Who Killed Charmian Karslake? (15 page)

“Nothing that the detectives think would surprise me,” Miss Galbraith returned. “If we had had a French detective here he would have discovered the whole thing long ago, and then you would have seen – Oh, here is Mr. Juggs.”

Lady Moreton and her friend had been standing before the log-fire in the hall. Lady Moreton was holding one of her dainty, little, suede-clad feet to the blaze. She turned to greet the new-comer.

Mr. Juggs was coming down the staircase, blowing his nose noisily. He crossed to them at once.

“I guess you have heard my good news, ladies.”

“Our good news,” Lady Moreton corrected him. She held out her hands to him impulsively. “Of course we have heard it. And I cannot tell you how very, very thankful we are.”

The millionaire held her hands in his, unconsciously gripping them so closely that Viva Moreton had some ado to keep from crying out.

“You've been very good, you and your kind husband,” he said brokenly. “I am not ashamed to say I have been shedding tears just now, Lady Penn-Moreton. Real joy tears, they were. Sadie's my only one. And if I lost her – well, I should be all alone in this world till I go to meet her mother in the next. You have just the one child yourself, Lady Penn-Moreton, so you can figure it out how you would feel if he was taken.”

“I know, I know.” Lady Penn-Moreton gently released her hands. “I have been so sorry for you, more sorry than I can say, for you – and poor Dicky.”

“Ay! There's some lad!” the millionaire nodded emphatically. “I am free to confess, Lady Penn-Moreton, that when Sadie and he got spliced I didn't think much of my son-in-law. But Sadie had set her heart on him and I have never refused her anything in her life. It was not the marriage I had looked for for the girl. But, well, money isn't everything, and son-in-law and I understand one another now. Sadie is a real lucky girl and cute. She knew real gold when she came across it. I am off to cable to J. B. Harker. I reckon he is the sharpest sleuth in the States. I shall tell him to come over as soon as the mail can bring him, and he will soon sort out the tangle we have got things into here.”

“But won't Sadie be able to tell us all about it herself?” Lady Moreton inquired in a puzzled tone. “I understood the specialist said she would soon recover consciousness.”

The millionaire coughed.

“He did. But from what he said I don't think she will be able to be asked questions, not for some time anyway. He will be able to start straight away on Miss Karslake too. The poor thing was a countrywoman and your British sleuths seem to be a bit backward. Your young man is something in that line himself, I understand, ma'am?” He turned himself sharply about to Paula Galbraith.

She did not speak for a minute. Then she said slowly:

“Mr. Larpent is a barrister, not a detective. Of course he is making a name at the Bar. But it is for defending criminals, not discovering them.”

“Defending 'em, oh!” Mr. Juggs sniffed. “I have no use for a man that defends criminals. I'd hang the lot.”

“Innocent or guilty?” Paula Galbraith inquired scornfully.

Silas P. Juggs glanced at her.

“Well, way I look at it an innocent man isn't a criminal,” he said bluntly. “Well, I see Mr. Larpent coming up the drive with my son-in-law. I guess it will be the best thing for me to go out and meet them. Son-in-law hasn't heard our good news yet.” He went out humming to himself, singing beneath his breath, “His soul goes marching on.”

Lady Moreton turned back to the fire.

“Poor man! He has crushed all the feeling out of my hands. Still, I think we ought to meet them and tell Dicky how glad we are. Come along, Paula.”

But Paula Galbraith did not move, and after an uncertain glance at her Lady Moreton went on. She met the three men just outside the door and stood talking to them.

Paula Galbraith went into the drawing-room. A log fire was blazing on the open hearth. She waited, looking down into the glorious depths of the fire. Presently the door was pushed open and John Larpent came in alone. His face looked white and strained.

“Paula, I saw you in here and I made up my mind to follow you to force an explanation from you.”

“To force!” When he began to speak Paula had been toying with a little silver ornament from the mantelpiece. She set it down now with a decided little bang, and as she faced Larpent there was the light of battle in her eye. “To force an explanation!” she repeated. “Do you mean you will force me to put into words what you know only too well already?”

“Before Heaven I do not!” Larpent exclaimed with sudden fire. “But I mean you to tell me now. The worst of criminals has a right to know the charge against him – to be heard in his own defence.”

 “Suppose no defence is possible?” Miss Galbraith suggested. “What is the use of pretending? You know that I have guessed your secret.”

“My secret! I have no secret!” Larpent returned, staring at her. “What do you mean?”

Paula fixed her blue eyes upon him.

“You say you have no secret. Have you forgotten the night of the ball and Peter Hailsham?”

John Larpent's face changed, his whole bearing altered.

“For Heaven's sake, be quiet, Paula. You don't know what harm you may do.”

Paula Galbraith laughed contemptuously.

“I am not going to tell, as the children say. Do not be afraid; but – I know.”

“You cannot!” Larpent's dark face had turned to a sickly ashen pallor beneath its tan. “It is impossible.”

“Is it?” Paula's smile was not pleasant to see. “You shall judge. You may not have heard, but I know that two of the maids saw Charmian Karslake come along the conservatory and go into the small room at the end. I know they have told that detective man they heard her speak as if someone was waiting for her there, say – ‘so I have found you at last, Mr. Peter Hailsham.' Well, I was sitting within the conservatory farther back behind a bank of plants, and I, too, heard what she said, but I was wiser than they were, I knew who had gone in first. I knew who Peter Hailsham was.” Unconsciously as she uttered the last words she raised her voice.

Larpent sprang forward as if he would have closed her mouth himself.

“Be quiet!” he ordered in a low, hoarse voice. “What you saw – what you heard had no bearing on Charmian Karslake's death.”

Miss Galbraith did not shrink from him. She put her hands behind her and faced him defiantly.

“Has it not? I wonder whether Inspector Stoddart would think as you do, if he knew what I could tell him.”

“He must never know,” Larpent said in the same hoarse voice. “I have told you the truth – nothing that happened in – in the small smoking-room has any bearing on Charmian Karslake's death. If you speak of it –”

“Other people may think it had,” the girl said scornfully. “You have told me twice that what I heard has no bearing on Miss Karslake's death. But you do not know me yet, John Larpent. The girls of today are not so easily blinded as their mothers were.”

“By Heaven, I wish they were as good as their mothers,” Larpent interrupted her with sudden heat. “And there are plenty of men like me who would –”

Very quietly Paula drew the diamond ring from the third finger of her left hand and held it out to him.

“Please give this to someone who is nearer your ideal than I am.”

Larpent took it from her and flung it through the open window.

“There! That's that!” he said grimly.

Paula turned rather white.

“That is foolish!” she said icily. “You will want it next time.”

“There will be no next time,” Larpent said roughly. “I have had enough of this one to last my life.”

If Paula winced she did not show it.

“I regret very much that I did not end it sooner,” she said, her blue eyes meeting his coldly. “That I did not do so the day after the ball – for your sake.”

“That was most considerate of you,” Larpent told her in a tone of concentrated wrath. “May I inquire why you should change your mind now?”

Paula drew farther away from him. She glanced at her hands, now linked loosely in front of her, at the ringless third finger.

“Because it is, I believe, safer now,” she said slowly. “Then I thought if I did it then” – she paused – “if I broke everything off, they – the detectives – might suspect.”

“What do you mean?” Larpent questioned hotly. “By Heaven, you shall speak out!”

“I shall say no more to you.” Paula held her small head high. “If I say anything else it will be to the detectives, these dreadful men who are poking and prying about everybody and who will one day stumble on – the truth.”

“The truth – who knows what the truth is?” Larpent inquired, unconsciously paraphrasing the jesting Pilate. “You are wrong, Paula, horribly, wickedly wrong, if you speak of what happened, of what you thought happened that night in the smoking-room. You will bring down the most appalling trouble on innocent heads. You do not know –”

“I only know what you tell me about that, naturally,” Paula interrupted with the same composure. “But I –”

She stopped suddenly as the door was flung open and Mr. Juggs strode into the room.

“She has spoken, she knows us,” he exclaimed, apparently quite unconscious of the traces of disturbance on the faces of the two in the room.

Larpent was standing with his back to the door. He pulled himself together and turned round.

“Do you mean that Mrs. Richard has really spoken? I cannot tell you how glad I am. Now she will be able to tell us how she was attacked. Perhaps she has already done so?” He glanced keenly at Mr. Juggs as he spoke.

“No, she hasn't. Not yet. You bet she will. Sadie always kept her wits about her,” the millionaire responded. “She just opened her eyes a minute ago. ‘Dicky,' she said, ‘Dad.' I and son-in-law were there by the side of the bed together. ‘Darling,' son-in-law began and then the nurses hustled us out of the room. She must be kept quiet – must be kept quiet, they say. It will be a day or two before she will be able to be questioned, they tell us. But Sadie won't keep her mouth shut long. She is all there, my girl is.”

“I am sure she is,” Larpent responded politely.

“It's a queer tale!” Inspector Stoddart said in a puzzled tone. “What in the world did she go back to the Monks' Pool for? It is a particularly cheerless-looking spot, and the Fergusons say that when they first expressed a desire to see it, Mrs. Richard exclaimed, ‘What – want to go to that dismal pool! It gives me the hump.' And Miss Mary Ferguson says that when they were there, Mrs. Richard shivered from head to foot and said, ‘Ugh! I feel as if something wicked had been done here.' Then Miss Ferguson says the water was low and the sides were all rocky, for the old monks made the pool, you know, and they all bent over it trying to see the carp that tradition says are there in the pool now, and Mrs. Richard leaned over the longest trying to see till one of them pulled her back and told her she would fall in. Then when they have all said good-bye to her, she goes back to this dismal-looking hole by herself. Why?”

“As I said before, she must have dropped something there,” Superintendent Bower said impatiently, “and gone back to find it.”

“She does not seem to have had anything to drop,” the inspector said thoughtfully. “She had nothing with her but her little handbag and her handkerchief in that. And the handbag, Miss Ferguson says she distinctly remembers noticing that on her arm when they parted.”

“She might have dropped her gloves or some bit of jewellery,” Harbord hazarded.

The inspector shook his head.

“Her maid says she wore no jewellery but her rings and her pearls. As for gloves, the maid held up her hand at the notion. ‘Gloves to go in the garden?' she exclaimed. ‘‘Why, nobody would do such a thing nowadays.' Her purse was in her bag and the money was all intact as you know, superintendent.”

Superintendent Bower nodded.

“Ay, it was,” he said ponderously. “But then the man – whoever he is – took the bag with the purse in it. It might have been the purse he wanted and knocked her down for. Maybe he thought he heard somebody after him and threw it away just to throw 'em off the scent like.”

“I wonder?” The inspector looked round as if seeking inspiration from the shrubbery. The three men were standing together in the drive leading up to the Abbey, just by the entrance from the Bull Ring. It was here that Mrs. Richard had taken leave of her friends, the Fergusons, from here that she had started on her illfated second visit to the Monks' Pool.

Inspector Stoddart was continually returning to the Monks' Pool. Harbord was in the habit of saying he haunted it. From the first the inspector had felt certain that the key to the double tragedy at the Abbey must lie either in the house or in the garden. So far he had been singularly unsuccessful in the house, and the garden did not seem likely to be much more profitable. When Mrs. Richard recovered consciousness – if she ever did – he felt sure that the discovery of Charmian Karslake's murderer would be close at hand. In the meantime there were three questions that continually rang the changes in his brain. They were becoming an obsession with him. Why did Mrs. Richard go back to the Monks' Pool? Who was her assailant? And what did he take from her? For, though the pearls and the rings and the money in the purse showed that in one sense robbery was not the motive, yet robbery of some sort the inspector felt sure there had been – the cotton-wool and the lid of the box had assured him of that. But what had that box held? That was one bit of the riddle that the inspector was anxious to solve.

At last he roused himself.

“Well, superintendent, where are you off to this morning?”

The superintendent looked perturbed.

“Well, I am sorry to say I shall have to leave this matter in your hands today, inspector. There's a case of sudden death over at Stanford and I have to make the arrangements for the inquest.”