Wyllard's Weird

Between them Wyllard and the Coroner had contrived to put the London lawyer in full possession of the facts relating to the girl's death. Those facts were unfortunately of the scantiest. Edward Heathcote breathed no hint of that dark suspicion about Bothwell which had flashed into his mind after the inquest, and which he had vainly endeavoured to shake off since that time. Bothwell's manner at dinner this evening had not been calculated to disarm suspicion. His moody brow, his silence and abstraction, were the unmistakable signs of secret trouble of some kind. That trouble was coincidental in time with the event on the railway; for Heathcote and Bothwell had met in Bodmin, and had ridden home together on the previous day, and the young man had been cheery enough.

"The ticket found upon the girl was from London to Plymouth, I apprehend," said Distin, when he had heard everything.

"Yes."

"Then she started from Paddington that morning. My business will be to find out who she was, and the motive of her journey."

"And do you think there is a possibility of tracing her in London, without a shred of evidence – except the photograph of a dead face?" exclaimed Wyllard. "To my mind it seems like looking in a brook for a bubble that broke there a week ago."

"As a west countryman you should remember how otter-hounds hunt the bead on the water," answered Distin. "With a photograph, the police ought to be able to trace that girl – even in the wilderness of London."

"But if she were a foreigner, and only passed through London?" suggested Wyllard.

"Even then she would leave her bead, like the otter. She could not get a night's shelter without some one knowing of her coming and going. Unless she slept in the lowest form of lodging-house – a place through which the herd of strange faces are always passing – the probabilities are in favour of her face being remembered."

"Judging by the neatness of her clothes and the refinement of her features, she must have been the last person likely to set foot in a common lodging-house," said Heathcote. "But there was no money found upon her; neither purse nor papers of any kind."

"That fact is to me almost conclusive," said Distin.

"Upon what point?"

"It convinces me that she was made away with."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Wyllard, much surprised. "The thing never occurred to me in that light."

"Naturally, my dear friend. You have not devoted twenty years of your life to the study of the criminal mind," answered the lawyer easily. "Don't you see that the first thought of a man who made up his mind to throw a girl out of a train – unless he did the act in a blind fury which gave him no time for thought of any kind – his first precaution, I say, would be to see that there was no evidence of her identity upon her, more especially where the victim was a stranger in the land, as this poor thing was? The identification of the victim is often half-way towards the identification of the murderer. But if the dead can be buried unrecognised – a nameless unknown waif, in whose fate no private individual is interested – why, after the funeral the murderer may take his ease and be merry, assured that he will hear no more of the matter. Public interest in a mysterious crime of that kind soon dies out."

"And you think that this poor girl was the victim of a crime?" asked the Coroner, surprised to find his own idea shared by the great authority.

"In my own mind I have no doubt she was murdered."

"But why should she not have committed suicide?"

"Why should she have travelled from London to Cornwall in order to throw herself over that particular embankment?" demanded Distin. "An unnecessary luxury, when there were the Holborn Viaduct and a score of bridges at her service, to say nothing of the more natural exit by her own bedroom window. Besides, in the statistics of self-murder you will find that nineteen out of twenty suicides – nay, I might almost say ninety-nine out of a hundred – leave a piteous little note explaining the motive of the deed – an appeal to posterity, as it were. 'See how great a sufferer I have been, and what a heroic end I have made.' No, there is only one supposition that would admit this girl being her own destroyer. Some ruffian in the train might have so scared her that she flung herself out, in a frantic effort to escape from him. But against this possibility there is the fact of the absence of any purse or papers. She could not have been travelling that distance without, at least, a few shillings in her possession."

"Who knows!" said Julian Wyllard. "Very narrow are the straits of genteel poverty. If, as I suppose, she was a poor little nursery governess going to her situation, she may have had just money enough to pay for her railway ticket, and no more. She may have relied upon her employers meeting her at the station with a conveyance."

"If she were a nursery governess, due at some country house on that day, surely her employers would have communicated with the Bodmin police before now," said Distin.

"News finds its way slowly to sleepy old houses in remote districts off the railway," replied Wyllard. "There are people still living in Cornwall who depend upon a weekly paper for all news of the outer world."

"If the poor girl were going to such benighted wretches, let us hope they will wake in a day or two, and enlighten us about her," said Distin. "And now to be distinctly practical, and to tell you what I am going to do. Mr. Heathcote's carriage was announced nearly an hour ago, and I saw him looking at his watch just now."

"I was only uneasy about Mrs. Wyllard and my sister. We are keeping them up rather late," said the Coroner apologetically.

"Dora won't mind. She loves the tranquillity of midnight," replied Wyllard. "Go on, Distin. What is your plan?"

"Your adjourned inquest does not come on for nearly a fortnight," said Distin. "Now, you can't expect me to waste all that time in Cornwall, delicious as it would be to dream away existence among the roses of your delightful garden; so the best thing I can do is to run up to London to-morrow morning" – he spoke as if he were at Maidenhead or Marlow – "find out all I can there, and return here in time for the Coroner's next sitting. By which time," added the specialist cheerily, "I hope we shall have got up a pretty little case for the Public Prosecutor. Mr. Heathcote will kindly keep me informed of any new details that crop up here. I shall have the poor little girl's photograph in my pocket-book. You'll send a messenger to your town early to-morrow morning, Wyllard, and tell the photographer to meet me at the station with his photographs of the dead girl? He ought to have them ready by that time."

"I will give the order to-night," said Wyllard; and then the three men repaired to the drawing-room.

"I have been very happy here," said Hilda to her brother; "but I thought you were never coming for me. Mrs. Wyllard must be dreadfully tired."

"Never tired of your company, Hilda," interjected Dora. "Nor of Schubert."

"And as for Mr. Grahame, he has been asleep ever since dinner."

"That is a baseless calumny, Miss Heathcote. I have not lost a note of your songs. I am told that Schubert was rather a low person – convivial, that is to say somewhat Bohemian; fond of taverns and tavern company. But I will maintain there must have been a pure and beautiful soul in the man who wrote such songs as those."

"I am so glad you like them," answered Hilda, brightening at his praise. "I daresay you often heard them in India."

"No; the people I knew in India had not such good taste as you."

"But in a country like that, where ladies have so little to do, music must be such a resource," persisted Hilda, who was curiously interested in Mr. Grahame's Indian experiences.

She was always wondering what his life had been like in that strange distant world, what kind of people he had known there. She wondered all the more perhaps on account of Bothwell's reticence. She could never get him to talk freely of his Indian days, and this gave the whole thing an air of mystery.

The clock in the great gray pile of stabling was striking twelve as the Coroner's carriage drove away.

"I cannot think what has happened to Mr. Grahame," said Hilda. "He used to be so lively, and now he is so dull."

"The change is palpable to others, then, as well as to me," thought Heathcote. "Whatever the cause may be, there is a change. God help him if my fear is well grounded! If I were a criminal, I would as soon have a sleuthhound on my track as Joseph Distin."

Mr. Distin was on his way to London before noon next day, curled up in a corner of a coupé, looking out eagerly at every station for the morning papers. He had the dead girl's photographs – full-face, profile – in his letter-case. On making his adieux at Penmorval he declared that he had thoroughly enjoyed his little run into the country, his night in the fresh air.

"So delicious to wake at six – my usual hour – and smell your roses, and hear your fountain," he said. "I look forward with delight to my return the week after next."

During that interval which occurred between Mr. Distin's departure and the adjourned inquest, Edward Heathcote gave himself up to his usual avocations, and took no further trouble to fathom the mystery of the stranger's untimely fate. After all, he told himself, wearied by brooding upon a subject that troubled him greatly, it was not for him to solve the problem. He was not the Public Prosecutor, nor was he a detective, nor even a criminal lawyer, like Joseph Distin. His business was to hear what other people had to say, not to hunt up evidence against anybody. His duty began when he took his seat at an inquest, and ended when he left it. Why, then, should he vex his mind with dark suspicions against a man who was the near kinsman, the adopted brother, of that woman for whose sake or for whose happiness he would have gladly died?

This was how Edward Heathcote argued with himself; and it was in pursuance of this conclusion that he gave himself up to a life of idleness during the twelve days that succeeded Mr. Distin's departure. He rode far afield in the early morning, he drove with his sister and the twins in the afternoon. He appeared at two archery meetings and three tennis-parties, a most unusual concession to the claims of society, and he dawdled away the rest of his existence, reading the last new books in English, French, and German, and discussing them with Hilda's duenna, Theresa Meyerstein, a curious specimen of the German Fräulein, intensely domestic, and yet deeply learned – a woman able to turn from Schopenhauer to strawberry jam, from Plato to plum-pudding – a woman who knew every theory that had ever been started upon the mind and its functions, and who could tell to a hundredweight how much coal ought to be consumed in a gentleman's household. Mr. Heathcote had discovered this paragon of domesticity and erudition, acting as deputy-manager at a boarding-house at Baden, during the first year of his widowhood, and he brought her away from the white slavery and the scanty remuneration of that institution to the luxury of an English country house, and the certainty of a liberal recompense for her labours. Fräulein Meyerstein rewarded her employer by a most thorough fidelity, and adored Hilda and the twin daughters. Her soul had languished in a chilling atmosphere, for lack of something to love, and she lavished the garnered treasures of long years upon these Cornish damsels who were committed to her care.

More than once during those long summer days Hilda urged the necessity of calling at Penmorval; but her brother told her she could go alone, or take the Fräulein, who dearly loved a drive, and a gossip over a cup of tea, and who was always kindly received by Mrs. Wyllard, in spite of her short petticoats, anatomical boots, and Teutonic bonnets.

"You can perform those small civilities without any assistance from me," said Heathcote. "You women are so tremendously posted in the details of etiquette. Now, it would never have occurred to me that because we dined at Penmorval a few nights ago, we were strenuously bound, to call upon Mrs. Wyllard before the end of the week. I thought that, with friends of long standing those Draconic laws were a dead letter."

"I don't mean to say that we need be ceremonious, Edward," answered Hilda, "but I am sure Dora will expect to see us. She will think we are forgetting her if we don't go."

"Then you go, dear, and let her see that you are not forgetful, whatever I may be," said Heathcote.

He had a horror of entering that house of Penmorval just now, lest he should see or hear something that would give him new cause for suspecting Bothwell. He had a feeling that he could only cross that threshold as the bringer of evil: and it would be a bitter thing for him to carry evil into her home for whose peace he had prayed night and morning for the last eight years.

So Hilda drove her ponies up the hill to Penmorval, and Miss Meyerstein sat beside her in all the glory of her new bonnet, sent from Munich by a relative, and reported as the very latest fashion in that city. Unhappily for the success of the bonnet in Cornwall, Bodmin fashions and Munich fashions were wide as the poles asunder. Bodmin boasted a milliner who took in the fashion-magazines, and beguiled her clients with the idea that everything she made for them was Parisian. The Bodmin milliner had a heavy hand, and laid on feathers and flowers as if with a trowel; but her bonnets and hats were light as thistledown in comparison with the art of Bavaria.

It was the afternoon of the adjourned inquest, and Joseph Distin was on the scene, ready to watch the inquiry. He had arrived at Penmorval in time for breakfast, after travelling all night.

"Such a good way of getting rid of the night," he said, as he discussed a salmi of trout, caught in the stream that traversed Penmorval Park.

Alone in the library with Julian Wyllard after breakfast, the London lawyer confessed that for once in his life he had been pretty nearly beaten. He had shown the photographs of the dead face to two of the cleverest detectives in London – had set one to work in the east and the other in the west, promising a liberal reward for any valuable information; and nothing had come of their labours. One had tried every lodging-house within a certain radius of Paddington. The other had explored the neighbourhood of London Bridge Station, and failing there, had come as far west as Charing Cross. The ground had been thoroughly beaten, and no likely place had been forgotten in which a stranger of this girl's class could find shelter.

"She might have gone to the house of friends," suggested Wyllard.

"If she had friends in London – were they ever such slight acquaintances even – they would have been heard of before now," argued Distin. "I take it that she was unknown to a mortal on this side of the Channel, except the man who murdered her, and who had no doubt some very powerful motive for wanting to get rid of her."

"What do you suppose that motive to have been?"

"My dear Wyllard, what a question for a clever man to ask!" exclaimed the lawyer, with a shade of contempt. "To speculate upon the motive I must have some knowledge of the man, and of this girl's murderer I know nothing. If I could once find the man, I should soon find the motive. Such a murder as this generally means the breaking of some legal tie that has become onerous – some bond which death alone can loosen."

CHAPTER IV.

BOTHWELL DECLINES TO ANSWER

The room at the Vital Spark was filled to overflowing on the occasion of the adjourned inquiry. At the previous examination only the inhabitants of Bodmin and its immediate neighbourhood had been present; but on this second afternoon people had come from long distances, and there was not standing room for the audience, which filled the passage, and waited with strained ears to catch a stray word now and then through the open door.

The idea of a profound mystery – of a dastardly crime – had been fostered in the local mind by the newspapers, which had harped upon the ghastly theme, and gloated over the particulars of the nameless girl's fate in paragraphs and leaderettes ad nauseam. Articles headed "More details concerning the Bodmin Mystery," "Further particulars about the strange death on the railway," had served as the salt to give savour to cut and dried reports about the harvest, the markets, and those small offenders whose peccadilloes furnish the material for Justice to exercise her might upon at petty sessions.

Every one had read about that strange death of a lonely girl in the summer sunset. Every one was interested in a fate so melancholy – an abandonment so inexplicable.

"I thought that there was hardly ever a human being so isolated as to be owned by no one," said the curate of Wadebridge. "Yet it would seem that this poor girl had no one to care for her in life, or to identify her after death. If she had one friend living in England or France, surely that person must have made some sign before now."

"People in France are very slow to hear about anything that happens in England," replied Dr. Menheniot, to whom the curate had been talking.

"But I heard Mr. Heathcote, at the first inquiry, say that he meant to advertise in a Parisian newspaper."

"Then be sure the advertisement appeared," answered Menheniot. "Heathcote is one of those few men with whom meaning and doing are the same thing."

The inquiry dragged its slow length along, and hardly one new fact was elicited. There was a great deal of repetition, in spite of the Coroner's attempt to keep all his witnesses to the point. Mr. Distin sat near the Coroner, and asked a few questions of two or three of the witnesses; and though he elicited no actually new facts, he seemed to put things in a clearer light by his cross-examination.

Just before the close of the inquiry, he said:

"I see Mr. Grahame, of Penmorval, is here this afternoon. I should like to ask him a question or two, if you have no objection."

The Coroner paled ever so slightly at this suggestion, but he had no objection to offer: so Bothwell Grahame was asked to come up to the table, and kiss the Book, which he did with a somewhat bewildered air, as if the thing came upon him as an unpleasant surprise.

"You were in the train that evening, I believe, Mr. Grahame," said Distin.

"I was."

"Were you alone, in a compartment, or in company with other passengers?"

"I had a third-class compartment to myself."

"And you saw this girl fall?"

"I saw her fall – but as I saw just a little less than Dr. Menheniot and the guard saw, I don't see the good of my being questioned," answered Bothwell, with rather a sullen air.

"I beg your pardon," returned Mr. Distin suavely, "every witness sees an event from a different point of view. You may have noticed something which escaped the two witnesses we have just heard."

"I noticed nothing more than you have been told by these two, and I saw less than they saw. I did not look out of the window till I heard the girl's shriek, and I saw her in the act of falling."

"Good. But you may have observed this solitary girl – a foreigner, and therefore more noticeable – on the platform at Plymouth. You were on the platform at Plymouth, you know."

"I was. But I did not see the girl at the station."

"Strange that she should have escaped your observation, although the porter who was busy with his duties had time to notice her," said Mr. Distin.

"Would it surprise you to hear that during the four or five minutes I spent in the station before the train started I was standing at the bookstall buying papers, with my back to the platform?"

"That would account for your not having seen this noticeable young stranger. You were in Plymouth for several hours, I believe, Mr. Grahame?"

"I was; but upon my word I don't see what hearing that fact can have upon this inquiry."

"Perhaps not. Still, you will not object to tell us what you were doing in Plymouth – how you disposed of your time there."

This question evidently troubled Bothwell, simple as it was, and easy as it ought to have been to answer.

"I played a game at billiards at the Duke of Cornwall," he said.

"I am sure you are too good a player for that to occupy more than half an hour," said Mr. Distin, with his silky air, as if he were employed in a very pleasant business, and were bent upon being as cheery as possible.

"I had to wait for the table."

"Come now, Mr. Grahame, you need not be mysterious about so simple a matter," exclaimed Mr. Distin. "You don't mean to tell us that you went to Plymouth by the 12.15 train" – he had ascertained this fact before the inquiry began – "and spent the whole of the day there, in order to play a game at billiards in a public billiard-room. You must have had other business in Plymouth."

"Certainly. I had other business there."

"Will you kindly tell us what that business was?"

"As it concerned others besides myself, and as it has not the faintest bearing upon this case, I must decline to answer that question."

"Really, now, I should advise you to be more frank. You leave Bodmin early in the day – without giving any notice of your departure – and you return late in the evening. A most mysterious catastrophe occurs in the train which brings you home – a death so strange, so horrible, that it casts a cloud over all the passengers travelling by that train – leaves a stigma upon all, as it were, until the guilt of that deed can be brought home to one. Surely, under such circumstances, the utmost frankness is desirable. Every traveller in that train should be ready to answer any question which those who are charged with the elucidation of this mystery may ask."

"I have answered your questions as to what occurred to me in the train, and at the station; but I decline to be catechised about my business in Plymouth," answered Bothwell doggedly.

"That will do," said Distin; and Bothwell went to his seat next Julian Wyllard, whose handsome presence appeared in the front rank of spectators, amongst those of the élite who were favoured with chairs, while the commonalty stood in a mob at the back of the room.

The audience had been breathless during this examination of Bothwell Grahame. The young man's sunburnt face was clouded with anger, his dark strongly-marked brows were scowling over those gray-blue eyes which once had such a pleasant expression.

"I can't think what has come to Grahame," muttered a sporting squire to his next neighbour. "He used to be such a pleasant fellow, but to-day he looks like a murderer."

"You don't think he threw the girl out of the train, do you?" asked the other.

"God forbid! But by that London lawyer's questions one would think he suspected Grahame of having had a hand in the business."

The jury gave their verdict presently, "Death from misadventure."

"Tell Dora not to expect me at dinner," said Bothwell to Julian Wyllard, before they left the inn; "I shall dine in Bodmin."

"Have you any engagement?"

"No, but I can easily make one. I am not going to break bread with your lawyer friend. So long as he is at Penmorval I shall be missing."

"My dear Bothwell, you have no right to be angry at a simple question which you might have so easily answered," remonstrated Wyllard gravely.

"It was a question which I did not choose to answer, and which he had no right to ask. It was an outrage to ask such a question – to press it as he did. Fifty years ago he might have been shot for a lesser insult. By Jove, I never felt more sorry that the good old duelling days are over – the days when one man could not insult another with impunity."

"How savage you are, Bothwell, and against a man who was only in the exercise of his profession!"

"He had no right to question me as if I were a murderer," retorted Bothwell savagely. "Did he think that I spent my time in Plymouth plotting that girl's death? If I had made up my mind to push a woman over an embankment, I should not have wanted to spend a day in Plymouth in order to plan the business. A murder of that kind must be touch and go – no sooner thought of than done."

"All trouble would have been saved, my dear fellow, if you had given a straight answer to a simple question."

"To answer would have been to acknowledge his right to question me. No judge would have allowed counsel to have asked such a motiveless question. Nowhere except at a petty rustic inquiry would such a thing be permitted."