Chapter 15

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IF she changed colour her deception was valueless. She fixed her mind upon the most impersonal object she could think of, and she must have succeeded in this effort of self-control, for apparently Marjorie saw nothing to arouse her suspicions.

"Why should I?" asked Jane, but her companion was looking out of the window.

Donald Wells was coming slowly across the lawn, his hands thrust deep in his pockets, his eyes on the ground. By his very attitude she knew that the gardener was not mistaken, and, risking the inevitable snub, she went out of the room and down the stairs to meet him.

"Yes, it was Basil." He was surprisingly civil. "Poor devil, he must have been battered to death by a hammer or something."

Jane, standing on the landing above, listening, held tight to her fast-beating heart. Battered to death---with a hammer!

She went back to her room, retrieved the hammer head which she had concealed in the coal-box, and had time to slip it into her trunk and unlock the door before Marjorie returned in some hurry.

"I told Donald that you have sent for Mr. Bourke," she said in a low voice. "He's furious with you; he says you may have done Peter an awful lot of harm."

There was a tap at the door. Jane opened it and found her husband standing in his bath-robe.

"What's the racket?" he asked. "Has anything happened? Somebody told me something unpleasant, but I can't quite remember what it was."

He was nervous and, for him, irritable. She opened the door wider.

"Come in," she invited.

He had forgotten all that had happened a few minutes before---forgotten that she had told him of Basil's death!

"Don't you remember? A man has been found dead in the grounds---murdered."

The hand that went up to his mouth shook a little.

"Murdered? Who was it?" he asked huskily.

It was Marjorie who supplied the answer.

"Basil Hale."

He blinked at her like a man suddenly confronted with a strong light.

"Basil Hale murdered?" And then: "By whom? When did it happen?"

"Some time in the night." Jane's voice was very gentle. "I think about three o'clock. And, Peter, I've sent for Mr. Bourke."

He looked at her dully, as though he did not fully comprehend the tremendous news she had given him.

"Hale murdered? Good God!"

"Did you mind---my sending for Bourke?"

He shook his head.

"No, I am greatly obliged to you. How did you know what time it occurred?"

She told him of the cry in the night, and again he blinked.

"I was asleep then." His voice was defiant, challenging. In that moment he was consciously on his defence. "I heard nothing, and I am a very light sleeper. Has Donald seen him?"

Jane nodded. He stood for a second or two, looking from one to the other.

"I'll dress and go down," he said, and went into his room.

Jane waited till she heard the slam of the door and turned to meet the inquisitive eyes of Mrs. Wells.

"Peter is a little shaken."

"Has he no excuse for being shaken?" demanded Jane indignantly, and when Marjorie Wells smiled she hated her.

"Don't be stupid---there's the footstep of my beloved, a little lighter than a cat but not quite so light as a tiger."

She opened the door and Donald strode in, his face as black as thunder.

"Has anybody told Peter?"

"I have," said Jane.

"And you sent for Bourke, too, eh? That wasn't wise, Marjorie. This is going to make an evening paper sensation."

"You can hardly hush it up," said Jane. "It is a very terrible thing to happen, but I don't see that it concerns us."

She was being deliberately brutal, and felt no qualms at her callousness.

"It concerns everybody," said Donald sharply. "It wouldn't have mattered so much if there hadn't been that fight yesterday evening. You don't suppose the servants are going to keep quiet about that, do you? They hated each other, he and Peter. Besides, I'd already telephoned for Rouper; he happens to be at Hertford on a case. I told him to drive over at once. We don't want Bourke in this business----"

"Mr. Rouper dislikes Peter," said Jane steadily. "I think you might have consulted me before you called him in."

He was somewhat staggered at her tone, and it struck Jane that up to that moment he had regarded her more or less as a cipher, a negligible quantity, not to be considered seriously in such a moment of crisis.

"I suppose I should have done," he said after a pause. "Somehow I had forgotten that you and Peter are married---Rouper isn't a bad sort really, and I don't think he has any particular animosity towards Peter. Naturally, every police officer is antagonistic when he's investigating a crime."

Jane was dressed and standing before the house when Rouper arrived.

"Good morning, Mrs. Clifton." His manner was just short of being genial. "I had the doctor's message when I got to the Chief Constable's office. He's had a little quarrel, hasn't he? I don't suppose there'll be any summons for assault. I'd have telephoned last night, but I was out on a case----"

Donald Wells's voice called him sharply from the hall.

"Is that you, Rouper? Come in, will you? I want to speak to you very privately."

He left Jane momentarily bewildered. Assault? Then Donald phoned the man last night---about what? Then it flashed on her that the subject of the telephone message had been the fight in the rose garden. If there was one thing certain it was that Rouper knew nothing of the murder. It seemed natural now that she should seek out Marjorie and tell her of the detective's arrival and of their conversation.

Marjorie was dressing when the girl came into the room. She listened without interruption, and when Jane had finished she laughed; it was a hard, mirthless little laugh. And then, to the girl's amazement, she ran out of the room into Jane's and went stealthily to the window. She was just in time to see Donald Wells and the detective before they disappeared into the tangle of bushes where the body lay.

"What is the mystery---please?"

She had never heard Jane Clifton's voice quite so cold, quite so incisive. It was not a request, it was a command. For a moment she, ignoring to the full, with a certain malignant satisfaction, her own mystery, was startled.

"Some day you will know all about it," she said, but Jane was not allowing a vital matter to be dismissed so lightly.

"There is something very, very wrong, Marjorie," she said evenly. "I don't think you know a great deal. You told me that you were a good guesser, and I have a feeling that you're guessing right. Are you going to take me entirely into your confidence and tell me all you know and think and believe? I am groping in the dark at present. All this concerns Peter, doesn't it---do you think Peter killed this man?"

Marjorie pursed her lips. She was a curiously contradictory woman, dominated by her moods. Jane felt that for the moment their tacit alliance was dissolved. Donald Wells's wife had also a personal end to serve, and would not sacrifice her own interests by any nonsensical act of altruism. She would be ready indeed to sacrifice Peter if any other course threatened to jeopardise her own comfortable future.

"I believe you're wanting to help me up to a point, Marjorie, and I think that point has been reached. But you can't help me except by giving me knowledge. What do you know?"

"Nothing."

The reply was prompt and decisive, and for a second Jane had a dreary sense of isolation. There was only one person could help her, and that was Peter.

A few minutes later she knocked at Peter's door. He was standing by the window in his shirt sleeves, staring absently towards the bushes where the men had vanished. He, too, had been watching.

"Peter!"

He had not heard her come in and started when she addressed him.

"Won't you let me help you?"

He was betrayed by the unexpectedness of the question into a despairing gesture.

"Who can help----" he began wearily, and realised too late that he had revealed his own distress. "Do you mean my headache?" he began lamely.

"I mean Basil Hale---and all he said. And I mean"---it required a tremendous effort to finish her sentence---"I mean that room where the printing presses are."

He went a shade paler, but did not turn his head.

"You know, do you? How did you find that out? How perfectly ghastly for you!"

"I came down two nights ago," she went on, and her tone was almost conversational, "and I saw you in the room and the press working."

Reproaches, demands for explanations, and an expression of the agony of mind she felt would have been so many banalities. She might as well, she told herself, have said "How odd!" of an earthquake.

He made no other comment upon her discovery; apparently something more important was filling his mind.

"Somebody took my clothes off last night or this morning," he said, not looking at her. "That isn't the suit I wore." He pointed to the jacket which Jane had hung over the chair. "And that is not the shirt."

"I took your clothes off," she said, "early this morning."

Still he was staring out of the window.

"Why?" he asked at last. "Had they any---was there anything----?"

And now he looked at her, his face bleak from the foreknowledge of all she had to tell.

"There was blood on them," said Jane quietly.

He drew a long, shuddering breath.

"I thought so---there were stains on the washbowl in the bath-room. Was there any on my---hands?"

She nodded.

"I washed them off," she said simply. "Look at me, Peter, please."

He obeyed.

"I must have killed him," he said simply. "I've no recollection, except that I still feel so terribly tired. Do you know how I got out of the window? Was there a ladder there?"

"There was a ladder there; he may have come into the room," she answered.

Peter shook his head. He was very calm; the old nervousness had passed.

"I was rather agitated last night---I've not been feeling quite sure of myself, that's why I brought Donald down. There was always a chance that I'd have these queer lapses, yet I'll swear no man feels saner than I. But Donald warned me, and so did Sir William Clewers."

"Is that the specialist?" she asked.

He nodded.

"He's the fellow who gave the 'all clear' a little prematurely." His frosty smile was without humour. "I've only done one mad thing---consciously---and that was marrying you, Jane. I don't know that that was so mad as wicked. You washed my hands, of course, and my face? How dear of you!"

His voice was so gentle that she felt the tears coming to her eyes.

"What do you want me to do?" He was like a child, this tall athlete. "I want a lead. I suppose I ought to tell Bourke everything when he comes."

"You'll tell him nothing---except about the quarrel," she said vigorously. "You have to think of me, Peter. Get rid of Donald as soon as you can, and after the police have been we will go back to London."

He nodded.

"All right---not about the blood or anything? I'll do what you think best. But if anybody else is suspected---I can't keep silent then, can I? If it weren't for you I'd tell him everything. We'll have to separate anyway. I must get somebody to look after me."

He went slowly down the stairs and she followed. Donald had not returned, and Marjorie was in her room.

They were alone when Bourke's high-powered car came up the drive, and the big man's face was serious.

"What time did this happen?" he asked without preamble. "Some time after one o'clock, I know."

"How did you know that?" asked Peter.

Bourke was looking at him gravely.

"Because at one o'clock," he said, "Hale called up Scotland Yard and told the officer on duty that Longford Manor was the head-quarters of the Clever One, and we should find the plant in a secret room that leads from the library."