The Paradise Mystery by J. S. Fletcher (simple e reader TXT) 📗

Bryce paused awhile, as if marshalling his facts.

“Now, after that,” he continued presently, “I began to investigate matters myself—for my own satisfaction. And very soon I found out certain things—which I'll summarize, briefly, because some of my facts are doubtless known to you already. First of all—the man who came here as John Braden was, in reality, one John Brake. He was at one time manager of a branch of a well-known London banking company. He appropriated money from them under apparently mysterious circumstances of which I, as yet, knew nothing; he was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to ten years' penal servitude. And those two wards of Ransford's, Mary and Richard Bewery, as they are called, are, in reality, Mary and Richard Brake—his children.”

“You've established that as a fact?” asked Jettison, who was listening with close attention. “It's not a surmise on your part?”

Bryce hesitated before replying to this question. After all, he reflected, it was a surmise. He could not positively prove his assertion.

“Well,” he answered after a moment's thought, “I'll qualify that by saying that from the evidence I have, and from what I know, I believe it to be an indisputable fact. What I do know of fact, hard, positive fact, is this:—John Brake married a Mary Bewery at the parish church of Braden Medworth, near Barthorpe, in Leicestershire: I've seen the entry in the register with my own eyes. His best man, who signed the register as a witness, was Mark Ransford. Brake and Ransford, as young men, had been in the habit of going to Braden Medworth to fish; Mary Bewery was governess at the vicarage there. It was always supposed she would marry Ransford; instead, she married Brake, who, of course, took her off to London. Of their married life, I know nothing. But within a few years, Brake was in trouble, for the reason I have told you. He was arrested—and Harker was the man who arrested him.”

“Dear me!” exclaimed Mitchington. “Now, if I'd only known—”

“You'll know a lot before I'm through,” said Bryce. “Now, Harker, of course, can tell a lot—yet it's unsatisfying. Brake could make no defence—but his counsel threw out strange hints and suggestions—all to the effect that Brake had been cruelly and wickedly deceived—in fact, as it were, trapped into doing what he did. And—by a man whom he'd trusted as a close friend. So much came to Harker's ears—but no more, and on that particular point I've no light. Go on from that to Brake's private affairs. At the time of his arrest he had a wife and two very young children. Either just before, or at, or immediately after his arrest they completely disappeared—and Brake himself utterly refused to say one single word about them. Harker asked if he could do anything—Brake's answer was that no one was to concern himself. He preserved an obstinate silence on that point. The clergyman in whose family Mrs. Brake had been governess saw Brake, after his conviction—Brake would say nothing to him. Of Mrs. Brake, nothing more is known—to me at any rate. What was known at the time is this—Brake communicated to all who came in contact with him, just then, the idea of a man who has been cruelly wronged and deceived, who takes refuge in sullen silence, and who is already planning and cherishing—revenge!”

“Aye, aye!” muttered Mitchington. “Revenge?—just So!”

“Brake, then,” continued Bryce, “goes off to his term of penal servitude, and so disappears—until he reappears here in Wrychester. Leave him for a moment, and go back. And—it's a going back, no doubt, to supposition and to theory—but there's reason in what I shall advance. We know—beyond doubt—that Brake had been tricked and deceived, in some money matter, by some man—some mysterious man—whom he referred to as having been his closest friend. We know, too, that there was extraordinary mystery in the disappearance of his wife and children. Now, from all that has been found out, who was Brake's closest friend? Ransford! And of Ransford, at that time, there's no trace. He, too, disappeared—that's a fact which I've established. Years later, he reappears—here at Wrychester, where he's bought a practice. Eventually he has two young people, who are represented as his wards, come to live with him. Their name is Bewery. The name of the young woman whom John Brake married was Bewery. What's the inference? That their mother's dead—that they're known under her maiden name: that they, without a shadow of doubt, are John Brake's children. And that leads up to my theory—which I'll now tell you in confidence—if you wish for it.”

“It's what I particularly wish for,” observed Jettison quietly. “The very thing!”

“Then, it's this,” said Bryce. “Ransford was the close friend who tricked and deceived Brake:

“He probably tricked him in some money affair, and deceived him in his domestic affairs. I take it that Ransford ran away with Brake's wife, and that Brake, sooner than air all his grievance to the world, took it silently and began to concoct his ideas of revenge. I put the whole thing this way. Ransford ran away with Mrs. Brake and the two children—mere infants—and disappeared. Brake, when he came out of prison, went abroad—possibly with the idea of tracking them. Meanwhile, as is quite evident, he engaged in business and did well. He came back to England as John Braden, and, for the reason of which you're aware, he paid a visit to Wrychester, utterly unaware that any one known to him lived here. Now, try to reconstruct what happened. He looks round the Close that morning. He sees the name of Dr. Mark Ransford on the brass plate of a surgery door. He goes to the surgery, asks a question, makes a remark, goes away. What is the probable sequence of events? He meets Ransford near the Cathedral—where Ransford certainly was. They recognize each other—most likely they turn aside, go up to that gallery as a quiet place, to talk—there is an altercation—blows—somehow or other, probably from accident, Braden is thrown through that open doorway, to his death. And—Collishaw saw what happened!”

Bryce was watching his listeners, turning alternately from one to the other. But it needed little attention on his part to see that theirs was already closely strained; each man was eagerly taking in all that he said and suggested. And he went on emphasizing every point as he made it.

“Collishaw saw what happened?” he repeated. “That, of course, is theory—supposition. But now we pass from theory back to actual fact. I'll tell you something now, Mitchington, which you've never heard of, I'm certain. I made it in my way, after Collishaw's death, to get some information, secretly, from his widow, who's a fairly shrewd, intelligent woman for her class. Now, the widow, in looking over her husband's effects, in a certain drawer in which he kept various personal matters, came across the deposit book of a Friendly Society of which Collishaw had been a member for some years. It appears that he, Collishaw, was something of a saving man, and every year he managed to put by a bit of money out of his wages, and twice or thrice in the year he took these savings—never very much; merely a pound or two—to this Friendly Society, which, it seems, takes deposits in that way from its members. Now, in this book is an entry—I saw it—which shows that only two days before his death, Collishaw paid fifty pounds—fifty pounds, mark you!—into the Friendly Society. Where should Collishaw get fifty pounds, all of a sudden! He was a mason's labourer, earning at the very outside twenty-six or eight shillings a week. According to his wife, there was