The Solitary House (With Bonus Novels Bleak House and the Woman in White)

by Lynn Shepherd

  “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I say what I must say; and no more.”

  “I hope it may prove so. Very well. Go on. Go on, sir!”

  Glancing at the angry eyes which now avoid him, and at the angry figure trembling from head to foot, yet striving to be still, Mr. Bucket feels his way with his forefinger, and in a low voice proceeds.

  “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it becomes my duty to tell you that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn long entertained mistrusts and suspicions of Lady Dedlock.”

  “If he had dared to breathe them to me, sir—which he never did—I would have killed him myself!” exclaims Sir Leicester, striking his hand upon the table. But, in the very heat and fury of the act, he stops, fixed by the knowing eyes of Mr. Bucket, whose forefinger is slowly going, and who, with mingled confidence and patience, shakes his head.

  “Sir Leicester Dedlock, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn was deep and close; and what he fully had in his mind in the very beginning, I can’t quite take upon myself to say. But I know from his lips, that he long ago suspected Lady Dedlock of having discovered, through the sight of some handwriting—in this very house, and when you yourself, Sir Leicester Dedlock, were present—the existence, in great poverty, of a certain person, who had been her lover before you courted her, and who ought to have been her husband”; Mr. Bucket stops and deliberately repeats, “ought to have been her husband; not a doubt about it. I know from his lips, that when that person soon afterwards died, he suspected Lady Dedlock of visiting his wretched lodging, and his wretched grave, alone and in secret. I know from my own inquiries, and through my eyes and ears, that Lady Dedlock did make such visit, in the dress of her own maid; for the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn employed me to reckon up her Ladyship—if you’ll excuse my making use of the term we commonly employ—and I reckoned her up, so far, completely. I confronted the maid, in the chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with a witness who had been Lady Dedlock’s guide; and there couldn’t be the shadow of a doubt that she had worn the young woman’s dress, unknown to her. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I did endeavour to pave the way a little towards these unpleasant disclosures, yesterday, by saying that very strange things happened even in high families sometimes. All this, and more, has happened in your own family, and to and through your own Lady. It’s my belief that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn followed up these inquiries to the hour of his death; and that he and Lady Dedlock even had bad blood between them upon the matter, that very night. Now, only you put that to Lady Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet; and ask her Ladyship whether, even after he had left here, she didn’t go down to his chambers with the intention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose black mantle with a deep fringe to it.”

  Sir Leicester sits like a statue, gazing at the cruel finger that is probing the life-blood of his heart.

  “You put that to her Ladyship, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, from me, Inspector Bucket of the Detective. And if her Ladyship makes any difficulty about admitting of it, you tell her that it’s no use; that Inspector Bucket knows it, and knows that she passed the soldier as you called him (though he’s not in the army now), and knows that she knows she passed him, on the staircase. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, why do I relate all this?”

  Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a single groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By and by he takes his hands away; and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness, though there is no more colour in his face than in his white hair, that Mr. Bucket is a little awed by him. Something frozen and fixed is upon his manner, over and above its usual shell of haughtiness; and Mr. Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in his speech, with now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which occasions him to utter inarticulate sounds. With such sounds, he now breaks silence; soon, however, controlling himself to say, that he does not comprehend why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as the late Mr. Tulkinghorn should have communicated to him nothing of this painful, this distressing, this unlooked-for, this overwhelming, this incredible intelligence.

  “Again, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” returns Mr. Bucket, “put it to her Ladyship to clear that up. Put it to her Ladyship, if you think it right, from Inspector Bucket of the Detective. You’ll find, or I’m much mistaken, that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn had the intention of communicating the whole to you, as soon as he considered it ripe; and further, that he had given her Ladyship so to understand. Why, he might have been going to reveal it the very morning when I examined the body! You don’t know what I’m going to say and do, five minutes from this present time, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, you might wonder why I hadn’t done it, don’t you see?”

  True. Sir Leicester, avoiding, with some trouble, those obtrusive sounds, says, “True.” At this juncture, a considerable noise of voices is heard in the hall. Mr. Bucket, after listening, goes to the library-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again. Then he draws in his head, and whispers, hurriedly, but composedly, “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this unfortunate family affair has taken air, as I expected it might; the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn being cut down so sudden. The chance to hush it is, to let in these people now in a wrangle with your footmen. Would you mind sitting quiet—on the family account—while I reckon ’em up? And would you just throw in a nod, when I seem to ask you for it?”

  Sir Leicester indistinctly answers, “Officer. The best you can, the best you can!” and Mr. Bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook of the forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices quickly die away. He is not long in returning, a few paces ahead of Mercury, and a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed smalls, who bear between them a chair in which is an incapable old man. Another man and two women come behind. Directing the pitching of the chair, in an affable and easy manner, Mr. Bucket dismisses the Mercuries, and locks the door again. Sir Leicester looks on at this invasion of the sacred precincts with an icy stare.

  “Now, perhaps you may know me, ladies and gentlemen,” says Mr. Bucket, in a confidential voice. “I am Inspector Bucket of the Detective, I am; and this,” producing the tip of his convenient little staff from his breast-pocket, “is my authority. Now, you wanted to see Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Well! You do see him; and, mind you, it ain’t every one as is admitted to that honour. Your name, old gentleman, is Smallweed; that’s what your name is; I know it well.”

  “Well, and you never heard any harm of it!” cries Mr. Smallweed in a shrill loud voice.

  “You don’t happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?” retorts Mr. Bucket, with a steadfast look, but without loss of temper.

  “No!”

  “Why, they killed him,” says Mr. Bucket, “on account of his having so much cheek. Don’t you get into the same position, because it isn’t worthy of you. You ain’t in the habit of conversing with a deaf person, are you?”

  “Yes,” snarls Mr. Smallweed, “my wife’s deaf.”

  “That accounts for your pitching your voice so high. But as she ain’t here, just pitch it an octave or two lower, will you, and I’ll not only be obliged to you, but it’ll do you more credit,” says Mr. Bucket. “This other gentleman is in the preaching line, I think?”

  “Name of Chadband,” Mr. Smallweed puts in, speaking henceforth in a much lower key.

  “Once had a friend and brother sergeant of the same name,” says Mr. Bucket, offering his hand, “and consequently feel a liking for it. Mrs. Chadband, no doubt?”

  “And Mrs. Snagsby,” Mr. Smallweed introduces.

  “Husband a law-stationer, and a friend of my own,” says Mr. Bucket. “Love him like a brother!—Now, what’s up?”

  “Do you mean what business have we come upon?” Mr. Smallweed asks, a little dashed by the suddenness of this turn.

  “Ah! You know what I mean. Let us hear what it’s all about in presence of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Come.”

  Mr. Smallweed, beckoning
Mr. Chadband, takes a moment’s counsel with him in a whisper. Mr. Chadband, expressing a considerable amount of oil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his hands, says aloud, “Yes. You first!” and retires to his former place.

  “I was the client and friend of Mr. Tulkinghorn,” pipes Grandfather Smallweed, then; “I did business with him. I was useful to him, and he was useful to me. Krook, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law. He was own brother to a brimstone magpie—leastways Mrs. Smallweed. I come into Krook’s property. I examined all his papers and all his effects. They were all dug out under my eyes. There was a bundle of letters belonging to a dead and gone lodger, as was hid away at the back of a shelf in the side of Lady Jane’s bed—his cat’s bed. He hid all manner of things away, everywheres. Mr. Tulkinghorn wanted ’em and got ’em, but I looked ’em over first. I’m a man of business, and I took a squint at ’em. They were letters from the lodger’s sweetheart, and she signed Honoria. Dear me, that’s not a common name, Honoria, is it? There’s no lady in this house that signs Honoria, is there? O no, I don’t think so! O no, I don’t think so! And not in the same hand, perhaps? O no, I don’t think so!”

  Here Mr. Smallweed, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of his triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, “O dear me! O Lord! I’m shaken all to pieces!”

  “Now, when you’re ready,” says Mr. Bucket, after awaiting his recovery, “to come to anything that concerns Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, here the gentleman sits, you know.”

  “Haven’t I come to it, Mr. Bucket?” cries Grandfather Smallweed. “Isn’t the gentleman concerned yet? Not with Captain Hawdon, and his ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain? Come, then, I want to know where those letters are. That concerns me, if it don’t concern Sir Leicester Dedlock. I will know where they are. I won’t have ’em disappear so quietly. I handed ’em over to my friend and solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn; not to anybody else.”

  “Why, he paid you for them, you know, and handsome too,” says Mr. Bucket.

  “I don’t care for that. I want to know who’s got ’em. And I tell you what we want—what we all here want, Mr. Bucket. We want more painstaking and search-making into this murder. We know where the interest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If George the vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an accomplice, and was set on. You know what I mean as well as any man.”

  “Now I tell you what,” says Mr. Bucket, instantaneously altering his manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary fascination to the forefinger, “I am damned if I am a-going to have my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half a second of time, by any human being in creation. You want more painstaking and search-making? You do? Do you see this hand, and do you think that I don’t know the right time to stretch it out, and put it on the arm that fired that shot?”

  Such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is that he makes no idle boast, that Mr. Smallweed begins to apologize. Mr. Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him.

  “The advice I give you, is, don’t you trouble your head about the murder. That’s my affair. You keep half an eye on the newspapers; and I shouldn’t wonder if you was to read something about it before long, if you look sharp. I know my business, and that’s all I’ve got to say to you on that subject. Now about those letters. You want to know who’s got ’em. I don’t mind telling you. I have got ’em. Is that the packet?”

  Mr. Smallweed looks, with greedy eyes, at the little bundle Mr. Bucket produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and identifies it as the same.

  “What have you got to say next?” asks Mr. Bucket. “Now, don’t open your mouth too wide, because you don’t look handsome when you do it.”

  “I want five hundred pound.”

  “No, you don’t; you mean fifty,” says Mr. Bucket, humorously.

  It appears, however, that Mr. Smallweed means five hundred.

  “That is, I am deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to consider (without admitting or promising anything) this bit of business,” says Mr. Bucket; Sir Leicester mechanically bows his head; “and you ask me to consider a proposal of five hundred pounds. Why, it’s an unreasonable proposal! Two fifty would be bad enough, but better than that. Hadn’t you better say two fifty?”

  Mr. Smallweed is quite clear that he had better not.

  “Then,” says Mr. Bucket, “let’s hear Mr. Chadband. Lord! Many a time I’ve heard my old fellow-sergeant of that name; and a moderate man he was in all respects, as ever I come across!”

  Thus invited, Mr. Chadband steps forth, and after a little sleek smiling and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands, delivers himself as follows:

  “My friends, we are now—Rachael my wife, and I—in the mansions of the rich and great. Why are we now in the mansions of the rich and great, my friends? Is it because we are invited? Because we are bidden to feast with them, because we are bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play the lute with them, because we are bidden to dance with them? No. Then why are we here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful secret, and doe we require corn, and wine, and oil—or, what is much the same thing, money, for the keeping thereof? Probably so, my friends.”

  “You’re a man of business, you are,” returns Mr. Bucket, very attentive; “and consequently you’re going on to mention what the nature of your secret is. You are right. You couldn’t do better.”

  “Let us then, my brother, in a spirit of love,” says Mr. Chadband, with a cunning eye, “proceed untoe it. Rachael, my wife, advance!”

  Mrs. Chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her husband into the back-ground, and confronts Mr. Bucket with a hard frowning smile.

  “Since you want to know what we know,” says she, “I’ll tell you. I helped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her Ladyship’s daughter. I was in the service of her Ladyship’s sister, who was very sensitive to the disgrace her Ladyship brought upon her, and gave out, even to her Ladyship, that the child was dead—she was very nearly so—when she was born. But she’s alive, and I know her.” With these words, and a laugh, and laying a bitter stress on the word “Ladyship,” Mrs. Chadband folds her arms, and looks implacably at Mr. Bucket.

  “I suppose now,” returns that officer, “you will be expecting a twenty-pound note, or a present of about that figure?”

  Mrs. Chadband merely laughs, and contemptuously tells him he can “offer” twenty pence.

  “My friend the law-stationer’s good lady, over there,” says Mr. Bucket, luring Mrs. Snagsby forward with the finger. “What may your game be, ma’am?”

  Mrs. Snagsby is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from stating the nature of her game; but by degrees it confusedly comes to light, that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, whom Mr. Snagsby has habitually deceived, abandoned and sought to keep in darkness, and whose chief comfort, under her afflictions, has been the sympathy of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn; who showed so much commiseration for her, on one occasion of his calling in Cook’s Court in the absence of her perjured husband, that she has of late habitually carried to him all her woes. Everybody, it appears, the present company excepted, has plotted against Mrs. Snagsby’s peace. There is Mr. Guppy, clerk to Kenge and Carboy, who was at first as open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as midnight, under the influence—no doubt—of Mr. Snagsby’s suborning and tampering. There is Mr. Weevle, friend of Mr. Guppy, who lived mysteriously up a court, owing to the like coherent causes. There was Krook, deceased; there was Nimrod, deceased; and there was Jo, deceased; and they were “all in it.” In what, Mrs. Snagsby does not with particularity express; but she knows that Jo was Mr. Snagsby’s son, “as well as if a trumpet had spoken it,” and she followed Mr. Snagsby when he went on his last visit to the boy, and if he was not his son why did he go? The one occupation of her life has been, for some time back, to follow Mr. Snagsby to and fro, and up and down, and
to piece suspicious circumstances together—and every circumstance that has happened has been most suspicious; and in this way she has pursued her object of detecting and confounding her false husband, night and day. Thus did it come to pass that she brought the Chadbands and Mr. Tulkinghorn together, and conferred with Mr. Tulkinghorn on the change in Mr. Guppy, and helped to turn up the circumstances, in which the present company are interested, casually, by the wayside; being still, and ever, on the great high road that is to terminate in Mr. Snagsby’s full exposure and a matrimonial separation. All this, Mrs. Snagsby, as an injured woman, and friend of Mrs. Chadband, and the follower of Mr. Chadband, and the mourner of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the seal of confidence, with every possible confusion and involvement possible and impossible; having no pecuniary motive whatever, no scheme or project but the one mentioned; and bringing here, and taking everywhere, her own dense atmosphere of dust, arising from the ceaseless working of her mill of jealousy.

  While this exordium is in hand—and it takes some time—Mr. Bucket, who has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Snagsby’s vinegar at a glance, confers with his familiar demon, and bestows his shrewd attention on the Chadbands and Mr. Smallweed. Sir Leicester Dedlock remains immovable, with the same icy surface upon him; except that he once or twice looks towards Mr. Bucket, as relying on that officer alone of all mankind.

  “Very good,” says Mr. Bucket. “Now I understand you, you know; and, being deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to look into this little matter,” again Sir Leicester mechanically bows in confirmation of the statement, “can give it my fair and full attention. Now I won’t allude to conspiring to extort money, or anything of that sort, because we are men and women of the world here, and our object is to make things pleasant. But I tell you what I do wonder at; I am surprised that you should think of making a noise below in the hall. It was so opposed to your interests. That’s what I look at.”