The Loudwater Mystery

by Edgar Jepson

Then Mr. Flexen sent again for Elizabeth Twitcher and questioned her at length about Lord Loudwater's onslaught on Lady Loudwater the night before and about the condition in which he had been at the end of it. Elizabeth was somewhat sulky in her manner, for she felt that she was to blame for that onslaught having come to Mr. Flexen's ears. She was the more careful to make it plain that however violently Lord Loudwater may have been affected, Olivia had taken the business lightly enough, and decided to ignore his injunction to her to leave the Castle. Mr. Flexen did not miss the point that Lord Loudwater had threatened to hound Colonel Grey out of the Army; but at the moment he did not attach importance to it. It was the kind of threat that an angry man would be pretty sure to make in the circumstances.

Having dismissed Elizabeth Twitcher, he came to lunch with the impression strong on him that he had made as much progress as could be expected in one morning towards the solution of the problem. He was quite undecided whether Hutchings' presence in the Castle at so late an hour, and the probability that he had entered and left it by the library window, or the matter of the woman who had had the stormy interview with the murdered man, was the more important. It must be his early task to discover who that woman was.

He found Mr. Manley awaiting him in the little dining-room, ready to play host. Over their soup and fish they talked about ordinary topics and a little about themselves. Mr. Manley learned that Mr. Flexen had been in the Indian Police for over seven years, and had been forced to resign his post by the breaking down of his health; that during the war he had twice acted as Chief Constable and three times as stipendiary magistrate in different districts. Mr. Flexen gathered that Mr. Manley had fought in France with a brilliant intrepidity which had not met with the public recognition it deserved, and learned that he had been invalided out of the Army owing to the weakness of his heart. This common failure of health was a bond of sympathy between them, and made them well disposed to one another.

There came a pause in this personal talk, and either of them addressed himself to the consumption of the wing of a chicken with a certain absorption in the occupation. It was not uncharacteristic of Mr. Manley that his high sense of the fitness of things had not prevailed on him to accord the liver wing to the guest. He was firmly eating it himself.

Then Mr. Flexen said: "I suppose you came across Hutchings, the butler, pretty often. What kind of a fellow was he?"

"He was rather more like his master than if he had been his twin brother, except that he wore whiskers and not a beard," said Mr. Manley, in a tone of hearty dislike.

"He does not appear to have been at all popular with the other servants," said Mr. Flexen.

"He certainly wasn't popular with me," said Mr. Manley dryly.

"What did Lord Loudwater discharge him for?"

"A matter of a commission on the purchase of some wine," said Mr. Manley. Then in a more earnest tone he added: "Look here: the trenches knock a good deal of the nonsense out of one, and I tell you frankly that if I could help you in any way to discover the criminal, I wouldn't. My feeling is that if ever any one wanted putting out of the way, Lord Loudwater did; and as he was put out of the way quite painlessly, probably it was a valuble action, whatever its motive."