THE WOMAN IN THE CASE?
There was no call during the long watches of the night, no untoward happenings of any sort. Cleek, sleeping with one eye open, rose now and again and crept silent-footed out into the passage, doing a little bit of listening in upon his own account. But nothing of any moment happened. And so when at length the house was astir, and the sound of servants with their brushes and brooms began to make their usual early-morning clamour, he shook himself awake, got to his feet, and went off into the bathroom, where Ross Duggan's safety-razor worked wonders with his over-night beard, and a wash under the cold-water tap still more.
Returning, he stopped at the door of that chamber of tragedy where the one-time master of all this vast inheritance of stone and moorland lay, Death wiping from his aged face every line and leaving it as smooth as a child's.
"I want to have a little poke round for myself," he told the constable on duty outside the door, who instantly let him in, as became a representative of Scotland Yard. "You might send someone up to the Inn of the Three Fishers with this note, and see that it gets delivered immediately into the hands of a chap named Dollops. It's important."
"Very good, sir."
"And in the meantime, I'll see that no one enters this room, I promise you. Inspector Petrie himself will be around presently. And Superintendent Narkom should be with us at twelve o'clock or thereabouts."
Left alone, therefore, in the early morning sunlight of that perfect June day, Cleek made his way into the still room, closed the door behind him, and then, glancing up, caught sight of the stolid back of the constable on duty outside of the courtyard window, and not being wishful to enter into conversation with him, began to poke about of his own accord.
But the room held little or no clues for him to go upon. Not in the first rough glance, at any rate. Over by the window, where it had stood upon the previous day, when Maud Duggan had shown it to him, stood the spinning wheel, innocently incongruous indeed in this room of Death. He gave it a casual glance, and then turned to the desk-top where a pile of papers lay scattered in some disarray upon its leather surface.
Cleek ran his fingers quickly through these, glancing at each of them in turn.
"He was just about to alter the will, was he? Well, if that were so, the will should be here now—and it isn't," he said to himself, with suddenly upflung brows. "Queer thing! Unless someone put it away. I'll try the drawers. There should be no secrets from a detective, my poor misguided friend, and if the drawers don't answer to my fingers, I'm going to search your pockets for the key—though to steal from the dead is a ghoulish business at the best of times.... Hello, hello! Locked, of course! Brrrh! I don't fancy the task at all, but I mean to have my little look-in before any of the other members of the family get downstairs for their breakfast. So here goes."
Still mentally talking to himself, Cleek went over to the Thing that had once been Sir Andrew Duggan, and plunged his hands in the trousers' pockets without more ado. A bunch of keys rewarded the search. He ran them over adroitly in his fingers; chose one which he thought would fit the lock of the drawers, found it didn't fit, chose another, and this time was more successful. For the top left-hand drawer of that handsomely carved desk slid noiselessly open for him, stopped automatically, and gave a funny little click. In a moment he had slid down on his knees beside that gruesome figure which so impeded his progress, and slipped his fingers up under the drawer (which was half full of papers and so allowed him to do so), touched something which felt like a button, and was a button. Then the drawer came forward in his hand, and revealed at back of it another one, which at a touch of that button had dropped its front panel so that it formed a pigeon-hole. As he peered into the recesses of this, he saw a bundle of yellowed papers tied about with a faded piece of pink ribbon, and immediately drew them forth into the light.
"Whew! What a beastly dust! Well, I've met this kind of a desk before, so fortunately you're no closed book to me, my friend," he apostrophized it, as a powder of dust flew over his fingers as he touched the packet. "Here's something which wants looking into, so I'll appropriate it now, and have a squint at it later. Secretive old chap he was, then! With his secret drawers and all! Looks like a bundle of old love-letters to all intents and purposes, but written on paper that one would hardly have called suitable for such tender epistles. Commonest kind of note-paper—village note-paper." He drew a sheet from the packet and held it up to the light. "And with a water-mark of a crown and anchor.... Hello! bit of an illiterate lady, wasn't she, who penned these lines! For the spelling's pretty shaky. And signed Jeannette.... H'm. Some pretty little amour which has held such savour as to be preserved in this form until after death—poor old fellow! Well, I'll look into it later. Couldn't have been from the first Lady Duggan, for her name was Edith. Miss Duggan herself told me that. And ... Jeannette! Now, I wonder...."
But what he wondered was never recorded at that time, for just then came the sound of a soft footstep upon the hall without, the rattle of a door-handle and the gentle opening of the door itself; and Cleek had just time to whisk away the packet, and assume an appearance of stolid nonchalance, when someone came into the room on silently shod feet, stepped a few paces forward, and then, seeing him, gave out a little shriek and shut her two hands over her breast spasmodically.
"Oh!—how you startled me!" gave out Lady Paula breathlessly, as she recognized who the intruder was. "What can you be doing here, Mr. Deland? The police ... this awful tragedy."
Cleek bowed and came toward her with outstretched hand.
"My dear Lady Paula," he said suavely, "I represent the police myself. I happen to have taken up criminology many years ago, and came up here to Scotland upon a little holiday. This terrible thing that has happened brought me immediately here to do my duty and to give what little help I could to you all in your bereavement. And so here I am. I beg of you, don't stay in this apartment now. It is no place for a lady—particularly a lady so highly strung and nervous as yourself."
"But how—did you ever—come to hear about it?" she demanded, stepping back a pace or two, with her eyes carefully avoiding that Thing which lay huddled there before them—mute reminder of all the terrors that had happened the night before. "How could you have known, Mr. Deland——"
"I mentioned the fact of my profession to your stepdaughter yesterday, and she immediately summoned me here. And, of course, I came. Anything which I can do...."
"Thank you. But there is nothing—nothing! I came in now because last night I—dropped my handkerchief, and it was one which I very much value, because my dear husband gave it to me upon the anniversary of our wedding-day. Duchesse lace, Mr. Deland, and with my name embroidered across the corner. And I knew, if the police found it, that I—I should never get it back again. Everything, you see, becomes a clue, doesn't it? But it seems not to be here."
Her agitation was very apparent, and Cleek mentally registered the fact that the excuse was a tame one, and utterly untrue.
"No," he said, "it isn't here, Lady Paula. And, as you say, if it were, I could not give it to you. Go back to your room, I beg, and lie down. You look ghastly pale; and after breakfast I shall have need of your help, believe me. So go, please. And leave me to this gruesome vigil alone.... Oh, by the way, do you happen to remember, during last night's many and terrible happenings, whether the will which Sir Andrew was about to alter (I have the facts of the case, you see, from Miss Duggan herself) was put away by any member of the family? Because it isn't here, you know."
He swept his hand out across the desk-top in an expressive gesture. Her face flushed rosily, and something like a startled light, half of gladness, half of fear, showed in her wide, velvety eyes. But she shook her head.
"It was never touched—to my knowledge," she said emphatically. "And I happen to remember that fact, for in the confusion of everything that followed, when we were looking at my poor, poor husband, it fell to the ground, and Maud picked it up again and laid it over there, under those other things that my husband had been looking into. I noted the fact, even in my despair, as one does note these little trivial things in the midst of a great trouble, Mr. Deland. But it was there— I am positive. And you can't find it now?"
"No, Lady Paula."
"Oh! Then undoubtedly Maud has hidden it away somewhere, in case I might steal it, I suppose, and so do her precious brother out of his inheritance, if such a thing were possible."
The venom in her voice was like the bite of a serpent—positively poisonous, and Cleek gave her a quick, keen look.
"Hardly that, Lady Paula. And—well, I don't happen to be well up on these matters at all, the law, y'know, and all that—only the law of criminals, and that's an altogether different thing. No doubt one of the family has put it away. It will turn up in time. Now, please go away before the rest of the constables arrive. You will want every atom of your strength to see this appalling thing through, believe me, and therefore I insist that you harbour it."
She smiled up at him sadly, and turned upon her heel, her trailing pink negligée whisking across the thickly carpeted floor like the tail of some sinuous snake, weighted as it was with one heavy beaded tassel.
"Very well—if you wish," she said quietly, with an arch glance at him; but as she went something white fluttered to the ground in the wake of her, and Cleek, waiting until she had gone, closed the door softly, and then bent down and whisked it up.
It was a handkerchief—a mere wisp of gossamer, with Duchesse lace edge, and the name Paula written in embroidery across one corner of its fragile square.
A little twisted smile flitted across his face as he looked at it, and then suddenly his mouth went grim. This was obviously the handkerchief in question—and she had had it upon her person every moment of the time! So that excuse was a false one, from the start-out. Then, too, a woman who could look archly at another man over her own husband's dead body was surely no woman at all, but a harpy in woman's guise. It was ghoulish, horrible!... And if the excuse were false, what did she come for—in the early hours of the morning, when servants were only just astir in the other wing of the house, and she knew that there was that dead Thing who had been her husband to be confronted? Would a woman face a murdered man for a mere handkerchief?... She would lose a thousand such sooner, from what he knew of the feminine sex.
No, there was some other reason, and that a secret one. Was it the will? But that was already gone. Was it to remove some distinguishing clue which she feared might be found to connect her with this crime?