MR. BUTTERBY IN PRIVATE LIFE.
The bustle of the assizes was over; the tramp and tread and hum had
gone out of the streets; the judges, the barristers, and the rest of
the transitory visitors had departed, to hold their assize at the next
county town.
A great deal of the bustle and the hum of another event had also
subsided. It does not linger very long when outward proceedings are
over, and sensational adjuncts have ceased; and Mr. Ollivera, at the
best, had been but a stranger. The grave where he lay had its visitors
still; but his brother and other friends had left for London, carrying
his few effects with them. Nothing remained to tell of the fatal act
of the past Monday evening; but for that grave, it might have seemed
never to have had place in reality.
The Reverend Mr. Ollivera had been firm in refusing to admit belief in
his brother's guilt. He did not pretend to judge how it might have
happened, whether by accident or by some enemy's hand; but he felt
convinced the death could not have been deliberately self-inflicted.
It was an impossibility, he avowed to Mr. Butterby--and he was looked
upon, by that renowned officer, as next door to a lunatic for his
pains. There was no more shadow of a doubt on Mr. Butterby's mind that
the verdict had been in accordance with the facts, than there was on
other people's.
Always excepting Alletha Rye's. She had been silent to the public
since the avowal at the grave; but, in a dispute with Mrs. Jones, had
repeated her assertion and belief. Upon a report of the display coming
to Mrs. Jones's ears, that discreet matron--who certainly erred on the
side of hard, correct, matter-of-fact propriety, if on any--attacked
her sister in no measured terms. There were several years between
them, and Mrs. Jones considered she had a right to do it. Much as Mrs.
Jones had respected Mr. Ollivera in life, she entertained no doubt
whatever on the subject of his death.
"My opinion is, you must have been crazy," came the sharp reprimand.
"Go off after that tramping tail to the grave! I wish I'd seen you
start. A good name is easier lost than regained, Alletha Rye."
"I am not afraid of losing mine," was the calm rejoinder.
"Folks seldom are till they find it gone," said Mrs. Jones, tartly.
"My goodness! not content with trapesing off there in the middle
of the night, you must go and make an exhibition of yourself
besides!--kneeling down on the damp earth to pray, in the face and
eyes of all the people; and then rising to make a proclamation, just
as if you had been the town bellman! Jones says it struck him dumb."
Alletha Rye was silent. Perhaps she had felt vexed since, that the
moment's excitement had led her to the act.
"Who are _you_, that you should put yourself up against the verdict?"
resumed Mrs. Jones. "Are you cleverer and sharper than the jury, and
the coroner, and me, and Mr. Ollivera's friends, and the rest of the
world, all of us put together? There can't be a _doubt_ upon the
point, girl."
"Let it drop," said Alletha, with a shiver.
"Drop! I'd like to see it drop. I'd like the remembrance of it to drop
out of men's minds, but you've took care that shan't be. What on earth
induced you to go and do it?"
"It was a dreadful thing that Mr. Ollivera should lie under the
imputation of having killed himself," came the answer, after a pause.
"Now, you just explain yourself, Alletha Rye. You keep harping on that
same string, about Mr. Ollivera; what grounds have you for it?"
The girl's pale face flushed all over. "None," she presently answered.
"I never said I had grounds. But there's that vivid dream upon me
always. He seemed to reproach me for not having sooner gone into the
room to find him; and I'm sure no self-murderer would do that. They'd
rather lie undiscovered for ever. Had I kept silence," she
passionately added, "I might have become haunted."
Mrs. Jones stared at the speaker with all the fiery fervour of her
dark, dark eyes.
"Haunted! Haunted by what?"
"By Mr. Ollivera's spirit; by remorse. Remorse for not doing as I am
sure he is wishing me to do--clear his memory."
Mrs. Jones lifted her hands in wonder, and for once made no retort.
She began to question in real earnest whether the past matters had not
turned her sister's brain.
Dicky Jones was present during this passage-at-arms, which took place
on the Thursday, after breakfast. He had just been enduring a battery
of tongue on his own score; various sins, great and small, being
placed before him in glaring colours by his wife; not the least
heinous of which was the having arrived home from his pleasure trip at
the unseasonable hour of half after one o'clock in the morning. In
recrimination he had intimated that others of the family could come in
at that hour as well as himself; not to do Alletha Rye harm, for he
was a good-natured man, as people given to plenty of peccadilloes are
apt to be; but to make his own crime appear the less. And then it all
came out; and Mrs. Jones's ears were regaled with Alletha Rye's share
in the doings at the interment.
On this same Thursday, but very much later in the day, Frank Greatorex
and the Reverend Mr. Ollivera departed from the city, having stayed to
collect together the papers and other effects of the deceased
gentleman. Which brings us (the night having passed, and a great
portion of the ensuing day) to the opening of the chapter.
Mr. Butterby sat in his parlour: one of two rooms he occupied on the
ground floor of a private house very near a populous part of the city.
He was not a police-sergeant; he was not an inspector; people did not
know what he was. That he held sway at the police-station, and was a
very frequent visitor to it, everybody saw. But Mr. Butterby had been
so long in the town that speculation though rife enough at first upon
the point, had ceased as to what special relations he might hold
with the law. When any one wanted important assistance, he could,
if he chose, apply to Mr. Butterby, instead of to the regular
police-inspector; and, to the mind of the sanguine inquirer, that
application appeared to constitute a promise of success.
Mr. Butterby's parlour faced the street. Its one sash window,
protected by shutters thrown back in the day, and by green dwarf
venetian blinds and a white roller-blind inside, was not a very large
one. Nevertheless, Mr. Butterby contrived to keep a tolerable lookout
from it on those of his fellow citizens who might chance to pass. He
generally had the white blinds drawn down to meet, within an inch, the
mahogany top of the venetian ones; and from that inch of outlet, Mr.
Butterby, standing up before the window, was fond of taking
observations. It was an unpretending room, with a faded carpet and rug
on the floor; a square table in the middle, a large bureau filled with
papers in a corner; some books in a case opposite, and a stock of
newspapers on the top of that; and a picture over the mantelpiece
representing Eve offering the apple to Adam.
Mr. Butterby sat by the fire at his tea, taking it thoughtfully. He
wore an old green coat with short tails sprouting out from the waist,
not being addicted to fashion in private life, and a red-and-black
check waistcoat. It was Friday evening and nearly dusk. He had been
out on some business all the afternoon but his thoughts were not
fixed on that, though it was of sufficient importance; they rested on
the circumstances attending the death of Mr. Ollivera.
Before the brother of the deceased had quitted the town, he had made
an appointment with Mr. Butterby, and came to it accompanied by Frank
Greatorex; the fly, conveying them to the station, waiting at the
door. The purport of his visit was to impress upon that officer his
full conviction that the death was not a suicide, and to request that,
if anything should arise to confirm his opinion, it might be followed
up.
"He was a good, pure-minded man; he was of calm, clear, practical
mind, of sound good sense; he was fond of his profession, anxious to
excel in it; hopeful, earnest, and without a care in the world," urged
the Reverend Mr. Ollivera, with emotion. "How, sir, I ask you, could
such a man take away his own life?"
Mr. Butterby shook his head. It might be unlikely, he acknowledged;
but it was not impossible.
"I tell you it is impossible," said Mr. Ollivera. "I hold a full,
firm, positive conviction that my brother never died, or could have
died, by his own wilful hands: the certainty of it in my mind is so
clear as to be like a revelation from heaven. Do you know what I did,
sir? I went to the grave at night after he was put into it, and read
the burial service over him."
"I see you doing it," came the unexpected answer of Mr. Butterby. "The
surplice you wore was too long for you and covered your boots."
"It belonged to a taller man than I am--the Reverend Mr. Yorke," the
clergyman explained. "But now, sir, do you suppose I should have dared
to hold that sacred service over a man who had wilfully destroyed
himself?"
"But instead of there being proof that he did not wilfully destroy
himself, there's every proof that he did," argued Mr. Butterby.
"Every apparent proof; I admit that; but I know--I know that the
proofs are in some strange way false; not real."
"The death was real; the pistol was real; the writing on the
note-paper was real."
"I know. I cannot pretend to explain where the explanation may be
hidden; I cannot see how or whence the elucidation shall come. One
suggestion I will make to you, Mr. Butterby it is not clear that no
person got access to the drawing-room after the departure from it of
Mr. Bede Greatorex. At least, to my mind. I only mentioned this
thought," concluded Mr. Ollivera, rising to close the interview; for
he had no time to prolong it. "Should you succeed in gleaning
anything, address a communication to me, to the care of Greatorex and
Greatorex."
"Stop a moment," cried Mr. Butterby, as they were going out. "Who
holds the paper that was found on the table?"
"I do," said Frank Greatorex. "Some of them would have had it
destroyed; Kene and my brother amidst them; they could not bear to
look at it. But I thought my father might like to see it first, and
took it into my own possession."
A smile crossed the lip of the police agent. "Considering the two
gentlemen you mention are in the law, it doesn't say much for their
forethought, to rash at destroying the only proof there may remain to
us of anybody else's being guilty."
"But then, you know, they do not admit that any one else could have
been guilty," replied Frank Greatorex. "At least my brother does not;
and Kene only looks upon it as a possible case of insanity. Do you
want to see the paper? I have it in my pocket."
"Perhaps you'd not mind leaving it with me for a day or two," said Mr.
Butterby. "I'll forward it up safe to you when I've done with it."
Frank Greatorex took the paper from his pocketbook and handed it to
the speaker. It was folded inside an envelope now. Mr. Butterby
received possession of it and attended his guests to the door, where
the fly was waiting.
"You'll have to drive fast, Thompson," he said to the man. And
Thompson, touching his hat to the officer, who was held in some awe by
the city natives, whipped his horse into a canter.
It was upon this interview that Mr. Butterby ruminated as he took his
tea on the Friday evening. In his own opinion it was the most
unreasonable thing in the world, that anybody should throw doubt upon
the verdict. Nothing but perversity. He judged it--and he was a
keen-sighted man--to be fully in accordance with the facts, as given
in evidence. Excepting perhaps in one particular. Had he been on the
jury he should have held out for a verdict of insanity.
"They are but a set of bumble-heads at the best," soliloquised
Mr. Butterby, respectfully alluding to the twelve men who had returned
the verdict, as he took a large bite out of his last piece of
well-buttered pikelet. "Juries for the most part always are: if they
have got any brains they send them a wool-gathering then. Hemming, the
butter-and-cheese man, told me he did say something about insanity;
and he was foreman, too; but the rest of 'em and the coroner wouldn't
listen to it. It don't much matter, for he got the burial rites after
all, poor fellow: but if I'd been them, I should have gave him the
benefit of the doubt."
Stopping in his observations to put the rest of the pikelet in his
mouth, Mr. Butterby went on again as he ate it.
"It might have been that, insanity; but as to the other suspicion,
there's no grounds whatever for it on the face of things at present.
If such is to be raised I shall have to set to work and hunt 'em up.
Create 'em as it were. 'Don't spare money,' says that young clergyman
last night when he sat here; 'your expenses shall be reimbursed to you
with interest.' As if I could make a case out of nothing! I'm not a
French Procureur-Imperial."
Drinking down his tea at a draught, Mr. Butterby tried the teapot,
lest a drop might be left in it still, turning it nearly upside down
in the process. The result was, that the lid came open and a shower of
tea-leaves descended on the tray.
"Bother!" said Mr. Butterby, as he hastily set the teapot in its
place, and went on with his arguments.
"There's something odd about the case, though, straightforward as it
seems; and I've thought so from the first. That girl's dream, for
example, which _she_ says she had; and her conduct at the grave. It
was curious that Dicky Jones should just be looking on at her," added
Mr. Butterby, slightly diverging from the direct line of consecutive
thought: "curious that Dicky should have come up then at all. First,
Alletha Rye vows he didn't do it; and, next, the parson vows it,
Reverend Ollivera. Kene, too--but he points to insanity; and now the
young fellow, Francis Greatorex. Suppose I go over the case again?"
Stretching out his hand, Mr. Butterby pulled the bell-rope--an
old-fashioned twisted blue cord with a handle at the end; and a young
servant came in.
"Shut the shutters," said he.
While this was in process, he took two candles from the mantelpiece,
and lighted them. The girl went away with the tea-tray. He then
unlocked his bureau, and from one of its pigeon-holes brought forth a
few papers, memoranda, and the like, which he studied in silence, one
after the other.
"The parson's right," he began presently; "if there is a loophole it's
where he said--that somebody got into the room after the departure of
Mr. Greatorex. Let's sum the points up."
Drawing his chair close to the table on which the papers lay, Mr.
Butterby began to tell the case through, striking his two forefingers
alternately on the table's edge as each point came flowing from his
tongue. Not that "flowing" is precisely the best word to apply, for
his speech was thoughtfully slow, and the words dropped with
hesitation.
"John Ollivera, counsel-at-law. He comes in on the Saturday with the
other barristers, ready for the 'sizes. Has a cause or two coming on
at 'em, in which he expects to shine. Goes to former lodgings at
Jones's, and shows himself as full of sense and sanity as usual; and
he'd got his share of both. Spends Saturday evening at his friend's,
Mrs. Joliffe's, the colonel's widow; is sweet, Mrs. Jones thinks, on
one of the young ladies; thought so when he was down last October.
Gets home at ten like a decent man, works at his papers till twelve,
and goes to bed."
Mr. Butterby made a pause here, both his fingers resting on the table.
Giving a nod, as if his reflections were satisfactory, he lifted his
hands and began again.
"Sunday. Attends public worship and takes the sacrament. _That's_ not
like the act of one who knows he is on the eve of a bad deed. Attends
again after breakfast, with the judges, and hears the sheriff's
chaplain preach. (And it was not a bad sermon, as sermons go,"
critically pronounced Mr. Butterby in a parenthesis). "Attends again
in the afternoon to hear the anthem, the Miss Joliffes with him. Dines
at Jones's at five, spends evening at Joliffes'. Home early, and to
bed."
Once more the hands were lifted. Once more their owner paused in
thought. He gave two nods this time, and resumed.
"Monday. Up before eight. Has his breakfast (bacon and eggs), and goes
to the Nisi Prius Court. Stays there till past three in the afternoon,
tells Kene he must go out of court to keep an appointment that wasn't
a particularly pleasant one, and goes out. Arrives at Jones's at
half-past four; passes Mrs. Jones in that there small back hall of
theirs; she tells him he looks tired; answers that he _is_ tired and
has got a headache; court was close. Goes up to his sitting-room and
gets his papers about; (papers found afterwards, on examination, to
relate to the cause coming on on Tuesday morning). Girl takes up his
dinner; he eats it, gets to his papers again, and she fetches things
away. Rings for his lamp early, quarter-past six may be, nearly
daylight still; while girl puts it on table, draws down blinds himself
as if in a hurry to be at work again. Close upon this Mr. Bede
Greatorex calls, (good firm that, Greatorex and Greatorex,"
interspersed Mr. Butterby, with professional candour). "Bede Greatorex
has come down direct from London (sent by old Greatorex) to confer
with Ollivera on the Tuesday's cause. Stays with him more than an
hour. Makes an appointment with him for Tuesday morning. Jones's
nephew, going upstairs at the time, hears them making it, and shows
Mr. Bede Greatorex out. Might be half-past seven then, or two or three
minutes over it; call it half-past. Ollivera never seen again alive.
Found dead next morning in arm-chair; pistol fallen from right hand,
shot penetrated heart. Same chair he had been sitting in when at his
papers, but drawn aside now at corner of table. Alletha Rye finds him.
Tells a cock-and-bull of having been frightened by a dream. Dreamt he
was in the sitting-room dead, and goes to see (she says) that he was
not there, dead. Finds him there dead, however, just as (she says) she
saw him in her dream. Servant rushes out for doctor, meets me, and I
am the first in the room. Doctor comes, Hurst; Kene comes, Jones's
nephew fetching him; then Kene fetches Bede Greatorex. Doctor says
death must have took place previous evening not later than eight
o'clock. Mrs. Jones says lamp couldn't have burnt much more than an
hour: is positive it didn't exceed an hour and a half; but she's one
of the positive ones at all times, and women's judgment is fallible.
Now then, let's stop."
Mr. Butterby put his hands one over the other, and looked down upon
them, pausing before he spoke again.
"It draws the space into an uncommon narrow nutshell. When Bede
Greatorex leaves at half-past seven, Ollivera is alive and well--as he
and Jones's nephew both testify to--and, according to the evidence of
the surgeon, and the negative testimony of the oil in the lamp, he is
dead by eight. If he did not draw the pistol on himself, somebody came
in and shot him.
"Did he draw it on himself? I say Yes. Coroner and jury say Yes. The
public say Yes. Alletha Rye and the Reverend Ollivera say No. If we
are all wrong--and I don't say but that there's just a loophole of
possibility of it--and them two are right, why then it was murder. And
done with uncommon craftiness. Let's look at the writing.
"Those high-class lawyers are not good for much in criminal cases,
can't see an inch beyond their noses; they don't practise at the Old
Bailey, they don't," remarked Mr. Butterby, as he took from the papers
before him the unfinished note found on Mr. Ollivera's table, the loan
of which he had begged from Frank Greatorex. "The idea of their
proposing to destroy this, because 'they couldn't bear to look at it!'
Kene, too; and Bede Greatorex! _they_ might have known better. _I'll_
take care of it now."
Holding it close to one of the candles, the detective scanned it long
and intently, comparing the concluding words, uneven, blotted, as if
written with an agitated hand, with the plain collected characters of
the lines that were undoubtedly Mr. Ollivera's. When he did arrive at
a conclusion it was a summary one, and he put down the paper with an
emphatic thump.
"May I be shot myself if I believe the two writings _is_ by the same
hand!"
Mr. Butterby's surprise may plead excuse for his grammar. He had
never, until this moment, doubted that the writing was all done by one
person.
"I'll show this to an expert. People don't write the same at all
times; they'll make their capitals quite different in the same day, as
anybody with any experience knows. But they don't often make their
small letters different--neither do men study to alter their usual
formation of letters when about to shoot themselves; the pen does its
work then, spontaneous; naturally. These small letters are different,
several of them, the _r_, the _p_, the _e_, the _o_, the _d_; all them
are as opposite as light and dark, and I _don't_ think the last was
written by Mr. Ollivera."
It was a grave conclusion to come to; partially startling even him,
who was too much at home with crime and criminals to be startled
easily.
"Let's assume that it is so for a bit, and see how it works that way,"
resumed the officer. "We've all been mistaken, let's say; Ollivera,
did not shoot himself, someone goes in and shoots him. Was it man or
woman; was it an inmate of the house, or not an inmate? How came it to
be done? what was the leading cause? Was the pistol (lying convenient
on the table) took up incidental in the course of talking and fired by
misadventure?--Or did they get to quarrelling and the other shot him
of malice?--Or was it a planned, deliberate murder, one stealing in to
do it in cold blood? Halt a bit here, Jonas Butterby. The first--done
in misadventure? No: if any honest man had so shot another, he'd be
the first to run out and get a doctor to him. No. Disposed of. The
second--done in malice during a quarrel? Yes; might have been. The
third--done in planned deliberation? That would be the most likely of
all, but for the fact (very curious fact in the supposition) of the
pistol's having been Mr. Ollivera's, and put (so to say) ready there
to hand. Looking at it in either of these two views, there's mystery.
The last in regard to the point now mentioned; the other in regard to
the secrecy with which the intruder must have got in. If that dratted
girl had been at her post indoors, as she ought to have been, with the
chain of the door up, it might never have happened," concluded Mr.
Butterby, with acrimony.
"Between half-past seven and eight? Needn't look much before or much
beyond that hour. Girl says nobody went into the house at all, except
Jones's nephew and Jones's sister-in-law. Jones's nephew did not stay;
he got his book and went off again at half-past seven, close on the
heels of Bede Greatorex, Mr. Ollivera being then alive. Presently,
nearer eight, Alletha Rye goes in, for a pattern, she says, and she
stays upstairs, according to the girl's statement, a quarter of an
hour."
Mr. Butterby came to a sudden pause. He faced the fire now, and sat
staring into it as if he were searching for what he could not see.
"It does not take a quarter of an hour to get a pattern. _I_ should
say not. And there was her queer dream, too. Leastways, the queer
assertion that she had a dream. Dreams, indeed!--moonshine. Did she
invent that dream as an excuse for having gone into the room to find
him? And then look at her persistence from the first that it was not a
suicide! And her queer state of mind and manners since! Dicky Jones
told me last night when I met him by the hop-market, that she says
she's haunted by Mr. Ollivera's spirit. Why should she be, I wonder? I
mean, why should she fancy it? It's odd; very odd. The young woman, up
to now, has always shown out sensible, in the short while this city
has known her.
"That Godfrey Pitman," resumed the speaker. "The way that man's name
got brought up by the servant-girl was sudden. I should like to know
who he is, and what his business might have been. He was in hiding;
that's what he was. Stopping indoors for a cold and relaxed throat! No
doubt! But it does not follow that because he might have been in some
trouble of his own, he had anything to do with the other business;
and, in fact, he couldn't have had, leaving by the five o'clock train
for Birmingham. So we'll dismiss _him_.
"And now for the result?" concluded Mr. Butterby, with great
deliberation. "The result is that I feel inclined to think the young
parson may be right in saying it was not a suicide. What it _was_, I
can't yet make my mind up to give an opinion upon. Suppose I inquire
into things a bit in a quiet manner?--and, to begin with, I'll make a
friendly call on Dicky Jones and madam. She won't answer anything that
it does not please her to, and it never pleases her to be questioned;
on the other hand, what she does choose to say is to be relied upon,
for she'd not tell a lie to save herself from hanging. As to
Dicky--with that long tongue of his, he can be pumped dry."
Mr. Butterby locked up his papers, changed his ornamental coat for a
black one, flattened down the coal on his fire, blew out the candles,
took his hat, and went away.