CHAPTER VI
MRS. BOOTH COMMITTED FOR TRIAL
AFTER his day’s round, Mr. Hobbs returned home to his tea. For this meal he was glad to see a plate of pink prawns on the table. If he had one weakness of the epicure, it was in the direction of prawns, and Mrs. Hobbs, when in a specially good humour, was wont to indulge him. This happened with her perhaps the more rarely, as her husband was wont on these occasions, while praising the quality of the prawns, which he rated as being nearly equal to Gravesend shrimps, to inveigh against Colonial provisions generally.
“The meat was not equal to English meat—not the flavour—the vegetables were tasteless, and the fruit lacking in juice.”
These remarks on the products of her native land made Mrs. Hobbs mad and restive.
“If everything was so good in England, why in the name of fortune did you leave it?”
“I wish I had not, and that’s the truth,” Mr. Hobbs would reply.
“And I wish so too!” would retort his good lady.
Then would follow a domestic squall, during which Mrs. Hobbs launched forth in voluble Anglo-Saxon on the worthlessness of men in general, and this one in particular.
In the meantime her husband leisurely ate up the prawns.
This night was an exception. The meal passed without the customary equinoctial, and Mrs. Hobbs got her fair share of the shrimps.
“I can tell you what it is, Tom, if you go jumping in the water again with your uniform clothes on, and expect me to wash them and get them decent, you are very much mistaken; somebody else may do them, I won’t. Such a job, with all the nasty salt water in them. If that brazen-faced hussy wants to drown herself let her. Good riddance, I say, to bad rubbish. If it had been me, now, you would not have been so quick, I’ll be bound.”
“Now, draw it mild, Bell! It was you that were taking her part only last night.”
“How dare you say that, you aggravating man! Did I not say at once that it was she that killed her husband, and now are not my words proved true? Has not her guilty conscience driven her to try and drown herself? Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“Don’t be so hasty; it proves nothing of the sort. You will admit that if she is the criminal, she must be a most daring and cold-blooded one. Now, daring criminals, particularly women criminals, are hardly ever known to display remorse of any kind. The mind of an innocent woman is only too likely to be upset by such a day as that passed by Mrs. Booth, but a criminal having expected it would remain quite unmoved.”
“So you still think she is innocent?”
“I am more convinced than ever.”
“And what have you done to-day?”
“To commence at the beginning—I thought the matter well over last night. You will remember that the doctor said the knife entering the back near the spine, between the ribs, pierced the heart, and caused instantaneous death; but violent muscular movements of the limbs and body were likely to have occurred for some moments afterwards, and the stab could not have been self-inflicted. I felt by no means sure of that. It seemed unlikely, certainly; but any solution of this problem must be an unlikely one, and this appeared at least as feasible and plausible as any. Then I tried to imagine how Mr. Booth could have carried out his purpose. The knife, as you know, had no proper handle, but only the thin pointed haft. Suppose he had stuck it in his bed, raised himself, and fallen backwards on the point, and then, in his pain, turned over—this would account for his position?”
“Why, of course, that’s it, Tom! It’s as plain as possible! Why, you have got more sense than I gave you credit for!”
“But that is not it, Bell. I have carefully examined the bed and the sheet he was lying on, and there is no perforation, such as the haft must have made. Giving up this idea, I had to find another solution. If Mrs. Booth was not the criminal, but some third party, who was that criminal likely to be? Clearly some one resident in the house; this was the more likely. They would be on the spot, and be acquainted with all the small details necessary to execute such a deed undetected. At the same time, it must not be overlooked that a person capable of entering, undisturbed, one locked room, might, perhaps, just as easily have entered a locked-up house.
“I considered the inmates in this order—There was Mrs. Delfosse, the landlady. She is a respectable lady, and known on the Shore for years. In regard to her, the crime could bring no conceivable benefit. Mr. Booth was almost a stranger to her, and his tragic death is likely to prove a serious loss, so I rule her out of the possibles. Next there is the servant girl. Here I thought there might be a clue. These betting men are mostly a fast lot; perhaps Booth had been tampering with her. But Eliza Smith is a quiet, decent girl, engaged to be married to a carpenter, and when she assured me Mr. Booth had not spoken half-a-dozen times to her in his life, I believed her. So I ruled her out. Then there are the other boarders—the two Germans, the brothers Schnider, on the first floor. I said to myself, ‘These foreign fellows are often the kind of men to fancy other men’s wives, and to take strange means to gratify their fancy.’
“Acting on this idea, I called on these gentlemen in town. They seem to be in a good way of business, fine warehouse, clerks, and all the rest of it; but the men themselves are a pair of ugly yellow devils, with big fat noses. Supposing Mrs. Booth to be a party to an intrigue with one of them, to say the least she has very bad taste. But then I reflected that women are very capricious.”
“Not more than men, I’m sure!”
“And, though the late Mr. Booth was at least in appearance worth half-a-dozen of these German sauerkrauts, yet we have the memorable example of Hamlet’s mother, that ugliness itself is sometimes an attraction to feminine taste.”
“Who was that Mrs. Hamlet? Did she live on the Shore? I never heard of her.”
“No, she is a character in a play.”
“Written by a man, I suppose?”
“Yes; William Shakespeare.”
“That explains it. I knew it would take a man to write foolery like that! And what did those Germans tell you?”
“I could get nothing out of them. They talked like two idiots, so I left them in disgust. But, coming home, and thinking the matter over in my mind, I began to doubt if they had not been acting a part with me to try perhaps to throw me off the scent. Is it likely now, that two dunderheads such as they pretended to be, could successfully carry on a Sydney wholesale business? They tell me, and I have no doubt it’s true, that it takes a man to be as sharp as a razor for that kind of work. And later, when crossing the ferry, I met one of the clerks I had seen in the office, I took the opportunity to pump him in a quiet way about his bosses, and he was not slow to talk.
“‘Are they fond of women!’ said the clerk. ‘Just terrors! I believe it’s all they think about, and they think no small beer of themselves. Why, there’s Jacob, that’s the eldest, to hear him you would think all the girls in Sydney were running after him, and the married women, too. Even this Mrs. Booth they are talking about so much now, he has often said she had made a dead set at him, wanted him to spark her about, and I don’t know what.’
“‘And did he?’ I asked.
“‘Not that I know of. He never told us that. But then he is such a terrible liar I never believe a word he says.’
“Here we arrived at Milson’s Point, and the clerk left me, but what he had said caused me to think more seriously of these Germans, particularly the elder one, Jacob. As you said yourself, Bell, the knife is not a woman’s weapon, and more than that, with the exception of a few sailors who carry a sheath knife, it is not an Englishman’s weapon. With many foreigners, on the other hand, it is their common mode of attack. Here we have a man stabbed in a house, probably by an inmate of that house. Two of these residents are foreigners, and one of them has an avowed passion for the wife of the murdered man. What is more likely than that he should be the criminal?”
“Of course, Tom, it’s as clear as daylight; it’s that Jacob! That’s the man!”
“Not so fast, Bell, not so fast. How did he open and close the locked and bolted door?”
“Why? why! she must have done it for him!”
“Then she is as guilty as he is, and we had decided she was innocent! Besides, how does this explain the robbery of Mr. Booth’s safe in Sydney? For, in spite of the newspapers, I am convinced there is some connection between the two events. Reviewing the evidence carefully, I think with the Germans it is so far a case of suspicion only. Another boarder was Professor Norris. He, you will remember, was the first to break open the door and enter the room. And mark this, he is an old friend of Mrs. Booth. I went to his shop in Park Street, where he appears to carry on a fortune-telling or character-reading business. As I expected, he was not there; but I found him at Mrs. Delfosse’s. He talked very freely, and I must admit seemed very straightforward in all he said. He may be a bit eccentric in his opinions, but I am bound to say appears as little like a murderer as any man I ever met. This is what he said, in answer to my questions—He had known Mrs. Booth about four years, when he first employed her to assist him in his lectures on phrenology and clairvoyance, which he gave in various towns of the colony. He finally gave up this work, because Mrs. Booth, who was a Miss Summerhayes at that time, got tired of the business, and preferred a life in Sydney. Here she took a place as barmaid, and after a time, against his advice, married the late Mr. Booth. Their married life, he said, was fairly happy, so far as it had gone; nevertheless, he still believes the match was an unsuitable one, and that later on it would have led to dissensions and misery. He is fairly convinced that Mrs. Booth had no hand in her husband’s death. She was still, he said, very fond of him. He could think of no enemy who could desire, or would have benefited in any way by Booth’s death; but he expressed the opinion that all men connected with horse-racing are more or less rogues, and Mr. Booth’s acquaintances were all of that class.
“I asked concerning Mrs. Booth’s relations to the German boarders. He said they were on no more than just speaking terms. They met sometimes at meals, but Mrs. Booth had often told him that she did not like their manners. ‘They ate their food like hogs,’ that was her expression. So that latterly she had done no more than nod to them. The Professor felt positive they had had no hand in the crime.
“‘Who has then?’ I asked. ‘Whom do you suspect?’ He said, ‘I have no suspicions. I have thought of nothing else for the last two days, day and night, and I cannot even form a theory, even a stupid theory, as to either how the crime was done, or who did it. I am pretty well acquainted, by reading, with the history of mysterious crimes, but this, so far as I know, is without a parallel. If I did not know Bertha—that is Mrs. Booth—so well, I should incline to the view that she must have had a hand in it; but I can assure you positively, that I would rather believe it was I myself did it say when I was asleep than that she ever dreamed of such a thing. I know her so well. She would not harm a fly, and the sight of blood at any time would make her faint right away. No, decidedly no, it was not Bertha, and who it was I cannot imagine.’
“With this I left him. The man may be a skilful liar, but I think not. It is not the action of a criminal to try and avert suspicion from others—the Germans, for instance. In Mrs. Booth’s case it might be understood. It is not the action of the criminal to leave no theory to explain his crime. So that I am inclined to believe the Professor, and rule him out, and for that matter, accepting his evidence, rule out Jacob Schnider.”
“But who is there left, Tom?” chimed in Mrs. Hobbs. “If the people in the house are not to be suspected, and the man did not kill himself, it must have been some one outside.”
“So I think. This is why I called at Mr. Booth’s Sydney office and interviewed his clerk. This young man’s story, as published, ran so pat I did not half like the look of it. In the first place, supposing him to be guilty, his story is such as a specious scoundrel would invent. The fact that three weeks ago he knew that thousands of pounds worth of securities were in the safe, while at the date of the robbery there was only a few hundreds in cash, looks a plausible enough suggestion till you come to examine it.
“What were these securities? Were they inscribed stock, mortgage deeds, or bonds? If so, however valuable to the owner they might have been, they would be quite useless to a thief. Cash, on the other hand, is useful to anybody, and there is nothing to show that the cash in the safe at this particular time was not as large as it had ever been. On the other hand, supposing David Israel to be the criminal, or cognisant of the crime, it is hard to understand why an apparently useless murder of great danger and difficulty was added to the comparatively easy crime of theft. Certainly the safe must have been opened by a strange key. Why, having the key, should the robber trouble himself about the life of Mr. Booth? Clearly, if there was any connection between the two crimes there must have been some other motive besides that of robbery.
“These were the thoughts in my mind when I questioned the clerk. He is a glib young man, very dapper in his dress, very voluble in talk, and this is what he said in answer to my questions—He was still carrying on the business, not opening any fresh accounts, but simply paying and receiving cash as it became due. In this he was acting according to instructions from Mrs. Booth, who desired that all her husband’s engagements should be honourably met. He had been in the employ of the late Mr. Booth for the past six months, his duty being to keep all the accounts and the books, Mr. Booth being a poor scholar. The business had been very profitable, no doubt of that, and, besides, his master had had a great run of luck. He could not remember such a run of ‘skinners’ as Booth had had lately. I asked him what a skinner was.
“He said it was a day that was bad for the public; when they were skinned, in fact. As he kept all the accounts, I asked him if he could tell me more exactly by referring to them, how much money had been left in the safe on Saturday. Israel seemed to me to hesitate a little; perhaps it was only my fancy, for he very quickly gave me a total—£374 10s.
“‘This is larger,’ I suggested, ‘than the amount that you first stated.’
“‘Yes, it is,’ he said; ‘but I then spoke hurriedly, without reference to the accounts.’
“‘Was it usual,’ I asked, ‘to have so much loose money?’
“‘Oh, yes,’ he answered, very sharply, ‘we often had a couple of hundred; but Saturday was a busy day, and there might have been a little extra.’
“‘As a matter of fact,’ I inquired, ‘is not this the first time in your experience that such a large sum in cash has been locked up in the safe?’
“‘Perhaps it is,’ he said.
“‘Is it not a fact, Mr. Israel’—and here I made a shot at a venture, an inspiration of the moment ‘that Mr. Booth was about to dispense with your services?’
“‘No such thing!’ he exclaimed; but his sallow face turned red, then very pale. ‘No such thing; he might have growled a bit, he did occasionally when “lively”; but he did not mean what he said.’
“‘He did give you notice then?’
“‘In a sort of way; but it was not serious, and he was half tight at the time.’
“‘And when would this notice expire?’
“‘The end of this week. But it was not serious, I tell you. I took no notice of it. As a matter of fact, Mr. Booth could not understood his own books, and knew he could not do without me.’
“At this point I turned the conversation, and asked him did he know if his master had any enemies, or any persons who would benefit by his death. Israel answered readily enough.
“No, he did not know any particular person; but a big betting man was likely enough to have bad blood with some people; and, as regards his death, that might no doubt lead to the scratching of all his horses in training by his widow; and of course those who had backed them would lose, and the chances of other horses in the race be so much the better.
“This was a new clue to me, and, bidding good-day to Mr. Israel, I came home. Carefully considering the evidence of this clerk, it appears to me the most important of all. In the first place, on his own statement there was ample motive for a robbery of the safe. And not only was there a motive, but he was the only person likely to know that such a large sum was locked up. Next, we have his own assertion that there was £374. But how much more may there have been, unentered by him in those books, over which he had full control? And this notice of dismissal that he was under which he now treats so easily—may, very likely, have been of serious consequence to him. And why was this notice given? Certainly a man in Booth’s position, ignorant of accounts, much of whose business was done on ‘the nod,’ and required an expert to recognize all his varied customers, would be very slow to dismiss a confidential clerk. Probably the cause was something serious—perhaps criminal? At any rate, it looks shady. If there was a spirit of revenge in this man we have a motive for his master’s death; but if we add to this the possibility, as he himself suggested, of a betting-book being so arranged as to gain largely by Mr. Booth’s death, we have a second and still stronger motive.”
“Well, I will say, Tom,” said Mrs. Hobbs, “you have more sense than I gave you credit for. You should arrest that Jew boy at once. I should not hesitate a minute.”
“Easy, my dear, easy. Remember you were equally persistent just now, first that Booth killed himself, then that Jacob Schnider did it.”
“I said nothing of the sort. It was you, you thick-headed numbskull! But there, that’s just like you, trying to put your own mistakes on my shoulders! Why, no one with a grain of sense could hesitate for a minute. I had my doubts from the first about that clerk!”
“Well, old woman, let us suppose it is the clerk, or some one helping him. How do you account for his passing through two locked and bolted doors, and re-passing, leaving them fastened behind him? That he should be able to open the doors is understandable, but that he should have troubled to relock and rebolt them after himself is incredible. The man who robbed the shop locked neither safe nor door, though the motive in that case would have been quite as strong and the job much easier, for in this case the locking was from the outside.”
“Then the murderer did not open the doors at all!”
“So I was inclined to think. But there are only two other possible entrances to the room—a chimney a cat could hardly crawl down, and a window fastened inside, barred without, and thirty-three feet from the ground.”
“Well, I don’t care what you say! That Israel did it, right enough! I never saw a man so aggravating as you are. You no sooner find the man that did it than you try and prove he didn’t!”
* * * * *
It was the evening of the next day. Mr. Hobbs had returned to his tea.
“Well, Tom!” said his wife; “how did the inquest go? Anything fresh?”
“Nothing fresh, Bell. Nothing I have not told you. Dobell, as I expected, has found out nothing. He is in a bit of a fix I can see plainly enough. He expected to find corroborative evidence against Mrs. Booth, but, so far, he has failed.”
“Then the jury acquitted her?”
“On the contrary; they committed her for wilful murder, and by this time she is in Darlinghurst. But that was only what was to be expected. A coroner’s jury have not got a judge to direct them. Their verdict is only tentative. With the evidence before them they did right.”
“And how did the poor woman take it?”
“You never saw any one look more astounded. She stared round the room as though she was looking at a ghost, and then swooned right away, with a loud shriek. The Professor was there to hold her up, and I could see him turn pale and tremble like a leaf. He told me himself that the shock of this affair is likely to send the poor girl out of her mind, and it is easy to see he is very much attached to her.”
“Poor dear creature, what she must suffer! You must help her, Tom. Now set your wits to work. I know you can if you like.”
“I will do my best, Bell; and if brains and ability, though I say it that should not, can solve the North Shore mystery, I will solve it!”