The Case of Miss Elliott

by Baroness Orczy

  “His misfortune, however, had left him terribly sensitive; he never could bear the looks of compassion thrown upon him, whenever he ventured out on his crutches, and even the kindliest sympathy was positive torture to him. Gradually, therefore, as he got on in life, he took to staying more and more at home, and after a while gave up going out altogether. By the time he was sixty-five years old and Miss Amelia a fine young woman of seven-and-twenty, old Dyke had not been outside the door of his flat for at least five years.

  “And yet, when Constable Turner aided by the locksmith entered the flat on that memorable 24th November, there was not a trace anywhere of the old man.

  “Miss Amelia was in the last stages of despair, and at first she seemed far too upset and hysterical to give the police any coherent and definite information. At last, however, from amid the chaos of tears and of ejaculations, Constable Turner gathered the following facts:

  “Miss Amelia had some great friends in Edinburgh whom she had long wished to visit, her father’s crippled condition making this extremely difficult. A fortnight ago, however, in response to a very urgent invitation, she at last decided to accept it, but in order to leave her father altogether comfortable, she advertised in the local paper for a respectable woman who would come to the flat every day and see to all the work, cook his dinner, make the bed, and so on.

  “She had several applications in reply to this advertisement, and ultimately selected a very worthy looking elderly person, who, for seven shillings a week, undertook to come daily from seven in the morning until about six in the afternoon, to see to all Mr Dyke’s comforts.

  “Miss Amelia was very favourably impressed with this person’s respectable and motherly appearance, and she left for Edinburgh by the 5.15 a.m. train on the morning of Thursday, 19th November, feeling confident that her father would be well looked after. She certainly had not heard from the old man while she was away, but she had not expected to hear unless, indeed, something had been wrong.

  “Miss Amelia was quite sure that something dreadful had happened to her father, as he could not possibly have walked downstairs and out of the house alone; certainly his crutches were nowhere to be found, but this only helped to deepen the mystery of the old man’s disappearance.

  “The constable, having got thus far with his notes, thought it best to refer the whole matter at this stage to higher authority. He got from Miss Amelia the name and address of the charwoman, and then went back to the station.

  “There, the very first news that greeted him was that the medical officer of the district had just sent round to the various police stations his report on the human remains found in Wembley Park the previous Saturday. They had proved to be the dismembered body of an old man between sixty and seventy years of age, the immediate cause of whose death had undoubtedly been a violent blow on the back of the head with a heavy instrument, which had shattered the cranium. Expert examination further revealed the fact that deceased had had in early life both legs removed by a surgical operation just above the knee.

  “That was the end of the prologue in the Lisson Grove tragedy,” continued the man in the corner, after a slight and dramatic pause, “as far as the public was concerned. When the curtain was subsequently raised upon the first act, the situation had been considerably changed.

  “The remains had been positively identified as those of old Mr Dyke, and a charge of wilful murder had been brought against Alfred Wyatt, of no occupation, residing in Warlock Road, Lisson Grove, and against Amelia Dyke for complicity in the crime. They are the two people whom I am going to see this afternoon brought before the ‘beak’ at the Marylebone Police Court.”

  2

  “Two very important bits of evidence, I must tell you, had come to light, on the first day of the inquest and had decided the police to make this double arrest.

  “In the first place, according to one or two of the neighbours, who happened to know something of the Dyke household, Miss Amelia had kept company for some time with a young man named Alfred Wyatt; he was an electrical engineer, resided in the neighbourhood, and was some years younger than Miss Dyke. As he was known not to be very steady, it was generally supposed that the old man did not altogether approve of his daughter’s engagement.

  “Mrs Pitt, residing in the flat immediately below the one occupied by the Dykes, had stated, moreover, that on Wednesday the 18th, at about midday, she heard very loud and angry voices proceeding from above, Miss Amelia’s shrill tones being specially audible. Shortly afterwards she saw Wyatt go out of the house; but the quarrel continued for some little time without him, for the neighbours could still hear Miss Amelia’s high-pitched voice, speaking very excitedly and volubly.

  “‘An hour later,’ further explained Mrs Pitt, ‘I met Miss Dyke on the stairs; she seemed very flushed and looked as if she had been crying. I suppose she saw that I noticed this, for she stopped and said to me:

  “‘“All this fuss, you know, Mrs Pitt, because Alfred asked me to go for a drive with him this afternoon, but I am going all the same.”’

  “‘Later in the afternoon – it must have been quite half past four, for it was getting dark – young Wyatt drove up in a motor car, and presently I heard Miss Dyke’s voice on the stairs saying very pleasantly and cheerfully: “All right, Daddy, we shan’t be long.” Then Mr Dyke must have said something which I didn’t hear, for she added, “Oh, that’s all right; I am well wrapped up, and we have plenty of rugs.”’

  “Mrs Pitt then went to her window and saw Wyatt and Amelia Dyke start off in a motor. She concluded that the old man had been mollified, for both Amelia and Wyatt waved their hands affectionately up towards the window. They returned from their drive about six o’clock; Wyatt saw Amelia to the door, and then went off again. The next day Miss Dyke went to Scotland.

  “As you see,” continued the man in the corner, “Alfred Wyatt had become a very important personality in this case; he was Amelia’s sweetheart, and it was strange – to say the least of it – that she had never as yet even mentioned his name. Therefore, when she was recalled in order to give further evidence, you may be sure that she was pretty sharply questioned on the subject of Alfred Wyatt.

  “In her evidence before the coroner, she adhered fairly closely to her original statement:

  “‘I did not mention Mr Wyatt’s name,’ she explained, ‘because I did not think it was of any importance; if he knew anything about my dear father’s mysterious fate he would have come forward at once, of course, and helped me to find out who the cowardly murderer was who could attack a poor, crippled old man. Mr Wyatt was devoted to my father, and it is perfectly ridiculous to say that daddy objected to my engagement; on the contrary, he gave us his full consent, and we were going to be married directly after the New Year, and continue to live with father in the flat.’

  “‘But,’ questioned the coroner, who had not by any means departed from his severity, ‘what about this quarrel which the last witness overheard on the subject of your going out driving with Mr Wyatt?’

  “‘Oh, that was nothing,’ replied Miss Dyke very quietly. ‘Daddy only objected because he thought that it was rather too late to start at four o’clock, and that I should be cold. When he saw that we had plenty of rugs he was quite pleased for me to go.’

  “‘Isn’t it rather astonishing, then,’ asked the coroner, ‘seeing that Mr Wyatt was on such good terms with your father, that he did not go to see him while you were away?’

  “‘Not at all,’ she replied unconcernedly; ‘Alfred went down to Edinburgh on the Thursday evening. He couldn’t travel with me in the morning, for he had some business to see to in town that day; but he joined me at my friends’ house on the Friday morning, having travelled all night.’

  “‘Ah!’ remarked the coroner dryly, ‘then he had not seen your father since you left.’

  “‘Oh yes,’ said Miss Amelia; ‘he called round to see dad during the day, and found him looking well and cheerful.’

  “Miss Amelia Dy
ke, as she gave this evidence, seemed absolutely unconscious of saying anything that might in any way incriminate her lover. She is a handsome, though somewhat coarse-looking, woman, nearer thirty I should say, than she would care to own. I was present at the inquest, mind you, for that case had too many mysteries about it from the first for it to have eluded my observation, and I watched her closely throughout. Her voice struck me as fine and rich, with – in this instance also – a shade of coarseness in it; certainly, it was very far from being high-pitched, as Mrs Pitt had described it.

  “When she had finished her evidence she went back to her seat, looking neither flustered nor uncomfortable, although many looks of contempt and even of suspicion were darted at her from every corner of the crowded court.

  “Nor did she lose her composure in the slightest degree when Mr Parlett, clerk to Messrs Snow and Patterson, solicitors, of Bedford Row, in his turn came forward and gave evidence; only while the little man spoke her full red lips curled and parted with a look of complete contempt.

  “Mr Parlett’s story was indeed a remarkable one, inasmuch as it suddenly seemed to tear asunder the veil of mystery which so far had surrounded the murder of old Dyke by supplying it with a motive – a strong motive, too: the eternal greed of gain.

  “In June last, namely, it appears that Messrs Snow and Patterson received intimation from a firm of Melbourne solicitors that a man of the name of Dyke had died there recently, leaving a legacy of £4,000 to his only brother, James Arthur Dyke, a mining engineer, who in 1890 was residing at Lisson Grove Crescent. The Melbourne solicitors in their communication asked for Messrs Snow and Patterson’s kind assistance in helping them to find the legatee.

  “The search was easy enough, since James Arthur Dyke, mining engineer, had never ceased to reside at Lisson Grove Crescent. Armed, therefore, with full instructions from their Melbourne correspondent, Messrs Snow and Patterson communicated with Dyke, and after a little preliminary correspondence, the sum of £4,000 in Bank of Australia notes and various securities were handed over by Mr Parlett to the old cripple.

  “The money and securities were – so Mr Parlett understood – subsequently deposited by Mr Dyke at the Portland Road Branch of the London and South-western Bank: as the old man apparently died intestate, the whole of the £4,000 would naturally devolve upon his only daughter and natural legatee.

  “Mind you, all through the proceedings the public had instinctively felt that money was somewhere at the bottom of this gruesome and mysterious crime. There is not much object in murdering an old cripple except for purposes of gain, but now Mr Parlett’s evidence had indeed furnished a damning motive for the appalling murder.

  “What more likely than that Alfred Wyatt, wanting to finger that £4,000, had done away with the old man? And if Amelia Dyke did not turn away from him in horror, after such a cowardly crime, then she must have known of it and had perhaps connived in it.

  “As for Nicholson, the charwoman, her evidence had certainly done more to puzzle everybody all round than any other detail in this strange and mysterious crime.

  “She deposed that on Friday, 13th November, in answer to an advertisement in the Marylebone Star, she had called on Miss Dyke at Lisson Grove, when it was arranged that she should do a week’s work at the flat, beginning Thursday, the 19th, from seven in the morning until six in the afternoon. She was to keep the place clean, get Mr Dyke – who, she understood, was an invalid – all his meals, and make herself generally useful to him.

  “Accordingly, Nicholson turned up on the Thursday morning. She let herself into the flat, as Miss Dyke had entrusted the latchkey to her, and went on with the work. Mr Dyke was in bed, and she got him all his meals that day. She thought she was giving him satisfaction, and was very astonished when, at six o’clock, having cleared away his tea, he told her that he would not require her again. He gave her no explanation, asked her for the latchkey, and gave her her full week’s money – seven shillings in full. Nicholson then put on her bonnet, and went away.

  “Now,” continued the man in the corner, leaning excitedly forward, and marking each sentence he uttered with an exquisitely complicated knot in his bit of string, “an hour later, another neighbour, Mrs Marsh, who lived on the same floor as the Dykes, on starting to go out, met Alfred Wyatt on the landing. He took off his hat to her, and then knocked at the door of the Dykes’ flat.

  “When she came home at eight o’clock, she again passed him on the stairs; he was then going out. She stopped to ask him how Mr Dyke was, and Wyatt replied: ‘Oh, fairly well, but he misses his daughter, you know.’

  “Mrs Marsh, now closely questioned, said that she thought Wyatt was carrying a large parcel under his arm, but she could not distinguish the shape of the parcel as the angle of the stairs, where she met him, was very dark. She stated, though, that he was running down the stairs very fast.

  “It was on all that evidence that the police felt justified in arresting Alfred Wyatt for the murder of James Arthur Dyke, and Amelia Dyke for connivance in the crime. And now this very morning, those two young people have been brought before the magistrate, and at this moment evidence – circumstantial, mind you, but positively damning – is being heaped upon them by the prosecution. The police did their work quickly. The very evening after the first day of the inquest, the warrant was out for their arrest.”

  He looked at a huge silver watch which he always carried in his waistcoat pocket.

  “I don’t want to miss the defence,” he said, “for I know that it will be sensational. But I did not want to hear the police and medical evidence all over again. You’ll excuse me, won’t you? I shall be back here for five o’clock tea. I know you will be glad to hear all about it.”

  3

  When I returned to the ABC shop for my tea at five minutes past five, there he sat in his accustomed corner, with a cup of tea before him, another placed opposite to him, presumably for me, and a long piece of string between his bony fingers.

  “What will you have with your tea?” he asked politely, the moment I was seated.

  “A roll and butter and the end of the story,” I replied.

  “Oh, the story has no end,” he said with a chuckle; “at least, not for the public. As for me, why, I never met a more simple ‘mystery’. Perhaps that is why the police were so completely at sea.”

  “Well, and what happened?” I queried, with some impatience.

  “Why, the usual thing,” he said, as he once more began to fidget nervously with his bit of string. “The prisoners had pleaded not guilty, and the evidence for the prosecution was gone into in full. Mr Parlett repeated his story of the £4,000 legacy, and all the neighbours had some story or other to tell about Alfred Wyatt, who, according to them, was altogether a most undesirable young man.

  “I heard the fag end of Mrs Marsh’s evidence. When I reached the court she was repeating the story she had already told to the police.

  “Someone else in the house had also heard Wyatt running helter-skelter downstairs at eight o’clock on the Thursday evening; this was a point, though a small one, in favour of the accused. A man cannot run downstairs when he is carrying the whole weight of a dead body, and the theory of the prosecution was that Wyatt had murdered old Dyke on that Thursday evening, got into his motor car somewhere, scorched down to Wembley with the dismembered body of his victim, deposited it in the spinney where it was subsequently found, and finally had driven back to town, stabled his motor car, and reached King’s Cross in time for the 11.30 night express to Edinburgh. He would have time for all that, remember, for he would have three hours and a half to do it in.

  “Besides which the prosecution had unearthed one more witness, who was able to add another tiny link to the already damning chain of evidence built up against the accused.

  “Wilfred Poad, namely, manager of a large cycle and motor-car depot in Euston Road, stated that on Thursday afternoon, 19th November, at about half past six o’clock, Alfred Wyatt, with whom he had had some business
dealings before, had hired a small car from him, with the understanding that he need not bring it back until after 11 p.m. This was agreed to, Poad keeping the place open until just before eleven, when Wyatt drove up in the car, paid for the hire of it, and then walked away from the shop in the direction of the Great Northern terminus.

  “That was pretty strong against the male prisoner, wasn’t it? For, mind you, Wyatt had given no satisfactory account whatever of his time between 8 p.m., when Mrs Marsh had met him going out of Lisson Grove Crescent, and 11 p.m., when he brought back the car to the Euston Road shop. ‘He had been driving about aimlessly,’ so he said. Now, one doesn’t go out motoring for hours on a cold, drizzly night in November for no purpose whatever.

  “As for the female prisoner, the charge against her was merely one of complicity.

  “This closed the case for the prosecution,” continued the funny creature, with one of his inimitable chuckles, “leaving but one tiny point obscure, and that was, the murdered man’s strange conduct in dismissing the woman Nicholson.

  “Yes, the case was strong enough, and yet there stood both prisoners in the dock, with that sublime air of indifference and contempt which only complete innocence or hardened guilt could give.

  “Then when the prosecution had had their say, Alfred Wyatt chose to enter the witness-box and make a statement in his own defence. Quietly, and as if he were making the most casual observation he said: