WIDENER LIBRARY
HX 3179 C
e MYSTERY OF THE
SUMMER-HOUSE
HORACE HUTCHINSON


AL1797 125


JVEERIT
HARVARD
COLLEGE
LIBRARY














THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
HORACE HUTCHINSON





THE MYSTERY
OF THE
SUMMER-HOUSE
BY
HORACE HUTCHINSON
NEW DH YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


AL 1997,1,25
COLLEGE
HARVARD
LIBRARY
COPYRIGHT, 1919,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
I THE ALARM . . . . . . . . . II
II THE EMPTY BED . . . . . . . . 19
III WHAT WAS FOUND IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE 26
IV MY AUNT ENID . . . . . . .
V THE VIGIL IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE . . .
VI SERGEANT CRISP . . . . . . . .
VII WHAT THE GAMEKEEPER HAD TO TELL . 82
VIII WHAT THE BUTLER AND THE HOUSEMAID
HAD TO SAY . . . . . . . . 99
IX WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL . 119
X AMENDED EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH MAID 144
XI WHAT THE POACHER HAD TO SAY. . . 168
XII THE CORONER'S INQUEST . . . . . 187
XIII SERGEANT CRISP “RECONSTRUCTS” . . 214
XIV THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CAPTAIN VIBART 235
XV THE PRISONER IN THE Dock . . . .
XVI THE TRIAL AND VERDICT . . . . . 259
XVII WAR . . . . . . . . . . 280
XVIII THE TRUTH . . . . . . . . . .
XIX THE END . . . . . . . . . . 298
243
·
287
·
[v]


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THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE



TO BACK OF HOUSE
THE SUMMERHOUSE
SPOT WHERE
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WERE DISCOVERD
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TO VILLAGE
TO
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SERVATORY
FRONT OF HOUSE
→
THE FOOT PRINTS


THE MYSTERY OF THE
SUMMER-HOUSE
CHAPTER I
THE ALARM
D OWEVER many years I may have to live, I am
11 very certain that I can never efface from my
mind any single detail of the one most terrible night
that I ever spent in the whole course of my existence.
I most devoutly wish I might. Even now I sometimes
find myself, of a sudden, vividly awake, at dead of
night, starting out of a profound sleep and fancying I
hear or have just heard a violent ringing at the door-
bell. That happens when I wake. When I am asleep it
is a sound that haunts me in my dreams, and the series
of dreadful things that followed are rehearsed in
whole or in part, sometimes with quite impossible and
fantastic exaggeration added to their already sufficient
terror.
That first violent ringing of the front door-bell
which was to serve, as it were, for the ringing up of
the curtain upon all the tragic drama, must have hap-
pened as nearly as possible at midnight-no one seems
to have noted the precise hour and minute, as, indeed,
[11]


THE ALARM
I knew the voice: it was my Uncle Ralph's. My
room was on the second floor, above his, but both
looked out the same way towards the front of the
house.
I ran to my window, which was widely open then,
and put out my head, expecting to see a flicker of
flame or to catch the smell of smoke, but there was
neither. The night was extraordinarily clear and
peaceful: it was almost as light as day. A full moon
-I think they call it the harvest moon-rode high
in the sky and flooded the whole front of the house
with its light, gloriously.
My aunt's room-Aunt Enid, Uncle Ralph's wife
was directly over the front door and porch; my uncle's,
over which was mine, to one side of it. When he
called out of his window : "Who's there?" and so on,
the figure of a man stepped out of the cover of the
porch, which had hidden him from us, into the open
moonlight. I recognised him in a moment, even with-
out the big black retriever which accompanied him. It
was Livesay, the gamekeeper.
"It's me, sir," I heard the keeper call up, quite
unnecessarily.
“Yes, I see that,” said my uncle. "What then?
What is it you want?"
The man hesitated a moment. Then he said, in a
curious hoarse whisper, as if he would like it to reach
his master's ear only:
"I want you, sir. Come down, sir. For God's sake,
come down quick.”
My uncle muttered something, I did not hear what,
in reply, and drew in his head. I wondered for a mo-
[13]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
ment what I should do-whether or not to go back to
bed. For all I knew, I might not be wanted. In an
affair between my uncle and the keeper a girl might be
only in the way. Still, I might possibly be of use-my
uncle was accustomed to confer with me a good deal,
much more than a man often does with a young girl-
and, besides--I suppose I may as well confess it-my
curiosity was furiously aroused. I very much indeed
wanted to know what could be the reason of this vio-
lent rousing of the household-for surely few of them
could fail to have heard the loud and continued ring-
ing.
I had lost half a minute or so of time, while thus
debating, but I quickly made it up again. I expect a
girl has rather an advantage over a man in the speed
of throwing on the few clothes essential to decent
covering, always excepting any hair-dressing or the
like vanity. At any rate I found myself on the land-
ing outside Uncle Ralph's room just at the moment
at which he was coming out. He did not seem the
least surprised to see me-I suppose he was occupied
with his own thoughts--in any case he accepted my
presence there as the most natural thing. No doubt
he realised that I too must have been aroused by the
ringing. and by the keeper's calling up.
When we got to the hall, after going down the
stairs together, we found there Grainger, the butler,
fumbling away at the bolts and chain of the door. He
seemed to me to take an unconscionable time about
undoing them, one by one, and blundering over each,
although they must have been perfectly familiar to
his hand. He must have done and undone them
[14]


THE ALARM
s unleseuld shor early. The
nightly and daily for many years. But I noticed that
he hardly seemed to be looking at them (of course the
electric light had been switched fully on) but at my
uncle's face all the while. My uncle, however, paid no
attention whatever to the look, if it was of any sig-
nificance, and he showed a wonderful patience, I
thought, at the man's slowness in getting the door
opened. And then I noticed another singular thing
about Grainger's appearance. Uncle was as dishevelled
as I myself, in his hastily snatched up attire, hastily
thrown on, but Grainger was fully dressed, even to his
collar and perfect white tie. He could not, surely,
have been to bed. And yet I knew it was his usual
habit to go to bed early. Uncle always rang and told
him he could shut up and go to bed about half-past
ten, unless there were guests from outside dining with
us, and to-night we had all been particularly quiet and
early. There was no one staying in the house only
my uncle and aunt and myself—and Aunt Enid had
had a headache and had taken a little dinner in her
own room and I had not seen her again.
After an exasperatingly long grinding and groaning
of bolts, as it seemed to me, the door was opened, and
a flood of moonlight came in. Runyer, the retriever,
wagged his tail and sniffed about us.
Still Livesay did not speak for a moment in any ex-
planation of his extraordinary summons. He glanced
uneasily first at me and then at Grainger. He seemed
at a loss to begin on what he came to say. At length
my uncle said testily: "Well, what is it?"
Even then he delayed. He plucked my uncle by
the sleeve, with a familiarity which he would hardly
[15]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
have used in the broad daylight and in ordinary cir-
cumstances. He muttered something into my uncle's
ear, in that same singular, hoarse whisper as before,
only much reduced in volume as if he was using it at
much shorter range. I caught only some scraps of
words of it—"a body"-"the summer-house." My
uncle ejaculated dreadfully once or twice, “My God!
My God!” Then he began moving away, a few quick
steps, with the keeper.
I hardly knew whether I should follow them or not:
they paid no attention to me. Grainger still stood hold-
ing the open door, motionless. He had heard, pre-
sumably, just as much, and as little, of the dialogue
between master and keeper as I.
“Uncle,” I called, moving a step or two after them
irresolutely
He stopped. "Well ?” he said, rather impatiently.
"Shall I come? Will you want me? Or"-as a
thought suddenly struck me—"hadn't I better tell Aunt
Enid you've gone out with Livesay? She's sure to
have been awakened.”
He stood intent a moment, as if he could not make
up his mind how he should answer. I was startled
by his face; it looked so haggard and white in the
moonlight. All at once he said quickly:
"Yes, yes. Do what you like.” Then he turned
again and the two men went rapidly away together
across the gravelled drive, the big black dog at their
heels.
I watched them for a moment and then wheeled
about to meet the grey Scottish eyes set deep beneath
[16]


THE ALARM
the overhanging brows in Grainger's rugged, inscrut-
able face.
He still stood without moving at the door and I
believe he looked after my every step as I went up
out of the hall to my aunt's room. I knocked at the
door. There was no answer. I knocked again, much
louder, but still, to my surprise, no answer came, so
I turned the door handle and went in. The room was
in darkness.
“Aunt Enid,” I called, but there was no reply.
My heart began beating furiously. I was far more
frightened by this unexpected and uncanny silence
than I had been by any of the other strange events of
this most strange night. I fumbled for the switch
by the door and flooded the room with light.
It was empty.
I could hardly believe my own senses. I looked
again at the bed, after searching out with my eyes each
corner and crevice of the room. No one lay there.
What was more, and more perplexing still, no one had
lain in that bed since it was last made. Aunt Enid,
who had gone to bed, as she said, before dinner, with
a bad headache and feeling miserable, had not lain on
her bed at all. She had gone. What could have hap-
pened?
Whatever had happened, it seemed to me that my
own course of immediate action, for the first time that
night since I had been awakened by the pealing of the
bell, was set clearly before me. Whatever had hap-
pened, it seemed to me of the first importance that my
uncle should be told that his wife was not there.
Doubtless, as I imagined, he had gone out, in response
[17]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
that I kalinking of n
to Livesay's appeal, without thinking of looking into
her room. I believed that I knew more or less whither
to go in search of him. Among the scraps that I had
overheard of Livesay's stage-whispering was that word
"the summer-house." That was the first place, at all
events, in which to look for them. Thither I hurried.
search of
(18)


CHAPTER II
THE EMPTY BED
T DID not know what, or why, I feared, but I was
I painfully conscious that my knees were trembling
beneath me and that my legs felt extremely shaky as I :
again went down the stairs under the sinister heads of
the rhinoceros, the lions and several antelopes with
immense pointed horns which Sir Ralph Carlton, my
uncle, had brought home with him from one of his
African big-game shooting expeditions. Grainger, to
my surprise, was still there at the open door, gazing
out into the glorious moonlit night. As I went down I
heard quickly pattering feet behind me and turned
to see Céleste, my aunt's French maid, hurrying
down.
“Ah, Mademoiselle, what is it then?" she asked, as
she overtook me on the last step. "That ringing-
what did it mean? I was just going to Madame to
see if she should want my help, when I saw Mademoi-
selle on the stair. Mademoiselle permits that I ask?"
The woman was panting with the haste both of her
running and of her speech, but I noticed that although
she was not, like Grainger, fully dressed, she had at
least taken the time to make sure that her négligé was
not wholly unbecoming to her. I could imagine her
[19]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
to have snatched more than one passing glance in her
glass.
Somehow an undefinable suspicion flashed across me
that she might know more of the mysterious affair
than her hurried questions seemed to show.
“Céleste," I said shortly, "what is the meaning of
it? Her ladyship is not in her room." .
"Not in her room, mon Dieu, but, Mademoiselle, she
will then have run out, like you, like me, like Mr.
Grainger”-she pointed to the butler's gaunt figure
standing guardian at the door—"when she heard that
so loud ringing of the bell."
"Céleste," I said, "you do not understand. Her
ladyship is not there. I don't know how long it is
since she has gone, but her bed has not been slept in."
I observed her closely. Either the girl had been
thoroughly prepared for what I told her, and acted
surprise well, or else her astonishment was genuine.
"But, not there! Not slept in! Mon Dieu, it is
impossible! Mademoiselle has made mistake. I go
to see.” She turned and flew up the stairs almost
more quickly than she had descended.
I did not wait for her return. On the contrary, I
was well pleased to be rid of her.
“Did you hear what I said to Céleste, Grainger?” I
asked the butler, as I came to him at the door. “Her
ladyship is not in her room. Her bed has not been
slept in."
"Eh," he said grimly and gravely, in his slow Scot-
tish way, without a change of expression in his rugged
face, “that's verra strange, verra strange."
[20]


THE EMPTY BED
"I must tell Sir Ralph," I said. “I am going-I
think I know where he and Livesay went.”
The man made a movement almost as if he had a
thought in his mind of blocking my way through the
door, but if such an idea ever was in his mind he
thought better of it and drew back to let me pass.
"Ah weel,” I heard him say, to himself, rather than i
to me, as I went by him. And then again, “Ah weel.”
I tried to piece together the puzzle of his strange
behaviour, as I hurried across the moonlit space be-
fore the house and dived into the shadow under the
shrubbery trees. If my position in the family had
been other than it was if I had been a mere niece
of the house, and no more I believe that he really
would have stopped my going. But I counted for
rather more than this.
My father had been an elder brother of Uncle
Ralph, and the place such as it was—it was of no
great size or value-together with the title, the baron-
etcy, had been his. My mother had died when I was
quite young, and I was their only child. The con-
sequence was that when I left school and came to live
at home, at Scotney House, my father began by de-
grees to let more and more of the direction of the
household affairs slip into my hands. Of course he
always said what was to be done, if any question arose,
but he liked me to see to the running of all the ordinary
machinery of our domestic life, and if any point came
up for decision on which I did not suppose that he
would take particular interest, I would more often
than not settle it without troubling him about it. So
in some ways, young though I was, my position came
[21]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
to be something not unlike that of the mistress of the
home, and I always gave the orders about dinner and
so on and the rooms that visiting guests were to oc-
cupy and the like.
Then the greatest sorrow of my life came, when I
was not yet quite twenty-one-for I had been too
young when my mother died to feel her loss in any
real and enduring sense. But my father and I had
been rather like elder brother and sister, I think, to
each other, than the ordinary relation between father
and daughter, or perhaps I may say that there was
between us all that was most dear in both relation-
ships. I was older, I know, than my years, partly be-
cause I was an only child and had been brought up so
much with my elders, and he was always so full of
life and fun and so ready to take part in anything that
was going on, that I never realised the difference in
age between us.
And then, coming in from hunting on a cold, wet,
miserable day, he had sat down before the library
fire and gone fast asleep. He awoke feeling chilled
and wretched, the next morning he had a fearful cold,
which grew worse as the day went on. In the evening
he was in bed with a high temperature and in less than
a fortnight, after a three days' fight with death, his
heart gave out, and I was left one of the most unhappy
beings in the world. I could not credit that life would
'ever hold an interest for me again.
Uncle Ralph was a major in a Highland regiment,
though it was on his mother's side only that he was a
Scot, when my father's death made him a baronet and
the owner of our not very opulent or extensive acres.
fire and Ened, the n
the day
[22]


THE EMPTY BED
He had been looking forward to the command of the
regiment, and would far rather have remained a sol-
dier than have returned home to take possession of his
patrimony, but he realised that he owed a duty to the
place and to the tenants. He was devoted, too, to a
country life and to the home of his boyhood, so that he
did not really make any considerable sacrifice. Of
course I had been quite uncertain what was to become
of me, whether I should be given orders to quit, or
what would happen, until Uncle Ralph in the kindest
way in the world implored me to stay on, with him,
directing the house as I had done for my father.
I was only too thankful to accept, both because of
my love of Scotney itself and of Uncle Ralph, and also
because it was not very obvious that there was any-
where else for me to go. And really I exercised rather
more authority under my uncle's reign than under my
father's, because the former came new into his king-
dom, and I was already queening it there.
But of course I had every expectation that my
queenship would be at an end as soon as ever Uncle
Ralph surprised us all by coming home from a hunting
trip in Cashmere with a young bride whom he had
picked up at Simla. Somehow none of us had ever
expected that Uncle Ralph would marry, although it
was so obviously the right thing for him to domjust
as the obviously right thing for me to have done would
have been to be born a boy. The house of Carlton
needed heirs. But Uncle Ralph had always been so
shy with girls—we all had chaffed him about it often
that we could not imagine his plucking up the courage
to propose to anyone. Perhaps, after all, that was not
[23]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
exactly the way in which it did happen in the end;
but, however it was done, about two or three years
before that dreadful night he had arrived with his
young bride, a blonde and most beautiful creature. It
was no wonder that Uncle Ralph had been fascinated.
And then, of course, I prepared, with the best grace
I might, to lay the reins definitely down, but to my sur-
prise, so soon as I made a move to do so, my new
Aunt Enid, as I had to call this girl who was certainly
by years younger than I and by looks many years
younger, begged that things might be allowed to go on
just as they had before. She had no idea how to
manage a house, indeed it would bore her immensely
to have to do so, and Ralph told her that I was such
a wonderful manager-so on, and so forth.
The end was that, as before, I consented to remain.
Of course it would not be quite the same. In a
measure it was a little as if I were the queen dowager
and she the reigning sovereign. She, naturally, sat at
the head of the table and did the honours in every way.
I did the housekeeping department, and really it was an
arrangement which worked a great deal better than it
could have been expected to, because on the one hand
it was perfectly evident that she had been as truthful
as she had been frank in saying that she would have
done the domestic part of the business very badly, and
in the second place it was always the social business
which had bored me. I took a great deal more interest
in trying to run the place with reasonable economy, in
Uncle Ralph's interests, than in receiving his guests.
So that is how it happened that I was accustomed to
exercise far more authority over the household staff
[24]


THE EMPTY BED
than a niece of the husband usually would where there
is a young reigning wife, and that is why even Grain-
ger, who was rather inclined to presume on the fact
that he had been Uncle's servant long before Uncle
came to Scotney, hesitated to carry out what I believed
to be his half-formed intention of dissuading me from
going out in pursuit of Uncle and the keeper.
[25]


CHAPTER III
WHAT WAS FOUND IN THE SUMMER-
HOUSE
IT only shows how immensely quickly our minds
work that I should have been able to think of all
this, and indeed of a great deal more detail incidental to
it, in the very short time that it took me to reach the
summer-house. The door, facing me, stood open as
I went up the short side paths towards it, and even as
I turned into this little by-path I could see a curious
yellow gleam within the summer-house itself strug-
gling with the pure silvery ray of the moon which
flooded everything. A change in the direction of the
gleam enabled me to understand its meaning: it came
from the bull's-eye lantern which the keeper always
had with him when he went his rounds in the coverts.
Already I had become dreadfully aware of the sem-
blance of a white-draped figure lying on the summer-
house floor, of my uncle standing on the one side of
it, while on the other must be Livesay with the lantern.
This I made out, confusedly, and then the retriever
came from the door, at first with a stiffening of its
back and a growl, but then with a tail-wagging greet-
ing as it recognised me for a friend.
And with that I reached the door and, looking in,
seemed to know the worst, at a glance.
[26]


FOUND IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE
On the floor of the summer-house lay the form of
my young aunt, motionless, her face absolutely pallid,
pallid with even an exaggerated deathly whiteness
given to it by those strange and contesting lights.
Even so there was enough, lying as she did, to suggest
all the elements of a tragedy, but plainer evidence
stared up at us from the recumbent body in an irregu-
lar patch of crimson staining the bodice of the dress
around and below the left breast.
I had a stifling feeling as if my heart had leapt up to
my throat and was beating there so as to impede my
speaking. It was with a great effort that I gasped
out the entirely foolish question: "Good Heavens,
Uncle Ralph, what is it? What has happened?"
Small need indeed to ask what had happened, with
that awful evidence of the fact lying there before us-
that crimson witness. As for the further question,
the how of its happening, that was a problem crying
insistently for solution, destined to occupy us for
many a day to come.
I had said the foolish words before the ray of the
bull's-eye lantern, turned full in my face as I stood
in the open doorway, blinded me for a moment. I
think Livesay had made a movement as if to stand
between me and the poor body-as if there was any
additional horror still left for me to know !—but then
perhaps he realised the futility of it, and did nothing,
remaining as before and letting the ray of his lamp
fall across the figure and reveal what it would.
Uncle Ralph did not try to answer my question.
Probably he knew that it meant nothing, came out al-
[27]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
most unawares, and that I should not really expect it
answered. All he said was: “You there, Netty?"
My coming did not seem to surprise him at all. He
was much accustomed to having me at his elbow, to
talk to about affairs of the house and estate. I hope,
and think, that it was a companionship which troubled
him so little that he was hardly aware when I was
there the most ultimate of tests. I looked at his face
and at Livesay's to see whether either of them con-
tained any promise of elucidation of the dreadful
horror, but the same blank and despairing look—that
and no more-was expressed on each.
"I came to tell you, Uncle," I said, in a voice which
I was grateful to find had regained its steadiness, "that
Aunt Enid was not in her room, that her bed had not
been slept in.”
"No," he said absently, and scarcely looking at
me. "No, I suppose not."
The summer-house, hexagonal building of wood,
was lighted on either side of the doorway by a glazed
and latticed window, and moonlight streamed through
that on the more southerly side. The door now open
occupied a considerable part of one of the six sections
of the exterior of the house, so that all was bathed
in the white warmish glare of the moon. The silence,
as neither of the men spoke, grew almost intolerable,
and it seemed as if the dog felt it too, for just at the
moment when it seemed to me as if I must cry out, to
break the tension, a cold wet nose, seeking comfort
and sympathy, was thrust into my hand. I am not
sure that it did not help to steady me more than any
human touch could have done.
[28]


FOUND IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE
“Oh, Uncle Ralph,” I said, "are you sure is it
certain-is she quite ?"
"Yes," he said hopelessly. "Quite! Look at her.”
At the first moment of my coming it had been al-
most more than I could do to obey that simple sug-
gestion: "Look at her.” Look I did, but it was with
momentary glances only, which I quickly withdrew in
horror. I had seen death before, but it was the de-
cent, ordered death of a bedroom, not a violent tragedy
of the open night. But my nerves were growing
steadier each instant and I looked, as he bade me, long
and fixedly, by the beam which Livesay diverted
downward, to help me.
She lay quite peacefully, almost as it might be one
sleeping, on her back, with her face upward to the
light. The small perfect features had never looked
more faultless, the slightly peevish expression which
rather spoilt the almost too tiny mouth had gone; the
golden hair lying in very little disorder made a beauti-
ful frame for the marble-white face. The left-hand
outstretched lay palm upward on the floor, the other
was bent over her body. It was evident that she had
not come out in response to any sudden unexpected
summons. Even in life the excessive neatness and
daintiness of her dress had almost seemed to convey
a tacit reproach to me, who only with the greatest
effort could be at the trouble to take decent care in
regard to such matters. But now, in death, the deli-
cacy of the fine lace edging about the neck and corsage
of the clinging white tea-gown and the attention that
she had evidently given to every detail of her toilette
made a curious contrast and almost a mute protest
[29]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
against the disorderly attire of Uncle Ralph and my-
self. Probably a man would not have felt aware of
it, but to a woman, whose education, I suppose, makes
her more attentive to such things, the incongruity and
horror of the whole scene was intensified by this
daintiness. There was just the one evidence, such
terrible evidence, that she was not resting there quietly
asleep-the stain of outrageous crimson against the
white bosom of the dress.
“You found her som like this?” I asked the keeper,
who did not answer audibly but nodded his head in
assent.
My question to the man seemed to rouse my uncle
out of the fixed brooding into which he had fallen.
“We had better take her up,” he said, in a strained,
hoarse voice. "If you will help me, Livesay, we will
take her to her room.”
I know that there was forming in my sadly strained
mind a dim idea that there was something not quite
right about the proposal even before Livesay put it
clearly into words for me by suggesting : “Beg pardon,
Sir Ralph, but wouldn't it be right that the doctor and
perhaps the police should see—her ladyship?" he hesi-
tated a moment over giving the poor piece of human
clay the title it had worn in life. “She” would be “it,”
or “the body," before many hours were past.
“Yes, Livesay, yes, of course you are right," my
uncle agreed, passing his hand across his brow as if
he would rub away some confusion of the brain. “Yes,
the best way would be if you would go for Dr. Pratt.
Ask him to come here, to the summer-house-he will
know his way—at once, and then go on to Larncombe
[30]


FOUND IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE
(Larncombe was the village constable) and tell him.”
“Yes, Sir Ralph," the man said, in the hushed voice
of reverence which he had used throughout. “I'll
leave the lantern in case in case you should want it,"
he ended feebly, as if realising how very remote was
any possibility that it would be much needed.
My uncle did not say him yea or nay, so the man
set down the lantern on the small iron-legged table
and went out, followed by his dog, leaving us two
watchers of the dead.
[31]


CHAPTER IV
MY AUNT ENID
I MUST now say a few words about this summer-
Thouse which was the scene of our awful vigil, and
about its situation in the grounds.
I suppose it stood at a distance of some three
hundred yards or so from the house. The shrubbery
itself lay to the left of the drive as one looked out from
the front door-a tangle of rhododendrons, laurels and
a variety of shrubs below, shadowed by the foliage of
great trees, in which the rooks nested and cawed, above.
Generally it was a dark and gloomy place, but here
and there were clearer spaces where the sunlight pene-
trated, and in the midst of one of these was the sum-
mer-house. It was approached by a gravelled foot-
path leading away from the sweep of the drive before
the house, and after passing the summer-house this
path led on, still among shrubs and beneath thick
trees, till it came out on the main road at the entrance
of Upper Scotney village. This was indeed the near-
est way from the village to the house, and was used
habitually by those going on foot from one to the
other. The carriage way along the drive made quite
a considerable detour, by comparison.
About halfway between the summer-house and the
[32]


MY AUNT ENID
main house the path branched, and one branch, so to
call it, though it really went on almost in a straight
line, led to the back regions, the servants' part. And
besides these two, which may be regarded as the main
paths, there was yet another branchlet leading to an-
other entrance to the house through a conservatory
which it had been a whim of my Aunt Enid to have
built. I suppose that artistic taste in architecture had
at no time been a strong point with the Carltons. Our
grandfather at all events had contributed some Vic-
torian additions of a rather terrible kind to what had
once been an inoffensive and entirely unpretentious
structure. But it had been left for the latest importa-
tion into the family, my Aunt Enid, to perpetrate the
last and worst atrocity, in the form of this staring
little conservatory. Of beauty of form or harmony
she had no idea at all, but the bright colours of flowers
appealed to her, rather as they might to a child. The
conservatory opened out of her boudoir and so to this
path, which was little more than a track, leading
through the trees until it joined the gravelled way.
The summer-house stood back, some twenty yards
or so, in its clearing, from the main path, but it had its
own short gravelled by-path leading to it at right
angles to the main one, fringed on each side with a
strip of green sward. The space before it was quite
open, but the trees came closely up to it behind.
It was rather a woodlousy and earwiggy little place,
these insects lurking in the many crevices of its
wooden walls and thatched roof. Its furniture was
simple, consisting only of four wicker armchairs in
addition to the iron-legged circular-topped table which
[337


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
I have mentioned, but it was a very pleasant place
wherein to sit and read in the summer time none the
less. The gardeners kept it as clean as it is in nature
of such arbours to be, sweeping it out daily and clean-
ing its windows of cobwebs and the like. The two
windows, one on either side of the door, admitted all
the light which the small space needed. It was a very
favourite resort of mine, because it was just far
enough from the house to make the servants dis-
inclined to come and bother me there about any
domestic matter which was not of more than common
importance.
I thought, as I sat there that night, in silence, with
my uncle, of the many hours of contemplative peace
which I had passed there, and of the utter impossibility
that I could ever spend another in that place with the
like peace of mind. That dread object, still so beauti-
ful, though so dreadful, which had been my young
aunt, lay there, scarcely more silent than its watchers.
I was silent, though I had questions on my lips which
I keenly desired to ask, because I knew Uncle Ralph's
moods well enough to be very sure that he had no in-
clination to have questions put to him now. He never
was a talker. His mind was not very quick or versa-
tile, though his judgment was radically sound in all
matters that engaged his thought. He could act
quickly enough and forcibly if occasion required it,
and as a rider, shot and fisherman, in fact in all the
leisure accomplishments of a country gentleman, he
was in the very first rank, but about most subjects he
much preferred listening to talking.
Now, in the face of this fearful tragedy, he seemed
(34)


MY AUNT ENID
as if he were benumbed. He had drawn up his chair,
and sat as close as might be to the white, crimson-
stained form lying on the bare, boarded floor. I, on
the contrary, had chosen the chair furthest removed
from it, and even that chair I had edged back to the
wall, in an almost involuntary movement which took
me as far from the dead body as possible. So I sat
there, and watched my uncle, who scarcely, as it seemed
to me, took his eyes for a moment from the beautiful
dead face. He hardly stirred a muscle, and the silence
was so extreme that once, when he got up from his
chair and the wicker, relieved of his weight, gave out
its creakings, I almost jumped at the startling change.
I watched, curious to know what he was about to
do. He had been sitting to the right of the body. He
moved, stepping with great care, across to the other
side of it. Then he stooped down and lifted the left
hand, which lay, palm upward, on the floor. I thought
that he was going to lift it to his lips, but instead, when
he had raised it but a very little, he put it down again
quietly and reverently.
God knows what was in his mind as he did the ac-
tion. I doubted much whether he knew himself, and
of a surety I did not. But after he had done this he
went back and sat in the same chair again, almost
precisely in the same attitude as before, gazing down
into the face that he had loved.
He had loved her-no human being who had ever
seen them together for two moments could well have
a doubt of that. For my own part, I may admit at
once that I did not love her. I never had. Bitterly
as I might grieve for the cruel death that had taken
[35]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
one who seemed so peculiarly full of life and of the
enjoyment of life, I could not disguise from myself
that the thought had come into my mind time and
again during the last year or two that it would have
been better with my uncle had he never met her, that
it would be far better for him even now could some
kind fate remove her.
Remove her Fate had, but one hardly could call it
kind, as the white moonlight or the yellow lantern ray
fell on the patch of crimson. I speak without any
personal knowledge of such places, but from all one
hears of society in hill stations in India, Simla is not
the spot of all others to which a wise man who was not
very young would go to choose for himself quite a
young wife. Very surely it was with no such intent
in mind that my Uncle Ralph had gone there. It had
just so happened that, returning from a shooting trip
in Cashmere, Simla lay in his way, so, almost as a
thing of course, he had paid it a visit. He had writ-
ten very little about the visit and we only wondered at
the length to which it ran, because Simla was not
exactly the place which we would have thought held
attractions, apart from its polo, for a man of his
taste. But we had reckoned without Enid Went-
worth.
There happened to Ralph Carlton what does now
and again befall a man who has lived nearly forty
years without any serious feminine influence coming
into his life. It absorbed him. It took complete pos-
session of him. That was the account of it which we
heard at length from acquaintances who were at Simla
at the time, but we did not hear it until the marriage
[36]


MY AUNT ENID
was an accomplished fact. Of course there was no
obvious reason why their wedding should be delayed
- possibly there were many reasons why, once it was
determined on, it was better that it should be hastened.
Uncle Ralph may very well have persuaded himself
that his duty to the estate demanded his return to
England-he as much as said later that this was his
determining motive. But it was more likely than not
that his desperate infatuation was by far the strongest
motive, although he may possibly not have realised it.
And it was not in the least likely that the girl's people
would put any obstacles or delay in the way of her
wedding a man of Uncle Ralph's position and quite
sufficient fortune. It was a far better marriage than
there was the least reason to expect that the daughter
of an Indian Civil Servant would make. It appeared,
moreover, that Enid Wentworth had enjoyed her full
share of the adventures that were likely to befall a
very beautiful and pleasure-loving girl in a society
of that kind. Some of the gossips went so far as to
hint that her people were only too glad to get her safely
married.
At all events the first news that I received of the step
which Uncle Ralph contemplated came in a cablegram
informing me of his engagement, and before I had time
to get his letter, full of more than boyish enthusiasm
over the transcendant beauty and bewitching qualities
of his betrothed, the knot had been tied as irrevocably
as church and law could fasten it.
I do not mean to pretend that the news did not come
to me as something like a blow. I was, I hope, de-
lighted that my dear Uncle Ralph, whom I loved al-
[37]


MY AUNT ENID
speck of dirt or dust could be tolerated or could pos-
sibly rest on her, is not describable. I find myself per-
petually running to French phrases, which I detest,
trying to depict her-she was marvellously, and al-
ways, bien soignée. Even on a wet dirty day, or on
a dry dusty one, she had a faculty of avoiding all the
splashes and all the specks, which filled me with envy
and admiration.
So she was introduced, this beautiful fairly-like
creature, into our solid and perhaps rather sombre
English home, and at first I, watching them, loved to
see the way in which Uncle Ralph's eye followed her
about the room as she came and went, and to note his
loverly ways with her. It struck me, even from the
start, that there was a carelessness in her manner of
response to such little caressing acts of his as I was
allowed to see which did not suggest a return of equal
devotion. It hurt me. I was most thankful to be
able to believe that Uncle Ralph did not notice any lack
of fervency on her part. He was always more than
satisfied with her, always disposed to sing her praise
and commend her actions, and often I was touched by
the way in which he would glance from her to me,
when she arranged a flower prettily or did any trivial
act with her own peculiar grace, or when she made any
particularly daring speech or quip, for she had ac-
quired in India a freedom of man-like language quite
strange to us at Scotney, and would smile, as if taking
me into his confidence and saying, “Was there ever any-
thing so beautiful and so perfect in the world before?”
This is what his look and its accompanying smile
would ask. And at the first I was able to smile back
[39]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
at him, with willing and admiring assent, but by de-
grees, as I learnt to know her better, and began to
learn, particularly, how very little, in that shallow
nature, there was to know, I found myself often at
a loss how to answer, or even to bear, that look, and
often and often I would turn my eyes aside or pretend
absorption in work or in a book, when I knew that it
would be coming. There were moments when I came
near to despising poor Uncle Ralph for his blindness
in not seeing a little more of what the soul, if she had
one, of this most exquisite piece of human porcelain
was composed. But principally it was a most pro-
found pity that I felt for him, mingled with a wonder
whether he really were quite so blind as he seemed, or
whether he wilfully declined to see what was really
obvious.
Just a trace of a look of doubt, of distress, of puzzle-
ment, came, as it seemed to me, now and again, into
those adoring, dog-like eyes of his, following his wife
as she moved—just a little questioning in them, taking
the place of the old glad confidence, as he turned them
from her to me.
Under the consulship of my Aunt Enid, Uncle
Ralph was a good deal more away from Scotney than
in the old days, and a good deal more away than he
cared to be. He was essentially a man of the country,
and of the natural life; she, essentially a woman of
cities and of the artificial. She took him often to
London, which he detested, and to a mode of London
life which he loathed with a special detestation. She
took him to Ciro's where he bored himself nearly to
death while she pirouetted, in the latest fox-trots and
[40]


MY AUNT ENID
cake-walks with all and sundry white-waistcoated
young men. She took him to revues innumerable, to
musical comedies and to Savoy suppers after them.
The one pleasure that they seemed to me to enjoy at all
equally was watching the polo at Hurlingham.
And then, of course, it was only natural and seemly
that the young men with whom she had danced at
Ciro's and had supped at the Savoy should be asked
to stay at Scotney. They were asked, and they came,
and they talked a language together of which Uncle
Ralph could scarcely understand the elements. Aunt
Enid, of their own generation and of quicker aptitudes,
assimilated it wonderfully. She was one of their lot,
and Uncle Ralph was not one of them and was, and
must have felt himself, out of it. They laughed and
talked together, not always about too seemly sub-
jects, all through dinner, and Uncle Ralph, at the head
of his own table, would sit almost silent, still watching
her at times with the spaniel eyes, but sometimes again
with the puzzled look, and with a glance at me as if
tacitly asking my view about it all.
I had my own views, very clearly formed, but I did
not think it would do either of us, nor the general
situation of things, any good were I to impart it to
him. Country neighbours had called, of course, on the
bride, and at first she had charmed them, as she
charmed everybody. But then her obvious boredom
with these highly respectable and, as judged by her
standard, most tiresome and frumpy people, quickly
changed their first impressions. On their subsequent
visits I had to do most of their entertainment, while
[41]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
Aunt Enid chattered with some young man staying in
the house.
What, if any, trouble might have followed I do not
know. Possibly all might have been lived through
and lived down and they might have settled into the
ordinary not very stimulating or satisfactory jog-trot
of double harness—"not love in a cottage, nor luxury
in Park Lane, but just marriage in Onslow Square,”
as has been said; but then Captain Vibart came.
I did not know, as it was not my business to know,
and as I did not want to, what former relations there
may have been between Aunt Enid and him. I only
knew of him as a soldier-friend of Aunt Enid's in
India. He had actually been in Simla at the time
when Uncle Ralph got engaged to her. I had indeed
hardly heard his name mentioned until Aunt Enid an-
nounced quite casually at luncheon one day:
"Willy Vibart (she always spoke of her men friends
by their Christian names) is coming down to-morrow."
There were several people at luncheon. I saw a very
curious expression come into Uncle Ralph's face. All
he said was: “Vibart!”
He said it in a way which, coupled with the look,
told me that he was thinking a great deal more than
he said. I have thought since that Aunt Enid brought
out the topic of the Vibart visit thus, when there were
a lot of people about, so that Uncle should not be able
to raise any objection to it. Besides, if he had an ob-
jection, it must be made quickly, since it was only
on the morrow that the guest was due.
“Yes, Willy Vibart," Aunt Enid said again. "You
met him at Simla you know. Surely you remember."
[42]


MY AUNT ENID
"Oh yes," Uncle Ralph answered, with a laugh
which he cut short. “I remember meeting him quite
well.”
I do not know whether any more was said about it
between them afterwards. That, at all events, is all
that passed at the time, and the next day Captain Vi-
bart duly arrived.
I expect that he was a type of the kind of man that
exercises a tremendous fascination over women of a
certain nature. It is a type which I find rather re-
pellent. He was a broad, blonde, well-made man, with
good features. He was beginning already to go bald
on the top of the head. He had a very long, golden
moustache. I expect he was proud of his moustache,
for he was always playing with it and twisting it
about with his manicured fingers. He was always
quite agreeable and pleasant, and had Aunt Enid been
with him just as she was with all the other men
friends that she liked to have about her I do not sup-
pose I should have taken particular notice of him for
good or ill, but emphatically Aunt Enid was not the
same with him as with the rest. She seemed quite
altered when he was there.
To me, it was most curious to see her. It reminded
me of stories one has read of certain people having
a peculiar power over dangerous animals, as of a lion-
tamer dominating some fierce and beautiful feline
thing. For certainly I had always realised a possibil-
ity of fierce wilfulness underlying the vanity and ve-
neer of my lovely aunt, and yet more certainly there
was much that was very feline about her. There was a
singular and absolute reversal of her rôle here, as com-
[43]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
pared with her attitude towards Uncle Ralph. Where-
as with him, it was he that followed her with the dog-
like gaze, in the case of this other man it was she who
was, more or less covertly perhaps, watching him all
the time, hardly taking her eyes off him while he was
in the room, and adopting, possibly quite unawares,
his phrases and terms of speech.
He on the contrary appeared-perhaps he made it
his pose to be rather rudely indifferent to her, smiling
at her in an amused way, as if she were scarcely to be
taken seriously, and this indifference, instead of anger-
ing her, seemed to subjugate her only the more. All
that by-play, however, I could have borne with
patience, and might have been merely amused at it,
but what really did cause me most furious internal
anger was his attitude towards Uncle Ralph. It was
impossible to say that he was absolutely discourteous
to Uncle, or forgetful of his relation towards him as
guest to host, but there was in his attitude an air of
smiling tolerance, almost of patronage, the air of one
who deemed himself entirely superior, which made me
boil inwardly with rage. He had the air of suffering
a fool gladly, with a Christian resignation, which was
unendurable.
However this, his first visit, passed without any un-
toward incident. There was nothing, so far as I know,
to which Uncle Ralph could possibly take offence. So
he came again. It apeared that his regiment had re-
turned for Home Service, or else that he had ex-
changed into a Home Battalion-I forget which. He
came three times, in all, in a little more than a year,
and each time the same story repeated itself. Aunt
144]


MY AUNT ENID
Enid was absorbed by him from the moment of his
coming until his going, and he seemed always smil-
ingly careless and almost indifferent. I gathered too
that she saw him more than once in London, and
thought that maybe they met far more often than she
said. I did not then know, but I suspected that it
was so.
The last time that he came to Scotney was on a
Saturday, the Saturday of the week preceding that in
which the tragedy happened. There were one or two
others here for the week-end, but by the Tuesday all
except Captain Vibart left. He stayed on, and showed
no immediate signs of going. How long he was to
stay had been arranged, I presume, between him and
Aunt Enid, but neither Uncle Ralph nor I was told.
"When the deuce d'you think the fellow's going?”
Uncle had said to me on the Wednesday, and I could
give him no information. He had asked in a kind of
humourous exasperation. We had not said much to
each other about Captain Vibart. I expect we both
felt he was a subject best left undiscussed. But I think
each of us understood tolerably well what the views
of the other about that gentleman were, and that they
had much in common.
Then something happened, on the afternoon of the
next day, the Thursday, which changed my Uncle's
mood most completely from the humourously exasper-
ated. Aunt Enid and Captain Vibart had been out
walking together as usual, and whether Uncle had
seen or had overheard something which they had not
intended him to see or hear, I do not know. All I do
know is that he came in at the front door when I hap-
[45]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
pened to be in the hall, walking more quickly, and, as it
seemed to me, with heavier steps, than his wont. His
face was downcast, frowning, and he passed me with-
out a word, which was a most unusual thing for him
to do. I hardly know whether he as much as noticed
that I was there. He went on into the library.
At dinner that night the atmosphere seemed very
highly charged with electricity. I do not think that
Uncle Ralph spoke more than twice all through the
meal, and then it was to Grainger, and on each occasion
to find fault with him for some trivial or imaginary
misdemeanour. Aunt Enid too was abnormally silent,
and when she did speak it was in a feverishly quick
way, with a laugh higher pitched than usual. Little
though I liked her I must admit that she had some self-
control, and I think it needed a considerable exercise
of that useful quality to save her from hysterics. Cap-
tain Vibart hardly noticed these little sallies, though
they were generally addressed to him. He had none
of his usual smiling and careless air with which to
greet them. Once or twice I noticed quite a different
expression on his face from any that I had seen it
wear before-a hard cruel glint in his eyes. And
what struck me as curious was that they had this glint
in them almost as markedly when he looked at Aunt
Enid as when he looked at Uncle. He had none of it
when he was so good as to favour me, to whom he was
completely indifferent, with a glance, and as a matter
of fact the greater part of the very little conversation
that passed during the whole of that most disagreeable
dinner was between him and me, and on topics which
had not the faintest interest for either of us.
[46]


MY AUNT ENID
The meal came to an end somehow and Aunt Enid
and I left the men to themselves. She did not say a
word when we went into the drawing-room, but sat
down in her usual chair and made pretence of reading
a book whose pages she quite forgot to turn. Pres-
ently she got up, still without a word, and went
straight out of the room-I really think that she could
not trust herself to speak. She banged the door be-
hind her and I did not see her any more that night.
I sat there alone, for half an hour or more, after
she had gone and still the two men did not come from
the dining-room. I was on the point of giving them
up and going to my room, when they came. They
were both very pale, but perfectly composed. My
uncle held the door open, with a studious politeness,
for Captain Vibart, and said, in a strained compressed
way:
"Oh, is Enid not here? Has she gone to bed?”
I said that I believed she had, and then he went on,
making conversation to me about nothing at all, just
as unlike his usual self as possible, for uncle and I had
been long at that delightful stage of friendliness in
which we could be together without feeling any neces-
sity to talk unless we had something that we thought
worth the saying. Captain Vibart did not seem to
think that he was called on to make any further ef-
forts. He looked at a book or two, held open the
door for me, saying “Good-night” when I left the room
and I went upstairs sincerely grateful that the miser-
able evening was over.
Aunt Enid did not come down to breakfast the next
morning, and much the same comedy between myself
[47]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
and the two men had to be played out as on the night
before. Uncle Ralph began to show himself to me
in something of a new light, making phrases, as a
diplomatist might, putting an obvious restraint on
himself and acting quite an unreal rôle. I should not
have believed him capable of it. Captain Vibart was
again singularly silent..
I began to wonder, as I went to see about some
household business, how long life was to continue in
this delightful manner, when I saw, looking from the
window, the station car coming round to the door.
I was surprised, for I was generally informed of any
comings or goings, but I was immensely relieved when
I passed through the hall to find luggage, which I
knew must belong to Captain Vibart, being brought
through and placed on the car. So he was going, and
Uncle Ralph had not told me; therefore I must send
word to the cook that there would be one less at
luncheon and dinner than I had told her. That was
the first, the purely domestic, thought that came to
my mind. The second, and the more lasting, was one
of supreme thankfulness that he was going.
He said “Good-bye” to me very pleasantly. He
thanked Uncle Ralph, under Grainger's observant eye,
for his "pleasant visit,” to which Uncle Ralph said
nothing. The two men just touched hands-it could
not be called a shake-and he went.
He went; but his going did not by any means dispel
all the tension that his visit had created. What had
passed between Uncle Ralph and Aunt Enid I did not
know, but he, in his new rôle of polished diplomatist,
was almost painfully courteous in the few words which
[48]


MY AUNT ENID
were all that I heard him address to her either on the
Thursday evening or the following day.
She was far less unlike her normal self. The little
vertical furrow which came now and then between
her perfect brows was a trifle accentuated. She was
pale, and the slightly petulant expression which was
the one fault of her beautiful little mouth was rather
emphasised by a drawing down of the corners. The
look of wilfulness was more marked. But otherwise
there was no change in her. During those hours she
never once, so far as I know, said a word to Uncle
Ralph on her own initiative.
Again, just as before Captain Vibart's going, I was
asking myself how long this miserable state of things
was to endure. The answer began with that violent
ringing of the house door bell by Livesay, the keeper,
at midnight on the Friday when the harvest moon was
in the sky.
[49]


CHAPTER V
THE VIGIL IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE
LL these miserable happenings, with many more
unrecorded details, kept enacting themselves
over and over again in my brain as I sat in the sum-
mer-house with my uncle, during our weary vigil.
The time no doubt was much shorter than it seemed
before we heard steps quickly coming, from the direc-
tion of the village, along the shrubbery path. It was
the doctor on whom Livesay had called to tell him of
the tragedy; and much I regretted, in these terrible
circumstances, that it was not our old friend Dr. Rum-
ford, who had brought two generations of Carltons,
counting myself for one, into the world, besides the
greater part of the present population of the village
of Upper Scotney. But Dr. Rumford had retired
from his practice lately, having grown, to tell the
truth, a little old for his job and being left a little
in a backwater. by the current of modern medical
science. The practice had been bought by a man of a
very different stamp, a young fellow, Dr. Pratt by
name, of rather bustling-perhaps he could have
called them "hustling"-ways, reputed to be excep-
tionally clever, and really kind and considerate, espe-
cially to the poor people in their illness. But he was,
[50]


THE VIGIL IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE
as my uncle said, "a bit of a bounder, or at least on
the boundary line." I think there is little doubt that
he was clever, but I am quite sure that the person who
had the least doubt on that question was Dr. Pratt
himself. Very likely it is a good point about a doctor
that he should have confidence in his own ability, and
certainly it was a good point not lacking to this new
young doctor at Scotney. He believed in himself and
he seemed to think it a good thing to let it be known
that he so believed. Perhaps he was right. It is an
age of advertisement, when people take others a good
deal at their own valuation, and Dr. Pratt, very much
a child of his age, asked no better of them than this.
If they accepted him at his own rating they would not
place him very low in the ranks of his profession.
He was a kindly young man, however, as I have said,
and not without sympathy. I could see that he was
moved now with real pity for my uncle, and never had
I liked him so well as I did during that brief and try-
ing consultation, if that is the right word for it, in the
summer-house.
He came in, blocking out the moonlight as he stood
in the doorway, and just nodded, as he looked at the
white form on the floor, as much as to say it was only
what he had been told that he would find. He did not
attempt to say a word of his sympathy or sorrow either
to Uncle Ralph or to myself, but he pressed my hand
hard, in order, as I know, to convey that he did feel for
us, and I do not doubt that he expressed himself in the
same tacit way in his handshake with my uncle.
Without a word he took the keeper's lantern from
the table and knelt down beside the body, letting the
[51]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
light from the bull's-eye stream on the face. Only a
moment's examination sufficed him to solve the first
question which he had to answer. He answered it
sufficiently by a shake of his head as he looked up at
uncle.
Then uncle spoke, and the hollowness of his voice
gave me a start. "No use of course?"
“I can be of no use, no," Dr. Pratt said. “She is
long past my help.”
Uncle Ralph nodded. “Of course," he agreed, "it
was only a matter of form, sending for you. It had
to be."
"Of course, of course," the doctor assented. “And,
this is also a matter of form-what I have to do now.
I think, if I were you, I should turn aside for a minute
or two: it might be too painful for you—it is my duty
to ascertain precisely the manner of death—the evi-
dence will be expected of me-you understand?".
"Oh yes, I understand perfectly," my uncle said,
with resignation, but whether he acted on the doctor's
thoughtful suggestion I had no means of knowing, for
to this added horror I shut my own eyes firmly.
I presume that his examination was concluded about
the same time that voices and the sound of steps ap-
proaching up the path announced the arrival of Live-
say with the constable. Larncombe, the one and only
policeman of Upper Scotney, was a good fellow in
his way and probably a useful and very typical mem-
ber of his calling, but he was the son of agricultural
labourers and his professional training had not in-
cluded a course of instruction in tact. He drew him-
self up stiffly, like a soldier at attention, in the door
[52]


THE VIGIL IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE
of the summer-house and said in a deep official voice:
"Very sorry to 'ear of this tragic occurence, Sir
Ralph."
It was his cue, I thought, to model himself on the
police officials described in the newspaper reports of
tragedies.
He seemed much taken aback by the fact that my
uncle did not answer him. This was not playing the
game in accord with his conception of it. There fol-
lowed an awkward moment of silence, which was re-
lieved by the doctor's sugestion: "Well, I have done
my part, Larncombe, in this painful business. It is
for you now to do yours.”
"Thank you, Dr. Pratt," said the constable, "I know
my duty”—which was quite untrue. His sense of of-
fended dignity immediately moved him to a show of
official activity and he produced from his person an
enormous pocket-book and a stub of pencil which he
moistened with his tongue, and setting the lantern so
that it should fall on the book's page began a laborious
entry.
"Corpse discovered," he read slowly, giving us the
benefit of each word as he wrote it down, "by George
Livesay, gamekeeper-at what hour precisely ?” he de-
manded of the keeper.
"I should say, as near as I could judge, a quarter to
twelve."
"Eleven forty-five," Larncombe corrected severely,
noting it down. “And nothing had been disturbed
from the time of the discovery of the corpse until the
police appeared upon the scene?” Whatever his limita-
tions Larncombe evidently had a retentive memory.
[53]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
He had all the language of the police court report to
the very letter.
"I didn't make to touch her ladyship when I seed as
she was dead, if that's what you mean, Joe Larn-
combe," said the keeper dubiously. “I just went
right up to the house and told Sir Ralph.”
For a minute or two the stubby pencil travelled over
the pocket-book's page, and then the constable's re-
quest for information addressed itself to Uncle Ralph
and to me, in order to elicit how we had received the
news. There is no need to repeat, with all the weary-
ing unimportant details which Larncombe's questioning
extracted, a story of which all the points that matter
have been given to the reader already. Several pages
of the book had been filled and the lead stub had many
times been refreshed with moisture before the con-
stable, in his bucolic way, moved on to a new chapter:
"And now will you be good enough to explain, Mr.
Livesay, how it was as you happened to be in the
neighbourhood of the summer-house, and to discover
the corpse, as stated ?"
"Sir Ralph knows all about that. I told him al-
ready as we came along down here," was Livesay's
answer.
"That is all very well, Mr. Livesay," Larncombe
said severely. "You have told Sir Ralph. What I
am asking of you now, as is my duty, me being a police
constable, is as you should inform the Law—that is,
Me." It is impossible to do justice to the immense
dignity with which Larncombe here invested the per-
sonal pronoun unless it be written with a capital
initial.
[54]


THE VIGIL IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE
"And I told you too, Joe Larncombe-only just
now, as we come along from the village. You know
very well as I did.”
"And you know very well, Mr. Livesay, as you told
me when under the trees, in the shade like, and me not
having my note-book in my hand.”
"Well, you surely haven't forgotten," Livesay be-
gan, protesting, but at this point Uncle Ralph broke
in with an exclamation which showed how much in the
way of nerve strain it was costing him to endure the
prolonged torture. It was as if on the snapping or
release of some tensely held spring in him that he
burst out with :
“Oh, for God's sake let him ask his questions in his
own way, and get done with it, Livesay."
"Very good, Sir Ralph,” said Livesay, obediently,
subduing, as many a wise man has been constrained
to do before him, his irritation at the tortoise-like
methods of the law.
Uncle's exclamation, though addressed to Livesay,
who was his own servant, was not without its effect
on the other also, and he seemed to make such en-
deavours as his intelligence permitted him to expedite
his enquiry.
"I will put it to you this way, Mr. Livesay," he
said. “Didn't you say as you was in the shrubbery
with your dog because you had reason to suspect as a
certain person had been in there a-laying his snares
for the rabbits?”
"I didn't suspect-I knowed,” the keeper replied
with some heat. “Didn't I find the snares? Three
or four of them?”
[55]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
“That's so, Mr. Livesay. That's the way as the
law puts it-reason to suspect.” The stubby pencil
went to work again while the keeper, though saying
no articulate word, snorted in a manner which sug-
gested no profound respect for the law.
"And what did you see in the shrubbery, Mr. Live-
say?"
"I saw Jim Heasden," said the keeper shortly.
“And where did you see Jim Heasden?” was the
next question, when the fact of that person's appari-
tion had been noted.
"He came out from the summer-house," said Live-
say. “Least-ways,” he corrected himself, almost as if
in reply to a movement and a half-uttered ejaculation
of my uncle, “least-ways, I should not like to say as
it was from the summer-house itself as I seed him
come. I seed him come from the path which leads
down to the summer-house, the little short path, out
of the main path like."
"The Law," said Larncombe very impressively, in
the pauses of noting down the heads of this reply, "is
most particular as witnesses should be most particular
in witnessing to the particulars."
Apparently Livesay did not think it necessary to
reply to the caution.
"And you give it as your opinion then, Mr. Live-
say," asked the constable, "as it was Jim Heasden as
come away from the summer-house after murdering
her ladyship?"
At this extremely leading question, the doctor could
not restrain himself from exclaiming "Oh come, come
Larncombe," but the keeper himself forestalled the
[56]


THE VIGIL IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE
exception which the doctor no doubt was about to take
to the question, by pronouncing with decision: “I ain't
going to give it as my opinion as anybody had any-
thing to do at all with the murder. I don't know
nothing about that. Murder there has been, and that's
a fact, but as to who done it I know no more than the
babe unborn. I know only as I see Jim Heasden come
as I've told you, and I chased him in and out among
the bushes, and then I lost him, and then I looked in at
the summer-house, in case he was hiding there, and
then I seed her ladyship. And that's all.”
"I am to understand then, Mr. Livesay," Larncombe
observed, "as you decline to give any further informa-
tion.”
"Decline!" retorted the keeper indignantly. "I
don't decline to give nothing. I've give all I have to
give, and I can't give no more, can I now?”
"Doctor's evidence,” said the constable phlegmat-
ically, introducing a new heading and beginning a
new page in the note-book, without noticing the keep-
er's wrath.
"Death probably instantaneous-caused by some
sharp weapon, probably knife or dagger. Take that
down, and that's all I have to give you—for the mo-
ment at all events—by the way of doctor's evidence.
And now, Larncombe," Dr. Pratt added, "you must
realise that all this must be intensely painful to Sir
Ralph, to say nothing of Miss Carlton. Surely you
have asked questions enough, or the rest can be asked
somewhere else than in their presence.”
"I know my duty, Dr. Pratt," said the constable,
repeating that highly improbable statement with the
[57]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
same ponderous dignity as before, "and I believe that
it is now done.” He closed the note-book with an air
of as much solemnity as if it had been the book of
doom, and, as he spoke, re-adjusted its elastic band.
“It is my duty to inform you, Sir Ralph,” he added
pompously, “that nothing must be touched in or about
the summer-house, nor the body be moved in any way
until my report is made to a higher official.”
It was more than my Uncle Ralph could bear.
"D’you mean to say," he exclaimed, “that I am not
at liberty to take her back and lay her on her own bed?
The thing is monstrous. What good is it that the poor
body should still lie here?"
The doctor had to reason with Uncle a little, per-
suading him that in this the ridiculous Dogberry of
the Watch was probably right. And at least, he
argued, what harm could there be—how could the poor
clay lie better than in this peaceful house in the woods?
That was the sum of his argument, and my uncle,
despite himself, had to concede its force.
"Then if she is to lie here,” he said, at length as-
senting, "I shall sit here beside her. You do not wish
to order me away, I suppose?” he demanded of the
constable.
"Certainly not, Sir Ralph," the man answered. "I
have only to do my duty,” he added, a shade less
pompously.
I suppose Uncle Ralph had sat in the chair at the
bench of magistrates a score of times and had ordered
Larncombe to do his bidding, and it is possible that
the policeman may have felt a little secret pleasure in
something like a reversal of the rôles.
bench of magists his bidding, and secret pleasure
[58]


THE VIGIL IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE
I prayed Uncle that he would let me share his watch
with him, but this he would not consent to. I was so
shivering with cold and misery that I hardly knew
what I did and I was grateful to the doctor when he
said that he would take me back to the house. He told
Uncle that he would bring him, on his retum journey,
an overcoat and other wraps.
We talked as we walked together the two hundred
or so yards to the house, of several notable points
which the man who “knew his duty" had omitted to
take note of. In the first place, it was morally certain
that robbery could not have been the motive of the fell
deed, for my Aunt Enid's many rings were on her
fingers still and a row of valuable pearls, which she
always wore, was around her neck.
"And Livesay tells me," said the doctor, “though
that ass Larncombe never though of enquiring into
that fairly obvious point, that though he looked in and
around the summer-house, as well as he could by the
light of his bull's-eye, he could see nothing of any
knife or dagger with which the wound might have
been made."
“If they were to find that and identify it, of course
it would bring them very near the murderer," I said.
"Larncombe has made up his mind that it is Jim
Heasden who did it, and Jim's pretty well blackguard
enough for anything. Still, unless he did it for rob-
bery one hardly sees the motive. Did Lady Carlton
ever have any words with him at any time?”
“Once she caught him trespassing and gave it to
him for it, I know. Probably he was setting snares
[59]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
for rabbits then. But that would hardly account for
such a deed as this."
"Until we find the knife," said the doctor, “I agree
that we are bound to be in the dark," and with that
we arrived at the house.
Grainger was at the door ready to admit us, and
from the sound of certain shutting of distant doors
in the house, I gathered that the domestic staff had
been thoroughly awakened and was prepared to use
all its ears to gather any news that it could pick up.
The doctor supplemented the warm clothing which he
took out to Uncle with a large flask of brandy, and
left me, bidding me go to bed and to sleep.
I could not help thinking it an ironical suggestion.
Sleep in my violently perturbed state of mind ap-
peared an absolute impossibility. I had a special cause
of perturbation, of which I had told no one. When
Uncle was being questioned by Larncombe in the sum-
mer-house he had distinctly stated that he had not
gone outside the doors of Scotney House that night,
after the shutters were shut, until he went at the
summons of Livesay. Now it so happened that just
as I had put out my light, after reading for a while in
bed, I had looked out of the window, attracted by the
brilliance of the moonlight, and there I had seen, as
it seemed to me quite distinctly and unmistakably,
Uncle Ralph going across the gravelled sweep before
the house. I could not be sure, but it seemed to me
just as if he had gone up the shrubbery path. I was
certain, at all events, that he vanished into the shade
of the big trees in that direction.
And yet, in the face of that, he had told the con-
[60]


THE VIGIL IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE
stable most directly, and without hesitation, that he
had not quitted the house. It was beyond everything
mysterious. Then I tried to put this fact together
with the singular condition of full dress in which
Grainger, the butler, had appeared at midnight to
answer the house-door bell, but could see no link of
connection between the two.
With my mind in such agitation it appeared to me,
as I got into bed, almost useless to attempt to sleep,
but nature knew a great deal better, and from the
moment that I put my wearied head on the pillow
until broad daylight on the following morning I slept
the sleep of the just and the untroubled.
[61]


CHAPTER VI
SERGEANT CRISP
row up to this point in the tragedy I have been
able to tell it as I learnt of it at first-hand, have
been retailing what I saw or heard directly. The
greater part of what has to follow I believe I shall be
able to tell in the same way, of my personal experience.
But in part I know that this will be impossible, and
therefore I will ask the reader to understand, when I
write of something which it is obvious that I could
not know in this personal and first-hand manner, that
I am doing my best to reproduce events and conversa-
tion from what I learnt from this person or the other.
Larncombe the constable must have spent a consid-
erable portion of the night, after leaving the summer-
house, in telephonic communication with higher po-
lice authorities. It was said in the village that he was
talking all night with Scotland Yard. However that
may be, it is certain that the early train on the follow-
ing Saturday morning brought to Scotney, a little
person, who was said to be one of the most famous
detectives in all London, a compound of M. Dupin,
Sergeant Cuff, M. Lecoq, Sherlock Holmes, and all
the famous detectives of fiction. He, too, was a Ser-
geant-Sergeant Crisp. I thought when I first saw
[62]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
muscular adjustment which was necessary for his pur-
pose. In sitting he was, if possible, yet more rigid.
I expect it was for the reason that he hardly ever
moved in them, that his pepper and salt clothes ap-
peared to fit him more closely and more creaselessly
than any suit I ever saw on any other man.
But the muscles which, above all, he was remark-
able in not exercising, were those which most people
use continually to close their eyes. I suppose that
this little man did sometimes sleep and did sometimes
let the lids down over his eyes in that movement which
we call a wink, but assuredly they were the most un-
winking pair of optics that I ever saw. They were quite
small eyes, and light in colour, the irises of a peculiarly
light grey, but once I had become conscious of their
peculiarity they affected me more than the most boldly
staring or fiercely frowning eyes I have ever encoun-
tered. Really he was in some ways quite a terrible
little man: he was so utterly inhuman. And yet,
though I began by despising him and went on to being
quite in terror of him, I ended with becoming really
attached to him. I grew to learn that somewhere,
deeply hidden, he had a quite unexpected heart. His
appearance gave no promise of it. One would have
thought that the brain, the intellect only, moved, so
far as it did move, this curiously mechanical little
frame, but it was not so. The little man could feel.
Really, au fond, he was quite astonishingly human.
So Sergeant Crisp, somewhat as I have endeavoured
to describe him, arrived and introduced himself and
for a day or two was in and out of the house so con-
stantly that he almost became one of ourselves.
[64]


; THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
was sure to be flying about the neighbourhood, and the
village people and others would be flocking, with the
morbid curiosity which is so very human, to see all
that was to be seen, even if it were only the very ordi-
nary background and scenery of the wretched drama.
"This is Sergeant Crisp, Miss, of the London De-
tective Force," said Larncombe, in his big booming
voice, by way of introduction. I said, “How d'you
do?” Sergeant Crisp said nothing, but bowed and
stood with an uncanny stillness of body and probably,
had I been able to perceive it, an uncanny activity of
mind. The daylight made the scene if possible more
dreadful than before. It revealed all the deathly pal-
lor of the face, and hinted at the rigidity of the muscles
of the poor body stretched on the bare boards. The
pearls on the neck and the rings on the fingers looked
terribly out of the picture. The stain on the left
breast, which had seemed crimson in the blend of light
given by the moon and by the lantern in the night,
had now, by day, and perhaps somewhat by its own
real change of colour, taken on a dark brown look
which made it more dreadful than ever. The fact that
towards morning Livesay's bull's-eye must have ex-
hausted its oil and that the light had gone out with a
very sickening smell helped to give the last element of
misery and sordidness.
"What has been moved since you saw the body
first?” the Sergeant asked Larncombe.
"Nothing, nothing whatever," Larncombe replied
with loud confidence. “I told Sir Ralph, as my duty
was "
Sergeant Crisp, in his gentle little voice, interrupted
[68]


SERGEANT CRISP
the constable, without the slightest ceremony, in the
middle of his protestation:
"Do you mean that Sir Ralph has been sitting here
all night, and has not moved any of the chairs, or
anything?”
“Oh, as to the chairs, I don't know as I noticed— ”.
"No," the Sergeant said, interrupting the full cur-
rent of speech just as before, "you didn't notice.”
Larncombe appeared to feel that he was called upon
to justify himself in some degree. He began again
to repeat that he had told Sir Ralph, as his duty was,
that nothing should be touched. Sergeant Crisp did
not seem as if he was aware that any one was speak-
ing. He stood perfectly still. He had hardly crossed
the doorway. I could see, in spite of his stillness of
body, that his pale eyes were perpetually moving,
looking to this side and to that, resting awhile on
the body lying on the floor, again penetrating into
each corner of the small arbour, looking first at one
window and then at the other. He slightly lifted his
head and the up-turn of his grey eyes told me that he
was making a study of the thatched roof. About the
time that the energy of the constable's booming had
run itself down into silence the grey eyes came to
meet mine, and they met them and held them with
that extraordinary unwinking steadiness which I have
mentioned before. What would happen if two Ser-
geant Crisps (if he had a double) were to meet and
look at each other I cannot think. I suppose they
would go on looking till it was dark or till something
came between them. I, at least, could not go on meet-
[69]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
ing the gaze of those apparently quite uninterested
cold grey eyes. I had to turn mine aside very soon.
When I looked again, the eyes were still on me, and
this happened yet a third time. Just as I began to
feel that I must call out or throw something at him
if he continued to fix me, he released me by looking
away. I had an idea that he must have extracted all
from me that I could possibly reveal to him and that
he had no need to ask me any question. In this re-
spect it was an idea very far from the truth, but it
was correct so far, that by this study he had already
appraised me and had made his mind up in regard to
the questions that he might usefully put to me. So
much as that he himself told me afterwards, and it
was a great deal for him to say. What he did say
after that first inspecting of me, was not to me but
to Larncombe, nor was it in any way in answer to
what the constable had been asseverating: “Go," he
said, “and find Mr. Livesay and bring him here."
It struck me that there was a singular absence of
any such garnishing phrases as "please" or as “ask
Mr. Livesay if he will kindly,” etc. This very quiet
little man spoke like the centurion of Scripture and
with equal confidence that his command would be
obeyed.
I imagine that the sending for Mr. Livesay achieved
two ends at once—that for which it was most obvi-
ously designed, and also our temporary freedom from
Larncombe and his pomposity. I was rather afraid
that when we were alone the little man might ad-
dress me in his military, Roman fashion, but he was,
[70]


SERGEANT CRISP
on the contrary, quite as courteous as his expression-
less manner permitted.
“Will you answer me a few questions, Miss ?” he
asked, and, of course, I said that I would tell all that
I possibly could.
He began by asking me how my attention had first
been called to the tragedy, and I told him in sub-
stance what I have already written down about the
violent peal at the bell, and Livesay's call up to my
uncle at the window. I hesitated a moment then,
doubtful whether I should say anything about having
seen Uncle go out earlier. I decided immediately in
my own mind that I would say nothing about it.
Uncle Ralph must surely have some excellent reason,
which he would tell me all in good time, for denying
that he had been out. It was not for me to know
better.
That is rather how I argued it out to myself, and
I am sure that the argument did not take more than
the eighth of a second, but I am equally certain that
the little man was aware of that eighth of a second's
hesitation and registered it on his own mental record.
I did tell him, however, about Grainger's being fully
dressed, and he asked me a very funny question upon
that: “Did you notice whether his tie was tied the
same as it was at dinner?”
Of course I had not noticed, and of course I told
him so, but the very idea that it was possible for him
to ask the question, possible for him to think it a pos-
sibility that I might have taken note of such a thing,
gave me a momentary and almost terrifying insight
into the power and the habit of observation of the
[71]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
man himself. For a full minute after this he did not
ask me another question, and from his silence I guessed
that this figure of Grainger in full dress appeared to
him significant, and that he was trying to think out
what its significance could be. Then he put yet an-
other question, more or less to the same point: "Did
you notice, Miss Carlton, whether the butler's shoes
looked as if he had been out?”
Again I had to shake my head. I began to feel
like a child under examination for general intelligence,
and like a child who was acquitting itself badly and
getting bad marks.
"You thought it funny," he observed then, "when
I asked you whether Mr. Grainger's tie was just as it
was when he waited at dinner." (How had he known
I thought it funny-I had not told him so?) "I will
ask you a question now that I think you will be able
to answer: Is Lady Carlton now"-he pointed to
the body on the floor-"dressed as she was when you
last saw her?"
I was on surer ground here, as he had foreseen.
“Yes,” I said, "she is.”
"And that would be at what hour-that you last
saw her alive?"
"About half-past seven.”
“And at that time she went to her room?"
“Yes."
"You and Sir Ralph, your uncle, dined alone?"
“Yes.”
"Lady Carlton was unwell? Did you think it was
serious ?”
[72]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
looks now and by the way it looked when you last
saw her?”
It was rather dreadful, having to make the inspec-
tion which he suggested of the coiffure of this poor
cold clay and compare it with what I remembered of
Aunt Enid in her vivid and lovely health.
“So far as I can judge,” I said, “_ of course it
is not possible to be certain her hair has not been
done again. It is much as it was when I saw it last.”
"So that we arrive at the probability," he com-
mented, "that the poor lady did not lie down, and we
may suppose, too, that she was not very gravely in-
disposed.”
I was interested, and a little flattered, at his think-
ing me worthy of being admitted to his reasoning proc-
esses. It is quite likely that it was his intention to
please me and thus engage my help, for his next ques-
tion touched more delicate ground and he certainly
guessed that I might be reluctant to answer it quite
freely:
"Is it possible that her ladyship's trouble--the reason
why she retired and did not care to dine downstairs-
was of the mind rather than of the body? There
are times when we are wearied and upset and one
would be alone, to straighten out the thoughts and to
rest the nerves."
The little man was becoming quite eloquent.
"It may have been something like that," I said.
Then he exploded at me, without notice, the ques-
tion to which all this had no doubt been leading up.
"Of course Sir Ralph and her ladyship were al-
ways on perfectly affectionate terms?”
[74]


SERGEANT CRISP
I should have been disposed to say that even before
this, and during the whole of his interrogating, the
little man had been observing me with the utmost pos-
sible closeness, but as he put this important question
the piercing quality of his eye seemed suddenly to be
intensified many degrees. It may have been only my
fancy that suggested this to me, or it may be that he
really did stare a little more intently. Please remem-
ber, too, that my nerve had been strained by all that
I had gone through and was still enduring. However
it was, I felt that I could bear it no longer. I jumped
up from my chair and said:
"Sergeant Crisp—I told you that I would answer
you any questions you liked, and I am perfectly will-
ing to do so, but I am not going to I cannot—sit
there any longer and have your eye boring into the
back of my brain like a gimlet. If we are to go on
with this game of question and answer it must be with
a screen set up between us.”
Of course I spoke out of the urgency of my vexed
nerves, and without making any calculation before-
hand of how the detective would take what I said,
but its effect on him was quite extraordinary. It re-
sulted in quite a transformation. From this almost
diabolically perfect and bloodless piece of mechanism
for wringing truth out of the most secret places, he
became of a sudden the most absolutely soft and hu-
man little being imaginable.
"Ah,” he said, in a voice of genuine grief, “I am so
pained. There is no improvement-no improvement,
Again and again I have promised myself that I would
remember there were other things, human things,
[75]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
hearts and feelings, besides the finding out who did
this murder or that burglary. It is my weakness, Miss,
my besetting sin that when I get on the track, hunting
as you may say, I lose myself. I lose all my humanity.
Miss Carlton, it is a disgusting profession mine. I
loathe it." His whole face had changed marvellously,
and had become, from a thing of wood, quite full of
expression.
"Oh, no," I said, "you don't really.” It was won-
derful how differently I felt towards him and towards
the whole situation now, after that curious outbreak
of his. I had felt afraid of him, and now I felt nothing
but a pity and almost a kind of affection. I felt that
it was in my rôle to comfort him and encourage him.
"You don't really loathe your profession," I said.
“You are doing a very good work, bringing the crim-
inals to justice. You are really serving society all
the while."
"Well,” he said with a sigh, "let us put it like that.
At all events it is my profession now, and I have a
wife and children to support by it, so I must make the
best of it as it is. And now we must get back to pro-
fessional work again, Miss Carlton. I apologise to
you for troubling you with my personal failings, and I
apologise too for so offensively fixing you with my
cold, grey eye-like the Ancient Mariner, eh?”.
"Well, then,” I said, “to hark back to the last ques-
tion that you asked me—it is no use trying to pretend
that theirs was exactly an ideal marriageUncle
Ralph's and Aunt Enid's; but they got on, I should
think, as well as the majority of married couples.”
"You don't look on that as setting the standard very
[76]


SERGEANT CRISP
high," he suggested. "Now," he went on, glancing
at the one shoe which projected beyond the skirt of
the poor body on the floor, “would you say that those
were her ladyship's house shoes, or are they those that
she would ordinarily put on when she was going out?”
"Those are not indoor shoes,” I could answer with
decision.
“Then we come to the conclusion that it was no
sudden impulse of her ladyship's, on which she went
out last night. It must have been deliberate.”
"It looks so," I agreed.
"And yet she came out without hat or cloak. It
would seem that we should infer that her ladyship
had no intention of being long out-of-doors."
He had become quite loquacious and confidential
for the moment, and took me step by step with him
in his inferences.
“Very strange,” he said, “very strange-one would
almost think”—but what it was that one would almost
think I was not to learn-at that point at all events
-for he checked himself there. “Well," he said, in-
stead of finishing his sentence, “it does not do to
form theories till facts thrust them right at you. That
is one of the lessons, and one of the hardest, that we
have to learn in our profession."
"I am sure," I said, “I am under no temptation to
form a theory. I have tried hard enough, but it seems
to me absolutely impossible to form any theory about
it all. It is hardly to be believed that Heasden can
have done it. What could his motive be? Nothing
has been taken."
"Very strange, very strange," he said again, half
[77]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
I imposed upon him when I said, with a great air of
candour:
"Well, to be exact, I did see him before-see his
head at least, for when I looked out of the window to
see who was ringing the bell, I saw Uncle's head be-
low me, out of his own window."
Thus we passed that perilous corner, and I felt my
heart beating quickly in the reaction from my anxiety
about it. I flattered myself that I had fenced with
the little man well and foiled him without telling an
actual lie.
He went on then to elicit from me the other episodes
of the night in which I had taken a personal share,
and I told him of my going to Aunt Enid's room, to
inform her of Uncle's being called out, I little dream-
ing then why it was that Livesay had called him. I
told the Sergeant, too, about Céleste, my aunt's maid,
and all the rest just as I have written it already. I had
no reserve from him, except in that one particular of
my having seen uncle go out before his going in answer
to Livesay's summons.
So, when we had brought all up to the point at
which Sergeant Crisp had been introduced to me by
the village constable, he said:
"Now that is finished, Miss Carlton, and I thank
you very much for answering my questions so fully
and so frankly"--my conscience smote me a little at
that praise. “I am going to ask you now to leave me
here alone, for a little while. I want to look around,
and make a thorough examination of this arbour-
perhaps take a photograph or two-and then I shall
be able to relieve you and Sir Ralph of some of the
[80]


SERGEANT CRISP
strain you have suffered. There will be no reason,
after that, why the body should not be carried to the
house and properly cared for.”
I could be thankful from my heart for that. The
prolonged watch had been a terrible strain and trial.
The only thing that puzzled me was his request to be
alone to have a look round the very small space. Had
he not been looking, with those gimletty eyes of his,
all the while, for a long, a very long half hour and
more? I said as much to him, and he smiled that
queer little ghost of a smile which just, and no more,
curled one corner of his mouth, as he answered :
"You do not know, Miss, what looking around and
examining means to us who have to look carefully,
who have to leave nothing unlooked at, even through
this--and that.” He brought first a large magnify-
ing glass and then a smaller triple lense out of some
pockets where it seemed impossible that they could
have found room to lie beneath his creaseless coat.
"But," I asked, “what is there that you can pos-
sibly expect to find ?”
I felt it was a foolish question even before he had
made the really very obvious answer: "Ah, if only
we knew that, then there wouldn't be so very much
need to look.”
Then from the subdued light in the summer-house,
from that searching inquisition and from the dread
presence of that dead figure on the floor, I went out
into the golden sunshine, so dazed and blinded that I
could hardly see my way.
[81]


CHAPTER VII
WHAT THE GAMEKEEPER HAD TO TELL
I LEARNED something of Sergeant Crisp's doings
1 in the summer-house, after I had left him, from
what Livesay, the keeper, told me. Crisp had sent
Larncombe to look for Livesay while he was talking
to me, and when the two arrived the detective was at
work in his examination. They stood for a while by
the door, which the Sergeant had left open in order
to admit as much light as possible. Larncombe had
announced "Mr. Livesay, sir," as he brought the
keeper to the summer-house, “but that there Sergeant
Crisp," as Livesay told me, "he didn't take no more
notice of us, Miss, than if we'd been a brace of beetles.
I really could hardly say whether he knew as we were
there or not, though Joe Larncombe he called it out
loud enough. 'Tis my belief as he really didn't know,
in a manner of saying, as we were there at all, though
in another manner of saying of course he must have
knowed, becaused there we were, and he must have
seen us, and likewise he must have heard us. But as
for taking notice of us—there!"
Livesay, although a man to whom words came
easily, preferred to leave to my imagination, so wholly
inadequate did he find language to describe the ab-
[82]


WHAT THE GAMEKEEPER TOLD
solute detachment of the detective from all the cir-
cumstances which did not immediately interest him
when his attention was focussed on a particular task.
And he did wisely to leave it so, for I had seen enough
of that detachment and concentration to be able to
form a much better idea of it than his words were
likely to suggest. Livesay did, however, fill in some of
the details of the picture for me.
The sergeant, it appears, went over the whole floor
of the little house, board by board, with his big magni-
fying glass. Now and then he picked up some small
object, too minute for the men at the door to be able
to distinguish what it was, and subjected it to more
minute inspection through the three-lensed magnifier.
He brought from invisible pockets of that creaseless
coat some envelopes, into which he put some of these
objects. Each chair, and the table, had to undergo
a like microscopic examination. He left the body of
my poor young aunt to the last, but when he did come
to its inspection the investigation was every more
meticulous.
On his way from the station to the house, under
the convoy of Larncombe, he had left a suitcase and a
handbag at the White Hart in the village, where he had
engaged a bedroom, and after his first glance at the
summer-house he had instructed Larncombe to send
one of the other attendant constables to the hotel, with
orders to ask for the bag and to bring it to the summer-
house. This errand had been executed, and the bag
had been placed just within the door, in course of my
interrogation.
He opened the dress and made a particular examina-
[83]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
tion of the shape of the wound, sketching on one of his
envelopes its exact outline and noting the extent and
character of the bruised space around it. From his
handbag he brought a camera, and, setting the time
arrangement carefully so as to get a good result in the
subdued light of the summer-house, took photographs,
from different angles, of the body and its surrounding
objects. When all that was done, he looked up at
Livesay, who had coughed several times, loudly but
vainly, to attract his attention, and without any apol-
ogy or preface entered upon his catechism:. “Now tell
me, what time was it that you came into the shrubbery
last night?"
"Well, I come there about eleven o'clock.”
“And went into the summer-house?”
“No, certainly not,” said Livesay, with indignation.
“I did not go into the summer-house.”
“My mistake!” Sergeant Crisp replied, apologet-
ically. “Where did you go then?”
"Why naturally, the wind being east, what there
was of it, and me being looking out for this fellow
and having a dog, I went west side, as any man what
knowed his business would. 'Tisn't likely as I'd go to
windward.”
"Oh,” Crisp said, innocently, "you were looking out
for some one, were you?”
"Of course I was. I was looking out for Jim Heas-
den of course.”
"Ah-but what made you think he was likely to be
there?"
"What made me think? Why, I'd seed him there
before-twice I had, when I was going around, and
[84]


WHAT THE GAMEKEEPER TOLD
what's more I'd seed one or two rabbit wires as I
reckoned to be his.”
The little man hesitated and thought for a while
before he went on to his next question, and when he
did speak he did not ask a question at all but scribbled
a note and bade Larncombe take it to one of the police
constables stationed at some distance. When Larn-
combe was well out of hearing, and not till then, he
addressed himself again to the keeper with: “Now I
must ask your help here. I don't know very much
about country things and game and so on-always
been in towns, you see but isn't eleven o'clock at night
rather a late hour for a man to be going the rounds
of his rabbit wires at this time of year?"
"Now I call that a very sensible question, so I do,”
Livesay said approvingly, as if it was much more to
the point that anything he had at all expected from
such a source. "It is late, for a man who isn't on the
regular professional lay as a poacher, which Jim
Heasden is not, he being what you might rather call
a casual. But then you see it so happens as I've seed
him in the shrubbery about that hour on other nights,
so as I know more or less what his habit is, so to call
it.”
"Oh, you've caught him there before?"
"Well, no, not exactly caught him so to say-that
is, not caught him setting a wire, nor yet lifting a
rabbit out of a wire, nor nothing. But I've seed him
there. I've been sure of him-sure as it was him
but he's always had the best of me, so to say, always
got away before I could catch him. And besides,"
confessed the keeper regretfully, 'tisn't as if to find
[85]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
him was the same to prove as he was doing anything
wrong. You see, any one might be on the path here
if only he was going to the house from the village on
an errand or a message. 'Tisn't all so easy, being a
gamekeeper."
"I daresay not," the sergeant said sympathetically.
"It's something the same as being a detective, isn't it?
But now, to come down to last night—how was it that
you began to think that Heasden was in the shrubbery?
Did you see him or hear him?”
“I said as I had my dog along with me, didn't I ?” the
keeper answered, "and that being so, and me and the
dog to leeward, 'tisn't likely as the first notice of Jim
Heasden as I'd have had would be seeing him, or hear-
ing him either."
"You mean that your dog, smelling him, would give
you notice of him first."
"That's what I mean," Livesay said, "and that of
course is how it was. The dog had been restless like,
before-I'd never knowed him so restless—and once
I did believe myself as I heard a step crunch on the
gravel, but I couldn't say for certain. More than once
I was on the point of starting out, to see whether it was
anybody or not, but I couldn't make out, owing to the
old dog's manner. And then, all in a minute, he be-
came different at once, growling and pulling at the
chain I had him on-I knew well enough then as that
meant as some stranger was between him and the
wind."
"Between the wind and his majesty ?" asked Crisp,
incomprehensibly to the keeper. “Yes, and what did
you do?”
[86]


WHAT THE GAMEKEEPER TOLD
"I went forward then, as quietly as might be, among
the bushes, hanging on to the dog, till we come out to
the path, and then we goes along it, me following the
way the dog was like to tug, till we come—just there."
The keeper broke off and pointed, with some sense
of the dramatic, out along the little path which led
straight to the summer-house.
“Just where the constable stands,” Crisp suggested,
glancing at the policeman who was guarding that angle
of the path.
"Just so," Livesay agreed.
“And what then?”
"Why it was just as I come there that I saw him.”
“Meaning Jim Heasden?”
“Of course," Livesay answered.
“And what was he doing?”
“He was running.”
“Ah,” said Crisp. "He had got a sight of you and
was running away from you?”
"Why no,” said Livesay in rather a puzzled way.
"I shouldn't say as he exactly was running away from
me. Seemed more to me as if he was running right
towards me.”
"Wasn't that rather curious then?” Crisp asked, his
- intent little eyes watching unwinkingly every turn of
the keeper's face.
Livesay at this point took from his tail pocket a
large red handkerchief with which he mopped his
brow repeatedly during the remainder of the inter-
view. It was not so much that the day, as that the
questioning, was close. Probably he had never before
[87]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
been called on to keep his attention so rivetted on one
particular series of events.
“It was curious, very curious, come to think of it,"
he admitted, after a brow wiping.
"But did it not strike you so at the time, Mr. Live-
say?" Crisp asked.
“Well no," Livesay said. "I don't know how it
was, but I don't know as it did.”
Crisp continued his unwinking stare at him, but for
a long while said nothing, so that the keeper resorted
again to his handkerchief which acted at once as a
cleanser-merely temporary-of his face, and as a
shield from the detective's eyes.
"He was running from the summer-house," Crisp
at length suggested.
“It was from the summer-house, in a manner of
saying," the keeper admitted, with a modification.
"What's the sense of that-in a manner of saying?”
the detective asked sharply.
"It's a manner of saying," Livesay explained, not
too lucidly. "If you was to say to me ‘George Live-
say, would you go into court and swear as you see Jim
Heasden running from the summer-house?' I would
say to you as I would. But if you was to say to me
'George Livesay, would you go into court and swear
as you seed Jim Heasden runing out of the summer-
house?' I would say to you as I wouldn't, for the
reason that I never seed no such thing."
Sergeant Crisp said “Hum !” like a man not too well
satisfied, adding, "will you tell me then just where
on this path it was that you first did see Jim Heas-
den?”
[88]


WHAT THE GAMEKEEPER TOLD
Livesay led him down the path to a point about
half-way between the little house itself and the angle
at which stood the constable on guard, and after some
hesitation made a stab with his stick on the sward on
one side of the path saying: “I should say as it would
be somewhere just about here."
"And he was running ?”
"Well yes”—with a slight hesitation-"yes, I should
say as he was running.”
"But what doubt could you have about it?"
"Well, I mean as he wasn't running very fast like,
but he was running-yes, I should say as he was going
faster than a walk."
"And if he was running, how was it that he didn't
run into you—that you didn't catch him?"
“Because just as I saw him the dog made a spring,
and, whether or not because of that, he caught sight
of me, and no sooner had sight of me than he was
turned away in a flash and into the bushes I should
say that just there's the place, between the bushes, as
he slipped through-quick as light he was.”
“And you after him?"
"And me after him, but it's a needle in a haystack,
as the saying is, among them bushes, and especially in
the dark, and especially me having a dog. I daren't
let the dog go, fear he'd have mauled him and I should
get into trouble, seeing as I'd nothing proved against
him."
"Running towards you," Sergeant Crisp said over
again, as if to summon up the vision clearly, “and
just here! Now what, I wonder, was he running
from?"
1891


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
"And so do I,” said the keeper heartily.
"You saw no one that he was running from?” Live-
say shook his head. "No one,” the Sergeant con-
tinued, “in the shrubbery at all that night except him?"
and again the keeper gave the negative shake.
"So when you had lost him in the bushes, what did
you do?"
“I came out on the path again, a little further
down”-pointing in the direction of the village and
then I came back along the path and went up to the
summer-house.”
“Yes. Was the door shut or open?”
“The door was shut. There's no lock to it as you
may see. I just turned the handle and half opened it.”
“Yes?” said the detective, as the other paused.
“And I saw-it."
I have not a doubt that the keen eyes were more than
commonly piercing as Sergeant Crisp shot the next
question at him: "What made you go and look in the
summer-house?”
"Well,” the keeper said, hesitating a moment, “it
was like this. I said to myself as may be Jim Heas-
den might have doubled back on me and be in hiding
in the summer-house. 'Twasn't much of a chance,
but it was worth taking: and then again, you see, it
seemed as if it was from the summer-house as he'd
come running. So that made me want to see.”
“You said just now that it didn't strike you at the
time as curious that he should have come running
towards you."
"And I don't know exactly as it did," Livesay re-
plied, “but I was kind of confused like, and wonder-
[90]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
"After the first moment I knowed as she was dead.”
"Did you feel her heart to see if it was beating?”
The keeper shook his head. “I did not touch her.
I could not touch her. I was afraid. All I could do
was to go and tell Sir Ralph. And after I had gone
from the house the summer-house, I mean I could
not believe as I could have seen right. I thought it
must have been a dream like or a ghost or something.
I had to go back, after I'd come out into the main
path, and go up this little path again and open the
door and look in again before I could believe it. I did
that, and then I went up to the house and called Sir
Ralph."
"You're pretty well accustomed to seeing dead
things. Why should you have been so frightened ?"
“ 'Twasn't exactly frightened I was, so much as
afraid, if you can see the difference," Livesay said.
“Besides, there's a difference between pheasants and
rabbits and things, and that. Her ladyship in par-
ticular," he added, as if an afterthought.
"You were very much attached to her ladyship?"
the sergeant asked.
"I wouldn't go that far," said the keeper cautiously,
"no. Attached to Sir Ralph I am, me having knowed
him from a boy and his brother too, not to name his
father and his uncle, but her ladyship, you see, he only
brought her lately. A pleasant spoken lady enough
and civil to me always, from the first, but they do say
in the house as how she had an edge to her tongue,
poor lady."
"Did Sir Ralph seem fond of her?” the detective
asked.
[92]


WHAT THE GAMEKEEPER TOLD
"Fond of her," Livesay repeated heartily. “Aye
that he did. Do any mortal thing for her, at her bid-
ding, that he would. Not as I believe, you know,"
he added, “as that's the way to treat a woman, no, not
by a long way, no more than it is the way to treat a
dog. You let a dog, or a woman either, think he's
only got to wink his eye or wag his tail and he's going
to get everything he wants—that ain't the way to
make a good dog of him, nor of a woman either."
"Spoilt her, did he-Sir Ralph ?”.
“That's about it,” said Livesay. “Spoilt her."
"And now, how about her ladyship? Was she fond
of Sir Ralph?”
..
"Her ladyship as fond of Sir Ralph as he of her,"
the keeper responded with a fine glow of scorn in his
voice. “Why it wasn't to be named in the same com-
pany, not Sir Ralph's fondness for her and her fond-
ness for him—that is, supposing as she had any, for
that's what I've doubted time and again. No, no, she
was one of the taking kind, her ladyship was—take
everything and give nothing. Sir Ralph now, it was
all the other way with him. He was for giving every-
thing."
"And the difference in age was considerable, eh?”
Crisp suggested.
"Not to make all that matter," Livesay said. "For
my part I believe as a man should be the elder, to
steady the other down. But Sir Ralph he never had
the hand firm enough to steady her. She was always
about with the young fellows that came down visiting
-always about with them, laughing and making fun,
and Sir Ralph always going about the place by him-
[93]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
self. I never liked to see it. Never took any real
interest in the place, her ladyship didn't. There was
hardly a tenant on the estate, I believe, as she'd know
by name. A little lady of the town, her ladyship, I
should say, out of her place in the country. Why I
never seed her yet in a pair of good thick shoes as
would keep out any wet, Patent leather and high
heels was her ladyship’s wear."
"I see,” said Crisp, gleaning grain all the time from
the sheaves of the keeper's talk. “She liked the young
fellows about her, I expect. Liked their admiration,
eh? No doubt they admired her."
"Oh, they admired her right enough, and reason
good they should. Reason good as you may see for
yourself even now, by no more than looking at the
dead body of the poor thing as it lies. She was ad-
miration worthy, was her ladyship, if you look to the
outsides of her, anyway. I don't know as for work,
or for breeding or breaking, as she'd take a field trial
prize. The show bench more, for her ladyship, as I
fancy."
"And was there one rather than another of the
young fellows that she seemed to like to be admired
by ?" Crisp asked.
"Couldn't say as to that I'm sure," Livesay an-
swered, “but there's one as she'd been about with a
deal of late-Captain Vibart, that is—a bit older than
some of the others.”
"About this Jim Heasden,” said Crisp, switching
off the talk to a seemingly irrelevant line. “Did her
ladyship ever hapen to catch him any time that he was
about in the shrubbery?”
[94]


WHAT THE GAMEKEEPER TOLD
"Yes—that her ladyship did catch him once, and
gave him a pretty good taste of the sharp edge of her
tongue too, as I understand, when she did catch him.”
"Ah-some one overheard her giving it to him?"
"Did they?” said Livesay. “First I hear of it
then. I didn't know as there was any one there except
them two."
“Oh, then it was one of them that told you her
ladyship gave it to him so sharp. Did Jim Heasden
tell you?"
"No, he did not. 'Tisn't more talk than I can help
that I ever has with that there Jim Heasden. 'Twas
her ladyship as told me, now I come to think of it.”
"Oh, her ladyship was it? Did she seem very angry
about it?"
“Not so much angry about it, I should say, as
amused like. Not so angry about it as what you
would think. More amused like, than anything, at
the dressing down she told me as she had given him.
She could be very pleasant when she pleased, her
ladyship.”
Sergeant Crisp meditated a moment or two. "I
should like to see this Heasden,” he said then. “They
tell me he's a perfect Adonis.”
"What's that?" Livesay asked disgustedly. "If it's
same as a perfect blackguard he's that all right.”
"Very often it is the same, and that's partly what I
want to find out about him. I daresay it isn't exactly
the Adonis rôle he'd be most likely to play if Venus
was anywhere about,” said Crisp, speaking of mys-
teries entirely hidden from the comprehension of the
keeper.
[95]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
I think that Livesay must have been growing more
than a trifle dazed by this time, under the rain of ques-
tions which the detective kept pelting down on him,
and must have been immensely relieved when the
latter opened his next line of fire with the remark:
“Now there's only one other point that I want to ask
you about: you went straight from the summer-house
-after your second look in to assure yourself it was
not a dream-straight from there to the big house?”
“Yes," Livesay answered.
“And you didn't meet anyone on your way?”.
"No," Livesay answered, surprised by the question.
"It was nigh midnight, or so I reckon.”
"Yes, I know," the detective said. "Well, what
happened when you got to the house?”
Livesay had noticed nothing remarkable. No light
was showing at any of the windows. The front door
was locked and bolted, as was clearly proved by the
time that the butler took about its undoing. In all
respects Livesay's narrative from the outside of the
house harmonised with mine about what went on with-
in. There is no need to travel over that ground again.
"And you went together to the summer-house?”
Crisp asked, when he had reached the point of Uncle
Ralph's coming out of the house and leaving me be-
hind on my self-suggested errand (which he already
knew to be a futile one), of telling my aunt that he
had gone out.
“Yes," said Livesay, but a little doubtfully, "we
went together.”
“You led the way,” Crisp suggested, not failing to
notice his hesitation, “and Sir Ralph followed ?”
[96]


WHAT THE GAMEKEEPER TOLD
“Not at all. Sir Ralph set out so fast that it was all
I could do to keep up with him—not running, I don't
mean, you'll understand, but walking out at such a
pace as I could hardly keep with him. A little slower
it was, p'raps, under the trees, but not much. Only,
as he come near the summer-house, especial as he comes
to this turn of the path and about here as we stand
now, he slowed down a lot, Sir Ralph did. Seemed
as if he was almost afraid to go on, he did-same
as I had been myself.”
“Yes,” Crisp said, “I daresay that was quite natural.
I can understand it. What did he say as you went
along?"
"I don't mind,” said Livesay, "as he said anything
at all. Seemed to me like a man dazed like, he did.”
"Didn't ask you anything about how you had found
her-about what had happened?".
"Not at the first he didn't-seemed like as if he were
stunned.”
“Yes,” said Crisp thoughtfully. "I suppose it might
be like that. I suppose you never can tell how a thing
like this is going to take a man.”
"And I hope as I never shall know," Livesay added.
"How was he looking?” Crisp asked then.
“Terrible," said Livesay. “Terrible drawn and
white-like. I wouldn't hardly have knowed the face
for Sir Ralph's if I'd seed it off the body."
"No," Crisp agreed, “I don't suppose you would.
But tell me, when he reached the summer-house, what
did he do then?”
"Just stood and looked. Terrible still, he was, ter-
rible still and quiet. Just once he knelt down and took
[97]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
her hand—that one, the left, as is stretched out-and
he bent over and kissed her on the forehead. But he
did not say nothing, nothing as you'd call sense, only
such things as 'Enid,' 'Enid Enid was her ladyship's
name—and 'God,' and the like of that.”
"I see,” said Crisp, "ejaculations—I mean," he
added, realising that the word was too hard for Live-
say, "just broken sentences, bits of sentences, nothing
with a plain meaning to it.”
“Very like," Livesay assented.
"A man might, you know ” Crisp said again, as if
arguing with himself. “It might take a man like that.
You can't tell how it might take a man. Well, and
then?"
"And then Miss Carlton came."
"Ah yes.” He put Livesay through a few more
questions before he let him go, but Livesay of course
had nothing to tell him except to confirm what I have
written before of what happened in the summer-house
after my arrival.
[98]


CHAPTER VIII
WHAT THE BUTLER AND THE HOUSEMAID
HAD TO SAY
I HAD been busied, in the meanwhile, sadly enough,
T in the house. With the help of the estate carpen-
ter I had arranged a kind of litter made of shawls
spread over long poles, and had it ready in the hall
awaiting the moment when Sergeant Crisp should send
word that we were allowed to bring the body from
the summer-house. I did not propose to trouble Uncle
Ralph about it. He had gone to his room, spent and
worn out after his terrible night of watching, and I
was anxious to leave him undisturbed as long as pos-
sible, that he might have a chance, at least, of rest.
It was about midday before Larncombe, accom-
panied by Livesay, came to the house with a message
from the sergeant, to the effect that we were now at
length permitted to bring back the poor body and lay
it out with decent respect. Livesay had come to volun-
teer his services as one of the carriers, and with him
and Grainger bearing the improvised litter between
them we went back to the summer-house. Larncombe's
authority gave us the right to pass the constables on
guard.
Sergeant Crisp watched in respectful silence, rais-
[99]


WHAT BUTLER AND HOUSEMAID SAID
of time, twine its way over the whole little house. It
had been an idea of my Aunt Enid's, and we had all
mightily approved of it. But naturally the plant had
made no growth in the fortnight or so that it had been
planted, and its aspect was only that of bare straggling
limbs fastened by nails and worsted to the wooden wall
of the house. The semicircle from which the turf
had been taken still remained bare of grass.
Sergeant Crisp, after his interview with the keeper,
had spent some time, to the detriment of his faultless
suit, in poking and diving among the bushes rather
as if he were a terrier trying to pull out a rat. His
object was in the main to make all the ground good,
by examining it so that nothing which might serve as
a clue could well escape him if it were there to be seen.
He was faithful to his general principle that if you
knew what you were likely to find there would not
be nearly the same necessity to look for it. But be-
sides this he had always the hope that a hunt in the
vicinity of the body might discover the knife with
which the murder had been done. Of the fact of mur-
der there seemed no reasonable doubt whatever.
Crisp's diving among the bushes did not reveal to
him any evidence so direct and material as the actual
knife, but it did, nevertheless, result in a discovery
to which he attached much importance. He had
keenly regretted that the shrubbery paths, and the ap-
proach to the summer-house itself, were for the most
part so firmly gravelled that there was not a chance of
learning anything from the imprint of feet upon them.
But within this semicircle, where the honeysuckle had
been planted, the soil was still quite soft and receptive,
[101]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
and on that impressionable surface, clearly outlined,
were the imprints not only of one but of two feet.
I suppose it is not quite exact to say the imprints of
both were clear, for as a matter of fact the one was
rather cut into, and almost cut into by, the other, but
fully enough remained of the unobliterated outline to
serve as a sufficient guide for filling in the parts that
were missing.
Evidently the prints were made by shoes belonging
to different pairs. Each print was that of a right-
foot shoe, and they lay, the one almost across the
other.
You see what it means: there was the print of the
smaller, finer, slighter shoe which had been impressed
first, and then there was the print of the other, heav-
ier, more clumsy shoe falling across it, and in part
blocking it out.
Sergeant Crisp, as I learned later, had discovered
these footprints during the interval between the
termination of his interview with Livesay and our
coming with the litter to take away the body of poor
Aunt Enid. After he had accompanied us to the
house, he returned to the summer-house on his way
to the White Hart and to his dinner, and, taking from
his handbag some paper and a pair of scissors, cut out
an exact outline, first of the heavy, superimposed sole,
and then of the finer under one, and went to his mid-
day dinner with the appetite of a man who had break-
fasted before dawn.
Sergeant Crisp, having dined well, though thought-
fully, came back again to Scotney House, and his ring
at the front door bell was answered, in natural course,
[102]


WHAT BUTLER AND HOUSEMAID SAID
by Grainger. Although he had dined, we had not yet
had luncheon. Nominally it was announced at one-
thirty, but all the household arrangements were a little
thrown out of gear by the shock that we had suffered,
and though it was nearly two o'clock I was still wait-
ing for the gong. I had seen Uncle Ralph, looking
very much better and less haggard than when he went
to his room after that terrible night in the summer-
house. He had slept, he assured me, and had bathed
and shaved and altogether seemed far more able to
look the world in its cruel face. He had quite collected
and mastered himself, though it seemed to me that I
could read the traces of his suffering still very legibly.
I was in the library, with the door open into the
hall, when Sergeant Crisp was met at the front door
by the butler. All that I overheard of the colloquy at
first was one-sided—the butler's side—but it was not
difficult to guess at the other :
"Ye canna see Sir Ralph the noo. He's just going
in to luncheon.”
Then the detective said something which I did not
catch, but to which the answer was:
"I canna be troubled wi' ony questions the noo_I'm
just bringing in the luncheon.”
I thought, impatiently, how hopeless it was to try
to stir servants out of their accustomed routine, even
in such a case as this. I went out into the hall and
said sharply: “Nonsense, Grainger, you must stay and
answer any questions Sergeant Crisp wants to ask
you. It is of more importance than whether we are
ten minutes later in getting luncheon. Besides, James
can attend to the luncheon."
[103]


WHAT BUTLER AND HOUSEMAID SAID
2005 buas noica?
“You were in bed when Mr. Livesay rang the front-
door bell?"
"I was no," said Grainger shortly.
"Not in bed? At close on midnight?"
Grainger did not answer: it is true that he had
really replied to that question already.
“What were you doing, if you were not in bed ?”
"I was sitting in my chair, by the bed-head."
"Really! That's rather an unusual thing to be
doing at twelve o'clock at night, is it not?”
“Maybe.”
"But there's no rule against it, is there?” said
Crisp, trying to melt his taciturnity by turning on a
current of warm geniality. “A man may sit up by
the bed-head all night in his chair if he likes, mayn't
he?”
The attempt at pleasantry had no effect. For all
response that it extracted from the butler he might
just as well not have heard it.
"So that you were dressed and ready to go and
answer the bell directly it was rung,” Crisp said then.
“Aye,” Grainger admitted, much as if he regretted
having to do so. "I was ready."
"And you were able to go off at the first sound of
the bell and see what was the matter."
The butler remained mutely irresponsive to the
suggestion.
Crisp had been putting these questions to him in a
very quiet, gentle voice, moving no unnecessary muscle
and not taking his unwinking eyes off the wooden
Scottish face, but at his next question I caught a new
quality, keener and more incisive, in his tone: "I sup-
[105]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
pose you were dressed because you had been out-
late-after dinner ?”
The butler's voice took on a new note at that, too. It
seemed as if the question startled him out of his in-
difference:
"I was no," he declared with an entirely different
emphasis from that with which he had said the self-
same words just before.
"You did not go out at all that night, after dinner?”
"I did not.”
"And if you were ready dressed when you heard
the bell of course you were in the hall first-before
any of the others who had to put on some clothes
before they came down."
"Aye, I was in the hall first.”
“And I suppose you spoke to Mr. Livesay first."
"Then ye suppose wrang,” said Grainger, dourly.
“Did you not open the door then?”
“There's two bolts and a bit chain and a big lock
and key before you can open the door."
"Which would take” (Crisp pulled out his watch as
he spoke and looked at its second-hand while he went
through the motions of pulling back one bolt at the
top of a door, another bolt at the bottom, unhitching
the chain and turning the key) "exactly five seconds.”
Grainger offered no comment on this estimate.
"So that it is not very apparent what you were
doing-why you were not the first to get the door
opened and to speak to Mr. Livesay."
Grainger offered no solution of the puzzle.
“Now,” said Crisp, and his eyes seemed to me all
of a sudden to take on an expression twice as pene-
[106]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
The Sergeant had questioned me closely about the per-
sons that composed our household staff. Its head,
below stairs, should, traditionally, I suppose, have
been the cook, and so, for official purposes, she al-
ways was considered, but our cook of the moment was
rather a young woman, and the person of real author-
ity was old Susan, who had been in service at Scot-
ney House ever since she was a girl and was now re-
garded in the light of a family friend, rather than
servant. Whatever was required, appeal was always
made to Susan and she never was found wanting.
Just what it was that Sergeant Crisp hoped to find
out by interrogating Susan I do not think that even he
knew himself. He was merely, as I imagine, acting
on his general principle of neglecting no possibility of
information. He had something of the large optimism
of Mr. Micawber, ever anticipating that something
would turn up.
In spite of all his experience and in spite of all his
astuteness, I knew, for the little man himself told me
as much, that he was at this time just as beclouded
as I was in the midst of all the mysteries of the
many and various mysteries—that enveloped this
tragic and violent death of my young aunt. There
was of course the main, and central, problem-by
whom had she been killed, and why?-but there were
also a number of minor problems lying circumferen-
tially to this as their centre. Why had she gone out,
as she had done, to meet her fate? Why had she af-
fected, if indeed it was only affection, illness, and why
had she gone up to her room before dinner and not
come down again? If she were well enough to go out,
[108]


WHAT BUTLER AND HOUSEMAID SAID
she was surely well enough to come down: but of
course this might have an entirely different explana-
tion. The trouble between her and Uncle Ralph about
Captain Vibart, whatever it was, might sufficiently
account for a petulant and wilful little creature such
as she was declining to dine with him. I never was in
her confidence at all, nor was there ever any real sym-
pathy between us, though outwardly we were always
the best of friends.
One of the first enquiries that I had made as soon
as I was free to do so was whether Aunt Enid had re-
ceived any telephone message the night before, in
answer to which she had gone out, but I could not
learn that there had been any telephone call at all that
evening. The idea of going out could not have been
altogether a sudden one, for she had changed her
shoes. Even in the country she always wore shoes
that would have been far more in place on a London
pavement, but still she did make a difference between
those which she wore out of doors and in the house.
And they were out-of-door shoes in which she had
gone to her death.
And yet she had put nothing over her head, nor
had she worn any cloak or shawl. The night had been
beautifully fine and still, but the season was autumnal.
I had been shivering with cold during my vigil with
Uncle in the summer-house.
It is curious how unwilling people are to confess
that they are sound sleepers and hard to wake. Susan
admitted to Sergeant Crisp that she had not heard the
loud ringing of the bell—“though a light sleeper as a
rule,” she hastened to inform him. “And indeed I
[109]


· THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
don't see as how Mr. Grainger heard it as he did on
the second, his room being up the attic stairs, and
James sleeping handy to the bells who heard nothing."
"Perhaps James is a heavy sleeper,” Crisp had sug-
gested. To which Susan had replied demurely, “Men
are," as if light sleep were a delicate and peculiarly
feminine grace.
“You might just take me to Mr. Grainger's room,"
said the Sergeant. “Oh, I do not mean to enter it"-
he added hurriedly, as he saw a look of something very
like dismay pass over Susan's face. "I should just
like to see where it is. And James' too.”
As a matter of fact Grainger's room was, as Susan
had said, so far from the passage in which the bells
made their sound that it was singular that Grainger,
"dozing in his chair,” as he had suggested he might
have been, should have heard the ringing, and it
seemed almost equally surprising that it should have
failed to rouse James, whose room was most adjacent
to the passage, although that youth, on being ques-
tioned, did admit freely that his mother had expressed
fears that he would not be wakened by the last trump
by reason of his singular powers of sleep.
“And now that we are here,” Crisp said, “I should
be obliged if you would show me the disposition of the
other rooms-Sir Ralph's room, and her ladyship's
and so on.”
I had given Susan instructions that she should as-
sist Sergeant Crisp's enquiries in every possible way.
But for that instruction, I do not suppose that she
would have shown him all that she did, without refer-
ring to Uncle or to myself, but I fancy that she made
[110]


WHAT BUTLER AND HOUSEMAID SAID
very much less demur to showing him any of the
chambres de maîtres than she did to introducing him
into the room sacred to the slumber of Mr. Grainger.
After all, there is much reason in the distinction which
servants make in this respect, for they are in the con-
stant habit of going in and out of our rooms, in course
of their domestic service, whereas, except in the case of
such tragedies as the fusing of an electric wire, or
some unusual occurrence of the kind, our "lawful
occasions” do not take us into their rooms.
"He was a wonderful silent gentleman," Susan told
me, of Sergeant Crisp, afterwards. It appeared, for
all that, that he had asked her a good many questions.
But her comment had reference to that habit of his,
which I had been given considerable opportunity of
noting in the summer-house, for standing perfectly
still, without the movement of a muscle, and as it
appeared letting all that came within his view sink in
through his eyes into his brain. That was the manner
of his operations as they appealed to me, and they
seem to have struck Susan similarly. He stood per-
fectly still and looked out of the window of Uncle
Ralph's room, at the front of the house, and at the
way leading into the summer-house. He gazed with
the same silent intentness on the objects on each of
the tables in the room, as if he would photograph
them in his mind, but especially, as Susan said, he
made a prolonged study of the row of shoes and boots,
ranging from evening "pumps" to nail-clad shooting
boots, which were ranged along one side of the wall.
He even took up, one of each, and looked at them be-
side each other, the "pump" and the shooting boot.
[111]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
“One would hardly believe, would one,” he said to
Susan pleasantly, as if making amicable conversation
to her, "that they could be intended to fit the same
foot ?" Each was of the right-foot shape.
Susan admitted that it was curious.
"Now could you,” he asked, "get me one of her
ladyship's shoes, to compare with this one? I should
like to compare it, as a matter of curiosity."
Susan went in search of the shoe he asked for,
greatly wondering why he should want it. I was
equally at a loss when she told me about it, and it was
not till long afterwards, when this as well as many
other puzzles had been solved, that I had any inkling
of the detective's motive in asking for it. As a matter
of fact it was merely a device, the first that occurred
to him, for getting Susan out of the room for a mo-
ment, while he made certain measurements. From his
pocket he drew two pieces of paper-those pieces
which he had cut so carefully into the exact shapes,
respectively, of the finely-pointed shoe and of the large
and heavy boot-print which partially obliterated it, in
the semicircle of soft soil in which the honeysuckle
had been planted against the summer-house wall.
Comparing the more slender piece of paper by placing
the "pump" upon it, he found that they tallied pre-
cisely. Comparing the broader shape in the same
way with the shooting boot, the shape did not cor-
respond at all. By the time that Susan had returned
with one of my Aunt Enid's shoes, the pieces of paper
had gone back into their place of hiding and the de-
tective was still, quite aimlessly as it appeared to her,
balancing the shooting boot with the "pump.” A short:
[112]


WHAT BUTLER AND HOUSEMAID SAID
comedy of the same kind was enacted with the tiny
shoe which Susan had brought him, and then he re-
turned it to her, saying gravely again that it was very
curious.
The opinion expressed by Susan later was that
which was formed by a good many who made the ac-
quaintance of the Sergeant, that he was a queer gen-
tleman, and she couldn't make him out at all.
Nevertheless she let me understand that on the
whole he succeeded in gaining her confidence. It ap-
peared that after the conclusion of their conversation
there was very little in the relations between the various
members of the household and in their duties and
habits which he had not in one way or another gleaned
from her. Grainger's service in the dining-room being
concluded for the time being, it seems that he appeared
in my uncle's room and looked at them with an ex-
pression of strong disapproval of their presence in
that apartment. He hovered about them, inventing
imaginary business to perform, in the way of opening
drawers and shutting them again, until Crisp led the
housemaid into other regions whither the butler's du-
ties gave him no ostensible excuse for following them.
Poor Aunt Enid's rooms, her bedroom and her bou-
doir, they found more or less under the guardianship
of a person I suppose just about as much unlike
Grainger, the self-constituted guardian angel of my
uncle's apartment, as one human being can be unlike
another-Céleste, my aunt's French maid.
Céleste already had begun to have her own pigeon-
hole in that most retentive, accurate and well-ordered
storehouse of interesting facts, Sergeant Crisp's brain.
[113]


WHAT BUTLER AND HOUSEMAID SAID
as there has been any of that. Only when it does
come to him and her being seen late at night in the
dark, at any hour, walking in the shrubbery, then all
I have to say it that it's a different thing. But I'm
saying nothing. Céleste, no matter what her faults,
is a fellow-servant. I'm saying nothing."
“And you are quite right, ma'am, quite right,” said
Crisp admiringly, having been told all that Susan was
at all likely to be able to tell him on the subject. “You
are quite right to be discreet in what you say about
your fellow-servants.”
It began to be Susan's opinion that she had never
before met anybody who understood her quite so well
as Sergeant Crisp. And it is not at all unlikely that
she was quite right. I think that the only exception
which she had to take to his conduct was a slight ob-
jection to the extreme politeness of his greeting, which
she considered excessive, on first introduction to
Céleste herself.
One amongst the many mysteries of that dreadful
night was the way by which my Aunt Enid had gone
from the house to meet her death. I think I have said
that there was a track leading out of the main footpath
through the shrubbery to the door of the conservatory
which adjoined my aunt's boudoir. She kept the key
of the conservatory door, the gardener coming to her
for it when there was any work for him in the small
conservatory, and returning it to her again. It was
by this door that she usually went out into the garden
or grounds, and this seemed the natural way for her
to go if the moonlight and the beauty of the night had
attracted her out for a stroll.
[115]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
But the difficulty in accepting that otherwise most
natural and simple explanation was that the door was
found locked, and no key in it. If she had gone out
through it and locked it behind her it was reasonable
to think that the key would be found attached to her,
in her dress or by her body. But it was nowhere to be
seen.
How then did she make her exit? That was one
among the many problems-a minor one, perhaps-
which called for solution. There was no other obvious
way out except through the front door, which she cer-
tainly had not used, or through the library. And if
she had gone through the library Uncle Ralph must
have seen her. He appeared to have been in that
room practically all the evening, and it was a room
which my aunt hardly ever went into. All the down-
stairs windows were closed and bolted. It was very
strange.
It never was necessary for my uncle, if he wished to
go out at any time after the front door was closed, to
unbolt and unchain and unlock that principal portal of
the house. His library had large windows, opening
right down to the ground, and all that he had to do was
to push up the lower half of one of these, and, stoop-
ing a very little, to step out through it. That brought
him on to the gravel sweep and just opposite the point
at which the gravelled footpath went off from it and
led away to the shrubbery.
Even into my aunt's boudoir Grainger found an oc-
casion for following the detective. He came to an-
nounce that Larncombe was below and would be glad
to know whether Sergeant Crisp had any orders for
[116]


WHAT BUTLER AND HOUSEMAID SAID
him. The detective hesitated a moment, and then said,
"I will come and speak to him.” He thanked Susan
for the attention with which she had heard and an-
swered his questions, expressed a hope to Céleste that
he might have the pleasure of a talk with her a little
later, and went down with the butler to where Larne-
combe was awaiting him at the back door.
"Well," he said to the constable, as soon as he had
led him out of earshot of the attentive Grainger,
"have you made any discoveries?”
Larnecombe shook his head. "Nothing fresh," he
said. “May I be allowed to ask whether you have,
sir?"
"So many," Crisp replied, "that I cannot see clearly
where they are leading. Now tell me, where is the
nearest magistrate or justice excepting, I mean, Sir
Ralph?”
Larncombe mentioned a neighbour living about a
mile and a half away; but he could not say whether
he was at home at the moment.
"Then please go over at once and ascertain. It
will be convenient to know in case we make an
arrest."
"In case we arrest Jim Heasden?” Larncombe ex-
claimed, all aglow with excitment. “Why I knowed
all along as it was him.”
"Then you've known all along a great deal more
than I know even now," said the Sergeant. “But go
along and find that out for me. That's what I want
you to do."
The constable might have been less pleased had he
also known that one main purpose of his errand, un-
[117]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
avowed to him by Sergeant Crisp, was to get him out
of the way so that the Sergeant might be quit of him
and be free to conduct his enquiries in his own way
for an hour or two at least of the afternoon.
[118]


CHAPTER IX
WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL
THINK that a detective's life must be in some
ways a very dreadful one. Of course it has its
interests in the problems which these unravellers of
mysteries are constantly called upon to solve, but in
going about, trying to solve them, they have to be per-
petually playing a part, they can never be themselves.
I know, from what Sergeant Crisp told me after-
wards, that already and from the first moment that he
had seen that imprint of an evening shoe on the soft
soil beneath the window of the summer-house, he had
begun to have a very terrible suspicion, or doubt or
inkling of a possibility in his mind; and it was a sus-
picion strongly confirmed by that identity of outline
which he had traced between the paper pattern of the
footprints and the "pump" in my uncle's room. And
yet with this dreadful possibility growing up in him,
he had come to my uncle, as he did that afternoon,
when they had a talk together in the library, as if he
were approaching him in the most candid and open
manner, in perfect confidence, and as if they were as
a matter of absolute course working hand in glove to-
gether to one and in common, the discovery and the
conviction of the criminal who had stabbed my poor
young aunt to death.
[119]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
To be exact, the Sergeant's suspicions at the com-
mencement of this interview ranged over several per-
sons, and among those of whom he had his shrewd
doubts was that enigmatical Grainger with his sphinx-
like reticence. There must surely be something hid-
den behind an attitude of such inpenetrable reserve
as that.
Uncle gave him his opportunity for commenting
on it almost at the outset of their talk, by saying that
he hoped Sergeant Crisp was receiving all the assis-
tance he required in his investigations. The detec-
tive replied to that that every one had seemed very
ready to help him, so far, with the single exception of
the butler.
"Ah," said my uncle, "he's a dour silent Scot.”
“Yes," Crisp persisted, “but he's more than that.
He's more than negative. I can swear he's positively
opposed to my investigating. He followed me, as I
went about the house this morning, like a cat watching
a mouse. A more impressionable man than myself
might quite reasonably have been frightened-afraid
that he might do me a bodily injury."
"Oh," said Uncle, "I really think that must be a
little imagination on your part. Grainger is constitu-
tionally, and even naturally, silent and reserved, but
he could not want to obstruct your enquiry—that is,
always supposing that you do not suspect him of hav-
ing had a hand in the crime."
"It is a rule in our profession," the detective said,
"to suspect everyone. Can you suppose that he could
have had any possible grudge which he could wish to
pay off on her ladyship?”
[120]


WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL
"Impossible,” said Uncle Ralph. “The idea is quite
out of the question. No, no grudge at all."
"And was there anyone had her ladyship an
enemy?”
"Not that I am at all aware of-and I think I should
have known it if she had."
"Not this man Heasden, for instance?" the Ser-
geant asked. “Did not her ladyship catch him poach-
ing or trespassing or the like?”.
"Why, yes, and I have no doubt she may have
spoken sharply to him. But you are not going to find
a motive for murder in that?"
"I suppose not, I suppose not,” the detective re-
peated thoughtfully. “You think that was the only
time she spoke to him?”.
"I never heard of any other," Uncle Ralph said,
much astonished.
“Quite so, Sir Ralph, quite so," said Crisp. "Now
I do not wish to worry you with questions. Will you
let me say how deeply I have felt for you? The cir-
cumstances have been most terribly painful. Your
last night's watch must have been a cruel trial."
“Naturally it was very painful,” said my uncle, in
a tone which he presumed would check the man's un-
solicited expressions of sympathy; but he pursued
nevertheless :
"I always find, myself, in a long period of waiting
in trying circumstances, a wonderful relief and com-
fort in tobacco. Nicotine is a blessed comforter. I
daresay you were able to find much relief from its
help during your vigil.”
"Certainly I did not,” replied Uncle Ralph, begin-
[121]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
ning to feel more than a little outraged by the Ser-
geant's tactless persistence. “I could not have smoked
then-there-over her body."
The Sergeant was all penitence, in a moment. “For-
give me,” he said, “I ought to have known better than
make the suggestion. Of course, at such a moment,
you could not. I ought to have understood."
He passed quickly on to other questions : Had Sir
Ralph any idea of any errand on which Lady Carlton
might have been going when she went out thus at
dead of night? Sir Ralph could not help him with any
suggestion of a motive.
"It might have been that her ladyship was troubled
and could not sleep and that the beauty of the night
tempted her."
"Oh, yes," Uncle agreed, “it might conceivably have
been that.”
"And would this have been at all a usual thing for
her ladyship to do?”
Certainly not usual at all, but her ladyship had done
such a thing before to Sir Ralph's knowledge.
“I suppose the summer-house was a place you often
went to?” Sergeant Crisp asked then.
"Oh, in the daytime, yes. Not at night though.”
"You were there yourself I daresay, in the course
of yesterday."
"No," Uncle Ralph said. “No. As it happens I
had not been in it for several days—until last night.”
"And you went, then, straight to the summer-house,
with Livesay."
“Straight to the summer-house-yes-naturally,"
[122]


WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL
said Uncle Ralph, not quite understanding the ques-
tion.
"And the door was shut-yes?" Uncle Ralph
nodded.
“And you went down, I suppose, and opened it,
did you open it, or Livesay ?”
"I—I was in front of him.”
"And there you saw-it must have been a terrible
shock to you."
“Naturally it was," Uncle Ralph replied, "but I was
prepared, of course. Livesay had virtually told me.”
I suppose that the detective's professional acuteness
was shown just as much in the questions which he left
unasked as in those which he did ask-the obvious
questions, I mean. For instance he never put any
question to my uncle about his relations with Aunt
Enid, whether they had always been quite friendly,
whether there had been any special cause of trouble
between them at the moment? It was true that it was
a question which he could get answered elsewhere, but
still the person who would be able to answer it most
fully, if he cared to do so, would be, of course, Uncle.
But Crisp may very well have thought that he would
not care. Also he may have reflected that he had al-
ready put Uncle to some vexation by his question about
his smoking in the summer-house, and may not have
wished to give him further annoyance. He had every
motive to keep on the best possible terms with any-
body who was likely to be able to help him with in-
formation.
Probably he had it in his mind that any further light
which he might desire on the mutual feelings of Uncle
[123]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
and Aunt Enid was very likely to be shed in the next
interview which he had in contemplation-with Cé-
leste, my aunt's French maid.
He asked my uncle about the character of one or
two of the servants, how long they had been in his
employment, especially of Livesay. Uncle gave him
the highest assurance with regard to one and all of
them. And then he asked whether Uncle had formed
any idea, any theory, of the murder. Of course there
was always the possibility of some tramp, hidden, per-
haps sleeping for the night in the bushes or in the
summer-house itself, seeing my aunt go in and assault-
ing her for the sake of her jewellery or anything she
had about her. That supposition was in part con-
tradicted by the fact that nothing, so far as we knew,
had been taken from my aunt. Her rings and
jewellery were there on the body-really adding to
the dreadfulness of its appearance, as I thought. But
of course it was always conceivable that the tramp,
or whoever it was, might have been scared, as soon as
he had done the deed, by his own act, or might have
heard footsteps-perhaps Livesay's own-and may
have fled before reaping the fruits of his crime.
I understand that they talked over the thing in all
its aspects, but could find no satisfactory solution. At
one particularly knotty point, the detective lamented
that he had left his cigarette case behind, and asked
Uncle if he could give him a cigarette, as tobacco al-
ways stimulated his mental activity. Uncle, I think,
considered the request rather a cool one, from a man in
the Sergeant's position, but he gave him the cigarette
he had asked for readily enough and the debate pro-
[124]


WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL
ceeded. Possible solutions of the mystery were not
wanting, but proof was lacking. The only person, as
they agreed, against whom there was any evidence
was the semi-gypsy, the Adonis and bad boy of the
village, Jim Heasden, but even against him the evi-
dence that he had actually been in the summer-house
itself was not quite clear, though apparently Crisp
thought it sufficient for getting out a warrant for his
arrest. But at the same time he did not deem it to
suffice for the immediate serving of the warrant. He
proposed to keep it ready for use in case of need.
And of course we knew that the future held in store
a further very painful trial-the coroner's inquest.
This was to be held on the Monday—the day of which
I am now writing being Saturday—at the White Hart,
in the village. But it would be necessary, we were
told, for the corpse to be seen, as a matter of legal
form, by the coroner and his jury, and for this purpose
they would come to the house and to my Aunt Enid's
room where her poor little body was now laid out.
decently on the bed. What I resented a great deal
more than this visit of inspection, though in itself it
seemed rather an outrage on the peace of death, was
that the tragedy and many family affairs that I would
far rather had been kept secret would be given up to
the curious gossip of the public and would become
the common talk of the village. To be sure, this was
a trivial thing, in comparison with the actual tragedy
itself, but still it all helped to add a sordidness which
increased the pain.
Of course Crisp, in these interrogations through
which he put us, had none of the authority of a
[125]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
coroner or of a judge. We were not under oath in our
examination. He had no power to compel us to an-
swer if we did not wish, or to check any flood of talk
under which truth might hide itself away as behind a
smoke cloud. He could not punish us for contempt of
court.
The power to extract answers from the unwilling
is one which, I know, he much wished that he had
when he was putting his questions to the reluctant
Grainger—there was one question in particular which
he longed to ask him, but thought that he would get
no true answer, so refrained—but when he came to
the interrogation of his next witness, Céleste, I am
quite sure that what he most especially would have
desired was the judge's power to check an excess of
talk. Céleste's tongue normally required only very
slight encouragement to start it running to incalcul-
able lengths, and she now appeared to be so excited
over this terrible thing which had happened to her
mistress that she was even more voluble than usual.
I had never been able to make out whether Céleste
was fond of my aunt. As a rule the servants did not
love Aunt Enid. They did her bidding, because she
spoke to them sharply, and had no consideration for
their feelings, treating them, in fact, as I have ob-
served that people who have lived some time in India
and have been used to ordering their Hindu servants
about, do deal with English servants when they come
home; and in consequence have much difficulty in keep-
ing them. But our servants stayed, partly because
Aunt Enid did not really take the wife's usual share
in ordering her household, but largely also because of
[126]


WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL
the affection they one and all felt for Uncle Ralph.
If Aunt Enid was a little too severe and sharp, he cer-
tainly was far too spoiling and kind. He hated to
have to say a word in rebuke to any of them, and as a
matter of fact generally passed on to me the task of
saying it. Not a very pleasant task, but I felt that
I had to take my world, and especially my Uncle
Ralph, as I found them, and on no account would I
have made any change in the latter, even if I could.
Possibly there were times when I might wish him a
stronger character, more determined and assertive, and
especially I might feel this now and then in regard to
his relations with Aunt Enid, but on the whole any
change of the kind would have made him different
from the Uncle Ralph whom I knew, and loved; and
assuredly I did not want him different.
But I was never quite sure to what extent Céleste
shared in the feelings of the other servants towards
their master and mistress. In the first place she was
altogether her mistress' servant, and had next to noth-
ing to do with her master. Uncle Ralph, I think, was
a little afraid of her. Anything like a voluble tongue
and a forthcoming manner always made him feel
rather shy. As he said himself, he did not like wo-
men who were always bowling half-volleys at you.
Just what kind of ball it was with which Aunt Enid
had taken his wicket I never could quite make out, for
I should much have suspected her of being an irre-
pressible half-volley bowler, in Uncle Ralph's sense.
Perhaps his eye was a little dazzled at the moment
with the Indian sunlight. Céleste I always regarded
as being in some ways rather like my Aunt Enid-
[127]


WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL
tions which would bring them to such scenes and
reconciliations.
For the moment at all events Céleste had nothing to
say that was not altogether good of her late mistress.
Whether it was the kindly act of death in gilding
virtues and glossing faults, or whether Céleste was
moved by the sentiment that there could be none of the
same recriminations nor the same reconciliations in the
future, she declared with tearful emphasis to the Ser-
geant that never before had any servants had such a
good and kind mistress. There never had been such
another. She was always so gay, which was for the
most part true; never put out, which was grossly far
from the fact; she had never received anything but
kindness from her—so forth and so on.
“More friend than mistress," Crisp suggested tact-
fully during a momentary pause in which Céleste wiped
her eyes with what the detective deemed a very fine
handkerchief for a woman in her position.
"Exactly, monsieur”—the idea propelled Céleste on
a new current of praise and exposition. “There was
nothing that milady did which she did not confide to
Céleste," and so on.
Sergeant Crisp may have privately doubted whether
milady was likely to have been so extremely indiscreet,
but he did not mention his doubt to the maid. He
said, instead, that he understood her to have been de-
voted to Sir Ralph.
"But yes”—Céleste was off again. Milady was an
angel. Of course Sir Ralph, everyone thought him
such a good, kind gentleman, but he was a great deal,
oh, many years, older than milady. He could not help
[129]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
that, Céleste admitted, but milady—! Céleste in-
terspersed her commendation with a large number
of “si gentiles,” “si jolies,” and so on, and gave the
impression that in her opinion, kind gentleman though
Sir Ralph was reputed to be, he was very far from
being good enough for her ladyship. Indeed Céleste
seemed to have considered him rather to blame that he
did not realise this inferiority for himself, that he did
not recognise that it was only right and proper that
a lady of milady's charms and youth should require
something more than the companionship of “always
the same person,” as Céleste put it, with an uncon-
scious condemnation of monogamy of which Crisp was
able to perceive the humour.
"Oh, then Sir Ralph objected to them sometimes,
did he to all these young men who came about the
house?”
“Oh, well, 'objected'!"-Céleste would not be quite
sure about the "objected.” She did not quite know
what the word meant, but Sir Ralph would look-oh
yes, he would look. He would look and not speak, no
he would not speak, he would not take his part and be
gay; he would be silent. And he would look. Mon-
sieur knew how much might be expressed by the eyes.
And Céleste turned her own, which were very ex-
pressive, as if by way of demonstration, truly ocular,
full blaze into the little acute grey eyes of monsieur,
as she spoke.
The Sergeant replied that he understood fully, and
then with what might have seemed extreme irrele-
vance, asked incidentally if it were not true that her
ladyship was extremely fond of dogs.
[130]


WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL
"Of dogs! Ah, monsieur, what a droll idea !” A
ripple of high-pitched Gallic laughter came from the
woman as if she found the suggestion exceedingly
humorous. Why, milady had them in horror, as in-
deed had Céleste herself. For her part she detested
them. If it was cats now-ah a cat!
Céleste went off into a brief panegyric on the engag-
ing, graceful, caressing ways of cats, while Sergeant
Crisp mentally contrasted this view held in common by.
maid and mistress of our canine friends with the
assiduous petting, on the part of the maid more espe-
cially, of the keeper's dog, Ranger, as described to
him by Livesay. To say the least, it was very curious.
When the French woman came to an end of her
recital of the feline virtues, Sergeant Crisp led her
back to the previous question by asking her whether
there was anyone of the young men who came about
the house so much for whom her ladyship had shown
any particular preference. Was it the same with all
of them or was there one in especial?
Ah, well, there was one, Céleste said. But did mon-
sieur think that she ought to say? She, who was so
in milady's confidence? Would it be right?
Monsieur, appealed to, declared warmly that Cé-
leste's high sense of honour did her the greatest
credit; that if her ladyship were still alive he would not
suggest for a moment that she should betray her con-
fidence; but that, her ladyship being unhappily beyond
the reach of any harm that could be done her by Cé-
leste's telling him all that she knew, he was able to
advise her, with a clear conscience, that it was her
obvious duty to conceal nothing that could possibly
[131]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
advance the cause of justice. Did not Céleste, on
consideration, agree with him? He was even able to
inform her that it would possibly be to her material
advantage to be open with him.
Céleste having taken the matter into her considera-
tion, and being further powerfully moved, as I
imagine, though this she did not mention to the Ser-
geant, by her innate disposition to loquacity, forth-
with began to tell him what he in part knew already,
that there was indeed one-oh yes, one most serious
attachment, something quite different from the others
-a Captain Vibart, known to her ladyship long be-
fore her marriage with Sir Ralph. Yes, and if Cap-
tain Vibart had had the money of Sir Ralph it was not
Sir Ralph at all, but Captain Vibart that milady would
have married. Oh, yes, milady had told Céleste so
herself—there was nothing that she did not tell to
Céleste. But Captain Vibart, he was poor, and milady
too was poor, so that they could not marry. Was it
not sad?
Sergeant Crisp agreed that it was very sad to be
poor.
And so Sir Ralph came, out to India, and he was
rich, very rich, and so he married her under the very
nose of the poor Captain Vibart. Again Céleste re-
marked how very sad it was.
So then, when Captain Vibart came home to Eng-
land, of course he came down to see milady. He was
such a nice gentleman, so charming—Sergeant Crisp
conjectured that he had been judiciously liberal in
the matter of tips—a surmise confirmed as Céleste
added "so generous, although he was so poor," and he
[132]


WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL
and milady they had so much to tell each other of the
old times-oh it was all very natural: Céleste was sure
that monsieur would understand.
Monsieur was very understanding, very attentive to
what Céleste said, continually desirous to hear more.
She told him that sometimes her ladyship would go
up to London “to see her dressmaker" as she would
tell Sir Ralph, and it might be that too, a little, but
also it might be a great deal to see the charming Cap-
tain Vibart. And when she came back she told Sir
Ralph all about her dressmaker, which he, poor man,
could not understand, but she told him nothing about
Captain Vibart, although she told much to her,
Céleste.
Just how much, of all this that she was narrating,
was truth and how much was exaggeration or invention
Crisp had to wonder perpetually. He had already dis-
cerned in the French girl a fine natural aptitude for
lying, or perhaps I should rather say a fine natural
indifference to truth. It may be that I am hard on
her: in all probability my judgment is a great deal in-
fluenced by my feelings, for I know that I detested
the woman. I thought her to be something like the
evil genius of my poor young aunt, or at the least to
be the confidante of all her follies, if not worse than
follies, and a very bad influence. But I could do
nothing. Céleste was always perfectly respectful to
me in speech, though her manner of holding her head
in the air with a little smile, which I fancied to convey
a hint of some derision, on her thin lips, as she passed
me in the house, was intended, I felt quite sure, to be
offensive; but it was an offence which would not be
[133]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
apparent to anyone else; least of all to Uncle Ralph,
most unsuspicious of mortals, and of course it would
have been no use carrying any complaint based on
the curying of the girl's lips or the lift of her snaky
head, to my Aunt Enid.
So Céleste told the Sergeant of meetings in London,
meetings in Captain Vibart's rooms, and how much of
it all to believe he hardly knew. It is to be admitted
that the girl, in her own utter absence of moral sense,
did not suppose herself to be doing any wrong to her
mistress' memory, in telling about her these tales,
whether true or false. She did not conceive them as in
any way lowering to the estimation in which a man of
the world would hold her mistress. I believe she
looked on it all as the most natural and even the most
inevitable thing in the world for a young woman mated
with a man a dozen or so years older than herself.
When she came to speak of Captain Vibart's visits
to Scotney and of all that happened in their course,
the Sergeant could feel the ground more secure; for
he could check her in some measure here, by evidence
of other people. Three or four times, she said, Cap-
tain Vibart had been down to stay and each time he
had stayed for a long time, and each time "that Sir
Ralph," he had seemed more silent, more morose, more
put out about it. And that was not the way, was it?
-Céleste appealed to monsieur-to win milady's
thoughts back from the Captain, if that had been in
any way possible? Not that Céleste, for her part,
believed that it was possible he was so charming, such
an old friend. The Sergeant had to arrest the flow
[134]


WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL
of words here, which threatened to traverse again all
the country that they had gone over before.
"And the last time that he was down here?” he
asked.
“Ah, yes, the last time—that was the most dreadful.
Heavens”—and Céleste threw her eyes in the direc-
tion where she believed that celestial place to lie-
"Figure to yourself that it is only two days ago—this
is Saturday and that was Thursday—that he was here
and they were so happy, so happy, the Captain and
milady.” That delicate handkerchief went again to
Céleste's eyes and the Sergeant thought that it could
hardly be adequate to all the work that she was im-
posing on it. “And to think that she is now-like
that!" Céleste indicated the room in which the body
was laid out.
"On Thursday they were happy, were they?” Crisp
put in.
“Yes, monsieur-on the Thursday. That is to say
it was in the evening, not the afternoon, of that Thurs-
day that there happened something."
“What?" Sergeant Crisp asked.
"What?" echoed Céleste. “Ah that, God knows,"
she said, as one who would imply that she did not and
that few mortals did. “They had gone out together, so
happy, in the half light after tea, and it was all so
peaceful, except that Sir Ralph, he was so silent, so
morose. And then, when they came in, there was
something, I do not know what. Milady came to
her room, and I knew there was something. She did
not say to me a word, but her colour was high, and
she came in-like a flame. She sat down on the bed.
[135]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
I asked her what it was. She did not answer. Then
she took off her hat, a hat so pretty, and threw it from
her, on the floor. It was time for her to dress for
dinner, and she began to take off her things, and I to
help her, not saying a word. When I did speak, when
I asked her anything, she said, 'Don't speak to me. . I
can't bear it. If you speak to me I shall cry, and I
don't mean to cry. So we went on: it was terrible.
And when she went down to dinner she did not say to
me a word. She was afraid to cry.”
“Ah, but that night she did cry. She was not any
longer afraid. She did cry. When she came up to
her room—she came up early—she let me take her in
my arms, and she cried, oh as if she would not stop,
and so, always crying, I got her into bed, and she say-
ing nothing but ‘I can't bear it. I can't bear it.' What
it was she could not bear she would not say. She
would say nothing-only that: 'I can't bear it-again
and again. And so, still crying but quieting down, I
left her.”
“That was the Thursday night," the Sergeant re-
marked.
“Yes, and in the morning-ah, ciel, only yesterday!
—she was quiet. When I called her, she said she
would take her breakfast in bed. That was nothing.
It was so milady often did. Then she went down,
when she was dressed. But she told me nothing, no
not even me, whom she told everything. But I knew,
we all knew, that Captain Vibart, he had gone. Yes,
he had gone, though we all knew that he had been
going to stay until the Saturday. But he went, and
milady did not say good-bye to him, no, for milady
[136]


WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL
did not see him that morning before he went. No, but
there was a note. I know, because Captain Vibart, he
was on the stairs as I went to milady's room, and he
gave me the note to give her—which of course, I did,"
Céleste added, very demurely.
"And what did the note contain?” Sergeant Crisp
asked.
"Monsieur !” exclaimed Céleste, with a horrified and
most indignant accent at the suggestion which the
question seemed to convey.
“I mean,” the Sergeant explained quietly, “that since
her ladyship gave you so much of her confidence she
might have told you what was in the note.”
"Ah,” said Céleste, appearing satisfied to accept this
version of his meaning, “but milady was not herself
that day. No, milady told me nothing, and I did not
see that note again. Milady that day was like one
who thought a great deal to herself, but she said noth-
ing. When I spoke to her she scarcely answered me.
She went down about midday, and from then until it
was time that she should dress for dinner I only saw
her once, when I made pretence and went into her
boudoir to ask her a question about a blouse I was
altering for her. I made pretence, yes, because what
I really wanted was to see how milady was, and
whether I could do anything for her, but she sent me
away and said that she wanted nothing. Only she
told me that she felt ill, that she wanted rest, that she
had slept not at all the night before and she told me
to take up a little dinner on a tray to her room, and
she would not dress and would go to her bed at the
early hour."
[137]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
"And what did her ladyship have for dinner?"
“Ah, a mere nothing—a slice of fish, a cutlet, a glass
of claret-just a little rice pudding. Milady would
take nothing."
“Ah, well, I don't know; not so bad, quite a good
little nothing, I should say. Well, and then ? You
took away her tray—at what hour?”
“Oh, as to that it took no time, no. In a few
minutes it was done. Half-past eight, I daresay."
“And at what time did you last see her ladyship?"
“At that hour-at half-past eight, or but a few
minutes after. Milady did not want me any more,
she said. I brought her some hot water, and that
was all. She had not changed her dress: there were
no things to put away. Milady did not want me any
more that night. She would go to bed, she said,
directly, she was so tired, she needed sleep."
"And the dress, the dress that she had on when the
body was found, was that the dress in which she was
when you last saw her?”
“That was the dress.”
"And the shoes?”
“Ah no, the shoes! that is another thing. It is
another pair of shoes."
“Out-of-door shoes?”.
“Yes, monsieur.”
"And her ladyship had not been out during the
day?"
“No, monsieur."
"And now tell me, Mademoiselle Céleste," said the
Sergeant, in an apologetic way. "You must pardon
me if I am asking a question which I ought not, I do
[138]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
“Ah, it is sad-terrible. Ah monsieur, who could
have done this thing—so cruel? And milady so young,
so joyous! Is it possible, do you think, Monsieur-
but no "
An unusual motive of discretion seemed to take
Céleste in sudden possession and she arrested herself
abruptly on the verge of some suggestion that she had
been about to make.
"Is what possible, Mademoiselle?" the detective per-
sisted.
But Céleste was very firm. She could be, I am sure.
That thin, tight-shutting line of mouth and those
straight brows must be the sign of some qualities with-
in. Although Sergeant Crisp did his best with her,
and although he had much experience with the
reluctant kind of witness, she would not speak. Find-
ing himself perforce obliged to appear to drop the
point, he did so with a grace which gave him the
better hope of returning to it with more success an-
other time.
“After all,” he said, “it is not for me to press
Mademoiselle” (he had, as a matter of fact, just been
pressing her as hard as he knew how) "to tell that
which she does not wish to tell. I may be more frank
perhaps with Mademoiselle than she is with me—the
suspicion of the police," and here his little grey eyes
would naturally take on their most gimletty look, "has
fallen on a loafing, poaching gipsy fellow-name of
Jim Heasden.”
It was his fancy to put it in this way, giving the idea
that he had no notion of any knowledge of such a fel-
[140]


WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL
low on the part of the lady's maid, just to see how she
would take it.
As a matter of fact she did not take it well. It
was extremely obvious to the Sergeant's practised eye
that the information hit her badly. But so far as
words went she did tolerably: “Ah Jim Heasden-Jim
Heasden. Ah, yes," falling in excellently with the
Sergeant's suggestion that he would be personally un-
known to her. "He is the one that milady found in
the shrubbery after the rabbits, is it not ?"
Then Sergeant Crisp hazarded a venturous shot.
“He is that one,” he said. Then added, “He is the
one whom her ladyship found—whom her ladyship
met,” he spoke slowly giving the corrected phrase its
chance to sink with its full significance into the French
girl's mind, "more than once, in the shrubbery,” and
with another pause-after rabbits.”
The shot at a venture hit. The girl's eyes flashed,
her brows went even straighter, her bosom heaved
“Milady met him—saw him-once, only once, no
more," she asserted, with an emphasis that the occa-
sion did not seem to require.
Sergeant Crisp allowed his face to put on something
as much like a smile as was possible for it: “And
Mademoiselle," he said ironically, "was so much in
the confidence of her ladyship!"
"But I know—I know," said the girl impatiently.
"Ah-it is no matter how I know, but I know.”
"Well, well,” the Sergeant said, as if humouring
her. "It is no matter, as you truly say, Mademoiselle.
What does it matter to you or me how often her lady-
ship met Jim Heasden in the shrubbery, eh?"
[141]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
He had her right off her poise now, which of course
was the result to which he had been aiming ever since
he had found her concealing something from him
Then he rapped out directly:
“At what time was it that you met Jim Heasden last
night?"
He had thrown her off the balance, but she was
not quite so far perturbed as to be plastic to that sug-
gestion. He had made a mistake in his judgment of
her psychology and knew it even before she answered
with a perfectly recovered demureness:
"Plaît-il?"
The question had shown her her danger: shown her
how dangerous was the extraordinarily innocuous
looking little man who was asking her questions:
shown her that he was a weaver of snares. The vanity
of setting snares before the eyes of any bird has been
told us on highest authority. Céleste was as the bird
whose eyes had been opened to the snares. She was
quite a match for her fowler now, and the fowler
realised it. He cackled, with a real appreciation of
the excellent piece of acting in that: “Plaît-il?” but
he did not trouble to answer it otherwise. He realised
that he was not likely to get anything else of value out
of Mademoiselle Céleste for the moment. After all,
he had got much. He had discovered that she was
capable of being stirred to fires of jealousy by the bare
suggestion that another woman, even her own mistress,
for whom she expressed deep affection and admiration,
had been meeting this rustic Adonis. So doing, she
had sufficiently revealed her own sentiments towards
that young Egyptian. Neither did it seem at all
[142]


WHAT THE FRENCH MAID HAD TO TELL
obscure to the detective why she, who "had dogs in
horror," had deemed it prudent to make a friend of
Ranger, the dog of the keeper who was apt to be
abroad and on the watch in the shrubbery. Several
dark mysteries began to grow clearer to the detective's
mental vision as he walked thoughtfully back to the
White Hart, but there was very much that was dark
still. The dark areas were still far wider than the
light, and the central mystery remained in the pro-
foundest gloom of all.
[143]


CHAPTER X
AMENDED EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH
MAID
MERGEANT CRISP had made a very early start
D from London in the morning, and may have
deemed that he had already concluded a good day's
work by the time that he had finished his catechism
of Céleste, but he still had something to do when
he returned to the White Hart before he could be-
gin writing his notes on the case, so far as he had yet
carried it.
When he had begged a cigarette of Uncle Ralph,
he had not smoked it to its end. He had allowed it to
go out, between his lips, and when it had so gone out
he did not throw the end away, but, on the contrary,
placed it with some care in an envelope, and pocketed
it. When he got back to his room at the hotel he
drew out this piece of cigarette, together with the stubs
of two others which he had secured during his investi-
gation of the summer-house. He compared them,
under a magnifying glass. The stubs from the sum-
mer-house had been smoked tolerably lately. As he
peered through his glass he shook his head gravely:
“Very strange,” he said to himself then. “Very
strange. Same brand, same paper, same tobacco," and
[144]


EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH MAID
he recalled Uncle Ralph's reproachful wrath at the
bare idea, which the sergeant himself had suggested,
of his smoking in the presence of his wife's dead
body.
None of the other minute objects which he had
found on the floor of the summer-house interested
him at all to the same extent because there was noth-
ing to show when they had been dropped there. They
might have lain for days and might have been left
by anybody. They told him nothing.
He allowed himseif a little relaxation after he had
finished his examination, and sat in a corner of the
quadrangle formed by the hotel buildings where he was
able to see all comers and goers and was himself,
with his suit of the "protective colouring,” his small-
ness and his immobility, hardly noticeable. He made
it a rule of his day to give himself an hour or two, if
it were possible, of detachment from any case that he
was engaged in "to preserve his humanity," as he said.
He wrote a letter, using a fountain-pen, and a sheet
of paper from a thin notebook, to his wife telling her
where he was and that he was likely to be kept there
for the time being. The next day would be Sunday,
which he always tried to spend at home.
After his supper the Sergeant sat himself down to
writing his notes, arranging them in some sequence
and making comments upon them, both for future
reference and also to obtain the clearest mental vision
possible of the aspects of the case as far as they had
revealed themselves. One of its principal difficulties,
at this stage, was that the aspects and the possibilities
were so many. Accepting the detective's view that
[145]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
the idea of motive might almost be excluded from the
factors leading to a solution of the mystery, because
of the extreme difficulty of knowing motives which
people wish to keep secret, suspicion seemed to fall
very directly on him who was the first to give informa-
tion of the murder—on Livesay, the keeper. Of course
it was he in the first instance who suggested the sus-
picion against Heasden, by telling the strange story of
meeting him running from the summer-house. On
the face of it that was a most unlikely tale, and really
looked very much like the invention of a clumsy per-
son trying to avert suspicion from himself. Livesay
therefore had to take a high place on the list of sus-
pects.
But then, if one adopted the other view, and ac-
cepted Livesay's story for truth, the suspicion became
keen against Heasden, and the Sergeant could not rid
himself of the idea of some disgraceful dalliance be-
tween my foolish and susceptible young aunt, with her
unfortunate education in India hill station society.
and this singularly handsome rustic. Had he pre-
sumed too far? Had she, resisting his presumption,
raised his hot gypsy blood to rage and had he struck,
in blind fury? It was all possible.
Then there were mysteries quite apart, mysteries to
which neither of those alternatives gave the clue.
Somewhere, by some one, by more than one, Sergeant
Crisp had a conviction at this stage that something,
some fact or some facts of note were being withheld,
but he could not put his finger on them. He was still
feeling after them in the dark, or, at best, in a twi-
light which did not seem to be gaining in illumination.
[146]


EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH MAID
There was the mystery of the two footprints.
What was the meaning of that one print, of the
heavy sole overlying the slender delicate one? The
slender print he had identified as being similar with
that which my uncle's shoe, for evening wear, would
make.
But then there was another, besides my uncle, who
might wear a shoe of that outline-Grainger. With
this was perhaps to be linked that other mystery, of
the appearance of Grainger in full dress in response to
the midnight bell-ringing. Really it was hardly
so much that the case was in gloom, as that light
played in upon it from such various directions that
they became confusing. With regard to that other
print, the overlying one, of the heavy shoe, Sergeant
Crisp had not yet identified it. He believed that he
would find it to be the impress of the foot of one or
other of two persons, Livesay or Heasden, and the
determination of this point, which he reserved for
investigation on the morrow, would act as a direction
post, this way or the other, towards reinforced sus-
picion of the person who had made it.
But even so, remained the puzzle of the underlying
print, of the lighter shoe. The sergeant could re-
construct for himself the scene in which both the one
and the other imprint were made. It was fairly
evident, from their place on the semicircle of soft soil,
that they had been impressed by a person, or rather by
two persons, both pushing their way into the bushes
which came up almost to the summer-house wall, and
with a slight lean over of their bodies to the right
getting into such a position as would enable them to
[147]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
look in at the window of the summer-house and see
what was inside.
What was it that those persons had seen?
Sergeant Crisp, as I say, could reconstruct the scene
in outline, so far as to visualise those two persons,
first one and then the other, peering over, looking in,
but he could not fill up those outlines satisfactorily:
he could not fill in the figures, so as to be sure whose
they were, nor could he form a clear idea of the view
within the summer-house which their eyes had seen.
And then it was almost certain that the French maid,
Céleste, knew more than she had told. She had even
avowed as much. And Sergeant Crisp did not by any
means dismiss as impossible the idea that the actual
murder might have been the work of a woman's hand.
Céleste was slight, but the sergeant judged her to
be strong and sinewy. The wound was not one which
it was at all inconceivable that the hand of a woman
might have given, and he had formed, as it seemed,
the very worst opinion of Céleste. He believed her
capable of anything.
Of me, too, as I know now, the Sergeant had his
suspicion, not, indeed, that he thought I could possibly
have had a hand in my poor aunt's death, but that he
believed me to be keeping back from him something
that might have an important bearing on the case. And
this, of course, was absolutely correct. I was keeping
back a fact of importance the fact, of which I was
nearly as certain as the evidence of one's eyes can
make one, that I had seen Uncle Ralph go out under
the moonlight and enter the shrubbery path at an hour
when he himself denied having left the house at all.
[148]


EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH MAID
It is curious, but I began to be rather less absolutely
certain that it was he than I was at at first. I think
it does happen thus-that we begin by being very sure
of something which we believe that we have seen,
and then, by degrees, if people tell us, or facts conspire
to prove to us, that we must have been mistaken, we
begin to be shaken in our conviction, we begin to i
doubt what we had at first supposed to be the clear
evidence of our senses. I imagine that it is a kind of
suggestion working upon us.
So in this way I began by degrees to have less cer-
tainty that it was my Uncle Ralph that I had seen. I
began to entertain the possibility that it might have
been someone else, like him in figure and dress, that I
had mistaken for him. My thoughts fell upon
Grainger, who was of much the same height. I really
began hardly to know what to think.
But, of course, on the detective's list of suspects it
was impossible but that Uncle Ralph's name should
figure. It even figured the most largely of all. It
could not well be otherwise. To me, who knew Uncle
Ralph's nature, his gentle character and his devo-
tion to my aunt, it scarcely seemed possible really to
suspect him for a moment of such an act as the sus-
picion implied, and yet, behind all that, and even
while I told myself that I could not possibly suspect,
I was conscious, the while, that there was a hint, a sort
of whisper of a dreadful doubt going through my
mind all the time. For I really hardly could doubt
the evidence of my eyes, though it was by moonlight,
that it was Uncle Ralph whom I had seen crossing
the gravel and going towards the summer-house; and
[149]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
I could in no way reconcile that with his denial that
he had gone out at all until summoned by Livesay.
So I did not know what to think.
But the detective had not the knowledge that I had
of my uncle's character and disposition: and there
was all this serious trouble between my uncle and my
aunt over the (in my opinion) wholly unworthy Cap-
tain Vibart, to furnish some part of a possible motive,
in my uncle's case. For, of course, in spite of his
view of the absence of proof of motive counting for so
little, the detective would admit the full value of pos-
itive evidence of motive; and I suppose jealousy, such
as he might presume my uncle to be under the influ-
ence of, has been the motive of more crimes of vio-
lence than any other sentiment.
On the other hand Sergeant Crisp had not the fact,
if it was a fact, that I had seen Uncle go out, to con-
firm this dreadful suspicion of him. That was the
fact which I was withholding from him-perhaps
wrongly.. I do not know.
So, as he looked at his notes and jottings and com-
ments in his book, and turned its pages over, he had
to confess himself in a very tangled maze, and while
he was puzzling and entangling himself in it more and
more hopelessly, the “Boots” came to his door and
put his head in with the information that there was a
Tady below asking to speak to him.
Sergeant Crisp descended to the coffee-room. There
was Céleste.
It was Céleste in the guise of a penitent; in a mood
of grief for a sin committed which would have wrung
[150]


EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH MAID
tears from a heart less hard than one of stone-or of
a detective officer.
"Ah, Monsieur,” she exclaimed, “I am come. I
have been so very unhappy.”
The Sergeant said sympathetically that he was most
grieved to hear it.
"I am come, Monsieur,” she said, “because when
you were with me to-day I did not tell you the truth.
Ah,” she caught herself up, “I do not mean that I did
tell you an untruth-no. It was not so bad as that.
I could not do that. But I did not tell you every-
thing, not what you call the whole truth. No, there
was one little thing which I did not tell, and it has
made me so unhappy-to think that I did not tell the
whole truth."
"Ah, well, Mademoiselle," the Sergeant said be-
ginning to feel rather like a father confessor. “It is
satisfactory to think that it is not too late to tell the
whole truth now. What is it that you have to say
to me?”
They had the dingy coffee-room to themselves, and
Céleste led the Sergeant to the corner most dimly
lighted and farthest from the door, and there she be-
gan to talk in an agitated whisper.
"It was last night,” she said, “and oh, but I do not
know that I did not tell Monsieur one little lie, after
all. I do not know. I do not remember exactly what
it was that I did say. But I believe I did say to Mon-
sieur that I had not been out at all last night, after
milady said she did not want me. That was not true.
I did go out, just for a little turn. The moon, it is so
beautiful.”
(151)


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
The Sergeant agreed dryly that the moon is an ad-
mirable planet.
"So I did walk along the little path that goes under
the trees-Monsieur knows it—and as I did come to
that place which is opposite the little summer-house,
what was it that I saw ?”
"Well, Mademoiselle?" the Sergeant asked, as the
French woman, with a sort of dramatic instinct,
paused.
"I saw, Monsieur,” she said, whispering still lower
and more agitatedly, and bringing her mouth close to
the detective's ear, “I saw Sir Ralph, Sir Ralph him-
self, coming from the summer-house."
At that announcement I believe that she did indeed
alter the beating of Sergeant Crisp's heart a great
deal more effectively than by her pathos, but that
heart was a very well trained and disciplined organ
and Céleste may have been much disappointed of the
effect she had hoped to produce when the Sergeant
enquired simply:
"Well, Mademoiselle, and then?"
"Well, Monsieur !" the girl responded, in indignant
surprise. "Monsieur can ask 'What then?' Is it not
enough? There was no 'then'-no 'Après. Sir
Ralph, he just came past me; it was moonlight and
I was in the shade of the trees-he did not see me--
and went back along the path to the house. But is it
not enough? He was coming from the summer-
house, I tell you—from that house where you know,
Monsieur, what was in that house." .
Céleste was fearfully indignant and astonished at
[152]


EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH MAID
the Sergeant's slowness in comprehending all that her
news implied.
"And how did he look, Mademoiselle-Sir Ralph?”
"He was white,” said Céleste. "His face was white
-I could see it-and very hard. He walked quickly.”
“And what had he in his hand, what was he hold-
ing?"
"In his hand!” she reflected. “But nothing—I did
not notice.”
"He had no-no stick-nothing in his hand ?” the
Sergeant persisted.
"Nothing, nothing that I saw. His hand, perhaps
it was clenched-he walked like that, like a man that
has the hand clenched-stiff.”
"I see, so that he might have held something in
his hand.”
"It is possible. I did not see."
The Sergeant had to leave this point; he could not
carry it any further. Then he said:
"But after all, of what use is it? Why have you
come to tell me this—this story?”
"Story! Monsieur," Céleste exclaimed, indignant
again. "It is not story, it is truth that I am telling."
“Yes, I know. I am quite sure that you are telling
truth. But of what value is it?"
"Of what value? I do not understand. If Sir
Ralph came from the summer-house, and if, in the
summer-house there was lying-that--that which you
know," Céleste seemed to have a singular repugnance
to speak of the dead body of her mistress in so many
plain words—"well, does it not prove ?" Céleste
[153]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
ended in a pause which she made the more significant
by a shrug of the shoulders in the national manner.
"If Sir Ralph came from the summer-house, Mad-
emoiselle, then indeed it might seem to prove. And I
do not doubt that what you say is true.” (He did
not add that he might have been inclined to doubt it
exceedingly had it not seemed to be supported by the
witness of that footprint which he had seen beneath
the window of the summer-house. He did not, how-
ever, say anything about that witness to Céleste.)
“I believe your story,” he repeated, “but before it can
be of any value in law it will have to be believed by
twelve men who will be called a jury, and when you
tell your story, Mademoiselle, and when Sir Ralph
tells his, which we may take it is likely to be that he
was not at the place at all at that time-indeed he
has already said so—why, then, Mademoiselle, it will
be but one person's word against another, Sir Ralph's
against yours, and I ask you, Mademoiselle I do
not wish to be rude but I put it to you: which story
will those twelve men be most likely to believe-yours,
which is a very unlikely one upon the face of it, or
Sir Ralph's? What do you think?”.
Céleste, very much contrary to her usual manner,
did not answer for a moment. She was very intel-
ligent. Intensely as I disliked and distrusted her, I
never doubted for a minute the excellence of her brain.
“I understand," she said, after a moment's thought.
"Monsieur means that it will all come to be a question
of one person's word against another's, as you say:
and that in that case Sir Ralph's would naturally be
believed in preference to my own.”
[154]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
fellow," she repeated, as if to emphasise her poor
opinion of him. "He was just speaking to me I was
asking him what business he had there—when Sir
Ralph came from the summer-house, and we both saw
him.”
"You saw this fellow in the shrubbery, Made-
moiselle, yes ? And you thought he was poaching?"
“Yes," said the girl.
“And you saw Sir Ralph coming?"
“Yes."
"And what did you do you and Heasden? Did
he not see you?”
: "No, we were in the shadow of the trees, and he
passed by."
"And why—I do not understand, Mademoiselle
you had seen this fellow, whom you thought to be
poaching, and you saw Sir Ralph coming-why did
you not call out to Sir Ralph and tell him that the
fellow was there?”
As a matter of fact the Sergeant was not nearly so
much at a loss to understand the situation as he gave
the girl to suppose. But then he had received an en-
lightenment on its obscurity, of which she was not
aware, in the course of his previous talk with Susan,
the old housemaid, who had told him of Céleste being
seen later than, in Susan's opinion, she ought to have
been out, in the shrubbery path and in the society of
this very Heasden.
Céleste had all her quick wits about her, and
responded, almost without hesitation, and with a be-
coming affectation of modesty, to the Sergeant's ques-
tion:
1Scen.
[156]


EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH MAID
"It was late, Monsieur-late for a girl like me to
be out. Sir Ralph might not have liked it.”
"I see," said the Sergeant, who was enjoying him-
self immensely throughout the conversation. “And
what time was it?”
.: “It was after eleven, Monsieur. I afraid it was
after eleven,” said Céleste, with modest shame.
"Or'it may have been half-past?".
"It is possible, Monsieur. One does not know-the
moon was so beautiful.”
“Or even twelve?”
"Oh, no.” Céleste was emphatic as to that. She
was sure it was not so dreadful an hour as midnight.
What must not Monsieur think of her?
Monsieur did not state, in answer, what his thoughts
of her were. Instead he asked her how it was that
she was able to leave the house and return to it, ap-
parently at will, at such an hour as even, say, eleven.
Her ready explanation was that she came and went by
way of the conservatory which opened out from
milady's boudoir. There were two keys to the con-
servatory-milady was so good to her, she allowed
her to have one of the keys, so she was free to come
and go.
It was an explanation which the detective presumed
would have to suffce, since her ladyship was no longer
able to confirm or to contradict it. That there were
two keys seemed probable enough, though whether
her ladyship had been cognizant of Céleste's posses-
sion of one of them, whether the second might not
have been obtained covertly by the maid for her own
[157]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
purposes, was a point that there did not seem to be any
means of determining for the moment.
“And were you in the habit, Mademoiselle, of going
out at so late an hour?"
Céleste adopted the pathetic rôle again in making
reply to this question.
"A girl has not much time, Monsieur, a lady's maid,
even to so kind a lady as milady, that she can call her
own. There is little freedom. Only after milady had
come up and I had seen to her for the night and she
had said she did not want me any more-only then
could I go out.”
"And what did you do you and Heasden-after
Sir Ralph had gone past you?"
"I and Heasden, indeed!” the girl exclaimed, as if
greatly resenting this linking of them together. "What
Heasden did, I'm sure I don't know—went after his
rabbits, I suppose. What I did was to hurry back to
the house again, following after Sir Ralph.”
“And did he go in by way of the conservatory, too?"
"I think not-no, he had not the key. He would go
most likely by the window of the library that goes
down to the ground.”
“Then when you went back you locked the door of
the conservatory?"
"Certainly, Monsieur."
"Something then is accounted for," the Sergeant
observed, “but in that case where is the other key-
that which her ladyship had? Nothing of the kind
was found upon her, nor near her. Yet I suppose she
must have let herself out?”.
Even his penetrative eyes could not see that the girl
[158]


EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH MAID
was at all troubled by the questioning note which he
threw into the last sentence. She only answered, sim-
ply and demurely: "Oh, yes."
"I must ask for your help here, Mademoiselle, if
you will be good enough to give it to me”-he was
intent for the moment on getting her into an amiable
and a helpful frame of mind, if it were possible, for
on this point about the key and of my aunt's exit from
the house, he thought that she might give him useful
assistance. “I should be greatly obliged if you could
find me that key. How did you find the conservatory
door when you went out? Was it locked or un-
locked ?"
"Oh, locked, Monsieur," she answered.
"Then does not that look as if her ladyship, in let-
ting herself out, had locked the door behind her, and
taken the key with her?”
"It would seem so, Monsieur."
"And yet the key was not found on her-nor near
her! Does it not seem strange? How did her lady-
ship propose to come into the house again?”
It always was the Sergeant's way, when he wished
to gain a person as an assistant, to make a great show
of consulting him or her upon the case, as though he
valued the advice very highly. Doubtless it was a
subtle and valuable form of flattery, well calculated
to reach its end. But, further than that, I knew that
he took the view that it was always judicious to listen
to what might be no more than the babblings of the
merest amateur, because you never knew but what
they might contain an occasional suggestion that was
useful.
[159]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
"I am afraid," he had said to me, "that it is only in
works of fiction that you meet with the omniscient
detective of crime, who never makes a mistake and
uncoils the plot with deadly silent certainty in his own
brain, infallibly and without listening to a word that
anyone outside may tell him about it. They make
good heroes of fiction, these fellows, but I do not
think they would make very good detectives."
In the particular case of Céleste, and in inviting her
assistance in this matter of the key, he had also a
further motive. An obvious solution of the mystery
of the locked door would be that Céleste had let her
mistress out of it, had locked it, and had been mean-
ing to re-admit her on returning. He did not wish to
raise Céleste's suspicion of him by a direct suggestion
that this might be the explanation. He asked ques-
tions round and about the point, but the woman gave
no sign, let drop no word, to convey that she was in her
mistress' confidence about this nocturnal promenade.
If she were fencing with him, her guard, both of word
and feature, was so good that the Sergeant could not
get past it. Yet the theory was one which explained
very nicely the moonlight ramble of the French girl
also, for it was most natural that when she found her
mistress not returning, she should go out to see what
was the matter. To be sure, there was a quite sufficient
alternative motive for this ramble- Jim Heasden.
Sergeant Crisp, as may be seen, had passed a toler-
ably strenuous day, and into its many engagements
he had not found time to fit an interview with the
handsome rascal of the village. Nevertheless by
proxy, that is to say, by the eyes of one or other of
[160]


EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH MAID
the Sergeant's satellites, in or out of uniform, Heas-
den had been the subject of an attention which, had he
been aware of it, he might have considered more im-
pertinent than flattering. Since the Sergeant's first
conversation with Livesay, Heasden's every move-
ment had been kept under observation, and had been
entered on a report which had been handed to the de-
tective in a very unobtrusive way as he strolled out
from the White Hart for a short “constitutional"
after supper.
Among the items of information relating to Heas-
den, contained in the report, was one to the effect
that shortly after dusk he had been seen talking earn-
estly and for a considerable time with “her ladyship's
French maid.” What had happened was that Céleste
had gone into the village, probably on some errand
invented for the special purpose of seeing Heasden,
had succeeded in coming across him and had been
followed by him to the unfrequented strip of country
road between the village and the turning off towards
Scotney House. It was a light evening and Sergeant
Crisp's reporter had not been able to approach them
near enough to overhear the subject of their talk, but
it was long and, apparently, grave.
The Sergeant's comment on this, jotted down as a
marginal entry against the brief summary of it which
he had transcribed into his own book, ran-being
translated out of the secret hieroglyphic in which he
made these entries which were intended for his own
deciphering alone-"French woman probably telling
lover that he was suspected by the police."
As he listened to the girl's statement feverishly
[161]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
whispered into his ear in the coffee-room of the White
Hart, he was telling himself that this entry must be
modified, or, rather, expanded, for he thought that
what she was saying to him now had been a good deal
affected by her earlier talk with Heasden. He did
not give any hint of this idea to Celeste, however.
They were on the best of terms together now, and
he did not despair of getting some useful information
from her, though he was well aware that this would
only be if he could show it to be to her interest to
give it, or if she should impart it unintentionally.
The latter alternative was the one in which he had
the better hope, and it was partly in pursuance of
that hope that he said to her pleasantly, in a voice of
playful rebuke: “You were very naughty this after-
noon, were you not, Mademoiselle, when you would
not tell me what you knew?”
"Ah, but Monsieur," Céleste answered, in her most
pleading tones, “I have confessed, I have been pen-
itent, have I not? And Monsieur has forgiven, has he
not?”
“But even now, Mademoiselle," the Sergeant went
on in his insistent way, "have you confessed every-
thing? Have you been penitent for everything? Is
there not something else that I shall have to forgive?”
Céleste took refuge in that convenient little French
question which asks so much and tells so little:
“Plaît-il?” she said, as if not understanding in the
least the drift of the Sergeant's last question.
"Ah, Mademoiselle," he said, "that just brings me
to the point to which I was referring—that very 'plaît-
il? Do you remember, Mademoiselle, in our talk this
[162]


EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH MAID
afternoon, I put to you a question which I think you
were not expecting, and you answered just so-Plaît-
iľq"
"No, Monsieur, I do not remember," said Céleste
simply.
"I asked, if you will recall it, 'At what time did you
see Jim Heasden last night?' and all you answered,
Mademoiselle, was ‘Plaît-il?'"
"And still, Monsieur," she said, “I might answer
‘Plaît-il?' Still I do not understand.”
"Oh, Mademoiselle,” the Sergeant reproached her,
"and you so intelligent! I asked at what time you
saw Jim Heasden, and you replied as if the idea of
your ever seeing Jim Heasden that night or even any
other night was altogether too absurd to be under-
stood. Was not that the meaning of your ‘Plaît-il?'
And yet I find, Mademoiselle, by your very own con-
fession made just now that you actually did see Jim
Heasden that very night. The question was not alto-
gether so absurd, after all.”
The girl was beaten, and she knew it, although she
was an agile fencer. "Ah,” she exclaimed, helplessly,
"Monsieur knows too much."
But Monsieur hastened to disclaim any such intel-
ligence as that. It would be far more likely to attract
her confidence if she could be brought to believe him
somewhat stupid.
"Ah, no," he said. “It is not that I know too much.
It is that I know too little-almost nothing. That is
why it is that I am asking you for help. And this is
what I will ask you now, by way of help to me: Why
was it, since you knew this about Sir Ralph's coming
[163]


EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH MAID
Sergeant replied thoughtfully, as if all that she had
said had been brought to his mind for the first time
by her words, “but still all those arguments, do they
not still hold good? In what way are they changed
since our talk this afternoon?”
"Ah, Monsieur,” Céleste exclaimed, with an air of
virtue triumphant, “it is that this afternoon my
thought was for myself, for Céleste—what would be-
come of me. It was very wrong—I see it now. My
thought now is for the truth, as it should have been
from the first. I should not have thought of myself
no. It was very wrong.”
"Mademoiselle," said the Sergeant in a tone of pro-
found respect, “it is a change of heart which does you
the greatest credit. I congratulate you on it, if I
may. I trust you may never find that it has injured
your worldly prospects. Of any others I would not
presume to speak.”
It seemed a high note on which to terminate the
interview. Sergeant Crisp led her most courteously
to the door, opened it for her to pass out, and bowed
as though she were a marquise under Louis XIV and
he a gentleman about the Court.
“Now, I should think,” he said to himself, as he
went up the stairs to his bedroom, with slow ponder-
ing steps, “that that Frenchwoman is just about as
fine a specimen of polished ungodliness as one would
easily find.”
When he reached his bedroom he sat with that entry
relating to Jim Heasden and the French maid open
before him, thinking long before he decided just what
addition was to be made to it. He was still in a state
[165]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
of indecision when he began jotting in his secret code,
and the final entry was to be a verdict of 'not proven':
it suggested alternatives :
(1) The girl and her lover, at their meeting this
afternoon, decided that they would tell me they had
seen Sir Ralph leaving the summer-house.
They decided to do this either (a) because they
thought by inventing this story they would avert sus-
picion from Heasden, or
(b) because they really had seen it.
If we accept (b) what is the reason why the
Frenchwoman did not tell me of it in our earlier talk?
Answer: Presuming she and Heasden really had
seen Sir Ralph coming from the summer-house, then it
is quite possible that they might have argued (the
Frenchwoman's wit would have been quite equal to
it) that they had nothing to gain by denouncing Sir
Ralph. Nobody would give them anything for doing
that. But, on the other hand, if they did not denounce
Sir Ralph, but told him quietly that they had seen
him, then there is virtually no end of the blackmail
that they might have extorted from him.
That might have been their scheme. But then, as
soon as I had told the Frenchwoman that her lover
was seriously under police suspicion, as I did this
morning, she might have grown frightened for him
and might have agreed with him that it was better to
tell the truth, and let the chance of blackmail go, before
he was arrested, rather than wait for his arrest
after which anything that he said which went to
throw the suspicion on another would be less readily
believed.
[166]


EVIDENCE OF THE FRENCH MAID
That was the gist of the Sergeant's ciphered entry,
and by the time he had concluded it he was very
ready to go to bed and sleep the sleep of the wearied
both in mind and body.
[167]


WHAT THE POACHER HAD TO SAY
I did not leave the grounds all day, and was little
out of the house. The policeman at the entrance to
the shrubbery path, and another stationed at the drive-
entrance gave a sense of being in a beleagued castle,
but really I felt grateful for their guardianship,
if they served to keep out a gaping crowd of imperti-
nently curious people. It was hard to believe that it
was all real, that one would not wake up of a sudden
and find that it had been some horrid dream.
It was by no means the day of rest and even of en-
forced idleness with Sergeant Crisp that it was with
us. He breakfasted early and came up to the summer-
house to see whether the scene of the crime would
have any new suggestions to offer him in the morning.
I do not know that he found anything to interest him
especially, but he did meet one whom he particularly
desired to see the keeper, Livesay. Livesay came
along the main path as the detective was looking out,
from the front of the summer-house, up the short
path which joined the main one. He signed to the
keeper that he would like a word with him.
He studied the countryman's big sturdy frame and
uncompromising, unintelligent face as they met, and
felt almost inclined to acquit him on sight of any hand
in the murder. There was one fact, however, in pos-
sible connection with the keeper, which he wished to de-
termine, but as usual with him, he did not go di-
rectly to his end. He preferred to pursue his favourite
plan of appearing to take the person from whom he
wished to extract information into his confidence, and
to ask his help.
"You will realise," he said, after a few exchanges
[169]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
feet and was in any position to take notice, the paper
pattern had gone back again into the Sergeant's
pocket.
Whoever it was that had looked into the summer-
house, superimposing his heavy shoe upon the print
of the more slender one, it was not the keeper.
Livesay having failed to extract anything except
much native soil from the rabbit hole, the detective's
interest seemed to lapse, for the moment, from the
knife problem. He began to make inquiries of the
keeper about the village of Upper Scotney, and at
what point in it he might find the residence of Mr.
Heasden.
The village consists in the main of one long street
with houses ranged on either side of it. The cottages
have little gardens at their backs; beyond the gardens
are pastures. Thus, on the good old British principle
of each man's house being his castle, these gardens
would share in this safe guardianship owing to the
fact that it is in most cases necessary to pass through
the houses in order to get to them. In no instance in
the village was this privilege cherished more zealously
than in the case of the Heasden cottage and garden.
There were all kinds of rumours as to the strange
collection of live-stock that might be found there, if
anyone was allowed to investigate, and strange sights
were seen through the interstices of the fence. Sounds
of fierce canine voices came from it, and it was said
that the neighbours on either side did not regard it
as a very sanitary centre. It was known to be the
home of ferrets and of tame rabbits, as well as of the
dogs, and when any poultry wert a-missing in the
[172]


WHAT THE POACHER HAD TO SAY
neighbourhood, as did sometimes happen, it was more
than suspected that some light might be thrown on the
loss if a thorough inspection of the back premises of
the Heasden domain were permitted.
That was a permission, however, which was never
accorded, and any attempt at forcing an entry was
resented very bitterly and very successfully, for in
the first place Jim Heasden himself, when at home,
was a very formidable figure, his reputation for reck-
lessness and defiance of law equalling his physical
power, and was generally aided and abetted by a
fierce visaged mongrel or two baring their teeth at
any intruder, and in the second place the castle had
an almost more efficient guardian in the person of its
chatelaine, Jim Heasden's mother. She really was a
very terrible old lady, with a brilliantly flashing eye
set under shaggy brows, on either side of a nose like
a hawk's beak-a picturesque old figure. She must
have been a real beauty in her youth, and there could
be no doubt whence Jim Heasden, the son, derived his
splendid features and proportions. She would have
been very tall, but for a chronic stoop which rheuma-
tism had imposed upon her. But if she was pic-
turesque she was a very terrible old figure, for all
that. Her tongue was quick and witty, as sharp-edged
as an asp's and as poisonous, and not at all choice in
its selection of epithets. She supported herself on a
stick, which she could wield vigorously enough to
keep all children at its full length from her, and
among some of the village folk it was piously believed
that she had the power of the evil eye, although that
was a faith which had rather suffered in the free
[173]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
thought of a later generation that had been to a Board
School. She was not at all a neighbourly old lady,
having taken very much to her heart a maxim dear
to many of our villagers, of keeping oneself to oneself.
But she had a fierce tigerish affection for this only
son—the father had been dead many years—who was
something like a very well grown tiger-cub himself.
She took his side ferociously in every trouble, and
they had been many, into which he had fallen with
the lawful authorities both as boy and man, and in
consequence had become something of an Ishmaelite,
with her hand, for his sake, turned against every man,
and with every man's hand turned against her and
against him.
But so far as he was concerned, it was by no means
the same in regard to the hand of every woman. I
suppose that he had about him in the eyes of the vil-
lage maidens something of that glamour which always
surrounds the robber or the pirate in our works of
fiction. The homely virtues do not seem to be those
which always commend a man to the feminine heart.
Besides which the good looks of Jim Heasden were
so very remarkable that any village maid might find
much excuse for falling victim to them. It has been
seen that even that much more experienced lady of the
world, Mademoiselle Céleste, had no armour of proof
against them.
When Sergeant Crisp enquired of Livesay the
whereabouts of Heasden's cottage, the keeper most
obligingly offered to conduct him there. The Ser-
geant, however, declined. It seemed to him that to
come in the company of the gamekeeper to call upon
[174]


WHAT THE POACHER HAD TO SAY
a person bearing the reputation of Heasden would be
much like coming in the company of a ferret to call
on a rabbit. The comparison may have been sug-
gested to him by the recent exertions of Livesay down
the rabbit-hole, but however that may be, he went
with the keeper only so far as the outskirts of the
village from which the exact position of the Heasden
castle could be pointed out to him. From thence he
sent back the keeper, with thanks for his escort, and
proceeded to his assault on the stronghold single-
handed.
Rather happily for his enterprise, the formidable
chatelaine was not at her post. A frosty night or
two in the early autumn had brought on the rheu-
matic pains with increased acuteness, and the poor
old woman was bedridden, chafing with impatience at
her inability to get up, and attended only by the min-
istrations of her son who probably left something to
be desired in the role of sick-nurse.
So the Sergeant knocked at the door, and was an-
swered only by a chorus of dog-voices. He knocked
again, and already was beginning to be the object
of much interest to the Sabbath loiterers in the village
street, both for his own sake, because he was a
stranger and was known to be connected with the
police and with “her ladyship's murder," as the trag.
ecy had begun to be spoken of in the village, and also
because anyone who ventured to call on the Heasdens
was regarded as rather greatly daring, no matter what
he might be.
The third knock, given most loudly of the three,
was successful in drawing the owner, who opened the
[175]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
door and restrained, though in no very whole-hearted
or effective manner, the dogs which threatened to
treat the Sergeant rather after the fashion in which
Nebuchadnezzar's lions dealt with his privy council-
lors.
The little man took the measure of the splendid
specimen of humanity before him in a glance, a glance
which he purposely made as direct and penetrating as
he could—and what he could do in that way was very
remarkable. He said without any preface:
"I am Sergeant Crisp of the police, and I want a
word with you."
He proceeded, at the same time, to walk in, past the
astonished proprietor and his outraged dogs, but both
human and canine guardians were so taken aback
by the matter of course manner, with no leave asked
or granted, of this entry into their stronghold that
they did not know how to resist it effectively.
I do not think for a moment that the Sergeant
would have imposed his will in this simple way on
old Mrs. Heasden, had she been up and about, but as
I have said, she was upstairs, in bed, and so racked
with rheumatism that she had little attention to spare
for what was going on outside her poor old body.
So the Sergeant went on, through the little, un-
evenly flagged passage, and out through the back door
into the little garden at the rear, followed by the dogs
sniffing at his heels and only waiting a word from
their master before seeing what his calves tasted like,
and by that master himself bringing up the tail of the
procession in a manner not at all like his usual swag-
gering self.
[176]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
all the note of insolence had gone out of his voice as
he answered anxiously:
"I swear, I swear to God, as I didn't have nothing
to do with the murder."
"Whether you had or whether you had not, you
would be sure to swear that," the Sergeant rejoined
uncompromisingly.
"I wouldn't swear a lie,” said the young fellow,
piously.
"If you would commit a murder you wouldn't be
likely to stop short at a lie," was the answer.
“But I tell you I didn't commit no murder," said
the badgered man, miserably.
"And I haven't said that you did,” the Sergeant
persisted, “I only say that if you had committed the
murder it isn't likely that you'd make any difficulty
about swearing to a lie.”
By this time all airs and graces had been thoroughly
scared out of this rustic Apollo. He was as flattened
as a collapsed balloon, and did not answer a word.
The Sergeant deemed that he had reduced him to a
condition sufficiently amenable, and said, "Now I want
you to tell me just all about what you did on Friday
night in the shrubbery at Scotney House-all you did
and all you saw. The more you tell the truth now
the more chance there is of your getting off.”
I am told—I do not know whether rightly or not-
that the Sergeant was acting quite wrongly and il-
legally, for a man in his position, in thus threatening
the unfortunate Heasden. I do not know how that
may be, but I am quite sure that if it was so the Ser-
geant was very well aware of it and defied the law
[178]


WHAT THE POACHER HAD TO SAY
deliberately. I suppose, too, that the fact that there
was no witness of the conversation, except the dogs
and ferrets, put him on safe ground. In any event,
although Heasden knew something of the magistrate's
law, he was not well up in it as it applied to more im-
portant offences and was eager to say: "I'll tell
everything-everything as I know.”
“Go along, then,” the Sergeant encouraged him.
Heasden, to think at greater ease, seated himself
on a malodorous ferrets' hutch and began:
"I was in along the shrubbery that night "
"What were you there for?” the Sergeant asked
sharply, interrupting him.
The young fellow hesitated—the Sergeant quite
well knew why. He had two possible alternatives,
either of which he might avow, perhaps about equally
dubious in respectability: he might say that he had
come poaching after rabbits, or after Céleste. After
a moment's pause he decided to adopt the former,
probably thinking that any trouble with the Bench
was to be preferred to the trouble that he might incur
if he brought in Céleste's name unnecessarily.
"Well,” he said, "I had put down a wire or two
them rabbits—they aren't no use in the shrubbery-
they only spoils the shrubs. Her ladyship told me so
herself.”
“Ah, did she? Did you often see her ladyship?"
"See her, yes. But see her to talk to, no more than
once, no."
"Ah,” said the Sergeant, and thought over this ob-
servation a moment. Then he added: “Well-you
went to look at your snares—and what then?"
[179]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
"So happened, as I happened to see Mademoiselle
Céleste."
“What would she be doing out there at that time
so late as that? By-the-bye, what time was it?"
"I couldn't say exactly, I don't take much account
of the time."
"Roughly then-between eleven and twelve?"
"It would be that, because I heard the church clock
strike as I come out of the house to go along."
"Didn't it seem to you queer, Mademoiselle being
out as late as that?”
Heasden was considerably confused. He had none
of the skill in verbal fencing of Céleste. "I don't
know," he said. “I don't know as I gave it a thought.”
The Sergeant did not press the point, since he al-
ready knew the true inwardness of this particular
episode. Rabbits may have been part of its motive.
Céleste certainly stood for more, seeing that, but for
her, the rabbit snares could have been looked over
much earlier. As a rule, however, she could not be
sure of getting out until her mistress had done with
her for the night, so her assignations had to be put
off to a compromisingly late hour.
"Well—you met Mademoiselle. What then?”
“Twas just as we came to the part of the path "
"Oh, you walked together?” the Sergeant inter-
rupted to ask.
"A step or two,” Heasden admitted, with reluctance,
"and we come to that part where the path goes off
down to the summer-house, when right down along
that path comes Sir Ralph.”
“How do you know it was Sir Ralph ?"
[180]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
“And Mademoiselle saw him at the same time?”
“Yes."
“And what did you do after he had gone by you?”
"I left Mademoiselle and I went up along the path
to the summer-house, at least I kept up along the right
side of the path, in the shadow, I didn't know whether
there was anyone in the summer-house or no.”
The Sergeant took a good, measuring look down
at the man's right boot. It was a common clod-hop-
ping boot, such as would be bought at a village cob-
bler's, but it was a full size smaller than the broad
sole of the keeper to which the detective had tried to
match his paper pattern. The gipsies are a small-
footed and small-handed race, as manual workers go,
and Jim Heasden had inherited this, with his other
fine physical qualities, from his fierce old mother.
“So you went along the edge of the path,” the Ser-
geant said, with his piercing little eyes fixed on the
other's face to see whether he accepted as truth the
suggestion that he was making, “and up to the win-
dow on the south side of the house and leant over the
bushes and looked in.”
The great fellow gazed at him in open-eyed aston-
ishment: “Did Mademoiselle tell you ?” he gasped
out.
The Sergeant cackled gently. "No," he said, “Made-
moiselle didn't tell me. Never mind. Tell me what
you saw when you looked into the summer-house."
“What I saw—well.” He began gasping again
now, with the freshly awakened vision of the horror
that he had seen. “You know yourself what it was-
same as what you saw. I couldn't see it very well,
[182]


WHAT THE POACHER HAD TO SAY
for the moonlight was only half on it, and I kept get-
ting in my own light-in the way of the moon shin-
ing in at the window, you understand.”
"I understand-yes."
"I couldn't see plain, but I could see-I could see
there was some figure there-lying. I couldn't tell
: it was her ladyship. I couldn't tell whether it was
dead, but it lay there, and I could see all the blood,
red on the white.”
The Sergeant nodded—the description was vivid
enough, if it was not very detailed.
“Didn't you go to the door? Didn't you open it
and look in?"
"No, I didn't," Heasden said, with a kind of a
catch at his breath, "and I don't know whether I
should have, but just then I heard that dog of Live-
say's barking so I ran back, and as I come down the
path I got sight of Livesay and went off into the
bushes."
“And Livesay after you?”
“Well—_" for the first time during the interview
something like a smile came to his face, "I believe as
I did hear something rousing about among the bushes,
but then—'tisn't very likely as I'd have a great trouble
to keep away from Mr. Livesay, is it now?"
And Sergeant Crisp, with a glance at the lithe limbs
of the splendidly made young fellow, had to smile in
sympathy at the idea of the heavily built Livesay in
pursuit of him through the bushes and in the deceitful
moonlight.
"But the dog?” he enquired. "How about the dog?"
"Oh, the old dog-Livesay didn't loose him. Be-
[183]


WHAT THE POACHER HAD TO SAY
a word to anyone at all about it and she advised me
to do the same, 'cause then no one could say as either
she nor me hadn't any hand in it—and no more we
had, so help me God.”
Jim Heasden had run himself nearly out of breath
by the time that he had brought this long speech to
its forcible conclusion.
"But, then, if that's so, why is it that you're telling
me all about it now, like this?"
"Well, I seed her again yesterday," said Heasden
not at all aware that he was telling the Sergeant what
he well knew already, "and she said as how I'd bet-
ter tell, if I was asked about it, and if not that 'twas
likely as not as I'd be in trouble myself about it, same
as you tell me. And I take my oath to God as I didn't
have no hand in it and I couldn't say no other if it
were ever so.”
“Yes," replied the Sergeant, “so you've said al-
ready, and I don't mind telling you this, that on the
whole I'm inclined to believe you. But I tell you this,
too, as I told you at first, that you're in some danger.
Murder's a nasty thing, when it's proved against you
-the noose round your neck, instead of round the
rabbit's, and all that-and it's happened to men who've
been just as innocent as you can be, when the verdict's
gone against them. So I must tell you once again
that your best chance is to tell me everything--the
whole truth. Now, are you sure—are you quite sure,”
the Sergeant asked earnestly, “that you really have
told me all the whole truth yet?”
"That I have, so help me,” the fellow asseverated;
and whether it was indeed the whole truth or merely ·
[1851


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
such version of it as his counsellor, Céleste, had per-
suaded him to tell, the Sergeant remained uncertain,
but it was a position from which he was not to be
shifted.
[1867


CHAPTER XII
THE CORONER'S INQUEST
Y the time that the Sergeant had concluded his
D interview with Heasden the small congregation
were beginning to file into the village church. He
stood aside, a very unobtrusive figure, and watched
them, and when all had gone in and he had ascer-
tained that Dr. Pratt was not of their number, he
went to the doctor's house and asked whether he could
be seen. But Dr. Pratt was out on his rounds in his
car and the maid did not expect him back until after
luncheon. Twice in the course of the afternoon the
detective repeated his call, but still without success.
As a matter of fact the doctor was engaged most of
the time in facilitating the entry into the world of a
new piece of humanity, which is often, as it seems, an
even more troublesome business than ushering an old
one out of it, and the consequence was that the Ser-
geant was not able to see him until the inquest, which
was held on the Monday evening.
I suppose there is good reason for the law's decree
that the body on which the inquest has to be held must
be personally inspected, but it was an added horror
to our painful case that on that Monday the house
must needs be invaded by the Coroner and his jury,
(187)


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
tramping up the stairs and into my aunt's bedroom
to see her poor mortal remains laid out for them. By
how much they can have been the wiser for the look
it is difficult to say, but I understand that even in this
some concession was made to Uncle Ralph's feelings,
for the actual enquiry and examination of witnesses
was not held at the house itself, as it might have been,
but at the White Hart in the village.
So thither the twelve good men and true, all of
whom were old friends of ours in the village, went
back in a lugubrious procession, headed by the Cor-
oner as their leader, and thither we of the household,
who had been summoned as witnesses, followed after.
I cannot describe what my own feelings were, as I
made one of that melancholy cortège. I dreaded beyond
everything the strain which this business of the in-
quest must impose on Uncle Ralph. It was terrible
for him, and I could not think how he was going to
endure it. And then, at the back of that, whenever
my thoughts went in his direction, and that was ex-
ceedingly often, there was that haunting suspicion. I
walked along in such a whirl and turmoil of feeling
that it was impossible to analyse it, and I arrived at
the White Hart with my brain almost in a state of
numbness. .
I saw Sergeant Crisp, who took off his hat to me,
at the door as we went in, and really regarded the
little man as a staunch friend in need because I knew
him to be as self-possessed and just as much master of
the situation as the Coroner himself, whereas all the
rest of us were rather like new boys at school, help-
[188]


THE CORONER’S INQUEST
had been prepared by the Coroner's clerk. Livesay
stuck firmly to the story which he had told Larncombe,
that he was unable to say that Heasden came from the
summer-house itself. All that he would swear to was
that he had seen Heasden running towards him at a
point at which he made a cross, in pencil, on the plan
when handed to him. The point was just about half-
way down the small path between the summer-house
and the main path.
"He was running already, was he?" the Coroner
asked.
"He was, sir," Livesay asserted firmly.
“And towards you?"
"Yes, sir."
“That seems very strange," the Coroner commented.
"Did he have anything in his hand ?''
"I didn't notice nothing, sir."
At this moment the Coroner's clerk, who had been
in whispered conversation with Sergeant Crisp and
had been writing on a slip of paper with which the
detective had furnished him, passed the slip to the
Coroner who nodded, and left the question of Heas-
den's movements. He asked Livesay to tell the Court
further, and in detail, about the finding of the body
and his coming to the house to call Uncle Ralph, and
so on-all just as the reader knows the story already.
The Coroner asked him one question, but only one-
for which I was most grateful-as to the way in
which Uncle Ralph received the awful news. He
asked if Uncle had seemed terribly agitated.
"Kind of stunned like, he seemed, sir," Livesay
answered.
[1917


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
The Coroner nodded, as if he quite understood.
Then he made Livesay tell the jury of his leading
Uncle Ralph to the summer-house and leaving him
there while he went in search of the doctor and the
constable.
That ended the gamekeeper's examination for the
moment, though the Coroner told him that he had bet-
ter not leave the room, in case it should be necessary
to put further questions to him later on. It was an
injunction which need certainly not have been given,
for hardly anything short of physical force could have
kept away any of the local people who had a chance of
getting in, so eager was their curiosity to hear every
detail of this tragedy in the midst of a neighbourhood
generally deep in its bucolic peace.
But peace was a blessing which we were not des-
tined to know again for many a week to come. Oc-
curring, as it did, late on the Friday night, the first
notice of the tragedy appeared in the London papers
only on the Saturday, and that was a brief, undetailed
story. No more than this was given to the readers
of the Sunday papers, even to those which make a
special cult of horrors. But by the Monday morning
every journal was ablaze with it. Scotney House and
Upper Scotney village were spoken of, I suppose, that
morning, and discussed that day and for many a day
after, by many millions who had lived respectably
long lives without ever hearing of either of them be-
fore. We became suddenly, and hatefully, famous. I
suppose that, quite unknown to us at the house, both
the village and the approaches to the place had been
beset all through the Sabbath hours by industrious
[192]


THE CORONER'S INQUEST
newspaper reporters. I could feel grateful again to
our police guard that they had not been allowed to
penetrate actually into the house itself, but certainly
they had gossiped with the village folk and probably
even with some of the servants, for if they had been
allowed the most free run possible of every room they
could not have had all particulars more complete, and,
everything considered, they had them in wonderful
correctness. Our family life and habits were turned
inside out and exhibited to the publice gaze with an
immodesty that was very revolting. All the details
of my uncle's life in the army, his big-game shoots,
his succession to the property and the title and his
marriage were entered into with a prolixity which,
'one would have thought, might have terribly wearied
its readers. The fact that Aunt Enid had been beau-
tiful and pleasure-loving was duly recorded, and quite
as much emphasis as was at all seemly was laid on the
fact that she was a good many years younger than
her husband. For one piece of reticence I was pro-
foundly thankful, though I am quite sure that it was
reticence inspired only by ignorance, no special men-
tion was made in any of Monday morning's papers,
that I saw, of Captain Vibart or of any person in
particular as a friend of Aunt Enid Beyond the
general intimation which might or might not be im-
plied by the emphasis laid on her beauty, her love of
gaiety, and her youth in comparison with her husband,
no indiscreet suggestion of this kind had been at-
tempted. But "Summer-house Case," "The Summer-
house Murder," "The Mystery of the Summer-house,”
“The Scotney House Mystery," and a score of other
[193]


THE CORONER'S INQUEST
police would know whether a wound of that kind was
often inflicted by a common clasp knife.
“I suppose a knife, such as a deerstalker or any
hunter of big game might carry, in order to give the
coup de grâce, would be the most likely kind of weapon
for such a wound?”.
I heard the doctor assent to this suggestion on the
Coroner's part, but I heard his reply almost as if it
was given in a dream, said in another world than this.
for at that phrase "a hunter of big game," I felt a chill
fall on my heart. It was as if its beat stopped for an
instant. And in that instant I met the piercing eyes of
the little man in grey firmly upon me, fixedly upon me,
and in the same instant I knew his thought and my
own thought to be at one, and that he knew my
thought-knew my terrible suspicion. I could almost
believe that I read some pity for my distress in those
strangely penetrating and strangely pale eyes.
Then the Coroner asked whether the wound was one
which it would require great muscular power on the
part of the wielder of the weapon, whatever it might
be, to inflict, and the doctor answered readily that if
the edge and, more particularly the point, were sharp
no great strength would be needed.
"A woman might have delivered it in fact?” the
Coroner asked, and the reply came readily “Oh, yes.”
"Now of course-I need hardly ask, you say death
was virtually instantaneous-life was quite extinct
when you saw the body?”
“Oh, yes, indeed," said the doctor, almost with a
smile at the question.
[195]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
"And how long, in your judgment, would life have
been extinct?"
I did not take very much interest in the question.
It seemed to me that I was listening to all that passed
as if it was happening very far off, so that I only heard
questions and answers in a kind of muffled way. I do
not know that I had formed any expectation as to what
the doctor's answer was likely to be. But I heard him
say: “I should put it at something like three hours."
My brain must have been in some stupefied, abnormal
condition, for I remember quite clearly seeing the little
grey man, who was usually so immobile, give quite a
start as he caught the doctor's answer. I thought that
he looked up at me again for an instant, but of that I
am not sure, and the next moment he was scribbling
away on one of those slips of paper of which he seemed
to keep a supply by him ready for use. This slip he
handed to the Coroner's clerk, and the clerk passed it
on to the Coroner himself, who just glanced at it and
nodded and went on with his questions to the doctor.
In the interval he had been asking him on what he
based his estimate of the length of time during which
life had been extinct.
I did not follow his answer, which had a good many
scientific terms in it, but kept repeating over and over
in my head in a numb way the words of his conclusion:
"I should put it at something like three hours."
I believe that I had a subconscious conviction that
the words meant a great deal to me even before their
real significance came home to my fully conscious
mind. I heard the Coroner then-in response, I have
no doubt, to what the Sergeant had scribbled on the
[196]


THE CORONER’S INQUEST
slip of paper-go back again to that sentence of the
doctor's which was insistently going through my head :
. “You say that life had been extinct three hours or
so when you first saw the body. Are you quite sure of
that?”
The doctor looked nettled. I have intimated that
he was rather a conceited young man. “I should not
say so," he replied shortly, "if I was not sure.”
"No, quite so," said the Coroner, humouring him
I have no doubt that he had a wide experience in deal-
ing with all sorts and conditions of men. "Perhaps I
ought not to have put my question just in that form.
What I mean is that science cannot be quite certain,
quite exact, on a point of that kind, can she? I sup-
pose there is a margin of possible doubt as to the time.
Let me put it like this—you are quite certain that
death took place at least an hour before you saw the
body?"
"At least two," the doctor said emphatically, "and
in my judgment certainly nearer three. It so hap-
pens," he added, "that I have made rather a special
study of the circulation of the blood and I believe I
may say that I am rather better qualified than most men
in the medical profession to speak with some confi-
dence. Besides, as I have said already, there was other
confirmatory evidence."
"I see," said the Coroner. “We are fortunate, Dr.
Pratt, very fortunate, in having you as a witness. We
are not all able even to appreciate the value of scien-
tific evidence. At what hour was it that you saw the
body?”
"Approximately, half an hour after midnight."
[197]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
"Half an hour after midnight,” the Coroner re-
peated, in a calculating way, "and three hours from
that—that would bring it to nine-thirty. You are
fairly confident, fully confident I may perhaps say, that
her ladyshipLady Carlton, was not alive at a much
later hour than nine-thirty on that Friday night?”
“That is so," the doctor answered. “I am sure of
it.”
Now if the Coroner had been specially aware of
the maze of confusion in which my brain was tangled
up, and had been specially desirous of disentangling
it for me, he could not have put his questions in a bet-
ter form. As he spoke, the whole feeling of numb-
ness passed off. I realised to the full the immense
significance, which I had only appreciated in a dim
vague way before, of this evidence of the doctor's.
If my unfortunate Aunt Enid was dead by nine-thirty,
or at latest only a little after, on that Friday night,
then it was absolutely impossible that her death could
be in any way connected with that vision which I be-
lieved myself to have had of my Uncle Ralph going
out of the house at eleven-thirty. She would have
been dead already some two hours.
I suppose I had been brought to a far more over-
wrought state than I had any idea of by the strain of
the previous two days and more. However that may
be, I accomplished a feat which I have only achieved
about once besides in the whole course of my life
I went off in a dead faint, there, in view of the whole
assembly. I had a knowledge that somehow the little
man in grey had made his way to me, and that it was
he that put his arm round me and saved me from
[198]


THE CORONER'S INQUEST
falling; and after that I became dead to the world for
the time being.
When I revived, I found myself sitting on a bench,
often occupied by some old gaffers of the village drink-
ing beer, outside the hotel. Old Susan, the house-
maid, had come out of the room and was fussing about
me. I knew, at the first return of consciousness, that
I had some reason for deep thankfulness: I came back
to a very happy sense of things about me; but it was
only by degrees that I recollected the details and re-
called the true ground for my satisfection. And when
I did realise it, it was tempered at once with a dread-
ful loathing and disgust of myself that I had ever
dared to entertain such a terrible suspicion about my
Uncle Ralph as that which I now realised, almost more
clearly than I had allowed myself to admit before, had
been lurking in the background of my mind. I longed
to go back into the room and stand beside him as if,
in so doing, I could made him some amends; and after
a little while, finding that I was perfectly collected and
able to walk about again quite strongly, Susan assented
to my returning, though she insisted on supporting me
under the arms all the time as if I had been a wounded
soldier.
I do not know exactly how long I had been absent,
but they did not seem to have made much progress in
the interval. The Coroner was questioning Larne-
combe a good deal about the knife that had given the
wound and I gathered that he was annoyed that a more
thorough search had not been made for it in the
shrubbery and in the neighbourhood of the summer-
house. It appeared to me at that time as if it would
[199]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
be like the hunt for the needle in the haystack, but then
I did not realise, as I came to do later, what a really
systematic search by trained police could amount to.
One of the questions which the Coroner had asked the
doctor while I was out of the room was whether my
aunt's wound was one which she could conceivably
have inflicted on herself. The reply had been that it -
was quite impossible that she could have done so, and,
besides, the absence of the knife was the strongest pos-
sible evidence that it was a case of murder. There
seemed no reasonable doubt on that point. The ques-
tion terribly in doubt was that of the identity of the
murderer, and this, as I was given to understand, was
not really the business, or certainly, not the main
business, of the Coroner's jury. Their chief duty was
to decide as to the manner of death, whether it was due
to natural cause, to suicide, or to violence by another
hand, and since there was no room for doubt, in this
instance, that it was the last of the three, it did not
seem to me at all necessary to make such a long de-
bate about it as they did, with so much questioning and
answering.
But I was told that all the available evidence had to
be taken in case anything unexpected should turn up.
Again, it was rather in accord with the Sergeant's
great principle that it would be little use making en-
quiry if you knew exactly what you were going to find
out. And, besides, as I was informed, it was always
open to the Coroner, if he thought that the evidence
justified it, to issue a warrant on his own account for
the arrest of a suspected person. So, for all these rea-
sons it was I suppose right and proper that the enquiry
[200]


THE CORONER'S INQUEST
important peo-
enjoying it all the
I think that
should be conducted in all its uncompromising length
of torture to so many of us, though I fully believe that
most of the audience, and more especially the jury,
who had never found themselves such important peo-
ple before, were enjoying it all thoroughly.
I think that the Coroner really did try to spare me,
although the questions that he had to put to the sery-
ants and to Uncle Ralph especially, about the relations-
between him and my aunt, whether they had always
been an affectionate couple, and so on, were dreadfully
intimate. I think it was very fortunate that he took
the evidence of my uncle first, for Uncle said in a light
way-he was perfectly collected all through the ordeal
-that he supposed he and his wife had been pretty
much like the average of married couples : they had
had their differences, and so on. The Coroner did not
press him to the point of asking whether there had
been any particular subject of disagreement between
them of late. I realised that he might have made his
questions very much more searching and vexing had
he so wished.
I say it was lucky that Uncle Ralph's evidence was
heard first, because the servants, I am sure, took their
cue from it, and said, in effect, just what he had, in
this regard. I trembled when the examination of
Céleste began, but she went docilely with Uncle Ralph
and Grainger and Susan-just slight disagreements,
there may have been, between monsieur and her lady-
ship. Was it not ever so with married people? She
did not know—this with a shrug of her shoulders.
Perhaps Monsieur ("Monsieur," on this occasion was
[201]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
the Coroner) was himself married and was better able
to judge.
A smile went round the court at this manner of
Céleste's carrying the war of questions against the
Coroner himself. I think that he was rather glad to
dismiss her, and be quit of her overreadiness to offer
evidence and unsolicited suggestions, and that he was
a little terrified as to what she might say next.
It was a terror that I myself was very conscious of,
so perhaps I only imagined it in him. At all events
she did not say much that she conceivably might have
said about the acute recent trouble between my uncle
and aunt. Nor did she say anything about that story
which she had told the Sergeant of seeing my uncle
leave the summer-house, or, at least, come from its
direction, when she was in the shrubbery with Jim
Heasden. And Heasden, when his turn to be ques-
tioned came, said nothing about it either.
At that time I knew nothing of the tale that Céleste
had told the Sergeant, so naturally I was not expect-
ing, or fearing, to hear it, but I suppose that the Ser-
geant may have been, though, of course, all the impor-
tance had been taken out of any statement of the kind
by the doctor's evidence as to the hour at which the
death must have taken place. Céleste probably would
have been quite clever enough to realise this, and prob-
ably had whispered to Heasden, who was standing
quite near her and who might or might not have ap-
preciated the point, that their story no longer had the
value which they had attributed to it. At the same
time the doctor's evidence served Jim Heasden no less
well, for his presence in the neighbourhood of the sum-
[202]


THE CORONER'S INQUEST
mer-house at eleven-thirty or some such hour could not
possibly be supposed to have anything to do with a
crime committed two hours earlier. The whole aspect
of the problem had been altered by this unexpected
evidence on the doctor's part, and it took a little while
to readjust one's point of view towards it.
There was an adjournment for luncheon or dinner,
whichever meal one happened to take about the middle
of the day, soon after twelve o'clock, and when the
court re-assembled the Coroner, by the mouths of
various witnesses, followed all the course of the story,
so far as they could tell it, much on the lines that I
have written, and when he had gone through all the
witnesses on his list and had considered, for a few
minutes, the case as a whole, he prepared to sum up
and lay it, in his own language and as clearly as might
be, before the jury. Before he did so, however, and
more as a matter of form than anything else, he said,
addressing the audience generally:
"Now has anyone else anything that he or she can
tell the court-anything that may have any possible
bearing on the case? There is no piece of evidence so
small but what it may be of possible assistance. I shall
be very glad if anyone who thinks he can add any-
thing to what the court already knows will tell us.”
He looked about the large room with very little ex-
pectation of any response to his appeal. Nor was
response at all readily forthcoming. Only, far back,
there was a certain shuffling of feet, a certain inter-
change of hoarse whispers. One could see in a mo-
ment what it meant-one of the rustics had some
information which he did not know whether he ought
[203]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
or ought not to report. His comrades were urging
him to do so, but his shyness and a kind of stage fright
at the idea of standing up and having to speak before
such an assembly, kept him tongue-tied. At length,
as the Coroner waited, he was prevailed on to speak:
“There be something as perhaps I did ought to say.
I don't know whether it be anything or no. Most like 17
as it be nothing, but then, there it is. I don't know
like.”
All the while that he was speaking he was being
propelled by some powerful shoves behind into a more
forward position in the room, and the people made a
way for him. He was Job Manson, the carpenter,
whom I knew well, for he was a handy joiner and
often did little things for us about the house.
“That's right,” the Coroner said encouragingly,
noting his diffidence. “Let him be sworn, and we will
hear what he has to say."
So the formidable preliminaries were accomplished
and he owned to the name of Job Manson and the pro-
fession of carpenter and then, again protesting that he
"didn't know as it was anything,” informed the court
that his little girl had told him that as she was going
along the shrubbery path that evening she had seen
someone come out from that by-path leading down to
the summer-house.
“And at what time would that have been, Mr. Man-
son?"
"My little girl says as 'twould be about nine o'clock."
If I were a reporter I suppose I should say that at
this announcement there was a “sensation” in the court.
There was a curious little ubiquitous movement as
[204]


THE CORONER'S INQUEST
everyone stiffened into an attitude of acute expectancy.
A hum of whispered comment and ejaculation ac-
companied it.
"But,” said the Coroner, “this is a most important
piece of evidence. Why is it that you did not com-
municate it to the court before?"
"I didn't rightly know whether 'twas anything or
not,” the carpenter said sheepishly.
"Most important,” the Coroner repeated. “What
age is this little girl of yours? Is she old enough to
Le sworn?”
"Oh yes, I reckon she be," the carpenter said, while
a smile went round the faces of those who knew his
daughter.
"What is her age?”
“She'll be twenty-two come the ninth of February."
“Twenty-two! Then why the Is the girl
here?"
"Yes she be," said Mr. Manson.
“Then let her come forward and tell the court her-
self what it is that she saw," the Coroner said.
So Mr. Manson was deposed from his place of
honour, which he had occupied with much reluctance
and discomfort, and made way for his "little girl," who
proved to be a big buxom being looking fully the age
that her father had mentioned and taking her place as
witness with very little of the diffidence by which he
had been troubled.
"Were you in what they call the shrubbery path
leading to Scotney House on Friday night?” the
Coroner asked her, when she had been duly sworn in
[205]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMER-HOUSE
"up at the house," so that she knew more or less about
the comings and goings there.
It was no news to me that our household affairs
were the common property, and the topic of the com-
mon gossip, of the village.
Was she quite sure that this was Captain Vibart,
she was then asked, whom she had seen thus coming
from the summer-house? the girl replied that she was
very sure. “How did you identify him?" the Coroner
asked then; but this question had to be put in an
amended form before the girl grasped the meaning
of it: Had Captain Vibart anything particular in his
appearance by which she could recognise him—could
she be sure it was him-by the moon's light?
And to that she answered quite readily and de-
cisively that she would have known him anywhere by
his long moustaches—"beautiful moustaches," they
were, she added, with the air of a connoisseur, which I
thought rather repulsive. But as to the point of fact
she was quite correct. Captain Vibart was eminently
a recognisable man, even under the light of a moon
far less brilliant than it was that night. I had not the
slightest doubt that it was he that she had seen; and
then the next question that naturally came to my mind
was: “What was he doing there?” and the answer
came no less pat and inevitable: "He was there in
order to meet my aunt-almost certainly by previous
arrangement with her.”
The Coroner questioned the girl as to the manner of
her meeting him. She explained that she was coming
away from the house, after leaving the mended picture-
frame, and that as she passed the bit of by-path which
[208]


THE CORONER’S INQUEST
led down, off the main path, to the summer-house she
saw some one coming from that little house. She her-
self was in the shadow of the big trees and did not
think that the person saw her. She went on for a few
steps past the opening of the side path and stood a
moment under the trees in order, as she candidly ad-
mitted, to see who it was that was coming from the
summer-house. The person came out to the junction
of the by-path with the main path and stood there
looking down the path towards the house.
"As if he was expecting someone?" the Coroner
asked: but to that leading question all the girl had to
say was that "It might be. It looked like it."
As he stood, the moonlight was full upon him and
though his face was in the shadow while he was
actually looking down the path, he moved once or
twice in such a way that the beam fell right across
his face and she was quite sure she could not have
mistaken him.
"And what time would that have been?"
"Somewhere between nine and half past. 'Twas
just past the half-hour when I got home."
"And was this person, whom you recognised as
Captain Vibart, still looking down the path when you
went on, on your way home?”.
"No. He turned and went back down the path to
the summer-house again.”
"You did not watch him, to see whether he went into
the summer-house?”.
“No, I just went on home."
In answer to further questioning, she said that she
had not mentioned seeing Captain Vibart when she
[209]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
went home. It had not occurred to her to do so.
She did not think anything about it, or attach any im-
portance to it. She supposed that Captain Vibart was
staying at the house and had just strolled out, as any-
one might on a beautiful night like that. It was only
the next day, when all the village was talking about the
tragic affair, that she told her father what she had
seen, and he told her that she had better say nothing
at all about it: "Least said, soonest mended," was the
conclusive argument that he had used to her.
The Coroner let her go at that, but he called up
Mr. Manson, the father, and questioned him pretty
sharply as to what his motive could have been in giving
such counsel as this to his girl,"calculated to impede
the course of justice," as he put it. .
He got very unsatisfactory answers. Manson had
more than the average difficulty of our village folk
in making his motives articulate, and the Coroner
when he dismissed him was evidently puzzled, as well
as much displeased. But he need not have been
puzzled, really. Manson's reticence and his advice to
his daughter only arose from the native suspiciousness
of morbid fear of getting themselves into trouble with
the law of all the rustic people in that part. If he had
known them as I knew them he would have realised
that it was perfectly natural, although perfectly idiotic.
Whatever he thought about it, however, he had to
leave it at that; he could not get any more out of
either father or daughter.
But of course, all the time that the Coroner had been
asking questions and getting unsatisfactory answers
my mind had been at work trying to piece together
[210]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
put to him a series of questions which Uncle could not
with any sincerity evade, and which ultimately elicited
the truth that he had, as I had surmised, virtually
ordered Captain Vibart out of his house, and that he
had received a promise from Aunt Enid that she would
never see him or communicate with him again. I was
terribly afraid that Céleste would be re-examined, for
if she once got started talking on such a subject, I
did not know what she might not reveal, or invent, but
mercifully the Coroner did not call her to give further
evidence. It was all bad enough, tragic enough and
sordid enough as it was; and at length, seeming satis-
fied that he was likely to learn nothing more, he hesi-
tated from his questions and remained silent and
thoughtful for a minute. He consulted a note-book
which he took from his pocket, then summoned his
clerk and conversed with him briefly. Sergeant Crisp
told me, afterwards, that in so doing the Coroner was
debating whether he should adjourn the inquest, in
order to bring Captain Vibart himself into court, or
should proceed at once with his charge to the jury. A
coroner, it appears, always prefers to be able to attach
the guilt definitely to an individual, if the jury brings
in a verdict of murder.
Evidently, it is to be presumed, the stress of other
business and, perhaps, also, some humane considera-
tion for Uncle Ralph, decided him to address the jury
forthwith and to be done with it.
Probably a coroner's task in summing up a case and
presenting its real meaning even to men who have no
experience in weighing evidence, is very much more
simple than that of a judge who has to try to clear
[212]


CHAPTER XIII
SERGEANT CRISP “RECONSTRUCTS”
HAT particular phase of our ordeal was over,
| but I do not suppose it is possible, in the short
span of a human life, for all that such an ordeal must
imply, to be left behind. For the moment the most
outrageous interference with the privacy which grief
specially demands was at an end. Of course all the
eyes and morbid curiosity of the public, for which
the different newspapers catered, each in its particular
manner, was enormously increased by the entry of
Captain Vibart's figure on the stage. It introduced
just that element of "wife's friend" which domestic
drama and tragedy seem to require, but by sedulously
avoiding all reading of the newspapers one could es-
cape this added horror. In spite of the most careful
avoidance, however, one had to meet now and again
some headline such as “The Mystery of the Summer-
house,” for that was the favourite form of the title
which our misery had assumed in people's talk and in
the journalists' writings.
Search for the knife with which the wound had been
inflicted was being begun in a systematic manner which
would leave its mark for many a long day in the shrub
bery. The grass was scythed down, and the low and
[214]


SERGEANT CRISP. “RECONSTRUCTS”
bushy parts of the shrubs cut away for a considerable
area in the neighbourhood of the summer-house-all
under the direction of the police. I avoided that part
of the grounds most carefully, but knew all that was
going on there. The only time that I went outside the
grounds, for several days after the inquest, was on the
Wednesday when we buried the body of my young
aunt in the presence of an immense number of people
of whom I do not suppose that as many as one tenth
would have been there to pay her respect had her
death happened in any ordinary way. Two of her
brothers came down for the funeral, but I am thank-
ful to say that they did not stay in the house. I do
not know how Uncle Ralph could have borne it if they
had.
He was in a very curious state all these days, ab-
solutely unlike his normal self. He had summoned
me into the library soon after the inquest and had
said :
"Now please understand-I do not want to talk
about all this. I want everything connected with it
to be mentioned as little as possible between us. I
want to ask you to make all arrangements about every-
thing as far as possible without consulting me at all
about them. I shall be satisfied with everything that
you may arrange, or if I am not I will let you know,
but I would much rather that you would do all without
referring to me about it. I want to put it away from
me as much as I can.” ..
He said it in a hard, rather a bitter voice, just as
unlike as could be his usual kindly tones. His look
was fixed, and firm and hard too. He seemed quite
[215]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
changed. But then, when he had said this almost as
if he were repeating a lesson which he had taught
himself to say, he added, in a much more kindly way:
“Please do not think that I do not realise that I am ask-
ing a great deal of you in asking you this-am putting
a good deal on you. I do realise it, and I shall be ever
so grateful to you if you will do it. You do not know
what a lot you will be sparing me."
This was a very long speech for Uncle Ralph, who
was no great talker and it was a great unfolding of
himself, too, for he was not at all good at explaining
himself, or his actions, even to himself. I knew the
effort it must be to him, and so appreciated it the
more, and of course promised to do all I could for
him, so far as it was in my power. After all, it was
only a little extension of what I had always done in the
old times before Aunt Enid had made her appearance,
and even in a large degree since.
It was a few days after Uncle Ralph had made this
request to me that Grainger told me that Sergeant
Crisp would like to see me. I had seen him once or
twice about the grounds and in the house, since the
inquest-instructions had been given to the servants
that he should be allowed to come and go where and
as he liked-but I had not spoken to him. We lived,
during those days, under police surveillance as it were.
It was almost as if the place were not ours, but the
Government's, and we were more or less prisoners,
or interned lunatics, allowed a modified and limited
share of liberty in it. Police officers in uniform and
others who had “policeman" written conspicuously in
their bearing and general aspect, though they were not
[216]


SERGEANT CRISP “RECONSTRUCTS”
encased in blue cloth and brass buttons, appeared at
the most unexpected corners and times. It was like
living in a state of siege.
I had a sitting-room of my own where I did the
household accounts and to which I could retire out of
range of boredom-that is, boredom by anybody ex-
cept myself. I was there when Grainger told me that
the Sergeant had called, so I gave orders that he should
come in. It was the room in which I had first seen
the little man. I held out my hand to him as he came
in, and I think that he was particularly pleased to be
greeted in this manner, though one could scarcely do
less to a man whose arm has been round one's waist,
as his had been about mine when he suported me as I
was going to faint at the inquest. I had learnt by this
time that he was very amenable to any treatment which
seemed as if one regarded him as a human being and
not as a mere crime-detecting machine.
He looked at me keenly enough-his glance could
not be other than keen-but it was with a kindly
keenness, as I thought, quite different from the steely
hard gaze that had seemed to pierce me through when
he was catechising me at our first meeting. He began
by saying something conventional about hoping I was
better after my fainting attack.
I replied by thanking him for his help on the oc-
casion, and that put us on good terms at once.
"It is possible," he said, “that I may have to ask you
for a good deal of help in return."
I said that I should be very glad to give it him, if he
would explain in what way.
"Well," he said, “it is like this. Of course my ob-
[217]


SERGEANT CRISP “RECONSTRUCTS"
but since you khi it can surely ly since the
would not tell me. You kept back something. It
was something which seemed to point suspicion at
someone whom you are very fond of. Tell me, is not
that a correct guess?”
"It is. But since you know so much- "
"Since I know so much, it can surely do no harm
to tell me more, to tell me all-especially since the
doctor's evidence has proved that suspicion to be
groundless—it is not so?”
“Yes, certainly that is so," I admitted, “and I think I
will tell you everything, quite frankly. But do you
tell me this first-how did you find out, I will not say
that I was keeping something back-you may have
conjectured that from my manner-but how did you
find out that what I was keeping back pointed to a
suspicion which the doctor's evidence dispelled ?".
"My dear Miss Carlton," he answered, “surely that
is most obvious. It was just this—the doctor's evi-
dence-which caused you so much emotion. That
could not have been so unless you had that suspicion.
And you could not have had that suspicion unless you
had some evidence, apparently pointing towards it,
which you had kept back from me. The inferences,
you see, are very simple.”
"Simple, yes; if that is simplicity," I assented, "and
now I really will tell you—all.”
The "all” that I had to tell him was very little, and
it was quickly told, though it had meant a great deal
to me: it was just that vision which I believed my-
self to have had of Uncle Ralph crossing the gravel
front and going to the shrubbery plant.
I had noticed that it very often happened with Ser-
[219]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
asked you those questions about the coat and hat just
to make you sure what it was that you really did see
when you looked from the window that night. It is
now evident—is it not?—that what you did see was
just a figure of which you had the general impres-
sion that it was the figure of your uncle, of Sir
Ralph? That is a correct statement of your impres-
sion, is it not?”
"Well, yes," I admitted, “I certainly thought it was
Uncle that I saw, though even before to-day I began
to have a doubt about it, after Uncle's saying that he
did not go out. I hardly knew what to think. But if
it was not Uncle who else could it have been?”
“Ah, we will come to that immediately, if you
please. Let us leave it for the moment like this—with
regard to Number One point, of the three that we
noted, we are uncertain.”
"Well," I agreed, “I will consent to leave it so, but
with regard to Number Two, you are quite certain
that the print was of Uncle Ralph's shoe."
"Of that I am certain," he replied, “but what I am
far from certain, is whether Sir Ralph's foot was in
the shoe when the impression was made.”
He explained to me then that he had been at pains
to obtain from Céleste the information that Grainger
was in the habit of wearing his master's discarded
shoes, and also he had taken an occasion when Grain-
ger was on an errand in the village to go to his bed-
room and ascertain that the paper pattern which he
had taken of the slender shoe-print fitted exactly one
of a pair which Grainger wore in the house.
Of course I saw by this time whither his conjecture
[224]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
of the butler, but there was no saying what might not
be had out of the master."
"Blackmail, you mean. But is it possible? Do you
believe Céleste could be capable ?”
"I believe that French woman to be capable of every-
thing, Miss Carlton,” he answered with decision, "and,
besides, she is no lover of Sir Ralph. I can discern
that from her manner in speaking of him.”
“You are right there,” I said. “She was too much
my aunt's friend to be his. But what I do not under-
stand is—it was not at first, when you first questioned
her, that she said anything about their having seen
Uncle Ralph.”
“Why no,” he replied, "naturally she would not.
The statement that she and her precious lover had seen
him would be of much less value as soon as it was
communicated to anyone else. It was of value only
while it was kept secret and not made public. Then
they could hold it over Sir Ralph's head, to extort
money out of him.”
“Then why did they tell you when they did-or,
rather, when Céleste did ?”
“Because by that time I had given her a real good
fright by telling her that Heasden was seriously sus-
pected. They had not thought of that before. As
soon as they did they thought they had better try to
shift the suspicion off on somebody else. I say 'they,'
for I believe the French woman, in her own way, is
really fond of that good-looking gipsy."
"Had you ever any suspicion of Heasden?" I asked
him.
“I suspected everybody. That is always the best
[230]


SERGEANT CRISP “RECONSTRUCTS”
way. It is the only way to keep an open mind. But
up to the moment of the inquest I have to confess that
my suspicions were about equally divided between Sir
Ralph and the butler. You see, I am being perfectly
candid. Of course I had not seen the doctor, as he
was always out when I tried to find him.”
“And now?" I asked.
"Oh, now! There seems only one that it is possible
to suspect now, in view of what we have discovered
since. You know I suppose that we have discovered,
or believe that we have discovered, the means by which
Captain Vibart came?”
"No," I said, “I don't know.”
"I'm glad to hear it,” he said. "I'm glad that the
police are able to some extent to keep their secrets-
though I suppose I ought not to say that, at this mo-
ment when I have been telling you some of my own
secrets. But yes, we have found out, as we believe,
the garage from which Captain Vibart hired the motor
in which he drove down from London that night-
it was by motor, not by train, that he seems to have
come. A man, corresponding more or less to the
description of Captain Vibart, though it was quite
• another name that he gave, did hire a motor that night.
He drove himself, and it says a good deal for the
honesty of the people who commonly hire motors that
the people at the garage let him have it, on no guaran-
tee, and without knowing anything about him. How-
ever, they lost nothing, as it happened, in this instance,
for the hirer, whoever he was, was back with the motor
at some time before midnight, and paid for it then
and there to some sleepy fellow in authority who does
[231]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
not seem to have observed him very closely. But
what makes it seem almost certain that it was Captain
Vibart is, in the first place, that the name and address
that he gave—the garage people had been at the quite
inadequate trouble of taking the name and address of
the hirer-were quite fictitious. There was no such
number as he gave in the street which he mentioned.
And in the second place the tyres of the motor that
he hired, which are not of a very common make, are
of the identical pattern of the tyres which have in-
dented the soft ground on the roadside just a little on
the London side of the path which goes down into the
shrubbery here. Evidently a car has been turned
there, and in turning has been backed a little too far
and has made this mark, and it is just the place at
which anyone motoring down from London, and in-
tending to return after a stroll down the shrubbery
path would naturally turn his car if he did not want
to make himself conspicuous, for it is just there that
high trees overshadow the road.”
“I follow," I said. “Your idea is that he motored
down from London: he met my aunt, probably by
agreement, do you not think?" he nodded as I paused
a moment on the question: "and then, after the crime
was done, motored back again."
"Certainly that is my idea.”
"But why do you suppose that he should have done
it-why? He was in love with her or so at least
there is every reason to believe."
The little man smiled. “Ah there, Miss Carlton,"
he said, "we touch on what, as I think I said to you be-
fore, we are not called on to decide the motive. And
[232]


CHAPTER XIV
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CAPTAIN VIBART
SUPPOSE that it was only natural that Sergeant
1 Crisp should be enormously surprised at my not
knowing that the police had visited Captain Vibart's
rooms only to find him fled. As soon as the Sergeant
left me I began to reason myself into the conviction
that my avoidance of all the newspapers was rather
morbidit is possible to suspect that a reawakened
curiosity was an equally strong, though not an equally
avowed motive and I looked up some of the reports
of the last few days from which it would appear that
"The Mystery of the Summer-House," as nearly all
the narratives were headed now, was the one episode
in the world's history which really counted for the
moment, and that all other problems of foreign or
domestic policy took quite a second place in popular
interest.
What had happened was that on the very evening
of the day on which the inquest was held at the White
Hart in Upper Scotney, the police had paid a visit to
the rooms which Captain Vibart had been occupying
in Duke Street, St. James', and had found, as the
Sergeant had told me, that he had gone. He had gone
in a manner which indicated either a considerable
[235]


THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CAPTAIN VIBART
to raise this necessary loan at the bank. That would
not be until the Monday morning. Therefore his de
parture could not really have been such a very hurried
one, and the fact of his leaving so many of his clothes
and other things behind him pointed to the probability
that his object was to avoid carrying with him any
signs by which he might be identified. That, at least,
was the interpretation which the various guessers at
truth in the newspapers generally put upon it, and it
seemed the only reasonable one.
It struck me, on the first moment of reading all this,
that Captain Vibart would be a man who would be
recognised anywhere, on account of those long
moustaches which I specially abominated, but a second
thought showed me how foolish this former one had
been, for of course the obvious and first change for
him to make would be the exceedingly simple one of
cutting those long appendages off, and I found myself
trying in vain to picture what his bad, blonde face
would look like without them.
I suppose it was impossible for me, hating him and
despising him as I did, to do any kind of justice to
Captain Vibart's intellectual capacity—one could not,
I imagine, do worse than justice to his moral qualities
-and perhaps also I did more than justice to the
' wonderful network of detective subtlety in which cer-
tain works of fiction have taught us that the police of
modern cities have enmeshed the world. At all events
I could not believe that such a man as Captain Vibart
was likely to be able to keep out of the web for long.
every day I expected to see in the paper that he had
been arrested, but no such announcement came.
& appendages off any simple one of
trying in vain
[237]


THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CAPTAIN VIBART
make brave efforts to be conversational and to find
topics connected with the gardens or the farms in
which we could take a common interest, but the very
fact that the effort was so apparent robbed them of
very much chance of achieving their object. We
would pursue the subjects in a despairing way, with a
failing scent all the time, and finally give them up and
relapse into the old silence. There was hardly any-
one whom Uncle could have borne to have staying in
the house. I did not desire anyone, and I do not sup-
pose that guests would have been exceedingly eager
to come, under the circumstances.
In these conditions I began to regard Sergeant
Crisp, who appeared without previous announcement
from time to time, as a real friend. I suppose that it
does not do for the mind of the ordinary human being
to keep quite shut up within itself the subject in which
it is most preoccupied, and this was precisely my case
with regard to this dreadful thing that had happened
in our peaceful midst, except when the Sergeant came.
I could not have spoken about it to Uncle, unless he
had given me the lead, and that lead he never did give.
And there was no one else.
But with the Sergeant I could now talk quite openly.
and he never showed the slightest objection to speak
ing equally freely with me. He may have kept things
back, but if he did he never let me discover his reti-
cence and to the best of my belief I was fully informed
by him of the progress of the case. That was the more
likely and easy, because there was really so very little
to record. He was an absolute optimist, or so pro-
fessed himself, nevertheless, about the police methods.
[239]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
"They are close on his track.” “Within a day we
are sure to lay our hands on him.” It was always in
some terms like these that he made his report to me
about the hunt for the elusive Captain Vibart Now
it was in Paris that they had heard of a man who, it
was practically certain, must be he. The next time
I saw him they were just about to capture the Captain
in Vienna. Again, and it seemed that the fox must
have doubled back, for they thought they had run
him to ground in Boulogne. We began to flavour the
grimness of it all by making a small joke of this, after
a time, and I used to ask him: "Well, I suppose you
are just on the point of catching him in Timbuctoo?"
Of two things the Sergeant always professed him-
self absolutely certain, first that however long the
chase might be it could have but one finish—the hunted
man was sure to be found and taken in the end, and
secondly that it was nowhere in this country that he
was in hiding. He was somewhere abroad, and the
Sergeant was nearly sure that he was on the continent
of Europe. The ocean-going steamers had been kept
under a close watch and it was thought most unlikely
that he had gone far oversea. And finally the Ser-
geant had no doubt whatever that, once the fugitive
was in the hands of justice, the charge against him
could be absolutely proved to the full satisfaction of
any jury. If anything had been lacking to the final
proof of his guilt, this flight and concealment supplied
the need. Of course he had long outstayed the term
of his leave, and even if the police had nothing to say
to him he would fall into the most serious trouble with
the military authorities.
[240]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
very thing of flying with him-which she had refused
to do and had thus so angered him that he had com-
mitted the dreadful deed. But if she had come out pre-
pared to throw the key away, which would be equiva-
lent to the burning of her ships, it could only mean
that she was on her way to this very flight! The
whole thing was but a mystery the more.
[242]


CHAPTER XV
THE PRISONER IN THE DOCK
CHRISTMAS that year was a season of black
y gloom for Uncle and myself at Scotney House.
I think that we both found it the harder to bear be-
cause of the festivity that we knew to be around us.
In the housekeeper's room I had to see holly and a
bunch of mistletoe-in less profusion than usual, out
of a well meant but rather ludicrous idea of sympathy
-over the pictures on the walls and dependent from
the ceiling. On Christmas Day itself sounds of mer-
riment coming from the servants' quarters indicated
that some of them, at all events, had been able to throw
off the prevalent atmosphere of melancholy under
which the rest of the house suffered, but there was
at least one who failed to wear the cheerful counte-
nance which suits that festive tide.
This was Grainger. His expression at its bright-
est was never hilarious, and ever since the night of
our tragedy a smile appeared more of an impossibil-
ity even than before to his rugged features. His si-
lence and dourness seemed to have increased upon him
out of fellow-feeling with his master's grief and trou-
ble, and as he was the most constant of our attendants
at meals he certainly did not help to make them
merry.
[243]


THE PRISONER IN THE DOCK
deal as a piece of positive evidence, but negatively its
absence counts for nothing. You see, it was not nec-
essarily a knife of any unusual pattern that was used.
Perhaps a knife with a rigid blade would be a more
safe and sure weapon for the dealing of such a stab,
but many clasp knives are fitted with a spring which
makes the blade rigid until the spring is pressed down.
again. And even the commonest form of clasp knife
might have been used. The cases of stabbing with
an ordinary clasp knife are frequent enough.
“The examination of the Captain's rooms did give
us one important piece of evidence," he went on,
“which we followed up. When I went to the sum-
mer-house, on the Saturday, I had found two ends of
cigarettes which had been lately smoked and in the
tobacco and the paper and altogether they matched
exactly the cigarettes that Sir Ralph smokes. I
presumed that he had smoked them as he kept
watch during the small hours of the morning over
her ladyship's body. Yet when I suggested to him
that he had tried to solace himself in this way he was
quite indignant with me. I really did not know what
to think. But the examination of Captain Vibart's
rooms showed that he smoked cigarettes of exactly
the same make, and by applying to the tobacconist with
whom he was found to have an account, we discovered
that it was Sir Ralph's tobacconist also, and that the
Captain had begun to deal there only a month or so
before for the very reason that he had smoked some
of that firm's cigarettes, as they were supplied to Sir
Ralph, and wished to get more of the brand. So those
cigarette stubs in the summer-house which at first
245]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
seemed to point to Sir Ralph become now a link in the
chain that we have bound round Captain Vibart.”
The Sergeant wanted to see Uncle in order to tell
him that they had at length caught the wretched fugi-
tive, but Uncle was out somewhere, no one knew on
what part of the estate, and the Sergeant had to visit
Matilda Manson in order to get some point quite clear
about the evidence that she would be able to give at
the trial of the identification of Captain Vibart. He
had to go off to catch his return train to London be-
fore meeting Uncle, so it fell to me to tell him of the
arrest in Paris. As a rule we avoided so far as pos-
sible even the most remote reference to the tragedy,
but it was no use thinking of avoiding it in this in-
stance and the most direct way seemed to me the best,
so I said: “Sergeant Crisp has been here this morn-
ing, and he asked me to tell you that the police have
arrested Captain Vibart in Paris.”
I could almost swear that for a moment a glint of
something like triumph came into Uncle's face. I was
a little shocked by it, but the next moment I was tell-
ing myself that it was only natural that he should have
some of this feeling on hearing that his wife's mur-
derer was at length to be brought to justice. It was
but a quickly passing gleam, too, that I saw, and his
face settled again almost immediately into the gloom
which had become its habit as he answered, in a voice
which I think he strained to make indifferent:
"Oh, have they? Where did they find him?"
"I understand that he was in the Quartier Latin,
among the artists and so on."
[246]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
to bear it with the knowledge that there was one be-
side you knowing what you were enduring, and grate-
ful to you for your share in it, as well as bearing his
own far heavier burden.
Therewith there began a new and rather a less
grievous phase in our lives, because we were better
able to express to each other our sympathy even if it
were only in such unspoken ways as a pressure of the
hand, or a look of mutual understanding. And now
and again Uncle could even bring himself to speak of
what he was enduring and had still to go through. He
did not hide from himself that this trial of Captain
Vibart must of necessity lead to a far wider publicity
of a great deal of that trouble in his domestic life
which had already been in some part disclosed at the
inquest. All this we might have hoped to avoid had
suspicion not been turned on Captain Vibart by the
pure accident of the Manson girl seeing him in the
shrubbery path. Of course I knew that I ought to be
thankful that justice was in process of being done and
my young aunt's cruel murder avenged, but I believe
I should have been more truly grateful if all recollec-
tion of it could have been allowed to fade from the
mind of the impertinent public, even at the cost of
letting the murderer go at large.
Again, after Sergeant Crisp's announcement to me
of the arrest, there followed what appeared a wholly
inexplicable and unnecessarily long interval in which
nothing, as it seemed, was done. Presumably some-
thing was being done all the while, letters passing,
forms being signed, innumerable knots in red tape tied
and untied. At length we were told that the arrested
[248]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
of the finding of the body, the summoning of Uncle,
the pursuit of Heasden through the bushes, and the
rest of it with which we were very familiar. It was
when Céleste was brought into the box that I knew
the test was at hand. I looked at Uncle. His broad
and once so good-humoured face was set very firmly.
He, too, was bracing himself for what was coming.
I had not seen Céleste for several months. When
she left us I had said that I would give her a character
if she was looking for another place. I had no option,
much as I disliked her, for there was nothing tangible
against her. But I had not heard from her, and did
not know at all what she had been doing in the mean-
time.
She had not been long in the box before it became
very evident what one of the things was that she
had been doing. She had been talking. What the
means were by which the prosecution-in this case,
of course, the Crown-had succeeded in loosening
that never very firmly rivetted member, her tongue, it
was obvious that they had been efficacious. The coun-
sel, too, had been well coached by his solicitor-I be-
lieve that is the process in the questions that he
should ask in order to bring out in their strongest and
least favourable light the various meetings, in Lon-
don and elsewhere, of Aunt Enid and her lover. It
was not until she began to speak of these that the pris-
oner turned in the dock so as to give me a full view
of his face. Hitherto he had faced away from me.
I had heard him reply "Not Guilty" to the usual chal-
lenge, but I had practically not seen him. I had ex-
pected to receive a shock in his changed appearance.
[250]


THE PRISONER IN THE DOCK
As a matter of fact I did receive something of a shock
in seeing him to be changed, so far as I could detect,
not at all. His moustaches, which were his most ob-
vious peculiarity, had been closely shaved, as I was
told, and his whole appearance greatly altered when
he was arrested, but he had let them grow again in
prison and I could not see that he looked at all dif-
ferent from the man whom I had so cordially disliked
at Scotney except that his face, which was then
bronzed from the Indian sun and life in the open air,
was now very pale--the result, I imagine, of being
within doors. He was, plainly, very nervous, and
scarcely ceased to clasp and unclasp his hands on the
front of the dock; but that, after all, was not unnatural.
Céleste's account of his meetings with my young
aunt appeared to interest him more than any of the
evidence which had preceded it. Perhaps he was won-
dering how much she knew, or perhaps--this idea also
flashed across me as I watched him-he was wonder-
ing at her powers of invention. How much of what
she said might be true I had no means of knowing,
but if only a half of it were veracious the meetings
must have been far more frequent than I, at least, ever
had suspected.
Counsel on both sides really did seem to understand
that this exposure to the vulgar view of his domestic
troubles must be a very ghastly indignity and grief for
Uncle Ralph to suffer, for when he was called as wit-
ness, neither in examination nor cross-examination
was he harassed further than was necessary to elicit
the essential facts. He had, of course, to make public
a great deal more than he had revealed at the inquest.
[251]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
Céleste's evidence had already borne frank witness to
certain disagreements between husband and wife on
account of Captain Vibart, and Uncle candidly told
the jury that he had in the first instance ordered Cap-
tain Vibart out of the house on the Thursday evening,
but had agreed subsequently that he should remain
until the following morning in order not to give the
servants occasion to suspect a scandal. I was terribly
sorry for Uncle when the Counsel for the Crown be-
gan to ask him about his interview with Aunt Enid on
the subject, but it was a brief torture, for Uncle said
at once that he had extracted a promise from her that
she would never see or communicate in any way with
the Captain again.
In spite of which promise she had, on the very next
morning, if Céleste's evidence were to be believed, re-
ceived, by Céleste's own hand, a note from the Cap-
tain. Possibly it might have been argued in Aunt
Enid's favour that she was only a passive agent in
thus receiving the note. One of the questions which
had been put to Céleste was whether her mistress knew
from whom the note came. The French girl had an-
swered demurely that she did not know, and that there
was no address on the envelope, but Counsel probably
reflected that no body of jurymen was likely to be so
simple as to be able to be persuaded that she had not
known.
Uncle had his own Counsel specially “watching the
case," as it was called, for him, but he did very little
else than "watch.” I suppose that it was useless, from
our point of view, to contest that Captain Vibart had
been a favoured lover, but I was rather surprised that
[252]


THE PRISONER IN THE DOCK
his counsel did not seem to care to contest it: but when
he put his client into the box, then it became tolerably
apparent why he had thought it of no use to do so.
When the prisoner was first arrested in Paris, he
had protested his utter innocence of the crime and had
denied that he had ever left London on the night when
it was committed. Evidence was put in to show that
this was the line that he had taken on his arrest. But
almost as soon as ever he came into the box and began
to answer the questions which his counsel put to him
it was plain that he had abandoned this line altogether.
Presumably he had been better advised, in the interval,
seeing how strong the facts were against him. It was
for this reason, because he was prepared to make full
admission of the fact that he had visited Scotney that
evening, that Matilda Manson was not more severely
cross-questioned than she had been. Nor was all the
evidence in regard to the motor car, in which his visit
had been made, at all disputed. He even admitted, on
being questioned, that the note handed by Céleste to
her mistress was in his writing, and that its purport
was to propose a meeting in the summer-house at nine
o'clock on that very Friday night.
Admitting so much, it was scarcely much use to
him to attempt to deny anything that Céleste had said,
no matter to what depth her vivid fancy might have
embroidered the actual truth of it, in respect to the
meetings and the intimacy between Aunt Enid and
himself. Further than this, however, in the direction
of admission as to the contents of the letter, he could
not be induced to go. Although counsel for the pros-
ecution "suggested,” in that insidious way that they
[253]


THE PRISONER IN THE DOCK
not see Matilda Manson, for one, coming along the
main path?
His reply was that part at least, probably a half, of
the main shrubbery path, where the summer-house
faced it, was in deep shadow and that it was extremely
probable that anyone might pass along, past the little
side path's entrance, and not be seen from the sum-
mer-house.
He was asked, again, whether he did not think that
he himself was running a great risk of being seen,
coming up as he did from the summer-house into the
main path.
To that he replied that he was tolerably acquainted
with the shrubbery path, and knew that very few
people ever went along it at that hour of night; also
that as he came up the little by-path he kept himself
on the shadow side as much as possible, so as not to
be seen if anyone should be there.
And he had not heard a sound?
He remarked that he had heard a dog barking in
the distance, once or twice a man or boy whistling,
and several times repeated an owl hooting. Except
those sounds he had heard none distinctly.
“So then you went back to London, disappointed ?"
"Yes if you like to put it so."
"You did not attempt to go down to the house?”.
"Certainly not. What would have been the good ?”
The counsel did not reply. After all, he was not
there to be the questioned one. But he did say, in a
tone that implied much sympathy: “It must have been
very cold waiting.”
“Rather, not very. It was a lovely night.”
[257]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
"But autumnal,” the counsel commented. "Were
you not very cold driving ?”
“Not so very."
“Ah, you had a good rug?”
"Yes, a good rug."
"Perhaps two?”
The question was the first that seemed to embarrass
him at all. “Yes—I don't know," he said. "Per-
haps there may have been two. I was quite warm.”
“And these rugs—they were in the car or did you
bring them to the garage from your rooms?”
"Neither. I drove the car round to my rooms be-
fore I left London and picked up the rugs there."
This was evidence which, as appeared later, was
independently corroborated by a servant at Captain
Vibart's rooms. His account of himself as a fugitive
was truly pitiful. He had come off at first merely
with the idea of removing himself from a case which
threatened trouble for him and for the woman whom
he had loved and wronged. It was only later when
he learned from the English papers that the hue and
cry was after him, that he began disguising and hid-
ing himself, putting himself continually more and
more in the wrong. After that his life was a chronic
misery until his capture.
There was much further criss-cross of question and
answer, but no new fact was elicited, and at length
he was allowed to quit the witness box and resume his
old place in the dock.
[258]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
who had heard the evidence that she left it with the
special purpose of meeting that man. He did not wish
to complicate the case or to confuse the issue by rais-
ing any question about the point to which the man
had or had not been the lover of the woman. Really,
with the evidence which they had before them, that
became almost immaterial. But what did seem in
every respect most probable was that the man had
come down from London with the express design not
only of meeting the woman but also of inducing her
to flee with him. For what other purpose were these
two rugs which he admitted to have brought?
Then again, on the quite impossible hypothesis of
the innocence of the accused, what conceivable motive
could there be for his hurried flight? It would un-
doubtedly be the endeavour of the defence, as fore-
shadowed by the questions asked of the witnesses on
that side and especially by the answers of the accused
himself, to suggest that he had fled in order that his
name might not be brought into the case at all, so
that he might avoid compromising the lady. It was a
little late, perhaps, for the second consideration to oc-
cur to him, but, of course, the whole explanation was
unworthy of presentation as a serious argument to
intelligent men. It was suggested that the accused was
so flustered and put about by hearing of the tragedy
that he resorted to this extraordinary flight in order
to avoid being brought into the case. But how was
his name any the less likely to be brought in because
he himself was abroad? In all the inevitable adver-
tisement given to his name as a consequence of his
flight it was brought into infinitely greater prominence
[260]


THE TRIAL AND VERDICT
than if he had just remained in his lodgings; and as
to being flustered, so as to have lost his judgment, was
that in accordance with the behaviour of a man who
patiently waited over the Sunday in order that he
might have money from his bankers on the Monday
morning ? The hypothesis was so perfectly absurd
that the very fact that it could be put forward was
only the most striking witness to the weakness of the
defence which had to be attempted.
He commented at some length on the absence of the
knife, and on the non-success of the police in finding
it, but dismissed it, as really of no account as a neg-
ative witness much in the same way as Sergeant Crisp
had dismissed it when talking to me; but then he came
to another curious point, to which he said he attached
value equally little with that of the non-appearance of
the knife, but which he was convinced, from the trend
of his questions, his learned friend for the defence in-
tended to set up as highly important—that was the
somewhat curious position in which the key had been
found.
"It is not essential to my case," he told the jury,
"that I should establish a motive for the dreadful deed
of which it is the view of the prosecution that the ac-
cused is proved to have been guilty. Lovers' quarrels
may notoriously arise on very little provocation, espe-
cially in the heated atmosphere which appears to have
prevailed at this time in the neighbourhood of Scotney
House. It is not strictly the business of the prosecu-
tion to produce a motive. But seeing that my learned
friend will undoubtedly try to base an argument, with
his customary acumen, on the absence of any obvious
[261]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
motive, I will suggest to you that which seems to have
in it a very high degree of probability, namely that the
accused, with his two rugs and his chauffeurless car
had designed an elopement, and that the lady, although
consenting to meet him, was far from ready to take
so decisive a step as to fly with him, and on this rock
it is most probable that they would split, a violent dis-
pute would arise, culminating in that tragic termina-
tion which we know. Obviously, from the lightness of
the lady's attire, she had no long motor drive in pros-
pect. She had taken with her nothing which would
bear any evidence of her intention for any such final
step. She did not intend to flee with her lover. And
it is under this head that I may anticipate somewhat
of the probable argument of my learned friend in re-
spect to the position of the key. It may be argued
that it could only have been found where it lay on the
supposition that it had been thrown there by the lady
herself, and from that it is but a step to the conclusion
that she would only so have thrown it away if she
had no intention of returning. Otherwise it would
have lain where it was dropped, either in the summer-
house, or on the path. That is a line of argument
which the defence may conceivably adopt, but I will
readily show you that it is entirely unconvincing in its
major premise, which is that no other agency than
Lady Carlton's own hand could have directed it to
the place where it was found.
There are, on the contrary, many other conceivable
agencies. Children going to and from the house may
have seen it and thrown it away, but besides this, we
have been told by Mr. Livesay, the keeper, that there
[262]


THE TRIAL AND VERDICT
was a rookery in the trees of the shrubbery. The lar-
cenies of all birds of the corvine kind are notorious, so
notorious that it is indeed extremely impossible that
such an attractive small object as a small bright key
would have been allowed to remain for long undis-
turbed on the path. And there are doubtless many
other birds and little animals in the wood which would
be liable to pick up and carry for a short distance
such an object as that. In fact, the position of the
key is, as evidence, perfectly valueless, and I will ask
you to dismiss it from your minds in respect of any
possible bearing that it might be claimed to have on
the case about which you will shortly pass your verdict.
And then we have the statement, on the accused's
own showing, that he left his place of assignation,
left it without any further attempt at seeing his lady-
love, at 9.30, just half an hour after the time ap-
pointed. Is that a probable statement? Is it likely
that a man having hired a car and driven himself all
that way, between thirty and forty miles, should go
back again without granting the lady longer than
thirty minutes' leeway? The idea is preposterous.
What then will the defence ask you to believe?-I
suppose they will admit that Lady Carlton is dead,
and that she was done to death by someone. Whom
then will they assert to be the guilty person, or how
was the death perpetrated, if not in the manner I am
suggesting to you? Is it the idea that the lady, after
such long delay, for which no motive or reason what-
ever can be suggested, did eventually come out after
her lover, so strangely, easily wearied of his watch,
had gone away? And what then? Will it be pre-
and that she will admit thace ask you to
[263]


THE TRIAL AND VERDICT
complimenting with a moment's consideration the
truly ridiculous theory of the crime which the Crown
has laid before you, what a number of preposterous
suppositions it entails! What are all these fables that
my learned friend had to tell you about this latter day
incarnation of the Jackdaw of Rheims picking up the
key which had been dropped in the path and carrying
it into the bushes ? Does it not indicate the ludicrous
frailty of his case if he has to attempt to bolster up its
crumbling structure with such fairy-tales from a child's
first natural history book as these? I do not in the
very least wish, as the super-acute perspicuity of my
learned friend led him to anticipate, to point any moral
or to adduce any theory from the position of the key.
It is not for the defence, it is for the prosecution, to
bring forward a theory, a theory which will sustain
the attacks of reasoned argument, a theory capable of
proof. It is just this in which the prosecution has so
lamentably failed and thereby, by giving me so little
to answer, has made my task so hard. If any theory
was to be drawn from the situation of the key, it
would be inevitably, as my learned friend has foreseen,
that it was thrown there by Lady Carlton's own hand,
she having no further use for it, since she went to
meet, and to flee with, her lover.
“That being her intention-an intention clearly in-
dicated by the position of the key, as well as by other
confirmatory testimonies—how is it possible for the
prosecution to put forward as a motive for the com-
mission of the crime a quarrel between the men urging
her to fly and the woman strenuously resisting his per-
suasions?”
[267]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
Counsel waxed very eloquent under this head of
his argument while I was wondering, as I considered
the stolid faces of the jurymen, how many of them
had realised his trickery in making a strong appeal
by means of argument based on the very fact, the
key's position, which he had begun by saying that he
would not think of using.
He passed to the point made by the prosecution of
Aunt Enid's slight attire and general lack of prepara-
tion for a journey. This, he urged, which the Crown
had chosen for evidence that she had not premeditated
fight was if viewed in its true light the strongest evi-
dence of its premeditation. For, naturally, he argued,
she would not take with her such travelling apparatus
as would advertise her intention of going a journey.
All her preparations would be directed towards hiding
that intention, so that when her absence was discovered
(which she would not expect to happen until the fol-
lowing morning) search should be restricted to the
neighbourhood of the house, the grounds, and so on;
for it would be easily proved that she had not taken a
ticket at the nearest railway station, where she was
well known. And, in confirmation, there was the pos-
itive evidence of the two rugs, which the accused had
returned to his rooms, from the garage, purposely to
fetch. Surely it was manifest to the meanest intel-
ligence that the murdered lady had come from the
house in such array as would least direct suspicion to
the manner of her fight, and had so gone to meet her
lover, but by some accidental circumstance which they
could not possibly ascertain, but which it was ex-
[268]


THE TRIAL AND VERDICT
tremely easy to imagine, she had been delayed, so that
when she did come the lover was gone.
He went on to deal with the argument of the pros-
ecution that it was not reasonable to suppose that a
man who had made so long a journey to meet his lady
would tire of waiting for her in so short a space as
half an hour. But, he maintained, in order to pass a
right judgment on this point, it was essential to recall
all the circumstances. It was not to be supposed for a
moment that his client would have been in a remark-
ably equable state of mind. He did not invite the
jury to any such improbable hypothesis. On the con-
trary, it was very certain that he was in a highly
nervous, excited, wrought-up state. This would be so,
by reason of his recent altercation with Sir Ralph, the
husband, by reason of his anxiety for the woman
whom he loved and whom he had brought into a per-
ilous and grievous situation by that love, by reason of
the lateness of the hour, by reason of the danger both
to him and to her if he should be discovered—there
were a thousand reasons why he should not be in a very
patient mood. Yet she did not come. He who had
driven nearly forty miles to meet her was at his post
full twenty minutes before the time appointed. She,
who had but a few score yards to walk, did not arrive
-did not arrive. What could be detaining her? If it
were illness, which was, of course, the supposition
which would occur to him, she certainly would not be
able to come at all, if unable to be punctual within
thirty minutes.
In fact he so twisted the argument of the prosecu-
tion as to make it appear now as if thirty minutes had
[269]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
by the hand of the accused; and of that impossibility
I am confident you must all feel convinced, even though
the strongest piece of evidence to that effect still re-
mains for me to expound to you.
"My client, as is established and admitted, left Lon-
don for the Continent by the 2.30 p. m. train by
Folkestone and Boulogne, giving himself time to ne-
gotiate a loan with his bankers before he started. It
was the necessity for raising that loan which kept him
in this country over the Sunday, when the banks were
shut. But, on the theory of the prosecution, what
in the world was there to prevent his arranging his
loan on the Saturday morning and going across on
that day? Surely if he knew of the tragedy at all, and
deemed it to make it advisable that he should leave the
country, this is what he would have done. He would
have left the country at the earliest possible opportu-
nity, that is, say by the afternoon boat on Saturday,
instead of Monday. Is not that evident? But the
reason why he did not, in fact, go on the Saturday,
gentlemen, is exceedingly obvious: it is because he
had not the slightest idea of what had happened in
the summer-house of Scotney House shrubbery after
his leaving it on the Friday night. Had he known of
that dreadful occurrence, unquestionably he would
have been off on the Saturday. As it was it was not
until the Saturday evening, long after the closing of
the banks, that he read the account in the evening
papers. Then he was, we may suppose, in a fever to
be off.
"I am not asserting, gentlemen, that he acted wisely
in so doing—very far from it. It was, indeed, in my
[272]


THE TRIAL AND VERDICT
opinion nothing less than a disastrous step for him to
take, because it was one which must inevitably raise
a prejudice against him in your minds. Evidently,
gentlemen, my client rather lost his head. It would
have been far better had he stayed at home and met
the charge, which is now brought against him, forth-
with. But he acted, as he believed, for the best. He
had an idea that in going he took his name out of the
case, as he took himself out of the country, and in
some measure saved the reputation of the woman he
loved from the compromising association with him
which was otherwise bound to fall on it. As a mat-
ter of fact he did but injure her fair fame the more
by his ill-advised though well-intentioned act and at
the same time brought himself into a position exceed-
ingly liable to misconstruction."
Counsel went on to traverse almost all that his
"learned brother" had said about the value of the cir-
cumstantial evidence on which the Crown relied, ar-
guing that it hardly amounted to evidence, really bear-
ing on the point at issue, at all. He touched on a
great many facts and points, all of which, in his skil-
ful handling of them, and in my uncritical judgment
seemed to prove the extreme improbability, to say no
more, of Captain Vibart's being the murderer, and
concluded with a very solemn adjuration to the jury,
bidding them remember that it was no less grave a
thing than a man's life, and therewith a man's hon-
our, which depended on their verdict and that each
would have singly and severally to account for it to
his own conscience if he were to be so misguided from
the truth as to condemn an innocent man.
[273]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
I cannot say that at the conclusion of his speech I
had the very smallest doubt in my own mind as to
what my verdict would be, were I one of the twelve
on whom the terrible responsibility rested. I should
unhesitatingly have voted for a verdict of "Not
Guilty.”
But, of course, we were not yet finished with the
arguments. We had heard presumably all that was
extreme on the one side and on the other as set out
by two of the most clever and practised barristers in
England, each putting his own case in the strongest
possible form. It remained for the Judge, that em-
bodiment of all that was most impartial and most
balanced, to set the relative values of each piece of
the respective arguments over against each other and
to present the completed result to the jury as a guide
to their final verdict.
So much, he pointed out, had been admitted on
part of the defence, that the case really narrowed itself
down to a few questions. The prosecution averred
that Lady Carlton came to the summer-house while
the accused was there and was murdered by him; the
defence was that Lady Carlton came to the summer-
house after the accused had quitted it, and was there
murdered by some other person. That was the gist
of the case, and it turned largely on the moment at
which Lady Carlton actually did come to the summer-
house. Vague suggestions of reasons for her delay
had been put forward, but none of them very satis-
factory. Of course it might have been, as was inci-
dentally suggested, that she had delayed for fear of
being seen by someone, but if so, that someone would,
[274]


THE TRIAL AND VERDICT
no doubt, have been produced by the defence, which
had not been done. He touched on the position of
the key, which, so far as it went, favoured the view
of the defence, because if Lady Carlton had come out
with her mind so fully made up on flight with her
lover as the throwing away of the key seemed to in-
dicate, then the theory of a quarrel arising out of her
refusal to fly with him would not hold water. Still,
as counsel had said, motives for the quarrels of lovers
are very recondite as well as numerous. He would
wish the jury to give the point just the weight that it
deserved—no more. Then he passed to the prepara-
tions for the proposed flight, the two rugs in the car,
the light dress of my aunt, indicating, in his opinion,
in spite of the ingenious suggestion of the defence
in regard to it, a considerably more adequate prepara-
tion for an elopement by the man than by the lady.
In like manner he touched on all the principal fea-
tures of the case, softened down, as it seemed to me,
the edges of counsel's argument both on the one side
and the other until it appeared-I mean to my un-
practised mind—as if neither were left with any keen-
ness to it at all.
And then he came to the point on which the defence
had dwelt long, as being of utmost importance-the
fact that Captain Vibart had remained in London all
the Saturday, whereas, had he known of the murder,
the view of the defence was that he certainly would
have fled, if at all, on that day.
“In neither case," said the Judge, "can we deem
the act to have been that of a man of any keen intel-
ligence. It may be that the accused is not a person of
[275]


CHAPTER XVII
WAR
QO it was finished and we went back to our hotel —
we were staying in our County town for the
trial-Uncle and I together in a taxi.
He said never a word to me. I glanced at him and
still there was some trace-or so I thought-of that
dreadful look in his face. I did not dare speak to him,
and of truth I did not know what I should say, but I
did venture once to put out my hand and lay it on his,
in part to give him sympathy and in part to ask for
it from him in return. To my surprise and disap
pointment he drew his hand away from beneath mine,
as if he resented my act, and I felt chilled and disap-
pointed.
That night I hardly slept at all. All the evening,
and when I went to bed, my mind was in a confusion.
Of course the case, and nothing but the case, occupied
it; I saw again the Court and all its details, and the
arguments of the opposing counsel reiterated them-
selves, as they went through my wearied brain. And
then, some time after midnight, I think that my head
grew clear again and I seemed to follow all the argu-
ment with almost unnatural lucidity. And after a
period of that clear thought, I suppose that I became
[280]


WAR
healthily tired out and I dropped off to sleep, and by
the time that I was called in the morning I was quite
recovered.
We had a small sitting-room in which we break-
fasted and dined, for we did not care to meet inquis-
itive eyes more than was necessary, and after break-
fast, when Uncle had gone out and I was sitting there
alone, a card was brought up to me. It had Sergeant
Crisp's name.
I was quite glad to see him. In these days my life
had been very lonely, and he had been the one to
whom I could talk more freely than to any other. I
think he had a note of regret in his voice as he came
in and said that he had called to take his leave as he
did not suppose we were very likely to meet again.
“We have finished our business together,” he said,
and in saying it he seemed to me to express something
of that triumph which I had found so unendurable in
Uncle Ralph.
As I say, I had been thinking with an almost morbid
lucidity in the small hours of that morning, and the
look on his wooden little face and the note in his
voice impelled me, all in a moment and almost before
I knew what I was saying, to flash out:
"I believe you're all quite wrong. I don't believe
Captain Vibart had anything to do with it."
"My dear lady! My dear lady!" was all he could
answer, aghast with astonishment.
"No," I repeated, “I don't believe for a minute he
did it.”
"But, may I ask,” he said, "have you any reason?”
“Yes," I said, “I have. I don't know whether you
[281]


WAR
perior to the type as Sergeant Crisp undoubtedly was—
by any argument of that kind. I realised the futility of
it even as I said the words. They did just serve a cer-
tain purpose, as a safety valve to my own mind,
though they had no effect whatever on the mind into
which I discharged them. So I said “Farewell," with
some sincere regret, as I think, on both sides, to Ser-
geant Crisp and we went back, Uncle and I, to Scot-
ney House to take up again as we might those threads
of life which had been so tragically broken.
Now all this—that is to say the trial and condemna-
tion of Captain Vibart for the murder of my aunt-
happened shortly before the legal Long Vacation of
1914. It was a nine days' wonder, or something more,
for all the newspapers, and surely it would have en-
gaged their attention for a good while longer had
they not begun to be occupied with events of wider
importance. For very soon afterwards began that
series of events, opening, so far as was publicly seen,
in the murder of the Archduke at Serajevo, which
led up to the great war. There followed those days
of suspense which we all passed in a singular state of
arrested mental activity and almost, as it seemed, in a
condition of restricted heart-beats, when we knew not
whether we were going to take the heroic or the
cowardly course—to fight or not to fight.
Then the die was cast. Sir Edward Grey announced
the momentous decision in the House of Commons,
and the way in which the immense event affected me
most closely was in Uncle Ralph's going back, only a
week or two later, to rejoin his old regiment.
I was not at all able to fathom the Uncle Ralph of
[283]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
these, the last days in which I saw him. In some inde-
scribable way he had changed from the Uncle Ralph
whom I used to know and love. I loved him just as
well still, but I felt that I understood him far less well.
His had always been such a very simple and open, as
well as very lovable, character. But now there was
something secretive and withdrawing about it. It
was not that he loved me less I was quite sure of
that—and he was just as kind to me as ever, but there
was something between us. I could not define it, but
I was keenly aware of it.
So he went, with a very affectionate “Good-bye"
to me, and with him went Grainger, that creature of
the inscrutable face and manner, absolutely inscrutable
and absolutely devoted to my uncle as ever.
And all the while Captain Vibart, probably a gal-
lant soldier, for all his sins, and one who should have
been of value to the Empire, lay in prison, condemned
to the last penalty. He had given notice, as I under-
stood, of appeal to what is called the Court of Criminal
Appeal, and that would delay execution of his sen-
tence in any case, until the Judges sat again—which,
I believed, would be in the autumn.
It is not necessary that I should try to speak here
of deeds that are flamingly inscribed on the scroll of
fame, the achievement-amounting to no less than
the salvation of the world's liberty—of the "contemp-
tible little army.” Of that contemptible fraction,
Uncle was a unit, and somewhere in the neighbour-
hood of Mons, that God's acre of heroes, he met, what
it almost seemed as if he must have gone out espe-
cially to seek, his death.
[284]


WAR
He had done, so the tale dribbled home to us, told
in pieces by here one, there another, poor wrecks of
broken humanity themselves, more than it had seemed
possible for a man to do. After a day's fight in which
he had exposed himself without fear, as all had gone he
would insist on going out not once, but again and again
into that No Man's Land where the stricken lay dy-
ing, and the bullets still came searching for any sur-
vivors, to bring in wounded. Thrice he went out into
the hail of death, and thrice he came home through it
deathless, each time returning with his burden of a
wounded man rescued from death. In spite of the
prayers of his fellow officers, he went a fourth time,
and did not come back, and his death was mercifully
swift, ending a life which had not been so merciful to
him. Grainger had been killed at an earlier hour of
the same day, otherwise I really think that, in defiance
of all discipline, he would probably have attempted to
restrain his master by sheer force.
The day after that on which the official announce-
ment was made of Uncle's death, and, incidentally,
of his recommendation for a posthumous Victoria
Cross, I had a visitor whom I had hardly expected that
I should ever see again-Sergeant Crisp.
His pepper and salt coat of protective colouring
seemed to fit him as creaselessly as ever, yet after a
few overtures of commiseration with me on Uncle
Ralph's death, mingled with congratulations on its
heroic manner, he unbuttoned his coat and produced
from its breast pocket a long envelope. I saw that it
had the seal already broken. On the outside was
written in Uncle Ralph's hand :
Sergeant protecuer, ve
[285]


THE MYSTERY OF THE SUMMER-HOUSE
“To be opened in the event of my death occurring,
or any wound or illness rendering me incapable of
action, previously to sentence of death being carried
out on Captain Vibart.”
I knew at once, by Sergeant Crisp's manner, that
the contents of the envelope must be very grave, but
I was hardly prepared for the words which he spoke
as soon as I had read the inscription.
"You were quite right, Miss Carlton, in your view
that Captain Vibart was not the man to commit the
action for which he was sentenced. I shall not so
readily mistrust feminine intuition again.”
My impatience to see the contents of the envelope
was so great that I made no answer to that.
“Let me read it,” I said.
“You must prepare yourself for a surprise I am
afraid for a great shock," he said, as he handed it to
me.
I had a presentiment, which chilled my heart, of
what I should find as I took the envelope, but I said
nothing. I carried it with me to the window seat, and
began to read, while the Sergeant effaced himself,
characteristically, and became invisible and almost
non-existent in the depths of an armchair.
[286]


THE TRUTH
her. Then he had sworn, most solemnly, like a
coward, and like a liar, that he would not see her and
would not hold any communication with her again.
And after swearing that, he came down the very next
day to meet her again.
I was quite sure that he had come to meet her. Of
course I did not know that, but what else could he be
sitting in the summer-house there for, except to see
her? And if so, then she must have lied to me, and
must have broken or been meaning to break her prom-
ise to me, too. I meant to ask him, I meant to give
him the chance of explaining in some other way, what
he was doing there, if he could. But I did not sup-
pose for a moment that he would have any explana-
tion. And I did not mean to give him any other
chance--I had no idea of fighting a duel with him or
meeting him on equal terms, or anything of that kind.
I simply meant to kill him—that was all, and it
seemed to me the right thing to do.
So I went out of the house again, with the knife in
my pocket, and when I came to that corner where the
path from the house joins in with the main path, there
I happened to look back, to the left. I think it was
quite by chance that I happened to look back. I was
quite sure that it was to meet my wife that Vibart had
come to the summer-house, but I was thinking about
nothing except that I was going to kill him and I had
never thought of seeing my wife. But as I looked
down the path, to the left, I saw something, something
white in a woman's dress. That could only mean
that it had come, this white figure, by the track that
runs from the conservatory, and I had been under the
(291)


THE TRUTH
I know I committed murder, but so far as God's
judgment of me goes it will be for Vibart's murder,
who is still alive, that He will condemn me. I was
guilty of that, I know, for I went out purposely to kill
him. I as good as murdered him. But my wife I
did not murder, in the sight of God, though I did in
the judgment of men, for though I struck her with a
knife and killed her I swear that I had no conscious-
ness at the time of what I did. I have said so before,
and I will say it again and again.
All the same I did not feel any great sorrow for it,
as soon as I had done it. When I saw the dead body
lying there at my feet, all thought of Vibart in the
summer-house went out of my head. I quite forgot
the job I had started out to do. I went back to the
library, as I have said, and after Grainger had gone
out-he had been bringing in the whisky and syphon
--I sat in the armchair and thought.
I thought and thought and gradually, I suppose, out
of the dead state that my mind had been in, I began
to think more clearly again. And as I began to think
more clearly my love for my wife came back to me
again, and none of the hate with it. I began to think
of her as I had known her first, or, I suppose I ought
to say, as I had fancied her, so young and loving, or
at least affectionate, or seeming affectionate to me.
She was so young and lovely, and that brute-it was
all his fault-he had that influence over her which she
could not resist.
And then I began to think of her young dead body
lying out there like that with the dews falling upon it
and the night creatures, insects and mice and horrible
[295]


CHAPTER XIX
THE END
IN THEN I had read this extraordinary confession
I sat for a long time in the window seat with-
out saying a word, just thinking over its revelations.
It made all the details absolutely clear; it did not leave
a dusty corner in the whole. And a curious thing is
that, as I read, and as I learnt by degrees, and sentence
by sentence, the full horror of poor Uncle Ralph's act,
it still did not occur to me to blame him very greatly
in my mind. An immense pity for him was the over-
powering feeling. He was so infinitely better, and in
every moral sense bigger, than either of these two
people, one of whom he had set out to murder and the
other of whom he actually had murdered. Yet both
of them seemed to me like the sinners, and he, rela-
tively, the saint.
And then it was so curious that a person so entirely
simple and unsubtle as my uncle, writing in such very
unpolished and unliterary phrase, should have posed
such really subtle moral and legal problems—his moral
guilt of the murder of a man still alive, his moral
blamelessness for the death of a woman, his own wife,
whom he had murdered.
That was one curious problem, and another was his
legal fiction by which he conceived the law doing so
[298]



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