Читать книгу Unravelled Knots - Baroness Orczy - Страница 7

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“And yet the verdict was one of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown,” I said, after a slight pause, waiting for the funny creature to take up his narrative again.

“Yes,” he replied, “Arthur Clarke has been cleared of every suspicion. He left the court a free man. His innocence was proved beyond question through what everyone thought was the most damnatory piece of evidence against him― the evidence of the khaki tunic. The khaki tunic exonerated Arthur Clarke as completely as the most skilful defender could do. Because if did not fit him. Arthur Clarke was a rather heavy, full grown, broad-shouldered man, the khaki tunic would only fit a slim lad of eighteen. Clarke had admitted the tunic was his, but he had never thought of examining it, and certainly not of trying it on. It was Miss St. Jude who thought of that. Trust a woman in love for getting an inspiration.

“When she was called at the end of the day to affirm the statements which she had previously made to the police and realised that these statements of hers were actually in contradiction with Clarke’s own assertions, she worked herself up into at state bordering on hysteria, in the midst of which she caught sight of the khaki tunic on the coroner’s table. Of course she, like every one else in the neighbourhood, knew all about the tunic, but when April St. Jude actually saw it with her own eyes and realised what its existence meant to her sweetheart she gave a wild shriek.

“‘I’ll not believe it,’ she cried, ‘I’ll not believe it. It can’t be. It is not Arthur’s tunic at all.’ Then her eyes dilated, her voice sank to a hoarse whisper, and with a trembling hand she pointed at the tunic: ‘Why,’ she murmured, ‘it is so small, so small! Arthur! Where is Arthur! Why does he not show them all that he never could have worn that tunic?’

“Proverbially there is but a narrow dividing line between tragedy and farce: while some people shuddered and gasped and men literally held their breath, marvelling what would happen next, quite a number of women fell into hysterical giggling. Of course you remember what happened. The papers have told you all about it. Arthur Clarke was made to try on the khaki tunic and he could not even get his arms into the sleeves. Under no circumstances could he ever have worn that particular tunic. It was several sizes too small for him. Then he examined it closely and recognised it as one he wore in his school O.T.C when he was a lad. When he was originally confronted with it, he explained he was so upset, so genuinely terrified at the consequences of certain follies which he undoubtedly had committed, that he could hardly see out of his eyes. The tunic was shown to him and he had admitted that it was his, for he had quite a collection of old tunics which he had always kept. But for the moment he had quite forgotten about the one which he had worn more than eight years ago at school.

“And so the khaki tunic, instead of condemning Clarke had entirely cleared him, for it now became quite evident that the miscreant who had committed the dastardly murder had added this hideous act to his greater crime, and deliberately set to work to fasten the guilt on an innocent man. He had gone up to Clarke’s room, opened the wardrobe, picked up a likely garment, no doubt tearing a piece of cloth out of it whilst so doing, and thus getting the fiendish idea of inserting that piece of khaki between the fingers of the murdered woman. Finally, after locking the parlour door, he put the key in the pocket of the tunic and stuffed the latter in the bottom of a drawer.

“It was a clever and cruel trick which well nigh succeeded in hanging an innocent man. As it is, it has enveloped the affair in an almost impenetrable mystery. I say ‘almost’ because I know who killed Miss Clarke, even though the public has thrown out an erroneous conjecture. ‘It was Lady Foremeere,’ they say, ‘who killed Miss Clarke.’ But at once comes the question:

‘How could she?’ And the query: ‘When?’ Arthur Clarke says he was with her until seven, and after that hour there were several members of her household who waited upon her, notably her maid who it seems came up to dress her at about that time, and she and Lord Foremeere sat down to dinner as usual at eight o’clock.

“That there had been one or two dark passages in Lady Foremeere’s life, prior to her marriage four years ago, and that Miss Clarke was murdered for the sake of letters which were in some way connected with her ladyship were the only actual undisputable facts in that mysterious case. That it was not Arthur Clarke who killed his sister has been indubitably proved; that a great deal of the evidence was contradictory every one has admitted. And if the police does not act on certain suggestions which I have made to them, the ‘Hardacres’ murder will remain a mystery to the public to the end of time.

“‘And what are these suggestions?’ I asked, without the slightest vestige of irony, for, much against my will, the man’s personality exercised a curious fascination over me.

“To keep an eye on Lord Foremeere,” the funny creature replied with his dry chuckle, “and see when and how he finally disposes of a wet coat, a dripping hat and soaked boots which he has succeeded in keeping concealed somewhere in the smoking-room, away from the prying eyes even of his own valet.”

“‘You mean―?’ I asked, with an involuntary gasp.

“Yes,” he replied. “I mean that it was Lord Foremeere who murdered Miss Clarke for the sake of those letters which apparently contained matter that was highly compromising to his wife. Everything to my mind points to him as the murderer. Whether he knew all along of the existence of the compromising letters, or whether he first knew of this through the conversation between her ladyship and Clarke the day of the servants’ party, it is impossible to say; certain it is that he did overhear that conversation and that he made up his mind to end the impossible situation then and there, and to put a stop once and for all to any further attempt at blackmail. It was easy enough for him on that day to pass in and out of the house unperceived. No doubt his primary object in going to ‘Hardacres’ was to purchase the letters from Miss Clarke, money down; perhaps she proved obstinate, perhaps he merely thought that dead men tell no tales. This we shall never know. After the hideous deed, which must have revolted his otherwise fastidious senses, he must have become conscious of an overwhelming hatred for the man who had, as it were, pushed him into crime, and my belief is that the elaborate mise en scene of the khaki tunic, and the circumstantial lie that when he came out of the smoking-room Arthur Clarke had obviously just come in from outside was invented not so much with the object of averting any suspicion from himself as with the passionate desire to be revenged on Clarke.

“Think it over,” the Man in the Corner concluded, as he stuffed his beloved bit of string into his capacious pocket; “time, opportunity, motive, all are in favour of my theory, so do not be surprised if the early editions of tomorrow’s evening papers contain the final sensation in this interesting case.”

He was gone before I could say another word, and all that I saw of him was his spook-like figure disappearing through the swing door. There was no one now in the place, so a moment or two later I too paid my bill and went away.