Aurora looked wonderingly at her husband, not at Talbot.
"A new trial?" she said, inquiringly.
"You know that the murderer of James Conyers has not yet been discovered?" said Mr. Bulstrode.
"Yes, yes; but what of that?"
"My dear Mrs. Mellish, my dear Aurora, the world is apt to take a morbid delight in horrible ideas. There are some people who think that you are guilty of this crime!"
"I!"
She rose suddenly from her low seat, and turned her face toward the lamplight with a look of such blank amazement, such utter wonder and bewilderment, that, had Talbot Bulstrode until that moment believed her guilty, he must thenceforth and for ever have been firmly convinced of her innocence.
"I!" she repeated.
Then turning to her husband, with a sudden alteration in her face, that blank amazement changing to a look of sorrow, mingled with reproachful wonder, she said, in a low voice:
"You thought this of me, John; you thought this!"
John Mellish bowed his head before her.
"I did, my dear," he murmured; "God forgive me for my wicked folly; I did think this, Aurora. But I pitied you, and was sorry for you, my own dear love; and when I thought it most, I would have died to save you from shame or sorrow. My love has never changed, Aurora; my love has never changed."
She gave him her hand, and once more resumed her seat. She sat for some moments in silence, as if trying to collect her thoughts, and to understand the meaning of this strange scene.
"Who suspects me of this crime?" she said, presently. "Has any one else suspected me? Any one besides—my husband?"
"I can scarcely tell you, my dear Mrs. Mellish," answered Talbot; "when an event of this kind takes place, it is very difficult to say who may or may not be suspected. Different persons set up different theories: one man writes to a newspaper to declare that, in his opinion, the crime was committed by some person within the house; another man writes as positively to another paper, asserting that the murderer was undoubtedly a stranger. Each man brings forward a mass of supposititious evidence in favor of his own argument, and each thinks a great deal more of proving his own cleverness than of furthering the ends of justice. No shadow of slander must rest upon this house, or upon those who live in it. It is necessary, therefore, imperatively necessary, that the real murderer should be found. A London detective is already at work. These men are very clever; some insignificant circumstance, forgotten by those most interested in discovering the truth, would be often enough to set a detective on the right track. This man is coming here at nine o'clock, and we are to give him all the assistance we can. Will you help us, Aurora?"
"Help you? How?"
"By telling us all you know of the night of the murder. Why were you in the wood that night?"
"I was there to meet the dead man."
"For what purpose?"
Aurora was silent for some moments, and then, looking up with a bold, half-defiant glance, she said suddenly:
"Talbot Bulstrode, before you blame or despise me, remember how the tie that bound me to this man had been broken. The law would have set me free from him if I had been brave enough to appeal to the law; and was I to suffer all my life because of the mistake I had made in not demanding a release from the man whose gross infidelity entitled me to be divorced from him? Heaven knows I had borne with him patiently enough. I had endured his vulgarity, his insolence, his presumption; I had gone penniless while he spent my father's money in a gambling-booth on a race-course, and dinnerless while he drank Champagne with cheats and reprobates. Remember this when you blame me most. I went into the wood that night to meet him for the last time upon this earth. He had promised me that he would emigrate to Australia upon the payment of a certain sum of money."
"And you went that night to pay it to him?" cried Talbot, eagerly.
"I did. He was insolent, as he always was; for he hated me for having discovered that which shut him out from all claim upon my fortune. He hated himself for his folly in not having played his cards better. Angry words passed between us; but it ended in his declaring his intention of starting for Liverpool early the next morning, and—"
"You gave him the money?"
"Yes."
"But tell me—tell me, Aurora," cried Talbot, almost too eager to find words, "how long had you left him when you heard the report of the pistol?"
"Not more than ten minutes."
"John Mellish," exclaimed Mr. Bulstrode, "was there any money found upon the person of the murdered man?"
"No—yes; I believe there was a little silver," Mr. Mellish answered, vaguely.
"A little silver!" cried Talbot, contemptuously. "Aurora, what was the sum you gave James Conyers upon the night of his death?"
"Two thousand pounds."
"In a check?"
"No, in notes."
"And that money has never been heard of since?"
No; John Mellish declared that he had never heard of it.
"Thank God!" exclaimed Mr. Bulstrode; "we shall find the murderer."
"What do you mean?" asked John.
"Whoever killed James Conyers, killed him in order to rob him of the money that he had upon him at the time of his death."
"But who could have known of the money?" asked Aurora.
"Anybody; the pathway through the wood is a public thoroughfare. Your conversation with the murdered man may have been overheard. You talked about the money, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"Thank God, thank God! Ask your wife's pardon for the cruel wrong you have done her, John, and then come down stairs with me. It's past nine, and I dare say Mr. Grimstone is waiting for us. But stay—one word, Aurora. The pistol with which this man was killed was taken from this house—from John's room. Did you know that?"
"No; how should I know it?" Mrs. Mellish asked, naively.
"That fact is against the theory of the murder having been committed by a stranger. Is there any one of the servants whom you could suspect of such a crime, John?"
"No," answered Mr. Mellish, decisively, "not one."
"And yet the person who committed the murder must have been the person who stole your pistol. You, John, declare that very pistol to have been in your possession upon the morning before the murder?"
"Most certainly."
"You put John's guns back into their places upon that morning, Aurora," said Mr. Bulstrode; "do you remember seeing that particular pistol?"
"No," Mrs. Mellish answered; "I should not have known it from the others."
"You did not find any of the servants in the room that morning?"
"Oh, no," Aurora answered immediately, "Mrs. Powell came into the room while I was there. She was always following me about, and I suppose she had heard me talking to—"
"Talking to whom?"
"To James Conyers' hanger-on and messenger, Stephen Hargraves—the softy, as they call him."
"You were talking to him? Then this Stephen Hargraves was in the room that morning?"
"Yes; he brought me a message from the murdered man, and took back my answer."
"Was he alone in the room?"
"Yes; I found him there when I went in expecting to find John. I dislike the man—unjustly, perhaps, for he is a poor, half-witted creature, who, I dare say, scarcely knows right from wrong, and I was angry at seeing him. He must have come in through the window."
A servant entered the room at this moment. He came to say that Mr. Grimstone had been waiting below for some time, and was anxious to see Mr. Bulstrode.
Talbot and John went down stairs together. They found Mr. Joseph Grimstone sitting at a table in the comfortable room that had lately been sacred to Mrs. Powell, with the shaded lamp drawn close to his elbow, and a greasy little memorandum-book open before him. He was thoughtfully employed making notes in this memorandum-book with a stumpy morsel of lead-pencil—when do these sort of people begin their pencils, and how is it that they always seem to have arrived at the stump?—when the tw
o gentlemen entered.
John Mellish leaned against the mantle-piece, and covered his face with his hand. For any practical purpose, he might as well have been in his own room. He knew nothing of Talbot's reasons for this interview with the detective officer. He had no shadowy idea, no growing suspicion shaping itself slowly out of the confusion and obscurity, of the identity of the murderer. He only knew that his Aurora was innocent; that she had indignantly refuted his base suspicion; and that he had seen the truth, radiant as the light of inspiration, shining out of her beautiful face.
Mr. Bulstrode rang, and ordered a bottle of sherry for the delectation of the detective, and then, in a careful and business-like manner, he recited all that he had been able to discover upon the subject of the murder. Joseph Grimstone listened very quietly, following Talbot Bulstrode with a shining track of lead-pencil hieroglyphics over the greasy paper, just as Tom Thumb strewed crumbs of bread in the forest pathway with a view to his homeward guidance. The detective only looked up now and then to drink a glass of sherry, and smack his lips with the quiet approval of a connoisseur. When Talbot had told all that he had to tell, Mr. Grimstone thrust the memorandum-book into a very tight breast-pocket, and, taking his hat from under the chair upon which he had been seated, prepared to depart.
"If this information about the money is quite correct," he said, "I think I can see my way through the affair—that is, if we can have the numbers of the notes. I can't stir a peg without the numbers of the notes."
Talbot's countenance fell. Here was a death-blow. Was it likely that Aurora, that impetuous and unbusiness-like girl, had taken the numbers of the notes which, in utter scorn and loathing, she had flung as a last bribe to the man she hated?
"I'll go and make inquiries of Mrs. Mellish," he said; "but I fear it is scarcely likely that I shall get the information you want."
He left the room, but five minutes afterward returned triumphant.
"Mrs. Mellish had the notes from her father," he said. "Mr. Floyd took a list of the numbers before he gave his daughter the money."
"Then, if you'll be so good as to drop Mr. Floyd a line, asking for that list by a return of post, I shall know how to act," replied the detective. "I have n't been idle this afternoon, gentlemen, any more than you. I went back after I parted with you, Mr. Bulstrode, and had another look at the pond. I found something to pay me for my trouble."
He took from his waistcoat-pocket a small object, which he held between his finger and thumb.
Talbot and John looked intently at this dingy object, but could make nothing out of it. It seemed to be a mere disk of rusty metal.
"It's neither more nor less than a brass button," the detective said, with a smile of quiet superiority; "maker's name Crosby, Birmingham. There's marks upon it which seem oncommon like blood; and, unless I'm very much mistaken, it'll be found to fit pretty correct into the barrel of your pistol, Mr. Mellish. So what we've got to do is to find a gentleman wearin' or havin' in his possession a waistcoat with buttons by Crosby, Birmingham, and one button missin'; and if we happen to find the same gentleman changin' one of the notes that Mr. Floyd took the numbers of, I don't think we shall be very far off layin' our hands on the man we want."
With which oracular speech Mr. Grimstone departed, charged with a commission to proceed forthwith to Doncaster, to order the immediate printing and circulating of a hundred bills, offering a reward of £200 for such information as would lead to the apprehension of the murderer of James Conyers—this reward to be given by Mr. Mellish, and to be over and above any reward offered by the government.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE BRASS BUTTON, BY CROSBY, BIRMINGHAM.
Mr. Matthew Harrison and Captain Prodder were both accommodated with suitable entertainment at the sign of the "Crooked Rabbit;" but while the dog-fancier appeared to have ample employment in the neighborhood—employment of a mysterious nature, which kept him on the tramp all day, and sent him home at sunset, tired and hungry, to his hostlery—the sailor, having nothing whatever to do, and a great burden of care upon his mind, found the time hang very heavily upon his hands, although, being naturally of a social and genial temper, he made himself very much at home in his strange quarters. From Mr. Harrison the captain obtained much information respecting the secret of all the sorrow that had befallen his niece. The dog-fancier had known James Conyers from his boyhood; had known his father, the "swell" coachman of a Brighton Highflyer, or Sky-rocket, or Electric, and the associate of the noblemen and gentlemen of that princely era, in which it was the right thing for the youthful aristocracy to imitate the manners of Mr. Samuel Weller, senior. Matthew Harrison had known the trainer in his brief and stormy married life, and had accompanied Aurora's first husband as a humble dependent and hanger-on in that foreign travel which had been paid for out of Archibald Floyd's check-book. The honest captain's blood boiled as he heard that shameful story of treachery and extortion practised upon an ignorant school-girl. Oh, that he had been by to avenge those outrages upon the child of the dark-eyed sister he had loved! His rage against the undiscovered murderer of the dead man was redoubled when he remembered how comfortably James Conyers had escaped from his vengeance.
Mr. Stephen Hargraves, the softy, took good care to keep out of the way of the "Crooked Rabbit," having no wish to encounter Captain Prodder a second time; but he still hung about the Town of Doncaster, where he had a lodging up a wretched alley, hidden away behind one of the back streets—a species of lair common to every large town, and only to be found by the inhabitants of the locality.
The softy had been born and bred, and had lived his life in such a narrow radius, that the uprooting of one of the oaks in Mellish Park could scarcely be a slower or more painful operation than the severing of those ties of custom which held the boorish hanger-on to the neighborhood of the household in which he had so long been an inmate. But, now that his occupation at Mellish was for ever gone, and his patron, the trainer, dead, he was alone in the world, and had need to look out for a fresh situation.
But he seemed rather slow to do this. He was not a very prepossessing person, it must be remembered, and there were not very many services for which he was fitted. Although upward of forty years of age, he was generally rather loosely described as a young man who understood all about horses, and this qualification was usually sufficient to procure for any individual whatever some kind of employment in the neighborhood of Doncaster. The softy seemed, however, rather to keep aloof from the people who knew and could have recommended him; and when asked why he did not seek a situation, gave evasive answers, and muttered something to the effect that he had saved a little bit of money at Mellish Park, and had no need to come upon the parish if he was out of work for a week or two.
John Mellish was so well known as a generous paymaster, that this was a matter of surprise to no one. Steeve Hargraves had no doubt had pretty pickings in that liberal household. So the softy went his way unquestioned, hanging about the town in a lounging, uncomfortable manner, sitting in some public-house tap-room half the day and night, drinking his meagre liquor in a sullen and unsocial style peculiar to himself, and consorting with no one.
He made his appearance at the railway station one day, and groped helplessly through all the time-tables pasted against the walls; but he could make nothing of them unaided, and was at last compelled to appeal to a good-tempered-looking official who was busy on the platform.
"I want th' Liverpool trayuns," he said, "and I can't find nowght about 'em here."
The official knew Mr. Hargraves, and looked at him with a stare of open wonder.
"My word! Steeve," he said, laughing, "what takes you to Liverpool? I thought you'd never been farther than York in your life."
"Maybe I have n't," the softy answered, sulkily; "but that's no reason I should n't go now. I've heard of a situation at Liverpool as I think'll suit me."
"Not better than the place you had with Mr. Mellish."
"Perhaps not," muttered Mr. Hargrave
s, with a frown darkening over his ugly face; "but Mellish Park be no pleace for me now, and arn't been for a long time past."
The railway official laughed.
The story of Aurora's chastisement of the half-witted groom was pretty well known among the towns-people of Doncaster, and I am sorry to say there were very few members of that sporting community who did not admire the mistress of Mellish Park something more by reason of this little incident in her history.
Mr. Hargraves received the desired information about the railway route between Doncaster and Liverpool, and then left the station.
A shabby-looking little man, who had also been making some inquiries of the same official who had talked to the softy, and had consequently heard the above brief dialogue, followed Stephen Hargraves from the station into the town. Indeed, had it not been that the softy was unusually slow of perception, he might have discovered that upon this particular day the same shabby-looking little man generally happened to be hanging about any and every place to which he, Mr. Hargraves, betook himself. But the cast-off retainer of Mellish Park did not trouble himself with any such misgivings. His narrow intellect, never wide enough to take in many subjects at a time, was fully absorbed by other considerations; and he loitered about with a gloomy and preoccupied expression on his face that by no means enhanced his personal attractions.
It is not to be supposed that Mr. Joseph Grimstone let the grass grow under his feet after his interview with John Mellish and Talbot Bulstrode. He had heard enough to make his course pretty clear to him, and he went to work quietly and sagaciously to win the reward offered to him.
There was not a tailor's shop in Doncaster or its vicinity into which the detective did not make his way. There was not a garment confectionnée by any of the civil purveyors upon whom he intruded that Mr. Grimstone did not examine; not a drawer of odds and ends which he did not ransack, in his search for buttons by "Crosby, maker, Birmingham." But for a long time he made his inquisition in vain. Before the day succeeding that of Talbot's arrival at Mellish was over, the detective had visited every tailor or clothier in the neighborhood of the racing metropolis of the north, but no traces of "Crosby, maker, Birmingham," had he been able to find. Brass waistcoat-buttons are not particularly affected by the leaders of the fashion in the present day, and Mr. Grimstone found almost every variety of fastening upon the waistcoats he examined except that one special style of button, a specimen of which, out of shape and blood-stained, he carried deep in his trowsers-pocket.
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