CHAPTER IX
Endacott, although abstracted, seemed for him to be in an almost genial frame of mind when he obeyed the summons of the evening gong and, meeting Claire in the hall, waited to enter the dining room with her.
“A tiring day, Uncle?” she asked him.
“Not particularly,” he answered. “I made only two calls. Phillpots kept me some time at the British Museum, or I could really have caught the earlier train.—How is the piano?”
“I haven’t tried it,” she admitted.
“Your aunt all right to-day?”
“More confessions, Uncle. I haven’t even seen her.”
Endacott, as he took his place, removed his spectacles for a moment, rubbed his eyes wearily, and then looked across at his niece.
“What have you been doing all day then?” he demanded.
Claire summoned up all her courage.
“Mr. Ballaston called for me and I went over to the Cromer Golf Links with him,” she confided. “I had a lesson at golf, some lunch, and afterwards we came home through Blakeney.”
Her uncle, rather to Claire’s surprise, made no comment. The service of dinner appeared to interest him more than usual, and he certainly ate with appetite.
“Railway travelling agrees with me, I think,” he remarked. “I feel that I shall enjoy working this evening. After dinner I shall have a pipe on the lawn with my coffee, and then—the half-hour which I have been looking forward to for so long.”
“Did you get what you wanted from Mr. Phillpots?” she asked him, with a queer little note of eagerness in her tone.
“I did,” he admitted. “Unless I am very much mistaken, I can fill in all the missing spaces in that manuscript within an hour. By-the-by, Claire, you didn’t come down again last night after you had gone to bed, did you, or hear anything unusual?”
She shook her head.
“I was much too sleepy. Why?”
He toyed nervously with some bread upon his plate. His eyes sought hers almost furtively.
“Just an idea,” he said. “I left my work for five or ten minutes and walked around the garden. When I came back, my papers were all disturbed.”
“I didn’t stir out of my room after I went upstairs,” she assured him. “Was anything missing? Were there any papers there that mattered?”
“As it happened there were not,” he replied. “If it had been to-night—well, it might have been different, although a manuscript in Chinese, even though translated, as it will be, would be scarcely likely to attract an ordinary thief, would it?”
She moved in her chair a little uneasily.
“I should think not,” she replied. “In any case, if you were only out of the room for a few minutes, who could have entered without your seeing them?”
“Just so,” he agreed. “As you suggest, it might have been fancy, or a breath of wind from outside, or the opening of a door.”
“You mustn’t sit up too late to-night,” she told him. “You are looking very tired.”
He nodded gently.
“All the work I have to do,” he said, “will be finished in an hour. Afterwards I may write a letter while you go in and see your aunt.”
His sudden fit of what was for him almost garrulity, left him and he relapsed into his usual silence, punctuated only by monosyllabic replies to Claire’s remarks. He accompanied her into the garden, however, at the conclusion of the meal, and whilst they sat together over their coffee he asked her an abrupt question.
“How old are you, Claire?”
“Twenty-one,” she told him, “twenty-one last May.”
“You are a sensible girl,” he went on. “When I heard that I was going to have a niece to look after and that she was coming out to China for me to take her to England, I must confess that I was terrified. Such an upheaval in my daily life seemed to me calamitous. I have been agreeably surprised. Your coming has been a pleasure to me, Claire. I only wish that you had come before.”
Her eyes suddenly filled with tears. It was the first time he had ever spoken to her in such a fashion.
“I am a poor adviser for a young girl,” he continued, a little regretfully, “and I am afraid that your aunt is hopelessly prejudiced in the matter. I cannot bring myself to believe, however, that the society of this young man, Gregory Ballaston, is a good thing for you. I distrust the family ethics. I cannot help thinking that he is hoping through you to arrive at the information which so far I have refused his father and his uncle.”
“I was with him for several hours to-day, Nunks, and he never even mentioned it,” she ventured. “He is going out to Canada in a month or so to earn his own living.”
Endacott sighed.
“I am full of prejudices,” he confessed. “The last twenty years of my life have been spent in abstractions, have passed like a dream, away from the world which counts, which one ought really never to lose sight of. I should be an ill-adviser to any one.—Go and play something.”
Claire disappeared into the house and soon the sound of her music drifted out in little ripples of melody through the perfumed stillness. Her uncle listened for some time without any sign of pleasure or the reverse. Then he rose to his feet and looked up across the roofs of the village, over the green slopes in the background, to where a few lights were slowly appearing from the windows of the Hall. Presently the music ceased and Claire stole out to him. She passed her arm through his.
“It is a very beautiful home that, Uncle,” she said softly. “Don’t you think it would be a sin to have it all broken up?”
“A better race might follow,” he muttered.
She shook her head.
“They belong,” she said gently.
He turned away with a little grunt and entered his study. For a few minutes Claire flitted round the garden. There was a nightingale singing somewhere in the distance to which she stopped to listen. Even the noises from the village, through the gathering twilight, became almost melodious. Presently she passed through the postern gate, strolled across the lane and entered the drawing-room of the Little House through the wide-flung windows. Madame lay stretched upon her couch, listless and weary. She welcomed Claire with only the ghost of a smile.
“Where have you been all day, child?” she asked.
“Enjoying myself, I am afraid,” was the remorseful reply. “Gregory came and fetched me and we went over to Cromer.”
“How did he seem?” Madame enquired, with a shade of interest, almost eagerness, in her manner. “Was he very depressed?”
Claire shook her head, thankful for the twilight.
“He seemed very much as usual,” she answered; “if anything a little nicer. I enjoyed my day very much. The only thing I felt was that I was neglecting you.”
Madame made a faint gesture of denial.
“I am very glad to think that you had such a happy day, dear,” she said. “I am glad you came in for a moment, though. I don’t know why it is, but to-night I have nerves. Where is your uncle?”
“Working away as usual at his Chinese manuscripts,” Claire replied. “He went to London this morning and came back at five o’clock.”
Madame nodded.
“I saw the car go with him and bring him back. I don’t know how it is, but the sight of every one to-day makes me uneasy. Even Bertram seemed queer. He sat with me for an hour this afternoon. As a rule he soothes me. To-day, somehow or other, he frightened me. I feel as though there were a sort of psychological thunder in the air.”
“Aunt, you mustn’t let yourself imagine such foolish things,” Claire begged. “Everything and every one is as usual. Uncle, as a matter of fact, was in remarkably good spirits this evening.”
“Can any one help fancies and presentiments, my dear, who lies here hour after hour, day by day, as I do,” Madame sighed. “I know it is silly, but instinct is stronger than reason, and Bertram, at any rate, was strange to-day. Every now and then he left off talking and there seemed to be something always behind his eyes.”
Miss Besant entered the room and Claire called to her. She began to make preparations with firm, capable fingers, for moving the couch. Claire bent over and kissed her aunt.
“No more morbidness, please,” she insisted. “I’ll be over early to-morrow morning. I may have some news for you.”
“Your uncle has found what he wanted in London then?” Madame asked.
Claire nodded assent.
“He told me a short time ago,” she confided, “that in half an hour he would know everything there is to be known.”
She crossed the lane and passed through the postern gate, gazing wistfully over the roofs of the village houses towards the park. Her preparations for the night, when she finally reached her room, took her longer than usual. It was late when, after she had turned out the lights, she moved to the window and stood there for a moment looking out. Suddenly the little reminiscent smile upon her lips changed to one of actuality, of real and instant pleasure. The moonlight was as yet faint, but, crossing the stile which led from the park, she caught a glimpse of a white shirt. For a moment she was tempted. He might be coming even as far as the gardens, late though it was. Then she looked back at her neatly folded clothes and shook her head.
“Claire,” she soliloquised, “you’re a sentimental idiot!”
After which she turned out the light, got into bed and slept soundly.
When she awoke the sun was shining into her room, the thrushes and blackbirds were singing and there were sounds of unusual movement downstairs. Still only half awake, she sat up, listening to the footsteps upon the gravel beneath her window. There were voices too, muffled, yet agitated. Then she heard one word—a dramatic, horrible slur against the background of the summer morning.
“Dead!—Cold dead he were!”
For a moment she shook herself. She felt that she must be in a nightmare. Then she became conscious of the reality of those footsteps below, the renewed murmuring of awe-stricken voices. She sprang out of bed. Before she could reach the window, she heard the same hoarse, shocked voice, with its quaint Norfolk inflexion.
“Shot right through the head, that’s what happened to him. Writing there at the table with his papers lying all over the place. There’s a revolver on the floor. Police Sergeant Cloutson won’t have it touched.”
She leaned, screaming, out of the window. Amongst the little crowd below were the village policeman, both the gardeners, and Mr. Wilkinson, the clergyman.
“Tell me what has happened?” she cried out frantically.
They seemed all stricken dumb.
“Tell me, tell me what it is?” she insisted.
Mr. Wilkinson turned towards the front entrance.
“If you will put on a dressing gown and come to your door,” he said, “I will speak to you.”
She met him halfway down the stairs. Her knees were trembling, and she clung to the banisters for support.
“Tell me what it is?” she demanded. “Is it Uncle?”
“My dear young lady,” he announced solemnly, “a terrible thing has happened. You must prepare yourself for the worst. Your uncle has been shot through the head, apparently at some time during the night. The doctor is with him now, but—but he is quite dead.”
“Dead!” she repeated mechanically.
“All his papers are in a state of great disorder,” the clergyman concluded. “I am afraid—it is a terrible thing to say, but I am afraid there is no doubt that your uncle has been murdered.”
END OF BOOK TWO
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER I
The new tenant of the Great House, installed within twelve months of its dramatic vacancy, issued one evening through the small postern gate, set in the red brick wall which encircled his gardens, into the village street. This was his first appearance since he had taken up his residence in the neighbourhood, and he was consequently an object of absorbed interest to such few loiterers as were about. An elderly roadmender, who was making half-hearted assaults upon a broken piece of road with a pickax which seemed too heavy for him, looked up curiously and touched his hat. The postmistress, warned by a subordinate, hastened immediately to the entrance of her establishment as though to consult the church clock. Mr. Franks, the butcher at the corner of the street, hurried out on the pretext of giving some parting instructions to a boy who was just starting off on his bicycle with a special order for the Hall, and Mrs. Moles, who kept a small general shop and was reputed to know the genealogy, morals and predilections of every one within a dozen miles around, stared unabashed over the top of her curtains.
The first impressions of the newcomer, to be privately exchanged within the next hour or so, could scarcely fail to be favourable. Peter Johnson appeared to be a man a little under medium height, sturdy, clean-shaven, with bright, steady eyes, humorous mouth, brown, sun-dried complexion and hair inclined to greyness. He wore a tweed knickerbocker suit, a Homburg hat; he carried an ash stick, and his age might have been anything between forty and fifty.
No one was more interested in their new neighbour who was now engaged in making his leisurely way along the village street, than the three men in the bar parlour of the Ballaston Arms. Conscious of their own invisibility behind the muslin curtains, they yielded without restraint to their curiosity.
“He do seem an ordinary kind of a man,” Thomas Pank, the innkeeper observed critically.
“A sportsman, maybe,” Mr. Craske, the grocer, suggested, appreciating the costume of the approaching figure.
Rawson, the butler from the Hall, shrugged his shoulders doubtfully. Every one listened for his comment with interest. He was admitted to be a man of the world and a person of considerable experience.
“I should say not,” he decided. “He is wearing the clothes of a country gentleman, but to my mind he wears them as though he weren’t used to them.”
The only stranger in the neighbourhood, a young man of sandy complexion, of silent habits, and with rather sleepy eyes, who had lodgings in the farmhouse close by and was understood to be a schoolmaster taking a prolonged vacation, set down his glass and intervened. He, too, was watching the newcomer with some interest.
“He is asking for some shooting, Farmer Kershaw told me.”
“That don’t go to prove nothing,” the innkeeper declared. “There’s many as shoots now out from Norwich and the big towns that don’t know one end of the gun from the other. What I say is that it’s a queer thing that a man with no friends around, a solitary man too, by all accounts, should come and settle in a place like this, and in that particular house too. Mysterious, I call it!”
“I am of the same opinion,” Rawson agreed.
“Hold on, you chaps!” the innkeeper enjoined, in a tone of some excitement. “He’s coming right in here!”
The pseudo-schoolmaster, whose name was understood to be Fielding, was the only one of the little company who did not show signs of embarrassment as the latch of the door was lifted, the door itself pushed open, and the subject of their conversation made his appearance. The grocer had plunged rather too abruptly into the discussion of some local topic with the butler, and the innkeeper was too taken aback to conceal his astonishment at this unexpected visit. Mr. Johnson, however, was one of those people who carry with them a composing influence and the slight awkwardness was of very short duration.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he greeted them, glancing around with quiet geniality. “I should like a whisky and soda, Mr. Landlord.”
“That’s right, sir,” was the latter’s prompt reply, as he turned to his shelf.
“My name is Johnson—Peter Johnson,” the newcomer continued, establishing himself in a vacant easy-chair. “I have come to live for a time at the Great House.”
“Very glad to welcome you here, sir,” Mr. Craske assured him civilly.
“Hope you’ll find the place to your liking, sir,” Rawson put in.
“I am very much obliged to you all,” was the gratified rejoinder. “My first impressions are entirely favourable. I have been a hard worker and I need a little rest. So far as I can judge, this seems to me to be a particularly tranquil neighbourhood.”
There was for a moment an almost awkward hiatus in the conversation. The innkeeper and the grocer exchanged glances. Rawson coughed.
“It has always been considered so in the past, sir,” the latter acknowledged.
“This being my first visit, you gentlemen will perhaps join me,” Mr. Johnson invited, as he received his whisky and soda.
Every one accepted the invitation, including the presumed schoolmaster, who had not as yet spoken. Mr. Johnson observed him keenly from underneath his rather heavily lidded eyes.
“Are you a native of these parts?” he enquired.
“I am more or less a stranger,” was the somewhat reserved reply. “I, like you, have come down for a little quiet.”
“Can’t say as your manner of living quiet would altogether suit me,” the grocer remarked cheerily. “The young gentleman’s a naturalist, sir,” he explained, turning to the principal guest of the afternoon. “He goes moth hunting with a net, round the mere side and across to Cranley Swamp at night. That’s not a job as would suit every one.”
Mr. Johnson was politely interested. The young man smiled in expostulatory fashion.
“I am only an amateur,” he confessed, “and I only go out odd nights during the week. I miss my sleep too much.”
“You’ll not be finding much company in these parts, I’m afraid,” the innkeeper observed, making polite conversation with the stranger. “There’s not so many of the gentry living round as there used to be.”
Mr. Johnson showed signs of interest.
“Well,” he said, “I’m a great reader and I’m fond of the country, so I must make the best of it. Tell me something about my neighbours. Who lives in the long, low house across the way from my garden gate?”
“That’s what we do call the Little House, sir,” the innkeeper replied. “It belongs to a poor invalid lady, who don’t seem to get any stronger. De Fourgenet, her name is—or something like that—she having married a foreigner. But most of the folk round here just call her ‘Madame.’ She’s an English lady but she have lived abroad a great deal. According to her letters she do be some sort of a titled lady, but she don’t seem to hold to it herself.”
“An invalid, eh?” Mr. Johnson enquired sympathetically.
“They do say, sir, that it’s her spine,” the grocer confided. “Anyway, she’s mostly lying down. Some time ago they took her to one of them French places, but it don’t seem to have done her much good.”
“Aix-les-Bains, it was,” the butler put in. “I’ve been there with my gentlemen before now. In fact, it was through us, I think, that she went there.”
“Did it do her no good at all?”
“Some say it made a difference and some say it didn’t,” was the doubtful reply. “Anyway, there’s a physician comes to see her now once a month, and she has massage regularly from Norwich. It looks as though there were still some hope.”
“Is she—er—inclined to be sociable?” her new neighbour enquired.
The grocer shook his head.
“I’m afraid she isn’t disposed that way, sir,” he declared. “She and the Squire have been great friends all their lives, and he visits her regular, but she don’t see none of the other folk round if she can help it.”
“That doesn’t sound encouraging,” Mr. Johnson commented. “Does she live quite alone?”
“She has a companion,” the innkeeper answered—“a Miss Besant. A nice proper-spoken young woman, but keeps herself to herself. There was a niece too—lived at the Great House, she did—but she went away about a year agone and she hasn’t been in these parts since.”
“As a neighbour,” Mr. Johnson confessed, with a little sigh, “Madame appears to be a wash-out. Let’s hear about the rest of the folk.”
“Well,” the innkeeper continued, taking a modest pull at his own tankard, “there do be the vicar, for sure, but he bain’t no use to nobody these days. A man more changed than he I never did see.”
“A sombre, silent man he is now, surely,” the grocer confirmed.
The butler nodded ponderous agreement.
“He used to dine with us once a week regular, but hasn’t been near the Hall since—not for eleven months. They say that he never stirs out of his study now.”
“I was looking over his garden wall only last night,” the innkeeper observed. “It do seem—the whole place—to be going to rack and ruin. And he so proud of his garden, too.”
“He has had some sort of a loss, perhaps,” Mr. Johnson suggested.
“None as any one knows of,” the butler affirmed. “He’s a widower and have lived alone ever since he came here. There are some who say that he’s had a falling out with the Squire, but if that be so, none of us have heard of it.”
“The Squire?” Mr. Johnson repeated hopefully. “And who might he be?”
The butler’s manner betokened hurt surprise.
“The Squire, sir—my master—is Sir Bertram Ballaston of Ballaston Hall.”
“An old family?”
“The sixteenth baronet.”
Mr. Johnson was properly impressed.
“Any family?” he enquired.
“One son—Mr. Gregory Ballaston. Then the Squire’s brother—Mr. Henry Ballaston—lives at the Hall with him,” the butler added, after a scarcely perceptible pause. “Not that he’s much company for any one, though.”
“Indeed,” Mr. Johnson murmured. “Is he too a recluse or an invalid?”
There seemed to be a marked disinclination to discuss the inmates of the Hall. The innkeeper looked out of the window, Mr. Craske gazed into his tankard, the young man remained still almost outside the conversation.
“Things up at the Hall,” the butler confided, with some reserve, “are not what they used to be. There have come a change over the place.”
“A change indeed,” the grocer sighed gloomily.
Mr. Johnson sensed reserves and prepared for departure.
“Well, I must be tiring you with all my questions,” he declared good-humouredly. “I’m going to ask you one more, though. Is it my fancy, or wasn’t this place—Market Ballaston—the scene of some sort of a tragedy some time ago? The name—Market Ballaston—seemed familiar to me directly I read the advertisement, but I couldn’t recall what it was. If it was anything serious, it must have been whilst I was abroad.”
They all looked at him incredulously. The innkeeper picked up a glass and began to wipe it. The grocer coughed nervously. Even the butler seemed at a loss for words.
“You’ll excuse us, sir,” Mr. Craske said at last. “This is a very small place, of course, and when a thing happens right in the midst of us like what did happen, it seems to us somehow as though the whole world ought to know about it. Still there was a lot of stir—a lot of stir in all the London newspapers.”
“I am a careless reader of the newspapers,” Mr. Johnson confessed. “Besides which, the last twenty years of my life, up to a few months ago, have been spent, not only abroad, but a very long way abroad. Fill up the glasses, Mr. Innkeeper. I have asked you so many questions that you must allow me to be host once more. Now tell me what it was that happened here.”
They all exchanged glances. As though by common but unspoken consent the butler became spokesman.
“There was a very terrible murder committed in this village, sir, just about twelve months ago. A gentleman was killed in the night—shot through the head, he was—and never a trace of the murderer from that day to this.”
“Good God!” Peter Johnson exclaimed, properly shocked. “I am beginning to remember something about it.”
“It was a gentleman of the name of Endacott, from foreign parts like you,” the butler continued, “own brother to Madame at the Little House. He hadn’t been here very long, but he was a harmless body and well liked. He had dined with us at the Hall—him and his niece, a very beautiful young lady—her as Mr. Pank spoke of, being also niece to Madame—and it seemed as though we were going to become quite friendly. One morning—there he was—seated at his desk where he used to work at nights—shot through the head and stone dead, and a box of papers that was by his side all scattered about anyhow. There was police come from Norwich, and there was police come from Scotland Yard in London, but from that day to this they do seem to have been fairly outwitted.”
“What a terrible thing,” Mr. Johnson exclaimed. “In a small place like this, too! Where did it happen? Where did you say he lived?”
There was another embarrassed silence. This time it was the grocer who intervened. There was a note of indignation in his tone.
“If the agent as let the property—Mr. Borroughes, I suppose it was—said nothing about it, sir, then there’s no doubt he was very much to blame. The murder was committed in the Great House, where you’ve come to live. Mr. Endacott and his niece were the last tenants.”