The Moon Rock by Arthur J. Rees (e novels to read TXT) 📗

oppressed her listener with the sense of some great unknown horror. It was like trying to see a dark place by lightning. The flashes of her revelations revealed a distorted surface, but not the hidden depths. Mrs. Pendleton’s agitated mind, doubling in and out a maze of conjectures like a distracted hare, turned again and again to the question of Sisily’s complicity in her father’s death.

“I can hardly believe it even now,” she said with a shudder. “Such a sweet pretty girl! And yet—there was something strange in her manner. I remarked it to Joseph—my husband—before this happened.” She pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.

The lawyer, with a sideways glance at the Royal portrait opposite, which seemed in the act of smiling blandly at his companion’s grief, reflected, soberly enough, that sweet and pretty girls were as human as the rest of creation, if it came to that.

“Charlie Turold—my nephew, you know—will have it that she is innocent.”

“In spite of her disappearance?”

“Yes. He came this morning, before I was up, to see if I knew where Sisily had gone. After tea he came again in a terrible state, raving against the detective for taking out a warrant for her arrest. He said it was madness on his part to imagine that a girl like Sisily would kill her father. I told him that as Sisily had disappeared he could hardly blame the police for looking for her. He turned on me when I said that, and used such violent language that I was quite frightened of him. But I make allowances, of course.”

“Why?” the lawyer asked, looking at her.

“I think Charlie is very fond of Sisily,” murmured Mrs. Pendleton with womanly intuition.

“Do you mean that they love each other?” said the lawyer, regarding her attentively.

“I cannot say about Sisily. And I never guessed it of Charlie until this morning. I’m sure poor Robert had no idea of it. He would never have agreed—after what he told us on the day of the funeral, I mean.”

Mr. Brimsdown gave a tacit unspoken assent to that. Some men might have welcomed such a solution of an ugly family scandal, but not Robert Turold, with his fierce pride for the honour of the title which he had sought to gain.

“Is your nephew’s belief in Miss Turold’s innocence based on anything stronger than assertion? Does he suspect any one else?”

“He did not say so. He was very excited, and talked on and on, without listening to me in the least. He seems very impulsive and headstrong. I noticed that on the day of the funeral. When Robert told us about his marriage, Charles said to him that his first duty was to his daughter. Robert looked so angry.”

“I can well believe it,” murmured the lawyer. “The young man must have courage.”

“Oh yes, he served with distinction in the war,” Mrs. Pendleton innocently rejoined. “In temperament he takes after me, I think, more than after his father. Austin and I never did think alike. We even disagreed over poor Robert’s terrible death. Austin thought he had … destroyed himself.” Her voice dropped to a shocked whisper.

“On what grounds did he base that belief?” Mr. Brimsdown cautiously asked.

“He thought the circumstances pointed to it,” she rejoined. “But I knew better—I knew Robert would never do anything so dreadful. Besides, had I not seen that horrible old man-servant glaring through the door? That is why I went to the police.”

As Mrs. Pendleton showed a tendency to repeat herself, Mr. Brimsdown rose to terminate the interview. Mrs. Pendleton rose, too, but she had not yet reached the end of her surprises for him.

“And then there’s Robert’s will—so strange! Really—”

“The will! What will?” interrupted the lawyer testily. “Did your brother make his will down here?”

“Yes. A will drawn up by a local lawyer—a man with the extraordinary name of Bunkom—a most terrible little creature. Bunkom, indeed!” continued Mrs. Pendleton, shaking her head with a feeble assumption of sprightliness. “Everything is left to my brother Austin. I do not mind in the least about myself. After all, Robert and I met almost as strangers after many years, and I want nothing from him. But his treatment of this unfortunate girl, his daughter, is really too dreadful. I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, but I must say that much, whether Sisily had anything to do with Robert’s death or not, for, of course, Robert couldn’t have known about that at the time—when he made his will, I mean,” concluded Mrs. Pendleton, in some confusion of mind.

“It is strange that your brother did not consult me before drawing up this will,” said Mr. Brimsdown.

“Perhaps he imagined you might persuade him against it,” sighed Mrs. Pendleton. “It is all very strange. I do not understand it a bit.”

Mr. Brimsdown thought it strange, then and afterwards. Next day, after going to the police station and handing Robert Turold’s letter to Inspector Dawfield, he sought out the Penzance lawyer who had drawn up the will. Mr. Bunkom was a spidery little man who spun his legal webs in a small dark office at the top of Market Jew Street, a solicitor with a servile manner but an eye like a fox, which dwelt on his eminent confrère from London, as he perused the will, with an expression which it was just as well that Mr. Brimsdown didn’t see, so sly and savage was it. The Penzance spider knew his business. The will was watertight and properly attested. The bulk of the property was bequeathed to Austin Turold unconditionally. There were only two other bequests. Robert Turold had placed Thalassa and Sisily (“my illegitimate daughter”) on an equality by bequeathing to them annuities of £50 a year each. Austin Turold and Mr. Brimsdown were named as joint executors, and that was all.

Mr. Brimsdown would not have occupied such a distinguished place in the legal profession if he had not been a firm believer in the sacred English tradition that a man has the right to dispose of his own property as he thinks fit. Moreover, his legal mind realized the folly of speculating over the reasons which had prompted this hurried will when the man who had made it was beyond the reach of argument, reproof, or cross-examination.

But the lack of all mention of the title was a different matter, calling for investigation. It was remarkable that a man like Robert Turold should have gone to the grave without binding his heir to prosecute the claim for the Turrald title. To that end Robert Turold had devoted his life, and to the upkeep of the title he had proposed to devote his fortune. The absence of this precaution puzzled Mr. Brimsdown considerably at first, but as he pondered over the matter he began to see the reason. Robert Turold was so close to the summit of his ambition that he had not thought it necessary to take precautions. He was a strong man, and strong men rarely think of death. Once the title was his, it descended as a matter of course to his brother, and then to his brother’s son—provided, of course, that the proofs of his daughter’s illegitimacy were in existence.

That conclusion carried another in its wake. If Robert Turold had not safeguarded his dearest ambition because he hoped to carry it out himself, it followed as a matter of course that he did not take his own life. Mr. Brimsdown had never accepted that theory, but it was strange to have it so conclusively proved, as it were, by the inference of an omission. That brought the lawyer back to the position that some foreboding or warning of his murder had caused Robert Turold to summon him to Cornwall by letter. The next step of his investigations led Mr. Brimsdown to the dead man’s study, where that frantic appeal had been penned.

He engaged a vehicle at the hotel and drove over to Flint House in the afternoon. The impression of that visit remained. Flint House, rising from the basalt summit of the headland like a granite vault, its windows coldly glistening down on the frothy green gloom of the Atlantic far beneath, the country trap and lean black horse at the flapping gate, the undertaker’s man (dissolute parasite of austere Death) slinking out of the house, and Thalassa waiting at the open door for him to approach—all these things were engraved on Mr. Brimsdown’s mind, never to be forgotten. Who was it that had staged such a crime in such a proscenium, in that vast amphitheatre of black rocks which stretched dizzily down beneath those gleaming windows?

Then came other impressions: the dead man upstairs, the disordered dusty study, the stopped clock, the litter of papers. It was in the room where Robert Turold had been murdered that Mr. Brimsdown questioned Thalassa about the letter, and heard with a feeling of dismay his declaration that he had not posted it. Where was the nearest pillar box? Nearly a mile away, at the cross-roads. Could his late master have gone there to post it that night? If he had, Thalassa hadn’t heard him go out. Could anybody else have posted it? No; there was nobody else to post it.

It was like questioning a head on an old Roman coin, so expressionless was Thalassa’s face as he delivered himself of these replies. But the lawyer had the feeling that Thalassa was deriving a certain grim satisfaction from his questioner’s perplexity, and he dismissed him somewhat angrily. Then, when he had gone, he turned to an examination of some of the papers and documents which littered the room, but that was a search which told him nothing.

When the shades of evening warned him to relinquish that task, he told himself that he really ought to go and see Austin Turold before returning to Penzance. But he shrank, with unaccountable reluctance, from the performance of that obvious duty. He felt very old and tired, and his temples were throbbing with a bad nervous headache. He therefore decided to postpone his visit to Austin Turold until later.

Chapter XX

When the interview with Austin Turold did take place, Mr. Brimsdown learnt with a feeling which was little less than astonishment that Robert Turold had died without confiding to his brother the proofs, on which so much depended, of the statement he had made on the day of his death.

“I cannot understand it,” he murmured, putting down his tea-cup as he spoke.

Austin had received him in the blue sitting-room, hung with the specimens of Mr. Brierly’s ineffectual art, and had given him tea, as he had given Barrant tea some days before. But there was a subtle difference in the manner of Mr. Brimsdown’s reception; the tone was pitched higher, with fine shades and inflections attuned for a more gentlemanly ear.

“It disposes of the suicide theory finally and utterly,” added the lawyer thoughtfully.

“The suicide theory disappeared with Robert’s daughter,” said Austin, glancing at his son, who had taken no part in the conversation.

“You think her disappearance suggests guilt?” asked Mr. Brimsdown.

“It hardly suggests innocence, does it?”

“I would not like to hazard an opinion,” responded Mr. Brimsdown, with a thoughtful shake of the head. “My experience of women is that they are capable of the strangest acts without weighing the consequences.”

“That was before the war, when women were delightfully irrational creatures, but now they’re no longer so. They’ve become practical and coarse, like men. They smoke, drink, and tell improper stories with demure expression and heads a little on one side like overwise sparrows.”

“Was Robert Turold’s daughter a girl of this sort?” asked the lawyer in surprise.

“She was not.”

It was Charles Turold who made answer, with an angry glance at his father. Austin, looking at him, gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head. Slight as the warning was, it was intercepted by Mr. Brimsdown’s watchful eye, and he wondered what it meant.

“I do not think any useful purpose can be gained by discussing my brother’s death,” Austin interposed, turning to him. “It is a very painful subject, and does no good. The police are endeavouring to unravel the mystery—let us leave it to them.”

“I was merely going to say that your brother would have given you the proofs of this statement about his marriage if he had meditated self-destruction,” Mr. Brimsdown observed. “The proofs must be in existence, of course, but I do not think that they are at Flint House. Did your brother confide the information to you beforehand—before his public announcement, I mean?”

“Shortly before his death he hinted to me of some very important disclosure which he intended to make at the proper time—some family matter—but he did not say what it was, nor did I ask him.”

His son looked at him quickly, and the lawyer doubtfully, as he made this statement, but his own glance sustained both looks serenely and equably.

“My brother