CHAPTER XIV
KITTY SENDS A TELEGRAM
“AND when will you arrest him?” Lady Clevedon demanded.
“Ah, yes,” I returned slowly, “that is just it. You see, the difference between knowing and proving is several thousand miles and this brick wall—”
“Oh, you and your brick walls!” the old lady cried, waving her hands with an impatient and fretful gesture. “I want to see the murderer hanged and the whole thing cleared away and forgotten. He was stabbed with my hatpin and there are people silly enough to—”
“But, Auntie, Mr. Holt must be able to prove his case before he can arrest—anyone,” Miss Kitty Clevedon chimed in.
She spoke naturally and the colour had returned to her cheeks. My graphic description of the difference between knowledge and proof had apparently brought its consolation.
The old lady snorted disagreeably but seemed to have no convincing retort ready.
“And what is the brick wall you chatter so much about?” she demanded.
“I want to know,” I said slowly, examining the back of my left hand with apparent solicitude, “what hold the late Sir Philip Clevedon had over Miss Clevedon that she broke off her engagement with Mr. Ronald Thoyne and consented to marry the late baronet?”
There was for a moment or two a dead silence in the room, a silence that could be felt and almost touched. It was the old lady who finally exploded in a manifestation of wrath.
“My niece was never engaged to Ronald Thoyne,” she cried. “You are impertinent.”
“Never?” I queried, ignoring her concluding sentence.
“And she never promised to marry Sir Philip Clevedon.”
“No?”
She turned suddenly on the girl who, as I have said, was seated a little behind her.
“Was that what they meant at the inquest?” she demanded. “They said—that housekeeper, wasn’t it?—that Philip Clevedon and Ronald Thoyne quarrelled over—over a—a woman. Was that it? Tell me the truth.”
“I don’t know what Mr. Holt is talking about,” the girl replied carelessly.
She had entirely recovered her equanimity and was completely mistress of herself again.
“You were not engaged to Mr. Thoyne?” I asked.
“I was not.”
“And Sir Philip did not want to marry you?”
“Yes, he did,” Lady Clevedon interposed. “He proposed to you a year ago and you refused him. Was it over you they quarrelled, Kitty?”
“I don’t know anything about it,” Miss Clevedon returned a little wearily. “I don’t know why they should.”
The old lady rose from her seat and strode towards a little bureau in one corner of the room from which she took a bundle of newspaper cuttings.
“Yes, here is the report,” she said, and she began to read an extract from Mrs. Halfleet’s evidence in a loud, rather strident voice.
“I heard Sir Philip say, ‘You are talking nonsense. I cannot compel her to marry me against her will. The decision rests with her.’ He was not exactly shouting but was speaking a little more loudly than usual. Mr. Thoyne seemed angry. ‘You must release her from her promise,’ he said. His voice was hoarse and he struck the table with his stick as he spoke. I think Sir Philip stood up from his seat then. I did not see him, of course, but I seemed to hear him walking up and down. And he spoke sharply, almost angrily. The words appeared to come out with a sort of snap. ‘I have nothing to say in this matter,’ Sir Philip declared. ‘I neither hold her to her promise nor release her from it. The decision rests solely with her. If she notifies me that she cannot marry me, I have no power to compel her. But I am not prepared to take your word for it. The decision must come from herself.’ Mr. Thoyne said, ‘That is your last word, is it?’ to which Sir Philip replied, ‘My first word and my last. As far as I am concerned I am engaged and remain engaged until the young lady herself notifies me that the engagement is at an end.’ Then Mr. Thoyne said, ‘If you don’t release her I shall find a way of making you—I shall find a way.’”
The old lady ceased reading and glanced at Kitty over the top of her spectacles.
“What is behind it?” she cried. “Tell me, what is behind it all?”
“I don’t know,” Kitty said. “How should I know?”
“But—was it—who was it?”
“It may have been—Nora Lepley.”
I think she uttered the name quite on the spur of the moment and with no previous intention of taking that way out. At all events, for a moment or two the suggestion seemed rather to impress the old lady, then she shook her head.
“I don’t say that Nora Lepley—Philip Clevedon was like all other men, I dare say, no better and no worse. But he wouldn’t want to marry her. They might fight over Nora Lepley, yes, but it wouldn’t be because either of them wanted to marry her.”
“Why shouldn’t they want to marry Nora—she is very nice?” Kitty said.
“Don’t talk nonsense, child,” the old lady cried.
“These are democratic days—” I was beginning, but the old lady turned on me almost ferociously.
“I wasn’t asking you for your views,” she said. “And we’ll leave it at that. These two men quarrelled over Nora Lepley, or Jane Smith, or Martha Tompkins, and so—”
I rose from my seat and stood regarding them with a smile.
“And so my question goes unanswered,” I murmured, “and my brick wall remains.”
The old lady looked from me to Miss Kitty Clevedon and then back again.
“Yes,” she said, “and that ends the case. You must drop it—do you hear?—drop it. I am getting in deeper than I thought.”
I laughed quietly and then went towards the door.
“I am seeing Mr. Thoyne at Ilbay to-morrow,” I said, pausing there to make quite sure Kitty heard me, “and I will ask him.”
I left them, probably wondering what might be the precise meaning of that last promise—or was it a threat?—and finding my way out strolled slowly down to the big gates.
Once in the public road, however, I indulged in a course of action that might possibly have seemed a little strange to an uninitiated spectator. First of all I stood glancing here and there around me as if looking for someone or something. Then I made my way to the side of the road and clambered to the top of a small pile of boulders on the summit of which I found a seat on a flat stone, so placed that I was invisible to anyone coming from Hapforth House or proceeding in either direction along the road. Having made myself as comfortable as the circumstances permitted, I took out my watch. “Now for the test,” I murmured. “Unless I am out in all my deductions Kitty Clevedon will emerge from Hapforth House in something like half an hour.”
In point of fact it was precisely twenty-three minutes, and curiously enough she did exactly as I had done—stood outside the big gates and looked carefully about her in all directions. But there the resemblance ended. She did not, like me, climb any of the neighbouring rocks, but set off at a smart pace in the direction of Cartordale village, whither also in a very few minutes I followed her. “Mistake number one, young lady,” I murmured. “You should have taken your car into Midlington. You wouldn’t have lost much time and you would have made it safe. Now, then, for the post office.”
I was right again. It was into the little village post office that Kitty Clevedon turned. I did not follow her, but instead stepped into the garden that ran alongside the house and sat myself down on a rustic seat that stood just below a small window, and was hidden from the roadway by a huge, black, soft-water butt. It had been a discovery of my own, made quite casually a few days previously, and merely noted as I noted everything. From that seat it was possible to hear quite plainly the tapping of the telegraph instrument within. Ah, there it was now, tap-tap-tap-tap, H, TAP-tap-TAP, K, TAP-tap, N—oh, yes, of course “H. knows—”
Poor Kitty! She did not dream that the man she dreaded was seated under that little window reading her message as easily as if she had shown him the form on which she had written it. “H. knows your address and is coming to-morrow to see you.” I sped out of the garden and through the village, and taking a short cut met Kitty on her way back to Hapforth House. I was strolling along dragging my stick behind me, and I stopped as I reached her.
“Have you sent your telegram to Mr. Thoyne?” I asked.
She was trying to bluff me and I did not mean to spare her. Why should I? It was she who had declared war.
“My—my—I do not understand you, Mr. Holt,” she stammered, for once taken off her guard.
“Quite a random shot of mine,” I replied smilingly. “I inadvertently let out that I was going to Ilbay to see Mr. Thoyne, and it was natural you should want to warn him.”
“But what have I to do with—with Mr. Thoyne, and why should I want to warn him? Why shouldn’t you visit him if you wish?”
“But you did send him a wire, didn’t you?” I persisted.
“You are impertinent, Mr. Holt!” she cried.
“Yes, I fear I am,” I agreed. “One often has to be in such jobs as this. And it is your own fault, you know.”
“My fault!”
“Yes, you challenge me by your whole attitude. Your visit that night—”
“I have already denied any visit.”
“You adhere to that—good. But, don’t you see that that is the challenge? And now we have this quarrel between Thoyne and Sir Philip Clevedon—”
She turned on me swiftly with flaming cheeks and eyes that sparkled angrily, but I interrupted the coming outburst.
“I am sorry I have offended you,” I said, “but I am afraid that was inevitable. You would have done better to trust me. Anyway, I am in this case and I intend to solve the problem it presents. If it is to be war between us—”
“I do not understand you, Mr. Holt.”
“Let it be war, then, and we’ll fight it out.”
And I continued on my way, still dragging my stick behind me.