As she made her signalling movement towards Blick, Daffy retreated a pace or two within the thick shrubbery, and the expression in her eyes indicated a desire for secrecy and caution. Blick, in his turn, signed to his companion to follow him, and whispered an aside as they left the road and passed through the wicket-gate. “This is one of the women I told you of,” he murmured. “Mrs. Tretheroe’s maid—Daphne Halliwell, sister of the girl Myra Halliwell, who married Guy Markenmore. She’s therefore aunt to the new baronet!—and as deep as they make ’em. Come with me—I’ll let her think you’re an assistant of mine.”
“Excellent!” said the Professor. “An adventure! By all means, my dear fellow! The lady looks as if she had something to impart.”
“I shouldn’t wonder!” answered Blick. “As I say—she’s deep.”
Daffy had retreated further up the walk between the laurel and holly bushes; she now stood awaiting their approach, and as they drew near, she looked closely at the Professor, and especially at his fashionable attire. Her eyes glanced a question at Blick.
“All right!” whispered Blick. “Professional friend of mine. What is it?”
“I want to speak to you,” said Daffy. She looked round at their surroundings and then at a narrower path which opened close by. “Come along here,” she went on. “There’s an old summer-house down there that’s never used—we shall be safe there.”
The two men followed Daffy’s trim figure through a maze of shrubs until they came to a rustic arbour set in the midst of high trees. Entering this, a dilapidated and mouldy place, she turned and confronted Blick with another side-glance at the Professor.
“I wanted to speak to you, Mr. Blick,” she said, in low tones. “I’d been waiting there at the gate some little time, thinking I might see you coming out of the Sceptre. My mistress has driven into Selcaster, so I shan’t be wanted, and nobody’s likely to come here, so we’re safe enough for a bit of talk. Look here! there’s a reward out, isn’t there?”
“One hundred pounds,” assented Blick, watching her narrowly.
Daffy made a grimace.
“Oh, well!” she said. “It’s a miserable amount, but I don’t want it, and I don’t know anything that would enable me to get it. But—now, this is between ourselves, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely!” declared Blick. “Strictly so. Tell us anything you like—and can.”
“Well, I know of somebody who, I believe, has made a pretty good guess at the truth about Guy Markenmore,” answered Daffy. “And he’s a man who’d be glad of a hundred pounds, for he wants to emigrate.”
“What man?” asked Dick.
Daffy lowered the tones of her voice.
“Jim Roper!” she whispered. “You’ve heard of him?”
“Yes,” replied Blick. He was already wondering how much of whatever was coming was to be relied on; as far as he had seen into her character, Daffy did not seem the sort of woman to tell anything that would not benefit herself. But she might have reasons for benefiting Jim Roper which was not yet apparent. “Yes,” he repeated, “I’ve heard of Jim Roper. He’s the man who wanted to marry your sister, Myra, isn’t he—the sister who ran away with and married Guy Markenmore?”
“That’s just it,” assented Daffy. “It’s because he was about to marry Myra when she threw him clean over and went off with Guy Markenmore that Roper hasn’t spoken. But a hundred pounds might induce him to speak!”
“What do you mean, exactly, about it’s because of that?” asked Blick. “And what is it that he hasn’t spoken of?”
“Well,” replied Daffy, with a glance that took in both men, “it’s like this—Roper is, and always was, what you’d call a dark-tempered man. The sort that never forgets nor forgives. He’d always meant to marry Myra, and she’d promised him, too. In fact, they were just about to have the banns published when she suddenly ran away with Guy. And, of course, nobody—not even me, her own sister!—ever knew what had become of her until recently, when all this business came out about their having got married. Roper, when she first went off, went many a time to London to look for her. He never got a trace of her, of course, but he always swore that it was Guy Markenmore who’d enticed her away. And he swore something else, too—that if ever he chanced across Guy Markenmore he’d kill him, if he swung for it there and then. He meant it, too! That was about the last thing he said to me just before I went to India, with Mrs. Tretheroe, and it was the first thing I heard him say when I came back here, seven years later.”
“Still meaning to do it, eh?—after seven years?” said Blick.
“I believe he’d have done it if he’d met Guy Markenmore after seventeen years!” replied Daffy. “He’s that sort! I could see he’d got worse with brooding over it. It was the one thing on his mind. Why, it’s only a fortnight ago that I met him hereabouts one day, and happened to mention that old Sir Anthony was on his last legs, and that I’d wondered if Guy would come back and be master, and he scowled and said that if Guy ever came back it would only be to get a knife through him! And I’ll tell you, since it is between ourselves, that when I heard that Guy had been murdered, I fully believed that Roper had met him that morning and done for him—I really did!”
“And you don’t believe it now?” suggested Blick.
“No!” asserted Daffy. “But I believe Roper has a very good idea as to who did murder him. In fact, he may have more than an idea—he may know. And I tell you that he may be inclined to tell you for a hundred pounds, for now that he knows Myra is dead, he wants to leave here and go abroad.”
“What makes you think that Roper knows something?” enquired Blick. “Let’s have it straight out, now! Has he said anything to you?”
“Yes!” replied Daffy. “I met him a night or two ago, when he’d come down to the village to do his shopping. We got talking by that gate where you met me just now, and, of course, it was all about the murder. I asked him straight out if he’d had anything to do with it? He said no, worse luck, he hadn’t! And then he said more. ‘I could tell something about it,’ he said, ‘but I ain’t going to, for the thing’s done, now. I ain’t going to help the police,’ he went on. ‘Let ’em do their own work.’ That was all—he went off, then.”
“Giving you no more idea than just that?” asked Blick.
“He said nothing but that,” replied Daffy. “But I’m sure he knows something. Only, if you begin questioning him, for God’s sake don’t let him know I told you!”
“I can get over that, easily, if you’ll just tell me this,” said Blick reassuringly. “Did Roper make threats against Guy Markenmore in anybody’s presence beside your own?—in the old days, I mean?”
“Oh, he certainly did in the old days!—before I went to India,” asserted Daffy. “I’ve heard of him saying dreadful things at the Sceptre. I should think there’s many a man in the village who’s heard him.”
Blick’s memory went back to the first conversation he had overheard at the Sceptre, and to the remarks of certain of the village men as to the feelings of enmity cherished by various unnamed persons of the neighbourhood against Guy Markenmore.
“All right,” he said. “Your name shan’t come in. I’ve heard something of Roper’s threats and feelings elsewhere. But now, where does Roper live?”
“All by himself, in a cottage amongst the woods on the other side of the Downs, behind Markenmore Hollow,” replied Daffy. “He keeps himself to himself up there—never comes down this way, except once a week to buy his groceries and meat.”
“What sort of man is he?” asked Blick.
“He used to be as nice a lad as there was anywhere about, till Myra ran away,” answered Daffy. “But that soured him. He’s a black, gloomy, quiet man, now—scarcely speaks, and never smiles. I don’t know if you’ll get anything out of him or not, but I’m perfectly certain he either knows something or has guessed at something.”
“You’re quite sure, in your own mind, that Roper himself is innocent?” suggested Blick, looking searchingly at her.
Daffy Halliwell glanced at both men and uttered a queer laugh.
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “I’m certain of that!”
“Why, now?” asked the Professor, speaking for the first time since the beginning of the conversation. “Why are you certain?”
Daffy turned her regard more particularly to the second questioner. After looking carefully at him for a full minute, she spoke.
“You look as if you’d understand—whoever you are,” she said suddenly. “And that you’re a policeman—plain-clothes or otherwise—I don’t believe! I’m certain Jim Roper didn’t kill Guy Markenmore, because if he had he’s just the man to have let it be known that he’d had his revenge! He wouldn’t have cared twopence if they’d hanged him next day!”
Blick ............