Arthur Charles Fox-Davies

“ We mustn’t let them get the idea that we are merely curious, or they will all just shut up like oysters. Still, Baxter isn’t a fool; and if he says it wouldn’t help us, the probabilities certainly are that he is right. To sum it all up, Yardley, you’ve got the mystery of the death of Sir John, the mystery of the secret trust, and the mystery of the death of Miss Stableford, and I am convinced that all the lot are really only one mystery. But all the same, we haven’t got the explanation of that mystery.”
Some days later, Arthur Baxter came round to Tempest’s chambers. ”

“ He did trust his partners. Look here, there are scores of people in this world who can be trusted to do a specified thing who are absolute fools over money. They are not necessarily dishonest. It simply is that they muddle money away. Pay it all into a single banking account, and find to their horror, when it is too late, that they have overdrawn their accounts. That’s how half the trust funds which are lost go. That is what Sir John was afraid of.”
“Who do you think that other person is, Tempest?”
“You can take it for granted Sir John never gave away a client in his life. ”

“ You can take it from me—even if it were [126] not a judgment in court—that the trust is legal, and I think it is perfectly sane. The difficulty is this. Sir John had to deal with a secret, and he did his best to make that secret sacred. But Sir John knew nothing apparently about deduction, for it’s possible to get a good deal of explanation out of the thing as it stands. All I am doubtful about is how far one is justified in trying to find any explanation at all. You see, he leaves things to his partners, trusting blindly in their honour and integrity, and they accept the matter as sacred. ”

“ One can go to greater lengths with a witness than one can in cross-examining a prisoner. Decency compels a prisoner to be given fair play, and a judge would take good care he had it. Picking up a pen, Tempest wrote a note to the inspector:
“Dear Parkyns,—I take it you will have to call Smith (Sir John Rellingham’s confidential clerk) as a witness when Mr. Baxter is tried. I very particularly wish to cross-examine him. I don’t want to arouse his suspicions by doing it before the magistrate, and I don’t want you to put him on his guard by any obvious attentions. ”

“ Then Marston has absolutely forgotten. How about you, Moorhouse?”
“Oh, I was at the theatre.”
“That’s only another partial one, then. Why on earth don’t you people try to find out who did murder the man and not wait till you are in sight of the rope yourselves before you start?”
“But what can we do?”
“You can offer a reward for one thing. You can engage Dennis Yardley, the detective, for another.”
“Tempest, can we make it worth your while for you to take a hand in it?”
“No. I’m not keen at playing detective professionally. It’s not my profession. ”

“ Do you know anything about trusts, Tempest?”
“A bit—I daresay as much as most of the men on our side of the hedge. But if it’s a trust, why don’t you go to Overhill?”
“I’m going on to him presently—when [60] I’ve heard what you’ve got to say. But these chancery men always seem to me to be machines without humanity. To be candid, my partners and I want to know exactly where we stand over this infernal secret trust which old Sir John strapped on our shoulders. ”

“ Tempest?”
“Oh, Lord, no! You needn’t be afraid [94] of me getting a rise out of any of your people. I’m not going to do that. To be perfectly frank, Parkyns, I don’t approve altogether of coroner’s inquests. They serve a useful purpose in deciding whether a death is a natural one or not. But I think they ought to stop there. They must hamper your people fearfully, if it is a case that has to come to you. I myself don’t believe in making things public till you can go straight and arrest your man. The coroner’s inquests only too often warn him to keep away.” ”

“ The solicitor sat and watched him—watched his impassive face—watched the quick, nervous fingers as they clicked the rings upon them backwards and forwards—watched the cigarette smoked to the end and thrown away as another was lighted from it. At [68] last the barrister came to a pause in front of his fireplace.
“Baxter, the murder has proved an insoluble mystery, depending upon an unknown motive. You know everything about Sir John’s affairs, except what those papers may disclose. You cannot find a basis for a motive in what you know. The odds are the clue is hidden in those papers.” ”

“ But no man contemplates his own murder without taking steps to avert it, if that be possible. Sir John took no steps at all. No man would sit down to be murdered, and content himself with providing evidence to catch his murderer afterwards. Sir John never created the trust for that purpose. You can rest assured this is not the eventuality to provide for which that trust was created. ”

“ She played for that position for all she was worth, with every atom of knowledge she possessed or could acquire, played her game without the opposition of tangible rivals, played her game as a clever and beautiful woman of the world, knowing every wile and every blandishment that was permissible, played her game against an old man to whom had been given no weapon of defence and from whom had been withheld the worldly knowledge out of which such weapons could have been fashioned and which would have indicated their necessity. ”

“ Go along, Tempest!”
“How do you know, Marston? I don’t feel by any means certain on the point. Look here, then, why didn’t Sir John acknowledge his wife and daughter? He told you, Baxter, that he couldn’t because that would involve the disclosure of somebody else’s secret. If she were his daughter by his wedded wife, what secret could there be about her birth? I can assure you that it looks very much as if Evangeline were his illegitimate daughter. Only, if she were, what earthly object could anyone [228] have in murdering her? Sir John had left her nothing in his will. ”

“ Tempest had started his legal career with a certain fixed opinion concerning suicide which he never altered—never had reason to alter—an opinion that grew into conviction. Suicide of itself he held never was and never could be evidence of insanity. He maintained his conviction in argument on many occasions—at the Hardwicke—at the Union—in the courts. He carried his theory further, though not with equal certainty. But he laid it down as a proposition, yet to be disproved, that save in exceptional cases an insane person never commits suicide ”

“ He had been fascinated by the beauty of the dead woman whom several times he happened to have seen and greatly admired upon the stage. The little smile which still seemed to play upon the lips, [29] the long dark eyelashes resting upon her cheeks, the profusion of long black hair, the delicately chiselled features bit themselves in upon his brain, and for days afterwards the face with its haunting beauty formed and reformed itself before his eyes, no matter upon what he might be engaged. ”

“ I’ve got a miniature of her hanging in my chambers, so I know it well. Now, you can take it from me, inspector, that the two faces are so similar that they might be the same woman. If we didn’t know the one was dead, and had been buried twenty years ago, I would have taken my oath they were the same. The likeness is as strong as that. I never saw such a likeness in my life. Talk about doubles, it’s an absolute reincarnation.”
The inspector was silent as Tempest, leaning on the foot of the bed, gazed fascinated at the face of the dead woman. ”

“ Therefore, I think any idea of murder may be dismissed. Motive, of course, must always equally precede self-destruction, but there motive need not be that outside motive which must be looked for, and for which logical explanation must be found, where another person is concerned to compass the death of a victim. ”

“ The coroner’s verdict was suicide. Now, I’ve puzzled over that for twenty years. Then comes the death of Evangeline Stableford—the body found nude at the Charing Cross Hotel, and again the opened bottle [308] of champagne and prussic acid; and then there was the utterly marvellous likeness between Dolores and Evangeline. But they could not be mother and daughter, for Dolores had never had a child, and I had always assumed Evangeline could not be the daughter of Lady Madeley, because she was born on the day Lord and Lady Madeley were married. ”

“ From time to time in the ever-recurring sequence of murders of which the details are given to the world by a vigilant and busy Press, one will be found which stands out and grips the public attention. ”

“ He maintained that the act of suicide was in itself a sane act, for which cause was required to be shown, and could always be shown if the facts in full were available.
Such was the theory upon which he always relied whenever in the course of his profession he was brought face to face with a necessity for the elucidation of a death. He never found his theory at fault. ”

“ It is not difficult for an energetic newspaper to create such an impression, and the obstinate silence of the surviving partners of Sir John fanned the flame of public curiosity. So rooted did this conviction become that at last it took hold of Scotland Yard. Once [55] a settled conviction obtains a footing in that quarter, it usually sticks, and the Home Office took a hand in the game and asked for an assurance from the firm that the secret trust had no connection with the murder. ”

“ But the result of that litigation was that, under the clause in Sir John’s will, which I have just read to your lordship, the court decrees the trust funds to have vested in the three surviving partners in their own right. But if the trustees and executors are really in the entire ignorance they suggest, we are not. Not only was Lady Rellingham aware of the purposes of the trust, but what we believe are the actual terms of the instructions concerning it were within her knowledge. ”

“ Goodness only knows how many more have quietly dropped us without making a fuss and intend never to come back. In twelve months’ time we shan’t have a client left. I’m not married, no more is Marston, and he’s young, but Moorhouse has a wife and family. It’s serious enough for all of us, but it’s Gehenna for him. Can’t you suggest something? What do you think?”
Tempest and the solicitor walked out of Lincoln’s Inn together, and slowly across the fields, and as they went the barrister repeated the story he had argued out with Yardley. ”