The Lonely House (Lowndes)/Chapter 30

OUR days had gone by, and Lily was sitting out in the sunshine with Angus Stuart. The effect of the poisonous drug which had been administered to him the night he had dined at La Solitude had not passed off as quickly as Papa Popeau had believed it would. Still, he was now by way of being well again, and for the first time Lily felt she could ask him to tell her what had happened during the evening which was to end in so terrible and tragic a fashion.

He waited for a while before answering her, and then he said very quietly:

“There is curiously little to tell, darling. The one outstanding thing I remember is how surprised and annoyed I was that you did not appear. The Countess Polda is a wonderful actress”

Lily shuddered. “She is indeed,” she whispered.

“I remember that when she came out to meet me, as I walked up to the terrace by the usual way cross the lawn, she explained that you were not quite so well, and that she had persuaded you to remain in bed until after dinner. Looking back, I suppose she intended me to say—'I hope Miss Fairfield won't come down at all.'” He waited for a moment, then went on: “But, Lily, I was selfish, and I wanted desperately to see you! I had a queer kind of apprehensive feeling about you. Popeau had said something which had made me feel vaguely anxious, and I didn't believe it would do you any harm to come down for a few minutes—so I simply answered that I was glad you would come down after dinner.”

“What happened then?” asked Lily.

“Nothing particular happened, that I can recall. They were both very civil, in a formal, affected way, and I was astonished at the splendid spread to which we ultimately sat down. Still, there was a certain amount of delay, and as I look back I cannot help suspecting that their old servant”

He saw a curious expression pass over Lily's face, but he had no clue to what lay behind, so after a moment he went on:

“What was I saying? Oh yes—I cannot help thinking that the old servant wanted to convey some kind of warning to me. Twice, when she was standing in the only place where neither the Count nor the Countess could see her face, she stared at me in the most peculiar fashion, as if trying to attract my attention; and then after we had some hot soup—the rest of the meal was cold—she dropped a lovely but very small decanter on to the floor, and it broke into three or four pieces. It had had in it some liqueur the Count wanted me to taste, and I wondered to-day—for to-day is the first time I have really thought the whole thing over—whether that liqueur was drugged? Though the Count and Countess took the breaking of the decanter very well, and really made no fuss about it, I could see that they were extremely angry with the poor old soul. In fact, the Countess told her that henceforth we would wait on ourselves, and that she need not come back into the room.”

Again he stopped speaking for a few moments. Then he began again: “The Count went out of the dining-room for some more of this special liqueur, and he brought back some of it already poured out in two rather big wineglasses. I confess I thought it was quite delicious, and made, I should judge, of very old brandy.”

“And what happened after you had finished dinner?” asked Lily in an almost inaudible voice.

There had risen before her the scene Angus had described so simply—the unhappy Cristina trying to save Angus, and of course failing, utterly.

“To tell you the truth, Lily, I felt very tired and stupid. The Count had filled up my wineglass rather often,” he added, smiling, “That does not mean that I was drunk. But still, I did feel rather queer!”

“You mean after dinner?”

“Yes. And yet I was very much alive to the fact that you had not fulfilled your promise to come down, and twice the Countess went upstairs to hurry you. Each time she came back she said you were just coming, and of course I believed her. And then—and then—well, Lily, I suppose the drug they had managed to convey to me, either in the food, or in the wine and liqueur, began to act. As I sat on in the drawing-room, I got desperately drowsy, but I cannot tell at what exact time I fell into the sort of sleep which was practically insensibility.”

“I wonder they didn't kill you in the house,” said Lily in a strained voice.

“It was much safer to put a bullet into me by the side of the grave they had dug, and then tumble me in,” he said in a matter-of-fact way. “Popeau is convinced that I was the first of their friends they had ever thought of burying. The others were all so arranged as to convey in each case the impression of suicide.”

Lily Fairfield drew a long breath.

“You have told me everything I wanted to know,” she said, “and we'll make up our minds, here and now, never to speak of it again!”

“I agree,” he answered quietly. “Popeau knows all I have told you, and he didn't want me to go into it with you, but it would only have worried you to go on wondering what had happened.”

Reader, have you ever thought what it would be like to be in any way associated with a great criminal case—what the French call a cause célèbre Lily felt herself the cynosure of a hundred eyes wherever she moved or showed herself; yet very few of the people gazing so curiously at the pretty English girl knew how really closely associated she had been with the awful events which had taken place in the last few weeks at La Solitude. But the mere fact that she had stayed there as the guest of the Count and Countess Polda invested here with a morbid interest in their eyes.

The principal public excitement was concentrated on Cristina, and on that unhappy woman's mysterious disappearance. She was being searched for high and low, but it was as if the earth had swallowed her up.

And now, to-day, Lily Fairfield was expecting Mr. Bowering, who had been at once telegraphed for by Hercules Popeau. Though everything had been done to save her pain and distress, she had had to submit to a long interrogation on the part of three famous French lawyers, and M. Popeau was now secretly absorbed in the task of devising a way by which his young friend could be spared the terrible ordeal of appearing as a witness at the Countess Polda's forthcoming trial.

Count Polda was dying, and the hope of finding out where Cristina had hidden herself was being gradually abandoned.

All at once M. Popeau ambled up to where the two young people were sitting.

“Would you like to walk down to the station and meet your English friend?” he said persuasively to Lily.

The girl got up obediently. She moved like an automaton. “I will, if you think I had better do so,” she said dully. The story Angus Stuart had just told her was becoming intolerably real to her.

While walking down the broad road leading to the station Lily suddenly startled M. Popeau.

“There's something I must ask you,” she said in a low tone. “I want to know about Beppo Polda. Does poor, poor Beppo know?” There was a sob in her throat. “If he does, how strange it is that he isn't here! Or is he here, after all? Have they arrested him too? I seem to know nothing now of what is really happening!”

The Frenchman hesitated for a moment, then he said gently:

“You do not need to trouble yourself about Beppo Polda. By a strange and wonderful piece of good fortune for him, poor fellow, he killed himself accidentally in a shooting gallery the very night he arrived in Rome—before there was time for him to have learnt the awful truth.”

Lily's lip quivered, the tears ran down her face. And yet—yes, she was glad!

“And Cristina?” she ventured. “What do you think has really happened to her, Monsieur Popeau?”

“I think I know what has happened to Cristina,” he said mysteriously. Then he stopped walking, and looked round, but there was no one near enough to hear what he had suddenly made up his mind to tell her. He knew that he could trust her.

“I am quite sure that the unhappy woman fled on that awful night down to the valley, and then up to old Monaco, to the Convent of the White Sisters,” he said in a low voice.

Before Lily's inward vision there rose up the great forbidding-looking iron gates which gave access to the sunny courtyard beyond. She saw again the stately Mother Superior, heard her reprove poor Cristina, kindly but firmly, for the wild way in which she had spoken of herself.

“The Order was founded by one of Cristina's own ancestresses,” went on the Frenchman, “and there has always been a close connection between the Convent and the Poldas. It is possible, but I do not say it is likely—for after all, women are women, even when they wear the Holy Habit—that the nuns have not yet heard the story of what has happened at La Solitude, though all Monaco is ringing with it! But in any case, the nuns would never give Cristina up to justice. The poor soul will spend her life henceforth in work and prayer, repenting of her part in her wicked sister-in-law's crimes, and praying for Beppo Polda's soul.”

“I cannot understand how Cristina could ever have allowed herself to be used in that way,” said Lily in a deeply troubled tone. “She was so very kind and gentle.”

“I have little doubt that at first she was but an unconscious accomplice, and that at last the Count and Countess had to take her into their confidence. You may think of her now as being happier than she has been for years and years, for her life must have been one long torture. Yes, during the last two days I have liked to think of poor Cristina in that quiet old convent on the hill,” he said meditatively. “There must be wonderful views of both sea and land from those of the nuns' cells which overlook the sea.”

“Two days ago?” said Lily suddenly. “Then did something happen two days ago that made you feel sure that Cristina had taken refuge there?

Monsier [sic] Popeau again looked round. He even came a little closer to his pretty companion.

“I took a walk up to old Monaco quite early in the morning two days ago,” he said hesitatingly. “I walked past the gardens where I once left you alone with Captain Stuart, and then, when I was at the extreme end of the rock, I looked up, and on a little piece of wall which I now know to have been the wall of the convent garden, I saw”

He stopped, and Lily exclaimed breathlessly, “You saw Cristina peeping over?”

“No, I did not see Cristina peeping over—but I saw—Mimi!”

“Mimi! the cat?” exclaimed Lily.

“Yes, Mimi, the cat—walking along the top of the wall, already beginning to look as if he felt at home there! In fact, I will confess to you, Mademoiselle, that I tried a little experiment. I called out very quietly and tenderly, 'Mimi, Mimi, come hither, my friend!' and at once he jumped down, and rubbed himself, purring loudly, against me.”

“What an extraordinary thing!” exclaimed Lily.

“Without doubt poor Cristina caught up the cat, and fled with him. And now, as I said before, you may think of the poor woman as being happier than she has been for many, many years. She was the hapless victim of her wicked sister-in-law.”

As Lily gazed up into his face, a thousand questions trembling on her lips—questions that yet she shrank from asking—he went on, slowly:

“Bouton and I have been making certain calculations, and we are convinced that old Vissering was the Countess's ninth victim. But, of course, till the last few weeks, when circumstances proved too much for her, she was very prudent—she allowed, that is, plenty of time to elapse between each of her crimes. Towards the last, the complete immunity she had enjoyed made her feel that she need never fear to be suspected. Hers was the master mind. We have some evidence that the Count and Cristina were unwilling accomplices. On two occasions men afterwards so foully done to death received anonymous letters which we know could only have come from La Solitude.”