Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

“ It is all as clear as daylight to any receptive intelligence, and though human justice did err at first, and it looked, at one time, as if the innocent alone would suffer and the guilty enjoy the fruits of his crime, a higher justice interposed in the end. Charles has gone, and Philip is in possession of the fortune which his father desired him to have. I only hope that his eyes are opened at last to the true value of the beautiful Muriel's love, and that it will be some other worthier woman who will share his fortune and help him forget all that he endured in the past. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Morley Thrall had taken the opportunity of sneaking into the smoking-room, snatching up the revolver, and shooting 'Remount Forburg,' whom he hated because the Colonel was opposing his marriage with Miss Monica. It was all as clear as daylight to those dunderheads, and from that moment they simply would not listen to any more evidence. They had made up their minds; they were ready with their verdict and it was: Manslaughter against Morley Thrall. Not murder, you see! ”

“ It is easy enough for a man to disappear in crowded trains or railway stations if there is no one on his track; easy enough for him to stay in one hotel after another in any big town if he chooses hotels whose proprietors have reason to dread the police, and will not volunteer information if any of their visitors are 'wanted.' A month only of such wanderings and Sir James Narford, habitually a very dapper man, with sleek, sandy hair cropped very close, a tiny tooth-brush moustache and shaven cheeks and chin, can easily be transformed into one with shaggy hair and beard and walrus moustache. ”

“ 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 may well imagine that all the amateur detectives who were present at the inquest had made up their minds by now that Arthur Leighton had murdered Mr. Seton Jessup, and robbed the till both before and after the crime. It was a simple deduction easily arrived at and presenting the usual features. A flirty minx, an enamoured young man, extravagance, greed, opportunity, and supreme temptation. Amongst the public there were many who did not even think it worth while to hear further witnesses. To their minds the hangman's rope was already round young Leighton's neck. ”

“ I frowned. "Their enemy?"
"An old pal shall we say?" he retorted, "who knew something in the past history of one or the other of them that they did not wish their newest friends to know: really a blackmailer who, under the guise of comradeship, sat not infrequently at their fireside, watching an opportunity for extorting a heavy price for his silence and his good-will. Thus he could worm himself into their confidence; he knew their private life; he heard about the necklace, and decided that here was the long sought for opportunity at last. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After that there was another remand, Allan Carysfort's solicitor having asked and obtained an adjournment for a week. But by this time, as you may imagine, not only the county, but London Society too were absolutely horror-struck. To think that a man in the position of the Carysforts should have stooped to such an act, not only of violence, but of improbity, was indeed staggering. Nor did public opinion swerve from this attitude one hair's breadth, even though at the next hearing all the proofs which the police had adduced against the accused were absolutely confuted. ”

“ 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 say because he dare not. But let the police look for him, I say. The accused is innocent; he is the victim of tragic circumstances, but his whole life, his war-record, his affection for the deceased, all proclaim him to be guiltless of such a dastardly crime, and above all there stands the incontestable proof of his innocence, the muffler, gentlemen of the jury—the muffler!'
"He said a lot more than that, of course," the Old Man in the Corner went on, chuckling dryly to himself, "and said it a lot better than ever I can repeat it, but I have given you the gist of what he said. ”

“ The hard, cruel man is almost always a fool; the backbiting old maid invariably so.
"I am tempted to say this," he went on, "because I have been thinking over that curious case which newspaper reporters have called the Fulton Gardens Mystery. You remember it, don't you?"
"Yes," I said, "I do. As a matter of fact I knew poor old Mr. Jessup slightly, and I was terribly shocked when I heard about that awful tragedy. And to think that that horrid young Leighton——"
"Ha!" my eccentric friend broke in, with a chuckle, "then you have held on to that theory, have you?" ”

“ He seizes the stick and strikes the old man on the head with it, then he collects the money from the safe and thrusts it into his pockets. At that moment Ann Weber comes up the stairs. I say that this man was her lover; she had returned to him, as she did once before. Imagine her horror first, and then her desire—her mad desire—to save him from the consequences of his crime. It is her woman's wit which first suggests the idea of telephoning to Fitzjohn's Avenue: she who thinks of plunging the house in darkness. ”

“ M. le Duc de Rochechouart and his pretty Duchesse had above all our deepest sympathy, for it had very soon transpired that neither the Ingres masterpiece, nor indeed any of the Duc's valuable collection of art works, was insured. This fact seems almost incredible to English minds, with whom every kind of insurance is part and parcel of the ordinary household routine. But abroad the system is not nearly so far-reaching or so extended, and there are numberless households in every degree of the social scale who never dream of spending money on insurances save, perhaps, against fire. ”

“ There were not many faulty links in the chain, you will admit. The motive for the hideous crime was clear enough: for there was the fraudulent secretary and the unfortunate girl who had suspected the defalcations and was threatening to go and denounce her lover either to the President of the Institute or to the governors. And the method was equally clear: the meeting in the dark and the rain on the lonely cliff, the muffler quickly thrown around the victim's mouth to smother her screams, the blow with the stick, the push over the edge of the cliff. ”

“ That there had been one or two dark passages in Lady Foremeere's life, prior to her marriage four years ago, and that Miss Clarke was murdered for the sake of letters which were in some way connected with her ladyship were the only actual undisputable facts in that mysterious case. That it was not Arthur Clarke who killed his sister has been indubitably proved; that a great deal of the evidence was contradictory every one has admitted. And if the police do not act on certain suggestions which I have made to them, the Hardacres murder will remain a mystery to the public to the end of time. ”

“ His meanness, we are told, amounted to a mania; a miser never pays for something he can get for nothing. There was also another little point that struck me during the inquest as significant. If Triscott was an entire stranger to Charles Ashley, why should he have taken such a personal interest in him and in the old man to the extent of sending his wife to spend two whole days and nights in charge of an invalid who was nothing to him? Why should Mrs. Triscott have undertaken such a thankless task in the house of a miser, where she would get no comforts and hardly anything to eat? ”

“ She was sensible enough to know that Gerald Moville would never marry her, and she made it very clear that though he amused her, her heart would remain true to her Italian lover. But here was the trouble. Antonio was not the man to run in double harness. His fiery Southern blood rose in revolt against any thought of rivalry. He had won Winnie's love and meant to hold it against all comers, and more than once in public and in private he threatened to do for any man who came between him and Winnie. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Tufnell was not only upset, but quite frightened. Mr. Jessup had always been very kind and considerate to his servants, and the housekeeper declared that she had never been spoken to like that before. But we all know what that sort of people are: they have no understanding, and unless you are perpetually smiling at them they turn huffy at the slightest word of impatience. Undoubtedly Mr. Jessup was both tired and worried, and no great stress was laid by the police subsequently on the fact that he had spoken harshly on this occasion. ”

“ And in this tragic fashion did Louisa Smithson's wedding-day draw to its end; nor, as far as the public was concerned, was the mystery of that terrible murder ever satisfactorily cleared up. The local police worked very hard and very systematically, but, though presently they also had the help of one of the ablest detectives from Scotland Yard, nothing was seen or found that gave the slightest clue either as to the means which the murderer or murderers adopted for removing the body of their victim, or in what manner they made good their escape. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Fear, no doubt, lent ingenuity and strength to the miscreant; and, as a matter of fact, Gerald Moville is one of the few criminals who committed no appreciable blunder when he set to work to obliterate all traces of his crime; he left the knife with its tell-tale stains on the spot, and that knife was identified as the property of the Italian, and the head, which alone might have betrayed him, even if the body were not found for weeks, he took away with him to bury somewhere far away—goodness only knows where, but somewhere between Yorkshire and Scotland. ”

“ Aaron Jacobs should have informed Lord Polchester of his intentions before he went to the police. But Lord Polchester was such a nonentity in his own household, such a frivolous fool, and, moreover, addicted to drink and violent fits of temper, that those who knew him easily realised how a sensible business man like Mr. Aaron Jacobs would avoid any personal explanation with him.
Mr. Jacobs went straight to the police that self-same evening, and the next day Lady Polchester had a visit from Detective Purley, one of the ablest as he was one of the most tactful men on the staff. ”

“ An extraordinary sequel to the mysterious tragedy of the Dog's Tooth Cliff near Broxmouth occurred last night, when on the self-same spot where Miss Janet Smith met her death three months ago, General Sir Arkwright Jones lost his footing and fell a distance of two hundred feet on to the rocks below. It was a beautiful moonlight evening, and the tide being low a number of visitors were down on the beach at the time; but those who immediately hurried to the General's assistance found life already extinct. The distinguished soldier, who will be deeply mourned, must have been killed on the spot. ”

“ I have watched the police committing one blunder after another, and to-day, when they are completely baffled and the public has started to write letters to the papers about another undetected crime and another criminal at large, I am having the time of my life. ”