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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Skin O' My Tooth," Baroness Orczy deftly intertwines themes of loyalty, intrigue, and moral complexity against the backdrop of early 20th-century Europe. This novella showcases Orczy's hallmark literary style, marked by a melodramatic narrative that captivates readers with its rich character development and vivid imagery. Set amidst the turbulence of impending war, the story explores the tenuous nature of human relationships and the psychological depths of its protagonists, reflecting the era'Äôs anxieties and aspirations. Baroness Orczy, a Hungarian-born author known for creating the iconic character of The Scarlet Pimpernel, masterfully channels her own experiences as an expatriate into her storytelling. Her background in performance arts and her keen understanding of the socio-political landscape of her time informed her literary output, allowing her to craft narratives that resonate with themes of sacrifice and love amid conflict. The influence of her aristocratic lineage and the tumult of her native Hungary are palpable in her nuanced portrayals of loyalty and betrayal. "Skin O' My Tooth" is a compelling read for those who appreciate richly layered narratives and historical depth. Orczy's intricate plotting and psychological insight serve as an invitation to delve into the complexities of human emotion, making this novella a fascinating exploration of character and context that continues to hold relevance today. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Skin O' My Tooth
Table of Contents
Introduction
This volume, titled "Skin O' My Tooth," gathers together a sequence of works by Baroness Orczy, presented here in one place for readers who wish to follow a sustained arc of her crime writing across multiple cases. The purpose of the collection is practical and literary at once: to make accessible, in a single-author format, a run of narratives that revolve around investigation, inference, and the testing of evidence. The contents are assembled as distinct pieces rather than as a single continuous novel, inviting the reader to appreciate both the individuality of each case and the cumulative effect of Orczy’s method.
Within these pages are detective narratives whose titles signal their immediate preoccupations: murders, disputed inheritances, missing or contested valuables, and the entanglements of identity and motive. Whatever their original appearance in print, the texts here are unified by their case-based structure, in which a problem is posed, uncertainty is carefully managed, and resolution is pursued through disciplined reasoning. Read together, the stories demonstrate how Orczy returns to the fundamental pleasures of the genre: the sharpening of attention, the sorting of what is relevant from what is merely vivid, and the patient reconstruction of events from traces left behind.
The genre represented is detective fiction, closely aligned with the short-story tradition of self-contained mysteries. Each title gestures toward a compact narrative design: an incident that demands explanation, a set of circumstances that can mislead, and a chain of deductions that aims to restore clarity. The case format also allows Orczy to vary setting and social milieu without abandoning the core promise of the form. In such work, plot is not simply action but an argument, and the reader becomes a silent partner in testing whether an explanation truly accounts for the facts that have been placed on the record.
A distinctive hallmark of detective fiction at its most deliberate is its attention to procedure in the broadest sense: not merely official policing, but the habits of mind that enable one to read people and objects with precision. Across the collection, Orczy’s approach emphasizes observation, the calibration of probability, and the revealing power of small discrepancies. The emphasis is less on spectacle than on interpretation. Objects such as jewels, documents, and personal effects are not decorative details but potential carriers of meaning, capable of illuminating relationships, movements, and concealed intentions when they are examined without haste.
The titles also reveal a recurring fascination with how wealth and status can complicate the search for truth. Inheritance, peerage, and prominent names imply networks of obligation and reputation that may resist scrutiny even when suspicion is warranted. Orczy’s case narratives make room for the tension between public standing and private conduct, and for the idea that social authority can both obstruct and invite investigation. The drama of a mystery often depends on who is believed, who is protected by convention, and how quickly a plausible story hardens into accepted fact before it is properly tested.
Another unifying strand is the international and cosmopolitan range suggested by references to places and national identities. Such elements, when present, typically function as part of the mystery’s texture: they can introduce unfamiliar customs, travel, language, or legal contexts that complicate ordinary assumptions. At the same time, the underlying logic of the detective tale remains constant, asserting that careful reasoning can cross borders even when surface details differ. The juxtaposition of local woods, titled families, and foreign figures underscores a central principle of the genre: that disorder can arise anywhere, and that explanation must be earned rather than assumed.
Several titles point to material clues—pearls, a stud, a number inverted—hinting at Orczy’s interest in the suggestiveness of things. In the detective story, an object is rarely inert; it can be a token of intimacy, a sign of deception, a concealed instrument, or a misdirection placed to implicate the wrong person. Orczy’s case-centered writing invites readers to consider how meaning is assigned to physical evidence and how easily it may be misconstrued. The thematic emphasis falls on interpretation: the act of deciding what an item signifies, who possessed it, and why it appears where it does.
The collection also reflects the genre’s enduring engagement with testimony, perception, and the fragility of narrative. A case can hinge on what someone claims to have seen or heard, on the timing of a shot in the night, or on the apparently overwhelming nature of a set of facts that later proves incomplete or wrongly arranged. Orczy’s stories, taken together, demonstrate how certainty can be manufactured by repetition and confidence, and how an investigator must resist the comfort of easy coherence. The reader is repeatedly asked to hold competing possibilities in mind until the structure of the case compels a conclusion.
What makes these works compelling as a group is the balance between variety and consistency. Each story offers its own cast and circumstances, yet the collection maintains a recognizable temperament: brisk forward movement anchored by analytical discipline. Orczy’s prose in such narratives is typically in service of clarity, maintaining the reader’s orientation amid shifting suspicions. The stylistic emphasis is on presenting enough information to sustain fair-minded engagement while preserving the tension that makes a mystery a mystery. In the aggregate, the stories show how a firm narrative line can carry complex puzzles without sacrificing pace.
Gathered in one volume, the cases invite a mode of reading that differs from encountering them sporadically. Patterns become more visible: the kinds of situations that recur, the ways apparent solutions are made plausible, and the pressures—social, financial, personal—that repeatedly generate conflict. The reader can observe how Orczy returns to the fundamental question at the heart of the detective tale: not merely who committed an act, but how truth is established in the presence of motivated concealment. The cumulative reading experience becomes a study in method as much as a succession of entertainments.
The lasting significance of Orczy’s detective writing can be approached through its commitment to the idea that reasoned inquiry has ethical weight. In mysteries, the restoration of truth is often also a restoration of proportion: rumor gives way to verified detail, and fear gives way to explanation. By centering cases that depend on evidence, inference, and disciplined skepticism, these stories participate in a broader literary tradition that prizes intellectual rigor within popular form. Their endurance lies in the durable pleasures they offer—curiosity sharpened into analysis, and suspense organized into understanding.
The table of contents brings this arc to a close with "THE END," but the effect of the volume is not finality so much as coherence: a set of discrete investigations that, read together, form a portrait of an author at work within a defined genre. "Skin O' My Tooth" presents these narratives as an integrated reading experience, attentive to how each case stands on its own while contributing to the larger impression of Orczy’s craft. The reader who proceeds from the opening mystery to the last will have encountered a sustained meditation on clues, credibility, and the patient labor of making sense of what first appears inexplicable.
Author Biography
Baroness Emma Orczy (often published as Baroness Orczy) was a Hungarian-born British author who worked mainly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, becoming a recognizable name in popular fiction. Writing in English after settling in Britain, she built a career in genre storytelling that blended suspense, mystery, and adventurous plotting with a brisk, theatrical sense of scene. She is best known in the wider literary history for helping shape modern popular adventure and crime fiction, particularly through recurring characters and tightly engineered puzzles. Her books circulated widely among general readers, and her reputation has remained closely tied to her contributions to early twentieth-century entertainment literature.
Orczy’s early life began in Hungary, and she later lived in Western Europe before establishing herself in England, where she pursued training in art before turning decisively to writing. Her creative formation drew on cosmopolitan experience and the tastes of a mass reading public that favored melodrama, mystery, and clear narrative momentum. Rather than presenting herself as a literary experimentalist, she cultivated accessibility: vivid situations, strong hooks, and a confident handling of dialogue and revelation. The period’s thriving magazine and publishing culture encouraged such work, and Orczy’s fiction reflects the era’s appetite for detectives, hidden motives, and the glamour of international settings.
Her professional breakthrough is commonly associated with her success in serialized and book-length popular narratives, where character-driven suspense could be sustained over multiple installments. Across her career, she worked in forms that included novels and detective stories, often built around discrete cases and carefully timed disclosures. Orczy’s approach tended to prioritize legibility and pace: clues are offered, red herrings appear, and explanations arrive with a sense of performance. While her themes vary across titles, the consistent appeal lies in the promise of order restored through ingenuity—an expectation central to classic detective fiction. This emphasis helped her find a durable audience beyond a single era’s fashions.
The works associated with her in this collection highlight her sustained interest in mystery plotting and case-based narratives. Titles such as “The Murder In Saltashe Woods,” “The Murton-Braby Murder,” and “A Shot In The Night” signal a recurring preoccupation with violent disruptions that invite methodical inquiry rather than sensational excess. Other entries—“Overwhelming Evidence” and “The Inverted Five,” for example—suggest a focus on how proof is assembled and how assumptions can be reversed by careful reasoning. Even when the premises are dramatic, the organizing principle remains the case: an event to be understood, witnesses and circumstances to be sifted, and a final account that clarifies what truly happened.
Several of the titles also emphasize social position, foreignness, and the way identity can complicate judgment, motifs that fit Orczy’s cosmopolitan background and the conventions of her time. “The Case Of The Sicilian Prince,” “The Hungarian Landowner,” and “The Duffield Peerage Case” point to scenarios where aristocratic status, inheritance, or national origin frame the stakes of a mystery. Likewise, “The Case Of Major Gibson” and “The Case Of Mrs. Norris” indicate a pattern of centering investigations on individuals whose public roles or private reputations influence how they are perceived. Orczy frequently exploited these pressures to generate misdirection and moral tension without abandoning the mechanics of detection.
Material clues and emblematic objects also play a notable role in the collection, reflecting a classic detective-fiction interest in the eloquence of things. “The Kazan Pearls” and “The Turquoise Stud” foreground precious items as narrative engines—objects that can be stolen, concealed, misidentified, or used to establish timelines and motives. In such stories, physical details become a language that investigators and readers learn to interpret. Orczy’s technique relies on the reader’s pleasure in inference: a small discrepancy, a missing item, or an unexpected possession can reframe a whole sequence of events. This craftsmanship, more than psychological introspection, is central to her storytelling appeal.
In her later years, Orczy’s stature rested on the broad familiarity of her popular fiction and the way it captured the clean satisfactions of puzzle and pursuit. While tastes changed, the structure she helped popularize—self-contained cases, memorable premises, and the steady conversion of confusion into explanation—remained influential in genre entertainment. Readers who return to her work often do so for its period atmosphere and its commitment to narrative clarity, as well as for the lively international and social backdrops implied by titles like those in this collection. Her legacy endures as part of the foundation of modern crime and adventure fiction, still readable for its craft and narrative drive.
Historical Context
Baroness Emmuska Orczy (1865–1947) built her English-language career during the high period of mass-market periodicals and the consolidation of popular genre fiction in Britain. Having been born in Hungary to an aristocratic family and later educated on the Continent before settling in London, she wrote from the vantage point of a cosmopolitan émigré observing late Victorian and Edwardian society. The stories gathered as “Skin O’ My Tooth” belong to the broad early-20th-century moment when detective and mystery tales flourished in magazines and cheap book editions, and when public fascination with crime, evidence, and modern policing was rising alongside rapid urban and technological change.
The Britain most often implied by this collection’s cases—whether explicitly London-centered or connected to provincial estates—reflects the social structure and anxieties of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Class hierarchy, domestic service, and the visibility of inherited status sit close to newer forms of wealth and professional identity. Titles such as “The Duffield Peerage Case” point toward disputes over lineage, legitimacy, and inheritance that were culturally salient in a society where peerage and property still mattered. At the same time, the period saw debates over reform and representation and a press culture eager for scandal, which helped make “case” narratives feel timely and credible to contemporary readers.
Orczy’s popularity also rests on a recognizable shift in crime narratives from sensational melodrama toward puzzles structured around observation and inference. This tendency was strengthened in the late 19th century by the influence of earlier detectives in fiction and by the growing prestige of “scientific” reasoning in public life. The prominence of evidence in titles like “Overwhelming Evidence” echoes a broader cultural faith in rational adjudication even as real-world criminal justice could be inconsistent. Readers in the early 1900s were increasingly accustomed to reports of investigations, inquests, and trials as mass entertainment, and a story collection framed as a sequence of cases drew on that appetite for quasi-documentary order.
The institutional background includes major developments in policing and forensic practice that, without needing explicit mention, shaped expectations about what detectives could plausibly do. The Metropolitan Police had been established earlier in the 19th century, and by the late Victorian period investigative divisions were more formalized and familiar to the public. Fingerprinting began to be adopted in Britain in the early 20th century, and forensic medicine and toxicology were increasingly discussed in newspapers and popular writing. Even when Orczy’s plots emphasize wit, character-reading, or social maneuvering, the era’s belief that trace facts could be collected and marshaled helps explain the appeal of case titles such as “The Inverted Five” and “The Turquoise Stud,” which hint at material clues and methodical reconstruction.
The collection’s recurring international references—“The Case Of The Sicilian Prince,” “The Hungarian Landowner,” and “The Kazan Pearls”—fit a pre–First World War world in which European aristocratic networks and cross-border travel were common cultural reference points for British readers. Before 1914, the continent’s dynastic and noble cultures still carried prestige in popular imagination, even as nationalism and social change were eroding old certainties. A “prince” or a foreign landowner could serve as a shorthand for complex questions of identity, privilege, and vulnerability when transplanted into English legal and social settings. Orczy’s own Hungarian origins made such cosmopolitan materials part of her lived historical frame.
Material objects in these stories often signal the economic history of empire and global trade. Pearls, turquoise, and other luxury items—evoked in “The Kazan Pearls” and “The Turquoise Stud”—were linked in the public mind to long-distance commerce, colonial-era supply chains, and the conspicuous consumption of the wealthy. Britain’s global reach and its role as a financial and commercial hub brought exotic goods into metropolitan markets and into fiction as portable embodiments of value. Such jewels also connect to the period’s legal realities: insurance, inheritance, and property disputes, as well as the practical ease with which small objects could be stolen, hidden, or used to manipulate reputations within tightly regulated social worlds.
The emphasis on woods, country houses, and provincial localities—suggested by “The Murder In Saltashe Woods” and “The Murton-Braby Murder”—also reflects the cultural geography of the time. Rapid urbanization and industrial development throughout the 19th century heightened the symbolic contrast between city and countryside in popular literature. Rural spaces could be portrayed as pastoral refuges or as deceptively secluded settings where secrets persist. The country-house milieu, meanwhile, remained central to narratives about status, servants, and property. This setting harmonizes with ongoing historical changes: railways and improved communications made travel and policing more mobile, yet local hierarchies and reputations still powerfully shaped how crime and suspicion were understood.
A key social force behind early-20th-century mystery fiction was the expansion of literacy and leisure reading. Education reforms in the late 19th century increased basic literacy, and the growth of circulating libraries, inexpensive reprints, and magazine serialization widened audiences. These developments encouraged tightly structured stories with memorable titles and episodic “case” framing, which suited both magazine publication and later collection. The compact naming of episodes—“A Shot In The Night,” “The Inverted Five,” “The Case Of Major Gibson”—mirrors the marketing logic of periodical culture, where readers were drawn by a promise of brisk intrigue and a solvable problem rather than by a single sprawling narrative.
Gender roles and domestic arrangements form another important historical context. The late Victorian and Edwardian periods were marked by debates about women’s rights, education, employment, and suffrage, alongside persistent expectations about respectability. Domestic service remained a major employer of women, and the household was a key arena for class interaction and surveillance. Cases centered on named women—“The Case Of Mrs. Norris,” for instance—tap into an era when a woman’s social position could be precarious and when rumor and moral judgment could carry legal and economic consequences. Without requiring sensationalism, such stories reflect how the domestic sphere was both idealized and scrutinized in contemporary culture.
Military identity and imperial service also formed part of the period’s public consciousness, particularly after the South African War (1899–1902) and amid ongoing imperial commitments. A title like “The Case Of Major Gibson” signals how rank, honor, and the expectations attached to officers could become narrative engines in a culture that publicly valued martial respectability. At the same time, British society was negotiating the realities of professionalization and bureaucracy: the army, the civil service, and the legal system were institutions in which reputation and paperwork mattered. Mystery fiction could exploit the tension between the ideal of honor and the practical vulnerabilities created by debt, secrecy, or administrative error.
Legal culture provides a further framework for the collection’s concerns. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw steady public engagement with trials, coroners’ inquests, and courtroom reporting, and detective stories often mirrored the logic of legal proof. “Overwhelming Evidence” foregrounds a concept at the heart of adversarial procedure: the weighing of facts and testimony under the presumption that truth can be demonstrated. Yet the era also had vivid awareness of miscarriages of justice and the limitations of circumstantial proof, themes that mystery writers could explore while staying within entertaining conventions. The prominence of peerage and property cases likewise reflects how law mediated status and wealth.
Technological change shaped both crime and its fictional representation. By the early 20th century, telegraphy, widely available postal services, expanding telephone networks, and improved transport altered the speed of communication and pursuit. Firearms were increasingly present in public imagination, and a title like “A Shot In The Night” resonates with anxieties about sudden, modern violence occurring in spaces presumed safe. Street lighting, photography, and mass print also affected the plausibility of alibis and the circulation of descriptions. Even when a story emphasizes deduction over gadgets, readers brought to it an awareness that modern life left traces—messages, timetables, receipts—that could become decisive in a “case.”
The collection’s references to princes, landowners, and peerages coincide with a historical moment when the traditional European aristocracy was under pressure. Industrial wealth, democratic politics, and social mobility were changing the balance of power, while the press increasingly exposed elite scandals. Fiction that hinges on titles and lineage—such as “The Duffield Peerage Case” or “The Case Of The Sicilian Prince”—can be read within this context as dramatizing the fragility of inherited authority when confronted by documentation, imposture fears, or the plain force of modern legal scrutiny. These stories thus align with a broader cultural ambivalence: fascination with rank paired with skepticism about its moral reliability.
Orczy’s Central European background is relevant to how “The Hungarian Landowner” and “The Kazan Pearls” gesture toward a wider Europe beyond Britain. In the late 19th century, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was a major multinational polity; its social elites, minority questions, and political tensions were well known in educated circles, and they became more internationally salient as the pre-1914 order destabilized. “Kazan,” associated with the Russian Empire, likewise evokes a world in which Russia was both a near neighbor to Central Europe and a subject of British political interest. Such references helped position the cases within a broader, interconnected European sphere familiar to readers of international news.
The First World War (1914–1918) and its aftermath reshaped European society, and even stories not directly about the war were reread in its shadow. The war accelerated changes in class relations, women’s work, and the credibility of old elites, and it intensified interest in documentation, identity, and official secrecy. In popular culture, the interwar years saw a pronounced appetite for puzzles and orderly resolutions—often described by critics as a reaction to social upheaval. Case-based collections like “Skin O’ My Tooth,” with their emphasis on reconstructing events and restoring coherence, fit comfortably into that interwar reading habit, even when their social settings preserve earlier, prewar assumptions.
Economic strains and changing consumption patterns in the early 20th century also inform the recurring focus on valuable objects and contested estates. The late 19th-century “Great Depression” in agriculture, followed by shifting taxation and costs in the early 1900s and interwar years, contributed to pressure on landed families and encouraged narratives about inheritance, debt, and the monetization of heirlooms. Jewel-centered plots such as “The Turquoise Stud” and “The Kazan Pearls” align with a world where portable wealth could bridge old and new money, and where financial vulnerability might sit behind the façade of respectability. Such themes are historically grounded in the period’s evolving relationship between property, prestige, and liquidity.
The intellectual climate behind the stories includes the popularization of psychology, debates over criminality, and enduring Victorian ideas about character and moral legibility. Late 19th-century criminology and the public discussion of “types” of offenders influenced how readers imagined motives and deception, even as fiction often resisted deterministic explanations in favor of individual plot ingenuity. Titles like “The Inverted Five” suggest interest in patterns and reversals—devices compatible with an era fascinated by codes, systems, and the classification of facts. Orczy’s case narratives operate within this milieu by inviting readers to weigh demeanor, social context, and physical clues, reflecting a broader confidence that human actions could be interpreted through disciplined attention.
Synopsis (Selection)
SALTASHE AND OTHER MURDERS (The Murder In Saltashe Woods; The Murton-Braby Murder; A Shot In The Night)
These cases center on killings framed by place and circumstance—woodland concealment, tight-knit local reputations, and violence that arrives suddenly. Investigation turns on reconstructing timelines and testing seemingly “obvious” narratives against overlooked details and human motives. The tone blends brisk clue-chasing with a steady interest in how community pressure and private secrets can distort what looks like plain fact.
ARISTOCRATS, INHERITANCE, AND SOCIAL PROOF (The Case Of The Sicilian Prince; The Duffield Peerage Case; The Hungarian Landowner)
These stories move through the high-stakes world of titles, lineage, and contested identity, where status is both a prize and a vulnerability. The central tension typically lies in separating authentic personal history from performance, paperwork, and opportunistic testimony, as reputations hinge on what can be proved rather than what is believed. Orczy’s concern here is the brittle surface of privilege and the way legal or social “proof” can be engineered, challenged, or unexpectedly clarified.
JEWELS, OBJECTS, AND THE PROBLEM OF POSSESSION (The Kazan Pearls; The Turquoise Stud)
In these theft-tinged mysteries, a coveted object drives the plot, drawing suspects into risk, deceit, and carefully staged appearances. The investigation leans on tracing custody—who had access, who benefited, and how a small physical detail can reframe an entire story without requiring sensational twists. The tone highlights Orczy’s taste for tangible clues and the moral ambiguity that surfaces when value, vanity, and desire collide.
MILITARY AND PROFESSIONAL FACADES (The Case Of Major Gibson)
This case revolves around a figure defined by rank and respectability, using professional authority as both a shield and a source of scrutiny. Key developments come from probing the gap between public discipline and private vulnerability, as evidence is weighed against character and reputation. The tone is cool and methodical, emphasizing how social deference can complicate clear-eyed judgment.
PATTERN-BREAKERS AND STRUCTURAL PUZZLES (The Inverted Five; Overwhelming Evidence)
These entries foreground the logic of the mystery itself: patterns that don’t behave as expected and evidence that appears decisive but demands careful interpretation. The narratives pivot on re-evaluating assumptions—why a sequence is “inverted,” or how an apparently airtight case can still contain meaningful uncertainty. Stylistically, they stress inference over action, showcasing Orczy’s interest in the fragility of certainty.
DOMESTIC SPACES AND ORDINARY SUSPICION (The Case Of Mrs. Norris)
Set against the seemingly modest scale implied by its title, this case turns household dynamics and everyday credibility into the primary battleground. The plot’s movement comes from questioning routine behaviors and familiar relationships, revealing how ordinary settings can conceal sharp conflicts of interest. The tone is restrained but pointed, attentive to how social roles and gendered expectations influence what investigators—and bystanders—assume.
Skin O' My Tooth
The Murder In Saltashe Woods
We all called him “Skin o’ my Tooth:” his friends, who were few; his clients, who were many, and I, his confidential clerk, solus— and very proud I am to hold that position. I believe, as a matter of fact, that his enemies— and their name is legion— call him Patrick Mulligan; but to us all who know him as he is, “Skin o’ my Tooth” he always was, from the day that he got a verdict of “Not guilty” out of the jury who tried James Tovey, “the Dartmouth murderer.” Tovey hadn’t many teeth, but it was by the skin of those few molars of his that he escaped the gallows; not thanks to the pleading of his counsel, but all thanks to the evidence collected by Patrick Mulligan, his lawyer.
Of course, Skin o’ my Tooth is not popular among his colleagues; there is much prejudice and petty spite in all professions, and the Law is not exempt from this general rule.
Everyone knows that Skin o’ my Tooth is totally unacquainted with the use of kid gloves[1q]. He works for the best of his client; let the other side look to themselves, I say.
Funny-looking man, too, old Skin o’ my Tooth— fat and rosy and comfortable as an Irish pig, with a face as stodgy as a boiled currant dumpling. His hair, I believe, would be red if he gave it a chance at all, but he wears it cropped so close to his bulky head that he looks bald in some lights. Then, we all know that gentle smile of his, and that trick of casting down his eyes which gives him a look that is best described by the word “coy;” that trick is always a danger-signal to the other side.
Now, in the case of Edward Kelly, everyone will admit that that young man came nearer being hanged for murder than any of us would care for.
But this is how it all happened.
On Tuesday, September 3rd, Mary Mills and John Craddock— who were walking through the Saltashe Woods— came across the body of a man lying near the pond, in a pool of blood. Mary, of course, screamed, and would have fled; but John, manfully conquering the feeling of sickness which threatened to overcome him too, went up to the body to get a closer view of the face. To his horror he recognised Mr. Jeremiah Whadcoat, a well-known, respectable resident of Pashet. The unfortunate man seemed to John Craddock to be quite dead; still, he thought it best to despatch Mary at once for Doctor Howden, and also to the police-station; whilst he, with really commendable courage, elected to remain beside the body alone.
It appears that about half an hour after Mary had left him, John thought that he detected a slight movement in the rigid body, which he had propped up against his knee, and that the wounded man uttered a scarcely audible sigh and then murmured a few words. The young man bent forward eagerly, striving with all his might to catch what these words might be. According to his subsequent evidence before the coroner’s jury, Mr. Whadcoat then opened his eyes, and murmured quite distinctly—
“The letter... Kelly... Edward... the other.” After that all seemed over, for the face became more rigid and more ashen in colour than before.
It was past six o’clock before the doctor and the inspector, with two constables and a stretcher from Pashet policestation, appeared upon the scene and relieved John Craddock of his lonely watch. Mr. Whadcoat had not spoken again, and the doctor pronounced life to be extinct. The body was quietly removed to Mr. Whadcoat’s house in Pashet, Mary Mills having already volunteered for the painful task of breaking the news to Miss Amelia, Mr. Whadcoat’s sister, who lived with him.
The unfortunate man was cashier to Messrs. Kelly and Co., the great wine merchants; so Mr. Kelly, of Saltashe Park, also Mr. Edward Kelly, of Wood Cottage, were apprised of the sad event.
At this stage the tragic affair seemed wrapped up in the most profound mystery. Mr. Jeremiah Whadcoat was not known to possess a single enemy, and he certainly was not sufficiently endowed with worldly wealth to tempt the highway robber. So far the police had found nothing on the scene of the crime which could lead to a clue— footsteps of every shape and size leading in every direction, a few empty cartridges here and there; all of which meant nothing, since Saltashe Woods are full of game, and both Mr. Kelly and Mr. Edward Kelly had had shooting parties within the last few days.
The public understood that permission had been obtained from Mr. Kelly to drag the pond, and, not knowing what to think or fear, it awaited the day of the inquest with eager excitement.
I believe that that inquest was one of the most memorable in the annals of a coroner’s court. There was a large crowd, of course, for the little town of Pashet was a mass of seething curiosity.
The expert evidence of Dr. Howden, assisted by the divisional surgeon, was certainly very curious. Both learned gentlemen gave it as their opinion that the deceased met his death through the discharge of small shot fired from a rifle at a distance of not more than a couple of yards. All the shot had lodged close together in the heart, and the flesh round the wound was slightly charred.
The police, on the other hand, had quite a tit-bit of sensation ready for the eager public. They had dragged the pond and had found the carcass of a dog. The beast had evidently been shot with the same rifle which had ended poor Mr. Whadcoat’s days, the divisional surgeon, who had examined the carcass, having pronounced the wound— which was in the side— to be exactly similar in character. A final blow dealt on the animal’s head with the butt-end of the rifle, however, had been the ultimate cause of its death. As the medical officer gave this sensational bit of evidence, a sudden and dead silence fell over all in that crowded court, for it had leaked out earlier in the day that the dead dog found in the pond was “Rags,” Mr. Edward Kelly’s well-known black retriever.
In the midst of that silence, Miss Amelia Whadcoat— the sister of the deceased gentleman— stepped forward, dressed in deep black, and holding a letter, which she handed to the coroner.
“It came under cover, addressed to me,” she explained, “on the Tuesday evening.”
The coroner, half in hesitation, turned the square envelope between his fingers. At last he read aloud—
“To the Coroner and Jury at the inquest, should a fatal accident occur to me this (Tuesday) afternoon, in Saltashe Wood.”
Then he tore open the envelope. Immediately everyone noticed the look of boundless astonishment which spread over his face. There was a moment of breathless silent expectation among the crowd, while Miss Amelia stood quietly with her hands demurely folded over her gingham umbrella and her swollen eyes fixed anxiously upon that letter.
At last the coroner, turning to the jury, said—
“Gentlemen, this letter is addressed to you as well as to myself. I am, therefore, bound to acquaint you of its contents; but I must, of course, warn you not to allow your minds to be unduly influenced, however strange these few words may seem to you. The letter is dated from Ivy Lodge, Pashet, Tuesday, September 3rd, and signed ‘Jeremiah Whadcoat.’ It says:
‘Mr. Coroner and Gentlemen of the Jury,— I beg to inform you that on this day, at 2.30 p.m., I am starting to walk to Saltashe, there to see Mr. Kerhoet and Mr. Kelly on important business. Mr. Edward Kelly has desired me to meet him by the pond in Saltashe Woods, on my way. He knows of the business which takes me to Saltashe. He and I had a violent quarrel at the office on the subject last night, and he has every reason for wishing that I should never speak of it to Mr. Kelly and to Mr. Kerhoet. Last night he threatened to knock me down. If any serious accident happen to me, let Mr. Edward Kelly account for his actions.’”
A deadly silence followed, and then a muttered curse from somewhere among the crowd.
“This is damnable!”
And Mr. Edward Kelly, young, good-looking, but, at this moment, as pale as death, pushed his way forward among the spectators.
He wanted to speak, but the coroner waved him aside in his most official manner, while Miss Amelia Whadcoat demurely concluded her evidence. Personally, she knew nothing of her brother’s quarrel with Mr. Edward Kelly. She did not even know that he was going to Saltashe Woods on that fatal afternoon. Then she retired, and Mr. Edward Kelly was called.
Questioned by the coroner, he admitted the quarrel spoken of by the deceased, admitted meeting him by the pond in Saltashe Woods, but emphatically denied having the slightest ill-feeling against “Old Whadcoat,” as he called him, and, above all, having the faintest desire for wishing to silence him for ever.
“The whole thing is a ghastly mistake or a weird joke,” he declared firmly.
“But the quarrel?” persisted the coroner.
“I don’t deny it,” retorted the young man. “It was the result of a preposterous accusation old Whadcoat saw fit to level against me.”
“But why should you meet him clandestinely in the Woods?”
“It was not a clandestine meeting. I knew that he intended walking to Saltashe from Pashet through the Woods; a road from my house cuts the direction which he would be bound to follow, exactly at right angles. I wished to speak to him, and it saved me a journey all the way to Pashet, or him one down to my house. I met him at half-past three. We had about fifteen minutes talk; then I left him and went back home.”
“What was he doing when you left him?” asked the coroner, with distinct sarcasm.
“He had sat down on a tree stump and was smoking his pipe.”
“You had your gun with you, of course, on this expedition through the Woods?”
“I seldom go out without my gun this time of year.”
“Quite so,” assented the coroner grimly. “But what about your dog, who was found with its head battered in, close to the very spot where lay the body of the deceased?”
“Poor old Rags strayed away that morning. I did not see him at all that day. He certainly was not with me when I went to meet old Whadcoat.”
The rapidly spoken questions and answers had been listened to by the public and the jury with breathless interest. No one uttered a sound, but all were watching that the handsome young man, who seemed, with every word he uttered, to incriminate himself more and more. The quarrel, the assignation, the gun he was carrying; he denied nothing but he did protest his innocence with all his might.
One or two people had heard the report of a gun whilst walking on one or other of the roads that skirt Saltashe Woods, but their evidence as to the precise hour was unfortunately rather vague. Reports of guns in Saltashe Woods were very frequent, and no one had taken particular notice. On the other hand, the only witness who had seen Mr. Edward Kelly entering the wood was not ready to swear whether he had his dog with him or not.
Though it had been fully expected ever since Jeremiah Whadcoat’s posthumous epistle had been read, the verdict of “Wilful murder against Edward St. John Kelly” found the whole population of Pashet positively aghast. Brother of Mr. Kelly, of Saltashe Park, the accused was one of the most popular figures in this part of Hertfordshire. When his subsequent arrest became generally known in London, as well as in his own county, horror, amazement, and incredulity were quite universal.
2
The day after that memorable inquest and sensational arrest— namely, on the Saturday, I arrived at our dingy old office in Finsbury Square at about twelve o’clock, after I had seen to some business at Somerset House for my esteemed employer.
I found Skin o’ my Tooth curled up in his arm-chair before a small fire— as the day was wet and cold— just like a great fat and frowsy dog. He waited until I had given him a full report of what I had been doing, then he said to me—
“I have just had a visit from Mr. Kelly, of Saltashe Park.”
I was not astonished. That case of murder in the Saltashe Woods was just one of those which inevitably drifted into the hands of Skin o’ my Tooth. Though the whole aspect of it was remarkably clear, instinctively one scented a mystery somewhere.
“I suppose, sir, that it was on Mr. Edward Kelly’s behalf?”
“Your penetration, Muggins, my boy, surpasses human understanding.”
(My name is Alexander Stanislaus Mullins, but Skin o’ my Tooth will have his little joke).
“You are going to undertake the case, sir?”
“I am going to get Edward Kelly out of the hole his own stupidity has placed him in.”
“It will be by the skin of his teeth if you do, sir, the evidence against him is positively crushing,” I muttered.
“A miss is as good as a mile, where the hangman’s rope is concerned, Muggins. But you had better call a hansom; we can go down to Pashet this afternoon. Edward Kelly is out on bail, and Mr. Kelly tells me that I shall find him at Wood Cottage. I must get out of him the history of his quarrel with the murdered man.”
“Mr. Kelly did not know it?”
“Well, anyway, he seemed to think it best that the accused should tell me his own version of it. In any case, both Mr. Kelly and his wife are devoured with anxiety about this brother, who seems to have been a bit of a scapegrace all his life.”
There was no time to say more then, as we found that, by hurrying, we could catch the 1.05 p.m. train to Pashet. We found Mr. Edward Kelly at Wood Cottage, a pretty little house on the outskirts of Saltashe Woods. He had been told of our likely visit by his brother. He certainly looked terribly ill and like a man overweighted by fate and circumstances.
But he did protest his innocence, loudly and emphatically.
“I am the victim of the most damnable circumstances, Mr. Mulligan,” he said; “but I swear to you that I am incapable of such a horrible deed.”
“I always take it for granted, Mr. Kelly,” said Skin o’ my Tooth blandly, “that my client is innocent. If the reverse is the case, I prefer not to know it. But you have to appear before the magistrate on Monday. I must get a certain amount of evidence on your behalf, in order to obtain the remand I want. So will you try and tell me, as concisely and as clearly as possible, what passed between you and Mr. Whadcoat the day before the murder? I understand that there was a quarrel.”
“Old Whadcoat saw fit to accuse me of certain defalcations in the firm’s banking account, of which I was totally innocent,” began Mr. Edward Kelly quietly. “As you know, my brother and I are agents in England for M. de Kerhoet’s champagne. Whadcoat was our cashier and book-keeper. Twice a year we pay over into M. de Kerhoet’s bank in Paris the money derived from the sale of his wines, after deducting our commission. In the meanwhile, we have jointly the full control of the money— that is to say, all cheques paid to the firm have to be endorsed by us both, and all cheques drawn on the firm must bear both our signatures.
“It was just a month before the half-yearly settlement of accounts. Whadcoat, it appears, went down to the bank, got the cancelled cheques, and discovered that some £10,000, the whole of the credit balance due next month to M. de Kerhoet, had been drawn out of the bank, the amounts not having been debited in the books.
“To my intense amazement, he showed me these cheques, and then and there accused me of having forged my brother’s name and appropriated the firm’s money to my own use. You see, he knew of certain unavowed extravagances of mine which had often landed me in financial difficulties more or less serious, and which are the real cause of my being forced to live in Wood Cottage whilst my brother can keep up a fine establishment at Saltashe Park. But the accusation was preposterous, and I was furious with him. I looked at the cheques. My signature certainly was perfectly imitated, that of my brother perhaps a little less so. They were ‘bearer’ cheques, made out in a replica of old Whadcoat’s handwriting to ‘M. de Kerhoet,’ and endorsed at the back in a small, pointed, foreign hand.
“Old Whadcoat persisted in his accusations, and very high words ensued between us. I believe I did threaten to knock him down if he did not shut up. Anyway, he told me that he would go over the next afternoon to Saltashe Park to expose me before my brother and M. de Kerhoet, who was staying there on a visit to England for the shooting.
“I left him then, meaning to go myself that same evening to Saltashe Park and see my brother about it; but on my journey home, certain curious suspicions with regard to old Whadcoat himself crept up in my mind, and then and there I determined to try and see him again and to talk the matter over more dispassionately with him, in what I thought would be his own interests. My intention was to make, of course, my brother acquainted with the whole matter at once, but to leave M. de Kerhoet out of the question for the present; so I wired to Whadcoat in the morning to make the assignation which has proved such a terrible mistake.”
Edward Kelly added that he left Jeremiah Whadcoat, after his interview with him by the pond, in as excited a frame of mind as before. Fearing that his own handwriting on the cheques might entail serious consequences to himself, nothing would do but M. de Kerhoet as well as Mr. Kelly must, be told of the whole thing immediately.
“When I left him,” concluded the young man, “he was sitting on a tree stump by the pond, smoking his pipe and I walked away towards Wood Cottage.”
“Do you know what became of the cheques?” asked Skin o’ my Tooth.
“Old Whadcoat had them in his pocket when I left him. I conclude, as there has been no mention of them by the police, that they have not been found.”
There was so much simplicity and straight forwardness in Edward Kelly’s narrative that I, for one, was ready to believe every word of it. But Skin o’ my Tooth’s face was inscrutable. He sat in a low chair with his hands folded before him, his eyes shut and a general air of polite imbecility about his whole unwieldy person. I could see that our client was viewing him with a certain amount of irritability.
“Well, Mr. Mulligan?” he said at last, with nervous impatience.
“Well, sir,” replied Skin o’ my Tooth, “it strikes me that what with your quarrel with the deceased, the assignation in the Woods, his posthumous denunciation of you as his assassin, and his dying words, we have about as complete a case as we could wish.”
“Sir—”
