by Ellen Wood
“Between half-past seven and eight? Needn’t look much before or much beyond that hour. Girl says nobody went into the house at all, except Jones’s nephew, and Jones’s sister-in-law. Jones’s nephew did not stay; he got his book and went off again at half-past seven, close on the heels of Bede Greatorex, Mr. Ollivera being then alive. Presently, nearer eight, Alletha Rye goes in, for a pattern, she says, and she stays upstairs, according to the girl’s statement, a quarter of an hour.”
Mr. Butterby came to a sudden pause. He faced the fire now, and sat staring into it as if he were searching for what he could not see.
“It does not take a quarter of an hour to get a pattern. I should say not. And there was her queer dream, too. Leastways, the queer assertion that she had a dream. Dreams, indeed! — moonshine. Did she invent that dream as an excuse for having gone into the room to find him? And then look at her persistence from the first that it was not a suicide! And her queer state of mind and manners since! Dicky Jones told me last night when I met him by the hop-market, that she says she’s haunted by Mr. Ollivera’s spirit. Why should she be, I wonder? I mean, why should she fancy it? It’s odd; very odd. The young woman, up to now, has always shown out sensible, in the short while this city has known her.
“That Godfrey Pitman,” resumed the speaker. “The way that man’s name got brought up by the servant-girl was sudden. I should like to know who he is, and what his business might have been. He was in hiding; that’s what he was. Stopping in-doors for a cold and a relaxed throat! No doubt! But it does not follow that because he might have been in some trouble of his own, he had anything to do with the other business; and, in fact, he couldn’t have had, leaving by the five o’clock train for Birmingham. So we’ll dismiss him.
“And now for the result?” concluded Mr. Butterby, with great deliberation. “The result is that I feel inclined to think the young parson may be right in saying it was not a suicide. What it was, I can’t yet make my mind up to give an opinion upon. Suppose I inquire into things a bit in a quiet manner? — and, to begin with, I’ll make a friendly call on Dicky Jones and madam. She won’t answer anything that it does not please her to, and it never pleases her to be questioned; on the other hand, what she does choose to say is to be relied upon, for she’d not tell a lie to save herself from hanging. As to Dicky — with that long tongue of his, he can be pumped dry.”
Mr. Butterby locked up his papers, changed his ornamental coat for a black one, flattened down the coal on his Are, blew out the candles, took his hat, and went away.
CHAPTER VI.
Godfrey Pitman.
MRS. JONES was in her parlour, doing nothing; with the exception of dropping a tart observation from her lips occasionally. As the intelligent reader cannot have failed to observe, tartness in regard to tongue was essentially an element of Mrs. Jones’s nature; when anything occurred to annoy her, its signs increased four-fold; and something had just happened to annoy her very exceedingly.
The parlour was not large, but convenient and well fitted-up. A good fire burnt in the grate, throwing its ruddy light on the bright colours of the crimson carpet and hearth-rug; on the small sideboard, with its array of glass; on the horsehair chairs, on the crimson cloth covering the centre table, and finally on Mrs. Jones herself and on her sister.
Mrs. Jones sat at the table, some work before her, in the shape of sundry packages of hosiery, brought in from the shop to be examined, sorted, and put to rights. But she was not doing it. Miss Rye sat on the other side the table, stitching the seams of a gown-body by the light of the moderator lamp. The shop was just closed.
It had happened that ‘Dicky Jones, about tea-time that evening, had strayed into his next-door neighbour’s to get a chat: of which light interludes to business Dicky Jones was uncommonly fond. The bent of the conversation fell, naturally enough, on the recent calamity in Mr. Jones’s house: in fact, Mr. Jones found his neighbour devouring the full account of it in the Friday evening weekly newspaper, just damp from the press. A few minutes, and back went Dicky to his own parlour, his mouth full of news: the purport of which was that the lodger, Godfrey Pitman, who had been supposed to leave the house at half-past four, to take the Birmingham train, did not really quit it until some two or three hours later.
It had not been Mrs. Jones if she had refrained from telling her husband to hold his tongue for a fool; and of asking furthermore whether he had been drinking or dreaming. Upon which Dicky gave his authority for what he said. Their neighbour, Thomas Cause, had watched the lodger go away later, with his own eyes.
Mr. Cause, a quiet tradesman getting in years, was fetched in, and a skirmish ensued. He asserted that he had seen the lodger come out of the house and go up the street by lamplight, carrying his blue bag; and he persisted in the assertion, in spite of Mrs. Jones’s tongue. She declared he had not seen anything of the sort; that either his spectacles or the street lights had deceived him. And neither of them would give in to the other.
Leaving matters in this unsatisfactory state, the neighbour went out again. Mrs. Jones exploded a little, and then had leisure to look at her sister, who had sat still and silent during the discussion. Still and silent she remained; but her face had turned white, and her eyes wore a wild, frightened expression.
“What on earth’s the matter with you?” demanded Mrs. Jones.
“Nothing,” said Miss Rye, catching hold of her work with nervous, trembling fingers. “Only I can’t bear to hear it spoken of.”
“If Mr. Pitman didn’t go away till later, that accounts for the tallow-grease in his room,” suddenly interposed Susan Marks, who, passing into the parlour, caught the thread of the matter in dispute.
Mrs. Jones turned upon her. “Tallow-grease!”
“I didn’t see it till this afternoon,” explained the girl. “With all the commotion there has been in the house, I never as much as opened the room-door till to-day since Mr. Pitman went out of it. The first thing I see was the carpet covered in drops of tallow-grease; a whole colony of them: and I know they were not there on the Monday afternoon. They be there still.”
Mrs. Jones went up-stairs at once, the maid following her. Sure enough the grease drops were there. Some lay on the square piece of carpet, some on the boarded floor; but all were very near together. The candlestick and candle, from which they had no doubt dropped, stood on the wash-hand-stand at Mrs. Jones’s elbow, as she wrathfully gazed.
“He must have been lighting of his candle sideways,” remarked the girl to her mistress; “or else have held it askew while hunting for something on the floor. If he stopped as late as old Cause says, why in course he’d need a candle.”
Mrs. Jones went down again, her temper by no means improved. She did not like to be deceived or treated as though she were nobody; neither did she choose that her house should be played with. If the lodger missed his train (as she now supposed he might have done) and came back to wait for a later one, his duty was to have announced himself, and asked leave to stay. In spite, however, of the tallow and of Mr. Cause, she put but little faith in the matter. Shortly after this there came a ring at the side-door, and Mr. Butterby’s voice was heard in the passage.
“Don’t say anything to him about it,” said Miss Rye hastily, in a low tone.
“About what?” demanded Mrs. Jones, aloud.
“About that young man’s not going away as soon as we thought he did. It’s nothing to Butterby.”
There was no time for more. Mr. Butterby was shown in and came forward with a small present for Mrs. Jones. It was only a bunch of violets; but Mrs. Jones, in spite of her tartness, was fond of flowers, and received them graciously: calling to Susan to bring a wine-glass of water.
“I passed a chap at the top of High Street with a basket-full; he said he’d sold but two bunches all the evening, so I took a bunch,” explained Mr. Butterby. “It was that gardener’s man, Reed, who met with the accident and has been unfit for work since. Knowing you liked violets, Mrs. Jones, I thought I’d
just call in with them.”
He sat down in the chair, offered him, by the fire, putting his hat in the corner behind. Miss Rye, after saluting him, had resumed work, and sat with her face turned to the table, partially away from his view; Mrs. Jones, at the other side of the table, faced him.
“Where’s Jones?” asked Mr. Butterby.
“Jones is off, as usual,” replied Jones’s wife. “No good to ask where he is after the shop’s shut; often not before it.”
It was an unlucky question, bringing back all the acrimony which the violets had partially soothed away. Mr. Butterby coughed, and began talking of recent events in a sociable, friendly manner, just as if he had been Mrs. Jones’s brother, and never in his life heard of so rare an animal as a detective.
“It’s an uncommon annoying thing to have had happen in your house, Mrs. Jones! As if it couldn’t as well have took place in anybody else’s! There’s enough barristers lodging in the town at assize time, I hope. But there! luck’s everything. I’d have given five shillings out of my pocket to have stopped it.”
“So would I; for his sake as well as for mine,” was Mrs. Jones’s answer. And she seized one of the parcels of stockings, and jerked off the string.
“Have you had any more dreams, Miss Rye?”
“No,” replied Miss Rye, holding her stitching closer to the light for a moment. “That one was enough.”
“Dreams is curious things; not to be despised,” observed crafty Mr. Butterby; than whom there was not a man living despised dreams, as well as those who professed to have them, more than he. “But I’ve knowed so-called dreams to be nothing in the world but waking thoughts. Are you sure that one of yours was a dream, Miss Rye?”
“I would rather not talk of it, if you please,” she said. “Talking cannot bring Mr. Ollivera back to life.”
“What makes you persist in thinking he did not kill himself?”
Mr. Butterby had gradually edged his chair forward on the hearthrug, so as to obtain a side view of Miss Rye’s face. Perhaps he was surprised, perhaps not, to see it suddenly flush, and then become deadly pale.
“Just look here, Miss Rye. If he did not do it, somebody else did. And I should like to glean a little insight as to whether or not there are grounds for that new light, if there’s any to be gleaned.”
“Why, what on earth! are you taking up that crotchet, Butterby?”
The interruption came from Mrs. Jones. That goes without telling, as the French say. Mr. Butterby turned to warm his hands at the blaze, speaking mildly enough to disarm an enemy.
“Not I. I should like to show your sister that her suspicions are wrong: she’ll worrit herself into a skeleton, else. See here: whatever happened, and how ever it happened, it must have been between half-past seven and eight. You were in the place part of that half-hour, Miss Rye, and heard nobody.”
“I have already said so.”
“Shut up in your room at the top of the house; looking for — what was it? — a parcel?”
“A pattern — a pattern of a sleeve. But I had to open parcels, for I could not find it, and stayed searching. It had slipped between one drawer and another at the back.”
“It must have took you some time,” remarked Mr.
Butterby, keeping his face on the genial fire and his eyes on Miss Rye.
“I suppose it did. Susan says I was upstairs a quarter of an hour, but I don’t think it was so long as that. Eight o’clock struck after I got back to Mrs. Wilson’s.”
Mr. Butterby paused. Miss Rye resumed after a minute.
“I don’t think anyone could have come in legitimately without my hearing them on the stairs. My room is not at the top of the house, it is on the same floor as Mrs. Jones’s; the back room, immediately over the bedroom that was occupied by Mr. Ollivera. My door was open, and the drawers in which I was searching stood close to it. If any—”
“What d’ye mean by legitimate?” interrupted Mr. Butterby, turning to take a full look at the speaker.
“Openly; with the noise one usually makes in coming up stairs. But if any one crept up secretly, of course I should not have heard it. Susan persists in declaring she never lost sight of the front door at all; I don’t believe her.”
“Nobody does believe her,” snapped Mrs. Jones, with a fling at the socks. “She confesses now that she ran in twice or thrice to look to the fires.”
“Oh! she does, does she,” cried Mr. Butterby. “Leaving the door open, I suppose?”
“Leaving it to take care of itself. She says she shut it; I say I know she didn’t. Put it at the best, it was not fastened; and anybody might have opened it and walked in that had a mind to, and robbed the house.”
The visitor, sitting so unobtrusively by the fire, thought he discerned a little glimmer of possibility breaking in amidst the utter darkness.
“But, as the house was not robbed, why we must conclude nobody did come in,” he observed. “As to the verdict — I don’t see yet any reason for Miss Rye’s disputing it. Mr. Ollivera was a favourite, I suppose.”
The remark did not please Miss Rye. Her cheek flushed, her work fell, and she rose from her seat to turn on Mr. Butterby.
“The verdict was a wrong verdict. Mr. Ollivera was a good and brave and just man. Never a better went out of the world.”
“If I don’t believe you were in love with him!” cried Mr. Butterby.
“Perhaps I was,” came the unexpected answer; but the speaker seemed to be in too much agitation to heed greatly what she said. “It would not have hurt either him or me.”
Gathering her work, cotton, scissors in her hands, she went out of the room. At the same moment there arrived an influx of female visitors, come, without ceremony, to get an hour’s chat with Mrs. Jones. Catching up his hat, Mr. Butterby dexterously slipped out and disappeared.
The street was tolerably’ empty. He took up his position at the edge of the facing pavement, and surveyed the house critically. As if he did not know all its aspects by heart! Some few yards higher up, the dwellings of Mr. Cause and the linendraper alone intervening, there was a side opening, bearing the euphonious title of Bear Entry, which led right into an obscure part of the town. By taking this, and executing a few turnings and windings, the railway station might be approached without touching on the more public streets.
“Yes,” said the police agent to himself, calculating possibilities, “that’s how it might have been done. Not that it was, though: I’m only putting it. A fellow might have slipped out of the door while that girl was in at her fires, cut down Bear Entry, double back again along Goose Lane, and so gain the rail.”
Turning up the street with a brisk step, Mr. Butterby found himself face to face with Thomas Cause, who was standing within the shade of his side door. Exceedingly affable when it suited him to be so, he stopped to say a good evening.
“How d’ye do, Cause? A fine night, isn’t it?”
“Lovely weather; shall pay for it later. Has she recovered her temper yet?” continued Mr. Cause. “I saw you come out.”
Which was decidedly a rather mysterious addition to the answer. Mr. Butterby naturally enquired what it might mean, and had his ears gratified with the story of Godfrey Pitman’s later departure, and of Mrs. Jones’s angry disbelief in it. Never had those ears listened more keenly.
“Are you sure it was the man?” he asked cautiously.
“If it wasn’t him it was his ghost,” said Mr. Cause. “I was standing here on the Monday night, just a step or two for’arder on the pavement, little thinking that a poor gentleman was shooting himself within a few yards of me, and saw a man come out of Jones’s side door. When he was close up, I knew him in a moment for the same traveller, with the same blue bag in his hand, that I saw go in with Miss Rye on the Sunday week previous. He came out of the house cautiously, his head pushed forward first, looking up the street and down the street, and then turned out sharp, whisked past me as hard as he could walk, and went down Bear Entry. It seemed to me that he did
n’t care to be seen.”
But that detectives’ hearts are too hard for emotion, this one’s might have beaten a little faster as he listened. It was so exactly what he had been fancifully tracing to himself as the imaginary course of a guilty man. Stealing out of the house down Bear Entry, and so up to the railway station!
“What time was it?”
“What time is it now?” returned Mr. Cause: and the other took out his watch.
“Five-and-thirty minutes past seven.”
“Then it was as nigh the same time on Monday night, as nigh as nigh can be. I shut up my shop at the usual hour, and I’d stood here afterwards just about as long as I’ve stood here now. I like to take a breath of fresh air, Mr. Butterby, when the labours of the day are over.”
“Fresh air’s good for all of us — that can get it,” said Mr. Butterby, with a sniff at the air around him. “What sort of a looking man was this Godfrey Pitman?”