The Bungalow Mystery (6 page)

The attendant reverently turned back the cloths from their faces; two of them Roger passed unnoticed, his eyes turned to the third. Here the woman paused.

“You are prepared, I suppose, sir. The poor young thing's head was caught against the woodwork and—”

Roger's eyes were fixed upon the form outlined long and stark beneath the sheet.

“I am a doctor, my good woman,” he said impatiently.

“I beg your pardon, sir.” The woman drew back the covering. Roger caught the gleam of golden hair upon the pillow, hair that might yesterday have been curled and waved, but that to-day was combed primly back and stiffly coiled. He bent forward.

When he raised his head his face was ghastly white. He turned quickly away; the woman followed him.

“There is the dress she wore, sir. Maybe you might know that—dark-green it is. Poor thing, it will not bear thinking of. They say as she had something to do with the murder of that artist gentleman the other day, but it don't seem to me likely. Why, she was little more than a child, as you may say.”

As she spoke, she unlocked a heavy chest and brought out a green cloth coat and skirt. Recognizing the colour, Roger stepped forward, then his expression changed; he bent over the stained, dusty garments more closely.

The woman watched him curiously.

“Can you swear to them, sir?”

Roger waited a minute, then he straightened himself, as if throwing some weight off his shoulders.

“No; I cannot say anything about them.”

Outside in the clear, cool air, he lifted his face to the breeze. People were still struggling up to the barn; the undertaker's men, brisk and busy, met him. Half-way across the field he was hailed from behind:

“Eh, Dr. Lavington!”

Roger paused in some surprise; the man who was hurrying towards him, alert, rosy-faced, clean-shaven, was a stranger. He waited.

“I heard that you were in Northchester, that you had been to see Sir James Courtenay, and, as I am anxious to have a little conversation with you, I thought, perhaps, I had better avail myself of this opportunity. But I must introduce myself. I am Detective-Inspector Collins of Scotland Yard.”

“Indeed!” Lavington's tone was curt.” What can I do for you?”

Inspector Collins joined him on the path.

“I am going your way; if you will excuse me, Dr. Lavington, we can talk as we walk. Perhaps I ought first to have explained that I have been sent here in connection with the Bungalow Murder, and as you were the doctor called in, as well as the first person who saw Maximilian von Rheinhart after he was discovered by the housekeeper, I am naturally anxious to hear what you have to say.”

Roger frowned. He pulled his hat low down over his brows, and stuck his hand low down in his trousers pockets.

“I do not know that I have anything to add to the account I gave at the inquest.”

Detective-Inspector Collins's sharp little grey eyes glanced obliquely in his direction.

“Quite so! Quite so! I understand,” he said in a soothing tone, which somehow aroused an unreasonable amount of resentment within Roger's breast. “But, naturally, I want to hear what you have to say at first hand. You were of the opinion that Rheinhart had been dead some time when you saw him?”

“Some little time; possibly not more than half an hour,” Roger assented.

“Just so! Just so!” the detective acquiesced. “Now, this young woman”—he jerked his head back to the barn—“has been identified by a man named Heron as a girl he saw enter the garden gate at The Bungalow half an hour or three-quarters before the murder was committed and you were summoned; he recognized her by her yellow hair, he says; and the description he gave of her dress previously tallies with what she was wearing at the time of the accident. I take it you saw nothing of her there,” with another lightning glance.

There was a moment's silence; Roger's thoughts went back to the silent thing lying in that ghastly row with the primly-plaited golden hair; his right hand clenched itself suggestively in his pocket.

“Nothing!” he said in an abrupt, decided tone “She must have made her escape before I came.”

“I am sick of the whole detestable rubbish! It is worse than useless, I tell you.”

James Courtenay was sitting in the wheeled chair, in which he managed to make his halting, painful progression from room to room. Two years had elapsed since that Northchester disaster; but, though the doctors had held out hopes of being able to fix artificial limbs, there were other injuries that complicated matters and so far every attempt had ended in failure, and Courtenay was still absolutely crippled.

“This draught will at least relieve you,” Roger Lavington said quietly, as he held out the glass. The past two years had altered him but slightly; there were a few grey hairs mingled with brown near the temples, and an added line or so near the mouth, that was all.

The practice at Sutton Boldon had not turned out a success, and Courtenay, who had heard that Dr. Lavington was selling his practice, wrote to ask him to come to him as resident physician, with a handsome salary.

At first Lavington refused. It seemed to him that it would be giving up his independence. Courtenay, however, persisted; his condition was such as to render the presence of a physician close at hand almost a necessity.

Roger saw that it was no sinecure that was being offered to him, the case was an extremely interesting one from a medical point of view, and the post would afford him besides ample time for carrying on the experiments and the study which he had found impossible at Sutton Boldon.

So, after much deliberation, and due weighing of pros and cons, he had accepted for a time at any rate and though he had only been at Oakthorpe a week, he had found already that his task would be by no means an easy one.

At school and college Courtenay, though easily roused to passion, had been distinguished for his easy-going disposition, and his ready good nature. It would have been too much to expect that, after the terrible injuries he had received in the accident at Northchester, he should remain the same.

But beyond the general captiousness and irritability for which Lavington was prepared, it seemed to him that his friend's whole nature was warped and changed. He had become cynical and hard. In some moods he seemed to positively take a pleasure in making speeches that hurt and stung; and he, who had formerly listened to every tale of sorrow or trouble, and sympathized with the sufferers, often relieving them to an extent which his slender income had then in no way warranted, would now dismiss a tenant who came to him for advice or help, with blunt refusal of either, and in some moods would bring the hot blood to the cheek of the unlucky suppliant with a few contemptuous words.

The only thing which, as far as Roger could see, remained unchanged was the old friendship for himself. Though even with him Courtney would often be unjust and unreasonable, it was not difficult to divine that the old liking was there, that Lavington's presence at the Manor was a real pleasure to him.

To-day the nervous pains in the spine and head were unusually violent. Roger had been employed since early morning in trying to find some means of alleviating them, so far with little success. At last he had determined to administer a sedative. Courtney, however, was not an amenable patient, and it was no easy matter to persuade him to take it.

“The best thing you could do would be to give me something out of that medicine-case of yours that would send me to sleep for ever,” he growled, as Roger, glass in hand, stood waiting.

“This will probably make you sleep for a time, and I hope when you wake you will feel much better.” Roger set the draught on the table and stooped to readjust the mechanism of the chair.

Courtenay caught up the glass and emptied it.

“I see I shall get no peace until I do,” he said recklessly. “And, after all, sleep is the one thing left me. It is something to forget, if only for an hour, the crippled, useless log I have become; to think that I am once more alive! Will you ring for Miller, Lavington? I want to give her some directions about the study.”

Roger adjusted the chair to the proper angle, so that his patient could sleep, and touched a handbell.

“Send Mrs. Miller here, please,” he said to the man, and then waited till the housekeeper appeared.

He knew that she had been Courtenay's nurse in childhood, and that after the accident she had returned to Oakthorpe and begged to be allowed to assist in the nursing, and that Courtenay had since installed her as housekeeper. Courtenay had hinted, too, at a tragic story in her past. He had spoken of a daughter who had left her home, and whose desertion had well-nigh broken her mother's heart.

So far, however, Lavington had only seen her face by candlelight. As she came into the room now, he was conscious of a certain sense of familiarity. He watched her with some attention. She was dressed in the traditional black silk, her grey hair was rolled back beneath a lace cap, and she wore an elaborate gold brooch and chain. It seemed to Roger, however, that in spite of her stately attire she herself was ill at ease and nervous, that her eyes did not meet his fully.

“Have I ever seen you before?” he asked her suddenly.

She caught her sleeve in something on the table, and stooped to disentangle it.

“I believe you came to spend the holidays with Master James once, when you were both at Wellington, sir. I was with Mrs. Courtenay then.”

Roger looked at her again. He had fancied that his recollection of her was more recent; but the memory eluded him. He turned away.

“I suppose that is it, then.”

Already Courtenay was nodding in his chair. With a sign to Mrs. Miller to take care that he was not to be disturbed, Lavington left the room.

As he crossed the hall he heard his name. Mrs. Melville, Courtenay's married sister, who was staying at the Manor for the present, was standing at the library door.

“How is he?” she asked anxiously.

Roger went towards her and drew her inside. In their childish days he and pretty Ethel Courtenay had been fast friends.

“The pain will go off now, I trust. He was much easier when I came down.”

Great tears were standing in Mrs. Melville's eyes.

“Is it not terrible Roger?” she said piteously. “To think of him as he was and then to see him now.”

“He is altered,” Roger acquiesced. “But we ought to remember that it must inevitably sour and warp a man's whole nature to be thus suddenly and terribly cut off from all that makes life worth living.”

“Yes, of course; I am always reminding myself of that.” Mrs. Melville crossed to the window. “I cannot help thinking of poor Daphne Luxmore too,” she said, after a pause, during which Lavington had waited in sympathetic silence. “I went to see her yesterday. She looked so thin and worn and haggard and sometimes it seems only the other day that they were both so happy, and we were looking forward to their wedding. You know he will not even see her?”

“Miss Luxmore!” Roger looked surprised “I'd no idea of that. I have not heard her name mentioned since I came here. I knew of the interrupted marriage of course, and I must confess I have sometimes wondered—I have thought that the fact that she had failed him might account for a good deal of his subsequent bitterness.”

“She did not fail him.” Mrs. Melville slipped on to the broad window-seat and laid her head back against the woodwork. “Daphne Luxmore's love has never wavered. She came to Northchester with her father directly after the accident, and I know how she suffered through those long weary days and nights when we scarcely dared to hope that his life would be given back to us. It was a bitter blow to her when he absolutely refused to see her, and she is still unable to bring herself to believe that his decision is final.”

“But do you mean”—Roger's tone was expressive of the utmost astonishment—“that he has not seen Miss Luxmore since the accident?”

“He has not seen her since,'' Mrs Melville assented. “So far as I know he has not even replied to her letters or sent so much as a message to her since his first refusal to see her.”

She stopped and, leaning forward, pressed her head against the glass of the window. Outside, in the garden, the flowers were budding bravely, sweet-smelling narcissus, tall upstanding Madonna lilies; farther away, across the park, the wild hyacinths shone faintly, a haze of blue amid the trees; the lilacs were peeping forth from their green leaves; over their heads it was possible to catch a glimpse of the tender unfolding pink of the horse-chestnuts. A mist of tears rose to her eyes and blurred the colours.

“It wasn't Daphne's fault, Roger,” she went on, with a little catch in her breath. “She has been so noble through it all, I know. She has told me herself that she would have married him in spite of everything; that she would have given up her life in the hope that she might make things less hard for him.”

Roger did not speak for a minute or two; his heart was full of trouble for his friend, for the girl whose life's happiness had been thus terribly wrecked. His eyes wandered over the ordered fragrance outside to the broad pasture land beyond. All this was Courtenay's; and yet he lay in his room maimed and useless. The pity of it brought a huskiness to his voice.

“It was very noble of Miss Luxmore. But one can't help seeing that your brother would naturally shrink from letting her sacrifice herself in that fashion.”

“That is what I try to believe. But when I see Daphne it is impossible to think he is right. She tells me that every day when she opens her eyes in the morning her first thought is that surely to-day he will write to her, he will send for her; and every day closes in the same dreary disappointment. From her sister, too, I have heard that Daphne still goes every evening to their old trysting-place. She is firmly convinced that some day he will meet her there.”

“Poor thing!” Roger said involuntarily. In truth it was a difficult matter to deal with. His better judgment approved his friend's action, and yet it was impossible not to recognize that there were features in the case that made it specially hard.