The Loudwater Tragedy

by T. W. Speight

Mrs. Melray the elder was never told that it was to the hand of her nephew that James Melray owed his death-blow. To her, as to the world at large, the Loudwater Tragedy remained an unsolved mystery. Neither was she ever enlightened as to that secondary crime of forgery and fraud of which her nephew had been guilty. To have told her would have answered no good purpose, but might, indeed, have had a serious effect upon her health, already hardly tried by that which had gone before. It was a quite sufficient shock to her to learn of the elopement of Dyson and Miss Glyn. Womanlike, she laid the whole blame of the affair on the girl. Doubtless she was one of those double-faced, scheming hussies who seem sent into the world purposely to spoil the lives and ruin the careers of whatever young men may not be strong-minded enough to resist their siren-like blandishments. That poor dear Richard had been both weak and foolish she could not deny; still, he was to be pitied far more than blamed. He was not the first man by many, nor would he be the last, to fall a victim to the arts of a designing woman. As long as she lived Mrs. Melray continued to think and speak of Dyson with mingled pity and tenderness, and at her death it was found that she had bequeathed him half of all she had to leave.

Long before that event took place Robert Melray had paid over to Dyson, or rather to the solicitor who represented him, the three thousand pounds willed him by the man whose death lay at his door. Had it not been for those two legacies falling in one after another, Dyson, in all probability, would have lived several years longer than he did. But for them--his wife's fortune having been quickly dissipated--he would not have been able to continue in that course of fast living, combined with hard drinking, which gradually shattered his constitution and consigned him to a premature grave while he ought still to have been in the prime of life.

The Erinyes have many ways of avenging their misdeeds on the children of men.

Within twenty-four hours of Dyson's disappearance Denia had quitted Loudwater House, never to return. She announced her intention of taking up her abode, for a time at least, with certain friends in London whom she had known during her uncle's lifetime. About a year later, she married again, by which time she had received her share of the property left by her husband. Her second husband (a blackleg with the manners and education of a gentleman) was a very different type of man from James Melray, as, later on, Denia found to her cost.

It was about the time of Denia's marriage that the final mystery in connection with the Loudwater Tragedy found its solution.

One day a young American arrived at Merehampton in search of his brother, who had been missing for upwards of a year. After some difficulty he had succeeded in tracing him as far as the little seaport, but at that point he came, for the time being, to a deadlock. Like so many of his countrymen, the missing man had been fond of adventure and change of scene. For many months he had been touring about England, chiefly on foot, and, with a view of eking out his slender means, had been in the habit of writing sketches of English life and character for one or more American newspapers, as well as occasional short stories for sundry magazines.

It would be beyond the scope of this narrative to recount how Gavin Pryce, having succeeded in picking up the missing clue, was led onward step by step till at length a shred of doubt was no longer left him that the unidentified victim of the Eastwich accident was none other than his brother Evan.

The way in which the latter had acquired his intimate knowledge of the details of the Loudwater Tragedy, as set forth by him in the MS. which fell into the hands of Mr. Timmins, was as peculiar as it was simple.

It may be remembered that the alarm raised by the housemaid Charlotte, which followed immediately on her discovery of her master's body, was responded to by a constable and a couple of strangers who happened to be passing at the time. One of the strangers in question was the young American, Evan Pryce. He it was who helped the constable to examine the body with the view of ascertaining whether life was extinct, and, a little later, assisted in carrying it upstairs. At the inquest he was called as a witness, and, being a newspaper man, the case had an exceptional interest for him in so far as it furnished him with an ample supply of "copy" for some time to come. Having used it up as far as the newspapers were concerned, the idea would appear to have occurred to him that the main incidents of the affair, if worked up into a magazine story, would not prove ineffective. Hence, in order to supply the crime with a raison d'être, his invention of a lover for the young wife, who finding on his return from abroad that she is married, picks a quarrel with the husband; at which point, as the reader may remember, the manuscript broke off abruptly. Whether the author had written no further when he came by his untimely end, or whether only a part of the manuscript was recovered from the débris of the accident, is a question which must remain for ever unanswered. It will not have been forgotten that it was Mr. Timmins who furnished the story with an ending after a fashion of his own.

That it was as gall and wormwood to Mrs. Sudlow to have to be beholden to a woman she disliked more than anyone, and whom she had contemned and turned her back upon as the widow of a notorious felon, for the pecuniary help which had been forthcoming from no other source, may be taken for granted. But for Mrs. Winslade the Vicar would have been a ruined man. It was bitter, very bitter, to have to acknowledge that such was the indisputable fact. And then, what likelihood was there of her husband ever being in a position to pay back the sum which had been thus generously and unconditionally advanced? None at all as far as Mrs. Sudlow could see. A few pounds might be spared now and again--mere driblets, as it were--but, in the face of family expenses which could not but help growing for several years to come, it would not be possible to do more. In those days Mrs. Sudlow was a very unhappy woman.