Less than a year has passed, and last week, in the very midst of our much vaunted London streets, a crime of a similar nature has been committed. I do not know if your paper gives full details, but this is what happened: last Monday evening two gentlemen, both in evening dress and wearing opera hats, hailed a hansom in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was about a quarter past eleven, and the night, if you remember, was a typical November one – dark, drizzly, and foggy. The various theatres in the immediate neighbourhood were disgorging a continuous stream of people after the evening performance.

“The cabman did not take special notice of his fares. They jumped in very quickly, and one of them, through the little trap above, gave him an address in Cromwell Road. He drove there as quickly as the fog would permit him, and pulled up at the number given. One of the gentlemen then handed him up a very liberal fare – again through the little trap – and told him to drive his friend on to Westminster Chambers, Victoria Street.

“Cabby noticed that the ‘swell’, when he got out of the hansom, stopped for a moment to say a few words to his friend, who had remained inside; then he crossed over the road and walked quickly in the direction of the Natural History Museum.

“When the cabman pulled up at Westminster Chambers, he waited for the second fare to get out; the latter seemingly making no movement that way, cabby looked down at him through the trap.

“‘I thought ’e was asleep,’ he explained to the police later on. ‘’E was leaning back in ’is corner, and ’is ’ead was turned towards the window. I gets down and calls to ’im, but ’e don’t move. Then I gets on to the step and give ’im a shake… There! – I’ll say no more… We was near a lamppost, the mare took a step forward, and the light fell full on the gent’s face. ’E was dead and no mistake. I saw the wound just underneath ’is ear, and “Murder!” I says to myself at once.’

“Cabby lost no time in whistling for the nearest point-policeman, then he called the night porter of the Westminster Chambers. The latter looked at the murdered man, and declared that he knew nothing of him; certainly he was not a tenant of the Chambers.

“By the time a couple of policemen arrived upon the scene, quite a crowd had gathered around the cab, in spite of the lateness of the hour and the darkness of the night. The matter was such an important one that one of the constables thought it best at once to jump into the hansom beside the murdered man and to order the cabman to drive to the nearest police station.

“There the cause of death was soon ascertained; the victim of this daring outrage had been stabbed through the neck from ear to ear with a long, sharp, instrument, in shape like an antique stiletto, which, I may tell you, was subsequently found under the cushions of the hansom. The murderer must have watched his opportunity, when his victim’s head was turned away from him, and then dealt the blow, just below the left ear, with amazing swiftness and precision.

“Of course the papers were full of it the next day; this was such a lovely opportunity for driving home a moral lesson, of how one crime engenders another, and how – but for that murder in Paris a year ago – we should not now have to deplore a crime committed in the very centre of fashionable London, the detection of which seems likely to completely baffle the police.

“Plenty more in that strain, of course, from which the reading public quickly jumped to the conclusion that the police held absolutely no clue as to the identity of the daring and mysterious miscreant.

“A most usual and natural thing had happened; cabby could only give a very vague description of his other ‘fare’, of the ‘swell’ who had got out at Cromwell Road, and been lost to sight after having committed so dastardly and so daring a crime.

“This was scarcely to be wondered at, for the night had been very foggy, and the murderer had been careful to pull his opera hat well over his face, thus hiding the whole of his forehead and eyes; moreover, he had always taken the additional precaution of only communicating with the cabman through the little trapdoor.

“All cabby had seen of him was a clean-shaven chin. As to the murdered man, it was not until about noon, when the early editions of the evening papers came out with a fuller account of the crime and a description of the victim, that his identity was at last established.

“Then the news spread like wildfire, and the evening papers came out with some of the most sensational headlines it had ever been their good fortune to print. The man who had been so mysteriously murdered in the cab was none other than Mr Philip Le Cheminant, the nephew and heir-presumptive of the Earl of Tremarn.”

2

“In order fully to realize the interest created by this extraordinary news, you must be acquainted with the various details of that remarkable case, popularly known as the ‘Tremarn Peerage Case’,” continued the man in the corner, as he placidly munched his cheesecake. “I do not know if you followed it in its earlier stages, when its many details – which read like a romance – were first made public.”

I looked so interested and so eager that he did not wait for my reply.

“I must try and put it all clearly before you,” he said; “I was interested in it all from the beginning, and from the numerous wild stories afloat I have sifted only what was undeniably true. Some points of the case are still in dispute, and will, perhaps, now for ever remain a mystery. But I must take you back some five-and-twenty years. The Hon. Arthur Le Cheminant, second son of the late Earl of Tremarn, was then travelling round the world for health and pleasure.

“In the course of his wanderings he touched at Martinique, one of the French West Indian islands, which was devastated by volcanic eruptions about two years ago. There he met and fell in love with a beautiful half-caste girl named Lucie Legrand, who had French blood in her veins, and was a Christian, but who, otherwise, was only partially civilized, and not at all educated.

“How it all came about it is difficult to conjecture, but one thing is absolutely certain, and that is that the Hon. Arthur Le Cheminant, the son of one of our English peers, married this half-caste girl at the parish church of St Pierre, in Martinique, according to the forms prescribed by French laws, both parties being of the same religion.

“I suppose now no one will ever know whether that marriage was absolutely and undisputably a legal one – but, in view of subsequent events, we must presume that it was. The Hon. Arthur, however, in any case, behaved like a young scoundrel. He only spent a very little time with his wife, quickly tired of her, and within two years of his marriage callously abandoned her and his child, then a boy about a year old.

“He lodged a sum of £2,000 in the local bank in the name of Mme Le Cheminant, the interest of which was to be paid to her regularly for the maintenance of herself and child, then he calmly sailed for England, with the intention never to return. This intention fate itself helped him to carry out, for he died very shortly afterwards, taking the secret of his incongruous marriage with him to his grave.

“Mme Le Cheminant, as she was called out there, seems to have accepted her own fate with perfect equanimity. She had never known anything about her husband’s social position in his own country, and he had left her what, in Martinique amongst the coloured population, was considered a very fair competence for herself and child.

“The grandson of an English earl was taught to read and write by the worthy curé of St Pierre, and during the whole of her life, Lucie never once tried to find out who her husband was, and what had become of him.

“But here the dramatic scene comes in this strange story,” continued the man in the corner, with growing excitement; “two years ago St Pierre, if you remember, was completely destroyed by volcanic eruptions. Nearly the entire population perished, and every house and building was in ruins.