MADAME AND THE BUTLER
FEBRUARY 17TH
_Ah! Quel monde!_ I have just had another strange experience.
It came about in this manner. Soon after the departure of Madame Houget I
found myself again in the _bureaux_, and one morning was interviewed by a
lady named Wentworth, tall, graceful and _chic_. She had luxuriant fair
hair, and I could see in a moment that she was used to the services of an
experienced maid.
As we sat together in the small private room of the agency, she looked me
straight in the face for a few moments before speaking, and at last said—
“I have seen your excellent recommendations, Mariette, and I think you
will suit me. But the fact is I am in want of a maid in whom I can repose
the utmost confidence. I want a person whom I can trust with a secret in
the certainty that I shall not be betrayed.”
“Any confidence Madame reposes in me I shall respect,” I replied
demurely, scenting a fresh scandal.
“Well,” she said, after a few moments’ hesitation, “I was told of you by
one of your late mistresses, who held you in high esteem, Mariette, and I
hope that if I engage you, you will serve me equally well.”
“I always endeavour, Madame, to serve my ladies loyally,” I replied. “A
secret with me is always a secret from Monsieur.”
“Ah! Then we understand each other!” she exclaimed, apparently much
relieved. “You will become my maid and my confidante as well.”
“I shall be delighted, Madame,” I said. “Madame lives in the country, I
presume?”
“You are very shrewd, Mariette!” she exclaimed, with a laugh. “How did
you know that?”
I shrugged my shoulders, replying—
“There are little things which a _femme-de-chambre_ is quick to notice.”
“Ah! I see you are a clever girl—yes, you will suit me admirably. Now I
wish to confide in you—remember what I am about to say is strictly in
secret.”
I placed my finger upon my lips.
“Well, the facts are briefly these,” she said. “I am the wife of the
owner of Elmhurst Court, in Sussex, with about ten thousand acres. In
residence there are my husband, and daughter aged ten, the governess,
and the servants. Six months ago, while dressing, I found a curious
mark upon my arm, but took no notice of it. Soon afterwards, however, I
developed diphtheria and very nearly lost my life. My doctors could not
account for it in any way. Both the water and drainage were perfectly
satisfactory, and mine was the only case in the district. My recovery
was slow, and only three weeks ago I returned from Italy, where I have
been spending my convalescence. Strangely enough, however, on the morning
before last I found another mark upon my arm exactly similar to that
prior to my serious illness. It is a mystery how it was inflicted. Just
look at it, and see what you think.”
Whereupon she took off her coat, rolled up the sleeve of her blouse,
and showed me upon her right arm just below the vaccination marks two
curious scarlet spots about half-an-inch apart, just like the marks of a
serpent’s tooth.
“It looks like a snake-bite, doesn’t it?” she said, to which I responded
in the affirmative.
I examined the surface of the skin. There were two distinct punctures,
slightly inflamed, but too clearly done and too small to have been
inflicted by a reptile’s tooth.
“_Bon Dieu!_ They probably have been done by some insect—a spider, for
instance,” I remarked. Yet I certainly had never seen such a mark upon
human flesh before. “It has been proved, I believe, Madame, that certain
insects can convey the microbe of diphtheria. Did you tell your doctor of
it?”
“I did, but he only laughed at me. Nevertheless, I feel much alarmed,
now that I find a second puncture upon my arm in nearly exactly the same
place as the first.”
I admitted that there was something uncanny about the occurrence. Madame,
in reply to my questions, could not recollect feeling any pain, hence
I could but conclude that it was inflicted while she was sleeping. She
seemed unnerved, fearing that she was about to be again stricken down by
the deadly malady, in which case, weakened as she was, she would no doubt
succumb.
“I have a habit of locking my door at night, therefore no intruder could
enter my room. Hence it must be, as you suggest, Mariette, due to some
poisonous insect. The curious point of it, however, is that I do not
sleep in the same room as I did when I noticed the first puncture.”
“Madame feels no ill effects?” I asked.
“None—as yet,” she replied seriously.
“It may be a mere coincidence,” I said in an endeavour to improve her
despondent frame of mind.
But she shook her head, declaring that the bacilli of some deadly disease
had been injected into her blood by an unknown agency.
“Then do you suspect an attempt upon your life?” I asked.
“Well, that is just what I want to know, Mariette,” she said. “What do
you think?”
“At present, the affair seems distinctly mysterious,” I replied. “Is
there any reason why your life should be taken? Have you any enemy
capable of such an action?”
She shifted uneasily in her chair, and was silent for a few moments.
Then, not without some reluctance, she replied—
“Well—the fact is, I do suspect an enemy.”
“Whom?”
“I do not wish to say,” she responded evasively.
“Some one who would profit by your death—eh?”
“No. That’s the curious discrepancy in my suspicion. The person would not
profit, but lose considerably, by my decease.”
“Is it a relative?”
“Excuse me, Mariette, if I decline to answer.”
“Of course, Madame,” I said, “your private affairs are no concern
of mine. I do not ask for the sake of prying, but merely to obtain
information to aid me in forming a conclusion. What do you wish me to do?”
In reply she urged me to go with her down to Elmhurst and look at the
room in which she slept, a course to which I consented.
The remainder of that day I spent strolling in the London streets. The
mystery, as it stood, was a somewhat curious one, and yet, after all,
the marks might have easily been inflicted by an insect. No. If my new
mistress was in such fear of another attack of some fell disease, why did
she not name the person of whom she held suspicion?
Did she suspect her own husband? He certainly would lose by her decease,
as she explained to me.
If she suspected her husband she certainly would not tell me. Therefore,
I decided that such was the fact.
_Bien!_ Next morning I met her at Victoria Station, and we travelled
together down to Crawley, whence the car took us another six miles to
Elmhurst, a magnificent old Elizabethan house in the centre of a fine
park—one of the finest places in the county.
Captain Wentworth, her husband, did not impress me favourably. He was a
short, thick-set, ferret-eyed man, with a thin nose, a hard mouth, and a
line between his eyes indicative of bad temper.
Yet he was quite affable, and, welcoming me, expressed a hope that I
should remain with them for a long time.
In the afternoon I took a tour round the house, which I found even
finer and more full of valuable works of art than I had imagined.
_Magnifique!_ The house had been the gift of Queen Elizabeth to the first
Lord Elmhurst, one of her favourites, and had been in the family for many
generations until purchased by Captain Wentworth ten years before.
The room in which my mistress had been sleeping when she received the
first mark upon her arm was in the east, or modern wing of the house. I
examined it thoroughly, but could detect nothing suspicious. There was
only one door, and upon that was a patent lock which showed no sign of
ever having been tampered with.
The room in which she was at present sleeping was some distance away,
nearly in the centre of the house. It was a large, pleasant apartment,
overlooking the broad park, and had recently been modernised, with a
dressing-room and bath-room adjoining. Like the other, both doors of the
bedroom bore patent locks of the best pattern, a fact which caused me
some reflection, for people do not usually put street-door latches upon
their bedroom doors.
This, however, was quickly accounted for by a remark of my mistress’s.
“You see those are patent locks, Mariette,” she said. “I had them put
on because, as you notice, my safe is here,” and she pointed to a small
green-painted safe in a corner. “I keep my jewels there, and I think it
best to put good locks on the doors.”
“Whatever locks Madame puts on would not protect the safe from
professional safe-breakers,” I remarked, with a smile.
“Well, anyhow,” she said, “they would prevent any one entering here while
I am sleeping, wouldn’t they?”
I shook my head dubiously.
“If you left the keys in, they could be opened from the outside, while if
the keys were out, they might be opened with duplicates. I see there are
no bolts,” I remarked.
“No. I’ll have some put on to-day,” she said. “I had never thought of
that.”
Then presently she called the butler Ford, and ordered some one to go
down to the village and fetch the carpenter.
_Enfin_, I had been at Elmhurst four days, idling about, with my eyes
very much open. I passed all the servants in review, one by one, but
there was no suspicion. Indeed, what suspicion could there be, if, as was
so feasible, the punctures had been inflicted by an insect?
In reply to my questions while I was dressing Madame’s hair one morning,
she said that she had told her husband nothing of the fresh mark upon her
arm, fearing to unduly alarm him. He was not strong, she said, and the
doctor always feared a shock because of his weak heart.
His doctor, I learnt, was named Emmott, of Cavendish Square. Therefore
there was no suspicion that he had had any hand in this suspected subtle
attempt at assassination.
_Extraordinaire!_ All my surmises were based upon such flimsy evidence
that I began to laugh at my own theories as utterly unsound. There was,
as a matter of fact, no actual evidence that the first puncture had
anything to do with the subsequent attack of diphtheria. It was mere
surmise.
This I pointed out to Madame, but she only shook her head, as though
certain of the origin of the disease.
Could it be that Madame knew more than she had explained to me? Could
it be that she had felt the sharp touch of a hypodermic needle? She had
admitted her suspicions of some person she refused to name, thus showing
that she was, at least in some things, a secretive woman.
In the course of careful inquiries I made during the week I was Madame’s
_femme-de-chambre_, I discovered that Mrs. Wentworth was of an extremely
quarrelsome turn of mind, that disagreements between she and her husband
were frequent—so much so that Miss Wylde, the governess, had given notice
to leave. I learnt, too, that Mrs. Wentworth was “horrible jealous” of
her husband, and further, that she had probably some cause. It seemed
that Miss Wylde’s predecessor had been a young French lady of peculiar
attractiveness.
“And,” added my informant, the rustic under-gardener, with a laugh, “the
captain is a good judge of a pretty face.”
“Where is this Mademoiselle now?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. She got sent out at a moment’s notice by the
captain’s wife. A bit ’ard on ’er, I think, for she was very nice, was
Mademoiselle.”
“What was her name?”
“Perrin—Lucie Perrin. She went back to France, so I ’eard.”
“How long ago did that happen?”
“Oh, perhaps eight months. It wor’ just before Lady Day, I remember. And
the most funny part of it all is that the disagreement arose out of a
cake.”
“A cake!” I ejaculated. “How?”
“Well, according to what Mr. Ford, the butler told me, it appears that
when the birthday cake was carved, Mademoiselle found in her portion a
splendid diamond ring—and Mrs. Wentworth accused her husband of placing
it there. That was the commencement of the jealousy.”
“Were there no other presents in the cake?”
“None. The captain denied that he put in the ring, and there the affair
remained a mystery—only Mademoiselle had the ring, and wore it.”
Madame had told me nothing of this, though I gave her every opportunity
to do so. Therefore I became suspicious that if there had been any foul
play, it was in this direction that I ought to seek the motive.
I left Elmhurst, with Madame’s connivance, at the end of the week, but I
did not at once leave the neighbourhood. Inquiries I subsequently made,
however, negatived the idea that Mrs. Wentworth’s suspicions had any
foundation, for it seemed that a certain young man named Alfred Ackland,
the son of a neighbouring squire, had become deeply attached to Lucie
Perrin, and that the pair had often been seen by the villagers walking
together in places where they had believed themselves unobserved.
_Diable!_ I suppose I had returned to London about ten days and was still
much puzzled regarding the affair, when one day I received a telegram
from Madame, and in response went down to Elmhurst. There I found her
lying in bed suffering from what the doctor had on the previous day
diagnosed as typhoid.
“Did I not tell you, Mariette,” she said faintly, “that I had been again
innoculated with some disease? They mean to kill me.”
“What do you mean?” I asked quickly. “Tell me.”
But she only sighed and turned uneasily in her bed, saying—
“I—I am a doomed woman.”
“But tell me your suspicions. Then I shall probably be able to get at
the truth. You have an enemy—one whose sole desire is to encompass your
death by means that shall appear natural. You have heavy insurances, I
suppose?” Truth to tell, I had not been idle.
“You have made inquiries about them, eh?” she asked quickly.
“I have all the numbers of the policies in the various offices. They
total over thirty thousand pounds,” I said. “In whose favour have you
made a will?”
“That is my affair,” she snapped.
Madame was still disinclined to tell me anything which might serve me as
a clue to the would-be assassin.
That there was foul play was now perfectly plain, for was not Madame
again stricken down by one of the most dangerous of fevers?
Her husband, unlike his usual self, was highly concerned about her, and
tended her night and day, although two nurses were in attendance.
I turned up the sleeve of her nightdress to look again at the mysterious
mark, and there, to my entire surprise, I found a third, evidently quite
recent, close to the second. _Mystère!_
She was unaware of it, and when I pointed it out to her she lay staring
at me utterly dumfounded and terrified.
The matter had grown more mysterious, and I confess that I had become
very much puzzled.
Of the whereabouts of the French governess I could learn nothing. I
remained in the house for several days, but the state of my mistress grew
worse, and the two doctors became apprehensive, while Captain Wentworth
and the faithful Ford were full of anxiety and dread lest a fatal issue
should result.
Madame was delirious, therefore I ran up to London in order to transact
some private business, and again returned to Elmhurst to fulfil a promise
I had made to remain near her.
The crisis of the disease was a grave one. One day at noon a nurse came
to me saying that the doctors had agreed that she could not possibly live
till evening, therefore things looked blackest. Poor Madame! She had been
struck down by a hand unknown and unsuspected. The first attempt not
being successful, the second and third innoculations had accomplished the
object.
And her enemy was a person whom she refused to name.
I kept all my information to myself, remaining alert and watchful. My
presence in the house was accounted for by the story she had told Captain
Wentworth of how she had found a treasure of a maid, and that she wished
me to be near her during her illness.
The fateful day wore slowly on, and happily, quite contrary to the
medical men’s expectations, her strong constitution withstood the strain.
At midnight came a turn for the better, and with noon next day came a
marked improvement. From that moment she made slow progress.
When at last I was allowed in the darkened room she gripped my hand, and
in a low, appealing whisper said—
“You will protect me, Mariette, won’t you? You won’t allow them to do it
again.”
She spoke in the plural. Then her suspicion had fallen upon more than one
person!
I promised, and she gripped my hand in silent thanks.
All through the month of December, during Madame’s convalescence, I
remained at Elmhurst. Yet I was just as much in the dark as to the motive
of the crime, or its perpetration, as I had been on the first day when
she had told me about it.
I was frank with her, and told her so. But she urged me to persevere,
adding bitterly—
“If you discover who has tried to take my life—if it is the person I
suspect—then, by heaven! I will have my revenge.”
During the weeks of Madame’s illness the grey-haired butler proved an
invaluable servant, and was entirely devoted to his mistress. He was a
quiet-mannered, highly-respectful person, with dark side whiskers and
a sleek, even pompous, appearance. And though this was the man who had
gossipped about his master’s affairs in the Elmhurst Arms, yet I could
only believe that he had done so after his tongue had been loosened by
sundry strong drinks.
_Vraiment_ I liked the man for his quiet manner and his entire
devotedness. He was frequently up all night attending to his mistress’s
wants, while the captain was always full of his praises.
A month passed. A change for the better had occurred, and Madame became
so well that she could now come down-stairs to meals, and it had been
arranged that she was to go to Hyères to avoid the rigours of the English
winter.
The greater part of the first day on which she came down-stairs I spent
with her beside the boudoir fire, but at night we kept up an occasion to
celebrate her marvellous recovery.
It was a purely family dinner, consisting of my master and mistress, Miss
Wylde and her pretty fair-haired charge.
Served by Ford in that long old room which had echoed to the laughter
of many a hundred bygone feasts, the meal was essentially of the good
old-fashioned kind, satisfying, if indigestible, as judged by the
standards laid down by to-day’s food-cranks.
They were a merry party, all welcoming Madame back again to the table
after her long illness, and raising their glasses to her better health.
Then, following the dainty dinner, Ford entered, carrying upon his tray
an ice pudding.
Peeping through the crack of the door, I glanced towards Monsieur, seated
at the head of the table, before whom the grave, silent butler placed the
ice. Were his thoughts, I wondered, running in the same channel as my own?
Ford handed the clean plates to his mistress, who at once commenced to
serve out the pudding, first to her husband, then to Miss Wylde and
Doris. Afterwards, upon the remaining plate, she placed the last portion,
and all took up their forks and spoons.
That instant I entered the room, exclaiming suddenly—
“No one must eat this!” and I added firmly, “Charles Ford, stand there! I
accuse you!”
The confusion my words caused may well be imagined. The ladies shrieked,
believing I had taken leave of my senses, while little Doris clung to her
father in fright.
“What do you mean, Mariette?” gasped Monsieur, pale and startled.
“Shall I speak, M’sieur?” I asked him.
For a second he hesitated.
“No,” Madame answered hoarsely. “Not here—not before them, Mariette. Come
into my boudoir and explain there.”
“I should prefer that the others left the room,” I said, still with eyes
turned upon the grey-faced butler. He stood before me as though dazed,
his face white as a sheet, his grey eyes staring at me in terror.
“Will you please leave us?” Madame said, addressing her husband.
“Of course, dear,” he said; “but all this seems very strange. I—I really
don’t understand why Mariette should upset our night in this tragic and
unaccountable manner?”
“I will explain later on, Monsieur,” I exclaimed, my eyes still fixed
upon the exemplary Ford.
With the governess and little Doris, Captain Wentworth rose and left in
indignation at my sudden threatening of the old servant. Then, when the
door had closed behind them, I turned to my mistress and said—
“Please be very careful to preserve your plate, Madame.”
“Why?” she asked in surprise. “I don’t understand!”
“_Ecoutez_, Madame. You consulted me some time ago concerning a certain
matter, and I have since made diligent inquiry and kept vigilant watch.
Three days ago this exemplary servant of yours, Mr. Ford, was granted a
day’s holiday, and went up to London to see his brother. The fictitious
brother whom he desired to see was a Frenchman named Gervais, a student
of bacteriology, living in London because there is a warrant out for him
in France. Ford brought away from that house in Earl’s Court Road a tiny
tube filled with gelatine, in which were cultivations of a deadly malady.
It was his fiendish idea to administer them to you at the moment of your
joyfulness at recovery—at your dinner to-night. Look! Examine your plate
well, and tell me what you find.”
Madame took her plate beneath the stronger light beside the overmantel,
and examined her plate carefully.
“Yes!” she gasped. “There are certainly some tiny scraps of a colourless
jelly. The ice pudding seems to have covered some of them!”
Ford stood blanched and trembling beneath my unsparing denunciation.
“You fiend!” shrieked his mistress, turning upon him. “Then it is you—you
who have innoculated me so secretly when I have dozed in my boudoir, in
the hope that I should die—you—the woman to whom you owe your life and
liberty!”
“_Pardon_, madame,” I said, interrupting. “Would it not be judicious to
say the least possible about this affair—for your husband’s sake?”
“I shall say what I like, Mariette,” she replied angrily. “That man is a
murderer!”
“I know,” I said. “Probably I know more than you think.”
“Oh, what do you know?” she asked, not without a twinge of sarcasm. This
latter rather piqued me.
“_Très bien_,” I said. “If you wish that I should speak openly, I will
do so. You have not been exactly frank with me, Madame, and had it not
been that your life was at stake, I should have refused to carry on the
inquiry. But as I saw that murder was intended by some unknown person,
and without motive, I prosecuted my inquiries. Their result has been, to
say the least, curious. I found that that man yonder was not your servant
at all, but your partner in certain very shady gambling transactions in
an illicit gaming-house you own in Hamburg, unknown to your husband, and
from which you derive your income. From Consols your husband believes
it to be. Four years ago a Frenchman named Perrin was robbed and killed
there—killed under circumstances which left no doubt that your partner
was the murderer. Under threats of closing the house and placing the
evidence you had in the hands of the Hamburg police, you compelled him to
give up his share of ownership, and to serve you here as your servant.
You——”
“Ford killed him! He has admitted it!” interrupted my mistress. “I
took the poor fellow’s daughter as governess in order to keep her from
starvation, but that man played a shabby trick upon me. He placed a
diamond ring in a cake as though it were a present from my husband, which
naturally aroused my jealousy.”
“That matter does not concern the present affair,” I replied. “This
man Ford saw that if you died, he would again become proprietor of the
lucrative establishment in Hamburg, and at the same time your lips would
be closed, and he would be revenged upon you for your action in depriving
him of half the profits for several years, and for compelling him to
become your servant.”
Ford tried to speak, but his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth.
At last he managed in wild, abrupt words, to crave forgiveness of the
woman whom he had tried to kill by such insidious means.
But the other only turned upon him fiercely, denouncing him as an
assassin.
“Madame,” I said, “I have kept my promise to you, and have performed
my duty. It now remains with you what action you will take against
this man. Remember, however, that your husband is in ignorance of
everything—believing that your income is derived from legitimate
business.”
“Yes,” she said hoarsely, “for my husband’s sake—for the sake of little
Doris—I suppose I must still allow the fellow his liberty.” Then, looking
across at the assassin, she said, “Go, you murderous brute! And if ever
you cross my path again, by Heaven, I’ll shoot you like a dog!”
The grey-faced old scoundrel slunk out, and when the door had closed my
mistress said in a low, confidential tone—
“Of course, Mariette, not a word must be breathed about this! My husband
must never know. I admit all you have said against me, but I’ve resolved
to give up the place in Hamburg. I can live quite comfortably without it.
By Jove! I’ve had a narrow escape. Come, let’s go up-stairs to my room.
I’ve a headache, and I’m tired.”
For my silence I received next day an English bank-note for one hundred
pounds.
_Oh, là là!_