The Vanity Box/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX
Though Gaylor had the air of idling away most of his time at Riding St. Mary, and never seemed seriously to catechise any one in the neighbourhood, somehow he picked up an extraordinary amount of information, particularly concerning the habits of most of the persons connected closely or remotely with Friars' Moat. Among the most important of his gleanings was the fact that Ian Barr had at one time been in the habit of using the upper room in the Tower as a kind of study. A year ago, or not much more, he had been writing a series of articles on the Roman camps in Surrey; and as there were finely marked traces of an encampment on the hill of the View Tower, Sir Ian Hereward—interested in the young man's work—had suggested his writing in the Tower. He had offered to ask permission from Mrs. Forestier; she had granted it freely; and Sir Ian had lent Barr the key which was very seldom used by any one at Friars' Moat. When Barr had finished the articles, he was known to have returned the key of the Tower. All this Gaylor learned from the butler at the Moat, who had heard of the matter in talk around the table at the time; had forgotten it, but remembered distinctly when his recollections had been baited and played, with the skill of a true fisherman, by the detective.
Thus it was established that Barr had at one period gone every day, or nearly every day, to the View Tower, beginning a habit which he might have chosen to keep up secretly, after having ostensibly dropped it. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to have Sir Ian's key copied, as he had certainly had it for weeks in his possession; and it was not unnatural that he might have wanted to keep the run of the place. At his own cottage, which was more picturesque than convenient, he had but one sitting-room, where he must do his work, write his letters, see his callers and eat his meals. Besides, the situation of the housekeeper's room just above made it practically impossible to hold a private conversation in that sitting-room, if she were overhead or likely to go. It seemed almost certain to Gaylor that Barr would have had the key copied, in order to use the Tower when he chose.
He must have known that neither Mrs. Forestier nor any one else, with the exception of Barnard, opened the Tower doors twice a year. As for Barnard, he went only once every few weeks; and it would have been possible for Barr to find out which days were chosen by the farmer for his inspection. Even if Tom had come upon the steward there, no harm would have been done, for it might be supposed that Barr retained permission to go when he liked.
Through Kate Craigie, Gaylor discovered that Lady Hereward had believed her French maid Liane kept tryst with Ian Barr at the Tower. Why Lady Hereward had held this belief Kate did not know, but supposed she "must have heard something." Possibly Liane had been seen going to the Tower; in any case Kate knew that "her ladyship," who disapproved of Mr. Barr from the first, "because he was a dangerous socialist," suddenly became bitterly prejudiced against him, on account of an alleged flirtation between him and Liane.
Each day it began to appear more and more important to find Ian Barr, and the theory of the police was that he would be found through Miss Verney. Nevertheless, Nora had contrived to thwart the vigilance of her "shadow" on arriving in Paris, by posting a letter which he could not identify as hers.
He was there, on the spot, and watching, when she slipped something into a letter-box at the Gare du Nord. He had been given specimens of her handwriting, before he left England, and was granted the privilege of seeing each letter which the box contained. But not only was there no envelope or card addressed to Ian Barr, but there was no handwriting which resembled Miss Verney's. The half-French detective had an aggravating conviction that, if he could only open each of the many letters, he would find one from Nora Verney to Ian Barr; but he could not do that, and he had to acknowledge himself defeated for the moment. Barr had doubtless taken another name, and Miss Verney had asked a friend to address her envelope, or had used a typewriter.
Michel examined the contents of the letter-box, in company with a postman instructed by the French police, while Miss Ricardo and her travelling companion dined. He "shadowed" the two ladies in Paris for the short time they spent there, and journeyed with them to Chamounix, where he put up in a cheap room at their hotel. They did nothing that repaid his watchfulness, but when they had been at the mountain village for several days, he learned that they proposed a driving tour. They were not engaging a carriage and horse at Chamounix, but had sent elsewhere, which struck Michel as odd, though he did not quite see how it bore upon the business which had brought him to France.
He could not find out for some time whence the vehicle would come, but at last heard from some employé of the hotel that it was to arrive from St. Pierre de Chartreuse, whither it would return with the ladies. This was disappointing to Michel, because it ceased to appear strange. It was natural enough to engage a conveyance of the hotel at which they intended to stop, where the landlord might make a better price for incoming guests than would one about to lose his clients.
Michel was on hand when the carriage arrived at the Chamounix Hotel, and saw Miss Ricardo and Miss Verney go out to look at it. There were two good horses; the vehicle was a well-appointed landau, with a rack for light luggage behind; and the driver was a noticeably smart young man. He had a clean-shaven face, as dark as a Spaniard's, but rather long, wavy black hair, which fell from under a broad-brimmed hat over the collar of his coat. He was tall, with a fine slim figure, and was dressed like a peasant.
Miss Ricardo and Miss Verney seemed to be very much interested in the carriage, which arrived toward evening, and they asked the picturesque young man a number of questions in Italian, of which Michel understood only a few words. They were answered in the same language—and it surprised the detective that the driver from St. Pierre de Chartreuse should be an Italian. He reflected, however, that "Ricardo" was an Italian name, and this expedition was Miss Ricardo's affair. That might explain the seeming mystery, yet he resolved to find out all about the matter, when he had followed the ladies to St. Pierre de Chartreuse, as he not only intended to do, but to be close upon their heels. Even apparently unimportant details were of interest when connected with this case, and nobody could tell what bearing they might have upon it.
That night the coachman put up his horses and slept at Chamounix. Next morning early the ladies were ready to start; and Michel, who had engaged a vehicle for himself, started also. Other driving parties, as well as automobilists, were leaving the hotel at the same hour, and there was no reason why he should be remarked by Miss Ricardo and Miss Verney.
The ladies were evidently not in a hurry to reach their journey's end, or they would have chosen to travel by train or motor. The first day, having started early in the morning, they reached La Grande Chartreuse in time for luncheon. Paul Michel was not far behind them. He too stopped to eat, and saw the great monastery, like most other travellers who toured in this direction, and several times encountered Miss Ricardo and Miss Verney, who scarcely glanced at him. Once, in the vast, deserted monastery itself, they condescended to show their Italian-speaking driver something of the place, or else he, being already familiar with it, was playing guide. Michel could not be sure which was the case, but the young man walked respectfully by Miss Verney's side, while Miss Ricardo wandered ahead, with a volume of Murray in her hand.
"I wonder?" Michel began to ask himself, in response to a striking idea which was knocking at his mind.
He had no portrait of Ian Barr as a grown man, for the reason that, if any had been taken, Scotland Yard had not been able to learn where or when. Michel had, however, an old picture of Sir Ian Hereward's young relative, as a boy of thirteen, made in Barr's school days, and discovered at a local photographer's since the murder. The detective slipped it between the leaves of his guide book, glancing from it to the face of the long-haired coachman, and comparing the features. But he could not be sure that they were the same. If this dark peasant in the wide-brimmed hat were Ian Barr in disguise, that disguise was a good one. The only thing was to watch and wait. If Ian Barr were really conducting his fiancée and her friend, he would betray himself sooner or later.
The party took three days on the way to St. Pierre de Chartreuse, though they could have accomplished the distance in less time. Perhaps they lingered on the road only because it was beautiful; perhaps because a pair of lovers dreaded to part. Michel was a vigilant spy, but he could not discover, so far, that any private interviews took place between the coachman and Nora Verney.
About five o'clock on the third day the carriage containing the two ladies and their light luggage drew up before one of the best hotels in the beautiful little village of St. Pierre de Chartreuse. Michel was near enough in his following conveyance to see them received by the landlord. No look of recognition passed between the proprietor of the hotel and the man who had brought his guests from Chamounix. This was odd, for if the fellow really came from St. Pierre de Chartreuse, he would almost certainly have been sent by the hotel at which Miss Ricardo meant to stay.
When the two dressing-bags and suitcases had been carried into the hotel, the young man still stood by the horses' heads. On the wide balcony at the top of the steps Miss Ricardo and Nora Verney consulted together for a moment in low voices. Then Miss Ricardo took an envelope out of her guide book, and gave it to Miss Verney, who ran down with it to the driver. She put it in his hand, and said a few words to him with an appearance of earnestness. Then he touched his hat (which Michel had never seen him remove), mounted to the box of his vehicle and drove off.
Meanwhile the detective had descended, without waiting for the first carriage to make the way clear. Having paid his coachman and seen his luggage carried up the steps by a porter, he reached the balcony himself just in time to witness a somewhat dramatic little scene, which he would not have missed for a great deal.
The two ladies, whom Michel admired extremely, were chatting with the landlord, a lesser personage having been sent to welcome the newcomer, when in the doorway appeared Sir Ian Hereward.
Michel had never seen Sir Ian in the flesh, but he had studied his features in many newspaper snapshots and sketches, during the last ten days, asking himself whether or no the face was the face of a murderer. Now he recognized it instantly, leaping to the startling conclusion that this meeting, at a remote village in France, had been arranged between Sir Ian and Teresina Ricardo.
Here was something better than he had dreamed of expecting, and he was delighted. The fact that this man and this woman journeyed so far from their world to meet each other, seemed to prove that Miss Ricardo had perjured herself in swearing that Ian Hereward had not loved her, long ago, in India. They had been separated for years, these two; and as they had apparently met in private only once (on the afternoon of the murder) since the old days in India, there must have been something between them, or they would not be keeping this tryst now.
"At last the wife is out of the way, and they aren't losing much time in profiting by it!" Michel said to himself.
This put a rather different complexion on his business. He had been sent after Nora Verney in the hope of running down Ian Barr. But since Ian Hereward came to St. Pierre de Chartreuse, Michel's theory of the murder was shaken. What if, after all, the elder Ian knew more about it than the younger, and Barr were but a scapegoat?
Of course, it would soon be known at headquarters that Sir Ian was here, if it were not known already, since the ex-officer was under observation; yet some kudos might be gained, in spite of that fact, if Michel played his cards well. He intended to let not the smallest chance slip, and the eyes which flashed from Sir Ian to Teresina Ricardo and Nora Verney were the merciless eyes of a lynx.
Michel saw Sir Ian start as if with astonishment at the sight of the two women; saw him hesitate in the doorway as if he were minded to beat a retreat; saw Miss Ricardo turn scarlet, and Nora Verney grow as pale as if she were faint, and heard the elder woman exclaim: "Sir Ian!" Still, the detective's conviction that this encounter was a "put-up job" did not waver for an instant. He thought that Sir Ian was a creditable actor, and that perhaps Miss Ricardo had not wished the first meeting to take place like this, on the hotel verandah, in the presence of half a dozen people. (It would be like a woman to have planned out something more romantic, and to be disappointed!) It struck him as probable that Nora Verney was not in the secret. The two most concerned would naturally wish her to believe that they met by accident; but, thought Michel, she would be a little idiot to be deceived, considering what kind of place was St. Pierre de Chartreuse. If it were Aix-les-Bains, for instance, where all the world passed and repassed, it might be different.
Miss Ricardo's faint cry of recognition put an end, of course, to Sir Ian's hesitation. He took a few steps forward, and held out his hand to her.
"This is indeed a great surprise!" he said.
"It is indeed," she echoed.
They shook hands, looking straight into each other's eyes for a second or two, as if in spite of everything it was a joy to meet, a joy which would not be denied. They had the air of thinking that they two were alone in the world, just for an instant; and then, as though with the birth of the same thought, they dropped hands and turned to Miss Verney.
"Nora! How very strange, isn't it?" almost stammered Terry, as if she were afraid that the girl did not believe in her surprise. And if she were afraid of this (thought the detective), it at least was not as strange as some other things.
"Yes," said Nora, in a low voice. "It is strange." She looked frightened, almost horrified, it seemed to the detective, who had some sympathy for her, as she was, in his opinion, the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She did not put out her hand, and neither did Sir Ian. Michel noticed that the ex-officer gazed at her somewhat sadly and that she appeared to turn her eyes distastefully from his.
"Can that girl have found out anything about Sir Ian Hereward which has made her hate him?" the detective wondered, in a kind of professional ecstasy.