A sobbing sound came from Lambert Coxe. He sprang to his feet, pressing his hands to his temples, then crashed unconscious to the floor.
While Trent loosened his collar, the lawyer splashed water from the bottle on his table upon the upturned face. The eyelids began to flicker. ‘He’ll do,’ Bradshaw said coolly. ‘My congratulations, Mr Trent. This man is not a client of mine, so I may say that I don’t think he will enjoy the title for long – or the money, which was what really mattered, I have reason to believe. He’s dropped his monocle again, you see. I happen to know, by the way, that he has been half-blind of that eye since it was injured by a cricket ball at Marsham.’
XII
The Ordinary Hairpins
A small committee of friends had persuaded Lord Aviemore to sit for a presentation portrait, and the painter to whom they gave the commission was Philip Trent. It was a task that fascinated him, for he had often seen and admired, in public places, the high half-bald skull, vulture nose, and grim mouth of the peer who was said to be deeper in theology than any other layman, and all but a few of the clergy; whose devotion to charitable work had made him nationally honoured. It was not until the third sitting that Lord Aviemore’s sombre taciturnity was laid aside.
‘I believe, Mr Trent,’ he said abruptly, ‘you used to have a portrait of my late sister-in-law here. I was told that it hung in the studio.’
Trent continued his work quietly. ‘It was just a rough drawing I made after seeing her in Carmen – before her marriage. It has been hung in here ever since. Before your first visit I removed it.’
The sitter nodded slowly. ‘Very thoughtful of you. Nevertheless, I should like very much to see it, if I may.’
‘Of course.’ Trent drew the framed sketch from behind a curtain. Lord Aviemore gazed long in silence at Trent’s very spirited likeness of the famous singer, while the artist worked busily to capture the first expression of feeling that he had so far seen on that impassive face. Lighted and softened by melancholy, it looked for the first time noble.
At last the sitter turned to him. ‘I would give a good deal,’ he said simply, ‘to possess this drawing.’
Trent shook his head. ‘I don’t want to part with it.’ He did a few strokes carefully on the canvas. ‘If you care to know why, I’ll tell you. It is my personal memory of a woman whom I found more admirable than any other I ever saw. Lillemor Wergeland’s beauty and physical perfection were unforgettable. Her voice was a marvel; her spirit matched them; her fearlessness, her kindness, her vigour of mind and character, her feeling for beauty, were what I heard talked about even by people not given to enthusiasm. She had weaknesses, I dare say – I never spoke to her. I heard her sing very many times, but I knew no more about her than many other strangers. A number of my friends knew her, though, and all I ever gathered about her made me inclined to place her on a pedestal. I was ten years younger then; it did me good.’
Lord Aviemore said nothing for a few minutes, then he spoke slowly. ‘I am not of your temperament or your circle, Mr Trent. I do not worship anything of this world. But I do not think you were far wrong about Lady Aviemore. Once I thought differently. When I heard that my eldest brother was about to marry a prima donna, a woman whose portrait was sold all over the world, who was famous for extravagance in dress and what seemed to me self-advertising conduct, I was appalled when I heard from him of this engagement. I will not deny that I was shocked, too, at the idea of a marriage with the daughter of Norwegian peasants.’
‘She was country-bred, then,’ Trent observed. ‘One never heard much about her childhood.’
‘Yes. She was an orphan of ten years old when Colonel Stamer and his wife went to lodge at her brother’s farm for the fishing. They fell in love with the child, and having none of their own, they adopted her. All this my brother told me. He knew, he said, just what I would think; he only asked me to meet her, and then to judge if he had done well or ill. Of course I asked him to introduce me at the first opportunity.’
Lord Aviemore paused and stared thoughtfully at the portrait. ‘She charmed everyone who came near her,’ he went on presently. ‘I resisted the spell; but before they had been long married she had conquered all my prejudice. It was like a child, I saw, that she delighted in the popularity and the great income her gifts had brought her. But she was not really childish. It was not that she was what is called intellectual; but she had a singular spaciousness of mind in which nothing little or mean could live – it had, I used to fancy, some kinship with her Norwegian landscapes of mountain and sea. She was, as you say, extremely beautiful, with the vigorous purity of the fair-haired northern race. Her marriage with my brother was the happiest I have ever known.’
He paused again while Trent worked on in silence, and soon the low meditative voice resumed. ‘It was about this time six years ago – the middle of March – that I had the terrible news from Taormina, the day after my return from Canada. I went out to her at once. When I saw her I was aghast. She showed no emotion; but there was in her calmness the most unearthly sense of desolation that I have ever received. From time to time she would say, as if she spoke to herself, “It was all my fault”.’
At Trent’s exclamation of surprise Lord Aviemore looked up. ‘Few people,’ he said, ‘know the whole of the tragedy. You have heard that a slight shock of earthquake caused the collapse of the villa, and that my brother and his child were found dead in the ruins; you have heard, I suppose, that Lady Aviemore was not in the house at the time. You have heard that she drowned herself afterwards. But you have evidently not heard that my brother had a presentiment that this visit to Sicily would end in death, and wished to abandon it at the last moment; that his wife laughed away his forebodings with her strong common sense. But we belong to the Highlands, Mr Trent; we are of that blood and tradition, and such interior warnings as my brother had are no trifles to us. However, she charmed his fears away; he had, she told me, entirely lost all sense of uneasiness. On the tenth day of their stay her husband and only child were killed. She did not think, as you may think, that there was coincidence here. The shock had changed her whole mental being; she believed then, as I believed, that my brother inwardly foreknew that death awaited him if he went to that place.’ He relapsed into silence.
‘I know slightly,’ Trent remarked, ‘a man called Selby, a solicitor, who was with Lady Aviemore just after her husband’s death.’
Lord Aviemore said that he remembered Mr Selby. He said it with such a total absence of expression of any kind that the subject of Selby was killed instantly; and he did not resume that of the tragedy of the woman whom the world remembered still as Lillemor Wergeland.
It was a few months later, when the portrait of Lord Aviemore was to be seen at the show of the NSPP, that Trent received a friendly letter from Arthur Selby. After praising the picture, Selby went on to ask if Trent would do him the favour of calling at his office by appointment for a private talk. ‘I should like,’ he wrote, ‘to put a certain story before you, a story with a problem in it. I gave it up as a bad job long ago myself, but seeing your portrait of A. reminded me of your reputation as an unraveller.’
Thus it happened that, a few days later, Trent found himself alone with Selby in the offices of the firm in which that very capable, somewhat dandified lawyer was a partner. They spoke of the portrait, and Trent told of the strange exaltation with which his sitter had spoken of the dead lady. Selby listened rather grimly.
‘The story I referred to,’ he said, ‘is the Aviemore story. I acted for the countess when she was alive. I was with her at the time of her suicide. I am an executor of her will. In the strictest confidence, I should like to tell you that story as I know it, and hear what you think about it.’
Trent was all attention; he was deeply interested, and said so. Selby, with gloomy eyes, folded his arms on the broad writing-table between them, and began.
‘You know all about the accident,’ he said. ‘I will start with the 15th of March, when Lord Aviemo
re and his son were buried in the cemetery at Taormina. That was before I came on the scene. Lady Aviemore had already discharged all the servants except her own maid, with whom she was living at the Hotel Cavour. There, as I gathered afterwards, she seldom left her rooms. She was undoubtedly overwhelmed by what had happened, though she seems never to have lost her grip on herself. Her brother-in-law, the present Lord Aviemore, had come out to join her. He had only just returned from Canada’ – Selby raised a finger and repeated slowly – ‘from Canada, you will remember. He had gone out to get ideas about the emigration prospect, I understood. He remained at the hotel, meaning to accompany Lady Aviemore home when she should feel equal to the journey.
‘It was not until the 18th that we received a long telegram from her, asking us to send someone representing the firm to her at Taormina. She stated that she wished to discuss business matters without delay, but did not yet feel able to travel. At the cost of some inconvenience, I went out myself, as I happen to speak Italian pretty well. You understand that Lady Aviemore, who already possessed considerable means of her own, came into a large income under her husband’s will.’
‘She was a client who could afford to indulge her whims,’ Trent observed. ‘If you were already her adviser, she probably expected you to come.’
‘Just so. Well, I went out to Taormina, as I say. On my arrival Lady Aviemore saw me, and told me quite calmly that she was acquainted with the provisions of her late husband’s will, and that she now wished to make her own. I took her instructions, and prepared the will at once. The next day the British Consul and I witnessed her signature. You may remember, Trent, that when the contents of her will became public after her death they attracted a good deal of attention.’
‘I don’t think I heard of it,’ Trent said. ‘If I was giving myself a holiday at the time, I wouldn’t know much about what was going on.’
‘Well, there were some bequests of jewellery and things to intimate friends. She left £2,000 to her brother Knut Wergeland, of Myklebostad in Norway, and £100 to her maid, Maria Krogh, also a Norwegian, who had been with her a long time. The whole of the rest of her property she left to her brother-in-law, the new Lord Aviemore, unconditionally. That surprised me, because I had been told that he had disapproved bitterly of the marriage, and hadn’t concealed his opinion from her or anyone else. But she never bore malice, I knew; and what she said to me at Taormina was that she could think of nobody who would do so much good with the money as her brother-in-law. From that point of view she was justified. He is said to spend three-fourths of his income on charities of all sorts, and I shouldn’t wonder if it was true. Anyhow, she made him her heir.’
‘And what did he say to it?’
Selby coughed. ‘There is no evidence that he knew anything about it before her death. No evidence,’ he repeated slowly. ‘And when told of it afterwards he showed precious little feeling of any kind. Of course, that’s his way. But now let me get on with the story. Lady Aviemore asked me to remain to transact business for her until she should leave Taormina. She did so on the 27th of March, accompanied by Lord Aviemore, myself, and her maid. To shorten the railway journey, as she told us, she had planned to go by boat first to Brindisi, then to Venice, and so home by rail. The boats from Brindisi to Venice all go in the daytime except once a week, when a boat from Corfu arrives in the evening and goes on about eleven. She decided to get to Brindisi in time to catch that boat. So that was what we did; had a few hours in Brindisi, dined there, and went on board about ten o’clock. Lady Aviemore complained of a bad headache. She went at once to her cabin, which was a deck-cabin, asking me to send someone to collect her ticket at once, as she wanted to sleep as soon as possible and not be awakened again. That was soon done. Shortly before the boat left, the maid came to me on her way to her own quarters and told me her mistress had retired. Soon after we were out of the harbour I turned in myself. At that time Lord Aviemore was leaning over the rail on the deck on to which Lady Aviemore’s cabin opened, and some distance from the cabin. There was nobody else about that I could see. It was just beginning to blow, but it didn’t trouble me, and I slept very well.
‘It was a quarter to eight next morning when Lord Aviemore came into my cabin. He was fearfully pale and agitated. He told me that the Countess could not be found; that the maid had gone to her cabin to call her at 7.30 and found it empty.
‘I got up in a hurry, and went with him to the cabin. The dressing-case she had taken with her was there, and her fur coat and her hat and her jewellery-case and her handbag lay on the berth, which had not been slept in. The only other thing was a note, unaddressed, lying open on the table. Lord Aviemore and I read it together. After the inquiry at Venice I kept the note. Here it is.’
Selby unfolded and handed over a sheet of thin ruled paper, torn from a block. Trent read the following words, written in a large, firm, rounded hand:
Such an ending to such a marriage is far worse than death. It was all my fault. This is not sorrow; it is complete destruction. I have been kept up till now only by the resolution I took on the day when I lost them, by the thought of what I am going to do now. I take my leave of a world I cannot bear any more.
There followed the initials ‘L A’. Trent read and reread the pitiful message, so full of the awful egotism of grief; then he looked up in silence at Selby.
‘The Italian authorities found that she had met her death by drowning. They could not suppose anything else – nor could I. But now listen, Trent. Soon after her death I got an idea into my head, and I have puzzled over the affair a lot without much result. I did find out a fact or two, though; and it struck me the other day that if I could discover something, you could probably do much better.’
Trent, still studying the paper, ignored this tribute. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what is your idea, Selby?’
Selby, evading the direct question, said, ‘I’ll tell you the facts I referred to. That sheet, you see, is torn from an ordinary ruled writing-pad. Now I have shown it to a friend of mine who is in the paper business. He has told me that it is a make of paper never sold in Europe, but sold very largely in Canada. Next, Lady Aviemore never was in Canada. And there was no writing-pad in her dressing-case or anywhere in the cabin. Neither was there any pen or ink, or any fountain pen. The ink, you see, is a pale sort of grey ink.’
Trent nodded. ‘Continental hotel ink, in fact. This was written in a hotel, then – probably the one where you had dinner in Brindisi. You could identify her writing, of course.’
‘Except that it seems to have been written with a bad pen – a hotel pen, no doubt – it is her usual handwriting.’
‘Any other exhibits?’ Trent asked after a brief silence.
‘Only this.’ Selby took from a drawer a woman’s handbag of elaborate bead-work. ‘Later on, when I saw Lord Aviemore about the disposal of her valuable and personal effects, I mentioned that there was this bag, with a few trifles in it. “Give it away,” he said. “Do what you like with it.” Well,’ Selby went on, smoothing the back of his head with an air of slight embarrassment, ‘I kept it. As a sort of memento – what? The things in it don’t mean anything to me, but you have a look at them.’ He turned the bag out upon the writing-table. ‘Here you are – handkerchief, notes and change, nail-file, keys, powder-thing, lipstick, comb, hair-pins – ’
‘Four hairpins.’ Trent took them in his hand. ‘Quite new ones, I should say. Have they anything to tell us, Selby?’
‘I don’t see how. They’re just ordinary black hairpins – as you say, they look too fresh and bright to have been used.’
Trent looked at the small heap of objects on the table. ‘And what’s that last thing – the little box?’
‘That’s a box of Ixtil, the anti-sea-sick stuff. Two doses are gone. It’s quite good, I believe.’
Trent opened the box and stared at the pink capsules. ‘So you can buy it abroad?’
‘I was with her when she bought it in Brindisi, just before we went on board.�
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Again Trent was silent a few moments. ‘Then all you discovered that was odd was this about the Canadian paper, and the note having obviously been prepared in advance. Queer enough, certainly. But going back before that last day or two – all through the time you were with Lady Aviemore, did nothing come under your notice that seemed strange?’
Selby fingered his chin. ‘If you put it like that, I do remember a thing that I thought curious at the time, though I never dreamed of its having anything to do – ’
‘Yes, I know, but you asked me here to go over the thing properly, didn’t you? That question of mine is one of the routine inquiries.’
‘Well, it was simply this. A day or two before we left Sicily I was standing in the hotel lobby when the mail arrived. As I was waiting to see if there was anything for me, the porter put down on the counter a rather smart-looking package that had just come – done up the way they do it at a really first-class shop, if you know what I mean. It looked like a biggish book, or box of chocolates, or something; and it had French stamps on it, but the postmark I didn’t notice. And this was addressed to Mlle Maria Krogh – you remember, the Countess’ maid. Well, she was there waiting, and presently the man handed it to her. Maria went off with it, and just then her mistress came down the big stairs. She saw the parcel, and just held out her hand for it and Maria passed it over as if it was a matter of course, and Lady Aviemore went upstairs with it. I thought it was quaint if she was ordering goods in her maid’s name; but I thought no more of it, because Lady Aviemore decided that evening about leaving the place, and I had plenty to attend to. And if you want to know,’ Selby went on as Trent opened his lips to speak, ‘where Maria Krogh is, all I can tell you is that I took her ticket in London for Christiansand, where she lives, and where I sent her legacy to her, which she acknowledged. Now then!’
Trent Intervenes and Other Stories Page 21