Читать книгу The Case Of Miss Elliott - Baroness Orczy - Страница 12

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“But who poisoned Cigarette?” I asked after a while; “and why?”

“Ah, who did, I wonder?” he replied with exasperating mildness.

“Surely you have a theory,” I suggested.

“Ah, but my theories are not worth considering. The police would take no notice of them.”

“Why did Mrs Keeson go to the stables that night? Did she go?” I asked.

“Cockram swears she did.”

“She swears she didn’t. If she did why should she have asked for her son? Surely she did not wish to incriminate her son in order to save herself?”

“No,” he replied; “women don’t save themselves usually at the expense of their children, and women don’t usually ‘hocus’ a horse. It is not a female crime at all— is it?”

The aggravating creature was getting terribly sarcastic; and I began to fear that he was not going to speak, after all. He was looking dejectedly all around him. I had one or two parcels by me. I undid a piece of string from one of them, and handed it to him with the most perfectly indifferent air I could command.

“I wonder if it was Cockram who told a lie?” I then said unconcernedly.

But already he had seized on that bit of string, and nervously now, his long fingers began fashioning a series of complicated knots.

“Let us take things from the beginning,” he said at last. “The beginning of the mystery was the contradictory statements made by the groom Cockram and Mrs Keeson respectively. Let us take, first of all, the question of the groom. The matter is simple enough: either he saw Mrs Keeson or he did not. If he did not see her then he must have told a lie, either unintentionally or by design— unintentionally if he was mistaken; but this could not very well be since he asserted that Mrs Keeson spoke to him, and even mentioned her son, Mr Harold Keeson. Therefore, if Cockram did not see Mrs Keeson he told a lie by design for some purpose of his own. You follow me?”

“Yes,” I replied, “I have thought all that out for myself already.”

“Very well. Now, could there be some even remotely plausible motive why Cockram should have told that deliberate lie?”

“To save his sweetheart, Alice Image,” I said.

“But you forget that his sweetheart was not accused at first, and that, from the very beginning, Cockram’s manner, when questioned on the subject of the events of that night, was strange and contradictory in the extreme.”

“He may have known from the first that Alice Image was guilty,” I argued.

“In that case he would have merely asserted that he had seen and heard nothing during the night, or, if he wished to lie about it, he would have said that it was Palk, the tout, who sneaked into the stables, rather than incriminate his mistress, who had been good and kind to him for years.”

“He may have wished to be revenged on Mrs Keeson for some reason which has not yet transpired.”

“How? By making a statement which, if untrue, could be so easily disproved by Mr Keeson himself, who, as a matter of fact, could easily assert that his wife did not leave her bedroom that night, or by incriminating Mr Harold Keeson, who could prove an alibi? Not much of a revenge there, you must admit. No, no; the more you reflect seriously upon these possibilities the deeper will become your conviction that Cockram did not lie either accidentally or on purpose; that he did see Mrs Keeson at that hour at the stable door; that she did speak to him; and that it was she who told the lie in open court.”

“But,” I asked, feeling more bewildered than before, “why should Mrs Keeson have gone to the stables and asked for her son when she must have known that he was not there, but that her enquiry would make it, to say the least, extremely unpleasant for him?”

“Why?” he shrieked excitedly, jumping up like a veritable jack-in-the-box. “Ah, if you would only learn to reflect you might in time become a fairly able journalist. Why did Mrs Keeson momentarily incriminate her son?— for it was only a momentary incrimination. Think, think! A woman does not incriminate her child to save herself; but she might do it to save someone else— someone who was dearer to her than that child.”

“Nonsense!” I protested.

“Nonsense, is it?” he replied. “You have only to think of the characters of the chief personages who figured in the drama— of the trainer Keeson, with his hasty temper and his inordinate family pride. Was it likely when the half-ruined Earl of Okehampton talked of mésalliance, and forbade the marriage of his daughter with his trainer’s son, that the latter would not resent that insult with terrible bitterness? and, resenting it, not think of some means of being even with the noble Earl? Can you not imagine the proud man boiling with indignation on hearing his son’s tale of how Lord Okehampton had forbidden him the house? Can you not hear him saying to himself:

“‘Well, by — the trainer’s son shall marry the Earl’s daughter!’

“And the scheme— simple and effectual— whereby the ruin of the arrogant nobleman would be made so complete that he would be only too willing to allow his daughter to marry anyone who would give her a good home and him a helping hand?”

“But,” I objected, “why should Mr Keeson take the trouble to drug the groom and sneak out to the stables at dead of night when he had access to the mare at all hours of the day?”

“Why?” shrieked the animated scarecrow. “Why? Because Keeson was just one of those clever criminals, with a sufficiency of brains to throw police and public alike off the scent. Cockram, remember, spent every moment of the day and night with the mare. Therefore, if he had been in full possession of his senses and could positively swear that no one had had access to Cigarette but his master and himself, suspicion was bound to fasten, sooner or later, on Keeson. But Keeson was a bit of a genius in the criminal line. Seemingly he could have had no motive for drugging the groom, yet he added that last artistic touch to his clever crime, and thus threw a final bucketful of sand in the eyes of the police.”

“Even then,” I argued, “Cockram might just have woke up— might just have caught Keeson in the act.”

“Exactly. And that is, no doubt, what Mrs Keeson feared.

“She was a brave woman, if ever there was one. Can you not picture her knowing her husband’s violent temper, his indomitable pride? and guessing that he would find some means of being revenged on the Earl of Okehampton? Can you not imagine her watching her husband and gradually guessing, realizing what he had in his mind when, in the middle of the night, she saw him steal out of bed and out of the house? Can you not see her following him stealthily— afraid of him, perhaps— not daring to interfere— terrified above all things of the consequences of his crime, of the risks of Cockram waking up, of the exposure, the disgrace?

“Then the final tableau— Keeson having accomplished his purpose, goes back towards the house, and she— perhaps with a vague hope that she might yet save the mare by taking away the poison which Keeson had prepared— in her turn goes to the stables. But this time the groom is half awake, and challenges her. Then her instinct— that unerring instinct which always prompts a really good woman when the loved one is in danger— suggests to Mrs Keeson the clever subterfuge of pretending that she had seen her son entering the stables.

“She asks for him, knowing well that she could do him no harm, since he could so easily prove an alibi, but thereby throwing a veritable cloud of dust in the eyes of the keenest enquirer, and casting over the hocussing of Cigarette so thick a mantle of mystery that suspicion, groping blindly round, could never fasten tightly on anyone.

“Think of it all,” he added as, gathering up his hat and umbrella, he prepared to go, “and remember at the same time that it was Mr Keeson alone who could disprove that his wife never left her room that night, that he did not do this, that he guessed what she had done and why she had done it, and I think that you will admit that not one link is missing in the chain of evidence which I have had the privilege of laying before you.”

Before I could reply he had gone, and I saw his strange scarecrow-like figure disappearing through the glass door. Then I had a good think on the subject of the hocussing of Cigarette, and I was reluctantly bound to admit that once again the man in the corner had found the only possible solution to the mystery.