Scandal at High Chimneys (27 page)

“And he was exasperated, as you might say, with an intelligent man like you. He couldn’t see why it wasn’t plain, much as he disliked to make flat statements about a devilish distasteful subject—”

“I can understand all that,” groaned Clive. “But there was one statement he made that misled me more than anything else, whatever he may have meant by it. I thought the child
must
have been either Celia or Kate. He was speaking of what he called tainted blood; and he said, ‘This very evening I have seen Harriet Pyke’s eyes and Harriet Pyke’s hands.’ Where could he have seen them?”

“In a photograph,” said Whicher.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Didn’t Muswell tell you about the photographs in his desk?”

“Hold hard! I do seem to remember—”

“In the desk in the study, where that gentleman always sat alone and brooded before dinner as a rare-good murder-trap, he’d got three large full-length photographs: one of each child. Thunderation! You can bet he’d have had a look at ’em while he was waiting for you. Or, at least, he’d have studied the face of the conceited, spoiled, selfish lad who was going to put a bullet in his head if he spoke out with the truth.

“Now, then: considering all the facts everybody has told you, and considering we’ve got Victor Damon’s confession—”

Clive rose to his feet. His swollen right hand throbbed painfully, and he moved its fingers with difficulty.

“Mr. Whicher,” he said, “we can consider what you like. But how in blazes could you fit together all these details from the very beginning?”

Whicher coughed.

“Well, sir,” he said in a tone of apology, “’tisn’t hard to fit together the details if somebody’s already given you the answer.”

“The answer?”

“That’s right. In the letter Harriet Pyke wrote to Ivor Rich. I told you, quite truthfully, I didn’t know the name of Harriet Pyke’s child. I told you I didn’t know how old it was or where it was born. What I failed to say, in case I was wrong about who killed Mr. Damon, was that I knew the child was a boy. If the letter kept talking about the child as
he,
you’d have to be denser than I am to make a mistake.”

“But look here! You agreed that there is no such thing as ‘tainted blood.’”

“I did, sir. And I still agree. If you’ll just turn you mind to Victor Damon’s scheme—”

Whicher paused.

Against a hush of early morning, in the sedate old street, they could hear a four-wheeler draw up at the kerb. The street-door opened. Only a few seconds afterwards, Inspector Hackney escorted Kate Damon into the sitting-room.

Kate was very pale, though composed and even half-smiling. Whicher rose to his feet.

“Ma’am,” he said gently, “I hope you don’t blame me too much. We could keep the news from you that your brother wasn’t really your brother until such time as we nabbed him; after that, I thought, it wouldn’t matter. You already suspected he was a wrong ’un and a murderer, just as Mrs. Damon did. So if you feel strong enough to tell Mr. Strickland one or two things …”

“That’s not necessary,” Clive intervened. His heart smote him as he watched Kate. “It’s very late, my dear. I’ll take you to the hotel.”

“No!” said Kate. “I’ve hated myself, Clive, for not being frank with you. But I
couldn’t.
That’s to say, about Victor …”

Whicher set out a chair for her.

“What she means, Mr. Strickland, is that you’re a good friend. And you thought that young fellow was a friend of yours. So she couldn’t tell you, and neither could Mrs. Damon. Besides, Miss Kate was what you might call horrified; it wasn’t easy to believe a brother of hers would kill her father and arrange to put the blame on her.”

“It’s not easy,” snapped Clive, “to believe anybody would do it. How did all this begin? What made Victor think of it?”

“I made him think of it,” said Whicher, swallowing hard. “I told you I was partly responsible. And now I’ll explain why.”

He spoke again when the rest of them were seated.

“The answer to
that,
” he continued, biting the side of his forefinger, “is that Mary Jane Cavanagh wasn’t at High Chimneys when I went there in August. Up to August, this year, Mrs. Cavanagh never told her darling phenomenon he wasn’t the real son of Matthew Damon. She’d hinted, mind you, in case a day came when the spoiled son got a nasty shock. Victor knew there was something wrong, and spent bad times wondering about himself; he says so now, with buckets of tears for his plight.

“At Miss Celia’s birthday dinner, just after Mr. Damon had mentioned an ugly secret he’d be bound to tell when any of the children married,
I
turned up with a letter from a dead woman. The long and the short of it is that Master Victor managed to listen when I was explaining the letter to Mr. Damon in his study.

“And Master Victor learned everything.

“But Mary Jane Cavanagh wasn’t there at the time. Follow that; you’ll see its importance.

“Hark’ee, now: this lad didn’t
want
to kill anybody, any more than his mother ever had. Not by a long chalk! It mightn’t be needful, if Mr. Damon never opened his snitch: though there was always the question of how Victor could ever inherit money if he wasn’t a real son.

“All in all, he was in an uncommonly bad state of mind.

“And then, not long afterwards, one of the swellest of swells—Lord Albert Tressider—wants to marry Miss Celia for the money her father will settle on her.

“Whatever young Victor does, he’s bound to do something. He can’t risk having his noble friend, who’s contemptuous even of men that demean ’emselves by marrying actresses, learn who
his
mother was.

“Master Victor has a friend (yourself, Mr. Strickland) who’s got him out of fixes before this. He can always persuade you to go down to High Chimneys and offer the proposal of marriage: suggesting his sisters are in some terrible danger, probably from a father who’s a little insane, in case Mr. Damon tells you the truth.

“It’s possible, just remotely possible, Mr. Damon may be so impressed by an offer of marriage from the noble gentleman that he won’t say anything. You’ll be the man to test that. But Mr. Damon mustn’t even tell you; he mustn’t tell
anybody.
If he starts to, Victor’s all ready for it. Mr. Damon’s got to die.”

Again Whicher contemplated the fire.

Then he snorted.

“Naturally, as you said, you’d never have accepted that errand if you hadn’t seen Miss Kate’s portrait in Victor’s rooms. But Victor never doubted his charm. He was so sure he could persuade you that he got it arranged before then. He and his wily aunt had several days’ notice of Penelope Burbage going to a lecture in Reading on Monday night, so Mrs. Cavanagh could play the prowler while Victor got drunk with you to prove he couldn’t have been within forty miles of High Chimneys.

“Thunderation! When women play men’s parts on the stage, they don’t deceive anybody and they’re not meant to; there wouldn’t be any men-customers in the audience if they did. Penelope was never meant to think the prowler was a man. But her short sight … well, there it is. All hand-tailored to prove it was Miss Kate.”

Kate, her eyes closed, hesitated before she spoke.

“Mr. Whicher,” she cried, “does Victor hate me as much as all that?”

“Ma’am, he doesn’t hate you at all.”

“But you said—”

“No, ma’am. He’s rather fond of you, as far as he can be fond of anybody. He didn’t teach you to ride and shoot with that notion. But your wearing boy’s clothes on a well-known occasion, and Mrs. Damon’s talking about it too much, gave him an uncommon neat idea. By the time
he
came to High Chimneys to kill his ‘father’ on Tuesday night, he and Mary Jane Cavanagh thought it’d be taken for gospel the goblin was a woman.

“Victor’s short and slight. He would be taken for the same woman, he thought. Naturally there were two sets of clothes, Miss Kate! One for Mrs. C. to wear and then hide in your room with a cut-off stocking-top for a mask. And one for Victor, who could wear ’em when he went to High Chimneys, and was admitted through the conservatory door by Mrs. C; they wouldn’t make anybody suspicious anywhere; nearly every man in England’s got a costume like that.

“Neither he nor his aunt wore shoes. That was partly to avoid noise, and partly so dirt wouldn’t be tramped into the house if it happened to be a damp night. No outsider, d’ye see?
You.
As for Mary Jane Cavanagh …”

Whicher scowled and looked at Inspector Hackney.

“Hackney, my lad,” he asked, “have they telegraphed from Reading yet? After they arrested Harriet Pyke’s sister?”

“Ay; they’ve telegraphed,” growled Hackney.

“But the woman hasn’t confessed, I’ll lay you a bender? No; I didn’t think she would. She’s a hard nail. Not like the young ’un who planned it all and then broke like a rotten board when the law tapped him.”

“Why is it so important,” demanded Clive, “that Mrs. Cavanagh wasn’t at High Chimneys when you met the rest of the family?”

“Because Victor, who
was
there, didn’t remember my name and never troubled to say who I was. I’d been announced as an Inspector of the Detective Branch. Mrs. Cavanagh, when he told her about it, thought I was an official detective. She never associated the official detective with the cove she’d heard of: me.

“Got that, sir? When household gossip said Mr. Damon was going to London to see me, she imagined it was about Mrs. Damon and the gentleman you call Tress. She never hesitated to threaten Miss Kate with my name, even before the murder’d been committed.” Whicher glanced at Kate. “Begging your pardon, ma’am: but you knew it was about your so-called brother, didn’t you?”

“Yes. I—I as good as told her so, when Mr. Strickland was listening. I told her there was a man in the house on Monday night, prowling up and down. Of course Victor wasn’t there that night, but I thought he was.”

“And so Master Victor killed the gentleman who’d done so much for him,” said Whicher.

He was silent for a moment.

“We know now,” he went on grimly, “he brought a pistol to High Chimneys. His aunt stole Mr. Damon’s revolver, to make it seem more of Miss Kate’s work. His aunt tore up Mr. Damon’s will. That’s another pointer. Under the law as it stands, a daughter can’t inherit money unless it’s specifically allowed her in a will; a son can. You’re a lawyer, Mr. Strickland; didn’t that occur to you?”

“It occurred to me when Celia mentioned it long afterwards, yes. Not until then.”

“So he killed Mr. Damon; oh, ah! It would all ’a’ gone according to plan except for two things. First, Victor’s short and slight; but he’s not effeminate; you saw him in the goblin’s clothes, and knew it was a man. Second, Mrs. Damon was in the train to Reading that afternoon; she guessed the dirty work, whatever it was going to be, would incriminate Miss Kate. When Mrs. Damon nipped away from High Chimneys that evening, because a noble lord was blackmailing her and she had to meet him in London, she took the clothes that were meant to hang Miss Kate.

“Sorry, ma’am, but that’s a fact! And then, next day, Victor saw her in Oxford Street.

“He did more than see her, you know.

“As he admitted in the rum and stupid note he left for Mr. Strickland at my office, he followed Mr. Strickland and Mrs. Damon. He met her. He told her Mr. Damon had been shot; up to then he never dreamed she’d twigged him.

“What she let fall, when she heard her husband was dead, his confession don’t say. But Victor knew he might be a goner if he let her speak. In that tomfool’s note he left at my office he said he was taking her to the train; he couldn’t have taken her to the train if he nipped up and left a note for you.

“No! It was only to show he was staying in London, when he meant to go down to High Chimneys again. That’s where
I’m
to blame again. Mr. Strickland, when you talked to Victor in London on Wednesday morning, didn’t he do his best to throw suspicion on a woman?”

“He did.”

“Also, as you told me from overhearing Mrs. Damon talk to the manager of the Princess’s Theatre, Mrs. Damon knew the guilty party was a man. She said some person ought to be condemned to the treadmill, before she’d even heard about a murder; and we don’t condemn women to the treadmill. I couldn’t have asked for many more clues about Victor. If I’d gone to High Chimneys on Wednesday afternoon, as I’d intended—”

Whicher stopped. He rose to his feet, all bitterness.

“But, oh, no!” he said. “That’s not mysterious enough, or devious enough, for Johnny Whicher. I’m the dealer in shortcuts, and dummy arrests, and hocus-pocus to get a confession. Thinks I to myself, ‘I’ll borrow that letter of Harriet Pyke’s from the lodginghouse-keeper in Pimlico. I’ll send Cherry White to the young fellow’s lodgings, offering to sell the letter; I’ll let Cherry play on his nerves for a few days or a week; and then I’ll have Peelers ready to step in when Cherry hands over the letter with a close friend of Victor’s looking on.’

“It’s the same scheme we did use, except that it had to be done next day and risk failure by acting too soon. And, mark you, it succeeded.

“Howsoever! I should have seen that Victor Damon, after he’d talked to Cherry on Wednesday afternoon, would hare off for High Chimneys that evening. But I didn’t, and I let Mrs. Damon die. You can guess what Victor did, can’t you?”

Clive made a savage gesture.

“In many ways, that may be …”

“Sir, sir! It was easy for him to get into the house by the front door. But he hadn’t warned Mrs. Cavanagh he’d be there; he hadn’t taken counsel with a wiser head. If he had any doubts about killing Georgette Damon, he forgot ’em when he heard Mrs. Damon saying what she did say.

“He could kill, but he couldn’t leave the house again—what with the windows stuck, and the front door locked by Dr. Bland, and a mort o’ people in the servants’ hall watching the back door—unless he left by way of the conservatory and left that door unlocked.

“That’s why you and Miss Kate found the temperature lowered in the conservatory when you two ran away; the door had been left partly open. I told you, among other things, your theory about Mrs. Cavanagh being guilty was right as far as it went. I told you the murderer had left High Chimneys last night.