The Old Man in the Corner eBook

Baroness Emma Orczy
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 258 pages of information about The Old Man in the Corner.

The Old Man in the Corner eBook

Baroness Emma Orczy
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 258 pages of information about The Old Man in the Corner.

“Think of all that,” he added, “and then tell me if you believe that a stronger motive for the murder of such an enemy could well be found.”

“But what you suggest is impossible,” said Polly, aghast.

“Allow me,” he said, “it is more than possible—­it is very easy and simple.  The two men were alone together in the Hon. Robert de Genneville’s room after dinner.  You, as representing the public, and the police say that Beddingfield went away and returned half an hour later in order to kill his client.  I say that it was the lawyer who was murdered at nine o’clock that evening, and that Robert de Genneville, the ruined man, the hopeless bankrupt, was the assassin.”

“Then—­”

“Yes, of course, now you remember, for I have put you on the track.  The face and the body were so battered and bruised that they were past recognition.  Both men were of equal height.  The hair, which alone could not be disfigured or obliterated, was in both men similar in colour.

“Then the murderer proceeds to dress his victim in his own clothes.  With the utmost care he places his own rings on the fingers of the dead man, his own watch in the pocket; a gruesome task, but an important one, and it is thoroughly well done.  Then he himself puts on the clothes of his victim, with finally the Inverness cape and Glengarry, and when the hall is full of visitors he slips out unperceived.  He sends the messenger for Beddingfield’s portmanteau and starts off by the night express.”

“But then his visit at the Castle Hotel at ten o’clock—­” she urged.  “How dangerous!”

“Dangerous?  Yes! but oh, how clever.  You see, he was the Earl of Brockelsby’s twin brother, and twin brothers are always somewhat alike.  He wished to appear dead, murdered by some one, he cared not whom, but what he did care about was to throw clouds of dust in the eyes of the police, and he succeeded with a vengeance.  Perhaps—­who knows?—­he wished to assure himself that he had forgotten nothing in the mise en scene, that the body, battered and bruised past all semblance of any human shape save for its clothes, really would appear to every one as that of the Hon. Robert de Genneville, while the latter disappeared for ever from the old world and started life again in the new.

“Then you must always reckon with the practically invariable rule that a murderer always revisits, if only once, the scene of his crime.

“Two years have elapsed since the crime; no trace of Timothy Beddingfield, the lawyer, has ever been found, and I can assure you that it will never be, for his plebeian body lies buried in the aristocratic family vault of the Earl of Brockelsby.”

He was gone before Polly could say another word.  The faces of Timothy Beddingfield, of the Earl of Brockelsby, of the Hon. Robert de Genneville seemed to dance before her eyes and to mock her for the hopeless bewilderment in which she found herself plunged because of them; then all the faces vanished, or, rather, were merged in one long, thin, bird-like one, with bone-rimmed spectacles on the top of its beak, and a wide, rude grin beneath it, and, still puzzled, still doubtful, the young girl too paid for her scanty luncheon and went her way.

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Project Gutenberg
The Old Man in the Corner from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.