The Hand in the Dark
country-house. They have opportunities of seeing hidden things which
nobody else is likely to suspect. And the moat-house servants asserted,
with complete unanimity, that there had been nothing between Phil
Heredith and Hazel Rath during the time the girl had lived at the
moat-house. Their relations had been friendly, but nothing more. There
was no record of secret looks, stolen kisses, or surprised meetings to
support the theory of a mutual flirtation or furtive love. It was
impossible to doubt that Phil Heredith's attitude to the girl who had
occupied a dependent position in his home had been actuated by no warmer
feeling than a sort of brotherly regard.
Merrington, versed by long experience in forming an estimate of
character from second-hand opinion, was forced to the conclusion that
Phil Heredith was not the type of young man to betray the innocence or
trifle with the feelings of a young and unsophisticated girl. The
servants' testimony revealed him as gentle and courteous, but shy and
reserved, not fond of company, and immersed in his natural history
pursuits.
Merrington, however, had less difficulty in proving to his own
satisfaction that Hazel Rath had been secretly in love with Phil
Heredith almost since the days of her childhood. There was, to begin
with, the greenstone brooch which Caldew had picked tap in the bedroom
after Mrs. Heredith had been murdered. The members of the household were
in the custom of making the girl little presents on her birthday
anniversary, and Phil had given her the piece of greenstone, set in a
brooch, on her birthday six years before. There was no secret about it;
the gift had been chosen on the suggestion of Miss Heredith, who told
Merrington the facts. What was unknown was the addition of the
inscription, "Semper Fidelis," which must have been scratched on the
brooch subsequently by the girl herself as a girlish vow of love and
fidelity of the giver.
Detective Caldew might have ascertained these facts and shortened the
police investigations by the simple process of asking Miss Heredith
about the brooch in the first instance. But it is easy to be wise after
the event, and Superintendent Merrington was the last man to quarrel
with his subordinate for excess of caution in the initial stage of the
investigations, when it was his duty to doubt everybody and confide in
nobody. Moreover, Merrington could not forget that he himself had
completely underestimated the importance of that clue when Caldew had
drawn his attention to it.
A search of Hazel's bedroom at Stading brought to light additional
testimony of the love which was likely to destroy her. Merrington and
Caldew, ruthlessly turning over the feminine appointments of this dainty
little nest, had unearthed from the bottom of the girl's box a square
parcel tied with ribbon. The packet contained letters and postcards from
Phil, principally picture postcards from different Continental places he
had visited after leaving Cambridge. There were three letters: two
schoolboy epistles, asking the girl to look after the pets he had left
at home, and one short note from the University announcing the dispatch
of a volume of poems as a birthday gift. There was also a Christmas
card, dated some years before, inscribed, "To dear Phil, with love, from
Hazel." The girl had kept it, perhaps, because she was too shy to bestow
it on the intended recipient, but its chief value in Merrington's eyes
was the similarity between the written capital F and the same letter in
the scratched inscription on the greenstone brooch.
With these discoveries Merrington was satisfied. In Hazel Rath's secret
love for Phil Heredith the Crown was supplied with the motive for the
murder of Phil Heredith's wife. In Merrington's opinion, the supposition
of motive was strengthened by the fact that the murder was committed
during Hazel's first visit to the moat-house since the arrival of the
young bride, because until Phil's marriage it had been the girl's custom
to visit the moat-house once a week. Miss Heredith informed Merrington
that she had questioned the girl on the afternoon of the murder about
the sudden cessation of her visits, and Hazel had replied rather
evasively. Merrington formed the opinion that she had stayed away
because she could not bear to see the woman whom Phil had made his wife.
Then, realizing that her prolonged absence was likely to be remarked
upon, she went across on the day of the murder to see her mother.
Merrington did not think that the murder was premeditated. His belief
was that when the girl found herself back in the surroundings where she
had spent such a happy girlhood in association with Phil Heredith, she
was seized with a mad fit of jealousy against her successful rival, and
under its influence had rushed upstairs and murdered her. Merrington had
also come to the conclusion that her mother knew nothing about the crime
until afterwards, and then she had endeavoured to shield her daughter by
lying to the police and sending Milly Saker out of the way.
Merrington was unable to account for Hazel's possession of the revolver
with which Mrs. Heredith had been killed. The girl maintained her
stubborn silence after her arrest, and refused to answer any questions
about the weapon or anything connected with the crime. The police
assumption was that she had obtained the revolver from the gun-room of
the moat-house shortly before the murder was committed. The gun-room was
underground. It had originally been the crypt of the Saxon castle which
had once stood on the site where the moat-house was built, and was
entered by a short flight of steps not far from the passage which led to
the housekeeper's rooms. It was rectangular in shape, and, like the
majority of gun-rooms in old English country mansions, contained a large
assortment of ancient and modern weapons.
Neither Sir Philip Heredith nor Miss Heredith was able to state whether
the revolver found in the housekeeper's room belonged to the moat-house
or was the property of one of the guests, and Phil Heredith was too ill
to be asked. As expert evidence at the inquest definitely determined
that the bullet extracted from the murdered woman had been fired from
the revolver, Merrington did not attach very much importance to the
question of ownership, but before his departure for London he arranged
that Caldew should return to the moat-house later with the revolver for
Phil's inspection, in the hope of settling the point before the trial.
Miss Heredith had undertaken to let the detectives know when her nephew
was well enough to be seen, but as time went on she doubted whether he
would ever recover. Although the delirium which had followed his seizure
had passed away, he was slow in regaining health, and remained in bed,
listless and indifferent to everything, sometimes reading a little, but
oftener lying still, staring at the wall. He was passive and quiet, and
obedient as a child. He seemed to have no recollection of the events of
the night of the murder, and his aunt did not dare to recall them to his
mind.
It was for Phil's sake, and for him only, that she was able to preserve
her own courage and calmness through the sordid ordeal of the lengthy
inquest and the empty pomp of the funeral of the young wife. Her own
heart was bruised and numb within her with the horrors which had been
heaped upon her. She was like one who had seen a pit open suddenly at
her feet, revealing terrible human obscenities and abominations
wallowing nakedly in the depths. It was a poignant shock to her that
human nature was capable of such infamy. Her startled virgin eyes saw
for the first time in the monstrous passion of sex a force which was
stronger than her own most cherished beliefs. If a sweet and gentle girl
like Hazel Rath, who had been brought up under her own eye to walk
uprightly, could be swept away in the surge of tempestuous passion to
commit murder, where did Faith and Religion stand?
Almost as much as the effect of the murder did she fear the result of
this second revelation on her nephew. The knowledge that the person
accused of killing his wife was a girl who had lived in his own home for
years was bound to have an additionally injurious effect on his strange
and sensitive temperament. Nobody knew that temperament better than Miss
Heredith. It was not the Heredith temperament. It had been the heritage
of his mother, a strange, elfin, wayward creature, who had died bringing
Phil into the world. Like all sisters, Miss Heredith had wondered what
her brother had seen in his wife to marry her. Phil had all along been a
disappointment to his father. He had come into the world with a lame
foot and a frail frame, and the Herediths had always been noted for
masculine strength and grace. Instead of growing up with a scorn for
books and an absorbing love of sport, like a true Heredith, Phil had
early revealed symptoms of a bookish, studious disposition, reserved and
shy, with little liking for other boys or boyish games. His one hobby
was an interest in natural history. He devoted his pocket money to the
purchase of strange pets, which he kept in cages while they lived and
stuffed when they died.
Miss Heredith had disapproved of this hobby, but had suffered it in
silence, on the principle that a Heredith could do no wrong, until one
winter's morning she had been frightened into her first and only fit of
hysterics by discovering a large spotted snake coiled snugly on some
flannel garments she was making for the wife of the curate, in
anticipation of that unfortunate lady's fifth lying-in. Investigation
brought to light the fact that the snake had been surreptitiously
purchased by Master Phil from a Covent Garden dealer. He had kept it in
a box in the stables, but, finding it torpid with cold one night, he had
put it in his aunt's work-basket for the sake of the warmth. When Miss
Heredith recovered from her hysterics she had seen to it that Phil was
packed off to school almost as quickly as the snake was packed off to
the Zoological Gardens.
After Phil's college days his father's influence had obtained for him a
Government post which was to be the forerunnner of a diplomatic career,
if Phil cared for it. That was before the war, which upset so many
plans. In his capacity of assistant departmental secretary, Phil had
nothing particular to do, and an ample allowance from his father to
spend in his leisure time. Many young men in these circumstances--thrown
on their own resources in London with plenty of money to spend--would
have lost no time in "going wrong," but Phil's temperament preserved him
from those temptations which so many young well-born men find
irresistible. He had a disdain for the stage, he did not care for chorus
girls, he disliked horse-racing, and he did not drink.
He sought distractions in another way, and rumours of those distractions
filtered in due course down to his family home in Sussex. It was
whispered that Phil was "queer"--that his old passion for petting
reptiles and lower animal forms had merely been diverted into another
channel. He had become a Socialist, and had been seen consorting with
the lower orders at East End meetings with other people sufficiently
respectable to have known better. It was even stated that he had
supported an Irish revolutionary countess (who had discovered the first
Socialist in Jesus Christ, and wanted to disestablish the Church of
England) by "taking the chair" for her when she announced these tenets
to the rabble in Hyde Park one fine Sunday afternoon. A Heredith a
socialist and nonconformist! These were bitter blows to Miss Heredith, a
woman soaked in family and Church tradition, but she bore the shock with
uncompromising front, and was able to make the shortcomings of Phil's