The Witness on the Roof (27 page)

But Joan's regard to principle was not yet moved.

“And yet you deliberately prefer to see my suffering to giving up the name of your friend, the man whom you are shielding!” she answered firmly. “When you bring to justice my sister's murderer, when you prove to me that you had no part or lot in her death, then—then we will talk of peace!”

Warchester drew back quickly; he squared his broad shoulders; a dull flush dyed his forehead.

“I thought once that you would have trusted my word,” he said in a low, pained voice. “But since proof is needed, I—I will do my best to give it to you. For the rest we must leave it to time, I shall not plead again for what should be mine by right—my wife's love and trust!” 

He turned sharply on his heel and walked out of the room.

Left alone Joan stood for a moment motionless; then her throat caught in a harsh, tearless sob. With an exclamation of despair, she flung herself prone upon the couch. Now that Warchester had gone from her in anger, the recollection of his constant unvarying kindness, of the love that had encompassed her and shielded her, would obtrude itself. What sort of a return was this that she was making him? A longing to rush after him, to bid him lay his arms round her, to tell him that only their love counted, that the rest did not matter, swept over her. Then she thought of that other girl who had loved and trusted, the dear elder sister of her childhood, done to death in that studio in Grove Street; and with a moan she buried her head deeper in the velvet cushions.

Warchester, meanwhile, went straight out of the house. They were still staying in Grosvenor Square, or rather Joan and Cynthia Trewhistle were. Warchester himself, after coming up for his interview with Septimus Lockyer the previous week, had returned to the Towers. His visit of to-day was prompted mainly by an inability to keep away from Joan; a desire to ascertain how Hewlett's investigations were progressing more fully than was possible at Warchester had also its share in the matter; and last, but not least, a wish to see his cousin, Basil, whose progress since the operation had been all that could be desired, and who was now, as Mrs. Mannering informed him, asking to see him every day.

He bent his steps towards his cousin's house in Curzon Street. As he walked he would scarcely have been human if some feeling of bitterness towards Joan had not surged in his heart. He had counted so surely on the girl's faith in him. He had failed to allow sufficiently for the shock her recognition of him had proved.

His face was very grave as he knocked at his cousin's door.

Mr. Basil was better, the butler informed him, and Mrs. Mannering was at home and desired to be told at once if Lord Warchester called.

She came to him directly.

“Thank Heaven you have come, Paul! Basil has been asking for you all the morning. He is working himself up into a fever. If we had not had your letter saying you would be in town to-day and would call I should have wired to you. The doctors say he is to be kept perfectly quiet, but at the same time his mind must be set at rest, and he is most anxious to ask you some question. You will try to keep him calm, won't you, Paul?”

Warchester promised gravely as he followed her upstairs. He had always been fond of his cousins, Paul and Delia. In their earlier days before her marriage, Mrs. Mannering had been almost like a sister to him. She was a petite, sparkling brunette, with a pretty, vivacious manner, which neither her long residence in India nor her anxiety about her brother had noticeably diminished.

She opened the door into a big front room.

“Here is Paul, Basil! Now if I leave you two alone for a chat, you must both promise me to be good and not allow yourselves to be excited.”

Basil was sitting in an easy chair near the fireplace, propped up by pillows; his tall frame looked long and gaunt as he tried to raise himself. His face was white and drawn, the hand he held out to his cousin was pathetically thin and shaky, but his blue eyes held the light of reason once more, his look was full of anxious questioning.

“Paul, old fellow—at last I thank heaven!” Warchester was no less moved. He had never really believed in the power of any operation to restore his cousin's mind to the clearness which it possessed before his accident. It seemed to him that a miracle had been performed.

After that first exclamation, however, Basil said no more, but waited with ill-concealed impatience until Mrs. Mannering settled them both to her liking, and, after placing a medicine bottle and glass on the table and bidding Warchester administer a dose if Basil should get exhausted, left them alone, promising them half an hour's conversation. Then as the door closed, he raised himself eagerly.

“Paul, what of Queenie? What of my wife?” Warchester looked at him in consternation. Was it possible that the return of memory was only partial? What was he to answer in face of Mrs. Mannering's warning as to the result of excitement? Before he had made up his mind as to how it would be possible to delay matters, to prevaricate, Basil started forward and gripped his hand in a tight, feverish clasp.

“It is not true that she is—dead? Paul, I asked for the papers this morning; the doctors let me have them, they said they would help to occupy my mind. Occupy my mind!” He laughed aloud—a hollow, mirthless sound. “I saw something about the murder of ‘Miss Marie De Lavelle' in Grove Street. The murder of ‘Miss Marie De Lavelle'! Merciful Heaven! I think my brain has been on fire since. What does it mean, Paul?” His grasp tightened in its feverish intensity. “I know it isn't true! It is a mistake! But speak, man, tell me—”

Warchester deliberated a moment.

“Don't you remember?” he said at last.

Basil's eyes were fixed upon him, as though they would wring the truth from his lips.

“How should I remember? Heavens, Paul, don't you realize that for these ten years I have been an animal, a log?”

“Yes but—” Warchester paused and looked across. It seemed to him that if Basil inquired he was bound to learn the truth, and he knew that now his cousin's suspicions were aroused he would not rest. It was better that he should gather some idea of what had happened from him than from a stranger. Then Heaven help him if he remembered!

“Yes, but don't you recollect what happened before your accident, Basil?”

“My accident!” Basil repeated. “Why of course I do! I was coming to Grove Street to meet you and Queenie when I saw that great dray bearing down upon me. Then it is all confusion. I remember no more until I woke up here.”

“You are thinking now of the day before your accident, Basil,” Warchester corrected quietly. “I was to see Queenie at the studio on the 11th of May. Your accident was on the 12th. I remember Delia writing to me in Paris and telling me how terribly ill you were, and that you had been knocked down by a dray on the afternoon of the 12th.”

“Delia made a mistake then,” Basil said shortly. “Heavens, I have heard enough of the date of my accident since I have recovered, and no mistake! I was hurrying away from the Edens' wedding to meet you and Queenie. But that does not matter now. The one thing that does is that Queenie—my wife—” He covered his face with his hands. “That for ten years I have been a useless log, and she—my poor girl!—when I think what she must have suffered—”

“She has not suffered, Basil,” Warchester interrupted. “Don't you understand that for these ten years she has been at rest?” Warned by the change in his cousin's face, he sprang forward and, pouring out a measure of the stimulant, held it to his lips.

Basil took it unwillingly, but it brought a tinge of colour to his white cheeks, and after a minute or two he was able to speak.

“Tell me all,” he whispered faintly. “This paper spoke of Grove Street, but it is not possible—”

Warchester saw that matters had reached such a pitch that suspense would be worse than the truth.

“Queenie met her death in your studio in Grove Street on the afternoon of May 11th, 1897.”

“My poor Queenie!” moaned Basil. “But who—”

Paul watched him closely from beneath his drooping eyelids. Soon—soon he would, he must remember, and then—he shivered as he answered:

“That has never been discovered. We can't do her any good now, Basil.”

“No,” Basil said very quietly, though his eyes were glittering feverishly, “we can't do her any good. But we can punish her murderer. Do you imagine that I, her husband, shall rest, shall leave one stone unturned until she is avenged? Tell me everything now, Paul. How was it done?”

In Warchester's breast a slight, faint hope was beginning to dawn. Not yet would he allow himself to dwell on it, but he watched his cousin closely.

“She was shot with your pistol in the studio in Grove Street!”

“What!” Basil's face was full of incredulous horror. “Then she was followed! She was dogged by—”

Warchester's hope was growing now. Was it possible that all these years he had been under a terrible delusion, that the horror that had haunted his manhood was a chimera? A spectre of his imagination? He drew a deep breath, he straightened his back with the involuntary gesture of a man who throws off a burden.

“Basil, does that mean that she had some reason—that you think—”

Basil rested his arms on the table on his right and laid his head on them.

“She had only one enemy in the world, my poor Queenie!” he said brokenly. “There was only one person who had reason to hate her. And that—that was my fault. But it can't be—I can't see clearly now. I must think!”

Warchester laid his hand on his shoulder.

“Basil, try to tell me—”

“Well, the time is up, and how are we getting on?” a gay voice questioned behind them.

Unperceived, Mrs. Mannering had opened the door. The nurse, a pleasant, capable-looking woman, stood behind her.

Delia's tone changed.

“Oh, nurse,” she said helplessly, “what is it? Has it been too much for him?”

“That will soon be all right.” The nurse's practised eyes did not betray any of the dismay she felt at the condition in which she found her patient. “But I think perhaps if his lordship went down now, Mrs. Mannering—”

“Of course, of course,” Warchester agreed hastily.

But though he left the room, he could not bring himself to leave the house. He waited in the library until Delia came to him.

“Nurse says she does not think there is any real harm done,” she assured him. “It is only that it is the first time he has seen anyone, and he is weak.”

“Ah, yes, he is weak!” Warchester acquiesced abstractedly. He could not tear his thoughts for a single instant from the one overwhelming discovery of this afternoon, a discovery which, every moment he told himself, must turn out to be merely a will-o'-the-wisp—a creation of his own fancy.

“Delia,” he said quickly, “could you tell me the date of Basil's accident?”

Mrs. Mannering looked a little surprised at the question.

“Certainly! It was on the 11th of May, 1897.”

“The 11th?” Paul repeated. “Delia, are you quite certain? You said in your letter telling me of the accident that Basil had been knocked down by a motor just outside your house on the afternoon of May the 12th.”

“Oh, no, it was the 11th.” Mrs. Mannering said positively. “I couldn't make a mistake about it, because it was Cecily Eden's wedding, and I was bridesmaid. Basil had been there too, but he had an appointment, and had to leave early. There was a smash-up, and Basil's head was frightfully hurt. For weeks we thought he couldn't live. They fetched us away from the wedding—mother and me—and I got a great ugly stain on the front of my bridesmaid's gown. Ugh! Don't talk of it, Paul!”

M
R.
H
EWLETT
was walking along Albany Street, St. John's Wood. His face was grave and absorbed. The various complications that faced him at every turn in connection with the Grove Street Mystery were puzzling him not a little. At the time the murder took place, when he was on the Scotland Yard staff, it had interested him enormously. Now that he had returned to it afresh, every faculty stimulated by the new and extraordinary developments which had taken place, it threatened to obsess him altogether. Nor was his absorption lessened by the fact that, though up to a certain point his investigations had proved unusually successful, he was as far as ever apparently from solving the enigma. He had found it by no means uncommon to feel sure of a criminal's identity himself and yet lack the means to bring it home. But the Grove Street murder differed from others in this respect—he felt quite unable to make up his mind as to whose had been the hand that fired the fatal shot. To himself he seemed to be wandering in a maze; fresh clues appeared on every side, only for him to find on following any of them that he was brought up short by a blank wall.

He had gone up to Barnsbury with but scant hope of obtaining any useful information. By chance he had learned that for some three months while they were engaged at the Melpomene, Marie De Lavelle had been very intimate with a certain Rose Merivale, who was now considered a star in the music-hall world, and was living in a maisonnette in St. John's Wood. There was a possibility that she might be able to give some helpful information, and he had written to ask for an interview.

Miss Rose Merivale had replied by fixing this afternoon. Mr. Hewlett took out her profusely-scented, highly-glazed epistle and glanced at it.

“Blandford Road. Ah, here we are”—as he took a turn to the right—“and this will be No. 6!”

He knocked at the door, and was admitted by a maidservant, who told him her mistress would be down directly. Hewlett glanced about him. The numerous small tables, the whatnots and brackets, the mantelshelf, all were bestrewn with photographs, many of them signed with names familiar to him as those of music-hall celebrities. There were quantities of flowers, many of them already faded, in innumerable little vases, and there were chairs and couches piled with cushions.