They look at one another for a moment.
“Send for some doctor! Call for Miss Flite up the stairs, sir. Here’s poison by the bed! Call out for Flite, will you?” says Krook, with his lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire’s wings.
Mr. Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing and calls, “Miss Flite! Flite! Make haste, here, whoever you are! Flite!” Krook follows him with his eyes, and, while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to the old portmanteau, and steal back again.
“Run, Flite, run! The nearest doctor! Run!” So Mr. Krook addresses a crazy little woman who is his female lodger: who appears and vanishes in a breath: who soon returns, accompanied by a testy medical man, brought from his dinner—with a broad snuffy upper lip, and a broad Scotch tongue.
“Ey! Bless the hearts o’ ye,” says the medical man, looking up at them after a moment’s examination. “He’s just as dead as Phairy!”
Mr. Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has been dead any time?
“Any time, sir?” says the medical gentleman. “It’s probable he wull have been dead aboot three hours.”
“About that time, I should say,” observes a dark young man, on the other side of the bed.
“Air you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?” inquires the first.
The dark young man says yes.
“Then I’ll just tak’ my depairture,” replies the other; “for I’m nae gude here!” With which remark, he finishes his brief attendance and returns to finish his dinner.
The dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face, and carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his pretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one.
“I knew this person by sight, very well,” says he. “He has purchased opium of me, for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related to him?” glancing round upon the three bystanders.
“I was his landlord,” grimly answers Krook, taking the candle from the surgeon’s outstretched hand. “He told me once, I was the nearest relation he had.”
“He has died,” says the surgeon, “of an over-dose of opium, there is no doubt. The room is strongly flavoured with it. There is enough here now,” taking an old tea-pot from Mr. Krook, “to kill a dozen people.”
“Do you think he did it on purpose?” asks Krook.
“Took the over-dose?”
“Yes!” Krook almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible interest.
“I can’t say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit of taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I suppose?”
“I suppose he was. His room—don’t look rich,” says Krook, who might have changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around. “But I have never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to name his circumstances to me.”
“Did he owe you any rent?”
“Six weeks.”
“He will never pay it!” says the young man, resuming his examination. “It is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as Pharaoh; and to judge from his appearance and condition, I should think it a happy release. Yet he must have been a good figure when a youth, and I dare say, good-looking.” He says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting on the bedstead’s edge, with his face towards that other face, and his hand upon the region of the heart. “I recollect once thinking there was something in his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall in life. Was that so?” he continues, looking round.
Krook replies, “You might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose heads of hair I have got in sacks downstairs. Than that he was my lodger for a year and a half, and lived—or didn’t live—by law-writing, I know no more of him.”
During this dialogue, Mr. Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old portmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all appearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the bed—from the young surgeon’s professional interest in death, noticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as an individual; from the old man’s unction; and the little crazy woman’s awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his rusty clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all this while. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention nor abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As easily might the tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case, as the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case.
He now interposes; addressing the young surgeon, in his unmoved, professional way.
“I looked in here,” he observes, “just before you, with the intention of giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some employment at his trade of copying. I had heard of him from my stationer—Snagsby of Cook’s Court. Since no one here knows anything about him, it might be as well to send for Snagsby. Ah!” to the little crazy woman, who has often seen him in Court, and whom he has often seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show, to go for the law-stationer. “Suppose you do!”
While she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation and covers its subject with the patchwork counterpane. Mr. Krook and he interchange a word or two. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing; but stands, ever, near the old portmanteau.
Mr. Snagsby arrives hastily in his grey coat and his black sleeves. “Dear me, dear me,” he says; “and it has come to this, has it! Bless my soul!”
“Can you give the person of the house any information about this unfortunate creature, Snagsby?” inquires Mr. Tulkinghorn. “He was in arrears with his rent, it seems. And he must be buried, you know.”
“Well, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, coughing his apologetic cough behind his hand; “I really don’t know what advice I could offer, except sending for the beadle.”
“I don’t speak of advice,” returns Mr. Tulkinghorn. “I could advise—”
(“No one better, sir, I am sure,” says Mr. Snagsby, with his deferential cough.)
“I speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he came from, or to anything concerning him.”
“I assure you, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby after prefacing his reply with his cough of general propitiation, “that I no more know where he came from than I know—”
“Where he has gone to, perhaps,” suggests the surgeon, to help him out.
A pause, Mr. Tulkinghorn looking at the law-stationer. Mr. Krook, with his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next.
“As to his connexions, sir,” says Mr. Snagsby, “if a person was to say to me, ‘Snagsby, here’s twenty thousand pound down, ready for you in the Bank of England, if you’ll only name one of ’em,’ I couldn’t do it, sir! About a year and a half ago—to the best of my belief, at the time when he first came to lodge at the present rag and bottle shop—”
“That was the time!” says Krook, with a nod.
“About a year and a half ago,” says Mr. Snagsby, strengthened, “he came into our place one morning after breakfast, and finding my little woman (which I name Mrs. Snagsby when I use that appellation) in our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting, and gave her to understand that he was in want of copying work to do, and was—not to put too fine a point upon it—” a favourite apology for plain-speaking with Mr. Snagsby, which he always offers with a sort of argumentative frankness, “hard up! My little woman is not in general partial to strangers, particular—not to put too fine a point upon it—when they want anything. But she was rather took by something about this person; whether by his being unshaved, or by his hair being in want of attention, or by what other ladies’ reasons, I leave you to judge; and she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. My little woman hasn’t a good ear for names,” proceeds Mr. Snagsby after consulting his cough of consideration behind his hand, “and she considers Nemo equally the same as Nimrod. In consequence of which, she got into a habit of saying to me at meals, ‘Mr. Snagsby, you haven’t found Nimrod any work yet!’ or ‘Mr. Snagsby, why didn’t you give that eight-and-thirty C
hancery folio in Jarndyce to Nimrod?’ or such like. And that is the way he gradually fell into job-work at our place; and that is the most I know of him, except that he was a quick hand, and a hand not sparing of nightwork; and that if you gave him out, say five-and-forty folio on the Wednesday night, you would have it brought in on the Thursday morning. All of which—” Mr. Snagsby concludes by politely motioning with his hat towards the bed, as much as to add, “I have no doubt my honourable friend would confirm, if he were in a condition to do it.”
“Hadn’t you better see,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn to Krook, “whether he had any papers that may enlighten you? There will be an Inquest, and you will be asked the question. You can read?”
“No, I can’t,” returns the old man, with a sudden grin.
“Snagsby,” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, “look over the room for him. He will get into some trouble or difficulty, otherwise. Being here, I’ll wait, if you make haste; and then I can testify on his behalf, if it should ever be necessary, that all was fair and right. If you will hold the candle for Mr. Snagsby, my friend, he’ll soon see whether there is anything to help you.”
“In the first place, here’s an old portmanteau, sir,” says Snagsby.
Ah, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does not appear to have seen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and though there is very little else, Heaven knows.
The marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer conducts the search. The surgeon leans against the corner of the chimney-piece; Miss Flite peeps and trembles just within the door. The apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches tied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his long-sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied in the bow the Peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same place and attitude.
There are some worthless articles of clothing in the old portmanteau; there is a bundle of pawnbrokers’ duplicates, those turnpike tickets on the road of Poverty; there is a crumpled paper; smelling of opium, on which are scrawled rough memoranda—as, took, such a day, so many grains; took, such another day, so many more—begun some time ago, as if with the intention of being regularly continued, but soon left off. There are a few dirty scraps of newspapers, all referring to Coroners’ Inquests; there is nothing else. They search the cupboard, and the drawer of the ink-splashed table. There is not a morsel of an old letter, or of any other writing, in either. The young surgeon examines the dress on the law-writer. A knife and some odd halfpence are all he finds. Mr. Snagsby’s suggestion is the practical suggestion after all, and the beadle must be called in.
So the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come out of the room. “Don’t leave the cat there!” says the surgeon: “that won’t do!” Mr. Krook therefore drives her out before him; and she goes furtively downstairs, winding her lithe tail and licking her lips.
“Good night!” says Mr. Tulkinghorn, and goes home to Allegory and meditation.
By this time the news has got into the court. Groups of its inhabitants assemble to discuss the thing; and the outposts of the army of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr. Krook’s window, which they closely invest. A policeman has already walked up to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he stands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base occasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall back. Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms with Mrs. Piper, in consequence of an unpleasantness originating in young Perkins having “fetched” young Piper “a crack,” renews her friendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. The potboy at the corner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge of life, and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges confidential communications with the policeman, and has the appearance of an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable in station-houses. People talk across the court out of window, and bare-headed scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what’s the matter. The general feeling seems to be that it’s a blessing Mr. Krook warn’t made away with first, mingled with a little natural disappointment that he was not. In the midst of this sensation, the beadle arrives.
The beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a ridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the moment, if it were only as a man who is going to see the body. The policeman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the barbarous watchmen times; but gives him admission, as something that must be borne with until Government shall abolish him. The sensation is heightened, as the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that the beadle is on the ground, and has gone in.
By and by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation, which has rather languished in the interval. He is understood to be in want of witnesses, for the Inquest tomorrow, who can tell the Coroner and Jury anything whatever respecting the deceased. Is immediately referred to innumerable people who can tell nothing whatever. Is made more imbecile by being constantly informed that Mrs. Green’s son “was a law-writer his-self, and knowed him better than anybody”—which son of Mrs. Green’s appears, on inquiry, to be at the present time aboard a vessel bound for China, three months out, but considered accessible by telegraph, on application to the Lords of the Admiralty. Beadle goes into various shops and parlours, examining the inhabitants; always shutting the door first, and by exclusion, delay, and general idiotcy, exasperating the public. Policeman seen to smile to potboy. Public loses interest, and undergoes reaction. Taunts the beadle, in shrill youthful voices, with having boiled a boy; choruses fragments of a popular song to that effect, and importing that the boy was made into soup for the workhouse. Policeman at last finds it necessary to support the law, and seize a vocalist; who is released upon the flight of the rest, on condition of his getting out of this then, come! and cutting it—a condition he immediately observes. So the sensation dies off for the time; and the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more or less, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible great-coat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitting, pursues his lounging way with a heavy tread: beating the palms of his white gloves one against the other, and stopping now and then, at a street-corner, to look casually about for anything between a lost child and a murder.
Under cover of the night, the feeble-minded beadle comes flitting about Chancery Lane with his summonses, in which every Juror’s name is wrongly spelt, and nothing rightly spelt but the beadle’s own name, which nobody can read or wants to know. The summonses served, and his witnesses forewarned, the beadle goes to Mr. Krook’s, to keep a small appointment he has made with certain paupers; who, presently arriving, are conducted upstairs; where they leave the great eyes in the shutter something new to stare at, in that last shape which earthly lodgings take for No one—and for Every one.
And all that night, the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau; and the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through five-and-forty years, lies there, with no more track behind him, that any one can trace, than a deserted infant.
Next day the court is all alive—is like a fair, as Mrs. Perkins, more than reconciled to Mrs. Piper, says in amicable conversation with that excellent woman. The Coroner is to sit in the first-floor room at the Sol’s Arms, where the Harmonic Meetings take place twice a week and where the chair is filled by a gentleman of professional celebrity, faced by Little Swills, the comic vocalist, who hopes (according to the bill in the window) that his friends will rally round him, and support first-rate talent. The Sol’s Arms does a brisk stroke of business all the morning. Even children so require sustaining, under the general excitement, that a pieman who has established himself for the occasion at the corner of the court, says his brandy-balls go off like smoke. What time the beadle, hovering between the door of Mr. Krook’s establishment and the door of the Sol’s Arms, shows the curiosity in his keeping to a few discreet spirits, and accepts the comp
liment of a glass of ale or so in return.
At the appointed hour arrives the Coroner, for whom the Jurymen are waiting, and who is received with a salute of skittles from the good dry skittle-ground attached to the Sol’s Arms. The Coroner frequents more public-houses than any man alive. The smell of sawdust, beer, tobacco-smoke, and spirits, is inseparable in his vocation from death in its most awful shapes. He is conducted by the beadle and the landlord to the Harmonic Meeting Room, where he puts his hat on the piano, and takes a Windsor-chair at the head of a long table, formed of several short tables put together, and ornamented with glutinous rings in endless involutions, made by pots and glasses. As many of the Jury as can crowd together at the table sit there. The rest get among the spittoons and pipes, or lean against the piano. Over the Coroner’s head is a small iron garland, the pendant handle of a bell, which rather gives the Majesty of the Court the appearance of going to be hanged presently.
Call over and swear the Jury! While the ceremony is in progress, sensation is created by the entrance of a chubby little man in a large shirt-collar, with a moist eye, and an inflamed nose, who modestly takes a position near the door as one of the general public, but seems familiar with the room too. A whisper circulates that this is Little Swills. It is considered not unlikely that he will get up an imitation of the Coroner, and make it the principal feature of the Harmonic Meeting in the evening.
“Well, gentlemen—” the Coroner begins.
“Silence there, will you!” says the beadle. Not to the Coroner, though it might appear so.
“Well, gentlemen,” resumes the Coroner. “You are impanelled here, to inquire into the death of a certain man. Evidence will be given before you, as to the circumstances attending that death, and you will give your verdict according to the—skittles; they must be stopped, you know, beadle!—evidence, and not according to anything else. The first thing to be done, is to view the body.”
“Make way there!” cries the beadle.
The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White) Page 51