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

“There is a footpath across the park, leading towards the lodge gates. Where does it come out?” he asked, speaking rapidly in a low tone.

“It enters, the road near the avenue, close to the gates. It leads from a farmhouse.”

“A lady is walking through the park towards the lodge. Capella is running to intercept her. Come! We may hear something.”

Brett set off at a rapid pace along the turf. Hume followed, and soon they were near the lodge. Mrs. Crowe saw them, and came out.

“Stop her!” gasped Brett.

Hume signalled the woman not to open the gate. She watched them with open-mouthed curiosity. The barrister slowed down and quietly made his way to the leafy angle where the avenue hedge joined that which shut off the park from the road.

He held up a warning hand. Hume stepped warily behind him, and both men looked through a portion of the hedge where briars were supplanted by hazel bushes.

Capella was standing panting near a stile. A girl, dressed in muslin, and wearing a large straw hat, was approaching.

“Great Heavens! It is Helen!” exclaimed Hume.

Brett grasped his shoulder.

“Restrain yourself,” he whispered earnestly. “Luckily, Capella has not heard you. I regret the necessity which makes us eavesdroppers, but it is a fortunate accident, all the same. Not a word! Remember what is at stake.”

They could not see the Italian’s face. His back was heaving from the violence of his exertion. Miss Layton was walking rapidly towards the stile. Obviously she had perceived the waiting man, and she was not pleased.

Her pretty face, flushed and sunburnt, wore the strained aspect of a woman annoyed, but trying to be civil.

It was she who took the initiative.

“Good day, Mr. Capella,” she said pleasantly. “Why on earth did you run so fast?”

“Because I wished to be here before you, Miss Layton,” replied the man, his voice tremulous with excitement.

“Then I wish I had known, because I could have beaten you easily if you meant to race me.”

“That was not my object.”

“Well, now you have attained it, whatever it may have been, please allow me to get over the stile. I will be late for luncheon. My father wished me to ascertain how Farmer Burton is progressing after his spill. He was thrown from his dog-cart whilst coming from the Bury St. Edmund’s fair.”

It was easy for the listeners behind the hedge to gather that the girl’s affable manner was affected. She was really somewhat alarmed. Her eyes wandered to the high road to see if anyone was approaching, and she kept at some distance from the Italian.

“Do not play with me, Nellie,” said Capella, in agonised accents. “I am consumed with love of you. Can you not, at least, give me your pity?”

“Mr. Capella,” she cried, and none but one blind to all save his own passionate desires could fail to note her lofty disdain, “how can you be so base as to use such language to me?”

“Base! To love you!”

“Again I say it—base and unmanly. What have I done that you should venture to so insult your charming wife, not to speak of the insult to myself? When you so far forgot yourself a fortnight ago as to hint at your outrageous ideas regarding me, I forced myself to remember that you were not an Englishman, that perhaps in your country there may be a social code which permits a man to dishonour his home and to annoy a defenceless woman. I cannot forgive you a second time. Let me pass! Let me pass, I tell you, or I will strike you!”

Brett, in his admiration for the spirited girl who, notwithstanding her protestations, seemed to be anything but “defenceless,” momentarily forgot his companion.

A convulsive tightening of Hume’s muscles, preparatory to a leap through the hedge, warned him in time.

“Idiot!” he whispered, as he clutched him again.

Were not the others so taken up with the throbbing influences of the moment they must have heard the rustling of the leaves. But they paid little heed to external affairs. The Italian was speaking.

“Nellie,” he said, “you will drive me mad. But listen, carissima. If I may not love you, I can at least defend you. David Hume-Frazer, the man who murdered my wife’s brother, has returned, and openly boasts that you are waiting to marry him.”

“Boasts! To whom, pray?”

“To me. I heard him say this not fifteen minutes since.”

“Where? You do not know him. He could not be here without my knowledge.”

“Then it is true. You do intend to marry this unconvicted felon?”

“Mr. Capella, I really think you are what English people call ‘cracked.’”

“But you believe me—that this man has come to Beechcroft?”

“It may be so. He has good reasons, doubtless, for keeping his presence here a secret. Whatever they may be, I shall soon know them.”

“Helen, he is not worthy of you. He cannot give you a love fierce as mine. Nay, I will not be repelled. Hear me. My wife is dying. I will be free in a few months. Bid me to hope. I will not trouble you. I will go away, but I swear, if you marry Frazer, neither he nor you will long enjoy your happiness!”

The girl made no reply, but sprang towards the stile in sheer desperation. Capella strove to take her in his arms, not indeed with intent to offer her any violence; but she met his lover-like ardour with such a vigorous buffet that he lost his temper.

He caught her. She had almost surmounted the stile, but her dress hampered her movements. The Italian, vowing his passion in an ardent flow of words, endeavoured to kiss her.

Then, with a sigh, for he would have preferred to avoid an open rupture, Brett let go his hold on Hume. Indeed, if he had not done so, there must have been a fight on both sides of the hedge.

He turned away at once to light a cigarette. What followed immediately had no professional interest for him.

But he could not help hearing Helen’s shriek of delighted surprise, and certain other sounds which denoted that Giovanni was being used as a football by his near relative by marriage.

Mrs. Crowe came out of her cottage.

“What’s a-goin’ on in the park, sir?” she inquired anxiously.

“A great event,” he said. “Faust is kicking Mephistopheles.”

“Drat them colts!” she cried, adding, after taking thought; “but we haven’t any horses of them names, sir.”

“No! You surprise me. They are of the best Italian pedigree.”

Meanwhile, he was achieving his object, which was to drive Mrs. Crowe back towards the wicket.

Helen’s voice came to them shrilly:

“That will do, Davie! Do you hear me?”

“Why, bless my ’eart, there’s Miss Layton,” said Mrs. Crowe.

“What a fine little boy this is!” exclaimed Brett, stooping over a curly-haired urchin. “Is he the oldest?”

“Good gracious, sir, no. He’s the youngest.”

“Dear me, I would not have thought so. You must have been married very early. Here, my little man, see what you can buy for half-a-crown.”

“What a nice gentleman he is, to be sure,” thought the lodge-keeper’s wife, when Brett passed through the smaller gate, assured that the struggle in the park had ended.

“Just fancy ’im a-thinkin’ Jimmy was the eldest, when I will be a grandmother come August if all goes well wi’ Kate.”

The barrister signed to the groom to wait, and joined the young couple, who now appeared in the roadway. A haggard, dishevelled, and furious man burst through the avenue hedge and ran across the drive.

“Mrs. Crowe,” he almost screamed, “do you see those two men there?”

“Yes, sir.”

The good woman was startled by her master’s sudden appearance and his excited state.

“They are never to be admitted to the grounds again. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

Capella turned to rush away up the avenue, but he was compelled to limp. Mrs. Crowe watched him wonderingly, and tried to piece together in her mind the queer sounds and occurrences of the last two minutes.

She had not long been in the cottage when the butler arrived.

“You let two gentlemen in a while ago ?” he said.

“I did.”

“One was Mr. David and the other a Mr. Brett?”

“Oh, was that the tall gentleman’s name?”

“I expect so. Well, here’s the missus’s written order that whenever they want to come to the ’ouse or go anywheres in the park it’s O.K.”

Mrs. Crowe was wise enough to keep her own counsel, but when the butler retired, she said:

“Then I’ll obey the missus, an’ master can settle it with her. I don’t hold by Eye-talians, anyhow.”

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Helen was very much upset by the painful scene which had just been enacted. Its vulgarity appalled her. In a little old-world hamlet like Sleagill, a riotous cow or frightened horse supplied sensation for a week. What would happen when it became known that the rector’s daughter had been attacked by the Squire of Beechcroft in the park meadow, and saved from his embraces only after a vigorous struggle, in which her defender was David Hume-Frazer, concerning whom the villagers still spoke with bated breath?

Of course, the girl imagined that many people must have witnessed the occurrence. The appearance of Brett, of the waiting groom, and of a chance labourer who now strode up the village street, led her to think so.

She did not realise that the whole affair had barely lasted a minute, that Brett was Hume’s friend, the man-servant a stranger who had seen nothing and heard little, whilst the villager only wondered, when he touched his cap, “why Miss Layton was so flustered like.”

Brett attributed her agitation to its right cause. He knew that this healthy, high-minded, and athletic young woman went under no fear of Capella and his ravings.

“What happened when you jumped the hedge?” he said to Hume.

“I handled that scoundrel somewhat roughly,” was the answer. “It was Nellie here who begged for mercy on his account.”

“Ah, well, the incident ended very pleasantly. No one saw what happened save the principals, a fortunate thing in itself. We want to prevent a nine days’ wonder just now.”

“Are you quite sure?” asked Miss Layton, overjoyed at this expression of opinion, and secretly surprised at the interest taken by the barrister in the affair, for Hume had not as yet found time to tell her his friend’s name.

“Quite sure, Miss Layton,” he said, with the smile which made him such a prompt favourite with women. “I had nothing to do but observe the mise-en-scéne. The stage was quite clear for the chief actors. And now, may I make a suggestion? The longer we remain here the more likely are we to attract observation. Mr. Hume and I are going to call on Mrs. Eastham. May we expect you in an hour’s time?”

“Can’t you come in with us now?” exclaimed David eagerly.

She laughed excitedly, being yet flurried. The sudden appearance of her lover tried her nerves more than the Italian’s passionate avowal.

“No, indeed,” she cried. “I must go home. My father will forget all about his lunch otherwise, and I am afraid—I—w—ant to cry!”

Without another word she hurried off towards the rectory.

“My dear fellow,” murmured Brett to the disconsolate Hume, “don’t you understand? She cannot bear the constraint imposed by my presence at this moment, nor could she meet Mrs. Eastham with any degree of composure. Now, this afternoon she will return a mere iceberg. Mrs. Eastham, I am sure, has tact. I am going to the Hall. You two will be left alone for hours.”

He turned aside to arrange with the groom concerning the care of the horse, as they would be detained some time in the village. Then the two men approached Mrs. Eastham’s residence.

That good person, a motherly old lady of over sixty, was not only surprised but delighted by the advent of David Hume.

“My dear boy,” she cried, advancing to meet him with outstretched hands when he entered the morning-room. “What fortunate wind has blown you here?”

“I