Sisters in Crime

by Mike Ashley

  Michael Levison rose from his seat hastily, trembling in every limb. Horace rose at the same moment, and the two men stood face to face – one the very image of craven fear, the other cool and self-possessed.

  ‘This is a tissue of lies!’ gasped Levison, wiping his lips nervously with a handkerchief that fluttered in his tremulous fingers. ‘Have you brought me here to insult me with this madman’s talk?’

  ‘I have brought you here to your doom. There was a time when I thought that if you and I ever stood face to face I should shoot you down like a dog, but I have changed my mind. Such carrion dogs as you are not worth the stain of blood upon an honest man’s hand. It is useless to tell you how I loved the girl you murdered. Your savage nature would not comprehend any but the basest and most selfish passion. Don’t stir another step – I have a loaded revolver within reach and shall make an end of you if you attempt to quit this room. The police are on the watch for you outside, and you will leave this place for a jail. Hark! what is that?’

  It was the sound of a footstep on the stairs outside, a woman’s light footstep, and the rustling of a silk dress. The dining-room door was ajar, and the sounds were distinctly audible in the empty house. Michael Levison made for the door, availing himself of this momentary diversion, with some vague hope of escape; but, within a few paces of the threshold, he recoiled suddenly with a hoarse gasping cry.

  The door was pushed wide open by a light hand, and a figure stood upon the threshold – a girlish figure dressed in black silk, a pale sad face framed by dark auburn hair.

  ‘The dead returned to life!’ cried Levison. ‘Hide her, hide her! I can’t face her! Let me go!’

  He made for the other door, leading into the inner room, but found it locked, and then sank cowering down into a chair, covering his eyes with his skinny hands. The girl came softly into the room and stood by Horace Wynward.

  ‘You have forgotten me, Mr Levison,’ she said, ‘and you take me for my sister’s ghost. I was always like her, and they say I have grown more so within the last two years. We had a letter from you a month ago, posted from Trinidad, telling us that my sister Laura was well and happy there with you; yet you mistake me for the shadow of the dead!’

  The frightened wretch did not look up. He had not yet recovered from the shock produced by his sister-in-law’s sudden appearance. The handkerchief which he held to his lips was stained with blood. Horace Wynward went quietly to the outer door and opened it, returning presently with two men who came softly into the room and approached Levison. He made no attempt to resist them as they slipped a pair of handcuffs on his bony wrists and led him away. There was a cab standing outside, ready to convey him to prison.

  Emily Daventry sank into a chair as he was taken from the room.

  ‘Oh, Mr Wynward,’ she said, ‘I think there can be little doubt of my sister’s wretched fate. The experiment which you proposed has succeeded only too well.’

  Horace had been down to Devonshire to question the two girls about their sister. He had been struck by Emily’s likeness to his lost love and had persuaded her aunt to bring her up to London in order to identify Levison by her means and to test the effect which her appearance might produce upon the nerves of the suspected assassin.

  The police were furnished with a complicated mass of evidence against Levison in his character of clerk, merchant and bill-discounter, but the business was of a nature that entailed much delay, and after several adjourned examinations the prisoner fell desperately ill of heart disease from which he had suffered for years but which grew much worse during his imprisonment. Finding his death certain, he sent for Horace Wynward and to him confessed his crime, boasting of his wife’s death with a fiendish delight in the deed, which he called an act of vengeance against his rival.

  ‘I knew you well enough when you came home, Horace Wynward,’ he said, ‘and I thought it would be my happy lot to compass your ruin. You trapped me, but to the last you have the worst of it. The girl you loved is dead. She dared to tell me that she loved you; defied my anger; told me that she had sold herself to me to save her father from disgrace and confessed that she hated me and had always hated me. From that hour she was doomed. Her white face was a constant reproach to me. I was goaded to madness by her tears. She used to mutter your name in her sleep. I wonder I did not cut her throat as she lay there with the name upon her lips. But I must have swung for that. So I was patient and waited until I could have her alone with me upon the mountains. It was only a push, and she was gone. I came home alone, free from the worry and fever of her presence – except in my dreams. She has haunted those ever since, with her pale face – yes, by Heaven, I have hardly known what it is to sleep, from that hour to this, without seeing her white face and hearing the one long shriek that went up to the sky as she fell.’

  He died within a few days of this interview and before his trial could take place. Time, that heals almost all griefs, brought peace by and by to Horace Wynward. He furnished the house in Mayfair and for some time led a misanthropical life there; but on paying a second visit to Devonshire, where the two Daventry girls lived their simple industrious life in their aunt’s school, he discovered that Emily’s likeness to her sister made her very dear to him, and in the following year he brought a mistress to Crofton in the person of that young lady. Together they paid a mournful visit to that lonely spot in the Tyrol where Laura Levison had perished and stayed there while a white marble cross was erected above her grave.

  Ellen Wood

  GOING THROUGH THE TUNNEL

  Though the life of Ellen Wood (1814–1887) was not as sensational as that of Mary E. Braddon, her novel East Lynne (1861) helped, with its adulterous and scheming heroine, to establish the vogue for novels of sensation. Wood may well have inspired Braddon, and it may be worth noting that one of the male villains of East Lynne has the surname Levison, which might just have inspired Braddon to choose that for her own villain. Until 1856 Ellen Wood’s life had been fairly comfortable, though curvature of the spine in her childhood had left her partially handicapped and fragile; she stood barely five feet tall and could rarely carry anything heavier than a book – though, remarkably, she bore five children. But in 1856 her husband, Henry Wood, suffered financial failure, and the family returned to England from their home in France. Ellen had started to sell stories anonymously in 1851 and now turned to writing full time to support the family, though it was not until the publication of Danesbury House in 1860 that her name became well known and, with East Lynne, her reputation and financial security assured. When not publishing anonymously she always used the name Mrs Henry Wood, even after her husband’s death in 1866. In 1867 she bought the magazine The Argosy and edited it for the rest of her life, assisted by her son Charles. For The Argosy, starting in 1868, she wrote, anonymously, a long series of stories related by Johnny Ludlow, of which the following is one. Ellen was delighted that the Ludlow series received high critical acclaim from those unaware they were the work of Mrs Henry Wood, whose other books the same critics snobbishly discredited. Ludlow himself is an orphan adopted by Squire Todhetley of Dyke Manor in Worcestershire, the county in which Ellen, then Ellen Price, had spent her childhood, and there is a quaint nostalgia in the homely recounting of these tales.

  Most of the Ludlow stories, over eighty episodes of which were produced, feature some crime or mystery that either Ludlow himself or his adopted family seek to resolve. They include child abduction, blackmail, theft, disappearances, even hauntings. The following story, from the February 1869 edition of The Argosy – and included in the first of six volumes of Ludlow’s accounts – is one of the more light-hearted ones.

  Going Through the Tunnel

  WE HAD TO make a rush for it. And making a rush did not suit the Squire any more than it does other people who have come to an age when the body’s heavy and the breath nowhere. He reached the train, pushed head-foremost into a carriage and then remembered the tickets. ‘Bless my heart!’ he exclaimed as he jumped out again an
d nearly upset a lady who had a little dog in her arms and a mass of fashionable hair on her head that the Squire, in his hurry, mistook for tow.

  ‘Plenty of time, sir,’ said a guard who was passing. ‘Three minutes to spare.’

  Instead of saying he was obliged to the man for his civility, or relieved to find the tickets might still be had, the Squire snatched out his old watch and began abusing the railway clocks for being slow. Had Tod been there he would have told him to his face that the watch was fast, braving all retort, for the Squire believed in his watch as he did in himself and would rather have been told that he could go wrong than that the watch could. But there was only me, and I wouldn’t have said it for anything.

  ‘Keep two back-seats there, Johnny,’ said the Squire.

  I put my coat on the corner furthest from the door and the rug on the one next to it and followed him into the station. When the Squire was late in starting, he was apt to get into the greatest flurry conceivable, and the first thing I saw was himself blocking up the ticket place and undoing his pocket-book with nervous fingers. He had some loose gold about him, silver, too, but the pocket-book came to his hand first, so he pulled it out. These flurried moments of the Squire’s amused Tod beyond everything; he was so cool himself.

  ‘Can you change this?’ said the Squire, drawing out one from a roll of five-pound notes.

  ‘No, I can’t,’ was the answer in the surly tones put on by ticket clerks.

  How the Squire crumpled up the note again and searched in his breeches pocket for gold and came away with the two tickets and the change, I’m sure he never knew. A crowd had gathered round, wanting to take their tickets in turn, and knowing that he was keeping them flurried him all the more. He stood at the back a moment, put the roll of notes into his case, fastened it and returned it to the breast of his overcoat, sent the change down into another pocket without counting it and went out with the tickets in hand. Not to the carriage but to stare at the big clock in front.

  ‘Don’t you see, Johnny? exactly four minutes and a half difference,’ he cried, holding out his watch to me. ‘It is a strange thing they can’t keep these railway clocks in order.’

  ‘My watch keeps good time, sir, and mine is with the railway. I think it is right.’

  ‘Hold your tongue, Johnny. How dare you! Right? You send your watch to be regulated the first opportunity, sir. Don’t you get into the habit of being too late or too early.’

  When we finally went to the carriage there were some people in it, but our seats were left for us. Squire Todhetley sat down by the further door and settled himself and his coats and his things comfortably, which he had been too flurried to do before. Cool as a cucumber was he now the bustle was over; cool as Tod could have been. At the other door, with his face to the engine, sat a dark, gentleman-like man of forty, who had made room for us to pass as we got in. He had a large signet-ring on one hand and a lavender glove on the other. The other three seats opposite to us were vacant. Next to me sat a little man with a fresh colour and gold spectacles, who was already reading, and beyond him, in the corner, face to face with the dark man, was a lunatic. That’s to mention him politely. Of all the restless, fidgety, worrying, hot-tempered passengers that ever put themselves into a carriage to travel with people in their senses, he was the worst. In fifteen moments he had made as many darts – now after his hat-box and things above his head, now calling the guard and the porters to ask senseless questions about his luggage, now treading on our toes and trying the corner seat opposite the Squire and then darting back to his own. He wore a wig of a decided green tinge, the effect of keeping, perhaps, and his skin was dry and shrivelled as an Egyptian mummy’s.

  A servant, in undress livery, came to the door and touched his hat, which had a cockade on it, as he spoke to the dark man.

  ‘Your ticket, my lord.’

  Lords are not travelled with every day, and some of us looked up. The gentleman took the ticket from the man’s hand and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘You can get me a newspaper, Wilkins. The Times if it is to be had.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Yes, there’s room here, ma’am,’ interrupted the guard, sending the door back for a lady who stood at it. ‘Make haste, please.’

  The lady who stepped in was the same the Squire had bolted against. She sat down in the seat opposite me and looked at every one of us by turns. There was a sort of violet bloom on her face and some soft white powder, seen plain enough through her veil. She took the longest gaze at the dark gentleman, bending a little forward to do it; for, as he was in a line with her and also had his head turned from her, her curiosity could only catch a view of his side-face. Mrs Todhetley might have said she had not put on her company manners. In the midst of this, the manservant came back again.

  ‘The Times is not here yet, my lord. They are expecting the papers in by the next down-train.’

  ‘Never mind, then. You can get me one at the next station, Wilkins.’

  ‘Very well, my lord.’

  Wilkins must certainly have had to scramble for his carriage, for we started before he had well left the door. It was not an express train, and we should have to stop at several stations. Where the Squire and I had been staying does not matter; it has nothing to do with what I have to tell. It was a long way from our own home, and that’s saying enough.

  ‘Would you mind changing seats with me, sir?’

  I looked up to find the lady’s face close to mine; she had spoken in a half-whisper. The Squire, who carried his old-fashioned notions of politeness with him when he went travelling, at once got up to offer her the corner. But she declined it, saying she was subject to face-ache and did not care to be next the window. So she took my seat, and I sat down on the one opposite Mr Todhetley.

  ‘Which of the peers is that?’ I heard her ask him in a loud whisper as the lord put his head out at his window.

  ‘Don’t know at all, ma’am,’ said the Squire. ‘Don’t know many of the peers myself, except those of my own county: Lyttleton and Beauchamp, and –’

  Of all snarling barks, the worst was given that moment in the Squire’s face, suddenly ending the list. The little dog, an ugly, hairy, vile-tempered Scotch terrier, had been kept concealed under the lady’s jacket and now struggled itself free. The Squire’s look of consternation was good! He had not known any animal was there.

  ‘Be quiet, Wasp. How dare you bark at the gentleman? He will not bite, sir: he –’

  ‘Who has a dog in the carriage?’ shrieked the lunatic, starting up in a passion. ‘Dogs don’t travel with passengers. Here! Guard! Guard!’

  To call out for the guard when a train is going at full speed is generally useless. The lunatic had to sit down again, and the lady defied him, so to say, coolly avowing that she had hidden the dog from the guard on purpose, staring him in the face while she said it.

  After this there was a lull, and we went speeding along, the lady talking now and again to the Squire. She seemed to want to grow confidential with him, but the Squire did not seem to care for it, though he was quite civil. She held the dog huddled up in her lap so that nothing but his head peeped out.

  ‘Halloa! How dare they be so negligent? There’s no lamp in this carriage.’

  It was the lunatic again, and we all looked at the lamp. It had no light in it, but that it had when we first reached the carriage was certain for, as the Squire went stumbling in, his head nearly touched the lamp, and I had noticed the flame. It seems the Squire had also.

  ‘They must have put it out while we were getting our tickets,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll know the reason why when we stop,’ cried the lunatic fiercely. ‘After passing the next station, we dash into the long tunnel. The idea of going through it in pitch darkness! It would not be safe.’

  ‘Especially with a dog in the carriage,’ spoke the lord, in a chaffing kind of tone but with a good-natured smile. ‘We will have the lamp lighted, however.’

 
As if to reward him for interfering, the dog barked up loudly and tried to make a spring at him, upon which the lady smothered the animal up, head and all.

  Another minute or two, and the train began to slacken speed. It was only an insignificant station, one not likely to be halted at for above a minute. The lunatic twisted his body out of the window and shouted for the guard long before we were at a standstill.

  ‘Allow me to manage this,’ said the lord, quietly putting him down. ‘They know me on the line. Wilkins!’

  The man came rushing up at the call. He must have been out already, though we were not quite at a standstill yet.

  ‘Is it for The Times, my lord? I am going for it.’

  ‘Never mind The Times. This lamp is not lighted, Wilkins. See the guard, and get it done. At once.’

  ‘And ask him what the mischief he means by his carelessness,’ roared out the lunatic after Wilkins, who went flying off. ‘Sending us on our road without a light! And that dangerous tunnel close at hand.’