The Loudwater Mystery Part 31

"Yes, I'm all right again," said Grey. Then he frowned and added: "But the nuisance of it is that I shall always have this confounded limp."

"You get off more lightly than a good many men I know," said Flexen sadly.

"Yes. I'm not grousing much," said Grey.

There came a pause, and then Grey said: "I've been rather hoping to come across you. When you questioned me about my doings on the night of Loudwater's death, you asked me whether I heard him snore as I went through the library, going in and out of the Castle, and for reasons which seemed quite good to me at the time I told you I didn't. As a matter of fact, he was snoring like a pig when I came out."

Mr. Flexen looked at him hard, thinking quickly. Then he said softly: "My goodness! That would be half-past eleven!"

"Close on it," said Grey.

"Well as a matter of fact, I didn't believe you," said Mr. Flexen frankly. "In my business, you know, one acquires a very good ear for the truth."

Grey laughed cheerfully and said: "I expect you do."

"All the same, I'm glad to have it for certain," said Mr. Flexen, smiling at him. "Well, I must be getting on; let me give you a lift as far as Loudwater."

Grey thanked him and stepped into the car.

When he had set him down, Mr. Flexen drove on in frowning thought.

Colonel Grey was speaking the truth, and in that case neither James Hutchings nor the mysterious woman had committed the murder, unless they had deliberately returned for the purpose. He did not believe that James Hutchings had returned; he thought it improbable that the mysterious woman had returned.

Even more important was the fact that this admission of Colonel Grey a.s.sured him that neither he nor Lady Loudwater had committed the murder.

Grey had evidently lied to s.h.i.+eld her. He had no less evidently learned that she did not need s.h.i.+elding. That admission had not at all simplified the problem.

The next morning Scotland Yard telegraphed to him the reply to its cable to Captain Shepherd. It ran:

_Loudwater allowed Mrs. Helena Truslove Crest Loudwater six hundred a year and gave her Crest_.

He had the mysterious woman at last!

He drove over to the Crest at once and learned from the caretaker that Mrs. Truslove was now living in London in a flat at Clarence Gate. He could not get away from his work till the afternoon, and it was past half-past four when he knocked at the door of her flat.

The maid led him down the pa.s.sage, opened the door on the right, and announced him.

Helena was sitting beside a table on which afternoon tea for two was set.

She looked surprised to hear his name.

"Mrs. Truslove?" he said.

"I was Mrs. Truslove," she said, rising and holding out her hand. "But now I am Mrs. Manley. You know my husband. He will be so pleased to see you again. I'm expecting him every minute."

Mr. Flexen was for a moment conscious of a slight sensation of vertigo.

The mysterious woman was the wife of Herbert Manley!

He could not at once see the bearings of this fact, but ideas, fancies and suspicions raced one another through his head.

He checked them and said in a somewhat toneless voice: "I shall be delighted to see him again. Have you been married long?"

"Rather more than a fortnight." said Helena. "But do sit down. My husband will be so pleased to see you again. He has a great admiration for you."

Mr. Flexen sat down and unconsciously stared hard at her. Ideas were jostling one another in his head.

"We won't wait for him. I'll have the tea made at once," she said, bending forward to press the bell-b.u.t.ton.

"One moment, please," he said in his crispest, most official voice. "I've come to see you on a very important matter."

"Oh?" she said quickly, frowning. Then she looked at him with steady eyes.

"Yes. You know that I am investigating the Loudwater case, and I have received information that you are the mysterious lady who visited Lord Loudwater on the night of his death and had a violent quarrel with him."

"We began by quarrelling," she said quietly.

"_Began_ by quarrelling?" said Mr. Flexen.

"Yes. I'd better tell you the whole story, and you'll understand," she said in a matter-of-fact voice. "Rather more than two years ago I was engaged to be married to Lord Loudwater. He broke off our engagement and married Miss Quainton. I was not going to stand that, and I was going to bring a breach of promise action against him. He didn't want that, of course. It would most likely have stopped his marrying Miss Quainton. So he agreed to make over the Crest, my house just beyond Loudwater, to me, and pay me an allowance of six hundred a year."

"This was two years ago?" said Mr. Flexen.

"Yes," said Helena. "But stupidly, though I had the house properly made over to me, I didn't have a deed about the allowance. And a few days before he committed suicide--"

"Committed suicide?" Mr. Flexen interrupted.

"Of course he committed suicide. Didn't Dr. Thornhill say that the wound might have been self-inflicted? Besides, poor Egbert had a most frightful temper."

"But why should he commit suicide?" said Mr. Flexen.

"He may have been upset about Lady Loudwater and Colonel Grey. Why, I'm quite sure that it would drive him mad--absolutely mad for the time being. I know him well enough to be sure of that."

"Yes--yes," said Mr. Flexen slowly. "It's a tenable theory, doubtless.

But about your quarrel with him."

"A few days before he died he talked about halving my allowance. And, of course, I was frightfully annoyed about it. I wanted to have it out with him--I meant to--but I knew that he'd never let me get near him, if he could help it. But I knew, too, that he sat in the smoking-room every evening after dinner, and generally went to sleep. You know everything about every one in the country, you know. And I determined to take him by surprise, and I did. We did have a row, for I was frightfully angry. It seemed so mean. But he stopped it by telling me that he had instructed his bankers--we have the same bankers--to pay twelve thousand pounds into my account instead of allowing me six hundred a year."

There was just the faintest change in her voice as she spoke the last sentence, and it did not escape Mr. Flexen's sensitive ear. He thought that the whole story had been rehea.r.s.ed; it sounded so. But she spoke the last sentence just a little more quickly. The rest of the story rang true, or, at any rate, truer.

"Twelve thousand pounds," he said slowly. "And did Lord Loudwater tell you when he instructed his bankers?"

"No. But it must have been that very day. The letter must have been in the post, in fact, for two mornings later I received a letter from the bank telling me that they had credited me with that amount--the morning after the inquest, I think it was."

"I see," said Mr. Flexen, and he paused, considering the story. Then he said: "And were you surprised at all at his doing this?"

"Yes, I was," she said frankly. "It didn't seem like him. But since I've wondered whether he had made up his mind to commit suicide and wished to leave things quite straight."

It was a plausible theory, but Mr. Flexen did not believe that Lord Loudwater had committed suicide.

"I suppose that your husband knows all about it?" he said at random.

"He may, and he may not. He hasn't said anything to me about it," she said.