Miss Arnott's Marriage
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Under the circumstances it was not strange that matters in the drawing-room were no more lively than they had been at dinner. So Miss Arnott excused herself at what she considered to be the earliest possible moment and went to bed.
At least she went as far as her bedroom. She found Evans awaiting her. A bed was made up close to her own, all arrangements were arranged to keep watch and ward over her through the night.
"Evans," she announced, "I've come to bed."
"Have you, miss? It's early-that is, for you."
"If you'd spent the sort of evening I have you'd have come early to bed. Evans, I want to tell you something."
"Yes, miss; what might it be?"
"Don't you ever take it for granted that, because a man's clever at one thing, he's clever, or the least bit of good, at anything else."
"I'm afraid, miss, that I don't understand."
"Then I'll make you understand, before I've done with you; you're not stupid. I feel that before I even try to close my eyes I must talk to some rational being, so I'll talk to you."
"Thank you, miss."
"There's a Mr Gilbert downstairs."
"Yes, miss, I've heard of him."
"He's supposed to be a famous criminal lawyer; perhaps you've heard that too. I'm told that he's the cleverest living, and, I daresay, he's smart enough in his own line. But out of it-such clumsiness, such stupidity, such conceit, such manners-oh, Evans! I once heard a specialist compared to a dog which is kept chained to its kennel; within the limits of its chain that dog has an amazing knowledge of the world. I suppose Mr Gilbert is a specialist. He knows everything within the limits of his chain. But, though he mayn't be aware of it-and he isn't-his chain is there! And now, Evans, having told you what I wished to tell you, I'm going to bed."
But Miss Arnott did not go to bed just then. She seemed unusually wide awake. It was obvious that, if any sound data were to be obtained on the subject of her alleged somnambulistic habits, it was necessary, first of all, that she should go to sleep; but it would not be much good her getting into bed if she felt indisposed for slumber.
"The only thing, Evans, of which I'm afraid is that, if we're not careful, you'll fall asleep first, and that then, so soon as you're asleep, I shall start off walking through the woods. It'll make both of us look so silly if I do."
"No fear of that, miss. I can keep awake as long as anyone, and when I am asleep the fall of a feather is enough to wake me."
"The fall of a feather? Evans! I don't believe you could hear a feather falling, even if you were wide awake."
"Well, miss, you know what I mean. I mean that I'm a light sleeper. I shall lock the doors when we're both of us in bed, and I shall put the keys underneath my pillow. No one will take those keys from under my pillow without my knowing it, I promise you that, no matter how light-fingered they may be."
"I see. I'm to be a prisoner. It doesn't sound quite nice; but I suppose I'll have to put up with it. If you were to catch me walking in my sleep how dreadful it would be."
"I sha'n't do it. I don't believe you ever have walked in your sleep, and I don't believe you ever will."
Later it was arranged that the young lady should undress, take a book with her to bed, and try to read herself to sleep. Then it became a question of the book.
"I know the very book that would be bound to send me to sleep in a couple of ticks, even in the middle of the day. I've tested its soporific powers already. Three times I've tried to get through the first chapter, and each time I've been asleep before I reached the end. It is a book! I bought it a week or two ago. I don't know why. I wasn't in want of a sleeping powder then. Where did I put it? Oh, I remember; I lent it to Mrs Plummer. She seemed to want something to doze over, so I suggested that would be just the thing. Evans, do you think Mrs Plummer is asleep yet?"
"I don't know, miss. I believe she's pretty late. I'll go and see."
"No, I'll go and see. Then I can explain to her what it is I want, and just what I want it for. You stay here; I sha'n't be a minute."
Miss Arnott went up to Mrs Plummer's bedroom. It was called the tower-room. On one side of the house-which was an architectural freak-was an eight-sided tower. Although built into the main building it rose high above it. Near the top was a clock with three faces. On the roof was a flagstaff which served to inform the neighbourhood if the family was or was not at home.
Miss Arnott was wont to declare that the tower-rooms were the pleasantest in the house. In proof of it the one which she had selected to be her own special apartment lay immediately under that in which Mrs Plummer slept. It had two separate approaches. The corridor in which was Miss Arnott's sleeping-chamber had, at one end-the one farthest from her-a short flight of stairs which ascended to a landing on to which opened one of Mrs Plummer's bedroom doors. On the opposite side of the room was another door which gave access to what was, to all intents and purposes, a service staircase. Miss Arnott, passing along the corridor and up the eight or nine steps, rapped at the panel once, twice, and then again. As still no one answered she tried the handle, thinking that if it was locked the probabilities were that Mrs Plummer was in bed and fast asleep. But, instead of being locked, it opened readily at her touch. The fact that the electric lights were all on seemed to suggest that, at anyrate, the lady was not asleep in bed.
"Mrs Plummer!" she exclaimed, standing in the partly opened doorway.
No reply. Opening the door wider she entered the room. It was empty. But there was that about the appearance of the chamber which conveyed the impression that quite recently, within the last two or three minutes, it had had an occupant. Clothes were thrown down anywhere, as if their wearer had doffed them in a hurry. Miss Arnott, who had had a notion that Mrs Plummer was the soul of neatness, was surprised and even tickled by the evidence of untidiness which met her on every hand. Not only were articles of wearing apparel scattered everywhere, but the whole apartment was in a state of odd disarray; at one part the carpet was turned quite back. As she looked about her, Miss Arnott smiled.
"What can Mrs Plummer have been doing? She appears to have been preparing for a flitting. And where can she be? She seems to have undressed. Those are her clothes, and there's the dress she wore at dinner. She can't be in such a state of déshabille as those things seem to suggest; and yet- I don't think I'll wait till she comes back. I wonder if she's left that book lying about. If I can find it I'll sneak off at once, and tell her all about it in the morning."
On a table in the centre was piled up a heterogeneous and disorderly collection of odds and ends. Miss Arnott glanced at it to see if among the miscellanea was the volume she was seeking. She saw that a book which looked like it was lying underneath what seemed to be a number of old letters. She picked it up, removing the letters to enable her to do so. One or two of the papers fell on to the floor. She stooped to pick them up. The first was a photograph. Her eyes lighted on it, half unwittingly; but, having lighted on it, they stayed.
The room seemed all at once to be turning round her. She was conscious of a sense of vertigo, as if suddenly something had happened to her brain. For some seconds she was obsessed by a conviction that she was the victim of an optical delusion, that what she supposed herself to see was, in reality, a phantom of her imagination. How long this condition continued she never knew. But it was only after a perceptible interval of time that she began to comprehend that she deluded herself by supposing herself to be under a delusion, that what she had only imagined she saw, she actually did see. It was the sudden shock which had caused that feeling of curious confusion. The thing was plain enough.
She was holding in her hand the photograph of her husband-Robert Champion. The more she looked at it the stronger the conviction became. There was not a doubt of it. The portrait had probably been taken some years ago, when the man was younger; but that it was her husband she was certain. She was hardly likely to make a mistake on a point of that kind. But, in the name of all that was inexplicable, what was Robert Champion's photograph doing here?
She glanced at another of the articles she had dropped. It was another portrait of the same man, apparently taken a little later. There was a third-a smaller one. In it he wore a yachting cap. Although he was no yachting man-so far as she knew he had never been on the sea in his life; but it was within her knowledge that it was a fashion in headgear for which he had had, as she deemed, a most undesirable predilection. He had worn one when he had taken her for their honeymoon to Margate; anyone looking less like a seaman than he did in it, she thought she had never seen. In a fourth photograph Robert Champion was sitting in a chair with his arm round Mrs Plummer's waist; she standing at his side with her hand upon his shoulder. She was obviously many years older than the man in the chair; but she could not have looked more pleased, either with herself or with him.
What did it mean? – what could it mean? – those photographs in Mrs Plummer's room?
Returning to the first at which she had glanced, the girl saw that the name was scrawled across the right-hand bottom corner, which had hitherto been hidden by her thumb, in a hand which set her heart palpitating with a sense of startled recognition. "Douglas Plummer." The name was unmistakable in its big, bombastic letters; but what did he mean by scrawling "Douglas Plummer" at the bottom of his own photograph? She suddenly remembered having seen a visiting card of Mrs Plummer's on which her name had been inscribed "Mrs Douglas Plummer." What did it mean?
On the back of the photograph in which the man and the woman had been taken together she found that there was written-she knew the writing to be Mrs Plummer's-"Taken on our honeymoon."
When she saw that Miss Arnott rose to her feet-for the first time since she had stooped to pick up the odds and ends which she had dropped-and laughed. It was so very funny. Again she closely examined the pair in the picture and the sentence on the back. There could be no doubt as to their identity; none as to what the sentence said, nor as to the hand by which it had been penned. But on whose honeymoon had it been taken? What did it mean?
There came to her a feeling that this was a matter in which inquiries should be made at once. She had forgotten altogether the errand which had brought her there; she was overlooking everything in the strength of her desire to learn, in the shortest possible space of time, what was the inner meaning of these photographs which she was holding in her hand. She saw the letters which she had disturbed to get at the book beneath. In the light of the new discoveries she had made, even at that distance she recognised the caligraphy in which they were written. She snatched them up; they were in a bundle, tied round with a piece of pink baby ribbon. To use a sufficiently-expressive figure of speech, the opening line of the first "hit her in the face," – "My darling Agatha."
Agatha? That was Mrs Plummer's Christian name.
She thrust at a letter in the centre. It began-"My precious wife."
His precious wife? Whose wife? Douglas Plummer's? – Robert Champion's? – Whose? What did it mean?
As she assailed herself with the question-for at least the dozenth time-to which she seemed unlikely to find an answer, a fresh impulse caused her to look again about the room-to be immediately struck by something which had previously escaped her observation. Surely the bed had been slept in. It was rumpled; the pillow had been lain on; the bedclothes were turned back, as if someone had slipped from between the sheets and left them so. What did that mean?
While the old inquiry was assuming this fresh shape, and all sorts of fantastic doubts seemed to have had sudden birth and to be pressing on her from every side, the door on the other side of the room was opened, and Mrs Plummer entered.
CHAPTER XXXVI
OUT OF SLEEP
Miss Arnott was so astounded at the appearance which Mrs Plummer presented that, in her bewilderment, she was tongue-tied. What, in the absence of tonsorial additions-which the girl had already noted were set out in somewhat gruesome fashion on the dressing-table-were shown to be her scanty locks, straggled loose about her neck. The garment in which her whole person was enveloped was one which Miss Arnott had never seen before, and, woman-like, she had a very shrewd knowledge of the contents of her companion's wardrobe. More than anything else it resembled an unusually voluminous bath-sheet, seeming to have been made of what had originally been white Turkish towelling. The whiteness, however, had long since disappeared. It was not only in an indescribable state of filth, but also of rags and tatters. How any of it continued to hang together was a mystery; there was certainly not a square foot of it without a rent. On her feet she wore what seemed to be the remnants of a pair of bedroom slippers. So far as Miss Arnott was able to discern the only other garment she had on was her nightdress. In this attire she appeared to have been in some singular places. She was all dusty and torn; attached to her here and there were scraps of greenery: here a frond of bracken, there the needle of a pine.
"Mrs Plummer," cried Miss Arnott, when she had in part realised the extraordinary spectacle which her companion offered, "wherever have you been?"
But Mrs Plummer did not answer, at first to the girl's increased amazement; then it all burst on her in a flash-Mrs Plummer was asleep! It seemed incredible; yet it was so. Her eyes were wide open; yet it only needed a second or two to make it clear to Miss Arnott that they did not see her. They appeared to have the faculty of only seeing those objects which were presented to their owner's inner vision. Miss Arnott was not present at the moment in Mrs Plummer's thoughts, therefore she remained invisible to her staring eyes. It was with a curious feeling of having come into unlooked-for contact with something uncanny that the girl perceived this was so. Motionless, fascinated, hardly breathing, she waited and watched for what the other was about to do.
Mrs Plummer closed the door behind her carefully-with an odd carefulness. Coming a few steps into the room she stopped. Looking about her with what the girl felt was almost an agony of eagerness, it seemed strange that she should not see her; her eyes travelled over her more than once. Then she drew a long breath like a sigh. Raising both hands to her forehead she brushed back the thin wisps of her faded hair. It was with a feeling which was half-shame, half-awe that the girl heard her break into speech. It was as though she were intruding herself into the other's very soul, and as if the woman was speaking with a voice out of the grave.
Indeed, there was an eerie quality about the actual utterance-a lifelessness, a monotony, an absence of light and shade. She spoke as she might fancy an automaton would speak-all on the same note. The words came fluently enough, the sentences seemed disconnected.
"I couldn't find it. I can't think where I put it. It's so strange. I just dropped it like that." Mrs Plummer made a sudden forward movement with her extended right hand, then went through the motion of dropping something from it on to the floor. With sensations which in their instant, increasing horror altogether transcended anything which had gone before, the girl began to understand. "I can't quite remember. I don't think I picked it up again. I feel sure I didn't bring it home. I should have found it if I had. I have looked everywhere-everywhere." The sightless eyes looked here and there, anxiously, restlessly, searchingly, so that the girl began to read the riddle of the disordered room. "I must find it. I shall never rest until I do-never! I must know where it is! The knife! the knife!"
As the unconscious woman repeated for the second time the last two words, a sudden inspiration flashed through the listener's brain; it possessed her with such violence that, for some seconds, it set her trembling from head to foot. When the first shock its advent had occasioned had passed away, the tremblement was followed by a calm which was perhaps its natural sequence.
Without waiting to hear or see more she passed out of the room with rapid, even steps along the corridor to her own chamber. There she was greeted by Evans.
"You've been a long time, miss. I suppose Mrs Plummer couldn't find the book you wanted." Then she was evidently struck by the peculiarity of the girl's manner. "What has happened? I hope there's nothing else that's wrong. Miss Arnott, what are you doing there?"
The girl was unlocking the wardrobe drawer in which she had that afternoon replaced Hugh Morice's knife. She took the weapon out.
"Evans, come with me! I'll show you who killed that man in Cooper's Spinney! Be quick!"
She took the lady's-maid by the wrist and half-led, half-dragged her from the room. Evans looked at her with frightened face, plainly in doubt as to whether her young mistress had not all at once gone mad. But she offered no resistance. On the landing outside the door they encountered Mr Stacey and Mr Gilbert, who were apparently just coming up to bed. Miss Arnott hailed them.
"Mr Stacey! Mr Gilbert! you wish to know who it was who murdered Robert Champion? Come with me quickly. You shall see!"
They stared at the knife which was in her hand, at the strange expression which was on her face. She did not wait for them to speak. She moved swiftly towards the staircase which led to the tower-room. She loosed her attendant's wrist. But Evans showed no desire to take advantage of her freedom, she pressed closely on her mistress's heels. Mr Gilbert, rapid in decision, went after the two women without even a moment's hesitation. Mr Stacey, of slower habit, paused a moment before he moved, then, obviously puzzled, he followed the others.
When the girl returned Mrs Plummer was bending over a drawer, tossing its contents in seemingly haphazard fashion on to the carpet.
"I must find it! I must find it!" she kept repeating to herself.
Miss Arnott called to her, not loudly but clearly, -
"Mrs Plummer!" But Mrs Plummer paid no heed. She continued to mutter and to turn out the contents of the drawer. The girl moved to her across the floor, speaking to her again by name. "Mrs Plummer, what is it you are looking for? Is it this knife?"
Plainly the somnambulist was vaguely conscious that a voice had spoken. Ceasing to rifle the drawer she remained motionless, holding her head a little on one side, as if she listened. Then she spoke again; but whether in answer to the question which had been put to her or to herself, was not clear.
"The knife! I want to find the knife."
"What knife is it you are looking for? Is it the knife with which you killed your husband in the wood?"
The woman shuddered. It seemed as if something had reached her consciousness. She said, as if echoing the other's words, -
"My husband in the wood."
The girl became aware that Day, the butler, had entered through the door on the other side, wearing his hat, as if he had just come out of the open air, and that he was accompanied by Granger in his uniform, and by a man whom she did not recognise, but who, as a matter of fact, was Nunn, the detective. She knew that, behind her, was Evans with Mr Stacey and Mr Gilbert. She understood that, for her purpose, the audience could scarcely have been better chosen.
She raised her voice a little, laying stress upon her words.
"Mrs Plummer, here is the knife for which you are looking."
With one hand she held out to her the handle of the knife, with the other she touched her on the shoulder. There could be no mistake this time as to whether or not the girl had penetrated to the sleep-walker's consciousness. They could all of them see that a shiver went all over her, almost as if she had been struck by palsy. She staggered a little backwards, putting out her arms in front of her as if to ward off some threatening danger. There came another fit of shivering, and then they knew she was awake-awake but speechless. She stared at the girl in front of her as if she were some dreadful ghost. Relentless, still set upon her purpose, Miss Arnott went nearer to her.
"Mrs Plummer, here is the knife for which you have been looking-the knife with which you killed your husband-Douglas Plummer-in the wood."
The woman stared at the knife, then at the girl, then about her. She saw the witnesses who stood in either doorway. Probably comprehension came to her bewildered intellect, which was not yet wide awake. She realised that her secret was no longer her own, since she had been her own betrayer, that the Philistines were upon her. She snatched at the knife which the girl still held out, and, before they guessed at her intention, had buried it almost to the hilt in her own breast.
CHAPTER XXXVII
WHAT WAS WRITTEN
She expired that same night without having uttered an intelligible word. In a sense her end could hardly have been called an unfortunate one. It is certain that, had she lived, she would have had a bad time, even if she had escaped the gallows. She had left behind her the whole story, set forth in black and white by her own hand. It was a sufficiently unhappy one. It is not impossible that, having heard it, a jury would have recommended her to mercy. In which case the capital sentence would probably have been commuted to one of penal servitude for life. It is a moot question whether it is not better to hang outright rather than endure a living death within the four walls of a gaol.
The story of her life as recounted by herself-and there is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of her narrative-was this.
Agatha Linfield, a spinster past her first prime, possessed of some means of her own, met at a Brighton boarding-house a young man who called himself Douglas Plummer. Possibly believing her to be better off than she was he paid her attentions from the first moment of their meeting. Within a month he had married her. In much less than another month she had discovered what kind of a man she had for a husband. He inflicted on her all sorts of indignities, subjecting her even to physical violence, plundering her of all the money he could. When he had brought her to the verge of beggary he fell into the hands of the police; as he was destined to do again at a later period in his career. Hardly had he been sentenced to a term of imprisonment than his wife became the recipient of another small legacy, on the strength of which she went abroad, and, by its means, managed to live. Her own desire was never to see or hear of her husband again. She even went so far as to inform her relatives that he had died and left her a sorrowing widow. He, probably having wearied of a woman so much older than himself and knowing nothing of the improvement in her fortunes, seems to have made no effort on his release to ascertain her whereabouts. In short, for some years each vanished out of the other's existence.
On the night of the Saturday on which they returned from abroad, when Miss Arnott went for her woodland stroll, Mrs Plummer, whose curiosity had been previously aroused as to the true inwardness of her proceedings, after an interval followed to see what possible inducement there could be to cause her, after a long and fatiguing journey, to immediately wander abroad at such an uncanonical hour. She was severely punished for her inquisitiveness. Exactly what took place her diary did not make clear; details were omitted, the one prominent happening was alone narrated in what, under the circumstances, were not unnaturally vague and somewhat confused terms. She came upon the man who was known to Miss Arnott as Robert Champion, and to her as Douglas Plummer, all in a moment, without having had, the second before, the faintest suspicion that he was within a hundred miles. She had hoped-had tried to convince herself-that he was dead. The sight of him, as, without the least warning he rose at her-like some spectre of a nightmare-from under the beech tree, seems to have bereft her for a moment of her senses. He must have been still writhing from the agony inflicted by Jim Baker's "peppering" so that he himself was scarcely sane. He had in his hand Hugh Morice's knife, which he had picked up, almost by inadvertence, as he staggered to his feet at the sound of someone coming. It may be that he supposed the newcomer to have been the person who had already shot at him, that his intention was to defend himself with the accidentally-discovered weapon from further violence. She only saw the knife. She had set down in her diary that he was waiting there to kill her; which, on the face of it, had been written with an imperfect knowledge of the facts. As he lurched towards her-probably as much taken by surprise as she was-she imagined he meant to strike her with the knife. Scarcely knowing what she did she snatched it from him and killed him on the spot.