WHODUNIT MURDER MYSTERIES: 15 Books in One Edition. E. Phillips Oppenheim

So far as he could remember, they had barely exchanged more than a few words on that first visit, although she had danced with him, and there was nothing whatever in the manner of either of them to denote any previous acquaintance. At the Legation, she had certainly been startled at seeing him, but that, as a matter of fact, was easily comprehensible. She had been unwilling to dance, he remembered. It was he who had pressed her into it. And then the dancing lesson, over which he had brooded so often—the dancing lesson, his interruption of which, he subtly felt, might a few minutes before or afterwards have resulted in drama. His thoughts travelled still farther back, to the time when he had almost carried the child from the roadside to her hospital, from there to a nursing home, and afterwards to the altar. She had been eighteen years old then. What time or opportunity had there been for her to make friendships? With Madame de Sandillac dead, there had been few people with whom he could speak of her ward, but on one point those few were agreed. There were no visitors at the Sandillac château. Félice had not even been to boarding school. Governesses had arrived and gone. It was impossible that she should have had friendships in that sheltered life of which she had told him nothing. And since then it was even more impossible. Félice’s chief charm to him had been not only her dislike of, but her absolutely contemptuous refusal of anything approaching solitude, especially so far as he was concerned. She had refused to be left alone. If he had played polo she must be there to watch; cricket —even cricket she dozed through, with her hand in her husband’s if he were not playing, her puzzled eyes upon the game if he were. Always she said the same thing: “I have been alone all my life. There is so much to make up for. You must never leave me.” And he never had left her. Whatever they had done, they had done together. Not for a single night since their marriage had they slept under different roofs. Where then was this mystery born? Whence did it come? It could be nothing, he told himself resolutely, which could possibly cause him a moment’s uneasiness. Nevertheless, for her sake, although he had kept silent for so long, it was a mystery to be cleared up as gently and tactfully as possible… .

      Then came the rush of the world again, the immediately practical world in which he was living, the sound of the tapping of sticks, faint at first, but becoming insistent. The whistle blew. A cock pheasant, on its way to freedom, soared across the drive and fell with a heavy flop. He marked it with a quick glance, beckoned to his loader who was standing a little way off, took his other gun and was absorbed once more in the sport of the hour. At the end of the drive he came upon Félice, waiting for him rather dejectedly at the top of the avenue.

      “I did walk down behind every stand,” she complained, “and you were not there.”

      He handed his gun to his loader and passed his arm through hers.

      “Dearest,” he explained, “some one, you see, must walk with the beaters. Most people prefer a stand. When you are a host, you must take these outside things. That is why I was not in sight. Now at the next drive I will take a stand, and we will sit there together.”

      “Did you have any shooting?” she asked. “Every one is so excited, and happy. Sir Richard shot a woodcock which they all had missed. And Lord Manfield told me that he had two rights and lefts with cocks. Is that right? I could see them fall, and they were wonderful birds.”

      Andrew sent his loader to direct the other guns and turned down a grass-grown path leading through a strip of meadow land into another wood. As they passed through the gate, he bent down and met her eagerly offered lips. So soft they were, so tremulous, so loving, even in that hasty moment, that they brought the tears to his eyes. To think that any man could be fool enough to doubt for a single second any one so marvellous as Félice!

      “Little sweetheart,” he whispered, “I am worried about you.”

      “About me?” she protested. “But why?”

      “I cannot tell you,” he answered, a little sadly. “I am not clever. I just see what my eyes see, and I cannot help fancying that ever since the night when you lost your necklace you have been a little troubled in your heart. There have been moments when you have been even more than troubled; you have been frightened. Why are you so anxious to help this man Drayton who must have terrified you almost to death? Why have you and Dick Cotton talked so much and so gravely together? If you have kept a little secret from me, sweetheart, I don’t mind. I am not afraid of any secret you could carry in your heart. Let it be there, but I want you to know that your happiness is my happiness, and for that reason when I see you not quite gay, your eyes not quite so full of sunshine, your feet not quite so light upon the ground, why, then I have a great, clumsy, awkward desire to pick you up in my arms and to kiss you until you tell me what there is in the world I can do or have done, so that you are yourself again— little Félice—my wife!”

      She was crying softly to herself, clinging to his arm, making no effort to stem the tears, using no handkerchief, frantically anxious, as it seemed, that her arms should not leave his. She leaned over and wiped her face against the brown homespun of his clothes. They had arrived now at the line of sticks which indicated the places for the last stand.

      “Sweetheart,” he whispered, “we will go to the far one. The names are upon the others. Bennett will show them to their places. We shall be just round the corner and quite alone. Perhaps you may find something to say to me.”

      A hare scurried across the path. The gun which was being automatically raised to his shoulder was arrested by a word from her.

      “It looked at me, the poor little thing,” she cried, “and just now there is all kindness in my heart. You shall shoot those birds that fly so high, but not those frightened creatures, not this time. Andrew, Andrew, you are so clever.”

      “My God!” he exclaimed. “No one has ever called me that before.”

      “Stupid!” she half laughed through her tears. “What I mean is that I know so well what you want to know, and I know that I ought to tell you, and I can’t. That is what makes me unhappy; and what I am going to do I do not know. Perhaps you would like to send me back again to the Chateau de Sandillac where the rain comes through the roof and there are no fires nor any heating.”

      He shook his head.

      “You’re here for keeps, dear,” he assured her, “and you know it, but I am jealous of every moment when the clouds gather in your eyes and you are not light-hearted. That is why I am going to be a little brutal. I am your lord and master, your husband, your protector as well as your lover. If there is anything causing you trouble, it is my right to demand the knowledge of it. What about that, child?”

      “I rather like the sound of it,” she confided. “Now I am beginning to know your rules. The whistle has blown; you will sit on your seat, and here is Bennett coming to stand behind you with two cartridges between his thumb and finger, and with another gun. You have not frightened me, Andrew. I suppose I ought to have a terribly guilty feeling inside me, but I have not. Now you must shoot as the Lord of Glenlitten should shoot, and I shall stand behind like your dutiful wife.”

      Félice dropped behind just in time, for the birds began to come over freely. It was the last drive of the day and the best. Andrew shot his pheasants well, but he was proudest of all of the six woodcocks collected from his gun. Bennett drew out the little pin feathers of the first, and Félice stuck them in the band of her hat.

      “Drinks at the game cart,” the host called out. “The cars are on the top road.”

      They made their way out of the wood. Andrew handed his gun to his loader.

      “Any other living creature that we meet shall live,” he declared. “I shall walk with you, dear Félice, and you shall tell me just what is troubling you, and if I have to raise the roof from Glenlitten, or pawn Glenlitten Castle and become my own head keeper, it shall be done, if we find it necessary.”

      She clung again to his arm.

      “Dear Andrew,” she admitted, looking anxiously up into his face, “you are right, as you are always right. There is something between me and happiness. And this is the most terrible thing of all, this is what makes it worse and worse and worse—I cannot tell you what it is.”

      He