Unravelled Knots

by Baroness Orczy

  “But Charles—” I began.

  “Exactly,” he broke in, excitedly, “it was Charles who benefited by the crime. It was he who inherited the fortune.”

  “But, by the new will he would have inherited anyhow. Then why in the world—”

  “You surely don’t believe in that new will, do you? The way in which I marshalled the facts before you ought to have paved the way for more intelligent reasoning.”

  “But Mr. Triscott—” I argued.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, “Mr. Triscott—exactly. The whole thing could only be done in partnership, I admit. But does not everything point to a partnership in what, to my mind, is one of the ugliest crimes in our records? You ought be able to follow the workings of Charles Ashley’s mind, a mind as tortuous as the body that held it. Let me put the facts more briefly before you.

  “While Philip obstinately remained a bachelor, all was well. Charles stuck to the old miser, carefully watching over his interests lest they became jeopardised. But presently Lady Peet-Jackson became a widow and Philip gaily announced his engagement. From that hour Charles, of course, must have seen the fortune on which he had already counted slipping away irretrievably from his grasp. Can you not see in your mind’s eye that queer, misshapen creature setting his crooked brain to devise a way out of the difficulty? Can you not see the plan taking shape gradually, forming itself slowly into a resolve—a resolve to stop his brother’s marriage at all costs?

  “But how? Philip, passionately in love with Muriel Peet-Jackson, having won her after years of waiting, was not likely to give her up. No, but she might give him up. She had done it once for the sake of ambition, she might do it again if… if… Well, Charles Ashley, obscure, poor, misshapen, was not likely to find a rival who would supplant his handsome brother in any woman’s affections. Certainly not! But there remained the other possibility, the possibility that Philip, poor—or, better still, disgraced—might cease to be a prize in the matrimonial market. Disgraced! But how? By publicity? By crime? Yes, by crime! Now, can you see the plan taking shape?

  “Can you see Charles cudgelling his wits as to what crime could most easily be fastened on a man of Philip’s personality and social position? Probably a chance word dropped by his father put the finishing touch to his scheme, a chance word on the subject of a will. And there was the whole plan ready. The unsigned will, the assault on the dying man, and there were always plenty of quarrels between the peppery old miser and his somewhat impatient son. As for Triscott, the dapper little local lawyer, I suppose it took some time for Charles Ashley’s crooked schemes to appear as feasible and profitable to him. Of course, without him nothing could have been done, and the whole of my theory rests upon the fact that the two men were partners in the crime.

  “Where they first met, and how they became friends, I don’t profess to know. If I had had anything to do with the official investigation of that crime I should first of all have examined the servant in the Triscott household, and found out whether or no Mr. Charles Ashley had ever been a visitor there. In any case, I should have found out something about Triscott’s friends and Triscott’s haunts. I am sure that it would then have come to light that Charles Ashley and Mr. Triscott had constant intercourse together.

  “I cannot bring myself to believe in that unsigned will. There was nothing whatever that led up to it, except the supposed quarrel on the Wednesday. But, if that old miser did want to alter his will, why should he have sent for a man whom he hardly knew and whom, mind you, he would have to pay for his services, rather than for his friend, Oldwall, who would have done the work for nothing? The man was a miser, remember. 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? Why, I say, should the Triscotts have done all that if they had not some vital self-interest at stake?

  “And I contend that that vital self-interest demanded that one of them should be there, in the flat, on the watch to see that no third person was present whilst Philip spent his time by his father’s bedside—a witness, such as Lady Peet-Jackson, perhaps, or some friend—whose testimony might demolish the whole edifice of lies which had been so carefully built up. And, did you notice another point? The charwoman, by a new arrangement, was never at the flat on a Monday morning, and that arrangement had only obtained for the past two months. Now why? Charwomen stay away, I believe, on Sundays always, but, I ask you, have you ever heard of a charwoman having a holiday on a Monday?”

  I was bound to admit that it was unusual, whereupon the old scarecrow went on with excitement that grew as rapidly as did the feverish energy of his fingers manipulating his bit of string.

  “And now propel your mind back to that same Monday morning, when, the coast being clear, Charles Ashley, back at the flat and alone with the old man, was able at last to put the finishing touch to his work of infamy. One pressure of the fingers, one blow with the walking-stick, and the curtain was rung down finally on the hideous drama which he had skilfully invented. Think of it all carefully and intelligently,” the Man in the Corner concluded, as he stuffed his beloved piece of string into the capacious pocket of his checked ulster, “and you will admit that there is not a single flaw in my argument—”

  “The walking-stick,” I broke in, quickly.

  “Exactly,” he retorted, “the walking-stick. Charles was quick enough to grasp the significance of that, and on Saturday, while his brother’s back was turned, he carefully hid the walking-stick, knowing that it would be a useful piece of evidence presently. Do you, for a moment suppose,” he added, drily, “that any man would have been such a fool as to throw his walking-stick and the crumpled notes of the will underneath his victim’s bed? They could not have been left there, remember, they could not have rolled under the bed, as the walking-stick had a crook handle, they must deliberately have been thrown there.

  “No, no!” he said, in conclusion, “there is no flaw. 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 this 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.”

  “And what about the Triscotts?” I asked.

  “Ah!” he said, with a sigh, “they are the wicked who prosper, and higher Justice has apparently forgotten them, as it often does forget the evildoer, for a time. We must take it that they were well paid for their share in the crime, and, if the unfortunate Charles had lived, he probably would have been blackmailed by them and bled white. As it is, they have gone scot-free. I made a few enquiries in the neighbourhood lately and I discovered that Mr. Triscott is selling his practice and retiring from business. Presently we’ll hear that he has bought himself a cottage in the country. Then, perhaps, your last doubt will vanish and you will be ready to admit that I have found the true solution of the mystery that surrounded the death of the miser of Maida Vale.”

  The next moment he was gone and I just caught sight of the corner of his checked ulster disappearing through the swing-doors.

  XII

  The Fulton Gardens Mystery

  I

  “Are you prepared to admit,” the Man in the Corner said abruptly as soon as he had finished his glass of milk, “that sympathy, understanding, largeness of he
art—what?—are invariably the outcome of a big brain? It is the fool who is censorious and cruel. Your clever man is nearly always sympathetic. He understands, he appreciates, he studies motives and understands them. During the war it was the fools who tracked down innocent men and women under pretence that they were spies; it was the fools who did not understand that a German might be just as fine a patriot as a Briton or a Frenchman if he served his own country. 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?”

  “There was no other possible!” I retorted.

  “But he was discharged.”

  I shrugged my shoulders under pretence of being unconvinced. As a matter of fact, all I wanted was to make the funny creature talk. “A flimsy alibi,” I said coldly.

  “And a want of sympathy,” he rejoined.

  “What has sympathy got to do with a brutal assault on a defenceless old man? You can’t deny that Leighton had something, at any rate, to do with it?”

  “I did not mean sympathy for the guilty,” he argued, “but for the women who were the principal witnesses in the case.”

  “I don’t see—” I protested.

  “No, but I do. I understood, and in a great measure I sympathised.”

  At which expression of noble sentiment I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. In view of his preamble just now his fatuous statement was funny beyond words.

  “You being the clever man who understands, etcetera,” I said, as seriously as I could, “and I the censorious and cruel old maid who is invariably a fool.”

  “You put it crudely,” he rejoined complacently, “and had you not given ample proof of your intelligence before now I might have thought it worth while to refute the second half of your argument. As for the first…”

  “Hadn’t you better tell me about the Fulton Gardens Mystery?” I broke in impatiently.

  “Certainly,” he replied, in no way abashed. “I have meant to talk to you about it all along, only that you would digress.”

  “Pax!” I retorted, and with a conciliatory smile I handed him a beautiful bit of string. He pounced on it with thin hands that looked like the talons of a bird, and he gloated on that bit of string for all the world as on a prey.

  “I daresay,” he began, “that to most people the mystery appeared baffling enough. But to me… Well, there was the victim of what you very properly call the cowardly assault, your friend—or acquaintance—Mr. Seton Jessup, a man on the wrong side of sixty, but very active and vigorous for his years. He carried on the business of pearl merchant in Fulton Gardens, but he did not live there, as you know. He was a married man, had sons and daughters and a nice house in Fitzjohn’s Avenue. He also owned the house in Fulton Gardens, a four-storey building of the pattern prevalent in that neighbourhood.

  “The ground floor, together with the one above that, and the basement were used by Mr. Jessup himself for his business: on the ground-floor he had his office and showroom, above that were a couple of reception rooms where he usually had his lunch and saw a few privileged customers, and in the basement there was a kitchen with scullery and pantry, a small servants’ hall and a strong room for valuables. The top storey of all was let to a surgical-instrument maker who did not sleep on the premises, and the second floor—that is the one just below the surgical-instrument maker and immediately above the reception rooms—was occupied by Mrs. Tufnell, who was cook-housekeeper to Mr. Jessup, and her niece, Ann Weber, who acted as the house-parlourmaid. Mrs. Tufnell’s son, Mark, who was a junior clerk in the office, did not sleep in the house. He was considered to be rather delicate and lived with a family somewhere near the Alexandra Palace.

  “All these people, as you know, played important parts in the drama that was enacted on the 16th of November at No. 13, Fulton Gardens—an unlucky number, by the way, but one which Mr. Jessup did not change to the usual 12a when he bought the house because he despised all superstition. He was a hard-headed, prosperous businessman; he worked hard himself and expected hard work from his employees. Both his sons worked in the office, one as senior clerk and the other as showman, and in addition to young Mark Tufnell there was another junior clerk—a rather unsatisfactory youth named Arthur Leighton, who was some sort of a relation of Mrs. Jessup’s. But for this connection he never would have been kept on in the business, as he was unpunctual, idle and unreliable. The housekeeper, as well as some of the neighbours, had been scandalised lately by what was picturesquely termed the ‘goings on of that young Leighton with Ann, the housemaid at No. 13.’

  “Ann Weber was a very pretty girl, and like many pretty girls, she was fond of finery and of admiration. As soon as she entered Mr. Jessup’s service she started a flirtation with Mark Tufnell, then she dropped him for a while in favour of the youngest Mr. Jessup; then she went back to Mark and seemed really in love with him that time until, finally, she transferred her favours to Arthur Leighton, chiefly because he was by far the most generous of her admirers. He was always giving her presents of jewellery which Mark Tufnell could not afford, and young Jessup apparently did not care to give her. But she did not, by any means, confine her flirtations to one man: indeed, it appears that she had a marvellous facility for keeping several men hanging about her dainty apron-strings.

  “She was not on the best of terms with her aunt, chiefly because the latter noted with some asperity that her son was far from cured of his infatuation for the pretty housemaid. The more she flirted with Leighton and the others the greater did his love for her appear, and all that Mrs. Tufnell could hope for was that Mr. Leighton would marry Ann one day soon, when he would take her right away and Mark would then probably make up his mind to forget her. Young Leighton was doing very well in business apparently, for he always had plenty of money to spend, whilst poor Mark had only a small salary, and, moreover, had nothing of the smart, dashing looks about him which had made the other man so attractive to Ann.”

  II

  “And now,” the Man in the Corner continued after a while, “we come to that 16th of November when the mysterious drama occurred at No. 13, Fulton Gardens. As a general rule, it seems, Mr. Jessup was in his office most evenings until seven o’clock. His clerks and showmen finished at six, but he would, almost invariably, stay on an hour longer to go through his accounts or look over his stock. On this particular evening, just before seven o’clock, he rang for the housekeeper, Mrs. Tufnell, and told her that he would be staying until quite late, and would she send him in a cup of tea and a plate of sandwiches in about an hour’s time.

  “Mrs. Tufnell owned to being rather disappointed when she had this order because her son Mark had arranged to take her and Ann to the cinema that evening, and now, of course, they could not leave until after Mr. Jessup had gone, in case he wanted anything, and he might be staying on until all hours. However, Mark stayed to supper, and after supper Mrs. Tufnell got the tea and sandwiches ready and took the tray up to Mr. Jessup herself. Mr. Jessup was then sitting at his desk with two or three big books in front of him, and Mrs. Tufnell noticed that the safe in which the cash was kept that came in after banking hours was wide open.

  “Mrs. Tufnell put down the tray and was about to leave the room again when Mr. Jessup spoke to her.

  “‘I expect Mr. Leighton back presently. Show him in here when he comes. But I don’t want to see anybody else, not any of you. Understand?’

  “It seems that he said this in such a harsh and peremptory manner that Mrs. Tufnell was not only upset but quite frighte
ned. 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 those 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. Even to you at this moment I daresay that this seems a trifling circumstance, but I mention it because to my mind it had a great deal of significance, and I think that the police were very wrong to dismiss it quite so lightly.

  “Well, to resume. Mr. Jessup was in his office with his books and with the safe, where he kept all the cash that came in after banking hours, open. Mrs. Tufnell saw and spoke to him at eight o’clock and he was then expecting Arthur Leighton to come to him at nine.

  “No one saw him alive after that.

  “The next morning Mrs. Tufnell was downstairs as usual at a quarter to seven. After she had lighted the kitchen fire, done her front steps and swept the hall, she went to do the ground-floor rooms. She told the police afterwards that from the moment she got up she felt that there was something wrong in the house. Somehow or other she was frightened; she didn’t know of what, but she was frightened. As soon as she had opened the office door she gave a terrified scream. Mr. Jessup was sitting at his desk just as Mrs. Tufnell had seen him the night before, with his big books in front of him and the safe door open. But his head had fallen forward on the desk and his arms were spread out over his books. Mrs. Tufnell never doubted for a second but that he was dead, even before she saw the stick lying on the floor and that horrible, horrible, dull red stain which spread from the back of the old man’s head, right down to his neck and stained his collar and the top of his coat. Even before she saw all that she knew that Mr. Jessup was dead.