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

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

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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.

A Bitter Feud

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.

The Last Straw

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.”

“Fortune Hunting”