Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

When Justice Was Blinded by Joseph Gollomb

A Strange Case Where by a Trick of Fate the Victim’s Blood Stained George Manners’s Innocent Hands.

Blindfolded stands the goddess man has chosen as symbol for legal justice; blindfolded to show that in judging she knows neither favorite, friend nor foe, only justice. Such is man’s proud conception of his courts of law.

But if I believed there were ironic gods playing cruel jokes on man, it would seem to me that in the Manners-Lascelles case these gods pushed Justice off her pedestal and made her play blindman’s buff, a groping and somewhat ludicrous figure, to remind man that after all he is not a maker of gods or goddesses, but only a puppet himself.

Near Beckfield, in England, lived Edmund Lascelles, who jointly with sister Eva inherited a considerable fortune in farm lands all about them. They occupied an old Georgian mansion outside of Beckfield just where town meets country. The household consisted of Lascelles, his sister Eva, their housekeeper Mrs. Marsh, and two other women servants.

The brother and sister were a strongly contrasted pair. He was dark, she was fair; he had a rugged body, hers was fragile; her nature was given to love while his was a sullen smoldering anger which broke out on the least provocation and had something contagious about it.

He was away one day visiting some of his farmer tenants — visits they little relished — when one of the Lascelles servants announced that Mr. George Manners was downstairs to see Miss Eva.

The announcement was superfluous, because Miss Eva had been watching the driveway ever since her brother had left. It was not accident that George Manners came to call in her brother’s absence. The two men did not get along together very well, and the temper between them was fast approaching a climax.

Manners was determined to marry Eva Lascelles; and her brother was determined that he should not. Eva was in anguish.

She loved George Manners as the man to whom all her nature turned. It was also her nature, however, to love her brother because he was her brother. The antagonism between these two men tore at her heart.

She tried to make peace, but while the man she wanted to marry was more than eager to help, she could do little with her brother. The very mention of George Manners seemed to be enough.

“He wants you for your money!” he would rage when Eva spoke of the man she loved.

“How can you say such a terrible thing!” For she knew better.

What made things worse was that he made it a point to denounce Manners and his motives before the servants. Whether he did this by accident or design, the servants knew what their master thought of Mr. Manners, and his tirades furnished drama in their otherwise dull life as provincial domestics.

Even when they were not supposed to hear, the housekeeper and the two maids would steal out to the stair landing to hear Lascelles hold forth on the subject of the man he was determined should not marry his sister.

Manners had inherited considerable money and land, and he had added to his wealth by his success as a lawyer in Beckfield. He was robust, and himself possessed of a temper. But his intelligence and his love for Eva Lascelles helped him put a curb on the things he wanted to say and do to that brother of hers who opposed his marriage.

For a long time he tried to win Lascelles’s friendship. Failing that, he tried to avoid increasing his enmity. But nothing that he did or did not do helped matters. Eva tried to understand her brother in this matter. Then she gave up the effort and simply tried to keep them apart.

But Manners determined to solve the mystery of Lascelles’s antagonism — now he thought he knew the answer. It had taken some quiet investigation. Manners even engaged a London detective and put several of his office staff on the job — with the result that this time when he came to call on Eva Lascelles there was something in his manner she had never seen before.

The moment they were alone he said:

“Eva, your brother has stood between us and marriage long enough. To-day I’m not going to avoid him. I will wait till he comes back. I shall ask for his consent to our marriage. If he gives it — line! If he does not — you and I will marry just the same.”

Her heart sank at his belligerent tone; and her heart told her that he was right; he had been patient a cruelly long time for a man of his ardent nature.

Nevertheless, she made an effort to avert the inevitable.

“Let me talk to him once more, George!” she pleaded.

Gently he shook his head. “You know you have nothing to tell him he hasn’t heard before. Whereas I have.”

“Oh, what is it, George?”

He hesitated, and her intuition told her that for once he was not telling her the full truth. “Simply that I’m tired of waiting for his consent. You are of age and have the legal right to marry of your own will.”

“If he is still opposed — well, that is his misfortune as well as ours. If he tries to punish you by withholding anything that belongs to you by inheritance — why, I have enough for both of us. And—”

She sensed the beginning of a threat in his words; but he ended: “And that’s that!”

Lascelles came back from his round of landlord visits in none too good a temper. As he came into the house he saw from the way the domestics lingered on the staircase that something more engrossing than housework was keeping them there.

“Where is Miss Eva?” he demanded.

“In the living room.” Mrs. Marsh, the housekeeper, was the only one who dared to tell him, and her manner told him more than her words.

He strode to the living room and threw open the door. His sister was so startled that she seemed to her brother the embodiment of guilt. Whereas her lover faced him with a self-possession that made Lascelles lose his own.

He had left the door open through impetuosity. Now he went to it by design. He wanted the servants on the staircase to hear.

“You are a filthy fortune-hunter, sir! I have forbidden you the house. You have chosen to come here in spite of me. Your choice now is — get out or be thrown out!”

“Edmund,” pleaded his sister. “Please!”

George Manners had just managed to put a curb on himself at Lascelles’s words; but now the man’s complete disregard of Eva was too much for the man who loved her.

He went to the open door, but he stopped in front of Lascelles.

“You’ve just said something about fortune hunting.” His deliberation affected the other man worse than a blow. “For once I will admit that I have been hunting for Eva’s fortune. Something told me that it was going fast and that you had much to do with its going.

“I have tried to keep the news from her — just as you have. Though for somewhat different reasons. Now I’ll be interested to know — Eva, you may want to hear it, too — what you have to say to my charge that you have been converting much of her share to yourself!”

A cry from Eva shocked him with its pain. The man she loved had called her brother a thief, and the woman between them got the full brunt of the situation.

She sank into a chair, her hands pressed over her eyes to shut out the unbearable, and her cry had something stricken in it.

It shook George Manners to the heart. The servants on the stairs sensed in his voice a last desperate effort to make peace for the sake of their mistress.

“Lascelles,” they heard Manners say, “I am holding out to you the hand of friendship. Will you give me yours?”

They heard their master cry out with fury:

“In ten seconds you’ll get not my hand, but my boot!”

George Manners laughed softly.

“I think you will find it an interesting adventure.” Then his tone changed. “I am serving you notice that Eva and I are to-be married within the month. I still ask your hand in amity. But if you don’t give me your hand — my God, before I get through with you, you’ll give it to me whether you want to or not!”

There was such passion in him now that the servants on the stairs thrilled with the drama of it. But for the time their show was over. Apparently afraid to trust himself any further, Manners rushed out of the house.

A little later the servants saw their master leave the house too. His face was livid. In his hand was a riding-crop, and in the failing twilight he looked an ugly figure to encounter as he hurried out of the grounds.

The mood of George Manners as he swung off toward the town was not much different from Lascelles’s. His jaws and his fist were clenched, and now that the curb of Eva’s presence was off he was muttering to himself the things he thought of her brother.

Easily there was murder in the young man’s heart, and the realization of it finally sobered him. He did not want to be seen in town in the grip of such a passion. Already he had passed several of his townsmen without a greeting, and they looked curiously at him.

He decided to walk it off, and, turning, struck out for the open country. By the time night had fallen, bringing with it a light rain, George Manners felt cooled off enough to turn back.

Whatever moonlight there might otherwise have been was blanketed by rain clouds, and the road along which lie hurried toward the town was flanked by farmland and showed not a light. Manners was guided largely by the feel of the middle of the road.

Suddenly he tripped and sprawled in the road. Something lay under him, the feel of which brought him scrambling to his feet again. The road had been wet by the rain, but he must have fallen into a puddle. For his hands, face and clothing were mired.

But he was too shocked to realize this. What had tripped him was an inert body in the road. Manners fumbled for matches, but his wet hands and the rain made it impossible to strike a light.

He kneeled and, groping for the shoulders, shook the man lying there so limply. Then Manners rose, and at the top of his voice sent a call into the night. “Help!”

For he knew now that whoever it was, was dead.

Again and again Manners cried out until from across a field he saw the glimmer of a lantern coming his way. Eventually the lantern revealed a man who turned out to be James Crosby, a laborer on the farm close by.

Crosby held up the lantern to the young attorney’s face and recognized him. “Did you call, sir? Lawd, how mired you look!”

Then his lantern showed the body in the road.

“Lord bless me!” Crosby cried. “Is he drunk or—”

“Good God! It’s Lascelles! And he’s dead!”

Crosby, frightened though he was, could not help noting the consternation of the other man.

The farm man was not bright, but it did not take much intelligence to read fear in George Manners’s tone. And now that Crosby raised his lantern again he saw that the attorney was smeared with something that could not be plain honest mud.

In the poverty-stricken life of the community the gossip of the state of affairs between Lawyer Manners and Edmund Lascelles was eagerly discussed for the color and drama it afforded. Even James Crosby knew of it.

Now there lay Edmund Lascelles in the road. On his face and head were blood and the marks of a savage beating, many wounds pointing to an attack with fury.

And standing by his side, smeared with mire and blood, was Lawyer Manners.

“Don’t keep staring at me!” Manners shouted. “Go and fetch help!”

If Manners were not so appalled with the vision of what he must convey to Eva he would have noticed a change in the manner of the farm hand toward him.

“How do you know he’s dead?” Crosby asked, with what he thought was well concealed suspicion.

But Manners curtly sent him off. Then he left for the Lascelles home.

Crosby returned with several farmers and a cart. They stooped to lift the body into the cart when simultaneously from two newcomers there broke a cry.

“Good Lord, his hand is gone!”

It was the right hand that was missing, hacked off at the wrist.

Meanwhile George Manners rang the bell of the Lascelles home and Mrs. Marsh, the housekeeper, opened the door. As the light from the hall fell on his face she cried out at the sight he made. But her emotion did not concern him — at least not at that time.

“I must see Miss Eva—” he began.

The bell had already brought Eva Lascelles out on the stairs. She heard her lover’s voice and Mrs. Marsh’s exclamation. His appearance, even before he could say a word, already cried out disaster; and his words were no less appalling.

“Eva — bear up, my dear! Edmund has been — murdered!”

For awhile she stared at him, her eyes distending with horror. Then she fell to the floor.

Manners started forward to raise her but realized that he was mired from head to foot. “Mrs. Marsh, please tend her!”

The housekeeper drew back from him as if there were something leprous in his very speaking to her. “I don’t need you to tell me my duty!” she snapped.

The two maids came running with cold water and helped Mrs. Marsh in her efforts to revive the girl. To Manners it seemed an endless time before Eva showed signs of coming back; and indeed it did take a long time to bring her back to consciousness.

The brutal blow of the news and the sight of her lover as he told it were terrible enough in themselves. But what had struck hardest was the thought that seared her like a bolt of lightning.

Her lover had killed her brother.

The moment she came back to consciousness she slipped off again and none of the household remedies the servants tried availed. Manners in his fear for her ran to call a doctor.

While he was still away the battered and mutilated body of Edmund Lascelles was brought home. In its train was an increasing crowd of farmer neighbors. In undertones but agitatedly news and comment flew from lip to lip.

“Manners’s hands and face were a-drip with blood!” James Crosby reported.

“And Mr. Lascelles’s right hand has been hacked off! What I says is—”

Mrs. Marsh hurrying in and out of Eva’s room stopped to contribute habit! And indeed it was an important contribution.

“No more than a couple of hours ago,” she said to those who had brought the body, “I heard and saw Manners and Mr. Lascelles quarrel in that very doorway. And Manners’s last words were, ‘By God, Lascelles, if you won’t shake hands with me now I’ll take your right hand from you whether you like it or no!’ And that’s how he’s done it!”

“I knew he must ’a’ done it!” Crosby explained.

“Are you sure o’ what yer saying, Mrs. Marsh?” asked a substantial farmer seriously. “Because, you know, it’s a serious thing yer telling us!”

The two maids of the house pushed forward.

“We heard ’im, too! Word fer word, as Mrs. Marsh tells yer!”

By the time Manners came back with the doctor, a committee of farmers had left for the nearest police station.

George Manners was too distraught with the events of the night — especially because of the alarming way in which his beloved went from one fainting fit into another — to give thought to his own situation.

He stayed on at the Lascelles’s house outside of Eva’s room, trying to read Mrs. Marsh’s face for news of the stricken girl. Then the doctor came out and what he told Manners kept the young man from attending to the change in the doctor’s attitude toward him.

“She’s hard hit!” the doctor said curtly and went back to his patient.

Toward morning heavy steps crunched on the gravel outside the house, then in the hall. The local police inspector with two other officers approached Manners.

“I’m sorry,” said the inspector, “but I must take you into custody for the murder of Mr. Lascelles.”

The young man, who thought he had already reached the depths, dazedly repeated, “For the murder of Mr. Lascelles? But I didn’t murder him!”

“That will be for the magistrate to decide. I must ask you to come with, me peaceably! And I warn you that anything you may say—” Poor George Manners must have felt that Inferno’s ruler had chosen him that night for his own pleasure.

And by the time the day of his trial arrived he was sure of it. Only diabolical ingenuity could have plotted such a complete and simple case against him as the prosecutor without the least effort was able to marshal.

The woman he loved, brought to the witness stand from her sickbed, faltered her answers to the prosecutor’s questions. Yes, she was forced to admit, her brother had been against her marriage to the prisoner at the bar.

Yes, there was bad blood between the two men. There had been scenes. The last one, on the day of the murder was the worst. There had been threats and both men parted on a note of towering rage.

Mrs. Marsh was called to the stand and testified that she, too, had witnessed the scene.

And the last thing he said was, “Then, by God, if you won’t shake hands with me friendly you’ll give me your hand whether you like it or no!”

The two maids of the house corroborated Mrs. Marsh’s testimony to the syllable.

James Crosby, the laborer, told of hearing a cry for help on the night of the murder. Taking his lantern he hurried out on the road. He saw George Manners by the body of Edmund Lascelles. His face and hands were covered with blood and mud.

The judge and jury had little choice other than to accept the obvious as truth. The enmity between the two men; their high tempers; the last quarrel between them, an hour or two before the murder; the blood on George Manners when Crosby discovered him by the side of the murdered man and worst of all, the threat in terms of the hand — there was no refuting the case all these evidences built up.

The jury brought in the verdict and the judge pronounced sentence. George. Manners was to be hanged for the death of Edmund Lascelles.

And though the news was kept from Eva Lascelles in her sick room she might just as well have been told it; for she was far gone with brain fever.

Manners had kept on repeating that he was innocent; but after the death sentence had been pronounced he sank into the apathy of hopelessness.

He had friends however who fought for him. With all the evidence against him some of them still felt that the brutal murder was not in the character of George Manners.

Justice, the blindfolded goddess, with her even scales in one hand and the sword of power in the other, might declare herself satisfied with the verdict. The friends of George Manners were not.

They worked so hard and so substantial was their joint influence that finally they won commutation of sentence for George Manners, from death to life imprisonment. The prisoner received the news with indifference. There was little to choose between death and a life spent in prison contemplation of the fate that had befallen him.

But his friends were not content with what they had accomplished.

One day two strangers from London came to Beckfield, tired business men, they told the host at the inn where they put up. They meant to smoke, stroll about the country, chat with the farmers and call it a holiday.

Inevitably they became interested in the Lascelles murder and visited several times the scene where it took place and its vicinity. They were sociable men, these strangers, who took a human interest in the murder and chatted with anybody they could get to talk about it.

In the course of time it seemed as though they acquired as much knowledge about the murder as the judge and jury had. What they kept to themselves was the fact that they began to acquired more knowledge than had been brought out in court.

They learned, for instance, that the farmer for whom James Crosby worked was a tenant of Edmund Lascelles. He was having such a hard time making his farm pay that at the time of the murder he was behind in rent; and being behind in rent with Edmund Lascelles, as everybody knew, was trying on the nerves. Also this farmer, Charles Parker, had a mean temper.

Now the two men from London began to keep late hours for a quiet town like Beckfield. Not that this attracted any one’s notice; the two visitors were careful not to attract attention whenever they came back to the inn toward dawn. Least of all did the farmer, Charles Parker, suspect that it was on his farm the visitors spent their nocturnal hours.

For they had become interested indeed in Charles Parker. They had struck up an acquaintance with him and James Crosby; but their talk was of farming, the weather and like topics.

Occasionally Crosby would make them listen to his oft repeated dramatic experience on the night of the murder. Parker seldom alluded to it.

He was a morose man, and once or twice said something about giving up the struggle and trying again in the wheatfields of Canada. For the rest, he avoided even casual chat and moped about his farm.

The two Londoners, from the corners of their eyes, watched the places Parker seemed to avoid as well as those that attracted him.

Finally he became irritated at the too frequent visits of the two Londoners and let them see that they had worn out their welcome. It was then that the two men from London began to do their visiting by night.

They came quietly, a lantern under the coat of one, a shovel secreted by the other. Quietly they would dig into the ground in stable stalls, barns and cellars.

Before they touched shovel to earth, however, they would study the chosen spot by the light of the lantern. But for weeks they got little for their labor.

Then one night they looked thoughtfully at a pile of litter in a broken-down barn of Parker’s. They wonder why litter should be there, litter of just that kind, so far from its probable place of origin. They decided to dig.

They dug for an hour without results. Suddenly the man who was using the shovel, while the other held the lantern, said:

“Wait a minute!”

It was really an expression of excitement. For the light of his companion’s lantern showed a gruesome object in the spadeful he had just dug up.

A little later his shovel encountered something else — a short butchering knife, its blade thickly rusted. The knife, together with the human hand, rewarded the two detectives’ labors.

In the morning Charles Parker was arrested. The charge against him was the murder of Edmund Lascelles.

While he was being taken off to the police station the London detectives searched his house as thoroughly as they had his farm.

In one of Parker’s pillows trained fingers encountered a small, hard object. It was a ring with a large sapphire set in it, known to have belonged to Edmund Lascelles.

When this discovery was put before Parker the stolid silence with which he had met all questions up to then came to an end. Despair, such as George Manners must have felt, broke up the farmer’s resistance, and he confessed.

Sick cattle, poor crops and the everlasting nagging and bullying of Lascelles had done little to improve Parker’s temper.

On the night of the murder his landlord came to see him and Parker got the benefit of the temper in which Lascelles had come away from his last interview with Manners.

Parker finally forgot that Lascelles was his landlord. He told Lascelles, for the first time, what he really thought of him. Whereupon Lascelles gave the farmer a good taste of his riding crop. Then the landlord strode out of the farmhouse.

For some minutes the farmer remained where he was, smoldering. The welts raised on his face by the riding crop burned his flesh as if with fire.

Then, rushing out into the kitchen, the farmer snatched up a knife and set out on the dark road after Lascelles. Before he overtook him, Lascelles heard him approach and turned. Again the farmer got the riding crop across his face. This time, however, he had an adequate retort.

Madly he stabbed Lascelles again and again, exultant whenever his blade sank into flesh. The struggle ended abruptly — Lascelles was dead.

With resistance gone, Parker’s rage went. Utter fear and misery now possessed him. What was he to do when the crime should be discovered? Flight was his only hope. America — Australia — the farther the better! But how was he to get there, he who could not even pay the rental on his farm?

The sapphire ring on Lascelles’s right hand was part of the unforgetable picture his match showed. Here was his one hope for escape, the ring! Stooping, he took up the hand and tried to pull the ring off.

The hand resisted the effort as though the dead man still had strength. But Parker had to have that ring. And down the road some one was coming. In desperation as savage as had been his attack, Parker used the knife again.

He was tried, found guilty and executed.

George Manners was released, but had to wait weary months before the woman he loved recovered sufficiently to marry.

And Justice, whom the ironic gods had for the time pushed off her pedestal, regained it.