CHAPTER XVI
THE MYSTERY OF BILLY CLEVEDON
“TELL me,” I went on, “all you know about young Clevedon. His continued absence is certainly interesting.”
“I am not sure that I know very much about him,” Pepster said. “You see, he never came under my survey professionally, though according to accounts that was rather by way of good luck than actual desert. When they were children, brother and sister were inseparable and were always up to mischief of some sort. Their parents died when they were babies and they went to live at White Towers with old Lady Clevedon. When she went back to Hapforth House on the death of her husband, they went with her and in due time were packed off to school—”
“Yes, all that is common knowledge,” I interrupted. “But what about Ireland?”
“He is a captain in the 2nd Peakshires and they are stationed in Ireland.”
“But apparently he isn’t in Ireland now.”
“I don’t know that he isn’t. He went off on leave which began on February 20th and started for Dublin. But whether he ever reached that city or what he did next nobody knows.”
“They were very fond of each other, these two, I suppose.”
“Meaning the brother and sister?”
“Yes.”
“They were inseparable until their school-days came.”
I lay back in my basket chair and sent a long wraith of blue smoke curling and winding towards the ceiling.
“There may be nothing in it,” I murmured, “and yet why does he remain away? Suppose Thoyne and Clevedon quarrelled over Kitty and young Billy interfered—”
“I won’t say it is impossible,” Pepster interposed, “and if it had been a bullet or a blow from a fist or a stick I might have looked at it seriously, but poison is not Billy Clevedon’s line.”
“One never knows—there are no such things as impossibilities. There is a story behind all this.”
Pepster sat for some minutes gazing meditatively into the fire.
“There is a story behind it—yes,” he said. “Do you really think young Clevedon—?”
I smiled at that and shook my head.
“So far,” I said, “we have brought him to Dublin and that is a long way from Cartordale.”
“Yes, you’re right,” Pepster agreed. “We must bring him a bit nearer home. I wonder where Tulmin is.”
“You trot off to Dublin and look up young Billy,” I replied. “I will hang about here for a day or two and see what I can pick up.”
Ilbay, as I think I have already said, consists only of a score or so of tiny cottages clustered together at the foot of a tall cliff to the left of the jetty, while to the right a rough road goes upwards through what seems to be a narrow valley running inland. I determined upon a walk, not that I expected to discover anything thereabout, since the presence of the Sunrise at Ilbay appeared to be due more to accident than design. When I had been walking about half an hour I met an old white-headed man, who had apparently emerged from a jumble of hillocks and rocks by the roadside where perhaps he had been resting. He stood leaning heavily on his stick and surveying me with bleared, age-dimmed eyes which, however, showed no surprise nor any other interpretable sentiment.
“Where does this road go?” I asked.
“The road—where does it go?” he repeated, mumbling his words from a mouth that was evidently all but toothless, “wey, it goes over yonder”—and he pointed vaguely into the grey distance.
“How far is it to the next village?”
“Oh aye, that’ll be Little Upton, a matter of seven mile maybe and maybe twelve.”
He turned abruptly away and continued his walk towards the coast.
The road ran desolate and unfrequented, with open moorland on either side, as grim and forbidding as open moorland can be in early spring before winter has taken its final departure. The little fishing hamlet lay behind me hidden by the rising ground, while before and around me were only illimitable open spaces within an unbroken pall of grey sky overhead—no sign of human habitation anywhere visible. I decided that Ilbay was the more attractive and that I had nothing to gain by going on.
And it was just here at the loneliest and dreariest turn of the road that I met Ronald Thoyne again coming towards me with long, swinging strides. He stopped and faced me with a rather twisted grin.
“Still on the trail, Mr. Holt?” he said, with half a sneer: “Any discoveries?”
“Several,” I returned cheerfully. “I am, in short, getting on.”
“You must possess a really attractive collection of mare’s-nests,” he retorted.
“A few—yes. But this isn’t one. Not but what there are still puzzles in it. I can well understand that when Miss Kitty Clevedon told her brother that she had been compelled to promise to marry Sir Philip, he should offer to set her free by threatening to mur—no, keep your hands off me, Thoyne. But what I haven’t yet settled is why she promised to marry Sir Philip or what hold he had over her. There is a story behind it that would solve the puzzle, but I haven’t got it yet. I shall get it though, and if it involves young Clevedon—”
I broke off there with a short laugh, stepping back just in time to avoid the quick, nervous blow Thoyne aimed at me with his stick. He recovered himself on the instant and grinned a little ruefully.
“If you think Billy Clevedon murdered Sir Philip,” he said, “you are hopelessly out of your reckoning. A bullet or a blow, perhaps, but not poison. That isn’t Billy’s way.”
Pepster, I remembered, had said the same thing and I merely duplicated my reply.
“Oh, as for that,” I said, “one never knows. Where is he, anyway?”
“You don’t know?”
“No,” I responded. “I never pretend a knowledge I do not possess. I don’t know where he is—do you?”
“No,” he replied slowly, “I don’t. I would give £5,000 at this moment if I did.”
“If he is innocent,” I said, “he is a fool for stopping away, and no less, perhaps, if he is guilty because, at least, his guilt has to be proved. If you are hiding him you are doing him no service. I am not looking for him but the police are.”
“The police!”
“Could you expect otherwise? Here you have a title and a fortune and the owner refuses to come and take them. Why?”
“I wish,” he said a little wistfully, “that you and I were on the same side of the wall.”
“Meaning by that—”
“That you were with us instead of against us.”
I paused long and my reply to that was very carefully considered.
“Mr. Thoyne,” I said, “I am not on any side—I am not for or against anyone. I deal only in facts. If I convinced myself that young Clevedon murdered Sir Philip, I should say so. I have no reason for thinking that he did and certainly no desire to drag him into it. I am not fighting you nor anybody. You do not think young Clevedon murdered Sir Philip, or you try not to think so, but at the back of your mind is the fear that he did. You are therefore prejudiced but not, as you may think, in his favour. Your very horror of the possibility persuades you to treat it almost as a probability. But I, on the other hand, consider only evidence. I have no personal views in favour and certainly no prejudices against.”
“And what evidence have you?” he demanded.
“None,” I replied, “except what you and Miss Clevedon have provided and what his absence emphasises. If you and she had kept out of it and he had been at Cartordale, as he should have been, no suspicion ever would have attached to him. At this moment the only evidence against him is the belief you and Miss Clevedon harbour, that he—”
He paced from one side of the road to the other and then back again.
“I wish I dared tell you the whole story,” he said. “I believe you could help us.”
Without another word he resumed his walk and plodded steadily on without so much as a backward glance.
But I knew now that my surmises were accurate—that Sir William Clevedon’s continued and unexplained absence was breeding deadly and sinister fears in the bosoms of his friends, of his sister especially. That she was at the bottom of Thoyne’s mysterious activities seemed clear enough. It was for her sake, probably at her instigation, that he had tried so hard to envelop me in fog. And it seemed evident that she was in possession of knowledge which, so far, neither Pepster nor myself had penetrated. It would be my business to discover what that was. I had not, however, very long to wait.