The Whispering Lane/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
FACING THE WORST
Noonday brought a motor-car from Tarhaven, which decanted Detective-Inspector Trant, two of his underlings and the Divisional-surgeon, at the gates of the cottage. Already the ill-news—travelling proverbially fast—was known in Fryfeld, and a gradually-increasing stream of excited villagers surged eagerly along the curved road towards the scene of the tragedy. Men and women, also children, morbidly curious, invaded the grounds of the solitary dwelling, to stare fearfully at its grim walls of grey stone, and pointed roof of sombre slates. They peered in at the windows, tapped nervously on the green-painted door, rambled here, there, and everywhere, generally taking possession of the place. Constable Kemp was unable to cope with the throng single-handed, so contented himself with standing guard over the corpse, now hidden decorously under a tarpaulin. This mysterious crime was the most sensational event which had ever happened in Fryfeld, and its somnolent inhabitants were resolved to make the most of it. As the village wit remarked, shrewdly, “We don’t kill a pig every day.”
Immediately Trant arrived, he proceeded to deal masterfully with the situation, which was much too free and easy for his liking. Ejecting the morbid sightseers bluffly, he ordered the gates to be closed, and placed a policeman before them, so that no one should be able to go out, or to come in. Afterwards he looked at the body, left the doctor to determine the cause of death and considered the scanty report of the constable. Kemp declared that an inquisitive urchin, overhearing Miss More’s revelation in the village street, had broadcast the information, so that the inhabitants had descended in a body on the cottage. All he could do and did do, was to request Miss More to return to the house, and stay inside with her friend, Miss Danby, until the arrival of the Inspector to take charge of the case. Afterwards, he had covered the body with the tarpaulin, and while guarding it had kept a strict watch on the cottage—visible from the wood—so that neither of the women should leave without his knowledge. Finally, reported Kemp, he had searched the dead man’s pockets, and now handed over to his superior officer the articles which had been found, therein.
These consisted of a return half-ticket from Cornby—the nearest railway station—to the Liverpool Street Terminus in London, a bunch of keys, a gold watch, which was run down, some loose silver with a mixture of coppers, and a well worn pocket-book of red leather, containing Treasury notes to the value of five pounds, together with some memoranda slips, several visiting cards, and a few letters. Trant read these last rapidly, but there was not a single hint to be found in the writings, likely to connect the deceased with Fryfeld, with the cottage, or with its tenants. “Dr. Cuthbert Slanton, Plantagenet Hospital, Chelsea,” read out Trant from a visiting card. “So that was your name,” he added, looking down on the corpse. “I wonder why you were given this new one,” and his finger traced the four letters on the puffed discoloured forehead. “If we could learn why you were called Cain, we should learn who got rid of you. And how were you got rid of?”
The surgeon looked up and answered for the dead man. “There is a smell of opium,” he said, sniffing, “and if I am correct, the man was drugged.”
“Poisoned by opium?”
“I can’t be sure until I make a further examination. After the post mortem I shall be able to speak decisively,” the doctor rose, brushing withered herbage from his knees. “It can’t be done here.”
“I’ll have the body taken down to the village later. Meanwhile, you stay here, doctor, and you, Jeringham,” to the other policeman, “while I go into the cottage to question these women. Kemp, come with me.”
Midway across the lawn, Trant halted the constable, “What do you know about these women, Kemp?”
“Ladies, sir. Miss Edith Danby and her companion, Miss Aileen More. They rented this cottage furnished a year ago—Miss Danby did I mean—and have lived here, very quietly, ever since.”
“Do you know them: have you spoken to them?”
“Not to Miss Danby, sir. I have caught a glimpse of her wandering about the country, but she never came into the village, or went up to London. Miss More spoke to me several times, about the ’bus that runs to Cornby, three miles distant, and about various trivial things. She’s a very pretty girl, sir, and quite a lady is Miss Aileen More.”
“More! More!” the Inspector pinched his chin musingly. “Where have I heard that name before. More—George More! Ha! Of course—fifteen years ago. And to forget. Ha! There’s gratitude for you!”
“Yes, sir,” said Kemp, stolidly, quite at a loss what to make of this cryptic speech, “of course, sir.”
Trant paid no attention to him, but resumed his walk across the lawn. At the door he halted again. “Who is the owner of this cottage?”
“Squire Richard Hustings, who lives in the old Manor House at the end of Fryfeld, beyond the church. He’s a lawyer, sir, and goes daily to Town.”
“Is he intimate with his tenants?”
“Not with Miss Danby, sir, I think,” replied the constable, doubtfully, “he comes occasionally to the cottage. I rather think, sir, that he admires Miss More.”
Trant nodded. “He’s a young man then.”
“Twenty-eight, or thereabouts, sir. Was a captain during the war and got the D.S.O. Everyone about here loves him.”
“And he loves Miss Aileen More. I think you mentioned that as the name of the girl. H’m! Besides Mr. Hustings, did these ladies receive any visitors?”
“I never saw any particular person come, or go, sir, except the rector and he only called once. But, as the ladies stayed away from church, he didn’t call again to my knowledge. Dr. Slanton was the one and only person who came—and he came often—to see the ladies.”
“The dead man. Ha!” Trant looked up alertly, “He came often you say?”
“Every other week, sir. I used to see him step off the ’bus from Cornby, and get on it again, so’s to catch his train.”
“Did he ever stay here for the night? In the cottage: in the village?”
“Not to my knowing, sir. He came and went like a swallow as you might say.”
“And, now his body, ticketed ‘Cain’ is lying in yonder wood,” mused Trant, raising his eyebrows. “H’m! Anyone in the cottage besides the ladies?”
“Jenny Walton, the servant, sir, a girl of eighteen.”
“What does she say about them?”
“Only that Miss Danby is queer.”
“Queer! Queer! What does she mean by queer?”
“I can’t say, sir. But I do say,” went on the constable, upon whose susceptible heart Aileen’s beauty had made an impression, “that gossip as Jenny Walton is, she hasn’t a worse word in her mouth than ‘queer.’ And she only uses that about Miss Danby. She’s very well satisfied with her place, is Jenny Walton.”
“Have you seen her this morning?”
“She came out when I came up with Miss More, sir, and seemed all of a fluster like. Miss More told her to hold her tongue and pushed her into the house.”
“Ha! Miss More told Jenny Walton to hold her tongue, did she?”
The policeman nodded uneasily, thinking that he was unconsciously implicating the girl he so greatly admired. “And told her to wait until you came from Tarhaven, sir. I only think that Miss More wants things put straight,” ended the man, hurriedly.
“They are certainly crooked enough now,” commented Trant, and raised his hand to the large brass knocker, which adorned the green-painted door.
The Detective-Inspector was tall and thin, with a closely clipped grey moustache, and a fringe of closely clipped grey hair round the dome of his bald head. His face generally wore a severe expression, the result of official self-control; but his light blue eyes beamed occasionally with kindly glances, and when he smiled, his whole being was transformed into the semblance of a benign deity, prone to mercy. Publicly, Trant had the reputation of being a just and honourable officer, strict in his dealings with the criminal fraternity; privately, he possessed the common sense, arising from long experience, to know that there is a soul of good in all things evil. And that soul he was always looking for, so as to temper justice with mercy. Edith Danby was more fortunate than she knew, to have so reasonable a man in charge of such a baffling and suspicious case.
Aileen, with a pale and troubled face, opened the door, and an expression of grateful relief, which the Inspector was swift to notice, came into her eyes. “I am so glad you have come,” she said, impetuously, “Miss Danby is in a dreadful state of mind, and wants this matter cleared up.”
“Very naturally, very naturally,” remarked the officer, with a searching glance at her youth and beauty and manifest distress. Then he added abruptly, “You are Miss Aileen More—the companion of Miss Danby?”
“Yes!”
“Is your father George More, the inventor—the man who experiments with wireless matters?”
“Yes. Do you know my father?”
“I did know him,” said Trant slowly.
“Oh!” Aileen grasped the man’s arm, “then you may know where he is?”
The Inspector shook his head, “I heard that he disappeared just before the Armistice, but, so far, nothing has been heard of him.” He stared at the disappointed girl, as if about to say something particular, then checked himself all of a sudden. “Lead me to Miss Danby,” he commanded with abrupt sharpness, “and you, Kemp, stay by this door. Let no one go out, or come in.”
The constable saluted, closed the front door and took up a watchful position outside, while Aileen, with compressed lips, silently conducted the Inspector into the old-fashioned parlour. Here, the woman he sought was seated on the sofa, staring into the fire, and with her hands loosely folded in her lap. She did not even glance round when the new-comer entered, but her hands involuntarily clasped themselves tightly. Trant noted this sub-conscious betrayal of repressed emotion, but, making no comment, examined his surroundings with meticulous care. The flowering wall-paper, against which hung antiquated steel-engravings; the flowering carpet, splashed riotously with gaudy roses; the round table, covered with an Indian, gold-embroidered blue cloth; the horse-hair sofa, the mahogany side-board, the ancient chairs, which did not match, and the many china ornaments, which decorated the mantelpiece in front of the oblong mirror in its tarnished gilt frame. All this jumble of quaint flotsam and jetsam, the trained observer took in at a glance, and then found time to address Miss Danby. “What do you know of this dead man in your wood?” he asked, coming to the point at once.
The harassed woman, rose tall and gaunt, looking at the officer with tormented sunken eyes, but perfectly self-possessed. “I know that he is Dr. Cuthbert Slanton, whom I first met during the war.”
“Is that all?”
“What else is there to say?” she demanded, defiantly.
“For one thing, how does his dead body come to be lying in your grounds?”
“I don’t know.” Edith sat down again, crossed her legs and clasped her thin hands round her knees. But she did not meet Trant’s watchful eyes.
“When did you see him last?”
“A week ago—no, two weeks ago. My friend there was present when I saw him.”
Trant looked a question, which Aileen immediately answered, “I was in this room when Dr. Slanton paid Miss Danby a visit two weeks ago.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“No!” she replied with convincing emphasis, “not until I stumbled over his body this morning!” and she hurriedly explained how she had followed the animals into the wood. “It was just a chance that I went there,” she ended, coolly.
“H’m! Yes! Just a chance,” muttered the Inspector, pinching his chin, a sign of perplexity with him. Then he asked a sharp question. “What were you doing last night—at what time did you retire?”
“I read for the most part of the evening, then occupied myself with trimming a hat. It was close upon half-past nine o’clock when I went to bed.”
“Where is your bedroom?”
“Upstairs, immediately over this room.”
“Did you come down during the night?”
“No!” said Aileen, opening her eyes with manifest surprise, “why should I have come down? Once in bed, I stay in bed.”
“I see. You are a sound sleeper?”
“Very sound. I never wake from the moment I place my head on the pillow until the dawn comes. White Nights, as the French call them, are unknown to me.”
“Naturally!” agreed Trant, cordially. “Youthful health and an untroubled conscience banish insomnia. I understand then, that you heard nothing?”
“Nothing! It never occurred to me to lie awake, expecting to hear anything.”
“Yet this cottage is very isolated, and the countryside is disturbed by the aftermath of the war. A burglar might have”
Aileen laughed and shrugged her pretty shoulders. “Miss Danby and I have lived here for twelve months, in perfect peace and quietness.”
The Inspector looked at her searchingly; but, as she neither flinched, nor flushed, nor lowered her eyes from his piercing gaze, he was convinced in his own mind that she was speaking truthfully, so far as the truth was known to her. “So it appears that you know nothing about this murder?”
Before the girl could assent to this tentative opinion, the older woman roused herself from a state of apparent indifference, to ask an abrupt question vehemently. “Are you sure that it is a case of murder?”
“It certainly looks very much like it,” responded the officer, dryly.
“Why not a case of suicide?”
“Setting aside the difficulty of tattooing an unpleasant name on one’s own forehead, why should a man bent upon suicide do such a silly thing?” Then, as Edith simply answered with a shrug of her shoulders, Trant continued: “Did Dr. Slanton ever suggest to you that he would commit suicide?”
“No. Why should be take me into his confidence?”
“Well—er—you were very intimate friends you know, if one may judge from his frequent visits to this house.”
“We were intimate only so far that he wanted me to marry him and I refused.”
“And out of sorrow at your refusal, you suggest that he committed suicide?”
“I suggest nothing because I know nothing,” said Miss Danby, coldly, “but if it is not a case of suicide I cannot understand how Dr. Slanton’s body comes to be in my grounds.”
“That is what I am here to find out,” retorted the Inspector, quietly. “Come now, Miss Danby, your friend has accounted for her doings last night, so”
“I am to account for mine,” she broke in with a hard laugh. “Well, then, I played Patience for the first part of the evening, and afterwards read until I went to bed at ten o’clock.”
“Oh!” Trant seized upon this admission, “so you remained in this room for thirty minutes after Miss More retired.”
“Yes. Do you suggest that Dr. Slanton came to see me during that time” she asked, derisively, “and that I murdered him?”
“To use your own words, I suggest nothing. But the fact remains that you knew this man, and that his body is lying in the wood yonder.”
“I don’t dispute the facts, but I cannot explain the facts.”
“Cannot, or will not?”
“Which you like,” she returned, carelessly: then when Aileen would have spoken she signed to her to be silent. “Let him say what he likes and ask what he likes. Knowing nothing I can say nothing.”
“Where is your bedroom?” asked Trant, following another trail.
“Across the passage. You can search it if you like.” Miss Danby spoke insolently.
“Thank you. I shall do so at once!” and the officer promptly left the parlour to cross the passage and open the bedroom door. Immediately the dog, which Aileen had shut in earlier, bounced out with joyous barks. The girl caught him up in her arms. “For God’s sake, Edith, tell the truth,” she bent forward to whisper. “Let this man know everything. He looks kind.”
“I have nothing to tell,” said the gaunt woman, between her clenched teeth, and it was at this moment that Trant returned. “You have not been long,” she taunted.
“Long enough to find this,” said the officer, holding out an oddly-shaped pipe, with a tiny, tiny bowl and a long, long stem. “What is it?” he asked, unnecessarily.
“An opium pipe,” replied Edith, knowing well the futility of denial. “I suffer from neuralgia, and smoke opium to relieve the pain.”
“Did you smoke last night?”
“I did. And therefore slept too soundly to hear anything.”
Hitherto Trant had pursued his examination in a somewhat desultory manner, peculiar to himself, and perhaps not strictly official. Now he sat down, placed the opium pipe in his pocket, and assumed an authoritative mien. “You did see Dr. Slanton last night,” he insisted, positively, “here is the return half ticket from Cornby to London, which was found in his pocket.”
“I did not see him,” was the sullen answer. “If he came down here last night, it was not to visit me.”
“Has he other friends in the neighbourhood?”
“I don’t know—I never asked him.”
“Miss Danby,” said the Inspector, sternly, and looking singularly severe, “you are playing with the Law, which I represent. To save yourself from being placed in a very dangerous position, it will be better for you to speak out.”
“I have nothing to say,” declared the woman, firmly.
“You have and you must say it. I warn you that what you say will be used in evidence against you.”
“How dare you speak to me like this. I am not a criminal,” she flashed out.
“If you are not, explain this. You smoke opium, and the doctor, now examining the body, says that the man was drugged with opium.”
Aileen uttered a cry of terror. Every moment Edith was being entangled more and more in the nets of the Law: but she tried to defend her friend. “It’s impossible that—that Miss Danby should have—should have”
“Should have drugged Dr. Slanton and then tattooed the name ‘Cain’ on his forehead,” finished Trant, emphatically. “Why should it be impossible? But if it is impossible as you suggest, I ask Miss Danby to explain away the impossibility. Otherwise”
“You will arrest me!” broke in the grey woman harshly.
“That depends upon yourself. This one piece of evidence”—he tapped his pocket in which he had placed the opium-pipe—“is damning proof of your complicity, and it may be”—he looked round the room—“that I may find other proofs.”
“Search then—search!” was Edith’s reckless defiance.
Trant nodded, rose, and began to prowl round the parlour. Aileen crossed to Edith and sitting down beside her, enfolded her in a protective embrace. As if aware of the tragic circumstances, Toby, the dog, lay quietly on the sofa, watching silently, his nose upon his paws. For quite ten minutes the officer pried here, there and everywhere, nosing the trail like a bloodhound. Nothing, great or small, escaped his keen eyes; nothing failed to register itself in his retentive brain. He looked behind the steel-engravings, lifted the edges of the carpet, shook the curtains, examined the cupboard and drawers of the sideboard, peered into the china vases, and even swept the Indian cloth off the round table. But nowhere could he find anything incriminating. It would seem that his first important find would be his last, and Miss Danby watched him with sneering lips. She was as cold and hard as a stone image; unresponsive to the sympathetic embrace of her girl-friend, and unnaturally calm with the extraordinary self-possession of a strong-willed woman. Neither by word, nor deed did she attempt to assist the Law to prove her guilt, or innocence. It was Kismet. To her—although no one knew this but her own tormented self—Trant represented Fate: and she passively allowed Fate to do as Fate would do. Nevertheless, it surprised her, when this pseudo Fate made a discovery, which—as seemed positive—adjusted the hangman’s rope round her neck.
It was in the quaint, old-fashioned book-case in the far corner that Trant stumbled all of a sudden upon his find. Having gone through the room, so far, with a fine tooth-comb, as it were, he finally halted before this piece of furniture with the intention of shifting the books, one by one, in case they might contain a clue to the truth. But such precision of search was not required, for the moment he flung wide the glass doors, sheltering the volumes, a lacquer box of Chinese manufacture tumbled out. Picking it up off the floor, he lifted the lid to find that the box contained a set of tattooing needles, together with divers pigments for colouring the skin. Without a word, he walked across to the sofa and held this clinching evidence under the startled eyes of the silent woman. “Do you still deny that you saw Dr. Slanton last night?” he inquired, sternly.
She nodded faintly, summoning up her remaining strength for the denial. “I never set eyes on that box before.”
“Or on this?” espying the torn photograph at his feet. Trant pieced the fragments together, and immediately the saturnine face of the dead man leaped to his eye.
Sitting breathlessly still, the accused woman stared at the photograph, at the lacquer box, at the relentless looks of the officer. Then she began to rock to and fro, shrilling thinly, the hopeless laughter of Hell.
“Edith! Edith!” cried Aileen in agonized entreaty, and shook her without effect. Terror-stricken, the girl turned her white face towards the Inspector. “What are you going to do—oh, what are you going to do?”
“The only thing that is left to me to do,” he replied, with soulless official calmness, and stretched a hand towards the woman’s shoulder: “Edith Danby, I arrest you, in the King’s name, for the murder of Cuthbert Slanton. Anything you say now will be used in evidence against you.”
But the frenzied creature only went on laughing and laughing and laughing, until Aileen had to close her ears to shut out the dreadful merriment.