The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries

by The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries (retail) (epub)

  “Then you are mine, darling!” cried Gerald, impetuously, as he clasped his loved one proudly in his arms. “And you will never leave me?”

  “Never, dearest,” exclaimed May, as she raised her fashionably mauve eyes to his, with a trusting smile. And Gerald bent his golden head to meet her own, and—well, some heads are harder than others, and lovers are the same all over the world ever.

  * * *

  —

  So this tall, handsome, well-built man, with his yet dark curling locks and truthful azure orbs, took up the morning paper and read as follows:—

  “A dastardly crime has been committed in our midst, more horrible than anything described by De Quincey.

  “A man, wearing a handkerchief marked X.Y.Z., has been daringly murdered in cold blood in the streets of Melbourne. This blood-curdling incident reminds us strongly of a French novel, in which we have read of a murder committed in an omnibus, and indeed, were this fiction instead of fact, we should feel inclined to accuse the author of plagiarism; but we very much doubt whether any writer of this century could be ingenious enough to devise the extraordinary incidents which it is now our dismal duty to relate.”

  “Good heavens!” exclaimed Gerald, passing his hand through his rich chestnut curls, as he poured out a tumbler of brandy (Hennessey’s) and drained it feverishly. “My darling must not hear of this, it will kill her!”

  At this moment a knock was heard at the door, and a solicitor’s clerk entered, who had greatly distinguished himself at a recent trial, where he had acted as leading counsel for the defendant.

  Gerald Annesley, who had studied human nature, and possessed a daring ingenuity that savoured of Machiavelli, bethought him of offering his visitor a glass of wine, for it is a fact known to the Jesuits, and some men of equally diabolical cunning, that the influence of grape juice, especially when it hails from a neighbouring grocer, tends to render human beings more communicative and friendly. The astute lawyer fell easily into the snare thus laid for him, and addressing Gerald asked—

  “You are aware that a murder has been committed on the person of an unknown individual, bearing the initials X.Y.Z.?” Gerald grew pale and livid, his ashen hue contrasting strangely with the darkness of his raven hair. “Heavens!” he cried, as a knock sounded at the door, and his landlady entered with a letter. “Great Sc——” he exclaimed, “this cannot be! this is a letter from Jane Smith, whose mother is dying, and summons me at once to her bedside, to hear her dying confession!”

  So saying, he reeled lifeless to the ground.

  CHAPTER II

  It was late before Gerald Annesley could escape from the bedside of the expiring woman, to pay his morning greeting to his darling, who sat beside her father’s arm-chair, playfully caressing him, and reading aloud from the morning paper.

  As Gerald gazed on her fair hair and girlish face, with its sweet blue eyes and stormy smile, he thought he had never beheld so charming a picture.

  “For shame, errant knight!” she exclaimed, laughing lightly; “how comes it that you are so late in paying homage at the shrine.” (This is, be it observed, the newest colonial style in our courtly antipodes.) As Gerald was about playfully to answer this gay badinage the door opened, and three constables entered, bearing handcuffs.

  “Gerald Annesley,” said the foremost of them, “I arrest you for the murder of X.Y.Z.”

  “Heavens! what does this mean?” cried May, in frightened accents.

  “It means,” said Gerald proudly, “that I am about to leave you.”

  “Heavens! this must not be!” exclaimed May. “Release him instantly—I forbid you to arrest him!”

  “May,” replied her lover, “do not detain these men in the performance of their duty.”

  “Oh heavens! It is a mistake. You are innocent—I declare he is innocent! Do you still refuse to release him? Oh, my darling, my darling, this must not be!” So saying, May fell sobbing on the neck of her lover, and then tottered fainting to the ground, which the reader will observe has by this time borne a deal of tumbling.

  CHAPTER III

  Immediately on hearing the news of Gerald Annesley’s arrest, Mr. Johnson, the clerk so distinguished for his eloquent pleading, repaired to Mr. Nettleby’s for a confirmation of the report.

  “Good heavens!” exclaimed May, as he entered the apartment, “where is my darling? Take me to him, I must go to him!”

  “I fear, Miss May, that at this juncture your help would be unavailing,” replied the lawyer, as he gazed with unconcealed admiration at this noble girl.

  May Nettleby paused for a moment in reflection; then, drawing herself up to her full height, said, in a cool determined voice, “He must be saved”—proudly raising her head—“and I will save him!”

  In a moment she had developed from an innocent and unheeding girl into a self-reliant reader of “The Leavenworth Case.”

  The transformation was instantaneous. In the hour that followed she grew four inches across the chest, and the skirts of her dresses had all to be lengthened. “I am going to save my darling’s life!” she exclaimed, as she waved the lawyer to the step of the carriage.

  The lawyer was speechless.

  He had known May Nettleby from a babe, and always admired her plucky independence, but this revelation of the force of her character fairly appalled him.

  “Oh, it is too horrible, it must not be!” cried May, passionately, as she entered the court, and beheld her lover standing proud and impetuous in the dock. Numerous were the comments among the spectators on his fair golden hair and noble bearing. Both were said to be assumed, by the tongue of slander, but even slander was silent in the haunts of Themis. Gerald looked coldly down upon the rabble; his haughty spirit was not curbed by this misfortune, though his hot Irish blood rebelled against the indignity of his position.

  Gerald Annesley, being duly sworn, deposed:—

  “I am Gerald Annesley, a native of Ireland. I came to Melbourne six weeks ago with a letter of introduction to Mr. Nettleby. I have a family banshee and blue eyes. My hair occasionally changes colour, but my spirit is always fiery and impetuous.”

  On hearing these disclosures May Nettleby grew waxy white, and would have swooned had not Fred Addlepate, who was sitting beside her, supported her drooping form, and murmured tenderly, “One can overdo this kind of thing, you know.”

  “Good heavens!” she exclaimed, “this must not be!” She feared that if the strain were long maintained her nerves would give way, and that without the support of her undaunted courage, Gerald, as well as her limited vocabulary, would utterly collapse under his trouble.

  The jury retired to consider their verdict.

  “Good heavens!” suddenly exclaimed May Nettleby, clasping her hands to her heart, as a woman advanced towards her and informed her that the grandmother of Jane Smith was at the point of death, and wished to make her last confession. “Will these families never cease deceasing? I may, perhaps, gain the information that will save my darling’s life!” she exclaimed, as she rushed to the bedside of the dying woman.

  Half an hour—an hour—had elapsed, and still May Nettleby did not return. At last the jury jumped to a conclusion and into the court, while the verdict “Not guilty!” echoed in ringing accents through the building. As Gerald stepped down from the dock, and marched proudly from the building, his golden hair glinting in the sunlight, a lovely woman forced her way through the crowd, ejaculating, as she flung herself sobbing into his arms, “It must be so, I tell you! My darling—thank God, my darling is saved!” Then she tottered backwards and fell fainting to the unhappy ground.

  CHAPTER IV

  Three months had elapsed since the infamous murder of X.Y.Z., and the perpetrator of the crime had not been brought to justice. May Nettleby and her father had retired to the country, where they were entertaining
a party of brilliant guests. Mr. Nettleby possessed the rare art of making his visitors enjoy themselves at his expense, for he was extremely wealthy, and, as the witty Talleyrand has observed: “People who have money generally lead easier lives than those who have none,”—a cold and cynical remark, if you please, but one, nevertheless, that is singularly typical of the peculiar spirit of his age and generation.

  One afternoon, as May and her friends sat under the trees in the garden, the tall handsome figure of Gerald Annesley was seen advancing up the path, his dark clustering curls blowing in the breeze beneath a purple deer-stalker’s cap.

  “How hot it is to-day,” archly observed the facetious Fred Addlepate, flinging himself on the grass.

  “On the contrary, I am quite cool,” bantered May, airily.

  Addlepate hesitated a moment at this ready retort, while he searched what he was pleased to term his mind for a cutting reply.

  “Then we must agree to differ,” he exclaimed, as May rose to greet her beloved one; and the company fell into convulsions of laughter over this joke, to whose age and meaning respect were far more due. As soon as their merriment had somewhat abated, Gerald drew his darling aside, and, lover-like, was about to engage in a few moments of whispered nothings, when a servant announced to May that two gentlemen were waiting in the hall to make their dying confessions at her earliest convenience.

  “Good heavens!” cried May, “it cannot be, it is too horrible! Darling, will you come with me?”

  “Dearest, can you doubt me?” murmured Gerald, bending tenderly over her, as they quitted the garden together.

  How proud and fond was May of her high-spirited Irish lover at that instant. As she gazed at his purple eyes, the deer-stalker to match, and the now golden hair, she felt that nothing should ever separate her from him.

  “Darling,” murmured Gerald, fondly, “are you prepared for the trial that awaits you? Can you bear these revelations with your usual good-natured composure?”

  At that instant a figure dashed violently past them, waving in his hand a scroll of paper. It was Mr. Nettleby, flourishing his dying confession.

  In an instant May realised all! She caught sight of the words “Jane Smith,” “clandestine marriage.” Jane Smith must be his daughter by a former union, and it was to avert this disclosure that he had compassed the murder of X.Y.Z.

  “Oh, heavens, it cannot be!” cried May, with a wild scream.

  “Great Barnes, what have I done!” cried her father, falling heavily to the ground.

  “Oh, my darling, my darling, save me!” cried May, as she tottered fainting on to the lifeless corpse.

  Gerald reeled and staggered for several instants, while his hair and eyes changed colour with chameleon-like iridescence; then exclaiming: “Oh, my darling is fainting—save her!” he fell insensible over the second-floor body of his loved one.

  The assassin of X.Y.Z. had been found at last.

  CHAPTER V

  For six weeks May Nettleby lay at the point of death; indeed, she made (like so many heroines) a point of it. Jane Smith, on hearing the tidings, succumbed to the hereditary brain fever of her class, and meanwhile Gerald Annesley tossed (for five-pound notes) on his pillow in a raving delirium. When May was sufficiently recovered to learn how stricken he had been, she exclaimed, “Good heavens! I must go to my darling! He shall not die!” then fell back senseless on the pillows, comparatively unaccustomed to this sort of thing. The strain on her nerves had been too great, the sensitively organised frame gave way at last. The finely-tempered blade had worn out the scabbard; the acorn in the porcelain jar had worked its familiar ruin. But Gerald did not die, for he was neither a Smith by descent nor a professed confessioner. Even May, at length, recovered from her couch of suffering, which by this period required mending, and with her loving care and tender woman’s screams hovered round his bedside. The crisis of the fever, which had baffled the most eminent dentists, at length was over, and the fond lovers were re-united at last.

  Jane Smith became a reformed character, changed her name to Jones, and devoted her life to good works, founding a hospital to facilitate the confessions of Smiths and dying murderers.

  Fred Addlepate became a Member of Parliament, and was soon appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. Mr. Johnson, the lawyer’s clerk, married the quondam Jane Smith, and blossomed into Lord Chief Justice of the Fiji Islands. Often, when his little children were gambolling around his knee, he told them, in the flickering firelight, the story of the handsome cad, who had laid the foundation of his future fortunes.

  Soon afterwards May and Gerald were married.

  “And are you indeed mine?” cried Gerald, impetuously, as he bent his, this time truly, golden head towards his darling. They stood on the deck of the steamer that bore them away from the scene of all their troubles, and she could no longer doubt who was his hairdresser.

  “It must be for ever,” murmured his young bride, as, with her peculiarly stormy smile, she gazed up lovingly and trustingly into his violet eyes.

  “And you love me?”

  Her answer was (in the language of the billiard room)—a kiss.

  The Jewelled Skull

  DICK DONOVAN

  Ellery Queen was (justly) praised for the brilliant idea of using the same name for a (pseudonymous) byline as well as for the name of the detective hero, figuring there was a better chance of a reader remembering the Queen name if it were constantly being reinforced in the story. The cousins who created the Queen name were not, however, the first to employ this clever marketing tool; that honor goes to Dick Donovan.

  Although one of the most successful authors of Victorian and Edwardian detective stories and a regular contributor to the same Strand magazine in which Sherlock Holmes found fame, Donovan’s mysteries are seldom read today. His melodramatic, sensational plots featured physically active detectives—the most popular being Dick Donovan in first-person narratives—taking on secret societies, master villains, and innocent people coerced into crime while hypnotized or under the influence of sinister drugs.

  The lack of texture in his prose, the sparseness of background context, and the stick-figure characters all contributed to the diminishment of his reputation. Although he wrote more than fifty volumes of detective stories and novels, James Edward Preston Muddock (1842–1934), later changed to Joyce Emmerson Preston Muddock, claimed in his autobiography Pages from an Adventurous Life (1907) to be disappointed in their popularity, preferring his historical and nongenre fiction (much as Arthur Conan Doyle lamented the adulation given his Sherlock Holmes stories).

  Born in Southampton, Muddock traveled extensively throughout Asia, the Pacific, and Europe as a special correspondent to The London Daily News and the Hour and as a regular contributor to other periodicals. When he turned to writing mystery stories, he named his Glasgow detective Dick Donovan after a famous eighteenth-century Bow Street runner. The stories became so popular that he took it for his pseudonym.

  “The Jewelled Skull” was originally published in the July 1892 issue of The Strand Magazine; it was first published in book form in From Clue to Capture (London, Hutchingson, 1893).

  THE JEWELLED SKULL

  Dick Donovan

  Busily engaged one morning in my office trying to solve some knotty problems that called for my earnest attention, I was suddenly disturbed by a knock at the door, and, in answer to my “Come in!” one of my assistants entered, although I had given strict orders that I was not to be disturbed for two hours.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said my man, “but a gentleman wishes to see you, and will take no denial.”

  “I thought I told you not to disturb me under any circumstances,” I replied, somewhat tartly.

  “Yes, so you did. But the gentleman insists upon seeing you. He says his business is most urgent.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Here is
his card, sir.”

  I glanced at the card the assistant handed to me. It bore the name—Colonel Maurice Odell, The Star and Garter Club.

  Colonel Maurice Odell was an utter stranger to me. I had never heard his name before; but I knew that the Star and Garter Club was a club of the highest rank, and that its members were men of position and eminence. I therefore considered it probable that the colonel’s business was likely, as he said, to be urgent, and I told my assistant to show him in.

  A few minutes later the door opened, and there entered a tall, thin, wiry-looking man, with an unmistakable military bearing. His face, clean-shaved save for a heavy grey moustache, was tanned with exposure to sun and rain. His hair, which was cropped close, was iron grey, as were his eyebrows, and as they were very bushy, and there were two deep vertical furrows between the eyes, he had the appearance of being a stern, determined, unyielding man. And as I glanced at his well-marked face, with its powerful jaw, I came to the conclusion that he was a martinet of the old-fashioned type, who, in the name of discipline, could perpetrate almost any cruelty; and yet, on the other hand, when not under military influence, was capable of the most generous acts and deeds. He was faultlessly dressed, from his patent leather boots to his canary-coloured kid gloves. But though, judging from his dress, he was somewhat of a coxcomb, a glance at the hard, stern features and the keen, deep-set grey eyes was sufficient to dispel any idea that he was a mere carpet soldier.

  “Pardon me for intruding upon you, Mr. Donovan,” he said, bowing stiffly and formally, “but I wish to consult you about a very important matter, and, as I leave for Egypt tomorrow, I have very little time at my disposal.”