CHAPTER XII
MURDER
When I last wrote, it was at the time of my engagement, when I had made up my mind to enter upon a new life altogether. My theft of Lady Seaforth's jewels was to be the last crime with which I was to be associated. It is so easy to make plans for the morrow, not knowing what the morrow will bring forth. That theft was not my last crime nor my worst. I write now with the certainty that my marriage will never take place, and in awful fear of imminent catastrophe.
There is really very little to say as to that theft. An attempt had been made upon Lady Seaforth's jewels sometime before by a man of bad character, whom I afterwards had the privilege of bringing back to the paths of rectitude. Lady Seaforth regularly spent part of the winter in the Riviera, and took her diamonds with her. They were carried in an ordinary morocco bag, which she kept in her own possession. Neither her own maid nor any of the servants travelling with her ever handled that bag at all. With great trouble I managed to get a sight of it, and, thanks to an excellent memory, I had had a duplicate made, which, at any rate, resembled it closely enough to be mistaken for it in a bad light. An exceptionally rough Channel passage gave me the opportunity I wanted. For her ladyship, though not ill, was not so fresh and alert as usual; it was some few hours after we reached Calais that my opportunity came. When the loss was discovered, she said—and I have no doubt that she believed—that the bag had never been out of her hand. It would not be so easy to deceive others if it were not even easier for them to deceive themselves. It always amuses an expert conjurer to hear one of his tricks described by one of the audience. The man in the audience never tells what he really saw, but only what he thought he saw, which is a very different matter. I returned to England at once and did the work of removing the stones from their setting at my house in Bloomsbury, and the settings themselves are now at the bottom of the Thames. I was in no hurry to dispose of the stones; I could very well wait until the next time that I happened to visit my friend the diamond merchant in Brussels. In the meantime the excitement about the theft would have died down. It is the want of capital, making an immediate realisation necessary, which causes so many a clever man to lose his liberty. I was in the fortunate position that I could afford to wait.
The whole transaction would have completely satisfied me but for one thing—the time when the diamonds were taken was two o'clock on Sunday morning. I have already stated my views with regard to Sunday work, and my firm conviction that if I ever transgressed in this way disaster would follow. I cannot of course explain, what some will think, the superstitious regard for one commandment, at the very moment when I was breaking another; I can only say that it was so, and that even at the moment of the theft, and powerless to resist the opportunity that was offered to me, I knew that this would end badly. Long after every trace had been removed which could have connected me with the theft of Lady Seaforth's diamonds, I still had this conviction. The fact is that I had intended to take them on Saturday night while I was on the boat, and had felt fairly certain of my ability to do so; as if, happened, no opportunity presented itself then, and, once in pursuit of the prey, I was unable to leave it until it was mine.
I never lock up my diamonds.
I am interested in gardening, and the garden attached to my cottage at Brighton does me some credit. In an unlocked drawer of my writing-table, both at Brighton and at my house at Bloomsbury, I have generally got a collection of flower-seeds in different packets. These packets are labelled in the usual way with the name of the seed and directions for cultivation. You might open a score of them, taken at random from the drawer, and find the contents answer exactly to the printed description on the cover. And the twenty-first packet might enclose something far more valuable than the seed of the new mignonette with which the label credited it. It IS a simple but most effective method of taking care of loose stones, and had always left me, so far as they were concerned, with no fear of burglars.
I put the diamonds which I got from Lady Seaforth into three packets. I did this work late at night when the rest of my household were in bed. About a week afterwards it was necessary for me to open one of these packets for the purpose of verifying the weight of one of the diamonds. I found that this packet was missing. Further search showed me that the other two packets were missing as well. I felt sure that my foe was one of my own household. Even then the thought of Mrs Pethwick, my housekeeper, sour and bitter at my approaching marriage and her own dismissal, crossed my mind. Yet this woman had been an honest and devoted servant for ten years or more; the thing seemed impossible. I shut the drawer containing the seeds and sat down to think. There were many courses of action open before me, and I was confident that whichever course I chose would prove wrong. I recognised that my curse had come upon me, and that I could not get away from it. I was wretchedly nervous, and it was with great difficulty that I could bring myself to act at all. Perhaps it would have been better if I had not acted at all—if I had accepted my loss as my punishment—said nothing and done nothing.
After dinner at night I went up to my library, rang, and asked if Mrs Pethwick would be good enough to speak to me for a moment. Presently she came in, neatly dressed in black as usual, and with the pleasant rather deferential smile with which I was familiar. It was, I suppose, due to the force of habit, for her expression changed when I spoke to her. It was as though she now took off her disguise for the first time. The wheel had gone round, and she, who had always received my orders with such cheerful readiness, was now in a position to dictate. And she knew i. "Mrs Pethwick," I said, "sometime ago I purchased from a dealer in Hatton Garden a quantity of diamonds, cut but unset. They were intended as my wedding present to the lady whom I am going to marry. I have, as you know, no safe in the house, and undoubtedly I should have sent them to my bankers; but it occurred to me that they would be quite secure if nobody knew that they were diamonds, and that I might spare myself the bother of going to the bank about them. I placed them in three packets purporting to contain flower -seeds, and put them in the drawer which you see open there. This afternoon I found that they were missing. You are in a position of responsibility in this house, and it is to you that I come first: do you know anything about these diamonds, can you suggest anything?"
"Certainly," she said, "I took them." She really did it extremely well She was perfectly quiet, and had that air of not wishing to make an effect which is so immensely effective.
"You took them," I repeated.
"I took them, and in all probability shall keep them, until I get a chance of selling them." She gave a little bitter laugh. "One must have one's little compensations," she added.
"Mrs Pethwick," I said, "you have surprised me terribly. I could never have believed that you were capable of such dishonesty. However, your manner offers an explanation. You were not yourself then, and you are not yourself now; you have perhaps had some mental worry of which I know nothing; the impudence of your confession is alone proof enough that you need the care of a specialist. Meanwhile I remember your long services to me, and I shall do the best I can for you. We will speak of this no more at present, and you will do well not to let your mind dwell upon it. To-morrow a doctor shall see you."
It is difficult when you are playing a game, which you know to be a losing game, to play it as well as you can, and this was what I was doing. I wanted to see the extent of her knowledge.
"I am not insane," she said grimly, "and you know it. You will send for no doctor, because you dare not. I have stolen your diamonds—do you understand that? And the law gives you your remedy, and you dare not take that either!"
This had the disadvantage, from my point of view, of being absolutely true. "Very well," I said, "these are extraordinary statements. Perhaps you will tell me what you mean by them. You can sit down, if you like."
She sat down, there was no trace of excitement in her manner. A person who holds all the trump cards has no need to be excited. "I may say," she said, "that I have known the secret of your double life for some time past. I have kept the secret, and until now have made no use of it; but you have told me of your approaching marriage. I am not an old woman yet, but I am growing old, and I was to be flung aside. But not now—now I dictate my own terms."
"Will you," I said, "be good enough to tell me how you have discovered what in your slightly transpontine way you call the secret of my double life? By the way, it might also be interesting to know what this supposed double life is."
I could not succeed in annoying her in the least.
"Certainly," she said. "You who have preached to others are a thief; the diamonds which I took from you are those which you stole from Lady Seaforth. How do I know these things?" She paused and then spoke with more vehemence, "Yes, you have been very clever, that is true enough. You have outwitted the police, outwitted everybody but myself; you forgot me, you see. I will do you the justice to say that you are not a vain man. The possibility of a woman being"—she hesitated for her word—"interested in you as I have been never occurred to you. I was little more than a servant, and if I was not old I was certainly no longer young. Never mind all that; you don't want to know it. It is enough for you to know that I have watched and questioned. I know why, for instance, when you leave on your motor-car for Brighton you are so late in arriving there."
"Really? You are wonderful; you even find out secrets where there are none. Why don't you invent a motor tyre that cannot puncture? it would save your suspicions and confessions, and, incidentally, your self-respect."
And still she would not be angry. If I could have driven her into a blind fury and made her lose her head, I might yet have been able to save the situation; as it was, it seemed to me that I had but the choice of two things.
"Let me go on," she continued quietly. "Relying on the scrupulous honesty of your household and on your belief that nobody could suspect a gentleman in your position, you have been very careless. You have been careless with your keys; I have had a complete set of duplicates made. You have been careless, too, with your blotting-paper. The man who writes the long memoirs that you write these long winter evenings after dinner, should be particularly careful about his blotting-paper; it is so easy with a looking-glass, you know. It is easy enough, too, when one turns over a packet of seeds to find what one has hunted the whole house for, to notice that these seeds are different sizes and of the wrong weight, and unusually hard. It was all too simple and childish for you to trouble about; you doubted, probably, whether I had any intelligence at all, apart from housekeeping. I have watched you in a thousand ways—yes, and I have saved you from discovery before this. A woman is satisfied with very little, you know, and I had that little. Now you take that away. Very well, I will rob you first, and I will ruin you afterwards."
I passed the tip of my tongue over my lips, when I spoke my voice had become husky. "So you have kept my secret until now?" I said.
"Oh yes," she said bitterly, "and I have been fool enough to let you know why. You cannot marry me, of course. I do not think under any circumstances I would have married you; but most certainly you shall marry no one else. Does that sound unreasonable to you?"
"If you don't mind," I said, "I should like a little time to think this over. I have nearly decided what to do, and I admit that you are too strong for me. But the question is a momentous one. Come to me again at ten to-night."
She rose from her chair; her manner changed abruptly, there was no longer a trace of a threat in it, it was again almost deferential. "I see, sir," she said, "that you are much upset. It sounds queer, but I really am sorry to have given you this trouble. Why, I have spent the last seven years of my life in trying to the utmost of my power to save you trouble of every kind. True, I have been paid for it; but my services have not been those for which one can very well pay. Yes, several times, though you never knew it, I have stood between you and discovery; perhaps I shall tell you all about it one of these days. Well, well, I will wait until ten o'clock." She gave a little bitter laugh. "I am used to waiting," she said, and without another word she went out.
It was exactly nine o'clock; I had just one hour in which to think and to act. Mrs Pethwick had changed little in appearance in the last seven years, but I saw her to-night with new eyes; the mask had fallen, and the real woman had shown herself. I had seen those submissive eyes lit up with passion. I had heard that carefully modulated voice grow harsh and raucous. Yes, I suppose she had been a handsome woman once; I had never cared to have quite ugly people about me. And with her to-night, it was to be one of two things.
There was a third course open, that I should give up my marriage and go on living in this house as before. But I put that aside at once: I should still be entirely in the hands of Mrs Pethwick; one day she might change her mind; it was impossible to say what a woman in that position would not do—it was not to be thought of for a moment. Only under two conditions could I feel absolutely confident. One was that I should give her my name, and take her into partnership with me in every way. I thought this over a long time, utterly absorbed in it, and finally rejected it. It asked too much. Therefore only one thing was left, and that thing was horrible. I blamed her for it; she was a fool; she had brought it upon herself; she should have known that it would have been impossible for me to let her go on living after this. I glanced at my watch; it was five-and-twenty minutes to ten. I had made up my mind, but there was still much to do, and it had to be done quickly.
In a little cabinet in the library I keep various liquors and glasses. I have found the arrangement useful, for sometimes when I am alone my nerves have been unable to stand it any longer, and I have wished, without the knowledge of any other person in the house, to get intoxicated. From this cabinet I now took a bottle of champagne. Mrs Pethwick, I guessed, would know me desperate and would be ready to suspect me of everything; but she would not believe that a bottle of champagne could be opened, and tampered with, and then recorked in such a way as to leave no sign. It is really quite a simple operation, when one knows the exact right way to do it. I had practised it before. I had always thought it a thing that might one day be useful. I opened the bottle, made a slight addition to the contents, and then replaced the cork, the string, the wire, and the gilt foil just as before. I knew that the foil might not be thoroughly dry by ten o'clock, but in all probability it would not be until an hour later that I should want it The table in the middle of my room is covered with a cloth, which hangs down for about eighteen inches all round; to one of the legs of this table, in such a position that it would be hidden by the cloth, I fixed a little shelf. It was the simplest possible arrangement, made with the lid of a cigar box. I filled a glass from another bottle of champagne and placed this on the shelf It would be necessary for me to drink with Mrs Pethwick, and not to drink the wine she poured out for me. My mind was perfectly clear now, and I had thought out the minutest detail. The champagne in the glass on the shelf would be flat and still when the moment came for me to change it for the glass from which it was not safe for me to drink. Probably Mrs Pethwick would not notice this detail, but in any case I was ready. I had a pinch of sugar to add to the glass at the last moment. I drew my chair near to that leg of the table in which the shelf was placed, and waited. It was now three minutes to ten, and it seemed ages before I heard Mrs Pethwick's gentle tap at the door. Yet she was exactly punctual, as she always was.
It was a delicate business; if the woman had been quite a fool it would have been much easier, but in some ways I had at present a high opinion of Mrs Pethwick's sharpness. It has always been a cardinal principle with me never to tell an unnecessary lie. It was necessary that I should say that I had given up all thoughts of marriage, and that she should herself see the letter which I would write in the morning to break off my engagement That was the inevitable lie. But I was speaking the sober truth when I told her that it touched me deeply that she, knowing exactly what I was and how utterly unworthy I was of her, or any woman, should still care for me. I was not only touched but pleased; a few hours before, I might have agreed with Mrs Pethwick that I was not a vain man, yet now through all my mental tumult, through my terror at what had been discovered, and through my horror of what I had yet to do, the voice of vanity made itself heard. I could imagine myself grinning like a flattered school-boy. From this point I went on by slow degrees with her. I broached the idea of a partnership: we should work together, nominally she would remain my housekeeper; in reality she would share in the proceeds of every exploit, and possibly in the execution of many of them. I told her that I had often thought that I could do more if I had a woman accomplice whom I could trust absolutely. That was quite true.
"If you wish that," she said, "it shall be so. I have never stolen anything in my life except those diamonds, and it was not chiefly for their value that I took them. I was well brought up; I was taught to hate dishonesty, and I do hate it, but that shall all go for you, if you say so. If you wanted me to burn my right hand off for you, or to lose my soul for you, it would have to be."
It chanced that at this moment the flame of my lamp began to smoke a little. She noticed it at once and turned it down; she was an excellent housekeeper. The trouble was that she was a woman as well.
I began to speak of religious matters; I told her that it seemed to me that she was a fatalist and that I had been a fatalist too. I told her how in my early days I had struggled to let the gopd in me prevail over the bad; and how the struggle had been given up in the firm conviction that I was to save the souls of others but inevitably to lose my own. I spoke to her with fervour, saying what I felt deeply and carried away, as I always am, by my own words. When I had finished there were tears in her eyes. Yet all the time I had been listening intently, with a hearing that long practice has made wonderfully acute: I heard now what I had been waiting for—the steps of the rest of my household going up to bed.
"Is it too late?" she said. "Had you married you would probably have given up this life. Even without that, can nothing be done?"
"It might be," I said. I spoke of the possibility of a partnership of another kind with her—a partnership not in evil but in good. I made her talk. I had thought that I should have trouble in spinning the thing out, but words came readily to both of us; and all the time, I was as much in earnest as if I had not been playing a part It was after eleven when I found my chance to say that until to-night I had never thought of marrying, and that she had said that she would never marry me, but that one did not know what the end would be. And then, since the gradations must be gradual from the discussion of fatalism to the proposition of champagne, I made her talk of her past life and her early training. It was quite simple to dwell a little on the lighter side of that; so that it did not seem unnatural when she rose to go and I said that we must first drink together. It seemed even to mark my acceptance of the difference that had sprung up in the relations between us; it seemed a delicate way of telling her that she was to be in all ways my equal now.
How could she suspect? She herself took the wine and the glasses from the cabinet and opened the bottle. She filled the glasses, and then hesitated. "Wait one moment," she said. "I must first give these back to you." She took the diamonds, still in the packets where I had placed them, from the bag which she carried at her waist, and handed them to me. I took them and began to say how difficult it was for me to speak, that I felt dazed and could not express what I thought. As I spoke I dropped one of the packets; I stooped to pick it up with the glass of champagne which she had poured out for me still in my hand. The opportunity was made for me. I left that glass on the floor. When I rose I held in my hand the glass which unobserved I had taken from the shelf. We drank, and then it was time for me to hurry her off, for the thing that I had given her works quickly, and I did not want to watch the coming of the end. I shook hands with her as I said good-night. I waited for an hour, of which but a few minutes were occupied in planning what was to be done next It was all over, and it was of no good to think about it now. I took down a volume of Matthew Arnold's, his "Literature and Dogma," and read to occupy my mind. At the end of the hour I went as softly as possible up to her room. My key opened the door. In the room Mrs Pethwick lay on her bed fully dressed under the bright gas-jet. There was an open Bible by her side, with pencil annotations in the margin. The body turned over as I touched it. She was quite dead. I was surprised to find how quiet and how little moved I was now. I closed the Bible and put it back on the table by her bed-side; then I picked up the body—a, singularly awkward thing to carry—and took it down to the room where we had been sitting. Then I went back to her room and turned out the gas. There was no particular reason why I should, have done this; it almost amused me that one's careful habit of avoiding waste should survive even in such a time of stress. When I had got down to my own room again I put the body behind the screen. So far my nerves had been steady enough; I was afraid that the continued sight of the thing might break me down. I poured the poisoned champagne away, washed the bottle carefully, and then put into it a little wine from the second bottle that I had opened. I finished the remainder of the second bottle.
My motor-car is kept in the coach-house, and I now went down and ran it out, taking care to make as little noise as possible. As I lit the lamps, I was glad to notice that the man whom I employed to clean it had neglected it that night, and consequently I should not have the bother of cleaning it myself when I got back in the early hours, for the man would have no suspicion that the car had been taken out. I left it outside my front door and went into the house; I put on my own overcoat and cap, collected the things that I wanted for the part of the work that I dreaded most, and went back to the room where the body lay. I should not have been surprised if, as I opened the door, I had seen Mrs Pethwick's eyes staring out at me from above the screen. I should not have been surprised if I had found nothing behind the screen and had suddenly awakened to find that this was all a dream. But the body was there just as I had left it; the thing had been done which nothing can ever alter. I dressed it in an old ulster and cap of my own. A neck wrap hid the hair. The last horrible touch was to add a false beard. I carried the body down to the hall-door and peered out. So far as I could see, the street was empty. As quickly as I could I rushed down the steps to the car with the body. The rest was all simple enough; I put the rug round it, hiding the hands that looked so horribly white, and tied it into its position. I had stepped down from the car, and was making my final arrangements for starting when a policeman came round the corner. I knew the man. He looked at me and at the thing in the car and said good-night. I could not make out whether he suspected anything or not. I was terribly afraid that he might speak to the dead body, and I was careful to stand between him and it. "Good-night," I replied cheerfully. "My friend here thought it would be a nice night for a spin, else I am not often as late as this." He said something about the roads being pretty clear anyhow, and walked on. I could not say that he suspected, but he had certainly noticed. I had hoped that I might get away from my house without being seen, but as this was not to be I could only make the best of it. A half turn of the handle and my engine started; in another moment we were off, the dead body and I. Nothing that I could do would keep that head from shaking.
I left the body in a copse on Wimbledon Common, covering it with bracken and bringing back the disguise with me. Before going to bed I possessed myself of Mrs Pethwick's set of the duplicates of my keys, and destroyed the false beard in the fire. Then I took a bottle of brandy up to my room, but this night I could neither get drunk nor could I sleep; all the time my hands seemed to be clinging to the steering-wheel, and from the corner of my eye, I still saw the head of the dead woman, made grotesque by the false beard, nodding in languorous imbecility. I rose early and wrote this account. Almost all day I have felt strangely cold, and have sat cowering over the fire. My servants are in the state of the wildest excitement about the mysterious disappearance of Mrs Pethwick. I had of course to go to the police station to make enquiries. I did it very badly. An inspector asked me if I was ill. I said that this business had naturally upset me a good deal; he looked at me queerly. Everybody looks at me queerly now, almost as if they saw the brand on my forehead.
•••••
I add this note two days later. This is the end. The body has been found and identified; the policeman who saw me in the motor-car has told what he saw. They are watching my house; I can see them from this window. Every moment I expect them to come and take me. I might have got clear away; I might even now, if I had the head for it, manage to show that there was no evidence against me. But I know that it is written that this shall be the end. More evidence will come; it is useless to prolong the struggle.
But they will not take me alive. I still keep that last cigarette, and they will hardly refuse me permission to smoke it on my way to the station. That lesson in high explosives will be given after all.
And so I close the book of my life.
THE END
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