Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘You are very generous,’ said La Chicot, scornfully, ‘or very obstinate. If I run away with you and my husband gets a divorce, will you marry me?’

  Be faithful to me, and I will refuse you nothing,’ He went With her to the door of her lodgings for the first time, pleading his cause all the way, with such eloquence as he could command, which was not much. He was a man who had found money all powerful to obtain everything he wanted, and had seldom felt the need of words.

  ‘Send me a messenger you can trust at twelve O’clock to-morrow, and if I do not send you back your diamonds — —”

  ‘I shall know that your answer is yes. In that case you will find my brougham waiting at a quarter-past seven o’clock to-morrow evening at the corner of this street, and I shall be in the brougham. We will drive straight to Charing Cross, and start for Paris by the mail. It will be too dark for any one to notice the carriage. What time do you generally go to the theatre?’

  ‘At half-past seven.’,

  ‘Then you will not be missed till you are well out of the way. There will be no fuss, no scandal.’

  There will be a tremendous fuss at the theatre,’ said La Chicot. ‘Who is to take my place in the burlesque?’

  ‘Any one. What need you care? You will have done with burlesque and the stage for ever.’

  ‘True,’ said La, Chicot.

  And then she remembered the Student’s Theatre in Paris, and how her popularity had waned there. The same thing might happen here in London, perhaps, after a year or two. Her audience would grow tired of her. Already people in the theatre had begun to make disagreeable remarks about the empty champagne bottles which came out of her dressing-room. By-and-bye, perhaps, they would be impudent enough to call her a drunkard. She would be glad to have clone with them.

  Yet, degraded as she was, there were depths of vice from which her better instincts plucked her back; as if it were her good angel clutching her garments to drag her from the edge of an abyss. She had once loved her husband; nay, after her own manner, she loved him still, and could not calmly contemplate leaving him. Her brain, muddled by champagne and brandy, shaped all thoughts confusedly; yet at her worst the idea of selling herself to this Jewish profligate shocked and disgusted her. Her soul was swayed to and fro, to this side and to that. She had no inclination to vice, but she would have liked the wades of sin; for in this lower world the wages of sin; meant a villa at Passy, and a couple of carriages.

  ‘Good night,’ she said abruptly to her lover. I must not be seen talking to you. My husband may come home at any minute.’

  ‘I hear that he generally comes home in the middle of the night,’ said Mr. Lemuel.

  ‘What business is it of yours if lie does?’ asked La Chicot, angrily.

  ‘Everything that concerns you is my business. When I, who love the ground you walk upon, hear how you are neglected by your husband, do you suppose the knowledge does not make me so much the more determined to win you?’

  ‘Send your messenger for my answer to-morrow,’ said La Chicot, and then she shut the door in his face.

  ‘I hate him,’ she muttered when she was alone in the passage, stamping her foot as if she had trodden upon a venomous insect.

  She, went upstairs, and again sat down half-undressed upon the floor, to look at the diamond necklace. She had a childish love of the gems — a delight in looking at them which differed very little from her feelings when she was fifteen years younger, and longed for a blue bead necklace exposed for sale in the quaint old market place at Auray.

  ‘I shall send them back to him to-morrow,’ she said to herself. ‘The diamonds are beautiful — and I am getting tired of my life here, and I know that Jack hates me — but that man is too horrible — and — I am an honest woman.’

  She flung herself on her knees beside the bed, in the attitude of prayer, but not to pray. She had lost the habit of prayer soon after she left her native province. She was sobbing passionately for the loss of her husband’s love, with a dim consciousness that it was by her own degradation she had forfeited his regard.

  ‘I’ve been a good wife to him,” she murmured in broken syllables, ‘better than ever I was — —’

  And then speech lost itself in convulsive sobs, and she cried herself to sleep.

  CHAPTER III. MURDER.

  MURDER! an awful word wider the most ordinary circumstances of every-day life — all awful word even when spoken of an event that happened long ago, or afar off’. But what a word shouted in the dead of night, through the close darkness of a sleeking House, thrilling the ear of slumber, freezing the blood in the half-awakened sleepers’ veins.

  Such a shout — repeated with passionate clamour — scared the inhabitants of the Cibber Street lodging-house at three o’clock in the winter morning, still dark as deepest night. Mrs. Rawber heard it in her back bedroom on the ground floor. It penetrated confusedly — not as a word, but as a sound of fear and dread — to the front kitchen, where Mrs. Evitt, the landlady, slept on an ancient press bedstead, which by day made believe to be a bookcase. Lastly, Desrolles, who seemed to have slept more heavily than the other two on that particular night, came rushing out of his room to ask the meaning of that hideous summons.

  They all met on the fist-floor landing, when, Jack Chicot stood on the threshold of his wife’s bedroom, with a candle in his hand, the flickering flame making a patch of sickly yellow light amidst surrounding, gloom — a faint in which Jack Chicot’s pallid countenance looked like the face of a ghost.

  `What is the matter?’ Desrolles asked the two women simultaneously.

  `My wife has been murdered, My God, it is too awful! See — see — —’

  Chicot pointed with a trembling hand to a thin thread of crimson that had crept along the dull grey carpet to the very threshold. Shudderingly the others looked inside, as he held the candle towards the bed, with white averted face. There were hideous stains on the counterpane, an awful figure lying in a heap among the bedclothes, a long loose coil of raven hair, curved like a snake round the rigid form — a spectacle which not one of those who gazed upon it, spellbound, fascinated by the horror of the sight, could ever hope to forget.

  ‘Murdered, and in my house!’ shrieked Mrs. Evitt, unconsciously echoing the words of Lady Macbeth, on a similar occasion. ‘I shall never let my first floor again. I’m a ruined woman. Seize him, ‘old ‘im she cried, with sudden intensity.’It must ‘ave been her ‘usband done it. You was often a-quarrelling, you know you was.’

  This fierce attack startled Jack Chicot. He turned upon the woman with his ghastly face, a, new horror in his eyes.

  ‘I kill her!’ he cried. ‘I never raised my hand against her in my life, though she has tempted me many a time. I came into the house three minutes ago, I should not have known anything, for when I come in late I sleep in the little room, but I saw that —— (he pointed to the thin red streak which had crept across the threshold, and raider the door, to the carpetless landing outside), ‘and then I came in and found her lying here, as you see her.’

  ‘Somebody ought to go for a policeman,’ suggested Desrolles.

  ‘I will,’ said Chicot.

  He was the only person present in a condition to leave the house, and before any one could question his right to leave it he was gone.

  They waited outside that awful, chamber for a quarter of an hour, but no policemen came, nor, did Jack Chicot return.

  ‘I begin to think he has made a belt of said Desrolles. ‘That looks rather bad.’

  Didn’t I tell you he’d done it?’ screamed the landlady. ‘I know he’d got to hate her. I’ve seen it in his looks — and she has told me as much, and cried over it, poor thing, when she’d taken a glass or two more than was good for her. And you let him go, like a coward as you was.’

  ‘My good Mrs. Evitt, you are getting abusive. I was not sent into the world to arrest possible criminals. I am not a detective.’

  ‘But I’m a ruined woman!’ cried the outraged household
er. ‘Who’s to occupy my lodgings, future, I should like to know? The house ‘ll get the name of being haunted. Here’s Mrs. Rawber even, that has been with me close upon five year, will be wanting to go.’

  ‘I’ve had a turn,’ assented the tragic lady, ‘and I don’t feel that I can he down in my bed again downstairs. I’m afraid I may have to look for other apartments.’

  There,’ whimpered Mrs. Evitt, ‘didn’t I tell you I was a ruined woman?’

  Desrolles had gone into the front room, and was standing at an open window watching for a policeman.

  One of those guardians of the public peace came strolling along the pavement presently, with as placid in air as if lie had been an inhabitant of Arcadia, to whom Desrolles shouted, ‘Come up here, there’s been murder.’

  The public guardian wheeled himself stiffly round and approached the street door. He did not take the word murder in its positive sense, but in its local significance, which meant a row, culminating in a few bruises and a black eye or two. That actual murder had been done, and that a, dead woman was lying in the house, never entered his mind. He opened the door and came upstairs with slow, creaking footsteps, as if he had been making a ceremonious visit.

  What’s the row?’ he asked curtly, when he came to the first-floor landing, and saw the two women standing there, Mrs. Evitt wrapped in a waterproof, Mrs. Rawber in a yellow cotton dressing-gown of antiquated fashion, both with scared faces, and sparse dishevelled hair.

  Mr. Desrolles was the coolest of the trio, but even his countenance had a ghastly look in the light of the guttering candle which Jack Chicot had set down on the little table outside the bedroom door.

  They told him, breathlessly, what had happened.

  ‘Is she dead? ‘ he asked.

  ‘Go in and look’ said Mrs, Evitt. ‘I dared not go a-nigh her.’

  The policeman went in, lantern in hand, a monument of stolid calm, amidst the terror of the scene. Little need to ask if she were dead. That awful face upon the pillow, those glazed eves with their wide stare of horror, that gaping wound in the full white throat, from which the life-blood had poured in a crimson stream across the white counterpane, until it made a dark pool beside the bed, all told their own tale.

  ‘She must have been dead for an hour or more,’ said the policeman, touching the marble hand.

  La Chicot’s hand and arm were flung above her head, as if she had known what was coming, and had tried to clutch the bell-pull behind her. The other hand was tightly clenched as in the last convulsion.

  ‘There ‘ll have to be an inquest,’ said the policeman, after he had examined the window, and looked out to see if the room was easily accessible from without. ‘Somebody had better go for a doctor. I’ll o myself. There’s a surgeon at the corner of the next street. Who is she, and how did it happen?.

  Mrs. Evitt, in a torrent of words, told him all she knew, and all she suspected. It was La Chicot’s husband that had done it, she was sure.

  ‘Why?’ asked the policeman.

  Who else should it be? It couldn’t be burglars. You saw yourself that the window was fastened inside. She’d no valuables to tempt any one. Light come light go was her motto, poor thing. Her money went as fast as it came, and if it wasn’t him as did it, why haven’t lie come back?’

  The policeman asked what she meant by this, whereupon Desrolles told him of Mr. Chicot’s disappearance.

  ‘I must say that it looks fishy,’ concluded the second-floor lodger. ‘I don’t want to breathe a word against a man I like, but it looks fishy. He went out twenty minutes ago to fetch a policeman, and he hasn’t come back yet.’

  ‘No, nor never will,’ said Mrs. Rawber, who was sitting on the stairs shivering, afraid to go back to her bedroom.

  That ground-floor bedroom of hers was a dismal place at the best of times, overshadowed by the wall of the yard, and made dark and damp by a protruding cistern, but how would it seem with their wide stare of horror, that gaping wound in the full white throat, from which the life-blood had poured in a crimson stream across the white counterpane, until it made a dark pool beside the bed, all told their own tale.

  ‘She must have been dead for an hour or more,’ said the policeman, touching the marble hand.

  La Chicot’s hand and arm were flung above her head, as if she had known what was coming, and had tried to clutch the bell-pull behind her. The other hand was tightly clenched as in the last convulsion.

  ‘There ‘ll have to be an inquest,’ said the policeman, after lie had examined the window, and looked out to see if the room was easily accessible from without. ‘Somebody had better go for a doctor. I’ll go myself. There’s a surgeon at the corner of the next street. Who is she, and how did it happen?

  Mrs. Evitt, in a torrent of words, told him all she knew, and all she suspected. It was La Chicot’s husband that had done it, she was sure and closer you keep yourselves meanwhile the safer for you.’

  ‘I shall go back to bed,’ said Desrolles, ‘as, I don’t see my way to being of any use.’

  ‘That’s the best thing you can do,’ said the sergeant, approvingly; ‘and you, ma’am,’ he added, turning to Mrs. Rawber, had better follow the gentleman’s example.’

  Mrs. Rawber felt as if her bedroom would be peopled with ghosts, but did not like to give utterance to her fears.

  ‘I’ll go down and set alight to my parlour fire, and mix myself a wine-glass full of something warm,’ she said. ‘I feel chilled to the marrow of my bones.’

  You, ma’am, had better wait up here till I come back with the doctor,’ said the policeman

  Desrolles had returned to his room by this time. Mrs. Rawber went downstairs with the policeman, glad of his company so far. He waited politely while she struck a lucifer and lighted her candle, and then he hurried off to find the doctor.

  ‘There’s company in a fire,’ mused Mrs. Rawber, to her now when the house was made horrible by murder?

  ‘Do you know what time it was when the husband gave the alarm?’ asked the policeman.

  ‘Not more than twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘Any of you got a watch?’

  Desrolles shrugged his shoulders. Mrs. Evitt murmured something about her poor husband’s watch which had been a good one in its time, till one of the hands broke short off and the works went wrong. Mrs. Rawber had a clock on her bedroom mantel-piece, and had noticed the time when that awful cry awoke her, scared as she was. It was ten minutes after three.

  ‘And now it wants twenty to four,’ said the sergeant, looking at his watch. ‘If the husband did it, he must have done it a good hour before he gave the alarm; at least that’s my opinion. We shall hear what the doctor says. I’ll go and fetch him. Now, look here, my good people: if you value your own characters, you’ll none of you attempt to leave this house to-night. Your evidence will be wanted at the inquest to-morrow, and the quieter on the details of a last illness, or discussing the order of a funeral. She had a dreadful courage that came of familiarity with death. She took up the candle, and went in alone and unappalled to look at La Chicot.

  ‘How tight that hand is clenched,’ she said to herself; ‘I wonder whether there’s anything in it.’

  She forced back the stiffening fingers, and with the candle held close, bent down to peer into the marble palm. In the hollow of that dead hand she found a little tuft of iron-trey hair, which looked as if it had been torn from a man’s head.

  Mrs. Evitt drew the hairs from the dead hand, and with a careful precision laid them in an old letter which she took from her pocket, and folded up the letter into a neat little packet, which she returned to the same calico receptacle for heterogeneous articles.

  ‘What a turn it has given me,’ she said to her-self, stealing back to the landing, her petticoats lifted lest the hem of her garments should touch that dreadful pool beside the bed.

  The expression of her face had altered since she entered the room. There was a new intelligence in her dull grey eyes. Her countenance and beari
ng were as of one whose mind is charged with the weight of an awful secret.

  The surgeon came, an elderly man, who lived close at hand, and was experienced in the ways of that doubtful section of society which inhabited the neighbourhood of Cibber Street. In his opinion La Chicot had been dead three hours. It was now on the stroke of four. One o’clock must, therefore, have been the time of the murder.

  The police-sergeant came back in company with a man in plain clothes, and these two made a careful examination of the premises together, the result of which inspection went to show that it would have been extremely difficult for any one to enter the house from the back. The front door was left on the latch all night, and had been for the last eleven years, and no harm had ever come of it, Mrs. Evitt declared, plaintively. It was a Chubb lock, and she didn’t believe there was another like it in all London.

  The two men went into every room in the house, disturbed Mr. Desrolles in a comfortable slumber, acid surveyed his bedchamber with eyes which took in every detail. There was very little for them to see: a tent bedstead draped with flabby faded chintz, a rickety washstand, a small chest of drawers with a looking glass on the top, and three odd chairs, picked up at humble auctions.

  After inspecting Mr. Desrolles’ rooms, and over-hauling his limited wardrobe, they looked in upon Mrs. Rawber, and roused that talented woman’s ire by opening all her drawers and cupboards, and peering curiously into the same, whereby they beheld more mysteries of theatrical attire than ought to be seen by the public eye.

  ‘You don’t suppose I did it, I hope,’ protested Mrs. Rawber, in her grandest tragedy voice.

  ‘No, ma’am, but we’re obliged to do our duty’, answered the police-officer. ‘It’s only a form.’

  ‘It’s a very disagreeable form,’ said Mrs. Rawber, ‘and if you tallow-grease my Lady Macbeth dresses, I shall expect you to slake them good.’

  The man in plain clothes committed himself to no opinion, nor did he enter upon any discussion as to the motive of a crime apparently so motiveless. He made his notes of the plain facts of the case, and went away with the sergeant.