The young man had been carried away by his subject, and had spoken with a strange energy.
Mr. Dunbar laughed aloud at the lawyer’s enthusiasm.
“You should have been a barrister, Mr. Lovell,” he said; “that would have been a capital opening for your speech as counsel for the crown. I can see the wretched criminal shivering in the dock, cowering under that burst of forensic eloquence.”
Henry Dunbar laughed heartily as he finished speaking, and then threw himself back in his easy-chair, and passed his handkerchief across his handsome forehead, as it was his habit to do occasionally.
“In this case I think the criminal will be most likely arrested,” Arthur Lovell continued, still dwelling upon the subject of the murder; “he will be traced by those clothes. He will endeavour to sell them, of course; and as he is most likely some wretchedly ignorant boor, he will very probably try to sell them within a few miles of the scene of the crime.”
“I hope he will be found,” said Mr. Balderby, filling his glass with claret as he spoke; “I never heard any good of this man Wilmot, and, indeed, I believe he went to the bad altogether after you left England, Mr. Dunbar.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes,” answered the junior partner, looking rather nervously at his chief; “he committed forgery, I believe; fabricated forged bank notes, or something of that kind, and was transported for life, I heard; but I suppose he got a remission of his sentence, or something of that kind, and returned to England.”
“I had no idea of this,” said Mr. Dunbar.
“He did not tell you, then?”
“Oh, no; it was scarcely likely that he should tell me.”
Very little more was said upon the subject just then. At nine o’clock Mr. Dunbar left the room to see to the packing of his things, at a little before ten the three gentlemen drove away from the George Hotel, on their way to the station.
They reached the station at five minutes past ten; the train was not due until a quarter past.
Mr. Balderby went to the office to procure the three tickets. Henry Dunbar and Arthur Lovell walked arm-in-arm up and down the platform.
As the bell for the up-train was ringing, a man came suddenly upon the platform and looked about him.
He recognized the banker, walked straight up to him, and, taking off his hat, addressed Mr. Dunbar respectfully.
“I am sorry to detain you, sir,” he said; “but I have a warrant to prevent you leaving Winchester.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hold a warrant for your apprehension, sir.”
“From whom?”
“From Sir Arden Westhorpe, our chief county magistrate; and I am to take you before him immediately, sir.”
“Upon what charge?” cried Arthur Lovell.
“Upon suspicion of having been concerned in the murder of Joseph Wilmot.”
The millionaire drew himself up haughtily, and looked at the constable with a proud smile.
“This is too absurd,” he said; “but I am quite ready to go with you. Be good enough to telegraph to my daughter, Mr. Lovell,” he added, turning to the young man; “tell her that circumstances over which I have no control will detain me in Winchester for a week. Take care not to alarm her.”
Everybody about the station had collected on the platform, and made a circle about Mr. Dunbar. They stood a little aloof from him, looking at him with respectful interest: altogether different from the eager clamorous curiosity with which they would have regarded any ordinary man suspected of the same crime.
He was suspected; but he could not be guilty. Why should a millionaire commit a murder? The motives that might influence other men could have had no weight with him.
The bystanders repeated this to one another, as they followed Mr. Dunbar and his custodian from the station, loudly indignant against the minions of the law.
Mr. Dunbar, the constable, and Mr. Balderby drove straight to the magistrate’s house.
The junior partner offered any amount of bail for his chief; but the Anglo-Indian motioned him to silence, with a haughty gesture.
“I thank you, Mr. Balderby,” he said, proudly; “but I will not accept my liberty on sufferance. Sir Arden Westhorpe has chosen to arrest me, and I shall abide the issue of that arrest.”
It was in vain that the junior partner protested against this. Henry Dunbar was inflexible.
“I hope, and I venture to believe, that you are as innocent as I am myself of this horrible crime, Mr. Dunbar,” the baronet said, kindly; “and I sympathize with you in this very terrible position. But upon the information laid before me, I consider it my duty to detain you until the matter shall have been further investigated. You were the last person seen with the deceased.”
“And for that reason it is supposed that I strangled my old servant for the sake of his clothes,” cried Mr. Dunbar, bitterly. “I am a stranger in England; but if that is your English law, I am not sorry that the best part of my life has been passed in India. However, I am perfectly willing to submit to any examination that may be considered necessary to the furtherance of justice.”
So, upon the second night of his arrival in England, Henry Dunbar, chief of the wealthy house of Dunbar, Dunbar, and Balderby, slept in Winchester gaol.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PRISONER IS REMANDED.
Mr. Dunbar was brought before Sir Arden Westhorpe, at ten o’clock, on the morning after his arrest. The witnesses who had given evidence at the inquest were again summoned, and — with the exception of the verger, and Mr. Dunbar, who was now a prisoner — gave the same evidence, or evidence to the same effect.
Arthur Lovell again watched the proceedings in the interest of Laura’s father, and cross-examined some of the witnesses.
But very little new evidence was elicited. The empty pocket-book, which had been found a few paces from the body, was produced. The rope by which the murdered man had been strangled was also produced and examined.
It was a common rope, rather slender, and about a yard and a half in length. It was made into a running noose that had been drawn tightly round the neck of the victim.
Had the victim been a strong man he might perhaps have resisted the attack, and might have prevented his assailant tightening the fatal knot; but the surgeon bore witness that the dead man, though tall and stalwart-looking, had not been strong.
It was a strange murder, a bloodless murder; a deed that must have been done by a man of unfaltering resolution and iron nerve: for it must have been the work of a moment, in which the victim’s first cry of surprise was stifled ere it was half uttered.
The chief witness upon this day was the verger; and it was in consequence of certain remarks dropped by him that Henry Dunbar had been arrested.
Upon the afternoon of the inquest this official had found himself a person of considerable importance. He was surrounded by eager gossips, greedy to hear anything he might have to tell upon the subject of the murder; and amongst those who listened to his talk was one of the constables — a sharp, clear-headed fellow — who was on the watch for any hint that might point to the secret of Joseph Wilmot’s death. The verger, in describing the events of the previous afternoon, spoke of that one fact which he had omitted to refer to before the coroner. He spoke of the sudden faintness which had come over Mr. Dunbar.
“Poor gentleman!” he said, “I don’t think I ever see the like of anything as come over him so sudden. He walked along the aisle with his head up, dashing and millingtary-like; but, all in a minute, he reeled as if he’d been dead drunk, and he would have fell if there hadn’t been a bench handy. Down he dropped upon that bench like a stone; and when I turned round to look at him the drops of perspiration was rollin’ down his forehead like beads. I never see such a face in my life, as ghastly-like as if he’d seen a ghost. But he was laughin’ and smilin’ the next minute; and it was only the heat of the weather, he says.”
“It’s odd as a gentleman that’s just come home from India should complain
of the heat on such a day as yesterday,” said one of the bystanders.
This was the substance of the evidence that the verger gave before Sir Arden Westhorpe. This, with the evidence of a boy who had met the deceased and Henry Dunbar close to the spot where the body was found, was the only evidence against the rich man.
To the mind of Sir Arden Westhorpe the agitation displayed by Henry Dunbar in the cathedral was a very strong point; yet, what more possible than that the Anglo-Indian should have been seized with a momentary giddiness? He was not a young man; and though his broad chest, square shoulders, and long, muscular arms betokened strength, that natural vigour might have been impaired by the effects of a warm climate.
There were new witnesses upon this day, people who testified to having been in the neighbourhood of the grove, and in the grove itself, upon that fatal afternoon and evening.
Other labourers, besides the two Irishmen, had passed beneath the shadow of the trees in the moonlight. Idle pedestrians had strolled through the grove in the still twilight; not one of these had seen Joseph Wilmot, nor had there been heard any cry of anguish, or wild shrieks of terror.
One man deposed to having met a rough-looking fellow, half-gipsy, half-hawker, in the grove between seven and eight o’clock.
Arthur Lovell questioned this person as to the appearance and manner of the man he had met.
But the witness declared that there was nothing peculiar in the man’s manner. He had not seemed confused, or excited, or hurried, or frightened. He was a coarse-featured, sunburnt ruffianly-looking fellow; and that was all.
Mr. Balderby was examined, and swore to the splendid position which Henry Dunbar occupied as chief of the house in St. Gundolph Lane; and then the examination was adjourned, and the prisoner remanded, although Arthur Lovell contended that there was no evidence to justify his detention.
Mr. Dunbar still protested against any offer of bail; he again declared that he would rather remain in prison than accept his liberty on sufferance, and go out into the world a suspected man.
“I will never leave Winchester Gaol,” he said, “until I leave it with my character cleared in the eyes of every living creature.”
He had been treated with the greatest respect by the prison officials, and had been provided with comfortable apartments. Arthur Lovell and Mr. Balderby were admitted to him whenever he chose to receive them.
Meanwhile every voice in Winchester was loud in indignation against those who had caused the detention of the millionaire.
Here was an English gentleman, a man whose wealth was something fabulous, newly returned from India, eager to embrace his only child; and before he had done more than set his foot upon his native soil, he was seized upon by obstinate and pig-headed officials, and thrown into a prison.
Arthur Lovell worked nobly in the service of Laura’s father. He did not particularly like the man, though he wished to like him; but he believed him to be innocent of the dreadful crime imputed to him, and he was determined to make that innocence clear to the eyes of other people.
For this purpose he urged on the police upon the track of the strange man, the rough-looking hawker, who had been seen in the grove on the day of the murder.
He himself left Winchester upon another errand. He went away with the determination of discovering the sick man, Sampson Wilmot. The old clerk’s evidence might be most important in such a case as this; as he would perhaps be able to throw much light upon the antecedents and associations of the dead man.
The young lawyer travelled along the line, stopping at every station. At Basingstoke he was informed that an old man, travelling with his brother, had been taken ill; and that he had since died. An inquest had been held upon his remains some days before, and he had been buried by the parish.
It was upon the 21st of August that Arthur Lovell visited Basingstoke. The people at the village inn told him that the old man had died at two o’clock upon the morning of the 17th, only a few hours after his brother’s desertion of him. He had never spoken after the final stroke of paralysis.
There was nothing to be learned here, therefore. Death had closed the lips of this witness.
But even if Sampson Wilmot had lived to speak, what could he have told? The dead man’s antecedents could have thrown little light upon the way in which he had met his death. It was a common murder, after all; a murder that had been done for the sake of the victim’s little property; a silver watch, perhaps; a few sovereigns; a coat, waistcoat, and shirt.
The only evidence that tended in the least to implicate Henry Dunbar was the fact that he had been the last person seen in company with the dead man, and the discrepancy between his assertion and that of the verger respecting the time during which he had been absent from the cathedral yard.
No magistrate in his senses would commit the Anglo-Indian for trial upon such evidence as this.
CHAPTER XIV.
MARGARET’S JOURNEY.
While these things were taking place at Winchester, Margaret waited for the coming of her father. She waited until her heart grew sick, but still she did not despair of his return. He had promised to come back to her by ten o’clock upon the evening of the 16th; but he was not a man who always kept his promises. He had often left her in the same manner, and had stayed away for days and weeks together.
There was nothing extraordinary, therefore, in his absence; and if the girl’s heart grew sick, it was not with the fear that her father would not return to her; but with the thought of what dishonest work he might be engaged in during his absence.
She knew now that he led a dishonest life. His own lips had told her the cruel truth. She would no longer be able to defend him when people spoke against him. Henceforth she must only plead for him.
The poor girl had been proud of her father, reprobate though he was; she had been proud of his gentlemanly bearing, his cleverness, his air of superiority over other men of his station; and the thought of his acknowledged guilt stung her to the heart. She pitied him, and she tried to make excuses for him in her own mind: and with every thought of the penniless reprobate there was intermingled the memory of the wrong that had been done him by Henry Dunbar.
“If my father has been guilty, that man is answerable for his guilt,” she thought perpetually.
Meanwhile she waited, Heaven only knows how anxiously, for her father’s coming. A week passed, and another week began, and still he did not come; but she was not alarmed for his personal safety, she was only anxious about him; and she expected his return every day, every hour. But he did not come.
And all this time, with her mind racked by anxious thoughts, the girl went about the weary duties of her daily life. Her thoughts might wander away into vague speculations about her father’s absence while she sat by her pupil’s side; but her eyes never wandered from the fingers it was her duty to watch. Her life had been a hard one, and she was better able to hide her sorrows and anxieties than any one to whom such a burden had been a novelty. So, very few people suspected that there was anything amiss with the grave young music-mistress.
One person did see the vague change in her manner; but that person was Clement Austin, who had already grown skilled in reading the varying expressions of her face, and who saw now that she was changed. She listened to him when he talked to her of the books or the music she loved; but her face never lighted up now with a bright look of pleasure; and he heard her sigh now and then as she gave her lesson.
He asked her once if there was anything in which his services, or his mother’s, could be of any assistance to her; but she thanked him for the kindness of his offer, and told him, “No, there was nothing in which he could help her.”
“But I am sure there is something on your mind. Pray do not think me intrusive or impertinent for saying so; but I am sure of it.”
Margaret only shook her head.
“I am mistaken, then?” said Clement, interrogatively.
“You are indeed. I have no special trouble. I am only a little uneasy a
bout my father, who has been away from home for the last week or two. But there is nothing strange in that; he is often away. Only I am apt to be foolishly anxious about him. He will scold me when he comes home and hears that I have been so.”
Upon the evening of the 27th August, Margaret gave her accustomed lesson, and lingered a little as usual after the lesson, talking to Mrs. Austin, who had taken a wonderful fancy to her granddaughter’s music-mistress; and to Clement, who somehow or other had discontinued his summer evening walks of late, more especially on those occasions on which his niece took he music-lesson. They talked of all manner of things, and it was scarcely strange that amongst other topics they should come by and-by to the Winchester murder.
“By the bye, Miss Wentworth,” exclaimed Mrs. Austin, breaking in upon Clement’s disquisition on his favourite Carlyle’s “Hero-Worship,” “I suppose you’ve heard about this dreadful murder that is making such a sensation?”
“A dreadful murder — no, Mrs. Austin; I rarely hear anything of that kind; for the person with whom I lodge is old and deaf. She troubles herself very little about what is going on in the world, and I never read the newspapers myself.”
“Indeed,” said Mrs. Austin; “well, my dear, you really surprise me. I thought this dreadful business had made such a sensation, on account of the great Mr. Dunbar being mixed up in it.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 290
