The Stowmarket Mystery by Louis Tracy (best classic books of all time TXT) 📕

Margaret’s eyes were widely distended. Her mobile features expressed both astonishment and anxiety. She covered her face with her hands, in an attitude of deep perplexity.

They knew she was wrestling with the impulse to take them wholly into confidence.

At last she spoke:

“I cannot tell you,” she said, “how comforting your words are. If you, a stranger, can estimate the truth so nearly, why should I torture myself because my husband is outrageously unjust? I will follow your counsel, Mr. Brett. If possible, Nellie and I will leave here to-morrow. Perhaps Mrs. Eastham may be able to come with us to town. Will you order my carriage? A drive will do me good. Come with Nellie and me, and stay here to dinner. For to-day we may dispense with ceremony.”

She left the room, walking with a firm and confident step.

Brett turned to Miss Layton.

“Capella is in for trouble,” he said, with a laugh. “He will be forced to make love to his wife a second time.”

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During the drive the presence of servants rendered conversation impossible on the one topic that engrossed their thoughts.

The barrister, therefore, had an opportunity to display the other side of his engaging personality, his singular knowledge of the world, his acquaintance with the latest developments in literature and the arts, and so much of London’s vie intime as was suited to the ears of polite society.

Once he amused the ladies greatly by a trivial instance of his faculty for deducing a definite fact from seemingly inadequate signs.

He was sitting with his back to the horses. They passed a field in which some people were working. Neither of the women paid attention to the scene. Brett, from mere force of habit, took in all details.

A little farther on he said: “Are we approaching a village?”

“Yes,” answered Miss Layton, “a small place named Needham.”

“Then it will not surprise me if, during the next two minutes, we meet a horse and cart with a load of potatoes. The driver is a young man in his shirt sleeves. Sitting by his side is a brown-eyed maid in a poke bonnet. Probably his left arm follows the line of her apron string.”

His hearers could not help being surprised by this prediction. Helen leaned over the side and looked ahead.

“You are wrong this time, Mr. Brett,” she laughed merrily. “The only vehicle between us and a turn in the road is a dog-cart coming this way.”

“That merely shows the necessity of carefully choosing one’s words. I should have said ‘overtake,’ not ‘meet.’”

The carriage sped swiftly along. Helen craned her head to catch the first glimpse of the yet hidden stretch of road beyond the turning.

“Good gracious!” she cried suddenly.

Even Margaret was stimulated to curiosity. She bent over the opposite side.

“What an extraordinary thing!” she exclaimed.

Brett sat unmoved, anything in front being, of course, quite invisible to him. On the box the coachman nudged the footman, as if to say:

“Did you ever! Well, s’elp me!”

For, in the next few strides, the horses had to be pulled to one side to avoid a cart laden with potatoes, driven by a coatless youth who had one arm thrown gracefully around the waist of a girl in a huge bonnet.

Nellie turned and stared at them in most unladylike manner, much to their discomfiture.

“I do declare,” she cried, “the girl has brown eyes! Mr. Brett, do tell us how you did it.”

“I will,” he replied gaily. “Those labourers in a field half a mile away were digging potatoes. Among the women sorters was a girl who was gazing anxiously in this direction, and who resumed work in a very bad temper when another woman spoke to her in a chaffing way. The gate was left open, and there were fresh wheel-tracks in this direction. The men were all coatless, so I argued a young man driving and a girl by his side, hence the annoyance of the watcher in the field, owing particularly to the position of his arm. The presence on the road of several potatoes, with the earth still damp on them, added certainty to my convictions. It is very easy, you see.”

“Yes, but how about the colour of the girl’s eyes?”

“That was hazardous, to an extent. But five out of every six women in this county have brown eyes.”

“Well, you may think it easy; to me it is marvellous.”

“It is positively startling,” said Margaret seriously; and if the barrister indulged in a fresh series of deductions he remained silent on the topic.

He tried to lead the conversation to Naples, but was foiled by Mrs. Capella’s positive disinclination to discuss Italy on any pretext, and Miss Layton’s natural desire not to embarrass her friend.

Indeed, so little headway did he make, so fully was Margaret’s mind taken up with the new departure he had suggested, that when the carriage stopped at the rectory to drop Helen—who wished to tell her father about the dinner and to change her costume—he was strongly tempted to wriggle out of the engagement.

Inclination pulled him to his quiet sitting-room in the County Hotel; impulse bade him remain and make the most of the meagre opportunities offered by the drift of conversation.

“I hope,” said Helen, at parting, “that I may persuade you to come here and dine with my father some evening when Mrs. Capella and I are in town. If you take any interest in old coins he will entertain you for hours.”

“Then I depend on you to bring an invitation to the Hall this evening. I expect to be in Stowmarket next week.”

“Are you leaving to-morrow?” inquired Mrs. Capella.

“I think so.”

“Would you care to walk to the house with me now?”

“I will be delighted.”

So the carriage was sent off, and the two followed on foot. Brett thought that impulse had led him aright.

Once past the lodge gates, Margaret looked at him suddenly, with a quick, searching glance. Hume was not in error when he spoke of her “Continental tricks of manner.”

“You wonder,” she said, “why I do not trust you fully? You know that I am keeping something back from you? You imagine that you can guess a good deal of what I am endeavouring to hide?”

“To all those questions, I may generally answer ‘Yes.’”

“Of course. You observe the small things of life. The larger events are built from them. Well, I can be candid with you. My husband believes that I not only deceived him in regard to my marriage, but he is, or was, very jealous of me.”

She paused, apparently unable to frame her words satisfactorily.

“Having said so much,” put in the barrister gently, “you might be more specific.”

His cool, even voice reassured her.

“I hardly know how best to express myself,” she cried. “Question me. I will reply so far as I am able.”

“Thank you. You have told me that you first met Mr. Capella on New Year’s Eve two years ago, at Covent Garden?”

“That is so.”

“Had you ever heard of him before?”

“Never. He was brought to my party by an Italian friend.”

“Did the acquaintance ripen rapidly?”

“Yes. We found that our tastes were identical in many respects. I did not know of my brother’s death until the 2nd of January. No one in Beechcroft had my address, and my solicitor’s office was closed on the holiday. Mr. Capella called on me, by request, the day after the ball, and already I became aware of his admiration. Italians are quick to fall in love.”

“And afterwards?”

“When poor Alan’s murder appeared in the press, Giovanni was among the first to write me a sympathetic letter. Later on we met several times in London. I did not come to reside in the Hall until all legal formalities were settled. A year passed. I went to Naples. He came from his estate in Calabria, and we renewed our friendship. You do not know, perhaps, that he is a count in his own country, but we decided not to use the title here.”

“Then Mr. Capella is not a poor man?”

“By no means. He is far from rich as we understand the word. He is worth, I believe, £1,500 a-year. Why do you ask? Had you the impression that he married me for my money?”

“There might well be other reasons,” thought Brett, glancing at the beautiful and stately woman by his side. But it was no moment for idle compliments.

“Such things have been done,” he said drily.

“Then disabuse your mind of the idea. He is a very proud man. His estates are involved, and in our first few days of happiness we did indeed discuss the means of freeing them, whilst our marriage contract stipulates that in the event of either of us predeceasing the other, and there being no children, the survivor inherits. But all at once a cloud came between us, and Giovanni has curtly declined any assistance by me in discharging his family debt.”

Brett could not help remembering Capella’s passionate declaration to Helen, but Margaret’s words read a new meaning into it. Possibly the Italian was only making a forlorn hope attack on a country maiden’s natural desire to shine amidst her friends. Well, time would tell.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Capella’s outburst of confidence was valuable.

“A cloud!” he said. “What sort of a cloud?”

“Giovanni suddenly discovered that his father and mine were deadly enemies. It was a cruel whim of Fate that brought us together. Poor fellow! He was very fond of his father, and it seems that a legacy of revenge was bequeathed to him against an Englishman named Beechcroft. I remembered, too late, that he once asked me how our house came to be so named, and I explained its English meaning to him. I joked about it, and said the place should rightly be called Yewcroft. During our honeymoon at Naples he learnt that my father, for some reason, had travelled over a large part of Italy in an assumed name—”

“How did he learn this?” broke in Brett.

“I cannot tell you. The affair happened like a flash of lightning. We had been to Capri one afternoon, and I was tired. I went to my room to rest for a couple of hours, fell asleep, and awoke to find Giovanni staring at me in the most terrifying manner. There was a fierce scene. We are both hot-tempered, and when he accused me of a ridiculous endeavour to hoodwink him in some indefinable way I became very indignant. We patched up a sort of truce, but I may honestly say that we have not had a moment’s happiness since.”

“But you spoke of jealousy also?”

“That is really too absurd. My cousin Robert—”

“What, the gentleman from the Argentine?”

“Yes; I suppose David told you about him?”

“He did,” said the barrister grimly.

“Robert is poor, you may know. He is also very good-looking.”

“A family trait,” Brett could not avoid saying.

“It has not been an advantage to us,” she replied mournfully.

They were standing now opposite the library, almost on the spot where her brother fell. They turned and strolled back towards the lodge.

“Robert came to see me,” she resumed. “He paid a visit in unconventional manner—waylaid me, in fact, in this very avenue, and asked me to help him. He declined to meet my husband, and was very bitter about my marriage to a foreigner. However, I forgave him, for my own heart was sore in me, and he also had been unfortunate in a different way. We had a long talk, and I kissed him at parting. I afterwards found that Giovanni had seen us from his bedroom. He thought Robert was David. I do not think he believed me, even when I showed him the counterfoil of my cheque-book, and the amount of a remittance I sent to Robert next day.”

“How much was the sum?”

“Five hundred pounds.”

“And where did you send it?”

“To the Hotel Victoria.”

“In his own name?”

“Certainly.”

“Have you ever met him since?”

“Yes, unfortunately. I was