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‘My dear Bertie, I’ll take your word for it—’
‘No. I just want you to see for yourself. Get out of sight though. She’ll look out of the window when she hears the whistle. I want her to come down to the door. Let’s stand here. She can’t see us here from the window.’
His big hands urged the reluctant Gore into the angle formed by the railings of the section of the Green abutting on the hotel-grounds and one of the pillars of the gates admitting to them. Then he whistled softly. A large, very wet drop fell from an overhanging branch upon the nape of Gore’s neck and descended inside his collar. The dead leaves collected under the trees inside the railings and in the angle of the roadway by the gates emitted an odour of dismal dankness. The trunks of the trees looked disagreeably slimy. The fog smelt and tasted of decaying vegetation. One of Gore’s still new evening-shoes had pinched him a good deal during the evening and was pinching him quite uncomfortably now. Its toe stirred a little mound of leaves collected against the foot of the gate-pillar with some impatience.
‘Gone to bed and forgotten to switch off her light, old chap,’ he said. ‘Serve us right. Let’s get to bed.’
A small glistening object, revealed by the disturbance of the leaves at his feet, had attracted his attention—the vague attention of a sleepy man awaiting against his will the dénouement of a rather silly practical joke. As he stooped idly to pick it up, he heard the door beside the bar open cautiously and straightened himself again as Miss Rodney came into sight round the angle of the wall and halted abruptly upon perceiving him and his companion.
Challoner smiled at her grimly.
‘Good-night, Miss Rodney. Not in bed yet?’
She hesitated, plainly disconcerted; then decided upon haughty flippancy.
‘Looks like it, doesn’t it, Mr Challoner?’ she said tartly, and disappeared, remembering, however, to close the door as softly as she had opened it.
‘You see,’ said Challoner.
‘I see,’ said Gore. ‘Though I’m bound to say that Miss Rodney’s little amoors leave me cold.’
He yawned without the faintest attempt at concealment as he stooped and picked up the little glistening object which had attracted his attention amongst the leaves, and twiddled it between his fingers. Challoner however, displayed no resentment of his indifference nor any eagerness to adopt his advice as to getting to bed.
He stood frowning, apparently lost in thought, until Gore turned to leave him.
‘I say, old chap,’ he asked abruptly, ‘what time was it when you broke up at the Melhuishs’?’
‘About a quarter to twelve.’
‘Barrington left then—at a quarter to twelve?’
‘Yes. He and I came away together. Why?’
‘Nothing. I just wanted to know. Was he walking, or driving?’
‘Walking. At least I saw no car about, when I left him in Aberdeen Place.’
‘Oh,’ Challoner said musingly, ‘then he must have gone home on foot from the Melhuishs’—and taken his car out then … It was after one when Arndale said he saw it in Aberdeen Place.’
Despite his sleepiness and his aching toes, Gore’s interest in Mr Barrington’s nocturnal wanderings revived sharply.
‘In Aberdeen Place?’ he repeated.
‘Yes. Arndale told me he saw it there then—somewhere near the Melhuishs’ door. He must have gone home and taken it out—if you’re sure you didn’t see it there when he went away from the Melhuishs’ with you.’
Gore was to discover subsequently the reason for which the hour at which Barrington had reached home that night and taken out his car was of such interest to his companion. For him, at the moment, the point possessed no interest whatever beside the information that Barrington’s car had been in the neighbourhood of the Melhuishs’ hall door at the hour at which Arndale apparently had seen it there … after one o’clock. So he had gone, then—and found the door open, presumably … Left his car near the door, too, to advertise the affair to anyone who might happen to see it and recognise it … as Arndale had done—
‘Well, good-night, Bertie,’ he said curtly, and turned so that his companion might not see his face.
‘Good-night, Wick. Mind—mum’s the word, old chap.’
Gore crossed the hotel-grounds, and, finding the door of the annexe still open, gained his own quarters that way. Before he took off his overcoat one of the hands which explored its pockets mechanically drew out the small object which he had picked up near the gates. He stared at it in astonishment. It was a little hide knife-sheath, thickly ornamented with coloured beads—exactly like the sheaths of those two little Masai knives which had been included in his wedding-present to Pickles, and which he had seen a couple of hours before hanging in Melhuish’s hall.
He examined the thing carefully. Obviously it had not lain for any length of time amongst the damp leaves in which he had discovered it. It appeared to him too improbable a conjecture to surmise that chance should have brought to that spot—a bare hundred yards from the other two—a third such sheath. Common sense assured him that there was no third sheath—that this was one of the two which he had touched with a finger to draw the attention of Melhuish and Barrington to it.
How, then, had the blessed thing got out of Melhuish’s hall, across the road, and into that heap of leaves in the corner by the gates?
And the knife that should, for all prudence sake, have been in the sheath—where was that?
For a little while he pondered over the matter drowsily, half-minded to go out again and look about for the knife. But it was now getting towards half-past two. He smoked a final cigarette before his dying fire cheerlessly, and went to bed.
CHAPTER V
HE lunched next day with some friends out at Penbury, and was subsequently inveigled into participation in a hockey-match, in the course of which an enthusiastic curate inflicted such grievous injury upon one of his shins that he was compelled to abandon his intention of walking the four miles back to Linwood, and returned a full hour earlier than he had expected, in his host’s car. A page stopped him in the hall of the hotel to deliver a message received by telephone at two o’clock. Would Colonel Gore please ring up Linwood 7420 immediately upon his return, as Mrs Melhuish wished to speak to him urgently. Mrs Melhuish had been informed that Colonel Gore was not expected back until five o’clock, and had seemed annoyed, the page said. He had personally undertaken, if Colonel Gore returned before five, to ask him to ring up Linwood 7420 at once.
‘Urgently …’ Gore repeated to himself, as he limped to the telephone-cabinet. ‘Urgently …?’
An odd premonition of misfortune chilled him momentarily. The cheerful activities of his afternoon, the mob of light-hearted young people in whose company he had spent it, had banished most of the rather gloomy pessimism which had clouded his morning. But it was with an anxiety which he was quite unable to control that he awaited the reply to his call—an anxiety which increased sharply at the first sound of her voice.
‘Is that you, Wick? Can you come across here—now—at once? I must see you. I can’t explain over the phone. Can you come?’
‘Of course. My collar is a ruin—my boots are unspeakable—I’ve been playing hockey—’
‘Never mind. Never mind. Don’t wait to change. Please come at once.’
‘Coming right now.’
The dusk was deepening to darkness as he limped down Albemarle Hill and up Aberdeen Place to the door of Number 33. It opened to admit a patient and let out another as he came up to it. Melhuish’s busy time, of course—from two to six—the hour at which he would be out of the way … Gore’s depression deepened a shade.
He waited in the hall for a moment or two while Clegg ushered the incoming patient into the waiting-room and summoned from it the next in turn for the consulting-room. His eyes strayed to the trophy on the wall facing him, and instantly his memory recalled the sheath which he had found the night before by the back entrance to the Riverside. One of the two knives which had formed the lower apex of the trophy was missing. How the blazes had its sheath found its way to that heap of leaves?
‘Mrs Melhuish is in the morning-room, sir,’ said Clegg, pausing as the elderly lady whose name he had called emerged slowly from the waiting-room on the arm of a companion. ‘That door, sir, on the first landing. If you would kindly go up, sir.’
The room was in darkness when Gore entered, save for the glow of the fire before which she sat in a low chair, leaning forward, her chin cupped in her hands. She looked up eagerly.
‘Shut that door, Wick,’ she commanded. ‘And then come and sit down here. I want you not to look at me. That’s why I’ve switched off the lights. I’m in a most shocking mess.’
He obeyed her silently, seating himself, when he had shut the door, so that he, too, faced the glow of the fire.
‘I rang you up,’ she said, after a moment, ‘because I thought it just possible you might be able to help me out of it. Jolly cool, I expect you’ll think. But even if you do, I know you’ll listen to me. I simply must tell someone about it. And I could think of no one but you.’
‘Carry on,’ he said quietly. ‘What kind of a mess is it? Money—or a man?’
‘Both,’ she said curtly. ‘It’s simply a shocking mess.’
‘Told your husband about it?’
‘Heavens, no.’
‘That’s bad. Why not?’
‘I couldn’t. I’ve tried to screw myself up to do it—to tell him everything. But I can’t. I know he’d never forgive me … in his heart … even if the outside of him pretended to forgive me. He’s the best—the noblest man I have ever known. You can’t know, Wick, how good and fine he is. But … he’d never forgive … this.’
‘Rot,’ said Gore succinctly. ‘Piffle. Humbug.’
She made a little wretched gesture.
‘Ah, you’ve no idea what an idiot I’ve been, Wick.’
‘I wonder.’
‘You wonder?’
Her face turned to him sharply in the twilight.
‘No, no,’ he assured her quietly. ‘No one has told me anything. My wonder is merely the result of my own, I’m afraid, rather impertinent observation … and, if you’ll permit me to say so, your own infernal carelessness, young woman. I heard—you really compelled me to hear—a remark which you made last night, practically in my ear—not to me—but to … er … someone else.’
‘My God!’ she said in alarm, ‘you heard—What did I say?’
‘Er … something about a door, which might possibly not be open, you thought, but which Mr … er … the gentleman to whom you made the remark … seemed to think would be open.’
‘My God!’ she said again, her hands twisting nervously. ‘Did Lady Wellmore hear?’
‘I hope not. I think not. Though that’s not your fault. Then, the man is Mr Barrington?’
‘Yes.’
There was a silence. Gore rose to his feet abruptly, walked to the door, and flooded the room with light.
‘Well, Pickles, all I have to say to you—and I prefer to say it to your face, please—is this. You’re the silliest kind of silly ass. Mind—I know very little about this chap Barrington—can’t say I care much for most of what I do know. But if he were the best man that ever stepped—and he isn’t that—I should say just the same thing to you. Sorry I can’t be more sympathetic. I presume you expected I should be. But, as a confidant of illicit love-affairs, I’m afraid I’m rather a wash-out.’
She turned back upon him with a movement of exasperation.
‘Oh, don’t be a fool, Wick,’ she said sharply. ‘Good Heavens … I’m not that sort of idiot.’
‘Not that sort of idiot?’ he repeated. ‘Then may I ask what sort of idiot you are?’
‘Sit down. Don’t fidget about that way. I’ll tell you the whole thing—right from the beginning … It began this way. I met Mr Barrington four years ago … and … well, I had an affair with him … I didn’t know Sidney then—I hadn’t met him. He had only just come to Linwood, and I hadn’t come across him. If I had … well, this would never have happened …’
‘Suppose … er … we keep to what did happen …?’
‘I met Mr Barrington—he was Captain Barrington then—at a gymkhana got up by the Remount Depot people at Barhams. There was a Remount Depot out there, you know. He was stationed there then—in the summer of nineteen-eighteen. He won all sorts of things that afternoon—he’s a magnificent horseman—and, well, I was introduced to him and fell in love with him on the spot—that’s the long and the short of it—over head and ears the very first moment he spoke to me. You don’t understand that sort of thing. I know it will seem just silly to you—’
‘No, no, no. I’ve known it to happen before. Carry on.’
‘Well, it lasted for just five months—’
‘Five months is quite a long time. And then … it stopped?’
‘Yes. Something happened—and suddenly I saw what a frightful idiot I had been. It stopped then—very abruptly. He went away for a bit—when the depot was broken up—in the January of nineteen-nineteen. Then, a few months later, when he had been demobbed, he came back here again … to live. He had a flat at first in York Gardens, until he married and moved to Hatfield Place. He married Ethel Melville that spring—the very week I met Sidney. Of course I had to come across him. I couldn’t avoid it. I had known Ethel Melville all my life, and of course I had to call and dine with them and ask them to dine here, and so on. He was always at the Arndales’ house … In fact I ran into him and Ethel everywhere I went. However, he was always just polite—you know?—just like any other man one met. I thought at that time that the whole thing was done with—that he had done with me. But he hadn’t. He hasn’t. And that’s the mess.’
Gore shrugged his shoulders.
‘I suppose I’m more stupid than usual, or something. What, in the name of Heaven, is the mess?’
‘I’m not going into lurid details, Wick. You’ve got to try to understand that girls—even girls who are supposed, by misguided people like yourself, to be quite nice girls—are liable to be swept off their feet absolutely … if they happen just to have the bad luck to come across … a certain sort of man … the sort of man that Mr Barrington is. You can understand yourself, can’t you … that he is the sort of man who would sweep a girl off her feet?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘When I say sweep off her feet … I mean … well … the limit. You’re such an old dear that I know you’ll hardly believe that I could be capable of the limit. I’m afraid I am … or rather, was. At any rate … on a certain night in December, nineteen-eighteen, I got as near to it as doesn’t matter—with Mr Barrington’s kind assistance. Don’t look so unconvincing, Wick. I know you’re shocked to the marrow … However … there it is. By the merest fluke, I stopped there and had a good look at things. And nothing happened. Which was a jolly sight more than I deserved. Delightfully candid, am I not? I assure you there isn’t another man in the world upon whom I would inflict my candour so lavishly … if that is any consolation …’
‘Good. Let’s get to the ’osses.’
‘Well … as I say … nothing did happen. But nobody, you see … as things were … would believe that. That’s the trouble. Most of it, anyhow. I was fool enough … mad enough … to stay a night at a hotel at Bournemouth—with Mr Barrington … just before Christmas, nineteen-eighteen.’
Gore stared at her blankly.
‘Hell, Pickles,’ he said at length softly, ‘what did you do that for?’
‘I was infatuated with him, then. That’s the only word for it. I adored him—I thought of nothing, cared for nothing, wanted nothing … except to be with him. It seems extraordinary to me now … but—Well, that’s what happened, anyhow. I stayed a night at the Palatine at Bournemouth with him … as Mrs Barrington. If you care to take the trouble to go down to Bournemouth and ask them to let you look at the register for the date December 17th, 1918, you’ll see my beautiful handwriting. He was clever enough to make me sign— Trust him.’
‘But … how the …?’ Gore burst out after some moments of silent consternation.
‘How did I manage it? Oh, it was quite simple. I was still V.A.D.-ing at Lucey Court then. They thought I had gone home for the weekend. He had intended that we should stay the whole weekend at Bournemouth, you see. However … we didn’t. As I say, by the mercy of Providence, I had the sense to stop and take a good look at things just in time … Mr Barrington included. He lost his temper … and I had a glimpse of what he was like … really … I came home next day.’
‘Look here,’ said Gore desperately, ‘I must smoke a pipe. If I don’t I shall start in to break up the furniture or something.’
‘Yes, yes. Give me a cigarette. You’re sure you shut that door properly?
‘… Well, I thought I had done with him—though, of course, I feared all along that he might have kept my letters. But time went by, and—you know the way things that have happened dull off and stop worrying you. I had met Sidney … that helped me to forget about things I didn’t want to remember, too … We were married for a whole year before anything happened to make me in the least uneasy. And then one day Mr Barrington rang me up and said, “I want to see you. I shall be on the Downs, somewhere along the avenue, at half-past two. You’d better come along and see me.” Of course I refused at first, and, of course, in the end I got frightened and went. He was very hard up—that was his story at first … quite a polite, apologetic sort of story. Could I lend him a hundred pounds? I lent him a hundred pounds. Then I lent him another hundred. Then he asked for two hundred. I made a fuss—not that the money mattered so much, but because I had begun to realise by that time that he was not simply borrowing money from me, but demanding it. However, I gave him the two hundred—and, of course, he saw then that he had me—that I was afraid of him. And so it has gone on ever since, for two years. I think he has had about fifteen hundred pounds altogether, so far. Fifteen or sixteen, I’m not sure which. Sidney never dreams of asking me what I do with my own money … but of course I’ve been jolly careful in drawing the cheques for the money I paid away that way. So that I can’t be quite sure now myself. But it’s fifteen hundred at any rate.
‘Then I thought that if I gave him a really large sum, in one lump, he might be persuaded to give me back my letters. The letters are the trouble, you see. He said he would if I gave him six hundred. I agreed to that—that was about a fortnight or so ago. I agreed to make four payments of a hundred and fifty each, spread over two or three weeks. I was afraid to draw out so much money at once—because, of course, he insisted on being paid in cash.’
‘He would,’ Gore agreed grimly.
‘He insisted also on coming here to the house at night for the money. Of course, like a fool, I consented to that too, in the end. Though I might have known that his idea was to use that, afterwards, as an additional hold over me. But I gave way to him. I would have agreed to anything to get my letters back and have done with it. He came three nights and got a hundred and fifty each time. Last night he came again—I gave him the last hundred and fifty, and then he refused to give up the letters after all—said I must give him another four hundred— My God, Wick … what am I to do? What am I to do? It’s killing me. I shall go silly if it goes on much longer.’
He made no reply for a little space, stifling an inevitable inclination to sit in judgment and to consider what this ugliness just revealed to him meant to him rather than what it must have meant to her who had lived with it for two years. It was no moment for sentiment or for virtuous comment, he reminded himself. Facts were facts and must be faced—however ugly and disillusioning. Had he got all of them, even yet?
‘The letters are … very awkward?’
‘Very. Those I wrote to him after the episode at Bournemouth especially.’
‘You mean … a third person who read them would realise that the Bournemouth episode had taken place?’
‘Yes.’
‘Um. Well, then, you’ve got to get them back, that’s clear, somehow. Unless you face the music and tell your husband? …’
She shook her head.
‘No. I’d rather kill myself, Wick. In fact, I’ve been seriously thinking of killing myself all day.’
He grinned.
‘The more seriously the better …’
‘No. I’m not merely talking about it for the sake of talking about it. I’m not that sort, Wick. I could do it quite easily. Sidney has plenty of things in his consulting-room. All I have to do is sneak his keys. After all—what is it—to kill oneself? What is anything—if you once make up your mind to it? Things seem big and imposing and terrible and difficult … just to think of. But when you come to do them, they’re just a little movement of your hand or your tongue or your throat … nothing. Who, to look at me, would think for a moment that I could deliberately try to kill someone else? No one. And yet I did try, last night—tried deliberately. I didn’t succeed, as it happened. But do you think it seemed anything to me while I was trying to do it? Nothing. The simplest, flattest thing in the world. My dear man, if I once make up my mind to do myself in, I shall do it like a bird. And about the best thing I could do, it seems to me.’
‘Yes, yes. However—to keep to brass tacks. Do I understand you to say, seriously, that you made an attempt to do Mr Barrington in last night—while he was here—in this house?’
‘Yes. I tried to stab him with one of those little poisoned knives—you know … the things you were talking of to Sidney last night in the hall …’
‘What?’
‘Yes. I heard what you said to Sidney. I was on the stairs, just outside this room, while you were talking about them. I remembered, then, afterwards. If I had been just a shade quicker … well, I suppose I should have been in gaol by this time. But I should have got my letters and burnt them. There would have been plenty of time—at least I thought there would have been—before anyone came down and found him in the hall … All the night. And so Sidney would never have known. I meant just to give him a scratch. I heard you say a little prick would be enough. I should have had to fudge up some story—but I’m quite capable of doing that.’
Her matter-of-factness staggered him. He drew a long breath. ‘Phew …’
For a little while he paced to and fro between the fireplace and the door.
‘What happened? He took the knife from you, I suppose?’
‘Yes. I was trying to get it out of the little cover or sheath or whatever you call it … behind my back. And he grabbed my wrist and took it from me.’
‘Did he take it away with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘The knife and the sheath?’
‘Yes. Both. He put the knife into the sheath before he put it into his pocket. Why?’
‘Because, last night, about a quarter-past two or thereabouts, I found the sheath lying on the ground among some leaves, over there beside the gates leading into the hotel grounds. He must have thrown it away when he got outside. No, though. He had his car outside—just near your hall door, by the way—’
She uttered an exclamation of dismay. Then her eyes hardened in suspicion.
‘How do you know that? How do you know his car was there?’
‘Arndale told Challoner he saw it there a little after one o’clock … and Challoner told me … and Heaven knows how many other people since. However … to return to this confounded sheath. Barrington wouldn’t take his car over there into that corner, would he? That’s the one direction he wouldn’t take it. To get to Hatfield Place from here, he’d go along Aberdeen Place or Selkirk Place—I don’t know, though. Perhaps he went up that lane over there at the back of the hotel, and chucked the knife away as he passed the gates … into the Green. Yes. He might have done that. Though why exactly he should throw the knife away …’
She shook her head with conviction.
‘No. He wouldn’t throw it away. I’m quite sure of that. He put it away in his pocket carefully before he went out of the hall. He intended to keep it—he told me so—to hold it over me. I know he meant to keep it. I can’t think how you can have—You found only the sheath?’