Fergus Hume - The Silent House

"The proofs you have given seem sufficient, Mrs. Vrain, but may I ask when your husband left his home?"

"About a year ago, eh, poppa?"

"You are overdoing it, Lyddy," corrected the father. "Size it up as ten months, and you'll do."

"Ten months," said Lucian suddenly, "and Mr. Berwin——"

"Vrain!" struck in Lydia, the widow, "Mark Vrain."

"I beg your pardon! Well, Mark Vrain took the house in Geneva Square six months back. Where was he during the other four?"

"Ask me something easier, Mr. Denzil. I know no more than you do."

"Did you not know where he went on leaving Berwin Manor?"

"Sakes! how should I? Mark and I didn't pull together nohow, so he kicked over the traces and made tracks for the back of beyond."

"And you might square it, Lyddy, by saying as 'twasn't you who upset the apple cart."

"Well, I should smile to think so," said Mrs. Vrain vigorously. "I was as good as pie to that old man."

"You did not get on well together?" said Link sharply.

"Got on as well as a cat hitched along with a dog. My stars! there was no living with him. If he hadn't left me, I'd have left him—that's an almighty truth."

"So the gist of all this is that Mr. Vrain left you ten months ago, and did not leave his address?"

"That's so," said the widow calmly. "I've not seen nor heard of him for most a year, till pop there tumbled across your paragraph in the papers. Then I surmised from the name and the missing finger and the scarred cheek, that I'd dropped right on to Mark. I wouldn't take all this trouble for any one else; no, sir, not me!"

"My Lyddy does not care about being a grass-widow, gentlemen."

"I don't mind being a grass-widow or a real one, so long as I know how to ticket myself," said the candid Lydia; "but seems to me there's no question that Mark's sent in his checks."

"I certainly think that this man who called himself Berwin was your husband," said Denzil, for Mrs. Vrain's eyes rested on him, and she seemed to expect an answer.

"Well, then, that means I'm Mr. Vrain's widow?"

"I should say so."

"And entitled to all his pile?"

"That depends on the will," said Lucian dryly, for the light tone of the pretty woman jarred upon his ear.

"Oh, that's all right," replied Mrs. Vrain, putting a gold-topped smelling bottle to her nose. "I saw the will made, and know exactly how I come out. The old man's daughter by his first wife gets the manor and the rents, and I take the assurance money!"

"Was Mr. Berwin—I beg pardon, Vrain—was he married twice?"

"I should think so!" said Lydia. "He was a widower with a grown-up daughter when I took him to church. Well, can I get this assurance money?"

"I suppose so," said Link, "provided you can prove your husband's death."

"Sakes alive!" cried Mrs. Vrain briskly. "Wasn't he murdered?"

"The man called Berwin was murdered."

"Well, sir," said the rosy-cheeked Clyne, with more sharpness than might have been expected from his peaceful aspect, "and ain't Berwin Vrain?"

"It would seem so," replied Link coolly. "All your evidence goes to prove it, yet the assurance company may not be satisfied with the proof. I expect the grave will have to be opened, and the remains identified."

"Ugh!" said Mrs. Vrain with a shrug, "how disgusting! I mean," she added, colouring as she saw that Lucian was rather shocked by her flippancy, "that sorry as I am for the old man, he wasn't a good husband to me, and corpses a week old ain't pleasant things to look on."

"Lyddy," interposed Clyne, hastening to obliterate, if possible, the impression made on the two men by this foolish speech, "how you do go on. But you know your heart is better than your tongue."

"It was, to put up so long with Mr. Vrain," said Lydia resentfully; "but I'm honest, if I'm nothing else. I guess I'm sorry that Vrain got stuck like a pig; but it wasn't my fault, and I've done my best to show respect by wearing black. But it is no good going on in this way, poppa, for I've no call to excuse myself to strangers. What I want to know is how I'm going to get the dollars."

"You'll have to see the assurance company about that," said Link coldly; "my business with you, Mrs. Vrain, is about this murder."

"I know nothing about it," retorted the widow. "I haven't set eyes on Mark for most a year."

"Have you any idea who killed him?"

"I guess not! How should I?"

"You might know if he had enemies."

"He," said Mrs. Vrain, with supreme contempt, "why, he hadn't backbone enough for folks to get riz at him! He was half baked!"

"Crazy, that is," remarked Clyne; "always thought the world was against him, and folks wanted to get quit of him."

"He said he had enemies," hinted Lucian.

"You bet! He no doubt made out that all Europe was against him," said Clyne. "That was my son-in-law all over. Lyddy and he had a tiff, just like other married couples, and he clears out to lie low in an out-of-the-way shanty in Pimlico. I tell you, gentlemen, that Vrain had a chip out of his head. He fancied things, he did; but no one wanted to harm him that I know of."

"Yet he died a violent death," said Denzil gravely.

"That's a frozen fact, sir," cried Clyne, "and both Lyddy and I want to lynch the reptile as did it; but we neither of us know who laid him out."

"I'm sure I don't," said Mrs. Vrain in a weeping voice. "Every one that I knew was civil to him; he had no one who wanted to kill him when he left Berwin Manor. Why he went away, or how he died, I can't say."

"If you want to know how he died," explained Link, "I can tell you. He was stabbed."

"So the journals said; with a bowie!"

"No, not with a bowie," corrected Lucian, "but with some long, sharp instrument."

"A dagger?" suggested Clyne.

"I should be even more precise," said Denzil slowly. "I should say a stiletto—an Italian stiletto."

"A stiletto!" gasped Mrs. Vrain, whose delicate pink colour had faded to a chalky white. "Oh!—oh! I—I—" and she fainted forthwith.

CHAPTER VII

THE ASSURANCE MONEY

Mrs. Vrain's fainting fit was of no great duration, and she shortly recovered her senses, but not her sprightliness. Her excuse was that the long discussion of her husband's murder, and the too precise details related to her by Link before Denzil's arrival, had so wrought on her nerves as to occasion her temporary indisposition.

This reason, which was a trifle weak, since she seemed to bear her husband's loss with great stoicism, awakened suspicions in Lucian's mind as to her truthfulness. However, these were too vague and confused to be put into words, so the young man remained silent until Mrs. Vrain and her father departed. This they did almost immediately, after the widow had given her London and country addresses to the detective, in case he should require her in the conduct of the case.

This matter being attended to, she left the room, with a parting smile and especial bow to Lucian.

Link smiled in his turn as he observed this Parthian shaft, the shooting of which was certainly out of keeping with Mrs. Vrain's character of a mourning widow.

"You seem to have made an impression on the lady, Mr. Denzil," he said, with a slight cough to conceal his amusement.

"Nonsense!" replied Lucian, his fair face crimsoning with vexation. "She seems to me one of those shallow women who would sooner flirt with a tinker than pass unnoticed by the male sex. I don't like her," he concluded, with some abruptness.

"On what grounds?"

"Well, she spoke very hardly about her husband, and seemed rather more concerned about this assurance money than his death. She is a flippant doll, with a good deal of the adventuress about her. I don't think," said the barrister significantly, "that she is altogether so ignorant of this matter as she pretends to be."