The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime

by Michael Sims

  “Wanted, to hear of Margaret Quinion, or her heirs-at-law. She was known to have left the South of England (that she was a Southerner I had learnt by her accent) about the year 1830 to become housekeeper to a married foster-sister, who settled in a midland county (this information, and especially the date, Mrs. Green had to answer for). Address,——” Here followed that of my own solicitors, who had their instructions to keep the lady hanging about the office several days, and until they heard from me.

  I am very much afraid I intended that should the case appear as black against her as I feared it would, she was to be arrested at the offices of the gentlemen to whom she was to apply in order to hear of something to her advantage. And furthermore, I am quite sure that many an unfortunate has been arrested who has been enticed to an office under the promise of something to his or her special benefit.

  For of such misrepresentations is this deplorable world.

  When this advertisement came out, the least acute reader is already aware of the use I made of it.

  I pointed out the news to Mrs. Green, and I have no doubt she digited the intelligence to every soul she met, or rather overtook, in the course of the day. And indeed before evening (when I was honoured with a visit from Mrs. Quinion herself), it was stated with absolute assurance that Mrs. Quinion had come in for a good twenty-two thousand pounds, and a house in Dyot Street, Blooms-bury Square, Lunnun.

  It was odd, and yet natural, that Mrs. Quinion should seek me out. I was the only stranger with whom she was possibly acquainted in the district, and my strangeness to the neighbourhood she had already, from her point of view, turned to account. Therefore (human nature considered) I did not wonder that she tried to turn me to account again. My space is getting contracted, but as the following is the last conversation I had with Mrs. Quinion, I may perhaps be pardoned for here quoting it. Of course I abridge it very considerably. After the usual salutations, and an assurance that Martha suited very fairly, she said,——

  “I have a favour to ask you.”

  “Indeed; pray what is it?”

  “I have received some news which necessarily takes me from home.”

  “I think,” said I, smiling, “I know what that news is,” and I related how I had myself seen the advertisement in the morning.

  I am afraid I adopted this course the more readily to attract her confidence.

  I succeeded.

  “Indeed,” said she, “then since you have identified yourself with that news, I can the more readily ask you the favour I am about to——”

  “And what is that?”

  “I am desirous of going up to town—to London—for a few hours, to see what this affair of the advertisement means, but I hesitate to leave Martha alone in the house. You have started, and perhaps you feel offended that I should ask a stranger such a favour, but the fact is, I do not care to let anyone belonging to the neighbourhood know that I have left the Hall—it will be for only twenty-four hours. The news might reach Mr. Petleigh’s ears, and I desire that he should hear nothing about it. You see the position in which I am placed. If, my dear lady, you can oblige me I shall be most grateful; and, as you are staying here, it seemed—to—me——”

  Here she trailed off into silence.

  The cunning creature! How well she hid her real motive—the desire to keep those who knew of the catastrophe out of the Hall, because she feared their curiosity.

  Started! Yes, indeed I had started. At best I had expected that I should have to divulge who I was to the person whom she would leave in the place did the advertisement take, and here by the act of what she thought was her forethought, she was actually placing herself at my mercy, while I still remained screened in all my actions referring to her. For I need not say that had I had to declare who I was, and had I failed, all further slow-trapping in this affair would have been at an end—the “game” would have taken the alarm, and there would have been an end to the business.

  To curtail here needless particulars, that same evening at nine I was installed in the housekeeper’s parlour, and she had set out for the first station past Tram, to which she was going to walk across the fields in order to avoid all suspicion.

  She had not got a hundred yards away from the house, before I had turned up my cuffs, and I and Martha (a couple of detectives) were hard at work, trying to find that box.

  Her keys we soon found, in a work-basket, and lightly covered with a handkerchief.

  Now, this mode of hiding should have given me a clue.

  But it did not.

  For three hours—from nine till midnight, we hunted for that box, and unsuccessfully.

  In every room that, from the absence of certain dusty evidences, we knew must have been recently opened—in every passage, cellar, corridor, and hall we hunted.

  No box.

  I am afraid that we even looked in places where it could not have gone—such as under beds.

  But we found it at last, and then the turret-clock had gone twelve about a quarter of an hour.

  It was in her bedroom; and what is more, it formed her dressing-table.

  And I have no doubt I should have missed it had it not been that she had been imperfect in her concealment.

  Apparently she comprehended the value of what I may call “audacity hiding”—that is, such concealment that an ordinary person searching would never dream of looking for the object where it was to be found.

  For instance, the safest hiding-place in a drawing-room for a bank note, would be the bottom of a loosely-filled card-basket. Nobody would dream of looking for it in such a place.

  The great enigma-novelist, Edgar Poe, illustrates this style of concealment where he makes the holder of a letter place it in a card-rack over the mantelpiece, when he knows his house will be ransacked, and every inch of it gone over to find the document.

  Mrs. Quinion was evidently acquainted with this mode of concealment.

  Indeed, I believe I should not have found the box had it not been that she had overdone her unconcealed-concealment. For she had used a bright pink slip with a white flounce over it to complete the appearance of a dressing-table, having set the box up on one side.

  And therefore the table attracted my notice each time I passed and saw it. As it was Martha, in passing between me and the box, swept the drapery away with her petticoats, and showed a black corner.

  The next moment the box was discovered.

  I have no doubt that being a strong-minded woman she could not endure to have the box out of her sight while waiting for an opportunity to get rid of it.

  It was now evident that my explanation of the case, to the effect that young Petleigh had been imitating the action of the tale, was correct.

  The box was quite large enough to contain a man lying with his legs somewhat up; there was room to turn in the box; and, finally, there were about two dozen holes round the box, about the size of a crown piece, and which were hidden by the coarse black canvas with which the box was covered.

  Furthermore, the box was closeable from within by means of a bolt, and therefore openable from within by the same means.

  Furthermore, if any further evidence were wanting, there was a pillow at the bottom of the box (obviously for the head to rest on), and from a hole the feathers had escaped over the bottom of the box, which was lined with black and white striped linen bed-tick, this material being cut away from the holes.

  I was now at no loss to comprehend the fluff upon the unhappy young man’s coat.

  And, finally, there was the most damnifying evidence of all.

  For in the black canvas over one of the holes there was a jagged cut.

  “Lie down, Martha,” said I, “in the box, with your head at this end.”

  “Why, whatever——”

  “Tut—tut,—girl; do as I tell you.”

  She did; and using the stick of a parasol which lay on the dressing-table, I found that by passing it through the hole its end reached the officer in exactly the region by a wound i
n which young Mr. Petleigh had been killed.

  Of course the case was now clear.

  After the young woman, Dinah, had gone to bed, the housekeeper must have had her doubts about the chest, and have inspected it.

  Beyond all question, the young man knew the hour at which the housekeeper retired, and was waiting perhaps for eleven o’clock to strike by the old turret-clock before he ventured out—to commit what?

  It appeared to me clear, bearing in mind the butler’s letter, to rob the plate-chest No. 13, which I inferred had been left behind, a fact of which the young fellow might naturally be aware.

  The plan doubtless was to secure the plate without any alarm, to let himself out of the Hall by some mode long-since well-known to him, and then to meet his confederates, and share with them the plunder, leaving the chest to tell the tale of the robbery, and to exculpate the housekeeper.

  It struck me as a well-executed scheme, and one far beyond the ordinary run of robbery plots.

  What had caused that scheme to fail?

  I could readily comprehend that a strong-minded woman like Quinion would rely rather upon her own than any other assistance.

  I could comprehend her discovery; perhaps a low-muttered blasphemy on the part of the young man; or maybe she may have heard his breathing.

  Then, following out her action, I could readily suppose that once aware of the danger near her she would prepare to meet it.

  I could follow her, silent and self-possessed, in the hall, asking herself what she should do.

  I could mark her coming to the conclusion that there must be holes in the box through which the evil-doer could breathe, and I apprehended readily enough that she had little need to persuade herself that she had a right to kill one who might be there to kill her.

  Then in my mind’s eye I could follow her seeking the weapon, and feeling all about the box for a hole.

  She finds it.

  She fixes the point for a thrust.

  A movement—and the manslaughter is committed.

  That the unhappy wretch had time to open the box is certain, and doubtless it was at that moment the fierce woman, still clutching the shaft of the arrow, or barb—call it what you will—leant back, and so withdrew the shaft from the rankling iron.

  Did the youth recognise her? Had he tried to do so?

  From the peacefulness of the face, as described at the inquest, I imagined that he had, after naturally unbolting the lid, fallen back, and in a few moments died.

  Then must have followed her awful discovery, succeeded by her equally awful determination to hide the fault of her master’s, and perhaps of her own sister’s son.

  And so it came to pass that she dragged the youth’s dead body out into the cold morning atmosphere, as the bleak dawn was filling the air, and the birds were fretfully awaking.

  No doubt, had a sharp detective been at once employed, she would not have escaped detection.

  As it was she had so far avoided discovery.

  And I could easily comprehend that a powerfully-brained woman like herself would feel no compunction and little grief for what she had done—no compunction, because the act was an accident; little grief, because she must have felt she had saved the youth from a life of misery—for a son who at twenty robs a father, however bad, is rarely at forty, if he lives so long, an honest man.

  But though I had made this discovery I could do nothing so far against the housekeeper, whom of course it was my duty to arrest, if I could convince myself she had committed manslaughter. I was not to be ruled by any feeling of screening the family—the motive indirectly which had actuated Quinion, for, strong-minded as she was, it appeared to me that she would not have hesitated to admit the commission of the act which she had completed had the burglar, as I may call the young man, been an ordinary felon, and unknown to her.

  No, the box had no identification with the death, because it exhibited no unanswerable signs of its connexion with that catastrophe.

  So far, how was it identifiable (beyond my own circumstantial evidence, known only to myself) with the murder?

  The only particle of evidence was that given by the girl, who could or could not swear to the box having been brought on the previous day, and to the housekeeper saying that it had been taken away again—a suspicious circumstance certainly, but one which, without corroborative evidence, was of little or indeed no value.

  As to the jagged cut in the air-hole, in the absence of all blood-stain it was not mentionable.

  Corroborative evidence I must have, and that corroborative evidence would best take the shape of the discovery of the shaft of the weapon which had caused death, or a weapon of similar character.

  This, the box being found, was now my work.

  “Is there any armoury in the house, Martha?”

  “No; but there’s lots of arms in the library.”

  We had not searched in the library for the box, because I had taken Martha’s assurance that no boxes were there.

  When we reached the place, I remarked immediately—“What a damp place.”

  As I said so I observed that there were windows on each side of the room, and that the end of the chamber was circular.

  “Well it may be,” said Martha, “for there’s water all round it—a kind of fountain-pond, with gold fish in it. The library,” continued Martha, who was more sharp than educated, “butts out of the house.”

  Between each couple of book-cases there was fixed a handsome stand of arms, very picturesque and taking to the eyes.

  There were modern arms, antique armour, and foreign arms of many kinds; but I saw no arrows, though in the eagerness of my search I had the chandelier, which still held some old yellow wax-candles, lighted up.

  No arrow.

  But my guardian angel, if there be such good creatures, held tight on to my shoulder that night, and by a strange chance, yet not a tithe so wonderful as that accident by which the woman was saved from a bullet by a piece of just stolen iron, the origin of the weapon used by Quinion came to light.

  We had been searching amongst the stands of arms for some minutes, when I had occasion suddenly to cry——

  “Hu-u-sh! what are you about?”

  For my confederate had knocked off its hook a large drum, which I had noticed very coquettishly finished off a group of flags, and cymbals, and pikes.

  “I’m very sorry,” she said, as I ran to pick up the still reverberating drum with that caution which, even when useless, generally stands by the detective, when——

  There, sticking through the drum, and hooked by its barbs, was the point of such a weapon—the exact counterpart—as had been used to kill young Petleigh.

  Had a ghost, were there such a thing, appeared I had not been more astounded.

  The drum was ripped open in a moment, and there came to light an iron arrow with a wooden shaft about eighteen inches long, this shaft being gaily covered with bits of tinsel and coloured paper.

  [I may here at once state, what I ultimately found out—for in spite of our danger I kept hold of my prize and brought it out of battle with me—that this barb was one of such as are used by picadors in Spanish bull-fights for exciting the bull. The barbs cause the darts to stick in the flesh and skin. The cause of the decoration of the haft can now readily be comprehended. Beyond all doubt the arrow used by Quinion and the one found by me were a couple placed as curiosities amongst the other arms. The remaining one the determined housekeeper had used as suiting best her purpose, the other (which I found) had doubtless at some past time been used by an amateur picador, perhaps the poor dead youth himself, with the drum for an imaginary bull, and within it the dart had remained till it was to reappear as a witness against the guilty and yet guiltless housekeeper.

  I had barely grasped my prize when Martha said—“What a smell of burning!”

  “Good God!” I cried, “we have set the house on fire!”

  The house was on fire, but we were not to blame.

  We ran to the d
oor.

  We were locked in!

  What brought her back I never learnt, for I never saw or heard of her again. I guess that the motion of the train quickened her thought (it does mine), that she suspected—that she got out at the station some distance from Tram, and that she took a post-chaise back to Petleighcote.

  All this, however, is conjecture.

  But if not she, who locked us in? We could not have done it ourselves.

  We were locked in, and I attribute the act to her—though how she entered the house I never learnt.

  The house was on fire, and we were surrounded by water.

  This tale is the story of the “Unknown Weapon,” and therefore I cannot logically here go into any full explanation of our escape. Suffice it to our honour as detectives to say, that we did not lose our presence of mind, and that by the aid of the library tables, chairs, big books, &c., we made a point of support on one side the narrow pond for the library ladder to rest on, while the other end reached shallow water.

  Having made known the history of the “Unknown Weapon,” my tale is done; but my reader might fancy my work incomplete did I not add a few more words.

  I have no doubt that Quinion returning, her quick mind in but a few moments came to the conclusion that the only way to save her master’s honour was the burning of the box by the incendiarism of the Hall.

  The Petleighs were an old family, I learnt, with almost Spanish notions of family honour.

  Effectually did she complete her work.

  I acknowledge she conquered me. She might have burnt the same person to a cinder into the bargain; and, upon my word, I think she would have grieved little had she achieved that purpose.

  For my part in the matter—I carried it no further.

  At the inquiry, I appeared as the lady who had taken care of the house while Mrs. Quinion went to look after her good fortune; and I have no doubt her disappearance was unendingly connected with my advertisement in the Times.

  I need not say that had I found Quinion I would have done my best to make her tremble.

  I have only one more fact to relate—and it is an important one. It is this——