The Warrielaw Jewel, page 21
Of these events at the time I knew nothing. It was not till a nurse crept in to rouse Mary for some nourishment and bring me some food that I could realise anything but the tragedy of the house. It was only after three cups of strong tea that my curiosity woke to life again, and I was finding my solitary confinement unbearable when release came at last. It was granted to me by the one I least expected, for I could hardly believe my eyes when Neil himself came into the room.
“Don’t bother, my dear!” Neil’s composure was as perfect as ever. Nothing in his look or manner suggested the strain of this dreadful day or the last two months. “Just embrace me by way of congratulation!”—I was, I must confess, wringing his hands and crying—“and then make your escape from a family which can hardly, I fear, count among the pleasantest of your acquaintance.”
“But Alison, poor little Alison! Is she here? I must stay and see if I can be of any use to her!”
“Betty, I have a curious message for you,” said Neil. “I trust that its practical advantages for you will outweigh its rudeness. I brought Alison here, under protest, on the sole condition that I took you away and relieved her of your presence and mine. She is the sanest of us all but like most women she is not legally-minded, and her strongest emotions at the moment are her love and pity for Rhoda. Though it was to save my unworthy neck, she insists that it is John, and to a lesser extent you and Dennis, who have brought Rhoda to her doom (those are her rather exaggerated words). She does not want to see you or me or any of us. I have been talking to Dr. Hewetson and he agrees that she should have her way. She and Effie are in each other’s arms already. Effie is finding consolation for Annie’s tragedy in having Alison to comfort, and Alison feels Effie a rock beneath which she can shelter. The nurses are in charge with one or two more to help them, too, and by nightfall the Law will have decided how many policemen to add to this curious house-party. The Procurator Fiscal is gloriously intrigued, you see, about the position of the case. They ought to arrest Mary and Rhoda for concealment of Jessica’s death, if not for suspicion of foul play, but they can’t bring either of them into the Sheriff Court; and even when an indictment is made out, it can’t be read until they are well enough to be present. Mary will, I hope, be dead by then. If Rhoda has lost her reason for good she can’t be tried as she can’t plead for herself. As far as I can see, the house will remain a sort of place of detention for days or weeks. However, that’s not the immediate point. My only errand is to extract you and leave Alison in charge by her own wishes.”
Neil’s glance strayed to Miss Mary as he spoke, but his eyes were inscrutable.
“Not a lovable family,” he murmured in his old manner. “When one thinks of her and Rhoda, and of Cora still on the brink of insanity, one might almost believe that the fairy jewel kept up its old reputation after all. It’s a sordid little fairing! If it comes to me I shall send it to a Jumble Sale in aid of the Feeble-Minded.”
“Have you seen—her—Rhoda?” I asked falteringly as a nurse came in and we left the room. “My dear Betty, I have done my duty in every conceivable respect to-day,” said Neil lightly, though a shadow passed over his face. “Don’t think I shall indulge you in your morbid interest in horrors. She is said, in that idiotic phrase of the medical world, to be going on as well as can be expected. So far my day has been far more objectionable than if I had spent it quietly in the Courts being tried for my life. Now I propose to have some pleasure. I am going back to shave and bathe and join Firle and your husband for dinner in Firle’s rooms. I must insist on the resurrection of my body!”
It was late that evening before John came home, but Bob and Dennis were waiting with me, and now at last we could all settle down to hear Bob’s story complete. Up till now each of us had extracted one item or another and tried to set the pieces of the puzzle together as best we could. But the time had come for a full exposition, and John moved the whisky tray to Bob’s elbow.
“For you’ve got a good long sermon before you,” he said, “and a very good audience!”
“Please, I want to know,” I said, “what would have happened if I hadn’t realised this morning that it was Mary, not Jessica, whom I saw on the morning of April 13th?” That was the point which had been troubling me all day and I wanted first of all to have it settled.
“It would have delayed everything,” said Bob, “delayed everything badly. You see, I’d got the whole thing clear in my mind by then, but the point was that I could hardly get all those admissions out of poor Miss Mary unless I was absolutely sure of my ground. If you’d stuck to it that it was Jessica you saw we’d have had to get at all the rest piece by piece. That meant the risk of Miss Macpherson’s intervention, and we always recognised the danger to Miss Mary’s health. I was haunted by the feeling that we might be too late to get her confession.”
“Could you ever have got a solution without it?” asked John.
“That’s the question I ask myself and I have hardly had time to make sure of the answer. You see, I’ve not much to congratulate myself on in the case. I suppose my excuse must be that my original task was to find Miss Jessica, and that all along I accepted the first story of her departure to London. Once in those early days when I was making out a description of her I asked Effie if I could use Miss Mary as a model. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘they werna alike at all when you knew them.’ Miss Warrielaw and Miss Mary would be about the same height, she added, but Miss Jessica was broader and a much more energetic, stirring sort of body. Then her hair was a good thought greyer and she hadn’t the mole Miss Mary was always fingering on her forehead. Finally she showed me a photo of all the five sisters, and there was such a marked difference in the way of their hairdressing, and the shape of their heads, that I started on the second course of investigation with no idea that one sister would look very like the other in her outdoor costume. That has been a bad mark against me throughout, and I owe the final discovery as much to Mr. Dennis’s exclamation at the sight of that poor girl Annie as to anything else. It’s uncanny enough that it was the sight of a funeral which helped the case.
“But on the other hand I can honestly say this, that all along I felt some clue to the mystery must lie in the relations of Rhoda—I’ll leave out all my ‘Misses’ if you please, Mrs. Morrison—and Annie. And I had come to the conclusion, too, that they centred round that cloakroom ticket, when there wasn’t a trace of the duplicate half to be found anywhere in the south of Scotland. These things don’t disappear in a well-ordered station, but the friendship between Annie and her Cousin Jock, the porter at Bathgate, suggested that there might be some collusion about the affair there. You see, in the story there was a missing parcel, the parcel Jessica was said to have taken to London, and a missing cloakroom ticket. I had made up my mind to see if the two were connected on the day we went to Bathgate—and that was only yesterday.”
“But the parcel was said to be sandwiches!” I said.
“Yes, but I never believed that a cab-driver would have noticed a parcel small enough to hold the few sandwiches a lady would take with her in the train. And there was another parcel in the story, too, that black hat and cloak which Rhoda had spirited away before ever Effie got home on the 13th of April. Those three items were always at the back of my mind. They were bound up, too, with the mystery about that handkerchief. You and Mr. Firle let that drop, John, when once Mrs. Morrison had proved that half a dozen of Neil’s handkerchiefs were lying about in Jessica’s work-case, and that its presence did not incriminate him in any way. But I was never satisfied about it. I studied the weather reports of the day, and I studied the bushes where it lay with the handle. The soil is light and sandy and the shrubs grow very thickly. A mere shower wouldn’t get through there in a way which would drench a handkerchief. Now from midnight on the 12th to noon on the 13th it rained heavily off and on. Any piece of linen would be soaked through, and any bloodstained rag would be wet, and there would drip from it just that pale-coloured stain which you, Mrs. Morrison, noticed, and assumed to be the dye from Mrs. Murray’s bag. At twelve o’clock the wind got up and the sun came out. It must have shone directly on the shrubs opposite the window, and those wide leaves and that sandy soil would dry up in a few minutes. You thought me tiresome; you pointed out that anyhow it might still have been raining at noon, and the murderer would have had time to meet Jessica at 10.41 and get her down here and throw away the stiletto before the rain was off. But Neil, owing to his accident at Harburn, could not have got here before 12.30, even if his tale about Lockerbie was untrue. And all along I felt sure of this, that if we’d found the corpse and the handkerchief on the evening of the 13th, we should have agreed unanimously that the murderer must have left the rag and handle out all night as they were soaked through and through. Of course it made no sense while we believed Jessica to have been alive next morning. When once I guessed that Mary had impersonated her, that detail and every other fell into place.”
“Well, begin at the beginning, please,” said John.
“And how does Annie come into it all?” I asked, bewildered. “What had she or Jock to do with it? What did you find out at Bathgate?”
“I think I’d better tell you that as we go on along. Let’s reconstruct the whole story. And first of all let me say that though both the motive for the crime and the manner of it, when the whole story seemed to depend on the possession of a car for the transport of the corpse, tended to incriminate Neil, there was another character in the story who had laid herself open to suspicion again and again.”
“You mean Cora?”
“No, not seriously. I admit her behaviour with regard to the bag and to Annie Hope suggested some mysterious complicity in the crime, but one thing was certain, that Annie was at Bathgate from the night of the 12th to the evening of the 13th and that Cora couldn’t have done the crime alone. There was the chance that she was in collusion with Neil, but all their actions tended to show that they were trying to shield each other while each was in the dark about the other’s movements. He had seen her at the Lodge in the afternoon and later in George Street with Annie in the evening, and suppressed both facts. She had clearly suspected him and tried to clear away any evidence against him, but she also was evidently working on the vaguest suspicions without an idea of the real truth. Her one idea was to get hold of Annie to find out what had been happening at Warrielaw. If she knew all there was to know she would have certainly left Annie safely at Bathgate. No, the person who had obviously a good motive for the murder, and the coolness and audacity to carry it through, was Rhoda. And yet the fact stared me in the face that when Jessica was murdered Rhoda was either on her way to lunch or lunching quietly at Erleigh.”
“What motive?” asked Dennis.
“The outstanding point in the case was that it was Rhoda who was set upon getting hold of the jewel. Her behaviour at Warrielaw on the 13th, and to John and myself over the suit-case, betrayed that she had a touch of the family madness on that subject. That story of the mysterious burglary in February was so clearly, too, a premature effort on her part to get hold of it. You agreed with me over that, John?”
“I thought she’d seized an opportunity to have a try then, certainly,” agreed my husband. “I imagine that she noticed the light in Jessica’s room as she rode slowly or walked down the avenue that evening, and then, as she passed the front door, saw the kitchen in darkness, heard Effie and the dogs in the garden, and Annie busily tidying a deserted room which she had evidently been using as a shelter for some man friend of hers. Rhoda was quick-witted enough, too, to remember that there were tinkers about and that they would be suspected if anything in the house was missing. She must have run lightly upstairs, prepared to make herself pleasant to Jessica if she was in her room, and, when she found it empty, disarrange it in just the way which would throw suspicion on Annie, before she hunted for the jewel. I expect she hoped to find a duplicate key in the hoards of keys an old lady like Jessica usually keeps in her dressing-table—or she may merely have hoped that for once Jessica had left the real key lying there. It was what you told me of her conversation with Annie which suggested it, Betty. I am pretty sure she hoped to find that Annie was harbouring someone in the house that night to whom suspicion would attach. The fact that Jock had only made his appearance at the New Year, and couldn’t have got down there from the hospital for a week at least, didn’t suit her book. But she used it skilfully enough to establish such an ascendancy over Annie that she extorted a half-confession from her that she’d disarranged the room. And she had got the threat of exposure about Jock’s room to hang over Annie if she ever needed her services.”
“That’s so,” agreed Bob, filling his pipe. “That story made me go into the case with a strong bias against Rhoda apart from her behaviour. It was clear, too, that she had a personality which dominated weaker natures entirely. She could clearly count on Mary and Annie as her tools.”
“Now we come to the twelfth of April, and how far the true story of that night will ever be known depends, I suppose, on the next action of the Crown. They may accept Mary’s statement that Jessica’s death was an accident or they may not. If they refuse, and if either Mary or Rhoda are capable of standing on their trial, the police will have to reconsider the evidence they do possess about the actual course of events. One thing at least is established now. The accident or the murder, whichever it was, had taken place before nine o’clock that evening. There’s no doubt of that, for the post goes out of the village then, and before it went, Rhoda posted a note to Annie which I found yesterday in that black cape of Miss Jessica’s which the poor girl had been wearing for funerals. I’ve got a copy here,” said Bob, searching in his pockets, “and it proves to me that Jessica was dead and Rhoda’s plans laid by that time. ‘I’ve a parcel for you’, she wrote to Annie, ‘of old clothes which Miss Jessica forgot to give to Effie, and I have persuaded her to let you have them instead. Don’t mention this to Effie, or show the clothes to her or to anyone for the next few days, as Effie may think she should have them herself, but I want to make you this present as I know how much you have always wanted nice black things to wear at funerals. I can take a little run on my bicycle to Bathgate to-morrow, so be on the look-out at the station any time after 11 o’clock and I’ll hand them over to you. Yours truly, R.M.’ She did not date the letter, but the envelope is clearly marked April 12th. I am convinced that this sudden access of philanthropy on Rhoda’s part was due to the fact that her really wonderful powers of improvisation were already at work. It was, you see, essential to her scheme that she should dispose safely of the black hat and cloak which Mary must wear when she was to impersonate Jessica next forenoon. She had schemed all that before even the post went out. She had indeed a rare gift for organisation.”
“But what do you think really happened?” urged Dennis.
“What, indeed?” said John. “And you speak of Rhoda’s improvisations. Was it improvisation or, if she were responsible for Jessica’s death, was the whole thing part of a premeditated design? How do you reconstruct the scene?”
“First and foremost,” said Bob, filling his pipe slowly, “I am quite convinced it wasn’t an accident. I attach no importance to Mary’s confession. I don’t say we have proof enough to disprove it in law, but you’ve only to consider the characters of both aunt and niece to see that it’s impossible. There’s no doubt, I imagine, that there was a terrible scene in the library. No doubt Jessica turned upon Mary and Rhoda as they argued against the sale of the jewel, no doubt both old ladies were beside themselves with passion. But if Jessica really stumbled and fell, as the story goes, the fall would have sobered Mary. She is not an inhuman woman, she’s not a member of the professional criminal class whose habit of mind leads them to think at once: ‘The police’ll get me!’ Her one instinct would have been to summon assistance. It wouldn’t even have occurred to her that any suspicion would attach to her. Rhoda, on the other hand, was inhuman enough, but Rhoda, as we know, is a clever woman. If she’d planned this affair beforehand we may be pretty sure she’d have stage-managed the scene as an accident. If the quarrel in the library hadn’t suddenly had this fatal ending she would have seen for herself that they might present it as an accident. I haven’t the least doubt that when Firle started his line of defence—and you may be sure she heard of it—she hasn’t cursed herself a hundred times for not thinking of such an obvious way out for herself and her aunt, instead of her own tortuous schemes. No, to my mind it’s certain that both women hastened at once to try to disguise the deed because they were so suddenly and awfully conscious of their crime.”
“Then you think they were both involved?” asked John, shading his eyes.
“That’s my theory, though it could never be proved. I imagine that in the height of the quarrel Mary hit her sister so violently that Jessica fell, knocking her head against the brass fender with such force that she was stunned. Then I fancy she may have run for help and Rhoda, left alone, bent over Jessica, rejoicing to think the enemy of herself and her family was dead. When she saw that Jessica still lived, I imagine that her eyes fell on Mary’s stiletto, and—and she did the rest.”
“Mary couldn’t have done that, I feel sure,” agreed John hoarsely.
“No, but I think we must believe that she some share in the first blow. Otherwise I doubt if Rhoda could have persuaded her to act the part she played next day. I feel convinced that only the consciousness that she herself was partially responsible could have made her submit to Rhoda’s wishes after that. Rhoda, I suppose, called her back when all was over and brought home to her her share in the crime. And then I suppose the two women stood there in that dim room, Jessica’s body lying by the firelight, in that vast lonely house, wondering what on earth to do next. I expect Rhoda left Mary to shudder and cry while she made her plans and wrote and posted her letter to Annie. There was enough for poor Mary to do after that.”
