Lady Molly of Scotland YardOrczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness
General
Lady Molly of Scotland Yard
Orczy, Emmuska Orczy, Baroness
Detective and mystery stories; Police -- Great Britain -- Fiction
Well, plenty of very clever people (I mean those who write letters to
the papers and give suggestions to every official department in the
kingdom) thought that the police ought to keep a very strict eye upon
that pretty Scotch lassie. For she was very pretty, and had quaint,
demure ways which rendered her singularly attractive, in spite of the
fact that, for most masculine tastes, she would have been considered
too tall. Of course, Saunders and Danvers kept an eye on her--you may
be sure of that--and got a good deal of information about her from the
people at the hotel. Most of it, unfortunately, was irrelevant to the
case. She was maid-attendant to Miss Marvell, who was feeble in
health, and who went out but little. Rosie waited on her master and
mistress upstairs, carrying their meals to their private room, and
doing their bedrooms. The rest of the day she was fairly free, and was
quite sociable downstairs with the hotel staff.
With regard to her movements and actions on that memorable 3rd of
February, Saunders--though he worked very hard--could glean but little
useful information. You see, in an hotel of that kind, with an average
of thirty to forty guests at one time, it is extremely difficult to
state positively what any one person did or did not do on that
particular day.
Most people at the Scotia remembered that Miss Marvell dined in the
_table d’hôte_ room on that 3rd of February; this she did about once
a fortnight, when her maid had an evening “out.”
The hotel staff also recollected fairly distinctly that Miss Rosie
Campbell was not in the steward’s room at supper-time that evening,
but no one could remember definitely when she came in.
One of the chambermaids who occupied the bedroom adjoining hers, said
that she heard her moving about soon after midnight; the hall porter
declared that he saw her come in just before half-past twelve when he
closed the doors for the night.
But one of the ground-floor valets said that, on the morning of the
4th, he saw Miss Marvell’s maid, in hat and coat, slip into the house
and upstairs, very quickly and quietly, soon after the front doors
were opened, namely, about 7.0 a.m.
Here, of course, was a direct contradiction between the chambermaid
and hall porter on the one side, and the valet on the other, whilst
Miss Marvell said that Campbell came into her room and made her some
tea long before seven o’clock every morning, including that of the
4th.
I assure you our fellows at the Yard were ready to tear their hair out
by the roots, from sheer aggravation at this maze of contradictions
which met them at every turn.
The whole thing seemed so simple. There was nothing “to it” as it
were, and but very little real suggestion of foul play, and yet Mr.
Leonard Marvell had disappeared, and no trace of him could be found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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