The Hand in the Dark
watched and waited for an opportunity."
Colwyn nodded as though dismissing the subject, but the butler lingered.
Perhaps it was his realization of the implication of his last words
which gave him the courage to broach the matter which had been occupying
his mind.
"Might I ask you a question, sir?" he hesitatingly commenced.
"What is it?"
"It's about the young woman who has been arrested, sir. Is there any
likelihood that she will be proved innocent?"
"You must have some particular reason for asking me that question,
Tufnell."
"Well, sir, I am aware that Mr. Philip thinks her innocent."
"So you told me when I was down here before, but that is not the reason
for your question. You had better be frank."
"I wish to be frank, sir, but I am in a difficulty. I have learnt
something which seems to have a bearing on this young woman's position,
which I think you ought to know, but I have to consider my duty to the
family. It was something--something I overheard."
"If it throws the slightest light on this crime it is your duty to
reveal it," the detective responded gravely. "You are aware that I have
been called into the case by Mr. Heredith because he is not convinced of
Hazel Rath's guilt."
"Quite so, sir. For that reason I have been trying to make up my mind to
confide in you. When you have heard what I have to say you will
understand how hard it is. It relates to Mr. Philip, sir. Since his
illness I have been worried about his health, because he is so changed
that I feared he might go mad with grief. He hardly speaks a word to
anybody, but sometimes I have seen him muttering to himself. The night
before he went away with Mr. Musard he did not come down to dinner. Miss
Heredith was going to send a servant to his room in case he had not
heard the gong, but I offered to go myself. When I reached his bedroom,
I heard the most awful sobbing possible to imagine. Then, through the
partly open door, I heard Mr. Philip call on God Almighty to make
somebody suffer as he had suffered. He mentioned a name--"
"Whose name?"
The butler looked fearfully towards the closed door, as though he
suspected eavesdroppers, and then brought it out with an effort:
"Captain Nepcote, sir."
Colwyn had expected that name. Nepcote's statement on the previous night
had led him to believe that Philip Heredith had suspected Nepcote's
relations with his wife, but could not bring himself to disclose that
when he sought assistance. It was Colwyn's experience that nothing was
so rare as complete frankness from people who came to him for help. It
was part of the ingrained reserve of the English mind, the sensitive
dread of gossip or scandal, to keep something back at such moments. The
average person was so swaddled by limitations of intelligence as to be
incapable of understanding that suppressed facts were bound to come to
light sooner or later if they affected the matter of the partial
confidence. Of course, there was sometimes the alternative of a
reticence which was intended to mislead. If that entered into the
present case it was an additional complication.
"What interpretation did you place on these overheard words?" he asked
the butler. "Did you suppose that they referred to the murder?"
"Well, sir--" the butler hesitated, as if at a loss to express himself.
"It was not for me to draw conclusions, sir, but I could not help
thinking over what I had heard. I know Mr. Philip believed the young
woman to be innocent, and--Mrs. Heredith was shot with Captain Nepcote's
revolver."
"I see. You had no other thought in your mind?"
"No, sir. What else could I think?"
The butler's meek tones conveyed such an inflection of surprise that
Colwyn was convinced that he, at all events, had no suspicion of the
secret between Mrs. Heredith and Nepcote.
"Your confidence is quite safe with me, Tufnell," the detective added
after a pause. "But I cannot answer your question at present."
"Very well, sir." The butler turned to the sideboard again without
further remark, and left the dining-room a few minutes later.
Colwyn went to his room shortly afterwards, and occupied himself for a
couple of hours in going through his notes of the case. It was his
intention to defer his visit to the bedroom in the left wing until the
household had retired, so as to be free from the curious speculations
and tittle-tattle of the servants.
The moat-house kept country hours, and when he had finished his writing
and descended from his room he found the ground floor in darkness. A
clock somewhere in the stillness chimed solemnly as he walked swiftly
across the hall. Its strokes finished proclaiming the hour of eleven as
he mounted the staircase of the left wing.
The loneliness of the deserted wing was like a moving shuddering thing
in the desolation of the silence and the darkness. It was as though the
echoing corridor and the empty rooms were whispering, with the appeal of
the forgotten, for friendly human companionship and light to disperse
the horror of sinister shapes and brooding shadows which lurked in the
abode of murder. Colwyn entered the bedroom where Mrs. Heredith had been
murdered, and by the ray of his electric torch crossed to the bedside
and switched on the light.
He stood there motionless for a while, trying to picture the manner and
the method of the murder. If Hazel Rath had spoken the truth, the
murderer had stood where he was now standing when the girl entered the
room in the darkness. Had the light from the corridor, streaming through
the open door, revealed her approaching figure to him? How long had he
been there in the darkness, waiting for the moment to kill the woman on
the bed?
If Nepcote was the murderer he must have entered almost immediately
before, because he could not have reached the moat-house until nearly
half-past seven, and the shot was fired at twenty minutes to eight. How
had he known that Mrs. Heredith was there alone, in the darkness? A
secret assignation might have been the explanation if the time had been
after, instead of before the household's departure for the evening. But
even the most wanton pair of lovers would hesitate to indulge their
passion while the risk of chance discovery and exposure was so great.
As he pondered over the two stories Colwyn did not attempt to shut his
eyes to the fact that Hazel, on her own showing, fitted into the crime
more completely than Nepcote. She had ample opportunities to slip into
the room and murder the woman who had supplanted her. She had really
strengthened the case against herself by the damaging admission that she
had sought Mrs. Heredith's room in secret just before the crime was
committed. Her explanation of the scream and the shot was so improbable
as to sound incredible. It was not to be wondered that Scotland Yard
preferred to believe that it was the apparition of the frantic girl,
revolver in hand, which had caused her affrighted victim to utter one
wild scream before the shot was fired which ended her life.
But Colwyn had never allowed himself to be swayed too much by
circumstance. Appearances were not always a safe guide in the
complicated tangle of human affairs. Things were forever happening which
left experience wide-eyed with astonishment. The contradictions of human
nature persisted in all human acts. In this moat-house mystery, the
grimmest paradox of his brilliant career, Colwyn was determined not to
accept the presumption of the facts until he had satisfied himself that
no other interpretation was possible. His subtle mind had been
challenged by a finger-post of doubt in the written evidence; a
finger-post so faint as to be passed unnoticed by other eyes, but
sufficiently warning to his clearer vision to cause him to pause midway
in the broad track of circumstantial evidence and look around him for a
concealed path.
It was the point he had mentioned to Caldew at his chambers after
reading the copy of the coroner's depositions which Merrington had lent
him. While perusing them he had been struck by a curious fact. The
medical evidence stated that the cause of death was a small punctured
wound not larger than a threepenny piece, but added the information that
the hole in the gown of the dead woman was much larger, about the
diameter of a half-crown. The Government pathologist had formed the
opinion that the revolver must have been held very close to the body to
account for the larger scorched hole. That inference was obvious, but
Colwyn saw more in the two holes than that. It seemed to him that the
live ring of flame caused by the close-range shot must have been
extinguished by the murderer, or it would have continued to smoulder and
expand in an ever-widening circle. And that thought led to another of
much greater significance. The shot had been fired at close range to
ensure accuracy of aim or deaden the sound of the report. But, whichever
the murderer's intention, the second purpose had been achieved,
intentionally or unintentionally. How had it happened, then, that the
sound of the report had penetrated so loudly downstairs?
As Colwyn moved about the room, examining everything with his quick
appraising eye, he noticed that the position of the bed had been changed
since he last saw it. The head was a trifle askew, and nearer to the
side of the wall than the foot. The difference was slight, but Colwyn
could see a portion of the fireplace which had not been visible before.
The bed stood almost in the centre of the room, the foot in line with
the door, and the head about three or four feet from the chimney-piece.
In noting this rather unusual position during his last visit, Colwyn had
formed the conclusion that it had been chosen for the benefit of fresh
air and light during the summer months, as the window, which looked over
the terraced gardens, was nearer that end of the room.
Colwyn approached the head of the bed and bent down to examine the
bedposts. A slight groove in the deep pile carpet showed clearly enough
that the bed had been pushed back a few inches. The change in position
was so trifling that it might have been attributed to the act of a
servant in sweeping the room if a closer examination had not revealed
the continuance of the groove under the bed. The inference was
unmistakable: the bed, in the first instance, had been pushed much
farther back on its castors, and then almost, but not quite, restored to
its original position.
Had the bed been moved to gain access to the fireplace? He could see no
reason for such a proceeding. It was too early in the autumn to need
fires, and the room had not been occupied since the murder. In any case,
the appearance of the grate showed that no fire had been lit. There was
ample space to pass between the head of the bed and the fireplace,
though perhaps not much room for movement. On his last visit Colwyn had
looked into this space to test its possibilities of concealment. In the
quickened interest of his new discovery he pushed the bed out of the way
and examined it again.
The first thing that caught his eye was a scratch on the polished
surface of the register grate. It looked to be of recent origin, and for
that reason suggested to Colwyn's mind that the bed had been moved by
somebody who wanted more room in front of the grate. For what purpose?
He turned his attention to the grate itself in the hope of obtaining an
answer to that question.
The grate was empty, and in the housewifely way a sheet of white paper
had been laid on the bottom bars to catch occasional flakes of soot from
the chimney. But there were no burnt papers or charred fragments to
suggest that the grate had recently been used. Dissatisfied and
perplexed, Colwyn was about to rise to his feet when it chanced that his
eyes, glancing into a corner, lighted on something tiny and metallic in