Itwas not Elsie Maynard’s first visit to London, but her visits had been so few that London had presented itself to her as a vast labyrinth of streets, shops and houses. The prevailing impression of all previous visits was that, since it was a simple matter to get lost involuntarily in the labyrinth, it would be a simple matter for any one to disappear voluntarily and remain hidden from search. But on this occasion, when there was need for secrecy as to her visit and its object, she fancied the vast city to be full of prying eyes.
It seemed improbable that among the thousands of people she met in the streets there would not be some one who knew her. There might be some one watching her—some one who had received a telephone message regarding her journey by train from Ashlingsea. To disappear from some one who was watching her seemed to be impossible, for among the throng of people it was impossible to single out the watcher.
From Victoria Station she took a tube ticket to Earl’s Court, so as to give the impression to any one who was following her that her destination was in the west of London. She inspected closely all the people who followed her into the carriage. She alighted at South Kensington and changed to the Piccadilly tube. She got out at Holborn and then took a bus to Aldgate. She walked along to the junction of Whitechapel Road and Commercial Road, where she took a tram. After a short journey by tram along Commercial Road she got out and walked along the south side of the street, keeping a look out for the names of the side streets.
When she reached Quilter Street she turned down it, and eventually stopped at the door of No. 23. It was a short street with a monotonous row of houses on each side. At one side of the corner where it joined Commercial Road was a steam laundry, and at the other side a grocer’s which was also a post office. The faded wrappings of the tinned goods which had been displayed for many months in the windows were indicative of the comparative poverty of the locality. In the ground-floor windows of most of the houses were cardboard notices showing that tailoring was the craft by which the inhabitants earned their bread. It was here that a great deal of the work sent out by tailors’ shops in the City was done, and the placards in the windows proclaimed a desire for work from chance customers whose clothes needed repairs and pressing.
There were dirty ragged children playing in the gutters, and dirty slatternly women, with black shawls over their heads and shoulders and jugs in their hands, were to be seen hurrying along the pavement for milk and beer. Although Miss Maynard had taken care not to dress herself elaborately for her journey to London, she was aware that her appearance before the door of No. 23 was attracting some attention among the women standing at their doors and gossiping across area railings. When the door was opened by a girl in her early teens who had her sleeves rolled up and was wearing a piece of sacking as an apron, Miss Maynard entered hurriedly and closed the door after her.
“Does Mr. Miller live here?” she asked.
“Yes,” replied the girl.
“Is he in now?”
“Yes, he told me he was expecting a lady to call. Are you her?”
“Yes.”
“First floor—front,” said the girl, jerking a dirty thumb in the direction of the stairs as an indication to her visitor that she could find her way up unaided.
But before she had reached the top of the stairs the door of the front room on the first floor was opened, and the man she had come to see appeared on the stairs to welcome her. He clasped her hands eagerly and led her to his room, closing the door carefully behind him. For a moment he hesitated and then placed his arms around her. Her head fell back on his shoulder and he pressed his lips to hers in a long lingering kiss.
Arnold Brett was a young man of spare build whose military training had taught him to keep his shoulders well back. He had a slight black moustache, and his hair, which was carefully brushed down on his head, was raven black in colour. His aquiline nose seemed to emphasize the sharpness of his features; the glance from his dark eyes was restless and crafty.
“Darling, I knew you would come,” he said. He released her, but only for the purpose of taking her again in his arms and kissing her.
“But why are you here?” she asked, giving a glance at the impoverished furniture—the narrow bed with its faded counterpane, the cheap chest of drawers, the dressing-table with a cracked mirror, the dirty window curtains and the single wooden chair.
“Before God, I swear I had nothing to do with it, Elsie,” he exclaimed passionately.
It was a relief to hear him declare his innocence. Even if he had spoken without emphasis she would not have doubted his word. It was because her belief in his innocence deepened the mystery of his reason for hiding that she repeated:
“But why are you here?”
“Do you believe me?” he asked. Between lovers faith counts for much more than reason.
“Of course I do.”
“I knew you would,” he said. “It is because I know you were true that I asked you to come. I am beginning to think that perhaps I made a great mistake in running away. But I was unnerved by the accident. I was thrown out of the car and I must have been unconscious in the road for more than an hour. And, recalling how poor Frank had met his death, it seemed to me that there was a diabolical scheme on foot to murder me as well. Perhaps I was wrong. Tell me everything. Do the police suspect me? Have they a warrant out for me? Did you go to the farm that night? I have sent out for a newspaper each day, but the London newspapers have said very little about the murder. All I have seen is a couple of small paragraphs.”
She was more immediately concerned in the discovery that he had been thrown out of a motor-car and injured than in his thirst for information about the murder at Cliff Farm. She was solicitous as to the extent of the injury he had suffered, the length of time he had been unconscious, and his movements after he came to his senses on the lonely road. Not only were her feminine sympathies stirred by the thought of the sufferings of the man she loved, but by the fear that the accident must have affected his mind temporarily and prompted him to hide himself.
He was too impatient for her news to spare time for more than a vague disconnected account of the accident. He assured her that he was all right again, except for a cut on the head which he showed her. It was on her news more than on anything else that the question of his return to Staveley depended.
She told him in response to his questions that the murder had created a sensation. Every one was talking about it. TheStaveley Courierhad published a two column account of the tragedy with details about the victim and the eccentricities of his grandfather in later years. Stress was laid, in the newspaper account of the story, on the rumour that old Joseph Lumsden had buried his money after the war broke out, and on the disappointment of the legatees whose legacies could not be paid at his death because the money could not be found. The police, it was stated, had questioned these legatees as to their movements on the night of the murder. The theory of the police seemed to be that the murder had been committed by some one who had heard about the buried money and believed it was hidden in the house, or thought the victim had known where it was hidden.
She told him that Scotland Yard had sent down a detective to investigate the crime, and that Mr. Crewe, the famous private detective, was also working on it.
“Crewe!” he exclaimed in dismay. “Who has brought him into it?”
“He happened to be staying at Staveley with Sir George Granville on the night of the murder, and when Mr. Marsland rang up his uncle, Sir George Granville, from the Ashlingsea police station to say he was all right, and to tell Sir George about the murder, Mr. Crewe was naturally interested in it. He took up the case on his own initiative because his host’s nephew discovered the body.”
“I can’t follow you,” he said. “Who is Mr. Marsland?” He started back with a look of terror in his eyes. “My God, you don’t mean Captain Marsland? That is who it is; that is who it is! I knew I was right.”
“Arnold, what is the matter?” she exclaimed, rising to her feet and putting a hand on his shoulder. “You look dreadful.”
“Captain Marsland,” he muttered. “Captain Marsland come to life again.” He raised his clenched hand and shook it slowly as if to give impressive emphasis to his words. “That is the man who shot poor Frank. I knew I was right.”
“Impossible.”
He turned on her fiercely.
“Impossible,” he echoed. “Who are you to say it is impossible? What do you know about it or about him? Perhaps you are in love with him?”
“Don’t be foolish, Arnold,” she said sternly. “The Mr. Marsland I am speaking of is not a captain—at least, he does not wear uniform, and I have not heard any one call him ‘captain.’ At any rate, it is impossible for him to have killed Frank Lumsden. I was at the farm before he was, and poor Frank’s dead body was upstairs all the time I was there, though I did not know it.”
“All the time you were there? When did you get there?”
“About six o’clock—just as the storm came on.”
“Six o’clock? And was there no one at the house when you got there?”
“No one.”
“You saw no trace of anyone having been there?”
“No. I found the key of the door in the lock and naturally I thought that Frank had left it there—that you and he were inside. You remember that you told me to be there about six o’clock, and that you and Frank would be there before then.”
“Yes. That was the arrangement, but—well, never mind that, Elsie, now; tell me your story.”
“I opened the door and walked in,” she said. “I called out ‘Is there anybody in?’ but I got no answer. I thought then that you and Frank were in one of the sheds, and I sat down in the sitting-room, expecting you would be back in a moment. I took the key out of the door so as to make you knock in order to get in. The rain was just commencing then, but it had been blowing hard for half an hour. About ten minutes after I had been in the sitting-room there was a knock at the front door. Naturally I thought it was you. I rushed to open it and as I flung it back I asked what had kept you so long. But the man on the door step was a stranger—this Mr. Marsland.”
“What is he like?” asked Brett quickly.
“He is rather good-looking; fair-haired and fair-skinned and blue-eyed—the Saxon type. He is about medium height—not quite so tall as you.”
“How old is he?”
“Quite young—about 26 or 27, I should say.”
“Does he wear glasses—gold-rimmed eye-glasses?”
“He was not wearing them then, but he does wear them as a rule. I think he told me subsequently that he had lost a pair while he was riding along—blown off by the wind.”
“What explanation did he give of his visit?”
“He had been riding across the downs from Staveley and had lost his way in the storm. His horse was lame and when he saw the house he decided to seek shelter.”
“Did you believe him?”
“Of course I did—then.”
“Do you believe him now?”
“I don’t know, Arnold, after what you have said. He may have been there before I was—it may have been he who left the key in the door.”
“I am sure of it.”
“He came in and sat down—he certainly acted as if he had never been in the house before. I do not know how long we were in the sitting-room—perhaps twenty minutes. We did not talk very much. I was busy trying to think what had become of you and Frank. I thought it best to tell him as little as possible, so I made up a story that I had found the door open and had walked in with the intention of taking shelter until the storm was over. I said nothing about the key. I began to get a little nervous as we sat there listening to the storm. I was upset about you.”
“Go on,” he said impatiently, as she paused.
“Presently we heard a crash upstairs—it was like breaking glass or china. Mr. Marsland said he would go upstairs and see what it was. I determined to go with him, as I was too frightened by that time to stay alone. On one of the stairs he picked up Grandfather Lumsden’s cryptogram. I felt then that Frank had been there, and that something dreadful had happened. We went upstairs, and there we found Frank’s dead body in the arm-chair. I thought at first that he had been taken ill after you and he got there that afternoon, and that he had died alone while you were away trying to get a doctor. But Mr. Marsland said he had been shot. Poor Frank! What a dreadful end.”
“What time did you leave?”
“We left almost at once. That would be about a quarter to seven. He went to Ashlingsea police station to report the discovery of the body. I asked him not to drag me into it—not to tell the police that I had been at the farm. I thought that was the best thing to do until I saw you—until I found where you had been.”
“Quite right, Elsie—everything you do is right, my dear girl. And while you and this Marsland were at the farm I was just recovering consciousness on the Staveley road after a bad smash. It was after five o’clock before I left Staveley; I had told Frank I would leave about three o’clock, but I was delayed by several things. He told me he would come along the road to meet me. I was driving along the road fairly fast in order to reach the farm before the storm broke, and I must have been dazed by a flash of lightning. The next thing I remember was being awakened by the rain falling on my face as I lay unconscious beside the car, which had been overturned.”
“Were you badly hurt, dear?”
“I was badly shaken and bruised, but the only cut was the one on my head. I didn’t know what to do at first. I thought I would walk back to Staveley and tell them at the garage about the car. But finally I decided to go on to the Cliff Farm, as it was so much nearer than Staveley, and then go to Staveley by train in the morning. It must have been nearly eight o’clock when I reached the farm and found the front door open.”
“We locked it,” she interposed. “That is, Mr. Marsland did: he told me that he was sure he heard the lock click.”
“It was open when I got there—wide open,” he persisted.
“Then Mr. Marsland was right. The murderer was in the house while we were there. The crash we heard was made by him, and after we went away he bolted and left the hall door open.”
“The murderer was in the house while you were there,” he said. “There is nothing more certain than that. The murderer was Captain Marsland.”
“I can’t believe it,” she said.
“Wasn’t it he who put the idea into your head, after you had left the house, that the murderer might have been upstairs all the time?”
“Yes, it was.”
“And he told you that he had slammed the hall door when he left? You didn’t see him close it?”
“No, I was waiting for him down the path. After seeing poor Frank I felt too frightened to stay in the house.
“Marsland left the door open, but told you he had closed it, his object being to give the police the impression that it had been left open by some one who left the house after he did. But I closed it when I left—I distinctly remember doing so.”
“What makes you suspect Marsland? He had no grudge against Frank. Why should he kill him?”
“If Marsland didn’t kill him, who did?”
“Any one may have done so. A tramp, for instance, who had broken into the house and was there when Frank came home.”
“Do tramps in this country carry revolvers?”
“Not usually. But since the war many of the men discharged from the army do.”
“There you’ve said it. Many of the officers who have been discharged carry revolvers, but not the men. They have got used to doing it. At the front only officers carry revolvers. And Marsland is an officer—a captain. He was a captain in the London Rifle Brigade, in the battalion to which Frank and I belonged.”
“Oh!” There was a note of dismay in the exclamation of surprise. “Does he know you, Arnold?”
“I was not one of his company, but of course he knows me.”
“Did he know Frank? Do you think he knew Frank when he saw his dead body in the room?”
“Of course he knew Frank. Frank was in his Company.”
“He did not say anything to me about this as we walked home,” said Elsie thoughtfully. “And perhaps he has not told the police. It is very strange.”
“There is nothing strange about it. He had good reasons for saying nothing.”
“You think he shot Frank? Why should he commit such a crime?”
“My dear Elsie, strange things happen in war. Frank told me something about Captain Marsland, and as soon as you mentioned his name it all came back to me. But we thought he was dead. Frank told me he was killed at the front—a stray bullet or something.”
“What was it that Frank told you about him? I must know.”
“Marsland sent a man to certain death to get him out of the way. One night he sent Frank and another man—Collingwood, I think Frank said his name was—as a listening patrol. They had to crawl up near the German trenches and, lying down with their ears to the ground, listen for sounds in the German trenches which might indicate that the Germans were getting ready to make an attack. While they were out this fellow Collingwood told Frank his history. Collingwood had a sort of premonition that he would not get back alive, and he took Frank into his confidence. He said he knew that Marsland had sent him out in the hope that the Germans would get him. It appears that Collingwood and Marsland were both in love with the same girl, and she preferred Collingwood, though her parents didn’t approve of him. Collingwood was a gentleman, like a great many more of the rankers in Kitchener’s Army. He gave Frank a letter to this girl, and her photograph, and asked Frank to see that she got them if he himself was killed. And killed he was that night—through the treachery of Marsland. While they were listening they heard the Germans getting ready for an attack. They crept back to warn their comrades, but there was no one to warn. The trench had been evacuated. When Marsland sent Frank and Collingwood out as a listening patrol he had an order in his pocket to vacate the trench, as it had been decided to fall back half a mile to a better position. He thought he was sending Collingwood and Frank to their death. Collingwood was killed. The Germans attacked before he and Frank could get away, but Frank, as you know, was taken prisoner. I was taken prisoner the same day, but at a different sector about a mile away. Subsequently Frank and I met as prisoners—and after being tortured by the Germans we got away.”
“And did Frank deliver Collingwood’s letter to the girl?”
“No, that is the sad part of it. The Germans took all his papers from him and he never saw them again. He did not know the address of the girl or even her name.”
“It was a dreadful thing for Captain Marsland to do,” she murmured.
“A great many dreadful things have been done out there,” he said. “I’ll tell you my idea of how this murder was committed. Marsland thought Frank had been killed by the Germans. After riding across the downs beyond Staveley he met Frank, who was walking along the road to meet me. He stopped Frank and pretended to be very friendly to him. They talked over old times at the front, Marsland being anxious to know how Collingwood had died and whether Collingwood had any idea that he had been sent to his death. As there was no sign of my car, Frank turned back with Marsland to the farm. While they were in the house Frank let slip the fact that Collingwood had confided in him before he died. Perhaps Marsland became aware of it through an effort on Frank’s part to get from him the name of the girl to whom Collingwood had been practically engaged.
“No doubt there were angry words between them; and Marsland, in order to save himself from being exposed by Frank to the regimental authorities, and to the girl, shot him dead. That would be a few minutes before you reached the farm. When you reached the house Marsland had gone outside to remove traces of the crime—perhaps to burn something or to wash blood-stains from his hands or clothing at the pump. He left the key in the door so that he could enter the house again. When he found the key gone he was confused: he was not certain whether he had placed the key in the lock. He did not believe that any one had entered the house, but to make sure on that point he knocked. He was surprised when you opened the door, but he played his part so well that you did not suspect he had been in the house before. As you had not discovered the body, he thought it best that you and he should discover it together. That would be less suspicious, as far as he was concerned, than for you to go away without discovering it. Had you betrayed any suspicion that you thought he was the murderer he would have shot you too, and then made off.”
“But his horse was there,” she said. “It was quite lame. He could not have ridden away on it; and to leave it behind was to leave the police a convincing clue that he had been to Cliff Farm.”
“I was forgetting about his horse,” said Brett. “It was the fact that his horse was there which made him knock after he saw the key had been taken from the door. He had to brazen it out.”
“The police have no suspicion of him, so far as I can ascertain,” said the girl.
“We must direct their attention to him,” was the reply.
“Will you come back to Staveley and tell Inspector Murchison?”
“No, that would be injudicious. My instinct was right in telling me to get out of sight when I saw Frank’s dead body. It was after you left the house with Marsland that I got there. The door was open as I said—Marsland left it open purposely, and told you a lie about closing it. I went upstairs, as I couldn’t see Frank about below, and when I saw him dead I felt immediately that his murder was but the continuation of some black deed in France. I knew instinctively that if I didn’t disappear I should be the next victim. And so I should be if Marsland knew how much I know about him. The man is a cold-blooded villain, who thinks nothing of taking human life. If I went back to Staveley and accused him, he would take steps to put me out of the way. We must get him arrested for the murder, and when he is under lock and key I’ll come back to Staveley and tell the police all I know about him.”
“But how can we get the police to arrest him unless you first tell them all you know?” she asked.
“We must find a way,” he said thoughtfully.
Creweengaged a room in Whitethorn Gardens in order to watch Mrs. Penfield’s movements, and took up his post of observation immediately. As he did not want Mrs. Penfield to know he was watching her house, he had chosen an attic bedroom on the opposite side and some distance higher up the steep street—an elevated vantage point, which not only commanded a view of all the houses in the street but of a great portion of Staveley and the surrounding country-side as well. From this eyrie the detective could see the front, the downs, and the distant cliff road to Ashlingsea; but the residence of Brett’s landlady engrossed his attention.
There was very little sign of life in the street. One or two old ladies walked primly in the front gardens before dusk, but went inside as soon as the evening sea-mist began to rise. Sedate maidservants lit the gas and lowered blinds, and the street was left to darkness till a lamplighter came and lit a street-lamp which stood near No. 41. Crewe observed that the front rooms of No. 41 remained black and unlighted: apparently Mrs. Penfield lived in the back of the house and took her meals there.
As darkness was falling, Mrs. Penfield’s elderly servant came from the back of the house, carrying a large basket. She went out of the front gate, turned up the street, and disappeared round the corner. About half an hour later Crewe heard the front gate click, and saw Mrs. Penfield appear. Her face was plainly visible by the street light as she glanced anxiously up and down the street several times, as though she feared she was watched. Then she turned down the street and walked quickly away.
Crewe ran downstairs, let himself noiselessly out of the front door and followed quickly in her wake. As he neared the bottom of the street, he saw her a little distance in front of him. When she reached the end of Whitethorn Gardens she turned to the right along the sea front.
The night was mild, and a few drops of rain were falling. The front seemed deserted, and was shrouded in a mist which reduced the lamplights to a yellow glimmer. It was an easy matter for Crewe to follow closely behind the woman, conscious that the mist would shield him from observation if she turned.
Mrs. Penfield walked rapidly along the front till she came to High Street. Half-way along the front the mist seemed suddenly to grow thicker and Crewe crept closer in order to keep her in view. She walked swiftly with her head down, looking neither to the right nor the left. She passed under the faint light of a street lamp, and as Crewe came up behind he saw a uniformed figure in front of him. It was Police Constable Heather who had come over from Ashlingsea on official business. Heather was so pleased at this unexpected meeting with the great London detective that he called out in a loud voice:
“Good night, Mr. Crewe.”
Crewe answered softly and passed on. He could only hope that Mrs. Penfield was so absorbed in her own thoughts that she had not heard Constable Heather’s stentorian utterance of his name. Suddenly he heard her footsteps cease and he, too, came to a stop. Then he saw her confronting him.
“Why are you following me, Mr. Crewe?” she asked in quick excited tones. “It was you who telephoned to me to come up and see Inspector Murchison. I should have known it was a hoax. You wanted to get me out of the house.”
“If I wanted to get you out of the house, Mrs. Penfield, why should I follow you?” asked Crewe.
“But you were following me,” she persisted.
“It is not the sort of night I would choose for such work,” he replied.
“When I heard that man call out your name, I knew I had been hoaxed.”
“By whom?” asked Crewe, who was puzzled at this example of feminine reasoning.
“I shall go back and see,” she said. “I will ring up Inspector Murchison from there and find out if he sent a message to me to go up to the police station.”
Crewe was keenly interested in knowing if she had been hoaxed, and by whom. Therefore he offered to accompany her home, as it was not a nice night for a lady to be in the street unattended.
When they reached 41 Whitethorn Gardens, she opened the gate, and walked up to the house rapidly. At the porch she stopped, touched Crewe lightly on the arm, and pointed to the front door. In the dim light a patch of blackness showed; the door was open.
“Come with me,” she whispered, “and we will take him by surprise. Don’t strike a match; give me your hand.”
She walked noiselessly along the dark hall, and turning into a passage some distance down it led the way through an open doorway into a room—a small and stuffy storeroom, Crewe imagined it to be, as the air was suggestive of cheese and preserves.
“Go, Arnold, the police are here! Go at once!”
The words rang shrilly through the house. Crewe realized that he had been tricked by the woman and he sprang forward to the door. But the click of a lock told him he was too late. He struck a match and its light revealed to him Mrs. Penfield standing with her back against the door she had closed.
“There is a candle on the shelf behind you,” she said composedly.
Crewe’s glance followed the turn of her head; he lit the candle with his expiring match. The candle flickered, then burnt brightly, and the detective saw that he was in a small storeroom with shelves lining the walls. He turned again to Mrs. Penfield who was watching him closely.
“Why did you alarm him?” he asked. “You think it was Brett?”
Although his tone was one of curiosity rather than anger, the woman threw her arms out at full length as though she feared he would attempt to drag her away from the door.
“Do not be afraid,” said Crewe. “You have nothing to fear from me. And, as for him, it is too late to pursue him.”
“I must give him ample time to make his escape,” she said. “You will go and tell the police he was here.”
“What makes you think it was Brett?” asked Crewe. “If he came back this way—if he hoaxed you with a telephone message in order to get you out of the house—he has shown a lamentable want of trust in you.”
“He knows he can trust me,” she said confidently. “He can never doubt it after to-night.”
“I cannot conceive why he should take the great risk of coming back,” he said meditatively.
“That means you would like to go up to his rooms and find out what he came for. But I forbid you. If you attempt to go upstairs, I will rouse the neighbourhood with the cry that there are burglars in the house.”
“I think you have more reason to be afraid of the police than I,” said Crewe. “However, I am in your hands. As far as I am concerned, you can have full credit for having saved him to-night.”
She showed her faith in this assurance by unlocking the door. Taking the candle from the shelf, she led the way along the passage and the hall again. She opened the front door, and held the candle higher to light him out. She stood in the open doorway till Crewe reached the garden gate.
He walked back along the front. The mist was still rising from the sea in great white billows, which rolled across the beach and shrouded everything in an impenetrable veil. It penetrated unpleasantly into the eyes and throat, and Crewe was glad when he turned off the deserted parade and reached Sir George Granville’s house.
The servant who admitted him told him the family were in the drawing-room, and thither he directed his steps. Lady Granville was seated at the piano, playing softly. Marsland in an easy chair was listlessly turning over the pages of a bound volume ofPunch. Sir George was in another easy chair a little distance away, nodding in placid slumber with his handsome white beard on his breast, and an extinguished cigar between his fingers.
Lady Granville smiled at Crewe as he entered, and stopped playing. The cessation of the music awakened Sir George, and when he saw Crewe his eyes wandered towards the chess-table.
“Do you feel inclined for a game of chess?” he exclaimed in his loud voice. “I want my revenge, you know.”
“I’ll be pleased to give it to you,” responded Crewe.
“A very unpleasant night outside,” said Marsland.
“The mist seems to be thicker up this end of the front,” replied Crewe. “Have you been out in it?”
“I came in about five minutes ago. I went for a walk.”
Lady Granville took a book and seated herself not far from the chess-table. Marsland came and stood near the players, watching the game. He soon got tired of it, however, and went back toPunch. Sir George was a slow player at all times, and his anxiety when pitted against a renowned player like Crewe made him slower than usual. He studied each move of Crewe’s in all its bearings before replying, scrutinizing the board with set face, endeavouring to penetrate his opponent’s intentions, and imagining subtle traps where none existed. Meanwhile, his fingers hovered nervously above the pieces with the irresoluteness of a chess-player weighed down by the heavy responsibility of his next move, and, finally, when the plunge had been taken Sir George sat back, stroking his long white beard doubtfully, and fixed his eyes on Crewe, as though mutely asking his opinion of the move. “Game” seemed an inappropriate word to apply to chess as played by Sir George Granville.
It was during one of these strategical pauses, after the game had been in progress for nearly an hour, that Crewe heard a frightened exclamation from Lady Granville. He looked up and saw Marsland standing near the fire-place with his hand over his heart, swaying as though about to fall. Crewe sprang forward and supported him to an easy chair.
“A little brandy,” said Crewe quietly.
Sir George hurriedly brought a decanter of brandy and a glass, and Crewe poured a little down Marsland’s throat. The colour came slowly back to the young man’s cheeks, and he smiled feebly at the three faces looking down at him.
“I’m afraid I’ve been giving you a lot of trouble,” he said, with an obvious effort to collect himself.
“I’ll ring up for Dr. Harrison,” Sir George spoke in a loud voice, as though to reassure himself.
“There is not the slightest need to send for Harrison,” said Marsland. “I’m quite right again. I must expect these attacks occasionally for some time to come. They’re nothing—just weakness. All I need is a good night’s rest, and if you’ll excuse me I’ll retire now.” He got up and walked resolutely out of the room with square shoulders, as though to demonstrate to those watching him that no trace of his weakness remained.
“Do you think it is safe to leave him alone?” said Sir George turning to Crewe, as the door closed on his nephew’s retreating figure. “I feel very anxious about him. Anything might happen to him during the night.”
“A good night’s rest will do him more good than anything else. He has been under a rather severe nervous strain during the last few days. We will go to his room in a few minutes to see how he is.”
They settled down to their game again and Lady Granville moved up her chair near the chess-table for the sake of their company and pretended to take an interest in the game. Only a few moves had been made when there was a loud report of an explosion. Lady Granville jumped up from her chair and screamed and then fell back into the chair in a faint.
“Look to her,” said Crewe to his host, “while I go and see what’s the matter.”
As he ran along the hall to the staircase he met two of the maids, who with white faces and hands clasped in front of them seemed too frightened to move.
“Where was it?” asked Crewe. “Upstairs?”
“Yes, sir, upstairs,” said one of them.
“It came from Mr. Marsland’s room,” added the other, in an awed whisper.
Crewe ran straight for Marsland’s room, expecting to find there some evidence of a tragedy. As he burst into the room he saw to his great relief that Marsland was there, leaning out of the window.
“What is it?” asked Crewe. “Did you fire a revolver?”
Marsland, who was wearing a dressing-gown, came from the window. In his right hand he was holding a big revolver.
“I missed him,” he said.
“Missed whom?”
“A burglar.”
“It is very early in the night for a burglar to be out.”
“He took advantage of the mist. He must have thought that there was no one in the room. I had turned out the light and was resting on the bed. I was half asleep, but he knocked a brush off the dressing-table as he was getting through the window and that woke me up. I caught a good glimpse of him and I fired. He dropped at once, and I thought I had hit him, but when I looked out of the window I saw him disappear in the mist. What an awful pity I didn’t get him.”
“How did you happen to be lying down with a revolver beside you?” asked Crewe.
“I often take it to bed with me. That is the result of the life at the front. And to-night I had a kind of presentiment that I should need it.”
It occurred to Crewe that the young man had been subject to hallucinations during his illness. This habit of sleeping with a revolver under his pillow seemed to indicate that his cure was still far from complete. Was the burglar a phantom of a sick mind?
He went over to the window for the purpose of looking out but his attention was arrested by a stain on the outside sill.
“You did not miss him altogether,” he said to Marsland. “Look here.”
Marsland touched the stain and held a blood-stained finger up to the light for his own inspection.
Crewesteered to the stone landing-place and tied the little motor-boat to a rusty iron ring which dangled from a stout wooden stake, wedged between two of the seaweed covered stones. The tide was out, and the top of the landing-place stood well out of the water, but it was an easy matter for a young and vigorous man to spring up to the top, though three rough and slippery steps had been cut near the ring, perhaps for the original builder in his old and infirm days.
Looking down, he noticed that while his little boat floated easily enough alongside, a boat of slightly deeper draught would have scraped on the rocky bottom, which was visible through the clear water. The surface of the landing-place was moist, and the intersections between the rough stones were filled with seaweed and shells, indicating that the place was covered at high tide.
Crewe had come from Staveley by boat instead of motoring across, his object being to make a complete investigation of Cliff Farm without attracting chance attention or rural curiosity about his motor-car, which was too big to go into the stables. He wanted to be undisturbed and uninterrupted in his investigation of the house. As he entered the boat-house, he looked back to where he had left his boat, and saw that the landing-place was high enough out of the water to prevent passers-by on the cliff road seeing the boat before high tide. By that time he hoped to have completed his investigations and be on his way back to Staveley.
The boat-house was a small and rickety structure perched on a rough foundation of stones, which had been stacked to the same height as the landing-place. The inside was dismal and damp, and the woodwork was decaying. Part of the roof had fallen in, and the action of wind and sea and storm had partly destroyed the boarded sides. Many of the boards had parted from the joists, and hung loosely, or had fallen on the stones. An old boat lay on the oozing stones, with its name,Polly, barely decipherable on the stern, and a kedge anchor and rotting coil of rope inside it. Crewe had no doubt that it was the boat James Lumsden used to go fishing in many years ago. A few decayed boards in front of the boat-house indicated the remains of a wooden causeway for launching the boat. In a corner of the shed was a rusty iron windlass, which suggested the means whereby the eccentric old man had been able to house his boat without assistance when he returned with his catch.
Having finished his scrutiny of the boatshed and its contents, Crewe made his way up the cliff path, and walked across the strip of downs to the farm.
Cliff Farm looked the picture of desolation and loneliness in the chill, grey autumn afternoon. Its gaunt, closely-shuttered ugliness confronted Crewe uncompromisingly, as though defying him to wrest from it the secret of the tragic death of its owner. It already had that air of neglect and desertion which speedily overtakes the house which has lost its habitants. There was no sign of any kind of life; the meadows were empty of live-stock. Somewhere in the outbuildings at the side of the house an unfastened door flapped and banged drearily in the wind. Even the front door required main strength to force it open after it had been unlocked, as though it shared with the remainder of the house the determination to keep the secret of the place, and resented intrusion. The interior of the house was dark, close and musty. Through the closed and shuttered windows not a ray of light or a breath of air had been able to find an entrance.
Crewe’s first act was to open the shutters and the windows on the ground floor; his next to fling open the front and back doors, and the doors of the rooms. He wanted all the light he could get for the task before him, and some fresh air to breathe. He soon had both: wholesale, pure strong air from the downs, blowing in through doors and windows, stirring up the accumulated dust on the floors, causing it to float and dance in the sunbeams that streamed in the front windows from the rays of an evening sun, which had succeeded in freeing himself in his last moments above the horizon from the mass of grey clouds that had made the day so chill and cheerless.
Crewe commenced to examine each room and its contents with the object of trying to discover something which would assist him in his investigation of the Cliff Farm murder. He worked carefully and minutely, but with the swiftness and method of a practised observer.
The front room that he first entered detained him only a few minutes. Originally designed for the sitting-room, it had been dismantled and contained very little furniture, and had evidently not been used for a considerable time. A slight fissure in the outside wall explained the reason: the fissure had made the room uninhabitable by admitting wind and weather, causing damp to appear on the walls, and loosening the wall-paper till it hung in festoons.
Crewe next examined the opposite front room in which Sergeant Westaway conducted his preliminary inquiries into the murder. This room was simply furnished with furniture of an antique pattern. Apparently it had been used at a more or less recent date as the sitting-room, for a few old books and a couple of modern cheaply bound novels were lying about; a needle with a piece of darning cotton which was stuck in the wall suggested a woman’s occupation, or perhaps the murdered man or his grandson had done bachelor darning there in the winter evenings. The latter hypothesis seemed most probable to Crewe: only a very untidy member of the other sex would have left a darning needle sticking in the sitting-room wall.
Crewe then examined the room behind the front room in which Marsland and Miss Maynard had sat before discovering the murdered man. It was the front room of an English farm-house of a bygone age, kept for show and state occasions but not for use, crowded with big horse-hair chairs and a horse-hair sofa. There were two tables—a large round one with a mahogany top and a smaller one used as a stand for the lamp Marsland had lit—a glass case of stuffed birds; an old clock in a black case on the mantelpiece, which had been stopped so long that its works were festooned with spiders’ webs; a few dingy oil-paintings on the walls, alternately representing scenes from the Scriptures and the English chase, and a moth-eaten carpet on the floor. There was also a small glass bookcase in a corner containing some bound volumes of theLeisure Hourof the sixties,Peter Parley’s Annual, Johnson’s Dictionary,an ancientEvery Day Book, and an old family Bible with brass clasps.
It was in the room next to the sitting-room that Crewe found the first article which suggested possibilities of a clue. It was a small room, which had evidently been used by a former occupant as an office, for it contained an oak case holding account books, some files of yellowing bills hanging from nails on the wall, and an old-fashioned writing bureau. It was this last article that attracted Crewe’s attention. It was unlocked, and he examined closely the papers it contained. But they threw no light on the mystery of Cliff Farm, being for the most part business letters, receipted bills, and household accounts.
There was a bundle of faded letters in one of the pigeon-holes tied with black ribbon, which had been written to Mrs. James Lumsden from somebody who signed himself “Yours to command, Geoffrey La Touche.” These letters were forty years old, and had been sent during a period of three years from “Her Majesty’s sloopHyacinth” at different foreign ports. They were stiff and formal, though withal courteous in tone, and various passages in them suggested that the writer had been an officer in the Royal Navy and a relative of Mrs. Lumsden. They ceased with a letter written to “James Lumsden, Esq.,” expressing the writer’s “deep regret and sincere sorrow” on learning of his “dear niece’s sad and premature end.”
There was another room opposite this office which had doubtless been intended for a breakfast-room, but was now stored with odds and ends: superfluous articles of furniture, some trunks, a pile of bound volumes of theIllustrated London News, and a few boxes full of miscellaneous rubbish. The passage on which these rooms opened terminated in two stone steps leading into the kitchen, which was the full width of the house. A notable piece of furniture in this room was an oaken dresser with shelves reaching to the ceiling. There were also a deal table, some kitchen chairs, and an arm-chair.
From the blackened beams of its low sloping ceiling some hams and strings of onions hung, and an open tea-caddy stood on the table, with a leaden spoon in it, as though somebody had recently been making tea. An old brown earthenware teapot stood by the fire-place with tea-leaves still in the pot, and Crewe noticed on the mantelpiece a churchwarden pipe, with a spill of paper alongside. He found a pair of horn spectacles and an old newspaper on the top of the press beside the old-fashioned fire-place. Evidently the kitchen had been the favourite room of Frank Lumsden’s grandfather—the eccentric old man who had built the landing-place.
Before examining the upper portion of the house Crewe closed the doors and windows he had opened, restoring things to the condition in which he had found them. Then he went upstairs, and, after opening the windows and blinds as he had opened them downstairs, entered the room in which the murdered man had been discovered.
It was while Crewe was thus engaged that his quick ears detected a slight crunch of footsteps on the ground outside, as though somebody was approaching the house. The room he was searching looked out on pasture land, but he was aware that there was a gravel path on the other side, running from the outbuildings at the side to the rear of the house. He crossed over to the corresponding room on that side of the house, and looked out of the open window, but could see no one.
He ran quietly downstairs and into the kitchen. His idea was to watch the intruder by looking through one of the kitchen windows, without revealing his own presence, but he found to his annoyance that the little diamond shaped kitchen window which looked out on the back was so placed as to command a view of only a small portion of the bricked yard at the back of the house.
He waited for a moment in the hope that the visitor would enter the house through the unlocked kitchen door, but as he heard no further sound he decided to go in search of the person whose footsteps he had heard. He opened the door and looked over the empty yard. Suddenly a woman’s figure appeared in the doorway of the barn on the left. Immediately she saw Crewe she retreated into the shed in the hope that she had not been seen. In order to undeceive her on this point, Crewe walked down the yard to the barn, but before he reached it she came out to meet him. She was young and pretty and well dressed.
“You are Mr. Crewe,” she said with composure.
“And you are Miss Maynard. We have not met before, but I have heard a great deal about you.”
She read suspicion in his use of the conventional phrase and she decided to meet it.
“I came out to look at the old place—at the scene of this dreadful tragedy—before finally deciding what I ought to do.”
He realized that having said so much she had more to say, and he gave her no assistance.
“Perhaps Mr. Marsland has not told you, Mr. Crewe, that I was with him in the house when he discovered the body.”
“He has not,” replied Crewe.
“That makes it all the more difficult for me. I do not mind telling you, for you are his friend, and you are such a clever man that I feel I will be right in taking your advice.”
Crewe’s mental reservation to be slow in offering her advice was an indication that his suspicions of her were not allayed.
“I also sought shelter here from the storm on that fateful night,” she continued. “But because I was afraid of the gossip of Ashlingsea I asked Mr. Marsland if he would mind keeping my name out of it. And he very generously promised to do so.”
“A grave error on both sides,” said Crewe.
She was quick in seizing the first opening he gave her.
“That is the conclusion I have come to; that is why I think I ought to go to the police and tell them that I was here. They may be able to make something out of my story—they may be able to see more in it than I can. My simple statement of facts might fit in with some other information in their possession of which I know nothing, and in that way might lead to the detection of the man who killed Frank Lumsden. But how can I go to them and tell them I was here after I begged Mr. Marsland to say nothing about me? He would never forgive me for placing him in such an embarrassing position. It would not be right.”
“And it is not right to keep from the police any information to which they are entitled.”
“That is my difficulty,” she said, with a smile of gratitude to him for stating it so clearly.
“I have no hesitation in advising you to tell the police the whole truth,” said Crewe.
“And Mr. Marsland?”
“He must extricate himself from the position in which his promise to you has placed him. He knows that the promise should never have been made, and doubtless in the end he will be glad to have been released from it.”
“I hope he will understand my motives,” she said.
“Perhaps not. But he will begin to realize, what all young men have to learn, that it is sometimes difficult to understand the motives which actuate young ladies.”
That reply seemed to indicate to her that their conversation had reached the level of polite banter.
“Will you plead for me?” she asked.
“That is outside my province,” was the disappointing reply. “I understood you to say, Miss Maynard, that you came here that night for shelter from the storm. Did you arrive at the house before Marsland or after him?”
There was a moment of hesitation before her reply was given.
“A few minutes before him.”
“No doubt you will materially assist the police by giving them a full account of what you know,” said Crewe.
“Goodmorning, sergeant.”
“Good morning, Miss Maynard. What can I do for you?”
It was seldom that Sergeant Westaway was so obliging as to make a voluntary offer of his services, but then it was still more seldom that a young lady of Miss Maynard’s social standing came to seek his advice or assistance at the police station. As the daughter of a well-to-do lady, Miss Maynard was entitled to official respect.
The sergeant had known Miss Maynard since her mother had first come to live at Ashlingsea fifteen years ago. He had seen her grow up from a little girl to a young lady, but the years had increased the gulf between them. As a schoolgirl home from her holidays it was within the sergeant’s official privilege to exchange a word or two when saluting her in the street. Her development into long dresses made anything more than a bare salutation savour of familiarity, and the sergeant knew his place too well to be guilty of familiarity with those above him.
With scrupulous care he had always uttered the name “Miss Maynard,” when saluting her in those days, so that she might recognize that he was one of the first to admit the claims of adolescence to the honours of maturity. Then came a time with the further lapse of years when she reached the threshold of womanhood, and to utter her name in salutation would have savoured of familiarity. So the salute became a silent one as indicative of Sergeant Westaway’s recognition that his voice could not carry across the increased gulf between them.
“I have something very important to tell you,” said Miss Maynard, in reply to his intimation that the full extent of his official powers were at her disposal.
“Ah!”
The sergeant realized that a matter of great personal importance to Miss Maynard might readily prove to be of minor consequence to him when viewed through official glasses; but there was no hint of this in the combination of politeness and obsequiousness with which he opened the door leading from the main room of the little police station to his private room behind it.
He placed a chair for her at the office table and then went round to his own chair and stood beside it. There was a pause, due to the desire to be helped with questions, but Sergeant Westaway’s social sense was greater than his sense of official importance, and he waited for her to begin.
“It is about the Cliff Farm murder,” she said in a low voice.
“Oh!” It was an exclamation in which astonishment and anticipation of official delight were blended. “And do you—do you know anything about it?” he asked.
“I am not sure what you will think of my story—whether there is any clue in it. I must leave that for you to judge. But I feel that I ought to tell you all that I do know.”
“Quite right,” said the sergeant. His official manner, rising like a tide, was submerging his social sense of inequality. “There is nothing like telling the police the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It is always the best way.” His social sense made a last manifestation before it threw up its arms and sank. “Not that I suppose for one moment, Miss Maynard, that you had anything to do with it—that is to say, that you actually participated in the crime.”
He looked at her inquiringly and she shook her head, smiling sadly as she did so.
“But there is no reason why, after all, you might not know who did it,” said the sergeant in a coaxing voice which represented an appeal to her to do her best to justify his high hopes. “In some respects it is a mysterious crime, and although the police have their suspicions—and very strong suspicions too—they are always glad to get reliable information, especially when it supports their suspicions.”
“And whom do you suspect?” she asked.
Sergeant Westaway was taken aback at such a question. It was such an outrageous attempt to penetrate the veil of official secrecy that he could refrain from rebuking her only by excusing it on the ground of her youth and inexperience.
“At present I can say nothing,” was his reply.
She turned aside from his official manœuvring and took up her own story:
“What I came to tell you is that I was at Cliff Farm on the night that poor Mr. Lumsden was shot.”
“You were there when he was shot?” exclaimed the sergeant.
“No; he was dead when I got there.”
“Did you hear the shot?”
“No.”
“But you saw some one?”
“I saw Mr. Marsland.”
“Ah!” The commonplace tone in which the word was uttered indicated that the sergeant was deeply disappointed with her story. “We know all about his visit there. He came and told us—it was through him that we discovered the body. He has been straightforwardness itself: he has told us everything.”
“Did he tell you I was there?”
“No; he has not mentioned your name. Perhaps he didn’t see you.”
“We were in the house together, and I was with him when he went upstairs and discovered the body.”
“He has said nothing about this,” said the sergeant impressively. “His conduct is very strange in that respect.”
“I am afraid I am to blame for that,” she said. “As he walked home with me from the farm on his way to the police station I asked him if he would mind saying nothing about my presence at the house. I told him that I was anxious to avoid all the worry and unpleasantness I should have to put up with if it was publicly known that I had been there. He readily agreed not to mention my name. I thought at the time that it was very kind of him, but in thinking it all over since I am convinced that I did wrong. I have come to the conclusion that it was a very extraordinary thing for him to agree to as he did, not knowing me—we had never met before. I felt that the right thing to do was to come to you and tell you all I know so that you can compare it with what Mr. Marsland has told you. In that way you will be able to make fuller inquiries, and to acquit him of any sinister motive in his kind offer to me to keep my name out of it.”
The sergeant nodded his head slowly. There was much to take in, and he was not a rapid thinker.
“Any sinister motive?” he repeated after a long pause.
“Of course I don’t wish to cast any suspicions on Mr. Marsland,” she said looking at the police officer steadily. “But it has already occurred to you, Sergeant, that Mr. Marsland, in kindly keeping my name out of it, had to depart from the truth in the story he told you about his presence at Cliff Farm, and that he may have thought it advisable to depart from the truth in some other particulars as well.”
The sergeant’s mental process would not have carried him that far without assistance, but there was no conscious indication of assistance in the emphasis with which he said:
“I see that.”
“Let me tell you exactly what happened so far as I am concerned,” she went on.
“Yes, certainly.” He sat down in his chair and vaguely seized his pen. “I’ll write it down, Miss Maynard, and get you to sign it. Don’t go too fast for me; and it will be better for you if you take time—you will be able to think it over as you go along. This promises to be most important. Detective Gillett of Scotland Yard will be anxious to see it. I am sorry he’s not here now; he has been recalled to London, but I expect him down again to-morrow.”
“On Friday, the night of the storm, I left my house about dusk—that would be after five o’clock—with the intention of taking a walk,” she began. “I walked along the downs in the direction of Cliff Farm, intending to return along the sands from the cliff pathway. I was on the downs when the storm began to gather. I thought of retracing my steps, but the storm gathered so swiftly and blew so fiercely that I was compelled to seek shelter in the only house for miles around—Cliff Farm.
“The wind was blowing hard and big drops of rain were falling when I reached the door. I knocked, but received no answer. Then I noticed that the key was in the door. Owing to the darkness, which had come on rapidly with the storm, I had not seen it at first. The door had a Yale lock and the key turned very easily. I was wearing light gloves, and when I turned the key in the lock I noticed it was sticky. I looked at my glove and saw a red stain—it was blood.”
“Ah!” interrupted Sergeant Westaway. “A red stain—blood? Just wait a minute while I catch up to you.”
“I was slightly alarmed at that,” she continued, after a pause; “but I had no suspicion that a cruel murder had been committed. In my alarm I took the key out of the lock and closed the door. I felt safer with the door locked against any possible intruder. I went into the sitting-room and sat down, after lighting a candle that I found on the hallstand. Then it occurred to me that Mr. Lumsden might have left the key in the door while he went to one of the outbuildings to do some work. The blood might have got on it from a small cut on his hand.”
“What did you do with the key?” asked the Sergeant.
“I brought it with me here.” She opened her bag and handed a key to the police officer.
Sergeant Westaway looked at it closely. Inside the hole made for the purpose of placing the key on a ring he saw a slight stain of dried blood. He nodded to Miss Maynard and she continued her story.
“I felt more at ease then, and when I heard a knock at the door I felt sure it was he—that he had seen the light of the candle through the window and knew that whoever had taken the key had entered the house. I opened the door, but it was not Mr. Lumsden I saw, but Mr. Marsland. He said something about wanting shelter from the storm—that his horse had gone lame. He came inside and sat down. I told him that I, too, had sought shelter from the storm and that I supposed Mr. Lumsden, the owner of the house, was in one of the outbuildings attending to the animals. I saw that he was watching me closely and I felt uneasy. Then I saw him put his hand to the upper pocket of his waistcoat.”
“What was that for?” asked the sergeant.
“I think he must have lost a pair of glasses and temporarily forgotten that they were gone. He was not wearing glasses when I saw him but I have noticed since that he does wear them.”
“I’ve noticed the same thing,” said the sergeant. “He was not wearing glasses the night he came here to report the discovery of Mr. Lumsden’s body—I am sure of that.”
Miss Maynard, on resuming her narrative, told how Mr. Marsland and she, hearing a crash in one of the rooms overhead, went upstairs to investigate and found the dead body of the victim sitting in an arm-chair. When she realized that a dreadful crime had been committed she ran out of the house in terror. She waited in the path for Mr. Marsland and he was kind enough to escort her home. It was because she was so unnerved by the tragedy that she had asked Mr. Marsland to keep her name out of it not to tell any one that she had taken shelter at the farm. It was a dreadful experience and she wanted to try and forget all about it. But now she realized that she had done wrong and that she should have come to the police station with Mr. Marsland and told what she knew.
“That is quite right, Miss Maynard,” said the sergeant, as he finished writing down her statement. “Does Mr. Marsland know that you have come here to-day with the intention of making a statement?”
“No; he does not, and for that reason I feel that I am not treating him fairly after he was so kind in consenting to keep my name out of it.”
The sergeant had but a limited view of moral ethics where they conflicted with the interests of the police.
“He should not have kept your name from me,” he said. “But, apart from what you have told me, have you any reason for suspecting that Mr. Marsland had anything to do with the murder of Frank Lumsden?”
“That it was he who left the key in the door?”
“Well—yes.”
“If that is the case, his object in leaving the house for a few minutes might be to destroy traces of his guilt. But I saw nothing of a suspicious nature in his manner after I admitted him to the house.”
The sergeant was impressed with the closeness of her reasoning—it seemed to shed more light. Clearly she had given the matter the fullest consideration before deciding to make a statement.
She added with a slight laugh:
“You cannot call his action in feeling for a missing pair of glasses suspicious?”
“No, no,” said the sergeant generously. “We can scarcely call that suspicious.”
“What I do regard as suspicious—or, at any rate, as wanting in straightforwardness—is the fact that Mr. Marsland did not tell me that he knew Mr. Lumsden in France. They were both in the London Rifle Brigade—Mr. Marsland was a captain and Mr. Lumsden a private.”
“Where did you learn this, Miss Maynard?” was the excited question. “Are you sure?”
“Hasn’t he told the police?” she asked in a tone of astonishment. “Then perhaps it is not true.”
“Where did you hear it?”
“In Staveley. I was talking to a wounded officer there on the front—Mr. Blake. He knew Mr. Marsland as Captain Marsland and he knew Mr. Lumsden as well. I think he said poor Mr. Lumsden had been Captain Marsland’s orderly for a time.”
“I must look into this,” said Sergeant Westaway.
“Unfortunately Mr. Blake has returned to the front. He left Staveley yesterday.”
“No matter. There are other ways of getting at the truth, Miss Maynard. As I said, Detective Gillett will be down here to-morrow and I’ll show him your statement. He will probably want to interview you himself and in that case I’ll send for you. But don’t you be alarmed—he’s a nice gentlemanly young fellow and knows how to treat a lady.”
He was about to bow her out of the station when he suddenly remembered that she had not signed her statement.
“Would you please read through this and sign it?” he asked. “A very important statement—clear and concise. I feel I must congratulate you about it, Miss Maynard.”
She read through the sergeant’s summary of her narrative, but was unable to congratulate him on the way in which he had done his work. She felt that the statement she and her lover had compiled, to guide her in her narrative to the police, was a far more comprehensive document.