The Ashiel mystery Part 12

"Rather indignant, though completely mystified, I promised again. He seemed satisfied, and said he would write the whole thing down for me. He moved from the hearth, where we had been sitting, to the writing-table, which stands in the middle of the room, in front of the window. He sat down at it, and I stood a little behind him, looking on as he took a sheet of notepaper and turned over the pens in the tray in search of a pencil. The room was very hot; the tufts of peat smouldering in the grate, and the two lamps, combined with the fumes of Lord Ashiel's cigar to render the atmosphere oppressive to a person with a violent headache. I glanced longingly towards the window. It was not entirely hidden by the heavy curtains which were drawn across it, for they did not quite meet in the middle, and I could see perfectly well that the window was shut. For a moment I hesitated, torn between the desire for fresh air and the fear that my father might feel too cold. He was terribly chilly. I decided to ask him, and turned to him again as he took up the pencil and examined the point critically.

"'Would you mind,' I was beginning; but at that instant a loud report sounded just outside the window. Lord Ashiel fell forward on to the table with a low cry, his hand clasped to his ribs. 'Oh, what is it?' I cried, bending over him; 'you are hurt; you are shot! Oh, what shall I do!' He was making a great effort to speak, I could see that plainly enough; but no words would come, and he seemed to be choking. At last he managed to get out a few words. 'Gimblet,' he gasped, 'the clock-eleven-steps-' and then with a groan his hand dropped from his side, his head rolled back upon the table, and a silence followed, more horrible to me than anything that had gone before.

"I saw now that his shirt was already soaked with blood; and, as in terror I called again upon his name, the dreadful truth was borne in upon me, and I knew that he was dead."

Juliet's voice failed her; she spoke the last few words in a quavering whisper, and if Gimblet had looked at her at that moment he would have beheld a countenance drawn and distorted by horror.

But he was very much occupied, and did not look up. With a notebook open on his knee, he was busily writing down what she had said.

"You are sure of the words?" he asked, as his pencil sped across the page. "'Gimblet-the clock-eleven-step,' is that it?"

His matter-of-fact voice soothed and rea.s.sured her. This little grey-haired man, sitting at her side, was somehow a very comfortable companion to one whose nerves were badly overwrought. Juliet pulled herself together.

"Steps," she corrected, and her voice sounded almost natural again.

"Not step."

"Do you suppose," asked the detective, "that he meant the English word, steps, or the Russian, steppes?"

"I don't know," said Juliet, surprised. "I never thought of it. But, Mr. Gimblet, I have not told anyone but you that he spoke after he was. .h.i.t. I thought perhaps that he might have wished those last words of his to be kept private."

"Quite right," said Gimblet approvingly. "He did right to trust your discretion. And now, please, go on," he added, putting down his pencil; "what happened next?"

And Juliet answered him in a tone as calm as his own:

"I think I must have fainted."

CHAPTER IX

"The next thing I remember, was finding myself lying on the floor, and, when I tried to get up, seeing everything in the room swinging about me like the swinging boats at a fair. I don't know how long I had been unconscious, but when, at last, I managed to stand up, and clinging, faint and giddy, to the back of a chair, looked again at the motionless figure that sprawled across the writing-table, there was a great pool of blood on the polished oak of the floor beneath it, which grew slowly broader, as drop after drop dripped down to swell it With a great effort I conquered my faintness, and staggered out of the room and down the long pa.s.sage.

"In the billiard-room Mr. McConachan was still practising his game. He must have been making a break, for I remember hearing him speak, as I opened the door. 'Twenty-seven,' he said aloud. My voice wouldn't come, and I stood holding on to the doorpost, while he, with his back to me, went on potting the red.

"'That you, Miss Byrne?' he said, without looking round. Then, as I didn't answer, he glanced up and saw by my face, I suppose, that something was very wrong. He came quickly to me, his cue in his hand. 'What's the matter?' he said. 'Do you feel ill?' 'Lord Ashiel is dead,' I said; 'in the library. Some one shot him. Didn't you hear?' 'Dead?' he cried; 'Uncle Douglas shot! Do you know what you're saying! I heard a shot, it is true, five minutes ago, but surely that was the keeper shooting an owl or something.'

"I shook my head. 'He is dead,' I repeated dully. He looked at me, still incredulous, and then darted forward and caught me by the arm. 'Here, sit down,' he said, and half pushed, half led me to a chair. I saw him run to the bell and tug violently at the rope. Then I believe I fainted again.

"I think that is all there is to tell you, Mr. Gimblet. You know already that the murderer got clear away, and the next morning footmarks were found outside the window which proved to have been made by Sir David Southern. I was so idiotic, when I was questioned, as to mention having spoken to him outside the gun-room door, and to repeat, incidentally, that he had said he had been cleaning his rifle. I never dreamt that anyone could be so mad as to suspect him. But they looked at the rifle, and found that it was dirty, so that it must have been discharged again since I saw him. And it appears he did not join in the search for the murderer, and was not seen until it was all over. And so they arrested him and took him away. No amount of evidence could ever make me believe for a moment that he had a hand in this dreadful thing, but oh, Mr. Gimblet, I see only too well how black it looks against him. What shall I do if you, too, now that I have told you everything, think he did it? You don't, do you?"

"My dear young lady," said the detective. "I really can't give you an opinion at present. There are a score of points I must investigate, a dozen other people besides yourself whom I must question, before I can form any kind of conclusion. I hope that Sir David Southern may prove to be a much wronged man. But beyond that I can't go, just at present; and I shouldn't build too much on my help if I were you. I'm not infallible; far from it. And I certainly can't prove him innocent if he is guilty."

He stood up, shaking the sand out of his clothes.

"Let us go on, up to the castle," he said.

The gates were near at hand; in silence they breasted the steep incline of the drive, which wound and zigzagged up between high banks covered with rhododendron and bracken, and grown over with trees. After a quarter of a mile these gave place to an abrupt, gra.s.s covered slope, whose top had been smoothed and levelled by the hand of man, and from which on the far side rose the castle of Inverashiel, its stout and ancient framework disguised and masked by the modern addition to the building which faced the approach; a ma.s.s of gabled and turreted stonework in the worst style of nineteenth century architecture which in Scotland often took on a shape and semblance even more fantastically repulsive than it a.s.sumed in the south. The great tower that formed the princ.i.p.al remaining portion of the old building could just be discerned over the top of the flaring facade, but the nature of the site was such that most of the ancient fortress was invisible from that part of the grounds. Juliet stopped at the turn of the road.

"I will leave you here," she said, "you will not want me, I suppose? After you have finished, will you come to Lady Ruth Worsfold's house, and tell me what you think? It is just past the station turning; you will easily find your way, though the house is hidden by the trees. Your luggage will be there already, as Lady Ruth is going to put you up."

Mr. Mark McConachan, or rather Lord Ashiel, as he had now become, was in the act of ending a solitary meal, when Gimblet was announced. He went to meet the detective, forcing to his trouble-lined face a smile of welcome that lit up the large melancholy eyes with an expression few people could resist.

"I thought it was another of those newspaper fellows, but, thank goodness, I believe they're all gone now," he said. "I am exceedingly glad to see you, Mr. Gimblet. I should myself have asked you to come to our aid, but I found that Miss Byrne had been before me. I suppose you have seen her?"

"Yes," said Gimblet. "She met me at the station. I'm afraid I'm rather late on the scene. I hear that the Glasgow police have come and gone, taking with them the author of the crime."

"It is a dreadful business altogether," returned young Ashiel. "I don't know which part of it is the worst. There's my uncle dead, shot down like a rat by some cold-blooded scoundrel; and now my cousin David, poor chap, in jail, and under charge of murder. It seems impossible to believe it of him, and yet, what is one to believe? One can only suppose that he must have been off his head if he did it. But have you had lunch, Mr. Gimblet? Sit down and have something to eat first of all; you can ask me any questions you wish while you are eating."

And he insisted on Gimblet's doing as he suggested.

"The household is naturally a bit disorganized," he said when the servants had left the room and the detective was busy with some cold grouse. "I had a cold lunch myself to save trouble; would you rather have something hot? I expect that a chop or something could be produced, if you are cold after your journey."

Gimblet a.s.sured him that he could like nothing better than what he already had.

"You have had Macross up here, haven't you?" he asked. "It is really disappointing to find the whole thing over before I arrive. I am afraid there is nothing left for me to do."

Mark looked at him quickly. Was it possible he accepted Macross's verdict without inquiring further himself?

"We are hoping you will undo what has been done," he said. "I look to you to get my cousin out of prison. Surely there must be some other explanation than that he did it. I simply won't believe it."

"If there is any other explanation," said Gimblet, "I will try and find it; but the affair looks bad against Sir David Southern from what I can hear."

"Why should he have shot through the window?" said Ashiel. "They were both in the same house. Why should my cousin go into the garden, when he had nothing to do but to open the library door and shoot, if he wanted to?"

"Oh," said Gimblet, "ordinary caution would suggest the garden. He did not know perhaps, whether his uncle would be alone; and as a matter of fact, he was not, was he?"

"No, Miss Byrne was with him. By Jove," said Mark, bending forward to light a cigarette, "I shall never forget the fright it gave me when I saw her face. She looked as if-oh, she looked perfectly ghastly! I was in the billiard-room when she came in, as white as a sheet, and stood there without speaking for a minute, while I imagined every sort of catastrophe except the real one. And all the time I kept thinking it would turn out to be nothing really, as likely as not; women will look hideously frightened and upset if they cut their finger, or see a rat, or think they hear burglars. One never knows. And then at last she got out a few words, 'Lord Ashiel has been shot,' or something of the sort, and fainted."

"What did you do?" asked Gimblet.

"Well, I had to see to her, you know. I couldn't very well leave her in that state, could I? I hung on to the bell for all I was worth, and the butler and footmen came running. I told them to look after the young lady and to call her maid, and then I ran off to the library, followed by old Blanston, the butler. You know what we found there. My poor old uncle, dead as a door nail; a hole in the window where the bullet came in, and the floor around him all covered with blood. Ugh!" Mark shuddered, "it was horrid. We only stayed to make sure he was dead, and then we left him as we had found him and rushed back to rouse the rest of the household, and to start a chase after the murderer. Of course the first person I looked for was David Southern, but he wasn't to be found, so I and three menservants ran out at once with sticks and lanterns, and hunted all over the grounds without seeing or hearing anything or anyone. The hall boy had been sent down to fetch up the stablemen and chauffeur, and to rout out some of the gardeners and anyone else he could find, so that we were a decently large party, and I don't think there was an inch of ground we didn't go over, of all that lies within the policies. The murderer, however, had plenty of time to get right away, and as it was hopeless to scour the whole country side in that darkness-for it was as black as your hat-I decided, after an hour of groping about in the shrubberies, that we must leave off and wait for daylight."

"What time was it when you abandoned the hunt?" asked Gimblet.

"It was past midnight. I didn't see that any good could be done by sitting up all night. On the contrary, I thought it important that we should get some sleep while we could, so as to be fresher for the chase when daylight came. At this time of the year it gets light fairly early, so I sent every one to bed, except two of the ghillies, whom I told to row across the loch to Crianan and fetch the doctor and police, which I suppose I ought to have thought of before. Then I went to bed myself."

"And when did Sir David Southern turn up?" asked Gimblet.

"Oh, he appeared soon after we started to beat the policies. I hadn't time then to ask him where he'd been, and he was as keen on catching the murderer as anyone. Of course it never occurred to me to cross-question him."

"Naturally. Please go on with your narrative."

"Well, we slept, to speak for myself, for three or four hours, and then James and Andrew came back with the people I had sent for. And now, Mr. Gimblet, I come to a strange thing, a thing I've been careful not to mention to anyone but you, though I'm afraid it's bound to come out at the trial. When Blanston and I went out of the library, we locked the door behind us, but when I opened it again, to let in the doctor and the police, my uncle's body had been moved."

"Moved? How?" Gimblet repeated after him.

"Oh, not far, but it had been touched by some one, I am ready to swear, though I said nothing about it at the time. When we first found him, he was lying forward on the table with one arm under his head and the other hanging beside him. When I went in for the second time he was sitting sideways in his chair with his head and arm in quite a different place. Instead of being in the middle, on the blotting-pad, they were further to the right, on the bare polished wood."

Gimblet looked at him keenly.