Chapter XXIV
"Wilton will be acquitted of course," Harbord said, looking at the inspector. Stoddart nodded.
"The prosecution will offer no evidence against him. He will leave the court without a stain on his character—that style of thing. Skrine's confession may be put in or it may not. Anyway, it will have to be made public. Wilton must be cleared of all complicity in Dr. Bastow's murder as well as Iris Wilton's."
"I should have fought it out if I had been Skrine," Harbord said, knitting his brows. "Conviction wouldn't have been easy."
Stoddart smiled grimly.
"It wouldn't have been difficult. He knew they would find arsenic in Lady Skrine's body. His recognition as William Taylor was bound to follow. In fact he must have felt pretty certain that it had already taken place to account for the exhumation. In that lay the keynote to the other two murders. Dr. Bastow discovered his secret and was shot in consequence. Iris Houlton blackmailed him and he conceived the idea of killing her, and by making Wilton appear guilty get rid of them both at one stroke. Altogether it was a marvellous edifice of crime, and it was within a hairbreadth of success. They say all murderers make mistakes, and it seems to me that Skrine with all his experience made a pretty big one. I wonder if you can guess what it was?"
"The putting of the beard in the bag," Harbord hazarded.
Stoddart nodded.
"Though I am inclined to go further and say the putting of the bag in the cloak-room at all. He meant it to clinch matters against Wilton, and so at first sight it appeared to do. It was cleverly thought out. The putting in of newspapers taken in by Iris Wilton and of the date of the murder and of the empty Chinese box and the beard, all combined, did seem to point unmistakably to Wilton; and, if our suspicions had not already been directed to Skrine, it might have succeeded. Once the beard came into our possession, however, we had got hold of one thread of the tangled skein. The bag itself was another. It could not have been identified as Wilton's—it must have been eventually discovered to be Skrine's. Oh, we should have traced it all home to him in time, but he has saved us a lot of trouble. And when we had succeeded, and he had been put on his trial, it would only have resulted in all the great medicos swearing it was a case of homicidal insanity, and he would have retired to Broadmoor to enjoy himself."
"He would have found it a change from Worthington Square and Heathcote Manor and from the universal respect accorded to Sir Felix Skrine, K.C., I fancy," Harbord said dryly.
"He would that. There seems a touch of rough, self-inflicted justice in the fact that he shot himself with the same pistol that he used in the Bastow case."
"That pistol?" Harbord opened his eyes. "But I thought that was found in Rufford Square—that we had it at the Yard."
Stoddart shrugged his shoulders.
"You ought to know we do not always tell the public everything. The newspapers jumped to the conclusion at once that the pistol found in Rufford Square was the pistol with which Dr. Bastow was shot. But as a matter of fact all the great gunsmith experts have agreed that it was not and that this one of Skrine's was. It seems that when a bullet is fired from a gun, revolver or what not, marks are made upon it so fine as to be indistinguishable to the naked eye, but proof positive to the expert that the bullet was fired from that particular gun—proof positive and capable of ocular demonstration.''
"Still, that would only have proved that the pistol was in Skrine's possession if the case had come for trial," Harbord argued.
"Naturally! But of course the inference goes much further," Stoddart rejoined. "And Mrs. Carr spoke out when she knew that Skrine was dead. She had known him years ago in her husband's lifetime and he had tried to make love to her then. Incidentally it comes out that she was innocent of all complicity in Major Carr's death. But that is another story. She recognized Skrine by his walk in the garden on the night of Dr. Bastow's murder; but she was too much afraid of him to speak out. She knew he would deny it and might in turn accuse her, and she felt certain that his word would be taken against hers."
"Dare say it would," Harbord acknowledged. "But one thing I should like to know, inspector, what made you suspect Skrine? For suspect him from the first I feel sure you did."
"I really hardly know," the inspector answered thoughtfully. "Intuition, I think I must say. Something in his manner—his grief over his friend's death did not seem quite genuine to me. And I never for one moment believed in the theory that some discovery Dr. Bastow had made in his research work was the motive for the crime. Well, well, we know the truth now and all the world will know it soon. And so the Bastow Case ends—a mystery no longer."
"Well, I have a bit of news for you, Hilary. Two bits, to speak accurately, but one can wait awhile. This one is about myself."
The two—Hilary and her aunt—had settled down for the time being in a private hotel in Bloomsbury. It had the advantages of being central, cheap and within fairly easy reach of Fee's clinic.
Rose Cottage was to let furnished. Hilary had left Heathcote directly after the tragedy of Skrine's death, and had refused to go back even to superintend the packing of her own belongings. The Manor was to be sold. Lady Skrine's fortune had returned to her own family after Skrine's death. And it was astonishing how little the great K.C. had left of his own. That little had been left to Hilary and Fee in equal shares. Hilary had refused to touch it, but by common consent it was to be allowed to pay for some of Fee's expensive treatment.
It was a month since Wilton's second trial had resulted, as Inspector Stoddart had prophesied, in an acquittal—no evidence being offered by the prosecution. Since then so far as Miss Lavinia knew Hilary had heard nothing of her whilom lover. But the girl had developed a sort of apathy. She seemed to be living in a trance and to take little or no notice of anything that was going on. Her aunt was becoming seriously alarmed at her lack of interest and had determined to rouse her if possible.
"News! What news?" Hilary questioned in a lifeless fashion. "Anything particular?"
Miss Lavinia bridled. "Well, some people might think it so. I only hope they won't say that I have gone through the wood and taken the crooked stick at last. I am going to be married, Hilary."
Certainly she had achieved her object of rousing her niece. Hilary started up in her chair.
"Aunt Lavinia! You must be joking!" she gasped.
"Certainly I am not," Miss Lavinia returned with dignity. "Your surprise is not very complimentary, Hilary. You don't even ask who the man is."
"I—I was too much amazed," Hilary said, gazing up at her aunt.
Decidedly, she reflected, it must have been a brave man who had proposed to Miss Lavinia. That lady's odd style of dress, her thin legs in their silk stockings, her masculine, weatherbeaten countenance with the wisps of sandy hair sticking out all round, seemed rather out of place taken in conjunction with matrimonial dallying.
"Who in the world is it, Aunt Lavinia?" her niece questioned at last.
Miss Priestley bridled afresh. Her wrinkled cheeks actually deepened in colour.
"Well, I expect you will be surprised to hear. But I have seen a good deal of him lately and I have learned to estimate him at his true worth. It is Dr. Sanford Morris."
"Aunt Lavinia!" Hilary ejaculated in her astonishment. "Why, you have always said you didn't like him. You used to call him the Beaver."
"Oh, well! You can't call him that now. He is clean-shaven enough. I won't say that I should have married him if he had stuck to his beard," Miss Lavinia said with a wide smile that showed her false teeth to their fullest advantage. "I hate being kissed by a man with a beard."
A faint smile curved Hilary's lips.
"Have you tried,