CHAPTER II. THE TRIAL
CHAPTER III. A BOTTLE OF BURGUNDY
CHAPTER IV. DR. DRAYTON’S SUSPICIONS
CHAPTER V. HIDE AND SEEK
CHAPTER VI. FLOWN
CHAPTER VII. GENERAL ST. GEORGE
CHAPTER VIII. CUPID AT PINCOTE
CHAPTER IX. AT THE VILLA PAMPHILI
CHAPTER X. BACK AGAIN AT PARK NEWTON
CHAPTER XI. MRS. MCDERMOTT WANTS HER MONEY
CHAPTER XII. FOOTSTEPS IN THE ROOM
CHAPTER XIII. THE SQUIRE’S TRIBULATION
IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT.
CHAPTER I.
THE EVE OF THE TRIAL.
Within a week of Tom Bristow’s first visit to Pincote, and his
introduction to the Copes, father and son, Mr. Cope, junior, found
himself, much to his disgust, fairly on his way to New York. He would
gladly have rebelled against the parental dictum in this matter, if he
had dared to do so; but he knew of old how worse than useless it would
be for him to offer the slightest opposition to his father’s wishes.
“You will go and say goodbye to Miss Culpepper as a matter of course,”
said Mr. Cope to him. “But don’t grow too sentimental over the parting.
Do it in an easy, smiling way, as if you were merely going out of town
for a few days. Don’t make any promises—don’t talk about the
future—and, above all, don’t say a word about marriage. Of course, you
will have to write to her occasionally while you are away. Just a few
lines, you know, to say how you are, and all that. No mawkish silly
love-nonsense, but a sensible, manly letter; and be wisely reticent as
to the date of your return. Very sorry, but you don’t know how much
longer your business may detain you—you know the sort of thing I mean.”
When the idea had first entered Mr. Cope’s mind that it would be an
excellent thing if he could only succeed in getting his son engaged to
Squire Culpepper’s only child, it had not been without an ulterior eye
to the fortune which that young lady would one day call her own that he
had been induced to press forward the scheme to a successful issue. By
marrying Miss Culpepper, his son would be enabled to take up a position
in county society such as he could never hope to attain either by his
own merits, which were of the most moderate kind, or from his father’s
money bags alone. But dearly as Mr. Cope loved position, he loved money
still better; and it was no part of his programme that his son should
marry a pauper, even though that pauper could trace back her pedigree
to the Conqueror. And yet, if the squire went on speculating as madly
as he was evidently doing now, it seemed only too probable that
pauperism, or something very much like it, would be the result, as far
as Miss Culpepper was concerned. Instead of having a fortune of at
least twenty thousand pounds, as she ought to have, would she come in
for as many pence when the old man died? Mr. Cope groaned in spirit as
he asked himself the question, and he became more determined than ever
to carry out his policy of waiting and watching, before allowing the
engagement of the young people to reach a point that would render a
subsequent rupture impossible without open scandal—and scandal was a
bugbear of which the banker stood in extreme dread.
Fortunately, perhaps, for Mr. Cope’s view, the feelings of neither of
the people chiefly concerned were very deeply interested. Edward had
obeyed his father in this as in everything else. He had known Jane from
a child, and he liked her because she was clever and good-tempered. But
she by no means realized his ideal of feminine beauty. She was too
slender, too slightly formed to meet with his approval. “There’s not
enough of her,” was the way he put it to himself. Miss Moggs, the
confectioner’s daughter, with her ample proportions and beaming smile,
was far more to his taste. Equally to his taste was the pastry
dispensed by Miss Moggs’s plump fingers, of which he used to devour
enormous quantities, seated on a three-legged stool in front of the
counter, while chatting in a free and easy way about his horses and
dogs, and the number of pigeons he had slaughtered of late. And then it
was so much easier to talk to Miss Moggs than it was to talk to Jane.
Miss Moggs looked up to him as to a young magnifico, and listened to
his oracular utterances with becoming reverence and attention; but
Jane, somehow, didn’t seem to appreciate him as he wished to be
appreciated, and he never felt, quite sure that she was not laughing at
him in her sleeve.
“So you are going to leave us by the eight o’clock train to-morrow, are
you?” asked Jane, when he went to Pincote to say a few last words of
farewell. He had sat down by her side on the sofa, and had taken her
unresisting hand in his; a somewhat thin, cold little hand, that
returned his pressure very faintly. How different, as he could not help
saying to himself, from the warm, plump fingers of Matilda Moggs.
“Yes, I’m going by the morning train. Perhaps I shall never come back.
Perhaps I shall be drowned,” he said, somewhat dolorously.
“Not you, Edward, dear. You will live to plague us all for many a year
to come. I wish I could do your business, and go instead of you.”
“You don’t mean to say that you would like to cross the Atlantic,
Jane?”
“I mean to say that there are few things in the world would please me
better. What a fresh and glorious experience it must be to one who has
never been far from home!”
“But think of the sea-sickness.”
“Think of being out of sight of commonplace land for days and days
together. Think how delightful it must be to be rocked on the great
Atlantic rollers, and what a new and pleasant sensation it must be to
know that there is only a plank between yourself and the fishes, and
yet not to feel the least bit afraid.”
Edward shuddered. “When you wake up in the middle of the night, and
hear the wind blowing hard, you will think of me, won’t you?” he said.
“Of course I shall. And I shall wish I were by your side to enjoy it.
To be out in a gale on the Atlantic—that must indeed be glorious!”
Edward’s fat cheeks became a shade paler, “Don’t talk in that way,
Jane,” he said. “One never can tell what may happen. I shall write to
you, of course, and all that; and you won’t forget me while I’m away,
will you?”
“No, I shall not forget you, Edward; of that you may be quite sure.”
Then he drew her towards him, and kissed her; and then, after a few
more words, he went away.
It was just the sort of parting that his father would have approved of,
he said to himself, as he drove down the avenue. No tears, no
sentimental nonsense, no fuss of any kind. Privately he felt somewhat
aggrieved that she had not taken the parting more to heart. “There
wasn’t even a single tear in her eye,” he said to himself. “She doesn’t
half know how to appreciate a fellow.”
He would perhaps have altered his opinion in some measure could he have
seen Jane half an hour later. She had locked herself in her bedroom,
and was crying bitterly. Why she was crying thus she would have found
it difficult to explain: in fact, she hardly knew herself. It is
possible that her tears were not altogether tears of bitterness—that
some other feeling than sorrow for her temporary separation from Edward
Cope was stirring the fountains of her heart. She kept on upbraiding
herself for her coldness and want of feeling, and trying to persuade
herself that she was deeply sorry, rather than secretly—very
secretly—glad to be relieved of the tedium of his presence for several
weeks to come. She knew how wrong it was of her—it was almost wicked,
she thought—to feel thus: but, underlying all her tears, was a gleam of
precious sunshine, of which she was dimly conscious, although she would
not acknowledge its presence even to herself.
After a time her tears ceased to flow. She got up and bathed her eyes.
While thus occupied her maid knocked at the door.
Mr. Bristow was downstairs. He had brought some photographs for Miss
Culpepper to look at.
“Tell Mr. Bristow how sorry I am that I cannot see him to-day,” said
Jane. “But my head aches so badly that I cannot possibly go down.” Then
when the girl was gone, “I won’t see him to-day,” she added to herself.
“When Edward and I are married he will come and see us sometimes,
perhaps. Edward will always be glad to see him.”
Hearing the front-door clash, she ran to the window and pulled aside a
corner of the blind. In a minute or two she saw Tom walking leisurely
down the avenue. Presently he paused, and turned, and began to scan the
house as if he knew that Jane were watching him. It was quite
impossible that he should see her, but for all that she shrank back,
with a blush and a shy little smile. But she did not loose her hold of
the blind; and presently she peeped again, and never moved her eyes
till Tom was lost to view.
Then she went downstairs into the drawing-room, and found there the
photographs which Tom had left for her inspection. There, too, lying
close by, was a glove which he had dropped and had omitted to pick up
again. “I will give it to him next time he comes,” she said softly to
herself. Strange to relate, her next action was to press the glove to
her lips, after which she hid it away in the bosom of her dress. But
young ladies’ memories are proverbially treacherous, and Jane’s was no
exception to the rule. Tom Bristow’s glove never found its way back
into his possession.
Jane Culpepper had drifted into her engagement with Edward Cope almost
without knowing how such a state of affairs had been brought about.
When her father first mentioned the matter to her, and told her that
Edward was fond of her, she laughed at the idea of Edward being fond of
anything but his horses and his gun. When, later on, the young banker,
in obedience to parental instructions, blundered through a sort of
declaration of love, she laughed again, but neither repulsed nor
encouraged him. She was quite heart-whole and fancy-free; but certainly
Mr. Cope, junior, bore only the faintest resemblance to the vague hero
of her girlish dreams—who would come riding one day out of the
enchanted Kingdom of Love, and, falling on his knees before her,
implore her to share his heart and fortune for evermore. To speak the
truth, there was no romance of any kind about Edward. He was hopelessly
prosaic: he was irredeemably commonplace; but they had known each other
from childhood, and she had a kindly regard for him, arising from that
very fact. So, pending the arrival of Prince Charming, she did not
altogether repulse him, but went on treating his suit as a piece of
pleasant absurdity which could never work itself out to a serious issue
either for herself or him. She took the alarm a little when some
whispers reached her that she would be asked, before long, to fix a day
for the wedding; but, latterly, even those whispers had died away.
Nobody seemed in a hurry to press the affair forward to its legitimate
conclusion: even Edward himself showed no impatience on the point. So
long as he could come and go at Pincote as he liked, and hover about
Jane, and squeeze her hand occasionally, and drive her out once or
twice a week behind his high-stepping bays, he seemed to want nothing
more. They were just the same to each other as they had been when they
were children, Jane said to herself—and why should they not remain so?
But, of late, a slight change had come o’er the spirit of Miss
Culpepper’s dream. New hopes, and thoughts, and fears, to which she had
hitherto been a stranger, began to nestle and flutter round her heart,
like love-birds building in spring. The thought of becoming the wife of
Edward Cope was fast becoming—nay, had already become, utterly
distasteful to her. She began to realize the fact that it is impossible
to keep on playing with fire without getting burnt. She had allowed
herself to drift into an engagement with a man for whom she really
cared nothing, thinking, probably, at the time that for her no Prince
Charming would ever come riding out of the woods; and that, if it would
please her father, she might as well marry Edward Cope as any one else.
But behold! all at once Prince Charming _had_ come, and although, as
yet, he had not gone down on his knees and offered his hand and heart
for evermore, she felt that she could never love but him alone. She
felt, too, with a sort of dumb despair, that she had already given
herself away beyond recall—or, at least, had led the world to think
that she had so given herself away; and that she could not, with any
show of maidenly honour, reclaim a gift which she had let slip from her
so lightly and easily that she hardly knew herself when it was gone.
The eve of Lionel Dering’s trial came at last. The Duxley assizes had
opened on the previous Thursday. All the minor cases had been got
through by Saturday night, and one of the two judges had already gone
forward to the next town. The Park Newton murder case had been left
purposely till Monday, and by those who were supposed to know best, it
was considered not unlikely that trial, verdict, and sentence would all
be got through in the course of one sitting.
The celebrated Mr. Tressil, who had been specially engaged for the
defence, found it impossible to get down to Duxley before the five
o’clock train on Sunday afternoon. He was met on the platform by Mr.
Hoskyns and Mr. Bristow. His junior in the case, Mr. Little, was to
meet him by appointment at his rooms later on. Tom was introduced to
Mr. Tressil by Hoskyns as a particular friend of Mr. Dering’s, and the
three gentlemen at once drove to the prison. Mr. Tressil had gone
carefully through his brief as he came down in the train. The
information conveyed therein was so ample and complete that it was more
as a matter of form than to serve any real purpose that he went to see
his client. The interview was a very brief one. The few questions Mr.
Tressil had to ask were readily answered, but it was quite evident that
there was no fresh point to be elicited. Then Mr. Tressil went away,
accompanied by Mr. Hoskyns; and Tom was left alone with his friend.
Edith had taken leave of her husband an hour before. They would see
each other no more till after the trial was over. What the result of
the trial might possibly be they neither of them dared so much as
whisper. Each of them put on a make-believe gaiety and cheerfulness of
manner, hoping thereby to deceive the other—as if such a thing were
possible.
“In two days’ time you will be back again at Park Newton,” Edith had
said, “and will find yourself saddled with a wife, whom, while a
prisoner, you were compelled to marry against your will. Surely, in so
extreme a case, the Divorce Court would take pity on you, and grant you
some relief.”
“An excellent suggestion,” said Lionel, with a laugh. “I must have some
talk with Hoskyns about it. Meanwhile, suppose you get your trunks
packed, and prepare for an early start on our wedding tour. Oh! to get
outside these four walls again—to have ‘the sky above my head, and the
grass beneath my feet’—what happiness—what ecstasy—that will be! A week
from this time, Edith, we shall be at Chamounix. Think of that, sweet
one! In place of this grim cell—the Alps and Freedom! Ah me! what a
world of meaning there is in those few words!”
The clock struck four. It was time to go. Only by a supreme effort
could Edith keep back her tears—but she did keep them back.
“Goodbye—my husband!” she whispered, as she kissed him on the lips—the
eyes—the forehead. “May He who knows all our sorrows, and can lighten
all our burdens, grant you strength for the morrow!”
Lionel’s lips formed the words, “Goodbye,” but no sound came from them.
One last clasp of the hand—one last yearning, heartfelt look straight
into each other’s eyes, and then Edith was gone. Lionel fell back on
his seat with a groan as the door shut behind her; and there, with
bowed head and clasped fingers, he sat without moving till the coming
of Mr. Tressil and the others warned him that he was no longer alone.
As soon as Mr. Tressil and Hoskyns were gone, Lionel lighted up his
biggest meerschaum, and Tom was persuaded, for once, into trying a very
mild cigarette. Neither of them spoke much—in fact, neither of them
seemed to have much to say. They were Englishmen, and to-day they did
not belie the taciturnity of their race. They made a few disjointed
remarks about the weather, and they both agreed that there was every
prospect of an excellent harvest. Lionel inquired after the Culpeppers,
and was sorry to hear that the squire was confined to his room with
gout. After that, there seemed to be nothing more to say, but they
understood each other so well that there was no need of words to
interpret between them. Simply to have Tom sitting there, was to Lionel
a comfort and a consolation such as nothing else, except the presence
of his wife, could have afforded him; and for Tom to have gone to his
lodgings without spending that last hour with his friend, would have
been a sheer impossibility.
“I shall see you to-morrow?” asked Lionel, as Tom rose to go.
“Certainly you will.”
“Good-night, old fellow.”
“Good-night, Dering. Take my advice, and don’t sit up reading or
anything to-night, but get off to bed as early as you can.”
Lionel nodded and smiled, and so they parted.
Tom had called at Alder Cottage earlier in the day, and had seen Edith
and Mrs. Garside, and had given them their final instructions. He had
one other person still to see—Mr. Sprague, the chemist, and him he went
in search of as soon as he had bidden Lionel good-night.
Mr. Sprague himself came in answer to Tom’s ring at the bell, and
ushered his visitor into a stuffy little parlour behind the shop, where
he had been lounging on the sofa in his shirt-sleeves, reading Burton’s
“Anatomy of Melancholy.” And a very melancholy, careworn-looking man
was this chemist whom Tom had come to see. He looked as if the
perpetual battle for daily bread, which had been going on with him from
year’s end to year’s end ever since he was old enough to handle a
pestle, was at last beginning to daunt him. He had a cowed, wobegone
expression as he passed his fingers wearily through his thin grizzled
locks: although he did his best to put on an air of cheerfulness at the
tardy prospect of a customer.
Tom and the chemist were old acquaintances. Sprague’s shop was one of
the institutions of Duxley, and had been known to Tom from his early
boyhood. Once or twice during his present visit to the town he had
called there and made a few purchases, and chatted over old times, and
old friends long dead and gone, with the melancholy chemist.
“You still stick to the old place, Mr. Sprague,” said Tom, as he sat
down on the ancient sofa.
“Yes, Mr. Bristow—yes. I don’t know that I could do better. My father
kept the shop before me, and everybody in Duxley knows it.”
“I suppose you will be retiring on your fortune before long?”
The chemist laughed a hollow laugh. “With thirteen youthful and
voracious mouths to feed, it looks like making a fortune, don’t it,
sir?”
“A baker’s dozen of youngsters! Fie, Mr. Sprague, fie!”
“Talking about the baker, sir, I give you my word of honour that he and
the butcher take nearly every farthing of profit I get out of my
business. It has come to this: that I can no longer make ends meet, as
I used to do years ago. For the first time in my life, sir, I am
behindhand with my rent, and goodness only knows when and how I shall
get it made up.” Mr. Sprague’s voice was very pitiable as he finished.
“But, surely, some of your children are old enough to help themselves,”
said Tom.
“The eldest are all girls,” answered poor Mr. Sprague, “and they have
to stay at home and help their mother with the little ones. My eldest
boy, Alex, is only nine years old.”
“Just the age to get him off your hands—just the age to get him into
the Downham Foundation School.”
“Oh, sir, what a relief that would be, both to his poor mother and me!
The same thought has struck me, sir, many a time, but I have no
influence—none whatever.”
“But it is possible that I may have a little,” said Tom, kindly.
“Oh, Mr. Bristow!” gasped the chemist, and then could say no more.
“Supposing—merely supposing, you know,” said Tom, “that I were to get
your eldest boy into the Downham Foundation School, and were, in
addition, to put a hundred-pound note into your hands with which to pay
off your arrears of rent, you would be willing to do a trifling service
for me in return?”
“I should be the most ungrateful wretch in the world were I to refuse
to do so,” replied the chemist, earnestly.
“Then listen,” said Tom. “You are summoned to serve as one of the jury
in the great murder case to-morrow.”
Mr. Sprague nodded.
“You will serve, as a matter of course,” continued Tom. “I shall be in
the court, and in such a position that you can see me without
difficulty. As soon as the clock strikes three, you will look at me,
and you will keep on looking at me every two or three minutes, waiting
for a signal from me. Perhaps it will not be requisite for me to give
the signal at all—in that case I shall not need your services; but
whether they are needed or no, your remuneration will in every respect
be the same.”
“And what is the signal, Mr. Bristow, for which I am to look out?”
“The scratching, with my little finger—thus—of the left-hand side of my
nose.”
“And what am I to do when I see the signal?”
“You are to pretend that you are taken suddenly ill, and you are to
keep up that pretence long enough to render it impossible for the trial
to be finished on Monday—long enough, in fact, to make its postponement
to Tuesday morning an inevitable necessity.”
“I understand, sir. You want the trial to extend into the second day;
instead of being finished, as it might be, on the first?”
“That is exactly what I want. Can you counterfeit a sudden attack of
illness, so as to give it an air of reality?”
“I ought to be able to do so, sir. I see plenty of the symptoms every
day of my life.”
“They will send for a doctor to examine you, you know.”
“I suppose so, sir. But my plan will be this: not merely to pretend to
be ill, but to be ill in reality. To swallow something, in fact—say a
pill concocted by myself—which will really make me very sick and ill
for two or three hours, without doing me any permanent injury.”
“Not a bad idea by any means. But you understand that you are to take
no action whatever in the matter until you see my signal.”
“I understand that clearly.”
After a little more conversation, Tom went, carrying with him in his
waistcoat pocket a tiny phial, filled with some dark-coloured fluid
which the chemist had mixed expressly for him.
On the point of leaving, Tom produced three or four rustling pieces of
paper. “Here are thirty pounds on account, Mr. Sprague,” said he. “I
think we understand one another, eh?”
The chemist’s fingers closed like a vice on the notes. His heart gave a
great sigh of relief. “I am your humble servant to command, Mr.
Bristow,” he returned. “You have saved my credit and my good name, and
you may depend upon me in every way.”
As Tom was walking soberly towards his lodging, he passed the open door
of the Royal Hotel. Under the portico stood a man smoking a cigar.
Their eyes met for an instant in the lamplight, but they were strangers
to each other, and Tom passed on his way. Next moment he started, and
turned to look again. He had heard a voice say: “Mr. St. George, your
dinner is served.”
He had come at last, then, this cousin, who had not been seen in Duxley
since the day of the inquest—on whose evidence to-morrow so much would
depend.
“Is that the man, I wonder,” said Tom to himself, “in whose breast lies
hidden the black secret of the murder? If not in his—then in whose?”