The Burning Court (19 page)

He had seen it coming. Faintly at first, a word here, a phrase there, going off the path, coming back again—Stevens had seen it insistently approaching and growing larger, all the more ugly because its movements were so haphazard. It was a blind thing, flapping its way, but it had come into the room at last. And he was powerless to shut it out.

“Except Ted and Marie, of course,” said Lucy. She smiled uncertainly.

Stevens could see the idea come into three minds at once. Mark and Lucy looked at him. Even Partington, who had remained in a brown study throughout the whole interview, raised his head a little. In that almost fey state which comes with a stringing-up of the nerves for battle, Stevens thought that he could see into Mark’s brain and follow every thought. Thus the idea sprang into Mark’s head. He pictured Marie visually; there was a blank interval; a little twitch of incredulity came to his lips. He pictured her again; the incredulity grew to a broadening smile.

And, as though to prove it, Mark spoke.

“I’ll be hanged,” he said, in the flat tone of one making a statement. “I never thought of that. You know, Ted, you asked me last night whether I could stand having a case made out against my own wife. It looks as though the tables are turned. It looks as though I’ll have to ask you the same question.”

“That’s fair enough,” said Stevens, answering his casual lightness. “As a matter of fact, I hadn’t thought of it myself. But I can see the point.”

But he was not concerned with Mark. Out of the corner of his eye he was watching Brennan, who had turned round with a courteous mask of a face. He wondered how much Brennan might know. He also had an unreal sensation that this whole scene had been played out somewhere before. But he realized that the next few minutes might be the most critical of his life—for he was about to try a wrestling-fall with Foxy Frank.

“Ted and Marie?” repeated Brennan, inclining his head with just that degree of broad heartiness which Stevens had expected. “I suppose that’s you and your wife, Mr. Stevens?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Well, man to man, now. Do you know any reason why either of you should want to poison Miles Despard?”

“No; that’s just it. We scarcely knew him, either of us. I don’t think I’ve talked with him a dozen times, and Marie rather less. Any of the family will tell you that.”

“You don’t seem very surprised.”

“At what?”

“At being accused,” said Brennan, blinking a little as though he were pulled up short.

“That depends on what you mean by surprised. I’m not going to jump up and yell, ‘Damn you, what are you insinuating?’ I know what you’re getting at, all right, Captain; and I don’t blame you. The trouble is, it’s not true.”

“For the sake of argument,” said Brennan. “I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting your wife, Mr. Stevens. I’d like to know what she looks like. For instance, is she about the size and build of Mrs. Despard? What do you say, Mrs. Despard?”

Lucy’s eyes were shining strangely, yet it was with a blank stare which seemed to be turned inward. Stevens had never seen such an expression on the face of the placid, easy-going Lucy he knew, and it disquieted him.

“Yes, she’s about my size,” she admitted. “But— Oh, this is absurd! You don’t
know
her! Besides…”

“Thanks, Lucy,” Stevens said. “What Mrs. Despard was probably going to say,” he went on, easily, “is something that I’m afraid is bad for your theory, Captain. Let me understand this. You think that the woman went there disguised in a mask and a costume exactly like Lucy’s, so that, if somebody happened to see her, she would be mistaken for Lucy?”

“Yes, I’m pretty certain of it.”

“Good. And it’s furthermore agreed that this woman, whatever else she wore, did not wear a hat. Isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s what I was telling you; she was imitating Mrs. Despard’s costume, and Mrs. Despard didn’t have a hat. But both of ’em had a gauze scarf over the shoulders.”

“Then,” the other said, decisively, “you can get rid of any idea that it was Marie. Lucy, as you can see for yourself, has hair of the color that the poets compare to a raven’s wing. Marie is a blonde. Therefore——”

Brennan held up his hand. “Whoa, there! Don’t go so fast. We asked Mrs. Henderson about that. She said she didn’t notice, or couldn’t tell exactly, what color hair the woman had; so you can’t prove anything by that. Mrs. Henderson said the light was too dim.”

“The light was too dim for her to tell the color of the hair—although she told you every color in the dress. What’s more, this woman was standing silhouetted against the light. Gauze scarf or no, that’s exactly the position where hair does shine, if it’s blonde, with a light on the edges of it. Yet Mrs. Henderson didn’t notice. You can see for yourself that what she saw was some woman with black hair like Lucy or dark brown hair like Edith. That’s why she thought it must be either Lucy or Edith. Whereas Marie’s hair would have been like a brass kettle, and Mrs. H. would have known it wasn’t either one of them.” He paused. “But that isn’t the point. Let’s suppose Marie is going to disguise herself as Lucy. Now, if a blonde is masquerading as a brunette—muffled up in heavy clothes, mask, and scarf—let me ask you this: is it reasonable to think she’ll wear no hat and thus leave exposed the one part of her which will show, twenty feet away, that she
isn’t
the brunette?”

Mark reached up and made a gesture as though he were pulling the cord of a bell.

“End of round one,” he said, critically, “He’s got you there, Captain. I thought I’d stand by as
amicus curiae,
Ted; but it doesn’t seem to be necessary. I warn you, Captain, this fellow is an academic terror. The Jesuits aren’t in it when he begins to argue.”

Brennan considered. “It’s true, in a way. Though I’ve got a feeling we’re being steered away from the main issue, somehow.” He frowned. “Let’s just get back to straight facts. Where were you and your wife on the night of the 12th?”

“Right here in Crispen. I admit that.”

“Why do you say you ‘admit it’?” Brennan asked, quickly.

“Because it wasn’t usual. As a rule we come down here only on week-ends, and that was a Wednesday. I had business in Philadelphia.”

Brennan turned to Lucy. “Did Mrs. Stevens know you were going to that masquerade, and what costume you were wearing?”

“Yes, she knew that. Marie came up here in the afternoon to say they’d come down unexpectedly for the night, and to ask what we were doing that evening. I showed her the dress. I was just finishing it. I made it myself, you know, from the design of one of the pictures in the gallery.”

“May I ask you something, Lucy?” interposed Stevens. “Was that Wednesday afternoon the first time Marie had heard anything about the dress?”

“Yes. I only decided to make it on Monday.”

“Could somebody have bought a duplicate of that dress at a theatrical costumier’s, or dressmaker’s, or somewhere?”

“I should certainly think they couldn’t!” said Lucy, with some asperity. “It was much too elaborate and much too distinctive. As I say, I copied it from a painting here. I never saw anything like it. That’s why I——”

“Between the time you told Marie about the dress on Wednesday afternoon, and the time the mysterious visitor showed up in Miles’s room at 11:15, would there have been time for her to make one of them herself?”

Lucy’s eyes opened wide, and then narrowed. “Good Lord, no! Of course. I never thought of that. It took me three days as it was. She wouldn’t even have had time to get the materials. Besides, now I remember it, she stayed here with me until half-past six. Then she went down to meet you.”

Stevens sat back and looked at Brennan. For the first time Brennan was genuinely worried. Though he was holding himself in well, a faint stir of temper began to show under the brisk exterior. He covered it with smiles and a confidential air.

“I can depend on that, can I, Mrs. Despard?” he asked. “I don’t know much about these things, but it strikes me that if some one worked fast——”

“It’s absolutely impossible,” declared Lucy, wagging her head with the air of a schoolmistress. “My dear man! It takes the best part of a day just to put on those paste diamonds. You ask Edith.”

Brennan scratched the back of his neck. “But
somebody
copied the dress! If— No, wait; we’ll come back to that. We’re getting sidetracked again. I’ll go back to the questioning.” He faced Stevens with sour good-nature. “How did you spend the evening of the 12th?”

“With my wife. We stayed at home, and went to bed early.”

“What time did you go to bed?”

“At exactly
11:30
,” said Stevens, advancing the real time by one hour. It was the first tangible lie he had told Brennan; and, as he told it, Foxy Frank’s eyeballs seemed to grow larger. Through the effect of his own imagination, his voice suddenly sounded wrong. “Eleven-thirty, Captain, I happened to notice it particularly.”

“Why should you notice it?”

“Because it was the first time we had been at Crispen during the week. I had to set the alarm-clock so that we could get up in the morning to drive back to New York.”

“Have you got any witness besides yourself? Any kids? Any maid?”

“No. There’s a maid, but she only comes in during the day.”

Brennan appeared to come to a decision. He thrust his glasses back into the breast pocket of his coat, slapped his knees, and got up. He looked sharper and more dangerous.

“If it’s agreeable to you, Mr. Despard,” he said, “there’s one point in connection with this business that we’ll settle now. Is that nurse, Miss Corbett, in the house? I’d like to ask her something about a theft.”

“She’s with Edith. I’ll get her.” Mark regarded him shrewdly, but with a curious wariness. “And I’m glad to see you’ve stopped barking up that tree. The point about the dress pretty well proves it; but we all knew Marie couldn’t have had anything to do with this thing——”

“Yet,” said Lucy, “you didn’t hesitate to believe
I
might have had something to do with it.”

It flashed out of her; she could not seem to check herself. The next moment she obviously regretted it. Lucy’s square little jaw grew set, and her eyes went roving; but she did not look at Mark. She stood with a heightened color, staring at a picture over the stone mantelpiece.

“What would you have thought, I ask you?” enquired Mark. “I— Oh, damn it, think! The dress. The appearance. The—Besides, I never thought you did have anything to do with it! That’s the whole point.”

“I don’t mind that,” said Lucy, still staring at the picture. “What I do mind is that you should have discussed it carefully with other people before you even mentioned it to me.”

Mark was stung so badly that he hit back by instinct. “Discussions of such things don’t seem to be very popular with anyone hereabouts. I was worried. I’d have had even more reason to be worried if I had known that a telephone call almost took you away from the masquerade as it was. Not having heard about that phone call—”

“Tais-toi, imbécile”
said Lucy, changing her mind but not lowering her eyes from the picture:
“les agents ont des oreilles longues. Ce n’était pas un rendezvous, je t’ assure.”

Mark nodded and stumped out of the room, and there was anger in even so small a thing as the ape-like swing of his arms. At the door he gestured to Partington, who rose, nodded gravely to the company, and followed him out. Stevens was startled even to remember the doctor’s presence there. Remembering Partington’s placid but very talkative mood of the night before, he wondered whether the doctor would need several eye-openers before he became his dignified self. But Stevens was concentrated on Brennan, and on whether Brennan had really left off the attack or whether he was only preparing to return to it.

Lucy lowered her eyes and smiled.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Brennan,” she said. “It was the very worst taste to speak in French, the way you spell out words before a child when you don’t want it to understand. It was dreadfully banal, too. I have an idea you understood quite well.”

Brennan, it was clear, had taken a genuine liking to Lucy. He waved his hand.

“You seem a whole lot bothered about that phone call, Mrs. Despard. I’m not: that’s straight. I don’t know the exact truth about it, but I won’t press you yet. There’s more important things we have to do.”

“But
what?”
cried Lucy. “That’s what I was going to ask you. The thing is so mixed up with—ghosts, and nonsense, and that horrible business of Uncle Miles’s body disappearing, that I don’t even see where you’re going to start.”

“Why, I’m going to find that body, of course,” said Brennan, opening his eyes wide. “We can’t get anywhere without it. The old man was poisoned; there’s no doubt about that. And the murderer, learning in advance that Mr. Despard was going to open the crypt, got scared and stole the body out of it. That’s easy. We can’t prove the man was poisoned until we do find the body. How did somebody swipe it? Don’t ask me how! I haven’t found the private entrance to the crypt—yet.” He turned round and eyed Stevens frowningly. “There’s one little bit of information, though, I’ll give you free of charge. I know you four people who opened up the crypt weren’t up to any funny business last night. If you’d come to me this morning and told that story, I’d have believed you cooked it up among yourselves. But I had a man there watching you, and I know better.”

“Yes. That,” said Stevens, “is the only piece of luck we’ve had so far.”

Lucy was uneasy. “But where are you going to look for it? I mean, are you going to—dig up the grounds, or something? That’s what they always do in the stories. With lanterns and things.”

“If it’s got to be done, I’ll do it. But we may not have to make as much mess as that. It’s entirely in the cards”—he spoke with calmness, but with an eye on both of them—“it’s entirely in the cards that the body may be in this house.”

“In the house?” said Stevens, startled without knowing why.

“Yes. Why not? There must be a private way into the crypt. There’s also a private door somewhere in Miles Despard’s room. Personally, I’ve got a hunch that the two are connected, and probably connected with each other.”