Unravelled Knots

by Baroness Orczy

  “His evidence would have seemed uninteresting and unimportant but for the fact that while he gave it he glanced now and again in the direction where Ann Weber sat beside her aunt. It seemed as if he were all the time mutely asking for her approval of what he was saying, and presently when the coroner asked him whether he knew the cause of his employer’s irritability, he very obviously looked at Ann before he finally said: ‘No, sir, I don’t!’

  “After that Ann Weber was called. Of course it had been clear all along that she was by far the most important witness in this mysterious case, and when she rose from her place looking very trim and neat in her navy-blue coat and skirt, with a jaunty little hat pulled over her left eye, and wearing long amber earrings that gave her pretty face a piquant expression, everyone settled down comfortably to enjoy the sensation of the afternoon.

  “Ann, who was thoroughly self-possessed, answered the coroner’s preliminary questions quite glibly, and when she was asked to relate what occurred at No. 13, Fulton Gardens on the night of the 16th, she plunged into her story without any hesitation or trace of nervousness.

  “‘At about half-past eight,’ she said, ‘or it may have been later—I won’t swear as to the time—there was a ring at the front door bell. I was down in the pantry and as I came upstairs I heard the office door being opened. When I got into the passage I saw Mr. Jessup standing in the doorway of the office. He had his spectacles on his nose and a pen in his hand. He looked as if he had just got up from his desk.

  “‘“If that’s young Leighton,” he said to me, “tell him I’ll see him tomorrow. I can’t be bothered now.” Then he went back into the office and shut the door.

  “‘I opened the door to Mr. Leighton,’ witness continued, ‘and he came in looking very cold and wet. I told him that Mr. Jessup didn’t want to see him tonight. He seemed very pleased at this but he wouldn’t go away, and when I told him I was busy, he said that I couldn’t be so unkind as to turn a fellow out into the rain without giving him a drink. Now I could see that already Mr. Leighton he’d had a bit too much, and I told him so quite plainly. But there! he wouldn’t take “No” for an answer, and as it really was jolly cold and damp I told him to go and sit down in the servants’ hall while I got him a hot toddy. I went down into the kitchen and put the kettle on and cut a couple of sandwiches. I don’t know where Mr. Leighton was during that time or what he was doing. I was in the kitchen some time because I couldn’t get the kettle to boil as the fire had gone down and we have no gas downstairs.

  “‘When I took the tray into the servants’ hall Mr. Leighton was there, and again I told him that I didn’t think he ought to have any more whisky, but he only laughed and was rather impudent, so I just put the tray down, and then I thought that I would run upstairs and see if Mr. Jessup wanted anything. I was rather surprised when I got to the hall to see that all the lights up the stairs had been turned off. There’s a switch down in the hall that turns off the lot. The whole house looked very dark. There was but a very little light that came from the lamp at the other end of the hall, near the front door.

  “‘I was just thinking that I would turn on the lights again when I saw what I could have sworn was Mr. Jessup coming out of his office. He had already got his hat and coat on, and when he came out of the office he shut the door and turned the key in the lock, just as Mr. Jessup always did. It never struck me for a moment that it could be anybody but him. Though it was dark, I recognised his hat and his overcoat, and his own way of turning the key. I spoke to him,’ witness continued in answer to a question put to her by the coroner, ‘but he didn’t reply; he just went straight through the hall and out by the front door. Then after a bit Mr. Leighton came up, and I told him Mr. Jessup had gone. He was quite pleased and stopped talking in the hall for a moment, and then aunt called to me and Mr. Leighton went away.’

  “Witness was then questioned as to the other visitor who called later that same evening, but she stated that she had no idea who it was. ‘He came about nine,’ she explained, ‘and I went down to open the door. He kept me talking ever such a time, asking all sorts of silly questions; I didn’t know how to get rid of him, and he wouldn’t leave his name. He said he would call again and that it didn’t matter.’

  “Ann Weber here gave the impression that the unknown visitor had stopped for a flirtation with her on the doorstep and her smirking and pert glances rather irritated the coroner. He pulled her up sharply by putting a few straight questions to her. He wanted to pin her down to a definite statement as to the time when (1) she opened the door to Mr. Leighton; (2) she saw what she thought was Mr. Jessup go out of the house, and (3) the second visitor arrived. Though doubtful as to the exact time, Ann was quite sure that the three events occurred in the order in which she had originally related them and in this she was, of course, corroborating the evidence of the point policeman.

  “But there was the mysterious contradiction. Ann Weber swore that Mr. Leighton followed her up from the servants’ hall just after she had seen the mysterious individual go out by the front door. On the other hand, she couldn’t swear what happened while she was busy in the kitchen getting the toddy for Mr. Leighton. She had been trying to make the fire burn up, and had rattled coals and fire-irons. She certainly had not heard anyone using the telephone, which was in the office, and she did not know where Mr. Leighton was during that time.

  “Nor would she say what was in her mind when first she saw her employer lying dead over the desk and exclaimed: ‘My God! He has killed him!’ And when the coroner pressed her with questions, she burst into tears. Except for this her evidence had, on the whole, been given with extraordinary self-possession. It was a terrible ordeal for a girl to have to stand up before a jury and, roughly speaking, to swear away the character of a man with whom she had been on intimate terms… The character, did I say? I might just as well have said the life, because whatever doubts had lurked in the public mind about Arthur Leighton’s guilt, or at least complicity in the crime, those doubts were dispelled by the girl’s evidence. For I need not tell you, I suppose, that every man present that second day at the inquest had already made up his mind that Ann Weber was lying to save her sweetheart. No one believed in the mysterious impersonator of Mr. Jessup. It was Arthur Leighton, they argued, who had murdered his employer and robbed the till, and Ann Weber knew it and had invented the story in order to drag a red herring across the trail.

  “I must say that the man himself did not make a good impression when he was called in his turn. As he stepped forward with a swaggering air, and a bold glance at coroner and jury, the interest which he aroused was not a kindly one. He was rather a vulgar-looking creature, with a horsey get-up, high collar, stocktie, fancy waistcoat and so on. His hair was of a ginger colour, his eyes light and his face tanned. Everyone noticed that he winked at Ann Weber when he caught her eye, and also that the girl immediately averted her glance and almost imperceptibly shrugged her shoulders. Thereupon Leighton frowned and very obviously swore under his breath.

  “Questioned as to his doings on the 16th, he admitted that ‘the guv’nor had been waxy with him, because,’ as he put it with an indifferent swagger, ‘there were a few pounds missing in the till.’ He also admitted that he had not been looking forward to the evening’s interview, but that he had not dared refuse to come. In order to kill time and to put heart into himself, he had gone with a couple of friends to the Café Royal in Regent Street and they all had whiskies and sodas till it was time for him to go to Fulton Gardens. His friends were to wait for him until he returned, when they intended to have supper together. Witness then went to Fulton Gardens and saw Ann Weber, who told him that the guv’nor didn’t wish to see him. This, according to his own picturesque language, was a little bit of all right. He stayed for a few minutes talking to Ann, and she gave him a hot toddy. He certainly didn’t think he had stayed as long as half an hour, but then, when a fellow was talking to a pretty girl… eh?… what?…

  “The coroner curtly in
terrupted his fatuous explanations by asking him at what time he had left his friends, and at what time he had met them again subsequently. Witness was not very sure; he thought he left the Café Royal about half-past eight, but it might have been earlier or later. He took a bus to the bottom of Fulton Gardens. It was beastly cold and wet, and he was very grateful to Ann for giving him a hot drink. He denied that he had been drinking too much or that he had demanded the hot drink. It was Ann Weber who had offered to get it for him. Jolly pretty girl, Annie-bird, and not shy. Witness concluded his evidence by swearing positively that he had waited in the servants’ hall all the while that Ann Weber got him the toddy; he had followed her down and not gone upstairs or seen anything of Mr. Jessup all the time he was in the house. When he left Fulton Gardens he tried to get a bus back to Regent Street, but many of them were full and it was rather late before he got back to the Café Royal.

  “It was very obvious that as the coroner continued to put question after question to him, Arthur Leighton became vaguely conscious of the feeling of hostility towards him which had arisen in the public mind. He lost something of his swagger, and his face under the tan took on a greyish hue. From time to time he glanced at Ann Weber, but she obstinately looked another way.

  “Undoubtedly he felt that he was caught in a network of damnatory evidence which he was unable to combat. The day ended, however, with another adjournment; the police wanted a little more time before taking drastic action. The public so often blame them for being in too great a hurry to fasten an accusation on the flimsiest grounds that one is pleased to record such a noteworthy instance when they really did not leave a single stone unturned before they arrested Arthur Leighton on the charge of murder. They did everything they could to find some proof of the existence and identity of the individual whom Ann Weber professed to have seen while Leighton was still in the house. But all their efforts in that direction came to naught, whilst Leighton himself denied having had an accomplice just as strenuously as he did his own guilt.

  “He was brought up before the magistrate, charged with the terrible crime. No one, the police argued, had so strong a motive for the crime or such an opportunity. Alternatively, no one else could have admitted the mysterious impersonator of Mr. Jessup into the house, the accomplice who did the deed, whilst Leighton engaged Ann Weber’s attention, always supposing that he did exist, which was never proved, and which the evidence of the police constable refuted. People who dabbled in spiritualism and that sort of thing were pleased to think that the mysterious personage whom the housemaid saw was the ghost of poor old Jessup, who was then lying murdered in his office, stricken by Leighton’s hand. But even the most physically-minded individual was unable to give a satisfactory explanation for the ghost having changed hats while he walked away from that fateful No. 13.

  “Altogether the question of hats played an important role in the drama of Leighton’s arrest and final discharge. The magistrate did not commit him for trial because the case for the prosecution collapsed suddenly like a pack of cards. It was the question of hats that saved Leighton’s neck from the hangman’s rope. You remember, perhaps, that in his evidence he had stated that before starting to interview his irate employer he had been with some friends at the Café Royal in Regent Street, and that subsequently he met these friends there for supper. Well, although it appeared impossible to establish definitely the time when Leighton left the Café Royal to go to Fulton Gardens, there were two or three witnesses prepared to swear that he was back again at a quarter to ten. Now this was very important. It seems that his friends who were waiting at the Café Royal were getting impatient, and at twenty minutes to ten by the clock one of them—a fellow named Richard Hurrill—said he would go outside and see if he could see anything of Leighton. He strolled on as far as Piccadilly Circus where the buses stop that come from the City, and a minute or two later he saw Leighton step out of one. He seemed a little fuzzy in the head, and Hurrill chaffed him a bit. Then he took him by the arm and led him back in triumph to the Café Royal.

  “Now mark what followed,” the funny creature went on, whilst all at once his fingers started working away as if for dear life on his bit of string. “A hat—a soft grey hat—with an overcoat wrapped round it, were found in the area of a derelict house in Blackhorse Road, Walthamstow, close to the waterworks, and identified as the late Mr. Seton Jessup’s overcoat and hat. I don’t suppose that you have the least idea where Blackhorse Road, Walthamstow is, but let me tell you that it is at the back of beyond in the north-east of London.

  “If you remember, the point policeman had stated that the first visitor had called at No. 13, Fulton Gardens, at half-past eight and stayed half an hour. He then walked away in the direction of Finsbury. That visitor, the police argued, was Arthur Leighton who had murdered Mr. Jessup and sent the telephone message to Fitzjohn’s Avenue; then, hearing Ann Weber moving about downstairs and frightened at being caught by her, he had put on the deceased’s hat and coat and slipped out of the house. Ann, however, had recognised him. She had involuntarily given him away when the housekeeper asked her whom she was talking to, so she invented the story of having seen what she thought was Mr. Jessup in order to save her sweetheart.

  “It was a logical theory enough, but here came the evidence of the hat. The man who walked away from Fulton Gardens at nine o’clock, whom the point policeman saw changing his hat in the street at that hour, could not possibly have gone all the way to Walthamstow, either by bus or even part of the way in a taxi, and back again to Piccadilly Circus all in the space of forty-five minutes. And Leighton, mind you, stepped out of a bus when his friend met him, and I can tell you that the police worked their hardest to find a taxi-man who may have picked up a fare that night in the neighbourhood of Clerkenwell and driven out to Walthamstow and then back to Holborn. That search proved entirely fruitless.

  “On the other hand, Leighton had paid his bus fare from Holborn, and the conductor vaguely recollected that he had got in at the corner of Clerkenwell Road. Well, that being proved, the man couldn’t have done in the time all that the prosecution declared that he did.

  “After he was discharged, the Press started violently abusing the police for not having directed their attention to the second visitor who called at Fulton Gardens ten minutes or so after the first one had left. But this person appeared as elusive and intangible as the mysterious wearer of Mr. Jessup’s hat and coat. The point policeman saw him in the distance and Ann Weber admitted him into the house and chatted with him for over twenty minutes. She didn’t know him, but she declared that she could easily recognise him if she saw him again. For some time after that the poor girl was constantly called upon by the police to see, and if possible identify, the mysterious visitor. Half the shady characters in London passed, I believe, before her eyes during the next three months. But this search proved as fruitless as the other. The murder of Mr. Seton Jessup has remained as complete and as baffling a mystery as any in the annals of crime.

  “Many there are—you amongst the number—who firmly believe that Arthur Leighton had, at any rate, something to do with it. I know that the family of the deceased were convinced that he did. Mr. Aubrey Jessup, the eldest son of the deceased, who was one of the executors under his father’s will, and who had gone through the accounts of the business, had noted certain irregularities in Leighton’s books; he also declared that various sums which had come in on the 16th after banking hours were missing from the safe. Moreover, young Leighton himself had admitted that ‘the guv’nor was waxy with him because a few pounds were missing from the till.’

  “All these facts, no doubt, had influenced the police when they applied for a warrant for his arrest, but there was no getting away from the evidence of that hat and coat found ten miles and more away from the scene of the crime, and of the bus conductor who could swear that out of forty-five minutes which the accused had to account for, he had spent twenty in a bus.”

  “It is all very mysterious,” I put in, because
my eccentric friend had been silent for quite a long time, while his attention was entirely taken up by the fashioning of a whole series of intricate knots. “I am afraid that I was one of those who blamed the police for not directing their investigations sooner in the direction of the second visitor. He seems to me much more mysterious than the first. We know who the first one was—”

  “Do we?” he retorted with a chuckle. “Or rather, do you?”

  “Well, of course, it was Arthur Leighton,” I rejoined impatiently. “Mrs. Tufnell saw him—”

  “She didn’t,” he broke in, quickly. “The house was pitch dark; she heard voices and she asked whether she was speaking to Mr. Leighton.”

  “And Ann said yes!” I riposted.

  “She said yes,” he admitted with an irritating smile.

  “And Leighton himself in his evidence—”

  “Leighton in his evidence,” the funny creature broke in excitedly, “admitted that he had called at the house, he admitted that he remembered vaguely that Ann Weber told him that Mr. Jessup had decided not to see him, and that to celebrate the occasion he got the girl to make him a whisky toddy. But, apart from these facts, he only had the haziest notions as to the time when he came and when he left or how long he stayed. Nor were his precious friends at the Café Royal any clearer on that point. They had all of them been drinking and only had the haziest notion of time until twenty minutes to ten, when they got hungry and wanted their supper.”