Part 19

"Ruggles's task was, of course, much easier. All he had to do was to put the gems in his pocket, and these Narford took over from him in the morning at the flat before he telephoned for the police. To put on the black cape and hat and to accost the lift-boy was easy enough on a dark, snowy night in January. And now all the excitement has died down. The whole thing was so cleverly planned that the real rascal was never suspected. Ruggles may have been but nothing could really be brought up against him. The gems haven't been found and to all appearances he has not benefited by the robbery. He is just the faithful, trusted servant of his master.

"Sir James Narford has got his money from the Insurance Company and since then has left for abroad. By the way," the Old Man in the Corner concluded, as he gathered up his precious bit of string and slipped it in the pocket of his ulster, "I heard recently that he has bought some property in Argentina and has settled down there permanently with his friend Ruggles. I think he was wise to do that, and if you care to publish my version of that mysterious affair, you are at liberty to do so. I don't think that our friend would sue you for defamation of character, and, anyway, I'll undertake to pay damages if the case comes into court."

XI

THE MISER OF MAIDA VALE

§1

"One of the most puzzling cases I ever remember watching," the Old Man in the Corner said to me that day, "was the one known to the public as that of 'The Miser of Maida Vale.' It presented certain altogether novel features, and for once I was willing to admit that, though the police had a very hard nut to crack in the elucidation of the mystery, and in the end failed to find a solution, they were at one time very near putting their finger on the key of the puzzle. If they had only possessed some of that instinct for true facts with which Nature did so kindly endow me, there is no doubt that they would have brought that clever criminal to book."

I wish it were in my power to convey something of that air of ludicrous complacency with which he said this. I could almost hear him purring to himself, like a lean, shabby old cat. He had his inevitable bit of string in his hand, and had been in rapturous contemplation of a series of knots which he had been fashioning until the moment when I sat down beside him and he began to speak. But as soon as he embarked upon his beloved topic he turned his rapturous contemplation on himself. He just sat there and admired himself, and now and again blinked at me, with such an air of self-satisfaction that I longed to say something terribly rude first, and then to flounce out of the place, leaving him to admire himself at his leisure.

But, of course, this could not be. To use the funny creature's own verbiage, Nature had endowed me with the journalistic instinct. I had to listen to him; I had to pick his brains and to get copy out of him. The irresistible desire to learn something new, something that would thrill my editor, as well as my public, compelled me to swallow my impatience, to smile at him--somewhat wryly, perhaps--and then to beg him to proceed.

I was all attention.

"Well," he said, still wearing an irritating air of condescension, "do you remember the case of the old miser of Maida Vale?"

"Only vaguely," I was willing to admit.

"It presented some very interesting features," he went on, blandly, "and assuming that you really only remember them vaguely, I will put them before you as clearly as possible, in order that you may follow my argument more easily later on.

"The victim of the mysterious tragedy was, as no doubt you remember, an eccentric old invalid named Thornton Ashley, the well-known naval constructor, who had made a considerable fortune during the war and then retired, chiefly, it was said, owing to ill-health. He had two sons, one of whom, Charles, was a misshapen, undersized creature, singularly unprepossessing both in appearance and in manner, whilst the other, Philip, was a tall, good-looking fellow, very agreeable and popular wherever he went. Both these young men were bachelors, a fact which, it appears, had been for some time a bone of contention between them and their father. Old Ashley was passionately fond of children, and the one desire of his declining years was to see the grandchildren who would ultimately enjoy the fortune which he had accumulated. Whilst he was ready to admit that Charles, with his many afflictions, did not stand much chance with the fair sex, there was no reason at all why Philip should not marry, and there had been more than one heated quarrel between father and son on that one subject.

"So much so, indeed, that presently Philip cut his stick and went to live in rooms in Jermyn Street. He had a few hundreds a year of his own, left to him by a godmother. He had been to Rugby and to Cambridge, and had been a temporary officer in the war: pending his obtaining some kind of job he settled down to live the life of a smart young bachelor in town, whilst his brother Charles was left to look after the old man, who became more and more eccentric as his health gradually broke up. He sold his fine house in Hyde Park Gardens, his motor, and the bulk of his furniture, and moved into a cheap flat in Maida Vale, where he promptly took to his bed, which he never left again. His eccentricities became more and more pronounced and his temper more and more irascible. He took a violent dislike to strangers, refused to see anybody except his sons and two old friends, Mr. Oldwall, the well-known solicitor, and Dr. Fanshawe-Bigg, who visited him from time to time and whose orders he obstinately refused to obey. Worst of all, as far as the unfortunate Charles was concerned, he became desperately mean, denying himself (and, incidentally, his son) every luxury, subsisting on the barest necessities, and keeping no servant to wait on him except a daily 'char.'

"Soon his miserliness degenerated into a regular mania.

"'Charles and I are saving money for the grand-children you are going to give me one day,' he would say with a chuckle whenever Philip tried to reason with him on the subject of this self-denying ordinance. 'When you have an establishment of your own, you can invite us to come and live with you. There will be plenty then for housekeeping, I promise you!'

"At which the handsome Philip would laugh and shrug his shoulders and go back to his comfortable rooms in Jermyn Street. But no one knew what Charles thought about it all. To an outsider his case must always have appeared singularly pathetic. He had no money of his own and his delicate health had made it impossible for him to take up any profession: he could not cut his stick like his brother Philip had done, but, truth to tell, he did not appear to wish to do so. Perhaps it was real fondness for his father that made him seem contented with his lot. Certain it is that as time went on he became a regular slave to the old man, waiting on him hand and foot, more hard-worked than the daily 'char,' who put on her bonnet and walked out of the flat every day at six o'clock when her work was done, and who had all her Sundays to herself.

"All the relaxation that Charles ever had were alternate week-ends, when his brother Philip would come over and spend Saturday to Monday in the flat taking charge of the invalid. On those occasions Charles would get on an old bicycle, and with just a few shillings in his pocket which he had saved during the past fortnight out of the meagre housekeeping allowance which he handled, he would go off for the day somewhere into the country, nobody ever knew where. Then on Monday morning he would return to the flat in Maida Vale, ready to take up his slave's yoke, to all appearances with a light heart.

"'Charles Ashley is wise,' the gossiping acquaintances would say, 'he sticks to the old miser. Thornton Ashley can't live for ever, and Oldwall says that he is worth close on a quarter of a million.'

"Philip, on the other hand, could have had no illusions with regard to his father's testamentary intentions. The bone of contention--Philip's celibacy--was still there, making bad blood between father and son; more than once the old miser had said to him with a sardonic grin: 'Let me see you married soon, my boy, and with a growing family around you, or I tell you that my money shall go to that fool Charles, or to the founding of an orphan asylum or the establishment of a matrimonial agency.'

"Mr. Oldwall, the solicitor, a very old friend of the Ashleys, and who had seen the two boys grow up, threw out as broad a hint to Philip on that same subject as professional honour allowed.

"'Your father,' he said to him one day, 'has got that mania for saving money, but otherwise he is perfectly sane, you know. He'll never forgive you if you don't gratify his wish to see you married. Hang it all, man, there are plenty of nice girls about. And what on earth would poor old Charles do with a quarter of a million, I'd like to know.'

"But for a long time Philip remained obstinate and his friends knew well enough the cause of this obstinacy; it had its root in a pre-war romance. Philip Ashley had been in love--some say that he had actually been engaged to her--with a beautiful girl, Muriel Balleine, the daughter of the eminent surgeon, Sir Arnold Balleine. The two young people were thought to be devoted to one another. But the lovely Muriel had, as it turned out, another admirer in Sir Wilfred Peet-Jackson, the wealthy shipowner, who worshipped her in secret. Philip Ashley and Wilfred Peet-Jackson were great friends; they had been at school and 'Varsity together. In 1915 they both obtained a commission in the Coldstreams and in 1916 Peet-Jackson was very severely wounded. He was sent home to be nursed by the beautiful Muriel in her father's hospital in Grosvenor Square. His case had already been pronounced hopeless, and Sir Arnold himself, as well as other equally eminent surgeons, gave it as their opinion that the unfortunate young man could not live more than a few months--if that.

"We must then take it that pity and romance played their part in the events that ensued. Certain it is that London society was one day thrilled to read in its _Times_ that Miss Muriel Balleine had been married the previous morning to Sir Wilfred Peet-Jackson, the wealthy shipowner and owner of lovely Deverill Castle in Northamptonshire. Her friends at once put it about that Muriel had only yielded to a dying man's wish, and that there was nothing mercenary or calculating in this unexpected marriage; she probably would be a widow within a very short time and free to return to her original love and to marry Philip Ashley. But in this case, like in so many others in life, the unexpected occurred. Sir Wilfred Peet-Jackson did not die--not just then. He lived six years after the doctors had said that he must die in six months. He remained an invalid and he and his beautiful wife spent their winters in the Canaries and their summers in Switzerland, but Muriel did not become a widow until 1922, and Philip Ashley all that time never looked at another girl; he was even willing to allow a fortune to slip away from him, because he always hoped that the woman whom he had never ceased to worship would be his wife one day.

"Probably old Ashley knew all that; probably he hated the idea that this one woman should spoil his son's life for always; probably he thought that threat of disinheritance would bring Philip back out of the realms of romance to the realities of life. All this we shall never know. The old man spoke to no one about that, not even to Mr. Oldwall, possibly not even to Charles. By the time that Sir Wilfred Peet-Jackson had died and Philip had announced his engagement to the beautiful widow, Thornton Ashley was practically a dying man. However, he did have the satisfaction before he died of hearing the good news. Philip told him of his engagement one Saturday in May when he came for his usual fortnightly week-end visit. Strangely enough, although the old man must have been delighted at this tardy realisation of his life's desire, he did not after that make any difference in his mode of life. He remained just as irascible, just as difficult, and every bit as mean as he had always been; he never asked to see his future daughter-in-law, whom he had known in the past, though she did come once or twice to see him; nor did he encourage Philip to come and see him any more frequently than he had done before. The only indication he ever gave that he was pleased with the engagement was an obvious impatience to see the wedding-day fixed as soon as possible, and one day he worked himself up into a state of violent passion because Philip told him that Lady Peet-Jackson was bound to let a full year lapse before she married again, out of respect for poor Wilfred's memory.

§2

"Of course a good deal of gossip was concentrated on all these events. Although Thornton Ashley had, for the past three years, cut himself adrift from all social intercourse, past friends and acquaintances had not altogether forgotten him, whilst Philip Ashley and Lady Peet-Jackson had always been well-known figures in a certain set in London. It was not likely, therefore, that their affairs would not be discussed and commented on at tea-parties and in the clubs. Philip Ashley was exalted to the position of a hero. By his marriage he would at last grasp the fortune which he had so obstinately and romantically evaded: true love was obtaining its just reward, and so on. Lady Peet-Jackson, on the other hand, was not quite so leniently dealt with by the gossips. It was now generally averred that she had originally thrown Philip Ashley over only because Peet-Jackson was a very rich man and had a handle to his name, and that she was only returning to her former lover now because Thornton Ashley had already one foot in the grave, and was reputed to be worth a quarter of a million.

"I have a photograph here," the Old Man in the Corner went on, and threw a bundle of newspaper cuttings down before me, "of Lady Peet-Jackson. As no doubt you will admit, she is very beautiful, but the face is hard; looking at it one feels instinctively that she is not a woman who would stand by a man in case of trouble or disgrace. But it is difficult to judge from these smudgy reproductions, and there is no doubt that Philip Ashley was madly in love with her. That she had enemies, especially amongst those of her own sex, was only natural in view of the fact that she was exceptionally beautiful, had made one brilliant marriage, and was on the point of making another.

"But the two romantic lovers were not the sole food of the gossip-mongers. There was the position of Charles Ashley to be discussed and talked over. What was going to become of him? How would he take this change in his fortune? If rumour, chiefly based on Mr. Oldwall's indiscretions, was correct, he would be losing that reputed quarter of a million if Philip's marriage came off. But in this case gossip had to rest satisfied with conjectures. No one ever saw Charles, and Philip, when questioned about him, had apparently very little to say.

"'Charles is a queer fish,' he would reply. 'I don't profess to know what goes on inside him. He seems delighted at the prospect of my marriage, but he doesn't say much. He is very shy and very sensitive about his deformity, and he won't see any one now, not even Muriel.'

"And thus the stage was set," the funny creature continued with a fatuous grin, "for the mysterious tragedy which has puzzled the public and the police as much as the friends of the chief actors in the drama. It was set for the scene of Philip Ashley's marriage to Muriel Lady Peet-Jackson, which was to take place very quietly at St. Saviour's, Warwick Road, early in the following year.

"On the twenty-seventh of August old Thornton Ashley died, that is to say he was found dead in his bed by his son Charles, who had returned that morning from his fortnightly week-end holiday. The cause of death was not in question at first, though Dr. Fanshawe-Bigg was out of town at the moment, his _locum tenens_ knew all about the case, and had seen the invalid on the Thursday preceding his death. In accordance with the amazing laws of this country, he gave the necessary certificate without taking a last look at the dead man, and Thornton Ashley would no doubt have been buried then and there, without either fuss or ceremony, but for the amazing events which thereupon followed one another in quick succession.

"The funeral had been fixed for Thursday, the thirtieth, but within twenty-four hours of the old miser's death it had already transpired that he had indeed left a considerable fortune, which included one or two substantial life insurances, and that the provisions of his will were very much as Philip Ashley and his friends had surmised. After sundry legacies to various charitable institutions concerned with the care of children, Thornton Ashley had left the residue of his personalty to whichever of his sons was first married within a year from the time of the testator's death, the other son receiving an annuity of three hundred pounds. This clearly was aimed at Philip, as poor misshapen Charles had always been thought to be out of the running. Moreover, a further clause in the will directed that in the event of both the testator's sons being still unmarried within that given time, then the whole of the residue was to go to Charles, with an annuity of one hundred pounds to Philip and a sum of ten thousand pounds for the endowment of an orphan asylum at the discretion of the Charity Organisation Society.

"There were a few conjectures as to whether Charles Ashley, who, by his brother's impending marriage, would be left with a paltry three hundred pounds a year, would contest his father's will on the grounds of _non compos mentis_, but, as you know, it is always very difficult in this country to upset a will, and the provisions of this particular one were so entirely in accord with the wishes expressed by the deceased on every possible occasion, that the plea that he was of unsound mind when he made it would never have been upheld, quite apart from the fact that Mr. Oldwall, who drew up the will and signed it as one of the witnesses, would have repudiated any suggestion that his client was anything but absolutely sane at the time.

"Everything then appeared quite smooth and above board when suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, came the demand from the Insurance Company in which the late Mr. Thornton Ashley had a life policy for forty thousand pounds for a _post-mortem_ examination, the company not being satisfied that the deceased had died a natural death. Naturally, Dr. Percy Jutt, who had signed the death certificate, was furious, but he was overruled by the demands of the Insurance Company, backed by no less a person than Charles Ashley. Indeed, it soon transpired that it was in consequence of certain statements made by Mr. Triscott, a local solicitor, on behalf of Charles Ashley to the general manager of the company, that the latter took action in the matter.

"Philip Ashley, through his solicitor, Mr. Oldwall, and backed by Dr. Jutt, might perhaps have opposed the proceedings, but quite apart from the fact that opposition from that quarter would have been impolitic, it probably also would have been unsuccessful. Anyway, the sensation-mongers had quite a titbit to offer to the public that afternoon; the evening papers came out before midday with flaring headlines: 'The mystery miser of Maida Vale.' Also, 'Sensational developments,' and 'Sinister Rumours.'

"By four o'clock in the afternoon some of the papers had it that a _post-mortem_ examination of the body of the late Mr. Thornton Ashley had been conducted by Dr. Dawson, the divisional surgeon, and that it had revealed the fact that the old miser had not died a natural death, traces of violence having been discovered on the body. It was understood that the police were already in possession of certain facts and that the coroner of the district would hold an inquest on Thursday, the thirtieth, the very day on which the funeral was to have taken place."

§3

"Now I have attended many an inquest in my day," the Old Man in the Corner continued after a brief pause, during which his claw-like fingers worked away with feverish energy at his bit of string, "but seldom have I been present at a more interesting one. There were so many surprises, such an unexpected turn of events, that one was kept on tenterhooks the whole time as to what would happen next.

"Even to those who were in the know, the witnesses in themselves were a surprise. Of course, every one knew Mr. Oldwall, the solicitor and life-long friend of old Thornton Ashley, and the divisional surgeon, whose evidence would be interesting; then there was poor Charles Ashley and his handsome brother, Philip, now the owner of a magnificent fortune, whose romantic history had more than once been paragraphed in the Press. But what in the world had Mr. Triscott, a local lawyer whom nobody knew, and Mrs. Trapp, a slatternly old 'char,' to do with the case? And there was also Dr. Percy Jutt, who had not come out of the case with flying professional colours, and who must have cursed the day when he undertook the position of _locum tenens_ for Dr. Fanshawe-Bigg.

"The proceedings began with the sensational evidence of Dr. Dawson, the divisional surgeon, who had conducted the _post-mortem_. He stated that the deceased had been in an advanced state of uræmia, but this had not actually been the cause of death. Death was due to heart failure, caused by fright and shock, following on violent aggression and an attempt at strangulation. There were marks round the throat, and evidences of a severe blow having been dealt on the face and cranium causing concussion. In the patient's weak state of health, shock and fright had affected the heart's action with fatal results.

"All the while that the divisional surgeon gave evidence, going into technical details which the layman could not understand, Dr. Percy Jutt had obvious difficulty to control himself. He had a fidgety, nervous way with him and was constantly biting his nails. When he, in his turn, entered the witness-box, he was as white as a sheet and tried to hide his nervousness behind a dictatorial, blustering manner. In answer to the coroner, he explained that he had been acting as _locum tenens_ for Dr. Fanshawe-Bigg, who was away on his holiday. He had visited the deceased once or twice during the past fortnight, and had last seen him on the Thursday preceding his death. Dr. Fanshawe-Bigg had left him a few notes on the case.