The Bungalow Mystery (8 page)

“I think an occasion like this—” Lord Luxmore began presently.

Roger interrupted him with scant ceremony:

“Who is that—the girl standing by Mr. Marchand?”

Lord Luxmore looked slightly surprised as he adjusted his pince-nez.

“That—oh, that is my youngest daughter; she is distributing the prizes to-day. That is my boy next her; he was fifteen yesterday; fine-looking fellow I call him. And yet they tell me he is not strong. I must get you to look at him and see what you think, some day, Dr. Lavington.”

Roger murmured something inaudible; he scarcely knew what Lord Luxmore was talking about. With his eyes following every movement of the girl on the grassy platform he was trying to grasp the inconceivable fact that, though her smile, her eyes, her very walk were those of the girl at The Bungalow, she was indeed Elizabeth Luxmore, the daughter of one of the most important men in the country—what had Mrs. Melville called her?—the belle of last season.

His replies grew so wide of the mark at last that Lord Luxmore looked at him in mild astonishment; and Roger himself felt thankful when the children, with their clear, young voices, began one of the glees that had been carefully taught them for the occasion.

When the last prize had been presented Miss Luxmore stepped down and was lost to sight among the children.

Lord Luxmore touched Roger's arm imperatively.

“Come, they will expect me to speak; and I want to show you my boy.”

Still moving like a man in a dream, Roger followed him. As they passed through the children, now scampering about in all directions, Roger found himself face to face with the girl in the grey dress with the golden hair that had been his magnet all the afternoon. He turned almost with a shudder from the contemplation of her fair, plump face and complacent blue eyes.

At the same moment Lord Luxmore spoke at his elbow. “Elizabeth, my dear; I want to introduce Dr. Lavington.”

Evidently Miss Luxmore was a favourite with the Oakthorpe children. Two or three of them were clinging to her skirts; she held one mite in her arms, its curly head nestled up against her neck. As her father spoke she set it down and responded to Roger's bow with a grave smile.

It was not often that Lavington's self-possession was shaken, but to-day, in face of this girl, with her little dainty air of aloofness, whose eyes, the very counterpart of those others he had seen in The Bungalow, held only cold surprise as they met his, he stood, tongue-tied, embarrassed like the veriest schoolboy.

Miss Luxmore waited a moment, then she said slowly, the same musical inflection in her voice that had rung through the hall at Freshfield:

“What a charming afternoon we have had for our treat, have we not? It is very kind of you to help us, Dr. Lavington. I am sure Mr. Marchand is greatly indebted to you.”

It was she, then, whom Roger had heard speak earlier in the afternoon. Was there a spice of raillery in the clear, level tones now, he wondered—a soupçon of mockery in the eyes that were regarding him so steadily?

“I am afraid I cannot claim to have been of assistance,” he said slowly at last. “But I have been very much interested—”

“Roger! Roger! I was looking for you” It was Mrs. Melville's voice; she was coming towards them. “I'm going back now if you are ready. Good-bye, Elizabeth, dear,” kissing the girl heartily. “It has been quite delightful seeing you, and I should like to stay longer; but I feel that we ought to go home—that we should not leave James any longer.”

Oakthorpe Manor was not a building of great antiquity; there was a tradition that an older mansion had originally stood on the same ground, and that it had been in Elizabethan times the home of the Courtenays.

The old rose-garden was still maintained in all its beauty; but Wilson, the old Scotch gardener, would tell, with a huskiness in his voice, how Sir James had promised to bring Miss Luxmore to see it the very day of the accident, and how the news was brought to Oakthorpe that Sir James would never walk again just at the moment he was expecting them. But, though Courtenay had never visited the rose-garden, the conservatory had remained one of his favourite resorts. He was there to-day, his chair wheeled close up to the fountain in the centre; his shoulders hunched up as he leant a little forward, marking the fresh green of the ferns at the water's edge, watching the goldfish darting to and fro from their leafy shelters.

Farther down, by the door opening on to the grassy terrace, Lavington was sitting smoking. The two men were not talking; Courtenay, who in his youth had been one of the most loquacious of mortals, had developed a curious reserve; he was given to long gloomy fits of silence, and Roger had learned that at such times he was best left alone. To-day, however, Courtenay was the first to speak.

“Have you ever heard that the man who wrote the most exciting stories that have ever been penned was a hopeless invalid, Lavington?”

Roger took out his pipe, and rapped its contents on the ash-tray before he answered.

“I don't quite know that I have, but I should believe it quite possible. Heine was a terrible sufferer, I have heard, and yet it does one good to read his poems.”

“When I am lying here, and I realize the hopelessness of everything, or dreaming of anything better in the future, all sorts of queer fancies come crowding into my brain. Sometimes I fancy I shall put them down on paper, and see what the world will think of them. What do you say?”

“Say? Why it's a capital idea,” Roger assented heartily, as he rose and strolled over to the fountain.

In truth, it seemed to him that the very suggestion was doing Courtenay good. His eyes looked brighter, his tone was more animated.

“Your travels, too, would give freshness to the setting of your tales,” he went on.

“Oh, I don't think I should go in for descriptions of scenery, and that sort of thing,” Courtenay said, a satirical smile curving his thin lips. “What I thought of trying was short stories of crime, forgery burglary, murder even, crisp and pithy, putting in the motive in a few words. Some of Maupassant's are examples of what I mean. And I had an old seventeenth-century thing—French too. I think the name was Duvarnois. It professed to be a true and particular account of the Borgia crimes. It was not particularly fine writing, I dare say, but it made you feel Duvarnois ought to be in the library. I wonder whether I could find it?”

He moved his chair forward as he spoke, and Roger followed.

“Now, he ought to be over there on the fifth shelf. I am afraid I must trouble you to reach it down.” Roger glanced along the indicated shelf.

Duvarnois was an unpretending little book, wedged in between two bulky volumes of memoirs. He handed it to Courtenay, and then turned back, attracted by the title of a treatise near at hand. He moved a little nearer the light. It was a work, out of print now, that he had seen referred to recently in a medical journal, and had endeavoured to get it in vain. It was curious that he should stumble across it in his friend's library.

A curious stifled sound roused him from his absorption in its pages. He looked up. Something had fallen from the old Duvarnois on to the foot of Courtenay's chair, and he was stooping, trying to reach it.

Roger stepped forward. He was about to speak, but something in his friend's expression restrained him.

Courtenay's thin nervous face was contorted by an ugly sneer.

As Roger hesitated, the lean, yellow hand clutched the white oblong packet and raised it triumphantly. Something fell out. It looked like a curl of yellow hair, Roger thought. Another moment he saw he was right. It was a lock of long, golden hair. It curled round Courtenay's fingers like a living thing. With an oath he stooped forward, his face transformed by rage and aversion, loathing even, and held it up, still coiling and twining itself over his fingers. Then, with a shudder of horror, he hung it from him, right into the heart of the fire.

Roger woke up suddenly to the fact that Courtenay had forgotten that he was in the room, that he believed himself to be alone. He stepped back, and caught his heel on some piece of furniture.

Courtenay started; his face, convulsed as it had been by a very passion of emotion, smoothed itself out in a wonderful fashion.

Roger was resolutely averting his eyes from the fire-place where, to his fancy, the shining curl was winding round the flames as it had twisted round Courtenay's fingers.

There was a faint smell of burnt hair in the air.

“Ah, yes. You are dining at the Rectory to-night, aren't you? I'd forgotten.”

Courtenay's voice sounded very tired and far-away now. He leaned his head back against the cushions.

“I should have a nap if I were you, old fellow,” Roger said quickly, as he made his way to the door. “Sleep over Duvarnois, and see what you think of him then.”

“Well, it sounds absurd. I have been doing nothing but sitting in this chair all day, but I believe I am tired.”

“All right, old fellow. I will look you up presently.”

Courtenay's air of languor did not deceive Roger for a moment. He knew that as soon as the door closed behind him the head would be raised, all the exhaustion would disappear, and the invalid would give himself up to the contemplation of the memories that had been evoked by the sight of the gleaming golden hair.

Roger could not help speculating as to whom it could have belonged; that some history was attached to it he could not doubt after the scene he had witnessed. For some time now, too, he had seen reason to doubt Courtenay's attachment to Miss Luxmore. It seemed to him that, terrible though his injuries were, they formed no adequate reason for his refusal to even answer his former fiancée's letters. Roger fancied that the yellow curl might explain much, and he felt a throb of pity for the girl who was herself so faithful.

And then a startling thought came to him. Where had he seen such yellow hair before? Ah, he remembered only too well!

Roger Lavington found his thoughts constantly wandering in the direction of Elizabeth Luxmore during the week that elapsed after the school-treat.

Elizabeth Luxmore's great dark eyes haunted him, her extraordinary likeness to the girl who had masqueraded at Freshfield as Zoe seemed so absolutely inexplicable. Sometimes Roger told himself that he must be the victim of some hallucination, that, unconsciously even, his thoughts must have reverted to the Bungalow murder, and that he had exaggerated some chance resemblance. It was impossible that Lord Luxmore's daughter could be related in any way to the trembling, terrified girl he had found at The Bungalow.

Nevertheless, the fact that he was asked to meet Lord Luxmore and his youngest daughter at the Rectory to-night was responsible for his acceptance of the invitation. Much as he disliked the Marchands, they greeted him effusively. There were a retired colonel and his daughter, and a couple of clergymen with their meek, shabby wives. Roger was introduced to each in turn, and gathered that, with the exception of the Luxmores, the party was now complete. They had not long to wait; just as Roger had been informed that to him was allotted the pleasing duty of escorting Miss Marchand to dinner, Lord Luxmore and Miss Luxmore were announced.

It seemed to Roger that the resemblance which had struck him at the school-treat, strong though it undoubtedly was, was less marked to-night than he had fancied it in his recollection. Meeting his glance, Miss Luxmore bowed very slightly; her manner was singularly unlike her father's genial, kindly fashion of greeting him, Roger thought, as he offered his arm to Miss Marchand and followed in the wake of the others to the dining-room.

At the long table he found that he was between Miss Marchand and the colonel's daughter. Elizabeth Luxmore was next her host on the opposite side of the table. Between the ferns in front of him, Roger could catch a glimpse of her dainty, clear-cut profile, of her crown of waving brown hair. She was not talking much. He fancied that she looked weary and distraite; evidently she was not enjoying the good rector's conversation. He was studying her expression, replying absently the while to Miss Marchand's lively sallies, when she glanced across suddenly and their eyes met in the one brief moment before he looked away. He could not help fancying that her glance held a certain veiled hostility, a latent yet perceptible dislike.

All through the rest of the dinner—which was long and pretentious, with weary waits between each course—he found himself puzzling once more over the riddle of Elizabeth Luxmore. What could account for her likeness and yet unlikeness to the girl he had protected at The Bungalow? And what could be the reason for the enmity with which he felt sure he had inspired her? The enigma was still unsolved when the ladies left the table.

Lord Luxmore drew his chair nearer Roger's.

“I am coming to call on you one of these next few days, Dr. Lavington. How is poor Courtenay now?”

“Much about the same, I think,” Roger replied, a little surprised at the sudden transition.

Lord Luxmore blew his nose noisily.

“It was a sad thing-a very sad thing! You know, of course, of his engagement to my elder daughter?”

Roger bowed an affirmative.

“Poor girl! It has naturally spoiled her life,” Lord Luxmore went on, twirling the stem of his wine-glass in his right hand. “It is a continual grief to her, too, that Courtenay refuses to see her. Of course I can understand his feeling in a measure; the alteration is a terrible one; no doubt he would prefer that she would remember him as he was. But still, when he knows how the poor child troubles about the separation, I think he should put his own sentiment on one side for her sake. I wish you could bring him to see matters in this light, Dr. Lavington.”

“I wish I could,” Roger acquiesced. “It would be the best thing for Courtenay too. I will do what I can, of course, Lord Luxmore, but at present I am not very sanguine of success. Courtenay is terribly altered.”