The Opal Serpent Part 30

"I suppose you are pleased to see me?" asked Hurd, puffing meditatively at his briar.

Paul nodded. "Very glad," he answered, "that is, if you have done anything about Mrs. Krill?"

"Well," drawled the detective, smiling, "I have been investigating that murder case."

"Lady Rachel Sandal's?" said Beecot, eagerly. "Is it really murder?"

"I think so, though some folks think it suicide. Curious you should have stumbled across that young lord," went on Hurd, musingly, "and more curious still that he should have been in the room with Mrs. Krill without recollecting the name. There was a great fuss made about it at the time."

"Oh, I can understand Lord George," said Beecot, promptly. "The murder, if it is one, took place before he was born, and as there seems to have been some scandal in the matter, the family hushed it up. This young fellow probably gathered sc.r.a.ps of information from old servants, but from what he said to me in the cab, I think he knows very little."

"Quite enough to put me on the track of Lemuel Krill's reason for leaving Christchurch."

"Is that the reason?"

"Yes. Twenty-three years ago he left Christchurch at the very time Lady Rachel was murdered in his public-house. Then he disappeared for a time, and turned up a year later in Gwynne Street with a young wife whom he had married in the meantime."

"Sylvia's mother?"

"Exactly. And Miss Norman was born a year later. She's nearly twenty-one, isn't she?"

"Yes. She will be twenty-one in three months."

Hurd nodded gravely. "The time corresponds," said he. "As the crime was committed twenty-three years back and Lord George is only twenty, I can understand how he knows so little about it. But didn't he connect Mrs.

Krill with the man who died in Gwynne Street?"

"No. She explained that. The name of Krill appeared only a few times in the papers, and was princ.i.p.ally set forth with the portrait, in the hand-bills. I shouldn't think Lord George was the kind of young man to bother about hand-bills."

"All the same, he might have heard talk at his club. Everyone isn't so stupid."

"No. But, at all events, he did not seem to connect Mrs. Krill with the dead man. And even with regard to the death of his aunt, he fancied she might not be the same woman."

"What an a.s.s he must be," said Hurd, contemptuously.

"I don't think he has much brain," confessed Paul, shrugging his shoulders; "but he asked me if I thought Mrs. Krill was the same as the landlady of 'The Red Pig,' and I denied that she was. I don't like telling lies, but in this case I hope the departure from truth will be pardoned."

"You did very right," said the detective. "The fewer people know about these matters the better--especially a chatterbox like this young fool."

"Do you know him?"

"Yes, under the name of the Count de la Tour. But I know of him in another way, which I'll reveal later. Hay is still fleecing him?"

"He is. But Lord George seems to be growing suspicious of Hay," and Paul related the conversation he had with the young man.

Hurd grunted. "I'm sorry," he said. "I want to catch Hay red-handed, and if Lord George grows too clever I may not be able to do so."

"Well," said Paul, rather impatiently, "never mind about that fellow just now, but tell me what you have discovered."

"Oh, a lot of interesting things. When I got your letter, of course I at once connected the opal serpent with Aaron Norman, and his change of name with the murder. I knew that Norman came to Gwynne Street over twenty years ago--that came out in the evidence connected with his death. Therefore, putting two and two together, I searched in the newspapers of that period and found what I wanted."

"A report of the case?"

"Precisely. And after that I hunted up the records at Scotland Yard for further details that were not made public. So I got the whole story together, and I am pretty certain that Aaron Norman, or as he then was, Lemuel Krill, murdered Lady Rachel for the sake of that precious brooch."

"Ah," said Paul, drawing a breath, "now I understand why he fainted when he saw it again. No wonder, considering it was connected in his mind with the death of Lady Rachel."

"Quite so. And no wonder the man kept looking over his shoulder in the expectation of being tapped on the shoulder by a policeman. I don't wonder also that he locked up the house and kept his one eye on the ground, and went to church secretly to pray. What a life he must have led. Upon my soul, bad as the man was, I'm sorry for him."

"So am I," said Paul. "And after all, he is Sylvia's father."

"Poor girl, to have a murderer for a father!"

Beecot turned pale. "I love Sylvia for herself," he said, with an effort, "and if her father had committed twenty murders I would not let her go. But she must never know."

"No," said Hurd, stretching his hand across and giving Paul a friendly grip, "and I knew you'd stick to her. It wouldn't be fair to blame the girl for what her father did before she was born."

"We must keep everything from her, Hurd. I'll marry her and take her abroad sooner than she should learn of this previous murder. But how did it happen?"

"I'll tell you in a few minutes." Hurd rose and began to pace the narrow limits of the attic. "By the way, do you know that Norman was a secret drinker of brandy?"

Paul nodded, and told the detective what he had learned from Mrs. Krill.

Hurd was much struck with the intelligence. "I see," said he; "what Mrs.

Krill says is quite true. Drink does change the ordinary nature into the opposite. Krill sober was a timid rabbit; Krill drunk was a murderer and a thief. Good lord, and how he drank!"

"How do you know?"

"Well," confessed Hurd, nursing his chin, "Pash and I went to search the Gwynne Street house to find, if possible, the story alluded to in the sc.r.a.p of paper Deborah Junk found. We couldn't drop across anything of that sort, but in Norman's bedroom, which n.o.body ever entered, we found brandy bottles by the score. Under the bed, ranged along the walls, filling cupboards, stowed away in boxes. I had the curiosity to count them. Those we found, ran up to five hundred, and Lord knows how many more he must have got rid of when he found the bottles crowding him inconveniently."

"I expect he got drunk every night," said Paul, thinking. "When he locked up Sylvia and Deborah in the upper room--I can understand now why he did so--he could go to the cellar and take possession of the shop key left on the nail by Bart. Then, free from all intrusion, he could drink till reeling. Not that I think he ever did reel," went on Beecot, mindful of what Mrs. Krill had said; "he could stand a lot, and I expect the brandy only converted him into a demon."

"And a clever business man," said Hurd. "You know Aaron Norman was not clever over the books. Bart sold those, but from all accounts he was a Shylock when dealing, after seven o'clock, in the p.a.w.nbroking way. I understand now. Sober, he was a timid fool; drunk, he was a bold, clever villain."

"My poor Sylvia, what a father," sighed Paul; "but this crime--"

"I'll tell you about it. Lemuel Krill and his wife kept 'The Red Pig' at Christchurch, a little public house it is, on the outskirts of the town, frequented by farm-laborers and such-like. The business was pretty good, but the couple didn't look to making their fortune. Mrs. Krill was a farmer's daughter."

"A Buckinghamshire farmer," said Paul.

"How do you know? oh!"--on receiving information--"Mrs. Krill told you so? Well, considering the murder of Lady Rachel, she would have done better to hold her tongue and have commenced life with her dead husband's money under a new name. She's a clever woman, too," mused Hurd, "I can't understand her being so unnecessarily frank."

"Never mind, go on," said Paul, impatiently.

Hurd returned to his seat and re-filled his pipe. "Well, then," he continued, "Krill got drunk and gave his wife great trouble. Sometimes he thrashed her and blacked her eyes, and he treated their daughter badly too."

"How old was the daughter?"

"I can't say. Why do you ask?"

"I'll tell you later. Go on, please."