The Victorian Mystery Megapack: 27 Classic Mystery Tales

by Charles Dickens

  “I am half-frozen with cold,” said Loveday, addressing Sir George’s groom; “if you’ll kindly take charge of my portmanteau, I’d prefer walking to driving to the Court.”

  The man gave her a few directions as to the road she was to follow, and then drove off with her box, leaving her free to indulge Mr. Bate’s evident wish for a walk and confidential talk along the country road.

  Bates seemed to be in a happy frame of mind that morning.

  “Quite a simple affair, this, Miss Brooke,” he said: “a walk over the course, I take it, with you working inside the castle walls and I unearthing without. No complications as yet have arisen, and if that girl does not find herself in jail before another week is over her head, my name is not Jeremiah Bates.”

  “You mean the French maid?”

  “Why, yes, of course. I take it there’s little doubt but what she performed the double duty of unlocking the safe and the window too. You see I look at it this way, Miss Brooke: all girls have lovers, I say to myself, but a pretty girl like that French maid, is bound to have double the number of lovers than the plain ones. Now, of course, the greater the number of lovers, the greater the chance there is of a criminal being found among them. That’s plain as a pikestaff, isn’t it?”

  “Just as plain.”

  Bates felt encouraged to proceed.

  “Well, then, arguing on the same lines, I say to myself, this girl is only a pretty, silly thing, not an accomplished criminal, or she wouldn’t have admitted leaving open the safe door; give her rope enough and she’ll hang herself. In a day or two, if we let her alone, she’ll be bolting off to join the fellow whose nest she has helped to feather, and we shall catch the pair of them ’twixt here and Dover Straits, and also possibly get a clue that will bring us on the traces of their accomplices. Eh, Miss Brooke, that’ll be a thing worth doing?”

  “Undoubtedly. Who is this coming along in this buggy at such a good pace?”

  The question was added as the sound of wheels behind them made her look round.

  Bates turned also. “Oh, this is young Holt; his father farms land about a couple of miles from here. He is one of Stephanie’s lovers, and I should imagine about the best of the lot. But he does not appear to be first favourite; from what I hear someone else must have made the running on the sly. Ever since the robbery I’m told the young woman has given him the cold shoulder.”

  As the young man came nearer in his buggy he slackened pace, and Loveday could not but admire his frank, honest expression of countenance,

  “Room for one—can I give you a lift?” he said, as he came alongside of them.

  And to the ineffable disgust of Bates, who had counted upon at least an hour’s confidential talk with her, Miss Brooke accepted the young farmer’s offer, and mounted beside him in his buggy.

  As they went swiftly along the country road, Loveday explained to the young man that her destination was Craigen Court, and that as she was a stranger to the place, she must trust to him to put her down at the nearest point to it that he would pass.

  At the mention of Craigen Court his face clouded.

  “They’re in trouble there, and their trouble has brought trouble on others,” he said a little bitterly.

  “I know,” said Loveday sympathetically; “it is often so. In such circumstances as these suspicions frequently fastens on an entirely innocent person.”

  “That’s it! that’s it!” he cried excitedly; “if you go into that house you’ll hear all sorts of wicked things said of her, and see everything setting in dead against her. But she’s innocent. I swear to you she is as innocent as you or I are.”

  His voice rang out above the clatter of his horse’s hoots. He seemed to forget that he had mentioned no name, and that Loveday, as a stranger, might be at a loss to know to whom he referred.

  “Who is guilty Heaven only knows,” he went on after a moment’s pause; “it isn’t for me to give an ill name to anyone in that house; but I only say she is innocent, and that I’ll stake my life on.”

  “She is a lucky girl to have found one to believe in her, and trust her as you do,” said Loveday, even more sympathetically than before.

  “Is she? I wish she’d take advantage of her luck, then,” he answered bitterly. “Most girls in her position would be glad to have a man to stand by them through thick and thin. But not she! Ever since the night of that accursed robbery she has refused to see me—won’t answer my letters—won’t even send me a message. And, great Heavens! I’d marry her tomorrow, if I had the chance, and dare the world to say a word against her.”

  He whipped up his pony. The hedges seemed to fly on either side of them, and before Loveday realized that half her drive was over, he had drawn rein, and was helping her to alight at the servants’ entrance to Craigen Court.

  “You’ll tell her what I’ve said to you, if you get the opportunity, and beg her to see me, if only for five minutes?” he petitioned before he re-mounted his buggy. And Loveday, as she thanked the young man for his kind attention, promised to make an opportunity to give his message to the girl.

  Mrs. Williams, the housekeeper, welcomed Loveday in the servants’ hall, and then took her to her own room to pull off her wraps. Mrs. Williams was the widow of a London tradesman, and a little beyond the average housekeeper in speech and manner.

  She was a genial, pleasant woman, and readily entered into conversation with Loveday. Tea was brought in, and each seemed to feel at home with the other. Loveday in the course of this easy, pleasant talk, elicited from her the whole history of the events of the day of the robbery, the number and names of the guests who sat down to dinner that night, together with some other apparently trivial details.

  The housekeeper made no attempt to disguise the painful position in which she and every one of the servants of the house felt themselves to be at the present moment.

  “We are none of us at our ease with each other now,” she said, as she poured out hot tea for Loveday, and piled up a blazing fire. “Everyone fancies that everyone else is suspecting him or her, and trying to rake up past words or deeds to bring in as evidence. The whole house seems under a cloud. And at this time of year, too; just when everything as a rule is at its merriest!” and here she gave a doleful glance to the big bunch of holly and mistletoe hanging from the ceiling.

  “I suppose you are generally very merry downstairs at Christmas time?” said Loveday. “Servants’ balls, theatricals, and all that sort of thing?”

  “I should think we were! When I think of this time last year and the fun we all had, I can scarcely believe it is the same house. Our ball always follows my lady’s ball, and we have permission to ask our friends to it, and we keep it up as late as ever we please. We begin our evening with a concert and recitations in character, then we have a supper and then we dance right on till morning; but this year!”—she broke off, giving a long, melancholy shake of her head that spoke volumes.

  “I suppose,” said Loveday, “some of your friends are very clever as musicians or reciters?”

  “Very clever indeed. Sir George and my lady are always present during the early part of the evening, and I should like you to have seen Sir George last year laughing fit to kill himself at Harry Emmett dressed in prison dress with a bit of oakum in his hand, reciting the “Noble Convict!” Sir George said if the young man had gone on the stage, he would have been bound to make his fortune.”

  “Half a cup, please,” said Loveday, presenting her cup. “Who was this Harry Emmett then—a sweetheart of one of the maids?”

  “Oh, he would flirt with them all, but he was sweetheart to none. He was footman to Colonel James, who is a great friend of Sir George’s, and Harry was constantly backwards and forwards bringing messages from his master. His father, I think, drove a cab in London, and Harry for a time did so also; then he took it into his head to be a gentleman’s servant, and great satisfaction he gave as such. He was always such a bright, handsome young fellow and so full of fun, that everyone liked
him. But I shall tire you with all this; and you, of course, want to talk about something so different;” and the housekeeper sighed again, as the thought of the dreadful robbery entered her brain once more.

  “Not at all. I am greatly interested in you and your festivities. Is Emmett still in the neighbourhood? I should amazingly like to hear him recite myself.”

  “I’m sorry to say he left Colonel James about six months ago. We all missed him very much at first. He was a good, kind-hearted young man, and I remember he told me he was going away to look after his dear old grandmother, who had a sweet-stuff shop somewhere or other, but where I can’t remember.”

  Loveday was leaning back in her chair now, with eyelids drooped so low that she literally looked out through “slits” instead of eyes.

  Suddenly and abruptly she changed the conversation.

  “When will it be convenient for me to see Lady Cathrow’s dressing-room?” she asked.

  The housekeeper looked at her watch. “Now, at once,” she answered: “it’s a quarter to five now and my lady sometimes goes up to her room to rest for half an hour before she dresses for dinner.”

  “Is Stephanie still in attendance on Lady Cathrow?” Miss Brooke asked as she followed the housekeeper up the back stairs to the bedroom floor.

  “Yes, Sir George and my lady have been goodness itself to us through this trying time, and they say we are all innocent till we are proved guilty, and will have it that none of our duties are to be in any way altered.”

  “Stephanie is scarcely fit to perform hers, I should imagine?”

  “Scarcely. She was in hysterics nearly from morning till night for the first two or three days after the detectives came down, but now she has grown sullen, eats nothing and never speaks a word to any of us except when she is obliged. This is my lady’s dressing-room, walk in please.”

  Loveday entered a large, luxuriously furnished room, and naturally made her way straight to the chief point of attraction in it—the iron safe fitted into the wall that separated the dressing-room from the bedroom.

  It was a safe of the ordinary description, fitted with a strong iron door and Chubb lock. And across this door was written with chalk in characters that seemed defiant in their size and boldness, the words: “To be let, unfurnished.”

  Loveday spent about five minutes in front of this safe, all her attention concentrated upon the big, bold writing.

  She took from her pocket-book a narrow strip of tracing-paper and compared the writing on it, letter by letter, with that on the safe door. This done she turned to Mrs. Williams and professed herself ready to follow her to the room below.

  Mrs. Williams looked surprised. Her opinion of Miss Brooke’s professional capabilities suffered considerable diminution.

  “The gentlemen detectives,” she said, “spent over an hour in this room; they paced the floor, they measured the candles, they—”

  “Mrs. Williams,” interrupted Loveday, “I am quite ready to look at the room below.” Her manner had changed from gossiping friendliness to that of the business woman hard at work at her profession.

  Without another word, Mrs. Williams led the way to the little room which had proved itself to be the “weak point” of the house.

  They entered it by the door which opened into a passage leading to the back-stairs of the house. Loveday found the room exactly what it had been described to her by Mr. Dyer. It needed no second glance at the window to see the ease with which anyone could open it from the outside, and swing themselves into the room, when once the brass catch had been unfastened.

  Loveday wasted no time here. In fact, much to Mrs. Williams’s surprise and disappointment, she merely walked across the room, in at one door and out at the opposite one, which opened into the large inner hall of the house.

  Here, however, she paused to ask a question:

  “Is that chair always placed exactly in that position?” she said, pointing to an oak chair that stood immediately outside the room they had just quitted.

  The housekeeper answered in the affirmative. It was a warm corner. “My lady” was particular that everyone who came to the house on messages should have a comfortable place to wait in.

  “I shall be glad if you will show me to my room now,” said Loveday, a little abruptly; “and will you kindly send up to me a county trade directory, if, that is, you have such a thing in the house?”

  Mrs. Williams, with an air of offended dignity, led the way to the bedroom quarters once more. The worthy housekeeper felt as if her own dignity had, in some sort, been injured by the want of interest Miss Brooke had evinced in the rooms which, at the present moment, she considered the “show” rooms of the house.

  “Shall I send someone to help you unpack?” she asked, a little stiffly, at the door of Loveday’s room.

  “No, thank you; there will not be much unpacking to do. I must leave here by the first up-train tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow morning! Why, I have told everyone you will be here at least a fortnight!”

  “Ah, then you must explain that I have been suddenly summoned home by telegram. I’m sure I can trust you to make excuses for me. Do not, however, make them before supper-time. I shall like to sit down to that meal with you. I suppose I shall see Stephanie then?”

  The housekeeper answered in the affirmative, and went her way, wondering over the strange manners of the lady whom, at first, she had been disposed to consider “such a nice, pleasant, conversable person!”

  At supper-time, however, when the upper-servants assembled at what was, to them, the pleasantest meal of the day, a great surprise was to greet them.

  Stephanie did not take her usual place at table, and a fellow-servant, sent to her room to summon her returned, saying that the room was empty, and Stephanie was nowhere to be found.

  Loveday and Mrs. Williams together went to the girl’s bed-room. It bore its usual appearance: no packing had been done in it, and, beyond her hat and jacket, the girl appeared to have taken nothing away with her.

  On enquiry, it transpired that Stephanie had, as usual, assisted Lady Cathrow to dress for dinner; but after that not a soul in the house appeared to have seen her.

  Mrs. Williams thought the matter of sufficient importance to be at once reported to her master and mistress; and Sir George, in his turn, promptly dispatched a messenger to Mr. Bates, at the “King’s Head,” to summon him to an immediate consultation.

  Loveday dispatched a messenger in another direction—to young Mr. Holt, at his farm, giving him particulars of the girl’s disappearance.

  Mr. Bates had a brief interview with Sir George in his study, from which he emerged radiant. He made a point of seeing Loveday before he left the Court, sending a special request to her that she would speak to him for a minute in the outside drive.

  Loveday put her hat on, and went out to him. She found him almost dancing for glee.

  “Told you so! told you so! Now, didn’t I, Miss Brooke?” he exclaimed. “We’ll come upon her traces before morning, never fear. I’m quite prepared. I knew what was in her mind all along. I said to myself, when that girl bolts it will be after she has dressed my lady for dinner—when she has two good clear hours all to herself, and her absence from the house won’t be noticed, and when, without much difficulty, she can catch a train leaving Huxwell for Wreford. Well, she’ll get to Wreford safe enough; but from Wreford she’ll be followed every step of the way she goes. Only yesterday I set a man on there—a keen fellow at this sort of thing—and gave him full directions; and he’ll hunt her down to her hole properly. Taken nothing with her, do you say? What does that matter? She thinks she’ll find all she wants where she’s going—‘the feathered nest’ I spoke to you about this morning. Ha! ha! Well, instead of stepping into it, as she fancies she will, she’ll walk straight into a detective’s arms, and land her pal there into the bargain. There’ll be two of them netted before another forty-eight hours are over our heads, or my name’s not Jeremiah Bates.”

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p; “What are you going to do now?” asked Loveday, as the man finished his long speech.

  “Now! I’m back to the “King’s Head” to wait for a telegram from my colleague at Wreford. Once he’s got her in front of him he’ll give me instructions at what point to meet him. You see, Huxwell being such an out-of-the-way place, and only one train leaving between 7.30 and 10.15, makes us really positive that Wreford must be the girl’s destination and relieves my mind from all anxiety on the matter.”

  “Does it?” answered Loveday gravely. “I can see another possible destination for the girl—the stream that runs through the wood we drove past this morning. Good night, Mr. Bates, it’s cold out here. Of course so soon as you have any news you’ll send it up to Sir George.”

  The household sat up late that night, but no news was received of Stephanie from any quarter. Mr. Bates had impressed upon Sir George the ill-advisability of setting up a hue and cry after the girl that might possibly reach her ears and scare her from joining the person whom he was pleased to designate as her “pal.”

  “We want to follow her silently, Sir George, silently as, the shadow follows the man,” he had said grandiloquently, “and then we shall come upon the two, and I trust upon their booty also.” Sir George in his turn had impressed Mr. Bates’s wishes upon his household, and if it had not been for Loveday’s message, dispatched early in the evening to young Holt, not a soul outside the house would have known of Stephanie’s disappearance.

  Loveday was stirring early the next morning, and the eight o’clock train for Wreford numbered her among its passengers. Before starting, she dispatched a telegram to her chief in Lynch Court. It read rather oddly, as follows:—

  “Cracker fired. Am just starting for Wreford. Will wire to you from there. L. B.”

  Oddly though it might read, Mr. Dyer did not need to refer to his cipher book to interpret it. “Cracker fired” was the easily remembered equivalent for “clue found” in the detective phraseology of the office.

  “Well, she has been quick enough about it this time!” he soliquised as he speculated in his own mind over what the purport of the next telegram might be.