The Mystery in Palace Gardens. A novel

Front matter

I ■ ■ ■ ' She remained resolutely silent.' See p. 109. THE MYSTERY IN PALACE GARDENS. % lotol. BY MRS. J. H. RIDDELL, AUTHOR OF ' GEORGE GEITH,' ' CITY AND SUBURB," ETC. THIRD EDITION. LONDON : RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, $ubl.sljrr& in ©r&inarp to i)tx -fMajf-sts tijf ©uffit. 1881. [.All Rights reserved!] CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE i. The Empty House i II. TO LOOK OVER THE HOUSE 14 111. The New Tenant 23 iv. In the Morning Twilight . . . 33 v. Mr. Palthorpe 39 vi. All for Love 50 vn. A Bunch of Grapes 58 viii. Was it Chance ? 68 ix. Light .80 x. In the Forest 88 xi. Mrs. Palthorpe's Decision 96 xii. The Letter 107 xiii. He is dead 117 xiv. At Sunnydown Farm 126 xv. Mrs. Palthorpe is frank 137 xvi. Lost 148 xvii. After Long Years 159 xviii. A Wonderful Woman 166 xix. Miss Banks' Tactics 177 xx. Sir John considers 186 xxi.

Lady Moffat at Home 193 xxii. Mr. Lassils makes a New Acquaintance . . . 206 xxiii. Lady Moffat 218 xxiv. A Lonely Man 229 xxv. Out of Town 237 xxvi. At the Grand Hotel 246 xxvii. A Happy Holiday 264 xxviii. Miss Banks triumphant CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE xxix. Sir John reflects • 280 xxx. Stormy Weather 289 xxxi. ' Thou art the Man' 306 xxxii. Mr. Woodham is astonished 326 xxxiii. From the Dead 335 xxxiv. The Beginning of the End 345 xxxv. In Sir John's Office 352 xxxvi. Doctor Dilton's Patient 365 xxxvii. Waiting 375 xxxviii. For Better, for Worse 381 xxxix. Dead 387 xl. ' There is Money to be made' . . . .398 xli. A Bitter Trial 406 xlii. Conclusion THE MYSTERY IN PALACE GARDENS.

Chapter I

the empty house Whex the Franco-German war was quite over, and the French people were beginning to pay those milliards which once upon a time some very clever individuals on this side the Channel, in common perhaps with other clever individuals in a different country, thought that wonderful nation would never be able to scrape together, — when Napoleon III. was still alive, and dreaming (who can tell ?) of the earthly greatness he hoped still to compass, or the narrow grave he was so soon to fill, there stood a house in Palace Gardens, empty, and to be sold. It had stood empty for a long time. The board in front, which informed all those who passed by that the desirable residence might be treated for, had grown in appearance quite weather-beaten with standing out amongst the evergreens dur ing the passage of several springs, summers, autumns, and winters.

The firm of auctioneers who might have been sup posed closely interested in its welfare seemed to have forgotten its existence, for the very bills in the windows looked as if they too were weary of stating a self-evident proposition. There were some to whom, passing that way as they did constantly, the house grew to be a haunting presence. When they woke in the night they thought of it standing there empty, with its curtainless and blindless windows staring out into the darkness ; when they were on 'Change, or poring over a brief or considering the possibilities of a bill of costs, it came be tween them and the sunshine. People possessed of setded incomes, quite easy in their minds about money matters, with balances at their bankers', B THE MYSTERY IN P.4I.a4CE GARDENS. 2 investments in safe securities, practically unlimited credit in the books of their tradespeople, shook their heads as they drove past, and decided the house would never be sold ; that it was haunted by the ghosts of ruined men and defrauded women and beggared children, if by no worse phantom ; whilst City magnates — gentlemen who were floating loans and nego tiating concessions and advertising new companies and getting nominated as directors and supporting credit upon fictitious papers and financing banking accounts — looked at the house intelligently.

Many a man gazing at it must have thought, ' Some day, when I am in Spain, my house will be standing empty in like manner,' or, ' When my governor is in limbo, I wonder if we shall see his crib vacant, as this is, or if it will turn out to have been settled upon his wife ?' Gamekeepers nail up a kite as a public warning and example to all other kites that they will be similarly de:ilt with, and yet so terrible a spectacle seems to exercise no sort of deterrent influence upon the species ; and in like manner, although the empty house in Palace Gardens had once been inhabited by a well-known man who, from foreign parts, could return to Eng land no more, its mournful line of blank windows, its eternal iteration of ' To be sold — To be sold — To be sold ;' the green moss on its drive, the litter of leaves on its borders, its ill-kept grass-plot, the paint peeling from its doors, its silent bell, its vacant rooms, — had no more effect in turning even one com mercial sinner into the straight and narrow path of rectitude than the sight of his fellow rat caught in a trap prevents his companion graybeard tearing the flesh ofthe tootnsome chicken or sucking the blood ofthe pretty pigeon, who but yesterday at noon was preening her feathers and showing her many-hued beauties to the admiration of the sun.

Those who were not ' too deep in the swim' — to use an inelegant but expressive phrase — failed to read the lesson written on every pane of glass — on every blade of grass about the empty house ; whilst fer others who were in the thick of the battle, who understood the matter from A to Z, from the setting out of the problem to its solution, they mentally cried, ' It is too late ;' ' We may as well see it out to the end ;' ' It is dangerous to go forward, but it is certain defeat to turn back ;' ' Who can tell how the fortunes of any commercial war may turn ?' and so held on in the broad way which led most of them to pecuniary disgrace and social destruction. No man who reads his Bible could, I fancy, have passed that ' desirable tenement' and failed to think ofthe house ' built upon the sand.' As he remembered the lights which had once streamed from its -windows, the carriages he had seen driven through its gates, the music he had heard floating from its por tals, the wealth and prosperity that had seemed to have taken up their abode within those walls, he could not forget the parable of what happened when the rains beat and the winds blew.

Upon the man who once tenanted that house the winds had blown and the rains had beaten ; but being wise in his generation he provided against the accident which might hap pen, as few provide for a certainty which must happen, and secured for himself a refuge when the evil time came and the magnificent commercial edifice he had reared, and that he knew to be rotten at the core, fell with a crash, the noise whereof was heard throughout the length and breadth of Eng land. On a certain fine Friday in the year of grace 1866, he went into the City gaily. Things were going well with him, his ven tures were prospering, not a ball ofthe many he had tossed up was as yet come to the ground. So far he had been able to keep them all going. Here one — there one — no person could tell how he managed, yet his busy brain controlled their action and prevented the collapse of a single scheme.

He seemed to find time for everything — pleasure, business, philanthropy. ' A master mind,' observed spectators, admiringly watching the game, and not understanding in the least how it was played. Well, yes, one may so far agree with the opinion of the world ; but then, in his way, the late Mr. Peace must be con sidered a very clever gentleman, and no doubt Messrs. Benson and his associates and Messrs. Meiklejohn et Cie. possessed talents of a high order. The daring and capacity, however, possessed by a respectable thief, who pursues his calling in a grand counting-house in the City, can scarcely be regarded as equal to that possessed by his humbler brother, who has not the prestige of a good commercial reputation, who lives just where he can, and steals as chance favours and occasion offers.

The spectacle presented by Mr. Peace driving amiably round the suburbs, and contemplating houses where he meant to operate, is more extraordinary than that of the promoter, who robs by virtue of an Act of Parliament, and collects the GARDENS. 4 pence of widows and orphans with an air of as lofty superiority as though he were the great O'Connell. The man who drove into the City on the especial Friday could have built many Conciliation Halls with the money which had, throughout England, been posted in answer to his many appeals ; but he did not court that publicity. He was modest and content — satisfied with his office in Throgmorton-street, his house in Palace Gardens, and a little villa on the Thames. He had not any other place — he was not a shooting-man, or a riding-man, or a fishing-man, or a yachting-man.

He felt pleased to see his friends about him at ' the Gardens,' as he abbreviated the name of his place of residence, and he would have liked, he said, ' to get away, if he could, to Switzerland every year ;' but then he never could so get away, and there was ' no use talking about such holiday-making.' ' Yes,' he had a partner ; the partner could leave, but with himself it was different And people admired ' that master mind,' and bowed down before the colossal intellect. When the crash came many understood why he had not been able to go abroad. They comprehended, if one of the balls had touched the ground it would have been all up with the player. Sitting in his office all in the fine summer weather, there came a thunderbolt across the great leather-covered table. ' Overends have gone, sir,' said the head clerk, rushing into the room without knocking, and literally gasping for breath with his hurry and the greatness of his announcement. ' Nonsense !' retorted his employer. ' It is a fact, sir. I have run all the way back to let you know.

Cornhill is blocked up, and you might walk on the heads of the people in Finch-lane.' The great financier rose a little unsteadily, as if he had taken at luncheon more than his accustomed three glasses of sherry, which just at that time a celebrated surgeon, now, alas, dead, was prescribing for all the ills that flesh is heir to— rose, took his hat, looked into it as if he beheld some wonderful secret within the lining, and remarked, ' Well, it is a sad pity ; but, one comfort, it does not affect us.' After this observation he went out and joined the crowd gathered around the Corner House, great with every likelihood of its becoming greater. 'We have not got them yet from the West-end and the suburbs,' remarked a sergeant of police, touching his hat deferentially to the commercial potentate. ' They'll have to order out the military, sir,' observed a fussy old gentleman, who went on to add, ' he did not approve of new ways of doing business ; stick to the former paths and you can't go very far wrong,' he said, as well as the lack of teeth would let him say anything. ' Ah !' answered the happy individual whom the failure did not affect, ' but what about the South-Sea Bubble ?' Scarcely a person he met who did not look dazed and bewildered.

Millionaires, as they hurried by, waved their hands with a despairing gesture, as though to signify the end of the world was at hand. Panic was writ large on the faces of bank directors and bank managers. He was about to stop a principal in one of the great discount houses in order to ask him some question ; but that gentleman only found time to shake his head in token of the ruin which hung over the devoted City ere he too had passed out of sight. ' No,' remarked an honest country squire, who stood con templating the show ; ' I wouldn't be the men who have wrought this ruin for all the gold in the Bank of England.' ' I wonder they could sleep in their beds,' cried a florid individual dressed in clerical style. ' Ah, there is nothing like honesty — here we see the end of the wicked.' The rich man who was possessed of a ' master mind' turned and looked curiously at this speaker. ' I should like to know the precise nature of the swindle you are engaged in, my friend,' he thought, after he had stared him over from head to foot.

The crowd vvas every moment growing in number and fury ; those people from the West-end and the suburbs the policeman had mentioned were coming, coming — residents in the country, up in town for pleasure or on business, had abandoned every plan and desire except a mad endeavour to reach the doors of the doomed Corner House ; the noise was deafening, the excite ment indescribable ; if half the population had been struck dead there could not have been produced a wilder despair, a greater consternation. , Standing on a door-step, the gentleman who had his office in Throgmorton-street looked upon the scene with a curious sense of viewing it from an immense distance. He felt, and he appeared, a mere spectator gazing upon a spectacle. If he had never been in business he could not have seemed further GARDE.XS. removed from sympathy with this tremendous commercial down fall.

There was a curious expression about his mouth which induced one or two persons who were jostled up against him to think he was smiling at the great human exhibition then on view, and they resented his merriment ; but they were mistaken. He did not feel sorr)' and he did not feel glad ; it was nothing to him, nothing one way or another; there was no reason why he should fight his way madly through the crowd, and indeed there was no good reason why he stood there at all. ' Those that win may laugh, Mr. Seaton,' said a harsh voice at his elbow ; and turning he saw a man who, like others, fancied he was amused by the play then in full progress. ' You, Allold f he remarked, the sensation that he was act ing some part in a dream growing stronger upon him : ' I am not laughing, and I do not win — or — lose,' he added, after an almost imperceptible pause. ' What a lucky fellow you are !

I wish I could say the same.' ' Heavily hit ? For answer Mr. Allold drew his forefinger lightly but sug gestively across his windpipe. ' So bad as that !' commented the great promoter, with a faint interest. The other nodded and walked off. The gentleman on the steps looked after his retreating figure and smiled in earnest ' I do not think it is so bad as that. I daresay he is not in at all.' Really it was like looking down from another world upon the shifts and lying and subterfuges and cares of this ; but after a time Air. Seaton grew weary of it all, and returned to his office. There he found his partner — a man, his junior in the firm, though his senior in age, who, having brought money into the business, asked anxiously, ' Will it affect us much ? ' There is no telling. One can never know the houses that may be dragged down in a smash like this ; but we need not walk out to meet trouble half-way.

If it is coming it will be here soon enough.' ' You take matters very coolly.' ' It is of no use to take them otherwise ' Yet afterwards the partner who had brought in money thought with a sort of frenzy over this conversation. ' He sat opposite to me, sir, where you are sitting now,' he explained subsequently to a solicitor, ' and never blenched. I give you my word I should, from his manner, as soon have ventured to suspect the Governor ofthe Bank of England.' Though there was not much actual business to transact at his office, Mr. Seaton did not leave till long after the time when he usually returned to Palace Gardens. ' There has been a tremendous failure in the City,' he re marked to his wife, in explanation of his detention j ' but per haps you have heard of it ?' No, Mrs. Seaton had not heard of it.

She had not been out ; and no visitor had called likely to be interested in such matters. It was understood in Palace Gardens as well as else where that Mrs. Seaton did not profess any fondness for business affairs. Except in the most general manner her husband never at home spoke of commerce ; and when she drove into the City — to fetch him, as she sometimes did, though rarely — she did not alight from the carriage and enter his office, but sat outside awaiting his leisure. She had not brought Mr. Seaton much of a dot ; but such as it was he settled carefully the amount on her. Other settlement she had none. ' A man cannot afford to fake money out of his business,' Mr. Seaton said, when speaking on the subject. When he made this observation, those to whom he addressed it laughed, and thought if any man could afford to do so, it was he. 'Yes, Overends have come to grief,' Mr. Seaton went on.

It was at dinner he uttered these confidences ; for returning so late there was no time for conversation before he dressed in order to sit down to that meal. ' A frightful affair ; must mean ruin to thousands. I never saw such a sight in the City before.' He talked about the matter a little longer, and then, seeing how small an interest Mrs. Seaton seemed to take in the sub ject, passed on to other matters. When the butler went down to the basement, he was very full of the news, and went out to try and get an evening paper. Not one was to be had in the neighbourhood, however, for love or money; and he must have gone to bed dissatisfied had another of the servants not discovered 'master' had brought one home with him, for a Standard lay on the marble slab sur mounting the coil of hot-water pipes in the billiard-room.

Master had gone out saying ' no one need wait up for him;' mistress was in the boudoir playing the piano ; the children GARDENS. were in bed ; there happened to be no company that night, and in spite of the pleasant excitement caused by the tidings that so many people were ruined, the servants felt the house seemed dull and quiet ; ere twelve they were all in bed and asleep. Long before that time Mrs. Seaton had closed the piano and gone up to her own room. Never an early riser, it was nearly noon the next morning before her maid awoke her. ' If you please, ma'am, said that functionary, ' Mr. Harri man is here and wants to see master.' Now Mr. Harriman was the partner who had brought money into Mr. Season's firm. Mrs. Seaton opened her eyes and asked what the time was. ' Gone half-past eleven, ma'am.' ' So late !

Well, he cannot expect to find Mr. Seaton here at this hour. He knows perfectly well Mr. Seaton always leaves home punctually at nine o'clock.' ' Yes, ma'am, but he did not do so this morning ; he never came home last night at all.' ' What can you mean ?' asked Mrs. Seaton, bewildered. ' He never came home, ma'am ; the door was on the latch this morning when Sarah went down-stairs, and master always puts up the chain after he comes in ; and he is not in his dressing-room, and he has not been to the office ; and Mr. Harriman says, ifyou please, ma'am, he wants to know where he is likely to find him, for he is needed in the City most par ticular.' All in a hurry Mrs. Seaton suffered her maid to assist her to dress, and ran down-stairs to the library, where Mr. Harri man waited her coming. ' It is most important I should see Seaton immediately,' he began. ' Can you tell me where I had better go and look for him ?' No; Mrs. Seaton could not.

He went out after dinner, down to his club as she understood, and she had not seen him since. ' He was not going on any journey, I suppose?' asked Mr. Harriman. ' He did not say anything about going on a journey to me,' she answered, ' and he took no luggage, not even a bag.' ' You are sure of that, Mrs. Seaton ?' ' Quite sure. I was crossing the hall when he went out.' ' And you have no idea where I can find him ?' ' Not the least. Unless he has gone to the office, and you have crossed him as you came here ; and yet,' she added, ' he would never go to the office without changing his dress. Do you think anything can have happened to him, Mr. Harriman?' 'No, I think not; but I fancy something has happened to me,' was the answer. Mrs. Seaton looked straight in his face, and asked him what he meant. ' I would rather not say at present,' he replied. ' I hope and trust that I may never have to say fully what I mean.' Without further ceremony he went out of the house and down into Kensington High-street, where, hailing the first hansom he met, he bade the man drive to Pall Mall.

Yes, Mr. Seaton had been at his club the previous evening; but he only stopped a few minutes. It was late, and he jumped into a cab, and told the porter to direct the driver to take him to Palace Gardens. Mr. Harriman went from Pall Mall to Scotland-yard ; there he had a tale to tell, and he told it ' He has never left London, I think you will find, sir,' was the remark hazarded by the person in authority at the head office of police ; ' but we will soon know all about it' In this case, however, as in many others, the police never knew anything about it. For all the information they could glean, Mr. Seaton might have thrown himself over one of the bridges or taken the wings of the morning and flown to the uttermost parts of the earth. He might have been in St. Giles's or in the next world ; he had vanished utterly, disappeared as totally as though the ground had opened and swallowed him up alive.

Mr. Harriman never saw him again. The detectives em ployed independently by many indignant creditors failed to discover the faintest clue to his whereabouts. Palace Gardens lost him for ever that night when he went out with only a light top-coat over his evening-dress, and said no one need sit up for him. To wife and children he never returned ; the postman left no letters from foreign parts ; the ' master mind' had proved its superiority in this at least— that it enabled its possessor to disappear in the very nick of time, and to leave nor trace nor tiding of his whereabouts. Another twelve hours and he would have been under sur veillance ; now it was about as useful looking for him as for a needle in a truss of hay. I.X PALACE GARDENS. 10 If he had stayed he could not have proved a source of profit to any one, and he might have been a cause of inconvenience to many.

The lawyers made a great fuss about his disappearance ; but they managed to run up plenty of costs, as they always do, no matter who goes or who stays, who wins or who loses. There was nothing for the creditors ; but then, all the same, there would have been nothing had they sent him into penal servitude. It was very hard for his wife to encounter such a storm as ensued all alone ; but her husband could not have stood beside her when in Millbank, and in Millbank most assuredly he would have found himself had he waited to stand his trial. It vvas whispered that some of those who talked most loudly of his ' cowardice' in running away from ' the consequences of his own acts,' and ' leaving them to bear the burden of his mis deeds,' were secretly rejoiced at his disappearance. The shoulders ofthe absent are broad, and many a fraud was laid upon those of Mr. Seaton that others must have shared had he ' remained at his post' and faced the worst ' like a man.' In various parts of the kingdom widows and orphans clam oured for vengeance ; but they had to partake of poverty with out that condiment, and probably in the long-run digested their bitter meal as well as if he had stood in the public pillory for their gratification.

Not a creature was much the worse because of his absence except Mr. Harriman, and with one mind therefore the wise public decided he was an accomplice, the worse criminal per haps of the two. He stuck to his guns, and people wondered he was not ashamed of himself. He made himself active in endeavouring to trace the missing man, and universal opinion decided he had been well paid to preserve the secret. He had lost everything, and proved the loss by figures ; whereupon the wise men of Gotham said, ' Figures could be so manipu lated as to prove anything,' and the loss, if he sustained any, had been made up to him in other ways. What a to-do there was for a time in Palace Gardens as well as in Throgmorton-street ! As nothing was in settlement, the trustees in bankruptcy and the lawyers worked their will amongst the goods and chattels the great man had gathered together.

That they were somewhat disappointed by the result of their capture goes perhaps without saying. Persons like Mr. Seaton go in more for show than for intrinsic worth. The furniture had cost a large amount, it is true ; but furniture once used is after all but second-hand, whereas a good picture is value until its canvas hangs in tatters, ay, and after. An ' Old Master,' however, no matter how valuable, would not have served Mr. Season's end so well as a suite of chairs, sofa, and ottoman upholstered in silk. He had kept open house in order to maintain his credit, and nothing which failed to minister to that end could be found in it. To decorators, upholsterers, the makers of mirrors, the inventors of parquet, and the sellers of carpets he had been a liberal patron. Turn where he pleased in Holyrood House, which was the modest name of the desirable residence in Palace Gardens, he could scarcely fail to see his own reflection in some looking-glass ; go where he would his eyes were glad dened with the sight of some entirely new effect in ornament.

Now he wandered through what might have been a Moorish interior ; from that he passed into a book-room decorated in the style of the Middle Ages. The conservatory resembled a square cut out of the corridor of the Crystal Palace, and the dining-room could only be likened to the Egyptian Court in the same building. As for the drawing-room, it at once com bined all styles and defied definition of any. Its windows opened on to a broad terrace, such as is sometimes presented to view on the stage ; below that a small and pretty garden bordered and sheltered by great elm-trees ; beyond that an iron railing divided a paddock-like enclosure in Kensington Gardens from the 'grounds' of Holyrood House; and further off still were to be seen the dark yews that are historical in the annals of the old comfortable-looking palace where our present Queen was born, and many another king and queen lived and died.

Mrs. Seaton had left Palace Gardens long ere the things came to be ticketed. Indeed, as she went almost immediately after the disappearance of her husband, strangers going through the house said it did not look like a place where there had been such a shipwreck, but rather like a mansion waiting the return of the family. After a time the servants departed also, making a noise and confusion ere they scattered abroad, such as bees indulge in when they swarm. Before their final exodus they were much given to feel ' cold shivers' and to 'expect to meet master sudden.' His portrait in the library ' upset them,' and a few of his belongings which IN PALACE GARDENS. 12 a housemaid turned out of a drawer in the bookcase ' gave her quite a turn.' When the time for the auction arrived the house would have been overrun with the curious and the indignant had the ruling powers not decided to charge five shillings each for cata logues.