Man with the Dark Beard (17 page)

The strain and suspense of the past months had told upon Hilary. She was perceptibly thinner, the rounded contours of her cheeks and throat had sharpened and her brown eyes were sunken and had deep blue half-circles beneath them. The eyes themselves had a trick of filling with tears when nobody was looking.

She and Fee were alone at Rose Cottage now. Miss Lavinia was visiting some friends in London.

At first Fee had been fairly contented in the assurance that he was obeying the doctor's orders; but as time went on, and he heard nothing from Sir Felix as to any arrangements being made that would enable him to go to Dr. Blathwayte's nursing home for regular treatment, he grew impatient, almost as discontented as he had been when they first came down to the country.

He looked very cross now.

“I wonder how you would like to lie here all day and know that all the fellows of your own age were doing things, going to school and college, cricketing, rowing, dancing, while you were just rotting your life away. I suppose you never think of that?”

“Indeed I do.” Hilary's voice was sad. “You know that I have always sympathized with you, Fee. If I could only make you well with a word –”

“A word!” Fee laughed contemptuously. “Yes! That wouldn't give you any trouble, would it? If it did –”

“What do you mean, Fee?” Hilary asked quietly. It was not the first time Fee had hinted at some secret knowledge, but he had never been quite so definite before.

“Mean!” he repeated passionately. “Why, I mean that the cost of the treatment would be only a bagatelle to Sir Felix, and if you would do what he wants I should soon be well, like other people.”

“You don't know that, Fee,” Hilary said with more firmness. “Dr. Blathwayte was not nearly so definite. He only said that he hoped to be able to do a great deal for you. And I know that Sir Felix thinks –”

“That he is not inclined to spend a lot of money on trying to help me while you persist in refusing him,” Fee finished bitterly.

Hilary turned white.

“I don't know what you have heard or imagined, Fee. But you must understand that the ordering of my life is my own affair.”

“Oh, quite! And you can muddle it up as you jolly well like. I know that,” Fee returned angrily. “But when you will not have anything to do with a man like Skrine that we have known all our lives, and that was our father's dearest friend, and persist in hankering after a fellow like Basil Wilton, who will probably be hanged before long, I think it is time some one spoke out, and as I am your brother and your only male relative –”

There was a certain pomposity about Fee's tone that at a happier time would have made Hilary smile. Today she was only furiously angry.

“Fee! How dare you! You are simply an impertinent boy!”

Fee was in no wise abashed.

“It is time you heard the plain truth. Moreover, the ‘Daily Wire' had a leaderette this morning saying what lots of people have thought, that it is an extremely curious thing that Basil Wilton should have been in two houses in which murders have been committed in the past three months. One is generally enough for a man's lifetime.”

Hilary turned on him.

“Do you mean to insinuate that it was Basil Wilton who shot Dad?”

“It is not what I insinuate, it is what the ‘Daily Wire' insinuates,” Fee returned, unmoved. “And it is just what everybody is saying, so you may as well know it.”

“I don't believe you or them or the ‘Daily Wire' – the ‘Daily Liar,' most people call it,” Hilary stormed. “But I don't think that even the ‘Daily Liar' would dare to say –”

She stopped as the garden gate clicked and Sir Felix Skrine came slowly across the grass to them. He was looking pale and worried, but smiled as he caught the end of Hilary's speech.

“What is it that the ‘Daily Liar' would not dare to do, Hilary?” he inquired. “Between ourselves I always thought that there were no limits to the cheek of that lively journal.”

“I don't think that there are!” Hilary retorted hotly. “But surely even the ‘Daily Wire' would hardly dare to say that Basil Wilton murdered both my father and his wife. I thought in England a man was considered innocent until he was proved guilty.”

Sir Felix drew in his lips. “Who told you that the ‘Daily Wire' said that?”

“Fee has just told me so. I don't know where he had it from,” Hilary returned, with a much displeased glance at her brother.

Sir Felix looked at him too.

“You must be careful what you say, Fee, or you will lay yourself open to prosecution for libel. I don't think the ‘Daily Wire' has ever said that in so many words.”

“Not in so many words, perhaps,” Fee said, catching at the end of the sentence. “But it was put so that anybody could read between the lines.”

“Ah, reading between the lines is not a particularly safe amusement!” Sir Felix said dryly.

“Sir Felix,” Hilary said suddenly, “you don't believe that Basil Wilton killed my father or his wife, do you?”

Sir Felix obviously hesitated. “I have never even considered Wilton in connexion with your father's death, Hilary. With regard to his wife, I don't know” – speaking very slowly, with a little pause between each word – “I realize that the trend of public opinion is against him. And. of course the circumstances are suspicious – distinctly suspicious. But there are one or two things, trifles in themselves, but decidedly in Wilton's favour. I think a good deal might be made of them in some hands.”

“If you were to defend him, Sir Felix,” Hilary said tentatively.

“Ah, he is not on trial yet,” Sir Felix said quietly. “And when he is, as I am afraid there is small doubt he ultimately will be, his counsel will probably be fully able to make the most of his case. As for me, my time is fully taken up. I have more work on my hands than I know how to get through.”

Hilary made no response. She sat down on the end of Fee's couch and looked away from her godfather. Her brown eyes were fixed unseeingly on the tall lupins opposite, her hands lying on her knees.

Fee fidgeted. He hated people sitting on his couch, a fact which his sister seldom forgot.

“If the blighter didn't kill his wife, who did?” he burst out suddenly.

“How dare you, Fee! If you speak of Basil Wilton –”

Tears choked Hilary's utterance, and springing from the couch she rushed indoors and upstairs to her own room. For the first time since she had learnt of Iris Wilton's death, and of the suspicion attaching to Basil Wilton, she burst into an agony of sobbing. Life, which had once looked very fair to Hilary Bastow, was now growing almost too difficult to be borne. Every day seemed to be beset with new troubles and fresh problems, and she could see no rift in the dark clouds that obscured her whole horizon.

So far, she had kept up for her crippled brother's sake, but now that Fee had apparently turned against her, her last source of strength was gone and in her despair she told herself that life was not worth living. Sometimes in the ordered calm of her existence in her father's house she had heard of girls who had taken their own lives, and she had marvelled. She had thought such misery impossible. Now –now as she contemplated the long years that lay ahead of her – it seemed the most natural thing in the world that people, even girls like herself, should be unhappy enough to prefer death to life. Still, the tears did her good, and she had the resilience of youth. She told herself that something must happen to better things. It could not be that she would go on being miserable for ever.

She bathed her eyes and powdered her swollen nose, and as she passed a comb quickly through her short curly hair she glanced down into the garden beneath. 

Sir Felix was leaning over the head of Fee's couch, and apparently talking earnestly to the lad, who seemed to be listening with great attention. Hilary surmised that they were talking about the new cure and that Fee was trying to induce his godfather to bear the expenses. With some idea of preventing this and of inducing Sir Felix to allow some of their own capital to be used she ran downstairs. In the hall she encountered Sir Felix.

“I was wondering what had become of you, Hilary,” he said, opening the drawing-room door. “Come in here. I want to talk to you.”

Hilary obeyed him unwillingly and took the chair he drew forward.

Sir Felix closed the door, and took up a position before the empty fireplace, one arm resting on the high wooden mantelpiece.

“Fee is most anxious to try the new cure,” he began. “And I think I shall be able to arrange it. The boy ought to have his chance, and you must remember that he is my godson.”

“Yes. But we cannot sponge on you. We have taken enough from you,” Hilary said unsteadily. “Sir Felix, you must let some of the money my father left – our capital –be used to pay for this treatment and Fee's stay abroad afterwards.” 

Sir Felix shook his head.

“I can't do that, Hilary. I am your father's executor, and I am bound to see that his capital is kept intact for his children. Besides, even if I were willing, my co-trustee would object, and quite rightly too. No, you must let me have my own way for once, Hilary.”

“I can't! Indeed I can't,” the girl said decidedly.

Sir Felix smiled faintly. “I am afraid you will not be able to help it, my dear. Your father left you both in my care, and I must do my best for Fee.”

Hilary bit her lip as she turned from him. The prospect of being so indebted to Skrine was hateful to her. She told herself that she would have done anything – anything – to escape this intolerable obligation.

Sir Felix drew a little nearer.

“If you would only let me do much more for you both, Hilary. Dear, will you not give me my chance – will you not let me try to teach you to care for me? I will be very patient, but I am not young and time is passing. Hilary, you will –?”

“I – I can't.” Hilary raised her eyes bravely “Don't you understand that one cannot marry one man, loving another? And – and you have always been –my godfather –”

Sir Felix turned white, his deep blue eyes held a passion of pain and of entreaty.

“You are very cruel, Hilary, more cruel than you know. But young people do not – understand.''

Hilary did not answer. Sir Felix became aware that she was not attending to him. He glanced beyond. The postman was coming to the door. They could hear Simpkins in the hall.

Hilary leaned out of the window.

“Give me the letters, please, postman.”

Sir Felix's lips were set closely together as he walked out of the room and went back to Fee on the lawn.

One glance at the letter she held brought the hot blood to Hilary's cheeks, set her heart beating with great suffocating throbs. So Basil Wilton had answered the letter she had written to him – in the first flush of her pity and indignation – at last.

She tore it open. Inside were just a very few words written on a single sheet of paper. There was no address and it was undated and began abruptly:

That was all. Hilary's eyes grew dim, everything turned dark. The very room itself seemed to whirl round her as with ceaseless sickening iteration one question beat itself upon her brain:

“Does it mean innocence or guilt?”

“Is that you, Harbord?” Inspector Stoddart was sitting at his desk in his private room at Scotland Yard. His head was bent over his case book, and he was apparently immersed in the study of its contents. He barely glanced up when there was a familiar knock at the door.

Harbord came in gingerly.

“You sent for me, sir?”

“Yes.” The inspector waited a minute, then he shut up his book with a bang. “Yes, I want you to come with me to West Kensington.” Harbord waited in an attitude of attention. The inspector fidgeted about with the papers before him for a minute, then he said suddenly:

“You will be surprised to hear that the visit I am about to pay is to Basil Wilton.” He looked keenly at the younger detective as he spoke. “He is staying with his brother who has taken a furnished house in Kensington – West Kensington to be more correct.”

Contrary to his expectations Harbord did not look surprised.

“Is he, sir?”

“I want to talk his story over with him, and see what I can make of it. I should like you to hear what he says.”

“Certainly, sir.”

Stoddart got up and taking a light overcoat from the peg threw it over his arm.

The house in which Basil Wilton was staying was one of those small houses that look as if they had been built when West Kensington was miles away from London proper, in the wilds beyond Tyburn. By some marvel it had survived when the craze for modern jerry-building surged round. It abutted on no thoroughfare, but was reached by a green door that opened into the little garden from one of those narrow alleys or courts that can only be found by people who know where to look for them. It was a bright-looking little house, though, with its gay window-boxes and the brilliantly coloured flowers in the herbaceous borders round. The detectives went towards the door without delay.

Basil Wilton watched them coming up the garden path from a window on the ground floor. They walked briskly up to the door and knocked authoritatively. It was opened by a respectable-looking, elderly woman of a dour expression who showed them straight into the dining-room.

Wilton came to them at once. Stoddart turned to him.

“I am much obliged to you for giving me this interview, Mr. Wilton.”

“Well, I fancy it was rather a matter of Hobson's choice, wasn't it?” Wilton said with a wry smile as he sank wearily into the big leather arm-chair near the window.