Statement of Lilly Bingham, known
in England as Laura Brice, in the
United States as Frances Latimer,
to the police of both countries as
Laura the Lady, besides having recently
figured as a housemaid at
Burridge’s Hotel, London, under the
alias of Sara Dwight.
I NEVER was so glad of anything in my life as to get out of that beastly hole, Chicago. I’ll certainly never go back there unless there is an inducement big enough to compensate for the elevated railroad, the lake, the noise, the winds, the restaurants, the climate, and the people. Ugh, what a nightmare!
England’s the country for me, and London is the focus of it. You can live like a Christian here, and enjoy all the refinements and decencies of life for a reasonable consideration. How my heart leaped when I saw the old, gray, sooty walls looming up through the river haze—I thought it best to sneak by the back way, because if I go up the front stairs and ring the bell there may be loiterers round who had seen Laura the Lady before, and might become impertinently curious about her future movements. And then when I saw Tom waiting for me—my own Tom, that I lawfully married, in a burst of affection, three years ago, at Leamington—I shouted out greetings, and danced on the deck, and waved my handkerchief. It was worth while having lived in Chicago for a year to come back to London and Tom and a little furnished flat in Knightsbridge.
We were very respectable and quiet for a month—just a few callers climbing up the front stairs, and demure female tea-parties at intervals. I bought plants to put in the windows, and did knitting in a conspicuous solitude which the neighbors could overlook. When I saw the maiden lady opposite scrutinizing me through an opera-glass I felt like sending her my marriage certificate to run her eye over and return. We even hired a maid of all work from an agency as a touch of local color on this worthy domestic picture. But when the Castlecourt diamond scheme began to ripen I nagged at her till she was impudent and bundled her off. Maud Durlan came in then, put on a cap and apron, and played her part a good deal better than she used to when she acted soubrettes in the vaudeville.
We were two weeks lying low, maturing our plans, tho when I left Chicago I knew what I was coming back for. Outwardly all was the same as usual—the decent callers still climbed the front stairs, and elderly ladies who, without any stretch of imagination, might have been my mother and aunts, dropped in for tea. I used to wonder how the people on the floor below—they were the family of a man who made rubber tires for bicycles—would have felt if they could have seen Maud, our neat and respectable slavy, sitting with the French heels of her slippers caught on the third shelf of the bookcase, dropping cigarette ashes into the waste-paper basket.
When all was ready, Tom and I left for a “business” trip on the Continent. We went away in a four-wheeler, driven by Handsome Harry, the top piled with luggage, my face at the window smiling a last, cautioning good-by at Maud. Five days later, under the name of Sara Dwight, I was installed as housemaid on the third floor of Burridge’s Hotel.
I had done work of that kind before—once in New York, and at another time in Paris; having been born and spent my childhood in that cheerful city, my French is irreproachable. The famous robbery of the Comtesse de Chateaugay’s rubies was my work—but I mustn’t brag about past exploits. I had never been engaged in a hotel theft of the importance of the Castlecourt one. The necklace was valued at between eight thousand and nine thousand pounds. The stones were not so remarkable for size as for quality. They were of an unusually even excellence and pure water.
After I had been in the hotel for a few days and watched the Castlecourt party, all apprehension left me, and I felt confident and cool. They were an extremely simple layout. Lady Castlecourt was a beauty—a seductive, smiling, white and gold person, without any sense at all. Her husband adored her. Being a man of some brains, that was what might have been expected. What might not have been expected was that she appeared to reciprocate his affection. Having made a careful study of the manners and customs of the upper classes, I was not prepared for this. I note it as one of those exceptions to rule which occur now and then in the animal kingdom.
Besides the marquis and his lady, there were a maid and a valet to be considered. The former was a dense, honest woman named Sophy Jeffers, close on to forty, and of the unredeemed ugliness of the normal lady’s maid. Such being the case, it was but natural to find that she was in love with Chawlmers, the valet, who was twenty-seven and good-looking. Jeffers was too truthful to tamper with her own age, but she did not feel it necessary to keep up the same rigid standard when it came to Chawlmers. It was less of a lie to make him ten years older than herself ten years younger. From these facts I drew my deductions as to the sort of adversary Jeffers might be, and I found that, by a modest avoidance of Chawlmers’ society, I could make her my lifelong friend.
The evening of the Duke of Duxbury’s dinner was the time I decided upon as the most convenient for taking the stones. I had heard from Jeffers that the marquis and marchioness were going. When her ladyship left her rooms that afternoon I heard her tell Jeffers that she would not be back till after six, and to have everything ready at that hour. Off and on for the next two hours I was doing work about the corridor with a duster. It was near six when I heard the two servants talking in the sitting-room. A bird’s-eye view through the keyhole showed me where they were, and that they were engaged in searching for something in the desk. It was my chance. With my housemaid’s pass-key I opened the door a crack, and peeped in. The leather case of the diamonds stood on the dressing-table not twenty feet from the door. It did not take five minutes to enter, open the case, take the necklace, and leave. Jeffers heard me. She was in the room almost as I closed the door. Before she could have got into the hall I was in the broom-closet hunting for a dust-pan. But she evidently suspected nothing, for the door did not open and there was no indication of disturbance.