Who Killed Charmian Karslake? Page 12

  “To force!” When he began to speak Paula had been toying with a little silver ornament from the mantelpiece. She set it down now with a decided little bang, and as she faced Larpent there was the light of battle in her eye. “To force an explanation!” she repeated. “Do you mean you will force me to put into words what you know only too well already?”

  “Before Heaven I do not!” Larpent exclaimed with sudden fire. “But I mean you to tell me now. The worst of criminals has a right to know the charge against him – to be heard in his own defence.”

  “Suppose no defence is possible?” Miss Galbraith suggested. “What is the use of pretending? You know that I have guessed your secret.”

  “My secret! I have no secret!” Larpent returned, staring at her. “What do you mean?”

  Paula fixed her blue eyes upon him.

  “You say you have no secret. Have you forgotten the night of the ball and Peter Hailsham?”

  John Larpent’s face changed, his whole bearing altered.

  “For Heaven’s sake, be quiet, Paula. You don’t know what harm you may do.”

  Paula Galbraith laughed contemptuously.

  “I am not going to tell, as the children say. Do not be afraid; but – I know.”

  “You cannot!” Larpent’s dark face had turned to a sickly ashen pallor beneath its tan. “It is impossible.”

  “Is it?” Paula’s smile was not pleasant to see. “You shall judge. You may not have heard, but I know that two of the maids saw Charmian Karslake come along the conservatory and go into the small room at the end. I know they have told that detective man they heard her speak as if someone was waiting for her there, say – ‘so I have found you at last, Mr. Peter Hailsham.’ Well, I was sitting within the conservatory farther back behind a bank of plants, and I, too, heard what she said, but I was wiser than they were, I knew who had gone in first. I knew who Peter Hailsham was.” Unconsciously as she uttered the last words she raised her voice.

  Larpent sprang forward as if he would have closed her mouth himself.

  “Be quiet!” he ordered in a low, hoarse voice. “What you saw – what you heard had no bearing on Charmian Karslake’s death.”

  Miss Galbraith did not shrink from him. She put her hands behind her and faced him defiantly.

  “Has it not? I wonder whether Inspector Stoddart would think as you do, if he knew what I could tell him.”

  “He must never know,” Larpent said in the same hoarse voice. “I have told you the truth – nothing that happened in – in the small smoking-room has any bearing on Charmian Karslake’s death. If you speak of it –”

  “Other people may think it had,” the girl said scornfully. “You have told me twice that what I heard has no bearing on Miss Karslake’s death. But you do not know me yet, John Larpent. The girls of today are not so easily blinded as their mothers were.”

  “By Heaven, I wish they were as good as their mothers,” Larpent interrupted her with sudden heat. “And there are plenty of men like me who would –”

  Very quietly Paula drew the diamond ring from the third finger of her left hand and held it out to him.

  “Please give this to someone who is nearer your ideal than I am.”

  Larpent took it from her and flung it through the open window.

  “There! That’s that!” he said grimly.

  Paula turned rather white.

  “That is foolish!” she said icily. “You will want it next time.”

  “There will be no next time,” Larpent said roughly. “I have had enough of this one to last my life.”

  If Paula winced she did not show it.

  “I regret very much that I did not end it sooner,” she said, her blue eyes meeting his coldly. “That I did not do so the day after the ball – for your sake.”

  “That was most considerate of you,” Larpent told her in a tone of concentrated wrath. “May I inquire why you should change your mind now?”

  Paula drew farther away from him. She glanced at her hands, now linked loosely in front of her, at the ringless third finger.

  “Because it is, I believe, safer now,” she said slowly. “Then I thought if I did it then” – she paused – “if I broke everything off, they – the detectives – might suspect.”

  “What do you mean?” Larpent questioned hotly. “By Heaven, you shall speak out!”

  “I shall say no more to you.” Paula held her small head high. “If I say anything else it will be to the detectives, these dreadful men who are poking and prying about everybody and who will one day stumble on – the truth.”

  “The truth – who knows what the truth is?” Larpent inquired, unconsciously paraphrasing the jesting Pilate. “You are wrong, Paula, horribly, wickedly wrong, if you speak of what happened, of what you thought happened that night in the smoking-room. You will bring down the most appalling trouble on innocent heads. You do not know –”

  “I only know what you tell me about that, naturally,” Paula interrupted with the same composure. “But I –”

  She stopped suddenly as the door was flung open and Mr. Juggs strode into the room.

  “She has spoken, she knows us,” he exclaimed, apparently quite unconscious of the traces of disturbance on the faces of the two in the room.

  Larpent was standing with his back to the door. He pulled himself together and turned round.

  “Do you mean that Mrs. Richard has really spoken? I cannot tell you how glad I am. Now she will be able to tell us how she was attacked. Perhaps she has already done so?” He glanced keenly at Mr. Juggs as he spoke.

  “No, she hasn’t. Not yet. You bet she will. Sadie always kept her wits about her,” the millionaire responded. “She just opened her eyes a minute ago. ‘Dicky,’ she said, ‘Dad.’ I and son-in-law were there by the side of the bed together. ‘Darling,’ son-in-law began and then the nurses hustled us out of the room. She must be kept quiet – must be kept quiet, they say. It will be a day or two before she will be able to be questioned, they tell us. But Sadie won’t keep her mouth shut long. She is all there, my girl is.”

  “I am sure she is,” Larpent responded politely.

  CHAPTER 14

  “It’s a queer tale!” Inspector Stoddart said in a puzzled tone. “What in the world did she go back to the Monks’ Pool for? It is a particularly cheerless-looking spot, and the Fergusons say that when they first expressed a desire to see it, Mrs. Richard exclaimed, ‘What – want to go to that dismal pool! It gives me the hump.’ And Miss Mary Ferguson says that when they were there, Mrs. Richard shivered from head to foot and said, ‘Ugh! I feel as if something wicked had been done here.’ Then Miss Ferguson says the water was low and the sides were all rocky, for the old monks made the pool, you know, and they all bent over it trying to see the carp that tradition says are there in the pool now, and Mrs. Richard leaned over the longest trying to see till one of them pulled her back and told her she would fall in. Then when they have all said good-bye to her, she goes back to this dismal-looking hole by herself. Why?”

  “As I said before, she must have dropped something there,” Superintendent Bower said impatiently, “and gone back to find it.”

  “She does not seem to have had anything to drop,” the inspector said thoughtfully. “She had nothing with her but her little handbag and her handkerchief in that. And the handbag, Miss Ferguson says she distinctly remembers noticing that on her arm when they parted.”

  “She might have dropped her gloves or some bit of jewellery,” Harbord hazarded.

  The inspector shook his head.

  “Her maid says she wore no jewellery but her rings and her pearls. As for gloves, the maid held up her hand at the notion. ‘Gloves to go in the garden?’ she exclaimed. ‘‘Why, nobody would do such a thing nowadays.’ Her purse was in her bag and the money was all intact as you know, superintendent.”

  Superintendent Bower nodded.

  “Ay, it was,” he said ponderously. “But then the man – whoever he is – took the bag with
the purse in it. It might have been the purse he wanted and knocked her down for. Maybe he thought he heard somebody after him and threw it away just to throw ’em off the scent like.”

  “I wonder?” The inspector looked round as if seeking inspiration from the shrubbery. The three men were standing together in the drive leading up to the Abbey, just by the entrance from the Bull Ring. It was here that Mrs. Richard had taken leave of her friends, the Fergusons, from here that she had started on her illfated second visit to the Monks’ Pool.

  Inspector Stoddart was continually returning to the Monks’ Pool. Harbord was in the habit of saying he haunted it. From the first the inspector had felt certain that the key to the double tragedy at the Abbey must lie either in the house or in the garden. So far he had been singularly unsuccessful in the house, and the garden did not seem likely to be much more profitable. When Mrs. Richard recovered consciousness – if she ever did – he felt sure that the discovery of Charmian Karslake’s murderer would be close at hand. In the meantime there were three questions that continually rang the changes in his brain. They were becoming an obsession with him. Why did Mrs. Richard go back to the Monks’ Pool? Who was her assailant? And what did he take from her? For, though the pearls and the rings and the money in the purse showed that in one sense robbery was not the motive, yet robbery of some sort the inspector felt sure there had been – the cotton-wool and the lid of the box had assured him of that. But what had that box held? That was one bit of the riddle that the inspector was anxious to solve.

  At last he roused himself.

  “Well, superintendent, where are you off to this morning?”

  The superintendent looked perturbed.

  “Well, I am sorry to say I shall have to leave this matter in your hands today, inspector. There’s a case of sudden death over at Stanford and I have to make the arrangements for the inquest.”

  A keen observer might have seen a gleam of relief in the inspector’s face.

  “I am sorry to hear that, superintendent,” he said politely. “I don’t suppose we shall make any exciting discoveries today.”

  “I hope as nobody else will be attacked,” Superintendent Bower said solemnly.

  They turned into the Bull Ring together; then the superintendent went across to the police station. The other two walked more slowly past the church and along to the High Street. Instead of turning up this, however, somewhat to his companion’s surprise the inspector kept along Burton Street, which was more or less a continuation of the one by which they had come from the Abbey.

  “There’s a Mrs. Mary Gwender lives along here,” the inspector said, gazing up at the names over the quaint little shop doors.

  “Yes?” Harbord said interrogatively.

  “You noticed the name on the box lid that our worthy friend” – with a backward jerk of his head – “found in the shrubbery?”

  Harbord nodded. “McCall and Saunders, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” Stoddart assented. “Well, though the address was not readable, it looked as if the box might have been at the side of the pool some time too. I made out that McCall and Saunders was the name of a very big firm of wholesale confectionery in Queen Anne Street, Birmingham. I rang them up. At first they didn’t seem able to help me at all. They said it would mean searching their books back it might be for years. At last, however, I convinced them it was a police matter and would have to be thoroughly gone into. They set to work on their books and an hour ago they rang me up. It seems that just before Christmas a large purchase of these boxes which contained what is known in the trade as ‘‘mixed goodies’ was made by a Mrs. Mary Gwender of Hepton. She has a small business in Burton Street, Hepton, I was informed. She had been a customer of McCall and Saunders for years, but her orders had usually been very small, rarely if ever exceeding a dozen boxes of mixed goodies or perhaps of chocolates and a few pounds of loose sweets; therefore the size of this order made it remarkable. I had previously, as I thought, been round to all the sweet shops there are in Hepton – Goodman’s, Murray’s and Reynolds’, without success. This Mrs. Gwender’s must be a very small affair, or I should not have overlooked it. They didn’t have a number, just Mrs. Mary Gwender, Burton Street. But I fancy that Hepton does not bother itself much about numbers.”

  They walked on, the inspector’s keen eyes glancing from side to side until they reached the end of Burton Street and could see the open country beyond. Then in the very last block a couple of doors from the end they came upon the name they were seeking, Mary Gwender, in dingy, unobtrusive letters, over a small, stone-built house little more than a cottage. It stood down a step, and there was a flat, stone-paved space in front of the door. An oblong, many-paned window at the side held a few boxes of pins, needle-cases, cards of buttons, reels of cotton, and such-like small articles. Across the middle of the window there ran a narrow shelf on which were ranged a few glass jars of sweets.

  “Well, this is a rum sort of place,” the inspector said as he stepped down.

  Though it was obviously a shop there was no hospitable, open door. Instead, it was firmly closed and was apparently to be unfastened by turning the brass knob. The inspector hesitated and then applied his knuckles to the old door from which the paint was peeling off in large blisters. After a pause they heard shuffling footsteps crossing the floor towards them. The door was opened gingerly a very little way and there peeped out at them an ancient, withered face surmounted by a curious sort of headgear which might be supposed to be a cap, and which probably had been white in the earlier stages of its existence.

  The inspector took off his hat politely.

  “Mrs. Mary Gwender?”

  The door was opened wider.

  “Yes, that’s me,” a thin old voice piped out. “What be you gentlemen a-wanting? I ain’t been doin’ nothin’ wrong.”

  “I am sure of that, Mrs. Gwender,” the inspector said reassuringly. He managed to insert his shoulder between the old lady and the doorpost. “You will ask us in, won’t you? And I want a few of those delicious-looking sweets of yours for my children.”

  “Eh! They are good.” The old crone moved aside and let him push the door open. “Though I says it as shouldn’t, you won’t find nothing better anywhere than Mary Gwender’s cough balls, all home-made too.”

  “Ah! That’s the sort of stuff I want,” the inspector said, following her into the low, stuffy apartment which held a few chairs and a long board on trestles apparently representing a counter. “All home-made you say, and nothing but good stuff in them I’ll warrant. Cough balls, you call ’em – just the very thing for the kids when they get a cold. And those goodies up there” – pointing at one of the bottles in the window with his stick – “did you make those, Mrs. Gwender?”

  The old lady shook her palsied head.

  “I did not, sir. I never make anything but the cough balls and they keep me pretty busy, for all the children round has got to know of them and comes for them when they has colds.”

  “I am not surprised. I’ll take a pound, if you please.”

  “A pound! I don’t sell them in that fashion, sir. Twelve a penny they be and good value, too.”

  “That I am sure of, Mrs. Gwender. I will take eight dozen, then, please. And a box of mixed goodies, if you please. I am told there are none in Hepton to come near them. A tin box, those I am speaking of are in.”

  Mrs. Gwender shook her head.

  “I haven’t got any o’ the sort, sir. I hev got the little cardboard boxes of chocolates, fourpence each, and the best chocolates at that.”

  “You haven’t got one of that sort!” the inspector said in a disappointed tone. “And yet I am sure it was here I was told to come for them.” He drew the lid from his pocket. “See, Mrs. Gwender, this is the top of one of them. I was hoping I could get a dozen or so of them. I heard they were so good.”

  “Is it that you mean?” The old lady peered forward and took the lid in her shaking old hand. “No, I hain’t got any o’ them now,
sir. I’m out of ’em just at the moment. But that one did come from me, that’s right enough.”

  “Ah! I thought I hadn’t made any mistake,” the inspector said in a satisfied tone. “Now I wonder if you could tell me who bought it, Mrs. Gwender?”

  The old lady looked astonished at the question.

  “My, how could I. I generally ha’ one or two in stock and when they are sold out I get in a few more – a quarter of a dozen maybe. But anybody as is passing might look in for one. They are a bit too much money for the chillern – that’s why I don’t get more. Eightpence each, that’s what they are, and ’tain’t often chillern has that to lay out. It’s mostly the mothers as buy these. Her ladyship from the Abbey she bought all I had left at Christmas time and gave me a big order for some more, and she bought pretty near all the loose goodies too. Goin’ to make pretty muslin bags and put ’em in she was, she said.”

  “Her ladyship at the Abbey!” The inspector pricked up his ears. “Her ladyship hasn’t any children to give them to. Leastways I should say her little chap is too young.”

  “He is a deal!” The old lady shook her head at him. “The father of a family should know it ud be just the death of him.”

  “That’s what I thought, but I didn’t care to say so. Not when I was talking to a lady of your experience. But who did her ladyship want them for then, I wonder?”

  “For the Christmas tree as they give to the servants and their friends,” Mrs. Gwender explained. “Her ladyship she come round herself and went into pretty near every shop in the town buying presents. For they give a big party and all sorts o’ things to the school-children too.”

  “It might have been that she wanted the boxes of sweets for,” the inspector said with a disappointed air.

  The old woman nodded.

  “Yes! It might be. I can’t tell ’ee any more, sir. How many cough balls might it be you said you wanted?”

  “Oh, about eight dozen,” the inspector said carelessly.

  Mrs. Gwender opened her eyes.

  “I haven’t that lot by me, bless ’ee. Three dozen maybe I might spare ’ee. But they take time to make and I have my reg’lar customers to think of.”