Part 6 (1/2)
”As near as I can reckon, it would be five minutes to ten,” answered Mr.
Folliot. ”I put it at that because I'd gone in for the morning service, which is at ten. I saw him go up the inside stair to the clerestory gallery--he was looking about him. Five minutes to ten--and it must have happened immediately afterwards.”
Bryce heard this and turned away, making a calculation for himself. It had been on the stroke of ten when he saw Ransford hurrying out of the west porch. There was a stairway from the gallery down to that west porch. What, then, was the inference? But for the moment he drew none--instead, he went home to his rooms in Friary Lane, and shutting himself up, drew from his pocket the sc.r.a.p of paper he had taken from the dead man.
CHAPTER V. THE Sc.r.a.p OF PAPER
When Bryce, in his locked room, drew that bit of paper from his pocket, it was with the conviction that in it he held a clue to the secret of the morning's adventure. He had only taken a mere glance at it as he withdrew it from the dead man's purse, but he had seen enough of what was written on it to make him certain that it was a doc.u.ment--if such a mere fragment could be called a doc.u.ment--of no ordinary importance.
And now he unfolded and laid it flat on his table and looked at it carefully, asking himself what was the real meaning of what he saw.
There was not much to see. The sc.r.a.p of paper itself was evidently a quarter of a leaf of old-fas.h.i.+oned, stoutish notepaper, somewhat yellow with age, and bearing evidence of having been folded and kept flat in the dead man's purse for some time--the creases were well-defined, the edges were worn and slightly stained by long rubbing against the leather. And in its centre were a few words, or, rather abbreviations of words, in Latin, and some figures:
In Para. Wrycestr. juxt. tumb.
Ric. Jenk. ex cap. xxiii. xv.
Bryce at first sight took them to be a copy of some inscription but his knowledge of Latin told him, a moment later, that instead of being an inscription, it was a direction. And a very plain direction, too!--he read it easily. In Paradise, at Wrychester, next to, or near, the tomb of Richard Jenkins, or, possibly, Jenkinson, from, or behind, the head, twenty-three, fifteen--inches, most likely. There was no doubt that there was the meaning of the words. What, now, was it that lay behind the tomb of Richard Jenkins, or Jenkinson, in Wrychester Paradise?--in all probability twenty-three inches from the head-stone, and fifteen inches beneath the surface. That was a question which Bryce immediately resolved to find a satisfactory answer to; in the meantime there were other questions which he set down in order on his mental tablets. They were these:
1. Who, really, was the man who had registered at the Mitre under the name of John Braden?
2. Why did he wish to make a personal call on the Duke of Saxonsteade?
3. Was he some man who had known Ransford in time past--and whom Ransford had no desire to meet again?
4. Did Ransford meet him--in the Cathedral?
5. Was it Ransford who flung him to his death down St. Wrytha's Stair?
6. Was that the real reason of the agitation in which he, Bryce, had found Ransford a few moments after the discovery of the body?
There was plenty of time before him for the due solution of these mysteries, reflected Bryce--and for solving another problem which might possibly have some relations.h.i.+p to them--that of the exact connection between Ransford and his two wards. Bryce, in telling Ransford that morning of what was being said amongst the tea-table circles of the old cathedral city, had purposely only told him half a tale. He knew, and had known for months, that the society of the Close was greatly exercised over the position of the Ransford menage. Ransford, a bachelor, a well-preserved, active, alert man who was certainly of no more than middle age and did not look his years, had come to Wrychester only a few years previously, and had never shown any signs of forsaking his single state. No one had ever heard him mention his family or relations; then, suddenly, without warning, he had brought into his house Mary Bewery, a handsome young woman of nineteen, who was said to have only just left school, and her brother Richard, then a boy of sixteen, who had certainly been at a public school of repute and was entered at the famous Dean's School of Wrychester as soon as he came to his new home. Dr. Ransford spoke of these two as his wards, without further explanation; the society of the Close was beginning to want much more explanation. Who were they--these two young people? Was Dr.
Ransford their uncle, their cousin--what was he to them? In any case, in the opinion of the elderly ladies who set the tone of society in Wrychester, Miss Bewery was much too young, and far too pretty, to be left without a chaperon. But, up to then, no one had dared to say as much to Dr. Ransford--instead, everybody said it freely behind his back.
Bryce had used eyes and ears in relation to the two young people. He had been with Ransford a year when they arrived; admitted freely to their company, he had soon discovered that whatever relations.h.i.+p existed between them and Ransford, they had none with anybody else--that they knew of. No letters came for them from uncles, aunts, cousins, grandfathers, grandmothers. They appeared to have no memories or reminiscences of relatives, nor of father or mother; there was a curious atmosphere of isolation about them. They had plenty of talk about what might be called their present--their recent schooldays, their youthful experiences, games, pursuits--but none of what, under any circ.u.mstances, could have been a very far-distant past. Bryce's quick and attentive ears discovered things--for instance that for many years past Ransford had been in the habit of spending his annual two months' holiday with these two. Year after year--at any rate since the boy's tenth year--he had taken them travelling; Bryce heard sc.r.a.ps of reminiscences of tours in France, and in Switzerland, and in Ireland, and in Scotland--even as far afield as the far north of Norway. It was easy to see that both boy and girl had a mighty veneration for Ransford; just as easy to see that Ransford took infinite pains to make life something more than happy and comfortable for both. And Bryce, who was one of those men who firmly believe that no man ever does anything for nothing and that self-interest is the mainspring of Life, asked himself over and over again the question which agitated the ladies of the Close: Who are these two, and what is the bond between them and this sort of fairy-G.o.dfather-guardian?
And now, as he put away the sc.r.a.p of paper in a safely-locked desk, Bryce asked himself another question: Had the events of that morning anything to do with the mystery which hung around Dr. Ransford's wards?
If it had, then all the more reason why he should solve it. For Bryce had made up his mind that, by hook or by crook, he would marry Mary Bewery, and he was only too eager to lay hands on anything that would help him to achieve that ambition. If he could only get Ransford into his power--if he could get Mary Bewery herself into his power--well and good. Once he had got her, he would be good enough to her--in his way.
Having nothing to do, Bryce went out after a while and strolled round to the Wrychester Club--an exclusive inst.i.tution, the members of which were drawn from the leisured, the professional, the clerical, and the military circles of the old city. And there, as he expected, he found small groups discussing the morning's tragedy, and he joined one of them, in which was Sackville Bonham, his presumptive rival, who was busily telling three or four other young men what his stepfather, Mr.
Folliot, had to say about the event.
”My stepfather says--and I tell you he saw the man,” said Sackville, who was noted in Wrychester circles as a loquacious and forward youth; ”he says that whatever happened must have happened as soon as ever the old chap got up into that clerestory gallery. Look here!--it's like this.
My stepfather had gone in there for the morning service--strict old church-goer he is, you know--and he saw this stranger going up the stairway. He's positive, Mr. Folliot, that it was then five minutes to ten. Now, then, I ask you--isn't he right, my stepfather, when he says that it must have happened at once--immediately?
”Because that man, Varner, the mason, says he saw the man fall before ten. What?”
One of the group nodded at Bryce.
”I should think Bryce knows what time it happened as well as anybody,”