The House in Lordship Lane

Chapter 10

Olivia

A.E.W. Mason


SHE WAS standing in the room with the windows looking upon the holly hedge. But there was space enough between the hedge and the windows for the sunlight to fall golden upon the gravel path between and to fill the room with a serene and quiet light.

“I don’t want to distress you more than must be,” said Maltby gently; and Olivia Horbury gravely acknowledged his courtesy.

“You have your duty, Superintendent.”

She was tall and dressed in a coat and skirt of dark blue and a white shirt with a collar. Her hair, which was black but had the blue sheen of a raven’s wing, was parted in the middle and drawn softly back, masking the tops of her ears. Beneath its heavy mass her face was very pale and her eyes, enormous under the long, upturned lashes, were black as night, too, and as night unfathomable. Prepared as Mr. Ricardo had been for someone of a closer kinship with the house than with her gross bandit of a husband, he was none the less surprised. The broad forehead, the wide spacing of her eyes, the delicacy of nose and nostril, the short upper lip and the curve of cheek and jaw gave her beauty; but the supple grace of her movements, the slenderness of her figure, the long white hands, made her exquisite besides. . . .  She was neither of the Lambeth Walk nor of bankrupt gentility. He was inclined, with a rare spurt of fancy, to think that she was born at Sèvres, and there had got lost amongst images with the colours of pale flowers as lovely as herself. There Horbury, on an off day between Longchamps and Auteuil, bought her, noticing that she was alive and so worth more of his money than the others. Her voice, however, upset Ricardo’s fairy tale. For it was not silvery and light, as it should have been, but full and low.

“Will you sit down, Superintendent—and your friends, of course.”

Was there a hint of a question in her use of the word friends? Mr. Ricardo hoped not. The very last thing for which he wished was to be turned out of the room. The Superintendent took it up indirectly.

“I don’t want any misunderstanding, Mrs. Horbury,” he said. “You have a perfect right to refuse to tell me anything, with or without a solicitor present. The only person you will definitely be called upon to answer is—”

“The coroner,” she interposed. “But I have nothing to hide from you, Superintendent.”

She sat upon the opposite side of the table, the bright green hedge beyond the window behind her. The men began to take their seats opposite, like so many directors at a board meeting. But Superintendent Maltby was not satisfied. He had his country’s belief in fair play, except, perhaps, so far as Bryan Devisher was concerned.

“This,” he said, laying his hand for a moment on Hanaud’s arm, “is Monsieur Hanaud of the Sûreté in Paris. You might object to his presence. I am in your hands.’

Olivia Horbury’s eyes moved slowly towards the burly Frenchman. There was no hostility in them, no change in the stillness of her face.

“I think, of all men, Monsieur Hanaud should be here,” she said. “He is far more in this”—she paused, as though she hated to use high-sounding words—“tragedy, than perhaps he knows.”

Hanaud was disconcerted. He looked inquiringly at Mrs. Horbury; he bobbed his head at her; he sat down rather heavily. “Dee-flated,” said Mr. Ricardo, but he only said it to himself.

“I should be obliged, madam, if you would tell us what happened here last night,” said Maltby, and the detective-sergeant at once produced a notebook and an indelible pencil.

“Beginning with—?” she asked.

“Your reason for spending the night at White Barn. I understand that it was not unusual for you and your husband to come here unexpectedly. But was there yesterday any special reason?”

“Yes,” she answered at once. “Dan rang me up yesterday afternoon from King Street.”

“King Street, St. James,” said Maltby.

“Yes.’’

“From his offices?”

“Yes Witherton’s Rooms, where, in the thirties of last century, the select dined and gambled, and yesterday Daniel only drank a glass of Pommery ’06 and gambled.”

A slow and wistful smile changed surprisingly Olivia Horbury’s face. It lost its hard calm and with the calm something of its pallor. A rose-leaf pink softened it and a tender humour shone in her eyes. She might have been watching, with more amusement than disapproval, the antics of a not very well-behaved boy.

“And he was in some trouble?” Maltby asked.

Mr. Ricardo saw the tears suddenly flood her eyes and glisten on her lashes. He heard her voice check and, for a second, tremble.

“Perhaps. Would I drive him down to White Barn? So many dangers had there conjured themselves into nothing. Of course, I would! There were no special arrangements to be made. Daniel changed into his dinner jacket at the office. I picked him up there and drove him to the Milan Grill, where we dined. It was, perhaps, half-past seven. He told me nothing at dinner, but drank—see, I am frank with you, Superintendent!—more than he usually did. We left the hotel at a few minutes before nine. I noticed the clock in the small hall. It was the time when the theatres were filling. But beyond Battersea Bridge there was very little traffic, and I reached White Barn well before half-past nine.”

“You noticed no one in Lordship Lane whom you knew?”

Mrs. Horbury looked at Maltby in surprise. “No. There was no one to notice,” she answered at once. “Not a soul. The gate was open. It is left open. I drove the car into the space in front of the door and left it so that it could be backed into the garage. Dan got out and opened the door of the house with his latchkey.”

“That was on his ring of keys?” Maltby asked carelessly.

“Yes,” said Olivia, dwelling for a second on the monosyllable. “No doubt.”

“And he carried the ring in his pocket on a chain?”

The even flow of Mrs. Horbury’s narrative was checked. She did not take her eyes from Maltby’s face, but suddenly they were wary.

“As so many people do,” Maltby added in an indifferent voice.

“Yes, I suppose he did,” she answered. “Anyway, he opened the house door and came back to the garage.”

It was noticeable to Mr. Ricardo, who prided himself considerably upon the nicety of his observation, that she who had been so slick—he used in his thoughts that unpleasant word—in her statement of quite unimportant details, such as the exact time at which they dined and the traffic on the roads, was now not so sure, was wondering; not what the answer was, but what it was politic that it should be.

“And I suppose Mr. Horbury backed the car into the garage and locked it up again?”

“I suppose so.”

“He could do that?”

“Oh, yes. He never drove a car because his mind ran off to business in the midst of Piccadilly, but he could drive,” Mrs. Horbury answered. “Whilst he was putting the car away, I went into the garden-room and lit the fire. It was dark, but the moon was like gold in a clear dark sky, and I thought what a pity it was to close out the last of the summer nights. But Dan liked to be what he called snug—fire burning, blinds down, curtains drawn, and a glass of the only wine in the world at his elbow.” Again that half smile of amusement and affection gave to her face tenderness.

“You did share a bottle of champagne yesterday evening, didn’t you?” said Maltby. “And by share, I don’t mean divide.”

Olivia Horbury bowed her head.

“Yes, but not at once. Dan came in just as I had finished lighting the fire.”

“You had left the door open?”

“Yes, and I closed it after he had entered. He flung himself in his chair at the back of the table. He pulled his fountain pen out of his pocket and opened the blotting-book.”

“Before you go on, may I interrupt?” Maltby asked.

“Of course.”

“What had Mr. Horbury done with his coat and hat?”

Olivia looked up at the ceiling as if trying to remember. Then her eyes were suddenly turned to Mr. Ricardo. Whether she saw him or not, he could never be sure.

“I don’t think he had a hat at all,” she explained. “But he certainly came away from the Milan Grill with a brown overcoat over his dress-jacket. I expect that he hung it up in the hall.”

“He wasn’t wearing it, then, in the garden-room?”

“No, I should certainly have noticed it if he had been.”

He had taken off his overcoat before he had entered the room.

“Well, you are both in the garden-room,” Maltby resumed.

“My husband was in trouble. He said that, to put the lid on, Monsieur Hanaud was on his way from Paris with a criminal charge against him which, even if he got the verdict, would ruin his career.”

Hanaud sat back in his chair with a look of absolute incredulity upon his face. “But, madame, this is a lunacy. It was a small affair for him, for me, too, Hanaud. A small conversation, an injustice put right . . . ”

Mrs. Horbury replied coldly: “My husband did not take it so lightly, Monsieur Hanaud,” and Hanaud threw up his hands.

It was Maltby’s moment to take charge again.

“From whom did Horbury hear of Monsieur Hanaud’s visit?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “He was in great distress and I didn’t press him with questions. He jumped up after that and said that a glass of wine might help us.”

“Yes?” said Maltby, leaning forward a little. He glanced quickly at Detective-Sergeant Hughes, who was holding his notebook below the table upon his knees. “Yes?”

“Daniel fetched two glasses of champagne from the kitchen and drank his own with one gulp.”

“Just the two of you standing in the garden-room?”

“Yes. I remember Dan saying with a sort of hysterical laugh: ‘That isn’t the proper way to treat a wine like that. Upon my word, I deserve all that Hanaud can do to me!”

“He said that?” exclaimed Hanaud without any apologies to the Superintendent.

“I remember it clearly,” Mrs Horbury declared; and once more Hanaud sat back in his chair, but this time with such a look of admiration upon his face that Mr. Ricardo was quite at a loss to understand it.

“It could not be disputed,” he said, bowing to her; and now she was for a moment disconcerted. “So Horbury does a thing which he had never in his life done before. He put a bottle of Pommery ’06 half-full back in the cupboard.”

Mr Ricardo was indignant. Hanaud had no manners. He was French, of course. You had to take that into account. But if ever a man had called a charming woman a liar to her face, that man was Hanaud of the Paris Sûreté. He just didn’t believe that Horbury had put back the half-empty bottle into the cupboard. Unusual? Perhaps. People did unusual things—he himself, for instance, who, only two nights ago, had crossed the Channel in a cockle-boat. However, Olivia Horbury had resumed her story, and it was more pleasant to listen to her low and melodious voice than to reflect how curiously wrong Hanaud could be when he was removed from the perhaps rather sordid purlieus of Paris.

Mrs Horbury was saying: “Daniel was less discouraged. He had got out of scrapes just as awkward before. He supposed it was just returning to this house which so comforted him—but he wondered at times whether the big fight was worth all it cost—” and then, without a break in her voice, without any warning change in feature or expression, she uttered a little cry and covered her face with her hands. She bent her head forward and the tears ran between her fingers and splashed upon the table. There was no sound from her throat of a sob, but she pressed her hands tight, although they could not hold back her tears. Not one of those who saw her but was distressed. So calm and sedate she had been, she had even laughed wistfully once or twice as she spoke of Daniel; and then came this flood of grief as though a gate had burst.

Maltby spoke with compassion: “I am sorry. One cannot help these interviews being distressing. Perhaps you would like us to wait . . . ”

“No, no!” she cried with a sudden violence. “Let us finish!” She took her hands away from her face and dried her eyes and swallowed. Then she made her apology for her outburst. “You are right. It is, of course, disturbing. But I am almost at an end. For, seeing that Daniel was in an easier mood, I went up to bed.”

“And what time would that be?” Maltby asked easily. “Did you notice?”

“Certainly; There’s a clock upon the mantelshelf of the garden-room. It was half-past ten.”

“You expected him to follow you?”

“Yes,” she answered. “He gave me three-quarters of an hour, as a rule. But it had been a tiring evening, and as soon as I was in bed I fell asleep.”

Monsieur Hanaud now covered his face, but it was to hide a grin, not a flood of tears. So far, to his thinking, Olivia Horbury had told her tale cleverly, but there was a snag just ahead of her which he did not see how she could weather.

“And you slept well?”

“Too well,” she answered remorsefully.

“Too well—because you had quarrelled?”

Olivia Horbury was bewildered. She raised her eyes and stared blankly at the Superintendent. And then to the recognition of all of them bewilderment became deliberately intended. At first she had been surprised. Now surprise was being acted.

“If we ever quarrelled, the quarrel ended before we parted,” she said, and waited for a trap to be sprung. Superintendent Maltby obliged.

“How is it, then, since you hadn’t quarrelled, and since you expected Mr. Horbury to follow you in three-quarters of an hour, that your door was locked against him?”

“But it wasn’t!”

The Superintendent jumped in his chair as he heard that calm, quiet statement. Hanaud looked down at the table; for the smile upon his face was more pronounced than ever. She would have her answer ready, not a doubt of it, and quite a good answer, too.

“But, madam,” Maltby answered, and now there was a note of sternness in his voice. He was not a preparatory schoolboy in flannel shorts who must take what is told him without contradiction. “Your charwoman, Mrs. Wallace, found your door locked this morning.”

“But that’s not all she told you,” Olivia Horbury returned.

“No, there was more,” Maltby admitted.

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Horbury. “I left my door on the latch. Daniel, if he finds me asleep, is careful to make no noise. I slept until I was awakened by a scream. A scream of horror. I sat up with my heart beating. I saw that the lights were on, although the sunlight was streaming round the edges of the blinds. Then I noticed that Dan’s bed had not been slept in, that the coverlet had been turned down, and that his pyjamas were spread out upon it, waiting for him. Something terrible had happened. I sprang out of bed, afraid, and I turned the key without thinking. I heard Mrs. Wallace sobbing and crying out bits of words which I couldn’t understand, and I did”—she shrugged her shoulders—“the fool thing which women do. I fainted. I know. For when I came to my senses I was lying on the floor and Mrs. Wallace was banging on the door. I can only have lain there for a few seconds, but”—and she shivered as she recalled the moment—“I felt as cold as ice. I unlocked the door and told Mrs. Wallace to wait until I got into bed again.”

She sat with all their eyes upon her, intent upon telling her story without unnecessary lamentations. If ever a woman was speaking the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, Mr. Ricardo was certain it was now. If the telephone had rung at half-past two in the morning, she had not run down the stairs to answer it, Mr. Ricardo put his hand in his bosom ready to swear it. Even Maltby seemed to be impressed.

I see,” he said slowly. Then, like one turning to a lighter subject: “Will you carry your mind back to the hour or two when you and your husband were in the garden-room?”

“Yes.”

“Did Mr. Horbury, during that time, take his keys off the chain in his pocket?”

Mrs. Horbury’s forehead wrinkled. She drew a deep breath or two. “I don’t think that he did.”

“Thank you,” said Maltby. “There is just one last question which I must ask you. But I am afraid it is the most trying for you of them all.” He held out his hand to the Detective-Sergeant.

With a little gasp, Olivia whispered: “That can’t be helped.”

The Detective-Sergeant put into Maltby’s hand the long, white cardboard box. It was ornamented with gold lines. It was gay and gleaming, the sheath of beauty’s buckler and weapon, a dainty flickering toy to exploit a pair of passionate eyes or make malice of an admirable mouth. But the prettier it looked, the more Olivia Horbury dreaded it. Maltby set it down on the mahogany table and rather slowly, with his eyes upon Olivia, “Now!” he whispered. Really, he might have been a conjuror, Mr. Ricardo thought. And then Maltby suddenly whisked the lid from the box, and there was no luxurious fan of painted chicken skin with a handle of jade, but the long, blood-crusted blade and the straight handle of Cambridge blue.

Olivia set her hands against the table’s edge and thrust her chair back. The knife might have been a cobra and she the rabbit, so helplessly she stared at it.

“Have you ever seen that knife, madam?”

Olivia shook her head once and a second time more violently. But Maltby must have the word spoken and duly recorded in Hughes’ notebook.

“You mean, madam, that you have never seen it before,” he said, polite but insistent.

“I do mean just that,” she answered, and, as Maltby covered the box again with its lid, she uttered a sigh of relief and suddenly swayed in her chair. Mr. Ricardo uttered a cry. He saw her slipping down by the bed room door. “She will fall,” he cried.

But however caustic Hanaud might be in words, he was very quick on his feet when succour was needed. He was already at Olivia’s side and supporting her. “You know what I think?” he asked.

“I do not,” replied Maltby.

“I think that a bottle of the Pommery ’06 would be the best thing for Mrs. Horbury.”

Mrs. Horbury sprang up at once. “No, please! I am quite well.” She turned to Maltby. “If you have done with me, I will go home.”

Maltby bowed to her. “I have to thank you very much for answering my questions. I shall have to lock up this house for the moment and leave the constable in charge.” He turned to Inspector Herbert. “Mrs. Wallace must go, too, and will you take her latchkey?”

Herbert went off upon his mission. Mrs. Horbury said: “No doubt you will want mine, too, Superintendent?”

“I should prefer to have it. Should you need anything here, you have only to name it to me or Inspector Herbert.”

“Thank you,” said Olivia. She took a dark blue hat which had been lying on a chair, pinned it on in front of a mirror, and drew down a veil which hid her eyes. They gathered in the hall: Mrs. Horbury, the charwoman, Maltby, Hanaud, Mr. Ricardo, Herbert and Hughes. Mrs. Wallace was the first to go.

“The detective-inspector has your address,” said Maltby. “You will be wanted at the inquest, of course. Notice will be sent to you.”

She went away on foot and then the garage door was opened by Herbert. “You have petrol enough, madam?”

“More than enough,” she answered as she opened the door and climbed into the car. She drove the little car out into the open and stopped again.

“Monsieur Hanaud,” she called, and Monsieur Hanaud advanced from the group at the garage door. “It is not private,” she added, and Hanaud stopped so that all might hear. “You spoke of some injustice to be put right.”

“Yes, madam.”

“You must give me a few days.”

“Certainly. It is ages since I was in a vacancy. I will give myself one now until you are ready.”

Olivia Horbury stared for a moment. “I should like your address.”

Hanaud smiled. It was the moment for an off-hand gesture, an address hardly worth giving, so certain it was that he must lodge there. “The Grosvenor Square. The corner house.”

“Oh!” cried Olivia with a little twist of her lips. “Have they got one in Grosvenor Square now?” and she drove out past the policeman at the gate and turned her car towards London, her face losing its humour as the chestnuts and the gardens disappeared. The flat and arid life of the town—she must get used to that now that Dan, with his rogueries and his good humour, his preposterous politics and his queer truth to her, had gone. That, sooner or later, he might go to prison for a long time she had felt sure, even before she had married. But death—violent, bloody—Dan hated the sight of blood—this sort of death above all! And as she drove across Battersea Bridge and past the Houses of Parliament yet a third and this time a passionate, expression began to burn in her eyes.

.     .     .     .     .

The police officers returned to the house. In the upper rooms a bathroom, two servants rooms, a dressing-room for Mr. Horbury, and the big double bedroom, nothing new was discovered. The windows of the garden-room, its door, the doors of the dining-room and the kitchen-everything was made safe.

“There will be a man in the house, as well as one outside, until the inquest’s over,” said Maltby, as he handed over the keys to Inspector Herbert. “I have arranged for it at the Station.”

They were in the hall, and Maltby was opening the front door when Hanaud cried: “’Arf a mo! There is somethin’ we forget? Yes, no?”

He dashed across the hall, and a rather condescending smile at the antics of the foreigner which had begun to broaden over Maltby’s face was suddenly frozen there.

Hanaud went straight to a cupboard in the wall. It was not locked. He pulled it open and there, for all to see, a brown overcoat of a light weight, and a white silk scarf hung upon a hook.

“Ah!” he cried. “The Horbury’s coat!”

He turned it so that the lining showed and the inside pocket in the breast. He stood up on the tips of his toes to peer into it. Suddenly he whipped the silk scarf from the hook, shook it out, and spread it over his palm. He felt in the breast pocket of the overcoat and stood for a moment, or two afterwards with his back towards his companions, and in the poise of his head and the stoop of his shoulders there was a bitter confession of defeat.

Mr. Ricardo, indeed, feared that, he was going to disgrace the whole confraternity of the Sûreté by a shameless attempt to hide his discovery. But it was not unusual for Mr. Ricardo to be wrong. Hanaud was double-dyed in his vocation. He would follow relentless through the dark labyrinth of a crime; but he never pretended when a stiff barrier had to be climbed; and never denied failure when one simple fact, which could not fairly be explained away, brought him up all standing and closed the case. He knew the difference between a full-stop and a semi-colon. So now he came slowly to his colleagues, holding and hiding his treasure in a scarf. A semi-colon?-at the least. A full-stop?-maybe.

“It is over,” he said, holding forward his swathed hand.

Maltby looked puzzled. “The Case—if it is a Case?” the Superintendent asked.

“Yes. For the Coroner at all events”—the semi-colon, so to speak—“it is over.”

Hanaud turned back with deliberate care the folds of the scarf. Lying upon it, across the palm of his hand, was the thick, stiff sheath of a long knife. It was decorated at the wider end with a pattern in thread of Cambridge blue.

“And in Horbury’s top-coat, eh?”

“Yes.”

Maltby looked with a smile of relief at Inspector Herbert. “That settles it, then.”

The knife on the ground beneath Horbury’s hand and his finger-marks upon the handle; the sheath in the pocket of the overcoat in which Horbury had driven from London: facts. All else was wild surmise.

“For the Coroner, yes,” Hanaud repeated as he handed scarf and sheath to the detective-sergeant.

But for the Red Judge? The full stop? He was not so sure.


The House in Lordship Lane - Contents    |     Chapter 11 - The Blind Man’s Dog


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