The Blue Diamond Read online

  “Naturally they would,” the superintendent acquiesced blandly. “Still, I think I should just like to ask Mr. Garth Davenant whether Nurse Marston said anything then that might cast a light on her subsequent disappearance.”

  “Had she done so Mr. Davenant would certainly have informed us.” Sir Arthur’s tone was distinctly one of displeasure now. “He knows the trouble and anxiety her absence is causing us.”

  “She might have let drop a word or two that he overlooked at the time, and yet if he came to think of them now they might bear another meaning,” the superintendent suggested.

  Arthur rose and pressed the bell.

  “At any rate the matter can soon be placed beyond doubt. Mr. Davenant is, I believe, in the house at the present moment. Jenkins”—as the butler made his appearance—“ask Mr. Garth to come here for a few moments.”

  There was an awkward pause as the old man departed on his errand. Sir Arthur sat drumming his fingers on the table, his brows contracted, his expression one of bored irritation. Dr. Grieve took off his spectacles, polished them deliberately with his handkerchief, and then replaced them, and sat watching the door, evidently on the qui vive for any fresh sensation. The placid, plump countenance of the police officer alone remained unmoved; his eyes were fixed absently on the pictures, and as he rose and bowed when Garth entered there was absolutely no change in his expression.

  Davenant looked distinctly surprised as he turned to his future brother-in-law.

  “I thought you were quite alone, Arthur. Jenkins said you wished to see me, but I have not much time to spare this morning; Mavis is waiting for me. I am going to drive her to Friar’s Key—”

  “We shall not delay you long,” Arthur said quickly. “We—that is to say, Superintendent Stokes, who is investigating the circumstance surrounding Nurse Marston’s disappearance, wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  Garth Davenant’s face cleared, and he turned briskly to the police officer.

  “I am sure that any information that I possess is heartily at your service. My only difficulty is that I am afraid I know nothing likely to be of any value. I did not even see Nurse Marston that night.”

  “No,” the superintendent agreed. “So I have heard before, sir; but you were talking to her in the avenue in the afternoon. May I ask if she alluded in any way to anything that might call her away—whether she hinted at any trouble?”

  “Nothing of the kind. Oh, I am sure she had no intention of leaving then. I cannot understand her departure at all,” the young man answered readily.

  “Or when you met with her in Exeter the Saturday before?” the superintendent went on blandly, his face looking merely mildly interested, though his sharp, ferrety eyes took in every change of expression in Garth Davenant’s features, and not one note of the different intonation in the young man’s voice escaped his keen ears.

  There was a distinct pause before the answer.

  “Certainly not!”

  Sir Arthur turned to Garth and said:

  “That would be the day after you came down—the day you had promised to ride with Mavis?”

  “Yes, I had to go to Exeter on business instead.”

  “But what was Nurse Marston doing in Exeter?” Dr. Grieve speculated. “Did she give you any idea, Mr. Garth?”

  Garth hesitated.

  “Whatever her business in Exeter might be, I can answer for it that it had no connexion with her subsequent disappearance.”

  “Then I take it that you have some definite knowledge of that business?” the superintendent interposed smartly, while Dr. Grieve was still considering the last answer.

  “To a certain extent, yes,” Garth acknowledged, with reservation.

  The superintendent leaned forward.

  “Can’t you enlighten us further, Mr. Davenant? As a barrister you must understand that in a case of this kind it is necessary that the police should be in possession of every detail, however apparently insignificant, that may have any bearing on the case.”

  “This can have none.”

  The response was quick and decisive, yet the superintendent looked by no means satisfied.

  “Are we to understand that you deliberately refuse to give us any further information, Mr. Davenant?”

  “I have none that could possibly assist you in any way,” Garth said slowly.

  Sir Arthur turned and stared at him in amazement.

  “Well, but really, you know, Davenant, you must speak out. Why, the whole thing is making my mother quite ill, to say nothing of Mavis and Dorothy. You really must do what you can to help us.”

  Garth’s dark face looked set and stern.

  “I have already said that a knowledge of Nurse Marston’s errand in Exeter could in no sense help you. Besides”—he paused and hesitated—“it is not an affair of my own. I can say no more.”

  “That is your last word?”

  “It is.”

  “Well, upon my word, Davenant—”

  “One moment, if you please, Sir Arthur,” the superintendent said. “There is another question which I must ask permission to put in different forms to every one who was in this house on the 6th of June. Perhaps Mr. Davenant would kindly answer it now?”

  With an air of relief Garth turned to him.

  “Certainly—I am at your service.”

  There was a light step outside, and after a preliminary tap at the door it was thrown open and Mavis appeared.

  “This is really too bad of you, Arthur. You are keeping Garth a most unconscionable time—you and Dr. Grieve,” with a smile at the old man. “We shall be late at Friar’s Key, and you know how particular Lady Maynard is.”

  “I shall be ready in a moment,” Garth answered for himself, with a smile at her, though his face looked worried and anxious. “What was it you wanted to ask me, superintendent?”

  “Perhaps another time, sir,” Stokes suggested smoothly.

  “Oh, it will be better to get it done with now! You can wait a moment, Mavis,” Sir Arthur said with fraternal unconcern. “Now then, Stokes!”

  “It is only that, just as a matter of form, I should like to ask Mr. Davenant whether he has in his possession a gutta-percha tobacco-pouch ornamented with a spray of flowers in silk?”

  “Why, certainly he has!” Mavis interrupted with a gay laugh. “I worked it for him myself—roses and lilies, wasn’t it, Garth? Awfully old-fashioned they are too; but it is so difficult to know what you can work for a man. Have you got it with you, Garth?”

  He looked embarrassed, and the other three men gazed across at him in silent expectation.

  “Not to-day, Mavis.”

  “When I gave it to you you said you would always carry it about with you. Where is it? You do not— Oh, Garth,” in a tone of deep reproach, “I believe you have lost it.”

  Davenant’s smile was a trifle forced.

  “It—I have mislaid it for the time being, Mavis. I shall find it again in a day or two, I have no doubt.”

  “In the meantime”—the superintendent’s mellifluous accents interposed—“I believe Miss Hargreave saw the one that was found in this room on the night of the 6th of June. Perhaps she could tell us whether it was the one she worked?”

  “I am sure I couldn’t,” Mavis said indifferently. “I hardly glanced at it. It looked dirty, I remember. I should have noticed it more particularly had I guessed the care you took of my presents, Garth.”

  “The spray across, as I remember, was pink and white,” Sir Arthur said slowly. “Garth, I—”

  “I will never forgive you if you left it lying about to be picked up by anybody,” Mavis finished. “I am sorry I can’t wait to hear you describe it more accurately, Arthur, but I am afraid Lady Maynard would think it a poor compliment to her luncheon-party if she could see us standing here discussing that wretched pouch when we ought to be on our way. Come, Garth, we really must make a start,” and with a laughing nod she took him away.

  Chapter Seven

  “OH,
IF ONE could only realize one’s ideals in this world!”

  “Does it not satisfy you now?” Hilda asked softly.

  She was lying back on the great roomy sofa in Lady Laura’s morning-room. Her clinging white wrapper, as Arthur had assured her, was the very garment for the lily-maid, and the warm rug across her feet took, for the nonce, the place of the coverlet of cloth of gold.

  She had acceded with a little blush and smile to her host’s eager request for a sitting, and since then Sir Arthur, having transferred his sketch-book and himself from the studio to the morning-room, had spent most of his time in making attempts, which invariably ended in failure, to portray her in the character of Elaine.

  Dorothy was sitting a little behind her. She leant forward.

  “Why, Arthur, that is beautiful! If it does not content you, you must indeed be hard to please.”

  “How can I be satisfied when I look at the original?” Arthur inquired gloomily. “That glowing colour—I wonder whether I dare ask you to let your hair down, Miss Hilda? I want it to fall on both sides like that—do you see?”

  The girl’s delicate colour deepened a little, her long lashes drooped beneath his gaze, but she raised no objection.

  “I will let it down with pleasure,” she declared at once, “but I am afraid it will come far short of the required length, Sir Arthur.”

  She drew out the pins as she spoke, and both Dorothy and Arthur made exclamations as the hair fell around in a glittering golden mass.

  “It is beautiful,” Dorothy said with honest enthusiasm, “and it curls so prettily round your head, Hilda.”

  “It is a lot of trouble to keep in order,” Hilda complained with a pout, a little flickering smile playing round her mouth as Arthur, with a gesture of despair, went back to his paint-box.

  “Oh, to catch that wonderful sheen!” he cried as he turned over the tubes despairingly. “But it is hope-less!” rumpling up his hair. “How can one dream of obtaining it with paint and canvas?”

  “I am sorry I am such a difficult subject,” Hilda said demurely, “but I have never been painted before, and I must plead that as an excuse.”

  Dorothy lifted her brown eyes and glanced at her cousin; the significance of the remark was apparently lost on him. With evident love in his eyes he was gazing at his beautiful model.

  Dorothy saw that if advantage was to be taken of this apparent return of memory on their mysterious visitor’s part she must be the one to avail herself of it; her cousin’s absorption in his work and his model was so great that he had not even noticed it.

  She put a stitch or two in her work before she spoke, then she said in a carefully matter-of-fact tone:

  “Have you ever been photographed, Hilda? A good photograph is often a great help.”

  The blue eyes looked at her for a second vaguely.

  “I don’t think I have a very good one,” the girl began slowly, then her face clouded over, and she put up her hands to her head. “I think I have a photograph somewhere—in fancy dress—I seem to see it—but I can’t remember. Oh, why did you ask me? It is so dreadful not to know.” She burst into a passion of tears.

  Dorothy drew back in dismay.

  “I did not mean—Indeed, I am so sorry,” she faltered.

  Sir Arthur flung down his palette, his eyes full of a passionate pity.

  “Do not think of it, do not try to remember. It will come back some day—all the doctors are agreed upon that. In the meantime you know how delighted we are to have you with us; if we could only teach you to look upon the Manor as your home.”

  “You are all so kind to me,” the girl said as she sobbed, “far too kind, and I am very stupid and ungrateful. But it seems to bring it home to me somehow what an absolute waif I am when I am asked a simple question like that and cannot answer it.”

  Sir Arthur’s face darkened as he glanced impatiently at his cousin.

  “Dorothy should not have asked it,” he said shortly. “I thought you had been warned, Dorothy—that you had been told all excitement was to be avoided.’’

  Two hot red spots burned in Dorothy’s cheeks; it was the first time her cousin had ever spoken to her in that tone and the tears were very near the surface.

  “Indeed, Arthur, I am very sorry,” she said penitently. “But Hilda spoke of not having been painted before, and I thought if I answered her in the same strain it was possible that she might recollect.”

  Arthur frowned irritably.

  “Thought!” he repeated testily. “I wish you would use a little more discretion, Dorothy. Don’t you see how bad all this is for her?”

  The girl made no reply, her lips were trembling, her eyes were full of unshed tears.

  Sir Arthur glanced from her to Hilda. The latter was apparently making a brave attempt to conquer her sobs.

  “I shall be all right directly, thank you!” she murmured. “You must not be vexed with Miss Dorothy, it was all my own stupidity; she did not mean to hurt me.”

  “I am sure she did not,” Arthur assented more calmly; his momentary annoyance with his cousin was passing, and he gave her a kindly glance. “I am very sorry it has happened. I cannot have my Elaine upset.”

  This was too much for Dorothy’s equanimity. That Arthur should blame her—as she felt unjustly—was bad enough, but that Hilda should make excuses for her to him was the last straw. Forgetting that Lady Laura and Mavis were both out, and that she had promised to sit in the improvised studio until their return, she caught up her work and hurried out of the room.

  Upstairs, throwing herself down by her bed, she burst into an agony of sobs. Those shy, sweet hopes, which she had hitherto hardly dared to put into words, even to herself, but which a month ago had seemed so near fruition, were now withering away. Ever since Hilda’s coming to the Manor she had fancied that there was a distinct change in Arthur’s manner; she had done her best to persuade herself that she was mistaken, that he was the same as ever, but this morning she told herself that it would be folly to deceive herself any longer.

  Evidently Arthur had found out that his feeling for her was merely cousinly affection, and this beautiful stranger was absorbing his whole thoughts in a fashion which, she knew well, she had never been able to do.

  There, on her knees, wrestling with her first agony of humiliation that she should have given her love unsought, Dorothy told herself that she could have borne it if she could have believed that the object of Arthur’s devotion was worthy of it—that the love itself would make for his happiness; but despite her best efforts, though she knew that Lady Laura and Mavis had succumbed to her charm, Dorothy had never been able to bring herself to like Hilda, and the utmost she could do was to resolve that no word or look of hers should reveal her feelings to others.

  In the meantime, in the morning-room, Arthur was making dangerous strides in his intimacy with Hilda.

  She, finding herself left alone with him, had made obvious efforts to control her agitation, and smiled resolutely through her tears into his concerned face.

  “Do go on with your picture, Sir Arthur, or I shall feel that I have wasted your morning, and you will say that I am a shocking model.”

  “You are so absolutely an ideal Elaine that the impossibility of doing the subject justice is almost driving me crazy,” Arthur declared, tossing his fair hair back from his forehead as he gazed despairingly at his morning’s work. Nevertheless, he went to work with feverish energy and painted away with a sort of fierce absorption for a short time.

  Presently he looked up.

  “That is better, I think. I am not tiring you, I hope, Miss Hilda!”

  The girl twisted up her hair with a laugh as she nestled into her cushions.

  “I am the most luxuriously-served of models, and one could hardly get tired of lying on this couch, but I must confess it is a relief to turn over sometimes.”

  “I was a brute not to remember before,” Arthur said contritely, “but the fact is, when I am looking at you, I can think of noth
ing but Elaine.”

  He was mixing his paints on his palette as he spoke.

  Hilda looked at him in silence for a few minutes. At last she spoke in a subdued tone:

  “Sir Arthur, may I ask you something?”

  Sir Arthur looked up, palette knife in hand, in some surprise.

  “Anything I can tell you—”

  Hilda glanced round her fearfully a moment before she spoke.

  “Where is Nurse Marston, Sir Arthur?”

  The young man started; he hesitated a moment before replying, for he knew that the mystery attaching to Nurse Marston’s curious departure from the Manor had been hitherto kept from her patient, but it seemed to him, looking at the girl’s agitated face, that some hint of the circumstances must have reached her, and he deliberated as to whether it might not now be more expedient to speak out.

  Hilda’s eyes were fixed upon his wavering face, as if they would wring the secret from him.

  “Where is Nurse Marston?” she reiterated. “Where did she go when she left the Manor? ‘‘

  “I do not know,’’ Sir Arthur said slowly at last. “I wish I did,’’ he added.

  Hilda pushed back the heavy mass of hair from her white forehead.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, bewildered. “Do you know why she left?”

  “What has made you ask me?” he inquired.

  The girl’s face was noticeably paler, her blue eyes looked strained and terrified.

  “When I was lying only partially conscious, I caught words and phrases which, disconnected as they were, made me fancy later on when I was better, and could put things together, that there was something strange—some story about her. Then yesterday Minnie was helping me to dress—Mavis is so kind, she always sends her—and I asked how it was that Nurse Marston went away so suddenly. She turned absolutely ashen white as soon as I mentioned the name and began to tremble all over. Then when I persisted she burst into tears and I could extract nothing from her.’’

  “Minnie’s behaviour has been to me one of the queerest things about the whole affair,’’ Sir Arthur acknowledged. “I cannot for the life of me see how it concerns her. Yet she goes about looking like a ghost and seems to be terrified at the mention of Nurse Marston’s name.’’