The Turnpike House

by Fergus Hume

Mrs. Garvey started. "Ah! it was about that crime you have been asking me--the Jenner tragedy? I know--the man was murdered by his wife. And what has this piece of gold got to do with it?"

"It belonged to the murderer," Ruth said with a shudder. "It seemed to me that you spoke in the person of the murderer. You described the room, its appearance at the time of the crime--the dead body, and a child holding a knife, and looking on. Then you said you were in darkness, that you would never be found out, and--oh! you said a lot of strange things--that the child had a knife in his hand, and that he was standing over the body," faltered Ruth, thinking she was about to hear that Neil had killed his father.

Mrs. Garvey shook her head. "It was not the child," she said, decidedly; "he would not have had those links about him. The man who killed his father wore them, else I could not have told you what I did. Where did you find this piece of gold?"

"Under the window of the room in which the crime was committed. What you say fits in with my own belief that the blow was struck through the window. You can't remember who you were--in the trance, I mean?"

"No," said the woman gently; "I remember nothing. Find the man to whom the link belongs. I can give no further or better advice than that."

"That is easier said than done," protested the girl. "How am I to find the man?"

Mrs. Garvey shook her head. She could give no more information, and she said so. Moreover, she was exhausted after the effort she had made, seeing which Ruth took her broken link and returned home more perplexed than ever; that being the usual frame of mind of those who dabble in the supernatural. Yet she fully believed what the clairvoyant had told her; Mrs. Garvey could not possibly have known of the scene in that bare room immediately after the crime had been committed. Mrs. Jenner alone could have described it; and she had told it only to Geoffrey Heron.

Although Miss Cass's thoughts were much taken up with the case, she saw no way of prosecuting further inquiries. The toy horse in the hands of the clairvoyant might perhaps have helped her; but, truth to tell, she had forgotten all about it! Meanwhile she wrote to Geoffrey and related what had happened. With regard to the clairvoyant, she quite expected that the hard-headed young man would scoff at her; but, much, to her surprise, he did not. In place of a letter, the young squire himself appeared, with full permission from Neil to tell Ruth the reason why his mother had held her peace. He did not stay at Hollyoaks, but drove over from his own place.

Mrs. Chisel received him with effusion, and worried him with questions about himself; and all the time, for reasons of his own connected with love and business, he was dying to be alone with Miss Cass. At length, however, Mrs. Chisel, putting it in her own graceful way, thought it would only be fair to give poor Ruth her chance of pushing her conquest; so she left the winter garden on the plea that her dear children required their mother's eye; and Geoffrey Heron proceeded at once to the business which had brought him.

"I am beginning to think something of your clairvoyant after all," he said. "What you wrote to me about Mrs. Garvey's description of the scene must be wonderfully accurate; yes, even to the child with the knife in his hand. That child was Neil; and it was because his mother found him standing thus that she has undergone all this punishment without speaking a word in her own defence."