There was another at that table who was as disturbed as Sir Chichester and Lady Splay. Martin Hillyard knew nothing of the paragraph which had caused this consternation in his hosts; and he had asked no questions last night. But he remembered every word that Joan had said. She had seen Mario Escobar somewhere since leaving Rackham Park — that was certain; and Mario Escobar had demanded information. “Demanded” was the word which Joan had used. Mario Escobar was of the blackmailing type. Martin’s heart was in his mouth.
“An invention about us here?” he asked.
“About one of us,” answered Sir Chichester; and Martin dared ask no more.
Harry Luttrell, however, had none of Martin’s knowledge to restrain him.
“In that case, sir, wouldn’t it be wiser to read it now, aloud?” he suggested. “It can’t be suppressed now. Sooner or later every one will hear of it.”
Every one agreed except Hillyard. To him Harry Luttrell seemed wilfully to be rushing towards catastrophe.
“Yes ... yes,” said Sir Chichester slowly. He unfolded his newspaper again and read; and of all those who listened no one was more amazed than Hillyard himself. Mario Escobar had no hand in this abominable work. For this is what Sir Chichester read:
“‘A mysterious and tragic event has occurred at Rackham Park, where Sir Chichester Splay, the well-known Baronet — —’” He broke off to observe, “Really, it’s put quite civilly, Millie. It’s a dreadful mistake, but so far as the wording of the Editor is concerned it’s put really more considerately than I noticed at first.”
“Oh, please go on,” cried Millie.
“Very well, my dear,” and he resumed Sir Chichester Splay, the well-known Baronet is entertaining a small party. At an early hour this morning Mrs. Croyle, one of Sir Chichester’s guests, died under strange circumstances.”
Miranda uttered a little scream.
“Died!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, listen to this,” said Sir Chichester. “Mrs. Croyle was discovered lying upon her side with her face bent above a glass of chloroform. The glass was supported between her pillows and Mrs. Croyle’s fingers were still grasping it when she was discovered.”
A gasp of indignation and horror ran round that breakfast table when Sir Chichester had finished.
“It’s so atrociously circumstantial,” said Mr. Albany Todd.
“Yes.” Sir Chichester seized upon the point. “That’s the really damnable point about it. That’s real malice. This report will linger and live long after the denial and apology are published.”
Lady Splay raised her head.
“I can’t imagine who can have sent in such a cowardly lie. Enemies of us? Or enemies of Stella?”
“We can think that out afterwards, Lady Splay,” said Harold Jupp. He was of a practical matter-of-fact mind and every one turned to listen to his suggestion. “The first thing to do is to get the report contradicted in the evening papers.”
“Of course.”
There was something to be done. All grasped at the doing of it in sheer relief — except one. For as the men rose, saying; one “I’ll look after it”; and another “No, you’d better leave it to me,” Luttrell’s voice broke in upon them all, with a sort of dreadful fatality in the quiet sound of it.
“Where is Mrs. Croyle now?” he asked, and he was as white as the tablecloth in front of him.
There was no further movement towards the door. Slowly the men resumed their seats. A silence followed in which person after person looked at Stella’s empty place as though an intensity of gaze would materialise her there. Miranda was the first bravely to break through it.
“She hasn’t come down yet,” she said, and Millie Splay seized upon the words.
“No, she never comes down for breakfast — never has all this week.”
“Yes, that’s true,” returned Dennis Brown with an attempt at cheerfulness.
“Besides — what makes — the idea — impossible,” said Sir Chichester, “is the publication this morning. There wouldn’t have been time.... It’s clearly an atrocious piece of malice.” He was speaking with an obvious effort to convince himself that the monstrous thing was false. But he collapsed suddenly and once more discomfort and silence reigned in the room.
“Stella’s not well,” Millie Splay took up the tale. “That’s why she is seldom seen before twelve. Those headaches of hers — —” and suddenly she in her turn broke off. She leaned forward and pressed the electric bell upon the tablecloth beside her. That small trivial action brought its relief, lightened the vague cloud of misgiving which since Luttrell had spoken, had settled upon all.
“You rang, my lady,” said Harper in the doorway.
“Yes, Harper. We were making some plans for a picnic to-day and we should like to know if Mrs. Croyle will join us. Can you find out from her maid whether she is awake?”
It was superbly done. There was not a quaver in Lady Splay’s voice, not a sign of agitation in her manner.
“I’ll inquire, my lady,” replied Harper, and he left the room upon his errand.
“One thing is certain,” Mr. Albany Todd broke in. “I was watching Harper over your shoulder, Lady Splay. He hasn’t seen the paragraph. There’s nothing known of it in the servants’ hall.”
Sir Chichester nodded, and Millie Splay observed:
“Harper’s so imperturbable that he always inspires me with confidence. I feel that nothing out of the way could really happen whilst he was in the house.” And her attitude of tension did greatly relax as she thought, illogically enough, of that stolid butler. A suggestion made by Martin Hillyard set them to work whilst they waited.
“Let us see if the report is in any of the other papers,” and all immediately were busy with that examination — except one again. And that one again, Harry Luttrell. He sat in his place motionless, his eyes transfixed upon some vision of horror — as if he knew, Martin said to himself, yes, as if all these questions were futile, as if he knew.
But no other newspaper had printed the paragraph. They had hardly assured themselves of this fact, when Harper once more stood in the doorway.
“Mrs. Croyle gave orders last night to her maid that she was not to be disturbed until she rang, my lady,” he said.
“And she has not rung?” Millie asked.
“No, my lady.”
Miranda suddenly laughed in an odd fashion and swayed in her chair.
“Miranda!” Millie Splay brought her back to her self-control with a sharp cry of rebuke. Then she resumed to Harper.
“I will take the responsibility of waking Mrs. Croyle. Will you please, ask her maid to rouse Mrs. Croyle, and inquire whether she will join us this morning. We shall start at twelve.”
“Very well, my lady.”
There was no longer any pretence of ease amongst the people seated round the table. A queer panic passed from one to the other. They were awed by the imminence of dreadful uncomprehended things. They waited in silence, like people under a spell, and from somewhere in the house above their heads, there sounded a loud rapping upon a door. They held their breath, straining to hear the grate of a key in a lock, and the opening of that door. They heard only the knocking repeated and repeated again. It was followed by a sound of hurrying feet.
Jenny Prask ran down the great main staircase, and burst into the breakfast room, her face mottled with terror, her hand spread above her heart to still its wild beating.
“My lady! My lady! The door’s locked. I can get no answer. I am afraid.”
Sir Chichester rose abruptly from his chair. But Jenny Prask had more to say.
“The key had been removed. My lady, I looked through the keyhole. The lights are still burning in the room.”
“Oh!”
Martin Hillyard had started to his feet. He remembered another time when the lights had been burning in Stella Croyle’s room in the full blaze of a summer morning. She was sitting at the writing-table then. She had been sitting there all through the night making meaningless signs and figures u
pon the paper and the blotting-pad in front of her. The full significance of that flight of the unhappy Stella to the little hotel below the Hog’s Back was now revealed to him. But between that morning and this, there was an enormous difference. She had opened her door then in answer to the knocking.
“We must get through that door, Lady Splay,” he said. Sir Chichester was already up and about in a busy agitation.
“Yes, to be sure. It’s just an ordinary lock. We shall easily find a key to fit it. I’ll take Harper with me, and perhaps, Millie, you will come.”
“Yes, I’ll come,” said Millie quietly. After her first shock of horror and surprise when she had first chanced upon the paragraph in the Harpoon, she had been completely, wonderfully, mistress of herself.
“The rest of you will please stay downstairs,” said Sir Chichester, as he removed the key from the door of the room. Jenny Prask was not thus to be disposed of.
“Oh, my lady, I must go up too!” she cried, twisting her hands together. “Mrs. Croyle was always very kind to me, poor lady. I must come!”
“She won’t keep her head,” Sir Chichester objected, who was fast losing his. But Milly Splay laid her hand upon the girl’s arm.
“Yes, you shall come with us, Jenny,” she said gently, and the four of them moved out of the room.
The others followed them as far as the hall, and stood grouped at the foot of the staircase.
“Miranda, would you like to go out into the air?” Dennis Brown asked with solicitude of his wife.
“No, dear, I am all right. I — oh, poor woman!” and with a sob she dropped her face in her hands.
“Hush!” Luttrell called sharply for silence, and a moment afterwards, a loud shrill scream rent the air like lightning.
Miranda cowered from it.
“Jenny Prask!” said Hillyard.
“Then — then — the news is true,” faltered Miranda, and she would have fallen but for the arm of her husband about her waist.
They waited until Sir Chichester came down the stairs to them. He was shaken and trembling. He, the spectator of dramas, was now a character in one most tragically enacted under his own roof.
“The report is true to the letter,” he said in a low voice. “Dennis, will you go for McKerrel, the doctor. You know his house in Midhurst. Will you take your car, and bring him back. There is nothing more that we can do until he comes.” He stood for a little while by the table in the hall, staring down at it, and taking particular note of its grain.
“A curious thing,” he said. “The key of her room is missing altogether.”
To no one did it come at this moment that the disappearance of the key was to prove a point of vast importance. No one made any comment, and Sir Chichester fell to silence again. “She looked like a child sleeping,” he said at length, “a child without a care.”
Then he sat down and took the newspaper from his pocket. Mr. Albany Todd suddenly advanced to Harry Luttrell. He had been no less observant than Martin Hillyard.
“You alone, Colonel Luttrell,” he said, “were not surprised.”
“I was not,” answered Harry frankly. “I was shocked, but not surprised. For I knew Mrs. Croyle at a time when she was so tormented that she could not sleep at all. During that time she learnt to take drugs, and especially that drug in precisely that way that the newspaper described.”
The men drifted out of the hall on to the lawn, leaving Sir Chichester brooding above the outspread sheets of the Harpoon. Here was the insoluble sinister question to which somehow he had to find an answer. Stella Croyle died late last night, in the country, at Rackham Park; and yet in this very morning’s issue of the newspaper, her death with every circumstance and detail was truthfully recorded, hours before it was even known by anybody in the house itself.
“How can that be?” Sir Chichester exclaimed in despair. “How can it be?”
CHAPTER XXIX
Jenny Puts Up Her Fight
STELLA, THE UNDISCIPLINED! She had flung out of the rank and file, as long ago Sir Charles Hardiman had put it, and to this end she had come, waywardness exacting its inexorable price. Harry Luttrell, however, was not able to lull his conscience with any such easy reflections. He walked with Martin Hillyard apart in the garden.
“I am to blame,” he cried. “I took on a responsibility for Stella when I went out of my way to do one kind, foolish thing.... Yet, she would have killed herself if I hadn’t — as she has done five years afterwards!... I couldn’t leave her when I had brought her home ... she was in such misery!... and it couldn’t have gone on.... Old Hardiman was right about that.... It would have ended in a quarrel when unforgivable words would have been used.... Yet, perhaps, if that had happened she wouldn’t have killed herself.... Oh, I don’t know!”
Martin Hillyard had never seen Harry Luttrell so moved or sunk in such remorse. He did not argue, lest he should but add fuel to this high flame of self-reproach. Life had become so much easier as a problem with him, so much inner probing and speculation and worry about small vanities had been smoothed away since he had been engaged day after day in a definite service which was building up by a law deduced here, an inspired formula there, a tradition for its servants. The service, the tradition, would dissolve and blow to nothing, when peace came again. Meanwhile there was the worth of traditional service made clear to him, in an indifference to the little enmities which before would have hurt and rankled, in a freedom from doubt when decision was needed, above all in a sort of underlying calm which strengthened as his life became more turbulently active.
“It’s a clear principle of life which make the difference,” he said, hesitating, because to say even so much made him feel a prig. “Stella just drifted from unhappiness to unhappiness — —”
But Harry Luttrell had no attention to give to him.
“I simply couldn’t have gone on,” he cried. “It wasn’t a question of my ruin or not.... It was simply beyond me to go on.... There were other things more powerful.... You know! I once told you on the river above Kennington Island.... Oh, my God, I am in such a tangle of argument — and there she is up there — only thirty, and beautiful — such a queer, wayward kid— ‘like a child sleeping.’”
He quoted Sir Chichester’s phrase, and hurried away from his friend.
“I shall be back in a little while,” he muttered. His bad hour was upon him, and he must wrestle with it alone.
Martin Hillyard returned to the hall, and found Sir Chichester with the doctor, a short, rugged Scotsman. Dr. McKerrel was saying:
“There’s nothing whatever for me to do, Sir Chichester,” he said. “The poor creature must have died somewhere about one o’clock of the morning.” He saw Sir Chichester with a start fall once more to reading the paragraph in the Harpoon, and continued with a warmth of admiration, “Eh, but those newspaper fellows are quick! I saw the Harpoon this morning, and it was lucky I did. For I’d ha’ been on my rounds otherwise when that young fellow called for me.”
“It was good of you to come so quickly,” said Sir Chichester.
“I shall charge for it,” replied Dr. McKerrel. “I’ll just step round to the Peace Officer at once, and I’ll be obliged if you’ll not have that glass with the chloroform touched again. I have put it aside.”
Martin Hillyard was disturbed.
“There will have to be an inquest then?” he asked.
“Aye, but there wull.”
“In a case of this kind,” Sir Chichester suggested, “it would be better if it could be avoided.”
“But it can’t,” answered Dr. McKerrel bluntly. “And for my part, I tell you frankly, Sir Chichester, I have no great pity for poor neurotic bodies like the young lady upstairs. If she had had a little of my work to do, she would have been too tired in the evening to think about her worries.” He looked at the disconsolate Baronet with a sudden twinkle in his eye. “Eh, man, but you’ll get all the publicity you want over this case.”
Sir Chichester had no rejoinder to th
e quip; and his unwonted meekness caused McKerrel to relent. He stopped at the door, and said:
“I’ll give you a hint. The coroner can cut the inquest down to the barest necessary limits, if he has got all the facts clear beforehand. If he has got to explore in the dark, he’ll ask questions here and questions there, and you never know, nor does he, what he’s going to drag out to light in the end. But let him have it all clear and straight first! There’s only one character I know of, more free from regulations and limitations and red-tape than a coroner, and that’s the police-sergeant who runs the coroner. Goodday to you.”
A telegram was brought to Martin Hillyard whilst McKerrel was yet speaking; and Hillyard read it with relief. Mario Escobar had been taken that morning as he was leaving the hotel for the morning train to London. He was now on his way to an internment camp. So that complication was smoothed out at all events. He agreed with Sir Chichester Splay that it would be prudent to carry out McKerrel’s suggestion at once.
“I will make the document out,” said Sir Chichester importantly. Give him a little work which set him in the limelight as the leader of the Chorus, and nothing could keep down his spirits. He took a sheet of foolscap, a blotting pad, a heavy inkstand, and a quill pen — Sir Chichester never used anything but a quill pen — to the big table in the middle of the hall, and wrote in a fair, round hand:
“The case of Mrs. Croyle.”
and looked at his work and thought it good.
“It looks quite like a cause célèbre, doesn’t it?” he said buoyantly. But he caught Martin Hillyard’s eye, and recovered his more becoming despondency. Harry Luttrell came in as the baronet settled once more to his task. He laid a shining key upon the table and said:
“I found this upon the lawn. It looked as if it might be the key of Mrs. Croyle’s room.”
It was undoubtedly the key of a door. “We’ll find out,” said the baronet. Harper was sent for and commissioned to inquire. He returned in a few minutes.
“Yes, sir, it is the key of Mrs. Croyle’s room.” He laid it upon the table and went out of the room.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 559