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

by Lynn Shepherd

  “We wanted to get in,” pleads Mr. Smallweed.

  “Why, of course you wanted to get in,” Mr. Bucket asserts with cheerfulness; “but for a old gentleman at your time of life—what I call truly venerable, mind you!—with his wits sharpened, as I have no doubt they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which occasions all his animation to mount up into his head—not to consider, that if he don’t keep such a business as the present as close as possible it can’t be worth a mag to him, is so curious! You see your temper got the better of you; that’s where you lost ground,” says Mr. Bucket in an argumentative and friendly way.

  “I only said I wouldn’t go without one of the servants came up to Sir Leicester Dedlock,” returns Mr. Smallweed.

  “That’s it! That’s where your temper got the better of you. Now, you keep it under another time, and you’ll make money by it. Shall I ring for them to carry you down?”

  “When are we to hear more of this?” Mrs. Chadband sternly demands.

  “Bless your heart for a true woman! Always curious, your delightful sex is!” replies Mr. Bucket, with gallantry. “I shall have the pleasure of giving you a call tomorrow or next day—not forgetting Mr. Smallweed and his proposal of two fifty.”

  “Five hundred!” exclaims Mr. Smallweed.

  “All right! Nominally five hundred”; Mr. Bucket has his hand on the bell-rope; “shall I wish you good day for the present, on the part of myself and the gentleman of the house?” he asks in an insinuating tone.

  Nobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it, and the party retire as they came up. Mr. Bucket follows them to the door; and returning, says with an air of serious business:

  “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, it’s for you to consider whether or not to buy this up. I should recommend, on the whole, its being bought up myself; and I think it may be bought pretty cheap. You see, that little pickled cowcumber of a Mrs. Snagsby has been used by all sides of the speculation, and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and ends together than if she had meant it. Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, he held all these horses in his hand, and could have drove ’em his own way, I haven’t a doubt; but he was fetched off the box head-foremost, and now they have got their legs over the traces, and are all dragging and pulling their own ways. So it is, and such is life. The cat’s away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, and the water runs. Now, with regard to the party to be apprehended.”

  Sir Leicester seems to wake, though his eyes have been wide open; and he looks intently at Mr. Bucket, as Mr. Bucket refers to his watch.

  “The party to be apprehended is now in this house,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, putting up his watch with a steady hand, and with rising spirits, “and I’m about to take her into custody in your presence. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don’t you say a word, nor yet stir. There’ll be no noise, and no disturbance at all. I’ll come back in the course of the evening, if agreeable to you, and endeavour to meet your wishes respecting this unfortunate family matter, and the nobbiest way of keeping it quiet. Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, don’t you be nervous on account of the apprehension at present coming off. You shall see the whole case clear, from first to last.”

  Mr. Bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly whispers Mercury, shuts the door, and stands behind it with his arms folded. After a suspense of a minute or two, the door slowly opens, and a Frenchwoman enters. Mademoiselle Hortense.

  The moment she is in the room, Mr. Bucket claps the door to, and puts his back against it. The suddenness of the noise occasions her to turn; and then, for the first time, she sees Sir Leicester Dedlock in his chair.

  “I ask you pardon,” she mutters hurriedly. “They tell me there was no one here.”

  Her step towards the door brings her front to front with Mr. Bucket. Suddenly a spasm shoots across her face, and she turns deadly pale.

  “This is my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock,” says Mr. Bucket, nodding at her. “This foreign young woman has been my lodger for some weeks back.”

  “What do Sir Leicester care for that, you think, my angel?” returns Mademoiselle, in a jocular strain.

  “Why, my angel,” returns Mr. Bucket, “we shall see.”

  Mademoiselle Hortense eyes him with a scowl upon her tight face, which gradually changes into a smile of scorn. “You are very mysterieuse. Are you drunk?”

  “Tolerable sober, my angel,” returns Mr. Bucket.

  “I come from arriving at this so detestable house with your wife. Your wife have left me, since some minutes. They tell me downstairs that your wife is here. I come here, and your wife is not here. What is the intention of this fool’s play, say then?” Mademoiselle demands, with her arms composedly crossed, but with something in her dark cheek beating like a clock.

  Mr. Bucket merely shakes the finger at her.

  “Ah my God, you are an unhappy idiot!” cries Mademoiselle, with a toss of her head and a laugh.—“Leave me to pass downstairs, great pig.” With a stamp of her foot, and a menace.

  “Now, Mademoiselle,” says Mr. Bucket, in a cool determined way, “you go and sit down upon that sofy.”

  “I will not sit down upon nothing,” she replies, with a shower of nods.

  “Now, Mademoiselle,” repeats Mr. Bucket, making no demonstration, except with the finger, “you sit down upon that sofy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I take you into custody on a charge of murder, and you don’t need to be told it. Now, I want to be polite to one of your sex and a foreigner, if I can. If I can’t, I must be rough; and there’s rougher ones outside. What I am to be, depends on you. So I recommend you, as a friend, afore another half a blessed moment has passed over your head, to go and sit down upon that sofy.”

  Mademoiselle complies, saying in a concentrated voice, while that something in her cheeks beats fast and hard, “You are a Devil.”

  “Now, you see,” Mr. Bucket proceeds approvingly, “you’re comfortable, and conducting yourself as I should expect a foreign young woman of your sense to do. So I’ll give you a piece of advice, and it’s this. Don’t you talk too much. You’re not expected to say anything here, and you can’t keep too quiet a tongue in your head. In short, the less you Parlay, the better, you know.” Mr. Bucket is very complacent over this French explanation.

  Mademoiselle, with that tigerish expansion of the mouth, and her black eyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a rigid state, with her hands clenched—and her feet too, one might suppose—muttering, “O, you Bucket, you are a Devil!”

  “Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” says Mr. Bucket, and from this time forth the finger never rests, “this young woman, my lodger, was her Ladyship’s maid at the time I have mentioned to you; and this young woman, besides being extraordinary vehement and passionate against her Ladyship after being discharged—”

  “Lie!” cries Mademoiselle. “I discharge myself.”

  “Now, why don’t you take my advice?” returns Mr. Bucket, in an impressive, almost in an imploring tone. “I’m surprised at the indiscreetness you commit. You’ll say something that’ll be used against you, you know. You’re sure to come to it. Never you mind what I say till it’s given in evidence. It is not addressed to you.”

  “Discharge, too!” cries Mademoiselle, furiously, “by her Ladyship! Eh, my faith, a pretty Ladyship! Why, I r-r-r-ruin my character by remaining with a Ladyship so infame!”

  “Upon my soul I wonder at you!” Mr. Bucket remonstrates. “I thought the French were a polite nation, I did, really. Yet to hear a female going on like that, before Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet!”

  “He is a poor abused!” cries Mademoiselle. “I spit upon his house, upon his name, upon his imbecility,” all of which she makes the carpet represent. “Oh, that he is a great man! O yes, superb! O Heaven! Bah!”

  “Well, Sir Leicester Dedlock,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, “this intemperate foreigner also angrily took it into her head that she had established a claim upon Mr.
Tulkinghorn, deceased, by attending on the occasion I told you of, at his chambers; though she was liberally paid for her time and trouble.”

  “Lie!” cries Mademoiselle. “I ref-use his money alltogezzer.”

  (“If you will Parlay, you know,” says Mr. Bucket parenthetically, “you must take the consequences.) Now, whether she became my lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock, with any deliberate intention then of doing this deed and blinding me, I give no opinion on; but she lived in my house, in that capacity, at the time that she was hovering about the chambers of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and likewise persecuting and half frightening the life out of an unfortunate stationer.”

  “Lie!” cries Mademoiselle. “All lie!”

  “The murder was committed, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you know under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you to follow me close with your attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and the case was entrusted to me. I examined the place, and the body, and the papers, and everything. From information I received (from a clerk in the same house) I took George into custody, as having been seen hanging about there, on the night, and at very nigh the time, of the murder; also, as having been overheard in high words with the deceased on former occasions—even threatening him, as the witness made out. If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether from the first I believed George to be the murderer, I tell you candidly No; but he might be, notwithstanding; and there was enough against him to make it my duty to take him, and get him kept under remand. Now, observe!”

  As Mr. Bucket bends forward in some excitement—for him—and inaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his forefinger in the air, Mademoiselle Hortense fixes her black eyes upon him with a dark frown, and sets her dry lips closely and firmly together.

  “I went home, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, at night, and found this young woman having supper with my wife, Mrs. Bucket. She had made a mighty show of being fond of Mrs. Bucket from her first offering herself as our lodger, but that night she made more than ever—in fact, overdid it. Likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for the lamented memory of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn. By the living Lord it flashed upon me, as I sat opposite to her at the table and saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!”

  Mademoiselle is hardly audible, in straining through her teeth and lips the words, “You are a Devil.”

  “Now where,” pursues Mr. Bucket, “had she been on the night of the murder? She had been to the theayter. (She really was there, I have since found, both before the deed and after it.) I knew I had an artful customer to deal with, and that proof would be very difficult; and I laid a trap for her—such a trap as I never laid yet, and such a ventur as I never made yet. I worked it out in my mind while I was talking to her at supper. When I went upstairs to bed, our house being small and this young woman’s ears sharp, I stuffed the sheet into Mrs. Bucket’s mouth that she shouldn’t say a word of surprise, and told her all about it.—My dear, don’t you give your mind to that again, or I shall link your feet together at the ankles.” Mr. Bucket, breaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon Mademoiselle, and laid his heavy hand upon her shoulder.

  “What is the matter with you now?” she asks him.

  “Don’t you think any more,” returns Mr. Bucket, with admonitory finger, “of throwing yourself out of window. That’s what’s the matter with me. Come! Just take my arm. You needn’t get up; I’ll sit down by you. Now take my arm, will you? I’m a married man, you know; you’re acquainted with my wife. Just take my arm.”

  Vainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips, with a painful sound, she struggles with herself and complies.

  “Now we’re all right again. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this case could never have been the case it is, but for Mrs. Bucket, who is a woman in fifty thousand—in a hundred and fifty thousand! To throw this young woman off her guard, I have never set foot in our house since; though I’ve communicated with Mrs. Bucket, in the baker’s loaves and in the milk, as often as required. My whispered words to Mrs. Bucket, when she had the sheet in her mouth, were, ‘My dear, can you throw her off continually with natural accounts of my suspicions against George, and this, and that, and t’other? Can you do without rest, and keep watch upon her, night and day? Can you undertake to say, She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be my prisoner without suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than from death, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till I have got her, if she did this murder?’ Mrs. Bucket says to me, as well as she could speak on account of the sheet, ‘Bucket, I can!’ And she has acted up to it glorious!”

  “Lies!” Mademoiselle interposes. “All lies, my friend!”

  “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, how did my calculations come out under these circumstances? When I calculated that this impetuous young woman would overdo it in new directions, was I wrong or right? I was right. What does she try to do? Don’t let it give you a turn? To throw the murder on her Ladyship.”

  Sir Leicester rises from his chair, and staggers down again.

  “And she got encouragement in it from hearing that I was always here, which was done a’ purpose. Now, open that pocket-book of mine, Sir Leicester Dedlock, if I may take the liberty of throwing it towards you, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the two words, LADY DEDLOCK, in it. Open the one directed to yourself, which I stopped this very morning, and read the three words, LADY DEDLOCK, MURDERESS, in it. These letters have been falling about like a shower of ladybirds. What do you say now to Mrs. Bucket, from her spy-place, having seen them all written by this young woman? What do you say to Mrs. Bucket having, within this half-hour, secured the corresponding ink and paper, fellow half-sheets and what not? What do you say to Mrs. Bucket having watched the posting of ’em every one by this young woman, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet?” Mr. Bucket asks, triumphant in his admiration of his lady’s genius.

  Two things are especially observable, as Mr. Bucket proceeds to a conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a dreadful right of property in Mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her, as if a close net, or a pall, were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around her breathless figure.

  “There is no doubt that her Ladyship was on the spot at the eventful period,” says Mr. Bucket; “and my foreign friend here saw her, I believe, from the upper part of the staircase. Her Ladyship and George and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one another’s heels. But that don’t signify any more, so I’ll not go into it. I found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your house at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you’ll say, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. No. But when my foreign friend here is thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear up the rest of that leaf, and when Mrs. Bucket puts the pieces together and finds the wadding wanting, it begins to look like Queer Street.”

  “These are very long lies,” Mademoiselle interposes. “You prose great deal. Is it that you have almost all finished, or are you speaking always?”

  “Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, who delights in a full title, and does violence to himself when he dispenses with any fragment of it, “the last point in the case which I am now going to mention, shows the necessity of patience in our business, and never doing a thing in a hurry. I watched this young woman yesterday, without her knowledge, when she was looking at the funeral, in company with my wife, who planned to take her there; and I had so much to convict her, and I saw such an expression in her face, and my mind so rose against her malice towards her Ladyship, and the time was altogether such a time for bringing down what you may call retribution upon her, that if I had been a younger hand with less experience, I should have taken her, certain. Equally, last night, when her Ladyship, as is so universally admired I am sure, come home looking—why, Lord! a man might almost say
like Venus rising from the ocean, it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being charged with a murder of which she was innocent, that I felt quite to want to put an end to the job. What should I have lost? Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, I should have lost the weapon. My prisoner here proposed to Mrs. Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that they should go, per bus, a little ways into the country, and take tea at a very decent house of entertainment. Now, near that house of entertainment there’s a piece of water. At tea, my prisoner got up to fetch her pocket handkercher from the bedroom where the bonnets was; she was rather a long time gone, and came back a little out of wind. As soon as they came home this was reported to me by Mrs. Bucket, along with her observations and suspicions. I had the piece of water dragged by moonlight, in presence of a couple of our men, and the pocket-pistol was brought up before it had been there half-a-dozen hours. Now, my dear, put your arm a little further through mine, and hold it steady, and I shan’t hurt you!”

  In a trice Mr. Bucket snaps a handcuff on her wrist. “That’s one,” says Mr. Bucket. “Now the other, darling. Two, and all told!”

  He rises; she rises too. “Where,” she asks him, darkening her large eyes until their drooping lids almost conceal them—and yet they stare, “where is your false, your treacherous and cursed wife?”

  “She’s gone forrard to the Police Office,” returns Mr. Bucket. “You’ll see her there, my dear.”

  “I would like to kiss her!” exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting tigress-like.

  “You’d bite her, I suspect,” says Mr. Bucket.

  “I would!” making her eyes very large. “I would love to tear her, limb from limb.”

  “Bless you, darling,” says Mr. Bucket, with the greatest composure; “I’m fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising animosity against one another, when you do differ. You don’t mind me half so much, do you?”