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

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 Apathy of Hopelessness

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.

Keeping Late Hours

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.