but he finally went up to bed soon after ten, after he had seen to
all the doors below being bolted and barred, with the exception of
the front door which had to be left on the latch, Mrs. Aaron having
the latchkey. Thus the house was shut up and every one in bed by
half-past ten.
"In the meanwhile the lovely Rebecca and Reuben had dressed and gone
to the ball.
"The next morning at a little before six, Ida Griggs, the housemaid,
having got up and dressed, prepared to go downstairs: but when she
went to open her bedroom door she found it locked--locked on the
outside. At first she thought that the other girls were playing her
a silly trick, and, presently hearing the patter of their feet on the
stairs, she pounded against the door with her fists. It took the
others some time to understand what was amiss, but at last they did
try the lock on the outside, and found that the key had been turned
and that Ida was indeed locked in.
"They let her out, and then consulted what had best be done, but for
the moment it did not seem to strike any of the girls that this
locking of a door from the outside had a sinister significance.
Anyway, they all went down into the kitchen and Ida prepared old Mrs.
Levison's early cup of tea. This she had to take up every morning at
half-past six; on this occasion she went up as usual, knocked at her
mistress's door, and waited to be let in, as the old lady always
slept behind locked doors. But no sound came from within, though Ida
knocked repeatedly and loudly called her mistress by name.
"Soon she started screaming, and her screams brought the household
together: the two girls came up from the kitchen, Mr. Aaron came down
from the top floor brandishing a poker, and presently Mrs. Aaron
opened her door and peeped out clad in a filmy and exquisite
nightgown, her eyes still heavy with sleep, and her beautiful hair
streaming down her back. But of old Mrs. Levison there was no sign.
"Mr. Aaron, genuinely alarmed, glued his ear to the keyhole, but not
a sound could he hear. Behind that locked door absolute silence
reigned. Fearing the worst, he set himself the task of breaking open
the door, which after some effort and the use of a jemmy, he
succeeded in doing: and here the sight that met his eyes filled his
soul with horror, for he saw his mother lying on the floor of her
bedroom in a pool of blood.
"Evidently an awful crime had been committed. The unfortunate woman
was fully dressed, as she had been on the evening before; the door of
the safe was open with the key still in the lock, but no other piece
of furniture appeared to be disturbed; the one window of the room was
wide open, and the one door had been locked on the inside; the other
door, the one which gave on the front drawing-room, being permanently
blocked by a heavy wardrobe; and below the open window the bunch of
creepers against the wall was all broken and torn, showing plainly
the way that the miscreant had escaped.
"After a few moments of awe-stricken silence Aaron Levison regained
control of himself and at once telephoned--first for the police and
then for the doctor, but he would not allow anything in the room to
be touched, not even his mother's dead body.
"For this precaution he was highly commended by the police inspector
who presently appeared upon the scene, accompanied by a constable and
the divisional surgeon; the latter proceeded to examine the body. He
stated that the unfortunate woman had been attacked from behind, the
marks of fingers being clearly visible round her throat: in her
struggle for freedom she must have fallen backwards and in so doing
struck her head against the corner of the marble washstand, which
caused her death.
"In the meanwhile the inspector had been examining the premises: he
found that the back door which gave on the yard and the one that gave
on the front area were barred and locked just as Mr. Aaron had left
them before he went up to bed the previous night; on the other hand
the front door was still on the latch, young Mrs. Levison having
apparently failed to bolt it when she came home from the ball.
"In the backyard the creeper against the wall below the window of
Mrs. Levison's room was certainly torn, and the miscreant undoubtedly
made his escape that way, but he could not have got up to the window
save with the aid of a ladder, the creeper was too slender to have
supported any man's weight, and the brick wall of the house offered
no kind of foothold even to a cat. The yard itself was surrounded on
every side by the backyards of contiguous houses, and against the
dividing walls there were clumps of Virginia creeper and anæmic
shrubs such as are usually found in London backyards.
"Now neither on those walls nor on the creepers and shrubs was there
the slightest trace of a ladder being dragged across, or even of a
man having climbed the walls or slung a rope over: there was not a
twig of shrub broken or a leaf of creeper disturbed.
"With regard to the safe, it must either have been open at the time
that the murderer attacked Mrs. Levison, or he had found the key and
opened the safe after he had committed that awful crime. Certainly
the contents did not appear to have been greatly disturbed, no
jewellery or other pledged goods of value were missing: Mr. Aaron
could verify this by his books, but whether his mother had any money
in the safe he was not in a position to say.
"There was no doubt at first glance the crime did not seem to have
been an ordinary one; whether robbery had been its motive, or its
corollary, only subsequent investigation would reveal: for the moment
the inspector contented himself with putting a few leading questions
to the various members of the household, and subsequently questioning
the neighbours. The public, of course, was not to know what the
result of these preliminary investigations was, but the midday papers
were in a position to assert that no one, with perhaps the exception
of Ida Griggs, had seen or heard anything alarming during the night,
and that the most minute enquiries in the neighbourhood failed to
bring forth the slightest indication of how the murderer effected an
entrance into the house.
"The papers were also able to state that young Mrs. Levison returned
from the ball in the small hours of the morning, but that Mr. Reuben
Levison did not sleep in the house at all that night.
§3
"Fortunately for me," my eccentric friend went on glibly, "I was up
betimes that morning when the papers came out with an early account
of the mysterious crime in Bishop's Road. I say fortunately,
because, as you know, mysteries of that sort interest me beyond
everything, and for me there is no theatre in the world to equal in
excitement the preliminary investigations of a well-conceived and
cleverly executed crime. I should indeed have been bitterly
disappointed had circumstances prevented me from attending that
particular inquest. From the first, one was conscious of an
atmosphere of mystery that hung over the events of that night in the
Bishop's Road household: here indeed was no ordinary crime; the
motive for it was still obscure, and one instinctively felt that
somewhere in this vast city of London there lurked a criminal of no
mean intelligence who would probably remain unpunished.
"Even the evidence of the police was not as uninteresting as it
usually is, because it established beyond a doubt that this was not a
case of common burglary and housebreaking. Certainly the open window
and the torn creeper suggested that the miscreant had made his escape
that way, but how he effected an entrance into Mrs. Levison's room
remained an unsolved riddle. The absence of any trace of a man's
passage on the surrounding walls of the backyard was very mysterious,
and it was firmly established that the back door and the area door
were secured, barred and bolted from the inside. A burglar might, of
course, have entered the house by the front door, which was on the
latch, using a skeleton key, but it still remained inconceivable how
he gained access into Mrs. Levison's room.
"From the first the public had felt that there was a background of
domestic drama behind the seemingly purposeless crime, for it did
appear purposeless, seeing that so much portable jewellery had been
left untouched in the safe. But it was when Ida Griggs, the
housemaid, stood up in response to her name being called that one
seemed to see the curtain going up on the first act of a terrible
tragedy.
"Griggs was a colourless, youngish woman, with thin, sallow face,
round blue eyes, and thin lips, and directly she began to speak one
felt that underneath her placid, old-maidish manner there was an
under-current of bitter spite, and even of passion. For some reason
which probably would come to light later on, she appeared to have
conceived a hatred for Mrs. Aaron; on the other hand she had
obviously been doggedly attached to her late mistress, and in the
evidence she dwelt at length on the quarrels between the two ladies,
especially on the scene of violence that occurred at the dinner-table
on Saturday, and which culminated in old Mrs. Levison flouncing out
of the room.
"'Mrs. Levison was that upset,' the girl went on, in answer to a
question put to her by the coroner, 'that I thought she was going to
be ill, and she says to me that women like Mrs. Aaron were worse than
---- as they would stick at nothing to get a new gown or a bit of
jewellery. She also says to me----'
"But at this point the coroner checked her flow of eloquence, as, of
course, what the dead woman had said could not be admitted as
evidence. But nevertheless the impression remained vividly upon the
public that there had been a terrible quarrel between those two, and
of course we all knew that young Mrs. Levison had been seen at the
ball wearing those five diamond stars; we did not need the sworn
testimony of several witnesses who were called and interrogated on
that point. We knew that Rebecca Levison had worn the diamond stars
at the ball, and that Police Inspector Blackshire found them on her
dressing-table the morning after the murder.
"Nor did she deny having worn them. At the inquest she renewed the
statement which she had already made to the police.
"'My brother-in-law, Reuben,' she said, 'was a great favourite with
his mother, and when we were both of us ready dressed he went into
Mrs. Levison's room to say good-night to her. He cajoled her into
letting me wear the diamond stars that night. In fact he always
could make her do anything he really wanted, and they parted the best
of friends.'
"'At what time did you go to the ball, Mrs. Levison?' the coroner
asked.
"'My brother-in-law,' she replied, 'went out to call a taxi at
half-past nine, and he and I got into it the moment one drew up.'
"'And Mr. Reuben Levison had been in to say good-night to his mother
just before that?'
"'Yes, about ten minutes before.'
"'And he brought you the stars then,' the coroner insisted, 'and you
put them on before he went out to call the taxi?'
"For the fraction of a second Rebecca Levison hesitated, but I do not
think that any one in the audience except myself noted that little
fact. Then she said quite firmly:
"'Yes, Mr. Reuben Levison told me that he had persuaded his mother to
let me wear the stars, he handed them to me and I put them on.'
"'And that was at half-past nine?'
"Again Rebecca Levison hesitated, this time more markedly; her face
was very pale and she passed her tongue once or twice across her lips
before she gave answer.
"'At about half-past nine,' she said, quite steadily.
"'And about what time did you come home, Mrs. Levison?' the coroner
asked her blandly.
"'It must have been close on one o'clock,' she replied. 'The dance
was a Cinderella, but we walked part of the way home.'
"'What! in the rain?'
"'It had ceased raining when we came out of the town hall.'
"'Mr. Reuben Levison did not accompany you all the way?'
"'He walked with me across the Park, then he put me into a taxicab,
and I drove home alone. I had my latchkey.'
"'But you failed to bolt the door after you when you returned. How
was that?'
"'I forgot, I suppose,' the lovely Rebecca replied, with a defiant
air. 'I often forget to bolt the door.'
"'And did you not see or hear anything strange when you came in?'
"'I heard nothing. I was rather sleepy and went straight up to my
room. I was in bed within ten minutes of coming in.'
"She was speaking quite firmly now, in a clear though rather harsh
voice: but that she was nervous, not to say frightened, was very
obvious. She had a handkerchief in her hand, with which she fidgeted
until it was nothing but a small, wet ball, and she had a habit of
standing first on one foot then on the other, and of shifting the
position of her hat. I do not think that there was a single member
of the jury who did not think that she was lying, and she knew that
they thought so, for now and again her fine dark eyes would
scrutinise their faces and dart glances at them either of scorn or of
anxiety.
"After a while she appeared very tired, and when pressed by the
coroner over some trifling matters, she broke down and began to cry.
After which she was allowed to stand down, and Mr. Reuben Levison was
called.
"I must say that I took an instinctive dislike to him as he stood
before the jury with a jaunty air of complete self-possession. He
had a keen, yet shifty eye, and sharp features very like a rodent.
To me it appeared at once that he was reciting a lesson rather than
giving independent evidence. He stated that he had been present at
dinner during the quarrel between his mother and sister-in-law, and
his mother was certainly very angry at the moment, but later on he
went upstairs to bid her good-night. She cried a little and said a
few hard things, but in the end she gave way to him as she always
did: she opened the safe, got out the diamond stars and gave them to
him, making him promise to return them the very first thing in the
morning.
"'I told her,' Reuben went on glibly, 'that I would not be home until
the Monday morning. I would see Rebecca into a taxi after the ball,
but I had the intention of spending a couple of nights and the
intervening Sunday with a pal who had a flat at Haverstock Hill. I
thought then that my mother would lock the stars up again,
however--she was always a woman of her word--once she had said a
thing she would stick to it--and so as I said she gave me the stars
and Mrs. Aaron wore them that night.'
"'And you handed the stars to Mrs. Aaron at half-past nine?'
"The coroner asked the question with the same earnest emphasis which
he had displayed when he put it to young Mrs. Levison. I saw
Reuben's shifty eye flash across at her, and I know that she answered
that flash with a slight drop of her eyelids. Whereupon he replied
as readily as she had done:
"'Yes, sir, it must have been about half-past nine.'
"And I assure you that every intelligent person in that room must
have felt certain that Reuben was lying just as Rebecca had done
before him."
§4
The Old Man in the Corner paused in his narrative. He drank half a
glass of milk, smacked his lips, and for a few moments appeared
intent on examining one of the complicated knots which he had made in
his bit of string. Then after a while he resumed.
"The one member of the Levison family," he said, "for whom every one
felt sorry was the eldest son Aaron. Like most men of his race he
had been very fond of his mother, not because of any affection she
may have shown him but just because she was his mother. He had
worked hard for her all his life, and now through her death he found
himself very much left out in the cold. It seems that by her will
the old lady left all her savings, which, it seems, were
considerable, and a certain share in the business, to Reuben, whilst
to Aaron she only left the business nominally, with a great many
charges on it in the way of pensions and charitable bequests and
whatever was due to Reuben.
"But here I am digressing, as the matter of the will was not touched
upon until later on, but there is no doubt that Aaron knew from the
first that it would be Reuben who would primarily benefit by their
mother's death. Nevertheless, he did not speak bitterly about his
brother, and nothing that he said could be construed into possible
suspicion of Reuben. He looked just a big lump of good nature,
splendidly built, with the shoulders and gait of an athlete, but with
an expression of settled melancholy in his face, and a dull, rather
depressing voice. Seeing him there, gentle, almost apologetic,
trying to explain away everything that might in any way cast a
reflection upon his wife's conduct, one realised easily enough the
man's position in the family--a kind of good-natured beast of burden,
who would do all the work and never receive a 'thank you' in return.
"He was not able to throw much light on the horrible tragedy. He,
too, had been at the dinner-table when the quarrel occurred, but
directly after dinner he had been obliged to return to the shop, it
being Saturday night and business very brisk. He had only one
assistant to help him, who left at nine o'clock, after putting up the
shutters: but he himself remained in the shop until ten o'clock to
put things away and make up the books. He heard the taxi being
called, and his wife and brother going off to the ball; he was not
quite sure as to when that was, but he dared say it was somewhere
near half-past nine.
"As nothing of special value had been pledged that day in the course
of business, he had no occasion to go and speak with his mother
before going up to bed and, on the whole he thought that, as she
might still be rather sore and irritable, it would be best not to
disturb her again, he did just knock at her door and called out
'good-night, mother.' But hearing no reply he thought she must
already have been asleep.
"In answer to the coroner Aaron Levison further said that he had
slept in the spare room at the top of the house for some time, as his
wife was often very late coming home, and he did not like to have his
night's rest broken. He had gone up to bed at ten o'clock and had
neither seen nor heard anything in the house until six o'clock in the
morning when the screams of the maid down below had roused him from
his sleep and made him jump out of bed in double-quick time.
"Although Aaron's evidence was more or less of a formal character,
and he spoke very quietly without any show either of swagger or of
spite, one could not help feeling that the elements of drama and of
mystery connected with this remarkable case were rather accentuated
than diminished by what he said. Thus one was more or less prepared
for those further developments which brought one's excitement and
interest in the case to their highest point.
"Recalled, and pressed by the coroner to try and memorise every
event, however trifling, that occurred on that Saturday evening, Ida
Griggs, the maid, said that, soon after that she had dropped to
sleep, she woke with the feeling that she had heard some kind of
noise, but what it was she could not define: it might have been a
bang, or a thud, or a scream. At the time she thought nothing of it,
whatever it was, because while she lay awake for a few minutes
afterwards, the house was absolutely still; but a moment or two later
she certainly heard the window of Mrs. Levison's room being thrown
open.
"'There did not seem to you anything strange in that?' the coroner
asked her.
"'No, sir,' she replied, 'there was nothing funny in Mrs. Levison
opening her window. I remember that it was raining rather heavily,
for I heard the patter against the window-panes, and Mrs. Levison may
have wanted to look at the weather. I went to sleep directly after
that and thought no more about it.'
"'And you don't know what it was that woke you in the first instance?'
"'No, sir, I don't,' the girl replied.
"'And you did not happen to glance at the clock at the moment?'
"'No, sir,' she said, 'I did not switch on the light.'
"But having disposed of that point, Ida Griggs had yet another to
make, and one that proved more dramatic than anything that had gone
before.
"'While I was clearing away the dinner things,' she said, 'Mr. Reuben
and Mrs. Aaron were sitting talking in the parlour. At half-past
eight Mrs. Aaron rang for me to take up her hot water as she was
going to dress. I took up the water for her and also for Mrs.
Levison, as I always did. I was going to help Mrs. Levison to
undress, but she said she was not going to bed yet as she had some
accounts to go through. She kept me talking for a bit, then while I
was with her there was a knock at the door and I heard Mr. Reuben
asking if he might come in and say good-night. Mrs. Levison called
out "good-night, my boy," but she would not let Mr. Reuben come in,
and I heard him go downstairs again.
"'A quarter of an hour or so afterwards Mrs. Levison dismissed me and
I heard her locking her door after me. I went downstairs on my way
to the kitchen: Mrs. Aaron was in the parlour then, fully dressed and
with her cloak on; and Mr. Reuben was there, too, talking to her.
The door was wide open, and I saw them both and I heard Mrs. Aaron
say quite spiteful like: "So she would not even see you, the old cat!
She must have felt bad." And Mr. Reuben he laughed and said: "Oh
well, she will have to get over it." Then they saw me and stopped
talking, and soon afterwards Mr. Reuben went out to call a taxi, and
we girls went up to bed.'
"'It is all a wicked lie!' here broke in a loud, high-pitched voice,
and Mrs. Aaron, trembling with excitement, jumped to her feet. 'A
lie, I say. The woman is spiteful, and wants to ruin me.'
"The coroner vainly demanded silence, and after a moment or two of
confusion and of passionate resistance the lovely Rebecca was
forcibly led out of the room. Her husband followed her, looking
bigger and more meek and apologetic than ever before; and Ida Griggs
was left to conclude her evidence in peace. She reaffirmed all that
she had said and swore positively to the incident just as it had
occurred in Mrs. Levison's room. Asked somewhat sharply by the
coroner why she had said nothing about all this before, she replied
that she did not wish to make mischief, but that truth was truth, and
whoever murdered her poor mistress must swing for it, and that's all
about it.
"Nor could any cross-examination upset her: she looked like a
spiteful cat, but not like a woman who was lying.
"Reuben Levison had sat on, serene and jaunty, all the while that
these damaging statements were being made against him. When he was
recalled he contented himself with flatly denying Ida Griggs's story,
and reiterating his own.
"'The girl is lying,' he said airily, 'why she does so I don't know,
but there was nothing in the world more unlikely than that my mother
should at any time refuse to see me. Ask any impartial witness you
like,' he went on dramatically, 'they will all tell you that my
mother worshipped me: she was not likely to quarrel with me over a
few bits of jewellery.'
"Of course Mrs. Aaron, when she was recalled, corroborated Reuben's
story. She could not make out why Ida should tell such lies about
her.
"'But there,' she added, with tears in her beautiful dark eyes, 'the
girl always hated me.'
"Yet one more witness was heard that afternoon whose evidence proved
of great interest. This was the assistant in the shop, Samuel Kutz.
He could not throw much light on the tragedy, because he had not been
out of the shop from six o'clock, when he finished his tea, to nine,
when he put up the shutters and went away. But he did say that,
while he was having his tea in the back parlour, old Mrs. Levison was
helping in the front shop, and Mr. Reuben was there, too, doing
nothing in particular, as was his custom. When witness went back to
the shop Mrs. Levison went through into the back parlour, and, as
soon as she had gone, he noticed that she had left her bag on the
bureau behind the counter. Mr. Reuben saw it, too; he picked up the
bag, and said with a laugh: 'I'd best take it up at once, the old
girl don't like leaving this about.' Kutz told him he thought Mrs.
Levison was in the back parlour, but Mr. Reuben was sure she had
since gone upstairs.
"'Anyway,' concluded witness, 'he took the bag and went upstairs with
it.'