The Ashiel mystery: A Detective Story by Mrs. Charles Bryce (red seas under red skies TXT) 📗

of the tragedy, which was not till three days after it had occurred, and had spent the long journey in incessant self-reproach that he had ever allowed Juliet to go alone among these murderous strangers. The sight of his familiar face was full of comfort to the distracted girl; and the knowledge that Mark was arrested and powerless to harm her, with the gladsome news that David was free again, combined to soothe her nerves and restore her self-control.

The fear of one cousin began to give place insensibly to the dread lest the other should find her red-eyed and woe-begone; and soon the importance of looking her best when David should return occupied her mind almost to the exclusion of the terrors she had experienced. Thus does the emotion of love monopolize the attention of those it possesses, so that individuals may fall thick around him and the surface of the earth be convulsed with the strife of nations, and still your lover will walk almost unconscious among such catastrophes, except in so much as they affect himself or the object of his affections.

But not yet was Juliet to see David. His mother's health had broken down under the distress and worry of the accusation brought against him, and it was to her side that he hurried as soon as he was released from prison.

While Lady Ruth carried Juliet off at once to the cottage, there to be comforted, fed, made much of and put to bed, Gimblet and the men who had assisted him in the work of rescue stayed behind in the walls of the tower, to rig up, with ropes and buckets, an apparatus by which to descend to that lowest depth of the oubliette where poor Julia's body must be lying.

They had little hope of finding her alive; nor did they do so. She was floating, face downwards, in the water at the bottom of the pit.

In a grim, wrathful silence the men raised the poor lifeless body, and with some difficulty brought it back to the light of day. When the gruesome business was done, Gimblet returned to the cottage, tired out with his night's work; for, like all the men on the place, he had been scouring the moors since the previous evening, when Mark's derisive words had first sent them, hot foot, to assure themselves of Juliet's whereabouts. As he reached the cottage, the daily post bag was being handed in, and among his letters was one from the colonel of Mark's regiment:

"MY DEAR SIR," it ran, "I have sent you a wire in answer to your letter received to-day, since in view of what you say I see that it is necessary to disclose what I hoped, for the sake of the regiment, to continue to keep secret. But if, as you tell me, the innocence and even the life of Sir David Southern is involved, and you have such good reason to consider McConachan the man guilty of his uncle's death, it becomes my duty to put aside my private feelings and to confess to you that I am unable to look upon Mark McConachan as entirely above suspicion. When he was a subaltern in the regiment I have the honour to command, he was a source of grave worry and trouble to me.

"From the day he joined I had misgivings, and, though his good looks, lively spirits, and recklessness with money made him popular with others of his age, I soon discovered that his moral sense was practically nonexistent, and considered him a very undesirable addition to our ranks. Still, I hoped he might improve, and for a year or two nothing occurred to force me to take serious notice of his behaviour. Unknown to me, however, he took to gambling very heavily, and must have lost a great deal more than he could afford, for he appears to have got deep in the clutches of moneylenders long before I heard anything about it. So desperate did his financial affairs become, that shortly before he left the regiment he was actually driven to forging the name of a brother officer, a rich young man, with whom he was on very friendly terms. The large amount for which the cheque was drawn drew the attention of the bankers to it, and in spite of the extreme skill with which, I am told, the signature had been counterfeited, the forgery was detected, and the matter was brought before me.

"The victim of the fraud was as anxious as myself to avoid a public scandal, and it was arranged that nothing should be done for a year, to give time to McConachan to refund the money; if, however, he failed to do so within that time, there would be nothing for it but to make the matter public. These terms were agreed on and McConachan was told to send in his papers at once.

"The year allowed is now drawing to a close, and the money has not been forthcoming, so that there is no doubt that Mark McConachan's need of obtaining a large amount is extremely pressing. My knowledge of his character obliges me to add that I consider him one of the few men I ever knew whom I could imagine going to almost any length to provide himself with what he so urgently requires.

"Please consider this letter confidential unless you obtain actual proof of his guilt.—I am, sir, yours faithfully,

"T. G. URSFORD,

"Colonel commanding 31st Lancers."

Gimblet put the letter away with the other items of evidence of Mark's guilt: the telegram from the analyst in Edinburgh, the measurements of the footprints on the rose-bed, and of those other marks near the hedge by which he had at first been mystified. It was another thread in the thin cord that, like the silken line Ariadne gave to Theseus, had led him to come successfully out of the bewildering labyrinth into which the investigation of the crime had beguiled him.

CHAPTER XXII

It was after dinner that night, as he sat in the little drawing-room of the cottage with Lady Ruth and Sir Arthur, that his hostess asked him to explain to them how he had contrived to detect the way in which the murder had been committed.

"You promised to tell me all about it," Lady Ruth reminded him, "if I would keep silent about your finding the papers in the statue."

"Tell us the whole thing from the beginning," Sir Arthur urged him.

"I will willingly tell you anything that may interest you," Gimblet consented readily. "Every one enjoys talking about their work to sympathetic listeners such as yourselves. It is a bad thing to start on a case with a preconceived idea, and I can't deny that when I first came here I was very near having an idée fixe as to the origin of the crime. I tried to deceive myself into thinking that I kept an open mind on the subject; but I don't think I ever really doubted for a minute that the Nihilist society to which Lord Ashiel had formerly belonged was responsible for the murder. Even after my conversation with the new peer, which showed me that things looked blacker against Sir David Southern than I had expected, I was far from convinced that he was guilty, though I was obliged to admit that there was some ground for the conclusion come to by the police.

"But what was the evidence against him? Sir David was known to have quarrelled with his uncle; he had even been heard to say he had a good mind to shoot him. But that was more than twenty-four hours previous to the crime, and the words were uttered in a moment of anger, when he probably said the first thing that came into his head. Was he likely to have hugged his rage in silence for the hours that followed, and then to have walked out into the garden and shot his uncle in cold blood and without further warning? It did not appear to me probable, but then I did not know the young man.

"He was not to be found when the deed was discovered, and a hunt instituted for the murderer. Well, he had an answer to that which fitted in with my own theory. He said he saw some one hanging about the grounds, and went to look for him. But it was said that the night was so dark as to make it improbable that anyone should have been seen, even if there had been anyone to see. That cut both ways, to my mind. For it would account for the intruder making his escape undiscovered.

"Then there was the matter of the rifle, which he had told Miss Byrne he had cleaned that evening, in which case it had certainly been fired since then. He owned that he had locked it up and that the key never left his possession afterwards, but now denied that he had told the young lady that he had cleaned it. I asked young Lord Ashiel if he could put any possible interpretation on these facts except the one accepted by the police, and he replied that he could not. That, for the first time, made me wonder if he were really anxious to believe his cousin innocent. For I could put quite different interpretations on them myself.

"In the first place, though it was possible that Sir David lied in making his second statement to the effect that he had not said he had cleaned his rifle, it was equally possible that the first statement that he had cleaned it was not strictly accurate. For some reason, which he did not care to divulge, he might have told Miss Byrne he had been cleaning his gun when he had been really doing something entirely different. But had he told her he had cleaned it? His words, as repeated by her to me, were, 'I went in there to clean my rifle,' but not, 'I have been cleaning my rifle,' which would be another thing altogether, he probably had not yet begun cleaning it when he heard Miss Byrne coming and went out to speak to her; it is possible some feeling akin to shyness might make him reluctant to confess this afterwards in public. Indeed I now feel quite sure that this is the explanation of the matter. Later on, when I questioned her again, she did not appear certain which of the two forms of words he had used; but there was, at all events, a considerable doubt. There were other possibilities also. Some one might possess a duplicate key to the gun-cabinet. It seemed to me impossible that none of these considerations should have occurred to young Ashiel, if he were really reluctant to believe in Sir David's guilt. But at the same time I remembered the almost incredible lack of reasoning powers shown by most members of the public where a deed of violence has been committed, and knowing that there is nothing so improbable that it will not find a host of ready believers, I did not attach much importance to the circumstance until later.

"Still on the whole, after talking to young Lord Ashiel, I felt more disposed to believe that there might be some truth in the accusation that had been made than I had previously thought likely. But on that point I reserved my opinion till I should have had an opportunity of examining the scene of the tragedy for myself. So I prevailed upon the new owner of the castle to leave me alone—which he was the more ready to do since he had urgent need to be first in examining some papers of his uncle's which were in another room—and proceeded to make a cast round the garden from which the shot had been fired, in the hope of lighting upon some trifle which had escaped the notice of Macross.

"It was when I came upon the footprints in the rose-bed which had done so much to prove the guilt of Sir David Southern in the eyes of his accusers, that I began to be certain of his innocence; and a very little examination convinced me absolutely that whoever had shot Lord Ashiel it was not his youngest nephew. For the tracks on the flower-bed left no room for doubt.

"It is true they corresponded exactly with the shooting-boots Sir David had been wearing on the day the crime was committed. I had provided myself with a pair that I was assured was exactly like those particular boots which fitted the tracks and which the police had taken away with them, and I found that there was indeed no difference, except for the matter of an