The adventures of Dora Bell, detective

by Mrs. George Corbett

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.