a cupboard, and presently produced from it a photograph mounted on brown paper, which he presented to his visitor.

  ‘You must not judge from it,’ he said, ‘more than you would from the shadow of an apple tree the colour of its blossom. But is it not a beautiful face, Monsieur?’

  ‘Beautiful, indeed,’ answered Le Sage, profoundly preoccupied. ‘And did the brother know you had secured this transcript?’ he asked presently.

  ‘Of a truth not, Monsieur. Sooner would I have died than tell him.’

  ‘Ah!’ For minutes longer the Baron stood absorbed in contemplation of the photograph. Then suddenly he looked up.

  ‘I want you to part with this to me, my friend.’

  ‘Monsieur, it is yours. There is none to whom I would sooner confide it.’

  ‘You have the negative?’

  ‘Truly, yes.’

  ‘Keep it, and print no more from it for the present. Above all, keep the knowledge of your possessing it from the Goth.’

  Between wonder and sympathy the Frenchman acquiesced.

  ‘No doubt he would want to destroy that too,’ he said.

  ‘Exactly,’ answered Le Sage. ‘Now, listen, my friend. I have a commission for you.’

  It was a very handsome commission, the nature of which need not be specified, since it was in effect merely a delicate acknowledgment of a service rendered. And if the acknowledgment was out of all proportion with the service, that was M. le Baron’s way, and one not to be resented by a poor man who was also a reasonably proud man. So the two parted very good friends, and the Baron went back to his hotel, in high good humour with himself and all the world. On the following night he was in London, ensconced in rooms in a private hotel in Bloomsbury, where he learnt from the papers of the latest startling development in what had come to be known as the ‘Wildshott Murder Case’. ‘So,’ he thought, ‘it works according to plan.’

  He had managed to procure, while in Paris, a personal introduction from a certain eminent official to a corresponding dignitary in the Metropolis; but for the present he kept that in his pocket. There were some smaller fry to be dealt with first: aids to the great approach.

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE BARON FINDS A CHAMPION

  (From the Bickerdike MS.)

  WHO that was present at that scene could ever forget its anguish and pathos? Its fierce dramatic intensity will remain for all time indelibly seared on my soul. Could I believe in my friend’s guilt? Knowing him, it was impossible: and yet that seemingly incontrovertible evidence as to when the shot was fired? If he had done it, if he had done it, not his own nature but some fiend temporarily in possession of it must have directed his hand. But I would not believe he had done it. I would not, until I had heard him confess to it with his own lips. However appearances might be against him, he should find an unshakable ally in me. And if the worst were to come to the worst, and the trial confirm his guilt beyond dispute, there would be that yet for me to plead in revision of my former evidence so cruelly surprised from me, to plead in virtue of my intimacy with the unhappy boy—that in the moods to which he was subject he was apt to lose complete control of himself, and to behave on occasions veritably like a madman. It might mitigate, extenuate—who could say? But in the meantime I would not believe—not though the world accused him.

  Before he was taken away he and his father met in a room below the Court. Sir Calvin, coming across the floor after the committal, looked like a white figure of Death—Death stark, but in motion. He walked straight on, avoiding nobody; but a little stagger as he passed near me was eloquent of his true state. I was moved impulsively to hold out my arm to him, and he took it blindly, and we descended the stairs together. In a bare vault-like office we found my poor friend. He was in the charge of the two policemen who had arrested him. His deadly pallor was all gone, and succeeded by a vivid flush. He held out his hand with a steadfast smiling look.

  ‘Take it or not, sir,’ he said.

  It was taken, and hard wrung—just that one moment’s understanding—and the two fell apart.

  ‘Thank you, si
r,’ said the boy simply. ‘I did not do it, of course.’

  The father laughed; it wrung one to hear him, and to see his face.

  ‘One of your judges, Hughie,’ he said, wheezing hilariously—‘old Crosson; you know him—told me not to lose heart—that appearances weren’t always to be trusted. He ought to know, eh, after three attempts?’

  ‘I wanted you just to hear me say,’ said the other hurriedly, ‘that I’m glad it’s come—not the way it has, but the truth. I’ve behaved like a blackguard, sir, and it’s been weighing on me; you don’t know how it’s been weighing. It’s been making my life hell for some little time past. But now you know, and it’s the worst of me—bad enough, but not the unutterable brute they’d make me out.’ He turned to me. ‘So they got at you, Viv,’ he said. ‘Never mind, old boy; you meant the best.’

  ‘It was an infamous breach of confidence,’ I burst out. ‘It was that Sergeant led me on.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hugh: ‘I supposed he was at the bottom of all this. But I can’t help his witnesses. It was the truth I told.’

  ‘He has betrayed the house,’ I said hotly, ‘he was engaged to serve.’

  But to this Sir Calvin, greatly to my surprise and indignation, demurred, in a hoarse broken way: ‘If he thought his duty lay this road, it was his business like an honest man to take it. We want no absolution on sufferance—eh, Hughie, my boy?’

  ‘No, sir, no. You will see that I am properly advised as to the best way to go to clear myself. Thank God my mother isn’t alive!’

  It was said with the first shadow of a break in his voice, and the General could not stand it. He gave a little gasp, and turned away, his fingers working at his moustache.

  ‘She’ll see to it, Hughie,’ he said indistinctly, ‘that—that it’s all made right. There was never a more truth-loving woman in the world. But you shall have your advice—for form’s sake—the best that can be procured.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  It was intimated that the interview must end. The two men just faced one another—in an unforgettable look; and then the father turned, and, rigid as a sleep-walker, passed out of the room without another word. I lingered behind a moment, just to whisper my friend bonne chance; then hurried after the retreating figure. We entered the car in silence, and drove off alone together, leaving the household witnesses to follow later. All the way it must have lain in the mind of the stiff figure beside me with what other expectations, in what other company, we had made the outward journey. I thought it best not to disturb him; and we reached the house without a solitary sentence, I believe, having passed between us. Once there, Sir Calvin walked straight into his study, and I saw him no more that day.

  What was the true thought in his heart? Faith scornful and triumphant, or some secret misgiving? Who could tell? Perhaps for the first time some doubts as to his own qualifications as a father were beginning to move in him, some tragic self-searching for the seed of what might or might not be in this ‘fruit of his blood’. The day stole by on hushed wings; a sense of still fatality brooded over the house. The voiceless, almost unpeopled quiet told upon my nerves, and kept me wandering, aimless and solitary, from room to room. Near evening, Audrey was sent for by her father. I saw her, and saw her for the first time since our return, as she disappeared into his study. What passed between them there one could only surmise, but at least it was marked by no audible sounds of emotion. In that dead oppression I would have welcomed even her company; but she never came near me, and I was left to batten as I would on my own poisonous reflections. They passed and passed in review, with sickening iteration, the same wearisome problems—the evidence, my hateful and unwilling share in it, my friend’s dreadful situation. Against the detective I felt a bitter animosity. No wonder that, conscious of his treachery to his employer, as I still persisted in regarding it, his manner had changed of late, and he had held himself aloof from us. Even that cynical official fibre, I supposed, could not be entirely insensitive to the indecency of eating the salt of him he was planning to betray. I was so wrath with him that I could have wished, if for no other reason than his discomfiture, to vindicate my friend’s innocence. The thought sent me harking back once more over familiar ground. If Hugh were innocent, who was guilty? If another could be proved guilty, or even reasonably suspect, the whole evidence against the prisoner fell into discredit. Who, then?

  Now, this overwhelming business itself had not been enough to dismiss wholly from my mind its haunting suspicions regarding the Baron. So secret, so subtle, so inexplicable, could it still be possible that he was somehow implicated in the affair? If not, was it not at least remarkable that it should have coincided with his coming, involved his servant, been followed by that midnight theft of the paper? And then suddenly there came to me, with a little shock of the blood, a memory of our conversation in the keeper’s cottage on the fatal day of the shoot. How curious he had been then on the subject of poachers, of their methods, of their proneness to violence on occasion! He had asked so innocently yet shown such shrewdness in his questions, that even Orsden had laughingly commented on the discrepancy. And that mention of the muffling properties of a mist in the matter of a gunshot! Why, it was as if he had wished to assure himself of the adequacy of some precaution already calculated and taken to mislead and bewilder in a certain issue!

  The thought came upon me like a thunderclap. Was it, could it be possible that some blackguard poacher had been made the instrument of a diabolical plot—perhaps that fourth shadowy figure that had never materialised; perhaps Henstridge himself, who had volunteered the damning evidence, and whom it would be one’s instinct to mistrust? Le Sage and Henstridge in collusion! Was it an inspiration? Did I stand on the threshold of a tremendous discovery? In spite of the feverish excitement which suddenly possessed me, I could still reason against my own theory. The motive? What possible motive in murdering an unoffending servant girl? Again, what time had been the Baron’s in which to complot so elaborate a crime?

  But, supposing it had all been arranged beforehand, before ever he came? I had not overlooked the mystery attaching to the girl herself. It might cover, for all one knew, a very labyrinthine intrigue of vengeance and spoliation.

  And then in a moment my thought swerved, and the memory of Cleghorn returned to me—Cleghorn, white and abject, grasping the rail of the dock. Cleghorn fainting where he stood. What terrific emotion had thus prostrated the man, relieved from an intolerable oppression? Was mere revulsion of feeling enough to account for it, or was it conceivable that he too was, after all, concerned in the business, a third party, and overwhelmed under his sense of unexpected escape from what he had regarded as his certain doom?

  I was getting into deep waters. I stood aghast before my own imagination. How was I to deal with its creations?

  It was an acute problem, my decision on which was reached only after long deliberation. It was this: I would keep all my suspicions and theories to myself until I could confide them to the ear of the Counsel engaged on Hugo’s behalf.

  In the meantime some relief from the moral stagnation of Wildshott had become apparent with the opening of the day succeeding the inquiry. That deadly lethargy which had followed the first stunning blow was in part shaken off, and the household, though in hushed vein, began to resume its ordinary duties. Sir Calvin himself reappeared, white and drawn, but showing no disposition to suffer commiseration in any form, or any relaxation from his iron discipline. The events of the next few days I will pass over at short length. They yielded some pathos, embraced some preparations, included a visit. I may mention here a decision of the General’s which a little, in one direction, embarrassed my designs. Just or unjust to the man, he would not have Cleghorn back. One could not wonder, perhaps, over his determination; yet I could have preferred for the moment not to lose sight of my suspect. We heard later that the butler, as if anticipating his dismissal, had gone, directly after his release, up to London, where, no doubt, he could be found if wanted. I had to
console myself with that reflection. The valet, Louis, we came to learn about the same time, had taken refuge, pending his master’s return—he had got to hear somehow of the Baron’s absence—with an excellent Roman Catholic lady, who had pitied his case and offered him employment. He had no desire, very certainly, to return to a house where he had suffered so much.

  Of a visit I was allowed to pay my friend in the prison I do not wish to say a great deal. The interview took place in a room with a grating between us and a warder present. The circumstances were inexpressibly painful, but I think I felt them more than Hugo. He was cheery and optimistic—outspoken too in a way that touched me to the quick.

  ‘I want to tell you everything, Viv,’ he said hurriedly, below his breath; ‘I want to get it all off my chest. You guessed the truth, of course; but not the whole of it. There was one thing—I’d like you to tell my father, if you will—it makes me out a worse cur than I admitted, but I can’t feel clean till I’ve said it. It began this way. I surprised the girl over some tricky business—God forgive her and me; that’s enough said about it!—and I bargained with her for my silence on terms. I’ll say for myself that I knew already she was fond of me; but it doesn’t excuse my behaving like a damned cad. Anyhow, she fell to it easily enough; and then the fat was in the fire. It blazed up when she discovered—you know. It seemed to turn her mad. She must be made honest—my wife—or she would kill herself, she said. I believe in the end I should have married her, if—Viv, old man, I loved that girl, I loved her God knows with what passion; yet, I tell you, my first emotion on discovering her dead was one of horrible relief. Call me an inhuman beast, if you will. I dare say it’s true, but there it is. I was in such a ghastly hole, and my nerves had gone all to pieces over it. If I had done what she wished, it meant the end of everything for her and me. I knew the old man, and that he would never forgive such an alliance—would ruin and beggar us. I had been on a hellish rack, and was suddenly off it, and the momentary sensation was beyond my own control. Does the admission seem to blacken the case against me? I believe I know you better than to think so. I’m only accounting in a way for my behaviour on the night of the—the— Why, all the time, at the bottom of my soul, I was crying on my dead darling to come back to me, that I could not live without her. O, Viv! why is it made so difficult for some men to go straight?’