The Case of Miss Elliott

by Baroness Orczy

  “Harold was terribly unhappy at this turn of events. Pride forbade him to take an unfair advantage of a young girl’s devotion, and, acting on the advice of his parents, he started for his tour in Norway, ostensibly in order to try and forget the fair Lady Agnes. This unhappy love affair, ending in an open and bitter quarrel between himself and the owner of Cigarette, did – as I said before – the young man’s case no good. At the instance of the Earl of Okehampton, who determined to prosecute him, he was arrested on landing at Harwich.

  “Well,” continued the man in the corner, “the next events must be still fresh in your mind. When Harold Keeson appeared in the dock, charged with such meanness as to wreak his private grievance upon a dumb animal, public sympathy at once veered round in his favour. He looked so handsome, so frank and honest, that at once one felt convinced that his hand, at any rate, could never have done such a dastardy thing.

  “Mr Keeson, who was a rich man, moreover had enlisted the services of Sir Arthur Inglewood, who had, in the short time at his disposal, collected all the most important evidence on behalf of his client.

  “The two young men who had been travelling in Norway with Harold Keeson had been present with him on the memorable night at a bachelor party given by a mutual friend at the Stag and Mantle. Both testified that the party had played Bridge until the small hours of the morning, that between two rubbers – the rooms being very hot – they had all strolled out to smoke a cigar in the streets. Just as they were about to re-enter the hotel two church clocks – one of which was St Saviour’s – chimed out the hour – four o’clock.

  “Four o’clock was the hour when Cockram said that he had spoken to Mrs Keeson. Harold had not left the party at the Stag and Mantle since ten o’clock, which was an hour before Alice Image took the drugged beer to the groom. The whole edifice of the prosecution thus crumbled together like a house of cards and Harold Keeson was discharged, without the slightest suspicion clinging to him.

  “Six months later he married Lady Agnes Stourcliffe. The Earl, now a completely ruined man, offered no further opposition to the union of his daughter with a man who, at any rate, could keep her in comfort and luxury; for though both Mr Keeson and his son lost heavily through Cigarette’s illness, yet the trainer was sufficiently rich to offer his son and his bride a very beautiful home.”

  The man in the corner called to the waitress, and paid for his glass of milk and cheesecake, whilst I remained absorbed in thought, gazing at The Daily Telegraph, which, in its ‘London Day by Day’, had this very morning announced that Mr and Lady Agnes Keeson had returned to town from ‘The Rookery’, Newmarket.

  5

  “But who poisoned Cigarette?” I asked after a while; “and why?”

  “Ah, who did, I wonder?” he replied with exasperating mildness.

  “Surely you have a theory,” I suggested.

  “Ah, but my theories are not worth considering. The police would take no notice of them.”

  “Why did Mrs Keeson go to the stables that night? Did she go?” I asked.

  “Cockram swears she did.”

  “She swears she didn’t. If she did why should she have asked for her son? Surely she did not wish to incriminate her son in order to save herself?”

  “No,” he replied; “women don’t save themselves usually at the expense of their children, and women don’t usually ‘hocus’ a horse. It is not a female crime at all – is it?”

  The aggravating creature was getting terribly sarcastic; and I began to fear that he was not going to speak, after all. He was looking dejectedly all around him. I had one or two parcels by me. I undid a piece of string from one of them, and handed it to him with the most perfectly indifferent air I could command.

  “I wonder if it was Cockram who told a lie?” I then said unconcernedly.

  But already he had seized on that bit of string, and nervously now, his long fingers began fashioning a series of complicated knots.

  “Let us take things from the beginning,” he said at last. “The beginning of the mystery was the contradictory statements made by the groom Cockram and Mrs Keeson respectively. Let us take, first of all, the question of the groom. The matter is simple enough: either he saw Mrs Keeson or he did not. If he did not see her then he must have told a lie, either unintentionally or by design – unintentionally if he was mistaken; but this could not very well be since he asserted that Mrs Keeson spoke to him, and even mentioned her son, Mr Harold Keeson. Therefore, if Cockram did not see Mrs Keeson he told a lie by design for some purpose of his own. You follow me?”

  “Yes,” I replied, “I have thought all that out for myself already.”

  “Very well. Now, could there be some even remotely plausible motive why Cockram should have told that deliberate lie?”

  “To save his sweetheart, Alice Image,” I said.

  “But you forget that his sweetheart was not accused at first, and that, from the very beginning, Cockram’s manner, when questioned on the subject of the events of that night, was strange and contradictory in the extreme.”

  “He may have known from the first that Alice Image was guilty,” I argued.

  “In that case he would have merely asserted that he had seen and heard nothing during the night, or, if he wished to lie about it, he would have said that it was Palk, the tout, who sneaked into the stables, rather than incriminate his mistress, who had been good and kind to him for years.”

  “He may have wished to be revenged on Mrs Keeson for some reason which has not yet transpired.”

  “How? By making a statement which, if untrue, could be so easily disproved by Mr Keeson himself, who, as a matter of fact, could easily assert that his wife did not leave her bedroom that night, or by incriminating Mr Harold Keeson, who could prove an alibi? Not much of a revenge there, you must admit. No, no; the more you reflect seriously upon these possibilities the deeper will become your conviction that Cockram did not lie either accidentally or on purpose; that he did see Mrs Keeson at that hour at the stable door; that she did speak to him; and that it was she who told the lie in open court.”

  “But,” I asked, feeling more bewildered than before, “why should Mrs Keeson have gone to the stables and asked for her son when she must have known that he was not there, but that her enquiry would make it, to say the least, extremely unpleasant for him?”

  “Why?” he shrieked excitedly, jumping up like a veritable jack-in-the-box. “Ah, if you would only learn to reflect you might in time become a fairly able journalist. Why did Mrs Keeson momentarily incriminate her son? – for it was only a momentary incrimination. Think, think! A woman does not incriminate her child to save herself; but she might do it to save someone else – someone who was dearer to her than that child.”

  “Nonsense!” I protested.

  “Nonsense, is it?” he replied. “You have only to think of the characters of the chief personages who figured in the drama – of the trainer Keeson, with his hasty temper and his inordinate family pride. Was it likely when the half-ruined Earl of Okehampton talked of mésalliance, and forbade the marriage of his daughter with his trainer’s son, that the latter would not resent that insult with terrible bitterness? and, resenting it, not think of some means of being even with the noble Earl? Can you not imagine the proud man boiling with indignation on hearing his son’s tale of how Lord Okehampton had forbidden him the house? Can you not hear him saying to himself:

  “‘Well, by —— the trainer’s son shall marry the Earl’s daughter!’

  “And the scheme – simple and effectual – whereby the ruin of the arrogant nobleman would be made so complete that he would be only too willing to allow his daughter to marry anyone who would give her a good home and him a helping hand?”

  “But,” I objected, “why should Mr Keeson take the trouble to drug the groom and sneak out to the stables at dead of night when he had access to the mare at all hours of the day?”

  “Why?” shrieked the animated scarecrow. “Why? Because Keeson was
just one of those clever criminals, with a sufficiency of brains to throw police and public alike off the scent. Cockram, remember, spent every moment of the day and night with the mare. Therefore, if he had been in full possession of his senses and could positively swear that no one had had access to Cigarette but his master and himself, suspicion was bound to fasten, sooner or later, on Keeson. But Keeson was a bit of a genius in the criminal line. Seemingly he could have had no motive for drugging the groom, yet he added that last artistic touch to his clever crime, and thus threw a final bucketful of sand in the eyes of the police.”

  “Even then,” I argued, “Cockram might just have woke up – might just have caught Keeson in the act.”

  “Exactly. And that is, no doubt, what Mrs Keeson feared.

  “She was a brave woman, if ever there was one. Can you not picture her knowing her husband’s violent temper, his indomitable pride? and guessing that he would find some means of being revenged on the Earl of Okehampton? Can you not imagine her watching her husband and gradually guessing, realizing what he had in his mind when, in the middle of the night, she saw him steal out of bed and out of the house? Can you not see her following him stealthily – afraid of him, perhaps – not daring to interfere – terrified above all things of the consequences of his crime, of the risks of Cockram waking up, of the exposure, the disgrace?

  “Then the final tableau – Keeson having accomplished his purpose, goes back towards the house, and she – perhaps with a vague hope that she might yet save the mare by taking away the poison which Keeson had prepared – in her turn goes to the stables. But this time the groom is half awake, and challenges her. Then her instinct – that unerring instinct which always prompts a really good woman when the loved one is in danger – suggests to Mrs Keeson the clever subterfuge of pretending that she had seen her son entering the stables.

  “She asks for him, knowing well that she could do him no harm, since he could so easily prove an alibi, but thereby throwing a veritable cloud of dust in the eyes of the keenest enquirer, and casting over the hocussing of Cigarette so thick a mantle of mystery that suspicion, groping blindly round, could never fasten tightly on anyone.

  “Think of it all,” he added as, gathering up his hat and umbrella, he prepared to go, “and remember at the same time that it was Mr Keeson alone who could disprove that his wife never left her room that night, that he did not do this, that he guessed what she had done and why she had done it, and I think that you will admit that not one link is missing in the chain of evidence which I have had the privilege of laying before you.”

  Before I could reply he had gone, and I saw his strange scarecrow-like figure disappearing through the glass door. Then I had a good think on the subject of the hocussing of Cigarette, and I was reluctantly bound to admit that once again the man in the corner had found the only possible solution to the mystery.

  III

  The Tragedy in Dartmoor Terrace

  1

  “It is not by any means the Law and Police Courts that form the only interesting reading in the daily papers,” said the man in the corner airily, as he munched his eternal bit of cheesecake and sipped his glass of milk, like a frowsy old tom-cat.

  “You don’t agree with me,” he added, for I had offered no comment to his obvious remark.

  “No?” I answered. “I suppose you were thinking –”

  “Of the tragic death of Mrs Yule, for instance,” he replied eagerly. “Beyond the inquest, and its very unsatisfactory verdict, very few circumstances connected with that interesting case ever got into the papers at all.”

  “I forget what the verdict actually was,” I said, eager, too, on my side to hear him talk about that mysterious tragedy, which, as a matter of fact, had puzzled a good many people.

  “Oh, it was as vague and as wordy as the English language would allow. The jury found that ‘Mrs Yule had died through falling downstairs, in consequence of a fainting attack, but how she came to fall is not clearly shown’.

  “What had happened was this: Mrs Yule was a rich and eccentric old lady, who lived very quietly in a small house in Kensington; No. 9 Dartmoor Terrace is, I believe, the correct address.

  “She had no expensive tastes, for she lived, as I said before, very simply and quietly in a small Kensington house, with two female servants – a cook and a housemaid – and a young fellow whom she had adopted as her son.

  “The story of this adoption is, of course, the pivot round which all the circumstances of the mysterious tragedy revolved. Mrs Yule, namely, had an only son, William, to whom she was passionately attached; but, like many a fond mother, she had the desire of mapping out that son’s future entirely according to her own ideas. William Yule, on the other hand, had his own views with regard to his own happiness, and one fine day went so far as to marry the girl of his choice, and that in direct opposition to his mother’s wishes.

  “Mrs Yule’s chagrin and horror at what she called her son’s base ingratitude knew no bounds; at first it was even thought that she would never get over it.

  “‘He has gone in direct opposition to my fondest wishes, and chosen a wife whom I could never accept as a daughter; he shall have none of the property which has enriched me, and which I know he covets.’

  “At first her friends imagined that she meant to leave all her money to charitable institutions; but oh! dear me, no! Mrs Yule was one of those women who never did anything that other people expected her to. Within three years of her son’s marriage she had filled up the place which he had vacated, both in her house and in her heart. She had adopted a son, preferring, as she said, that her money should benefit an individual rather than an institution.

  “Her choice had fallen upon the only son of a poor man – an ex-soldier – who used to come twice a week to Dartmoor Terrace to tidy up the small garden at the back: he was very respectable and very honest – was born in the same part of England as Mrs Yule, and had an only son whose name happened to be William; he rejoiced in the surname of Bloggs.

  “‘It suits me in every way,’ explained Mrs Yule to old Mr Statham, her friend and solicitor. ‘You see, I am used to the name of William, and the boy is nice-looking and has done very well at the Board School. Moreover, old Bloggs will die within a year or two, and William will be left without any encumbrances.’

  “Herein Mrs Yule’s prophecy proved to be correct. Old Bloggs did die very soon, and his son was duly adopted by the rich and eccentric old lady, sent to a good school, and finally given a berth in the Union Bank.

  “I saw young Bloggs – it is not a euphonious name, is it? – at that memorable inquest later on. He was very young and unassuming, and used to keep very much out of the way of Mrs Yule’s friends, who, mind you, strongly disapproved of his presence in the rich old widow’s house, to the detriment of the only legitimate son and heir.

  “What happened within the intimate and close circle of 9 Dartmoor Terrace during the next three years of course nobody can tell. Certain it is that by the time young Bloggs was nearing his twenty-first birthday, he had become the very apple of his adopted mother’s eye.

  “During those three years Mr Statham and other old friends had worked hard in the interests of William Yule. Everyone felt that the latter was being very badly treated indeed. He had studied painting in his younger days, and now had set up a small studio in Hampstead, and was making perhaps a couple of hundred or so a year, and that with much difficulty, whilst the gardener’s son had supplanted him in his mother’s affections, and, worse still, in his mother’s purse.

  “The old lady was more obdurate than ever. In deference to the strong feelings of her friends she had agreed to see her son occasionally, and William Yule would call upon his mother from time to time – in the middle of the day when Bloggs was out of the way at the Bank – stay to tea, and part from her in frigid, though otherwise amicable, terms.

  “‘I have no ill-feeling against my son,’ the old lady would say, ‘but when he married against my wishes, h
e became a stranger to me – that is all – a stranger, however, whose pleasant acquaintanceship I am pleased to keep up.’

  “That the old lady meant to carry her eccentricities in this respect to the bitter end, became all the more evident when she sent for her old friend and lawyer, Mr Statham, and explained to him that she wished to make over to young Bloggs the whole of her property by deed of gift, during her lifetime – on condition that on his twenty-first birthday he legally took up the name of Yule.

  “Mr Statham subsequently made public, as you know, the whole of this interview which he had with Mrs Yule.

  “‘I tried to dissuade her, of course,’ he said, ‘for I thought it so terribly unfair on William Yule and his children. Moreover, I had always hoped that when Mrs Yule grew older and more feeble she would surely relent towards her only son. But she was terribly obstinate.’

  “‘It is because I may become weak in my dotage,’ she said, ‘that I want to make the whole thing absolutely final – I don’t want to relent. I wish that William should suffer, where I think he will suffer most, for he was always over-fond of money. If I make a will in favour of Bloggs, who knows I might repent it, and alter it at the eleventh hour? One is apt to become maudlin when one is dying, and has people weeping all round one. No! – I want the whole thing to be absolutely irrevocable; and I shall present the deed of gift to young Bloggs on his twenty-first birthday. I can always make it a condition that he keeps me in moderate comfort to the end of my days. He is too big a fool to be really ungrateful, and after all I don’t think I should very much mind ending my life in the workhouse.’

  “‘What could I do?’ added Mr Statham. ‘If I had refused to draw up that iniquitous deed of gift, she only would have employed some other lawyer to do it for her. As it is, I secured an annuity of £500 a year for the old lady, in consideration of a gift worth some £30,000 made over absolutely to Mr William Bloggs.’