Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (26 page)

The ownership of the ring
he could not and did not dispute. He had lost it in the grounds of Clevere, he
said. But the jeweller in Coney Street swore that he had sold the ring to Mr.
Smethick on the 18th of December, whilst it was a well-known and an admitted
fact that the young man had not openly been inside the gates of Clevere for
over a fortnight before that.

On this evidence Laurence
Smethick was committed for trial. Though the actual weapon with which the
unfortunate Major had been stabbed had not been found, nor its ownership
traced, there was such a vast array of circumstantial evidence against the
young man that bail was refused.

He had, on the advice of
his solicitor, Mr. Grayson—one of the ablest lawyers in York—reserved his
defence, and on that miserable afternoon at the close of the year, we all filed
out of the crowded court feeling terribly depressed and anxious.

My dear lady and I walked
back to our hotel in silence. Our hearts seemed to weigh heavily within us. We
felt mortally sorry for that good-looking young Yorkshireman, who, we were convinced,
was innocent, yet at the same time seemed involved in a tangled web of deadly
circumstances from which he seemed quite unable to extricate himself.

We did not feel like
discussing the matter in the open streets, neither did we make any comment when
presently, in a block in the traffic in Coney Street, we saw Margaret Ceely
driving her smart dog-cart, whilst sitting beside her, and talking with great
earnestness close to her ear, sat Captain Glynne.

She was in deep mourning,
and had obviously been doing some shopping, for she was surrounded with
parcels; so perhaps it was hypercritical to blame her. Yet somehow it struck me
that just at the moment when there hung in the balance the life and honour of a
man with whose name her own had oft been linked by popular rumour, it showed
more than callous contempt for his welfare to be seen driving about with
another man who, since his sudden access to fortune, had undoubtedly become a
rival in her favours.

When we arrived at the “Black
Swan,” we were surprised to hear that Mr. Grayson had called to see my dear
lady, and was upstairs waiting.

Lady Molly ran up to our
sitting-room and greeted him with marked cordiality. Mr. Grayson is an elderly,
dry-looking man, but he looked visibly affected, and it was some time before he
seemed able to plunge into the subject which had brought him hither. He
fidgeted in his chair, and started talking about the weather.

“I am not here in a
strictly professional capacity, you know,” said Lady Molly presently, with a
kindly smile and with a view to helping him out of his embarrassment. “Our
police, I fear me, have an exaggerated view of my capacities, and the men here
asked me unofficially to remain in the neighbourhood and to give them my advice
if they should require it. Our chief is very lenient to me, and has allowed me
to stay. Therefore, if there is anything I can do—”

“Indeed, indeed there is!”
ejaculated Mr. Grayson with sudden energy. “From all I hear, there is not
another soul in the kingdom but you who can save this innocent man from the
gallows.”

My dear lady heaved a
little sigh of satisfaction. She had all along wanted to have a more important
finger in that Yorkshire pie.

“Mr. Smethick?” she said.

“Yes; my unfortunate
young client,” replied the lawyer. “I may as well tell you,” he resumed after a
slight pause, during which he seemed to pull himself together, “as briefly as
possible what occurred on December 24th last and on the following Christmas
morning. You will then understand the terrible plight in which my client finds
himself, and how impossible it is for him to explain his actions on that
eventful night. You will understand, also, why I have come to ask your help and
your advice. Mr. Smethick considered himself engaged to Miss Ceely. The
engagement had not been made public because of Major Ceely’s anticipated
opposition, but the young people had been very intimate, and many letters had
passed between them. On the morning of the 24th Mr. Smethick called at the
Hall, his intention then being merely to present his
fiancée
with the ring you know of. You remember the
unfortunate
contretemps
that occurred: I mean the unprovoked quarrel sought by Major Ceely with my poor
client, ending with the irascible old man forbidding Mr. Smethick the house.”

“My client walked out of
Clevere feeling, as you may well imagine, very wrathful; on the doorstep, just
as he was leaving, he met Miss Margaret, and told her very briefly what had
occurred. She took the matter very lightly at first, but finally became more
serious, and ended the brief interview with the request that, since he could
not come to the dance after what had occurred, he should come and see her
afterwards, meeting her in the gardens soon after midnight. She would not take
the ring from him then, but talked a good deal of sentiment about Christmas
morning, asking him to bring the ring to her at night, and also the letters
which she had written him. Well—you can guess the rest.”

Lady Molly nodded
thoughtfully.

“Miss Ceely was playing a
double game,” continued Mr. Grayson, earnestly. “She was determined to break
off all relationship with Mr. Smethick, for she had transferred her volatile
affections to Captain Glynne, who had lately become heir to an earldom and
£40,000 a year. Under the guise of sentimental twaddle she got my unfortunate
client to meet her at night in the grounds of Clevere and to give up to her the
letters which might have compromised her in the eyes of her new lover. At two o’clock
a.m. Major Ceely was murdered by one of his numerous enemies; as to which I do
not know, nor does Mr. Smethick. He had just parted from Miss Ceely at the very
moment when the first cry of ‘Murder’ roused Clevere from its slumbers. This
she could confirm if she only would, for the two were still in sight of each
other, she inside the gates, he just a little way down the road. Mr. Smethick
saw Margaret Ceely run rapidly back towards the house. He waited about a little
while, half hesitating what to do; then he reflected that his presence might be
embarrassing, or even compromising to her whom, in spite of all, he still loved
dearly; and knowing that there were plenty of men in and about the house to
render what assistance was necessary, he finally turned his steps and went home
a brokenhearted man, since she had given him the go-by, taken her letters away,
and flung contemptuously into the mud the ring he had bought for her.”

The lawyer paused,
mopping his forehead and gazing with whole-souled earnestness at my lady’s
beautiful, thoughtful face.

“Has Mr. Smethick spoken
to Miss Ceely since?” asked Lady Molly, after a while.

“No; but I did,” replied
the lawyer.

“What was her attitude?”

“One of bitter and
callous contempt. She denies my unfortunate client’s story from beginning to
end; declares that she never saw him after she bade him ‘good morning’ on the
doorstep of Clevere Hall, when she heard of his unfortunate quarrel with her
father. Nay, more; she scornfully calls the whole tale a cowardly attempt to
shield a dastardly crime behind a still more dastardly libel on a defenceless
girl.”

We were all silent now,
buried in thought which none of us would have cared to translate into words.
That the
impasse
seemed indeed hopeless no one could deny.

The tower of damning evidence
against the unfortunate young man had indeed been built by remorseless
circumstances with no faltering hand.

Margaret Ceely alone
could have saved him, but with brutal indifference she preferred the sacrifice
of an innocent man’s life and honour to that of her own chances of a brilliant
marriage. There are such women in the world; thank God I have never met any but
that one!

Yet am I wrong when I say
that she alone could save the unfortunate young man, who throughout was
behaving with such consummate gallantry, refusing to give his own explanation
of the events that occurred on that Christmas morning, unless she chose first
to tell the tale. There was one present now in the dingy little room at the “Black
Swan” who could disentangle that weird skein of coincidences, if any human
being not gifted with miraculous powers could indeed do it at this eleventh
hour.

She now said, gently:

“What would you like me
to do in this matter, Mr. Grayson? And why have you come to me rather than to
the police?”

“How can I go with this
tale to the police?” he ejaculated in obvious despair. “Would they not also
look upon it as a dastardly libel on a woman’s reputation? We have no proofs,
remember, and Miss Ceely denies the whole story from first to last. No, no!” he
exclaimed with wonderful fervour. “I came to you because I have heard of your
marvellous gifts, your extraordinary intuition. Someone murdered Major Ceely!
It was not my old friend Colonel Smethick’s son. Find out who it was, then! I
beg of you, find out who it was!”

He fell back in his
chair, broken down with grief. With inexpressible gentleness Lady Molly went up
to him and placed her beautiful white hand on his shoulder.

“I will do my best, Mr.
Grayson,” she said simply.

We remained alone and
singularly quiet the whole of that evening. That my dear lady’s active brain
was hard at work I could guess by the brilliance of her eyes, and that sort of
absolute stillness in her person through which one could almost feel the
delicate nerves vibrating.

The story told her by the
lawyer had moved her singularly. Mind you, she had always been morally
convinced of young Smethick’s innocence, but in her the professional woman
always fought hard battles against the sentimentalist, and in this instance the
overwhelming circumstantial evidence and the conviction of her superiors had
forced her to accept the young man’s guilt as something out of her ken.

By his silence, too, the
young man had tacitly confessed; and if a man is perceived on the very scene of
a crime, both before it has been committed and directly afterwards; if
something admittedly belonging to him is found within three yards of where the
murderer must have stood; if, added to this, he has had a bitter quarrel with the
victim, and can give no account of his actions or whereabouts during the fatal
time, it were vain to cling to optimistic beliefs in that same man’s innocence.

But now matters had
assumed an altogether different aspect. The story told by Mr. Smethick’s lawyer
had all the appearance of truth. Margaret Ceely’s character, her callousness on
the very day when her late
fiancé
stood
in
the dock, her quick transference of her affections to the richer man, all made
the account of the events on Christmas night as told my Mr. Grayson extremely
plausible.

No wonder my dear lady
was buried in thought.

“I shall have to take the
threads up from the beginning, Mary,” she said to me the following morning,
when after breakfast she appeared in her neat coat and skirt, with hat and
gloves, ready to go out, “so, on the whole, I think I will begin with a visit
to the Haggetts.”

“I may come with you, I
suppose?” I suggested meekly.

“Oh, yes!” she rejoined
carelessly.

Somehow I had an inkling
that the carelessness of her mood was only on the surface. It was not likely
that she—my sweet, womanly, ultra-feminine, beautiful lady—should feel
callously on this absorbing subject.

We motored down to
Bishopthorpe. It was bitterly cold, raw, damp, and foggy. The chauffeur had
some difficulty in finding the cottage, the “home” of the imbecile gardener and
his wife.

There was certainly not
much look of home about the place. When, after much knocking at the door, Mrs.
Haggett finally opened it, we saw before us one of the most miserable, slatternly
places I think I ever saw.

In reply to Lady Molly’s
somewhat curt inquiry, the woman said that Haggett was in bed, suffering from
one of his “fits.”

“That is a great pity,” said
my dear lady, rather unsympathetically, I thought, “for I must speak with him
at once.”

“What is it about?” asked
the woman, sullenly. “I can take a message.”

“I am afraid not,” rejoined
my lady. “I was asked to see Haggett personally.”

“By whom, I’d like to
know,” she retorted, now almost insolently.

“I dare say you would.
But you are wasting precious time. Hadn’t you better help your husband on with
his clothes? This lady and I will wait in the parlour.”