The House of the Whispering Pines (3 page)

But that was all over now—ended as her life was ended: suddenly,
incomprehensibly, and by no stroke of God. Even the jewel on her finger
was gone, the token of our betrothal. This was to be expected. She would
be apt to take it off before committing herself to a fate that proclaimed
me a traitor to this symbol. I should see that ring again. I should find
it in a letter filled with bitter words. I would not think of it or of
them now. I would try to learn how she had committed this act, whether by
poison or—

It must have been by poison; no other means would suggest themselves to
one of her refined sense; but if so, why those marks on her neck, growing
darker and darker as I stared at them!

My senses reeled as I scrutinised those marks. Small, delicate but
deadly, they stared upon me from either side of her white neck till
nature could endure no more and I tottered back against the further wall,
beholding no longer room, nor lounge, nor recumbent body, but a young
girl's exquisite face, set in lines which belied her seventeen years, and
made futile any attempt on my part at self-deception when my reason
inexorably demanded an explanation of this death. As suicide it was
comprehensible, as murder, not, unless—

And it had been murder!

I sank to the floor as I fully realised this.

PRINCE.—Bring forth the parties of suspicion.

FRIAR.—I am the greatest, as the time and place
Doth make against me, of this direful murder;
And here I stand, both to impeach and purge.
Myself condemned and myself excused.

Romeo and Juliet
.

I have mentioned poison as my first thought. It was a natural one, the
result undoubtedly of having noticed two small cordial glasses standing
on a little table over against the fireplace. When I was conscious again
of my own fears, I crossed to the table and peered into these glasses.
They were both empty. However, they had not been so long. In each I found
traces of anisette cordial, and though no bottle stood near I was very
confident that it could readily be found somewhere in the room. What had
preceded and followed the drinking of this cordial?

As I raised my head from bending over these glasses—not club glasses,
by the way—I caught sight of my face in the mantel mirror. It gave me
maddening thoughts. In this same mirror there had been reflected but a
little while before, two other faces, for a sight of whose expression at
that fatal moment I would gladly risk my soul.

How had
she
looked—how that other? Would not the story of those
awful, those irrevocable moments be plain to my eye, if the quickly
responsive glass could but retain the impressions it receives and give
back at need what had once informed its surface with moving life!

I stared at the senseless glass, appealed to it with unreasoning frenzy,
as to something which could give up its secret if it would, but only to
meet my own features in every guise of fury and despair—features I no
longer knew—features which insensibly increased my horror till I tore
myself wildly from the spot, and cast about for further clues to
enlightenment, before yielding to the conviction which was making a
turmoil in mind, heart, and conscience. Alas! there was but little more
to see. A pair of curling-irons lay on the hearth, but I had no sooner
lifted them than I dropped them with a shudder of unspeakable loathing,
only to start at the noise they made in striking the tiles. For it was
the self-same noise I had heard when listening from below. These tongs,
set up against the side of the fireplace had been jarred down by the
forcible shutting of the large front door, and no man other than myself
was in the house, or had been in the house; only the two women. But the
time when this discovery would have brought comfort was passed. Better a
hundred times that a man—I had almost said any man—should have been
with them here, than that they should be closeted together in a spot so
secluded, with rancour and cause for complaint in one heart, and a
biting, deadly flame in the other, which once reaching up must from its
very nature leave behind it a corrosive impress. I saw,-I felt,—but I
did not desist from my investigations. A stick or two still smouldered on
the hearthstone. In the ashes lay some scattered fragments of paper which
crumbled at my touch. On the floor in front I espied only a stray
hair-pin; everything else was in place throughout the room except the
cushions and that horror on the lounge, waiting the second look I had so
far refrained from giving it.

That look I could no longer withhold. I must know the depth of the gulf
over which I hung. I must not wrong with a thought one who had smiled
upon me like an angel of light—a young girl, too, with the dew of
innocence on her beauty to every eye but mine and only not to mine
within—shall I say ten awful minutes? It seemed ages,—all of my life
and more. Yet that lovely breast had heaved not so many times since I
looked upon her as a deified mortal, and now two small spots on another
woman's pulseless throat had drawn a veil of blood over that beauty, and
given to a child the attributes of a Medusa. Yet hope was not quite
stilled. I would look again and perhaps discover that my own eyes had
been at fault, that there were no marks, or if marks, not just the ones
my fancy had painted there.

Turning, I let my glance fall first on the feet. I had not noted them
before, and I was startled to see that the arctics in which they were
clad were filled all around with snow. She had walked then, as the other
was walking now; she, who detested every effort and was of such delicate
make that exertion of unusual kind could not readily be associated with
her. Had she come alone or in Carmel's company, and if in Carmel's
company, on what ostensible errand if not that of death? Her dress,
which was of dark wool, showed that she had changed her garments for this
trip. I had seen her at dinner, and this was not the gown she had worn
then—the gown in which she had confronted me during those few
intolerable minutes when I could not meet her eyes. Fatal cowardice! A
moment of realisation then and we might all have been saved this horror
of sin and death and shameful retribution.

And yet who knows? Not understanding what I saw, how could I measure the
might-have-beens! I would proceed with my task—note if she wore the
diamond brooch I had given her. No, she was without ornament; I had never
seen her so plainly clad. Might I draw a hope from this? Even the pins
which had fallen from her hair were such as she wore when least adorned.
Nothing spoke of the dinner party or of her having been dragged here
unaware; but all of previous intent and premeditation. Surely hope was
getting uppermost. If I had dreamed the marks—

But no! There they were, unmistakable and damning, just where the breath
struggles up. I put my own thumbs on these two dark spots to see
if—when what was it? A lightning stroke or a call of fate which one
must answer while sense remains? I felt my head pulled around by some
unseen force from behind, and met staring into mine through the glass of
the window a pair of burning eyes. Or was it fantasy? For in another
moment they were gone, nor was I in the condition just then to
dissociate the real from the unreal. But the possibility of a person
having seen me in this position before the dead was enough to startle
me to my feet, and though in another instant I became convinced that I
had been the victim of hallucination, I nevertheless made haste to cross
to the window and take a look through its dismal panes. A gale of
blinding snow was sweeping past, making all things indistinguishable,
but the absence of balcony outside was reassuring and I stepped hastily
back, asking myself for the first time what I should do and where I
should now go to ensure myself from being called as a witness to the
awful occurrence which had just taken place in this house. Should I go
home and by some sort of subterfuge now unthought of, try to deceive my
servants as to the time of my return, or attempt to create an alibi
elsewhere? Something I must do to save myself the anguish and Carmel the
danger of my testimony in this matter. She must never know, the world
must never know that I had seen her here.

I had lost at a blow everything that gives zest or meaning to life, but I
might still be spared the bottommost depth of misery—be saved the
utterance of the word which would sink that erring but delicate soul into
the hell yawning beneath her. It was my one thought now—though I knew
that the woman who had fallen victim to her childish hate had loved me
deeply and was well worth my avenging.

I could not be the death of two women; the loss of one weighed heavily
enough upon my conscience. I would fly the place—I would leave this
ghastly find to tell its own story. The night was stormy, the hour late,
the spot a remote one, and the road to it but little used. I could easily
escape and when the morrow came—but it was the present I must think of
now, this hour, this moment. How came I to stay so long! In feverish
haste, I began to throw the pillows back over the quiet limbs, the
accusing face. Shudderingly I hid those eyes (I understood their strange
protuberance now) and recklessly bent on flight, was half way across the
floor when my feet were stayed—I wonder that my reason was not
unseated—by a sudden and tremendous attack on the great door below,
mingled with loud cries to open which ran thundering through the house,
calling up innumerable echoes from its dead and hidden corners.

It was the police. The wild night, the biting storm had been of no avail.
An alarm had reached headquarters, and all hope of escape on my part was
at an end. Yet because at such crises instinct rises superior to reason,
I blew out the candle and softly made my way into the hall. I had
remembered a window opening over a shed at the head of the kitchen
staircase. I could reach it from this rear hall by just a turn or two,
and once on that shed, a short leap would land me on the ground; after
which I could easily trust to the storm to conceal my flight across the
open golf-links. It was worth trying at least; anything was better than
being found in the house with my murdered betrothed.

I had no reason to think that I was being sought, or that my presence in
this building was even suspected. It might well be that the police were
even ignorant of the tragedy awaiting them across the threshold of the
door they seemed intent on battering down. The gleam of a candle burning
in this closed-up house, or even the tale told by the rising smoke, may
have drawn them from the road to investigate. Such coincidences had
been. Such untoward happenings had misled people into useless
self-betrayal. My case was too desperate for such weakness. Flight at
this moment might save all; I would at least attempt it. The door was
shaking on its hinges; these intruders seemed determined to enter.

With a spring I reached the window by which I hoped to escape, and
quickly raised it. A torrent of snow swept in, covering my face and
breast in a moment. It did something more: it cleared my brain, and I
remembered my poor horse standing in this blinding gale under cover of
the snow-packed pines. Every one knew my horse. I could commit no greater
folly than to flee by the rear fields while such a witness to my presence
remained in full view in front. With the sensation of a trapped animal, I
reclosed the window and cast about for a safe corner where I could lie
concealed until I learned what had brought these men here and how much I
really had to fear from their presence.

I had but little time in which to choose. The door below had just given
way and a party of at least three men were already stamping their feet
free from snow in the hall. I did not like the tone of their voices, it
was too low and steady to suit me. I had rather have heard drunken cries
or a burst of wild hilarity than these stern and purposeful whispers. Men
of resolution could have but one errand here. My doom was closing round
me. I could only put off the fatal moment. But it was better to do this
than to plunge headlong into the unknown fate awaiting me.

I knew of a possible place of concealment. It was in the ballroom not far
from where I stood. I remembered the spot well. It was at the top of a
little staircase leading to the musicians' gallery. A balustrade guarded
this gallery, supported by a boarding wide enough to hide a man lying
behind it at his full length. If the search I was endeavouring to evade
was not minute enough to lead them to look behind this boarding, it would
offer me the double advantage of concealment and an unobstructed view of
what went on in the hall, through the main doorway opening directly
opposite. I could reach this ballroom and its terminal gallery without
going around to this door. A smaller one communicated directly with the
corridor in which I was then lurking, and towards this I now made my way
with all the precaution suggested by my desperate situation. No man ever
moved more lightly. The shoes which I had taken off in the lower hall
were yet in my hand. I had caught them up after replacing the cushions on
Adelaide's body. Even to my own straining ears I made no perceptible
sound. I reached the balcony and had stretched myself out at full length
behind the boarding, before the men below had left the lower floor.

An interval of heart-torture and wearing suspense now followed. They were
ransacking the rooms below by the aid of their own lanterns, as I could
tell from their assured manner. That they had not made at once for the
scene of crime brought me some small sense of comfort, but not much. They
were too resolute in their movements and much too thorough and methodical
in their search, for me to dream of their confining their investigations
to the first floor. Unless I very much mistook their purpose, I should
soon hear them ascending the stairs, after which, instinct, if not the
faint smell of smoke still lingering in the air, would lead them to the
room where my poor Adelaide lay.