CHAPTER LXXXIII.

THE CAPTAIN ASKS STRANGE QUESTIONS.

Two hours had passed; it was the full glowing noon now of the summer day. The sun shone so brightly and warmly it was difficult to bear its rays; the air was faint with the rich odor of countless flowers; it was musical with the song of a thousand birds; the bright-winged butterfly hovered round the roses. Then the sweet summer silence was broken by the gallop of horses and the tramp of men.

Captain Ayrley had arrived with two clever officers; the whole town of Anderley was astir: in the silence of the soft summer night, red-handed murder had been among them, and robbed them of the fairest girl the sun had ever shone on. Foul, sneaking, red-handed murder! The whole town was roused: some went to the church where the rector awaited the bride, and told him the beautiful girl who was to have been married that day had been found dead, with a knife in her heart.

Up the broad staircase leading to the grand corridor they went slowly, that little procession of strong men. Captain Ayrley would not use the spiral staircase, he wished to see the place just as it was.

"If the outer door is locked," he said, "we will soon force it."

The next sound heard in that lordly mansion was the violent breaking open of a door; then, the earl being with them, they entered, accompanied by the doctor.

He could do nothing but declare how many hours she had been dead.

"Since two in the morning," he believed, and the earl shivered as he listened.

That was the time when Earle had heard the stifled cry.

Captain Ayrley was shrewd and keen, a man of great penetration; nothing ever escaped him. He asked each person to stand quite still while he looked round the room.

"There has been no violent entrance," he said; "the murderer must have come up the spiral staircase gently enough, there is not a leaf of the foliage destroyed! he evidently entered no other room but this. Strange--if he came for the purpose of robbery; for there, in the sleeping chamber, I see costly jewels that would have repaid any mere burglar."

He looked around again.

"There are no less than three bells," he said. "Where do they sound?"

"One went to the maid's room, another to the servants' hall, the third to the housekeeper's room."

"It was a strange thing," said Captain Ayrley, "that the young lady, having these bells at hand, did not sound an alarm; she had plenty of time."

"How do you know," asked the earl, "that she had plenty of time?"

The officer pointed to the bridal costume, all lying in shreds upon the floor.

"It must have taken some time to destroy those," he said; "they could not have been so completely destroyed in one single instant. Look again; you will find that they have been done with clean hands--there is not a mark upon them. That was done before the murder; the proof is that the lady has fallen, as you perceive, on the _debris_."

"You are right," said Lord Linleigh.

Then, with the same skill and care, he examined every other detail. The earl told him about the knife.

"It is, you perceive," he said, "a pruning-knife. It was fetched from one of the hot-houses yesterday, to cut some branches Lady Studleigh said darkened her room. I saw it yesterday afternoon lying on that table, when I had come to speak to my daughter. Would to Heaven I had taken it away with me!"

Captain Ayrley looked very thoughtful.

"If that be the case, then it is quite evident the person did not come _prepared_ to do murder! it must have been an afterthought."

"Perhaps my daughter made some resistance--tried to call for help, or something of that kind," said the earl.

Still the captain looked puzzled.

"Why not have called for help while these things were being destroyed?" he said. "I am sure there is a mystery in it, something that does not quite meet the eye at the first glance. Will you call Lady Studleigh's maid. Throw--throw a sheet over there first; that is not a fitting sight for any woman's eye."

Then came Eugenie, with many tears and wailing cries. She had nothing to tell, except that last evening her lady had, for the first time, spoken to her of her marriage, and had shown her the wedding costume.

"I took up the dress and looked at it," she said, "then I laid it over that chair. My lady wanted to see how large the veil was. I opened it, and we placed it on this chair: the wreath lay in a small scented box on the table. I remember seeing the knife there; it was left yesterday after the branches were cut. My lady told me to take it back, but I forgot it."

She knew no more, only that she had tried her hardest to open the door that morning, and had not succeeded. She was evidently ignorant and unconscious enough.

"Had your lady any enemy?" asked the earl.

"No," replied the maid; "I believe every one who saw her worshiped her.

"Was there any tramp or poacher to whom she had refused alms, or anything of that kind?" asked the captain.

"I should say not; my lady always had an open hand."

"She expressed no fear last evening, but seemed just as usual?" asked the earl.

"She was happier than usual, if anything, my lord," was the reply.

Then the medical details were taken down, and the body of the dead girl was raised from the ground. The doctor and the maid washed the stains from the golden hair. The housekeeper was summoned, and the two women, with bitter tears, laid the fair limbs to rest. She was so lovely, even in death! The cruel wound could not be seen. They would have arrayed her in her wedding-dress had it not been destroyed. They found a robe of plain white muslin, and put it on her: they brushed out the shining ripples of golden hair, and let it lie like a long veil around her; they crossed the perfect arms, and laid them over the quiet breast. Though she had died so terrible a death, there was no trace of pain on the beautiful face: it was calm and smiling, as though the last whisper from her lips had been anything rather than the terrible words.

"Oh, God! I am not fit to die!"--anything rather than that.

Eugenie went down into the garden and gathered fair white roses, she crowned the golden head with them; she laid them on the white breast, and over the silent figure, perfect in its pale loveliness as sculptured marble; so beautiful, so calm! Oh, cruel death, to have claimed her! Then the maid wept bitter tears over her, she could not tear herself from the room where the beautiful figure lay. Silently the earl entered, and bowed his head over the cold face, hot tears fell from his eyes upon it.

"I will avenge you, my darling," he said. "I will hunt your murderer down."

He went back to the room, where Captain Ayrley awaited him, with a strange expression on his face.

"I do not like to own myself defeated, Lord Linleigh," he said; "but I must own I am baffled here. I can see no motive for this most cruel murder."

"Robbery," said the earl, shortly.

"No: I cannot think so. The maid, who evidently understands her business, tells me that there is not so much as a ring, or an inch of lace missing; whatever the motive may have been, it was certainly not robbery; if so, when the victim lay helpless and dead, why not have carried off the plunder? There is jewelry enough here to have made a man's fortune; if any one risked murder for it, why not have taken it away?"

"Perhaps there was some noise, some interruption; the man grew frightened and ran away."

"I see no sign of it; there is nothing disturbed. Besides, my lord, there is another thing that puzzles me more than all. Why should a man, whose object was simply plunder, employ himself in tearing a wedding-dress and bridal-veil to pieces; why should he have delayed in order to crush her wedding-wreath in his hand, and trample it underneath his feet, especially when, as circumstantial evidence goes to prove, his victim must have been in his presence--must, if she had any fear, have had plenty of time to have rung for help. I do not understand it."

"It certainly seems very mysterious," said Lord Linleigh. "I do not at all understand the destruction of the wedding costume."

"Do not think me impertinent, my lord, if I ask whether there was any rival in the case? This is not a common murder--I would stake the whole of my professional skill on it. It is far more like a crime committed under the maddening influence of jealousy than anything else."

"I do not see that it is possible. My daughter, as was only natural for a beautiful girl in her position, had many admirers; but there was no one who would be likely to be jealous. Another thing is, by her own especial wish and desire, the fact of her marriage was to be kept a profound secret; no one knew one single word about it except ourselves."

"And that was by her own especial desire?" said Captain Ayrley.

"Yes, it was her whim--her caprice."

"She may have had a reason for it," said the captain, gravely. "I should imagine she had."

"And what would you imagine that reason to be?" asked the earl.

"I should say that, for some reason or other, she was afraid of its being known. There are many things hidden in lives that seem calm and tranquil; it seems to me that the unfortunate young lady was afraid of some one, and perhaps had reason for it."

The earl sat in silence for some minutes, trying to think over all his daughter's past life; he could not remember anything that seemed to give the least color to the officer's suspicions. He raised his eyes gravely to the shrewd, keen face.

"You may be right, Captain Ayrley," he said; "it is within the bounds of possibility. But, frankly, on the honor of a gentleman, I know of nothing in my daughter's life that bears out your suspicions; therefore I should wish you not to mention them to any one else; they can only give pain. For my part, not understanding the destruction of the wedding-dress, I firmly believe that it is a case of intended burglary, and that either while trying to defend herself or to give the alarm, she was cruelly murdered. I believe that, and nothing more. At the same time, if you like to follow out any clew, I will do all in my power to help you. For the present we will not add to horror and grief by assuming that such a crime can be the result of jealous or misspent love. Try by all means to catch the murderer--never mind who or what he is."

Captain Ayrley promised to obey. Yet, though they searched and searched well, there was not the least trace, no mark of footsteps, no broken boughs, no stains of red finger marks, nor could they find any trace, in the neighborhood, of tramps, vagrants, or burglars. It seemed to Captain Ayrley, that the Linleigh Court murder would be handed down as a mystery to all time.

Lord Linleigh did not enter the room, where lay the beautiful, silent dead, with Earle, he dreaded the sight of his grief, he could not bear the thought of his sorrow.

Earle went in alone, closing the door behind him, that none might hear or see when he bade his love farewell. Those who watched in the outer room heard a sound of weeping and wild words: they heard sobs so deep and bitter, that it was heartrending to remember it was a strong man weeping there in his agony. They did not disturb him: perhaps Heaven in its mercy sent him some comfort--none came from earth; nothing came to soften the madness of anguish when he remembered this was to have been his wedding day, and now his beautiful, golden-haired darling lay dead, cold, silent, smiling--dead! What could lessen such anguish as his?