Читать книгу The Case Of Miss Elliott - Baroness Orczy - Страница 8

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Quite by chance I found myself one morning sitting before a marble-topped table in the ABC shop. I really wondered for the moment what had brought me there, and felt cross with myself for being there at all. Having sampled my tea and roll, I soon buried myself in the capacious folds of my Daily Telegraph.

“A glass of milk and a cheesecake, please,” said a well-known voice.

The next moment I was staring into the corner, straight at a pair of mild, watery blue eyes, hidden behind great bone-rimmed spectacles, and at ten long bony fingers, round which a piece of string was provokingly intertwined.

There he was as usual, wearing— for it was chilly— a huge tweed ulster, of a pattern too lofty to be described. Smiling, bland, apologetic, and fidgety, he sat before me as the living embodiment of the reason why I had come to the ABC shop that morning.

“How do you do?” I said, with as much dignity as I could command.

“I see that you are interested in Cigarette,” he remarked, pointing to a special column in The Daily Telegraph.

“She is quite herself again,” I said.

“Yes, but you don’t know who tried to poison her and succeeded in making her very ill. You don’t know whether the man Palk had anything to do with it, whether he was bribed, or whether it was Mrs Keeson or the groom Cockram who told a lie, or why —?”

“No,” I admitted reluctantly; “I don’t know any of these things.”

He was fidgeting nervously in the corner, wriggling about like an animated scarecrow. Then suddenly a bland smile illuminated his entire face. His long bony fingers had caught the end of the bit of string, and there he was at it again, just as I had seen him a year ago, worrying and fidgeting, making knot upon knot, and untying them again, whilst his blue eyes peered at me over the top of his gigantic spectacles.

“I would like to know what your theory is about the whole thing,” I was compelled to say at last; for the case had interested me deeply, and, after all, I had come to the ABC shop for the sole purpose of discussing the adventures of Cigarette with him.

“Oh, my theories are not worth considering,” he said meekly. “The police would not give me five shillings for any one of them. They always prefer a mystery to any logical conclusion, if it is arrived at by an outsider. But you may be more lucky. The owner of Cigarette did offer £100 reward for the elucidation of the mystery. The noble Earl must have backed Cigarette for all he was worth. Malicious tongues go even so far as to say that he is practically a ruined man now, and that the beautiful Lady Agnes is only too glad to find herself the wife of Harold Keeson, the son of the well-known trainer.

“If you ever go to Newmarket,” continued the man in the corner after a slight pause, during which he had been absorbed in unravelling one of his most complicated knots, “anyone will point out the Keesons’ house to you. It is called Manor House, and stands in the midst of beautiful gardens. Mr Keeson himself is a man of about fifty, and, as a matter of fact, is of very good family, the Keesons having owned property in the Midlands for the past eight hundred years. Of this fact he is, it appears, extremely proud. His father, however, was a notorious spendthrift, who squandered his property, and died in the nick of time, leaving his son absolutely penniless and proud as Lucifer.

“Fate, however, has been kind to George Keeson. His knowledge of horses and of all matters connected with the turf stood him in good stead: hard work and perseverance did the rest. Now, at fifty years of age, he is a very rich man, and practically at the head of a profession, which, if not exactly that of a gentleman, is, at any rate, highly remunerative.

“He owns Manor House, and lived there with his young wife and his only son and heir, Harold.

“It was Mr Keeson who had trained Cigarette for the Earl of Okehampton, and who, of course, had charge of her during her apprenticeship, before she was destined to win a fortune for her owner, her trainer, and those favoured few who had got wind of her capabilities. For Cigarette was to be kept a dark horse— not an easy matter in these days, when the neighbourhood of every racecourse abounds with rascals who eke out a precarious livelihood by various methods, more or less shady, of which the gleaning of early information is perhaps the least disreputable.

“Fortunately for Mr Keeson, however, he had in the groom, Cockram, a trusted and valued servant, who had been in his employ for over ten years. To say that Cockram took a special pride in Cigarette would be but to put it mildly. He positively loved the mare, and I don’t think that anyone ever doubted that his interest in her welfare was every bit as keen as that of the Earl of Okehampton or of Mr Keeson.

“It was to Cockram, therefore, that Mr Kesson entrusted the care of Cigarette. She was lodged in the private stables adjoining the Manor House, and during the few days immediately preceding the Coronation Stakes the groom practically never left her side, either night or day. He slept in the loose box with her, and ate all his meals in her company; nor was anyone allowed to come within measurable distance of the living treasure, save Mr Keeson or the Earl of Okehampton himself.

“And yet, in spite of all these precautions, in spite of every care that human ingenuity could devise, on the very morning of the race Cigarette was seized with every symptom of poisoning, and although, as you say, she is quite herself again now, she was far too ill to fulfil her engagement, and, if rumour speaks correctly, completed thereby the ruin of the Earl of Okehampton.”