Lady Molly of Scotland Yard - Chapter 11 - Sir Jeremiah’s Will

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Many people have asked me whether I knew when and in what circumstances Lady Molly joined the detective staff at Scotland Yard, who she was, and how she managed to keep her position in society, as she undoubtedly did, while exercising a profession which usually does not make for high social standing. Well, of course, there is much that I have known all along about my dear lady,

just as much, in fact, as her aristocratic friends and relations did. But I had promised her not to let the general public know anything of her private life until she gave me leave to do so. Now things have taken a different turn, and I can tell you all I know.

But I must go back some years for that, and recall to your mind that extraordinary crime known in those days as the Batic Will case, which sent one of the most prominent and popular young men in society to penal servitude, a life sentence, mind you, which was considered to be remarkably lenient

by a number of people who thought that Captain de Marzan ought to have been hanged. He was such a good-looking young soldier in those days. I especially remember him at the late Queen's funeral, one of the tallest men in the British Army, and with that peculiar charm of manner which, alas, one has ceased to associate with young Englishmen nowadays.

If to these two undeniable advantages you add the one that Hubert de Marzin was the dearly loved grandson of Sir Jeremiah Battick, the multi-millionaire shipowner of Liverpool, you will realize how easy it was for that young guardsman to ingratiate himself with every woman in society, and more particularly with every mama who had a marriageable daughter.

But fate and love have a proverbial knack of making a muddle of things. Captain de Marzane, with a bevy of pretty and eligible girls from whom to select a wife, chose to fall in love with the one woman in the whole of England who, in his grandfather's opinion, should have remained a stranger, even an enemy to him.

You remember the sad story, more than a quarter of a century old now, of Sir Jeremiah's unhappy second marriage with the pretty French actress, Mademoiselle Adèle Destie,

who was then over 30 years younger than himself. He married her abroad and never brought her to England. She made him supremely wretched

for about three years and finally ran away with the Earl of Flintshire, whom she had met at Monte Carlo. Well, it was a daughter

of that same Earl of Flintshire, Lady Molly Robertson Kirk, that Captain Hubert de Marzin fell desperately in love with.

Imagine Sir Jeremiah's feelings when he heard of it. Captain Hubert, you must know, had resigned his commission in 1902 at his grandfather's request, when the latter's health first began to fail. He had taken up his permanent abode at Appledore Castle,

Sir Jeremiah's magnificent home in Cumberland, and, of course, it was generally understood that, ultimately, he would become possessed of the wealthy shipowner's millions, as well as of the fine property,

seeing that his mother had been Sir Jeremiah's only child by the latter's first marriage. Lord Flintshire's property was quite close to Appledore, but, needless to say, old Sir Jeremiah never forgave his noble neighbor

the cruel wrong he had suffered at his hands. The Second Lady Baddock, afterwards Countess of Flintshire, had been dead twenty years. Neither the county, nor the more exclusive sets of London,

ever received her, But her daughter Molly, who inherited all her beauty and none of her faults, was the idol of her father, and the acknowledged queen of county and town society. You see, it was the ancient yet ever-new story of Capaletti and Monticeki over again,

and one day Captain Hubert de Marzant had to tell Sir Jeremiah that he desired to marry the daughter of his grandfather's most cruel enemy. What the immediate result of that announcement was, no one could say. Neither Sir Jeremiah nor Captain Hubert de Marzane

would have allowed servants or dependents to hear a word of disagreement that might have passed between them, much less to suspect than an unpleasant scene had occurred.

Outwardly, everything went on as usual at Appledore Castle for about a fortnight or so, after which Captain Hubert went away one day, ostensibly for a brief stay in London,

but he never re-entered the doors of the castle until after the dark veil of an appalling tragedy had begun to descend on the stately old Cumberland home. Sir Jeremiah bore it pretty well for a time.

Then he had a slight paralytic stroke and became a confirmed invalid. The postmaster at Appledore declared that after many letters came, addressed to Sir Jeremiah in Captain Hubert's well-known handwriting

and bearing the London postmark, but presumably the old gentleman felt bitterly irreconcilable towards his grandson, for Captain de Marzan was never seen at the castle.

Soon the invalid grew more and more eccentric and morose. He ordered all the reception rooms of his magnificent home to be closed and shuttered, and he dismissed all his indoor servants, with the exception of his own male attendant

and an old married couple named Bradley, who had been in his service for years, and who now did the little work that was required in what had once been one of the most richly appointed country mansions in England.

Bitter resentment against his once dearly loved grandson and against the man who had robbed him of his young wife 25 years ago