A ring came at the door of the little studio where she worked at her china painting. Barbara was not pleased. Visitors meant dust, and dust meant specks.
It was Mary Eden. Barbara liked Mary. Though one was older than the other, they were both of them Cheltenham girls. That counted. Mary was looking ill.
"I was passing, and felt that f must drop in and see you. Do I disturb you?"
Barbara told her that she did not, and by way of proving the statement, began putting her things away in a cupboard.
"Is it true that Philip Vardon is leaving for Patagonia?" Mary asked suddenly.
Barbara said that it was true. Mary Eden shivered, and drew closer to the fire. There was silence for a few minutes.
"I'm glad he's free from suspicion. But oh, Barby! Barby!" and with that, to her own, and Barbara's, boundless surprise, Mary Eden began to cry. Terribly. Heartbrokenly.
It was over in a moment. But it was not forgotten, and it left its traces on the elder girl's face. These were the kind of tears that relieve.
"Since you've seen so much, I might as well tell you all," Mary said brokenly. "It's Charlie Tangye. He thinks he's going to be arrested—for his wife's murder. Murder!" Mary Eden shivered. "It's no use pretending that things aren't very suspicious. You see, he was in a frightfully tight place financially, it seems, and—well, of course, it was his own money—but he seems to've sent off some hundreds that same evening that she died. I couldn't make out about the money. Apparently Chief Inspector Pointer thinks it was taken before the police got to Riverview, and of course, that looks bad. So do—other things. Some one saw him come out of the house about five." Barbara winced. "He went back for some papers to do with his, and her insurance. Intending to raise money on them. And, of course, that looks terrible. His having kept silence, as well as his having been there, and the reason for his going. It's all terrible. Miss Saunders is standing by him splendidly. I wouldn't have thought she had it in her. But he's desperately afraid that the police intend to arrest him. He thinks Pointer doesn't believe her."
Barbara felt appallingly guilty. Had she bought Vardon's release with the torture of another man? Like Mary Eden, she felt sure of easy-going Mr. Tangye's innocence.
"I don't suppose you can help," Mary went on forlornly, "but if you can think of some trifle?" she spoke wistfully. "I did help to clear Philip, you know, and by something that told frightfully against Mr. Tangye. He says the Superintendent spoke as though I might be called as a witness against him." She bent forward again.
"Barbara, I helped to clear Philip," she repeated, "can't you help to clear Charlie Tangye? You're so quick-witted. Can't you think of anything we can do?"
Barbara had no help to give, and Mary kissed her as she left.
"Forget this scene, Barby," she said, holding her hand. "Forget it entirely. What I've said, and what I haven't said."
Barbara let her go with a remorseful heart. How could she have acted otherwise? Yet what had she done? It was ridiculous to suppose that Tangye was guilty, but if his wife's death was a murder, as the police maintained, then some one had done it. Some one, but surely not, oh surely not...
She broke the cup on which she was working, and merely pushed the bits on one side with her foot, as she sat thinking.
Chief Inspector Pointer had said that the best motive would win. Barbara felt afraid of the detective-officer since that one glimpse of the inner man. But his words carried weight. Could she find another motive than the obvious one of the will, the money. That was what he was trying to do she knew. He had questioned her about Mrs. Tangye's past, but the Ashes had only known the dead woman since her marriage to Branscombe. Barbara had been of no help, nor had Lady Ash, to whom her daughter had written at once, been able to remember anything that would serve.
But she had sent a letter to her husband saying that Barbara ought to go away for a while. Sir Richard agreed most emphatically. Barbara had refused. Now she reconsidered that refusal. There would be no rest for her anywhere till she knew who really had killed Mrs. Tangye. She shivered. Up till now her intervention had only made things worse for everybody in turn. But she must try again and again.
Barbara knew that Mrs. Tangye's early life in her father's parish till she was nineteen had been searched by Scotland Yard without any result, so her grandfather had told her. But what about France? As a true Briton, the girl had a feeling that if anything odd, or out of the way, had happened in Mrs. Tangye's past, it would be abroad. But there was no use in her going to France. Her command of that tricky but charming language was such as a high-school education generally leaves with its pupils. It was all right in England, but seemed all wrong in France. The replies of the natives even to the simplest of statements, failed to restrict themselves to a vocabulary, which surely was voluminous enough, judging by the years that it had taken to acquire.
Barbara reluctantly decided that she was foredoomed to failure, since she must clearly confine herself to her home land. But where to begin? How to begin?
Common sense told her that everything had been already sifted. Yet the Chief Inspector had questioned her as though he were not entirely satisfied. If she had a chance, Barbara decided that it would be found in some unnoticed corner. But how find that corner? She sat cleaning her brushes and thinking. Had she any knowledge, any forgotten, overlaid, scrap of information which would help?
It was when she had given it up as hopeless, and started on her work again, that she remembered some old songs.
When Mr. Branscombe died, now four years ago, Mrs. Branscombe, as she then was, had sent his Broadwood piano to Sir Richard Ash, saying that Cecil Branscombe had wanted his old partner to have it as a souvenir of their friendship. A music bench had accompanied the gift. In it the Ashes had found an armful of old songs. They were still lying somewhere in the attic. Lady Ash had spoken at once of sending them back. But the widow had said, with obvious sincerity, that though she had no idea of their preserice in the bench, she never sang them, and had no use for them.
Barbara seemed to remember an inscription of some sort on one of them.
She disinterred the tattered bundle at home after a considerable hunt. One only was marked, and that with a round rubber stamp, "W. Griffith, Cathedral Road, Newport." It was a little Welsh song, very dog-eared. At one time or other it had been a favourite. It was a man's song. Set for a tenor voice.
Still it suggested to her a possible starting point. Newport itself seemed too commercial to figure on any girl's itinerary, but Caerlean was close by, the home of the Round Table Knights. Close, too, was beautiful Llandaff Cathedral of which her father had often spoke to her. Tintern Abbey was not far off. Raglan Castle was within reach. Yes, to Newport Barbara would go, and since whatever it may be for the man, this world emphatically holds that still less is it good for a girl to be alone, she decided to take her mother's advice in yet another respect, and let Olive come with her. Poor Olive was still badly in need of bracing up.
Dorset Steele was out of town, she was rather glad of that. The critic on the hearth is apt to be avoided in times of doubt.
As to funds, she had just sold a dinner service for eighteen guineas. Eighteen and five are twenty-three. With that in hand, Barbara felt sure that she and Olive could stay a fortnight in some quiet spot.
Not even November can take the beauty out of South Wales. And through that land of dingle and dell, glen and mountain torrent, waterfall and wooded hill, ferny dale, and sweeping uplands runs the Usk; broad and winding. The river, beloved alike by Welshman, and artist, historian, salmon and trout.
The Wye may equal it, but nothing in the wide world can surpass—in its own way—the sweep between two rivers.
Just now the only colours were soft aquamarine and gray, but in its proper season all would be bright with orchards and hop fields, drooping willows and golden wheatfields set among the shimmering green of fragrant meadows belted by hills, and ringed by distant mountains. And all down the valley other little rippling streams branch out, each with its waterfalls, and bending arms of ferns. The Country of Castles, and of Arthur's Knights this.