Volume Three—Chapter One.
At Bay!
“Gracious Heavens, Clara! What brings you here?” uttered Markworth, half in astonishment, half in terror, as he suddenly turned round, and was confronted by Miss Kingscott, immediately after Susan had fallen back over the precipice.
“Murderer!” she exclaimed, standing right before him in the narrow pathway. “Thank God! I came in time to witness your crime!”
“Woman!” cried Markworth, trying to brush past her. “You’re mad! What do you mean? Let me pass!”
“Murderer!” she repeated, with withering bitterness, still blocking the way. “Murderer!”
“Good God! Clara, what do you mean?”
“Mean, Allynne Markworth? What do I mean! That you are caught at last in your own toils! I knew you were a swindler, a cheat, a villain! I can now prove that you are a murderer as well!”
“For God’s sake, Clara, do not say that! You don’t think I’ve murdered the girl?”
She still looked him full in the face, but made no reply; so he went on hurriedly—
“Why, she fell over the cliff herself! I never touched her! I was just—”
“Ha! ha!” she laughed, a cold, bitter laugh. “Tell that to the officers of justice who will be soon in pursuit of you! To the jury who will try you! To the judge who will sentence you to your final end! I don’t want to hear your lying story!”
Markworth turned pale and shook with fear. “What do you mean, woman? Who will accuse me? God knows I never meant the poor girl any harm! She slipped, and fell back by accident; and I was just hastening down to her assistance when you—you—”
“Murderer!”
“Let me go, woman!” he cried, excitedly, shoving past the governess, who threw her arms round him and tried to hold him back.
“She’s dying, perhaps! I’ll be too late! Curse you, let me go!”
“Help! Help! Murder!” she screamed. “You’re mad! Let me go at once or it will be the worse for you.” And he struggled with her to get away, while the air rung with her loud screams for help. At length he got one arm free, although she still clung with desperation to him. “Curse you!” he muttered, between his clenched teeth, raising his fist and dealing her a savage blow in the face. “You’ve brought it on yourself!”
Another half-uttered scream was checked on her lips, and she sank back in a heap on the ground, while Markworth rushed past her, and flew rather than ran down the heights.
In spite of lung logic, Clara Kingscott’s cries for help remained unheard. No one came to her assistance; and when she recovered her consciousness after the insensibility produced by Markworth’s blow, she found herself cold and alone, lying stretched out along the side of the narrow path where she had fallen. And he? Where was he?
Gone!
After one half-stupefied thought as to where she was, she recollected all, and nerved herself up to the determination of following Markworth to the death! The blood was still trickling down her face from the dastardly blow she had received: it animated her with additional strength and fresh courage; and she seemed like a tigress, and snarled, as it were, at the sight of her own blood!
Rising to her feet, she nearly stumbled at first from stiffness and faintness, but by force of will she quickly recovered her strength, and in a few moments felt better, and able to walk.
She had marked the spot where Susan had disappeared; thither she bent her steps, and gazed down into the deep descent, hidden now, and black with the dark veil of night.
Turning round, and retracing her steps down the winding path, she proceeded to search below. As she projected round an abrupt turn of the road she jostled against a sergent de ville—mutual astonishment—explanations.
Speaking rapidly to him in his native tongue, with which she was even better conversant than Markworth, and knew almost as well as a genuine Parisienne, she represented matters to the guardian of the peace. “A murder and an assault has been committed,” she said, eagerly gesticulating in her emotion.
“I saw the villain throw a girl over that precipice above, and she or her body must be here! Let us search for her; help me to arrest the murderer! Have you heard no cries, seen no one?”
No, the sergent de ville had seen no one: he had only just come up the road: the officer whom he had relieved had reported no disturbance.
“Had madame cried out? Mon Dieu! really? He had heard no cries, in faith! It was very late for madame to be out—did she know what time it was?”
“I suppose it is nearly ten o’clock,” replied Miss Kingscott.
“Ma foi! Why it is close on morning. Madame cannot be well”—he meant that the lady, who certainly looked very bedraggled and disorderly, was something infinitely worse.
“I tell you, officer,” exclaimed the governess, stamping her foot, and speaking angrily, “I am not mad or drunk; and, no matter what time it is—night or morning—I am telling you the truth! I know the man that has done this; his name is Markworth, and an Englishman; and I saw him shove the girl over the precipice, for I was close behind him at the time! I tried to stop him. He struck me; here is the cut on my forehead; you can see for yourself that I don’t lie. The blow made me faint, and I must have been insensible much longer than I supposed, but it is not too late! We may catch the villain yet. It is your duty to aid me! But let us first search for the girl; her body must be here!”
Although strongly inclined to believe that the lady who addressed him was under the influence of absinthe or eau de vie, and that she had lost her way amongst the heights, and tumbling down had hurt herself, thus accounting for her blood-stained face and wild appearance, the sergent de ville was somewhat thrown off his first-formed opinion by her enthusiasm and the coherency of her story. He accordingly adjusted his lantern, and they looked about together in silence for some time. However, when no body of any murdered person was to be found, no traces of a sanguinary struggle to be seen, and everything looked as usual about the place, the sergent de ville returned to his original opinion.
“I said Madame was not well!” he observed, in an aggrieved tone. “She had better go home to bed, and not be talking of any fabulous murders! Where does Madame reside?”
“I tell you I saw the thing with my own eyes! He must have carried the body away and hidden it!”
“Hush! ma petite,” said the man, soothingly. “Go home: it will be all right to-morrow!”
“I won’t go home. I am quite in my senses, and it will be your fault if that man escapes. You ought to do your duty and arrest him. I shall complain to the Maire! Where does he live? I must see him! Take me there at once.”
“C’est impossible!” replied the officer, coldly; “but Madame will find that I will do my duty,” he added, meaningly.
“I must see the Maire! The murderer will escape!” went on the governess, hysterically.
The sergent de ville placed her arm firmly within his own.
“Madame will come with me,” he said, and he led her away.
He was not going to wake up the Maire or Juge de Paix at that late hour of the night, or rather early hour of the morning, with such a cock and a bull story from a drunken woman. Why, he might lose his promotion should he disturb the slumbers of his superiors!
Finding, therefore, that his entreaties for her to go home were treated only as deaf words, and that she would neither go herself nor tell where she lived, the astute officer conducted her carefully to the guard-house, under the plea of showing her where the Maire lived in order to get her along quietly, and had her comfortably locked up.
The tables were turned with a vengeance! Markworth had got off scot free; and here was Clara Kingscott locked up in a police-station for the night as a disorderly character! Some allowance must be made, however, for the sergent de ville. Her story was so improbable, and she looked so strange and talked so excitedly, that the mistake might have been made even by one of our very bright and intelligent guardians of the peace, who never make such mistakes as, say, locking up a dying man perhaps on the charge of inebriety!
Be that as it may, however, there was Clara Kingscott incarcerated in a cell, and powerless of action. There are strange things happen sometimes in fiction; but stranger things often occur in real life.