“My client walked out of Clevere feeling, as you may well imagine, very wrathful; on the doorstep, just as he was leaving, he met Miss Margaret, and told her very briefly what had occurred. She took the matter very lightly at first, but finally became more serious, and ended the brief interview with the request that, since he could not come to the dance after what had occurred, he should come and see her afterwards, meeting her in the gardens soon after midnight. She would not take the ring from him then, but talked a good deal of sentiment about Christmas morning, asking him to bring the ring to her at night, and also the letters which she had written to him. Well—you can guess the rest.”
Lady Molly nodded thoughtfully.
“Miss Ceely was playing a double game,” continued Mr Grayson, earnestly. “She was determined to break off all relationship with Mr Smethick, for she had transferred her volatile affections to Captain Glynne, who had lately become heir to an earldom and £40,000 a year. Under the guise of sentimental twaddle she got my unfortunate client to meet her at night in the grounds of Clevere and to give up to her the letters which might have compromised her in the eyes of her new lover. At two o’clock a.m. Major Ceely was murdered by one of his numerous enemies; as to which I do not know, nor does Mr Smethick. He had just parted from Miss Ceely at the very moment when the first cry of ‘Murder!’ roused Clevere from its slumbers. This she could confirm if she only would, for the two were still in sight of each other, she inside the gates, he just a little way down the road. Mr Smethick saw Margaret Ceely run rapidly back towards the house. He waited about a little while, half hesitating what to do; then he reflected that his presence might be embarrassing, or even compromising to her whom, in spite of all, he still loved dearly; and knowing that there were plenty of men in and about the house to render what assistance was necessary, he finally turned his steps and went home a broken-hearted man, since she had given him the go-by, taken her letters away, and flung contemptuously into the mud the ring he had bought for her.”
The lawyer paused, mopping his forehead and gazing with whole-souled earnestness at my lady’s beautiful, thoughtful face.
“Has Mr Smethick spoken to Miss Ceely since?” asked Lady Molly, after awhile.
“No, but I did,” replied the lawyer.
“What was her attitude?”
“One of bitter and callous contempt. She denies my unfortunate client’s story from beginning to end—declares that she never saw him after she bade him ‘good-morning’ on the doorstep of Clevere Hall when she heard of his unfortunate quarrel with her father. Nay, more, she scornfully calls the whole tale a cowardly attempt to shield a dastardly crime behind a still more dastardly libel on a defenceless girl.”
We were all silent now, buried in thought which none of us would have cared to translate into words. That the impasse seemed indeed hopeless no one could deny.
The tower of damning evidence against the unfortunate young man had indeed been built by remorseless circumstances with no faltering hand.
Margaret Ceely alone could have saved him, but with brutal indifference she preferred the sacrifice of an innocent man’s life and honour to that of her own chances of a brilliant marriage. There are such women in the world; thank God I have never met any but that one!
Yet am I wrong when I say that she alone could save the unfortunate young man, who throughout was behaving with such consummate gallantry, refusing to give his own explanation of the events that occurred on that Christmas morning unless she chooses first to tell the tale. There was one present now in the dingy little room at the “Black Swan” who could disentangle that weird skein of coincidences, if any human being not gifted with miraculous powers could indeed do it at this eleventh hour.
She now said gently:
“What would you like me to do in this matter, Mr Grayson? And why have you come to me rather than to the police?”
“How can I go with this tale to the police?” he ejaculated in obvious despair. “Would they not also look upon it as a dastardly libel on a woman’s reputation? We have no proofs, remember, and Miss Ceely denies the whole story from first to last. No, no!” he exclaimed with wonderful fervour. “I came to you because I have heard of your marvellous gifts, your extraordinary intuition. Someone murdered Major Ceely! It was not my old friend Colonel Smethick’s son. Find out who it was, then! I beg of you, find out who it was!”
He fell back in his chair, broken down with grief. With inexpressible gentleness Lady Molly went up to him and placed her beautiful white hands on his shoulder.
“I will do my best, Mr Grayson.”
V
We remained alone and singularly quiet the whole of that evening. That my dear lady’s active brain was hard at work I could guess by the brilliance of her eyes, and that sort of absolute stillness in her person through which one could almost feel the delicate nerves vibrating.
The story told her by the lawyer had moved her singularly. Mind you, she had always been morally convinced of young Smethick’s innocence, but in her the professional woman always fought hard battles against the sentimentalist, and in this instance the overwhelming circumstantial evidence and the conviction of her superiors had forced her to accept the young man’s guilt as something out of her ken.
By his silence, too, the young man had tacitly confessed; and if a man is perceived on the very scene of a crime, both before it has been committed and directly afterwards; if something admittedly belonging to him is found within three yards of where the murderer must have stood; if, added to this, he has had a bitter quarrel with the victim, and can give no account of his actions or whereabouts during the fatal time, it were vain to cling to optimistic beliefs in that same man’s innocence.
But now matters had assumed an altogether different aspect. The story told by Mr Smethick’s lawyer had all the appearance of truth. Margaret Ceely’s character, her callousness on the very day when her late fiancé stood in the dock, her quick transference of her affections to the richer man, all made the account of the events on Christmas night as told by Mr Grayson extremely plausible.
No wonder my dear lady was buried in thought.
“I shall have to take the threads up from the beginning, Mary,” she said to me the following morning, when after breakfast she appeared in her neat coat and skirt, with hat and gloves, ready to go out, “so on the whole I think I will begin with a visit to the Haggetts.”
“I may come with you, I suppose?” I suggested meekly.
“Oh, yes!” she rejoined carelessly.
Somehow I had an inkling that the carelessness of her mood was only on the surface. It was not likely that she—my sweet, womanly, ultra-feminine, beautiful lady—should feel callous on this absorbing subject.
We motored down to Bishopthorpe. It was bitterly cold, raw, damp, and foggy. The chauffeur had some difficulty in finding the cottage, the “home” of the imbecile gardener and his wife.
There was certainly not much look of home about the place. When, after much knocking at the door, Mrs Haggett finally opened it, we saw before us one of the most miserable, slatternly places I think I ever saw.
In reply to Lady Molly’s somewhat curt inquiry, the woman said that Haggett was in bed, suffering from one of his “fits.”
“That is a great pity,” said my dear lady, rather unsympathetically, I thought, “for I must speak with him at once.”
“What is it about?” asked the woman, sullenly. “I can take a message.”
“I am afraid not,” rejoined my lady. “I was asked to see Haggett personally.”
“By whom, I’d like to know,” she retorted, now almost insolently.
“I dare say you would. But you are wasting precious time. Hadn’t you better help your husband on with his clothes? This lady and I will wait in the parlour.”
After some hesitation the woman finally complied, looking very sulky the while.
We
went into the miserable little room wherein not only grinding poverty but also untidiness and dirt were visible all round. We sat down on two of the cleanest-looking chairs, and waited whilst a colloquy in subdued voices went on in the room over our heads.
The colloquy, I may say, seemed to consist of agitated whispers on one part and wailing complaints on the other; this was followed presently by some thuds and much shuffling, and presently Haggett, looking uncared-for, dirty, and unkempt, entered the parlour, followed by his wife.
He came forward, dragging his ill-shod feet and pulling nervously at his forelock.
“Ah!” said my lady kindly, “I’m glad to see you down, Haggett, though I am afraid I haven’t very good news for you.”
“Yes, miss!” murmured the man, obviously not quite comprehending what was said to him.
“I represent the workhouse authorities,” continued Lady Molly, “and I thought we could arrange for you and your wife to come into the Union tonight, perhaps.”
“The Union?” here interposed the woman, roughly. “What do you mean? We ain’t going to the Union?”
“Well! but since you are not staying here,” rejoined my lady, blandly, “you will find it impossible to get another situation for your husband in his present mental condition.”
“Miss Ceely won’t give us the go-by,” she retorted defiantly.
“She might wish to carry out her late father’s intentions,” said Lady Molly with seeming carelessness.
“The Major was a cruel, cantankerous brute,” shouted the woman with unpremeditated violence. “Haggett had served him faithfully for twelve years, and—”
She checked herself abruptly, and cast one of her quick, furtive glances at Lady Molly.
Her silence now had become as significant as her outburst of rage, and it was Lady Molly who concluded the phrase for her.
“And yet he dismissed him without warning,” she said calmly.
“Who told you that?” retorted the woman.
“The same people, no doubt, who declare that you and Haggett had a grudge against the Major for this dismissal.”
“That’s a lie,” asserted Mrs Haggett doggedly; “we gave information about Mr Smethick having killed the Major because—”
“Ah,” interrupted Lady Molly, quickly, “but then Mr Smethick did not murder Major Ceely, and your information therefore was useless!”
“Then who killed the Major, I should like to know?”
Her manner was arrogant, coarse, and extremely unpleasant. I marvelled why my dear lady put up with it, and what was going on in that busy brain of hers. She looked quite urbane and smiling, whilst I wondered what in the world she meant by this story of the workhouse and the dismissal of Haggett.
“Ah, that’s what none of us know!” she now said lightly; “some folks say it was your husband.”
“They lie!” she retorted quickly. The imbecile, evidently not understanding the drift of the conversation, was mechanically stroking his red mop and looking helplessly all round him.
“He was home before the cries of ‘Murder!’ were heard in the house,” continued Mrs Haggett.
“How do you know?” asked Lady Molly quickly.
“How do I know?”
“Yes; you couldn’t have heard the cries all the way to this cottage—why, it’s over half a mile from the Hall!”
“He was home, I say,” she repeated with dogged obstinacy.
“You sent him?”
“He didn’t do it—”
“No one will believe you, especially when the knife is found.”
“What knife?”
“His clasp-knife, with which he killed Major Ceely,” said Lady Molly, quietly; “he has it in his hand now.”
And with a sudden, wholly unexpected gesture she pointed to the imbecile, who in an aimless way had prowled round the room whilst this rapid colloquy was going on.
The purport of it all must in some sort of way have found an echo in his enfeebled brain. He wandered up to the dresser whereon lay the remnants of that morning’s breakfast, together with some crockery and utensils.
In that same half-witted and irresponsible way he had picked up one of the knives and now was holding it out towards his wife, whilst a look of fear spread over his countenance.
“I can’t do it, Annie, I can’t—you’d better do it,” he said.
There was dead silence in the little room. The woman Haggett stood as if turned to stone. Ignorant and superstitious as she was, I suppose that the situation had laid hold of her nerves, and that she felt that the finger of a relentless Fate was even now being pointed at her.
The imbecile was shuffling forward, closer and closer to his wife, still holding out the knife towards her and murmuring brokenly:
“I can’t do it. You’d better, Annie—you’d better—”
He was close to her now, and all at once her rigidity and nerve-strain gave way; she gave a hoarse cry, and, snatching the knife from the poor wretch, she rushed at him ready to strike.
Lady Molly and I were both young, active, and strong, and there was nothing of the squeamish grande dame about my dear lady when quick action was needed. But even then we had some difficulty in dragging Annie Haggett away from her miserable husband. Blinded with fury, she was ready to kill the man who had betrayed her. Finally we succeeded in wresting the knife from her.
You may be sure that it required some pluck after that to sit down again quietly and to remain in the same room with this woman, who already had one crime upon her conscience, and with this weird, half-witted creature who kept on murmuring pitiably:
“You’d better do it, Annie—”
Well, you’ve read the account of the case, so you know what followed. Lady Molly did not move from that room until she had obtained the woman’s full confession. All she did for her own protection was to order me to open the window and to blow the police whistle which she handed me. The police-station fortunately was not very far, and sound carried in the frosty air.
She admitted to me afterwards that it had been foolish perhaps not to have brought Etty or Danvers with her, but she was supremely anxious not to put the woman on the alert from the very start, hence her circumlocutory speeches anent the workhouse and Haggett’s probable dismissal.
That the woman had had some connection with the crime Lady Molly, with her keen intuition, had always felt; but as there was no witness to the murder itself, and all circumstantial evidence was dead against young Smethick, there was only one chance of successful discovery, and that was the murderer’s own confession.
If you think over the interview between my dear lady and the Haggetts on that memorable morning, you will realize how admirably Lady Molly had led up to the weird finish. She would not speak to the woman unless Haggett was present, and she felt sure that as soon as the subject of the murder cropped up the imbecile would either do or say something that would reveal the truth.
Mechanically, when Major Ceely’s name was mentioned, he had taken up the knife. The whole scene recurred to his tottering mind. That the Major had summarily dismissed him recently was one of those bold guesses which Lady Molly was wont to make.
That Haggett had been merely egged on by his wife, and had been too terrified at the last to do the deed himself, was no surprise to her, and hardly one to me, whilst the fact that the woman ultimately wreaked her own passionate revenge upon the unfortunate Major was hardly to be wondered at, in the face of her own coarse and elemental personality.
Cowed by the quickness of events and by the appearance of Danvers and Etty on the scene, she finally made full confession.
She was maddened by the Major’s brutality, when with rough, cruel words he suddenly turned her husband adrift, refusing to give him further employment. She herself had great ascendancy over the imbecile, and had drilled him into a part of hate and of revenge At first he
had seemed ready and willing to obey. It was arranged that he was to watch on the terrace every night until such time as an alarm of the recurrence of the cattle-maiming outrages should lure the Major out alone.
This effectually occurred on Christmas morning, but not before Haggett, frightened and pusillanimous, was ready to flee rather than to accomplish the villainous deed. But Annie Haggett, guessing perhaps that he would shrink from the crime at the last, had also kept watch every night. Picture the prospective murderer watching and being watched!
When Haggett came across his wife he deputed her to do the deed herself.
I suppose that either terror of discovery or merely desire for the promised reward had caused the woman to fasten the crime on another.
The finding of the ring by Haggett was the beginning of that cruel thought which, but for my dear lady’s marvellous powers, would indeed have sent a brave young man to the gallows.
Ah, you wish to know if Margaret Ceely is married? No! Captain Glynne cried off. What suspicions crossed his mind I cannot say; but he never proposed to Margaret, and now she is in Australia—staying with an aunt, I think—and she has sold Clevere Hall.
By the Sword
Selwyn Jepson
Selwyn Jepson (1899–1989) was a member of a distinguished literary family. His father, Edgar, was a popular novelist who occasionally wrote crime fiction, and who became a founder member of the Detection Club, while his niece is Fay Weldon. Selwyn was educated at St Paul’s School and the Sorbonne, and after serving in the First World War, he too became a novelist, producing books such as The Red-Haired Girl and The Death Gong during the Twenties. As a screenwriter in the Thirties, his credits included The Riverside Murder, loosely based on Six Dead Men, an excellent novel by the Belgian author S.A. Steeman, and The Scarab Murder Case, a 1936 film based on a Philo Vance mystery written by the American S.S. Van Dine.
The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories Page 3