CHAPTER XVII
MORE ABOUT BILLY CLEVEDON
THOYNE must have started off immediately for Cartordale because it was no later than the next morning, while I was seriously considering whether I should return home or follow Pepster to Dublin that I received a wire from Thoyne reading: “Can you see K.C. and self at C. to-morrow?” K.C. was Kitty and C. was Cartordale and I was not long in making up my mind. I wired off a prompt reply suggesting Stone Hollow as the place of meeting. They were awaiting me when I arrived and they had evidently agreed that Thoyne should start the talking.
“We want to know,” he began slowly, “which side you would take if—”
He stopped there, perhaps expecting me to help him out. But I remained stubbornly silent.
“Suppose,” he went on, taking a sudden plunge, “you proved that—that Clevedon did—was involved in—in the death of Sir Philip—would you take your proof to the police?”
“I will make no promises either way,” I replied. “You sent for me and I am here. Why did you invite me to come and what have I to do with it, anyway? You need say nothing unless you wish. And in any case, I am not a detective but a writer of books—”
“Then why need you tell the police?” Kitty interposed softly.
“Tell them what?” I demanded, turning suddenly upon her.
She paled a little and shrank back.
“I did not say I should tell the police,” I went on. “Indeed, I decline to discuss the point. I retain absolute freedom and if you prefer to say good-bye, well, the decision rests with you.”
“The fact is,” Thoyne blurted out, “the thing is so much a nightmare to us, that we must settle it one way or the other. It would be better almost to know the worst than to rest in continual doubt.”
“But why come to me?”
“Because we think you can help us.”
“I am not a detective: I take no fees: I go my own way: I make no promises.”
“We accept your conditions,” Thoyne said, with a glance at Kitty who nodded an affirmative.
The story they told me was certainly interesting and what they omitted at the first telling, I managed to elicit by subsequent questioning.
Sir Philip Clevedon, it seemed, had given Kitty to understand that her brother was in some danger, though he had been judiciously vague, depending more upon hints, suggestions and innuendo than on definite statements. He was easily able to startle an impressionable girl where a man or an older woman might have been able to extract the truth from him by a process of cross-examination.
Only one thing stood out clear, that Billy was in some kind of a mess from which it would cost far more money than she possessed to extricate him, and that Sir Philip would find the cash if she consented to marry him, which she did. Sir Philip’s action could only be justified by the old adage that “All’s fair in love and war.” Undoubtedly he was very much in love with her which may be urged as his justification. “I have wealth and a title and I am not an old man,” he said to her, “and you have youth and beauty; it is not an unequal bargain.” That was true enough. Marriages far less appropriate occur every day. But nothing would have induced Miss Kitty Clevedon to consent except the thought that by her sacrifice she was saving her brother from some disaster, the details of which she did not understand.
Then came a very difficult task, to tell Ronald Thoyne that their little romance was ended and that she was going to marry Sir Philip Clevedon. Thoyne seems to have written straight off to Billy Clevedon, in which he was wise, and then went and had a row with Sir Philip, which was foolish.
Billy Clevedon as soon as he received Thoyne’s letter seems to have rushed off to Midlington where he summoned both Thoyne and Kitty to meet him. There under pressure from him, not unassisted perhaps by Thoyne, she told the story of her interview with Sir Philip.
“The swine!” Billy cried. “The unbuttered swine! I’ll wring his filthy neck for him. You’ll not marry him, Kitty, I’ll do for him first.”
He was very angry and swore mightily, but they paid little heed to his wrath. It was characteristic of him to be a trifle over-emphatic in his expressions.
“I asked him to lend me some money, it is true,” he said, “but it wasn’t as much as he told you and it didn’t matter in that way. I was in a hole but that was nothing new and there was no disgrace attached to it. But I’ll settle it—you leave to me. Kiss Ronny Thoyne and make it up with him.”
Billy took two or three turns up and down the room, spitting out the words as he went.
“It’s blackmail,” he continued. “But of course it’s nonsense. He can’t make her if—does she want to marry him?”
“She does not,” Thoyne told him promptly.
“No, I should think not. He’s twice her age and more. But I see his game—he must be an infernal cad. I didn’t suspect that of him. He is cold and selfish but I did not think he was that sort of reptile. I knew nothing of this, Thoyne—you believe that, don’t you. I am a mixture like most men but I am not that sort.”
He resumed his restless pacing to and fro.
“I had no idea of it, none at all,” he repeated. He did not tell them what the trouble was nor why he had wanted the money.
“I would have lent—” Thoyne was beginning, but Billy airily dismissed the suggestion.
“I’m all right for a bit and I’ll make the blasted baronet shell out somehow,” he said. “Don’t you worry. But I’m busy now—an engagement I must meet. I’ll see you later on. Meanwhile you cut clear of the swine.”
“Aren’t you coming to Cartordale?” Kitty asked him.
“Presently,” he told them, “but not to-night. Thoyne, you take her home.”
Thoyne did and left her at Hapforth House early in the evening.
The next day—the fatal 23rd—passed without any word from Billy. We know what happened on that day—Thoyne’s quarrel with the baronet and Kitty’s visit to White Towers in the evening. But the latter did not return directly to Hapforth House. She ran her little two-seater into Midlington only some twelve miles distant and called at the hotel at which she had met her brother on the previous day. But he was not there. He had paid his bill, packed his bag and departed.
She returned to Cartordale but her car broke down on the way and she pushed it to the side of the road and tried a short cut to Hapforth House, missing her way in the fog and landing in my study. The next day came the tragic story of Sir Philip’s death and though both she and Thoyne affected to believe that Billy could have had nothing to do with it, they were nevertheless terribly anxious and alarmed, the more as the days went on and nothing was heard of or from him.
“And now let me reduce it to definite dates,” I said. “You will check me if I am wrong. You left your brother at the ‘King’s Head’ in Midlington on the afternoon of February 22nd. He left the hotel on the morning of February 23rd. Sir Philip Clevedon died on the night of the 23rd.”
They nodded a joint affirmative.
“In other words, and to put it in its most brutal form, he left Midlington and came secretly to Cartordale, having first obtained some poison, secured an entrance to White Towers, poisoned Sir Philip’s whisky, disappeared—”
“But I don’t believe—” Kitty began.
“No,” I said, “of course you don’t, but that summary of possibilities represents your fears.”
“Why doesn’t he show up?” Thoyne interposed.
“Yes,” I agreed, “that is precisely the question we have to answer. Could he have got into White Towers without being seen? You and he lived there as children and I have been told that you were veritable little imps of mischief. All sorts of things would be possible in connection with a big and ancient mansion like White Towers.”
Kitty looked woefully distressed and turned with white-faced, pathetic pleading to Thoyne.
“I should tell everything, Kitty, dear,” he said.
“There is a secret way into White Towers which we discovered years ago,” she replied. “We agreed to keep it to ourselves and I have never told anyone. I don’t think anyone knows of it except my brother and myself.”
I regarded her thoughtfully for a moment or two.
“Well, now,” I said, “you know of that secret way—could you have entered White Towers and placed the poison in that bottle without being seen?”
“Surely, you don’t think I—”
“Could you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Well, now, look,” I said, importing a sudden harshness into my tones, “you hated the thought of marrying Sir Philip and his death would mean your release, besides which it would mean wealth to your brother and a happy issue from his financial—”
“But the suggestion is infamous, intolerable!” Thoyne cried.
“Don’t be a fool,” I advised him. “I am not accusing Miss Clevedon; I am summarising the case against her brother. The first essential is to establish a motive and there you have one twice over—Sir Philip’s death would release his sister from a hateful marriage and it would—he would succeed to the dead man’s title and money. I am being purposely brutal because I want to put it at its worst. He comes to Midlington, a few miles from Cartordale on the day before the tragedy, he leaves Midlington for some unknown destination, which may, however, have been Cartordale, a few hours before the murder, he knows a secret way into White Towers, and he has a dual motive for assassinating Sir Philip. You have summed all this up in your own minds, haven’t you? It has been a dark shadow in your thoughts ever since that tragic day. Isn’t that so?”
There was a long silence.
“Yes,” Thoyne said at length, “you are perfectly right. You have described exactly what, as I said before, has been a ceaseless nightmare to us. And you have omitted the main difficulty. Why doesn’t he come to Cartordale?”
“But, now,” I went on, “let us take the other side. There is no evidence of any sort that Clevedon ever had any prussic acid in his possession. Or is there?”
“We know of none,” Thoyne assented eagerly.
“And you?” I asked, turning to Kitty.
“No,” she said, shaking her head, “I never heard of any.”
“And then there is the possibility that when he left Midlington he never came to Cartordale at all. That is where our investigation begins. Where did he go when he left Midlington? Let us return to your interview in the ‘King’s Head.’ At what time did it take place?”
“In the afternoon,” Thoyne responded. “It would be three o’clock when we left the ‘King’s Head.’”
“And did he give you no indication of the nature of his engagement?”
“Nothing at all.”
“Did he say when he was coming to Cartordale?”
“No, I don’t think he mentioned it—at all events, nothing definite.”
“Well, now, let me put it like this. Suppose that after the meeting at Midlington there had been no tragedy, would your brother’s prolonged absence have worried you?”
“Oh, no,” Kitty replied. “One never knew what Billy was going to do and frequently he wasn’t sure himself. He would just do it.”
“Did you know,” I asked, “that your brother was going on a long leave. It is rather a wonder that Thoyne’s letter ever reached him, but evidently it did. The fact that he had obtained leave before the receipt of that letter suggests some contemplated purpose—the visit to Midlington was only a break in the journey.”
“Yes,” Thoyne said, “we have thought all that out. But why hasn’t he come back when—it is unbelievable that he should have seen nothing—no account of the—”
“Unlikely, but not impossible,” I observed. “He may have met with an accident, for example.”
“We should have heard of it,” Thoyne said, shaking his head.
“Well, anyway,” I returned, as cheerfully as I could, “suppose we accord him the right every Briton has under the law, of being regarded as innocent until he is proved guilty. Is he, by the way, interested, do you know, in any—lady?”
“In about a hundred, I should think,” Thoyne returned.
“Yes, I dare say he would be. At his age one is. But I mean any special lady?”
But they could give me no help in that.