The Glenlitten Murder - ebook

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER XXVI

CHAPTER XXVII

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHAPTER XXIX

CHAPTER XXXCHAPTER I

Glenlitten, although a country house of antiquity and tradition, was in these modern days a free and easy place, so far as the entertainment of its guests was concerned. The state drawing-rooms were seldom opened, and the general meeting place for cocktails before dinner and coffee afterwards was the great hall which had been transformed into a lounge, and which led into the old picture gallery, now a ballroom. Andrew Glenlitten, sixth Marquis, sunburnt, blue-eyed, in appearance and speech younger than his thirty-two years, moved cheerfully about amongst his guests, superintending the service of cocktails.

“Sorry my wife’s a few minutes late, Dick,” he apologised, resting his hand for a moment affectionately upon the shoulder of the famous criminal lawyer. “My fault, I am afraid. We went down to see old Heggs about the stands for to-morrow, and he kept us gassing for over an hour.”

“I am looking forward immensely to meeting your wife,” Sir Richard observed, helping himself, after a moment’s hesitation, to a second cocktail. “Are we a large party?”

“A very small one,” his host replied. “There’s yourself, my sister Susan–you haven’t forgotten of course?”

“Scarcely,” Cotton acknowledged, glancing towards a fair-haired, good-natured looking woman, apparently a few years older than her brother, who was curled up upon a sofa, smoking a cigarette and reading the evening paper. “We don’t meet much nowadays, but I was nearly her godfather. Who is the tall, thin man with an eyeglass? I don’t seem to remember him.”

“You probably wouldn’t,” his host remarked. “His name is Haslam–Rodney Haslam. He is a commissioner out in West Africa. Then there’s Jimmy Manfield, talking to De Besset. Jimmy was at Eton with me–no end of a swell in the county now. They’ve just made him Lord Lieutenant. De Besset, you wouldn’t know, I suppose. He is a Frenchman, and a very good fellow–a great polo player and gambler –but I don’t fancy he’s much use with a gun. His people own all the land round where Félice was brought up, and she and I ran across him at Deauville. Then that’s Lady Manfield–the dark little woman talking to Bobby.”

“Bobby who?” Sir Richard queried.

“Bobby Grindells. You’ll come across him later in life if he’s in luck. He’s a youthful barrister–a good sort, and, although I’m not cadging, an odd brief wouldn’t do him any harm. The elderly gentleman in the corner is Doctor Meadows, our local practitioner. That’s every one, I think, except two fellows who are coming over from the barracks and they’re bringing a guest with them–a Russian emigré–Prince something or other… . Ah, here is Félice at last!”

Sir Richard turned toward the great oak staircase, and, although he was rather a hardened old person as regards the other sex, a little murmur of admiration, purely involuntary, escaped him. The appearance of the girl who was slowly descending the wide oak staircase, making what was almost her debut as hostess of Glenlitten, was so entirely unexpected by the majority of her assembled guests that the momentary lull in the conversation which had seemed at first a merely natural effort at politeness, seemed afterwards to lapse into a silence possessed of peculiar and pulsating qualities. They were all used to the sight of beautiful women–their portraits lined both walls of the staircase down which Félice was slowly descending–but about this girl, or child, as she appeared, there were other qualities. She was exquisitely small, with light golden hair of dazzling smoothness. Her brown eyes were deep-set, and looked larger than ever under her dark eyebrows. Her lips were a little parted and the fingers of her right hand clung close to the smooth balustrade. She was rather like a frightened child in her gown of shimmering white and in her obvious nervousness–the single note of possible maturity the exquisite diamonds which flashed upon her throat and neck.

Suddenly her eyes met her husband’s, as he stepped eagerly forward to meet her, and she seemed transformed. The hesitation passed from her movements, brilliant smile answered his. She came gravely forward to be embraced by her sister-in-law, to greet those of the guests whom she had met, and to be introduced by her husband to the others.

“And this, Félice,” the latter concluded, “is one of our great family friends, Sir Richard Cotton. You would have met him before, but he has been in the States for some months. Dick, I hope that you and Félice will be great friends.”

“I do hope so, indeed,” she said, speaking very slowly and with an obvious effort to make her accent as little noticeable as possible. “My husband has spoken of you often, Sir Richard. You are the clever man, are you not, who sends people to prison?”

“Sometimes,” he reminded her, smiling, “I try to keep them out.”

They were all crowding around her now except De Besset, who stood upon the outside of the little circle, watching her with a look purely Gallic in character, the look of a man who can watch without speech or movement. She took a cocktail from the tray and laughed and talked with every one. Once she met De Besset’s eyes and smiled naturally and happily at him.

“You too must drink a cocktail, Comte de Besset,” she begged. “See, it is my first act as hostess–I pass it to you.”

She took one of the richly cut glasses from the tray and handed it across. De Besset accepted it with a bow. He looked over for a moment at his host.

“Madame,” he murmured, “I drink to the great good fortune of the House of Glenlitten.”

Do you know, Lady Glenlitten,” Haslam remarked, leaning over her, “I thought when you appeared upon the stairs just now that a touch of our West African magic had stolen into your veins. You walked as though you were in a trance.”

She looked at him with an appealing little uplift of her eyebrows.

“I was so nervous,” she confessed. “It is the first time that we have received friends. The house is so large. These stairs are so wide, the ceilings so high, those pictures so huge, that I felt smaller than ever. I can scarcely believe that it is really I who am here. In France, the little château where I was brought up was full of quaint, tiny rooms, and my guardian who lived there had not much money, so all the furniture was just Provençal, and homely. I did not see the inside of any other house, and here is something so wonderfully different.”

“You will have to get used to it, my dear,” her husband remarked, resting his hand for a moment caressingly upon her arm. “You’re here for keeps, you know. What about dinner? Is there any one else? Oh, of course, those fellows from the barracks. Here they are, thank God!”

Parkins, the butler, was approaching with his usual smooth, sedate walk, followed by the three expected guests. The two first were of the ordinary British type. The third was obviously a foreigner. He was fair-haired, unusually tall, rather full of feature for the young man he undoubtedly was, and with a drooping line about his clean-shaven mouth which spoiled his otherwise not disagreeable appearance. Glenlitten stepped forward to meet them.

“Fraser and Philipson, isn’t it?” he said, holding out his hand. “So glad the Colonel could spare you both. I see you have brought your friend.”

“Thanks to your kindness, Lord Glenlitten,” the senior of the two men observed. “May I introduce Prince Charles of Suess–the Marquis of Glenlitten.”

Glenlitten shook hands with a pleasant word of greeting. Then he turned around.

“I must present you to my wife,” he said. “This is almost her first appearance down here, and she is, as you may have heard, partly a compatriot of yours.”

For a single second a sense of something unusual throbbed in the atmosphere, which a moment before was gay with light-hearted conversation and chaff. Once more Félice seemed to be fighting against the nervousness which had brought her so timidly down the stairs to greet her guests. She stared past the two men at the tall figure behind, and in her eyes there was an utterly untranslatable light. Then the sound of her husband’s cheery voice dissolved the situation as though by magic.

“My dear,” he said, “I want to present to you two of my officer neighbours from the barracks here– Major Fraser and Captain Philipson. This is their friend too, Prince Charles of Suess. My wife, Lady Glenlitten.”

She was herself again, grave, slower even than usual in her halting speech, but with the ghost of a smile upon her child’s lips.

“I am very glad to have you come to us and to know that we are neighbours,” she said, shaking hands with the two men. “How do you do, Prince Charles. I too am half Russian, but, alas, I was four years old when I left the country, so I fear that we shall not be able to indulge in reminiscences.”

Her fingers rested for a moment in the hand of the young man who towered over her.

“It is perhaps as well,” he said gravely. “There are few things one cares to remember concerning our unhappy country.”

Parkins once more made his dignified appearance.

“My lady,” he announced, “dinner is served.” There was no lack of conversation at dinner time, mostly of the chaffing, good-humoured type common in these days amongst those more or less intimate. Manfield thought that his host was off on a wild-goose chase, trying to kill partridges on the first of September with so much corn standing. Glenlitten chaffed his old schoolfellow about his weakness for big bags and late shooting.

“I like to go after ‘em early, and go often,” he declared. “Leave the cheepers alone, of course, but get at the old ‘uns before they’re wild. My stands aren’t so good for driving as yours.”

The two soldier men, who hoped for invitations from both, sympathized with each point of view. De Besset explained the misunderstood French attitude with regard to the slaying of game, and Prince Charles contributed some anecdotes of bags in Hungary which sounded almost fantastic. Sir Richard Cotton and Manfield succeeded apparently in entertaining and being entertained by their hostess, and Grindells, who was already establishing the reputation of a professional diner- out, was chipping in wherever he thought a word or two useful.

“I’ve got a grudge against you, Sir Richard,” Manfield declared across the table. “You shouldn’t have been so devilish clever about that poor fellow Johnson. If any one else had been in your place he’d have got off, and quite right too.”

“Think so?” the lawyer observed equably. “That wasn’t exactly my idea.”

“Johnson was a good fellow,” Manfield went on; “fought in the war, popular everywhere, and there were some very ugly rumours about the man he killed.”

“This is England, not France,” Sir Richard reminded them calmly. “If a man commits a murder here, and I am for the Crown, it’s my duty to have him found guilty, whatever the provocation may have been. It may not be justice perhaps, sometimes, but the bases of the law are sound. Here and there one poor fellow must suffer that a great principle may remain.”

“Nevertheless,” Manfield insisted. “I say that the case of Johnson is one more nail in the coffin of this rigid administration of exact laws. It is circumstances, not actual deeds, which decide guilt.”

“In West Africa,” Haslam put in, “we are compelled often to abandon statutes altogether in dealing with the natives. Every now and then, the good man kills the black sheep who richly deserves it. I won’t say that we pat the good man on the back, but we don’t hang him.”

“In an uncivilised country,” Sir Richard remarked, “you naturally have more latitude. Here, where every man and woman can read the newspapers and understands the code of the laws, justice must be differently administered.”

“I am afraid, Sir Richard,” Félice murmured, “that you are a very cruel man.”

He smiled.

“I try to fancy myself a just one.”

She looked at his straight, firm mouth, the legal type, without twitch or droop, the lean, clean-shaven face, and the clear, grey eyes.

“I think if I had done wrong,” she confided, “I would not like it to be you who tried to convince the jury that I must be punished.”

He smiled at her once more with the tolerance one shows to a child.

“Lady Glenlitten,” he assured her, “I should refuse the brief. I should plunge myself into the fray on the other side.”

“Now you are becoming more human,” she conceded. “I like people who say nice things to me, and what you have said just now is chivalrous.”

“Don’t you trust him, Lady Glenlitten,” Manfield advised her. “He’s as hard as a flint. You should have heard how merciless he was about that poor fellow Johnson, who was hung last week. Dash it all, if a man commits suicide, you allow him a verdict of ‘Suicide during temporary insanity’, by which you clear him of guilt; why shouldn’t murder sometimes be committed in a fit of ‘temporary insanity’?”

“It very often is,” Sir Richard acknowledged. “There are a great many men who habitually lose their temper, who might be considered technically at times to be in a state of temporary insanity. On the other hand, you couldn’t frame laws to meet such a condition.”

“I wish some one would tell me,” Grindells observed, “why crime and everything to do with crime^ has such a fascination for people nowadays. Every one seems to be dabbling in criminology. I was junior in the Hassell case a short time ago, and I should think I had a hundred applications from well-known people to try to get them into Court.” Sir Richard nodded.

“My office is sometimes besieged.”

“I wonder what it would feel like to commit a real crime,” Félice reflected. “I think sometimes it must be very difficult, if one hates any one very much and knows that they go about doing evil, to keep from it if the opportunity comes.”

“There were some very interesting statistics published the other day,” Glenlitten remarked from the other end of the table. “Taking the three supposedly most civilised countries, the estimate was that seventy-five per cent. of the murders in the world were committed for the sake of, or on account of, a woman, twenty per cent. for financial reasons, including robberies, and the remainder for no particular cause.”

“I,” Prince Charles intervened, “have seen such murders–murders committed for no particular cause. I have seen many of them. I have seen men start by killing people because they believed they were political enemies, and then I have seen them go mad and rush about killing any one, killing just for the sake of killing. I have seen the blood fever. It is a terrible thing.”

Félice shivered a little. Her husband promptly interposed–

“Too much of this talk about crime,” he declared cheerfully. “Dick, did you start talking shop?”

“Not I,” was the prompt reply. “When I come out for a holiday I like to believe in my fellow creatures.”

“If you had the misfortune,” Prince Charles said gloomily, joining once more in the conversation, “to be of my nationality, crime as a subject would not appeal to you. Fortunately for our hostess,” he added, with a little bow towards Félice, “she was too young for those horrors, but for myself I saw things, when I was young loo–barely seventeen–of which I could not speak, to think of which, even now, makes me shudder.”

They looked at him with curiosity. Félice was gazing steadily down the table towards the opposite wall. She had the appearance of one trying to close her senses, to hear nothing of that still, expressionless voice.

“You were in Russia during the revolution?” Glenlitten asked.

“I was training to be a soldier,” the Prince replied. “Many of my relatives were murdered, our estates were seized, the escape of my family was a miracle of which we do not even now dare to speak. Still, none of us will forget; it would be impossible.”

There was a moment’s silence. Every one was interested in the tall, young figure with the cold, grey eyes, seated upright at the table, head and shoulders taller than his neighbours. Suddenly came an interruption from outside. There was a low rumble, and the windows shook. Félice started.

“What’s that?” some one exclaimed.

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