by Mike Ashley
White continued staring at her. ‘Miss Brooke,’ he said presently in an altered tone, ‘whatever suspicions may attach to the sisterhood, I’ll stake my life on it, my Annie has had no share in any wickedness of any sort.’
‘Oh, quite so. It is most likely that your Annie has, in some way, been inveigled into joining these sisters – has been taken possession of by them, in fact, just as they have taken possession of the little cripples.’
‘That’s it!’ he cried excitedly. ‘That was the idea that occurred to me when you spoke to me on the hill about them, otherwise you may be sure –’
‘Did they get relief of any sort at the hall?’ interrupted Loveday.
‘Yes. One of the two ugly old women stopped outside the lodge gates with the donkey cart, and the other beauty went up to the house alone. She stayed there, I should think, about a quarter of an hour, and when she came back was followed by a servant carrying a bundle and a basket.’
‘Ah! I’ve no doubt they brought away with them something else besides old garments and broken victuals.’
White stood in front of her, fixing a hard, steady gaze upon her.
‘Miss Brooke,’ he said presently in a voice that matched the look on his face, ‘what do you suppose was the real object of these women in going to Wootton Hall this morning?’
‘Mr White, if I wished to help a gang of thieves break into Wootton Hall tonight, don’t you think I should be greatly interested in procuring from them the information that the master of the house was away from home; that two of the menservants who slept in the house had recently been dismissed and their places had not yet been filled; also that the dogs were never unchained at night and that their kennels were at the side of the house at which the butler’s pantry is not situated? These are particulars I have gathered in this house without stirring from my chair, and I am satisfied that they are likely to be true. At the same time, if I were a professed burglar I should not be content with information that was likely to be true but would be careful to procure such that was certain to be true and so would set accomplices to work at the fountain head. Now do you understand?’
White folded his arms and looked down on her.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked in short, brusque tones.
Loveday looked him full in the face. ‘Communicate with the police immediately,’ she answered. ‘And I should feel greatly obliged if you will at once take a note from me to Inspector Gunning at Reigate.’
‘And what becomes of Annie?’
‘I don’t think you need have any anxiety on that head. I’ve no doubt that when the circumstances of her admission to the sisterhood are investigated it will be proved that she has been as much deceived and imposed upon as the man John Murray who so foolishly let his house to these women. Remember, Annie has Mrs Copeland’s good word to support her integrity.’
White stood silent for a while.
‘What sort of a note do you wish me to take to the inspector?’ he presently asked.
‘You shall read it as I write it, if you like,’ answered Loveday. She took a correspondence card from her letter case, and, with an indelible pencil, wrote as follows: ‘Wootton Hall is threatened tonight – concentrate attention there. LB’
White read the words as she wrote them with a curious expression passing over his handsome features.
‘Yes,’ he said, curtly as before. ‘I’ll deliver that, I give you my word, but I’ll bring back no answer to you. I’ll do no more spying for you – it’s a trade that doesn’t suit me. There’s a straightforward way of doing straightforward work, and I’ll take that way – no other – to get my Annie out of that den.’
He took the note, which she sealed and handed to him, and strode out of the room.
Loveday, from the window, watched him mount his bicycle. Was it her fancy, or did there pass a swift, furtive glance of recognition between him and the hedger on the other side of the way as he rode out of the courtyard?
Loveday seemed determined to make that hedger’s work easy for him. The short winter’s day was closing in now, and her room must consequently have been growing dim to outside observation. She lighted the gas chandelier which hung from the ceiling and, still with blinds and curtains undrawn, took her old place at the window, spread writing materials before her and commenced a long and elaborate report to her chief at Lynch Court.
About half an hour afterwards, as she threw a casual glance across the road, she saw that the hedger had disappeared but that two ill-looking tramps sat munching bread and cheese under the hedge to which his bill-hook had done so little service. Evidently the intention was, one way or another, not to lose sight of her so long as she remained in Redhill.
Meantime, White had delivered Loveday’s note to the inspector at Reigate and had disappeared on his bicycle once more.
Gunning read it without a change of expression. Then he crossed the room to the fireplace and held the card as close to the bars as he could without scorching it.
‘I had a telegram from her this morning,’ he explained to his confidential man, ‘telling me to rely upon chemicals and coals throughout the day, and that, of course, meant that she would write to me in invisible ink. No doubt this message about Wootton Hall means nothing …’
He broke off abruptly, exclaiming, ‘Eh! what’s this!’ as, having withdrawn the card from the fire, Loveday’s real message stood out in bold, clear characters between the lines of the false one.
Thus it ran:
North Cape will be attacked tonight – a desperate gang – be prepared for a struggle. Above all, guard the electrical engine-house. On no account attempt to communicate with me; I am so closely watched that any endeavour to do so may frustrate your chance of trapping the scoundrels. LB
That night when the moon went down behind Reigate Hill an exciting scene was enacted at North Cape. The Surrey Gazette, in its issue the following day, gave the subjoined account of it under the heading ‘Desperate encounter with burglars’.
Last night North Cape, the residence of Mr Jameson, was the scene of an affray between the police and a desperate gang of burglars. North Cape is lighted throughout with electricity, and the burglars, four in number, divided in half – two being told to enter and rob the house, and two to remain at the engine-shed where the electricity is stored, so that, at a given signal, should need arise, the wires might be unswitched, the inmates of the house thrown into sudden darkness and confusion and the escape of the marauders thereby facilitated. Mr Jameson, however, had received timely warning from the police of the intended attack, and he, with his two sons, all well armed, sat in darkness in the inner hall awaiting the coming of the thieves. The police were stationed some in the stables, some in outbuildings nearer to the house and others in more distant parts of the grounds. The burglars effected their entrance by means of a ladder placed to a window of the servants’ staircase, which leads straight down to the butler’s pantry and to the safe where the silver is kept. The fellows, however, had no sooner got into the house than the police, issuing from their hiding-place outside, mounted the ladder after them and thus cut off their retreat. Mr Jameson and his two sons at the same moment attacked them in front, and thus overwhelmed by numbers the scoundrels were easily secured. It was at the engine-house outside that the sharpest struggle took place. The thieves had forced open the door of this engine-shed with their jemmies immediately on their arrival under the very eyes of the police who lay in ambush in the stables, and when one of the men, captured in the house, contrived to sound an alarm on his whistle, these outside watchers made a rush for the electrical jars in order to unswitch the wires. Upon this the police closed upon them, and a hand-to-hand struggle followed, and if it had not been for the timely assistance of Mr Jameson and his sons, who had fortunately conjectured that their presence here might be useful, it is more than likely that one of the burglars, a powerfully built man, would have escaped.
The names of the captured men are John Murray, Arthur and George L
ee (father and son) and a man with so many aliases that it is difficult to know which is his real name. The whole thing had been most cunningly and carefully planned. The elder Lee, lately released from penal servitude for a similar offence, appears to have been prime mover in the affair. This man had, it seems, a son and a daughter who, through the kindness of friends, had been fairly well placed in life: the son at an electrical engineers’ in London; the daughter as nursery governess at Wootton Hall. Directly this man was released from Portland he seems to have found out his children and done his best to ruin them both. He was constantly at Wootton Hall endeavouring to induce his daughter to act as an accomplice to a robbery of the house. This so worried the girl that she threw up her situation and joined a sisterhood that had recently been established in the neighbourhood. Upon this, Lee’s thoughts turned in another direction. He induced his son, who had saved a little money, to throw up his work in London and join him in his disreputable career. The boy is a handsome young fellow but appears to have in him the makings of a first-class criminal. In his work as an electrical engineer he had made the acquaintance of the man John Murray, who, it is said, has been rapidly going downhill of late. Murray was the owner of the house rented by the sisterhood that Miss Lee had joined, and the idea evidently struck the brains of these three scoundrels that this sisterhood, whose antecedents were a little mysterious, might be utilized to draw off the attention of the police from themselves and from the especial house in the neighbourhood that they had planned to attack. With this end in view, Murray made an application to the police to have the sisters watched, and, still further to give colour to the suspicions he had endeavoured to set afloat concerning them, he and his confederates made feeble attempts at burglary upon the houses at which the sisters had called begging for scraps. It is a matter for congratulation that the plot, from beginning to end, has been thus successfully unearthed, and it is felt on all sides that great credit is due to Inspector Gunning and his skilled coadjutors for the vigilance and promptitude they have displayed throughout the affair.
Loveday read aloud this report with her feet on the fender of the Lynch Court office.
‘Accurate, as far as it goes,’ she said, as she laid down the paper.
‘But we want to know a little more,’ said Mr Dyer. ‘In the first place, I would like to know what it was that diverted your suspicions from the unfortunate sisters?’
‘The way in which they handled the children,’ answered Loveday promptly. ‘I have seen female criminals of all kinds handling children, and I have noticed that although they may occasionally – even this is rare – treat them with a certain rough sort of kindness, of tenderness they are utterly incapable. Now Sister Monica, I must admit, is not pleasant to look at; at the same time, there was something absolutely beautiful in the way in which she lifted the little cripple out of the cart, put his tiny thin hand around her neck and carried him into the house. By the way, I would like to ask some rapid physiognomist how he would account for Sister Monica’s repulsiveness of feature as contrasted with young Lee’s undoubted good looks – heredity, in this case, throws no light on the matter.’
‘Another question,’ said Mr Dyer, not paying much heed to Loveday’s digression. ‘How was it you transferred your suspicions to John Murray?’
‘I did not do so immediately, although at the very first it had struck me as odd that he should be so anxious to do the work of the police for them. The chief thing I noticed concerning Murray, on the first and only occasion on which I saw him, was that he had had an accident with his bicycle, for in the right-hand corner of his lamp-glass there was a tiny star, and the lamp itself had a dent on the same side, had also lost its hook and was fastened to the machine by a bit of electric fuse. The next morning as I was walking up the hill towards Northfield I was accosted by a young man mounted on that selfsame bicycle – not a doubt of it: star in glass, dent, fuse, all three.’
‘Ah, that sounded an important keynote and led you to connect Murray and the younger Lee immediately.’
‘It did, and, of course, also at once gave the lie to his statement that he was a stranger in the place and confirmed my opinion that there was nothing of the north-countryman in his accent. Other details in his manner and appearance gave rise to other suspicions. For instance, he called himself a press reporter by profession, and his hands were coarse and grimy as only a mechanic’s could be. He said he was a bit of a literary man, but the Tennyson that showed so obtrusively from his pocket was new and in parts uncut and totally unlike the well-thumbed volume of the literary student. Finally, when he tried and failed to put my latch-key into his waistcoat pocket, I saw the reason lay in the fact that the pocket was already occupied by a soft coil of electric fuse, the end of which protruded. Now, an electric fuse is what an electrical engineer might almost unconsciously carry about with him, it is so essential a part of his working tools, but it is a thing that a literary man or a press reporter could have no possible use for.’
‘Exactly, exactly. And it was no doubt that bit of electric fuse that turned your thoughts to the one house in the neighbourhood lighted by electricity and suggested to your mind the possibility of electrical engineers turning their talents to account in that direction. Now, will you tell me, what, at that stage of your day’s work, induced you to wire to Gunning that you would bring your invisible-ink bottle into use?’
‘That was simply a matter or precaution. It did not compel me to the use of invisible ink, if I saw other safe methods of communication. I felt myself being hemmed in on all sides with spies, and I could not tell what emergency might arise. I don’t think I have ever had a more difficult game to play. As I walked and talked with the young fellow up the hill it became clear to me that if I wished to do my work I must lull the suspicions of the gang and seem to walk into their trap. I saw by the persistent way in which Wootton Hall was forced on my notice that it was wished to fix my suspicions there. I accordingly, to all appearance, did so and allowed the fellows to think they were making a fool of me.’
‘Ha! ha! Capital that – the biter bit, with a vengeance! Splendid idea to make that young rascal himself deliver the letter that was to land him and his pals in jail. And he all the time laughing in his sleeve and thinking what a fool he was making of you! Ha, ha, ha!’ And Mr Dyer made the office ring again with his merriment.
‘The only person one is at all sorry for in this affair is poor little Sister Anna,’ said Loveday pityingly. ‘And yet, perhaps, all things considered, after her sorry experience of life she may not be so badly placed in a sisterhood where practical Christianity, not religious hysterics, is the one and only rule of the order.’
HE FLUNG HIMSELF UPON THE PANELS …
from ‘The Villa of Simpkins’ by Arabella Kenealy
Arabella Kenealy
THE VILLA OF SIMPKINS
Like Catherine Pirkis, Arabella Kenealy (1859–1938) was an ardent anti-vivisectionist and wrote a prize-winning essay on the subject, The Failure of Vivisection and the Future of Medical Research (1909). She was by training a medical doctor and practised in London and Watford between 1888 and 1894, specializing in the care of women and children, before a severe attack of diphtheria forced her to retire and turn to writing. Not surprisingly, her first book was Dr Janet of Harley Street (1893), which, like her other novels, such as Woman and the Shadow (1898), championed the role of the independent ‘new’ woman. Yet Kenealy was also conscious of problems inherent in a totally liberated woman, which she finally confronted in Feminism and Sex-Extinction (1920) where she highlighted the importance of the distinction between the sexes.
Kenealy was the daughter of Dr Edward Vaughan Kenealy, who had been the counsel for the defence in the notorious Tichborne case of 1874 regarding whether the claimant to the Tichborne baronetcy was genuine. Kenealy’s conduct during this rather erratic trial was such that he was subsequently disbarred. This must have affected the whole Kenealy family, especially Arabella, who was only fifteen at the time, but it i
s probably also true that her father’s irascibility and temperament rubbed off on Arabella as she, too, could be argumentative and difficult. This character trait also appears in the narrator of the following story. Kenealy had an interest in the occult, and in 1896 she wrote a series for The Ludgate magazine, ‘Some Experiences of Lord Syfret’. The stories themselves are genuine mysteries and not supernatural, but behind them is the suggestion that strange forces might be at work directing human actions. In the following story, for instance, Syfret has a premonition of disaster, but that is the only hint of the outré.
The Villa of Simpkins
THERE IS AN atmosphere about houses. They who live and joy and grieve in them invest them with a kind of aura. So some houses come to wear a face of gloom, of gaiety, of tragedy or terror. This circumstance, to me so manifest, escapes the notice of most persons.
One can see that tiles are broken on the roof; another that the window curtains are in need of washing; another that the masonry demands repointing or the woodwork repainting; while a fourth condemns the sanitary arrangements. But the more intrinsic fact, the fact of desolation or disaster, that to my mind is most obvious, they miss, and even when perceived they refer to some detail of dilapidation or poverty. That my instinct is infallible, I do not claim – on the contrary, it has more than once deceived me – but in cases where it has been rooted and tenacious, even though proofs have not substantiated it, I am satisfied my conviction of mystery or calamity had had its origins in fact; that the sense I have of violence and murder in the midst of a smiling family is an echo, a shadow, a stain on the fabric of life left by some former catastrophe. Sometimes I have been able to justify it by raking up the ashes of the past. Sometimes – and this is singular – the tragedy has happened long after I have sensed it. Of this, what follows is an example.