"That's the lady you spoke about - the one who's known Lord Easterfield all her life, and was once engaged to marry him?"
"That's right."
Superintendent Battle said, "I think you can make your mind easy about the young lady, Mr. Fitzwilliam. I'll have someone put on to keep a sharp watch on her. With that, and with Jackson tailing his lordship, there ought to be no danger of anything happening."
"You relieve my mind a good deal," said Luke.
The superintendent nodded sympathetically.
"It's a nasty position for you, Mr. Fitzwilliam. Worrying about Miss Conway. Mind you, I don't expect this will be an easy case. Lord Easterfield must be a pretty shrewd man. He will probably lie low for a good long while. That is, unless he's got to the last stage."
"What do you call the last stage?"
"A kind of swollen egoism where a criminal thinks he simply can't be found out. He's too clever and everybody else is too stupid. Then, of course, we get him."
Luke nodded. He rose. "Well," he said, "I wish you luck. Let me help in any way I can."
"Certainly."
"There's nothing that you can suggest?"
Battle turned the question over in his mind. "I don't think so. Not at the moment. I just want to get the general hang of things in the place. Perhaps I could have another word with you in the evening?"
"Rather."
"I shall know better where we are then."
Luke felt vaguely comforted and soothed.
Many people had had that feeling after an interview with Superintendent Battle. He glanced at his watch. Should he go round and see Bridget before lunch? Better not, he thought. Miss Waynflete might feel that she had to ask him to stay for the meal and it might disorganize her housekeeping. Middle-aged ladies, Luke knew from experience with aunts, were liable to be fussed over problems of housekeeping. He wondered if Miss Waynflete was an aunt? Probably.
He had strolled out to the door of the inn. A figure in black hurrying down the street stopped suddenly when she saw him. "Mr. Fitzwilliam."
"Mrs. Humbleby." He came forward and shook hands.
She said, "I thought you had left."
"No, only changed my quarters. I'm staying here now."
"And Bridget? I heard she had left Ashe Manor."
"Yes, she has."
Mrs. Humbleby sighed. "I am so glad - so very glad she has gone right away from Wychwood."
"Oh, she's still here. As a matter of fact, she's staying with Miss Waynflete."
Mrs. Humbleby moved back a step. Her face, Luke noted with surprise, looked extraordinarily distressed. "Staying with Honoria Waynflete? Oh, but why?"
"Miss Waynflete very kindly asked her to stay for a few days."
Mrs. Humbleby gave a little shiver. She came close to Luke and laid a hand on his arm.
"Mr. Fitzwilliam, I know I have no right to say anything - anything at all. I have had a lot of sorrow and grief lately and, perhaps, it makes me fanciful. These feelings of mine may be only sick fancies."
Luke said gently, "What feelings?"
"This conviction I have of - of evil!" She looked timidly at Luke. Seeing that he merely bowed his head gravely and did not appear to question her statement, she went on, "So much wickedness - that is the thought that is always with me - wickedness here in Wychwood. And that woman is at the bottom of it all. I am sure of it."
Luke was mystified. "What woman?"
Mrs. Humbleby said, "Honoria Waynflete is, I am sure, a very wicked woman! Oh, I see you don't believe me! No one believed Lavinia Fullerton either. But we both felt it. She, I think, knew more than I did. Remember, Mr. Fitzwilliam, if a woman is not happy, she is capable of terrible things."
Luke said gently, "That may be, yes."
Mrs. Humbleby said quickly, "You don't believe me? Well, why should you? But I can't forget the day when John came home with his hand bound up from her house, though he pooh-poohed it and said it was only a scratch." She turned. "Good-bye. Please forget what I have just said. I - I don't feel quite myself these days."
Luke watched her go. He wondered why Mrs. Humbleby called Honoria Waynflete a wicked woman. Had Doctor Humbleby and Honoria Waynflete been friends, and was the doctor's wife jealous? What had she said? "No one believed Lavinia Fullerton either." Then Lavinia Fullerton must have confided some of her suspicions to Mrs. Humbleby.
With a rush, the memory of the railway carriage came back, and the worried face of a nice old lady. He heard again an earnest voice saying: "The look on a person's face." And the way her own face had changed, as though she were seeing something very clearly in her mind. Just for a moment, he thought, her face had been quite different; the lips drawn back from the teeth and a queer almost gloating look in her eyes.
He suddenly thought: "But I've seen someone look just like that - that same expression. Quite lately. When? This morning. Of course. Miss Waynflete when she was looking at Bridget in the drawing room at the Manor." And quite suddenly another memory assailed him. One of many years ago. His Aunt Mildred saying: "She looked, you know, my dear, quite half-witted." And just for a minute her own sane, comfortable face had borne an imbecile, mindless expression.
Lavinia Fullerton had been speaking of the look she had seen on a man's - no, a person's - face. Was it possible that, just for a second, her vivid imagination had reproduced the look that she saw - the look of a murderer looking at his next victim?
Half unaware of what he was doing, Luke quickened his pace toward Miss Waynflete's house. A voice in his brain was saying over and over again: "Not a man - she never mentioned a man. You assumed it was a man because you were thinking of a man, but she never said so. Oh, God, am I quite mad? It isn't possible, what I'm thinking. Surely it isn't possible; it wouldn't make sense. But I must get to Bridget. I must know she's all right. Those eyes - those queer amber eyes. Oh, I'm mad. I must be mad. Easterfield's the criminal. He must be. He practically said so." And still, like a nightmare, he saw Miss Fullerton's face in its momentary impersonation of something horrible and not quite sane.
The stunted little maid opened the door to him. A little startled by his vehemence, she said, "The lady's gone out. Miss Waynflete told me so. I'll see if Miss Waynflete's in."
He pushed past her, went into the drawing room. Emily ran upstairs. She came down breathless. "The mistress is out too."
Luke took her by the shoulder. "Which way? Where did they go?"
She gaped at him. "They must have gone out by the back. I'd have seen them if they'd gone out front ways, because the kitchen looks out there."
She followed him as he raced out through the door into the tiny garden and out beyond.
There was a man clipping a hedge.
Luke went up to him and asked a question, striving to keep his voice normal.
The man said slowly, "Two ladies? Yes. Some while since. I was having my dinner under the hedge. Reckon they didn't notice me."
"Which way did they go?"
He strove desperately to make his voice normal. Yet the other's eyes opened a little wider as he replied slowly: "Across them fields. Over that way. I don't know where after that."
Luke thanked him and began to run. His strong feeling of urgency was deepened. He must catch up with them - he must! He might be quite mad. In all probability, they were just taking an amicable stroll, but something in him clamored for haste. More haste! He crossed the two fields, stood hesitating in a country lane. Which way now? And then he heard the call - faint, far away, but unmistakable: "Luke! Help!" And again, "Luke!" Unerringly he plunged into the wood and ran in the direction from which the cry had come. There were more sounds now - scuffling, panting, a low gurgling cry.
He came through the trees in time to tear a mad woman's hands from her victim's throat, to hold her, struggling, foaming, cursing, till at last she gave a convulsive shudder and turned rigid in his grasp.
Chapter 24
"But I don't understand," said Lord Easterfield. "I don't understand." He strove to maintain his dignity but beneath the pompous exterior a rather pitiable bewilderment was evident. He could hardly credit the extraordinary things that were being told him.
"It's like this. Lord Easterfield," said Battle patiently. "To begin with, there is a touch of insanity in the family. We've found that out now. Often the way with these old families. I should say she had a predisposition that way. And then she was an ambitious lady, and she was thwarted. First her career and then her love affair." He coughed. "I understand it was you who jilted her."
Lord Easterfield said stiffly, "I don't like the term 'jilt.'"
Superintendent Battle amended the phrase, "It was you who terminated the engagement?"
"Well, yes."
"Tell us why, Gordon," said Bridget.
Lord Easterfield got rather red. He said, "Oh, very well, if I must. Honoria had a canary. She was very fond of it. It used to take sugar from her lips. One day it pecked her violently instead. She was angry and picked it up and - wrung its neck! I - I couldn't feel the same after that. I told her I thought we'd both made a mistake."
Battle nodded. He said, "That was the beginning of it. As she told Miss Conway, she turned her thoughts and her undoubted mental ability to one aim and purpose."
Lord Easterfield said incredulously, "To get me convicted as a murderer? I can't believe it."
Bridget said, "It's true, Gordon. You know, you were surprised yourself at the extraordinary way that everybody who annoyed you was instantly struck down."
"There was a reason for that."
"Honoria Waynflete was the reason," said Bridget. "Do get it into your head, Gordon, that it wasn't Providence that pushed Tommy Pierce out of the window, and all the rest of them. It was Honoria."
Lord Easterfield shook his head. "It all seems to me quite incredible!" he said.
Battle said, "You say you got a telephone message this morning?"
"Yes, about twelve o'clock. I was asked to go to the Shaw Wood at once, as you, Bridget, had something to say to me. I was not to come by car, but to walk."
Battle nodded. "Exactly. That would have been the finish. Miss Conway would have been found with her throat cut, and beside her your knife with your fingerprints on it! And you yourself would have been seen in the vicinity at the time! You wouldn't have had a leg to stand upon. Any jury in the world would have convicted you."
"Me?" said Lord Easterfield, startled and distressed. "Anyone would have believed a thing like that of me?"
Bridget said gently, "I didn't, Gordon. I never believed it."
Lord Easterfield looked at her coldly, then he said stiffly, "In view of my character and my standing in the country, I do not believe that anyone for one moment would have believed such a monstrous charge." He went out with dignity and closed the door behind him.
Luke said, "He'll never realize that he was really in danger." Then he said, "Go on, Bridget. Tell me how you came to suspect the Waynflete woman."
Bridget explained, "It was when you were telling me that Gordon was the killer. I couldn't believe it! You see, I knew him so well. I'd been his secretary for two years. I knew him in and out. I knew that he was pompous and petty and completely self-absorbed, but I knew, too, that he was a kindly person and almost absurdly tender-hearted. It worried him even to kill a wasp. That story about his killing Miss Waynflete's canary - it was all wrong. He just couldn't have done it. He'd told me once that he had jilted her. Now you insisted that it was the other way about. Well, that might be so! His pride might not have allowed him to admit that she had thrown him over. But not the canary story! That simply wasn't Gordon! He didn't even shoot, because seeing things killed made him feel sick.
"So I simply knew that that part of the story was untrue. But if so. Miss Waynflete must have lied. And it was really, when you came to think of it, a very extraordinary lie. And I wondered suddenly if she'd told any more lies. She was a very proud woman - one could see that. To be thrown over must have hurt her pride horribly. It would probably make her feel very angry and revengeful against Lord Easterfield - especially, I felt, if he turned up again later, all rich and prosperous and successful. I thought, 'Yes, she'd probably enjoy helping to fix a crime upon him.' And then a curious sort of whirling feeling came in my brain, and I thought: 'But suppose everything she says is a lie,' and I suddenly saw how easily a woman like that could make a fool of a man. And I thought: 'It's fantastic, but suppose it was she who killed all these people and fed Gordon up with the idea that it was a kind of divine retribution.' It would be quite easy for her to make him believe that. As I told you once, Gordon would believe anything! And I thought: 'Could she have done all those murders?' And I saw that she could! She could give a shove to a drunken man, push a boy out of a window, and Amy Gibbs had died in her house. Mrs. Horton, too - she used to go and sit with her when she was ill. Doctor Humbleby was more difficult. I didn't know then that Wonky Pooh had a nasty septic ear. Miss Fullerton's death was even more difficult, because I couldn't imagine Miss Waynflete dressed up as a chauffeur, driving a Rolls.
"And then, suddenly, I saw that that was the easiest of the lot! It was the old shove from behind - easily done in a crowd. The car didn't stop, and she saw a fresh opportunity and told another woman she had seen the number of the car, and gave the number of Lord Easterfield's Rolls.
"Of course, all this only came very confusedly through my head. But if Gordon definitely hadn't done the murders - and I knew, yes, knew that he hadn't - well, who did? And the answer seemed quite clear. Someone who hates Gordon! Who hates Gordon? Honoria Waynflete of course.
