Skeleton key

“ All my blood leaped and tingled to the shock of it. I stole, and put my ear to my own keyhole; and at once the nature of the sound was made clear to me. He had noiselessly opened his door and come out into the passage, down which he was stealthily creeping in a direction away from me. I don’t know how I recognized all this, but there is a language in profound stillness. When silence is at its deathliest, one can hear almost the way the earth is moving on its axis. ”

“ Would that consideration be enough in itself to goad him on to murder? With a man of Ridgway’s character and trained cautiousness of disposition I did not think it probable. Assuming, then, that the murder were his act, what more overmastering motive could have driven him to it? What but jealousy, the one passion uncontrollable by even the most self-disciplining nature. He was himself passionately enamoured of his own beautiful decoy, and she had betrayed not only his interests but his love. The crime had been, in the expressive French phrase, and in the fullest sense, a crime passionel. ”

“ The stately, wrought-iron gates of Wildshott open from the main road. Thence a drive of considerable extent reaches to the house, which is a rectangular red-brick Jacobean structure, with stone string-courses and a fine porch, having a great shell over it. There are good stables contiguous, and the grounds about are ample and well timbered—almost too well timbered, it might be thought by some people, since the closeness of the foliage gives an effect of gloom and solemnity to a building which, amid freer surroundings, should have nothing but grace and frankness to recommend it. ”

“ In the same neighborhood there have more recently been discovered, in different caves, four other human skeletons. They were all stained with oxide of iron, and two of them surrounded with pierced sea-shells, teeth of the stag, constituting the remains of necklaces and bracelets. With one skeleton, which belonged to a large individual, were discovered implements of stone and bone, tooth of a cave-bear, bones of other animals, and shells of edible marine mollusks. The other two skeletons were those of children, and not accompanied by either implements or ornaments. ”

“ In a recess of the, of old, inhabited cave, at a depth of 5 feet 2 inches from the upper surface of the stalagmite, and in a block of stalagmitic breccia of stony hardness, a second human skull, mutilated in the labour of detachment of the matrix, was discovered with other parts of a human skeleton [16] . At every foot of depth of the breccia of the cavern were found scattered implements of flint and bone—the latter chiefly supplied by antlers of reindeer (Cervus tarandus) . ”

“ A lawyer does not appropriate trust funds because he is a lawyer, but because he is a gambler: so, a detective is not impeccable because he is a detective, but because he is an honest man. You wonder that he can be at the same time a detective and a desperate criminal. Well, I don’t.”
“Ah! You’ve got a reason?”
“Just this. What is in that lawyer’s mind when he steals? Imagination. It leaps the dark abyss to wing for the golden peaks beyond, where, easy restitution passed, it sees its dreams fulfilled. What was in Ridgway’s mind when he planned his tremendous venture? Imagination again. ”

“ Was it, could it be possible that some blackguard poacher had been made the instrument of a diabolical plot—perhaps that fourth shadowy figure that had never materialised; perhaps Henstridge himself, who had volunteered the damning evidence, and whom it would be one’s instinct to mistrust? Le Sage and Henstridge in collusion! Was it an inspiration? Did I stand on the threshold of a tremendous discovery? In spite of the feverish excitement which suddenly possessed me, I could still reason against my own theory. The motive? What possible motive in murdering an unoffending servant girl? ”

“ Le Sage made the most of it to himself, though he was really distressed and moved. “Poor eyes!” he thought, “si pleins de tendresse: but an hour ago so beautiful, and now quenched in death. So this was the tryst you kept! Why, it can hardly be cold yet about your heart.”
Sir Calvin, stern and wrath, gave brief directions. A shutter was to be brought, a doctor fetched from Longbridge by one servant, the county police informed by another. He asked a short question or two—one of his son. Was this the tree against which he had left his gun leaning? Hugh answered no, while Le Sage listened. ”

“ Why should he wish to escape? All my instinctive suspicion of him reawakened on the moment; and I wondered. True, he could not himself have perpetrated the crime; Hugo’s evidence would not permit of such a supposition; but could he not be somehow implicated in it as instigator or abettor? I determined then and there to keep a very close observation on M. le Baron.
We entered the room together, since I would not suffer his going in alone to misrepresent me. Sir Calvin was there, with his son and the detective. ”

“ The decayed bones of Mound-Builders are invariably found within the mounds, never on the surface, usually at the bottom of the structure, and nearly always “in such a state of decay as to render all attempts to restore the skull, or, indeed, any part of the skeleton, entirely hopeless.” Not more than one or two skeletons of that people have been recovered in a condition suitable for intelligent examination. ”

“ She just stood looking at the intruder, a wonder on her rosy lips, and Le Sage for his part returned her scrutiny at his leisure. His impression of the night before he found more than confirmed by daylight: she was a very Arcadian nymph, with a sweet-briar complexion and eyes and hair of thyme and honey; shapely as a doe, ineffably pretty. He wondered less than ever over Louis’s infatuation.
And what was she doing here? Her head was bare; a light waterproof veiled her official livery: it might be concluded without much circumspection that a tryst was in the air. ”

“ Now I knew the origin of the bizarre footprints whose attenuation had disturbed and troubled me.
When the eighth skeleton had passed from sight, my eyes were drawn as by scene irresistible impulsion to one of the nearer headstones, beside which I was amazed to perceive what I had not noticed before: a freshly opened grave, gaping darkly in the soft soil. Then, at my elbow, I heard a low rattling, and the fingers of a fleshless hand plucked lightly at my sleeve. A skeleton was beside me, differing only from the others through the fact that it bore no infant in its arms. ”

“ What spirit of romance, to be sure, might lurk unsuspected under the hard official rind. Here was the last man in the world whom one would have credited with a sense of beauty, and he was wrought to emotion by a landscape!
“You talk,” said he, “of your profession not affording you many such moments as this. Now, to my mind, it seems the profession for a man romantically inclined.”
“Does it, indeed, sir?”
“Why, don’t you live in a perpetual atmosphere of romance? Think of the mysteries which are your daily food.” ”

“ It might, after all, prove no murder, but only an accident, the perpetrator of which, terrified by the deed which he had unwittingly committed, might be keeping silence only until assured that he could tell the truth without danger to himself. Le Sage ventured to applaud that suggestion, turning to Hugh to ask him if he did not think it a quite reasonable one. But the young man refused to consider it; he was very excited; it was murder, he said, gross, palpable, open, and it was mere criminal sophistry to pretend to account for it on any other theory. ”

“ Said Le Sage:—
“Are we not a little apt to judge a man by his business—as that a lawyer must be unfeeling, a butcher cruel, a doctor humane, and a sweep dishonest? But it is not his profession which makes a man what he is, but the man who makes his profession what it appears in him. ”

“ Sir Calvin turned to the detective. “Do you need Mrs. Bingley any more?”
“Not for the present,” answered the Sergeant, and the housekeeper left the room. I had expected from him, on her disappearance, some significant look or gesture, betokening his acceptance of the inevitable conclusion; but he made no such sign, and merely resumed his business conduct of the case. He knew better than we, no doubt, that in crime the most obvious is often the most unreliable.
“We must find the girl’s relations, if possible, Sir Calvin,” he said. ”

“ The last thing of which a lawyer, as a lawyer, would be guilty, would be the bringing himself within the grasp of the law: the last thing of which a detective, as a detective, would be guilty would be the making himself a subject for detection. What induces either of them, then, to sin against the logic of his own profession? Imagination alone and always, the primary impulse to everything that is good and bad in the world. A man may be blessed with it, or he may be cursed; contain it in his being like the seed of beauty or the seed of dipsomania.”
“And Ridgway like the latter?” ”

“ I tried to get him to go home, leaving his gun with the keeper, but he absolutely refused; and he refused again to part with it when, in the afternoon, he finally did leave us, saying he was good for nothing, and had had enough of it. If only then he had done what I wanted him to do, and left his gun behind, this wretched business might never have happened.”
“Ah!” said the detective, “he feels that, I dare say, and it doesn’t help to cheer him up. Well, sir, I’d get him out, if I was you—distract his thoughts, and make him forget himself. He won’t mend what’s done by moping.” ”

“ It is the way of cats and women to tear the hand that would release them from the trap.
The dinner, in short, began very uncomfortably, with an irascible host, a moody son, and an offended daughter, the butler taking his cue from his master, and the servants from the butler. They waited nervously, and got in one another’s way, only the more flurriedly for their whispered harrying by the exacerbated Cleghorn. ”

“ Some of the tombs are open, as if burst asunder by an explosion, and the skeletons stand bolt upright; some are half closed, and their occupants creeping quietly out; while in others the disjointed bones are seen, not yet rebuilt into human shape, or a skeleton is detected half clothed with flesh, and some bones still protruding in their original bareness. ”

“ The detective or mystery tale, in which this last book is an experiment, involves in itself a problem for the artist, as odd as any of the problems which it puts to the policeman. A detective story might well be in a special sense a spiritual tragedy; since it is a story in which even the moral sympathies may be in doubt. A police romance is almost the only romance in which the hero may turn out to be the villain, or the villain to be the hero. We know that Mr. Osbaldistone’s business has not been betrayed by his son Frank, though possibly by his nephew Rashleigh. ”

“ Le Sage had stepped back. He had a way sometimes of thrusting his hands into the tail pockets of his coat, and bringing them round in front of him. So he stood now, with a curious smile on his lips.
“Dark horse wins,” said he. “My mate, I think, Sergeant John Ridgway.”
The door opened with the word, spoken pretty loudly, and there came quickly into the room an inspector and two constables of the local police, followed by Sir Calvin and another gentleman.
“I have the pleasure,” said M. le Baron to the new-comers, “of introducing to you the murderer of Annie Evans, alias Ivy Mellor.” ”

“ In the meanwhile I am your grateful Baron.” He took vast snuff, making his eyes glisten, and somehow she liked him for it.
“I shall be glad,” she said, “when that detective goes. One will feel more at peace from the squalor of it all.” ”

“ Very well, now: we have got so far as to convict Sergeant Ridgway of murder, following on a plot to disinherit, with the help of a confederate, the very man whom he schemed to charge with the crime. So we arrive necessarily at the question, who was this Annie Evans, whom he had chosen for his accomplice in the business, and whom he had ended by so foully doing to death? To get at the whole truth of the story, it was essential that the mystery of their connexion should be traced to its source. ”

“ He chuckled aloud. “You are a frank young lady.” He took her slim left hand between his cushiony palms, and patted it paternally. “When a suspected man is arrested, my dear, the first warning he receives from the police is that anything he says may be used in evidence against him. Supposing we apply that rule to common converse? Then at least we shall avoid self-committal.”
“But are we all, every one of us, suspected people?”
“One never knows what may lie in a question. For instance, you ask me what can I find in chess. Very seeming innocent; but, O, the suspicion it may embody!” ”

“ Clever after a sort; but frightfully obtuse, too. I wouldn’t trust him with a secret. He’s so cocksure of himself that he’d always be liable to give it away with his blessing. But I oughtn’t to speak like that of him. He’s a great friend of Hugh’s, and he does really like to help people, I think, only it must be in his own way and not theirs. Do you like him?”
“I am rather surprised that he and your brother should be on such close terms of friendship.”
“Are you? Why?”
“Is not Mr. Hugo, now, without offence, a rather passionate, self-willed young gentleman?” ”

“ Only a little below the surface lies earth still black from the heats of the tremendous conflagration; charred bones crackle beneath the tread; in an under-chamber of one of the baths has been found the skeleton of an old man crouched between the pillars, as if seeking refuge from the rage of fire and sword. The skeletons of two women were beside him and, close to his bony hand, his little hoard of coins. There still stands a rugged mass of wall some seventy feet in length, its Roman string-courses of flat red bricks showing bright against the prevailing grey of that jagged, gaping structure. ”