The Hand in the Dark Part 19

"Where was she?"

"She went across to the village to see her mother, who is ill."

"With your permission, I presume?"

"Yes."

"Why did you permit her to go?"

"The girl's mother was very ill, and needed her daughter."

"You let her go, although I had told you I wanted to question all the servants?"

"No, it was before you told me that I gave Milly permission to have the morning off," responded Mrs. Rath quietly.

"Is that the true explanation?"

"Yes."

"Is it as true as your other statement?"

"What other statement?"

"The statement you made to me this morning when you a.s.sured me your daughter had left this house to return to her employment at Stading?" said Merrington, with a cruel smile. "That wasn't true, you know. How do you describe that untruth? As a temporary aberration of memory, or what?"

The housekeeper looked up with swift, startled eyes, and her thin hand involuntarily clutched the edge of the table in front of her, but she did not speak.

"You lied about that, you know," continued Merrington. "I've found out your daughter has been in the house all day. Why did you tell me a lie? Come, out with it!"

"You are too abrupt, Merrington," said Captain Stanhill, interposing with unexpected firmness. "You have frightened her. Come, Mrs. Rath," he said gently, "can you not give us some explanation as to why you misled us this morning?"

"Because I didn't want my daughter to be drawn into this dreadful thing," she exclaimed wildly. "I suppose it was very foolish of me," she added, in a more composed voice, as though rea.s.sured by the kindly look in Captain Stanhill's eyes, "but I really didn't think it mattered. My daughter knew nothing about the murder and as she is highly strung I did not want her to be upset."

"Where was your daughter last night when the murder was committed?" asked Merrington.

"In my room."

"Did either of you hear the scream or the shot?"

"No, my rooms are a long way from the left wing, and we were sitting with the door shut."

"Then when did you learn about the murder?"

"Very soon after it happened. One of the maidservants came and told me."

"And you say that your daughter was with you at the time, and had been with you a considerable time before?"

"Yes."

"I think that will do, Mrs. Rath, I have given you every opportunity, but you still persist in telling falsehoods. Your daughter was seen walking up the hall last night in the direction of the left wing shortly before the murder was committed. The person who saw her was the maid Milly Saker. Was that the real reason why you gave Milly leave of absence to visit her mother this morning-so that she should not tell us what she knew?"

"It is not true," gasped the housekeeper. "My daughter was not out of my rooms last night, I a.s.sure you that is the truth."

"I wouldn't believe you on your oath," retorted Merrington. "Lumbe, go and tell Caldew to bring in the girl."

CHAPTER XIII

The girl who entered the room a moment later was tall and graceful, with a yearning expression in her soft dark eyes, as though in search of a happiness which had been denied her by Fate. Her appearance was one of unusual refinement. She had not a trace of the coa.r.s.ened blowzy look so common in English country girls; there was nothing of rustic lumpishness in her slim figure, and there was more than mere prettiness in her exquisite small features, her thick dark hair, her clear white skin with a tracery of blue veins in the temples. Her high-bridged nose and firm chin suggested some force of character, but that suggestion was counteracted by her wistful tender mouth, with drooping underlip. The face, on the whole, was a paradoxical one, containing elements of strength and weakness, and the eyes were the index to a strange pa.s.sionate nature.

She advanced into the room quietly, with a swift glance, immediately veiled by drooped lids, at the faces of the police officials who were awaiting her. When she reached the far end of the table at which they were seated she stopped and stood with her hands clasped loosely in front of her, as though waiting to be questioned.

"Please sit down, Miss Rath," said Captain Stanhill politely. "We wish to ask you a few questions."

The girl seated herself in a chair some distance away from her mother, and this time she surveyed the men before her with an air of indifference which was obviously simulated.

But again she quickly dropped her eyes, for Merrington was staring at her with a look of amazement, as though confronted with a familiar presence whose ident.i.ty he could not recall. He glanced from Hazel to her mother, and his eyes fastened themselves fiercely on the housekeeper with the satisfaction of a man who had solved an elusive puzzle.

"So we have met before, Mrs. Rath," he said. "You are-"

"No, no! Please keep silent in front of my daughter," broke in the housekeeper hurriedly.

"I was not mistaken. I remembered this woman's face this morning, but I could not then recall where I had seen her before," pursued Merrington, turning to Captain Stanhill and speaking with a sort of reflective cruelty. "Her daughter's face supplies the clue. She is the image of her mother as I remember her when she stood her trial at Old Bailey fifteen years ago. She was tried for-"

"I beg of you not to say it!" Mrs. Rath started from her seat, and looked wildly around as though seeking some avenue of escape from a threatened disaster.

"Is it necessary to go into this, Merrington?" asked Captain Stanhill in his mild tones, glancing from the excited woman to his colleague with the troubled consciousness that he was a.s.sisting in a scene which was distasteful to him.

"Of course it is necessary if we want to get at the truth of this case," retorted Merrington. "You needn't be concerned on Mrs. Rath's account," he went on, with a kind of savage, disdainful irony. "A woman who has been tried as an accessory to murder is not likely to be squeamish. Her name is not Rath. It is Theberton-Mary Theberton. She and her husband were tried at Old Bailey fifteen years ago for the murder of a man named Bridges. The trial made a great stir at the time. It was known as 'The Death Signal Case'."

Caldew looked at the housekeeper with a new interest. He readily recalled the notorious case mentioned by Merrington. Theberton was an Ess.e.x miller, who, having discovered that his young wife was in the habit of signalling his absence to Bridges by means of a candle placed in her window, had compelled her to entice him to the cottage by the signal, and was then supposed to have murdered him by throwing him into the mill dam. But though Bridges was seen entering the cottage and was not seen afterwards, the charge of murder failed because the detectives were unable to find his body. Theberton protested his innocence; Mary Theberton said her husband locked her in her room before admitting Bridges, and she knew nothing of what took place between the two men.

There was much popular sympathy with her during the trial as the belief gained ground that the relations between her and Bridges were innocent, though indiscreet; the outcome of a craving for sympathy which had led an unhappy young wife to confide her troubles to a former schoolfellow. She was the daughter of an architect, and had been reared in refinement and educated well, but she had been disowned by her father for marrying beneath her. Her husband ill-used her, and her story was that she had sought the a.s.sistance of an old schoolfellow in order to go to London to earn a living for herself and her little daughter. When the trial was over Theberton emigrated, and his wife disappeared, although there was some talk of putting on foot a public subscription for her. This was the end of "The Death Signal Case," for the mystery of the disappearance of Bridges was never solved.

Caldew wondered by what strange turn of Fortune's wheel the woman before him had come to be housekeeper at the moat-house. It was certain that Miss Heredith knew nothing of the black page in her past, because Miss Heredith, in spite of her kind heart and rigid church principles, was the last person to appoint anybody with a tainted name to a position of trust in her household. She was too proud of the family name to do such a thing. The fact that the housekeeper had held the post so long without discovery was proof of the ease with which ident.i.ty could be safely concealed from everything except chance. Although her nervous demeanour suggested that she had been walking on a razor edge of perpetual suspense in her quiet haven, ever dreading detection, it seemed to Caldew that she might have gone undiscovered to her grave but for a trick of Fate in selecting Superintendent Merrington to investigate the moat-house murder. Fate, after its cruel fas.h.i.+on, had left her on her razor edge for quite a long while before toppling her over, and Caldew reflected that he had been made the instrument of her fall.

But what lay beyond the exposure of the housekeeper's ident.i.ty? Why had she deceived Merrington about her daughter's presence in the house? Was it only the fear that Merrington would recognize her in her early likeness to her daughter, or were her falsehoods intended to deceive the detectives about Hazel's movements at the time of the murder? What would the girl say? The situation was full of strange possibilities.

While these reflections were pa.s.sing through Caldew's head there was silence in the room, broken only by the clock on the mantelpiece ticking loudly, with pert indifference to human affairs. Merrington, after dragging the hidden and forgotten tragedy to light, remained quiet, watchfully noting the effect on mother and daughter. The mother stood without a word or gesture, her hand stiffened in arrested protest, like a woman frozen into silence. The girl's look was directed towards her mother with the fixity of gaze of a sleeper awakened in the horror of a bad dream. At least in their stillness they were both in accord. Then Hazel glanced wonderingly at the faces of the others in the room, with the fatigued indifference of a returning consciousness seeking to regain its bearings. This phase pa.s.sed, and in the sudden wild burst of tears which followed was the belated realization of the meaning of her mother's exposure; the shame, the agony, the disgrace which it implied. With a quick movement she rose from her seat, walked across to her mother, and caught hold of her hand.

"Mother!" she said.

But her mother turned away from her, and, sinking in her chair, covered her face in her hands with a shamed gesture, like a woman cast forth naked in the light of day.

"Never mind your mother just now," said Merrington, as the girl bent over as though to sooth her. "Please return to your seat and answer my questions."

Hazel turned round at the sound of his voice, but stood where she was, regarding him anxiously.

"You stayed here last night with your mother, I understand?" Merrington continued.