Wyllard's Weird (Mystery Classics Series). Mary Elizabeth Braddon
gray evening sky, and the warm lamplight within. Joseph Distin could not see his face, but he could see that he was strongly moved.
“My dear fellow, let us hope that Mrs. Wyllard will never know anything about this suspicion of mine,” said Distin soothingly. “I have—so far—not one scrap of evidence against Mr. Grahame; except the evidence of looks and manner, and the one fact of his refusal to say what he was doing in Plymouth the day of the girl’s death. There is nothing in all that to bring a man to the gallows. I may have my own ideas about this mystery, and Mr. Heathcote may have pretty much the same notion, but there is nothing to touch your wife’s cousin so far. I shall go back to town, and try to forget the whole matter. All you have to do is to keep your own counsel, and take care that Mrs. Wyllard knows nothing of what has passed in strictest confidence between you and me.”
“I would not have her know it for worlds. It would break her heart; it might kill her. Women cannot bear such shocks. And to think that a man can be suspected of a crime on such grounds—suspected by you, a student of crime and criminals—because of a moody manner, a refusal to answer a question! The whole thing seems too absurd for belief.”
“Say that the thing is absurd, and that for once in his life Joe Distin has made a fool of himself. Take your wife to Aix-les-Bains—or to Biarritz——”
Julian Wyllard started at that last word as if he had been stung.
“What the deuce is the matter with you, or with Biarritz?” asked Distin sharply.
“Nothing. My mind was wandering, that’s all. You were saying——”
“That you had better forget all that has passed between us to-night—forget the death of that girl—make a clean slate. Take your wife to some foreign watering-place, the brightest and gayest you can find. And let Bothwell Grahame dree his weird as best he may. The catastrophe on the railway will be forgotten in a week.”
“I doubt it. We have not much to think about at Bodmin, and we exaggerate all our molehills into mountains. That girl’s death will be the talk of the town for the next six months.”
“And yet people go on existing in such places, and think they are alive!” exclaimed Distin.
He left Penmorval after breakfast next morning, without having seen Bothwell, who was out on the hills breaking in a new horse while the family were at breakfast. He had been out since five o’clock, the butler told Mrs. Wyllard.
“Is he riding Glencoe?” she asked, with a look of alarm.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He is a dreadful horse, I know, Julian,” she said. “Manby told me about him only yesterday. He had narrowly escaped being thrown the day before; and he said that Glencoe was a really dangerous horse, and that we ought to get rid of him.”
“So that he may break somebody else’s bones,” suggested Mr. Distin. “That is what a good coachman always advises.”
“And now Bothwell has gone out on him, alone.”
“You would not have him take some one to pick him up if he were thrown,” said Wyllard. “My dear Dora, there is not the slightest occasion for alarm. The horse is young, and a little gay; but your cousin excels as a rough-rider, and there will be no harm done.”
“But why should he want to ride that horse?” said Dora; “I’m sure Manby would advise him not.”
“The very reason why he should do it,” replied her husband.
“I wonder if he is trying to kill himself while I am eating my breakfast calmly here?” speculated Joseph Distin. “He must know that I suspect him; and he may think that the game is up.”
Whatever Bothwell’s intention might have been, he came back to Penmorval before eleven o’clock, bringing home the big bay hunter bathed in sweat, and as tame as a sheep.
“A fine, honest horse! Only wants riding,” he said, as he flung the bridle to the groom, who had been watching for him at the stable-gates, with an air of expecting to see broken bones.
In the hall Bothwell met Dora, cool, and calm, and beautiful, in her white muslin breakfast gown. She was bringing in a basket of flowers from the hothouse, to be arranged by her own hands.
“Is that London lawyer gone yet?” asked Bothwell curtly.
He could not be civil even to his cousin when he spoke of Joseph Distin.
“Yes, he has gone—I hope, never to come back again,” said Dora. “He is really a very well-bred man, and he made himself most agreeable here; but he seemed to bring with him an atmosphere of crime. I could not help thinking of all the horrible cases he must have been concerned in, and that he had grown rich by the crimes of mankind. He could find out nothing about that poor girl’s death, it seems, although he is so clever.”
“Which goes rather to establish my view that the girl fell out of the train by accident,” replied Bothwell.
Chapter 5.
People Will Talk.
The year was a month older since Joseph Distin went back to town, baffled and angry with himself, yet glad for his friend’s sake that his discoveries had gone no further. The heather was purpling on the hills, where the dwarf furze flashed here and there into patches of gold. The tourist season had set in; but the tourist for the most part avoided the little town of Bodmin, nestling snugly inland among the hills, and turned his face to the sea, and the wild rocks which defend that romantic western coast, to the Lizard and the Land’s End, to rugged Tintagel and sandy Bude.
Life at Penmorval had drifted by as calmly as an infant’s sleep, in those four weeks of soft summer weather. There had been no visitors staying in the house, for both Julian Wyllard and his wife loved a studious repose, and there were long intervals in which they lived almost alone. Penmorval would be full by and by, in October, when the pheasant-shooting began; and in the mean time it was pleasant to Dora Wyllard to be able to ride and drive with her husband—to be the companion of his walks, to read the books he read, and to waste long evenings in inexhaustible talk. They always had so much to say to each other. The sympathy between them was so complete.
Hilda Heathcote was at Penmorval nearly every day. She ranked almost as one of the family. She came to Mrs. Wyllard for counsel and instruction upon all manner of subjects—sometimes for a gardening lesson, sometimes for a lesson in crewel-work, in French, German, Italian. Dora was in advance of her young friend in all these subjects; but the pupil was so bright and quick that it was a pleasure to teach her. Between them Mrs. Wyllard and Miss Heathcote achieved marvels in the way of art-needlework—piano-backs which were as beautiful as pictures, portières worthy to rank with the highest examples of Gobelin tapestry, counterpanes that ought to have been exhibited at South Kensington. The calm leisure of country life lent itself to such slow and elaborate labours.
Mrs. Wyllard had a big box of foreign books once a month from Rolandi’s library, and she meted out to Hilda such volumes as were fit for a young English lady’s perusal; and then they met to talk over the books, sometimes alone, sometimes with Bothwell as a third. Bothwell was very scornful of all the sentimental books, laughed at the super-refined heroines of French novels, the dreamy heroes of German romance; but he read all the books that Hilda read, and he seemed to enjoy talking about them at that protracted function of afternoon tea from which he rarely absented himself.
The weather was peerless during this month of August, and Mrs. Wyllard’s afternoon tea-table was set out in an arbour of clipped yew, at the end of the Italian garden, a point from which there was a fine view of the moors, and the great brown hills beyond.
Bothwell’s sullen gloom had passed away soon after Mr. Distin’s departure. He seemed to Hilda to have become once again the old Bothwell—gay, and cheery, and kind, and frank. But he did not