Delphi Complete Works of Sheridan Le Fanu

by J. Sheridan le Fanu

  Now the oddity of the evidence respecting the instrument by which Sir Roke was deprived of life was this: the knife which Clewson had seen him secrete in the stableyard was also produced, and proved to be a dagger which Sir Roke had purchased in Spain. Sir Roke did not carry it about his person. It happened to he on his dressing-table. Clewson could point out the spot. He could swear that it was Sir Roke’s dagger. It was as much stained with blood as the other. The drain was dry, and it had got no wet to wash the blood off.

  “You heard voices, and a noise of something broken in Sir Roke Wycherly’s room some time, you can’t exactly say how long, before you saw Sherlock in your room?”

  “I heard something broke, and I heard Sir Roke’s voice, and I heard him walking about the room when I went into the dressing-room.”

  “How do you know it was he who was walking there?” asked Mr. Mervyn.

  “Well, I thought it must be he— “

  “You can only say you heard steps — is that it?” said old Mr. Mervyn, with half-closed eyes, and inclining his ear.

  “Well — yes — that’s all.”

  “Was it your master’s step? — did you recognise his step?” asked the coroner.

  “I took it, it must be his step; but I couldn’t swear.”

  “Did you mention that circumstance to Mr. Shadwell in the morning?” asked Mr. Mervyn, in the same attitude of shrewd attention.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mark Shadwell confirmed this statement with a nod of assent, but he was looking pale and angry.

  “Then you heard a crash of something thrown down — you heard a voice or voices, and recognised Sir Roke’s, speaking in excitement, and afterwards heard steps, you can’t say whose steps, passing to and fro in the room, in silence?”

  “Yes, sir, that’s about it,” said Clewson.

  Mark Shadwell, who sat close behind the vicar, leaning on the back of his chair, was now standing upright, and he said:

  “You’ll allow me, Mr. Coroner, to say a word. It seems to me that an imputation is indirectly thrown upon me, as if I had in my evidence suppressed what the witness Clewson told me in the morning. I need not tell you, sir, and others here, who know me better” — he glanced at the Reverend Stour Temple— “than ever Mr. Mervyn is likely to do, that I am incapable of suppressing anything in my evidence. I can’t conceive a motive. If my attention had been called to that particular incident, I should, of course, have remembered all about it. What the man told me was simply that he heard a crash, followed, as he believed, by Roke Wycherly’s voice, exerted in anger; he said it was his habit to talk by himself, and that a trifle like the breaking of that glass was enough to put him out of temper — he had a violent temper — that he went to the door and heard him — he did not then speak as if there was any doubt about it — walking about the room, that he returned to bed, and was wakened by the appearance of Carmel Sherlock, under the circumstances which he described, in his room; and that he could not tell how short might have been his interval of sleep when he was thus awakened. No sort of suspicion crossed my mind in consequence of this statement, and as to those knives, or whatever you call them, I’ve no clear conception what Mr. Mervyn imagines or surmises. I suppose he will let us know, and whatever it is, I venture to predict, it will turn out to be another mare’s nest.”

  Mark Shadwell bent a sarcastic and agitated scowl upon the shrewd old gentleman, who said, with a cynical coolness:

  “Pray, Mr. Coroner, allow me one remark, as a juror. I shall do my duty, and sift every thing. I rather think it’s important to know whether more persons than one were engaged in this atrocious murder.”

  “Oh, I see” said Shadwell.

  “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t hear you, Mr. Shadwell,” said the coroner.

  “You see,” continued Mr. Mervyn, addressing the coroner, “here are two deadly weapons, each stained with blood, each used in this murder. If people see nothing odd in this I can’t give them eyes, or brains.”

  “Now, I really must request — all this is quite irregular,” said the coroner, beseechingly.

  “Odd!” repeated Mark, grimly, and neither regarding the coroner’s appeal nor Stour Temple’s distressed look, which might have acted on him like a pluck by the coat. “The whole thing’s odd, and I can’t see why one particular singularity is seized upon for the purpose of suggesting that there is an undetected murderer still hid among this family, except for the odd satisfaction of inflicting pain upon me, by casting a scandal on my household.”

  “Now, Mr. Shadwell, I beg you’ll observe this kind of interruption I cannot tolerate,” said the coroner, growing peremptory; “we have been interrupted, gentlemen, by an altercation, and I must say I have heard no imputation to warrant any feeling— “

  “It is indifferent to me what motives may be imputed in some quarters. I shall do my duty all the same, to the best of my power,” said old Mervyn, drily.

  “The better you do it, the better we are pleased,” retorted Shadwell. These two gentlemen, who loved not one another, were growing more bitter as the dialogue proceeded, constantly springing up in gleams of anger like an imperfectly-extinguished fire, and causing the presiding functionary more trouble than the venerable chief of the nursery suffers, when children forget Dr. Watts’s exhortations about “little hands” and “one another’s eyes.” But this subsided for a time, and the sterner business of the day proceeded.

  While the examination of Clewson was continued, in course of which the letter to Pepys Adderly, which it was thought might possibly throw a light on the motive of the murderer, was read, the surgeon was upstairs, and made a careful inspection of the body.

  The result of this was that he discovered three deep wounds, one about an inch from the extremity of the ear, nearly under the left jaw, entering the throat, and passing almost through the neck; another, a little at the left side of the breast, which had pierced the heart; and a third, with the same effect, about an inch below it. It turned out oddly that it was impossible to determine by which of the weapons the wounds were inflicted, for the length of each blade was the same, and although the creese looked the narrower of the two, its wavy shape made up for this, and produced a gash as nearly as possible of exactly the same width. It was impossible then to determine which of these instruments had been employed, or whether only one or both, in accomplishing the murder.

  In addition to these deep and fatal wounds, the palm and fingers of the right hand were deeply cut. There was also a severe contusion on the forehead and a cut there, but inflicted either by a blunt instrument, or by the fist of his assailant.

  The jury returned to Sir Roke’s room to view the body and the room again, and, after another minute scrutiny, they arrived substantially at this conclusion — that Sir Roke, having written his letter, and then read for a time, fell asleep in his chair; that, while he slept, Carmel Sherlock had entered the room to execute his guilty purpose; that, as he approached the chair, stealthily, the baronet awoke; that a brief struggle ensued, during which the decanter had been thrown to the ground, and the exclamations, imperfectly heard by Clewson, had been uttered, and Sir Roke almost instantaneously struck back in his chair by a blow on the forehead, had lain there stunned, while he was despatched by the three dagger-wounds which have been described, having clutched the blade of the knife in his hand during the struggle, and thus received those deep wounds in its palm and fingers which the surgeon had mentioned.

  In this struggle, one or other of two things may have happened: either Sir Roke may have had his own dagger, for some reason, within reach — for he had already talked to several persons of a visit which had surprised him from Carmel Sherlock, who had attempted to enter his room on a former occasion at a very late hour at night, and whom, by suddenly opening the door, he had discovered and disconcerted; he might on this night have placed the weapon beside him, from a nervous fancy that Sherlock might repeat the visit which he had then attempted, and may have seized and lost it in the struggle —
Sherlock wresting it from his hand, and in doing so dropping his own knife, and committing the murder with Sir Roke’s, which he had secured. Or the murder may have been perpetrated with his own creese; whichever weapon fell upon the ground, at the side of Sir Roke’s chair, would have been as effectually stained with blood as if it had been actually used in stabbing him. This seemed the only way of accounting for Sir Roke’s dagger having been removed by Sherlock. He must have picked up Sir Roke’s, in his confusion, instead of his own.

  Again by which door had the murderer entered the room of the deceased? Clewson swore distinctly that he heard the bolt which secured the door that opened on the dressing-room fall into its place while he was arranging the candle and some other things in the dressing-room. If this were so, access from the dressing-room was impossible. The murderer must have entered from the gallery, and after committing the murder, locked the door upon the inside, as the blood marks on the handle of the key attested. One thing was certain, that he had not made his egress through the same door. He must have raised the falling bolt, and let himself out through the dressing room. Clewson, who was accustomed to be called up at all hours of the night by his master, slept very lightly; no one, he was confident, could pass through his room without awaking him. Carmel Sherlock could not, he thought, have been many seconds in his room at the time when he first saw him.

  And now the jurors trooped down the stairs again, silently ruminating; and having retired and considered their finding for some ten minutes, they returned with a verdict of wilful murder against Carmel Sherlock, for whose apprehension the coroner accordingly forthwith issued his warrant.

  CHAPTER XIX.

  ROGER TEMPLE SEES HIS LADYLOVE.

  WHEN at length the house was cleared of these intruders, and left to the consciousness of late occurrences, and the gloom of death, Mark Shadwell, standing with Stour Temple and honest Roger in the hall, had hardly seen the last vehicle drive away, and disappear through the perspective of towering trees, when, lifting his head, he said to the vicar:

  “Did you hear and see that long-headed villain?” Mark looked fiercely on Stour Temple.

  “Whom do you mean?” asked he, surprised at this abrupt appeal.

  “Old Mervyn, of course — stingy as he is, I believe he’d give a hundred pounds to improve this occasion to aggravate the misfortune and blacken the gloom under which my house lies — think of the wretch! The whole day long, but one idea in his head — to try and make people fancy that there were two murderers in this house! Whom could he mean to indicate? It could not be that fellow, Clewson. There is no imaginable motive there, and he’s a stranger — a mere sojourner — that would not disgrace me — whom could he be thinking of?”

  “I’m quite clear,”, answered the vicar, “that he did not think of any one in particular. I don’t think even he fancies any such thing seriously, himself. He threw it out simply as a possible hypothesis on which to account for some puzzling circumstances, which must have struck you also. If I, or Roger here, had mooted the same inquiry, you would not have suspected an unfair motive. It is, pardon me, my dear Mr. Shadwell, your own prejudice that reflects itself in mistaken imputations of his motives.”

  “Ha, Temple, you wont see! — that fellow goes to your church, and listens to your sermons, and gives you a half-crown now and then out of his overgrown wealth to divide among your poor — so, of course, he’s a saint! May God unmask, and punish him!”

  “Pray, my dear sir, do consider; only this moment, as I may say, descended from so awful a scene, and the presence of that mute and terrible witness of the vanity of earth and the victory of death,” said the vicar, in the low tones of earnest expostulation; “I do assure you you wrong Mr. Mervyn. He may be no friend of yours; you make no secret of your feelings towards him: but I’m very certain he bears you no enmity.”

  “I’ll make him speak out; he shall tell his meaning. I’m much obliged for his forbearance, but this is a limited household, and to set such an imputation afloat among them! Surely you see the malignity and cowardice of it as clearly as I do? But — no matter — the ‘cat will mew, the dog will have his day;’ it may be my turn yet. I saw his nephew a short time since — Charles Mordant — is he still with you?”

  “Yes; on leave. We are all so fond of him. I don’t know whether he is going to visit his uncle this year! I fancy he has more liberty with us, and enjoys it more,” answered the vicar.

  “I dare say; I don’t know much about him. Have you seen my wife to-day? I’m certain she’d like to talk to you a little. There’s no good in my going; I’m as much put out by this odious business as she is, and I really don’t know what to say to her. But you could — I have not seen her to-day, simply because I knew I should find her in distress, and should not know how to comfort her.”

  “Certainly, if you think she would wish it.”

  “Of course she would. I don’t mean talking nothing but Bible; tell her the news, and anything to get up her spirits a little; I’ll go upstairs to her room with you. I hope those fellows,” he continued in a low tone, as they went upstairs side by side, “will come at once and take away poor Roke. You can’t imagine what it is, having all that here, with so many nervous women in the house; and to be in charge of such a thing — I hate it. And then, I’m every way quite upset; and how I’m to get on without Carmel Sherlock God only knows. Here we are — I’m coming to see you, Amy, and I’ve brought a visitor with me; are you at home to us?”

  “It is so good of you to come again to-day,” she said to the vicar; “you must stay — pray don’t go for a few minutes?”

  He answered her little appeal and her beseeching look kindly, and Mark said:

  “Having seen you, Amy, and asked you how you do, I take my leave; there are fifty things to be looked after, one more distressing than another — but it must be got through.” And dismally he turned and left the room.

  “That dreadful inquest is quite over?” she said, in a very low tone, and looking at him as if she would have asked another question.

  “Yes; and I think very satisfactorily — that is, so far as perfect distinctness is concerned. That poor, wretched man, you know,” and the vicar shook his head, “mad man, I must call him — they found that the act was his — as we all knew before — and so, except for him, it ends; and he, from all we can learn, appears to be unquestionably insane.”

  “That any one capable of this should have been living in this house, talking to us, passing us on the stairs, and smiling in our faces, seems so frightful; and that the crime should have happened in this quiet household — so near to one’s doors, and by a hand we all so trusted — is like a dream — or a frightful story!”

  “I am haunted by that kind of incredulity myself,” said the vicar, with a little shrug. “I can fancy how men who are beginning to grow insane, and are frightened by their illusions, feel. It really is by an effort that I can fix the truth in my mind as a reality, and believe in it.”

  “And how did Mr. Shadwell go through that dreadful ordeal?”

  “Oh, just as we did — very well.”

  “He is more sensitive than you would imagine; anything that touches the honour of his house is agony to him. It was very kind of you to come; he is not on happy terms, you know, with some of our neighbours, and he might have imagined affronts intended, where none were thought of; and a word from you would set it all right; and — teas there anything unpleasant — did anything occur?”

  “No — nothing — there was just a word or two between him and old Mr. Mervyn.”

  “Oh! Mr. Mervyn? What did he say?” asked she, nervously.

  “Merely a few words, such as I might have said, or any other friend, but the spirit of which Mr. Shadwell mistook quite; and, in fact, take it what way one might, there was absolutely nothing in it to cause the slightest pain.”

  “Tell me — do tell me — if there was anything? I am sure you’ll tell me.”

  “Nothing — really — just an impatient word
from Mr. Shadwell, and a word of defence, or excuse, from Mr. Mervyn; but only that; and everything went on quite smoothly; no hitch— ‘nothing: and now — except, of course, the impression that remains upon one’s nerves — your trouble, on this account, is quite over.”

  “God grant it!” said she, with a great sigh and a look of great anxiety.

  “And now I must tell you how they are at home; and what is going on in our little world round the vicarage.”

  And so the good man endeavoured to lead away her thoughts from the occurrences that had so awfully occupied them.

  The hall door was still open, and our friend, Roger Temple, stood in the hall alone, looking from that elevation down the avenue, with its broad grass borders and solemn perspective of gigantic trees.

  His jerry was on his head, his dark grey “zephyr,” as he called his outer garment, loosely encompassed his portly form, and with the ivory crook of his stick pressed upon his fat chin, he looked with an innocent melancholy upon the prospect before him.

  He had not, it must be allowed, much variety to amuse him; but, like more busy and bustling, men, he had something to think of. That which from outward seeming we often assume to be the dominant idea, is not always present in our thoughts, any more than in our dreams. I do not think that honest Roger was absorbed wholly by the tragedy of Raby. There was another drama in which his interest was nearer and more active.

  As his fancy painted its scenes, and listened to its dialogue, with an interest that took no account of the time that was flying while he stood there, and amid his dreams kept him continually on the alert for sign or sound that might indicate the coming of that enchantress whose approach thrilled him, even at a distance, with an indescribable emotion, he looked about him, now and then, with a fat and simple sadness, and stood suspended, the handle of his cane removed from his expansive chin as he listened, and then sighed, and resumed his tender contemplation of nature.