MRS. FITZHARDINGE.
Return we now to Mrs. Fitzhardinge, whom the officers of justice had
arrested at Dover, on suspicion of being concerned in the murder of Mr.
Percival, the miser.
The old woman, when made acquainted with the cause of her apprehension,
was completely thunder-struck; for, in truth, she had not even heard
until that moment of the dreadful deed which had taken place. But
the Dover constables who took her into custody, and who were in
plain clothes, insisted upon her accompanying them to London; and,
yielding to the imperious necessity with as good a grace as possible,
Mrs. Fitzhardinge cherished that consolation that her innocence must
inevitably become apparent when the case should undergo a magisterial
investigation.
For a variety of reasons, she made no mention of her daughter and
Charles, who, she doubted not, had embarked in safety; neither did
she volunteer any explanations relative to her acquaintance with
Mr. Percival, or the business which she had with him on the night
when, as it appeared, the murder was committed. She had already
in her life passed through the ordeal of arrest--examination at a
police-court--committal--trial--and condemnation--aye, and expiation
also; and she was well aware that unseasonable garrulity, or
explanatory remarks inconsiderately volunteered, seldom benefit even
the innocent person when unjustly accused. She accordingly shrouded
herself, or, rather, took refuge in a complete silence, from which the
officers did not seek to draw her, as they all proceeded together by
railway to London.
On their arrival in the metropolis at a somewhat late hour in the
afternoon, Mrs. Fitzhardinge was consigned to Clerkenwell prison, where
she passed the night; and at ten o’clock on the following morning
she was removed in a cab to Marylebone police-court, to undergo an
examination relative to the serious charge existing against her.
The prisoner, who had retained counsel in her behalf, and made other
arrangements for her defence, appeared perfectly cool and collected;
and although the sinister expression of her countenance might have told
somewhat in her disfavour, in the estimation of common observers, yet,
to the eye of the experienced magistrate, it spoke not of guilt in this
instance. Nevertheless, that very experience which he possessed taught
him not to judge either way by outward appearances; and he therefore
prepared himself to give the matter the most searching investigation.
The first witness examined was Mrs. Dyer, who deposed as follows:--“I
occupy a house adjoining that of the deceased. At half-past eleven
o’clock on the night in question, I returned home from the dwelling of
a friend in the neighbourhood, and saw deceased at his door, taking
leave of two females. He had a light in his hand. One of the women, who
seemed by her figure and general appearance to be young, was at the
garden-gate; and I could not see her countenance. The light which the
deceased carried fell fully upon the face of the other female; and I
therefore obtained a good view of her. The prisoner at the bar is the
female alluded to.”
Mrs. Dyer then narrated how she and her lodgers had discovered the
murder on the ensuing morning; but these details are already known to
the reader.
The inspector of police who had the case in hand, was next examined,
and his deposition was to the following effect:--“In consequence of the
information I received from Mrs. Dyer, immediately after the murder
was discovered, I instituted certain inquiries, and ascertained, in
the course of the morning, that an old and a young woman had taken a
cab in the neighbourhood of the Angel at Islington, on the previous
night, which was the one in question. They drove to Suffolk-street,
Pall Mall, where the young lady paid the driver his fare from a heavy
and well-filled purse. The driver gave me a description of the elder
female; and that description tallied with the one already given by Mrs.
Dyer. I thereupon repaired to Suffolk-street, and learnt that the two
women had taken their departure in a post-chaise, between nine and ten
o’clock that morning. This was the morning after the murder. Previous
to their departure, they were joined by a young gentleman who went away
with them. He had called on several occasions at the lodgings; and his
name was----”
Here the magistrate interposed, and said that it might not be necessary
to mention this name publicly, as there was nothing to implicate the
gentleman referred to.
The inspector accordingly proceeded thus:--“The chaise was sent for
in a great hurry, and its destination was unknown to the landlady and
servants of the house. No previous intimation of the intended departure
of the lodgers had been given. They settled all their liabilities
before they left. The prisoner at the bar paid the rent and other
little matters owing; but did not display any large sum of money.
Having ascertained all these particulars, I sent a description of the
elder female to the various railways having electric telegraphs; and
the prisoner at the bar was apprehended at Dover, in consequence of the
information thus conveyed.”
Upon being cross-examined by the learned gentleman for the defence,
the inspector fairly and impartially deposed as follows:--“The stake
with which the murder was evidently perpetrated, was found by the side
of the corpse. It was taken from a piece of unenclosed waste ground
at the back of the house. I believe this to be the fact, because I
have discovered a hole from which a stake had most likely been taken;
and the stake now produced fits that hole. I also discovered marks of
footsteps between the back door of the house and the spot where the
stake had been pulled up. Those marks are of a man’s boots. The soil
of some part of the waste ground is moist and damp. There are marks on
the window-ledge of the back parlour, as if some one with dirty boots
or shoes had clambered up and stood there. The shutters have numerous
heart-holes in them, so that a person standing up on the ledge, outside
the window could see into the back parlour. I discovered no traces
of any female footsteps on the waste ground neither are there two
descriptions of marks. They are all produced by the same sized boots.
The door-post of the back gate was cut away from the outside. Whoever
did it must have known the precise place where the bolt fitted into the
door-post in the inside. The cutting away rendered it easy to force
back the bolt with the fingers. The work of cutting was performed,
I should say, with a knife--most probably a pocket or clasp-knife.
It must have taken half an hour at the least to accomplish; and the
hand that did it must have been tolerably strong. There are marks of
footsteps, indicated in the same manner as those on the window-ledge,
up the stairs from the back door to the back parlour. The lock of the
back door so often alluded to, was picked from the outside.”
The inspector’s evidence terminated here; and the counsel for Mrs.
Fitzhardinge recalled Mrs. Dyer.
“Will you state, as accurately as you can, the hour when you returned
home on the night of the murder?” he asked.
“Half-past eleven, sir,” was the answer.
“That will do,” said the learned gentleman, who forthwith proceeded
to call the driver of the cab which Mrs. Fitzhardinge and Perdita had
taken on the night in question. “At what hour,” he demanded, “did the
prisoner and the young lady who accompanied her hire your vehicle?”
“It was twelve o’clock,” replied the man. “I am sure it was precisely
midnight, because I had just left a public-house when I was hailed by
the ladies.”
This witness was ordered to stand down; and the landlady of the house
in Suffolk-street was called next. She deposed that she was sitting up
for her lodgers on the night in question, and that they reached home
at twenty minutes to one. She was certain as to the correctness of her
statement, because she looked at the clock in the passage as she passed
by to let the ladies in. There was nothing confused in their manner.
She attended them to the door of their bed-chamber, and did not observe
that their shoes were at all soiled with damp clay. She was convinced
that they did not leave the house again that night. The ladies had
always appeared to have plenty of money from the very day they entered
her dwelling.
The learned counsel then proceeded to address the magistrate on behalf
of Mrs. Fitzhardinge. He began by remarking on the meagre nature of
the evidence against her--the mere fact that she and the young lady
who was with her, and who was her daughter, were the last persons seen
in the company of the murdered man;--and he complained bitterly that
his client should have been arrested--ignominiously brought back to
London--and forced through the ordeal of a public examination on such
a shallow pretence. Every circumstance, adduced that morning--every
feature of the evidence, tended only to exculpate the prisoner
at the bar. In the first place, it was clear, from the testimony
recorded, that the prisoner and her daughter had quitted the house
of the deceased at half-past eleven--had taken a cab at the Angel at
midnight--and had driven straight home, reaching Suffolk-street at
twenty minutes to one. Now the distance from the scene of the murder
to the Angel would require rapid walking for two females to accomplish
in half an hour, and leave not an instant to accomplish the crime
before they set out, much less to cut away the door-post, ransack the
deceased’s boxes, and so forth. From the Angel they were traced home,
and they did not leave the house again that night. Now, the evidence of
the inspector of police tended, to show incontestibly that the murder
had been perpetrated by a man. He (the learned counsel) was instructed
to state that Mrs. Fitzhardinge and her daughter had called upon Mr.
Percival for the purpose of obtaining the discount of a bill; that
he did discount the document, and that he left his cash-box open on
the table during the negotiation. It was presumable that some man,
who probably knew the premises well, had clambered up against the
back-window, had beheld the cash-box and its contents, and, during the
night, had perpetrated the bloody deed. The speedy departure of the
prisoner, her daughter, and the gentleman who had been alluded to, on
the morning following that night of the crime, was occasioned by the
fact that the young people contemplated a matrimonial alliance unknown
to the gentleman’s parents; and the means of travelling having been
procured by the discount already mentioned, there was no necessity to
delay the departure for Paris any longer. This was the simple and plain
explanation of the suddenly undertaken journey and the precipitate
decampment from Suffolk-street. But the ladies did not act as if they
had committed a crime, nor their male companion as if he had been an
accomplice in one; for they travelled by post-chaise instead of by
rail, to Dover; and there they waited quietly until the steam-packet
left next morning, instead of hiring some small craft, as they might
have done, to waft them across, the same night of their arrival, to
Calais. Again, if the prisoner and her daughter had even entertained
such a fearful idea as that of depriving the miser of his life for
the sake of his gold, they would have had a better opportunity of
carrying it into execution while alone with him in his back parlour,
than by the roundabout manner suggested by the nature of the charge
against Mrs. Fitzhardinge. During the short time the two ladies had
dwelt at the lodgings in Suffolk-street they had not been embarrassed
for want of funds; nor even when they sought the aid of the discounter
was their need so pressing, much less was it of that desperate nature
which could alone prompt to such a dreadful alternative as murder. The
reason why the assistance of the deceased was sought at all, could be
readily explained by the avowal that the bill to be discounted was not
a security which any other class of money-lenders would entertain: it
was the promissory note of a young gentleman raising cash upon his
expectations, and therefore of a character suiting only the purposes of
a discounter who took an amount of interest proportionate to the risk
which he ran. In conclusion, the learned gentleman insisted that there
was not a shadow of evidence against his client.
The magistrate acquiesced in this view of the case, and discharged Mrs.
Fitzhardinge forthwith. She was, however, compelled to repair from the
Marylebone Police-court to the tavern where the coroner was holding
an adjourned inquest upon the body; but the result of her examination
before the magistrate being communicated to that functionary, she was
not detained on his authority. A verdict of “Wilful murder against some
person or persons unknown” was returned, and the old woman once more
found herself at liberty.
The evidence given by the inspector of police at the Marylebone court,
and repeated in the presence of the coroner, had excited certain
suspicions in the mind of Mrs. Fitzhardinge; and the more she pondered
upon the subject--the more she reflected upon the occurrences at
Percival’s house on the night of the murder, and the details of the
manner in which the deed itself must have been accomplished, the more
confident did she become that she could name the assassin.
Had circumstances permitted, she would have remained in London to
ferret out the individual whom she thus associated with the crime:
but she could not now spare the time; for she was anxious to proceed,
without delay, to Paris, and join her daughter and Charles Hatfield,
who, she had no doubt, had reached that capital in safety.
Her examination at the police-court, and her attendance at the inquest,
had however consumed the entire day; and she therefore waited until
the next morning, when she departed by the first train for Folkestone,
at which town she arrived in time to embark on board a steamer for
Boulogne.
In order that we may accurately show the precise time when Mrs.
Fitzhardinge reached Paris, we must request our readers to observe,
that on the same day that Charles and Perdita crossed the water to
Calais, the old woman was borne back to London by the constables:
on the following day, while they were journeying towards the French
capital, she was undergoing the examination already recorded;--on
the third day, when they were married at the British Ambassador’s
chapel, she was hastening to join them;--and it was, therefore, in the
after-part of the fourth day, being the one on which the separation of
Charles and her daughter had occurred, that Mrs. Fitzhardinge entered
Paris in the _diligence_, or stage-coach--thoroughly wearied out by the
fatigue, annoyance, and excitement she had lately undergone.
The old woman repaired to an hotel in the immediate neighbourhood of
the office where the coach stopped; and, having changed her apparel,
drove forthwith in a hackney vehicle to the British Embassy: for it
must be remembered that she was entirely ignorant of every thing that
had taken place in respect to her daughter and Charles since she had
been separated from them, and knew not where they had put up in Paris.
Indeed, she even had her misgivings whether they were in the French
capital at all, or whether they might not have set out upon some tour
immediately after their marriage; for that they were already united
in matrimonial bonds, she had no doubt. That they had returned to
Dover to look for her, she did not flatter herself; inasmuch as she
had latterly seen enough of Perdita’s altered disposition to be fully
aware that all maternal authority or filial affection were matters
which the young lady was more inclined to treat with contempt than
with serious consideration. But Mrs. Fitzhardinge was resolved not to
be thrust aside without an effort to regain the maternal authority: as
for the filial affection, her soul--tanned, hardened, rendered rough
and inaccessible, and with all its best feelings irremediably blunted
by the incidents of her stormy life--her soul, we say, experienced but
a slight pang at the idea of having to renounce that devotedness which
it is usually a mother’s joy and delight to receive at the hands of a
daughter.
No; the aim of this vile intriguing woman was merely the
re-establishment of her former ascendancy over her daughter,--by fair
means or by foul--by conciliation or intimidation--by ministering to
her vanity and her pride, or by working on her fears--by rendering
herself necessary to her, or by reducing her to subjection through a
course of studied despotism and tyranny. Her imagination pictured the
voluptuous and impassioned Perdita clinging to her young husband as
to something which had become necessary to her very existence, and
from which it were death to part; and she chuckled within herself, as
she muttered between her lips,--“The girl would have this marriage;
and it shall be made in my hands a means to subdue her! For in her
tenderest moments--when reading love in _his_ eyes, and looking love
with _her own_,--when wrapt in Elysian dreams and visions of ineffable
bliss--then will I steal near her, and whisper in her ear, ‘Perdita,
you must yield to me in all things; or with a word--a single word--will
I betray you to that fond, confiding fool; I will blast all your
happiness, and he shall cast thee away from him as a loathsome and
polluted thing!’”
With such agreeable musings as these did Mrs. Fitzhardinge while away
the half-hour which the hackney-coach occupied in driving her from the
hotel to the British Embassy. It was now five o’clock in the evening,
and she fortunately found the chaplain’s clerk in an office to which
the gate-porter directed her to proceed. From the official to whom
she was thus referred, she learnt that Charles Hatfield and Perdita
Fitzhardinge were united in matrimonial bonds on the previous day; and
an inspection of the register, for which she paid a small fee, enabled
her to ascertain the address they had given as their place of abode in
the French capital.
Satisfied with these results, Mrs. Fitzhardinge returned to the
vehicle, and ordered the coachman to drive her to an hotel which she
named, and which was the one mentioned in the register. We should
observe that the old woman spoke French with fluency; and thus she had
no difficulty in making herself understood in the gay city of Paris.