The Mysterious Affair at Styles
days or dates. His watchful and attentive manner never varied. From the
very first I took a firm and rooted dislike to him, and I flatter
myself that my first judgments are usually fairly shrewd.
Presently Mrs. Inglethorp turned to give some instructions about
letters to Evelyn Howard, and her husband addressed me in his
painstaking voice:
“Is soldiering your regular profession, Mr. Hastings?”
“No, before the war I was in Lloyd’s.”
“And you will return there after it is over?”
“Perhaps. Either that or a fresh start altogether.”
Mary Cavendish leant forward.
“What would you really choose as a profession, if you could just
consult your inclination?”
“Well, that depends.”
“No secret hobby?” she asked. “Tell me—you’re drawn to something?
Everyone is—usually something absurd.”
“You’ll laugh at me.”
She smiled.
“Perhaps.”
“Well, I’ve always had a secret hankering to be a detective!”
“The real thing—Scotland Yard? Or Sherlock Holmes?”
“Oh, Sherlock Holmes by all means. But really, seriously, I am awfully
drawn to it. I came across a man in Belgium once, a very famous
detective, and he quite inflamed me. He was a marvellous little fellow.
He used to say that all good detective work was a mere matter of
method. My system is based on his—though of course I have progressed
rather further. He was a funny little man, a great dandy, but
wonderfully clever.”
“Like a good detective story myself,” remarked Miss Howard. “Lots of
nonsense written, though. Criminal discovered in last chapter. Everyone
dumbfounded. Real crime—you’d know at once.”
“There have been a great number of undiscovered crimes,” I argued.
“Don’t mean the police, but the people that are right in it. The
family. You couldn’t really hoodwink them. They’d know.”
“Then,” I said, much amused, “you think that if you were mixed up in a
crime, say a murder, you’d be able to spot the murderer right off?”
“Of course I should. Mightn’t be able to prove it to a pack of lawyers.
But I’m certain I’d know. I’d feel it in my fingertips if he came near
me.”
“It might be a ‘she’,” I suggested.
“Might. But murder’s a violent crime. Associate it more with a man.”
“Not in a case of poisoning.” Mrs. Cavendish’s clear voice startled me.
“Dr. Bauerstein was saying yesterday that, owing to the general
ignorance of the more uncommon poisons among the medical profession,
there were probably countless cases of poisoning quite unsuspected.”
“Why, Mary, what a gruesome conversation!” cried Mrs. Inglethorp. “It
makes me feel as if a goose were walking over my grave. Oh, there’s
Cynthia!”
A young girl in V.A.D. uniform ran lightly across the lawn.
“Why, Cynthia, you are late to-day. This is Mr. Hastings—Miss Murdoch.”
Cynthia Murdoch was a fresh-looking young creature, full of life and
vigour. She tossed off her little V.A.D. cap, and I admired the great
loose waves of her auburn hair, and the smallness and whiteness of the
hand she held out to claim her tea. With dark eyes and eyelashes she
would have been a beauty.
She flung herself down on the ground beside John, and as I handed her a
plate of sandwiches she smiled up at me.
“Sit down here on the grass, do. It’s ever so much nicer.”
I dropped down obediently.
“You work at Tadminster, don’t you, Miss Murdoch?”
She nodded.
“For my sins.”
“Do they bully you, then?” I asked, smiling.
“I should like to see them!” cried Cynthia with dignity.
“I have got a cousin who is nursing,” I remarked. “And she is terrified
of ‘Sisters’.”
“I don’t wonder. Sisters _are_, you know, Mr. Hastings. They simp-ly
_are_! You’ve no idea! But I’m not a nurse, thank heaven, I work in the
dispensary.”
“How many people do you poison?” I asked, smiling.
Cynthia smiled too.
“Oh, hundreds!” she said.
“Cynthia,” called Mrs. Inglethorp, “do you think you could write a few
notes for me?”
“Certainly, Aunt Emily.”
She jumped up promptly, and something in her manner reminded me that
her position was a dependent one, and that Mrs. Inglethorp, kind as she
might be in the main, did not allow her to forget it.
My hostess turned to me.
“John will show you your room. Supper is at half-past seven. We have
given up late dinner for some time now. Lady Tadminster, our Member’s
wife—she was the late Lord Abbotsbury’s daughter—does the same. She
agrees with me that one must set an example of economy. We are quite a
war household; nothing is wasted here—every scrap of waste paper, even,
is saved and sent away in sacks.”
I expressed my appreciation, and John took me into the house and up the
broad staircase, which forked right and left half-way to different
wings of the building. My room was in the left wing, and looked out
over the park.
John left me, and a few minutes later I saw him from my window walking
slowly across the grass arm in arm with Cynthia Murdoch. I heard Mrs.
Inglethorp call “Cynthia” impatiently, and the girl started and ran
back to the house. At the same moment, a man stepped out from the
shadow of a tree and walked slowly in the same direction. He looked
about forty, very dark with a melancholy clean-shaven face. Some
violent emotion seemed to be mastering him. He looked up at my window
as he passed, and I recognized him, though he had changed much in the
fifteen years that had elapsed since we last met. It was John’s younger
brother, Lawrence Cavendish. I wondered what it was that had brought
that singular expression to his face.
Then I dismissed him from my mind, and returned to the contemplation of
my own affairs.
The evening passed pleasantly enough; and I dreamed that night of that
enigmatical woman, Mary Cavendish.
The next morning dawned bright and sunny, and I was full of the
anticipation of a delightful visit.
I did not see Mrs. Cavendish until lunch-time, when she volunteered to
take me for a walk, and we spent a charming afternoon roaming in the
woods, returning to the house about five.
As we entered the large hall, John beckoned us both into the
smoking-room. I saw at once by his face that something disturbing had
occurred. We followed him in, and he shut the door after us.
“Look here, Mary, there’s the deuce of a mess. Evie’s had a row with
Alfred Inglethorp, and she’s off.”
“Evie? Off?”
John nodded gloomily.
“Yes; you see she went to the mater, and—Oh,—here’s Evie herself.”
Miss Howard entered. Her lips were set grimly together, and she carried
a small suit-case. She looked excited and determined, and slightly on
the defensive.
“At any rate,” she burst out, “I’ve spoken my mind!”
“My dear Evelyn,” cried Mrs. Cavendish, “this can’t be true!”
Miss Howard nodded grimly.
“True enough! Afraid I said some things to Emily she won’t forget or
forgive in a hurry. Don’t mind if they’ve only sunk in a bit. Probably
water off a duck’s back, though. I said right out: ‘You’re an old
woman, Emily, and there’s no fool like an old fool. The man’s twenty
years younger than you, and don’t you fool yourself as to what he
married you for. Money! Well, don’t let him have too much of it. Farmer
Raikes has got a very pretty young wife. Just ask your Alfred how much
time he spends over there.’ She was very angry. Natural! I went on,
‘I’m going to warn you, whether you like it or not. That man would as
soon murder you in your bed as look at you. He’s a bad lot. You can say
what you like to me, but remember what I’ve told you. He’s a bad lot!’”
“What did she say?”
Miss Howard made an extremely expressive grimace.
“‘Darling Alfred’—‘dearest Alfred’—‘wicked calumnies’ —‘wicked
lies’—‘wicked woman’—to accuse her ‘dear husband!’ The sooner I left
her house the better. So I’m off.”
“But not now?”
“This minute!”
For a moment we sat and stared at her. Finally John Cavendish, finding
his persuasions of no avail, went off to look up the trains. His wife
followed him, murmuring something about persuading Mrs. Inglethorp to
think better of it.
As she left the room, Miss Howard’s face changed. She leant towards me
eagerly.
“Mr. Hastings, you’re honest. I can trust you?”
I was a little startled. She laid her hand on my arm, and sank her
voice to a whisper.
“Look after her, Mr. Hastings. My poor Emily. They’re a lot of
sharks—all of them. Oh, I know what I’m talking about. There isn’t one
of them that’s not hard up and trying to get money out of her. I’ve
protected her as much as I could. Now I’m out of the way, they’ll
impose upon her.”
“Of course, Miss Howard,” I said, “I’ll do everything I can, but I’m
sure you’re excited and overwrought.”
She interrupted me by slowly shaking her forefinger.
“Young man, trust me. I’ve lived in the world rather longer than you
have. All I ask you is to keep your eyes open. You’ll see what I mean.”
The throb of the motor came through the open window, and Miss Howard
rose and moved to the door. John’s voice sounded outside. With her hand
on the handle, she turned her head over her shoulder, and beckoned to
me.
“Above all, Mr. Hastings, watch that devil—her husband!”
There was no time for more. Miss Howard was swallowed up in an eager
chorus of protests and good-byes. The Inglethorps did not appear.
As the motor drove away, Mrs. Cavendish suddenly detached herself from
the group, and moved across the drive to the lawn to meet a tall
bearded man who had been evidently making for the house. The colour
rose in her cheeks as she held out her hand to him.
“Who is that?” I asked sharply, for instinctively I distrusted the man.
“That’s Dr. Bauerstein,” said John shortly.
“And who is Dr. Bauerstein?”
“He’s staying in the village doing a rest cure, after a bad nervous
breakdown. He’s a London specialist; a very clever man—one of the
greatest living experts on poisons, I believe.”
“And he’s a great friend of Mary’s,” put in Cynthia, the irrepressible.
John Cavendish frowned and changed the subject.
“Come for a stroll, Hastings. This has been a most rotten business. She
always had a rough tongue, but there is no stauncher friend in England
than Evelyn Howard.”
He took the path through the plantation, and we walked down to the
village through the woods which bordered one side of the estate.
As we passed through one of the gates on our way home again, a pretty
young woman of gipsy type coming in the opposite direction bowed and
smiled.
“That’s a pretty girl,” I remarked appreciatively.
John’s face hardened.
“That is Mrs. Raikes.”
“The one that Miss Howard——”
“Exactly,” said John, with rather unnecessary abruptness.
I thought of the white-haired old lady in the big house, and that vivid
wicked little face that had just smiled into ours, and a vague chill of
foreboding crept over me. I brushed it aside.
“Styles is really a glorious old place,” I said to John.
He nodded rather gloomily.
“Yes, it’s a fine property. It’ll be mine some day—should be mine now
by rights, if my father had only made a decent will. And then I
shouldn’t be so damned hard up as I am now.”
“Hard up, are you?”
“My dear Hastings, I don’t mind telling you that I’m at my wits’ end
for money.”
“Couldn’t your brother help you?”
“Lawrence? He’s gone through every penny he ever had, publishing rotten
verses in fancy bindings. No, we’re an impecunious lot. My mother’s
always been awfully good to us, I must say. That is, up to now. Since
her marriage, of course——” he broke off, frowning.
For the first time I felt that, with Evelyn Howard, something
indefinable had gone from the atmosphere. Her presence had spelt
security. Now that security was removed—and the air seemed rife with
suspicion. The sinister face of Dr. Bauerstein recurred to me
unpleasantly. A vague suspicion of everyone and everything filled my