“All this Miss Penny recounted in her letters to her friends, with a wealth of detail and a marvellous profusion of adjectives, and finally in one of her letters there was mention of a certain Russian grandee—Prince Orsoff by name—who was paying Louisa marked attention. He also was staying at the ‘Paris,’ appeared very wealthy, and was obviously of very high rank for he never mixed with the crowd which was more than usually brilliant this year in Monte Carlo. This exclusiveness on his part was all the more flattering to the Smithsons, and, when he apprised them of his intention to spend the season in London, they had asked him to come and visit them in Folkestone, where Mrs. Smithson intended to take a house presently and there to entertain lavishly during the summer.
“After this preliminary announcement from Miss Penny, Louisa herself wrote a letter to Henry Carter. It was quite a pleasant chatty letter, telling him of their marvellous doings abroad, and of her own social successes. It did not do more, however, than vaguely hint at the Russian Prince, his distinguished appearance and obvious wealth. Nevertheless it plunged the unfortunate young man into the utmost depths of despair, and according to his brother John’s subsequent account the latter had a terrible time with young Henry that winter. John himself was very busy with journalistic work which kept him away sometimes for days and weeks on end from the little home in London which the two brothers had set up for themselves with the money derived from the sale of the tailoring business. And Henry’s state of mind did at times seriously alarm his brother, for he would either threaten to do away with himself, or vow that he would be even with that accursed foreigner.
“At the end of March, the Smithsons returned to England. During the interval Mrs. Smithson had made all arrangements for taking ‘The Towers,’ a magnificently furnished house facing the Leas at Folkestone, and here she and Louisa installed themselves preparatory to launching their invitations for the various tea and tennis parties, dinners and dances which they proposed to give during the summer.
“One might really quite truthfully say that the eyes of all Folkestone were fixed upon the two ladies. Their Paris dresses, their hats, their jewellery was the chief subject of conversation at tea-tables, and of course everyone was talking about the Russian Prince, who—Mrs. Smithson had confided this to a bosom friend—was coming over to England for the express purpose of proposing to Louisa.
“There was quite a flutter of excitement on a memorable Friday afternoon when it was rumoured that Henry Carter had come down for a weekend, and had put up at a small hotel down by the harbour. Of course, he had come to see Louisa Smithson; everyone knew that, and no doubt he wished to make a final appeal to her love for him, which could not be entirely dead yet. Within twenty-four hours, however, it was common gossip that young Henry had presented himself at The Towers and been refused admittance. The ladies were out, the butler said, and he did not know when they would be home. This was on the Saturday. On the Sunday Henry walked about on the Leas all morning in the hope of seeing Louisa or her mother, and as he failed to do so he called again in the early part of the afternoon: he was told the ladies were resting. Later he came again and the ladies had gone out, and on the Monday, as presumably business called him back to town, he left by the early-morning train, without having seen his former fiancée. Indeed people from that moment took it for granted that young Henry had formally been given his conge.
“Toward the middle of April Prince Orsoff arrived in London. Within two days he telephoned to Mrs. Smithson to ask her when he might come to pay his respects. A day was fixed and he came to ‘The Towers’ to lunch. He came again, and at his third visit he formally proposed to Miss Louisa Smithson and was accepted. The wedding was to take place almost immediately, and the very next day the exciting announcement had gone the round of the Smithsons’ large circle of friends, not only in Folkestone but also in London.
“The effect of the news appears to have been staggering as far as the unfortunate Henry Carter was concerned. In the picturesque language of Mrs. Hicks, the middle-aged charlady who ‘did’ for the two brothers in their little home in Chelsea, ‘’e carried on something awful.’ She even went so far as to say that she feared he might ‘put ’is ’ead in the gas oven,’ and that, as Mr. John was away at the time, she took the precaution every day when she left to turn the gas off at the meter.
“The following weekend Henry came down to Folkestone and again took up his quarters in the small hotel by the harbour. On the Saturday afternoon he called at ‘The Towers’ and refused to take ‘No’ for an answer when he asked to see Miss Smithson. Indeed he seems literally to have pushed his way into the drawing-room where the ladies were having tea. According to statements made subsequently by the butler, there ensued a terrible scene between Henry and his former fiancée, at the very height of which, as luck would have it, who should walk in but Prince Orsoff.
“That elegant gentleman, however, seems to have behaved on that trying occasion with perfect dignity and tact, making it his chief business to reassure the ladies and paying no heed to Henry’s recriminations, which presently degenerated into vulgar abuse and ended in violent threats. At last, with the aid of the majestic butler, the young man was thrust out of the house, but even on the doorstep he turned and raised a menacing fist in the direction of Prince Orsoff and said loudly enough for more than one person to hear:
“‘Wait! I’ll be even with that—foreigner yet.’
“It must indeed have been a terrifying scene for two sensitive and refined ladies like Mrs and Miss Smithson to witness. Later on, after the Prince himself had taken his leave, the butler was rung for by Mrs. Smithson who told him that under no circumstances was Mr. Henry Carter ever to be admitted inside ‘The Towers.’
“However, a Sunday or two afterwards, Mr. John Carter called and Mrs. Smithson saw him. He said that he had come down expressly from London in order to apologise for his brother’s conduct. Harry, he said, was deeply contrite that he should thus have lost control over himself, his broken heart was his only excuse. After all, he had been and still was deeply in love with Louisa, and no man, worth his salt, could see the girl he loved turning her back on him without losing some of that equanimity which should of course be the characteristic of every gentleman.
“In fact Mr. John Carter spoke so well and so persuasively that Mrs. Smithson and Louisa, who were at bottom a quite worthy pair of women, agreed to let bygones be bygones, and said that, if Henry would only behave himself in the future, there was no reason why he should not remain their friend.
“This appeared a quite satisfactory state of things, and over in the little house in Chelsea Mrs. Hicks gladly noted that ‘Mr. ’Enry seemed more like ’isself afterwards.’ The very next weekend the two brothers went down to Folkestone together, and they called at ‘The Towers’ so that Henry might offer his apologies in person. The two gentlemen on that occasion were actually asked to stay to tea.
“Indeed it seems as if Henry had entirely turned over a new leaf, and when presently the gracious invitation came for both brothers to come to the wedding they equally graciously accepted.”
III
“The day fixed for the happy event was now approaching. The large circle of acquaintances, friends, and hangers-on which the Smithsons had gathered around them were all agog with excitement, wedding-presents were pouring in by every post. A kind of network of romance had been woven around the personalities of the future bride, her mother, and the Russian Prince. The wealth of the Smithsons had been magnified a hundredfold, and Prince Orsoff was reputed to be a brother of the late Czar, who had made good his escape out of Russia bringing away with him most of the Crown jewels, which he would presently bestow upon his wife. And so on, ad infinitum.
“And upon the top of all that excitement and that gossip, and marvellous tales akin to the Arabian Nights, came the weddingday with its awful culminating tragedy.
“The Russian Prince had been murdered and his body so cleverly disposed of that in spite of the most strenuous e
fforts on the part of the police not a trace of it could be found.
“That robbery had been the main motive of the crime was quickly enough established. The Smithsons—mother and daughter—had at once supplied the detective in charge of the case with proofs as to that. It seems that as soon as the unfortunate Prince had become engaged to Louisa he asked that the marriage should take place without delay. He explained that his dearest friend, Mr. Schumann, the great international financier, had offered him shares in one of the greatest post-war undertakings which had ever been floated in Europe, and which would bring in to the fortunate shareholders a net income of not less than £10,000 yearly for every £10,000 invested; Mr. Schumann himself owned one half of all the shares and had, by a most wonderful act of disinterested generosity, allowed his bosom friend, Prince Orsoff, to have a few—a concession, by the way, which he had only granted to two other favoured personages, one being the Prince of Wales and the other the President of the French Republic. Of course to receive £10,000 yearly for every £10,000 invested was too wonderful for words; the President of the French Republic had been so delighted with this chance of securing a fortune that he had put two million francs into the concern, and the Prince of Wales had put in £500,000.
“And it was so wonderfully secure, as otherwise the British Government would not have allowed the Prince of Wales to invest such a vast sum of money if the business was only speculative. Security and fortune beyond the dreams of thrift! It was positively dazzling. No wonder that this vision of untold riches made poor Mrs. Smithson’s mouth water, the more so as she was quite shrewd enough to realise that at the rate she was going her share in the £15,000 left by the late worthy grocer would soon fade into nothingness. In the past few months she and Louisa had spent considerably over £4,000 between them, and once her daughter was married to a quasi-royal personage, good old Mrs. Smithson did not see herself retiring into comparative obscurity on a few hundreds a year to be jeered at by all her friends.
“So she and Louisa talked the matter over together, and then they talked it over with Prince Orsoff on the occasion of his visit about ten days before the wedding. The Prince at first was very doubtful if the great Mr. Schumann would be willing to make a further sacrifice in the cause of friendship. He was an international financier, accustomed to deal in millions; he would not look favourably—the Prince feared—at a few thousands. Mrs. Smithson’s entire fortune now only consisted of about £5,000; this she was unwilling to admit to the wealthy and aristocratic future son-in-law. So the two ladies decided to pool their capital and then they begged that Prince Orsoff should ask the great Mr. Schumann whether he would condescend to receive £10,000 for investment in Mrs. Smithson’s name in his great undertaking.
“Fortunately the great financier did condescend to do this—he really was more of a philanthropist than a businessman—but, of course, he could not be kept waiting, the money must reach him in Paris not later than May the 20th, which was the very day fixed for the wedding. It was all terribly difficult, and Mrs. Smithson was at first in despair as she feared she could not arrange to sell out her securities in time, and the difficulties were increased a hundredfold because, as Prince Orsoff explained to her, Mr. Schumann would even at the eleventh hour refuse to allow her to participate in the huge fortune if he found that she had talked about the affair over in England. The business had to be kept a profound secret for international reasons, in fact, if any detail relating to the business and to Mr. Schumann’s participation in it were to become known, the whole of Europe would once more be plunged into war.
“To make a long story short, Mrs. Smithson and Louisa sold out all their securities, amounting between them to £10,000. Then they went up to London, drew the money out of their bank, changed it themselves into French money—so as to make it more convenient for Mr. Schumann—and handed the entire sum over to Prince Orsoff on the eve of the wedding. Of course such fatuous imbecility would be unbelievable if it did not occur so frequently: vain, silly women, who have never moved outside their own restricted circle are always the ready prey of plausible rascals.
“Anyway, in this case the Smithsons returned to Folkestone that day, perfectly happy and with never a thought of anything but contentment for the present and prosperity in the future. The wedding was to be the next day; the bridegroom-elect was coming down by the midday train with his best man, whom he vaguely described as secretary to the Russian Embassy, and the bridal pair would start for Paris by the afternoon boat.
“All this the Smithsons related to the police inspector in charge of the case and subsequently to the Scotland Yard detective, with a wealth of details and a profusion of lamentations not unmixed with expletives directed against the unknown assassin, and thief. For indeed there was no doubt in the minds of Louisa and her mother that the unfortunate Prince, on whom the girl still lavished the wealth of her trustful love, had been murdered for the sake of the vast wealth which he had upon his person. It must have amounted to millions of francs, Mrs. Smithson declared, for he had the Prince of Wales’ money upon him also, and probably that of the President of the French Republic, and at first she and Louisa fastened their suspicions upon the anonymous best man, the so-called secretary of the Russian Embassy. Even when they were presently made to realise that there was no such thing as a Russian Embassy in London these days, and that minute inquiries both at home and abroad regarding the identity of a Prince Orsoff led to no result whatever, they repudiated with scorn the suggestion put forth by the police that their beloved Russian Prince was nothing more or less than a clever crook who had led them by the nose, and that in all probability he had not been murdered in the train but had succeeded in jumping out of it and making good his escape across country.
“This the Smithson ladies would not admit for a moment, and with commendable logic they argued that if Prince Orsoff had been a crook and had intended to make away with their money he could have done that easily enough without getting into a train at Victoria and jumping out of it at Sydenham Hill.
“Pressed with questions, however, the ladies were forced to admit that they knew absolutely nothing about Prince Orsoff, they had never been introduced to any of his relations, nor had they met any of his friends. They did not even know where he had been staying in London. He was in the habit of telephoning to Louisa every morning, and any arrangements for his visits down to ‘The Towers’ or the ladies’ trips up to town were made in that manner. As a matter of fact Louisa and her future husband had not met more than a dozen times altogether, on some five or six occasions in Monte Carlo, and not more than six in England. It had been a case of love at first sight.
“The question of Mr. Schumann’s vast undertaking was first discussed at ‘The Towers.’ After that the ladies wrote to their bank to sell out their securities, and subsequently went up to town for a couple of days to draw out their money, change it into French currency, and finally hand it over to Prince Orsoff. On that occasion he had met them at Victoria Station and taken them to a quiet hotel in Kensington, where he had engaged a suite of rooms for them. All financial matters were then settled in their private sitting-room. In answer to enquiries at that hotel, one or two of the employees distinctly remembered the foreign-looking gentleman who had called on Mrs. and Miss Smithson, lunched with them in their sitting-room that day, and saw them into their cab when they went away the following afternoon. One or two of the station porters at Victoria also vaguely remembered a man who answered to the description given of Prince Orsoff by the Smithson ladies: tall, with a slight stoop, wearing pincenez, and with a profusion of dark, curly hair, bushy eyebrows, long dark moustache, and old-fashioned imperial, which made him distinctly noticeable, he could not very well have passed unperceived.
“Unfortunately, on the actual day of the murder, not one man employed at Victoria Station could swear positively to having seen him, either alone or in the company of another foreigner; and the latter has remained a problematic personage to this day.
“But
the Smithson ladies remained firm in their loyalty to their Russian Prince. Had they dared they would openly have accused Henry Carter of the murder; as it was they threw out weird hints and insinuations about Henry, who had more than once sworn that he would be even with his hated rival, and who had actually travelled down in the same train as the Prince on that fateful wedding morning, together with his brother John, who no doubt helped him in his nefarious deed. I believe that the unfortunate ladies actually spent some of the money which now they could ill spare in employing a private detective to collect proofs of Henry Carter’s guilt.
“But not a tittle of evidence could be brought against him. To begin with, the train in which the murder was supposed to have been committed was a non-stop to Swanley. Then how could the Carters have disposed of the body? The Smithsons suggested a third miscreant as a possible confederate; but the same objection against that theory subsisted in the shape of the disposal of the body. The murder—if murder there was—occurred in broad daylight in a part of the country that certainly was not lonely. It was not possible to suppose that a man would stand waiting on the line close to Sydenham Hill station until a body was flung out to him from the passing train, and then drag that body about until he found a suitable place in which to bury it: and all that without being seen by the workmen on the line or employees on the railway, or in fact any passer-by. Therefore the hypothesis that Henry Carter or his brother murdered the Russian Prince with or without the help of a confederate was as untenable as that the Prince had travelled from Victoria to Sydenham Hill and there jumped out of the train, at risk of being discovered in the act, rather than disappear quietly in London, shave off his luxuriant hair, or assume any other convenient disguise, until he found an opportunity for slipping back to the Continent.
Unravelled Knots Page 8
