CHAPTER XV
When Barrant learnt from the trembling lips of Mrs. Pendleton that she hadnot seen her niece since that morning, his first step was to get Sisily'sfull description, and call up Dawfield on the hotel telephone withinstructions to have all the railway stations between Penzance and Londonwarned to look out for her. That was a necessary precaution, but it didnot need Dawfield's hesitating information about time tables to convincehim that it was almost futile. The later of the two trains by which Sisilymight have fled from Cornwall had reached London and discharged itspassengers somewhere about the time that Mr. Peter Portgartha, in thedepth of the rumbling wagonette, was paying his tribute to shrinkingfemale modesty as exhibited on Mousehole rocks.
After doing this Barrant returned to the empty lounge, where Mrs.Pendleton sat in partial darkness with tearful face. All the other guestshad retired, and a lurking porter yawned longingly in the passage, waitingfor an opportunity to put out the last of the lights and get to bed.
In the first shock of Barrant's violent apparition and angry questions,Mrs. Pendleton had tried, in a bewildered way, to insist that her niecehad not left her room on the previous night. But now, in her troubledconsideration of the new strange turn of events surrounding her brother'sdeath, she saw that she might have been deceived on this point. Barrant,for his part, had not the slightest doubt of it when he heard that herbelief rested on no stronger foundation than Sisily's early withdrawalfrom the dining-room on the plea of fatigue, and the fact that her bedroomdoor was locked when Mrs. Pendleton returned from her own visit to FlintHouse. Sisily's subsequent flight eliminated any uncertainty about that,and established beyond reasonable doubt her identity with the silent girlwho had entered the returning wagonette at the cross-roads. Thecoincidence of those two facts had a terrible significance. Barrant had nodoubt that Sisily had gone to her own room early in order to find anopportunity to pay a secret visit to her home, for a purpose which nowseemed to stand sinisterly revealed by her disappearance. He also thoughthe saw the motive--that vital factor in murder--looming behind hernocturnal expedition. But that was a question he was not inclined toanalyze too closely at that moment. He wanted to know how she had beenable to disappear that day without the knowledge of her aunt.
Mrs. Pendleton had a ready explanation of that. She said that afterreturning from her visit to the police station that morning she had beenengaged with her brother Austin until nearly lunch-time, and when she wentup to Sisily's room she found it empty. She concluded that her niece hadgone out somewhere to be alone with her grief--she was the type of girlthat liked to be alone. After lunch Mrs. Pendleton had letters to write,and then she had gone to her bedroom and fallen sound asleep tilldinner-time, worn out by the shock of her brother's death, and thesleepless night which had followed it. When Sisily did not appear atdinner she began to grow uneasy, but sought to convince herself thatSisily might have gone on a _char-a-banc_ trip to Falmouth which hadbeen advertised for that day. The incongruity of a sad solitary girl likeSisily nursing her grief in a public vehicle packed with curiouschattering trippers did not seem to have occurred to her. But as timepassed she grew seriously alarmed, and sent her husband out to makeenquiries.
She had sat in the lounge listening with strained ears for the girl'sfootsteps until Barrant arrived.
"Has your niece any friends in Cornwall or London, or anywhere, for thatmatter, who would receive her?" Barrant abruptly demanded.
"I really do not know," said Mrs. Pendleton.
She wiped the tears from her eyes with a large white handkerchief. She wasoverwhelmed by the shock of her niece's disappearance, and the terribleinterpretation Barrant evidently placed upon it. But Barrant was in nomood to allow for her confused state of mind.
"You had better try and remember," he said irritably. "It seems to me thatI've been kept in the dark. You went to the police to demand aninvestigation into your brother's death, but you did not say anything ofthe disclosure he made to you yesterday of his daughter's illegitimacy.Instead of doing so, you only directed suspicion to his man-servant.Meanwhile your niece, who was placed in your care, disappears to heavenknows where, and you took no steps to inform the police. You have actedvery indiscreetly, Mrs. Pendleton, to say the least."
"I did not know--I did not think," gasped Mrs. Pendleton. She endeavouredto commence a flurried explanation of the mixed motives and impulses whichhad swayed her since her brother's death, but Barrant cut it short with animpatient wave of the hand.
"Never mind that now," he said. "I have lost too much time already. Haveyou no idea where your niece is likely to have sought refuge?"
Mrs. Pendleton shook her head. "Robert had no friends," she said, "andSisily led a very lonely life. Robert told me that yesterday. That was thereason he wanted me to take charge of her--so as to give her theopportunity of making some girl friends of her own age."
She paused, embarrassed by the recollection that her brother's realintention in placing Sisily in her charge was altogether different.Barrant noted her hesitation, and interpreted it aright.
"No," he said. "The real reason of your brother parting with his daughterprovides the motive for her return to his house last night. What happenedbetween them is a matter for conjecture, at present. Apparently she wasthe last person who saw him alive before he was shot, and now she is notto be found."
There was something so portentously solemn in his manner of speaking theselast words that his listener quaked in terror, and gazed at him withwidened eyes. Barrant turned abruptly to another phase.
"Are you quite sure that it was the man-servant you saw looking throughthe door yesterday afternoon?"
It was proof of the fallibility of human testimony that Mrs. Pendleton hadsincerely convinced herself that she was quite sure. "Yes," she said.
Barrant looked doubtful. By reason of his calling he was well aware of thehuman tendency to unintentional mistake in identity. With womenespecially, the jump from an impression to a conclusion was sometimes asrapid as the thought itself.
"Did you see his face?" he asked.
"Only the eyes. But I am sure that they were Thalassa's eyes."
Barrant did not press the point. He did not doubt the honesty of herbelief, but the words in which it was conveyed suggested hasty impressionrather than conviction. Such proofs of identity were not to be reliedupon.
"Had your brother's servant any reason, so far as you know, to belistening at the door?" he asked.
"All servants are curious," murmured Mrs. Pendleton. She shook her headwisely, as one intimating a wide knowledge of their class.
"All curious servants are not murderers," returned Barrant. "This man hasbeen in your brother's service for a long time, has he not?"
"For a great number of years. Almost ever since Robert returned toEngland, I think."
"So Mr. Austin Turold informed me. Had he any grudge against his master?"
"Thalassa? I really couldn't tell you, because I do not know. But he has amost truculent and overbearing manner--not at all the kind of manner youexpect in a servant, and he seemed to do just what he liked. I dislikedhim as soon as I saw him. I'm sure he looks more like some dreadful oldsea pirate than a gentleman's servant. I would not have him in myhousehold." Mrs. Pendleton set her lips firmly. "No, not for a singlemoment. But I suppose poor Robert was attached to him from longassociation."
Barrant nodded in an understanding way. "Then this man Thalassa must haveknown your niece from childhood," he said in a casual tone. "Was heattached to her, do you think?"
"I know nothing of that."
"That's rather a pity," he said with a gentle shake of the head. He lookedat her knowingly.
"I do not understand you," she faltered.
"You had grounds for your suspicions of Thalassa--reasonable grounds. Hemust have admitted your niece into the house last night, you know. I mustget it out of him."
She gave a start, for she saw now where his drift of questions was takingthem. With a sickening sense of horror she real
ized that her slightsuspicions were being used by him to help fashion a case against her ownflesh and blood.
"What are you suggesting?" she breathed, with a nervous look.
"Nothing at present," he said, with a quick realization of the fact thathe was in danger of talking too much. "Can you tell me if your niece isprovided with money?"
"My brother gave her twenty-five pounds in bank notes yesterday--he toldme."
"That is enough to keep her for some weeks. You are quite sure you cannotform any idea where she has gone?"
"No," said Mrs. Pendleton coldly, with a belated inward resolve not to beso ready in volunteering information to the police in future.
"I should like to see the room your niece occupied last night," he said.
That was a search which brought nothing to light. Barrant left the hoteljust as little Mr. Pendleton returned to it with an alarmed face and afeeling of personal guilt at his failure to find Sisily.
Barrant passed him with a side glance, his mind full of the problem of thegirl's disappearance. He left the hotel in a state of thoughtfulness,fully realizing the difficulties of the task which lay before him intracing Sisily's movements on the previous night, and discovering whereshe had flown. The deeper questions of motive and the inconsequence ofsome of her actions he preferred to leave till later. Action, and notmental analysis, was the need of the moment. Barrant prided himself onbeing a man of action, and he was also a detective. The thrill of pursuitstirred in his blood.
His later activities that night and the following day brought to lightmany things, but not all that he wanted to know. He convinced himself, inthe first place, that it was possible for the girl to have left her roomand returned to it on the night of her father's death without any of theinmates of the hotel being aware of her absence. That lessened thecomplexity of the case by absolving Mrs. Pendleton from the suspicion ofpretended ignorance. Barrant was also convinced the aunt believed herniece to be in bed and asleep during the time of her own visit to herbrother's house. Sisily had to pass the office of the hotel in going outand returning, but she could easily have done so unobserved. There werefew guests at that season of the year, and the proprietor's daughter, wholooked after the office, was in the dining-room having her dinner athalf-past seven. She went to bed shortly after ten, leaving the frontentrance in charge of the porter, who had duties to perform in variousparts of the house. And it was possible to descend the stairs and leavethe hotel without being seen from the lounge or smoking-room.
There was a wagonette to St. Fair from the railway station athalf-past-seven. The hotel dinner was at a quarter to seven for theconvenience of some permanent guests, and Sisily, who left the tablebefore the meal was concluded--about a quarter-past seven, according toMrs. Pendleton--had time to catch the wagonette. On the assumption thateven a Cornish wagonette would cover the journey of five miles across themoors in less than an hour, Sisily had probably reached her father's houseat half-past eight or a little earlier. The stopped clock in the studyindicated that he met his death at half-past nine. If so, Sisily must haveleft Flint House shortly before her aunt's arrival to catch the returningwagonette at the cross-roads where the young woman was seen waiting byPeter Portgartha.
But that plausibly conceived itinerary of events needed the support ofproof, and there Barrant found himself in difficulty.
The morning's enquiries made it manifest that Sisily had left Penzance bythe mid-day train on the previous day. After leaving Mrs. Pendleton,Barrant had gone to the station. The sour and elderly ticket-clerk on dutycould give him no information, but let it be understood that there wasanother clerk selling tickets for the mid-day train, which was unusuallycrowded by farmers going to Redruth. The other clerk, seen in the morning,had no difficulty in recalling the young lady of Barrant's description.She was pretty and slight and dark, with a pale clear complexion, and shecarried a small handbag. She asked for a ticket to London. The clerkunderstood her to ask for a return ticket, but as she picked it up withthe change for the five pound note with which she paid for it, she saidthat she thought she had asked for a single ticket. He assured her thatshe had not, but offered to change it. At that moment the departure of thetrain was signalled, and she ran through the barrier without waiting tochange the ticket. The incident caused him to observe her, and hisdescription tallied so completely with Mrs. Pendleton's description thatBarrant had not the least doubt that it was Sisily.
On the strength of this information Barrant applied to a local magistratefor a warrant for the girl's arrest. He was well aware that he had not yetgathered sufficient evidence to satisfy the law that she had murdered herfather, but his action was justified by her flight and the presumption ofher secret visit to her father's house when she was supposed to be in bedand asleep at the hotel.
These things fulfilled, Barrant then applied his mind to the question ofThalassa's complicity. If Sisily's actions on the night of her father'sdeath, and her subsequent flight, simplified matters to the extent ofdeepening the assumption of murder into a practical certainty, they addedto the complexity of the case by giving it the appearance of a carefullyplanned crime in which Thalassa seemed to be deeply involved.
The insistent necessity of motive which should explain the events of thatnight with apt presumptions, threw Barrant back on the suggestion, made byAustin Turold, that it was really Sisily whom Mrs. Pendleton had detectedlooking through the door of the downstairs room when the other members ofthe family were assembled within listening to Robert Turold. Barrant toldhimself that Mrs. Pendleton's suspicion of Thalassa rested on nothing moresubstantial than feminine prejudice, an unreasoning impulse of dislikewhich would leave few men alive if it always carried capital punishment inits train.
The substitution of Sisily for Thalassa provided a convincing motive formurder. The overheard revelation of her mother's shame and her ownprecarious condition in the world when she might reasonably have beencounting on becoming an heiress of note, were sufficient to account forthe nocturnal return and an effort to entreat justice or compelsilence--the alternatives depended on the type of girl. From what Mrs.Pendleton had told him of Sisily and her love for her mother--poor Mrs.Pendleton had insisted, all unwittingly, very strongly on that--Barranthad pictured her as a brooding yet passionate type of girl who might havecommitted the murder in a sudden frenzy of determination to prevent herfather making public the unhappy secret of her mother's life. That was anact by no means inconsistent with the temperament of a strongwilled andlonely girl, whose stormy passions had been wrought to the breaking-pointby disclosures made on the very day that her loved mother had been buriedin a nameless grave. There was, additionally, the motive of self-interest,awakened to the lamentable fact that she had no claim on her father beyondwhat generosity might dictate. In short, Barrant believed the motive forthe murder to be a mixed one, as human motives generally are. At thatstage of his reasoning he did not ask himself whether worldly greed waslikely to enter into the composition of a girl like Sisily.
This reconstruction of the crime pointed to an accomplice, and thataccomplice must have been the man-servant. Nobody but Thalassa could havelet the girl into the house; and he could have dropped the key in the roomafter the door was broken open. That theory not only presupposed strongdevotion on Thalassa's part for a girl he had known from childhood, whichwas a theory reasonable of belief, but it also suggested that he bore adeep grudge against his master on his own account, sufficient to cause himto refrain from doing anything to prevent the accomplishment of themurder, and to risk his own skin afterwards to shield the girl from theconsequences. This aspect of the case struck Barrant as very strange anddeep, because it failed to account for Sisily's subsequent flight. IfThalassa had jeopardized himself by keeping silence about her visit, andhad returned the key to her father's room in order to create the idea ofsuicide, why had she dispelled the illusion by running away, bringing bothher accomplice and herself into danger? Had she been, seized with terror,perhaps due to Mrs. Pendleton's insistence on her beli
ef of murder, or hadThalassa conveyed some warning to her that inquiries were likely to be putafoot?
These were questions to which Barrant felt he could find no answer untilhe had seen Thalassa and attempted to wrest the truth from him.
He postponed his visit to Flint House until the evening. He wanted to makethe journey as Sisily had made it on the previous night, in order to findout, as nearly as possible, the exact moment she had arrived at herfather's house. He was not even in a position to prove that she had goneby the wagonette until he had questioned the driver.
He took his way to the station that evening with the feeling that it wouldbe difficult to get anything out of Thalassa, whatever the reasons for hissilence. He instinctively recognized that the authority of the law, whichstrikes such terror into craven hearts, would not help him with this oldman whose glance had the lawless fearlessness of an eagle. But he hadconfidence in his ability to extract the truth, and Thalassa, moreover,was at the disadvantage of having something to hide. It would be strangeif he did not succeed in getting the facts out of him.
The St. Fair wagonette was pulled up outside the station. Mr. Crows,master of his destiny and time-tables, reclined in front, regarding with aglazed eye his drooping horse. Inside, some stout women with bundleswaited patiently until it suited the autocrat on the box seat to start onhis homeward way. Mr. Crows showed no indication of being in a hurry. Hishead nodded drowsily, and a little saliva trickled down his nether lip. Hestraightened himself with a sudden jerk as Barrant climbed up beside him.
"What be yewer doin' yare?" he demanded.
"I'm going to St. Fair," said Barrant.
"I doan't allow no passergers to sit alongside o' me."
"You'll have to put up with it for once," returned Barrant curtly, in noway softened by the odour of Mr. Crows' breath.
As this was a reply which no resident of St. Fair would have dared tomake, Mr. Crows bent a muddled glance on his fare, and by a concentratedeffort recalled the face of the man who had given him ten shillings on theprevious night. He decided to pocket the present indignity in the hope ofanother tip.
"Aw right," he said, with unwonted amiability, "yewer can stay where yeware--for wance."
He applied himself to driving the wagonette. Sobriety was not an essentialof the feat. The horse knew the way, drew clear of the town withoutaccident, and jogged into the long winding road which stretched across themoors. The shadows deepened into night, and Mr. Crows lighted a solitarylamp in the front of his vehicle.
"Aren't you going to light up inside?" asked Barrant, when the lamp wasflickering faintly.
"No," replied Mr. Crows shortly. "It don't pay. Let 'em set in the dark."
"Not enough passengers, eh?"
"Moren enough fat old wommen on the out journey," declared Mr. Crowspassionately. "That's because it's all up-hill. But they walk in downhillto save a shellen. _I_ know them." He brooded darkly. "It's all partof the plan," he went on. Then, as though feeling that this latterstatement, in itself, erred on the side of vagueness, he added--"to worrita man."
"How many passengers did you have on your last journey in, last night?"
"Two on 'em." Mr. Crows, with forefinger and thumb, snuffed his nose as hehad previously snuffed the candle in the lamp. "There was Peter Portgarthaand a young woman. I happen to know it was a young 'un because she wentaway at such a rate when she got out. When wommen begins to get up inyears they go in the legs, same as harses."
"Would you know her again if you saw her?" asked Barrant eagerly.
"Not if you was to sware me on the Howly Trinity."
"Did this young woman travel up with you by this wagonette last night?"
Mr. Crows couldn't say for that. There were six insides, that was all_he_ knew. He disremembered anything about them.
"Surely you notice the passengers you carry?"
Mr. Crows, with the air of one propounding an insoluble riddle, asked hisfare why should he take notice of his passengers? He weren't paid forthat--no, not he. What's more, the night was a dark one. He knew there wassix insides because six fares was put through the winder, but whether theywas put through by men or ma'adens or widder wommen was moren he cud say.
He again called on the Trinity to attest his ignorance.
"Their shellens is nuthin' to me"--the reference was to the passengers."They wouldn't pay for the harse's feed. I work for the Duchy, I do, whichis almost the same as being in Guvverment, ain't it? I remember yew,thow--because yew gave me ten shellens for driving yew to the Centralhotel last night." Mr. Crows cast a quick glance at his fare to see how hetook this artful reminder of his munificence. "But as for their bobs--" Hespat into the night in order to express his contempt for theinsignificance of such small sums.
There was a tap at the window behind him. He unfastened the pane, and aspectral hand came through with a coin. Mr. Crows took it, the handdisappeared, to be replaced by another, more dirty than spectral, with acoin in the outstretched palm, like its predecessor.
"You see," said Mr. Crows, when he had collected six shillings in thismanner. "What's the need for to look at them? I've learnt them to hand intheir fares this way. Saves time and talk for nothing. Why should I lookat a lot of fat old wommen? I ain't paid for that. It's quite enough tolet them set in my cab, wearing out my cushions with their great fatbodies, without looking at them." He eyed Barrant with some sternness.
"But this was not a fat old woman," said Barrant. "She was a pretty younggirl."
"Ma'ad or widder, it's all the same to me," returned the misogynist. "Someholds with the sex and finds them soothing, but I was never took up withthem myself. I prefers beer. Every man to his taste."
"Did any of the passengers alight at the crossroads?"
They were nearing the cross-roads as he spoke, and the rude outline of thewayside cross loomed out of the shadows directly ahead.
"I couldn't tell you that, neither. I always stop at the cross-roads, inand out. It's one of my regular stopping-places. Come to think of it,though, somebody did get out at the cross-roads last night."
"A man or woman?" asked Barrant with eagerness.
"A woman. She went off acrass the moors that way." Mr. Crows pointed anindifferent whip into the blackness which rested like a pall between thewhite road and the distant roaring sea. "She was a wunner to go, too--outof sight in a moment, she was."
"Thank you. I'll get down here, too."
As the wagonette stopped at the cross-roads Barrant jumped down from hisseat and disappeared in the indicated direction before Mr. Crows couldsummon his slow wits to determine the value of the coin which thedetective had pressed into his passively expectant palm.