The Hand in the Dark
"Is it...?" her voice dropped to nothingness, but her frightened eyes,
travelling fearfully into the shadowy corners of the big bedroom,
completed the unspoken sentence.
Musard understood her, and bowed his head silently. Then, turning his
face to the door, he beckoned Tufnell to approach. The old servant
advanced tremblingly into the room, vainly endeavouring to compose his
horror-stricken face into a semblance of the impassive mask of the
well-trained English servant.
"Go downstairs and get me some hot water," said Musard quietly. "Look
sharp--and bring it yourself. I do not want any maidservants here to go
into hysterics."
Tufnell hastened away. Musard resumed his place at the bedside, silently
watching the figure on the bed. There was blood on his hands and
clothes.
"Is there no hope? Can nothing be done to save her?" whispered Miss
Heredith.
"Nothing. The lung is penetrated. She is bleeding to death."
His quick eye noticed a change in the figure on the bed. The face
quivered ever so slightly, and the blue eyes half opened. Then the
stricken girl made an effort as though she wanted to sit up, but a
sudden convulsion seized her, and she fell back on her pillow, with one
little white hand, glittering with rings, flung above her head, as if
she died in the act of invoking the retribution of a God of justice on
the assassin who had blotted out her young life in agony and horror.
"She is dead," said Musard gently. "This is a terrible business, and our
first duty is to try and capture the monster who committed this foul
crime."
They stood there in silence for a moment, looking earnestly at one
another. Outside, somewhere in the woodland, there sounded the haunting
gush of a night-bird's song, shivering through the quietness like a
silver bell. The sweet note finished in a frightened squawk, and was
followed by the cry of an owl. The song had betrayed the singer.
Musard turned away from Miss Heredith, and walked restlessly around the
bedroom, scanning the heavy pieces of furniture and the faded hangings,
and peering into every nook and corner, as if seeking for the murderer's
place of concealment. A roomy old wardrobe near the window attracted his
eye, and he stopped in front of it and flung its doors open. It
contained some articles of the dead girl's apparel--costumes and
frocks--hanging on hooks.
His eye wandered to the window, shrouded in the heavy folds of the
damask curtains. He walked over to it, and drew the curtains aside. The
bottom half of the window was wide open.
Miss Heredith, who was following his movements closely, gave vent to a
faint cry of surprise.
"The window!" she exclaimed.
Musard looked round inquiringly.
"The window--what of it?" he asked.
"It was closed when I came in here before dinner to see Violet."
"You are quite sure of that?"
"Oh, yes! At least, I think so."
"I do not understand you."
"I mean that the atmosphere of the room was heavy and thick, as if the
window had not been opened all day."
"It has been a still, close day."
"But Violet never had a window open if she could help it. She disliked
fresh air. She was always afraid of catching cold."
Musard looked out of the window into the velvet darkness of the night.
"If the window was closed before, the murderer has opened it and escaped
through it," he said.
"It is hardly possible."
"Why not?" He turned round and faced her.
"The ground falls on that side. The window is nearly twenty feet from
the ground. And--there is the moat to be crossed. There is no bridge on
that side of the house, and this window opens on the garden. Don't you
remember?"
"I remember now."
"I thought you would."
"Still----" Musard broke off abruptly, and walked away from the window.
Near the window stood the dressing-table. The swing oval mirror
reflected its contents--ivory brushes, silver hand mirrors, all the
costly bijoutry of a refined woman's toilet. Among them stood Violet's
silver jewel-case. Musard strode over and examined the case. It was
locked.
"This ought to be put away," he said.
"I was coming up to get it when I heard the scream," whispered his
companion.
"Perhaps you will take charge of it now," he said, placing it in her
hands. As he did so there flashed across his mind the cynical
appropriateness of the old proverb about locking doors after stolen
steeds.
There was a restraint and lack of spontaneity about their conversation
of which both were acutely conscious. The note was forced, as though
from too great an effort to strike the right key. A curious
psychological change had swept over both since they stood together by
the bedside of the dying woman. It had come with the entry of death.
They conversed hurriedly and guardedly, as if they mistrusted each
other. In each of them two entities were now apparent--a surface
consciousness, which talked and acted mechanically, and a secondary
inner consciousness, watchful, and fearful of misinterpretation of the
spoken word. The faculties which make up the human mind are different
and complex, and mysteriously blended. It may be that when tragedy
upsets the frail structure of human life the brute instincts of
watchfulness and self-preservation come uppermost, guarding against
chance suspicion, or the loud word of accusation. Perhaps through
Musard's mind was passing the thought of the strange manner in which the
murder had been committed, and how he, by detaining everybody downstairs
at the dinner table while he told his story had been an instrument in
its accomplishment.
The situation was terminated by the arrival of Tufnell with some hot
water. Almost on his heels came the young men who had been searching the
house. Musard was relieved by their return, though his impassive face
did not reveal his feelings. Miss Heredith left the room with Tufnell,
taking the jewel-case with her. Musard met the young men at the
threshold.
The tall young officer with the sunburnt face, Major Gardner, informed
Musard that they had completed a search of the house from top to bottom,
but had found nothing. They had also searched the grounds, without
result.
"Mrs. Heredith is dead," Musard gravely informed them. "She died while
you have been searching for the miscreant who fired the shot we heard at
the dinner table. Gentlemen, he must be found. It seems hardly possible
that he has succeeded in getting clear away in so short a time."
"We have searched the place from top to bottom," remarked one of the
young men.
"It is a strange, rambling old place, and difficult to explore unless
you know it thoroughly," said Musard.
"We have done the best we could."
"I do not doubt it, but there are many old nooks and corners in which a
man might hide."
"His first thought, after such a dreadful crime, would be to get away as
quickly as possible," said Major Gardner.
"But how did he escape? Certainly not by the staircase, because we
rushed out from the dining-room directly we heard the shot, and we
should have caught him on his way down."
"Is there not a window in the bedroom? Could he not have escaped that
way?"
"The window is nearly twenty feet from the ground."
"An athletic man might jump that distance," remarked Major Gardner
thoughtfully.
"I still think it possible he may be concealed about the premises,"
replied Musard. "There is an old unused staircase at the end of this
passage, which opens on the south side of the moat-house. Did you find
it? It shuts with a door at the top, and might easily have escaped your
notice."
"I opened the door and went down the staircase," said the young flying
officer. "Nobody could have escaped that way. The door at the bottom is
locked, and there is no key."
The scared face of a maidservant at that moment appeared at the head of
the stairs.
"If you please, sir," she said, addressing Musard, "one of the gentlemen
downstairs sent me up to tell you that he has been trying for the last
ten minutes to ring up the police, but he can't get an answer."
"Send the butler to me at once."
The maid disappeared, and in another moment the butler came hurriedly up
the stairs.
"Tufnell," said Musard quickly, "you must go at once to the village and
get Sergeant Lumbe and Dr. Holmes. Hurry off, and be as quick as you
can. And now, gentlemen," he added, turning to the others, "let us go
downstairs. While we are waiting for the police I will help you make
another search of the house and grounds. The murderer may escape while
we stand here talking. We have wasted too much valuable time already."
CHAPTER VI
The butler left the moat-house at a brisk pace which became almost a run
after he crossed the moat bridge. His way across the park lay along the
carriage drive, bordered by an avenue of tall trees, between an
ornamental lake and some thick game covers, and then through the outer
fields to the village.
It was a soft and mellow September night, with a violet sky overhead
sprinkled with silver. But a touch of autumn decay was in the air, which
was heavy and still, and a white mist was rising in thick, sluggish
clouds from the green, stagnant surface of the lake. The wood was veiled
in blackness, in which the trunks of the trees were just visible,
standing in straight, regular rows, like soldiers at attention.
Tufnell hurried along this lonely spot, casting timid glances around
him. He was not a nervous man at ordinary times, but like many country
people, he had a vein of superstition running through his phlegmatic
temperament, and the events of the night had swept away his calmness.
The croaking of the frogs and the whispering of the trees filled him
with uneasiness, and he kept glancing backwards and forwards from the
lake to the wood, as though he feared the murderer might suddenly appear
from the misty surface of the one or the dim recesses of the other.
He had almost reached the confines of the wood when he was startled by a
loud whirr, which he recognized as the flight of a covey of partridges
from a cover close at hand. What had startled them? Glancing fearfully
around him he saw, or thought he saw, the crouching figure of a man in
one of the bypaths of the wood, partly hidden by the thick branches
which stretched across the path a short distance from the drive.
Tufnell's first impulse was to take to his heels, but he was saved from
this ignominious act by the timely recollection that he was an
Englishman, whose glorious privilege it is to be born without fear. So
he stood still, and in a voice which had something of a quaver in it,
called out:
"Who is there?"
In the wood a bird gave a single call like the note of a flute, the wind
murmured in the tall avenue of trees, a frog splashed in the still
waters of the lake, but there was no sound of human life. Glancing
cautiously into the wood, the butler could no longer see anything
crouching in the path. The man--if it had been a man--had vanished.
"It may have been my fancy," muttered the butler, speaking aloud as
though to reassure himself by hearing his own voice.
He walked quickly onward, and was relieved when he had left the wood
behind him, and could see the faint lights of the village twinkling
beyond the fields. Crossing a footbridge which spanned a narrow stream
at the bottom of the meadows, Tufnell climbed over a stile, and walked
along the road on the other side until he reached a cottage standing
some distance back from the road at the summit of a gentle slope.
Tufnell ascended the slope and knocked loudly at the cottage door.
After the lapse of a few moments the door was opened by a woman with a
candle in her hand--a stout countrywoman of forty, with a curved nose,
prominent teeth, and hair screwed up in a tight knob at the back of her