THE UNDERTAKER’S EVIDENCE.
‘My father,’ cried Laura, when Mr. Leopold had taken his departure, and
she and her husband were left alone, ‘my father guilty of this cruel
murder! A crime of the vilest kind, without a shadow of excuse. And to
think that this man’s blood flows in my veins, that your wife is the
daughter of a murderer. Oh, John, it is too terrible! You must hate me.
You must shrink from me with loathing.’
‘Dear love, if you had descended from a long line of criminals, you
would still be to me what you have been from the first hour I knew
you, the purest, the dearest, the loveliest, the best of women.
But as to this scoundrel Desrolles, who imposed on your youth and
inexperience--who stole into your benefactor’s gardens like a thief,
seeking only gain--who extorted from your generous young heart a pity
he did not deserve, and robbed you of your money,--I no more believe
that he is your father than that he is mine. While his claim upon you
meant no more than an annuity which it cost us no sacrifice to give, I
was too careless to trouble myself about his credentials. But now that
he stands revealed as the murderer of that unfortunate woman, it is our
business to explode his specious tale. Will you help to do this, Laura?
I can do nothing but advise, while I am tied hand and foot in this
wretched place.’
‘I will do anything, dearest, anything to prove that this hateful man
is not the father I lived with when I was a little child. Only tell me
what I ought to do.’
‘The first thing to be done is to go down to Chiswick, and make
inquiries there. Do you think you could find the house in which you
lived, supposing that it is still standing?’
‘I think I could. It was in a very dull, out-of-the-way place. I can
just remember that. It was called Ivy Cottage, and it was in a lane
where there was never anything to be seen from the windows.’
‘Very well, darling, what you have to do is to go down to Chiswick
with Sampson--we can afford to trust him with all our secrets, for
he’s as true as steel--see if you can find the particular Ivy Cottage
we want,--I dare say there are half-a-dozen Ivy Cottages in Chiswick,
all looking out upon nothing particular,--and then discover all you
can about your father’s residence in that house, and how and when he
quitted it.’
‘I will go to-day, John. Why should Mr. Sampson go with me? I am not
afraid of going alone.’
‘No, dear, I could not bear that. You must have our good Sampson to
take care of you. He is as sharp as a needle, and, in a country where
he is not tongue-tied, will be very useful. He will be here in a few
minutes, and then you and he can start for Chiswick as soon as you
like.’
Half-an-hour later, Laura and Mr. Sampson were seated in a railway
carriage on their way to Chiswick; and in less than an hour from the
time she left Clerkenwell, Laura was looking wonderingly at the lanes
with which her infancy had been familiar.
There had been great changes, and she wandered about for a long time,
unable to recognise a single feature in the scene, except always the
river, which looked at her through the gray mistiness of a winter
afternoon, like an old friend. Terraces had been built; villas of
startling newness stared her in the face in every direction. Where erst
had been a rustic lane there was all the teeming life of a factory.
‘Surely this cannot be Chiswick!’ exclaimed Laura.
Yes, there was the good old church, looking sober, gray, and rustic
as of old; and here was the village, but little changed. Laura and
her companion rambled on till they left the new terraces and stuccoed
villas behind them, and came at last to a bit of the ancient world,
quiet, dull, lonely, as if it had been left forgotten on the bank of
the swift-rolling river of Time.
‘It must have been hereabouts we lived,’ said Laura.
It was a very dreary lane. There were half-a-dozen scattered
houses, some of which had a blind look, presenting a blank wall,
pierced by an odd window and a door, to the passer-by. These were
the more aristocratic habitations, and had garden fronts looking
the other way. A little further on the explorers came to a square,
uncompromising-looking cottage, with a green door, a bright brass
knocker, and five prim windows looking into the lane. It was a cottage
that must have looked exactly the same a hundred and twenty years ago,
when Hogarth was living and working hard by.
‘That is the house we lived in!’ cried Laura. ‘Yes, I am sure of it. I
remember those hard-looking windows, staring straight into the lane.
I used to envy the children in the house further on, because they had
a garden--only a little bit of garden--but just enough for flowers to
grow in. There was only a stone yard, with a pump in it, at the back of
our house, and not a single flower.’
‘Had you the whole house, do you think?’ asked Sampson.
‘I am sure we had not, because we were so afraid to take liberties
in it. I remember my poor mother often telling me to be very quiet,
because Miss Somebody--I haven’t the faintest recollection of her
name--was very particular. I was dreadfully afraid of Miss Somebody.
She was tall, and straight, and old, and she always wore a black gown
and a black cap. I would not for the world have done anything to offend
her. She kept the house very clean--too clean, I’ve heard my father
say, for she was always about the stairs and passages, on her knees,
with a pail beside her. I have often narrowly escaped tumbling into
that pail.’
‘I wonder if she’s alive still,’ said Sampson; ‘the house looks as
if it was in the occupation of a maiden lady. I dare say my sister’s
house will look like that, when she has set up housekeeping on her own
account.’
He lifted the brass knocker and gave a loudish knock. The door was
opened almost immediately by a puffy widow, who had a chubby boy of
three or four years old clinging to her skirts. The widow was very
civil, and willing to answer any questions that might be asked her, but
she could not give them the information they wanted. She begged them to
come into her parlour, and she was profuse in her offer of chairs; but
she was not the Miss Somebody whom Laura remembered.
That stern damsel, whose name was Fry, after occupying Ivy Cottage
with honour to herself and credit to the parish for eight-and-thirty
years, had been called to her forefathers just one little year ago,
and was taking her rest, after an industrious career, in the quiet
old churchyard where the great English painter and satirist lies. She
had left no record of a long line of lodgers, and the amiable widow
who had taken Ivy Cottage immediately after Miss Fry’s death was not
even furnished with any traditions about the people who had lived
and died in the rooms now hers. She could only reiterate that Miss
Fry had been a most respectable lady, that she had paid her way, and
left the cottage in good repair, and she hoped that she, Mrs. Pew,
would continue to deserve those favours which the public had lavishly
bestowed upon her predecessor. If the lady and gentleman should hear
of any party wanting quiet lodgings in a rural neighbourhood, within
a quarter of an hour’s walk of the station, Mrs. Pew would consider
it a great kindness if they would name her to the party in question.
She would have a parlour, with bedroom over, vacant on the following
Saturday.
Sampson promised to carry the fact in his mind. Laura thanked the widow
for her civility, and gave the chubby boy half-a-crown, a gift which
was much appreciated by the mother, who impounded it directly the door
was shut.
‘Johnny shall have twopence to go and buy brandy snaps, he shall,’
cried the matron, when her boy set up a howl at this blatant theft; and
the prospect of that immediate and sensual gratification pacified the
child.
‘Failure number one,’ said Sampson, when they were out in the lane.
‘What are we to do next?’
Laura had not the least idea. She felt how helpless she would have been
without the kindly little solicitor; and how wise it had been of her
husband to insist upon Mr. Sampson’s companionship.
‘We are not going to be flummoxed--excuse the vulgarity of the
expression--quite so easily,’ said Sampson. ‘Everybody can’t be dead
within the last seventeen years. Why, seventeen years is nothing to a
middle-aged man. He scarcely feels himself any older for the lapse of
seventeen years; there are a few gray hairs in his whiskers, perhaps,
and his waistcoats are a trifle bigger round the waist, and that’s
all. There must be somebody in this place who can remember your father.
Let me think it out a bit. We want to know if a certain gentleman
who was supposed by old Mr. Treverton to have died here, did really
die, or whether he recovered and left the place, as a certain party
asserts. All the probabilities are in favour of the one fact; and we
have only the word of a very doubtful character for the other. Let me
see, now, Mrs. Treverton, where shall we make our next inquiry? At the
doctor’s? Well, you see, there are a dozen doctors in such a place as
this, I dare say. At the undertaker’s? Yes, that’s it. Undertakers are
long-lived men. We’ll look in upon the oldest established undertaker
in the village. If your father died in this place, somebody must have
buried him, and the record of his funeral will be in the undertaker’s
books. But before I begin this business, which may be rather tedious, I
should like to put you into a train, and send you back to London, Mrs.
Treverton. A cab will take you from the station to your lodgings. You
are looking pale and tired.’
‘No, no,’ said Laura eagerly, ‘I am not tired. I had much rather stay.
Don’t think of me. I have no sense of fatigue.’
Sampson shook his head dubiously, but gave way. They went to the
village, and after making sundry inquiries at the post-office, Mr.
Sampson and his companion repaired to a quiet, old-fashioned looking
shop, in whose dingy window appeared the symbols of the gloomy trade
conducted within.
Here they found an old man, who emerged from a workshop in the rear,
bringing with him the aromatic odour of elm shavings.
‘Come,’ said Sampson cheerily, ‘you’re old enough to remember seventeen
years ago. You look like an old inhabitant.’
‘I can remember sixty years ago as well as I can remember yesterday,’
answered the man, ‘and I shall have lived in this house sixty-nine
years come July.’
‘You’re the man for us,’ said Sampson. ‘I want you to look up your
books for the year 1856, and tell me if you buried Mr. Malcolm, of Ivy
Cottage, Markham Lane. You buried Mrs. Malcolm first, you know, and the
husband soon followed her. It was a very quiet funeral.’
The undertaker scratched his head thoughtfully, and seemed to retire
into the shadow-land of departed years. He ruminated for some minutes.
‘I can find out all about it in my ledger,’ he said, ‘but I’ve a pretty
good memory. I don’t like to feel dependent upon books. Ivy Cottage?
That was Miss Fry’s house. I buried her a year ago. A very pretty
funeral, everything suitable, and in harmony with the old lady’s
character. Some of our oldest tradespeople followed. It was quite a
creditable thing.’
Sampson waited hopefully while the old man pondered upon past triumphs
in the undertaking line.
‘Let me see, now,’ he said musingly. ‘Ivy Cottage. I’ve done a good
bit of business for Ivy Cottage within the last thirty years. I’ve
buried--there--I should say a round dozen of Miss Fry’s tenants. They
was mostly elderly folks, with small annuities, who came to Chiswick to
finish up their lives; as a quiet old-fashioned place, you see, where
they was in nobody’s way. First and last I should say I’ve turned out
a round dozen from Ivy Cottage. It was a satisfaction to do things
nicely for Miss Fry herself, at the wind up. She’d been a good friend
to me, and she wasn’t like the doctors, you know. I couldn’t offer her
a commission. Malcolm! Malcolm, husband and wife, I ought to remember
that! Yes, I’ve got it! a sweet young lady, seven-and-twenty at the
most, and the husband drooped and died soon afterwards. I remember.
She had a very plain funeral, poor dear, for there didn’t seem to be
much money, and the husband was the only mourner. We buried him in
rather superior style, I recollect; for an old friend had turned up at
the last, and there was enough money to pay all the little debts and
do things very nicely, in a quiet way, for the poor gentleman. There
were only two mourners in his case, the doctor and an elderly lady
from London, who followed in her own carriage. I remember the lady,
because she called upon me directly after the funeral, and asked me if
I was paid, or sure of being paid, as the deceased was her nephew, and
she would be willing to perform this last act of kindness for him. I
thought it a very graceful thing for the lady to do.’
‘Did she give you her address?’ asked Sampson.
‘I’ve a notion that she left her card, and that I copied the address
into my book. It would be a likely thing for me to do, for I’m very
methodical in my ways; and with a party of that age there’s always an
interest. She might come to want me herself soon, and might bear it in
mind on her death-bed. Well, now I’ve called upon my memory, I’ll look
at my ledger.’
He went to a cupboard in a corner of the shop, and took down a volume
from a row of tall, narrow books, a series which comprised ‘the story
of his life from year to year.’
‘Yes,’ he said, after turning over a good many leaves, ‘here it is.
Mrs. Malcolm, pine, covered black cloth, black nails,----’
‘That’ll do,’ interrupted Sampson, seeing Laura’s distressed look at
these details; ‘now we want Mr. Malcolm.’
‘Here he is, three months later. Stephen Malcolm, Esq., polished oak,
brass handles,--a very superior article, I remember.’
‘There can be no mistake, I suppose, in an entry of that kind,’ asked
Sampson.
‘Mistake!’ cried the undertaker, with an offended air. ‘If you can find
a false entry in my books, I’ll forfeit five per cent. upon ten years’
profits.’
‘There can be no doubt, then, that Mr. Stephen Malcolm died at Ivy
Cottage, and that you conducted his funeral?’
‘Not the least doubt.’
‘Very well. If you will get me a certified copy of the entry of his
death in the parish register, I shall be happy to recompense you
for your trouble. The document is required for a little bit of law
business. Is the doctor who attended Mr. Malcolm still living?’
‘No. It was old Dr. Dewsnipp. He’s dead. But young Dewsnipp is alive,
and in practice here. He can give you any information you want, I dare
say.’
‘Thanks. I think if you get me the copy of the register, that will
be sufficient. Oh, by the way, you may as well find the old lady’s
address.’
‘Ah, to be sure. As you are interested in the family, you may like
to have it; though I dare say the old lady has gone to her long home
before now. Some London firm had the job, no doubt. London firms
are so pushing, and they contrive to stand so well with the medical
profession.’
The address was found--Mrs. Malcolm, 97, Russell Square--and copied by
Mr. Sampson, who thanked the old man for his courtesy, and gave him his
card, with the Midland Hotel address added in pencil. The short winter
day was now closing in, and Sampson felt anxious to get Mrs. Treverton
home.
‘I might have gone to the parish register in the first instance,’ he
said, when they had left the undertaker’s, ‘but I thought we should get
more information out of an old inhabitant, and so we have, for we’ve
heard of this old lady in Russell Square.’
‘Yes, I remember spending a week at her house,’ said Laura. ‘How long
ago it all seems! Like the memory of another life.’
‘Lor’, yes,’ said Sampson; ‘I remember when I was a little chap, at Dr.
Prossford’s grammar school, playing chuck-farthing. I’ve often looked
back and wondered to think that little chap, in a tight jacket and
short trousers, was an early edition of me.’
‘You think the later editions have been improvements on that,’ said
Laura, smiling.
She was able to smile now. A heavy load had been suddenly lifted from
her mind. What infinite relief it was to know that her father had never
been the pitiful trickster--the crawling pensioner upon a woman’s
bounty--that she had been taught to think him. Her heart was full of
gratitude to heaven for this discovery--so easily made, and yet of such
immeasurable value.
‘Who can that man be?’ she asked herself. ‘He must have been a friend
of my father’s, in close companionship with him, or he would hardly
have become possessed of my mother’s miniature, and of those letters
and papers.’
She determined to go without delay to the house in Russell Square, in
the hope--at best but a faint hope--of finding the old lady in black
satin still among the living, and not represented by an entry in the
ledger of some West-end undertaking firm, or by a number in the dismal
catalogue of a suburban cemetery.