Miss Arnott's Marriage Part 51

I wonder if she's left that book lying about. If I can find it I'll sneak off at once, and tell her all about it in the morning."

On a table in the centre was piled up a heterogeneous and disorderly collection of odds and ends. Miss Arnott glanced at it to see if among the miscellanea was the volume she was seeking. She saw that a book which looked like it was lying underneath what seemed to be a number of old letters. She picked it up, removing the letters to enable her to do so. One or two of the papers fell on to the floor. She stooped to pick them up. The first was a photograph. Her eyes lighted on it, half unwittingly; but, having lighted on it, they stayed.

The room seemed all at once to be turning round her. She was conscious of a sense of vertigo, as if suddenly something had happened to her brain. For some seconds she was obsessed by a conviction that she was the victim of an optical delusion, that what she supposed herself to see was, in reality, a phantom of her imagination. How long this condition continued she never knew. But it was only after a perceptible interval of time that she began to comprehend that she deluded herself by supposing herself to be under a delusion, that what she had only imagined she saw, she actually did see. It was the sudden shock which had caused that feeling of curious confusion. The thing was plain enough.

She was holding in her hand the photograph of her husband--Robert Champion. The more she looked at it the stronger the conviction became.

There was not a doubt of it. The portrait had probably been taken some years ago, when the man was younger; but that it was her husband she was certain. She was hardly likely to make a mistake on a point of that kind. But, in the name of all that was inexplicable, what was Robert Champion's photograph doing here?

She glanced at another of the articles she had dropped. It was another portrait of the same man, apparently taken a little later. There was a third--a smaller one. In it he wore a yachting cap. Although he was no yachting man--so far as she knew he had never been on the sea in his life; but it was within her knowledge that it was a fashion in headgear for which he had had, as she deemed, a most undesirable predilection.

He had worn one when he had taken her for their honeymoon to Margate; anyone looking less like a seaman than he did in it, she thought she had never seen. In a fourth photograph Robert Champion was sitting in a chair with his arm round Mrs Plummer's waist; she standing at his side with her hand upon his shoulder. She was obviously many years older than the man in the chair; but she could not have looked more pleased, either with herself or with him.

What did it mean?--what could it mean?--those photographs in Mrs Plummer's room?

Returning to the first at which she had glanced, the girl saw that the name was scrawled across the right-hand bottom corner, which had hitherto been hidden by her thumb, in a hand which set her heart palpitating with a sense of startled recognition. "Douglas Plummer."

The name was unmistakable in its big, bombastic letters; but what did he mean by scrawling "Douglas Plummer" at the bottom of his own photograph? She suddenly remembered having seen a visiting card of Mrs Plummer's on which her name had been inscribed "Mrs Douglas Plummer."

What did it mean?

On the back of the photograph in which the man and the woman had been taken together she found that there was written--she knew the writing to be Mrs Plummer's--"Taken on our honeymoon."

When she saw that Miss Arnott rose to her feet--for the first time since she had stooped to pick up the odds and ends which she had dropped--and laughed. It was so very funny. Again she closely examined the pair in the picture and the sentence on the back. There could be no doubt as to their ident.i.ty; none as to what the sentence said, nor as to the hand by which it had been penned. But on whose honeymoon had it been taken? What did it mean?

There came to her a feeling that this was a matter in which inquiries should be made at once. She had forgotten altogether the errand which had brought her there; she was overlooking everything in the strength of her desire to learn, in the shortest possible s.p.a.ce of time, what was the inner meaning of these photographs which she was holding in her hand. She saw the letters which she had disturbed to get at the book beneath. In the light of the new discoveries she had made, even at that distance she recognised the caligraphy in which they were written. She s.n.a.t.c.hed them up; they were in a bundle, tied round with a piece of pink baby ribbon. To use a sufficiently-expressive figure of speech, the opening line of the first "hit her in the face,"--"My darling Agatha."

Agatha? That was Mrs Plummer's Christian name.

She thrust at a letter in the centre. It began--"My precious wife."

His precious wife? Whose wife? Douglas Plummer's?--Robert Champion's?--Whose? What did it mean?

As she a.s.sailed herself with the question--for at least the dozenth time--to which she seemed unlikely to find an answer, a fresh impulse caused her to look again about the room--to be immediately struck by something which had previously escaped her observation. Surely the bed had been slept in. It was rumpled; the pillow had been lain on; the bedclothes were turned back, as if someone had slipped from between the sheets and left them so. What did that mean?

While the old inquiry was a.s.suming this fresh shape, and all sorts of fantastic doubts seemed to have had sudden birth and to be pressing on her from every side, the door on the other side of the room was opened, and Mrs Plummer entered.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

OUT OF SLEEP

Miss Arnott was so astounded at the appearance which Mrs Plummer presented that, in her bewilderment, she was tongue-tied. What, in the absence of tonsorial additions--which the girl had already noted were set out in somewhat gruesome fashion on the dressing-table--were shown to be her scanty locks, straggled loose about her neck. The garment in which her whole person was enveloped was one which Miss Arnott had never seen before, and, woman-like, she had a very shrewd knowledge of the contents of her companion's wardrobe. More than anything else it resembled an unusually voluminous bath-sheet, seeming to have been made of what had originally been white Turkish towelling. The whiteness, however, had long since disappeared. It was not only in an indescribable state of filth, but also of rags and tatters. How any of it continued to hang together was a mystery; there was certainly not a square foot of it without a rent. On her feet she wore what seemed to be the remnants of a pair of bedroom slippers. So far as Miss Arnott was able to discern the only other garment she had on was her nightdress. In this attire she appeared to have been in some singular places. She was all dusty and torn; attached to her here and there were sc.r.a.ps of greenery: here a frond of bracken, there the needle of a pine.

"Mrs Plummer," cried Miss Arnott, when she had in part realised the extraordinary spectacle which her companion offered, "wherever have you been?"

But Mrs Plummer did not answer, at first to the girl's increased amazement; then it all burst on her in a flash--Mrs Plummer was asleep!

It seemed incredible; yet it was so. Her eyes were wide open; yet it only needed a second or two to make it clear to Miss Arnott that they did not see her. They appeared to have the faculty of only seeing those objects which were presented to their owner's inner vision. Miss Arnott was not present at the moment in Mrs Plummer's thoughts, therefore she remained invisible to her staring eyes. It was with a curious feeling of having come into unlooked-for contact with something uncanny that the girl perceived this was so. Motionless, fascinated, hardly breathing, she waited and watched for what the other was about to do.

Mrs Plummer closed the door behind her carefully--with an odd carefulness. Coming a few steps into the room she stopped. Looking about her with what the girl felt was almost an agony of eagerness, it seemed strange that she should not see her; her eyes travelled over her more than once. Then she drew a long breath like a sigh. Raising both hands to her forehead she brushed back the thin wisps of her faded hair. It was with a feeling which was half-shame, half-awe that the girl heard her break into speech. It was as though she were intruding herself into the other's very soul, and as if the woman was speaking with a voice out of the grave.

Indeed, there was an eerie quality about the actual utterance--a lifelessness, a monotony, an absence of light and shade. She spoke as she might fancy an automaton would speak--all on the same note. The words came fluently enough, the sentences seemed disconnected.

"I couldn't find it. I can't think where I put it. It's so strange. I just dropped it like that." Mrs Plummer made a sudden forward movement with her extended right hand, then went through the motion of dropping something from it on to the floor. With sensations which in their instant, increasing horror altogether transcended anything which had gone before, the girl began to understand. "I can't quite remember. I don't think I picked it up again. I feel sure I didn't bring it home. I should have found it if I had. I have looked everywhere--everywhere."

The sightless eyes looked here and there, anxiously, restlessly, searchingly, so that the girl began to read the riddle of the disordered room. "I must find it. I shall never rest until I do--never!

I must know where it is! The knife! the knife!"

As the unconscious woman repeated for the second time the last two words, a sudden inspiration flashed through the listener's brain; it possessed her with such violence that, for some seconds, it set her trembling from head to foot. When the first shock its advent had occasioned had pa.s.sed away, the tremblement was followed by a calm which was perhaps its natural sequence.

Without waiting to hear or see more she pa.s.sed out of the room with rapid, even steps along the corridor to her own chamber. There she was greeted by Evans.

"You've been a long time, miss. I suppose Mrs Plummer couldn't find the book you wanted." Then she was evidently struck by the peculiarity of the girl's manner. "What has happened? I hope there's nothing else that's wrong. Miss Arnott, what are you doing there?"

The girl was unlocking the wardrobe drawer in which she had that afternoon replaced Hugh Morice's knife. She took the weapon out.

"Evans, come with me! I'll show you who killed that man in Cooper's Spinney! Be quick!"

She took the lady's-maid by the wrist and half-led, half-dragged her from the room. Evans looked at her with frightened face, plainly in doubt as to whether her young mistress had not all at once gone mad.

But she offered no resistance. On the landing outside the door they encountered Mr Stacey and Mr Gilbert, who were apparently just coming up to bed. Miss Arnott hailed them.

"Mr Stacey! Mr Gilbert! you wish to know who it was who murdered Robert Champion? Come with me quickly. You shall see!"

They stared at the knife which was in her hand, at the strange expression which was on her face. She did not wait for them to speak.

She moved swiftly towards the staircase which led to the tower-room.

She loosed her attendant's wrist. But Evans showed no desire to take advantage of her freedom, she pressed closely on her mistress's heels.

Mr Gilbert, rapid in decision, went after the two women without even a moment's hesitation. Mr Stacey, of slower habit, paused a moment before he moved, then, obviously puzzled, he followed the others.

When the girl returned Mrs Plummer was bending over a drawer, tossing its contents in seemingly haphazard fashion on to the carpet.

"I must find it! I must find it!" she kept repeating to herself.

Miss Arnott called to her, not loudly but clearly,--

"Mrs Plummer!" But Mrs Plummer paid no heed. She continued to mutter and to turn out the contents of the drawer. The girl moved to her across the floor, speaking to her again by name. "Mrs Plummer, what is it you are looking for? Is it this knife?"

Plainly the somnambulist was vaguely conscious that a voice had spoken.

Ceasing to rifle the drawer she remained motionless, holding her head a little on one side, as if she listened. Then she spoke again; but whether in answer to the question which had been put to her or to herself, was not clear.

"The knife! I want to find the knife."

"What knife is it you are looking for? Is it the knife with which you killed your husband in the wood?"

The woman shuddered. It seemed as if something had reached her consciousness. She said, as if echoing the other's words,--

"My husband in the wood."

The girl became aware that Day, the butler, had entered through the door on the other side, wearing his hat, as if he had just come out of the open air, and that he was accompanied by Granger in his uniform, and by a man whom she did not recognise, but who, as a matter of fact, was Nunn, the detective. She knew that, behind her, was Evans with Mr Stacey and Mr Gilbert. She understood that, for her purpose, the audience could scarcely have been better chosen.

She raised her voice a little, laying stress upon her words.