IN THE PRESENCE OF THE DEAD.
The rooms that had been occupied by Maurice de Crespigny were at the
back of the house, and Eleanor, returning by the way that she had come,
had occasion to pass once more through the garden and shrubbery upon
which the windows of these rooms looked.
Mrs. Monckton paused amongst the evergreens that grew near the house,
sheltering and darkening the windows with their thick luxuriance. The
Venetian shutters outside the windows of the room in which the dead
man lay were closed, and the light within shone brightly between the
slanting laths.
“Poor old man,” Eleanor murmured, as she looked mournfully towards this
death-chamber, “he was very good to me; I ought to be sorry for his
death.”
The evergreens which grew in groups on either side of the windows made
a thick screen, behind which half-a-dozen people might have safely
hidden themselves upon this moonless and starless February night.
Eleanor lingered for a few moments amongst these clustering laurels
before she emerged upon the patch of smooth turf, which was scarcely
large enough to be dignified with the title of a lawn.
As she lingered, partly because of a regretful tenderness towards the
dead man, partly because of that irresolution and uncertainty that had
taken possession of her mind from the moment in which she had heard of
his death, she was startled once more by the rustling of the branches
near her. This time she was not left long in doubt: the rustling of the
branches was followed by a hissing whisper, very cautious and subdued,
but at the same time very distinct in the stillness; and Eleanor
Monckton was not slow to recognize the accent of the French commercial
traveller, Monsieur Victor Bourdon.
“The shutters are not fastened,” this man whispered; “there is a chance
yet, _mon ami_.”
The speaker was within two paces of Eleanor, but she was hidden from
him by the shrubs. The companion to whom he had spoken was of course
Launcelot Darrell; there could be no doubt of that. But why were these
men here? Had the artist come in ignorance of his kinsman’s death,
and in the hope of introducing himself secretly into the old man’s
apartments, and thus outmanœuvring the maiden nieces?
As the two men moved nearer one of the windows of the bedchamber,
moving very cautiously, but still disturbing the branches as they went,
Eleanor drew back, and stood, motionless, almost breathless, close
against the blank wall between the long French windows.
In another moment Launcelot Darrell and his companion were standing so
close to her that she could hear their hurried breathing as distinctly
as she heard her own. The Frenchman softly drew back one of the
Venetian shutters a few inches, and peeped very cautiously through the
narrow aperture into the room.
“There is only an old woman there,” he whispered, “an old woman, very
grey, very respectable; she is asleep, I think; look and see who she
is.”
Monsieur Bourdon drew back as he spoke, making way for Launcelot
Darrell. The young man obeyed his companion, but in a half-sulky,
half-unwilling fashion, which was very much like his manner on the
Parisian Boulevard.
“Who is it?” whispered the Frenchman, as Launcelot leant forward and
peered into the lighted room.
“Mrs. Jepcott, my uncle’s housekeeper.”
“Is she a friend of yours, or an enemy?”
“A friend, I think. I know that she hates my aunts. She would rather
serve me than serve them.”
“Good. We are not going to trust Mrs. Jepcott; but it’s as well to know
that she is friendly towards us. Now listen to me, my friend; we must
have the key.”
“I suppose we must,” muttered Launcelot Darrell, very sulkily.
“You suppose we must! Bah!” whispered the Frenchman with intense
scornfulness of manner. “It is likely we should draw back, after having
gone so far as we have gone, and made such promises as we have made.
It is like you Englishmen to turn cowards at the very last, in any
difficult business like this. You are very brave and very great so long
as you can make a great noise about your honour, and your courage, and
your loyalty; so long as the drums are beating and the flags flying,
and all the world looking on to admire you. But the moment there is
anything of difficult—anything of a little hazardous, or anything of
criminal, perhaps—you draw back, you have fear. Bah! I have no patience
with you. You are a great nation, but you have never produced a great
impostor. Your Perkin Warbecks, your Stuart Pretenders, they are all
the same. They ride up hills with forty thousand men, and,”—here
Monsieur Bourdon hissed out a very big French oath, to give strength
to his assertion,—“when they get to the top they can do nothing better
than ride down again.”
It is not to be supposed that, in so critical a situation as that in
which the two men had placed themselves, the Frenchman would have said
all this without a purpose. He knew Launcelot Darrell, and he knew
that ridicule was the best spur with which to urge him on when he was
inclined to come to a standstill. The young man’s pride took fire at
his companion’s scornful banter.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“I want you to go into that room and look for your uncle’s keys. I
would do it, and perhaps do it better than you, but if that woman woke
and found me there, she would rouse the house; if she wakes up and sees
you, any sentimental story of your desire to look for the last time
upon your kinsman and benefactor will satisfy her and stop her mouth.
_You_ must search for the keys, Monsieur Robert Lance, pardon!—Monsieur
Launcelot Darrell.”
The young man made no immediate answer to this speech. He stood close
to the window, with the half-open shutter in his hand, and Eleanor
could see, by the motion of this shutter, that he was trembling.
“I can’t do it, Bourdon,” he gasped, after a long pause; “I can’t do
it. To go up to that dead man’s bedside and _steal_ his keys. It seems
like an act of sacrilege—I—I—_can’t_ do it.”
The commercial traveller shrugged his shoulders so high that it almost
seemed he never meant to bring them down again.
“Good!” he said, “_C’est fini!_ Live and die a pauper, Monsieur
Darrell, but never again ask me to help you in a great scheme. Good
night.”
The Frenchman made a show of walking off, but went slowly, and gave
Launcelot plenty of time to stop him.
“Stay, Bourdon,” the young man muttered; “don’t be a fool. If you mean
to stand by me in this business, you must have a little patience. I’ll
do what must be done, of course, however unpleasant it may be. I’ve no
reason to feel any great compunction about the old man. He hasn’t shown
so much love for me that I need have any very sentimental affection for
him. I’ll go in and look for the keys.”
He had opened the shutter to its widest extent, and he put his hand
upon the window as he spoke, but the Frenchman checked him.
“What are you going to do?” asked Monsieur Bourdon.
“I’m going to look for the keys.”
“Not that way. If you open that window the cold air will blow into the
room and awaken the old woman—what you call her—Madame Jepcott. No, you
must take off your boots, and go in through one of the windows of the
other rooms. We saw just now that those rooms are empty. Come with me.”
The two men moved away towards the windows of the sitting-room.
Eleanor crept to the Venetian shutters which Launcelot had closed,
and, drawing one of them a little way open, looked into the room in
which the dead man lay. The housekeeper, Mrs. Jepcott, sat in a roomy
easy-chair, close to the fire, which burned brightly, and had evidently
been very lately replenished. The old woman’s head had fallen back
upon the cushion of her chair, and the monotonous regularity of her
snores gave sufficient evidence of the soundness of her slumbers.
Voluminous curtains of dark green damask were drawn closely round the
massive four-post bed; a thick wax candle, in an old-fashioned silver
candlestick, burned upon the table by the bedside, and a pair of
commoner candles, in brass candlesticks, brought, no doubt, from the
housekeeper’s room, stood upon a larger table near the fireplace.
Nothing had been disturbed since the old man’s death. The maiden ladies
had made a merit of this.
“We shall disturb nothing,” Miss Lavinia, who was the more loquacious
of the two, had said; “we shall not pry about or tamper with any of our
beloved relative’s effects. You will take care of everything in your
master’s room, Jepcott; we place everything under your charge, and you
will see that nothing is touched; you will take care that not so much
as a pocket-handkerchief shall be disturbed until Mr. Lawford’s clerk
comes from Windsor.”
In accordance with these directions, everything had remained exactly
as it had been left at the moment of Maurice de Crespigny’s death. The
practised sick-nurse had retired, after doing her dismal duty; the
stiffening limbs had been composed in the last calm sleep; the old
man’s eyelids had been closed upon the sightless eyeballs; the curtains
had been drawn; and that was all.
The medicine bottles, the open Bible, the crumpled handkerchiefs, the
purse, and paper-knife, and spectacles, and keys, lying in disorder
upon the table by the bed, had not been touched. Eager as the dead
man’s nieces were to know the contents of his will, the thought of
obtaining that knowledge by any surreptitious means had never for one
moment entered into the head of either. They were conscientious ladies,
who attended church three times upon a Sunday, and who would have
recoiled aghast from before the mere thought of any infraction of the
law.
Eleanor, with the Venetian shutter a very little way open, and with her
face close against the window, stood looking into the lighted room, and
waiting for Launcelot Darrell to appear.
The great four-post bedstead stood opposite the windows; the door was
on Eleanor’s right hand. About five minutes elapsed before there was
any sign of the intruder’s coming. Then the door was opened, very
slowly, and Launcelot Darrell crept into the room.
His face was almost livid, and he trembled violently. At first he
looked helplessly about him, as if paralyzed by fear. Then he took a
handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped the cold perspiration from his
forehead, still looking helplessly right and left.
But presently the Frenchman’s head appeared round the edge of the door,
which Launcelot Darrell had left a little way open, a fat little hand
pointed to the table by the bed, and Monsieur Bourdon’s hissing whisper
vibrated in the room.
“V’là,—the table—the table—straight before you.”
Following this indication, the young man began with trembling hands to
search amongst the disorder of the littered table. He had not occasion
to seek very long for what he wanted. The dead man’s keys lay under one
of the handkerchiefs. They jingled a little as Launcelot took them up,
and Mrs. Jepcott stirred in her sleep, but she did not open her eyes.
“Come away, come!” whispered the Frenchman, as Launcelot stood with
the keys in his hand, as if too much bewildered even to know that his
purpose was accomplished. He obeyed Monsieur Bourdon, and hurried from
the room. He had taken off his boots at his companion’s instigation,
and his stockinged feet made no sound upon the thick carpet.
“What is he going to do with those keys?” Eleanor thought. “If he knows
the contents of the will, as Richard believed, what good can the keys
be to him?”
She still looked into the lighted bed-chamber, wondering what could
happen next. Where had Launcelot Darrell gone, and what was he going to
do with the keys? She crept along by the side of the house, past the
window of the dressing-room, which was still dark, and stopped when
she came to the window of the old man’s study. All the windows upon
this floor were in the same style—long French windows, opening to the
ground, and they were all sheltered by Venetian shutters. The shutters
of the study were closed, but the window was open, and through the bars
of the shutters Eleanor saw a faint glimmer of light.
She drew the shutter nearest her a little way open, and looked into the
room. The light that she had seen came from a very small bull’s-eye
lantern, which the Frenchman held in his hand. He was standing over
Launcelot Darrell, who was on his knees before the lower half of an
old-fashioned _secrétaire_, at which Mr. de Crespigny had been in the
habit of writing, and in which he had kept papers.
The lower half of this _secrétaire_ contained a great many little
drawers, which were closed in by a pair of inlaid ebony doors. The
doors were open now, and Launcelot Darrell was busy examining the
contents of the drawers one by one. His hands still trembled, and he
went to work slowly and awkwardly. The Frenchman, whose nerves appeared
in no way shaken, contrived to throw the light of the bull’s-eye always
upon the papers in the young man’s hand.
“Have you found what you want?” he asked.
“No, there’s nothing yet; nothing but old leases, receipts, letters,
bills.”
“Be quick! Remember we have to put the keys back, and to get away. Have
you the other ready?”
“Yes.”
They spoke in whispers, but their whispers were perhaps more distinct
than their ordinary tones would have been. Eleanor could hear every
word they said.
There was a long pause, during which Launcelot Darrell opened and shut
several drawers, taking a hurried survey at their contents. Presently
he uttered a half-smothered cry.
“You’ve got it?” exclaimed the Frenchman.
“Yes.”
“Put in the substitute, then, and lock the cabinet.”
Launcelot Darrell threw the document which he had taken from the drawer
upon a chair near him, and took another paper from his pocket. He put
this second paper in the place from which he had taken the first, and
then shut the drawer, and closed and locked the doors of the cabinet.
He did all this in nervous haste, and neither he nor his companion
perceived that a third paper, very much like the first in shape and
size, had fallen out of one of the drawers and lay upon the carpet
before the cabinet.
Now, for the first time, Eleanor Monckton began to comprehend the
nature of the conspiracy which she had witnessed. Launcelot Darrell
and his accomplice had substituted a fictitious paper for the real
will signed by Maurice de Crespigny and witnessed by Gilbert Monckton
and the lawyer’s clerk. The genuine document was that which Launcelot
Darrell had flung upon the chair by the side of the _secrétaire_.