The Ashiel mystery: A Detective Story, Mrs. Charles Bryce [red queen free ebook .txt] 📗

it. It is no use keeping up this pretence of innocence to me, who had more right to kill him than you. Why shouldn't you kill who you wish? But don't say you didn't do it. It is foolish. I saw you."

"It is a lie. You can't have seen me," Mark declared again, but with less assurance. "You were in the drawing-room all the time. Lady Ruth and Maisie Tarver both said so. The drawing-room doesn't even look out on the garden. There is no room that does, except the library, and you weren't there then, anyhow."

"I didn't see you fire the shot," said Julia, "but I saw you afterwards when you went to put back your rifle in the gun-room. I told you that after the first search in the grounds was over, and everyone had gone up to bed, I slipped out of the house by the door near the gunroom, and came round to the library to see if Lord Ashiel had carried the list on him. When I came back, I let myself in quietly by the door which I had left unbolted, and had just got half-way up the back stairs when I heard footsteps in the passage below, and crouched down behind the banisters. I saw you come along the passage, carrying an electric lantern in one hand and your rifle in the other. I saw you look round anxiously before opening the gun-room door and going in. When you had vanished, I hurried on up to my room, for it was not the time or place to tell you what I had seen, but I left a crack of my door open, and after rather a long while saw you pass along the passage to your own room; this time without your gun. I knew, of course, that you had been cleaning it and putting it away."

She spoke with the indifference with which one may refer to a regrettable but incontrovertible fact, and Mark seemed to feel it useless to deny what she said.

"You had no right to spy on me," he exclaimed angrily when she had done.

"Oh, Mark," she cried, dismayed, "I wasn't spying. It was the merest accident. And I think it's horrid of you to mind my knowing. Why didn't you tell me all about it before. I might have helped you, I'm sure."

But he would have none of her endearments, and threw off the hand she laid upon his arm with a rough gesture.

"Mark, oh, Mark," she wailed, "don't be angry with me! You know I can't bear it. I can bear anything but that. Don't, don't be angry with me."

She had but one thought; it was for him, and he who ran might read it shining in the depths of her great eyes. After a few minutes of sulking, Mark relented.

"No one could be angry with you for long, Julia," he declared.

Instantly she was once more all smiles.

"Don't ever be angry with me again," she urged, her hands in his. "And now that you have forgiven me, tell me all about it. What made you do such a dreadful thing, Mark? You must have had some good reason, I know. I never would doubt that."

"There's nothing much to tell," he said unwillingly. "I had a good reason, yes. I must have money. It is for your sake, darling, that I must get it. I can't marry you without it. I hadn't meant to kill him, if I could get it without. He was ill, and had left his fortune to me. I thought I should get it in time, by letting Nature take her course. It was that or ruin, and I really had to do it for your sake, darling. I didn't want to hurt the old boy. Why should I? It's not a pleasant thing to have to do. But I had no choice—there was no other way of getting enough money, and I simply had to get it. It was his life or mine. You don't understand. I can't explain. It just had to be done, and there's an end of it. Everything was going wrong. That girl, that Byrne girl, I imagined he was going to marry her. You know we all did. That would have spoilt everything. At first I thought she could be got out of the way, but she seemed to bear a charmed life."

"What?" cried Julia, "did you try to kill her too?"

"Why, if anyone had to be got rid of," he admitted defiantly, "it seemed better to go for a stranger, like her, than for my own uncle. Come, you must see that, surely! She was nothing to me, and, anyhow, my hand was forced. It's very hard that I should have been put in such a position. I'm the last person to do harm to a fly, but one must think of oneself."

Since it was no use denying the murder, he seemed to find some sort of satisfaction in telling Julia of his other crimes. And yet, though he tried hard to speak with an affectation of indifference, it was plain that he kept a watchful eye upon his listener, and was ready to fasten resentfully upon the first sign of horror, or even disapproval. For all his efforts, the tone of his disclosures was at once swaggering and suspicious; but he need have had no anxiety as to the spirit in which they would be received. It was clear that Julia brought to his judgment no remembrance of ordinary human standards of conduct. To her he was above such criticisms, as the Immortals might be supposed to be above the rules that applied to dwellers upon earth. What he did was right in her eyes, because he did it, and she admired his brutality, as she adored the rest of him, whole-heartedly, without reservation.

"I had a shot at her," he went on, "one day on the moor when she was with David; but I missed her. It was a rotten shot. I can't think how I came to do it. Then when she fell into the river—I saw her standing by it as I came home from stalking…. I had walked on ahead, and where the path runs along above the waterfall pool I happened to go to the edge and look over. There she was on a stone right at the edge, by the deepest part. It looked as if she'd been put there on purpose, and I should have been a fool to miss such a chance. It's no good going against fate. As a matter of fact I thought I'd got her sitting this time. I caught up the nearest piece of rock and dropped it down on her. That was a good shot, though I say it, but it hit her on the shoulder instead of the head as luck would have it, which was bad luck for me. However, in she went, and I thought all was well and lost no time in getting away from the place. If it hadn't been for that meddling fool Andy!… Well, then, at dinner, Uncle Douglas came out with the news that she was his daughter, not his intended, and everything looked worse than ever. Afterwards when she went to talk to him in the library, and passed through the billiard-room where I was knocking the balls about and feeling pretty savage, I can tell you, I happened, by a fluke, to ask her if she knew where David was. She said he'd gone into the garden.

"Then I saw my chance, and it seemed too good to miss. Why should I let my inheritance be stolen from me? I ran off to the gun-room for a gun. I meant to take David's rifle, but I found he hadn't cleaned it, so I left it alone and took mine, as the thing was really too important to risk using a strange gun unless it was absolutely necessary, and his is a little shorter in the stock than I like. I nipped back and let myself out of the passage door into the enclosed garden. It was a black night, though I knew my way blindfolded about there. But the curtains of the library were drawn, and I couldn't see between them without stepping on the flower bed. I knew too much to leave my footmarks all over them, but I had to get on to the bed to have a chance of getting a shot. So I got the long plank the gardeners use to avoid stepping on the flower beds when they're bedding out, from the tool-house behind the holly hedge where I knew it was kept, and put it down near the hedge. It is held up clear of the ground by two cross pieces of wood, one at each end, you know, so there would be no marks left to identify me by.

"When I walked to the end of the plank, I could see straight into the middle of the room; but they must have been sitting near the fire, for no one was in sight. I could see the writing bureau and the chair in front of it, and dimly in the back of the room I could make out the face of the clock, but that was all.

"Well, I stood there for what seemed a long while. You've no idea how cramping it is to stand on a narrow plank with no room to take a step forward or back, for long at a time. And I don't mind telling you I got a bit jumpy, waiting there. If anyone chanced to come along, what could I say by way of explanation? I couldn't think of anything the least likely to wash. And somehow, in the dark, one begins to imagine things. I saw David coming at me across the lawn every other minute. And it seemed so hideously likely that he should come. I knew he was somewhere out in the grounds. By Jove, if he had, he'd have got the bullet instead of Uncle Douglas! But he didn't come. Those beastly shadows and shapes and whisperings and rustlings that seemed to be all round me, hiding in the night, turned out to be nothing after all. But when I didn't fancy him at my elbow, I imagined he was in the gunroom, wondering where the dickens my rifle had got to.

"Oh, I had a happy half-hour among the roses, I tell you! A rifle is a heavy thing too. I leant it up against a rose-bush and tried to sit down on the plank, but it wouldn't do, and I saw I must bear it standing, or Uncle Douglas might cross in front of the slit between the curtains without my having time to get a shot. You must remember I'd been on the hill all day, so that I was very stiff to begin with. It got so bad that I began to think it was hardly worth the candle at last—and it's a wonder I didn't miss him clean—when, just as I was on the point of giving the whole thing up and going in again, he came suddenly into my field of vision, and actually sat down at the table.

"I took a careful aim and fired. I saw him fall forward, and then I jumped off the plank and hurled it back under the hedge before I ran for the house. I had left the door ajar, and I just stayed to close it, and then darted into the empty billiard-room and thrust my rifle under a sofa. It was a quick bit of work. I had counted on Juliet Byrne waiting a moment or two to see if she could do anything to help him before she roused the house, or it roused itself, and she was rather longer than I expected. I don't mind owning I got into a panic when minutes passed and no one appeared, and I began to think I must have missed the old boy altogether. I was within an ace of going to make certain, when the door opened and in she came. Oh well, you know all the rest. That silly old ass, David, was still mooning about in the garden, thinking of her, I suppose, which was very lucky for me."

Julia had listened with absorbed interest.

"I think it is wonderful," she said, "that you should have gone through all that for my sake. I shall always try to deserve it, my dear. Was it all, all for me, that you did it, truly?"

"Yes," Mark assured her, gruffly monosyllabic.