by Graeme Davis
The cheerful friend took his cigar out of his mouth, smiled, and said, “Yes; it’s a thriving town, a small London, really—the metropolis in miniature.”
“You know Liverpool very well?” asked the Smasher’s companion.
“No, not very well; in point of fact, I know very little of England at all. My visit has been a brief one.”
He is evidently an American from this remark, though there is very little of brother Jonathan in his manner.
“Your visit has been a brief one? Indeed. And it has had a very melancholy termination, I regret to perceive,” said the persevering stranger, on whose every word the Smasher and Mr. Darley hung respectfully.
“A very melancholy termination,” replied the gentleman, with the sweetest smile. “My poor friend had hoped to return to the bosom of his family, and delight them many an evening round the cheerful hearth by the recital of his adventures in, and impressions of, the mother country. You cannot imagine,” he continued, speaking very slowly, and as he spoke, allowing his eyes to wander from the stranger to the Smasher, and from the Smasher to Gus, with a glance which, if anything, had the slightest shade of anxiety in it; “you cannot imagine the interest we on the other side of the Atlantic take in everything that occurs in the mother country. We may be great over there—we may be rich over there—we may be universally beloved and respected over there,—but I doubt—I really, after all, doubt,” he said sentimentally, “whether we are truly happy. We sigh for the wings of a dove, or to speak practically, for our travelling expenses, that we may come over here and be at rest.”
“And yet I conclude it was the especial wish of your late friend to be buried over there?” asked the stranger.
“It was—his dying wish.”
“And the melancholy duty of complying with that wish devolved on you?” said the stranger, with a degree of puerile curiosity and frivolous interest in an affair entirely irrelevant to the matter in hand which bewildered Gus, and at which the Smasher palpably turned up his nose; muttering to himself at the same time that the forrin swell would have time to get to America while they was a-palaverin’ and a-jawin’ this ’ere humbug.
“Yes, it devolved on me,” replied the cheerful gentleman, offering his cigar-case to the three friends, who declined the proffered weeds. “We were connections; his mother’s half-sister married my second cousin—not very nearly connected certainly, but extremely attached to each other. It will be a melancholy satisfaction to his poor widow to see his ashes entombed upon his native shore, and the thought of that repays me threefold for anything I may suffer.”
He looked altogether far too airy and charming a creature to suffer very much; but the stranger bowed gravely, and Gus, looking towards the prow of the vessel, perceived the earnest eyes of Mr. Peters attentively fixed on the little group.
As to the Smasher, he was so utterly disgusted with the stranger’s manner of doing business, that he abandoned himself to his own thoughts and hummed a tune—the tune appertaining to what is generally called a comic song, being the last passages in the life of a humble and unfortunate member of the working classes as related by himself.
While talking to the cheerful gentleman on this very melancholy subject, the stranger from Liverpool happened to get quite close to the coffin, and, with an admirable freedom from prejudice which astonished the other passengers standing near, rested his hand carelessly on the stout oaken lid, just at that corner where the canvas left it exposed. It was a most speaking proof of the almost overstrained feeling of devotion possessed by the cheerful gentleman towards his late friend that this trifling action seemed to disturb him; his eyes wandered uneasily towards the stranger’s black-gloved hand, and at last, when, in absence of mind, the stranger actually drew the heavy covering completely over this corner of the coffin, his uneasiness reached a climax, and drawing the dingy drapery hurriedly back, he rearranged it in its old fashion.
“Don’t you wish the coffin to be entirely covered?” asked the stranger quietly.
“Yes—no; that is,” said the cheerful gentleman, with some embarrassment in his tone, “that is—I—you see there is something of profanity in a stranger’s hand approaching the remains of those we love.”
“Suppose, then,” said his interlocutor, “we take a turn about the deck? This neighbourhood must be very painful to you.”
“On the contrary,” replied the cheerful gentleman, “you will think me, I dare say, a very singular person, but I prefer remaining by him to the last. The coffin will be put in the hold as soon as we get on board the Washington; then my duty will have been accomplished and my mind will be at rest. You go to New York with us?” he asked.
“I shall have that pleasure,” replied the stranger.
“And your friend—your sporting friend?” asked the gentleman, with a rather supercilious glance at the many-coloured raiment and mottled-soap complexion of the Smasher, who was still singing sotto voce the above-mentioned melody, with his arms folded on the rail of the bench on which he was seated, and his chin resting moodily on his coat-sleeves.
“No,” replied the stranger; “my friends, I regret to say, leave me as soon as we get on board.”
In a few minutes more they reached the side of the brave ship, which, from the Liverpool quay, had looked a white-winged speck not a bit too big for Queen Mab; but which was, oh, such a Leviathan of a vessel when you stood just under her, and had to go up her side by means of a ladder—which ladder seemed to be subject to shivering fits, and struck terror into the nervous lady and the bald-headed parrot.
All the passengers, except the cheerful gentleman with the coffin and the stranger—with Gus and the Smasher and Mr. Peters loitering in the background—seemed bent on getting up each before the other, and considerably increased the confusion by evincing this wish in a candid but not conciliating manner, showing a degree of ill-feeling which was much increased by the passengers that had not got on board looking daggers at the passengers that had got on board, and seemed settled quite comfortably high and dry upon the stately deck. At last, however, every one but the aforesaid group had ascended the ladder. Some stout sailors were preparing great ropes wherewith to haul up the coffin, and the cheerful gentleman was busily directing them, when the captain of the steamer said to the stranger from Liverpool, as he loitered at the bottom of the ladder, with Mr. Peters at his elbow,—“Now then, sir, if you’re for the Washington, quick’s the word. We’re off as soon as ever they’ve got that job over,” pointing to the coffin. The stranger from Liverpool, instead of complying with this very natural request, whispered a few words into the ear of the captain, who looked very grave on hearing them, and then, advancing to the cheerful gentleman, who was very anxious and very uneasy about the manner in which the coffin was to be hauled up the side of the vessel, he laid a heavy hand upon his shoulder, and said,—“I want the lid of that coffin taken off before those men haul it up.”
Such a change came over the face of the cheerful gentleman as only comes over the face of a man who knows that he is playing a desperate game, and knows as surely that he has lost it. “My good sir,” he said, “you’re mad. Not for the Queen of England would I see that coffin-lid unscrewed.”
“I don’t think it will give us so much trouble as that,” said the other quietly. “I very much doubt it’s being screwed down at all. You were greatly alarmed just now, lest the person within should be smothered. You were terribly frightened when I drew the heavy canvas over those incisions in the oak,” he added, pointing to the lid, in the corner of which two or three cracks were apparent to the close observer.
“Good Heavens! the man is mad!” cried the gentleman, whose manner had entirely lost its airiness. “The man is evidently a maniac! This is too dreadful! Is the sanctity of death to be profaned in this manner? Are we to cross the Atlantic in the company of a madman?”
“You are not to cross the Atlantic at all just yet,” said the Liverpool stranger. “The man is not mad, I assure you, but he is one
of the principal members of the Liverpool detective police-force, and is empowered to arrest a person who is supposed to be on board this boat. There is only one place in which that person can be concealed. Here is my warrant to arrest Jabez North, alias Raymond Marolles, alias the Count de Marolles. I know as certainly as that I myself stand here that he lies hidden in that coffin, and I desire that the lid may be removed. If I am mistaken, it can be immediately replaced, and I shall be ready to render you my most fervent apologies for having profaned the repose of the dead. Now, Peters!”
The dumb detective went to one end of the coffin, while his colleague stood at the other. The Liverpool officer was correct in his supposition. The lid was only secured by two or three long stout nails, and gave way in three minutes. The two detectives lifted it off the coffin—and there, hot, flushed, and panting, half-suffocated, with desperation in his wicked blue eyes, his teeth locked in furious rage at his utter powerlessness to escape from the grasp of his pursuers—there, run to earth at last, lay the accomplished Raymond, Count de Marolles!
They put the handcuffs on him before they lifted him out of the coffin, the Smasher assisting. Years after, when the Smasher grew to be an older and graver man, he used to tell to admiring and awe-stricken customers the story of this arrest. But it is to be observed that his memory on these occasions was wont to play him false, for he omitted to mention either the Liverpool detective or our good friend Mr. Peters as taking any part in the capture; but described the whole affair as conducted by himself alone, with an incalculable number of “I says,” and “so then I thinks,” and “well, what do I do next?” and other phrases of the same description.
The Count de Marolles, with tumbled hair, and a white face and blue lips, sitting handcuffed upon the bench of the steamer between the Liverpool detective and Mr. Peters, steaming back to Liverpool, was a sight not good to look upon. The cheerful gentleman sat with the Smasher and Mr. Darley, who had been told to keep an eye upon him, and who—the Smasher especially—kept both eyes upon him with a will.
Throughout the little voyage there were no words spoken but these from the Liverpool detective, as he first put the fetters on the white and slender wrists of his prisoner: “Monsieur de Marolles,” he said, “you’ve tried this little game once before. This is the second occasion, I understand, on which you’ve done a sham die. I’d have you beware of the third time. According to superstitious people, it’s generally fatal.”
* William Calcraft (1800–1879) was the official Executioner for the City of London and Middlesex at the time The Trail of the Serpent was published. He was one of the most prolific executioners in British history; in a forty-five-year career, he carried out an estimated 450 executions.
† Eugène François Vidocq (1775–1857), founder of the French Sûreté Nationale and head of the first known private detective agency.
‡ From Samuel Johnson’s book The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia (sic).
§ A popular snack of the time, consisting of a cheese sauce poured over toasted bread.
¶ Mute, as previously noted, Peters is using sign language.
# The “Prize Ring,” London’s illegal bare-knuckle fighting circuit.
** Italian: “reworking.”
†† A kind of large housefly with an iridescent blue abdomen, common across Britain.
‡‡ Ernest de Bunsen (1819–1903), an Anglo-German writer of speculative works in the field of comparative religion.
§§ A famous race-course in the County of Suffolk.
¶¶ HMS Royal George heeled over and sank in August, 1782, with the loss of more than 600 lives.
## The SS President, the largest passenger ship in the world at the time, was lost at sea between New York and Liverpool in 1841.
*** Irish actor William Grattan Tyrone Power (1795–1841), an ancestor of the American actor, was among those lost aboard the SS President.
††† A personification of the states of New England, looking like a younger version of Uncle Sam. Now largely superseded by the national personification.
THE NOTTING HILL MYSTERY
(EXTRACT)
by “Charles Felix”
1862
The identity of “Charles Felix” is itself something of a mystery. It is generally thought that Charles Felix is a pseudonym used by Charles Warren Adams, a London lawyer who is known to have published under other noms de plume. “Felix” is a Latin word, which may be translated as “lucky” or “happy.”
The Notting Hill Mystery appeared as a serial in Once A Week magazine between November 1862 and January 1863; it was republished in book form in 1865, one year after another mystery by “Charles Felix,” Velvet Lawn.
Unusually for detective fiction, the story is told in epistolary form, consisting of recorded statements, letters, journal entries, and other documents bracketed by an introduction and a conclusion attributed to insurance investigator Ralph Henderson. This form has both advantages and disadvantages: on the one hand, it enables the writer to present readers with exactly the same evidence as the detective; on the other, the detective as a character is largely absent from the story.
The case concerns a Baron R**, whose wife died after drinking acid while apparently sleepwalking. Further suspicion is raised by the facts that the Baroness had recently inherited £25,000 following the deaths of a husband and wife who were prior heirs to the inheritance, and that the Baron had taken out no fewer than five life insurance policies on her, each for the maximum of £5,000. As a result of her death, he stood to gain £50,000: an immense sum at the time, equivalent—according to online sources—to almost £6m (U.S. $8m) in today’s terms.
As summed up in the detective’s conclusion, the case involves poison, blackmail, and mesmerism, which was still taken seriously by the mainstream science of the day. While Henderson finds the Baron’s behavior throughout to be highly suspicious, he is forced to admit that absolute certainty of his guilt is impossible to establish: he may have committed the perfect crime.
First then, for what may be called the preliminary portions of the evidence. With these we need here deal but very briefly. They consist almost entirely of letters furnished by the courtesy of a near relation of the late Mrs. Anderton, and read as follows:
Some six or seven and twenty years ago, the mother of Mrs. Anderton—Lady Boleton—after giving birth to twin daughters, under circumstances of a peculiarly exciting and agitating nature, died in child-bed. Both Sir Edward Boleton and herself appear to have been of a nervous temperament, and the effects of these combined influences is shown in the highly nervous and susceptible organisation of the orphan girls, and in a morbid sympathy of constitution, by which each appeared to suffer from any ailment of the other. This remarkable sympathy is very clearly shown in more than one of the letters I have submitted for your consideration, and I have numerous others in my possession which, should they be considered insufficient, will place the matter, irregular as it certainly is, beyond the reach of doubt. I must request you to bear it particularly and constantly in mind throughout the case.
Almost from the time of the mother’s death, the children were placed in the care of a poor, but respectable woman, at Hastings. Here the younger, whose constitution appears to have been originally much stronger than that of her sister, seems to have improved rapidly in health, and in so doing to have mastered, in some degree, that morbid sympathy of temperament of which I have spoken, and which in the weaker organisation of her elder sister, still maintained its former ascendency. They were about six years old when, whether through the carelessness of the nurse or not, is immaterial to us now, the younger was lost during a pleasure excursion in the neighbourhood. Every inquiry was made, and it appeared pretty clear that she had fallen into the hands of a gang of gipsies, who at that time infested the country round, but no further trace of her was ever after discovered.
The elder sister, now left alone, seems to have been watched with redoubled solicitude. There is nothing, however, in the yea
rs immediately following Miss C. Boleton’s disappearance having any direct bearing upon our case, and I have, therefore, confined my extracts from the correspondence entrusted to me, to two or three letters from a lady in whose charge she was placed at Hampstead, and one from an old friend of her mother, from which we gather the fact of her marriage. The latter is chiefly notable as pointing out the nervous and highly sensitive temperament of the young lady’s husband, the late Mr. Anderton, to which I shall have occasion at a later period of the case, more particularly to direct your attention. The former give evidence of a very important fact; namely, that of the liability of Miss Boleton to attacks of illness equally unaccountable and unmanageable, bearing a perfect resemblance to those in which she suffered in her younger days sympathetically with the ailments of her sister; and, therefore, to be not improbably attributed to a similar cause.