The Witness on the Roof (31 page)

“This—this is her doing, the hussy!” he said between his teeth. “I'll be level with her yet! I promised her I would. Just you take me to the proper folks, and I will make a clean breast of it!”

“H
AVE YOU
seen the papers this morning, Joan?”

Lord Warchester's tone was abrupt, almost curt.

Joan was standing in the hall, warming her hands at the fire and waiting for Cynthia. At the sound of her husband's voice she started violently, the tell-tale colour flooded her cheeks. She did not turn for a while. Warchester looked at her. No one would have guessed the mad passion of longing that seized him as he gazed at his wife's dainty averted cheek, the hot revolt against the fate that had been his for the last three months.

At last Joan turned.

“No,” she said slowly—“no, not this morning. Why?” Her face was very pale now; the shadow of a terrible dread lay in her brown eyes.

Warchester averted his gaze.

“Cécile De Lavelle was arrested last night for the murder of your sister, Evelyn.”

“Ah!” Joan put up one ungloved hand to the lace at her throat; her eyes were fixed on Warchester, haunting, accusing. “Is that why you have come up this morning?”

“I came up last night,” ‘Warchester corrected. “Your Uncle Lockyer wired to me. He thought no good purpose could be served by telling you last night, but to-day you were bound to know. It is most probable—nay, almost certain—that you will be called as a witness.”

“What!” Joan exclaimed. “What am I to do?” she cried wildly. “What can I do? How can I stand aside and let them accuse her when I know?”

Warchester made no answer. His face was very white; his grey eyes were dark with pain. She stepped swiftly across to him and laid her little hot hand on his wrist.

“What must we do, Paul? You—you must go away —right away where no one can ever find you. Then, when you are quite safe, I can tell—I must tell! You will, Paul!” a ring of agonized pleading in her voice. “You must! And you must be quick, lest they should find out!”

Very deliberately Warchester shook her hand from his arm. He bent his cold gaze upon her.

“So this is how you think of me! This is how you regard my word! You believe that I would allow a woman to be accused in my place!”

With a gesture of intolerable wrath he swung away from her. Joan moved forward quickly, her hands clasped.

‘“Paul! Paul!”

But already he had passed into the vestibule. She heard him speak to the butler; then the door closed.

At the same moment, Cynthia came downstairs.

“Joan, what do you think I have just heard? That wretched woman who pretended to be Evelyn has been arrested for murdering her—your sister, Evelyn, I mean! Of course they only call her Marie De Lavelle. Isn't it terrible? To think that we even knew the wretch! I am glad of one thing—I never was as civil as you wanted me to be! Now Reggie will see I was right!”

“How did you hear?” Joan asked faintly.

“Celestine told me,” Cynthia replied as she buttoned her gloves. “Now I do hope you are not going to worry yourself about the creature, Joan”—as the change in her cousin's face struck her—“she is a bad lot.”

“She had nothing to do with Evelyn's death,” Joan returned as she rang the bell. “Bring me a newspaper, please, John” to the footman. “Any of them—it doesn't matter which.”

Cynthia opened her blue eyes.

“Now, Joan, how can you possibly tell?”

Joan made no answer. She seized eagerly upon the paper the man brought her and turned it over with trembling fingers. She had not far to look. The Grove Street murder had attracted a considerable amount of public attention lately; it was accorded a paragraph on the front sheet.

Joan read it with avidity; she laid the paper on the table.

“Cynthia, I am going to hear the case.”

“What!” Mrs. Trewhistle stared at her in deep disgust. “How can you, Joan? You arranged to be at Céline's to have your gowns fitted this morning.”

“They will have to wait!” It was evident that Joan was in no mood to trouble about her dresses now. “It is no use, Cynthia, I must go—I must hear!”

“But you can't!” Cynthia said blankly. “I don't believe women ever do go to those places alone. And you don't even know where it is. It only says ‘Before the magistrate.' Now I am sure I haven't the least idea—”

“The chauffeur will find that out,” Joan returned obstinately. “It is no use, Cynthia, I must go! Uncle Septimus is sure to be there—he will look after me.”

“Well, if you go, I suppose I must,” Cynthia said unwillingly. “And to think that I had been looking forward to a delightful morning's shopping! This is another result of that idiotic will of Granny's!”

Joan made no reply; she waited with tragic eyes until the car appeared at the door.

The chauffeur fully justified her confidence. He found his way without difficulty to the dingy city court where Cecile De Lavelle was again brought up on a charge of murder.

It was fairly early, but the case was already proceeding when they arrived, and a great crowd round the entrance testified to public interest in the charge. Joan and Cynthia left their car and with difficulty made their way to the door. A message to Septimus Lockyer brought him out, radiant with the success of his investigations, but inclined to be angry with Joan for coming before she was summoned.

“You might have known that you would get a subpoena!” he grumbled. “But there—in such things women never have any sense!”

In spite of his vexation, however, he successfully piloted them to seats near his own, where it was possible to see and hear everything. Cécile De Lavelle was in the dock alone. All her mannerisms, her recklessness had deserted her now—she looked shrunken, smaller, Joan fancied. She was seated with her head down, a long shiver shaking her every now and then.

In the witness-box opposite Basil Wilton was giving evidence.

Joan stared and rubbed her eyes when she recognized this fact. She had missed the earlier sensation that had stirred the court when he had stated that he was the Wingrove for whom such long and unavailing search had been made, but a few whispered words from her uncle enlightened her and she bent forward eagerly. Basil, however, had little to relate that bore upon the actual tragedy. He looked wan and haggard as he described how he had asked his wife to be at his studio at four o'clock on that afternoon of the 11th of May, and identified the torn portion of the letter produced by the police as part of her reply. Questioned as to his reason for making the appointment, he stated that it was in order that his cousin, upon whose judgement his wife was wont to place reliance, might explain to her the reasons that rendered it imperative that their marriage should remain a secret for a while. He added that it had, of course, been his intention to present himself, but that his accident had taken place that very afternoon and had thus accounted for his supposed mysterious absence.

Counsel for the prisoner put no questions to this witness, who left the box amidst a sympathetic murmur from the court. Then there was a pause of expectation as Viscount Warchester was called.

Joan started; regardless of the spectators, she craned forward. It could not be that Paul was here—that they were going to question him! She caught her breath in an agony as she saw him making his way through the crowd. He did not look towards his wife; apparently he did not see the appealing eyes, the pallid, anguished face. Having taken the oath, he waited quietly for his examination to begin. Harvey Wilberforce, a man well known to Warchester by name as one of the greatest criminal lawyers of the day as well as a great friend of Septimus Lockyer's, was for the Crown. He was a tall, spare man, with a luxuriant crop of red hair and a particularly bland, benevolent smile. He rose now, hitching up his gown over his left arm.

“Can you carry your memory back to the afternoon of the 11th of May, 1897, Lord Warchester? Will you tell us whether you kept the appointment which Mr. Wilton has told us he made, with your consent, to meet his wife in the studio at Grove Street on that afternoon?”

Warchester bowed gravely.

“I did.”

Mr. Harvey Wilberforce smiled ingratiatingly.

“Will you please tell us precisely what took place?”

Warchester waited a moment as if to collect his thoughts.

‘“I was a few minutes late,” he said very quietly. “The appointment was made for four; it was perhaps ten minutes or a quarter past when I arrived at my cousin's rooms. I went up without meeting anyone, and found, to my surprise, that the door of the flat was ajar. As no one answered my knock, I pushed it open and entered. There, to my horror, I saw on the floor the body of my cousin's wife. I knew at once as I bent over her that she was dead—had been dead for some minutes. I saw on the floor near the door my cousin's pistol, one of a pair I myself had given him having the initial
W
upon them in silver. Then, I—I” He paused and faltered for a moment.

“Yes?” Harvey Wilberforce prompted quietly. “What did you do next, Lord Warchester?”

Warchester braced himself for the telling of his tale with a manifest effort.

“My first instinct was, of course, to call for assistance, to send for the police. I was already turning to the door for this purpose when I stumbled over the pistol I have mentioned. Then—then I think I must have lost my head. I knew that of late Mrs. Basil Wilton had been demanding the public recognition of her marriage, that she had quarrelled with my cousin, and I thought—I feared that in a fit of passion he—in short, he must have used the pistol! I—I—”

He paused and glanced involuntarily across at his cousin. Basil's eyes met his, and his smile flashed sympathy and comprehension.

Warchester seemed to gather strength visibly.

“The only thing for me to do, I thought, was to try to avert suspicion from him. I placed the pistol in the dead girl's hand. I tore and burned up any photographs or letters I saw about that might prove that Wingrove was in reality Basil Wilton. The cane found in the corner of the room was mine.”

He stopped.

“That night I went away to Paris first, afterwards to Southern Nigeria. Until my cousin's memory was restored the other day I had no idea that his accident had occurred before and not after his wife's death. That is all, I think.”

“Thank you, Lord Warchester!” Harvey Wilberforce said blandly, and sat down.

Counsel for the defence arose.

“Though I am reserving my cross-examination of the witnesses until I have had an opportunity of conferring with my client, I wish to ask Lord Warchester two questions—first, whether the idea that the murdered woman had committed suicide entered his mind at first.”

“No.” Warchester replied, without hesitation.

“Why not?”

“I did not for one moment think that Mrs. Basil Wilton was a person likely to take her own life,” Warchester replied slowly.

“You did not think Mrs. Basil Wilton a person likely to take her own life?” repeated counsel, Mr. Roy Denman. “But is it not an established fact that people who commit suicide are usually the last persons one would have expected to do so?”

Warchester paused.

“It may be so—I do not know.”

“You do not know. Very well!” Mr. Roy Denman commented. “But now I must ask you, Lord Warchester—you were aware that there were two rooms communicating with your cousin's studio?”

“Yes, I knew that.”

“Had you any idea that any person whatever was concealed in either of those rooms?”

“Not in the least!” This time Warchester's answer was prompt. “I am quite clear that when I entered there was no one in either, as my first impulse was to look round to see if I could find any traces of my cousin.”

“And you heard nothing to lead you to think that anyone came in afterwards?”

“Nothing at all.”

“You neither heard nor saw anything at all to make you imagine an unseen witness was lurking in either of these rooms?”

“No.”

“That is what I wanted to ascertain. Thank you, Lord Warchester,” and Mr. Roy Denman sat down.

There was a pause in the proceedings. Counsel engaged conferred with the solicitors. Cecile De Lavelle still sat silent, motionless; not once had she looked round the court. Her head had bent lower and lower while Basil Wilton was giving his evidence; more than once the wardresses on either hand had stooped as if to assure themselves that she was not fainting.

The prosecuting counsel leaned towards an official of the court.

“Call James Gregory!”

“James Gregory!” A stir rang through the crowded court. It was a confirmation of the rumour, which had been gaining ground in the last hour, that James Gregory had turned informer. All heads turned to the side door, through which two warders presently conducted Gregory, The unhappy prisoner in the dock looked up once; then, with a gesture of utter despair, she cowered down in her chair lower than ever.