The Brooklyn Murders
by G. D. H. Cole
published by Thomas Seltzer (New York), 1924
Contents
I A Family Celebration
II Sir Vernon’s Will
III Murder
IV What Joan Found in the Garden
V Plain as a Pikestaff
VI A Pause for Reflection
VII The Case Against Walter Brooklyn
VIII A Review of the Case
IX Walter Brooklyn’s Explanation
X Charis Lang
XI Joan Takes Up the Case
XII Robert Ellery
XIII An Arrest
XIV Mainly a Love Scene
XV To and Fro
XVI A Link in the Chain
XVII The Lovely Lady
XVIII The Case for the Defence
XIX The Police Have Their Doubts
XX Superintendent Wilson Thinks It Out
XXI Don Quixote
XXII “The Spaniard” Does His Bit
XXIII Walter Brooklyn Goes Free
XXIV A Fresh Start
XXV Raising the Wind
XXVI Two Men Strike a Bargain
XXVII Robert Ellery’s Idea
XXVIII The Superintendent’s Theory
XXIX The Lie of the Land
XXX A Letter and Its Consequences
XXXI A Button in a Bag
XXXII Sir John Bunnery
XXXIII On the Tiles
XXXIV The Stable-Yard
XXXV An Order for Bulbs
XXXVI An Afternoon Call
XXXVII A Happy Ending
Chapter I
A Family Celebration
At seventy Sir Vernon Brooklyn was still the outstanding figure in the
theatrical world. It was, indeed, ten years since he had made his
farewell appearance on the stage; and with a consistency rare among
the members of his profession, he had persisted in making his first
farewell also his last. He had also for some time past resigned to
younger men the actual direction of his vast theatrical enterprises,
which included five great West End theatres and a steady stream of
touring companies in the provinces and overseas. Both as actor and as
manager, he was wont to say, his work was over; but as Chairman of the
Brooklyn Dramatic Corporation, which conducted all its work under his
name, he was almost as much as ever in the eye of the public.
Like most men who have risen by their own efforts, aided by fortune
and by a public which takes a pleasure in idolatry, to positions of
wide authority, Sir Vernon had developed, perhaps to excess, the habit
of getting his own way. Thus, although his niece and house-keeper,
Joan Cowper, and his near relatives and friends had done their best to
dissuade him from coming to London, he had ignored their protests, and
insisted on celebrating his seventieth birthday in the London house,
formerly the scene of his triumphs, which he now seldom visited. Sir
Vernon now spent most of his time at the great country house in Sussex
which he had bought ten years before from Lord Fittleworth. There he
entertained largely, and there was no reason why he should not have
taken the advice of his relatives and his doctor, and gathered his
friends around him to celebrate what he was pleased to call his
“second majority.” But Sir Vernon had made up his mind, and it was
therefore in the old house just off Piccadilly that his guests
assembled for dinner on Midsummer Day, June 25th.
Like Sir Vernon’s country place, the old house had a history. He had
bought it, and the grounds with their magnificent garden frontage on
Piccadilly, looking over the Green Park, from Lord Liskeard, when that
nobleman had successfully gambled away the fortune which had made him,
at one time, the richest man in England who had no connection with
trade. Sir Vernon had turned his purchase to good use. Facing
Piccadilly, but standing well back in its garden from the street, he
had built the great Piccadilly Theatre, the perfect playhouse in
which, despite its size and large seating capacity, every member of
the audience could both see and hear. The theatre covered a lot of
ground; but, when it was built, there still remained not only the old
mansion fronting upon its side-street—a _cul de sac_ used by its
visitors alone—but also, between it and the theatre, a pleasant
expanse of garden. For some years Sir Vernon had lived in the house;
and there he had also worked, converting the greater part of the
ground floor into a palatial set of offices for the Brooklyn Dramatic
Corporation. On his retirement from active work, he had kept in his
own hands only the first floor, which he fitted as a flat to house him
on his visits to town. On the second floor he had installed his
nephew, John Prinsep, who had succeeded him as managing director of
the Corporation. The third floor was given over to the servants who
attended to the whole house. It was in this house that Sir Vernon was
celebrating his birthday, and his guests were to dine with him in the
great Board Room of the Corporation on the ground floor—formerly the
banqueting hall of generations of Liskeards, in which many a political
plot had been hatched, and many a diner carried helpless from under
the table in the bad days of the Prince Regent.
Between the house and the tall back of the theatre lay the garden, in
which a past Lord Liskeard with classical tastes had erected a model
Grecian temple and a quantity of indifferent antique statuary, the
fruits of his sojourn at the Embassy of Constantinople.
In this garden, before dinner was served, a number of Sir Vernon’s
guests had already gathered. The old man had been persuaded, despite
the brilliant midsummer weather, to remain in the house; but Joan
Cowper and John Prinsep were there to do the honours on his behalf. As
Harry Lucas came into the garden, John Prinsep was laughingly, as he
said, “showing off the points” of a dilapidated Hercules who, club,
lion-skin and all, was slowly mouldering under the trees at one end of
the lawn. The stone club had come loose, and Prinsep had taken it from
the statue, and was playfully threatening to do classical execution
with it upon the persons of his guests. Seeing Lucas, he put the club
back into the broken hand of the statue, and came across the lawn to
bid him welcome.
“You’re the last to arrive, Mr. Lucas,” said he. “You see it’s quite a
family affair this evening.”
It was quite a family affair. Of the eight persons now on the lawn,
six were members of the Brooklyn family by birth or marriage; Lucas
was Sir Vernon’s oldest friend and collaborator; and young Ellery, the
remaining member of the party, was Lucas’s ward, and was usually to be
found, when he had his will, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Joan
Cowper. As Sir Vernon had fully made up his mind that Joan was to
marry Prinsep, and there was supposed to be some sort of engagement
between them, Ellery’s attentions were not welcome to Prinsep, and
there was no love lost between the two men.
But there was no sign of this in Prinsep’s manner this evening. He
seemed to be in unusually good spirits, rather in contrast to his
usual humour. For Prinsep was not generally regarded as good company.
Since he had succeeded Sir Vernon in the business control of the
Brooklyn Corporation, of which he was managing director, he had grown
more and more preoccupied with affairs, and had developed a brusque
manner which may have served him well in dealing with visitors who
wanted something for nothing, but was distinctly out of place in the
social interchange of his leisure hours. Prinsep had, indeed, his
pleasures. He was reputed a heavy drinker, whose magnificent natural
constitution prevented him from showing any of the signs of
dissipation. Many of Prinsep’s acquaintances—who were as many as his
friends were few—had seen him drink more than enough to put an
ordinary man under the table; but none had ever seen him the worse for
drink, and he was never better at a bargain than when the other man
had taken some glasses less than he, but still a glass too much. Men
said that he took his pleasures sadly: certainly they had never been
allowed to interfere with his power of work; and often, after a hard
evening, he would go to his study and labour far into the night. But,
for this occasion, his sullenness seemed to have left him, and his
rather harsh laugh rang out repeatedly over the garden.
Lucas had never liked Prinsep; and he soon found himself one of a
group that included Joan and Ellery and Mary Woodman, a cousin of the
Brooklyns who lived with Joan and helped her to keep Sir Vernon’s
house. Presently Joan drew him aside.
“Uncle Harry,” she said, “there’s something I want to tell you.”
Lucas was, in fact, no relation of the Brooklyns; but from their
childhood Joan and George Brooklyn had known him as “Uncle Harry,” and
had made him their confidant in many of their early troubles. The
habit had stuck; and now Joan had a very serious trouble to tell him.
“You must do what you can to help me,” she said. “I’ve told Uncle
Vernon again to-day that on no account will I ever marry John, and he
absolutely refuses to listen to me. He says it’s all settled, and his
will’s made on that understanding, and that we’re engaged, and a whole
lot more. I must make him realise that I won’t; but you know what he
is. I want you to speak to him for me.”
Lucas thought a moment before replying. Then, “My dear,” he said, “I’m
very sorry about it, and you know I will do what I can; but is this
quite the time? We should only be accused, with some truth, of
spoiling Sir Vernon’s birthday. Let it alone for a few days, and then
I’ll try talking to him. But it won’t be easy, at any time.”
“Yes, uncle; but there’s a special reason why it must be done
to-night. Uncle Vernon tells me that he is going to announce the terms
of his will, and that he will speak of what he calls John’s and my
‘engagement.’ I really can’t allow that to happen. I don’t really mind
about the will, or John getting the money; but it must not be publicly
given out that John is to have me as well. Uncle Vernon has no right
to leave me as part of his ‘net personalty’ to John or anybody else.”
Lucas sighed. He foresaw an awkward interview; for Sir Vernon was not
an easy man to deal with, and latterly every year had made him more
difficult. But he saw that he was in for it, and, with a reassuring
word to Joan, passed into the house in search of his host.
As Joan turned back to rejoin the others, Robert Ellery stepped
quickly to her side. Slim and slightly built, he offered a strong
contrast to Prinsep’s tall, sturdy figure. Joan’s two lovers were very
different types. Ellery was not strictly handsome; but he had an
invincible air of being on good terms with the world which, with a
ready smile and a clear complexion, were fully as effective as the
most approved type of manly beauty. Still under thirty, he was just
beginning to make himself a name. A play of his had recently been
produced with success by the Brooklyn Corporation: one of his
detective novels had made something of a hit, and his personal
popularity was helping him to win rapid recognition for his undoubted
talent as a writer. Moreover, his guardian, Lucas, was a big figure in
the dramatic and literary world, knew everybody who was worth knowing,
and had a high opinion of the ability of his ward.
It was obvious that Ellery was in love with Joan. Few men had less
power of concealing what was in them, and everybody in the Brooklyn
circle, except Sir Vernon himself, was well aware that Ellery thought
the world of Joan, and more than suspected that she thought the world
of him. Of course, the theory could not be mentioned in Prinsep’s
presence; but, when he was not there, the situation was freely
discussed. George Brooklyn and his wife always maintained that, even
if Joan did not marry Ellery, she would certainly not marry Prinsep.
Carter Woodman, Sir Vernon’s lawyer as well as his cousin, held firmly
to the opposite opinion, and often hinted that Sir Vernon’s will would
settle the question in Prinsep’s favour; but then, as George said,
Woodman was a lawyer and his mind naturally ran on the marriage
settlements rather than the marriage itself.
The Brooklyns were neither particularly united nor particularly
quarrelsome, in their own family circles. They had their bickerings
and their mutual dislikes to about the average extent; but more than
the normal amount of family solidarity had manifested itself in their
dealings with the outer world. Two “outsiders,” Lucas and Ellery, were
indeed recognised almost as members of the family; and, on the other
hand, one black sheep, Sir Vernon’s brother Walter, had been driven
forth and refused further recognition. For the rest, they stuck
together, and accepted for the most part unquestioningly Sir Vernon’s
often tyrannical, but usually benevolent, authority. If Joan had been
a real Brooklyn, George would hardly have been so confident that she
would not marry Prinsep.
But Joan was not really a Brooklyn at all. She was the step-daughter
of Walter, who had for a time retrieved his fallen fortunes, fallen
through his own fault, by marrying the rich widow of Cowper, the
“coffee king.” The widow had then obligingly died, and Walter Brooklyn
had lost no time in spending her money, including the large sum left
in trust for Joan by her mother. But it was not this, so much as
Walter’s manner of life, that had caused Joan, at twenty-one, to say
that she would live with him no longer. Sir Vernon, to whom she was
strongly attached, had then offered her a home, and for five years she
had been in fact mistress of his house, and hostess at his lavish
entertainment of his theatrical friends. From the first Sir Vernon had
set his heart on her marrying his nephew, John Prinsep, who was ten
years her senior. But Joan was a young woman with a will of her own;
and for five years she had resisted the combined pressure of Sir
Vernon and of John Prinsep himself, without any success in persuading
either Sir Vernon to give up the idea, or Prinsep of the hopelessness
of his suit. Prinsep persisted in believing that she would “come
round,” though of late her growing friendship with Ellery had made him
more anxious to secure her consent to a definite engagement.
Ordinarily, Prinsep had a way of scowling when he saw Joan and Ellery
together; but to-night he seemed without a care as he came up to Joan
and invited her to lead the way indoors. Dinner was already served;
and Sir Vernon with Lucas was waiting for them all to come in.
There, in the great Board Room of the Corporation, they offered, one
by one, their congratulations to the old man. An enemy had once said
of Sir Vernon Brooklyn that he was the finest stage gentleman in
Europe—both on and off the stage. The saying was unjust, but there was
enough of truth in it to sting. Sir Vernon was a little apt to act off
the stage; and the habit had perhaps grown on him since his
retirement. To-night, with his fine silver hair and keen, well-cut
features, he was very much the gentleman, dispensing noble hospitality
with just too marked a sense of its magnificence. But it was Sir
Vernon’s day, and his guests were there to do his will, to draw him
out into reminiscence, to enhance his sense of having made the most of
life’s chances, and of being sure to leave behind him those who would
carry on the great tradition. The talk turned to the building of the
Piccadilly Theatre. The old man told them how, from the first days of
his success, he had made up his mind to build himself the finest
theatre in London. From the first he had his eye on the site of
Liskeard House; and it had taken him twenty years to persuade the
Liskeards, impoverished as they were, to sell it for such a purpose.
At last he had secured the site, and then again his foresight had been
rewarded. Not for nothing had he paid for George Brooklyn’s training
as an architect, based on the lad’s own bent, and given him the
opportunity to study playhouse architecture in every quarter of the
globe. The Piccadilly Theatre was not only George Brooklyn’s
masterpiece: it was, structurally, acoustically, visually, for
comfort, in short in every way, the finest theatre in the world. It
was also the best paying theatre. And, the old man said, if in his day
he had been the finest actor, so was George’s wife still the finest
actress, if only she would not waste on domesticity the gift that was
meant for mankind. For Mrs. George Brooklyn, as Isabelle Raven, had
been the star of the Piccadilly Theatre until she had married its
designer and quitted the stage, sorely against Sir Vernon’s will.
Sir Vernon was in his best form; and the talk, led by him, was rapid
and, at times, brilliant. But there was at least one of those present
to whom it made no appeal; for Joan Cowper was painfully anxious as to
the result of Lucas’s interview with Sir Vernon. Several times she
caught his eye; but, although he smiled at her down the table, his
look brought her no reassurance. At last, when the servants had
withdrawn after the last course, Joan rose, purposing to lead the
ladies to the drawing-room. But Sir Vernon waved her back to her seat,
saying that, before they left the table, there was something which he
wanted them all to hear. Clearly there was nothing for it but to wait;
but Joan made up her mind that, if Sir Vernon spoke of her publicly as
engaged to Prinsep, not even the spoiling of his birthday party should
stop her from speaking her mind.