The verdict at the inquest was of course one of accidental death, the coroner and jury expressing the greatest possible sympathy with Lady Foremeere and Miss St. Jude. It was only subsequently that one or two facts came to light which appeared obscure and unimportant to the man in the street, but which for me, in the light of my conversation with the Man in the Corner, bore earnest significance.
It seems that an hour or two before the accident, the chief superintendent of police had called with two constables at Meere Court and was closeted for a considerable time with Lord Foremeere in the smoking-room. And Spinks, the butler, who subsequently let the three men out, noticed that one of the constables was carrying a coat and a hat, which Spinks knew were old ones belonging to his lordship.
Then I knew that the funny creature in the loud check tweeds and baggy trousers had found the true solution of the ‘Hardacres’ mystery.
Oh, and you wish to know what was the sequel to the pretty love story between April St. Jude and Arthur Clarke. Well, you know, she married Amos Rottenberg, the New York banker last year, and Clarke runs a successful garage now somewhere in the North. A kind friend must have lent him the capital wherewith to make a start. I can make a shrewd guess who that kind friend was.
II
The Mystery of the Ingres Masterpiece
I
I did not see the Man in the Corner for several weeks after that strange meeting in the blameless teashop. The exigencies of my work kept me busy, and somehow the sensational suicide of Lord Foremeere which had appeared like the logical sequence of the spook-like creature’s deductions, had left a painful impression on my mind. Entirely illogically, I admit, I felt that the Man in the Corner had had something to do with the tragedy.
But when in March of that year we were all thrilled by the mystery of the valuable Ingres picture, and wherever one went one heard conjectures and explanations of that extraordinary case, my thoughts very naturally reverted to the funny creature and his bit of string, and I found myself often wondering what his explanation of what seemed a truly impenetrable mystery could possibly be.
The facts certainly were very puzzling in themselves. When first I was deputed by the Express Post to put them clearly and succinctly before its readers, I found the task strangely difficult; this, for the simple reason that I myself could not see daylight through it all, and often did I stand in front of the admirable reproduction which I possess of the Ingres La Fiancée wondering if those smiling lips would not presently speak and tell me how an original and exquisite picture could possibly have been in two different places at one and the same time.
For that, in truth, was the depth of the puzzle. We will, if you please, call the original owners of the picture the Duke and Duchess Paul de Rochechouart. That, of course, is not their name, but, as you all know what they really are, it matters not what I call them for the purpose of recording their singular adventure.
His Grace had early in life married a Swedish lady of great talent and singular beauty. She was an artist of no mean order, having exhibited pictures of merit both at the Paris Salon and at the Royal Academy in London; she was also an accomplished musician, and had published one or two very charming volumes of poetry.
The Duke and his wife were devoted to one another; they lived for the greater part of the year at their beautiful chateau on the Oise, not far from Chantilly, and here they entertained a great deal, more after the homely and hospitable manner of English country houses than in the more formal foreign fashion. Here, too, they had collected some rare furniture, tapestries, and objects of art and vertu, amongst which certain highly-prized pictures of the French School of the Nineteenth Century.
The war, we may imagine, left the Duc de Rochechouart and his charming wife a good deal poorer, as it left most other people in France, and soon it became known amongst the art dealers of London, Paris and New York that they had decided to sell one or two of their most valuable pictures; foremost amongst these was the celebrated La Fiancée by Ingres.
Immediately there was what is technically known as a ramp after the picture. Dealers travelled backwards and forwards from all the great continental cities to the chateau on the Oise to view the picture. Offers were made for it by cable, telegram and telephone, and the whole art world was kept in a flutter over what certainly promised to be a sensational deal.
Alas! as with most of the beautiful possessions of this impoverished old world, the coveted prize was destined to go to the country that had the longest purse. A certain Mr. Aaron Jacobs, the Chicago multi-millionaire, presently cabled an offer of half a million dollars for the picture, an offer which, rumour had it, the Duc de Rochechouart had since accepted. Mr. Jacobs was said to be a charming, highly-cultured man, a great art connoisseur and a great art lover, and presently one heard that he had already set sail for Europe with the intention of fetching away his newly-acquired treasure himself.
On the very day following Mr. Jacobs’ arrival as the guest of the Duc and Duchesse de Rochechouart at the latter’s chateau, the world-famous picture was stolen in broad daylight by a thief or thieves who contrived to make away with their booty without leaving the slightest clue, so it was said, that might put the police on their track. The picture was cut clean out of the frame, an operation which must have taken at least two or three minutes. It always used to hang above the tall chimneypiece in the Duchesse’s studio, but that self-same morning it had been lifted down and placed on an easel in the dining-hall, no doubt for closer inspection by the purchaser. This easel stood in a corner of the hall, close to one of the great windows that overlooked the gardens of the chateau.
The amazing point in this daring theft was that a garden fête and tennis tournament were in progress at the time. A crowd of guests was spread all over the lawns and grounds in full view of the windows of the hall, and, as far as the preliminary investigations were able to establish, there were not more than twenty or twenty-five minutes at most during which some servant or other inmate of the chateau had not either actually been through the hall or had occasion to observe the windows.
The dining-hall itself has monumental doors which open on the great central vestibule, and immediately facing it similar doors give on the library. The marble vestibule runs right through the centre of the main building, it has both a front and a garden entrance, and all the reception rooms open out of it, right and left. Close to the front door entrance is one of the main ways into the kitchens and offices.
Now right away until half-past four on that fateful afternoon the servants were up and down the vestibule, busy with arrangements for tea which they were serving outside on the lawns. The tennis tournament was then drawing to a close, the Duchess was on the lawn with her guests, dispensing tea, and at half-past four precisely the Duc de Rochechouart came into the chateau by way of the garden entrance, went across the vestibule and into the library to fetch the prizes which were to be distributed to the victors in the tournament, and which were locked up in his desk. The doors of the dining-hall were wide open and the Duc walking past them peeped into the room. The picture was in its place then, and he gave a glance at it as he passed, conscious of a pang of regret at the thought that he must needs part with this precious treasure. It took the Duke some little time to sort the prizes, and as in the meanwhile the afternoon post had come in and a few letters had been laid on his desk, he could not resist the desire to glance through his correspondence. On the whole he thought that he might have been in the library about a quarter of an hour or perhaps more. He had closed the door when he entered the room, and when he came out again he certainly noticed that the doors of the dining-hall were shut. But there was nothing in this to arouse his suspicions, and with the neatly tied parcels containing the prizes under his arm, he recrossed the vestibule and went out once more into the garden.
At five o’clock M. Amede, the chief butler, had occasion to go into the dining-hall to fetch a particular silver tray which he required. He owned to being astonished at finding the doors
closed, because he had been past them a quarter of an hour before that and they were wide open then. However, he entered the room without any serious misgivings, but the next moment he nearly fainted with horror at sight of the empty frame upon the easel. The very first glance had indeed revealed the nefarious deed. The picture had not been moved out of its frame, it was the canvas that had been cut. M. Amede, however, knowing what was due to his own dignity did not disturb the entire household then and there; he made his way quietly back into the garden where the distribution of prizes after the tournament was taking place and, seizing a favourable opportunity, he caught M. le Duc’s eye and imparted to him the awful news.
Even so nothing was said until after the guests had departed. By the Duke’s orders the doors leading into the dining-hall were locked, and to various enquiries after the masterpiece made by inquisitive ladies, the evasive answer was given that the picture was in the hands of the packers.
There remained the house party, which, of course, included Mr. Aaron Jacobs. There were also several ladies and gentlemen staying at the chateau, and before they all went up to their rooms to dress for dinner, they were told what had happened. In the meanwhile the police had already been sent for, and M. le Commissaire was conducting his preliminary investigations. The rooms and belongings of all the servants were searched, and, with the consent of the guests themselves, this search was extended to their rooms. A work of art worth half a million dollars could not thus be allowed to disappear and the thief to remain undetected for the sake of social conventions, and as the law stands in France any man may be guilty of a crime until he be proved innocent.
II
The theft of the Ingres masterpiece was one of those cases which interest the public in every civilised country, and here in England where most people are bitten with the craze for criminal investigation it created quite a sensation in its way.
I remember that when we all realised for the first time that the picture had in very truth disappeared, and that the French police, despite its much vaunted acumen, had entirely failed to find the slightest trace of the thief, we at once began to look about for a romantic solution of the mystery. M. le Duc de Rochechouart and his pretty Duchess had above all our deepest sympathies, for it had very soon transpired that neither the Ingres masterpiece, nor indeed any of the Duke’s valuable collection of art works, was insured. This fact seems almost incredible to English minds, with whom every kind of insurance is part and parcel of the ordinary household routine. But abroad the system is not nearly so far-reaching or so extended, and there are numberless households in every degree of the social scale who never dream of spending money on insurances save, perhaps, against fire.
Be that as it may, the fact remained that La Fiancée was not insured against theft, and that through the action of an unknown miscreant the Duc and Duchesse de Rochechouart would, unless the police did ultimately succeed in tracing the stolen masterpiece, find themselves the poorer by half a million dollars. With their usual lack of logic, readers of the halfpenny Press promptly turned their attention to Mr. Aaron Jacobs, the intending purchaser. Being a Chicago multi-millionaire does not, it appears, render a man immune from the temptation of acquiring by dishonest means the things which he covets. Anyway, the public decided that Mr. Jacobs was not so rich as he was reputed to be, but that, on the other hand, being as greedy for the possession of European works of art as any ogre for human flesh, he had stolen the picture which he could not afford to buy; and ten, or mayhap fifteen years hence, when the story of the mysterious theft would have been consigned to oblivion, Mr. Jacobs would display the masterpiece in his gallery. How this was to be accomplished without the subsequent intervention of the police those wiseacres did not attempt to explain.
The mystery remained impenetrable for close on two years. Many other sensations, criminal or otherwise, had, during that time, driven the affair of the Ingres masterpiece out of the public mind. Then suddenly the whole story was revived and in a manner which proved far more exciting than anyone had surmised. It was linked—though the European public did not know this—with the death in July 1919, of Charles B. Tupper, the head of one of the greatest cinematograph organisations in the States—a man who for the past few years had controlled over two thousand theatres, and had made millions in his day. Some time during the war he had married the well-known cinema star, Anita Hodgkins, a beautiful entirely uneducated girl who hailed from Upper Tooting. The will of Mr. Charles B. Tupper was proved for a fabulous sum, and, as soon as his affairs were settled, Mrs. Tupper, who presumably had remained Cockney at heart as well as in speech, set sail for England with the intention of settling down once more in the country of her birth. She bought Holt Manor, a magnificent house in Buckinghamshire, sent for all her splendid furniture and belongings from America, and, early in 1920, when her palatial residence was ready for occupation, she married Lord Polchester, a decadent young nincompoop, who was said to have fallen in love with her when he first saw her face on the screen.
Presumably Mrs. Anita Tupper née Hodgkins hugged herself with the belief that once she was styled my lady she would automatically become a social star as she had been a cinema one in the past. But in this harmless ambition she was at first disappointed. Though she had furnished her new house lavishly, though paragraphs appeared in all the halfpenny and weekly Press giving details of the sumptuous establishment of which the new Lady Polchester was queen, though she appeared during the London season of 1920 at several official functions and went to an evening Court that year, wearing pearls that might have been envied by an empress, she found that in Buckinghamshire the best people were shy of calling on her, and the bits of pasteboard that were from time to time left at her door came chiefly from the neighbouring doctors, parsons, or retired London tradespeople, or from mothers with marriageable daughters who looked forward to parties at the big house and consequent possible matrimonial prizes.
This went on for a time and then Lady Polchester, wishing no doubt to test the intentions of the county towards her, launched out invitations for a garden party! The invitations included the London friends she had recently made, and a special train from Paddington was to bring those friends to the party. Among these was Mr. Aaron Jacobs. He had known the late Charles B. Tupper over in the States, and had met Lady Polchester more recently at one of the great functions at the United States Embassy in London. She had interested him with a glowing account of her splendid collection of works of art, of pictures and antique furniture which she had inherited from her first husband and which now adorned her house in Buckinghamshire, and when she asked him down to her party he readily accepted, more I imagine out of curiosity to see the objects in which he was as keenly interested as ever, than from a desire to establish closer acquaintanceship with the lady.
The garden party at Holt Manor, as the place was called, does not appear to have been a great social success. For one thing it rained the whole afternoon, and the military band engaged for the occasion proved too noisy for indoor entertainment. But some of the guests were greatly interested in the really magnificent collection of furniture, tapestries, pictures and works of art which adorned the mansion, and after tea Lady Polchester graciously conducted them all over the house, pointing out herself the most notable pieces in the collection and never failing to mention the price at which the late Mr. Charles B. Tupper purchased the work of art in question.
And that is when the sensation occurred. Following their hostess, the guests had already seen and duly admired two really magnificent Van Dycks that hung in the hall, when she turned to them and said, with a flourish of her plentifully be-gemmed hands:
“You must come into the library and see the picture for which Mr. Tupper gave over half a million dollars. I never knew I had it, as he never had it taken out of its case, and I never saw it until this year when it came over with all my other things from our house in New York. Lord Polchester had it unpacked and hung in the library. I don’t care much about it myself, and the late M
r. Tupper hadn’t the time to enjoy his purchase, because he died two days after the picture arrived in New York, and, as I say, he never had it unpacked. He bought it for use in a commercial undertaking which he had in mind at one time, then the scheme fell through, and I am sure I never thought any more about the old picture.”
With that she led the way into the library, a nobly-proportioned room lined with books in choice bindings, and with a beautiful Adams chimneypiece, above which hung a picture.
Of course there were some people present who had never heard of the stolen Ingres, but there must have been a few who, as they entered the room, must literally have gasped with astonishment, for there it certainly was. La Fiancée with her marvellously painted Eastern draperies, her exquisitely drawn limbs and enigmatic smile, was smiling down from the canvas, just as if she had every right to be in the house of the ex-cinema star, and as if there had not been a gigantic fuss about her throughout the whole art world of Europe.
We may take it that the person by far the most astonished at that moment was Mr. Aaron Jacobs. But he was too thoroughly a gentleman and too much a man of the world to betray his feelings then, and I suppose that those who, like himself, had thought they recognised the stolen masterpiece, did not like to say anything either until they were more sure: English people in all grades of society being proverbially averse to being what they would call “mixed up” in any kind of a fuss. Certain it is that nothing was said at the moment to disturb Lady Polchester’s complacent equanimity, and after a while the party broke up and the guests departed.
Of course people thought that Mr. Aaron Jacobs should have informed Lord Polchester of his intentions before he went to the police. But Lord Polchester was such a nonentity in his own household, such a frivolous fool, and, moreover, addicted to drink and violent fits of temper, that those who knew him easily realised how a sensible businessman like Mr. Aaron Jacobs would avoid any personal explanations with him.
Unravelled Knots Page 3
