The chronicles of Michael Danevitch of the Russian Secret Service

I was in Liverpool, engaged on a rather delicate matter, when I received a telegram from the chief of the police in Edinburgh, telling me to return by the next train. I wasn’t at all pleased by this recall, for it was wretched weather, and the prospect of a night journey to the North was far from agreeable.

The date was January 3. During the whole of New Year’s Eve there had been a violent storm, which seems to have been general all over the country. The result was a breakdown of telegraph-wires and serious interruption to traffic.

The telegram sent to me was five hours on the road; and as the ‘next train’ meant the night mail, I had no alternative but to bundle my traps together and start.

When we reached Carlisle a thaw had set in, and on arriving at Edinburgh I thought I had never seen Auld Reekie look so glum and dour. The streets were ankle-deep in slush.

Snow was slipping from the roofs everywhere in avalanches, necessitating considerable wariness on the part of pedestrians.

Horses panted, groaned, and steamed as they toiled with their loads through the filthy snow, and overhead the sky hung like a dun pall.

On reaching the head office, I was at once instructed to proceed to Corbie Hall to investigate a case of murder, and endeavour to trace the whereabouts of one Raymond Balfour, who, according to the statement of a Captain Jasper Jarvis, corroborated by James Macfarlane, medical student at the Edinburgh College, had mysteriously disappeared soon after midnight on January 1. The remarkably sudden and unaccountable death of Maggie Stiven necessitated a legal inquiry, and Dr. Wallace Bruce was sent to examine the body and report on the cause of death.

On removing the clothes, he noticed that the linen that had been next to the chest was slightly blood-stained, and an examination revealed a very small blue puncture, slightly to the left of the sternum, and immediately over the heart.

On probing this puncture with his finger, he felt something hard. He therefore proceeded to open the chest, assisted by a colleague, Dr. James Simpson, the well-known Edinburgh surgeon. To their astonishment, they found the puncture was due to a thrust from a very fine stiletto, which had pierced the heart on the left side. The stiletto had broken off, and four inches of the steel remained in the wound. This, acting as a plug, had prevented outward bleeding to any extent, but there had been extensive internal hæmorrhage. There was nothing else to account for death.

The girl was exceedingly well developed, well nourished, and without any sign or trace of organic disease. As she could not have driven the stiletto into her chest in such a way herself, it was obviously a case of murder.

When I reached Corbie Hall, the country round about was still white with snow, and Blackford Hill was like a miniature Alp, although the thaw was making its influence felt.

The Hall was a curious, rambling sort of place, with every appearance of age. It was a stone building, flanked by a small turreted tower at each end. It stood in about an acre of ground that was partly walled and partly fenced round. Two cast-iron gates of good design, hung on pillars, each surmounted by a carved greyhound, admitted to a carriage-drive that swept in a semicircle to the main entrance.

Passing through the doorway—the door itself was a massive structure—I found myself in a large square, paved hall, and immediately in front a broad flight of oak stairs led up to the first landing, where there was a very fine stained-glass window.

On the left was a long dining-room, which communicated by means of folding doors with another room of almost equal dimensions.

On the opposite side of the passage, and close to the foot of the stairs, was the door of the drawing-room, which was a counterpart almost of the dining-room.

Between the banisters of the stairs and the partition wall of the dining-room, the passage was continued to a door that gave access to a passage communicating with the kitchen and back premises.

The recess underneath the stairs was used for hanging up coats, hats, and other things. From the second landing the stairs struck off at an acute angle, and rose to the second story, where there were at least a dozen rooms, large and small.

Under the guidance of Chunda, the black servant, who seemed very ill and much depressed, I made a thorough inspection of the house. As he could not speak English, we had to communicate in signs, which was rather awkward. In addition to this Indian, Mr. Balfour had kept a cook and a small girl to help her, also a housemaid. Besides these, he employed a groom and a coachman. The coachman lived over the stables at the back with his wife and daughter, a girl of eighteen, and she and her mother both assisted in the house when necessary. The groom had a room to himself above the coach-house.

I questioned each of these servants individually and apart from the others as to whether they had heard the scream alluded to by Captain Jarvis. The three women living in the house said that they heard it, but those who lived over the stables did not. The ones who heard it slept in the right-hand tower. They did not retire until after the New Year had come in. Although the master had given them some hot drink, they were quite sober when they went upstairs.

As they were in the habit of doing every night, they extinguished the hall lamp and a lamp that stood on the bracket at the top of the stairs, thus leaving that part of the house in darkness. They did not attach any importance to the scream, as they thought it was some of the visitors larking, for they had all been very frisky during the evening.

The cook, however—her name was Mary Kenway—opened her door, which commanded in perspective a full view of the corridor leading to the top of the stairs, and she saw, or thought she saw, a shadowy figure standing in this corridor near the top of the stairs. Feeling a bit nervous, she shut the door hurriedly, and said to her fellow-servants, who shared the room with her:

‘One of those fools is playing at ghosts or something. Well, when the wine’s in, the wit’s out.’

She and her companions then got into bed, and some time afterwards were startled by a loud knocking at their door. The cook hurriedly procured a light, and on asking who was there, and being informed it was Captain Jarvis, and that he was searching for the master, who had disappeared, she slipped on her clothes and opened the door.

The temporary servants, of whom there were three, were sleeping in a room above her. They had indulged somewhat too freely, and it was a considerable time before they could be made to understand that something dreadful had happened.

With these details, and the statement of Captain Jarvis, I felt I was in a position to begin my researches.

If Captain Jarvis’s statement was true, and there wasn’t the slightest reason to doubt it, for it was in the main corroborated by Robert Thomson and others, the whole affair was shrouded in considerable mystery. Indeed, I think it was one of the strangest cases I ever had to do with. Maggie Stiven had been foully done to death by some subtle, deft, and treacherous assassin. She had been struck with great force, and the breaking of the weapon showed the fury with which her murderer had done his damnable work.

The skipper’s statement that when he opened the dining-room door he heard a sigh and sort of groan was compatible with the nature of the wound, for though the heart was injured, the fact of the piece of steel remaining in the wound would prevent a sudden emptying of the heart, and she might have lived after being struck five to ten minutes. The shadowy figure which Jarvis said he saw ‘gliding’ up the stairs was no doubt the assassin, although Jarvis—his imagination having been fired—thought it a supernatural appearance.

The cook also spoke of ‘a shadowy figure,’ and thought that some of the guests were ‘playing at ghosts.’ This independent testimony suggested that there was something curious and out of the common about the figure, and I was led to infer that the person who had done the deed was small, light of foot, and agile of movement. When he struck Maggie down he had probably been lurking in the drawing-room, the door of which, as I have already described, was just at the foot of the stairs, or he may have been concealed in the recess under the stairs. Whichever way it was, the girl had not mounted the stairs, and must have been stabbed the moment she reached the mat where the body was found, and before she had time to get her feet on the stairs to go up.

Now came the question, Why was she killed? Her going in search of Raymond Balfour was quite unpremeditated, and the assassin could hardly have known that she was coming out of the room.

Why, then, did he kill her? On the face of it, it seemed to be an unprovoked and brutal crime without any reason. But a little pondering, and a careful weighing of all the pros and cons, led me to the conclusion that the deed was not as purposeless as it seemed. If it was the result of madness, there was certainly method in the madness.

Some people expressed the opinion that Balfour himself had murdered the girl, but that opinion would not hold water.

Firstly, he himself was induced to leave the room by a scream or cry that was described as ‘uncanny.’ Did he arrange for that cry to be uttered in order that he might have an excuse for going out, knowing that the girl would follow him?

Secondly, if he was the slayer, why did he choose to kill the girl in his own house? for very little reflection must have shown him that to escape detection would be an impossibility.

No. It was only too evident that he did not kill Maggie Stiven, and his extraordinary disappearance led me to believe that he also had fallen a victim to the assassin. But if that was so, where was his body? It was, of course, of the highest importance that he should be discovered, dead or alive.

I caused a search to be made of the house from top to bottom. There wasn’t a room missed, not a cupboard overlooked, not a recess but what was scrutinized. Every box or trunk large enough to contain a man’s body was opened without result.

Every hole and corner, every chimney, every likely and unlikely place, was examined, but not a trace, not a sign, of the missing man was brought to light.

His bedroom was the largest and most important room in the house. It was panelled with dark oak panelling. The ceiling was carved wood, and there was a very large carved oak mantelpiece, which was considered a work of art. Two lattice-paned windows were in keeping with the place, which had also been furnished with a view to its character.

A massive four-post bedstead occupied one corner, and near it was an unusually large clothes-press of oak. This press was spacious enough to have held the bodies of three or four men, but Balfour’s body was not there.

From this room a small door gave access to a short, narrow passage, leading to another door at the foot of a stone staircase of about twenty steps, by which the top of the tower at that end of the building was gained. From the roof of the tower a very beautiful view was obtained. I need scarcely say I critically examined the doors, the passage, the stairs, the tower itself.

The locks of both doors were very rusty, and it was evident they had not been opened for some time. In the one at the foot of the tower stairs there was no key, and it was only after considerable search that one was found to fit it. And even then the lock could not be turned until it had been well oiled.

The dust on the stone stairs was the accumulation of months, and bore not the faintest trace of footprints. It was obvious that no one had passed that way for a very long time.

Having thus exhausted the interior of the building, I now proceeded to search outside.

Skipper Jarvis declared that, when he and Bob Thomson went through the house on the night of the tragedy, they looked to every door and window, but all were properly secured, and unless Balfour had squeezed himself through a keyhole or a cranny, he could not have left the building. Nevertheless, it seemed to me that the man must have got out in some way; otherwise, if he were dead, how was it we had failed to find his body in the house? So thorough had been the search that a dead mouse could not have escaped me.

There was still a great deal of snow on the ground, especially in the hollows and ravines; but it was soft and slushy owing to the rise in temperature.

Aided by half a dozen men—mostly gamekeepers—and several dogs, we commenced systematically to examine the grounds, the country round about, the burns, the woods, but all to no purpose. Every inch of Braid Glen was gone over; what is now the Waverley curling pond was dragged; the Jordan and Braid streams examined; all the quarries in the neighbourhood—of which there are many—were looked into; the Braid Hill and all round about the Braid Hill was paced; but the result was the same. Raymond Balfour was not found.

When our failure became known, the excitement increased greatly, especially amongst ignorant and stupid people, who stoutly maintained that the master of Corbie Hall had been spirited away by the Evil One, who had also killed Maggie Stiven. These good folks failed to explain why the Evil One should have stabbed Maggie with a stiletto, and have left more than half the blade in the wound, when he might have deprived her of life so much more easily. I found that even Captain Jarvis was not without some belief in this absurd theory.

‘If there is not something uncanny about the whole business, how is it you have failed to get trace of the man?’ asked Jarvis, with the air of one who felt he was putting a poser which was absolutely unanswerable. ‘You see,’ pursued the skipper, with an insistency of tone that was very amusing—‘you see, we were a bad lot. We’d just come there for an orgie, and the meat and drink that we wasted would have kept many poor wretches from starving on that awful night.’

‘Do you consider that Raymond Balfour was an exceptionally wicked man?’ I asked Jarvis.

‘Well, no,’ he answered seriously; ‘I shouldn’t like to say that. But he was a wild fellow.’

‘What do you mean by wild?’

‘Well, he was a little too fond of liquor and the ladies.’

‘Have you known him long?’

‘Yes, several years. I first met him in Madras. I saw a good deal of him later in Calcutta. He was a very wild boy then, I can tell you.’

‘But still no worse than tens of thousands of other people?’ I suggested.

‘Oh no; I don’t say he was,’ Jarvis answered quickly, and in a way that suggested he was anxious his friend should not be painted too black.

‘Now, I want you to tell me this, Captain Jarvis,’ I said somewhat solemnly, as I wished to impress him with the importance of the question: ‘was there any love-making between Raymond Balfour and Maggie Stiven?’

The skipper did not answer immediately. He seemed to be revolving the matter in his mind. Then, with a thoughtful stroking of his chin, he replied:

‘Balfour was fond of Maggie.’

‘Did he allow that fondness to display itself before others?’

‘When he was a bit gone in his cups he did,’ answered the captain, with obvious reluctance.

‘And was she fond of him?’

‘Yes—I think so’—the same reluctance showing itself.

‘Did she show her partiality?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Maggie wasn’t considered to be very stanch to anyone, was she?’

‘Well, she’d a good many admirers. She was an awful good-looking lass, you see. And lads will always run after a pretty girl.’

‘That scarcely answers my question, captain,’ I said. ‘I want to know if she openly—that is, before others—showed that she liked Balfour better than any other body?’

‘You see, Mr. Brodie, I’m not altogether competent to answer that,’ said the skipper, as though he was anxious to shirk the question.

‘But did she do so on the New Year’s Eve, when you were all so jovial?’

‘Yes.’

‘How did she display her liking?’

‘She sat on his knee several times. She kissed him, and he kissed her.’

‘That was before the company?’

‘It was.’

‘Did he make any remark, or did she? I mean, any remark calculated to engender a belief that this spooning was serious, and not a mere flirtation, the result of a spree?’

‘Well—I—I heard him say two or three times, “Mag, old girl, I’m going to marry you.”’

‘He had been drinking then, I suppose?’

‘He had, a good deal.’

‘And what did she reply?’

‘As near as I mind, she said, “All right, old man. We are just suited to each other, and we’ll make a match of it.”’

‘I must now ask you one or two other questions, captain. There were several men present, were there not?’

‘There were.’

‘They were all young men?’

‘Yes.’

‘And belonged to Edinburgh or its immediate neighbourhood?’

‘They did.’

‘Consequently they were all more or less well acquainted with Maggie?’

‘Yes. I don’t think there was a man there who didn’t ken her. You see, in her way she was a kind of celebrity in Edinburgh. Certain folk said hard things about her, and that made her mad sometimes, so that she took a delight in just showing how she could lead the lads by the nose.’

‘Now, I want you to give me an answer to this question, captain. Is it within your knowledge that out of her many admirers there was one who had been emboldened by her to think that he had the best claim upon her?’

‘I couldn’t say for certain; but it’s likely enough.’

‘Has it occurred to you to ask yourself if that favoured one was among Raymond Balfour’s guests on New Year’s Eve?’

The question seemed to startle Captain Jarvis. He looked at me searchingly and inquiringly, and it was some moments before he spoke, while his expression gave every indication that he fully understood the drift of my inquiry. At last he replied, hesitatingly and cautiously:

‘You see, Mr. Brodie, I wasn’t the keeper of Maggie’s conscience. She didn’t make me her confidant. Nor was I one of her favoured suitors. I’m an old married man, and she preferred young fellows.’

‘You’ve avoided my question now,’ I remarked, a little sharply, as it seemed to me he was prevaricating.

‘I’m trying to think,’ he said, with a preoccupied air. Then, after a pause, he added: ‘I can’t answer you, because I don’t know. What your question suggests is that some chap who was madly jealous of her murdered her.’

‘You are correct in your surmise,’ I answered.

‘Then, all I’ve got to say is this: It was impossible for anyone to have left the room and committed the crime without my being aware of it. I say again, it would have been impossible. She couldn’t have been out of the room two minutes before she was struck. You see, she had even been unable to get up the stair. Her going out was quite unpremeditated; and until she jumped up from her seat, and said she would go and look for Balfour, nobody knew she was going out of the room. No, Mr. Brodie, I’m convinced that no man of that company did the deed.’

I had every reason to think that Captain Jarvis was perfectly right in his conclusions. The logic of his argument was unanswerable. I had already taken means to ascertain some particulars about every person who had been present on the fateful night, including the extra servants; and I saw nothing and heard nothing calculated in any way to justify a suspicion being entertained against any particular individual. Nevertheless, I had them under surveillance.

What I had to deal with was the broad, plain, hard fact that Maggie Stiven had been brutally and suddenly murdered, while Raymond Balfour had disappeared as effectually as if the earth had suddenly opened and swallowed him, leaving not a trace behind. If he went forth from the house after quitting his guests, where had he gone to?

The state of the country, owing to the snow, made it physically impossible that he could have travelled far on that awful night; and had he perished in the snow near the house, his body must have been discovered, so thorough had been our search.

Then, again, assuming that he had got away, there would surely have been some indication of his mode of exit—an unfastened window, an unlocked door. But the most exhaustive inquiry satisfied me there was neither one nor the other.

But if Balfour was not out of the house, he must be in the house; and if he was in the house, it was as a dead man. And where was his body?

It seemed unreasonable to suppose that a human body could be disposed of so quickly and so effectually as to leave not a trace behind.

Then, again, granting that he was murdered, who murdered him, and why was he murdered? Who raised the unearthly cry, and was it raised purposely to draw him from the room in order that he might be immediately struck down?

Such was the problem with which I was confronted, and I freely confess that at this stage I felt absolutely baffled. I saw no clue, and nothing likely to lead me to a clue; but though baffled, I was not beaten. The mystery was profound, and the whole case so strange, so startling, that I was not surprised at ignorant people attributing it to supernatural agency. It had about it all the elements of some wild, weird story of monkish superstition, lifted from the pages of a mediæval romance. It was no romance, however, no legend, but a hard, dry fact of the nineteenth century that had to be accounted for by perfectly human means.

There was one point, however, which made itself clear through the darkness. It was that the author of the deed was a person of such devilish cunning, such brutal ferocity, such crafty ingenuity, that he would occupy a niche all to himself for evermore in the gallery of criminals.

As I have already said, though I was baffled, I was not beaten, and I felt sure I should ultimately succeed in the task set me. I had in my possession the broken blade of the stiletto, and I knew that might prove of value as a clue; and having done all that it was practical to do for the moment, I set to work to define a motive for the crime, and to construct a theory that would aid me in my efforts to solve the problem.