The Bittermeads Mystery/Chapter 21

In point of fact Dunn had not been asleep when Deede Dawson came listening at his door. Of late he had slept little and that little had been much disturbed by evil, haunting dreams in which perpetually he saw his dead friend, Charley Wright, and dead John Clive always together, while behind them floated the pale and lovely face of Ella, at whom the two dead men looked and whispered to each other.

In the day such thoughts troubled him less, for when he was under the influence of Ella's gentle presence, and when he could watch her clear and candid eyes, he found all doubt and suspicion melting away like snow beneath warm sunshine.

But in the silence of the night they returned, returned very dreadfully, so dreadfully that often as he lay awake in the darkness beads of sweat stood upon his forehead and he would drive his great hands one against the other in his passionate effort to still the thoughts that tormented him. Then, in the morning again, the sound of Ella's voice, the merest glimpse of her grave and gracious personality, would bring back once more his instinctive belief in her.

The morning after Deede Dawson had paid his visit to the attic there was news, however, that disturbed him greatly, for Mrs. Barker, the charwoman who came each morning to Bittermeads, told them that two men in the village—notorious poachers—had been arrested by the police on a charge of being concerned in Mr. Clive's death.

The news was a great shock to Dunn, for, knowing as he thought he did, that the police were working on an entirely wrong idea, he had not supposed they would ever find themselves able to make any arrest. As a matter of fact, these arrests they had made were the result of desperation on the part of the police, who unable to discover anything and entirely absorbed by their preconceived idea that the crime was the work of poachers, had arrested men they knew were poachers in the vague hope of somehow discovering something or of somehow getting hold of some useful clue.

But that Dunn did not know, and feared unlucky chance or undesigned coincidence must have appeared to suggest the guilt of the men and that they were really in actual danger of trial and conviction. He had, too, received that morning, through the secret means of communication he kept open with an agent in London, conclusive proof that at the moment of Clive's death Deede Dawson was in town on business that seemed obscure enough, but none the less in town, and therefore undoubtedly innocent of the actual perpetration of the murder.

Who, then, was left who could have fired the fatal shot?

It was a question Dunn dared not even ask himself but he saw very plainly that if the proceedings against the two arrested men were to be pressed, he would be forced to come forward before his preparations were ready and tell all he knew, no matter at what cost.

All the morning he waited and watched for his opportunity to speak to Ella, who was in a brighter and gayer mood than he had ever seen her in before.

At breakfast Deede Dawson had assured her that he could not conceive what were the suspicions she had referred to the night previously, and while he would certainly have no objection to her mentioning them at any time, in any quarter she thought fit if anything happened at Wreste Abbey—and would indeed be the first to urge her to do so—he, for his part, considered it most unlikely that anything of the sort she seemed to dread would in fact occur.

“Not at all likely,” he said with his happy, beaming smile that never reached those cold eyes of his. “I should say myself that nothing ever did happen at Wreste Abbey, not since the Flood, anyhow. It strikes me as the most peaceful, secluded spot in all England.”

“I'm very glad you think so,” said Ella, tremendously relieved and glad to hear him say so, and supposing, though his smooth words and smiles and protestations deceived her very little, that, at any rate, what she had said had forced him to abandon whatever plans he had been forming in that direction.

Her victory, as it seemed to her, won so easily and containing good promise of further success in the future, cheered her immensely, and it was in almost a happy mood that she went unto the garden after lunch and met Dunn in a quiet, well-hidden corner, where he had been waiting and watching for long.

His appearance startled her—his eyes were so wild, his whole manner so strained and restless, and she gave a little dismayed exclamation as she saw him.

“Oh, what's the matter?” she asked. “Aren't you well? You look—”

She paused for she did not know exactly how it was he did look; and he said in his harshest, most abrupt manner:—

“Do you remember Charley Wright?”

“Why do you ask?” she said, puzzled. “Is anything wrong?”

“Do you remember John Clive?” he asked, disregarding this. “Have you heard two men have been arrested for his murder?”

“Mrs. Barker told me so,” she answered gravely. He came a little nearer, almost threateningly nearer.

“What do you think of that?” he asked.

She lifted one hand and put it gently on his arm. The touch of it thrilled him through and through, and he felt a little dazed as he watched it resting on his coat sleeve. She had become very pale also and her voice was low and strained as she said,

“Have you had suspicions too?”

He looked at her as if fascinated for a moment, and then nodded twice and very slowly.

“So have I,” she sighed in tones so low he could scarcely hear them.

“Oh, you, you also,” he muttered, almost suffocating.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes—perhaps the same as yours. My stepfather,” she breathed, “Mr. Deede Dawson.”

He watched her closely and moodily, but he did not speak.

“I was afraid—at first,” she whispered. “But I was wrong—quite wrong. It is as certain as it can be that he was in London at the time.”

From his pocket Dunn took out the handkerchief of hers that he had found near the body of the dead man.

“Is this yours?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “Yes, where did you get it?”

He did not answer, but he lifted his hands one after the other, and put them on her shoulder, with the fingers outspread to encircle her throat. It seemed to him that when she acknowledged the ownership of the handkerchief she acknowledged also the perpetration of the deed, and he became a little mad, and he had it in his mind that the slightest, the very slightest, pressure of his fingers on that soft, round throat would put it for ever out of her power to do such things again. Then for himself death would be easy and welcome, and there would be an end to all these doubts and fears that racked him with anguish beyond bearing.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, making no attempt to resist or escape.

Ever so slightly the pressure of his hands upon her throat strengthened and increased. A very little more and the lovely thing of life he watched would be broken and cold for ever. Her eyes were steady, she showed no sign of fear, she stood perfectly still, her hands loosely clasped together before her. He groaned, and his arms fell to his side, helpless. Without the slightest change of expression, she said:

“What were you going to do?”

“I don't know,” he answered. “Do you ever go mad? I do, I think. Perhaps you do too, and that explains it. Do you know where Charley Wright is?”

“Yes,” she answered directly. “Why? Did you know him, then?”

“You know where he is now?” Dunn repeated.

She nodded quietly.

“I heard from him only last week,” she said.

“I am certainly mad or you are,” he muttered, staring at her with eyes in which such wonder and horror showed that it seemed there really was a touch of madness there.

“What is the matter?” she asked.

“You heard from him last week,” he said again, and again she answered:—

“Yes—last week. Why not?”

He leaned forward, and before she knew what he intended to do he kissed her pale, cool cheek.

Once more she stood still and immobile, her hands loosely clasped before her. It might have been that he had kissed a statue, and her perfect stillness made him afraid.

“Ella,” he said. “Ella.”

“Why did you do that?” she said, a little wildly now in her turn. “It was not that you were going to do to me before.”

“I love you,” he muttered excusingly.

She shook her head.

“You know too little of me; you have too many doubt and fears,” she said. “You do not love me, you do not even trust me.”

“I love you all the same,” he asserted positively and roughly. “I loved you—it was when I tied your hands to the chair that night and you looked at me with such contempt, and asked me if I felt proud. That stung, that stung. I loved you then.”

“You see,” she said sadly, “you do not even pretend to trust me. I don't know why you should. Why are you here? Why are you disguised with all that growth of hair? There is something you are preparing, planning. I know it. I feel it. What is it?”

“I told you once before,” he answered, “that the end of this will be Deede Dawson's death or mine. That's what I'm preparing.”

“He is very cunning, very clever,” she said. “Do you think he suspects you?”

“He suspects every one always,” answered Dunn. “I've been trying to get proof to act on. I haven't succeeded. Not yet. Nothing definite. If I can't, I shall act without. That's all.”

“If I told him even half of what you just said,” she said, looking at him. “What would happen?”

“You see, I trust you,” he answered bitterly.

She shook her head, but her eyes were soft and tender as she said:

“It wasn't trust in me made you say all that, it was because you didn't care what happened after.”

“No,” he said. “But when I see you, I forget everything. Do you love me?”

“Why, I've never even seen you yet,” she exclaimed with something like a smile. “I only know you as two eyes over a tangle of hair that I don't believe you ever either brush or comb. Do you know, sometimes I am curious.”

He took her hand and drew her to sit beside him on the bench under a tree near by. All his doubts and fears and suspicions he set far from him, and remembered nothing save that she was the woman for whom yearned all the depths of his soul as by pre-ordained decree. And she, too, for man, to her strange, aloof, mysterious, but dominating all her life as though by primal necessity.

When they parted, it was with an agreement to meet again that evening, and in the twilight they spent a halcyon hour together, saying little, feeling much.

It was only when at last she had left him that he remembered all that had passed, that had happened, that he knew, suspected, dreaded, all that he planned and intended and would be soon called upon to put into action.

“She's made me mad,” he said to himself, and for a long time he sat there in the darkness, in the stillness of the evening, motionless as the tree in whose shade he sat, plunged in the most profound and strange reverie, from which presently his quick ear, alert and keen even when his mind was deep in thought, caught the light and careful sound of an approaching footstep.

In a moment he was up and gliding through the darkness to meet who was coming, and almost at once a voice hailed him cautiously.

“There you are, Dunn,” Deede Dawson said. “I've been looking for you everywhere. Tomorrow or next day we shall be able to strike; everything is ready at last, and I'll tell you now exactly what we are going to do.”

“That's good news,” said Dunn softly.

“Come this way,” Deede Dawson said, and led Dunn through the darkness to the gate that admitted to the Bittermeads grounds from the high road.

Here he paused, and stood for a long time in silence, leaning on the gate and looking out across the road to the common beyond. Close beside him stood Dunn, controlling his impatience as best he could, and wondering if at last the secret springs of all these happenings was to be laid bare to him.

But Deede Dawson seemed in no hurry to begin. For a long time he remained in the same attitude, silent and sombre in the darkness, and when at last he spoke it was to utter a remark that quite took Dunn by surprise.

“What a lovely night,” he said in low and pensive tones, very unlike those he generally used. “I remember when I was a boy—that's a long time ago.”

Dunn was too surprised by this sudden and very unexpected lapse into sentiment to answer. Deede Dawson went on as if thinking to himself:—

“A long time—I've done a lot—seen a lot since then—too much, perhaps—I remember mother told me once—poor soul, I believe she used to be rather proud of me—”

“Your mother?” Dunn said wondering greatly to think this man should still have such memories.

But Deede Dawson seemed either to resent his tone or else to be angry with himself for giving way to such weakness. In a voice more like his usual one, he said harshly and sneeringly:—

“Oh, yes, I had a mother once, just like everybody else. Why not? Most people have their mothers, though it's not an arrangement I should care to defend. Now then, Ella was with you tonight; you and she were alone together a long time.”

“Well,” growled Dunn, “what of it?”

“Fine girl, isn't she?” asked Deede Dawson, and laughed.

Dunn did not speak. It filled him with such loathing to hear this man so much as utter Ella's name, it was all he could do to keep his hands motionless by his side and not make use of them about the other's throat.

“She's been useful, very useful,” Deede Dawson went on meditatively. “Her mother had some money when I married her. I don't mind telling you it's all spent now, but Ella's a little fortune in herself.”

“I didn't know we came to talk about her,” said Dunn slowly. “I thought you had something else to say to me.”

“So I have,” Deede Dawson answered. “That's why I brought you here. We are safe from eavesdroppers here, in a house you can never tell who is behind a curtain or a door. But then, Ella is a part of my plans, a very important part. Do you remember I told you I might want you to take a second packing-case away from here in the car one night?”

“Yes, I remember,” said Dunn slowly. “I remember. What would be in it? The same sort of thing that was in—that other?”

“Yes,” answered Deede Dawson. “Much the same.”

“I shall want to see for myself,” said Dunn. “I'm a trustful sort of person, but I don't go driving about the country with packing-cases late at night unless I've seen for myself what's inside.”