‘I was sitting sewing in madame’s boudoir, when Lady Barnsdale came into the bedroom. She did not see me, I know, for she began at once talking volubly to madame about a serious loss she had just sustained at Bridge; several hundred pounds, she said.’

“‘Well?’ queried the coroner, for the girl had paused, almost as if she regretted what she had already said. She certainly threw an appealing look at Lord Barnsdale, who, however, seemed to take no notice of her.

“‘Well,’ she continued with sudden resolution, ‘madame was very angry at this; she declared that Lady Barnsdale deserved a severe lesson; her extravagances were a positive scandal. “Not a penny will I give you to pay your gambling debts,” said madame; “and, moreover, I shall make it my business to inform my nephew of your goings-on whilst he is absent.”

“‘Lady Barnsdale was in a wild state of excitement. She begged and implored madame to say nothing to Lord Barnsdale about it, and did her very best to try to induce her to help her out of her difficulties, just this once more. But madame was obdurate. Thereupon Lady Barnsdale turned on her like a fury, called her every opprobrious name under the sun, and finally flounced out of the room, banging the door behind her.

“‘Madame was very much upset after this,’ continued Alice Holt, ‘and I was not a bit astonished when directly after dinner she rang for me, and asked to be put to bed. It was then nine o’clock.

“‘That is the last I saw of poor madame alive.

“‘She was very excited then, and told me that she was quite frightened of Lady Barnsdale – a gambler, she said, was as likely as not to become a thief, if opportunity arose. I offered to sleep on the sofa in the next room, for the old lady seemed quite nervous, a thing I have never known her to be. But she was too proud to own to nervousness, and she dismissed me finally, saying that she would lock her door, for once: a thing she scarcely ever did.’

“It was a curious story, to say the least of it, which Alice Holt thus told to an excited public. Cross-examined by the coroner, she never departed from a single point of it, her calm and presence of mind being only equalled throughout this trying ordeal by that of Lord Barnsdale, who sat seemingly unmoved whilst these terrible insinuations were made against his wife.

“But there was more to come. Sir Gilbert Culworth had been called; in the interests of justice, and in accordance with his duty as a citizen, he was forced to stand up and, all unwillingly, to add another tiny link to the chain of evidence that implicated his friend’s wife in this most terrible crime.

“Right loyally he tried to shield her in every possible way, but cross-questioned by the coroner, harassed nearly out of his senses, he was forced to admit two facts – namely, that Lady Barnsdale had lost nearly £800 at Bridge the day before the murder, and that she had paid her debt to himself in full, on the following morning, in gold and notes.

“He had been forced, much against his will, to show the notes to the police; unfortunately for the justice of the case, however, the numbers of these could not be directly traceable as having been in Mme Quesnard’s possession at the time of her death. No diaries or books of accounts of any kind were found. Like most French people, she arranged all her money affairs herself, receiving her vast dividends in foreign money, and converting this into English notes and gold, as occasion demanded, at the nearest moneychanger’s that happened to be handy.

“She had, like a great many foreigners, a holy horror of banks. She would have mistrusted the Bank of England itself; as for solicitors, she held them in perfect abhorrence. She only went once to one in her life, and that was in order to make a will leaving everything she possessed unconditionally to her beloved nephew, Lord Barnsdale.

“But in spite of this difficulty about the notes, you see for yourself, do you not? how terribly strong was the circumstantial evidence against Lady Barnsdale. Her losses at cards, her appeal to Mme Quesnard, the latter’s refusal to help her, and finally the payment in full of the debt to Sir Gilbert Culworth on the following morning.

“There was only one thing that spoke for her, and that was the very horror of the crime itself. It was practically impossible to conceive that a woman of Lady Barnsdale’s refinement and education should have sprung upon an elderly woman, like some navvy’s wife by the docks, and then that she should have had the presence of mind to jump out of the window, to obliterate her footmarks in the flower-bed, and, in fact, to have given the crime the look of a clever burglary.

“Still, we all know that money difficulties will debase the noblest of us, that greed will madden the sanest and most refined. When the inquest was adjourned, I can assure you that no one had any doubt whatever that within twenty-four hours Lady Barnsdale would be arrested on the capital charge.”

3

“But the detectives in charge of the case had reckoned without Sir Arthur Inglewood, the great lawyer, who was watching the proceedings on behalf of his aristocratic clients,” said the man in the corner, when he had assured himself of my undivided attention.

“The adjourned inquest brought with it, I assure you, its full quota of sensation. Again Lord Barnsdale was present, calm, haughty, and impassive, whilst Lady Barnsdale was still too ill to attend. But she had made a statement upon oath, in which, whilst flatly denying that her interview with the deceased at 6 p.m., had been of an acrimonious character as alleged by Alice Holt, she swore most positively that all through the night she had been ill, and had not left her room after 11.30 p.m.

“The first witness called after this affidavit had been read was Jane Barlow, Lady Barnsdale’s maid.

“The girl deposed that on that memorable evening preceding the murder, she went up to her mistress’ room at about 11.30 in order to get everything ready for the night. As a rule, of course, there was nobody about in the bedroom at that hour, but on this occasion when Jane Barlow entered the room, which she did without knocking, she saw her mistress sitting by her desk.

“‘Her ladyship looked up when I came in,’ continued Jane Barlow, ‘and seemed very cross with me for not knocking at the door. I apologized, then began to get the room tidy; as I did so I could see that my lady was busy counting a lot of money. There were lots of sovereigns and banknotes. My lady put some together in an envelope and addressed it, then she got up from her desk and went to lock up the remainder of the money in her jewel safe.’

“‘And this was at what time?’ asked the coroner.

“‘At about half past eleven, I think, sir,’ repeated the girl.

“‘Well,’ said the coroner, ‘did you notice anything else?’

“‘Yes,’ replied Jane, ‘whilst my lady was at her safe, I saw the envelope in which she had put the money lying on the desk. I couldn’t help looking at it, for I knew it was ever so full of banknotes, and I saw that my lady had addressed it to Sir Gilbert Culworth.’

“At this point Sir Arthur Inglewood jumped to his feet and handed something over to the coroner; it was evidently an envelope which had been torn open. The coroner looked at it very intently, then suddenly asked Jane Barlow if she had happened to notice anything about the envelope which was lying on her ladyship’s desk that evening.

“‘Oh yes, sir!’ she replied unhesitatingly, ‘I noticed my lady had made a splotch, right on top of the “C” in Sir Gilbert Culworth’s name.’

“‘This, then, is the envelope,’ was the coroner’s quiet comment, as he handed the paper across to the girl.

“‘Yes, there’s the splotch,’ she replied. ‘I’d know it anywhere.’

“So you see,” continued the man in the corner, with a chuckle, “that the chain of circumstantial evidence against Lady Barnsdale was getting somewhat entangled. It was indeed fortunate for her that Sir Gilbert Culworth had not destroyed the envelope in which she had handed him over the money on the following day.

“Alice Holt, as you know, heard the conflict and raised the alarm much later in the night, when everybody was already in bed, whilst long before that Lady Barnsdale was apparently in possession of the money with which she could pay back her debt.

“Thus the motive for the crime, so far as she was concerned, was entirely done away with. Directly after the episode witnessed by Jane Barlow, Lady Barnsdale had a sort of nervous collapse, and went to bed feeling very ill.