I will admit here, before I go further, that my suspicions of Lady Castlecourt were aroused from the first. It was, perhaps, with a predisposed mind that I began those explorations into her life during the past five years which have convinced me that she was the moving spirit in this theft of the diamonds.
For the first two years of her married life Lady Castlecourt lived most of the time on the estate of Castlecourt Marsh Manor. During this period she became the mother of two sons, and it was after the birth of the second that she went to London and spent her first season there since her marriage. She was in blooming health, and even more beautiful than she had been in her girlhood. She became the fashion: no gathering was complete without her; her costumes were described in the papers; royalty admired her.
I have discovered that at this time her husband gave her six hundred pounds per annum for a dressing allowance. During the first two years of her married life she lived within this. But after that she exceeded it to the extent of hundreds, and finally thousands, of pounds. The fifth year after her marriage she was in debt three thousand pounds, her creditors being dressmakers, furriers, jewelers, and milliners in London and Paris. She made no attempt to pay these debts, and the tradesmen, knowing her high social position and her husband’s rigid sense of pecuniary obligations, did not press her, and she went on spending with an unstinted hand.
It was last year that she finally precipitated the catastrophe by the purchase of a coat of Russian sable for the sum of one thousand pounds, and a set of turquoise ornaments valued at half that amount. Each of these purchases was made in Paris. The two creditors, having been already warned of her disinclination to meet her bills, had, it is said, laid wagers with other firms to which she was deeply in debt, that they would extract the money from her within the year.
It was in the summer of the past year that Lady Castlecourt was first threatened by Bolkonsky, the furrier, with law proceedings. In the end of September she went to Paris and visited the man in his own offices, and—I have it from an eyewitness—exhibited the greatest trepidation and alarm, finally begging, with tears, for an extension of a month’s time. To this Bolkonsky consented, warning her that, at the end of that time, if his account was not settled, he would acquaint his lordship with the situation and institute legal proceedings.
Before the month was up—that was in October of the past year—his account was paid in full by Lady Castlecourt herself. At the same time other accounts in Paris and London were entirely settled or compromised. I find that, during the months of October and November, Lady Castlecourt paid off debts amounting to nearly four thousand pounds. In most instances she settled them personally, paying them in bank-notes. A few claims were paid by check. I have it from those with whom she transacted these monetary dealings that she seemed greatly relieved to be able to discharge her obligations, and that in all cases she requested silence on the subject as the price of her future patronage.
I now come to a feature of the case that I admit greatly puzzles me. Lady Castlecourt was still wearing the diamonds when this large sum was disbursed by her. As far as can be ascertained, she had made no effort to sell them, and I can find no trace of a frustrated attempt to steal them. She had suddenly become possessed of four thousand pounds without the aid of the diamonds. They were not called into requisition till nearly six months later.
The natural supposition would be that “some one”—an unknown donor—had put up the four thousand pounds; in fact, that Lady Castlecourt had a lover, to whom, in a desperate extremity, she had appealed. But the most thorough examination of her past life reveals no hint of such a thing. Frivolous and extravagant as she undoubtedly was, she seems to have been, as far as her personal conduct goes, a moral and virtuous lady. Her name has been associated with no man’s, either in a foolish flirtation or a scandalous and compromising intrigue; in fact, her devotion to Lord Castlecourt appears to have been of an absolutely genuine and sincere kind. While she did not scruple to deceive him as to her pecuniary dealings, she unquestionably seems to have been perfectly upright and honest in the matter of marital fidelity.
Where, then, did Lady Castlecourt secure this large sum of money? My reading of the situation is briefly this:
Her creditors becoming rebellious and Lady Castlecourt becoming terrified, she appealed to some woman friend for a loan. Who this is I have no idea, but among her large circle of acquaintances there are several ladies of sufficient means and sufficiently intimate with Lady Castlecourt to have been able to advance the required sum. This was done, as I have shown above, in the month of October, when Lady Castlecourt was in Paris, where she at once began to pay off her debts. After this she continued wearing the diamonds, and, in my opinion—such is her shallowness and irresponsibility of character—forgot the obligations of the loan, which had probably been made under a promise of speedy repayment, either in full or in part.