Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  “A well-grown, straight man; got a lot of black hair about his face; whiskers, and beard, and moustachios.”

  “Young?”

  “Thirty. Perhaps not so much. In reading the account in the Herald this evening, I saw Jones’s folks gave evidence that he had left at half-past four to catch the Birmingham train. I told Jones it was a mistake, and he told his wife; and didn’t she fly out! As if she need have put herself in a tantrum over that! ’twas a matter of no consequence.”

  In common with the rest of the town, not a gleam of suspicion that the death was otherwise than the verdict pronounced it to be, had been admitted by Mr. Cause. He went on enlarging on the grievance of Mrs. Jones’s attack upon him.

  “She’d not hear a word: Jones fetched me in there. She told me to my face that, between spectacles and the deceitful rays of street lamps, one, come to my age, was unable to distinguish black from white, round from square. She said I must have mistaken the gentleman, Mr. Greatorex, for Godfrey Pitman, or else Jones’s nephew, both of them having gone out about the same time. I couldn’t get in a word edgeways, I assure you, Mr. Butterby, and Dicky Jones can bear me out that I couldn’t. Let it go; ’tis of no moment; I don’t care to quarrel with my neighbours’ wives.”

  Mr. Butterby thought it was of a great deal of moment. He changed the conversation to something else with apparent carelessness, and then took a leisurely departure. Turning off at the top of High Street, he increased his pace, and went direct to the railway station.

  The most intelligent porter employed there was a man named Hall. It was his duty to be on the platform when trains were starting; and, as the detective had previous cause to know, few of those who departed by them escaped his observation. The eight o’clock train for London was on the point of departure. Mr. Butterby waited under some sheds until it had gone.

  Now for Hall, thought he. As if to echo the words, the first person to approach the sheds was Hall himself. In a diplomatic way, Mr. Butterby, when he had made known his presence, began putting enquiries, about a matter totally foreign to the one he had come upon.

  “By the way, Hall,” he suddenly said, when the man thought he was done with, “there was a friend of mine went away last Monday evening, but I’m not sure by which train. I wonder if you happened to see him here? A well-grown, straight man, with black beard and whiskers — about thirty.”

  Hall considered, and shook his head. “I’ve no recollection of any one of that description, sir.”

  “Got a blue bag in his hand. He might have went by the five o’clock train, or later. At eight most likely; this hour, you know.”

  “Was he going to London, or the other way, sir?”

  “Can’t tell you. Try and recollect.”

  “Monday? — Monday?” cried Hall, endeavouring to recal what he could. “I ought to remember that night, sir, the one of the calamity in High Street; but the fact is, one day is so much like another here, it’s hard to single out any in particular.”

  “Were you on duty last Sunday week, in the afternoon?”

  “Yes, sir; it was my Sunday on.”

  “The man I speak of arrived by train that afternoon, then. You must have seen him.”

  “So I did,” said the porter, suddenly. “Just the man you describe, sir; and I remember that it struck me I had seen his face somewhere before. It might have been only fancy; I had not much of a look at him; he got mixed with the other passengers, and went away quickly. I recollect the blue bag.”

  “Just so; all right. Now then, Hail, did you see him leave last Monday evening?”

  “I never saw him, to my recollection, since the time of his arrival. Stop a bit. A blue bag? Why, it was a blue bag that — And that was Monday evening. Wait an instant, sir. I’ll fetch Bill.”

  Leaving the detective to make the most of these detached sentences, Hall hurried off before he could be stopped. Mr. Butterby turned his face to the wall, and read the placards there.

  When Hall came back he had a lad with him. And possibly it might have been well for that lad’s equanimity, that he was unconscious the spare man, studying the advertisements, was the city’s renowned detective, Jonas Butterby.

  “Now then,” said Hall, “you tell this gentleman about your getting that there ticket, Bill.”

  “’Twas last Monday evening,” began the boy, thus enjoined, “and we was waiting to start the eight o’clock train. In that there dark corner, I comes upon a gentleman set down upon the bench; which he called to me, he did, and says, says he, ‘This bag’s heavy,’ says he, ‘and I don’t care to carry it further nor I can help, nor yet to leave it,’ says he, ‘for it’s got val’able papers in it,’ says he; ‘if you’ll go and get my ticket for me,’ says he, ‘third class to Oxford,’ says he, ‘I’ll give you sixpence,’ says he: which I did, and took it to him,” concluded the speaker; “and he give me the sixpence.”

  “Did he leave by the train?”

  “Why in course he did,” was the reply. “He got into the last third class at the tail o’ the train, him and his bag; which were blue, it were.”

  “An old gentleman, with white hair, was it?” asked Mr. Butterby, carelessly.

  The boy’s round eyes opened. “White hair! Why, ’twas as black as ink. And his beard, too. He warn’t old; he warn’t.”

  Mr. Butterby walked home, ruminating; stirred up his fire when he arrived, lighted his candles, for he had a habit of waiting on himself, and sat down, ruminating still. Sundry notes and bits of folded paper had been delivered for him from his confrères at the police-station — if Mr. Butterby will not be offended at our classing them with him as such — but he pushed them from him, never opening one. He did not even change his coat for the elegant green-tailed habit, economically adopted for home attire, and he was rather particular in doing so in general. No: Mr. Butterby’s mind was ill at ease: not in the sense, be it understood, as applied to ordinary mortals; but things were puzzling him.

  To give Mr. Butterby his due, he was sufficiently keen of judgment; though he had made mistakes occasionally. Taking the surface of things only, he might have jumped to the conclusion that a certain evil deed had been committed by Godfrey Pitman; diving into them, and turning them about in his practised mind, he saw enough to cause him to doubt and hesitate.

  “The man’s name’s as much Pitman as mine is,” quoth he, as he sat looking into the fire, a hand on each knee. “He arrives here on a Sunday, accosts a Stranger he meets accidentally in turning out of the station, which happened to be Alletha Rye, and gets her to accommodate him with a week’s private lodgings. Thought, she says, the house she was standing at was hers: and it’s likely he did. The man was afraid of being seen, was flying from pursuit, and dare not risk the publicity of an inn. Stays in the house nine days, and never stirs out all the mortal time. Makes an excuse of a cold and relaxed throat for stopping in; which was an excuse,” emphatically repeated the speaker. “Takes leave on the Monday at half-past four, and goes out to catch the Birmingham train. Is seen to go out. What brought him back?”

  The question was not, apparently, easy to solve, for Mr. Butterby was a long while pondering it.

  “He couldn’t get back into the house up through the windows or down through the chimneys; not in any way but through the door. And the chances were that he might have been seen going in and coming out. No: don’t think he went back to harm Mr. Ollivera. Rather inclined to say his announced intention of starting by the five o’clock train to Birmingham was a blind: he meant to go by the one at eight t’other way, and went back to wait for it, afeard of hanging about the station itself or loitering in the streets. It don’t quite wash, neither, that; chances were he might have been seen coming back,” debated Mr. Butterby.

  “Wonder if he has anything to do with that little affair that has just turned up in Birmingham?” resumed the speaker, deviating to another thought. “Young man’s wanted for that, George Winter: might have been this very self-same Godfrey Pitman; and of course might
not. Let’s get on.

  “It don’t stand to reason that he’d come in any such way into a town and stop a whole week at the top of a house for the purpose of harming Mr. Ollivera. Why ’twas not till the Tuesday after Pitman was in, that the Joneses got the barrister’s letter saying he was coming and would occupy his old rooms if they were vacant. No,” decided Mr. Butterby; “Pitman was in trouble on his own score, and his mysterious movements had reference to that: as I’m inclined to think.”

  One prominent quality in Mr. Butterby was pertinacity. Let him take up an idea of his own accord, however faint, and it took a vast deal to get it out of him. An obstinate man was he in his self-conceit. Anybody who knew Mr. Butterby well, and could have seen his thoughts as in a glass, might have known he would be slow to take up the doubts against Godfrey Pitman, because he had already them up against another.

  “I don’t like it,” he presently resumed. “Look at it in the best light, she knows something of the matter; more than she likes to be questioned about. Put the case, Jonas Butterby. Here’s a sober, sensible, steady young woman, superior to half the women going, thinking only of her regular duties, nothing to conceal, open and cheerful as the day. That’s how she was till this happened. And now? Goes home on the Monday night at nigh eleven o’clock (not to speak yet of what passed up to that hour), sits over the parlour-fire after other folks had went to bed, ‘thinking,’ as she puts it. Goes up later; can’t sleep; drops asleep towards morning, and dreams that Mr. Ollivera’s dead. Gets flurried at inquest (I saw it, though others mightn’t); tramps to see him buried, stands on the fresh grave, and tells the public he did not commit suicide. How does she know he didn’t? Come. Mrs. Jones is ten times sharper-sighted, and she has no doubt. Says, next, to her sister in confidence (and Dicky repeats it to me as a choice bit of gossip) that she’s haunted by Ollivera’s spirit.

  “I don’t like that,” pursued Mr. Butterby, after a revolving pause. “When folks are haunted by dead men’s spirits — leastways, fancy they are — it bodes a conscience not at rest in regard to the dead. Tonight her face was pale and red by turns; her fingers shook so they had to clutch her work; she won’t talk of it; she left the room to avoid me. And,” continued Mr. Butterby, “she was the only one, so far as can be yet seen, that was for any length of time in the house between half-past seven and eight on Monday evening. A quarter of an hour finding a sleeve-pattern!

  “I don’t say it was her; I’ve not got as far as that yet, by a long way. I don’t yet say it was not as the jury brought it in. But she was in the house for that quarter of an hour, unaccounting for her stay in accordance with any probability; and I’m inclined to think that Godfrey Pitman must have been out of it before the harm was done. Nevertheless, appearances is deceitful, deductions sometimes wrong, and while I keep a sharp eye on the lady, I shall look you up, Mr. Godfrey Pitman.”

  One drawback against the “looking up” was — and Mr. Butterby felt slightly conscious of it as he rose from his seat before the fire — that he had never seen Godfrey Pitman in his life; and did not know whence he came or whither he might have gone.

  END OF THE PROLOGUE.

  PART THE SECOND. THE STORY.

  CHAPTER VII.

  In the Office.

  THE morning sun was shining on the house of Greatorex and Greatorex. It was a busy day in April. London was filling; people were flocking to town; the season was fairly inaugurated, the law courts were full of life.

  The front door stood open; the inner door, closed, could be pushed back at will. It bore a brass plate with the inscription, “Greatorex and Greatorex, Solicitors,” and it had a habit, this inner door, of swinging-to upon clients’ heels as they went out, for the spring was sharp. In the passage which the door closed in, was a room on either hand. The one on the left was inscribed outside, “Clerks’ Office”; that on the right, “Mr. Bede Greatorex.”

  Mr. Bede Greatorex was in his room to-day: not his private room; that lay beyond. It was a moderate sized apartment, the door in the middle, the fire-place opposite to it. On the right, between the door and the near window, was the desk of Mr. Brown; opposite to it, between the fire-place and far window, stood Mr. Bede Greatorex’s desk; two longer desks ran along the walls towards the lower part of the room. At the one, in a line with that of Mr. Bede Greatorex, the fireplace being between them, sat Mr. Hurst, a gentleman who had entered the house for improvement; at the one on the other side the door, in a line with Mr. Brown’s, sat little Jenner, a paid clerk. Sundry stools and chairs stood about; a huge map hung above the fire-place; a stone bottle of ink, some letter-scales, and various other articles more useful than ornamental, were on the mantle-shelf: altogether, the room was about as bare and dull as such offices usually are. The door at the end, marked “Private,” opened direct to the private room of Mr. Bede Greatorex, where he held consultations with clients.

  And he generally sat there also. It was not very often that he came to his desk in the front office: but he chose to be there on occasions, and this was one. This side of the house was understood to comprise the department of Mr. Bede Greatorex; some of the clients of the firm were his exclusively; that is, when they came they saw him, not his father; and Mr. Brown was head-clerk and manager under him.

  Bede Greatorex (called generally in the office, “Mr. Bede,” in contradistinction to his father, Mr. Greatorex) sat looking over some papers taken out of his locked desk. Four years have gone by since you saw him last, reader; for that prologue to the story with its sad event, was not enacted lately. And the four years have aged him. His father was wont to tell him that he had not got over the shock and grief of John Ollivera’s death; Bede’s private opinion was that he never should get over it. They had been as close friends, as dear brothers; and Bede had been a changed man since. Apart from this grief and regret and the effect it might have left upon him, suspicions had also arisen latterly that Bede Greatorex’s health was failing; in short there were indications, fancied or real, that the inward complaint of which his mother died, might, unless great care were used, creep upon him. Bede had seen a physician, who would pronounce no very positive opinion, but believed on the whole that the fears were without foundation, certainly they were premature.

  Another cause that tended to worry Mr. Bede Greatorex, lay in his domestic life. More than three years ago now, he had married Miss Joliffe; and the world, given you know to put itself into everybody’s business and whisper scandal of the best of us, said that in marrying her, Bede Greatorex had got his pill. She was wilful as the wind; spent his money right and left; ran him in debt; plunged into gaiety, show, whirl, all of which her husband hated: she was in fact a perfect, grave exemplification of that undesirable but expressive term that threatens to become a household word in our once sober land— “fast.” Three parts of Bede’s life — the life that lay apart from his profession, his routine of office duties — was spent in striving to keep from his father the extravagance of his wife, and the sums of money he had to draw for personal expenditure. Bede had chivalric ideas upon the point; he had made her his wife, and would jealously have guarded her failings from all: he would have denied, had he been questioned, that she had any. So far as he was able he would indulge her whims and wishes; but there was one of them that he could not and did not: and that related to their place of dwelling. Bede had brought his wife to the home that had been his mother’s, to be its sole mistress in his late mother’s place. It was a large, convenient, handsome residence (as was previously seen), replete with every comfort; but after a time Mrs. Bede Greatorex grew discontented. She wanted to be in a more fashionable quarter; Hyde Park, Belgrave Square; anywhere amidst the great world. After their marriage Bede had taken her abroad; and they remained so long there that Mr. Greatorex began to indulge a private opinion that Bede was never coming back again. They sojourned in Paris, in Switzerland, in Germany; and though, when they at length did return, Bede laughingly said he could not get Louisa home, he had in point of fact been as ready
to linger away from it as she was. The Bedford Square house had been done up beautifully, and for two years Mrs. Bede found no fault with it; she had taken to do that lately, and it seemed to grow upon her like a mania.

  Upstairs now, now at this very moment, when her husband is poring over his law-puzzles with bent brow, she is studying the advertisements of desirable houses in the Times, almost inclined to go out and take one on her own account. A charming one (to judge by the description) was to be had in Park Lane, rent only six hundred a-year, unfurnished. Money was as plentiful as sand in the idea of Mrs. Bede Greatorex.

  You can go and see her. Through the passages and the intervening door to the other house; or else go out into the street and make a call of state at the private entrance. Up the wide staircase to the handsome landing-place already told of, with its rich green carpet, its painted windows, its miniature conservatory, and its statues; on all of which the sun is shining as brightly as it was that other day four years ago, when Bede Greatorex came home, fresh from the unhappy scenes connected with the death of Mr. Ollivera. Not into the dining-room; there’s no one in it; there’s no one in the large and beautiful drawing-room; enter, first of all, a small apartment on the side that they call the study.

  At die table sat Jane Greatorex, grown into a damsel of twelve, but exceedingly little and childlike in appearance. She was writing French dictation. By her side, speaking the words in a slow, distinct tone, with a good and pure accent, sat a young lady, her face one of the sweetest it was ever man’s lot to look upon. The hazel eyes were deep, honest, steady; the auburn hair lay lightly away from delicate and well-carved features; the complexion was pure and bright. A slender girl of middle height, and gentle, winning manners, whose simple morning dress of light cashmere sat well upon her.

  Surely that modest, good, thoughtful young woman could not be Mrs. Bede Greatorex! No: you must wait yet an instant for introduction to her. That is only Miss Jane’s governess, a young lady who has but recently entered on her duties as such, and is striving to perform them conscientiously. She is very patient, although the little girl is excessively tiresome, with a strong will of her own, and a decided objection to lessons of all kinds. She is the more patient because she remembers what a tiresome child she was herself, at that age, and the vast amount of trouble she gave wilfully to her sister-governess.