The Ashiel Mystery, Mrs. Charles Bryce [e novels to read online .txt] 📗

Julia. But was Julia really dead?

 

She leant over and called down into the darkness:

 

"Julia! Julia!"

 

But no answer came, although she waited, holding her breath, and called

again and again.

 

Then she had fallen into the water? She must be drowned even if the fall

did not kill her. Poor, misguided Julia. Better dead, after all, thought

Juliet, with eyes full of tears, than alive, and at the mercy of that

terrible man. What disillusionments must have come to her sooner or

later; final disillusionings that could not be explained away. How

horrible to find that the man you loved was like that. Nothing else in

the world could be so appalling. Yes, Julia was better dead. As Juliet

thought of the dreadful manner in which death had come to the unfortunate

girl, she forgot her faults, forgot her strange views upon the

justifiability of taking human life, forgot even that she had approved of

Lord Ashiel's assassination and contemplated bringing about his death

herself, and remembered only the frightful nature of her punishment.

 

And while she sat there, clinging precariously to the twisted roots of

the beech tree, Juliet's tears streamed down into the watery grave.

 

Hours passed, and darkness fell upon the world without. In the patch of

loch that was visible to her, she could see a star mirrored; it cheered

her somehow. What there was comforting about it she could not have said,

but in some way it seemed to be an emblem of her hopes. She wedged

herself tightly between the roots, laid her head down upon the uppermost

of them, and, such is the adaptability of youth and health, slept on her

dangerous perch like a bird upon a bough.

 

With the day she awoke, stiff and hungry. How long would it be before she

was found? She felt braver under this new stimulus of hunger and more

ready to risk detection by Mark. After all, he could hardly get at her

here, and someone else might see her if she signalled. She took off her

shoes and stockings and pushed them through the hole in the wall, then

her handkerchief, and finally the white blouse she wore was taken off and

thrust out between the stones. She kept her hold upon one of the sleeves,

and wedged it down between the wall and the beech root, so that the

blouse might hang out on the face of the rock like a flag and catch the

attention of some passer-by. From time to time, too, she squeezed her

hand through the gap and fluttered her fingers backward and forward. She

knew that the path by the burn ran below, and it was used constantly by

the ghillies and by the household. Only of course so early in the morning

there was not likely to be anyone about. And she remembered with a

sinking heart that people seldom look up as they walk.

 

Yet in the course of the day some one would surely see it. She sternly

refused to allow herself to expect an immediate rescue. She would not,

she told herself, begin to get really anxious about it till evening. It

would be long to wait, of course. She looked at the little watch which

Sir Arthur had given her on her last birthday. It was six o'clock. She

must be patient.

 

But in spite of all her forced cheerfulness the time passed terribly

slowly. She found an old letter in her pocket, and a pencil, with which

she scrawled painstaking directions for her rescue. She would push it

through the hole, she thought, if she heard any sound of voices above the

clamour of the burn. After that there remained nothing more to do, and

the hours seemed to creep along more and more slowly, till each second

seemed like a minute and each minute an hour. She tried to divert herself

by repeating poetry, and doing imaginary sums; and it was about eleven

o'clock, when she was in the middle of the dates of the Kings of England,

that she heard Gimblet's voice hailing her in a shout from below.

 

It was not till after her rescue, not till after she was given safely

over to the affectionate ministrations of Lady Ruth, that Juliet gave

way under the strain to which she had been subjected, and broke down

altogether.

 

Up till that moment, the urgency of her own danger had prevented her from

feeling as acutely as she would have in other circumstances the terrible

fate of the Russian girl; but, as soon as she herself was safe, the full

horror of it settled upon her mind till thought became an agony. She was

shaken by alternate fits of shuddering and weeping, until Lady Ruth, who

had a scathing contempt for doctors, was on the point of sending for one.

 

The arrival of Sir Arthur, an hour or so after her release, did much to

calm her. He had started post haste from Belgium as soon as he heard of

the tragedy, which was not till three days after it had occurred, and had

spent the long journey in incessant self-reproach that he had ever

allowed Juliet to go alone among these murderous strangers. The sight of

his familiar face was full of comfort to the distracted girl; and the

knowledge that Mark was arrested and powerless to harm her, with the

gladsome news that David was free again, combined to soothe her nerves

and restore her self-control.

 

The fear of one cousin began to give place insensibly to the dread lest

the other should find her red-eyed and woe-begone; and soon the

importance of looking her best when David should return occupied her mind

almost to the exclusion of the terrors she had experienced. Thus does the

emotion of love monopolize the attention of those it possesses, so that

individuals may fall thick around him and the surface of the earth be

convulsed with the strife of nations, and still your lover will walk

almost unconscious among such catastrophes, except in so much as they

affect himself or the object of his affections.

 

But not yet was Juliet to see David. His mother's health had broken

down under the distress and worry of the accusation brought against

him, and it was to her side that he hurried as soon as he was released

from prison.

 

While Lady Ruth carried Juliet off at once to the cottage, there to be

comforted, fed, made much of and put to bed, Gimblet and the men who had

assisted him in the work of rescue stayed behind in the walls of the

tower, to rig up, with ropes and buckets, an apparatus by which to

descend to that lowest depth of the _oubliette_ where poor Julia's body

must be lying.

 

They had little hope of finding her alive; nor did they do so. She was

floating, face downwards, in the water at the bottom of the pit.

 

In a grim, wrathful silence the men raised the poor lifeless body,

and with some difficulty brought it back to the light of day. When

the gruesome business was done, Gimblet returned to the cottage,

tired out with his night's work; for, like all the men on the place,

he had been scouring the moors since the previous evening, when

Mark's derisive words had first sent them, hot foot, to assure

themselves of Juliet's whereabouts. As he reached the cottage, the

daily post bag was being handed in, and among his letters was one

from the colonel of Mark's regiment:

 

"MY DEAR SIR," it ran, "I have sent you a wire in answer to your letter

received to-day, since in view of what you say I see that it is necessary

to disclose what I hoped, for the sake of the regiment, to continue to

keep secret. But if, as you tell me, the innocence and even the life of

Sir David Southern is involved, and you have such good reason to

consider McConachan the man guilty of his uncle's death, it becomes my

duty to put aside my private feelings and to confess to you that I am

unable to look upon Mark McConachan as entirely above suspicion. When he

was a subaltern in the regiment I have the honour to command, he was a

source of grave worry and trouble to me.

 

"From the day he joined I had misgivings, and, though his good looks,

lively spirits, and recklessness with money made him popular with others

of his age, I soon discovered that his moral sense was practically

nonexistent, and considered him a very undesirable addition to our ranks.

Still, I hoped he might improve, and for a year or two nothing occurred

to force me to take serious notice of his behaviour. Unknown to me,

however, he took to gambling very heavily, and must have lost a great

deal more than he could afford, for he appears to have got deep in the

clutches of moneylenders long before I heard anything about it. So

desperate did his financial affairs become, that shortly before he left

the regiment he was actually driven to forging the name of a brother

officer, a rich young man, with whom he was on very friendly terms. The

large amount for which the cheque was drawn drew the attention of the

bankers to it, and in spite of the extreme skill with which, I am told,

the signature had been counterfeited, the forgery was detected, and the

matter was brought before me.

 

"The victim of the fraud was as anxious as myself to avoid a public

scandal, and it was arranged that nothing should be done for a year, to

give time to McConachan to refund the money; if, however, he failed to do

so within that time, there would be nothing for it but to make the matter

public. These terms were agreed on and McConachan was told to send in his

papers at once.

 

"The year allowed is now drawing to a close, and the money has not been

forthcoming, so that there is no doubt that Mark McConachan's need of

obtaining a large amount is extremely pressing. My knowledge of his

character obliges me to add that I consider him one of the few men I ever

knew whom I could imagine going to almost any length to provide himself

with what he so urgently requires.

 

"Please consider this letter confidential unless you obtain actual proof

of his guilt.--I am, sir, yours faithfully,

 

"T. G. URSFORD,

 

"Colonel commanding 31st Lancers."

 

Gimblet put the letter away with the other items of evidence of Mark's

guilt: the telegram from the analyst in Edinburgh, the measurements of

the footprints on the rose-bed, and of those other marks near the hedge

by which he had at first been mystified. It was another thread in the

thin cord that, like the silken line Ariadne gave to Theseus, had led him

to come successfully out of the bewildering labyrinth into which the

investigation of the crime had beguiled him.

CHAPTER XXII

It was after dinner that night, as he sat in the little drawing-room of

the cottage with Lady Ruth and Sir Arthur, that his hostess asked him to

explain to them how he had contrived to detect the way in which the

murder had been committed.

 

"You promised to tell me all about it," Lady Ruth reminded him, "if I

would keep silent about your finding the papers in the statue."

 

"Tell us the whole thing from the beginning," Sir Arthur urged him.

 

"I will willingly tell you anything that may interest you," Gimblet

consented readily. "Every one enjoys talking about their work to

sympathetic listeners such as yourselves. It is a bad thing to start on a

case with a preconceived idea, and I can't deny that when I first came

here I was very near having an _idée fixe_ as to the origin of the crime.

I tried to deceive myself into thinking that I kept an open mind on the

subject; but I don't think I ever really doubted for a minute that the

Nihilist society to which Lord Ashiel had formerly belonged was

responsible for the murder. Even after my conversation with