Sand on the Gumshoe: a century of Australian crime writing

‘You wished to see me, Mr Sinclair. I am sorry I had to keep you waiting, but my poor child is very ill this morning – indeed, I am very uneasy regarding her.’

‘I cannot wonder at that, dear madam,’ I returned very seriously.

‘What? I hardly understood you, sir,’ she stammered. ‘Why should you not wonder? Ah, perhaps you are aware of her imprudence in exposing herself to the night air last evening? My poor Hester is very headstrong.’

‘Mrs Thorne, my wish to see you concerned Miss Thorne. A terrible duty has fallen to my lot, but I am Archie’s friend, and if I am to befriend you for his sake, there must be neither concealment or deception between you and I.’

She stared at me with such dreadful, growing, and wild terror in her eyes, that I was nearly unmanned for the duty before me. At last she managed to articulate feebly and with trembling white lips -

‘What dreadful thing has happened? For mercy’s sake, tell me at once! It cannot be of her, she is safe at home! Oh, tell me!’

‘It is of Miss Thorne. Prepare yourself, dear Mrs Thorne, for sad tidings. If I tell you who and what I am, will it help you to understand? I am a member of the Melbourne Detective Police Force.’

‘And you know? You have found out?’ Oh, the horror, the despair, the fear pictured in that poor, pale face!

‘I know all. I know that you are not a widow, that Hester’s father is not dead – that he is mad. Not very long ago, duty called me into one of the violent cells at the Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum, and in one of his worst paroxysms I saw John Thorne, without once suspecting his relationship to my friend Archie. As soon, however, as I saw your daughter, I recognised the strong likeness and suspected.’

‘Suspected what?’ The wretched mother could hardly speak. I pitied her from my very heart, knowing what I did know.

‘My dear Mrs Thorne, I can say nothing to comfort you. I can only try to soften my bitter intelligence.’

‘Don’t soften it!’ she interrupted hurriedly. ‘If you don’t want to see me die here under your eyes, tell me at once! Quick!’

‘Knowing how your unhappy husband’s lunacy first evinced itself, I suspected as soon as I saw Miss Thorne’s stranged and determined gaze at the running water. I trembled for her even then.’

‘But now! Don’t wait! Tell me the worst. I have trembled for bitter years, and dared not cross her slightest humour, lest one of those fearful outbreaks should culminate in the worst. Tell me all! Tell me all!’

Wringing her hands and writhing as one in terrible bodily agony, she thus went on as I paused – wishing, hard as I was, that the task had not fallen to my lot.

‘You know how your poor husband’s madness culminated? I need not remind you of that?’

She gasped but could not speak.

‘He grew insanely jealous of you, his wife, and one night stole upon you in your sleep and tried to murder you. You remember all this?’

‘It is not – my God, it is not that!’ she cried, starting up and stretching her hands above her wildly. ‘If you hope for mercy, do not say it is that!’

‘I fear it is. Ah! dear madam, what can I say! Bessie Elliot is missing. Miss Thorne is known to have inveigled her from her home by a pretended note from Archie. What has become of that poor girl we must ask your unfortunate daughter.’

‘Are you alluding to me?’ asked a sharp voice at the open, long window, and as the mother’s shriek rang in my ears, I saw Hester Thorne standing on the verandah. To say it as gently as possible, there was something actually develish in the girl’s face as her fierce, black eyes blazed at me, and for a moment I was really and truly afraid; but remembering my strength, and my always ready handcuffs, I recovered my self-possession, and seeing that poor Mrs Thorne had mercifully fainted in her chair, I rose and went out the window, steadily meeting the maniac’s eyes as I did so.

‘I ask again if you were alluding to me? Am I the person you designated as your unfortunate daughter?’

‘You are,’ I replied, firmly.

‘And in doing so you are only exposing your own ignorance; but I have previously had occasion to remark the contemptible ignorance and folly of men – especially young men. So far from being unfortunate, I am one of the most fortunate girls in the whole world! Where is Archie?’

‘There,’ I said, pointing down towards the Loddon. ‘I see him coming along the bank. Shall we join him?’

‘Certainly. I should like to go and meet him, and I cannot very well go alone.’

‘Will you tell me why you consider yourself so fortunate?’ I asked as we walked down the garden path – she with her eyes fixed on the man she had loved to distraction, and a strange jubilant expression in her pale face.

‘If you found in your way an insuperable obstacle to your happiness, and if that obstacle were suddenly (ay, and effectually) should not you consider yourself fortunate and happy?’ she cried, turning her wild, gleaming eyes full upon me.

‘You are happy, then?’

‘Beyond all words! Harry, I want to meet Archie.’

We were now close on the river, and would have met my poor friend before, only that he had paused to look back at Bessie’s home, as it appeared to me, thinking, doubtless, of the lost girl he so dearly loved. As our footsteps sounded near him he turned round suddenly, and as he saw his cousin, so great a change came over him that I gazed at him in fear as well as wonder.

He advanced to Hester Thorne with a face as white as her own, and set teeth gleaming between pallid, dry lips. I saw he was suffering greatly, and wondered how far I could depend on his assistance in case of an outburst, which I dreaded.

‘Hester!’ he cried. ‘What have you done with my darling? You need not deny it I know it was you! Jealous of my love for my sweet, innocent Bessie, you have decoyed her from her home, and if evil has happened her, so help me heaven, but you shall suffer for it!’

‘Hush!’ I whispered, for I saw the awful change in the listening woman’s countenance – the flush that mounted, blood-red to her forehead – the fierce clutching of her long, thin fingers, and the quick gasps of the hot, hard breath between her white, clenched teeth.

‘I will not hush! Why should I? If I were to hold my tongue the stones would cry out! Hester Thorne, what have you done with my darling? Where is my Bessie – my own darling love – my life? For she is all that; give me my love, I say, or you shall suffer for it!’

The poor fellow seemed nearly mad himself, while she grew strangely and unaccountably calm with every added word of his violent accusation.

‘You love her very much, then?’ she asked, in a tone of ice.

‘More than my life – more than my soul. If anything should happen to my Bessie I should die! Do you hear? I should die!’

‘Yes – I hear. To listen to your ravings, a fool might fancy that love was the strongest passion of the human heart, but there’s a stronger.’

‘There is not! Nothing could be stronger than my love for Bessie!’

‘You are mistaken. My hate was stronger. Come, and I will prove it to you.’

Archie staggered back – an inkling of the fearful truth was beginning to creep dimly on him; there was something awful in the hard, cold gaze she now turned on him – a something indescribably suggestive of evil in the very tones so her voice.

‘Follow her!’ I whispered. ‘Humour her! Good heavens, Archie, don’t you see she is mad – quite mad, like her unfortunate father?’

He looked at me, and guessed it all! Like a blind man, he silently followed Hester Thorne, as she moved quietly, and with a firm step toward her favourite seat at the foot of the tree. She passed it and went toward the river bank where the sweeping branches dipped low in the water, and the ripples ran murmuring through green, glossy leaves. With one swift hand she drew back a heavy branch, and then stepping aside, turned her face toward us, with a bitter smile on the pale lips, as her outstretched right hand pointed toward the river at her feet.

Archie would have bounded forward, but almost by main force I held him back until I passed before him and