Perfectly consistent with himself, as I believe all such monsters to be, this Slinkton recovered himself, and showed a defiance that was sufficiently cold and quiet. He was white, he was haggard, he was changed; but only as a sharper who had played for a great stake, and had been outwitted and had lost the game.
“Listen to me, you villain,” said Beckwith, “and let every word you hear me say be a stab in your wicked heart. When I took these rooms, to throw myself in your way and lead you on to the scheme that I knew my appearance and supposed character and habits would suggest to such a devil, how did I know that? Because you were no stranger to me. I knew you well. And I knew you to be the cruel wretch who, for so much money, had killed one innocent girl while she trusted him implicitly, and who was by inches killing another.”
Slinkton took out a snuff-box, took a pinch of snuff, and laughed.
“But see here,” said Beckwith, never looking away, never raising his voice, never relaxing his face, never unclenching his hand. “See what a dull wolf you have been, after all! The infatuated drunkard who never drank a fiftieth part of the liquor you plied him with, but poured it away, here, there, everywhere—almost before your eyes; who bought over the fellow you set to watch him and to ply him, by outbidding you in his bribe, before he had been at his work three days—with whom you have observed no caution, yet who was so bent on ridding the earth of you as a wild beast, that he would have defeated you if you had been ever so prudent—that drunkard whom you have, many a time, left on the floor of this room, and who has even let you go out of it, alive and undeceived, when you have turned him over with your foot—has, almost as often, on the same night, within an hour, within a few minutes, watched you awake, had his hand at your pillow when you were asleep, turned over your papers, taken samples from your bottles and packets of powder, changed their contents, rifled every secret of your life!”
He had had another pinch of snuff in his hand, but had gradually let it drop from between his fingers to the floor: where he now smoothed it out with his foot, looking down at it the while.
“That drunkard,” said Beckwith, “who had free access to your rooms at all times, that he might drink the strong drinks that you left in his way, and be the sooner ended, holding no more terms with you than he would hold with a tiger, has had his master key for all your locks, his tests for all your poisons, his clue to your cipher-writing. He can tell you, as well as you can tell him, how long it took to complete that deed, what doses there were, what intervals, what signs of gradual decay upon mind and body; what distempered fancies were produced, what observable changes, what physical pain. He can tell you, as well as you can tell him, that all this was recorded day by day, as a lesson of experience for future service. He can tell you, better than you can tell him, where that journal is at this moment.”
Slinkton stopped the action of his foot, and looked at Beckwith.
“No,” said the latter, as if answering a question from him. “Not in the drawer of the writing-desk that opens with a spring; it is not there, and it never will be there again.”
“Then you are a thief!” said Slinkton.
Without any change whatever in the inflexible purpose, which it was quite terrific even to me to contemplate, and from the power of which I had always felt convinced it was impossible for this wretch to escape, Beckwith returned:
“And I am your niece’s shadow, too.”
With an imprecation Slinkton put his hand to his head, tore out some hair, and flung it to the ground. It was the end of the smooth walk; he destroyed it in the action, and it will soon be seen that his use for it was past.
Beckwith went on: “Whenever you left here, I left here. Although I understood that you found it necessary to pause in the completion of that purpose, to avert suspicion, still I watched you close, with the poor confiding girl. When I had the diary, and could read it word by word—it was only about the night before your last visit to Scarborough—you remember the night? you slept with a small flat vial tied to your wrist—I sent to Mr. Sampson, who was kept out of view. This is Mr. Sampson’s trusty servant standing by the door. We three saved your niece among us.”
Slinkton looked at us all, took an uncertain step or two from the place where he had stood, returned to it, and glanced about him in a very curious way—as one of the meaner reptiles might, looking for a hole to hide in. I noticed, at the same time, that a singular change took place in the figure of the man—as if it collapsed within his clothes, and they consequently became ill-shapen and ill-fitting.
“You shall know,” said Beckwith, “for I hope the knowledge will be bitter and terrible to you, why you have been pursued by one man, and why, when the whole interest that Mr. Sampson represents would have expended any money in hunting you down, you have been tracked to death at a single individual’s charge. I hear you have had the name of Meltham on your lips sometimes?”
I saw, in addition to those other changes, a sudden stoppage come upon his breathing.
“When you sent the sweet girl whom you murdered (you know with what artfully made-out surroundings and probabilities you sent her) to Meltham’s office, before taking her abroad to originate the transaction that doomed her to the grave, it fell to Meltham’s lot to see her and to speak with her. It did not fall to his lot to save her, though I know he would freely give his own life to have done it. He admired her—I would say he loved her deeply, if I thought it possible that you could understand the word. When she was sacrificed, he was thoroughly assured of your guilt. Having lost her, he had but one object left in life, and that was to avenge her and destroy you.”
I saw the villain’s nostrils rise and fall convulsively; but I saw no moving at his mouth.
“That man Meltham,” Beckwith steadily pursued, “was as absolutely certain that you could never elude him in this world, if he devoted himself to your destruction with his utmost fidelity and earnestness, and if he divided the sacred duty with no other duty in life, as he was certain that in achieving it he would be a poor instrument in the hands of Providence, and would do well before Heaven in striking you out from among living men. I am that man, and I thank God that I have done my work!”
If Slinkton had been running for his life from swift-footed savages, a dozen miles, he could not have shown more emphatic signs of being oppressed at heart and labouring for breath than he showed now, when he looked at the pursuer who had so relentlessly hunted him down.
“You never saw me under my right name before; you see me under my right name now. You shall see me once again in the body when you are tried for your life. You shall see me once again in the spirit, when the cord is round your neck, and the crowd are crying against you!”
When Meltham had spoken these last words, the miscreant suddenly turned away his face, and seemed to strike his mouth with his open hand. At the same instant, the room was filled with a new and powerful odour, and, almost at the same instant, he broke into a crooked run, leap, start—I have no name for the spasm—and fell, with a dull weight that shook the heavy old doors and windows in their frames.
That was the fitting end of him.
When we saw that he was dead, we drew away from the room, and Meltham, giving me his hand, said, with a weary air:
“I have no more work on earth, my friend. But I shall see her again elsewhere.”
It was in vain that I tried to rally him. He might have saved her, he said; he had not saved her, and he reproached himself; he had lost her, and he was broken-hearted.
“The purpose that sustained me is over, Sampson, and there is nothing now to hold me to life. I am not fit for life; I am weak and spiritless; I have no hope and no object; my day is done.”
In truth, I could hardly have believed that the broken man who then spoke to me was the man who had so strongly and so differently impressed me when his purpose was before him. I used such entreaties with him as I
could; but he still said, and always said, in a patient, undemonstrative way—nothing could avail him—he was broken-hearted.
He died early in the next spring. He was buried by the side of the poor young lady for whom he had cherished those tender and unhappy regrets; and he left all he had to her sister. She lived to be a happy wife and mother; she married my sister’s son, who succeeded poor Meltham; she is living now, and her children ride about the garden on my walking-stick when I go to see her.
The Wife-Killer
JAMES M’GOVAN
With the creation of police departments in England and elsewhere, accounts of the adventures of policemen and detectives and their battles with murderers, forgers, thieves, and other criminals became an enormously popular literary genre. The fact that these tales were mostly fictional and written by hacks appears to have fooled a gullible public, which snapped them up as quickly as they were published. Many used “house names”—pseudonyms that could be used by the same writer—which enabled publishers to develop a following for certain authors who were recognized in their time but are largely forgotten today.
Although known today only by serious collectors and/or scholars of crime fiction, William Crawford Honeyman (1845–1919), using the pseudonym James M’Govan (often spelled McGovan), was one of the most successful perpetrators of these fictional tales.
Born to Scottish parents who immigrated to New Zealand, Honeyman moved to England, where he had an undistinguished career as a violinist and orchestra leader and wrote books about playing the violin.
He took to writing short stories about an Edinburgh detective named James M’Govan, telling the tales of his brilliance in the first person. Most readers of the time, and later, believed them to be nonfiction, in spite of the created dialogue and apparent infallibility of the narrator/policeman.
While many other books of a similar type were published before Honeyman took up his pen, he was clever enough to have interesting titles with subtitles that were virtually identical to one another and to the other writers whose full titles were mainly indistinguishable. Among his books were Brought to Bay; or, Experiences of a City Detective (1878), Hunted Down; or, Recollections of a City Detective (1878), Strange Clues; or, Chronicles of a City Detective (1881), and Traced and Tracked; or, Memoirs of a City Detective (1884).
“The Wife-Killer” was originally published in Strange Clues; or, Chronicles of a City Detective (Edinburgh, John Menzies, 1881).
THE WIFE-KILLER
James M’Govan
The man was a sailor, I could see, but it was the expression of his face that most powerfully interested me, as he sauntered in and sat down to wait his turn in the “reception room.” Blank despair was there, and that woe-begone, reckless look which I have seen dozens of times on the faces of men and women who have tried to commit suicide, and either failed or been rescued. There was also an ill-suppressed excitement affecting him, as I could see by the powerful quivering of his hands as he cut himself a bit of tobacco.
“Been having a spree and lost his money or watch, and now comes to us for help,” was my mental comment, so I was in no hurry to attend to him. His first words, however, both undeceived and startled me.
“My name is Matthew Harris, and I’ve come to give myself up.”
I stared at him, trying in vain to remember any one of that name who was “wanted.”
“What for? What have you done?” I said, after a pause.
“For killing my wife. She was buried about a month ago, and I’ve had no rest ever since.”
I thought I understood it now. The man was mad, and like many more in that unhappy condition imagined himself guilty of murder.
I took him to a quieter room, and tried to engage him in conversation till the medical inspector could be brought to examine him. But my delicacy was quite thrown away upon the self-accused sailor, who was a man of great intelligence and penetration, for he read my thoughts like a book, and promptly said—
“I know what you think. You’re saying to yourself, ‘Oh, here’s another madman—I’ll have to humour him a bit’; but you’re wrong. I’m not mad, nor likely to be—I only wish I was; I’d get some kind of rest then.”
“If you killed your wife, how comes it that we have heard nothing of the crime?” I quietly remarked. “How was the thing done?”
“Oh, there’s lots o’ ways o’ killing folk that nobody ever dreams on,” wearily returned Harris. “Nobody thought I’d harmed a hair of her head; and nobody would yet, only my conscience won’t let me off. I thought, before she was gone, that if ever anybody deserve to be helped out of the world it was her, but when folks are in the grave you come to think different on ’em.”
“You were unhappy, then?”
“Mortal unhappy. Nobody knows but myself what I suffered through that woman—as drunken a jade as ever crawled the earth. If I didn’t know it, I couldn’t believe that it was the same lass that I used to sweetheart and look forward to seeing at the end of the voyage. She was as pretty and good as any on earth then, but she took to drink after we was married—little by little—and then it got such hold on her that she couldn’t help herself. First she drank all my savings, then she drank her clothes, and then she began to drink the furniture.”
“And you tried to stop it, of course?”
“Might as well have whistled for wind in a dead calm—she wouldn’t be stopped; and as I was at sea most of the time, I’d no proper idea what a miserable woman she’d growed to. I thought when the child came it would pull her up a bit, but it didn’t for long. I was sort o’ built up on the wee thing, I will admit—”; and the man wiped the sweat from his brow rather slowly to hide something else. “It was so like what she’d been when she was pure, and young, and sweet; and, as I didn’t know how it was neglected while I was away, I never took thought of evil. I was always thinking of the child when I was away, seeing that its mother was not worth thinking of now, and looked for’ard to the time when it would be a grown-up lass, able to watch its mother and keep her outen harm’s way. My God! when I think of it, I sometimes feel as if she deserved to die after all.”
“How? what? did she injure the child?”
“I was coming up Leith Walk, one bitter cold morning before six o’clock, when our ship had just got in, and was thinking what a nice surprise I’d give to the child when I got home. I’d a little squeaking doll in my pocket for it, and no end of sweeties I’d brought from Rotterdam. When I was half-way up Leith Walk I comes on a crowd of working men, and such like, who were gathered round a ragged little infant they’d found lying ’bout dead in the frozen gutter. It had been left there for God knows how long—most likely all night—and was just about gone when the policeman got it and put his coat about it. I swore a bit at the unnatural father and mother that could leave such a little thing there, and went as far as the Police Station with the crowd, and then heard that the poor little thing was dead. I then went home, and found the door of my house open, but nobody at home. Then somebody told me that my wife had been took up drunk the night before. Nobody know’d anything about the child. I went to the station and found my wife, but she didn’t know what she’d done with it neither. Don’t know how it was, but the minute she said that, my heart went all cold and dead as a lump of lead, and I thought straight of the little thing I’d seen picked up on the street. ‘If that’s my little Chicky’—I used to call her that—I said to myself, ‘I’ll never hold up my head again.’ I went down to the station-house, and got them to show me the frozen little thing. It was my little Chicky, stiff as a stone. I took out the little toys I’d brought for her, and let ’em drop on the floor—they was no use to me now. I’m not hard-hearted, but I couldn’t cry—there wasn’t a bit of cry in me. The men in the place seemed to take on more than me, and said some kind words which I didn’t rightly hear, I was so struck to see Chicky dead. Then I took her up in my arms, and axed the loan of a coat to co
ver her over while I carried her to my house; and they sent a man to follow and watch me in case I should drop dead on the way. Wish’t I had—wish’t I had!”
“I think I remember that case,” I interposed in a subdued whisper. “Your wife was tried for it, and got six months’ imprisonment.”
“I saw Chicky buried, and then sent word to my wife that I was done with her; that she’d get half of my pay as soon as she came out of prison, but that she and I must be same as strangers. But what’s the use of saying anything or arranging anything with a woman whose brain is sodden with whisky? She wouldn’t be shook off—she drank harder than ever, and followed me through the streets screaming after me, and making the crowds believe I’d killed her child—the pure little thing that she’d been in prison for killing. She’d got her whole brain turned upside down, and thought everything the opposite of what it was. Sometimes I was near killed by the mobs she raised about me; and once I was as near turning on her in the street and killing her as any one ever was without doing it—only by accident I’d changed my clothes that morning, and hadn’t my knife with me—thank God for His mercy!”
I thought it rather odd that he should be thankful for having spared her, and yet kill her after all, but I said nothing.
The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries Page 9