The Castlecourt Diamond Case, Novel Magazine, 1906/Part 2
PART II
I HAD been in Lady Castlecourt's service two years when the Castlecourt diamonds were stolen. At the time we were staying in London for the season, where my lord and lady occupied a suite of rooms at Burridge's Hotel.
The evening of the robbery my lady was going to dinner at the Duke of Duxbury's. In the afternoon I got everything ready for her, and put the leather case containing the diamonds on the dressing-table in her bedroom.
I was talking in the sitting-room with Chawlmers (my lord's man) when I thought I heard a rustle of skirts in the bedroom. I went in at once, and seeing nothing opened the door on to the landing, but no one was about.
While I was dressing my lady she took up the leather case, but when she opened it she found the jewels were missing. Chawlmers and myself were suspected by the detectives who were called in of being concerned in the theft.
The next morning we heard of the disappearance of Sara Wight, one of the housemaids on our floor. There was every sign of a hurried flight, and from descriptions Sara Wight was supposed to be a thief well known in America as Laura the Lady. Suspicion then fell on her.
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I HAD long had my eye on the Castlecourt diamonds, and knowing that Lord and Lady Castlecourt were staying at Burridge's, I obtained a situation as housemaid of their suite. I had every opportunity of watching my lady's movements, and made friends with Sophy Jeffers, her maid.
On the day I took the jewels Jeffers had laid out Lady Castlecourt's clothes, together with the case containing the diamonds, in my lady's bedroom. I darted in and took the diamonds out of the case while Jeffers was talking with Chawlmers, my lord's man, in the sitting-room.
Jeffers heard me as I went out. She was in the room almost as I closed the door. Before she could have got on to the landing I was in a cupboard hunting for a dustpan. But she evidently suspected nothing.
I stole out of the hotel and back to Tom, my husband, at our flat in Knightsbridge.
We unmounted the diamonds, and I carried them about in a bag pinned inside my bodice
One night Tom and I went out with the intention of going to the theatre. I had suspicions that our cab was being followed, and under cover of the fog we slipped into the house of a Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy, Americans with great social ambitions, passing ourselves off as Major and Mrs. Thatcher.
Towards the end of the evening I took the bag of diamonds out of my dress, and leaning towards Mrs. Kennedy, asked her to give it to a mythical Amelia. Mrs. Kennedy, who I could see was unwilling to acknowledge her ignorance of “Amelia,” acquiesced. I was most relieved to be quit of the jewels, though the connection of our gang with them did not end there.
■ ■ ■
WE had been in London two years when a series of extraordinary events took place which involved us, through no fault of our own, in the most unpleasant predicament that ever over took two decent Americans in a foreign country.
I had been sent over to start the English branch of the Colonial Box, Tub, and Cordage Company, one of the biggest concerns of the Middle West, and it wasn't two months before I realised that the venture would catch on, and I was going to be at the head of a booming business.
I'd brought my wife and little girl along with me. We'd been married five years—met in Necropolis City, and lived there and afterwards in Chicago, where I got my first big promotion. She was Daisy K. Fairweather, of Buncumville, Indiana, and had been the belle of the place. She'd also attracted considerable attention in St. Louis and Kansas City, where she'd visited a good deal There was nothing green about Daisy K. Fairweather—never had been.
Daisy and I didn't know many people when we first came over, but that little woman wasn't here six months before she'd sized up everything in sight, and made up her mind just how and where she was going to butt in. The first thing she did was to conform to those particular ones among the local customs that seemed to her the most high-toned.
In Chicago we'd always dined at half-past six, and given the hired girls every Thursday off. In London we dined the first year at half-past seven, and the second at half past eight. We had four servants and a butler called Perkins, who ran everything in sight—myself included. I always dressed for dinner after Perkins came, and tried to look as if it were my lifelong custom. I'd have sunk out of sight in a sea of shame rather than have had Perkins think I hadn't been brought up to it.
Daisy caught on to everything, and then passed the word on to me. She was always springing innovations on me, and I did the best I could to keep my end up. She stopped talking the way she used to in Necropolis City and made Elaine—that's our little girl—stop calling me “Poppa” and call me “Daddy.”
She called her front hair her “fringe,” and her shirt-waist her “bloos,” and she made me careful of what I said before the servants. “Servants talk so!” she'd say, just as if she'd heard them. In Necropolis City, or even Chicago, we never bothered about the “helps” talking. They said what they wanted and we said what we wanted, and that was the end of it. But I supposed it was all right. Whatever Daisy K. Fairweather Kennedy says I do.
By the second season Daisy'd broken quite a way into Society, and knew a bishop and two lords. We were asked out a great deal, and we'd some smart little dinners at our own shanty—15 Hanley Street, near Walworth Crescent, a thirty-five foot, four-storey edifice that we paid the same rent for you'd pay for a seven-room flat in Chicago. Daisy by this time was in with all kinds of push. She was what she called a “success.” Nights when we didn't go out she'd sit with me and say:
“Well, I don't really see how I'll ever be able to live in Chicago again, and Necropolis City would certainly kill me.”
This same season Lady Clara Gyves dined with us twice (it was a great step, Daisy said, and I took it for granted she knew), and once at a reception Daisy stood right up close to the Marchioness of Castlecourt, the greatest beauty in London, and watched her drink a cup of tea. Daisy didn't meet her that time, but she said to me:
“Next season I'll know her, and the season after that, if we're careful, I'll dine with her. Then, Cassius P. Kennedy, we shall have arrived!”
I said “Sure!” That's what I mostly say to her, because she's mostly right. You don't often find that little woman making breaks.
It was in our third season in London, the time the middle of May, when the things occurred of which I have made mention at the beginning of my statement. It was this way:
We'd been going out a good deal, pretty nearly every night, and we were glad to have, for once, a quiet evening at home. Of course that doesn't mean the same as it does in Necropolis City or even Chicago. We dine, just the same, at half-past eight, and both of us dress for dinner. We have to, Daisy says, no matter how we feel, because of the servants.
The servants in London are good servants all right, but the way you have to avoid shocking their sensitive feelings sometimes makes a free-born American rebellious. I like to think I'm an object of interest to my fellow creatures, but it's a good deal of a bother to have it on your mind that you mustn't destroy the illusions of the butler or upset the ideals of the cook.
As we were waiting for dinner to be announced we heard a cab rattle up and stop, as it seemed, at our door. We looked at each other with inquiring eyes, and then heard the cab go off—on the jump, I should say, by the noise it made—and a minute later the bell rang sharply and quickly. Perkins, opened the door, and Daisy and I heard a lady's voice, very sweet and sort of drawling, say something in the hall
I peeped through the curtains, and there was a man and a woman—a distinguished-looking pair—taking off their coats and prinking themselves up at the hall mirror. I'd never seen either of them before, as far as I could remember, but I could tell by their general make-up that they were the real thing—the kind Daisy was always cultivating and asking to dinner.
I stepped back, and said to her, in a whisper:
“Somebody's come to dinner, and you've forgotten all about it.”
She shook her head and whispered back:
“I haven't asked anyone to dinner; I'm sure I haven't.”
“Well, they're here, whether we've asked them or not,” I hissed, “and you can't turn 'em out. They expect to be fed.”
“Who are they?”
“Search me! Friends of yours I've never seen.”
“For pity's sake, don't look surprised. Try to pretend it's all right.”
We lined up by the fireplace, and got our smiles all ready. The portière was drawn, and Perkins announced:
“Major and Mrs. Thatcher.”
They sailed smilingly into the room, the woman ahead, rustling in a long, sparkly, black dress. To my certain knowledge, I'd never seen either of them before.
The woman was very pretty; not pretty in the sense that Daisy is, with beautiful features and a perfect complexion, but slim, and pale, and smart-looking. She had black hair with a little wreath of red flowers in it, and the whitest neck I ever saw. She evidently thought she was all right as far as herself and the house and the dinner were concerned, for she was perfectly serene, and easy as an old shoe.
The man behind her was a big, handsome, dense chap—just home from India, they said, and he looked it. He'd that dull way those swell Army fellows sometimes have; it goes with a long moustache and an eyeglass.
I looked out of the corner of my eye at Daisy, and I knew by her face she couldn't remember either of them. But they were the right sort, and she wasn't going to be muddled by any situation that could boil up out of the Society pool. She was just as easy as they were. She'd a smile on her face like a child, and she said the little, mild, milky things women say just as milkily and mildly as though she were greeting her lifelong friends.
Well, it went along as smoothly as a summer sea. They introduced themselves as Major and Mrs. Thatcher, and told a lot about their life and their movements—all of which I could see Daisy greedily gathering in. I didn't know whether she remembered them or not, but I didn't think she did, she was so careful about alluding to places where she had met them.
They seemed to know her all right—Mrs. Thatcher especially. She'd allude to smart houses where Daisy had been asked, and toney people that were getting to be friends of Daisy's. She seemed to be right in the best circles herself. I wouldn't like to say how many times she mentioned the names of earls and lords; one of them, Baron—some name like Fiddlesticks—she said was her cousin.
They didn't stay long after dinner. I don't think I sat ten minutes with the major—and it was a dull ten minutes, and no mistake. There was nothing light and airy about him. He asked me about Chicago (which he pronounced “Chickago”), and said he had heard there was good sport in the Rocky Mountains, and thought of going there to hunt the Great Auk. I didn't know what the Great Auk was, and I asked him. He looked blankly at me, and said he believed a “large form of bird,” which surprised me, as I had an idea it was a Pre-Adamite beast, like a behemoth.
I was glad to have the major go, not only because he was so dull, but because I was so dying to find out from Daisy if she'd placed them and who they were. They were hardly on the steps and the front door shut on them before I was back in the drawing room.
“Who are they, for Heavens' sake?” I burst out.
She shook her head, laughing a little, and looking utterly bewildered.
“My dear boy,” she said, “I haven't the least idea. It's the most extraordinary thing I ever knew.”
“Isn't there anything about them you remember? Didn't they say something that gave you a clue?”
“Not a word, and yet they seem to know me so well. The queerest thing of all was when you were in the dining-room with the man, the woman, in the most confidential tone, began to ask me about someone called Amelia. It was too dreadful! I hadn't the faintest notion what she meant.”
“What did you say? I'll lay ten to one you were equal to it.”
“I realised it was desperate, and, after going through dinner so creditably, I wasn't going to break down over the coffee. She said: 'How about poor Amelia?' I knew by that 'poor' and by the expression of her face it was something unusual and queer. I thought a minute, and then looked as solemn as I could, and answered: 'Really, the subject is a very painful one to me. I'd rather not talk about it.'”
We both roared. It was so like Daisy to be ready that way!
“And then—this is the strangest part of all—she put her hand in the front of her dress and drew out some little thing of chamois leather, and told me to give it to Amelia from her. I tried to stop her, but it was too late. She put it here in the crystal bowl.”
Daisy went to the bowl, and took out a little limp sack of chamois leather.
“It feels like pebbles,” she said, pinching it.
And then she opened it and shook the “pebbles” into her hand. I bent down to look at them, my head close to hers. The palm of her hand was covered with small, sparkling crystals of different sizes and very bright. We looked at them, and then at one another. They were diamonds!
For a moment we didn't either of us say anything. Daisy had been laughing, and her laugh died away into a sort of scared giggle. Her hand began to shake a little, and it made the diamonds send out gleams in all directions.
“What—what—does it mean?” she said, with a low sort of gasp.
I just looked at them and shook my head. But I felt a cold sinking in that part of my organism where my courage is usually screwed to the sticking-place.
“Are they real, do you think?” she said again, and she took the evening paper, and poured them out on to it.
Spread out that way, they looked most awfully numerous and rich. There must have been more than a hundred of them of different sizes, and shaking about on the surface of the paper made them shine and sparkle like stars.
“It's a fortune, Cassius,” she said, almost in a whisper; “it's a fortune in diamonds. Why did she leave them?”
“Didn't she say they were for Amelia?” I said, in a hollow tone.
“Yes; but who is Amelia? How will we ever find her? What shall we do? It's too awful!”
We stood opposite one another with the paper between us, and tried to think. In the lamplight the diamonds winked at us with what seemed human malice. I turned round and picked up the bag they had come from, looked vaguely into it, and shook it. A last stone fell out on the paper, quite a large one, and added itself to the pile.
“Why did she leave them here?” Daisy moaned on. “What did she bother us for? Why didn't she take them to Amelia herself?”
“Because she was afraid,” I said, in the undertone of melodrama. “They're stolen, Daisy.”
I had voiced the fear in both our hearts. We sat down opposite one another on either side of the table, with the newspaper full of diamonds between us. I don't know whether I was as pale as Daisy, but I felt quite as bad as she looked. And sitting thus, each staring into the other's scared face, we ran over the events of the evening.
We couldn't make much of it; it was too uncanny. But from the first we both decided we'd felt something to be wrong. Why or how they'd come? Who they were? What they wanted? We couldn't answer a single question. We were in a maze. The only thing that seemed certain was that they had one hundred and fifty diamonds of various sizes that they had wanted, for some reason, to get rid of, and they'd got rid of them to us. And so we talked and talked till, by slow degrees, we got to the point where suddenly, with a simultaneous start, we looked at one another, and breathed out:
“The Castlecourt diamonds!”
We had read it all in the papers, and we had talked it over, and here we were with a heap of stones in a newspaper that might be the very stones!
“And next year I'd hoped to know Lady Castlecourt. I'd been sure I would!” Daisy wailed. “And now”
“But you haven't stolen the diamonds, dearest,” I said soothingly. “You needn't get in a fever about that.”
“But, Good Heavens, I might just as well! Do you suppose there's anyone in the world fool enough to believe the story of what happened here to-night? People say it's hard to believe everything in the Bible! Why, Jonah and the whale is simple and commonplace compared with it!”
It did look bad, and the more we talked of it the worse it looked. We didn't sleep all night, and the dawn was coming through the blinds when we were still talking, trying to decide what to do. At breakfast we sat like two graven images, not eating a thing, and all that day in the office I found it impossible to concentrate my mind, but sat thinking of what on earth we'd do with those diamonds.
I'd suggested the first thing to go and give them up at the nearest police-station. But Daisy wouldn't hear of that. She said that no one would believe a word of our story—it was quite impossible. And when I came to think of it I must say I agreed with her.
I saw myself telling that story in a court of justice, and I realised that a look of conscious guilt would be painted on my face the whole time. I'd have felt, whether it was true or not, that nobody really ought to believe it, and as an honest, self-respecting citizen I ought not to expect them to.
Here we were, strangers that nobody knew a thing about, anyway. Daisy said they'd take us for accomplices; and when I said to her we'd be a pretty rank pair of accomplices to give up the swag without a struggle, she said they'd think we got scared, and decided to do what she calls “turn State's evidence.”
She thought the best thing to do was to keep the stones till we could think up a more plausible story. We tried to do that, and the night after our meeting with Major and Mrs. Thatcher we stayed awake till three o'clock thinking up “plausible stories.” We got a great collection of them, but it seemed impossible to get a good one without implicating somebody.
I invented a corker, but it cast a dark suspicion on Daisy,and she had an even better one, but it would have undoubtedly resulted in the arrest of Perkins and the housemaid, and possibly myself.
It was a horrible situation. Even if we could possibly have escaped suspicion ourselves, it would have ruined us socially and financially. Would the Colonial Box, Tub, and Cordage Company have retained as the head of its London branch a man who had got. himself mixed up with a sensational diamond robbery? Certainly not! That concern demands a high standard and unspotted record in all its employees. I'd have got the sack at the end of the month.
And Daisy! How would the bishop and the two lords have felt about it? Have no more use for that little woman, you can bet your bottom dollar! Even Lady Clara Gyves, who, they say, will go anywhere to get a good dinner, would have given her a chilling smile. I know them.
And I saw my Daisy sitting at home all alone on her reception day, and taking dinner with me every night. No, sir! That wouldn't happen if Cassius P. Kennedy had to take those diamonds to the Thames and throw them off London Bridge in a weighted bag.
So there we were! It was a dreadful predicament; Every morning we read the papers with our hearts thumping like hammers. Every ring at the bell made us jump, and we had a deadly fear that each time the portière was lifted and a caller appeared we'd see the buttons and helmet of a policeman with a warrant of arrest concealed upon his person.
I began to have awful dreams and Daisy didn't sleep at all, and got pale and pinched. We thought up more “plausible stories,” but they seemed to get less probable every time, and all our spare moments together, which used to be so happy and care-free, were now dark and harassed as the meetings of conspirators.
Even concealing the miserable things was a wearing anxiety. First we decided to divide them, and Daisy wore her half in the chamois bag hung round her neck, while I concealed mine in a money-belt worn under my clothes.
We had about decided on that and I'd bought the belt, when we got the idea that if we were killed in an accident they'd be found on us, and then our memories would go down to posterity blackened with shame. So we just put them back in the bag and locked them up in Daisy's jewel-case, round which we hovered as they say a murderer does round the hiding-place of his victim.
I never knew before how burglars felt; but if it was anything like the way Daisy and I did, I wonder why anybody ever takes to that perilous trade. We were the most unhappy creatures in London, feeling our selves a pair of thieves, and our unpolluted innocent home no better than a “fence.”
There was less in the papers about the Castlecourt diamond robbery, but that did not give us any peace; for, in the first place, we didn't know for certain that we had the Castlecourt diamonds, and, in the second, when we now and then did see dark allusions to the sleuths being “on a new and more promising scent,” we modestly supposed that we might be the quarry to which it led. Daisy began to talk of “going to prison” as a termination of her career that might not be so far distant, and to the thought of which she was growing reconciled.
This about covers the ground of my immediate connection with the stolen diamonds. Their subsequent disposition is a matter in which my wife is more concerned than I am. She also will be able to tell her part of the story with more literary frills than I can muster up. I'm no writing man, and all I've tried to do is to state my part of the affair briefly and clearly.
■ ■ ■
AT a quarter before eight o'clock, on the evening of May 4th, a telephone message was sent to Scotland Yard that a diamond necklace, the property of the Marquis of Castlecourt, had been stolen from Burridge's Hotel. Brison, one of the best of their men, was detailed upon the case, and three days later my services were engaged by the marquis.
After investigations which have occupied several weeks, I have become convinced that the case is an unusual and complicated one. The reasons which have led me to this conclusion I will now set down as briefly and clearly as possible.
As has already been stated in the papers, the diamonds, on the afternoon of the robbery, were standing in a leather jewel-case on the bureau in Lady Castlecourt's apartment. To this room access was obtained by three doors—that which led into Lord Castlecourt's room, that which led into the sitting-room, and that which led into the landing.
Lord Castlecourt's valet, James Chawlmers, and Lady Castlecourt's maid, Sophy Jeffers, had been occupied in this suite of apartments throughout the afternoon: At six o'clock Jeffers had laid out her ladyship's clothes, taken the diamonds from the metal dispatch-box in which they were usually carried, and set them on the bureau. She had then withdrawn into the sitting-room with Chawlmers, where they had remained for half-an-hour talking.
During this period of time Jeffers deposes that she heard the rustle of a skirt in the sitting-room, and went to the door to see if anyone had entered. No one was to be seen: She returned to the sitting-room, and resumed her conversation with Chawlmers.
It is the general supposition—and it would appear to be the reasonable one—that the diamonds were taken then. According to Jeffers, they were in the case at six o'clock, and on the testimony of Lord and Lady Castlecourt they were gone at half-past seven. The person towards whom suspicion points is a housemaid, going by the name of Sara Wight, who had a pass-key to the apartment.
The suspicions of Sara Wight were strengthened by her actions. At half-past seven that evening she left the hotel without giving warning, and carrying no farther luggage than a small portmanteau.
Upon examination of her room it was discovered that she had left her box, which contained a few articles of coarse under clothing and a wadded cotton quilt. She had been uncommunicative with the other servants, but had had much conversation with Sophy Jeffers, who described her as a brisk, civil-spoken girl, whose manner of speech was above her station.
The natural suspicions evoked by her behaviour were intensified in the mind of Brison by the information that the celebrated thief, Laura the Lady, had returned to London. I myself had seen the woman at Earl's Court, and told Brison of the occurrence.
It had appeared to Brison that Jeffers' description of the housemaid had many points of resemblance with Laura the Lady. The theft reminded us both of the affair of the Comtesse de Chateaugay's rubies, when this particular thief, who speaks French as well as she does English, was supposed to have been the moving spirit in one of the most daring jewel robberies of our time.
Brison, confident that Sara Wight and Laura the Lady were one and the same, concentrated his powers in an effort to find her. He was successful to the extent of discovering a woman closely resembling Laura the Lady living quietly in a furnished flat in Knightsbridge with a man who passed as her husband. He discovered that this couple had left for a “business trip” on the Continent shortly before Sara Wight's appearance at Burridge's, and had returned shortly after her departure therefrom;
He regarded the pair and their movements as of sufficient importance to be watched, and for a week after their return from the Continent had the flat shadowed.
One foggy night, while he himself was watching the place, the man and woman came out in evening dress, and took a hansom that was waiting for them. Brison followed them, and the fog being thick and their horse fresh, lost them in the maze of streets about Walworth Crescent.
He is positive that the occupants of the cab realised they were followed and attempted to escape. He assures me that he saw the driver turn several times and look at his hansom, and then lash his horse to a desperate speed.
One of the points in this nocturnal pursuit that he thinks most noteworthy is the manner in which the occupants of the cab disappeared. After keeping it well in sight for over half-an-hour, he lost it completely, and suddenly, in the short street that runs from Walworth Crescent north into Hanley Street; ten minutes later he is under the impression that he sighted it again near the Hyde Park Hotel. But if it was the same cab it was empty, and the driver was looking for fares.
For some hours after this Brison patrolled the streets in the neighbourhood, but could find no trace of the suspected pair. It was near midnight when he returned to his surveillance of the flat. The next morning he heard that its occupants had left. A search-warrant revealed the fact that they had gone with such haste that they had left many articles of dress, etc., behind them. There was every evidence of a hurried flight.
All this was so much clear proof, in Brison's opinion, of the guilt of Sara Wight. Upon this hypothesis he is working, and I have not disturbed his confidence in the integrity of his efforts.
The result of my investigations, which I have been quietly and systematically pursuing for the last three weeks, has led me to a different and much more sensational conclusion. That Sara Wight may have taken the diamonds I do not deny. But she was merely an accomplice in the hands of another. The real thief, in my opinion, is Gladys, Marchioness of Castlecourt.
My reasons for holding this theory are based upon observations taken at the time, by my large and varied experience in such cases, and by information that I have been collecting since the occurrence. Let me briefly state the result of my deductions and researches.
Lady Castlecourt, who was the daughter of a penniless Irish clergyman, was a young girl of great beauty brought up in the direst poverty. Her marriage with the Marquis of Castlecourt, which took place seven years ago this spring, lifted her into a position of social prominence and financial ease. Society made much of her; she became one of its most brilliant ornaments.
Her husband's infatuation was well known. During the first few years ot their marriage he could refuse her nothing, and he stinted himself—for, though well off, Lord Castlecourt is by no means a millionaire peer—in order to satisfy her whims.
The lady very quickly developed great extravagances. She became known as one of the most expensively dressed women in London. It had been mentioned in certain Society journals that Lord Castlecourt's revenues had been so reduced by his wife's extravagance that he had been forced to let his town house in Grosvenor Gate, and for two seasons take rooms in Burridge's Hotel.
This is a simple statement of certain tendencies of the lady. Now let me state, with more detail, how these tendencies developed and to what they led.
I will admit here, before I go further, that my suspicions of Lady Castlecourt were aroused from the first. It was, perhaps, with a pre-disposed mind that I began those explorations into her life during the past five years which have convinced me that she was the moving spirit in this theft of the diamonds.
For the first two years of her married life Lady Castlecourt lived most of the time on the estate of Castlecourt Marsh Manor. During this period she became the mother of two sons, and it was after the birth of the second that she went to London and spent her first season there since her marriage. She was in splendid health, and even more beautiful than she had been in her girlhood. She became the fashion; no gathering was complete without her; her costumes were described in the papers; Royalty admired her.
I have discovered that at this time her husband gave her six hundred pounds per annum as a dress allowance. During the two first years of her married life she lived within this. But after that she exceeded it to the extent of hundreds, and finally thousands, of pounds.
The fifth year after her marriage she was in debt for three thousand pounds, her creditors being dressmakers, furriers, jewelers, and milliners in London and Paris. She made no attempt to pay these debts; the tradesmen knowing her high social position and her husband's sterling honour, did not press her, and she went on spending with an unstinted hand.
It was last year that she finally precipitated the catastrophe by the purchase of a coat of Russian sable for the sum of one thousand pounds, and a set of turquoise ornaments valued at half that amount. Each of these purchases was made in Paris.
The two creditors, having been already warned of her disinclination to meet her obligations, had, it is said, laid wagers with other firms to which she was deeply in debt that they would extract the money from her within the year.
It was in the summer of the past year that Lady Castlecourt was first threatened by Bolkonsky, the furrier, with law proceedings. In the end of September she went to Paris and visited the man in his own offices, and I have it from an eye-witness that she exhibited the greatest trepidation and alarm, finally begging with tears for an extension of a month's time. To this Bolkonsky consented, warning her that, at the end of that time, if his account were not settled, he would acquaint his lordship with the situation and institute legal proceedings.
Before the month was up—that was in October of the past year—his account was paid in full by Lady Castlecourt herself. At the same time other accounts in Paris and London were entirely settled or compromised.
I find that during the months of October and November Lady Castlecourt paid off debts amounting to nearly four thousand pounds. In most instances she settled them personally, paying them in bank notes. A few claims were paid by cheque.
I have it from those with whom she transacted these monetary dealings that she seemed greatly relieved to be able to discharge her obligations, and that in all cases she requested silence on the subject as the price of her future patronage.
I now come to a feature of the case that I admit greatly puzzles me. Lady Castlecourt was still wearing the diamonds when this large sum was disbursed by her. As far as can be ascertained she had made no effort to sell them, and I can find no trace of a frustrated attempt to steal them. She had suddenly become possessed of four thousand pounds without the aid of the diamonds. They were not called into requisition till nearly six months later.
The natural supposition would be that “someone”—an unknown donor—had lent her the four thousand pounds; in fact, that Lady Castlecourt had a lover, to whom, in a desperate extremity, she had appealed. But the most thorough examination of her past life reveals no hint of such a thing.
Frivolous and extravagant as she undoubtedly was, she seems to have been, as far as her personal conduct goes, a moral and virtuous lady. Her name has been associated with no man's, either in a foolish flirtation or a scandalous and compromising intrigue; in fact, her devotion to Lord Castlecourt appears to have been of an absolutely strong and sincere kind. While she did not scruple to deceive him as to her pecuniary dealings, she unquestionably seems to have been perfectly upright and honest in the matter of marital fidelity.
Where, then, did Lady Castlecourt secure this large sum of money? My reading of the situation is briefly this:
Her creditors becoming rebellious and Lady Castlecourt becoming terrified, she appealed to some woman friend for a loan. Who this is I have no idea, but among her large circle of acquaintances there are several ladies of sufficient means and sufficiently intimate with Lady Castlecourt to have been able to advance the required sum.
This was done, as I have shown already, in the month of October, when Lady Castlecourt was in Paris, where she at once began to pay off her debts. After this she continued wearing the diamonds, and, in my opinion, such is her shallowness and irresponsibility of character, forgot the obligations of the loan, which probably had been made under a promise of speedy repayment, either in full or in part.
It was then—this, let it be understood, is all surmise—that Lady Castlecourt's new and unknown debtor began to press for a repayment. There might be many reasons why this should have so closely followed the loan.
With a woman of Lady Castlecourt's lax and unbusiness-like methods, unusual conditions could be readily exacted. She is of the class of persons that, under a pressing need for money, would agree to any conditions and immediately forget them.
That she did agree to a speedy reimbursement I am positive; that once again she found herself confronted by an angry and threatening creditor; and that, in desperation and with the assistance of Sara Wight, she stole the diamonds, intending probably to pawn them, is the conclusion to which my experience and investigations have led me.
How she came to select Sara Wight as an accomplice I am not qualified to state. In my opinion, fear of detection made her seek the aid of a confederate. Sara's flight, with its obviously suspicious surroundings, has an air of prearrangement suggestive of having been carefully planned to divert suspicion from the real criminal.
Sophy Jeffers assured me that Lady Castlecourt had never, to her knowledge, conversed at any length with the housemaid. But Jeffers is a very simple-minded person whom it would be an easy matter to deceive. That Sara Wight was her ladyship's accomplice I am positive; that she took the jewels and now has them is also my opinion.
Being convinced of her need of ready money, and of the rashness and lack of balance in her character, I have been expecting that Lady Castlecourt would make some decisive move in the way of selling the diamonds.
With this idea agents of mine have been on the watch, but without so far finding any evidence that she has attempted to place the stones on the market.
I am of the opinion that they are still in the hands of Sara Wight, who, whether she is an accomplished thief or not, is probably more wary and more versed in such dealings than Lady Castlecourt.
That her ladyship should have been the object of my suspicions from the start may seem peculiar to those to whom she only appears as a person of rank, wealth, and beauty.
Before the case came under my notice at all I had heard her uncontrolled extravagance remarked upon, and that alone, coupled with the fact that Lord Castlecourt is not a peer of vast wealth, and that the lady's moral character is said to be unblemished, would materially arouse the suspicions of one used to the vagaries and intricacies of the evolution of crime.
During my first interview with her ladyship I watched her closely, and was struck by her pallor, her impatience under questionings, her hardly concealed nervousness, and her indignant repudiation of the suspicions cast upon her servants.
Her answers to many of my questions were vague and evasive, and to both Brison and myself, on two different occasions, she suggested the possibility of the jewels not being stolen at all, but having been “mislaid.” Even Brison, whose judgment had been warped by her beauty and rank, was forced to admit the strangeness of this remark.
The description given me by Sophy Jeffers of her ladyship's deportment when the theft was discovered still further strengthened my suspicions.
It is alleged by Jeffers—quite innocently of any intention to injure her mistress, to whom she appears devoted—that her ladyship's first emotion on discovering the loss was a fear of her husband; that when he entered the room she instinctively tried to conceal the empty jewel-case behind her, and that almost her first words to him were assurances that she had not been careless, but had guarded the jewels well.
Afterwards she attempted to be more reticent, and adopted an air of what almost appeared indifference, surprising not only myself and Brison but Jeffers by her remarks, made with irritated impatience, that they still might “turn up somewhere.”
This change of attitude was even more convincing to me than her former exhibition of alarm. The very candour and childishness with which she showed her varying states of mind would have disarmed most people, but were to me almost conclusive proofs of her guilt.
She is a woman whose shallow irresponsibility of mind is even more unusual than her remarkable beauty. No one but an old and seasoned criminal, or a creature of extraordinary simplicity, could have behaved with so much audacity in such a situation.
Having arrived at these conclusions, I am now reduced to a passive attitude. I will wait and watch until such time as the diamonds are either pawned or sold. This may not occur for months, though I am inclined to think that her ladyship's need of money will force her to a recklessness which will be her undoing.
This brings my statement up-to-date; At the present writing I am simply awaiting developments, confident that the outcome will prove the verity of my original proposition.
[This story concludes next month, when Mrs. Kennedy and the Marchioness of Castlecourt give an account of their connection with the robbery. Their statements throw further light upon the mystery.]