“Froissart! You don’t mean that Lord Froissart has committed suicide!” Hopford exclaimed, stopping in his work and looking up.
“Why, yes. His body was found at the foot of the cliffs at Bournemouth about six o’clock this evening. Nobody saw him go over, apparently, but while I was at the Junior Carlton the man I was dining with, a friend of Froissart’s, got a telegram from a friend in Bournemouth saying that an open letter had just been found in the dead man’s pocket, in which he confessed that he was about to take his life. My friend says Froissart never really got over the shock of his daughter’s suicide—it was suicide in her case, too, of course. He also said that of late Froissart had been looking terribly ill and worried. It’s a good story, anyhow, and I think I have more facts than any other morning paper will get hold of. Lucky I happened to be dining with a man who knew Froissart intimately—what?”
Next day the papers were full of the tragedy. Lord Froissart had, it seemed, left his house in Queen Anne’s Gate about eleven o’clock in the morning, the time he usually went out. He had called to see his lawyers, in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, shortly before noon, and remained there about three quarters of an hour. From there he had gone, apparently on foot, to the Metropolitan Secret Agency, “the house with the bronze face,” and after interviewing Mr. Alix Stothert, head of that concern, had lunched alone at Frascati’s. He had caught the three thirty-seven train to Bournemouth, and after that nothing more was known until his body had been found at the foot of the cliffs by some children, who had at once run home and told their parents, who, in turn, had notified the police. All this the newspapers had succeeded in ferreting out before their late editions went to press.
The report written by Hopford contained certain intimate and exclusive details, however. Lord Froissart had stayed late at the Junior Carlton the night before, writing one letter after another. A waiter of whom he had inquired at what times fast trains left for Bournemouth said he had thought his lordship seemed “excitable and nervy.” Before leaving the club, he added, deceased had pressed a five pound note into his hand, greatly to his surprise, for he had never before known Lord Froissart to infringe the club rules.
In addition this report stated that the writer knew for a fact that Lord Froissart had on several occasions recently spoken about suicide, a subject in which he appeared suddenly to evince a deep interest. Further, he had asked a friend of the writer’s, two days previously, if he had any idea what height the highest cliffs at Bournemouth were, and if he had ever heard of any one committing suicide by jumping off them. A sealed letter found on the body was addressed in deceased’s handwriting to his elder and only surviving child, the Honorable Mrs. Ferdinand-Westrup, then living in Ceylon with her husband, who was a tea planter. No motive could be assigned for Lord Froissart’s having taken his life, though the shock of his daughter’s death the year before might have unhinged his mind.
Some days later the usual verdict was returned—“Suicide whilst temporarily insane,” and within a fortnight the tragedy had been virtually forgotten.
By all except one or two people. Captain Charles Preston remembered it; so did Cora Hartsilver, and so did Yootha Hagerston. And the reason they remembered it was this.
Lord Froissart died quite a rich man. His sole heir ought by rights to have been his daughter, Mrs. Ferdinand-Westrup. Instead, the bulk of his fortune and property were left to an individual of whom nobody, apparently, had ever heard—a Mrs. Timothy Macmahon, described as the widow of Timothy Macmahon of Cashel, Co. Tipperary, and the will, which was not yet proved, had been executed on the morning of the very day of the tragedy, at the offices of Messrs. Eton, West and Shrubsole, solicitors, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields.
Now those solicitors, as Preston happened to have heard from his servant, whose brother was a clerk in Eton, West and Shrubsole’s office, were solicitors also to Jessica Mervyn-Robertson. A coincidence, perhaps, as Preston said to Cora Hartsilver a day or two after Froissart’s death, yet in his opinion a curious coincidence.
And when, ten days later, Hopford succeeded in obtaining an interview with Cora Hartsilver, and told her of his interview with Aloysius Stapleton, and what Stapleton had tried to induce him to hint at in the newspaper—feeling it his duty to tell her, he had no hesitation in breaking faith with Stapleton—events in the life of Aloysius Stapleton began to look peculiar.