Annie Haynes Premium Collection – 8 Murder Mysteries in One Volume. Annie Haynes

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СКАЧАТЬ "That will do very well. Tell them to bring the pony carriage round, Célestine. I will drive down."

      "Yes, miladi." Célestine waited while Judith went to the inner nursery and gave Paul back to his nurse. "Shall we be coming home to-night, miladi, or do we spend the night in town?"

      "Oh, I shall come back to-night," Judith said quickly. "But I shall not take you, Célestine. I shall have a taxi straight from the station to the dentist's and manage quite well alone."

      At the station, as Lady Carew got out of the carriage, a man on a bicycle came swiftly up and dismounted at the steps. When she took her ticket to London, he was just behind her. When Judith got out at St. Pancras the same man was close behind her again and took the next taxi to hers.

      But once in London Lady Carew's toothache apparently disappeared. The taxi rolled rapidly westward, and passing down Park Lane and by Hyde Park Corner, made its way to Chelsea.

      As it drew nearer it became increasingly obvious that Judith was exceedingly nervous. The taxi passed through the better streets, and finally came to a stop before a quaint old-fashioned house standing a little back from the road. Judith paid her cab and dismissed it, then went up the steps, and rang the bell with fingers that trembled visibly.

      "Is Mrs. Rankin at home?" she asked when a smiling, white-capped maid had answered the door.

      "Yes, ma'am," the girl showed her into a pretty, unpretentious drawing-room.

      Judith did not sit down. She turned and waited, standing with her face towards the open door, her hand clutching at the small inlaid table at her right.

      At last there was the sound of a door opening. Judith's eyelids flickered slightly, her hand tightened its grasp.

      Mrs. Rankin was coming slowly across the hall, obvious lagging unwillingness in every step. As she entered the room she looked at Judith with cold condemning eyes. "So you have come at last, Lady Carew?"

      "Yes, I have come," Judith assented quickly.

      Mrs. Rankin had not offered her hand; she had not attempted any sort of greeting, but as she spoke she turned and carefully closed the door.

      Judith did not appear to resent her manner, or to expect any other kind of welcome. "I had to come," she said, her breath catching her in the throat with a hoarse sob. "You saw Anthony the other day. Sophie was down in our neighbourhood, I had to come to ask you. You will not tell Anthony—if he questions you—you—"

      Mrs. Rankin cast one swift look at her visitor's agitated face, then quickly glanced away again. "You may rely on me, as you have always relied on me for the past two years, Judith. Has not your very silence proved your trust? Or had you forgotten?"

      "Ah, no!" Judith caught her breath with a sob. "I had not forgotten—how could I ever forget? But I was afraid. I—I knew you would say I was doing wrong."

      "You might have trusted me, Judith. It was not my place to judge another. I might have tried to persuade you to be brave—to be true to yourself."

      "Ah, yes," Judith cried with a great sob that threatened to choke her. "I know you would. And I only wanted to be happy, to forget—if I could."

      The pity in the other woman's eyes grew and strengthened.

      "Happiness does not come that way, Judith."

      "I know that, I know that!" cried Lady Carew recklessly. "Nothing comes but misery—utter hopeless misery." She thrust back her golden hair from her brow; she held out her hands. "Do I look like a happy woman?" she demanded. "I tell you that I am wretched, wretched."

      Looking at her tragic face, beautiful even in its pallor, Mrs. Rankin could not doubt the truth of her words. The elder woman's face softened involuntarily, she moved a step or two nearer, then she stopped before she reached her visitor.

      "What does he—Sir Anthony—know of the past? What have you told him?"

      Judith laughed drearily. "What should he know? Nothing, except that I was Sophie's governess. He has heard of peaceful days in the old convent at Bruges before, that is all. He does not guess, how should he, at the blackness of the shame and the misery that lie between."

      Mrs. Rankin drew a deep breath. "Ah, Judith, if you had only trusted him—if you had only told him. Surely, surely he would have forgiven, he would at least have taken care that you were safe."

      "That I was safe!" A sudden change swept over Judith's face, the passion, the pain died out, leaving it white and rigid. "What do you mean?" she said hoarsely, speaking slowly with a little pause between each word. "What do you know?"

      Mrs. Rankin's face was white, too, now. She leaned across the little table, her voice sinking to a whisper.

      "I know nothing. But one night last spring we had a visitor." She paused and drew a handkerchief across her trembling lips.

      "Yes!" said Judith, in a harsh, loud tone. "Yes! you had a visitor?" Her eyes watched Mrs. Rankin's in a very anguish of dread. "You had a visitor, you say. Who was it?"

      Again Mrs. Rankin glanced round, her voice dropped until it became almost inaudible.

      "He—he called himself Charles Warden."

      There was a long silence. Judith's eyes wandered round the room, it was all so familiar, so homelike.

      Mrs. Rankin's voice sounded a very great way off when she began to speak again. Judith could hardly bring herself to attend to it. What was she saying?

      "He called himself Charles Warden, he wanted to know where you were to be found. When we professed entire ignorance of your whereabouts, he told us that he had come into a large fortune, and that he meant to share it with you And he begged me if I should hear of you, if I could recall any clue that would help him in his search for you, to let him know at once at the—"

      At last Judith brought her eyes back to the face of the woman standing opposite. "Yes! Where were you to let him know?"

      "At Abbey Court, at—at No. 42," Mrs. Rankin whispered.

      "Ah!" Judith slipped sideways from her hold on the table on to the chair behind.

      Mrs. Rankin did not move; she went on speaking with stiff, pale lips.

      "That was on Tuesday, and when I saw the papers on Thursday evening I—I was frightened. Judith, tell me, you do not know who was in the flat that night, who fired the fatal shot?"

      "I wish to Heaven I did."

      The words and accent alike had the force of complete truthfulness. Mrs. Rankin's face altered; the reserve, the hardness broke up, melted. She came round the table, she took both the ice-cold hands in hers.

      "Forgive me, Judith, if I doubted," she whispered. "I was frightened—terribly frightened! I know the awful temptation it might have been. Forgive me, child!"

      Judith's hands lay listlessly in hers. "There is nothing to forgive!" she said dully. "You only judge as the world will judge when it hears the story of that night. And something tells me the time is drawing very near now."

      The grey shadow was stealing over Mrs. Rankin's face again, now her clasp of the cold hands loosened.

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