WHAT DOCTOR JOHNSON KNEW.
There had been several rather startling suicides during the season
which was now ending, of men and women of social standing, and in every
case the usual verdict had been returned. The events had created a
certain amount of interest; theories to account for the tragedies had
been advanced; then the nine days’ wonder had subsided and London life
had gone on again as usual.
When, however, no less than seven men and five women of high rank and
apparently without a care in the world had ended their lives within
the first three weeks of July, the newspapers had begun to agitate
to know the reason of this epidemic of suicides which exceeded even
the epidemic of 1918, when Lord Hope-Cooper, Viscount Molesley, the
Honorable Vera Froissart, Madame Leonora Vandervelt, Sir Stephen
Lethbridge, Henry Hartsilver, and others, had died by their own hand.
In Society, too, everybody had begun to talk. The mystery of Lord
Froissart’s suicide comparatively recently, when his body had been
found at the foot of the cliffs at Bournemouth, had never been solved.
Now the hot weather was held by some to be responsible for the series
of tragedies, but this theory was not general. Interviewed on the
subject of the “epidemic” several eminent psychologists and scientists
expounded their views in more or less complex language, the meaning of
which most people failed to grasp.
Indeed, the majority of those interviewed endeavored to convince
the public that the series of tragedies was due to whatever cause
they themselves happened to be interested in. Thus the spiritualists
had theories concerning “souls” and “vampires” and the vengeance of
people long dead; ecclesiastics were perfectly certain the prevalence
of suicide was due to men’s, and especially to women’s, sinful way
of living; followers of certain unconventional physicians’ views
on eugenics attributed the outbreak to the effects of “unwholesome
environment,” though in what way the dead people’s environment had been
unwholesome they did not explain; while advocates of early Victorianism
were ready to “prove” that the tragedies would have been unthinkable in
their young days.
All such speculation of course led nowhere, and served only to increase
anxiety as well as alarm. The theory which enlisted most adherents was
that folk lavishly endowed with this world’s goods were in the habit of
exercising so little self-control that eventually their minds became
affected, and finally unbalanced. This was, to some extent, the view
held by Doctor Johnson, and he told Blenkiron as much when, happening
to meet him one day at his club, their conversation drifted to the
prevalent topic.
“I am anxious about our common friend, Charlie Preston,” Blenkiron said
presently. “Have you seen him lately?”
“Not since Henley week,” Johnson replied. “What is the matter with him?”
“I am certain he has something on his mind; he appears to me to have
changed enormously within the last week or so.”
“In what way?”
“All the ‘vim’ seems to have gone out of him. He seems to be always
preoccupied, always thinking--thinking. Often when I speak to him he
doesn’t answer; in fact I don’t believe he hears. He used not to be
like that.”
“He is engaged to be married.”
“I know, but I am positive that isn’t the reason. If it is, heaven
prevent my ever becoming engaged!” and Blenkiron smiled rather grimly.
“Then to what do you attribute it?”
“I don’t attribute it. There is nothing to which I can attribute it.
But I tell you this in confidence, Johnson--if I heard that Charlie
Preston had become another victim to the suicide epidemic I should not
be surprised.”
“You don’t say so! He is one of the last men I should have thought
capable of that. When could I see him, I wonder? I should like to have
a talk with him, after what you say.”
“Why not ask him to lunch one day? Oddly enough, Johnson, Miss
Hagerston, whom he is to marry, has greatly changed too. This is not
imagination on my part, I can assure you.”
But before Johnson could invite Preston to lunch, something happened.
This was a visit which Johnson received from Cora Hartsilver; she had
become acquainted with him about the time when Yootha was in trouble
regarding the pearl necklace.
Cora had made an appointment by telephone, and during the afternoon she
called.
“I have come to see you,” she said, “about my friend, Miss Hagerston,
who tells me she had the pleasure of meeting you at Henley.”
“Yes, and I had the pleasure of congratulating her upon her engagement.
She is not indisposed, I hope?”
“Indeed she is, seriously indisposed, though not in the way you mean.
She is mentally indisposed, if I may put it so.”
“I am sorry to hear that. Can you give me a few particulars?”
“Well, she is staying with me at present, and has been since Henley
week. She asked me if she might come to stay with me because she could
no longer sleep at night in her flat--she got frightened and had
terrible nightmares, she said. That she has something on her mind I
am absolutely convinced; yet though we are such intimate friends she
positively refuses to tell me anything, though she as good as admits
that she is worried. So I thought I would take the liberty of asking
your advice without telling her.”
“Hadn’t I better see her?”
“I think not, at least not yet. Your calling to see her would arouse
her suspicion, because I have asked her once or twice to let me ask a
doctor to call, and each time she has strongly opposed the suggestion.”
“Is she unhappy at the thought of her approaching marriage?”
“Indeed no! She is terribly in love. In fact, I tremble to think what
would happen to her if any mishap befell Captain Preston. So strongly
do I feel on that point that sometimes I wonder if she has some secret
cause to believe that some mishap may befall him. He seems greatly
worried too.”
“So I understand.”
“Why, who told you?”
“His great friend, Blenkiron.”
“Well, Doctor Johnson, what do you suggest?”
For a minute the doctor did not answer.
“You say the change in Miss Hagerston dates from Henley Regatta?” he
said at last.
“From the morning of the third day. She went to the Regatta on the
second day only. She went with Captain Preston.”
“That was the day I met them both on Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s
house-boat. They were then both in the best of spirits, apparently, and
looked radiantly happy.”
Again he pondered, his brow slightly contracted.
“Where did Miss Hagerston sleep that night?” he asked suddenly.
This was a question Cora had not expected. She colored violently. Then
she said awkwardly:
“Oh, at her flat in Knightsbridge, I suppose.”
“You don’t know for certain?”
“No. How should I?”
“You say that you and Miss Hagerston are great friends, Mrs.
Hartsilver, so I thought that probably you would know. She did not, I
suppose, spend the night on Preston’s house-boat?”
“How could she, Doctor Johnson, alone with him!”
The doctor looked at her keenly, but she would not meet his gaze.
“Why not be frank with me, Mrs. Hartsilver,” he said, lowering his
voice. “She did spend the night on the boat with him, and you know it.”
Cora looked terribly alarmed.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, doctor,” she exclaimed, “don’t let anybody
know! Think what would be said, the inference that would be drawn,
especially as they are engaged. I will be frank with you, then. I was
with friends at Henley, and Yootha was to have met me at ten o’clock
at night, and we were to have returned to town together. But she did
not meet me, and I, thinking she must have gone back to London alone,
returned with my friends. As soon as I got home I rang up her flat, and
her maid said she had not come in; the maid was sitting up, awaiting
her. I was dreadfully upset, and blamed myself for having missed her.
“Next morning, about noon, she came to my house, looking very ill and
worried. She said that she and Captain Preston had forgotten all about
the time until it was too late to meet me, also by then the last train
had gone. Captain Preston tried everywhere to find a bed for her, but
there was not one to be had. Finally there was nothing for it but for
her to return with the captain to his house-boat, where he gave her his
bed and slept himself in his servant’s bed, while his servant slept
outside in a deck-chair. That is what she told me, and I believe every
word, because she couldn’t lie to me. There was no harm in it at all,
believe me, there was not, but of course it would not do for people
to know. Nobody knows but you and Captain Preston’s servant, a man
absolutely to be trusted not to talk.”
“And Miss Hagerston’s maid. At least she knows that her mistress did
not come home.”
Johnson began to pace the room.
“Of course I shall treat what you have just told me as strictly
confidential,” he said, “but the fact remains that we don’t know
what happened during the time Preston and Miss Hagerston left Mrs.
Mervyn-Robertson’s house-boat, and the time, late at night, when they
returned to his own house-boat.”
“What do you imply?” Cora asked sharply, drawing herself up.
“Forgive me if I have conveyed a wrong impression,” Johnson said,
stopping in his walk. “I assure you I did not mean to imply what
you think. Nothing was further from my mind. No, my thoughts were
traveling in quite a different channel. Tell me, Mrs. Hartsilver,
are Miss Hagerston and Captain Preston now on terms of intimacy
with Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson? They appeared to be the other day, and
I was surprised, because I was under the impression that their
acquaintanceship with her had for some time past been, how shall I put
it--rather strained?”
“Indeed it was more than rather strained,” Cora answered quickly.
“Mrs. Robertson detests Yootha almost as much as she detests me, and
I think I am safe in saying that she bears Captain Preston no love at
all. As we are speaking in confidence I may as well tell you that Miss
Hagerston, Captain Preston, myself, and one or two others have for
some months past suspected Jessica Mervyn-Robertson and her friends,
Mr. Aloysius Stapleton and Mr. Archie La Planta, of being impostors
of some sort, if nothing worse; we have reasons for suspecting this.
Consequently we have been making private inquiries about them of the
Metropolitan Secret Agency and other sources, and this, I think, they
have got to know. Captain Preston and Yootha accepted their invitation
to tea on their house-boat chiefly out of curiosity, I believe, and
were greatly surprised at the exceptionally friendly reception accorded
them. I think they made a mistake in associating with Mrs. Robertson at
all in the circumstances.”
Johnson smiled.
“As that is so, Mrs. Hartsilver, perhaps you will admit me to your
little group which suspects ‘Mrs. Jessica’ and her two satellites of
not being all that they seem to be. Tell me, wasn’t Captain Preston in
Shanghai at one time?”
“Yes, I have heard him say so.”
“Well, from the middle of 1910 to the end of 1912 I practiced in
Hong Kong. Englishmen, as I dare say you know, become very clannish
when exiled in places of that sort. I used to visit Shanghai rather
frequently, where I had a _locum tenens_, and if Mrs. Jessica and a
notorious young woman named Angela Robertson are not the same--oh, but
they are the same, I am perfectly positive they are. Stapleton, too,
lived in Shanghai for a while--that must have been in 1911. He made
the Astor Hotel his home, remember, and though I only saw him once or
twice, and never met him to speak to, my _locum tenens_ had all sorts
of extraordinary stories about him, and my _locum_ was not a man to
heed idle gossip.”
“Stapleton and Fobart Robertson--the adventurer whom Mrs. Jessica
married--were hand in glove at that time. Then one day Fobart Robertson
found Shanghai too hot to hold him--and if you had ever been in
Shanghai, Mrs. Hartsilver, you would know how hot that must have
been--and left hurriedly, whereupon Stapleton calmly stepped into
his shoes and became to all intents Mr. Robertson--at the club they
nicknamed him ‘Fobart’s understudy.’ It created something of a scandal
amongst the British population, but in the East the morals of most
Europeans are on a lower plane than over here, and after a while the
_liaison_ came to be winked at, so that Angela Robertson was once more
received as she had been when living with her husband, and Stapleton,
being well-to-do and extremely hospitable, and consequently popular,
was no longer cold-shouldered. Other friends of Angela Robertson’s
in Shanghai were, I remember, Mrs. Stringborg--yes, the woman whose
necklace was removed--and a queer fellow called Timothy Macmahon. It
was Macmahon’s widow to whom Lord Froissart left all his property, if
you remember. Does all this interest you, Mrs. Hartsilver, or am I
boring you?”
“Boring me!” Cora exclaimed. “I am thrilled! Captain Preston knows
nothing of all this, I suppose?”
“Not so far as I am aware. Of course it would not do for me to say
outside what I have just told you in confidence. Having no evidence in
support of my statements I might get myself into serious trouble, to
say nothing of ruining my practice.”
“Oh, but you will tell Captain Preston?”
“I would sooner you told him, Mrs. Hartsilver.”
Cora smiled.
“So that if either of us should get into trouble it would not be you?”
“Precisely,” Johnson replied with a laugh. He was silent for some
moments.
“And now you may think what I am about to say is strange, Mrs.
Hartsilver, but I have rather keen intuition, and something seems to
tell me that whatever happened to Preston and Miss Hagerston that
evening at Henley, which apparently upset them, Angela Robertson and
Stapleton had a hand in it. The idea may sound ridiculous, but that is
my strong impression.”
“But what can have happened to them, doctor?”
“I have no idea--at present. Can’t you induce Miss Hagerston to tell
you? You and she are such friends.”
“I am afraid not, but I will try.”
“Supposing, for instance, that in the ardor of their love for each
other they should have been discovered in some apparently compromising,
though in reality quite harmless situation--and been blackmailed. Such
things happen oftener than you might suppose; not that I suppose you
ever think about such things.”
Cora glanced at him with an expression of horror.
“Is that really so?” she asked.
Johnson nodded.
“Almost any man or woman, not excepting the most virtuous, may under
certain circumstances get let in for blackmail, and the wonder to me
is that more are not blackmailed. Look at this so-called ‘epidemic’
of suicide that everybody is talking about and that the papers are
full of. My private opinion is that some, at any rate, are victims of
blackmail, who have taken their lives to escape public exposure.”
“But blackmailed by whom?”
“Ah, there you have me. The whole thing reads to me as though the
victims, if blackmailed, were charged by the same person, or it may
have been by members of some gang, or an organization of some sort.
Don’t you remember the series of suicides which took place a year
ago and that--oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Hartsilver. I had quite
forgotten.”
“Pray don’t apologize, Doctor Johnson. I am most interested in what you
say. I wonder--I wonder if poor Henry----”
“I knew your husband slightly, Mrs. Hartsilver, and I must say I was
amazed when I read of the tragedy. The last man--the very last man----”
“So everybody said. Blackmail! Now I wonder if----”
Unconsciously she stopped, for strange thoughts, reflections, memories
of little incidents, were crowding in upon her. Then quickly her train
of thought shot away into a different channel. The man she had loved so
dearly, young Sir Stephen Lethbridge--the whole of the terrible affair
came back to her, as though it had happened the day before.
“Exactly the way Molesley made away with himself,” again she heard her
husband’s voice, unemotional, cold as ice. And in Viscount Molesley’s
room a quantity of burnt papers, she remembered reading, had been found
in the grate and scattered beside the body.