Crow's Inn Tragedy (13 page)

Rose Cottage looked quite an ideal dwelling for an artist. It was a black and white timbered cottage standing back from the road, its garden for the most part surrounded by a high hedge. Over the walls creepers were running riot. Later on there would be a wealth of colour, but to-day only the
pyrus japonica
was putting forth adventurous rosy blossoms. A wicket gate gave access to the gravelled path running up to the rustic porch between borders gay with crocuses—purple and white and gold.

“Evidently cars are not expected here,” John Steadman remarked as he and the inspector alighted and walked up to the front door.

There was apparently no bell, but there was a shining brass knocker. Inspector Furnival applied himself to it with great energy.

The door was opened by a pleasant-looking woman, who was hastily donning a white apron.

“Mr. Hoyle?” the inspector queried.

“Not at home,” the woman said at once.

The inspector hesitated. “Can you tell me when he will be at home?”

The woman shook her head. “I cannot indeed. He is away on a sketching expedition, and one never knows when he will be back. It may be a week or a month or longer.”

“Oh, dear!” The inspector looked at Mr. Steadman. “This is most unfortunate! I was particularly anxious to see him to-day. However, I suppose I must write. I wonder if you would let me just scribble a line here? I should esteem it a great favour if you would.”

For a moment the woman looked doubtful, then after a keen glance at the two men she led the way to a sitting-room that apparently ran from back to front of the house. She indicated a writing-table.

“You will find pens and ink there, sir.”

The inspector sat down. “A very pretty room this,” he began conversationally. “I wonder if I am right in thinking that you are Mrs. Hoyle?”

“Oh, dear, no, sir.” The woman laughed. “I am only Mr. Hoyle's housekeeper. I have lived with him ever since he came to Burford.”

“And that must be a dozen years or more ago now. And I haven't seen him a dozen times, I should say, the inspector went on. “Dear, dear, how time flies! His daughter must be grown up, I suppose, he went on, examining the pens before him with meticulous care.”

“Miss Cecily? Oh, yes; a fine-looking young lady too. She will be here for good very soon.”

Meanwhile John Steadman, standing near the door, was glancing appraisingly round the room. It was essentially a man's room. The chairs, square solid table, sideboard and writing-table were all of oak, very strong, the few easy chairs were leather covered and capacious, there was nothing unnecessary in the room. Near the French window looking on to the garden at the back of the house there stood an easel with an untidy pile of sketches piled one on top of the other upon it. A table close at hand held more sketches, tubes of paint, a palette and various paint brushes. Steadman walked across and took one of the water-colours from the easel.

“I like this,” he said, holding it from him at arm's length. “It is a charming little view of one of the forest glades near here, taken at sunset. Is there any possibility of this being for sale?”

“Well, I don't rightly know, sir,” the housekeeper said, coming over to him. “Mr. Hoyle do sell some of his pictures, I know. But it is always in London. I have never known him do it down here.”

John Steadman smiled.

“Well, I shouldn't think there would be many customers down here. But I could do with a couple. This one—and another to make a pair with it.”

“Well, sir, perhaps you will write to Mr. Hoyle about it,” the housekeeper suggested. “I couldn't say anything about it.”

“Of course not,” the barrister assented. He looked very closely at the picture for a minute, and then put it back on the easel. “Well, I must leave it at that, and hope to persuade Mr. Hoyle to part with it when he comes back.”

As he spoke there came a loud knock at the door. He looked at the housekeeper.

“It's all right, sir,” she said composedly. “It is only the baker's man for orders, and my niece will go to the door. She always comes up twice a week to give me a hand with the work. Me not being so young as I might be.”

“We none of us are, ma'am,” the inspector said with a chuckle as he sealed his letter and placed it in a conspicuous place on the writing-table. “Not that you have much to complain about,” he added gallantly as he rose.

The housekeeper smiled complacently as she saw them off to the little garden. The inspector was in an expansive mood and stopped to admire the crocuses as they passed.

“Well?” Mr. Steadman said as they seated themselves in the car before starting.

The inspector waited until they had started before he replied, then he said quietly:

“Well, Mr. Steadman, sir?”

“Well?” the barrister echoed. “I hope you have found what you expected, inspector.”

“I hardly know what I did expect,” the inspector said candidly. “Except that, if matters are as I suspect, Hoyle is certainly not the man to give himself away.”

The barrister coughed.

“And yet I noticed one small thing that may help you, inspector. You saw that water-colour sketch?”

“The one you are going to buy,” the inspector assented with a grin. “Ay. I should like to have had a good look round at those drawings. But that blessed housekeeper wasn't giving us any chances.”

“Not that she knew of,” John Steadman said quietly. “Did you notice the big ‘Christopher Hoyle' in the left-hand corner of the painting, inspector?”

“I saw it,” said the inspector, “but it didn't tell me much.”

“No. That alone did not,” John Steadman went on. “But I looked at that and I looked at several of the others. And I am as sure as I can be without subjecting them to a test that in each case that big flourishing Christopher Hoyle has been scrawled with a paint brush on the top of another signature. One, moreover, that from the little I could see of it bore no sort of resemblance to Christopher Hoyle. What do you make of that, inspector?”

“Is Mr. Christopher Hoyle a man with two names?” the inspector questioned. “Or has he some reason to wish to appear to be an artist in simple Burford society when in reality he is nothing of the kind?”

“The latter, I imagine,” John Steadman said after a pause. “Because—I don't know whether you know anything of painting, inspector?”

“Bless you, not a thing!” the inspector said energetically. “If I have to do with a picture case, I have to call in experts! But you mean—”

“Judging from the three or four sketches I was able to examine I should say that none of them—no two of them were done by the same hand. There is as much difference in painting as in handwriting, you know, inspector.”

“I see!” The detective sat silent for a minute, his eyes scanning the flying landscape. “Well, it is pretty much what I expected to hear,” he said at last. “It strengthens my suspicions so far—”

“I can't understand your suspicions,” John Steadman said impatiently. “This man Hoyle is a bit of a humbug, evidently, but what connection can there be between him and Luke Bechcombe's murder?”

“His daughter?” the inspector suggested without looking round.

The barrister shrugged his shoulders. “That girl is no murderess.”

“No,” agreed the inspector. “But she is helping the guilty to escape.”

John Steadman raised his eyebrows. “Who is the guilty?”

For answer Inspector Furnival's keen, ferret eyes looked back at him, focused themselves on the barrister's face as though they would wring some truth from it.

But John Steadman's face would never give him away. In his day he had been one of the keenest cross examiners at the bar. His eyes had never been more blandly expressionless than now as they met the inspector's inquiringly.

Defeated, the detective sank back in his corner of the car with a deep breath, whether of relief or disappointment John Steadman could not tell.

They were just entering Burford again. Before the car stopped the inspector said quietly:

“Don't you know, sir?”

“I do not!” said John Steadman, looking him squarely in the face.

“Don't you guess?”

“Guessing,” said the barrister sententiously, “is a most unprofitable employment. One I never indulge in.”

“Ah well!” said the inspector as the car stopped before the door of the inn. “I don't know, sir. And you don't guess. We will leave it at that. Well, landlord”—as that worthy came to the door rubbing his hands—“we are back upon your hands for tea. Mr. Hoyle was out.”

Anthony Collyer got out of his bus at Lancaster Gate Tube. He looked round, but there was no sign of the figure he was hoping to see. He crossed the road and entered Kensington Gardens, stopping at the gate to buy some chocolates of the kind that Cecily particularly affected.

Near the little sweet-stall a small ragged figure was skulking. In his preoccupation Anthony did not even see him. Inside the Gardens he turned into a sheltered walk on the right flanked on either side by clumps of evergreens. There was a touch of chill in the wind, but the sun was shining brightly and through the short grass the daffodils were already adventurously poking their gay yellow heads. The urchin who had been lurking by the palings followed slowly. He got over on the grass in a leisurely fashion and ensconced himself out of sight in the shadow of the evergreens.

Anthony had time to glance at his watch more than once and even to grow a little impatient before Cecily appeared.

Then one glance was enough to show him that there was something amiss with the girl. There were big blue half-circles beneath her eyes, and the eyes themselves were dim and sunken. All her pretty colouring looked blurred as she gave her hand to Anthony, and he saw that it was trembling and felt that it was cold even through her glove. He held it in both of his and chafed it.

“You are cold, dear,” he said solicitously. “Are your furs warm enough? The wind is treacherous to-day.”

“Oh, I don't know. Yes, of course I am warm enough—I mean it does not matter,” Cecily said incoherently. “I—I wrote to you—you know—because I wanted to see you.”

Tony looked round. No one was in sight. He drew her to a seat beside the path, knowing nothing of the unseen watcher hidden in the rhododendrons.

“I hoped you did. I always want to see you, Cecily,” he said simply.

Cecily shivered away from him. “You—you must not.”

Anthony stared at her.

“Must not—what?” he said blankly. “Want to see you, do you mean?”

Cecily nodded.

“Oh, but it is no use telling me not to do that,” Anthony said quaintly, “I shall want to see you every day as long as I live.”

“You will not be able to,” Cecily said desperately. “Because now—to-day—I am going right out of your life—you will never see me again.”

“Oh!” For a time Anthony said no more. His clasp of her hand relaxed. Very quietly he returned to her the possession of it. “I see,” he said at last. “You are giving me the chuck, are you not?”

The girl looked at him with frightened, miserable eyes.

“Tony, I can't help it.”

“Naturally you can't,” Tony assented moodily. “You couldn't be expected to. I never was anything but a wretched match at the best of times—even with the money Uncle Luke left me—but now, now that every damned rag of a paper in the country is saying out as plainly as they dare that I am a murderer, it settles the matter, of course.”

Cecily interrupted him with a little cry.

“Tony! You know it isn't that!”

A gleam of hope brightened Anthony Collyer's eyes.

“Not that? Is it just that you are sick of me then? Heaven knows I wouldn't blame you for that. I was always a dull sort of chap. But I love you, Cecily.”

The girl's big tragic eyes looked at his bent head with a sudden wave of tenderness in their brown depths. “And I love you, Tony,” she said beneath her breath. “But that does not matter.”

“Doesn't it?” A sudden fire leaped into Anthony's deep-set eyes. “Why, that is just the one thing that matters—the only thing that does matter. If you love me, I shall never go out of your life, Cecily.”

“Oh, yes, you will,” the girl said, putting his warm outstretched hand back determinedly. “And it doesn't matter that we love one another, not one bit. Because I am not going to marry anyone.”

“Of course you are!” said Anthony, staring at her. “You are going to marry me. Do you really think I am going to let you back out of it now?”

“You can't help yourself,” Cecily said, still with that miserable note of finality in her voice. “It is no use, Tony. You have just got to forget me.”

“Forget you!” Anthony said scornfully. “That is so likely, isn't it? Now, dear, what is this bogy that you have conjured up that is going to separate us? You say it has nothing to do with me?”

“No, no! Of course it hasn't!”

“And you haven't fallen in love with anyone else?”

“Don't be silly, Tony!” There was a momentary irritation in the clear tones. But something in the accent, even in the homely words themselves roused fresh hopes in Anthony's heart.

“Then it is something some one else has said,” he hazarded, “or done.”

For a moment Cecily did not answer. She pressed her lips very closely together. At last she said slowly:

“That is all that I can tell you, Tony. I just wanted to say that and—good-bye.”

“Good-bye!” Tony repeated scoffingly. “Nonsense, dear! You say that this mysterious something has nothing to do with you or with me personally. And for the rest of the world what does it matter? Nothing counts but just you and me, sweetheart.”

“Oh, but it does!” Cecily contradicted firmly. “We—we can't think only of ourselves. It—it is no use, Tony. My mind is made up.”