hat is to be found in a small building
in a dingy street, now a chapel of ease, but in old days the Parish
Church among the fields of the pretty village of Marylebone.

"The day of the interment was dark and cold, and drizzling. Although the
last offices were performed in the most scrupulously private manner, the
feelings of the community could not be repressed. From nine till eleven
o'clock that day all the British shipping in the docks and the river,
from London Bridge to Gravesend, hoisted their flags half-mast high, and
minute guns were fired from appointed stations along the Thames. The
same mournful ceremony was observed in all the ports of England and
Ireland; and not only in these, for the flag was half-mast high on every
British ship at Antwerp, at Rotterdam, at Havre.

"Ere the last minute gun sounded all was over. Followed to his tomb by
those brothers who, if not consoled, might at this moment be sustained
by the remembrance that to him they had ever been brothers, not only in
name but in spirit, the vault at length closed on the mortal remains of
George Bentinck."

Such was the conventional view which Society took of the sad
circumstances of Lord George's death.

The old Duke was over eighty years of age and too infirm to attend the
funeral, but the Marquis of Titchfield and Lord Henry Bentinck were
present.

As in most mysteries, there were other conjectures more or less
improbable.

Years afterwards it was put down to the account of Palmer the poisoner,
who it was said had administered strychnine to Lord George as he did to
some other members of the aristocracy.

But what was Palmer's motive?

Had Lord George and he any betting transactions together in which Palmer
had lost, and finding himself unable to pay, destroyed his noble
creditor with diabolical secrecy?

Yet Palmer in 1848 was a young doctor, aged about twenty-three, just
setting out on his professional career.

It was not until a few years afterwards that Palmer commenced to turn
his attention to turf transactions, therefore it is difficult to find a
motive which should be some evidence against him as the perpetrator of
this crime.

The case of Palmer was an extraordinary one. He was a medical
practitioner at Rugeley in Staffordshire, and having become infatuated
with betting had no scruples about removing those to whom he had
contracted debts of honour. It was not till the early months of 1856
that light was shed upon some of his