There was dead silence for a few minutes; broken at last by Stoddart.
“Don’t you think it is time to speak out, Sir Felix? Was the secret of which Dr. Bastow spoke connected with this girl?”
“I don’t know,” Skrine said slowly. “I have guessed – I have thought that perhaps it was. But I really know nothing.”
“But you had some reason for thinking it might be, I expect.”
Stoddart was in a difficult position. He held a very responsible post at Scotland Yard; but Skrine was one of the greatest – some said the greatest – criminal lawyers of his day. Stoddart dared not deal with him as he would have liked – could not force from him the secret which he expected had led to Dr. Bastow’s death, as he would have done from a different man.
Skrine had been leaning against the mantelpiece. Instead of answering the detective’s question at once, he dropped the arm with which he had been supporting himself, pulled himself together and began to pace up and down the room, his hands clasped behind him, his head bent, his blue eyes thoughtful. At last he came to a stop before Stoddart.
“When I first saw Mary Ann Taylor as the parlourmaid here I recognized that I had met her in very different circumstances some years before. Do you remember the Carr case?”
“Tried in Edinburgh five years ago,” the inspector rejoined eagerly. “It was out of our jurisdiction. But I always regretted it did not occur in London. I think we should have brought Major Carr’s murder home to his wife. To allow that verdict of ‘Not proven’ is a tremendous mistake.”
“I don’t think so,” Sir Felix said shortly. He went back to the mantelpiece, leaning his elbow on the high wooden shelf and resting his head on his hand, with his face averted from Stoddart. “After all, it comes to the same thing when our juries fail to agree upon a verdict.”
“Not quite. Because in that case the prisoner can be, and generally is, tried again,” the inspector argued shrewdly. “In Scotland ‘Not proven’ is final.”
Sir Felix nodded.
“Quite. I had forgotten. Well, to return to the Carrs. About a year before the tragedy I was staying with Sir Donald Ferguson in Perthshire; there was a big house party, and the Carrs were there among others. I took a violent dislike to him – he was a first-class sort of brute, and whoever killed him ought to be forgiven, but I do not for one moment believe his wife was guilty. She was a good-looking woman and he led her a dog’s life. She bore with him like an angel.”
“Angels, like worms, probably turn sometimes,” the inspector remarked with a grim smile. “But you surely don’t mean, Sir Felix, that Mary Ann Taylor was –”
“Mrs. Carr,” Sir Felix finished. “Whether that was the discovery Dr. Bastow made I don’t know. But that is and was the only thing I can think of.”
“Would that have worried him?” debated the inspector.
“Depends on how he looked at the case,” Sir Felix answered. “If he believed her guilty, and had only just discovered her identity, the thought that he had introduced a murderess into his family, however unwittingly, would not be a pleasant one.”
“But he could have got rid of her at once. He need not have worried himself about it,” the inspector argued.
Sir Felix raised his eyebrows.
“Well, it is the only secret I can think of. It appears to me too that there we have the reason for her disappearance. Mrs. Carr did not wish to be recognized as Mary Ann Taylor. She must have thought it probable that in the case of any murder occurring in a house of which she was an inmate she was an obvious suspect. And, if she knew or guessed anything and gave evidence, she would have been recognized and scarcely believed.”
“Why should Mrs. Carr be masquerading as a parlourmaid?” the inspector said thoughtfully. “She was left quite well off. In that fact was supposed to lie the motive for the crime. But, Sir Felix, doesn’t a curious similarity between the two murders strike you?”
“There is a certain resemblance,” assented Sir Felix. “But Major Carr was shot out of doors, in a wood. My dear old friend was murdered by some fiend as he sat quietly in his consulting-room. The likeness between, the two lies in the fact that both were shot through the brain.”
“Exactly!” the inspector agreed. “But it goes a little further than that, Sir Felix. In both cases the revolver must have been held quite close to the head, since the edges of the wound were blackened and discoloured, the inference being that the murderer was some one known and trusted, I would rather say ‘not feared,’ by the victim.”
Sir Felix held up his hand.
“Not quite so fast, Stoddart. In Carr’s case it was assumed that he was shot by some one walking with him, some one who quietly fell back a pace and fired the shot without having raised any suspicion in Carr’s mind. In the case of Dr. Bastow, everything goes to show that the doctor was quietly writing when the assassin stole into the room unobserved. Far from his assailant being some one known and trusted by Dr. Bastow, I feel sure that he never saw his assailant and knew nothing of anyone else being in the room.”
“Well, it may be so – probably it was,” the detective acquiesced. “But what do you take to have been the motive in Dr. Bastow’s case, Sir Felix?”
“I cannot imagine.” The lawyer’s tone was puzzled. “I should have said that he had not an enemy in the world. In spite of the disappearance of the Chinese box, I don’t believe it was robbery, the doctor’s watch and pocket-book being left intact seem to decide that. While as to Mrs. Carr –”
“The crime would be absolutely motiveless,” the detective interrupted.
“Even if the secret the doctor spoke of referred to her – of which I am doubtful – it explains nothing. Even if she were a proved murderess, she would hardly shoot a man for discovering her identity. But what about the assistant, inspector?”
“Well, he would hardly shoot a man for refusing to let him marry his daughter,” countered the detective. “And he has not a dark beard.”
Sir Felix took his arm from the mantelpiece and drew himself up.
“I don’t believe in your man with the dark beard, inspector. I believe the words on the paper are just a scribbled note in Dr. Bastow’s own writing. While as for Turner – well, he isn’t a witness I should care to put in the box. But now, inspector, if there is nothing else this morning, I am a busy man, you know. And I must see Miss Bastow before I go.”
Left alone, the detective sat down again at the table and applied himself afresh to his notes of the case.
Outside, just coming out of her office, the K.C. encountered the dead man’s secretary. Iris Houlton was wearing the plain workaday frock she had worn in her late employer’s lifetime. She looked a dowdy little person with her shingled brown hair all tousled. She did not raise her eyes, though she stopped and drew back as Sir Felix came out of the morning-room. Sir Felix stopped too.
“Good morning, Miss Houlton. You had my letter this morning, I expect?”
“Yes, Sir Felix.”
“I hope you will see your way to undertaking my work. I know that my poor friend found you so satisfactory in every way that I –”
“You are very kind, Sir Felix,” the girl said demurely when he paused. “But” – she did not raise her downcast lids, though a faint smile flickered round her lips for a second – “I shall not need to look out for another post. My circumstances have altered. And I am inquiring about a flat. I have answered your letter, Sir Felix. You will get it by the next delivery. I am sorry not to be able to do what you want.”
“Oh, that is all right,” Skrine said easily. “Secretaries as secretaries are not difficult to find. But I always understood you were something very special. However, my loss is your gain. I congratulate you most heartily, Miss Houlton. It is pleasant to hear of good luck coming some one’s way; I am sure there is trouble enough for everybody as a rule.”
“Thank you very much, Sir Felix. I am much obliged to you.” She gave him that vague, enigmatic smile once more as with a slight bow she turned back into her office.
Sir Felix looked after her, and then went on to find himself confronted by Miss Lavinia, who had come quietly down the stairs from the drawing-room.
She glanced at him curiously.
“What do you make of that young person, Sir Felix?”
“I don’t make anything of her,” Skrine answered testily. “I am looking out for a secretary, and I thought she might do, but –”
“Dear me!” Miss Lavinia interrupted. “I shouldn’t have thought a female secretary would have been in your line, Sir Felix. But all you men are alike nowadays – keep half a dozen young women running after you.”
This pleasantry was obviously not to Sir Felix’s liking. He drew his brows together.
*“Really, Miss Priestley!”
“Really, Sir Felix!” she mocked. “Well, I shall be surprised if you do not find Miss Iris Houlton as sly as they make ’em.”
“I shall not find her anything at all,” Sir Felix returned. “She is not going to take another engagement, she says. Come into money, I gather.”
“Dear me!” exclaimed Miss Lavinia. “I should like to know where she got it from. Well, you haven’t lost much, Sir Felix. I think – I really think I would rather have Mary Ann Taylor as a parlourmaid than that young woman as a secretary, and that is saying a great deal!”