CARLYN HALL was a big, rambling house, having no architectural pretensions whatever. Nevertheless it was a roomy, comfortable abode with its wide passages and big, low roofed, raftered rooms. Originally it had been little more than a farm-house, but as the Carlyns grew in wealth and importance, and began to rank with the county, successive owners had enlarged and improved it according to their own ideas, each man throwing out a room there, a window here, as seemed good in his eyes. Time, the kindly, had thrown over the whole a veil of ampelopsis and ivy, had mellowed the old walls and sown them with lichen and stone crop.
It looked very pleasant and homelike to-day as the last rays of the setting sun fell across the many-gabled roof, touching it with molten gold.
Tea was being laid beneath the great beeches that had been in their prime when the Carlyns were only yeomen. Mrs. Carlyn, the mother of the young squire, sat in her accustomed place by the big wicker- table, and beside her Barbara Burford, the vicar’s daughter, was playing with Bruno, Frank Carlyn’s favourite setter.
Suddenly Bruno pricked up his ears, then shaking off Barbara’s hand he sprang up and bounded round the side of the house.
The girl laughed. “No need to tell us that Frank has come home.”
Mrs. Carlyn smiled in response. “No, Bruno is devoted to his master. I don’t know why Frank did not take him to-day. He generally does. Barbara, there is one thing I must ask you. Is it true Esther Retford has left her home?”
“I believe so,” Barbara answered with apparent unwillingness.
Mrs. Carlyn turned pale. “What will her poor father do? He worshipped her. Barbara, who is the man?”
The girl shook her head. “Nobody knows, some stranger probably.”
Mrs. Carlyn sighed. “I hoped so. I did hear a whisper that—Ah, here is Frank!”
Barbara’s long eyelashes flickered, the colour in her cheeks deepened as the young master of the house stepped out of his study window and crossed the lawn towards them.
At first sight his pleasant, boyish face looked unusually worried and preoccupied, there were two vertical lines between his level brows, and his mouth was firmly compressed. But, as he caught sight of the girl sitting beside his mother, his expression changed, his face lighted up in a way that made it look wonderfully bright and attractive.
“Why, Barbara,” he exclaimed as they shook hands, “you are almost a stranger. I haven’t seen you for ages. What have you been doing with yourself?”
“Oh, well”—Barbara laughed, yet with a touch of constraint in her manner that did not escape Mrs. Carlyn’s watchful eyes— “I have been rather busy. And this is a good-bye visit too. I am going to stay with Aunt Freda to-morrow.”
“Oh, really! I am sorry to hear that—sorry for our sakes, I mean,” Carlyn said as he took his cup of tea from his mother’s hand.
But his tone lacked warmth, and after a quick glance at him the girl turned back to Bruno, who had installed himself at her feet. She drew his long silky ears through her fingers and fed him with dainty pieces of bread and butter.
Mrs. Carlyn glanced at her son. “Where have you been, Frank? You look hot and tired.”
“I have been dismissing Winter,” he answered shortly. “The coverts are in a disgraceful state, and when I spoke to him about it he was so insolent that I dismissed him then and there.”
There was a pause. Carlyn’s eyes watched every movement of Barbara’s fingers. The girl did not look up; the hand that was caressing Bruno stopped suddenly for a minute, then went on again mechanically. At last Mrs. Carlyn spoke:
“I am very glad to hear it. We shall be well rid of Winter.”
“Yes,” her son assented without any enthusiasm. He was not looking at Barbara now, his eyes had strayed to the Home Wood, in the midst of which stood the humble cottage of John Winter, his head gamekeeper.
“I shall not be sorry to make a change,” he went on. “But I cannot help thinking of the man’s wife. It will be jolly hard lines on her.”
“Ah!” Mrs. Carlyn drew in her breath.
Barbara stood up suddenly. “I must be getting back. Father will be expecting—”
Mrs. Carlyn put out her hand. “Not yet, Barbara, dear. I want to consult you. I suppose Mrs. Winter will go with her husband, Frank. He is a young man and will presumably be able to support her in another situation.”
“Oh, support,” Carlyn echoed, with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “I wish I could get you to take an interest in her, mother. Or you, Barbara. It is obvious that she belongs to a class above Winter’s. And the man is a brute. He ill-treats her; I am not sure he does not beat her.” He clenched his right hand.
“Oh, I should hope not,” Mrs. Carlyn said in her placid tones, though her eyes looked troubled. “Anyhow, it is an awkward thing to interfere between man and wife, Frank. And Mrs. Winter herself is not responsive. When I went to see her she was barely civil to me. A churlish sort of young woman I thought her. Though handsome in a peculiar style of course. Stay, what was that, Frank?” holding up her hand just as her son was about to speak.
They all listened. In the silence the sound Mrs. Carlyn had heard was becoming distinctly audible. Someone was running up the drive as if for dear life, more than one person apparently.
Carlyn got up. “Some one seems in a precious hurry. I think I will just go and see what they want.”
He strolled towards the house. Moved by some sudden impulse Mrs. Carlyn and Barbara followed him. As they got nearer they saw that two men were running towards them at full speed, several more following in the distance.
“It is Jack Winter, sir,” the first called out as he caught sight of the young squire. “He is dead!”
“Dead!” Carlyn’s face turned a curious, greyish tint beneath its tan. “What do you mean, man? I parted from him only an hour ago.”
“He is dead enough now, sir,” panted the man whom Mrs. Carlyn recognized as Retford, one of the under-keepers. “Lying in a pool of blood in front of his cottage, shot through the head.”
“Suicide!” Frank Carlyn drew in his breath sharply. “Spencer, I—”
“They are saying it’s murder, sir,” the man interrupted him respectfully.
“Good heavens!” Carlyn fell back a pace.
His mother touched his arm, her face white, her eyes big and frightened.
“Frank, what is it? Winter can’t be dead. We were talking about him only this minute.”
Carlyn put her aside hurriedly. “No, no! It is some stupid mistake of course. Probably the man has had a fit. You go into the house with Barbara, and I will run down to the cottage and see what really is the matter.”
He scarcely waited for her answer as he hurried off to the gamekeeper’s cottage. It was but a step away, as the North-country folk phrase it, when the near path through the Home Wood was taken, and Frank Carlyn was soon on the scene of action. Early as he was, however, quite a little crowd had assembled already.
Carlyn drew his brows together as he saw Marlowe, the village constable, officiously pushing the people aside and bending over something that lay on the ground.
The people, most of them his own employees, made way for the young squire. He glanced for a moment at the thing laying on the ground—the thing that so short a time before had been a living, breathing man—and turned away with a shudder of horror. The whole of the bottom part of the face had been blown away, and there were other ghastly injuries.
“Dead, poor fellow!” he said hoarsely.
The constable looked up. “As a door nail, sir. Whoever did this job didn’t mean there to be any doubt about it.”
Carlyn looked at him. “Whoever did it,” he repeated. “But surely it is a clear case of suicide?”
The constable shook his head. “He couldn’t have shot himself, sir, and then carried his gun off and thrown it behind that stack of wood, which is where Bill Jenkins found it just now. It’s murder, safe enough, and here is Dr. Thompson to tell us all about it.”
The doctor bustled up. He was a little, wiry man of sixty or thereabouts.
Motioning the bystanders away he knelt by the corpse. In a moment he looked up again.
“You are right, constable, there is nothing to be done here. We had better have him moved into the cottage. Tell his wife—but I will speak to her myself. Where is she?”
Constable Marlowe looked round. “Blest if I hadn’t forgotten all about her,” he ejaculated. “Where is she?”
Nobody answered for a minute. By one consent everybody turned and looked in at the cottage door, through which a glimpse could be obtained of the pleasant, homely interior. At last one man spoke:
“It was me that come on the body first, sir,” he said slowly, addressing himself to Carlyn, his eyes wandering fearfully every now and then to that long, silent thing on the ground. “And as I come into the wood I met Winter’s missus coming out. Tearing along like a wild thing she was, and never answered when I passed her the time of day civilly.”
There was another silence. The bystanders looked at one another. Constable Marlowe drew a deep breath.
“Tearing along like a wild thing, was she? Phew!”
The inference was unmistakable. Frank Carlyn looked across at him with rising anger.
“What do you mean, Marlowe? Mrs. Winter has, no doubt, gone to see some of her friends and will be back presently. The tearing along was probably Spencer’s fancy.”
Spencer scratched his head.
“Beg pardon, sir, there was no fancy about it,” he said stolidly. “And Jack Winter’s missus has no friends hereabouts. Seems as if she thought no one good enough for her to associate with.”
“Pooh! You are talking nonsense—” Carlyn was beginning, but Dr. Thompson touched his arm.
“Least said soonest mended,” he said in a low tone. “We don’t want to bring anyone’s name into this. Come, they are going to take the poor fellow inside.”
Winter’s house was just the ordinary rural cottage, the front door led straight into the kitchen; opposite, another door led into the little parlour, a third opened on the closed stairs. There was a fire in the kitchen, a kettle was singing on the hob, a big black cat was curled up on the hearth, but of human presence there was no sign.
An odd expression flashed for a moment into Carlyn’s eyes as he looked round. Was it relief, or was it fear? Dr. Thompson, who was watching his face narrowly, could not tell.
The men halted on the threshold with their burden. The doctor motioned them to the inner room, he and Carlyn following closely, Constable Marlowe bringing up the rear.
The principal piece of furniture in the room was a big, old-fashioned sofa. Here the bearers laid the dead man reverently. Frank Carlyn stood alone in the doorway while the doctor and the constable directed and helped the men. He looked swiftly round the room—a questioning, fearful glance—then he stepped quickly across to the fireplace, and from behind the cheap ornaments and shells with which it was adorned drew out a small, oblong object, and slipped it into his pocket.
He went back to the kitchen, and there presently Dr. Thompson and Marlowe joined him.
“That is all there is to be done for the present,” the former said as he closed the door. “Except that the coroner must be communicated with.”
Constable Marlowe looked at him. “Beg pardon, sir; there is another thing we have to do as quickly as possible, I think, and that is find Mrs. Winter. I am going to phone to headquarters at once, and I fancy you will find they will agree with me.”
The doctor’s kindly face over-clouded. “Oh, well, you may be right, Marlowe. But I hope Mrs. Winter will be at home very shortly and convince you that you are wrong.”
“I don’t fancy there is much chance of that, sir,” the constable rejoined.
He wasn’t an attractive man, Constable Marlowe, but his prominent jaw and his keen, deep-set eyes gave promise of a certain order of intelligence. The constable was by no means inclined to under-rate himself. He had made up his mind to rise in his calling, and had regarded it as little less than a calamity when he was sent to Carlyn village, which seemed to afford no scope for his ability. Now, however, with the mystery surrounding Winter’s death, he told himself his opportunity had come. Rosy visions of a speedy promotion, of an inspectorship in the near future, even of a post in the detective force of the Metropolis dangled before his eyes. He watched the young squire and the doctor out of sight, and then went back into the cottage. A close study of the methods of Sherlock Holmes had taught him that the most unconsidered trifle would sometimes give the clue to the mystery. He did not intend that any such should escape the sharp eyes of Constable Marlowe.
Frank Carlyn returned to the hall. Dr. Thompson kept by his side; a great favourite of Mrs. Carlyn’s, he knew he was assured of his welcome.
“This is a sad affair, a very sad affair,” he remarked sympathetically.
Carlyn turned to him with something like passion in his tone.
“I tell you it is a case of suicide. I had just dismissed the man. Perhaps I had been unjustifiably harsh—”
The doctor shook his head. “Don’t blame yourself, my dear Frank. This was no suicide. The shot was fired from some distance away. It would have been a physical impossibility for Winter to have done it himself. As for what that fellow Marlowe was hinting at—well, poor young thing! Poor young thing! Heaven knows what she may have suffered at Winter’s hands.”
The view the doctor took of the case was unmistakable, but his pity for the young wife was so evidently genuine that some of the anger in Carlyn’s face evaporated.
“I attended her in the spring,” the doctor went on. “And I saw enough to know that some tragedy underlay the marriage. It was obvious, though she avoided all reference to the past, that she was of a very different class to her husband.”
“Anyone could see that,” Carlyn said gruffly. “But she had nothing to do with this, doctor.”
“And yet,” the doctor went on, “one of the things that struck me most was that there was nothing in the cottage, beyond its scrupulous cleanliness, no books, no knick-knacks or flowers to indicate that its mistress was a person of superior refinement.”
“Wasn’t there?” Carlyn’s hand strayed to his breast pocket for an instant.
But, as the doctor went on with his surmises as to Mrs. Winter’s origin, Carlyn’s responses grew curter and curter. It was with a sigh of profound relief that when they reached the house, he deputed to Dr. Thompson the task of telling Mrs. Carlyn what had happened, and went off himself to his study.
He was still sitting there a couple of hours later when Constable Marlowe asked for an interview.
“We were right enough from the first, sir,” he said when he was admitted. “Mrs. Winter had caught the 3.30 train up to town; when the inspector came he phoned up at once to have her stopped, but we were too late.”
“How do you mean?” Carlyn’s tone was stern. He shuffled the papers on his table as if to show the constable that he was wasting his time.
Marlowe coughed.
“We phoned to the junction, sir, but she wasn’t in the train. She must have got out at Brentwood, the first stop. But we shall catch her soon, there is no doubt of that. The inspector is having her description circulated. But he is hampered in one way: there doesn’t seem to be any photograph of her to be had. We were wondering if any of the servants up here would be likely to have one.”
“I should think it was exceedingly unlikely,” Carlyn’s tone was short in the extreme. He rose to signify that the interview was ended. “But you must make what inquiries you like, constable. I think you are on the wrong track altogether, as you know.”
“Yes, sir!” The constable’s eyes gleamed unpleasantly. It was evident that he resented his dismissal. He glanced furtively round the room. “Time will show which of us is right, sir,” he said as he left the room.
Left alone Frank Carlyn drew a small folding case from his pocket. It held three miniatures painted on ivory. One was that of a fine, soldierly-looking old man; opposite him a comparatively young woman with a sweet, serious face, and then, beneath, the lovely, laughing face of a very young girl with a mass of red-gold hair, and big, mischievous, grey eyes.
It was on this last that Carlyn’s gaze was riveted.
“Yes, I was right to bring it, no one could have mistaken it,” he said slowly.
With it in his hand he went slowly across to his writing-table, opened a drawer and thrust the miniature and case to the very back. Then he locked the drawer and thrust the key into his pocket, his face looking very grave and stern.