Who Killed Charmian Karslake?

by Annie Haynes

“Look at this.”

  Harbord looked. The paper appeared to have been torn out of some book. On it had been scrawled over and over again in a bold characteristic writing: “Paula Galbraith Paula Galbraith.”

  “What does this mean?” the inspector said, staring at it. “Paula Galbraith. Has Miss Karslake met her before? If it had been the other girl, the American – Mrs. Richard Penn-Moreton – I shouldn’t have been surprised. But Paula Galbraith. How could the two have come across one another? Well, that is another question we have to find the answer to.”

  “Another?” Harbord repeated, raising his eyebrows.

  “Why did Charmian Karslake come down to Hepton?” the inspector went on. “Not, I think, because she had taken a fancy to Lady Moreton, and the latter sent her an invitation to the dance.”

  “You think she had some private reason for wishing to come to the Abbey?”

  The inspector nodded. “As far as I can see it is perfectly obvious that she had. It is our job now to find out what that reason was. Another question that will suggest itself to my mind is, Was Charmian Karslake really an American, or was she an English girl who, making name and fortune in America, had some motive for throwing off her nationality and taking on that of the United States?”

  Harbord looked at him. “What motive could she have had?”

  The inspector shrugged his shoulders. “That we have to find out.

  “That is the box the maid spoke of.”

  He pointed to a small morocco case standing on a little table with one or two other belongings of Miss Karslake’s.

  “We had better see if the money is intact as far as we can.”

  The little lock, which Charmian Karslake probably thought absolutely safe, was soon opened. The inspector felt in his pocket and produced a curious looking little instrument. He applied this to the lock and in a minute the morocco case lay open before him – open, but empty! Of the notes of which Celeste had spoken there was no sign.

  “H’m! what do you make of that?” the inspector said, glancing at his assistant.

  Harbord did not speak for a minute, then he said slowly:

  “I imagine Miss Karslake took them out herself. It is scarcely likely that the murderer spent much time in the room after the crime was committed. Doubtful, too, even if he had possessed himself of Miss Karslake’s keys, whether he would have guessed that that little box contained money. And, granted that he did, would he have stopped to open the box? He would have been more likely to put the whole thing into his pocket.”

  Stoddart clapped the young man on the back. “Well thought out, Harbord. Now we must ’phone the Bank – the Imperial Counties – and see if they have kept the numbers of the notes. I don’t think we shall do very much good by looking further round here. We are more likely to find the clue, without which we are wandering round in a maze, either in one of the other rooms in the Abbey or in Charmian Karslake’s flat. At the present moment I feel inclined to put a few questions to Miss Paula Galbraith. But first the Bank –”

  He led the way out of the room and, with a word to the policeman at the door, he and Harbord made their way to the station.

  As they reached the gallery, from which they could see down into the hall, they heard the sound of voices. One was a woman’s, low, but tense with feeling:

  “No, I tell you I will not listen.’’

  Then came a man’s:

  “By Heaven, Paula, I will not let you go, you shall explain.”

  Stoddart laid his hand sharply on Harbord’s shoulder, but quickly as the detectives stopped some sound had evidently betrayed their approach to the two in the gallery. They stopped. The woman came quickly towards the detectives, her golden head uplifted; the man disappeared in the opposite direction. Harbord drew back. Stoddart stepped forward.

  “Miss Galbraith, I believe.”

  The girl looked at him, unseeing for a moment, then she started violently as if suddenly waking up.

  “Yes.”

  “I am Inspector Stoddart of Scotland Yard,” the detective went on.

  Was it a momentary gleam of fear that flashed into the girl’s blue eyes?

  “Yes. I knew you were coming to – to –”

  “To investigate the mystery of Miss Karslake’s death,” the inspector finished. “I should be glad of a few minutes’ talk with you.”

  The girl frowned. “It would not be of the least use. I could not tell you anything that could possibly help you.”

  “You must let me be the judge of that, I think,” the inspector said lightly, but with a certain firmness in his tone.

  Miss Galbraith bit her lip. “Will it do in the morning?”

  “I am afraid not. If you will kindly come into the library, which Sir Arthur has placed at our disposal, I shall probably keep you only a very short time.”

  The girl hesitated a moment, glancing at him as though wondering whether refusal were possible.

  “Very well,” she said at last, with a certain sullenness in her tone, “but it will be time wasted for you.”

  “Will you come to the library, then?” The inspector drew back and motioned her to precede them.

  Once more the girl hesitated perceptibly. Then, shrugging her shoulders as though making the best of a bad job, she walked quickly past him and down the stairs. The inspector had some ado to keep pace with her hurrying footsteps as they crossed the hall. But he managed to reach the library door first and held it open for her.

  She frowned as she saw Harbord following him in. “I thought you wished to see me alone?”

  “Mr. Harbord is my trusted assistant,” the inspector said quietly, as he set a chair for her. “You may speak quite freely before him.”

  “Only, as I told you, I have nothing to say,” Miss Galbraith said as she sat down.

  The inspector took the chair at the head of the table and, taking his notebook from his pocket, laid it open before him.

  “Were you acquainted with Miss Karslake before her coming to Hepton?”

  “Not in the least. I had not even seen her on the stage.”

  “When did you first see her? I understand that, like her, you came down from town that afternoon.”

  “Yes. But not by the same train. I reached Hepton about half-past two. Miss Karslake and the majority of the guests from town travelled by the four o’clock express. I just saw Miss Karslake when she came in with the others to tea, which we had in the hall.”

  “She was a good-looking woman, wasn’t she?”

  “Every paper in the country tells you so,” Miss Galbraith responded.

  “And your opinion?”

  “I don’t know that my opinion is important or even relevant to the inquiry you are making,” Paula Galbraith answered coolly. “But, yes, of course I thought her beautiful. It would be impossible to think otherwise. But I did not care for her face particularly.”

  “Did you have much conversation with her?” The girl smiled a little. “None at all. We were not even introduced. Of course a crowd of people wanted to be introduced to her. Lady Moreton had her hands full. And as I was not particularly anxious to know her I remained where I was.”

  “Where was that?”

  The faint, ironic smile that had been playing round the girl’s lips ever since she entered the room deepened now.

  “I was sitting on the big oak settle to the right of the door.”

  “Alone?” the inspector said sharply.

  “Certainly not!” the girl said in her turn, with a slight asperity. “I was with Mr. John Larpent.”

  “Was he introduced to Miss Karslake?”

  “No. He remained with me until I went upstairs to dress. Miss Karslake had gone up some little time before, so that I know there was no introduction.”

  “And at the scratch dinner, as Lady Moreton phrases it, you were not near the actress.”

  “She did not come down,” Miss Galbraith said at once. “She said she was very tired and would prefer to rest in her own room until the dance.�
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  “I see.”

  The inspector leaned forward and fixed his penetrating glance upon the girl’s mobile face.

  “Miss Galbraith, I wonder whether it will surprise you to hear that among the few papers found here in Miss Karslake’s trunk was a piece of paper with your name written on it over and over again.”

  “It would surprise me very much,” she said at last. “In fact it would surprise me so much that I do not think I should be able to bring myself to believe it.”

  “Yet it is so,” the inspector said, still keeping his eyes on the girl. “You can give no explanation, Miss Galbraith?”

  “None at all,” the girl said with a puzzled air.

  “I am to take it, then, that you saw practically nothing of Miss Karslake.”

  “I saw her, of course, at the dance.”

  It did not escape the inspector’s keen gaze that the girl’s eyes no longer met his in the same frank fashion, that a faint touch of colour flickered in her pale cheeks.

  “Did you speak to her then?” he questioned sharply.

  “No, I told you that I did not speak to her at all.” Miss Galbraith’s voice was as firm, as decided as his, but some quality there was in it that made Stoddart regard her even more closely.

  “You can give us no help at all, then, Miss Galbraith?”

  The girl shook her head. “None at all, I am sorry to say.”

  The inspector rose. “Then, I will not keep you longer now. It is just possible that I may want to see you later.”

  He opened the door for her. But her proudly poised head and her firmly compressed lips did not hide from him the shadow of the fear that lurked in her blue eyes.

  When they were once more alone and the door had closed behind Miss Galbraith, Stoddart looked across at Harbord.

  “What do you make of that young woman?”

  “I think she knows more than she says. She is obviously scared. But yet” – Harbord’s voice dropped and he looked worried and puzzled – “it is difficult to believe that a girl like that could be implicated in a horrible murder.”

  “She may not be implicated, but she may know, or guess, somebody who is,” the inspector said with a far-away look in his eyes. “Anyway, guesses and surmises will not help us, and it strikes me there is a jolly lot of spade work in front of us before the mystery of Charmian Karslake’s death is elucidated.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Hepton was the quaintest of old-fashioned villages, or perhaps we should say, since it boasted a market consisting of a few stalls in the little cobble-paved street, the tiniest of market-towns. It nestled under the shadow of the Abbey, and to the true Heptonian the Penn-Moretons represented the ruling class, all that they knew of rank, or wealth, or culture.

  True, the King and Queen were higher, but then the King and Queen did not come in the way of the Heptonians. Sir Arthur and Lady Penn-Moreton were good enough.

  On the morning after the discovery of Charmian Karslake’s murder, Stoddart and Harbord walked slowly up the village street from the Abbey, glancing curiously from side to side.

  To reach it from the Abbey they had to cross a wide, open space, still known as the Bull Ring. On one side were the schools and the schoolmaster’s house, on the other the church, the Abbey Church, as it had been at the Dissolution. It was little altered now, save in heavy wooden pews which had been put in by laterday Protestants.

  Once past that there were little, old-fashioned shops on one side, with high steps leading up to them. On the other was the butter and poultry market. Heavy oak standards of stout lattice-work at the sides and overhead, the fine old justice-room in which the local magistrates still sat to adjudicate upon the cases of drunkenness or pilfering that might be brought before them.

  The justice-room was well worth the antiquaries’ attention, but Stoddart only bestowed the most cursory glance upon it. All his attention was given to the shops on the other side, or rather to the names upon them.

  By the local Bank he stopped and looked up the village street that led to the almshouses and past them to the open country beyond.

  “Quaint old spot, isn’t it?” he said to Harbord. “Matter of fact, Sir Arthur told me it was said to be the original Dickens’ Sleepy Hollow. Well, here we come to the parting of the ways. I will have a look at the shops and then have a glance at the ‘Moreton Arms,’ which seems to be about the biggest pub hereabouts, while you prowl around in the churchyard, get a look at the register if you can, and see if you can meet with the name – names I should say.”

  “Names!” Harbord repeated in a puzzled fashion. “Karslake, of course one understands, but –”

  “Karslake and Charmian, of course,” the inspector said quietly. “In fact I think the Christian name is the more important, as it is the more distinctive of the two.”

  “Charmian Karslake.” Harbord repeated the two words thoughtfully. “Certainly it sounds like an assumed name.”

  “The sort of name an actress assumes,” Stoddart added. “Well, so long, Alfred, we shall meet again at the Abbey.”

  Harbord turned in at the old lych-gate leading to the churchyard, while Stoddart proceeded with his saunter up the narrow street, looking from side to side at the names over the shops, Thompson, Dickenson, Grey, Walker, and other stranger names probably indigenous to the district, Frutrell, Furniger, Thorslett, but no Karslake.

  Evidently there was little business doing this morning. Of customers very few shops had any sign. In many cases, white aproned or black aproned, the tradesmen stood at their doors passing the time of day with the passersby or exchanging remarks with their next-door neighbours.

  Stoddart guessed rightly that nothing but the terrible occurrence at the Abbey would be talked of for many a long day at Hepton. He made his way to the upper part of High Street, and after a lingering glance round turned in at the “Moreton Arms.” The bar was at the right-hand side of the red-bricked passage. A hubbub of conversation arose from within, hushed as Stoddart stood at the door. He went forward to the counter where a buxom-looking barmaid was serving out foaming frothy glasses of ale.

  “Good morning, miss,” he said politely, as she glanced at him. “A sherry and bitters, please.”

  She served him quickly and went on to a tall, stout-looking man, who had followed him in. This individual was evidently something of a stranger, like Stoddart himself.

  As he ordered a pint of Bass’s best, he said cheerfully:

  “Terrible affair that at the Abbey?”

  “Terrible!” the barmaid assented, with an uneasy glance at Stoddart.

  The newcomer looked at him too. “You have heard of it maybe, sir?”

  “I have,” Stoddart told him in a noncommittal tone. At present he was uncertain whether the reason for his presence at Hepton was known or not.

  Quite evidently this new-comer desired to be friendly. “Can’t understand a woman being shot in her own bedroom, and the murderer getting away with it. Can you, sir?” turning suddenly on the detective.

  Stoddard took a long pull at his drink before answering, then he said slowly:

  “Has he got away with it? Has it been proved that the murderer was ‘he’ at all?”

  The hand with which the barmaid was manipulating the big brass taps obviously trembled.

  The rubicund stranger paused in the very act of raising his glass and stared at the detective.

  “I say, sir, does that mean –”

  Stoddard smiled grimly. “It does not mean anything but a plain statement of fact. Miss Karslake is quite as likely to have been shot by a woman as by a man. By the way, I hear she was a stranger hereabouts.”

  “That she was,” said the newcomer, who seemed to be constituting himself the spokesman of the assembly.

  “We are not much for going up to London, we Hepton folks, and this was the first time she ever come here.”

  “Was it?” Stoddart questioned.

  “Why, of course it was,” the burly one said positively. “Who ha
s been getting at you?”

  “Nobody.” Stoddart looked round. “But I thought I had heard of people named Karslake living in Hepton and she might have been a connexion.”

  “What be ’e a saying Karslakes. Course there is Karslakes in Hepton. ’Tain’t spelt like this woman’s though.”

  The interruption came from an old man cowering down in the chimney-corner seat and holding out his trembling old hands to the heat.

  Inspector Stoddart turned to him. Here was what he had been trying to find – one of the forefathers of the hamlet.

  “You have known Karslakes in Hepton, sir,” he said, with a deferential air to which the old man was quite unaccustomed.

  “’Ees, ’ees, sir,” he quavered. “So do many of these ’ere folks too. Only our Karslake, ’taint spelt like this ’ere pore thing’s. Karslake, I understand hers was – spelt with a K like. While ours was Carslake, spelt with a C. That’s what made folks not recognize the name. But if it were spelt different folks wouldn’t be unlike, would they?”

  “I suppose not”, the inspector said slowly. “But now these Carslakes spelt with a C, are there any of them left in Hepton?”

  “Now, no, sir.” The old man shook his head. “The last of ’em, Mrs. Lee Carslake, she lived at the Red House, a bit out o’ town that were. Everybody knowed her – a widow woman – her man had been a doctor over at Peysford Green, and when he died she come back to live at Hepton. Hepton born and bred she was. Father was Lawyer Herbert, buried at back o’ church he is. Ay, Hepton born and bred were Mrs. Lee Carslake.”

  “Had she any children?” the inspector inquired in as conversational a tone as he could manage.

  “Ay! Chillen, yes. Of course she had.” The ancient scratched his head. “A matter of four or five boys and then the youngest, the purtiest little wench ever I see.”

  A little girl! The inspector felt that he was striking oil at last.

  “What was her name?” he asked abruptly.

  “Her name?” the old man repeated. “Well, now, it was Missy Carslake I called her, when I spoke to her, which wasn’t often. Her mother, I have heard her call her Angel or someut like that.”

  But other memories were waking.