XII — FLAVELLE BRUTON’S STORY

 

Tomlinson went to the telephone to question the doctor as to the possibility of a talk with Miss Bruton. Pointer asked for a word with Mr. Ayres. From him he learnt that Miss Bruton and Mrs. Moncrieff had been friends as girls, or at least that they had been friends before the Major and his wife had met. “They first met in Miss Bruton’s studio, as a matter of fact.” To Pointer’s query as to whether Miss Bruton had ever seemed at all taken with the Major, or he with her, Ayres smiled, and assured the chief inspector that the two disliked each other heartily. It was the two women who were close friends. Pointer hinted that he inferred from something told him that they had quarreled yesterday. Ayres looked faintly surprised, and said that that was quite possible, as both had worked very hard at getting the rehearsal ready. But if so, it must have been some slight affair of nerves, which would have soon blown over.

Pointer seemed to be convinced by this, and suggested that perhaps the quarrel had been between the Major and his wife instead. And then Ayres had looked uncomfortable and mumbled something about that happening in every household. No two people, however devoted, but had tiffs at times, unless one or the other was absolutely under the domination of the other.

Pointer would not let it go at this, and finally drove the other into admitting that he knew of that quarrel of which the artist had already told them one startling fragment. Ayres had evidently no conception of the open razor part, but from his room on the other side he had heard Major Moncrieff’s voice raised in tones which, though quickly suppressed, certainly suggested “a—well—misunderstanding.” Ayres’ face and voice suggested that if he could have maintained that the tones had conveyed the idea of a tremendous joke or passionate love-making, he would have been glad to do so. Pointer then had another word with Mr. Santley. How had Miss Bruton seemed while she recited? And from him he finally learnt of her strange appearance and manner of delivery. Santley said that certainly she had been in a raging temper. He was quite unaware what had caused it, and suggested asking her when she was well enough. Pointer inquired what she had recited, and learnt of the substitution at the last moment of Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. More: Pointer borrowed a volume with the poem in it, and read it through. He raised his straight eyebrows, and asked Santley to be good enough to read it aloud to him imitating Miss Bruton as much as possible.

Santley declined, and said that he was no good at imitations.

Pointer apologized for this sort of cat-and-mouse intrusion, and went in search of Tomlinson, whom he found again entreating an obdurate physician to let him have at least one word...just one word with Miss Bruton, he didn’t even want the permission for himself, he was saying as the other came in, but for a chief inspector from the Yard, one of their ablest men—he made a face at Pointer over the instrument—who had so far not even seen Miss Bruton. The doctor must surely appreciate how irregular that was! For a chief inspector not even to have seen one of the members of the house after such a tragedy, and after nearly twenty-four hours! In the end Tomlinson hung up with a pained expression. “Doctor Andrews says he knows what the police are!” He looked so indignant that Pointer laughed.

“I’m surprised at him!” the superintendent went on. Then he cooled down. “But after all, she’s his patient. He’s a cautious doctor. Now what about you? What have you learnt—anything bearing out the theory of Miss Bruton and the Don being in it?”

“Theory?” questioned Pointer. “You mean guess.’”

“Well, the kind of guess then that generally takes one to the end of the case in one stride,” Tomlinson said ungrudgingly. “Now, what else have you learnt?”

Pointer summed up what Ayres and what Santley had said. It was the artist’s words that most interested Tomlinson. Whereas it had been Mr. Ayres’ information which had seemed most important to Pointer.

“Tearing passion!” Tomlinson now repeated. “Because Mrs. Moncrieff, poor little woman, wouldn’t agree to divorce her husband.”

“Like to see what she recited?” Pointer held out the book at the poem in question.

Tomlinson looked surprised, but he read it carefully, then he whistled.

“Put that, together with what Mr. Goodenough saw in her holding up that Don’s sword, and you get—what happened, eh? It would have been better for Mrs. Moncrieff if she had fallen in with their suggestion.”

Pointer said nothing.

“That’s about the ticket, eh?” Tomlinson pressed.

“What about those words of his to her, ‘You can’t escape what’s coming to you’?” Pointer asked.

“Well, what about them?” Tomlinson inquired frankly. “As you evidently have the gift of second sight, there’s no need for me to fag my brains.”

“Two young women, one young man—“ mused the seer aloud. “One goes to Paris, the other marries the man. Friendship apparently breaks off. No meeting between any of them until Mrs. Phillimore gets Miss Bruton to come down here as her daughter’s old friend, because of her supposed, or real, animosity to the husband. Mr. Santley bore out that idea. So does Mr. Ayres.”

“Only Mr. Goodenough saw through it,” Tomlinson murmured. “But I follow you, well?”

“The husband and the wife’s friend have a talk together, the husband storms up to his room where his wife is and there is a scene which she ends, we think, by her snatching up an open razor and threatening to kill herself if he persists in doing something—this latter is but fancy, of course—but it seems, to continue the fancy, that what he has told her is that he and Miss Bruton are going away together…”

“...She objects, and is murdered within little more than an hour,” Tomlinson finished.

“We think that is linked, but we don’t know that it is,” Pointer reminded him.

“Miss Bruton’s fury!” Tomlinson said with confidence.

“Sounds to me as though there had been some act of treachery in the past,” Pointer said slowly. “That past when they were all three meeting each other...before he married Miss Phillimore. Yes, I’m inclined to suspect that she thought herself in the past the victim of some act of treachery on the Major’s part; whereas the treachery was on Mrs. Moncrieff’s part, or Miss Phillimore as she was then. Say that Miss Bruton’s hatred of him, on which Mrs. Phillimore banked, was due to this idea! That he had seemed to care for her in the old days, or had really cared; and that Miss Phillimore had stepped in between them and tricked them both, suppressed their letters, cooked up tales...There are ways…”

“Miss Bruton thinks she has been let down by the Major, and has no idea of the part you think Miss Phillimore may have played,…” Tomlinson said. “Certainly, that poem she chose bears out this idea. Though that’s nothing to go on. When does she learn the truth? Supposing this idea is the truth.”

“Yesterday. Just before that scene between the husband and wife which so shocked Mr. Santley. I think some chance word of Miss Bruton’s to him, or his to her, told both of them the truth...he rushed up, and taxed his wife with what she had done. And threatened that he was now going away with Miss Bruton, or at any rate, going to separate from Mrs. Moncrieff, without further delay...She thinks of the invitations to the tableaux.”

“She loved him,” Tomlinson said gruffly.

“True. There seems no doubt of that in any one’s mind. But still, the invitations might have weighed if he had threatened to leave the house with Miss Bruton at once. She bluffs with the razor and gains time. And then?” Pointer’s eyes were filled with thought. “What then?” he repeated under his breath.

“Miss Bruton killed her,” Tomlinson said promptly, “and the Don, as you say, spoilt her little plan. And of all the ghastly treacheries, that murder was the worst! No matter what lay behind it.”

“Theoretically, it’s the next step in this tragedy. But in reality? It would take a very unusual type of woman. Of a brutal as well as of a passionate character…” Pointer was speaking more to himself than to the superintendent.

“I didn’t pay much attention to her one way or the other at the time,” Tomlinson admitted. “I intended, of course, to have it out with her later about that hanky-panky with the keys.”

“Yet her character is nil important,” Pointer finished, “only an interview could help one to make up one’s mind.”

“As you say, an interview,” Tomlinson said, pursing up his lips.

“Which Doctor Andrews does not want us to have,” Pointer’s tone was full of meaning.

“Oh, he’s all right!” Tomlinson was startled.

“Doubtless. But he doesn’t intend us to see Miss Bruton yet awhile. He would hardly want to keep her out of our way if he thought her connected with the tragedy, but if she had said something, murmured something, when coming out of her stupor which suggested that she and Moncrieff had been in love?...He might want to give her time to pull herself together.”

“And it’s true, the wife’s death didn’t upset her, but it was only after the Major was dead that she took that overdose.” Tomlinson wished he had a clearer idea of Miss Bruton. As he confessed, he had hardly glanced at her, thinking that her turn would come later.

“If this was how the murder was done, which means why it was done,” Pointer said next, “it may be impossible to prove it. Even if we ourselves become certain that we’re right, it may be impossible to make an arrest.” He stood a moment frowning down at his shoes. “I think I’ll have a look at her studio. You have its number? I ought to get some idea of her character from her work.”

Tomlinson could not come, but Pointer made for the address in question. There was no answer to his ring, and he let himself in, finally, with one of his own keys. He was not, however, Pointer of New Scotland Yard, but a grizzled artist with a flowing beard and a big black hat. He was a Monsieur Verhaeren Claes, a Flemish artist on a visit to London, who had knocked in vain, tentatively tried the door, and “found” to his surprise, that he could walk in. But he was not challenged, and Pointer made a very careful tour of the rooms. At first he found only the strange, violent-hued walls, a few sketches of Don Plutarco in the bull-ring, evidently recently laid on the table beside an old box with her modeling tools in it. But a moment later, he too found the drawer, and the dusty little wax figure of Moncrieff with a pin run through its heart. Run in too in very much the same way that the sword had been run through his wife’s. So she really had hated him; if this was her work, as one could presume it to be. She had hated him, and then melted into tears on his breast, when she learned of the baselessness of that hate? There was no evidence here connecting her with the crime. No letters from the past. But a charming head laughed at him from among a group of plaster masks on one wall. It was Mrs. Moncrieff’s; and a dainty rogue she looked, with that arch sly smile…

Among a group of men’s masks on the other side of the room, Pointer found one which had been badly crushed in. The damage had evidently been done some time ago…

Someone came whistling a Brahms melody up to the door. A ring followed. Pointer, opening, found an elderly man, shabby and bright-eyed, who stepped briskly in, and without a word walked into the inner room, and took up a palette knife.

“Mine.” And with that he slipped it into his pocket and turned to go. He would have gone, too, without another word, but for the chief inspector’s question.

“I take it you are Miss Bruton’s last tenant?”

The man nodded, he looked distrait and in a hurry. Then, as Pointer still stood by the door, he looked him over.

“And you’re the new one, eh? Architect then, or engineer?” and again he made for the door. Pointer was amused at the way in which his disguise had failed to convince the man. He decided to be as brief himself.

“Who smashed that?” he asked, waving his hand towards the unrecognizable plaster mask.

“The Bruton. Last thing she did before slamming the door behind her.”

“Interesting,” Pointer murmured. “Why did she want to smash up Major Moncrieff’s face?”

“Dunno.” And the intruder again looked hopefully at the door,

“Was it a good likeness?” Pointer asked.

The other gave him a surprised look, as might a man who hears an animal begin to talk. He waited, with inquiry in his eye.

“I happen to know what the Major looks like,” Pointer explained, “and I wondered whether she is really as good as people say she is. But what about a smoke? Pipe, I fancy,” and he held out his pouch.

The other laughed, and for the first time seemed to become human. He had been before a walking thought, a cogitation on legs.

“My name’s Humphreys,” he said, filling his pipe. “Good stuff, this. Rather like my own. The Bruton’s work?...She was a puling babe when she did those things,” he waved a contemptuous pipe stem around, “but she grew up in Paris. Some do, you know. Atmosphere. Docs exist. Grew up in a few months. She got backbone...there’s no backbone, or any other bone, in those things. I suppose you’ve met her, as you are taking on the studio?”

“Not yet. I hope to meet her this evening. But I am particularly interested in that mask. The why it was broken. Reasons of my own. Valid ones. Not just curiosity.”

“You’ll have to ask her. She’ll tell you—if she feels like it. All I know is that when she cleared out for Paris, she left a few things behind, as I did my palette knife, and came back for them, wished me luck, half closed the door—I had started some work—and then came back, snatched up my mallet and biff—biff—Moncrieff was no more. She looked as though she enjoyed herself too while doing it,” mused Mr. Humphreys. “Women love violence, you know. And to see that little meek mouse, as she was then, in that mood amused me.”

“Well, small blame to her, if Moncrieff had treated her badly,” Pointer said.

The other looked mildly interested and smoked on.

“Wasn’t there some talk of their being engaged before he married Miss Phillimore?” Pointer indicated the little face opposite.

“Never heard of it,” said Humphreys.

“Did you know them well?”

The other nodded, and yawned with engaging frankness. “I think I’ll be getting back. My plaster ought to be just about dry enough now to work on,” he murmured; explaining in the last sentence why he had stayed at all. And this time, Mr. Humphreys succeeded in getting away. Pointer looked a moment at the crushed mask.

So it had been Moncrieff. As it had been Moncrieff’s little effigy which she kept transpierced. She had returned too to demolish it. And she had been a meek mouse in those days; while her going to Paris was only some six months before the marriage of Moncrieff and Miss Phillimore. And Goodenough’s story. That embrace, those tears? Pointer had thought him telling the truth, and genuinely puzzled by it. Also, there seemed no reason for the tale...for, unless Goodenough were himself the murderer, he would not know what the police suspected. To them his odd story pointed to the young woman and to her Spanish friend as being possibly implicated in this really horrible crime. But to any man ignorant of the truth, it would seem only a reason the more why Moncrieff might have shot himself. Moncrieff’s face smashed, Moncrieff’s effigy pierced by that pin. He must wait until he could have a word with her before finding out where she stood in the whole affair. But the Spaniard...with the bruised wrist...Pointer would have a look at him and see if he had any other bruises.

Back at Beechcroft, he found that Tomlinson had just had an interview with Miss Bruton. The doctor had tried to head him off, but the superintendent would not take no. And finally Doctor Andrews had allowed him across the threshold where Flavelle Bruton lay on a couch her face upturned to the ceiling, looking, at a quick glance, almost as lifeless as Lavinia or Major Moncrieff. Tomlinson told the chief inspector that the only thing that he had got out of her was the fact that she had rushed to the doors and locked them when she saw that Mrs. Moncrieff had been killed “by a dreadful accident.” She said that this was done in order to give the Major a chance to do what she felt sure he would do—kill himself. She maintained that she had not thought of the police, but only of the friendly interference of the men in the house. Mr. Ayres, Santley, Goodenough, and young Pusey. As the police had found, she had not been seen in the audience after her recitation, but she could, or would, say only that she had gone immediately to her room to rest.

“Gone immediately upstairs to her room, is all right,” Tomlinson allowed grudgingly, “but as to resting? Not much! Dashed into that sheikh’s rig and rushed down to finish Mrs. Moncrieff, more likely! She dashed back again into the room just before she locked the doors. No one saw her, but she would have had time to tear off the sheikh’s robes and fling them up to the Don…”

“Mr. Goodenough says he was sitting on the window-seat facing down the passage,” Pointer reminded him.

“I forgot for the moment. What happened was that she dashed into the room where the Don already was, the property room, flung out of those robes, dashed down the ladder and in by one of the windows. She could just do it.”

Pointer agreed that there would have been time for it. He said that he would like a talk with Miss Bruton himself. Perhaps by himself. Tomlinson was only too glad to hear him say so. He felt, he said, corners and ends sticking out of her silence. The ends and the corners of a multitude of things hidden behind it.

Pointer sent up his name, and asked for an interview. A reply came down at once that Miss Bruton would see him now.

Pointer gave the figure lying on the couch a very keen look as he bowed over the hand she held out. A beautiful hand, he thought it. Not small. Not slender. Your narrow-knuckled hand too often means a nagger. But this had that peculiar effect of having brains in it, which now and again a hand or a foot can convey. The thumb was if anything on the delicate side. Not the thumb of a violent person, though it was the hand of a nervous, high-spirited woman.

Pointer did not think any woman with those hands, above all with those thumbs, could by any possibility, for any reason whatsoever, have butchered Mrs. Moncrieff. He looked at the face turned half towards him, though the eyes seemed to hardly see him, so obsessed and haunted were they by another sight, he thought. He had heard her spoken of as handsome, though Tomlinson, the admirer of Mrs. Lavinia Moncrieff, would not allow that there could be any comparison between the two women. But this Flavelle Bruton was ugly. Her complexion was sallow and mottled. Her eyes, deep set with purple rings below them, seemed small and lifeless. Her hair was rough and tumbled.

“Why have you come?” she asked tonelessly. “I can’t be of any use to you.” She closed her eyes as though to keep their expression hidden.

“Miss Bruton,” he began gently. “You think that Major Moncrieff killed his wife intentionally, and then, in belated remorse, shot himself. I think both ideas are quite wrong. No, I can’t at the moment explain further. But I assure you that if you are suffering from that thought, you are suffering needlessly.”

In her eyes Pointer could read the question as to how the Major could have used the Spaniard’s sword instead of his stage rapier, could have missed the opening and thrust it through his wife’s heart, by a blunder; could have killed himself for any other reason but horror at what he had done. She was staring at him with white, parted lips.

“It will be difficult to prove,” he added. “Now, I want you, if you are innocent of her death—“ and on that she fell back as though he had struck her.

“You and Major Moncrieff loved each other once, did you not?” Pointer asked gently; “and she came between you? I rather thought so, and that you—both of you—only learnt the truth yesterday just before the rehearsal. The Major taxed his wife with whatever it was that she had done—treachery of some kind probably—and because of what happened immediately afterwards, you think he killed her in a fit of fury, and then, horrified at what he had let his hand do, shot himself. Now, that is not how we see it. Not in the least. Will you be frank with me? I assure you that, unless it’s a confession of guilt, which is not what I am expecting, whatever you tell me will be kept strictly confidential. Do you want us to get at the real facts? Those facts which I believe were quite different from what you think? If so, please be frank, and tell me exactly how things were between you and the two Moncrieffs.”

She jumped to her feet. “I will.” She looked as though chains were tumbling off her. “Oh, if you—“ She stopped herself, put a hand to her head, and sat down dizzily.

“Don’t spare anybody,” Pointer urged her. “Nil de mortuis is very poor counsel in such cases. Miss Bruton.”

She looked up at him—a long searching look. Then: “Sit down here nearer to me,”—she motioned to a chair—“and I’ll tell you the whole story. I will do as you say, I won’t spare anybody—Lavinia, or Harry, or myself. Harry Moncrieff and I met in my studio and fell in love with each other six years ago. But an aunt on whom I was entirely dependent was a strange domineering woman. She had set her heart on my marrying a young man, the son of a man with whom she herself had once been in love. She was certain that I could have him, if I tried. I think she was a little mad on that point. And I was terrified of her. Always had been. I was timid in those days. I didn’t dare tell her the truth, that I had fallen head over ears in love with Captain Moncrieff. He wasn’t Major then. Mind you, Chief Inspector, looking back last night and all since, I see things in their true light. I realize, oh, completely, that my own cowardice is the real cause of all this tragedy. But I was a timid little slave.”

Something in Pointer’s gaze made her repeat. “Five years ago I was just that. Cowed by my aunt’s browbeating to a degree that seems as comic to me as incredible to you, I suppose. She thought that Captain Moncrieff was attracted to my great friend Lavinia Phillimore. He and I used her as a cloak; believing that she was absolutely on our side. We corresponded through her. Or rather we started that way. Later on, neither of us got the other’s letters. She swore to each of us that she had handed them in person, and as my aunt and I lived in a suburb, Dulwich, and as both Lavinia and Harry Moncrieff lived in town, it was all so easy for her. We simply, each of us, ceased to hear from the other. Engagements to meet were made and not kept. Her plan worked. In time I didn’t see much of Lavinia either. Then, I summoned my courage to life; decided that I would sink or swim by my own effort; and I went to Paris. There I finally got a letter from Miss Phillimore telling me that she was going to be married to Harry Moncrieff. That she didn’t love him, but she liked him. That he had told her as soon as I left England that he had made a mistake in thinking he cared for me, whereas it was really her whom he loved. It seemed natural. Lavinia was lovely, chief inspector, far lovelier then than she was this last year. She had great charm, and many good qualities. I saw no reason to question what she wrote me, and we remained friends. But we did not try to meet. When, the other day, her mother heard that I was back in England, she asked me to go down and see what could be done to help Lavinia. I ought to have refused. Yes, yes!” She spoke as though Pointer had murmured some polite negative. “I ought to have refused! I knew as much even then. But I hated him so much that I wanted to find him utterly a brute. Mrs. Phillimore said he was slowly killing Lavinia. I thought him capable of any treachery.” She looked up with a sudden flash of green in her eyes which appeared to enlarge them beyond belief. Then, even as Pointer looked into them, they shone quite blue, so that it seemed as though the green must have been a mistake. “I wanted to find him all that I thought him,” she repeated somberly. “To justify the hate of him that I felt.” And Pointer knew that in the pause that followed she, like himself, was thinking of a waxen effigy pierced by a red-hot pin. “Oh, I don’t white-wash my reason for coming down here,” she went on. Then she looked at him with a genuinely seeking glance for the first time, ““I wonder if you have ever stayed in a house where your host loathed you? It was a quaint sensation, and to me all bitter and unjust, an amusing one. I wasn’t any more in love with Major Moncrieff—“ she leant a little forward, and her face now had lost its sallowness and showed itself in its beautiful configuration, “not in the least, but I was very much in hate with him. Lavinia was charming. And how she loved Harry! She tried to hide it. She even spoke quite coolly of him to me, but it showed in her every word and look. But her mother was right, she was not happy. She lived in some sort of constant dread. He never went out in his car but she didn’t grow pale. There never came a noise which might have been a shot, though only a burst tire, that didn’t seem to turn her to stone. Lying here in misery these last hours, I’ve thought—wondered—if she had some sort of premonition.”

Pointer said nothing. This dread and fear on Lavinia Moncrieff’s part might but be due to the engagement which he believed bound her husband to a firm of motor-car makers, or it might be due to something more sinister. But the first idea would amply justify it.

“And then, yesterday—was it only yesterday, or was it years and years ago?”

“Yesterday,” he prompted gently, for she really had lost all count of time for the moment. No one who has ever suffered anguish, or true joy, needs to learn that there is no such thing as Time. The heart and the mind both know that they function outside of its span.

“Yesterday morning, then, just before those who had to change were beginning to start dressing for the rehearsals, he and I happened to be alone in the dining-room. A picture I had given Lavinia which was not hung, she had hung hardly any of her own things, was there. Mr. Ayres had suggested that it would be just what was wanted in A Zoffany Conversation Piece. He had got it down from the attic and stood it back to front, and on the back was a sketch of Harry Moncrieff. I had painted it just at the time that we fell in love with each other. And he came up to me and caught me by the shoulders. ‘Why did you do it, Flavelle? Why did you torture me? Why?’ And I—“ she choked; “I don’t know what I replied, but the truth came out. Mutually. Bit by bit. Letter by suppressed letter. And we knew what Lavinia had done. He burst from me finally, saying that he must see her and tax her with it.” Again Miss Bruton paused. “She told him she was going to have a baby,” she went on in a calmer tone. “She picked up his razor, left ready for him to use before the tableaux, and said that she would cut her throat there and then unless he gave her his word of honor that he would stay at least under the same roof until after the performance was over. He got the razor away from her, but she rushed screaming wildly from the room. Then she went back and repeated that if he would stay until over the weekend, without making any scene, she would be reasonable too. I don’t know what he said to her. He was mad with fury when he repeated to me what she had said. But he had given way for the moment. Somehow, it seemed to me that his anger was too big to find vent in words.”

“Had you promised to go away with him?” Pointer asked.

“No.” Flavelle Bruton looked him squarely eye to eye. “No. But he took it for granted, and that I was still in love with him.”

“You didn’t undeceive him? Why not?”

She hesitated. He thought it honestly done to express clearly what she had only felt in turmoil. “I can’t quite understand myself,” she said to that. “Time seemed to have slipped back for a few minutes just then. It was again as it had been—but without reality. It was more like a dream. A dream of something that happened when one was a child. So we were lovers again—in a dream. But as soon as he rushed off for that interview with his wife I came to myself. I love Don Plutarco Ramón, Chief Inspector, not Harry Moncrieff. But I don’t think I felt any room for love of any one just then. All I felt was fury against Lavinia! I had been her dupe! She had deliberately roused that in me against Harry Moncrieff.” Flavelle bit her lip. “I think we always find it very difficult to forgive those who call out our worst emotions, who drag us down; and I was still more enraged by the he she had told Harry. It was so clever of her! It was a he, wasn’t it? I mean that she was going to have a baby? Ask the doctor if it’s true.”

“It is not true,” Pointer replied. “The doctor has assured us of that.”

“How like Lavinia!” And something like a smile flitted for a second across Flavelle Bruton’s worn face. “I felt sure it was one when Harry told me. And, if anything, it added fresh fuel to what I felt for her! We couldn’t have more than a word or two, for I had to recite something,” and this time the smile was more genuine. “I could have raged around on the little stage and sworn myself black in the face. But I chose some lines that went with my feelings and let off steam that way. When it was over, I rushed to my room and had a cold bath. That helped, and I began to feel rather ridiculous. Also, I had to face another talk with Major Moncrieff and tell him that though something, memory—or something—had brought back the old feeling for a second, it had been only a last flash. I wanted to see him as soon as possible, for fear lest he make some arrangement with Lavinia which he wouldn’t have done had he known that I had no intention of going away with him. I thought that if I waited until the end of his own performance I should be able to speak to him as he left the stage. So I slipped into the hall, as we called the room where the tableaux were being rehearsed, just before the conjuring trick. Mrs. Moncrieff was already lying on the table. Waiting!” Flavelle Bruton’s face showed intense pallor. “I sat at the back and closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them the sword was just descending.” She looked still more ghastly. “I knew, as it flashed through the air, that he held Don Plutarco’s sword, and not the property one. I tried to call out, but no sound came from my throat. Then he rushed on. With that cry. And—“ her voice was low and all but spent, “I have told the superintendent all the rest. My one thought was to give him time—for what must be the next thing. I thought I heard a shot, but I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t dare be too sure. I didn’t want the others rushing after him. Least of all the police, when I knew they were present, rushing up to his room before—before!”

She was sitting far back in her chair now, her hands half covering her face; utterly exhausted by what she had gone through.

“And the overdose of sleeping medicine?” Pointer asked.

She raised desperately unhappy eyes to his. “I thought that if he had taken that road, so must I. I knew he thought that I still loved him. I thought I saw the result lying on the table. Poor Lavinia!” Her face quivered. “I loathe lies and deceit and treachery, and she had been guilty of them all. And yet, now, I can only think of her as a girl too madly in love to count any cost.”

She spoke with apparently deep sincerity. Was she honest? Pointer did not think that she herself had stabbed Lavinia Moncrieff. She was not the type to commit a brutal murder. But she was the type to feel deeply, to brood, to incite others, to help revolutions on their awful way. In Don Plutarco she would have a splendid weapon. Had she used it? Those words of regret for the wife’s death might well be a sham. That she no longer loved the husband, Pointer believed. Her voice had rung true in that. But could he trust it about “his” wife?

“And later, your talk with Don Plutarco Ramón?” Pointer said, after a long silence during which she and he had each been plunged in thought.

Her face flushed, green shone in her eyes for a second, then the anger faded. “That was an entirely private affair, Chief Inspector, but having told you so much, I will tell you about it. Don Plutarco had heard, or guessed, something of the talk with Harry Moncrieff. And he was desperately jealous. That is a blemish in a very noble nature. I had to tell him that for a moment, just for a short space, I had been swept off my feet, caught back as though by a tide-wave into the past, but that it was most certainly and most definitely the past. I—“ her face flushed again, but this time without anger; “I swore on his sword that the old affair was truly and really done with, and that I loved him, not Major Moncrieff. His sword is to Don Plutarco what it is to a Sikh. He told you that he left it lying on the mantel in the hall. I ran and fetched it, and laid it on a chair in the morning-room. Only chance, or someone who saw it in there, could have known where to find it. Yet Harry found it, or someone found it for him, and hung it on his belt.” Her face grew sombre again. “You say it was used by accident, that it was a genuine blunder? I can’t believe it! Yet you must have some reason?” She searched his face. A face pleasant enough at the moment, but quite unrevealing.

“We quite definitely think that the Major had no intention of killing or injuring Mrs. Moncrieff,” Pointer assured her.

Her face lit up with relief and thankfulness. But was it relief and thankfulness that nothing was as yet, apparently, suspected? In face, in voice, in bearing, she gave the impression of a fine character, built on big lines; but an impression, in a murder case, was of as much weight with the chief inspector as a feather of a butterfly’s wing.

She professed herself unable to give him any further information, and obviously needed rest. Pointer left at once. He walked away deep in thought. He did not like this case. He was always thankful when he could put women on one side as definitely out of the question as far as a crime went. He could not do so here. Love...hate...and only her word for the old love affair. There might have been nothing before Captain Moncrieff, as he then was, married Lavinia Phillimore, and any love-making since, such as the scene which Goodenough had described, might have been a very recent affair. No one else seemed to have even known of the old state of affairs. Had it ever existed? And, supposing it to have existed, was it true that her hate of the Major had passed as her old love for him had? Or was there some quite different tale behind it all, a tale which would account for an open hatred of the husband and a secret hatred of the wife too? Was this double tragedy a double revenge? A clever woman, and he felt Flavelle Bruton to be that, could have tied the Major up, supposing she had strolled in to his dressing-room and shown him some “trick knots,” but instead of “trick rope “used real jute. Yes, there were many ways in which she could have lured the Major into the chest, then, pretending it had been a joke and that she had forgotten him, lured him, got him out, handed him the revolver to hold, as part of a picture in which she was to appear, and then shot him. While downstairs another more physically capable hand than hers had dispatched the wife. The eye, the mouth of steel, of the young bull-fighter rose again before Pointer’s mind, and he felt that he was swimming in deep waters. These two might still be in the very heart of the crime.