One thing he had done. He had made a great effort to prevent Laura Pavely"s being put into the witness-box. He had discovered that she shrank with a kind of agonised horror from the ordeal, and he had begged Lord St. Amant to join him in trying to spare her. But of course their efforts had been of no avail. Laura, in one sense, was the princ.i.p.al witness. But for her receipt of the letter, the body of her husband might not have been discovered for weeks, maybe for months. Fernando Apra would only have had to send a further instalment of rent, with the proviso that his room should not be entered till he returned, for the mystery to remain a mystery for at any rate a long time.
The funeral of G.o.dfrey Pavely was to take place the next day in the old Parish Church of Pewsbury, where the Pavely family had a vault. The arrangements had all been left to Mr. Privet, and the only time Lord St.
Amant had seen Oliver Tropenell smile since the awful discovery had been made, had been in this connection.
"I"m very glad we thought of it," he said, "I mean that Mrs. Pavely and myself thought of it. Poor old Privet! He was one of the very few people in the world who was ever really attached to G.o.dfrey Pavely. And the fact that all the arrangements have been left to him is a great consolation, not to say pleasure, to the poor old fellow."
CHAPTER XX
It was the day of G.o.dfrey Pavely"s funeral, and more than one present at the great gathering observed, either to themselves or aloud to some trusted crony or acquaintance, that the banker would certainly have been much gratified had he seen the high esteem in which he was held by both the gentle and simple of the surrounding neighbourhood.
Even Lord St. Amant was a good deal impressed by the scene. Every blind in the High Street was down--a striking mark of respect indeed towards both the dead banker and his widow. Apart from that fact, the town looked as if it was in the enjoyment of a public holiday, but even that was in its way a tribute. The streets were full of people, and round the entrance to the churchyard was a huge crowd. As for the churchyard itself, it was overflowing, and presented a remarkable rather than a touching scene. Only a few of the town-folk were still allowed to be buried in the mediaeval churchyard which lay just off the High Street, so a funeral actually taking place there was a very rare event.
The circ.u.mstances of Mr. Pavely"s death had been so strange that the local paper had printed a verbatim report of the inquest, as well as a very flowery account of the departed, who had been, it was explained, so true and so loyal a townsman of Pewsbury. Yet, even so, there were those present at his funeral who muttered that Mr. Pavely had met his death just as might have been expected, through his love of money. It was also whispered that the job in which this queer foreigner had been a.s.sociated with the banker had not been of the most reputable kind. This Fernando Apra--every one knew his queer name because of the big reward--had wanted to raise money for a kind of glorified gambling h.e.l.l; that was the long and the short of it, after all, so much the shrewder folk of Pewsbury had already found out, reading between the lines of the evidence offered at the inquest.
In an official sense the chief mourners were two distant cousins of G.o.dfrey Pavely--men with whom he had quarrelled years ago--but in a real, intimate sense, the princ.i.p.al mourners were old Mr. Privet, Lord St. Amant, who, though he was so fond of travel, never neglected the duties entailed by his position in the county, and last but by no means least Mr. Oliver Tropenell, who, as every one present was well aware, had during the last few months become the one intimate friend of the dead man. Among the women there were several who knew that at this very moment Mrs. Pavely was being comforted by Mr. Oliver Tropenell"s mother, a lady who stood high in public esteem, and with whom Mrs. Pavely as a girl, had spent much of her youth, and from whose house, picturesque Freshley Manor, she had been married to the man whom they were now engaged in burying.
Another person present who aroused even more interest among the good folk of Pewsbury than either Lord St. Amant or Oliver Tropenell, was Mrs. Winslow.
The older townspeople looked at Katty with a good deal of rather excited sympathy, for they remembered the gossip and talk there had been about pretty Katty Fenton and the dead man, and of how unkind old Mrs. Pavely, now dead many a year, had shown herself to the lovely, motherless girl.
There were even some there who whispered that poor G.o.dfrey Pavely had again become very fond of his first love--and that, too, when they were both old enough to know better! But these busybodies were not encouraged to say the little they knew. These are things--natural human failings--which should be forgotten at a man"s funeral.
Mrs. Winslow did not look unreasonably upset. There were no tears in her bright brown eyes, and her black frock, sable plumed hat, and beautiful black furs, intensified the brilliant pink and white of her complexion.
Indeed, many of the people who gazed at Katty that day thought they had never seen her looking so attractive. The world belongs to the living--not to the dead, and poor G.o.dfrey Pavely, with his big, prosperous one-man business, and his almost uncanny cleverness in the matter of making money, belonged henceforth very decidedly to the past.
So it was that among the men and women who stared with eager curiosity and respectful interest at the group of mourners, several noticed that Mr. Oliver Tropenell seemed to pay special attention to Mrs. Winslow.
Once he crossed over, and stood close to her for a minute or two by the still open grave, and his dark handsome face showed far more trace of emotion than did hers.
After the funeral, Lord St. Amant dropped Mrs. Winslow at the gate of Rosedean, and, on parting with Katty, he patted her hand kindly, telling himself that she was certainly a very pretty woman. Lord St. Amant, like most connoisseurs in feminine beauty, preferred seeing a pretty woman in black.
"You must try and forget poor G.o.dfrey Pavely," he said feelingly.
He was startled and moved by the intensity with which she answered him:--"I wish I could--but I can"t. I feel all the time as if he was there, close to me, trying to tell me something! I believe that he was murdered, Lord St. Amant."
"I"m sure you"re mistaken. You must never think that!"
"Ah, but I do think so. I"m certain of it!"
Following the old custom, G.o.dfrey Pavely"s will was to be read after his burial, and Laura had written to Lord St. Amant asking him if he would be present.
In the great dining-room of The Chase, a dining-room still lined with the portraits of Mrs. Tropenell"s ancestors, were two tables, one large long table which was never used, and a round table in the bow-window.
To-day it was about the big table that there were gathered the five men and the one woman who were to be present at the reading of the will.
Laura was the one woman. The men were G.o.dfrey Pavely"s lawyer, the dead man"s two cousins--who had perhaps a faint hope of legacies, a hope destined to be disappointed, Oliver Tropenell, present as Laura Pavely"s trustee, and Lord St. Amant, who had been a trustee to her marriage settlement.
Laura, in her deep black, looked wan, sad and tired, but perfectly calm.
All the men there, with one exception, glanced towards her now and again with sympathy. The exception was Oliver Tropenell. He had shut her out, as far as was possible, from his mind, and he seemed hardly aware of her presence. He stared straight before him, a look of rather impatient endurance on his face--not at all, so argued Lord St. Amant to himself, the look of a man from whose path a hitherto impa.s.sable obstacle has just been removed.
Though rather ashamed of letting his mind dwell on such thoughts at such a time, Lord St. Amant told himself that Mrs. Tropenell had doubtless been mistaken as to what she had confided to him on his return from abroad. Mothers are apt to be jealous where only sons are concerned, and Letty--his dear, ardent-natured friend Letty--had always been romantic.
Lord St. Amant was confirmed in this view by the fact that that very morning Mrs. Tropenell had told him that Oliver was going back to Mexico almost at once. To her mind it confirmed what she believed to be true.
But her old friend and some-time lover had smiled oddly. Lord St. Amant judged Oliver by himself--and he had always been a man of hot-foot decisions. It was inconceivable to him that any lover could act in so cold-blooded, careful a fashion as this. No, no--if Oliver cared for Laura as his mother believed he cared, he would not now go off to the other end of the world, simply to placate public opinion.
To those who had known the man, G.o.dfrey Pavely"s will contained only one surprise, otherwise it ran on the most conventional lines. Practically the whole of his very considerable fortune was left, subject to Laura"s life interest--an interest which lapsed on re-marriage--in trust for his only child.
The surprise was the banker"s substantial legacy to Mrs. Winslow. That lady was left Rosedean, the only condition attaching to the legacy being that, should she ever wish to sell the little property, the first offer must be made to Alice Pavely"s trustees. Also, rather to the astonishment of some of those present, it was found that the will had only been made some two months ago, and the lawyer who read it out was aware that in some important particulars it had been modified and changed. In the will made by G.o.dfrey Pavely immediately after his marriage he had left his wife sole legatee. After Alice was born the banker had naturally added a codicil, but he had still left Laura in a far greater position of responsibility in regard to the estate than in this, his final will.
After the will had been read, Lord St. Amant spent a few moments alone with Laura. He felt he had a rather disagreeable task before him, and he did not like disagreeable tasks. Still he faced this one with characteristic courage.
"I"ve been asked by Sir Angus Kinross to undertake a rather unpleasant duty, my dear Laura--that of persuading you to withdraw the reward you are offering for the discovery of Fernando Apra. He points out that if Apra"s story is true, it might easily mean that you would simply be giving a present of a thousand pounds to the person who killed your husband."
Laura heard him out without interruption. Then she shook her head. "I feel it is my duty to do it," she said in a low voice. "Katty, who was G.o.dfrey"s greatest friend, says he would have wished it--and I think she"s right. It isn"t going to be paid out of the estate, you know. _I_ will pay it--if ever it is earned."
She went on painfully. "I am very unhappy, Lord St. Amant. G.o.dfrey and I were not suited to one another, but still I feel that I was often needlessly selfish and unkind."
Lord St. Amant began to see why Oliver Tropenell was going back to Mexico so soon.
PART THREE
CHAPTER XXI
Those winter and spring months which followed the tragic death of G.o.dfrey Pavely were full of difficult, weary, and oppressive days to his widow Laura. Her soul had become so used to captivity, and to being instinctively on the defensive, that she did not know how to use her freedom--indeed, she was afraid of freedom.
Another kind of woman would have gone away to the Continent, alone or with her child, taking what in common parlance is described as a thorough change. But Laura went on living quietly at The Chase, feeling in a queer kind of way as if G.o.dfrey still governed her life, as if she ought to do exactly what G.o.dfrey would wish her to do, all the more so because in his lifetime she had not been an obedient or submissive wife.
As the Commissioner of Police had foretold, the large reward offered by Mrs. Pavely had brought in its train a host of tiresome and even degrading incidents. A man of the name of Apra actually came from the Continent and tried to make out that _he_ had been the banker"s unwitting murderer! But his story broke down under a very few minutes"
cross-examination at Scotland Yard. Even so, Laura kept the offer of the thousand pounds in being. It seemed to be the only thing that she could still do for G.o.dfrey.
Though she was outwardly leading the quiet, decorously peaceful life of a newly-made widow, Laura"s soul was storm-tossed and had lost its bearings. Her little girl"s company, dearly as she loved the child, no longer seemed to content her. For the first time in her life, she longed consciously for a friend of her own age, but with the woman living at her gate, with Katty Winslow, she became less, rather than more, intimate.
Also, hidden away in the deepest recess of her heart, was an unacknowledged pain. She had felt so sure that Oliver Tropenell would stay on with his mother through the winter and early spring! But, to her bewildered surprise, he had left for Mexico almost at once. He had not even sought a farewell interview to say good-bye to her alone, and their final good-bye had taken place in the presence of his mother.
Together he and Mrs. Tropenell had walked over to The Chase one late afternoon, within less than a week of G.o.dfrey"s funeral, and he had explained that urgent business was recalling him to Mexico at once. He and Laura had had, however, three or four minutes together practically alone; and at once he had exclaimed, in a voice so charged with emotion that it recalled those moments Laura now shrank from remembering--those moments when he had told her of his then lawless love--"You"ll let me know if ever you want me? A cable would bring me as quickly as I can travel. You must not forget that I am your trustee."
And she had replied, making a great effort to speak naturally: "I will write to you, Oliver, often--and I hope you will write to me."
And he had said: "Yes--yes, of course I will! Not that there"s much to say that will interest you. But I can always give you news of Gillie."
He had said nothing as to when they were to meet again. But after he was gone Mrs. Tropenell had spoken as if he intended to come back the following Christmas.