The picture of the room crowded with witnesses, and people whom she knew, and strangers, whilst she gave the evidence which would turn their liking for her into contempt and suspicion would fade away from before her eyes, and the summer afternoon on Duncton Hill glow in its place.
She had bidden Hillyard look at the Weald of Suss.e.x, that he might carry the smell of its soil, the aspect of its blooms and dark woodlands and brown cottages away with him as a treasure to which he could secretly turn like a miser to his gold; and she herself, with them ever before her eyes, had forgotten them altogether. To sink back into the rank and file--how fine she had thought it, and how little she had heeded it! Now she had got to pay for her heedlessness, and she buried her face in her pillows and lay shivering.
Meanwhile, in the dining-room downstairs, Millie Splay, Sir Chichester and Harry Luttrell gathered about Martin at the table whilst he ate cold beef and drank a pint of champagne.
"I went up to London to see some one on the editorial staff of the _Harpoon_," Martin explained. "There were two questions I wanted answers for, if I could get them. You see, according to McKerrel--and you, Sir Chichester, say that he is a capable man--Stella Croyle died at one in the morning."
"Yes," Sir Chichester agreed.
"_About_ one," Harry Luttrell corrected, with the exactness of the soldierly mind.
""About" will do," Martin rejoined. "For newspapers go to press early nowadays. The _Harpoon_ would have been made up, and most of the editorial staff would have gone home an hour--yes, actually an hour--before Mrs. Croyle died here at Rackham in Suss.e.x. Yet the news is in that very issue. How did that happen? How did the news reach the office of the _Harpoon_ an hour before the event occurred?"
"Yes, that is what has been bothering me," added Sir Chichester.
"Well, that was one question," Martin resumed. "Here"s the other. How, when the news had reached the _Harpoon_ office, did it get printed in the paper?"
Millie Splay found no difficulty in providing an explanation of that.
"It"s sensational," she said disdainfully.
Martin shook his head.
"I don"t think that"s enough. The _Harpoon_, like lots of other newspapers, has its social column, and in that column, no doubt, a paragraph like this one about Stella would have a certain sensational value. But supposing it wasn"t true! A libel action follows, follows inevitably. A great deal would be said about the unscrupulous recklessness involved; the judge would come down like a cartload of bricks and the paper would get badly stung. No editor of any reliable paper would run such a risk. No sub-editor, left behind with power to alter and insert, would have taken the responsibility. Before he printed that item of news he would want corroboration of its truth. That"s certain. How did he get it? It was true news, and it was corroborated.
But, again, it was corroborated before the event happened. How?"
"I haven"t an idea," cried Sir Chichester. "I thought I knew something about getting things into the papers, but I see that I am a baby at it."
"It"s much the more difficult question of the two," Hillyard agreed.
"But we will go back to the first one. How did the news reach the _Harpoon_ office yesterday night? Perhaps you can guess?" and he looked towards Harry Luttrell.
Luttrell, however, was at a loss.
"It"s beyond me," he replied, and Martin Hillyard understood how that one morning at the little hotel under the Hog"s Back had given to him and him alone the key by which the door upon these dark things might be unlocked.
"The news arrived in the form of a letter marked urgent, which was handed in by the chauffeur of a private motor-car just after midnight.
Of the time there is no doubt. I saw the editor myself. The issue would already have gone to press, but late news was expected that night from France, and the paper was waiting for it. Instead this letter came."
A look of bewilderment crept into the faces of the group about the table.
"But who in the world could have written it?" cried Sir Chichester in exasperation.
"It was written over your name."
"Mine?"
The bewilderment in Millie Splay"s face deepened into anxiety. She looked at her husband with a sudden sinking of her heart. Had his foible developed into a madness? Such things had been. A little gasp broke from her lips.
"But not in your handwriting," Hillyard hastened to add.
"Whose then?" asked Harry Luttrell suddenly.
"Stella"s," answered Hillyard.
A shiver ran from one to the other of that small company, and discomfort kept them silent. A vague dread stole in upon their minds. It was as though some uncanny presence were in the room. They had eaten with Stella Croyle in this room, played with her out there in the sunlit garden, and only one of them had suspected the overwhelming despair which had driven her so hard. They began to blame themselves. "Poor woman! Poor woman!" Millie Splay whispered in a moan.
Sir Chichester broke the silence.
"But we left Stella here when we went to Harrel," he began, and Hillyard interrupted him.
"There"s no doubt that Stella sent the message," he said. "Your car, Mrs. Brown"s and Luttrell"s, were all used to take us to Harrel. One car remained in your garage--Stella"s."
"But there wouldn"t be time for that car to reach London." Sir Chichester fought against Hillyard"s statement. He did not want to believe it. He did not want to think of it. It brought him within too near a view of that horrid brink where overtried nature grows dizzy and whirls down into blackness.
"Just time," Hillyard answered relentlessly, "if you will follow me.
Joan certainly returned here last night--that I know, as you know. But she was back again in the ball-room at Harrel within a few minutes of ten o"clock. She must have left Mrs. Croyle a quarter before ten--that, at the latest."
"Yes," Millie Splay agreed.
"Well, I have myself crossed Putney Bridge after leaving here, within ten minutes under the two hours. And that in the daytime. Stella had time enough for her purpose. It was night and little traffic on the road. She writes her letter, sends Jenny with it to the garage, and the car reaches the _Harpoon_ office by twelve."
"But its return?" asked Sir Chichester.
"Simpler still. Your gates were left open last night, and we returned from Harrel at four in the morning. Stella"s chauffeur hands in his letter, comes back by the way he went and is home here at Rackham an hour and a half before we thought of saying good-bye to Mrs. Willoughby.
That is the way it happened. That is the way it must have happened,"
Hillyard concluded energetically. "For it"s the only way it could have happened."
Luttrell, though he had been a listener and nothing else throughout Martin"s statement, had cherished a hope that somehow it might be discovered that Stella had died by an accident. That she should die by her own hand, in this house, under the same roof as Joan, and because of one year which had ended at Stockholm--oh, to him a generation back!--was an idea of irrepressible horror. He could not shake off some sense of guiltiness. He had argued with it all that day, discovering the most excellent contentions, but at the end, not one of them had succeeded in weakening in the least degree his inward conviction that he had his share in Stella"s death. Unless her death was an accident, unless, using her drug, she fell asleep and so drifted unintentionally out of life! He still caught at that hope.
"Are you sure that the handwriting was Stella"s?" he asked.
"Quite. I saw the letter."
"Did the editor give it to you?"
"No, he had to keep it for his own protection."
"That"s a pity," said Harry. A pity--or a relief, since, without that evidence before his eyes, he could still insist upon his pretence.
"Not such a great pity," answered Martin, and taking a letter from his pocket he threw it down upon the table, with the ghost of a smile upon his face. "What do you think I have been doing during the last two years?" he asked drily.
Harry pounced upon the letter and his first glance dispelled his illusion--nay, proved to him that he had never had faith in it. For he saw, without surprise, the broad strokes and the straight up-and-down letters familiar to him of old. Stella had always written rather like a man, a man without character. He had made a joke of it to her in the time before the little jokes aimed by the one at the other had begun to rasp.
"Yes, she wrote the letter and signed it with Sir Chichester"s name."
Millie Splay reached out for the letter.
"Stella took a big risk," she said. "I don"t understand it. She must have foreseen that Chichester"s hand was likely to be familiar in the office."
"No, Millie," said Sir Chichester suddenly, and he spurred his memory.