The Lost Heir Part 22

"I think not. There would be no use in beginning the fight in the coroner's court. It will all have to be gone into when he applies to the higher courts for an order on the trustees of the will to proceed to carry out its provisions. Then our case will be fully gone into. We shall plead that in the first place the will was made under undue influence. We shall point to the singularity of the General's mysterious attack, an attack which one of the doctors who attended him at once put down to poison, and that at the moment of the attack Simcoe was sitting next to him at dinner. We shall point to the extraordinary coincidence that the child who stood between Simcoe and the inheritance disappeared on the evening when the General was _in extremis_, and, lastly, we shall fire our last shot by declaring that the man is not the John Simcoe named in the will, but is an impostor who a.s.sumed his name and traded upon his brave action on the General's behalf.

"But I do not want the fight to begin until we are in a better position than at present to prove what we say. As yet, however satisfactory to us, we have not got beyond the point of conjecture and probabilities, and I trust that, before we have to fight the case, we shall obtain some absolute facts in support of our theory. The man would be able at present to put into court a number of highly respectable witnesses from Stowmarket, and of officers he has met here, who would all testify to his being John Simcoe, and as against their evidence our conjectures would literally go for nothing. No doubt you will all receive notices to attend this evening. The policeman took your names and addresses, and will have told the officer in charge of the case the nature of the evidence you will probably give. And please remember that, in giving evidence, you must carefully abstain from saying anything that would lead the jury to perceive that you have any personal feeling against Simcoe, for they would be likely to put down your declaration of inability to recognize the body as a result of a bias against him. Do not let it be seen that there is any personal feeling in the matter at all."

The summonses arrived that evening and the next morning they drove to the coroner's court, Miss Purcell accompanying them. They found Mr.

Pettigrew awaiting them at the door.

"There is another case on before ours," he said, "and I should advise you to take a drive for half an hour, and, when you come back, to sit in the carriage until I come for you. The waiting room is a stuffy little place, and is at present full of witnesses in the case now on, and as that case is one of a man killed in a drunken row, they are not of a cla.s.s whom it is pleasant to mix with."

When they returned, he again came out. "I have just spoken to the coroner and told him who you are, and he has kindly given permission for you to go up to his own room. The case he has now before him may last another half hour."

It was just about that time when Mr. Pettigrew came up and said that their case was about to commence, and that they must go down and take their places in court. This was now almost empty; a few minutes before it had been crowded by those interested in the proceedings, which had terminated in the finding of manslaughter against four of those concerned in the fray. The discovery of a child's body in the ca.n.a.l was far too common an event to afford any attraction, and with the exception of the witnesses, two counsel seated in the front line facing the coroner, and two or three officials, there was no one in court. As soon as the little stir caused by the return of the jury from viewing the body had ceased, the coroner addressed them.

"We shall now, gentlemen of the jury, proceed to the case of the body of the child said to be that of Walter Rivington, which was found under very strange and suspicious circ.u.mstances near this end of the ca.n.a.l.

You will hear that the child was missing from his home in Hyde Park Gardens on the 23d of October, and for his discovery, as some of you are doubtless aware, large sums have been offered. The day before yesterday the drags were used for the purpose of discovering whether another child, who was lost, and who had been seen going near the bank, had been drowned. In the course of that search this body was brought up. You have already viewed it, gentlemen. Dr. MacIlvaine will tell you that it has certainly been a month in the water, perhaps two or three weeks longer.

Unfortunately the state of the body is such that it is impossible now to ascertain the cause of death, or whether it was alive when it fell in, or was placed in, the water. Fortunately some of its clothes still remain on the body, and one of the witnesses, the nurse of the missing boy, will tell you that the marks upon them were worked by herself, and that she can swear to them. Whether any other matters will come before you in reference to the case, which, from the fact that the child was grandson of the late General Mathieson and heir to his property, has attracted much attention, I cannot say. The first witness you will hear is the lock-keeper, who was present at the finding of the body."

Before the witness was called, however, one of the counsel rose and said:

"I am instructed, sir, to appear to watch the proceedings on behalf of Mr. John Simcoe, who, by the death of Walter Rivington, inherits under the will of the late General Mathieson."

The coroner bowed. The other counsel then rose.

"And I, sir, have been instructed by Mr. Pettigrew and Colonel Bulstrode, the trustees under the will, the former gentleman being also joint guardian with Miss Hilda Covington of the missing child, to watch the case on their behalf."

There was again an exchange of bows, and the lock-keeper then entered the box. His evidence was given in few words. He simply deposed to a.s.sisting in dragging the ca.n.a.l, and to the finding of the body.

"Have you any questions to ask the witness?" the coroner said, turning to the barristers.

The counsel employed by Mr. Pettigrew rose.

"Yes, sir; I have a few questions to ask. Now, Mr. Cousins, you say that you took part in dragging the ca.n.a.l. You are in charge of the drags, are you not?"

"Yes, sir; they are always kept in readiness at the lockhouse."

"How came you to use the drags? I suppose you don't take them down and spend a day or two in dragging the ca.n.a.l unless you have reason for supposing that a body is there."

"No, sir. The afternoon before a woman came up crying and said that her child had fallen into the water. He had gone out in the morning to play, and when dinner-time came and he didn't return she searched everywhere for him, and two children had just told her that they were playing with him on the bank of the ca.n.a.l, and that he had fallen in. They tried to get him out, but he sank, and they were so frightened that they ran home without saying anything. But they thought now that they had better tell.

I said that she had better go to the police station and repeat her statement, and they would send a constable to help me. She did that, and came back with the policeman. It was getting late then, but we took a boat and dragged the ca.n.a.l for two or three hours. The next morning she came again, and said that the boys had shown her just where her child fell in, and we dragged there and found this body. We brought it ash.o.r.e, and after we had carried it to the lockhouse we set to work again, but could not find any other body."

"What became of the woman?"

"She was with us till we fetched up this body. When she saw it she ran away crying, and did not come back again."

"You have not seen her since, Mr. Cousins?"

"No, sir; I have not seen her since. I believe the constable made inquiries about her."

"Thank you, I have nothing more to ask."

The policeman then entered the box and gave his evidence shortly, as to a.s.sisting in the operation of dragging and to finding the body.

"About this woman who gave the alarm," the barrister asked. "Have you seen her, constable?"

"No, sir; not since the body was found. Thinking it strange that she did not come back, I reported it at the station. She had given the name of Mary Smith and an address in Old Park. I was told to go round there, but no such person was known, and no one had heard of a child being lost. On my reporting this, inquiries were made all round the neighborhood; but no one had heard of such a woman, nor of a missing child."

"This is a very strange circ.u.mstance, sir, and it looks as if the whole story of the drowning child was a fabrication. The fact that the body of the child whose death we are considering was found close to the spot would certainly seem to point to the fact that some person or persons who were cognizant of the fact that this body was there were for some reasons anxious that it should be found, and so employed this woman to get the drags used at that point in order that the body might be brought to light."

"It is certainly a very strange business," the coroner said, "and I hope that the police will spare no efforts to discover this woman. However, as she is not before us, we must proceed with the case."

Then the officer of the court called out the name of Mary Summerford, and the nurse went into the witness box.

"I understand, Mary Sommerford, that you were nurse to Walter Rivington?"

"I was, sir."

"Will you tell the jury when you last saw him, and how it was that he was lost?"

She told the story as she had told it to Hilda on the day that he was missing.

"You have seen the clothes found on the body. Do you recognize them as those that he was wearing when you last saw him?"

"Yes, sir."

"How do you recognize them?"

"Because his initials are worked in two places. I worked them myself, and can swear to them."

"You cannot recognize the body, nurse?"

"I do not believe it is the body of my young master," she said; "his hair was lovely--long and silky. What hair remains on the body is very short, and what I should call stubbly."

"But the hair might have been cut short by the people who stole him,"

the coroner said. "It is the first precaution they would take to evade the search that would at once be set on foot."

"Yes, sir, but I don't think that it would have grown up so stiff."

"My experience of workhouse children," the coroner remarked, "is that whatever the hair they may have had when they entered the house, it is stiff enough to stand upright when cut close to the head. There is nothing else, is there, which leads you to doubt the ident.i.ty of the child?"

"No, sir, I cannot say that there is; but I don't believe that it is Master Walter's body."

Hilda, Netta, and Mr. Pettigrew all gave their evidence. The two former stated that they identified the clothes, but, upon the same ground as the nurse, they failed to recognize the body as that of Walter Rivington. All were asked if they could in any way account for the finding of the child's body there. The question had been foreseen, and they said that, although they had used every means of discovering the child, they had obtained no clew whatever as to his whereabouts from the time that he was stolen to the time they were summoned to identify the body.

"You quite a.s.sume that he was stolen, and not that he wandered away, as children will do when their nurses are gossiping?"

"We are convinced that he was stolen, sir, because the search was begun so momentarily after he was missed that he could hardly have got out of sight, had he merely wandered away on foot. Notice was given to the police an hour after he disappeared, and every street in this part of London was scoured immediately."

"Children of that age, Miss Covington, have often a fancy for hiding themselves; and this child may have hidden somewhere close until he saw his nurse pa.s.s by, and then made off in the opposite direction. The spot where the child's body was found is little more than a quarter of a mile from the corner where he was missed. He might have wandered up there, found himself on the ca.n.a.l bank, and childlike, have begun to play, and so slipped into the water."