Armadale

by Wilkie Collins

  ‘Tell me first, sir,’ said the wary Pedgift, ‘what inquiries you made, when you found this lady had vanished?’

  ‘Inquiries?’ repeated Allan, ‘I was utterly staggered; I didn’t say anything. What inquiries ought I to have made?’

  Pedgift Junior cleared his throat, and crossed his legs in a strictly professional manner.

  ‘I have no wish, Mr Armadale,’ he began, ‘to inquire into your business with Mrs Mandeville—’

  ‘No,’ interposed Allan, bluntly, ‘I hope you won’t inquire into that. My business with Mrs Mandeville must remain a secret.’

  ‘But,’ pursued Pedgift, laying down the law with the forefinger of one hand on the outstretched palm of the other, ‘I may, perhaps, be allowed to ask generally, whether your business with Mrs Mandeville is of a nature to interest you in tracing her from Kingsdown Crescent to her present residence?’

  ‘Certainly!’ said Allan. ‘I have a very particular reason for wishing to see her.’

  ‘In that case, sir,’ returned Pedgift Junior, ‘there were two obvious questions which you ought to have asked, to begin with – namely, on what date Mrs Mandeville left, and how she left. Having discovered this, you should have ascertained next, under what domestic circumstances she went away – whether there was a misunderstanding with anybody; say a difficulty about money-matters. Also, whether she went away alone, or with somebody else. Also, whether the house was her own, or whether she only lodged in it. Also, in the latter event—’

  ‘stop! stop! You’re making my head swim,’ cried Allan. ‘I don’t understand all these ins and outs – I’m not used to this sort of thing.’

  ‘I’ve been used to it myself from my childhood upwards, sir,’ remarked Pedgift. ‘And if I can be of any assistance, say the word.’

  ‘You’re very kind,’ returned Allan. ‘If you could only help me to find Mrs Mandeville; and if you wouldn’t mind leaving the thing afterwards entirely in my hands—?’

  ‘I’ll leave it in your hands, sir, with all the pleasure in life,’ said Pedgift Junior. (‘And I’ll lay five to one,’ he added mentally, ‘when the time comes, you’ll leave it in mine!’) ‘We’ll go to Bayswater together, Mr Armadale, to-morrow morning. In the meantime here’s the soup. The case now before the court is – Pleasure versus Business. I don’t know what you say, sir; I say, without a moment’s hesitation, Verdict for the plaintiff. Let us gather our rosebuds while we may. Excuse my high spirits, Mr Armadale. Though buried in the country, I was made for a London life; the very air of the metropolis intoxicates me.’ With that avowal the irresistible Pedgift placed a chair for his patron, and issued his orders cheerfully to his viceroy, the head-waiter. ‘Iced punch, William, after the soup. I answer for the punch, Mr Armadale – it’s made after a receipt of my great-uncle’s. He kept a tavern, and founded the fortunes of the family. I don’t mind telling you the Pedgifts have had a publican among them; there’s no false pride about me. “Worth makes the man (as Pope says), and want of it the fellow; the rest is all but leather and prunella.”1 I cultivate poetry as well as music, sir, in my leisure hours; in fact, I’m more or less on familiar terms with the whole of the nine Muses. Aha! here’s the punch! The memory of my great-uncle, the publican, Mr Armadale – drunk in solemn silence!’

  Allan tried hard to emulate his companion’s gaiety and good humour, but with very indifferent success. His visit to Kingsdown Crescent recurred ominously again and again to his memory, all through the dinner, and all through the public amusements to which he and his legal adviser repaired at a later hour of the evening. When Pedgift Junior put out his candle that night, he shook his wary head, and regretfully apostrophized ‘the women’ for the second time.

  By ten o’clock the next morning, the indefatigable Pedgift was on the scene of action. To Allan’s great relief, he proposed making the necessary inquiries at Kingsdown Crescent, in his own person, while his patron waited near at hand, in the cab which had brought them from the hotel. After a delay of little more than five minutes, he re-appeared, in full possession of all attainable particulars. His first proceeding was to request Allan to step out of the cab, and to pay the driver. Next, he politely offered his arm, and led the way round the corner of the crescent, across a square, and into a by-street, which was rendered exceptionally lively by the presence of the local cab-stand. Here he stopped, and asked jocosely, whether Mr Armadale saw his way now, or whether it would be necessary to test his patience by making an explanation.

  ‘see my way?’ repeated Allan in bewilderment. ‘I see nothing but a cab-stand.’

  Pedgift Junior smiled compassionately, and entered on his explanation. It was a lodging-house at Kingsdown Crescent, he begged to state to begin with. He had insisted on seeing the landlady. A very nice person, with all the remains of having been a fine girl about fifty years ago; quite in Pedgift’s style – if he had only been alive at the beginning of the present century – quite in Pedgift’s style. But perhaps Mr Armadale would prefer hearing about Mrs Mandeville? Unfortunately, there was nothing to tell. There had been no quarrelling, and not a farthing left unpaid: the lodger had gone, and there wasn’t an explanatory circumstance to lay hold of anywhere. It was either Mrs Mandeville’s way to vanish, or there was something under the rose, quite undiscoverable so far. Pedgift had got the date on which she left, and the time of day at which she left, and the means by which she left. The means might help to trace her. She had gone away in a cab which the servant had fetched from the nearest stand. The stand was now before their eyes; and the waterman was the first person to apply to – going to the waterman for information, being clearly (if Mr Armadale would excuse the joke) going to the fountain-head. Treating the subject in this airy manner, and telling Allan that he would be back in a moment, Pedgift Junior sauntered down the street, and beckoned the waterman confidentially into the nearest public-house.

  In a little while the two reappeared; the waterman taking Pedgift in succession to the first, third, fourth and sixth of the cabmen whose vehicles were on the stand. The longest conference was held with the sixth man; and it ended in the sudden approach of the sixth cab to the part of the street where Allan was waiting.

  ‘Get in, sir,’ said Pedgift, opening the door, ‘I’ve found the man. He remembers the lady; and, though he has forgotten the name of the street, he believes he can find the place he drove her to when he once gets back into the neighbourhood. I am charmed to inform you, Mr Armadale, that we are in luck’s way so far. I asked the waterman to show me the regular men on the stand – and it turns out that one of the regular men drove Mrs Mandeville. The waterman vouches for him; he’s quite an anomaly – a respectable cabman; drives his own horse, and has never been in any trouble. These are the sort of men, sir, who sustain one’s belief in human nature. I’ve had a look at our friend; and I agree with the waterman – I think we can depend on him.’

  The investigation required some exercise of patience at the outset. It was not till the cab had traversed the distance between Bayswater and Pimlico, that the driver began to slacken his pace and look about him. After once or twice retracing its course, the vehicle entered a quiet by-street, ending in a dead wall, with a door in it; and stopped at the last house on the left-hand side, the house next to the wall.

  ‘Here it is, gentlemen,’ said the man, opening the cab-door.

  Allan and Allan’s adviser both got out, and both looked at the house, with the same feeling of instinctive distrust. Buildings have their physiognomy – especially buildings in great cities – and the face of this house was essentially furtive in its expression. The front windows were all shut, and the front blinds were all drawn down. It looked no larger than the other houses in the street, seen in front; but it ran back deceitfully, and gained its greater accommodation by means of its greater depth. It affected to be a shop on the ground-floor – but it exhibited absolutely nothing in the space that intervened between the window and an inner row of red curtains, which hid the interior entirely from
view. At one side was the shop-door, having more red curtains behind the glazed part of it, and bearing a brass plate on the wooden part of it, inscribed with the name of ‘Oldershaw’. On the other side was the private door, with a bell marked Professional; and another brass plate, indicating amedical occupant on this side of the house, for the name on it was ‘Doctor Downward’. If ever brick and mortar spoke yet, the brick and mortar here said plainly, ‘We have got our secrets inside, and we mean to keep them.’

  ‘This can’t be the place,’ said Allan; ‘there must be some mistake.’

  ‘You know best, sir,’ remarked Pedgift Junior, with his sardonic gravity. ‘You know Mrs Mandeville’s habits.’

  ‘I!’ exclaimed Allan. ‘You may be surprised to hear it – but Mrs Mandeville is a total stranger to me.’

  ‘I’m not in the least surprised to hear it, sir – the landlady at Kingsdown Crescent informed me that Mrs Mandeville was an old woman. Suppose we inquire?’ added the impenetrable Pedgift, looking at the red curtains in the shop-window with a strong suspicion that Mrs Mandeville’s grand-daughter might possibly be behind them.

  They tried the shop-door first. It was locked. They rang. A lean and yellow young woman, with a tattered French novel in her hand, opened it.

  ‘Good morning, miss,’ said Pedgift. ‘Is Mrs Mandeville at home?’

  The yellow young woman stared at him in astonishment. ‘No person of that name is known here,’ she answered sharply, in a foreign accent.

  ‘Perhaps they know her at the private door?’ suggested Pedgift Junior.

  ‘Perhaps they do,’ said the yellow young woman, and shut the door in his face.

  ‘Rather a quick-tempered young person that, sir,’ said Pedgift. ‘I congratulate Mrs Mandeville on not being acquainted with her.’ He led the way, as he spoke, to Doctor Downward’s side of the premises, and rang the bell.

  The door was opened this time by a man in a shabby livery. He, too, started when Mrs Mandeville’s name was mentioned; and he, too, knew of no such person in the house.

  ‘Very odd,’ said Pedgift, appealing to Allan.

  ‘What is odd?’ asked a softly-speaking gentleman in black, suddenly appearing on the threshold of the parlour-door.

  Pedgift Junior politely explained the circumstances, and begged to know whether he had the pleasure of speaking to Doctor Downward.

  The doctor bowed. If the expression may be pardoned, he was one of those carefully-constructed physicians, in whom the public – especially the female public – implicitly trust. He had the necessary bald head, the necessary double eyeglass, the necessary black clothes, and the necessary blandness of manner, all complete. His voice was soothing, his ways were deliberate, his smile was confidential. What particular branch of his profession Doctor Downward followed, was not indicated on his door-plate – but he had utterly mistaken his vocation, if he was not a ladies’ medical man.2

  ‘Are you quite sure there is no mistake about the name?’ asked the doctor, with a strong underlying anxiety in his manner. ‘I have known very serious inconvenience to arise sometimes from mistakes about names. No? There is really no mistake? In that case, gentlemen, I can only repeat what my servant has already told you. Don’t apologize, pray. Good morning.’ The doctor withdrew as noiselessly as he had appeared; the man in the shabby livery silently opened the door; and Allan and his companion found themselves in the street again.

  ‘Mr Armadale,’ said Pedgift, ‘I don’t know how you feel—I feel puzzled.’

  ‘That’s awkward,’ returned Allan; ‘I was just going to ask you what we ought to do next.’

  ‘I don’t like the look of the place, the look of the shopwoman, or the look of the doctor,’ pursued the other. ‘And yet I can’t say I think they are deceiving us – I can’t say I think they really do know Mrs Mandeville’s name.’

  The impressions of Pedgift Junior seldom misled him; and they had not misled him in this case. The caution which had dictated Mrs Oldershaw’s private removal from Bayswater, was the caution which frequently over-reaches itself. It had warned her to trust nobody at Pimlico with the secret of the name she had assumed as Miss Gwilt’s reference; but it had entirely failed to prepare her for the emergency that had really happened. In a word, Mrs Oldershaw had provided for everything, except for the unimaginable contingency of an after-inquiry into the character of Miss Gwilt.

  ‘We must do something,’ said Allan; ‘it seems useless to stop here.’

  Nobody had ever yet caught Pedgift Junior at the end of his resources; and Allan failed to catch him at the end of them now. ‘I quite agree with you, sir,’ he said; ‘we must do something. We’ll cross-examine the cabman.’

  The cabman proved to be immovable. Charged with mistaking the place, he pointed to the empty shop-window. ‘I don’t know what you may have seen, gentlemen,’ he remarked; ‘but there’s the only shop-window I ever saw with nothing at all inside it. That fixed the place in my mind at the time, and I know it again when I see it.’ Charged with mistaking the person, or the day, or the house at which he had taken the person up, the cabman proved to be still unassailable. The servant who fetched him was marked as a girl well known on the stand. The day was marked, as the unluckiest working day he had had since the first of the year; and the lady was marked, as having had her money ready at the right moment (which not one elderly lady in a hundred usually had), and having paid him his fare on demand without disputing it (which not one elderly lady in a hundred usually did). ‘Take my number, gentlemen,’ concluded the cabman, ‘and pay me for my time; and what I’ve said to you, I’ll swear to anywhere.’

  Pedgift made a note in his pocket-book of the man’s number. Having added to it the name of the street, and the names on the two brass plates, he quietly opened the cab-door. ‘We are quite in the dark, thus far,’ he said. ’suppose we grope our way back to the hotel?’

  He spoke and looked more seriously than usual. The mere fact of ‘Mrs Mandeville’s’ having changed her lodging without telling any one where she was going, and without leaving any address at which letters could be forwarded to her – which the jealous malignity of Mrs Milroy had interpreted as being undeniably suspicious in itself – had produced no great impression on the more impartial judgment of Allan’s solicitor. People frequently left their lodgings in a private manner, with perfectly producible reasons for doing so. But the appearance of the place to which the cabman persisted in declaring that he had driven ‘Mrs Mandeville’, set the character and proceedings of that mysterious lady before Pedgift Junior in a new light. His personal interest in the inquiry suddenly strengthened, and he began to feel a curiosity to know the real nature of Allan’s business which he had not felt yet.

  ‘Our next move, Mr Armadale, is not a very easy move to see,’ he said, as they drove back to the hotel. ‘Do you think you could put me in possession of any further particulars?’

  Allan hesitated; and Pedgift Junior saw that he had advanced a little too far. ‘I mustn’t force it,’ he thought; ‘I must give it time, and let it come of its own accord.’ ‘In the absence of any other information, sir,’ he resumed,3 ‘what do you say, to my making some inquiry about that queer shop, and about those two names on the door-plate? My business in London, when I leave you, is of a professional nature; and I am going into the right quarter for getting information, if it is to be got.’

  ‘There can’t be any harm, I suppose, in making inquiries,’ replied Allan.

  He, too, spoke more seriously than usual; he, too, was beginning to feel an all-mastering curiosity to know more. Some vague connection, not to be distinctly realized or traced out, began to establish itself in his mind between the difficulty of approaching Miss Gwilt’s family circumstances, and the difficulty of approaching Miss Gwilt’s reference. ‘I’ll get down and walk, and leave you to go on to your business,’ he said. ‘I want to consider a little about this; and a walk and a cigar will help me.’

  ‘My business will be done, sir, between one and t
wo,’ said Pedgift, when the cab had been stopped, and Allan had got out. ‘shall we meet again at two o’clock, at the hotel?’

  Allan nodded, and the cab drove off.

  CHAPTER IV

  ALLAN AT BAY

  Two o’clock came; and Pedgift Junior, punctual to his time, came with it. His vivacity of the morning had all sparkled out; he greeted Allan with his customary politeness, but without his customary smile; and when the head-waiter came in for orders, his dismissal was instantly pronounced in words never yet heard to issue from the lips of Pedgift in that hotel: ‘Nothing at present.’

  ‘You seem to be in low spirits,’ said Allan. ‘Can’t we get our information? Can nobody tell you anything about the house in Pimlico?’

  ‘Three different people have told me about it, Mr Armadale; and they have all three said the same thing.’

  Allan eagerly drew his chair nearer to the place occupied by his travelling companion. His reflections in the interval since they had last seen each other, had not tended to compose him. That strange connection, so easy to feel, so hard to trace, between the difficulty of approaching Miss Gwilt’s family circumstances, and the difficulty of approaching Miss Gwilt’s reference, which had already established itself in his thoughts, had by this time stealthily taken a firmer and firmer hold on his mind. Doubts troubled him which he could neither understand nor express. Curiosity filled him, which he half-longed and half-dreaded to satisfy.

  ‘I am afraid I must trouble you with a question or two, sir, before I can come to the point,’ said Pedgift Junior. ‘I don’t want to force myself into your confidence; I only want to see my way, in what looks to me like a very awkward business. Do you mind telling me whether others beside yourself are interested in this inquiry of ours?’