I shall not soon forget that afternoon. It began with Audrey and the Baron driving off together for a jaunt in the little cart. They were very merry, and our young Baronet would have liked, I think, to join them. I had noticed Le Sage looking excessively sly during lunch over what he thought, no doubt, was an exclusive discovery of his regarding these two. But he was wrong. They were good friends, and that was all; and, as to the young lady’s heart, I had just as much reason as Orsden—which was none whatever—for claiming a particular share in its interest. Any thought of preference would have been rank presumption in either of us, and the wish, I am sure, was founded upon no such supposition. It was merely that with Hugh in his present mood, the prospect of spending further hours in his company was not an exhilarating one.
He was flushed, and lethargic, and very difficult to move to further efforts when the meal was over; but we got him out at last and went to work. It did not last long with him. It must have been somewhere short of three o’clock that he shouldered his gun and came plodding to me across the stubble.
“Look here, Viv,” he said, “I’m going home. Make my apologies to Orsden, and keep it up with him; but I’m no good, and I’ve had enough of it.”
He turned instantly with the word, giving a short laugh over the meaning expressed obviously enough, I dare say, in my eyes, and began to stride away.
“No,” he called, “I’m not going to shoot myself, and I’m not going to let you make an ass of me. So long!”
I had to let him go. Any further obstruction from me, and I knew that his temper would have gone to pieces. I gave his message to Orsden, and we two continued the shoot without him. But it was a joyless business, and we were not very long in making an end of it. We parted in the road—Orsden for the Bit and Halter and the turning to Leighway, and I for the gates of Wildshott. It was near five o’clock, and a grey still evening. As I passed the stables, a white-faced groom came hurrying to stop me with a piece of staggering news. One of the maids, he said, had been found murdered, shot dead, that afternoon in the Bishop’s Walk.
CHAPTER VI.
“THAT THUNDERS IN THE INDEX”
Le Sage, in the course of a pleasant little drive with Audrey, asked innumerable questions and answered none. This idiosyncrasy of his greatly amused the young lady, who was by disposition frankly outspoken, and whose habit it never was to consider in conversation whether she committed herself or any one else. Truth with her was at least a state of nature—though it might sometimes have worn with greater credit to itself a little more trimming—and states of nature are relatively pardonable in the young. A child who sees no indecorum in nakedness can hardly be expected to clothe Truth.
“This Sir Francis,” asked the Baron, “he is an old friend of yours?”
“O, yes!” said Audrey; “quite an old friend.”
“And favourite?”
“Well, he seems one of us, you see. Don’t you like him yourself?”
“I suppose he and your brother are on intimate terms?”
“We are all on intimate terms; Hugh and Frank no more than Frank and I.”
“And no less, perhaps; or perhaps not quite so much?”
“O, yes they are! What makes you think so?”
“Not quite so intimate, I will put it, as your brother and Mr. Bickerdike?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. Hugh is great friends with them both.”
“Tell me, now—which would you rather he were most intimate with?”
“How can it matter to me?”
“You have a preference, I expect.”
“I certainly have; but that doesn’t affect the question. It was Hugh you were speaking of, not me.”
“Shall I give your preference? It is for Mr. Bickerdike.”
“Well guessed, Baron. Am I to take it as a compliment to my good taste?”
“He is a superior man.”
“Isn’t he? And always wishes one to know it, too.”
“Aha! Then the Baronet is the man?”
“How absurd you are! Do you value your friends by preference? Nobody is the man, as you call it. Because I don’t much like Mr. Bickerdike, it doesn’t follow that I particularly like anybody else.”
“Why don’t you like him?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps because he likes himself too much.”
“Conceited, is he?”
“Not quite that: a first-rate prig I should call him—always wanting to appear cleverer than he really is.”
“Isn’t he clever?”
“O, yes! Clever after a sort; but frightfully obtuse, too. I wouldn’t trust him with a secret. He’s so cocksure of himself that he’d always be liable to give it away with his blessing. But I oughtn’t to speak like that of him. He’s a great friend of Hugh’s, and he does really like to help people, I think, only it must be in his own way and not theirs. Do you like him?”
“I am rather surprised that he and your brother should be on such close terms of friendship.”
“Are you? Why?”
“Is not Mr. Hugo, now, without offence, a rather passionate, self-willed young gentleman?”
“Very, I should say.”
“Balance and instability—there you are.”
“You mean they are not at all alike. I should have thought that was the best reason in the world for their chumming. One of oneself is quite enough for most people. Fancy the horror of being a Siamese twin!”
“Is that why you and Sir Francis are on such good terms—because there is nothing in common between you?”
“Isn’t there? What, for instance.”
“He presents himself to me, from what little I have seen and heard of him, as a rather gentle, spiritual young man, with a taste for books and the fine arts, and a preference in sport, if any, for angling. In aere piscari.”
“What does that mean?”
“I should fancy him a fisherman, by choice, of ideas rather than of streams.”
“And me, I suppose, a cross-tempered, empty-headed country hoyden, who thinks of nothing but dogs and stables?” But she laughed as she bent to Le Sage, looking mockingly into his smiling eyes. “M. le Baron, what a character!”
“It is not of my giving,” he said. “A spirited Diana should have been my antithesis.”
“But why should you contrast us at all? Frank and I are not going to live together.”
“You are bearing in mind, I hope,” he said, “that I promised your father to be back at Wildshott by half-past two?”
“For chess again? What can you find in it?” She pulled up the pony, and, halting in the road, determinedly faced her companion. “Do you know you never answer anything that’s asked of you? Why don’t you?”
“I didn’t know I didn’t.”
“Don’t fib, sir.”
He chuckled aloud. “You are a frank young lady.” He took her slim left hand between his cushiony palms, and patted it paternally. “When a suspected man is arrested, my dear, the first warning he receives from the police is that anything he says may be used in evidence against him. Supposing we apply that rule to common converse? Then at least we shall avoid self-committal.”
“But are we all, every one of us, suspected people?”
“One never knows what may lie in a question. For instance, you ask me what can I find in chess. Very seeming innocent; but, O, the suspicion it may embody!”
“What suspicion?”
“Why, that chess represents my poor wits, and that I live upon them.”
Audrey tinkled with laughter. “I never guessed I was such a serpent. But I am afraid I was only thinking of the dullness of it. To sit for ten minutes looking at a board, and then to move a pawn a single inch on it! Ugh! By that time I should be screaming for ‘Grab.’”
“Let us play ‘Grab’ one night,” said the Baron gaily.
They drove on by the pleasant lanes, and presently came out into the High road near Wildshott. As they passed the wicket in the hedge, a gleam of something, quickly seen and quickly withdrawn among the green beyond, caught Le Sage’s attention. He laid a hand on the reins, suggesting a halt.
“Was that a private way to the house?” he asked. “—there, where the little gate stood?”
Audrey told him yes. That it was called the Bishop’s Walk, and that he might lift the latch and go by it if he pleased. She twinkled as she spoke, and the Baron looked roguish.
“Inquisitive?” said he; “I admit it, if it is the word for an inquiring mind. But not conceited, I hope. I am going to explore.”
He was out in the road, to the dancing relief of the governess-cart springs, and waved au revoir to his companion. She nodded, and drove on, while he turned to go back to the wicket. He hummed as he went, a little philandering French air, droning the words in a soft, throaty way, and was still recalling them as he mounted the two steps from the road, opened the gate, and passed through. His eyes, moving in an immobile face, were busy all the time. “Dites moi, belle enchanteresse,” he sang, “Qui donc vous a donné vos yeux?” just above his breath and suddenly, at a few yards in, eighteen or twenty, swerved from the close narrow track and stepped behind a beech-trunk. And there was a girl hiding from view, her eyes wide, her forefinger crooked to her lip.
“Vos doux yeux, si pleins de tendresse,” hummed M. le Baron, and nodded humorously. “I thought I recognised you from the road.”
She did not flush up or exclaim “Me!” or exhibit any of the offensive-defensive pertness of the ordinary housemaid surprised out of bounds. She just stood looking at the intruder, a wonder on her rosy lips, and Le Sage for his part returned her scrutiny at his leisure. His impression of the night before he found more than confirmed by daylight: she was a very Arcadian nymph, with a sweet-briar complexion and eyes and hair of thyme and honey; shapely as a doe, ineffably pretty. He wondered less than ever over Louis’s infatuation.
And what was she doing here? Her head was bare; a light waterproof veiled her official livery: it might be concluded without much circumspection that a tryst was in the air.
“I am sorry,” said M. le Baron. “I did not come to be a spoil-sport. I ought, perhaps, to have pretended to see nothing and pass by. But that rudeness of my man last night sticks in my mind, and it occurred to me to apologise for him.”
She laughed, with a tiny toss of her head. “Thank you, sir, but I can look after myself.”
“So I perceive,” he said. “You tone very well with the trees. No eyes, except perhaps the favoured ones, could possibly guess you were here.”
“Except yours, sir,” she said, with just a tiny sauce of irony.
“Except mine, of course,” he agreed; and left her to wonder why, if she would.
“Well,” he said, after a smiling moment, “that was an unpardonable act of Louis’s, only don’t visit it further on his head. I have wanted to warn you, and here is my opportunity. He comes of a hot-blooded race, and there’s no knowing——. But you can look after yourself; I will take your word for it.”
He believed she could, though she made no further answer to assure him; and, with a nod, he went on his way, taking up again the little murmured burden of his song: “Yeux, yeux,—Astres divins tombés des cieux.” “O, eyes!” he said. “Sweetest eyes were even seen! From what heaven did you fall to flower in a housemaid’s face!” There was something suggestive about the girl, more than her surprising beauty—a “towniness,” a hint, both in speech and manner, of some shrewd quality which was not of the soil. “When Lamia takes to country service,” thought the Baron, “let more than rustic hearts look to their locks!” With whom, he wondered, could be her assignation? What if, after all, it were with Louis himself? Would that surprise him? Perhaps not. Cabanis was a handsome and compelling fellow, and women, like the Lord, could chasten whom they loved. But he devoutly hoped it was not so; he desired no amorous complications in his train; and, disturbed by the thought, he inquired for his valet the moment he reached the house—only to learn that the man had gone out some time before and had not yet returned. Somewhat disquieted, Le Sage entered the hall, where he was met by his host.
“Ah, Baron!” hailed Sir Calvin. “Punctuality itself! Go into my study, will you, and I’ll join you in a moment.”
The study was a comfortable room on the ground floor, with a large bay window overlooking the gardens. Here the table for chess was set ready, with a brace of high easy chairs and, handily contiguous, a smoker’s cabinet. There were trophies of the chase and some good sporting pictures on the walls, against them a couple of mahogany bookcases containing well-bound editions of Alken, Surtees, and others, and, let into an alcove of that one of them which included the fireplace, a substantial safe. Le Sage knew it was there, though it was hidden from sight behind a shallow curtain; and now, as he moved humming about the room, his hands behind his back, his eyes scrutinising a picture or two while he awaited his host’s coming, he gravitated gradually toward its place of concealment. Arrived there, he lifted very delicately, and still humming, the hem of the curtain, just exposed the keyhole, and bent to examine it with singular intentness. But a moment later, when the General entered, he was contemplating a coaching print by Flavell over the mantelpiece.
“Indifferent art, I suppose you will admit,” he said. “But there is something picturesquely direct about these old Sporting pieces.”
“Well, they suit me,” answered Sir Calvin, “because I understand them. Red’s red and blue’s blue to me, and if any artist tells me they are not, I’ve nothing to answer the fellow but that he’s a damned liar.”
Le Sage laughed—“What is the colour of a black eye, then?”—and they settled down to their game. The General was a good player; all the best of his mental qualifications—which were otherwise of the standard common among retired officers of an overbearing, obstinate, and undiscerning disposition—were displayed in his astute engineering of his small forces. He was a tactical Napoleon in miniature when it came to chess; he seemed to acquire then a reason and a dignity inconspicuous in his dealings with living people. The chess-men could not misrepresent him; their movements were his movements, and their successes or failures his. If he lost, he had no one but himself he could possibly blame, and his understanding of that condition seemed to bring out the best in him. He was never choleric over the fortunes of the game. For the rest, he was not a wise man, or an amenable man, or anything but a typical despot of his class, having an inordinate pride of family, which owed less than it should have to any moral credit he had brought it in the past. In person he was a leanish, clean-built soldier of fifty-five, with bullying eyebrows and a thick blunt moustache of a grizzled blonde.
He and the Baron were very fond of devising problems, which they would send up for solution to the Morning Post. They set to elaborating a tough one now, a very difficult changed-mate two-mover, which kept them absorbed and occupied over the board for a considerable time. Indeed, a full hour and a half had passed before they had settled it to their satisfaction; and then the Baron, taking a refreshing pinch of Macuba, rose to his feet.
“That is it, my friend,” said he; “an economical B.P. at K. Knight 4, and the thing is done.”
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed a quarter past four as he spoke, and on the tinkling reverberation of its one stroke some one opened the door. It was Hugo Kennett: the young man’s face was ghastly; his hands shook; he came into the room hurriedly, as if overweighted with some dreadful piece of intelligence.
“Good God, Hughie!” exclaimed his father, and rose, staring at the boy, his eternal cigarette caught between his teeth.
The young soldier made an effort to speak; his breath fluttered audibly in him like the leaf of a ventilator; his nerve seemed for the moment gone utterly beyond his control.
“Steady, sir!” commanded the General; and his masterful tone had its visible effect. “Now,” he said, after a rallying pause. “What is it?”
Hugh swallowed once or twice, and answered. Le Sage, observant of him, could see what immense force he had to put upon himself to do so.
“The Bishop’s Walk! Can you come at once, sir? There’s been what looks like a dreadful murder there.”
Sir Calvin never so much as blenched or exclaimed. One might at least admire in him the self-possessed soldier, not to be rattled by any sudden call upon his nerve.
“Murder!” he said. “Whose murder?”
The young man’s lips quivered; he looked physically sick.
“It’s one of the maids, sir. I saw her; I came upon her myself. I had forgotten my gun, and went back to fetch it, and there she was lying on her face, and——” He put his hands before his own face and shuddered horribly.
“Look here,” said the father, “you must pull yourself together. This won’t do at all. Baron, get me my hunting flask, if you’ll be so good. It’s in the right-hand top drawer of my desk.”
He poured into the cup, with an unshaking hand, a full half gill of liqueur brandy, and made his son drink it down. It wrought a measure of effect; a tinge of colour came to Hugh’s cheek; his hurried respirations steadied.
“Now,” said Sir Calvin, “try to be coherent. What do you mean by forgetting your gun?”
“I mean, sir,”—he looked down; his features still twitched spasmodically, “I mean—it was like this. I was no good at the shoot, and I left it and came back by myself—came back by the Bishop’s Walk. Just a little way inside, I stopped to light a cigarette, and rested my gun against a tree and forgot it; but an hour later I remembered that I had left it there, and went back to fetch it, and saw—O, it was ghastly!”
“Steady, man! Was the girl there when you first entered the path?”
Le Sage listened for an answer in the affirmative, and could hardly hear it when it came.
“And you stopped to light a cigarette?” The father looked keenly into the son’s face. “You haven’t yet told us what girl, Hughie.”
The good liqueur was working. The young fellow lifted his head, a new passionate expression in his eyes:—
“It was Annie, sir—that good-looking housemaid. You wouldn’t wonder over my horror if you saw. He must have fired at short range, the damned villain, and when she was turned from him. There is a hole in her back that one could put—ah, I can’t tell you!”
M. le Baron exclaimed, “That would have been,” said he, speaking for the first time, “between three and four, when you discovered the body?”
“Just now,” answered Hugh, addressing his father. “I have come straight from it. They are waiting for you, sir, to know what to do.”
“It was done with your gun? Is that the assumption?” suggested the Baron.
“I don’t know,” replied the young man feverishly, again not to the questioner. “I suppose so; I dare say. Both barrels are discharged, and one I am pretty sure I left loaded. Are you coming, sir?”
Sir Calvin, frowning a stiff moment, moved to acquiesce. They all went out together. At the entrance to the track a group of frightened maid-servants stood white-lipped and whispering, afraid to penetrate farther. One or two grooms and a couple of gardeners had already gone in, and were awaiting about the body the arrival of their master. It lay, face downwards, close beside the beech trunk behind which the living girl had sought to hide herself from Le Sage. That stood at a point in the winding path some twenty-five yards from the wicket, and was nowhere remotely visible from the road. She might have been making her way back to the house when she was fired on and shattered. It was a pitiful, ugly sight; but death must have been instantaneous—that was one comfort. Le Sage made the most of it to himself, though he was really distressed and moved. “Poor eyes!” he thought, “si pleins de tendresse: but an hour ago so beautiful, and now quenched in death. So this was the tryst you kept! Why, it can hardly be cold yet about your heart.”
Sir Calvin, stern and wrath, gave brief directions. A shutter was to be brought, a doctor fetched from Longbridge by one servant, the county police informed by another. He asked a short question or two—one of his son. Was this the tree against which he had left his gun leaning? Hugh answered no, while Le Sage listened. He had left it, he said, propped against a smaller trunk, four or five yards nearer the gate. He had had to pass the body to recover it, and had then taken it home, and thrust it into the gun-room as he had hurried by to raise an alarm. He spoke with extreme agitation, averting his eyes from the dead girl; and, indeed, it was a sight to move a tougher heart than his. Sir Calvin’s next question was to the group at large. It was to ask if any one knew of any enemy the unfortunate victim had raised against herself, or of any possible reason for the attack. But no one knew or guessed, or, if he felt a suspicion, would have dared to formulate it. It would have been too risky a venture at this stage of the affair. Their master looked from face to face, and grunted and spoke a warning word. If that were so, he said, let them avoid all loose discussion of the matter until the police had taken it in hand. It might, after all, prove no murder, but only an accident, the perpetrator of which, terrified by the deed which he had unwittingly committed, might be keeping silence only until assured that he could tell the truth without danger to himself. Le Sage ventured to applaud that suggestion, turning to Hugh to ask him if he did not think it a quite reasonable one. But the young man refused to consider it; he was very excited; it was murder, he said, gross, palpable, open, and it was mere criminal sophistry to pretend to account for it on any other theory. His father steadied him once more with a word, and the three turned to go back to the house together as they had come, leaving the men to follow with the body. On issuing from the copse they found the little group of frightened sobbing women reinforced by Cleghorn. The butler wore a cloth cap and a light overcoat. His face was the colour of veal, and his lower jaw hung in a foolish incapable way.
“Ha, Cleghorn!” said his master. “This is a bad business.”
“It’s knocked me all of a heap, sir,” answered the man. His voice shook and wheezed. “I’ve only this moment heard of it, sir.”
Hugo hung behind as they entered the hall. His father, steady as a rock, marched on to his study, and was followed by M. le Baron. The latter shut the door upon them.
“An ugly business,” he said.
“A cursed interruption to our game,” damned the General. He was greatly incensed. That such a vulgar scandal should have come to pollute the sacred preserves of Wildshott seemed to him the incredible outrage.
“What am I to do?” he said. “What is the infernal procedure? There will have to be an inquest, I suppose, and then——”
“And then to indict the murderer,” said Le Sage, answering the pause.
“You think it is a murder?”
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know; I suppose so. It may prove a devil of a business to find out. Ought we to have a detective?”
“These provincial police are excellent men, but their normal training——. Still, it may prove a quite simple affair.”
“I have a feeling somehow that it won’t. I’d better write up to Scotland Yard.”
“If you’re decided on it, why not apply? there is, or was, in the neighbourhood the very man.”
“You mean that fellow Ridgway? By Jove, yes—a clever dog! I’ll motor into Winton first thing to-morrow, and find out. In the meantime—where’s Hugo?”
“I think I saw him go upstairs. I’ll have him sent to you, if you’ll allow me. I was wanting to write some letters.”
He retreated, with a smile which left his face the moment he was outside. Finding a servant, he gave her Sir Calvin’s message, and then put a question of his own:—
“Do you know where my man is, my dear?”
“I think Mr. Cabanis is out, sir,” answered the girl. Her cheeks were still mottled with the fright of things. “He went out some time ago.”
“O, to be sure! About three o’clock, wasn’t it?”
“Earlier than that, sir—directly after dinner in the servants’ hall.”
Her manner appeared a little odd, disordered; but that might have been due to the shock they had all received.
“And he has not yet returned?” said the Baron cheerily. “Well, send him to me the moment he comes in, if you will be so good.” And he moved to mount the stairs, humming as he went. But again, though his song was light, he turned a dark face to the wall.
CHAPTER VII.
THE BARON VISITS THE SCENE OF THE CRIME
(From the Bickerdike MS.)
I confess that the man’s communication, coming on the top of my concern for my friend, fairly, in the first moment of it, took me aghast. The state in which I had found Hugh, that disquieting business of the gun, his insistence on sticking to his weapon—it was inevitable that my mind should instinctively leap to some association between these and a catastrophe so seemingly their corollary in its nature and instrumentality. It was odd, but ever since my meeting with the Baron in Simpson’s smoking-room a sense as of some vague fatality had seemed to overcloud me. It was formless, impalpable, but it was there, like that unnerving atmosphere which precedes, according to people who know, an earthquake. But that first sick alarm was not long in dissipating itself in me in a fine scorn. The thing, to my recovered judgment, was simply incredible. Apart from the brutal clumsiness, the unthinking recklessness of such a deed, what was there in my knowledge of my friend to justify such a horrible assumption? Spoilt he was, selfish he was, no doubt, but always the last man in the world to incline to personal violence. A sensitiveness to pain, almost morbid, on account of himself or others, was rather his characteristic; an excess of affection, his charm and his weakness. He could not have done it, of course, for whatever mad reason.
But, as I came to learn the particulars of the tragedy, so far as they were known or guessed, another suspicion, less base though still discomposing, would occur to me. The poor girl, according to all accounts, had been a great beauty; and it appeared probable—from evidence freely volunteered by M. le Baron, who had passed through the copse some short time before the murder must have been committed, and who had seen and spoken with her there—that she was keeping an assignation. With whom? Who could as yet say? But I had too good reason to dread my friend’s susceptibility where the adorable feminine was concerned, and I could not forget how the time of the assignation, if such it were, had coincided with that of his leaving the shoot. “This,” I thought, “may be as unjustified an assumption as the other; still, for the sake of argument, admit it, and one thing at least is accounted for. With such a wire-strung nature as Hugh’s, the consciousness of a guilty intrigue would be quite enough to induce in him that state of recklessness and excitability which had so bothered and perplexed me.”
It was still, in fact, perplexing me at dinner on the night of the murder, when, after the withdrawal of Audrey and the servants, much discussion of the tragic subject took place, and later, when he and I were for a brief time alone together in the billiard-room. It was not so much that he was not shocked and horrified with the rest of us, as that his emotions were expressed in such an extraordinary form. They made him lament one moment, and go into half hysterical laughter the next; now utter raging imprecations against the dastard capable of so damnable a crime, now assert that jealousy was probably responsible for it, and that no man who had not felt jealousy had a right to sit in judgment on a passion which was after all not so much a passion as a demoniac possession. Then he would declare that, the thing being done, it was no good making oneself miserable about it, and rally me on my long face, which, he said, made him feel worse than a hundred murders. The horror of the thing had no doubt unhinged him, coupled with the knowledge that it was through his own carelessness in leaving a loaded gun within reach of temptation that the deed had been made possible. With such a nature as his, that consciousness must have counted for much, though still, and at the same time, I could never quite rid myself of the feeling that, beneath all his expressed remorse and pity, a strange little note of—I will not call it relief, but ease from some long haunting oppression, made itself faintly audible. However, remembering his late promise of confidence to me, I determined to abide in patience its coming, only wondering in the interval what had instigated his remarks on jealousy, and if it were possible that they had been inspired by any suspicion of the criminal, and if so, on what personal grounds. He came down quite quiet to breakfast the next morning, and from that time onwards was his own rational hospitable self.
Early in the afternoon of that day Sir Calvin came back with the detective, Sergeant Ridgway, in tow. The latter had been retrieved, by good luck, from Antonferry, whither, after the trial, he had returned from Winton to settle for the lodgings he had occupied during the Bank investigations. The General had been fortunate in encountering him at the very moment of his departure, and had at once secured from him, contingent on the receipt of official authority, a promise to undertake the case. A prepaid telegram to Scotland Yard had brought the necessary sanction, and within a couple of hours of its despatch the Sergeant was safe at Wildshott, and already engaged over the preliminaries of the business. Personally, I admit, I felt greatly relieved by his appearance on the scene. A notable writer has somewhat humoured a belief in the fatuity of the professional detective; but that was with a view, I think, to exalt his own incomparable amateur rather than to discredit a singularly capable body of men, having a pretty persistent record of success to justify their being. Intellectuality was at least not absent by inference from this face. When I saw it, I felt that the case was in safe hands, and that henceforth we might, one and all of us, cast whatever burden of personal responsibility had unwittingly overhung our spirits. The Sergeant was installed in the house, and lost no time in getting to work in a reassuring, business-like way. He went in the first instance to view the body, which had been laid on a table in the gun-room, with a policeman—one of two brought over the night before by the Chief Constable, a friend of Sir Calvin’s, in person—to watch the door. Thereafter, established in the General’s study, he briefly reviewed the evidence of such witnesses as could supply any topical information that bore on the crime—Le Sage, to wit, Hugo himself, Mrs. Bingley the housekeeper, and one or two of the servants, including the men who, on their young master’s alarmed summons, had first entered the copse to remove the body.
I was present during the whole, I think, of this examination, and for the following reason. It happened that I and the Baron, on his way to the study, met in the hall, when he attacked me, I thought rather impertinently, on a question of punctilio.
“Do you not think, my friend,” he said, “that under the circumstances it would be decent of us to offer to terminate our visit? Supposing we both, here and now, address Sir Calvin on the subject?”
I was very much annoyed. “Baron,” I said, “I am not accustomed to seek advice in matters of conduct, and I certainly shall not do as you propose. Apart from the question of deserting my friend in a crisis, I think that any suggestion of our leaving now would look like a desire to avoid inquiry—which I, for my part, am far from wishing to do—and would bear a very bad complexion. You can act as you like; but it is my intention to see this thing through.”
“O, very well!” he said. “Then I will speak for myself alone.”
Why should he wish to escape? All my instinctive suspicion of him reawakened on the moment; and I wondered. True, he could not himself have perpetrated the crime; Hugo’s evidence would not permit of such a supposition; but could he not be somehow implicated in it as instigator or abettor? I determined then and there to keep a very close observation on M. le Baron.
We entered the room together, since I would not suffer his going in alone to misrepresent me. Sir Calvin was there, with his son and the detective. I saw the last for the first time. He was quite the typical Hawkshaw, and handsome at that—a lithe man of middle height, with a keen, dark, aquiline face, and clean-shaven jaws and chin. I could have thought him a young man for his work and reputation; he did not look more than thirty-five, and might have been less; but about his mental ability, if one could judge by indications, there was no question. A certain rather truculent dandyism in his dress contrasted oddly with this intellectuality of feature; it showed itself a little over-emphatic in the matter of trouser-crease and collar and scarf-pin, and it tilted his black plush Homburg hat, when out of doors, at a slightly theatrical angle. But taste, after all, is a question not of mind but of breeding, and the man who has, like Disraeli, to stand on his head for a living, may be excused a little ostentation in the process. He looked at us both searchingly as we entered.
“This, Sergeant,” said Sir Calvin, “is the Baron Le Sage, whom I mentioned to you as having encountered the unfortunate young woman in the copse a little before——”
The detective nodded. “I should like to ask a question of you, sir.”
Le Sage told what he knew. It was very little, and only of value in so far as it touched upon the evidence of time.
“It must have been a little before half-past two when we met,” he said.
“And shortly after three,” said the detective, turning to Hugo, “when you came by the same path, sir, and had your little talk with her, like this gentleman?”
“My talk,” said the Baron, smiling, “was of the briefest. We exchanged but a pleasant word or two, and I passed on.”
“And yours,” said the detective to Hugh, “was perhaps of a more prolonged sort?”
“It may have been, Sergeant,” was my friend’s answer. He was looking pale but composed; and his manner was absolutely frank and unequivocal. “You see,” said he, “poor Annie was, after all, one of the household, and there was nothing out of the way in my stopping to speak with her. We may have chatted for ten minutes—I should think no longer—while I put down my gun and lighted a cigarette. I was back at the house by a quarter past three or thereabouts.”
“And you remembered, and returned for your gun?”
“That must have been just about four o’clock.”
“So that the murder, if murder it was, must have been committed some time between 3.15 and 4 p.m.”
“That is so, I suppose.”
The detective stood as if mutely weighing the few facts at his disposition for a moment or two, then turned to the General.
“We shall want evidence of identity, Sir Calvin,” he said. “Your housekeeper, I suppose, engaged the young woman? Can I see her?”
Mrs. Bingley was rung for, and in the interval, while awaiting her appearance, Le Sage approached our host.
“Pardon me, Sir Calvin,” said he; “but before you proceed any further, would you not prefer that I should withdraw? I cannot but feel that my visit itself is proving untimely, and that it were better that I should relieve you of the embarrassment of——”
But the General broke in forcibly.
“Not a bit of it! There’s nothing to conceal. Damn it, man! Beyond helping this Sergeant what we can to find out the truth, I don’t see why the even tenour of our ways need disturb itself by so much as a thought. No, no; you came for chess, and you’ll stay for chess!” A sentiment which, while justifying my own attitude, pretty effectually disposed of the Baron’s affected, and perhaps interested scruples.
He smiled, with a tiny shrug. “Well, if I am not in the way!” and addressed the detective; “the ruling passion, you see, Sergeant Ridgway. Do you play chess?”
“A little,” answered the man, cautious even in his admission. “It’s a great game.”
“It’s the game,” said the Baron. “We’ll play, you and I, one of these days, when you’re needing some distraction from your labours.”
“Very well, sir,” responded the detective civilly, and at that moment Mrs. Bingley entered the room.
Wildshott was, by common assent, fortunate in its housekeeper. She was a good soul and a good manager, strict but tolerant, ruling by tact alone. Spare and wiry, her virgin angularity (despite her courtesy title), was of the sort one associates with blessed women in old painted manuscripts. Firmness and patience showed in her capable face, to which agitation had now lent a rather red-eyed pallor. She bowed to Sir Calvin, and faced the detective quietly:—
“You wanted to speak with me, sir?”
“Just a few words,” he answered. “This young woman’s name, Mrs. Bingley——?”
“Was Annie Evans, sir.”
“And her age?”
“She was just, by her own statement, turned twenty-three.”
“You have communicated with her relations?”
“No, indeed. She never referred to any, and I have no means of finding them out. Annie was a very reserved girl.”
“But surely, when you engaged her——”
“I did so by advertisement, sir, through the Ladies’ Times newspaper. We were in immediate need of an under-housemaid, and there was a difficulty about local girls. I put an advertisement in the paper, as I had often done before, preferring that method to the agencies, and she answered it. That was about two months ago.”
“And her former employer?”
“That was a Mrs. Wilson, sir. She had gone to New Zealand, and left a written character with Annie. It was quite against my custom to take a servant with only a written character; but in this instance I was persuaded to break my rule, the character given was so excellent, and the girl herself so modest and attractive.”
“H’m! Then you saw her before engaging her?”
“I went up to see her at the office of the paper itself by her own appointment, and was so struck by her manner and appearance that I settled with her then and there. She was to come down two days later. To the best of my memory, I never inquired about her people.”
“But she must have spoken of them—received letters?”
“She never spoke of them to my knowledge, or that of her fellow servants, to whom I have put the question. As to letters, Annie certainly did receive one now and again—one or two quite recently; but I have been looking, and can find no trace of any. It would have been just like her funny sensitive ways to destroy every one of them.”
The detective was silent for a moment, his dark scrutinizing eyes fixed on the speaker’s face, as if he were pondering some significance, to him, in the answer.
“What became of the written character?” he asked presently.
“I returned it to her, sir. It is customary to do so.”
“In case she should want to use it again? That being so, I should have thought she would have kept it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But you have not come across it?”
“It may be in her boxes. I have not looked.”
“You and I must overhaul those boxes, Mrs. Bingley. Did you think, now, of making any inquiries about this Mrs. Wilson?”
“No, it would have been useless; she had already sailed for New Zealand.”
“Do you remember her address?”
“She wrote, so far as I can recollect, from the Savoy Hotel.”
Sergeant Ridgway took an envelope from his pocket, and making a note on the back of it, returned it into keeping.
“Well, you can leave that to me,” he said, and, resting his right elbow in the palm of the other hand, softly caressed his chin, bending an intent look on his witness.
“Now, ma’am,” he said. “I want to ask you a particular question. Has Annie Evans’s conduct, while in this service, always continued to justify you in your first good opinion of her?”
“Always,” answered the housekeeper with emphasis. “She was a thoroughly good straightforward girl, and during the short time she was here I have never had any trouble with her that was of her own procuring.”
“Will you tell me quite what you mean by that?”
“Well, sir, she could not help being pretty and admired, and if it led to some quarrels among the men on her account, the blame was theirs, and never in the smallest degree to be charged to her conduct with them. She always did her best to keep them at a distance.”
“O, quarrels, were there? Can you tell me of any particular quarrel, now?”
“I could——” began the housekeeper, and stopped.
“Come, Mrs. Bingley,” said her master. “You must speak out without fear or favour.”
“I know it, sir,” said the housekeeper, distressed. “I will try to do my duty.”
“Hey!” cried the General. “Of course you must. You wouldn’t want to risk hanging the wrong man? What particular quarrel—hey?”
“It was between Mr. Cleghorn and the Baron’s gentleman, sir.”
“Cleghorn, eh? Great Scott! Was he sweet on the girl?”
“I think for some time he had greatly admired her, sir. And then Mr. Cabanis came; and being a young man, with ways different from ours——” again she hesitated.
“Out with it!” cried Sir Calvin. “Don’t keep anything back.”
“On the night before—before the deed,” said the housekeeper, with an effort, “Annie had come down into the kitchen, I was told, red with fury over Mr. Cabanis having tried to kiss her. She had boxed his ears for him, she said, and he had looked murder at her for it. He came down himself later on, I understand, and there was a fine scene between the two men. It was renewed the next day at dinner, when Annie wasn’t there, and in the end, after having come to blows and been separated, they both went out, Cabanis first, and Mr. Cleghorn a little later. That is the truth, sir, and now may I go?”
I think we were all sorry for the Baron; it appeared so obvious whither the trend of the detective’s inquiries must henceforth carry him. But he sat quite quiet, with only a smile on his face.
“Louis is not vindictive,” was the sole thing he contented himself with saying.
Sir Calvin turned to the detective. “Do you need Mrs. Bingley any more?”
“Not for the present,” answered the Sergeant, and the housekeeper left the room. I had expected from him, on her disappearance, some significant look or gesture, betokening his acceptance of the inevitable conclusion; but he made no such sign, and merely resumed his business conduct of the case. He knew better than we, no doubt, that in crime the most obvious is often the most unreliable.
“We must find the girl’s relations, if possible, Sir Calvin,” he said. “You can leave that to me, however. What I would advise, if her boxes yield no clue, would be an advertisement in the papers.”
An examination of some of the servants ensued upon this; but beyond the fact of their supplying corroborative testimony as to the quarrel, their evidence was of little interest, and I omit it here. The Baron disappeared during the course of the inquiry, so secretively that I think I was the only one who noticed his going. At the end the detective expressed a desire to examine the scene of the crime. If one of us, he said, would conduct him there, he would be satisfied and would ask no more. He did not want a crowd. I ventured to volunteer, and was accepted. Sir Calvin had looked towards his son; but Hugh, with reason sufficient, had declined to go. He had sat throughout the inquiry, after giving his own evidence, perfectly still, and with a sort of white small smile on his lips. Thinking my own thoughts, I was sorry for him.
The Sergeant and I made for the coppice. Passing the constable at the gun-room door, he nodded to him. “That’s a poor thing inside,” he said, as we went on. “What a lot of trouble she’d save if she could speak! Well, I suppose that him that did it thinks she’s got her deserts.” “I hope he’ll get his,” I answered. “Ah!” he agreed, “I hope he will.” We turned a bend as we came near the fatal beech-tree—and there was the Baron before us!
The detective stopped with a smart exclamation, then went on slowly.
“Doing a little amateur detective work on your own, sir?” he asked sarcastically.
“I was considering, my friend,” answered the Baron. “It becomes interesting to me, you see, since my man is involved.”
“Who said he was involved, sir?”
“Ah! Who, now? You can see very distinctly, Sergeant, where the body lay—just the one ugly token. No signs of a struggle, I think; and the ground too hard to have left a trace of footprints. But I won’t disturb you at your work.”
“I wouldn’t, sir,” said the detective pretty bluntly. “You can undertake, I fancy, to leave it all to me.”
“I’m sure I can,” answered the Baron pleasantly, and he went off towards the house, humming softly to himself a little French air.
“Who is he?” asked the detective, when the odd creature was out of hearing.
“I know little more about him than you do,” I answered; “and Sir Calvin’s acquaintance with him is, I think, almost as casual as my own. We both met him abroad at different times. He may be a person of distinction, or he may be just an adventurer for all I know to the contrary.”
“Well,” said the officer, “whoever he is, I don’t want him meddling in my business, and I shall have to tell Sir Calvin so.”
“Do,” I said. “Chess is the Baron’s business, and it’s that that he’s here for.”
But I kept my private suspicions, while duly noting as much as might or might not be implied in Le Sage’s curious interest in the scene of the crime. No doubt the last thing he had expected was our sudden descent upon him there.
CHAPTER VIII.
AN ENTR’ACTE
Jake was a boy of imagination, though one would never have thought it to look at his jolly rubicund face and small sturdy form. The very gaiters on his stout calves, spruce and workmanlike, would have precluded any such idea. His master, Sir Francis Orsden—the son of one of whose gamekeepers he was—would never, though a young man of imagination himself, have guessed in Jake a kindred spirit. Yet, when Sir Francis played on the organ in the little church at Leighway, and Jake blew for him, it was odds which of the two brought the more inspiration to his task. Sir Francis would practise there occasionally, and bring the boy with him, because Jake was dogged and strong of muscle, and not easily tired. He never knew what secret goad to endurance the small rascal possessed in his imagination. The business in hand-blowing was to watch a plummet’s rise and fall: you pumped for the fall and slackened for the rise. That was the hard prose of it; but Jake knew a better way. He would imagine himself blowing up a fire with a bellows. When a full organ was needed, he had to blow like the devil to keep the plummet down, and then the fire roared under his efforts; otherwise, a gentle purring glow was easily stimulated. At another time he would be filling a bucket at a well for a succession of thirsty horses, and would so nicely time the allowance for each that the bucket was descending again on the very point of its being sucked dry. Or he would be the landlord of the Bit and Halter, dozing over his parlour fire, nodding, nodding down in little jerks, and then recovering himself with an indrawn rising sigh. Sometimes, when the music was very liquid, he would work a beer engine—one or two good pulls, and then the upward flow through the syphon; sometimes he would fish, and, getting a bite, pull in. These make-believes greatly ameliorated the tedium of his office by importing a sense of personal responsibility into it. It was not so much the music he had to keep going as his fancy of the moment.
One morning he was blowing for his master—and pretending, rather gruesomely, to be an exhausted swimmer struggling for a few strokes, and then relaxing and drifting until agonised convulsively to fresh efforts—when he became aware of a young lady standing by him and amusedly watching his labours. Jake ducked, even in the process of pumping, and Miss Kennett put a finger to her lips. She was quite a popular young lady among the villagers, whom she treated on terms of sociability which her father would strongly have disapproved had he known. There was nothing of Touchstone’s rosy Audrey about Miss Kennett, but there was a good deal of the graceful and graceless rebel. Grievance, mutely felt, had thrown her into another camp than that of her order.
Sir Francis played on, unconscious of his listener; until presently, with a whispered “Give it me, Jacob,” the young lady appropriated the pump-handle and began herself to inflate the lungs of the music. The change did not make for success; her strokes, femininely short and quick, raced against the rising plummet, and presently gave out altogether at a critical moment of full pressure. The wind went from the pipes in a dismal whine; Miss Kennett sat back on the pump-handle in a fit of helpless laughter, and Sir Francis came dodging round the organ in a fume.
“Great Scott!” he exclaimed; and the asperity in his face melted into an amiable grin.
“My mistake,” said Audrey. “Do go on!”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t; but I heard some one grinding the organ, and came in to see.”
“Jake,” said his master, “Miss Kennett is going to blow for me, so you can cut along.”
The boy touched his forehead, secured his cap, and departed.
“A good youngster,” said Sir Francis.
“I love him,” said Audrey.
“Ah!” sighed the young Baronet, “lucky Jake!”
“Frank, don’t be tiresome. Do you really want me to blow for you? No, not for ever. I know you are going to say it, and it would simply be silly. If I am going to stop here, you must talk sense.”
“I have hardly said anything yet.”
“Well, don’t say it. Sit down and play.”
“I don’t want to play: I want to be serious. Why am I so obnoxious to you, Audrey?”
“Now I shall go.”
“No. Do be patient. Really, you know, you have never yet said, in so many words, why you won’t marry me.”
“Yes I have. It is because I couldn’t possibly call myself Audrey Orsden of Audley.”
“Well, if you will be flippant.”
She stood looking at him a moment. “I didn’t mean to be flippant, Frank—nothing but kind. Shall we go a walk together? It’s such a lovely morning. Only you must promise.”
“I think I know what you mean by kind, Audrey—kind in forbearing. Very well, I will promise.”
He stowed his music away, and they went out together—out through the green and shadowed churchyard, with its old headboards and epitaphs. There was one to a merry maid dead at sixteen, whose thoughtless laughter had served some mortuary rhymster for a theme on the perishableness of sweet things, with an earnest recommendation to the Christian to be wise while he might—as if wisdom lay in melancholy. There was a fine opportunity for drawing a moral; but Sir Francis did not draw it. Perhaps he thought he would rather have marriage as a jest than no wife at all.
Soon they were outside the village and making for the free Downs. Audrey was always at her best and frankest on the Downs.
“I had wanted to speak to you,” said her companion. “Is it really true that our friend the Baron’s man has been arrested in connexion with this horrible affair?”
“Yes, it is quite true. Poor Baron! I am not allowed to know much about it all; but it seems that everything points to this Louis being the culprit. He went out on the afternoon of the murder with the express purpose of seeking Annie, and did not come home till long afterwards. The police have taken him into custody on suspicion.”
“It must be awkward for you all, having the Baron for a guest.”
“It is, in a way; but we can’t very well ask him to go elsewhere while his man is in peril. He offered; but papa wouldn’t hear of it. He said the best thing for them both was to go on playing chess.”
“How’s Hugo?”
“He’s all right. Why shouldn’t he be?”
“I don’t know. Only he struck me as being upset about something on that day we shot together.”
“Well, he doesn’t give me his confidence, you know.”
“No, I know. Poor Audrey!”
“Why do you call me poor Audrey?” asked the girl angrily. “I don’t want your pity, or anybody’s.”
“You don’t want anything of mine, I’m sure; and yet it’s all there for your acceptance—every bit.”
“Is this keeping your promise? No, I don’t. I want what I want, and it’s nothing that you can give me.”
“Not my whole love and submission, Audrey?”
She flounced her shoulder, and seemed as if about to leave him, but suddenly thought better of it, and faced him resolutely.
“It’s that, Frank, though you don’t seem to understand it. I don’t want any man’s submission! I want his mastership, if I want him at all.” Her eyes softened, and she looked at him pityingly. “I hate to pain you, you dear; but I can’t marry you. You have a thousand good qualities; you are gentle and true and just and honourable, and you have a mind to put my poor little organ to shame. Why you should possibly want me, I can’t tell; but I’m very sure of one thing—that I am wise in disappointing you. We should be the brass and the earthenware pots, Frank, and you would be the one to be broke. I know it. You are a poet, and I am the very worst of prose. You have a right to despise me, and I have a right—not to despise you, but to see what you are not—from my point of view.”
“That is to say, a sportsman.”
“You know I could never pretend to any sympathy with your real tastes—books and music and musty old prints, and all that sort of thing.”
He laughed. “Well, I shall try again.”
His persistence goaded her to cruelty.
“If you want to know the truth, I like a man to be a man, as my brother is.”
His face twitched and sobered. “And I am not one.”
“Why do you make me say these things?” she cried resentfully. “You drive me to it, and then take credit, I suppose, for your larger nature.”
“I take credit for nothing,” said he. “My account with you is all on the debit side. Audrey, dear, please forgive me for having broken my word. It shall be the last time.”
“I believe it has been the first,” she said, with a rather quivering lip. “I will say that for you, Frank. Your word is your bond. Now do let us talk about something else. I came out to get rid of all that horrible atmosphere, of police, and detectives, and suspicions about everybody and everything, and this is my reward. The inquest is taking place this very day, and how glad I shall be when the whole sick business is over, and the poor thing decently buried, words can’t say. Now, one, two, three, and let us race for that clump.”
CHAPTER IX.
THE INQUEST
The Bit and Halter was seething with excitement. Its landlord, Joe Harris, selected foreman of the jury about to sit on the poor remains of that which, five days earlier, had been the living entity known as Annie Evans, had all the bustling air of a Master of the Ceremonies at some important entertainment. The tap overflowed as on an auction day—occasion most popular for bringing together from near and far those birds of prey to whom a broken home or a bankrupt farm stock offers an irresistible attraction. Here it was another sort of calamity, but the moral was the same. It turned upon that form of Epicurism which consists in watching comfortably from an auditorium the agonies of one’s martyred fellow-creatures in the arena. There are sybarites of that complexion who, if they cannot be in at the death, will go far to be in at the burying.
The case, both from its local notoriety and the agreeable mystery which surrounded it, had aroused pretty widespread interest. Speculation as to its outcome was rife and voluble. Quite a pack of vehicles stood congregated in the road, and quite a crowd of their owners in and about the inn enclosure. Each known official visage, as it appeared, was greeted with a curious scrutiny, silent until the new-comer had passed, and then rising garrulous in the wake of his going. There was no actual ribaldry heard, but plenty of rather excited jocularity, with odds given and taken on the event. If the poor shattered voiceless thing, which lay so quietly in its shell in an outhouse awaiting the coming verdict, could only once have pleaded in visible evidence for itself, surely the solemnity of that mute entreaty for peace and forgetfulness would have found its way even to those insensate hearts. But charity is as much a matter of imagination as of feeling, and many an unobtrusive need in the world fails of its relief through the lack of that penetrative vision in the well-meaning. Our souls, it may be, are not to be measured within the limits of our qualities.
At near eleven o’clock the deputy District Coroner, Mr. Brabner, drove up in a fly. He was a small important-looking, be-whiskered man, in large round spectacles of such strength as to impart to his whole face a solemn owlish look, very sapient and impressive. A hush fell upon the throng as he alighted, with his clerk, and, ushered by the landlord, entered the inn. But he had hardly disappeared when a more thrilling advent came, like Aaron’s serpent, to devour the lesser. This was of the arrested man, in charge of a couple of officers from the County police-station. The unhappy little Gascon looked frightened and bewildered. His restless, vivacious, brown eyes glanced hither and thither among the people, seeming to deprecate, to implore, to appeal for pity from a monstrous terror which had trapped and was about to devour him. But his emotions had hardly found scope for their display when he was gone—hurried in by his escort.
Thereafter—the party from the house, with all necessary witnesses, being already assembled in the inn—no time was lost in opening the proceedings, which were arranged to take place in the coffee-room, the one fair-sized chamber in the building, though still so small that only a fraction of the waiting public could be allowed admittance to it, the rest hanging disconsolately about the passages and windows, and getting what information they could by deputy. The Coroner took his seat at one end of the long table provided; the jury—probi et legales homines to the number of twelve, good farm-hands and true, the most of them, and ready to believe anything they were told—were despatched to view the body; and the business began. Mr. Redstall, a Winton solicitor, watched the case on behalf of Sir Calvin, the deceased’s family being unrepresented, and Mr. Fyler, barrister-at-law, appeared for the police. A report of the subsequent proceedings is summarised in the following notes:—
Evidence of identification being in the first instance required, Sergeant Ridgway, of the Scotland Yard detective force, stated that it had been found impossible so far, in spite of every effort made, to trace out the deceased’s relations. He had himself made a journey to London, whence the girl had been originally engaged, for the express purpose of inquiring, but had failed wholly to procure any information on the subject. All agencies had been communicated with, and the name did not figure anywhere on their books. An advertisement, appealing to the next of kin, had been inserted in a number of newspapers, but without as yet eliciting any response. He called on Mrs. Bingley to repeat the statement she had already made to him regarding the deceased’s engagement by her, and the housekeeper having complied, he asked the Coroner, in default of any more intimate proof, to accept the only evidence of identification procurable at the moment. Further attempts would be made, of course, to elucidate the mystery, as by way of the deceased’s former employer, Mrs. Wilson; but that lady, being gone to New Zealand, might prove as difficult to trace as Evans’s own connexions; and in any event a long time must elapse before an answer could be obtained from her. A search of the girl’s boxes and personal belongings, though minutely conducted by himself and the housekeeper, had failed to yield any clue whatsoever, and, in short, so far as things went, that was the whole matter.
The Sergeant spoke, now as hereafter, always with visible effect, not only on the jury but on the Coroner himself. His cool, keen aspect, his pruned and essential phrases, the awful halo with which his position as a great London detective surrounded him, not to speak of the local reputation he had lately acquired, weighted his every word, to these admiring provincial minds, with a gravity and authority which were final. If he said that such a thing was, it was. The Coroner’s clerk entered on his minutes the name of Annie Evans, domestic servant, age twenty-three, family and condition unknown; and the case proceeded.
Mr. Hugo Kennett was the first witness called. He gave his evidence quietly and clearly, though with some signs of emotion when he referred to his discovery of the dead body. His relation of the event has already been given, and need not here be repeated. The essential facts were that he had entered the Bishop’s Walk, on the fatal afternoon, shortly after three o’clock; had encountered and stood talking with the girl for a period estimated at ten minutes; had then continued his way to the house, which he may have reached about 3.15, and later, just as it struck four, had suddenly remembered leaving his gun in the copse, and had returned to retrieve it, with the result known. The body was lying on its face, and from its attitude and the nature of the injury, it would appear that the shot had been fired from the direction of the road. He went at once to raise an alarm.
At the conclusion of this evidence, Counsel rose to put a few questions to the witness.
Q. You say, Mr. Kennett, you left at once, on discovering the body, to give the alarm?
A. Yes.
Q. Leaving your gun where it was?
A. No, I forgot. I spoke generally, not realising that the point might be important.
Q. You see that it may be?
A. Quite.
Q. You secured your gun first, then?
A. Yes, I did. I had to pass the body to do it, not liking the job, but driven to it in a sort of insane instinct to get the thing into my safe keeping when it was too late. You see, I blamed myself for having in a sort of way contributed to the deed by my carelessness. I was very much agitated.
Q. You mean that, in your opinion, the crime might never have been committed had not the gun offered itself to some sudden temptation?
A. Yes, that is what I mean.
Q. You are convinced, then, that the shot was fired from this particular weapon?
A. It seems reasonable to conclude so.
Q. Why?
A. I had left it with one of the barrels loaded, and when I saw it again they had both been discharged.
Q. You will swear to the one barrel having been loaded when you left it leaning against the tree?
A. To the best of my belief it was.
Q. You will swear to that?
A. No, I cannot actually swear to it, but I am practically convinced of the fact.
Q. Did you notice, when you took up the gun again, if the barrels, or barrel, were warm?
A. No, I never thought of it.
Q. Don’t you think it would have been well if it had occurred to you? Don’t you think you would have done better to leave the gun alone altogether, until the police arrived?
A. (The witness for the first time exhibiting a little irritability under this catechism): I dare say it would have been better. I was agitated, I tell you, and the situation was new to me. One doesn’t think of the proper thing to do on such an occasion unless one is a lawyer. I just took the gun with me, and chucked it into the gun-room as I passed, hating the infernal thing.
Q. Very natural under the circumstances, I am sure. Now, another question. The shot was fired, you consider, from the direction of the road. At what distance from the deceased would your knowledge as a sportsman put it?
A. Judging roughly, I should say about fifteen feet.
Q. About the distance, that is to say, between the tree against which you had leaned your gun and the spot where the body was found?
A. Yes.
Q. Then the inference is that the gun had suddenly been seized by some one from its position, fired, and replaced where it was?
A. I suppose so.
Q. You reached the house, you say, about 3.15, and left it again, on your way to the copse, just as it struck four. Would you mind telling us how you disposed of the interval?
A. (With some temper): I was in my own den all the time. What on earth has that to do with the matter?
Q. Everything, sir; touching on the critical movements of witnesses in a case of this sort matters. I wish to ask you, for instance, if, during that interval from 3.15 to 4 o’clock, you heard any sound, any report, like that of a gun being discharged?
A. If I had, I should probably have paid no attention to it. The sound of a gun is nothing very uncommon with us.
Q. I ask you if you were aware of any such sound?
A. Not that I can remember.
Mr. Fyler was an advocate of that Old Bailey complexion, colourless, black-eyebrowed, moist, thick rinded, whose constant policy it is to provoke hostility in a witness with the object of bullying him for it into submission and self-committal. With every reason, in the present case, to respect, and none to suspect, the deponent, his professional habit would nevertheless not permit him to cast his examination in a wholly conciliatory form.
Q. Now, Mr. Kennett, I must ask you to be very particular in your replies to the questions I am about to put to you. You came upon Annie Evans, I understand, shortly after entering the copse, and put down your gun with the purpose of speaking to her.