John Carr - Till Death Do Us Part

Only a short time ago he had seen the rather unimaginative Cynthia Drew go through such an emotional tumult as you might not have believed possible. The nerve-strain of the day considered, its effect on Lesley should have been much worse. And yet this was not so.

Nerve-strain existed, certainly. But most of all you felt a lessening of tension, a radiance of relief, which touched on the borders of happiness. Lesley walked straight towards Dick.

'Hello, darling,' she said. Laughter twinkled in the brown eyes. 'You have been having fun and games with my career as a murderess.'

And, after ducking a mocking curtsy to Dr Fell - who responded by waving the crutch-handled cane and chuckling with an alarming violence which threatened to become a coughing-fit - Lesley slipped demurely out of the room, closing the green-baize door after her.

'Ah, well, gentlemen!' remarked Lord Ashe, and drew a deep breath.

'Admirable!' roared Dr Fell. 'Admirable!'

'Idiotic,' curtly commented the military-looking man by the fireplace. 'And damned risky too. But women are like that.'

Dick held hard to reason.

'I don't want to butt in, Dr Fell,' he said; 'but you asked me over here, and here I am. If you could manage to tell me...'

Dr Fell blinked at him.

' Eh, my boy ? Tell you what ?'

' Tell me what this is all about!'

'Oh, ah! Yes!' cried Dr Fell, enlightened. The Gargantuan doctor was not trying to be mystifying; he had merely slipped ahead into some obscure mental calculation, and forgotten all about what had been on his mind a few minutes before. 'By the way, let me introduce you to my friend Superintendent Hadley. Mr Markham, Superintendent Hadley.'

Dick shook hands with the military-looking man.

'Hadley, of course,' pursued Dr Fell, 'recognized the dead man as soon as he clapped eyes on him.'

'I'm rather sorry to lose Sam, in a way,' said Hadley, chopping his teeth together in a way that meant trouble for somebody. 'He had his points, Sam had. Though I sometimes wanted to kill him myself, I admit.' Then Hadley grinned.' Steady, Mr Markham! You want to know who this fellow really was ?' 'Yes!'

'He was a professional crook named Samuel De Villa,' replied Hadley. 'Probably the cleverest confidence-man in the business.'

'Imagination, Hadley,' said Dr Fell, shaking his head. ' Imagination! Oh, my eye!'

'Too much imagination,' retorted Hadley. 'It killed him.'

' Confidence-man ? ' yelled Dick Markham.

'Perhaps, my dear boy,' interposed the thoughtful voice of Lord Ashe,' it would interest you to see this.'

Pushing back the creaky swivel-chair, he pulled open the long drawer of the table at which he was sitting. From the drawer he took out a largish square of dark-coloured velvet, folded together like a bag, and spread it out on the table.

' Gaudy, eh ?' inquired Dr Fell.

'Gaudy' was a mild word. Outside a musical comedy, Dick had never seen anything like the objects which lay against that dark square of velvet There were only four of them: a triple-tiered necklace, a bracelet, a single earring, and what looked like a collar. But they stunned the eye with their antique combination of what can only be called beauty with vulgarity.

And now Dick realized why a certain heraldic device seemed to have been haunting him. He had seen the Ashe arms, a griffin and ash-tree, often enough on the entrance-gates of the Hall. He had seen it on the small signet-ring which Lord Ashe usually wore. He had even seen it, heaven knew, on the sign of the local public-house.

But it was all over these exhibits as a convict's uniform used to be starred with broad-arrows. It decorated the clasp of the bracelet, it was woven into the design of the gold collar. It marked and stamped them as the property of the Ashe family.

Of course, Dick thought to himself, such flamboyant jewels couldn't possibly be real. The pearls of the triple-tiered necklace, opalescent and alive when light through the windows fell on them; the intense hard malignant glitter of diamond on the bracelet; the fluid red glow of ruby on that antique, curiously wrought gold collar...

Interpreting his expression, Lord Ashe glanced up.

'Oh, yes,' said Lord Ashe. 'The jewels are real enough.'

Delicately he touched first the necklace and then the bracelet.

'These,' he continued, 'are early eighteenth century. This,' he touched the earring, ' I suspect of being modem and spurious. But this,' he touched the collar, 'this is what tradition describes as a gift to George Converse, in the year fifteen seventy-six, from Gloriana herself.'

And Lord Ashe raised his eyes to the portrait above the fireplace, that black portrait through which only a shadow-image could be discerned.

There was a long silence.

Outside, in the walled garden, stood a solitary plum-tree. As in a dream Dick saw the sunlight filling that garden, pouring through the tall narrow windows on the blaze of these coloured fires. He saw the dingy room with its rows of brown books round the walls. He saw the portrait, breathing of English soil at a time when such finery as these gauds decorated arm and throat and ear as a matter of everyday wear.

But most of all he saw the face of Lord Ashe - that combination of the scholar and the outdoor man, with evasive-looking eyes - as Lord Ashe's hand hovered over the jewels. And Dick at last broke the silence.

'Yours, sir?'

The other shook his head.

'I wish I could say they were,' he answered regretfully. He looked up and smiled. 'They belong, now, to Miss Lesley Grant.'

'But that's impossible! Lesley doesn't own any jewellery!' ' I beg your pardon,' said Lord Ashe.' She hates jewellery, yes. She never wears jewellery, yes. But this is a question of owning things in spite of herself.'

He meditated for a time, and then looked at Dr Fell.

'You don't mind, sir, if I explain matters as Miss Grant explained them to me this morning ?'

‘No,'said Dr Fell.

'It's a foolish story,' said Lord Ashe, 'and in many ways it's a pathetic story. It's the story of this girl's - what shall I say? - frantic search for respectability. Did you ever hear, Mr Markham, of a woman called Lily Jewell ?'

'No,' said Dick.

But more than a suspicion grew in his mind nevertheless.

' Oddly enough, I mentioned her to you only this morning. It would be an understatement,' said Lord Ashe, 'to describe her as a lady of easy virtue. My elder brother Frank ruined himself and others for her just before the fourteen-eighteen war. Among other things he gave her those trinkets there. Are you beginning to follow me now?'

'Yes. I think so.'

'Lily Jewell died in obscurity a few years ago. But she died a violent death. She was an elderly woman, paying young lovers to attend her-'

'Yes.'

'She threatened one of them with a gun, for being unfaithful to her. In the scuffle and accident, she was herself shot. She was the mother, by a certain Captain Jewell, of the young lady whom you know as Lesley Grant'

Lord Ashe paused.

Dick turned away and stared out into the walled garden. A hundred pictures returned to him. Every word, every gesture, every inflexion now took on significance out of what had hitherto been so meaningless. Dick nodded.

'I - er - live somewhat out of the world,' explained Lord Ashe, ruffling his finger-tips across his temples. 'I was hardly prepared for it when she burst in here this morning, and threw this lot of trinkets on the table, and said, " Please take the damned things, if you think you're entitled to them." '

Again Lord Ashe paused. Dr Fell cleared his throat.

'After her mother's death’ pursued Lord Ashe, 'her one idea was to cut off from the previous life and to be as unlike her mother as possible in every way. Do you follow that too, Mr Markham ?'