The Ashiel mystery: A Detective Story by Mrs. Charles Bryce (ebook smartphone .txt) 📕

always disliked the name, having suffered from a Biblical one myself. I said to his mother when he was born. 'For goodness' sake give the poor child a name he won't be expected to live up to. Just fancy how his friends will hate to be known as Jonathans, let alone thingamy's wife. You're laying up a scandal for your son,' I told her, and if my words haven't come true it's more thanks to him than to his parents. A nice pink and white baby he was, poor boy. There's just one good side to this dreadful affair," she went on without a pause, "and that is that the young lady with the dollars whom he was to have married, and hated the sight of, has thrown him over. The first least little breath of suspicion was enough for her, and the moment he was downright accused she was off. And he's well rid of her, dollars and all. An Englishman of his birth and looks doesn't need to go to Chicago for a wife."

"Was Sir David in need of money?" asked Gimblet.

"He hasn't got a penny," said Lady Ruth. "Not a red cent, as that terrible young woman put it. His father left everything to the moneylenders, so to speak, and David couldn't bear to see his mother poverty-stricken. He did it entirely for her sake—got engaged, I mean—but I don't think he'd have been such a self-sacrificing son if he'd met Miss Juliet Byrne a little earlier in the day."

"Indeed!" said Gimblet. "I thought Miss Byrne seemed very much worried about his arrest."

"Worried? Poor child, she's the ghost of what she was a few days ago.
Half-drowned, too, when it happened, which made it worse for her."

"She must have had a narrow escape," Gimblet remarked. "What was the name of the man who pulled her out of the river?"

"Andy Campbell. He had been stalking with Mark McConachan."

"Was young Lord Ashiel with him?"

"No, he was on ahead. He saw Juliet in the distance, just going up to the waterfall, but he seems to have taken her for Miss Romaninov, which is odd, because they aren't in the least like one another, one being tall and the other short, in the first place, and one fair and the other dark in the second. He can't have looked very carefully. However, he was very positive about it till they both assured him that Julia Romaninov had turned and gone home some time before she had reached the top pool. And I certainly should have in her place. It doesn't amuse me scrambling over rocks and scratching my legs in bramble bushes. The path Andy came by goes along high above the water for half a mile. I hate walking on a height myself. And for most of that distance the river is not in sight. If he hadn't been thirsty and come down to the water-side for a drink at a spring near by, he would never have seen Miss Byrne floating down the stream, and she would have been in the loch pretty soon. It just shows how much better it is to drink water than whisky."

"It was lucky he did," said Gimblet. "Does the path pass in sight of the pool she fell into?"

"No. The banks are high there, and you can't see down into the pool unless you go to the very edge of the precipice. I did it once, to look at the waterfall, and I very nearly joined it. It's a nasty giddy place, though why one should feel inclined to throw oneself down I can't imagine; but it seems a natural instinct, and it's certainly easier to go down than up."

"It appears almost miraculous that she wasn't drowned," said Gimblet. "She certainly can have been in no fit state to bear the events that followed."

"No, indeed. She has lost everything: father, family and lover at one blow. You know Lord Ashiel said she was his daughter, and told her he'd made a will leaving everything to her. For that matter the lawyers say he didn't—not that I should ever believe anything a lawyer said. They always mean something you wouldn't expect from their words. They do it, I believe, to keep in practice for trials, you know, where they have to make the witnesses say what they don't mean, poor things. And what I shall have put into my mouth by them, if I'm called as a witness against poor David, doesn't bear thinking of. But the Lord knows what Ashiel did with the will, and, as I was saying, it can't be found."

"So I heard," said Gimblet "You talk of being called as a witness, Lady Ruth. Do you know anything about the case? Where were you when the shot was fired?"

"Oh no," she said, "I shouldn't have anything to tell, but I don't suppose that will matter. They'll twist and turn my words till I find myself saying I saw him do it with my own eyes. My poor dear husband, when I first met him, was an eminent Q.C., as you may know, Mr. Gimblet, so I have a very good idea what they're like. I refused him point-blank when he proposed, but he proved to me in three minutes that I'd really accepted him; and it was the same thing ever after. A wonderfully brilliant man, though slightly trying at times, especially in church, where he always snored so unnecessarily loud—or so it seemed to me. I often think deafness has its compensations, though I'm sure I ought to be thankful at my age that my hearing is still so acute. However, I didn't hear the shot the other night, but the castle walls are thick even in that detestable modern addition, and besides, Julia Romaninov has got such a tremendously powerful voice,''

"Were you talking to her?"

"Oh dear no! I was playing patience, and she was singing, while Miss Tarver murdered the accompaniment. We little thought at the time that some one else was murdering poor Ashiel while we were sitting there in peace. I must say that girl sings remarkably well, and it was a pity there was no one who could play for her. Though it wasn't for want of practice on Miss Tarver's part. The moment we were out of the dining-room she would sit down at the piano, and they would neither of them stop till bedtime."

"Had they both been playing and singing all that evening?"

"Yes, they hadn't ceased for a moment, and I found it prevented the Demon from coming out, as I couldn't help counting in time with the music. It was all right when it was one, two, three, but common time muddled it dreadfully, though now I come to think of it, Julia was not actually in the room when we heard the bad news. She'd gone upstairs to look for a song or something. Of course there's no legal proof that Juliet really is his child," Lady Ruth continued; "she admits that he was rather vague about it, fancied a resemblance, in fact. Not that I or anyone else had any notion he had been married as a young man, but that's a thing he would be likely to be right about. I must say Mark has behaved extremely well about it, even quixotically. He wanted her to take his inheritance, and when she refused—and of course she couldn't decently do otherwise— I'm blessed if he didn't ask her to marry him."

Gimblet looked up with more interest than he had yet shown.

"Do you mean to say he proposed that, merely as a way out of the difficulty?"

"Well, more or less. I don't say he isn't attracted by the pretty face of her, as much as his cousin was; privately I think he is, but I don't really know. Anyhow, it certainly would be a very good solution; but it was tactless of him to suggest it with David at the foot of the gallows, poor boy."

"She didn't tell me that," murmured Gimblet.

At that moment Juliet came into the room, and they talked of other things.

"I hear the post is gone," Gimblet said presently. "I particularly wanted to catch it. I suppose there is no means of posting a letter now?"

The last train had gone south by that time, however, so there was nothing to be done till the next day.

He retired again to his room and gave himself up to his correspondence.

First a long letter to Macross in Glasgow, begging for the loan of prints of the photographs taken by the police during their visit, together with any details they might see fit to impart as to their observations and conclusions. "I have arrived so late on the scene that you have left me nothing to do," he wrote deceitfully. "But for the interest of the case I should like to have a look at the photographs."

He did not expect to get much help from Macross.

Then he took from his pocket the pill-box in which he had stored the dust so carefully collected in the gunroom. He wrapped it carefully in paper, and addressed the small parcel to an expert analyst in Edinburgh. He wrote one more letter, and then went downstairs again.

The dressing-bell sounded as he opened his door, and at the foot of the staircase he met the two ladies on their way to dress.

"Dinner is at eight, Mr. Gimblet," Lady Ruth told him.

"I was just coming to find you," Gimblet answered her. "I want to ask if you would mind my not coming down? I am subject to very bad headaches after a long journey; and, as I want particularly to be up early to-morrow, I think the best thing I can do is to go straight to bed and sleep it off. It is poor sort of behaviour for a detective, I am aware, but I hope you will forgive it."

"You must certainly go to bed if you feel inclined to," said Lady Ruth; "but you will have some dinner in your room, will you not? They shall bring you up the menu."

"No, really, thanks, I shall be better without anything. I know how to treat these heads of mine by now, I assure you, and I won't have anything to eat till to-morrow morning. The only thing I need is quiet and sleep. If you will be so very kind as to give orders that I shall not be disturbed…."

"Of course, of course," said his hostess, full of concern. "And you must let me give you an excellent remedy for headaches. It was given me years ago by dear old Sir Ronald Tompkins, that famous specialist, you know, who always ordered every one to roll on the floor after meals, and I invariably keep a bottle by me."

And she hurried off to fetch it.

Gimblet accepted it gratefully, and as he passed a hand across his aching brow said he felt sure it would do him good.

Once again within his own room, however, the detective's headache seemed to have miraculously vanished, and he showed himself in no hurry to go to bed. Instead, having locked the door and drawn down the blind, he sat down in an arm-chair and gave himself up to reflection. Mentally he rehearsed the facts of the case as far as they were known to him, and was obliged to admit that he found several of them very puzzling.

There were other problems, too, not directly connected with the murder, of which he could not at present make head or tail. For instance, where was he to find the documents which he knew it was Lord Ashiel's wish he should take charge of. He had promised that he would do so, and the recollection of his failure to guard the first thing the dead peer had entrusted him with made him the more determined that he would carry out the remainder of his promise. But how was he to begin his search? He had so little to go on, and he dared not hint to anyone what he wished to find. Yet, if he delayed, it was possible that young Ashiel would come across the papers in his hunt for his uncle's will, and Gimblet felt there was danger in their falling into the hands of anyone but himself.

He took out his notebook and studied the dying words of his unfortunate client.

"Gimblet—the clock—eleven—steps." Or was it steppes?

Considering that he had lived in dread of a blow which should descend on him out of Russia, the last seemed