Daisy looked quite scared.
“She’s in ’sterics—that’s what it is,” he said shortly. “I’ll just get the water-jug. Wait a minute!”
Bunting felt very put out. Ellen was ridiculous—that’s what she was, to be so easily upset.
The lodger’s bell suddenly pealed through the quiet house. Either that sound, or maybe the threat of the water-jug, had a magical effect on Mrs. Bunting. She rose to her feet, still shaking all over, but mentally composed.
“I’ll go up,” she said a little chokingly. “As for you, child, just run down into the kitchen. You’ll find a piece of pork roasting in the oven. You might start paring the apples for the sauce.”
As Mrs. Bunting went upstairs her legs felt as if they were made of cotton wool. She put out a trembling hand, and clutched at the banister for support. But soon, making a great effort over herself, she began to feel more steady; and after waiting for a few moments on the landing, she knocked at the door of the drawing-room.
Mr. Sleuth’s voice answered her from the bedroom. “I’m not well,” he called out querulously; “I think I’ve caught a chill. I should be obliged if you would kindly bring me up a cup of tea, and put it outside my door, Mrs. Bunting.”
“Very well, sir.”
Mrs. Bunting turned and went downstairs. She still felt queer and giddy, so instead of going into the kitchen, she made the lodger his cup of tea over her sitting-room gas-ring.
During their midday dinner the husband and wife had a little discussion as to where Daisy should sleep. It had been settled that a bed should be made up for her in the top back room, but Mrs. Bunting saw reason to change this plan. “I think ’twould be better if Daisy were to sleep with me, Bunting, and you was to sleep upstairs.”
Bunting felt and looked rather surprised, but he acquiesced. Ellen was probably right; the girl would be rather lonely up there, and, after all, they didn’t know much about the lodger, though he seemed a respectable gentleman enough.
Daisy was a good-natured girl; she liked London, and wanted to make herself useful to her stepmother. “I’ll wash up; don’t you bother to come downstairs,” she said cheerfully.
Bunting began to walk up and down the room. His wife gave him a furtive glance; she wondered what he was thinking about.
“Didn’t you get a paper?” she said at last.
“Yes, of course I did,” he answered hastily. “But I’ve put it away. I thought you’d rather not look at it, as you’re that nervous.”
Again she glanced at him quickly, furtively, but he seemed just as usual—he evidently meant just what he said and no more.
“I thought they was shouting something in the street—I mean just before I was took bad.”
It was now Bunting’s turn to stare at his wife quickly and rather furtively. He had felt sure that her sudden attack of queerness, of hysterics—call it what you might—had been due to the shouting outside. She was not the only woman in London who had got the Avenger murders on her nerves. His morning paper said quite a lot of women were afraid to go out alone. Was it possible that the curious way she had been taken just now had had nothing to do with the shouts and excitement outside?
“Don’t you know what it was they were calling out?” he asked slowly.
Mrs. Bunting looked across at him. She would have given a very great deal to be able to lie, to pretend that she did not know what those dreadful cries had portended. But when it came to the point she found she could not do so.
“Yes,” she said dully. “I heard a word here and there. There’s been another murder, hasn’t there?”
“Two other murders,” he said soberly.
“Two? That’s worse news!” She turned so pale—a sallow greenish-white—that Bunting thought she was again going queer.
“Ellen?” he said warningly. “Ellen, now do have a care! I can’t think what’s come over you about these murders. Turn your mind away from them, do! We needn’t talk about them—not so much, that is——”
“But I wants to talk about them,” cried Mrs. Bunting hysterically.
The husband and wife were standing, one each side of the table, the man with his back to the fire, the woman with her back to the door.
Bunting, staring across at his wife, felt sadly perplexed and disturbed. She really did seem ill; even her slight, spare figure looked shrunk. For the first time, so he told himself ruefully, Ellen was beginning to look her full age. Her slender hands—she had kept the pretty, soft white hands of the woman who has never done rough work—grasped the edge of the table with a convulsive movement.
Bunting didn’t at all like the look of her. “Oh, dear,” he said to himself, “I do hope Ellen isn’t going to be ill! That would be a to-do just now.”
“Tell me about it,” she commanded, in a low voice. “Can’t you see I’m waiting to hear? Be quick now, Bunting!”
“There isn’t very much to tell,” he said reluctantly. “There’s precious little in this paper, anyway. But the cabman what brought Daisy told me——”
“Well?”
“What I said just now. There’s two of ’em this time, and they’d both been drinking heavily, poor creatures.”
“Was it where the others was done?” she asked looking at her husband fearfully.
“No,” he said awkwardly. “No, it wasn’t, Ellen. It was a good bit farther West—in fact, not so very far from here. Near King’s Cross—that’s how the cabman knew about it, you see. They seems to have been done in a passage which isn’t used no more.” And then, as he thought his wife’s eyes were beginning to look rather funny, he added hastily. “There, that’s enough for the present! We shall soon be hearing a lot more about it from Joe Chandler. He’s pretty sure to come in some time to-day.”
“Then the five thousand constables weren’t no use?” said Mrs. Bunting slowly.
She had relaxed her grip of the table, and was standing more upright.
“No use at all,” said Bunting briefly. “He is artful, and no mistake about it. But wait a minute——” he turned and took up the paper which he had laid aside, on a chair. “Yes, they says here that they has a clue.”
“A clue, Bunting?” Mrs. Bunting spoke in a soft, weak, die-away voice, and again, stooping somewhat, she grasped the edge of the table.
But her husband was not noticing her now. He was holding the paper close up to his eyes, and he read from it, in a tone of considerable satisfaction:
“ ‘It is gratifying to be able to state that the police at last believe they are in possession of a clue which will lead to the arrest of the——’ ”
and then Bunting dropped the paper and rushed round the table.
His wife, with a curious sighing moan, had slipped down on to the floor, taking with her the tablecloth as she went. She lay there in what appeared to be a dead faint. And Bunting, scared out of his wits, opened the door and screamed out, “Daisy! Daisy! Come up, child. Ellen’s took bad again.”
And Daisy, hurrying in, showed an amount of sense and resource which even at this anxious moment roused her fond father’s admiration.
“Get a wet sponge, Dad—quick!” she cried, “a sponge,—and, if you’ve got such a thing, a drop o’ brandy. I’ll see after her!” And then, after he had got the little medicine flask, “I can’t think what’s wrong with Ellen,” said Daisy wonderingly. “She seemed quite all right when I first came in. She was listening, interested-like, to what I was telling her, and then, suddenly—well, you saw how she was took, father? ’Taint like Ellen this, is it now?”
“No,” he whispered. “No, ’taint. But you see, child, we’ve been going through a pretty bad time—worse nor I should ever have let you know of, my dear. Ellen’s just feeling it now—that’s what it is. She didn’t say nothing, for Ellen’s a good plucked one, but it’s told on her—it’s told on her!”
And then Mrs. Bunting, sitting up, slowly opened her eyes, and instinctively put her hand up to her head to see if her hair was all right.
> She hadn’t really been quite “off.” It would have been better for her if she had. She had simply had an awful feeling that she couldn’t stand up—more, that she must fall down. Bunting’s words touched a most unwonted chord in the poor woman’s heart, and the eyes which she opened were full of tears. She had not thought her husband knew how she had suffered during those weeks of starving and waiting.
But she had a morbid dislike of any betrayal of sentiment. To her such betrayal betokened “foolishness,” and so all she said was, “There’s no need to make a fuss! I only turned over a little queer. I never was right off, Daisy.”
Pettishly she pushed away the glass in which Bunting had hurriedly poured a little brandy. “I wouldn’t touch such stuff—no, not if I was dying!” she exclaimed.
Putting out a languid hand, she pulled herself up, with the help of the table, on to her feet. “Go down again to the kitchen, child”; but there was a sob, a kind of tremor in her voice.
“You haven’t been eating properly, Ellen—that’s what’s the matter with you,” said Bunting suddenly. “Now I come to think of it, you haven’t eat half enough these last two days. I always did say—in old days many a time I telled you—that a woman couldn’t live on air. But there, you never believed me!”
Daisy stood looking from one to the other, a shadow over her bright, pretty face. “I’d no idea you’d had such a bad time, father,” she said feelingly. “Why didn’t you let me know about it? I might have got something out of Old Aunt.”
“We didn’t want anything of that sort,” said her stepmother hastily. “But of course—well, I expect I’m still feeling the worry now. I don’t seem able to forget it. Those days of waiting, of—of——” she restrained herself; another moment and the word “starving” would have left her lips.
“But everything’s all right now,” said Bunting eagerly, “all right, thanks to Mr. Sleuth, that is.”
“Yes,” repeated his wife, in a low, strange tone of voice. “Yes, we’re all right now, and as you say, Bunting, it’s all along of Mr. Sleuth.”
She walked across to a chair and sat down on it. “I’m just a little tottery still,” she muttered.
And Daisy, looking at her, turned to her father and said in a whisper, but not so low but that Mrs. Bunting heard her, “Don’t you think Ellen ought to see a doctor, father? He might give her something that would pull her round.”
“I won’t see no doctor!” said Mrs. Bunting with sudden emphasis. “I saw enough of doctors in my last place. Thirty-eight doctors in ten months did my poor missis have. Just determined on having ’em she was! Did they save her? No! She died just the same! Maybe a bit sooner.”
“She was a freak, was your last mistress, Ellen,” began Bunting aggressively.
Ellen had insisted on staying on in that place till her poor mistress died. They might have been married some months before they were married but for that fact. Bunting had always resented it.
His wife smiled wanly. “We won’t have no words about that,” she said, and again she spoke in a softer, kindlier tone than usual. “Daisy? If you won’t go down to the kitchen again, then I must”—she turned to her stepdaughter, and the girl flew out of the room.
“I think the child grows prettier every minute,” said Bunting fondly.
“Folks are too apt to forget that beauty is but skin deep,” said his wife. She was beginning to feel better. “But still, I do agree, Bunting, that Daisy’s well enough. And she seems more willing, too.”
“I say, we mustn’t forget the lodger’s dinner,” Bunting spoke uneasily. “It’s a bit of fish to-day, isn’t it? Hadn’t I better just tell Daisy to see to it, and then I can take it up to him, as you’re not feeling quite the thing, Ellen?”
“I’m quite well enough to take up Mr. Sleuth’s luncheon,” she said quickly. It irritated her to hear her husband speak of the lodger’s dinner. They had dinner in the middle of the day, but Mr. Sleuth had luncheon. However odd he might be, Mrs. Bunting never forgot her lodger was a gentleman.
“After all, he likes me to wait on him, doesn’t he? I can manage all right. Don’t you worry,” she added, after a long pause.
CHAPTER VIII
Perhaps because his luncheon was served to him a good deal later than usual, Mr. Sleuth ate his nice piece of steamed sole upstairs with far heartier an appetite than his landlady had eaten her nice slice of roast pork downstairs.
“I hope you’re feeling a little better, sir,” Mrs. Bunting had forced herself to say when she first took in his tray.
And he had answered plaintively, querulously, “No, I can’t say I feel well to-day, Mrs. Bunting. I am tired—very tired. And as I lay in bed I seemed to hear so many sounds—so much crying and shouting. I trust the Marylebone Road is not going to become a noisy thoroughfare, Mrs. Bunting?”
“Oh, no, sir, I don’t think that. We’re generally reckoned very quiet indeed, sir.”
She waited a moment—try as she would, she could not allude to what those unwonted shouts and noises had betokened. “I expect you’ve got a chill, sir,” she said suddenly. “If I was you, I shouldn’t go out this afternoon; I’d just stay quietly indoors. There’s a lot of rough people about——” Perhaps there was an undercurrent of warning, of painful pleading, in her toneless voice which penetrated in some way to the brain of the lodger, for Mr. Sleuth looked up, and an uneasy, watchful look came into his luminous grey eyes.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mrs. Bunting. But I think I’ll take your advice. That is, I will stay quietly at home. I am never at a loss to know what to do with myself so long as I can study the Book of Books.”
“Then you’re not afraid about your eyes, sir?” said Mrs. Bunting curiously. Somehow she was beginning to feel better. It comforted her to be up here, talking to Mr. Sleuth, instead of thinking about him downstairs. It seemed to banish the terror which filled her soul—aye, and her body, too—at other times. When she was with him Mr. Sleuth was so gentle, so reasonable, so—so grateful.
Poor kindly, solitary Mr. Sleuth! This kind of gentleman surely wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone a human being. Eccentric—so much must be admitted. But Mrs. Bunting had seen a good deal of eccentric folk, eccentric women rather than eccentric men, in her long career as a useful maid.
Being at ordinary times an exceptionally sensible, well-balanced woman, she had never, in old days, allowed her mind to dwell on certain things she had learnt as to the aberrations of which human nature is capable—even well-born, well-nurtured, gentle human nature—as exemplified in some of the households where she had served. It would, indeed, be unfortunate if she now became morbid or—or hysterical.
So it was in a sharp, cheerful voice, almost the voice in which she had talked during the first few days of Mr. Sleuth’s stay in her house, that she exclaimed, “Well, sir, I’ll be up again to clear away in about half an hour. And if you’ll forgive me for saying so, I hope you will stay in and have a rest to-day. Nasty, muggy weather—that’s what it is! If there’s any little thing you want, me or Bunting can go out and get it.”
—
It must have been about four o’clock when there came a ring at the front door.
The three were sitting chatting together, for Daisy had washed up—she really was saving her stepmother a good bit of trouble—and the girl was now amusing her elders by a funny account of Old Aunt’s pernickety ways.
“Whoever can that be?” said Bunting, looking up. “It’s too early for Joe Chandler, surely.”
“I’ll go,” said his wife, hurriedly jumping up from her chair. “I’ll go! We don’t want no strangers in here.”
And as she stepped down the short bit of passage she said to herself, “A clue? What clue?”
But when she opened the front door a glad sigh of relief broke from her. “Why, Joe? We never thought ’twas you! But you’re very welcome, I’m sure. Come in.”
And Chandler came in, a rather sheepish look on his good-looking, fair young face.
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p; “I thought maybe that Mr. Bunting would like to know——” he began, in a loud, cheerful voice, and Mrs. Bunting hurriedly checked him. She didn’t want the lodger upstairs to hear what young Chandler might be going to say.
“Don’t talk so loud,” she said a little sharply. “The lodger is not very well to-day. He’s had a cold,” she added hastily, “and during the last two or three days he hasn’t been able to go out.”
She wondered at her temerity, her—her hypocrisy, and that moment, those few words, marked an epoch in Ellen Bunting’s life. It was the first time she had told a bold and deliberate lie. She was one of those women—there are many, many such—to whom there is a whole world of difference between the suppression of the truth and the utterance of an untruth.
But Chandler paid no heed to her remarks. “Has Miss Daisy arrived?” he asked, in a lower voice.
She nodded. And then he went through into the room where the father and daughter were sitting.
“Well?” said Bunting, starting up. “Well, Joe? Now you can tell us all about that mysterious clue! I suppose it’d be too good news to expect you to tell us they’ve caught him?”
“No fear of such good news as that yet awhile. If they’d caught him,” said Joe ruefully, “well, I don’t suppose I should be here, Mr. Bunting. But the Yard are circulating a description at last. And—well, they’ve found his weapon!”
“No?” cried Bunting excitedly. “You don’t say so! Whatever sort of a thing is it? And are they sure ’tis his?”
“Well, ’tain’t sure, but it seems to be likely.”
Mrs. Bunting had slipped into the room and shut the door behind her. But she was still standing with her back against the door, looking at the group in front of her. None of them were thinking of her—she thanked God for that! She could hear everything that was said without joining in the talk and excitement.
“Listen to this!” cried Joe Chandler exultantly. “ ’Tain’t given out yet—not for the public, that is—but we was all given it by eight o’clock this morning. Quick work that, eh?” He read out:
The Big Book of Jack the Ripper Page 71