Serpents in Paradise Read online

  ‘I had, as I have said, a twin brother named Ernest, whose resemblance to me was so great that even when we were together people could see no difference between us. Down to the smallest detail we were exactly the same. As we grew older this likeness became less marked because our expression was not the same, but with our features in repose the points of difference were very slight.

  ‘It does not become me to say too much of one who is dead, the more so as he is my only brother, but I leave his character to those who knew him best. I will only say—for I have to say it—that in my early manhood I conceived a horror of him, and that I had good reason for the aversion which filled me. My own reputation suffered from his actions, for our close resemblance caused me to be credited with many of them. Eventually, in a peculiarly disgraceful business, he contrived to throw the whole odium upon me in such a way that I was forced to leave the Argentine for ever, and to seek a career in Europe. The freedom from his hated presence more than compensated me for the loss of my native land. I had enough money to defray my medical studies at Glasgow, and I finally settled in practice at Bishop’s Crossing, in the firm conviction that in that remote Lancashire hamlet I should never hear of him again.

  ‘For years my hopes were fulfilled, and then at last he discovered me. Some Liverpool man who visited Buenos Aires put him upon my track. He had lost all his money, and he thought that he would come over and share mine. Knowing my horror of him, he rightly thought that I would be willing to buy him off. I received a letter from him saying that he was coming. It was at a crisis in my own affairs, and his arrival might conceivably bring trouble, and even disgrace, upon some whom I was especially bound to shield from anything of the kind. I took steps to insure that any evil which might come should fall on me only, and that’—here he turned and looked at the prisoner—‘was the cause of conduct upon my part which has been too harshly judged. My only motive was to screen those who were dear to me from any possible connection with scandal or disgrace. That scandal and disgrace would come with my brother was only to say that what had been would be again.

  ‘My brother arrived himself one night not very long after my receipt of the letter. I was sitting in my study after the servants had gone to bed, when I heard a footstep upon the gravel outside, and an instant later I saw his face looking in at me through the window. He was a clean-shaven man like myself, and the resemblance between us was still so great that, for an instant, I thought it was my own reflection in the glass. He had a dark patch over his eye, but our features were absolutely the same. Then he smiled in a sardonic way which had been a trick of his from his boyhood, and I knew that he was the same brother who had driven me from my native land, and brought disgrace upon what had been an honourable name. I went to the door and I admitted him. That would be about ten o’clock that night.

  ‘When he came into the glare of the lamp, I saw at once that he had fallen upon very evil days. He had walked from Liverpool, and he was tired and ill. I was quite shocked by the expression upon his face. My medical knowledge told me that there was some serious internal malady. He had been drinking also, and his face was bruised as the result of a scuffle which he had had with some sailors. It was to cover his injured eye that he wore this patch, which he removed when he entered the room. He was himself dressed in a pea-jacket and flannel shirt, and his feet were bursting through his boots. But his poverty had only made him more savagely vindictive towards me. His hatred rose to the height of a mania. I had been rolling in money in England, according to his account, while he had been starving in South America. I cannot describe to you the threats which he uttered or the insults which he poured upon me. My impression is, that hardships and debauchery had unhinged his reason. He paced about the room like a wild beast, demanding drink, demanding money, and all in the foulest language. I am a hot-tempered man, but I thank God that I am able to say that I remained master of myself, and that I never raised a hand against him. My coolness only irritated him the more. He raved, he cursed, he shook his fists in my face, and then suddenly a horrible spasm passed over his features, he clapped his hand to his side, and with a loud cry he fell in a heap at my feet. I raised him up and stretched him upon the sofa, but no answer came to my exclamations, and the hand which I held in mine was cold and clammy. His diseased heart had broken down. His own violence had killed him.

  ‘For a long time I sat as if I were in some dreadful dream, staring at the body of my brother. I was aroused by the knocking of Mrs Woods, who had been disturbed by that dying cry. I sent her away to bed. Shortly afterwards a patient tapped at the surgery door, but as I took no notice, he or she went off again. Slowly and gradually as I sat there a plan was forming itself in my head in the curious automatic way in which plans do form. When I rose from my chair my future movements were finally decided upon without my having been conscious of any process of thought. It was an instinct which irresistibly inclined me towards one course.

  ‘Ever since that change in my affairs to which I have alluded, Bishop’s Crossing had become hateful to me. My plans of life had been ruined, and I had met with hasty judgments and unkind treatment where I had expected sympathy. It is true that any danger of scandal from my brother had passed away with his life; but still, I was sore about the past, and felt that things could never be as they had been. It may be that I was unduly sensitive, and that I had not made sufficient allowance for others, but my feelings were as I describe. Any chance of getting away from Bishop’s Crossing and of everyone in it would be most welcome to me. And here was such a chance as I could never have dared to hope for, a chance which would enable me to make a clean break with the past.

  ‘There was this dead man lying upon the sofa, so like me that save for some little thickness and coarseness of the features there was no difference at all. No one had seen him come and no one would miss him. We were both clean-shaven, and his hair was about the same length as my own. If I changed clothes with him, then Dr Aloysius Lana would be found lying dead in his study, and there would be an end of an unfortunate fellow, and of a blighted career. There was plenty of ready money in the room, and this I could carry away with me to help me to start once more in some other land. In my brother’s clothes I could walk by night unobserved as far as Liverpool, and in that great seaport I would soon find some means of leaving the country. After my lost hopes, the humblest existence where I was unknown was far preferable, in my estimation, to a practice, however successful, in Bishop’s Crossing, where at any moment I might come face to face with those whom I should wish, if it were possible, to forget. I determined to effect the change.

  ‘And I did so. I will not go into particulars, for the recollection is as painful as the experience; but in an hour my brother lay, dressed down to the smallest detail in my clothes, while I slunk out by the surgery door, and taking the back path which led across some fields, I started off to make the best of my way to Liverpool, where I arrived the same night. My bag of money and a certain portrait were all I carried out of the house, and I left behind me in my hurry the shade which my brother had been wearing over his eye. Everything else of his I took with me.

  ‘I give you my word, sir, that never for one instant did the idea occur to me that people might think that I had been murdered, nor did I imagine that anyone might be caused serious danger through this stratagem by which I endeavoured to gain a fresh start in the world. On the contrary, it was the thought of relieving others from the burden of my presence which was always uppermost in my mind. A sailing vessel was leaving Liverpool that very day for Corunna, and in this I took my passage, thinking that the voyage would give me time to recover my balance, and to consider the future. But before I left my resolution softened. I bethought me that there was one person in the world to whom I would not cause an hour of sadness. She would mourn me in her heart, however harsh and unsympathetic her relatives might be. She understood and appreciated the motives upon which I had acted, and if the rest of her family condemned me, she, at least,
would not forget. And so I sent her a note under the seal of secrecy to save her from a baseless grief. If under the pressure of events she broke that seal, she has my entire sympathy and forgiveness.

  ‘It was only last night that I returned to England, and during all this time I have heard nothing of the sensation which my supposed death had caused, nor of the accusation that Mr Arthur Morton had been concerned in it. It was in a late evening paper that I read an account of the proceedings of yesterday, and I have come this morning as fast as an express train could bring me to testify to the truth.’

  Such was the remarkable statement of Dr Aloysius Lana which brought the trial to a sudden termination. A subsequent investigation corroborated it to the extent of finding out the vessel in which his brother Ernest Lana had come over from South America. The ship’s doctor was able to testify that he had complained of a weak heart during the voyage, and that his symptoms were consistent with such a death as was described.

  As to Dr Aloysius Lana, he returned to the village from which he had made so dramatic a disappearance, and a complete reconciliation was effected between him and the young squire, the latter having acknowledged that he had entirely misunderstood the other’s motives in withdrawing from his engagement. That another reconciliation followed may be judged from a notice extracted from a prominent column in the Morning Post:

  ‘A marriage was solemnized upon September 19th, by the Rev Stephen Johnson, at the parish church of Bishop’s Crossing, between Aloysius Xavier Lana, son of Don Alfredo Lana, formerly Foreign Minister of the Argentine Republic, and Frances Morton, only daughter of the late James Morton, J.P., of Leigh Hall, Bishop’s Crossing, Lancashire.’

  Murder By Proxy

  M. McDonnell Bodkin

  Matthias McDonnell Bodkin (1850–1933) was an Irish lawyer whose first book, published pseudonymously in 1890, rejoiced in the title Poteen Punch, Strong, Hot, and Sweet: Being a Succession of Irish After-Dinner Stories. A couple of years later, he was elected to Parliament, and the experience of three years as an MP, as well as his time as a barrister and judge, contributed to a book of reminiscences he published about his life in the law and in politics.

  When Conan Doyle lost his enthusiasm for writing about Sherlock Holmes in the 1890s, Bodkin was one of many authors who tried, with varying degrees of success, to fill the void. He created Paul Beck (“the Rule of Thumb Detective”) and then Dora Myrl (“the Lady Detective”) and proceeded to marry them off; in due course, the fruit of their union also turned to sleuthing in Young Beck: A Chip of the Old Block (1912). This story shows Beck senior at his best.

  ***

  At two o’clock precisely on that sweltering 12th of August, Eric Neville, young, handsome, debonair, sauntered through the glass door down the wrought-iron staircase into the beautiful, old-fashioned garden of Berkly Manor, radiant in white flannel, with a broad-brimmed Panama hat perched lightly on his glossy black curls, for he had just come from lazing in his canoe along the shadiest stretches of the river, with a book for company.

  The back of the Manor House was the south wall of the garden, which stretched away for nearly a mile, gay with blooming flowers and ripening fruit. The air, heavy with perfume, stole softly through all the windows, now standing wide open in the sunshine, as though the great house gasped for breath.

  When Eric’s trim, tan boot left the last step of the iron staircase it reached the broad gravelled walk of the garden. Fifty yards off the head gardener was tending his peaches, the smoke from his pipe hanging like a faint blue haze in the still air that seemed to quiver with the heat. Eric, as he reached him, held out a petitionary hand, too lazy to speak.

  Without a word the gardener stretched for a huge peach that was striving to hide its red face from the sun under narrow ribbed leaves, plucked it as though he loved it, and put it softly in the young man’s hand.

  Eric stripped off the velvet coat, rose-coloured, green, and amber, till it hung round the fruit in tatters, and made his sharp, white teeth meet in the juicy flesh of the ripe peach.

  BANG!

  The sudden shock of sound close to their ears wrenched the nerves of the two men; one dropped his peach, and the other his pipe. Both stared about them in utter amazement.

  ‘Look there, sir,’ whispered the gardener, pointing to a little cloud of smoke oozing lazily through a window almost directly over their head, while the pungent spice of gunpowder made itself felt in the hot air.

  ‘My uncle’s room,’ gasped Eric. ‘I left him only a moment ago fast asleep on the sofa.’

  He turned as he spoke, and ran like a deer along the garden walk, up the iron steps, and back through the glass door into the house, the old gardener following as swiftly as his rheumatism would allow.

  Eric crossed the sitting-room on which the glass door opened, went up the broad, carpeted staircase four steps at a time, turned sharply to the right down a broad corridor, and burst straight through the open door of his uncle’s study.

  Fast as he had come, there was another before him. A tall, strong figure, dressed in light tweed, was bending over the sofa where, a few minutes before, Eric had seen his uncle asleep.

  Eric recognized the broad back and brown hair at once.

  ‘John,’ he cried, ‘John, what is it?’

  His cousin turned to him a handsome, manly face, ghastly pale now even to the lips.

  ‘Eric, my boy,’ he answered falteringly, ‘this is too awful. Uncle has been murdered—shot stone dead.’

  ‘No, no; it cannot be. It’s not five minutes since I saw him quietly sleeping,’ Eric began. Then his eyes fell on the still figure on the sofa, and he broke off abruptly.

  Squire Neville lay with his face to the wall, only the outline of his strong, hard features visible. The charge of shot had entered at the base of the skull, the grey hair was all dabbled with blood, and the heavy, warm drops still fell slowly on to the carpet.

  ‘But who can have…’ Eric gasped out, almost speechless with horror.

  ‘It must have been his own gun,’ his cousin answered. ‘It was lying there on the table, to the right, barrel still smoking, when I came in.’

  ‘It wasn’t suicide—was it?’ asked Eric, in a frightened whisper.

  ‘Quite impossible, I should say. You see where he is hit.’

  ‘But it was so sudden. I ran the moment I heard the shot, and you were before me. Did you see anyone?’

  ‘Not a soul. The room was empty.’

  ‘But how could the murderer escape?’

  ‘Perhaps he leapt through the window. It was open when I came in.’

  ‘He couldn’t do that, Master John.’ It was the voice of the gardener at the door. Me and Master Eric was right under the window when the shot came.’

  ‘Then how in the devil’s name did he disappear, Simpson?’

  ‘It’s not for me to say, sir.’

  John Neville searched the room with eager eyes. There was no cover in it for a cat. A bare, plain room, panelled with brown oak, on which hung some guns and fishing-rods—old fashioned for the most part, but of the finest workmanship and material. A small bookcase in the corner was the room’s sole claim to be called ‘a study’. The huge leather-covered sofa on which the corpse lay, a massive round table in the centre of the room, and a few heavy chairs completed the furniture. The dust lay thick on everything, the fierce sunshine streamed in a broad band across the room. The air was stifling with the heat and the acrid smoke of gunpowder.

  John Neville noticed how pale his young cousin was. He laid his hand on his shoulder with the protecting kindness of an elder brother.

  ‘Come, Eric,’ he said softly, ‘we can do no good here.’

  ‘We had best look round first, hadn’t we, for some clue?’ asked Eric, and he stretched his hand towards the gun; but John stopped him.

  ‘No, no,’ he cried hastily, ‘we must leave things
just as we find them. I’ll send a man to the village for Wardle and telegraph to London for a detective.’

  He drew his young cousin gently from the room, locked the door on the outside and put the key in his pocket.

  ‘Who shall I wire to?’ John Neville called from his desk with pencil poised over the paper, to his cousin, who sat at the library table with his head buried in his hands. ‘It will need be a sharp man—one who can give his whole time to it.’

  ‘I don’t know any one. Yes, I do. That fellow with the queer name that found the Duke of Southern’s opal—Beck. That’s it. Thornton Crescent, W.C., will find him.’

  John Neville filled in the name and address to the telegram he had already written—

  ‘Come at once. Case of murder. Expense no object. John Neville, Berkly Manor, Dorset.’

  Little did Eric guess that the filling in of that name was to him a matter of life or death.

  John Neville had picked up a time-table and rustled through the leaves. ‘Hard lines, Eric,’ he said, ‘do his best, he cannot get here before midnight. But here’s Wardle already, anyhow; that’s quick work.’

  A shrewd, silent man was Wardle, the local constable, who now came briskly up the broad avenue; strong and active too, though well over fifty years of age.

  John Neville met him at the door with the news. But the groom had already told of the murder.

  ‘You did the right thing to lock the door, sir,’ said Wardle, as they passed into the library where Eric still sat apparently unconscious of their presence, ‘and you wired for a right good man. I’ve worked with this here Mr Beck before now. A pleasant man and a lucky one. “No hurry, Mr Wardle,” he says to me, “and no fuss. Stir nothing. The things about the corpse have always a story of their own if they are let tell it, and I always like to have the first quiet little chat with them myself”.’

  So the constable held his tongue and kept his hands quiet and used his eyes and ears, while the great house buzzed with gossip. There was a whisper here and a whisper there, and the whispers patched themselves into a story. By slow degrees dark suspicion settled down and closed like a cloud round John Neville.