Nancy Stair Part 32

CHAPTER XXIV

THE MURDER

Up to this point there are many events which I have drawn with blurred edges by reason of the distance of time; but from this to the end of my story I have the pettiest details of it in mind, many of them with a horrid distinctness.

On the evening of the twenty-third the Armstrongs held a dance in honor of the marriage of their daughter Jean with one of John Graham's lads, and a number of young folks were bid to dinner before this festivity should begin, Nancy being one of the number. His Grace of Borthwicke and I were asked for the dancing, a courtesy which he declined by reason of his indisposition, as well as from the fact that he was to start for the Highlands in the morning. Almost immediately after our dinner he excused himself to me, saying that an important letter must be got off on the early post. And his breeding was shown in the fact that he allowed no doubt to remain with me that this was any invented excuse to avoid my society, for he stated to whom the epistle was destined, and the need for its immediate sending, a point of conduct which seemed to me gentlemanly in the extreme.

"It's a letter to Pitt," he said.

"Ye are great friends now, are ye not?" I asked.

"He is the nearest friend I have in all the world," he answered. "We are both rhymesters," he added with a smile. "But this letter is a business one, for I have advices from France for which he is waiting, and they must be sent in cipher because of the trouble brewing in that country. If I do not get the letter off to-night he may not receive it for a fortnight, as he accompanies his Majesty to the country on Friday."

"Why not send it by special carrier?" I asked.

"It's not important enough for that," he answered lightly, as he crossed to Nancy's writing-room, which had been given to his use as an office during her absence at Allan-lough.

Left with the evening on my hands, I set out for Creech's with no weightier purpose than to divert myself and have some merry talk over a bowl of punch; but, as I entered, Blake, who was throwing dice with Dundas at the other end of the room, called to me to ask if I had heard whether Mr. Pitcairn was better.

"Is he ill?" I asked in surprise, as it was but the morning before he was at Stair.

"He was carried from the court this afternoon," he answered, and at the words I took up my coat and started for Pitcairn's house to see if there was some help that I could offer. I found him wrapped in flannels in front of a great fire in his own chamber, in as vile a frame of mind as I have ever seen any human being, bearing his indisposition as unphilosophically as I might have done myself, and I spent a highly uncomfortable, dry, and sober evening with him, escaping from his society somewhere at the back of the midnight with a feeling of relief and the intention of getting something to drink. Going down, unattended, I pulled the house-door hard after me to close it for the night, when Pitcairn called me from the window above to ask that I stop by the chemist's and hurry along a draught for which he was waiting.

A light and tricksey snow had begun to fall while I was in the house; snow which blew in gusts, now from one side, now from another; snow which came crosswise, to be caught by the high wind and carried up to the tops of the houses; and over all and around all the fog of the sea and beaten bells sounding far away, as of ships in trouble or as warnings from the sh.o.r.e.

I pulled my hat over my eyes, turned the collar of my great-coat around my ears, and took to the middle of the road, looking round warily from side to side to make sure that I was followed by none, for the town had been greatly excited during this winter by statements in the public prints of mysterious disappearances. Folks had been suddenly missed from their own doorways, of whom no subsequent traces could be found; visitors entering the city were lost sight of; Irish haymakers on their road to the agricultural districts of the lowlands had disappeared from their companions as if by magic, and suspicions of a dreadful nature were abroad.[9]

[9] Benson's Noted Trials.

It was a uncanny night, black as chaos; and with my mind excited by these horrid tales, I hurried along to the chemist's, whose man was outside putting up the shutters. I stated my errand to the doctor, who said he would carry the medicine himself, as Mr. Pitcairn's house lay on the road to another patient with whom he had promised to pa.s.s the night. This occurrence seems of small moment, and I but set it down to show how slight a thing may turn many lives, for it was this very dose of rhubarb and jalap which brought about much of the trouble toward which we were drawing.

Starting again toward Stair I came directly upon some of the town-guard, who, with flaming torches held aloft, were carrying a couple of drunken wretches to the gaol. Turning to look after them I became aware that a man had stepped from the shadow and was walking beside me, going in the same direction, but at a much quicker gait than my own. By the uncertain flare of the torches I saw that he was tall, carried himself with distinction, and, what seemed markedly strange on such a night, wore no covering whatever upon his head. I felt that he noted me not at all, and as the gloom swallowed him up, saw him throw out his hand with a significant gesture, as of one who has neither hope nor courage.

It was this motion which made my heart give a sudden leap and set it throbbing light and quick in my throat, for the belief came to me that the stranger was none other than Danvers Carmichael, though any reasonable explanation for his being abroad alone at such an hour and going toward Stair was far from clear to me. My first thought was to call out to him, but a bit of caution held me back, and upon thinking it over I made sure that my eyes and the fog had combined to deceive me, and I put the thing out of my mind altogether and hurried on toward home. Nearing the house I kept close to the high stone wall for protection against the wind, thinking to enter the grounds from the lower carriage-way, but the gates were closed, and I was forced to the main gate, the irons of which were swung far back.

As I turned into the path my eye was caught by a wide cone of light which came from the window of the room in which I had left his Grace of Borthwicke. Looking more attentively, I saw to my amazement that the window nearest the writing-table was wide open, and I thought to go directly to this place, for there was a low porch outside from which an entrance to the house could be effected. I had started across the lawn when I heard a pistol shot, followed by a pause, and then another, quick upon the heels of the first, which had seemed to come from the house. But the second, whether because of my confusion of mind or the blowing of the wind, appeared to have been somewhere behind me, and with a thought for my own safety I stepped under some frozen vines which hung above the gateway. As I did so, a small figure, coming from I know not what direction, pa.s.sed through the cone of light. It ran low to the ground and light, and with incredible swiftness disappeared somewhere in the rose-garden by the south wall. Then a silence fell, and for a few seconds I stood waiting to hear a disturbance in the house, but finding naught happening I ran up the path in a preternatural hurry of spirits, and set the knocker of the main door clanging so that it might disturb the dead.

Even with all this racketing it was full five minutes before Huey MacGrath stuck his head, with a white nightcap upon it, from the attic window, holding a lighted candle high in his hand as he peered into the dark.

"I'll have ye arrest.i.t!" he called down.

"Whist, Huey!" I cried. "It's I, the laird himself. There're burglars in the house!"

"Ye've no been drinkin'?" he shouted back, questioningly.

"Didn't ye hear the shots?" I asked.

"I heard nothing," he answered in an unconvinced manner.

"Do you want to be murdered in your bed?" I called up to him, "rather than come down to see what's going about?"

"There's just naething the matter at all," he returned. "Ye've been drinkin'. Is Rab Burns with ye?" he asked, resting his elbows imperturbably on the window-ledge.

His conduct, in my excited state, enraged me to the extent of using language which acquainted him with my wishes if not with my sobriety, and I noted him withdraw his head hastily, and the light grow bright and dim, and bright again, in his turning of the stairs, before the bars were let down and the door opened to me.

"There's just naething the matter at all," was his greeting. "Aye, ye will have been drinkin'!"

Although he carried such a brave front I saw that he had taken the precaution to bring an old blunderbuss with him, and two of the serving-men, who appeared from a rear stairway in a sleep-befuddled condition.

As we stood in the silence of the great dark hall a fear came over me that I had up-turned the house to no purpose, but underneath it lay the premonition of a great trouble, a feeling so strong that I was unable to put it by. The doors on both sides of the hall were closed, and there was no light save one small gleam which trickled from the keyhole of Nancy's writing-room. Advancing to the door I rapped boldly upon it, and waited for the duke to bid me enter; no voice answered, nor was any sound to be heard save the tick, tick, tick of a great clock that stood near. Again I beat upon the door, and called Montrose loudly by name, and with baited breath listened to the tick-ticking of the clock, and nothing else.

"He's fell asleep," Huey suggested, and upon this, thinking the door locked, I threw my weight against it, precipitating myself into the room with unnecessary violence, to find the duke sitting at the desk, his head thrown back upon the cushions, and one hand on the arm of the great chair in an att.i.tude of peaceful slumber. But there came to me a dread of the sleep which could keep a man of his temperament unconscious while the house was being pulled about his ears. As I drew nearer to him the wind from the opened cas.e.m.e.nt blew the curtains far into the room and rustled the papers on the table, the light of which was pushed back and the papers redd up, as if the business of the evening were by with.

I stepped softly to the sitting man and touched him on the shoulder, and, as I did so, fell back with a loud cry, while a voice with which I seemed to have nothing to do cried out:

"He's been murdered! He's shot! He's dead!"

I can not recall what other words this personless voice cried out, but I know that I stood staring at this man who but a few hours before had been so hated, feared, aye, and admired; staring at his dreadful pallor, his inhuman repose, and his inscrutable smile, as he sat before me with the blood trickling down the side of his face from a bullet-hole just over the temple.

In the first sight I had of him I knew that he was dead; the feeling of death was around him; there was death in the air, in the awful serenity of the pale face, in the hands which lay motionless and relaxed, as if surrendering all; in the faint smile, as though Death himself had come before the great man's vision and had been regarded calmly before his work was done; and while the four of us were standing, drunk with fear at this awful sight, there came to us the sound of carriage-wheels and gay voices, and before the power of action was with any of us, Nancy stood in the doorway, her eyes filled with laughter, her scarlet lips curved backward in a smile as she came forward to the place where I stood.

"Are ye giving a ball while the mistress of the house is from home?"

she inquired, gayly; and, as the queerness of our actions struck her: "What is it?" she cried; and again, "What is it?"

To save her, some power of thought came back to my disordered mind.

"Come away, Nancy! Come away with me!" I cried; but before I could reach her she had moved forward toward the dead, her head lowered, her eyes widened with terror, and at sight of the blood clapped her hands over her eyes to shut out the horrid sight, and went white, and but for me would have fallen.

The telling of this takes longer than the acting of it, for it was less than a minute before she called, with some authority in her tone:

"Send them away, Jock. Send them all away! Leave me alone with him."

I motioned the men from the room. It was the common belief that his grace was Nancy's accepted lover, and there seemed nothing strange in her request to be alone with him. As I came back she held me by the sleeve.

"Have you found anything----" she began. "Do you know of anybody?"

"Nothing has been found," I answered, and a look pa.s.sed between us which told me that my dread was her own.

"Jock, darling," she went on, "stay here! but don't _see_ anything you may have to tell of afterward," and a vision of the hatless man in the snow came back to me at her words.

"Fetch me some water," she went on, "and let none come in but you."

I stood holding the door ajar while the water for which she asked was being brought; but though my back was toward her I knew she made a hasty move between the open window and the desk, and as I drew near again she pointed out a pistol lying directly under the duke's left hand, at sight of which I fell back with a cry of dismay, for it was one of a brace which I had given Danvers Carmichael on his birthday two years before.

How this could have escaped my sight at the first look I had of the dead was a thing I could not understand, for it lay well in the light, and by its reflections would naturally be an object to hold the eye, and even in my confusion of mind I felt certain that it had been placed there since my first entrance to the room.