The Best Crime Stories Ever Told (5 page)

“Hammer away,” replied the earl, approaching me with his usual good-natured, jocular expression.

“I eliminate the safe from our investigations because it was purchased thirteen years ago, but the buying of the book, of wall covering, of this tough paper from France, all group themselves into a set of incidents occurring within the same month as the purchase of the anvil and the building of the forge; therefore, I think they are related to one another. Here are some sheets of paper he got from Budge Row. Have you seen anything like it? Try to tear this sample.”

“It’s reasonably tough,” admitted his lordship, fruitlessly endeavoring to rip it apart.

“Yes. It was made in France, and is used in gold beating. Your uncle beat his sovereigns into gold leaf. You will find that the book from Denny’s is a volume on gold beating, and now as I remember that scribbled word which I could not make out, I think the title of the volume is ‘Metallurgy.’ It contains, no doubt, a chapter on the manufacture of gold leaf.”

“I believe you,” said the earl; “but I don’t see that the discovery sets us any farther forward. We’re now looking for gold leaf instead of sovereigns.”

“Let’s examine this wall paper,” said I.

I placed my knife under a corner of it at the floor, and quite easily ripped off a large section. As Higgins had said, the brown paper was on top, and the coarse, light-colored paper underneath. But even that came from the oak panelling as easily as though it hung there from habit, and not because of paste.

“Feel the weight of that,” I cried, handing him the sheet I had torn from the wall.

“By Jove!” said the earl, in a voice almost of awe.

I took it from him, and laid it, face downward, on the wooden table, threw a little water on the back, and with a knife scraped away the porous white paper. Instantly there gleamed up at us the baleful yellow of the gold. I shrugged my shoulders and spread out my hands. The Earl of Chizelrigg laughed aloud and very heartily.

“You see how it is,” I cried. “The old man first covered the entire wall with this whitish paper. He heated his sovereigns at the forge and beat them out on the anvil, then completed the process rudely between the sheets of this paper from France. Probably he pasted the gold to the wall as soon as he shut himself in for the night, and covered it over with the more expensive paper before Higgins entered in the morning.”

We found afterwards, however, that he had actually fastened the thick sheets of gold to the wall with carpet tacks.

His lordship netted a trifle over a hundred and twenty-three thousand pounds through my discovery, and I am pleased to pay tribute to the young man’s generosity by saying that his voluntary settlement made my bank account swell stout as a City alderman.

E. C. BENTLEY

A
small committee of friends persuaded Lord Aviemore to sit for a presentation portrait, and the painter to whom they gave the commission was Philip Trent. It was a task that fascinated him, for he had often seen and admired in public places the high, halfbald skull, vulture nose, and grim mouth of the peer who was said to be deeper in theology than any other layman, and whose devotion to charitable work had brought him national honour. It was only at the third sitting that Lord Aviemore’s sombre taciturnity was laid aside.

“I believe, Mr. Trent,” he remarked, abruptly, “that you used to have a portrait of my late sister-in-law here. I was told that it hung in this studio.”

Trent continued his work quietly. “It was just a rough drawing I made, after seeing her in ‘Carmen’ before her marriage. It used to hang here. Before your first visit I removed it.”

The sitter nodded slowly. “Very thoughtful of you. Nevertheless, I should much like to see it, if I may.”

“Of course.” And Trent drew the framed sketch from behind a curtain. Lord Aviemore gazed long in silence at Trent’s very spirited likeness of the famous singer, while the artist worked busily to capture the first expression of feeling that he had so far seen on that impassive face. Lighted and softened by melancholy, it looked for the first time noble.

At last the sitter turned to him. “I would give a good deal,” he said, simply, “to possess that drawing.”

Trent shook his head. “I don’t want to part with it.” He laid a few strokes carefully on the canvas and went on: “You would like to know why, I dare say. I will tell you. It is my personal memory of a woman whom I found more admirable than any other I ever saw. Lillemor Wergeland’s beauty and physical perfection were a marvel. Her voice was a miracle. Her spirit matched them. I never spoke to her; but everybody in my world talked about her, and many of them knew her.”

Lord Aviemore said nothing for a few minutes. Then he spoke slowly. “I do not think you were far wrong about Lady Aviemore. Once I thought differently. When I heard that my elder brother was about to marry a
prima donna,
a woman whose portrait was sold all over the world, who was famous for extravagance in dress and what seemed to me undignified, self-advertising conduct—I was appalled when I heard from him of this engagement. I will not deny that I was also shocked at the idea of a marriage with the daughter of plain Norwegian peasants. She was an orphan of only ten years old when Colonel Stamer and his wife went to lodge at her brother’s farm for the fishing. They fell in love with the child, and, having none of their own, they adopted her. All this my brother told me. He knew, he wrote, just what I would think; he only asked me to meet her, and then to judge. Of course, I did so at the first opportunity.”

Lord Aviemore paused and stared thoughtfully at the portrait. “She charmed everyone who came near her,” he went on presently. “I resisted the spell, but before they had been long married she had vanquished all my prejudice. Her life was all generous impulses and frank enjoyment. But she was not childish. It was not that she was what is called intellectual; but she had a singular spaciousness of mind in which nothing little or mean could live; it had, I used to fancy, some kinship with her Norwegian landscapes of mountain and sea. She was, as you say, extremely beautiful, with the vigorous purity of the fair-haired northern race. All sorts of men were at her feet; but my brother’s marriage was the happiest I have ever known.”

Trent worked busily upon his canvas, and soon the low, meditative voice resumed.

“It was almost this time six years ago—the middle of March—that I received the terrible news from Taormina. I had just returned from Canada, and I went out there at once. When I saw her she showed no emotion; but there was in her calmness the most unearthly sense of desolation that I have ever perceived. She believed, I found, that she was to blame. You have heard that a slight shock of earthquake caused the villa to collapse, and that my brother and his child were found dead in the ruins; you have heard that Lady Aviemore was sailing in the bay at the time. But you have probably not heard that my brother had a presentiment that their visit to Sicily would end in death, and wished to abandon it; that his wife laughed away his forebodings with her strong modern common sense. But we are of Highland blood and tradition, Mr. Trent, and such interior warnings are no trifles to us. . . . On the tenth day her husband and son were killed. She did not think, as you may suppose, that there was merely coincidence here. The shock changed her whole mental being; she believed then, as I believed, that my brother inwardly foreknew that death awaited him if he went to that place.”

He said no more, until Trent remarked, “I know slightly a man called Selby, a solicitor, who was with Lady Aviemore just after her husband’s death.”

Lord Aviemore said that he remembered Mr. Selby. He said it with such a total absence of expression of any kind that the subject of Selby was killed instantly; and he did not resume that of the tragedy of her whom all the world remembered still as Lillemor Wergeland.

A few months later, when the portrait of Lord Aviemore was to be seen at the show of the N.S.P.P., Trent received a friendly note from Arthur Selby, who asked if Trent would do him the favour of calling at his office by appointment for a private talk. “I should like,” he wrote, “to put a certain story before you, a story with a problem in it. I gave it up as a bad job long ago myself; but seeing your portrait of A. at the show reminded me of your reputation as an unraveller.”

Thus it happened that, a few days later, Trent was closeted with Selby in one of the rooms of the firm in which that very capable, somewhat dandified, lawyer was a partner. Selby, who never wasted words, came quickly to the point.

“The story I referred to,” he said, “is the Aviemore story. I was with her at the time of her suicide. I am an executor of her will. In the strictest confidence, I should like to tell you that story as I know it.” He folded his arms upon the broad writing-table between them, and went on: “You know all about the accident. I will start with March l0th, when Lord Aviemore and his son were buried in the cemetery at Taormina. His widow left the villa next day, discharging all the servants except her maid, with whom she went to the Hotel Cavour. There, as I gathered, she seldom left her rooms. She was undoubtedly quite overwhelmed by what had happened, though she seems never to have lost her grip on herself. Her brother-in-law, the present peer, arrived on the 15th. He had only just returned from Canada.” Selby raised his finger and repeated, “From Canada, you will remember. He had gone out to get ideas about the emigration prospect.”

I understood. He remained at the hotel, meaning to accompany her home, when she should feel equal to the journey. It was not until the 18th that we received a long telegram from her, asking if we could send someone representing the firm to her at Taormina; she stated that she wished to discuss business matters, but did not yet feel able to travel. You understand that Lady Aviemore, who already possessed considerable means of her own, came into a large income under her husband’s will. She was a client who could afford to indulge her whims.

“I went out to Taormina. On my arrival Lady Aviemore saw me and told me quite calmly that she was acquainted with the provisions of her late husband’s will, and that she now wished to make her own. I took her instructions and prepared the will. The next day I and the British Consul witnessed her signature. You may remember, Trent, that when the provisions of that will became public after her death, they attracted a good deal of attention. You don’t remember? Well, to put it simply, she left two thousand pounds to her brother, Knut Wergeland, of Myklebostad, in Norway, and fifty to her maid, Maria Krogh, also a Norwegian, who had been with her some years. The whole of the rest of her property she left to her brother-in-law unconditionally. That surprised me, because he had disapproved bitterly of the marriage, and he hadn’t concealed his opinion. But she said to me that she could think of nobody who would do so much good with her money as her brother-in-law. From that point of view she was justified. Lord Aviemore is said to spend most of his income in charitable work. Anyhow, she made him her heir.”

“And what did he say to it?”

Selby coughed. “There is no evidence that he knew anything about it before her death. No evidence,” he repeated, slowly. “But now let me get on with my story. Lady Aviemore asked me to remain to transact business for her until she should leave Taormina. This she did at last on March 30th, accompanied by Lord Aviemore, myself, and her maid. To shorten the railway journey, as she told us, she planned to go by boat first to Brindisi, then to Venice, and from Venice home by rail. The boats from Brindisi to Venice all go in the day-time, except once a week, when a boat from Corfu arrives in the evening, and goes on about eleven. It happened we could get across from Taormina in time to catch that boat, and Lady Aviemore decided to go by it. We had a few hours in Brindisi, dined there, and about ten o’clock went on board. Lady Aviemore complained of a headache. She went at once to her cabin, which was a deck-cabin, asking me to send someone to collect her ticket at once, as she wanted to sleep as soon as possible, and not to be awakened again. That was done. Shortly before the boat left the maid came to me and told me her mistress was then lying down, and had said she wished to be called at half-past seven in the morning. The maid then went to her own cabin in the second class. Soon after we were out of the harbour I turned in myself. At that time Lord Aviemore was still up. He was leaning over the rail on the promenade deck, upon which Lady Aviemore’s cabin opened, and at some distance from the cabin. His own was on the other side of the same deck. I think only two or three other people still remained on the deck, looking out over the sea. It was beginning to blow. I thought we should very likely have some bad weather in an hour or two, and so it turned out. It didn’t trouble me, however, and I slept very well.

“It was a quarter to eight when Lord Aviemore woke me by coming into the cabin. He was pale and agitated. He told me that his sister-in-law could not be found, that the maid had gone to her cabin at half-past seven and found it empty!

“I got up in a hurry and went to the cabin. The dressing-case Lady Aviemore had taken with her was there, and her small velvet bag lay on the bed, with her fur coat. Her purse, full of notes and silver, and her jewel-case were on the table, and by them lay a note, folded up, but without address, which you can see presently. To make a long story short, she had disappeared in the night, and there is not the slightest doubt that she found her grave in the Adriatic. The body was never recovered.”