§1
The Old Man in the Corner was in a philosophising mood that afternoon, and all the while that his thin, claw-like fingers fidgeted with the inevitable piece of string, he gave vent to various, disjointed, always sententious remarks.
Suddenly he said:
"We know, of course, that the world has gone dancing mad! But I doubt if the fashionable craze has ever been responsible before for so dark a tragedy as the death of old Sarah Levison. What do you think?"
"Well," I replied guardedly, for I knew that, whatever I might say, I should draw an avalanche of ironical remarks upon my innocent head, "I never have known what to think, and all the accounts of that brutal murder as they appeared in the cheaper Press only made the obscurity all the more obscure."
"That was a wise and well-thought-out reply," the aggravating creature retorted with a dry chuckle, "and a non-committal one at that. Obscurity is indeed obscure for those who won't take the trouble to think."
"I suppose it is all quite clear to you?" I said, with what I meant to be withering sarcasm.
"As clear as the proverbial daylight," he replied undaunted.
"You know how old Mrs. Levison came by her death?"
"Of course I do. I will tell you, if you like."
"By all means. But I am not prepared to be convinced," I added cautiously.
"No," he admitted, "but you soon will be. However, before we reach that happy conclusion, I shall have to marshal the facts before you, because a good many of these must have escaped your attention. Shall I proceed?"
"If you please."
"Well, then, do you remember all the personages in the drama?" he began.
"I think so."
"There were, of course, young Aaron Levison and his wife, Rebecca—the latter young, pretty, fond of pleasure, and above all of dancing, and he, a few years older, but still in the prime of life, more of an athlete than a business man, and yet tied to the shop in which he carried on the trade of pawnbroking for his mother. The latter, an old Jewess, shrewd and dictatorial, was the owner of the business: her son was not even her partner, only a well-paid clerk in her employ, and this fact we must suppose rankled in the mind of her smart daughter-in-law. At any rate, we know that there was no love lost between the two ladies; but the young couple and old Mrs. Levison and another unmarried son lived together in the substantial house over the shop in Bishop's Road.
"They had three servants and we are told that they lived well, old Mrs. Levison bearing the bulk of the cost of housekeeping. The younger son, Reuben, seems to have been something of a bad egg; he held at one time a clerkship in a bank, but was dismissed for insobriety and laziness; then after the war he was supposed to have bad health consequent on exposure in the trenches, and had not done a day's work since he was demobilised. But in spite, or perhaps because, of this, he was very markedly his mother's favourite; where the old woman would stint her hard-working, steady elder son, she would prove generous, even lavish, toward the loafer, Reuben; and young Mrs. Levison and he were thick as thieves.
"What money Reuben extracted out of his mother he would spend on amusements, and his sister-in-law was always ready to accompany him. It was either the cinema or dancing—oh, dancing above all! Rebecca Levison was, it seems, a beautiful dancer, and night after night she and Reuben would go to one or other of the halls or hotels where dancing was going on, and often they would not return until the small hours of the morning.
"Aaron Levison was indulgent and easy-going enough where his young wife was concerned: he thought that she could come to no harm while Reuben was there to look after her. But old Mrs. Levison, with the mistrust of her race for everything that is frivolous and thriftless, thought otherwise. She was convinced in her own mind that her beloved Reuben was being led astray from the path of virtue by his brother's wife, and she appears to have taken every opportunity to impress her thoughts and her fears upon the indulgent husband.
"It seems that one of the chief bones of contention between the old and the young Mrs. Levison was the question of jewellery. Old Mrs. Levison kept charge herself of all the articles of value that were pawned in the shop, and every evening after business hours Aaron would bring up all bits of jewellery that had been brought in during the day, and his mother would lock them up in a safe that stood in her room close by her bedside. The key of the safe she always carried about with her. For the most part these bits of jewellery consisted of cheap rings and brooches, but now and again some impoverished lady or gentleman would bring more valuable articles along for the purpose of raising a temporary loan upon them, and at the time of the tragedy there were some fine diamond ornaments reposing in the safe in old Mrs. Levison's room.
"Now young Mrs. Levison had more than once suggested that she might wear some of this fine jewellery when she went out to balls and parties. She saw no harm in it, and neither, for a matter of that, did Reuben. Why shouldn't Rebecca wear a few ornaments now and again if she wanted to?—they would always be punctually returned, of course, and they could not possibly come to any harm. But the very suggestion of such a thing was anathema to the old lady, and in her flat refusal ever to gratify such a senseless whim she had the whole-hearted support of her eldest son: such a swerving from traditional business integrity was not to be thought of in the Levison household.
"On that memorable Saturday evening young Mrs. Levison was going with her brother-in-law to one of the big charity balls at the Kensington Town Hall, and her great desire was to wear for the occasion a set of diamond stars which had lately been pledged in the shop, and which were locked up in the old lady's safe. Of course, Mrs. Levison refused, and it seems that the two ladies very nearly came to blows about this, the quarrel being all the more violent as Reuben hotly sided with his sister-in-law against his mother."