Wicked Uncle

Chapter XXXVIII

After dinner that evening a party of four sat comfortably round the study fire. Frank Abbott made the fourth. The Chief Inspector having departed leaving him to tidy up, he had most thankfully accepted an invitation to stay at the Grange. Tomorrow they would all have gone their separate ways. Tonight they sat peacefully round the fire and talked like friends. The sense of strain had gone from the house. Old houses have seen many deaths, many births, many courtships, much joy and sorrow, much good and evil. In more than three hundred years this house had known them all. Gregory Porlock and Leonard Carroll had joined themselves to the past. They were no more to the house now than Richard Pomeroy who had stabbed a serving-man in 1650 and been hanged for it under the Lord Protector, or than Isabel Scaife who married James Pomeroy some fifty years later and threw herself out of a window of the very room occupied by Mr. Carroll. For what reason was never clearly known. She fell on the stones of the courtyard and was taken up dead. Men looked askance at James Pomeroy, but he lived out his life, and it was his son who was known as good Sir James and endowed a foundation to provide twelve old men and twelve old women of the parish with a decent lodging and wearing apparel, together with food sufficient for their needs “for as long as they shall live, with decent Buriall afterwards.”

There were other stories, other minglings of good and bad- men who thought little of their own lives, risking them in battle, throwing them away to bring a wounded comrade safe; men who sinned and men who suffered; men who did well and men who did ill; men who died riotously abroad, or piously abed. The house had outlived them all. Gregory Porlock and Leonard Carroll were neither here nor there. The house could live them down.

The fire burned bright. The room was comfortable and warm. Miss Silver had finished the vest she had been knitting and had begun another. An inch of ribbing ruffled on the needles in a pale pink frill. She looked at Justin and Dorinda with a benignant smile. Nothing pleased her better than to see young people happy.

She turned her glance on Frank, and met one from him which was cool and a little cynical.

“Well, revered preceptress, are you going to perpend?”

“My dear Frank! What do you want me to say?”

The cynical look changed to a smile.

“Anything you like.”

She smiled too, but only for a moment. She was grave again as she said,

“I shall not ask you to be indiscreet, but I assume that since Mr. Masterman was brought up before the magistrates this morning on the charge of having murdered Leonard Carroll, there does not seem to be enough evidence to charge him with Gregory Porlock’s death, although it must be clear to everyone that he committed both these crimes.”

Frank nodded.

“Those handprints you put us on to and the trace of luminous paint on the edge of his dinner-jacket sleeve are the only things you can begin to call evidence in the Porlock case, and counsel would make short work of them. He could have put his hand on the mantelpiece for a dozen innocent reasons. He could have touched the staircase panelling during the charade. They all came down the stairs, turned at the newel, and went through the spotlight towards the back of the hall. That left-handed print on the panelling occurs just where he would have been leaving the spotlight and passing into the dark again. Quite a natural action to put out a hand and touch the wall.”

Miss Silver coughed.

“But in that case the hand would have been pointing towards the back of the hall. The print was, I understand, very nearly upright, but with some inclination in the other direction-in fact just as one would expect to find it if, as I suggested, Mr. Masterman had been crossing from the hearth in the dark with a hand out in front of him to let him know when he reached the staircase. I expected a left-hand print, because the right hand would be held ready to use the dagger.”

Frank nodded.

“Oh, that’s how it happened. But we couldn’t go into court with it-a clever barrister would tear it to shreds. No, we’ve got him for Carroll-I think that’s a cert. His prints on the telephone extension in Porlock’s room and on the billiard-room door and window, and Miss Masterman’s statement-”

Dorinda said quickly, “I’m so dreadfully, dreadfully sorry for her.”

Miss Silver looked at her kindly.

“She has been through a terrible time. I think there is no doubt that she has suspected her brother of causing their old cousin’s death. Not necessarily by poison or actual violence. She was, I understand, in no state to be frightened or shocked. I think Miss Masterman fears that she was frightened and died of it. That is a terrible thing for her to have had on her mind, quite apart from the suppression of the will, which did not actually benefit her since she received the same amount under the will which has now been produced. I cannot help wondering how long Miss Masterman herself would have survived if her brother’s guilt had not come to light. Suppose Mr. Oakley had been arrested. Suppose her to have held her tongue-I do not think it possible that she could have concealed her remorse and distress from her brother. And he must have become aware of the danger he would be in should she break down, as she did in fact break down. He had just killed two men-do you think he would have hesitated to kill again? I think we should have had a very convincing suicide. I feel sure that Miss Masterman saved her own life when her conscience would not allow her to stand by and see an innocent man arrested.”

Justin raised his eyebrows.

“I wonder whether she thinks it was worth saving.”

Miss Silver’s needles clicked with vigour.

“I must disagree with you there, Mr. Leigh. Life is always worth saving. Miss Masterman is a conscientious woman. She has good religious principles. She will have a large fortune. She can be encouraged to look forward to the good she can do. There will be painful times for her to go through, but I shall try to keep in touch with her. I believe that she will come through and take up her life again as a trust for others. I shall do my best to encourage her. You know, as Lord Tennyson says:

No life that breathes with human breath

Has ever truly longed for death.”

Justin restrained himself.

“An echo from the great Victorian Utopia, where the more articulate portion of the population made believe that all was for the best in the best of all possible worlds.”

Miss Silver coughed in a reproving manner.

“It was an age which produced great men and women. Pray do not forget those who toiled tirelessly for the better social conditions which we are beginning to see realized. But to return to Lord Tennyson’s aphorism. I do not believe that faith and hope can be separated from life, and where these linger, however faintly, they can be revived. A real longing for death could only follow upon their complete extinction.”

Frank’s bright, cool glance held a spark of unaffected admiration. Maudie, so practical, so resolute, so intelligent, so inflexible in her morality, so kindly, and so prim-in all these aspects she delighted him. He blew her an impudent, affectionate kiss and said,

“You don’t know what a lot of uplift I get from being on a case with you. My moral tone fairly shoots to the top of the thermometer. But go on telling us. There’s quite a lot I want to know, and most of it will never come out in court.” He turned to Justin. “Strictly off the record, I don’t mind telling you something of a highly confidential nature.” He dropped his voice to a whisper and said, “She knows everything.”

“My dear Frank!”

He nodded emphatically.

“Don’t take any notice of her. She was brought up modest-a Victorian failing. You can take it from me that as far as she is concerned the human race is glass-fronted. She looks right through the shop-window into the back premises and detects the skeleton in the cupboard. So next time you think of committing a crime you’d better give her a wide berth. You have been warned. It is only the fact that I have a perfectly blameless conscience that enables me to meet her eye.”

Miss Silver pulled at her pale pink ball… “My dear Frank, I really do wish you would stop talking nonsense. Pray, what is it that you wish me to tell you?”

“Well, I should very much like to know whether Carroll was bluffing-all that talk of his about what he might have seen when the lights came on. There’s no doubt that he was very advantageously placed. From the top of those stairs-well, three steps from the top, which comes to very much the same thing- he would be looking right down on all those people round the hearth. If there was anything to see, he’d have seen it all right. But was there anything? If there was, what was it?”

Miss Silver coughed in a gentle, thoughtful manner.

“I think that there was something. I have given some consideration to what it may have been. There is no possibility that Mr. Carroll could have seen the blow struck, or the removal of fingerprints from the handle of the dagger. After hearing Mr. Porlock call out and fall, Mr. Leigh had to push Miss Dorinda back against the wall and then feel his way along it to the front door and turn on the lights. The murderer had ample time to wipe the handle of the dagger and remove it from the vicinity of the corpse. I think there is only one thing which Mr. Carroll could have seen. In stabbing Mr. Porlock, the sleeve of Mr. Masterman’s dinner-jacket came in contact with the luminous paint with which he had marked his victim. He would not notice it until he had gained the position where he intended to be found when the lights came on. But once there, he might very naturally glance down at his hand and arm and see in the darkness a faint glow from the smear of paint. To try and remove the smear would be instinctive. If the lights went on whilst he was rubbing the edge of his sleeve, this is what Mr. Carroll may have seen, and I think he was too clever not to draw his own deductions. You will remember that Mr. Masterman subsequently took the opportunity of brushing against Miss Lane, who had some of the paint on her sleeve, and that he then drew everyone’s attention to the fact that he had stained his cuff. Now this stain was right on the edge of the cloth sleeve and nowhere else. It would be very difficult to acquire a stain of this sort by brushing against a lady in a light frock-so difficult that I cannot believe it happened. Whereas it would, I think, be extremely difficult for a man to stab someone up to the hilt in the middle of a luminous patch without getting some of the paint on the edge of a shirt cuff or coat sleeve. I have asked everyone whether there was anything noticeable about Mr. Masterman’s dinner-jacket. Four of them, including Mr. Leigh, remarked that the sleeves were too long, practically hiding the shirt cuff. This would account for the smear being on the cloth.”

Justin Leigh said, “That’s very interesting, Miss Silver. But if Carroll thought Masterman was the murderer, why didn’t he blackmail him instead of going for Oakley?”

Miss Silver shook her head. There was some suggestion that a pupil was not being quite as bright as she expected.

“Did Mr. Carroll strike you as a courageous person? He did not make at all that impression upon me.”

Justin gave a half laugh.

“Oh, no.”

“I do not think that he would have approached anyone whom he knew to be a murderer directly. He would certainly not have gone to meet Mr. Masterman in that deserted courtyard but Mr. Oakley was a different matter. Like everyone else, Mr. Carroll had seen Mrs. Oakley on her knees beside the dead man and heard her call him Glen. He could hardly fail to guess at Mr. Oakley’s state of mind, or to suspect that he might be terribly afraid of his wife having some part in the crime. He was prepared to play upon those fears. He rang up, dropped his malicious hint, and rang off again. When Mr. Oakley rang, him up and said he was coming over, Mr. Carroll must have felt confident of success. That his purpose was blackmail is certain from the words overheard by Mrs. Tote when Masterman, pretending to be Oakley, said, ‘It might be worth your while to keep a still tongue. Come down and talk it over.’ Mr. Carroll laughed and came. That was his moment of triumph. But the triumphing of the wicked is short.”

Justin said, “Yes, you’re right-it would have been like that. Very satisfying. It all fits in. Well, we’re all off tomorrow, but I hope it isn’t goodbye. You’ll come and see us when we’re married?”

She smiled graciously.

“It will be a pleasure to which I shall look forward. It is always delightful to look forward. As Lord Tennyson says,

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!”

There was a slightly awed silence. Dorinda produced rather a shy smile, but Frank Abbott rose to the occasion. There was laughter in his voice, but it was the laughter of real affection. He leaned over and kissed Miss Silver’s hand, knitting-needles and all.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Pure gold doesn’t rust.”