LORD SEAMORD'S FALSE FUNERAL.
_The stealing of the body--The large reward--The tragical and
mysterious disappearance--Death of Mdlle. Rousell--The dead lord comes
to life in New York--The extraordinary disclosures._
"I never was so astonished in all my life!" said D----, the well known
detective, whom I met accidentally in the Strand.
"I thought men of your experience were never surprised at anything,"
was my answer.
"But this is such a peculiar, out of the way case."
"It is not the loss of a dressing-case, then, nor a mysterious murder?"
"No, a body has unaccountably disappeared from the family vault!"
"That is an American trick," I replied. "How much money do they want
for the safe return of the corpse?"
"None at all. Heavy rewards are offered, but without response. It does
not appear to be a case of black-mailing."
"How, then," I asked, "was it discovered that the corpse had walked?"
"By an anonymous letter."
"Just so--from one of the thieves, no doubt. To regain possession of
the body, you must bid higher--it is a question of money."
"There you are wrong. The writer of the anonymous letter has been
found."
"Well?"
"He is a respectable tenant on the deceased man's estate."
"What explanation does he give?"
"He says he was returning from market late one night when he was
greatly alarmed by seeing lights in the family vault. It was rumoured
at the time of the funeral that certain valuable relics were interred
with the body, and he thought robbers were despoiling the dead. Next
morning he did not know what to do. He was afraid his statement would
be laughed at, so he decided to send the unsigned letter. Here is a
copy of it. It is addressed to the family solicitor. "Passing Lord
Seamord's last resting place," he wrote, "between nine and ten p.m.
yesterday, the writer was greatly astonished to see lights in the
vault, and an examination will prove that the dead has been disturbed"."
"And how long ago did this happen?" I asked.
"Three months."
"Did you confine your advertisements to any particular newspaper? This
is the first I have heard of the occurrence."
"When it was proved that the body had really been carried off, a
communication was at once sent to the chief, who decided on secrecy.
Like you, he thought it was a question of money, and daily expected
that the thieves would open up a correspondence with the family. But
nothing of the kind has taken place. When two months had passed without
any sign, we tried the advertisements, but nothing has come of them."
"In what hole-and-corner papers did you insert the advertisements?"
He handed me a slip on which was printed the following:--
"Craigmillar.--On the night of the 15th November last something
valuable disappeared near this place, and the family are prepared
to pay a large reward for its return, or for a correct intimation
where it can be found.--Information, which will be treated as
strictly confidential, to be sent to R. B. Johnson, Esq., solicitor,
Craigmillar."
"Did you ever try naming a sum of money?"
"Yes, first £1,000, and then £5,000."
"Would the family go higher than that?"
"I am sure they would. What can the thieves mean?"
"There is some hidden mystery. You are right in saying the case is
peculiar."
Here was a complication after my own heart. Awake and asleep the
subject haunted me. I worked out all manner of solutions, but none
of them brought me any nearer the secret; and when you learn the
marvellous particulars you will not blame me for my stupidity. Of all
the extraordinary revelations made known to the public, this one, it
will be readily admitted, takes a prominent place.
Who was this Lord Seamord? For obvious reasons, I use an assumed
name. At Elliott and Fry's I got his portrait for a shilling. It is
lying before me now. Not a man to make an enemy of. His chin betokens
resolution; lips, firmness; nostrils, daring; eyes, cruelty; forehead,
intellect. He was a tall man I ascertained, and dark enough to have
been taken for a Spaniard. Debrett told me that he had been an only
child; that he married a duke's daughter, that there was no issue
of the marriage, and that when his decease occurred he must have
been thirty-five years of age. From private sources, from men who
had frequented the same clubs as his lordship, I received a very bad
account of him. He was, according to them, an individual to be avoided.
The girls he had seduced, the friends he had ruined at play, the duels
he had fought, some of them with fatal results, would fill a volume.
He took no active part in politics, and seemed to live entirely for
his own amusement. His wife, who was very pretty, and who it was said,
worshipped him, was sadly neglected; and he resided principally on the
Continent.
The next heir to the title and estate was a cousin, who was not a
little surprised to be informed that everything that money could be
raised on had been mortgaged. This was all the more strange when it
was known, that Lord Seamord was unusually careful in monetary matters,
and that most of his speculations resulted in an addition to his large
fortune. What had become of these immense sums of money?
This was the first question I set myself to answer. I was charmed with
the insurmountable difficulties surrounding the case, and entered on
the investigation with great relish. You may ask what business it was
of mine, and the only reply I think it necessary to give is that the
enquiry interested me, and that if success crowned my efforts I could
if I chose earn a large sum of money.
I went down to Craigmillar, but the information I gleaned there did not
amount to much. No one could say how the money had gone. His lordship
was at Milan when he died, and he had with him a servant called Robert
Simmons. This man had been in the family for many years, but he was
much disliked. Like master like man. There was nobody to say a good
word about either. It was thought that Simmons was a ready and willing
assistant in the many villainies perpetrated by Lord Seamord. To my
enquiry as to what had become of Simmons, I was told that he left
soon after the funeral, and had not been heard of since. This was
suspicious. There were now two questions in my note book--first, how
had the money been disposed of? and the second, why had the servant
disappeared?
I may or may not have had an interview with the family solicitor, but
at all events I went on the Continent, and traced his lordship on his
last journey to the town in which he died. Up to reaching Milan I
found nothing remarkable. His stay in Paris was short, and presented
no feature of interest. The people at the hotel knew him well, and
I had no trouble in getting at his daily doings. At Milan the case
was different. It assumed the mysterious at once. To begin with, he
dropped the title and used a feigned name. He kept changing his hotel,
and finally rented a house of his own. Altogether he remained in this
rather dull Italian town upwards of six months. There must have been a
powerful reason, I thought, for his prolonged stay and erratic conduct,
but neither the people he came in contact with nor the authorities were
aware of it. Simmons was with him all the time, and could no doubt
explain many things, but the man was not available. In despair, I asked
for a file of one of the daily papers, to see if anything remarkable
occurred about the first of November, and my attention was arrested by
a thrilling paragraph relating to the death of a young lady. It ran
thus:--
"Murder or Suicide?--It is our painful duty to notify the death of the
daughter of M. Rousell, the famous sculptor. The young lady was only
nineteen years of age, and had shown great promise as a painter. Her
voice would have insured her a hearty welcome on the operatic stage.
A more accomplished, beautiful and fascinating young lady it would be
difficult to find, and much sympathy is felt for the bereaved father,
the more so on account of the manner of his daughter's death. She was
found in the public gardens stabbed to the heart."
A few days afterwards another short paragraph appeared on the subject.
It read as follows:--
"The Death of Mdlle. Rousell.--We have nothing fresh to communicate
regarding this unfortunate occurrence, except that her father
had noticed that her mind seemed much disturbed about the period
of her death, and the police state that it is now shown that she
was accustomed to keep appointments with some strange man. It was
understood that in January she was to be wed to a gentleman holding a
high position in the Government, and who has been in a raging fever
ever since his great loss was communicated to him. The authorities are
making extraordinary exertions to clear up the mystery."
This murder or suicide took place a few days before the death of Lord
Seamord. Knowing his partiality for the fair sex, and his unscrupulous
character, it was possible that there might be some connection between
the two events. Was he the unknown man that Mdlle. Rousell met by
stealth? It did not take me long to discover that his lordship in his
assumed name was a frequent visitor to the studio of the sculptor, and
he had undoubtedly seen the daughter there, but I could not make out
for certain that there had been any acquaintanceship between them,
or even an introduction, and, however bad the man was, I could not
believe for a moment that he would take away the life of this charming
girl. He lived in good but not extravagant style in Milan, and the
money question was as much involved in obscurity as ever. One thing
the banker told me, which only made matters more mysterious still, and
that was that very heavy sums had been remitted from England, and that
his balance was nearly all drawn out immediately before his death. It
was no use stopping any longer in Milan, and I returned to England,
determined to have a little explanation with Robert Simmons. He could
at the very least give me some account of the missing money.
None of the Craigmillar people had heard anything of the man, but
I succeeded in getting his portrait and address of his parents,
who resided near Carlisle. I hunted them up, but it was somewhat
akin to pulling stubborn teeth to extract information out of them.
They had evidently been warned not to let anyone know their son's
whereabouts. There was no getting a direct answer out of them, and
this reticence only made me the more anxious to have a few minutes'
private conversation with Simmons. They were old and ignorant people,
and I made sure that if any correspondence was going on a third
party conducted it for them. This proved to be correct. The village
schoolmaster wrote their letters, and on the plea that Lady Seamord had
a small legacy to pay the man, I had no difficulty in obtaining the
wished-for address. The letters were addressed the Poste Restante, New
York. So Simmons had thought it advisable to take up his abode on the
other side of the Atlantic. Another suspicious circumstance.
A Cunard boat soon landed me in America, and I immediately stationed
a trustworthy detective at the Poste Restante, while I made some
cautious enquiries in the town. On the fourth day a man answering the
description of Lord Seamord's servant called at the post-office for
letters from England for Robert Simmons, and was followed to one of
the best hotels in New York. Possibly he had secured employment there
as a waiter. As he did not know me from Adam I had no hesitation in
taking up my quarters in Fifth Avenue Hotel. Up to dinner time nothing
occurred. I did not even catch a glimpse of Simmons, and none of the
other servants knew him by that name, but I was on the brink of a
startling discovery.
When the gong sounded for dinner there walked into the room an
exact counterpart of the late Lord Seamord. From the portrait in my
possession the most unbelieving would have sworn that it was the man
himself. Tall, dark, and cruel-looking, the resemblance was, to say
the least of it, extraordinary, and this was a phase in the enquiry
which I had not anticipated. The fact of Simmons being also in the
hotel convinced me that I was about to fathom some terrible mystery.
The bookkeeper in answer to my question said the tall, dark gentleman
was an Englishman named Mayhurst, and had been living in the hotel with
his servant for a month or two. A few days convinced me there was no
mistake--that the real Lord Seamord and his servant was residing in the
hotel under feigned names. What did that false funeral at Craigmillar
mean? who was the man interred? why was the body stolen? and what all
powerful motives had compelled Lord Seamord to adopt such an unheard-of
line of conduct? The plan had been thought of and matured at Milan, and
the large amounts of money wore no doubt in the hands of the rightful
owner. Had the violent death of Mdlle. Rousell anything to do with
these marvellous disclosures?
When I was certain that there was no mistake about the two men, I
telegraphed to Mr. Johnson, the family solicitor, asking him to come
to New York at once, as something of the greatest importance connected
with the disappearance of the body at Craigmillar had occurred. He
replied promptly, and was with me in less than a fortnight. I took
him to a different hotel, but close to where I was staying; and when
I had prepared his mind a little for the startling news, I told him
what I had discovered. The old man was horrified, and flatly declined
to believe me, but before the end of the day I had placed him in a
position to convince himself that what I had stated was perfectly
correct. Lord Seamord he had known all his life, and therefore,
although I might, he could not well be mistaken. Nothing was decided
that night; Mr. Johnson was too incapable of acting in a sane fashion;
but next morning after a long conversation between us, in the course of
which I produced the Milan journals concerning the two paragraphs about
the death of the sculptor's daughter, he elected to seek an interview
alone with his lordship.
Hour after hour passed, and Mr. Johnson did not return to his hotel,
where I was waiting for him, and I began to get alarmed. I was just
about to set out in search, of him, when he arrived, looking crushed
and heartbroken, and there was appearance of tears on his blanched
cheeks. It must have been a terrible meeting, but I never heard a full
account of what took place; he was only authorised to tell me what had
been carefully written for him on a sheet of notepaper. The following
is a copy of the statement, which was in Lord Seamord's handwriting:--
"Mdlle. Rousell was the innocent cause of what has occurred. I fell
madly in love with her, and determined to carry her off. Under a
promise of marriage she met me clandestinely, unknown to anyone. My
plans were complete when her death occurred. It was my blame, but I
have never in my life raised my hand in violence to a woman. To save
her honour she stabbed herself to the heart. I had good reasons for
believing that I was being watched by the police, and to prevent
the disgrace to my family of my being tried for murder, I, with the
assistance of Simmons and a doctor attached to the hospital, pretended
to die, and a dead body was secretly conveyed into the house and
interred at Craigmillar. It was my wishing to make assurance doubly
sure, and destroy all possible traces of the deception which has led to
the discovery. I shall never resume the title again, and to all intents
and purposes I am legally dead. My wife may rejoin me if it pleases
her. Mr. Johnson has my instructions."
He did not deserve it, but his wife, on the pretence of entering
a convent, soon hastened to his side. Women, always excepting
mothers-in-law, are so forgiving.