THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEM
It was fairly late that evening when Austin Starr arrived at Cacciola’s, having had a hasty meal at a restaurant when he was through with his day’s work.
He had been obliged to decline the maestro’s hospitable invitation to dinner, and had been assured by the old man that it did not matter how late he turned up: “I am not what the English call an early bird!”
Cacciola himself, arrayed in dressing-gown and slippers and carrying a big curved meerschaum pipe in his hand, admitted and welcomed him cordially.
There was no one else in the spacious sitting-room, but Austin’s quick sense of disappointment was speedily banished by his host.
“Sit down, my friend. You will find that chair comfortable. Now, will you have wine—it is here ready? Or wait for the coffee which my Maddelena will bring soon? She is now preparing it.”
“Coffee for me, thank you, sir.”
“And none makes it better than Maddelena,” said the old man, settling himself in his own great chair, and resuming his pipe. “It is well indeed for us all that she is at home at this time, for, alas! we are a sick household, with Boris and my poor old Giulia so much distressed by this terrible event, which touched us so nearly through our poor Boris.”
“It’s a great and awful mystery that I’d give my right hand to solve,” said Austin bluntly.
Cacciola looked at him with grave surprise.
“Say a tragedy, yes. But where is the mystery? There is no doubt of the guilt of that unhappy young man.”
“Doubt! Man alive, Roger Carling is as innocent as I am; I’d stake my life on that! He’s been committed for trial, I know—one couldn’t expect anything else at present—but——”
He checked himself. After all, he had come here in search of a clue, and must say nothing that might put Cacciola on his guard.
“Now that is strange,” mused Cacciola. “Maddelena has been saying the same ever since we returned from the court, simply because she has decided that he does not look like a murderer—a woman’s reason!”
“I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting your niece yet. Does she live with you, sir?”
“It is her home, and has been these many years, since my brother died and left her in my charge. She and my poor Boris are to me as children. But she has not been at home except for holidays since she went to school; she has been educated here in England, and since two years has been studying in Milan. She should be there now, the naughty one, but the moment she heard the news of this terrible thing she came back, travelling night and day. I was vexed, yes; with a musician, music should always come first, and her impulse will retard her career; but I do not know what we should have done without her. None can manage Boris and our old Giulia as Maddelena does,” he added with an indulgent smile.
“Is that so? She’s evidently a very capable as well as a very charming young lady. Is she a singer, sir?” said Austin, conscious of a curious sense of relief. What dark suspicions had been in his mind ever since he saw that fury of hatred in the girl’s face as she stood by Paula Rawson’s grave he had not dared to formulate, even in thought, but they had been there, and now Cacciola’s words had dispersed them so far as Maddelena was concerned. However much she hated the dead woman, she could have had no hand in her death.
Yet he was still convinced that here, in this quaint Bohemian household, the heart of the mystery was hidden. How was he to discover it? At present all he could do was to cultivate his friendship with the genial, simple-minded old maestro, whom he was learning to like immensely. At the back of his mind he was secretly ashamed of employing this plan. It was a low-down trick, yet the only course that seemed possible at present. And Roger Carling’s life was in the balance: that grim fact overshadowed all other considerations!
Cacciola shook his head and shrugged his shoulders with a whimsical air of resignation.
“Alas! no. She has a voice indeed which, compared with most English voices for instance, would pass as good. But a Cacciola who sings must excel, and my Maddelena will never excel——”
“As a singer! My uncle is on his old grievance,” said Maddelena herself, as she entered carrying the coffee-tray, and flashed an amused glance from one to the other.
“Aha! What is the proverb about listeners never hearing any good of themselves?” chuckled Cacciola. “This is my little girl, Mr. Starr; and if she had come an instant later she would have heard something nicer, for one of these days she is going to be a great violinist.”
“So my uncle says; but we shall see,” laughed Maddelena, setting the tray on a low, carved stand, and giving Austin her hand, and continuing more seriously: “I am so glad you have come to-night, Mr. Starr, for I have heard so much of you, and there are, oh, so many things I want to ask you about. You are a great friend of that poor Mr. Carling and his bride, are you not? The poor young lovers, how my heart is grieved for them! But we must have our coffee first and then we will talk.”
There was something so frank and charming in her manner, so like her uncle’s, in its easy, gracious simplicity, that again Austin marvelled, remembering her in that unguarded moment the other day. Was she merely a creature of passionate impulse or a consummate actress?
“I am very much the maid-of-all-work these days,” she explained, seating herself between them on a big “humpty.” “For Giulia—you know her?”
“Your old servant, yes, I have seen her.”
“She is still in such a state of nerves that she is no use at all. It is very foolish of her.”
“Have patience, carissima; she will get over it in time. We all shall,” said Cacciola soothingly.
“I suppose Mrs. Giulia was very fond of Lady Rawson?” hazarded Austin.
Maddelena turned towards him, raising her dark brows.
“Fond of her? No, indeed. Why should she be?”
“I don’t know. But I thought, as she seemed to be fairly intimate with you all——”
“Paula Rawson intimate with us!”
There was a note of indignant protest in her rich voice, and her eyes flashed stormily. Austin metaphorically “sat up,” and Cacciola cast a deprecating glance at the girl.
“I’m sorry if I’ve said anything wrong, Miss Maddelena; but it seems she did come here very frequently, so I naturally thought——”
“Come here, yes, indeed, and far too often,” said Maddelena with emphasis. “But not to see us. She came to see Boris, her cousin; not because she loved him—Paula Rawson was not capable of loving anyone—but because she wanted him as a tool for her ambitions, for her intrigues. She was ruining him, body and soul!”
Cacciola interposed, almost sternly: “Peace, Maddelena. We must speak with charity of the dead!”
“That is my uncle all over. Oh, yes, ‘speak with charity, think with charity!’ For me, I cannot, I will not, when I think of Paula Rawson. I am glad she is dead. If I made any other pretence I should be a hypocrite. This is the truth, Mr. Starr—my uncle knows it, though he will not say so now. We were so happy together, he and I and Boris, a year ago, when I came home from Milan for the winter vacation. You, who have only seen Boris as he is now, cannot imagine what he was then—what he was to us both. And his voice!”
“Ah! she is right,” sighed Cacciola. “It was divine, but the voice is there still, my child, the saints be praised, and when he recovers he will sing once more, better than ever perhaps, and be his old self once again.”
“Perhaps. Because Paula Rawson is dead and can trouble him no more,” cried Maddelena. “He met her, she whom he had thought dead, as would to heaven she had been—and, lo, we became as nothing to him: his voice, his career became as nothing! He lived only for her, to do her bidding, to see her from time to time; plotting for their country, they said. Pouff! He had forgotten his country until he met her—Paula—again, and fluttered round her like a moth round a candle, singeing his wings. Well, that candle has been put out, just in time to save him being burnt up!”
Cacciola shifted uneasily in his chair, but did not venture on further expostulation.
“Do you know any of their Russian friends, Miss Cacciola?” asked Austin.
She shook her head.
“They used to come and go like shadows, seeing only Boris, and whoever might chance to admit them when he did not—Giulia or my uncle usually. She—Paula—actually had a key, and could let herself into this, our home, if you please, whenever she liked. I was always furious about it, as was Giulia, and my uncle did not like it. He should have forbidden it, as I told him a hundred times.”
“She had a key!” exclaimed Austin. “Did she use it that last time she was here?”
“I do not know. Why do you ask?”
“Because if she did it ought to have been found either in her purse or her bag, and certainly it was not there.”
“That is curious,” said Maddelena reflectively. “I will find out from Giulia to-morrow; she is in bed now. You think that is of importance?”
“Every little thing is of importance. See, here, Miss Cacciola——”
“Well?” she asked, her bright eyes fixed inquiringly upon him, as he hesitated, wondering if, and how far, he should confide in her. Cacciola still remained silent but was listening intently.
“It’s this way,” Austin resumed slowly, weighing each word before he spoke. “Roger Carling is innocent. A good few of us—every one who really knows him, in fact, except Sir Robert Rawson himself—are convinced of that, although appearances are so terribly against him.”
“I too, since I watched him in the court to-day,” she murmured.
“I know. The maestro told me so just before you came in. Now we’ve got to find out the truth, to trace the murderer, before the trial comes on, and we’ve only a very few weeks to do it in. It’s no use going to the police, unless and until we’ve got something definite to put them on. They think the case is clear and their duty done.”
“But you—there is something in your mind?”
“There is, but I don’t quite know how to explain it. I believe this Russian business may provide the clue, and that you can help to find it. Just suppose there was one of them who had a personal grudge against her—or even a spy in their councils, for there always is a spy, sure, in these intrigues.”
“Or someone who wanted to separate her from Boris,” said Maddelena dryly, and he was thankful that she was now gazing at the fire and not at him. “Well, I and my uncle wanted to do that. He is sorry the separation has been brought about with such tragedy, but I—I care not how it came about so that it did come. I wonder you did not suspect me, Mr. Starr!”
She turned and looked at him again, a sort of challenge in her eyes, which he met squarely.
“Maddelena!” exclaimed Cacciola, glancing from one to the other, but neither heeded him at the moment.
“Perhaps I did till I met you,” Austin answered. “I don’t now, or I shouldn’t have asked your help.”
“Good! I like an honest man, and that is very honest, Mr. Starr. I also will be honest. I did not murder Paula Rawson, though there have been many times when I would have done so if I could. And I tell you that if I knew who did I would do all in my power to shield him.”
“But not if an innocent man should suffer in his place,” he urged. “Miss Cacciola, I implore you if you know anything—even if you suspect anything or anyone——”
“I neither know nor suspect anything,” she interrupted decisively. “I had not thought till to-day that there was any doubt. But you are right, the innocent must not suffer. I—we”—she glanced at her uncle—“will do all we can to help you.”
“What can we do?” asked Cacciola perplexedly. “I have heard you with much surprise, with much distress. I am grieved that Maddelena here is so hard; she knows it. It is not like her, signor, for she is truly a loving child.”
He looked so thoroughly upset and miserable that with one of her swift impulses Maddelena sprang up, and bent over the back of his chair, putting her arms caressingly round him.
“Never mind me, dear uncle. I love when I love and I hate when I hate; I am made like that, and it cannot be helped. But Mr. Starr is right: we must do what we can to bring the truth to light.”
“That’s so, Miss Cacciola. Now do either of you know the names of any of these Russians or where they live?”
“I do not, nor you, uncle? As I said, they came and went as they liked, and my uncle should have forbidden it; but he is so weak where Boris is concerned. And he is so sorry for them, as for all who are unfortunate.” She gave him another hug, and resumed her seat, continuing: “Do you know he used to give them food if he was at home and knew they were there with Boris, slinking in by one and two after dark? Well, he would bid Giulia make a good meal; and she did, grumbling. But she was never permitted to take in the dishes—no, nor even to peep into the room. Boris always came and took them from her!”
“What is a little food?” protested Cacciola. “I do not believe there is any harm in these poor souls; they are not Communists, but aristocrats who have escaped with their bare lives—whose lives are still perhaps in danger; and of one thing I am certain: not one of them would have lifted his hand against Paula—she was their best friend.”
“There may have been a spy among them for all that, as Mr. Starr suggested,” said Maddelena. “And I promise you that I will find out all I can about them. Boris will tell me, if I go to work in the right way.”
“I’m infinitely obliged to you, Miss Maddelena,” said Austin earnestly.
“And now let us talk of something pleasanter. Will you have some more coffee? Ah, it is cold! Some wine, then. That will make my uncle more cheerful. Will you move the coffee-tray, Mr. Starr? Set it on the piano—anywhere.”
He jumped up to do her bidding, while she crossed to the corner cupboard. Taking the tray from the little carved stand, he glanced round the room, and noting a small table near the door moved towards it.
As he did so he saw the door, on which hung a heavy embroidered portière, gently closing. Next instant he remembered that Maddelena had certainly shut the door after her when she entered; he had noticed the clever little backward kick with which she did so, and had heard the click of the latch. None of them had been anywhere near the door since. Who then was outside?
Striding swiftly across the room he dropped rather than set the tray on the table, sprang to the door and threw it wide open. The outer hall was dark and silent.
“Who is there?” he demanded, and at the same moment Maddelena called from the other side the room:
“What is the matter, Mr. Starr?”
“The door has been opened—someone has been listening,” he said, stepping warily into the darkness and feeling for the electric switch. “Where is that switch?”
“By the hall door, on the right,” said Maddelena, hurrying to him, while Cacciola followed more slowly, shuffling in his big slippers.
He switched the light on. The small, square hall was empty but for themselves. Maddelena passed swiftly along and switched on another light that illuminated the two passages at the end that ran right and left. No one there either.
“I shut the door when I came in,” she whispered.
“I know. I saw you,” he answered as softly.
“And I left the light on in the hall—I had both my hands full. It must have been either Boris or Giulia. Uncle, go and see if Boris is up. I will go to Giulia,” she said, motioning Austin to stay where he was.
He watched her go softly along the right-hand passage, open a door at the end, and switch on a light. From within the room, even at that distance, he could hear a sonorous snore.
Maddelena put out the light, closed Giulia’s door, and beckoned to Austin to join her.
“She is fast asleep; it could not have been she. I—I am frightened. Let us look in the other rooms.”
They did so; dining-room, kitchen, her own room—a charming one, next to Giulia’s. No one lurking there.
They went back and found Cacciola doing the same in the other wing, which once was a separate flat. He too looked very disturbed.
“Boris sleeps soundly, as he should do; he is under the doctor and had a sleeping draught to-night, and there is none other here but ourselves. Who can have been here?”
“I guess whoever it was has just walked out,” said Austin, striding back to the front door. “Why didn’t I think of that first?”
“Wait, the lights will be out there. Take my torch,” counselled Cacciola, fumbling for it in his overcoat pocket.
Softly all three of them went down all those flights of stone stairs. Still no sign of anyone, no sound. They themselves were evidently, and as usual, the only occupants of the block who were up so late; but the street door was open.
“That is proof,” whispered Maddelena. “It is always closed at eleven; after that we have to admit ourselves with our pass-key.”
“How many keys to this door have you?” asked Austin, after looking out into the night and closing the door, latching it this time.
“Only one—my uncle has it; and if others are late they must rouse the porter.”
“I wonder who has that missing key—the key you told me just now that Lady Rawson had, and lost,” said Austin, when they had returned to the drawing-room. “Take my advice, Mr. Cacciola, and have a new lock to your front door to-morrow. And don’t leave any spare keys around!”