The Mystery of the Skeleton Key

CHAPTER IV

I AM INTERESTED IN THE BARON

(From the Bickerdike MS.)

I SEEMED conscious somehow, at dinner on the night of our arrival, of a feeling of electricity in the domestic atmosphere. Having no clue, such as the later course of events came to supply, to its origin, I diagnosed it, simply and vulgarly, as the vibrations from a family jar, of the sort to which even the most dignified and well-regulated households cannot always rise superior. Sir Calvin himself, exacting and domineering, could never at the best of times be considered a tactful autocrat: a prey to his hereditary foe, he appeared often to go out of his way to be thought detestable. When such was the case, his habit of harping on grievances could become an exquisite torture, his propensity for persisting in the unwelcome the more he saw it resented a pure malignancy. On this occasion, observing an obvious inclination in his son, my friend, to silence and self-obliteration, he took pleasure in drawing him out, with something of the savagery, I could not but think, of a fisherman who wrenches an obstinate hermit crab from its borrowed shell for bait. I saw how poor Hugh was rasped and goaded, but could do no more than take upon myself, where I could, the burden of response. Believing at the time that this aggravated fencing between the two was a part, or consequence, of some trouble, the serious nature of which might or might not have been implied in my friend’s recent outburst, I made and could make but an inefficient second; yet, even had I known, as I came to know, that my surmise was wrong, and that the father’s persistence was due to nothing but a perverse devil of teasing, it is not clear to me how else I could have helped the situation. I could not have hauled my host by the ears, as I should have liked to do, over his own dining-room table.

But the sense of atmospheric friction was not confined to these two. In some extraordinary way it communicated itself to the servants, the very butler, our young hostess. I had not seen Audrey at tea, and now greeted her for the first time. She came in late, to find us, by the Bashaw’s directions, already seated, and to suffer a sharp reprimand for her unpunctuality which brought a flush to her young rebellious cheek. Nor did I better things, so far as she was concerned, by an ostentatious display of attentions; she seemed to resent my sympathy even more than the harshness which had provoked it. It is the way of cats and women to tear the hand that would release them from the trap.

The dinner, in short, began very uncomfortably, with an irascible host, a moody son, and an offended daughter, the butler taking his cue from his master, and the servants from the butler. They waited nervously, and got in one another’s way, only the more flurriedly for their whispered harrying by the exacerbated Cleghorn. I was surprised, I confess, by the change in that usually immaculate dignitary. The very type and pattern of his kind, correct, imperturbable, pontifical, I had never before known Cleghorn to manifest the least sign of human emotion, unless it were when Mr Yockney, the curate from Leighway, had mixed water with his Château Margaux 1907. Now, preposterous as it appeared, I could have believed the great man had been crying. His globous eyes, his mottled cheeks, bore suspicious evidences of the fact; his very side-whiskers looked limp. Surely the domestic storm, if such, which had rocked the house of Kennett must have been demoralising to a hitherto unknown degree.

It was the Baron who redeemed the situation, winning harmony out of discord. He had, to do him justice, the reconciliatory faculty, chiefly, I think, because he could always find, as one should, a bright interest in differences of opinion instead of a subject for contention. I never knew him, then or thereafter, to be ruffled by opposition or contradiction. He accepted them placidly, as constituting possible rectifications of his own argumentative frontiers.

His opportunity came with a growl of Sir Calvin’s over the lateness of the evening papers. The General had been particularly curious to hear the result of a local trial, known as the Antonferry Bank robbery case, which was just reaching its conclusion, and it chafed him to be kept waiting. Le Sage asked for information, and the supplying it smoothed the troubled waters. There is a relish for most people in being the first to announce news, whether good, bad, or indifferent.

The case, as stated, was remarkable for nothing but the skill with which it had been unravelled. A Bank in Antonferry—a considerable market town lying some eight or nine miles north of Wildshott—had been robbed, and the question was by whom. That question had been answered in the upshot by an astute Scotland Yard detective, who, in spite of the obloquy thrown upon his kind by Mr Sherlock Holmes, had shown considerable sagacity in tracing the crime to its source in the Bank’s own manager—a startling dénouement. The accused, on the strength of this expert’s evidence, had been committed to stand his trial at Winton Quarter Sessions, and it was the issue of that event which was interesting Sir Calvin. He had had some dealings with the Bank in question, and had even been brought into some personal contact with the delinquent official.

‘It seems,’ he ended, ‘that there can be no doubt about the verdict. That Ridgway is a clever dog.’

‘The detective?’ queried Le Sage; and the General nodded.

‘The sort I should be sorry, if a thief, to have laid on my trail.’

‘But supposing you left none?’ questioned the Baron, with a smile.

‘Ah!’ said Sir Calvin, having nothing better to reply.

‘I have often thought,’ said Le Sage, ‘that if crime realised its own opportunities, there would be no use for detectives at all.’

‘Eh? Why not?’ asked his host.

‘Because there would be nothing to find out,’ answered the Baron.

‘How d’ye mean? Nothing to find out?’

‘Nothing whatever. My idea, now, of a successful crime is not a crime which baffles its investigators, but a crime which does not appear as a crime at all.’

‘Instance, M. le Baron,’ I ventured to put in.

‘Why,’ said Le Sage good-humouredly, ‘a dozen may well present themselves to a man of average inventive intelligence. Direct murder, for example—how crude! when a hundred means offer themselves for procuring plausible ends to life. Tetanus germs and an iron tack; ptomaine, that toxicologic mystery, so easy to introduce; the edge of a cliff and a windy day; a frayed picture cord; a loosened nut or two; a scrap of soap left on the boards by an opened window—given adroitness, timeliness, a little nerve, would not any of these do?’

Audrey drew back in her chair, with a flushed little laugh.

‘What a diabolical list!’ she said, and made a face as if she had taken medicine.

‘Yes,’ said I. ‘But after all, Baron, this is no more than generalising.’

‘You want a concrete instance?’ he answered, beaming on me. ‘What do you say then to a swimmer being awarded the Humane Society’s certificate for attempting to save the life of a man whom he had really drowned? It needs only a little imagination to fill in the details.’

‘That is good,’ I admitted. ‘We put one to your credit.’

‘Again,’ said the Baron, ‘I offer the case of a senseless young spendthrift. He gambles, he drinks, his life is a bad life from the insurance company’s point of view. When hard pressed, he is lavish with his IOUs; when flush of money he redeems them; he pays up, he throws the slips into the fire with hardly a glance at them. One who holds a good deal of his paper observes this, and acts accordingly. He preserves the original securities, and on redemption, offers forgeries in their place, which he is careful to see destroyed. On the death of the young man he puts in his claim on his estate on the strength of the indisputable original documents. Thus he is paid twice over, without a possibility of any suspicion arising.’

‘But one of the forged IOUs,’ said Audrey, ‘had been carried up the chimney without catching alight, and had been blown through the open window of the young man’s family lawyer, who had kept it as a surprise.’

There was a shout of laughter, in which the Baron joined.

‘Bravo, Audrey!’ cried her brother. ‘What about your average inventive intelligence, Baron?’

‘I said, specifically, a man’s,’ pleaded Le Sage. ‘Women, fortunately for us, are not eligible for the detective force.’

Audrey laughed at the compliment, but I think she liked the Baron for his pleasant good-nature. About that, for my part, I kept an open mind. Had he really invented these cases on the spur of the moment, or could it be possible that they touched on some experience of his own? One could not say, of course; but one could bear the point in mind.

The dinner went cheerfully enough after this jeu d’esprit of Audrey’s. That had even roused Hugh from his glooms, and to quite exaggerated effect. He became suddenly talkative where he had been taciturn, and almost boisterously communicative where he had been reserved. But I noticed that he drank a good deal, and detected curiously, as I thought, a hint of desperation under his feverish gaiety.

In all this, it may be said, I was appropriating to myself, without authority, a sort of watching brief on behalf of a purely chimerical client. I had no real justification for suspecting the Baron, either on his own account, or in association with my friend’s apparent state; it was presumptive that Sir Calvin knew at least as much about the man as I did; still, I thought, so long as I preserved my attitude of what I may call sympathetic vigilance à la sourdine, nothing could be lost, and something even might be gained. The common atmosphere, perhaps, affected me with the others, and inclined me to an unusually observant mood; a mood, it may be, prone to attach an over-importance to trifles. Thus, I could find food for it in an incident so ordinary as the following. There was a certain picture on the wall, a genre painting, to which Le Sage, sitting opposite it, referred in some connexion. Sir Calvin, replying, remarked that so-and-so had declared one of the figures to be out of proportion—too short or too tall, I forget which—and, in order to measure the discrepancy, interposed, after the manner of the connoisseur, a finger between his eye and the subject. There was nothing out of the common in the action, save only that the finger he raised was the second finger of his right hand, the first having been shot away in some long-past engagement; but it appeared, quite obviously to me, to arrest in a curious way the attention of the visitor. He forgot what he was saying at the moment, his speech tailed off, he sat gazing, as if suddenly fascinated, not at the picture but at the finger. The next instant he had caught up and continued what he was observing; but the minute incident left me wondering. It had signified, I was sure, no sudden realization of the disfigurement, since that must have been long known to him, but of some association with it accidentally suggested. That, in that single moment, was my very definite impression—I could hardly have explained why at the time; but there it was. And I may say now, in my own justification, that my instinct, or my intuition, was not at fault.

Once or twice later I seemed to catch Le Sage manoeuvring to procure a repetition of the action, but without full success; and soon afterwards the two men fell upon the ever-absorbing subject of chess, and lapsed into vigorous discussion over the relative merits of certain openings, such as the Scotch, the Giuoco Piano, the Ruy Lopez attack, Philidor’s defence, and the various gambits; to wit, the Queen’s, the Allgaier, the Evans, the Muzio, the Sicilian, and God knows what else. They did not favour the drawing-room for long after dinner, but went off to the library to put their theories into practice, leaving Hugh and me alone with the lady. I cannot admit that I found the subsequent evening exhilarating. Hugh appeared already to be suffering a relapse from his artificial high spirits, and again disturbed me by the capricious oddity of his behaviour. He and his sister bickered, after their wont, a good deal, and once or twice the girl was brought by him near the verge of angry tears, I thought. I never could quite make out Audrey. She seemed to me a young woman of good impulses, but one who was for ever on the defensive against imagined criticism, and inclined therefore, in a spirit of pure perversity, to turn her worst side outermost. Yet she was a really pretty girl, a tall stalk of maiden-hood, nineteen, and athletically modern in the taking sense, and had no reason but to value herself and her attractions at the plain truth they represented. The trouble was that she was underestimated, and I think proudly conscious of the fact. With a father like Sir Calvin, it was, and must be, Hugo first and the rest nowhere. He bullied everyone, but there was no under-suggestion of jealous proprietorship in his bullying of Audrey as there was in his adoring bullying of his son. He did not care whether she felt it or not; with the other it was like a lover’s temper, wooing by chastisement. Nor was Hugo, perhaps, a very sympathetic brother. He could enjoy teasing, like his father, and feel a mischievous pleasure in seeing ‘the galled jade wince’. Audrey, I believe, would have worshipped him had he let her—I had observed how gratified she looked at dinner over his commendation of her jest—but he held her aloof between condescension and contempt, and the two had never been real companions. The long-motherless girl was lonely, I think, and it was rather pathetic; still, she did not always go the right way about it to avoid unfavourable criticism.

We were out for a day in the stubble on the morrow, and I made it an excuse for going to bed betimes. The trial of the Bank-Manager, I may mention by the way, had ended in a verdict of guilty, and a sentence of three years penal servitude. I found, and took the paper in to Sir Calvin before going upstairs. The servants never dared to disturb him at his game.

CHAPTER V

THE BARON CONTINUES TO INTEREST ME

(From the Bickerdike MS.)

WE were three guns—Hugo, myself, and a young local landowner, Sir Francis Orsden of Audley, whom I had met before and liked. He was a good fellow, though considered effeminate by a sporting squirearchy; but that I could never see. Our shooting lay over the lower estate, from which the harvest had lately been carried, and we went out by the main gates, meeting the head gamekeeper, Hanson, with the dogs and a couple of boy beaters, in the road. Our plan was to work the stubble as far as possible in a south-westerly direction, making for Asholt Copse and Hanson’s cottage, where Audrey and the Baron were to meet us, driving over in a pony trap with the lunch.

I perceived early enough that my chance of a day’s sport wholly untrammelled by scruples of anxiety was destined to be a remote one. Hugh, it had been plain to me from the first, had not mastered with the new day his mood of the night before. His nervous irritability seemed to me even to have increased, and the truth was he was a trying companion. I had already made him some tentative bid for his confidence, but without result; I would not be the one again to proffer my sympathy uninvited. After all, he had asked for it, and was the one to broach the subject, if he wanted it broached. Probably—I knew him—the matter was no great matter—some disappointment or monetary difficulty which his fancy exaggerated. He hated trouble of any sort, and was quite capable of summoning a friend from a sick-bed to salve some petty grievance for him. So I left it to him to explain, if and when he should think proper.

It was a grey quiet day, chill, but without wind; the sort of day on which the echo of a shot might sound pretty deceptively from a distance—a point to be remembered. I was stationed on the left, Orsden on the extreme right, and Hugh divided us. His shooting was wild to a degree; he appeared to fire into the thick of the coveys without aim or judgment, and hardly a bird fell to his gun. Hanson, who kept close behind his young master, turned to me once or twice, when the lie of the ground brought us adjacent, and shook his head in a surprised, mournful way. Once Hugh and I came together at a gap in a hedge. I had negotiated it without difficulty, and my friend was following, when something caught my eye. I snatched at his gun barrel, directing it between us, and on the instant the charge exploded.

‘Good God, man!’ I exclaimed. ‘You?’

Like the veriest Cockney greenhorn, he had been pulling his piece after him by the muzzle, and the almost certain consequence had followed. I stood staring at him palely, and for the moment his face was distorted.

‘Hugh!’ I said stiffly, ‘you didn’t mean it?’

He broke into a mirthless laugh.

‘Mean it, you mug! Of course I didn’t mean it. Why should I?’

‘I don’t know. Mug for saving your life, anyhow!’

‘I’ll remember it, Vivian. I wish I owed you something better worth the paying.’

‘That’s infernal nonsense, of course. Now, look here; what’s it all about?’

‘All what?’

‘You know.’

‘I’ll tell you by-and-by, Viv—on my honour, I will.’

‘Will you? Hadn’t you better go back in the meantime and leave your gun with Hanson?’

‘No; don’t be a fool, or make me seem one. I’ll go more careful after this; I promise you on my sacred word I will. There, get on.’

I was not satisfied; but Hanson coming up at the moment to see what the shot had meant, I could have no more to say, and prepared silently to resume my place.

‘It’s all right, George,’ said his master, ‘only a snap at a rabbit.’

Had he meant to kill himself? If he had, what trouble so much more tragic than any I had conceived must lie at the root of the matter! But I would not dare to believe it; it had been merely another manifestation of the reckless mood to which his spoilt temper could only too easily succumb. Nevertheless, I felt agitated and disturbed, and still, in spite of his promise, apprehensive of some ugly business.

He shot better after this episode, however, and thereby brought some reassurance to my mind. Hanson, that astute gamekeeper, led us well and profitably, and the morning reached its grateful end in that worthy’s little parlour in the cottage in the copse, with its cases of stuffed birds and vermin, and its table delectably laid with such appetising provender as ham, tongue, and a noble pigeon pie, with bottled beer, syphons, and old whisky to supply the welcome moisture. Audrey presided, and the Baron, who had somehow won her liking, and whom she had brought with her in the governess cart, made a cheerful addition to the company. He was brightly interested in our morning’s sport, as he seemed to be generally in anything and everything; but even here one could never make out from his manner whether his questions arose from knowledge or ignorance in essential matters. They were not, I suppose—in conformity with his principle of inwardness—intended to betray; but the whole thing was to my mind ridiculous, like rattling the coppers in one’s pocket to affect affluence. One might have gathered, for all proof to the contrary, that his acquaintance with modern sporting weapons was expert; yet he never directly admitted that he had used them, or was to be drawn into any relation of his personal experiences in their connexion. The subject of poachers was one on which, I remember, he exhibited a particular curiosity, asking many questions as to their methods, habits, and the measures taken to counter their dangerous activities. It was Orsden who mostly answered him, in that high eager voice of his, with just the suspicion of a stammer in it, which I could never hear without somehow being tickled. Hugh took no trouble to appear interested in the matter. He was again, I noticed with uneasiness, preoccupied with his own moody reflections, and was drinking far too much whisky and soda.

The Baron asked as if for information; yet it struck me that his inquiries often suggested the knowledge they purported to seek, as thus:

‘Might it not be possible, now, that among the quiet, respectable men of the village, who attend to their business, drink in moderation, go punctually to church, and are well thought of by the local policeman, the real expert poacher is mostly to be found—the man who makes a study and a business of his craft, and whose depredations, conducted on scientific and meteorological lines, should cause far more steady havoc among the preserves than that wrought by the organised gangs, or by the unprofessional loafer—“moocher”, I think you call him?’

Or thus: ‘This country now, with its mixture of downlands and low woods, and the variety of opportunities they afford, should be, one might imagine, peculiarly suited to the operations of these gentry?’

Or thus: ‘I wonder if your shrewd poacher makes much use of a gun, unless perhaps on a foggy morning, when the sound of the report would be muffled? He should be a trapper, I think, par excellence’—and other proffered hypotheses, seeming to show an even more intimate acquaintance with the minutiae of the subject, such as the springes, nets, ferrets, and tricks of snaring common to the trade—a list which set Orsden cackling after a time.

‘On my word, Baron,’ said he, ‘if it wasn’t for your innocent way of p-putting things, I could almost suspect you of being a poacher yourself.’

Le Sage laughed.

‘Of other men’s games, in books, perhaps,’ he said.

‘Well,’ said Orsden, ‘you’re right so far, that one of the closest and cunningest poachers I ever heard of was a Leighway hedge-carpenter called Cleaver, and he was as quiet, sober, civil-spoken a chap as one could meet; pious, too, and reasonable, though a bit of a village politician, with views of his own on labour. Yet it came out that for years he’d been making quite a handsome income out of Audley and its neighbours—a sort of D-Deacon Brodie, you know. Not one of their preserves, though; you’re at fault there, Baron. Your local man knows better than to put his head into the noose. His dealings are with the casual outsiders, so far as pheasants are concerned. When he takes a gun, it’s mostly to the birds; and of course he shoots them sitting.’

‘Brute!’ said Audrey.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ said the young Baronet. ‘He’s a tradesman, isn’t he, not a sportsman, and tradesmen don’t give law.’

‘How did he escape so long?’ asked the girl.

‘Why, you see,’ answered Orsden, ‘you can’t arrest a man on suspicion of game-stealing with nothing about him to prove it. He must be caught in the act; and if one-third of his business lies in poaching, quite two-thirds lie in the art of avoiding suspicion. Fellows like Cleaver are cleverer hypocrites than they are trappers—J-Joseph Surfaces in corduroys.’

‘Do you find,’ said Le Sage, ‘men of his kind much prone to violence?’

‘Not usually,’ replied Orsden, ‘but they may be on occasion, if suddenly discovered at work with a gun in their hands. It’s exposure or murder then, you see; ruin or safety, with no known reason for anyone suspecting them. I expect many poor innocent d-devils were hanged in the old days for the sins of such vermin.’

‘Yes,’ said Le Sage, ‘a shot-gun can be a great riddler.’

One or two of us cackled dutifully over the jeu de mot. Could we have guessed what tragic application it would receive before the day was out, we might have appreciated it better, perhaps.

I shall not soon forget that afternoon. It began with Audrey and the Baron driving off together for a jaunt in the little cart. They were very merry, and our young Baronet would have liked, I think, to join them. I had noticed Le Sage looking excessively sly during lunch over what he thought, no doubt, was an exclusive discovery of his regarding these two. But he was wrong. They were good friends, and that was all; and, as to the young lady’s heart, I had just as much reason as Orsden—which was none whatever—for claiming a particular share in its interest. Any thought of preference would have been rank presumption in either of us, and the wish, I am sure, was founded upon no such supposition. It was merely that with Hugh in his present mood, the prospect of spending further hours in his company was not an exhilarating one.