IV. Dora Turns the Tables
“There will soon be very little of my uncle Calmour’s property left, if this woman is allowed to pursue her present reckless course of extravagance,” observed Mr Churchill, discontentedly, about two years after the incidents narrated in the last story.
He had come to consult me as to the possibility of still outwitting Mrs Calmour, and of regaining possession of the family acres. He had but the haziest idea as to the plan most likely to realise his wishes, and admitted that the widow’s position seemed unassailable from an ordinary point of view; yet, in spite of our previous failure, he was imbued with such an extravagant belief in the abnormal ability of Messrs Bell and White that he had taken it into his head to see if we could not unseat the adventuress, even now.
“According to the law of England,” I observed to Mr Churchill, “Mrs Calmour is perfectly entitled to squander the property. The will has been duly proved, and unless we could show that this clever schemer’s title is base there is little chance of ousting her.”
“What are the pleas upon which we could upset her right to possession?”
“Probably a clever lawyer, if you could find such an individual, might suggest several. At present I can only think of two.”
“And they are?”
“The illegality of Mr Calmour’s marriage and the existence of a will posterior to the one that has been proved.”
“Miss Bell! You give me new hope! There may really be another will in existence, or rather, there may have been. When I come to think of it, it is not likely that such a will would have been kept so long, even if it had ever been penned. To suppress a will is a serious thing, and culprits do not, I should imagine, carefully preserve the evidence of their own guilt.”
“There you are quite wrong. There are innumerable instances on record of people who have been punished for grave crimes that would never have been brought home to them but for their own incredible carelessness. A letter, an article of wearing apparel, a trivial trinket – these have often been the principal factors in elucidating criminal puzzles.”
“Then you really think Mrs Calmour has kept the real will back?”
“My dear sir! I never said any such thing. I only supposed it possible that, to secure the property, Mrs Calmour had suppressed her husband’s final testament, in which case it might safely be concluded that it would have been entirely in your or your wife’s favour, since the will that was eventually proved required a lot of very clever scheming on the successful legatee’s part.”
“Just so, and I mean to act on the supposition that you have made a correct guess at the true state of affairs. The idea that the marriage was not legal cannot be entertained for a moment. There are too many proofs to the contrary, worse luck.”
“So you think. But we are accustomed to look at a case from every point of view. An exhaustive analysis of Mrs Calmour’s past might disclose the existence of a prior right on the part of some accommodating individual, who is content to remain in the background for the sake of a liberal share of the plunder.”
But this view of the case, excited my impulsive client so much that I with difficulty restrained his prematurely triumphant exultation, and when he left our office he seemed to be firmly convinced that his wife would still become possessor of what was left of her father’s estate. As she was an only child, it had always been natural to suppose herself the heiress, and as at first one beloved piece of land and then another was sold by the present possessor she found it very hard to hear of such wanton waste of fine property. Probably she would share her husband’s newly-awakened hopes and enthusiasm when he told her of his interview with me.
And were these hopes quite as unfounded as they appear at the first blush?
Probably not.
I had been so much chagrined at the manner in which I had been outwitted by Mrs Calmour, that I had resolved to ferret well into her past life, and rake thence such items of interest as would help to turn the tables on her, and return to Mrs Churchill the property which I deemed morally hers.
I had already made good progress in my researches before I was consulted again by my client. But it would not have been wise, from a professional point of view, to betray the full extent of my knowledge at once. Clients have sometimes a rather a nasty knack of imagining that the remuneration due to a private detective is commensurate with the amount of research required after a case has been actually taken in hand on their behalf. They forget that all the knowledge and experience which is anterior to their application for their assistance has been the result of determined labour and forethought, without which no detective could hope to succeed, and which deserve ultimate interest equally with the client’s own provision for the future, whether it be in the shape of invested funds or acquired mental knowledge.
Of course, a great proportion of our clients are of a more reasonable nature. But the exceptions have taught us caution, and we rarely fall into a confidential mood until we are quite sure that our professional prestige will not suffer by doing so.
Thus it happened that I forebore to tell Mr Churchill how hopeful I really considered his wife’s cause to be. But I knew enough already to have made Mrs Calmour quake in her shoes, could she have guessed that I was on her trail. For instance, I knew that a certain Mr Selby formerly posed as the guardian of the lady, who, by-the-by, was at least thirty-six years of age, though she only owned to being twenty-seven. On making certain inquiries, I learned something else about Mr Selby, and came to the conclusion that his doings were quite as shady as those of his “ward.”
He made it a practice to hunt up charming country cottages or handsomely furnished suites of rooms and to offer such liberal terms for them as tempted their owners to take a lodger in for once, in order to earn an extra honest penny. Then Mr Selby, who had sung the praises of his accomplice sky-high, would superintend the installation of that individual with much empressement. The lady, whom he always represented as rich, and whom he endowed with fictitious relationship to people of note, who would have repudiated all connection with her, would bring her maid and her bosom female crony, a certain Miss Losteel, and they and the reputed guardian would eat and drink the poor hosts into ruination.
This would last until the latter began to look askance at the idea of always receiving excuses instead of money, and then the gang would suddenly seek fresh victims. Oddly enough, the victimised hosts generally found that some of their treasured knick-knacks always disappeared at the same time as their swindling lady lodger, who, while the spell of her fascination lasted, borrowed money for stamps, stationery, railway fares, and any other thing for which money is absolutely needed.
The woman was short, squat, dark, and of curious, square set features. While under the aegis of the charm which she could use at will, people found all sorts of excuses for her constant lapses into vulgarity, and smiled at the egregious vanity she displayed. Once fully alive to the unscrupulous creature’s real nature, they wondered how such an ugly incarnation of selfishness could ever have fascinated them, and were inclined to attribute her power to sorcery, or hypnotism, or to anything but the deep-laid plots of mere cunning.
After Miss Reede’s marriage to Mr Calmour, the whilom guardian (he posed as “uncle” at Dieppe) lived in bachelor chambers in London in great style, and did not even trouble to go to the office in which he had formerly done occasional business of a shady sort. He had money enough to live upon, and I had no difficulty in surmising whence it came.
Soon after Mrs Calmour succeeded to the estates Mr Selby developed into a property buyer. He figured at several of the purchases of land sold by the widow. As the latter showed no signs of being better off for all the cash she got, I inferred that it found its way back into Mr Selby’s possession, and that the latest scheme was intended to divert the ownership of the property to the nominal purchaser, instead of the widow.
I argued that there must be a reason for this, and the painstaking researches I made resulted in the astounding discovery that the couple were really man and wife. They had found it pay better to profess a different relationship. The marriage with Mr Calmour was, therefore, null and void. But I was not quite sure that this fact would suffice to restore her fortune to Mrs Churchill.
Prolonged observation convinced me that the utmost harmony existed between the two conspirators.
I felt sure that fear of discovery was prompting the transfer of the property, and argued that as friendly relations existed between the two principals, there must be a third party of whose revelations they were afraid.
It did not require much ingenuity to supply the missing link in the chain of evidence I was weaving round the lady who had outwitted me so cleverly when posing as my colleague. Suppose I turned my attention to the Mr and Mrs Carlile, whose active co-operation ensured the success of the widow’s schemes?
I thought the plan a very good one, and followed it up with such success that I learnt enough of the past life of the Carliles to have sent them both to penal servitude.
My colleagues had given me their active co-operation, and when I had arrived at a quite triumphant point of my personal investigations, I knew exactly where to put my hands on the people I wanted. But I did not care to present myself unsupported in the lion’s den, so was accompanied both by my uncle and by Mr Henniker when I paid the unsuspecting swindlers a visit.
Within half an hour we convinced them that we had them in our power, and that the only way to escape imprisonment themselves was to confess everything they knew relating to Mr Calmour’s inheritrix and her accomplice. And a pretty confession it was too!
It seems that the misguided squire had made two wills, both in legal form, and both drafted without the assistance of a lawyer. Of the one the reader has heard particulars, and though it did not carry out Mrs Calmour’s own views, she preferred to risk her chances on it rather than on the one made by the legatee in the heat of passion, a few hours before he died.
This last will left everything to Ada Calmour, absolutely and unconditionally, and was the outcome of Mr Calmour’s discovery that he had been duped and fooled. He was altogether so excited at this revelation that he was visited by a stroke, and died without being able to impart his knowledge to anyone who would have helped to see justice done to his daughter.
Mrs Carlile was a visitor in the house at the time. She obtained possession of Mr Calmour’s last will, and declined to give it up when asked to do so by the supposed widow, as she was quite aware of the power its possession gave her. The Carliles had lived quite luxuriously at Mrs Calmour’s expense, but had found it necessary to threaten exposure lately, as they had become suspicious of her intention to realise all she could, and levant with her lawful husband.
The reader can guess the rest. Mr and Mrs Churchill are installed in their own again. Even the land nominally sold to the man calling himself Selby is restored to them, as the transfer was a palpably fraudulent transaction between him and his wife, who had no legal power to sell.
The Carliles have deemed it wise to emigrate. I wish I could add that the Selbys had been duly punished for their misdeeds. But Mrs Churchill did not care to expose her poor father’s weakness too widely, and has let them go scot free.
For anything I know to the contrary, they have reverted to their former farcical pretence of being a guardian of his rich genius of a ward. Certain it is, that wherever they are, they are swindling somebody, and I would earnestly warn my readers against trusting the unsupported testimony of a plausible, gentlemanly fellow who wants to engage costly board and lodgings for his lady friend, whom he endows with the additional recommendation of being about to outstrip her pretended talented relations in the race for fame.