The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ looked as though he would like to strike the bland face before him. He clenched his fist.

      "Come, come, sir." Pointer changed to a pleasanter tone. "This won't help her, and she's in a tight spot, you know. But between us we ought to be able to get her out. Look here, why not explain the whole affair?"

      Pointer spoke as though that bright idea had just occurred to him.

      "Your marriage, for instance."

      "There's nothing to explain about that," Thornton spoke wearily. "Only too usual a story, I'm afraid. An unhappy marriage—a parting—and a chance meeting again when she took the place of Colonel Scarlett's lady housekeeper. In justice to myself, I thought she was amply provided for. Her father settled a large sum on her when she married, and he died soon after, presumably a wealthy man. It was Russia's debt-repudiation that made all the difference, it seems. I never dreamt of that."

      "Chance meeting?" Pointer repeated questioningly. "No, it wasn't that, Mr. Thornton. Not on her part. She knew you were at Red Gates. She came down because she knew that."

      "What do you mean?"

      "Just that, sir. I've seen—to be frank, we hold a letter of hers to the colonel. In it she refers to you, and says that she'll gladly come, provided that he will keep his promise, and never let you know that she knew beforehand that you were living at Red Gates."

      Thornton got up, and walked quickly to a window. He stood with his back to the room.

      "How can I get her out of what I've got her into?" he asked, without turning round.

      "You got her into?"

      "I put the matter in the hands of Scotland Yard, didn't I? I knew that she was shielding some one. I know it now. She'd shield a mad dog if it ran to her. But if so, that blow that killed Rose Charteris was struck by some terrible accident, or in some mistake—I can't explain it, but Beatrice, I mean my wife, would never shield a guilty person. There never was a woman with a clearer, cooler judgment, and a greater sense of right. To think that she ever had a part or knowledge—the mere suggestion is monstrous."

      Pointer could have smiled. Beatrice Thornton had been shielding some one.

      Thornton still looked out of the darkened window, and Pointer thought he heard a whispered "Beatrice" before the newly-revealed husband turned.

      "Perhaps you can help her better than I can. I only seem to've drawn her deeper into things. You see, I thought that if she found herself in a tight place, she would perforce turn to me. I was at hand. She must have known that I—that—" He faced the window again, his face working. "I was a fool once. I was a poor ambitious chap once. And I won't say that her fortune counted for nothing with me, as it should have done." Thornton fought against the flood of emotion within him, but it had got past the gates, and rushed him with it "After she left me—there was no divorce. Neither of us are the kind to give the other reasons of that sort for parting I—well, I learnt as many another fool has that I cared a great deal more than I thought I did, or rather than she thought I did. I came into some money, took to art collecting, to divert my mind. But to go back to that awful Friday morning. You're the last man to believe in spiritualism, I suppose, Chief Inspector?"

      "I shouldn't be the first," Pointer agreed whimsically.

      "Then you do believe in—in that sort of thing?"

      "I think there's a deal more to us than our bodies, than what we can feel and touch. I'm a religious man, sir. But why the question?"

      "Because as I sat by Rose Charteris's body in that sand-pit early on Friday morning, I had the most extraordinary sense of urgency, of being spurred on to take some decision quickly. I felt as though it were a call for help from the girl whose body lay beside me, and for immediate help. When Bond and Co. were so keen on the police taking up the matter, the feeling had passed. I could almost think it had passed from me into them. I thought—better, not. I thought—" He paused again.

      "I wonder what you did think?" Pointer still spoke pleasantly.

      "Then, as now, I never doubted—my wife. Naturally! I knew, knew that she had no hand in any crime, except to help—the victim. I thought if I could talk things over with her first—but walking away from the police-station I got that message of haste again. And this time it conquered. It quite obsessed me. I felt as though Rose herself were begging me to lose no time. I can't put the sensation into words, any more than one could light or dark." There was a long pause.

      "And did you lend Mrs. Lane your car, or did she get it out herself?"

      Thornton drew in his breath sharply.

      "You're right. Frankness is the only thing now, I see. I lent her the car. She woke me up about one on Thursday night or rather Friday morning, tapping on my bedroom window. It opens on to my balcony, too, you know. She asked me to let her have my big car at once. She asked me—" He hesitated in deep distress.

      "Yes? We know the facts about the car," Pointer said very gently.

      "To let her have it for a couple of hours, and to lend it without asking her any questions about it. I came down and got it out. She wouldn't let me drive it even into the lane for her, and she begged me—there were tears in her eyes, and she looked, good God!" Thornton seemed to fall into a brooding pity, "she begged me never to refer to the matter again. I promised. I got the car out and left her, and it. She even made me promise that I wouldn't watch which way the car went."

      There followed a long silence.

      "That's all," Thornton said under his breath. "I only hope I've done right in speaking of it."

      "You've done no harm, sir, because we knew it more or less already. And that's really all, sir?"

      "All. My word on that. And now you see the mingled feelings that made me ask you to look into the case. There was the sensation of being impelled to it by Miss Rose herself. There was the presence of Bond and Co. They never let things drop. And there was—it sounds caddish, but there was also the hope that by crowding my wife into a corner, she might turn to me—in her fright."

      "She didn't get frightened, more's the pity," Pointer said rather sourly. "It would have shortened things a lot if she had. You recognised her, I suppose, when she looked out at Miss Scarlett's room, when you and Doctor Metcalfe drove up on Friday morning?"

      "Yes."

      "She went in to speak to Miss Scarlett. She had lent her some toothache medicine and wanted it back. As Miss Scarlett was asleep, she was going out again, when she heard the car. That, at least, is what she told Maud, and I think it is the truth."

      "But why—what—" In Thornton's voice was an anguish that had been racking his heart for many days now.

      Pointer did not reply to it.

      "What was Mrs. Thornton's maiden name, by the way?"

      "Lane. She was the daughter of our minister to the Netherlands. We were married at the Hague by the Embassy Chaplain in—" He gave the date.

      There was another pause, then Thornton said shyly, "That letter you found? You really mean that. Be—Mrs. Thornton—knew that I was at Red Gates?"

      Pointer nodded. "That's why she took the place. It's the first time in my life that I ever betrayed to one man what I had СКАЧАТЬ