Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  I suppose my gentleman comes home at night and lets himself in with a latch-key,’ the vicar said to himself, much provoked at having travelled five miles without result.

  He was climbing the hurdle on his return to the lane when a small girl, in a very short skirt, a girl of timid aspect, carrying a beer-jug, dropped him a curtsey, and said:

  ‘Please, sir, was it you a-ringing of that bell just now?”

  ‘Was it I?’ ejaculated the vicar, impatiently. ‘Yes, it was.’

  And then, smiling on the small girl, for he had a heart large enough for ever so many parishes of children, he said:

  ‘I am not vexed with you, my dear; I am angry with Fate. Tell me all you know about that cottage, and I’ll give you half-a-crown.”

  The girl gasped. She had never possessed a half-crown, but she had an idea it meant abundance. Her father counted his wages by half-crowns, and there were not many in a week’s wage.

  ‘Please, sir, Mr. Foy lived there with his sister, but they’ve left.’

  ‘Oh, they’ve left, have they? When did they leave?’

  ‘Last Monday sir, and the lady she was very ill, sir, and he took her away in a cab.’

  ‘And Mr. Foy has not been back since?’

  ‘No, sir. He left for good, and he gave the key of the cottage to my mother, and the agent is to put up a board next week, and the house is to be let. It was took furnished, and it’s to be let furnished again.’

  ‘Did they live quite alone? Had they no servant?’

  ‘No, sir, never no reg’lar servant. Mother used to do the cleaning twice a week. Mother’s very sorry they be gone. They was good to mother.’

  ‘How long had they lived there?’

  ‘Nigh upon a year.’

  ‘And the lady was Mr. Foy’s sister?

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And now take me to your mother.’

  The girl looked wistfully at the jug.

  ‘If you please I was to fetch father’s beer, sir.’

  ‘I see. And if you don’t father will be angry?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then you shall go — but first tell me where your mother lives.’

  The child pointed down Lawson Lane. ‘It’s the last cottage, sir.’

  ‘All right.’

  Just where the lane straggled off into ploughed fields and open country, there was a row of labourers’ cottages, and in the last of these Mr. Leworthy found a plaintive woman with a child in her arms, who owned to being the mother of the small girl with the jug.

  The vicar wasted no time in preliminaries. He seated himself on an almost bottomless chair, and, with his stout umbrella planted between his knees, interrogated the matron thus:

  ‘You used to work for Mr. Foy and his sister. What do you know about them?’

  ‘Only that they paid me honourable for what I did, sir. I’m bound to up and say that whoever asks me.’

  ‘Good. Did they live happily together as — brother and sister?’

  Here the matron began to hesitate. She shifted her baby from one arm to the other. She gave a deprecating cough.

  ‘I see,’ said the vicar, ‘they quarrelled sometimes.’

  ‘I never see’em, sir, for I scarce ever see Mr. Foy. He was off to Grandchester before I went of a morning, and he didn’t come back till after I left. I used to go for the half-day, you see, sir, not the whole day. But I don’t think the young lady was quite happy in her mind. I’ve seen her fretting, and people will talk, you see, sir — neighbours next door to Rose Cottage have heard them at high words, in summertime, when the winders was all open, or when they was in the garden.’

  ‘I see. Had the sister been long ill?’

  ‘No, sir. Not above a month.’

  ‘What was the matter with her?’

  ‘Well, sir, I can’t say azackly. It was a sort of wasting sickness like. She couldn’t keep nothing on her stomach of late, poor dear; and she had pains that racked her, and used to complain of a burning feel in her throat; out of sorts altogether, as you may say. I believe it all came from fretting.’

  ‘Why did she fret so much? Was her brother very unkind to her?’

  ‘No, sir. I don’t think it was his unkindness that worried her. But he used to keep very late hours — hardly ever coming home till the last train, and that worried her. Not that he was ever the worse for drink. He was the soberest young man as ever was, but she was of a jealous disposition, and the thought that he was out enjoying himself with other people used to prey on her mind.’

  ‘That was hardly fair, if he treated her kindly when he was at home. A sister has no right to be jealous of a brother.’

  ‘Perhaps not, sir, but jealous she was, and fret she did.”I’ve nobody but him in the world, Mrs. Moff,” she said — my name being Moff—”and I can’t bear him to be always away. There was a time when he spent all his evenings at home.” And then the tears would roll down her poor holler cheeks, and it went to my ‘eart to see her so miserable. I had a feller-feeling, you see, sir, for I know how it worrits me when my master stops late at the”Coach and Horses,” on a Saturday night.’

  ‘Ah, but it’s different with a husband. A wife has a right to be exacting — not a sister. Now, tell me how they left the place, and all about it. I’m interested in this poor girl, and perhaps I may be able to befriend her. Where did they go?’

  ‘He was going to take her to some place near the sea, on the other side of Grandchester, and a good way off. The name has gone clean out of my head. He was very kind to her from the time she fell ill. She told me so with her own lips.”Gaston was never so kind to me in his life,” she says. He fancied it was the air here that didn’t agree with her, she told me, and it is rather a relaxin’ air, sir. I feel it so sometimes myself. There’s times when I feel that low that if it wasn’t for my drop of beer I should go off in a dead faint.’

  ‘What kind of a young woman was Miss Foy? Was she like her brother?’

  ‘No, sir, she were not. I never laid eyes on a brother and sister more unsimilar. She had been very pretty, there’s no denying that, but her nervous worriting ways had that worn and preyed upon her that she was old and ‘aggard before her time. She had light brown hair, and a fair skin and blue eyes, and I dessay she had been a pretty figure before she wasted away like, but her ‘ealth were never good from the time I knew her.’

  ‘Did you see her the day she went away?’ asked the vicar.

  ‘It wasn’t a day, sir. She went late at night, by the last train to Grandchester. She was to sleep in Grandchester, and go on to the seaside next morning; and I do say that it wasn’t the right thing for a young person in her state of ealth to travel late on a winter’s night. But there, poor young feller, it wasn’t his fault, for he had to be at the office all day.’

  ‘She was wrapped up warmly, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, she wore a thick Scotch plaid shawl that he bought her the winter before.’

  ‘Black and red?’ said the vicar.

  ‘Black and red,’ assented the woman, with some astonishment. ‘One would think you’d seen it, sir.’

  ‘I told you I was interested in the young lady,’answered the vicar, vaguely.

  He took out his memorandum book, and wrote down the date and hour of the young woman’s removal from Hose Cottage. She had left in the one cab that plied between Parminter village and the Parminter Road Station. The cabman could be forthcoming if he were wanted, Mrs. Moff protested.

  Mr. Leworthy rewarded this worthy woman with a crown piece, half of which he stipulated was to be given to the little girl when she came home from her errand; and then he walked briskly back to the station, which was a good half-mile from Lawson Lane. He was lucky enough to get a train in less than half-an-hour; and he was back in Grandchester at three o’clock in the afternoon.

  Here he took a cab and drove straight to Mr. Brockbank’s office, to whom he imparted all he had done.

  ‘Upon my soul, you’re a clever fellow, vicar!�
�� cried the lawyer; ‘you ought to have been something better than a parson.’

  ‘You mean I ought to have been something that pays better. Now, look here, Brockbank, you must start off to Milldale by the first train, and get the coroner to order a post-mortem. No post-mortem necessary, forsooth, said that fool of a local surgeon, because the immediate cause of death was obviously laudanum. Why, it’s clear to my mind, from what I’ve heard to-day, that this poor creature was slowly done to death by arsenic, and that the dose of laudanum was only given at the last to accelerate the end.’

  Mr. Brockbank saw the force of this argument, and looked at once to his railway time-table.

  ‘There’s a train at 4.30,’ he said; ‘I can go by that. And now what are you going to do?’

  ‘I shall call on Mr. Umpleby and try and stop to-morrow’s wedding.’

  ‘What motive can this Foy have had for getting rid of his sister?’ speculated the lawyer.

  ‘Very little motive, I should imagine, for getting rid of a sister. But what if the young woman was something more difficult to dispose of than a sister? What if she was his wife? These two young people lived quite alone in a country lane. It was easy for them to live as man and wife, yet pass for brother and sister. The charwoman’s account shows that the poor girl was jealous and unhappy. She fretted on account of Foy’s late hours. They were overheard quarrelling. Take my word for it, Brockbank, that unfortunate young woman was a wife — a wife of whom Mr. Foy grew mortally tired when he found that it was on the cards for him to marry Miss Umpleby, with a handsome dowry, and the prospect of rapid advancement in the firm. Now I want you to set one of your clerks at work, without an hour’s delay, to hunt up the evidence of such a marriage, either in a church or at a registry office.’

  ‘It shall be done,’ said Brockbank. ‘Anything more?’

  ‘Only this much. I have written an advertisement which will appear to-morrow in the three local dailies.’

  He read the draft of his advertisement. ‘This may bring us information as to the next stage in that poor young woman’s journey after she left Parminter,’ he said.

  ‘Possibly. You really are a genius in the art of hunting a criminal.’

  ‘No, sir, I am only thorough. I would do a good deal more than this to help any one I love. Now I’m off. I dare say you’ve some business to get through before you start for Milldale.’

  ‘Only half-a-dozen letters to dictate,’ answered the lawyer lightly, and then he put his lips to a speaking-tube and gave an order.’

  ‘Send up the shorthand clerk, and have a cab at the door at a quarter past four.’

  CHAPTER V. ‘DELAY THIS MARRIAGE!’

  MR. LEWORTHY went back to Kibble and Umpleby’s, and asked if Mr. Umpleby was on the premises. No, Mr. Umpleby had left half-an-hour ago, to return to the bosom of his family in Tolkington Park.’

  Happily for the eager vicar, Tolkington Park was an adjoining suburb, where those well-to-do citizens of Grandchester who did not like the labour of daily railroad journeys contented themselves with a semi-urban retirement in villas of their own building, amidst shrubberies of their own planting, overlooking the towniest and most formal of public parks. It had long been a grief to the feminine Umplebys that, whereas other merchants’ families of wealth and standing had Gothic mansions or Italian palaces set in richly wooded landscapes, remote from the smoke of the city, they had only the stereotyped surroundings of a thickly populated suburb, and were in no wise better off than their next door neighbours.

  A cab with a horse of his own choosing drove Mr. Leworthy to the utmost limit of Tolkington Park in less than half an hour. He found the Umpleby mansion, which was called Mount Lebanon, although the ground on which it stood was as flat as a pancake, and there was not a cedar within a mile. It was a substantial, square house, with bay windows, a broad flight of steps, grandiose iron railings, painted dark blue, and surmounted with gilded pine-apples, and an all-pervading glare of plate-glass windows.

  The hall was tesselated; the drawing-room was brilliant in colour, and painfully new. Here Mr. Leworthy sat waiting for the master of the house, while a young lady in an adjacent chamber favoured him with a solfeggio exercise, which strained to the uttermost a somewhat acid voice.

  ‘I wonder whether that is the bride singing,’ speculated the vicar, ‘and I wonder if she is very much attached to my gentleman. Rather hard lines for her if she is fond of him, poor child!’

  At last Mr. Umpleby appeared, plethoric, rubicund, pompous.

  ‘Happy to have the honour of making your acquaintance, vicar,’ he said. ‘I have long known you by repute.’

  ‘Every one in Grandchester does that,’ answered Leworthy pleasantly; ‘I have been too often in hot water not to be pretty well known.’

  ‘Impossible to please every one,’ murmured Mr. Umpleby.

  ‘Precisely, and the man who tries it ends by pleasing no one. I have taken my own course; and though I’ve made a good many enemies, thank God I’ve made twice as many friends. Now, Mr. Umpleby, I must ask you to receive me with all good nature, and to believe that I mean well by you and yours, although I have come on a most unpleasant business.’

  The merchant looked uneasy. Another great firm gone wrong, perhaps; a question of a big bad debt.

  ‘Is it a business matter?’ he faltered.

  ‘No, it is a family matter.’

  ‘Oh!’ he said, with an air of relief, as if this were of minor importance.

  ‘You are going to marry your daughter to-morrow?’ said the vicar.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘To your clerk, Mr. Foy?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It is not the first time that a merchant’s daughter has married her father’s clerk, I believe, though it is out of the common course of things.’

  ‘I am here to beg you to postpone the marriage.’

  ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Before I tell you that, you must give me your promise to communicate nothing I tell you to Mr. Foy.’

  Mr. Umpleby hesitated.

  ‘Mind, it is vital to you, as a father, to know what I have to tell.’

  Mr. Umpleby gave the required promise.

  The vicar told his story, beginning with the scene at the railway station, ending with the story he had heard at Parminter.

  ‘Were you aware that Foy had a sister?’

  ‘I never heard him speak of one.’

  ‘Curious that, in your future son-in-law.’

  Mr. Umpleby sat and stared into space like a man bewildered. He wiped his large, bald forehead with the biggest and most expensive thing in bandannas.

  ‘This is a most frightful suspicion,’ he said; ‘a young woman poisoned, for you seem to think this young woman was poisoned. It is an awful position. Every arrangement has been made for the wedding, as you may suppose — guests invited — some of the best people in Grandchester. My wife and daughters have the highest opinion of young Foy. I may say they are infatuated about him. His conduct in business has been irreproachable. There must be some mistake — some ridiculous misunderstanding.’

  ‘I got Foy’s address at your own office, and at that address I heard of a sister of whose existence you are absolutely unaware. Do you think that speaks well for your intended son-in-law?’

  ‘He may have had some powerful reason for concealing her existence. She may be weak in her intellect. She may have gone wrong. As for your idea of slow poisoning, that is too absurd.’

  ‘And you mean this young man to marry your daughter to-morrow morning?’

  ‘What am I to do? I never cared about the match. I have been persuaded into giving my consent. My girl had a right to look higher. But to stop the marriage now would be — —’

  ‘Simply prudent. Investigate the case as I have put it before you. If I am deceived — if Foy is not the man who took that dying girl to the railway station — if Foy’s sister, or a woman who passed as his sister, is not lying dead at Milldale, I will make the humblest apology to you and Mr.
Foy for my baseless suspicions. You must take your own course. I want to save your daughter from sorrow and disgrace. Remember, you have been warned. If Foy is the man I take him to be the police will be dogging his heels to-morrow morning when he goes into the church to marry your daughter. Good afternoon. I have given you plain facts, and I have no time to spare for discussion.’

  Mr. Umpleby would fain have detained him, but the vicar was in a hurry. He drove back to Grandchester, and to the headquarters of the police, to whom he repeated, his story. They had been at work all day, and had done very little. They had discovered a porter at the station who remembered the arrival of a gentleman with a sick lady in a plaid shawl. They had seen the woman who took charge of the ladies’ waiting-room, second class — always more crowded than the first class — and from her they had heard again of a sick lady in a plaid shawl, accompanied, by a very attentive gentleman, but she could give no account of the personal appearance of either. The lady’s face was hidden by a veil, and there had been so many people rushing in and out just at the last that there had been no time for her to observe these two, who came in late. This much she knew, that the lady seemed in a kind of faint or stupor, and the gentleman had to carry her in his arms.

  Once furnished with a clue, professional intelligence was quite equal to taking it up.

  ‘This woman at Parminter must be taken to Milldale to identify the body,’ said the chief official in the detective line, ‘and we must watch this fellow Foy, so that he may not give us the slip.’

  ‘He is to be married to his employer’s daughter to-morrow morning,’ said the vicar. ‘To leave Grandchester before tomorrow would be tantamount to a confession of his guilt. It would be throwing up the cards altogether.’

  ‘The symptoms you describe sound like arsenical poisoning,’ said the officer, and then he and his colleague whispered together for a minute or so.

  ‘I don’t think there is anything more I can do to-night,’ said the vicar.