Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  In the private sitting-room, study, or sanctum sanctorum of this Mr. Bowers, Hugh Martin, the constable, made his report, detailing every particular of his day’s work. “I’ve done according as was agreed upon between you and me this morning, sir,” be said. “I’VE waited out the day, and kept all dark, taking care to keep my eye upon ’em up yonder; but I can’t sec any way out of it but one, and I don’t think we’ve any course but to do as we said then.”

  Hugh Martin was closeted with the justice for a considerable time after this; and when he left the residence of Mr. Bowers, he hurried off at a brisk pace in the direction of the village and through the High Street to the door of the Black Bear. In the wide open space before that hostelry he came upon a man lounging in the bitter night, as if it had been some pleasant summer’s evening, whose very atmosphere was a temptation to idleness. This man was no other than the red-nosed and blue-lipped semi-official, who had been drinking at the bar, and loitering about the neighbourhood of the inn all that day. He was a constable himself, but so inferior in position to the worthy Mr. Hugh Martin, that he was only looked upon as an assistant or satellite of that gentleman; useful in a fray with poachers, to be knocked down with the butt-end of a gun before the real business of the encounter began; good enough to chase a refractory youngster who bad thrown pebbles at the geese in the village pond; to convey an erratic donkey to safe keeping in the pound; or to induct a drunken brawler in the stocks; but fit for nothing of a higher character.

  “All right, Bob?” asked Mr. Hugh Martin of this gentleman.

  “Quite right.”

  “Anybody left the inn?”

  “Why Pecker himself has been in and out, up and down, and here and there, gabbling and chattering like an old magpie; but that’s all, and he’s safe enough in the bar now.”

  “Nobody else has left the place?”

  “Nobody.”

  “That’s all right. Keep on the look-out down here, and if I open one of those windows overhead and whistle, you’ll know you are wanted.”

  The appearance of the constable created intense excitement amongst the loungers at the bar of the Black Bear. They gathered round him, so eager for information, that amongst them they very nearly knocked him down.

  What had he discovered? Who had done it? What had been the motive? Had he found the weapon? Had he found the body? Had he found the murderer?

  Mr. Hugh Martin pushed all these eager questioners aside without any wonderful ceremony, and walked straight to the bar, where he addressed himself to the worthy Samuel Pecker.

  “Mr. Markham is upstairs, is he not?” he asked.

  “He is in the blue room, poor dear gentleman.”

  “With the lady — his cousin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’ll just step upstairs, Pecker, for I’ve a few words to say to him about this business.”

  The bystanders had gathered about Mr. Martin, and had contrived to hear every syllable of this brief dialogue.

  “He has found out all about it,” they said, when the constable went upstairs, “and he’s gone to tell Mr. Markham — very proper, very right, of course.”

  Feeling that it was not unlikely they would have a reversionary interest in the information that the constable had just taken up to the blue room, the excited Comptomans lingered patiently about the foot of the stairs, waiting for Hugh Martin’s return.

  In the blue room Millicent Duke sat with her fair head resting on Sarah Pecker’s ample shoulder, her frail form supported by the strong arm of that faithful friend. The two women were seated on a great roomy sofa drawn close up to the fire, against which stood a table, with a tea-tray on which Mrs. Pecker’s choicest old dragon china cups and saucers were set forth. On the opposite side of the fireplace sat Darrell Markham, his eyes still fixed upon his cousin, with the same look of anxious watchfulness which had marked his face all that day. Millicent had recovered from that terrible stupor. She had recognized Darrell and Mrs. Pecker, and had been soothed and tranquillized by their presence. She had told them the brief story of the night before. How she had gone to George Duke’s chamber, with the intention of making an appeal to his mercy, and how she had found him ‘with his throat cut from ea to ear — dead!

  Sarah had taken off Mrs. Duke’s blood-stained dress, and wrapped her in some garments of her own, which hung about her slender figure in thick clumsy folds. The hideous stains had been removed from her hands and forehead, and there was nothing now about her to tell of the horrors through which she had passed.

  Mrs. Pecker was holding a tea-cup to Millicent’s lips, imploring her to drink, when Darrell Markham started from his chair, and went to the door, where he stood with his head bent, listening to some sound without.

  “What’s that?” he exclaimed.

  It was the tramp of a man’s footstep upon the stair, the footstep of Mr. Hugh Martin, the constable.

  Darrell’s face grew even paler than it had been all that day; he drew back, holding his breath, terribly calm and white to look upon. The constable tapped at the door, and without waiting for an answer, walked in.

  Hugh Martin carried a certain official-looking document in his hand. Armed with this, he walked straight across the room to the sofa upon which Millicent sat.

  “Mrs. Millicent Duke,” he said, “in the King’s name’ I arrest you for the wilful murder of your husband, George Duke.” —

  Darrell Markham flung himself between his cousin and the constable. —

  “Arrest her!” he cried; “arrest this weak girl, who was the first to bring the tidings of the murder!”

  “Softly, Mr. Markham, softly, sir,” answered the constable, opening the nearest window, and whistling to the watcher beneath. “I am sorry this business ever fell to my lot; but I must do my duty. My warrant obliges me to arrest you as well as Mrs. Duke.”

  CHAPTER XX. COMMITTED FOR TRIAL.

  Millicent and Darrell were taken to a dreary dilapidated building called the lock-up, very rarely tenanted, save by some wandering vagrant, who had been found guilty of the offence of having nothing to eat and no place of shelter; or some more troublesome delinquent, in the shape of a poacher, who had been taken in the act of appropriating the hares and pheasants on a neighbouring preserve.

  To this place Hugh Martin the constable, and his assistant, Bob, conducted gentle and delicately nurtured Mrs. George Duke; and the only one privilege which the entreaties of Darrell Markham and Sarah Pecker could obtain for her was the constable’s permission to Sally to stop all night in the cell with the female prisoner.

  Darrell prayed Hugh Martin to take them straight to the house of Mr. Montague Bowers, in order that any examination which had to be made might take place that very night; but the constable shook his head gravely, and said that Mr. Bowers had made up his mind to wait till morning. So, in a dilapidated chamber, which had been divided across the centre by a thin wooden partition, for the accommodation of an occasional press of prisoners, Millicent and Sarah spent that long and dismal night. A dirty casement window, secured by bars of rusty iron, was their only separation from the village street. They could see the feeble lights in cottage windows, blurred and dim through the discoloured glass; and could hear every now and then the footsteps of a passer-by, crunching the crisp snow beneath his tread.

  Millicent, lying on a truckle-bed close to this window and listening to those passing footsteps, remembered how often she had gone by that dismal building, and how utterly unmindful she had been of those within. She shuddered as she looked at the ragged stains of damp and mildew on the plaster wails — which transformed themselves into grotesque and goblin faces in the uncertain flicker of a rushlight — remembering how many helpless creatures must have lain there through long winter nights like this, conjuring hideous faces from the same crooked lines and blotches, and counting the cobwebs hanging from the roof.

  It was strange that since her arrest and removal to this dreary lock-up Millicent Duke had seemed to recover the quiet gentle
ness which was so much a part of her nature. She had been incoherent before, but she was now perfectly calm and collected. Hers was one of those natures which rise with the occasion; and though a shrinking timid soul at ordinary times, she might on emergency have become a heroine. Not a Joan of Arc nor a Charlotte Corday, nor any such energetic creature; but a gentle saintly martyr of the old Roman Catholic days, quietly going forth to meet her death without a murmur.

  She put her arms about Mrs. Pecker’s neck, and tenderly embraced the outraged matron.

  “All will be right in the end, dear,” she said; “they never, never, never can think me guilty of this dreadful deed. They are searching for the real murderer, perhaps this very night, while I lie here. God, who knows that I am innocent, will never permit me to suffer.”

  “Permit you to suffer! No, no, no, darling, no,” cried Sarah, clinging about Millicent, and bursting into a passion of tears.

  She remembered, with a shudder, how many hapless wretches suffered in those days, and how scarcely a week went by unmarked by an execution at Carlisle; for every Monday was black Monday a hundred years ago, and Mr. Ketch had his hands full in every part of the country. To-night Mrs. Pecker thought of these things with unutterable horror. How did she know that all who died that ignominious death were guilty of the crimes whose penalty they paid? She had never thought of it till now; taking it always for granted that judges and juries knew best; and that these cold-blooded judicial murders were done in the cause of morality, and for the protection of honest people.

  “O, Miss Milly, Miss Milly, if I bad only been with you last night!” she said: “I bad half a mind to have come down to the Hall after Mr. Darrell left you; but I knew I was no favourite with Captain Duke, and I thought my coming might only make him angry against you.”

  The last footfall died away upon the snow, the last dim light faded out in the village street; and the two women kept silence, waiting patiently for the dawn. To those weary watchers the long winter night seemed almost eternal: but it wore itself out at last, and the cheerless daybreak showed a wan and ghastly face at the barred casements of Compton gaol.

  A coach, hired from the Black Bear, carried the two prisoners to the magistrate’s house. The family was at breakfast when the little party arrived, and the prisoners heard the prattle of children’s voices as they were ushered through the hall into the magistrate’s study. A grim chamber, this hall of audience, lighted by two narrow windows, and furnished with stiff high-backed oaken chairs, ponderous tables, and a solemn-faced eight-day clock, which was subject to those internal snortings and groanings common to eight-day clocks, and altogether calculated to strike terror to the heart of a criminal.

  Here Millicent and Darrell, with Hugh Martin the constable, and Sarah Pecker, waited for Mr. Montague Bowers, justice of the peace, to make his appearance.

  Hanging about the hall and gathered round the door of this chamber were several people who had persuaded themselves into the idea that they knew something of the disappearance of Captain Duke, and were eager to serve the State by giving evidence to that effect. The ostler who had aroused the constable; half-a-dozen men who had helped in the ineffectual search for the body; a woman who had assisted in conveyiug Mrs. Meggis, the deaf housekeeper, to the spot that morning, and many others equally unconnected with the case, were amongst these. There was therefore a general sensation of disappointment and injury when Mr. Montague Bowers, coming away from his breakfast, selected Samuel Pecker from amongst this group of outsiders, and bidding the innkeeper follow him, walked into the chamber of justice, and closed the door upon the rest.

  “Now, Mr. Pecker,” said the justice, seating himself at the oaken table, and dipping a pen into the ink, after having duly sworn the timid Samuel, “what have you to say about this business?”

  Taken at a disadvantage thus, Samuel Pecker had very little indeed to say about it. He could only breathe hard, fidget nervously with his plaited ruffles (he had put on his Sunday clothes in honour of the occasion), and stare at the justice’s clerk, who sat, pen in hand, waiting to take down the innkeeper’s deposition.

  “Come, Mr. Pecker,” said the justice, “what have you to state respecting the missing man?”

  Samuel scratched his head vaguely, and looked appealingly at his wife Sarah, who sat by the side of Mrs. Duke, weeping audibly.

  “Meaning him as was murdered?” suggested Mr. Pecker “Meaning Captain George Duke,” replied the justice.

  “All, but there it is,” exclaimed the bewildered Samuel; “that’s just where it is. Captain George Duke. Very good; but which of them? Him as asked me the way to Marley Water seven years ago on horseback last October? you remember, Master Darrell, for you was by at the time,” said the innkeeper, addressing himself to one of the accused. “Him as Miss Millicent saw on Marley pier by moonlight, when the clocks was a-striking twelve? Him as came to the Black Bear the day before yesterday at three o’clock in the afternoon? or him as drank and paid for a glass of brandy between eight and nine the same night, and left a horse in our stables, which has never been fetched away?”

  Mr. Montague Bowers stared hopelessly at the witness.

  “What is this?” he demanded, looking at Sarah and the two prisoners in his despair; “what, in Heaven’s name, does it all mean?”

  Whereupon Mr. Samuel Pecker entered into a detailed account of all that had happened at Compton-on-the-Moor for the last seven years, not forgetting even the foreign-looking pedlar, who stole the spoons; and, indeed, throwing out a feeble suggestion that the itinerant might be in some way connected with the murder of Captain George Duke. When urged to come to the point, after rambling over nearly three sides of foolscap, he became so bewilderingly obscure that it was only by means of brief and direct questioning that the justice approached any nearer to the object of the examination.

  “Now, suppose you tell me, Mr. Pecker, at what hour Captain Duke left your house on the night before last.”

  “Between eight and nine.”

  “Good; and you next saw him—”

  “Between nine and ten, when I went to the Hall with Miss Millicent and Mr. Darrell.”

  “Did Mrs. Duke and her husband appear to be on friendly terms?”

  To this question Samuel Pecker made a very discursive answer, setting out by protesting that nothing could have been more affectionate than the conduct of Millicent and the Captain; and then going on to declare that Mrs. Duke had fallen prostrate on the snow, bewailing her bitter fortune and her husband’s return; and further relating how she had never addressed a word to him, except once, when she suddenly cried out, and asked him why he had come back to make her the most guilty and miserable of women.

  Here the innkeeper came to an abrupt finish, in nowise encouraged by the terrific appearance of his wife Sarah, who sat shaking her head at him fiercely from behind the shelter of her apron.

  It took a long time, therefore, altogether before the examination of Samuel Pecker was concluded, and that rather unmanageable witness pumped completely dry. Enough, however, had been elicited from the innkeeper to establish Darrell Markham’s innocence of the charge brought against him, inasmuch as he had quitted Compton Hall in the company of Samuel, leaving Captain Duke alive and well at ten o’clock, and had gone straight to his chamber at the Black Bear. Between that hour and the time of George Duke’s disappearance, Millicent and the deaf housekeeper had been alone in the great house with the missing man. Montague Bowers congratulated the young man upon his having come so safely out of the business; but Darrell neither heeded nor heard him. He stood close against the chair in which his cousin sat, watching that still and patient figure, that pale resigned face, and thinking with anguish and terror that every word which tended to exonerate him only threw a darker shadow of suspicion upon her.

  Darrell Markham, being acquitted of all participation in the crime, was competent to give evidence, and was the next witness examined. All was revealed in the course of that cruel interrogation, to which the
witness was compelled to submit. He was on his oath, and must needs tell the truth, even though the truth might be damning for Millicent. Who shall say that he might not have been ready to perjure himself for her dear sake, if perjury could have saved her? But in such a case as this it generally happens that the truth, however fatal, is safer than falsehood; for the man who swears to a lie can never tell how long and complicated may be the series of deceptions in which he involves himself, or how difficult it may be for him to sustain his false position.

  The magistrate asked his pitiless questions; and all was told — the marriage at St. Mary’s church, Ringwood’s letter, the return to Compton, the surprise and horror caused by Captain Duke’s reappearance, the hard words that had been spoken between the two men, Millicent’s despair and shuddering terror of her husband, and then the long blank interval of many hours, at the end of which Mrs. George Duke came to the Black Bear to tell of a murder that had been done.

  “And did she appear agitated?”

  “Yes, very much agitated.”

  “And was there blood upon her dress?”

  “Yes.”

  “And were her hands stained, with blood?”

  Again Darrell must needs say yes. Her hands were stained with blood. She had cut her hand; the magistrate might see the wound if he pleased.

  The magistrate shook his bead with a sad smile. A surface-wound like that might be so easily inflicted, he thought, to account for the blood upon the wretched woman’s dress.

  All this the clerk’s busy pen recorded, and to this Darrell Markham afterwards signed his name in witness of its truth.

  Hugh Martin the constable was next sworn. He described the appearance of the house. The absence of any sign of pillage or violence, the unbroken fastenings of the heavy oaken door, the undisturbed plate on the sideboard, and lastly, the blood-stained razor found by him in the bureau.