The Loudwater Mystery Part 26

Then Elizabeth gave him his tea. After it they talked calmly with an actual approach to cheerfulness till it was time for her to return to the Castle to dress Olivia's hair for dinner. Then she would have it that he should escort her back to the Castle. She declared, truly enough, that he was doing himself no good by moping at the cottage, that people would say that he dare not show himself. He _must_ hold his head up.

She insisted also that they should take the long way round, through the village; that people should see them together. She insisted that he should look cheerful, and talk to her all the length of the village street. The looking cheerful helped to lighten his spirit yet more. As they went through the village she kept looking up at him in an affectionate fashion and smiling.

The village was, indeed, taken aback. It had made up its mind that James Hutchings was a pariah to be shunned. It was not only taken aback, it was annoyed. It had no wish that its belief that James Hutchings had murdered Lord Loudwater should be in any way unsettled.

Mrs. Roper, the mother of William Roper and a lifelong enemy of the Hutchings family, summed up the feeling of her neighbours about the behaviour of James Hutchings and Elizabeth.

"Brazen, I call it," she said bitterly.

Before they reached the Castle, Elizabeth had come to feel that during the last three days James Hutchings had changed greatly, and for the better. She had an odd fancy that murdering his master had improved his character; the fear of the police had softened him. Not once did he try to domineer over her. That domineering had been the source of their not infrequent quarrels, for she was not at all of a temper to endure it.

Olivia and Grey had again spent their afternoon in the pavilion in the East wood. Their bearing at times had been oddly like that of Elizabeth and James Hutchings. Now and again they had lapsed from their absorption in one another into a like fearfulness. But, unlike Elizabeth and James Hutchings, neither of them said a word about the murder of Lord Loudwater. But both of them seemed a little less under a strain than they had been. This new factor of a quarrel with an unknown woman seemed to open a loophole. Olivia's colouring had lost some of its warmth; the contours of her face were less rounded. Grey had manifestly taken a step backwards in his convalescence; his face was thinner, even a little haggard; there was a somewhat strained watchfulness in his eyes.

They could not tear themselves away from the pavilion till the last moment, and he walked back with her as far as the shrubbery on the edge of the East lawn, and there they parted after she had promised to meet him there that evening at nine.

As Olivia came into her sitting-room Elizabeth and James Hatchings came to the back door of the Castle. She did not say good-bye at once; of set purpose, she lingered talking to him that the other servants might understand clearly that her att.i.tude to him was definitely fixed.

But at last she held out her hand and said: "I must be getting along to her ladyship, or she'll be waiting for me."

James Hutchings looked round, considered the coast sufficiently clear, caught her to him, kissed her, and said huskily: "You're just a ministering angel, Lizzie, and there's more sense in your little finger than in all my fat head. I'm feeling a different man, and I'll baulk them yet."

"Of course you will, Jim," said Elizabeth, and she opened the door.

"Lord, how I wish I was coming in with you--back in my old place! I should be seeing you most of the time," he said wistfully.

Elizabeth stopped short, flushing, and looked at him with suddenly excited eyes.

At his words a great thought had come into her mind.

"Wait a minute, Jim. Wait till I come back," she said somewhat breathlessly, and, leaving the door open, she hurried down the pa.s.sage.

She hurried up to her room, took off her hat, and hurried to Olivia. She found her in her sitting-room looking through an evening paper to learn if any new fact about the murder had come to light.

"If you please, your ladyship, James Hutchings has come to ask if your ladyship would like him to come back for the time being till you've got suited with another butler," said Elizabeth in a rather breathless voice.

Olivia looked at Elizabeth's flushed, excited and hopeful face, and smiled.

"Why, have you and James made it up, Elizabeth?" she said.

"Yes, m'lady," said Elizabeth, and the flush deepened in her cheeks.

"Then go and tell him to come back, by all means," said Olivia.

"Thank you, m'lady," said Elizabeth, in accents of profound grat.i.tude, and she ran out of the room.

Olivia smiled and then she sighed. It was pleasant to have given Elizabeth such obviously keen pleasure. She never dreamed that Elizabeth and James Hutchings were under the same strain of fear and anxiety as she herself, and that she had given them great help in their trouble, for Elizabeth saw that the return of James Hutchings to his situation would give the wagging tongues full pause.

James Hutchings was dumbfounded on receiving the message. He stared at Elizabeth with his mouth open.

"Be quick, Jim. Get your clothes and be back in time to wait on her ladyship at dinner," said Elizabeth.

James Hutchings came out of his stupor.

"Why, L-L-Lizzie, you must let me p-p-put up our b-b-banns tomorrow," he stammered.

"Be off!" said Elizabeth, stamping her foot. "We can talk about that later."

When she came from her bath Olivia sent Elizabeth to tell Holloway that she would dine with Mr. Flexen and Mr. Manley that evening. She had a sudden desire to see more of Mr. Flexen, to weigh him as an antagonist.

Mr. Flexen was somewhat surprised to receive the information; then, considering the terms on which Olivia had been with her husband, he found her action natural enough. After all, she was not a woman of the middle cla.s.s, bound to make a pretence of grieving for a wholly unamiable bully.

Also, he was pleased: to dine with so charming a creature as Olivia would be pleasant and stimulating. In the course of the evening his wits might rise to the solution of his problem. Moreover, it would be odd if he did not gain a further, valuable insight into her character.

He was yet more surprised to find James Hutchings, still rather pale and haggard, but quite cool and master of himself, superintending the waiting of Wilkins and Holloway at dinner. Also, he liked the way in which he spoke to Olivia and looked at her. To Mr. Flexen, James Hutchings had the air of the authentic faithful dog. He was inclined to a better opinion of him.

Plainly, too, Olivia had learned that tongues were wagging against him, and had taken this way of checking them. It was a generous act. At the same time, he could very well believe that Olivia might, unconsciously of course, be on the side of the murderer of such a husband.

Thanks to Mr. Manley's invaluable sense of what was fitting, there was no constraint about the dinner. He had decided that they were three people of the world dining together, and the fact that there had been a murder in the house three days before and a funeral in the morning should not be allowed to impair their proper nonchalance. At the same time, decorum must be preserved; there must be no laughter.

Accordingly he took the conversation in hand, and kept it in hand. Mr.

Flexen was somewhat astonished at the ability with which he did it; now and again he felt as if, personally, he were performing feats on the loose wire, but that, thanks to Mr. Manley, he was not going to fall off.

They talked of the usual subjects on which people who have not a large circle of common acquaintances fall back. They all three abused the politicians with perfect sympathy; they abused the British drama with perfect sympathy; with no less perfect sympathy they abused the Cubists and the Vorticists and the New Poets. Mr. Flexen had an odd feeling that they were behaving with entire naturalness and propriety; that their real interest was in the politicians, the British drama, the Cubists, the Vorticists and the New Poets, and not at all in the fate of the murderer of the late Lord Loudwater. After a while he found himself vying earnestly with Mr. Manley in an effort to display himself as a man of at least equal insight and intelligence.

Olivia did not talk much herself. She never did. But she displayed a quickness of understanding and soundness of judgment which stimulated them. All the while she was watching and weighing Mr. Flexen. He never once perceived it. Plainly enough, the talk did her good. She had come to dinner looking, Mr. Flexen thought, rather under the water. Before long she was looking, as she had resolved to look, her usual self. When, at a few minutes to nine, she left them, she was looking the most charming and sympathetic creature in the world, and, what was more, a creature without a care.

When the door closed behind her, she seemed to have taken with her a good deal of the brightness of the room. Mr. Flexen dropped back into his chair and frowned. In the silence which fell he wondered. Plainly she was free enough from care now.

"But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire--"

Then Mr. Manley said, in a tone almost insolent: "If you think she murdered that red-eyed bull in a china shop, you're wrong. She didn't."

Mr. Flexen did not resent his tone. Indeed, before he could speak, it flashed on him that if she had done so, and Justice was depending on him himself to bring her to it, it was depending on a somewhat frail reed. He liked Mr. Manley for his readiness to fight for her cause.

He laughed gently and said: "I wasn't thinking so. I was only wondering."

Then his eyes on Mr. Manley's face turned very keen, and he said: "I believe you know a good deal more about the affair than I do, if you liked to speak."

It seemed to him that for a moment Mr. Manley's desire to make himself valued struggled with his desire to be accurate.

Then the young man shook his head and said in a tone of surprise: "But what nonsense! You know so much more about it than I do. Why, you must have all the threads in your hands by now. I never even dreamt of the _Daily Wire's_ mysterious woman."

"Not quite all--yet. But they're coming all right," said Mr. Flexen, with a confidence he was far from feeling.

James Hutchings, coming into the room to fetch cigarettes for Olivia, interrupted them.

"I'm glad to see you back again, Hutchings," said Mr. Manley in a tone of hearty congratulation. "Your going away for a trifle after all the years you've been here was a silly business."

"Thank you, sir," said Hutchings gratefully.

When Hutchings had gone, Mr. Flexen said: "It's all very well your talking, but it was you who suggested that Lady Loudwater was a woman of strong primitive emotions with a strain of Italian blood in her."