Lord Castlecourt’s valet, James Chawlmers, and Lady Castlecourt’s maid, Sophy Jeffers, had been occupied in this suite of apartments throughout the afternoon. At six Jeffers had laid out her ladyship’s clothes, taken the diamonds from the metal despatch-box in which they were usually carried, and set them on the bureau. She had then withdrawn into the sitting-room with Chawlmers, where they had remained for half an hour talking. During this period of time Jeffers deposes that she heard the rustle of a skirt in the sitting-room, and went to the door to see if any one had entered. No one was to be seen. She returned to the sitting-room, and resumed her conversation with Chawlmers. It is the general supposition—and it would appear to be the reasonable one—that the diamonds were then taken. According to Jeffers, they were in the case at six o’clock, and on the testimony of Lord and Lady Castlecourt they were gone at half-past seven. The person toward whom suspicion points is a housemaid, going by the name of Sara Dwight, who had a pass-key to the apartment.
The suspicions of Sara Dwight were strengthened by her actions. At quarter past seven that evening she left the hotel without giving warning, and carrying no further baggage than a small portmanteau. Upon examination of her room, it was discovered that she had left a gown hanging on the pegs, and her box, which contained a few articles of coarse underclothing and a wadded cotton quilt. She had been uncommunicative with the other servants, but had had much conversation with Sophy Jeffers, who described her as a brisk, civil-spoken girl, whose manner of speech was above her station.
The natural suspicions evoked by her behavior were intensified in the mind of Brison by the information that the celebrated crook Laura the Lady had returned to London. I myself had seen the woman at Earlscourt, and told Brison of the occurrence. It had appeared to Brison that Jeffers’ description of the housemaid had many points of resemblance with Laura the Lady. The theft reminded us both of the affair of the Comtesse de Chateaugay’s rubies, when this particular thief, who speaks French as well as she does English, was supposed to have been the moving spirit in one of the most daring jewel robberies of our time.
Brison, confident that Sara Dwight and Laura the Lady were one and the same, concentrated his powers in an effort to find her. He was successful to the extent of locating a woman closely resembling Laura the Lady living quietly in a furnished flat in Knightsbridge with a man who passed as her husband. He discovered that this couple had left for a “business trip” on the Continent shortly before Sara Dwight’s appearance at Burridge’s, and had returned shortly after her departure therefrom.
He regarded the pair and their movements as of sufficient importance to be watched, and for a week after their return from the Continent had the flat shadowed. One foggy night, while he himself was watching the place, the man and woman came out in evening dress, and took a hansom that was waiting for them. Brison followed them, and the fog being dense and their horse fresh, lost them in the maze of streets about Walworth Crescent. He is positive that the occupants of the cab realized they were followed and attempted to escape. He assures me that he saw the driver turn several times and look at his hansom, and then lash his horse to a desperate speed.
One of the points in this nocturnal pursuit that he thinks most noteworthy is the manner in which the occupants of the cab disappeared. After keeping it well in sight for over half an hour, he lost it completely and suddenly in the short street that runs from Walworth Crescent, north, into Farley Street; ten minutes later he is under the impression that he sighted it again near the Hyde Park Hotel. But if it was the same cab it was empty, and the driver was looking for fares. For some hours after this Brison patrolled the streets in the neighborhood, but could find no trace of the suspected pair. It was midnight when he returned to his surveillance of the flat. The next morning he heard that its occupants had left. A search-warrant revealed the fact that they had gone with such haste that they had left many articles of dress, etc., behind them. There was every evidence of a hurried flight.
All this was so much clear proof, in Brison’s opinion, of the guilt of Sara Dwight. Upon this hypothesis he is working, and I have not disturbed his confidence in the integrity of his efforts. The result of my investigations, which I have been quietly and systematically pursuing for the last three weeks, has led me to a different and much more sensational conclusion. That Sara Dwight may have taken the diamonds I do not deny. But she was merely an accomplice in the hands of another. The real thief, in my opinion, is Gladys, Marchioness of Castlecourt!
My reasons for holding this theory are based upon observations taken at the time, upon my large and varied experience in such cases, and upon information that I have been collecting since the occurrence. Let me briefly state the result of my deductions and researches.
Lady Castlecourt, who was the daughter of a penniless Irish clergyman, was a young girl of great beauty brought up in the direst poverty. Her marriage with the Marquis of Castlecourt, which took place seven years ago this spring, lifted her into a position of social prominence and financial ease. Society made much of her; she became one of its most brilliant ornaments. Her husband’s infatuation was well known. During the first years of their marriage he could refuse her nothing, and he stinted himself—for, tho well off, Lord Castlecourt is by no means a millionaire peer—in order to satisfy her whims. The lady very quickly developed great extravagances. She became known as one of the most expensively dressed women in London. It had been mentioned in certain society journals that Lord Castlecourt’s revenues had been so reduced by his wife’s extravagance that he had been forced to rent his town house in Grosvenor Gate, and for two seasons take rooms in Burridge’s Hotel.
This is a simple statement of certain tendencies of the lady. Now let me state, with more detail, how these tendencies developed and to what they led.