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

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СКАЧАТЬ that the whole was a made-up story became almost a certainty; but I obtained a list of the ladies’ schools in Brighton. There is no Miss Chesterton, but there are a Chester and a Chesham. I called upon both and found, as I had expected, that no Hilda Leparge had been a pupil, and that there had been no disappearance from their schools. The rest of the matter I left in the superintendent’s hands. I had his report this morning. No such name is known at any of the Brighton schools, and, in short, he says that if his inquiries have made one thing more certain than another it is that no disappearance in the circumstances related by Mrs. Leparge has taken place at Brighton.”

      Mavis caught her breath quickly.

      “Garth, what does it all mean? What object could she have had in coming here if she had not lost her daughter? I can’t understand it.”

      “Neither can I at present,” said Garth in a curiously significant tone. “But we are gathering up the threads, Mavis, and I think it will not be long before the end of this remarkably tangled skein is in our hands.”

      Mavis did not reply for a minute; she was looking puzzled and worried.

      “I—I don’t see what you mean, Garth,” she said slowly. “I don’t see what Mrs. Leparge’s coming has to do with Hilda, unless”—thoughtfully—“Hilda has been the victim of some plot, that perhaps Mrs. Leparge has been one of the people who have ill-treated her, that they thought they could get possession of her again, and when she was here she found it hopeless as we should make so many inquiries and so gave it up. Is that what you think, Garth?”

      “Not—not exactly,” he said slowly. “In fact I should be puzzled to tell you what I do think, Mavis. My feeling is more one of vague suspicion than anything definite.”

      “Suspicion of Mrs. Leparge?”

      “Oh, of her and other people.”

      Mavis sighed.

      “Well, I hope it will all come right some day. Oh, Garth, how I should like to go to sleep and wake up and find that everything was a bad dream—everything that has happened since we dined at the Court, I mean!”

      Garth looked out of the uncurtained window—the moon was so bright that, in spite of the electric light, outside things stood out almost as clearly as in the day-time; his eye was caught by a dark bank of clouds near the horizon.

      “See, Mavis,” he said, directing her attention to it, “those threatening clouds will spread presently and obscure all this moonlit sky, but after a while they will pass, and everything will be bright again. I think our lives are like that—when troubles come they darken and alter the face of the world for us, but some day it will be all clear again.” His hand just touched hers. “Can’t you believe it, Mavis?”

      The girl’s eyes looked up at him trustingly.

      “Oh, yes. I will—I do! But it seems difficult to realize the silver lining when one only sees the cloud.”

      “Ah, we all feel that!” Garth said absently, his attention once more straying to his future brother-in-law, whose back was towards them, but whose attitude of admiring attention was sufficiently obvious. “Oh, by the way,” he went on, “when I was in town I had a regular turn-out, made my man institute a systematic search, and I have found the pouch you worked for me, Mavis, and which the police professed to believe was the one discovered in the small library at the time of Nurse Marston’s disappearance. I shall take it in and have a talk with Stokes in the morning.”

      “Oh, I am glad!” Mavis exclaimed. “I hate you to lose my presents, and Stokes seemed so horrid about it besides. I wonder what Arthur and Hilda will say when they know that Mrs. Leparge’s daughter was not lost from Brighton.” She raised her voice. “Hilda!”

      “Don’t say anything about it, don’t tell them for the world,” Davenant said in a low, emphatic tone, “or you may spoil everything.”

      The other two looked up in some surprise as he sauntered over to them with some excuse about the latest political canard, and Mavis was left alone to puzzle out the mystery of his words.

      When Garth rose to take his leave she glanced once more out of the window; the dark clouds of which he had spoken had fulfilled their prophecy in so far as they had spread over the sky. Obscured by them, the moon shone slantwise across the heavens, and even as she watched a vivid flash of lightning almost blinded her for a moment, and nearly simultaneously a crash of thunder seemed to shake the very house. The girls sprang to their feet and looked at one another in consternation.

      Sir Arthur turned to the window.

      “It is late in the season for such lightning,” he remarked. “I wonder if it has struck anything. Garth, my boy, how are you going home? The storm will be upon us directly.”

      Garth laughed.

      “Well, I am not exactly sugar and salt. I drove Gipsy over in the high cart, and I fancy her nerves are pretty well seasoned.”

      Mavis laid hold of him.

      “Well, mine are not,” she declared positively. “No, Garth, indeed you are not going out of this house until the storm is over. Do you think I could sleep to-night if I knew that you had been out in such a storm as this promises to be? Besides, this lightning might strike you dead,” as another flash lighted up the room. “Oh, no. Indeed, Garth, you must not go!”

      “Why, what is this? Garth thinking of going?” Lady Laura, roused by the thunder, was sitting up and rearranging the scrap of lace, called by courtesy a cap, on her hair. “It is out of the question, my dear boy,” she went on. “Here you are, and here you must stop until it is fine again. Do you hear that?” as the thunder crashed overhead, and the first few heavy drops amid the stillness that followed heralded a veritable downpour. “That settles it, I think.”

      Garth smiled in her harassed eyes. The two women’s solicitude was very pleasant to him, and though in his heart he felt that Lady Laura was really responsible, from sheer kind-heartedness and lack of worldly wisdom, for much of her own trouble, yet his real affection for her made him long to smooth away the wrinkles from her forehead, the tired lines round her mouth.

      “It does sound rather alarming, doesn’t it?” he said.

      “I will wait a little, if you will allow me, Lady Laura. But you are not afraid of lightning, are you?” as a vivid forked flash lit up the room and she shuddered. “There is no danger really.”

      “Oh, one never knows! I always feel a little nervous in these old houses; something may catch fire,” and Lady Laura glanced round apprehensively.

      Garth took her hands in his.

      “Oh, it is passing over now. Already the thunder is more distant. Listen! And it had much better come this week than next, you know.”

      Lady Laura looked at her son, who was engaged in soothing Hilda’s fears.

      “Yes, I should have been very sorry if it had spoilt the outdoor amusements for the poor people,” she said listlessly. “But for myself, as you know, this affair” —nodding at the young people—“has been such a disappointment that personally I should not care if it rained cats and dogs the whole time.”

      Garth hesitated a moment; he glanced round doubtfully. He and Lady Laura were virtually alone—Mavis, her nervousness apparently СКАЧАТЬ