And, in the meantime, I shall tell you about our dinner last night at Knaresborough House.
I was, for a while, afraid that we should not be able to dine out. Unfortunately, while she was at the shops yesterday morning, the news of Mr Vane going to the magistrate was forced upon Flora’s attention and she suffered afterwards with the headache. But she bore with the news much better than I had expected. She seems to rely entirely upon Mr Lomax’s judgement and continues to believe that there is no great danger of a trial.
And so, since she was most anxious to prove to Mr Lansdale that he was not deserted by his friends, we kept our engagement. And very grateful I am that we did!
I wish most particularly to give you an account of this dinner, Eliza. You see it has produced what is perhaps the strangest mystery of all this unaccountable business.
First of all you must know that, although we had only been invited to a family dinner, when we arrived, we found that there was one other guest: a young man Mr Lansdale introduced as ‘My great friend Jem Morgan.’ And a great friend he was – both tall and broad!
I do not mean to suggest, however, that there was anything strange or mysterious about Mr Morgan himself. Indeed, he seemed a remarkably ordinary young man with a lot of unruly black hair which would not lie flat, and a rather ill-shaven chin with a cut upon it. He is one of those young men who, even when they are freshly dressed for dinner, have not quite the knack of looking tidy. He has chambers in the Temple, is studying law and suffers under the common delusion that a woman may be pleasantly entertained by the relating of endless anecdotes about his friends, his horses and his dogs. As you have no doubt understood from this complaint, I had all his attention throughout dinner. For Mr Lansdale, as usual, devoted himself to Flora – and by the by I rather wonder at our cousin. Does she allow the young man to engross her so when her husband is present? – well, I suppose that is no business of mine. All I meant to say was that I was Mr Morgan’s sole object. And a heavy misfortune it was, because, besides his conversation, I had spilt wine and dropped knives to contend with, for he really is the clumsiest man I ever met.
And it is to his clumsiness that we are indebted for the great discovery of the evening.
Flora and I were not long alone with Miss Neville after dinner before the gentlemen joined us. Though I would not have you think that I wasted my time, for while Flora amused herself at the pianoforte, I talked again with Clara Neville about the evening on which Mrs Lansdale died. And I discovered two things which may be of interest.
Firstly, she said that Mr Vane visited the lady not long before she retired to her dressing room and administered to her ‘her usual dose’. It seems that she complained then of disordered nerves and wished the apothecary to remain in the house with her. But Mr Vane was not overly worried and said only that he would be at home all evening and she must send for him if her symptoms became worse.
And second, I found that she was served with chocolate in her dressing room before going to her bed. Now the chocolate I believe to be of some significance, for it seems to me that its strong, rather bitter taste would effectively disguise any physic put into it. If I was going to poison anyone, Eliza, I would certainly make use of a jug of chocolate if I could. With this in mind, I took some trouble to find out more about the chocolate and discovered that it had been prepared in the kitchen and that Miss Neville had carried it up to the dressing room. However when she arrived at the dressing room Mr Lansdale was there and, since his aunt particularly requested that they be left alone, Miss Neville handed the tray to him.
In short, both Miss Neville and Henry Lansdale had opportunity enough to introduce the opium mixture to the jug…if they wished to do so.
And another thing to consider is that we have only Mr Vane’s word that it was no more than the ‘usual dose’ which he administered that evening.
By the by, I rather fancy Mr Vane for a murderer, though I confess that, try as I might, I have not yet been able to think of any reason why he should wish for the lady’s demise. Nor why, having brought it about, he should wish to draw attention to his crime by starting the idea of an unnatural death.
But I do not quite despair of his being guilty. I must give the matter more thought.
For now I shall return to Mr Morgan and his clumsiness.
Well, he and Mr Lansdale soon followed us into the drawing room, and once we were all gathered in that room it was only natural that conversation should turn to the burglars who had entered it. The subject, as you may imagine, had been discussed already in the dining room, but now the local interest of the window through which the ruffians had come and the drawers they had disturbed, soon led Mr Lansdale into a more detailed account of the events. We were all deeply interested and, when he stepped to a window saying, ‘This was the one that had the broken catch,’ we all naturally followed him and looked at it.
There was nothing to see – except that the window opens outward, just as I suspected. So, after a moment or two, we all turned back into the room. But, as we did so, Mr Morgan had the ill-luck to catch his foot in the long window curtain and fall headlong into a sofa.
And, as he fell, something bright caught my eye: something which had been lying hidden in the trailing hem of the curtain. I cried out ‘Oh look!’ or something foolish like that as one does on such occasions – and picked it up.
Eliza, it was an emerald necklace!
Well, you may imagine how we all gathered around and exclaimed over it. It was an extremely pretty thing: a slender gold chain with one stone hanging in the centre flanked by two pairs of smaller ones. Naturally Flora and I thought that it had been taken from elsewhere in the house and accidentally dropped by the thieves as they made their escape.
But – and this is the unaccountable part of the business – both Miss Neville and Henry Lansdale were sure that it had not. They both declared that they had never set eyes on the necklace before. And Mr Lansdale was quite certain that it had not belonged to his aunt. He said that he had carefully examined her jewel case when the intruders had first been discovered and he was certain that the case had not been broken into, nor was anything missing from it. Furthermore, he was sure that the emerald necklace could not have been his aunt’s.
‘For,’ he said, ‘I know she did not like emeralds at all. She fancied that they did not suit her complexion. Everything in her jewel case is diamonds or rubies and very different from this. This is very new,’ he said. ‘Fresh from the jewellers I should say. Everything that my aunt had was old-fashioned, heavy stuff. Believe me,’ he said, ‘she never wore anything like this.’
My next suggestion was that it might have been dropped by the last tenants of the house and remained unobserved until now; but Mr Lansdale negatived that immediately. It seems that every inch of the house was cleaned before he and his aunt took possession. Every curtain had been removed, thoroughly cleansed and rehung. His aunt had insisted upon it.
So, Eliza, this is our mystery: thieves break into a house and take nothing from it – this might be explained by their being disturbed before they can find anything of value – however, they not only fail to remove any goods, but they leave behind them a valuable item which was not there before.