The Mystery Of An Old Murder (12 page)

CHAPTER 14

conclusion

The nearest way to the cottage was through  the shrubbery and across the fir-wood. The path through the shrubbery was narrow and winding, and hemmed in on each side by thickly massed evergreens. To pass from this to the wood where the sunlight fell in golden shafts athwart the tall red trunks, and the wind was making solemn music in the swinging branches overhead, was like entering another world. The stony calmness with which Robert Carew had set out on his dreadful mission broke down as the beauty of the familiar place stole upon his senses. His breast heaved, a great sob broke from him. He stopped. Close by him there was the fallen tree-trunk on which Marjorie and Kitty had sat that morning. He sat down there. There were primroses, one or two, on the ground, which Marjorie had dropped. He picked one up and twisted it to pieces in his fingers, unconscious of what he was doing. He had no doubt that the dying man at the cottage was his father. Mr. Bulteel had said he could not be sure—he hoped he was mistaken. But Robert had no hope. Mr. Bulteel had never heard the story of Jean Carois.

How long he sat there Robert did not know. Such moments cannot be counted. He was roused by the sound of a step, hardly audible on the thick carpet of fir-needles which covered the path. He looked up, and saw the vicar coming towards him. He got to his feet. If it had been possible he would have avoided him, but he was already quite close. And when he saw Robert look up he quickened his steps. But he came close to him before he spoke. There were tears in his kind eyes. His voice was broken.

"Robert, I was coming to you," he said. "I—"

Robert's face had turned ashy white. The moment he had seen the vicar's face be had divined that he had something to say to him. He was coming from Tregelles's cottage. How could Robert doubt what his message was? But he could not bear to hear. He lifted his hand.

"I know," he said in a harsh voice. And then as he met the vicar's eyes he fell back a step, lifting his hand to his forehead. "No," he said, "I do not know. What have you to tell me?"

For he saw that it was joy for him, not grief, which had filled those kind eyes with tears. And the strong man began to tremble like a child.

The vicar spoke very slowly, waiting a moment between each sentence. He wished the light to break gradually on Robert.

"I have just come from Tregelles's cottage. Robert, that man, Captain O'Brien as he called himself, is dying. He has made a confession. You will know who he is when I tell you his real name. It is Baroni. He knew you in Plymouth, he says."

He paused, waiting for Robert to speak, but Robert could not. He hardly breathed. His eyes were fixed on the vicar's face. He saw he had more to tell him. Mr. Fortescue went slowly on :

"He met Captain O'Brien at Lisbon, ill and friendless at a hotel. He died, and this man. Baroni, who had been condemned to the galleys in France, and had only lately made his escape, took his name. He had found out about that money Marjorie discovered this morning, Robert. He came to get it. But he had tried to get it once before. Do you remember that ship you and Nell saw off Blackdown Point. He was on board of her. He landed under the Point. It was he—he—"He broke off and began again, laying his hand on Robert's shoulder. "Robert, it was this man who came back to the inn for your father's horse; who sold his papers to the French. Can you understand? Your father never left the Manor House."

Robert stared at him. No, he could not understand, his brain was reeling. And the vicar went on in a solemn voice: "He came too late to defend your grandfather, Robert. He found him lying dead, shot by that villain. But he gave up his life rather than take the bribes Baroni offered him. Do you understand now, my dear boy? For fourteen years your father has been at rest, his body hidden in the caves. Baroni has confessed everything. Marjorie must have touched his wicked heart in some strange way, and he sent her for me. Sit down here, on this tree. Let me tell you all."

It was a strange story the vicar had to tell. Baroni had heard Mr. Carew speak laughingly of the treasure supposed to be hidden in the secret passage between the Manor House and Blackdown caves, and his visit to St. Mawan had been for the purpose of discovering this passage. He hid himself in the caves when he was supposed to be exploring the coast, and at last made his way to the small chamber in which Marjorie had found the gold. No gold was to be seen then, only a row or two of wooden kegs against the wall. But he watched till he saw Mr. Vyvyan enter on one of his stealthy night visits, and by following him he learnt the secret of the panel door. He had been largely engaged in secret traffic with France, not merely smuggling, but the selling of valuable information, and it was easy for him to get a ship with a captain and crew who would accept any explanation he chose to give about the contents of the brandy kegs. He came from Plymouth in this ship, escaping by a few hours from sudden arrest, and landed from a boat at the mouth of the cave. Leaving the boat to wait for him he made his way to the secret chamber. He might have made off with his booty and left no trace behind, had not Mr. Vyvyan, taking advantage of his servants' absence, come to visit his beloved hoards, and surprised him. The old man was unarmed except for his stick, and Baroni had his pistol. He rushed back into the house and shut the panel, intending to call for help. But Baroni had followed him, and pushed the panel back almost as soon as he shut it. Before he could reach the door leading into the hall, he fell, shot through the heart.

After listening for some moments to satisfy himself that the squire had been alone in the house, Baroni coolly rifled the body of his victim, taking among other things the snuff-box, whose lid he dropped afterwards in the cave on his way to the boats. He then went into the hall, intending to look through the rooms for any objects of value that might be portable. He was in the middle of the hall when he heard a step outside, and an instant after the great doorbell went echoing through the house. Before he could move or make up his mind what to do, the door was pushed open and Mr. Carew stepped into the hall, having determined beforehand not to wait for his ring to be answered, lest he should be turned back from the door.

His surprise on seeing Baroni was extreme. Baroni, however, was ready with an explanation which satisfied him for the moment.

Being in the town he had called on Mr. Vyvyan, he said, and finding him out had been loth to go without looking round the beautiful old hall. They walked round the hail together, and Baroni learnt that Mr. Carew had ridden from Padstow that morning, and put his horse up at the inn, and that the horse was to be sent to the Manor House to him if the squire proved to be hospitable enough to ask him to supper and he did not return before dusk. But though Mr. Carew talked freely enough he watched his friend with growing distrust, and Baroni's ill-concealed alarm when the suggestion was made that they should go into the kitchen to find out if the house was really empty, made him certain that he had something to conceal. To satisfy himself Mr. Carew insisted on entering the panelled passage, and Baroni led the way. But he flung the heavy door in Mr. Carew's face and made a dart for the secret panel. When he tried to shut it, however, it resisted his efforts, and he was still struggling with it when Mr. Carew, after one horror-stricken look at his father-in-law's body, rushed upon him. Baroni left the panel open and got back to the treasure chamber, hoping to be able to buy the silence of Robert's father, whose desperate need for money he was fully aware of. But he soon found that he had mistaken the character of the man he had to deal with. Mr. Carew wasted no words. He suddenly closed with him and wrested the pistol from his grasp. But Baroni had a knife hidden, and he used it with deadly effect. Mr. Carew staggered back, the life-blood spurting from a wound in his side. He never spoke again.

Half an hour afterwards Baroni got back to the boat. He told the men that he had changed his plans about the kegs, as he had to pay a visit to Padstow. They were to be waiting for him soon after midnight at a lonely spot on the coast near Padstow, which both he and the captain knew well. He had already formed the plan he afterwards carried out. He knew that even if the servants did not return till late, the boy from the inn would come with the horse and raise an alarm. It was necessary to leave the kegs till another time, and to divert suspicion from himself he determined to throw it on Robert's father. He was just his height and build, and with eyes and hair only a trifle darker. Dressed in the dead man's riding-coat and beaver, he completely deceived the servants at the inn. He reached Padstow and was on board the ship before the old servants got back to the Manor House. And by daybreak he was out of sight of land, on his way to a point on the French coast, where the captain knew a brig was waiting for him, with a cargo of brandy and tobacco on board. Baroni embarked on the French brig, as he had often done before. He was continually passing between France and England in his work as a spy. The English ship having taken on board the smuggled brandy and tobacco sailed for Plymouth. But it never reached port. A great storm arose that night and it was wrecked off the Lizard, every man on board being lost.

Baroni made his way to Paris, fully intending to return to St. Mawan to reap the reward of his double crime as soon as possible. But, as he grimly told the vicar, circumstances had rendered his return impossible till lately; a remark Robert could interpret better than the vicar, from his knowledge of Jean Carois' history. For it was now plain who Jean Carois was.

What the vicar told Robert Carew that morning was but the barest skeleton of the narrative here set forth, only just enough to make him understand the truth. Robert listened in silence, looking down on the ground, his lips set close together. He did not speak when the vicar had finished, but turned and gripped his hand. The tears were dropping fast over his face.

The vicar got up. "I will go on to the house. You would like to be alone a little."

He sat suddenly down again, putting his arm round Robert's shoulders. He was as dear to him as a son. "If I could tell you what this is to me, what it will be to us all. To have you back again, to see you in your right place. But I know what you are thinking. Robert, he died a soldier's death, he died for honour's sake. All these years he has been quietly at rest."

Robert averted his face. "You know—where?" he said in a low voice.

"Yes, he told me."

Both men were silent for a moment, thinking of that secret tomb in the caves. Then the vicar tried to lead the son's thoughts gently away from it

"Yes, he seemed eager to tell all at last. Yet but for Marjorie he might have died silent. Hardened villain as he is, that dear child seems to have touched some chord of pity in him. He had refused to open his lips to Dr. Bell, but when he heard her voice at the door he asked to see her. And she persuaded him to send for me. The man has been fitly punished, Robert. He was taking the diamonds and Tregelles's guineas to the cave when he missed his way and slipped on the edge of the shaft. He meant to carry it all off at leisure. Not one of us suspected him, though Marjorie had a sort of horror of him from the first, she tells me."

"I should like to see Marjorie," Robert said, looking up. "Where is she?"

"At the Vicarage. I sent her home. Will you go down to her presently, Robert? Let me tell Mrs. Bulteel. And all the town must know."

The old vicar could not keep the ring of joyous triumph out of his voice. To have Robert back again at the Manor House, his father's name cleared, was what he had never dared to hope for. He felt a dozen years younger as he walked quickly towards the house to carry the glad news to the Bulteels.

Half an hour afterwards, Marjorie and Kitty were in the Vicarage garden, when Mrs. Fortescue came out to tell Marjorie that her cousin was in the drawing-room waiting to see her. She let her go in alone. She had already spoken to Robert.

Kitty looked after her, her blue eyes full of loving admiration. " I wonder what he will say to her, Mrs. Fortescue. For it is all Marjorie's doing, all of it. And I brought her here. If Uncle James and Aunt Mary had not fetched her from Plymouth they would not have gone to Saltleigh, and then Marjorie would not have come here. Oh, how I hated the idea of coming to Cornwall! but I am very glad I came. Mrs. Fortescue, do you think Mr. Carew will live here now?"

Mrs. Fortescue smiled at her over her spectacles. "Perhaps he will find it too dull after London, my dear."

Kitty coloured up, but found it possible to laugh at this bit of teasing. "I always thought people who lived in the country must find it so dull," she confessed. "It seemed very funny to me at first to find you were all sorry for me because I had to live in London. But of course Mr. Carew will like to live in his own house. But it is dreadful to think of Mr. Carew's body being hidden away in the caves all these years. Will they bury him properly now, Mrs. Fortescue?"

"Of course, my dear," said Mrs. Fortescue, getting hastily up. The light gossiping tone in which Kitty was talking jarred intolerably on her, though she knew the girl meant no harm. "Come and help me sow some seeds, Kitty. You can never be dull if you have a garden. There is always something to do in it."

Marjorie was glad to go to her cousin. There was something she wanted to say to him, something that she had not told Mr. Bulteel. For a moment or two she found it difficult to speak at all; she had begun to sob a little in sheer happiness of heart when she saw him. He was very pale and grave, but every line in his face seemed changed. And there was a light in his eyes no one had seen there for fourteen years.