IT was in Dr. Crawford’s surgery the day before the resumed inquest that I met Lady Clevedon again. A little to my surprise she recognised me, though, as far as I knew, she had only seen me in the dark, and greeted me by name.
“I wanted to know you, Mr. Holt,” the old lady said. “You were a popular theme of conversation when your aunt’s will became known, and everybody wondered what this London nephew might be like.”
“May I suppose that he, even though distantly, approaches expectation?” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know that we really harboured expectations,” Lady Clevedon retorted bluntly. “I had seen your photograph, so that your features do not come upon me with any overwhelming sense of novelty. Mrs. Mackaluce showed me the portrait.”
“Yes, I know she had one,” I said. “I found it in the house. But I don’t know how she got it.”
“I think she said her lawyer procured it for her. ‘I quarrelled with his father and mother,’ she told me, ‘and I’m not going to make it up with him. But he is the only relative I have in the world, and he has only me, and I shall make him my heir.’ Are you really as lonely as all that, Mr. Holt?”
“Lonely?” I echoed, perhaps a little vaguely. “Oh, you mean the only relative—no, it’s not quite so blank as that. True, my relatives do not worry me much, but there are some about somewhere.”
“Are you going to settle in Cartordale?” she demanded. “It’s slow enough as a rule, though there is excitement just now, more than enough. Sir Philip Clevedon stabbed and with my hatpin—it was my hatpin, you know—”
She closed her lips together with what was almost a snap, as if she feared to say too much. But she was not constructed for long silences.
“That man Peppermint, Peppercorn—”
“Pepster,” Dr. Crawford murmured.
“Ah, yes, Pepster—thinks I did the murder. Where did I last see my hatpin? Did I leave it at White Towers? ‘My good man,’ I said, ‘I haven’t been in White Towers for three years.’ Wasn’t I friendly with Sir Philip? Had I quarrelled with him? when did I last see him? Of course I had quarrelled with him. Philip Clevedon was always quarrelling with somebody. He was—but there, he’s dead now.”
She paused again and began to draw on her glove.
“The late baronet wasn’t exactly popular—?” I began.
“Popular!” the old lady cried explosively. “Popular!”
She left it there and, indeed, she had no need to go into further detail. Her inflection on the word was sufficient.
“But, anyway, I didn’t kill him,” she went on. “There is a lot of difference between a desire to box a man’s ears and stabbing him with a hatpin. If I stabbed everybody I quarrelled with I should have some busy days.”
“It was your hatpin,” I murmured, possibly in the hope that I might irritate her into talking, a plan which, if indeed I had really formed it, Dr. Crawford frustrated.
“Well, anyway, you did not kill Sir Philip Clevedon,” he said roughly.
“You are a true friend,” the old lady cried, with grim and satirical humour. “Thank God! somebody believes me innocent. If I come to the gallows—”
“I know you did not kill him,” the doctor repeated half sullenly, but with so much emphasis that I could not help wondering what was behind it.
“How can you know?” Lady Clevedon cried. “Perhaps I did. I have felt like it many a time, anyway. And it was my hatpin—as Mr. Holt reminded me. Pepperpot suspects me at all events. But here comes Kitty.”
The old lady drew Dr. Crawford aside and began to discuss with him some matters connected, I fancy, with village doings. Kitty Clevedon and I were left by ourselves in the huge bay window that looked out over the rough, uncultivated garden. The girl made no effort to avoid my company but greeted me with a cool tranquillity that was, however, of that careful variety which suggested some anxiety to show that she was not afraid of me. For my part I merely returned a conventional reply and stood looking out into the garden, leaving it to her to open a conversation or not just as she thought proper. I took it that, being a woman, she would, and I was not far out.
“Your gaze on that garden seems very intent, Mr. Holt,” she said, with a bewildering smile. “Are you looking for something?”
“Well, perhaps,” I responded, with a smile. “You see, I am always on the look-out—for your double.”
“My double! Have I a double? How delightful!” she cried.
“Yes,” I said gravely, turning once more to the garden; “a double—someone so exactly like you that it is very difficult to distinguish you. I should like to find her—that other one. But I have had no luck, none at all.”
“Are you so very anxious to find her?” Kitty asked, bringing that smile once more to bear as she saw that my eyes were turned again in her direction.
“At this moment, none at all,” I responded lightly. “I find my present company fully adequate.”
“Is it that I make an efficient substitute? How very sweet of you to say so,” Kitty murmured, with a quick glance downward as if at the slender toe of an exceptionally pretty shoe.
“No, I do not remember saying that,” I replied. “You see, you are you and she is she—”
“‘And never the twain shall meet’—isn’t that Kipling?” Kitty demanded.
“I think it may be quite safely asserted,” I said, with grim meaning, “that you will never meet your double.”
She flushed a little at the thrust but maintained otherwise her smiling calm.
“But when did you meet her, Mr. Holt—did you ever tell me?” she asked, with a delightful assumption of candour and innocence.
There was never a cleverer actress on or off the stage than Kitty Clevedon.
“Oh, she flitted into my life through my study window—and then flitted out again—into the darkness—”
“Leaving you desolate—how very unkind of her!”
She broke off with a quick trill of pretty laughter that was not at all affected and in which I joined her.
“It sounded a trifle sentimental, didn’t it?” I said, and then added with tranquil insolence, looking her this time full in the face, “but isn’t there a proverb about better to have seen and lost than never to have—oh, and that reminds me. I asked Dr. Crawford where I should find another young lady like Miss Clevedon and he replied, ‘Impossible—there isn’t one. God broke the mould when He made her.’ But there is another one, I know, because I have seen her, and—”
“I should want a very solemn affidavit indeed to make me believe that Dr. Crawford ever said anything so pretty as that,” she interrupted.
I had expected to make her angry but she seemed only amused.
“Oh, you don’t know the doctor,” I said airily. “He is capable of much. But he was wrong in this case—the double exists.”
“I shall ask him if he said it.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“Oh, well, you know, he might ask some awkward questions in his turn. You see, I have never told anyone yet about your—double. I don’t think I should care to entrust him with the secret.”
“But why let it trouble you, Mr. Holt—why not forget it—and her?”
“Oh, I am not allowing it to trouble me.”
“You seem to be always talking about it.”
“I have never mentioned it to a soul except yourself.”
“I should think—” Kitty began, then turned away to meet Lady Clevedon, whose conference with Dr. Crawford had just terminated.
The old lady stood glaring at me for a moment or two.
“I dare say you think that we—Kitty and I—take this—this tragedy very calmly, Mr. Holt,” she said.
“I don’t know that I thought about it at all,” I responded.
“Women sometimes wear a mask, Mr. Holt.”
“Yes?”
“It may be for a purpose or it may be by habit.”
“Yes.”
I glanced quickly at Kitty and found her surveying the old lady with sombre eyes from which all the laughter had fled. She at all events had been wearing a mask.
When the two ladies had gone Dr. Crawford and I sat down to a whisky and soda apiece and a cigar. He seemed ill at ease, restless and rather unhappy until I casually reintroduced the subject of the Clevedon mystery, then he seemed in some curious way to brighten up.
“Aye, murder cases,” he said reflectively. “A murder case can be very interesting, you know—morbid but fascinating.”
I agreed without at all grasping his meaning.
“You are a student of criminology and you have written books on the subject,” Crawford went on. “Did you ever run up against a case of poisoning with prussic acid?”
“Several times,” I replied. “It is a frequent and formidable poison because it is so swift and unerring in its effect. The victim is dead before help can possibly reach him.”
“That is true,” Crawford agreed. “Death may be a matter of seconds, of minutes at most. But, now, tell me, have you met cases in which a man, having taken a dose of prussic acid, lies calmly down and is found as tranquil and orderly in posture as if he had died in his sleep?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Indeed, I should say the majority of cases were like that. Prussic acid is said to produce convulsion, frothing at the mouth, and so forth. Those do take place, and may in every instance, though there are cases in which no evidence of them remains.”
“Just so,” Crawford agreed, nodding his head. “But, now suppose it were a case of suicide by prussic acid, would you expect to find the bottle near at hand?”
“In nine cases out of ten—yes,” I responded.
“And in the tenth?” he asked eagerly.
“There might have been some other way of administering the poison—wasn’t there a case of prussic acid in chocolates—?”
“Would it be possible for a man who had taken prussic acid to conceal the bottle?”
“Possible, yes, but—”
“And if no bottle were found you would regard it as a case of murder?”
“If the murderer had any sense he would leave the bottle near at hand to give the appearance of suicide.”
“But murderers—sometimes forget—these little—”
“They do, fortunately for the law. Nine murderers out of ten are hanged by their own mistakes. But what is your sudden interest in poison cases? Have you one in—?”
“I have—Sir Philip Clevedon—”
“Sir Philip Clevedon!” I echoed, for once surprised into showing my astonishment.
“Aye,” Dr. Crawford said slowly. “He died from prussic acid poisoning and the hatpin was thrust through his heart—after he was dead.”