"Do you think so?"
"You've all got your mind set on a woman, haven't you?" inquired H. M. "That Mrs. Thompson didn't swear it was a woman. No, no. She wouldn't. Widen your horizon a bit. Imagine it wasn't. '.. Besides, there's another reason why it sticks in the old man's throat to believe this Louise Carewe came down and bashed Tait's head in. I'll pass over the girl's remarkable ingenuity at bein' able to fly over a hundred feet of snow. I'll only ask you, What took her so long to do it?"
"How do you mean?"
"She cane down here at half-past one. Accordin' to what Masters says, Tait wasn't killed until some time after three. 'She came down to argue and expostulate,' says you, 'and when that wouldn't work she acted. It took nearly two hours. I can't imagine anybody arguin' with Tait for two hours without being chucked out. But disregard that, and look at the big point. Tait was expecting a visitor — John Bohun. If you've got any doubts of that, root 'en out of your mind. She was expecting important news about Canifest. Well, can you picture Tait wantin' anybody there on the premises when her cher amant dropped in during the night, especially the daughter of the man she had on the string for proposed matrimony? She got rid of Willard fast enough, but we're supposed to imagine she allowed the Carewe girl to stop there for two hours when she expected Bohun any minute. And two hours can be an awful long time, son."
"But look here, sir! Are you coming back to Rainger's idea that Bohun night have come down here at some time during the night? Because we know John didn't get back here until three o'clock. "
H. M. had stopped. They had followed fading lines of tracks down towards the entrance to the avenue of evergreens. H. M. pushed his hat forward as he peered about. He glanced back towards the house, some hundred yards back up the slope. His eye seemed to be measuring distances.
"At the moment I won't say anything, my lad, except that Rainger's notion of hocussed tracks was even sillier than you thought. John Bohun went down there when he said he did, and no flummery there; and before he got there, there was no tracks. No, no. That's not the part of the feller's behavior that bothers me. The part that does bother me to blazes is his behavior in London: that attack on Canifest, when he thought he'd killed him. "
Then Bennett remembered what had almost been lost in the twists and terrors of development. He asked what had happened, and what Canifest had said to Masters on the telephone. H. M., who seemed to be inspecting the end of the evergreen-avenue, scowled more heavily.
"I dunno, son. Except what Masters told me. It seems Masters tried to imitate Maurice's voice, and said, 'Yes?' Then Canifest said sonethin' like, 'I wanted to speak to you, Bohun, but I hope it won't be necessary to explain my reasons for asking that my daughter be sent home at once.' Like that. Masters said he sounded weak and very shaky. Then Masters said: 'Why? Because John landed one on your chin and thought you were a goner when you keeled over with a heart-attack?' Of course the feller tumbled to its not being Maurice's voice, and kept gabbling; 'Who is this, who is this?' Then Masters said he was a police-officer, and Canifest had better cone out here and give us a spot of help if he didn't want to get into an unholy mess. He piled it on, I understand. Said Caifest's daughter was accused of murder, and so on. All Masters could gather was that Bohun had followed the old boy hone last night; got in a side entrance or something and tried to reopen 'some business subject'; and there was a row during which John cut up rough. Naturally Canifest ain't likely to be garrulous about the subject. Masters said to come out here, heart-attack or no heart-attack; and hung up while Canifest was still digestin' the gruesome result of publicity if he refused to play fair with the police."
"That seems straightforward enough…"
H. M. grunted. "Does it? Come on out to the pavilion." As he waddled on he was slapping irritably at the trees with his gloved hand. "Look here, didn't they say they'd left the body out here and used the dead-van to haul Bohun to the doctor's? H'm, yes. I was hopin' for that. Got a handkerchief? My glasses get all snowed up. What's botherin' you?"
"But, hang it all, sir, if there were no footprints whatever, and. here's a woman murdered 1"
"Oh, that? You're like Masters. Funny thing, but that's the easiest part of it. Mind, I'm not sayin' I know how the trick was worked before I even have a look at the pavilion. But I got a strong hunch; oh, a very strong hunch. And if I find what I expect to find out here…"
"You'll know the murderer?"
"NO!" said H. M. "Burn me, that's just it. All I could tell you right now is the two or three people it isn't. And that's not accordin' to rule either. As a general rule, these sleight-of-hand tricks are a dead give-away to the murderer once you've tumbled to the means of workin' the illusion. A special sort of crime indicates a special set of circumstances, and those circumstances narrow down to fit one person like a hangman's cap when you know what they are. Well, this is the exception. Even if I'm right I may not be any closer, because…"
"Because?"
They had come out into the vast, dusky open space before the frozen lake, churned now with many lines of tracks. The pavilion was unlighted now; it looked darker against the spectral whiteness of snow. So quiet was this muffled world that they could hear the snowflakes ticking and rustling in the evergreen-branches.
"When I was raggin' Masters," said H. M., "I thought I'd be very neat and unanswerable. I asked, Was it by accident that the murderer went to and from the crime without leavin' a footprint? And I chuckled in my fatheaded way. But that's it, son; and it's the whole difficulty. That's exactly what happened."
Bennett stared round. He was beginning to experience the same eerie sensation he had felt when he first came into this clearing at dawn: a feeling of being shut away into a twilight place where the present did not exist, and where Marcia Tait dead among the Stuart finery was no less alive than the beribboned ladies, with' their paint and their wired ringlets, who smiled over plumed fans at the card-tables of the merry monarch…
He glanced up sharply.
A light had appeared in the pavilion.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ashes at the Pavilion
Level slits of light showed yellow through the Venetian blinds in the windows of the room on the left hand side of the door: a lonely glow in the midst of the lake. H. M., who had put the dead pipe into his mouth, rattled it against his teeth.
"It might be one of Potter's men still there," he said. "Or it might not. Strike a match and see if there are any fresh tracks…"
"The snow's covering them," Bennett answered, when he had wasted several matches; "but they look like fresh ones. Big shoes. Shall we — I — '
H. M. lumbered ahead, as quietly as his own squeaky shoes would permit. The causeway was again muffled. in snow, but they need not have used any secrecy. The front door of the pavilion was opened just as they reached it.
"I rather imagined," said Jervis Willard's voice, out of the gloom in the doorway, "that I saw someone out there. I must make my deepest apologies if I came down here without permission. But the police had gone, and the door was open."
He stood courteously, his head a little inclined, the glow from the drawing-room shining down one side of his handsome face where none of the wrinkles showed now. The light brought out rich hues and shadows; a brocade curtain behind his stiff black clothes, a shadow-trick whereby he seemed to be wearing a black periwig.
"You are Sir Henry Merrivale," he stated. "I'll go now. I hope I didn't intrude. She is still in the bedroom."
If H. M. caught a curious undercurrent in the man's voice, he paid no attention. He only looked briefly at Willard, and stumped up the steps.