The Moon Rock

by Arthur J. Rees

These things fulfilled, Barrant then applied his mind to the question of Thalassa’s complicity. If Sisily’s actions on the night of her father’s death, and her subsequent flight, simplified matters to the extent of deepening the assumption of murder into a practical certainty, they added to the complexity of the case by giving it the appearance of a carefully planned crime in which Thalassa seemed to be deeply involved.

The insistent necessity of motive which should explain the events of that night with apt presumptions, threw Barrant back on the suggestion, made by Austin Turold, that it was really Sisily whom Mrs. Pendleton had detected looking through the door of the downstairs room when the other members of the family were assembled within listening to Robert Turold. Barrant told himself that Mrs. Pendleton’s suspicion of Thalassa rested on nothing more substantial than feminine prejudice, an unreasoning impulse of dislike which would leave few men alive if it always carried capital punishment in its train.

The substitution of Sisily for Thalassa provided a convincing motive for murder. The overheard revelation of her mother’s shame and her own precarious condition in the world when she might reasonably have been counting on becoming an heiress of note, were sufficient to account for the nocturnal return and an effort to entreat justice or compel silence—the alternatives depended on the type of girl. From what Mrs. Pendleton had told him of Sisily and her love for her mother—poor Mrs. Pendleton had insisted, all unwittingly, very strongly on that—Barrant had pictured her as a brooding yet passionate type of girl who might have committed the murder in a sudden frenzy of determination to prevent her father making public the unhappy secret of her mother’s life. That was an act by no means inconsistent with the temperament of a strongwilled and lonely girl, whose stormy passions had been wrought to the breaking-point by disclosures made on the very day that her loved mother had been buried in a nameless grave. There was, additionally, the motive of self-interest, awakened to the lamentable fact that she had no claim on her father beyond what generosity might dictate. In short, Barrant believed the motive for the murder to be a mixed one, as human motives generally are. At that stage of his reasoning he did not ask himself whether worldly greed was likely to enter into the composition of a girl like Sisily.

This reconstruction of the crime pointed to an accomplice, and that accomplice must have been the man-servant. Nobody but Thalassa could have let the girl into the house; and he could have dropped the key in the room after the door was broken open. That theory not only presupposed strong devotion on Thalassa’s part for a girl he had known from childhood, which was a theory reasonable of belief, but it also suggested that he bore a deep grudge against his master on his own account, sufficient to cause him to refrain from doing anything to prevent the accomplishment of the murder, and to risk his own skin afterwards to shield the girl from the consequences. This aspect of the case struck Barrant as very strange and deep, because it failed to account for Sisily’s subsequent flight. If Thalassa had jeopardized himself by keeping silence about her visit, and had returned the key to her father’s room in order to create the idea of suicide, why had she dispelled the illusion by running away, bringing both her accomplice and herself into danger? Had she been, seized with terror, perhaps due to Mrs. Pendleton’s insistence on her belief of murder, or had Thalassa conveyed some warning to her that inquiries were likely to be put afoot?

These were questions to which Barrant felt he could find no answer until he had seen Thalassa and attempted to wrest the truth from him.

He postponed his visit to Flint House until the evening. He wanted to make the journey as Sisily had made it on the previous night, in order to find out, as nearly as possible, the exact moment she had arrived at her father’s house. He was not even in a position to prove that she had gone by the wagonette until he had questioned the driver.

He took his way to the station that evening with the feeling that it would be difficult to get anything out of Thalassa, whatever the reasons for his silence. He instinctively recognized that the authority of the law, which strikes such terror into craven hearts, would not help him with this old man whose glance had the lawless fearlessness of an eagle. But he had confidence in his ability to extract the truth, and Thalassa, moreover, was at the disadvantage of having something to hide. It would be strange if he did not succeed in getting the facts out of him.

The St. Fair wagonette was pulled up outside the station. Mr. Crows, master of his destiny and time-tables, reclined in front, regarding with a glazed eye his drooping horse. Inside, some stout women with bundles waited patiently until it suited the autocrat on the box seat to start on his homeward way. Mr. Crows showed no indication of being in a hurry. His head nodded drowsily, and a little saliva trickled down his nether lip. He straightened himself with a sudden jerk as Barrant climbed up beside him.

“What be yewer doin’ yare?” he demanded.

“I’m going to St. Fair,” said Barrant.