Statement of John Burns Gilsey, privatedetective, especially engaged onthe Castlecourt diamond case.
AT A quarter before eight on the evening of May fourth a telephone message was sent to Scotland Yard that a diamond necklace, the property of the Marquis of Castlecourt, had been stolen from Burridge’s Hotel. Brison, one of the best of their men, was detailed upon the case, and three days later my services were engaged by the marquis. After investigations which have occupied several weeks, I have become convinced that the case is an unusual and complicated one. The reasons which have led me to this conclusion I will now set down as briefly and clearly as possible.
As has already been stated in the papers, the diamonds, on the afternoon of the robbery, were standing in a leather jewel-case on the bureau in Lady Castlecourt’s apartment. To this room access was obtained by three doors—that which led into Lord Castlecourt’s room, that which led into the sitting-room, and that which led into the hall.
Lord Castlecourt’s valet, James Chawlmers, and Lady Castlecourt’s maid, Sophy Jeffers, had been occupied in this suite of apartments throughout the afternoon. At six Jeffers had laid out her ladyship’s clothes, taken the diamonds from the metal despatch-box in which they were usually carried, and set them on the bureau. She had then withdrawn into the sitting-room withChawlmers, where they had remained for half an hour talking. During this period of time Jeffers deposes that she heard the rustle of a skirt in the sitting-room, and went to the door to see if any one had entered. No one was to be seen. She returned to the sitting-room, and resumed her conversation with Chawlmers. It is the general supposition—and it would appear to be the reasonable one—that the diamonds were then taken. According to Jeffers, they were in the case at six o’clock, and on the testimony of Lord and Lady Castlecourt they were gone at half-past seven. The person toward whom suspicion points is a housemaid, going by the name of Sara Dwight, who had a pass-key to the apartment.
The suspicions of Sara Dwight were strengthened by her actions. At quarter past seven that evening she left the hotel without giving warning, and carrying no further baggage than a small portmanteau. Upon examination of her room, it was discovered that she had left a gown hanging on the pegs, and her box, which contained a few articles of coarse underclothing and a wadded cotton quilt. She had been uncommunicative with the other servants, but had had much conversation with Sophy Jeffers, who described her as a brisk, civil-spoken girl, whose manner of speech was above her station.
The natural suspicions evoked by her behavior were intensified in the mind of Brison by the information that the celebrated crook Laura theLady had returned to London. I myself had seen the woman at Earlscourt, and told Brison of the occurrence. It had appeared to Brison that Jeffers’ description of the housemaid had many points of resemblance with Laura the Lady. The theft reminded us both of the affair of the Comtesse de Chateaugay’s rubies, when this particular thief, who speaks French as well as she does English, was supposed to have been the moving spirit in one of the most daring jewel robberies of our time.
Brison, confident that Sara Dwight and Laura the Lady were one and the same, concentrated his powers in an effort to find her. He was successful to the extent of locating a woman closely resembling Laura the Lady living quietly in a furnishedflat in Knightsbridge with a man who passed as her husband. He discovered that this couple had left for a “business trip” on the Continent shortly before Sara Dwight’s appearance at Burridge’s, and had returned shortly after her departure therefrom.
He regarded the pair and their movements as of sufficient importance to be watched, and for a week after their return from the Continent had the flat shadowed. One foggy night, while he himself was watching the place, the man and woman came out in evening dress, and took a hansom that was waiting for them. Brison followed them, and the fog being dense and their horse fresh, lost them in the maze of streets about Walworth Crescent.He is positive that the occupants of the cab realized they were followed and attempted to escape. He assures me that he saw the driver turn several times and look at his hansom, and then lash his horse to a desperate speed.
One of the points in this nocturnal pursuit that he thinks most noteworthy is the manner in which the occupants of the cab disappeared. After keeping it well in sight for over half an hour, he lost it completely and suddenly in the short street that runs from Walworth Crescent, north, into Farley Street; ten minutes later he is under the impression that he sighted it again near the Hyde Park Hotel. But if it was the same cab it was empty, and the driver was looking for fares.For some hours after this Brison patrolled the streets in the neighborhood, but could find no trace of the suspected pair. It was midnight when he returned to his surveillance of the flat. The next morning he heard that its occupants had left. A search-warrant revealed the fact that they had gone with such haste that they had left many articles of dress, etc., behind them. There was every evidence of a hurried flight.
All this was so much clear proof, in Brison’s opinion, of the guilt of Sara Dwight. Upon this hypothesis he is working, and I have not disturbed his confidence in the integrity of his efforts. The result of my investigations, which I have been quietly and systematically pursuingfor the last three weeks, has led me to a different and much more sensational conclusion. That Sara Dwight may have taken the diamonds I do not deny. But she was merely an accomplice in the hands of another. The real thief, in my opinion, is Gladys, Marchioness of Castlecourt!
My reasons for holding this theory are based upon observations taken at the time, upon my large and varied experience in such cases, and upon information that I have been collecting since the occurrence. Let me briefly state the result of my deductions and researches.
Lady Castlecourt, who was the daughter of a penniless Irish clergyman, was a young girl of great beauty brought up in the direst poverty. Her marriage with the Marquisof Castlecourt, which took place seven years ago this spring, lifted her into a position of social prominence and financial ease. Society made much of her; she became one of its most brilliant ornaments. Her husband’s infatuation was well known. During the first years of their marriage he could refuse her nothing, and he stinted himself—for, tho well off, Lord Castlecourt is by no means a millionaire peer—in order to satisfy her whims. The lady very quickly developed great extravagances. She became known as one of the most expensively dressed women in London. It had been mentioned in certain society journals that Lord Castlecourt’s revenues had been so reduced by his wife’s extravagance that he had beenforced to rent his town house in Grosvenor Gate, and for two seasons take rooms in Burridge’s Hotel.
This is a simple statement of certain tendencies of the lady. Now let me state, with more detail, how these tendencies developed and to what they led.
I will admit here, before I go further, that my suspicions of Lady Castlecourt were aroused from the first. It was, perhaps, with a predisposed mind that I began those explorations into her life during the past five years which have convinced me that she was the moving spirit in this theft of the diamonds.
For the first two years of her married life Lady Castlecourt lived most of the time on the estate of Castlecourt Marsh Manor. Duringthis period she became the mother of two sons, and it was after the birth of the second that she went to London and spent her first season there since her marriage. She was in blooming health, and even more beautiful than she had been in her girlhood. She became the fashion: no gathering was complete without her; her costumes were described in the papers; royalty admired her.
I have discovered that at this time her husband gave her six hundred pounds per annum for a dressing allowance. During the first two years of her married life she lived within this. But after that she exceeded it to the extent of hundreds, and finally thousands, of pounds. The fifth year after her marriage she was in debt three thousand pounds,her creditors being dressmakers, furriers, jewelers, and milliners in London and Paris. She made no attempt to pay these debts, and the tradesmen, knowing her high social position and her husband’s rigid sense of pecuniary obligations, did not press her, and she went on spending with an unstinted hand.
It was last year that she finally precipitated the catastrophe by the purchase of a coat of Russian sable for the sum of one thousand pounds, and a set of turquoise ornaments valued at half that amount. Each of these purchases was made in Paris. The two creditors, having been already warned of her disinclination to meet her bills, had, it is said, laid wagers with other firms to which she was deeply in debt, thatthey would extract the money from her within the year.
It was in the summer of the past year that Lady Castlecourt was first threatened by Bolkonsky, the furrier, with law proceedings. In the end of September she went to Paris and visited the man in his own offices, and—I have it from an eyewitness—exhibited the greatest trepidation and alarm, finally begging, with tears, for an extension of a month’s time. To this Bolkonsky consented, warning her that, at the end of that time, if his account was not settled, he would acquaint his lordship with the situation and institute legal proceedings.
Before the month was up—that was in October of the past year—his account was paid in full by LadyCastlecourt herself. At the same time other accounts in Paris and London were entirely settled or compromised. I find that, during the months of October and November, Lady Castlecourt paid off debts amounting to nearly four thousand pounds. In most instances she settled them personally, paying them in bank-notes. A few claims were paid by check. I have it from those with whom she transacted these monetary dealings that she seemed greatly relieved to be able to discharge her obligations, and that in all cases she requested silence on the subject as the price of her future patronage.
I now come to a feature of the case that I admit greatly puzzles me. Lady Castlecourt was still wearing the diamonds when this large sumwas disbursed by her. As far as can be ascertained, she had made no effort to sell them, and I can find no trace of a frustrated attempt to steal them. She had suddenly become possessed of four thousand pounds without the aid of the diamonds. They were not called into requisition till nearly six months later.
The natural supposition would be that “some one”—an unknown donor—had put up the four thousand pounds; in fact, that Lady Castlecourt had a lover, to whom, in a desperate extremity, she had appealed. But the most thorough examination of her past life reveals no hint of such a thing. Frivolous and extravagant as she undoubtedly was, she seems to have been, as faras her personal conduct goes, a moral and virtuous lady. Her name has been associated with no man’s, either in a foolish flirtation or a scandalous and compromising intrigue; in fact, her devotion to Lord Castlecourt appears to have been of an absolutely genuine and sincere kind. While she did not scruple to deceive him as to her pecuniary dealings, she unquestionably seems to have been perfectly upright and honest in the matter of marital fidelity.
Where, then, did Lady Castlecourt secure this large sum of money? My reading of the situation is briefly this:
Her creditors becoming rebellious and Lady Castlecourt becoming terrified, she appealed to some woman friend for a loan. Who this is Ihave no idea, but among her large circle of acquaintances there are several ladies of sufficient means and sufficiently intimate with Lady Castlecourt to have been able to advance the required sum. This was done, as I have shown above, in the month of October, when Lady Castlecourt was in Paris, where she at once began to pay off her debts. After this she continued wearing the diamonds, and, in my opinion—such is her shallowness and irresponsibility of character—forgot the obligations of the loan, which had probably been made under a promise of speedy repayment, either in full or in part.
It was then—this, let it be understood, is all surmise—that Lady Castlecourt’s new and unknown debtor began to press for a repayment.There might be many reasons why this should so closely have followed the loan. With a woman of Lady Castlecourt’s lax and unbusinesslike methods, unusual conditions could be readily exacted. She is of the class of persons that, under a pressing need for money, would agree to any conditions and immediately forget them. That she did agree to a speedy reimbursement I am positive; that once again she found herself confronted by an angry and threatening creditor; and that, in desperation and with the assistance of Sara Dwight, she stole the diamonds, intending probably to pawn them, is the conclusion to which my experience and investigations have led me.
How she came to select SaraDwight as an accomplice I am not qualified to state. In my opinion, fear of detection made her seek the aid of a confederate. Sara’s flight, with its obviously suspicious surroundings, has an air of prearrangement suggestive of having been carefully planned to divert suspicion from the real criminal. Sophy Jeffers assured me that Lady Castlecourt had never, to her knowledge, conversed at any length with the housemaid. But Jeffers is a very simple-minded person, whom it would be an easy matter to deceive. That Sara Dwight was her ladyship’s accomplice I am positive; that she took the jewels and now has them is also my opinion.
Being convinced of her need of ready money, and of the rashnessand lack of balance in her character, I have been expecting that Lady Castlecourt would make some decisive move in the way of selling the diamonds. With this idea agents of mine have been on the watch, but without so far finding any evidence that she has attempted to place the stones on the market. We have found no traces of them either in London or Paris, or the usual depots in Holland or Belgium. It is true that the Castlecourt diamonds, not being remarkable for size, would be easy to dispose of in small, separate lots, but our system of surveillance is so thorough that I do not see how they could escape us. I am of the opinion that the stones are still in the hands of Sara Dwight, who, whether she is an accomplished thiefor not, is probably more wary and more versed in such dealings than Lady Castlecourt.
That her ladyship should have been the object of my suspicions from the start may seem peculiar to those to whom she appears only as a person of rank, wealth, and beauty. Before the case came under my notice at all, I had heard her uncontrolled extravagance remarked upon, and that alone, coupled with the fact that Lord Castlecourt is not a peer of vast wealth, and that the lady’s moral character is said to be unblemished, would naturally arouse the suspicion of one used to the vagaries and intricacies of the evolution of crime.
During my first interview with her ladyship I watched her closely,and was struck by her pallor, her impatience under questioning, her hardly concealed nervousness, and her indignant repudiation of the suspicions cast upon her servants. All the domestics in her employment agree that she is a kind and generous mistress, and it would be particularly galling to one of her disposition to think that her employees were suffering for her faults. Her answers to many of my questions were vague and evasive, and to both Brison and myself, at two different times, she suggested the possibility of the jewels not being stolen at all, but having been “mislaid.” Even Brison, whose judgment had been warped by her beauty and rank, was forced to admit the strangeness of this remark.
The description given me by Sophy Jeffers of her ladyship’s deportment when the theft was discovered still further strengthened my suspicions. Lady Castlecourt’s behavior at this juncture might have passed as natural by those not used to the very genuine hysteria which often attacks criminals. That she was wrought up to a high degree of nervous excitement is acknowledged by all who saw her. It is alleged by Jeffers—quite innocently of any intention to injure her mistress, to whom she appears devoted—that her ladyship’s first emotion on discovering the loss was a fear of her husband; that when he entered the room she instinctively tried to conceal the empty jewel-case behind her, and that almost her first words tohim were assurances that she had not been careless, but had guarded the jewels well.
Fear of Lord Castlecourt was undoubtedly the most prominent feeling she then possessed, and it showed itself with unrestrained frankness in the various ways described above. Afterward she attempted to be more reticent, and adopted an air of what almost appeared indifference, surprising not only myself and Brison, but Jeffers, by her remarks, made with irritated impatience, that they still might “turn up somewhere,” and “that she did not see how we could be so sure they were stolen.” This change of attitude was even more convincing to me than her former exhibition of alarm. The very candor and childishness withwhich she showed her varying states of mind would have disarmed most people, but were to me almost conclusive proofs of her guilt. She is a woman whose shallow irresponsibility of mind is even more unusual than her remarkable beauty. No one but an old and seasoned criminal, or a creature of extraordinary simplicity, could have behaved with so much audacity in such a situation.
Having arrived at these conclusions, I am not reduced to a passive attitude. I will wait and watch until such time as the diamonds are either pawned or sold. This may not occur for months, tho I am inclined to think that her ladyship’s need of money will force her to a recklessness which will be her undoing. Sara Dwight may be able to control her toa certain point, but I am under the impression that her ladyship, frightened and desperate, will be a very difficult person to handle.
This brings my statement up to date. At the present writing I am simply awaiting developments, confident that the outcome will prove the verity of my original proposition and the exactitude of my subsequent line of argument.