The Warrielaw Jewel, page 19
And then some half-forgotten words of long ago woke in my memory, and I suddenly clutched Alison’s hand.
“Alison,” I whispered fiercely, “was it Jessica or Mary who had a little mole on her forehead?”
“Why, Mary,” replied Alison, her eyes fixed on Askew Firle.
For the great lawyer had just arisen and his cool critical voice was falling upon the Court like ice after the long slow stream of the speech for the Crown. “My position to-day is”, he said, “in my experience at least unique, for I rise to refute a charge of murder when not the faintest shred of evidence exists to show that any murder has been committed.” The words, I believe, were to become a catchword, but I could pay no attention to them. Somehow or other I stumbled out of the Court to the passage where Bob stood awaiting me anxiously.
“Oh Bob, Bob!” I cried incoherently. “What has happened? What shall I do?”
Bob grasped my arm and gazed at me with keen eyes in his queer sunken face.
“What is it?” he asked. “What is it?”
“Why, just this,” I said. “It wasn’t Jessica I saw at the station. She hadn’t a mole on her forehead: Alison says it’s Mary who has a mole. It was Mary I saw at Princes Street, and Mary looked just like Neil now. Oh, what does it mean? What does it mean?”
“You’re sure of this for yourself? You’ll swear to this?” Bob’s voice was like a rapier.
“Yes! Yes! I saw the mole. Did you know that Jessica had none and Mary had one?”
“I found that out from Effie long ago. But, you see, Effie was not at the station. I had no means of knowing who it was you all saw at the station.”
“But it must have been Jessica!” I cried, bursting into tears as if I were a child. “How could it be Mary? What does it all mean? Why do you look as if you expected this?”
“Never mind now. We’ve got to act. We’ve got to get down to Warrielaw at once at all costs, and we’ve got to get Miss Mary to give us her evidence or sign this deposition I’ve got here. You must come too. You must be ready to swear to what you’ve said after you’ve seen her again. I’ll just scribble a message to give some warning to John. Firle must go on till lunch. He can put the medical evidence through. That may still be of use.”
“But why? How? To whom?” I cried.
“We can’t talk now. Look here, I’ll go and get hold of the man we want. We must have a Notary Public and he’ll take a policeman, too, I expect. I’ll tell you what I can on the way. Stand you here and keep your eye on Miss Macpherson if you can. If she gets wind of this she’ll try to get down to Warrielaw before us, and we must prevent that at all costs.”
“But what are you going to do there?” I was still too much upset to see any light in the tangle of events.
But Bob vanished, and I stood there, still as stone. It must have been at that moment, unnoticed by any of us, that yet another witness slipped out of the Court. That I did not notice, but I realised that Dennis was by my side and Alison behind him, leaning against the wall, and I pushed my smelling-salts towards her frantically.
“Are you ill, Betty?” he asked. “Why did you go? I had to get Alison out. The woman next me said I must or she’d faint. Firle is marvellous! What on earth’s the matter? Have you seen a ghost?”
I shook my head, though I was not sure that Dennis’s surmise was far from the truth. You see a ghost, I imagine, mainly because you expect to see one. Small’s cabman had seen Jessica, I had seen Jessica at Princes Street, Dennis had seen her at Carstairs, simply because we expected to see her in those circumstances, and we were accustomed to see her in that outfit. We had none of us seen through the simplest of all possible disguises: we had none of us questioned ourselves as to whether Jessica looked the same as usual or not. We had simply expected to see Jessica, and so we were ready to swear to having seen her. A man’s life had depended on our observation, and not one of us had questioned who it was we had seen. Because I believed in the evidence of my imagination rather than my eyes I had nearly helped to condemn an innocent man to death. That truth was so overwhelming that I could hardly find words for Dennis. And when I stammered out my discovery he stood stricken.
“But what does it all mean?” he stammered as I had myself.
“Well, for one thing I suppose it means that Jessica may have been murdered at any time after that evening in Neil’s studio!”
“Then why was Mary at the station?” asked Dennis. “Why did she dress herself up like Jessica?”
A thousand suggestions and implications began to stir in my returning reason, but there was no time for discussion. And Dennis made no reply, but turned round with a start. Alison’s colour had returned, and she stood behind us unnoticed. She had heard every word of our conversation, and now too she chimed in like a ghostly echo—“Oh, what does it mean?”
We all stood in silence staring at each other till Alison turned.
“Rhoda must know about this!” she said.
“Hush, Alison!” I said. “You can’t go in again. People can’t run in and out like that! You and I are supposed to have felt faint, I imagine, but now we’re out we must stay out, till you can creep in behind a policeman.”
Alison turned with a hunted look and began to scribble suddenly in a little notebook. I paid no attention, for at this moment Bob appeared in the doorway.
“Come on,” he said to me briefly. “Mr. Howard, you must stay and look after Miss Macpherson.”
As we turned I saw Alison give a note to a policeman and the man disappeared into Court. I had no time to think over this move, for Bob was hurrying me on, and my heart was set on doing what I could to atone for my fault. A tall slim man with an impassive face was waiting for us, and behind him was a short, fidgety policeman. I remember reflecting vaguely that the two should, by rights, exchange roles, when I found myself in the car, introduced to Mr. Mair, and the policeman was taking his place on the box.
“I’ll have to call round by my office to say I’ll be away,” said Mr. Mair, and as he spoke I grasped Bob’s arm.
“Look!” I said. “There’s Rhoda.”
Rhoda’s back was towards us. She was pulling out her bicycle feverishly and mounted even as I spoke.
It was our car in which we sat. John had borrowed his father’s chauffeur for the day, and Bob turned to Mr. Mair.
“We’ve got to be at Warrielaw before that lady,” he said briefly. “It’s essential. Could you leave someone to ring up a message?”
But Mr. Mair was not to be hurried. There was no risk that a bicycle would get ahead of our car, he pointed out, and he vanished into his chambers. Bob sat immovable as the clock slowly ticked out the minutes, and the tension in the car as the five minutes wore on to ten, and ten to fifteen, and fifteen to twenty, was almost unbearable. Nothing could have enabled me to speak politely to Mr. Mair when at last he emerged and got into the car beside me, but as, at our directions, the car started swiftly westwards down Princes Street, Bob’s composure was unruffled and his eyes shone alert and resolute in his kind, delightful, ugly face.
“D’you know the details of this case, Sir?” he asked.
“Who doesn’t in Edinburgh? But what’s the new evidence you’ve got hold of? Why wasn’t the trial held up?”
“Because it was only at six o’clock this morning that I made out the truth,” replied Bob. “I went to bed late last night without seeing any way out of the puzzle, and it was only when I woke up that I saw the solution, what is the true solution, I believe. It was only Mrs. Morrison here who finally convinced me just now.”
“But what does it all mean?” I repeated yet again. “It means that Miss Warrielaw never started for London at all. Miss Mary impersonated her at Princes Street and took her place in the train. And the reason she did it was because Jessica Warrielaw already lay dead, hidden away in an outhouse by her own stables.”
“That’s a startling theory,” said Mr. Mair, roused out of his usual calm. “How do you get at that?”
We were safely past the tram terminus and sweeping down the country roads by now. At every corner Bob leaned forward to see if he could catch a glimpse of Rhoda’s bicycle, and his voice was almost uninterested as he replied:
“My disadvantage throughout in this case has been that I never saw Miss Jessica—at least I never saw her alive. No one has ever happened to convey the impression to me that one sister was so like another as to make such an impersonation possible. Nor had such an idea occurred to me even remotely till your brother, Mrs. Morrison, started at the sight of Annie Hope in Miss Jessica’s clothes, as if he had seen a ghost. There was no likeness at all between maid and mistress, but the idea that one sister could easily pass for the other if their clothes were exchanged crossed my mind for the first time. After all, I remembered too, none of the witnesses who saw Miss Jessica on the 13th knew her well or exchanged any words with her. Naturally it took some time to adjust my ideas. I always felt there was something suggestive about the relative positions of Erleigh, Warrielaw and Bathgate, just as I knew there was some mysterious link between Miss Macpherson and Annie Hope, but it was only yesterday at Bathgate that I found out what it was.”
“Then Rhoda’s mixed up in it?” I queried confusedly.
“Up to the hilt. It was all her scheme, no doubt of that. I mean it was her scheme to make everyone think Miss Jessica had really gone off to London, by persuading Miss Mary to dress up in her clothes, go off in her cab and travel in her train as far as Carstairs.”
“But Mary!” I cried. “But Rhoda! You don’t mean it was they who … ?”
I could not bring myself to finish the sentence, and Bob only shook his head.
“We don’t know who did the crime,” he said soberly. “Remember, at the moment Mr. Firle is protesting that there was no crime, only an accident. But there’s no doubt that it was Miss Mary and Miss Rhoda who concealed it between them.”
“My God!” said Mr. Mair suddenly and explosively. “That girl! That young woman! What about a warrant?”
“No question of that yet. What we’re going to do now is to try to take a deposition from Miss Mary Warrielaw. It may kill her, but we’ve got to try.”
“She’d best die that way perhaps,” said Mr. Mair grimly.
“We’ll never get the whole story out of her, ill as she is. I suppose it’s in order if I ask her leading questions and she answers ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ in your presence—assuming of course she’s been warned in the ordinary way?”
“That’s all right, if you can get the truth from her. But she’ll never own to being guilty.”
“We needn’t go into that too far. (I say, this man’s an abominably careful driver!) What we’ve got to do is to get her witness that Jessica was dead and hidden away before ever Mary left Warrielaw in Jessica’s dress on the morning of April 13th. That’ll clear Mr. Logan straight off with no more fuss, and that’s what we’ve got to do for the moment. There’s a chance we’ll get at a confession by shock tactics, and it’s worth trying. What’s that, Grier?”
The policeman had turned and was beckoning to us. We had turned off the high road now down the road to the front avenue of Warrielaw. Just by the gate a laundry van was turning heavily down the lane to the village and before it was a figure on a bicycle.
“She’ll be taking the lane and in at the back avenue,” muttered Bob, as we bumped down the familiar ruts of the drive. “If she’d been wise she’d have got a hurl in that laundry van from Edinburgh! Well, Mrs. Morrison, get you hold of Effie and keep Miss Macpherson out of the light any way you can. Grier will help you.”
“But why must you keep them apart?” I asked. “Because there’s no hope of getting at the truth if they’re together. You can’t look at Miss Macpherson without seeing that she’d use all her influence to make Miss Mary give herself away and let her get clear out of it all. I expect she primed her up with some tale in case they were suspected long ago, and bullied the poor old lady so terribly that she’s been glad of nurses and doctors to keep her niece at a distance ever since!”
“Can we get at Miss Mary without the doctor’s authority?” asked Mr. Mair.
“I’ve ’phoned him. That’s his car before the front steps, I expect.”
CHAPTER XIV
MARY WARRIELAW SPEAKS
I had never seen Warrielaw in midsummer sunshine before. Through the glimmering branches of the beech trees the plaster shone a mellow apricot, and a warm, sunny peace brooded over the long grass of the park and the glittering shrubs. But the windows were all blank and shuttered now by order of the nurses, the great door under the portico was closed, and one lonely spaniel lay pathetically before it. As the engine of the car stopped we could hear the bees in the clover and the coo of the wood-pigeons in the plantations, but to me even these murmurs of the summer seemed like the distant chanting of a funeral hymn. Not even sunshine nor July could lift the curse that lay upon the lonely ruined house.
It was just as Effie’s step shuffled from within the hall towards us, as we stood waiting before the great door under the portico, that we heard the sound of a car hooting at the locked gates of the back drive.
“Remember you and Effie have got to keep her off somehow,” reiterated Bob, as Effie flung open the doors, and we saw the cool, silent hall, and the doctor’s anxious face looking at us through the swing door.
“Where is Miss Warrielaw?” asked Bob.
“In the library. She is very much better to-day, but not in a state, I must warn you, to sustain any sort of shock if it can possibly be avoided.”
“It can’t,” said Bob briefly. “Mr. Mair will explain to you.”
“There is no doubt at this juncture that we must hear what Miss Warrielaw has to tell us,” said Mr. Mair seriously. “She is, I imagine from what I have heard, quite collected, in full possession of her senses?”
“Oh yes, entirely so, but—”
The nurse came cautiously out of the library, closing the door behind her. Effie and I were standing at the swing door in the big hall, staring down the long passage of the old house to the library as the conversation took place. It seemed to me as if in that wide, sun-lit background we were waiting in a lighted theatre, looking at a long, narrow stage, still in the darkness, where the scene-shifters were busy at their work. Nowhere had time stood still more definitely at Warrielaw than in this corridor. Heaven and some early-Victorian Warrielaw only knew when last painter or paperer had been near it. The dull, drab, faded flock-paper was covered with endless dark prints framed in satinwood: spiders nestled uninterrupted in the dark corners, and mice had made their exits and entrances in the skirting-boards for years: the worn carpet was stained to a uniform dull purple. A door on the right led to the kitchen quarters: the only door on the left was that of the library. The passage ended in a rounded window on the glass of which some Victorian lady had achieved transfers of the family coat of arms and of a ruined abbey: they were faded and cracked, and beyond them the green shrubbery enclosing the semi-circular garden looked no less faded and unreal through the grimy glass. Against that background the four men, my two tall, alert companions, the stout little doctor, the jerky, embarrassed constable, and the slim, genteel nurse, moved and spoke in lowered tones which added to the sense of unreality. So I remembered watchers had waited outside a closed door in a scene from a play of Maeterlinck’s. With all my heart I longed for this drama, this fantastic, sinister drama of real life, to come to its conclusion.
“She’s getting worried, Sir,” said the nurse in a polite whisper. “I think you should come in as soon as possible to set her mind at rest.”
No one but myself seemed to notice the irony of the phrase. Bob stopped to direct the policeman to wait at the library door, and with a nod of consent from the doctor, he left it open. Miss Mary must not be alarmed by the sight of more visitors than were absolutely necessary.
“Good morning, Miss Warrielaw.” Bob’s voice reached me, low and serious, but with no sort of menace. “I’m afraid we’ve come on an unpleasant mission.”
“Oh dear!” Mary’s reply came weak and fluttering. “Nurse, I’m hardly well enough to see these gentlemen!”
“I fear you must, Miss Warrielaw.” Mr. Mair was speaking now with that queer, kind detachment which seemed to characterise him. “I think you know that your nephew stands on trial for his life to-day, and information has just come to light which seems to prove him innocent. We want you to give us your help. We want you to save him and make your own peace with Heaven at the same time. Remember this, that the truth or most of the truth is clear now.”
There was no answer from Miss Mary but a long, choking sigh, and then I heard the murmurs of the nurse and doctor. Effie, who had been standing beside me till now, mute with bewilderment, started forward suddenly, but I seized her hand and held her back.
“She’s got to go through with it, Effie,” I muttered, “if Mr. Neil isn’t to hang.”
“Eh, Sirs, what a work!” Effie muttered, and then leant back against the wall in resignation and the silence of despair. From the library came the sound of clinking glass, as, I imagine, some restorative was given to the patient, and then Mary’s voice reached us, thin and dignified.
“No, Nurse, I must manage this somehow. Doctor, tell me, I couldn’t live if they tried to arrest me or take me to prison, could I?”
I did not hear the answer, for Effie suddenly seized my arm. Up above us, in the wide passage at the top of the great flight of stairs, we heard footsteps, light steps moving rapidly in the direction of Mary’s room.
“Who’ll be there?” whispered Effie. “That’s no the girls up there.”
“It’s Miss Macpherson,” I said. “She must have got in at the back door. She’s not to get to Miss Mary now, you understand, Effie.”
“She can’t forbye she gets past us,” said Effie grimly. “But what’ll she be at, up there?”
I shook my head, but I knew well enough. Even at this eleventh hour Rhoda was seeking wildly, hopelessly and in vain for the other half of that cloakroom ticket. If she could find that she could still hope, I imagine, that any case against her, at least, could not be complete.
