Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Missing persons -- Fiction; Mystery fiction; Young women -- Fiction
And this, as far as they were concerned, was the last act and the
fitting climax of the play. They were ready now for the curtain to
rise upon another play; but there were other people not so young, or
not so sturdy, for whom the first drama was not so readily dismissed.
There was Captain Grey, who was never to see his sister now, never to
know if she had really wanted him and needed him. He did not soon
forget what had happened at the Tower.
Mrs. Enderby was sent for, and arrived that morning before sunrise,
with her husband. She listened to Caroline’s strange story, and made
what she could of it. She had not one word of reproach for her
daughter.
“We shall not cry over the spilled milk,” she said. “Let us see what
is to be done, before the police come.” She had a thoroughly European
point of view about the police. “If we are fortunate enough to find an
officer with discretion,” she added, “even yet a scandal may be
averted.”
For that was still her passionate resolve—that there should be no
scandal. She thought and planned with desperate energy; she directed
every one as to the part he or she should play; and in the end she
succeeded. Nobody knew that Caroline had disappeared, and nobody ever
would know. Nobody knew that the so-called Mrs. Quelton was Caroline,
and that, too, would never be known. Only let Joe and Mrs. Royce be
persuaded to hold their tongues; as for Lexy, Captain Grey, and
Houseman, she could of course rely upon them.
So the police were, as they say, baffled. Mr. Houseman told them a
tale. He had been alarmed about the lady whom he knew as Mrs. Quelton,
and he had climbed up on the balcony, hoping to see her alone; but he
had met Dr. Quelton instead, and had been hurt in trying to escape
from him.
Captain Grey also had a tale. He, too, had been alarmed about the lady
whom he believed to be his sister. He had gone with Miss Moran to call
upon her, and they had found the doctor dead, lying across the coffin.
There was an inquest, and Mr. Houseman had a very unpleasant time of
it, being the last one who had seen the doctor alive; but there was no
really serious suspicion against him. The _post-mortem_ showed that
the doctor had died of some unknown poison, at least half an hour
after the young man had arrived at the hospital. The verdict was
suicide, although the coroner’s jury had its own opinion about the
mysterious dark woman who had posed as the doctor’s wife. An autopsy
revealed that Mrs. Quelton had died from a natural cause—phthisis of
the lungs. In short, as far as could be discovered, there was no
murder at all.
This was a disappointment to the public, but there was always the
mysterious dark woman. The police instituted a search for her, and
there was much about her in the newspapers, but she was never found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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