"And upon the top of all that excitement and that gossip, and marvellous tales akin to the Arabian Nights, came the wedding-day with its awful culminating tragedy.
"The Russian Prince had been murdered and his body so cleverly disposed of that in spite of the most strenuous efforts on the part of the police, not a trace of it could be found.
"That robbery had been the main motive of the crime was quickly enough established. The Smithsons—mother and daughter—had at once supplied the detective in charge of the case with proofs as to that.
"It seems that as soon as the unfortunate Prince had become engaged to Louisa, he asked that the marriage should take place without delay. He explained that his dearest friend, Mr. Schumann, the great international financier, had offered him shares in one of the greatest post-war undertakings which had ever been floated in Europe, and which would bring in to the fortunate shareholders a net income of not less than ten thousand pounds yearly for every ten thousand pounds invested; Mr. Schumann himself owned one-half of all the shares, and had, by a most wonderful act of disinterested generosity, allowed his bosom friend, Prince Orsoff, to have a few—a concession, by the way, which he had only granted to two other favoured personages, one being the Prince of Wales and the other the President of the French Republic. Of course to receive ten thousand pounds yearly for every ten thousand pounds invested, was too wonderful for words; the President of the French Republic had been so delighted with this chance of securing a fortune that he had put two million francs into the concern, and the Prince of Wales had put in five hundred thousand pounds.
"And it was so wonderfully secure, as otherwise the British Government would not have allowed the Prince of Wales to invest such a sum of money if the business was only speculative. Security and fortune beyond the dreams of thrift! It was positively dazzling.
"No wonder that this vision of untold riches made poor Mrs. Smithson's mouth water, the more so as she was quite shrewd enough to realise that, at the rate she was going, her share in the fifteen thousand pounds left by the late worthy grocer would soon fade into nothingness. In the past few months she and Louisa had spent considerably over four thousand pounds between them, and once her daughter was married to a quasi-royal personage, good old Mrs. Smithson did not see herself retiring into comparative obscurity on a few hundreds a year to be jeered at by all her friends.
"So she and Louisa talked the matter over together, and then they talked it over with Prince Orsoff on the occasion of his visit about ten days before the wedding. The Prince at first was very doubtful if the great Mr. Schumann would be willing to make a further sacrifice in the cause of friendship. He was an international financier accustomed to deal in millions; he would not look favourably—the Prince feared—at a few thousands. Mrs. Smithson's entire fortune now only consisted of about five thousand pounds; this she was unwilling to admit to the wealthy and aristocratic future son-in-law. So the two ladies decided to pool their capital and then they begged that Prince Orsoff should ask the great Mr. Schumann whether he would condescend to receive ten thousand pounds for investment in Mrs. Smithson's name in his great undertaking.
"Fortunately the great financier did condescend to do this—he really was more a philanthropist than a business man—but, of course, he could not be kept waiting, the money must reach him in Paris not later than May twentieth, which was the very day fixed for the wedding.
"It was all terribly difficult; and Mrs. Smithson was at first in despair as she feared she could not arrange to sell out her securities in time, and the difficulties were increased an hundredfold because, as Prince Orsoff explained to her, Mr. Schumann would even at the eleventh hour refuse to allow her to participate in the huge fortune if he found that she had talked about the affair over in England. The business had to be kept a profound secret for international reasons, in fact, if any detail relating to the business and to Mr. Schumann's participation in it were to become known, the whole of Europe would once more be plunged into war.
"To make a long story short, Mrs. Smithson and Louisa sold out all their securities, amounting between them to ten thousand pounds. Then they went up to London, drew the money out of their bank, changed it themselves into French money—so as to make it more convenient for Mr. Schumann—and handed the entire sum over to Prince Orsoff on the eve of the wedding.
"Of course such fatuous imbecility would be unbelievable if it did not occur so frequently: vain, silly women, who have never moved outside their own restricted circle, are always the ready prey of plausible rascals.
"Anyway, in this case the Smithsons returned to Folkestone that day, perfectly happy and with never a thought of anything but contentment for the present and prosperity in the future. The wedding was to be the next day; the bridegroom-elect was coming down by the midday train with his best man, whom he vaguely described as secretary to the Russian Embassy, and the bridal pair would start for Paris by the afternoon boat.
"All this the Smithsons related to the police inspector in charge of the case and subsequently to the Scotland Yard detective, with a wealth of detail and a profusion of lamentations not unmixed with expletives directed against the unknown assassin and thief. For indeed there was no doubt in the minds of Louisa and her mother that the unfortunate Prince, on whom the girl still lavished the wealth of her trustful love, had been murdered for the sake of the money which he had upon his person.
"It must have amounted to millions of francs, Mrs. Smithson declared, for he had the Prince of Wales's money upon him also, and probably that of the President of the French Republic, and at first she and Louisa fastened their suspicions upon the anonymous best man, the so-called secretary of the Russian Embassy. Even when they were presently made to realise that there was no such thing as a Russian Embassy in London these days, and that minute enquiries both at home and abroad regarding the identity of a Prince Orsoff led to no result whatever, they repudiated with scorn the suggestion put forth by the police that their beloved Russian Prince was nothing more or less than a clever crook who had led them by the nose, and that in all probability he had not been murdered in the train but had succeeded in jumping out of it and making good his escape across country.
"This the Smithson ladies would not admit for a moment, and with commendable logic they argued that if Prince Orsoff had been a crook and had intended to make away with their money he could have done that easily enough without getting into a train at Victoria and jumping out of it at Sydenham Hill.
"Pressed with questions, however, the ladies were forced to admit that they knew absolutely nothing about Prince Orsoff, they had never been introduced to any of his relations, nor had they met any of his friends. They did not even know where he had been staying in London. He was in the habit of telephoning to Louisa every morning, and any arrangements for his visits down to The Towers or the ladies' trips up to town were made in that manner. As a matter of fact Louisa and her future husband had not met more than a dozen times altogether, on some five or six occasions in Monte Carlo, and not more than six in England. It had been a case of love at first sight.
"The question of Mr. Schumann's vast undertaking was first discussed at The Towers. After that the ladies wrote to their bank to sell out their securities, and subsequently went up to town for a couple of days to draw out their money, change it into French currency, and finally hand it over to Prince Orsoff. On that occasion he had met them at Victoria Station and taken them to a quiet hotel in Kensington, where he had engaged a suite of rooms for them. All financial matters were then settled in their private sitting-room.
"In answer to enquiries at that hotel, one or two of the employees distinctly remembered the foreign-looking gentleman who had called on Mrs. and Miss Smithson, lunched with them in their sitting-room that day, and saw them into their cab when they went away the following afternoon. One or two of the station porters at Victoria also vaguely remembered a man who answered to the description given of Prince Orsoff by the Smithson ladies: tall, with a slight stoop, wearing pince-nez, and with a profusion of dark, curly hair, bushy eyebrows, long, dark moustache, and old-fashioned imperial, which made him distinctly noticeable, he could not very well have passed unperceived.
"Unfortunately, on the actual day of the murder, not one man employed at Victoria Station could swear positively to having seen him, either alone or in the company of another foreigner; and the latter has remained a problematical personage to this day.
"But the Smithson ladies remained firm in their loyalty to their Russian Prince. Had they dared they would openly have accused Henry Carter of the murder; as it was they threw out weird hints and insinuations about Henry who had more than once sworn that he would be even with his hated rival, and who had actually travelled down in the same train as the Prince on that fateful wedding morning, together with his brother John, who no doubt helped him in his nefarious deed. I believe that the unfortunate ladies actually spent some of the money which now they could ill spare in employing a private detective to collect proofs of Henry Carter's guilt.
"But not a tittle of evidence could be brought against him. To begin with, the train in which the murder was supposed to have been committed was a non-stop to Swanley. Then how could the Carters have disposed of the body? The Smithsons suggested a third miscreant as a possible confederate; but the same objection against that theory subsisted in the shape of the disposal of the body. The murder—if murder there was—occurred in broad daylight in a part of the country that certainly was not lonely. It was not possible to suppose that a man would stand waiting on the line close to Sydenham Hill station until a body was flung out to him from the passing train, and then drag that body about until he found a suitable place in which to bury it: and all that without being seen by the workmen on the line or employees on the railway, or in fact any passer-by. Therefore the hypothesis that Henry Carter or his brother murdered the Russian Prince with or without the help of a confederate was as untenable as that the Prince had travelled from Victoria to Sydenham Hill and there jumped out of the train, at risk of being discovered in the act, rather than disappear quietly in London, shave off his luxuriant hair, or assume any other convenient disguise, until he found an opportunity for slipping back to the Continent.
"But the Smithsons remained firm in their belief in the genuineness of their Prince and in their conviction that he had been murdered—if not by the Carters, then by the mysterious secretary to the Russian Embassy or any other Russian or German emissary, for political reasons.
"And thus the public was confronted with the two hypotheses, both of which led to a deadlock. No sensible person doubted that the so-called Russian Prince was a crook, and that he had a confederate to help him in his clever plot, but the mystery remained as to how the rascal or rascals disappeared so completely as to checkmate every investigation. The travelling by train that morning and setting the scene for a supposed murder was, of course, part of the plan, but it was the plan that was so baffling, because to an ordinary mind that disappearance could have been effected so much more easily and with far less risk without the train journey.
"Of course there was not a single passenger on that train who was not the subject of the closest watchfulness on the part of the police, but there was not one—not excluding the Carters—who could by any possible chance have known that the Prince carried a large sum of money upon his person. He was not likely to have confided the fact to a stranger, and the mystery of the vanished body was always there to refute the theory of an ordinary murderous attack for motives of robbery."
§4
The Old Man in the Corner ceased talking, and became once more absorbed in his favourite task of making knots in a bit of string.
"I see in the papers," I now put in thoughtfully, "that Miss Louisa Smithson has overcome her grief for the loss of her aristocratic lover by returning to the plebeian one."
"Yes," the funny creature replied dryly, "she is marrying Henry Carter. Funny, isn't it? But women are queer fish! One moment she looked on the man as a murderer, now, by marrying him, she actually proclaims her belief in his innocence."
"It certainly was abundantly proved," I rejoined, "that Henry Carter could not possibly have murdered Prince Orsoff."
"It was also abundantly proved," he retorted, "that no one else murdered the so-called Prince."
"You think, of course, that he was an ordinary impostor?" I asked.
"An impostor, yes," he replied, "but not an ordinary one. In fact I take off my hat to as clever a pair of scamps as I have ever come across."
"A pair?"
"Why, yes! It could not have been done alone!"
"But the police..."
"The police," the spook-like creature broke in with a sharp cackle, "know more in this case than you give them credit for. They know well enough the solution of the puzzle which appears so baffling to the public, but they have not sufficient proof to effect an arrest. At one time they hoped that the scoundrels would presently make a false move and give themselves away, in which case they could be prosecuted for defrauding the Smithsons of ten thousand pounds, but this eventuality has become complicated through the master-stroke of genius which made Henry Carter marry Louisa Smithson."
"Henry Carter?" I exclaimed. "Then you do think the Carters had something to do with the case?"
"They had everything to do with the case. In fact, they planned the whole thing in a masterly manner."
"But the Russian Prince at Monte Carlo?" I argued. "Who was he? If he was a confederate, where has he disappeared to?"
"He is still engaged in free-lance journalism," the Old Man in the Corner replied drily, "and in his spare moments changes parcels of French currency back into English notes."
"You mean the brother!" I ejaculated with a gasp.
"Of course I mean the brother," he retorted dryly, "who else could have been so efficient a collaborator in the plot? John Carter was comparatively his own master. He lived with Henry in the small house in Chelsea, waited on by a charwoman who came by the day. It was generally given out that his reporting work took him frequently and for lengthened stays out of London. The brothers, remember, had inherited a few hundreds from their father, while the Smithsons had inherited a few thousands. We must suppose that the idea of relieving the ladies of those thousands occurred to them as soon as they realised that Louisa, egged on by her mother, would cold-shoulder her fiancé.
"John Carter, mind you, must be a very clever man, else he could not have carried out all the details of the plot with so much sang-froid. We have been told, if you remember, that he had early in life cut his stick and gone to seek fortune in London, therefore the Smithsons, who had never been out of Folkestone, did not know him intimately. His make-up as the Prince must have been very good, and his histrionic powers not to be despised: his profession and life in London no doubt helped him in these matters. Then, remember also that he took very good care not to be a great deal in the Smithsons' company—even in Monte Carlo he only let them see him less than half a dozen times, and as soon as he came to England he hurried on the wedding as much as he could.
"Another fine stroke was Henry's apparent despair at being cut out of Louisa's affections, and his threats against his successful rival: it helped to draw suspicion on himself—suspicion which the scoundrels took good care could easily be disproved. Then take a pair of vain, credulous, unintelligent women and a smart rascal who knows how to flatter them, and you will see how easily the whole plot could be worked. Finally, when John Carter had obtained possession of the money, he and Henry arranged the supposed tragedy in the train and the Russian Prince's disappearance from the world as suddenly as he had entered it."
I thought the matter over for a moment or two. The solution of the mystery certainly appealed to my dramatic sense.
"But," I said at last, "one wonders why the Carters took the trouble to arrange a scene of a supposed murder in the train: they might quite well have been caught in the act, and in any case it was an additional unnecessary risk. John Carter might quite well have been content to shed his role of Russian Prince, without such an elaborate setting."
"Well," he admitted, "in some ways you are right there, but it is always difficult to gauge accurately the mentality of a clever scoundrel. In this case I don't suppose that the Carters had quite made up their minds about what they would do when they left London, but that the plan was in their heads is proved by the hat, pince-nez, and railway ticket which they took with them when they started, and which, if you remember, were found on the line: but it was probably only because the train was comparatively empty, and they had both time and opportunity in the non-stop train, that they decided to carry their clever comedy through.
"Then think what an immense advantage in their future plans would be the Smithsons' belief in the death of their Prince. Probably Louisa would never have dreamed of marrying if she thought her aristocratic lover was an impostor and still alive: she would never have let the matter rest; her mind would for ever have been busy with trying to trace him, and bring him back, repentant, to her feet. You know what women are when they are in love with that type of scoundrel, they cling to them with the tenacity of a leech. But once she believed the man to be dead, Louisa Smithson gradually got over her grief and Henry Carter wooed and won her on the rebound. She was poor now, and her friends had quickly enough deserted her: she was touched by the fidelity of her simple lover, and he thus consolidated his position and made the future secure.
"Anyway," the Old Man in the Corner concluded, "I believe that it was with a view to making a future marriage possible between Louisa and Henry that the two brothers organised the supposed murder. Probably if the train had been full and they had seen danger in the undertaking they would not have done it. But the mise en scène was easily enough set and it certainly was an additional safeguard. Now in another week or so Louisa Smithson will be Henry Carter's wife, and presently you will find that John in London, and Henry and his wife, will be quite comfortably off. And after that, whatever suspicions Mrs. Smithson may have of the truth, her lips would have to remain sealed. She could not very well prosecute her only child's husband.
"And so the matter will always remain a mystery to the public: but the police know more than they are able to admit because they have no proof.
"And now they never will have. But as to the murder in the train, well!—the murdered man never existed."
V
THE MYSTERIOUS TRAGEDY IN BISHOP'S ROAD
§1
The Old Man in the Corner was in a philosophising mood that afternoon, and all the while that his thin, claw-like fingers fidgeted with the inevitable piece of string, he gave vent to various, disjointed, always sententious remarks.
Suddenly he said:
"We know, of course, that the world has gone dancing mad! But I doubt if the fashionable craze has ever been responsible before for so dark a tragedy as the death of old Sarah Levison. What do you think?"
"Well," I replied guardedly, for I knew that, whatever I might say, I should draw an avalanche of ironical remarks upon my innocent head, "I never have known what to think, and all the accounts of that brutal murder as they appeared in the cheaper Press only made the obscurity all the more obscure."
"That was a wise and well-thought-out reply," the aggravating creature retorted with a dry chuckle, "and a non-committal one at that. Obscurity is indeed obscure for those who won't take the trouble to think."
"I suppose it is all quite clear to you?" I said, with what I meant to be withering sarcasm.
"As clear as the proverbial daylight," he replied undaunted.
"You know how old Mrs. Levison came by her death?"
"Of course I do. I will tell you, if you like."
"By all means. But I am not prepared to be convinced," I added cautiously.
"No," he admitted, "but you soon will be. However, before we reach that happy conclusion, I shall have to marshal the facts before you, because a good many of these must have escaped your attention. Shall I proceed?"
"If you please."
"Well, then, do you remember all the personages in the drama?" he began.
"I think so."
"There were, of course, young Aaron Levison and his wife, Rebecca—the latter young, pretty, fond of pleasure, and above all of dancing, and he, a few years older, but still in the prime of life, more of an athlete than a business man, and yet tied to the shop in which he carried on the trade of pawnbroking for his mother. The latter, an old Jewess, shrewd and dictatorial, was the owner of the business: her son was not even her partner, only a well-paid clerk in her employ, and this fact we must suppose rankled in the mind of her smart daughter-in-law. At any rate, we know that there was no love lost between the two ladies; but the young couple and old Mrs. Levison and another unmarried son lived together in the substantial house over the shop in Bishop's Road.
"They had three servants and we are told that they lived well, old Mrs. Levison bearing the bulk of the cost of housekeeping. The younger son, Reuben, seems to have been something of a bad egg; he held at one time a clerkship in a bank, but was dismissed for insobriety and laziness; then after the war he was supposed to have bad health consequent on exposure in the trenches, and had not done a day's work since he was demobilised. But in spite, or perhaps because, of this, he was very markedly his mother's favourite; where the old woman would stint her hard-working, steady elder son, she would prove generous, even lavish, toward the loafer, Reuben; and young Mrs. Levison and he were thick as thieves.
"What money Reuben extracted out of his mother he would spend on amusements, and his sister-in-law was always ready to accompany him. It was either the cinema or dancing—oh, dancing above all! Rebecca Levison was, it seems, a beautiful dancer, and night after night she and Reuben would go to one or other of the halls or hotels where dancing was going on, and often they would not return until the small hours of the morning.
"Aaron Levison was indulgent and easy-going enough where his young wife was concerned: he thought that she could come to no harm while Reuben was there to look after her. But old Mrs. Levison, with the mistrust of her race for everything that is frivolous and thriftless, thought otherwise. She was convinced in her own mind that her beloved Reuben was being led astray from the path of virtue by his brother's wife, and she appears to have taken every opportunity to impress her thoughts and her fears upon the indulgent husband.
"It seems that one of the chief bones of contention between the old and the young Mrs. Levison was the question of jewellery. Old Mrs. Levison kept charge herself of all the articles of value that were pawned in the shop, and every evening after business hours Aaron would bring up all bits of jewellery that had been brought in during the day, and his mother would lock them up in a safe that stood in her room close by her bedside. The key of the safe she always carried about with her. For the most part these bits of jewellery consisted of cheap rings and brooches, but now and again some impoverished lady or gentleman would bring more valuable articles along for the purpose of raising a temporary loan upon them, and at the time of the tragedy there were some fine diamond ornaments reposing in the safe in old Mrs. Levison's room.
"Now young Mrs. Levison had more than once suggested that she might wear some of this fine jewellery when she went out to balls and parties. She saw no harm in it, and neither, for a matter of that, did Reuben. Why shouldn't Rebecca wear a few ornaments now and again if she wanted to?—they would always be punctually returned, of course, and they could not possibly come to any harm. But the very suggestion of such a thing was anathema to the old lady, and in her flat refusal ever to gratify such a senseless whim she had the whole-hearted support of her eldest son: such a swerving from traditional business integrity was not to be thought of in the Levison household.
"On that memorable Saturday evening young Mrs. Levison was going with her brother-in-law to one of the big charity balls at the Kensington Town Hall, and her great desire was to wear for the occasion a set of diamond stars which had lately been pledged in the shop, and which were locked up in the old lady's safe. Of course, Mrs. Levison refused, and it seems that the two ladies very nearly came to blows about this, the quarrel being all the more violent as Reuben hotly sided with his sister-in-law against his mother."
§2
"That then was the position in the Levison household on the day of the mysterious tragedy," the Old Man in the Corner went on presently; "an armed truce between the two ladies—the lovely Rebecca sore and defiant, pining to gratify a whim which was being denied her, and old Mrs. Levison more bitter than usual against her, owing to Reuben's partisanship. Egged on by Rebecca, he was furious with his mother and vowed that he was sick of the family and meant to cut his stick in order to be free to lead his own life, and so on. It was all tall-talk, of course, as he was entirely dependent on his mother, but it went to show the ugliness of his temper and the domination which his brother's wife exercised over him. Aaron, on the other hand, took no part in the quarrel, but the servants remarked that he was unwontedly morose all day, and that his wife was very curt and disagreeable with him.
"Nothing, however, of any importance occurred during the day until dinner-time, which as usual was served in the parlour at the back of the shop at seven o'clock. It seems that as soon as the family sat down to their meal, there was another violent quarrel on some subject or other between the two ladies, Rebecca being hotly backed up by Reuben, and Aaron taking no part in the discussion; in the midst of the quarrel, and following certain highly offensive words spoken by Reuben, old Mrs. Levison got up abruptly from the table and went upstairs to her own room which was immediately overhead at the back of the house, next to the drawing-room, nor did she come downstairs again that evening.
"At half-past nine the three servants went up to bed according to the rule of the house. Old Mrs. Levison, who was a real autocrat in the management of the household, expected the girls to be down at six every morning, but they were free to go to bed as soon as their work was done, and half-past nine was their usual time.
"Two of the girls slept at the top of the house, and the housemaid, Ida Griggs by name, who also acted as a sort of maid to old Mrs. Levison, occupied a small slip room on the half-landing immediately above the old lady's bedroom. On the floor above this there was a large bedroom at the back, and a bathroom and dressing-room in front, all occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Aaron, and over that the two maids' room, and one for Mr. Reuben, and a small spare room in which Mr. Aaron would sleep now and again when his wife was likely to be out late and he did not want to get his night's rest broken by her home-coming, or if he himself was going to be late home on a holiday night after one of those country excursions on his bicycle of which he was immensely fond and in which he indulged himself from time to time.
"On this fateful Saturday evening Aaron was kept late in the shop, but he finally went up to bed soon after ten, after he had seen to all the doors below being bolted and barred, with the exception of the front door which had to be left on the latch, Mrs. Aaron having the latchkey. Thus the house was shut up and every one in bed by half-past ten.
"In the meanwhile the lovely Rebecca and Reuben had dressed and gone to the ball.
"The next morning at a little before six, Ida Griggs, the housemaid, having got up and dressed, prepared to go downstairs: but when she went to open her bedroom door she found it locked—locked on the outside. At first she thought that the other girls were playing her a silly trick, and, presently hearing the patter of their feet on the stairs, she pounded against the door with her fists. It took the others some time to understand what was amiss, but at last they did try the lock on the outside, and found that the key had been turned and that Ida was indeed locked in.
"They let her out, and then consulted what had best be done, but for the moment it did not seem to strike any of the girls that this locking of a door from the outside had a sinister significance. Anyway, they all went down into the kitchen and Ida prepared old Mrs. Levison's early cup of tea. This she had to take up every morning at half-past six; on this occasion she went up as usual, knocked at her mistress's door, and waited to be let in, as the old lady always slept behind locked doors. But no sound came from within, though Ida knocked repeatedly and loudly called her mistress by name.
"Soon she started screaming, and her screams brought the household together: the two girls came up from the kitchen, Mr. Aaron came down from the top floor brandishing a poker, and presently Mrs. Aaron opened her door and peeped out clad in a filmy and exquisite nightgown, her eyes still heavy with sleep, and her beautiful hair streaming down her back. But of old Mrs. Levison there was no sign.
"Mr. Aaron, genuinely alarmed, glued his ear to the keyhole, but not a sound could he hear. Behind that locked door absolute silence reigned. Fearing the worst, he set himself the task of breaking open the door, which after some effort and the use of a jemmy, he succeeded in doing: and here the sight that met his eyes filled his soul with horror, for he saw his mother lying on the floor of her bedroom in a pool of blood.
"Evidently an awful crime had been committed. The unfortunate woman was fully dressed, as she had been on the evening before; the door of the safe was open with the key still in the lock, but no other piece of furniture appeared to be disturbed; the one window of the room was wide open, and the one door had been locked on the inside; the other door, the one which gave on the front drawing-room, being permanently blocked by a heavy wardrobe; and below the open window the bunch of creepers against the wall was all broken and torn, showing plainly the way that the miscreant had escaped.
"After a few moments of awe-stricken silence Aaron Levison regained control of himself and at once telephoned—first for the police and then for the doctor, but he would not allow anything in the room to be touched, not even his mother's dead body.
"For this precaution he was highly commended by the police inspector who presently appeared upon the scene, accompanied by a constable and the divisional surgeon; the latter proceeded to examine the body. He stated that the unfortunate woman had been attacked from behind, the marks of fingers being clearly visible round her throat: in her struggle for freedom she must have fallen backwards and in so doing struck her head against the corner of the marble washstand, which caused her death.
"In the meanwhile the inspector had been examining the premises: he found that the back door which gave on the yard and the one that gave on the front area were barred and locked just as Mr. Aaron had left them before he went up to bed the previous night; on the other hand the front door was still on the latch, young Mrs. Levison having apparently failed to bolt it when she came home from the ball.
"In the backyard the creeper against the wall below the window of Mrs. Levison's room was certainly torn, and the miscreant undoubtedly made his escape that way, but he could not have got up to the window save with the aid of a ladder, the creeper was too slender to have supported any man's weight, and the brick wall of the house offered no kind of foothold even to a cat. The yard itself was surrounded on every side by the backyards of contiguous houses, and against the dividing walls there were clumps of Virginia creeper and anæmic shrubs such as are usually found in London backyards.
"Now neither on those walls nor on the creepers and shrubs was there the slightest trace of a ladder being dragged across, or even of a man having climbed the walls or slung a rope over: there was not a twig of shrub broken or a leaf of creeper disturbed.
"With regard to the safe, it must either have been open at the time that the murderer attacked Mrs. Levison, or he had found the key and opened the safe after he had committed that awful crime. Certainly the contents did not appear to have been greatly disturbed, no jewellery or other pledged goods of value were missing: Mr. Aaron could verify this by his books, but whether his mother had any money in the safe he was not in a position to say.
"There was no doubt at first glance the crime did not seem to have been an ordinary one; whether robbery had been its motive, or its corollary, only subsequent investigation would reveal: for the moment the inspector contented himself with putting a few leading questions to the various members of the household, and subsequently questioning the neighbours. The public, of course, was not to know what the result of these preliminary investigations was, but the midday papers were in a position to assert that no one, with perhaps the exception of Ida Griggs, had seen or heard anything alarming during the night, and that the most minute enquiries in the neighbourhood failed to bring forth the slightest indication of how the murderer effected an entrance into the house.
"The papers were also able to state that young Mrs. Levison returned from the ball in the small hours of the morning, but that Mr. Reuben Levison did not sleep in the house at all that night.
§3
"Fortunately for me," my eccentric friend went on glibly, "I was up betimes that morning when the papers came out with an early account of the mysterious crime in Bishop's Road. I say fortunately, because, as you know, mysteries of that sort interest me beyond everything, and for me there is no theatre in the world to equal in excitement the preliminary investigations of a well-conceived and cleverly executed crime. I should indeed have been bitterly disappointed had circumstances prevented me from attending that particular inquest. From the first, one was conscious of an atmosphere of mystery that hung over the events of that night in the Bishop's Road household: here indeed was no ordinary crime; the motive for it was still obscure, and one instinctively felt that somewhere in this vast city of London there lurked a criminal of no mean intelligence who would probably remain unpunished.
"Even the evidence of the police was not as uninteresting as it usually is, because it established beyond a doubt that this was not a case of common burglary and housebreaking. Certainly the open window and the torn creeper suggested that the miscreant had made his escape that way, but how he effected an entrance into Mrs. Levison's room remained an unsolved riddle. The absence of any trace of a man's passage on the surrounding walls of the backyard was very mysterious, and it was firmly established that the back door and the area door were secured, barred and bolted from the inside. A burglar might, of course, have entered the house by the front door, which was on the latch, using a skeleton key, but it still remained inconceivable how he gained access into Mrs. Levison's room.
"From the first the public had felt that there was a background of domestic drama behind the seemingly purposeless crime, for it did appear purposeless, seeing that so much portable jewellery had been left untouched in the safe. But it was when Ida Griggs, the housemaid, stood up in response to her name being called that one seemed to see the curtain going up on the first act of a terrible tragedy.
"Griggs was a colourless, youngish woman, with thin, sallow face, round blue eyes, and thin lips, and directly she began to speak one felt that underneath her placid, old-maidish manner there was an under-current of bitter spite, and even of passion. For some reason which probably would come to light later on, she appeared to have conceived a hatred for Mrs. Aaron; on the other hand she had obviously been doggedly attached to her late mistress, and in the evidence she dwelt at length on the quarrels between the two ladies, especially on the scene of violence that occurred at the dinner-table on Saturday, and which culminated in old Mrs. Levison flouncing out of the room.
"'Mrs. Levison was that upset,' the girl went on, in answer to a question put to her by the coroner, 'that I thought she was going to be ill, and she says to me that women like Mrs. Aaron were worse than —— as they would stick at nothing to get a new gown or a bit of jewellery. She also says to me——'
"But at this point the coroner checked her flow of eloquence, as, of course, what the dead woman had said could not be admitted as evidence. But nevertheless the impression remained vividly upon the public that there had been a terrible quarrel between those two, and of course we all knew that young Mrs. Levison had been seen at the ball wearing those five diamond stars; we did not need the sworn testimony of several witnesses who were called and interrogated on that point. We knew that Rebecca Levison had worn the diamond stars at the ball, and that Police Inspector Blackshire found them on her dressing-table the morning after the murder.
"Nor did she deny having worn them. At the inquest she renewed the statement which she had already made to the police.
"'My brother-in-law, Reuben,' she said, 'was a great favourite with his mother, and when we were both of us ready dressed he went into Mrs. Levison's room to say good-night to her. He cajoled her into letting me wear the diamond stars that night. In fact he always could make her do anything he really wanted, and they parted the best of friends.'
"'At what time did you go to the ball, Mrs. Levison?' the coroner asked.
"'My brother-in-law,' she replied, 'went out to call a taxi at half-past nine, and he and I got into it the moment one drew up.'
"'And Mr. Reuben Levison had been in to say good-night to his mother just before that?'
"'Yes, about ten minutes before.'
"'And he brought you the stars then,' the coroner insisted, 'and you put them on before he went out to call the taxi?'
"For the fraction of a second Rebecca Levison hesitated, but I do not think that any one in the audience except myself noted that little fact. Then she said quite firmly:
"'Yes, Mr. Reuben Levison told me that he had persuaded his mother to let me wear the stars, he handed them to me and I put them on.'
"'And that was at half-past nine?'
"Again Rebecca Levison hesitated, this time more markedly; her face was very pale and she passed her tongue once or twice across her lips before she gave answer.
"'At about half-past nine,' she said, quite steadily.
"'And about what time did you come home, Mrs. Levison?' the coroner asked her blandly.
"'It must have been close on one o'clock,' she replied. 'The dance was a Cinderella, but we walked part of the way home.'
"'What! in the rain?'
"'It had ceased raining when we came out of the town hall.'
"'Mr. Reuben Levison did not accompany you all the way?'
"'He walked with me across the Park, then he put me into a taxicab, and I drove home alone. I had my latchkey.'
"'But you failed to bolt the door after you when you returned. How was that?'
"'I forgot, I suppose,' the lovely Rebecca replied, with a defiant air. 'I often forget to bolt the door.'
"'And did you not see or hear anything strange when you came in?'
"'I heard nothing. I was rather sleepy and went straight up to my room. I was in bed within ten minutes of coming in.'
"She was speaking quite firmly now, in a clear though rather harsh voice: but that she was nervous, not to say frightened, was very obvious. She had a handkerchief in her hand, with which she fidgeted until it was nothing but a small, wet ball, and she had a habit of standing first on one foot then on the other, and of shifting the position of her hat. I do not think that there was a single member of the jury who did not think that she was lying, and she knew that they thought so, for now and again her fine dark eyes would scrutinise their faces and dart glances at them either of scorn or of anxiety.
"After a while she appeared very tired, and when pressed by the coroner over some trifling matters, she broke down and began to cry. After which she was allowed to stand down, and Mr. Reuben Levison was called.
"I must say that I took an instinctive dislike to him as he stood before the jury with a jaunty air of complete self-possession. He had a keen, yet shifty eye, and sharp features very like a rodent. To me it appeared at once that he was reciting a lesson rather than giving independent evidence. He stated that he had been present at dinner during the quarrel between his mother and sister-in-law, and his mother was certainly very angry at the moment, but later on he went upstairs to bid her good-night. She cried a little and said a few hard things, but in the end she gave way to him as she always did: she opened the safe, got out the diamond stars and gave them to him, making him promise to return them the very first thing in the morning.
"'I told her,' Reuben went on glibly, 'that I would not be home until the Monday morning. I would see Rebecca into a taxi after the ball, but I had the intention of spending a couple of nights and the intervening Sunday with a pal who had a flat at Haverstock Hill. I thought then that my mother would lock the stars up again, however—she was always a woman of her word—once she had said a thing she would stick to it—and so as I said she gave me the stars and Mrs. Aaron wore them that night.'
"'And you handed the stars to Mrs. Aaron at half-past nine?'
"The coroner asked the question with the same earnest emphasis which he had displayed when he put it to young Mrs. Levison. I saw Reuben's shifty eye flash across at her, and I know that she answered that flash with a slight drop of her eyelids. Whereupon he replied as readily as she had done:
"'Yes, sir, it must have been about half-past nine.'
"And I assure you that every intelligent person in that room must have felt certain that Reuben was lying just as Rebecca had done before him."
§4
The Old Man in the Corner paused in his narrative. He drank half a glass of milk, smacked his lips, and for a few moments appeared intent on examining one of the complicated knots which he had made in his bit of string. Then after a while he resumed.
"The one member of the Levison family," he said, "for whom every one felt sorry was the eldest son Aaron. Like most men of his race he had been very fond of his mother, not because of any affection she may have shown him but just because she was his mother. He had worked hard for her all his life, and now through her death he found himself very much left out in the cold. It seems that by her will the old lady left all her savings, which, it seems, were considerable, and a certain share in the business, to Reuben, whilst to Aaron she only left the business nominally, with a great many charges on it in the way of pensions and charitable bequests and whatever was due to Reuben.
"But here I am digressing, as the matter of the will was not touched upon until later on, but there is no doubt that Aaron knew from the first that it would be Reuben who would primarily benefit by their mother's death. Nevertheless, he did not speak bitterly about his brother, and nothing that he said could be construed into possible suspicion of Reuben. He looked just a big lump of good nature, splendidly built, with the shoulders and gait of an athlete, but with an expression of settled melancholy in his face, and a dull, rather depressing voice. Seeing him there, gentle, almost apologetic, trying to explain away everything that might in any way cast a reflection upon his wife's conduct, one realised easily enough the man's position in the family—a kind of good-natured beast of burden, who would do all the work and never receive a 'thank you' in return.
"He was not able to throw much light on the horrible tragedy. He, too, had been at the dinner-table when the quarrel occurred, but directly after dinner he had been obliged to return to the shop, it being Saturday night and business very brisk. He had only one assistant to help him, who left at nine o'clock, after putting up the shutters: but he himself remained in the shop until ten o'clock to put things away and make up the books. He heard the taxi being called, and his wife and brother going off to the ball; he was not quite sure as to when that was, but he dared say it was somewhere near half-past nine.
"As nothing of special value had been pledged that day in the course of business, he had no occasion to go and speak with his mother before going up to bed and, on the whole he thought that, as she might still be rather sore and irritable, it would be best not to disturb her again, he did just knock at her door and called out 'good-night, mother.' But hearing no reply he thought she must already have been asleep.
"In answer to the coroner Aaron Levison further said that he had slept in the spare room at the top of the house for some time, as his wife was often very late coming home, and he did not like to have his night's rest broken. He had gone up to bed at ten o'clock and had neither seen nor heard anything in the house until six o'clock in the morning when the screams of the maid down below had roused him from his sleep and made him jump out of bed in double-quick time.
"Although Aaron's evidence was more or less of a formal character, and he spoke very quietly without any show either of swagger or of spite, one could not help feeling that the elements of drama and of mystery connected with this remarkable case were rather accentuated than diminished by what he said. Thus one was more or less prepared for those further developments which brought one's excitement and interest in the case to their highest point.
"Recalled, and pressed by the coroner to try and memorise every event, however trifling, that occurred on that Saturday evening, Ida Griggs, the maid, said that, soon after that she had dropped to sleep, she woke with the feeling that she had heard some kind of noise, but what it was she could not define: it might have been a bang, or a thud, or a scream. At the time she thought nothing of it, whatever it was, because while she lay awake for a few minutes afterwards, the house was absolutely still; but a moment or two later she certainly heard the window of Mrs. Levison's room being thrown open.
"'There did not seem to you anything strange in that?' the coroner asked her.
"'No, sir,' she replied, 'there was nothing funny in Mrs. Levison opening her window. I remember that it was raining rather heavily, for I heard the patter against the window-panes, and Mrs. Levison may have wanted to look at the weather. I went to sleep directly after that and thought no more about it.'
"'And you don't know what it was that woke you in the first instance?'
"'No, sir, I don't,' the girl replied.
"'And you did not happen to glance at the clock at the moment?'
"'No, sir,' she said, 'I did not switch on the light.'
"But having disposed of that point, Ida Griggs had yet another to make, and one that proved more dramatic than anything that had gone before.
"'While I was clearing away the dinner things,' she said, 'Mr. Reuben and Mrs. Aaron were sitting talking in the parlour. At half-past eight Mrs. Aaron rang for me to take up her hot water as she was going to dress. I took up the water for her and also for Mrs. Levison, as I always did. I was going to help Mrs. Levison to undress, but she said she was not going to bed yet as she had some accounts to go through. She kept me talking for a bit, then while I was with her there was a knock at the door and I heard Mr. Reuben asking if he might come in and say good-night. Mrs. Levison called out "good-night, my boy," but she would not let Mr. Reuben come in, and I heard him go downstairs again.
"'A quarter of an hour or so afterwards Mrs. Levison dismissed me and I heard her locking her door after me. I went downstairs on my way to the kitchen: Mrs. Aaron was in the parlour then, fully dressed and with her cloak on; and Mr. Reuben was there, too, talking to her. The door was wide open, and I saw them both and I heard Mrs. Aaron say quite spiteful like: "So she would not even see you, the old cat! She must have felt bad." And Mr. Reuben he laughed and said: "Oh well, she will have to get over it." Then they saw me and stopped talking, and soon afterwards Mr. Reuben went out to call a taxi, and we girls went up to bed.'
"'It is all a wicked lie!' here broke in a loud, high-pitched voice, and Mrs. Aaron, trembling with excitement, jumped to her feet. 'A lie, I say. The woman is spiteful, and wants to ruin me.'
"The coroner vainly demanded silence, and after a moment or two of confusion and of passionate resistance the lovely Rebecca was forcibly led out of the room. Her husband followed her, looking bigger and more meek and apologetic than ever before; and Ida Griggs was left to conclude her evidence in peace. She reaffirmed all that she had said and swore positively to the incident just as it had occurred in Mrs. Levison's room. Asked somewhat sharply by the coroner why she had said nothing about all this before, she replied that she did not wish to make mischief, but that truth was truth, and whoever murdered her poor mistress must swing for it, and that's all about it.
"Nor could any cross-examination upset her: she looked like a spiteful cat, but not like a woman who was lying.
"Reuben Levison had sat on, serene and jaunty, all the while that these damaging statements were being made against him. When he was recalled he contented himself with flatly denying Ida Griggs's story, and reiterating his own.
"'The girl is lying,' he said airily, 'why she does so I don't know, but there was nothing in the world more unlikely than that my mother should at any time refuse to see me. Ask any impartial witness you like,' he went on dramatically, 'they will all tell you that my mother worshipped me: she was not likely to quarrel with me over a few bits of jewellery.'
"Of course Mrs. Aaron, when she was recalled, corroborated Reuben's story. She could not make out why Ida should tell such lies about her.
"'But there,' she added, with tears in her beautiful dark eyes, 'the girl always hated me.'
"Yet one more witness was heard that afternoon whose evidence proved of great interest. This was the assistant in the shop, Samuel Kutz. He could not throw much light on the tragedy, because he had not been out of the shop from six o'clock, when he finished his tea, to nine, when he put up the shutters and went away. But he did say that, while he was having his tea in the back parlour, old Mrs. Levison was helping in the front shop, and Mr. Reuben was there, too, doing nothing in particular, as was his custom. When witness went back to the shop Mrs. Levison went through into the back parlour, and, as soon as she had gone, he noticed that she had left her bag on the bureau behind the counter. Mr. Reuben saw it, too; he picked up the bag, and said with a laugh: 'I'd best take it up at once, the old girl don't like leaving this about.' Kutz told him he thought Mrs. Levison was in the back parlour, but Mr. Reuben was sure she had since gone upstairs.
"'Anyway,' concluded witness, 'he took the bag and went upstairs with it.'
"This may have been a valuable piece of evidence or it may not," the Old Man in the Corner went on with a grin, "in view of the tragedy occurring so much later, it did not appear so at the time. But it brought in an altogether fresh element of conjecture, and while the police asked for an adjournment pending fresh enquiries, the public was left to ponder over the many puzzles and contradictions that the case presented. Whichever line of argument one followed, one quickly came to a dead stop.
"There was, first of all, the question whether Reuben Levison did cajole his mother into giving him the diamond stars, or whether he was peremptorily refused admittance to her room; but this was just a case of hard swearing between one party and the other, and here I must admit, that public opinion was inclined to take Reuben's version of the story. Mrs. Levison's passionate affection for her younger son was known to all her friends, and people thought that Ida Griggs had lied in order to incriminate Mrs. Aaron.
"But in this she entirely failed, and here was the first dead stop. You will remember that she said that, after she left Mrs. Levison, she went downstairs and saw Mrs. Aaron and Mr. Reuben fully dressed in the back parlour, and that afterward she heard Mr. Reuben call a taxi: obviously, therefore, Mrs. Aaron had the diamonds in her possession then, since she was wearing them at the ball, and it is not conceivable that either of those two would have gone off in the taxi, leaving the other to force an entrance into Mrs. Levison's room, strangle her, and steal the diamonds. As Mrs. Aaron could not possibly have done all that in her evening-dress, making her way afterwards from a first floor window down into the yard by clinging to a creeper in the pouring rain, the hideous task must have devolved on Reuben, and even the police, wildly in search of a criminal, could not put the theory forward that a man would murder his mother in order that his sister-in-law might wear a few diamond stars at a ball.
"It was, in fact, the motive of the crime that seemed so utterly inadequate, and therefore public argument fell back on the theory that Reuben had stolen the diamond stars just before dinner after he had found his mother's handbag in the shop, and that the subsequent murder was the result of ordinary burglary, the miscreant having during the night entered Mrs. Levison's room by the window while she was asleep. It was suggested that he had found the key of the safe by the bedside and was in the act of ransacking the place when Mrs. Levison woke, and the inevitable struggle ensued resulting in the old lady's death. The chief argument, however, against this theory was the fact that the unfortunate woman was still dressed when she was attacked, and no one who knew her for the careful, thrifty woman she was could conceive that she would go fast asleep leaving the safe door wide open. This, coupled with the fact that not the slightest trace could be found anywhere in the backyard of the house, or the adjoining yards and walls of the passage, of a miscreant armed with a ladder, constituted another dead stop on the road of public conjecture.
"Finally, when at the adjourned inquest Reuben Levison was able to bring forward more than one witness who could swear that he arrived at the ball at the Kensington Town Hall in the company of his sister-in-law somewhere about ten o'clock, and others who spoke to him from time to time during the evening, it seemed clear that he, at any rate, was innocent of the murder. Mr. Aaron had not gone up to bed until ten o'clock, and, if Reuben had planned to return and murder his mother, he could only have done so at a later hour, when he was seen by several people at the Kensington Town Hall.
"Subsequently the jury returned an open verdict and that abominable crime has remained unpunished until now. Though it appeared so simple and crude at first, it proved a terribly hard nut for the police to crack. We may say that they never did crack it. They are absolutely convinced that Reuben Levison and Mrs. Aaron planned to murder the old lady, but how they did it, no one has been able to establish. As for proofs of their guilt, there are none and never will be, for though they are perhaps a pair of rascals, they are not criminals. It is not they who murdered Mrs. Levison."
"You think it was Ida Griggs?" I put in quickly, as the Old Man in the Corner momentarily ceased talking.
"Ah!" he retorted, with his funny, dry cackle, "you favour that theory, do you?"
"No, I do not," I replied. "But I don't see——"
"It is a foolish theory," he went on, "not only because there was absolutely no reason why Ida Griggs should kill her mistress—she did not rob her, nor had she anything to gain by Mrs. Levison's death—but as she was neither a cat, nor a night moth, she could not possibly have ascended from a first floor window to another window on the half-landing above, and entered her own room that way, for we must not lose sight of the fact that her bedroom door was the next morning found locked on the outside, and the key left in the lock."
"Then," I argued, "it must have been a case of ordinary burglary."
"That has been proved impossible," he riposted—"proved to the hilt. No man could have climbed up the wall of the house without a ladder, and no man could have brought a ladder into that backyard without leaving some trace of his passage, however slight: against the walls, around the yard, there were creepers and shrubs—it would be impossible to drag a heavy ladder over those walls without breaking some of them."
"But some one killed old Mrs. Levison," I went on with some exasperation—"she did not strangle herself with her own fingers."
"No, she did not do that," he admitted, with a dry laugh.
"And if the murderer escaped through the window, he could not vanish into thin air."
"No," he admitted again, "he could not do that."
"Well then?" I retorted.
"Well then, the murder must have been committed by one of the inmates of the house," he said; and now I knew that I was on the point of hearing the solution of the mystery of the five diamond stars, because his thin, claw-like fingers were working with feverish rapidity upon his beloved bit of string.
"But neither Mrs. Aaron," I argued, "nor Reuben Levison——"
"Neither," he broke in decisively. "We all know that. It was not conceivable that a woman could commit such a murder, nor that Reuben would kill his mother in order to gratify his sister-in-law's whim. That, of course, was nonsense, and every proof, both of time and circumstance, both of motive and opportunity, was entirely in their favour. No. We must look for a deeper motive for the hideous crime, a stronger determination, and above all a more powerful physique and easier opportunity for carrying the plot through. Personally, I do not believe that there was a plot to murder; on the other hand, I do believe in the man who idolised his young wife, and had witnessed a deadly quarrel between her and his mother, and I do believe in his going presently to the latter in order to try to soothe her anger against the woman he loved."
"You mean," I gasped, incredulous and scornful, "that it was Aaron Levison?"
"Of course I mean that," he replied placidly. "And if you think over all the circumstances of the case you will readily agree with me. We know that Aaron Levison loved and admired his wife; we know that he was very athletic, and altogether an outdoor man. Bear these two facts in mind, and let your thoughts follow the man after the terrible quarrel at the dinner-table.
"For a while he is busy in the shop, probably brooding over his mother's anger and the unpleasant consequences it might have for the lovely Rebecca. But presently he goes upstairs determined to speak with his mother, to plead with her. Dreading that Ida Griggs, with the habit of her kind, might sneak out of her room, and perhaps glue her ear to the keyhole, he turns the key in the lock of the girl's bedroom door. He knows that the interview with his mother will be unpleasant, that hard words will be spoken against Rebecca, and these he does not wish Ida Griggs to hear.
"Then he knocks at his mother's door, and asks admittance on the pretext that he has something of value to remit to her for keeping in her safe. She would have no reason to refuse. He goes in, talks to his mother; she does not mince her words. By now she knows the diamond stars have been extracted from the safe, stolen by her beloved Reuben for the adornment of the hated daughter-in-law.
"Can't you see those two arguing over the woman whom the man loves and whom the older woman hates? Can't you see the latter using words which outrage the husband's pride and rouses his wrath till it gets beyond his control? Can't you see him in an access of unreasoning passion gripping his mother by the throat, to smother the insults hurled at his wife?—and can you see the old woman losing her balance, and hitting her head against the corner of the marble wash-stand and falling—falling—whilst the son gazes down, frantic and horror-struck at what he has done?
"Then the instinct of self-preservation is roused. Oh, the man was cleverer than he was given credit for! He remembers with satisfaction locking Ida Griggs's door from the outside; and now to give the horrible accident the appearance of ordinary burglary! He locks his mother's door on the inside, switches out the light, then throws open the window. For a youngish man who is active and athletic the drop from a first floor window, with the aid of a creeper on the wall, presents but little difficulty, and when a man is faced with a deadly peril, minor dangers do not deter him.
"Fortunately, everything has occurred before he has bolted and barred the downstairs door for the night. This, of course, greatly facilitates matters. He lets himself down through the window, jumps down into the yard, lets himself into the house through the back door, then closes up everything, and quietly goes upstairs to bed.
"There has not been much noise, even his mother's fall was practically soundless, and—poor thing!—she had not the time to scream; the only sound was the opening of the window; it certainly would not bring Ida Griggs out of her bed—girls of her class are more likely to smother their heads under their bedclothes if any alarming noise is heard. And so the unfortunate man is able to sneak up to his room unseen and unheard.
"Whoever would dream of casting suspicion on him?
"He was never mixed up in any quarrel with his mother, and he had nothing much to gain by her death. At the inquest every one was sorry for him; but I could not repress a feeling of admiration for the coolness and cleverness with which he obliterated every trace of his crime. I imagine him carefully wiping his boots before he went upstairs, and brushing and folding up his clothes before he went to bed. Cannot you?
"A clever criminal, what?" the whimsical creature concluded, as he put his piece of string in the pocket of his funny tweed coat. "Think of it—you will see that I am right. As you say, Mrs. Levison did not strangle herself, and a burglar from the outside could not have vanished into thin air."
VI
THE MYSTERY OF THE DOG'S TOOTH CLIFF
The Old Man in the Corner was more than usually loquacious that day: he had a great deal to say on the subject of the strictures which a learned judge levelled against the police in a recent murder case.
"Well deserved," he concluded, with his usual self-opinionated emphasis, "but not more so in this case than in many others, where blunder after blunder is committed and the time of the courts wasted without either judge or magistrate, let alone the police, knowing where the hitch lies."
"Of course, you always know," I remarked dryly.
"Nearly always," he replied, with ludicrous self-complacence. "Have I not proved to you over and over again that with a little reasonable common-sense and a minimum of logic there is no such thing as an impenetrable mystery in criminology. Criminology is an exact science to which certain rules of reasoning invariably apply. The trouble is that so few are masters of logic and that fewer still know how to apply its rules. Now take the case of that poor girl, Janet Smith. We are likely to see some startling developments in it within the next two or three days. You'll see if we don't, and they will open the eyes of the police and public alike to what has been clear as daylight to me ever since the first day of the inquest."
I hastened to assure the whimsical creature that though I was acquainted with the main circumstances of the tragedy, I was very vague as to detail, and that nothing would give me greater pleasure than that he should enlighten my mind on the subject—which he immediately proceeded to do.
"You know Broxmouth, don't you?" he began, after a while—"on the Wessex coast. It is a growing place, for the scenery is superb, and the air acts on jaded spirits like sparkling wine. The only drawback—that is, from an artistic point of view—to the place is that hideous barrack-like building on the West Cliff. It is a huge industrial school recently erected and endowed by the trustees of the Woodforde bequest for the benefit of sons of temporary officers killed in the war, and is under the presidency of no less a personage than General Sir Arkwright Jones, who has a whole alphabet after his name.
"The building is certainly an eyesore, and before it came into being, Broxmouth was a real beauty spot. If you have ever been there, you will remember that fine walk along the edge of the cliffs, at the end of which there is a wonderful view as far as the towers of Barchester Cathedral. It is called the Lovers' Walk, and is patronised by all the young people in the neighbourhood. They find it romantic as well as exhilarating: the objective is usually Kurtmoor, where there are one or two fine hotels for plutocrats in search of rural surroundings, and where humble folk like you and I and the aforesaid lovers can get an excellent cup of tea at the Wheatsheaf in the main village street.
"But it is a daylight walk, for the path is narrow and in places the cliffs fall away, sheer and precipitous, to the water's edge, whilst loose bits of rock have an unpleasant trick of giving way under one's feet. If you were to consult one of the Broxmouth gaffers on the advisability of taking a midnight walk to Kurtmoor, he would most certainly shake his head and tell you to wait till the next day and take your walk in the morning. Accidents have happened there more than once, though Broxmouth holds its tongue about that. Rash pedestrians have lost their footing and tumbled down the side of the cliff before now, almost always with fatal results.
"And so, when a couple of small boys hunting for mussels at low tide in the early morning of May fifth last, saw the body of a woman lying inanimate upon the rocks at the foot of the cliffs, and reported their discovery to the police, every one began by concluding that nothing but an accident had occurred, and went on to abuse the town Council for not putting up along the more dangerous portions of the Lovers' Walk some sort of barrier as a protection to unwary pedestrians.
"Later on, when the body was identified as that of Miss Janet Smith, a well-known resident of Broxmouth, public indignation waxed high: the barrier along the edge of the Lovers' Walk became the burning question of the hour. But during the whole of that day the 'accident' theory was never disputed; it was only towards evening that whispers of 'suicide' began to circulate, to be soon followed by the more ominous ones of 'murder.'
"And the next morning Broxmouth had the thrill of its life when it became known throughout the town that Captain Franklin Marston had been detained in connection with the finding of the body of Janet Smith, and that he would appear that day before the magistrate on a charge of murder.
"Properly to appreciate the significance of such an announcement, it would be necessary to be oneself a resident of Broxmouth where the Woodforde Institute, its affairs and its personnel are, as it were, the be-all and end-all of all the gossip in the neighbourhood. To begin with the deceased was head matron of the institute, and the man now accused of the foul crime of having murdered her was its secretary; moreover the secretary and the pretty young matron were known to be very much in love with one another, and, as a matter of fact, Broxmouth had of late been looking forward to a very interesting wedding. The idea of Captain Marston—who by the way was very good-looking, very smart, and a splendid tennis player—being accused of murdering his sweetheart was in itself so preposterous, so impossible, that his numerous friends and many admirers were aghast and incredulous. 'There is some villainous plot here somewhere,' the ladies averred, and wanted to know what Major Gubbins's attitude was going to be under these tragic circumstances.
"Major Gubbins, if you remember, was headmaster of the school, and, what's more, he, too, had been very much in love with Janet Smith, but it appeared that his friendship with Captain Marston had prompted him to stand aside as soon as he realised which way the girl's affections lay. Major Gubbins was not so popular as the Captain, he was inclined to be off-hand and disagreeable, so the ladies said, and, moreover, he did not play tennis, and, with the sublime inconsequence of your charming sex, they seemed to connect these defects with the terrible accusation which was now weighing upon the Major's successful rival.
"The executive of the institute consisted, in addition to the three persons I have named, of its president, General Sir Arkwright Jones, who, it seems, took little if any interest in the concern. It seemed as if, by giving it the prestige of his name, he had done all that he intended for the furtherance of the institute's welfare. Then there were the governors, a number of amiable local gentlemen and ladies who played tennis all day and attended innumerable tea-parties, and knew as much about administering a big concern as a terrier does of rabbit-rearing.
"In the midst of this official supineness, the murder of the young matron, followed immediately by the arrest of the secretary, had come as a bombshell, and now wise heads began to wag and ominous murmurs became current that for some time past there had been something very wrong in the management of the Woodforde Institute. Whilst, at the call of various august personages, money was pouring in from the benevolent public, the commissariat was being conducted on parsimonious lines that were a positive scandal. The boys were shockingly underfed, and the staff of servants was constantly being changed because girls would not remain on what they called a starvation régime.