the person of the point policeman, who was on duty from eight o'clock
onwards on the evening of the sixteenth at the corner of Clerkenwell
Road and Fulton Gardens. No. 13 is only a few yards up the street.
The man had stated, it seems, that soon after half-past eight he had
seen a man come along Fulton Gardens from the direction of Holborn,
go up to the front door of No. 13 and ring the bell. He was admitted
after a minute or two, and he stayed in the house about half an hour.
It was a dark night, and there was a slight drizzle; the witness
could not swear to the man's identity. He was slight and of middle
height, and walked like a young man. When he arrived he wore a
bowler hat and no overcoat, but when he came out again he had an
overcoat on and a soft grey hat, and carried the bowler in his hand.
Witness noticed as he walked away up Fulton Gardens towards Finsbury
this time he took off the soft hat, slipped it into the pocket of his
overcoat, and put on the bowler. About ten minutes later, not more,
another visitor called at No. 13. He also was slight and tallish,
and he wore an overcoat and a bowler hat. He turned into Fulton
Gardens from Clerkenwell Road, but on the opposite corner to the one
where witness was standing. He rang the bell and was admitted, and
stayed about twenty minutes. He walked away in the direction of
Holborn. Witness would not undertake to identify either of these two
visitors; he had not been close enough to them to see their faces,
and there was a good deal of fog that night as well as the drizzle.
There was nothing suspicious looking about either of the men. They
had walked quite openly up to the front door, rung the bell, and been
admitted. The only thing that had struck the constable as queer was
the way the first visitor had changed hats when he walked away.
"Witness swore positively that no one else had gone in or out of No.
13 that night except those two visitors. How important this evidence
was you will understand presently.
"After this young Tufnell was called. He was a shy-looking fellow,
with a nervous manner altogether out of keeping with his dark
expressive eyes--eyes which he had obviously inherited from his
mother and which gave him a foreign as well as a romantic appearance.
He was said to be musical and to be a talented amateur actor. Every
one agreed, it seems, that he had always been a very good son to his
mother until his love for Ann Weber had absorbed all his thoughts and
most of his screw. He explained that he was junior clerk to Mr.
Jessup, and as far as he knew had always given satisfaction. On the
sixteenth he had also noticed that the guv'nor was not quite himself.
He appeared unusually curt and irritable with everybody. Witness had
not been in the house all the evening. When his mother told him that
neither she nor Ann could go to the cinema with him he went off by
himself, and after the show he went straight back to his digs near
the Alexandra Palace. He only heard of the tragedy when he arrived
at the office as usual on the morning of the seventeenth. His
evidence would have seemed uninteresting and unimportant but for the
fact that while he gave it he glanced now and again in the direction
where Ann Weber sat beside her aunt. It seemed as if he were all the
time mutely asking for her approval of what he was saying, and
presently when the coroner asked him whether he knew the cause of his
employer's irritability, he very obviously looked at Ann before he
finally said: 'No, sir, I don't!'
"After that Ann Weber was called. Of course it had been clear all
along that she was by far the most important witness in this
mysterious case, and when she rose from her place, looking very trim
and neat in her navy-blue coat and skirt, with a jaunty little hat
pulled over her left eye, and wearing long amber earrings that gave
her pretty face a piquant expression, every one settled down
comfortably to enjoy the sensation of the afternoon.
"Ann, who was thoroughly self-possessed, answered the coroner's
preliminary questions quite glibly, and when she was asked to relate
what occurred at No. 13, Fulton Gardens on the night of the
sixteenth, she plunged into her story without any hesitation or trace
of nervousness.
"'At about half-past eight,' she said, 'or it may have been later--I
won't swear as to the time--there was a ring at the front-door bell.
I was down in the pantry, and as I came upstairs I heard the office
door being opened. When I got into the passage I saw Mr. Jessup
standing in the doorway of the office. He had his spectacles on his
nose, and a pen in his hand. He looked as if he had just got up from
his desk.'
"'"If that's young Leighton," he said to me, "tell him I'll see him
to-morrow. I can't be bothered now." Then he went back into the
office and shut the door.
"'I opened the door to Mr. Leighton,' witness continued, 'and he came
in looking very cold and wet. I told him that Mr. Jessup didn't want
to see him to-night. He seemed very pleased at this, but he wouldn't
go away, and when I told him I was busy he said that I couldn't be so
unkind as to turn a fellow out into the rain without giving him a
drink. Now I could see that already Mr. Leighton he'd had a bit too
much, and I told him so quite plainly. But there! he wouldn't take
"No" for an answer, and as it really was jolly cold and damp I told
him to go and sit down in the servants' hall while I got him a hot
toddy. I went down into the kitchen and put the kettle on and cut a
couple of sandwiches. I don't know where Mr. Leighton was during
that time or what he was doing. I was in the kitchen some time,
because I couldn't get the kettle to boil as the fire had gone down
and we have no gas downstairs. When I took the tray into the
servants' hall Mr. Leighton was there, and again I told him that I
didn't think he ought to have any more whisky, but he only laughed,
and was rather impudent, so I just put the tray down, and then I
thought that I would run upstairs and see if Mr. Jessup wanted
anything. I was rather surprised when I got to the hall to see that
all the lights up the stairs had been turned off. There's a switch
down in the hall that turns off the lot. The whole house looked very
dark. There was but a very little light that came from the lamp at
the other end of the hall, near the front door. I was just thinking
that I would turn on the lights again when I saw what I could have
sworn was Mr. Jessup coming out of his office. He had already got
his hat and coat on, and when he came out of the office he shut the
door and turned the key in the lock, just as Mr. Jessup always did.
It never struck me for a moment that it could be anybody but him.
Though it was dark, I recognised his hat and his overcoat, and his
own way of turning the key. I spoke to him,' witness continued in
answer to a question put to her by the coroner, 'but he didn't reply;
he just went straight through the hall and out by the front door.
Then after a bit Mr. Leighton came up, and I told him Mr. Jessup had
gone. He was quite pleased, and stopped talking in the hall for a
moment, and then aunt called to me and Mr. Leighton went away.'
"Witness was then questioned as to the other visitor who called later
that same evening, but she stated that she had no idea who it was.
'He came about nine,' she explained, 'and I went down to open the
door. He kept me talking ever such a time, asking all sorts of silly
questions; I didn't know how to get rid of him, and he wouldn't leave
his name. He said he would call again and that it didn't matter.'
"Ann Weber here gave the impression that the unknown visitor had
stopped for a flirtation with her on the doorstep, and her smirking
and pert glances rather irritated the coroner. He pulled her up
sharply by putting a few straight questions to her. He wanted to pin
her down to a definite statement as to the time when (1) she opened
the door to Mr. Leighton, (2) she saw what she thought was Mr. Jessup
go out of the house, and (3) the second visitor arrived. Though
doubtful as to the exact time, Ann was quite sure that the three
events occurred in the order in which she had originally related, and
in this she was, of course, corroborating the evidence of the point
policeman. But there was the mysterious contradiction. Ann Weber
swore that Mr. Leighton followed her up from the servants' hall just
after she had seen the mysterious individual go out by the front
door. On the other hand, she couldn't swear what happened while she
was busy in the kitchen getting the hot toddy for Mr. Leighton. She
had been trying to make the fire burn up, and had rattled coals and
fire-irons. She certainly had not heard any one using the telephone,
which was in the office, and she did not know where Mr. Leighton was
during that time.
"Nor would she say what was in her mind when first she saw her
employer lying dead over the desk and exclaimed: 'My God! He has
killed him!' And when the coroner pressed her with questions she
burst into tears. Except for this her evidence had, on the whole,
been given with extraordinary self-possession. It was a terrible
ordeal for a girl to have to stand up before a jury and, roughly
speaking, to swear away the character of a man with whom she had been
on intimate terms.... The character, did I say? I might just as
well have said the life, because whatever doubts had lurked in the
public mind about Arthur Leighton's guilt, or at least complicity in
the crime, those doubts were dispelled by the girl's evidence. For I
need not tell you, I suppose, that every man present that second day
at the inquest had already made up his mind that Ann Weber was lying
to save her sweetheart. No one believed in the mysterious
impersonator of Mr. Jessup. It was Arthur Leighton, they argued, who
had murdered his employer and robbed the till, and Ann Weber knew it
and had invented the story in order to drag a red herring across the
trail.
"I must say that the man himself did not make a good impression when
he was called in his turn. As he stepped forward with a swaggering
air, and a bold glance at coroner and jury, the interest which he
aroused was not a kindly one. He was rather a vulgar-looking
creature, with a horsey get-up, high collar, stock-tie, fancy
waistcoat, and so on. His hair was of a ginger colour, his eyes
light, and his face tanned. Every one noticed that he winked at Ann
Weber when he caught her eye, and also that the girl immediately
averted her glance and almost imperceptibly shrugged her shoulders.
Thereupon Leighton frowned and very obviously swore under his breath.
"Questioned as to his doings on the sixteenth, he admitted that 'the
guv'nor had been waxy with him, because,' as he put it with an
indifferent swagger, 'there were a few pounds missing from the till.'
He also admitted that he had not been looking forward to the
evening's interview, but that he had not dared refuse to come. In
order to kill time, and to put heart into himself, he had gone with a
couple of friends to the Café Royal in Regent Street, and they all
had whiskies and sodas till it was time for him to go to Fulton
Gardens. His friends were to wait for him until he returned, when
they intended to have supper together. Witness then went to Fulton
Gardens and saw Ann Weber, who told him that the guv'nor didn't wish
to see him. This, according to his own picturesque language, was a
little bit of all right. He stayed for a few minutes talking to Ann,
and she gave him a hot toddy. He certainly didn't think he had
stayed as long as half an hour, but then, when a fellow was talking
to a pretty girl ... eh? ... what? ...
"The coroner curtly interrupted his fatuous explanations by asking
him at what time he had left his friends, and at what time he had met
them again subsequently. Witness was not very sure; he thought he
left the Café Royal about half-past eight, but it might have been
earlier or later. He took a bus to the bottom of Fulton Gardens. It
was beastly cold and wet, and he was very grateful to Ann for giving
him a hot drink. He denied that he had been drinking too much, or
that he had demanded the hot drink. It was Ann Weber who had offered
to get it for him. Jolly pretty girl, Annie-bird, and not shy.
Witness concluded his evidence by swearing positively that he had
waited in the servants' hall all the while that Ann Weber got him the
toddy; he had followed her down, and not gone upstairs or seen
anything of Mr. Jessup all the time he was in the house. When he
left Fulton Gardens he tried to get a bus back to Regent Street, but
many of them were full and it was rather late before he got back to
the Café Royal.
"It was very obvious that as the coroner continued to put question
after question to him, Arthur Leighton became vaguely conscious of
the feeling of hostility towards him which had arisen in the public
mind. He lost something of his swagger, and his face under the tan
took on a greyish hue. From time to time he glanced at Ann Weber,
but she obstinately looked another way.
"Undoubtedly he felt that he was caught in a network of damnatory
evidence which he was unable to combat. The day ended, however, with
another adjournment; the police wanted a little more time before
taking drastic action. The public so often blame them for being in
too great a hurry to fasten an accusation on the flimsiest grounds
that one is pleased to record such a noteworthy instance when they
really did not leave a single stone unturned before they arrested
Arthur Leighton on the charge of murder. They did everything they
could to find some proof of the existence and identity of the
individual whom Ann Weber professed to have seen while Leighton was
still in the house. But all their efforts in that direction came to
naught, whilst Leighton himself denied having had an accomplice just
as strenuously as he did his own guilt.
"He was brought up before the magistrate, charged with the terrible
crime. No one, the police argued, had so strong a motive for the
crime or such an opportunity. Alternatively, no one else could have
admitted the mysterious impersonator of Mr. Jessup into the house,
the accomplice who did the deed, whilst Leighton engaged Ann Weber's
attention, always supposing that he did exist, which was never
proved, and which the evidence of the police constable refuted.
People who dabbled in spiritualism and that sort of thing were
pleased to think that the mysterious personage whom the housemaid saw
was the ghost of poor old Jessup, who was then lying murdered in his
office, stricken by Leighton's hand. But even the most
psychic-minded individual was unable to give a satisfactory
explanation for the ghost having changed hats while he walked away
from that fateful No. 13.
"Altogether the question of hats played an important role in the
drama of Leighton's arrest and final discharge. The magistrate did
not commit him for trial, because the case for the prosecution
collapsed suddenly like a pack of cards. It was the question of hats
that saved Leighton's neck from the hangman's rope. You remember,
perhaps, that in his evidence he had stated that before starting to
interview his irate employer he had been with some friends at the
Café Royal in Regent Street, and that subsequently he met these
friends there for supper. Well, although it appeared impossible to
establish definitely the time when Leighton left the Café Royal to go
to Fulton Gardens, there were two or three witnesses prepared to
swear that he was back again at a quarter to ten. Now this was very
important. It seems that his friends, who were waiting at the Café
Royal, were getting impatient, and at twenty minutes to ten by the
clock one of them--a fellow named Richard Hurrill--said he would go
outside and see if he could see anything of Leighton. He strolled on
as far as Piccadilly Circus where the buses stop that come from the
City, and a minute or two later he saw Leighton step out of one. He
seemed a little fuzzy in the head, and Hurrill chaffed him a bit.
Then he took him by the arm and led him back in triumph to the Café
Royal.
"Now mark what followed," the funny creature went on, whilst all at
once his fingers started working away as if for dear life on his bit
of string. "A hat--a soft grey hat--with an overcoat wrapped round
it, were found in the area of a derelict house in Blackhorse Road,
Walthamstow, close to the waterworks, and identified as the late Mr.
Seton Jessup's overcoat and hat. I don't suppose that you have the
least idea where Blackhorse Road, Walthamstow, is, but let me tell
you that it is at the back of beyond in the northeast of London. If
you remember, the point policeman had stated that the first visitor
had called at No. 13 Fulton Gardens at half-past eight, and stayed
half an hour. He then walked away in the direction of Finsbury.
That visitor, the police argued, was Arthur Leighton, who had
murdered Mr. Jessup and sent the telephone message to Fitzjohn's
Avenue; then, hearing Ann Weber moving about downstairs and
frightened at being caught by her, he had put on the deceased's hat
and coat and slipped out of the house. Ann, however, had recognised
him. She had involuntarily given him away when the housekeeper asked
her whom she was talking to, so she invented the story of having seen
what she thought was Mr. Jessup in order to save her sweetheart.
"It was a logical theory enough, but here came the evidence of the
hat. The man who walked away from Fulton Gardens at nine o'clock,
whom the point policeman saw changing his hat in the street at that
hour, could not possibly have gone all the way to Walthamstow, either
by bus or even part of the way in a taxi, and back again to
Piccadilly Circus all in the space of forty-five minutes. And
Leighton, mind you, stepped out of a bus when his friend met him, and
I can tell you that the police worked their hardest to find a
taxi-man who may have picked up a fare that night in the
neighbourhood of Clerkenwell and driven out to Walthamstow and then
back to Holborn. That search proved entirely fruitless. On the
other hand, Leighton had paid his bus fare from Holborn, and the
conductor vaguely recollected that he had got in at the corner of
Clerkenwell Road. Well, that being proved, the man couldn't have
done in the time all that the prosecution declared that he did.
"After he was discharged, the Press started violently abusing the
police for not having directed their attention to the second visitor
who called at Fulton Gardens ten minutes or so after the first one
had left. But this person appeared as elusive and intangible as the
mysterious wearer of Mr. Jessup's hat and coat. The point policeman
saw him in the distance, and Ann Weber admitted him into the house
and chatted with him for over twenty minutes. She didn't know him,
but she declared that she could easily recognise him if she saw him
again. For some time after that the poor girl was constantly called
upon by the police to see, and if possible identify, the mysterious
visitor. Half the shady characters in London passed, I believe,
before her eyes during the next three months. But this search proved
as fruitless as the other. The murder of Mr. Seton Jessup has
remained as complete and as baffling a mystery as any in the annals
of crime. Many there are--you amongst the number--who firmly believe
that Arthur Leighton had, at any rate, something to do with it. I
know that the family of the deceased were convinced that he did. Mr.
Aubrey Jessup, the eldest son of the deceased, who was one of the
executors under his father's will, and who had gone through the
accounts of the business, had noted certain irregularities in
Leighton's books; he also declared that various sums which had come
in on the sixteenth after banking hours were missing from the safe.
Moreover, young Leighton himself had admitted that 'the guv'nor was
waxy with him because a few pounds were missing from the till.' All
these facts no doubt had influenced the police when they applied for
a warrant for his arrest, but there was no getting away from the
evidence of that hat and coat found ten miles and more away from the
scene of the crime, and of the bus conductor who could swear that out
of forty-five minutes which the accused had to account for he had
spent twenty in a bus."
"It is all very mysterious," I put in, because my eccentric friend
had been silent for quite a long time, while his attention was
entirely taken up by the fashioning of a whole series of intricate
knots. "I am afraid that I was one of those who blamed the police
for not directing their investigations sooner in the direction of the
second visitor. He seems to me much more mysterious than the first.
We know who the first one was----"
"Do we?" he retorted with a chuckle. "Or rather, do you?"
"Well, of course, it was Arthur Leighton," I rejoined impatiently.
"Mrs. Tufnell saw him----"
"She didn't," he broke in quickly. "The house was pitch-dark; she
heard voices and she asked Ann whether she was speaking to Mr.
Leighton."
"And Ann said yes!" I riposted.
"She said yes," he admitted with an irritating smile.
"And Leighton himself in his evidence----"
"Leighton in his evidence," the funny creature broke in excitedly,
"admitted that he had called at the house, he admitted that he
remembered vaguely that Ann Weber told him that Mr. Jessup had
decided not to see him, and that to celebrate the occasion he got the
girl to make him a whisky toddy. But, apart from these facts, he
only had the haziest notions as to the time when he came and when he
left or how long he stayed. Nor were his precious friends at the
Café Royal any clearer on that point. They had all of them been
drinking, and only had the haziest notion of time until twenty
minutes to ten, when they got hungry and wanted their supper."
"But what does that prove?" I argued with an impatient frown.
"It proves that my contention is correct; that the first visitor was
not Leighton, that it was some one for whom Ann Weber cared more than
she did for Leighton, as she lied for his sake when she told her aunt
that she was speaking to Leighton in the hall. The whole thing
occurred just as the police supposed. The first visitor called, and
while Ann Weber was down in the kitchen getting him something to eat
and drink, he entered the office, probably not with any evil
intention, and saw his employer sitting at his desk with the safe
containing a quantity of loose cash invitingly open. Let us be
charitable and assume that he yielded to sudden temptation. Mr.
Jessup's coat, hat, and stick were lying there on a chair. The stick
was one of those heavily-weighted ones which men like to carry
nowadays. He seizes the stick and strikes the old man on the head
with it, then he collects the money from the safe and thrusts it into
his pockets. At that moment Ann Weber comes up the stairs. I say
that this man was her lover; she had returned to him, as she did once
before. Imagine her horror first, and then her desire--her mad
desire--to save him from the consequences of his crime. It is her
woman's wit which first suggests the idea of telephoning to
Fitzjohn's Avenue: she who thinks of plunging the house in darkness.
And now to get the criminal out of the house. It can be done in a
moment, but just then Mrs. Tufnell opens her door on the second floor
and begins to grope her way downstairs. It is impossible to think
quickly enough how to meet this situation. Instinct is the only
guide, and instinct suggests impersonating the deceased, to avoid the
danger of Mrs. Tufnell peeping in at the office door. The criminal
hastily dons his victim's hat and coat, and he is almost through the
hall when Mrs. Tufnell calls to Ann: 'Is it Mr. Leighton?' And Ann
on the impulse of the moment replies: 'Yes, it is! He is just
going.' And so the criminal escapes unseen. But there is still the
danger of Mrs. Tufnell peeping in at the office door, so Ann invents
the story of having seen Mr. Jessup walk out of the house some time
before. So for the moment danger is averted; the housekeeper does
peep in at the door, but only in order to satisfy herself that the
lights are out; and the women then go upstairs together.
"Ten minutes later there is another ring at the bell. This time it
is Arthur Leighton, and Ann Weber has sufficient presence of mind not
to let him see that there is anything wrong in the house. She asks
him in, she tells him Mr. Jessup cannot see him, she gets him a
drink, and sends him off again. I don't suppose for a moment that at
this stage she has any intention of using him as a shield for her
present sweetheart; but undoubtedly the thought had by now crept into
her mind to utilise Leighton's admitted presence in the house for the
purpose of confusing the issues. Nor do I think that she had any
idea that night that Mr. Jessup was dead. She probably thought that
he had only been stunned by a blow from the stick; hence her
exclamation when she realised the truth: 'My God, he has killed him!'
Then only did she concentrate all her energies and all her wits to
saving her sweetheart--even at the cost of another man. Women are
like that sometimes," the Old Man in the Corner went on with a
chuckle, "the instinct of the primitive woman is first of all to save
her man, never mind at whose expense. The cave-man's instinct is to
protect his woman with his fists--but she, conscious of physical
weakness, sets her wits to work, and if her man is in serious danger
she will lie and she will cheat--ay, and perjure herself if need be.
And those flirtatious minxes, of which Annie-bird is a striking
example, are only cave-women with a veneer of civilisation over them.
"She did save her man by dragging a red herring across his trail, and
she left Fate to deal with Leighton. Once embarked on a system of
lies she had to stick to it or her man was doomed. Fortunately she
could rely on the other woman. A mother's wits are even sharper than
those of a sweetheart."
"A mother?" I ejaculated. "Then you think that it was----?"