“There will soon be very little of my uncle Calmour’s property left,
if this woman is allowed to pursue her present reckless course of
extravagance,” observed Mr Churchill, discontentedly, about two
years after the incidents narrated in the last story.
He had come to consult me as to the possibility of still outwitting
Mrs Calmour, and of regaining possession of the family acres. He had
but the haziest idea as to the plan most likely to realise his
wishes, and admitted that the widow’s position seemed unassailable
from an ordinary point of view; yet, in spite of our previous
failure, he was imbued with such an extravagant belief in the
abnormal ability of Messrs Bell and White that he had taken it into
his head to see if we could not unseat the adventuress, even now.
“According to the law of England,” I observed to Mr Churchill, “Mrs
Calmour is perfectly entitled to squander the property. The will has
been duly proved, and unless we could show that this clever schemer’s
title is base there is little chance of ousting her.”
“What are the pleas upon which we could upset her right to possession?”
“Probably a clever lawyer, if you could find such an individual,
might suggest several. At present I can only think of two.”
“And they are?”
The illegality of Mr Calmour’s marriage and the existence of a will
posterior to the one that has been proved.”
“Miss Bell! You give me new hope! There may really be another will
in existence, or rather, there may have been. When I come to think
of it, it is not likely that such a will would have been kept so
long, even if it had ever been penned. To suppress a will is a
serious thing, and culprits do not, I should imagine, carefully
preserve the evidence of their own guilt.”
“There you are quite wrong. There are innumerable instances on
record of people who have been punished for grave crimes that would
never have been brought home to them but for their own incredible
carelessness. A letter, an article of wearing apparel, a trivial
trinket – these have often been the principal factors in elucidating
criminal puzzles.”
“Then you really think Mrs Calmour has kept the real will back?”
“My dear sir! I never said any such thing. I only supposed it
possible that, to secure the property, Mrs Calmour had suppressed
her husband’s final testament, in which case it might safely be
concluded that it would have been entirely in your or your wife’s
favour, since the will that was eventually proved required a lot of
very clever scheming on the successful legatee’s part.”
“Just so, and I mean to act on the supposition that you have made a
correct guess at the true state of affairs. The idea that the
marriage was not legal cannot be entertained for a moment. There are
too many proofs to the contrary, worse luck.”
“So you think. But we are accustomed to look at a case from every
point of view. An exhaustive analysis of Mrs Calmour’s past might
disclose the existence of a prior right on the part of some
accommodating individual, who is content to remain in the background
for the sake of a liberal share of the plunder.”
But this view of the case, excited my impulsive client so much that
I with difficulty restrained his prematurely triumphant exultation,
and when he left our office he seemed to be firmly convinced that
his wife would still become possessor of what was left of her
father’s estate. As she was an only child, it had always been natural
to suppose herself the heiress, and as at first one beloved piece of
land and then another was sold by the present possessor she found it
very hard to hear of such wanton waste of fine property. Probably
she would share her husband’s newly-awakened hopes and enthusiasm
when he told her of his interview with me.
And were these hopes quite as unfounded as they appear at the first
blush?
Probably not.
I had been so much chagrined at the manner in which I had been
outwitted by Mrs Calmour, that I had resolved to ferret well into
her past life, and rake thence such items of interest as would help
to turn the tables on her, and return to Mrs Churchill the property
which I deemed morally hers.
I had already made good progress in my researches before I was
consulted again by my client. But it would not have been wise, from
a professional point of view, to betray the full extent of my
knowledge at once. Clients have sometimes a rather a nasty knack of
imagining that the remuneration due to a private detective is
commensurate with the amount of research required after a case has
been actually taken in hand on their behalf. They forget that all
the knowledge and experience which is anterior to their application
for their assistance has been the result of determined labour and
forethought, without which no detective could hope to succeed, and
which deserve ultimate interest equally with the client’s own
provision for the future, whether it be in the shape of invested
funds or acquired mental knowledge.
Of course, a great proportion of our clients are of a more reasonable
nature. But the exceptions have taught us caution, and we rarely
fall into a confidential mood until we are quite sure that our
professional prestige will not suffer by doing so.
Thus it happened that I forebore to tell Mr Churchill how hopeful
I really considered his wife’s cause to be. But I knew enough already
to have made Mrs Calmour quake in her shoes, could she have guessed
that I was on her trail. For instance, I knew that a certain Mr Selby
formerly posed as the guardian of the lady, who, by-the-by, was at
least thirty-six years of age, though she only owned to being
twenty-seven. On making certain inquiries, I learned something else
about Mr Selby, and came to the conclusion that his doings were
quite as shady as those of his “ward.”
He made it a practice to hunt up charming country cottages or
handsomely furnished suites of rooms and to offer such liberal terms
for them as tempted their owners to take a lodger in for once, in
order to earn an extra honest penny. Then Mr Selby, who had sung the
praises of his accomplice sky-high, would superintend the
installation of that individual with much empressement. The lady,
whom he always represented as rich, and whom he endowed with
fictitious relationship to people of note, who would have repudiated
all connection with her, would bring her maid and her bosom female
crony, a certain Miss Losteel, and they and the reputed guardian
would eat and drink the poor hosts into ruination.
This would last until the latter began to look askance at the idea
of always receiving excuses instead of money, and then the gang
would suddenly seek fresh victims. Oddly enough, the victimised
hosts generally found that some of their treasured knick-knacks
always disappeared at the same time as their swindling lady lodger,
who, while the spell of her fascination lasted, borrowed money for
stamps, stationery, railway fares, and any other thing for which
money is absolutely needed.
The woman was short, squat, dark, and of curious, square set
features. While under the aegis of the charm which she could use at
will, people found all sorts of excuses for her constant lapses into
vulgarity, and smiled at the egregious vanity she displayed. Once
fully alive to the unscrupulous creature’s real nature, they
wondered how such an ugly incarnation of selfishness could ever have
fascinated them, and were inclined to attribute her power to sorcery,
or hypnotism, or to anything but the deep-laid plots of mere cunning.
After Miss Reede’s marriage to Mr Calmour, the whilom guardian (he
posed as “uncle” at Dieppe) lived in bachelor chambers in London in
great style, and did not even trouble to go to the office in which
he had formerly done occasional business of a shady sort. He had
money enough to live upon, and I had no difficulty in surmising
whence it came.
Soon after Mrs Calmour succeeded to the estates Mr Selby developed
into a property buyer. He figured at several of the purchases of
land sold by the widow. As the latter showed no signs of being
better off for all the cash she got, I inferred that it found its
way back into Mr Selby’s possession, and that the latest scheme was
intended to divert the ownership of the property to the nominal
purchaser, instead of the widow.
I argued that there must be a reason for this, and the painstaking
researches I made resulted in the astounding discovery that the
couple were really man and wife. They had found it pay better to
profess a different relationship. The marriage with Mr Calmour was,
therefore, null and void. But I was not quite sure that this fact
would suffice to restore her fortune to Mrs Churchill.
Prolonged observation convinced me that the utmost harmony existed
between the two conspirators.
I felt sure that fear of discovery was prompting the transfer of the
property, and argued that as friendly relations existed between the
two principals, there must be a third party of whose revelations
they were afraid.
It did not require much ingenuity to supply the missing link in the
chain of evidence I was weaving round the lady who had outwitted me
so cleverly when posing as my colleague. Suppose I turned my
attention to the Mr and Mrs Carlile, whose active co-operation
ensured the success of the widow’s schemes?
I thought the plan a very good one, and followed it up with such
success that I learnt enough of the past life of the Carliles to
have sent them both to penal servitude.
My colleagues had given me their active co-operation, and when I had
arrived at a quite triumphant point of my personal investigations,
I knew exactly where to put my hands on the people I wanted. But I
did not care to present myself unsupported in the lion’s den, so was
accompanied both by my uncle and by Mr Henniker when I paid the
unsuspecting swindlers a visit.
Within half an hour we convinced them that we had them in our power,
and that the only way to escape imprisonment themselves was to
confess everything they knew relating to Mr Calmour’s inheritrix and
her accomplice. And a pretty confession it was too!
It seems that the misguided squire had made two wills, both in legal
form, and both drafted without the assistance of a lawyer. Of the
one the reader has heard particulars, and though it did not carry
out Mrs Calmour’s own views, she preferred to risk her chances on it
rather than on the one made by the legatee in the heat of passion, a
few hours before he died.
This last will left everything to Ada Calmour, absolutely and
unconditionally, and was the outcome of Mr Calmour’s discovery that
he had been duped and fooled. He was altogether so excited at this
revelation that he was visited by a stroke, and died without being
able to impart his knowledge to anyone who would have helped to see
justice done to his daughter.
Mrs Carlile was a visitor in the house at the time. She obtained
possession of Mr Calmour’s last will, and declined to give it up
when asked to do so by the supposed widow, as she was quite aware of
the power its possession gave her. The Carliles had lived quite
luxuriously at Mrs Calmour’s expense, but had found it necessary to
threaten exposure lately, as they had become suspicious of her
intention to realise all she could, and levant with her lawful husband.
The reader can guess the rest. Mr and Mrs Churchill are installed in
their own again. Even the land nominally sold to the man calling
himself Selby is restored to them, as the transfer was a palpably
fraudulent transaction between him and his wife, who had no legal
power to sell.
The Carliles have deemed it wise to emigrate. I wish I could add that
the Selbys had been duly punished for their misdeeds. But Mrs
Churchill did not care to expose her poor father’s weakness too
widely, and has let them go scot free.
For anything I know to the contrary, they have reverted to their
former farcical pretence of being a guardian of his rich genius of a
ward. Certain it is, that wherever they are, they are swindling
somebody, and I would earnestly warn my readers against trusting the
unsupported testimony of a plausible, gentlemanly fellow who wants
to engage costly board and lodgings for his lady friend, whom he
endows with the additional recommendation of being about to outstrip
her pretended talented relations in the race for fame.