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Loudwater Mystery

<h2 id="id00399" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER V</h2> "Murdered? Lord Loudwater?" said Mr. Manley with another terrific yawn, and he rubbed his eyes. Then he awoke completely and said: "Send a groom for Black the constable at once. Yes—and tell Wilkins to telephone the news to the Chief Inspector at Low Wycombe. Hurry up! I'll get dressed and be down in a few minutes. Hurry up!" Holloway turned to go. "Stop!" said Mr. Manley. "Tell Wilkins to see that no one disturbs Lady Loudwater. I'll break the news myself when she is dressed." "Yes, sir," said Holloway, and ran down the corridor. Mr. Manley was much quicker than usual making his toilet, but thorough. He foresaw a hard and trying day before him, and he wished to start it fresh and clean. He would come into contact with new people; he saw himself playing an important rôle in a most important affair; he would naturally and as usual make himself valued. A slovenly air did not conduce to that. It seemed fitting to put on his darkest tweed suit and a black necktie. When he came—briskly for him—downstairs he found a group of women servants in the hall, outside the door of the smoking-room, three of them snivelling, and Wilkins and Holloway in the smoking-room itself, standing and staring with a wholly helpless air at the body of Lord Loudwater, huddled in the easy chair in which he had been wont to sleep after dinner every evening. "He's been stabbed, sir. There's that knife which was in the inkstand on the library table stickin' in 'is 'eart," said Wilkins in a dismal voice. Mr. Manley glanced at the dead man. He looked to have been stabbed as he slept. His body had sagged down in the chair, and his head was sunk between his shoulders, so that he appeared almost neckless. His once so florid face was of an even, dead, yellowish pallor. Mr. Manley's glance at the dead man was brief. Then he saw that the door between the smoking-room and the library was ajar. He could not see the library windows without crossing the smoking-room. That he would not do. He was a stickler for correctness in all matters, and he knew that the scene of a crime must be left untrampled. He turned and said: "We will leave everything just as it is till the police come. And telephone at once to Doctor Thornhill, and ask him to come. If he is out, tell them to get word to him, Wilkins." Wilkins and Holloway filed out of the room before him; he followed them out, locked the door and put the key in his pocket. Then he opened the door from the hall into the library. The long window nearest the smoking-room door was open. The group of servants were all watching him; never had he moved or acted with an air of graver or greater importance. His portliness gave it weight. "Has any of you opened the windows of the library this morning?" he said. No one answered. Then Mrs. Carruthers, the housekeeper, said: "Clarke does the library every morning. Have you done it this morning, Clarke?" "No, mum. I hadn't finished the green droring-room when Mr. Holloway brought the sad news," said one of the housemaids. Mr. Manley locked the library door and put that key also in his pocket. Then he said in a tone of authority: "I think, Mrs. Carruthers, that the sooner we all have breakfast the better. I for one am going to have a hard day, and I shall need all my strength. We all shall." "Certainly, Mr. Manley. You're quite right. We shall all need our strength. You shall have your breakfast at once. I'll have it sent to the little dining-room. You would like to be on the spot. Come along, girls. Wilkins, and you, Holloway, get on with your work as quickly as you can," said Mrs. Carruthers, driving her flock before her towards the servants' quarters. "Thank you. And will you see that no one wakes Lady Loudwater before her usual hour, or tells her what has happened? I will tell her myself and try to break the news with as little of a shock as possible," said Mr. Manley. "Twitcher hasn't bin downstairs yet. She doesn't know anything about it," said one of the maids. "Send her straight to me—to the terrace when she does come down," said Mr. Manley, walking towards the hall door. He felt that after the sight of the dead man's face the fresh morning air would do him good. There came a sudden burst of excited chatter from the women as they passed beyond the door into the back of the Castle. All their tongues seemed to be loosed at once. Mr. Manley went out of the Castle door, crossed the drive, and walked up and down the lawn. He took long breaths through his nostrils; the sight of the dead man's yellowish face had been unpleasant indeed to a man of his sensibility. In about five minutes Elizabeth Twitcher came out of the big door and across the lawn to him. She was looking startled and scared. "Mrs. Carruthers said you wished to speak to me, sir?" she said quickly. "Yes. I propose to break the news of this very shocking affair to Lady Loudwater myself. She's rather fragile, I fancy. And I think that it needs doing with the greatest possible tact—so as to lessen the shock," said Mr. Manley in an impressive voice. Elizabeth Twitcher gazed at him with a growing suspicion in her eyes. Then she said: "It isn't—it isn't a trap?" "A trap? What kind of a trap? What on earth do you mean?" said Mr. Manley, in a not unnatural bewilderment at the odd suggestion. "You might be trying to take her off her guard," said Elizabeth Twitcher in a tone of deep suspicion. "Her guard against what?" said Mr. Manley, still bewildered. Elizabeth's Twitcher's eyes lost some of their suspicion, and he heard her breathe a faint sigh of relief. "I thought as 'ow—as how some of them might have told you what his lordship was going to do to her, and that she—she stuck that knife into him so as to stop it," she said. "What on earth are you talking about? What was his lordship going to do to her?" cried Mr. Manley, in a tone of yet greater bewilderment. "He was going to divorce her ladyship. He told her so last night when I was doing her hair for dinner," said Elizabeth Twitcher. She paused and stared at him, frowning. Then she went on: "And, like a fool, I went and talked about it—to some one else." Mr. Manley glared at her in a momentary speechlessness; then found his voice and cried: "But, gracious heavens! You don't suspect her ladyship of having murdered Lord Loudwater?" "No, I don't. But there'll be plenty as will," said Elizabeth Twitcher with conviction. "It's absurd!" cried Mr. Manley. Elizabeth Twitcher shook her head. "You must allow as she had reason enough—for a lady, that is. He was always swearing at her and abusing her, and it isn't at all the kind of thing a lady can stand. And this divorce coming on the top of it all," she said in a dispassionate tone. "You mustn't talk like this! There's no saying what trouble you may make!" cried Mr. Manley in a tone of stern severity. "I'm not going to talk like that—only to you, sir. You're a gentleman, and it's safe. What I'm afraid of is that I've talked too much already—last night that is," she said despondently. "Well, don't make it worse by talking any more. And let me know when your mistress is dressed, and I'll come up and break the news of this shocking affair to her." "Very good, sir," said Elizabeth, and with a gloomy face and depressed air she went back into the Castle. She had scarcely disappeared, when Holloway came out to tell Mr. Manley that his breakfast was ready for him in the little dining-room. Mr. Manley set about it with the firmness of a man preparing himself against a strenuous day. The frown with which Elizabeth Twitcher's suggestion had puckered his brow faded from it slowly, as the excellence of the chop he was eating soothed him. Holloway waited on him, and Mr. Manley asked him whether any of the servants had heard anything suspicious in the night. Holloway assured him that none of them had. Mr. Manley had just helped himself a second time to eggs and bacon when Wilkins brought in Robert Black, the village constable. Mr. Manley had seen him in the village often enough, a portly, grave man, who regarded his position and work with the proper official seriousness. Mr. Manley told him that he had locked the door of the smoking-room and of the library, in order that the scene of the crime might be left undisturbed for examination by the Low Wycombe police. Robert Black did not appear pleased by this precaution. He would have liked to demonstrate his importance by making some preliminary investigations himself. Mr. Manley did not offer to hand the keys over to him. He intended to have the credit of the precautions he had taken with the constable's superiors. He said: "I suppose you would like to question the servants to begin with. Take the constable to the servants' hall, give him a glass of beer, and let him get to work, Wilkins." He spoke in the imperative tone proper to a man in charge of such an important affair, and Robert Black went. Mr. Manley could not see that the grave fellow could do any harm by his questions, or, for that matter, any good. He finished his breakfast and lighted his pipe. Elizabeth Twitcher came to tell him that Lady Loudwater was dressed. He told her to tell her that he would like to see her, and followed her up the stairs. The maid went into Lady Loudwater's sitting-room, came out, and ushered him into it. His strong sense of the fitness of things caused him to enter the room slowly, with an air grave to solemnity. Olivia greeted him with a faint, rather forced smile. He thought that she was paler than usual, and lacked something of her wonted charm. She seemed rather nervous. She thought that he had come from her husband with an unpleasant and probably most insulting message. He cleared his throat and said in the deep, grave voice he felt appropriate: "I've come on a very painful errand, Lady Loudwater—a very painful errand." "Indeed?" she said, and looked at him with uneasy, anxious eyes. "I'm sorry to tell you that Lord Loudwater has had an accident, a very bad accident," he said. "An accident? Egbert?" she cried, in a tone of surprise that sounded genuine enough. It gave Mr. Manley to understand that she had expected some other kind of painful communication—doubtless about the divorce Lord Loudwater had threatened. But he had composed a series of phrases leading up by a nice gradation to the final announcement, and he went on: "Yes. There is very little likelihood of his recovering from it." Olivia looked at him queerly, hesitating. Then she said: "Do you mean that he's going to be a cripple for life?" "I mean that he will not live to be a cripple," said Mr. Manley, pleased to insert a further phrase into his series. "Is it as bad as that?" she said, in a tone which again gave Mr. Manley the impression that she was thinking of something else and had not realized the seriousness of his words. "I'm sorry to say that it's worse than that. Lord Loudwater is dead," he said, in his deepest, most sympathetic voice. "Dead?" she said, in a shocked tone which sounded to him rather forced. "Murdered," he said. "Murdered?" cried Olivia, and Mr. Manley had the feeling that there was less surprise than relief in her tone. "I have sent for Dr. Thornhill and the police from Low Wycombe," he said. "They ought to have been here before this. And I am going to telegraph to Lord Loudwater's solicitors. You would like to have their help as soon as possible, I suppose. There seems nothing else to be done at the moment." "Then you don't know who did it?" said Olivia. Her tone did not display a very lively interest in the matter or any great dismay, and Mr. Manley felt somewhat disappointed. He had expected much more emotion from her than she was displaying, even though the death of her ill-tempered husband must be a considerable relief. He had expected her to be shocked and horror-stricken at first, before she realized that she had been relieved of a painful burden. But she seemed to him to be really less moved by the murder of her husband than she would have been, had the Lord Loudwater carried out his not infrequent threat of shooting, or hanging, or drowning the cat Melchisidec. "No one so far seems to be able to throw any light at all on the crime," said Mr. Manley. Olivia frowned thoughtfully, but seemed to have no more to say on the matter. "Well, then, I'll telegraph to Paley and Carrington, and ask Mr. Carrington to come down," said Mr. Manley. "Please," said Olivia. Mr. Manley hesitated; then he said: "And I suppose that I'd better be getting some one to make arrangements about the funeral?" "Please do everything you think necessary," said Olivia. "In fact, you'd better manage everything till Mr. Carrington comes. A man is much better at arranging important matters like this than a woman." "You may rely on me," said Mr. Manley, with a reassuring air, and greatly pleased by this recognition of his capacity. "And allow me to assure you of my sincerest sympathy." "Thank you," said Olivia, and then with more animation and interest she added: "And I suppose I shall want some black clothes." "Shall I write to your dressmaker?" said Mr. Manley. "No, thank you. I shall be able to tell her what I want better myself." Mr. Manley withdrew in a pleasant temper. It was true that as a student of dramatic emotion he had been disappointed by the calmness with which Olivia had received the news of the murder; but she had instructed him to do everything he thought fit. He saw his way to controlling the situation, and ruling the Castle till some one with a better right should supersede him. He was halfway along the corridor before he realized that Olivia had asked no single question about the circumstance of the crime. Indifference could go no further. But—he paused, considering—was it indifference? Could she—could she have known already? As he came down the stairs Wilkins opened the door of the big hall, and a man of medium height, wearing a tweed suit and carrying a soft hat and a heavy malacca cane, entered briskly. He looked about thirty. On his heels came a tall, thin police inspector in uniform. Mr. Manley came forward, and the man in the tweed suit said: "My name is Flexen, George Flexen. I'm acting as Chief Constable. Major Arbuthnot is away for a month. I happened to be at the police station at Low Wycombe when your news came, and I thought it best to come myself. This is Inspector Perkins." Mr. Manley introduced himself as the secretary of the murdered man, and with an air of quiet importance told Mr. Flexen that Lady Loudwater had put him in charge of the Castle till her lawyer came. Then he took the keys of the smoking-room and the library door from his pocket and said: "I locked up the room in which the dead body is, and the library through which there is also access to it, leaving everything just as it was when the body was found. I do not think that any traces which the criminal has left, if, that is, he has left any, can have been obliterated." He spoke with the quiet pride of a man who has done the right thing in an emergency. "That's good," said Mr. Flexen, in a tone of warm approval. "It isn't often that we get a clear start like that. We'll examine these rooms at once." Mr. Manley went to the door of the smoking-room and was about to unlock it, when Dr. Thornhill, a big, bluff man of fifty-five, bustled in. Mr. Manley introduced him to Mr. Flexen; then he unlocked the door and opened it. The doctor was leading the way into the smoking-room when Mr. Flexen stepped smartly in front of him and said: "Please stay outside all of you. I'll make the examination myself first." He spoke quietly, but in the tone of a man used to command. "But, for anything we know, his lordship may still be alive," said Dr. Thornhill in a somewhat blustering tone, and pushing forward. "As his medical adviser, it's my duty to make sure at once." "I'll tell you whether Lord Loudwater is alive or not. Don't let any one cross the threshold, Perkins," said Mr. Flexen, with quiet decision. Perkins laid a hand on the doctor's arm, and the doctor said: "A nice way of doing things! Arbuthnot would have given his first attention to his lordship!" "I'm going to," said Mr. Flexen quietly. He went to the dead man, looked in his pale face, lifted his hand, let it fall, and said: "Been dead hours." Then he examined carefully the position of the knife. He was more than a minute over it. Then he drew it gingerly from the wound by the ring at the end of it. It was one of these Swedish knives, the blades of which are slipped into the handle when they are not being used. "I think that's the knife that lay, open, in the big ink-stand in the library. We used it as a paper-knife, and to cut string with," said Mr. Manley, who was watching him with most careful attention. "It may have some evidence on the handle," said Mr. Flexen, still holding it by the ring, and he drove the point of it into the pad of blotting paper on which Mr. Manley had been wont to write letters at the murdered man's dictation. "And how am I to tell whether the wound was self-inflicted, or not?" cried the doctor in an aggrieved tone. "If you will get some of the servants, you can remove the body to any room convenient and make your examination. It's a clean stab into the heart, and it looks to me as if the person who used that knife had some knowledge of anatomy. Most people who strike for the heart get the middle of the left lung," said Mr. Flexen. So saying, he gently drew the easy chair, in which the body was huddled, nearer the door by its back. Mr. Manley bade Holloway fetch Wilkins and two of the grooms, and then, eager for hints of the actions of a detective, so useful to a dramatist, gave all his attention again to the proceedings of Mr. Flexen, who was down on one knee on the spot in which the chair had stood, studying the carpet round it. He rose and walked slowly towards the door which opened into the library, paused on the threshold to bid Perkins examine the chair and the clothes of the murdered man, and went into the library. He was still in it when the footman and the grooms lifted the body of Lord Loudwater out of the chair, and carried it up to his bedroom. Mr. Manley stayed on the threshold of the smoking-room. His interest in the doings of Mr. Flexen forbade him leaving it to superintend decorously the removal of the body. Presently Mr. Flexen came back, and as he walked round the room, examining the rest of it, especially the carpet, Mr. Manley studied the man himself, the detective type. He was about five feet eight, broad-shouldered out of proportion to that height, but thin. He had an uncommonly good forehead, a square, strong chin, a hooked nose and thin, set lips, which gave him a rather predatory air, belied rather by his pleasant blue eyes. The sun wrinkles round their corners and his sallow complexion gave Mr. Manley the impression that he had spent some years in the tropics and suffered for it. When Mr. Flexen had examined the room, though Inspector Perkins had already done so, he felt round the cushions of the easy chair in which Lord Loudwater had been stabbed, found nothing, and stood beside it in quiet thought. Then he looked at Mr. Manley and said: "The murderer must have been some one with whom Lord Loudwater was so familiar that he took no notice of his or her movements, for he came up to him from the front, or walked round the chair to the front of him, and stabbed him with a quite straightforward thrust. Lord Loudwater should have actually seen the knife—unless by any chance he was asleep." "He was sure to be asleep," said Mr. Manley quickly. "He always did sleep in the evening—generally from the time he finished his cigar till he went to bed. I think he acquired the habit from coming back from hunting, tired and sleepy. Besides, I came down for a drink between eleven and twelve, and I'm almost sure I heard him snore. He snored like the devil." "Slept every evening, did he? That puts a different complexion on the business," said Mr. Flexen. "The murderer need not have been any one with whom he was familiar." "No. He need not. But are you quite sure that the wound wasn't self-inflicted—that it wasn't a case of suicide?" said Mr. Manley. "No, I'm not; and I don't think that that doctor—what's his name? Thornhill—can be sure either. But why should Lord Loudwater have committed suicide?" "Well, he had found out, or thought he had found out, something about Lady Loudwater, and was threatening to start an action against her for divorce. At least, so her maid told me this morning. And as he wholly lacked balance, he might in a fury of jealousy have made away with himself," said Mr. Manley thoughtfully. "Was he so fond of Lady Loudwater?" said Mr. Flexen in a somewhat doubtful tone. He had heard stories about Lord Loudwater's treatment of his wife. "He didn't show any great fondness for her, I'm bound to say. In fact, he was always bullying her. But he wouldn't need to be very fond of any one to go crazy with jealousy about her. He was a man of strong passions and quite unbalanced. I suppose he had been so utterly spoilt as a child, a boy, and a young man, that he never acquired any power of self-control at all." "M'm, I should have thought that in that case he'd have been more likely to murder the man," said Mr. Flexen. "He was," said Mr. Manley in ready agreement. "But the other's always possible." "Yes; one has to bear every possibility in mind," said Mr. Flexen. "I've heard that he was a bad-tempered man." "He was the most unpleasant brute I ever came across in my life," said Mr. Manley with heartfelt conviction. "Then he had enemies?" said Mr. Flexen. "Scores, I should think. But, of course, I don't know. Only I can't conceive his having had a friend," said Mr. Manley in a tone of some bitterness. "Then it's certainly a case with possibilities," said Mr. Flexen in a pleased tone. "But I expect that the solution will be quite simple. It generally is." He said it rather sadly, as if he would have much preferred the solution to be difficult. "Let's hope so. A big newspaper fuss will be detestable for Lady Loudwater. She's a charming creature," said Mr. Manley. "So I've heard. Do you know who the man was that Loudwater was making a fuss about?" "I haven't the slightest idea. Probably the maid, Elizabeth Twitcher, will be able to tell you," said Mr. Manley. Mr. Flexen walked across the room and drew the knife out of the pad of blotting-paper by the ring in its handle, and studied it. "I suppose this is the knife that was in the library? They're pretty common," he said. Mr. Manley came to him, looked at it earnestly, and said: "That's it all right. I tried to sharpen it a day or two ago, so that it would sharpen a pencil. I generally leave my penknife in the waist-coat I'm not wearing. But I couldn't get it sharp enough. It's rotten steel." "All of them are, but good enough for a stab," said Mr. Flexen. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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