Read Ebook: The Castlecourt Diamond Mystery by Bonner Geraldine Stoner Harrie F Illustrator

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Ebook has 402 lines and 28472 words, and 9 pages

Lord Castlecourt turned to me.

"What's this mean, Jeffers? You've had charge of the diamonds."

I told him all I knew and as well as I could, what with my legs trembling that they'd scarce support me, and my tongue dry as a piece of leather. When I got toward the end, my lady interrupted me, crying out:

Lord Castlecourt made a sort of gesture toward her to be still. I could see it meant that. He kept the case, and, going to the door, locked it.

"How long have you been in these rooms?" he said, turning round on me with the key in his hand.

I told him, trembling, and almost crying. I had never seen my lord look so terribly stern. I don't know whether he was angry or not, but I was afraid of him, and it was for the first time; for he'd always been a kind and generous master to me and the other servants.

"Oh, my lord," I said, feeling suddenly weighed down with dread and misery, "you surely don't think I took them?"

"I'm not thinking anything," he said. "You and Chawlmers are to stay in this room, and not move from it till you get my orders. I'll send at once for the police."

My lady turned round in her chair and looked at him.

"The police?" she said. "Oh, Herbert, wait till to-morrow! You're not even sure yet that they are stolen."

"Where are they, then?" he says, quick and sharp. "Jeffers says she saw them in that case an hour ago. They are not in the case now. Do either you or she know where they are?"

I was down on my knees, picking up the bottles that had been knocked over by the empty jewel-case.

"Not I, God knows," I said, and I began to cry.

"The matter must be put in the hands of the police at once," my lord said. "I'll have the hotel policeman here in a few minutes, and the rooms searched. Jeffers and Chawlmers and their luggage will be searched to-morrow."

My lady gave a sort of gasp. I was close to her feet, and I heard her. But, for myself, I just broke down, and, kneeling on the floor with the overturned bottles spilling cologne all around me, cried worse than I've done since I was in short frocks.

"Oh, my lady, I didn't take them! I didn't! You know I didn't!" I sobbed out.

My lady looked very miserable.

"My poor Jeffers," she said, and put her hand on my shoulder, "I'm sure you didn't. If I'd only a sixpence in the world I'd stake that on your honesty."

Lord Castlecourt didn't say anything. He went to the bell and pressed it. When the boy answered it he gave him a message in a low tone, and it didn't seem five minutes before two men were in the room. I did not know till afterward that one was the manager, and the other the hotel policeman. I stopped my crying the best I could, and heard my lord telling them that the diamonds were gone, and that Chawlmers and I had been the only people in the room all the afternoon. Then he said he wanted them to communicate at once with Scotland Yard, and have a capable detective sent to the hotel.

"Lady Castlecourt and I are going to dinner," he said, looking at his watch. "We will have to leave, at the latest, within the next twenty minutes."

Lady Castlecourt cried out at that:

"Herbert, I don't see how I can go to that dinner. I am altogether too upset, and, besides, it will be too late. It's eight o'clock now."

"We can make the time up in the carriage," my lord said; and he went into the next room with the policeman, where they talked together in low voices. I helped my lady on with her cloak, and she stood waiting, her eyebrows drawn together, looking very pale and worried. When my lord came back he said nothing, only nodded to my lady that he was ready, and, without a word, they left the room.

I tried to tidy the bureau and pick up the bottles as well as I could, and every time I looked at the door into the sitting-room I saw that policeman's head peering round the door-post at me.

That was an awful night. I did not know it till afterward, but both Chawlmers and I were under what they call "surveillance." I did not know either that Lord Castlecourt had told the policeman he believed us to be innocent; that we were of excellent character, and nothing but positive proof would make him think either of us guilty. All I felt, as I tossed about in bed, was that I was suspected, and would be arrested and probably put in jail. Fifteen years of honest service in noble families wouldn't help me much if the detectives took it into their heads I was guilty.

The next morning we heard about the disappearance of Sara Dwight, and things began to look brighter. Sara had left the hotel at a little after seven the evening before, speaking to no one, and carrying a small portmanteau. When they came to examine her room and her box they found a jacket and skirt hanging on the wall, some burnt papers in the grate, and the box almost empty, except for some cheap cotton underclothes and a dirty wadded quilt put in to fill up. Sara had given no notice, and had not at any time told any of her fellow servants that she was dissatisfied with her place or wanted to leave.

That morning Mr. Brison, the Scotland Yard detective, had us up in the sitting-room asking us questions till I was fair muddled, and didn't know truth from lies. Lord Castlecourt and my lady were both present, and Mr. Brison was forever politely asking my lady questions till she got quite angry with him, and said she wasn't at all sure the diamonds were stolen; they might have been mislaid, and would turn up somewhere. Mr. Brison was surprised, and asked my lady if she had any idea where they were liable to turn up; and my lady looked annoyed, and said it was a silly question, and that she "wasn't a clairvoyant."

Three days after this Mr. John Gilsey, who is a detective, and, I have heard since, a very famous gentleman, was engaged by Lord Castlecourt to "work upon the case." Mr. Gilsey was very soft-spoken and pleasant. He did not muddle you, as Mr. Brison did, and it was very easy to tell him all you knew or could remember, which he always seemed anxious to hear. He had me up in the sitting-room twice, once alone and once with Mr. Brison, and they asked me a host of questions about Sara Dwight. I told them all I could think of; and when I came to her hands, and how they were white and fine, like a lady's, I saw Mr. Brison look at Mr. Gilsey and raise his eyebrows.

"Does it seem to you," he says, scribbling words in his note-book, "that this sounds like Laura the Lady?"

And Mr. Gilsey answered:

"The manner of operating sounds like her, I must admit."

"She was in Chicago when last heard of," says Mr. Brison, stopping in his scribbling, "but we've information within the last week that she's left there."

"Laura the Lady is in London," Mr. Gilsey remarked, looking at his finger nails. "I saw her three weeks ago at Earlscourt."

Mr. Brison got red in the face and puffed out his lips, as if he was going to say something, but decided not to. He scribbled some more, and then, looking at what he had written as if he was reading it over, says:

"If that's the case, there's very little doubt as to who planned and executed this robbery."

"That's a very comfortable state of affairs to arrive at," says Mr. Gilsey, "and I hope it's the correct one." And that was all he said that time about what he thought.

After this we stayed on at Burridge's for the rest of the season, but it was not half as cheerful or gay as it had been before. My lord was often moody and cross, for he felt the loss of the diamonds bitterly; and my lady was out of spirits and moped, for she was very fond of him, and to have him take it this way seemed to upset her. Mr. Brison or Mr. Gilsey were constantly popping in and murmuring in the sitting-room, but they got no further on--at least, there was no talk of finding the diamonds, which was all that counted.

This is all I know of the theft of the necklace. What happened at that time, and what Mr. Gilsey calls "the surrounding circumstances of the case," I have tried to put down as clearly and as simply as possible. I have gone over them so often, and been forced to be so careful, that I think they will be found to be quite correct in every particular.

Statement of Lilly Bingham, known in England as Laura Brice, in the United States as Frances Latimer, to the police of both countries as Laura the Lady, besides having recently figured as a housemaid at Burridge's Hotel, London, under the alias of Sara Dwight.

Statement of Lilly Bingham, known in England as Laura Brice, in the United States as Frances Latimer, to the police of both countries as Laura the Lady, besides having recently figured as a housemaid at Burridge's Hotel, London, under the alias of Sara Dwight.

I never was so glad of anything in my life as to get out of that beastly hole, Chicago. I'll certainly never go back there unless there is an inducement big enough to compensate for the elevated railroad, the lake, the noise, the winds, the restaurants, the climate, and the people. Ugh, what a nightmare!

England's the country for me, and London is the focus of it. You can live like a Christian here, and enjoy all the refinements and decencies of life for a reasonable consideration. How my heart leaped when I saw the old, gray, sooty walls looming up through the river haze--I thought it best to sneak by the back way, because if I go up the front stairs and ring the bell there may be loiterers round who had seen Laura the Lady before, and might become impertinently curious about her future movements. And then when I saw Tom waiting for me--my own Tom, that I lawfully married, in a burst of affection, three years ago, at Leamington--I shouted out greetings, and danced on the deck, and waved my handkerchief. It was worth while having lived in Chicago for a year to come back to London and Tom and a little furnished flat in Knightsbridge.

We were very respectable and quiet for a month--just a few callers climbing up the front stairs, and demure female tea-parties at intervals. I bought plants to put in the windows, and did knitting in a conspicuous solitude which the neighbors could overlook. When I saw the maiden lady opposite scrutinizing me through an opera-glass I felt like sending her my marriage certificate to run her eye over and return. We even hired a maid of all work from an agency as a touch of local color on this worthy domestic picture. But when the Castlecourt diamond scheme began to ripen I nagged at her till she was impudent and bundled her off. Maud Durlan came in then, put on a cap and apron, and played her part a good deal better than she used to when she acted soubrettes in the vaudeville.

We were two weeks lying low, maturing our plans, tho when I left Chicago I knew what I was coming back for. Outwardly all was the same as usual--the decent callers still climbed the front stairs, and elderly ladies who, without any stretch of imagination, might have been my mother and aunts, dropped in for tea. I used to wonder how the people on the floor below--they were the family of a man who made rubber tires for bicycles--would have felt if they could have seen Maud, our neat and respectable slavy, sitting with the French heels of her slippers caught on the third shelf of the bookcase, dropping cigarette ashes into the waste-paper basket.

When all was ready, Tom and I left for a "business" trip on the Continent. We went away in a four-wheeler, driven by Handsome Harry, the top piled with luggage, my face at the window smiling a last, cautioning good-by at Maud. Five days later, under the name of Sara Dwight, I was installed as housemaid on the third floor of Burridge's Hotel.

I had done work of that kind before--once in New York, and at another time in Paris; having been born and spent my childhood in that cheerful city, my French is irreproachable. The famous robbery of the Comtesse de Chateaugay's rubies was my work--but I mustn't brag about past exploits. I had never been engaged in a hotel theft of the importance of the Castlecourt one. The necklace was valued at between eight thousand and nine thousand pounds. The stones were not so remarkable for size as for quality. They were of an unusually even excellence and pure water.

After I had been in the hotel for a few days and watched the Castlecourt party, all apprehension left me, and I felt confident and cool. They were an extremely simple layout. Lady Castlecourt was a beauty--a seductive, smiling, white and gold person, without any sense at all. Her husband adored her. Being a man of some brains, that was what might have been expected. What might not have been expected was that she appeared to reciprocate his affection. Having made a careful study of the manners and customs of the upper classes, I was not prepared for this. I note it as one of those exceptions to rule which occur now and then in the animal kingdom.

Besides the marquis and his lady, there were a maid and a valet to be considered. The former was a dense, honest woman named Sophy Jeffers, close on to forty, and of the unredeemed ugliness of the normal lady's maid. Such being the case, it was but natural to find that she was in love with Chawlmers, the valet, who was twenty-seven and good-looking. Jeffers was too truthful to tamper with her own age, but she did not feel it necessary to keep up the same rigid standard when it came to Chawlmers. It was less of a lie to make him ten years older than herself ten years younger. From these facts I drew my deductions as to the sort of adversary Jeffers might be, and I found that, by a modest avoidance of Chawlmers' society, I could make her my lifelong friend.

The evening of the Duke of Duxbury's dinner was the time I decided upon as the most convenient for taking the stones. I had heard from Jeffers that the marquis and marchioness were going. When her ladyship left her rooms that afternoon I heard her tell Jeffers that she would not be back till after six, and to have everything ready at that hour. Off and on for the next two hours I was doing work about the corridor with a duster. It was near six when I heard the two servants talking in the sitting-room. A bird's-eye view through the keyhole showed me where they were, and that they were engaged in searching for something in the desk. It was my chance. With my housemaid's pass-key I opened the door a crack, and peeped in. The leather case of the diamonds stood on the dressing-table not twenty feet from the door. It did not take five minutes to enter, open the case, take the necklace, and leave. Jeffers heard me. She was in the room almost as I closed the door. Before she could have got into the hall I was in the broom-closet hunting for a dust-pan. But she evidently suspected nothing, for the door did not open and there was no indication of disturbance.

Two days later Tom and I returned from our "business trip" to the Continent. I quite prided myself on the way our luggage was labeled. It had just the right knock-about, piebald look. We drove up in a four-wheeler, Handsome Harry on the box, and Maud opened the door for us. For the next few days we were quiet and kept indoors. We spent the time peacefully in the kitchen, breaking the settings of the diamonds and reading about the robbery in the papers. As soon as things simmered down, Tom was to take the stones across to Holland, where they would be distributed. We threw away the settings, and put the diamonds in a small box of chamois-skin that I pinned to my corset with a safety-pin.

That was the way things were--untroubled as a summer sea--till ten days after our return, when I began to get restive. I had had what they call in America "a strenuous time" at Burridge's, working like a slave all day, with not a soul to speak to but a parcel of ignorant servant women, and I wanted livening up. I longed for the light and noise of Piccadilly, the crowd and the restaurants; but what I wanted particularly was to go to the theater and see a play called "The Forgiven Prodigal."

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