“Then there was another point which the clever lawyer brought to the coroner’s notice. As Alice Holt had stated in her sworn evidence that Mme Quesnard had owned to being frightened of Lady Barnsdale that night, was it likely that she would of her own accord have opened the door to her in the middle of the night, without at least calling for assistance?
“Thus the matter has remained a strange and unaccountable puzzle. It has always been called the ‘Barnsdale Mystery’ for that very reason. Everyone, somehow, has always felt that Lady Barnsdale did have something to do with that terrible tragedy. Her husband has taken her abroad, and they have let Barnsdale Manor; it almost seems as if the ghost of the old Frenchwoman had driven them forth from their own country.
“As for Alice Holt, she maintains to this day that Lady Barnsdale was the culprit, and I understand that she has not yet given up all hope of collecting a sufficiency of evidence to have the beautiful and fashionable woman of society arraigned for this hideous murder.”
4
“Will she succeed, do you think?” I asked at last.
“Succeed? Of course she won’t,” he retorted excitedly. “Lady Barnsdale never committed that murder; no woman, except, perhaps, an East-end factory hand, could have done it at all.”
“But then –” I urged.
“Why, then,” he replied, with a chuckle, “the only logical conclusion is that the robbery and the murder were not committed by the same person, nor at the same hour of the night; moreover, I contend that there was no premeditated murder, but that the old lady died from the result of a pure accident.”
“But how?” I gasped.
“This is my version of the story,” he said excitedly, as his long bony fingers started fidgeting, fidgeting with that eternal bit of string. “Lady Barnsdale, pressed for money, made an appeal to Mme Quesnard, which the latter refused, as we know. Then there was an acrimonious dispute between the two ladies, after which came the dinner hour, then madame, feeling ill and upset, went up to bed at nine o’clock.
“Now my contention is that undoubtedly the robbery had been committed before that, between the dispute and madame’s bedtime.”
“By whom?”
“By Lady Barnsdale, of course, who, as the mistress of the house, could come and go from room to room without exciting any comment; who, moreover, at 6 p.m. was hard pressed for money, and who but a few hours later was handling a mass of gold and banknotes.
“But the strain of committing even an ordinary theft is very great upon a refined woman’s organization. Lady Barnsdale has a nervous breakdown. Well! what is the most likely thing to happen? Why! that she should confess everything to her husband, who worships her, and no doubt express her repentance at what she had done.
“Then imagine Lord Barnsdale’s horror! The old lady had not discovered the theft before going to bed. That was only natural, since she was feeling unwell, and was not likely to sit up at night counting her money; the lock of the bureau drawer having been tampered with would perhaps not attract her attention at night.
“But in the morning, the very first thing, she would discover everything, at once suspect the worst, and who knows? make a scandal, talk of it before Alice Holt, Lady Barnsdale’s archenemy, and all before restitution could be made.
“No, no, that restitution must be made at once; not a minute must be lost, since any moment might bring forth discovery, and perhaps an awful catastrophe.
“I take it that Mme Quesnard and her nephew were on very intimate terms. He hoped to arouse no one by going to his aunt’s room, but in order to make quite sure that Alice Holt, hearing a noise in her mistress’ room, should not surreptitiously come down, and perhaps play eavesdropper at the momentous interview, he turned the key of the girl’s door as he went past, and locked her in.
“Then he knocked at his aunt’s door (gently, of course, for old people are light sleepers), and called her by name. Mme Quesnard, recognizing her nephew’s voice, slipped on her dressing-gown, smoothed her hair, and let him in.
“Exactly what took place at the interview it is, of course, impossible for any human being to say. Here even I can but conjecture,” he added, with inimitable conceit, “but we can easily imagine that, having heard Lord Barnsdale’s confession of his wife’s folly, the old lady, who as a Frenchwoman was of quick temper and unbridled tongue, would indulge in not very elegant rhetoric on the subject of the woman she had always disliked.
“Lord Barnsdale would, of course, defend his wife, and the old lady, with feminine obstinacy, would continue the attack. Then some insulting epithet, a word only, perhaps, roused the devoted husband’s towering indignation – the meekest man on earth becomes a mad bull when he really loves, and the woman he loves is insulted.
“I maintain that the old lady’s death was really due to a pure accident; that Lord Barnsdale gripped her by the throat, in a moment of mad anger, at some hideous insult hurled at his wife; of that I am as convinced as if I had witnessed the whole scene. Then the old lady fell, hit her head against the marble, and Lord Barnsdale realized that he was alone at night in his aunt’s room, and that he had killed her.
“What would anyone do under the circumstances?” he added excitedly. “Why, of course, collect his senses and try to save himself from what might prove to be consequences of the most awful kind. This Lord Barnsdale thought he could best do by giving the accident, which looked so like murder, the appearance of a burglary.
“The lock of the desk in the next room had already been forced open; he now locked the door on the inside, threw open the shutter and the window, jumped out as any burglar would have done; and, being careful to obliterate his own footmarks, he crept back into the house, and thence into his own room, without alarming the watchdog, who naturally knew his own master. He was, of course, just in time before Alice Holt succeeded in rousing the household with her screams.
“And thus you see,” he added, “there are no such things as mysteries. The police call them so, so do the public, but every crime has its perpetrator, and every puzzle its solution. My experience is that the simplest solution is invariably the right one.”
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About the Author
Copyright
Pushkin Press
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These stories were first published as
The Case of Miss Elliott by T. Fisher Unwin in 1905
First published by Pushkin Press in 2019
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ISBN 13: 978–1–78227–534–3
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