Then there is Howard’s extraordinary masquerade. Why make himself so grotesquely conspicuous? Why blaze a trail all over the country? Did his project go a little to his head? Was he, after all, a victim of the artistic temperament?
The late Mr. Justice Alper records that Howard’s lawyer told him he knew the answer. But, soon after this, the lawyer died.
I have often thought I would like to use this case as the basis for a detective story, but the material refuses to be tidied up into fiction form. I prefer it as it stands, with all its loose ends dangling. I am loath to concoct the answers. Let this paradoxical affair retain its incredible mystery. It is too good to be anything but true.
“Bollinger 71,” said Lord John Challis.
“Thank you, my lord,” said the wine-waiter.
He retrieved the wine-list, bowed and moved away with soft assurance. Lord John let his eyeglass fall and gave his attention to his guest. She at once wrinkled her nose and parted her sealing-wax lips in an intimate smile. It was a pleasant and flattering grimace and Lord John responded to it. He touched his little beard with a thin hand.
“You look charming,” he said, “and you dispel all unpleasant thoughts.”
“Were they unpleasant?” asked his guest.
“They were uncomplimentary to myself. I was thinking that Benito—the wine-waiter, you know—had grown old.”
“But why—?”
“I knew him when we were both young.”
The head-waiter materialised, waved away his underlings, and himself delicately served the dressed crab. Benito returned with the champagne. He held the bottle before Lord John’s eyeglass and received a nod.
“It is sufficiently iced, my lord,” said Benito.
The champagne was opened, tasted, approved, poured out, and the bottle twisted down in the ice. Benito and the head-waiter withdrew.
“They know you very well here,” remarked the guest.
“Yes. I dined here first in 1907. We drove from the station in a hansom cab.”
“We?” murmured his guest.
“She, too, was charming. It is extraordinary how like the fashions of to-day are to those of my day. Those sleeves. And she wore a veil, too, and sat under the china cupid mirror as you do now.”
“And Benito poured out the champagne?”
“And Benito poured out the champagne. He was a rather striking looking fellow in those days. Black eyes, brows that met over his nose. A temper, you’d have said.”
“You seem to have looked carefully at him,” said the guest lightly.
“I had reason to.”
“Come,” said the guest with a smile, “I know you have a story to tell and I am longing to hear it.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Very well, then.”
Lord John leant forward a little in his chair.
“At the table where that solitary lady sits—yes—the table behind me—I am looking at it now in the cupid mirror —there sat in those days an elderly woman who was a devil. She had come for the cure and had brought with her a miserable niece whom she underpaid and bullied and humiliated after the manner of old devils all the world over. The girl might have been a pretty girl, but all the spirit was scared out of her. Or so it seemed to me. There were atrocious scenes. On the third evening—”
“The third?” murmured the guest, raising her thinned eyebrows.
“We stayed a week,” explained Lord John. “At every meal that dreadful old woman, brandishing a repulsive ear-trumpet, would hector and storm. The girl’s nerves had gone, and sometimes from sheer fright she was clumsy. Her mistakes were anathematised before the entire dining-room. She was reminded of her dependence and constantly of the circumstance of her being a beneficiary under the aunt’s will. It was disgusting—abominable. They never sat through a meal without the aunt sending the niece on some errand, so that people began to wait for the moment when the girl, miserable and embarrassed, would rise and walk through the tables, pursued by that voice. I don’t suppose that the other guests meant to be unkind but many of them were ill-mannered enough to stare at her and wait for her reappearance with shawl, or coat, or book, or bag, or medicine. She used to come back through the tables with increased gaucherie. Every step was an agony and then, when she was seated, there would be merciless criticism of her walk, her elbows, her colour, her pallor. I saw it all in the little cupid mirror. Benito came in for his share too. That atrocious woman would order her wine, change her mind, order again, say it was corked, not the vintage she ordered, complain to the head-waiter—I can’t tell you what else. Benito was magnificent. Never by a hairsbreadth did he vary his courtesy.”
“I suppose it is all in their day’s work,” said the guest.
“I suppose so. Let us hope there are not many cases as advanced as that harridan’s. Once I saw him glance with a sort of compassion at the niece. I mean, I saw his image in the cupid mirror.”
Lord John filled his guest’s glass and his own.
“There was also,” he continued, “her doctor. I indulge my hobby of speaking ill of the dead and confess that I did not like him. He was the local fashionable doctor of those days; a soi-disant gentleman with a heavy moustache and clothes that were just a little too immaculate. I was, and still am, a snob. He managed to establish himself in the good graces of the aunt. She left him the greater part of her very considerable fortune. More than she left the girl. There was never any proof that he was aware of this circumstance but I can find no other explanation for his extraordinary forbearance. He prescribed for her, sympathised, visited, agreed, flattered. God knows what he didn’t do. And he dined. He dined on the night she died.”
“Oh,” said the guest lifting her glass in both hands, and staring at her lacquered fingertips, “she died, did she?”
“Yes. She died in the chair occupied at this moment by the middle-aged lady with nervous hands.”
“You are very observant,” remarked his companion.
“Otherwise I should not be here again in such delightful circumstances. I can see the lady with nervous hands in the cupid mirror, just as I could see that hateful old woman. She had been at her worst all day, and at luncheon the niece had been sent on three errands. From the third she returned in tears with the aunt’s sleeping tablets. She always took one before her afternoon nap. The wretched girl had forgotten them and on her return must needs spill them all over the carpet. She and Benito scrambled about under the table, retrieving the little tablets, while the old woman gibed at the girl’s clumsiness. She then refused to take one at all and the girl was sent off lunchless and in disgrace.”
Lord John touched his beard with his napkin, inspected his half bird, and smiled reminiscently.
“The auguries for dinner were inauspicious. It began badly. The doctor heard of the luncheon disaster. The first dish was sent away with the customary threat of complaint to the manager. However, the doctor succeeded in pouring oil, of which he commanded a great quantity, on the troubled waters. He told her that she must not tire herself, patted her claw with his large white hand, and bullied the waiters on her behalf. He had brought her some new medicine which she was to take after dinner, and he laid the little packet of powder by her plate. It was to replace the stuff she had been taking for some time.”
“How did you know all this?”
“Have I forgotten to say she was deaf? Not the least of that unfortunate girl’s ordeals was occasioned by the necessity to shout all her answers down an ear-trumpet. The aunt had the deaf person’s trick of speaking in a toneless yell. One lost nothing of their conversation. That dinner was quite frightful. I still see and hear it. The little white packet lying on the right of the aunt’s plate. The niece nervously crumbling her bread with trembling fingers and eating nothing. The medical feller talking, talking, talking. They drank red wine with their soup and then Benito brought champagne. Veuve Clicquot, it was. He said, as he did a moment ago, ‘It is sufficiently iced,’ and poured a little into the aunt’s glass. She sipped it and said it was not cold enough. In a second there was another formidible scene. The aunt screamed abuse, the doctor supported and soothed her, another bottle was brought and put in the cooler. Finally Benito gave them their Clicquot. The girl scarcely touched hers, and was asked if she thought the aunt had ordered champagne at thirty shillings a bottle for the amusement of seeing her niece turn up her nose at it. The girl suddenly drank half a glass at one gulp. They all drank. The Clicquot seemed to work its magic even on that appalling woman. She became quieter. I no longer looked into the cupid mirror but rather into the eyes of my vis-à-vis.”