Legendary Women Detectives Read online

  “The long drought we’ve had would render such a thing impossible, let alone the fact that Sandy’s lodge stands right on the gravelled drive, without flower-beds or grass borders of any sort around it. But look here, Miss Brooke, don’t you be wasting your time over the lodge and its surroundings. Every iota of fact on that matter has been gone through over and over again by me and my chief. What we want you to do is to go straight into the house and concentrate attention on Master Harry’s sick-room, and find out what’s going on there. What he did outside the house on the night of the 6th, I’ve no doubt I shall be able to find out for myself. Now, Miss Brooke, you’ve asked me no end of questions, to which I have replied as fully as it was in my power to do; will you be good enough to answer one question that I wish to put, as straightforwardly as I have answered yours? You have had fullest particulars given you of the condition of Sandy’s room when the police entered it on the morning after the murder. No doubt, at the present moment, you can see it all in your mind’s eye – the bedstead on its side, the clock on its head, the bed-clothes half-way up the chimney, the little vases and ornaments walking in a straight line towards the door?”

  Loveday bowed her head.

  “Very well. Now will you be good enough to tell me what this scene of confusion recalls to your mind before anything else?”

  “The room of an unpopular Oxford freshman after a raid upon it by under-grads.,” answered Loveday promptly.

  Mr. Griffiths rubbed his hands.

  “Quite so!” he ejaculated. “I see, after all, we are one at heart in this matter, in spite of a little surface disagreement of ideas. Depend upon it, by-and-bye, like the engineers tunnelling from different quarters under the Alps, we shall meet at the same point and shake hands. By-the-way, I have arranged for daily communication between us through the postboy who takes the letters to Troyte’s Hill. He is trustworthy, and any letter you give him for me will find its way into my hands within the hour.”

  It was about three o’clock in the afternoon when Loveday drove in through the park gates of Troyte’s Hill, past the lodge where old Sandy had met with his death. It was a pretty little cottage, covered with Virginia creeper and wild honeysuckle, and showing no outward sign of the tragedy that had been enacted within.

  The park and pleasure-grounds of Troyte’s Hill were extensive, and the house itself was a somewhat imposing red brick structure, built, possibly, at the time when Dutch William’s taste had grown popular in the country. Its frontage presented a somewhat forlorn appearance, its centre windows – a square of eight – alone seeming to show signs of occupation. With the exception of two windows at the extreme end of the bedroom floor of the north wing, where, possibly, the invalid and his mother were located, and two windows at the extreme end of the ground floor of the south wing, which Loveday ascertained subsequently were those of Mr. Craven’s study, not a single window in either wing owned blind or curtain. The wings were extensive, and it was easy to understand that at the extreme end of the one the fever patient would be isolated from the rest of the household, and that at the extreme end of the other Mr. Craven could secure the quiet and freedom from interruption which, no doubt, were essential to the due prosecution of his philological studies.

  Alike on the house and ill-kept grounds were present the stamp of the smallness of the income of the master and owner of the place. The terrace, which ran the length of the house in front, and on to which every window on the ground floor opened, was miserably out of repair: not a lintel or door-post, window-ledge or balcony but what seemed to cry aloud for the touch of the painter. “Pity me! I have seen better days,” Loveday could fancy written as a legend across the red-brick porch that gave entrance to the old house.

  The butler, John Hales, admitted Loveday, shouldered her portmanteau and told her he would show her to her room. He was a tall, powerfully-built man, with a ruddy face and dogged expression of countenance. It was easy to understand that, off and on, there must have been many a sharp encounter between him and old Sandy. He treated Loveday in an easy, familiar fashion, evidently considering that an amanuensis took much the same rank as a nursery governess – that is to say, a little below a lady’s maid and a little above a house-maid.

  “We’re short of hands, just now,” he said, in broad Cumberland dialect, as he led the way up the wide staircase. “Some of the lasses downstairs took fright at the fever and went home. Cook and I are single-handed, for Moggie, the only maid left, has been told off to wait on Madam and Master Harry. I hope you’re not afeared of fever?”

  Loveday explained that she was not, and asked if the room at the extreme end of the north wing was the one assigned to “Madam and Master Harry.”

  “Yes,” said the man, “it’s convenient for sick nursing; there’s a flight of stairs runs straight down from it to the kitchen quarters. We put all Madam wants at the foot of these stairs and Moggie comes down and fetches it. Moggie herself never enters the sick-room. I take it you’ll not be seeing Madam for many a day, yet awhile.”

  “When shall I see Mr. Craven? At dinner tonight?”

  “That’s what naebody could say,” answered Hales. “He may not come out of his study till past midnight; sometimes he sits there till two or three in the morning. Shouldn’t advise you to wait till he wants his dinner – better have a cup of tea and a chop sent up to you. Madam never waits for him at any meal.”

  As he finished speaking he deposited the portmanteau outside one of the many doors opening into the gallery.

  “This is Miss Craven’s room,” he went on; “cook and me thought you’d better have it, as it would want less getting ready than the other rooms, and work is work when there are so few hands to do it. Oh, my stars! I do declare there is cook putting it straight for you now.”

  The last sentence was added as the opened door laid bare to view, the cook, with a duster in her hand, polishing a mirror; the bed had been made, it is true, but otherwise the room must have been much as Miss Craven left it, after a hurried packing up.

  To the surprise of the two servants Loveday took the matter very lightly.

  “I have a special talent for arranging rooms and would prefer getting this one straight for myself,” she said. “Now, if you will go and get ready that chop and cup of tea we were talking about just now, I shall think it much kinder than if you stayed here doing what I can so easily do for myself.”

  When, however, the cook and butler had departed in company, Loveday showed no disposition to exercise the “special talent” of which she had boasted.

  She first carefully turned the key in the lock and then proceeded to make a thorough and minute investigation of every corner of the room. Not an article of furniture, not an ornament or toilet accessory, but what was lifted from its place and carefully scrutinized. Even the ashes in the grate, the debris of the last fire made there, were raked over and well looked through.

  This careful investigation of Miss Craven’s late surroundings occupied in all about three quarters of an hour, and Loveday, with her hat in her hand, descended the stairs to see Hales crossing the hall to the dining-room with the promised cup of tea and chop.

  In silence and solitude she partook of the simple repast in a dining-hall that could with ease have banqueted a hundred and fifty guests.

  “Now for the grounds before it gets dark,” she said to herself, as she noted that already the outside shadows were beginning to slant.

  The dining-hall was at the back of the house; and here, as in the front, the windows, reaching to the ground, presented easy means of egress. The flower-garden was on this side of the house and sloped downhill to a pretty stretch of well-wooded country.

  Loveday did not linger here even to admire, but passed at once round the south corner of the house to the windows which she had ascertained, by a careless question to the butler, were those of Mr. Craven’s study.

  Very cautiously she drew near them, for the blinds were up, the curtains drawn back. A side glance, however, relieved he
r apprehensions, for it showed her the occupant of the room, seated in an easy-chair, with his back to the windows. From the length of his outstretched limbs he was evidently a tall man. His hair was silvery and curly, the lower part of his face was hidden from her view by the chair, but she could see one hand was pressed tightly across his eyes and brows. The whole attitude was that of a man absorbed in deep thought. The room was comfortably furnished, but presented an appearance of disorder from the books and manuscripts scattered in all directions. A whole pile of torn fragments of foolscap sheets, overflowing from a waste-paper basket beside the writing-table, seemed to proclaim the fact that the scholar had of late grown weary of, or else dissatisfied with his work, and had condemned it freely.

  Although Loveday stood looking in at this window for over five minutes, not the faintest sign of life did that tall, reclining figure give, and it would have been as easy to believe him locked in sleep as in thought.

  From here she turned her steps in the direction of Sandy’s lodge. As Griffiths had said, it was gravelled up to its doorstep. The blinds were closely drawn, and it presented the ordinary appearance of a disused cottage.

  A narrow path beneath the over-arching boughs of cherry-laurel and arbutus, immediately facing the lodge, caught her eye, and down this she at once turned her footsteps.

  This path led, with many a wind and turn, through a belt of shrubbery that skirted the frontage of Mr. Craven’s grounds, and eventually, after much zigzagging, ended in close proximity to the stables. As Loveday entered it, she seemed literally to leave daylight behind her.

  “I feel as if I were following the course of a circuitous mind,” she said to herself as the shadows closed around her. “I could not fancy Sir Isaac Newton or Bacon planning or delighting in such a wind-about-alley as this!”

  The path showed greyly in front of her out of the dimness. On and on she followed it; here and there the roots of the old laurels, struggling out of the ground, threatened to trip her up. Her eyes, however, had now grown accustomed to the half-gloom, and not a detail of her surroundings escaped her as she went along.

  A bird flew out the thicket on her right hand with a startled cry. A dainty little frog leaped out of her way into the shrivelled leaves lying below the laurels. Following the movements of this frog, her eye was caught by something black and solid among those leaves. What was it? A bundle – a shiny black coat? Loveday knelt down, and using her hands to assist her eyes, found that they came into contact with the dead, stiffened body of a beautiful black retriever. She parted, as well as she was able, the lower boughs of the evergreens, and minutely examined the poor animal. Its eyes were still open, though glazed and bleared, and its death had, undoubtedly, been caused by the blow of some blunt, heavy instrument, for on one side its skull was almost battered in.

  “Exactly the death that was dealt to Sandy,” she thought, as she groped hither and thither beneath the trees in hopes of lighting upon the weapon of destruction.

  She searched until increasing darkness warned her that search was useless. Then, still following the zigzagging path, she made her way out by the stables and thence back to the house.

  She went to bed that night without having spoken to a soul beyond the cook and butler. The next morning, however, Mr. Craven introduced himself to her across the breakfast table. He was a man of really handsome personal appearance, with a fine carriage of the head and shoulders, and eyes that had a forlorn, appealing look in them. He entered the room with an air of great energy, apologized to Loveday for the absence of his wife, and for his own remissness in not being in the way to receive her on the previous day. Then he bade her make herself at home at the breakfast-table, and expressed his delight in having found a coadjutor in his work.

  “I hope you understand what a great – a stupendous work it is?” he added, as he sank into a chair. “It is a work that will leave its impress upon thought in all the ages to come. Only a man, who has studied comparative philology as I have for the past thirty years, could gauge the magnitude of the task I have set myself.”

  With the last remark, his energy seemed spent, and he sank back in his chair, covering his eyes with his hand in precisely the same attitude at that in which Loveday had seen him over-night, and utterly oblivious of the fact that breakfast was before him and a stranger-guest seated at table. The butler entered with another dish. “Better go on with your breakfast,” he whispered to Loveday, “he may sit like that for another hour.”

  He placed his dish in front of his master.

  “Captain hasn’t come back yet, sir,” he said, making an effort to arouse him from his reverie.

  “Eh, what?” said Mr. Craven, for a moment lifting his hand from his eyes.

  “Captain, sir – the black retriever,” repeated the man.

  The pathetic look in Mr. Craven’s eyes deepened.

  “Ah, poor Captain!” he murmured; “the best dog I ever had.”

  Then he again sank back in his chair, putting his hand to his forehead.

  The butler made one more effort to arouse him.

  “Madam sent you down a newspaper, sir, that she thought you might like to see,” he shouted almost into his master’s ear, and at the same time laid the morning’s paper on the table beside his plate.

  “Confound you! Leave it there,” said Mr. Craven irritably. “Fools! Dolts that you all are! With your trivialities and interruptions you are sending me out of the world with my work undone!”

  And again he sank back in his chair, closed his eyes and became lost to his surroundings.

  Loveday went on with her breakfast. She changed her place at table to one on Mr. Craven’s right hand, so that the newspaper sent down for his perusal lay between his plate and hers. It was folded into an oblong shape, as if it were wished to direct attention to a certain portion of a certain column.

  A clock in a corner of the room struck the hour with a loud, resonant stroke. Mr. Craven gave a start and rubbed his eyes.

  “Eh, what’s this?” he said. “What meal are we at?” He looked around with a bewildered air. “Eh! – who are you?” he went on, staring hard at Loveday. “What are you doing here? Where’s Nina? – Where’s Harry?”

  Loveday began to explain, and gradually recollection seemed to come back to him.

  “Ah, yes, yes,” he said. “I remember; you’ve come to assist me with my great work. You promised, you know, to help me out of the hole I’ve got into. Very enthusiastic, I remember they said you were, on certain abstruse points in comparative philology. Now, Miss – Miss – I’ve forgotten your name – tell me a little of what you know about the elemental sounds of speech that are common to all languages. Now, to how many would you reduce those elemental sounds – to six, eight, nine? No, we won’t discuss the matter here, the cups and saucers distract me. Come into my den at the other end of the house; we’ll have perfect quiet there.”

  And utterly ignoring the fact that he had not as yet broken his fast, he rose from the table, seized Loveday by the wrist, and led her out of the room and down the long corridor that led through the south wing to his study.

  But seated in that study his energy once more speedily exhausted itself.

  He placed Loveday in a comfortable chair at his writing-table, consulted her taste as to pens, and spread a sheet of foolscap before her. Then he settled himself in his easy-chair, with his back to the light, as if he were about to dictate folios to her.

  In a loud, distinct voice he repeated the title of his learned work, then its subdivision, then the number and heading of the chapter that was at present engaging his attention. Then he put his hand to his head. “It’s the elemental sounds that are my stumbling-block,” he said. “Now, how on earth is it possible to get a notion of a sound of agony that is not in part a sound of terror? Or a sound of surprise that is not in part a sound of either joy or sorrow?”

  With this his energies were spent, and although Loveday remained seated in that study from early morning till daylight began to fade,
she had not ten sentences to show for her day’s work as amanuensis.

  Loveday in all spent only two clear days at Troyte’s Hill.

  On the evening of the first of those days Detective Griffiths received, through the trustworthy post-boy, the following brief note from her:

  I have found out that Hales owed Sandy close upon a hundred pounds, which he had borrowed at various times.

  I don’t know whether you will think this fact of any importance.

  L.B.

  Mr. Griffiths repeated the last sentence blankly. “If Harry Craven were put upon his defence, his counsel, I take it, would consider the fact of first importance,” he muttered. And for the remainder of that day Mr. Griffiths went about his work in a perturbed state of mind, doubtful whether to hold or to let go his theory concerning Harry Craven’s guilt.

  The next morning there came another brief note from Loveday which ran thus:

  As a matter of collateral interest, find out if a person, calling himself Harold Cousins, sailed two days ago from London Docks for Natal in the Bonnie Dundee?

  To this missive, Loveday received, in reply, the following somewhat lengthy dispatch:

  I do not quite see the drift of your last note, but have wired to our agents in London to carry out its suggestion. On my part, I have important news to communicate. I have found out what Harry Craven’s business out of doors was on the night of the murder, and at my instance a warrant has been issued for his arrest. This warrant it will be my duty to serve on him in the course of today. Things are beginning to look very black against him, and I am convinced his illness is all a sham. I have seen Waters, the man who is supposed to be attending him, and have driven him into a corner and made him admit that he has only seen young Craven once – on the first day of his illness – and that he gave his certificate entirely on the strength of what Mrs. Craven told him of her son’s condition. On the occasion of this, his first and only visit, the lady, it seems, also told him that it would not be necessary for him to continue his attendance, as she quite felt herself competent to treat the case, having had so much experience in fever cases among the blacks at Natal.