The Witness on the Roof (33 page)

“A young person from Madame Céline's, ma'am, about your gown!”

“What a fool I am—I forgot all about it!” exclaimed Cynthia. I will come back in a minute, Joan.” She darted away.

Left alone, Joan sit motionless for a minute or two.

Could it be that she had finally estranged Warchester's love? she was asking herself. As she gazed into the fire with hot, aching eyes it seemed to her that she saw her past conduct in its true light. She recalled Warchester's kindness to her when her father died, his unfailing patience under the false Evelyn's presence at the Towers, their mutual love in the early days of their marriage. A little trust, a little faith—that was all he had asked from her, and in the hours of his need she had failed him. Tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.

At last she sprang up. What was it Cynthia had said? Warchester was going to Ireland by the boat train that night. It was possible that she might yet see him—that she might implore his forgiveness once more. With the hope that this thought inspired she went downstairs and across to the study as quickly as her trembling limbs would allow.

“Come in!” Warchester called out in response to her tap.

He looked up in surprise as she entered. He was sitting at his writing-table with his papers spread about in front of him. Before he had time to rise Joan crossed swiftly to him and laid her hands on his shoulders.

“Won't you forgive me, Paul?”

“There is no question of forgiveness, Joan, you could not help yourself.”

“But Cynthia told me you are going away!” Joan's lips trembled childishly.

“You asked me to go away only this morning.”

“Ah, but you knew that was only because I thought—” Joan caught her breath. “I was so frightened, Paul. And, besides, afterwards I should have come to you.” Warchester's face softened suddenly.

“You would have come to me?”

“Why, of course! That was what I meant. I—I couldn't have stayed away, Paul!”

Warchester caught the soft hands that were still resting on his shoulders and pressed them in his.

“Why wouldn't you trust me, Joan?”

“I—I was blind,” Joan said, her lips quivering. “But I loved you, Paul, always. You won't leave me now?”

“I don't think I shall.” Warchester pointed to the paper in front of him. “I am writing to tell Gormanton it will not be possible for me to join him. As for leaving by the boat-train to-night, what would Cynthia say if I took you with me just for a three days' honeymoon, eh, sweet-heart?”

Joan sat down on the arm of his chair, and his right arm slipped round her waist.

“I don't know what Cynthia would say,” she remarked demurely, “I know what I should.”

Warchester's eyes held their old fond smile as he looked up.

“What would you say, sweetheart?”

“I—I want to come,” she whispered childishly, clinging to him. “Take me, Paul!”

He caught her in his arms and drew her head to his shoulder.

“You love me a little still, Joan, in spite of all.”

“I loved you always!” She yielded herself to his embrace with a sigh of content. “I was mad then—I am sane now, that is all, Paul. Tell me again that you forgive—that in time you will love me again—just the same!”

Warchester pressed her to him and kissed her sweet lips.

“Not the same,” he murmured passionately, “but better and better, more and more, my wife!”

That dreadful time of estrangement and suspicion seems like a dream to Joan Warchester now. She is happier than she ever dreamed of being in the old days—happier even than in her first married bliss. For there are children now at the Towers, a white-frocked mite of nearly two, with his mother's lovely colouring, and his father's brave grey eyes, whom the outside world knows as the Honourable John Wilton, but who to his mother and father is simply Sonnie. Nor is Sonnie alone in his nursery; there is a creature, still in long frocks, who is Basil Wilton's namesake and godchild, and who will succeed some day to the broad lands of the Davenants.

Warchester Hall is let now to Septimus Lockyer, who has settled down to a green old age in the country. He has retired from his profession, and astonished everybody by marrying an old sweetheart from whom he was separated by circumstances in his youth.

Sometimes in the twilight Joan's thoughts will wander pityingly to her sister—Basil Wilton's wife; to the mother whose mad marriage ruined her life, later on dwelling a moment on the fate of the woman whom for a few short weeks Joan had tried to give a sister's love.

The result of Cécile De Lavelle's trial had been a foregone conclusion from the first. There was no getting away from the evidence, and the jury had returned a verdict of guilty, with a recommendation to mercy. The story told by Gregory and Mrs. Perks showed no evidence of pre-meditation. The public took the matter up and signed numerous petitions, and the sentence of death passed upon her at her trial was commuted to penal servitude for life.

Mrs. Spencer is happy too, now—not in the Bell at Willersfield, but in a comfortable house of her own, provided by Joan. Amy is engaged to a curate, for whom Lord Warchester is expected to find a living, and all the rest of Joan's half-brothers and sisters are doing well. Lady Warchester has no reason to be ashamed of them. Altogether it seems to Joan that after her troubled childhood and girlhood, her life has fallen truly in pleasant places. She is secure in her husband's love; her children are the joy of her home as well as the delight of three houses—the Lockyers', the Trewhistles', and the Marsh, for Basil Wilton, contrary to prophecy, has not married again.

THE END

Annie Haynes was born in 1865, the daughter of an ironmonger.

By the first decade of the twentieth century she lived in London and moved in literary and early feminist circles. Her first crime novel,
The Bungalow Mystery
, appeared in 1923, and another nine mysteries were published before her untimely death in 1929.

Who Killed Charmian Karslake?
appeared posthumously, and a further partially-finished work,
The Crystal Beads Murder
, was completed with the assistance of an unknown fellow writer, and published in 1930.

The Bungalow Mystery

The Abbey Court Murder

The Secret of Greylands

The Blue Diamond

The House in Charlton Crescent

The Crow's Inn Tragedy

The Master of the Priory

The Man with the Dark Beard

The Crime at Tattenham Corner

Who Killed Charmian Karslake?

The Crystal Beads Murder

“As for books,” Sir Oswald said, “I don't care for them. Unless I get hold of a good detective story. The tracing out of crime always has a curious fascination for me.”

Frank Carlyn quarrelled with his gamekeeper Jack Winter, and then appeared agitated. Soon after, Winter was found shot dead with his own gun. Suspicion was primarily aimed at the late man's wife, seen rushing to catch a London train, and then vanishing.

One year later, the enigmatic governess Elizabeth Martin arrives to take up her duties at Davenant Priory. Her appearance means nothing to the almost-blind Sir Oswald, though others in the household note her dyed dark hair and the smoked glasses she habitually wears. But what is Miss Martin's secret and how is it connected to the sinister slaying committed twelve months earlier?

The Master of the Priory
(1927) is a classic of early golden crime fiction. This new edition, the first in over eighty years, features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

“The story is written so brightly that it almost reads itself.”
Eve

C
ARLYN
H
ALL
was a big, rambling house, having no architectural pretensions whatever. Nevertheless it was a roomy, comfortable abode with its wide passages and big, low roofed, raftered rooms. Originally it had been little more than a farm-house, but as the Carlyns grew in wealth and importance, and began to rank with the county, successive owners had enlarged and improved it according to their own ideas, each man throwing out a room there, a window here, as seemed good in his eyes. Time, the kindly, had thrown over the whole a veil of ampelopsis and ivy, had mellowed the old walls and sown them with lichen and stone crop.

It looked very pleasant and homelike to-day as the last rays of the setting sun fell across the many-gabled roof, touching it with molten gold.

Tea was being laid beneath the great beeches that had been in their prime when the Carlyns were only yeomen. Mrs. Carlyn, the mother of the young squire, sat in her accustomed place by the big wicker- table, and beside her Barbara Burford, the vicar's daughter, was playing with Bruno, Frank Carlyn's favourite setter.

Suddenly Bruno pricked up his ears, then shaking off Barbara's hand he sprang up and bounded round the side of the house.

The girl laughed. “No need to tell us that Frank has come home.”

Mrs. Carlyn smiled in response. “No, Bruno is devoted to his master. I don't know why Frank did not take him to-day. He generally does. Barbara, there is one thing I must ask you. Is it true Esther Retford has left her home?”

“I believe so,” Barbara answered with apparent unwillingness.

Mrs. Carlyn turned pale. “What will her poor father do? He worshipped her. Barbara, who is the man?”

The girl shook her head. “Nobody knows, some stranger probably.”

Mrs. Carlyn sighed. “I hoped so. I did hear a whisper that—Ah, here is Frank!”

Barbara's long eyelashes flickered, the colour in her cheeks deepened as the young master of the house stepped out of his study window and crossed the lawn towards them.

At first sight his pleasant, boyish face looked unusually worried and preoccupied, there were two vertical lines between his level brows, and his mouth was firmly compressed. But, as he caught sight of the girl sitting beside his mother, his expression changed, his face lighted up in a way that made it look wonderfully bright and attractive.

“Why, Barbara,” he exclaimed as they shook hands, “you are almost a stranger. I haven't seen you for ages. What have you been doing with yourself?”

“Oh, well”—Barbara laughed, yet with a touch of constraint in her manner that did not escape Mrs. Carlyn's watchful eyes— “I have been rather busy. And this is a good-bye visit too. I am going to stay with Aunt Freda to-morrow.”

“Oh, really! I am sorry to hear that—sorry for our sakes, I mean,” Carlyn said as he took his cup of tea from his mother's hand.

But his tone lacked warmth, and after a quick glance at him the girl turned back to Bruno, who had installed himself at her feet. She drew his long silky ears through her fingers and fed him with dainty pieces of bread and butter.

Mrs. Carlyn glanced at her son. “Where have you been, Frank? You look hot and tired.”

“I have been dismissing Winter,” he answered shortly. “The coverts are in a disgraceful state, and when I spoke to him about it he was so insolent that I dismissed him then and there.”

There was a pause. Carlyn's eyes watched every movement of Barbara's fingers. The girl did not look up; the hand that was caressing Bruno stopped suddenly for a minute, then went on again mechanically. At last Mrs. Carlyn spoke:

“I am very glad to hear it. We shall be well rid of Winter.”

“Yes,” her son assented without any enthusiasm. He was not looking at Barbara now, his eyes had strayed to the Home Wood, in the midst of which stood the humble cottage of John Winter, his head gamekeeper.

“I shall not be sorry to make a change,” he went on. “But I cannot help thinking of the man's wife. It will be jolly hard lines on her.”

“Ah!” Mrs. Carlyn drew in her breath.

Barbara stood up suddenly. “I must be getting back. Father will be expecting—”

Mrs. Carlyn put out her hand. “Not yet, Barbara, dear. I want to consult you. I suppose Mrs. Winter will go with her husband, Frank. He is a young man and will presumably be able to support her in another situation.”

“Oh, support,” Carlyn echoed, with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “I wish I could get you to take an interest in her, mother. Or you, Barbara. It is obvious that she belongs to a class above Winter's. And the man is a brute. He ill-treats her; I am not sure he does not beat her.” He clenched his right hand.

“Oh, I should hope not,” Mrs. Carlyn said in her placid tones, though her eyes looked troubled. “Anyhow, it is an awkward thing to interfere between man and wife, Frank. And Mrs. Winter herself is not responsive. When I went to see her she was barely civil to me. A churlish sort of young woman I thought her. Though handsome in a peculiar style of course. Stay, what was that, Frank?” holding up her hand just as her son was about to speak.

They all listened. In the silence the sound Mrs. Carlyn had heard was becoming distinctly audible. Someone was running up the drive as if for dear life, more than one person apparently.

Carlyn got up. “Some one seems in a precious hurry. I think I will just go and see what they want.”

He strolled towards the house. Moved by some sudden impulse Mrs. Carlyn and Barbara followed him. As they got nearer they saw that two men were running towards them at full speed, several more following in the distance.

“It is Jack Winter, sir,” the first called out as he caught sight of the young squire. “He is dead!”

“Dead!” Carlyn's face turned a curious, greyish tint beneath its tan. “What do you mean, man? I parted from him only an hour ago.”

“He is dead enough now, sir,” panted the man whom Mrs. Carlyn recognized as Retford, one of the under-keepers. “Lying in a pool of blood in front of his cottage, shot through the head.”