CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Leonard and Gloria were married a month before Jasper Stormont and his wife left England for China. That last month they spent in London. It was a very quiet wedding; a cousin of the bridegroom officiated as one of the bridesmaids, the two others were girl friends of the bride, and had been her bosom friends at Effington, where the memory of Howard Stormont was still held in kindly remembrance by those who would have been horrified if they had known the truth about him. Mr. Grewgus was present at the ceremony, and presented dainty gifts to both bride and bridegroom.

Leonard had bought a charming house in the neighbourhood of Godalming with some four acres of pretty grounds. It could not compare with the magnificence of Effington Hall, where Howard Stormont had played the rôle of country gentleman what time he was hatching his evil schemes in conjunction with his taciturn fellow-criminal, John Whitehouse. But to Gloria it was a haven of peace and delight, with her flowers and dogs and the sweet sounds and scents of country life. She and her young husband are devoted to each other, and although they have the most friendly relations with their neighbours, are full of happiness when they are alone.

Twelve months had passed, and the villainy of Stormont and his associates had become almost a faint memory to the young wedded couple. Grewgus was always engaged in fresh investigations, and the case to which he had given so much time and attention had almost been jostled out of his mind by fresh problems.

Then one morning in the newspaper he read something that greatly startled him and sent his thoughts travelling back to the strenuous time when he had made that journey to Paris in pursuit of the woman suspected to be Elise Makris.

His eye caught sight of the headline. “Murder and suicide in a small Devonshire village.” Two very clear portraits of the victim, a woman, and the murderer who had shot himself after killing her, stared at him from the pages of the newspapers. The woman was Elise Makris, to call her by the first name under which he had known of her in these pages; the man was Bertram Edwards.

The report stated that a Mrs. Mayhew and her daughter Mrs. Baradine had come to this village about a year ago, where they had purchased a house of moderate size. They led a quiet and secluded life, only mixing infrequently with the few neighbours of a respectable class around them. Both women gave themselves out as widows. They attended church regularly and visited at the Vicar’s house. Although little was known about them, they had made a very favourable impression on everybody with whom they had come in contact. The daughter was quite a young woman and of remarkable beauty.

No visitors except those in the immediate neighbourhood had ever been known to enter their doors. But one day their comparative isolation had been disturbed. According to the account of one of the two maids, a handsome man about thirty with very urbane and courteous manners had called and requested that his name should be taken in to the ladies. The name he gave was Edwards.

The mention of this name, when the maid took it in to the drawing-room where the two women were seated, seemed to arouse consternation in both mother and daughter. After a whispered conversation between the two, Mrs. Baradine went into the hall and took the strange visitor to her mother. The door of the room was closed, and the three sat together for over an hour. At the end of that time, Mrs. Baradine went out with the man Edwards and they did not return till it wanted a few minutes to dinner.

The visitor stayed the night, sleeping in one of the spare bedrooms at the back of the house. He stopped on the next day. From a remark dropped by Mrs. Mayhew to the maid after breakfast, she gathered that Edwards was taking his departure on the following morning. During the whole of his visit, the demeanour of both mother and daughter exhibited symptoms of great depression and anxiety.

They all dined together on the evening of the second day. After dinner Mrs. Mayhew went out for a stroll, leaving Edwards and Mrs. Baradine in the dining-room by themselves. The housemaid also went out, and the rest of the story was finished by the other servant, the cook.

This woman, very curious as to this strange visitor, admitted that twice she went into the hall and listened at the dining-room door. The second time she heard voices high in altercation, but could not gather what was being said. Suddenly, as she sat in the kitchen, speculating on what was taking place between her young mistress and the man Edwards, a shot rang out, followed in a fraction of time by a second one. Sensing that a tragedy had happened, she rushed into the room and was confronted with a ghastly spectacle. Mrs. Baradine was lying on the floor dead, and beside her Edwards with a bullet through his brain. Screaming, she fled into the village in search of the local constable, whom she brought back to the house. Five minutes after they came back, Mrs. Mayhew returned from her walk and fainted at the awful sight.

Later on, the mother told her story. Mrs. Baradine was not a widow; her real name was Edwards and she was the wife of the man who had killed her, and who, realizing the impossibility of escape, destroyed himself. Hers had been a most unhappy marriage, and, to escape from her husband’s brutality, she had left him and hid herself, as she fondly hoped, in this quiet Devonshire village under an assumed name.

By some means he had tracked her down, and had visited her with the view of obtaining her forgiveness of the past, and inducing her to resume their married life. To his request she had returned an obstinate refusal, in which he seemed to have acquiesced, as he announced his intention of returning to London on the following day. On the evening of the fatal day, Mrs. Mayhew had left them alone after dinner, apparently on fairly amicable terms. She could only conjecture that, during her absence, he had sought to alter her daughter’s resolution, that high words had ensued, and that in the violence of his passion he had first taken her life and then his own.

Mrs. Mayhew, otherwise Madame Makris, was a clever woman and had told her story well; she had kept out of it anything that would arouse suspicions of the past. But Grewgus, with his knowledge, was able to read between the lines.

Edwards had felt his old criminal instincts rising within him. So long a time had elapsed without any action being taken that he had concluded the past was done with. To the successful accomplishment of any future schemes, his wife was necessary. He had tracked her down to this lonely Devonshire village, and used all his arts of persuasion to induce her to return to him. A man of brutal and violent passions, he had been maddened by her refusal, and in a fit of frenzy bordering on delirium had killed her.

After he had mastered the facts, Grewgus went round to Lydon’s office. The young man knew what he had come for. He and Gloria had read the same news at breakfast.

“I wonder if she was wearing her mascot when he killed her?” said Lydon in a musing tone. “It saved her from the consequences of her lover’s bullet, but not from her husband’s.”

“And so that is the end of three out of the four,” observed Grewgus in the same thoughtful voice. “I wonder if Nemesis has yet overtaken that gloomy miscreant, John Whitehouse, or if he is living somewhere a life of smug respectability on his ill-gotten gains?”

But that question has not been answered yet. For all that is known to the contrary, John Whitehouse, as great a criminal as the others, may be leading the life suggested by the detective.

THE END.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Minor spelling inconsistencies (_e.g._ moneylender/money-lender, note-book/note book, womenfolk/women-folk, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Abandon the use of drop-caps.

Add ToC.

Punctuation: a few missing/invisible periods.

[Chapter Two]

Change “a gorgeous carved sapphire _make_ into a pendant” to _made_.

“very shortly after the _terribly_ tragedy, with instructions” to _terrible_.

[Chapter Six]

“on a considerable _snm_ of money for its purchase” to _sum_.

[Chapter Eleven]

“The _Storments_ had a small private sitting-room” to _Stormonts_.

[Chapter Seventeen]

“with something of a snarl in his _voiec_” to _voice_.

[End of text]