CHAPTER XTHE CASE AGAINST LADY VIOLET
I felthonestly sorry for the poor girl in spite of the vindictive attitude she had taken up just before. I had no doubt that she was quite sincere, and that she had unconsciously deceived herself as to her real feelings up to the last moment.
Tarleton remained calm in the face of her outburst; when he spoke again his tone was courteous but businesslike—perhaps the most considerate one to adopt in the circumstances.
“You have told Dr. Cassilis and me very little that we weren’t prepared to hear, and nothing that we aren’t able to understand and allow for. But now we have to ask you for some information. In the first place I should like to know how you obtained admission to the Domino Club.”
Sarah made an effort to collect herself. As far as I could judge she was telling the truth, up to a certain point at all events.
“I bought a ticket of admission from Madame Bonnell.”
We both started and exchanged looks of surprise.
“Do you mean to say that anybody could get in by paying?” the consultant asked.
Sarah shook her head.
“I don’t know that anybody could. But theredidn’t seem to be much difficulty. I think it was pretty well known, in Chelsea and in Kensington, that you could buy a ticket from Madame Bonnell. She made a great favour of it, but I expect that was only to keep up the price.”
“What was the price?”
“Five pounds. She entered your name in a book, and the name of some member of the Club who was supposed to be introducing you; but whether it was a real name or not I don’t know.”
Tarleton smiled grimly.
“I’m beginning to understand why Madame made so much fuss over giving up her books. She must have made a good thing out of the Club in one way and another. Did she know who you were?”
“Oh, no! At least, I didn’t tell her. I gave my name as Mrs. Antrobus.”
“I remember that name in the Visitors’-book,” I put in.
My chief nodded. “Did she say anything to you about the disguise you were to come in?”
“Yes. She asked me what I was going to wear. I told her I hadn’t made up my mind, and she recommended me to go to a place in Coventry Street where I should be able to see some costumes.”
“Another little side line,” the shrewd examiner commented. “There’s not much doubt she got a commission there. She struck me as a good woman of business.” His face became grave once more. “And now, Miss Neobard, I must ask you to tell uswhat you know about Lady Violet Bredwardine?”
It was the question I had been dreading. I dreaded the answer still more.
The accuser flushed. “I know that she was more than a patient,” she said in a low voice. “I know that he met her away from the house, at other places besides the Club.”
“I’m afraid I must ask you to tell us more than that. You have practically accused her of poisoning him. I think you must see that I am entitled to know whether you have any grounds for throwing suspicion on her beyond personal ill-will.”
The answer came slowly. It was with a painful effort that the girl confessed how far her jealousy had carried her.
“I knew that he was neglecting my mother for other women. I had known that for some time. He was almost always out at night, and he never told us where he had been. I wanted my mother to apply for a separation, and I thought I ought to get evidence. I followed him.”
She stopped short, her face burning and her eyes lowered towards the ground.
“Yes? You have told us already that you followed him to the Club that night. But you must have seen them together at other places before?”
The girl nodded. “I have seen them walking in Regent’s Park. And I have seen them dining together at....” She whispered the name of a restaurant in a little side street not far from Piccadilly,which is well known to Londoners as a place to which men more often take other people’s wives and daughters than their own.
Tarleton prudently refrained from asking his witness anything about her own proceedings. It looked to me as though she must have placed herself in the hands of a private inquiry agent, but if so it was evident that she had insisted on going with him on the trail.
“Didn’t that seem as if they were friends?” was the next question.
“No!” The denial was emphatic. “He was making love to her, anyone could see that, but she was resisting him. You could see that she hated him.”
“And yet she went about with him.”
“It was against her will, I am certain of it. She had the air of a prisoner.”
Poor, unhappy Violet! It was hard work to control myself as I listened, and pictured her sitting in that doubtful resort, tormented by the vile wooing of the monster who had her in his power, while her jealous rival, with a hired spy in attendance, gloated over her distress.
The merciless accuser went on.
“That night they dined together. I saw him try to slip a bracelet on to her wrist. She snatched her hand away so fiercely that it fell on the floor, and he dropped his napkin over it so as to pick it up without the waiter seeing.”
The scene was as vividly before me as though itwas passing on the screen. The eyes of jealousy had been sharper than the waiter’s.
“Well, let us come to yesterday night. We knew before you told us that one of the dancers wore the dress you have described. What makes you so confident that she was Lady Violet?”
And now indeed I had reason to listen with all my ears. If this girl convinced my chief that she was right, the position would be one of deadly danger.
Sarah Neobard didn’t seem to understand the doubt in his mind.
“Madame Bonnell told me so.”
Tarleton gave me a stare which I returned with interest. In my excitement I was rash enough to speak.
“She told you so? Why? How could she know herself?”
“I don’t know.” Sarah looked a little puzzled. “I suppose she knew everything that went on in the Club. Before selling me the ticket she asked if I knew any member. I thought the question was only put for form’s sake, and I gave Lady Violet’s name. Afterwards I asked her if Lady Violet was likely to be there, and if she knew what costume she was likely to wear. She told me that she was pretty sure to come, and that she always wore the same costume. She made me give her an extra guinea for telling me. I could see she was the sort of woman who would do anything for money.”
There could be no doubt that this last opinionwas sound. Unfortunately it was too late for me to act on it. I held my tongue again, and let my chief put the next question.
“You watched her, I suppose, during the night? Did you notice nothing peculiar about her? One of the waiters seems to have thought it was a man.”
“A man!” The girl’s surprise was unmistakable. Her jealousy had blinded her that time as much as it had sharpened her sight the other. “No, I never thought of noticing anything of that sort. I hadn’t any reason for it. I believed what I was told. And she behaved just like Lady Violet. And he certainly believed it was she. I tried to keep them apart, but it was no use. I saw him make her come into the alcove. She went unwillingly, just as I should have expected. I got near, and watched them through the curtain. He ordered coffee for both....”
She seemed to pull herself up. Was she telling a carefully framed story, and hesitating at the last fatal point? Or was she only shrinking from uttering the words that might condemn a fellow creature to death?
“And?” the physician breathed gently.
Sarah braced herself up with a visible effort.
“I saw her drop something into his cup.”
I believed it was a lie. To this hour I believe it. Sarah Neobard and I are never likely to meet again on this earth, and I may do her an injustice. Yet on her showing, if she was to be believed, she had looked on at what must have seemed to her an attemptto murder, and had not lifted a finger to save the life of the man she half hated and half loved.
Meanwhile the charge had been made, a charge which the adviser of the Home Office was bound to act upon, as the look he gave me clearly showed. I seized on it as an invitation to speak.
“Did you believe that the person, whoever it was, meant to poison him?” I asked, trying to suppress my indignation.
“What else could I believe?” She gave the answer almost rudely, so as to show that she resented my presuming to question her.
“And you did nothing? You didn’t interfere?”
The accuser flushed angrily. She stumbled over her reply.
“What could I do? If I had made a scene she would have denied it, and he would have taken her part. Besides, it was all over in a moment. He had drunk his coffee before I had time to do anything.”
“Think again,” I said earnestly. “You are not on your oath. Are you certain of what you saw? Remember that you are bringing a charge of murder against a fellow creature, a young woman who has done you no wrong, who, you admit yourself, was your step-father’s innocent victim.”
“I didn’t say that. I said she hated him. She can’t be innocent if she poisoned him.”
“Ifshe poisoned him,” I repeated with emphasis. “You have heard that she was more than a hundred miles away, according to the police evidence.But the same evidence shows that you were there, and you have told us as much.”
“What?” The girl almost leaped from her seat “Are you suggesting that I had anything to do with it?”
I glanced at my chief for permission to go on. He was lying back on his chair, his timepiece twisting between his fingers, apparently listening with the detachment of an impartial judge.
“You compel me to point out to you the situation you are in, Miss Neobard,” I continued. “A death has taken place, the police have inquired into it, and they have found cause for suspicion against certain persons. Lady Violet Bredwardine was one of those persons; you were another. Her innocence has now been proved. Yours only rests on your own assertion—or rather it may rest, because so far you haven’t actually asserted it. Therefore, you have the strongest possible motive for trying to throw suspicion on someone else; and you have been doing so all along. Now at last you have made a direct charge, and backed it up by stating what you say you saw through a curtain. I ask you again if you are certain of what you say, and I ask you to be careful.”
Sarah Neobard’s face underwent a succession of changes while she listened, from amazement to wrath and from wrath to abject fear. Tarleton put the crown on her discomfiture.
“Although we are not policemen, and this is not a formal charge, Dr. Cassilis is right to caution you,”he said firmly. “I shall feel at liberty to report whatever you say to the police.”
The tables were completely turned. The triumphant accuser found herself all at once standing in the dock. She gave us both a long deep look of despairing hatred and dread. Then, with lips tightly closed, she got up and walked out of the room and out of the house.
My chief gratified me with a nod and smile of approval.
“You did that very well, Cassilis; I congratulate you. I think that young woman’s teeth have been drawn pretty effectually. It would never have done for her to be going about accusing the police of trying to hush up the case. She would have got some paper to take up her story, and there would have been the devil to pay.”
“Do you think there is any chance that she was mixed up in the business?” I asked with hesitation.
Evidently the specialist was displeased by the question.
“It is not my practice to speculate, as I think I have told you. I prefer to confine myself to reasoning on the evidence before me. At present the evidence points to this death being due to a certain drug, which must have been administered during the dance by some person who was present, and who had a motive for rendering Weathered insensible—the death may have been due to his or her ignorance of the power of the drug. We now have direct evidence,which may be true, that the drug was put into his coffee by the dancer disguised as Zenobia, and we have further evidence that that costume was supplied to Lady Violet Bredwardine about a year ago, and was regularly worn by her in the Domino Club.
“Add to that the appearance of her name in the list of suspects compiled from Weathered’s diary and the Club register, and the story we have just heard of her being pursued by Weathered and persecuted with attentions which she resented. It is a case on which very few juries would hesitate to convict.
“Against that we have nothing but an idle suspicion on the part of a waiter that the wearer of the Zenobia costume on this particular night was a man, and the police information that Lady Violet left London by a midday train. Of course she may have got out anywhere, and been back long before night.”
What was I to say? What ought I to do? Had the time come for me to make the confession I had held back even more for Violet Bredwardine’s sake than for my own? I shuddered at the thought that what I had to tell might not exonerate her—that it might deepen the suspicion against her, if it were believed. And suppose it should not be believed? What excuse could I make for having put it off so long? Would not Sir Frank Tarleton have every right to doubt me, and to think that my story was a false one invented at the eleventh hour to save the true culprit?
There was one slender plank to cling to. I was confident that Lady Violet’s alibi was genuine. If the question of her guilt or innocence could be made to depend on that, I had no fear of the result.
“In that case, sir, wouldn’t it be best for the police to go down to Herefordshire, and make sure whether she was there or not?”
To my surprise Tarleton raised the objection that had held me back before.
“I think not. Captain Charles isn’t a particularly tactful man himself, and we can’t trust to his employing a very tactful agent. Whether Lady Violet is innocent or guilty she ought not to be alarmed. It seems to me far the best course for me to go down myself, and call on her openly.”
I was startled by the proposal. I hardly knew whether to welcome it or not. Certainly the consultant was less likely to frighten Violet than the police were, but on the other hand he was much more likely to find out whatever was to be found.
“Won’t that come to the same thing?” I objected feebly. “If she knows you have come to question her about Weathered’s death?”
“I may not have to question her about his death,” the specialist put in sharply. “Have you forgotten the numbers in the appointment-book? I propose to ask Lady Violet if she can explain what they signify!”
I was silenced. I could think of no possible objectionto such a course. It was clear that the explanation must be obtained from someone, and equally clear that Lady Violet was most likely to be able to give it. My chief’s plan was worthy of his shrewdness. He would be killing two birds with one stone,—gaining information he needed, and at the same time quietly testing the information of the police.
Tarleton gave me no time for further reflection.
“Just look up the trains for Hereford,” he said briskly.
I hastened to obey. “Am I coming with you, sir?”
I put the question almost without hope. I was overjoyed by the answer.
“Why, yes, I think you ought to, in fairness to the poor girl. You have defended her very well from her enemy. I look on you as her advocate. I think you ought to be present and help her if you can.”
He spoke with a mixture of seriousness and playfulness that left me in doubt whether he had really noticed anything to suggest that I took a personal interest in Lady Violet’s defence. I was glad to feel that in any case he had no animosity against her. Even if he thought her guilty of Weathered’s death, it was probable that he saw some excuse for the deed.
Nothing more passed between us on the subjecttill we were in the train for Hereford. During a great part of the journey the consultant sat silent in his corner seat, with his golden pendulum swinging softly in his hand, to the evident astonishment of the solitary passenger who shared our compartment.
I sat opposite him, filled with bitter-sweet reflections and memories that became more intense as we neared the little city on its rushing river beyond the Malvern Hills. How every feature in the landscape recalled the passionate days of yore, when I had made that journey for the first time! Then I had travelled third-class with a knapsack on my back, and the hopes of youth in my heart, on my way to explore the romantic hills and vales of the borderland, the Golden Valley and the untrodden Beacons that looked down on Breconshire. I recalled every step of the way, from the morning on which I had turned my face to the west and tramped out towards the wooded slopes of Blakemere, to the hour when I had encountered in its romantic setting that figure which became for me all that Queen Guinevere had been for Lancelot.
Less than four years had passed since then, and now I was returning to the scene of my wrecked romance, my unforgotten secret agony; returning in official dignity as a representative of the law charged to examine the partner of my secret on a fearful accusation from which perhaps only I could save her, and only at the cost of my own life.
That night I did not sleep. I passed it in wrestling with the problem, as I tossed from side to side on my bed in the hotel where we had put up. But before retiring for the night I had managed to escape from my chief’s observation for a few minutes, just long enough to scribble a brief note and despatch it to Tyberton Castle. It ran:
Be out to-morrow morning when Sir Frank Tarleton arrives. The barn at twelve if possible. Zenobia.