Dead Man's Quarry (15 page)

“We find that deceased met his death by shooting at the hands of Sir Morris Price.”

There was a second's blank silence, and then a faint sigh, from Blodwen or from Felix, John thought. Morris Price remained as if petrified in his seat for a moment. Then a strange, half-scornful, half-incredulous look came into his face, even while the last vestige of colour went from it. He rose to his feet, and interrupting the coroner's first words, addressed the foreman of the jury in a tone more scoffing than angry, yet with a queer undertone of fear, as though he had begun to realize that a high hand will not always carry the day:

“Don't be a fool!”

John, who until this moment had been unable to make up his mind, now apostrophized his cousin beneath his breath:

“Sydenham, we're not going back to London for ages. I would bet my last penny that our feudal friend is innocent. But he badly needs somebody to say to him what he has just said to the foreman of the jury. And unless I'm much mistaken our Mr. Penrose intends to be the man to say it.”

“I suppose you've no idea, Miss Price, of what sort of life your brother led in Canada? I mean there's always the possibility that somebody followed him over here for the express purpose of murdering him. A remote possibility, perhaps, but there it is. Of course if it had been Russia he'd been living in, or Turkey, or some other hotbed of political crime, the possibility wouldn't be remote at all. But there's something so peculiarly blameless about Canada.”

“I haven't the slightest idea. He was working in a shop in some small town, I believe, when they traced him.”

“That sounds innocent enough. You didn't write to him, then?”

“We used to write regularly for about a year after he went out. We gave up writing when he gave up answering our letters. For years we didn't hear a word from him. It's extraordinarily difficult,” said Blodwen meditatively, “to keep up a correspondence with a person who's at the other side of the world. Even if you're great friends, it's difficult.”

They were pacing slowly up and down the terrace in front of Rhyllan Hall. It was that peaceful hour of a summer afternoon when shadows are beginning to lengthen, and the tinkling of tea-cups may be heard in the kitchen. Two red setters basked in the sun on the steps leading down into the Dutch garden, and the whir of a mowing-machine came from some near invisible distance. At the other side of the Dutch garden the gardener's boy David was picking off dead pansies. The serene frontage of Rhyllan Hall presided benignantly over these summer afternoon activities. Sir Charles was murdered, and Sir Morris was arrested for his murder; but the lawns must be mown, and the pansies tidied up, and Blodwen's dogs be given their due hours of freedom. Felix had retired for an hour or two from the unbearable usualness of things and the legal importunities of Mr. Penrose, and at Blodwen's command had gone to his room, ostensibly to sleep. Rampson had fallen in with Lion Browning in Penlow, and had been taken prisoner and led off to view an unsatisfactory microscope. Blodwen and John had the summer afternoon to themselves.

“How long have Felix and his father lived at Rhyllan Hall?”

“How long? Oh, ever since my father came into the title. That was—let me see, thirteen years ago.”

“After Charles went to Canada?”

“Yes, two years after. At the time Charles went out, we had no idea that Rhyllan would ever come to our branch of the family. It would have seemed the remotest thing, if we had ever even thought of it. Sir Almeric Price, my great-uncle, had Rhyllan then, and he had two sons and a grandson. But the three of them were drowned in a yachting accident in the Mediterranean, and a few months afterwards Uncle Almeric died of a broken heart. And so, all in a moment, it seemed, the baronetcy came to my father. It was a great change for us. My father wrote over and over again to Charles, but he got no answer, and the lawyers failed to trace him. So Uncle Morris and Felix came here to live, and Uncle Morris took over the management of the estates. My father was never very strong, and was glad to leave all the business matters to my uncle. Felix was quite a child then, about thirteen, I suppose. They've lived here ever since.”

“Both widowers, I suppose—your father and uncle, I mean?”

“N—o,” said Blodwen slowly. “My father was. My mother died when Charles was quite small. But Uncle Morris's wife is still alive, I believe.”

“You believe?”

“I haven't seen her since I was a child, and haven't heard her spoken of for years. I don't know whether even Uncle Morris knows where she is. It was a most unhappy marriage, I believe, though at the time I was too young to know much about it.”

“Then Felix—”

“Oh, this wasn't Felix's mother! Felix's mother was Uncle Morris's first wife. She died when Felix was a baby. And then Uncle Morris married again. This was ages ago, long before any of us came to live here, so I can't tell you much about her, Mr. Christmas. I have heard that she was the daughter of an hotel-keeper in Bristol. Uncle Morris was practising as an architect in those days. He lived in Bristol, I know, and I fancy that was where he met his second wife. They were only together two or three years, I believe. She ran away with another man.”

“Was there a divorce?”

“No. I know that, because I used to hear my father talking about the folly of it—the folly of not having a divorce, I mean. But Uncle Morris—well, he wouldn't. Whether because he wanted her back, or just wanted to make himself disobliging, I don't know. It's such ancient history, you see. It must be—oh, twenty years or more ago!”

“I see,” said John slowly. “Twenty years! It sounds like a lifetime. But still—”

Blodwen looked at him doubtfully.

“You can't be thinking there's any connection between that old affair and this.”

“No. But it's as well to know all one can, even about things that happened twenty years ago. One never knows where an investigation like this will lead one. And the more past history one knows, the less likely one is to be led astray. You don't know, I suppose, whether your uncle still kept in touch with his wife?”

Blodwen laughed.

“No. I've never heard him mention her name. All I know is from my father, who didn't admire the lady and thought her departure a good riddance. I don't think even my father knew how Uncle Morris felt about it. Uncle Morris isn't a man to talk about his private affairs to anyone.”

“How long ago was this?” 

“Let me see. It was the year I went to school in Germany. I was sixteen that year. So it's just twenty years ago.”

“You don't remember her name?” 

“Yes, I do! That's the one thing I remember clearly, because it was a queer name, and appealed to my school-girl imagination. Clytie Meadows. Aunt Clytie. I only saw her once, and don't remember much about her. Except that she used a marvellous scent, and had a general air about her of not wanting to be bothered with schoolgirls.”

“And the name of the man she ran away with?” 

“I can't tell you. I suppose I heard it at the time, but it wouldn't have conveyed much to me. Why, Mr. Christmas, this was twenty years ago! Cousin Jim may know. Is there any other family scandal I can rake up for your benefit? No, I don't think so. My Aunt Clytie is the only blot on the family scutcheon within my memory. Until—oh, Mr. Christmas! What a nightmare this is! Is it true? I keep asking myself: is it true? And for quite minutes at a time I can think it isn't, and Uncle Morris is in the library, or out on the farm. Though all the time it's hanging there in the background, something threatening that one's half forgotten! And then it rushes forward, and one can't deceive oneself! It is true! It is! It—”

She bit her lip and turned aside, and suddenly sat down on the steps of the Dutch garden and fondled her setter's long silky ears. When she looked round again after a moment or two, her plain aquiline face wore its usual serene, slightly ironical expression.

“Give me a cigarette, and a match. By the way, that young cousin of mine made a nice mess of it, trying to burn Uncle Morris's letter in full view of the constabulary. Young idiot! As if he couldn't have waited till he got home! And as if there was anything in the letter to feel so guilty about! Really, I don't understand Felix! I thought he had more backbone.”

“My own impression is—” began John, and stopped, wondering whether he had better not, after all, keep his impression to himself.

“Well?” asked Blodwen, and something cool and intelligent in her grey eyes constrained him to go on.

“Well,” said John, sitting down on the top step, and stroking the silky brown muzzle which was laid in an investigatory fashion on his knee, “I think that young Felix is, or at any rate was, afraid that his father really had—”

He paused, absurdly at a loss for a delicate way of putting it.

Miss Price, to his relief, showed no sign of indignation or even astonishment.

“Murdered Charles? Yes, it had occurred to me that Felix thought so. Young idiot, again. But of course he's been away a lot since he grew up. He doesn't really know Uncle Morris well, not so well as I know him. And they rather exasperate one another. They're so alike in some ways, and so different in others, that they don't see one another at all clearly. But if Felix thinks so, there's all the more reason for him to pull his socks up. That's just one of the differences between him and Uncle Morris. Just when it's most necessary for him to stiffen up—he collapses. I'm very fond of Felix. But sometimes I do wish he had a little more grit. It's tiresome when one likes a person and can't admire him. It exasperates one.”

“I say, you are rather a—well, a Roman cousin, aren't you, Miss Price?”

“Hard on Felix, you mean? Hard altogether, perhaps? Yes, I am,” agreed Blodwen tranquilly. She added in a low voice: “But not so hard that I'll be able to bear to live if—if—”

“Then you—”

“Don't share Felix's fears? No, of course not. Uncle Morris might have done it, in a temper. But he says he didn't.”

“But—”

“Oh, yes, I know. But a thousand things in his manner and his voice tell me that he didn't, besides his words. People can't lie to those who know them, about such a matter. Not simple people like Uncle Morris, anyhow. I suppose a Machiavelli can. But then nobody can claim to know a Machiavelli.”

“Oh, surely they may
claim
! A successful Machiavelli would never label himself with a big M.”

Blodwen rose to her feet, tumbling one of her lazy dogs down the steps on to the grass, where he picked himself up leisurely and looked reproachful. She admitted and dismissed this subtlety with a perfunctory smile.

“Isn't there anything we can do? If only I could do something! But to go on like this, to try to live as if nothing had happened! It's impossible! Leave everything to me—that's what Mr. Penrose says. But I don't want to leave everything to him! And he's a lawyer, one can't really tell what he thinks! He's got caution on the brain. And while we waste time here, the real murderer is getting farther and farther away!”

She threw her cigarette down among the roses with a nervous gesture.

“Well,” said John briskly, “to begin with, let's go and look at the drawer in the library where the revolver used to be. And while we're looking at it you can tell me: who had access to this revolver besides your uncle?”

“My dear Mr. Christmas!” said Blodwen with a despairing laugh, as she led the way into the large, cool hall, so shadowy and grateful after the heat of the sun. “I don't think that question will help us much!
Everybody
had access to the revolver!”

They entered the long library, rich and dark with its loaded shelves, and Blodwen closed the door.

“At least,” she amended, “everybody in the house.”

“That is to say?”

“Uncle Morris. Felix. Myself. Charles himself. Cousin Jim. Any of the servants. And any visitor who may have entered the library since the revolver was last seen.”

John smiled.

“It would narrow the inquiry down a little if we could find out when the revolver was last seen safely in its drawer. Perhaps the servant who usually cleans the room would know.”

“Mrs. Maur would know,” said Blodwen, “if anybody would. She dusts this room herself, because my father used to be so fussy about having everything left in its usual place. But I don't suppose she's opened any of the drawers since spring-cleaning. . . Oh, Waters, will you ask Mrs. Maur to come here, please?”

The man-servant who had appeared in answer to Blodwen's ring bowed and withdrew. John noticed that as he turned to go he cast a quick, curious glance at the end drawer of a row of drawers built in under the massive book-cases which lined one wall of the room. As the door closed John asked quickly:

“Which is the drawer? That end one?”

“Yes. How did you know?”

“That chap Waters knows,” observed John thoughtfully. “Though there may be nothing in that. The affair's been pretty thoroughly discussed in the servants' hall, no doubt. Do you know anything about the man? Has he been here long?”

“About three months, I believe. He's quite a satisfactory servant, I think, though Mrs. Maur did mention to me some weeks ago that he was neglecting his work and making one of the housemaids neglect hers. Love's young dream, I suppose. But I've heard no complaints about him since. And after all, one must be reasonable. Oh, Mrs. Maur, Mr. Christmas wants to ask you some questions about this drawer.”

A short, elderly woman with a rather stern but comely face had quietly entered the room and stood with her hands crossed over her black silk apron, awaiting orders. An excellent housekeeper, no doubt, thought John, noting her respectful yet steady glance, her submissive but dignified pose. Faithful, energetic, intelligent and conservative; something a little inhuman, perhaps, in the large, regular features and close-shut lips; a good but not an endearing face; not much toleration there for love's young dream. She waited for the questions. It was not for her to volunteer statements.