The latter had been a great deal in his godfather’s house, when he and Alice were both small children, and had called each other ‘hubby’ and ‘wifey’ in play, when they were still in the nursery. Later on, whenever old Checkfield went abroad to see his daughter, he always took Hubert with him, and a boy-and-girl flirtation sprang up between the two young people; a flirtation which had old Checkfield’s complete approval, and no doubt he looked upon their marriage as a fait accompli, merely desiring the elder Mr Turnour to administer the girl’s fortune until then.

“Hubert Turnour, at the time of the subsequent tragedy, was a good-looking young fellow, and by profession what is vaguely known as a ‘commission agent’. He lived in London, where he had an office in a huge block of buildings close to Cannon Street Station.

“There is no doubt that at the time of old Checkfield’s death, Alice looked upon herself as the young man’s fiancée. When the girl reached her nineteenth year, it was at last decided that she should leave school and come to England. The question as to what should be done with her until her majority, or until she married Hubert, was a great puzzle to Mr Turnour. He was a bachelor, who lived in comfortable furnished rooms in Reading, and he did not at all relish the idea of starting housekeeping for the sake of his young ward, whom he had not seen since she was out of the nursery, and whom he looked upon as an intolerable nuisance.

“Fortunately for him this vexed question was most satisfactorily and unexpectedly settled by Alice herself. She wrote to her guardian, from Geneva, that a Mrs Brackenbury, the mother of her dearest school-fellow, had asked her to come and live with them, at any rate for a time, as this would be a more becoming arrangement than that of a young girl sharing a bachelor’s establishment.

“Mr Turnour seems to have hesitated for some time: he was a conscientious sort of man, who took his duties of guardianship very seriously. What ultimately decided him, however, was that his brother Hubert added the weight of his eloquent letters of appeal to those of Alice herself. Hubert naturally was delighted at the idea of having his rich fiancée under his eye in London, and after a good deal of correspondence, Mr Turnour finally gave his consent, and Alice Checkfield duly arrived from Switzerland in order to make a prolonged stay in Mrs Brackenbury’s house.”

2

“All seems to have gone on happily and smoothly for a time in Mrs Brackenbury’s pretty house in Kensington,” continued the man in the corner. “Hubert Turnour was a constant visitor there, and the two young people seem to have had all the freedom of an engaged couple.

“Alice Checkfield was in no sense of the word an attractive girl; she was not good-looking, and no effort on Mrs Brackenbury’s part could succeed in making her look stylish. Still, Hubert Turnour seemed quite satisfied, and the girl herself ready enough at first to continue the boy-and-girl flirtation as of old.

“Soon, however, as time went on, things began to change. Now that Alice had become mistress of a comfortable fortune there were plenty of people ready to persuade her that a ‘commission agent’, with but vague business prospects, was not half-good enough for her, and that her £80,000 entitled her to more ambitious matrimonial hopes. Needless to say that in these counsels Mrs Brackenbury was very much to the fore.

“She lived in Kensington, and had social ambitions, foremost among which was to see her daughter’s bosom friend married to, at least, a baronet, if not a peer.

“A young girl’s head is quickly turned. Within six months of her stay in London, Alice was giving Hubert Turnour the cold shoulder, and the young man had soon realized that she was trying to get out of her engagement.

“Scarcely had Alice reached her twentieth birthday, than she gave her erstwhile fiancée his formal congé.

“At first Hubert seems to have taken his discomfiture very much to heart. £80,000 were not likely to come his way again in a hurry. According to Mrs Brackenbury’s servants, there were one or two violent scenes between him and Alice, until finally Mrs Brackenbury herself was forced to ask the young man to discontinue his visits.

“It was soon after that that Alice Checkfield first met Count Collini at one of the brilliant subscription dances given by the Italian colony in London, the winter before last. Mrs Brackenbury was charmed with him, Alice Checkfield was enchanted! The Count, having danced with Alice half the evening, was allowed to pay his respects at the house in Kensington.

“He seemed to be extremely well off, for he was staying at the Carlton, and, after one or two calls on Mrs Brackenbury, he began taking the ladies to theatres and concerts, always presenting them with the choicest and most expensive flowers, and paying them various other equally costly attentions.

“Mrs and Miss Brackenbury welcomed the Count with open arms (figuratively speaking). Alice was shy, but apparently over head and ears in love at first sight.

“At first Mrs Brackenbury did her best to keep this new acquaintanceship a secret from Hubert Turnour. I suppose that the old matchmaker feared another unpleasant scene. But the inevitable soon happened. Hubert, contrite, perhaps still hopeful, called at the house one day, when the Count was there, and, according to the story subsequently told by Miss Brackenbury herself, there was a violent scene between him and Alice. As soon as the fascinating foreigner had gone, Hubert reproached his fiancée for her fickleness in no measured language, and there was a good deal of evidence to prove that he then and there swore to be even with the man who had supplanted him in her affections. There was nothing to do then but for Mrs Brackenbury to ‘burn her boats’. She peremptorily ordered Hubert out of her house, and admitted that Count Collini was a suitor, favoured by herself, for the hand of Alice Checkfield.

“You see, I am bound to give you all these details of the situation,” continued the man in the corner, with his bland smile, “so that you may better form a judgment as to the subsequent fate of Count Collini. From the description which Mrs Brackenbury herself subsequently gave to the police, the Count was then in the prime of life; of a dark olive complexion, dark eyes, extremely black hair and moustache. He had a very slight limp, owing to an accident he had had in early youth, which made his walk and general carriage unusual and distinctly noticeable. His was certainly not a personality that could pass unperceived in a crowd.

“Hubert Turnour, furious and heartsick, wrote letter after letter to his brother, to ask him to interfere on his behalf; this Mr Turnour did, to the best of his ability, but he had to deal with an ambitious matchmaker and with a girl in love, and it is small wonder that he signally failed. Alice Checkfield by now had become deeply enamoured of her Count, his gallantries flattered her vanity, his title and the accounts he gave of his riches and his estates in Italy fascinated her, and she declared that she would marry him, either with or without her guardian’s consent, either at once, or as soon as she had attained her majority, and was mistress of herself and of her fortune.

“Mr Turnour did all he could to prevent this absurd marriage. Being a sensible, middle-class Britisher, he had no respect for foreign titles, and little belief in foreign wealth.