Ever After (52 page)

“No,” said Partridge cautiously. “But don’t try to leave town.”

“You mean I’m being watched?”

“Sure to be.”

“And if I walked out of the house now and went to a railway station I’d be stopped?”

“You would.”

Bracken sat down.

“Wherever she is,” he said, “Lisl is enjoying this.”

D
INAH
and Miss French went for their usual walk in the park the following morning, oppressed by the knowledge that Alwyn was interviewing gorgons in the library, and fortified by Bracken’s promise that Miss French would go on his own payroll after Dinah married him.

When Dinah returned home the night before and ran upstairs to the top floor, light-headed with love and champagne, she had found Miss French lying down in her bedroom which opened off the schoolroom on the opposite side to Dinah’s. Miss French had been crying, and the room smelled of the Florida Water she rubbed on her head when it ached. Her only fault, she knew, was that she was a better judge of men than Lord Alwyn, and had trusted Bracken completely. For that she had got the sack, and it seemed that the long, affectionate friendship between her and Dinah was to be ended. But even then her anxiety was for Dinah and not for herself. She had not known until Lord Alwyn threw it in her face that Bracken had a wife, for Dinah had scrupulously refrained from discussing his affairs. The news had come as a shock to Miss French, and had shaken her confidence in him and her own judgment of him. Lord Alwyn implied that Bracken had led Dinah on with hopes of his being free to marry her, and it was not until she heard Dinah’s stammering, ecstatic account of the conversation in Bracken’s chambers that Miss French saw how cruelly wrong about the whole thing Lord Alwyn was. When Dinah went on to tell how Bracken had said she would need help with the establishment and that Miss French should come to them permanently as a sort of housekeeper, the headache miraculously went, and they made cocoa
on the schoolroom spirit-lamp and had a celebration with biscuits and
fruit from the cupboard, and didn’t go to bed till after midnight, there was so much to talk about.

As they were returning through Waterloo Place from their walk the contents-bills of the morning papers caught their horrified eyes. JOURNALIST’S WIFE MURDERED. MRS. BRACKEN MURRAY: SENSATION. Miss French recovered first from a kind of paralysis of incredulity and bought a paper. They stood together on the pavement, Dinah reading over her shoulder—
found
strangled
in
Bloomsbury
lodgings
—
husband
well
known
in
Fleet
Street
—
estranged
for
several
years
—
further
questioning
of
Mr.
Murray
as
regards
his
whereabouts
at
time
of
his
wife’s
death
—

“He was with me,” said Dinah in a whisper. “Why doesn’t he
tell
them?”

“No gentleman would bring your name into it,” Miss French said with conviction, and added a little dramatically, “He’d hang first!”

Dinah walked home in a haze, carrying the paper. In the front hall they met Alwyn, also with a paper in his hand.

“Oh, you’ve seen it,” he said dryly. “Well, I’m afraid your friend Murray is right up against it now.”

“What will they do?” Dinah asked.

“Arrest him, I should think. Unless he has an absolute
watertight
alibi for the time of the murder, and he doesn’t seem to have one. You’d think an innocent man could say where he was, wouldn’t you!
Somebody
must have seen him! Perhaps you will see reason now, instead of making a scene when I forbid you to have anything to do with him!”

Dinah turned and walked past her brother and up the stairs, followed by Miss French. She climbed the second flight slowly, as though she trailed a broken wing. Miss French went into her room to take off her hat, but Dinah stood still in the middle of the
schoolroom
floor, holding the paper and trying to think.
Further 
question
ing
of
Mr.
Murray
—
you’d
think
an
innocent
man
could
say
where
he
was
—
he’d
hang
first
—
somebody
must
have
seen
him
…. I saw him, Dinah thought. I’m the only one who saw him. I could tell them where he was while his wife was being strangled. But he never will. If I don’t tell—

Cold with terror, she saw Bracken in the dock, being tried for murder rather than mention her name, saw the wigs and gowns and solemn pageantry of the courtroom—Archie knew all about that—perhaps Archie could do something, perhaps Archie could save him—but Archie wasn’t with him last night. There was only one person who could save him. There was only one way….

Dinah’s eyes rested on the door of Miss French’s room, opening
out of the schoolroom where she stood, with the key on the
schoolroom
side. Miss French’s purse and gloves lay on the table where she had dropped them in her agitation before she went into her room. Dinah darted across the schoolroom, pulled Miss French’s door shut on her and locked it.

“Miss French,” she said against the panel. “Miss French, you’ve got to listen! I’ve locked you in—can you hear me? Will you please stay quietly where you are till I get back? I’m going down to Scotland Yard and tell them where Bracken was, so they’ll let him go.”

Miss French rattled the doorknob and said something Dinah couldn’t hear. She raised her voice a little.

“You can’t stop me, do you see? If they find out, it’s not your fault, you couldn’t stop me! And I’m going to pay the cab fare out of your purse, but Bracken will give it back to you!”

She snatched up Miss French’s purse and ran out of the
schoolroom
and down the upper flight of stairs. The bedroom corridor was empty, but from the top of the lower flight she could hear Edward’s voice in the drawing room. Step by step she descended, screened by an angle of the hall, her feet cushioned by the
stair-carpet
, flitted to the outer door and heard it close behind her with a stealthy click. From the step, she remembered to turn to the left to avoid passing under the drawing room windows, and caught a cab at the corner of Charles Street.

“I want to go to Scotland Yard,” she told the driver as she got in. “Please hurry.” She thought he looked surprised, but it was not so much at her destination as at her youth and evident state of distraction. Dinah did not know that people went to Scotland Yard for the sake of a lost umbrella much oftener than to rescue a lover from being tried for murder, and she felt that her mission must be suspected at once.

A large, benign constable stood at the gate of the big red building above the Embankment. He watched with interest while the very young lady with a wing in her hat paid her cab-driver and gave him a tip which wreathed him in smiles. Then the constable realized with increasing interest that she meant to enter Scotland Yard. He didn’t get them like that very often here.

“Please,” said Dinah, pausing before him, “I want to see someone about the murder.”

“Which murder, miss?”

“M-Mrs. Bracken Murray.”

The constable came to life. He led her into the entrance hall where a police sergeant sat behind a desk, and there was a whispered conference. The sergeant looked at her piercingly, as if he could not believe that he actually saw a girl in a blue
polonaise
with a
wing in her hat standing where Dinah stood, and then he got up and went away. The constable gave her a chair and stood guard above her as though he though she might try to leave.

The sergeant came back very soon and crooked a finger at her, saying, “Will you come this way, please, miss?”

She followed him to the lift and then along miles of upper corridors, and finally he opened the door of an office and motioned her inside and left her there alone. Presently an inner door opened and a tall grey-haired man with a kind smile approached her.

“Good morning,” he said. “I’m Chief Inspector Jerrold. You have something to tell me about the Murray case?”

“Yes. Is he here? Please don’t let him see me, he wouldn’t want me to tell.”

The Chief Inspector’s smile went.

“First of all, will you please tell me your name?” he requested.

“I’m Dinah Campion. You can’t arrest Mr. Murray, because he was with me last evening. My governess said he’d never mention that to save himself, so I—had to come.”

“How long was he with you, last evening?”

“I went to his rooms after tea. I don’t want you to think—you see, I’d never gone there alone before, but I was in trouble at home and I ran away to him because—because he’s the person I love best in the world and I had to see him.”

“And was he there when you arrived?”

“No, he was late, so I waited. His man let me in.”

“What time did Mr. Murray come home?”

“Just after six. I heard the Palace clock strike while I was sitting there.”

“And how long did you stay after he came in?”

“I was with him till nearly ten, but we weren’t in
his rooms all that time. It was his man’s evening out and he’d gone, so we had dinner at a place in Compton Street. He—Mr. Murray wasn’t out of my sight all that time. I don’t want you to think—you see, we’d never done such a thing before, but I wasn’t going to be allowed to see him again for a
long time, and—he
said
we should get the governess and take her along, but that was impossible, and—I
overruled
him.”

The Chief Inspector’s smile was coming back.

“I’m sure you did,” he said.

“So now that you know where he was, you’ll let him go, won’t you?”

“My dear child, he’s not under arrest, you know.”

“My brother said he would be, if he didn’t have an alibi. My brother is Lord Alwyn, and I’ve got another brother who is a Junior at the Temple, but they weren’t any good to Bracken because you
see they didn’t know where
I
was, last evening. I had to come here myself, didn’t I?”

The Chief Inspector was seeing a great deal of rather blinding light. He was not a student of the peerage, but he could orient
himself
at once when he heard Lord Alwyn’s name, and he was not surprised, in a way, that the honest, self-possessed young person in front of him had walked out of Debrett. She was young, but she was brave, and she was trying to protect the person she loved best in the world.

“Yes, I’m glad you’ve come,” he said gently. “We had to ask Mr. Murray some questions, of course, and there was a certain amount of mystery about his whereabouts last evening, which is now happily cleared up.”

“You—you haven’t put him in jail?”

“Dear me, no, he’s in the next room. Would you like to make sure?” He opened the inner door, through which he had emerged a few minutes before. “Come and see for yourself,” he smiled, for while he believed her story he wanted Bracken’s reaction to her presence there.

Three men stood up as she entered, among them Bracken. Dinah ran at him and clasped him protectively around the shoulders, crying, “Oh, Bracken, are you all right? I came as soon as I could!”

“Of course he’s all right,” said the Chief Inspector rather testily. “We haven’t exactly had thumb-screws on him, you know!”

Bracken held her against him, looking bewildered and at the same time very proud.

“Dinah, what on earth have you been up to? How did you get here?”

“The paper said you hadn’t got an alibi. So I locked Miss French in her room and came to tell them where you were last evening.” She turned on the beaming Scotland Yard people with rather an air of a well-brought-up tigress defending its young, her arms still around Bracken. “Have you finished with him? May I take him away now?”

“Certainly, do what you like with him,” said the Chief Inspector. “But first I must ask you to sign a written statement of what you told me in the other room, if you don’t mind.”

Dinah said she didn’t mind, and the Chief Inspector explained that she must come into the other room with him and repeat her story before a stenographer. She left Bracken with a backward glance, safely in the company of Partridge and Inspector Evans, and followed Chief Inspector Jerrold into the room she had entered first. A quiet little man with a pad and pencil took down her answers to the Chief Inspector’s questions, turning them into a statement as
he went. Within a remarkably short time this was returned to her, typed, for signing. Dinah wrote her name with a firm hand, and the Chief Inspector led the way back to where Bracken was waiting, and said he was free to go. Dinah took his arm.

“Where’s your hat, Bracken?” she asked in a motherly way.

Somebody gave Bracken his hat, and Dinah held out her hand to the Chief Inspector. Generations of graciousness were in the simple gesture.

“You’ve been very kind,” she said, looking up at him. “Thank you so much for listening to me.”

“My dear Lady Dinah, it was the greatest pleasure,” he said gallantly, and when Bracken had said his own goodbyes she led him away, still holding his arm protectively. Scotland Yard stood and watched them go, with fatuous smiles, for Dinah shimmered with romance.

They passed the desk in the entrance hall, where the sergeant said, “Everything all right, miss?” and Dinah smiled at him broadly and said, “Yes, thank you.” And they came to the gate, where the
constable
touched the brim of his helmet and said, “Good morning, miss,” and Dinah, holding Bracken’s arm, said, “Good morning, and thank you.”

Then Bracken spoke.

“Shall I call a cab, miss?”

“Yes, please,” said Dinah faintly, and when it came she sank into the seat and pulled him down beside her as though now, at last, he was rescued. “Oh,
Bracken,
I was so frightened! What did they do to you?”

“Well, first,” he said solemnly, “I was boiled in oil. And then I was drawn and quartered. And after that I was questioned on the rack—”