The Gloucestershire Mystery (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 24) Read online

  “Perhaps he has the good reason to cover his ears,” went on the detective, with a cheerful voice, which somehow seemed rather flippant under the circumstances. “It is understandable that it is nicer to cover them with hair than with the hat. But if he wants to use the hair, why does he not make it look like the real hair? There was never the hair of that color in the world. Why does he not conceal the curse of the family better, if he is really so ashamed of it? Is it because he is proud of it, Monsieur?”

  “It’s an ugly wig to be proud of and an ugly story,” I said.

  “Bien sur,” replied this curious little man, “but would you not feel in the little way proud that the genuine old family curse, it is rather the good thing to have? Does it not give the color to the dreary colorless existence of today?”

  “By Jove!” I cried. “That’s true enough. My uncle was a bank robber, and, now I come to think of it, it gave me many stories to tell my schoolmates growing up.”

  “And think,” the little man went on, “of the stream of blood and poison that came from his mouth the moment you so much as mentioned his family. Why should he tell to every stranger such horrors unless he is proud of it? He does not hide his wig. He does not conceal his family curse, but ascribes the magic to it. He does not conceal the family crimes but… ”

  The little man’s voice changed so suddenly, he put down his fork and knife so abruptly, and his eyes so rapidly grew rounder and brighter like a waking owl’s, that it had all the impact of a summer storm.

  “But,” he ended, “he does at all cost conceal the toilet.”

  It somehow completed the thrill of my eager nerves that at that moment the lord appeared again silently among the tables and the patrons, with his grey suit and black-blue hair, in the company of the old war horse. Before he came within earshot, Poiret added quite composedly, “Why does he wear the purple wig? There must be the unknown secret hidden behind the known secret.”

  The lord resumed his seat at the table with all his dignity. The embarrassed historian hovered on his hind legs, like a huge bear. The lord addressed the detective with great seriousness. “Mr. Poiret,” he said, “Sergeant McDonald informs me that you have come here in your role as a private detective. For the sake of my family name, and for the sake of our previous good humored conversation, I am very willing to hear you. But I presume you would rather be heard in private.”

  He looked at me. Whatever I retain of the gentleman made me stand up to leave. Whatever I have attained of the journalist made me remain seated and open my ears. This paralysis was resolved by the detective.

  “If,” he said, “Monsieur, you will permit to Poiret the request, he would urge that as many men as possible should be present.”

  “For what?” asked the lord, arching his eyebrows.

  “Monsieur, please to take off your wig,” said Poiret.

  The lord’s face did not move, but he looked at the little man with a glassy stare which was the most awful expression I have ever seen on a human face. I could see the historian’s great legs wavering under him like a huge tree about to fall, and I could not banish from my own brain the idea that everyone around us was now listening in silence to our conversation.

  “I refuse,” said the lord in a voice of pity. “I refuse to hurt you. If I remove the wig and you witness the horror I and I alone have to bear, you would lie shrieking at my feet and beg me to spare you more. I will spare you your doom.”

  “The doom of Poiret, Monsieur, it will not be,” said the little detective, with an unconscious grandeur of certitude that stood up like a granite tower. “The truth, Monsieur, it is never unbearable. Please to take off your wig.”

  I was leaning over the table in mounting excitement, in listening to this extraordinary duel. “Your Lordship,” I cried, “I call your bluff. Take off that wig or I’ll knock it off.”

  I suppose I can be prosecuted for assault, but I’m glad I did it. When he said, in the same voice of stone, “I refuse,” I simply sprang on him. For a moment he struggled against me as if he had the deuce to help him, but I pulled his hair until the wig fell off. I admit that I shut my eyes as it fell as I for a moment was dazzled by the old wives’ tale of gloom and doom.

  I was awakened by a cry from Sergeant McDonald, who was looking at the bald head of the wigless lord. Then he exclaimed, “What can it mean? Why, the man has nothing to hide. His ears are just like everybody else’s.”

  “Oui,” said Poiret, “but that is not what he has to hide.”

  The detective walked up to the lord, but strangely enough did not even glance at his ears. He stared with an almost comical seriousness at his bald forehead, and pointed to a series of scars, long healed, but still discernible.

  “Monsieur Heffer,” he said politely, “you did get the whole estate after all, after you strangled your wife.”

  And now let me tell you what I think the most remarkable thing is in the whole affair. This man used the old feudal fables to hide the truth from his servants, the only witnesses to his crime. They trembled before this mysterious chieftain with an ancient bloodline of evil stars and name when they are really trembling before a murderer who killed his wife in front of one of them and buried her at night when they were in their rooms where he had ordered them to be. He lived this lie for twelve years. I think it very typical of the real case against our aristocracy as it is, and this cycle of superstition will only be broken when newspapers like ours shine the light of truth and justice on the darker corners of our ignorant nation.”

  Mr. Kiffin put down the letter and called out with unusual sharpness, “Miss Lyon, please take down a letter to Mr. Pickston. Are you ready?”

  She put her cup of tea down and nodded.

  “Dear Pickston, you must be mad. We can’t touch this, unless he’s arrested. I wanted ghost stories and the bad old days of the aristocracy. Readers like to be frightened. You must know Lord Stroud would sue us for libel and win! It would also ruin his cousin, who’s standing at Cheltenham and he falls on our side, politically speaking. Besides, the grey lady would sack me by phone, if I printed lunacy like this. Do be reasonable, old boy. Force the old man to sue that French detective or have the family of the wife sue the lord or talk the police into an official investigation. Do what needs to be done to give us immunity to write about the murder or come home. Yours, S. Kiffin.”

  As Miss Lyon rattled away cheerfully, he crumpled up his reporter’s dispatch and tossed it into the bin.

  The End

  Jules Poiret Mystery Series

  Murder on the Liverpool Express

  The Murder of Lady Malvern

  Look into my Eyes

  Blackpool

  Torn between Lovers

  Mistaken Identity