Lord Okehampton, discussing the financier's fate in a _tête-à-tête_
dinner with his wife, was only one among a multitude who were thinking
of the Provana murder. There is nothing that English men and women
enjoy more than the crime which they call "a really good murder." They
will import sensation cases from America or the colonies, and will try
to feel as keenly interested in a murder in New York or Melbourne as in
a London tragedy. But the keen relish is lacking where the crime has
been done afar off. It is impossible to realise the scene in unfamiliar
surroundings. The sense of nearness, of the street or the countryside
we know, is a strong factor in the interest of the story. To the man
who knows his Paris thoroughly a Parisian crime may appeal; but to the
woman who buys frocks in the Rue de la Paix, and hats on the Boulevard
des Italiens, the most diabolical murder in the Marais, or on the
heights of Belleville, seems tame.
Thus the murder of a millionaire in the midst of the rich man's London
was a crime that set every sensation-seeker theorising and arguing.
Every man is at heart a Sherlock Holmes, while every woman thinks
herself a criminal investigator by instinct; and the theories worked
out and expounded over tea-tables, and maintained with a red-hot
intensity, were various and startling. The most sanguinary murder is
a poor thing if people know how and by whom it was done. Mystery is
essential in a crime that is to occupy the mind of the public. The
murder in the great house in Portland Place had all the elements of
enduring success--wealth, beauty, secrecy, and that Italian flavour
which offered poignant possibilities of jealousy or revenge, or perhaps
a life-long vendetta, as the motive of the crime.
The inquiry in the coroner's court dragged slowly towards an
indeterminate and unsatisfactory close, being adjourned at long
intervals to give the police time to make discoveries.
So far the police had made no discoveries, and the daily Press was
beginning to be angry with the Criminal Investigation Department; and
to make uncivil comparisons between the home article and the same thing
in France and Germany. In the meantime the newspapers found subject for
occasional paragraphs, though they had no new facts to communicate. So
long as the inquest went on, picturesque reporters found a spacious
field for their pen in the descriptions of witnesses and spectators
in the coroner's court; the spectators being mostly women of some
fashion, and more or less famous in the world of art and letters. The
stage, also, had been represented among that morbidly curious crowd;
popular actresses coming to study the appearance and demeanour of the
young widow, whose marble calm in the witness box had been written and
talked about. But in spite of searching and patient inquiry, the murder
in Portland Place remained an insoluble mystery, a standing reproach
against Scotland Yard.
While the man in the street and the daily papers he battens upon
were expatiating upon the supineness and incompetency of the
Criminal Investigation Department, the chief of that department was
not idle. Scotland Yard is not greatly in favour of the offering
of rewards for the apprehension of criminals. Scotland Yard has an
idea that such offers do more harm than good, and prefers to rely
upon the intelligence of its officials; and on that spontaneous and
disinterested help which is often afforded by outsiders.
But after the man in the street had expended much wonder and
indignation upon the fact that no reward had as yet been offered by the
murdered man's widow or family, the Disbrowes had taken upon themselves
to arouse Vera to a proper sense of her position and responsibilities.
Among Provana's friends and allies in the City--the great semi-oriental
banking house of Messrs. Zeba and Zalmunna, with whom he had been
closely associated, and other firms almost as distinguished--there was
also a feeling that strong measures were required, and some wonderment
that the widow had as yet done nothing.
Lady Okehampton, who had been in Portland Place nearly every
day--although not always allowed to see her niece--took the matter in
hand, as spokeswoman for the Disbrowes, and told Vera that she must
offer a reward for the apprehension of her husband's murderer.
"It ought to have been done before how," she said, "but you have been
so lost in grief, that I have been afraid to talk of poor Provana;
however, as time goes on people must think it extraordinary that you
can let things slide; especially after that splendid will which makes
you the richest woman in London."
The splendid will, executed in the first year of her marriage, left
Vera residuary legatee, after a long list of legacies, which although
generous, did not absorb more than a sixth of Mario Provana's estate.
If not actually the richest woman in London--a fact not easily to be
ascertained--Vera was at least rich enough to support that reputation.
She gave a little moan of anguish when her aunt spoke of the will,
and replied, with averted face, that her uncle was to do whatever he
thought right.
Before darkness came down the police stations of London exhibited
bills, offering a thousand pounds for information leading to the
discovery of the murderer, and the man in the street was a little
easier in his mind.
In the meantime Scotland Yard was pursuing its own course, and one
of the most experienced and intelligent members of the force had the
Provana affair in hand, and was actually established in Portland Place,
where he was explained to the household as a picture-restorer, who had
been engaged by Mr. Provana shortly before he left England, to examine
and restore certain pictures among those somewhat depressing examples
of the early Italian school which gave gloom to the too spacious
dining-room.
It might seem strange that work of this kind, ordered by the dead
man, should be carried out at such a time; but Mr. James Japp, of
the Criminal Investigation Department, had a power of impersonation
which rarely failed him in the most critical circumstances; and having
assumed the role of artistic man-of-all-work, he omitted no detail that
could impress and convince the house servants, among whom he hoped to
put his hand upon the murderer. Plausible, friendly, and altogether an
acquisition in that low-spirited household, Mr. Japp, alias Johnson,
was soon upon terms of cordial friendship with butler and housekeeper,
while he was genially patronising to the four stalwart footmen, and by
no means stand-offish to the coachman and his underlings, who sometimes
crept into the servants' hall in the gloaming to talk over the last
paragraph upon the mystery in Portland Place. For them the mystery was
meat and drink. They hung upon it with a morbid tenacity, never tired
of re-stating the same facts, and going over the same arguments, and
doing battle, each for his own solution of the ghastly problem. For
these Mr. Johnson, artist and picture-restorer, was a godsend.
The man was so delightfully innocent in the ways and workings of
criminals. He showed the simple faith of a child when listening with
avidity to Mr. Sedgewick's views, and allowed himself to be browbeaten
by the coachman. He would turn the drift of the talk aside at a most
interesting point to relate his early aspirations as a student, and
his dismal failure as an artist, and how he had been driven from the
painting of colossal historical pictures to the humbler art of the
varnisher and restorer, working for a daily wage. He would tell stories
of his early struggles that evolved laughter and good-natured scorn.
He had a room allotted to him for his work, one of those rooms opening
out of the long passage that led to Mr. Provana's private door, that
door by which he and his murderer must have entered the house on the
fatal night. Mr. Johnson had examined the door with studious attention,
confessing to a morbid interest in the details of crime, co-existent
with a curious ignorance of the law of the land. The nature and methods
of a coroner's court had to be explained to him, condescendingly, by
Mr. Sedgewick, when the Provana murder was under discussion.
He had his room for his artistic work, where he installed himself with
three of the largest pictures from the dining-room, his bottles of
oil and varnish, and his stock of brushes, and where he insisted upon
being undisturbed. He was of a nervous temperament, and could not bear
to have his work looked at. He talked of his progress from day to day,
expatiating upon the dangers of blue mould, the horrors of asphaltum
and other pernicious mediums, and the superiority of the old painters,
who ground their own colours; but no one, not even Mr. Sedgewick, was
allowed to see him at work.
He was altogether a superior person, yet it was something of a surprise
to the household that he should be admitted every evening to an
interview with Mrs. Provana, who received him in the great, lonely
drawing-room, where he remained with her for about a quarter of an
hour, giving an account of his day's work.
This privilege was explained by Mr. Johnson as a natural result of the
lady's interest in art, and the value she set upon pictures which it
appeared were especial favourites with her husband.
"At the rate he goes at it, I don't fancy he can have much progress to
report," remarked Mr. Sedgewick, "for I don't believe he works a solid
hour a day at those pictures. He takes things a bit too easily, to my
mind. He knows he's got a soft job, and he means to make it last as
long as the missus will let him. He's got his head pretty well screwed
on, has our friend Johnson; and he knows when he's in for a good thing.
And he's got a tongue that would talk over a special commissioner of
income tax; so no doubt he makes Mrs. Provana believe that he works
heavens hard at fetching up the colour in the Frau Angelicas."
"I shall think something of his work if he can do anything to brighten
up those Salvini Roses, which are about the dismallest pictures I
ever saw in a gentleman's dining-room," the housekeeper remarked with
conviction.
Mr. Johnson was a desultory worker. He told his friends in the
household that he worked like a tiger while he was at it, but your real
artist was ever fitful in his toil. It was in the artistic temperament
to be desultory. He would emerge from his den after an hour or so, in a
canvas apron so stained with oil, and so sticky with varnish, that none
could doubt his industry. He was eminently sociable. He couldn't get on
without company and conversation. The four young footmen afforded him
inexhaustible amusement.
"The oldest of 'em ain't over twenty-five," he said, "but every one of
'em is a character in his way. Now I love studying character. There's
no book, no, nor no illustrated magazine, you can give me that I enjoy
as I do human nature. Give me the human document, and leave your mouldy
old books for mouldy old scholars. Every one of those four lads is a
romance, if you know how to read him."
This taste, which Mr. Sedgewick and Mrs. Manby thought low, led Mr.
Johnson to consort in the friendliest way with the four youths in
question. He had not been in the house a fortnight before he knew
all about them; their sweethearts; their ambitions; their tastes for
pleasure, and their craving for gain. Even the odd man, a creature
whom the _élite_ of the household esteemed as hardly human--a savage
without a livery, by whom it was a hardship to be waited on at one's
meals--was not without interest for Johnson. While he delighted in Mr.
Sedgewick's company, and was proud to spend an evening with him at his
club, he shocked everybody by taking the old man to a music hall, and
giving him supper after the entertainment.
"I think you're all too hard upon Andrew," he said. "I find him
distinctly human."
With the ladies of the household he was at once friendly and gallant.
He aired his little stock of French with Ma'mselle, and took her for
evening walks in Regent's Park, which to dwellers north of Langham
Place is "the Park." He bought her little gifts, and took her to the
theatre. He played dummy whist with Mrs. Manby, who was sadly behind
the age, and could not abide bridge; and the result of all this
friendly intercourse, which had kept the establishment in good spirits
during a period of gloom, culminated one evening, when he told Mrs.
Provana that his residence under her roof had only a negative result,
and that he had exhausted all the means in his power without arriving
at any clue to the murderer of her husband.
"It has been a great disappointment to me, Madam," said Mr. Japp,
standing before Vera, with his hat in his hand, serious and subdued in
manner and bearing. The change from the sociable and trivial Johnson to
the business-like and thoughtful Japp showed a remarkable power in the
assumption of character.
"It has been the most disappointing case I have been engaged in for a
long time. I came into this house assured that I should put my hand
upon the guilty party under this roof. Every circumstance indicated
that the crime had been committed by someone inside the house. The
idea of an outsider seemed incredible. That a house with such a staff
of servants--with five men and an Irish terrier sleeping on the ground
floor--could have been entered by a burglar seemed out of the question.
Mr. Provana being known to keep large sums of money in one shape and
another in the safe in his private room, and no doubt being also known
to carry the keys of that safe upon his person, there was a sufficient
inducement for robbery; while it is our common experience that any
man bold enough to attempt robbery on a large scale is not the man
to shrink from murder, when his own skin is in danger. My theory was
that one of your men servants had been waiting for his opportunity
during Mr. Provana's absence in America; that he had provided himself
with implements for forcing the lock of the safe, perhaps with the
aid of an outside accomplice, and that, by a strange coincidence, he
had stumbled upon the night of his master's unexpected return, and
had been surprised at the beginning of his work. There are scratches
on the polished steel about the lock of the safe that might be made
by one of those graduated wedges which burglars use. I thought that,
being surprised by Mr. Provana's entrance, he snatched up one of the
pistols from the case on the table--which he might have examined
previously--and fired within narrow range, as Mr. Provana was about to
open the door of your room, without having seen him; that he took the
keys from Mr. Provana's pocket after he fell, unlocked the safe, and
abstracted the two parcels of bonds which are missing. The disordered
state of the safe, and the keys left in the lock, indicate that
everything was done in extreme haste. This was my theory before I came
into your house, Madam; but after nearly five weeks' careful study of
every individual under this roof, I have reluctantly arrived at the
conclusion that nobody in your household is in it, either as principal
or accomplice, before or after the fact. I think it is in an old play
that the remark has been made that 'Murder will out,' also that 'Blood
will have blood.' Both remarks are perfectly correct; but there is
another remark that might have been made with even greater truth, and
that is 'Money will out.' You can't hide money--at least the average
criminal can't. That's where he gives himself away. He can't keep
his plunder to himself--the money burns--it burns--he must spend it.
Some spend it on drink; some, begging your pardon, Madam--spend it on
ladies; some, the weakest of the lot, spend it on clothes and hansom
cabs; but spend they must. There's not one of those four young men
that could keep five or six thou' in his pocket and not give himself
away--somehow or somewhere. Nor yet Mr. Sedgewick, fine gentleman and
philosopher as he is--nor yet even the odd man. Being a poor creature,
he'd have melted those securities with the first low fence he could
hear of, and would have been on the drink night after night, till he
got the horrors and gave himself up to the police. I've been looking
for the money, Madam, and finding no trace of _that_, I know I've not
come within range of the party we want. We must look outside, Madam,
and we may have to look a long way off. If the possessor of those bonds
is an old hand, he is not likely to turn them into money anywhere in
this City; for though they are bonds to bearer, a transaction of that
kind must leave some trace. I feel the humiliation of my failure,
Madam, and I have no doubt you are disappointed."
Vera looked up at him with melancholy eyes, pale, hollow-cheeked, a
sombre figure in the severest mourning that the Maison de Deuil near
the Madeleine could supply, and French mourning knows no compromise.
"Disappointed," she repeated slowly in a low, tired voice, and then, to
Mr. Japp's surprise and almost horror, she said, "I don't think it much
matters whether the wretched creature who killed him is discovered or
not. It can make no difference to _him_ lying at rest, beyond all pain
and sorrow, that his murderer is hidden somewhere out of reach of the
law, and may escape the agony of a shameful death."
The horror in her widening eyes as she said these words showed that
her imagination could realise the horror of the scaffold. "However he
may escape human law," she went on, in the same slow, dull tones, "he
must carry his punishment with him to the grave. He can never know one
peaceful hour. He can never know the comfort of dreamless sleep. He
will be a haunted man."
"Excuse me for differing with you, Madam, but you don't know what stuff
the criminal classes are made of. _They_ don't mind. One more or less
sent to kingdom come don't prey upon _their_ nerves. Where are they
found, as a rule, when they do get nicked? Why at a theatre or in a
music-hall, or at the Derby--and generally in ladies' society. The
things you read of in novels, conscience, remorse, Banquo's ghost,
don't trouble _them_."
Mr. Japp apologised for having expressed himself so freely, and
stood for a few minutes fingering the brim of his hat, waiting for
Mrs. Provana to speak. Her speech just now had been a surprise to
him, for never had he met with so silent a lady. Night after night
she had listened hungrily to his statement of his day's progress,
his suspicions, his glimpses of light, now seeming full of promise,
and anon delusive. She had listened with keen attention; but she
had expressed no opinion, and had asked no questions. And now for
him--the accomplished Criminal Investigator, the man who had worked
at the science of detection as superior persons work at the higher
mathematics--to hear this lady say that the discovery of her husband's
murderer did not matter, that, for her part, he might go about the
world a free man, with nothing worse than a mind full of scorpions and
a sleepless bed, seemed too monstrous for comprehension. She, to whom
the murdered man had left millions, not to hunger for the ignominious
death of his murderer!
"It must be Christian Science," thought Mr. Japp, as he packed his
portmanteau. "Nothing less can account for it."