On the face of it, your father—with what provocation of course I do not know—did attempt this Mr Frank Whitmarsh’s life and then take his own. You imply another version. What reason have you?”
“That is the terrible part of it,” exclaimed the girl, with rising distress. “It was that which made me so afraid of coming to you, although I felt that I must, for I dreaded that when you asked me for proofs and I could give you none you would refuse to help me. We were not even in time to hear him speak, and yet I know, know with absolute conviction, that my father would not have done this. There are things that you cannot explain, Mr Carrados, and—well, there is an end of it.”
Her voice sank to an absent-minded whisper.
“Everyone will condemn him now that he cannot defend himself, and yet he could not even have had the revolver that was found at his feet.”
“What is that?” demanded Carrados sharply. “Do you mean that?”
“Mean what?” she asked, with the blankness of one who has lost the thread of her own thoughts.
“What you said about the revolver—that your father could not have had it?”
“The revolver?” she repeated half wearily; “oh yes. It was a heavy, old-fashioned affair. It had been lying in a drawer of his desk for more than ten years because once a dog came into the orchard in broad daylight light and worried half-a-dozen lambs before anyone could do anything.”
“Yes, but why could he not have it on Thursday?”
“I noticed that it was gone. After Frank had left in the afternoon I went into the room where he had been waiting, to finish dusting. The paper says the dining-room, but it was really papa’s business-room and no one else used it. Then when I was dusting the desk I saw that the revolver was no longer there.”
“You had occasion to open the drawer?”
“It is really a very old bureau and none of the drawers fit closely. Dust lies on the ledges and you always have to open them a little to dust properly. They were never kept locked.”
“Possibly your father had taken the revolver with him.”
“No. I had seen it there after he had gone. He rode to Stinbridge immediately after lunch and did not return until nearly eight. After he left I went to dust his room. It was then that I saw it. I was doing the desk when Frank knocked and interrupted me. That is how I came to be there twice.”
“But you said that you had no proof, Miss Whitmarsh,” Carrados reminded her, with deep seriousness. “Do you not recognize the importance—the deadly importance—that this one shred of evidence may assume?”
“Does it?” she replied simply. “I am afraid that I am rather dull just now. All yesterday I was absolutely dazed; I could not do the most ordinary things. I found myself looking at the clock for minutes together, yet absolutely incapable of grasping what time it was. In the same way I know that it struck me as being funny about the revolver but I always had to give it up. It was as though everything was there but things would not fit in.”
“You are sure, absolutely sure, that you saw the revolver there after your father had left, and missed it before he returned?”
“Oh yes,” said the girl quickly; “I remember realizing how curious it was at the time. Besides there is something else. I so often had things to ask papa about when he was out of the house that I got into the way of making little notes to remind me later. This morning I found on my dressing-table one that I had written on Thursday afternoon.”
“About this weapon?”
“Yes; to ask him what could have become of it.”
Carrados made a further inquiry, and this was Madeline Whitmarsh’s account of affairs existing between the two branches of the family:
Until the time of William Whitmarsh, father of the William Whitmarsh just deceased, the properties of Barony and High Barn had formed one estate, descending from a William senior to a William junior down a moderately long line of yeomen Whitmarshes. Through the influence of his second wife this William senior divided the property, leaving Barony with its four hundred acres of good land to William junior, and High Barn, with which went three hundred acres of poor land, to his other son, father of the Frank implicated in the recent tragedy. But though divided, the two farms still had one common link. Beneath their growing corn and varied pasturage lay, it was generally admitted, a seam of coal at a depth and of a thickness that would render its working a paying venture. Even in William the Divider’s time, when the idea was new, money in plenty would have been forthcoming, but he would have none of it, and when he died his will contained a provision restraining either son from mining or exploiting his land for mineral without the consent and co-operation of the other.
This restriction became a legacy of hate. The brothers were only half-brothers and William having suffered unforgettably at the hands of his step-mother had old scores to pay off. Quite comfortably prosperous on his own rich farm, and quite satisfied with the excellent shooting and the congenial life, he had not the slightest desire to increase his wealth. He had the old dour, peasant-like instinct to cling to the house and the land of his forefathers. From this position no argument moved him.
In the meanwhile, on the other side of the new boundary fence, Frank senior was growing poorer year by year. To his periodical entreaties that William would agree to shafts being sunk on High Barn he received an emphatic “Never in my time!” The poor man argued, besought, threatened and swore; the prosperous one shook his head and grinned. Carrados did not need to hear the local saying: “Half brothers: whole haters; like the Whitmarshes,” to read the situation.
“Of course I do not really understand the business part of it,” said Madeline, “and many people blamed poor papa, especially when Uncle Frank drank himself to death. But I know that it was not mere obstinacy. He loved the undisturbed, peaceful land just as it was, and his father had wished it to remain the same. Collieries would bring swarms of strange men into the neighbourhood, poachers and trespassers, he said. The smoke and dust would ruin the land for miles round and drive away the game, and in the end, if the work did not turn out profitable, we should all be much worse off than before.”
“Does the restriction lapse now; will Mr Frank junior be able to mine?”
“It will now lie with Frank and my brother William, just as it did before with their fathers. I should expect Willie to be quite favourable. He is more—modern.”
“You have not spoken of your brother.”
“I have two. Bob, the younger, is in Mexico,” she explained; “and Willie in Canada with an engineering firm. They did not get on very well with papa and they went away.”
It did not require preternatural observation to deduce that the late William Whitmarsh had been “a little difficult.”
“When Uncle Frank died, less than six months ago, Frank came back to High Barn from South Africa. He had been away about two years.”
“Possibly he did not get on well with his father?”
Madeline smiled sadly.
“I am afraid that no two Whitmarsh men ever did get on well together,” she admitted.
“Your father and young
