Unfortunately a climax was reached some days before the disastrous events at Newmarket. The Earl of Okehampton suddenly took up a very firm stand on the subject of Harold Keeson’s courtship of his daughter. Some hot words were exchanged between the two men, ending in an open breach, the Earl positively forbidding the young man ever to enter his house again.

“Harold was terribly unhappy at this turn of events. Pride forbade him to take an unfair advantage of a young girl’s devotion, and, acting on the advice of his parents, he started for his tour in Norway, ostensibly in order to try and forget the fair Lady Agnes. This unhappy love affair, ending in an open and bitter quarrel between himself and the owner of Cigarette, did – as I said before – the young man’s case no good. At the instance of the Earl of Okehampton, who determined to prosecute him, he was arrested on landing at Harwich.

“Well,” continued the man in the corner, “the next events must be still fresh in your mind. When Harold Keeson appeared in the dock, charged with such meanness as to wreak his private grievance upon a dumb animal, public sympathy at once veered round in his favour. He looked so handsome, so frank and honest, that at once one felt convinced that his hand, at any rate, could never have done such a dastardy thing.

“Mr Keeson, who was a rich man, moreover had enlisted the services of Sir Arthur Inglewood, who had, in the short time at his disposal, collected all the most important evidence on behalf of his client.

“The two young men who had been travelling in Norway with Harold Keeson had been present with him on the memorable night at a bachelor party given by a mutual friend at the Stag and Mantle. Both testified that the party had played Bridge until the small hours of the morning, that between two rubbers – the rooms being very hot – they had all strolled out to smoke a cigar in the streets. Just as they were about to re-enter the hotel two church clocks – one of which was St Saviour’s – chimed out the hour – four o’clock.

“Four o’clock was the hour when Cockram said that he had spoken to Mrs Keeson. Harold had not left the party at the Stag and Mantle since ten o’clock, which was an hour before Alice Image took the drugged beer to the groom. The whole edifice of the prosecution thus crumbled together like a house of cards and Harold Keeson was discharged, without the slightest suspicion clinging to him.

“Six months later he married Lady Agnes Stourcliffe. The Earl, now a completely ruined man, offered no further opposition to the union of his daughter with a man who, at any rate, could keep her in comfort and luxury; for though both Mr Keeson and his son lost heavily through Cigarette’s illness, yet the trainer was sufficiently rich to offer his son and his bride a very beautiful home.”

The man in the corner called to the waitress, and paid for his glass of milk and cheesecake, whilst I remained absorbed in thought, gazing at The Daily Telegraph, which, in its ‘London Day by Day’, had this very morning announced that Mr and Lady Agnes Keeson had returned to town from ‘The Rookery’, Newmarket.

5

“But who poisoned Cigarette?” I asked after a while; “and why?”

“Ah, who did, I wonder?” he replied with exasperating mildness.

“Surely you have a theory,” I suggested.

“Ah, but my theories are not worth considering. The police would take no notice of them.”

“Why did Mrs Keeson go to the stables that night? Did she go?” I asked.

“Cockram swears she did.”

“She swears she didn’t. If she did why should she have asked for her son? Surely she did not wish to incriminate her son in order to save herself?”

“No,” he replied; “women don’t save themselves usually at the expense of their children, and women don’t usually ‘hocus’ a horse. It is not a female crime at all – is it?”

The aggravating creature was getting terribly sarcastic; and I began to fear that he was not going to speak, after all. He was looking dejectedly all around him. I had one or two parcels by me. I undid a piece of string from one of them, and handed it to him with the most perfectly indifferent air I could command.

“I wonder if it was Cockram who told a lie?” I then said unconcernedly.

But already he had seized on that bit of string, and nervously now, his long fingers began fashioning a series of complicated knots.

“Let us take things from the beginning,” he said at last. “The beginning of the mystery was the contradictory statements made by the groom Cockram and Mrs Keeson respectively. Let us take, first of all, the question of the groom. The matter is simple enough: either he saw Mrs Keeson or he did not. If he did not see her then he must have told a lie, either unintentionally or by design – unintentionally if he was mistaken; but this could not very well be since he asserted that Mrs Keeson spoke to him, and even mentioned her son, Mr Harold Keeson. Therefore, if Cockram did not see Mrs Keeson he told a lie by design for some purpose of his own. You follow me?”

“Yes,” I replied, “I have thought all that out for myself already.”

“Very well. Now, could there be some even remotely plausible motive why Cockram should have told that deliberate lie?”

“To save his sweetheart, Alice Image,” I said.

“But you forget that his sweetheart was not accused at first, and that, from the very beginning, Cockram’s manner, when questioned on the subject of the events of that night, was strange and contradictory in the extreme.”

“He may have known from the first that Alice Image was guilty,” I argued.

“In that case he would have merely asserted that he had seen and heard nothing during the night, or, if he wished to lie about it, he would have said that it was Palk, the tout, who sneaked into the stables, rather than incriminate his mistress, who had been good and kind to him for years.”

“He may have wished to be revenged on Mrs Keeson for some reason which has not yet transpired.”

“How? By making a statement which, if untrue, could be so easily disproved by Mr Keeson himself, who, as a matter of fact, could easily assert that his wife did not leave her bedroom that night, or by incriminating Mr Harold Keeson, who could prove an alibi? Not much of a revenge there, you must admit. No, no; the more you reflect seriously upon these possibilities the deeper will become your conviction that Cockram did not lie either accidentally or on purpose; that he did see Mrs Keeson at that hour at the stable door; that she did speak to him; and that it was she who told the lie in open court.”

“But,” I asked, feeling more bewildered than before, “why should Mrs Keeson have gone to the stables and asked for her son when she must have known that he was not there, but that her enquiry would make it, to say the least, extremely unpleasant for him?”

“Why?” he shrieked excitedly, jumping up like a veritable jack-in-the-box. “Ah, if you would only learn to reflect you might in time become a fairly able journalist. Why did Mrs Keeson momentarily incriminate her son? – for it was only a momentary incrimination.