Chapter 15

THE THIN END OF A CLUE

Edmund Grosse later on in the morning strolled down to the stables. He had been there the day before, but he had still something to say to the stud-groom, an old friend of his, who had the highest respect for the baronet's judgment.

Edmund loved a really well-kept stable, where hardly a straw escapes beyond the plaited edges, where the paint is renewed and washed to the highest possible pitch of cleanliness, and where a perpetual whish of water and clanking of pails testify to a constant cleaning of cobblestone yard and flagged pavement.

In the middle of Groombridge Castle stable-yard there was an oval of perfect turf, and that was surrounded by soft, red gravel; then came alternate squares of pavement and cobble-stones, on to which opened the wide doors of coach-houses and stables and harness-rooms, and the back gate of the stud-groom's house.

An old, white-haired, ruddy-faced man standing on the red gravel smiled heartily when Sir Edmund appeared. The man was in plain clothes, with a very upright collar and a pearl horseshoe-pin in his tie; his figure was well-built, but showed unmistakably that his knees had been fixed in their present shape by constant riding.

He touched his hat.

"How's the mare to-day, Akers?" asked Sir Edmund.

"Nicely, nicely; it's a splendid mash that, Sir Edmund. Old Hartley gave me the recipe for that. He was stud-groom here longer than I have been, in the old lord's day. He had hoped to have had his son to follow him, but the lad got wild, and it couldn't be."

The old man sighed, and changed the conversation. "Will you come round again, sir?"

"Yes," said Edmund; "I don't mind if I do. But you've got a son of your own about the stable, haven't you?" he asked, as they turned towards the other side of the yard.

"I had two, Sir Edmund," was the brief and melancholy answer. "Jimmy's here, but the lad I thought most on, he went and enlisted in the war, and he couldn't settle down again after that. Jimmy, he'll never rise to my place--it would not be fair, and I wouldn't let his lordship give it a thought--but the other one might have done it."

Sir Edmund felt some sympathy for the stay-at-home, whom he knew. "He seems a cheerful, steady fellow."

"He's steady enough, and he's cheerful enough," said his father, in a tone of great contempt; "but the other lad had talent--he had talent."

Both men had paused in the interest of their talk.

"My eldest son, Thomas, of whom I'm speaking, went to the war in the same ship as General Sir David Bright, and there's a thing I'd like to tell you about that, Sir Edmund. It never came into my head how curious a thing it was till yesterday--last night, I may say. Lady Rose Bright's lady's-maid come in with Lady Groombridge's lady's-maid to see my wife, and you'll excuse me if I do repeat some woman's gossip when you see why I do it. Well, the long and short of it was that it seems Lady Rose Bright has been left rather close as to fortune for a lady in her position, and the money's all gone off elsewhere. Then the maid said, Sir Edmund--whether truly or not I don't know, naturally--that there had been hopes that another will might be sent home from South Africa, but that nothing came of it. I felt, so to speak, puzzled while I was listening, and afterwards my wife says to me while we were alone, she says, 'Wasn't it our Thomas when he was on board ship wrote that he had put his name to a paper for Sir David Bright?'--witnessing, you'll understand she meant by that, sir--'and what's become of that paper I should like to know,' says she. So she up and went to her room and took out all Thomas's letters, and sure enough it was true."

Akers paused, and then very slowly extracted a fat pocket-book from his tight-fitting coat, and pulled out a letter beautifully written on thin paper. He held it with evident respect, and then, after a preparatory cough, he began to read:

"'I was sent for to-day, and taken up with another of our regiment to the state cabins by Sir David Bright's servant, and asked to put my name to a paper as witness to Sir David Bright's signature, and so I did.'"

Akers stopped, and looked across his glasses at Sir Edmund.

"I don't know if you will remember Sir David's servant, Sir Edmund; he was killed in the same battle as Sir David was, poor fellow. A big man with red hair--a Scotchman--you'd have known that as soon as he opened his mouth. He'd have chosen my boy from having known him here, in all probability."

"Yes, yes," said Grosse impatiently; "but how do you know that what he witnessed was a will?"

"Well, of course, I don't know, Sir Edmund, and of course the boy didn't know what was in the paper he witnessed; but the missus will have it that that paper was a will, and there'll be no getting it out of her head that the right will has been lost. I was wondering about it when I see you come into the yard, and I thought I'd just let you see the lad's letter. It could do no harm, and it might do good."

Edmund had been absolutely silent during this narrative, with his eyes fixed on the stud-groom's face.

"And where is Thomas now?" he asked, in a low voice.

"He's in North India somewhere, Sir Edmund, but that is his poor mother's trouble; we've not had a line from him these three months."

"Oh, I'll find him for you," said Edmund, and he was just going to ask what regiment Thomas was in when they were disturbed by the appearance of Billy emerging from the hunters' stable, and Edmund Grosse felt an unwarrantable contempt for a young man who dawdles away half the morning in the stable.

"Should I find you at six o'clock this evening?" he asked, in a low voice, of the stud-groom; and having been satisfied on that point, he strolled off and left Billy to talk of the horses.

Edmund Grosse felt for the moment as if the missing will were in his grasp, and he was quite sure now that he had never doubted its existence. What he had just heard was the very first thing approaching to evidence in favour of his own theory, which he had hitherto built up entirely on guess-work. Of course, the paper might have been some ordinary deed, some bit of business the General had forgotten to transact before starting. But, if so, he felt sure that it must have been business unknown to the brothers Murray, as they had discussed with Grosse every detail of Sir Edmund's affairs. One thing was certain: it would be quite as difficult after this to drive out of Edmund Grosse's head the belief that this paper was a will as it would be to drive it out of the head of Mrs. Akers.

Edmund was in excellent spirits at luncheon. In the afternoon he drove with Lady Groombridge and Rose and Molly to see a famous garden some eight miles off, the owners of which were away in the South. The original house to which the gardens belonged had been replaced by a modern one in Italian style at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was not interesting, and Lady Groombridge gave a sniff of contempt as she turned her back on it and her attention, and that of her friends, to the far more striking green walls beyond the wide terraced walk on the south side of the building.

In the midst of ordinary English country scenery, these gardens had been set by a great Frenchman who had caught the strange secret of the romance of utterly formal hedges. He could make of them a fitting framework for the glories of a court, or for sylvan life in Merrie England. There were miles of hedges; not yew, hornbeam had been chosen for this green, tranquil country. At one spot many avenues of hedges met together as if by accident, or by some rhythmic movement; it was a minuet of Nature's dancing, grown into formal lines but not petrified--every detail, in fact, alive with green leaves. If you stood in the midst of this meeting of the ways, the country round outside, seen in vistas between the hedges, was curiously glorified, more especially on one side where the avenues were shortened. There one saw larger glimpses of fields and woods and bits of common-land that seemed wonderfully eloquent of freedom and simplicity, nature and husbandry. But if you had not seen those glimpses through the lines of strange, stately, regal dignity--the lines of those mighty hedges--you would not have been so startled by their charm. That was the triumph of the genius of Lenôtre: he had seen that, framed in the sternest symbols of rule and order, one could get the freshest joy in the pictures of Nature's untouched handiwork. On the west side the avenues of hedges disappeared into distant vistas of wood, one only ending in a piece of most formal ornamental water. I don't know how it was, but it was difficult not to be infected by a curious sense of orgy, of human beings up to their tricks--love tricks, drinking and eating--perhaps murdering tricks--all done in some impish fantastic way, between those long hedges or behind them. If there were not something going on down one avenue you looked into, it was happening in another.

Somewhat of all this Edmund said to Molly as they strolled between the hedges which reached far above his head, but she felt that he was absent-minded while he did so. He had planned for himself a walk and a talk with Rose, but he had reckoned without his hostess, who had shown so unmistakably that she intended him to amuse Molly that it would have been discourteous to have done anything else. He had felt rather cross as he saw Lady Groombridge and Rose turn down one of the longest walks, one that seemed indeed to have no ending at all, with an air of finality, as if their _tête-à-tête_ were to be as long as the path before them, and as secret as the hedges could keep it. He would never have come out driving with three women if he had not hoped to get a talk alone with Rose. He told himself that Rose's avoidance of him was becoming quite an affectation, and after all, he asked himself, what had he done to be treated like this?

"Why, if I were trying to make love to her she could not be more absurd! The only time after our first walk here that we have been alone she made Miss Dexter join us, and as the girl would not stay Rose found she must write letters."

As soon as he had made up his mind that he would show Rose what nonsense it all was, he could and did--not without the zest of pique--turn his attention to Molly.

"Lady Groombridge doesn't frame well here, does she?" he said, smiling. "Rather a shock at that date--the tweed skirt and the nailed boots and the felt hat."

"Yes; but Lady Rose floats down between the hedges as if she had a long train, only she hasn't," laughed Molly. "The hem of her garment never touches the earth, as a matter of fact. I wonder how it is done."

"You are right," said Edmund; "and, do you know another thing about Rose?--whatever she wears she seems to be in white."

"I know," answered Molly. "I see what you mean."

"It may be," said Edmund, "because she always wore white as a young girl. I remember the day when David Bright first saw her she was in white." Edmund had for a moment forgotten entirely why he should not have mentioned David Bright. If Molly could have read his mind at the next moment she would have seen that he was expressing a most fervent wish that he had never met her. How little he had gained, or was likely to gain, from her, and how stupid and tiresome, if not worse, was this appearance of friendship. He felt this much more strongly on account of the morning's discovery, and he was determined to keep on neutral ground.

"Have you ever seen Versailles?" he asked.

"No; I have seen absolutely nothing out of England except India, when I was a small child."

There it was again! He could not let her give him any confidences about India or anything else.

"Well, the hedges at Versailles don't impress me half as much as these do, and yet these are not half so well known. There's more of nature here, and they are not so self-contained. At Versailles the Court and its gardens were the world, and nature a tapestry hanging out for a horizon; here it is amazing how the frame leads one's eyes to the great, beautiful world outside. I never saw meadows and woods look fairer than from here."

They were silent; and in the silence Grosse heard shouting and then saw a huge dog dragging a chain, rushing along the avenue towards them, while louder shouts came from the opposite direction.

"We must run," he said very quietly, "there's something wrong with it;" and two men, still calling and waving their arms, appeared at the end nearest the house. Edmund took Molly by the arm, and they ran to meet the men.

"Get the lady over the kitchen-garden wall!" shouted one who held a gun, and as they came to the end of the hedge on their left they saw a wall at right angles to it about five feet high. Molly looked for any sort of footing in the bricks for one second, and then she felt Grosse lift her in his arms, and deposit her on the top of the wall. She rolled over on the other side into a strawberry bed in blossom. She heard a gun fired as she jumped to her feet, and a second shot followed.

"He's dead, sir," she heard a voice say. "I'll open the gate for the lady."

And then a garden gate a few yards off was opened inward, and Molly walked to meet the man whom she supposed to be a head gardener. She thanked him and went through the gate, to find Edmund, with a very white face, leaning back on a stone bench built into the wall.

"The gentleman strained himself a bit," said the gardener, in a tone of apology to Molly. "I can't think how he come to break his chain"--he meant the dog this time. "I've said he ought to be shot long ago; now they'll believe me. Why, he bit off the porter's ear at the station when he first come, and he was half mad with rage to-day."

"I'm all right," said Edmund, with a kindly smile to the horribly distressed Molly. She went up to him with a gentle, tender anxiety on her face that betrayed a too strong feeling, only he was just faint enough not to notice it.

"It's nothing, child," he said in the fatherly tone that to Molly meant so far too much. "The merest rick. I forgot, in the hurry, to think how high I was lifting you, and I also forgot that there might be cucumber frames on the other side!"

"I wouldn't have said 'over the garden wall,' sir, if there had been," said the gardener with a smile, as he offered a glass of water that had been fetched by the other man, whose coat and gaiters proclaimed him unmistakably a keeper.

"A fine dog, poor fellow," said Edmund to the latter.

The keeper shook his head. "I don't deny it, sir, but there are fine lions and fine bears, too, sir, that are kept locked up in the Zoölogical Gardens." Evidently the gardener and the keeper were of one opinion in this matter.

Presently Sir Edmund was so clearly all right that the men, after being tipped and having all their further offers of help refused, went away.

Edmund and Molly were left alone.

"How well you run!" he said, smiling.

"Yes; even without a ferocious dog behind me I can run fairly well," she said. "But I wish you had let me get over that wall alone. And I wish they could have spared that splendid animal."

"After all, he would have been shot whether we had been there or not," said Edmund. "My only bad moment was listening for the crash of broken glass and thinking that you were cut to pieces."

"You are sure that you have not hurt yourself?" Her grey eyes were large with anxiety.

Edmund, laughing, held up his hand, which was bleeding.

"I see I have sustained a serious injury of which I was not aware in the excitement of the crisis."

Molly examined his hand with a professional air. Edmund let her wash it with her handkerchief dipped in the glass of water, and bind it with his own. Her touch was light and skilful, and it would have been absurd to refuse to let her do it. But, as holding his wrist she raised it a little higher to turn her bandage under it, her small, lithe, thin hand was close to his face, and he gave it the slightest kiss.

Any girl who had been abroad would have taken it as little more than the merest politeness, but to Molly it came as a surprise. A glow of quick, deep joy rose within her; her cheeks did not blush, for this was a feeling too peaceful, too restful for blushes or any sort of discomfort.

"This young lady can run like a deerhound," said Edmund, "and bandage like a surgeon."

"But that's about all she can do," laughed Molly. "Ah! there"--she could not quite hide the regret in her voice--"there are Lady Groombridge and Lady Rose."