The Bungalow Mystery (20 page)

“Ay, that is right enough,” the inspector assented. “Before we bring a charge, first we must bring evidence to show that Miss Luxmore was on the scene; secondly we must connect her definitely with the crime itself. If we could find the pistol now—”

“Ah, that would be something to go upon,” Detective Collins agreed. The dreaming in his eyes had vanished; his face had resumed its usual keen, alert expression. “I wonder what became of it. Whoever shot Maximilian von Rheinhart carried it away with him or her. It was not left in the neighbourhood, either, I'm pretty sure, for we searched it rather closely—eh inspector?”

“And kept a close watch for it since. Still, it is not a big thing; it might have been disposed of in a hundred ways.”

“Yes, yes.” Collins got up and, pushing his chair back, took a few steps up and down the room. “The next thing to be done is to interview Miss Luxmore's maid, and to find out from her what her mistress's movements were on that April 14th.”

“The young ladies, Miss Luxmore and Miss Elizabeth, they have the same maid,” Frost observed. “I have thought of that myself, but the one they have with them has only been with them a little over a year; their last married and went to live at Birmingham. I have got the address, sir, if you would like to have it.” He felt in his coat pocket.

“Yes, you might as well give it.” Detective Collins held out his hand for the little slip of paper. “Mrs. Gere, 25 Bubbington Road. Well, I think I had better look Mrs. Gere up myself. And if I don't get anything out of her I think I shall—”

The other two looked at him doubtfully as he paused.

“Well?” the inspector said questioningly.

“I shall look up Sir James Courtenay's valet and see if I can get any information about a certain pistol,” Collins concluded significantly.

“I see there is a leader on police procrastination in one of the papers. It instances the Bungalow murder as a case in point,” Lavington remarked.

He was walking beside the pony-chair in which he insisted on Courtenay taking a daily drive.

The latter was distinctly improving under Roger's care; the open-air treatment which Lavington had instituted was having its effect in better nights and lessened irritability; in a minor degree, too, in the brighter eyes and healthier hue of the skin.

He looked up now with a certain amount of interest.

“It is distinctly a contradiction of the proverb that murder will out.”

“So far,” Roger acquiesced.

He often wondered how much Courtenay knew or guessed of Daphne's connection with the Bungalow tragedy. That, in some way, the girl's association with Rheinhart had led to the estrangement of the lovers, he never doubted.

“Do you mean that you think they will yet trace the girl who disappeared so mysteriously?”

Lavington drove the ferrule of his walking-stick vigorously into the ground as he walked. Should he tell Courtenay of Mrs. von Rheinhart's presence in the village, of her discovery of the incriminating letters, he deliberated. In face of Daphne's danger, would her lover's heart turn to her again? Would he help Roger to prove her innocence, or would he accept her guilt as a foregone conclusion and harden his heart still further against her?

Roger felt that he could give no satisfactory reply; he temporized.

“I doubt whether they have not already done that, but it is not a foregone conclusion that she murdered Rheinhart.”

Courtenay turned in his carriage to stare at him. Some of the healthy glow the summer sun had brought to his face had faded now.

“Do you mean—have you heard anything definite?” he asked incoherently.

Lavington took rapid counsel with himself. After all, nothing could be worse for Courtenay than his long fits of depression, his causeless outburst of anger. If he could be roused from the morbid contemplation of his own trouble, even though it were to a knowledge of Daphne's danger, it must make things better, it seemed to Roger.

“I have heard that a letter has been discovered making an appointment for that night—the night of the murder,” he said slowly at last.

Courtenay leaned a little forward; he was breathing heavily. His face, so far as Roger could see it from his post at the side, was of a curious purple hue.

“An—an anonymous letter of course. The—the person who wrote it would not sign her name.”

Roger considerately averted his eyes.

“There—I understood that there were initials; that they were those of a lady from whom the police had previously discovered a letter.”

Courtenay stopped the chaise abruptly and turned. The purple flush had faded, his face was white, his eyes sought Roger's.

“Lavington, do they know—have you heard the name?”

“Yes.” It seemed to Roger more merciful to strike the blow at once. “Yes! I have heard it.”

“Ah!” Courtenay caught his breath. His face turned white as death, and he fell back in a dead faint.

It was some minutes before Courtenay regained consciousness. When at last he opened his eyes, he met Lavington's meaningly.

“It—of course, there is no truth in it, Lavington; you know that.”

“I believe the lady whose name was signed to that note is innocent,” Roger said steadily. “But, unfortunately, I do not count. It is other people— the police—we have to convince, and the time may be very short.”

“Short!” Courtenay raised himself on one elbow.

“I don't understand, Lavington. You cannot fear—”

“An arrest!” Roger finished. “It seems to me that there may be grave danger.”

“I cannot believe it!” throwing himself back with a gesture of angry impotence. “It is impossible. They would not dare to accuse her!”

Roger did not speak for a minute. It was evident that his surmise was only too well founded. Courtenay needed no words to tell him whose name the police had discovered.

“You cannot rely upon that,” he said at last, choosing his words carefully. “Position and—er— that sort of thing might make the police take care to be quite sure of their ground before they preferred a charge; but once having ascertained that, it would be impossible to prevent their bringing it. No. The only way to be of real help is to find some reason to turn the suspicion into the right quarter.”

“And that is, you imagine?” Courtenay questioned eagerly.

Lavington shrugged his shoulders hopelessly.

“How can I tell? It seems a horrible muddle. I can see no way out of it. The only thing I know is that Rheinhart was undoubtedly shot; that the lady to whom the suspicions of the police are directed is as certainly innocent; and that given these circumstances there must be some way of proving her so.”

Courtenay groaned aloud.

“Ah, I see what you mean! But Heaven help us, Lavington.”

There was another silence. Courtenay's face was rigid; his eyes, as he gazed out straight in front of him, were strained and tense. He jerked the carriage round.

“I must go back, Roger. I must look at the case in all its bearings. It—I think it is possible there might be a way of helping her, but I must go in; I must be alone. It is impossible to think clearly out here.” He urged the pony on.

Roger dropped behind. When he reached the Manor, Courtenay had already disappeared, the pony-chaise was being led round to the stables. As he entered the hall, Mrs. Miller crossed from her master's room. She looked alarmed, disturbed. Roger was struck afresh by that curious sense of familiarity. Seeing him, she turned quickly towards him.

“Oh, Dr. Lavington, I am afraid Sir James is worse! He looked dreadful when he came in; and when Jenkins and William were lifting him into his chair I thought he was dying, his face was that white and drawn. I brought brandy and sal volatile, but he wouldn't touch them—just wheeled himself off to his study, and shut the door to, without as much as a word to me, though I was just behind. I can't understand it; something must be wrong. But perhaps he will tell you.”

Roger was watching her closely; in his eyes incredulity was struggling with a dawning recognition.

“Perhaps—presently,” he said slowly. “I think for a time Sir James will be better alone. He is not ill.”

“I beg your pardon, sir, I am sure, for contradicting you.” For once, in her anxiety for her master, the housekeeper seemed to have thrown off her timidity, her nervous, shrinking manner. “If you leave him—” She broke off with a cry.

A low exclamation broke from Lavington's lips; he stepped forward impetuously.

“Ah! Now I remember!”

Mrs. Miller looked at him in astonishment.

“I don't understand, sir—Oh!” Meeting his glance fully, she drew away from him, back against the dark wainscoting, her face growing white, her eyes fixed on his as if fascinated.

Lavington followed her up.

“Of course I know now. What a fool I have been not to see it before. You were Maximilian von Rheinhart's housekeeper at The Bungalow! It was you who summoned me, and I saw you again at the inquest!”

The woman did not answer, half leaning, half crouching against the dark background. Her pale face, her silvery hair, looked whiter, more ghost-like than ever; she stared up at him with wide-open eyes and parted lips.

“You must have known me,” Roger went on. “When I told you that I thought I had seen you before, why didn't you speak? Why didn't you tell me that you had been Rheinhart's housekeeper?”

“I couldn't!” The woman drew herself upright against the wall; she put up her hands to smooth her tightly-braided hair, to straighten her little lace cap. “I wanted to forget all that time,” she went on directly, recovering her self-possession as if by magic. “It—I wasn't proud of having had my name in the papers, of being pointed at as The Bungalow housekeeper; and when you did not recognize me I was glad. What good would it have done to tell you where you had met me before?”

“I don't know,” Roger said mechanically. His mind was busy with The Bungalow question. Was it the hand of fate, he wondered, that was bringing so many of the actors in that mysterious tragedy together again? “But you did not call yourself Miller there—at The Bungalow?” he went on after a minute, certain facts striking him. “I am sure I remember—”

The housekeeper took out her handkerchief and wiped her dry lips furtively.

“No, sir, I didn't, worse luck for me; for John Miller was my first husband, and a better man never lived. I mourned for him truly. But then, after my poor girl went away and I was left alone, I was over-persuaded by a designing scoundrel for the sake of my bit of savings. I made a fool of myself, sir, in the second marriage; and when I came back to Sir James I was glad to forget about it, and go back to the name he had known me by when he was a child. But Sir James and Mrs. Melville, they both knew all about it, sir.”

“Ah, yes. I am sure that is all right. But I should like to have a few words with you, if you please, Mrs. Miller!”

Lavington opened the smoking-room door and held it for her. She looked round unwillingly and hesitated.

“Another time, sir, I'm sure I should be honoured; but to-day there is a good deal for me to see to. And Sir James not being well it does seem to me that one of us—”

“You can leave Sir James to me. I will answer for him.'' Lavington motioned imperatively for her to enter. “I shall not keep you long,” he added. “Just a question or two.”

Shrinking as far as possible from him, the woman obeyed. He closed the door.

“You have heard, no doubt, that the police are taking up this matter of the murder of Rheinhart once more? Sit down, Mrs. Miller, please.”

“Thank you, sir.” She took one of the morocco- covered chairs standing near the door. “Yes, I did see something about The Bungalow murder in the
Telephone
, but didn't take any notice of it.”

“Now I want you to cast your mind back to the night of the murder. I am particularly anxious to ascertain as far as possible the real facts of the case, and it seems to me that you are the only person who can help me. You know, of course, of the search that has been made for the woman who left her glove and ring beside Rheinhart's body, the woman who asked Heron the way to The Bungalow?”

Was it his fancy or did an expression of relief cross the face of the woman before him?

“Oh, yes, sir,” she said quickly. “Of course I knew of that. They found out that she was killed in the railway accident at Northchester.”

“No; that was a mistake,” Roger contradicted her. “They are searching for her now, more closely than ever. But of late I have had some reason to doubt that that girl did really shoot Rheinhart. I am anxious should she be indeed innocent to prove her so. Can you help me?”

The woman hesitated; she looked away. For the first time a doubt of her good faith crossed his mind. Was it possible that she had some idea who was guilty—that she was screening some one? He watched her closely.

“I can't tell you anything, sir,” she said after a pause. “Very often Mr. von Rheinhart had visitors I never saw. He would admit them himself by the window. I don't know who they were or whether he had anybody with him that night.”

“Yet one visitor there must have been.” Lavington's eyes did not move from her face. “At any rate some one must have taken the pistol away, and there is proof that the woman who left her glove was there. Do you know who she was?”

The suddenness of the question seemed to startle the woman's wits away.

“I don't know, sir,” she said at last. “How should I? I didn't see her. I never knew she was there. As I found him lying there, my thought was that he had killed himself. I neither heard her go in nor come out. Even now I can't bring myself to believe there ever was anybody there at all.”

Roger paused; he had no reason to doubt the woman's word. Yet, as she looked away again, he caught a twitching of the lower lip, and had an uneasy feeling that in some way he was being duped; that Mrs. Miller could have helped him if she would.