Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, The (43 page)

B
ENNETT WAS BORN in Hanley in the heart of the Staffordshire Potteries, the setting for much of his best fiction, and moved to London in 1888. During the 1890s he gradually established a reputation as a writer and
Anna of the Five Towns
became his first major critical success in 1902. Other novels set in the Potteries followed (most notably
The Old
Wives' Tale
and
Clayhanger
) but Bennett himself had by then become a metropolitan figure who lived in London and Paris for the rest of his life. He died of typhoid, allegedly contracted in France, where he had drunk a glass of suspiciously murky liquid from a tap in order to demonstrate the perfect safety of that nation's water supply. Bennett's crime fiction has been almost completely overshadowed by his other writing but it deserves rescuing from oblivion. The debonair millionaire Cecil Thorold appears in a series of stories, first published in
The
Windsor Magazine
in 1905 and then collected in a volume entitled
The
Loot of the Cities
. Thorold, who travels elegantly through Edwardian Europe, staying at the best hotels and dining at the best restaurants, is not always a conventional detective hero. Indeed, in some of the stories, he is the perpetrator of the crime rather than the solver of it. However, all the stories demonstrate Bennett's skill and versatility as a writer and remain well worth reading.

T
HE BRACELET HAD fallen into the canal.

  And the fact that the canal was the most picturesque canal in the old Flemish city of Bruges, and that the ripples caused by the splash of the bracelet had disturbed reflections of wondrous belfries, towers, steeples, and other unique examples of Gothic architecture, did nothing whatever to assuage the sudden agony of that disappearance. For the bracelet had been given to Kitty Sartorius by her grateful and lordly manager, Lionel Belmont (U.S.A.), upon the completion of the unexampled run of 'The Delmonico Doll', at the Regency Theatre, London. And its diamonds were worth five hundred pounds, to say nothing of the gold.

  The beautiful Kitty, and her friend Eve Fincastle, the journalist, having exhausted Ostend, had duly arrived at Bruges in the course of their holiday tour. The question of Kitty's jewellery had arisen at the start. Kitty had insisted that she must travel with all her jewels, according to the custom of theatrical stars of great magnitude. Eve had equally insisted that Kitty must travel without jewels, and had exhorted her to remember the days of her simplicity. They compromised. Kitty was allowed to bring the bracelet, but nothing else save the usual half-dozen rings. The ravishing creature could not have persuaded herself to leave the bracelet behind, because it was so recent a gift and still new and strange and heavenly to her. But, since prudence forbade even Kitty to let the trifle lie about in hotel bedrooms, she was obliged always to wear it. And she had been wearing it this bright afternoon in early October, when the girls, during a stroll, had met one of their new friends, Madame Lawrence, on the world-famous Quai du Rosaire, just at the back of the Hôtel de Ville and the Halles.

  Madame Lawrence resided permanently in Bruges. She was between twenty-five and forty-five, dark, with the air of continually subduing a natural instinct to dash, and well dressed in black. Equally interested in the peerage and in the poor, she had made the acquaintance of Eve and Kitty at the Hôtel de la Grande Place, where she called from time to time to induce English travellers to buy genuine Bruges lace, wrought under her own supervision by her own paupers. She was Belgian by birth, and when complimented on her fluent and correct English, she gave all the praise to her deceased husband, an English barrister. She had settled in Bruges like many people settle there, because Bruges is inexpensive, picturesque, and inordinately respectable. Besides an English church and chaplain, it has two cathedrals and an episcopal palace, with a real bishop in it.

  'What an exquisite bracelet! May I look at it?' It was these simple but ecstatic words, spoken with Madame Lawrence's charming foreign accent, which had begun the tragedy. The three women had stopped to admire the always admirable view from the little quay, and they were leaning over the rails when Kitty unclasped the bracelet for the inspection of the widow. The next instant there was a plop, an affrighted exclamation from Madame Lawrence in her native tongue, and the bracelet was engulfed before the very eyes of all three.

  The three looked at each other nonplussed. Then they looked around, but not a single person was in sight. Then, for some reason which, doubtless, psychology can explain, they stared hard at the water, though the water there was just as black and foul as it is everywhere else in the canal system of Bruges.

  'Surely you've not dropped it!' Eve Fincastle exclaimed in a voice of horror. Yet she knew positively that Madame Lawrence had.

  The delinquent took a handkerchief from her muff and sobbed into it. And between her sobs she murmured: 'We must inform the police.'

  'Yes, of course,' said Kitty, with the lightness of one to whom a fivehundred-pound bracelet is a bagatelle. 'They'll fish it up in no time.'

  'Well,' Eve decided, 'you go to the police at once, Kitty; and Madame Lawrence will go with you, because she speaks French, and I'll stay here to mark the exact spot.'

  The other two started, but Madame Lawrence, after a few steps, put her hand to her side. 'I can't,' she sighed, pale. 'I am too upset. I cannot walk. You go with Miss Sartorius,' she said to Eve, 'and I will stay,' and she leaned heavily against the railings.

  Eve and Kitty ran off, just as if it was an affair of seconds, and the bracelet had to be saved from drowning. But they had scarcely turned the corner, thirty yards away, when they reappeared in company with a high official of police, whom, by the most lucky chance in the world, they had encountered in the covered passage leading to the Place du Bourg. This official, instantly enslaved by Kitty's beauty, proved to be the very mirror of politeness and optimism. He took their names and addresses, and a full description of the bracelet, and informed them that at that place the canal was nine feet deep. He said that the bracelet should undoubtedly be recovered on the morrow, but that, as dusk was imminent, it would be futile to commence angling that night. In the meantime the loss should be kept secret; and to make all sure, a succession of gendarmes should guard the spot during the night.

  Kitty grew radiant, and rewarded the gallant officer with smiles; Eve was satisfied, and the face of Madame Lawrence wore a less mournful hue.

  'And now,' said Kitty to Madame, when everything had been arranged, and the first of the gendarmes was duly installed at the exact spot against the railings, 'you must come and take tea with us in our winter garden; and be gay! Smile: I insist. And I insist that you don't worry.'

  Madame Lawrence tried feebly to smile.

  'You are very good-natured,' she stammered.

  Which was decidedly true.

The winter-garden of the Hôtel de la Grande Place, referred to in all the hotel's advertisements, was merely the inner court of the hotel, roofed in by glass at the height of the first storey. Cane flourished there, in the shape of lounge-chairs, but no other plant. One of the lounge chairs was occupied when, just as the carillon in the belfry at the other end of the Place began to play Gounod's 'Nazareth', indicating the hour of five o'clock, the three ladies entered the winter garden. Apparently the toilettes of two of them had been adjusted and embellished as for a somewhat ceremonious occasion.

  'Lo!' cried Kitty Sartorius, when she perceived the occupant of the chair, 'the millionaire! Mr Thorold, how charming of you to reappear like this! I invite you to tea.'

  Cecil Thorold rose with appropriate eagerness.

  'Delighted!' he said, smiling, and then explained that he had arrived from Ostend about two hours before and had taken rooms in the hotel.

  'You knew we were staying here?' Eve asked as he shook hands with her.

  'No,' he replied; 'but I am very glad to find you again.'

  'Are you?' She spoke languidly, but her colour heightened and those eyes of hers sparkled.

  'Madame Lawrence,' Kitty chirruped, 'let me present Mr Cecil Thorold. He is appallingly rich, but we mustn't let that frighten us.'

  From a mouth less adorable than the mouth of Miss Sartorius such an introduction might have been judged lacking in the elements of good form, but for more than two years now Kitty had known that whatever she did or said was perfectly correct because she did or said it. The new acquaintances laughed amiably and a certain intimacy was at once established.

  'Shall I order tea, dear?' Eve suggested.

  'No, dear,' said Kitty quietly. 'We will wait for the Count.'

  'The Count?' demanded Cecil Thorold.

  'The Comte d'Avrec,' Kitty explained. 'He is staying here.'

  'A French nobleman, doubtless?'

  'Yes,' said Kitty; and she added, 'you will like him. He is an archaeologist, and a musician – oh, and lots of things!'

  'If I am one minute late, I entreat pardon,' said a fine tenor voice at the door.

  It was the Count. After he had been introduced to Madame Lawrence, and Cecil Thorold had been introduced to him, tea was served.

  Now, the Comte d'Avrec was everything that a French count ought to be. As dark as Cecil Thorold, and even handsomer, he was a little older and a little taller than the millionaire, and a short, pointed, black beard, exquisitely trimmed, gave him an appearance of staid reliability which Cecil lacked. His bow was a vertebrate poem, his smile a consolation for all misfortunes, and he managed his hat, stick, gloves, and cup with the dazzling assurance of a conjurer. To observe him at afternoon tea was to be convinced that he had been specially created to shine gloriously in drawing-rooms, winter-gardens, and tables d'hôte. He was one of those men who always do the right thing at the right moment, who are capable of speaking an indefinite number of languages with absolute purity of accent (he spoke English much better than Madame Lawrence), and who can and do discourse with verve and accuracy on all sciences, arts, sports, and religions. In short, he was a phoenix of a count; and this was certainly the opinion of Miss Kitty Sartorius and of Miss Eve Fincastle, both of whom reckoned that what they did not know about men might be ignored. Kitty and the Count, it soon became evident, were mutually attracted; their souls were approaching each other with a velocity which increased inversely as the square of the lessening distance between them. And Eve was watching this approximation with undisguised interest and relish.

  Nothing of the least importance occurred, save the Count's marvellous exhibition of how to behave at afternoon tea, until the refection was nearly over; and then, during a brief pause in the talk, Cecil, who was sitting to the left of Madame Lawrence, looked sharply round at the right shoulder of his tweed coat; he repeated the gesture a second and yet a third time.

  'What is the matter with the man?' asked Eve Fincastle. Both she and Kitty were extremely bright, animated, and even excited.

  'Nothing. I thought I saw something on my shoulder, that's all,' said Cecil. 'Ah! It's only a bit of thread.' And he picked off the thread with his left hand and held it before Madame Lawrence. 'See! It's a piece of thin black silk, knotted. At first I took it for an insect – you know how queer things look out of the corner of your eye. Pardon!' He had dropped the fragment on to Madame Lawrence's black silk dress. 'Now it's lost.'

  'If you will excuse me, kind friends,' said Madame Lawrence, 'I will go.' She spoke hurriedly, and as though in mental distress.

  'Poor thing!' Kitty Sartorius exclaimed when the widow had gone. 'She's still dreadfully upset'; and Kitty and Eve proceeded jointly to relate the story of the diamond bracelet, upon which hitherto they had kept silence (though with difficulty), out of regard for Madame Lawrence's feelings.

  Cecil made almost no comment.

  The Count, with the sympathetic excitability of his race, walked up and down the winter-garden, asseverating earnestly that such clumsiness amounted to a crime; then he grew calm and confessed that he shared the optimism of the police as to the recovery of the bracelet; lastly he complimented Kitty on her equable demeanour under this affliction.

  'Do you know, Count,' said Cecil Thorold, later, after they had all four ascended to the drawing-room overlooking the Grande Place, 'I was quite surprised when I saw at tea that you had to be introduced to Madame Lawrence.'

  'Why so, my dear Mr Thorold?' the Count inquired suavely.

  'I thought I had seen you together in Ostend a few days ago.'

  The Count shook his wonderful head.

  'Perhaps you have a brother?' Cecil paused.

  'No,' said the Count. 'But it is a favourite theory of mine that everyone has his double somewhere in the world.' Previously the Count had been discussing Planchette – he was a great authority on the supernatural, the sub-conscious, and the subliminal. He now deviated gracefully to the discussion of the theory of doubles.

  'I suppose you aren't going out for a walk, dear, before dinner?' said Eve to Kitty.

  'No, dear,' said Kitty, positively.

  'I think I shall,' said Eve.

  And her glance at Cecil Thorold intimated in the plainest possible manner that she wished not only to have a companion for a stroll, but to leave Kitty and the Count in dual solitude.

  'I shouldn't, if I were you, Miss Fincastle,' Cecil remarked, with calm and studied blindness. 'It's risky here in the evenings – with these canals exhaling miasma and mosquitoes and bracelets and all sorts of things.'