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CHAPTER XI.
CONCERNS MY PRIVATE AFFAIRS

“What have you found there?” inquired Ambler Jevons, quickly interested, and yet surprised at my determination to conceal it from him.

“Something that concerns me,” I replied briefly.

“Concerns you?” he ejaculated. “I don’t understand. How can anything among the old man’s private papers concern you?”

“This concerns me personally,” I answered. “Surely that is sufficient explanation.”

“No,” my friend said. “Forgive me, Ralph, for speaking quite plainly, but in this affair we are both working towards the same end – namely, to elucidate the mystery. We cannot hope for success if you are bent upon concealing your discoveries from me.”

“This is a private affair of my own,” I declared doggedly. “What I have found only concerns myself.”

He shrugged his shoulders with an air of distinct dissatisfaction.

“Even if it is a purely private matter we are surely good friends enough to be cognisant of one another’s secrets,” he remarked.

“Of course,” I replied dubiously. “But only up to a certain point.”

“Then, in other words, you imply that you can’t trust me?”

“I can trust you, Ambler,” I answered calmly. “We are the best of friends, and I hope we shall always be so. Will you not forgive me for refusing to show you these letters?”

“I only ask you one question. Have they anything to do with the matter we are investigating?”

I hesitated. With his quick perception he saw that a lie was not ready upon my lips.

“They have. Your silence tells me so. In that case it is your duty to show me them,” he said, quietly.

I protested again, but he overwhelmed my arguments. In common fairness to him I ought not, I knew, keep back the truth. And yet it was the greatest and most terrible blow that had ever fallen upon me. He saw that I was crushed and stammering, and he stood by me wondering.

“Forgive me, Ambler,” I urged again. “When you have read this letter you will fully understand why I have endeavoured to conceal it from you; why, if you were not present here at this moment, I would burn them all and not leave a trace behind.”

Then I handed it to him.

He took it eagerly, skimmed it through, and started just as I had started when he saw the signature. Upon his face was a blank expression, and he returned it to me without a word.

“Well?” I asked. “What is your opinion?”

“My opinion is the same as your own, Ralph, old fellow,” he answered slowly, looking me straight in the face. “It is amazing – startling – tragic.”

“You think, then, that the motive of the crime was jealousy?”

“The letter makes it quite plain,” he answered huskily. “Give me the others. Let me examine them. I know how severe this blow must be to you, old fellow,” he added, sympathetically.

“Yes, it has staggered me,” I stammered. “I’m utterly dumfounded by the unexpected revelation!” and I handed him the packet of correspondence, which he placed upon the table, and, seating himself, commenced eagerly to examine letter after letter.

While he was thus engaged I took up the first letter, and read it through – right to the bitter end.

It was apparently the last of a long correspondence, for all the letters were arranged chronologically, and this was the last of the packet. Written from Neneford Manor, Northamptonshire, and vaguely dated “Wednesday,” as is a woman’s habit, it was addressed to Mr. Courtenay, and ran as follows: —

“Words cannot express my contempt for a man who breaks his word as easily as you break yours. A year ago, when you were my father’s guest, you told me that you loved me, and urged me to marry you. At first I laughed at your proposal; then when I found you really serious, I pointed out the difference of our ages. You, in return, declared that you loved me with all the ardour of a young man; that I was your ideal; and you promised, by all you held most sacred, that if I consented I should never regret. I believed you, and believed the false words of feigned devotion which you wrote to me later under seal of strictest secrecy. You went to Cairo, and none knew of our secret – the secret that you intended to make me your wife. And how have you kept your promise? To-day my father has informed me that you are to marry Mary! Imagine the blow to me! My father expects me to rejoice, little dreaming how I have been fooled; how lightly you have treated a woman’s affections and aspirations. Some there are who, finding themselves in my position, would place in Mary’s hands the packet of your correspondence which is before me as I write, and thus open her eyes to the fact that she is but the dupe of a man devoid of honour. Shall I do so? No. Rest assured that I shall not. If my sister is happy, let her remain so. My vendetta lies not in that direction. The fire of hatred may be stifled, but it can never be quenched. We shall be quits some day, and you will regret bitterly that you have broken your word so lightly. My revenge – the vengeance of a jealous woman – will fall upon you at a moment and in a manner you will little dream of. I return you your letters, as you may not care for them to fall into other hands, and from to-day I shall never again refer to what has passed. I am young, and may still obtain an upright and honourable man as husband. You are old, and are tottering slowly to your doom. Farewell.

“Ethelwynn Mivart.”

The letter fully explained a circumstance of which I had been entirely ignorant, namely, that the woman I had loved had actually been engaged to old Mr. Courtenay before her sister had married him. Its tenor showed how intensely antagonistic she was towards the man who had fooled her, and in the concluding sentence there was a distinct if covert threat – a threat of bitter revenge.

She had returned the old man’s letters apparently in order to show that in her hand she held a further and more powerful weapon; she had not sought to break off his marriage with Mary, but had rather stood by, swallowed her anger, and calmly calculated upon a fierce vendetta at a moment when he would least expect it.

Truly those startling words spoken by Sir Bernard had been full of truth. I remembered them now, and discerned his meaning. He was at least an honest upright man who, although sometimes a trifle eccentric, had my interests deeply at heart. In the progress I had made in my profession I owed much to him, and even in my private affairs he had sought to guide me, although I had, alas! disregarded his repeated warnings.

I took up one after another of the letters my friend had examined, and found them to be the correspondence of a woman who was either angling after a wealthy husband, or who loved him with all the strength of her affection. Some of the communications were full of passion, and betrayed that poetry of soul that was innate in her. The letters were dated from Neneford, from Oban, and from various Mediterranean ports, where she had gone yachting with her uncle, Sir Thomas Heaton, the great Lancashire coal-owner. Sometimes she addressed him as “Dearest,” at others as “Beloved,” usually signing herself “Your Own.” So full were they of the ardent passion characteristic of her that they held me in amazement. It was passion developed under its most profound and serious aspects; they showed the calm and thoughtful, not the brilliant side of intellect.

In Ethelwynn’s character the passionate and the imaginative were blended equally and in the highest conceivable degree as combined with delicate female nature. Those letters, although written to a man in whose heart romance must long ago have been dead, showed how complex was her character, how fervent, enthusiastic and self-forgetting her love. At first I believed that those passionate outpourings were merely designed to captivate the old gentleman for his money; but when I read on I saw how intense her passion became towards the end, and how the culmination of it all was that wild reproachful missive written when the crushing blow fell so suddenly upon her.

Ethelwynn was a woman of extraordinary character, full of picturesque charm and glowing romance. To be tremblingly alive to the gentle impressions, and yet be able to preserve, when the prosecution of a design requires it, an immovable heart, amidst even the most imperious causes of subduing emotion, is perhaps not an impossible constitution of mind, but it is the utmost and rarest endowment of humanity. I knew her as a woman of highest mental powers touched with a melancholy sweetness. I was now aware of the cause of that melancholy.

Yet it was apparent that the serious and energetic part of her character was founded on deep passion, for after her sister’s marriage with the man she had herself loved and had threatened, she had actually come there beneath their roof, and lived as her sister’s companion, stifling all the hatred that had entered her heart, and preserving an outward calm that had no doubt entirely disarmed him.

Such a circumstance was extraordinary. To me, as to Ambler Jevons who knew her well, it seemed almost inconceivable that old Mr. Courtenay should allow her to live there after receiving such a wild communication as that final letter. Especially curious, too, that Mary had never suspected or discovered her sister’s jealousy. Yet so skilfully had Ethelwynn concealed her intention of revenge that both husband and wife had been entirely deceived.

Love, considered under its poetical aspect, is the union of passion and imagination. I had foolishly believed that this calm, sweet-voiced woman had loved me, but those letters made it plain that I had been utterly fooled. “Le mystère de l’existence,” said Madame de Stael to her daughter, “c’est la rapport de nos erreurs avec nos peines.”

And although there was in her, in her character, and in her terrible situation, a concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity, she was nevertheless a murderess.

“The truth is here,” remarked my friend, laying his hand upon the heap of tender correspondence which had been brought to such an abrupt conclusion by the letter I have printed in its entirety. “It is a strange, romantic story, to say the least.”

“Then you really believe that she is guilty?” I exclaimed, hoarsely.

He shrugged his shoulders significantly, but no word escaped his lips.

In the silence that fell between us, I glanced at him. His chin was sunk upon his breast, his brows knit, his thin fingers toying idly with the plain gold ring.

“Well?” I managed to exclaim at last. “What shall we do?”

“Do?” he echoed. “What can we do, my dear fellow? That woman’s future is in your hands.”

“Why in mine?” I asked. “In yours also, surely?”

“No,” he answered resolutely, taking my hand and grasping it warmly. “No, Ralph; I know – I can see how you are suffering. You believed her to be a pure and honest woman – one above the common run – a woman fit for helpmate and wife. Well, I, too, must confess myself very much misled. I believed her to be all that you imagined; indeed, if her face be any criterion, she is utterly unspoiled by the world and its wickedness. In my careful studies in physiognomy I have found that very seldom does a perfect face like hers cover an evil heart. Hence, I confess, that this discovery has amazed me quite as much as it has you. I somehow feel – ”

“I don’t believe it!” I cried, interrupting him. “I don’t believe, Ambler, that she murdered him – I can’t believe it. Her’s is not the face of a murderess.”

“Faces sometimes deceive,” he said quietly. “Recollect that a clever woman can give a truthful appearance to a lie where a man utterly fails.”

“I know – I know. But even with this circumstantial proof I can’t and won’t believe it.”

“Please yourself, my dear fellow,” he answered. “I know it is hard to believe ill of a woman whom one loves so devotedly as you’ve loved Ethelwynn. But be brave, bear up, and face the situation like a man.”

“I am facing it,” I said resolutely. “I will face it by refusing to believe that she killed him. The letters are plain enough. She was engaged secretly to old Courtenay, who threw her over in favour of her sister. But is there anything so very extraordinary in that? One hears of such things very often.”

“But the final letter?”

“It bears evidence of being written in the first moments of wild anger on realising that she had been abandoned in favour of Mary. Probably she has by this time quite forgotten the words she wrote. And in any case the fact of her living beneath the same roof, supervising the household, and attending to the sick man during Mary’s absence, entirely negatives any idea of revenge.”

Jevons smiled dubiously, and I myself knew that my argument was not altogether logical.

“Well?” I continued. “And is not that your opinion?”

“No. It is not,” he replied, bluntly.

“Then what is to be done?” I asked, after a pause.

“The matter rests entirely with you, Ralph,” he replied. “I know what I should do in a similar case.”

“What would you do? Advise me,” I urged eagerly.

“I should take the whole of the correspondence, just as it is, place it in the grate there, and burn it,” he said.

I was not prepared for such a suggestion. A similar idea had occurred to me, but I feared to suggest to him such a mode of defeating the ends of justice.

“But if I do that will you give me a vow of secrecy?” I asked, quickly. “Recollect that such a step is a serious offence against the law.”

“When I pass out of this room I shall have no further recollection of ever having seen any letters,” he answered, again giving me his hand. “In this matter my desire is only to help you. If, as you believe, Ethelwynn is innocent, then no harm can be done in destroying the letters, whereas if she is actually the assassin she must, sooner or later, betray her guilt. A woman may be clever, but she can never successfully cover the crime of murder.”

“Then you are willing that I, as finder of those letters, shall burn them? And further, that no word shall pass regarding this discovery?”

“Most willing,” he replied. “Come,” he added, commencing to gather them together. “Let us lose no time, or perhaps the constable on duty below or one of the plain-clothes men may come prying in here.”

Then at his direction and with his assistance I willingly tore up each letter in small pieces, placed the whole in the grate where dead cinders still remained, and with a vesta set a light to them. For a few moments they blazed fiercely up the chimney, then died out, leaving only black tinder.

“We must make a feint of having tried to light the fire,” said Jevons, taking an old newspaper, twisting it up, and setting light to it in the grate, afterwards stirring up the dead tinder with the tinder of the letters. “I’ll remark incidentally to the constable that we’ve tried to get a fire, and didn’t succeed. That will prevent Thorpe poking his nose into it.”

So when the whole of the letters had been destroyed, all traces of their remains effaced and the safe re-locked, we went downstairs – not, however, before my companion had made a satisfactory explanation to the constable and entirely misled him as to what we had been doing.

CHAPTER XII.
I RECEIVE A VISITOR

The adjourned inquest was resumed on the day appointed in the big room at the Star and Garter at Kew, and the public, eager as ever for sensational details, overflowed through the bar and out into the street, until the police were compelled to disperse the crowd. The evening papers had worked up all kinds of theories, some worthy of attention, others ridiculous; hence the excitement and interest had become intense.

The extraordinary nature of the wound which caused Mr. Courtenay’s death was the chief element of mystery. Our medical evidence had produced a sensation, for we had been agreed that to inflict such a wound with any instrument which could pass through the exterior orifice was an absolute impossibility. Sir Bernard and myself were still both bewildered. In the consulting room at Harley Street we had discussed it a dozen times, but could arrive at no definite conclusion as to how such a terrible wound could possibly have been caused.

I noticed a change in Sir Bernard. He seemed mopish, thoughtful, and somewhat despondent. Usually he was a busy, bustling man, whose manner with his patients was rather brusque, and who, unlike the majority of my own profession, went to the point at once. There is no profession in which one is compelled to exercise so much affected patience and courtesy as in the profession of medicine. Patients will bore you to death with long and tedious histories of all their ailments since the days when they chewed a gutta-percha teething-ring, and to appear impatient is to court a reputation for flippancy and want of attention. Great men may hold up their hands and cry “Enough!” But small men must sit with pencil poised, apparently intensely interested, and listen through until the patient has exhausted his long-winded recollections of all his ills.

Contrary to his usual custom, Sir Bernard did not now return to Hove each evening, but remained at Harley Street – dining alone off a chop or a steak, and going out afterwards, probably to his club. His change of manner surprised me. I noticed in him distinct signs of nervous disorder; and on several afternoons he sent round to me at the Hospital, saying that he could not see his patients, and asking me to run back to Harley Street and take his place.

On the evening before the adjourned inquest I remarked to him that he did not appear very well, and his reply, in a strained, desponding voice, was:

“Poor Courtenay has gone. He was my best friend.”

Yes, it was as I expected, he was sorrowing over his friend.

When we had re-assembled at the Star and Garter, he entered quietly and took a seat beside me just before the commencement of the proceedings.

The Coroner, having read over all the depositions taken on the first occasion, asked the police if they had any further evidence to offer, whereupon the local inspector of the T Division answered with an air of mystery:

“We have nothing, sir, which we can make public. Active inquiries are still in progress.”

“No further medical evidence?” asked the coroner.

I turned towards Sir Bernard inquiringly, and as I did so my eye caught a face hidden by a black veil, seated among the public at the far side of the room. It was Ethelwynn herself – come there to watch the proceedings and hear with her own ears whether the police had obtained traces of the assassin!

Her anxious countenance shone through her veil haggard and white; her eyes were fixed upon the Coroner. She hung breathlessly upon his every word.

“We have no further evidence,” replied the inspector.

There was a pause. The public who were there in search of some solution of the bewildering mystery which had been published in every paper through the land, were disappointed. They had expected at least to hear some expert evidence – which, if not always reliable, is always interesting. But there seemed an inclination on the part of the police to maintain a silence which increased rather than lessened the mystery.

“Well, gentlemen,” exclaimed Dr. Diplock, turning at last to the twelve local tradesmen who formed the jury, “you have heard the evidence in this curious case, and your duty is to decide in what manner the deceased came by his death, whether by accidental means, or by foul play. I think in the circumstances you will have very little difficulty in deciding. The case is a mysterious one – a very mysterious one. The deceased was a gentleman of means who was suffering from a malignant disease, and that disease must have proved fatal within a short time. Now this fact appears to have been well known to himself, to the members of his household, and probably to most of his friends. Nevertheless, he was found dead in circumstances which point most strongly to wilful murder. If he was actually murdered, the assassin, whoever he was, had some very strong incentive in killing him at once, because he might well have waited another few months for the fatal termination of the disease. That fact, however, is not for you to consider, gentlemen. You are here for the sole purpose of deciding whether or not this case is one of murder. If, in your opinion it is, then it becomes your duty to return a verdict to that effect and leave it to the police to discover the assassin. To comment at length on the many mysterious circumstances surrounding the tragedy is, I think, needless. The depositions I have just read are sufficiently full and explanatory, especially the evidence of Sir Bernard Eyton and of Doctor Boyd, both of whom, besides being well-known in the profession, were personal friends of the deceased. In considering your verdict I would further beg of you not to heed any theories you may have read in the newspapers, but adjudge the matter from a fair and impartial standpoint, and give your verdict as you honestly believe the truth to be.”

The dead silence which had prevailed during the Coroner’s address was at once broken by the uneasy moving of the crowd. I glanced across at Ethelwynn, and saw her sitting immovable, breathless, statuesque.

She watched the foreman of the jury whispering to two or three of his colleagues in the immediate vicinity. The twelve tradesmen consulted together in an undertone, while the reporters at the table conversed audibly. They, too, were disappointed at being unable to obtain any sensational “copy.”

“If you wish to retire in order to consider your verdict, gentlemen, you are quite at liberty to do so,” remarked the coroner.

“That is unnecessary,” replied the foreman. “We are agreed unanimously.”

“Upon what?”

“Our verdict is that the deceased was wilfully murdered by some person or persons unknown.”

“Very well, gentlemen. Of course in my position I am not permitted to give you advice, but I think that you could have arrived at no other verdict. The police will use every endeavour to discover the identity of the assassin.”

I glanced at Ethelwynn, and at that instant she turned her head, and her eyes met mine. She started quickly, her face blanched to the lips; then she rose unsteadily, and with the crowd went slowly out.

Ambler Jevons, who had been seated at the opposite side of the room, got up and rushed away; therefore I had no chance to get a word with him. He had glanced at me significantly, and I knew well what passed through his mind. Like myself, he was thinking of that strange letter we had found among the dead man’s effects and had agreed to destroy.

About nine o’clock that same night I had left Sir Bernard’s and was strolling slowly round to my rooms, when my friend’s cheery voice sounded behind me. He was on his way to have a smoke with me as usual, he explained. So we entered together, and after I had turned up the light and brought out the drinks he flung himself into his habitual chair, and stretching himself wearily said —

“The affair becomes more mysterious hourly.”

“How?” I inquired quickly.

“I’ve been down to Kew this afternoon,” was his rather ambiguous response. “I had to go to my office directly after the inquest, but I returned at once.”

“And what have you discovered? Anything fresh?”

“Yes,” he responded slowly. “A fresh fact or two – facts that still increase the mystery.”

“What are they? Tell me,” I urged.

“No, Ralph, old chap. When I am certain of their true importance I’ll explain them to you. At present I desire to pursue my own methods until I arrive at some clear conclusion.”

This disinclination to tell me the truth was annoying. He had always been quite frank and open, explaining all his theories, and showing to me any weak points in the circumstantial evidence. Yet suddenly, as it seemed to me, he had become filled with a strange mistrust. Why, I could not conceive.

“But surely you can tell me the nature of your discoveries?” I said. “There need be no secrets between us in this affair.”

“No, Ralph. But I’m superstitious enough to believe that ill-luck follows a premature exposure of one’s plans,” he said.

His excuse was a lame one – a very lame one. I smiled – in order to show him that I read through such a transparent attempt to mislead me.

“I might have refused to show you that letter of Ethelwynn’s,” I protested. “Yet our interests being mutual I handed it to you.”

“And it is well that you did.”

“Why?”

“Because knowledge of it has changed the whole course of my inquiries.”

“Changed them from one direction to another?”

He nodded.

“And you are now prosecuting them in the direction of Ethelwynn?”

“No,” he answered. “Not exactly.”

I looked at his face, and saw upon it an expression of profound mysteriousness. His dark, well-marked countenance was a complex one always, but at that moment I was utterly unable to discern whether he spoke the truth, or whether he only wished to mislead my suspicions into a different channel. That he was the acme of shrewdness, that his powers of deduction were extraordinary, and that his patience in unravelling a secret was almost beyond comprehension I knew well. Even those great trackers of criminals, Shaw and Maddox, of New Scotland Yard, held him in respect, and admired his acute intelligence and marvellous power of perception.

Yet his attempt to evade a question which so closely concerned my own peace of mind and future happiness tried my patience. If he had really discovered some fresh facts I considered it but right that I should be acquainted with them.

“Has your opinion changed as to the identity of the person who committed the crime?” I asked him, rather abruptly.

“Not in the least,” he responded, slowly lighting his foul pipe. “How can it, in the face of the letter we burnt?”

“Then you think that jealousy was the cause of the tragedy? That she – ”

“No, not jealousy,” he interrupted, speaking quite calmly. “The facts I have discovered go to show that the motive was not jealousy.”

“Hatred, then?”

“No, not hatred.”

“Then what?”

“That’s just where I fail to form a theory,” he answered, after a brief silence, during which he watched the blue smoke curl upward to the sombre ceiling of my room. “In a few days I hope to discover the motive.”

“You will let me assist you?” I urged, eagerly. “I am at your disposal at any hour.”

“No,” he answered, decisively. “You are prejudiced, Ralph. You unfortunately still love that woman.”

A sigh escaped me. What he said was, alas! too true. I had adored her through those happy months prior to the tragedy. She had come into my lonely bachelor life as the one ray of sunlight that gave me hope and happiness, and I had lived for her alone. Because of her I had striven to rise in the profession, and had laboured hard so that in a little while I might be in a position to marry and buy that quiet country practice that was my ideal existence. And even now, with my idol broken by the knowledge of her previous engagement to the man now dead, I confess that I nevertheless still entertained a strong affection for her. The memory of a past love is often more sweet than the love itself – and to men it is so very often fatal.

I had risen to pour out some whiskey for my companion when, of a sudden, my man opened the door and announced:

“There’s a lady to see you, sir.”

“A lady?” we both exclaimed, with one voice.

“Yes, sir,” and he handed me a card.

I glanced at it. My visitor was the very last person I desired to meet at that moment, for she was none other than Ethelwynn herself.

“I’ll go, old chap,” Jevons cried, springing to his feet, and draining his glass at a single draught. “She mustn’t meet me here. Good-bye till to-morrow. Remember, betray no sign to her that you know the truth. It’s certainly a curious affair, as it now stands; but depend upon it that there’s more complication and mystery in it than we have yet suspected.”