He looked from one to another as he spoke and as he met John Steadman’s glance his grey eyes were as hard as steel and his thin lips were drawn and pinched together like a trap.
The horror in his hearers’ faces grew and strengthened. Mrs. Bechcombe alone tried to speak; she leaned forward; in some inscrutable fashion her figure seemed to have shrunk in the last few minutes. She looked bent and worn and old, ten years older than Luke Bechcombe’s handsome wife had done. Her face was white and rigid and set like a death-mask. Only her eyes, vivid, burning, looked alive. No sound came from her parted lips for a moment, then with a hoarse croak she threw up her hands to her throat as though she would tear the very words out:
“What was he like?”
Mrs. Carnthwacke cast one glance at her and began to tremble all over, then she clutched violently at her husband’s hand.
“It—it is easier to say that he wasn’t like that portrait,” she confessed, “than to tell you what he really was like. He gave me the impression that he was a bigger man; his beard too was not neat and trimmed like that—short, stubbly and untidy-looking. His hair grew low down on his forehead. That—that man’s hair,” pointing with shaking fingers to the paper portrait, “grows far back. He is even a little bald. I don’t know that I can point out any other differences, but the two faces are not a bit alike really. Oh, if I had only known Mr. Bechcombe by sight this dreadful thing might never have happened! She leaned back in her chair trembling violently.”
Cyril B. Carnthwacke placed himself very deliberately between her and the rest of the room. His clasp of her cold hands tightened.
“Now, now, be a sensible girl!” he admonished, giving her a little shake as he spoke, yet with a very real tenderness in his gruff tones. “Quit crying and shaking and just say what you have to say as quietly as possible. Nobody can hurt you for that. And if they do try to, they will have to reckon with Cyril B. Carnthwacke. Now, sir.” He looked at John Steadman. “I guess there will be other questions you will have to ask, and it may be as well to get as much as we can over at once.”
The barrister cleared his throat.
“I am afraid it will be impossible to do that here. The very first thing to be done is to inform Scotland Yard of Mrs. Carnthwacke’s tragic discovery.”
The American bent over his wife for a minute then drew aside.
“I guess it will have to be as the gentleman says, Mrs. Carnthwacke. Now just as plain as you can put it, and remember that Cyril B. Carnthwacke is standing beside you.”
Mrs. Carnthwacke drew one of her hands from his and passed her handkerchief over her parched lips. Then she looked at Steadman.
It seemed to him that it was only by a supreme effort that she became articulate at all.
“I knocked at the door—I knew how to find it, Mr. Bechcombe had told me how on the phone. Down the passage to the right, past the clerks’ office. It—it wasn’t opened at once—I heard some one moving about rather stumblingly, and I was just going to knock again when the door was opened, and—” She stopped, shivering violently.
“Now then, now then!” admonished her husband. “You just quit thinking of what you are wise about now, and tell us just what took place as quickly as you can.”
Mrs. Carnthwacke appeared anxious to obey him.
“He—he opened the door, the man I—I told you about. ‘Come in, Mrs. Carnthwacke,’ he said. I never doubted its being Mr. Bechcombe—why should I? He knew my name and my errand. Certainly I thought he had an unpleasant voice, husky—not like what I had heard when I rang him up. But he said he had a cold.” She stopped again.
This time John Steadman interposed.
“Now the details of your interview you have told us before—”
“Ever so many times,” she sobbed. “I can’t say anything but what I told you at the inquest.”
“But, now that this extraordinary new light has been thrown upon everything, do you recollect anything—anything that may help us? You know the veriest trifles sometimes provide the most successful clues—a mark on hands or face, for example.”
“There wasn’t any,” Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke answered, shaking visibly. “Or if there was, I didn’t see it. But my eyesight isn’t what it was, and the room was very dark, so I couldn’t see very well.”
“Dark! I shouldn’t call it a dark room,” contradicted John Steadman. “And the day was a clear one, I know.”
“The room itself mightn’t be dark,” Mrs. Carnthwacke said obstinately. “But the blinds were drawn partly down and that heavy screen before the window nearest the desk would darken any room.”
“Screen!” John Steadman repeated in a puzzled tone. “I have seen no screen near the window.”
“Oh, but there is one,” Mrs. Carnthwacke affirmed positively. “A big heavy screen, stamped leather it looked like. It was opened out, and stood right in front of the window nearest the desk, I remember wondering he should have it there. It blocked out so much of the light.”
“What a very curious thing!” The rector interjected. “Often as I have been in to see my lamented brother-in-law, I have seen no screen. Nor have I found him with drawn blinds.”
“It was not Mr. Bechcombe who was so found by Mrs. Carnthwacke,” John Steadman corrected. “Of course the semi-darkness of the room was purposely contrived for one of two reasons, either that the murderer should not be recognized or that his disguise should not be suspected.”
“Your two reasons seem to me to mean the same thing, my dear sir,” Mr. Cyril B. Carnthwacke drawled. “But there, if that is all—”
“They do not mean the same thing at all,” John Steadman retorted. “Anybody might suspect a person of being disguised. But only some one who was personally acquainted with the murderer could recognize him. Now what we have to discover is which of these reasons was operating in this case. Or whether, as is possible, we have to reckon with both.”
Cyril B. Carnthwacke’s sleepy-looking eyes were opened sharply for once.
“I don’t understand you,” he drawled. “But I can put you wise on one of your points. Mrs. Cyril B. Carnthwacke ain’t acquaint with any murderers. So she could not have recognized the man.”
The barrister did not appear to be impressed.
“Nobody is aware that he is acquainted with murderers until the murderer is found out,” he remarked with a certain air of stubbornness. “Besides, it might not have been from Mrs. Carnthwacke that this murderer had to fear recognition. He may have been known by sight to lots of people who might possibly have encountered him on his way to and from the room. All the clerks for example, the messengers, office boys, tenants of the neighbouring offices. Other people might have come to Mr. Bechcombe’s private room too. Mrs. Carnthwacke may not have been the only expected client. But one thing is certain; this new evidence of Mrs. Carnthwacke’s does throw a good deal of light on the much vexed question of the time at which the murder took place.”
“As how?” Cyril B. Carnthwacke’s voice did not sound as though he would be easily placated.
Steadman shrugged his shoulders.
“Don’t you realize that the medical testimony that Luke Bechcombe met his death soon after twelve o’clock has always been at variance with Mrs. Carnthwacke’s statement that she saw him alive and well at one o’clock, and afterwards Miss Hoyle too heard some one moving about in Mr. Bechcombe’s room when she returned from lunch? Now we realize that the doctors were right and that Mrs. Carnthwacke’s interview took place with the murderer and that Miss Hoyle—”
The last word was interrupted by a hoarse, muffled shriek from Mrs. Carnthwacke. “I can’t bear it, Cyril B. Carnthwacke. If you don’t take me away I shall die.”
The American looked round doubtfully, then he drew her to her feet and supported her with one arm.
“Guess there is nothing to be gained by staying any longer,” he said, a certain note of truculence in his voice as he met Steadman’s eyes. “Sure thing you know where to find us if you want us. Come then, little woman, we will just say good morning.”
No one made any effort to detain them as they went towards the door. John Steadman followed them into the hall.
Cyril B. Carnthwacke was bending over his wife and saying something to her in a low, earnest voice. As John Steadman came up to them he turned.
“Guess that little fair lady on your side the table is some one you know well, sir?”
Steadman looked at him curiously.
“Well, fairly well. She is engaged to Luke Bechcombe’s nephew. She is a compatriot of yours too—a Mrs. Phillimore.”
“Gee whiz!” ejaculated the American. “And is that Mrs. Phillimore?”
“You have heard of her?” Steadman questioned.
“Reckon I have,” Cyril B. Carnthwacke assented, “and seen her too. Though it don’t seem to me she was called Phillimore then.”
“Before she was married perhaps,” suggested Steadman.
“Perhaps,” drawled the American. “Anyway I have glimpsed the lady somewhere. Americans mostly know one another by sight you know,” a faint twinkle in his eye as he glanced over his wife’s head at the barrister.
When Steadman went back to the dining-room Mrs. Bechcombe was lying back in her chair apparently in a state of collapse. Mrs. Phillimore was bending over her, looking very little better herself. All her little butterfly airs and graces had fallen from her. Her make-up could not disguise the extreme pallor of her cheeks, the great blue eyes were full of horror and of dread. She appeared to be trying to persuade Mrs. Bechcombe to drink a glass of wine which Mr. Collyer had poured out for her.
But as Steadman re-entered the room Mrs. Bechcombe sprang up, pushing Mrs. Phillimore aside and throwing the wine over the table cloth.
“Have you let her go?”
Steadman looked at her.
“Control yourself, my dear Madeleine. Let who go?”
“That—that woman. That Mrs. Carnthwacke,” Mrs. Bechcombe stormed hysterically. “I thought at least that you could see through her, that you had gone with her to make sure that she was arrested, that—”
A gleam of pity shone in Steadman’s eyes as he watched her—pity that was oddly mingled with some other feeling.
“There is not the slightest ground for arresting Mrs. Carnthwacke, Madeleine. I have told you so before. Less than ever now.”
“Why do you say less than ever now?” demanded Mrs. Bechcombe. “Are you blind, John Steadman? Or are you wilfully deceiving yourself? Do you not know that that woman was telling lies? I can see—I should think anyone with sense could see—what happened that dreadful day in Luke’s office. She took her jewels there, her husband followed her—I believe he is in it too. Probably he has lost his money—Americans are like that, up one day and down the next. He didn’t want it to be known that his wife was selling her jewels. Yes. Yes. That is how it must have been. He sent her with the diamonds to Luke and followed her to get them back and make it look as if Luke had been robbed. Luke resisted and he was killed in the struggle. Oh, yes, That was how it was! And this cock and bull story of theirs—” She paused, literally for breath.
Steadman looked pityingly at her wide, staring eyes, at her twitching mouth and the thin, nervous hands that never ceased clasping and unclasping themselves, working up and down.
“Madeleine, this suspicion of Mrs. Carnthwacke is becoming a monomania with you. It is making you unjust and cruel,” he said, then waited a minute while she apparently tried to gather strength to answer him. Then he went on, “There is not the slightest ground for this new idea. Cyril B. Carnthwacke’s name is one to conjure with in Wall Street as well as on the Stock Exchange here. Do you imagine that the police have neglected so very ordinary a precaution as an inquiry into his circumstances?”
With a desperate struggle Mrs. Bechcombe regained her power of speech.
“The police—the police are fools!” she cried passionately. “If a crime of this kind had been committed in Paris or New York, the murderer would have been discovered long ago, but in London—Scotland Yard cannot see what the merest tyro in such matters would recognize at once.”
“Do you think so?” John Steadman’s clean-cut, humorous mouth relaxed into a faint half-smile. “I can tell you, Madeleine, that both in New York and Paris it is recognized that our Criminal Investigation Department is the finest in the world. But your feeling towards Mrs. Carnthwacke is becoming an obsession. When the mystery surrounding Luke’s death is cleared up, and somehow I do not think it will be long now before it is, I prophesy that you will repent your injustice.”
“I prophesy that you will repent your folly in not listening to me,” retorted Madeleine Bechcombe obstinately. “That woman was lying. Ah, you may not have thought so. It takes a woman to find a woman out. If I had my way I would have women detectives—”
“Do you suppose we haven’t?” John Steadman interposed gently. “Dear Madeleine, no stone is being left unturned in our endeavours to bring Luke’s murderer to justice. Have patience a little longer!”
“Patience, patience! I have no patience!” Mrs. Bechcombe pushed Steadman’s outstretched hand away wrathfully and turned to Mrs. Phillimore. “Sadie, you thought the same—you said you did just now!”
In spite of her pallor Steadman fancied that the Butterfly looked considerably taken aback.
“I don’t think I said quite that,” she hesitated, “I don’t know what to think. I feel that I can’t—daren’t think—anything.”
“What?” Mrs. Bechcombe raised her hand.
For one moment Steadman thought she was about to strike her guest, and with some instinct of protection he stepped to the Butterfly’s side.
The Butterfly visibly flinched. “I—I think I said more than I ought,” she acknowledged frankly. “When you said she was telling lies, I—I didn’t know what to say.”
“What did you say?” Steadman inquired quietly. “Did you say anything that could be misinterpreted?”
The Butterfly raised a fragment of cambric, widely edged with real lace. Apparently it did duty as a pocket-handkerchief. She pressed it to her eyes, taking care, as Steadman noticed, not to touch her carefully pencilled eyebrows.
“I said I didn’t think Mrs. Carnthwacke was telling us all she knew,” she confessed. “I cannot tell what made me feel that, but I did. She—she was keeping something back, I am sure, and her husband knew that she was.”
“I wonder whether you are right,” said John Steadman slowly.