The Loudwater Mystery by Edgar Jepson

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THE LOUDWATER MYSTERY

BY EDGAR JEPSON

1920

CHAPTER I

Lord Loudwater was paying attention neither to his breakfast nor to the
cat Melchisidec. Absorbed in a leader in _The Times_ newspaper, now and
again he tugged at his red-brown beard in order to quicken his
comprehension of the weighty phrases of the leader-writer; now and again
he made noises, chiefly with his nose, expressive of disgust. Lady
Loudwater paid no attention to these noises. She did not even raise her
eyes to her husband's face. She ate her breakfast with a thoughtful air,
her brow puckered by a faint frown.

She also paid no attention to her favourite, Melchisidec. Melchisidec,
unduly excited by the smell of grilled sole, came to Lord Loudwater, rose
on his hind legs, laid his paws on his trousers, and stuck some claws
into his thigh. It was no more than gentle, arresting pricks; but the
tender nobleman sprang from his chair with a short howl, kicked with
futile violence a portion of the empty air which Melchisidec had just
vacated, staggered, and nearly fell.

Lady Loudwater did not laugh; but she did cough.

Her husband, his face a furious crimson, glared at her with reddish eyes,
and swore violently at her and the cat.

Lady Loudwater rose, her face flushed, her lips trembling, picked up
Melchisidec, and walked out of the room. Lord Loudwater scowled at the
closed door, sat down, and went on with his breakfast.

James Hutchings, the butler, came quietly into the room, took one of the
smaller dishes from the sideboard and Lady Loudwater's teapot from the
table. He went quietly out of the room, pausing at the door to scowl at
his master's back. Lady Loudwater finished her breakfast in the
sitting-room of her suite of rooms on the first floor. She was no longer
inattentive to Melchisidec.

During her breakfast she put all consideration of her husband's behaviour
out of her mind. As she smoked a cigarette after breakfast she considered
it for a little while. She often had to consider it. She came to the
conclusion to which she had often come before: that she owed him nothing
whatever. She came to the further conclusion that she detested him. She
had far too good a brow not to be able to see a fact clearly. She wished
more heartily than ever that she had never married him. It had been a
grievous mistake; and it seemed likely to last a life-time--her
life-time. The last five ancestors of her husband had lived to be eighty.
His father would doubtless have lived to be eighty too, had he not broken
his neck in the hunting-field at the age of fifty-four. On the other
hand, none of the Quaintons, her own family, had reached the age of
sixty. Lord Loudwater was thirty-five; she was twenty-two; he would
therefore survive her by at least seven years. She would certainly be
bowed down all her life under this grievous burden.

It was an odd calculation for a young married woman to make; but Lady
Loudwater came of an uncommon family, which had produced more brilliant,
irresponsible, and passably unscrupulous men than any other of the
leading families in England. Her father had been one of them. She took
after him. Moreover, Lord Loudwater would have induced odd reveries in
any wife. He had been intolerable since the second week of their
honeymoon. Wholly without power of self-restraint, the furious outbursts
of his vile temper had been consistently revolting. She once more told
herself that something would have to be done about it--not on the
instant, however. At the moment there appeared to her to be months to do
it in. She dropped her cigarette end into the ash-tray, and with it any
further consideration of the manners and disposition of Lord Loudwater.

She lit another cigarette and let her thoughts turn to that far more
appealing subject, Colonel Antony Grey. They turned to him readily and
wholly. In less than three minutes she was seeing his face and hearing
certain tones in his voice with amazing clearness. Once she looked at the
clock impatiently. It was half-past ten. She would not see him till
three--four and a half hours. It seemed a long while to her. However,
she could go on thinking about him. She did.

While she considered her ill-tempered husband her eyes had been hard and
almost shallow. While she considered Colonel Grey, they grew soft and
deep. Her lips had been set and almost thin; now they grew most kissable.

Lord Loudwater finished his breakfast, the scowl on his face fading
slowly to a frown. He lit a cigar and with a moody air went to his
smoking-room. The criminal carelessness of the cat Melchisidec
still rankled.

As he entered the room, half office and half smoking-room, Mr. Herbert
Manley, his secretary, bade him good morning. Lord Loudwater returned his
greeting with a scowl.

Mr. Herbert Manley had one of those faces which begin well and end badly.
He had a fine forehead, lofty and broad, a well-cut, gently-curving-nose,
a slack, thick-lipped mouth, always a little open, a heavy, animal jaw,
and the chin of an eagle. His fine, black hair was thin on the temples.
His moustache was thin and straggled. His black eyes were as good as his
brow, intelligent, observant, and alert. It was plain that had his lips
been thinner and his chin larger he would not have been the secretary of
Lord Loudwater--or of any one else. He would have been a masterless man.
The success of two one-act plays on the stage of the music-halls had
given him the firm hope of one day becoming a masterless man as a
successful dramatist. His post gave him the leisure to write plays. But
for the fact that it brought him into such frequent contact with the Lord
Loudwater it would have been a really pleasant post: the food was
excellent; the wine was good; the library was passable; and the servants,
with the exception of James Hutchings, liked and respected him. He had
the art of making himself valued (at far more than his real worth, said
his enemies), and his air of importance continuously impressed them.

With a patient air he began to discuss the morning's letters, and ask for
instructions. Lord Loudwater was, as often happened, uncommonly captious
about the letters. He had not recovered from the shock the inconsiderate
Melchisidec had given his nerves. The instructions he gave were somewhat
muddled; and when Mr. Manley tried to get them clearer, his employer
swore at him for an idiot. Mr. Manley persisted firmly through much abuse
till he did get them clear. He had come to consider his employer's furies
an unfortunate weakness which had to be endured by the holder of the post
he found so advantageous. He endured them with what stoicism he might.

Lord Loudwater in a bad temper always produced a strong impression of
redness for a man whose colouring was merely red-brown. Owing to the fact
that his fierce, protruding blue eyes were red-rimmed and somewhat
bloodshot, in moments of emotion they shone with a curious red glint, and
his florid face flushed a deeper red. In these moments Mr. Manley had a
feeling that he was dealing with a bad-tempered red bull. His employer
made very much the same impression on other people, but few of them had
the impression of bullness so clear and so complete as did Mr. Manley.
Lady Loudwater, on the other hand, felt always, whether her husband was
ramping or quiet, that she was dealing with a bad-tempered bull.

Presently they came to the end of the letters. Lord Loudwater lit another
cigar, and scowled thoughtfully. Mr. Manley gazed at his scowling face
and wondered idly whether he would ever light on another human being whom
he would detest so heartily as he detested his employer. He thought it
indeed unlikely. Still, when he became a successful dramatist there might
be an actor-manager--

Then Lord Loudwater said: "Did you tell Mrs. Truslove that after
September her allowance would be reduced to three hundred a year?"

"Yes," said Mr. Manley.

"What did she say?"

Mr. Manley hesitated; then he said diplomatically: "She did not seem
to like it."

"What did she _say_?" cried Lord Loudwater in a sudden, startling bellow,
and his eyes shone red.

Mr. Manley winced and said quickly: "She said it was just like you."

"Just like me? Hey? And what did she mean by that?" cried Lord Loudwater
loudly and angrily.

Mr. Manley expressed utter ignorance by looking blank and shrugging his
shoulders.

"The jade! She's had six hundred a year for more than two years. Did she
think it would go on for ever?" cried his employer.

"No," said Mr. Manley.

"And why didn't she think it would go on for ever? Hey?" said Lord
Loudwater in a challenging tone.

"Because there wasn't an actual deed of settlement," said Mr. Manley.

"The ungrateful jade! I've a good mind to stop it altogether!" cried
his employer.

Mr. Manley said nothing. His face was blank; it neither approved nor
disapproved the suggestion.

Lord Loudwater scowled at him and said: "I expect she said she wished
she'd never had anything to do with me."

"No," said Mr. Manley.

"I'll bet that's what she thinks," growled Lord Loudwater.

Mr. Manley let the suggestion pass without comment. His face was blank.

"And what's she going to do about it?" said Lord Loudwater in a tone of
challenge.

"She's going to see you about it."

"I'm damned if she is!" cried Lord Loudwater hastily, in a much less
assured tone.

Mr. Manley permitted a faint, sceptical smile to wreathe his lips.

"What are you grinning at? If you think she'll gain anything by doing
that, she won't," said Lord Loudwater, with a blustering truculence.

Mr. Manley wondered. Helena Truslove was a lady of considerable force of
character. He suspected that if Lord Loudwater had ever been afraid of a
fellow-creature, he must at times have been afraid of Helena Truslove.
He fancied that now he was not nearly as fearless as he sounded. He did
not say so.

His employer was silent, buried in scowling reflection. Mr. Manley gazed
at him without any great intentness, and came to the conclusion that he
did not merely detest him, he loathed him.

Presently he said: "There's a cheque from Hanbury and Johnson for twelve
thousand and forty-six pounds for the rubber shares your lordship sold.
It wants endorsing."

He handed the cheque across the table to Lord Loudwater. Lord
Loudwater dipped his pen in the ink, transfixed a struggling
bluebottle, and drew it out.

"Why the devil don't you see that the ink is fresh?" he roared.

"It is fresh. The bluebottle must have just fallen into it," said Mr.
Manley in an unruffled tone.

Lord Loudwater cursed the bluebottle, restored it to the ink-pot,
endorsed the cheque, and tossed it across the table to Mr. Manley.

"By the way," said Mr. Manley, with some hesitation, "there's another
anonymous letter."

"Why didn't you burn it? I told you to burn 'em all," snapped his
employer.

"This one is not about you. It's about Hutchings," said Mr. Manley in an
explanatory tone.

"Hutchings? What about Hutchings?"

"You'd better read it," said Mr. Manley, handing him the letter. "It
seems to be from some spiteful woman."

The letter was indeed written in female handwriting, and it accused the
butler, wordily enough, of having received a commission from Lord
Loudwater's wine merchants on a purchase of fifty dozen of champagne
which he had bought from them a month before. It further stated that he
had received a like commission on many other such purchases.

Lord Loudwater read it, scowling, sprang up from his chair with his eyes
protruding further than usual, and cried: "The scoundrel! The blackguard!
I'll teach him! I'll gaol him!"

He dashed at the electric bell by the fireplace, set his thumb on it, and
kept it there.

Holloway, the second footman, came running. The servants knew their
master's ring. They always ran to answer it, after some discussion as to
which of them should go.

He entered and said: "Yes, m'lord?"

"Send that scoundrel Hutchings to me! Send him at once!" roared
his master.

"Yes, m'lord," said Holloway, and hurried away.

He found James Hutchings in his pantry, told him that their master wanted
him, and added that he was in a tearing rage.

Hutchings, who never expected his sanguine and irascible master to be in
any other mood, finished the paragraph of the article in the _Daily
Telegraph_ he was reading, put on his coat, and went to the study. His
delay gave Lord Loudwater's wrath full time to mature.

When the butler entered his master shook his fist at him and roared: "You
scoundrel! You infernal scoundrel! You've been robbing me! You've been
robbing me for years, you blackguard!"

James Hutchings met the charge with complete calm. He shook his head and
said in a surly tone: "No; I haven't done anything of the kind, m'lord."

The flat denial infuriated his master yet more. He spluttered and was for
a while incoherent. Then he became again articulate and said: "You have,
you rogue! You took a commission--a secret commission on that fifty dozen
of champagne I bought last month. You've been doing it for years."

James Hutchings' surly face was transformed. It grew malignant; his
fierce, protruding, red-rimmed blue eyes sparkled balefully, and he
flushed to a redness as deep as that of his master. He knew at once who
had betrayed him, and he was furious--at the betrayal. At the same time,
he was not greatly alarmed; he had never received a cheque from the wine
merchants; all their payments to him had been in cash, and he had always
cherished a warm contempt for his master.

"I haven't," he said fiercely. "And if I had it would be quite
regular--only a perquisite."

For the hundredth time Mr. Manley remarked the likeness between Lord
Loudwater and his butler. They had the same fierce, protruding,
red-rimmed blue eyes, the same narrow, low forehead, the same large ears.
Hutchings' hair was a darker brown than Lord Loudwater's, and his lips
were thinner. But Mr. Manley was sure that, had he worn a beard instead
of whiskers, it would have been difficult for many people to be sure
which was Lord Loudwater and which his butler.

Lord Loudwater again spluttered; then he roared: "A perquisite! What
about the Corrupt Practices Act? It was passed for rogues like you!
I'll show you all about perquisites! You'll find yourself in gaol
inside of a month."

"I shan't. There isn't a word of truth in it, or a scrap of evidence,"
said Hutchings fiercely.

"Evidence? I'll find evidence all right!" cried his master. "And if I
don't, I'll, anyhow, discharge you without a character. I'll get you one
way or another, my fine fellow! I'll teach you to rob me!"

"I haven't robbed your lordship," said Hutchings in a less surly tone.

He was much more moved by the threat of discharge than the threat of
prosecution.

"I tell you you have. And you can clear out of this. I'll wire to town at
once for another butler--an honest butler. You'll clear out the moment he
comes. Pack up and be ready to go. And when you do go, I'll give you
twenty-four hours to clear out of the country before I put the police on
your track," cried Lord Loudwater.

Mr. Manley observed that it was exactly like him to take no risk, in
spite of his fury, of any loss of comfort from the lack of a butler. The
instinct of self-protection was indeed strong in him.

"Not a bit of it. You've told me to go, and I'm going at once--this very
day. The police will find me at my father's for the next fortnight," said
Hutchings with a sneer. "And when I go to London I'll leave my address."

"A lot of good your going to London will do you. I'll see you never get
another place in this country," snarled Lord Loudwater.

Hutchings gave him a look of vindictive malignity so intense that it
made Mr. Manley quite uncomfortable, turned, and went out of the room.

Lord Loudwater said: "I'll teach the scoundrel to rob me! Write at once
for a new butler."

He took some lumps of sugar from a jar on the mantelpiece, and went
through the door which opened into the library.

In the library he stopped and shouted back: "If Morton comes about the
timber, I shall be in the stables."

Then he went through one of the long windows of the library into the
garden and took his way to the stables. As he drew near them the scowl
cleared from his face. But it remained a formidable face; it did not grow
pleasant. None the less, he spent a pleasant hour in the stables, petting
his horses. He was fond of horses, not of cats, and he never bullied and
seldom abused his horses as he abused and bullied his fellow men and
women. This was the result of his experience. He had learnt from it that
he might bully and abuse his human dependents with impunity. As a boy he
had also bullied and abused his horses. But in his eighteenth year he had
been savaged by a young horse he had maltreated, and the lesson had stuck
in his mind. It was a simple, obtuse mind, but it had formed the theory
that he got more out of human beings, more deference and service, by
bullying them and more out of horses by treating them kindly. Besides, he
liked horses.

Mr. Manley did not set about answering the letters at once. He reflected
for a while on the likeness between Hutchings and his master. He thought
the physical likeness of little interest. There was a whole clan of
Hutchingses in the villages and woods round the castle, the bulk of them
gamekeepers; and there had been for generations. Mr. Manley was much more
interested in the resemblance in character between Hutchings and Lord
Loudwater. Hutchings, probably under the pressure of circumstances, was
much less of a bore than his master, but quite as much of a bully. Also,
he was more intelligent, and consequently more dangerous. Mr. Manley
would on no account have had him look at him with the intense malignity
with which he had looked at his master. Doubtless the butler had far
greater self-control than Lord Loudwater; but if ever he did lose it it
would be uncommonly bad for Lord Loudwater.

It would be interesting to find in the Loudwater archives the common
ancestor to whom they both cast so directly back. He fancied that it must
be the third Baron. At any rate, both had his protruding blue eyes,
softened in his portrait doubtless by the natural politeness of the
fashionable painter. Was it worth his while to look up the record of the
third Lord Loudwater? He decided that, if he found himself at sufficient
leisure, he would. Then he decided that he was glad that Hutchins was
going; the butler had shown him but little civility. Then he set about
answering the letters.

When he had finished them he took up the stockbroker's cheque and
considered it with a thoughtful frown. He had never before seen a cheque
for so large a sum; and it interested him. Then he wrote a short note of
instructions to Lord Loudwater's bankers. The ink in his fountain-pen ran
out as he came to the end of it, and he signed it with the pen with which
Lord Loudwater had endorsed the cheque. He put the cheque into the
envelope he had already addressed, put stamps on all the letters, carried
them to the post-box on a table in the hall, went through the library out
into the garden, and smoked a cigarette with a somewhat languid air. Then
he went into the library and took up his task of cataloguing the books at
the point at which he had stopped the day before. He often paused to dip
at length into a book before entering it in the catalogue. He did not
believe in hasty work.

CHAPTER II

Lord Loudwater came to lunch in a better temper than that in which he had
left the breakfast-table. He had ridden eight miles round and about his
estate, and the ride had soothed that seat of the evil humours--his
liver. Lady Loudwater had been careful to shut Melchisidec in her
boudoir; James Hutchings had no desire in the world to see his master's
florid face or square back, and had instructed Wilkins and Holloway, the
first and second footmen, to wait at table. Lord Loudwater therefore
could, without any ruffling of his sensibilities, give all his thought to
his food, and he did. The cooking at the castle was always excellent. If
it was not, he sent for the chef and spoke to him about it.

There was little conversation at lunch. Lady Loudwater never spoke to her
husband first, save on rare occasions about a matter of importance. It
was not that she perceived any glamour of royalty about him; she did not
wish to hear his voice. Besides, she had never found a conversational
opening so harmless that he could not contrive, were it his whim, to be
offensive about it. Besides, she had at the moment nothing to say to him.

In truth, owing to the fact that she took so many practically silent
meals with him, she was becoming rather a gourmet. The food, naturally
the most important fact, had become really the most important fact at the
meals they took together. She had come to realize this. It was the only
advantage she had ever derived from her intercourse with her husband.

At this lunch, however, she did not pay as much attention to the food as
usual, not indeed as much as it deserved. Her mind would stray from it to
Colonel Grey. She wondered what he would tell her about herself that
afternoon. He was always discovering possibilities in her which she had
never discovered for herself. She only perceived their existence when he
pointed them out to her. Then they became obvious. Also, he was always
discovering fresh facts, attractive facts, about her--about her eyes and
lips and hair and figure. He imparted each discovery to her as he made
it, without delay, and with the genuine enthusiasm of a discoverer. Of
course, he should not have done this. It was, indeed, wrong. But he had
assured her that he could not help it, that he was always blurted things
out. Since it was a habit of long standing, now probably ingrained, it
was useless to reproach him with any great severity for his frankness.
She did not do so.

For his part, the Lord Loudwater had but little to say to his wife. She
was fond of Melchisidec and indifferent to horses. For the greater part
of the meal he was hardly aware that she was at the other end of the
table. Immersed in his food and its deglutition, he was hardly sensible
of the outside world at all. Once, disturbed by Holloway's removing his
empty plate, he told her that he had seen a dog-fox on Windy Ridge;
again, when Holloway handed the cheese-straws to him, he told her that
Merry Belle's black colt had a cold. Her two replies, "Oh, did you?" and
"Has he?" appeared to fall on deaf ears. He did not continue either
conversation.

Then Lord Loudwater broke into an eloquent monologue. Wilkins had poured
out a glass of port for both of them to drink with their cheese-straws.
Lord Loudwater finished his cheese-straws, took a long sip from his
glass, rolled it lovingly over his tongue, gulped it down with a hideous
grimace, banged down his fist on the table, and roared in a terrible,
anguished voice:

"It's corked! It's corked! It's that scoundrel Hutchings! This is his way
of taking it out of me for sacking him. He's done it on purpose, the
scoundrel! Now I will gaol him! Hanged if I don't!"

"I'll get another bottle, m'lord," said Wilkins, catching up the
decanter, and hurrying towards the door.

"Get it! And be quick about it! And tell that scoundrel I'll gaol him!"
cried Lord Loudwater.

Wilkins rushed from the room bearing in his hand the decanter of
offending port; Holloway followed him to help.

Lady Loudwater sipped a little port from her glass. She was rather
inclined to take no one's word for anything which she could herself
verify. Then she took another sip.

Then she said; "Are you sure this wine's corked?"

Corked wine at the end of a really good meal is a bitter blow to any man,
an exceedingly bitter blow to a man of Lord Loudwater's sensitiveness in
such matters.

"Am I sure? Hey? Am I sure? Yes! I am sure, you little fool!" he
bellowed. "What do you know about wine? Talk about things you
understand!"

Lady Loudwater's face was twisted by a faint spasm of hate which left it
flushed. She would never grow used to being bellowed at for a fool. Once
more her husband's refusal to let her take her meals apart from him
seemed monstrous. Hardly ever did she rise from one at which she had not
been abused and insulted. She realized indeed that she had been foolish
to ask the question. But why should she sit tongue-tied before the brute?

She took another sip and said quietly: "It isn't corked."

Then she turned cold with fright.

Lord Loudwater could not believe his ears. It could not be that his wife
had contradicted him flatly. It--could--_not_--be.

He was still incredulous, breathing heavily, when the door opened and
James Hutchings appeared on the threshold. In his right hand he held the
decanter of offending port, in his left a sound cork.

He said firmly: "This wine isn't corked, m'lord. Its flavour is perfect.
Besides, a cork like this couldn't cork it."

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