Scandal at High Chimneys (18 page)

“It’s locked, and there’s no key here. Does Burbage usually lock the front door at this time?”

“No. Never. Last night it was a special precaution to—”

“To what?”

“Nothing.” Kate was deathly pale. “Superstitious people would say the omens were against us.”

“To blazes with the omens! Are you with me?”

“Yes! I love you.”

“We can go out by any full-length window; that’s easy.”

“No; it’s not so easy.” Kate moistened her lips. “Those windows are seldom if ever opened, and the—the catches are badly stuck. You could wrench one open, but it would take time and make a dreadful lot of noise. There
is
one way, though. The conservatory.”

Again Clive glanced over his shoulder.

“There’s—there’s a full-length window there,” said Kate, “as well as the little ones under the roof. The catches have to be kept in good order, or the temperature can’t be controlled. But if those policemen are still in the study …”

“Does it matter?”

“No! I
won’t
be stopped now.”

Every step seemed of inhuman loudness as this time they ran towards the back of the hall. The quiet, dim-lit rooms moved past. They were just between the door of the study and the back-parlour, turning left towards the back-parlour and the conservatory, when the door of the study abruptly opened.

That, however, was not what caused both Clive and Kate to stop.

The person who opened the door was only Penelope Burbage. Clive could see past her; he could see nearly the whole study; and, except for Penelope as she came out, it seemed otherwise empty.

Clive’s whisper stopped her too, and forced a whisper in reply.

“Where are they, Penelope? Superintendent Muswell and the constable?”

“I know, sir!” Penelope wrung her hands.

“You know?”

“That is to say, sir, I am aware they are gone. That was why I returned.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, sir! I escorted Mrs. Damon here, as I promised you. Afterwards, when I went in to supper, I wondered—”

“Speak quietly, please!”

“I wondered why no one had said, ‘Come in,’” Penelope whispered, “after Mrs. Damon tapped at the door. No one did speak. Mrs. Damon opened the door and entered. So I returned. Was it so very improper of me to return?”

Small and dumpy, with worry behind her fine eyes, Penelope seemed for the first time really to see Kate and Clive. She looked at the two portmanteaux Clive was carrying. His low voice cut across even her thoughts.

“Penelope, you have not met us. Do you understand?”

“Oh, yes, sir! All too well!”

“You haven’t even seen us, have you?”

“No, sir. I had best go back now.”

“Wait!” said Clive, as she curtseyed. “Last night, when Miss Kate and Miss Celia questioned you about the figure you had seen on the stairs on Monday night, they asked you if it could have been a woman. You said no. That was not true, was it?”

His whisper, harsh as it was, could barely be heard above the ticking of the black marble clock on the bookcase in the study.

“Sir—”

“It was a woman you saw, was it not? But you feared you might implicate either Miss Celia or Miss Kate?”

“Yes, sir,” Penelope answered, and shut her eyes.

“While you were being questioned, you saw Dr. Bland before you. You lost your head, said whatever words first occurred to you, and blurted out that you had seen a man with a beard?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But the woman you saw,” Clive stated rather than asked, “was Mrs. Cavanagh. Was it not?”

“I’ll not tell them I’ve seen you, sir,” replied Penelope, and turned and ran for the green-baize door.

Kate, gloved hand clenched at her breast, stared after her with steadily shining eyes.

“I knew it!” whispered Kate, all a glow and intensity. “Clive, we’re safe; it’s what I had believed and believed, except that Cavvy isn’t … oh, no matter! Celia’s safe. Why do you say you’re no detective? We’re free!”

“Are we?”

“What do you mean?”

Clive shut up his thoughts and turned a metaphorical key.

“Nothing at all!” he lied, looking at the back-parlour and the glass room beyond it. “But I left the lamp upstairs, and that conservatory will be a maze in the dark.”

“Is that all? Give me your hand. I could lead you through the conservatory blindfolded. Give me your hand, my dear!”

Shifting both portmanteaux to his right hand as Kate extended her left, he followed her.

In darkness they went through the parlour, beyond the glass door, and along a gravel path amid tendrils that brushed their sides or even their faces. To Clive the place seemed distinctly less warm, as though—

“Stop here,” whispered Kate, as they reached the clearing in the middle. Glass or iron creaked under the whoop of the wind. By this time her voice had an uneasy, unsteady note. “Stop here! The door to the south lawn isn’t far behind the bench. But I—I’m not quite sure of the direction after all.”

“Here: let me strike a match!”

“No; wait. I can find it. There’s a path to it, and it’s not ten feet from the beginning of the path to the door.”

Clammy darkness pressed round him; it was not a time to use the imagination. He could hear the rustle of Kate’s skirts, her footsteps on gravel, and then a low-breathed cry.

“Yes, here it is!” she called softly out of the dark. “Take two steps forward until you reach the bench. Then strike a match and follow me.”

He took the two steps, but he went no further.

“Clive! What’s the matter?”

There was no reply.

“Clive! What’s the matter?”

Clive put down the portmanteaux, clearing his throat. He could hear Kate’s quick, light steps approaching.

“Stay where you are,” he said very clearly. “I am going to strike that match; but don’t come any closer and don’t look. There’s someone sitting or lying on the bench, and she doesn’t move.”

The first thing he saw, after he had whisked the match along the edge of the iron table and the flame curled up, was a wink of gold on a bottle of smelling-salts. But that was not what drew his attention. That was not what swam up at him to the exclusion of all else.

Georgette Damon had been strangled to death.

She lay face upwards on the bench, twisted there in the black gown and crinoline she had not changed, with the black marks of fingers on her throat and her head hanging down over the arm of the bench. The auburn hair, loosened, also hung down. And more than life had gone from her: warmth, vivacity, good-nature, soul. The pretty lady was not pretty now.

In the midst of a silence more unnatural still, except for the creak as of another glass door a hairline open, Clive pointed to the gold-stoppered bottle of smelling-salts on the gravel below the bench.

“That’s what she left here,” he said. “That’s what she forgot. That’s why she came back. That’s how she died.”

I
N LONDON, TOWARDS MID-AFTERNOON
of the following day, when the events in a murder case ran fast towards the snare at their end, a four-wheeler drove at a spanking pace down Regent Street, past Regent’s Quadrant and the top of the Haymarket, and along Coventry Street into Leicester Square.

It was Thursday, October 19.

Hidden by the semi-darkness of the four-wheeler sat Kate Damon and Clive Strickland, in another emotional state. Clive, who held a morning newspaper and a second crumpled telegram from Whicher, had real troubles aside from this. He looked out of the window as the cab stopped on the north side of the square.

The cabman, after hesitating, climbed down from the box and doubtfully opened the door.

“Sure this is the right address, sir?”

“Yes; I think this is it.”

“But it’s a oyster-shop!” protested the cabman. “You can’t take the lady in there.”

“I don’t purpose to do so. The lady will remain in the cab. Wait here.”

“Clive—” began Kate.

“You will remain in the cab!”

The cabman discreetly climbed back up on the box while the other two indulged in a series of farewells as though the gentleman were leaving for a ten years’ stay in India. This lady, the cabman observed, was much upset and had been weeping.

“Clive, you’ll not be long?”

“No; not if Whicher’s there. I don’t want to keep you in this neighbourhood any longer than is necessary.”

“Clive, I don’t mind! I—I rather like it.”

“You wouldn’t like it if you saw the square after nightfall.”

And he repeated this to himself mentally as he climbed down to the pavement.

Except for one fantastic and would-be magnificent building on the east side, Leicester Square was so slatternly as to draw much public comment. In the centre of the square, amid rubble, the battered equestrian statue of King George the First had been covered with whitewash by some joker insisting that the place should be cleaned up.

Few people were abroad here at this hour. A pale sun tried to struggle out through smoke. Nor had the square’s appearance been improved when Saville House, on the north side, was destroyed by fire in February of this year, and its cellars converted into a brawling night-haunt called a wine ‘Shades.’

On the east side, grotesquely, the Alhambra Theatre and Music-Hall raised its gaudy arches and its four Moorish pinnacles in a lifeless splendour by day. But the oyster-shop, a dim cavern with tables bearing cruets of vinegar and red pepper, was beside the wine ‘Shades.’

Clive’s heart sank as he entered. Jonathan Whicher, very grave-faced, sat at a table and studied him.

“Where have you been all day?” demanded Clive.

“At High Chimneys. Talking to people. I’ve just got back.”

Here the former Inspector, despite his gravity, whistled on a note of reluctant admiration as he shook his head.

“You’ve done it this time,” he said. “Thunderation! You’ve really gone and done it this time!”

“Yes. I daresay.”

“Have a plate of oysters, sir? Very cheap.”

“I don’t need any oysters, thanks. That’s to say, I mean—!”

“Oh, ah. I think I know what you mean.”

“You don’t know, damn it!”

“Sit down, anyway.”

Clive gritted his teeth and sat down.

“Look here, sir!” continued the bedevilled Whicher. “Having met the young lady, I can understand why you should want to kidnap her and bring her to London. But why must you do it after you’d discovered Mrs. Damon’s body? As they tell it me, you and Miss Damon must have discovered the body. Why must you go on and do it
after?
Whose idea was that?”

“It was my idea, of course.”

Though this was only partial truth, it would have to serve.

The uncertainty, the irony of the past twenty hours, made him swear under his breath. Despite horror and shock at the death of Georgette Damon, whom he liked and for whom he sincerely grieved, he had been slam-bang determined to carry out an elopement according to plan.

And so was Kate: until, in the train, she had been seized by another fit of conscience. She cried out and called herself a monster of callousness. Kate said she could not understand herself. She compared herself unfavourably with Messalina, Lucrezia Borgia, and others of hard heart or doubtful morals.

By the time they were in London Kate had worked herself into such a state that he was compelled to leave her at Mivart’s Hotel in the care of a maid.

And that was only right, as Clive knew.

Moreover, human nature being what it is, he had been prepared for what happened when he called on her this morning. In the luxurious atmosphere of Mivart’s, on what would have been a fine day without the smoke, he found a different woman.

Now Kate called herself foolish and stupid for her state of mind last night; she asked him if he had ceased to love her; she asked him …

Oh, never mind!

Though Clive told Whicher not one word of this, he summed up his own state of mind when he banged his fist on the table.

“It was idiotic, if you like. Very well! But Kate says she doesn’t regret it; quite to the contrary; and I’m very certain
I
don’t regret it.”

“You really mean that, don’t you?”

“Yes!” Clive said honestly.

“Sir, listen to me! Superintendent Muswell …”

“He’s got a warrant out for Kate’s arrest, has he? Or for both of us?”

“Well …”

“On a charge of murder?”

“Come, now!” Whicher made a satiric face and clucked his tongue. “And you a lawyer, too! Coppers don’t need a warrant to arrest for murder. For most felonies, yes. Not for murder.”

“Then what is happening?”

“You’ll have to lie low, both of you, and keep out of sight….”

“Admirable!” said Clive, and meant that too. “We can take tomorrow’s harbour-train for Folkestone, and be in Paris late tomorrow afternoon. Kate is delighted.”

Whicher jumped up from the table.

“Thunderation!” he said in a voice of awe. Then, thick-set and pock-marked, his gravity increasing, he paced beside the table before wheeling round.

“I was afraid I’d failed you, sir,” he went on. “But I haven’t failed you, maybe. No! If you’re prepared to help me through some ugly awkward moments with maybe danger in ’em, you needn’t keep out of Muswell’s clutches much later than late tonight. You and Miss Damon weren’t the only ones who ran away from High Chimneys.”

“Oh? Who else did?”

“The murderer did.”

“You say you’ve guessed who the murderer is?”

“I
know
who it is. So does your young lady.”

Again Whicher paced, jingling coins in his pocket.

“Hark’ee!” he added. “That’s been on my mind too. It may be, yesterday, I misled you a bit. It wasn’t as much as Mr. Damon misled you; not by a jugful. But what he said wasn’t intentional. And what I said was deliberate. See?”

Clive drew himself up.

“Mr. Whicher,” he announced, spacing the words with a kind of violent politeness, “let us have no more mystification. Should the earth cease to spin, should grass turn red and the Nelson Column grow a full set of Dundreary whiskers, I beg you to draw it mild and spare me more of your blasted mystification.”

“Now, now, sir! You’re in a bit of an excited state, what with one thing and another.”