The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries

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

  “No,” said she; “there has been prying enough into my house.”

  Said he angrily, “You are obstructing justice. It is very suspicious.”

  “It is you that is suspicious, and a mischief-maker into the bargain,” said she. “How do I know what you might put into my wine and my keyholes, and say you found it? You are well known, you Bow Street runners, for your hanky-panky tricks. Have you got a search-warrant, to throw more discredit upon my house? No? Then pack and learn the law before you teach it me!”

  Bradbury retired, bitterly indignant, and his indignation strengthened his faint doubt of Cox’s guilt.

  He set a friend to watch the “Swan,” and he himself gave his mind to the whole case, and visited Cox in Newgate three times before his trial.

  The next novelty was that legal assistance was provided for Cox by a person who expressed compassion for his poverty and inability to defend himself, guilty or not guilty; and that benevolent person was—Captain Cowen.

  In due course Daniel Cox was arraigned at the bar of the Old Bailey for robbery and murder.

  The deposition of the murdered man was put in by the Crown, and the witnesses sworn who heard it, and Captain Cowen was called to support a portion of it. He swore that he supped with the deceased and loaded one pistol for him while Mr. Gardiner loaded the other; lent him the key of his own door for further security, and himself slept in the City.

  The judge asked him where, and he said, “13 Farringdon Street.”

  It was elicited from him that he had provided counsel for the prisoner.

  His evidence was very short and to the point. It did not directly touch the accused, and defendant’s counsel—in spite of his client’s eager desire—declined to cross-examine Captain Cowen. He thought a hostile examination of so respectable a witness, who brought nothing home to the accused, would only raise more indignation against his client.

  The prosecution was strengthened by the reluctant evidence of Barbara Lamb. She deposed that three years ago Cox had been detected by her stealing money from a gentleman’s table in the “Swan” Inn, and she gave the details.

  The judge asked her whether this was at night.

  “No, my lord; at about four of the clock. He is never in the house at night; the mistress can’t abide him.”

  “Has he any key of the house?”

  “Oh, dear, no, my lord.”

  The rest of the evidence for the Crown is virtually before the reader.

  For the defence it was proved that the man was found drunk, with no money or keys upon him, and that the knife was found under the wall, and blood was traceable from the wall to the stable. Bradbury, who proved this, tried to get in about the wine; but this was stopped as irrelevant. “There is only one person under suspicion,” said the judge rather sternly.

  As counsel were not allowed in that day to make speeches to the jury, but only to examine and cross-examine and discuss points of law, Daniel Cox had to speak in his own defence.

  “My lord,” said he, “it was my double done it.”

  “Your what?” asked my lord, a little peevishly.

  “My double. There’s a rogue prowls about the ‘Swan’ at nights, which you couldn’t tell him from me. [Laughter.] You needn’t to laugh me to the gallows. I tell ye he have got a nose like mine.” (Laughter.)

  Clerk of Arraigns. Keep silence in the court, on pain of imprisonment.

  “And he have got a waistcoat the very spit of mine, and a tumble-down hat such as I do wear. I saw him go by and let hisself into the ‘Swan’ with a key, and I told Sam Pott next morning.”

  Judge. Who is Sam Pott?

  Culprit. Why, my stable-boy, to be sure.

  Judge. Is he in court?

  Culprit. I don’t know. Ay, there he is.

  Judge. Then you’d better call him.

  Culprit (shouting). Hy! Sam!

  Sam. Here be I! (Loud laughter.)

  The judge explained, calmly, that to call a witness meant to put him in the box and swear him, and that although it was irregular, yet he would allow Pott to be sworn, if it would do the prisoner any good.

  Prisoner’s counsel said he had no wish to swear Mr. Pott.

  “Well, Mr. Gurney,” said the judge, “I don’t think he can do you any harm.” Meaning in so desperate a case.

  Thereupon Sam Pott was sworn, and deposed that Cox had told him about this double.

  “When?”

  “Often and often.”

  “Before the murder?”

  “Long afore that.”

  Counsel for the Crown. Did you ever see this double?

  “Not I.”

  Counsel. I thought not.

  Daniel Cox went on to say that on the night of the murder he was up with a sick horse, and he saw his double let himself out of the inn the back way, and then turn round and close the door softly; so he slipped out to meet him. But the double saw him, and made for the garden wall. He ran up and caught him with one leg over the wall, and seized a black bag he was carrying off; the figure dropped it, and he heard a lot of money chink: that thereupon he cried “Thieves!” and seized the man; but immediately received a blow, and lost his senses for a time. When he came to, the man and the bag were both gone, and he felt so sick that he staggered to the stable and drank a pint of neat brandy, and he remembered no more till they pumped on him, and told him he had robbed and murdered a gentleman inside the “Swan” Inn. “What they can’t tell me,” said Daniel, beginning to shout, “is how I could know who has got the money, and who hasn’t inside the ‘Swan’ Inn. I keeps the stables, not the inn: and where be my keys to open and shut the ‘Swan’? I never had none. And where’s the gentleman’s money? ’Twas somebody in the inn as done it, for to have the money, and when you find the money, you’ll find the man.”

  The prosecuting counsel ridiculed this defence, and inter alia asked the jury whether they thought it was a double the witness Lamb had caught robbing in the inn three years ago.

  The judge summed up very closely, giving the evidence of every witness. What follows is a mere synopsis of his charge.

  He showed it was beyond doubt that Mr. Gardiner returned to the inn with money, having collected his rents in Wiltshire; and this was known in the inn, and proved by several, and might have transpired in the yard or the tap-room. The unfortunate gentleman took Captain Cowen, a respectable person, his neighbor in the inn, into his confidence, and revealed his uneasiness. Captain Cowen swore that he supped with him, but could not stay all night, most unfortunately. But he encouraged him, left him his pistols, and helped him load them.

  Then his lordship read the dying man’s deposition. The person thus solemnly denounced was found in the stable, bleeding from a recent wound, which seemed to connect him at once with the deed as described by the dying man.

  “But here,” said my lord, “the chain is no longer perfect. A knife, taken from the ‘Swan,’ was found under the garden wall, and the first traces of blood commenced there, and continued to the stable, and were abundant on the straw and on the person of the accused. This was proved by the constable and others. No money was found on him, and no keys that could have opened any outer doors of the ‘Swan’ Inn. The accused had, however, three years before been guilty of a theft from a gentleman in the inn, which negatives his pretence that he always confined himself to the stables. It did not, however, appear that on the occasion of the theft he had unlocked any doors, or possessed the means. The witness for the Crown, Barbara Lamb, was clear on that.

  “The prisoner’s own solution of the mystery was not very credible. He said he had a double—or a person wearing his clothes and appearance; and he had seen this person prowling about long before the murder, and had spoken of the double to one Pott. Pott deposed that Cox had spoken of this double more than once; but admitt
ed he never saw the double with his own eyes.

  “This double, says the accused, on the fatal night let himself out of the ‘Swan’ Inn and escaped to the garden wall. There he (Cox) came up with this mysterious person, and a scuffle ensued in which a bag was dropped and gave the sound of coin; and then Cox held the man and cried ‘Thieves!’ but presently received a wound and fainted, and on recovering himself, staggered to the stables and drank a pint of brandy.

  “The story sounds ridiculous, and there is no direct evidence to back it; but there is a circumstance that lends some color to it. There was one blood-stained instrument, and no more, found on the premises, and that knife answers to the description given by the dying man, and, indeed, may be taken to be the very knife missing from his room; and this knife was found under the garden wall, and there the blood commenced and was traced to the stable.

  “Here,” said my lord, “to my mind, lies the defence. Look at the case on all sides, gentlemen: an undoubted murder done by hands; no suspicion resting on any known person but the prisoner—a man who had already robbed in the inn; a confident recognition by one whose deposition is legal evidence, but evidence we cannot cross-examine; and a recognition by moonlight only and in the heat of a struggle.

  “If on this evidence, weakened not a little by the position of the knife and the traces of blood, and met by the prisoner’s declaration, which accords with that single branch of the evidence, you have a doubt, it is your duty to give the prisoner the full benefit of that doubt, as I have endeavored to do; and if you have no doubt, why then you have only to support the law and protect the lives of peaceful citizens. Whoever has committed this crime, it certainly is an alarming circumstance that, in a public inn, surrounded by honest people, and armed with pistols, a peaceful citizen can be robbed like this of his money and his life.”

  The jury saw a murder at an inn; an accused, who had already robbed in that inn, and was denounced as his murderer by the victim. The verdict seemed to them to be Cox, or impunity. They all slept at inns; a double they had never seen; undetected accomplices they had all heard of. They waited twenty minutes, and brought in their verdict—Guilty.

  The judge put on his black cap, and condemned Daniel Cox to be hanged by the neck till he was dead.

  CHAPTER III

  After the trial was over, and the condemned man led back to prison to await his execution, Bradbury went straight to 13 Farringdon Street and inquired for Captain Cowen.

  “No such name here,” said the good woman of the house.

  “But you keep lodgers?”

  “Nay, we keep but one; and he is no captain—he is a City clerk.”

  “Well, madam, it is not idle curiosity, I assure you, but was not the lodger before him Captain Cowen?”

  “Laws, no! it was a parson. Your rakehelly captains wouldn’t suit the like of us. ’T was a reverend clerk, a grave old gentleman. He wasn’t very well-to-do, I think: his cassock was worn, but he paid his way.”

  “Keep late hours?”

  “Not when he was in town, but he had a country cure.”

  “Then you have let him in after midnight.”

  “Nay, I keep no such hours. I lent him a pass-key. He came in and out from the country when he chose. I would have you know he was an old man, and a sober man, and an honest man: I’ll wager my life on that. And excuse me, sir, but who be you, that you do catechise me so about my lodgers?”

  “I am an officer, madam.”

  The simple woman turned pale, and clasped her hands. “An officer!” she cried. “Alack! what have I done now?”

  “Why, nothing, madam,” said the wily Bradbury. “An officer’s business is to protect such as you, not to trouble you, for all the world. There, now, I’ll tell you where the shoe pinches. This Captain Cowen has just sworn in a court of justice that he slept here on the 15th of last October.”

  “He never did, then. Our good parson had no acquaintances in the town. Not a soul ever visited him.”

  “Mother,” said a young girl peeping in, “I think he knew somebody of that very name. He did ask me once to post a letter for him, and it was to some man of worship, and the name was Cowen, yes—Cowen ’twas. I’m sure of it. By the same token, he never gave me another letter, and that made me pay the more attention.”

  “Jane, you are too curious,” said the mother.

  “And I am very much obliged to you, my little maid,” said the officer, “and also to you, madam,” and so took his leave.

  * * *

  —

  One evening, all of a sudden, Captain Cowen ordered a prime horse at the “Swan,” strapped his valise on before him, and rode out of the yard post-haste: he went without drawing bridle to Clapham, and then looked round, and, seeing no other horseman near, trotted gently round into the Borough, then into the City and slept at an inn in Holborn. He had bespoken a particular room beforehand,—a little room he frequented. He entered it with an air of anxiety. But this soon vanished after he had examined the floor carefully. His horse was ordered at five o’clock next morning. He took a glass of strong waters at the door to fortify his stomach, but breakfasted at Uxbridge, and fed his good horse. He dined at Beaconsfield, baited at Thame, and supped with his son at Oxford: next day paid all the young man’s debts and spent a week with him.

  His conduct was strange: boisterously gay and sullenly despondent by turns. During the week came an unexpected visitor, General Sir Robert Barrington. This officer was going out to America to fill an important office. He had something in view for young Cowen, and came to judge quietly of his capacity. But he did not say anything at that time, for fear of exciting hopes he might possibly disappoint.

  However, he was much taken with the young man. Oxford had polished him. His modest reticence, until invited to speak, recommended him to older men, especially as his answers were judicious, when invited to give his opinion. The tutors also spoke very highly of him.

  “You may well love that boy,” said General Barrington to the father.

  “God bless you for praising him!” said of the other. “Ay, I love him too well.”

  Soon after the General left, Cowen changed some gold for notes, and took his departure for London, having first sent word of his return. He meant to start after breakfast and make one day of it, but he lingered with his son, and did not cross Magdalen Bridge till one o’clock.

  This time he rode through Dorchester, Benson, and Henley, and, as it grew dark, resolved to sleep at Maidenhead.

  Just after Hurley Bottom, at four cross-roads, three highwaymen spurred on him from right and left. “Your money or your life!”

  He whipped a pistol out of his holster, and pulled at the nearest head in a moment.

  The pistol missed fire. The next moment a blow from the butt end of a horse-pistol dazed him, and he was dragged off his horse and his valise emptied in a minute.

  Before they had done with him, however, there was a clatter of hoofs, and the robbers sprang to their nags, and galloped away for the bare life as a troop of yeomanry rode up. The thing was so common the newcomers read the situation at a glance, and some of the best mounted gave chase. The others attended to Captain Cowen, caught his horse, strapped on his valise, and took him with them into Maidenhead, his head aching, his heart sickening and raging by turns. All his gold gone, nothing left but a few one-pound notes that he had sewed into the lining of his coat.

  He reached the “Swan” next day in a state of sullen despair. “A curse is on me,” he said. “My pistol missed fire: my gold gone.”

  He was welcomed warmly. He stared with surprise. Barbara led the way to his old room, and opened it. He started back. “Not there,” he said, with a shudder.

  “Alack! Captain, we have kept it for you. Sure you are not afear’d.”

  “No,” he said, doggedly; “no hope, no fear.”

>   She stared, but said nothing.

  He had hardly got into the room when, click, a key was turned in the door of communication. “A traveller there!” said he. Then, bitterly, “Things are soon forgotten in an inn.”

  “Not by me,” said Barbara solemnly. “But you know our dame, she can’t let money go by her. ’Tis our best room, mostly, and nobody would use it that knows the place. He is a stranger. He is from the wars: will have it he is English, but talks foreign. He is civil enough when he is sober, but when he has got a drop he does maunder away to be sure, and sings such songs I never.”

  “How long has he been here?” asked Cowen.

  “Five days, and the mistress hopes he will stay as many more, just to break the spell.”

  “He can stay or go,” said Cowen. “I am in no mood for company. I have been robbed, girl.”

  “You robbed, sir? Not openly, I am sure.”

  “Openly—but by numbers—three of them. I should soon have sped one, but my pistol snapped fire just like his. There, leave me, girl; fate is against me, and a curse upon me. Bubbled out of my fortune in the City, robbed of my gold upon the road. To be honest is to be a fool.”

  He flung himself on the bed with a groan of anguish, and the ready tears ran down soft Barbara’s cheeks. She had tact, however, in her humble way, and did not prattle to a strong man in a moment of wild distress. She just turned and cast a lingering glance of pity on him, and went to fetch him food and wine. She had often seen an unhappy man the better for eating and drinking.

  When she was gone, he cursed himself for his weakness in letting her know his misfortunes. They would be all over the house soon. “Why, that fellow next door must have heard me bawl them out. I have lost my head,” said he, “and I never needed it more.”

  Barbara returned with the cold powdered beef and carrots, and a bottle of wine she had paid for herself. She found him sullen, but composed. He made her solemnly promise not to mention his losses. She consented readily, and said, “You know I can hold my tongue.”