Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  ‘Mrs. Rawber heard nothing, yet she was on the floor below, and was more likely to hear any movement in my wife’s room.’

  ‘I should like to know all you can tell me about Desrolles,’ said Mr. Leopold, frowning over his pocket-book.

  Honest Tom Sampson sat and listened, open eyed and silent. To him the famous criminal lawyer was as a god, a being made up of wisdom and knowledge.

  ‘I can tell you very little,’ answered John Treverton. ‘I know nothing to his discredit, except that he was poor, and too fond of brandy for his old welfare.’

  ‘I see,’ answered Leopold, quickly. ‘The kind of man who would do anything for money.’

  Treverton started. He could not deny that this was in somewise true of Mr. Desrolles, alias Mansfield, alias Malcolm. It horrified him to remember that this man was Laura’s father, and that at any moment the disgrace of that relationship might be made known, should Desrolles’ presence at the police court be insisted upon. Happily Desrolles was on the other side of the Channel, where only the solicitor who received his income knew where to find him.

  Mr. Leopold asked a good many more questions, some of which seemed frivolous and irrelevant, but all of which John Treverton answered as well as he was able.

  ‘I hope you believe in me, Mr. Leopold,’ he said, when his solicitor held out his hand at parting.

  ‘From my soul,’ answered the other, earnestly. ‘And, what’s more, I mean to pull you through this. It’s a troublesome business, but I think I can see my way to the end of it. I wish you could help me to find Desrolles.’

  ‘That I cannot do,’ said Treverton, decidedly.

  ‘It’s a pity. Well, good-day. The inquiry is adjourned till next Tuesday, so we have a week before us. It will be hard if we don’t do something in that time.’

  ‘The police have done very little in a twelve-month,’ said Treverton.

  ‘The police have not a monopoly of human intelligence,’ answered Mr. Leopold. ‘We may do better than the police.’

  Two advertisements appeared in the Times, Telegraph, and Standard, next morning: —

  ‘DESROLLES. — TEN POUNDS Reward will be given to anybody furnishing the PRESENT ADDRESS of Mr. DESROLLES, late of Cibber Street, Leicester Square.’

  ‘TO JEWELLERS, PAWNBROKERS, &c. — LOST, in February, 187 — , a COLLET NECKLACE of IMITATION DIAMONDS. — Anybody giving information about the same will be liberally rewarded.’

  CHAPTER XI. MRS. EVITT MAKES A REVELATION.

  MRS. EVITT was very ill. It may be that a prolonged residence on a level with the sewers, and remote from the direct rays of the sun, is not conducive to health or good spirits.

  Mrs. Evitt had long suffered from a gentle melancholy, an all-pervading dolefulness, which impelled her to hang her head on one side, and to sigh faintly, at intervals, without any apparent motive. She had been also prone to see all the affairs of life in their darkest aspect, as one living remote from the sun might naturally do. She had been given to prophesy death and doom to her acquaintance, to give a sick friend over directly the doctor was called in, to foresee sheriff’s officers and ruin at the slightest indication of extravagance in the management of a neighbour’s household, to augur bad things of babies, and worse things of husbands, to mistrust all mankind, and to perform under her human aspect that ungenial office which the screech owl was supposed to fulfil in a more romantic age.

  She had always been ailing. She suffered from vague pains and stitches, and undefinable aches, which took her at awkward angles of her bony frame, or which wracked the innermost recesses of that edifice. She knew a great deal more about her internal economy than is consistent with happiness, and was wont to talk about her liver and other organs with an almost professional technicality. She was not an agreeable companion; but a long succession of lodgers had borne with her, because she was tolerably clean and unscrupulously honest. Upon this last point she prided herself immensely. She knew that she belonged to a maligned and suspected race; nay, that the very name of her calling was synonymous with peculation; and her soul swelled with pride as she declared that she had never wronged a lodger by so much as a crust of bread. She would let a mutton bone rot in her larder rather than appropriate the barest shank without express permission. Rashers of bacon. half-pounds of Dorset, lard, flour, eggs, were as safe in her care as bullion in the Bank of England.

  George Gerard, to whom every penny was of consequence, had discovered this sovereign virtue in his landlady, and honoured her for it. He had suffered much from the harpies with whom he had dwelt in the city. He found his half-pound of tea or coffee last twice as long as in former lodgings; his rasher of bacon less costly; his mutton-chop better cooked; his loaf respected. For him Mrs. Evitt was a model landlady; and he rewarded her integrity by such small civilities as lay in his power. What gratified her most was his readiness to prescribe for those ailments which were the most salient feature of her life. Her mind had a natural bent towards medicine, and she loved to talk to the good-natured surgeon of her disorders, or even to question him about his patients.

  ‘That’s a bad case of small-pox you’ve got in Green Street, isn’t it, Mr. Gerard? she would say to him, with a dismal relish, when she came in after his day’s work to ask what she ought to do for that ‘grumbling’ pain in her back.

  ‘Who told you it was smallpox?’ asked Gerard.

  ‘Well, I had it from very good authority. The charwoman that works at number seven in this street is own sister to Mrs. Jewell’s Mary Ann, and Mrs. Jewell and Mrs. Peacock in Green Street is bosom friends, and the house where you’re attending is exackerly opposite Mr. Peacock’s.’

  ‘Excellent authority,’ answered Gerard, smiling, ‘but I am happy to tell you I haven’t a case of small-pox on my list. Did you ever hear of such a thing as rheumatic fever?’

  ‘Hear of it,’ echoed Mrs. Evitt, rapturously. ‘I’ve been down with it seven times.’

  She looked very hard at him as she made the assertion, as if not expecting to be believed.

  ‘Have you?’ said Gerard. ‘Then I wonder you’re alive.’

  ‘That’s what I wonder at myself,’ answered Mrs. Evitt, with subdued pride. ‘I must have had a splendid constitution to go through all I’ve gone through, and to be here to tell it. The quinsies I’ve had. Why the mustard that’s been put to my throat in the form of poultices would stock a first rate tea-grocer with the article. As to fever, I don’t think you could name the kind I haven’t had since I had the scarlatina at five months old, and the whooping-cough a top of the measles before I’d got over it. I’ve been a martyr.’

  ‘I’m afraid that damp kitchen of yours has had something to do with it,’ suggested Gerard.

  ‘Damp!’ cried Mrs. Evitt, casting up her hands. ‘You never made a greater mistake in your life, Mr. Gerard, than when you threw out such a remark. There ain’t a dryer room in London. No, Mr. Gerard, it ain’t damp, it’s sensitiveness. I’m a regular sensitive plant; and if there’s disease going about I take it. That’s why I asked you if the smallpox was in Green Street. I don’t want to be disfigurated in my old age.’

  Mr. Gerard looked upon Mrs. Evitt’s ailments as in a large degree imaginary, but he found her weak and overworked, and gave her a gentle course of quinine, ill as he could afford to supply her with so expensive a tonic. For some time the quinine had a restorative effect, and Mrs. Evitt thought her lodger the first man in his profession. That young man understood her constitution as nobody else had ever understood it, she told her gossips, and that young man would make his way. A doctor who had understood a constitution which had hitherto baffled the faculty was bound to achieve greatness. Unfortunately, the good effect of Gerard’s prescription was not lasting. There was a good deal of wet and foggy weather at the close of the old year and at the beginning of the new year; and the damp and fog crept into Mrs. Evitt’s kitchen, and seemed to take hold of her hard-worked old bones. She exhibited some very fine examples of shivering — her teeth chatter
ed, her complexion turned blue with cold. Even three pennyworth of best unsweetened gin, taken in half a tumbler of boiling water, failed to comfort or exhilarate her.

  “I’m afraid I’m in for it,’ Mrs. Evitt exclaimed to a neighbour, who had dropped in to pass the time of day and borrow an Italian iron. ‘And this time it’s ague.’

  And then, forcing the attack a little for the benefit of the neighbour, she set up one of those dreadful shivering fits, which rattled all the teeth in her head. ‘It’s ague this time,’ she repeated, when the shivering had abated. ‘I never had ague until now.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ cried the neighbour, with an assumption of cheerfulness. ‘It ain’t ague. Lord bless you, people don’t have ague in the heart of London, in a warm comfortable kitchen like this. It’s only in marshes and such like places that you hear of ague.’

  ‘Never you mind,’ retorted Mrs. Evitt, solemnly. ‘I’ve got the ague, and if Mr. Gerard doesn’t say as much when he comes home, he isn’t the clever man I think him.’

  Mr. Gerard came home in due course, letting himself in quietly with his latch-key, soon after dark. Mrs. Evitt managed to crawl upstairs with a tray, carrying a mutton-chop, a loaf, and a pat of butter. To cook the chop had cost her an effort, and it was as much as she could do to drag her weary limbs upstairs.

  ‘Why, what’s the matter with you to-night, Mrs. Bouncer?’ asked Gerard, who had given his landlady that classic name. “You’re looking very queer.’

  ‘I know I am,’ answered Mrs. Evitt, with gloomy resignation.’I’ve got the ague.’

  ‘Ague, nonsense!’ cried Gerard, rising and feeling her pulse.’Let’s look at your tongue, old lady. That’ll do. I’ll soon set you on your leg again, if you do what I tell you.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Get to bed, and stay there till you’re well. You’re not fit to be slaving about the house, my good soul. You must get to bed and keep yourself warm, and have some one to feed you with good soup and arrowroot, and such like.’

  ‘Who’s to look after the house?’ asked Mrs. Evitt, dismally. ‘I shall be ruined.’

  ‘No, you won’t. I’m your only lodger just now.’ Mrs. Evitt sighed, dolefully.’ And I want very little waiting upon. You’ll want some one to wait upon you, though. You’d better get a charwoman.’

  ‘Eighteenpence a day, three substantial meals, and a pint of beer,’ sighed Mrs. Evitt. ‘I should be eat out of house and home. If I must lay up, Mr. Gerard, I’ll get a girl. I know of a decent girl that would come for her vittles, and a trifle at the end of the week.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Gerard, ‘there are a good many decent young men walking the streets of London, who would go anywhere for their victuals. Life’s a harder problem than any proposition in Euclid, my worthy Bouncer.’

  The landlady shook her head in melancholy assent.

  ‘Now look here, my good soul,’ said Gerard, seriously. ‘If you want to get well, you mustn’t sleep in that kennel of yours down below.’

  ‘Kennel!’ cried the outraged matron, ‘kennel! Mr. Gerard. Why, you might eat your dinner off the floor.’

  ‘I dare say you might; but every breath you draw there is tainted more or less with sewer gas. That furred tongue of yours looks rather like blood-poisoning. You must make yourself up a comfortable bed on the first floor, and keep a nice little bit of fire in your room day and night.’

  ‘Not in her room, Mr. Gerard,’ exclaimed Mrs. Evitt, with a shudder. ‘I couldn’t do it, sir. It isn’t like as if I was a stranger. Strangers wouldn’t feel it. But I knew her. I should see her beautiful eyes glaring at me all night long. It would be the death of me.’

  ‘ Well, then, there’s Desrolles’ room. You can’t have any objection to that.’

  Mrs. Evitt shuddered again.

  ‘I’m that nervous,’ she said, ‘that my mind’s set against those upstairs rooms.’

  ‘You’ll never get well downstairs. If you don’t fancy that first floor bedroom you can make yourself up a bed in the sitting-room. There’s plenty of light and air there.’

  ‘I might do that,’ said Mrs. Evitt, ‘though it goes against me to ‘ack my beautiful drawring-room — —’

  ‘You won’t hurt your drawing-room. You have to recover your health.’

  ‘‘Health is a blessed privilege. Well, I’ll put up a truckle bed in the first floor front. The girl could sleep on a mattress on the floor at the bottom of my bed She’d be company.’

  ‘Of course she would. Make yourself comfortable mentally and bodily, and you’ll soon get well. Now, how about this girl? You must get her immediately.’

  ‘I’ve got a neighbour coming in presently. I’ll get her to step round and tell Jemima to come.’

  ‘Is Jemima the girl?’

  ‘Yes. She’s step-daughter to the tailor at the corner of Cricket’s Row. He’s got a fine family of his own, and Jemima feels herself one too many. She’s a hard working honest-minded girl, though she isn’t much to look at. Her father was in the public line; he was barman at the Prince of Wales’, and the stepfather throws it at her sometimes when he’s in drink.’

  ‘Never mind Jemima’s biography,’ said Gerard. ‘Get your neighbour to fetch her, and in the meantime I’ll help you to make up the bed.’

  ‘Lor’, Mr. Gerard, you haven’t had your tea. Your chop will be stone cold.’

  ‘My chop must wait,’ said Gerard, cheerily. And then, with all the handiness of a woman, and more than the kindness of an ordinary woman, the young surgeon helped to transform the first floor sitting-room into a comfortable bed-chamber. By the time this was done Jemima had arrived upon the scene, carrying all her worldly goods tied up in a cotton handkerchief. She was a raw-boned, angular girl, deeply marked with the small pox. Her scanty hair was twisted into a knot like a ball of cotton at the back of her head; her elbows were preternaturally red, her wrists were bound up with rusty black ribbon; but she had a good-natured grin that atoned for everything. She was as patient as a beast of burden, contented with the scantiest fare, invariably cheerful. She was so accustomed to harsh words and hard usage that she thought people who did not bully or maltreat her the quintessence of kindness.

  It was on the evening when Mrs. Evitt took to her bed, and the house was entrusted to the care of Jemima, that Mr. Leopold and Mr. Sampson came to make their inquiries at the house in Cibber-street. George Gerard saw them, and heard of John Treverton’s arrest, with considerable surprise and some indignation. He felt assured that Edward Clare must have given the information upon which the police had acted; and he felt angry with himself for having been in somewise a catspaw to serve the young man’s malice. He remembered Laura’s lovely face, with its expression of perfect purity and truth; and he hated himself for having helped to bring this terrible grief upon her.

  ‘There was a time when I believed John Treverton guilty,’ he told Mr. Leopold, ‘but I have wavered in my opinion ever since last Sunday week, when he and I talked together.’

  ‘You never would have thought badly of him if you had known him as well as I do,’ said the faithful Sampson. ‘He has stayed for a week at a stretch in my house, you know. We have been like brothers. This is an awkward business, and of course it’s very painful for that sweet young wife of his. But Mr. Leopold means to pull him through.’

  ‘I do,’ assented the famous lawyer.

  ‘Mr. Leopold has pulled a great many through, innocent and guilty.’

  ‘And guilty,’ assented the lawyer, with quiet self-approval.

  He was disappointed at not being able to see Mrs. Evitt.

  ‘I should like to have asked her a few questions,’ he said.

  ‘She is much too ill to-night for that kind of thing,’ answered Gerard. ‘Her only chance of recovery is to be kept quiet; and I don’t think she can tell you any more about the murder than she stated at the inquest.’

  ‘Oh, yes, she could,’ said Mr. Leopold. ‘She would tell me a great deal more.’

  ‘Do you think
she kept anything back?’

  ‘Not intentionally perhaps, but there is always something untold; some small detail, which to your mind might mean nothing, but which might mean a great deal to me. Please let me know directly I can see your landlady.’

  Gerard promised, and then Mr. Leopold, instead of taking his departure, made himself quite at home in the surgeon’s arm-chair, and stirred the small fire with so reckless a hand that poor Gerard trembled for his weekly hundred of coals. The solicitor seemed in an idle humour, and inclined to waste time. Honest Tom Sampson wondered at his frivolity.

  The conversation naturally turned upon the deed which had given that house a sinister notoriety. Gerard found himself talking freely of Madame Chicot and her husband; and it was only after Mr. Leopold and his companion had gone that he perceived how cleverly the experienced lawyer had contrived to cross-question him, without his being aware of the process.

  After this evening Gerard watched the newspapers for any report of the Chicot case. He read of John Treverton’s appearance at Bow Street, and saw that the inquiry had been adjourned for a week. At Mrs. Evitt’s particular request he read the report of the case in the evening papers on the night after the inquiry. She seemed full of anxiety about the business.

  ‘Do you think they’ll hang him?’ she asked, eagerly.

  ‘My good soul, they’ve a long way to go before they get to hanging. He is not even committed for trial.’

  ‘But it looks black against him, doesn’t it?’ ‘Circumstances certainly appear to point to him as the murderer. You see there seems to be no one else who could have had any motive for such an act.’

  ‘And you say he has got a sweet young wife.’

  ‘One of the loveliest women I ever saw; I feel very sorry for her, poor soul.’

  ‘If you was on the jury, would you bring him in guilty?’ asked Mrs. Evitt.

  ‘I should be sorely perplexed. You see, I should be called upon to find my verdict according to the evidence, and the evidence against him is very strong.’