The Case of Miss Elliott

by Baroness Orczy

  “When the name was first mentioned, everyone – especially the fair sex – shrugged their shoulders, and said: ‘Of course what else could one expect?’

  “As a matter of fact, Lady de Chavasse, née Birdie Fay, was one of the most fashionable women in society; she was at the head of a dozen benevolent institutions, was a generous patron of hospitals, and her house was one of the most exclusive ones in London. True, she had been on the stage in her younger days, and when Sir Percival de Chavasse married her, his own relations looked somewhat askance at the showy, handsome girl who had so daringly entered the ancient county family.

  “Sir Percival himself was an extraordinarily proud man – proud of his lineage, of his social status, of the honour of his name. His very pride had forced his relations, had forced society, to accept his beautiful young wife, and to Lady de Chavasse’s credit be it said, not one breath of scandal as to her past life had ever become public gossip. No one could assert that they knew anything derogatory to Birdie Fay before she became the proud baronet’s wife. As a matter of fact, all society asserted that Sir Percival would never have married her and introduced her to his own family circle if there had been any gossip about her.

  “Now suddenly the name of Lady de Chavasse was on everybody’s tongue. People at first spoke it under their breath, for everyone felt great sympathy with her. She was so rich, and entertained so lavishly. She was very charming, too; most fascinating in her ways; deferential to her austere mother-in-law; not a little afraid of her proud husband; very careful lest by word or look she betrayed her early connection with the stage before him.

  “On the following day, however, we had further surprises in store for us. Pamela Pebmarsh, advised by a shrewd and clear-headed solicitor, had at last made up her mind to view her danger a little more coolly, and to speak rather more of the truth than she had done hitherto.

  “Still looking very haggard, but perhaps a little less scared, she now made a statement which, when it was fully substantiated, as she stated it could be, would go far towards clearing her of the terrible imputation against her. Her story was this: on the memorable day in question, she did go up to town, intending to go to the theatre. At the station she purchased an evening paper, which she began to read. This paper in its fashionable columns contained an announcement which arrested her attention; this was that Sir Percival and Lady de Chavasse had returned to their flat in town at 51 Marsden Mansions, Belgravia, from ‘The Chase’, Melton Mowbray.

  “‘De Chavasse,’ continued Pamela, was the name of the lady who paid my aunt the small pension on which she lived. I knew her years ago, when she was on the stage, and I suddenly thought I would like to go and see her, just to have a chat over old times. Instead of going to the theatre I went and had some dinner at Slater’s, in Piccadilly, and then I thought I would take my chance, and go and see if Lady de Chavasse was at home. I got to 51 Marsden Mansions about eight o’clock, and was fortunate enough to see Lady de Chavasse at once. She kept me talking some considerable time; so much so, in fact, that I missed the 11 train from St Pancras. I only left Marsden Mansions at a quarter to eleven, and had to wait at St Pancras until twenty minutes past midnight.’

  “This was all reasonable and clear enough, and, as her legal adviser had subpoenaed Lady de Chavasse as a witness, Pamela Pebmarsh seemed to have found an excellent way out of her terrible difficulties, the only question being whether Lady de Chavasse’s testimony alone would, in view of her being Pamela’s friend, be sufficient to weigh against the terribly overwhelming evidence of Miss Pebmarsh’s dying accusation.

  “But Lady de Chavasse settled this doubtful point in the way least expected by anyone. Exquisitely dressed, golden-haired, and brilliant-complexioned, she looked strangely out of place in this fusty little village court, amidst the local dames in their plain gowns and antiquated bonnets. She was, moreover, extremely self-possessed, and only cast a short, very haughty, look at the unfortunate girl whose life probably hung upon that fashionable woman’s word.

  “‘Yes,’ she said sweetly, in reply to the coroner, ‘she was the wife of Sir Percival de Chavasse, and resided at 51 Marsden Mansions, Belgravia.’

  “‘The accused, I understand, has been known to you for some time?’ continued the coroner.

  “‘Pardon me,’ rejoined Lady de Chavasse, speaking in a beautifully modulated voice, ‘I did know this young – hem – person, years ago, when I was on the stage, but, of course, I had not seen her for years.’

  “‘She called on you on Wednesday last at about nine o’clock?’

  “‘Yes, she did, for the purpose of levying blackmail upon me.’

  “There was no mistaking the look of profound aversion and contempt which the fashionable lady now threw upon the poor girl before her.

  “‘She had some preposterous story about some letters which she alleged would be compromising to my reputation,’ continued Lady de Chavasse quietly. ‘These she had the kindness to offer me for sale for a few hundred pounds. At first her impudence staggered me, as, of course, I had no knowledge of any such letters. She threatened to take them to my husband, however, and I then – rather foolishly, perhaps – suggested that she should bring them to me first. I forget how the conversation went on, but she left me with the understanding that she would get the letters from her aunt, Miss Pebmarsh, who, by the way, had been my governess when I was a child, and to whom I paid a small pension in consideration of her having been left absolutely without means.’

  “And Lady de Chavasse, conscious of her own disinterested benevolence, pressed a highly scented bit of cambric to her delicate nose.

  “‘Then the accused did spend the evening with you on that Wednesday?’ asked the coroner, while a great sigh of relief seemed to come from poor Pamela’s breast.

  “‘Pardon me,’ said Lady de Chavasse, ‘she spent a little time with me. She came about nine o’clock.’

  “‘Yes. And when did she leave?’

  “‘I really couldn’t tell you – about ten o’clock, I think.’

  “‘You are not sure?’ persisted the coroner. ‘Think, Lady de Chavasse,’ he added earnestly, ‘try to think – the life of a fellow-creature may, perhaps, depend upon your memory.’

  “‘I am indeed sorry,’ she replied in the same musical voice. ‘I could not swear without being positive, could I? And I am not quite positive.’

  “‘But your servants?’

  “‘They were at the back of the flat – the girl let herself out.’

  “‘But your husband?’

  “‘Oh! when he saw me engaged with the girl, he went out to his club, and was not yet home when she left.’

  “‘Birdie! Birdie! won’t you try and remember?’ here came in an agonized cry from the unfortunate girl, who thus saw her last hope vanish before her eyes.

  “But Lady de Chavasse only lifted a little higher a pair of very prettily arched eyebrows, and having finished her evidence she stepped on one side and presently left the court, leaving behind her a faint aroma of violet sachet powder, and taking away with her, perhaps, the last hope of an innocent fellow-creature.”

  4

  “But Pamela Pebmarsh?” I asked after a while, for he had paused and was gazing attentively at the photograph of a very beautiful and exquisitely gowned woman.

  “Ah yes, Pamela Pebmarsh,” he said with a smile. “There was yet another act in that palpitating drama of her life – one act – the dénouement as unexpected as it was thrilling. Salvation came where it was least expected – from Jemima Gadd, who seemed to have made up her mind that Pamela had killed her aunt, and yet who was the first to prove her innocence.

  “She had been shown the few words which the murdered woman was alleged to have written after she had been stabbed. Jemima, not a very good scholar, found it difficult to decipher the words herself.

  “‘Ah, well, poor dear,’ she said after a while, with a deep sigh, ‘ ’er ’andwriting was always peculiar, seein’ as ’ow she wrote always with �
��er left ’and.’

  “‘Her left hand!!!’ gasped the coroner, while public and jury alike, hardly liking to credit their ears, hung upon the woman’s thin lips, amazed, aghast, puzzled.

  “‘Why, yes,’ said Jemima placidly. ‘Didn’t you know she ’ad a bad accident to ’er right ’and when she was a child, and never could ’old anything in it? ’Er fingers were like paralysed; the inkpot was always on the left of ’er writing-table. Oh! she couldn’t write with ’er right ’and at all.’

  “Then a strange revulsion of feeling came over everyone there.

  “Stabbed in the back, with her lung pierced through and through, how could she have done, dying, what she never did in life?

  “Impossible!

  “The murderer, whoever it was, had placed pen and paper to her hand, and had written on it the cruel words which were intended to delude justice and to send an innocent fellow-creature – a young girl not five-and-twenty – to an unjust and ignominious death. But, fortunately for that innocent girl, the cowardly miscreant had ignored the fact that Miss Pebmarsh’s right hand had been paralysed for years.

  “The inquest was adjourned for a week,” continued the man in the corner, “which enabled Pamela’s solicitor to obtain further evidence of her innocence. Fortunately for her, he was enabled to find two witnesses who had seen her in an omnibus going towards St Pancras at about 11.15 p.m., and a passenger on the 12.25 train, who had travelled down with her as far as Hendon. Thus, when the inquest was resumed, Pamela Pebmarsh left the court without a stain upon her character.

  “But the murder of Miss Pebmarsh has remained a mystery to this day – as has also the secret history of the compromising letters. Did they exist or not? is a question the interested spectators at that memorable inquest have often asked themselves. Certain is it that failing Pamela Pebmarsh, who might have wanted them for purposes of blackmail, no one else could be interested in them except Lady de Chavasse.”

  “Lady de Chavasse!” I ejaculated in surprise. “Surely you are not going to pretend that that elegant lady went down to Boreham Wood in the middle of the night in order to murder Miss Pebmarsh, and then to lay the crime at another woman’s door?”

  “I only pretend what’s logic,” replied the man in the corner with inimitable conceit; “and in Pamela Pebmarsh’s own statement, she was with Lady de Chavasse at 51 Marsden Mansions until eleven o’clock, and there is no train from St Pancras to Boreham Wood between eleven and twenty-five minutes past midnight. Pamela’s alibi becomes that of Lady de Chavasse, and is quite conclusive. Besides, that elegant lady was not one to do that sort of work for herself.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Do you mean to say you never thought of the real solution of this mystery?” he retorted sarcastically.

  “I confess –” I began a little irritably.

  “Confess that I have not yet taught you to think logically, and to look at the beginning of things.”

  “What do you call the beginning of this case, then?”

  “Why! the compromising letters, of course.”

  “But –” I argued.

  “Wait a minute!” he shrieked excitedly, whilst with frantic haste he began fidgeting, fidgeting again at that eternal bit of string. “These did exist, otherwise why did Lady de Chavasse parley with Pamela Pebmarsh? Why did she not order her out of the house then and there, if she had nothing to fear from her?”

  “I admit that,” I said.

  “Very well; then, as she was too fine, too delicate to commit the villainous murder of which she afterwards accused poor Miss Pamela, who was there sufficiently interested in those letters to try and gain possession of them for her?”

  “Who, indeed?” I queried, still puzzled, still not understanding.

  “Ay! who but her husband?” shrieked the funny creature, as with a sharp snap he broke his beloved string in two.

  “Her husband!” I gasped.

  “Why not? He had plenty of time, plenty of pluck. In a flat it is easy enough to overhear conversations that take place in the next room – he was in the house at the time, remember, for Lady de Chavasse said herself that he went out afterwards. No doubt he overheard everything – the compromising letters, and Pamela’s attempt at levying blackmail. What the effect of such a discovery must have been upon the proud man I leave you to imagine – his wife’s social position ruined, a stain upon his ancient name, his relations pointing the finger of scorn at his folly.

  “Can’t you picture him, hearing the two women’s talk in the next room, and then resolving at all costs to possess himself of those compromising letters? He had just time to catch the 10 train to Boreham Wood.

  “Mind you, I don’t suppose that he went down there with any evil intent. Most likely he only meant to buy those letters from Miss Pebmarsh. What happened, however, nobody can say but the murderer himself.

  “Who knows? But the deed done, imagine the horror of a refined, aristocratic man, face to face with such a crime as that.

  “Was it this terror, or merely rage at the girl who had been the original cause of all this, that prompted him to commit the final villainy of writing out a false accusation and placing it under the dead woman’s hand? Who can tell?

  “Then, the deed done, and the mise-en-scène complete, he is able to catch the last train – 11.23 – back to town. A man travelling alone would pass practically unperceived.

  “Pamela’s innocence was proved, and the murder of Miss Pebmarsh has remained a mystery, but if you will reflect on my conclusions, you will admit that no one else – no one else – could have committed that murder, for no one else had a greater interest in the destruction of those letters.”

  VI

  The Lisson Grove Mystery

  1

  The man in the corner ordered another glass of milk, and timidly asked for a second cheesecake at the same time.

  “I am going down to the Marylebone Police Court, to see those people brought up before the ‘beak’,” he remarked.

  “What people?” I queried.

  “What people!” he exclaimed, in the greatest excitement. “You don’t mean to say that you have not studied the Lisson Grove Mystery?”

  I had to confess that my knowledge on that subject was of the most superficial character.

  “One of the most interesting cases that has cropped up in recent years,” he said, with an indescribable look of reproach.

  “Perhaps. I did not study it in the papers because I preferred to hear you tell me all about it,” I said.

  “Oh, if that’s it,” he replied, as he settled himself down in his corner like a great bird after the rain, “then you showed more sense than lady journalists usually possess. I can, of course, give you a far clearer account than the newspapers have done; as for the police – well! I never saw such a muddle as they are making of this case.”

  “I dare say it is a peculiarly difficult one,” I retorted, for I am ever a champion of that hardworking department.

  “H’m!” he said, “so, so – it is a tragedy in a prologue and three acts. I am going down this afternoon to see the curtain fall for the third time on what, if I mistake not, will prove a good burlesque; but it all began dramatically enough. It was last Saturday, 21st November, that two boys, playing in the little spinney just outside Wembley Park Station, came across three large parcels done up in American cloth.

  “With the curiosity natural to their age, they at once proceeded to undo these parcels, and what they found so upset the little beggars that they ran howling through the spinney and the polo ground, straight as a dart to Wembley Park Station. Half-frantic with excitement, they told their tale to one of the porters off duty, who walked back to the spinney with them. The three parcels, in point of fact, contained the remains of a dismembered human body. The porter sent one of the boys for the local police, and the remains were duly conveyed to the mortuary, where they were kept for identification.

  “Three days later – that is to say, on
Tuesday, 24th November – Miss Amelia Dyke, residing at Lisson Grove Crescent, returned from Edinburgh, where she had spent three or four days with a friend. She drove up from St Pancras in a cab, and carried her small box up herself to the door of the flat, at which she knocked loudly and repeatedly – so loudly and so persistently, in fact, that the inhabitants of the neighbouring flats came out on to their respective landings to see what the noise was about.

  “Miss Amelia Dyke was getting anxious. Her father, she said, must be seriously ill, or else why did he not come and open the door to her? Her anxiety, however, reached its culminating point when Mr and Mrs Pitt, who reside in the flat immediately beneath that occupied by the Dykes, came forward with the alarming statement that, as a matter of fact, they had themselves been wondering if anything were wrong with old Mr Dyke, as they had not heard any sound overhead for the last few days.

  “Miss Amelia, now absolutely terrified, begged one of the neighbours to fetch either the police or a locksmith, or both. Mr Pitt ran out at once, both police and locksmith were brought upon the scene, the door was forcibly opened, and amidst indescribable excitement Constable Turner, followed by Miss Dyke, who was faint and trembling with apprehension, effected an entrance into the flat.

  “Everything in it was tidy and neat to a degree, all the fires were laid, the beds made, the floors were clean and washed, the brasses polished, only a slight, very slight layer of dust lay over everything, dust that could not have accumulated for more than a few days. The flat consisted of four rooms and a bathroom; in not one of them was there the faintest trace of old Mr Dyke.

  “In order fully to comprehend the consternation which all the neighbours felt at this discovery,” continued the man in the corner, “you must understand that old Mr Dyke was a helpless cripple; he had been a mining engineer in his young days, and a terrible blasting accident deprived him, at the age of forty, of both legs. They had been amputated just above the knee, and the unfortunate man – then a widower with one little girl – had spent the remainder of his life on crutches. He had a small – a very small – pension, which, as soon as his daughter Amelia was grown up, had enabled him to live in comparative comfort in the small flat in Lisson Grove Crescent.