Unravelled Knots

by Baroness Orczy

  “He had no right to be styled Colonel any longer, and quite recently had been threatened with prosecution if he persisted in making further use of his army rank. But that was not all the trouble. It seems that in his career of improbity he had been associated with a man named Nosdel, a man of Dutch extraction whom he had known in South Africa. This man was subsequently hanged for a particularly brutal murder, and it was his widow who was ‘Remount Forburg’s’ second wife and the mother of Monica and of Gerald, who had been given the fancy name of Glenluce.

  “Obviously a man in Mr Morley Thrall’s position could not marry into such a family, and it appears that whenever there was a question of a suitor for Monica, ‘Remount Forburg’ would tell the aspirant the whole story of his own shady past and, above all, that of Monica’s father. Sir Evelyn Thrall had been clever enough to discover one or two gentlemen who had had the same experience as his cousin Morley; they, too, just before their courtship came to a head had had a momentous interview with ‘Remount Forburg,’ who found this means of choking off any further desire for matrimony on the part of a man who had family connections to consider. But it was very obvious that Mr. Morley Thrall had no motive for killing ‘Remount Forburg’; he would have left Brudenell Court that very evening, he said, only that young Glenluce had begged him, for Monica’s sake, not to make a scene; anyway, he was leaving the house next day and had no intention of ever darkening its doors again.

  “Poor Monica Glenluce or Nosdel, ignorant of the hideous cloud that hung over her entire life, ignorant too of what passed between her stepfather and Mr. Morley Thrall, had nothing but hatred and contempt for the man whose love, she believed, had proved as unstable as that of any of her other admirers. For charity’s sake one must suppose that she really thought him guilty at first, and hoped that when the clouds had rolled by he would return to her, more ardent than before. Presumably he found means to make her understand that all was irrevocably at an end between them as far as he was concerned, whereupon her regard for him turned to bitterness and desire for revenge.

  “And, indeed, but for the cleverness of a distinguished lawyer, poor Morley Thrall might have found himself the victim of a judicial error brought about by the deliberate enmity of a woman. Had he been committed for trial, she would have had more time at her disposal to manufacture evidence against him, which I am convinced she had a mind to do.”

  “As it is,” I now put in tentatively, for the Man in the Corner had been silent for some little while, “the withdrawal of the charge of murder against Morley Thrall did not help to clear up the mystery of ‘Remount Forburg’s’ tragic death.”

  “Not as far as the public is concerned,” he retorted drily.

  “You have a theory?” I asked.

  “Not a theory,” he replied. “I know who killed ‘Remount For-burg.’”

  “How do you know?” I riposted.

  “By logic and inference,” he said. “As it was proved that Morley Thrall did not kill him, and that Miss Monica could not have done it, as the ladies did not join in the chase after the burglar, I looked about me for the only other person in whose interest it was to put that blackguard out of the way.”

  “You mean—?”

  “I mean the boy Gerald, of course. Openly and before the other witness Cambalt, he stood up for his stepfather against Thrall who was not measuring his words, but just think how the knowledge which he had gained about his own parentage and that of his sister must have rankled in his mind. He must have come to the conclusion that while this man—his stepfather—lived, there would be no chance for him to make friends, no chance for the sister whom he loved ever to have a home, a life of her own. Whether that interview on Christmas Eve was the first inkling which he had of the real past history of his own and Forburg’s family, it is impossible to say. Probably he had suspicions of it before, when, one by one, Monica’s suitors fell away after certain private interviews with the Colonel. Morley Thrall must have been a last hope, and that, too, was dashed to the ground by the same infamous means.

  “I am not prepared to say that the boy got hold of the revolver that night with the deliberate intention of killing his stepfather at the earliest opportunity: he may have run into the smoking-room to snatch up the weapon, only with a view to using it against the burglar; certain it is that he overtook ‘Remount Forburg’ in the five-acre field and that he shot him then and there. Remember that the night was very dark, and that there was a great deal of running about and of confusion. The boy was young enough and nimble enough after he had thrown down the revolver to run across the field and then to go back to the house by a roundabout way. It is easy enough in a case like that to cover one’s tracks, and, of course, no one suspected anything at the time. Even the sound of firing created but little astonishment; it was so very much on the cards that the Colonel would use a revolver without the slightest hesitation against a man who had been trying to break into his house. It was just the sort of revenge that a man of Gerald’s temperament—disfigured, shy, silent and self-absorbed—would seek against one whom he considered the fount of all his wrongs.”

  “But,” I objected, “how could young Glenluce run into the smoking-room, pick up the revolver out of a drawer, and run back through the hall with servants and guests standing about. Someone would be sure to see him.”

  “No one saw him,” the funny creature retorted, “for he did it at the moment of the greatest confusion. The butler had run in with the news of the burglary, the Colonel jumped up and ran out through the hall, the guests had not yet made up their minds what to do. In moments like this there are always just a few seconds of pandemonium, quite sufficient for a boy like Gerald to make a dash for the smoking-room.”

  “But after that—”

  “After that he took the revolver out of the drawer and ran out through the French window.”

  “But the shutters were found to be bolted on the inside,” I argued, “when they were subsequently examined by the police inspector.”

  “So they were,” he admitted. “Miss Monica had already been in there with young Gerald. They had seen to the shutters.”

  “Then you think that Monica knew?” I asked.

  “Of course she did.”

  “Then her desire to prove Morley Thrall guilty—?”

  “Was partly hatred of him and partly the desire to shield her brother,” the funny creature concluded as he collected his traps, his bit of string and his huge umbrella. “Think it over; you will see that I am right. I am sorry for those two, aren’t you? But they are selling Brudenell Court, I understand, and their mother’s fortune has become theirs absolutely. They will go abroad together, make a home for themselves, and one day, perhaps, everything will be forgotten, and a new era of happiness will arise for the innocent, now that the guilty has been so signally punished. But it was an interesting case. Don’t you agree with me?”

  IX

  The Mystery of the White Carnation

  I

  “I suppose that it is a form of snobbishness,” the Man in the Corner began abruptly.

  I gave such a jump that I nearly upset the contents of a cup of boiling tea which I was conveying to my mouth. As it was, I scalded my tongue and nearly choked.

  “What is?” I queried with a frown, for I was really vexed with the creature. I had no idea he was there at all. But he only smiled and concluded his speech, quite unperturbed.

  “…that creates additional interest in a crime when it concerns people of wealth or rank.”

  “Snobbishness,” I rejoined, “of course it’s snobbishness! And when the little suburban madam has finished reading about Lady Stick-in-the-mud’s reception at Claridge’s, she likes to turn to Lord Tomnoodle’s prospective sojourn in gaol.”

  “You were thinking of the disappearance of the Australian millionaire?” he asked blandly.

  “I don’t know that I was,” I retorted.

  “But of course you were. How could any journalist worthy of the name fail to be intereste
d in that intricate case?”

  “I suppose you have your theory—as usual?”

  “It is not a theory,” the creature replied, with that fatuous smile of his which always irritated me; “it is a Certainty.”

  Then, as he became silent, absorbed in the contemplation of a wonderfully complicated knot in his beloved bit of string, I said with gracious condescension:

  “You may talk about it, if you like.”

  He did like, fortunately for me, because, frankly, I could not see daylight in that maze of intrigue, adventure and possibly crime, which was described by the Press as “The Mystery of the White Carnation.”

  “The events were interesting from the outset,” he began after a while, whilst I settled down to listen, “and so were the various actors in the society drama. Chief amongst these was, of course, Captain Shillington, an Australian ex-officer, commonly reputed to be a millionaire, who, with his mother and sister, rented Mexfield House in Somerset Street, Mayfair, the summer before last. It appears that Lord Mexfield’s younger son, the Honourable Henry Buckley, who was an incorrigible rake and whom his father had sent on a tour round the world in order to keep him temporarily out of mischief, not to say out of gaol, had met a married brother of Captain Shillington’s out in the Antipodes; they had been very kind to him, and so on, with the result that when came the following London season the family turned up in England and, after spending a couple of days at the Savoy, they moved into the Mexfields’ house in Somerset Street.

  “Lord and Lady Mexfield were abroad that year and Henry Buckley and his sister Angela were living with an aunt who had a small house somewhere in Mayfair.

  “Although the Shillingtons were reputed to be very wealthy, they appeared to be very quiet, simple folk, and it certainly seemed rather strange that they should have gone to the expense of a house in town, when obviously they had no social ambitions and did not mean to entertain. As a matter of fact, as far as Mrs. Shillington and her daughter were concerned, nobody could have lived a quieter, more retiring life than they did. Mrs. Shillington was an invalid and hardly ever went outside her front door, and the girl Marion seemed to be suffering from a perpetual cold in the head.

  “They seemed to be in a chronic state of servant trouble. Mrs. Shillington was dreadfully irritable and one set of servants after another were engaged only to leave without notice after a few days. The only faithful servant who remained was a snuffy old man who came to them about a month after they moved into Mexfield House. He and a charwoman did all the work of cooking and valeting and so on. Presumably the old man could not have got a situation elsewhere as his appearance was very unprepossessing, and therefore he was willing to put up with what the servants’ registry offices would term ‘a very uncomfortable situation.’

  “Captain Shillington, the hero of the tragic adventure, on the other hand, went about quite a good deal. He was certainly voted to be rather straightlaced, not to say priggish, but he was very good looking and a fine dancer. Henry Buckley introduced him to some of his smart friends and Lady Angela constituted him her dancing partner. This partnership soon developed into warmer friendship, and presently it was given out that Lady Angela Buckley, only daughter of the Earl and Countess of Mexfield, was engaged to Captain Denver Shillington, the Australian millionaire. Lady Angela confided to her friends that her fiancé was the owner of immense estates in Western Australia, on a portion of which rich deposits of gold had lately been discovered. He certainly had plenty of money to spend, and on one occasion he actually paid Henry Buckley’s gambling debts to the tune of two or three hundred pounds.

  “On the whole, society pronounced the match a suitable one. Lady Angela Buckley was no longer in her first youth, whilst her brother, to whom she was really devoted, would be all the better for a somewhat puritanical, straight-laced and above all wealthy brother-in-law.”

  II

  “That, then, was the position,” the old Man in the Corner continued, after a while, “and the date of Lady Angela Buckley’s marriage to Captain Denver Shillington had been actually fixed when the public was startled one afternoon towards the end of the summer by the sensational news in all the evening papers: ‘Mysterious disappearance of a millionaire.’ This highly-coloured description applied, as it turned out, to Captain Shillington, the fiancé of Lady Angela Buckley. It seems that during the course of that same morning a young lady, apparently in deep distress and suffering from a streaming cold in the head, had called at Scotland Yard. She gave her name and address as Marion Shillington of Mexfield House, Somerset Street, Mayfair, and stated that she and her mother were in the greatest possible anxiety owing to the disappearance of her brother, Captain Denver Shillington. They had last seen him on the previous Friday evening at about nine o’clock when he left home in order to pick up his fiancée, Lady Angela Buckley, whom he was escorting that night to a reception in Grosvenor Square. He was wearing full evening dress and a soft hat. Miss Shillington couldn’t say whether he had any money in his pockets. She thought that probably he was carrying a gold cigarette case which Lady Angela had given him, but, as a matter of fact, he never wore any jewellery.

  “No one in the house had heard him come in again that night, and his bed had not been slept in. Questioned by the police, Miss Shillington explained that neither she nor her mother felt any alarm at first because there had been some talk of Captain Shillington going away with his fiancée to stay with friends over the weekend somewhere near Newmarket. It was only this morning, Wednesday, that Mrs. Shillington first began to worry when there was still no sign or letter from him.

  “‘My brother is a very good son,’ Miss Shillington continued, explaining to the police, ‘and always very considerate to mother. It was so unlike him to leave us without news all this while and not to let us know when to expect him home. So I rang up Lady Angela Buckley, who is his fiancée, to see if I could get news through her, as I could see mother was beginning to get anxious.

  “‘Mr. Henry Buckley, Lady Angela’s brother, answered the ‘phone. I asked after his sister and he told me that she was staying on in the country a day or two longer. He himself had come back to town the previous night. I then asked him, quite casually, if he knew whether Denver—that’s my brother—would be returning with Angela. And his answer to me was, “Denver? Why, I haven’t seen him since Friday, and I can tell you he is in for a row with Angela. She was furious with him that he never wrote once to her while she was away.” I was so upset that I hung up the receiver and just sat there wondering what to do next. But Mr. Buckley rang up a moment or two later and asked quite cheerily if there was anything wrong. “Good old Square-toes!” he said, meaning my brother, whom he always used to chaff by calling him “Squaretoes”, “don’t tell me he has gone off on the spree without letting you know. I say, that’s too bad of him, though. But I shouldn’t be anxious, if I were you. Boys, you know, Miss Shillington, will be boys, and I like old Square-toes all the better for it.”’

  “Miss Shillington,” the old Man in the Corner went on, “was, as usual, suffering from a streaming cold, and between spluttering and crying she had reduced two or three handkerchiefs to wet balls. At best she is no beauty, and with a red nose and streaming eyes she presented a most pitiable spectacle.

  “‘I made Mr. Buckley assure me once more,’ she said, ‘that he had seen nothing of Denver since Friday. That night he and Lady Angela and Denver were at a reception in Grosvenor Square. They all left about the same time. Angela and Denver went presumably straight home; at any rate, he, Mr. Buckley, saw nothing more of them after they got into their car. He himself went to spend an hour or two at his club and came home about two am. The next morning, after breakfast, he drove his sister out to Tatchford, near Newmarket, where they spent the weekend with some friends. And that was all Mr. Buckley could say to me.’ Miss Shillington concluded, vigorously blowing her nose: ‘He came home last night from Tatchford, and was expecting Lady Angela in a couple of days. Denver had not been at Tatchford at a
ll, and he had not once written to Angela all the while she was away.’

  “Of course the police inspector to whom Miss Shillington related all these facts had a great many questions to put to her. For one thing he wanted to know whether she had been in communication with Lady Angela Buckley since this morning.

  “‘No,’ the girl replied, ‘I have not, and so far I haven’t said anything to mother. As soon as I felt strong enough I put on my things and came along here.’

  “Then the inspector wanted to know if she knew of any friends or acquaintances of her brother’s with whom he might have gone off for a weekend jaunt without saying anything about it, either at home or to his fiancée. He put the questions as delicately as he could, but the sister flared up with indignation. It seems that the Captain’s conduct had always been irreproachable. He was a model son, a model brother, and deeply in love with Angela. Miss Shillington also refused to believe that he could have been enticed to a place of ill-fame and robbed by one of the usual confidence-tricksters.

  “‘My brother is exceptionally shrewd,’ she declared, ‘and a splendid businessman. Though he is not yet thirty he has built up an enormous fortune out in Australia, and administers his estates himself to the admiration of everyone who knows him. He is not the sort of man who could be fooled in that way.’

  “But beyond all this, and beyond giving a detailed description of her brother’s appearance, the poor girl had very little to say, and the detective who was put in charge of the case could only assure her that enquiries would at once be instituted in every possible direction, and that the police would keep her informed of everything that was being done. Obviously, the person most likely to be able to throw some light upon the mystery was Lady Angela Buckley, but as you know, the advent of this charming lady upon the scene only helped to complicate matters.