Chapter Thirty Nine.
Contains Lord Glenelg’s Story.
There was a long and painful pause.
“Eight years ago I was living with my wife and Judith at the Villa Carracci, in the Val d’Ema, close to Florence, and first met the hunchback Graniani, or Fra Francesco, as he was then called, for he was then a monk at the Certosa Monastery at Galuzzo,” said Lord Glenelg in a hard, strained voice. “He came to beg alms of me; our conversation ran upon books and ancient manuscripts, and I found, to my surprise, that he was very well versed in the study of palaeography. Discovering that I was a collector, he invited me to the monastery one day, and there exhibited the treasures of the library, including a very remarkable manuscript of Arnoldus. Away at Sienna there lived an English friend of this hunchback, named Selby, of whom he often spoke. One afternoon, when visiting the Certosa, I was introduced to this man, and found him to be a person whose past history was somewhat shady, and who was living in Sienna in strict privacy. It struck me from the first that the fellow, like lots of others one meets in Italy and elsewhere, had got into some trouble in England, and lived abroad to avoid arrest. On several occasions we met, and I could not help suspecting that there was some extraordinary bond of friendship existing between that hunchback monk and my dark-faced, oily-looking compatriot, who lived the life of a hermit, sometimes in Pisa, at others in Sienna, and frequently in Rome.
“My wife frequently gave alms to Fra Francesco, hence the lay brother was a constant caller, and was in the habit of bringing us in return presents of grapes, figs, and salads from the monastery garden. I, too, became interested in him, for his knowledge was several times of great assistance to me in my palaeographical studies in the Laurenziana Library and the archives of the Palazzo Vecchio. So, gradually, his connection with the adventurous Englishman passed out of my mind.
“After about a year a crushing blow fell upon me. I had been into Florence one morning making some researches in the archives, and on my return discovered my poor wife seated in her little salon stark and dead. She had, it seemed, received Fra Francesco in the hall, he having called with a present of grapes, and she had given him a few lire. The grapes had been taken to the dining-room, and she had gone straight to her own boudoir and must have there expired without being able to call assistance. The medical examination was a searching one; but it was found that death was due to sudden heart failure. Fra Francesco explained at the inquiry that my wife seemed quite in her usual health when she had given him alms, and that she had told him to call again on the following Monday. Selby was in Florence, and called to condole with me on the day my poor wife was interred in the English cemetery. After that I took Judith, and we became wanderers, travelling about hither and thither across the Continent. People believed me eccentric because I had closed Twycross and my town house here and preferred life in hotels with constant change.” He sighed, adding: “But they knew not that I travelled with one fixed object; that often when my friends supposed me to be thousands of miles away I was living here in secrecy, going forth only at night for fear of recognition. The object of this you will see later.”
“Ah, yes!” interrupted Lady Judith, her face a trifle paler, “an object that is now happily accomplished.”
“My daughter, here, was but a girl when my poor wife died,” went on his lordship, speaking in that mechanical, reflective tone that he had used all along, relating a painful history only from a sense of duty. “For the first three years she was, on and off, at a convent at Angers, and then as my constant companion lived a life of continual travel—an existence which has happily ended this very day. Well, I need not describe our weary wanderings, our swift movements from one city to another, nor our constant subterfuges for disguise. It is sufficient for me to come to these present days.
“By careful inquiries and personal observation I was aware that Fra Francesco had, about a year after my wife’s death, been forced to leave the Order owing to irreligious conduct, and that both he and the man Selby—who I had discovered was a chemist of considerable ability and had been lecturer at one of the London hospitals—were in possession of some profound secret. The pair travelled together very frequently, staying at the best hotels, such as the Langham in London, the Chatham in Paris, the Metropole in Vienna, Shepheard’s in Cairo, the Métropole at Monte Carlo, the Grand at Rome, the houses of the first order in Bombay, Sydney, San Francisco, and New York. Indeed, the pair made a world tour, and, strangely enough, in several places where they went some person of affluence, man or woman, expired suddenly, the doctors attributing death to the same vague cause as that of my poor wife’s disease—heart failure.
“Thus my suspicion became confirmed that this unfrocked monk and his shady companion had actually discovered some secret poison which, like the venom of the Borgias, while defying detection, could be used in the same subtle way and with the same deadly effect. The suspicion had been aroused by my discovering among my dead wife’s papers a note written to her by Fra Francesco just prior to her death, which showed that she had, by some means, become acquainted with their secret discovery, and knew the reason of the death of a small landed proprietor named Bardi, whose estate joined that of the Villa Caracci. It was undoubtedly because of this discovery of their dastardly crime and fear of denunciation that my poor wife was secretly assassinated.”