The Ashiel Mystery - Mrs. Charles Bryce (novels to improve english TXT) 📗
- Author: Mrs. Charles Bryce
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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 passage.
"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, grass 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 mass 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 assumed in
the south. The great tower that formed the principal remaining portion of
the old building could just be discerned over the top of the flaring
façade, 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 assured 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
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