The Countess Connections

By Robin Bell

In the year 1896, ten years after Lady Mary Evans Watson, Countess of Longmire and Oakdale arrived in England, she is a noteworthy businesswoman, who is comfortable dealing with people ranging from royalty to paupers in the workhouse. Her four adopted children have grown up and are pursuing their own careers, while Mary and her husband Sir Hugh

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Book Bureau
• Release date: Oct 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781960548139

Robin Bell

ROBIN BELL, is a retired teacher who now lives on and manages the family dairy farm in South Gippsland, Victoria, Australia purchased by her grandfather in 1910.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Melbourne Australia

April 1895

Solicitor Charles Mee looked up in alarm as a dishevelled man, with long hair and a shaggy beard, barged into his office and staggered towards his desk. As the man grabbed hold of the back of one of the two visitor’s chairs in front of the desk, he gasped ‘Help m..’ then slumped to the floor.

Charles stood up and looked at the frightened receptionist, who was staring through the doorway. ‘Ring the police, Carol!’

Placing his fingers on the side of the man’s neck, Charles could feel a faint pulse, and noted, from the slight movement of the unconscious man’s chest, that he was still breathing. Looking more closely at the man’s chest, he saw a large stain on the left side of his coat. Gingerly opening the grubby coat, and lifting the equally filthy shirt, he saw what looked like a bullet wound, still oozing blood on the left side of the man’s chest. He pressed his folded handkerchief over the wound, and called urgently to his receptionist. ‘Carol, please throw me the towel from the washstand, then telephone the ambulance station behind the Windsor Hotel. This man is seriously wounded!’

By the time two policemen arrived, Charles had staunched some of the bleeding, and the man was slowly showing signs of recovering consciousness, but he was very confused and incoherent. The older policeman looked at the man lying on the floor, then turned to Charles. ‘My name is Sergeant Taylor, Mr Mee. Do you know this man?’ The sergeant flipped open his notebook, as they heard the bell signalling the arrival in King Street of the new horse drawn ambulance.

‘No sergeant, I have no idea who he is, nor why he has come to my office.’ Charles sat in his chair, as his legs threatened to give way. ‘Do you think there may be some identification in that oilskin covered package that you took from his coat pocket?’ The sergeant remained silent when two puffing ambulance men carrying a canvas stretcher entered the office. The man’s wound was bandaged, and he was carried down to the ambulance waiting in the street.

‘I’m not sure. Inspector Brown will open it and read the contents, before deciding what action to take. We will go to the Melbourne Hospital now, to wait for the man to hopefully recover enough to talk to us.’ Sergeant Taylor headed for the door, beckoning the constable to follow him. ‘We will be in touch when he does, Mr Mee. He appears to have wanted to speak to you for some reason. Goodbye for now.’

Carol entered the office in response to the buzzer sounding on her desk. ‘Thank you for your help, Carol. This has been a shock for both of us. I suggest that you go home now, and take tomorrow off, as we have no pressing appointments for the day. I’ll shut the office early, and head home soon.’

When Carol left, Charles removed a bottle of whisky from the bottom draw of his desk, and poured himself a stiff drink. He wished that his Associate, Peter Jones, was there to share a drink with him, and to talk through what had just happened. But, as Peter was away for the week, he was left to sip his whisky alone, and ponder why a man, suffering such a wound, had come up three flights of stairs to his office, when surely it would have been easier to go into a ground floor office or shop to seek help.

The next morning, when Charles arrived at his office building, the young constable that he’d met the previous day stepped out of the doorway. ‘Mr Mee, your presence is required at the Melbourne Hospital.’ Puzzled, he accompanied the policeman on the walk to the hospital, where he was met by Sergeant Taylor, who was clearly annoyed. ‘Sorry to disrupt your morning, Mr Mee, but that tramp who collapsed in your rooms yesterday has recovered consciousness, and is demanding to speak only to you.’

‘Why me? I have no idea who he is, or why he chose my office to collapse in.’

‘Let’s go and see, shall we?’ Sergeant Taylor led the way through a number of corridors to a small room, where a burly policeman was sitting outside the door. On entering the room, Charles saw the stranger lying on the bed. His filthy clothes had been removed, and an attempt had been made to clean his face.

The man stared at Charles and spoke in a faltering voice. ‘Mr Mee, I am Graham Evans, Mary Evan’s brother. Please take the package in my coat pocket, and follow the terms of my enclosed will, should I not survive. I have money to pay for your services.’ Following this effort to speak, Graham shut his eyes, breathing painfully. A nurse ushered the men out of the room, and called a passing doctor into the room.

Charles and the Sergeant waited outside the hospital room. ‘Mary Evans was a client I met briefly about five years ago, Sergeant Taylor. As I accept Graham Evans as a client, I will need to go through his papers as quickly as possible, considering his current state of health. Where is the package Graham spoke of?’

Sergeant Taylor took the package from his pocket. ‘Here it is. The inspector wasn’t in his office when I returned to the station last night, so I brought it with me when I was told that the patient was awake, and asking for you.’ He handed the package to Charles. ‘Please let me know if there is anything untoward enclosed – after all, for some reason, someone appears to be after Mr Evans. You take care they don’t have a go at you too!’ As the two men were about to leave the hospital, Sergeant Taylor handed Charles a card. ‘If you have any trouble, you can telephone me on this number.’

Quickly walking back to his office Charles was acutely conscious of the package in his pocket, and was relieved when he had entered his rooms and locked the door behind him. Carefully slitting the top of the package with his paper knife, Charles slid the contents out on to the surface of his desk.

Thoroughly documenting all of the contents into a receipt book, he then carefully opened Graham Evans will. The one page document, signed by Graham and two witnesses, simply stated that, after expenses, all of his worldly goods, other than a bequest of £1,000 to his Aunt Clara Wilkinson, if she could be found, were to go to his step sister Mary Emma Evans. Solicitor Mr Charles Mee, Kings Street, Melbourne, was named as the executor.

Putting the will to one side, Charles picked up a small silver key with a tag attached, and saw that it was for a deposit box at the English, Scottish and Australian Bank in Collins Street. Thinking of the unkempt appearance of the man calling himself Graham Evans, Charles wondered why he would have such a key. Two other documents turned out to be land titles for adjoining rural properties in Gippsland, in the name of Graham Thomas Evans, and were dated six months ago. Seeing the addresses and names on the property titles, Charles wondered if Graham had bought land adjoining his farm.

As he had no appointments for the day, Charles walked to the E, S & A Bank, and produced the key, plus Graham’s will, to request access to the bank safety deposit box to view the contents. This request was granted, on the proviso that the escorting teller stayed in the room with him while he handled the contents. When the box was opened, it was found to contain numerous documents, plus Tom Evan’s engraved gold hunter watch, and two leather purses, one full of gold sovereigns, and the other with gold nuggets. There were also a number of bank books from different banks in Bendigo, Ballarat, and Echuca, all in Graham’s name, with multiple thousands of pounds in each, plus an E, S & A Bank statement for £20,000.

Amazed at the large sum of money that Graham appeared to possess, Charles noticed an envelope with his name on it. Opening it, he found the following hand written letter:

Melbourne April 1895

Dear Mr Mee,

Please excuse me for nominating you as executor for my will without prior consultation, but you are the only person I know who may have contact with my step sister Mary Emma Evans, and possibly through her, contact details for my Aunt Clara Wilkinson.

I fear for my life, so when you read this, it is likely that I am either dead or incapable of talking to you, so please bear with me while I explain my circumstances.

When Mary left our farm in January 1886, she wrote to tell Aunt Clara and myself that you had arranged for her to sail to England, soon after her arrival in Melbourne. Since then, we have had no further correspondence from her, so I have no knowledge of her whereabouts or her circumstances.

Unfortunately, following Mary’s departure from the farm, I lost interest in farming, and I’m afraid I made a huge mistake when I allowed myself to be hoodwinked by a lady in town, who professed to love me, and in whom I foolishly fell in love. Despite Aunt Clara’s misgivings and words of advice, Annette and I married, and she moved out to the farm. It soon became apparent that Annette wanted me to sell the farm and move to Melbourne, which like a besotted fool I did.

On arrival in Melbourne, Annette introduced me to a man she claimed was her brother. Inadvertently, I overhead some of their conversation in reception when he left, and I realised what a fool I had been. All she was after was my money. When Annette was out shopping, I removed the money from the farm sale and deposited it in the E, S & A Bank. I weighted and locked the Gladstone bag that had contained the money, and put it back into the wardrobe in our room. The following morning, when I awoke both Annette and the bag were gone. When I spoke to the receptionist, he told me that she had left at dawn with her brother, who was carrying my bag.

Two weeks later, I was informed by the police that Annette had been arrested, following a botched robbery that she and her ‘brother’ had attempted at a bank in Ballarat. Simon escaped after a young teller was killed, leaving Annette when she fell while trying to flee. As her husband, I was questioned by the police, but quickly cleared of being involved. Annette was hanged a week following her trial, while the police are still searching for Simon Lester.

Charles remembered the trial five years ago, where the female defendant had tried to lay the blame on everyone she could think of. Little did he know that she was Mary Evans step sister in law!

Following the trial, I travelled to Bendigo, and wandered around some of the less accessible areas prospecting for gold. To my surprise and delight, I discovered a sizable and extremely profitable deposit of gold, in the gravel bed of a small stream high in the hills. To allay suspicion, I only took small amounts to different towns to be weighed and sold. After two years, I had over one hundred thousand pounds in various banks.

On a trip up to Echuca, I signed on as a deck hand on the paddle steamer Lancashire Lass, and spent two years taking supplies up the Darling River to Wilcannia, and returning to Echuca with wool bales. Last year I returned home, to discover that the neighbour who had bought the farm had just died, so I bought both properties from his widow. She and her two adult sons are staying on to manage both farms.

Unfortunately, Simon Lester was in the area at that time, but disappeared when he realised that I had recognised him. Since then, I have been receiving threatening messages, demanding that I pay him what he believes should have been Annette’s half share of my income since she died. The threats have become quite violent recently, to the point that I have reported them to the police.

Hopefully I will be able to explain more to you in person, Mr Mee. If I can’t, please implement my will as I have stated.

Yours sincerely

Graham Evans

When the teller had packed everything, except the letter, back into the deposit box, he locked it, then handed the key to Charles. ‘As the named executor in Mr Evan’s will, you may keep the key, Sir.’ Conscious of the key and will in his pocket, Charles hurried back to his office, and locked the door behind him when he entered his rooms. After making a strong cup of tea, he sat at his desk, and wondered what on earth he had unintentionally become a party to.

Taking the letter out of the envelope again, he reread it, and wondered why Graham had not heard from Mary, other than the letter that she’d sent before she sailed. In the short period of time that he had known her, she had appeared to be very fond of Graham and their Aunt Clara. Also, Graham must have found a very rich gold deposit, which explained the substantial sum of money in his bank accounts.

The telephone rang while Charles was eating his lunch, and he was asked to meet Sergeant Taylor at the hospital as quickly as possible. At first, Charles wondered if it might be a trap, so he rang the number on the card Sergeant Taylor had given him. When his call was answered by a policeman at the nearby police station, who confirmed that Sergeant Taylor had been called to the hospital earlier, Charles set off to meet him.

A policeman waiting at the front of the hospital took Charles straight up to Graham’s room, where a number of policemen were waiting outside the door. Looking into the room Charles saw that the bed was empty, and become aware of an awful smell in the room. Before he could speak, Sergeant Taylor arrived and led him to another room further down the corridor, where Graham was lying unconscious on the bed.

‘Earlier this morning, a man wearing a doctor’s white coat entered the room, after saying good morning to the policeman on duty. Mistakenly believing him to be a doctor, the policeman had stayed outside when the man entered Mr Evan’s room. Luckily, a nurse passing the door glanced through the window, and saw the man holding a pillow over Mr Evans’ head.

She rushed into the room, and struck the man over the head with the heavy enamel bedpan she was carrying. As the man fell unconscious to the floor, she removed the pillow from Mr Evans’ face, and made sure that he was able to breath. Unfortunately, she was taking the used bedpan to be emptied, so the contents went all over the attacker, Mr Evans and herself!’

‘Good grief! No wonder the room smells so terrible!’ Charles, tried hard not to laugh. ‘Was Graham injured any further?’

‘Mr Evans is unconscious at the moment, but the doctors don’t think further harm has been done, thanks to the nurse’s swift action. Her colleagues who had to clean Mr Evans weren’t so thankful though, and nor will the cleaners be. The prisoner had to be doused under a pump at the horse trough, before he was put in the police van!’

When they both stopped laughing, Charles handed the letter to the policeman. ‘I think you should read this, Sergeant Taylor. It was in a bank safety deposit box in Mr Evans’ name, along with a number of gold nuggets and coins, his bank books, and statements showing that he possesses a small fortune.’

Handing the letter back to Charles, Sergeant Taylor looked thoughtful. ‘I wonder if the prisoner is Simon Lester, or more likely, someone doing his bidding? What became of Mr Evans’ sister Mary? Do you know if she ever landed in England, Mr Mee?’

‘Oh yes, she arrived in England in April 1886, to discover that she came from an aristocratic family, and had inherited the hereditary title of Countess. She is now an extremely wealthy young woman, but I can’t understand why she didn’t contact her brother or aunt before they left the farm. I will contact her solicitor in England, and ask him what has happened to her.’

During the fortnight following Charles Mee’s surprise meeting with Graham Evans, Graham was