The Aldershot Autumn Manœuvres were over, the troops dispersed, and the victory of Lord Moffat over Sir David Roberts—hard won, and much trumpeted by the newspapers, whose correspondents had accompanied the respective staffs of the belligerent generals—was already as much forgotten by the public as the shreds of cartridge-case that lay strewn among the Wessex stubble-fields. Lord Harrogate had time now to attend to the queer business broached by that respectable person, Mr Richard Hold.
‘Master will see you, sir—my lord,’ said the grim, prim parlour-maid, dropping a flurried courtesy, in acknowledgment of the rank of the visitor, as she returned. ‘Only you must please walk into the garden. He’s mostly there in the fine weather.’
Hard by the water’s edge, in a leafy arbour, overrun with American creepers, with the morning newspapers neatly arranged upon a table beside him, and a long slender fishing-rod lying on the turf within reach, was Mr Sturgis, a little nervous-mannered, trimly attired old gentleman, who shaded his eyes with one thin white hand, and then held it out in salutation.
‘You’ve a De Vere face, my lord,’ he said, rising from his chair. ‘A boy you were, a boy, when I saw you last. But I have known so many of the name.’
Mr Sturgis was deaf; and it was through the serpentine tube of an ear-trumpet that Lord Harrogate had to explain the object of his visit. He wished, he said, that Mr Sturgis would so far oblige him as to recall his recollections of the time when Clare, Baroness Harrogate, lost that only child who would in due course have succeeded her in the title that had now lapsed to the Wolverhampton line. Was it not true—a proper explanation should be forthcoming as to the reason for the inquiry—that Mr Sturgis had been at the late Lady Harrogate’s cottage-residence, beside the Thames, on the very day of the child’s drowning? Was it not also true that there were some suspicions of foul play?
The little old lawyer fidgeted very much with his yellow silk pocket-handkerchief, his gold-rimmed spectacles, and a tiny gold snuff-box that lay on the table at his elbow, before he returned any answer to these questions. ‘Poor young thing! poor young creature!’ he said at last ‘Yes; I was there. I attended her ladyship in Berkshire, there, at her request, to see to the proper execution of some legal documents relating to the trifling property her late husband the Colonel had left behind him; and within a few minutes of my reaching Holly Cottage, the accident occurred. Ah, to be sure! It was sad, very sad!’
‘You speak of it, I perceive, as an accident?’ said Lord Harrogate interrogatively. ‘There were reports, I believe, to the contrary?’
‘Why, yes,’ replied Mr Sturgis, in a slow reluctant tone. ‘The vulgar, your lordship knows, like a spice of the marvellous, especially when a death is in question, and there were ugly rumours flying about—soon hushed up and forgotten, though.’
‘Do you imagine that there was any substratum of solid truth underlying these rumours?’ asked Lord Harrogate through the trumpet.
‘Now, my dear sir—my dear lord—that’s a leading question,’ said the little lawyer argumentatively, and laying one weak hand on his visitor’s coat-sleeve. ‘What we have to deal with, as men of business and men of the world, are first facts, and then probabilities. The case primâ facie was a very simple one. Child, of tender years, left alone on terrace overlooking river—scream heard—infant’s body vainly sought for in the Thames—a very melancholy but commonplace concatenation of circumstances. Nothing but the rank of the parties called attention to the misfortune.’