Wyllard's Weird

"No, dear. I mean that he is a man who has spoiled one career for himself, and will have to work uncommonly hard in order to find another."

This was cruel logic to Dora's ear. For the first time in her life she thought that her husband was ungenerous; and for the first time in her life she reckoned her own fortune as an element of power. Hitherto she had allowed her rents to be paid into her husband's bank. She had her own cheque-book, and drew whatever money she wanted; but she never looked at her pass-book, and she did not even ask what income each year brought her, or what surplus was left at the end of the year. She had never offered to help Bothwell with money; she had felt that any such offer would humiliate him. But now she considered for the first time that her money must have accumulated to a considerable extent, and that it was in her power to assist Bothwell with capital for any enterprise which he might desire to undertake. If he had set his heart upon going to the South Sea Islands, he should not start with an empty purse.

The train from Paddington came into Bodmin Road station with laudable punctuality, and without mischance of any kind; and the dog-cart brought Mr. Distin to Penmorval before half-past eight. Dora was in the drawing-room when he arrived. She had dressed early in order to be ready to welcome her husband's friend; even albeit he came to her with a perfume of the Old Bailey.

In spite of Wyllard's praise of his old schoolfellow, Dora had expected a foxy and unpleasant individual, with craft in every feature of his face.

She was agreeably surprised on beholding a good-looking man, with aquiline nose, dark eyes, hair and whiskers inclining to gray, slim, well set up, neat without being dapper or priggish – a man who might have been taken for an artist or an author, just as readily as for a lawyer versed in the dark ways of crime.

"My friend Wyllard looks all the better for his rural seclusion," said Distin, after he had been introduced to Dora. "He seems to me a younger man by ten years than he was when I met him in Paris just ten years ago. And that means twenty years to the good, you see."

"Is it really ten years since you have met?" exclaimed Dora.

"Exactly a decade. Our last meeting was a chance encounter in the Palais Royal in the summer of '72, when Paris was just beginning to recover herself after the horrors of the Commune. We ran against each other one day at dinner-time – both making for Véfour's, where we dined together and talked over old times. I thought that evening my friend looked aged and haggard, nervous and worried, and I put it down to the ruling disease of our epoch, high-pressure. I knew it could not be the effect of late hours or dissipation of any kind, for Wyllard was always as steady as old Time. But now I find him regenerated, glorified by rustic pleasures. Happy fellow, who can afford to enjoy his otium cum dignitate in the very prime of life."

"You hear what he says, Dora," said Wyllard laughingly. "Now, I daresay what he thinks is: 'How can this poor devil endure his existence out of London – two hundred and forty miles from the clubs – from the opera-house – from the first nights of new plays – the crowd of familiar faces?' I know my friend Distin of old, and that he could not exist out of London any more than a fish can live out of water."

"I like my little London," admitted Distin coyly, almost as if he were talking of a fascinating woman. "There's so much in it, and it's such a devilish wicked place, to those who really know it. But I think the country a most delightful institution – from Saturday to Monday."

"The cockney stands confessed in that one remark," said Wyllard, laughing.

"That is the worst of Devonshire and Cornwall," pursued Distin, in his airy way. "Charming scenery, eminently picturesque; but not available between Saturday and Monday. Now, there is one ineffable charm in those pretty places up the river, and that rural district round Tunbridge Wells."

"Pray what is that?"

"One is always so delighted to arrive on Saturday afternoon, and so charmed to leave on Monday morning. The rustic aroma just lasts till Sunday night, and the keen craving for town begins with the dawn of Monday. But I must go and get rid of two hundred and forty miles of dust," said Mr. Distin, slipping off as lightly as a boy.

He left the drawing-room at twenty minutes to nine, and returned at five minutes before the hour, in full evening-dress. It was like a conjuring trick. His costume was of the quietest, yet there was a finish and style about everything that impressed even the ignorant. One felt that the very latest impress of Fashion's fairy fingers had touched that shirt, had meted out the depth of the silk collar, the curve of the sleeve. That black pearl centre-stud might have been the last gift of a prince or a grateful beauty. One ring, and one only, adorned the solicitor's left hand; but that ring was a table diamond, two hundred and forty years old, said to have been given by Anne of Austria to the Duke of Buckingham.

Bothwell, who took some pride in his clothes, looked clumsy and unfashionable beside the London lawyer, or at any rate fancied that he did. Edward Heathcote was at all times a careless dresser, but his tall figure, and a certain dash which was more soldierly than civilian, made him an important personage in every circle. He had the free grace, the easy movements, of a man who has spent his boyhood and youth out of doors – hunting, shooting, fishing, mountaineering.

The dinner was lively, thanks chiefly to Joseph Distin, for Bothwell had a dispirited air, and Hilda could not help feeling unhappy at seeing his gloom, though she tried to conceal her sympathy. Mr. Wyllard and Mr. Distin had the conversation to themselves during the greater part of the meal, for Mr. Heathcote was graver and more reserved than usual, and Dora had a subdued and thoughtful air. She would have been quite ready to admit that Joseph Distin was a very agreeable person, and altogether worthy of her husband's friendship; but she could not dissociate him from the horror of the event which caused his presence in that house. She felt that of those gathered around her table that night, in the shaded light of the low lamps, amidst the perfume of hothouse flowers, the greater number were brooding upon a mystery which might mean murder.

She was very glad to escape to the drawing-room with Hilda, directly dinner was over.

"And now, I suppose, they will talk of that poor creature's death," she said. "Come, Hilda, sing one of Schubert's ballads, and let us try to forget all that horror."

Hilda seated herself at the piano obediently, and began "Mignon." She had a superb mezzo-soprano, clear as a bell, ripe and round and full. The rich notes went pealing up to the low ceiling and floating out at the open windows. Perhaps Bothwell heard them in the dining-room, for he came sauntering in presently, and slipped quietly into a seat in a shadowy corner. Hilda always sang and played from memory. There was no irksome duty to be done in the way of turning over music.

"What made you desert the gentlemen, Bothwell?" asked Dora, when the song was over.

"They were talking of that diabolical inquest again. Nobody in Bodmin seems able to talk of anything else. Wherever I went to-day I heard the same ghastly talk – every imaginable suggestion, and not one grain of common sense. What ghouls people must be to gloat over such a subject! No wonder that men who live in great cities despise the rustic mind."

"I do not find that the inhabitants of cities are any less ghoulish," retorted Dora, who felt warmly about her native soil, and would have fought for Cornish people and Cornish institutions to the death. "See how the London papers gloat over the details of crime."

These three spent the evening very quietly in the drawing-room, while the three men in the dining-room were discussing the event on the railway.

Hilda sang some of Mrs. Wyllard's favourite songs, while her hostess sat in the lamp-light by an open window working at a group of sunflowers on a ground of olive plush. Bothwell kept in his dark corner all the evening, so quiet that he might have been asleep, save that he murmured a "Thank you, Miss Heathcote, very lovely," after one of Hilda's songs. She thought that he was only grateful for having had his slumber soothed by a vague strain of melody.

The men in the dining-room had turned away from the lighted table, and were sitting in a little knot in the embrasure of the wide Tudor window, smoking their cigars, half in the ruddy glow of the lamps and half in the mellow light of the newly-risen moon. They could hardly see each other's faces in that uncertain light. Stodden, the butler, had wheeled a table over to the window and arranged the claret-jugs and glasses upon it, before he left the room. The little knot of men smoking and drinking by the window looked a picture of comfort, with the soft sweet air blowing in from the garden, and the great full moon shining over the roses and the fountain in the old-fashioned parterre. Joseph Distin's keen eye noted every detail of his friend's surroundings; and he told himself that, for the fourth son of a village vicar, Julian Wyllard had done remarkably well.

Between them Wyllard and the Coroner had contrived to put the London lawyer in full possession of the facts relating to the girl's death. Those facts were unfortunately of the scantiest. Edward Heathcote breathed no hint of that dark suspicion about Bothwell which had flashed into his mind after the inquest, and which he had vainly endeavoured to shake off since that time. Bothwell's manner at dinner this evening had not been calculated to disarm suspicion. His moody brow, his silence and abstraction, were the unmistakable signs of secret trouble of some kind. That trouble was coincidental in time with the event on the railway; for Heathcote and Bothwell had met in Bodmin, and had ridden home together on the previous day, and the young man had been cheery enough.

"The ticket found upon the girl was from London to Plymouth, I apprehend," said Distin, when he had heard everything.

"Yes."

"Then she started from Paddington that morning. My business will be to find out who she was, and the motive of her journey."

"And do you think there is a possibility of tracing her in London, without a shred of evidence – except the photograph of a dead face?" exclaimed Wyllard. "To my mind it seems like looking in a brook for a bubble that broke there a week ago."

"As a west countryman you should remember how otter-hounds hunt the bead on the water," answered Distin. "With a photograph, the police ought to be able to trace that girl – even in the wilderness of London."

"But if she were a foreigner, and only passed through London?" suggested Wyllard.

"Even then she would leave her bead, like the otter. She could not get a night's shelter without some one knowing of her coming and going. Unless she slept in the lowest form of lodging-house – a place through which the herd of strange faces are always passing – the probabilities are in favour of her face being remembered."

"Judging by the neatness of her clothes and the refinement of her features, she must have been the last person likely to set foot in a common lodging-house," said Heathcote. "But there was no money found upon her; neither purse nor papers of any kind."

"That fact is to me almost conclusive," said Distin.

"Upon what point?"

"It convinces me that she was made away with."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Wyllard, much surprised. "The thing never occurred to me in that light."

"Naturally, my dear friend. You have not devoted twenty years of your life to the study of the criminal mind," answered the lawyer easily. "Don't you see that the first thought of a man who made up his mind to throw a girl out of a train – unless he did the act in a blind fury which gave him no time for thought of any kind – his first precaution, I say, would be to see that there was no evidence of her identity upon her, more especially where the victim was a stranger in the land, as this poor thing was? The identification of the victim is often half-way towards the identification of the murderer. But if the dead can be buried unrecognised – a nameless unknown waif, in whose fate no private individual is interested – why, after the funeral the murderer may take his ease and be merry, assured that he will hear no more of the matter. Public interest in a mysterious crime of that kind soon dies out."

"And you think that this poor girl was the victim of a crime?" asked the Coroner, surprised to find his own idea shared by the great authority.

"In my own mind I have no doubt she was murdered."

"But why should she not have committed suicide?"

"Why should she have travelled from London to Cornwall in order to throw herself over that particular embankment?" demanded Distin. "An unnecessary luxury, when there were the Holborn Viaduct and a score of bridges at her service, to say nothing of the more natural exit by her own bedroom window. Besides, in the statistics of self-murder you will find that nineteen out of twenty suicides – nay, I might almost say ninety-nine out of a hundred – leave a piteous little note explaining the motive of the deed – an appeal to posterity, as it were. 'See how great a sufferer I have been, and what a heroic end I have made.' No, there is only one supposition that would admit this girl being her own destroyer. Some ruffian in the train might have so scared her that she flung herself out, in a frantic effort to escape from him. But against this possibility there is the fact of the absence of any purse or papers. She could not have been travelling that distance without, at least, a few shillings in her possession."

"Who knows!" said Julian Wyllard. "Very narrow are the straits of genteel poverty. If, as I suppose, she was a poor little nursery governess going to her situation, she may have had just money enough to pay for her railway ticket, and no more. She may have relied upon her employers meeting her at the station with a conveyance."

"If she were a nursery governess, due at some country house on that day, surely her employers would have communicated with the Bodmin police before now," said Distin.

"News finds its way slowly to sleepy old houses in remote districts off the railway," replied Wyllard. "There are people still living in Cornwall who depend upon a weekly paper for all news of the outer world."

"If the poor girl were going to such benighted wretches, let us hope they will wake in a day or two, and enlighten us about her," said Distin. "And now to be distinctly practical, and to tell you what I am going to do. Mr. Heathcote's carriage was announced nearly an hour ago, and I saw him looking at his watch just now."

"I was only uneasy about Mrs. Wyllard and my sister. We are keeping them up rather late," said the Coroner apologetically.

"Dora won't mind. She loves the tranquillity of midnight," replied Wyllard. "Go on, Distin. What is your plan?"