The Bittermeads Mystery/Chapter 11

When he had finished his breakfast, and after he had had the wash of which he certainly stood in considerable need, Dunn made his way to the garage and there occupied himself cleaning the car. He noticed that the mud with which it was liberally covered was of a light sandy sort, and he discovered on one of the tyres a small shell.

Apparently, therefore, last night's wild journey had been to the coast, and it was a natural inference that the sea had provided a secure hiding-place for the packing-case and its dreadful contents.

But then that meant that there was no evidence left on which he could take action.

As he busied himself with his task, he tried to think out as clearly as he could the position in which he found himself and to decide what he ought to do next.

To his quick and hasty nature the swiftest action was always the most congenial, and had he followed his instinct, he would have lost no time in denouncing Deede Dawson. But his cooler thoughts told him that he dared not do that, since it would be to involve risks, not for himself, but for others, that he simply dared not contemplate.

He felt that the police, even if they credited his story, which he also felt that very likely they would not do, could not act on his sole evidence.

And even if they did act and did arrest Deede Dawson, it was certain no jury would convict on so strange a story, so entirely uncorroborated.

The only result would be to strengthen Deede Dawson's position by the warning, to show him his danger, and to give him the opportunity, if he chose to use it, of disappearing and beginning again his plots and plans after some fresh and perhaps more deadly fashion.

“Whereas at present,” he mused, “at any rate, I'm here and he doesn't seem to suspect me, and I can watch and wait for a time, till I see my way more clearly.”

And this decision he came to was a great relief to him, for he desired very greatly to know more before he acted and in especial to find out for certain what was Ella's position in all this.

It was Deede Dawson's voice that broke in upon his meditations.

“Ah, you're busy,” he said. “That's right, I like to see a man working hard. I've got some new things for you I think may fit fairly well, and Mrs. Dawson is going to get one of the attics ready for you to sleep in.”

“Very good, sir,” said Dunn.

He wondered which attic was to be assigned to him and if it would be that one in which he had found his friend's body. He suspected, too, that he was to be lodged in the house so that Deede Dawson might watch him, and this pleased him, since it meant that he, in his turn, would be able to watch Deede Dawson.

Not that there appeared much to watch, for the days passed on and it seemed a very harmless and quiet life that Deede Dawson lived with his wife and stepdaughter.

But for the memory, burned into Dunn's mind, of what he had seen that night of his arrival, he would have been inclined to say that no more harmless, gentle soul existed than Deede Dawson.

But as it was, the man's very gentleness and smiling urbanity filled him with a loathing that it was at times all he could do to control.

The attic assigned to him to sleep in was that where he had made his dreadful discovery, and he believed this had been done as a further test of his ignorance, for he was sure Deede Dawson watched him closely to see if the idea of being there was in any way repugnant to him.

Indeed at another time he might have shrunk from the idea of sleeping each night in the very room where his friend had been foully done to death, but now he derived a certain grim satisfaction and a strengthening of his nerves for the task that lay before him.

Only a very few visitors came to Bittermeads, especially now that Mr. John Clive, who had come often, was laid up. But one or two of the people from the village came occasionally, and the vicar appeared two or three times every week, ostensibly to play chess with Deede Dawson, but in reality, Dunn thought, drawn there by Ella, who, however, seemed quite unaware of the attraction she exercised over the good man.

Dunn did not find that he was expected to do very much work, and in fact, he was left a good deal to himself.

Once or twice the car was taken out, and occasionally Deede Dawson would come into the garden and chat with him idly for a few minutes on indifferent subjects. When it was fine he would often bring out a little travelling set of chessmen and board and proceed to amuse himself, working out or composing problems.

One day he called Dunn up to admire a problem he had just composed.

“Pretty clever, eh?” he said, admiring his own work with much complacence. “Quite an original idea of mine and I think the key move will take some finding. What do you say? I suppose you do play chess?”

“Only a very little,” answered Dunn.

“Try a game with me,” said Deede Dawson, and won it easily, for in fact, Dunn was by no means a strong player.

His swift victory appeared to delight Deede Dawson immensely.

“A very pretty mate I brought off there against you,” he declared. “I've not often seen a prettier. Now you try to solve that problem of mine, it's easy enough once you hit on the key move.”

Dunn thought to himself that there were other and more important problems which would soon be solved if only the key move could be discovered.

He said aloud that he would try what he could do, and Deede Dawson promised him half a sovereign if he solved it within a week.

“I mayn't manage it within a week,” said Dunn. “I don't say I will. But sooner or later I shall find it out.”

During all this time he had seen little of Ella, who appeared to come very little into the garden and who, when she did so, avoided him in a somewhat marked manner.

Her mother, Mrs. Dawson, was a little faded woman, with timid eyes and a frightened manner. Her health did not seem to be good, and Ella looked after her very assiduously. That she went in deadly fear of her husband was fairly evident, though he seemed to treat her always with great consideration and kindness and even with a show of affection, to which at times she responded and from which at other times she appeared to shrink with inexplicable terror.

“She doesn't know,” Dunn said to himself. “But she suspects —something.”

Ella, he still watched with the same care and secrecy, and sometimes he seemed to see her walking amidst the flowers as an angel of sweetness and laughing innocence; and sometimes he saw her, as it were, with the shadow of death around her beauty, and behind her gentle eyes and winning ways a great and horrible abyss.

Of one thing he was certain—her mind was troubled and she was not at ease; and it was plain, also, that she feared her smiling soft-spoken stepfather.

As the days passed, too, Dunn grew convinced that she was watching him all the time, even when she seemed most indifferent, as closely and as intently as he watched her.

“All watching together,” Dunn thought grimly. “It would be simple enough, I suppose, if one could hit on the key move, but that I suppose no one knows but Deede Dawson himself. One thing, he can't very well be up to any fresh mischief while he's lounging about here like this. I suppose he is simply waiting his time.”

As for the chess problem, that baffled him entirely. He said as much to Deede Dawson, who was very pleased, but would not tell him what the solution was.

“No, no, find it out for yourself,” he said, chuckling with a merriment in which, for once his cold eyes seemed to take full share.

“I'll go on trying,” said Dunn, and it grew to be quite a custom between them for Deede Dawson to ask him how he was getting on with the problem; and for Dunn to reply that he was still searching for the key move.

Several times little errands took Dunn into the village, where, discreetly listening to the current gossip, he learned that Mr. John Clive of Ramsdon Place had been injured in an attack made upon him by a gang of ferocious poachers—at least a dozen in number—but was making good progress towards recovery.

Also, he found that Mr. John Clive's visits to Bittermeads had not gone unremarked, or wholly uncriticized, since there was a vague feeling that a Mr. Clive of Ramsdon Place ought to make a better match.

“But a pretty face is all a young man thinks of,” said the more experienced; and on the whole, it seemed to be felt that the open attention Clive paid to Ella was at least easily to be understood.

Almost the first visit Clive paid, when he was allowed to venture out, was to Bittermeads; and Dunn, returning one afternoon from an errand, found him established on the lawn in the company of Ella, and looking little the worse for his adventure.

He and Ella seemed to be talking very animatedly, and Dunn took the opportunity to busy himself with some gardening work not far away, so that he could watch their behaviour.

He told himself it was necessary he should know in what relation they stood to each other, and as he heard them chatting and laughing together with great apparent friendliness and enjoyment, he remembered with considerable satisfaction how he had already broken one rib of Clive's, and he wished very much for an opportunity to break another.

For, without knowing why, he was beginning to conceive an intense dislike for Clive; and, also, it did not seem to him quite good taste for Ella to sit and chat and laugh with him so readily.

“But we were told,” he caught a stray remark of Ella's, “that it was a gang of at least a dozen that attacked you.”

“No,” answered Clive reluctantly. “No, I think there was only one. But he had a grip like a bear.”

“He must have been very strong,” remarked Ella thoughtfully.

“I would give fifty pounds to meet him again, and have it out in the light, when one could see what one was doing,” declared Clive with great vigour.

“Oh, you would, would you?” muttered Dunn to himself. “Well, one of these days I may claim that fifty.”

He looked round at Clive as he thought this, and Clive noticed him, and said:

“Is that a new man you've got there Miss Cayley? Doesn't he rather want a shave? Where on earth did Mr. Dawson pick him up?”

“Oh, he came here with the very best testimonials, and father engaged him on the spot,” answered Ella, touching her wrists thoughtfully. “He certainly is not very handsome, but then that doesn't matter, does it?”

She spoke more loudly than usual, and Dunn was certain she did so in order that he might hear what she said. So he had no scruple in lingering on pretence of being busy with a rose bush, and heard Clive say:

“Well, if he were one of my chaps, I should tell him to put the lawn-mower over his own face.”

Ella laughed amusedly.

“Oh, what an idea, Mr. Clive,” she cried, and Dunn thought to himself:—

“Yes, one day I shall very certainly claim that fifty pounds.”