Part 20 (1/2)

”I know it. It is very short, sir. It always was; and I can't help it,”

said Hutchings in an apologetic voice.

”Then you'd better set about learning to help it, my man,” said Mr. Flexen.

He took out his pipe and filled it slowly. The flush faded a little from Hutchings' face. Mr. Flexen lighted his pipe and rose.

Then as he went to the door he said: ”I should advise you to get that stupid temper well in hand. It makes a bad impression. Good afternoon.”

Mr. Flexen drove back to the Castle, considering Hutchings carefully.

There was no doubt that he was, indeed, badly frightened; but he had reason to be. Mr. Flexen could not decide whether he had worn the air of a guilty man or an innocent. He could not decide whether the butler had been too deeply absorbed in his own affairs to hear the snoring of Lord Loudwater as he went through the library. It was possible that Lord Loudwater was alive, asleep, and yet not snoring at the time. Snoring is often intermittent.

He considered Hutchings' violent outburst. Certainly such an outburst showed the man uncommonly unbalanced; it might, indeed, on occasion take the form of uncontrollable murderous fury. But it seemed to him that an actual meeting with Lord Loudwater would have been necessary to provoke that. But Lord Loudwater had been sitting in his chair when he died; and if he had not killed himself, he had been killed in his sleep. At any rate, there was probably sufficient evidence, seeing what juries are, to convict Hatchings. If he had been one of those not uncommon ministers of the law, whose only desire is to secure a conviction, he would doubtless arrest him at once. But it was not his only desire to secure a conviction; it was his very keen desire to find the right solution of the problem. He could not see where any more evidence against Hutchings was to come from. What Mr. Manley had told him about the knife, that it had been in general use, and that he had seen Hutchings cut string with it the day before the murder, greatly lessened its value as evidence, even if Hutchings' finger-prints were thick on it. He decided to dismiss Hutchings from his mind for the time being, and devote all his energies to discovering the mysterious woman with whom Lord Loudwater had had the furious quarrel between eleven and a quarter-past.

With this end in view, on his return to the Castle, he went straight to the library, where Mr. Carrington was engaged, along with Mr. Manley, in an examination of the murdered man's papers. They were uncommonly few, and Mr. Manley had already set them in order. Lord Loudwater seemed to have kept but few letters, and the papers consisted chiefly of receipted and unreceipted bills.

When he found that Mr. Flexen had come to confer with the lawyer, Mr.

Manley a.s.sumed an air of extraordinary discretion and softly withdrew.

”I want to know--it is most important--whether there was any entanglement between Lord Loudwater and a woman,” said Mr. Flexen.

”I should think it very unlikely,” said Mr. Carrington without hesitation. ”At least, I have never heard of anything of the kind, and so far I have come across no trace of anything of the kind among his papers.”

Mr. Flexen frowned, considering; then he said: ”Do you happen to know whether he employed any one besides your firm to do legal work for him?”

”As to that I can't say. But I should not think it likely. It was always a business to get him to attend to anything that wanted doing, and he always made a fuss about it. I can't see him employing another firm too.

But he may have done. The only thing is that I ought to have found either their bills or the receipts for them among those papers--except that my late client does not appear to have taken the trouble to keep many receipts.”

”The thing is that I've learnt that Lord Loudwater had a furious quarrel with some unknown woman between eleven and a quarter-past on the night of his death, and I want to find her. You can see how important it is. It may be that she stabbed him, or it may be that she provided him with the motive to commit suicide--not that that seems likely. But you can't tell: she might have been able to threaten him with some exposure. Those people without any self-control are always doing the most senseless things--bigamy, for instance, is often one of their weaknesses.”

”Loudwater was certainly without self-control; but I hardly think that he was the man to commit bigamy,” said the lawyer.

”It would very much simplify matters if he had,” said Mr. Flexen in a dissatisfied tone. ”I wonder whether Manley would know anything about it?”

”He might,” said Mr. Carrington.

Mr. Flexen went through the library window to find Mr. Manley strolling up and down the lawn with every appearance of enjoying his pipe and the respite from perusing papers.

”Mr. Carrington tells me that you were in Lord Loudwater's confidence,”

said Mr. Flexen.

”Wholly,” said Mr. Manley, with more promptness than his actual knowledge of the facts warranted.

It seemed to him fitting that a secretary of his intelligence and discretion should have been wholly in the confidence of any n.o.bleman who employed him. Therefore he himself must have been.

”Then perhaps you can tell me whether he was entangled with a woman,”

said Mr. Flexen.

”Entangled? In what way?” said Mr. Manley in a tone of surprise.