Читать книгу The Bride of a Moment - Carolyn Wells - Страница 7

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IF Bingham had appeared to be dazed and stunned before, he was not so now. His eyes blazed, and every muscle of his body was tense and rigid as he said to the detective:

“I overheard your words as I entered the church. Do I understand, Mr. Ferrall, that you are accusing me of the murder of my wife?”

The words, though not loud, were tense and sharp, and the speaker seemed to be holding himself in by main force from flying at Ferrall’s throat. His hands clenched as he awaited the reply.

But Ferrall was not the sort to be intimidated by any one’s anger, and he said, “I don’t accuse anybody, Mr. Bingham. It is my duty as a detective to investigate, not to accuse. What I said, I stand by. Is it true, sir, or is it not, that unless you were married before you were thirty, you would lose your fortune?”

“It is true,” replied Bingham, coldly. “But don’t make a fool of yourself, Mr. Ferrall. Had I wished to marry in order to inherit my father’s estate, and afterward commit a crime to rid myself of my bride, I most certainly should not have chosen the wedding altar as the scene of the tragedy!”

“That’s so,” said the Inspector, “it would be most unlikely!”

“Not at all,” insisted Ferrall. “Whoever chose the church as the place least likely of discovery, did a mighty cute thing. If we grant a murderer,—and there sure was one,—we must give him credit for great premeditation and foresight. As a detective, I’ve got to consider these things, and see where they lead me. Likewise, I’ve got to cast about for a motive. Where, I say, is there any possible motive to be found, except in this inheritance business? Who is going to murder a lovely young lady, with no reason for it? I’m not saying Mr. Bingham is the guilty man, but I am saying I haven’t seen any other direction to look, as yet. And, what I say, Mr. Bingham, I’m quite willing to say to your face, and give you all chance to defend yourself, if you’ve got a defence.”

“I have no defence, because none is needed,” returned Bingham, still in a constrained, nervous voice. “Your suspicion is too absurd even to call forth denial! Wait a minute,—I scorn to reply to your insinuations, but I see some men in the back of the church, who can at least tell you how ridiculous your talk is.”

Kennedy and Farrish, the two choristers who had gone away earlier, had returned, drawn no doubt by an irresistible anxiety to learn of further developments. Eugene Hall, another chorister, was there, too, and the bridegroom called on these men, all acquaintances of his, to tell anything they knew.

“You fellows all stood up there in the choir,” Bingham said; “if I had shot Ethel, would you not have seen me?”

“Of course,” said Farrish. “I was looking at you both from the beginning of the ceremony to the end.”

“So was I,” said Kennedy. “I saw you, Bing, when you put up your hand to fix Ethel’s veil,—or something like that.”

“Eh?” spoke up the detective, “fix the lady’s veil? What do you mean?”

“Yes, I did,” said Bingham. “Dr. Van Sutton had just spoken to Ethel, and was turning to me, when I saw a pearl pin loosened a little at the side of her head, and—”

“The right side?” asked the detective.

“Of course; that was the side toward me. I’m fussy about such things. The pin would have dropped out in a moment, and so I pushed it in with a light touch. I was surely privileged to do this to my own wife!”

“Of course,” said Kennedy; “I just happened to notice it, because naturally I was looking at you both.”

“And it was the next instant that the lady fell to the floor,” said Ferrall, looking intently at Bingham.

“Good Lord, Mr. Ferrall!” cried the bridegroom, “are you going to say I shot my bride while arranging that veil pin?”

“I am not saying that. I am asking you if there was any perceptible interval between your manœuvring with the pin and the lady’s fall?”

“How do I know?” cried Bingham, angrily. “At such a time one cannot remember minute details clearly! I fixed my wife’s veil. I admit it. My wife fell to the floor. The two incidents had no bearing on one another.”

“That is yet to be seen,” said Ferrall, ominously.

“But they couldn’t,” protested Guy Farrish. “We in the choir could see all clearly, as Bingham says, and while I didn’t especially notice the veil incident, I know I should have seen anything that looked like a shooting!”

“That’s just the point,” observed Inspector Kinney, “it didn’t look like a shooting! It’s a wonderfully mysterious crime and a wonderfully clever criminal we have to deal with, and we must look out for most unusual and unprecedented circumstances.”

“That’s true enough,” assented Farrish, “but you must have a little common sense in the matter.”

“That’s so, Mr. Farrish,” said Kinney. “I’m afraid, Ferrall, you’re going too fast. Only further investigation can show who had a motive for desiring the death of the ill-fated bride. You have no idea of any such person, Mr. Bingham?”

“Certainly not. And I must say that I think the mystery will never be solved if left in such incompetent hands as are managing it at present.”

“By Jove, that’s right!” and Eugene Hall jumped to his feet “I move we get a first-class detective on the case!”

“You are a little premature, Mr. Hall,” said Bingham; “I have no fault to find with Mr. Ferrall’s work. As he says, he must investigate; and as his first investigations point in my direction, I am content to let him run that line down and then turn to some more promising suspect.”

“Now, that’s white of you, Mr. Bingham,” said the somewhat crestfallen detective; “I can’t rightly say that I suspected you really, but there seemed to be no way to look—”

“There will be ways to look, Ferrall,” and the Inspector’s voice was grave, “but we can’t see things clearly all at once. A crime like this means premeditation and preparation. The criminal was prepared for it before the ceremony began. It was no sudden or spontaneous act.”

“It’s mysterious enough,” said Eugene Hall. “I wish I could be of definite help. But as I’ve told all I know, I may as well go home. Going my way, Farrish?”

Farrish was, and the two men left the church together, just as a coloured woman entered it by the side door.

“I’m Charlotte,” she stated, curtsying to the group of men who still stood by the pulpit.

“Yes, Charlotte, what is it?” and Stanford Bingham turned to greet her with a startled look in his eyes. “Charlotte is Miss Randall’s maid,” he added, by way of explanation of his own interest.

“Miss Randall she sent me ovah, suhs, to say as how Miss Ethel’s dimun ain’t been found on her pusson, suhs. An’ Miss Eileen, she say won’t you-all please look most ca’ful roun’ about dis yer chu’ch. De doctahs, dey done had a nawtopsy, an’ dey cyan’t fine de dimun anyw’eres on Miss Ethel. An’ Miss Eileen, she say it mus’ be in de chu’ch, summers.”

“I don’t think so,” said Bingham, slowly; “if that diamond is not on Ethel,—caught in her clothing or veil,—then it has been stolen. Had it been here on the floor, where she stood, some one must have seen it before this. It is too large to escape observation.”

“What was its value?” asked Ferrall.

“It cost more than fifty thousand dollars,” replied Bingham, “but it has no value now, in my eyes. It was my wedding gift to my wife; as I have now no wife, I have no use for the diamond.”

“Oh, I don’t know!” said Ferrall, with a distinctly offensive look at Bingham.

“Explain that speech!” cried Bingham, his eyes blazing again, as he turned on the detective.

“I only meant,” said Ferrall, slowly, and a little insolently, “that as you are so unconcerned about the loss of a great treasure, perhaps it is not so mysteriously or so irrecoverably missing!”

Stanford Bingham went white. “You mean that I know where it is?” he whispered, hoarsely.

“Something like that,” admitted the detective.

“I can’t stand any more of this,” said Bingham, passing his hand wearily across his forehead. “I think I will go home.”

“I think you won’t,” said Ferrall, but Kinney interrupted. “Yes, he may. Certainly, Mr. Bingham, go. You have stood enough for a man in such trouble as you are in. You will be at home if we want to see you again?”

“Certainly,” said Bingham, and with the staggering step of a half-dazed man, he left the church.

“You ought not to have let him go!” cried Ferrall. “He’ll light out and we’ll never see him again! Of course, he is the guilty man! His very attitude condemns him. He had motive, opportunity, and he is intensely clever, just such a one as could carry out such a crime!”

“But it is absurd, on the face of it!” expostulated Kinney. “For a man to shoot his own bride at his own wedding altar! It is incredible!”

“Lots of murders are incredible. Who else wanted to be rid of that woman? Not her aunt or uncle or any of her relatives or friends. She was a greatly admired young lady, a favourite, a belle, a most popular society girl. But Bingham had to marry her to get his fortune. So,—his fortune secured,—he rid himself of her, in circumstances so diabolically clever, that he thought he never would be suspected. Nor would he have been, if I did not happen to know that he did not love the lady he made his wife.”

“Didn’t love her? What do you mean? How do you know?”

“I don’t know, that is, not positively. That’s why I wanted to talk to him, and get him to incriminate himself.”

“Nonsense, Ferrall, you’re romancing. You have formed a crazy theory and you have let it run away with your common sense. But that is your habit, as I’ve often had cause to note. Now, then, come back to material things. Where’s the big diamond? Or do you think Bingham stole his own property?”

“Of course he stole it! It wasn’t his, after he gave it to her. He wanted it back, and he could get it no other way, so he took it. He had plenty of chances during the first immediate excitement.”

“But it would have been his. Of course, all the property his wife died possessed of, must necessarily have reverted to him.”

“Oh, well, that may be so, but he knew if he were suspected of the crime, he might have difficulty in getting possession of the diamond. So he made sure of it. Why, man, he must have done so! If any other person were the assassin, he couldn’t get near enough to the body to take the jewel. And you can’t for a moment believe that some bystander, one of the wedding-party, took it!”

“Why not? I’d just as soon think it of one of the ushers as of the bridegroom himself.”

“But the bridegroom had a motive for the murder, and so, for the theft. The ushers had no motive for murder—”

“You don’t know that!”

“Well, it can be proved, I’ve no doubt”

“The bride had many admirers.”

“Yes, more than any girl in town. She was the reigning belle.”

“Then the deed may have been the desperation of a discarded lover.”

“That will mean raking the town with a fine-tooth comb. For every young blade in Boscombe Fells was in love with the beautiful Ethel Moulton.”

“Then get to work and rake, before you accuse the bridegroom!”

“I’ll rake, all right; but there was no other man who had the cleverness or the nerve to plan and carry through this horrible performance.”

“Suppose you take a try at finding the diamond first; that may give a clue to the murderer. Indeed, I think it’s bound to. Here, you, Charlotte,—if that’s your name, you run along home. I forgot you were here. You tell Miss Randall that the police are searching for the jewel, and will report progress, when there is any to report.”

“Yassah. An’ can I tell yo’ sumpin, suh?”

“Certainly. What is it?”

“Well, I knows who kilt Miss Ethel.”

Charlotte was a very black negro, and as she spoke, she rolled her eyes in a tragic and mysterious manner. Inspector Kinney had heard this sort of fairy-tale evidence before, and he was for putting the woman out without listening further. But Ferrall wanted to hear her story.

“It means nothing, Ferrall,” said Kinney; “these darkies are always ready to make up yarns for the excitement of the thing.”

“But she may know something. Surely it will do no harm to listen to what she has to tell.”

“Go on, then,” said the other.

“Well, yo’ see, suh,” began the dusky servant woman, “I was outside that there window, a-look-in’ in.”

“That window!” exclaimed Ferrall, for Charlotte had indicated the first window on the east side of the church, the one directly inside range of the bride and groom as they stood at the altar.

“Yes, suh, dat berry window. An’ I knows as how nobody outside dat window didn’t shoot thoo it, kase ef dey had I’d ‘a’ seen ‘em, dat I would. Well, suh, dere was a man jest inside de chu’ch, an’ he was a-watchin’ ob de bride-lady, an’ he kep’ his hank’chif all ober his hand all de time. Now, suh, says I, moughtn’t he be de vilyun dat shot Miss Ethel?”

“Rubbish,” said the Inspector. “It was simply a man holding his handkerchief carelessly in his hand. It means nothing at all.”

“Don’t jump at conclusions so!” said Ferrall, getting back; “tell us more, Charlotte. What did the man look like?”

“I dunno, suh. I didn’ notice him much, kase I was a-watchin’ de bride myself. But I sort o’ sensed him all de time, an’ he nebber took dat hank’chif offen o’ dat hand!”

“Would you know the man if you saw him again?”

The black woman looked uncertain. “I mought an’ I moughtn’t,” she said, at last. “You see, his back was to me. But he had red hair.”

“Really red? Very red?” And Ferrall spoke excitedly.

“Well, not fi’ry red. But moh sorta aubuhn, suh.”

“You’re wasting time, Ferrall; send her home, and let us go home ourselves and think this thing out. We know a lot of facts that need to be straightened out and considered. Run along, Charlotte. Tell Miss Randall you delivered her message, and Mr. Kinney will see her to-morrow.”

“Yas, suh. Will yo’ come to huh house, suh?”

“I don’t know. If I do, I’ll telephone first, and make an appointment.”

The black woman went away. “You talked too much before her, Ferrall,” said Kinney, reprovingly.

“Oh, I didn’t say anything that oughtn’t to be repeated. And she didn’t understand, anyway. She’s an ignorant thing.”

“Not so awfully ignorant! I saw her watching you out of the corner of her eye, and she’s no fool. She made up that story of the ‘red-headed man’!”

“Ridiculous! She did nothing of the sort!”

“Well, see if you ever find him, that’s all!”