"I do not know what Lavender Sinclair may have said. This much, at any rate, is true. My brother Ralph is innocent of the crime imputed to him. I declare this upon my solemn oath.—MELVILLE ASHLEY."
He put the note, with Ralph's letter asking for the loan on which so much had turned, and Lavender's first letter from The Vale, and his remaining paper money, into an envelope, and addressed it to Mr. Tracy at Lincoln's Inn Fields. Then he strapped up the bag, which he left unlocked, and went on deck again. This was the end of it all? No god from a car could come to save him this time; the Furies had reached their quarry and were going to pull him down. He found a more or less deserted place upon the deck and stood, a dark figure, against the rail; and so the moment came. With one last glance around to make sure he was not observed, he got on to the outside of the rail and dropped silently into the warm, dark water.
When he rose he was surprised to see how far behind he was left; he had no idea the boat made such good speed. He stifled an impulse to call out, but the natural instinct to swim was too strong to be resisted, and, even managing to disengage himself from his thin overcoat, he began with slow steady strokes to follow in the wake of the boat. The black mass of her shape grew lower in the water, her lights drew away from him with ever increasing speed, the salt burned his eyelids and stung his face. His arms grew weaker with each more painful stroke, until at length, with his eyes set upon the far lights of the boat which represented man, of whom he was forsaken, and never once upon the stars, above which was enthroned the God whom he had rejected, Melville gave up the impossible task of living, and the last mechanical effort ceased.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE PLACE OF PEACE.
When Lavender knocked away the keystone of the vaulted arch beneath which Ralph Ashley was confined, the fabric fell to pieces easily. Provided with a copy of her depositions, the police sought Mr. Tracy, and next day he was engaged with the Treasury solicitors discussing the Fairbridge murder in the light of the new facts, and gathering together sufficient evidence to corroborate her statement and set the suspect free.
Of this, the most important part was Melville's pencilled note, which reached Mr. Tracy about five o'clock the following evening. In itself his suicide was held to be sufficient; that he had thrown himself overboard was beyond question. It was proved that he had gone on board the packet at Dover and that he was not on board at Calais; his Gladstone bag was there, with the note and the enclosures, and what had happened in the interval was self-evident. He, too, bore witness to his brother's innocence, and although, like Lavender, he did not say who the murderer was, it was a simple matter to name him now. All that was necessary was to prove that it was he who rowed Lavender to Fairbridge the day the murder was committed.
To do this was not very difficult. Lucille and Jervis both could prove that Lavender had been to Jermyn Street the day before the crime. The maid could swear that on the following morning her mistress went out for the day, taking a basket containing luncheon for two people, and that she returned in the evening terribly agitated and wet through. The valet could swear that Mrs. Sinclair took tea with Melville and asked him to take her out next day; he had overheard that much, although he did not overhear the answer, but he swore that next morning his master told him that he was going out and would not require anything during the day; that he was wearing flannels when he spoke, and that those garments were soiled and creased as if they had got wet when on the following Monday they were sent to the laundry. The manager acknowledged his surprise at finding Melville in when he answered the bell in the evening, for it was unusual for him to pass an entire afternoon in his rooms without requiring service of any kind, and his professed ignorance of Jervis's absence was odd, in view of the fact that he had himself given the leave of absence. Careful investigation showed that the time permitted of his going to Fairbridge and returning by the hour he saw the manager. The lock keeper at St. Martin's proved that a lady and gentleman had hired his last boat, and left it outside the lock on their return in order to make a rush to catch a train just due, which they must have missed if they had waited to go through the lock to the boathouse, and which would have got him back to Jermyn Street in time to change and affect to have been at home all day; In Melville's rooms, moreover, the police found ammunition similar to that found in the gun-room at the Manor House, but no trace of the revolver which it fitted. Jervis had often seen it, and swore that Melville generally carried it in his hip pocket. Was it not, therefore, the one that Lavender declared her companion had used and afterwards dropped into the river? Did not Ralph's possession of its fellow prove his own innocence and not his guilt, as Mr. Tracy had always contended?
Nor when it came to the question of motive was there any other difficulty. The perjury Melville had committed in denying all knowledge of Lady Holt's existence, and the inferences to be drawn from Sir Geoffrey's accounts, pointed directly to the motive. The story Ralph had told to Mr. Tracy of the hundred pounds explained the rest. Sir Geoffrey had paid Melville's debts and given him a final two hundred and fifty pounds. That Melville lost at Monte Carlo, where he was when Ralph wrote to him for the loan. He applied to his uncle for further help and got a hundred pounds, as the cheque itself attested. Yet, in spite of the fraud and its penalties, only averted by Ralph's generosity, Melville went back to Fairbridge and got more money from his uncle, as the cheque book again demonstrated. On what plea did he get those further funds? Obviously, under the false pretence that Lady Holt, whom, as her letter showed, he had seen in the brief interval, was in poor circumstances; or else, perhaps, as hush-money from his uncle, who believed that his wife was dead.
Finally, Sir Geoffrey made a will and refused to give Melville another penny for himself or for Lavender, and then Melville shot his uncle, either in a paroxysm of rage at being baffled, or hoping to benefit under some intestacy, for the will was only executed a few days before the tragedy. The whole story was complete, and could no longer be withstood. Within the briefest possible period the Crown dropped the case against Ralph Ashley, and he was free.