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

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СКАЧАТЬ explain exactly how we found it.”

      Mavis clasped his arm tightly and looked round her with wide open, terrified eyes.

      “Surely you do not imagine that I shall go on after seeing this, Garth? Nothing would induce me to go any farther through this dreadful wood.”

      “My dear child, this is really—” Garth was beginning when the steps that Mavis had heard before sounded nearer on a parallel path to them, and then as the two walks merged into one Tom Greyson came into sight. He was looking particularly gloomy and disconsolate as he strode along with his dog at his heels, but as he touched his hat he glanced in some surprise at the girl’s agitated face.

      She put out her hand and stopped him.

      “Don’t go on, Tom; you must stay and help us now. I am so frightened”—a little sob catching her throat.

      “Frightened, Miss Hargreave?” Greyson repeated in a puzzled tone.

      Garth passed his arm round her trembling form.

      “Come, come, Mavis; you must not give way like this; there is nothing really to alarm you! It is only that we, or rather the dogs, have found something that belonged to Nurse Marston, and it has upset Miss Hargreave. It is a notebook, and must have been dropped after she left the Manor.”

      A gleam of interest lighted up Greyson’s moody face.

      “She did come this way then, sir? I have always said she must ha’ done; but she would come right out close to her mother’s cottage. It puzzles me why she did not go in and speak to the old woman, just to set her mind at rest, as it were. She is getting worn to a shadow is Mrs. Marston with all the worry of it.”

      “I cannot understand it at all,” Garth said thoughtfully.

      “She came into this wood,” Mavis said, shuddering from head to foot with a vague intangible horror. “It may have been to see her mother, or anything, I don’t know what, but perhaps she never came out. Oh, don’t you see what I mean, Garth? She may have been taken ill here and lain down among the trees and died, or she may have met a tramp and been murdered, and—and—be lying here still!”

      She uttered the last words in a low, terrified tone beneath her breath.

      The eyes of the two men met in one long significant glance as she paused; then Garth said with a resolutely cheerful air:

      “My dear Mavis, we have not the least reason for supposing that Nurse Marston is dead. She is probably alive and well and will give us her own reasons for this mysterious absence when she returns. Come, you are tired and over-wrought; I will take you back to the Manor. Greyson, I think it might be as well to let the police know of this discovery, if you are going that way.”

      “I will tell them, sir,” the man said as he touched his hat.

      “First you must look to see that she is not lying here,” Mavis said with an effort, putting up her hands and clutching nervously at her throat as she spoke. “The—the dogs were moving about among the moss and leaves over there. Behind, farther in the wood, there is a hollow. I shall not go away—I could not—until I know. Garth, you must look—you must!”

      “No, no, sir! You stay with Miss Hargreave, sir,” Tom Greyson interposed quickly. “I’ll go and look. Don’t you frighten yourself, miss. Why, we are all over this coppice of nights now that the pheasants are nesting! If there had been anything of that sort here we should ha’ been bound to find it before now. Under that oak you said the dogs were, didn’t you, miss?”

      He sprang off. Garth drew Mavis to a fallen tree-trunk near and made her sit down.

      “Why, Mavis, I didn’t think you were so nervous!”

      “I think somehow a horror of the whole affair came over me—not quite at the first, but very soon after—with regard to Nurse Marston’s disappearance,” she said slowly. “It was all so strange when you think of it—that cry Dorothy heard; and Jenkins was so certain she could not have got out of the house.”

      “Ah, well! It is perfectly obvious now that the old man was wrong there,” Garth said, with as much cheerfulness as he could assume, for in truth her nervousness was beginning to infect him. “As for the shriek Dorothy heard—well, I have never been able to connect that with Nurse Marston. If she had been taken ill in the house, or any evil had happened to her there, she must have been found before now. Probably Dorothy fancied it, or perhaps one of the maidservants had a fit of hysterics. Well, Greyson, what is the result of your search?”

      “She isn’t there, sir,” the man said. “I made sure she wasn’t. We know our woods a bit too well for that to happen, as I told Miss Hargreave.”

      But it struck Garth, that, in spite of his apparent confidence, the man’s ruddy face was some degrees paler than it had been a few minutes before.

      “Well, now you are satisfied, I hope,” he said, turning to Mavis, whose colour was beginning to return. “Come, it is no use our staying here any longer. Greyson, you might look round the wood farther in just to satisfy Miss Hargreave—or stay, what are you going to do now?”

      “Going to have my dinner, sir. I live right by the side of the coppice, but that don’t matter if there is anything you would like me to do first.”

      “No, no! Have your dinner, and then come up to the Manor. I shall be there and we can ask Sir Arthur what he thinks is best to be done now.”

      “Very good, sir!” Greyson touched his hat again as they turned away.

      As Davenant held the gate into the park open for Mavis she looked up at him wistfully.

      “Garth, I want to ask you to do something for me.”

      “What is it, Mavis? You know anything I can do—”

      “Garth, will you tell me what you were doing with Nurse Marston in Exeter the day before she came to us?”

      Davenant did not look pleased.

      “Talking to her,” he answered shortly.

      “You were walking up the street. Superintendent Stokes said he saw you.”

      “And I declined to give him any further explanation.” Davenant’s tone was curt.

      “Yes, to tell him,” Mavis went on softly. “But I did not think you would have secrets from me, Garth.”

      He stopped and took both her hands in his and looked down at her gravely, compelling her to meet his gaze.

      “Nor will I of my own, Mavis. This belongs to some one else, but it has absolutely no connexion with Nurse Marston’s disappearance. That I can vouch for. For the rest, aren’t you going to trust me?”

      The tenderness of the tone disarmed the girl’s rising resentment, and her naturally sweet temper reasserted itself.

      “I will trust you, Garth, even though all the rest of the world should doubt you,” she said softly.

      Davenant’s glance and the close clasp of his hand were eloquent of his gratitude.

      Inside the hall СКАЧАТЬ