The Hand in the Dark by Arthur J. Rees (amazing books to read txt) 📕

would not like you to stay at the inn—neither should I." Miss Heredith rose as she spoke. "Please do whatever you wish, Mr. Colwyn. I quite understand that you have work to do, and wish to be alone."

"Thank you. Then I shall stay."

Colwyn sat for a while after she had left him, forming his plans. He was grateful to her for a tact which had not transgressed beyond the limits of unspoken thought during their brief interview, but he was more pleased with the fortuitous absence of Phil and Musard at that period of his investigations. He welcomed the opportunity of working unquestioned, because he was not prepared to disclose the statements of Nepcote and Hazel Rath to any of the inmates of the moat-house until he had tested the feasibility of both stories in the setting of the crime.

"It has all turned out very fortunately, so far," was the thought which arose in his mind. "And now—to work."

He glanced at his watch. It was nearly four o'clock. His immediate plans were a walk to Weydene, and another observation of the bedroom which Mrs. Heredith had occupied in the left wing. He decided to leave his investigation of the room until later so as to have the advantage of the waning daylight in his walk across the fields.

When he returned to the moat-house it was dark, and on the stroke of the dinner hour. That meal he took with Sir Philip and Miss Heredith in the faded state of the big dining-room—three decorous figures at a brightly lit oasis of snowy linen and silver, with the sober black of Tufnell in the background. Sir Philip greeted Colwyn with his tired smile of welcome. He seemed somewhat frailer, but quite animated as he pressed a special claret on his guest and told him, like a child telling of a promised treat, that he was dining out the following night. He insisted on giving the wonderful news in detail. He had yielded to the solicitations of an old friend—Lord Granger, the ambassador, who had just returned to Granger Park after five years' absence from England, and would take no denial. But it was Alethea's doing—she had arranged it all.

"I'm going to put back the clock of Time," he said, with a feeble chuckle. "Put the hands right back."

"I think it will do him good, don't you, Mr. Colwyn?" said Miss Heredith with a wistful smile.

"I have no doubt of it," said Colwyn with an answering smile. "A meeting with an old friend is always a good thing. Are you going with Sir Philip?"

"Oh, yes. I wouldn't go without her," said the baronet, with the helpless look of senility. "You're going, aren't you, Alethea?"

"Of course, Philip," was the gentle response.

This conversation, slight and desultory as it was, gave sufficient indication to the detective of the heavy burden Miss Heredith was bearing. The baronet could talk of nothing else during the remainder of the dinner, and when the meal was finished he begged his guest to excuse him as he wished to obtain a good night's rest to fortify him against the excitement of the coming outing. With an apologetic smile at Colwyn his sister followed him from the room.

The old butler busied himself at the sideboard as Colwyn remained seated at the table sipping his wine. His movements were so deliberate as to convey a suspicion that he was in no hurry to leave the room, and the glances he shot at Colwyn whenever he moved out of the range of his vision carried with them the additional suggestion that the detective was the unconscious cause of his slowness. More than once, after these backward glances, he opened his lips as though to speak, but did not do so. It was Colwyn who broke the silence.

"Tufnell!" he said.

"Yes, sir?" The butler deposited a dish on the sideboard and stepped quickly to the detective's chair.

"I want to ask you a question or two. It was you who found the back door of the left wing unlocked on the night of the murder, was it not?"

The butler gravely bowed, but did not speak.

"What made you try the door? Did you suspect that it was unlocked?"

"No; it was just chance that caused me to turn the handle. I'm so used to locking up the house at nights that I did it without thinking. I certainly never expected to find it unlocked, and the key in the inside of the door. That was quite a surprise to me. I have often wondered since who could have unlocked it and left the key in the door."

"You told me last time I was here that this door is usually locked and the key kept in the housekeeper's apartments. I suppose there is no doubt about that?"

"Not the least, sir. The key is hanging there now with a lot of others. Nobody ever thinks of using the door. That is why I was so astonished to find it open that night."

"If the key was hanging with a number of others it might have been taken some time before and not be missed?"

"That's just it, sir. It might not have been missed by now if I had not discovered it that night."

"What time was it when you found it?"

"Shortly before six o'clock—getting dusk, but not dark."

"You are quite sure you locked the door after finding it open?"

"There can be no doubt of that, sir. The lock was stiff to turn, and I tried the handle of the door to make sure that I had locked it properly."

"Did you return the key to the housekeeper's apartments immediately?"

"I intended to return it after dinner, but I forgot all about it in the excitement and confusion. It was still in my pocket when I informed Mr. Musard about it."

"Here is another question, Tufnell, and I want you to think well before answering it. Do you think it would have been possible for anybody to enter the house and gain the left wing unobserved while the household was at dinner that night?"

"I have asked myself that question several times since, sir—feeling a certain amount of responsibility. It would have been difficult, because the windows of the downstairs bedrooms of the left wing were all locked. There was always the chance of some of the servants seeing anybody crossing the hall on the way to the staircase, unless the—person watched and waited for an opportunity."

Colwyn nodded as though dismissing the subject, but the butler lingered. Perhaps it was his realization of the implication of his last words which gave him the courage to broach the matter which had been occupying his mind.

"Might I ask you a question, sir?" he hesitatingly commenced.

"What is it?"

"It's about the young woman who has been arrested, sir. Is there any likelihood that she will be proved innocent?"

"You must have some particular reason for asking me that question, Tufnell."

"Well, sir, I am aware that Mr. Philip thinks her innocent."

"So you told me when I was down here before, but that is not the reason for your question. You had better be frank."

"I wish to be frank, sir, but I am in a difficulty. I have learnt something which seems to have a bearing on this young woman's position, which I think you ought to know, but I have to consider my duty to the family. It was something—something I overheard."

"If it throws the slightest light on this crime it is your duty to reveal it," the detective responded gravely. "You are aware that I have been called into the case by Mr. Heredith because he is not convinced of Hazel Rath's guilt."

"Quite so, sir. For that reason I have been trying to make up my mind to confide in you. When you have heard what I have to say you will understand how hard it is. It relates to Mr. Philip, sir. Since his illness I have been worried about his health, because he is so changed that I feared he might go mad with grief. He hardly speaks a word to anybody, but sometimes I have seen him muttering to himself. The night before he went away with Mr. Musard he did not come down to dinner. Miss Heredith was going to send a servant to his room in case he had not heard the gong, but I offered to go myself. When I reached his bedroom, I heard the most awful sobbing possible to imagine. Then, through the partly open door, I heard Mr. Philip call on God Almighty to make somebody suffer as he had suffered. He mentioned a name—"

"Whose name?"

The butler looked fearfully towards the closed door, as though he suspected eavesdroppers, and then brought it out with an effort:

"Captain Nepcote, sir."

Colwyn had expected that name. Nepcote's statement on the previous night had led him to believe that Philip Heredith had suspected Nepcote's relations with his wife, but could not bring himself to disclose that when he sought assistance. It was Colwyn's experience that nothing was so rare as complete frankness from people who came to him for help. It was part of the ingrained reserve of the English mind, the sensitive dread of gossip or scandal, to keep something back at such moments. The average person was so swaddled by limitations of intelligence as to be incapable of understanding that suppressed facts were bound to come to light sooner or later if they affected the matter of the partial confidence. Of course, there was sometimes the alternative of a reticence which was intended to mislead. If that entered into the present case it was an additional complication.

"What interpretation did you place on these overheard words?" he asked the butler. "Did you suppose that they referred to the murder?"

"Well, sir—" the butler hesitated, as if at a loss to express himself. "It was not for me to draw conclusions, sir, but I could not help thinking over what I had heard. I know Mr. Philip believed the young woman to be innocent, and—Mrs. Heredith was shot with Captain Nepcote's revolver."

"I see. You had no other thought in your mind?"

"No, sir. What else could I think?"

The butler's meek tones conveyed such an inflection of surprise that Colwyn was convinced that he, at all events, had no suspicion of the secret between Mrs. Heredith and Nepcote.

"Your confidence is quite safe with me, Tufnell," the detective added after a pause. "But I cannot answer your question at present."

"Very well, sir." The butler turned to the sideboard again without further remark, and left the dining-room a few minutes later.

Colwyn went to his room shortly afterwards, and occupied himself for a couple of hours in going through his notes of the case. It was his intention to defer his visit to the bedroom in the left wing until the household had retired, so as to be free from the curious speculations and tittle-tattle of the servants.

The moat-house kept country hours, and when he had finished his writing and descended from his room he found the ground floor in darkness. A clock somewhere in the stillness chimed solemnly as he walked swiftly across the hall. Its strokes finished proclaiming the hour of eleven as he mounted the staircase of the left wing.

The loneliness of the deserted wing was like a moving shuddering thing in the desolation of the silence and the darkness. It was as though the echoing corridor and the empty rooms were whispering, with the appeal of the forgotten, for friendly human companionship and light to disperse the horror of sinister shapes and brooding shadows which lurked in the abode of murder. Colwyn entered the bedroom where Mrs. Heredith had been murdered, and by the ray of his electric torch crossed to the bedside and switched on the light.

He stood there motionless for a while, trying to picture the manner and the method of the murder. If Hazel Rath had spoken the truth, the murderer had stood where he was now standing when the girl entered the room in the darkness. Had the light from the corridor, streaming through the open door, revealed her approaching figure to him? How long had he been there in the darkness, waiting for the moment to kill the woman on the bed?

If Nepcote was the murderer he must have entered almost immediately before, because he could not have reached the moat-house until nearly half-past seven, and the shot was fired at twenty minutes to eight. How had he known that Mrs. Heredith was there alone, in the darkness? A secret assignation might have been the explanation if the time had been after, instead of before the household's departure for the evening. But even the most wanton pair of lovers would hesitate to indulge their passion while the risk of chance discovery and exposure was so great.

As he pondered over the two stories Colwyn did not attempt to shut