The Penguin Book of Victorian Women in Crime Page 6

  “Well, Paschal,” she said, “what do you want?”

  “I have been to get some money for the countess, who sent me into the City for that purpose, ma’am,” I boldly replied, “and she told me I was to come to you, give you ten pounds, and you would give me her address, for she wished me to follow her into the country.”

  “Oh! indeed. Where is the money?”

  I gave the housekeeper ten sovereigns, saying—

  “You can have five more if you like, I dare say she wont miss it.”

  “Not she. She has plenty.”

  The five additional portraits of Her Majesty were eagerly taken possession of by the housekeeper, who blandly told me that the countess would be found at Blinton Abbey, in Yorkshire, whither she had gone to spend a fortnight with some aristocratic acquaintance. I always made a point of being very quiet, civil, and obliging when in the presence of the housekeeper, who looked upon me as remarkably innocent, simple, and hardworking. After obtaining the information I was in search of I remained chatting in an amicable and agreeable manner for a short time, after which I took my leave. When, ho! for the night mail, north. I was accompanied by a superintendent, to whom I invariably intrusted the consummation of arduous enterprises which required masculine strength. He was a sociable man, and we might between us have proved a match for the cleverest thieves in Christendom. In fact we frequently were so, as they discovered to their cost. There is to me always something very exhilarating in the quickly rushing motion of a railway carriage. It is typical of progress, and raises my spirits in proportion to the speed at which we career along, now through meadow and now through woodland, at one time cutting through a defile and afterwards steaming through a dark and sombre tunnel. What can equal such magical travelling?

  It was night when we reached Blinton. The Abbey was about a mile and a half from the railway station. Neither the superintendent or myself felt inclined to go to rest, for we had indulged in a nap during the journey, from which we awoke very much invigorated. We left our carpet bags in the care of a sleepy railway porter who had only awaited the arrival of the night mail north, and at half-past one o’clock set out to reconnoitre the position of Blinton Abbey. The moon was shining brightly. We pursued a bridle path and found little difficulty in finding the Abbey as we followed the porter’s instructions to the letter. All was still as we gazed undisturbed upon the venerable pile which had withstood the blasts of many a winter and reflected the burning rays of innumerable summer suns. I was particularly struck with the chapel, which was grey and sombre before us; the darkened roof, the lofty buttresses, the clustered shafts, all spoke of former grandeur. The scene forcibly recalled Sir Walter Scott’s lines,

  “If thou would’st view fair Melrose aright,

  Go visit it by the pale moonlight;

  For the gay beams of lightsome day

  Gild but to flout the ruins grey.

  When the broken arches are black in night,

  And each shafted oriel glimmers white;

  When the cold light’s uncertain shower

  Streams on the ruined central tower;

  When buttress and buttress alternately

  Seem framed of ebon and ivory—

  Then go, but go alone the while,

  And view St. David’s sacred pile.”

  We halted, inspired with a sort of sacred awe. The chapel, the turreted castle, the pale and silvery moonlight, the still and witching time of night, the deep castellated windows, the embrasures on the roof from which, in days gone by, many a sharp-speaking culverin was pointed against the firm and lawless invader, all conspired to inspire me with sadness and melancholy. I was aroused from my reverie by the hand of the Superintendent which sought my arm. Without speaking a word he drew me within the shadow of a recess, and having safely ensconced me together with himself, he whispered the single word, “Look!” in my ear. I did as he directed me, and following the direction indicated by his outstretched finger saw a dark figure stealing out of a side door of Blinton Abbey. Stealthily and with cat-like tread did that sombre figure advance until it reached the base of a spreading cedar tree whose funereal branches afforded a deathlike shade like that of yew trees in a churchyard, when the figure produced a sharp-pointed instrument and made a hole as if about to bury something. I could scarcely refrain a hoarse cry of delight, for it seemed palpable to me that the Countess of Vervaine was about to dispose of her ill-gotten booty. I blessed the instinct which prompted me to propose a visit to the Abbey in the night-time, although I invariably selected the small hours for making voyages of discovery. I have generally found that criminals shun the light of day and seek the friendly shelter of a too often treacherous night. In a low voice I communicated my suspicions to the superintendent, and he concurred with me. I suggested the instant arrest of the dark figure. The lady was so intently engaged that she did not notice our approach; had she done so she might have escaped into the Abbey. The strong hand of the superintendent was upon her white throat before she could utter a sound. He dragged her remorselessly into the moonlight, and the well-known features of the Countess of Vervaine were revealed indisputably.

  “What do you want of me, and why am I attacked in this way?” she demanded in a tremulous voice as soon as the grasp upon her throat was relaxed.

  I had meanwhile seized a bag, the same canvas bag which had contained the ingots on the night of the robbery. They were still there. When I heard her ladyship’s enquiry, I replied to it. “The directors of the South Belgravia Bank are very anxious to have an interview with your ladyship,” I said.

  She raised her eyes to mine, and an expression of anguish ran down her beautiful countenance. She knew me, and the act of recognition informed her that she was hunted down. With a rapid motion, so swift, so quick, that it resembled a sleight-of-hand, the Countess of Vervaine raised something to her mouth; in another moment her hand was by her side again, as if nothing had happened. Something glittering in the moonlight attracted my attention. I stooped down and picked it up. It was a gold ring of exquisite workmanship. A spring lid revealing a cavity was open. I raised it to my face. A strong smell of bitter almonds arose. I turned round with a flushed countenance to her ladyship. She was very pale. The superintendent was preparing to place handcuffs around her slender wrists; he held the manacles in his hand and was adjusting them. But she was by her own daring act spared this indignity. A subtle poison was contained in the secret top of her ring, and she had with a boldness peculiar to herself swallowed it before we could anticipate or prevent her rash act. The action of the virulent drug was as quick as it was deadly. She tottered. A smile which seemed to say, the battle is over, and I soon shall be at rest, sat upon her lips. Then she fell heavily to the ground with her features convulsed with a hard spasm, a final pain; her eyes were fixed, her lips parted, and Fanny, the accomplished, lovely, and versatile Countess of Vervaine was no more. I did not regret that so young and fair a creature had escaped the felon’s dock, the burglar’s doom. The affair created much excitement at the time, and the illustrated papers were full of pictures of Blinton Abbey, but it has long since passed from the public mind, and hundreds of more sensations have cropped up since then. The South Belgravian Bank recovered its ingots, but it was nevertheless a heavy loser through the former depredations of the famous Countess of Vervaine.

  ANDREW FORRESTER

  (DATES UNKNOWN)

  Andrew Forrester Jr. is another author about whom little is known. The great crime fiction scholar and anthologist E. F. Bleiler suggests that the name “was a pseudonym chosen to capitalize on the fame of the historical Forrester brothers, who served as detectives for the City of London and were pioneers in the application of scientific methods to detection.” Given or assumed, the name Andrew Forrester shows up as author of three books (not counting two later rearrangements of the same work), including The Revelations of a Private Detective from 1863 and Secret Service from the following year. Also in 1864—the year in which Mrs. Paschal made her appearance�
��Ward Lock in London published The Female Detective . It was a milestone year in the history of women detectives.

  “My trade is a necessary one, but the world holds aloof my order.” These words by Mrs. G——, the narrator of The Female Detective, summarize much of the real-world attitude toward detectives in the mid-nineteenth century. Many newspaper commentators and law-makers worried about the idea of unidentified, uniformless “spies” infiltrating respectable English households. But detectives soon caught the public imagination and newspapers couldn’t supply enough tales of their adventures.

  In “Arrested on Suspicion,” a story from Revelations of a Private Detective, the narrator explains that his admiration for Edgar Allan Poe’s detective stories is what inspired him to investigate the crime for which his sister is wrongly accused. How apt that Forrester was aware of and explicit about his debt to Poe, because Forrester was himself one of the next great innovators. He cites Poe in the following story as well. Forrester takes the popular “Waters” Casebook school—the collections of informal reminiscences, usually at least semifictional, of a police officer—and transforms them into a well-organized, plot-driven narrative built around investigative methods. Forrester simply had more talent than most of his colleagues. “The Unknown Weapon” is driven by character-revealing dialogue, especially in great inquest and interrogation scenes, and Mrs. G. has an appealingly observant and ironic narrative voice. She begins by recounting the facts of the case as they are known before she herself becomes involved, and she makes even this summary lively and entertaining. And when she enters the scene herself, the action never flags until she solves the crime. Periodically she also summarizes the evidence gathered thus far. This method would reach its peak during the genre’s so-called golden age of the early twentieth century, when many puzzle-driven detective stories included murder-scene diagrams, train timetables, and other clues for the wary reader, culminating in Ellery Queen’s famous gimmick of a “Challenge to the Reader.”

  This entertaining and influential novella had never been reprinted after its first publication until an edition that E. F. Bleiler published in the 1970s. We are indebted to Bleiler for its resurrection. (It is his initials, E.F.B., that appear in a bracketed aside in the story.) Police casebook stories didn’t disappear because Forrester surpassed them, but a new way of doing things had been established and would soon find its followers. Mrs. G. relies upon forensic evidence from footprints and coroner’s reports to microscopic examination of “fluff.” This is a very forward-looking story.

  THE UNKNOWN WEAPON

  I am about to set out here one of the most remarkable cases which have come under my actual observation.

  I will give the particulars, as far as I can, in the form of a narrative.

  The scene of the affair lay in a midland county, and on the outskirts of a very rustic and retired village, which has at no time come before the attention of the world.

  Here are the exact preliminary facts of the case. Of course I alter names, for as this case is now to become public, and as the inquiries which took place at the time not only ended in disappointment, but by some inexplicable means did not arrest the public curiosity, there can be no wisdom in covering the names and places with such a thin veil of fiction as will allow of the truth being seen below that literary gauze. The names and places here used are wholly fictitious, and in no degree represent or shadow out the actual personages or localities.

  The mansion at which the mystery which I am about to analyse took place was the manor-house, while its occupant, the squire of the district, was also the lord of the manor. I will call him Petleigh.

  I may at once state here, though the fact did not come to my knowledge till after the catastrophe, that the squire was a thoroughly mean man, with but one other passion than the love of money, and that was a greed for plate.

  Every man who has lived with his eyes open has come across human beings who concentrate within themselves the most wonderful contradictions. Here is a man who lives so scampishly that it is a question if ever he earnt an honest shilling, and yet he would firmly believe his moral character would be lost did he enter a theatre; there is an individual who never sent away a creditor or took more than a just commercial discount, while any day in the week he may be arrested upon a charge which would make him a scandal to his family.

  So with Squire Petleigh. That he was extremely avaricious there can be no doubt, while his desire for the possession and display of plate was almost a mania.

  His silver was quite a tradition in the county. At every meal—and I have heard the meals at Petleighcote were neither abundant nor succulent—enough plate stood upon the table to pay for the feeding of the poor of the whole county for a month. He would eat a mutton chop off silver.

  Mr. Petleigh was in parliament, and in the season came up to town, where he had the smallest and most miserable house ever rented by a wealthy county member.

  Avaricious, and therefore illiberal, Petleigh would not keep up two establishments; and so, when he came to town for the parliamentary season, he brought with him his country establishment, all the servants composing which were paid but third-class fares up to town.

  The domestics I am quite sure, from what I learnt, were far from satisfactory people; a condition of things which was quite natural, seeing that they were not treated well, and were taken on at the lowest possible rate of wages.

  The only servitor who remained permanently on the establishment was the housekeeper at the manor-house, Mrs. Quinion.

  It was whispered in the neighbourhood that she had been the foster-sister (“and perhaps more”) of the late Mrs. Petleigh; and it was stated with sufficient openness, and I am afraid also with some general amount of chuckling satisfaction, that the squire had been bitten with his lady.

  The truth stood that Petleigh had married the daughter of a Liverpool merchant in the great hope of an alliance with her fortune, which at the date of her marriage promised to be large. But cotton commerce, even twenty-five years ago, was a risky business, and to curtail here particulars which are only remotely essential to the absolute comprehension of this narrative, he never had a penny with her, and his wife’s father, who had led a deplorably irregular life, started for America and died there.

  Mrs. Petleigh had but one child, Graham Petleigh, and she died when he was about twelve years of age.

  During Mrs. Petleigh’s life, the housekeeper at Petleighcote was the foster-sister to whom reference has been made. I myself believe that it would have been more truthful to call Mrs. Quinion the natural sister of the squire’s wife.

  Be that as it may, after the lady’s death Mrs. Quinion, in a half-conceded, and after an uncomfortable fashion, became in a measure the actual mistress of Petleighcote.

  Possibly the squire was aware of a relationship to his wife at which I have hinted, and was therefore not unready in recognising that it was better she should be in the house than any other woman. For, apart from his avariciousness and his mania for the display of plate, I found beyond all dispute that he was a man of very estimable judgment.

  Again, Mrs. Quinion fell in with his avaricious humour. She shaved down his household expenses, and was herself contented with a very moderate remuneration.

  From all I learnt, I came to the conclusion that Petleighcote had long been the most uncomfortable house in the county, the display of plate only tending to intensify the general barrenness.

  Very few visitors came to the house, and hospitality was unknown; yet, notwithstanding these drawbacks, Petleigh stood very well in the county, and indeed, on the occasion of one or two charitable collections, he had appeared in print with sufficient success.

  Those of my readers who live in the country will comprehend the style of the squire’s household when I say that he grudged permission to shoot rabbits on his ground. Whenever possible, all the year round, specimens of that rather tiring food were to be found in Squire Petleigh’s larder. In fact, I learnt that a young curate who remained
a short time at Tram (the village), in gentle satire of this cheap system of rations, called Petleighcote the “Warren.”

  The son, Graham Petleigh, was brought up in a deplorable style, the father being willing to persuade himself, perhaps, that as he had been disappointed in his hopes of a fortune with the mother, the son did not call for that consideration to which he would have been entitled had the mother brought her husband increased riches. It is certain that the boy roughed life. All the schooling he got was that which could be afforded by a foundation grammar school, which happened fortunately to exist at Tram.

  To this establishment he went sometimes, while at others he was off with lads miserably below him in station, upon some expedition which was not perhaps, as a rule, so respectable an employment as studying the humanities.

  Evidently the boy was shamefully ill-used; for he was neglected.

  By the time he was nineteen or twenty (all these particulars I learnt readily after the catastrophe, for the townsfolk were only too eager to talk of the unfortunate young man)—by the time he was nineteen or twenty, a score of years of neglect bore their fruit. He was ready, beyond any question, for any mad performance. Poaching especially was his delight, perhaps in a great measure because he found it profitable; because, to state the truth, he was kept totally without money, and to this disadvantage he added a second, that of being unable to spread what money he did obtain over any expanse of time.

  I have no doubt myself that the depredations on his father’s estate might have with justice been put to his account, and, from the inquiries I made, I am equally free to believe that when any small article of the mass of plate about the premises was missing, that the son knew a good deal more than was satisfactory of the lost valuables.