Man with the Dark Beard (25 page)

Then oddly enough, considering her interest in what was going on, she drew down the blind sharply.

“Whatever it is, it is no business of ours! Now make haste and get into bed, Hilary. If you have a headache, as you said you had, you are not going the way to improve it.” 

And now Hilary became conscious that she was very tired – that the one thing she needed was sleep.

Very quietly she undressed herself and got into bed, her aunt tucking her in with awkward, unaccustomed fingers, but with almost motherly tenderness.

As soon as she had gone Hilary fell into a dreamless slumber, lasting far beyond her usual hour for getting up. Somewhat to her surprise her aunt stood by the window in much the same position as she had seen her the preceding evening.

“Why, Aunt Lavinia, you've not been there all night surely?” she said stupidly.

“Good Lord! No, of course I haven't,” said Miss Lavinia, staring at her. “Don't you see I am dressed? I have had a shock this morning. I don't believe in beating about the bush, so I will tell you at once. I expect it will be one to you too – Sir Felix is dead!”

Hilary lay and gazed at her.

“He can't be!” she gasped at last. “I was talking to him just before I came to bed last night.”

“Well, you will not talk to him any more,” her aunt said brusquely.

Hilary was conscious of a great bewilderment and a feeling as if the bottom had fallen out of the universe rather than of any personal sorrow.

“But what killed him? He was quite well last night.”

“I dare say he was,” Miss Lavinia said slowly. “But as I said before it's no use beating about the bush and you will hear it when you get down, for the whole place is buzzing with it. Sir Felix shot himself.”

“It can't be true!” Hilary sprang up in bed with eyes of horror. “He would not do such a thing. Somebody has shot him as they shot Daddy. He – Godfather – was telling me that he had thought out a way of saving Basil – that I was not to worry any more. And now, what shall we do without him?”

“I fancy,” Miss Lavinia said very slowly, “I really fancy, for nobody has told me, that Sir Felix has not forgotten Basil Wilton.”

“But how could he –”

“I shall answer no more questions – come downstairs and have your breakfast.”

Miss Lavinia's tone was decisive.

“Wilton will be acquitted of course,” Harbord said, looking at the inspector. Stoddart nodded.

“The prosecution will offer no evidence against him. He will leave the court without a stain on his character – that style of thing. Skrine's confession may be put in or it may not. Anyway, it will have to be made public. Wilton must be cleared of all complicity in Dr. Bastow's murder as well as Iris Wilton's.”

“I should have fought it out if I had been Skrine,” Harbord said, knitting his brows. “Conviction wouldn't have been easy.”

Stoddart smiled grimly.

“It wouldn't have been difficult. He knew they would find arsenic in Lady Skrine's body. His recognition as William Taylor was bound to follow. In fact he must have felt pretty certain that it had already taken place to account for the exhumation. In that lay the keynote to the other two murders. Dr. Bastow discovered his secret and was shot in consequence. Iris Houlton blackmailed him and he conceived the idea of killing her, and by making Wilton appear guilty get rid of them both at one stroke. Altogether it was a marvellous edifice of crime, and it was within a hairbreadth of success. They say all murderers make mistakes, and it seems to me that Skrine with all his experience made a pretty big one. I wonder if you can guess what it was?”

“The putting of the beard in the bag,” Harbord hazarded.

Stoddart nodded.

“Though I am inclined to go further and say the putting of the bag in the cloak-room at all. He meant it to clinch matters against Wilton, and so at first sight it appeared to do. It was cleverly thought out. The putting in of newspapers taken in by Iris Wilton and of the date of the murder and of the empty Chinese box and the beard, all combined, did seem to point unmistakably to Wilton; and, if our suspicions had not already been directed to Skrine, it might have succeeded. Once the beard came into our possession, however, we had got hold of one thread of the tangled skein. The bag itself was another. It could not have been identified as Wilton's –it must have been eventually discovered to be Skrine's. Oh, we should have traced it all home to him in time, but he has saved us a lot of trouble. And when we had succeeded, and he had been put on his trial, it would only have resulted in all the great medicos swearing it was a case of homicidal insanity, and he would have retired to Broadmoor to enjoy himself.”

“He would have found it a change from Worthington Square and Heathcote Manor and from the universal respect accorded to Sir Felix Skrine, K.C., I fancy,” Harbord said dryly.

“He would that. There seems a touch of rough, self-inflicted justice in the fact that he shot himself with the same pistol that he used in the Bastow case.”

“That pistol?” Harbord opened his eyes. “But I thought that was found in Rufford Square – that we had it at the Yard.”

Stoddart shrugged his shoulders.

“You ought to know we do not always tell the public everything. The newspapers jumped to the conclusion at once that the pistol found in Rufford Square was the pistol with which Dr. Bastow was shot. But as a matter of fact all the great gunsmith experts have agreed that it was not and that this one of Skrine's was. It seems that when a bullet is fired from a gun, revolver or what not, marks are made upon it so fine as to be indistinguishable to the naked eye, but proof positive to the expert that the bullet was fired from that particular gun – proof positive and capable of ocular demonstration.''

“Still, that would only have proved that the pistol was in Skrine's possession if the case had come for trial,” Harbord argued.

“Naturally! But of course the inference goes much further,” Stoddart rejoined. “And Mrs. Carr spoke out when she knew that Skrine was dead. She had known him years ago in her husband's lifetime and he had tried to make love to her then. Incidentally it comes out that she was innocent of all complicity in Major Carr's death. But that is another story. She recognized Skrine by his walk in the garden on the night of Dr. Bastow's murder; but she was too much afraid of him to speak out. She knew he would deny it and might in turn accuse her, and she felt certain that his word would be taken against hers.”

“Dare say it would,” Harbord acknowledged. “But one thing I should like to know, inspector, what made you suspect Skrine? For suspect him from the first I feel sure you did.”

“I really hardly know,” the inspector answered thoughtfully. “Intuition, I think I must say. Something in his manner – his grief over his friend's death did not seem quite genuine to me. And I never for one moment believed in the theory that some discovery Dr. Bastow had made in his research work was the motive for the crime. Well, well, we know the truth now and all the world will know it soon. And so the Bastow Case ends – a mystery no longer.”

“Well, I have a bit of news for you, Hilary. Two bits, to speak accurately, but one can wait awhile. This one is about myself.”

The two – Hilary and her aunt – had settled down for the time being in a private hotel in Bloomsbury. It had the advantages of being central, cheap and within fairly easy reach of Fee's clinic.

Rose Cottage was to let furnished. Hilary had left Heathcote directly after the tragedy of Skrine's death, and had refused to go back even to superintend the packing of her own belongings. The Manor was to be sold. Lady Skrine's fortune had returned to her own family after Skrine's death. And it was astonishing how little the great K.C. had left of his own. That little had been left to Hilary and Fee in equal shares. Hilary had refused to touch it, but by common consent it was to be allowed to pay for some of Fee's expensive treatment.

It was a month since Wilton's second trial had resulted, as Inspector Stoddart had prophesied, in an acquittal – no evidence being offered by the prosecution. Since then so far as Miss Lavinia knew Hilary had heard nothing of her whilom lover. But the girl had developed a sort of apathy. She seemed to be living in a trance and to take little or no notice of anything that was going on. Her aunt was becoming seriously alarmed at her lack of interest and had determined to rouse her if possible.

“News! What news?” Hilary questioned in a lifeless fashion. “Anything particular?”

Miss Lavinia bridled. “Well, some people might think it so. I only hope they won't say that I have gone through the wood and taken the crooked stick at last. I am going to be married, Hilary.”

Certainly she had achieved her object of rousing her niece. Hilary started up in her chair.

“Aunt Lavinia! You must be joking!” she gasped.

“Certainly I am not,” Miss Lavinia returned with dignity. “Your surprise is not very complimentary, Hilary. You don't even ask who the man is.”

“I – I was too much amazed,” Hilary said, gazing up at her aunt.

Decidedly, she reflected, it must have been a brave man who had proposed to Miss Lavinia. That lady's odd style of dress, her thin legs in their silk stockings, her masculine, weatherbeaten countenance with the wisps of sandy hair sticking out all round, seemed rather out of place taken in conjunction with matrimonial dallying.

“Who in the world is it, Aunt Lavinia?” her niece questioned at last.

Miss Priestley bridled afresh. Her wrinkled cheeks actually deepened in colour.

“Well, I expect you will be surprised to hear. But I have seen a good deal of him lately and I have learned to estimate him at his true worth. It is Dr. Sanford Morris.”

“Aunt Lavinia!” Hilary ejaculated in her astonishment. “Why, you have always said you didn't like him. You used to call him the Beaver.”

“Oh, well! You can't call him that now. He is clean-shaven enough. I won't say that I should have married him if he had stuck to his beard,” Miss Lavinia said with a wide smile that showed her false teeth to their fullest advantage. “I hate being kissed by a man with a beard.”

A faint smile curved Hilary's lips.

“Have you tried, Aunt Lavinia?”

“Of course I have,” Miss Lavinia confessed shamelessly. “In the days when I was engaged to the curates it was not the fashion for a parson to go about like a smooth-faced girl. They wore beards or moustaches, espoused the first decent-looking district visitor they met and reared large families. Still, the present fashion has its advantages and I prefer it even, aesthetically, for a layman. But I do think a rector or a vicar looks better with a beard or something.”

“I cannot imagine you married,” Hilary breathed.

Miss Lavinia tossed her head.

“For that matter I cannot imagine you married, but I presume that some day I shall have to get accustomed to the idea, and you had better do the same. But that is enough of my affairs and of my first piece of news. The second is that an old friend wants to see you.”

“What old friend? I don't think I have any old friends,” Hilary said languidly.

“Oh, well! Perhaps you haven't,” Miss Lavinia agreed hurriedly. “Anyway, you shall see for yourself.” She bustled out of the room.

Hilary felt half inclined to follow her, and demand an explanation, but her desire was conquered by the general malaise from which she had suffered of late, and she laid her head back on her chair and gave herself up to a daydream of the past. From it she was awakened by a gentle tap at the door.

Wondering whether this could be the old friend spoken of by her aunt she said, “Come in.”

The door opened and Basil Wilton stood on the threshold. Then at last Hilary was startled into a momentary semblance of her old self. The hot blood surged over cheeks and neck and temples.

“You!” she said in an amazed tone. “Why have you come here?”

“To see you,” Basil Wilton answered quietly.

He came across the room and stood before her.

“Will you forgive me, Hilary?”

As quickly as it had come Hilary's colour faded away.

“Oh, yes, I forgive you,” she said listlessly. “You were quite right to marry Miss Houlton if you liked her best, only – you might have told me.” 

“Told you what?” Wilton began. Then he broke off – “Liked her best! Hilary, is that what you have been thinking? Dear, didn't you understand?”

“No. I did not understand. I don't know what you mean,” Hilary said slowly, in the same uninterested fashion.

Basil possessed himself of one hand, noting as he did so that both were ringless.

“It has all been a miserable tangle, Hilary, but one thing has never varied – my love for you.”

A faint, mocking laugh came from Hilary's pale lips.

“Why did you never write to me? Why did you marry Miss Houlton if your love for me had not altered? No, no! Please go! I can't talk. My head is not clear.”

But Wilton still clasped the cold hand that tried to withdraw itself.

“Let me try to make you understand, Hilary. I wrote to you again and again, but I had no answer. Of course my letters to you were stopped, as yours were to me, by Skrine.”

As the last word left his lips Hilary shivered from head to foot.

“Not – not that!”

“Just this once, dear, and then his name need never be mentioned between us again. There can be no doubt that our letters were intercepted by Skrine. And he helped Iris, who – Heaven knows why she should – had apparently taken one of those unbalanced fancies to me that one hears of sometimes. She asked me to her flat and we had always got on very well together – I need not say that I had never suspected her of any knowledge or complicity in the cruel end. So – I was feeling very unhappy and depressed; I heard on all sides that you were going to marry Skrine, and I was at a loose end; there seemed no reason why I shouldn't go. I was taken ill there. She drugged me, so much is certain, probably incited by Skrine, who found me in his way. At any rate I was kept under the influence of a certain preparation of morphia, and the purchase of it has now been definitely traced to Skrine. A marriage was suggested to me. She had been very good to me. She had nursed me. You were out of reach, and there seemed nothing else to be done. Then I dare say I was an expensive luxury and the flat must have cost a lot. I am afraid she must have asked for more money than Skrine could give. The idea of shooting her, poor thing, and putting the blame on me must have occurred to him. Thus at one blow he meant to rid himself of both the obstacles in his path. It was a diabolical scheme; it nearly succeeded.”