§3
"Fortunately for me," my eccentric friend went on glibly, "I was up betimes that morning when the papers came out with an early account of the mysterious crime in Bishop's Road. I say fortunately, because, as you know, mysteries of that sort interest me beyond everything, and for me there is no theatre in the world to equal in excitement the preliminary investigations of a well-conceived and cleverly executed crime. I should indeed have been bitterly disappointed had circumstances prevented me from attending that particular inquest. From the first, one was conscious of an atmosphere of mystery that hung over the events of that night in the Bishop's Road household: here indeed was no ordinary crime; the motive for it was still obscure, and one instinctively felt that somewhere in this vast city of London there lurked a criminal of no mean intelligence who would probably remain unpunished.
"Even the evidence of the police was not as uninteresting as it usually is, because it established beyond a doubt that this was not a case of common burglary and housebreaking. Certainly the open window and the torn creeper suggested that the miscreant had made his escape that way, but how he effected an entrance into Mrs. Levison's room remained an unsolved riddle. The absence of any trace of a man's passage on the surrounding walls of the backyard was very mysterious, and it was firmly established that the back door and the area door were secured, barred and bolted from the inside. A burglar might, of course, have entered the house by the front door, which was on the latch, using a skeleton key, but it still remained inconceivable how he gained access into Mrs. Levison's room.
"From the first the public had felt that there was a background of domestic drama behind the seemingly purposeless crime, for it did appear purposeless, seeing that so much portable jewellery had been left untouched in the safe. But it was when Ida Griggs, the housemaid, stood up in response to her name being called that one seemed to see the curtain going up on the first act of a terrible tragedy.
"Griggs was a colourless, youngish woman, with thin, sallow face, round blue eyes, and thin lips, and directly she began to speak one felt that underneath her placid, old-maidish manner there was an under-current of bitter spite, and even of passion. For some reason which probably would come to light later on, she appeared to have conceived a hatred for Mrs. Aaron; on the other hand she had obviously been doggedly attached to her late mistress, and in the evidence she dwelt at length on the quarrels between the two ladies, especially on the scene of violence that occurred at the dinner-table on Saturday, and which culminated in old Mrs. Levison flouncing out of the room.
"'Mrs. Levison was that upset,' the girl went on, in answer to a question put to her by the coroner, 'that I thought she was going to be ill, and she says to me that women like Mrs. Aaron were worse than —— as they would stick at nothing to get a new gown or a bit of jewellery. She also says to me——'
"But at this point the coroner checked her flow of eloquence, as, of course, what the dead woman had said could not be admitted as evidence. But nevertheless the impression remained vividly upon the public that there had been a terrible quarrel between those two, and of course we all knew that young Mrs. Levison had been seen at the ball wearing those five diamond stars; we did not need the sworn testimony of several witnesses who were called and interrogated on that point. We knew that Rebecca Levison had worn the diamond stars at the ball, and that Police Inspector Blackshire found them on her dressing-table the morning after the murder.
"Nor did she deny having worn them. At the inquest she renewed the statement which she had already made to the police.
"'My brother-in-law, Reuben,' she said, 'was a great favourite with his mother, and when we were both of us ready dressed he went into Mrs. Levison's room to say good-night to her. He cajoled her into letting me wear the diamond stars that night. In fact he always could make her do anything he really wanted, and they parted the best of friends.'
"'At what time did you go to the ball, Mrs. Levison?' the coroner asked.
"'My brother-in-law,' she replied, 'went out to call a taxi at half-past nine, and he and I got into it the moment one drew up.'
"'And Mr. Reuben Levison had been in to say good-night to his mother just before that?'
"'Yes, about ten minutes before.'
"'And he brought you the stars then,' the coroner insisted, 'and you put them on before he went out to call the taxi?'
"For the fraction of a second Rebecca Levison hesitated, but I do not think that any one in the audience except myself noted that little fact. Then she said quite firmly:
"'Yes, Mr. Reuben Levison told me that he had persuaded his mother to let me wear the stars, he handed them to me and I put them on.'
"'And that was at half-past nine?'
"Again Rebecca Levison hesitated, this time more markedly; her face was very pale and she passed her tongue once or twice across her lips before she gave answer.
"'At about half-past nine,' she said, quite steadily.
"'And about what time did you come home, Mrs. Levison?' the coroner asked her blandly.
"'It must have been close on one o'clock,' she replied. 'The dance was a Cinderella, but we walked part of the way home.'
"'What! in the rain?'
"'It had ceased raining when we came out of the town hall.'
"'Mr. Reuben Levison did not accompany you all the way?'
"'He walked with me across the Park, then he put me into a taxicab, and I drove home alone. I had my latchkey.'
"'But you failed to bolt the door after you when you returned. How was that?'
"'I forgot, I suppose,' the lovely Rebecca replied, with a defiant air. 'I often forget to bolt the door.'
"'And did you not see or hear anything strange when you came in?'
"'I heard nothing. I was rather sleepy and went straight up to my room. I was in bed within ten minutes of coming in.'
"She was speaking quite firmly now, in a clear though rather harsh voice: but that she was nervous, not to say frightened, was very obvious. She had a handkerchief in her hand, with which she fidgeted until it was nothing but a small, wet ball, and she had a habit of standing first on one foot then on the other, and of shifting the position of her hat. I do not think that there was a single member of the jury who did not think that she was lying, and she knew that they thought so, for now and again her fine dark eyes would scrutinise their faces and dart glances at them either of scorn or of anxiety.
"After a while she appeared very tired, and when pressed by the coroner over some trifling matters, she broke down and began to cry. After which she was allowed to stand down, and Mr. Reuben Levison was called.
"I must say that I took an instinctive dislike to him as he stood before the jury with a jaunty air of complete self-possession. He had a keen, yet shifty eye, and sharp features very like a rodent. To me it appeared at once that he was reciting a lesson rather than giving independent evidence. He stated that he had been present at dinner during the quarrel between his mother and sister-in-law, and his mother was certainly very angry at the moment, but later on he went upstairs to bid her good-night. She cried a little and said a few hard things, but in the end she gave way to him as she always did: she opened the safe, got out the diamond stars and gave them to him, making him promise to return them the very first thing in the morning.
"'I told her,' Reuben went on glibly, 'that I would not be home until the Monday morning. I would see Rebecca into a taxi after the ball, but I had the intention of spending a couple of nights and the intervening Sunday with a pal who had a flat at Haverstock Hill. I thought then that my mother would lock the stars up again, however—she was always a woman of her word—once she had said a thing she would stick to it—and so as I said she gave me the stars and Mrs. Aaron wore them that night.'
"'And you handed the stars to Mrs. Aaron at half-past nine?'
"The coroner asked the question with the same earnest emphasis which he had displayed when he put it to young Mrs. Levison. I saw Reuben's shifty eye flash across at her, and I know that she answered that flash with a slight drop of her eyelids. Whereupon he replied as readily as she had done:
"'Yes, sir, it must have been about half-past nine.'
"And I assure you that every intelligent person in that room must have felt certain that Reuben was lying just as Rebecca had done before him."