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LADY MOLLY always had the idea that if the finger of Fate had pointed to Mathis' in Regent Street, rather than to Lyons', as the most advisable place for us to have a cup of tea that afternoon, Mr. Culledon would be alive at the present moment. My dear lady is quite sure--and needless to say that I share her belief in herself--that she would have anticipated the murderer's intentions, and thus prevented one of the most cruel and callous of crimes which were ever perpetrated in the heart of London. She and I had been to a matinée of Trilby, and were having tea at Lyons', which is exactly opposite Mathis' Vienna café in Regent Street. From where we sat we commanded a view of the street and of the café, which had been very crowded during the last hour. We had lingered over our toasted muffin until past six, when our attention was drawn to the unusual commotion which had arisen both outside and in the brilliantly lighted place over the road. We saw two men run out of the doorway, and return a minute or two later in company with a policeman. You know what is the inevitable result of such a proceeding in London. Within three minutes a crowd had collected outside Mathis'. Two or three more constables had already assembled, and had some difficulty in keeping the entrance clear of intruders. But already my dear lady, keen as a pointer on the scent, had hastily paid her bill, and, without waiting to see if I followed her or not, had quickly crossed the road, and the next moment her graceful form was lost in the crowd. I went after her, impelled by curiosity, and presently caught sight of her in close conversation with one of our own men. I have always thought that Lady Molly must have eyes at the back of her head, otherwise how could she have known that I stood behind her now? Anyway, she beckoned to me, and together we entered Mathis', much to the astonishment and anger of the less fortunate crowd. The usually gay little place was indeed sadly transformed. In one corner the waitresses, in dainty caps and aprons, had put their heads together, and were eagerly whispering to one another whilst casting furtive looks at the small group assembled in front of one of those pretty alcoves, which, as you know, line the walls all round the big tea-room at Mathis'. Here two of our men were busy with pencil and notebook, whilst one fair-haired waitress, dissolved in tears, was apparently giving them a great deal of irrelevant and confused information. Chief Inspector Saunders had, I understood, been already sent for; the constables, confronted with this extraordinary tragedy, were casting anxious glances towards the main entrance, whilst putting the conventional questions to the young waitress. And in the alcove itself, raised from the floor of the room by a couple of carpeted steps, the cause of all this commotion, all this anxiety, and all these tears, sat huddled up on a chair, with arms lying straight across the marble-topped table, on which the usual paraphernalia of afternoon tea still lay scattered about. The upper part of the body, limp, backboneless, and awry, half propped up against the wall, half falling back upon the outstretched arms, told quite plainly its weird tale of death. Before my dear lady and I had time to ask any questions, Saunders arrived in a taxicab. He was accompanied by the medical officer, Dr. Townson, who at once busied himself with the dead man, whilst Saunders went up quickly to Lady Molly. "The chief suggested sending for you," he said quickly; "he was phoning you when I left. There's a woman in this case, and we shall rely on you a good deal." "What has happened?" asked my dear lady, whose fine eyes were glowing with excitement at the mere suggestion of work. "I have only a few stray
particulars," replied Saunders, "but the chief
witness is that yellow- The medical officer, who had been kneeling
beside the dead man, now rose and turned to Saunders. His
face was very grave.
"The whole matter is simple enough, so
far as I am concerned," he said. "The man has been
killed by a terrific dose of morphia-- "But when did this occur?" asked
Saunders, turning to the waitress.
"I can't say," she replied,
speaking with obvious nervousness. "The gentleman came
in very early with a lady, somewhere about four. They made
straight for this alcove. The place was just beginning to
fill, and the music had begun."
"And where is the lady now?"
"She went off almost directly. She had
ordered tea for herself and a cup of chocolate for the
gentleman, also muffins and cakes. About five minutes
afterwards, as I went past their table, I heard her say to
him, 'I am afraid I must go now, or Jay's will be closed,
but I'll be back in less than half an hour. You'll wait for
me, won't you?'"
"Did the gentleman seem all right
then?"
"Oh, yes," said the waitress.
"He had just begun to sip his chocolate, and merely
said 'S'long' as she gathered up her gloves and muff and
then went out of the shop."
"And she has not returned since?"
"No."
"When did you first notice there was
anything wrong with this gentleman?" asked Lady Molly.
"Well," said the girl with some
hesitation, "I looked at him once or twice as I went up
and down, for he certainly seemed to have fallen all of a
heap. Of course, I thought that he had gone to sleep, and I
spoke to the manageress about him, but she thought that I
ought to leave him alone for a bit. Then we got very busy,
and I paid no more attention to him, until about six
o'clock, when most afternoon tea customers had gone, and we
were beginning to get the tables ready for dinners. Then I
certainly did think there was something wrong with the man.
I called to the manageress, and we sent for the
police."
"And the lady who was with him at first,
what was she like? Would you know her again?" queried
Saunders.
"I don't know," replied the girl;
"you see, I have to attend to such crowds of people of
an afternoon, I can't notice each one. And she had on one of
those enormous mushroom hats; no one could have seen her
face--not more than her chin--unless they looked right under
the hat."
"Would you know the hat again?"
asked Lady Molly.
"Yes--I think I should," said the
waitress. "It was black velvet and had a lot of plumes.
It was enormous," she added, with a sigh of admiration
and of longing for the monumental headgear.
During the girl's narrative one of the
constables had searched the dead man's pockets. Among other
items, he had found several letters addressed to Mark
Culledon, Esq., some with an address in Lombard Street,
others with one in Fitzjohn's Avenue, Hampstead. The
initials M.C., which appeared both in the hat and on the
silver mount of a letter-case belonging to the unfortunate
gentleman, proved his identity beyond a doubt.
A house in Fitzjohn's Avenue does not,
somehow suggest a bachelor establishment. Even whilst
Saunders and the other men were looking through the
belongings of the deceased, Lady Molly had already thought
of his family-- What awful news to bring to an unsuspecting,
happy family, who might even now be expecting the return of
father, husband, or son, at the very moment when he lay
murdered in a public place, the victim of some hideous plot
or feminine revenge!
As our amiable friends in Paris would say, it
jumped to the eyes that there was a woman in the case--a
woman who had worn a gargantuan hat for the obvious purpose
of remaining unidentifiable when the question of the
unfortunate victim's companion that afternoon came up for
solution. And all these facts to put before an expectant
wife or an anxious mother!
As, no doubt, you have already foreseen, Lady
Molly took the difficult task on her own kind shoulders. She
and I drove together to Lorbury House, Fitzjohn's Avenue,
and on asking of the manservant who opened the door if his
mistress were at home, we were told that Lady Irene Culledon
was in the drawing-room.
Mine is not a story of sentiment, so I am not
going to dwell on that interview, which was one of the most
painful moments I recollect having lived through.
Lady Irene was young--not
five-and- Lady Molly broke the news to her with
infinite tact, but there it was! It was a terrific
blow--wasn't it?--to deal to a young wife,* now a widow; and
there was so little that a stranger could say in these
circumstances. Even my dear lady's gentle voice, her
persuasive eloquence, her kindly words, sounded empty and
conventional in the face of such appalling grief.
OF course, everyone expected that
the inquest would reveal something of the murdered man's
inner life--would, in fact, allow the over-eager public to
get a peep into Mr. Mark Culledon's secret orchard, wherein
walked a lady who wore abnormally large velvet hats, and who
nourished in her heart one of those terrible grudges against
a man which can only find satisfaction in crime.
Equally, of course, the inquest revealed
nothing that the public did not already know. The young
widow was extremely reticent on the subject of her late
husband's life, and the servants had all been fresh arrivals
when the young couple, just home from their honeymoon,
organized their new household at Lorbury House.
There was an old aunt of the deceased--a Mrs.
Steinberg-- "Mark Culledon was the one nephew whom I
loved," she stated with solemn emphasis. "I have
shown my love for him by bequeathing to him the large
fortune which I inherited from the late Mr. Steinberg. Mark
was the soul of honour, or I should have cut him out of my
will as I did my other nephews and nieces. I was brought up
in a Scotch home, and I hate all this modern fastness and
smartness, which are only other words for what I call
profligacy."
Needless to say, the old lady's statement,
solemn though it was, was of no use whatever for the
elucidation of the mystery which surrounded the death of Mr.
Mark Culledon. But as Mrs. Steinberg had talked of
"other nephews", whom she had cut out of her will
in favour of the murdered man, the police directed inquiries
in those various quarters.
Mr. Mark Culledon certainly had several
brothers and sisters, also cousins, who at different
times-- The mystery surrounding the woman in the big
hat deepened as the days went by. As you know, the longer
the period of time which elapses between a crime and the
identification of the criminal, the greater chance the
latter has of remaining at large.
In spite of strenuous efforts and close
questionings of every one of the employees at Mathis', no
one could give a very accurate description of the lady who
had tea with the deceased on that fateful afternoon.
The first glimmer of light on the mysterious
occurrence was thrown, about three weeks later, by a young
woman named Katherine Harris, who had been parlour-maid at
Lorbury House when first Mr. and Lady Irene Culledon
returned from their honeymoon.
I must tell you that Mrs. Steinberg had died
a few days after the inquest. The excitement had been too
much for her enfeebled heart. Just before her death she had
deposited £250 with her banker, which sum was to be
paid over to any person giving information which would lead
to the apprehension and conviction of the murderer of Mr.
Mark Culledon.
This offer had stimulated everyone's zeal,
and, I presume, had aroused Katherine Harris to a
realization of what had all the while been her obvious duty.
Lady Molly saw her in the chief's private
office, and had much ado to disentangle the threads of the
girl's confused narrative. But the main point of Harris's
story was that a foreign lady had once called at Lorbury
House, about a week after the master and mistress had
returned from their honeymoon. Lady Irene was out at the
time, and Mr. Culledon saw the lady in his smoking-room.
"She was a very handsome lady,"
explained Harris, "and was beautifully dressed."
"Did she wear a large hat?" asked
the chief.
"I don't remember if it was particularly
large," replied the girl.
"But you remember what the lady was
like?" suggested Lady Molly.
"Yes, pretty well. She was very, very
tall, and very good-looking."
"Would you know her again if you saw
her?" rejoined my dear lady.
"Oh, yes; I think so," was
Katherine Harris's reply.
Unfortunately, beyond this assurance the girl
could say nothing very definite. The foreign lady seems to
have been closeted with Mr. Culledon for about an hour, at
the end of which time Lady Irene came home.
The butler being out that afternoon it was
Harris who let her mistress in, and as the latter asked no
questions, the girl did not volunteer the information that
her master had a visitor. She went back to the servants'
hall, but five minutes later the smoking-room bell rang, and
she had to run up again. The foreign lady was then in the
hall alone, and obviously waiting to be shown out. This
Harris did, after which Mr. Culledon came out of his room,
and, in the girl's own graphic words, "he went on
dreadful".
"I didn't know I 'ad done anything so
very wrong," she explained, "but the master seemed
quite furious, and said I wasn't a proper parlour-maid, or
I'd have known that visitors must not be shown in straight
away like that. I ought to have said that I didn't know if
Mr. Culledon was in; that I would go and see. Oh, he did go
on at me!" continued Katherine Harris, volubly.
"And I suppose he complained to the mistress, for she
give me notice the next day."
"And you have never seen the foreign
lady since?" concluded Lady Molly.
"No; she never come while I was
there."
"By the way, how did you know she was
foreign? Did she speak like a foreigner?"
"Oh, no," replied the girl.
"She did not say much--only asked for Mr. Culledon--but
she looked French like."
This unanswerable bit of logic concluded
Katherine's statement. She was very anxious to know whether,
if the foreign lady was hanged for murder, she herself would
get the £250.
On Molly's assurance that she certainly
would, she departed in apparent content.
WELL! we are no nearer than we were
before," said the chief, with an impatient sigh, when
the door had closed behind Katherine Harris.
"Don't you think so?" rejoined Lady
Molly, blandly.
"Do you consider that what we have heard
just now has helped us to discover who was the woman in the
big hat?" retorted the chief, somewhat testily.
"Perhaps not," replied my dear
lady, with her sweet smile; "but it may help us to
discover who murdered Mr. Culledon."
With which enigmatical statement she
effectually silenced the chief, and finally walked out of
his office, followed by her faithful Mary.
Following Katherine Harris's indications, a
description of the lady who was wanted in connection with
the murder of Mr. Culledon was very widely circulated, and
within two days of the interview with the ex-parlour-maid
another very momentous one took place in the same office.
Lady Molly was at work with the chief over
some reports, whilst I was taking shorthand notes at a side
desk, when a card was brought in by one of the men, and the
next moment, without waiting either for permission to enter
or to be more formally announced, a magnificent apparition
literally sailed into the dust-covered little back office,
filling it with an atmosphere of Parma violets and Russia
leather.
I don't think that I had ever seen a more
beautiful woman in my life. Tall, with a splendid figure and
perfect carriage, she vaguely reminded me of the portraits
one sees of the late Empress of Austria. This lady was,
moreover, dressed to perfection, and wore a large hat
adorned with a quantity of plumes.
The chief had instinctively risen to greet
her, whilst Lady Molly, still and placid was eyeing her with
a quizzical smile.
"You know who I am, sir," began the
visitor as soon as she had sunk gracefully into a chair;
"my name is on that card. My appearance, I understand,
tallies exactly with that of a woman who is supposed to have
murdered Mark Culledon."
She said this so calmly, with such perfect
self-possession, that I literally gasped. The chief, too,
seemed to have been metaphorically lifted off his feet. He
tried to mutter a reply.
"Oh, don't trouble yourself, sir!"
she interrupted him, with a smile. "My landlady, my
servant, my friends have all read the description of the
woman who murdered Mr. Culledon. For the past twenty-four
hours I have been watched by your police, therefore I come
to you of my own accord, before they came to arrest me in my
flat. I am not too soon, am I?" she asked, with that
same cool indifference which was so startling, considering
the subject of her conversation.
She spoke English with a scarcely perceptible
foreign accent, but I quite understood what Katherine Harris
had meant when she said that the lady looked "French
like". She certainly did not look English, and when I
caught sight of her name on the card, which the chief had
handed to Lady Molly, I put her down at once as Viennese.
Miss Elizabeth Löwenthal had all the charm, the grace,
the elegance, which one associates with Austrian women more
than with those of any other nation.
No wonder the chief found it difficult to
tell her that, as a matter of fact, the police were about to
apply for a warrant that very morning for her arrest on a
charge of wilful murder.
"I know--I know," she said, seeming
to divine his thoughts; "but let me tell you at once,
sir, that I did not murder Mark Culledon. He treated me
shamefully, and I would willingly have made a scandal just
to spite him; he had become so respectable and strait-laced.
But between scandal and murder there is a wide gulf. Don't
you think so, madam?" she added, turning for the first
time towards Lady Molly.
"Undoubtedly," replied my dear
lady, with the same quizzical smile.
"A wide gulf which, no doubt, Miss
Elizabeth Löwenthal will best be able to demonstrate to
the magistrate to-morrow," rejoined the chief, with
official sternness of manner.
I thought that, for the space of a few
seconds, the lady lost her self-assurance at this obvious
suggestion--the bloom on her cheeks seemed to vanish, and
two hard lines appeared between her fine eyes. But,
frightened or not, she quickly recovered herself, and said
quietly:
"Now, my dear sir, let us understand one
another. I came here for that express purpose. I take it
that you don't want your police to look ridiculous any more
than I want a scandal. I don't want detectives to hang about
round my flat, questioning my neighbours and my servants.
They would soon find out that I did not murder Mark
Culledon, of course; but the atmosphere of the police would
hang round me, and I--I prefer Parma violets," she
added, raising a daintily perfumed handkerchief to her nose.
"Then you have come to make a
statement?" asked the chief.
"Yes," she replied; "I'll tell
you all I know. Mr. Culledon was engaged to marry me; then
he met the daughter of an earl, and thought he would like
her better as a wife than a simple Miss Löwenthal. I
suppose I should be considered an undesirable match for a
young man who has a highly respectable and snobbish aunt,
who would leave him all her money only on the condition that
he made a suitable marriage. I have a voice, and I came over
to England two years ago to study English, so that I might
sing in oratorio at the Albert Hall. I met Mark on the
Calais-Dover boat, when he was returning from a holiday
abroad. He fell in love with me, and presently he asked me
to be his wife. After some demur, I accepted him; we became
engaged, but he told me that our engagement must remain a
secret, for he had an old aunt from whom he had great
expectations, and who might not approve of his marrying a
foreign girl, who was without connections and a professional
singer. From that moment I mistrusted him, nor was I very
astonished when gradually his affection for me seemed to
cool. Soon after he informed me quite callously that he had
changed his mind, and was going to marry some swell English
lady. I didn't care much, but I wanted to punish him by
making a scandal, you understand. I went to his house just
to worry him, and finally I decided to bring an action for
breach of promise against him. It would have upset him, I
know; no doubt his aunt would have cut him out of her will.
That is all I wanted, but I did not care enough about him to
murder him."
Somehow her tale carried conviction. We were
all of us obviously impressed. The chief alone looked
visibly disturbed, and I could read what was going on in his
mind.
"As you say, Miss Löwenthal,"
he rejoined, "the police would have found all this out
within the next few hours. Once your connection with the
murdered man was known to us, the record of your past and
his becomes an easy one to peruse. No doubt, too," he
added insinuatingly, "our men would soon have been
placed in possession of the one undisputable proof of your
complete innocence with regard to that fateful afternoon
spent at Mathis' café."
"What is that?" she queried
blandly.
"An alibi."
"You mean, where I was during the time
that Mark was being murdered in a tea shop?"
"Yes," said the chief.
"I was out for a walk," she replied
quietly.
"Shopping, perhaps?"
"No."
"You met someone who would remember the
circumstance--or your servants could say at what time you
came in?"
"No," she repeated dryly; "I
met no one, for I took a brisk walk on Primrose Hill. My two
servants could only say that I went out at three o'clock
that afternoon and returned after five."
There was silence in the little office for a
moment or two. I could hear the scraping of the pen with
which the chief was idly scribbling geometrical figures on
his blotting pad.
Lady Molly was quite still. Her large,
luminous eyes were fixed on the beautiful woman who had just
told us her strange story, with its unaccountable sequel,
its mystery which had deepened with the last phrase which
she had uttered. Miss Löwenthal, I felt sure, was
conscious of her peril. I am not sufficiently a psychologist
to know whether it was guilt or merely fear which was
distorting the handsome features now, hardening the face and
causing the lips to tremble.
Lady Molly scribbled a few words on a scrap
of paper, which she then passed over to the chief. Miss
Löwenthal was making visible efforts to steady her
nerves.
"That is all I have to tell you,"
she said, in a voice which sounded dry and harsh. "I
think I will go home now."
But she did not rise from her chair, and
seemed to hesitate as if fearful lest permission to go were
not granted her.
To her obvious astonishment--and, I must add,
to my own--the chief immediately rose and said, quite
urbanely:
"I thank you very much for the helpful
information which you have given me. Of course, we may rely
on your presence in town for the next few days, may we
not?"
She seemed greatly relieved, and all at once
resumed her former charm of manner and elegance of attitude.
The beautiful face was lit up by a smile.
The chief was bowing to her in quite a
foreign fashion, and in spite of her visible reassurance she
eyed him very intently. Then she went up to Lady Molly and
held out her hand.
My dear lady took it without an instant's
hesitation. I, who knew that it was the few words hastily
scribbled by Lady Molly which had dictated the chief's
conduct with regard to Miss Löwenthal, was left
wondering whether the woman I loved best in all the world
had been shaking hands with a murderess.
NO doubt you will remember the
sensation which was caused by the arrest of Miss
Löwenthal, on a charge of having murdered Mr. Mark
Culledon, by administering morphia to him in a cup of
chocolate at Mathis' café in Regent Street.
The beauty of the accused, her undeniable
charm of manner, the hitherto blameless character of her
life, all tended to make the public take violent sides
either for or against her, and the usual budget of amateur
correspondence, suggestions, recriminations and advice
poured into the chief's office in titanic proportions.
I must say that, personally, all my
sympathies went out to Miss Löwenthal. As I have said
before, I am no psychologist, but I had seen her in the
original interview at the office, and I could not get rid of
an absolutely unreasoning certitude that the beautiful
Viennese singer was innocent.
The magistrate's court was packed, as you may
well imagine, on that first day of the inquiry; and, of
course, sympathy with the accused went up to fever pitch
when she staggered into the dock, beautiful still, despite
the ravages caused by horror, anxiety, fear, in face of the
deadly peril in which she stood.
The magistrate was most kind to her; her
solicitor was unimpeachably assiduous; even our fellows, who
had to give evidence against her, did no more than their
duty, and were as lenient in their statements as possible.
Miss Löwenthal had been arrested in her
flat by Danvers, accompanied by two constables. She had
loudly protested her innocence all along, and did so still,
pleading "Not guilty" in a firm voice.
The great points in favour of the arrest
were, firstly, the undoubted motive of disappointment and
revenge against a faithless sweetheart, then the total
inability to prove any kind of alibi, which, under the
circumstances, certainly added to the appearance of guilt.
The question of where the fatal drug was
obtained was more difficult to prove. It was stated that Mr.
Mark Culledon was director of several important companies,
one of which carried on business as wholesale druggists.
Therefore it was argued that the accused, at
different times and under some pretext or other, had
obtained drugs from Mr. Culledon himself. She had admitted
to having visited the deceased at his office in the City,
both before and after his marriage.
Miss Löwenthal listened to all this
evidence against her with a hard, set face, as she did also
to Katherine Harris's statement about her calling on Mr.
Culledon at Lorbury House, but she brightened up visibly
when the various attendants at Mathis' *caf‚ were placed in
the box.
A very large hat belonging to the accused was
shown to the witnesses, but, though the police upheld the
theory that this was the headgear worn by the mysterious
lady at the café on that fatal afternoon, the
waitresses made distinctly contradictory statements with
regard to it.
Whilst one girl swore that she recognized the
very hat, another was equally positive that it was
distinctly smaller than the one she recollected, and when
the hat was placed on the head of Miss Löwenthal, three
out of the four witnesses positively refused to identify
her.
Most of these young women declared that
though the accused, when wearing the big hat, looked as if
she might have been the lady in question, yet there was a
certain something about her which was different.
With that vagueness which is a usual and
highly irritating characteristic of their class, the girls
finally parried every question by refusing to swear
positively either for or against the identity of Miss
Löwenthal.
"There's something that's different
about her somehow," one of the waitresses asserted
positively.
"What is it that's different?"
asked the solicitor for the accused, pressing his point.
"I can't say," was the perpetual,
maddening reply.
Of course the poor young widow had to be
dragged into the case, and here, I think, opinions and even
expressions of sympathy were quite unanimous.
The whole tragedy had been inexpressibly
painful to her, of course, and now it must have seemed
doubly so. The scandal which had accumulated round her late
husband's name must have added the poignancy of shame to
that of grief. Mark Culledon had behaved as callously to the
girl whom clearly he had married from interested, family
motives, as he had to the one whom he had heartlessly cast
aside.
Lady Irene, however, was most moderate in her
statements. There was no doubt that she had known of her
husband's previous entanglement with Miss Löwenthal,
but apparently had-not thought fit to make him accountable
for the past. She did not know that Miss Löwenthal had
threatened a breach of promise action against her husband.
Throughout her evidence she spoke with
absolute calm and dignity, and looked indeed a strange
contrast, in her closely fitting tailor-made costume of
black serge and tiny black toque, to the more brilliant
woman who stood in the dock.
The two great points in favour of the accused
were, firstly, the vagueness of the witnesses who were
called to identify her, and, secondly, the fact that she had
undoubtedly begun proceedings for breach of promise against
the deceased. Judging by the latter's letters to her, she
would have had a splendid case against him, which fact
naturally dealt a severe blow to the theory as to motive for
the murder.
On the whole, the magistrate felt that there
was not a sufficiency of evidence against the accused to
warrant his committing her for trial; he therefore
discharged her, and, amid loud applause from the public,
Miss Löwenthal left the court a free woman.
Now, I know that the public did loudly, and,
to my mind, very justly, blame the police for that arrest,
which was denounced as being as cruel as it was
unjustifiable. I felt as strongly as anybody on the subject,
for I knew that the prosecution had been instituted in
defiance of Lady Molly's express advice, and in distinct
contradiction to the evidence which she had collected. When,
therefore, the chief again asked my dear lady to renew her
efforts in that mysterious case, it was small wonder that
her enthusiasm did not respond to his anxiety. That she
would do her duty was beyond a doubt, but she had very
naturally lost her more fervent interest in the case.
The mysterious woman in the big hat was still
the chief subject of leading articles in the papers, coupled
with that of the ineptitude of the police who could not
discover her. There were caricatures and picture post-cards
in all the shop windows of a gigantic hat covering the whole
figure of its wearer, only the feet and a very long and
pointed chin, protruding from beneath the enormous brim.
Below was the device, "Who is she? Ask the
police?"
One day--it was the second since the
discharge of Miss Löwenthal--my dear lady came into my
room beaming. It was the first time I had seen her smile for
more than a week, and already I had guessed what it was that
had cheered her.
"Good news, Mary," she said gaily.
"At last I've got the chief to let me have a free hand.
Oh, dear! what a lot of argument it takes to extricate that
man from the tangled meshes of red tape!"
"What are you going to do?" I
asked.
"Prove that my theory is right as to who
murdered Mark Culledon," she replied seriously;
"and as a preliminary we'll go and ask his servants at
Lorbury House a few questions."
It was then three o'clock in the afternoon.
At Lady Molly's bidding, I dressed somewhat smartly, and
together we went off in a taxi to Fitzjohn's Avenue.
Lady Molly had written a few words on one of
her cards, urgently requesting an interview with Lady Irene
Culledon. This she handed over to the man-servant who opened
the door at Lorbury House. A few moments later we were
sitting in the cosy boudoir. The young widow, high-bred and
dignified in her tight-fitting black gown, sat opposite to
us, her white hands folded demurely before her, her small
head, with its very close coiffure, bent in closest
attention towards Lady Molly.
"I most sincerely hope, Lady
Irene," began my dear lady, in her most gentle and
persuasive voice, "that you will look with all possible
indulgence on my growing desire--shared, I may say, by all
my superiors at Scotland Yard--to elucidate the mystery
which still surrounds your late husband's death."
Lady Molly paused, as if waiting for
encouragement to proceed. The subject must have been
extremely painful to the young widow; nevertheless she
responded quite gently:
"I can understand that the police wish
to do their duty in the matter; as for me, I have done all,
I think, that could be expected of me. I am not made of
iron, and after that day in the police court----"
She checked herself, as if afraid of having
betrayed more emotion than was consistent with good
breeding, and concluded more calmly:
"I cannot do any more."
"I fully appreciate your feelings in the
matter," said Lady Molly, "but you would not mind
helping me--would you--in a passive way, if you could, by
some simple means, further the cause of justice?"
"What is it you want me to do?"
asked Lady Irene.
"Only to allow me to ring for two of
your maids and to ask them a few questions. I promise you
that they shall not be of such a nature as to cause you the
slightest pain."
For a moment I thought that the young widow
hesitated, then, without a word, she rose and rang the bell.
"Which of my servants did you wish to
see?" she asked, turning to my dear lady as soon as the
butler entered in answer to the bell.
"Your own maid and your parlour-maid, if
I may," replied Lady Molly.
Lady Irene gave the necessary orders, and we
all sat expectant and silent until, a minute or two later,
two girls entered the room. One wore a cap and apron, the
other, in neat black dress and dainty lace collar, was
obviously the lady's maid.
"This lady," said their mistress,
addressing the two girls, "wishes to ask you a few
questions. She is a representative of the police, so you had
better do your best to satisfy her with your answers."
"Oh!" rejoined Lady Molly
pleasantly--choosing not to notice the tone of acerbity with
which the young widow had spoken, nor the unmistakable
barrier of hostility and reserve which her words had
immediately raised between the young servants and the
"representative of the police"--"what I am
going to ask these two young ladies is neither very
difficult nor very unpleasant. I merely want their kind help
in a little comedy which will have to be played this
evening, in order to test the accuracy of certain statements
made by one of the waitresses at Mathis' tea shop with
regard to the terrible tragedy which has darkened this
house. You will do that much, will you not?" she added,
speaking directly to the maids.
No one can be so winning or so persuasive as
my dear lady. In a moment I saw the girls' hostility melting
before the sunshine of Lady Molly's smile.
"We'll do what we can, ma'am," said
the maid.
"That's a brave, good girl!"
replied my lady. "You must know that the chief waitress
at Mathis' has, this very morning, identified the woman in
the big hat who, we all believe, murdered your late master.
Yes!" she continued, in response to a gasp of
astonishment which seemed to go round the room like a wave,
"the girl seems quite positive, both as regards the hat
and the woman who wore it. But, of course, one cannot allow
a human life to be sworn away without bringing every
possible proof to bear on such a statement, and I am sure
that everyone in this house will understand that we don't
want to introduce strangers more than we can help into this
sad affair, which already has been bruited abroad too
much."
She paused a moment; then, as neither Lady
Irene nor the maids made any comment, she continued:
"My superiors at Scotland Yard think it
their duty to try and confuse the witness as much as
possible in her act of identification. They desire that a
certain number of ladies wearing abnormally large hats
should parade before the waitress. Among them will be, of
course, the one whom the girl has already identified as
being the mysterious person who had tea with Mr. Culledon at
Mathis' that afternoon.
"My superiors can then satisfy
themselves whether the waitress is or is not so sure of her
statement that she invariably picks out again and again one
particular individual amongst a number of others or
not."
"Surely," interrupted Lady Irene,
dryly, "you and your superiors do not expect my
servants to help in such a farce?"
"We don't look upon such a proceeding as
a farce, Lady Irene," rejoined Lady Molly, gently.
"It is often resorted to in the interests of an accused
person, and we certainly would ask the co-operation of your
household."
"I don't see what they can do."
But the two girls did not seem unwilling. The
idea appealed to them, I felt sure; it suggested an exciting
episode, and gave promise of variety in their monotonous
lives.
"I am sure both these young ladies
possess fine big hats," continued Lady Molly with an
encouraging smile.
"I should not allow them to wear
ridiculous headgear," retorted Lady Irene, sternly.
"I have the one your ladyship wouldn't
wear and threw away," interposed the young
parlour-maid. "I put it together again with the scraps
I found in the dusthole."
There was just one instant of absolute
silence, one of those magnetic moments when Fate seems to
have dropped the spool on which she was spinning the threads
of a life, and is just stooping in order to pick it up.
Lady Irene raised a black-bordered
handkerchief to her lips, then said quietly:
"I don't know what you mean, Mary. I
never wear big hats."
"No, my lady," here interposed-the
lady's maid; "but Mary means the one you ordered at
Sanchia's and only wore the once--the day you went to that
concert."
"Which day was that?" asked Lady
Molly, blandly.
"Oh! I couldn't forget that day,"
ejaculated the maid; "her ladyship came home from the
concert--I had undressed her, and she told me that she would
never wear her big hat again--it was too heavy. That same
day Mr. Culledon was murdered."
"That hat would answer our purpose very
well," said Lady Molly, quite calmly. "Perhaps
Mary will go and fetch it, and you had better go and help
her put it on."
The two girls went out of the room without
another word, and there were we three women left facing one
another, with that awful secret, only half-revealed,
hovering in the air like an intangible spectre.
"What are you going to do, Lady
Irene?" asked Lady Molly, after a moment's pause,
during which I literally could hear my own heart beating,
whilst I watched the rigid figure of the widow in deep black
crepe, her face set and white, her eyes fixed steadily on
Lady Molly.
"You can't prove it!" she said
defiantly.
"I think we can," rejoined Lady
Molly, simply; "at any rate, I mean to try. I have two
of the waitresses from Mathis' outside in a cab, and I have
already spoken to the attendant who served you at Sanchia's,
an obscure milliner in a back street near Portland Road. We
know that you were at great pains there to order a hat of
certain dimensions and to your own minute description; it
was a copy of one you had once seen Miss Löwenthal wear
when you met her at your late husband's office. We can prove
that meeting, too. Then we have your maid's testimony that
you wore that same hat once, and once only, the day,
presumably, that you went out to a concert--a statement
which you will find it difficult to substantiate--and also
the day on which your husband was murdered."
"Bah! the public will laugh at
you!" retorted Lady Irene, still defiantly. "You
would not dare to formulate so monstrous a charge!"
"It will not seem monstrous when justice
has weighed in the balance the facts which we can prove. Let
me tell you a few of these, the result of careful
investigation. There is the fact that you knew of Mr.
Culledon's entanglement with Miss Elizabeth Löwenthal,
and did your best to keep it from old Mrs. Steinberg's
knowledge, realizing that any scandal round her favourite
nephew would result in the old lady cutting him--and
therefore you--out of her will. You dismissed a parlour-maid
for the sole reason that she had been present when Miss
Löwenthal was shown into Mr. Culledon's study. There is
the fact that Mrs. Steinberg had so worded her will that, in
the event of her nephew dying before her, her fortune would
devolve on you; the fact that, with Miss Löwenthal's
action for breach of promise against your husband, your last
hope of keeping the scandal from the old lady's ears had
effectually vanished. You saw the fortune eluding your
grasp; you feared Mrs. Steinberg would alter her will. Had
you found the means, and had you dared, would you not rather
have killed the old lady? But discovery would have been
certain. The other crime was bolder and surer. You have
inherited the old lady's millions, for she never knew of her
nephew's earlier peccadilloes.
"All this we can state and prove, and
the history of the hat, bought, and worn one day only, that
same memorable day, and then thrown away."
A loud laugh interrupted her--a laugh that
froze my very marrow.
"There is one fact you have forgotten,
my lady of Scotland Yard," came in sharp, strident
accents from the black-robed figure, which seemed to have
become strangely spectral in the fast gathering gloom which
had been enveloping the luxurious little boudoir.
"Don't omit to mention the fact that the accused took
the law into her own hands."
And before my dear lady and I could rush to
prevent her, Lady Irene Culledon had conveyed something--we
dared not think what--to her mouth.
"Find Danvers quickly, Mary!" said
Lady Molly, calmly. "You'll find him outside. Bring a
doctor back with you."
Even as she spoke Lady Irene, with a cry of
agony, fell senseless in my dear lady's arms.
The doctor, I may tell you, came too late.
The unfortunate woman evidently had a good knowledge of
poisons. She had been determined not to fail; in case of
discovery, she was ready and able to mete out justice to
herself.
I don't think the public ever knew the real
truth about the woman in the big hat. Interest in her went
the way of all things. Yet my dear lady had been right from
beginning to end. With unerring precision she had placed her
dainty finger on the real motive and the real perpetrator of
the crime the ambitious woman who had married solely for
money, and meant to have that money even at the cost of one
of the most dastardly murders that have ever darkened the
criminal annals of this country.
I asked Lady Molly what it was that first
made her think of Lady Irene as the possible murderess. No
one else for a moment had thought her guilty.
"The big hat," replied my dear lady
with a smile. "Had the mysterious woman at Mathis' been
tall, the waitresses would not, one and all, have been
struck by the abnormal size of the hat. The wearer must have
been petite, hence the reason that under a wide
brim only the chin would be visible. I at once sought for a
small woman. Our fellows did not think of that,
because they are men."
You see how simple it all was!
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(End.)
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