CHAPTER XXIV.
WHAT MRS. CARRUTH SAW.
All sorts of things have happened--past all belief. Tommy Tennant hasbeen arrested for murder--for the murder of me! Those wise police! AndReginald Townsend is coming to dine.
But let us proceed in order. Each thing in its place, and one at atime.
To take two or three things to begin with. The muddle they have madeabout what happened at Three Bridges is, really, in its way, quitemarvellous. And it all pans out so clean--or seems to--to those who arelooking on. No one is talking of anything else, and some of them talkof it to me. It only wants Mr. Townsend to favour me with a fewremarks, and Tommy to add a postscript, to make me begin to think thatI must be dreaming.
They have found the porter who saw me into the train at Brighton, andhe has declared that the corpse is me! What a sweet creature thatporter man must be! And they have found the porter who saw Tommy getout of the empty, blood-stained carriage at Victoria. But how they havefound Tommy himself I don't, as yet, altogether understand. I know theyhave not found me.
I have had another sight of Tommy since the one on that firstnight--or, rather, so early in the morning. And, again, the manner ofit was curious.
I have been in rather a predicament since I realised that Tommy and Iwere neighbours. There has been a certain delicacy about the situation.I might tell tales of him--he is married! I have seen his wife--such apretty woman; but, unless I am mistaken, she wears the breeches! Butthey would not do him a tithe of the injury his tales would do me. Andwe women are so handicapped. The justice of the world is so unjust. Aman may steal the horse, while we may not look over the hedge.Primitive civilisations are, after all, in certain respects, the best;but then they lack the very things we want!
I'm a widow--_bona fide_. I could put down as much hard cash, dollarfor dollar, as many women who are famed for riches. I want to beginagain. I have ambitions. I want to ruffle it among the best of them.Why shouldn't I? I have the qualities. So I have taken this highlyrespectable house in this highly respectable street, and furnished itin a highly respectable manner. I wanted to look about me--to find outwhere I am. I did not want to start with a splash, or folks would wantto know who I was. And there are people who could tell them. Forinstance, Tommy for one. I want some one to launch me; some one fullyequipped with the necessary equipment to give me a good send-off.
Tommy, if he liked, could spoil me. On the thin ice of my perfectrespectability, at this stage of the game, I stand or fall; and, if Ido fall, I fall right in. If I had known that Tommy and I wereneighbours, I should have behaved in a very different fashion when Idiscovered we were fellow-passengers. I should have shown a spirit ofChristian forgiveness; and, in excusing the past, I should have buriedthe hatchet. Tommy is a good-hearted creature, in his way. I could haveeasily induced him to hold his tongue, or even to assist me with ahelping hand.
Now that boat is burned!
My first impulse, when I discovered that we were neighbours, was to flybefore he made the same discovery on his own account. Had he chosen, hemight have made my position absolutely untenable. While this mood wason me, I did my little best to conceal the fact. When I went out, Itook care not to pass his house, lest he should see me from thewindows. And the funny part of it was that the first time I did passhis house, he saw me.
The papers were full of the Three Bridges tragedy. The hue-and-cry washot against the man who had travelled in that blood-stained carriage.What amazed me was his continued silence. It showed not only abjectcowardice, but drivelling idiocy to boot. Anything was better--forhim!--than keeping still. It was the Friday night. I had some lettersto post. I had a headache. I felt that I must have some fresh air, or achange of air if fresh air was not obtainable; so I took them myself tothe pillar-box at the end of the road. Doing so involved passingTommy's residence. But it was dark; there was more than the suspicionof fog--the risk seemed small.
I went on the opposite side of the street. The fog was so thick that,when I had despatched the letters, it seemed absurd to takeprecautions.
"I'll stroll back past Tommy's. Why should I be afraid of him?"
I strolled. The fog appeared to be thicker every moment. The houses inthe street, externally, were as like as two peas. I really found itdifficult to find out exactly whereabouts I was. I was thinking ofTommy, and of how eagerly he was being hunted, and of what a sensationI might make by sending his address to Scotland Yard--when there he wasin front of me!
Right close in front of me!
He was standing at the bottom of a flight of steps--his ownsteps--hatless, his hands in his trousers' pockets, as if, like me, hehad come out to get a change of air. Suddenly he became conscious of mypresence. He turned my way, and stared. The encounter was more than Ihad bargained for. It made me feel a trifle awkward. But the effectwhich it had on him was most astounding. The look which came upon hisface actually frightened me--it's a fact! I had not thought that ahuman countenance could have been capable of an expression of suchawful horror. To look at him--and I had to look!--made me go all cold.As I advanced, he went--automatically, I am sure--backwards up thesteps, never removing his eyes from off me, the awful something thatwas on his face intensifying every second. At the bottom of the steps Ipaused--I had to; something made me. I don't know what he thought; but,as he saw me standing there, he made a convulsive movement backwards,went into the house, and banged the door.
I am cool enough as a rule. It takes something to put me off mybalance. But I was off my balance then. The whole thing was so unlookedfor, and seemed so strange; it unnerved me. When Tommy had gone I foundthat I was trembling.
But the incident was not by any means concluded.
When I had gone a few steps further on, I all but cannoned into whatseemed to be a crowd of men, who, of malice prepense, were blocking upthe pavement. What with the fog and my state of fluster, I did notperceive what they were till I was right upon them.
They were policemen.
My nerves were in such a condition of tension that, when I realisedthat fact, it was all I could do to prevent myself from screaming.
"I beg your pardon," I mumbled. "I did not see you."
"It's all right, miss," said a voice. "Pass on."
I passed on. But I had not passed on another dozen yards when, itseemed to me, by a sort of inspiration, I guessed what might havebrought them there. What _might_ have brought them there? What had?
Be the consequences what they might, I felt that I must stay and seewhat was about to happen. Turning, I went back a little way; and,keeping as much in the shadow as I could, I stood and watched.
A man, who was dressed in ordinary private clothes, went on in front.The policemen divided in two sections. Two of them followed closely onthis man's heels. The rest went out into the road.
Just as I expected, the man in plain clothes passed up Tommy's steps.He hammered with the knocker at Tommy's door. The door was opened. Hewent in. The two policemen went in with him.
I knew that, even while I was standing watching there, Tommy was beingarrested for the murder of me!
The confusion of my ideas filled me with panic terror. He had seen menot a minute back. He had only to tell the policemen so. They wouldcome and find me there. There would be an end to all my dreams.
I rushed home. For the first time in my life I could not sleep. Indeed,I scarcely tried to sleep. All night I lay in agony. A thousandthoughts came crowding on my brain. I lost my self-control. I was halfstupefied with fear. I wished that there were a hundred miles betweenmy house and Tommy's. More than once, even in the middle of the night,I nearly made a bolt of it. I was so oppressed by the consciousnessthat he had only to send these policemen five doors along the street,and there was I.
But I did not lose every fragment of common sense. I did not become anutter fool. When the morning came, I was still there to see it out.
Next day I never moved outside the door. I bought all the eveningpapers. Th
ey were selling them in the streets all day. Tommy filledthem all. "Arrest of the Three Bridges Murderer!" "Examination beforethe Magistrates!" They were shouting the words in the streets all day.It seemed that they had taken him to East Grinstead, wherever thatmight be, early in the morning, and brought him before the magistratesdirectly they got him there. To me the whole business was amazing. Whyhad he not told them at once that he had seen me, and put the police onmy track? I was close at hand. They could scarcely have failed to findme. So far as he was concerned, there would have been an end of theaffair upon the spot.
But Tommy's ways always were beyond my finding out.
What the newspapers called his examination was of the most perfunctorykind. The police simply said that they had arrested him, and he wasremanded for a week.
And on Thursday Mr. Townsend was coming to dine.