Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  A certain official personage or two, perhaps deputies from the coroner, or from the parish, or from the undertaker furnishing the coffin and the two sets of bearers — who can tell? — whose mission it was to see the appointed proceedings carried out, cleared by their hands and gestures a space around the grave. The people fell back obediently. They pressed and elbowed each other no doubt, and grumbled at others crushing them; but they kept themselves back in their places. A small knot, gentlemen evidently, and probably friends of the deceased, were allowed to approach the grave. The grave-diggers stood near, holding the torches. But for those flaring torches, the crowd would have seen better: they saw well enough, however, in the bright moonlight.

  In the churchyard, having taken up his station there behind an upright tombstone, where tombstones were thick, stood an officer connected with the police. He was in plain clothes — in fact, nobody remembered to have seen him in other ones — and had come out to-night not officially but to gratify himself personally. Ensconced behind the stone, away from everybody, he could look on at leisure through its upper fretwork and take his own observations, not only of the ceremony about to be performed, but of those who were attending it. He was a middle-sized, spare man, with a pale face, deeply sunk green eyes, that had a habit of looking steadily at people, and a small, sharp, turned-up nose. Silent by nature and by habit, he imparted the idea of possessing a vast amount of astute keenness as a detector of crime: in his own opinion he had not in that respect an equal. Nobody could discern him, looking on, and he did not intend they should.

  Amidst a dead silence, save for the creaking of the cords, amidst a shiver of sympathy, of pity, of awful thoughts from a great many of the spectators, the black covering was thrown aside and the coffin was lowered. There was a general lifting off of hats; a pause; and then a rush. One in the front rank — a fat woman, who had fought for her place — stepped forward in her irrepressible curiosity to take a last look inside the grave; another followed her; the movement was contagious, and there was a commotion. Upon which the men holding the torches swept them round; it threw out the flame rather dangerously, and the rushers drew back again with a half cry. Not quite all. A few, more adventurous than the rest, slipped round to the safer side, and were in time to read the inscription on the lid:

  “JOHN OLLIVERA.

  AGED 28.”

  Short enough, and simple enough, for the sad death. Only a moment after the cords were drawn away did it remain visible; for the gravediggers, flinging their torches aside, threw in the earth, spadeful upon spadeful, and covered it up from sight The shallow grave was soon filled in; the gravediggers flattened it down level with spades and feet: no ceremony accorded, you see, to such an end as this poor man had made. Before it was quite accomplished, those officially connected with the burial, or with the buried, left the ground and departed. Not so the mob of people: they stayed to see the last; and would have stayed had it been until morning light. And they talked freely now, on with another, but were orderly and subdued still.

  Mr. Jones stayed. He had not mixed with the people, but stood apart in the churchyard, under the shade of the great yew-tree. Soon he began to move away, and came unexpectedly upon the detective officer standing yet behind the gravestone. Mr. Jones halted in surprise.

  “Halloa!” cried he. “Mr. Butterby!”

  “Just look at them idiots!” rejoined Mr. Butterby, with marked composure, as if he had seen Richard Jones from the first, and expected the address. “So you are back!” he added, turning his head sharply on the traveller.

  “I come in from Bromsgrove on my legs; missed the last train there,” said Mr. Jones, rather addicted to a free-and-easy kind of grammar in private life: as indeed was the renowned gentleman he spoke to. “When I got past the last turning and see these here folks, I thought the world must be gone mad.”

  “Did you come back on account of it?” asked Mr. Butterby. “Did they write for you?”

  “On account of what? As to writing for me, they’d be clever to do that, seeing I left ’em no address to write to. I have been going about from place to place; to-day there, to-morrow yonder.”

  “On account of that” answered the detective, nodding his head in the direction of the grave, to which the men were then giving the last finishing strokes and treads of flattening.

  To Mr. Jones’s ear there was something so obscure in the words that he only stared at their speaker, almost wondering whether the grave officer had condescended to a joke.

  “I don’t understand you, sir.”

  Mr. Butterby saw at once how the matter stood: that Dicky Jones — the familiar title mostly accorded him in the city — was ignorant of recent events.

  “The poor unfortunate man just put in there, Jones” — with another nod to the grave— “was Mr. Ollivera, the counsel.”

  “Mr. Ollivera!” exclaimed the startled Jones.

  “And he took his life away at your house.”

  “Lawk a mercy!” cried Mr. Jones, repeating his favourite expression, one he was addicted to when overwhelmed With surprise. “Whatever did he do it for?”

  “Ah, that’s just what we can’t tell. Perhaps he didn’t know himself what.”

  “How was it, sir? Poison?”

  “Shot himself with his own pistol,” briefly responded the officer.

  “And did it knowingly? — intentional?”

  “Intentional for sure, or he’d not have been put in there to-night. They couldn’t have buried a dog with much less ceremony.”

  “Well, I never knew such a thing as this,” cried Mr. Jones, scarcely taking in the news yet. “When I went away Mr. Ollivera hadn’t come; he was expected; and my wife — Halloa!”

  The cause of the concluding exclamation was a new surprise, as great as any the speaker had met with yet Mr. Butterby, his keen eyes strained forward from their enclosed depths, touched him on the arm with authority to enjoin silence.

  The young woman — it would be no offence against taste to call her a lady, with her good looks, her good manners, her usually calm demeanour — whom Mr. Jones had recognised as his wife’s sister, had come forward to the grave. Kneeling down, she bent her face in her hands, perhaps praying; then lifted it, rose, and seemed about to address the crowd. Her hands were clasped and raised before her; her bonnet had fallen back from her face and her bright flaxen hair.

  “It is Alletha Rye, isn’t it, sir?” he dubiously cried.

  “Hold your noise!” said Mr. Butterby.

  “I think it would be a wicked thing to let you disperse this night with a false belief on your minds,” began Miss Rye, her clear voice sounding quite loud and distinct in the hushed silence. “Wicked in the sight of God; unkind and unjust to the dead. Listen to my words, please, all you who hear me. I believe that a dreadful injury has been thrown upon Mr. Ollivera’s memory; I solemnly believe that he did not die by his own hand. Heaven hears me assert it.”

  The solemn tone, the strange words, the fair appearance of the young woman, with her good and refined face, deathly pale now, and the moonlight playing on her light hair, awed the listeners into something like statues. The silence continued unbroken until Miss Rye moved away, which she did at once and with a rather quick step in the direction of the road, pulling her bonnet on her head as she went, drawing her shawl round her. Even Mr. Jones made neither sound nor movement until she had disappeared, so entire was his astonishment.

  “Was there ever heard the like of that?” he exclaimed, when he at length drew breath. “Do you think she’s off her head, sir?”

  He received no answer, and turned to look at Mr. Butterby. That gentleman had his note-book out, and was pencilling something down in it by moonlight.

  “I never see such a start as this — take it for all in all,” continued Mr. Jones to himself and the air, thus thrown upon his own companionship.

  “And I’d not swear that you’ve seen the last of it,” remarked Mr. Butterby, closing his note-case with a click.

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bsp; “Well, sir, good-night to you,” concluded Mr. Jones. “I must make my way home afore the house is locked up, or I shall get a wigging from my wife. Sure to get that in any case, now this has happened,” he continued, ruefully. “She’ll say I’m always away when I’m wanted at home in particular.”

  He went lightly enough over the graves to the opposite and more frequented side of the churchyard, thus avoiding the assemblage; and took his departure. There being nothing more to see, the people began to take theirs. Having gazed their fill at the grave — just as if the silent, undemonstrative earth could give them back a response — they slowly made their way down the side-path to the high road, and turned towards the city, one group after another.

  By one o’clock the last straggler had gone, and Mr. Butterby came forth from his post behind the sheltering gravestone. He had his reasons, perhaps, for remaining behind the rest, and for wishing to walk home alone.

  However that might be, he gave their progress a good margin of space, for it was ten minutes past one when he turned out of the churchyard. He had just gained the houses, when he saw before him a small knot of people emerge from a side-turning, as if they had not taken the direct route in coming from the heart of the city. Mr. Butterby recognised one or two of them, and whisked into a friendly doorway until they had passed by.

  Letting them get on well ahead, he turned back and followed in their wake. That they were on their way to the grave, appeared evident: and the acute officer wondered why. A thought crossed him that possibly they might be about to take up what had been laid there.

  He went into the churchyard by the front gate, and made his way cautiously across it, keeping under the shadow of the grey church walls. Thence, stooping as he crossed the open ground, and dodging behind first one grave then another, he took up his former position against the high stone. They were at the grave now, and he began to deliberate whether, if his thought should prove correct, he should or should not officially interrupt proceedings. Getting his eyes to the open fretwork of the stone, Mr. Butterby looked out. And what he saw struck him with a surprise equal to any recently exhibited by Mr. Jones: he, the experienced police official, who knew the world so thoroughly as to be surprised at little or nothing.

  Standing at the head of the grave was a clergyman in his surplice and hood. Four men were grouped around him, one of whom held a lantern so that its light fell upon the clergyman’s book. He was beginning to read the burial service. They stood with bowed heads, their hats off. The night had grown cold, but Mr. Butterby took off his.

  “I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”

  The solemn words, doubly solemn at that time and place, came distinctly to the official ears. Perhaps in all the times he had heard them during his whole life — many and many that it had been — they had never so impressed him. But habit is strong; and Mr. Butterby found himself taking observations ere the psalm had well commenced, even while he was noticing how heartily the alternate verses were given by the spectators.

  Three of them around the grave he recognised; the other one and the clergyman he did not. Of those three, one was a tall fine man of forty years, Kene, the barrister; the next was a cousin of the deceased, Frank Greatorex, whom Mr. Butterby only knew by seeing him in the inquest-room, where he tendered some slight evidence; the third was a gentleman of the city. Neither the clergyman nor the one who held the light did Mr. Butterby remember to have seen before. The elder and other cousin of the deceased was not present, though Mr. Butterby looked for him; he had been the principal witness on the inquest — Mr. Bede Greatorex.

  The officer could but notice also how singularly solemn, slow, and impressive was the clergyman’s voice as he read those portions of the service that relate more particularly to the deceased and the faith in which he has died. “In sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life.” He almost made a pause between each word, as if he would impress on his hearers that it was his own belief the deceased had so died. And again, “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.” And towards the end, in the collect, in the beseeching prayer that when we depart this life we may rest in Christ, “as our hope is this our brother doth.” It was not to be mistaken that the clergyman, at least, held firm faith in the absence of guilt of the deceased in regard to his own death. As indeed the reading of the service over him proved.

  With the Amen of the concluding benediction, there ensued a silence; every head was bowed in prayer. The clergyman was the first to look up. He waited until the rest did.

  “Allow me to say a word ere we depart,” he began then, in a low tone; which nevertheless quickeared Mr. Butterby distinctly caught. “From the bottom of my heart, I believe a foul deed of murder to have been committed on my good and dear brother. It shall be the business of my life to endeavour to bring it to light, to clear his name from the cruel stain pronounced upon it; and my whole time, apart from what must be spent in my appointed duties, shall be devoted to this end. So help me, Heaven!”

  “Amen!” responded the young man who stood by Mr. Kene.

  “So! he’s the deceased man’s brother,” was Mr. Butterby’s comment on the clergyman, as he saw him take off his surplice and roll it up.

  Blowing out the light in the lantern, they silently took their departure. Mr. Butterby watched them away, and then finally took his, his mind in full work.

  “Just the same thing that the girl, Alletha Rye, said! It’s odd. I didn’t see any doubt about the business: in spite of what Kene said at the inquest; neither did the coroner; and I’m sure the jury didn’t. Dicky Jones was right, though. Take it for all in all, it’s the queerest start we’ve had in this town for many a day.”

  CHAPTER II.

  Up to the Monday Evening.

  ON the Saturday previous to the events recorded in the last chapter, the cathedral city had been the scene of unusual bustle. The judges came in from Oxford to hold the Spring Assize, bringing in their wake the customary multiplicity of followers: attendants, officers, barristers, and others. Some of the witnesses in the different cases to be tried, civil and criminal, also came in that day, to remain until they should be wanted the following week: so that the town was full.

  Amidst the barristers who arrived was Mr. Ollivera. He was a young man; and it was only the second time he had come on circuit. After leaving college he had travelled a good deal, and also sojourned in different foreign countries, acquiring legal experience, and did not take up his profession at home as early as some do. A fresh-coloured, pleasing, bright looking man was he, his curly hair of a light auburn, his eyes blue, his figure elastic and of middle height. All the world liked John Ollivera. He was essentially of a practical nature, of sound sense, of pure mind and habits, holding a reverence for all things holy; and in every respect just the last man who could have been suspected of a tendency to lay violent hands on himself.

  He had written to secure his former lodgings at Mr. Jones’s in High Street, and proceeded to them at once on arriving at the station. It was the third time he had lodged there. At the previous assizes in July he had gone there first: and the whole of the month of October, during the long vacation, he had been there again, having, as people supposed, taken a liking to the town. So that this was the third time.

  He got in between six and seven on the Saturday evening. Ordered tea and two mutton chops, which were got for him at once; and then went out to pay a visit to a lady who lived within the precincts of the cathedral. She was a widow; her husband, Colonel Joliffe, having died about a year before, leaving her with a slender income and three expensive daughters. During the colonel’s lifetime they had lived in good style, about two miles from the town; but a great part of his means died with him, and Mrs. Joliffe then took a small house in the city and had to retrench in all ways. Which was a terrible mortification to the young ladies.

  To this lady’s house Mr. Oll
ivera took his way when his frugal tea-dinner was over. He spent a couple of hours with them, and then returned to his rooms and got out his law papers, over which he remained until twelve o’clock, when he went to bed. He occupied the drawing-room, which was on the first floor over the shop, and looked to the street; and the bed-room behind it. On the following day, Sunday, he attended early prayers in the cathedral at eight o’clock, staying to partake of the Sacrament, and also the later service at eleven, when the judges and corporation were present. In the afternoon he attended the cathedral again, going to it with the Miss Joliffes; dined at home at five, which was also Mrs. Joliffe’s dinner hour, and spent the rest of the evening at her house. Mrs. Jones, his landlady, who had a vast amount of shrewd observation — and a shrewd tongue too on occasions, as well as a sharp one — gave it as her opinion that he must be courting one of the Miss Joliffes. He had been with them a little in his few days sojourn at the July assizes, and a great deal with them during his stay in October.

  On Monday morning the trials commenced, and Mr. Ollivera, though he had no cause on, was in court a great portion of the day. He left it in the afternoon, telling Mr. Kene that he had an appointment for half-past three, a disagreeable commission that had been entrusted to him, he added, and must go and keep it. About half-past four he appeared at his rooms; Mrs. Jones met him in the hall, and spoke to him as he went up stairs. When his dinner was sent up at five, the maid found him buried in a heap of law papers. Hastily clearing a space at one end of the table, he told her to put the dinner there. In less than half an hour the bell was rung for the things to be taken away, and Mr. Ollivera was then bending over his papers again.

  The papers no doubt related to a cause in which he was to appear the following day. It was a civil action, touching some property in which Mrs. Joliffe was remotely though not actively interested. The London solicitors were the good old firm of Greatorex and Greatorex; Mr. Ollivera was a relative of the house; nephew of old Mr. Greatorex, in fact; and to him had been confided the advocacy of the cause. The name of the local solicitor it does not signify to mention. It was not a very important cause: but a new barrister thinks all his causes important, and Mr. Ollivera was an earnest, painstaking man, sparing himself no trouble that could conduce to success. He had declined a proffered dinner engagement for that evening, but accepted an invitation for the next. So much was known of his movements up to the Monday evening.