GREAT PORTER SQUARE:
A MYSTERY.
BY
B. L. FARJEON,
_Author of "Grif," "London's Heart," "The House of White
Shadows," etc._
_IN THREE VOLUMES._
VOLUME I.
LONDON:
WARD AND DOWNEY,
12, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN.
1885.
[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]
PRINTED BY
KELLY AND CO., GATE STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS
AND KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I.--Introduces Mrs. James Preedy; hints at the trouble
into which she has fallen; and gives an insight into
her social position 1
II.--What was printed on the quarto bill: a proclamation
by her Majesty's Government 19
III.--Extracted from the "Evening Moon" 25
IV.--The examination of Mrs. Preedy, continued from the
"Evening Moon" 33
V.--Contains further extracts from the "Evening Moon"
relating to the Great Porter Square mystery 50
VI.--The "Evening Moon" speaks its mind 56
VII.--In which the "Evening Moon" continues to speak its
mind 62
VIII.--The "Evening Moon" postpones its statement
respecting Antony Cowlrick 88
IX.--In which the "Evening Moon" relates the adventures of
its Special Correspondent 90
X.--The Special Reporter of the "Evening Moon" makes the
acquaintance of a little match girl 121
XI.--The "Evening Moon" for a time takes leave of the case
of Antony Cowlrick 142
XII.--Mrs. Preedy has dreadful dreams 147
XIII.--Mrs. Preedy's young man lodger 154
XIV.--In which Becky commences a letter to a friend in the
country 167
XV.--In which Becky continues her letter, and relates how
she obtained the situation at No. 118 175
XVI.--In which Becky writes a second letter to her friend
in the country, and gives a woman's reason for not
liking Richard Manx 183
XVII.--In which Becky, continuing her letter, relates her
impressions of Mrs. Preedy's young man lodger 193
XVIII.--The "Evening Moon" reopens the subject of the Great
Porter Square murder, and relates a romantic story
concerning the murdered man and his widow 219
XIX.--The "Evening Moon" continues its account of the
tragedy, and describes the shameful part enacted by
Mr. Frederick Holdfast in his father's house 244
GREAT PORTER SQUARE:
A MYSTERY.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCES MRS. JAMES PREEDY; HINTS AT THE TROUBLE INTO WHICH SHE
HAS FALLEN; AND GIVES AN INSIGHT INTO HER SOCIAL POSITION.
Mrs. James Preedy, lodging-house keeper, bred and born in the vocation,
and consequently familiar with all the moves of that extensive class of
persons in London that has no regular home, and has to be cooked for,
washed for, and generally done for, sat in the kitchen of her house,
No. 118, Great Porter Square. This apartment was situated in the
basement, and here Mrs. Preedy received her friends and "did" for her
lodgers, in so far as the cooking for them can be said to be included
in that portentous and significant term. The floor of the kitchen was
oil-clothed, with, in distinguished places, strips of carpet of various
patterns and colours, to give it an air. Over the mantelpiece was a
square looking-glass in a mahogany frame, ranged on each side of which
were faded photographs of men, women, and children, and of one gentleman
in particular pretending to smoke a long pipe. This individual, whose
face was square, whose aspect was frowning, and whose shirt sleeves were
tucked up in an exceedingly free and easy fashion, was the pictorial
embodiment of Mrs. Preedy's deceased husband. While he lived he was "a
worryer, my dear," to quote Mrs. Preedy--and to do the lady justice, he
looked it; but being gone to that bourne from which no lodging-house
keeper ever returns, he immediately took his place in the affections of
his widow as "the dear departed" and a "blessed angel." Thus do we often
find tender appreciation budding into flower even at the moment the
undertaker nails the lid upon the coffin, and Mr. Preedy, when the
breath was out of his body, might (spiritually) have consoled himself
with the reflection that he was not the only person from whose grave
hitherto unknown or unrecognised virtues ascend. The weapons of the dead
warrior, two long and two short pipes, were ranged crosswise on the wall
with mathematical tenderness. When her day's work was over, and Mrs.
Preedy, a lonely widow, sat by herself in the kitchen, she was wont to
look regretfully at those pipes, wishing that he who had smoked them
were alive to puff again as of yore; forgetting, in the charity of her
heart, the crosses and vexations of her married life, and how often she
had called her "blessed angel" a something I decline to mention for
defiling the kitchen with his filthy smoke.
The other faded photographs of men, women, and children, represented
three generations of Mrs. Preedy's relations. They were not a handsome
family; family portraits, as a rule, when the sun is the painter, are
not remarkable for beauty, but these were a worse lot than usual. In
their painful anxiety to exhibit themselves in a favourable light, Mrs.
Preedy's relations had leered and stared to such a degree that it must
have been no easy matter for them to get their features back into their
natural shape after the photographer in the City Road was done with
them. To make things worse, they were in their Sunday clothes, and if
they had just been going into the penitentiary they could not have
looked more unhappy and uncomfortable.
On the mantelpiece, also, were two odd broken lustres which, in the
course of their chequered career, had lost half their crystal drops;
two fat vases, with a neat device of cabbage roses painted on them;
an erratic clock, whose vagaries supplied a healthy irritant to its
mistress; and a weather indicator, in the shape of an architectural
structure representing two rural bowers, in one of which, suspended on
catgut, dwelt an old wooden farmer, and in the other, also suspended on
catgut, a young wooden woman. When the weather was going to be stormy,
the wooden old farmer swung out, and with an assumption of preternatural
wisdom stared vacantly before him; when it was going to be fine,
the wooden young woman made her appearance, with a smirk and a leer
indicative of weak brains. They never appeared together; when one was in
the other was out; and that they were more frequently wrong than right
in their vaticinations concerning the weather (being out when they ought
to have been in, and in when they ought to have been out: which, in an
odd way, has a political signification) did not in the slightest degree
affect the wooden impostors. In this respect they were no worse than
other impostors, not made of wood, who set themselves up as prophets
(announcing, for instance, from time to time, the end of the world),
and exhibit no sense of shame at the continual confounding of their
predictions.
The other furnishings of the room were in keeping. The kitchen range;
the dresser, with its useful array of plates and dishes, and pots and
pans; the sideboard, with its obstinate drawers, which, when they did
allow themselves to be pulled out, gave way with a suddenness which
brought confusion on the operator; the six odd chairs, one of black
horsehair, bits of which peeped up, curious to see what was going
on; one very sad, of green rep, representing faded gentility; two of
wood and two of cane, and all of different breeds; the sofa, with a
treacherous sinking in its inside, indicative of spasms and rickets; the
solid, useful kitchen table, upon which many a pudding had been made,
and many a slice cut from lodger's joints; the what-not of walnut wood,
utterly useless, despite its pretension; the old-fashioned high-backed
piano, with very little music in it, which had been taken for a debt
from two old maiden sisters who had seen better days, and who had
drifted, drifted, till they had drifted to Great Porter Square; the
extraordinary production in water colours, which might have been a ship
on fire, or a cornfield in a fit, or a pig cut open, or a castle on a
sunlit mountain, or the "last-day," or a prairie of wild buffaloes,
executed by one of Mrs. Preedy's nephews, and regarded as a triumph of
art; the two coloured prints, one of the Queen, the other of Prince
Albert; the six odd volumes of books, all tattered and torn, like the
man in the nursery rhyme;--these were the elegant surroundings which set
the stamp upon Mrs. Preedy's social standing in the neighbourhood of
Great Porter Square.
There were four doors in the kitchen--one leading into the passage which
communicated with the upper portion of the house, another affording
an entrance into Mrs. Preedy's bedchamber, another disclosing a dark
cupboard, apparently about four feet square, but which, being used as a
bedroom by the maid-of-all-work, must have been slightly larger, and the
last conducting to the scullery, which opened into the area, through the
iron grating of which in the pavement above, human nature monotonously
presented itself in a panoramic prospect of definite and indefinite
human legs and ankles. Here, also, glimpses of a blissful earthly
paradise were enjoyed by the various maids-of-all-work who came and went
(for none stopped long at No. 118), through the medium of the baker, and
the butcher, and even of the scavenger who called to collect the dust.
Many a flirtation had been carried on in that dark nook. Beneath area
railings, as in the fragrant air of fashionable conservatories, Love is
lord of all.
Mrs. Preedy was alone. Not a soul was in the kitchen but herself. In the
dark cupboard the maid-of-all-work was enjoying, apparently, a sleep as
peaceful and noiseless as the sleep of a flower. It was nearly twelve
o'clock at night, and not a sound was to be heard but Mrs. Preedy's
heavy breathing, as, with many a sigh, she read, in the columns of a
much-thumbed newspaper, an item of news in the shape of a police report,
which must have possessed a singular magnetic power, inasmuch as she had
read it so often that she ought to have known it by heart. Nevertheless,
upon the present occasion, she did not miss a single word. Spectacles
on nose, she followed the report line by line, keeping faithful mark
with her forefinger until she reached the end; and then she commenced it
all over again, and inflicted what was evidently a serious mortification
upon herself. For it was not to be doubted, from the various shades of
inquietude and distress which passed over her face as she proceeded,
that the subject matter was exceedingly distasteful to her. It would
have been the dryest of dry work but for the glass of gin and water from
which Mrs. Preedy occasionally took a sip--moistening her grief, as it
were. The liquid might have been supposed to have some kind of sympathy
for her, exciting her to tears, which flowed the more freely the more
she sipped.
Once, treading very softly, she crept out of the room into the passage,
and looked up the dark staircase. As she did so, she was seized with
a fit of trembling, and was compelled to cling to the balustrade for
support. She crept upstairs to the street door, at which she listened
for a familiar sound. With her hand on the handle she waited until
she heard the measured tread of a policeman; then she opened the door
suddenly. It was a complaining, querulous door, and as she opened it a
jarring sound escaped from its hinges. This sound produced an effect
upon the policeman. He started back in affright, and with one leap
placed himself outside the kerb of the pavement. No cause for reasonable
alarm presenting itself, he looked up, and saw Mrs. Preedy standing upon
the threshhold.
"O, it's you, Mrs. Preedy?" he said, half-questioning.
"Yes," she replied, "it's me."
"You startled me," he said, coming close to her. "As the door opened
it sounded like a smothered cry for 'Help,' and I won't deny that it
startled me."
"I don't wonder at it," said Mrs. Preedy; "sometimes the least sound
sends my 'eart into my mouth."
By one impulse they both looked at the house next door, No. 119 Great
Porter Square. The next moment they turned their heads away from the
house.
"Will you have a glass of gin?" asked Mrs. Preedy.
"I've no objections," replied the guardian of the night.
He stepped inside the passage, and waited while Mrs. Preedy went
downstairs--now with a brisker step--and returned with a glass of
liquor, which he emptied at a gulp. Thus refreshed, he gave the usual
policeman's pull at his belt, and with a "thank 'ee," stepped outside
the street door.
"A fine night," he said.
"Yes," said Mrs. Preedy.
"But dark."
"Yes," acquiesced Mrs. Preedy, with a slight shudder, "but dark. 'As
anythink been discovered?" with another shrinking glance at No. 119.
"Nothing."
"'As nobody been took up?" she asked.
"No," replied the policeman. "One man come to the station last night
and said he done it; but he had the delirium trimmings very bad, and we
found out this morning that he was in Margate at the time. So of course
it couldn't have been him."
"No," said Mrs. Preedy, "but only to think of it--though it's more than
two months ago--sends the cold shivers over me."
"Well, don't you be frightened more than you can help. _I'll_ look after
you."
"Thank you," she said.
"Good night."
"Good night."
She closed the door and crept down to her kitchen, and sat down once
more to a perusal of the newspaper.
There were other papers on the table at which she occasionally glanced,
and also a quarto bill printed in large type, with a coat of arms at the
top, which caused her to shudder when her eyes lighted on it; but this
one paper which she read and re-read in anguish and tribulation of soul,
appeared to enchain her sole attention and sympathy. The quarto bill
was carefully folded, and what was printed thereon was concealed from
view; but its contents were as vivid in Mrs. Preedy's sight as they
would have been if they had been printed in blood.
The truth was, Mrs. Preedy was in trouble. A terrible misfortune had
fallen upon her, and had occasioned a shock to her nervous system from
which she declared she could never recover. But even this affliction
might have been borne (as are many silent griefs from which, not
unfrequently, the possessors contrive to extract a sweet and mournful
consolation), had it not been accompanied by a trouble of a more
practical nature. Mrs. Preedy's means of livelihood were threatened,
and she was haunted by grim visions of the workhouse.
The whole of the upper part of her lodging-house--the dining rooms, the
drawing rooms, the second and third floors, and the garrets or attics,
the boards of which were very close to the roof--were ordinarily let to
lodgers in various ranks and stations of life, none apparently above
the grade of the middle class, and some conspicuously below it. Many
strange tenants had that house accommodated. Some had come "down" in
life; some had been born so low that there was no lower depth for them;
some had risen from the gutters, without adding to their respectability
thereby; some had floated from green lanes on the tide which is ever
flowing from country to city. How beautiful is the glare of lights, seen
from afar! "Come!" they seem to say; "we are waiting for you; we are
shining for you. Why linger in the dark, when, with one bold plunge, you
can walk through enchanted streets? See the waving of the flags! Listen
to the musical murmur of delight and happiness! Come then, simple ones,
and enjoy! It is the young we want, the young and beautiful, in this
city of the wise, the fair, the great!" How bright, even in fragrant
lanes and sweet-smelling meadows, are the dreams of the great city
in the minds of the young! How bewitching the panorama of eager
forms moving this way and that, and crossing each other in restless
animation! Laughter, the sound of silver trumpets, the rustle of silken
dresses, the merry chink of gold, all are there, waiting to be enjoyed.
The low murmur of voices is like the murmur of bees laden with sweet
pleasure. Distance lends enchantment, and the sound of pain, the cry of
agony, the wail and murmur of those who suffer, are not heard; the rags,
the cruelty, the misery, the hollow cheeks and despairing eyes, are not
seen. So the ships are fully freighted, and on the bosom of the tide
innocence sails to shame, and bright hope to disappointment and despair.
But it mattered not to Mrs. Preedy what kind of lives those who lodged
with her followed. In one room a comic singer in low music-halls; in
another a betting man; in another a needle-woman and her child; in
another a Frenchman who lay abed all day and kept out all night; in
another a ballet girl, ignorant and pretty; in another the poor young
"wife" of a rich old city man; and a hundred such, in infinite variety.
Mrs. Preedy had but one positive test of the respectability of her
lodgers--the regular payment of their rent. Never--except, indeed,
during the last few weeks to one person--was a room let in her house
without a deposit. When a male lodger settled his rent to the day, he
was "quite a gentleman;" when a female lodger did the same, she was
"quite a lady." Failing in punctuality, the man was "a low feller," and
the woman "no better than she should be, my dear."
At the present time the house was more than half empty, and Mrs. Preedy,
therefore, was not in an amiable mood. Many times lately had she said
to neighbour and friend that she did not know what would become of
her; and more than once in the first flush of her trouble, she had
been heard to declare that she did not know whether she stood on her
head or her heels. If the declaration were intended to bear a literal
interpretation, it was on the face of it ridiculous, for upon such a
point Mrs. Preedy's knowledge must have been exact; but at an important
period she had persisted in it, and, as the matter was a public one,
her words had found their way into the newspapers in a manner not
agreeable or complimentary to her. Indeed, in accordance with the
new spirit of journalism which is now all the fashion, three or four
smartly-conducted newspapers inserted personal and quizzical leading
articles on the subject, and Mrs. Preedy was not without good-natured
friends who, in a spirit of the greatest kindness, brought these
editorial pleasantries to her notice. She read them in fear and
trembling at first, then with tears and anger, and fright and
indignation. She did not really understand them. All that she did
understand was that the cruel editors were making fun of the misfortunes
of a poor unprotected female. Curious is it to record that the departed
Mr. James Preedy came in for a share of her indignation for being dead
at this particular juncture. He ought to have been alive to protect her.
Had the "blessed angel" been in the flesh, he would have had a warm time
of it; as it was, perhaps, he was having---- But theological problems
had best be set aside.
Mrs. Preedy read and read, and sipped and sipped. Long habit had endowed
her with a strength of resistance to the insidious liquid, and, although
her senses were occasionally clouded, she was never inebriated. She
read so long and sipped so frequently, that presently her eyes began
to close. She nodded and nodded, bringing her nose often in dangerous
proximity with the table, but invariably, at the critical moment, a
violent and spasmodic jerk upwards was the means of saving that feature
from fracture, though at the imminent risk of a dislocation of the
slumberer's neck.
While she nods in happy unconsciousness, an opportunity is afforded of
looking over the newspapers, especially that which so closely concerns
herself, and the quarto bill, printed in large type, the contents of
which she so carefully conceals from sight.