The Warrielaw Jewel, page 13
“Better say nothing about this to the others,” said Bob when he followed me into the road. I had stumbled out, leaving a shilling in Jeanie’s hot little hand, with a sense of utter bewilderment and despair. “I’ve got the bit of paper. Heaven forgive me for making the excuse that I’d send the lassie another box, but I had to have it.”
“You can send her a box though,” I said stupidly.
“Of course I will, but it’s hard to take advantage of a man’s kind action like this.”
“It wasn’t Neil’s car,” I repeated. “His is an Argyle. It can’t have been Neil on the road to Carstairs on the morning of April 13th. I can’t believe—Oh Bob, I can’t believe all it might mean.”
“We can tell nothing till I’ve been to the garage. Anyhow don’t speak of it yet to the others, or anyone but your husband, Mrs. Morrison.”
“How did you guess about the accident and all that?” I asked, to regain some composure as Dennis approached us.
“It would likely be something like that to make a man stop to take such an address in a car of that kind,” said Bob. “That was why I knew it would be on the main road too.”
Alison and Dennis came back in high spirits. The fresh keen air of the hills seemed to have swept away the horrors of the last few days for the moment, and Bob parried their questions wonderfully well. He left us at the West End, while Dennis and I took Alison home. Dennis insisted on going indoors with her and was punished for it. For Rhoda was sitting at her ugly desk in her dark corner in the very darkest of tempers.
“I’ve been writing to your husband,” she said to me. “I shall have to come and see him again about the terms of this preposterous will.”
Only the evening before, in absolute privacy, poor Jessica’s remains had been laid in the family vault; only Charles Murray, John and Effie had stood beside the grave with the old minister, for Rhoda had absented herself. It seemed hardly gracious to learn that she had already discovered the terms of the will, or already found an occasion for a fresh dispute. Still it was clear, I must admit, that Jessica had not left affairs in such a state as to endear her to her sister or to her niece. It was twenty years before this date that old Mrs. Warrielaw died, leaving the house and estate so vaguely to Jessica and to her sister Mary after her. The husband who predeceased her had left the estate encumbered with some mortgages through sheer careless extravagance, but there had never been, as John told me on my visit to Warrielaw, any reason for that grinding economy which Jessica had exercised. The net result was that out of an income of £4,000 a year, she had saved in twenty years no less than £30,000: to that, by the sale of historic jewels and pictures and furniture, she had added some £20,000. And all this £50,000 was left to Neil unconditionally. I was sitting well back in my chair so that I trusted Rhoda did not see the shock this news gave me. It seemed as if the opportunity and motive alike for the murder of his aunt had been made clear this afternoon.
Rhoda’s anger did not rest here. Over the estate, of course, Jessica had no control. That passed in trust to Mary, but Rhoda had never apparently recognised that Mary was powerless, save for any savings she might now make in her lifetime out of the estate, as Jessica had done. The family had repeated among themselves so often that the entail was broken, that its younger members, like Rhoda, failed to recognise that the trust was equally binding. When Mary died, and no one could imagine that her life would be prolonged indefinitely, the whole estate of Warrielaw would pass to the four surviving heirs of the whole family of the late Warrielaw sisters, to Cora, Neil, Rhoda and Alison. Miserable as I was I could not conceal a smile at the thought of those four settling down all together at Warrielaw for life. The place would have to be sold unless, indeed, Cora bought out the other three and settled in the family property: she was the only one who could afford it. And meanwhile the legal firm newly appointed by Mary and Rhoda herself, finding that Mary’s income justified some of the extensive repairs needed on the tumble-down estate, were about to send down plumbers and gardeners, bricklayers and painters to set to work on any portion of the house which did not disturb Miss Mary. Every joint needed pointing, every inch needed weeding, every pipe needed mending, so their task would not be difficult. And poor Rhoda would have to watch Mary’s income dissipated before her eyes, to improve a place she could never hope to inherit, passionate as was her love for the family home. She did not admit so much to me openly, but I am convinced that she really had imagined always that Mary would be free to make her her heir if only she succeeded to Warrielaw.
I looked away from Rhoda’s staring, angry eyes round the room. Edinburgh is one of the few places which can invest the shabby genteel with a certain charm. Socially speaking, Comely Bank Acre was outside the pale, but the little, low stone houses were well built, and the mouldings of the ceiling, the old mantelpiece and high bow grate gave the room a dignified air. It showed equal and distinctive traces of Rhoda and Alison. To the elder sister it owed the cheap furniture, the ugly, serviceable carpet and oppressive neatness: to the younger the inexpensive, pretty cretonnes and bowls of tulips and wallflowers. From such rooms in that demure neighbourhood generations of decayed gentle people had looked out, from behind their window-curtains, on a world which had passed them by. To Rhoda with her love for Warrielaw on one hand, and her longings for a new life in New York on the other, it could only seem mean and uninteresting. For the first time I felt a little sorry for her, ungracious and vindictive as she was.
“Where have you been?” she asked suddenly. “I expected Alison long ago.”
“We went for a long drive in the country,” I replied evasively. Alison looked uncomfortable, for Bob had suggested that she should mention the events of the day to no one, not even her sister.
I very much doubted if the warning would have any effect.
“Well, I hope this Mr. Stuart was doing some work while you were having your joy-ride,” said Rhoda, and I noted her assumption with relief. “Surely the person they should get at is Cora, as I hear that she was at Warrielaw on April 13th. I expect this illness of hers is all a blind. It’s so easy to produce a nervous breakdown with an unsuspecting husband like Charles!”
“Mr. Lisle would hardly be taken in,” I said.
“And what’s all this I hear about her dismissing Annie?” Rhoda had evidently made herself thoroughly at home in the affairs of the Murrays. “The butler told me when I went to enquire that she simply turned the poor girl out into the streets. There must be something behind her extraordinary behaviour in engaging her as she did and getting rid of her like this. Cora is almost mad, that’s quite clear. She really is an impossible woman.”
“All Warrielaws are impossible,” was the phrase that crossed my mind, but I captured Dennis and left the house without disgracing myself. I could really hardly spare a thought for Rhoda till I knew what had happened about Neil.
By that evening we knew that the very worst had happened. Bob had found from the books of the garage that Neil’s Argyle was undergoing repairs from April 10th to April 17th. On April 13th he had hired a Lanchester car and left the garage in it at about nine o’clock, returning it at eight o’clock that evening. All that could be said in his favour was that the garage reported that the car was, as far as they remembered, quite unstained and in good condition. Bob went on, however, inevitably to report his discoveries to the police, and the Chief Constable took so serious a view of the affair that they sent men with a warrant to open and search Neil’s studio. At the back of a shelf in a wall cupboard, stuffed into an old tin of tobacco, they found a small parcel wrapped in tissue paper. It was the fairy jewel.
The police wired at once to headquarters in Paris. Neil’s address was unknown to us, but he was traced easily through the Salon where he was exhibiting a picture. A telegram came through that he was apparently preparing to return home and would be carefully watched. That was on Monday afternoon, June 4th. On Tuesday evening he crossed from Calais, and Scotland Yard officials shadowed him on his way to London. A message reported from the Grosvenor Hotel that his luggage had been labelled for Edinburgh by night express of the North British Railway, and that he would be watched on his journey on the night of Wednesday, the 6th of June. The Edinburgh police were instructed to await him at his studio on his arrival on Thursday morning to ask for a statement as to his doings on April 13th. If he refused this, the authorities had decided that there was sufficient evidence against him to justify them in issuing a warrant for his arrest for theft and for the murder of Jessica Warrielaw.
CHAPTER IX
THE ARREST OF NEIL LOGAN
The telephone bell rang persistently on Saturday morning, as we sat at breakfast.
We had been up very late the night before, for John, three days previously, had been rushed off to a client in London and had heard little of our news. Bob had outlined the case against Neil with such terrible accuracy and precision that his guilt seemed assured to me. And then, directly afterwards, he astounded us by remarking that he thought the authorities were acting with undue precipitancy if they arrested Neil.
“I don’t like the fellow,” said John slowly. “I never did, though I’d have found it hard to believe he would really murder the old woman. He made no secret of disliking her, and that will be against him, of course. Really, Bob, I can’t see that we can refuse to accept facts, and every one of them points to the conclusion that he did it.”
“Oh no,” said Bob, “there are some very loose ends. We can’t apparently doubt that he was motoring to meet her by the London train at Carstairs, but we haven’t a shadow of evidence to show that he brought her back alive, or dead. If he killed her on the road and put the corpse in the car he was a very neat-handed murderer. I’ve hunted every inch of the Lanchester and there isn’t a trace of a stain. If he persuaded her to return and murdered her at home, he’s responsible for as cunning a crime as one could devise. Only why ruin it all by advertising himself to the McGullys, and hiring a car so as to give the impression that he was trying to disguise himself? He didn’t use his name, of course, but I traced him with the utmost ease at Mackie’s in Princes Street. The young lady remembered the incidents, and remembered the gentleman perfectly, and another young lady had mentioned he was the artist Mr. Logan. Anyone who’d lived in Edinburgh all his life and dressed so conspicuously, must have known that would happen. And if it was the jewel he was after, why on earth didn’t he take it to Paris with him and dispose of the diamonds there? It’s unreasonable for a person to murder his aunt for the sake of a jewel, and then leave it lying about in an old tobacco-tin!”
“But I don’t imagine it was for the jewel he murdered her,” said John. “Much more likely they got in a fury with each other, and he pushed her over violently and finished her off afterwards. That’s the sort of thing that might happen to any two Warrielaws left alone together.”
“That’s possible, of course. You mean he only made use of circumstances as he found them? And that they happened to be as extraordinarily convenient for him as they were? But for Mrs. Morrison’s glimpse of the car and that tell-tale bit of paper, of course we might never have got on his tracks after such a long interval of time. But he couldn’t have been sure he would have seven weeks to the good! She might have been found next day and then the fact of his driving out to Carstairs might easily have leaked out.”
“Certainly he was never anxious to have her looked for,” said Dennis.
“No. Only Rhoda insisted on that. But it was Neil who had everything to gain when her death was proved.”
“He could wait for some months,” said Bob. “The longer the better for his own safety. He knew that the cabman would prove she had really left home on the 13th.”
So we had sat up, puzzling over the affair, and I had prolonged matters by returning again to Cora’s bag. I had wronged her by suspecting that she had got hold of the jewel, but was her story about the letters true, or had the bag contained some clue which might have helped us? It was obviously essential that Cora’s deposition should be made as soon as the doctors would allow; it, certainly before any news of the arrest reached her. That there might be collusion between Neil and Gora was probable, and Cora’s doings must be submitted to a far closer scrutiny.
Dennis introduced the question of the weapon, which had by this time an unholy fascination for him. Already the puzzle was beginning to make the horror fade for him. But over the weapon Bob was not encouraging. Warrielaw had been searched again and again, save indeed for Mary’s room into which entrance was forbidden, and nothing in Neil’s studio had been found remotely resembling the handle of that sharp short point. We went to bed at an impossibly late hour, and when the telephone bell sounded in the room our nerves were so badly on edge that I ran to answer it as if the police were coming to arrest us all at once.
I took the receiver off sharply, listened for a minute and then turned sharply, my hand over the mouthpiece.
“Doesn’t Alison know anything about this?” I asked.
“No, how should she?” said Dennis, springing up.
“The longer Rhoda’s out of it the better,” added John.
“Well, Alison is asking you and me, Dennis, if we’ll come round at once to Neil’s studio. She got a wire from him last night asking her to go and get breakfast ready for him because he’s coming back this morning, and she’s there now, wondering why he hasn’t turned up. What are we to do?”
“Go!” said John briefly. “He’ll be stopped by the police at the North British Station and never get there. Join her and tell her about it somehow, poor child. Of course, if he’s a story to tell that will clear him completely, he’ll get back in the end, but—” John’s pause showed that he hardly felt it worth while to contemplate that possibility.
“Be as quick as you can, in case his old woman has some suspicions, for they’ve posted a policeman in the square to watch.”
So we raced off to St. Mark’s Square in anxiety too acute for words. Not even Dennis’s skill could suggest the way in which we should try to break the truth to poor Alison.
But that task we were spared. When we reached the studio there was no answer to the bell. In the sleepy square with its silent, decayed houses and prim circular garden, we saw a little group of people and in the midst of them Neil’s housekeeper. How much she knew, and how much she suspected, we could not tell, but the frequent visits of the force to the house in the last few days, and the breathless interest aroused by the case in Edinburgh, were enough to make her put two and two together, prematurely but accurately. Only after endless agonised tugs at the bell from Dennis did we hear slow steps on the stairs within, and Alison stood before us with tear-drowned eyes and white face, crying uncontrollably as she saw us:
“Oh Dennis, Dennis! And I do love him so!”
On the low divan to which Alison returned lay a pathetic little heap of paper parcels, from the baker and dairy, and on the table stood a bottle of milk. Alison must have been greeted just after her message by the housekeeper with her suspicions, and had had the heart to do no more. I was pouring some milk out desolately into a cup, trying to persuade Alison to drink some and then come away with us, when a step sounded below. I glanced at the clock. It was ten o’clock, and Neil must have been in the hands of the police since his arrival at 7.30. John, I imagined, must be coming to our rescue, when Alison lifted up her head suddenly as she heard the footsteps and cried:
“It’s Neil! It’s Neil!”
And a minute later, debonair and casual, Neil walked into his studio.
All his life Neil loved a theatrical effect, and certainly he had one now. For Alison ran into his arms, Dennis sprang up gasping, and I stood as if stunned. Neil gazed at us with a faint frown of surprise, over Alison’s shining hair. His ridiculous cape was thrown aside, his hair and dress were as immaculate, his hat and cane and gloves as exquisite as ever. His eyes questioned us whimsically, but his lips smiled unconcernedly.
“But what a welcome!” he said. “There is nothing wanting, except indeed, my dear Alison, some less rudimentary suggestions of a meal! Still I have had tea. I am sorry, by the way, if it is my late arrival which causes this rather excessive display of emotion and surprise. Gentian Borrodaile was on the train—(what a patron flower for a hoyden)—and persuaded me to slip out with her at Berwick, where she had left her car on the way South, and motor home. Her theory was that we should beat the train, but by the time we had roused the garage and stopped every mile to powder Gentian’s nose, it proved fallacious. But now will you please explain why I seem to cause you all so much interest? Is it my absence that wins me this unexpected and gratifying display? I must hide myself oftener!”
“Haven’t you seen the papers?” asked Dennis bluntly.
“The papers? I never look at the Continental Mail or at the London evening rags. Gentian and I have that point in common. We contented ourselves with her comic papers from Germany: they are dull, but more amusing than The Times. Why, what has been happening in this hub of the universe?”
“It’s Aunt Jessica!” cried Alison distractedly. “She was found dead at Warrielaw on Monday, dead and hidden in a shed seven weeks ago! They found her there, after seven weeks.”
The Northern summer light shone down upon the studio and upon Neil who stood inscrutable, in absolute silence for one long minute.
“Do you mean she was murdered?” he asked at last in his slow, drawling voice. “Murdered. But how and when?”
“On her journey to Warrielaw, or at home, on the very day she went South,” babbled Alison, silencing us. “Neil! Neil! You’d nothing to do with it?”
Neil did not answer her. He was silent again and then he suddenly turned on me.
“Is Cora’s name mixed up in this?” he demanded.
“No—Yes—Well, yes,” I stammered. “She’s too ill now for anyone to find out what—Oh, it’s such a long story and—”
