CHAPTER XXVIII

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“I SAW--NO ONE!”

“No one dares to insinuate,” he broke out the second he got his breath, “that----”

“No,” said the coroner quietly. “Be good enough, Sir Thomas, to tell just what you saw of this woman outside. Did you observe her on that occasion only?”

“I saw her the next night. I followed her from the garden into the park. She was sitting on a rock in the moonlight, drinking champagne with a man. I couldn’t see her face, nor his; but she was wearing an evening cloak and I thought she was a lady. My dog went for the man, but he missed him----” He stopped something on the end of his tongue, as if he remembered there was no need to tell more than he was asked.

“Your dog appears to be ubiquitous!” dryly. “Did you know the man?”

The room was breathless with interest. Every soul in it, except Carrousel, leaned forward; but the question had apparently small interest for the cook.

“The man,” said Sir Thomas unwillingly, “was, to the best of my belief, Captain Gordon, though I thought him in bed at the castle. Levallion said he’d gone to bed, as he was leaving early in the morning.”

And if he had known the deadly gist of his evidence taken with Lady Gwendolen’s, he would have perjured himself ten times over.

“The woman was no one of the house-party? You are sure?” searchingly.

“She was a stranger, as far as I could tell. All the other women were in the drawing-room but my sister, and she and Levallion went in there while I was hanging out of the hall window watching the woman in the garden.”

“You are sure it was Captain Gordon in the wood?”

“I would be, but for one thing. My dog was furious when he saw him, and he was fond of Gordon. I thought afterward perhaps it was some one stouter than Gordon, but dressed like him.”

“How was he dressed?”

“In a Norfolk jacket and loose knickerbockers. I saw them against the moonlight.”

“You say Lord Levallion seemed to know who the woman was?”

Tommy nodded.

“I’m sure he did! He said afterward that it must have been a kitchen-maid; but maids don’t wear trains and long evening cloaks. I meant to tell him I’d seen her again, but when I went to his dressing-room last night before dinner he wouldn’t talk. And I drank some of that liqueur that he died of four hours afterward. It was all right then!”

The coroner nodded, knowing it already.

“I won’t trouble you any more,” he said. “Except to ask you if you would know that mysterious woman if you saw her again?”

Even Carrousel waited for the answer.

“I don’t know,” reluctantly. “I’d know her if she wore those clothes, but I never saw her face. Only I’m sure that she had something to do with the thing.”

“You were not in the house at the death of your brother-in-law, I think?”

“I ran out the back way after Jacobs. I thought he was after the cook, and I tore up-stairs and then down and outside till I found Jacobs, trying to get back into the house again. Then I sent for you, as soon as I found out what had happened.”

Tommy moved to Houghton’s side as one after one the house-party came in, and had, except Lord Chayter, to acknowledge that they had all heard and talked of Lady Levallion’s flirtation with her husband’s cousin. Houghton laid a quick hand on his shoulder, for the boy was livid with fury and outraged pride. Each guest in Levallion’s house had given his or her version of his wife’s flirtation with Adrian Gordon, come by either from sight or hearsay; of Levallion’s knowledge of it; of his quarrel with his wife half an hour before he died.

“My God!” whispered Tommy, half-choked. “Do they mean----”

“Hush! Wait!” said Houghton, in his ear. “There is only Chayter left.”

And Lord Chayter, to Tommy’s surprise, had other things to say. To his knowledge, and Lady Levallion’s, some one had been in the habit of spying round the house after dark. He had twice seen a face at the dining-room window, and had once pointed it out to Lady Levallion. Had also told Lord Levallion, who said it was nonsense. But Lord Chayter was of the opinion that Levallion had not meant what he said. “There were plenty of people, men and--well, more especially women, if you like! who had a grudge against Levallion.” (With which the jury agreed.) “In my opinion that loiterer was probably one of them,” ended Lord Chayter abruptly. “That’s what it seems to me.”

And Sir Thomas could have hugged the ugly little man. Aston called the last witness.

The room was packed by this time. Every one in the house but the boot-boy being in it, and no one had remembered him. Alone, through the silent, deserted house, Lady Levallion came to the shut door of the library, and, as if she saw none of the familiar faces, walked into the hot, close room.

She wore the coarse, blue serge Houghton had seen her in at dawn. Levallion had hated black. She had not a black gown to wear, and did not care. White as wax she took the oath, and, stony-eyed, faced the coroner. But she had to try three times before she could answer the first question.

“Yes,” she said huskily, “it was I who went to my husband’s room for that bottle of liqueur.”

“Before that,” said the coroner unexpectedly, “what had you been doing?”

“I was down in the hall talking up to him. I wanted to go out and he would not let me. He was annoyed with me because of something he imagined, till I told him why I wanted to go out.”

“Why was it?”

“A woman whom I had known was dying. She sent for me. I showed Levallion her letter, and he said we would both go after the others had gone to bed.”

“He was not annoyed, then?”

“Oh, no!” lifelessly.

“Why had he thought you wished to go out?”

“I dropped a card with some writing on it. Levallion thought it referred to last night, whereas it was one I never got, and four months old.”

“How did it reach you, then?”

“My stepmother’s maid had it. It was she who was dying and wanted to explain something to me that I knew already.”

“What--exactly?”

“I don’t think I need say. It concerned,” she twisted her hands hard together, “no one but me and Levallion,” she finished unexpectedly.

“Was it the card, a four-months’-old card, that was taking you out?”

“No. The woman who sent it to me was dying, and wrote me two letters begging me to come to her that night and let her tell me something before it was too late. She had behaved badly to me. She was sorry.”

“And Lord Levallion would not allow it?”

“On the contrary, he was going to take me, but----” she could not finish. With a sharp breath, an uncontrollable passion, she cried out: “Oh! Doctor Aston, I think, now that I’ve had time to think, that perhaps the woman knew something, knew some one meant to poison Levallion. That it was that which made her send for me. And I didn’t go. I can’t forgive myself that I didn’t go!”

“Where are her letters?”

“I can’t”--Carrousel looked really affected--“I can’t find them. I thought Levallion had them. Weren’t they in his pocket?”

“No. They have never been heard of till now. But I can easily send for the woman.”

“She died last night,” said Lady Levallion slowly. “Some one must have her letters. Some one might have picked them up when--he fell.” The last two words seemed to choke her.

But not a soul in Levallion Castle had seen those letters.

“Lord Levallion was annoyed about a card?” the coroner barked back obstinately.

“A card I never got, about something that was over long ago,” bravely. “That card referred to last May. Some one had told Levallion it was last night. I told him the truth--and he believed me. Whatever that card had to do with me once, it was not now.”

“Then you were on good terms with Lord Levallion when he sent you for that liqueur?”

“On better terms than ever in my life,” hardly able to answer.

“Describe what you did when you left the drawing-room.”

“I went straight to Levallion’s dressing-room. I took the bottle off a shelf and I thought it felt warm in my hands, like a ring some one has been wearing. And then my brother’s dog, who was with me, barked and startled me. I nearly dropped the bottle. I wish I had!”

“What did he bark at?”

Lady Levallion swayed where she stood.

“I don’t know,” she muttered. “I--he flew at the door and banged it as he jumped against it. I--I--thought”--Carrousel put a hand to his mouth as if to hide his pity for his mistress--“I thought it must be a cat in the hall. I caught Jacobs by the collar and he got away from me and tore back through my rooms and out into the hall.”

Some one who had no business there, since he had not been called as a witness, had come softly in behind her, but where he stood could see her face plainly in a mirror. The face he knew every line and curve of, just as he knew every tone of Ravenel Levallion’s voice. Something in both of them caught at his heart.

“Did you see the cat?”

“I saw no one, nothing,” said Lady Levallion deliberately. She looked round the crowded room as though she were hunted, looked at the Bible she had kissed but now. Her voice came suddenly to the waiting-room, clear, unfaltering as a bugle. “I saw absolutely no one. No one!”

And Adrian Gordon, whom no one had noticed come in, knew she lied.

“What did you do then?”

“I ran back to the drawing-room. I was frightened to be there alone. The dog had startled me. I never looked at the bottle, but when Levallion said it smelled of almonds”--and Heaven knew where she got her self-control to speak of it quietly--“I tried to stop his drinking it. I remembered it was almond soup that had poisoned my brother’s dog.”

Carrousel started furiously and then sat still. Lady Levallion might say what she liked.

“Where were you the night the dog was poisoned?”

“At supper. But I never thought of its being the soup till it flashed over me when Levallion spoke of the liqueur smelling of almonds. I suppose it made me think of prussic acid.”

If she had sobbed, fainted, been interestingly weak, the jury might not have sat so stolid. Each word she said was somehow setting them to think it was a desperate woman who stood so quiet and yet so bold before them.

“Before supper?” said the coroner slowly.

“I had been in the conservatory with Captain Gordon. He left me at the dining-room door; he was not well and went to bed. I went into the dining-room”--Houghton could have screamed at her to hold her tongue--“and it was empty. I stood at the door and waited for the others.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were alone in there, and alone in the dressing-room?” said the coroner, after what seemed a year.

“Yes,” listlessly. And then the faces of the jury seemed suddenly to leap into her eyes; live men, not automatons. She started, as if to back away from the dreadful thing that was written in those faces. But she stood dumb before them.

And every man of them thought it was the dumbness, the confession of guilt.

The coroner held out a rag of tweed toward her.

“Did you ever see a suit of clothes of this stuff?” he said. “Had Lord Levallion one?”

There was that desperate terror in her eyes now that Houghton knew. She looked from the jury to the coroner and back again.

“I don’t think he had,” she gasped. “I would not know.”

“Did you ever see a suit like them?”

“I--never--saw--one,” said Ravenel Levallion, white-lipped.

Sir Thomas Annesley caught Houghton’s hand and pointed to Adrian Gordon, dressed in that very tweed, thread for thread; and standing as if he were turned to stone.

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