The Stowmarket Mystery, Louis Tracy [best romance novels of all time .txt] 📗

the reversion of her vast property to himself, and of falling in love with Helen—all in the same breath. This species of criminality was only met with in lunatics, and Capella impressed the barrister as an emotional personage, capable of supreme good as of supreme evil, but quite sane.

The question to be solved was this: Why did Capella and his wife quarrel in the first instance? Perhaps, that way, light might come.

He asked a footman if Mrs. Capella would receive him. The man glanced at his card.

“Yes, sir,” he said at once. “Madam gave instructions that if either you or Mr. David called you were to be taken to her boudoir, where she awaits you.”

The room was evidently on the first floor, for the servant led him up the magnificent oak staircase that climbed two sides of the reception hall.

But this was fated to be a day of interruptions. The barrister, when he reached the landing, was confronted by the Italian.

“A word with you, Mr. Brett,” was the stiff greeting given to him.

“Certainly. But I am going to Mrs. Capella’s room.”

“She can wait. She does not know you are here. James, remain outside until Mr. Brett returns. Then conduct him to your mistress.”

Capella’s tone admitted of no argument, nor was it necessary to protest. Brett always liked people to talk in the way they deemed best suited to their own interests. Without any expostulation, therefore, he followed his limping host into a luxuriously furnished dressing-room.

Capella closed the door, and placed himself gently on a couch.

“Does your friend fight?” he said, fixing his dark eyes, blazing with anger, intently on the other.

“That is a matter on which your opinion would probably be more valuable than mine.”

“Spare me your wit. You know well what I mean. Will he meet me on the Continent and settle our quarrel like a gentleman, not like a hired bravo?”

“What quarrel?”

“Mr. Brett, you are not so stupid. David Hume, notwithstanding his past, may still be deemed a man of honour in some respects. He treated me grossly this morning. Will he fight me, or must I treat him as a cur?”

Brett, without invitation, seated himself. He produced a cigarette and lit it, adding greatly to Capella’s irritation by his provoking calmness.

“Really,” he said at last, “you amuse me.”

“Silence!” he cried imperatively, when the Italian would have broken out into a torrent of expostulations. “Listen to me, you vain fool!”

This method of address had the rare merit of achieving its object. Capella was reduced to a condition of speechless rage.

“You consider yourself the aggrieved person, I suppose,” went on the Englishman, subsiding into a state of contemptuous placidity. “You neglect your wife, make love to an honourable and pure-minded girl, stoop to the use of unworthy taunts and even criminal innuendos, lose such control of your passion as to lay sacrilegious hands upon Helen Layton, and yet you resent the well-merited punishment administered to you by her affianced husband. Were I a surgeon, Mr. Capella, I might take an anatomical interest in your brain. As it is, I regard you as a psychological study in latter-day blackguardism. Do you understand me?”

“Perfectly. You have not yet answered my question. Will Hume fight?”

“I should say that nothing would give him greater pleasure.”

“Then you will arrange this matter? I can send a friend to you?”

“And if you do I will send the police to you, thus possibly anticipating matters somewhat.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that my sole purpose in life just now is to lay hands on the man who killed Sir Alan Hume-Frazer. Until that end is achieved, I will take good care that your crude ideas of honour are dealt with, as they were to-day, by the toe of a boot.”

Capella was certainly a singular person. He listened unmoved to Brett’s threats and insults. He gave that snarling smile of his, and toyed impatiently with his moustache.

“Your object in life does not concern me. Your courts tried their best to hang the man who was responsible for his cousin’s death, and failed. I take it you decline this proffered duel?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will fight David Hume in my own way. You have rejected the fair alternative on his behalf. Caramba! We shall see now who wins. He will never marry Helen.”

“What did you mean just now when you said that he was ‘responsible for his cousin’s death’? Is that an Italian way of describing a cold-blooded murder?”

Capella leaned back and snarled silently again. It was a pity he had cultivated that trick. It spoilt an otherwise classically regular set of features.

“James!” he shouted.

The footman entered.

“Take this gentleman to your mistress. I have done with him.”

“For the present, James,” said Brett.

The astonished servant led him along a corridor and knocked at a door hidden by a silk curtain. Mrs. Capella rose to receive her visitor. She was very pale now, but quite calm and dignified in manner.

“Davie did not come with you?” she said when Brett was seated near to her in an alcove formed by an oriel window.

“No. He is with Miss Layton.”

“Ah, I am not sorry, I prefer to talk with you alone.”

“It is perhaps better. Your cousin is impulsive in some respects, though self-contained enough in others.”

“It may be so. I like him, although we have not seen much of each other since we were children. I knew him this morning principally on account of his likeness to Alan. But you are his friend, Mr. Brett, and I can discuss with you matters I would not care to broach with him. He is with Helen Layton now, you say?”

“Yes, and let me add an explanation. Those two young people are devoted to each other. No power on earth could separate them.”

“Why do you tell me that?”

“Because I think you wished to be assured of it?”

“You are clever, Mr. Brett. If you can interpret a criminal’s designs as well as you can read a woman’s heart you must be a terror to evil-doers.”

A slight colour came into her cheeks. The barrister leaned forward, his hands clasped and arms resting on his knees.

“I have just seen your husband,” he said.

She exhibited no marked sign of emotion but he thought he detected a frightened look in her eyes.

“Again I ask,” she exclaimed, “why do you tell me?”

“The reason is obvious. You ought to know all that goes on. There was a quarrel this morning between him and David Hume. Your husband wished me to arrange a duel. I promised him a visit from the police if I heard any more of such nonsense.”

“A duel! More bloodshed!” she almost whispered.

“Do not have any alarm for either of them. They are quite safe. I will guarantee so much, at any rate. But your husband is a somewhat curious person. He is prone to strong and sudden hatreds—and attachments.”

Margaret pressed her hands to her face. She could no longer bear the torture of make-believe quiescence.

“Oh, what shall I do!” she wailed. “I am the most miserable woman in England to-day, and I might have been the happiest.”

“Why are you miserable, Mrs. Capella?” asked Brett gently.

“I cannot tell you. Perhaps it is owing to my own folly. Are you sure that David and Helen intend to get married?”

“Yes.”

“Then, for Heaven’s sake, let the wedding take place. Let them leave Beechcroft and its associations for ever.”

“That cannot be until Hume’s character is cleared from the odium attached to it.”

“You mean my brother’s death. But that has been settled by the courts. David was declared ‘Not guilty.’ Surely that will suffice! No good purpose can be gained by reopening an inquiry closed by the law.”

“I think you are a little unjust to your cousin in this matter, Mrs. Capella. He and his future wife feel very grievously the slur cast upon his name. You know perfectly well that if half the people in this county were asked, ‘Who killed Sir Alan Hume-Frazer?’ they would say ‘David Hume.’ The other half would shake their heads in dubiety, and prefer not to be on visiting terms with David Hume and his wife. No; your brother was killed in a particularly foul way. He died needlessly, so far as we can learn. His death should be avenged, and this can only be done by tracking his murderer and ruthlessly bringing the wretch to justice. Are not these your own sentiments when divested of all conflicting desires?”

Brett’s concluding sentence seemed to petrify his hearer.

“In what way can I help you?” she murmured, and the words appeared to come from a heart of stone.

“There are many items I want cleared up, but I do not wish to distress you unduly. Can you not refer me to your solicitors, for instance? I imagine they will be able to answer all my queries.”

“No. I prefer to deal with the affair myself.”

“Very well. I will commence with you personally. Why did you quarrel with your brother in London a few days before his death?”

“Because I was living extravagantly. Not only that, but he disapproved of my manner of life. In those days I was headstrong and wilful. I loved a Bohemian existence combined with absurd luxury, or rather, a wildly useless expenditure of money. No one who knows me now could picture me then. Yet now I am good and unhappy. Then I was wicked, in some people’s eyes, and happy. Strange, is it not?”

“Not altogether so unusual as you may think. Was any other person interested in what I may term the result of the dispute between your brother and yourself?”

“That is a difficult question to answer. I was very careless in money matters, but it is clear that the curtailment of my rate of living from £15,000 to £5,000 per annum must make considerable difference to all connected with me.”

“Had you been living at the former rate?”

“Yes, since my father’s death. What annoyed Alan was the fact that I had borrowed from money-lenders.”

“Who else knew of your disagreement with him besides these money-lenders and his solicitors?”

“All my friends. I used to laugh at his serious ways, when I, older and much more experienced in some respects, treated life as a tiresome joke. But none of my friends were commissioned to murder my brother so that I might obtain the estate, Mr. Brett.”

“Not by you,” he said thoughtfully.

He knew well that to endeavour to get Margaret to implicate her husband would merely render her an active opponent. She loved this Italian scamp. She was profoundly thankful that David Hume had come back to claim the hand of Helen Layton, the woman who had been the unwilling object of Capella’s wayward affections. She would be only too glad to give half her property to the young couple if they would settle in New Zealand or Peru—far from Beechcroft.

Yet it was impossible to believe that she could love a man whom she suspected of murdering her brother. Why, then, had husband and wife drifted apart? Assuredly the pieces of the puzzle were inextricably mixed.

“Where did you marry Mr. Capella?” asked Brett suddenly.

“At Naples—a civil ceremony, before the Mayor, and registered by the British Consul.”

“Had you been long acquainted”

“I met him, oddly enough, in Covent Garden Theatre, the night my brother was killed”

It was now Brett’s turn to be startled.

“Are you quite certain of this ?” he asked, his surprise at the turn taken by the conversation almost throwing him off his guard.

“Positive. Were you led to believe that Giovanni was the murderer?”

Her voice was cold, impassive, marvellously under control. It warned him, threw him back into the safe rôle of Hume’s adviser and friend.

“I am led to believe nothing at present,” he said slowly. “This inquiry is, as yet, only twenty-four hours old so far as I am concerned. I am seeking information. When I am gorged with facts I proceed to digest them.”

“Well, what I tell you is true. There are no less than ten people, all living, I have no doubt, who can testify to its correctness. I had a box at the Fancy