by Ellen Wood
“What’s the matter with them?” asked Lake: his usual question.
“Everything; they are bad all over. I shall be back in a trice.”
I went the quickest way, through the passages, which brought me into Essex Street, and had my latch-key ready to open the door with as I approached the house. There were three of these latchkeys. I had one; Lennard another, for it sometimes happened that he had to come in before or after business hours; and Leah had possession of the third. But I had no use for mine now, for the door was open. A policeman, standing by the area railings, recognised me, and wished me good-evening.
‘Whose carelessness is this?’ thought I, advancing to the top of the kitchen stairs and calling to Leah.
It appeared useless to call: no Leah made her appearance. I shut the front door and went upstairs, wondering whether Mr. Brightman had left.
Left! I started back as I entered; for there lay Mr. Brightman on the floor by his desk, as if he had pushed back his chair and fallen from it.
“What is the matter?” I exclaimed, throwing my hat anywhere, and hastening to raise him. But his head and shoulders were a dead weight in my arms, and there was an awful look upon his face, as the gaslight fell upon it. A look, in short, of death, and not of an easy death.
My pulses beat quicker, man though I was, and my heart beat with them. Was I alone in that large house with the dead? I let him fall again and rang the bell violently. I rushed to the door and shouted over the banisters for Leah; and just as I was leaping down for the policeman I had seen outside, or any other help that might be at hand, I heard a latch-key inserted into the lock, and Lennard came in with Dr. Dickenson. I knew him well, for he had attended Miss Methold in the days gone by.
As he hastened to Mr. Brightman, Lennard turned to me, speaking in a whisper:
“Mr. Strange, how did it happen? Was he ill?”
“I know nothing about it, Lennard. I came in a minute ago, and found him lying here. What do you know? Had you been here before?”
“I came, as Mr. Brightman had directed,” he replied. “It was a little before eight; and when I got upstairs he was lying there as you see. I tried to rouse him, but could not, and I went off for the doctor.”
“Did you leave the front door open?”
“I believe I did, in my flurry and haste. I thought of it as I ran up the street, but would not lose time in going back to shut it.”
“He is gone, Mr. Strange,” said Dr. Dickenson, advancing towards me, for I and Lennard had stood near the door. “It is a case of sudden death.”
I sat down, bewildered. I could not believe it. How awfully sudden! “Is it apoplexy?” I asked, lifting my head.
“No, I should say not.”
“Then what is it?”
“I cannot tell; it may be the heart.”
“Are you sure he is dead? Beyond all hope?”
“He is indeed.”
A disagreeable doubt rushed over my mind, and I spoke on the impulse of the moment. “Has he come by his death fairly?”
The surgeon paused before he answered. “I see no reason, as yet, to infer otherwise. There are no signs of violence about him.”
I cannot describe my feelings as we stood looking down at him. Never had I felt so before. What was I to do next? — how act? A hazy idea was making itself heard that some weighty responsibility lay upon me.
Just then a cab dashed up to the door; we heard it all too plainly in the hushed silence; and someone knocked and rang. Lennard went down to open it, and I told him to send in the policeman and fetch another doctor. Looking over the banisters I saw George Coney come in.
“Such a downfall to my plans, Mr. Strange,” he began, seeing me as he ascended the stairs. “I went round to my inn to brush myself up before going to the play, and there I found a letter from my father, which they had forgotten to give me this morning. Our bailiff’s been taken ill, cannot leave his bed, and father writes that I had better let the horse and the thirty pounds go for a bad job, and come home, for he can’t have me away longer. So my spree’s done for, this time, and I am on my way to the station, to catch the nine o’clock train.”
“Don’t go in until you have heard what is there,” I whispered, as he was entering the room. “Mr. Brightman, whom you left well, is lying on the floor, and — —”
“And what?” asked young Coney, looking at me.
“I fear he is dead.”
After a dismayed pause he went gently into the room, taking off his hat reverently and treading on tiptoe. “Poor fellow! poor gentleman!” he uttered, after looking at him. “What an awful thing! How was he taken?”
“We do not know how. He was alone.”
“What, alone when he was taken! no one to help him!” returned the young man. “That was hard! What has he died of?”
“Probably the heart,” interposed Dr. Dickenson.
“Last summer a carter of ours fell down as he was standing near us; my father was giving him directions about a load of hay, and when we picked him up he was dead,” spoke the young man. “That was the heart, they said. But he looked calm and quiet, not as Mr. Brightman looks. He left seven children, poor chap!”
At that juncture Mr. Lennard returned with the policeman. Another doctor, he said, would be round directly. After some general conversation, George Coney looked at his watch.
“Mr. Strange, my time’s up. Would it be convenient to give me that money again? I should like to take it down with me, you see, just to have the laugh against the old folks at home.”
“I will give it you,” I said.
But for the very life of me, I could not put my hand into the dead man’s pocket. I beckoned to Lennard. “Can you take out his keys?”
“Let me do it,” said Dr. Dickenson, for Lennard did not seem to relish the task either. “I am more accustomed to death than you are. Which pocket are they in?”
“The right-hand pocket of his trousers; he always kept them there,” was my answer.
Dr. Dickenson found the keys and handed them to me. I unlocked the drawer, being obliged to bend over the dead to do so, and young Coney stepped forward to receive the bag.
But the bag was not there.
CHAPTER IV.
LEAH’S STORY.
Our dismayed faces might have formed a study for a painter, as we stood in my room in Essex Street: the doctor, George Coney, Lennard and myself. On the floor, between the hearthrug and the desk, lay the dead man, the blaze of the fire and the gaslights playing on his features. Mr. Brightman was dead. In my mental pain and emotion I could not realize the fact; would not believe that it was true. He had died thus suddenly, no one near him; no one, so far as was yet known, in the house at the time. And to me, at least, there seemed to be some mystery attaching to it.
But, at this particular moment, we were looking for George Coney’s sovereigns, which Mr. Brightman, not much more than an hour before, had locked up in the deep drawer of his desk, returning the keys to his pocket. After Dr. Dickenson had handed me the keys I unlocked and opened the drawer. But the bag was not there.
If the desk itself had disappeared, I could not have been more surprised. Lying in the drawer, close to where the bag had been, was a gold watch belonging to Mrs. Brightman, which had been brought up to town to be cleaned. That was undisturbed. “Coney,” I exclaimed, “the money is not here.”
“It was put there,” replied young Coney. “Next to that watch.”
“I know it was,” I answered. I opened the drawer on the other side, but that was full of papers. I looked about on the desk; then on my own desk, even unlocking the drawers, though I had had the key in my own pocket; then on the tables and mantelpiece. Not a trace could I see of the canvas bag.
“What bag is it?” inquired Dr. Dickenson, who, of course, had known nothing of this. “What was in it?”
“A small canvas bag containing some gold that Mr. George Coney had wished to leave here until Monday,” I answered.
“’Twas one of o
ur sample barley bags; I happened to have it in my pocket when I left home,” explained the young man. “My father’s initials were on it: S. C.”
“How much was in it?” asked Lennard.
“Thirty pounds.”
“I fear you will be obliged to go without it, after all,” I said, when I had turned everything over, “for it is not to be found. I will remit you thirty pounds on Monday. We send our spare cash to the bank on Saturday afternoons, so that I have not so much in the house: and I really do not know where Mr. Brightman has put the cheque-book. It is strange that he should have taken the bag out of the drawer again.”
“Perhaps it may be in one of his pockets,” suggested the doctor. “Shall I search them?”
“No, no,” interposed George Coney. “I wouldn’t have the poor gentleman disturbed just for that. You’ll remit it to me, Mr. Strange. Not to my father,” he added, with a smile: “to me.”
I went down with him, and there sat Leah at the bottom of the stairs, leaning her head against the banisters, almost under the hall lamp. “When did you come in, Leah?” I asked.
She rose hastily, and faced me. “I thought you were out, sir. I have come in only this instant.”
“What is the matter?” I continued, struck with the white, strange look upon her face. “Are you ill?”
“No, sir, not ill. Trouble is the lot of us all.”
I shook hands with George Coney as he got into his cab and departed, and then returned indoors. Leah was hastening along the passage to the kitchen stairs. I called her back again. “Leah,” I said, “do you know what has happened to Mr. Brightman?”
“No, sir,” answered she. “What has happened to him?”
“You must prepare for a shock. He is dead.”
She had a cloth and a plate in her hand, and laid them down on the slab as she backed against the wall, staring in horror. Then her features relaxed into a wan smile.
“Ah, Master Charles, you are thinking to be a boy again to-night, and are playing a trick upon me, as you used to do in the old days, sir.”
“I wish to my heart it was so, Leah. Mr. Brightman is lying upon the floor in my room. I fear there can be no doubt that he is dead.”
“My poor master!” she slowly ejaculated. “Heaven have mercy upon him! — and upon us! Why, it’s not more than three-quarters of an hour since I took up some water to him.”
“Did he ask for it?”
“He rang the bell, sir, and asked for a decanter of water and a tumbler.”
“How did he look then, Leah? Where was he sitting?”
“He was sitting at his table, sir, and he looked as usual, for all I saw, but his head was bent over something he was reading. I put some coals on the fire and came away. Mr. Charles, who is up there with him?”
“Dr. Dickenson and — —”
A knock at the door interrupted me. It proved to be the other doctor I had sent for.
The medical men proceeded to examine Mr. Brightman more closely. I had sent for the police, and they also were present. I then searched his pockets, a policeman aiding me, and we put their contents carefully away. But there was no bag containing gold amongst them. How had it disappeared?
A most unhappy circumstance was the fact that I could not send for Mrs. Brightman, for I did not know where she was. Mr. Brightman had said she was out of town, but did not say where.
When Watts came home, I despatched him to the house at Clapham, allowing him no time to indulge his grief or his curiosity. Leah had knelt down by Mr. Brightman, tears silently streaming from her eyes.
The fire in the front room was relighted; the fire, the very coals, which he, poor man, had so recently taken off; and I, Lennard and Arthur Lake went in there to talk the matter over quietly.
“Lennard,” I said, “I am not satisfied that he has died a natural death. I hope — —”
“There are no grounds for any other supposition, Mr. Strange,” he interrupted. “None whatever. Are there?” he added, looking at me.
“I trust there are none — but I don’t quite like the attendant circumstances of the case. The loss of that bag of money causes all sorts of unpleasant suspicions to arise. When you came to the house, Lennard, did you go straight upstairs?” I added, after a pause.
“No, I went into the front office,” replied Lennard. “I thought Sir Edmund Clavering might still be here.”
“Was Leah out or in?”
“Leah was standing at the front door, looking — as it seemed to me — down the steps leading to the Thames. While I was lighting my candle by the hall-lamp, she shut the front door and came to me. She was extremely agitated, and — —”
“Agitated?” I interrupted.
“Yes,” said Lennard; “I could not be mistaken. I stared at her, wondering what could cause it, and why her face was so white — almost as white as Mr. Brightman’s is now. She asked — as earnestly as if she were pleading for life — whether I would stop in the house for a few minutes, as Mr. Brightman had not gone, while she ran out upon an errand. I inquired whether Sir Edmund Clavering was upstairs, and she said no; he had left; Mr. Strange was out, and Mr. Brightman was alone.”
“Did she go out?”
“Immediately,” replied Lennard; “just as she was, without bonnet or shawl. I went up to your room, and tapped at the door. It was not answered, and I went in. At first I thought the room was empty; but in a moment I saw Mr. Brightman lying on the ground. He was dead even then; I am certain of it,” added Lennard, pausing from natural emotion. “I raised his head, and put a little water to his temples, but I saw that he was dead.”
“It is an awful thing!” exclaimed Lake.
“I can tell you that I thought so,” assented Lennard. “I knew that the first thing must be to get in a doctor; but how I found my way up the street to Dickenson’s I hardly remember. No wonder I left the front door open behind me.”
I turned all this over in my mind. There were two points I did not like — Leah’s agitation, and Lennard’s carelessness in leaving the door open. I called in one of the policemen from the other room, for they were there still, with the medical men.
“Williams,” I began, “you saw me come down the street with my latch-key in my hand?”
“I did, sir, and wished you good-evening,” replied Williams. “It wasn’t long after the other gentleman,” indicating Lennard, “had run out.”
“I did not see you,” cried Lennard, looking at him. “I wish I had seen you. I wanted help, and there was not a soul in the street.”
“I was standing in shadow, at the top of the steps leading to the water,” said the man. “You came out, sir, all in a hurry, and went rushing up the street, leaving the door open.”
“And it is that door’s having been left open that I don’t like,” I observed. “If this money does not turn up, I can only think some rogue got in and took it.”
“Nobody got in, sir,” said the policeman. “I had my eye on the door the whole time till you came down. To see two folk running like mad out of a quiet and respectable house roused my suspicions; and I went up to the door and stood near it till you entered.”
“How did you see two running out of it?” I inquired. “There was only Mr. Lennard.”
“I had seen somebody before that — a woman,” replied the officer. “She came out, and went tearing down the steps towards the river, calling to someone out of sight. I think it was your servant, Mrs. Watts, but I was only half-way down the street then, and she was too quick for me.”
“Then you are quite sure no one entered?”
“Quite sure, sir. I never moved from the door.”
“Setting aside Williams’s testimony, there was scarcely time for anyone to get in and do mischief,” observed Lake. “And no one could take that gold without first getting the keys out of Mr. Brightman’s pocket,” he rejoined. “For such a purpose, who would dare rifle the pockets of the dead?”
“And then replace the keys,” added Lennard.
“Besides,” I said impulsively, “no one knew the money was there. Mr. Brightman, myself, and George Coney were alone cognisant of the fact. The more one thinks of it, the stranger it seems to grow.”
The moments passed. The doctors and the police had gone away, and nothing remained but the sad burden in the next room. Lennard also left me to go home, for there was nothing more to be done; and Arthur Lake, who had gone round to his rooms, came in again. His conscience was smiting him, he said, for having deserted me. We sat down in the front room, as before, and began to discuss the mystery. I remarked, to begin with, that there existed not the slightest loophole of suspicion to guide us.
“Except one,” said Lake quietly. “And I may pain you, Charley, if I venture to suggest it.”
“Nonsense!” I cried. “How could it pain me? Unless you think I took it myself!”
“I fancy it was Leah.”
“Leah?”
“Well, I do. She was the only person in the house, except Mr. Brightman. And what did her agitation mean — the agitation Lennard has referred to?”
“No, no, Arthur; it could not have been Leah. Admitting the doubt for a moment, how could she have done it?”
“Only in this way. I have been arguing it out with myself in my rooms: and of course it may be all imagination. Leah took up some water, she says, that Mr. Brightman rang for. Now, it may be that he had the drawer open and she saw the money. Or it may even be that, for some purpose or other, he had the bag upon the table. Was he taken ill whilst she was in the room? and did she, overcome by temptation, steal the money? I confess that this possibility presents itself forcibly to me,” concluded Lake. “Naturally she would afterwards be in a state of agitation.”
I sat revolving what he said, but could not bring my mind to admit it. Circumstances — especially her agitation — might seem to tell against her, but I believed the woman to be honest as the day.
There is not the slightest doubt that almost every man born into the world is adapted for one especial calling over all others; and it is an unhappy fact that this peculiar tendency is very rarely discovered and followed up. It is the misdirection of talent which causes so many of the failures in life. In my own case this mistake had not occurred. I believe that of all pursuits common to man, I was by nature most fitted for that of a solicitor. At the Bar, as a pleader, I should have failed, and ruined half the clients who entrusted me with briefs. But for penetration, for seizing without effort the different points of a case laid before me, few equalled me. I mention this only because it is a fact: not from motives of self-praise and vanity. Vanity? I am only thankful that my talents were directed into their proper channel. And this judgment, exercised now, told me that Leah was not guilty. I said so to Arthur Lake.