‘And what did you do?’ asked Saunders.
‘I walked a few steps with him and put him on his way,’ replied Lord Mountnewte, blandly.
In Saunders’s own expressive words, he thought that story ‘fishy’. He could not imagine the arm of coincidence being quite so long as to cause these two men – who presumably were both in love with the same girl, and who had just met at a moment when one of them was obviously suffering pangs of jealousy – to hold merely a topographical conversation with one another. But it was equally difficult to suppose that the eldest son and heir of the Marquis of Loam should murder a successful rival and then rob him in the streets of London.
Moreover, here came the eternal and unanswerable questions: If Lord Mountnewte had murdered Leonard Marvell, where and how had he done it, and what had he done with the body?
I dare say you are wondering by this time why I have said nothing about the maid, Rosie Campbell.
Well, plenty of very clever people (I mean those who write letters to the papers and give suggestions to every official department in the kingdom) thought that the police ought to keep a very strict eye upon that pretty Scotch lassie. For she was very pretty, and had quaint, demure ways which rendered her singularly attractive, in spite of the fact that, for most masculine tastes, she would have been considered too tall. Of course, Saunders and Danvers kept an eye on her – you may be sure of that – and got a good deal of information about her from the people at the hotel. Most of it, unfortunately, was irrelevant to the case. She was maid-attendant to Miss Marvell, who was feeble in health, and who went out but little. Rosie waited on her master and mistress upstairs, carrying their meals to their private room, and doing their bedrooms. The rest of the day she was fairly free, and was quite sociable downstairs with the hotel staff.
With regard to her movements and actions on that memorable 3rd of February, Saunders – though he worked very hard – could glean but little useful information. You see, in a hotel of that kind, with an average of thirty to forty guests at one time, it is extremely difficult to state positively what any one person did or did not do on that particular day.
Most people at the Scotia remembered that Miss Marvell dined in the table d’hôte room on that 3rd of February; this she did about once a fortnight, when her maid had an evening ‘out’.
The hotel staff also recollected fairly distinctly that Miss Rosie Campbell was not in the steward’s room at suppertime that evening, but no one could remember definitely when she came in.
One of the chambermaids who occupied the bedroom adjoining hers, said she heard her moving about soon after midnight; the hall porter declared that he saw her come in just before half past twelve when he closed the doors for the night.
But one of the ground-floor valets said that, on the morning of the 4th, he saw Miss Marvell’s maid, in hat and coat, slip into the house and upstairs, very quickly and quietly, soon after the front doors were opened, namely, about 7.00 am.
Here, of course, was a direct contradiction between the chambermaid and hall porter on the one side, and the valet on the other, whilst Miss Marvell said that Campbell came into her room and made her some tea long before seven o’clock every morning, including that of the 4th.
I assure you our fellows at the Yard were ready to tear their hair out by the roots, from sheer aggravation at this maze of contradictions which met them at every turn.
The whole thing seemed so simple. There was nothing ‘to it’ as it were, and but very little real suggestion of foul play, and yet Mr Leonard Marvell had disappeared, and no trace of him could be found.
Everyone now talked freely of murder. London is a big town, and this would not have been the first instance of a stranger – for Mr Leonard Marvell was practically a stranger in London – being enticed to a lonely part of the city on a foggy night, and there done away with and robbed, and the body hidden in an out-of-the-way cellar, where it might not be discovered for months to come.
But the newspaper-reading public is notably fickle, and Mr Leonard Marvell was soon forgotten by everyone save the chief and the batch of our fellows who had charge of the case.
Thus I heard through Danvers one day that Rosie Campbell had left Miss Marvell’s employ, and was living in rooms in Findlater Terrace, near Walham Green.
I was alone in our Maida Vale flat at the time, my dear lady having gone to spend the weekend with the Dowager Lady Loam, who was an old friend of hers; nor, when she returned, did she seem any more interested in Rosie Campbell’s movements than she had been hitherto.
Yet another month went by, and I for one had absolutely ceased to think of the man in the Inverness cape, who had so mysteriously and so completely vanished in the very midst of busy London, when, one morning early in January, Lady Molly made her appearance in my room, looking more like the landlady of a disreputable gambling-house than anything else I could imagine.
‘What in the world –?’ I began.
‘Yes! I think I look the part,’ she replied, surveying with obvious complacency the extraordinary figure which confronted her in the glass.
My dear lady had on a purple cloth coat and skirt of a peculiarly vivid hue, and of a singular cut, which made her matchless figure look like a sack of potatoes. Her soft brown hair was quite hidden beneath a ‘transformation’, of that yellow-reddish tint only to be met with in very cheap dyes.
As for her hat! I won’t attempt to describe it. It towered above and around her face, which was plentifully covered with brick-red and with that kind of powder which causes the cheeks to look a deep mauve.
My dear lady looked, indeed, a perfect picture of appalling vulgarity.
‘Where are you going in this elegant attire?’ I asked in amazement.
‘I have taken rooms in Findlater Terrace,’ she replied lightly. ‘I feel that the air of Walham Green will do us both good. Our amiable, if somewhat slatternly, landlady expects us in time for luncheon. You will have to keep rigidly in the background, Mary, all the while we are there. I said that I was bringing an invalid niece with me, and, as a preliminary, you may as well tie two or three thick veils over your face. I think I may safely promise that you won’t be dull.’
And we certainly were not dull during our brief stay at 34, Findlater Terrace, Walham Green. Fully equipped, and arrayed in our extraordinary garments, we duly arrived there, in a rickety four-wheeler, on the top of which were perched two seedy-looking boxes.
The landlady was a toothless old creature, who apparently thought washing a quite unnecessary proceeding. In this she was evidently at one with every one of her neighbours. Findlater Terrace looked unspeakably squalid; groups of dirty children congregated in the gutters and gave forth discordant shrieks as our cab drove up.
Through my thick veils I thought that, some distance down the road, I spied a horsy-looking man in ill-fitting riding-breeches and gaiters, who vaguely reminded me of Danvers.
Within half an hour of our installation, and whilst we were eating a tough steak over a doubtful table cloth, my dear lady told me that she had been waiting a full month, until rooms in this particular house happened to be vacant. Fortunately the population in Findlater Terrace is always a shifting one, and Lady Molly had kept a sharp eye on No 34, where, on the floor above, lived Miss Rosie Campbell. Directly the last set of lodgers walked out of the ground-floor rooms, we were ready to walk in.
My dear lady’s manners and customs, whilst living at the above aristocratic address, were fully in keeping with her appearance. The shrill, rasping voice which she assumed echoed from attic to cellar.
One day I heard her giving vague hints to the landlady that her husband, Mr Marcus Stein, had had a little trouble with the police about a small hotel which he had kept somewhere near Fitzroy Square, and where ‘young gentlemen used to come and play cards of a night’. The landlady was also made to understand that the worthy Mr Stein was now living temporarily
at His Majesty’s expense, whilst Mrs Stein had to live a somewhat secluded life, away from her fashionable friends.
The misfortunes of the pseudo Mrs Stein in no way marred the amiability of Mrs Tredwen, our landlady. The inhabitants of Findlater Terrace care very little about the antecedents of their lodgers, so long as they pay their week’s rent in advance, and settle their ‘extras’ without much murmur.
This Lady Molly did, with a generosity characteristic of an ex-lady of means. She never grumbled at the quantity of jam and marmalade which we were supposed to have consumed every week, and which anon reached titanic proportions. She tolerated Mrs Tredwen’s cat, tipped Ermyntrude – the tousled lodging-house slavey – lavishly, and lent the upstairs lodger her spirit-lamp and curling-tongs when Miss Rosie Campbell’s got out of order.
A certain degree of intimacy followed the loan of those curling-tongs. Miss Campbell, reserved and demure, greatly sympathised with the lady who was not on the best of terms with the police. I kept steadily in the background. The two ladies did not visit each other’s rooms, but they held long and confidential conversations on the landings, and I gathered, presently, that the pseudo Mrs Stein had succeeded in persuading Rosie Campbell that, if the police were watching No 34, Findlater Terrace, at all, it was undoubtedly on account of the unfortunate Mr Stein’s faithful wife.
I found it a little difficult to fathom Lady Molly’s intentions. We had been in the house over three weeks and nothing whatever had happened. Once I ventured on a discreet query as to whether we were to expect the sudden re-appearance of Mr Leonard Marvell.
‘For if that’s all about it,’ I argued, ‘then surely the men from the Yard could have kept the house in view, without all this inconvenience and masquerading on our part.’
But to this tirade my dear lady vouchsafed no reply.
She and her newly acquired friend were, about this time, deeply interested in the case known as the ‘West End Shop Robberies’, which no doubt you recollect, since they occurred such a very little while ago. Ladies who were shopping in the large drapers’ emporiums during the crowded and busy sale time, lost reticules, purses, and valuable parcels, without any trace of the clever thief being found.
The drapers, during sale-time, invariably employ detectives in plain clothes to look after their goods, but in this case it was the customers who were robbed, and the detectives, attentive to every attempt at ‘shoplifting’, had had no eyes for the more subtle thief.
I had already noticed Miss Rosie Campbell’s keen look of excitement whenever the pseudo Mrs Stein discussed these cases with her. I was not a bit surprised, therefore, when, one afternoon at about teatime, my dear lady came home from her habitual walk, and, at the top of her shrill voice, called out to me from the hall:
‘Mary! Mary! They’ve got the man of the shop robberies. He’s given the silly police the slip this time, but they know who he is now, and I suppose they’ll get him presently. ’Tisn’t anybody I know,’ she added, with that harsh, common laugh which she had adopted for her part.
I had come out of the room in response to her call, and was standing just outside our own sitting-room door. Mrs Tredwen, too, bedraggled and unkempt, as usual, had sneaked up the area steps, closely followed by Ermyntrude.
But on the half-landing just above us the trembling figure of Rosie Campbell, with scared white face and dilated eyes, looked on the verge of a sudden fall.
Still talking shrilly and volubly, Lady Molly ran up to her, but Campbell met her halfway, and the pseudo Mrs Stein, taking vigorous hold of her wrist, dragged her into our own sitting-room.
‘Pull yourself together, now,’ she said with rough kindness; ‘that owl Tredwen is listening, and you needn’t let her know too much. Shut the door, Mary. Lor’ bless you, m’dear, I’ve gone through worse scares than these. There! You just lie down on this sofa a bit. My niece’ll make you a nice cup o’ tea; and I’ll go and get an evening paper, and see what’s going on. I suppose you are very interested in the shop robbery man, or you wouldn’t have took on so.’
Without waiting for Campbell’s contradiction to this statement, Lady Molly flounced out of the house.
Miss Campbell hardly spoke during the next ten minutes that she and I were left alone together. She lay on the sofa with eyes wide open, staring up at the ceiling, evidently still in a great state of fear.
I had just got tea ready when Lady Molly came back. She had an evening paper in her hand, but threw this down on the table directly she came in.
‘I could only get an early edition,’ she said breathlessly, ‘and the silly thing hasn’t got anything in it about the matter.’
She drew near to the sofa, and, subduing the shrillness of her voice, she whispered rapidly, bending down towards Campbell:
‘There’s a man hanging about at the corner down there. No, no; it’s not the police,’ she added quickly, in response to the girl’s sudden start of alarm. ‘Trust me, my dear, for knowing a ’tec when I see one! Why, I’d smell one half a mile off. No; my opinion is that it’s your man, my dear, and that he’s in a devil of a hole.’
‘Oh! He oughtn’t to come here,’ ejaculated Campbell in great alarm. ‘He’ll get me into trouble and do himself no good. He’s been a fool!’ she added, with a fierceness wholly unlike her usual demure placidity, ‘getting himself caught like that. Now I suppose we shall have to hook it – if there’s time.’
‘Can I do anything to help you?’ asked the pseudo Mrs Stein. ‘You know I’ve been through all this myself, when they was after Mr Stein. Or perhaps Mary could do something.’
‘Well, yes,’ said the girl, after a slight pause, during which she seemed to be gathering her wits together; ‘I’ll write a note, and you shall take it, if you will, to a friend of mine – a lady who lives in the Cromwell Road. But if you still see a man lurking about at the corner of the street, then, just as you pass him, say the word “Campbell”, and if he replies “Rosie”, then give him the note. Will you do that?’
‘Of course I will, my dear. Just you leave it all to me.’
And the pseudo Mrs Stein brought ink and paper and placed them on the table. Rosie Campbell wrote a brief note, and then fastened it down with a bit of sealing-wax before she handed it over to Lady Molly. The note was addressed to Miss Marvell, Scotia Hotel, Cromwell Road.
‘You understand?’ she said eagerly. ‘Don’t give the note to the man unless he says “Rosie” in reply to the word “Campbell”.’
‘All right – all right!’ said Lady Molly, slipping the note into her reticule. ‘And you go up to your room, Miss Campbell; it’s no good giving that old fool Tredwen too much to gossip about.’
Rosie Campbell went upstairs, and presently my dear lady and I were walking rapidly down the badly lighted street.
‘Where is the man?’ I whispered eagerly as soon as we were out of earshot of No 34.
‘There is no man,’ replied Lady Molly, quickly.
‘But the West End shop thief?’ I asked.
‘He hasn’t been caught yet, and won’t be either, for he is far too clever a scoundrel to fall into an ordinary trap.’
She did not give me time to ask further questions, for presently, when we had reached Reporton Square, my dear lady handed me the note written by Campbell, and said:
‘Go straight on to the Scotia Hotel, and ask for Miss Marvell; send up the note to her, but don’t let her see you, as she knows you by sight. I must see the chief first, and will be with you as soon as possible. Having delivered the note, you must hang about outside as long as you can. Use your wits; she must not leave the hotel before I see her.’
There was no hansom to be got in this elegant quarter of the town, so, having parted from my dear lady, I made for the nearest Underground station, and took a train for South Kensington.
Thus it was nearly seven o’clock before I reached the Scotia. In answer to my inquirie
s for Miss Marvell, I was told that she was ill in bed and could see no one. I replied that I had only brought a note for her, and would wait for a reply.
Acting on my dear lady’s instructions, I was as slow in my movements as ever I could be, and was some time in finding the note and handing it to a waiter, who then took it upstairs.
Presently he returned with the message: ‘Miss Marvell says there is no answer.’
Whereupon I asked for pen and paper at the office, and wrote the following brief note on my own responsibility, using my wits as my dear lady had bidden me to do.
‘Please, madam,’ I wrote, ‘will you send just a line to Miss Rosie Campbell? She seems very upset and frightened at some news she has had.’
Once more the waiter ran upstairs, and returned with a sealed envelope, which I slipped into my reticule.
Time was slipping by very slowly. I did not know how long I should have to wait outside in the cold, when, to my horror, I heard a hard voice, with a marked Scotch accent, saying:
‘I am going out, waiter, and shan’t be back to dinner. Tell them to lay a little cold supper upstairs in my room.’
The next moment Miss Marvell, with coat, hat, and veil, was descending the stairs.
My plight was awkward. I certainly did not think it safe to present myself before the lady; she would undoubtedly recollect my face. Yet I had orders to detain her until the appearance of Lady Molly.
Miss Marvell seemed in no hurry. She was putting on her gloves as she came downstairs. In the hall she gave a few more instructions to the porter, whilst I, in a dark corner in the background, was vaguely planning an assault or an alarm of fire.
More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes Page 22