CHAPTER XIX

A DENIAL

On the day after the interview with Spruce it was necessary for Owain to travel to London for the purpose of having an interview with Madame Alpenny. Vane at first wished to go with him, but on second thoughts decided that it would be best for him to remain in Cookley and keep a close watch on the Nut. That traitor, having behaved treacherously, was as pleased with himself as if he had acted in a most honourable manner. He was now certain of an excellent income, and determined to go abroad for a year or so to enjoy himself until such time as his West End friends forgot his little mistake at cards. Meanwhile he remained at the Bull Inn waiting for the arrest of the Hungarian lady, when everything would be put ship-shape. Spruce was very pleased with every one and everything since matters had turned out so well. That they had turned out badly for Madame Alpenny did not worry him in the least. He was much too busy building castles in the air to trouble about her.

Owain had given Mrs. Perage and Gwen a full account of the discovery of the old woman's guilt. They were naturally shocked, but scarcely surprised, as for a long time circumstances had tended to make them think that Madame Alpenny had murdered the Squire. At the same time Gwen pleaded with her lover to deal gently with the wretched creature as she was Zara's mother, and they both owed a great deal to Zara. Hench admitted as much and promised to be as lenient as he could. Nevertheless, he pointed out that to save himself he would have to inform the police about the woman's guilt. Unwilling as he was to act so drastically, there was no other course to be taken. All the way to London the young man argued out the matter in his own vexed mind, but was unable to see how he could shield Madame Alpenny. It was a pity that Zara, who was innocent, should suffer for the wickedness of her mother. All the same, it was impossible to spare her the shock. Owain hated the idea of saving himself at the expense of a woman, but in strict justice to himself, and considering that his liberty and life were at stake, he could not see what else he could do. When he was on his way to Bethnal Green he fully made up his mind to act as justice dictated.

The Home of the Muses was much in the same state as Hench had left it, although there were several new boarders. Mrs. Tesk received him joyfully, and conducted him to her sanctum saying that she wished for a private conversation with him. Madame Alpenny, it appeared, was in the drawing-room along with Bracken and Zara.

"For a surprising thing has occurred," said Mrs. Tesk, who looked more like a retired school-mistress than ever. "They are now man and wife."

"Oh!" Hench expected something of this sort, but was astonished to learn that the young couple had got married so promptly. "Man and wife, are they?"

"Yes! They have entered into the bonds of matrimony, and are now breaking the news to Madame Alpenny."

"She won't be pleased," observed Hench, with a shrug. "Oh, I am sure she will be very annoyed indeed!" cried Mrs. Tesk, clasping her hands with a look of distress. "She intended you to be her son-in-law. She told me so several times."

"Ah! There is such a thing as counting your chickens before they are hatched, Mrs. Tesk," was the young man's dry reply.

"But you loved Mademoiselle Zara--or rather I should now say Mrs. Bracken."

"I admired her," corrected Owain. "I never loved her. She quite understood my feeling. I wish her and Bracken all manner of luck."

"So do I, Mr. Hench. After all, if two people are tenderly attached, why should they not wed?"

"Why, indeed? When were they married?"

"Yesterday, at a Registrar's office. I scarcely look upon such a civil contract as a marriage myself, Mr. Hench, as such a ceremony should surely be sanctified by the blessing of the Church. But married they are according to the law of the land, and I expect they will leave me now."

"Why should they?"

"Because Madame Alpenny will never allow them to live under the same roof as herself. She is a very determined woman, Mr. Hench. I shall be sorry to lose the company of the bridal pair," said poor Mrs. Tesk, wiping away a tear, "as I highly approve of their young affection. It's so romantic. Ah!" she rose suddenly and opened the door. "They have broken the news. Hark!"

Madame Alpenny certainly was not pleased. She stood at the head of the stairs anathematizing the bridal pair as they descended arm in arm. Zara was weeping and Bracken's stolid face wore an angry expression. Moved to the depths of her being, Mrs. Tesk was about to rush out and console them when her skirts were plucked by Hench.

"Don't say that I am here," he whispered, and the landlady nodded comprehendingly as she disappeared.

While Mrs. Tesk was accompanying Bracken and his wife to the door Madame Alpenny still stood at the top of the stairs raging wildly. She was fat and homely in her appearance, and still wore her eternal orange-spotted dress, bead mantle and picture hat. But furious anger made her look quite picturesque as she poured out a torrent of words, shaking her fists and with flashing eyes. "Never come near me again, you miserable girl!" she shouted after her daughter. "Ah, but what a wicked child you are to throw yourself away on a fool. As to that man Hench, who has bribed you into deceiving me, he shall suffer for his evil doings. Take my curse with you, Zara, and may you-----" Sheer wrath choked her further utterance, and perhaps the fact that the happy pair had stepped out of the front door. Even Atê cannot waste her fury on nothing, and Madame Alpenny looked very like Atê indeed.

Luckily the boarders were all away and the servants were downstairs, so there were no spectators of the scene but Hench and Mrs. Tesk. The landlady parted with Zara and Bracken quite tenderly, for their romance appealed to her ever-young heart. While she was dismissing them on the doorstep, with a blessing which she hoped would neutralize the maternal curse, Hench ran up the stairs and into the drawing-room as quickly as he could. Madame Alpenny had staggered into the same a few moments earlier, and was sobbing violently on the sofa when Owain entered and closed the door. At the sound of the closing she looked up, and her face became purple with rage when she saw who had disturbed her.

"You dare to come here, you--you--you?" she stormed, rising promptly and shaking her fist. "You who have ruined my hopes for Zara."

"As those hopes were connected with a possible marriage between myself and your daughter," said Owain suavely, "I told you long ago that they could never be realized."

"You told me. What do I care what you told me?" Madame Alpenny was in such a rage that she could scarcely get the words out. "And you smile, do you? Ah, yes, you can smile at my shame."

"Don't be a fool," said Hench brusquely. "Your daughter has married an honourable man, whom you ought to be proud of as your son-in-law."

"But I wanted you," sobbed Madame piteously, and suddenly passing from anger to pleading sorrow.

"I know, and I pointed out to you that the thing was not possible. Zara loves Bracken, and I have arranged for money to be given to them so that they can make a fresh start in life."

"Money; my money," moaned the old woman. "Your money! What do you mean by saying that?" Madame Alpenny dropped her handkerchief from her eyes and stood up with as great a dignity as her stout ungainly figure permitted. "Your money is mine, Monsieur. You owe it to me that you inherited the money."

"Indeed!" Hench trapped her at once. "So you admit your guilt."

"My guilt?"

"Yes. It was you who murdered my uncle."

"I?" Madame Alpenny stood stock still and stared hard. "It is a lie."

"It is the truth. You learned from my father how matters stood twenty years ago, and our conversation in this very room revived your memory when I mentioned the place where my father had passed his youth. You went down to see my Uncle Madoc and arranged with him that I should be brought to meet him in Parley Wood by means of that advertisement which you showed me. And----"

Madame Alpenny interrupted his flow of words by waving her fat hand for silence. "I admit all this, although I don't know how you found it out."

"Never mind how I found it out. You are guilty."

"What? You tell me a long story of what I have done and which I admit to be true. But you have said nothing which can prove that I murdered the man."

"I was coming to that when you interrupted me," said Hench calmly. "You knew that I would go to the meeting, although I was then ignorant of my relationship to Squire Evans. Therefore you travelled down to Cookley on the first of July and----"

"I never did; I never did," interrupted Madame Alpenny violently, but looking very anxious in spite of her denial.

"You did, and when you arrived at Cookley you went to the Gipsy Stile before I did to stab my uncle."

"Oh!" Madame Alpenny waved her arms grotesquely. "La! la! la! la! I murdered him, did I? And why should I murder him?"

"So as to place me in possession of the money," said Hench solemnly. "So as to implicate me in the death, as you knew that I would arrive to find the dead body of the man you had killed. In this way you hoped to force me to marry your daughter and handle my fortune."

Madame Alpenny sat down with a cool ironical air. "A very clever tale indeed, Monsieur. And who can prove its truth?"

"Two people at least. You were followed when you first went to Cookley to join my uncle in laying the trap by means of the advertisement; you were followed on the occasion of your second visit, when you killed him."

"Who followed me? Who saw me?"

"Simon Jedd, who is a page here, and his brother Peter, who is in the service of Mrs. Perage at Cookley."

"And how much have you paid them to tell this lie?"

"I have paid them nothing. They are voluntary witnesses. Come, Madame, it is useless for you to deny the truth."

"But I do deny it, see you!" she cried excitedly. "I deny it wholly and altogether. My first visit---ah, yes, I say that I did call on your uncle, and he did tell me about the advertisement, but----"

"Why did he put in that advertisement?" interrupted Owain sharply.

"He wished to see you before revealing himself as your uncle."

"He could have appointed the meeting to take place in his house. Why was it arranged to come off in Parley Wood?"

"There," said Madame Alpenny with candour, "I cannot help you. But that Monsieur Evans was strange--ah yes, he was dangerous. He told me that he would meet you at the Gipsy Stile, and took me there to show me the place. I went into the wood after I had left the big house."

"I am aware of that," said Hench, remembering what Peter had said. "Go on."

"You seem to know much," she sneered.

"Enough to get you arrested and tried, condemned and hanged," said Hench in a significant tone. "Go on, I tell you."

Madame Alpenny snarled, and her eyes glittered viciously. "Don't try to ride the tall horse over me, beast that you are. I am not afraid; no, I am not at all afraid. I do not know why your uncle arranged the meeting for the wood. All I had to do was to draw your attention to the advertisement, which I did. He wrote it out and put it in the journal. For all I know," went on the woman, more or less to herself, "this man wished to kill you, and chose a lonely place to do so."

"Why should he wish to kill me?"

"Because he hated your father and he hated you, Monsieur. He did not wish you to get the money. I did, because then you could marry Zara and I would be rich for the rest of my life."

"That means I would have been under your thumb."

"Ah, but no. Why should you be under my thumb? It was gratitude I looked for because I knew what would give you a large fortune. Your uncle would have given you enough to live on--perhaps two thousand a year."

"Why so, when he hated me?"

"Because I would have persuaded him. I told him about my daughter and how you loved her."

"I did not," said Hench quickly and with a frown. "You did; you did. And Monsieur Evans, he said that if he found you a good young man and better than your wicked father, whom your uncle hated, that he would allow you a good income as his heir. For that reason did I agree to him putting in the advertisement and bringing you to meet him in that solitary spot. But it was in my mind to tell you all when I came back."

"Why didn't you? It would have saved much trouble."

"Because if I had not consented your uncle would never have acknowledged you as his heir or allowed you anything. Then you could not have married Zara and have given me money as I desired. Monsieur Evans was a healthy man, and I saw he would live for many years."

"Therefore to get the money into your clutches at once you killed him."

"I did not. Who dares to say that I did?"

"Simon Jedd will dare for one, when I examine him, and Mr. Spruce has already accused you, for another."

Madame Alpenny jumped up in a fury. "Mistare Spruce!" she shouted, with a violent gesture. "That wicked beast! That evil one! He accuse me?"

"Of murdering my uncle? Yes. It is due to his information that I am here, as he can help me to prove your guilt."

"My guilt!" Madame Alpenny snapped her fingers, with a crimson face. "Oh, that for my guilt! I am innocent."

"Naturally you say so. But can you prove your innocence?"

"I can." She said this with so much assurance that Hench was staggered, and began to wonder if he had made a mistake. "See you, that Mistare Spruce make me confess to him and then betrays me to you. Beast!"

"You should not have trusted him," said Owain coldly. "Any one can see that he is a bad lot. I wonder that a woman of your penetration, Madame, behaved in so rash a manner."

"Rash! Ah, but I did not behave rash. He forced me to speak. He knew so much that I had to tell him all."

"About the murder?"

"I am innocent of the murder," cried the woman, throwing back her head in a fierce way. "Hear what I speak, and then you shall see. Mistare Spruce was in this room when I told how I met your father. Is it not so?"

"Yes," agreed Hench. "He heard the whole conversation."

"I said," went on Madame Alpenny, "that there was a mystery about you, and now you know what the mystery was. Mistare Spruce, wanting to make money out of you and thinking that I knew something--which I did--watched me as a cat a mouse. I went to Cookley saying that I had to go away to find an engagement for my daughter. Is it not so?" she asked again.

"Yes. You were away for a few days and so was Spruce."

"He followed me down to Cookley."

"Are you sure?" asked Hench, wondering why the two sharp Jedd boys had not also seen the Nut.

"He confessed to me. He saw me enter the Grange; he saw me come out and go into the wood to meet Monsieur Evans at the Gipsy Stile. He stole after me and listened. You understand? He listened and learned about the property coming to you; about the advertisement; about my desire that you should marry my daughter Zara."

"Well?" asked Owain, when she stopped for want of breath.

"Well,"--she made a dramatic gesture,--"and what follows. He said nothing, but he knew the paper in which the advertisement appeared--Monsieur Evans mentioned it at the stile--and learned about the meeting. He still said nothing, but after the tale of the murder appears in the paper he comes to me."

"Yes? To accuse you; to blackmail you?"

"Ah, but no. He said nothing of me being guilty. He declared that you went down to Cookley to meet your uncle."

"How did he know?"

"I cannot say. It was, perhaps, what you call a pot-shot. But he says you are the guilty person and that he will denounce you unless I confess all. I tell him all, as I did not wish you to be arrested, and Mistare Spruce said that he would wait until you married Zara before speaking. Then he expected me to get you to give him two thousand a year for ever."

Hench nodded. "Quite so. That is the price he asked for betraying you. And why did he alter his arrangements?"

"He grew weary, and then that Bracken--the pig who stole my daughter--told him that he loved Zara and would marry her, as she loved him. And, mark you, Mistare Spruce still says nothing to me. Oh, no. He goes down to you and declares that I am guilty, as only in that way could he get the money. Do you think, Monsieur, that I am blind? Ah, but no. I see it all. You wish your name to be cleared, and you are helped by Mistare Spruce to accuse me. But it is a lie--a lie--a lie!" She rose to stamp furiously. "I am as innocent as you are guilty. You murdered Monsieur Evans to get the money."

"Well," said Hench, with a shrug, "it's not much use my denying that I did, as you can only save yourself by believing that I struck the blow. You _had_ a strong case against me," ended Hench, with emphasis. "But now that Spruce has told his story, these Jedd boys who watched you on the night of the murder can prove you to be the assassin."

"Ah," sneered Madame Alpenny contemptuously, "it is that silly, insolent, ugly page who accuses me?"

"He has not done so yet, but he will when I see him, if what Spruce says is true; and true, Madame, I believe it to be."

"Pfui!" She snapped her fingers again. "I did not go to Cookley on that night."

"Can you prove that?"

Madame Alpenny looked somewhat disconcerted; then a thought seemed to strike her and she burst into a violent rage. "Ah, but you dare to ask me that when you arranged, to save yourself, that I should go to Hampstead on the night."

"Go to Hampstead? What are you talking about?"

"Your wickedness!" vociferated the woman, beside herself with fury. "I received a letter on the morning of the first of July, asking me to meet the writer at the Ponds in Hampstead, as I would then be told how to get the money of your uncle at once. It was six o'clock I was to meet this person, and----"

"Who was the person?"

"There was no name signed to the letter, as you well know who wrote it," cried Madame Alpenny indignantly. "And it said also that if the person who wrote was not there I was to wait if it was two or three hours. I go"--she spoke dramatically, in the present tense--"I find no one. I wait and wait and wait; hour and hour and hour I wait. After ten o'clock--yes, and nearer eleven, if I remember--I come back disappointed to this place. I hear no more of the letter or of the person. But you see that I am innocent. Could I be in two places at once, I ask you, Monsieur?"

"No. But have you any witness to prove that you were at Hampstead?"

"No," said Madame Alpenny, in her turn, and disconcerted again as she was quite sharp enough to see the flaw in her story. "I cannot bring any one to prove I was at Hampstead. But I was----I was----I was."

"Show me the letter."

"I have not got it. I tore it up and so made a mistake."

"You did," said Hench coolly, and not believing a word of her tale. "All the worse for you, Madame. Well"--he rose and took up his hat--"it only remains for me to go to the police and tell them everything."

If Hench thought that this statement would frighten the woman, he was never more mistaken in his life. She snapped her fingers right under his nose. "Go! Go! Go!" she cried. "You have robbed me of my daughter by giving money to that fool to marry her; now you would rob me of my liberty. I defy you. I care not for the police, nor for you, nor for anything."

"Very good." Hench walked towards the door. "If you had behaved in a different spirit I would have tried to arrange matters differently for your daughter's sake. As it is you must take the consequence. To clear my own character, you can understand----"

"Oh, yes, I well understand, Monsieur. You murdered your uncle; you wrote that letter asking me to leave this house, so that I could be unable to explain where I was, and now you accuse me at the bidding of Mistare Spruce. I see it all, and I defy you; I spit upon you; I----" Here Hench, unable to stand any more of her savage anger, left the room, while she still raged.

The young man descended the stairs with the determination to go as soon as possible to the police-office and tell his tale. If he did not, the chances were that Madame Alpenny would run away, although he admitted to himself that her speech was not that of a frightened person. But when he reached the bottom of the stairs and saw Mrs. Tesk at the door of her sanctum, he remembered that Simon Jedd had still to be examined, and walked up to the landlady.

"Where is Bottles?" he asked abruptly.

"Dismissed from my employment!" was the unexpected reply.

"Dismissed! His brother, who is a page at Mrs. Perage's, did not tell me so."

"Simon did not wish his brother to know," said Mrs. Tesk quietly, "as he was ashamed, very naturally."

"Ashamed of what?"

"Of being dismissed for theft."

"Come, come, Mrs. Tesk, I can't believe that Bottles is a thief."

"He is!" insisted the ex-school-mistress, colouring. "Sorry as I am to say so, Mr. Hench. Several small articles have been missing lately, and amongst them a valuable carving-knife with a horn handle, which I inherited from my grandmother. So you see----"

"A horn-handled carving-knife!" echoed Hench with a start, and remembered clearly that such a weapon had been used to stab Madoc Evans. "Can you swear that the boy took it?"

"I accused him of stealing the knife and several other small articles. He turned red, but he did not deny his guilt. Out of consideration for his hard-working mother, I did not prosecute him, but sent him away, lest he should contaminate Amelia and the other servants."

"Where is he now?"

"Staying with Mrs. Jedd, his mother. As you know, she is the wardrobe mistress at the Bijou Music-hall."

"Thank you. I'll go and see Bottles. I can't believe that such an honest lad is guilty." And Hench turned on his heel.

"Wait, sir. You do not blame me?"

"Oh, no. If he did not deny your accusation, you acted rightly. But there must be some explanation of this. What it is I go to find out."

Mrs. Tesk would have detained him to ask questions concerning Madame Alpenny's frame of mind, but Hench refused to stay. He was now beginning to wonder if the Hungarian lady really was guilty. It seemed as if Bottles was the culprit, that is if he had really stolen the carving-knife. With such a weapon the crime had certainly been committed.