The Hand in the Dark, Arthur J. Rees [learn to read activity book .TXT] 📗

Miss Heredith answered him with a frankness which even Merrington grudgingly realized left nothing to be desired. She was, apparently, only too anxious to help the police investigations to the best of her ability. But what she had to tell amounted to very little. Her first knowledge of her nephew's intention to marry was contained in a letter written home some four months before, in which he announced his engagement to a young lady engaged in war work in a London Government office. A month later came the news that he was married, and was bringing his young bride to the moat-house. The young couple arrived a week after the receipt of the second letter. They were welcomed home, and settled down to country life in the old place. Phil left his post in the War Office, and busied himself in looking after the estate. He was very fond of his young wife, but it was obvious from the first that Violet found the quiet country existence rather dull after her London life. She knew nobody in Sussex except Mrs. Weyne, the author's wife, who had been an acquaintance of hers in London years before, and she did not seem to care much for the county people who visited the moat-house. She received letters from girl friends in London, and sometimes read extracts from them at the breakfast table, but her life, on the whole, was a secluded one. It was in order to brighten it that Phil suggested a house party. The guests consisted principally of Violet's and Phil's London friends and acquaintances.

"Do you know the names of these girl friends who used to write to her?" asked Merrington.

Miss Heredith replied that she did not.

"I suppose her husband would know them?"

"It is quite impossible to question my nephew," said Miss Heredith decisively. "He is dreadfully ill."

Merrington nodded in a dissatisfied sort of way. He was aware of Phil's illness, and his suspicious mind wondered whether it had been assumed for the occasion in order to keep back something which the police ought to know. His thick lip curled savagely at the idea. If these people tried to hide anything from him in order to save a scandal, so much the worse for them. But that was something he would go into later.

The next questions he put to Miss Heredith were designed to ascertain what she thought of the murder, whether she had any suspicions of her own, and whether there was any reason for suspecting Miss Heredith herself. At that stage of the inquiry it was Merrington's business to suspect everybody. He could not afford to allow the slightest chance to slip. His object was to get at the truth; to weigh each particle of supposition or evidence without regard to the feelings or social position of the witness.

The case so far puzzled him, and Miss Heredith's answers to his questions revealed little about the murder that he had not previously known. The only additional facts he gleaned related to the murdered girl's brief existence at the moat-house; of her earlier history and her London life Miss Heredith knew nothing whatever. Merrington made some notes of the replies in an imposing pocket-book, but he was plainly dissatisfied as he turned to another phase of the investigation.

"Were all your guests in the dining-room at the time the scream and the shot were heard?" he asked.

"They were all there when I left the room. The butler can tell you if any left afterwards."

"I will question Tufnell on that point later. No, on second thoughts, it will be better to settle it now. I attach importance to it."

Tufnell was recalled to the room, and, in reply to Superintendent Merrington's question, stated that none of the guests left the dining-room before the shot was fired. Tufnell added they were all interested in listening to a story that Mr. Musard was telling. Having imparted this information the butler returned to the breakfast room, overweighted with the responsibility of superintending the morning meal in his mistress's absence.

"Is this Musard the jewel expert of that name?" asked Merrington.

"Our guest is Mr. Vincent Musard, the explorer," replied Miss Heredith coldly.

"The same man." Merrington made another minute note in his pocket-book, and continued, "May I take it, then, that all your guests who were staying here were assembled in the dining-room at the time the murder was committed?"

"Yes; except one who left during the afternoon."

"Who was that?"

"Captain Nepcote, a friend of my nephew's. He received a telegram recalling him to the front, and returned to London by the afternoon train."

Merrington made a note of this in his pocket-book with an air of finality, and asked Miss Heredith to see that the servants were sent to the library one by one, to be questioned. Miss Heredith said she would arrange it with the housekeeper, and was then politely escorted to the door by Captain Stanhill.

The next few hours were educative for Captain Stanhill. Although he was Chief Constable of Sussex, he took no part in the proceedings, but sat at the table like a man in a dream, living in a world of Superintendent Merrington's creation—a world of sinister imaginings and vile motives, through which stealthy suspicion prowled craftily with padded feet, seeking a victim among the procession of weeping maids, stolid under-gardeners, stable hands, and anxious upper servants who presented themselves in the library to be questioned. But it seemed to Captain Stanhill that though the women were flustered and the men nervous, they knew nothing whatever about the atrocious murder which had been committed a few hours before in the room above their heads. Merrington also seemed to be aware that he was getting no nearer the truth with his traps, his questions, and his bullying, and he grew so angry and savage as the day wore on that he reminded Captain Stanhill of a bull he had once seen trying to rend a way through a mesh. As the morning advanced, Merrington's face took on a deeper tint of purple, his fierce little eyes grew more bloodshot, and between the intervals of examining the servants he mopped his perspiring head with a large handkerchief.

The significance of one fact he did not realize until afterwards. The last of the inmates of the moat-house to come to the library was the housekeeper, Mrs. Rath, who presented herself at his request in order to acquaint him with the details of the domestic management of the household. Mrs. Rath entered the room with a nervous air. Her white face contrasted oddly with her black dress, and her hands shook slightly, in spite of her effort to appear composed. Merrington stared at her careworn face and hollow grey eyes with the perplexed sensation of a man who is confronted with a face familiar to him, but is unable to recall its identity.

"Where have I seen you before?" he blurted out.

The housekeeper raised frightened eyes, ringed with black, to his truculent face, but dropped them again without speaking. Merrington did not repeat his question. He did not imagine the housekeeper knew anything about the murder, but it was a mistake to put a witness on her guard. It was in quite a different tone that he thanked Mrs. Rath for sending the servants to the library, and asked her to describe the household arrangements of the previous night. Mrs. Rath, who had been palpably nervous after his first question, became reassured and more at her ease, and answered him intelligently.

"And where were you at the time of the murder, Mrs. Rath?" pursued Merrington, when he had drawn forth these details.

"I was in my sitting-room."

"Did you hear the scream and the shot?"

"I heard the scream, but not the shot."

"How was that?"

"My sitting-room is a long way from Mrs. Heredith's room. Perhaps that is the reason."

Merrington looked at the position of the housekeeper's room on the plan of the moat-house which Caldew had drawn. As she said, it was a considerable distance to her room, which was in the old portion of the house, near the rear, and on the ground floor.

"Were you alone in your room?" he asked.

"No. My daughter was sitting with me."

To a quick ear it may have seemed that the answer was a trifle long in coming.

Merrington shook his head irritably. Really, it seemed impossible to reach the end of the people who were in this infernal moat-house at the time of the murder.

"Does your daughter live with you here?" he asked.

"Oh, no. She came to see me yesterday afternoon, and stayed all night because she missed her train back after—after the tragedy."

"Is she here now?"

"No. She went away by an early train. She is employed as a milliner at Stading, the market town, which is ten miles away."

"She lives there, I suppose?"

"Yes. She lives in."

"Who is her employer?"

"Mr. Closeby, the draper. Daniel Closeby and Son is the name of the firm."

Merrington made another note in his pocket-book. It sounded plausible enough, but the girl must be added to the lengthening list of people in the case who would have to be seen.

"I think that is all I need detain you for, Mrs. Rath," he said.

The housekeeper lingered to inquire when the gentlemen would like their lunch. Merrington, who had breakfasted early and passed an arduous morning, replied bluntly that it could not be too soon to please him.

"I'll have it served in the small breakfast-room in a quarter of an hour," said Mrs. Rath, hurrying away.

Her whole bearing, as she departed, indicated such an air of irrepressible relief at having passed through a trying ordeal that all Merrington's former doubts of her revived.

"I'd give something to remember where I've seen that infernal woman before," he ejaculated, slapping his thigh emphatically.

"What infernal woman?" asked Captain Stanhill, who had come to the conclusion that he did not like Superintendent Merrington or his style of conversation.

"Why, that woman who has just left the room—that housekeeper. I've seen her before somewhere, in very different circumstances, but I cannot recall where. I recollect her face distinctly—particularly her eyes. I flatter myself I never forget a pair of eyes. Confound it, where the devil have I seen her?"

Captain Stanhill turned away indifferently, and the conversation was terminated by the appearance of Detective Caldew, who appeared in the doorway as Mrs. Rath left the room.

"Dr. Holmes is waiting in the drawing-room if you wish to see him," he announced.

"Bring him here," commanded Merrington curtly. He had a great notion of his self-importance, and had no intention of dancing attendance on a mere country practitioner.

Caldew went away, and shortly reappeared with a little man whom he introduced as Dr. Holmes. The doctor was a meagre shrimp of humanity, with a peevish expression on his withered little face, as though he were bored with his own nonentity. He was dressed in faded clothes and carried a small black bag in one hand and a worn hat in the other. If he had any idea of airing a professional protest at being compelled to wait upon the police, the thought vanished as his eye took in the stupendous stature of Superintendent Merrington, who towered above him like a mastiff standing over a toy terrier.

"Sit down, doctor," he curtly commanded. "I want to ask you a few questions about the death of Mrs. Heredith. You examined the body, I understand?"

Dr. Holmes bowed, put on a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles in order to see Superintendent Merrington better, and waited to be questioned.

"I understand you were summoned to the moat-house last night, doctor, after Mrs. Heredith was murdered, and examined the body. What was the cause of death?"

"The cause of death was a bullet wound," pronounced the doctor oracularly.

"I am aware of that much," answered Merrington irritably. "But a bullet wound is not necessarily fatal. Mrs. Heredith lived some time after her death, so it is certain that the bullet which killed her did not penetrate the heart. What is the nature of the injuries it inflicted?"

"Death in Mrs. Heredith's case was the result of a bullet passing through the left lung. It passed between the second and third ribs in entering the body, traversed the lung, causing a great flow of blood, which filled the air passages."

"Then the cause of death was hæmorrhage?"

"Yes. There was very severe internal hæmorrhage. The face and the left-hand side of the neck were covered with blood. There had also been bleeding from the mouth and nose. Mr. Musard, who accompanied me to the room, told me he had washed it away while Mrs. Heredith was dying, in an endeavour to staunch the flow."

"She was quite dead when you saw her?"

"Oh, yes. Judging by the warmth of the body, and by the fact that blood had ceased to flow, I should say that death had taken place about forty minutes before."

"What time did you reach the moat-house?"

"It would be about twenty minutes past eight.