Читать книгу The Borgia Cabinet - J. S. Fletcher - Страница 5

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As he made his bow to her, Charlesworth took a good look at Mrs. John Stanmore; he felt it incumbent upon him to make himself well acquainted with the appearance of anyone who happened to be a resident of Aldersyke Manor at that particular time. He saw a little, compact, self-possessed woman, probably from forty to forty-five years of age, well-preserved, alert, sharp of eye—a woman, he decided, who looked business-like and even shrewd. Mrs. Stanmore inspected him, too, critically—through a pair of folding glasses which she detached from her gown and perched, leisurely, on the bridge of her high-arched nose.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “The—er, officer you told me you were sending for from Scotland Yard, Mr. Harding? Mr.——”

“Detective-Sergeant Charlesworth, ma’am,” said Harding.

“How do you do?” Mrs. Stanmore became gracious. “I hope you’ll be able to help us in this dreadful business. Mr. Harding, I came in to see you because I’ve just been talking to Dr. Holmes. Of course, it has been between ourselves, but Dr. Holmes said I could mention the fact to you. Dr. Holmes is strongly of opinion that my brother-in-law has been poisoned!”

“Yes,” agreed Harding. “He thinks so.”

“Dreadful!” said Mrs. Stanmore. “Of course, this Dr. Salmon for whom he’s sent, can say definitely if it is so or not. But—and this is really what I came in about—unfortunately, the rumour has got spread about the house! The servants——”

“Who’s spread it, ma’am?” interrupted Harding, a little angrily. “I told Bedford——”

“Oh it’s not amongst the upper servants!” said Mrs. Stanmore. “It’s—well, from what I’ve heard just now, it’s a general rumour. And—I may, of course, speak freely to you and to Mr. Charlesworth?—I’m afraid there’s going to be sad trouble! Dreadful trouble!”

“Of what nature, ma’am?” inquired Harding.

Mrs. Stanmore, who had taken a chair near the window, with her back to the light, became silent, studying the pattern of the carpet.

“I suppose it will all have to come out!” she said at last, with a sudden sigh. “There’ll be an inquest, of course, and questions asked, and all that sort of thing. The truth is, Mr. Harding, however unpleasant it may sound, that the servants know quite well that my brother-in-law and his wife didn’t get on together. Incompatible!—that’s the word. They had nothing in common—their marriage was a mistake, a failure—and servants find these things out. And—they talk.”

“Talking now, I suppose?” suggested Charlesworth, quietly. “And—what about?”

Mrs. Stanmore gave her questioner a sharp look. Something in the detective’s steady response impelled her to be candid.

“I’m afraid the servants don’t like Lady Stanmore,” she said. “They idolized Sir Charles—he was a very indulgent, generous master. They are throwing out—hints.”

“How did they reach your ears, Mrs. Stanmore?” asked Charlesworth. “There would be a channel, of course.”

“Well, through Mrs. Protheroe, the housekeeper. And,” continued Mrs. Stanmore, throwing up her hand as if to fling off all further reserve, “if you gentlemen, as representing the police, want the plain truth—which, as I’ve already said, must come out—Mrs. Protheroe herself, and Miss Fawdale, Sir Charles’ secretary—I’ve just left them together, after a terribly serious conversation with them—both assert that they know something which they absolutely insist, things being as they are, on telling to the police! What are we to do?”

“Let them tell!” replied Charlesworth. “Whatever it may be, if they are determined to tell it, they will tell it. And why not?—in the interests of justice. I suppose,” he went on, with a smile, “they have already told you?”

“Well, yes,” admitted Mrs. Stanmore. “They have! They insisted. And—it’s very dreadful, and I don’t know what to think. Such a scandal—such—I suppose you’ll have to see them?”

“No doubt of it!” said Charlesworth. He looked at Harding. “Better hear what they’ve got to say now?” he suggested. “Trite saying!—but there’s no time like the present.”

Harding hesitated. Charlesworth sat watching him—a little contemptuous. He had already set Harding down as the sort of man who dislikes trouble, bother, worry—evidently all this was new to him; perhaps the first case of murder, or suspected murder, that he had ever had.

“Oh, well, if you think it necessary,” said Harding at last. “Of course, if they’ve anything to tell, they could have told it at the inquest. But if you want to be beforehand——”

“I do!” interrupted Charlesworth. “What am I here for? Perhaps Mrs. Stanmore would be so good as to fetch these ladies? I say!” he continued, when Mrs. Stanmore had left the room. “There’s something I want posting up in. Sir Charles Stanmore, now?—was he a knight or a baronet? I’m not up in those matters.”

“Baronet,” replied Harding, laconically. “Got his baronetcy some years ago—for public services.”

“Then—who succeeds to the title?” asked Charlesworth. “You say he’d no son of his own. Is there any heir to the title?”

Harding nodded at the door through which Mrs. Stanmore had just vanished.

“Mrs. John Stanmore’s son, Guy Stanmore,” he replied. “Sir Charles’ nephew. A mere lad—I should say he’s—well, twenty, or twenty-one, at most.”

“Is he here?” asked Charlesworth.

“No—he’s in the Army. Subaltern. I forget what regiment,” answered Harding. “I believe he’s just now at Aldershot—was, anyway, last time I heard of him. Sir Guy now, of course. He’s——”

The door opened again. Mrs. Stanmore came back, preceding the two women of whom she had spoken. And once more Charlesworth exercised his powers of observation, first upon the housekeeper, Mrs. Protheroe, and then upon the dead man’s private secretary, Miss Fawdale. They were vastly different. Mrs. Protheroe, a rather more than middle-aged woman, of a very evident severe respectability, was a specimen of the prim and proper serving-woman in high place; she owned a rigid mouth and hard eyes; Charlesworth realized that a defaulting scullery-maid would have a stiff time at her hands. Miss Fawdale, however, was young—two-or-three and twenty, perhaps; pretty, demure, smartly dressed. And that she had been weeping that morning Charlesworth perceived at first glance. But Mrs. Protheroe’s eyes were dry and hard, and her general demeanour denoted indignation.

Charlesworth turned to Harding with a whisper.

“Your job!” he murmured. “They know you!”

Harding looked at the housekeeper, doubtfully. It needed but a glance to see that this business was not to his taste.

“Mrs. Stanmore says that you and Miss Fawdale have something to tell, Mrs. Protheroe,” he said. “If you think it’s something really relevant——”

“I should say it’s decidedly relevant, Mr. Harding,” interrupted the housekeeper, with decision. “Considering what we in this house know of the relations between my late employer and his wife I think it’s relevant beyond question!”

“I know nothing about their relations,” remarked Harding.

“We do!” declared Mrs. Protheroe. “They’d been strained for some time. Sir Charles and Lady Stanmore didn’t get on—they were the last people in the world to suit each other. There was no open—I don’t know how to express it, exactly, but there were no what you’d call scenes. Still—it was known to us of the household. My private belief is that Lady Stanmore, for some reason or other, hated her husband! And now I’m going to speak straight out. I know for a fact—and so does Miss Fawdale—that of late Lady Stanmore has had a lover, and has been meeting him in secret!”

Harding said nothing. He looked as a man looks who, against his will, is asked to share in a disagreeable business. But Charlesworth spoke.

“You’ve evidence of that, Mrs. Protheroe?” he asked. “It isn’t merely rumour?”

“I’ve evidence!” retorted Mrs. Protheroe. “So has Miss Fawdale. The best evidence anybody can have—the evidence of our own eyes. Seeing is believing!”

“Well?” said Charlesworth.

“Some little time ago,” continued Mrs. Protheroe, “I happened to go for a walk one afternoon in Aldersyke Spinney. That is a wood which is Sir Charles’ private property, and is entered from the grounds of the Manor. It’s strictly preserved for game—no one is permitted to enter it, except from the house. A very romantic, picturesque bit of scenery—there are some ruins in it, of an old Priory or something of that sort. I was looking round these ruins when I caught sight of Lady Stanmore, in company with a gentleman. The fact is they were sitting on a fallen tree, near the ruins. I didn’t know him—he had never come to the house in my time, and I’ve been here since before Sir Charles’ marriage—since three years before, as a matter of fact. He looked to me like a professional gentleman—dressed that way, you know, not in the way gentlemen dress in the country. I should say he’s about thirty years of age—a handsome, rather distinguished-looking man.”

“Well?” repeated Charlesworth.

“I’m not going to deny that I put myself where I could see them, and they couldn’t see me,” continued Mrs. Protheroe. “I am Sir Charles’ old servant, with a great deal of respect for him—he was very popular with all of us—and I considered it my duty. And my opinion was that those two were lovers. At any rate—though it was only once—I saw them kiss each other when they parted. So—there you are!”

“Well?” said Charlesworth. “There’s more, of course.”

“Yes!” assented Mrs. Protheroe. “A week later, I saw Lady Stanmore leave the house one afternoon and cross the grounds in the direction of the Spinney. I followed her. But—on this occasion I took Miss Fawdale with me: I happened to meet her just as I was going out. We——”

“A moment, Mrs. Protheroe,” said Charlesworth. “Had you already told Miss Fawdale of what you’d seen on a previous occasion?”

“I had!”

“Well—go on, then. Miss Fawdale went with you.”

“Yes—and we saw Lady Stanmore with this gentleman, at the same place. And that time there was no doubt about their being lovers.”

“You have grounds for that statement, of course, Mrs. Protheroe?” asked Charlesworth.

“Of course!—or I shouldn’t make it. They behaved like lovers.”

“And Miss Fawdale also saw this?”

“Ask her!”

Miss Fawdale looked down demurely at her interlaced fingers.

“I saw—what Mrs. Protheroe refers to,” she murmured.

“Couldn’t help it,” said Mrs. Protheroe. “It was there to see.”

Charlesworth glanced at Harding. Harding was looking glum and worried. He shook his head.

“I don’t see what all this has got to do with what we’re inquiring into,” he remarked, grumblingly. “Don’t see it at all! Lady Stanmore’s affair, all that—not ours.”

“Perhaps Mrs. Protheroe considers it has a bearing?” suggested Charlesworth, turning to the housekeeper. “I think she does—eh, Mrs. Protheroe?”

“I do!” exclaimed Mrs. Protheroe. “For you haven’t heard everything yet. Miss Fawdale has something to tell you of what she saw yesterday—only yesterday!—afternoon. As things have turned out—and it’s being talked of already that he’s been poisoned—I think you ought to know all about it.”

“We’re waiting to hear everything about it,” said Charlesworth. “What is it, Miss Fawdale? Don’t be afraid—and don’t keep anything back.”

Miss Fawdale braced herself for her task, letting it be seen that she had no taste for its accomplishment.

“I—I don’t like having to tell this,” she said, hesitatingly, “but Mrs. Protheroe thinks I should. It is just this—I was in the Spinney again yesterday afternoon, and I saw Lady Stanmore then, in the same place—the same gentleman was with her. They—they behaved as when Mrs. Protheroe and I had seen them before. But what Mrs. Protheroe particularly urges me to tell you is that before they parted, I saw this gentleman give Lady Stanmore a small packet, done up in white paper——”

“Stop there!” interrupted Charlesworth. “How far away were you from these two?”

“Perhaps fifteen or twenty yards,” replied Miss Fawdale, after reflecting.

“Where were you? Hidden?”

“I was in the ruins—looking out through a break in the masonry.”

“Well? A small packet, done up in white paper. How big?”

“Oh, small—like the powder one gets from chemists.”

“You could see that quite clearly?”

“Quite clearly.”

“Well—anything else?”

“Nothing, except that he seemed to be giving Lady Stanmore some very particular instructions or something of the sort, about this packet.”

“How long did you watch these two?”

“Not long. They were there when I went into the ruins. Just after he had given her the packet, they got up from the fallen tree on which they were sitting and went away into the thick part of the wood.”

“And you didn’t follow?”

“No—I returned to the house.”

Charlesworth asked no further questions. The three women withdrew. And when they had gone Charlesworth turned to Harding.

“Superintendent!” he said. “We must see Lady Stanmore—and at once!”