The Mystery At Lover's Cave

It was past noon when Roger made his appearance at the little grassy ledge. To his surprise he found it occupied by only one tenant, who was lying on his back and staring up into the blue sky, puffing contentedly at his pipe. Roger scrambled down the little slope and dropped on to the turf beside his cousin.

“How now, fair coz? What have you done with the lady? I wanted a word with her.”

Anthony turned his head. “You can hardly expect her to be at your beck and call all the time,” he observed with some severity. “You know she’s keeping house for the doctor.”

“Yes, Anthony,” Roger replied meekly. “Is she keeping house now?”

“She’s gone into the village to do some shopping. She’ll be coming back here when she’s through.”

“A proper little gent,” remarked Roger, pulling out his own pipe and filling it lazily, “a proper little gent, such as I could wish any cousin of mine to be, would have gone with her and carried her parcels for her.”

Anthony flushed slightly. “She wouldn’t let me, damn you. She said that— She wouldn’t let me.”

“Yes, she’s quite right,” Roger admitted handsomely. “Villages are appalling places for gossip, aren’t they?” He concealed his grin in the operation of applying a match to his pipe.

“Did you have any luck?” Anthony asked hastily.

“Well, yes and no.” His cousin’s leg successfully stretched, Roger was ready enough to revert to the main theme. “First of all I was waylaid by that wretched little parson, whose curiosity strikes me as being really indecent. He tried his best to pump me as to what I thought about it all, what the inspector thought about it all, whether any arrest was imminent, whether any other clues had been discovered, and all the rest of it, and though I’m afraid I was outrageously rude to him in my frantic efforts to get away, he managed to waste a perfectly good quarter-of-an-hour of my valuable time; finally I told him that a Bible and prayer-book marked with the initials ‘S. M.’ had been found on the ledge close to where the tragedy had taken place, and the police were looking for the owner. While he was still gasping, I effected my get-away.”

“You are an ass, Roger,” grinned Anthony.

“So it may seem to you,” Roger replied blandly. “In reality I am a person of remarkable astuteness and cunning. Well, then I went back to the inn, borrowed mine host’s bicycle and headed for Clouston Hall. I don’t mind walking it in the cool of the evening, but I was hanged if I was going to do so in the middle of a day like this. All fell out as arranged.”

“You mean, Woodthorpe’s cleared?”

“Yes. Luckily he was at home, and I pretended I wanted to clear up a minor point arising out of our conversation last night. If I must be forced to admit it, I’m afraid I took the inspector’s name in vain. Then, by subtle and extremely cunning degrees, I led the conversation round till I could quote the best illustrated joke in that issue of London Opinion, having been at some pains previously to buy a copy and study it. I quoted the first half of the joke only, and if friend Colin had seen the paper he couldn’t possibly have failed to remember it—but he couldn’t supply the point. Ergo, Colin had not seen that issue of London Opinion; ergo, Colin could not have been the person to have left it in the cave.”

“You don’t think he saw through you?”

“I’m quite sure he didn’t. Colin is not a young man who impressed me as teeming with intelligence, and of course I was on the alert for any signs of bluff. He was perfectly natural. No, I’m sure Colin isn’t our man. Now it’s your turn to report. Could Margaret give you any useful information? You had time to tell her our conclusions to date, I suppose?”

“Yes, I told her, but she couldn’t remember anything about a strange visitor to Mrs. Vane. She said she’d rack her brains on the way to the village and back, but she couldn’t think of one off-hand.”

“I see. And when do you expect her back?”

Anthony consulted his wrist-watch. “Any time now.”

“Good. Then let us recline on our backs, close our eyes and indulge in blessed silence till she comes, because certainly we shan’t get any when she does.” He proceeded to suit his action to his words.

Anthony regarded his horizontal cousin with a large grin. “ ‘Blessed silence!’ ” he scoffed “Oh, very good, Roger; very good indeed. I must try you with the butter test at lunch. If half-a-pound of butter, placed in the patient’s mouth—how does it go on, eh?”

But Roger, serenely recumbent, took refuge in his blessed silence.

During the next ten minutes not a single word was spoken. Then Margaret appeared, and Roger’s Trappist-like vow was a thing of the past.

“Now then, Margaret,” he said briskly, when greetings were over and they were all seated once more. “Now then, it’s up to you. Anthony tells me he’s given you an account of my activities. Have you got any information for me yet?”

“You mean, about the mysterious visitor?” said the girl, wrinkling her white forehead. “No, I’m afraid I haven’t. Elsie never had a mysterious visitor at all, to my knowledge.”

“And yet you said before that you thought there was someone or something she was afraid of,” Roger mused. “That doesn’t help you?”

“I’m afraid not,” Margaret confessed. “I couldn’t say anything definite about that when you asked me before, you remember.”

“Look here,” said Anthony suddenly, “are you sure she was afraid? Not just worried? If she was just worried, you see, that chap Woodthorpe would account for it.”

“Yes, that’s a good point,” Roger approved. “Whether she had any deep game on with him or not, she’d naturally be put out by his wanting to break with her. Is that more like it, Margaret?”

“It might have been that of course,” said the girl doubtfully, “but—oh, I don’t know, but my impression certainly is that it was something stronger than just worry.”

“All the better,” Roger said cheerfully. “That confirms my theory. If it was somebody out of her past, trying in all probability to blackmail her, she certainly would show signs of fear.”

“I know!” Margaret exclaimed. “I could go through her things, couldn’t I? Letters and papers, I mean. I could easily do that, and I should think if there is anything to be found out that’s the most likely way of discovering it.”

“I should say the inspector is almost certain to have done that already,” Roger meditated. “Still, there’s no harm in your doing it too.”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that,” said Margaret, her face falling. “Then it won’t be much use?”

“I doubt it. Still, we mustn’t disregard the possibility. Of course if you could find some place that the inspector may have overlooked—! Documentary evidence of that sort, you see, would be hidden very carefully away by a person of Mrs. Vane’s criminal—shall we say?—training. And after all, the inspector wouldn’t have been looking for anything like that. Probably he’ll only have glanced through the obvious, merely as a matter of routine.”

“Well, let’s hope for the best,” Margaret smiled. “Anyhow, if I don’t find something I promise you it won’t be for want of looking.”

“By the way,” said Roger, dismissing this topic, “how’s Dr. Vane?”

“George? Oh, he’s all right. Why?”

“I only wondered. No interesting developments yet?”

Margaret laughed. “You mean Miss Williamson? Oh, give her time. I don’t think any woman could be expected to propose to a man in less than a week from his wife’s death, really.”

“Roger judges everybody by himself,” interposed Anthony maliciously.

“I wasn’t going so far as to suggest that she’d actually proposed to him yet, Margaret,” Roger explained mildly. “I was just asking whether there’d been any developments, of any sort.”

“If there have been, then, I don’t know them. I hardly ever see either of them in these days. They seem to be spending more time in the laboratory than ever.”

“Well, I don’t know that I personally should care to conduct my courtship in an atmosphere of test-tubes, litmus-paper, and dead rabbits, but there’s no accounting for tastes. A dead rabbit, I feel convinced, would put me off my stroke altogether.”

“Roger, you’re disgusting. Well, is there anything else you want to ask me?”

“Not at the moment. I’ll wait for one of your more helpful days. Does that mean, by the way, that ‘Good-morning, Mr. Sheringham. It’s been so nice to see you. You must come again some day’? Because if so, I warn you that Anthony comes with me.”

“Roger, I think you’re being perfectly horrid this morning,” exclaimed Miss Cross, blushing warmly.

“Shall I chuck him over the cliff for you, Margaret?” suggested Anthony, no less moist.

“It doesn’t mean anything of the sort,” Margaret went on, disregarding this admirable offer. “I was simply going to say that if you don’t want to discuss things with me any more, I wish you’d show me the little cave where Elsie and Colin used to meet. It sounds most thrilling.”

“What I deplore most of all in the young women of to-day,” remarked Roger sadly, as he rose with reluctance to his feet, “is the unpleasing morbidity of their tastes.”