notice that she, like the coroner's jury the previous day, had
absolutely made up her mind that Morley Thrall was guilty, otherwise
her attitude of open hostility toward him would have been quite
inexplicable. She dwelt at full length on the fact that Mr. Thrall
had paid her marked attention for months, and that he had asked her
to marry him. She had given him her consent, and between them they
had decided to keep their engagement a secret until after she,
Monica, had attained her twenty-first birthday, when she would be
free to marry whom she chose.
"'Unfortunately,' the witness went on, suddenly assuming a dry,
pursed-up manner, 'Colonel Forburg got wind of this. He was always
very much set against my marrying at all, and between tea and dinner
on Christmas Eve he and I had some very sharp words together on the
subject, at the end of which my stepfather said very determinedly:
"Christmas or no Christmas, the fellow shall leave my house by the
first available train to-morrow, and to-night I am going to give him
a piece of my mind."'
"Just for a moment after Miss Glenluce had finished speaking, the
accused seemed to depart from his attitude of dignity and reserve,
and an indignant 'Oh!' quickly repressed, escaped his lips. The
public by this time was dead against him. They are just like sheep,
as you know, and the verdict of the coroner's jury had prejudiced
them from the start, and the police, aided by Miss Glenluce, had
certainly built up a formidable case against the unfortunate man.
Every one felt that the motive for the crime was fully established
already. 'Remount Forburg' had had a violent quarrel with Morley
Thrall, then had turned him out of the house, and the latter, furious
at being separated from the girl he loved, had killed the man who
stood in his way.
"I should be talking until to-morrow morning were I to give you in
detail all the evidence that was adduced in support of the
prosecution. The accused listened to it all with perfect calm. He
stood with arms folded, his eyes fixed on nothing. The 'Oh!' of
indignation did not again cross his lips, nor did he look once at
Miss Monica Glenluce. I can assure you that at one moment that day
things were looking very black against him.
"Fortunately for him, however, he had a very clever lawyer to defend
him in the person of his distinguished cousin, Sir Evelyn Thrall.
The latter, by amazingly clever cross-examination of the servants and
guests at Brudenell Court, had succeeded in establishing the fact
that at no time, from the moment that the burglary alarm was given
until after the two revolver shots had been heard, was the accused
completely out of sight of some one or other of the witnesses. He
was the last to leave the dining-room. Mrs. Rawstone and her
daughter testified to that. He had stayed behind one moment after
the other three gentlemen had gone out in order to say a few words to
Monica Glenluce. Miss Rawstone was standing inside the dining-room
door and she was quite positive that Mr. Thrall went straight out
into the garden.
"On the other hand Major Rawstone saw him in the forecourt coming
away from the five-acre meadow only a very few moments after the
shots were fired, and gave it absolutely as his opinion that it would
have been impossible for the accused to have fired those shots. This
is where the question of time came in.
"'When a man who bears a spotless reputation,' Major Rawstone argued,
'finds that he has killed a fellow creature, he would necessarily
pause a moment, horror-struck with what he has done; whether the deed
was premeditated or involuntary he would at least try and ascertain
if life was really extinct. It is inconceivable that any man save an
habitual and therefore callous criminal, would just throw down his
weapon and with absolute calm, hands in pocket and without a tremor
in his voice, make a casual remark to a friend. Now I saw Mr. Morley
Thrall perhaps two minutes after the shots were fired; in that time
he could not have walked from the centre of the field to the
forecourt where I was standing; and he had not been running as his
voice was absolutely clear and he came walking towards me with his
hands in his pockets.'
"As was only to be expected, Sir Evelyn Thrall made the most of Major
Rawstone's evidence, and I may say that it was chiefly on the
strength of it that the charge of murder against the accused was
withdrawn, even though the Clerk to the Magistrates, perpetually
egged on by Miss Glenluce, did his best to upset Major Rawstone.
When the lady found that this could not be done, she tried to switch
back to the idea that accused had abstracted the revolver out of the
smoking-room before dinner and immediately after his quarrel with
Colonel Forburg. The footman Cambalt's evidence on this point had
been somewhat discounted by his refusing to state positively that no
one could have gone into the smoking-room at that time without his
seeing them. But against this theory there was always the
argument--of which Sir Evelyn Thrall made the most as you know--that
before dinner the accused could not have known that there would be an
alarm of burglary which would give him the opportunity of waylaying
the Colonel in the open field. With equal skill, too, Sir Evelyn
brought forward evidence to bear out the statement made by the
accused on the matter of his quarrel with Colonel Forburg.
"'Just before dinner,' Mr. Thrall stated, 'Colonel Forburg told me he
had something to say to me in private. I followed him into the
smoking-room, and there he gave me certain information with regard to
his past life, and also with regard to Miss Glenluce's parentage,
which made it absolutely impossible for me, in spite of the deep
regard which I have for that lady, to offer her marriage. Miss
Glenluce is the innocent victim of tragic circumstances in the past,
and Forburg was just an unmitigated blackguard, and I told him so,
but I had my family to consider and very reluctantly I came to the
conclusion that I could not introduce any relation of Colonel Forburg
into its circle. Colonel Forburg did not stand in the way of my
marrying his stepdaughter; it was I who most reluctantly withdrew.'
"Whilst the accused was cross-examined upon this statement, and he
gave his answers in firm, dignified tones, Miss Monica never took her
eyes off him, and surely if looks could kill, Mr. Morley Thrall would
not at that moment have escaped with his life, so full of deadly
hatred and contempt was her gaze. The accused had signed a much
fuller statement than the one which he made in open court; it
contained a detailed account of his interview with Colonel Forburg,
and of the circumstances which finally induced him to give up all
thoughts of asking Miss Glenluce to be his wife.
"These facts were not made public at the time for the sake of Miss
Monica and of the unfortunate, Gerald, but it seems that the
transactions which had earned for the Colonel the sobriquet of
'Remount Forburg' were so disreputable and so dishonest that not only
was he cashiered from the army, but he served a term of imprisonment
for treason, fraud, and embezzlement. He had no right to be styled
Colonel any longer, and quite recently had been threatened with
prosecution if he persisted in making further use of his army rank.
"But this was not all the trouble. It seems that in his career of
improbity he had been associated with a man named Nosdel, a man of
Dutch extraction whom he had known in South Africa. This man was
subsequently hanged for a particularly brutal murder, and it was his
widow who was 'Remount Forburg's' second wife, and the mother of
Monica and of Gerald, who had been given the fancy name of Glenluce.
"Obviously a man in Mr. Morley Thrall's position could not marry into
such a family, and it appears that whenever there was a question of a
suitor for Monica, 'Remount Forburg' would tell the aspirant the
whole story of his own shady past and, above all, that of Monica's
father. Sir Evelyn Thrall had been clever enough to discover one or
two gentlemen who had had the same experience as his cousin Morley;
they, too, just before their courtship came to a head had had a
momentous interview with 'Remount Forburg,' who found this means of
choking off any further desire for matrimony on the part of a man who
had family connections to consider. But it was very obvious that Mr.
Morley Thrall had no motive for killing 'Remount Forburg'; he would
have left Brudenell Court that very evening, he said, only that young
Glenluce had begged him, for Monica's sake, not to make a scene;
anyway, he was leaving the house the next day and had no intention of
ever darkening its doors again.
"Poor Monica Glenluce or Nosdel, ignorant of the hideous cloud that
hung over her entire life, ignorant, too, of what had passed between
her stepfather and Mr. Morley Thrall, felt nothing but hatred and
contempt for the man whose love, she believed, had proved as unstable
as that of any of her other admirers. For charity's sake one must
suppose that she really thought him guilty at first, and hoped that
when the clouds had rolled by he would return to her more ardent than
before. Presumably he found means to make her understand that all
was irrevocably at an end between them as far as he was concerned,
whereupon her regard for him turned to bitterness and desire for
revenge.
"And, indeed, but for the cleverness of a distinguished lawyer, poor
Morley Thrall might have found himself the victim of a judicial error
brought about by the deliberate enmity of a woman. Had he been
committed for trial, she would have had more time at her disposal to
manufacture evidence against him, which I am convinced she had a mind
to do."
"As it is," I now put in tentatively, for the Old Man in the Corner
had been silent for some little while, "the withdrawal of the charge
of murder against Morley Thrall did not help to clear up the mystery
of 'Remount Forburg's' tragic death."
"Not so far as the public is concerned," he retorted dryly.
"You have a theory?" I asked.
"Not a theory," he replied. "I know who killed 'Remount Forburg.'"
"How do you know?" I riposted.
"By logic and inference," he said. "As it was proved that Morley
Thrall did not kill him, and that Miss Monica could not have done it,
as the ladies did not join in the chase after the burglar, I looked
about me for the only other person in whose interest it was to put
that blackguard out of the way."
"You mean----?"
"I mean the boy Gerald, of course. Openly and before the other
witness, Cambalt, he stood up for his stepfather against Thrall who
was not measuring his words, but just think how the knowledge which
he had gained about his own parentage and that of his sister must
have rankled in his mind. He must have come to the conclusion that
while this man--his stepfather--lived, there would be no chance for
him to make friends, no chance for the sister whom he loved ever to
have a home, a life of her own. Whether that interview on Christmas
Eve was the first inkling which he had of the real past history of
his own and Forburg's family, it is impossible to say. Probably he
had suspicions of it before, when, one by one, Monica's suitors fell
away after certain private interviews with the Colonel. Morley
Thrall must have been a last hope, and that, too, was dashed to the
ground by the same infamous means.
"I am not prepared to say that the boy got hold of the revolver that
night with the deliberate intention of killing his stepfather at the
earliest opportunity; he may have run into the smoking-room to snatch
up the weapon, only with a view to using it against the burglar;
certain it is that he overtook 'Remount Forburg' in the five-acre
field and that he shot him then and there. Remember that the night
was very dark, and that there was a great deal of running about and
of confusion. The boy was young enough and nimble enough after he
had thrown down the revolver to run across the field and then to go
back to the house by a roundabout way. It is easy enough in a case
like that to cover one's tracks, and, of course, no one suspected
anything at the time. Even the sound of firing created but little
astonishment; it was so very much on the cards that the Colonel would
use a revolver without the slightest hesitation against a man who had
been trying to break into his house. It was just the sort of revenge
that a man of Gerald's temperament--disfigured, shy, silent and
self-absorbed--would seek against one whom he considered the fount of
all his wrongs."
"But," I objected, "how could young Glenluce run into the
smoking-room, pick up the revolver out of a drawer, and run back
through the hall with servants and guests standing about? Some one
would be sure to see him."
"No one saw him," the funny creature retorted, "for he did it at the
moment of the greatest confusion. The butler had run in with the
news of the burglary, the Colonel jumped up and ran out through the
hall, the guests had not yet made up their minds what to do. In
moments like this there are always just a few seconds of pandemonium,
quite sufficient for a boy like Gerald to make a dash for the
smoking-room."
"But after that----"
"He took the revolver out of the drawer and ran out through the
French window."
"But the shutters were found to be bolted on the inside," I argued,
"when they were examined by the police inspector."
"So they were," he admitted. "Miss Monica had already been in there
with young Gerald. They had seen to the shutters."
"Then you think that Monica knew?"
"Of course she did."
"Then her desire to prove Morley Thrall guilty----"
"Was partly hatred of him, and partly the desire to shield her
brother," the funny creature concluded as he collected traps, his bit
of string and his huge umbrella. "Think it over; you will see that I
am right. I am sorry for those two, aren't you? But they are
selling Brudenell Court, I understand, and their mother's fortune has
become theirs absolutely. They will go abroad together, make a home
for themselves, and one day, perhaps, everything will be forgotten,
and a new era of happiness will arise for the innocent, now that the
guilty has been so signally punished. But it was an interesting
case. Don't you agree with me?"
IX
THE MYSTERY OF THE WHITE CARNATION
§1
"I suppose that is a form of snobbishness," the Old Man in the Corner
began abruptly.
I gave such a jump that I nearly upset the contents of a cup of
boiling tea which I was conveying to my mouth. As it was, I scalded
my tongue and nearly choked.
"What is?" I queried with a frown, for I was really vexed with the
creature. I had no idea he was there at all. But he only smiled and
concluded his speech, quite unperturbed.
"... that creates additional interest in a crime when it concerns
people of wealth or rank."
"Snobbishness," I rejoined, "of course it's snobbishness! And when
the little suburban madam has finished reading about Lady
Stickinthemud's reception at Claridge's she likes to turn to Lord
Tomnoodle's prospective sojourn in gaol."
"You were thinking of the disappearance of the Australian
millionaire?" he asked blandly.
"I don't know that I was," I retorted.
"But of course you were. How could any journalist worthy of the name
fail to be interested in that intricate case?"
"I suppose you have your theory--as usual?"
"It is not a theory," the creature replied, with that fatuous smile
of his which always irritated me; "it is a certainty."
Then, as he became silent, absorbed in the contemplation of a
wonderfully complicated knot in his beloved bit of string, I said
with gracious condescension:
"You may talk about it, if you like."
He did like, fortunately for me, because, frankly, I could not see
daylight in that maze of intrigue, adventure and possibly crime,
which was described by the Press as "The Mystery of the White
Carnation."
"The events were interesting from the outset," he began after a
while, whilst I settled down to listen, "and so were various actors
in the society drama. Chief amongst these was, of course, Captain
Shillington, an Australian ex-officer, commonly reputed to be a
millionaire, who, with his mother and sister, rented Mexfield House
in Somerset Street, Mayfair, the summer before last. It appears that
Lord Mexfield's younger son, the Honorable Henry Buckley, who was an
incorrigible rake and whom his father had sent on a tour round the
world in order to keep him temporarily out of mischief, not to say
out of gaol, had met a married brother of Captain Shillington's out
in the Antipodes, they had been very kind to him, and so on, with the
result that when came the following London season the family turned
up in England, and, after spending a couple of days at the Savoy,
they moved into the Mexfields' house in Somerset Street.
"Lord and Lady Mexfield were abroad that year, and Henry Buckley and
his sister Angela were living with an aunt who had a small house
somewhere in Mayfair.
"Although the Shillingtons were reputed to be very wealthy, they
appeared to be very quiet, simple folk, and it certainly seemed
rather strange that they should have gone to the expense of a house
in town, when obviously they had no social ambitions and did not mean
to entertain. As a matter of fact, as far as Mrs. Shillington and
her daughter were concerned, nobody could have lived a quieter, more
retiring life than they did. Mrs. Shillington was an invalid and
hardly ever went outside her front door, and the girl Marion seemed
to be suffering from a perpetual cold in the head. They seemed to be
in a chronic state of servant trouble. Mrs. Shillington was
dreadfully irritable, and one set of servants after another were
engaged only to leave without notice after a few days. The one
faithful servant who remained was a snuffy old man who came to them
about a month after they moved into Mexfield House. He and a
charwoman did all the work of cooking and valeting and so on.
Presumably the old man could not have got a situation elsewhere as
his appearance was very unprepossessing, and therefore he was willing
to put up with what the servants' registry offices would term 'a very
uncomfortable situation.'
"Captain Shillington, the hero of the tragic adventure, on the other
hand, went about quite a good deal. He was certainly voted to be
rather strait-laced, not to say priggish, but he was very
good-looking and a fine dancer. Henry Buckley introduced him to some
of his smart friends and Lady Angela constituted him her dancing
partner. The partnership soon developed into warmer friendship and
presently it was given out that Lady Angela Buckley, only daughter of
the Earl and Countess of Mexfield, was engaged to Captain Denver
Shillington, the Australian millionaire. Lady Angela confided to her
friends that her fiancé was the owner of immense estates in Western
Australia, on a portion of which rich deposits of gold had lately
been discovered. He certainly had plenty of money to spend, and on
one occasion he actually paid Henry Buckley's gambling debts to the
tune of two or three hundred pounds.
"On the whole, society pronounced the match a suitable one. Lady
Angela Buckley was no longer in her first youth, whilst her brother,
to whom she was really devoted, would be all the better for a
somewhat puritanical, strait-laced and, above all, wealthy
brother-in-law."
§2
"That, then, was the position," the Old Man in the Corner continued
after a while, "and the date of Lady Angela Buckley's marriage to
Captain Denver Shillington had been actually fixed when the public
was startled one afternoon towards the end of the summer by the
sensational news in all the evening papers: 'Mysterious disappearance
of a millionaire.' This highly coloured description applied, as it
turned out, to Captain Shillington, the fiancé of Lady Angela
Buckley. It seems that during the course of that same morning a
young lady, apparently in deep distress and suffering from a
streaming cold in the head, had called at Scotland Yard. She gave
her name and address as Marion Shillington, of Mexfield House,
Somerset Street, Mayfair, and stated that she and her mother were in
the greatest possible anxiety owing to the disappearance of her
brother, Captain Denver Shillington. They had last seen him on the
previous Friday evening at about nine o'clock when he left home in
order to pick up his fiancée, Lady Angela Buckley, whom he was
escorting that night to a reception in Grosvenor Square. He was
wearing full evening dress and a soft hat. Miss Shillington couldn't
say whether he had any money in his pockets. She thought that
probably he was carrying a gold cigarette case, which Lady Angela had
given him, but, as a matter of fact, he never wore any jewellery.
"No one in the house had heard him come in again that night, and his
bed had not been slept in. Questioned by the police, Miss
Shillington explained that neither she nor her mother felt any alarm
at first because there had been some talk of Captain Shillington
going away with his fiancée to stay with friends over the week-end,
somewhere near Newmarket. It was only this morning, Wednesday, that
Mrs. Shillington first began to worry when there was still no sign or
letter from him. 'My brother is a very good son,' Miss Shillington
continued, explaining to the police, 'and always very considerate to
mother. It was so unlike him to leave us without news all this while
and not let us know when to expect him home. So I rang up Lady
Angela Buckley, who is his fiancée, to see if I could get news
through her, as I could see mother was beginning to get anxious. Mr.
Henry Buckley, Lady Angela's brother, answered the 'phone. I asked
after his sister and he told me that she was staying on in the
country a day or two longer. He himself had come back to town the
previous night. I then asked him, quite casually, if he knew whether
Denver--that's my brother--would be returning with Angela. And his
answer to me was, "Denver? Why, I haven't seen him since Friday.
And I can tell you that he is in for a row with Angela. She was
furious with him that he never wrote once to her while she was away."
I was so upset that I hung up the receiver and just sat there
wondering what to do next. But Mr. Buckley rang up a moment or two
later and asked quite cheerily if there was anything wrong. "Good
old Square-toes!" he said, meaning my brother, whom he always used to
chaff by calling him "Square-toes," "don't tell me he has gone off on
the spree without letting you know. I say, that's too bad of him,
though. But I shouldn't be anxious if I were you. Boys, you know,
Miss Shillington, will be boys, and I like old Square-toes all the
better for it."'
"Miss Shillington," the Old Man in the Corner went on, "was as usual
suffering from a streaming cold, and between spluttering and crying,
she had reduced two or three handkerchiefs to wet balls. At best she
was no beauty, and with a red nose and streaming eyes she presented a
most pitiable spectacle. 'I made Mr. Buckley assure me once more,'
she said, 'that he had seen nothing of Denver since Friday. That
night he and Lady Angela and Denver were at a reception in Grosvenor
Square. They all left about the same time. Angela and Denver went,
presumably, straight home; at any rate, he, Mr. Buckley, saw nothing
more of them after they got into their car. He himself went to spend
an hour or two at his club and came home about two a.m. The next
morning, after breakfast, he drove his sister out to Tatchford, near
Newmarket, where they spent the week-end with some friends. And that
was all Mr. Buckley could say to me,' Miss Shillington concluded,
vigorously blowing her nose: 'He came home last night from Tatchford,
and was expecting Lady Angela in a couple of days. Denver had not
been at Tatchford at all, and he had not once written to Angela all
the while she was away.'
"Of course the police inspector to whom Miss Shillington related all
these facts had a great many questions to put to her. For one thing
he wanted to know whether she had been in communication with Lady
Angela Buckley since this morning.
"'No,' the girl replied, 'I have not, and so far, I haven't said
anything to mother. As soon as I felt strong enough I put on my
things and came along here.'