Detective and mystery stories, English; Police -- Fiction; Short stories
This story from its mystery was painful, but had no consequences to make
it tragical. The next which I shall tell, (and although traditionary,
these anecdotes of disappearances which I relate in this paper are
correctly repeated, and were believed by my informants to be strictly
true,) had consequences, and melancholy ones, too. The scene of it is in
a little country town, surrounded by the estates of several gentlemen of
large property. About a hundred years ago there lived in this small town
an attorney, with his mother and sisters. He was agent for one of the
'squires near, and received rents for him on stated days, which, of
course, were well known. He went at these times to a small public house,
perhaps five miles from ----, where the tenants met him, paid their
rents, and were entertained at dinner afterwards. One night he did not
return from this festivity. He never returned. The gentleman whose agent
he was employed the Dogberrys of the time to find him and the missing
cash; the mother, whose support and comfort he was, sought him with all
the perseverance of faithful love. But he never returned, and by and by
the rumor spread that he must have gone abroad with the money; his
mother heard the whispers all around her, and could not disprove it; and
so her heart broke, and she died. Years after, I think as many as fifty,
the well-to-do butcher and grazier of ---- died; but, before his death,
he confessed that he had waylaid Mr. ---- on the heath close to the town,
almost within call of his own house, intending only to rob him; but
meeting with more resistance than he anticipated, had been provoked to
stab him, and had buried him that very night deep under the loose sand
of the heath. There his skeleton was found; but too late for his poor
mother to know that his fame was cleared. His sister, too, was dead,
unmarried, for no one liked the possibilities which might arise from
being connected with the family. None cared if he was guilty or innocent
now.
If our detective police had only been in existence!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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