The Warrielaw Jewel, page 22
“Of course, there’s not a shadow of proof of this,” said John, as if refusing to be convinced.
“Only one bit of evidence, such as it is. We know that Jessica was engaged in working the initials on that handkerchief of Neil’s which Rhoda snatched up when she threw it with the handle of the stiletto into the bushes. Mary or Rhoda must have flung them into the bushes when they were tidying up after the crime. Perhaps, as it wasn’t done very efficiently, it was done by Mary. It seems strange that Rhoda did not notice them next morning, but then her work was cut out for her. She had to keep Mary up to her task, give her breakfast, disarrange Jessica’s room as if she had slept in it and get off to Midcalder on her bicycle. Even she couldn’t manage everything. But my point is now that Jessica was not doing her embroidery that evening. Even if she had been we know from Effie that an iron unwritten law existed between the two old ladies that neither must touch the worktable or the implements of the other. If it had been Jessica’s stiletto we discovered, Jessica’s stiletto which had pierced her heart, I might accept the accident theory. But it wasn’t. Mary’s stiletto was by her side; it was she who was working with it that evening. It cannot have been in Jessica’s hand when she fell. So I feel assured from what I know of the sisters, but naturally it is not a point on which you could convince a jury!”
“Go on with the story, please,” muttered Dennis.
“The next part must have been pretty horrible,” said Bob, staring before him. “Somehow or other Rhoda had to persuade Mary to carry her sister’s body with her to the shed. That I don’t believe she could have done if she hadn’t convinced Mary she was a partner in the crime. I expect it was the appalling nature of her job which led Rhoda then to make a bad mistake. She must have run upstairs to get the hat and cloak Jessica had laid out for the journey: she must have taken Jessica’s handbag and put it in Mary’s room assuming that her aunt’s pound notes and ticket were within it. She may have felt the cloak—and Jessica’s body—to assure herself that Jessica was neither carrying nor wearing the jewel. But she didn’t notice the flat notecase, and when at last she’d forced Mary to her horrible task, and in the rain and darkness they’d carried the body to the tool-shed, they placed it in such a way that the pocket with the notes was beneath it. Rhoda, we must assume, forgot to take off Jessica’s keys then as well. One can’t wonder! Picture the two women at work in the dark, for there were no signs of candle grease in the shed and the risk of being seen from the lodge would have been too great if they had brought a lantern! I expect Mary was in such a condition that Rhoda had not the time she wished to attend to details. After all, somehow or other she had to calm Mary enough to be ready for the part it was essential she should play on the next day. How difficult the job was we can gather from the fact that obviously Rhoda had no opportunity to retrieve the keys and make sure that the jewel was in her possession at last.
“You know what Mary’s part was. Mary, in Jessica’s hat, cloak and heavy veil got into the cab next morning, took the London train, alighted at Carstairs and took the slow train back to Midcalder. It was a fearful risk to run, a fantastic risk for any people better known than those two solitary old ladies were. As it was, luck, undeserved luck, attended that part of the scheme. No one who saw Mary had any suspicions; Neil, as we know, failed to arrive at Carstairs. They knew nothing of that possibility, of course, but if he had been up to time the whole plan must have miscarried. Mary passed unnoticed in the excursion, travelling by the slow train from Carstairs to Midcalder. I imagine it was according to plan that she left her suit-case in the train. It would add to the presumption, when it turned up, that Jessica had really travelled to London. The only thing which must have dismayed Mary was the discovery that neither the pound notes nor the tickets were in Jessica’s handbag. She must have had enough with her to buy a single ticket to Carstairs and another to Midcalder.
“It was Rhoda’s part of the scheme which miscarried. It was of course the part she had planned in the first panic of self-protection. She had been quick-witted enough to see at once that the difficulty would be to dispose of Jessica’s black clothes after Mary had discarded them and put on her own fawn cloak and hat for lunch at Erleigh. She dare not carry a big parcel on her bicycle there, I suppose, and leave it on her bicycle while she was at lunch. She would picture it falling off, opened by an inquisitive maid or torn by a dog—”
“But why shouldn’t she have a parcel of old black clothes?” I asked. “Why should anyone think that suspicious?”
“Why didn’t she simply throw them away into a ditch?” added Dennis. “I don’t see why she took so much trouble.”
“You’ve got to place yourself in her position on the thirteenth, remember. We know now that whatever she’d done would have been overlooked or forgotten probably after the lapse of seven weeks. But she didn’t know that she could count for certain on seven weeks or even seven days. The odds were that no one would go near the stables for months, but if by some accident the body had been found in a few days the investigations of the police would have been a very different affair. Presumably they would still have assumed that Jessica had travelled as far as Carstairs, that she had been lured from the train and brought home, alive or dead, in some vehicle. Or that she had changed her mind and returned, to be murdered by some passing ruffian. But if only a few days had elapsed the police could have gone through the evidence of every car and every person seen in the neighbourhood with a tooth-comb. When nothing suspicious could be traced they would have extended their investigations. Effie knew every item of Jessica’s wardrobe, and any hint of the contents of Rhoda’s parcel at Erleigh might have attracted attention. Any passer-by who picked up a parcel of old black clothes, if she’d thrown them away, as Dennis suggests, might have reported the information to the police. She might have risked throwing them away, weighted, into some burn, but even so Effie would have demanded where the missing garments were. Annie was a fairly safe recipient. She was not bright enough to attach much importance to dates or times: she would not be considered a trustworthy witness in any case. If Rhoda could have managed, as she intended, to get rid of the things quietly to this half-witted girl, she would have a reply to Effie’s questions which would rouse no suspicions. But unfortunately for her, her plans went wrong. Annie as we know wasn’t at the station. Rhoda would have been wiser, as things turned out, to have gone back with her parcel and risked its exposure at Erleigh, but she hadn’t the time to reconsider her scheme. Her work was cut out for her to get back to Erleigh in anything like time for lunch, and her mind was set on disposing of it. She took it to the cloakroom and left it with Jock, who, we may assume, was a stranger to her. It was, I expect, only as she bicycled furiously away that she realised that her appearance at Bathgate at 12.30 might seem suspicious if anyone got wind of the whole plan, as I did only yesterday.”
“But, my dear Bob,” interposed John, “women can be late for an appointment without one’s suspecting that a murder delayed them!”
“Just so, but think of it again from Rhoda’s point of view. We know that Mary’s impersonation had succeeded, but all she knew was that Mary had owned to being seen at Princes Street by Miss Wise and Mrs. Morrison, and, for all we know, she may have seen Dennis at Carstairs. Rhoda cannot have assumed that they were deceived for certain. We can imagine that it was because she felt she had made a mistake that she handed the cloakroom ticket into Mary’s keeping. That she felt might avert suspicions from herself. She had no possible reason to expect that the whole plan would miscarry on just that one trifle.
“And yet it was there that her troubles began. Annie, you see, got to the station at last, to hear that her precious black outfit was in a parcel in the cloakroom. She had set her heart on wearing the things at a funeral at Carglin that afternoon in spite of Rhoda’s prohibitions, and she managed to wheedle the parcel out of Jock for just that occasion and then let him have it back in the cloakroom. Then Cora carried her off to Edinburgh, and while Annie was there I expect she bothered Rhoda unceasingly for the missing ticket. Rhoda must have become terribly harassed by the prominence which the parcel and the date were coming to have in Annie’s mind, and as we know, she could not find the ticket at Warrielaw. At last apparently she told Annie that if she had any sense she’d just get Jock to give up the parcel and destroy the counterfoil. Jock did so when poor Annie came back in such distress from the Murray’s, but then their troubles began. Rhoda came over and professed great horror at their misdemeanour. She told Annie and Jock, who seems to have picked up a tinker’s horror of the law from Mrs. Hay, that if their doings ever became known Jock would be dismissed and probably put in gaol. She had already reminded Annie again and again that one word about her sheltering Jock at the New Year, or her behaviour in February, would mean lasting disgrace for her. In short, she gave them to understand that only the strictest secrecy about the parcel could save them if the police enquired about it. And there, like so many clever criminals, she overreached herself. It wasn’t till I saw the poor creature Annie working to scratch out the date of April 13th on the grave that I realised there was some urgent reason for secrecy about the parcel; and only when I got the whole tale out of Jock that it was clear that Rhoda brought that parcel from Midcalder to Bathgate. Then I realised that it must be for one reason, and for one only, that she had impressed on Annie at all costs that she must hide the date when she received the parcel.
“Now we must go back to the 13th of April. Rhoda bicycled back at a tremendous rate—she may have got a lift, but I doubt if she’d risk it, and I did find out lately that the Wises were not punctual people, so that she may have been even a quarter of an hour behind time that day. How would his host remember that? I don’t envy that lunch party or the walk home. For Mary must have reiterated that she had found herself at the Caledonian Station without the ticket or the pound notes and that she had been seen by two friends at least —and Rhoda must have told her that they must search the corpse again when they got home. Your presence, Mrs. Morrison, made that impossible. It must have been a terrible shock to them both to find you there, and Rhoda must have rushed straight round to the shed and secured the keys from the corpse, which was all she could manage alone. As we know she got the keys and unlocked the safe, only to find the jewel-case empty. After that Mary’s illness, and the discovery that the jewel had gone, upset the whole scheme and made the whole business a ghastly failure from her point of view. She had to leave Warrielaw with you that evening, knowing that she could hardly get to the shed again, for there was the lodge occupied by Mrs. Lee’s niece and her pack of bairns: there were doctors and nurses about and there was no one to help her to move the body, so that she could remove the notecase. She knew, too, from you, Mrs. Morrison, that the place had been open and deserted all day, so that the jewel might have been stolen in reality, just as she had planned might appear to have been the case in February. She must have fixed her hopes on having missed it in the suit-case after all, and nearly went out of her mind when that proved fallacious. She found out from Annie, I expect, that Cora had been enquiring about the happenings at Warrielaw on the 13th. She may have known that Cora was there alone. From the moment that she gave up hope of the jewel turning up in the suit-case, her one aim was to get the discovery of the corpse over and done with, in the hope that the enquiries about the murder or accident might lead to the discovery of the jewel. I fancy all her extraordinary behaviour in trying to get hold of money from the estate was a wild alternative plan to give up hope of the jewel and get away safely to America. By that time, you see, she must have found out, I fancy, that the handle and the handkerchief had been removed from the garden, and every now and then panic seized her.”
“I can’t feel sorry for her even now,” I said, “when I think of her behaviour to Neil.”
“I think”, said John, shading his eyes, “that you might if you’d seen her to-day, Betty, when she was brought in.”
“Remember, too,” said Bob, “that she wasn’t really quite sane about the jewel. She may have thought Neil really stole it that afternoon, as the case developed. She could not forgive him, too, for all he was to gain by Jessica’s will. The jewel and Warrielaw itself and money were the only things she cared for, and Neil was to deprive her of them all.”
“She dreaded his influence over Alison, too,” said John. “I think she really loved that poor child.”
“I still don’t understand about Annie,” said Dennis hastily. “What set her against Rhoda in that ghastly way, in the end?”
, “Well, Rhoda, you must remember, was growing wild with panic over our search for the missing counterfoil of the cloakroom ticket. From the moment we found Mary’s half, and from the moment I went to Bathgate, her one idea was to get rid of Annie or to discredit her as a witness. She went over, ostensibly, I imagine, to ensure her silence, and found Annie recalcitrant because Jock was anxious to own what he’d done. He realised by then that though he would be rebuked severely for having handed over the parcel to Annie and destroyed the counterfoil, he was likely to get into far more serious trouble over suppressing the truth when the enquiry was made. Either deliberately or in a passion Rhoda told Mrs. Hay that Annie was not to be trusted and not in command of her wits, and that she would send the doctor to observe her and see that she was put away into a proper home. That was, of course, why Annie ran away: it was always the fear of her life that she’d be taken away in the yellow van, as these country people say. After the scene yesterday afternoon when she was as near as possible to threatening myself and her sister with her absurd knife, I got the doctor to look at her. Rhoda had evidently wanted to clear a witness out of the way by throwing doubts on Annie’s sanity. I wanted to be assured of it. The doctor rang me up last night to say that he thought Annie should be kept under observation, but he saw no reason why she should be shut up as yet. He had mentioned to Mrs. Hay that the subject had been referred to him by a Miss Macpherson but he thought she was in the wrong. Annie heard that, and then and there, I suppose, made up her mind to be revenged.”
“I suppose that poor girl will be shut up in an asylum?” asked Dennis as Bob stopped to fill his pipe.
“Yes, inevitably. I think that would have happened anyhow. She hasn’t been responsible for her actions for a long time.”
“She would read in a tragedy as an instrument of the Fates,” said John abstractedly. “Well, Bob, you’ve done a fine piece of work to-day, and your reasoning about the whole affair is convincing enough but for just one thing. There’s one personal aspect of the question which makes it difficult for me to accept your theory. I’ve known Mary all my life. She’s essentially an honest woman, whatever Rhoda made her do, and she’s at bottom a religious woman. I find it very hard to believe that in the presence of death she would have sworn to a lie. She knew she was going fast. All these last few weeks she’s been dominated by her fear of Rhoda and her hatred of Rhoda. Would she have endangered her soul, as she’d have thought, to protect Rhoda in the end? I can’t believe it.”
I was sitting beside a table on which stood an electric lamp, and as John spoke I turned the lampshade a little so that its light no longer fell in my face. Bob’s eyes were upon me, and as if in answer to that searching gaze I sank back into the shadows.
“The value of her statement could be questioned only”, said Bob slowly, “if any witness could be found to prove that Rhoda was exercising her undoubted influence on Mary right up to the end. You may say that was impossible. We were all present at that last scene, and Rhoda was certainly not in the room. But one thing I noticed when we rose from our seats to sign Mary’s deposition—a curious thing. I noticed a mirror which hung at such an angle to the sofa that it must have presented a view of the formal garden and the shrubs to anyone lying on the sofa. If one of us had seen Rhoda watching the scene, if any of us had reason to suppose that the presence of Rhoda in the garden was even up to the last menacing her aunt, if it was because Rhoda’s eyes were upon her that Mary was induced to sign that confession, I suppose we should have grounds for re-opening the whole case and questioning the validity of Mary’s last statement.”
Again Bob’s eyes sought mine and still I sat motionless. Out of all the conflicting emotions of the day only one determination remained supreme in my mind. Never again should the life of any other human being depend on the evidences of my senses, never again should any evidence of mine help to place a captured human animal in a trap. You may say it was a most unworthy conclusion of the matter for a lawyer’s wife, but my mind was made up for life.
“On the other hand,” pursued Bob, “any such witness, if one there had been, might well conclude that Fate had provided a fit vengeance for Rhoda in full measure. It seems doubtful if she will recover, still more doubtful if she will ever regain her full faculties again. Any of us who saw her to-day might well consider that she had had her punishment, and wish to say nothing which might involve that most unhappy family in further suffering and disgrace.”
The silence which followed was broken by the telephone bell and I rose to answer it.
“Mary’s gone!” I said, turning round after listening to a few brief remarks from the other end of the wire. “John, I think I’ll—I’ll go to bed now.”
“Indeed you’d better, you poor child,” agreed John. “But, my dear, we can only thank Heaven for the news.”
“Yes,” agreed dully as Bob went to open door for me. “There’s nothing more to hear now, is there?”
