Hag's Nook

Chapter 10

There had been high words in the library a moment before; so much was plain from the constraint and tensity there, and the slight flush on Sir Benjamin's face. He stood with his back to the empty fireplace, his hands clasped behind him. In the middle of the room, Rampole saw, stood his own pet dislike — Payne, the lawyer.

"I'll tell you what you'll do, sir," said Sir Benjamin. "You'll sit down there like a sensible man, and you'll give your testimony when it's asked for. Not before."

Payne whirred in his throat. Rampole saw the short white hair bristle on the back of his head.

"Are you familiar with the law, sir?" he rasped.

"Yes, sir, I am," said Sir Benjamin. "I happen to be a magistrate myself, you know. Now will you obey my instructions, or shall I — "

Dr. Fell coughed. He inclined his head sleepily towards the door, hoisting himself up from his chair as Dorothy Starberth entered. Payne turned jerkily.

"Ah, come in, my dear," he said, pushing out a chair. "Sit down. Rest yourself. Sir Benjamin and I"-the whites of his eyes flashed over towards the chief constable, "will talk presently."

He folded his arms, but he did not move from the side of her chair, where he had taken up his stand like a guardian. Sir Benjamin was ill at ease.

"You know, of course, Miss Starberth," he began, "how we all feel about this tragic business. As long as I've known you and your family, I don't think I need say more." His sincere old face looked muddled and kindly. "I dislike intruding on you at this time. But if you feel up to answering a few questions…"

"You don't have to answer them," said Payne. "Remember that, my dear."

"You don't have to answer them," agreed Sir Benjamin, controlling his temper. "I only thought to save you trouble for the inquest."

"Of course," said the girl. She sat quietly, her hands in her lap, while she told the story she had told last night. They had finished dinner a little before nine o'clock. She had tried to entertain Martin and keep his mind off the forthcoming business; but he was moody and distraught, and had gone up to his room immediately. Where was Herbert? She did not know. She had gone out on the lawn, where it was cooler, and sat there for the better part of an hour. Then she had gone in to the office to look over the day's household accounts. In the hall she had met Budge, who informed her that he had taken a bicycle-lamp up to Martin's room, as Martin had asked. Several times, during the half-hour or three-quarters ensuing, she had been on the point of going up to Martin's room. But he had expressed a desire to be left alone; he was sullen, and had been bad-tempered at dinner; so she had refrained from doing so. He would feel better if nobody saw his state of nerves.

At about twenty minutes to eleven she had heard him leave his room, come downstairs, and go out the side door. She had run after him, reaching the side door as he was going down the drive, and called to him — afraid that he might have taken too much to drink. He had called back to her, snapping some words she did not catch; his speech was rather thick, but his step seemed fairly steady. Then she had gone to the telephone and communicated with Dr. Fell's house, telling them that he was on the way.

That was all. Her slow, throaty voice never faltered as she told it, and her eyes remained fixed on Sir Benjamin; the full pink lips, devoid of make-up, hardly seemed to move at all. At the conclusion, she sat back and looked at the sunlight in one unshuttered window.

"Miss Starberth," said Dr. Fell, after a pause, "I wonder if you'd mind my asking a question?… Thank you. Budge has told us that the clock in the hall out there was wrong last night, though none of the others were. When you say that he left the house at twenty minutes to eleven, do you mean the time by that clock, or the right time?"

"Why―" she looked at him blankly; then down at her wristwatch and up at the clock on the mantelpiece. "Why, the right time! I'm positive of it. I never even glanced at the clock in the hall. Yes, the right time."

Dr. Fell relapsed, while the girl regarded him with a slight frown. Evidently nettled at this irrelevancy being brought in again, Sir Benjamin began to pace up and down the hearth rug. You felt that he had been nerving himself up to ask certain questions, and the doctor's interruption had scattered his resolves. Finally he turned.

"Budge has already told us, Miss Starberth, about Herbert's entirely unexplained absence…."

She inclined her head.

"Think, if you please! You are positive that he never mentioned the possibility of leaving suddenly-well, that is, you can think of no reason for his doing so?"

"None," she said, and added, in a lower voice: "You needn't be so formal, Sir Benjamin. I understand the implications as well as you do."

"Well, to be frank, then: the coroner's jury is likely to put an ugly interpretation on it, unless he returns immediately. Even so you see? Has there been any ill-feeling between Herbert and Martin in the past?"

"Never."

"Or more recently?"

"We hadn't seen Martin," she answered, interlacing her fingers, "since about a month after father died, up until the time we met his boat at Southampton the day before yesterday. There has never been the slightest ill-feeling between them."

Sir Benjamin was plainly at a loss. He looked round at Dr. Fell, as though for prompting, but the doctor said nothing.

"At the moment, he went on, clearing his throat, "I can think of nothing else. It's — ah — very puzzling. Very puzzling indeed. Naturally, we don't want to subject you to any more of an ordeal than is necessary, my dear; and if you care to go back to your room…"

"Thanks. But if you don't mind," said the girl, "I should prefer to remain here. It's more-more… well, I should prefer to remain."

Payne patted her on the shoulder. "I'll attend to the rest of it," he told her, nodding towards the chief constable with dry, vicious satisfaction.

There was an interruption. They heard a nervous, whispering jabber in the hall outside, and a voice which suddenly croaked, "Nonsense!" with a shrillness so exactly like a talking crow that everybody started. Budge came sailing in.

"If you please, sir," he said to the chief constable, "Mrs. Bundle is bringing one of the housemaids who knows something about that clock."

"— now you march!" squawked the crow's voice. "You march right in there, young lady, and you speaks to 'em. It's a nice state of affairs, it's a nice state of affairs, I say, if we can't 'ave truth-telling people in the 'ouse, I say…. Pop!" concluded Mrs. Bundle, making a noise with her lips like a cork pulled out of a bottle.

Escorting a frightened housemaid, she came rolling through the door. Mrs. Bundle was a little lean woman with a sailor's walk, a lace cap coming down into her bright eyes, and a face of such extraordinary malevolence that Rampole stared. She glared upon everybody out of a dusty face, but she seemed less to be damning everybody than to be meditating some deep wrong. Then she assumed a wooden stare, which gave her a curious cross-eyed look.

"'Ere she is," said Mrs. Bundle. "And what I say is this: things being what they are, I say, we might as well all be murdered in our beds or Get Took By Americans. It's all the same. Many's the time I've said to Mr. Budge, I've said, `Mr. Budge, you mark my words, there's no good a-going ter come of mucking about with them ghosters. 'Tain't in natur,' I've said, `for this 'ere tenement of clay (which we all is) to be alwis a-trying to beard them ghosters by their beards,' I says. Pop. You'd think we was Americans. Pop! And them ghosters, now―"

"Of course, Mrs. Bundle, of course," the chief constable said, soothingly. He turned to the little housemaid, who trembled in Mrs. Bundle's grip like a virgin ensnared by a witch. "You know something about the clock — er — ?'

"Martha, sir. Yes, sir. Truly."

"Tell us about it, Martha."

"They chews gum. Drat 'em!" cried Mrs. Bundle, with such ferocious malignancy that she gave a little hop.

"Eh?" said the chief constable. "Who?"

"They takes pies and hits people," said Mrs. Bundle. "Eee! Squee! Pop! Drat 'em!…"

The housekeeper showed a tendency to hold forth on this theme. She was not talking about the ghosters, it seemed, but about the Americans, whom she proceeded to describe as "nasty cowboy people with straw hats on." The ensuing monologue she delivered, shaking a bunch of keys in one hand and Martha in the other, was a trifle clouded in meaning, due to the listeners' inability to tell when she was referring to the Americans and when she was referring to the ghosters. She had concluded a lecture which seemed to deal with the ghosters' impolite habit of squirting one another in the face with soda-water from syphons, before Sir Benjamin summoned enough courage to interfere.

"Now, Martha, please go on. It was you who changed the clock?"

"Yes, sir. But he told me to do it, sir, and―"

"Who told you?"

"Mr. Herbert, sir. Truly. I was crossing the hall, and he comes out of the library a-looking at his watch. And he says to me, `Martha, that clock's ten minutes slow; set it right,' he says. Sharp-like. `You know. I was that astonished you could have knocked me over with a feather. Him speaking sharp-like, and all. Which he never does. And he says, 'See to the rest of the clocks, Martha; set 'em right if they're wrong. Mind!'"

Sir Benjamin looked over at Dr. Fell.

"It's your enquiry," said the chief constable. "Carry on." "Hmf," said Dr. Fell. His rumbling from the corner startled Martha, whose pink face turned a trifle pinker.

"When was this, did you say?"

"I didn't, sir, truly 1 didn't say, but I will, because I looked at the clock. Naturally. Changing it like he told me, and all. It was just before dinner, sir, and the rector had just went after bringing Mr. Martin home, and Mr. Martin was in the library, he was; and so I changed the clock, and it said five-and-twenty minutes past eight. Only it wasn't. Being ten minutes fast after I changed it. 1 mean―"

"Yes, of course. And why didn't you change the others?

"I was a-going to sir. But then I went into the library, and Mr. Martin was there. And he says, `What are you doing?' and when I told him he says, 'You let them clocks alone,' he says. And of course I did. Him being the master, and all. And that's all I know, sir."

"Thank you, Martha.. Mrs. Bundle, did you or any of the housemaids see Mr. Herbert leaving the house last night?"

Mrs. Bundle thrust out her jaw. "When we went to the fair at Holdern," she replied, malignantly, "Annie Murphy's purse was stole by thiefpockets. And they put me on a thing what goes round and round, it did; round and round; and then I walks upon boards which shakes, and stairs which collapses, and in the dark, and me 'airpins comes loose, which is that the way to treat a lady? Eeee! Drat 'em!" squawked the housekeeper, shaking her keys ferociously. "It was a in-vention, that's what it was, a dratted in-ven-tion! All them inventions is like that, which I told Mr. Herbert about it many's the time, and when I see him going out to the stable last night―"

"You saw Mr. Herbert leave?" demanded the chief constable.

"— to the stable where he keeps them inventions which to be sure I don't look at stairs which shakes out me very 'airpins. Do I?"

"What inventions?" said the chief constable, rather helplessly.

"It's all right, Sir Benjamin," said Dorothy. "Herbert is always tinkering with something, without any success. He had a workshop out there."

Further than this no information could be elicited from Mrs. Bundle. All inventions, she was convinced, had to do with certain contraptions which threw one about in the dark at the Holdern fair. Apparently somebody with a primitive sense of humour had led the good lady into the Crazy House, where she had screamed until a crowd assembled, got caught in the machinery, hit somebody with an umbrella, and was finally escorted out by the police. Just as, after a tempestuous review of the matter without enlightenment for her hearers, she was led out by Budge.

"Waste of time," growled Sir Benjamin, when she had gone. "There's your question about the clock answered, Doctor. Now I think we can proceed."

"I think we can," Payne interposed, suddenly.

He had not moved from his position beside the girl's chair; small, his arms folded, ugly as a Chinese image.

"I think we can," he repeated. "Since you seem to get nowhere with this aimless questioning, I fancy that some explanations are due me. I hold a trust in this family. For a hundred years nobody except members of the Starberth family have been allowed in the Governor's Room on any pretext whatsoever. This morning, I am given to understand, you gentlemen — one of you a perfect stranger — violated that law. That in itself calls for an explanation."

Sir Benjamin shut his jaws firmly. "Excuse me, my friend," he said. "I don't think it does."

The lawyer was beginning, in a furious voice: "What you think, sir, is of minor―" when Dr. Fell cut him short. He spoke in a tired and indolent voice.

"Payne," said Dr. Fell, "you're an ass. You've made trouble at every turn, and I wish you wouldn't be such an old woman…. By the way, how did you know we were up there?"

The tone in which he spoke, one of mild expostulation, was worse than any contempt. Payne glared.

"I have eyes," he snarled. "I saw you leaving. I went up after you to be sure your meddling ways had interfered with nothing."

"Oh!" said Dr. Fell. "Then you violated the law too?"

"That is not the question, sir. I am privileged. I know what is in that vault…." He was so angry that he grew indiscreet, and added, "It is not the first time I have been privileged to see it."

Dr. Fell had been staring blankly at the floor. Now he rolled up his big lionlike head, still with that vacant expression, to regard the other.

"That's interesting," he murmured. "I rather thought you had, too. H'mf. Yes."

"I must remind you again," said Payne, "that 1 hold a trust―"

"Not any longer," said Dr. Fell.

There was a pause, which somehow seemed to make the room cold. The lawyer opened his eyes wide, jerking his head towards Dr. Fell.

"I said, `not any longer,' " the doctor repeated, raising his voice slightly "Martin was the last of the direct line. It's all over. The trust, or the curse, or whatever you care to call it, is done with for ever; and for that part of it I can say, thank God… Anyhow, it needn't be a mystery any longer. If you were up there this morning, you know that something has been taken from the safe.

"How do you know that?" demanded Payne, sticking out his neck.

"I'm not trying to be cute," the doctor responded, wearily. "And I wish you wouldn't try to he. either. In any case, if you want to help justice, you'd better tell us the whole story of your trust. We shall never know the truth about Martin's murder unless we know that. Go on, Sir Benjamin. I hate to keep butting in like this."

"That's the position exactly," said Sir Benjamin. "You'll withhold no evidence, sir. That is, unless you want to be held as a material witness."

Payne looked from one to the other of them. He had had an easy time of it, you felt, up to now. Few people had crossed him or sat upon him. He was wildly trying to keep his cool dignity, like a man striving to manage a sailboat in a high wind.

"I will tell you as much as I think fit," he said with an effort, "and no more. What do you want to know?"

"Thank you," said the chief constable, drily. "First, you kept the keys to the Governor's Room, did you not?"

"I did."

"How many keys were there?"

"Four."

"Damn it, man," snapped Sir Benjamin, "you're not on the witness-stand! Please be more explicit."

"A key to the outer door of the room. A key to the iron door giving on the balcony. A key to the vault. And, since you have already looked inside that vault," said Payne, biting his words, "I can tell you the rest. A small key to a steel box which was inside the safe."

"A box―" Sir Benjamin repeated. He glanced over his shoulder at Dr. Fell; his eyes had verified a. prediction, and there was a small, knowing, rather malicious smile in them. "A box. Which, we know, is gone…. What was inside the box?

Payne debated something in his mind. He had not unfolded his arms, and the fingers of one hand began to tap on his biceps.

"All that it was my duty to know," he answered after a pause, "is that there are a number of cards inside, each with the eighteenth-century Anthony Starberth's signature on it. The heir was instructed to take out one of those cards and present it to the executor next day, as proof that he had actually opened the box. Whatever else there may have been inside―" He shrugged.

"You mean you don't know?" asked Sir Benjamin.

"I mean that I prefer not to say."

"We will return to that in a moment," the chief constable said, slowly. "Four keys. Now, as to the word which opens the letter-lock… neither are we quite blind, Mr. Payne… as to the word: you are intrusted with that also?

A hesitation. "In a manner of speaking, I am," the lawyer returned, after considering carefully. "The word is engraved on the handle of the key which opens the vault. Thus some burglar might get a duplicate key made for the lock; but without the original key he was powerless."

"Do you know this word?"

A longer hesitation. "Naturally," said Payne. "Did anybody else know it?"

"I consider that question an impertinence, sir," the other told him. Small brown teeth showed under his upper lip. His face had become all wrinkles and ugliness, the grey cropped hair drawn down. He hesitated again, and then added, more mildly: "Unless the late Mr. Timothy Starberth communicated it to his son by word of mouth. He never took the tradition very seriously, I am bound to say."

For a moment Sir Benjamin went prowling up and down before the fireplace, flapping his hands behind his back. Then he turned.

"When did you deliver the keys to young Starberth?" "At my office in Chatterham, late yesterday afternoon." "Was anybody with him?"

"His cousin Herbert."

"Herbert was not present during the interview, I take it?"

"Naturally not… I delivered the keys, and gave the only instructions left me: that he open the safe and the box, examine what was inside, and bring me one of the cards inscribed with Anthony Starberth's name. That was all."

Rampole, sitting far back in the shadow, remembered those figures in the white road. Martin and Herbert had been coming from the lawyer's office when he saw them, and Martin had uttered that inexplicable taunt, "The word is Gallows." And he thought of that paper, written over with the queer meaningless verses, which Dorothy had shown him; it was fairly clear, now, what had been inside the box, despite Dr. Fell's ridicule of a "paper." Dorothy Starberth sat motionless, her hands folded; but she seemed to be breathing more rapidly…. Why?

"You refuse to tell us, Mr. Payne," the chief constable pursued, "what was inside that box in the vault?"

Payne's hand fluttered up to stroke his chin; that gesture, Rampole remembered, he always used when he was nervous.

"It was a document," he responded at length. "I cannot say more, because, gentlemen, I do not know."

Dr. Fell got to his feet, a bulky walrus coming to the surface.

"Ah," he said, blowing out his breath and hitting one stick sharply on the floor, "that's what I thought. That's what I wanted to know. The document was never allowed to leave that iron box, was it, Payne?… Good! Very good! Then I can go on."

"I thought you didn't believe in any document," said the chief constable, turning with a still more satiric expression.

"Oh, I never said that," the other protested, mildly. "I only protested at your guessing, without any logical reasons, that there was a box and a document. I never said you were wrong. On the contrary, I had already arrived at your own conclusions, with good and logical evidence to support them. That's the difference, you see."

He lifted his head to look at Payne. He did not raise his voice.

"I'll not trouble you about the document that Anthony Starberth left for his heirs in the early nineteenth century," he said. "But, Payne, what about the other document?"

"Other-?"

"I mean the one that Timothy Starberth, Martin's father, left in the steel box, in that same vault, less than two years ago."

Payne made a small motion of his lips, as though he were blowing out tobacco smoke slowly. He shifted his position, so that the floor creaked, and you could hear it plainly in the great stillness of the room.

"What's this? What's this?" gabbled Sir Benjamin.

"Go on, said Payne, softly.

"I've heard the story a dozen times," Dr. Fell went on, nodding his head in a detached, meditative fashion. "About old Timothy's lying there writing, just before he died. Sheets upon sheets he was writing-though his body was so smashed he could scarcely hold a pen. Propped up with a writing-board, cackling and howling with glee, determined to go on.."

"Well?" demanded Sir Benjamin.

"Well, what was he writing? 'Instructions for my son,' he said, but that was a lie. That was to throw some of you off the track. His son, by the nature of the so-called 'ordeal,' didn't need any instructions — he only needed to get the keys from Payne. In any event, he didn't need page after page of closely written script. Old Timothy wasn't copying anything, because he didn't need to do that, either… this 'document' of Anthony's, Payne says, never left the safe. So what was he writing?

Nobody spoke. Rampole found himself moving out towards the edge of the chair. From where he sat he could see Dorothy Starberth's eyes, unwinking, fixed on the doctor. Sir Benjamin spoke, loudly:

"Very well, then. What was he writing?"

"The story of his own murder," said Dr. Fell.