CHAPTER XII

Out of the Darkness

During luncheon Evelyn sat absorbed in her own thoughts, and spoke little and then at random. Celia, her only companion at the meal, was naturally full of questions; how did Evelyn know John had not done it? Why had she left her so suddenly? And the like, to all of which Evelyn returned evasive answers. She could not shake herself free from the baffling problems of the tragedy, no matter how often or how sincerely she resolved to leave them alone. She had been hopelessly, grievously wrong, but how and why? What had made her go wrong? On what false basis had she reared her crazy edifices? “Some one,” her mind kept repeating to her, “barred that window; John couldn’t do it himself; you have heard and you believe Celia’s story, you have followed Philip’s trail and it has led you to an absurdity. Who remains?” Then her mind ran away with her to the new fact which had just penetrated her consciousness, that there was a large margin of time inside which the little window might have been broken; it was probable of course that it had been done soon after the murder, but it was odd, if that was so, that it had not been discovered many hours earlier than it was. Supposing it had been done the morning after, what could she make of that? Who could have done it, and what was the reason why it was done? It was so easy to make suppositions, so easy to ask questions, but she seemed to be led into a blank wall when she tried to answer them.

Luncheon over, she threw herself down into a low basket chair, and gave herself entirely to a reconsideration of everything she had discovered. The most important point to be decided was, who had left that larger footmark in replacing the statuette? It was not John, it was not Philip. Who else could it possibly have been? As if in reply to the reiterated question, there was a discreet knock on the door and Fairlie entered. He bent in his habitual manner of semi-apology when delivering a message and said that her ladyship would be glad if Miss Celia would come and sit with her that afternoon. Evelyn, reclining in her chair, suddenly grew rigid: her eyes had fallen upon his shoes. She glanced away hurriedly, fearful of betraying the agitation in her mind; her thoughts had received their answer.

Two men remained who could have broken that window, Fairlie and the footman. The latter she put out of her reckoning at once; he was an ordinary, unintelligent, unresourceful lad, who had only been there a few months. He had never known John; he could not have played a part afterwards in any case even to save his neck from the gallows. She could not conceive any reason, except robbery—and of that there was no trace here—why he should murder his master. But Fairlie was a being of very different fibre. No one could ever guess at the thoughts lying hid in that silent soul beneath his stolid mask of dignified imperturbability. Whatever he had done, he was capable, if he chose, of concealing it.

Evelyn was too fresh from the complete upsetting of all her reasoning to leap at once to new conclusions of guilt; she was grown more moderate in her imaginings and no longer felt assured that any picture her mind painted was necessarily the truth. But she realized in an instant the possibilities of this new thought. Fairlie had been devoted to John as a little child. Whatever had happened it would have been his first thought to avoid running the risk of implicating John. She did not go so far in her thoughts as to say Fairlie struck Sir Roger down, but she saw that he might have done so; he might for instance have intervened in a quarrel. As to all that she did not know and refused, as far as she could, to speculate upon thoughts alone; but at any rate Fairlie might have let John out, Fairlie might have broken the window—no one more likely. It was obvious that if he was the one who had barred the window then whether it was he who hurled the statuette or no and whether that was done before or after John’s departure, he would have provided the semblance of some other entrance so that John’s presence on the scene might never be suspected.

The more she thought of it the more probable it seemed that Fairlie was the man: she was amazed that she had never given him a thought before. She recalled Philip’s account of how he had roused Fairlie: there was nothing in that to have prevented Fairlie’s participation during the earlier part of that long interval between thirteen minutes to twelve when Sir Roger left the study and half-past one when he was found dead: plenty of time for him to have let John out, killed Sir Roger—or killed Sir Roger and let John out, if that was the order—and gone himself to bed.

Full of such thoughts she saw her work clear before her, to find proofs which should either dispel this theory as all her others had been dispelled or make it stand out evident to all as the truth. It fitted all facts so well that even in her humility she felt assured that this time it would be strange indeed if she were entirely wrong. She had none of the bitter, horror-stricken resentment with which her belief in Philip’s guilt had inspired her; horror she felt still certainly, but also a kind of unwilling pity. She could not imagine Fairlie capable of what she would call a selfish crime: there could be no reason for such an act. Whatever his feelings towards Sir Roger were—and it was probable that beneath his respectful deference had lain a deep resentment—they would never have blazed, she felt, into violence. The thought fought itself in on her that he might have acted merely as a shield against discovery to John.

At this she rose hastily: it was no use repeating error by vexing herself in advance needlessly. It was time to act, to prove, not think. Her recent talk with Humblethorne on the subject of finger-marks had not been entirely conversational: at the back of her mind, humiliated though she had been, had still lingered irrepressible interest, and she had kept wondering whether it would not be possible to find on the statuette marks which would guide her towards the real truth. Now she would put the information given her by Humblethorne to the test. It was characteristic of her that she never stopped to consider the propriety of her handling the statuette for such a purpose: it would have been simpler and safer to have informed Humblethorne of her discovery, but she had erred alone and she would succeed alone.

She got up from the easy chair and thought out her plans. She must first get some fine flour and test the statuette. She was about to go downstairs to beg some from the cook, when glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece she noticed that it was just two o’clock. The sense of time had slipped from her: she saw instantly that it would be the most ill-fitting time to approach the cook, but the best to pursue unobserved any private inquiry of her own. The servants would all be at their dinner. At once her mind was made up. She went to her room, took scissors and paper, and, hurrying to the stain which had so baffled her, cut out another pattern. Then she made her way without noise or hesitation to the room she knew to be Fairlie’s. Outside she paused, wondering what explanation she would give if she were seen, but the clatter and voices in the servants’ hall reassured her: she opened the door and stole in. Beneath the washstand were a couple of pairs of boots; she dived at a left foot, turned it over and placed her pattern upon it. She had made no error this time: one thing was certain now, Fairlie’s foot had made the stain.

She was fearful of being discovered and had no definite object in further delay. But she saw no evening shoes; no doubt the pair then on his feet were those he had been wearing the evening of the murder, but they might be hidden away. Hastily she searched the most likely places, but without result; she opened rapidly one after another the drawers, but could find nothing. She dared stay no longer, and closed the drawers silently. She could not quite push home the top left-hand drawer, however; it had been closed and she was anxious to leave everything exactly as she had found it. She made another attempt and became convinced something was obstructing it. Hurriedly she pulled the drawer right out, felt at the back, and to her horror drew out a dirty, crumpled handkerchief stained with blood. She had hardly done so when she heard the screech of a chair being pushed back in the servants’ hall: she snatched a clean handkerchief from the drawer, thrust it behind, inserted and forced the drawer home, and fled back to her room with her pattern and the blood-stained relic crushed in her hand.

Then, locking the door, she examined what she had so unexpectedly stumbled upon. It was a man’s ordinary white handkerchief of good, but not especially fine, linen; it bore in the corner the initials J.F.; right across its width from edge to edge the centre was stained with a streaky band of blood, about three inches across at its widest and then narrowing irregularly to about an inch and a half; and it was marked by little ribs of dirt.

“More puzzles!” thought Evelyn. “Now what has this been used for?”

She locked it away carefully and then went down as she had first intended and managed to borrow some fine flour from the cook without exciting any special interest in that good woman’s lethargic mind; she had supplied both Celia and Evelyn with many curious things in her time when they had been amusing themselves learning to cook. So far Evelyn had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams; she had now the most delicate part of her self-imposed task before her.

A confidence, however, in her own dexterity of touch—if a clumsy-handed man like Humblethorne could do it, she certainly could, was her thought—and a belief that any discovery her experiment might yield would at best be only additional to what she already knew helped to steady her excitement and kept her from realizing how unusual her action was. She put on a pair of thin gloves, went along the passage, first making sure that no one was about, and, after examining the statuette once more as it stood, lifted it down by the arm which was free of any stain.

She was surprised to find how heavy it was; it looked slight and small in position, but she realized what a terrible blow it must have inflicted, hurled from that height. One other thing she noticed as she carried it unobserved to her room, and that was that it had become loose on its little ebony pedestal. The closer inspection, which was possible as soon as she was secure against observation or interruption inside her own locked door, revealed that the stout pins which entered the pedestal from the feet and held the figure in place had been badly strained, so that one foot had driven slightly into the pedestal to one side, and then when the statuette was put again in an upright condition had shifted back, leaving a distinct mark on the polished wood. That the statuette had had a severe fall was placed beyond all doubt.

Celia was a keen and skilful artist in delicate water-colour, so Evelyn had only to slip through to the girls’ study and borrow a fine brush to have all her preparations made for the new experiment. First of all, however, she practised making a few finger-prints by pressing her thumb on the polished mahogany of her dressing-table and sprinkling and brushing the flour. She had not been quite so ignorant of the elements of the art as her questions to Humblethorne had suggested and in any case did not find it particularly difficult. After a few attempts she felt reasonably sure of being able to make visible whatever the statuette concealed.

She came to it, and as she stood looking again at the bent arm a sudden knowledge came to her as to the use to which the blood-stained handkerchief had been put: like so much else it seemed obvious directly the thought had come at all—the handkerchief had been used to wipe the arm and shoulder. She took it out and examined it again in connexion with the stains on the statuette; yes, there could be little doubt. The line of her mouth tightened: a passionate impulse, even if it culminated in a blow, was less horrible than these evidences of a cool-headed and deliberate purpose afterwards. She was struck with the inconsistencies which showed themselves here before her. The criminal could think to wipe the statuette, move the box, break the window, but he had never noticed that he had put his foot in the blood. Well, this was what she had often heard, that criminals nullified a dozen careful clevernesses by a single evident oversight: the agitated mind, she supposed, was too occupied in laying its deceptions to observe the most obvious realities. Her thoughts went again to the marks on the sill of the drawing-room window, which she had been able fully to see that morning for the first time; it had struck her then that they had seemed not merely indefinite, but partially obliterated. She saw at once now that her thought had been right; the ribs of dirt on the handkerchief, so out of place in the property of a conspicuously clean and respectable butler, had been made when the handkerchief had been hastily rubbed over the trodden sill. She could not be sure, but at least it seemed highly probable; and just as the stains raised the presumption of Fairlie’s handling of the statuette so did the dirt of his shutting of the window.

She laid the handkerchief by, took the statuette carefully in her gloved hand by the clean arm and tipped it over; she was sure that the smooth polish of the pedestal would yield the best results and was afraid of testing the statuette itself in case she altered the appearance of the bloodstains. Carefully she sprinkled the fine flour over the front of the pedestal, brushed the surface very lightly, and then paused with shining eyes and a deep sigh, half satisfaction at the correctness of her conclusions and facility of her execution, half distress at the evidence of guilt before her. Clearly marked on the ebony towards each corner of the pedestal stood out the impressions of two large thumbs: the criminal after setting it down had evidently pressed it carefully back into its exact position.

She sat for some minutes staring almost vacantly at the marks; one link in the chain alone remained now, and that was the identification of those thumbs. That would not be difficult, she reflected: Fairlie had necessarily to be always handling things. She rose with quick decision—the sooner her task was complete the better—locked away the handkerchief, cleared a drawer, lifted the statuette carefully and placed it in a prone position in the drawer which she locked. Then she went downstairs.

In the hall she met Humblethorne, who was holding a telegram in his hand which Birts had just brought him. He wore a look of dissatisfaction in consequence both of an absolutely fruitless search for some further evidence, the shoes for preference, which should establish Philip Castle’s participation in the escape of the murderer, and also of the news he had just heard. The telegram said briefly in official code that John Penterton, carrying a bag, had left his home shortly before Humblethorne’s information had been received and had not returned, destination at present unknown, house would be watched and all steps to trace him followed.

Humblethorne glanced at Evelyn without pleasure. Her attitude had puzzled him, and if his evidence had not been so overwhelmingly direct he would have admitted that he felt a real misgiving. People do not say “Well! we know that: what of it?” in a matter of fact tone, in such circumstances as his last meeting with Evelyn, unless they have a reason. Thinking it over, he had been forced reluctantly to the conclusion that, though he could prove John’s secret entry, he could not prove his hand in the murder; he could only throw on John the onus of disproving it. And whatever grounds for suspicion he might have he knew that so far he had found no proof against Philip whatever. He had no doubt in his own mind, but this girl showed up to him fearlessly, almost, he felt, cynically, the weaknesses of his case.

“Miss Temple,” he said, as she was passing the two men, “I think you ought to be told a little how the case stands. It will be my duty very shortly to make a very painful communication to Lady Penterton; I think it would be as well if she was prepared. She may see it in the paper at any moment now.”

Evelyn shot a keen glance at him and his telegram, and then replied quietly, “It would be foolish of me to pretend I do not understand. Has Mr. Penterton been arrested?”

“Not yet,” Humblethorne admitted rather reluctantly. “But it is only a question of a few hours now before he will be.”

“Then you have still time to avoid making a mistake publicly,” she replied. “I advise you to use it.”

“Your good opinion of your friend’s brother does you credit,” remarked Humblethorne drily; “I regret I cannot share it.”

“It is hardly a question of good opinion,” she returned boldly, “but of proof. You know very well that you have none.”

Humblethorne flushed at this direct blow. “I have proof of things that will need a good deal of explanation,” he said shortly.

“You shall have all the explanation you require—in half an hour,” she said. “Delay the arrest that length of time and you will have no reason to regret it.”

“What do you mean?” he exclaimed.

“You have been looking for a pair of evening shoes, I think,” she went on with apparent irrelevance.

“Yes.” He tried unsuccessfully to hide his eagerness.

“I will show you them—in half an hour. Wait that long at any rate.” She nodded and went into the dining-room.