‘But then you heard about the reprieve,’ I put in. ‘Why couldn’t I be told?’
‘I didn’t tell anybody, Mr Staddon. I couldn’t take the risk that Gleasure might get wind of it. I’m sorry to have left you believing the worst, but I think you’ll agree it was worth it. Gleasure cracked, you see, as I’d hoped he would. At eight o’clock this morning, he asked to see me and said he was prepared to confess to the murders of Rosemary and Victor Caswell. He thought that by owning up in time to prevent the hanging he’d ensure he stood trial in England and earn some credit for saving Mrs Caswell’s life. Well, I let him believe the hanging was still due to go ahead and that, subsequently, it was only called off on his account. I haven’t told him the truth yet. I don’t know how he’ll react. Not that it matters. He’s signed his confession now. There’s no way back.’
‘He’s admitted everything?’
‘Yes. He gave two reasons. Firstly, he claims to bear you and Mrs Caswell no ill will. Secondly, he doesn’t want his accomplice to evade justice. I dare say he also hopes—’
‘He’s named an accomplice?’
‘With some relish.’ Wright grinned. ‘Why don’t you read his statement, Mr Staddon?’ From the valise beside his chair he drew a clip of papers and slid it across the table towards me. ‘I shouldn’t really show it to you, but we’re a long way from Scotland Yard and it seems only fair in view of what I’ve put you through.’ His grin broadened. ‘I think you’ll find it an interesting document.’
I, John William Gleasure, having been cautioned by Chief Inspector Wright that anything I say may be used in evidence hereafter, wish to make the following statement.
I have worked for the Caswells since 1891, when I started at Fern Lodge as a kitchen-boy. I was twelve years old then and Victor was twenty-three, just down from Cambridge and fretting at having to work for the family firm. I saw very little of him in the early days, but, whenever I did bump into him, he would have a kind word for me, which is more than I can say for any other member of the household. He used to tip me for polishing his boots with extra care. Later, he took to sending me on secret errands. Down to the betting shop, for instance, to put money on a horse. His father disapproved of gambling. If the horse won, Victor would give me something from his winnings. I liked him for that. I suppose you could say he was my hero.
In 1895, Victor was sent to Brazil to work for a bank. I found out later he had been sent away in disgrace, though only rumours of that reached the likes of me at the time. A few years passed, then we heard he had been sacked by the bank and had vanished without trace. Then, after a few more years, we heard he had reappeared, complete with a fortune made in the rubber trade. He returned to Hereford in 1908, bringing his beautiful Brazilian wife with him. By then, I was a footman working for his brother Mortimer, who had taken charge of the family firm when old Mr George Caswell died. Victor and his wife moved into Fern Lodge until they could find a suitable piece of land to build a house of their own on.
I was glad to have Victor back, unlike most of the household. He added a bit of zest to life. And we still got on well. So, it was no real surprise when he asked me if I would like to come and work for him when they moved. I jumped at it. I could see promotion was more likely under him than his skinflint of a brother.
Mrs Caswell – Consuela, that is – disliked me from the first. I think it was because I was the one servant on good terms with Victor. She resented that. In those days, she wanted him all to herself. I suppose she felt insecure and homesick in drab old Hereford. You could hardly blame her.
A lady’s maid was appointed specially to look after Consuela, Lizzie Thaxter by name. She arrived early in 1909. She was a bright, sparkling, red-headed girl with a bubbly laugh and a personality that quite bowled me over. We got to be sweet on each other. But we had to keep it a secret, because we knew Consuela would not want to keep Lizzie on if she found out about us. She trusted Lizzie, you see, but she would not have trusted her if she had known we were in love. That was wrong of her, because Lizzie would never have betrayed her, not even to me. To prove it, she did not say a word to me about Consuela’s affair with Staddon, not a word.
It came to the point where Lizzie and I started talking about getting wed. It seemed a perfect match. Footman with prospects and milady’s maid. But we were sure Consuela would object. And, all the time, the chances were growing that rumours would start about us below stairs. So, I decided to confide in Victor and see what he advised.
He was very fair, it seemed to me. He said that if he chose the right moment he could probably persuade Consuela to give us her blessing. But it might take a while: we would have to be patient. Well, we were still being patient when Lizzie’s brother, Peter Thaxter, was arrested for his part in the Peto’s Paper Mill robbery. That was February, 1911.
I was horrified. I had my future to think of. To do well in service you have to have a reputation for discretion and honesty. The last thing I needed was a gaol-bird for a brother-in-law. Lizzie was in Brazil at the time with her mistress, whose father had died, but I could hardly wait for her to get back before discussing what I should do with Victor. He was angry about all of it, as only seemed natural, Grenville Peto being Mortimer’s brother-in-law and one of Peter Thaxter’s accomplices being a carpenter – name of Malahide – who was working on the new house. But he also appreciated my predicament. In the end, we agreed that Lizzie could stay on if she disowned her brother and had no further contact with him. Once the trial was over and the dust had settled, we could get married as we had hoped.
A few weeks later, Lizzie came back with Consuela. She was upset about her brother, of course, but it seemed to me that was not the only difference in her. She had grown closer to her mistress while they had been away, closer to her and further from me. When I told her what Victor and I had decided, she flew into a rage and said we had no business settling her future between us; she would not be told by anybody to turn her back on her brother. She was sure he was innocent, even though he had been caught red-handed. Well, that was the first and the last row we ever had. I told her straight that she could forget marriage – and being a lady’s maid – if she stuck by him, that it would be the worse for her and her family if she lost her job and all her prospects with it.
She was torn. I could see that. But I did not mean to let her off the hook. I reckoned it was time to make her understand that I was to be obeyed. And it was true about her family. Her father and another brother had lost their jobs at the mill on account of Peter. They were looking to her to tide them over. I offered to help as well – if she did as I had told her. So, in the end, she agreed. It was all patched up between us. Except that it was never quite the same as before. She stopped trusting me. But I thought she would get back to her normal self once the trial was out of the way. I thought it was just a question of biding my time. Anyway, I had shown her who was master. That seemed important.
In April, we moved to the new house at Clouds Frome. Victor had said he would need a valet once he had left Fern Lodge and I had my eyes on the position. Lizzie and I did not see so much of each other at that time. I was working hard and I could tell she was brooding about her brother. He was due to come before the assizes in September. I was sure it would all come right after that, so I thought it best to leave well alone.
But it never did come right, because, one sultry night in July, Lizzie hanged herself in the orchard at Clouds Frome.
I could not understand why she had done it. She left no note, no explanation of any kind. I had known she was depressed, of course, but suicide seemed so extreme, an insult, almost, to me and what I had been planning for our future.
I grew a hard skin after Lizzie died. I had kept our love a secret, so I kept my grief a secret as well. I cut my feelings off. I decided never to let myself love anyone again, never to think of anybody’s interests but mine. That autumn, Victor made me his valet. It meant more money and a higher place in the scheme of things. Slowly, I forgot Lizzie and all
our hopes. I put them behind me. Time went on. I joined the army when the war broke out and got a nice safe posting as batman to a staff officer. Then, when it was all over, I went back to Clouds Frome as if nothing had changed.
Some things had changed, though. Victor had a daughter by then, Jacinta, a solemn little girl. Victor did not seem to feel for her what I would feel for a daughter of mine. I put it down to disappointment that she was not a boy. As for Consuela, she had become more and more withdrawn, living only for Jacinta, hardly speaking to Victor from one day to the next. Not that I cared whether they loved or hated each other. I was happy with my lot. Nothing could touch me any more – or so I thought.
One evening in the autumn of 1922, I was down at the Full Moon in Mordiford, having a drink, when a fellow asked if he could speak to me. He said he was Tom Malahide, one of Peter Thaxter’s accomplices in the Peto’s Paper Mill robbery. He said he had just been released from prison and that Peter had been hanged back in 1911 for killing a warder. Well, I had heard about that at the time and had thought little of it. But Malahide said Peter had given him a letter he had received from Lizzie just before her death, to be passed on to his family when Malahide came out. He said it explained why she had killed herself. And he also said Peter had told him Lizzie was secretly engaged to me. Malahide made no bones about what he wanted. He reckoned I was better off than the Thaxters, so he was making me an offer: Lizzie’s last letter in exchange for some money to help him get back on his feet.
The long and the short of it is that I bought the letter from Malahide for twenty pounds. I just had to have it, you see, once he had let me glimpse enough of it for me to be sure it was genuine. I just had to know why she had done it. And the letter told me. She had gone on visiting her brother and writing to him after I had forbidden her to. She had disobeyed and deceived me. And Victor had somehow found out. But, instead of telling me, he had blackmailed Lizzie into spying on Consuela for him. She had to choose between losing me – and her job – and betraying her mistress. Well, she chose. And Victor learned what he must have suspected. Consuela was having an affair with Staddon. But Lizzie could not bear the lies she had to tell, the secrets she had to betray. The strain of it drove her to suicide. Or Victor did. It depends how you look at it. But I looked at it only one way. Victor had killed Lizzie. He had taken her from me. I had spent years being grateful to a man who had ruined my life.
I read the letter – and thought it all through – over and over again. Then, one morning while I was shaving Victor, I mentioned Lizzie’s name, quite casually. I said I was beginning to think it was just as well I had never married her. I said that, at the time, I had not even been sure she was keeping her promise to have nothing more to do with her brother. And Victor replied: ‘Do you know, Gleasure, I think you may be right.’ Well, it was the way he said it, the tone of his voice, that gave the game away. And it was then, as I was sliding the razor down his cheek and staring into his eyes, that I decided to kill him for what he had done to Lizzie.
But I wanted to do more than just kill him. I wanted to cheat him, as well, to cheat him as he had cheated me. So, I started thinking about how I could get back at him. And an idea began to form in my mind. I knew from Lizzie’s letter that Consuela and Staddon had been lovers until July, 1911. Jacinta had been born in April, 1912 – exactly nine months later. That explained Victor’s neglect of her. She was not his. A few weeks after her birth, Quarton, his solicitor, had come to see Victor with a new will for him to sign. I had witnessed it, without seeing what it contained. I had assumed at the time that it was being done to provide for Jacinta. But now I thought differently. Now I thought it had probably been done for exactly the opposite reason: to strike her out of his will because she was not his daughter and perhaps to strike Consuela out as well, for carrying another man’s child. If I was right, he had substituted another heir for both of them. But who? Well, I thought I could guess. I knew the way his mind worked. If he had chosen the person I suspected, he had given me the opportunity I needed.
I had to be sure, of course. I had to see the will. It was kept in a concealed safe he had had installed during the first winter at Clouds Frome. I knew where it was. I had seen him open it often enough. What I did not know was the combination. But, as I say, I understood Victor. He had always liked playing games with numbers. He would put money on a horse with a lucky number – a family birthday, I mean, or some other important date – far sooner than he would on a long-odds favourite. And he would use the same sort of mental trick to memorize a combination rather than write it down somewhere. So, whenever he was away, I started trying out ideas based on the sort of numbers he might use. Eventually, I hit on the answer.
I found more than I had bargained for inside the safe. The will was there, of course. I read it and learned I had guessed right. But there was money as well. Thousands of pounds in brand-new five pound notes. Something about them made me suspicious. I took one away and discovered from the water-mark that it had been printed on Peto’s Mill paper. Then I realized Victor was cleverer than I had given him credit for. He had master-minded the robbery. And to think he had threatened to sack Lizzie and forbid our marriage because of the disgrace her brother had brought on her – a disgrace, I now knew, he was ultimately responsible for. Well, that settled it as far as I was concerned. I decided then to take his money as well as his life.
Victor’s sole heir was – and is – his nephew, Spencer. I reckon Victor chose him because he recognized something of himself in Spencer’s nature. Neither thought Hereford – or Caswell & Co. – was good enough for them. They both wanted more. And they were both prepared to do just about anything to get it.
That is what I intended to play on. Spencer had come down from Cambridge in the summer of 1922 and was working for the family firm – just as resentfully as Victor had thirty years before. I struck up an acquaintance with him. It was not difficult. All I had to do was buy him drinks at the pubs in Hereford he used and listen to his gripes and grudges. Most of them were against his father. Yes, he was just like Victor had been at that age.
When I put my plan to him, he jumped at it. I told him about the will. I suggested we murder Victor, then split the inheritance down the middle. Equal shares. We would both be rich men. The beauty of it was that the will was a secret, so when Spencer was named as the beneficiary, there would be no reason to think he had expected to inherit. And anyway, I would be the one who actually killed Victor. I, who had not a shadow of a motive – that anybody knew about.
Spencer was all for it. It was more than just greed, more even than the desire to be free of his father. It was the thrill of planning and getting away with it, the pleasure of committing an undetected crime. He had no scruples about murdering Victor, not one. I wanted revenge, but Spencer, well, he turned out to have an even harder heart than I thought. There is a spark of pure evil in his soul, take it from me. At first, I had difficulty restraining him. But I had to, of course, because I knew that, if we hurried, it would be a recipe for disaster. I had worked it all out, you see. We needed not just to cover our own tracks, but to fake somebody else’s. We needed a scapegoat as well as an alibi.
We chose Consuela because everybody knew she did not get on with Victor and because she had no friends, so nobody would rally round to defend her. I had already decided poison was the safest method to use. People seem to associate it with women. That was another argument for Consuela. The anonymous letters were Spencer’s idea. He has a gift for forgery.
There was a murder done in Hay-on-Wye a couple of years ago using an arsenic-based weed-killer. I remembered it well. That prompted me to have a look round the kitchen garden where I found some tins of Weed Out which looked ideal for our purpose. Spencer telephoned the manufacturer and confirmed it had arsenic as its major ingredient. They warned him to be careful with it. From that point on, it was simply a question of waiting for our chance. I did not intend to be hasty. I was prepared to wait as long as I had to for the right set of
circumstances. I carried a small packet of arsenic about with me, sewn into the lining of my waistcoat, against the day when I could use it without being discovered.
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