Who Killed Charmian Karslake? E-Book

Annie Haynes

• Herausgeber: Dean Street Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

"Owing to the sudden death of Miss Charmian Karslake this theatre is closed until further notice. Money for tickets already booked will be refunded." Who killed Charmian Karslake, the famous American actress, on the night of the ball at Hepton Abbey? Who was the mysterious Peter Hailsham who had been present at the ball and had since vanished into thin air? What was his connection, if any, with the respectable County family of Penn-Moreton at whose house the murder had taken place? How Inspector Stoddart and his assistant Harbord solve these questions, and the surprising discoveries they make in the course of their investigations, form the basis for one of their most devilish mysteries. Who Killed Charmian Karslake? is the third of Annie Haynes' Inspector Stoddart Mysteries. First published in 1929, it was out of print for over 80 years until this new edition, which also features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans. "A model detective story…a good mental exercise for the distracted reader who has just received his Super-Tax Demand. (The publishers) have again produced a good book." London Mercury

Leseprobe

ANNIE HAYNESWho Killed Charmian Karslake?

“Owing to the sudden death of Miss Charmian Karslake this theatre is closed until further notice. Money for tickets already booked will be refunded.”

Who killed Charmian Karslake, the famous American actress, on the night of the ball at Hepton Abbey? Who was the mysterious Peter Hailsham who had been present at the ball and had since vanished into thin air? What was his connection, if any, with the respectable County family of Penn-Moreton at whose house the murder had taken place?

How Inspector Stoddart and his assistant Harbord solve these questions, and the surprising discoveries they make in the course of their investigations, form the basis for one of their most devilish mysteries.

Who Killed Charmian Karslake? is the third of Annie Haynes’ Inspector Stoddart Mysteries. First published in 1929, it was out of print for over 80 years until this new edition, which also features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.

“A model detective story... a good mental exercise for the distracted reader who has just received his Super-Tax Demand. (The publishers) have again produced a good book.” London Mercury

The Mystery of the Missing Author Annie Haynes and Her Golden Age Detective Fiction

The psychological enigma of Agatha Christie’s notorious 1926 vanishing has continued to intrigue Golden Age mystery fans to the present day. The Queen of Crime’s eleven-day disappearing act is nothing, however, compared to the decades-long disappearance, in terms of public awareness, of between-the-wars mystery writer Annie Haynes (1865-1929), author of a series of detective novels published between 1923 and 1930 by Agatha Christie’s original English publisher, The Bodley Head. Haynes’s books went out of print in the early Thirties, not long after her death in 1929, and her reputation among classic detective fiction readers, high in her lifetime, did not so much decline as dematerialize. When, in 2013, I first wrote a piece about Annie Haynes’ work, I knew of only two other living persons besides myself who had read any of her books. Happily, Dean Street Press once again has come to the rescue of classic mystery fans seeking genre gems from the Golden Age, and is republishing all Haynes’ mystery novels. Now that her crime fiction is coming back into print, the question naturally arises: Who Was Annie Haynes? Solving the mystery of this forgotten author’s lost life has taken leg work by literary sleuths on two continents (my thanks for their assistance to Carl Woodings and Peter Harris).

Until recent research uncovered new information about Annie Haynes, almost nothing about her was publicly known besides the fact of her authorship of twelve mysteries during the Golden Age of detective fiction. Now we know that she led an altogether intriguing life, too soon cut short by disability and death, which took her from the isolation of the rural English Midlands in the nineteenth century to the cultural high life of Edwardian London. Haynes was born in 1865 in the Leicestershire town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the first child of ironmonger Edwin Haynes and Jane (Henderson) Haynes, daughter of Montgomery Henderson, longtime superintendent of the gardens at nearby Coleorton Hall, seat of the Beaumont baronets. After her father left his family, young Annie resided with her grandparents at the gardener’s cottage at Coleorton Hall, along with her mother and younger brother. Here Annie doubtlessly obtained an acquaintance with the ways of the country gentry that would serve her well in her career as a genre fiction writer.

We currently know nothing else of Annie Haynes’ life in Leicestershire, where she still resided (with her mother) in 1901, but by 1908, when Haynes was in her early forties, she was living in London with Ada Heather-Bigg (1855-1944) at the Heather-Bigg family home, located halfway between Paddington Station and Hyde Park at 14 Radnor Place, London. One of three daughters of Henry Heather-Bigg, a noted pioneer in the development of orthopedics and artificial limbs, Ada Heather-Bigg was a prominent Victorian and Edwardian era feminist and social reformer. In the 1911 British census entry for 14 Radnor Place, Heather-Bigg, a “philanthropist and journalist,” is listed as the head of the household and Annie Haynes, a “novelist,” as a “visitor,” but in fact Haynes would remain there with Ada Heather-Bigg until Haynes’ death in 1929.

Haynes’ relationship with Ada Heather-Bigg introduced the aspiring author to important social sets in England’s great metropolis. Though not a novelist herself, Heather-Bigg was an important figure in the city’s intellectual milieu, a well-connected feminist activist of great energy and passion who believed strongly in the idea of women attaining economic independence through remunerative employment. With Ada Heather-Bigg behind her, Annie Haynes’s writing career had powerful backing indeed. Although in the 1911 census Heather-Bigg listed Haynes’ occupation as “novelist,” it appears that Haynes did not publish any novels in book form prior to 1923, the year that saw the appearance of The Bungalow Mystery, which Haynes dedicated to Heather-Bigg. However, Haynes was a prolific producer of newspaper serial novels during the second decade of the twentieth century, penning such works as Lady Carew’s Secret, Footprints of Fate, A Pawn of Chance, The Manor Tragedy and many others.

Haynes’ twelve Golden Age mystery novels, which appeared in a tremendous burst of creative endeavor between 1923 and 1930, like the author’s serial novels retain, in stripped-down form, the emotionally heady air of the nineteenth-century triple-decker sensation novel, with genteel settings, shocking secrets, stormy passions and eternal love all at the fore, yet they also have the fleetness of Jazz Age detective fiction. Both in their social milieu and narrative pace Annie Haynes’ detective novels bear considerable resemblance to contemporary works by Agatha Christie; and it is interesting to note in this regard that Annie Haynes and Agatha Christie were the only female mystery writers published by The Bodley Head, one of the more notable English mystery imprints in the early Golden Age. “A very remarkable feature of recent detective fiction,” observed the Illustrated London News in 1923, “is the skill displayed by women in this branch of story-telling. Isabel Ostrander, Carolyn Wells, Annie Haynes and last, but very far from least, Agatha Christie, are contesting the laurels of Sherlock Holmes’ creator with a great spirit, ingenuity and success.” Since Ostrander and Wells were American authors, this left Annie Haynes, in the estimation of the Illustrated London News, as the main British female competitor to Agatha Christie. (Dorothy L. Sayers, who, like Haynes, published her debut mystery novel in 1923, goes unmentioned.) Similarly, in 1925 The Sketch wryly noted that “[t]ired men, trotting home at the end of an imperfect day, have been known to pop into the library and ask for an Annie Haynes. They have not made a mistake in the street number. It is not a cocktail they are asking for….”

Twenties critical opinion adjudged that Annie Haynes’ criminous concoctions held appeal not only for puzzle fiends impressed with the “considerable craftsmanship” of their plots (quoting from the Sunday Times review of The Bungalow Mystery), but also for more general readers attracted to their purely literary qualities. “Not only a crime story of merit, but also a novel which will interest readers to whom mystery for its own sake has little appeal,” avowed The Nation of Haynes’ The Secret of Greylands, while the New Statesman declared of The Witness on the Roof that “Miss Haynes has a sense of character; her people are vivid and not the usual puppets of detective fiction.” Similarly, the Bookman deemed the characters in Haynes’ The Abbey Court Murder “much truer to life than is the case in many sensational stories” and The Spectator concluded of The Crime at Tattenham Corner, “Excellent as a detective tale, the book also is a charming novel.”

Sadly, Haynes’ triumph as a detective novelist proved short lived. Around 1914, about the time of the outbreak of the Great War, Haynes had been stricken with debilitating rheumatoid arthritis that left her in constant pain and hastened her death from heart failure in 1929, when she was only 63. Haynes wrote several of her detective novels on fine days in Kensington Gardens, where she was wheeled from 14 Radnor Place in a bath chair, but in her last years she was able only to travel from her bedroom to her study. All of this was an especially hard blow for a woman who had once been intensely energetic and quite physically active.

In a foreword to The Crystal Beads Murder, the second of Haynes’ two posthumously published mysteries, Ada Heather-Bigg noted that Haynes’ difficult daily physical struggle “was materially lightened by the warmth of friendships” with other authors and by the “sympathetic and friendly relations between her and her publishers.” In this latter instance Haynes’ experience rather differed from that of her sister Bodleian, Agatha Christie, who left The Bodley Head on account of what she deemed an iniquitous contract that took unjust advantage of a naive young author. Christie moved, along with her landmark detective novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), to Collins and never looked back, enjoying ever greater success with the passing years.

At the time Christie crossed over to Collins, Annie Haynes had only a few years of life left. After she died at 14 Radnor Place on 30 March 1929, it was reported in the press that “many people well-known in the literary world” attended the author’s funeral at St. Michaels and All Angels Church, Paddington, where her sermon was delivered by the eloquent vicar, Paul Nichols, brother of the writer Beverley Nichols and dedicatee of Haynes’ mystery novel The Master of the Priory; yet by the time of her companion Ada Heather-Bigg’s death in 1944, Haynes and her once highly-praised mysteries were forgotten. (Contrastingly, Ada Heather-Bigg’s name survives today in the University College of London’s Ada Heather-Bigg Prize in Economics.) Only three of Haynes’ novels were ever published in the United States, and she passed away less than a year before the formation of the Detection Club, missing any chance of being invited to join this august body of distinguished British detective novelists. Fortunately, we have today entered, when it comes to classic mystery, a period of rediscovery and revival, giving a reading audience a chance once again, after over eighty years, to savor the detective fiction fare of Annie Haynes. Bon appétit!

Who Killed Charmian Karslake?

Stately country houses have long been the settings most associated in the minds of mystery fiction readers with Golden Age British detective novels. “How strongly the typical mysteries of interwar years linger in memory, invariably set in large country house...” recalled the late British crime writer P.D. James in Talking about Detective Fiction (2009), her short history of British mystery writing. Although the notion that in the 1920s and 1930s fictional British murders occurred mostly during weekend house parties at the country estates of the landed gentry is an exaggerated one, beguilingly influenced by an affectionate and perhaps in some cases slightly condescending nostalgia, at the height of the Golden Age the detective novelist Annie Haynes set down her own version of the classic country house party mystery in Who Killed Charmian Karslake? (1929), an entertaining novel praised in its day as “an uncommonly well-told murder tale, contrived and worked out with considerable craftsmanship.”

The country house murder setting in Who Killed Charmian Karslake? is Hepton Abbey, a long-defunct Midlands monastery that for centuries has served as the seat of the Penn-Moreton family. Currently residing at the imposing mansion are Sir Arthur Penn-Moreton, his wife Lady Viva and the couple’s infant son, as well as Sir Arthur’s affably idle half-brother, Dicky Penn-Moreton, and Dicky’s new bride Sadie, daughter of American canned soup magnate Silas P. Juggs. On the fatal night of the Penn-Moreton house party, there naturally are servants in the offing as well, most notably a coquettish French ladies maid, Celestine Dubois, and the Penn-Moreton butler, Brook, who is, Dicky Penn-Moreton jokes, “like Homocea, always on the spot.” (Homocea Touches the Spot and Sooths the Aching Part was the once ubiquitous advertiser’s slogan for this popular Victorian patent medicine.) Additionally there are guests remaining at Hepton Abbey after the dance: prominent barrister John Larpent; his fiancée, Paula Galbraith; and the American stage actress Charmian Karslake, on tour for the first time in England. Most shockingly, the next day the celebrated actress is found murdered in her room at Hepton Abbey and the bedazzling sapphire ball “mascot” she always wore around her neck has vanished. (The ill-omened sapphire was previously owned by “the hapless Princess de Lamballe and the murdered Queen Draga of Serbia, to name just a few of the unfortunate possessors.”)

Discovering who killed Charmian Karslake is a task that falls to Scotland Yard’s Inspector Stoddart, who once again in his criminal investigation is assisted by his “fidus Achates” from the force, young Alfred Harbord. Stoddart is met with scorn when Silas P. Juggs, a fervently patriotic American dismissive of British gumption, arrives at Hepton Abbey, Juggs bluntly telling the inspector, “I guess you aren’t quite a Sherlock Holmes yet, or you would have laid Charmian Karslake’s murderer by the heels before now.” Yet Stoddart soon unearths suspicious characters not only within the mighty walls of Hepton Abbey, but on the humble streets of Hepton, “the quaintest of old-fashioned villages….nestled under the shadow of the Abbey….” It becomes apparent to Stoddart and Harbord that Charmian Karslake may not have been quite as unacquainted with the locality as she had led people at the house party to believe. Did Miss Karslake have personal connections to Hepton, or even to Hepton Abbey itself? Who was the man at Hepton Abbey whom she was heard to taunt with the query, “Well, Mr. Peter Hailsham, we meet again, do we?”

One of the interesting aspects of Who Killed Charmian Karslake? lies in the brief discussions that take place between Stoddart and Harbord concerning notorious real life murder cases and the convicted murderers Edith Thompson, Hawley Harvey Crippen, Jack Alfred Field and William Thomas Gray. (The latter pair were found guilty of one of the Twenties “Crumbles murders,” both of which took place on a shingle beach between Eastbourne and Pevensey Bay.) “Some of the worst criminals I have known have been the best looking,” remarks Stoddart at one point. “Look at Mrs. Thompson—face like a flower, some ass said. But it was a flower that did not stick at murder when an unfortunate husband stood in the way.” Annie Haynes’ companion, Ada Heather-Bigg, recalled after the author’s death that Haynes had been intensely interested in “crime and criminal psychology” and that this interest “led her into the most varied activities,” including attending Dr. Crippen’s 1910 murder trial and even boldly “pushing her way into the cellar of 39 Hilldrop Crescent, where the remains of Belle Elmore [Crippen’s wife] were discovered….” A transatlantic ocean voyage made by several of the characters in Who Killed Charmian Karslake? may recall, in a minor degree, the Crippen case to readers’ minds.

Despite references to grim real life murders, Who Killed Charmian Karslake? mostly remains within the cozy confines of the country house and village world associated so strongly with the Golden Age British detective novel, a world that Haynes herself had once known well. “[T]o the true Heptonian the Penn-Moretons represented the ruling class, all that they knew of rank, or wealth, or culture,” observes the author, who grew up in a gardener’s cottage on the grounds of a Midlands great house, Leiscestershire’s Coleorton Hall, over which the Beaumont baronets had presided in splendor for over three centuries. Yet Haynes allows a few disgruntled characters, having long since departed Hepton (like she herself had long ago left Coleorton village for London), to voice discordant sentiments.

“Many’s the errand I’ve done for ’em and had a copper chucked to me like as I was a dog,” grumbles an émigré Heptonian of the Penn-Moretons, while another former resident of Hepton grows eloquent as she grouses to Stoddart about the lords of the Midlands village:

“I suppose you knew them very well, personally, I mean?” the inspector went on.

“Then there you make a great mistake… The Penn-Moretons were just the little tin gods of the town. I am sure people went to church more to see what Lady Penn-Moreton had on and how Sir Arthur was looking than to worship God. In return the Penn-Moretons were very good to us. They gave soup and other delicacies to the inhabitants. I remember when my mother was ill they sent grapes and pheasants. But as for calling upon us or knowing us, why, dear me, they would have thought us mad to expect such a thing. They would bow to us when they met us, but only as a king and queen bow to their subjects. Oh, I have no use for such a place as Hepton with its petty class restrictions.”

Mrs. Walker was getting breathless and her cheeks were hot as she stopped. Evidently Hepton society and its restrictions were subjects that moved her deeply.

Did Charmian Karslake’s unnatural death at Hepton Abbey have it roots in old Hepton enmities that were hoped to have been long forgotten? Readers can rest assured that whatever the cause of the killing of Charmian Karslake, the steadfast Inspector Stoddart will find it.

Curtis Evans

CHAPTER 1

“Beastly mess the place seems to be in,” grumbled Sir Arthur Penn-Moreton, looking round the room with a disgusted air.

“Well, if you will give balls you have to put up with the aftermath,” said Dicky, his younger brother, screwing his monocle in his left eye as he spoke.

Dicky was already seated at the table devouring kidneys and bacon with apparent relish.

Sir Arthur glanced at him as he sat down opposite. “You don’t look up to much this morning, Dicky!”

“How can a chap look up to much when he has sat up to the small hours of the night before, dancing round with a lot of screaming young women, and eating all sorts of indigestible food?” Dicky questioned, taking another helping of kidney. “You don’t look any great shakes yourself for that matter. We are neither of us in our first youth, Arthur, you must remember. Years will tell, you know.”

“Don’t be a fool, Dicky!” Sir Arthur said sharply. “Your wife was a great success. She roused us all up.”

Dicky looked pleased. “Good-looking kid, isn’t she? And lively – she has got the goods, you bet.”

“Who are you two gassing about?” a third man inquired, lounging into the room. “Charmian Karslake, I dare swear. She made your country bumpkins look up, Moreton, I thought. Even the parson said he found her extraordinarily interesting. And if she put it over him, by Jove, it is one up to her.”

“Pooh! Old Bowles doesn’t count,” Sir Arthur said, brushing the very notion away with a wave of his hand. “And you don’t remember much of Hepton, or I should say Meadshire society, Larpent, or you would realize that no actress, however wonderful, would excite the people overmuch. Mummers they call them, and look upon them as creatures of a different calibre to themselves.”

“And so they are!” exclaimed Mr. Larpent, sitting down and pulling a dish of mushrooms towards him. “Charmian Karslake, if you mean her! She is all alive from the crown of her lovely head to the toes of her pretty little feet. Now, last night your Meadshire beauties were about as cheerful as so many cows or sheep. Different calibre to Charmian Karslake, by Jove, I should think they are!”

While Mr. Larpent delivered himself of this exordium the room was gradually filling with other members of the house-party at Hepton Abbey, all looking more or less jaded. The one exception was Dicky Penn-Moreton’s young American wife. Mrs. Richard looked as bright as though dancing until three o’clock in the morning was an everyday experience with her, as indeed it was. Following her came Lady Penn-Moreton, the mistress of the house, as cheerful as ever, though rather tired-looking.

Hepton Abbey was something of a show place, one of the wealthiest religious houses in the kingdom at the time of the Dissolution, and it and the fat revenues appertaining to it had been bestowed by King Henry upon his reigning favourite, the head of the Penn-Moreton family. Probably Penn-Moreton had saved his head and his fortune by retiring immediately to his new estate and devoting himself to its improvement and development, and though he entertained King Henry regally at Hepton he was little seen at Court for the rest of his life. And since that time down to the present day, though the younger sons of the Penn-Moretons had gone into the Army or the Navy, or sometimes, though more rarely, into the Church, the heads of the family had always occupied themselves in the development of their lands.

The Abbey itself had been restored as little as possible, tradition said that the rooms in the bachelors’ wing had been the old monks’ cells. But in the other parts of the house two or three had been put together, and beyond the small diamond-paned windows showed little trace of their origin. The hall and the big diningroom had been made out of the old chapel. Visitors to the Abbey could see the remains of the high altar opposite the door by which they were admitted. Only bathrooms and the big conservatory – which from the outside looked like unsightly excrescences – had been added since the Penn-Moretons’ ownership.

The present head of the family was Sir Arthur Penn-Moreton, who had married, a couple of years before, the pretty, lively daughter of a penniless Irish peer. Their little son was now a year old. The previous Sir Arthur Penn-Moreton had been married twice, and had one son by each marriage. The present Sir Arthurs mother had died soon after her son’s birth, and the widower had replaced her within the year, so that there was no great difference in age between the two boys.

Dicky Penn-Moreton was a general favourite in society, but his portion as a younger son had been small, and Dicky was not fond of work. Just eighteen, he had joined the Army in the first months of the Great War, and he and his brother had passed through it unscathed. After the Armistice he had spent some time with the Army of Occupation; later he had announced that he loathed soldiering in peace time, that he found it impossible to live on his pay, supplemented, as it was, by his own small income and his brother’s liberal allowance, and had resigned his commission. Since then he had been unable to find a job to his liking, and had remained at Hepton looking round the estate and, as he put it, learning his business from the agent. A couple of months before he had astonished society by marrying the vivacious daughter of Silas P. Juggs, the Chicago multi-millionaire.

Sir Arthur and Lady Penn-Moreton had given a ball the night before this story opens to welcome the young couple on their return to England after their honeymoon.

The marriage had been so hurriedly arranged that there had been literally no time to get a house, and the Richard Penn-Moretons were at present living in one of London’s palatial hotels, seeing life and, incidentally, making long motor journeys to look at desirable residences to let.

Mrs. Richard had made a great impression at the ball. Her wonderful Parisian frock, the vivacity for which her countrywomen are famous, and a certain joie de vivre, peculiarly her own, had fascinated the somewhat humdrum society near Hepton.

Another attraction from over the water had been present in the person of the great American actress, who had taken all London by storm – Charmian Karslake.

Lady Moreton had regarded the acceptance of her invitation as a compliment, as the ball at Hepton Abbey was the only festivity at which the actress had been present since her coming to England. .

Her loveliness was undeniable; tall and slim, with an exquisite complexion that owed nothing to art, with a mass of auburn hair that alone would have made her remarkable in these days of shingling. Her small mignon face, with its beautifully formed features, was lighted up by a pair of eyes so deeply blue that they seemed almost to match the big sapphire ball that she always wore suspended by a long platinum chain. Her mascot, Miss Karslake called it, and it was always so described in every interview or account of her that appeared in any paper. At the ball she had worn a wonderful gown woven of gold tissue. Like a flame she had flashed to and fro among the sober Meadshire folk.

Dicky Moreton’s eyes kept wandering to the door, in spite of his pretty wife’s presence. So did those of most of the men in the room. But the minutes passed and no Charmian Karslake appeared.

Sir Arthur began to talk about the shooting; the fresh comers finished their breakfast and retired with the morning papers to the window.

At last the butler came into the room. He looked uncomfortably at Sir Arthur.

“Could I speak to you for a minute, if you please, Sir Arthur?”

With a murmured word of apology Sir Arthur went out of the room.

“Old Brook looks as if he had had a spot of something last night,” commented Dicky. “Whitish about the gills, reddish about the eyes, don’t you know!”

“Dicky, I’m really ashamed of you,” Mrs. Richard flashed round upon him. “Brook is the cutest creature alive. He might have stepped from the pages of Dickens or Thackeray, or Anthony Trollope. Family retainer, you know. And you –”

Words apparently failed Mrs. Richard. She made an expressive face at her husband just as Sir Arthur re-entered, looking distinctly worried.

He turned to his brother. “One of the upper doors has stuck, Dicky. You and Larpent will have to give me a hand. This old wood is the very deuce to move when once it catches.”

“All serene. I’ll come along,” said Dicky, abandoning his kidneys and beckoning to Mr. Larpent, who resigned his mushrooms with a sigh.

Once outside the room Sir Arthur’s manner changed. “I’m afraid that there is something wrong, Miss Karslake’s maid has not been able to get in this morning. At first she thought, when there was no response to her knock, that Miss Karslake was just sleeping off the effects of last night’s late hours. But at last she grew alarmed and appealed to Brook. He came to me, as you saw, and we have both been up. But though we have made noise enough to wake the dead we can’t rouse her. I can’t think what is the matter.”

Dicky gave his brother a resounding slap on the back. “Cheerio, I expect she is all right. You can’t expect her to keep the same hours as the rest of the world.” But Dicky’s own face was white as he followed his brother up the stairs and along the corridor to the door outside which a maid was standing – a typical-looking Frenchwoman with her dark hair and eyes, her black frock and coquettish little apron. She was dabbing her eyes with a dainty handkerchief as the men came up to her.

“Ah, sare,” she exclaimed, taking a look at them out of the corners of her eyes, “my poor Mademoiselle, dat somesing ’orrible ’as ’appened to her.”

“Rot! My good girl, I expect either that your mistress had gone out for an early walk or else she has taken something to make her sleep, and cannot hear us.” Dicky turned to his brother. “Best keep all the women back, old chap, in case – But we will soon have this door in. Now what sort of stuff would your mistress take if she could not sleep?” he demanded of the maid.

She spread out her hands. “Me! I do not know. Nevare – nevare have I seen my Mademoiselle take anysing. Nevare I see anysing zat she can take.”

“H’m! Well, she may keep it out of sight. Stand out of the way, please, mademoiselle. Now, Larpent!” At a word from Sir Arthur, Brook had gone back to keep Lady Moreton and the other women back.

Now the men surveyed the door a minute, then Dicky, his brother and Mr. Larpent put their shoulders to it. It cracked at first, but it did not give and it took the best efforts of all of them, using a flat board one of the footmen brought as a lever, before they were able to force it open. Then Dicky Moreton drew back, his fair face white.

“I am afraid there is something very wrong, Arthur. The room is all upset, as far as I can see.”

“And I don’t know how you did see,” said John Larpent. “I was just beside you and I didn’t. Don’t be a fool, Dicky! The room is in a deuce of a mess, that’s all. The girl’s on the bed.” But his voice stopped and he drew back with an exclamation of horror.

The most cursory glance was enough to show that something was terribly wrong. The room was in confusion, the furniture was tossed about everywhere, and Charmian Karslake lay on the bed, looking almost as if she had been flung there. Her white face was turned towards the door, the mouth wide open, and the blue, starry eyes, dull now and glazed, stared sightlessly at the men in the doorway. Quite evidently she had not finished undressing, though she was lying across the bed.

The bed-clothes were trailing on the floor, and she was wearing soft silk underclothing of the same fabric and colour as the wonderful gold frock she had worn at the ball the night before. Over them she had apparently thrown carelessly a white silk kimona. Right in the front, over the left breast, an ugly red stain disfigured both the kimona and the gold tissue. It needed no second glance to see that life had been extinct for some hours.

Sir Arthur went nearer and bent over the quiet form. He took one of the cold hands in his and let it fall again.

“Dead!” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Dead, and cold! Poor soul! Poor soul! What could have made her do it?”

“Made her do it!” echoed one of the men who had followed him in. “Man alive! Don’t you see” – pointing to two tiny burnt holes in the midst of the red stain, and then waving his hands round the disordered room – “how she has struggled and fought for her life? Charmian Karslake has been foully, brutally murdered.”

CHAPTER 2

The Golden Theatre was often said to be appropriately so named, for not only were its furniture plenishings golden, but it was the property of a syndicate, every member of which was popularly reputed to be a millionaire. The salaries given to the actors and actresses were enormous, and the box-office takings were in accordance. Night after night, when other theatres were not half-filled, the legend “House Full” hung outside the Golden.

Of late the great attraction there had been the famous American actress, Charmian Karslake, renowned no less for her brilliant, exquisite beauty than for her musical voice – the “golden voice” her admirers called it. A brief season had been arranged for her in town, and there were rumours that her salary was a fabulous sum per week. It had been publicly stated beforehand that Miss Karslake disliked society, and that all her time was spent in study.

There was general surprise therefore when it became known that Miss Karslake would not be in the cast for a couple of nights, and that she had accepted an invitation to be present at the Penn-Moretons, ball at Hepton Abbey.

“Why the Penn-Moretons?” people asked one another. Invitations had been showered upon Charmian Karslake from people far higher, far more important in the social world than the Penn-Moretons, only to be refused.

But neither Miss Karslake nor the Moretons were communicative, and public curiosity went unsatisfied.

Today, however, there was no cheerful “House Full” placard hung out at the Golden Theatre. Instead, all inside was darkness and gloom. In front of the box-office there were posters with black borders, men were propping up similar ones outside the theatre – all bore the same inscription:

“Owing to the sudden death of Miss Charmian Karslake this theatre is closed until further notice. Money for tickets already booked will be refunded, and should be applied for at the box-office.”

“The sudden death of Miss Charmian Karslake.” People stared, rubbed their eyes and stared again.

It was only this morning that those of them who took in the “Morning Crier,” or who looked at society paragraphs in the other papers, had read of her being present at the ball at Hepton Abbey, had revelled in the description of her gown of gold tissue, her wonderful jewel, the great sapphire ball – her mascot. And now it was impossible that she, brilliant, vivid Charmian Karslake should be dead!

People gathered in groups, the groups coalesced, became one great crowd that blocked the pavement in front of the Golden Theatre, and collected again as soon as it was disposed of by the police.

At last a slim, slight man, quite easily recognizable by the force as a detective in plain clothes, unobtrusively passed through the crowd.

Nearly opposite the Golden Theatre he knocked up against a man coming from the opposite direction, and stopped in surprise.

“Harbord! I was going to wire you. I thought you were in Derbyshire.”

“So I was this morning,” Harbord answered, “but matters have petered out there and I was anxious to report as soon as I could.”

“Good for you!” Inspector Stoddart said approvingly. “Now have you any arrangement to make? I leave St. Pancras by the 5.15.”

Harbord shook his head. “My people do not expect me back to-day as a matter of fact. So I am an absolutely free lance.”

“So much the better,” Stoddart said heartily, pushing his way out of the crowd.

He hailed a passing taxi, telling the man to drive to New Scotland Yard and directed Harbord to get in with him. Then, when they had settled themselves, he looked at the young man.

“You saw that crowd before the Golden Theatre. Do you know what has brought them together?”

Harbord shook his head. “Something about Charmian Karslake, I suppose. She seems to have put it over the man in the street. There is always some new excitement.”

“Yes,” the inspector said grimly. “This time it is her death; that’s all!”

“Her death!” Harbord stared at him. “Why, just now in the train I heard two women talking of some grand ball Charmian Karslake was at last night, and the wonderful gown she was wearing. And some sapphire mascot!”

“Quite!” The inspector nodded. “She danced through the evening and exhibited her gold gown and her mascot and then – she went up to her room to meet her death.”

“But how?” Harbord asked.

“She was shot through the heart; at close quarters too,” the inspector told him.

Hardened though he was to the ways of criminals, Harbord turned distinctly paler. “By whom?”

“Ah! That,” the inspector said gloomily, “is what you and I are going to catch the next train to Hepton in Meadshire to find out.”

Harbord gave a slight start. “You mean –?”

“The local police have appealed to Scotland Yard and I have been placed in charge of the case, and, as, I told you, I am off at once. You will come with me. I would rather have you than any three other members of the C.I.D. Now we have just half an hour before we start. I can tell you the main facts of the case. I dare say the evening papers will enlighten us further as we go down.”

“Who on earth should want to hurt Charmian Karslake?” Harbord debated. “I have always understood that she had made no friends in London, and kept herself very much to herself. I wonder – is there any reason to suppose she had been followed from America?”

“I know nothing about that,” Inspector Stoddart answered. “The first thing we have to do is to ascertain the names of every man, woman and child who slept in Hepton Abbey last night, and then to see if we can discover any connexion between any of them and Charmian Karslake.”

“Sounds rather a tall order,” Harbord observed. “The ball was an extraordinarily large one, I understand.”

“The ball was, but the house-party was not,” Inspector Stoddart corrected. “Most of the guests came by car. All the neighbouring houses had parties for the occasion; so that, although the house was full, it was not abnormally so.”

“I suppose there is no doubt that the murder was committed by some one in the house,” Harbord hazarded.

The inspector raised his eyebrows. “No reasonable doubt one would think. There is no sign of the house being broken into, and, yet, there is just this chance which we must not overlook. I hear that the servants testify that all the doors and windows on the ground floor were fastened after the dance and were found in the same state on the morning after the murder. But to my mind that does not rule out one possibility. A stranger to the Penn-Moretons who had some enmity towards Miss Karslake, or who intended to steal her jewels, might have managed to secrete himself in the house while the ball was going on. Then, finding Miss Karslake was awake – for there is ample evidence to prove that she was killed soon after going to her room – and, very probably, attempted to rouse the household, he may have shot her in the scuffle which certainly took place, and managed to get out of the window. On the other hand, Charmian Karslake may have been in somebody’s way and may have been murdered to get rid of her. But why on earth –?”

“In whose way?” Harbord questioned.

“How can I tell?” the inspector continued. “There is a snag or two in any theory that I can evolve as yet. However, we shall know more about it in an hour or two.”

Hepton Abbey was a little more than an hour’s run from town. As the inspector had prophesied, the first edition of the evening papers was procurable at St. Pancras.

“The murder of Charmian Karslake” in big, black type occupied the front page of most of them. But of details, evidently little was known, nothing was there that the inspector had not already heard, the papers had to content themselves with reprinting the little that had reached them of Charmian Karslake’s career in the States, and giving long accounts of the play in which she had been taking part in London.

It was already dark when they reached the station for Hepton. Here Sir Arthur Moreton’s car met them, and a run of a very few minutes brought them to the Abbey. They were taken at once to Sir Arthur’s study.

He greeted Stoddart with outstretched hand. “This is very good of you, Stoddart. I remembered your work in the Craston Diamond Case last year – Lord Craston was a friend of mine, you know – and then there was the Barstow murder. You tracked Skrine down when there did not seem to be the ghost of a clue pointing to him, and I made up my mind to ask specially that you might be sent to us. This affair has got to be probed to the very bottom. That a woman should be murdered in my house and the assassin go unpunished is unthinkable.”

The inspector permitted himself a slight smile.

“It has not happened yet, Sir Arthur. And it is early days to think of failure in connexion with Miss Karslake’s death. Now, you are anxious that we should set to work as soon as we can, I know. I gather that the local superintendent has set a guard over the house and its inmates, so that no one who was known to have slept in the house last night has been allowed to leave.”

Sir Arthur nodded. “That was done at once. But I cannot believe –”

Stoddart held up his hand. “Belief does not enter into these cases, Sir Arthur. Now, I must ask you to give me particulars of as many of these said inmates as you can. First, your immediate circle.”

Sir Arthur drew his brows together. It was obvious that the task was not to his taste.

“Our immediate circle,” he repeated. “Well, first, there is, of course, the young couple for whom last night’s ball was given – my younger brother and his American bride.”

“American?” The inspector, who had taken out his notebook, held his pencil poised for a moment. “The States, I suppose?”

“California,” Sir Arthur assented. “But I do not imagine my young sister-in-law has spent much time in her native country. She was educated at a convent near Paris; when she left there she went for a long Continental tour with her father, Silas Juggs – the canned soup magnate, you know. Then she probably went home for a time, I am not sure. Later, she had one season in London when my brother fell a victim to her charms; result a violent love-affair, a short engagement, and a speedy marriage. No, as I see my sister-in-law’s life there is no point in which it could have touched that of Charmian Karslake. Besides, she would have told us if she had known anything of Miss Karslake.”

“Ah, of course,” the inspector murmured, as he made an entry in his notebook. “Now, Sir Arthur, the other members of the house-party – I have heard a Mr. Larpent’s name.”

“Yes, Mr. John Larpent, a distant connexion, and my friend from boyhood,” Sir Arthur assented. “We were at Eton and at Christ Church together. But of course you have heard of him before, inspector. He is doing extraordinarily well at the Bar.”

The inspector brought his hands together sharply. “Of course; I knew the name was familiar. It was he who defended Mrs. Gatwick last year.”

Sir Arthur nodded. “He did not get her off, but it was a narrow shave. Quite possibly he may be able to help you, inspector. I fancy he has been making a few inquiries on his own.”

The inspector did not look particularly gratified. “Well, we shall see. Mr. Larpent is unmarried, I believe?”

“At present.” Sir Arthur smiled faintly. “He has lately become engaged to a friend of Lady Moreton’s – Miss Galbraith.”

The inspector looked up. “Daughter of Lord Galbraith?”

“The last – not the present peer,” Sir Arthur corrected.

“She would be here,” Stoddart said, as if stating a fact.

“She was, naturally,” Sir Arthur assented.

The inspector glanced over his notes. “Anybody else? I mean guests. I shall have to get the servants’ names from the housekeeper, I presume?”

“I expect so,” Sir Arthur said slowly. “As for the other guests, there were in the bachelors’ wing Captain Arthur Appley, Lord John Barton, Mr. Williams. But I made a list – here it is,” drawing a piece of paper from his pocket. “I thought it might save time. There, do you see, all the bachelors on this side. The unmarried ladies in the opposite wing.”

The inspector took the list and studied it in silence for a minute. Then he said without looking up:

“Miss Karslake did not sleep on this side of the house with the other unmarried ladies, I gather?”