The Loudwater Tragedy

by T. W. Speight

12 Leighton Place, Worthing.

Thursday.

"My Dear Phil.--By this post I send you a copy of a certain penny weekly journal entitled The Family Cornucopia, which, for lack of something better to read, I picked up the other day at a bookstall while on my way to the beach.

"Naturally, you will at once say to yourself (for you cannot deny, dear, that you occasionally express yourself with somewhat unnecessary emphasis over trifles), 'What the dickens does the girl mean by bothering me with her trumpery penny rubbish?' Well, that is just the point about which 'the girl' is going to enlighten you.

"Of course you have not forgotten 'The Loudwater Tragedy,' as most of the newspapers called it at the time (although some there were who wrote of it as the 'Merehampton Mystery'). Neither, perhaps, has it escaped your memory how, with the object of helping to interest and carry out of herself for a little while, a young woman who, just then, was staying at a dull Devonshire village with the captious, but much-to-be-pitied, invalid in whose service she was, you wrote her a number of letters, dated from the very roof under which the tragedy in question had been enacted, in which you recapitulated for her information all the details of the crime as gathered by you on the spot; nor how you sketched for her the old mansion and its inmates, with the view from its windows, and all the quaint features of the sleepy little seaport, so that, after a time, she could almost have persuaded herself that what you had written formed a part of her personal experiences. If you have forgotten those letters, I have not. Yesterday I refreshed my memory by reading them again, and the reason I did so is this.

"In the periodical I am sending you there is an article extending over five pages, entitled, 'How, and Why' which, strange to say, not merely seems to be based on the Loudwater Tragedy, but, under the guise of fiction, tells the story of the crime down to its minutest details; and not only does that, but, with almost photographic fidelity, limns for its readers the portraits of the various persons who were in any way mixed up with that mysterious affair.

"But the writer of 'How, and Why'--he or she, as the case may be--does more, much more, than merely retell the story of the crime and describe the people who had to do with it. The article in question purports to be the confession of the murderer of Mr. Melray, written on the eve of his suicide, and professes to trace, step by step, how he was led on to the commission of the crime, and, in point of fact, sets the whole affair in an entirely fresh and startling light. To prove to you that this is so, it will only be necessary to say that the writer of the confession describes himself as having been a lover, before her marriage, of the old merchant's 'girl-wife,' and that it was owing to his inadvertently interrupting an assignation between the young people that 'Mr. Melville' came by his death. High words passed between the elder man and the younger; there was a scuffle; a blow was given in the heat of passion, and in a moment the irrevocable deed was done. I have omitted to say that, according to the story, after the police have given up the case as hopeless, suspicion unexpectedly attaches itself to the head-clerk, (who figures as 'Mr. Day'), and that, in the result, circumstantial evidence is brought to bear against him sufficiently strong to ensure his conviction on the capital charge. It is after 'Mr. Day' is left for execution that the writer of the confession--who, although he acknowledges to the crime of which he has been guilty, is careful to impress upon his readers that he is not without his fine qualities--overcome by remorse, determines to avow the truth and thereby save the life of an innocent man, albeit at the expense of his own. He pens a farewell message to the 'Ernestine' of the story--that is to say, to the murdered man's widow--and then gives his readers to understand that the moment after the last word of his confession shall have been written he will swallow the poison which he has procured in readiness for that purpose.

"Now, all this seems to me sufficiently remarkable. Of course, the question is, how much truth and how much fiction underlies the supposititious confession? That the whole of the latter part of it is purely fictitious we know already. We know, for instance, that not an iota of suspicion ever attached itself to Mr. Melray's managing clerk. Consequently that he has never been arrested, tried, or condemned. Further than that, we know that the crime remains an unexplained mystery to this day.

"In view, then, of the fact that the latter half of the self-styled confession is proved to be a sheer invention, might it not reasonably be assumed that the first half pertains to the same class of narrative? Such would seem to be a common-sense way of looking at the affair, were it not that there is so much of actual fact as regards the commission of the crime itself mixed up with the narrative, and so many real persons under assumed names introduced therein, as to create a suspicion (in my mind, at least) that there may be some substratum of truth in that part of it which attributes the death of Mr. Melray to a quarrel with a former lover of his young and attractive wife.

"That you will read 'How, and Why,' after what I have here said about it, I do not doubt; after which I think you will agree with me that the story refers to 'The Loudwater Tragedy' and to no other crime, and that the writer of it, whoever he may be, displays a singularly minute and intimate acquaintance with all the details of that still unsolved mystery.