The Greatest Murder Mysteries - Dorothy Fielding Collection. Dorothy Fielding

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      "Sibella!" the Italian began, but Pointer, who was watching him closely, stepped between him and the girl.

      "Don't forget that you're in Scotland Yard. Unless you want handcuffs on, you'll stand back, Count di Monti."

      The Italian looked murderous. Just for a second he hesitated. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he sat down in the chair at which the Chief Inspector was pointing, and crossing his legs, lit a cigarette.

      "Rose really was in love with Mr. Bellairs," Sibella began, speaking as though she were glad to. "My father thought that he and I would have suited each other better. There had been some boy and girl affair between us, but that was all over long ago. After Count di Monti came to England, Rose hesitated between the two. Finally she decided to accept the count, but she wrote to Mr. Bellairs still. And lately they met in his studio."

      "Where he was painting her portrait?" asked Pointer.

      "Yes I—I thought the whole position not fair—to any of us. So I told Count di Monti on Thursday just before lunch what was going on. Then I grew wretched. I realised, when I saw his rage, what a fearful thing I had done. What an awful thing! And though I knew that neither of them loved the other, I was afraid of trouble. I knew that the count would never forgive her having played with him—he prefers to do the playing!" She shot a glance at the young man which was very reminiscent of her Italian grandmother. "I didn't go to the concert in Medchester Thursday evening. I drove on to Harry Bellairs' studio, getting there just as my cousin scrambled out of the studio window. She heard the count. At the front door. We drove home. Later, when I missed her from her room, I thought that she must have gone back for some reason. Next morning, when I heard that she was dead—oh, how could you have let me suffer what I have!" she burst out again, turning her burning eyes on di Monti.

      "What time was it when you went to your cousin's room?" Pointer asked.

      "When I dropped her at home it was about ten o'clock. That must have been when the maid spoke to her. I drove back to Medchester, but I didn't go to the concert till practically the end. I needed the fresh air to calm me down. When Mrs. Lane and I got back it was a little past eleven."

      "And you picked up that registered letter she had left behind her—forgotten—to confront her with the proof that she had been in the studio?" Pointer asked the Italian.

      Count di Monti nodded curtly. "That and the pendant, as I said in Verona." He turned to Sibella. "I would have told you the truth—-" he began, but she stopped him with a hand raised as though to ward off something distasteful, and finished his sentence in her own way.

      "Had you not wanted to make use of me, of my remorse, Of my agony of mind! By a trick, you got my help, got away, and would have gone to Jubaland without a word to me—"

      "Altro! Tutt'altro!" His face flamed. "Never! For a while—yes. I had to let you bear your burden, but you knew that whatever had happened to her she had richly deserved. She had played with me!" He trembled visibly with fury at the thought still. "But even if you mourned her, I would have made it all up to you. All, and much, much more! I would have taken you—away from all suffering—into a world all light, all gold, all fire."

      He repeated the sentence in his own beautiful tongue, "Un mundo di luce, d'oro, e di fuoco." His voice made each word shine and glow. He knelt before her and raised the hem of her black lace frock to his lips. He kissed it passionately. She neither swayed towards him nor away from him. Her eyes rested broodingly on that proud, bent head. On her face was a gentle, and yet a very remote look. It was as though she were hearing again a strain of music which held memories of poignant joy and love in every note, but the joy was a departed one, and the love was dead.

      With a sigh she seemed to return to the present, and now there was no softness about her. He rose on the instant, feeling the change, rebuffed by it before she spoke. But he was a good fighter. He did not give up.

      "Do not draw away from me! Listen to your heart. Your heart that does love me, say what you will. Let it plead for me. Love can forgive everything but lack of love."

      "It does not love you," Sibella said with convincing finality. "I did love you, yes, but that was not why I helped you to escape when I thought you had killed Rose. And you know that."

      She took a step towards him at last, but it was as an accuser.

      "You knew that the only thing that would make me help you, was the belief that it was I—I who was guilty of throwing fuel on that jealousy of yours, that mad jealousy that burned without any love back of it only pride!"

      Pointer looked at his watch.

      "I'm sorry," he said, and the two started as though they had been talking on the top of Mount Everest, and had no idea that another human being could be within a mile of them, "but I must ask you to leave us now, Miss Scarlett. I wanted you to know the facts of the case—well, to know them—some of them." He pressed a bell. A constable announced that a taxi was waiting for the lady.

      Sibella hesitated. She did not hold out her hand to the Chief Inspector. Suddenly she realised what all this meant, what that hand might be—in all likelihood was—about to do. It came home to her that possibly it was the last time that she, or any one else, would see Count di Monti a free man. He knew it. His cigarette end fell, bitten through, to the carpet. He had risen when she rose; and they looked at each other. Again their world dropped away from them. He made a gesture, but Sibella stopped him.

      "I said good-bye to you, Giulio, when we parted before," she spoke in a low broken voice, "there is no one I love left for me to say it to now." Turning her head away with something like a shudder, she passed swiftly from the room.

      Di Monti was pale enough now. Tears stood in those fierce, cold eyes. Eyes that looked as though they might have been handed down from some Etruscan tyrant of old. He blinked them away, straightened his straight back still more, smoothed a non-existent belt, and faced Pointer.

      "Ebbene?" he snapped, "but if it was that whelp Bellairs who betrayed that I was at his studio"—he thrust his jaw forward—"I told him that I would kill him if he dared speak of my having been there, when heard that she had been found dead—"

      Pointer did not trouble to answer him.

      "This way, if you please. There are still a few proofs to be accumulated before the whole story is cleared up."

      "And the handcuffs clicked on?" Di Monti threw back his head. "Hardly on my wrists, my good man."

      "The end is very close at hand, Count di Monti," Pointer repeated quietly.

      The Italian's face stiffened, as though he tightened all his muscles, but without a word he stalked through the double door into Pointer's second room, which again was almost filled by a big table with chairs set close around it.

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

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      POINTER followed hard on di Monti's heels. Everybody summoned was present.

      The Italian, after a derisive glance at Bellairs, who stared back at him like an angry cat, sat down at the place where his name lay.

      Thornton alone seemed to have drunk from some fountain СКАЧАТЬ