“But the Smithsons remained firm in their belief in the genuineness of their Prince and in their conviction that he had been murdered—if not by the Carters, then by the mysterious secretary to the Russian Embassy or any other Russian or German emissary, for political reasons.
“And thus the public was confronted with the two hypotheses, both of which led to a deadlock. No sensible person doubted that the so-called Russian Prince was a crook and that he had a confederate to help him in his clever plot, but the mystery remained as to how the rascal or rascals disappeared so completely as to checkmate every investigation. The travelling by train that morning and setting the scene for a supposed murder was, of course, part of the plan, but it was the plan that was so baffling, because to an ordinary mind that disappearance could have been effected so much more easily and with far less risk without the train journey.
“Of course there was a not a single passenger on that train who was not the subject of the closest watchfulness on the part of the police, but there was not one—not excluding the Carters—who could by any possible chance have known that the Prince carried a large sum of money upon his person. He was not likely to have confided the fact to a stranger, and the mystery of the vanished body was always there to refute the theory of an ordinary murderous attack for motives of robbery.”
IV
The Man in the Corner ceased talking and became once more absorbed in his favourite task of making knots in a bit of string.
“I see in the papers,” I now put in thoughtfully, “that Miss Louisa Smithson has overcome her grief for the loss of her aristocratic lover by returning to the plebeian one.”
“Yes,” the funny creature replied drily, “she is marrying Henry Carter. Funny, isn’t it? But women are queer fish! One moment she looked on the man as a murderer, now, by marrying him, she actually proclaims her belief in his innocence.”
“It certainly was abundantly proved,” I rejoined, “that Henry Carter could not possibly have murdered Prince Orsoff.”
“It was also abundantly proved,” he retorted, “that no one murdered the so-called Prince.”
“You think, of course, that he was an ordinary impostor?” I asked.
“An impostor, yes,” he replied, “but not an ordinary one. In fact I take off my hat to as clever a pair of scamps as I have ever come across.”
“A pair?”
“Why, yes! It could not have been done alone.”
“But the police…”
“The police,” the spook-like creature broke in with a sharp cackle, “know more, in this case, than you give them credit for. They know well enough the solution of the puzzle which appears so baffling to the public, but they have not sufficient proof to effect an arrest. At one time they hoped that the scoundrels would presently make a false move and give themselves away, in which case they could be prosecuted for defrauding the Smithsons of £10,000, but this eventuality has become complicated through the masterstroke of genius which made Henry Carter marry Louisa Smithson.”
“Henry Carter?” I exclaimed. “Then you do think the Carters had something to do with the case?”
“They had everything to do with the case. In fact, they planned the whole thing in a masterly manner.”
“But the Russian Prince at Monte Carlo?” I argued. “Who was he? If he was a confederate where has he disappeared to?”
“He is still engaged in the freelance journalism,” the Man in the Corner replied drily, “and in his spare moments changes parcels of French currency back into English notes.”
“You mean the brother!” I ejaculated with a gasp.
“Of course I mean the brother,” he retorted drily, “who else could have been so efficient a collaborator in the plot? John Carter was comparatively his own master. He lived with Henry in the small house in Chelsea, waited on by a charwoman who came by the day. It was generally given out that his reporting work took him frequently and for lengthened stays out of London. The brothers, remember, had inherited a few hundreds from their father, while the Smithsons had inherited a few thousands. We must suppose that the idea of relieving those ladies of those thousands occurred to them as soon as they realised that Louisa, egged on by her mother, would cold-shoulder her fiancé.
“John Carter, mind you, must be a very clever man, else he could not have carried out all the details of the plot with so much sangfroid. We have been told, if you remember, that he had, early in life, cut his stick and gone to seek fortune in London, therefore the Smithsons, who had never been out of Folkestone, did not know him intimately. His make-up as the Prince must have been very good, and his histrionic powers not to be despised: his profession and life in London no doubt helped him in these matters. Then, remember also that he took very good care not to be a great deal in the Smithsons’ company—even in Monte Carlo he only let them see him less than half a dozen times, and as soon as he came to England he hurried on the wedding as much as he could.
“Another fine stroke was Henry’s apparent despair at being cut out of Louisa’s affections and his threats against his successful rival: it helped to draw suspicion on himself—suspicion which the scoundrels took good care could easily be disproved. Then take a pair of vain, credulous, unintelligent women, and a smart rascal who knows how to flatter them, and you will see how easily the whole plot could be worked. Finally, when John Carter had obtained possession of the money, he and Henry arranged the supposed tragedy in the train and the Russian Prince’s disappearance from the world as suddenly as he had entered it.”
I thought the matter over for a moment or two. The solution of the mystery certainly appealed to my dramatic sense.
“But,” I said at last, “one wonders why the Carters took the trouble to arrange a scene of a supposed murder in the train: they might quite well have been caught in the act, and in any case it was an additional unnecessary risk. John Carter might quite well have been content to shed his role of Russian Prince, without such an elaborate setting.”
“Well,” he admitted, “in some ways you are right there, but it is always difficult to gauge accurately the mentality of a clever scoundrel. In this case I don’t suppose that the Carters had quite made up their minds about what they would do when they left London, but that the plan was in their heads is proved by the hat, pince-nez, and railway ticket which they took with them when they started, and which, if you remember, were found on the line: but it was probably only because the train was comparatively empty, and they had both time and opportunity in the non-stop train, that they decided to carry their clever comedy through.
“Then think what an immense advantage in their future plans would be the Smithsons’ belief in the death of their Prince. Probably Louisa would never have dreamed of marrying if she thought her aristocratic lover was an impostor and still alive; she would never have let the matter rest; her mind would for ever have been busy with trying to trace him, and bring him back, repentant, to her feet. You know what women are when they are in love with that type of scoundrel, they cling to them with the tenacity of a leech. But once she believed the man to be dead, Louisa Smithson gradually got over her grief and Henry Carter wooed and won her on the rebound. She was poor now, and her friends had quickly enough deserted her; she was touched by the fidelity of her simple lover, and he thus consolidated his position and made the future secure.
“Anyway,” the Man in the Corner concluded, “I believe that it was with a view to making a future marriage possible between Louisa and Henry that the two brothers organised the supposed murder. Probably if the train had been full and they had seen danger in the undertaking they would not have done it. But the mise-en-scène was easily enough set and it certainly was an additional safeguard. Now in another week or so Louisa Smithson will be Henry Carter’s wife, and presently you will find that John in London, and Henry and his wife, will be quite comfortably off. And after that, whatever suspicions Mrs. Smithson might have of the truth, her lips would have to remain sealed. She could not very well prosecute h
er only child’s husband.
“And so the matter will always remain a mystery to the public: but the police know more than they are able to admit because they have no proof.
“And now they never will have. But as to the murder in the train, well!—the murdered man never existed.”
V
The Mysterious Tragedy in Bishop’s Road
I
The Man in the Corner was in a philosophising mood that afternoon, and all the while that his thin claw-like fingers fidgeted with the inevitable piece of string he gave vent to various, disjointed, always sententious remarks.
Suddenly he said:
“We know, of course, that the world has gone dancing mad! But I doubt if the fashionable craze has ever been responsible before for so dark a tragedy as the death of old Sarah Levison. What do you think?”
“Well,” I replied guardedly, for I knew that, whatever I might say, I should draw an avalanche of ironical remarks upon my innocent head, “I never have known what to think, and all the accounts of that brutal murder as they appeared in the cheaper Press only made obscurity all the more obscure.”
“That was a wise and well-thought-out reply,” the aggravating creature retorted with a dry chuckle, “and a non-committal one at that. Obscurity is indeed obscure for those who won’t take the trouble to think.”
“I suppose it is all quite clear to you?” I said, with what I meant to be withering sarcasm.
“As clear as the proverbial daylight,” he replied undaunted.
“You know how old Mrs. Levison came by her death?”
“Of course I do. I will tell you if you like.”
“By all means. But I am not prepared to be convinced,” I added cautiously.
“No,” he admitted, “but you soon will be. However, before we reach that happy conclusion, I shall have to marshal the facts before you, because a good many of these must have escaped your attention. Shall I proceed?”
“If you please.”
“Well, then, do you remember all the personages in the drama?” he began.
“I think so.”
“There were, of course, young Aaron Levison and his wife, Rebecca—the latter young, pretty, fond of pleasure, and above all of dancing, and he, a few years older, but still in the prime of life, more of an athlete than a businessman, and yet tied to the shop in which he carried on the trade of pawnbroking for his mother. The latter, an old Jewess, shrewd and dictatorial, was the owner of the business: her son was not even her partner, only a well-paid clerk in her employ, and this fact we must suppose rankled in the mind of her smart daughter-in-law. At any rate, we know that there was no love lost between the two ladies; but the young couple and old Mrs. Levison and another unmarried son lived together in the substantial house over the shop in Bishop’s Road.
“They had three servants and we are told that they lived well, old Mrs. Levison bearing the bulk of the cost of housekeeping. The younger son, Reuben, seems to have been something of a bad egg. He held at one time a clerkship in a bank, but was dismissed for insobriety and laziness; then after the War he was supposed to have bad health consequent on exposure in the trenches, and had not done a day’s work since he was demobilised. But in spite, or perhaps because, of this, he was very markedly his mother’s favourite; where the old woman would stint her hard-working, steady elder son, she would prove generous, even lavish, toward the loafer, Reuben; and young Mrs. Levison and he were as thick as thieves.
“What money Reuben extracted out of his mother he would spend on amusements, and his sister-in-law was always ready to accompany him. It was either the cinema or dancing—oh, dancing above all! Rebecca Levison was, it seems, a beautiful dancer, and night after night she and Reuben would go to one or other of the halls or hotels where dancing was going on, and often they would not return until the small hours of the morning.
“Aaron Levison was indulgent and easy-going enough where his young wife was concerned: he thought that she could come to no harm while Reuben was there to look after her. But old Mrs. Levison, with the mistrust of her race for everything that is frivolous and thriftless, thought otherwise. She was convinced in her own mind that her beloved Reuben was being led astray from the path of virtue by his brother’s wife, and she appears to have taken every opportunity to impress her thoughts and her fears upon the indulgent husband.
“It seems that one of the chief bones of contention between the old and the young Mrs. Levison was the question of jewellery. Old Mrs. Levison kept charge herself of all the articles of value that were pawned in the shop, and every evening after business hours Aaron would bring up all bits of jewellery that had been brought in during the day, and his mother would lock them up in a safe that stood in her room close by her bedside. The key of the safe she always carried about with her. For the most part these bits of jewellery consisted of cheap rings and brooches, but now and again some impoverished lady or gentleman would bring more valuable articles along for the purpose of raising a temporary loan upon them, and at the time of the tragedy there were some fine diamond ornaments reposing in the safe in old Mrs. Levison’s room.
“Now young Mrs. Levison had more than once suggested that she might wear some of this fine jewellery when she went out to balls and parties. She saw no harm in it, and neither, for a matter of that, did Reuben. Why shouldn’t Rebecca wear a few ornaments now and again if she wanted to?—they would always be punctually returned, of course, and they could not possibly come to any harm. But the very suggestion of such a thing was anathema to the old lady, and in her flat refusal ever to gratify such a senseless whim she had the wholehearted support of her eldest son: such a swerving from traditional business integrity was not to be thought of in the Levison household.
“On that memorable Saturday evening young Mrs. Levison was going with her brother-in-law to one of the big charity balls at the Kensington Town Hall, and her great desire was to wear for the occasion a set of diamond stars which had lately been pledged in the shop, and which were locked up in the old lady’s safe. Of course, Mrs. Levison refused, and it seems that the two ladies very nearly came to blows about this, the quarrel being all the more violent as Reuben hotly sided with his sister-in-law against his mother.”
II
“That then was the position in the Levison household on the day of the mysterious tragedy,” the Man in the Corner went on presently: “an armed truce between the two ladies—the lovely Rebecca sore and defiant, pining to gratify a whim which was being denied her, and old Mrs. Levison more bitter than usual against her, owing to Reuben’s partisanship. Egged on by Rebecca, he was furious with his mother and vowed that he was sick of the family and meant to cut his stick in order to be free to lead his own life, and so on. It was all tall-talk, of course, as he was entirely dependent on his mother, but it went to show the ugliness of his temper and the domination which his brother’s wife exercised over him. Aaron, on the other hand, took no part in the quarrel, but the servants remarked that he was unwontedly morose all day, and that his wife was very curt and disagreeable with him.
“Nothing, however, of any importance occurred during the day until dinner-time, which as usual was served in the parlour at the back of the shop at seven o’clock. It seems that as soon as the family sat down to their meal, there was another violent quarrel on some subject or other between the two ladies, Rebecca being hotly backed up by Reuben, and Aaron taking no part in the discussion; in the midst of the quarrel, and following certain highly offensive words spoken by Reuben, old Mrs. Levison got up abruptly from the table and went upstairs to her own room which was immediately overhead at the back of the house, next to the drawing-room, nor did she come downstairs again that evening.
“At half-past nine the three servants went up to bed according to the rule of the house. Old Mrs. Levison, who was a real autocrat in the management of the household, expected the girls to be down at six every morning, but they were free to go to bed as soon as their work was done, and half-past nine was their us
ual time.
“Two of the girls slept at the top of the house, and the housemaid, Ida Griggs by name, who also acted as a sort of maid to old Mrs. Levison, occupied a small slip room on the half landing immediately above the old lady’s bedroom. On the floor above this there was a large bedroom at the back and a bathroom and dressing-room in front, all occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Aaron, and over that, the two maids’ room, and one for Mr. Reuben, and a small spare room in which Mr. Aaron would sleep now and again when his wife was likely to be out late and he did not want to get his night’s rest broken by her homecoming, or if he himself was going to be late home on a holiday night after one of those country excursions on his bicycle of which he was immensely fond and in which he indulged himself from time to time.
“On this fateful Saturday evening Aaron was kept late in the shop, but he finally went up to bed soon after ten, after he had seen to all the doors below being bolted and barred, with the exception of the front door which had to be left on the latch, Mrs. Aaron having the latch-key. Thus the house was shut up and everyone in bed by half-past ten.
“In the meanwhile the lovely Mrs. Rebecca and Reuben had dressed and gone to the ball.
Unravelled Knots Page 9
