“‘I am not guilty of the murder of Mr Dyke, and in proof of this I solemnly assert that on Thursday, 19th November, the day I am supposed to have committed the crime, the old man was still alive at half past ten o’clock in the evening.’
“He paused a moment, like a born actor, watching the effect he had produced. I tell you, it was astounding.
“‘I have three separate and independent witnesses here,’ continued Wyatt, with the same deliberate calm, who heard and saw Mr Dyke as late as half past ten that night. Now, I understand that the dismembered body of the old man was found close to Wembley Park. How could I, between half past ten and eleven o’clock, have killed Dyke, cut him up, cleaned and put the flat all tidy, carried the body to the car, driven on to Wembley, hidden the corpse in the spinney, and be back in Euston Road, all in the space of half an hour? I am absolutely innocent of this crime, and, fortunately, it is easy for me now to prove my innocence.’
“Alfred Wyatt had made no idle boast. Mrs Marsh had seen him running downstairs at 8 p.m. An hour after that, the Pitts in the flat beneath heard the old man moving about overhead.
“‘Just as usual,’ observed Mrs Pitt. ‘He always went to bed about nine, and we could always hear him most distinctly.’
“John Pitt, the husband, corroborated this statement; the old man’s movements were quite unmistakable because of his crutches.
“Henry Ogden, on the other hand, who lived in the house facing the block of flats, saw the light in Dyke’s window that evening, and the old man’s silhouette upon the blind from time to time. The light was put out at half past ten. This statement again was corroborated by Mrs Ogden, who also had noticed the silhouette and the light being extinguished at half past ten.
“But this was not all; both Mr and Mrs Ogden had seen old Dyke at his window, sitting in his accustomed armchair, between half past eight and nine o’clock. He was gesticulating, and apparently talking to someone else in the room whom they could not see.
“Alfred Wyatt, therefore, was quite right when he said that he would have no difficulty in proving his innocence. The man whom he was supposed to have murdered was, according to the testimony, alive at six o’clock; according to Mr and Mrs Ogden he was alive and sitting in his window until nine; again, he was heard to move about until ten o’clock by both the Pitts, and at half past ten only was the light put out in his flat. Obviously, therefore, as his dead body was found twelve miles away, Wyatt, who was out of the Crescent at eight, and in Euston Road at eleven, could not have done the deed.
“He was discharged, of course, the magistrate adding a very severe remark on the subject of ‘carelessly collected evidence’. As for Miss Amelia she sailed out of the court like a queen after her coronation, for with Wyatt’s discharge the case against her naturally collapsed. As for me, I walked out too, with an elated feeling at the thought that the intelligence of the British race had not yet sunk so low as our friends on the Continent would have us believe.”
4
“But then, who murdered the old man?” I asked, for I confess the matter was puzzling me in an irritating kind of a way.
“Ah! who indeed?” he rejoined sarcastically, while an artistic knot went to join its fellows along that never-ending bit of string.
“I wish you’d tell me what’s in your mind,” I said, feeling peculiarly irritated with him just at that moment.
“What’s in my mind?” he replied, with shrug of his thin shoulders. “Oh, only a certain degree of admiration!”
“Admiration at what?”
“At a pair of exceedingly clever criminals.”
“Then you do think that Wyatt murdered Dyke?”
“I don’t think – I am sure.”
“But when did they do it?”
“Ah, that’s more to the point. Personally, I should say between them on Wednesday morning, 18th November.”
“The day they went for that motor-car ride?” I gasped.
“And carried away the old man’s remains beneath a multiplicity of rugs,” he added.
“But he was alive long after that!” I urged. “The woman Nicholson –”
“The woman Nicholson saw and spoke to a man in bed, whom she supposed was old Mr Dyke. Among the many questions put to her by those clever detectives, no one thought, of course, of asking her to describe the old man. But even if she had done so, Wyatt was far too great an artist in crime not to have contrived a make-up which, described by a witness who had never before seen Dyke, would easily pass as a description of the old man himself.”
“Impossible!” I said, struck in spite of myself by the simplicity of his logic.
“Impossible, you say?” he shrieked excitedly.
“Why, I call that crime a masterpiece from beginning to end; a display of ingenuity which, fortunately, the criminal classes seldom possess, or where would society be? Here was a crime committed, where everything was most beautifully stage-managed, nothing left unforeseen. Shall I reconstruct it for you?”
“Do!” I said, handing across the table to him a brandnew, beautiful bit of string, on which his talon-like fingers fastened as upon a prey.
“Very well,” he said, marking each point with a scientific knot. “Here, it is, scene by scene. There was Alfred Wyatt and Amelia Dyke – a pair of blackguards, eager to obtain that £4,000 which only the old man’s death could secure for them. They decide upon killing him, and: Scene 1 – Miss Amelia makes her arrangements. She advertises for a charwoman, and engages one, who is to be a very useful witness presently.
“Scene 2 – The murder, brutal, horrible, on the person of an old cripple, whilst his own daughter stands by, and the dismembering of the body.
“Scene 3 – The ride in the motor car – after dark, remember, and with plenty of rugs, beneath which the gruesome burden is concealed. The scene is accompanied by the comedy of Miss Dyke speaking to her father, and waving her hand affectionately at him from below. I tell you, that woman must have had some nerve!
“Then, Scene 4 – The arrival at Wembley, and the hiding of the remains.
“Scene 5 – Amelia goes to Edinburgh by the 5.15 a.m. train, and thus secures her own alibi. After that, the comedy begins in earnest. The impersonation of the dead man by Wyatt during the whole of that memorable Thursday. Mind you, that was not very difficult; it only needed the brain to invent, and the nerve to carry it through. The charwoman had never seen old Dyke before; she only knew that he was an invalid. What more natural than that she should accept as her new master the man who lay in bed all day, and only spoke a few words to her? A very slight make-up of hair and beard would complete the illusion.
“Then, at six o’clock, the woman gone, Wyatt steals out of the house, bespeaks the motor car, leaves it in the street in a convenient spot, and is back in time to be seen by Mrs Marsh at seven.
“The rest is simplicity itself. The silhouette at the window was easy enough to arrange; the sound of a man walking on crutches is easily imitated with a couple of umbrellas – the actual crutches were, no doubt, burned directly after the murder. Lastly, the putting out of the light at half past ten was the crowning stroke of genius.
“One little thing might have upset the whole wonderful plan, but that one thing only; and that was if the body had been found before the great comedy scene of Thursday had been fully played. But that spinney near Wembley was well chosen. People don’t go wandering under trees and in woods on cold November days, and the remains were not found until the Saturday.
“Ah, it was cleverly stage-managed, and no mistake. I couldn’t have done it better myself. Won’t you have another cup of tea? No? Don’t look so upset. The world does not contain many such clever criminals as Alfred Wyatt and Amelia Dyke.”
VII
The Tremarn Case
1
“Well, it certainly is most amazing!” I said that day, when I had finished reading about it all in The Daily Telegraph.
“Yet the most natural thing in the world,” retorted the man i
n the corner, as soon as he had ordered his lunch. “Crime invariably begets crime. No sooner is a murder, theft, or fraud committed in a novel or striking way, than this method is aged – probably within the next few days – by some other less imaginative scoundrel.
“Take this case, for instance,” he continued, as he slowly began sipping his glass of milk, “which seems to amaze you so much. It was less than a year ago, was it not? that in Paris a man was found dead in a cab, stabbed in a most peculiar way – right through the neck, from ear to ear – with, presumably, a long, sharp instrument of the type of an Italian stiletto.
“No one in England took much count of the crime, beyond a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders at the want of safety of the Paris streets, and the incapacity of the French detectives, who not only never discovered the murderer, who had managed to slip out of the cab unperceived, but who did not even succeed in establishing the identity of the victim.
“But this case,” he added, pointing once more to my daily paper, “strikes nearer home. Less than a year has passed, and last week, in the very midst of our much vaunted London streets, a crime of a similar nature has been committed. I do not know if your paper gives full details, but this is what happened: last Monday evening two gentlemen, both in evening dress and wearing opera hats, hailed a hansom in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was about a quarter past eleven, and the night, if you remember, was a typical November one – dark, drizzly, and foggy. The various theatres in the immediate neighbourhood were disgorging a continuous stream of people after the evening performance.
“The cabman did not take special notice of his fares. They jumped in very quickly, and one of them, through the little trap above, gave him an address in Cromwell Road. He drove there as quickly as the fog would permit him, and pulled up at the number given. One of the gentlemen then handed him up a very liberal fare – again through the little trap – and told him to drive his friend on to Westminster Chambers, Victoria Street.
“Cabby noticed that the ‘swell’, when he got out of the hansom, stopped for a moment to say a few words to his friend, who had remained inside; then he crossed over the road and walked quickly in the direction of the Natural History Museum.
“When the cabman pulled up at Westminster Chambers, he waited for the second fare to get out; the latter seemingly making no movement that way, cabby looked down at him through the trap.
“‘I thought ’e was asleep,’ he explained to the police later on. ‘’E was leaning back in ’is corner, and ’is ’ead was turned towards the window. I gets down and calls to ’im, but ’e don’t move. Then I gets on to the step and give ’im a shake… There! – I’ll say no more… We was near a lamppost, the mare took a step forward, and the light fell full on the gent’s face. ’E was dead and no mistake. I saw the wound just underneath ’is ear, and “Murder!” I says to myself at once.’
“Cabby lost no time in whistling for the nearest point-policeman, then he called the night porter of the Westminster Chambers. The latter looked at the murdered man, and declared that he knew nothing of him; certainly he was not a tenant of the Chambers.
“By the time a couple of policemen arrived upon the scene, quite a crowd had gathered around the cab, in spite of the lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night. The matter was such an important one that one of the constables thought it best at once to jump into the hansom beside the murdered man and to order the cabman to drive to the nearest police station.
“There the cause of death was soon ascertained; the victim of this daring outrage had been stabbed through the neck from ear to ear with a long, sharp, instrument, in shape like an antique stiletto, which, I may tell you, was subsequently found under the cushions of the hansom. The murderer must have watched his opportunity, when his victim’s head was turned away from him, and then dealt the blow, just below the left ear, with amazing swiftness and precision.
“Of course the papers were full of it the next day; this was such a lovely opportunity for driving home a moral lesson, of how one crime engenders another, and how – but for that murder in Paris a year ago – we should not now have to deplore a crime committed in the very centre of fashionable London, the detection of which seems likely to completely baffle the police.
“Plenty more in that strain, of course, from which the reading public quickly jumped to the conclusion that the police held absolutely no clue as to the identity of the daring and mysterious miscreant.
“A most usual and natural thing had happened; cabby could only give a very vague description of his other ‘fare’, of the ‘swell’ who had got out at Cromwell Road, and been lost to sight after having committed so dastardly and so daring a crime.
“This was scarcely to be wondered at, for the night had been very foggy, and the murderer had been careful to pull his opera hat well over his face, thus hiding the whole of his forehead and eyes; moreover, he had always taken the additional precaution of only communicating with the cabman through the little trapdoor.
“All cabby had seen of him was a clean-shaven chin. As to the murdered man, it was not until about noon, when the early editions of the evening papers came out with a fuller account of the crime and a description of the victim, that his identity was at last established.
“Then the news spread like wildfire, and the evening papers came out with some of the most sensational headlines it had ever been their good fortune to print. The man who had been so mysteriously murdered in the cab was none other than Mr Philip Le Cheminant, the nephew and heir-presumptive of the Earl of Tremarn.”
2
“In order fully to realize the interest created by this extraordinary news, you must be acquainted with the various details of that remarkable case, popularly known as the ‘Tremarn Peerage Case’,” continued the man in the corner, as he placidly munched his cheesecake. “I do not know if you followed it in its earlier stages, when its many details – which read like a romance – were first made public.”
I looked so interested and so eager that he did not wait for my reply.
“I must try and put it all clearly before you,” he said; “I was interested in it all from the beginning, and from the numerous wild stories afloat I have sifted only what was undeniably true. Some points of the case are still in dispute, and will, perhaps, now for ever remain a mystery. But I must take you back some five-and-twenty years. The Hon. Arthur Le Cheminant, second son of the late Earl of Tremarn, was then travelling round the world for health and pleasure.
“In the course of his wanderings he touched at Martinique, one of the French West Indian islands, which was devastated by volcanic eruptions about two years ago. There he met and fell in love with a beautiful half-caste girl named Lucie Legrand, who had French blood in her veins, and was a Christian, but who, otherwise, was only partially civilized, and not at all educated.
“How it all came about it is difficult to conjecture, but one thing is absolutely certain, and that is that the Hon. Arthur Le Cheminant, the son of one of our English peers, married this half-caste girl at the parish church of St Pierre, in Martinique, according to the forms prescribed by French laws, both parties being of the same religion.
“I suppose now no one will ever know whether that marriage was absolutely and undisputably a legal one – but, in view of subsequent events, we must presume that it was. The Hon. Arthur, however, in any case, behaved like a young scoundrel. He only spent a very little time with his wife, quickly tired of her, and within two years of his marriage callously abandoned her and his child, then a boy about a year old.
“He lodged a sum of £2,000 in the local bank in the name of Mme Le Cheminant, the interest of which was to be paid to her regularly for the maintenance of herself and child, then he calmly sailed for England, with the intention never to return. This intention fate itself helped him to carry out, for he died very shortly afterwards, taking the secret of his incongruous marriage with him to his grave.
“Mme Le Cheminant, as she was called out there, seems to have acce
pted her own fate with perfect equanimity. She had never known anything about her husband’s social position in his own country, and he had left her what, in Martinique amongst the coloured population, was considered a very fair competence for herself and child.
“The grandson of an English earl was taught to read and write by the worthy curé of St Pierre, and during the whole of her life, Lucie never once tried to find out who her husband was, and what had become of him.
“But here the dramatic scene comes in this strange story,” continued the man in the corner, with growing excitement; “two years ago St Pierre, if you remember, was completely destroyed by volcanic eruptions. Nearly the entire population perished, and every house and building was in ruins. Among those who fell a victim to the awful catastrophe was Mme Le Cheminant, otherwise the Hon. Mrs Arthur Le Cheminant, whilst amongst those who managed to escape and ultimately found refuge in the English colony of St Vincent, was her son, Philip.
“Well, you can easily guess what happened, can’t you? In that English-speaking colony the name of Le Cheminant was, of course, well known, and Philip had not been in St Vincent many weeks, before he learned that his father was none other than a younger brother of the present Earl of Tremarn, and that he himself – seeing that the present peer was over fifty and still unmarried – was heir-presumptive to the title and estates.
“You know the rest. Within two or three months of the memorable St Pierre catastrophe Philip Le Cheminant had written to his uncle, Lord Tremarn, demanding his rights. Then he took passage on board a French liner and crossed over to Havre en route for Paris and London.
“He and his mother – both brought up as French subjects – had, mind you, all the respect which French people have for their papers of identification; and when the house in which they had lived for twenty years was tumbling about the young man’s ears, when his mother had already perished in the flames, he made a final and successful effort to rescue the papers which proved him to be a French citizen, the son of Lucie Legrand by her lawful marriage with Arthur Le Cheminant at the church of the Immaculate Conception of St Pierre.
The Case of Miss Elliott Page 11
