Читать книгу The Glenlitten Murder - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 8

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A rumour was somehow started in the county that my lord and Lady Glenlitten were moping because of the recent tragedy in their household, and, as though with common accord, every one descended upon them. Lady Susan, who lived in sedate widowhood, barely a score of miles away, turned up early upon a brilliant Saturday morning, with half a dozen young people, and after luncheon there were three or four tennis courts going, besides a little stream of visitors playing golf upon the private course in the park. The clouds seemed to have passed. The recent tragedy was forgotten. Félice was the most delightful of hostesses—at one moment a child, laughing and romping with the youngest, at another the smiling and gracious chatelaine of a great house. She played tennis—considering her small reach—with wonderful skill, and she was indefatigable. She was the blue butterfly of happiness, and sometimes she found it hard to escape from her youthful admirers. Towards the close of the afternoon, she and her husband settled down for a serious set, which they won with ease. She took one of her defeated opponents—Rodney Haslam—by the arm, and led him away.

"You would like a whisky and soda," she asked, as they reached the shade of a cedar tree, "or to talk with me?"

"I should like very much," he told her, "to combine the two."

He gave her some cup to which she pointed, and they sank into low chairs.

"Now we are very comfortable," she said, "and I feel that I must ask you a question which so many times has been in my mind. You permit?"

"Why, of course," he answered. "Ask me anything you like."

"I wish to know why you are so mysterious about this great tragedy which has made us all so sad?"

"Am I?" he answered, a little taken aback. "I find you so," she assured him. "It seems very stupid—perhaps I am wrong—but we will make an understanding about it. If ever the slightest reference is made to that terrible night, wherever we are, you look across at me almost—it sounds silly, but it is true—almost as though we had a secret in common."

He was frankly startled.

"I can promise you," he began?

She waved his protest away.

"This is a matter upon which I feel too deeply to fancy things. You have always the air of saying to yourself, 'There is something I could tell if I would, and you know it too, you, Félice.' And then you look across at me, and that light, that sombre light, is always burning in your eyes for people to see and wonder at."

He lit a cigarette. His long bony fingers shook a little as he blew out the match.

"You wish for frankness, Lady Glenlitten?"

"But yes," she answered, frowning at him impatiently. "Why not? We have no secret together, you and I, yet from the way you look at me one would sometimes imagine that we had. I do not like it. Please speak whatever is in your mind."

He glanced around. They were alone in the deep shade of one of the old cedar trees.

"On that night," he confided, "I saw De Besset slip away from the lounge. It was very soon after you yourself had gone upstairs. I behaved perhaps like a cad. I suppose it was a form of jealousy which seized hold of me."

"Jealousy?" she exclaimed, looking at him with wide-open eyes.

"Yes," he replied curtly. "I knew you, it seemed to me, better than De Besset. Before he came, I had the happiness to see a great deal of you at Deauville. Your husband and I were old schoolfellows. As you know, he didn't have much in common with the crowd there, and so by degrees we drifted together—we three—day by day."

"That is quite true," she admitted. "You were a very pleasant companion for Andrew, and I did like you myself."

"After De Besset appeared," Haslam continued, "everything was changed. It was he who danced with you, he whose little parties and expeditions you always joined, he whose box you accepted at the races, and on whose yacht you sailed. At first it simply meant that I was your husband's companion, whilst you and De Besset were amusing yourselves together. When I could stand it no longer, I left the place, and drifted back to my old state of loneliness."

"I am very sorry," she said, still a little perplexed. "I was just loving life so much, I accepted everything that came along, and Raoul de Besset, although he meant no more to me than you did, or any other man except my husband, made himself very agreeable. If I had known that I had hurt your feelings, I should have been very sorry. But tell me, what has all this to do with that awful night?"

"If you want the whole truth, you shall have it," Haslam went on, a grimmer note creeping into his tone. "When I saw De Besset glance around as though wondering whether any one were noticing and then leave the room, a mad thought came to me, and a mad impulse—an impulse to which I yielded. I followed him. He was quicker than I up the stairs, and disappeared, but he turned down the south corridor, and when I passed the door of your boudoir, I heard voices. You were supposed to have retired with a headache half an hour before, and Andrew was downstairs playing bridge, but I heard voices in your boudoir."

She turned and looked at him, frankly astonished and yet with some trace of that haunted look in her eyes which for a moment had crept into them during the inquest.

"Voices in my room?" she repeated. "But that is impossible. You imagined it."

"It has been the curse of my life," he told her, "that I have too little imagination. I never believed that I had any at all until I met you, but I heard the voices in your boudoir as surely as we hear the birds singing to us at this moment, and I think that if at that moment the door had opened and De Besset had come out—he might have been alive to-day —in the hospital perhaps, but alive."

Félice sat very still, and the man by her side had just tact enough not to break the silence she imposed. To all appearance she was watching the nearest of the tennis sets.

"So you spied upon my doings from the corridor —you, a guest in my husband's house," she said softly, without looking at him, almost as though speaking to herself.

"I followed De Besset," he explained, a little sullenly. "I had grown to hate the fellow, with his affectations and vanities and damned conceits. If I had stayed downstairs and not known where he was, I should have gone crazy. I had to come."

"Did your imagination lead you further still?" she asked. "Did you fancy that you did hear what passed between the two people who were not there?"

"No," he admitted. "There were servants passing in the main corridor. I couldn't remain like an eavesdropper outside your door. I heard the voices—you were speaking in French—that was enough for me, and I passed on to my own room."

"And then?"

"I pulled myself together," he answered, "as we all have to. I filled my case with the cigarettes I tried to persuade myself that I had come to fetch, and I went downstairs again."

"Passing my door?"

"Yes."

"You fancied still, perhaps, that you heard voices?"

"I did not listen," he admitted. "I could not, for exactly opposite there was a servant entering some one's room. But I heard the sound of movements. You were still there."

She stretched out her hand for her glass and drank slowly most of its contents. Then she turned in her chair and looked deliberately up at her companion. Life had made a hard man of Rodney Haslam, and the battle marks were in his face. The lines about his mouth were pitiless, his blue-grey eyes held little of softness. Upon the side of his forehead was a deep scar, spoiling what would have been a good outline, a scar, some one had once told her, made by the claw of a lioness when he had rushed out of the compound in his pyjamas, with only a light-calibred revolver, to save the life of a native child. Somehow or other the sight of that wound soothed her.

"Well," she said, "now that you have told me the truth, I know what you are thinking when they talk of that night. Do you not wish, perhaps, to tell this story to my husband, to those others who believe that De Besset saw the burglar and ran in to warn me? Or what is it you wish? To make a bargain with me for your silence?"

He turned his head, and for a moment she was ashamed. She laid her hand upon his wrist. Tears suddenly dimmed her eyes.

"I am imbecile!" she exclaimed. "I am a little beast! Forgive—please forgive."

A manservant, who had been crossing the lawn, made his respectful approach.

"You are asked for upon the telephone, my lady," he announced. "It is a call from London."

Félice sprang to her feet. She looked up at Haslam almost piteously. She was like a child shrinking from pain.

"You forgive?" she repeated.

"I forgive," he assured her.

She crossed the lawn with flying footsteps. She found her husband by her side as she hung up the receiver. He looked at her a little anxiously.

"Tired, dear?"

"Perhaps a little," she admitted. "Did you hear with whom I spoke?"

"I tried to play the eavesdropper, but I failed," he confessed, laughing. "I arrived just a second too late. One of your young admirers, I imagine, who can't get over this afternoon."

She clung tightly to his arm.

"Why do all these big schoolboys," she demanded, "like me so much, and a great man like you—though he is my husband—he does not care at all?"

He passed his arm around her waist and kissed her. She closed her eyes and nestled against him for a moment or two.

"Now that you have been sweet, I will tell you who it was who telephoned," she confided. "It was the stern, cruel man who gets people hung."

"Dick Cotton, by Jove!" Andrew exclaimed. "What on earth did he want?"

"He proposed himself to spend the week-end with us. He is on his way down. I told him, of course, that we would be very glad. He will be here in time for dinner."

"Capital! I am always glad to see old Cotton. And don't you make any mistake about him, sweetheart. A stern fellow he seems to most people, but he's really one of the kindest-hearted men in the world."

Félice shivered a little.

"I wish he did not frighten me so," she sighed. "It is his eyes which seem to be always following one about and asking cruel questions."

They stepped outside, and she flung herself into the outstretched arms of a new arrival—a pleasant-faced beflanneled youth, a nephew of the house.

"No more serious talk," she cried. "We will play tennis together—you and I, Billy, against the world —and afterwards rounders. Andrew, you must tell them about preparing Sir Richard's room. I am a child again and I am going to play."

They had gathered round her and rushed off to an unoccupied court. Haslam, who had made his unobtrusive appearance, stood by his host's side. They both watched her with varying expressions. The longer they looked, the more masklike became Haslam's face. Presently he turned to his host.

"Andrew," he said, "I am very sorry, but I have just received an urgent message from town. I must leave within a quarter of an hour. I have taken the liberty of ordering my car, and the man who looks after me is packing my clothes."

"My dear fellow!" Andrew protested. "I am terribly sorry. Sure you can't hang on until tomorrow?"

"Quite impossible."

"Well, I'll call Félice?"

"Please don't. Make my excuses to her, won't you? We have had a little conversation already, and I hinted that I might be called away. It's my Chief who needs me. There are a lot of changes being made, and two new posts to be granted. I can't afford to be away for a moment."

"Well, of course one must not say a word, if that's the case," Andrew observed, turning towards the house with his guest. "We'll be awfully sorry to lose you, all the same. Come down again—any time—so long as you're sure we're here. I may bring Félice up to town for a day or so before we start the pheasants. She's like most young women of a volatile temperament who have had to face a shock—the better for continual change afterwards. Here are your things coming out already, I see."

Haslam paused on the edge of the lawn and held out his hand.

"Don't come any farther, please," he begged his host. "They want you for tennis. I've had a ripping two days, anyway, and if I hear you're in town, I'll ring up."

"The twelfth for the pheasants, remember, unless you'd like the second go at the big wood," his friend reminded him, as they shook hands.

"I'll make a note of the twelfth," Haslam promised. "I'll come unless I'm packed off."

He hurried away, and Andrew Glenlitten retraced his steps in leisurely fashion. Upon the border of the higher lawn, he paused. Before him was the wing of the great edifice in which the tragedy had taken place. He stood with his hands behind his back, looking up at the row of windows, counting them until he arrived at Félice's. At them he gazed long and earnestly. He saw where the ladder had been. He pictured to himself the dark form slipping rapidly up the rungs, unfastening the catch holding the window which led into the room. He looked farther along the line towards De Besset's quarters. It was so natural what had happened—De Besset, leaning out for a breath of fresh air and seeing the intruder. A terrible tragedy, but a very simple one. The period of acute shock of course now had passed, and the reconstructing mind moved more easily. He could see De Besset obeying a chivalrous enough instinct, not pausing to give the alarm, but hurrying along the corridor, bursting into the threatened room, to find himself face to face with a desperate man collecting his spoils. Horrible to be shot down unarmed, without a moment's warning, or a chance at self-defence. There was only one thought which sometimes filled him with a vague unease—an unease which he recognised owed its reawakening in those few minutes to the thought of Cotton's unexpected visit. The great lawyer's attitude about the whole thing had been a little strange. Always his manner had seemed to conceal some hidden thought. The legal mind refusing to accept the obvious, he decided, as he turned away.

He met a scattered little group coming towards him. Félice now was being gravely polite to some older callers. The chill of the autumn evening, after the long Indian summer's day, was calling them all indoors.