The address communicated by Mrs. Todd took me to a lodging-house
situated in a respectable street near the Gray’s Inn Road.
When I knocked the door was opened by Mrs. Clements herself. She
did not appear to remember me, and asked what my business was. I
recalled to her our meeting in Limmeridge churchyard at the close of
my interview there with the woman in white, taking special care to
remind her that I was the person who assisted Anne Catherick (as Anne
had herself declared) to escape the pursuit from the Asylum. This was
my only claim to the confidence of Mrs. Clements. She remembered the
circumstance the moment I spoke of it, and asked me into the parlour,
in the greatest anxiety to know if I had brought her any news of Anne.
It was impossible for me to tell her the whole truth without, at the
same time, entering into particulars on the subject of the conspiracy,
which it would have been dangerous to confide to a stranger. I could
only abstain most carefully from raising any false hopes, and then
explain that the object of my visit was to discover the persons who
were really responsible for Anne’s disappearance. I even added, so as
to exonerate myself from any after-reproach of my own conscience, that
I entertained not the least hope of being able to trace her—that I
believed we should never see her alive again—and that my main interest
in the affair was to bring to punishment two men whom I suspected to
be concerned in luring her away, and at whose hands I and some dear
friends of mine had suffered a grievous wrong. With this explanation
I left it to Mrs. Clements to say whether our interest in the matter
(whatever difference there might be in the motives which actuated us)
was not the same, and whether she felt any reluctance to forward my
object by giving me such information on the subject of my inquiries as
she happened to possess.
The poor woman was at first too much confused and agitated to
understand thoroughly what I said to her. She could only reply that I
was welcome to anything she could tell me in return for the kindness I
had shown to Anne; but as she was not very quick and ready, at the best
of times, in talking to strangers, she would beg me to put her in the
right way, and to say where I wished her to begin.
Knowing by experience that the plainest narrative attainable from
persons who are not accustomed to arrange their ideas, is the narrative
which goes far enough back at the beginning to avoid all impediments
of retrospection in its course, I asked Mrs. Clements to tell me first
what had happened after she had left Limmeridge, and so, by watchful
questioning, carried her on from point to point, till we reached the
period of Anne’s disappearance.