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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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THE garden in the middle of Garthoyle Gardens is in the shape of a triangle; and at each of the three gates is a notice-board declaring that only residents in the Gardens, their families and their friends, are allowed in it. The gardeners have strict orders to turn strangers out. But my uncle Algernon, who left the Gardens to me, had a soft place in his heart, though he was a bachelor, for young people in love with one another; and he gave instructions to the gardeners not to interfere with pairs of lovers.
I let these instructions stand, because the garden looks more as if it had been laid out for the purpose of love-making than any other place of the kind in London. Indeed, on a summer's evening it would look rather incomplete, rather wasted, without some pairs of lovers in it. I am bound to say that I have never found it looking incomplete. I have never used it for that purpose myself.
The only girl I ever talk to in the garden is Amber Devine, the niece of Scruton, the New Zealand gum millionaire, who lives at No. 9. She is very pretty and nice, but I should never dream of letting myself fall in love with her. If I did, it would be the mess of a lifetime, for she let her uncle use her in a little millionairish game of his by which he tried to trick me into letting him have his house rent free. I have never been able to understand how she came to help him in it, for it is quite unlike anything else in her. But she did; and even if I wanted to make love to her it is quite out of the question.
One Friday night I had arranged to go to a Covent Garden ball, and after dining at home I strolled out about half-past ten into the central garden to smoke a cigarette. The garden never grows stale, like the rest of London in the summer, because it is watered, and watered, and watered. In dry weather all night long there is a patter of falling water from two or three revolving standards on most of the lawns; and if there is any moonlight their sprays glitter very prettily.
As I was crossing the road to the gate which stands in front of my house, I saw a pair of lovers going up the central path of the garden. At least I took them for a pair of lovers, though they were walking rather quickly. The girl was in evening dress, for I saw her shoulders white in the moonlight, and she had a scarf twisted round her head. The man was wearing tweeds and a straw hat. At the same time. I noticed a man in evening dress coming along the pavement on my left, in a rather slinking way, in the shadow of the shrubs on the edge of the garden.
I went through the gate and up the central path, and I had gone thirty or forty yards up it when I heard his feet crunch on the gravel by the garden gate. I looked back to see if it was anyone I knew, but a little bit of cloud was passing over the moon, and he was too far off to recognise. He turned sharply off to the right. I went on a few yards, and sat down on a seat. I had been sitting there two or three minutes when a woman came in through the gate. She came along at a smart pace, and I saw that she was wearing a good-sized feathered hat. I could not see who she was, for she wore a veil. She did not look like a wife or daughter of one of my tenants: she looked more like a lady's maid. She went straight up the central path, out of sight in the shadow, of the shrubberies.
The night was not as warm as it might have been. I got up and walked along the central path to find a more sheltered seat. Just before I came to the middle of the garden I met Amber Devine. We do not often meet in the garden in the evening; generally it is in the afternoon. We shook hands; she turned round, and we went on to the middle of the garden. She was in evening dress, with, a light and filmy wrap round her shoulders, and in the moonlight she looked, if anything, prettier than she does in the day. I thought that her eyes were like shining stars. The pair of lovers and the woman in the feathered hat were nowhere in sight.
Now, the middle of the garden is set with shrubberies in the shape of a wheel. The hub is a clump of shrubs; the spokes are narrow shrubberies; and the tyre is a ring, about twenty feet thick, of shrubs. In between the shrubberies which form the spokes are little lawns. Each of these lawns has a narrow entrance—a break in the tyre of the wheel. We turned into the nearest of these little lawns, and went to a seat at the end of it, right up against the hub of the wheel, and well sheltered, and began to talk.
We always have plenty to talk about; there are the poor children whom Amber collects in the Park and takes for outings to Kew or to the country: and there are the troubles I have with my tenants, owing to the fact that I run Garthoyle Gardens myself. I always tell her about them, because I find her so sympathetic. As we talked, I heard the sound of voices very faint on the lawn on the other side of the shrubbery on our left. I just noticed it, and no more; I was giving my attention to Amber. We had been sitting talking for three or four minutes at the outside, when there came the loud, startling bang of a revolver from the lawn on our left, and then a woman's scream.
Amber sprang up with a little cry of fright, and I got up more slowly. There was a crashing in the shrubbery on our left, and a man in evening dress burst out of it, bolted across the lawn, and out of the entrance.
'Come on!' I said. 'We must look into this!'
'No, no! Be careful—oh, do be careful,' cried Amber. And she clutched my arm with both hands.
'It's all right,' I said. 'They won't hurt me. You stop here a minute. You'll be quite safe.' And I tried to loosen the grip of her hands.
'No, you'll get hurt!' she said.
'But I must go—I must really,' I said.
'Then I'm coming, too,' said Amber.
'Very well; only don't be frightened. I'll see that you don't come to any harm,' I said. And I slipped my arm round her waist to encourage her.
We hurried out at the entrance of the lawn, and I saw at once we had lost time. The man in evening dress was nowhere in sight. But in the open garden on the left the lady in evening dress was hurrying down a path which led to the left-hand gate.
She was a good way off, but I called after her: 'What's happened?'
She did not answer; she did not even look back; she hurried on. Then, beyond her, on another path, also leading to the left-hand gate, I caught a short glimpse of the woman in the feathered hat as she passed a gap between two shrubberies. She was hurrying, too, as if the sound of the shot had frightened her.
Amber and I ran to the entrance of the lawn from which the sound of the shot had come. In the middle of it lay a man; fallen on his face, with his arms outspread. My first feeling was a great relief that it was not a woman. I ran to him, knelt down, and turned him over. He looked to he a foreigner, a man of about thirty. His face was very white; and his eyes were half closed. I felt for his pulse, but could not find it. I was sure that he was dead.
Amber broke into frightened sobbing. I could do nothing. It was a matter for a doctor and the police. I rose and said: 'Come on; we must tell the police.'
We took the path to the left-hand gate. When we came out of it neither of the two women was in sight. That side of the gardens was empty. I took her straight to No. 9, and saw her let herself in with her latchkey. Then, I ran round the top of the gardens and down the other side. At the bottom I found Brooks, one of the policemen who looks after them. I told him what had happened; and on his suggestion we ran round to my house, and I told Richards, my butler, to telephone the news to the police-station. Then Brooks and I ran to the scene of the crime.
The man was lying just as I left him. Brooks knelt down beside him, and examined him.
'He's quite dead,' he said rather shakily, and rose to his feet, looking shocked. He began to look about the lawn, holding his lantern about two feet from the ground and examining it carefully. About six feet from the dead man he found three envelopes, lying close together. They were empty, and all three were addressed to Sir Theobald Walsh. The addresses were typewritten. I knew Walsh and I was able to assure Brooks that the dead man was not he.
'Well, it's odd as he should have Sir Theobald Walsh's letters,' said Brooks. And he went on searching. The dead man's hat, a straw, was lying quite ten yards from the body, close to the left-hand shrubbery, as if it had pitched off his head and rolled along when he fell. On the other side of the lawn, behind the dead man, half-way between his body and the right-hand shrubbery, Brooks picked up a small revolver. It was stuck sideways in the turf. By the light of his lantern we saw that it was of French make, and that the top of the barrel was choked with earth.
'Now, why on earth was it stuck in the turf?' I said. 'It couldn't have been dropped, because it's not heavy enough to stick into the turf of itself.'
Brooks said we had better not trample about the turf too much; and we came out of the lawn, and waited at the entrance; discussing the crime. It plainly lay between the lady in evening dress and the man who had bolted from the shrubbery. One of them must have fired the shot.
We had not waited long when an inspector of police, a doctor and a man in grey tweeds came hurrying up. They were followed by two policemen wheeling an ambulance.
I gathered that the man in the tweeds was a detective, and his name was Pardoe. He had been at the police station when the telephone message came. He was tall and thin and hook-nosed, with bushy eyebrows and thin lips. He looked like a hawk. He took charge of the business and gave the orders. I told him quickly what I knew; and at once he sent off the two policemen to hunt about the garden to find if anyone in it had heard the shot fired, or seen the lady or the man in evening dress. Then he and the doctor went in to the lawn to the body,
The doctor knelt down beside it; and presently I heard him say: 'Cervical vertebrae smashed. Must have been killed instantly. The bullet is embedded in his neck.'
Pardoe himself fetched the ambulance, lifted the body on to it, and wheeled it out on the lawn. Then, by the light of the lanterns of the policemen, he searched the dead man's pockets. In the breast pocket of the jacket was a good-sized bag of money. He opened it, and took out a handful of coins. They were all sovereigns. There was a handful of loose silver and coppers in one of the trouser pockets; in one of the side-pockets of the jacket was an ugly-looking jack-knife—such as sailors carry—and very sharp. In the other pocket was a packet of Caporal tobacco, and cigarette papers. In one of the waistcoat pockets was a cheap American watch; in the other were four visiting cards, on which was printed the name Étienne Bechut.
When he read the name on the visiting cards, Pardoe took a lantern, and again looked closely at the dead man's face.
'Thought I knew him. A bad lot. Soho,' he said, in quick, jerky sentences.
'Well, then we shall soon find out all about him,' said the inspector. Then Brooks produced the revolver, and the typewritten envelopes addressed to Sir Theobald Walsh. Pardoe studied them by the light of a lantern; then he began to question me closely and at length about what I had seen and heard. I told him that I had seen the murdered man walking up the central path of the garden with a lady in evening dress; that I had seen the man in evening dress come into the garden and go up the right-hand path; and that a woman, veiled, and in a feather hat, had gone up the central path about fifty yards behind the lady and the murdered man; that I had strolled up that path myself, met Amber Devine, and gone with her on to the lawn on the left; and we had heard the revolver shot and the scream, and seen the man in evening dress halt.
'Did you see what the lady in evening dress was like?' said Pardoe.
'No, not clearly; but I got just an impression that she was all right—a lady, don't you know?' said I. 'But I didn't recognise, her, and I don't think I should know her again.'
'This foreigner hardly looks the kind of a man a lady would be walking with at this hour, here,' said the doctor.
'You're right there. Dr. Brandon,' said Pardoe slowly. 'But then there's this bag of sovereigns.'
'Blackmail?' said Dr. Brandon.
'Looks like it,' said Pardoe.
'But why should she shoot him? She'd got the letters,' I said.
'We don't know that, my lord,' said Pardoe.
'She may have wanted to make sure that he did not blackmail her again,' said Dr. Brandon.
'We don't know that she did shoot him,' said Pardoe. And he began to question me about the man in evening dress.
I told him that I should not know him again; that he had been too far off to recognise when he came into the garden, and he had bolted so fast from the shrubbery that I had not caught sight of his face before his back was turned to me and he was rushing out of the entrance.
Then he asked me in what position the dead man had been lying when I first came on to the lawn. I told him that he had been lying on his face, and that he had fallen with his face towards the left-hand shrubbery, out of which the man in evening dress had bolted.
He asked the doctor whether a man, with that wound, would fall straight forward. Brandon said that the bullet might knock him straight forward, or he might spin round, and then fall.
Then Pardoe questioned Brooks about the finding of the revolver. He too seemed puzzled by the fact that it had been sticking in the turf. He went on to question Brooks about the people he had seen in the Gardens, and found that he had seen none of the three actors in the crime.
He was in the middle of these questions when the two policemen who had been scouring the garden for someone who had heard the revolver fired, or seen the lady or the man in evening dress as they fled, came back, with the news that they had found no one else who could give any information. They had found three pairs of lovers but each pair had been so absorbed in the business in hand that they had heard and seen nothing.
Pardoe frowned; and considered for a little. Then he told the inspector that he was going straight off to Soho to try to find something in Bechut's lodgings which might throw some light on the matter, and that he would come back at half-past three, and search the lawn and shrubberies. Leaving the inspector and Brooks in charge of the lawn, Pardoe, Brandon, and I left the garden, followed by the two policemen wheeling the ambulance with the dead man on it.
I WENT home. At twelve o'clock I had some supper; and after it I smoked and read and puzzled over the crime till half-past three. Then I went back to the garden and found Pardoe and the police beginning their examination of the lawn in the daylight
At the very entrance to it Pardoe made a discovery. Hanging from the projecting bough of a shrub was a black lace scarf. It had plainly been caught from the lady's head as she ran out of the lawn. It was an expensive scarf, but not uncommon.
On the lawn itself they found nothing fresh. Then they searched the left-hand shrubbery from which the man in evening dress had bolted. In that they found nothing, not even his footprints, for the soil was hard. They went on to search the shrubbery on the right; and in that they found one of those leather wrist-bags in which women carry their handkerchiefs and purses. It was old and worn and shabby. It might have been thrown away by a nursemaid. It smelt strongly of some coarse violet scent, but in the dry weather we had been having it might have lain there for a day or two and still kept the scent. There was nothing more to be done, and I went off to bed.
SOON after breakfast next morning I went round to No. 9 to talk the matter over with Amber. I found that she could throw no more light than I on the identity of either the man or the woman.
I was surprised to find no mention of the matter in the evening papers; the police were keeping their own counsel. Pardoe came to see me in the afternoon to talk over my evidence at the inquest; and I learnt from him that Sir Theobald Walsh had declared himself quite unable to identify the three envelopes. I was able to assure him that that settled the question of his getting any information from that quarter. I know Walsh. He is as stubborn as an ox. At the same time, he could hardly be blamed for not giving the lady away.
THE inquest brought no new fact to light; it rather complicated the affair. It made it seem most improbable that the revolver had been fired from the left-hand shrubbery, for Brooks had found it between the spot where the man fell and the right-hand shrubbery. This made it look as if the woman had fired the shot. But why had she screamed after it was fired, and not before?
There were not many people at the inquest, but among them I noticed the Duke of Letchworth—we call him the piebald Duke because of his hair—and I saw that he was taking a great interest in the evidence. I had not known that he was one of those people who are keen on crimes and trials; he had never struck me as being morbid. I was a good deal surprised to find that there was no newspaper storm. I had expected there would be columns and columns about the case. This, of course, increased the, mystery, and set me puzzling over it harder than ever. Walsh was the man who knew, but he would never tell. In the case of any other man, it would have been possible to guess the lady. In the case of Walsh it was quite impossible; there were too many of them.
It was curious how after the inquest nothing seemed to happen. The police went on hunting, I knew, for I saw Pardoe in the Gardens frequently; and once or twice he came over to see me and talk over little clues he had found. They were not of any value, and it was soon quite clear that the police were baulked. They had not traced the scarf to anyone; they could not find the woman with the feathered hat. She might have been able to throw some light on the matter. They went so far as to advertise for her, but with no result. They did not find me of much help. I was not going to run the risk of getting any of my friends into the mess of a lifetime on account of a wretched blackmailing foreigner, but at the same time I went on making inquiries myself, just to try to satisfy my curiosity about the matter; and at last I began to think I was getting warm.
Then one night, a fortnight later. I was playing baccarat at Scruton's, and I fancied that the piebald Duke kept looking at me rather oddly as he played. The interest he was taking in me must have put him off his usual game, for he actually won—nearly seven thousand. The party broke up about three; and just as I was going out of the house, the Duke called to me:
'Half a minute, Garthoyle. I'll stroll along with you.' And we came out of the house together
'Are you in a hurry to go to bed?' he said.
'Not a bit,' I said. 'I like the early morning.'
'Have you got the key of that middle garden of yours on you?' he said. 'I want to talk to you. And after a long gamble like that, I'd sooner be in the fresh air than not. You might take me to the lawn where that foreign blackguard was shot.'
The words 'foreign blackguard' were rather an eye-opener. It looked as if the Duke knew something about the affair; more than I did. I had a key on me; we went into the garden, and straight to the lawn.
'It's about this murder that I want to talk to you,' he said slowly, looking round the lawn. 'I know who the lady was who was blackmailed; and I know who the man was who bolted. They came to me and put themselves into my hands. If you go on much further with your inquiries, you'll find out who they were yourself, and you will very likely enlighten the people whose enlightenment would a lot of harm in the way of causing an infernal scandal. Now, I want to give you my assurance that I am absolutely convinced that neither of them had anything to do with the shooting. Both of them were taken utterly by surprise by it, and, as you saw, bolted. I think it was the best thing they could do under the circumstances.... I don't know whether you care to accept my assurance that they were innocent, but I am absolutely convinced of it.'
'I'm quite ready to accept it,' I said, quickly. 'I would sooner take your judgment in the matter than anybody's.'
'Thank you. I thought you would,' he said. And he sighed, as if he had, taken a weight off his mind. 'There are one or two points that support my judgment,' he went on. 'The man lay here, and the revolver there, near the right-hand shrubbery. The man who bolted was in the left hand shrubbery on the-other side of the body. The shot was fired from the right-hand shrubbery.'
'I noticed that, and it does complicate the matter. It lets the man out pretty well. But it rather makes it look as if the woman may have fired the shot,' I said.
'Yet you yourself brought out the fact quite clearly that the woman screamed after the shot was fired. I think she told me the truth when she said she screamed because the shot surprised and frightened her.'
'Yes; that sounds right enough,' I said. 'But if neither of those two fired the shot, who on earth did?' I said.
'Well, I think that the police did not attach enough importance to the wrist-bag they found in the right-hand shrubbery, and to the fact that the revolver was of French make. That seem to me the real clues to the murderer.'
'Then who do you think the murderer was?'
'The woman in the feathered hat,' said the Duke.
'The deuce you do!' said I.
'Yes I do. She was veiled. She was following this blackmailing scoundrel and the lady. She bolted too; and she has disappeared. She never answered tho advertisement. Why is she hiding?' said the Duke.
'These are pretty awkward facts. I shall have to work it out afresh from this point of view,' I said,
'And you might put them to the police. Working on their present lines, they might discover these two innocent people and make a great deal of trouble. It doesn't seem likely; and I've seen to it that they are not being encouraged to show too much zeal in the matter, but they might if you could put them on the right track.'
'Oh, I will: or I'll try to,' I said.
'Thank you,' said the Duke.
We turned and walked to the bottom of the garden. As we came out of the gate, I said: 'I suppose, whether the police come in or not, this business has rather smashed up those two people's lives?'
'No; I don't think so,' said the Duke slowly. 'I think that it will be rather the other way about. They were drifting apart, but this business—being in this mess, together—is rather drawing them together again.'
'That's all right,' I said.
IT was quite plain that the Duke had seen to it that the police did not make themselves too active in the matter, for I saw nothing of Pardoe for two or three days. Then one morning he came.
'Well, Mr. Pardoe,' I said, 'I have discovered who murdered Étienne Bechut. To begin with, it was neither the lady he was blackmailing nor the man in evening dress. They do not, very naturally, want to appear in the matter; but they have put themselves into the hands of a third person, and told him what happened: as far as they know. I am absolutely convinced of their innocence.'
I paused; Pardoe scratched his head, and looked at me very keenly. 'You'll excuse my asking, my lord, but do you really honestly and truly believe this?'
'I give you my word that I believe them to be absolutely innocent.'
'I take it, my lord, that you're the person they put themselves in the hands of?'
I said nothing.
'Well, my lord, what are your new facts?' he said.
'The shot was fired from the right hand shrubbery by the woman in the feathered hat.'
Pardoe frowned thoughtfully. 'I've thought about her a good many times,' he said.
'Well, my theory is that she followed Bechut and the lady, carrying with her the revolver in the wrist-bag. She slipped into the right-hand shrubbery, took the revolver out of the bag, threw the bag down, shot Bechut, and threw the revolver away so that it stuck in the turf.'
Pardoe sat very still, frowning. Then he said:' 'There's certainly something in this. I'll. look for her in Soho.'
He wished me good-morning, and hurried off. Three days later he came again. When we were settled down in the library, he said:
'Well, my lord, I've found the woman in the feathered hat; or, to be exact, I've got on her track. The man Bechut was very mixed up with a woman of the name of Césarine Thibaudier. She seems to have been a thoroughly bad lot, as bad as Bechut himself. At the same time, she seems to have been infatuated with him, and just as jealous as could be. It seems that he had arranged to go to France quietly as soon as he got the money for the letters. He was just running away from her. She found out this plan of his, and rowed with him about it, for she had made up her mind that he was going off with another woman. She must have watched and followed him.'
'It seems to look pretty promising,' I said.
'Yes; it does fit in,' said Pardoe. 'And then she went off at six o'clock on. the morning after the murder, and has not been seen since. Probably she's in Paris.'
'Well, you ought to be able to catch her without much difficulty,' I said. 'Will you go over to Paris yourself?'
'Wait a bit—wait a bit, my lord,' said Pardoe, smiling. 'Where's our evidence? I've not been able to find anyone who saw Césarine Thibaudier nearer Garthoyle Gardens than Soho. It's true that I've found two of her friends who declare that the wrist-bag we found is the very image of one that belonged to her, but I counted nine women in Soho carrying the identical wrist-bag in the course of one morning. Also, Césarine Thibaudier used that scent of violets of which the bag smelt. But the two women who told me so, smelt of it themselves. I have not been able to trace the revolver to her; and I shouldn't wonder if it belonged to Bechut himself, and she stole it. Again, neither the lady who was blackmailed nor the man who bolted saw anything of the person who fired the shot; or, I take it, they would have told you about it. Unless this woman chose to confess we haven't enough evidence to hang a cat on.'
'All the same, I'm quite convinced that this woman followed Bechut to Garthoyle Gardens, and shot him from the shrubbery.'
Pardoe took a long pull at his whisky and soda. Then he said: 'Ah, my lord, if we were to arrest all the people we're sure have committed murder we could keep the Central Criminal Court going with murder trials for the next six months. But I don't suppose we'd get one in ten of them hanged. Murder's one thing, and evidence is another.'
'It's very cheery hearing,' I said.
He has not been to see me since; nor have the police arrested Césarine Thibaudier.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.