IX

Druze⁠—a woman! It was incredible⁠—almost impossible! Yet that shrewd old man would not have jested with her. She dragged herself up the stairs, her limp body aching for rest, her mind very wide awake and alert.

Druze a woman! She shook her head helplessly. And then she remembered Lady Raytham’s hysterical laughter. “What was Druze to you?” Jane Raytham knew!

Leslie was too sane, too big, to feel foolish. She stopped on the landing and, leaning heavily on the balustrade, she recalled the hairless face and figure of the portly butler. All her theories must go by the board. A scaffolding must be erected on a new foundation.

She found Lucretia Brown huddled up in a chair before a dead fire fast asleep. Lucretia had never been trained out of her habit of “waiting up.” It was her firm conviction that only this practice of hers saved her mistress from a terrible fate. She woke with a start and came reeling to her feet.

“Oh, miss!” she gasped. “What time is it?”

Leslie glanced at the mantelpiece.

“Three o’clock,” she said, “and a fine morning! Why aren’t you in bed, you poor, knock-kneed girl?”

“I’m not knock-kneed, and never was,” protested Lucretia. “Three o’clock, miss? What a time!” She shivered. And then, morbidly curious: “Has anything been up, miss?”

“More things are ‘up’ than will ever come down, I think,” replied Leslie, as she dropped into a chair. “There’s been a murder.”

“Good Gawd!” said the shocked Lucretia. And then, with pardonable curiosity: “Who done it?”

“If I knew ‘who’d done it,’ I’d be a very contented female.”

Leslie stifled a yawn.

“Run the bath, Lucretia, make me some hot milk, and don’t wake me till ten o’clock.”

“If I’m awake then,” said Lucretia ominously. “I never see such a place as this. You turn night into day, as the Good Book says⁠—London’s a modern Babbyling! Did he have his throat cut?” She returned to the tragedy.

“No, I’m sorry to disappoint you; but it was quite ghastly enough.”

She dragged herself to her feet and went to her desk, turning over the letters that had arrived by the night mail. There was one which looked promising. She tore off the end of the envelope, read its contents, and locked the document away in a drawer. Ten minutes later, before Lucretia had run the water from the bath, Leslie Maughan, snug between sheets, was sleeping dreamlessly.

She woke with a dim remembrance of the rattle of teacups and of Lucretia’s calling her. Half opening her eyes, she saw the cup by her bedside. She was horribly tired; bed was a warm and luxurious place. She must have dozed, for the sound of voices wakened her.

Her bedroom led from her sitting-room, and the door was half-open. Two people were speaking⁠—Lucretia and somebody else whose voice was familiar.

“I will wait. Please don’t wake Miss Maughan specially for me.”

Leslie sat up in bed. Through the closing door which the maid was jealously guarding, she saw the big, straight figure of a woman. Lady Raytham! In an instant she was out of bed, thrust her feet into slippers, and pulled her dressing-gown about her. She stopped only at the mirror to brush back her hair.

Lady Raytham was standing in the middle of the study, a bright coal fire was burning, and the room, at that early hour of the morning, had a special attraction for its young owner. But Jane Raytham’s presence seemed, for some unaccountable reason, to lend it a new distinction, as a great bunch of Easter lilies or a bowl of narcissus might have done.

“Good morning. I’m sorry to be so early. I hope I did not disturb you.”

She was polite, almost frigidly so, and Leslie could only look at her in wonder. All the evidence of distress and terror that had marked her face on the night before had vanished⁠—all except that dark tint under the eyes.

“Won’t you sit down? Have you had breakfast?” asked Leslie practically.

Lady Raytham shook her head.

“Please don’t bother about me; I have plenty of time and can wait,” she said.

There was a certain resentful admiration in her gaze; she was thinking how few women of her acquaintance were presentable at such an hour and in such circumstances. She had never seen Leslie Maughan in the daytime before, and not only did she stand the test of the cruel morning light, but she looked even prettier. She liked the poise of the girl and the readiness with which she accepted this sensible suggestion and disappeared into the bathroom, the gawky maid, her arms laden with garments, following. By the time she came out, Lucretia Brown had laid a little table; huge blue coffee cups and china racks bristling with crisp brown toast.

“No, I couldn’t eat, thank you.” Lady Raytham shook her head. “I will have some coffee.”

Leslie looked significantly at the door and Lucretia regretfully disappeared.

“Yes, I slept,” said Jane Raytham listlessly. “I don’t know how or why, but I did. I suppose I just couldn’t sleep any more. There is nothing about the murder in the newspapers.”

Leslie made a mental calculation.

“There wouldn’t be; it will be in the evening press. I know all about Druze.”

“You know⁠—about her?” Jane Raytham looked at her steadily.

“What was her name?” asked Leslie, but the other woman shook her head.

“I don’t know; she was always Druze to me.”

“Did your husband know⁠—”

“That she was a woman?” She shook her head. “No. Poor Raytham! He’d have had a fit! But then, he never notices anything.”

She had married the first Baron Raytham when he was a little over fifty, bachelor-minded, a man of set habits, who had found himself most unexpectedly a Benedict and was a little aghast at the discovery. For the greater part of a year he had striven to be the model husband, and had been something of a bore. The domestic habit was foreign to him. Society and all its dainty etceteras he loathed. Before the end of the first year of their married life, he had given up all attempt to interest himself in the new complexities which marriage had brought. Thereafter he devoted his energies and thoughts to his concession; his boards of directors, balance-sheets, and all the precious things which were life to him, and Jane Raytham was left very much to her own devices.

“My husband is very seldom in London⁠—probably not two months a year. He has”⁠—she hesitated⁠—“other interests.”

Very wisely, Leslie did not pursue the subject. She, too, had heard that Lord Raytham had carried into married life a loose string or two that were substantially attached and which he was unwilling or unable to drop. Leslie was too versed in the ways of the world to be shocked at this; too sophisticated to be anything but mildly amused at the inefficiency of man, who finds it so easy to get rid of a wife and so difficult to discharge a mistress.

“Your name is Leslie, isn’t it?” And, when she nodded: “I wonder if you would mind my ‘Leslie-ing’ you? You’re not so formidable as I thought. I⁠—I rather like you. My name is Jane⁠—if you ever feel friendly enough to ‘Jane’ me⁠—I’ve been abominably rude to you, but now I’ve come to ask you for favours.”

Leslie laughed.

“I owe you an apology,” she said and the other woman was quick to see her meaning.

“About Druze? It would be a beastly idea, only⁠—women are such queer fools, aren’t they? You can hardly pick up a Sunday newspaper that specializes in such matters without having proof of these strange⁠—mésalliances. No, I knew Druze was a woman; that made everything so hideous. It besmirched me, made me cringe when I thought of it⁠—I wonder if you will believe me when I say that that was almost my heaviest cross⁠—almost.”

“What was really the heaviest?” asked Leslie quietly.

Lady Raytham fetched a long sigh and looked out of the window.

“I don’t know⁠—it is rather difficult to compare these things.” And then, quickly: “Of course, I know now which is the heaviest, but that is so new and so crushing that I dare not let myself think about it. Something Druze said to me before she went out; something she told me that froze my blood.” She closed her eyes and shuddered, but recovered instantly. “That is why I got my car and went in search of her. She told me a little but not everything, and I had to know! My first thought was⁠—you’ll think I’m a hypocrite⁠—that Peter had killed her. If I thought at all! I don’t think I cared. I had only one idea in my mind, to find something she had boasted about.”

“Not the necklace?”

Jane Raytham smiled contemptuously.

“The necklace! As if I cared for that. I’m making a clean breast of everything⁠—up to a point. The necklace you saw at the house last night⁠—”

“Was a copy; I know that,” said Leslie quietly. “An exact replica of the real emerald chain, and valueless! When you didn’t bother to put it back in the safe, I guessed.”

Eye met eye, each striving to read the other’s thoughts.

“What else did you guess?” asked Jane Raytham, after a long silence, and then: “No, no, don’t tell me. I want to feel that nobody knows that⁠—nobody! You will tell me that I am trying to create a fool’s paradise myself, and I’m a moral coward⁠—I wonder if I am?” And then, obliquely: “Have you seen Peter?”

“I saw him last night, yes. He knew nothing about the murder⁠—not so much as you,” said Leslie.

The woman ignored this challenge.

“I wonder how much you do know, Leslie?”

It was a strain to ask the question. Even as she had her reservations, so also had Leslie Maughan. The truth must come from Jane Raytham or not be truth at all.

“I know you were being blackmailed; that the necklace you gave was part of the price; the twenty thousand pounds, which I imagine was all you could raise in cash, was the other part. I guess also that Druze was a blackmailer. Am I right?”

Jane nodded; there was a perceptible brightening of her face as though, fearing to hear worse, she was experiencing relief at the limitation of the girl’s knowledge.

“How long have you been paying?”

She did not answer, and Leslie repeated the question.

“I don’t know. Quite a long time.”

Another silence. The truth was not to come yet, then: only a measure of it.

“Do you want to tell me any more?” she asked.

Jane Raytham drooped her head. She wanted to tell⁠—just as much as this frank and friendly girl knew, hoping against hope that the more precious secret would remain with her, and yet almost praying that Leslie Maughan would suddenly drag forth the grisly skeleton and expose it to her eyes.

“Yes⁠—I want to, terribly! But I shan’t. I can’t bring myself to put things into words. And I want your help⁠—how badly I need it! But, my dear, you’re police, part of the machinery of Scotland Yard. I’ve told you too much already. I shall be living in a flutter of fear all day⁠—”

“I’m Leslie Maughan in this flat,” said Leslie, smiling. “Just a sort of little sister of the human race! But I’ll warn you that I am determined, as far as I can, to find the murderer of that wretched woman. Short of that information you can tell me anything.”

Jane shook her head ruefully.

“I don’t know who killed Druze. I will not swear that, but I will tell you on my word I don’t know; I do not even suspect. Anita wanted to know. I called on her this morning; she is like a woman distraught. I never knew she felt so deeply; the police have been there to inquire whether Druze called. I suppose you told them last night what I had told you. Poor Anita! She was terribly fond of Druze, who was once in her service. She always contended that he hadn’t been and talked about him as though he were the merest stranger. But that, I think, was her pride⁠—she hated the thought that she had ever been so poverty-stricken that she was obliged to let him go⁠—her, I mean: the habit of years takes a lot of breaking. I have thought of Druze as a man and spoken of him as a man so long that it is difficult to get out of the trick.”

“One question I want to ask you, Lady⁠—Jane, I’d better call you. It will be almost as difficult a habit to get into. Did Druze forge Lord Everreed’s name, as Peter Dawlish thinks he did?”

Jane Raytham shook her head.

“That is impossible,” she said simply.

“Why impossible?”

The answer took Leslie Maughan’s breath away.

“Because she could not read or write!”