The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries

by The Big Book of Victorian Mysteries (retail) (epub)

  The buffer retired, and in came a duffer who said the occasion was not convenient.

  “Ay, but it is,” said Bradbury, “and if my lord is not here in five minutes, I’ll go up-stairs and tell my tale before them all, and see if they are all hair-dressers’ dummies, without heart or conscience or sense.”

  In five minutes in came a gentleman, with an order on his breast, and said, “You are a Bow Street officer?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Name?”

  “Bradbury.”

  “You say the man condemned to die to-morrow is innocent?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Just taken the real culprit.”

  “When is the other to suffer?”

  “Twelve tomorrow.”

  “Seems short time. Humph! Will you be good enough to take a line to the sheriff? Formal message to-morrow.” The actual message ran:—

  “Delay execution of Cox till we hear from Windsor. Bearer will give reasons.”

  With this Bradbury hurried away, not to the sheriff, but to the prison; and infected the jailer and the chaplain and all the turnkeys with pity for the condemned, and the spirit of delay.

  Bradbury breakfasted, and washed his face, and off to the sheriff. Sheriff was gone out. Bradbury hunted him from pillar to post, and could find him nowhere. He was at last obliged to go and wait for him at Newgate.

  He arrived at the stroke of twelve to superintend the execution. Bradbury put the minister’s note into his hand.

  “This is no use,” said he. “I want an order from His Majesty, or the Privy Council at least.”

  “Not to delay,” suggested the chaplain. “You have all the day for it.”

  “All the day! I can’t be all the day hanging a single man. My time is precious, gentlemen.” Then, his bark being worse than his bite, he said, “I shall come again at four o’clock, and then, if there is no news from Windsor, the law must take its course.”

  He never came again, though, for, even as he turned his back to retire, there was a faint cry from the farthest part of the crowd, a paper raised on a hussar’s lance, and as the mob fell back on every side, a royal aide-de-camp rode up, followed closely by the mounted runner, and delivered to the sheriff a reprieve under the sign-manual of His Majesty George the First.

  At 2 p.m. of the same day Gen. Sir Robert Barrington reached Newgate, and saw Captain Cowen in private. That unhappy man fell on his knees and made a confession.

  Barrington was horrified, and turned as cold as ice to him. He stood erect as a statue. “A soldier to rob!” said he. “Murder was bad enough—but to rob!”

  Cowen with his head and hands all hanging down, could only say, faintly, “I have been robbed and ruined, and it was for my boy. Ah, me! what will become of him? I have lost my soul for him, and now he will be ruined and disgraced—by me, who would have died for him.” The strong man shook with agony, and his head and hands almost touched the ground.

  Sir Robert Barrington looked at him and pondered.

  “No,” said he, relenting a little, “that is the one thing I can do for you. I had made up my mind to take your son to Canada as my secretary, and I will take him. But he must change his name. I sail next Thursday.”

  The broken man stared wildly; then started up and blessed him; and from that moment the wild hope entered his breast that he might keep his son unstained by his crime, and even ignorant of it.

  Barrington said that was impossible; but yielded to the father’s prayers, and consented to act as if it was possible. He would send a messenger to Oxford, with money and instructions to bring the young man up and put him on board the ship at Gravesend.

  This difficult scheme once conceived, there was not a moment to be lost. Barrington sent down a mounted messenger to Oxford, with money and instructions.

  Cowen sent for Bradbury, and asked him when he was to appear at Bow Street.

  “To-morrow, I suppose.”

  “Do me a favor. Get all your witnesses; make the case complete, and show me only once to the public before I am tried.”

  “Well, Captain,” said Bradbury, “you were square with me about poor Cox. I don’t see as it matters much to you; but I’ll not say nay.” He saw the solicitor for the Crown, and asked a few days to collect all his evidence. The functionary named Friday.

  This was conveyed next day to Cowen, and put him in a fever; it gave him a chance of keeping his son ignorant, but no certainty. Ships were eternally detained at Gravesend and waiting for a wind; there were no steam tugs then to draw them into blue water. Even going down the Channel, letters boarded them if the wind slacked. He walked his room to and fro, like a caged tiger, day and night.

  Wednesday evening Barrington came with the news that his son was at the “Star” in Cornhill. “I have got him to bed,” said he, “and, Lord forgive me, I have let him think he will see you before we go down to Gravesend to-morrow.”

  “Then let me see him,” said the miserable father. “He shall know nought from me.”

  They applied to the jailer, and urged that he could be a prisoner all the time, surrounded by constables in disguise. No; the jailer would not risk his place and an indictment. Bradbury was sent for, and made light of the responsibility. “I brought him here,” said he, “and I will take him to the ‘Star,’ I and my fellows. Indeed, he will give us no trouble this time. Why, that would blow the gaff, and make the young gentleman fly to the whole thing.”

  “It can only be done by authority,” was the jailer’s reply.

  “Then by authority it shall be done,” said Sir Robert. “Mr. Bradbury, have three men here with a coach at one o’clock and a regiment, if you like, to watch the ‘Star.’ ”

  Punctually at one came Barrington with an authority. It was a request from the Queen. The jailer took it respectfully. It was an authority not worth a button; but he knew he could not lose his place, with this writing to brandish at need.

  The father and son dined with the General at the “Star.” Bradbury and one of his fellows waited as private servants; other officers, in plain clothes, watched back and front.

  At three o’clock father and son parted, the son with many tears, the father with dry eyes, but a voice that trembled as he blessed him.

  Young Cowen, now Morris, went down to Gravesend with his chief; the criminal back to Newgate, respectfully bowed from the door of the “Star” by landlord and waiters.

  At first he was comparatively calm, but as the night advanced became restless, and by and by began to pace his cell again like a caged lion.

  At twenty minutes past eleven a turnkey brought him a line; a horseman had galloped in with it from Gravesend.

  “A fair wind—we weigh anchor at the full tide. It is a merchant vessel, and the Captain under my orders to keep off shore and take no messages. Farewell. Turn to the God you have forgotten. He alone can pardon you.”

  On receiving this note, Cowen betook him to his knees.

  In this attitude the jailer found him when he went his round.

  He waited till the Captain rose, and then let him know that an able lawyer was in waiting, instructed to defend him at Bow Street next morning. The truth is, the females of the “Swan” had clubbed money for this purpose.

  Cowen declined to see him. “I thank you, sir,” said he, “I will defend myself.”

  He said, however, he had a little favor to ask.

  “I have been,” said he, “of late much agitated and fatigued, and a sore trial awaits me in the morning. A few hours of unbroken sleep would be a boon to me.”

  “The turnkeys must come in to see you are all right.”

  “It is their duty; but I will lie in sight of the door if they will be good enough not to wake me.”

 
“There can be no objection to that, Captain, and I am glad to see you calmer.”

  “Thank you; never calmer in my life.”

  He got his pillow, set two chairs, and composed himself to sleep. He put the candle on the table, that the turnkeys might peep through the door and see him.

  Once or twice they peeped in very softly, and saw him sleeping in the full light of the candle, to moderate which, apparently, he had thrown a white handkerchief over his face.

  At nine in the morning they brought him his breakfast, as he must be at Bow Street between ten and eleven.

  When they came so near him, it struck them he lay too still.

  They took off the handkerchief.

  He had been dead some hours.

  Yes, there, calm, grave, and noble, incapable, as it seemed either of the passions that had destroyed him or the tender affection which redeemed yet inspired his crimes, lay the corpse of Edward Cowen.

  Thus miserably perished a man in whom were many elements of greatness.

  He left what little money he had to Bradbury, in a note imploring him to keep particulars out of the journals, for his son’s sake; and such was the influence on Bradbury of the scene at the “Star,” the man’s dead face, and his dying words, that, though public detail was his interest, nothing transpired but that the gentleman who had been arrested on suspicion of being concerned in the murder at the “Swan” Inn had committed suicide: to which was added by another hand: “Cox, however has the King’s pardon, and the affair still remains shrouded with mystery.”

  Cox was permitted to see the body of Cowen, and, whether the features had gone back to youth, or his own brain, long sobered in earnest, had enlightened his memory, recognized him as a man he had seen committed for horse-stealing at Ipswich, when he himself was the mayor’s groom; but some girl lent the accused a file, and he cut his way out of the cage.

  Cox’s calamity was his greatest blessing. He went into Newgate scarcely knowing there was a God; he came out thoroughly enlightened in that respect by the teaching of the chaplain and the death of Cowen. He went in a drunkard; the noose that dangled over his head so long terrified him into life-long sobriety—for he laid all the blame on liquor—and he came out as bitter a foe to drink as drink had been to him.

  His case excited sympathy; a considerable sum was subscribed to set him up in trade. He became a horse-dealer on a small scale: but he was really a most excellent judge of horses, and, being sober, enlarged his business; horsed a coach or two; attended fairs, and eventually made a fortune by dealing in cavalry horses under government contracts.

  As his money increased, his nose diminished, and when he died, old and regretted, only a pink tinge revealed the habits of his earlier life.

  Mrs. Martha Cust and Barbara Lamb were no longer sure, but they doubted to their dying day the innocence of the ugly fellow, and the guilt of the handsome, civil-spoken gentleman.

  But they converted nobody to their opinion; for they gave their reasons.

  The Three Strangers

  THOMAS HARDY

  Ending his formal education at sixteen, Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) went on to study architecture and earned a modest living at it, though his first love was writing, particularly poetry. When he submitted The Poor Man and the Lady, his first novel, the desired publisher disparaged it so roundly that Hardy promptly destroyed it. When his second novel, Desperate Remedies (1871), was published with his financial assistance, it lost money and received only two reviews—both scathing.

  Resigned to becoming a full-time architect, he nonetheless continued to write and had modest success until he released Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), which became roaringly satisfying in both financial and critical terms, though he was annoyed when one reviewer hypothesized that it had been written by George Eliot under a pseudonym (!).

  All his subsequent books enjoyed ongoing success, ensuring his reputation as one of the greatest novelists of his time, but the universal approval dramatically diminished when he produced Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), which received a storm of abuse for its portrayal of infidelity and consequent “obscenity.”

  There followed even greater public uproar over the unconventional subjects of Jude the Obscure (1896), named Jude the Obscene by his critics. Hardy announced that he would never write fiction again. A bishop solemnly burned the books, “probably in his despair at not being able to burn me,” Hardy noted.

  “The Three Strangers” was originally published in the March 1883 issue of Longman’s Magazine; it was first collected in Wessex Tales: Strange, Lively, and Commonplace (London, Macmillan, 1888, two volumes).

  THE THREE STRANGERS

  Thomas Hardy

  Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be reckoned the high, grassy, and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and southwest. If any mark of human occupation is met with hereon it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd.

  Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county town. Yet, what of that? Five miles of irregular upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who “conceive and meditate of pleasant things.”

  Some old earthen camp or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some starved fragment of ancient hedge, is usually taken advantage of in the erection of these forlorn dwellings. But, in the present case, such a kind of shelter had been disregarded. Higher Crowstairs, as the house was called, stood quite detached and undefended. The only reason for its precise situation seemed to be the crossing of two footpaths at right angles hard by, which may have crossed there and thus for a good five hundred years.

  The house was thus exposed to the elements on all sides. But, though the wind up here blew unmistakably when it did blow, and the rain hit hard whenever it fell, the various weathers of the winter season were not quite so formidable on the coomb as they were imagined to be by dwellers on low ground. The raw rimes were not so pernicious as in the hollows, and the frosts were scarcely so severe. When the shepherd and his family who tenanted the house were pitied for their sufferings from the exposure, they said that upon the whole they were less inconvenienced by “wuzzes and flames” (hoarses and phlegms) than when they had lived by the stream of a snug neighbouring valley.

  The night of March 28, 182–, was precisely one of the nights that were wont to call forth these expressions of commiseration. The level rainstorm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the clothyard shafts of Senlac and Crecy. Such sheep and outdoor animals as had no shelter stood with their buttocks to the wind; while the tails of little birds trying to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown inside-out like umbrellas. The gable-end of the cottage was stained with wet, and the eaves-droppings flapped against the wall. Yet never was commiseration for the shepherd more misplaced. For that cheerful rustic was entertaining a large party in glorification of the christening of his second girl.

  The guests had arrived before the rain began to fall, and they were all now assembled in the chief or living-room of the dwelling. A glance into the apartment at eight o’clock on this eventful evening would have resulted in the opinion that it was as cozy and comfortable a nook as could be wished for in boisterous weather. The calling of its inhabitant was proclaimed by a number of highly polished sheep-crooks without stems that were hung ornamentally over the fireplace, the curl of each shining crook varying from the antiquated type engraved in the patriarchal pictures of old family Bibles to the most a
pproved fashion of the last local sheep-fair.

  The room was lighted by half a dozen candles, having wicks only a trifle smaller than the grease which enveloped them, in candlesticks that were never used but at high-days, holy-days, and family feasts. The lights were scattered about the room, two of them standing on the chimney-piece. This position of candles was in itself significant. Candles on the chimney-piece always meant a party.

  On the hearth, in front of a back-brand to give substance, blazed a fire of thorns, that crackled “like the laughter of the fool.”

  Nineteen persons were gathered here. Of these, five women, wearing gowns of various bright hues, sat in chairs along the wall; girls shy and not shy filled the window-bench; four men, including Charley Jake the hedge-carpenter, Elijah New the parish clerk, and John Pitcher, a neighbouring dairyman, the shepherd’s father-in-law, lolled in the settle; a young man and maid, who were blushing over tentative pourparlers on a life-companionship, sat beneath the corner-cupboard; and an elderly engaged man of fifty or upward moved restlessly about from spots where his betrothed was not to the spot where she was.

  Enjoyment was pretty general, and so much the more prevailed in being unhampered by conventional restrictions. Absolute confidence in each other’s good opinion begat perfect ease, while the finishing stroke of manner, amounting to a truly princely serenity, was lent to the majority by the absence of any expression or trait denoting that they wished to get on in the world, enlarge their minds, or do any eclipsing thing whatever—which nowadays so generally nips the bloom and bon homie of all except the two extremes of the social scale.

  Shepherd Fennel had married well, his wife being a dairyman’s daughter from the valley below, who brought fifty guineas in her pocket—and kept them there, till they should be required for ministering to the needs of a coming family. This frugal woman had been somewhat exercised as to the character that should be given to the gathering. A sit-still party had its advantages; but an undisturbed position of ease in chairs and settles was apt to lead on the men to such an unconscionable deal of toping that they would sometimes fairly drink the house dry. A dancing-party was the alternative; but this, while avoiding the foregoing objection on the score of good drink, had a counterbalancing disadvantage in the matter of good victuals, the ravenous appetites engendered by the exercise causing immense havoc in the buttery.