In the Shadow of Agatha Christie

by Leslie S. Klinger

  “But the child will not know that. The terror of Madame’s cruel story will be upon her, and she will exchange the pearls for the cross.”

  “I think not, for I shall be there to prevent it. Now, Druce, I have told you all that is necessary. Go to bed and sleep comfortably.”

  The next morning dawned dull and sullen, but the fierce storm of the night before was over. The ravages which had taken place, however, in the stately old park were very manifest, for trees had been torn up by their roots and some of the stateliest and largest of the oaks had been deprived of their best branches.

  Little Miss Ripley did not appear at all that day. I was not surprised at her absence. The time had come when doubtless Madame found it necessary to divulge her awful scheme to the unhappy child. In the midst of that gay houseful of people no one specially missed her; even Rowland was engaged with many necessary matters, and had little time to devote to his future wife. The ballroom, decorated with real flowers, was a beautiful sight.

  Vandeleur, our host, and I paced up and down the long room. Rowland was in great excitement, making many suggestions, altering this decoration and the other. The flowers were too profuse in one place, too scanty in another. The lights, too, were not bright enough.

  “By all means have the ballroom well lighted,” said Vandeleur. “In a room like this, so large, and with so many doors leading into passages and sitting-out rooms, it is well to have the light as brilliant as possible. You will forgive my suggestion, Mr. Rowland, when I say I speak entirely from the point of view of a man who has some acquaintance with the treacherous dealings of crime.”

  Rowland started.

  “Are you afraid that an attempt will be made here tonight to steal the necklace?” he asked, suddenly.

  “We won’t talk of it,” replied Vandeleur. “Act on my suggestion and you have nothing to fear.”

  Rowland shrugged his shoulders, and crossing the room gave some directions to several men who were putting in the final touches.

  Nearly a hundred guests were expected to arrive from the surrounding country, and the house was as full as it could possibly hold. Rowland was to open the ball with little Antonia.

  There was no late dinner that day, and as evening approached Vandeleur sought me.

  “I say, Druce, dress as early as you can, and come down and meet me in our host’s study.”

  I looked at him in astonishment, but did not question him. I saw that he was intensely excited. His face was cold and stern; it invariably wore that expression when he was most moved.

  I hurried into my evening clothes and came down again. Vandeleur was standing in the study talking to Rowland. The guests were beginning to arrive. The musicians were tuning up in the adjacent ballroom, and signs of hurry and festival pervaded the entire place. Rowland was in high spirits and looked very handsome. He and Vandeleur talked together, and I stood a little apart. Vandeleur was just about to make a light reply to one of our host’s questions when we heard the swish of drapery in the passage outside, and little Antonia, dressed for her first ball, entered. She was in soft white lace, and her neck and arms were bare. The effect of her entrance was somewhat startling and would have arrested attention even were we not all specially interested in her. Her face, neck, and arms were nearly as white as her dress, her dark eyes were much dilated, and her soft black hair surrounded her small face like a shadow. In the midst of the whiteness a large red cross sparkled on her throat like living fire. Rowland uttered an exclamation and then stood still; as for Vandeleur and myself, we held our breath in suspense. What might not the next few minutes reveal?

  It was the look on Antonia’s face that aroused our fears. What ailed her? She came forward like one blind, or as one who walks in her sleep. One hand was held out slightly in advance, as though she meant to guide herself by the sense of touch. She certainly saw neither Vandeleur nor me, but when she got close to Rowland the blind expression left her eyes. She gave a sudden and exceedingly bitter cry, and ran forward, flinging herself into his arms.

  “Kiss me once before we part for ever. Kiss me just once before we part,” she said.

  “My dear little one,” I heard him answer, “what is the meaning of this? You are not well. There, Antonia, cease trembling. Before we part, my dear? But there is no thought of parting. Let me look at you, darling. Ah!”

  He held her at arm’s length and gazed at her critically.

  “No girl could look sweeter, Antonia,” he said, “and you have come now for the finishing touch—the beautiful pearls. But what is this, my dear? Why should you spoil your white neck with anything so incongruous? Let me remove it.”

  She put up her hand to her neck, thus covering the crimson cross. Then her wild eyes met Vandeleur’s. She seemed to recognise his presence for the first time.

  “You can safely remove it,” he said to her, speaking in a semi-whisper.

  Rowland gave him an astonished glance. His look seemed to say, “Leave us,” but Vandeleur did not move.

  “We must see this thing out,” he said to me.

  Meanwhile Rowland’s arm encircled Antonia’s neck, and his hand sought for the clasp of the narrow gold thread that held the cross in place.

  “One moment,” said Antonia.

  She stepped back a pace; the trembling in her voice left it, it gathered strength, her fear gave way to dignity. This was the hour of her deepest humiliation, and yet she looked noble.

  “My dearest,” she said, “my kindest and best of friends. I had yielded to temptation, terror made me weak, the dread of losing you unnerved me, but I won’t come to you charged with a sin on my conscience; I won’t conceal anything from you. I know you won’t wish me now to become your wife; nevertheless, you shall know the truth.”

  “What do you mean, Antonia? What do your strange words signify? Are you mad?” said George Rowland.

  “No, I wish I were; but I am no mate for you; I cannot bring dishonour to your honour. Madame said it could be hidden, that this”—she touched the cross—“would hide it. For this I was to pay—yes, to pay a shameful price. I consented, for the terror was so cruel. But I—I came here and looked into your face and I could not do it. Madame shall have her blood-red cross back and you shall know all. You shall see.”

  With a fierce gesture she tore the cross from her neck and flung it on the floor.

  “The pearls for this,” she cried; “the pearls were the price; but I would rather you knew. Take me up to the brightest light and you will see for yourself.”

  Rowland’s face wore an expression impossible to fathom. The red cross lay on the floor; Antonia’s eyes were fixed on his. She was no child to be humoured; she was a woman and despair was driving her wild. When she said, “Take me up to the brightest light,” he took her hand without a word and led her to where the full rays of a powerful electric light turned the place into day.

  “Look!” cried Antonia, “look! Madame wrote it here—here.”

  She pointed to her throat.

  “The words are hidden, but this light will soon cause them to appear. You will see for yourself, you will know the truth. At last you will understand who I really am.”

  There was silence for a few minutes. Antonia kept pointing to her neck. Rowland’s eyes were fixed upon it. After a breathless period of agony Vandeleur stepped forward.

  “Miss Antonia,” he cried, “you have suffered enough. I am in a position to relieve your terrors. You little guessed, Rowland, that for the last few days I have taken an extreme liberty with regard to you. I have been in your house simply and solely in the exercise of my professional qualities. In the exercise of my manifest duties I came across a ghastly secret. Miss Antonia was to be subjected to a cruel ordeal. Madame Sara, for reasons of her own, had invented one of the most fiendish plots it has ever been my unhappy lot to come across. But I have been in time. Miss Antonia, you need fear nothing. Your neck contains no ghastly secret. Listen! I have saved you. The nurse whom Madame believed to be devoted to her ser
vice considered it best for prudential reasons to transfer herself to me. Under my directions she bathed your neck today with a preparation of cyanide of potassium. You do not know what that is, but it is a chemical preparation which neutralizes the effect of what that horrible woman has done. You have nothing to fear—your secret lies buried beneath your white skin.”

  “But what is the mystery?” said Rowland. “Your actions, Antonia, and your words, Vandeleur, are enough to drive a man mad. What is it all about? I will know.”

  “Miss Ripley can tell you or not, as she pleases,” replied Vandeleur. “The unhappy child was to be blackmailed, Madame Sara’s object being to secure the pearl necklace worth a King’s ransom. The cross was to be given in exchange for the necklace. That was her aim, but she is defeated. Ask me no questions, sir. If this young lady chooses to tell you, well and good, but if not the secret is her own.”

  Vandeleur bowed and backed towards me.

  “The secret is mine,” cried Antonia, “but it also shall be yours, George. I will not be your wife with this ghastly thing between us. You may never speak to me again, but you shall know all the truth.”

  “Upon my word, a brave girl, and I respect her,” whispered Vandeleur. Come, Druce, our work so far as Miss Antonia is concerned is finished.”

  We left the room.

  “Now to see Madame Sara,” continued my friend. “We will go to her rooms. Walls have ears in her case; she doubtless knows the whole dénouement already; but we will find her at once, she can scarcely have escaped yet.”

  He flew upstairs. I followed him. We went from one corridor to another. At last we found Madame’s apartments. Her bedroom door stood wide open. Rebecca Curt was standing in the middle of the room. Madame herself was nowhere to be seen, but there was every sign of hurried departure.

  “Where is Madame Sara?” inquired Vandeleur, in a peremptory voice.

  Rebecca Curt shrugged her shoulders.

  “Has she gone down? Is she in the ballroom? Speak!” said Vandeleur.

  The nurse gave another shrug.

  “I only know that Achmed the Arabian rushed in here a few minutes ago,” was her answer. “He was excited. He said something to Madame. I think he had been listening—eavesdropping, you call it. Madame was convulsed with rage. She thrust a few things together and she’s gone. Perhaps you can catch her.”

  Vandeleur’s face turned white.

  “I’ll have a try,” he said. “Don’t keep me, Druce.”

  He rushed away. I don’t know what immediate steps he took, but he did not return to Rowland’s Folly. Neither was Madame Sara captured.

  But notwithstanding her escape and her meditated crime, notwithstanding little Antonia’s hour of terror, the ball went on merrily, and the bride-elect opened it with her future husband. On her fair neck gleamed the pearls, lovely in their soft lustre. What she told Rowland was never known; how he took the news is a secret between Antonia and himself. But one thing is certain: no one was more gallant in his conduct, more ardent in his glances of love, than was the master of Rowland’s Folly that night. They were married on the day fixed, and Madame Sara was defeated.

  The Baroness Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála “Emmuska” Orczy de Orci, who wrote as the Baroness Orczy (1865–1947), was a prolific Hungarian-born British writer of adventures and crime. She is best remembered as the creator of Sir Percy Blakeney, the English fop who was secretly the Scarlet Pimpernel, the scourge of the French revolutionaries. In 1903, Orczy wrote a hugely successful stage play about Blakeney, based on one of her short stories, and subsequently produced thirteen books featuring the Scarlet Pimpernel. She also wrote two separate series of compelling, clever stories of detection. Lady Molly of Scotland Yard (1910) collected a dozen tales about a Molly Robertson-Kirk, who joined Scotland Yard to save her fiancé from a false accusation, building a fine career, only to quit when she has saved her man. Orczy also wrote thirty-eight stories featuring a near-anonymous armchair detective, the “Old Man in the Corner,” whose deductions are recorded by Miss Polly Burton, a journalist. Six stories appeared in 1901 as “Mysteries of London,” followed a year later by seven “Mysteries of Great Cities” and collected in 1908 as The Old Man in the Corner. Two other volumes, The Case of Miss Elliott (1905) and Unravelled Knots (1925) round out the complete tales of the Old Man in the Corner. The series spawned twelve silent films in 1924, and some of the stories have been adapted for radio and television. The following first appeared in The Royal Magazine for September 1901.

  THE REGENT’S PARK MURDER

  BARONESS ORCZY

  I

  By this time Miss Polly Burton had become quite accustomed to her extraordinary vis-á-vis* in the corner.

  He was always there, when she arrived, in the selfsame corner, dressed in one of his remarkable check tweed suits; he seldom said good morning, and invariably when she appeared he began to fidget with increased nervousness, with some tattered and knotty piece of string.

  “Were you ever interested in the Regent’s Park murder?” he asked her one day.

  Polly replied that she had forgotten most of the particulars connected with that curious murder, but that she fully remembered the stir and flutter it had caused in a certain section of London Society.

  “The racing and gambling set, particularly, you mean,” he said. “All the persons implicated in the murder, directly or indirectly, were of the type commonly called ‘Society men,’ or ‘men about town,’ whilst the Harewood Club in Hanover Square, round which centred all the scandal in connection with the murder, was one of the smartest clubs in London.

  “Probably the doings of the Harewood Club, which was essentially a gambling club, would for ever have remained ‘officially’ absent from the knowledge of the police authorities but for the murder in the Regent’s Park and the revelations which came to light in connection with it.

  “I dare say you know the quiet square which lies between Portland Place and the Regent’s Park and is called Park Crescent at its south end, and subsequently Park Square East and West. The Marylebone Road, with all its heavy traffic, cuts straight across the large square and its pretty gardens, but the latter are connected together by a tunnel under the road; and of course you must remember that the new tube station in the south portion of the Square had not yet been planned.

  “February 6th, 1907, was a very foggy night, nevertheless Mr. Aaron Cohen, of 30, Park Square West, at two o’clock in the morning, having finally pocketed the heavy winnings which he had just swept off the green table of the Harewood Club, started to walk home alone. An hour later most of the inhabitants of Park Square West were aroused from their peaceful slumbers by the sounds of a violent altercation in the road. A man’s angry voice was heard shouting violently for a minute or two, and was followed immediately by frantic screams of ‘Police’ and ‘Murder.’ Then there was the double sharp report of firearms, and nothing more.

  “The fog was very dense, and, as you no doubt have experienced yourself, it is very difficult to locate sound in a fog. Nevertheless, not more than a minute or two had elapsed before Constable F 18, the point policeman at the corner of Marylebone Road, arrived on the scene, and, having first of all whistled for any of his comrades on the beat, began to grope his way about in the fog, more confused than effectually assisted by contradictory directions from the inhabitants of the houses close by, who were nearly falling out of the upper windows as they shouted out to the constable.

  “‘By the railings, policeman.’

  “‘Higher up the road.’

  “‘No, lower down.’

  “‘It was on this side of the pavement I am sure.’

  “‘No, the other.’

  “At last it was another policeman, F 22, who, turning into Park Square West from the north side, almost stumbled upon the body of a man lying on the pavement with his head against the railings of the Square. By this time quite a little crowd of people from the different houses in the road had come down, curious to
know what had actually happened.

  “The policeman turned the strong light of his bull’s-eye lantern on the unfortunate man’s face.

  “‘It looks as if he had been strangled, don’t it?’ he murmured to his comrade.

  “And he pointed to the swollen tongue, the eyes half out of their sockets, bloodshot and congested, the purple, almost black, hue of the face.

  “At this point one of the spectators, more callous to horrors, peered curiously into the dead man’s face. He uttered an exclamation of astonishment.

  “‘Why, surely, it’s Mr. Cohen from No. 30!’

  “The mention of a name familiar down the length of the street had caused two or three other men to come forward and to look more closely into the horribly distorted mask of the murdered man.

  “‘Our next-door neighbour, undoubtedly,’ asserted Mr. Ellison, a young barrister, residing at No. 31.

  “‘What in the world was he doing this foggy night all alone, and on foot?’ asked somebody else.

  “‘He usually came home very late. I fancy he belonged to some gambling club in town. I dare say he couldn’t get a cab to bring him out here. Mind you, I don’t know much about him. We only knew him to nod to.’

  “‘Poor beggar! it looks almost like an old-fashioned case of garroting.’

  “‘Anyway, the blackguardly murderer, whoever he was, wanted to make sure he had killed his man!’ added Constable F 18, as he picked up an object from the pavement. ‘Here’s the revolver, with two cartridges missing. You gentlemen heard the report just now?’