‘Come, Esther, old girl,’ he said, speaking in an almost rough tone, and pulling the weeping girl to her feet. ‘You did your best. We must all fail at times. I presume,’ he added, ‘that Esther and I have failed, but will you explain why you sent two men to interfere with my liberty, Sir Penn?’
‘I think I can best explain,’ was my answer.
I then proceeded, in the presence of Esther and Karl Haldane, to give step by step the means I had taken to discover their secret. When I had finished speaking there was silence. After a pause, which was the most impressive I ever endured, Esther Haldane approached Sir Penn.
‘You can, of course, arrest both me and my husband,’ she said.
‘Good heavens!’ he exclaimed. ‘Your husband?’
‘Yes, Karl Haldane is my husband. I have played you the meanest trick a woman can play a man. I tried first to win your love, secondly to win your money. I succeeded in the first. I failed in the latter. All that I have done I have done for my husband, the only man on God’s earth whom I really love. I love him so well that I can even go under for him. You can take what steps you please to punish us both. Come, Karl, our game is up.’
LADY MOLLY
Created by Baroness Emma Orczy (1865-1947)
The daughter of a Hungarian aristocrat, Baroness Emma Orczy was born on the family estate in Tarnaörs, northern Hungary. A peasant uprising in 1868 forced her parents to move to Budapest and she was later educated in Paris and Brussels. The family settled in London when she was in her teens and she studied art at Heatherley’s School of Art in Chelsea. It was there that she met her husband Montague Barstow and her first published work was a collection of Hungarian folk tales which he illustrated. Her first historical novel was published in 1899. Her most famous character, Sir Percy Blakeney aka ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’, a daring English adventurer who rescues people from the guillotine in Revolutionary France, made his debut in a play in 1903 and went on to appear in a long series of novels and short stories. Baroness Orczy created two very distinctive detectives in the Edwardian era. One was ‘The Old Man in the Corner’ who solves seemingly insoluble mysteries whilst barely stirring from his seat in a London teashop. He and the lady journalist Polly Burton, who records the mysteries on which the old man throws light, first appeared in The Royal Magazine in 1901 and later in three collections of short stories. Baroness Orczy’s other detective creation was Lady Molly Robertson-Kirk, a young woman who has reached a position of authority in Scotland Yard nearly a decade before women in real life were even allowed to join the police. As narrated by her adoring sidekick, Mary Granard, Lady Molly’s adventures are very much of their time but they are still great fun to read.
THE WOMAN IN THE BIG HAT
1
Lady Molly always had the idea that if the finger of Fate had pointed to Mathis’ in Regent Street, rather than to Lyons’, as the most advisable place for us to have a cup of tea that afternoon, Mr Culledon would be alive at the present moment.
My dear lady is quite sure – and needless to say that I share her belief in herself – that she would have anticipated the murderer’s intentions, and thus prevented one of the most cruel and callous of crimes which were ever perpetrated in the heart of London.
She and I had been to a matinée of Trilby, and were having tea at Lyons’, which is exactly opposite Mathis’ Vienna café in Regent Street. From where we sat we commanded a view of the street and of the café, which had been very crowded during the last hour.
We had lingered over our toasted muffin until past six, when our attention was drawn to the unusual commotion which had arisen both outside and in the brilliantly lighted place over the road.
We saw two men run out of the doorway, and return a minute or two later in company with a policeman. You know what is the inevitable result of such a proceeding in London. Within three minutes a crowd had collected outside Mathis’. Two or three more constables had already assembled, and had some difficulty in keeping the entrance clear of intruders.
But already my dear lady, keen as a pointer on the scent, had hastily paid her bill, and, without waiting to see if I followed her or not, had quickly crossed the road, and the next moment her graceful form was lost in the crowd.
I went after her, impelled by curiosity, and presently caught sight of her in close conversation with one of our own men. I have always thought that Lady Molly must have eyes at the back of her head, otherwise how could she have known that I stood behind her now? Anyway, she beckoned to me, and together we entered Mathis’, much to the astonishment and anger of the less fortunate crowd.
The usually gay little place was indeed sadly transformed. In one corner the waitresses, in dainty caps and aprons, had put their heads together, and were eagerly whispering to one another whilst casting furtive looks at the small group assembled in front of one of those pretty alcoves, which, as you know, line the walls all round the big tea-room at Mathis’.
Here two of our men were busy with pencil and notebook, whilst one fair-haired waitress, dissolved in tears, was apparently giving them a great deal of irrelevant and confused information.
Chief Inspector Saunders had, I understood, been already sent for; the constables, confronted with this extraordinary tragedy, were casting anxious glances towards the main entrance, whilst putting the conventional questions to the young waitress.
