Читать книгу Dark Days and Much Darker Days: A Detective Story Club Christmas Annual - David Brawn, Frank Richardson - Страница 12

DEAD! Before I knelt beside him and, after unbuttoning his coat, laid my hand on his breast, I knew the man was dead. Before I turned the lantern on his white face I knew who the man was. Sir Mervyn Ferrand had paid for his sin with his life! It needed little professional skill to determine the cause of his death. A bullet fired, it seemed to me, at close quarters had passed absolutely through the heart. He must have fallen without a moan. Killed, I knew, by the hand of the woman he had wronged.

A sneering smile yet lingered on his set features. I could even imagine the words which had accompanied it, when swift and sudden, without one moment’s grace for repentance or confession, death had been meted out to him. At one moment he stood erect and full of life, mocking, it may be, her who had trusted him and had been betrayed; at the next, before the sentence he was speaking was completed, he lay lifeless at her feet, with the snowflakes beginning to form his winding-sheet!

Oh, it was vengeance! Swift, deadly vengeance! But why, oh why had she wreaked it? Philippa, my peerless Philippa, a murderess! Oh, it was too fearful, too horrible! I must be dreaming. All my own thoughts of revenge left me. It was for the time pity, sheer pity, I felt for the man, cut off in the prime of his life. Whilst I knew he was alive I could look forward to and picture that minute when we should stand coolly seeking to kill one another; but now that he was dead, I hated him no longer. Ah! Death is a sacred thing. Dead! Sir Mervyn Ferrand dead, and slain by Philippa!

It could not be true! It should not be true! Yet I shuddered as I remembered the passion she had thrown into those words, ‘Basil, did you ever hate a man?’ I gave a low cry of anguish as I remembered how I had hurled from me the pistol she had let fall—the very weapon which had done the dreadful deed.

Killed by Philippa! Not in a sudden burst of uncontrollable passion, but with deliberate intent. She must have gone armed to meet him. She must have shot him through the heart; must have seen him fall. Then, only then, the horrible deed which she had wrought must have been fully realised! Then she had turned and fled from the spot in a frenzy. Oh, my poor girl! My poor girl!

Utterly bewildered by my anguish, I rose from my knees and stood for a while beside the corpse. It was in that moment I learnt how much I really loved the woman who had done this thing. Over all my grief and horror this love rose paramount. At all cost I must save her—save her from the hands of justice; save her from the fierce elements which her tender frame was even at this moment braving. And as I recalled how she had sought me yesterday with the tale of her wrong—how she had wildly fled from me, a few minutes ago, madly, blindly into the night; as I thought of the injuries she had suffered, and which had led her to shed this man’s blood; as I contrasted her in her present position with what she was when first I knew her and loved her, the pity began to fade from my heart; my thoughts towards the lifeless form at my feet grew stern and sombre, and I found myself beginning, by the old code of an eye for an eye, to justify, although I regretted, Philippa’s fearful act. Right or wrong, she was the woman I loved; and I swore I would save her from the consequences of her crime, even—heaven help me!—if the accusation, when made, must fall upon my shoulders.

Yet it was not the beginning of any scheme to evade justice which induced me to raise the dead body and bear it to the side of the road, where I placed it under the low bank on which the hedge grew. It was the reverence which one pays to death made me do this. I could not leave the poor wretch bang in the very middle of the highway, for the first passer-by to stumble against. Tomorrow he would, of course, be found. Tomorrow the hue and cry would be out! Tomorrow Philippa, my Philippa, would—Oh, heavens! Never, never, never!

So I laid what was left of Sir Mervyn Ferrand reverentially by the side of the lonely road. I even tried to close his glassy eyes, and I covered his face with his own handkerchief. Then, with heart holding fear and anguish enough for a lifetime, I turned and went in search of the poor unhappy girl.

Where should I seek her? Who knew what her remorse may have urged her to do? Who knew whither her horror may have driven her? It needs but to find Philippa lifeless on the road to complete the heaviest tale of grief which can be exacted from one man in one short night! I clenched my teeth and rushed on.

I had the road all to myself. No one was abroad in such weather. Indeed, few persons were seen at night in any weather in this lonely part of the country. I made straight for my own house. The dismal thought came to me, that unless Philippa kept to the road she was lost to me for ever. If she strayed to the right or to the left, how on such a night could I possibly find her? My one hope was that she would go straight to my cottage; so thither I made the best of my way. If she had not arrived, I must get what assistance I could, and seek for her in the fields to the right and left of the road. It was a dreary comfort to remember that all the ponds and spaces of water were frozen six inches thick!

I hesitated a moment when I reached her late residence. Should I enquire if she had returned thither? No; when morning revealed the ghastly event of the night, my having done so would awake suspicion. Let me just go home.

Home at last! In a moment I shall know the worst. I opened the slide of my lantern, which was still alight, and threw the rays on the path which led to my door. My heart gave a great bound of thankfulness. There on the snow, not yet obliterated by more recent flakes, were the prints of a small foot. Philippa, as I prayed but scarcely dared to hope she might, had come straight to my house.

My man opened the door to me. It was well I had seen those footprints, as my knowledge of Philippa’s arrival enabled me to assume a natural air.

‘My sister has come?’ I asked.

‘Yes, sir; about a quarter of an hour ago.’

‘We missed each other on the road. What a night!’ I said, throwing off my snow-covered coat.

‘Where is she now?’ I asked.

‘In the sitting-room, sir.’ Then, lowering his voice, William added, ‘She seemed just about in a tantrum when she found you weren’t at home. I expect we shall find her a hard lady to please.’

William, in spite of his stolidity, occasionally ventured upon some liberty when addressing me.

His words greatly surprised me. I forced myself to make some laughing rejoinder; then I turned the handle of the door and entered the room in which Philippa had taken refuge.

Oh, how my heart throbbed! What would she say to me? What could I, fresh from that dreadful scene, say to her? Would she excuse or palliate, would she simply confess or boldly justify, her crime? Would she plead her wrongs in extenuation? Would she assert that in a moment of ungovernable rage she had done the deed? No matter what she said, she was still Philippa, and even at the cost of my own life and honour I would save her.

Yet as I advanced into the room a shudder ran through me. Fresh to my mind came the remembrance of that white face, that still form, lying as I had left it, with the pure white snow falling thickly around it.

Philippa was sitting in front of the fire. Her hat was removed; her dark hair dishevelled and gleaming wet with the snow which had melted in it. She must have heard me enter and close the door, but she took no notice. As I approached her she turned her shoulder upon me in a pettish way, and as one who by the action means to signify displeasure. I came to her side and stood over her, waiting for her to look up and speak first. She must speak first! What can I say, after all that has happened tonight?

But she kept a stony silence—kept her eyes still turned from mine. At last I called her by her name, and, bending down, looked into her face.

Its expression was one of sullen anger, and, moreover, anger which seemed to deepen as she heard my voice. She made a kind of contemptuous gesture, as if waving me aside.

‘Philippa,’ I said, as sternly as I could, ‘speak to me!’

I laid my hand upon her arm. She shook it off fiercely, and then started to her feet.

‘You ask me to speak to you,’ she said; ‘you, who have treated me like this! Oh, it is shameful! Shameful! Shameful! I come through storm and snow—come to you, who were to welcome me as a brother! Where are you? Away, your wretched servant tells me. Why are you away? I trusted you! Oh, you are a pretty brother! If you had cared for me or respected me, you would have been here to greet me. No! You are all in a league—all in a league to ruin me! Now I am here, what will you do? Poison me, of course! Kill me, and make away with me, even as that other doctor killed and made away with my poor child! He did! I say he did! I saw him do it! “A child of shame,” he said; so he killed it! All, all, all—even you—you, whom I trusted—leagued against me!’