The bustle of the assizes was over; the tramp and tread and hum had gone out of the streets; the judges, the barristers, and the rest of the transitory visitors had departed, to hold their assize at the next county town.
A great deal of the bustle and the hum of another event had also subsided. It does not linger very long when outward proceedings are over, and sensational adjuncts have ceased; and Mr. Ollivera, at the best, had been but a stranger. The grave where he lay had its visitors still; but his brother and other friends had left for London, carrying his few effects with them. Nothing remained to tell of the fatal act of the past Monday evening; but for that grave, it might have seemed never to have had place in reality.
The Reverend Mr. Ollivera had been firm in refusing to admit belief in his brother's guilt. He did not pretend to judge how it might have happened, whether by accident or by some enemy's hand; but he felt convinced the death could not have been deliberately self-inflicted. It was an impossibility, he avowed to Mr. Butterby--and he was looked upon, by that renowned officer, as next door to a lunatic for his pains. There was no more shadow of a doubt on Mr. Butterby's mind that the verdict had been in accordance with the facts, than there was on other people's.
Always excepting Alletha Rye's. She had been silent to the public since the avowal at the grave; but, in a dispute with Mrs. Jones, had repeated her assertion and belief. Upon a report of the display coming to Mrs. Jones's ears, that discreet matron--who certainly erred on the side of hard, correct, matter-of-fact propriety, if on any--attacked her sister in no measured terms. There were several years between them, and Mrs. Jones considered she had a right to do it. Much as Mrs. Jones had respected Mr. Ollivera in life, she entertained no doubt whatever on the subject of his death.
"My opinion is, you must have been crazy," came the sharp reprimand. "Go off after that tramping tail to the grave! I wish I'd seen you start. A good name is easier lost than regained, Alletha Rye."
"I am not afraid of losing mine," was the calm rejoinder.
"Folks seldom are till they find it gone," said Mrs. Jones, tartly. "My goodness! not content with trapesing off there in the middle of the night, you must go and make an exhibition of yourself besides!--kneeling down on the damp earth to pray, in the face and eyes of all the people; and then rising to make a proclamation, just as if you had been the town bellman! Jones says it struck him dumb."
Alletha Rye was silent. Perhaps she had felt vexed since, that the moment's excitement had led her to the act.
"Who areyou, that you should put yourself up against the verdict?" resumed Mrs. Jones. "Are you cleverer and sharper than the jury, and the coroner, and me, and Mr. Ollivera's friends, and the rest of the world, all of us put together? There can't be adoubtupon the point, girl."
"Let it drop," said Alletha, with a shiver.
"Drop! I'd like to see it drop. I'd like the remembrance of it to drop out of men's minds, but you've took care that shan't be. What on earth induced you to go and do it?"
"It was a dreadful thing that Mr. Ollivera should lie under the imputation of having killed himself," came the answer, after a pause.
"Now, you just explain yourself, Alletha Rye. You keep harping on that same string, about Mr. Ollivera; what grounds have you for it?"
The girl's pale face flushed all over. "None," she presently answered. "I never said I had grounds. But there's that vivid dream upon me always. He seemed to reproach me for not having sooner gone into the room to find him; and I'm sure no self-murderer would do that. They'd rather lie undiscovered for ever. Had I kept silence," she passionately added, "I might have become haunted."
Mrs. Jones stared at the speaker with all the fiery fervour of her dark, dark eyes.
"Haunted! Haunted by what?"
"By Mr. Ollivera's spirit; by remorse. Remorse for not doing as I am sure he is wishing me to do--clear his memory."
Mrs. Jones lifted her hands in wonder, and for once made no retort. She began to question in real earnest whether the past matters had not turned her sister's brain.
Dicky Jones was present during this passage-at-arms, which took place on the Thursday, after breakfast. He had just been enduring a battery of tongue on his own score; various sins, great and small, being placed before him in glaring colours by his wife; not the least heinous of which was the having arrived home from his pleasure trip at the unseasonable hour of half after one o'clock in the morning. In recrimination he had intimated that others of the family could come in at that hour as well as himself; not to do Alletha Rye harm, for he was a good-natured man, as people given to plenty of peccadilloes are apt to be; but to make his own crime appear the less. And then it all came out; and Mrs. Jones's ears were regaled with Alletha Rye's share in the doings at the interment.
On this same Thursday, but very much later in the day, Frank Greatorex and the Reverend Mr. Ollivera departed from the city, having stayed to collect together the papers and other effects of the deceased gentleman. Which brings us (the night having passed, and a great portion of the ensuing day) to the opening of the chapter.
Mr. Butterby sat in his parlour: one of two rooms he occupied on the ground floor of a private house very near a populous part of the city. He was not a police-sergeant; he was not an inspector; people did not know what he was. That he held sway at the police-station, and was a very frequent visitor to it, everybody saw. But Mr. Butterby had been so long in the town that speculation though rife enough at first upon the point, had ceased as to what special relations he might hold with the law. When any one wanted important assistance, he could, if he chose, apply to Mr. Butterby, instead of to the regular police-inspector; and, to the mind of the sanguine inquirer, that application appeared to constitute a promise of success.
Mr. Butterby's parlour faced the street. Its one sash window, protected by shutters thrown back in the day, and by green dwarf venetian blinds and a white roller-blind inside, was not a very large one. Nevertheless, Mr. Butterby contrived to keep a tolerable lookout from it on those of his fellow citizens who might chance to pass. He generally had the white blinds drawn down to meet, within an inch, the mahogany top of the venetian ones; and from that inch of outlet, Mr. Butterby, standing up before the window, was fond of taking observations. It was an unpretending room, with a faded carpet and rug on the floor; a square table in the middle, a large bureau filled with papers in a corner; some books in a case opposite, and a stock of newspapers on the top of that; and a picture over the mantelpiece representing Eve offering the apple to Adam.
Mr. Butterby sat by the fire at his tea, taking it thoughtfully. He wore an old green coat with short tails sprouting out from the waist, not being addicted to fashion in private life, and a red-and-black check waistcoat. It was Friday evening and nearly dusk. He had been out on some business all the afternoon but his thoughts were not fixed on that, though it was of sufficient importance; they rested on the circumstances attending the death of Mr. Ollivera.
Before the brother of the deceased had quitted the town, he had made an appointment with Mr. Butterby, and came to it accompanied by Frank Greatorex; the fly, conveying them to the station, waiting at the door. The purport of his visit was to impress upon that officer his full conviction that the death was not a suicide, and to request that, if anything should arise to confirm his opinion, it might be followed up.
"He was a good, pure-minded man; he was of calm, clear, practical mind, of sound good sense; he was fond of his profession, anxious to excel in it; hopeful, earnest, and without a care in the world," urged the Reverend Mr. Ollivera, with emotion. "How, sir, I ask you, could such a man take away his own life?"
Mr. Butterby shook his head. It might be unlikely, he acknowledged; but it was not impossible.
"I tell you it is impossible," said Mr. Ollivera. "I hold a full, firm, positive conviction that my brother never died, or could have died, by his own wilful hands: the certainty of it in my mind is so clear as to be like a revelation from heaven. Do you know what I did, sir? I went to the grave at night after he was put into it, and read the burial service over him."
"I see you doing it," came the unexpected answer of Mr. Butterby. "The surplice you wore was too long for you and covered your boots."
"It belonged to a taller man than I am--the Reverend Mr. Yorke," the clergyman explained. "But now, sir, do you suppose I should have dared to hold that sacred service over a man who had wilfully destroyed himself?"
"But instead of there being proof that he did not wilfully destroy himself, there's every proof that he did," argued Mr. Butterby.
"Every apparent proof; I admit that; but I know--I know that the proofs are in some strange way false; not real."
"The death was real; the pistol was real; the writing on the note-paper was real."
"I know. I cannot pretend to explain where the explanation may be hidden; I cannot see how or whence the elucidation shall come. One suggestion I will make to you, Mr. Butterby it is not clear that no person got access to the drawing-room after the departure from it of Mr. Bede Greatorex. At least, to my mind. I only mentioned this thought," concluded Mr. Ollivera, rising to close the interview; for he had no time to prolong it. "Should you succeed in gleaning anything, address a communication to me, to the care of Greatorex and Greatorex."
"Stop a moment," cried Mr. Butterby, as they were going out. "Who holds the paper that was found on the table?"
"I do," said Frank Greatorex. "Some of them would have had it destroyed; Kene and my brother amidst them; they could not bear to look at it. But I thought my father might like to see it first, and took it into my own possession."
A smile crossed the lip of the police agent. "Considering the two gentlemen you mention are in the law, it doesn't say much for their forethought, to rash at destroying the only proof there may remain to us of anybody else's being guilty."
"But then, you know, they do not admit that any one else could have been guilty," replied Frank Greatorex. "At least my brother does not; and Kene only looks upon it as a possible case of insanity. Do you want to see the paper? I have it in my pocket."
"Perhaps you'd not mind leaving it with me for a day or two," said Mr. Butterby. "I'll forward it up safe to you when I've done with it."
Frank Greatorex took the paper from his pocketbook and handed it to the speaker. It was folded inside an envelope now. Mr. Butterby received possession of it and attended his guests to the door, where the fly was waiting.
"You'll have to drive fast, Thompson," he said to the man. And Thompson, touching his hat to the officer, who was held in some awe by the city natives, whipped his horse into a canter.
It was upon this interview that Mr. Butterby ruminated as he took his tea on the Friday evening. In his own opinion it was the most unreasonable thing in the world, that anybody should throw doubt upon the verdict. Nothing but perversity. He judged it--and he was a keen-sighted man--to be fully in accordance with the facts, as given in evidence. Excepting perhaps in one particular. Had he been on the jury he should have held out for a verdict of insanity.
"They are but a set of bumble-heads at the best," soliloquised Mr. Butterby, respectfully alluding to the twelve men who had returned the verdict, as he took a large bite out of his last piece of well-buttered pikelet. "Juries for the most part always are: if they have got any brains they send them a wool-gathering then. Hemming, the butter-and-cheese man, told me he did say something about insanity; and he was foreman, too; but the rest of 'em and the coroner wouldn't listen to it. It don't much matter, for he got the burial rites after all, poor fellow: but if I'd been them, I should have gave him the benefit of the doubt."
Stopping in his observations to put the rest of the pikelet in his mouth, Mr. Butterby went on again as he ate it.
"It might have been that, insanity; but as to the other suspicion, there's no grounds whatever for it on the face of things at present. If such is to be raised I shall have to set to work and hunt 'em up. Create 'em as it were. 'Don't spare money,' says that young clergyman last night when he sat here; 'your expenses shall be reimbursed to you with interest.' As if I could make a case out of nothing! I'm not a French Procureur-Imperial."
Drinking down his tea at a draught, Mr. Butterby tried the teapot, lest a drop might be left in it still, turning it nearly upside down in the process. The result was, that the lid came open and a shower of tea-leaves descended on the tray.
"Bother!" said Mr. Butterby, as he hastily set the teapot in its place, and went on with his arguments.
"There's something odd about the case, though, straightforward as it seems; and I've thought so from the first. That girl's dream, for example, whichshesays she had; and her conduct at the grave. It was curious that Dicky Jones should just be looking on at her," added Mr. Butterby, slightly diverging from the direct line of consecutive thought: "curious that Dicky should have come up then at all. First, Alletha Rye vows he didn't do it; and, next, the parson vows it, Reverend Ollivera. Kene, too--but he points to insanity; and now the young fellow, Francis Greatorex. Suppose I go over the case again?"
Stretching out his hand, Mr. Butterby pulled the bell-rope--an old-fashioned twisted blue cord with a handle at the end; and a young servant came in.
"Shut the shutters," said he.
While this was in process, he took two candles from the mantelpiece, and lighted them. The girl went away with the tea-tray. He then unlocked his bureau, and from one of its pigeon-holes brought forth a few papers, memoranda, and the like, which he studied in silence, one after the other.
"The parson's right," he began presently; "if there is a loophole it's where he said--that somebody got into the room after the departure of Mr. Greatorex. Let's sum the points up."
Drawing his chair close to the table on which the papers lay, Mr. Butterby began to tell the case through, striking his two forefingers alternately on the table's edge as each point came flowing from his tongue. Not that "flowing" is precisely the best word to apply, for his speech was thoughtfully slow, and the words dropped with hesitation.
"John Ollivera, counsel-at-law. He comes in on the Saturday with the other barristers, ready for the 'sizes. Has a cause or two coming on at 'em, in which he expects to shine. Goes to former lodgings at Jones's, and shows himself as full of sense and sanity as usual; and he'd got his share of both. Spends Saturday evening at his friend's, Mrs. Joliffe's, the colonel's widow; is sweet, Mrs. Jones thinks, on one of the young ladies; thought so when he was down last October. Gets home at ten like a decent man, works at his papers till twelve, and goes to bed."
Mr. Butterby made a pause here, both his fingers resting on the table. Giving a nod, as if his reflections were satisfactory, he lifted his hands and began again.
"Sunday. Attends public worship and takes the sacrament.That'snot like the act of one who knows he is on the eve of a bad deed. Attends again after breakfast, with the judges, and hears the sheriff's chaplain preach. (And it was not a bad sermon, as sermons go," critically pronounced Mr. Butterby in a parenthesis). "Attends again in the afternoon to hear the anthem, the Miss Joliffes with him. Dines at Jones's at five, spends evening at Joliffes'. Home early, and to bed."
Once more the hands were lifted. Once more their owner paused in thought. He gave two nods this time, and resumed.
"Monday. Up before eight. Has his breakfast (bacon and eggs), and goes to the Nisi Prius Court. Stays there till past three in the afternoon, tells Kene he must go out of court to keep an appointment that wasn't a particularly pleasant one, andgoesout. Arrives at Jones's at half-past four; passes Mrs. Jones in that there small back hall of theirs; she tells him he looks tired; answers that heistired and has got a headache; court was close. Goes up to his sitting-room and gets his papers about; (papers found afterwards, on examination, to relate to the cause coming on on Tuesday morning). Girl takes up his dinner; he eats it, gets to his papers again, and she fetches things away. Rings for his lamp early, quarter-past six may be, nearly daylight still; while girl puts it on table, draws down blinds himself as if in a hurry to be at work again. Close upon this Mr. Bede Greatorex calls, (good firm that, Greatorex and Greatorex," interspersed Mr. Butterby, with professional candour). "Bede Greatorex has come down direct from London (sent by old Greatorex) to confer with Ollivera on the Tuesday's cause. Stays with him more than an hour. Makes an appointment with him for Tuesday morning. Jones's nephew, going upstairs at the time, hears them making it, and shows Mr. Bede Greatorex out. Might be half-past seven then, or two or three minutes over it; call it half-past. Ollivera never seen again alive. Found dead next morning in arm-chair; pistol fallen from right hand, shot penetrated heart. Same chair he had been sitting in when at his papers, but drawn aside now at corner of table. Alletha Rye finds him. Tells a cock-and-bull of having been frightened by a dream. Dreamt he was in the sitting-room dead, and goes to see (shesays) that he wasnotthere, dead. Finds him there dead, however, just as (shesays) she saw him in her dream. Servant rushes out for doctor, meets me, and I am the first in the room. Doctor comes, Hurst; Kene comes, Jones's nephew fetching him; then Kene fetches Bede Greatorex. Doctor says death must have took place previous evening not later than eight o'clock. Mrs. Jones says lamp couldn't have burnt much more than an hour: is positive it didn't exceed an hour and a half; but she's one of the positive ones at all times, and women's judgment is fallible. Now then, let's stop."
Mr. Butterby put his hands one over the other, and looked down upon them, pausing before he spoke again.
"It draws the space into an uncommon narrow nutshell. When Bede Greatorex leaves at half-past seven, Ollivera is alive and well--as he and Jones's nephew both testify to--and, according to the evidence of the surgeon, and the negative testimony of the oil in the lamp, he is dead by eight. If he did not draw the pistol on himself, somebody came in and shot him.
"Did he draw it on himself? I say Yes. Coroner and jury say Yes. The public say Yes. Alletha Rye and the Reverend Ollivera say No. If we are all wrong--and I don't say but that there's just a loophole of possibility of it--and them two are right, why then it was murder. And done with uncommon craftiness. Let's look at the writing.
"Those high-class lawyers are not good for much in criminal cases, can't see an inch beyond their noses; they don't practise at the Old Bailey, they don't," remarked Mr. Butterby, as he took from the papers before him the unfinished note found on Mr. Ollivera's table, the loan of which he had begged from Frank Greatorex. "The idea of their proposing to destroy this, because 'they couldn't bear to look at it!' Kene, too; and Bede Greatorex!theymight have known better.I'lltake care of it now."
Holding it close to one of the candles, the detective scanned it long and intently, comparing the concluding words, uneven, blotted, as if written with an agitated hand, with the plain collected characters of the lines that were undoubtedly Mr. Ollivera's. When he did arrive at a conclusion it was a summary one, and he put down the paper with an emphatic thump.
"May I be shot myself if I believe the two writingsisby the same hand!"
Mr. Butterby's surprise may plead excuse for his grammar. He had never, until this moment, doubted that the writing was all done by one person.
"I'll show this to an expert. People don't write the same at all times; they'll make their capitals quite different in the same day, as anybody with any experience knows. But they don't often make their small letters different--neither do men study to alter their usual formation of letters when about to shoot themselves; the pen does its work then, spontaneous; naturally. These small letters are different, several of them, ther, thep, thee, theo, thed; all them are as opposite as light and dark, and Idon'tthink the last was written by Mr. Ollivera."
It was a grave conclusion to come to; partially startling even him, who was too much at home with crime and criminals to be startled easily.
"Let's assume that it is so for a bit, and see how it works that way," resumed the officer. "We've all been mistaken, let's say; Ollivera, did not shoot himself, someone goes in and shoots him. Was it man or woman; was it an inmate of the house, or not an inmate? How came it to be done? what was the leading cause? Was the pistol (lying convenient on the table) took up incidental in the course of talking and fired by misadventure?--Or did they get to quarrelling and the other shot him of malice?--Or was it a planned, deliberate murder, one stealing in to do it in cold blood? Halt a bit here, Jonas Butterby. The first--done in misadventure? No: if any honest man had so shot another, he'd be the first to run out and get a doctor to him. No. Disposed of. The second--done in malice during a quarrel? Yes; might have been. The third--done in planned deliberation? That would be the most likely of all, but for the fact (very curious fact in the supposition) of the pistol's having been Mr. Ollivera's, and put (so to say) ready there to hand. Looking at it in either of these two views, there's mystery. The last in regard to the point now mentioned; the other in regard to the secrecy with which the intruder must have got in. If that dratted girl had been at her post indoors, as she ought to have been, with the chain of the door up, it might never have happened," concluded Mr. Butterby, with acrimony.
"Between half-past seven and eight? Needn't look much before or much beyond that hour. Girl says nobody went into the house at all, except Jones's nephew and Jones's sister-in-law. Jones's nephew did not stay; he got his book and went off again at half-past seven, close on the heels of Bede Greatorex, Mr. Ollivera being then alive. Presently, nearer eight, Alletha Rye goes in, for a pattern, she says, and she stays upstairs, according to the girl's statement, a quarter of an hour."
Mr. Butterby came to a sudden pause. He faced the fire now, and sat staring into it as if he were searching for what he could not see.
"It does not take a quarter of an hour to get a pattern.Ishould say not. And there was her queer dream, too. Leastways, the queer assertion that she had a dream. Dreams, indeed!--moonshine. Did she invent that dream as an excuse for having gone into the room to find him? And then look at her persistence from the first that it was not a suicide! And her queer state of mind and manners since! Dicky Jones told me last night when I met him by the hop-market, that she says she's haunted by Mr. Ollivera's spirit. Why should she be, I wonder? I mean, why should she fancy it? It's odd; very odd. The young woman, up to now, has always shown out sensible, in the short while this city has known her.
"That Godfrey Pitman," resumed the speaker. "The way that man's name got brought up by the servant-girl was sudden. I should like to know who he is, and what his business might have been. He was in hiding; that's what he was. Stopping indoors for a cold and relaxed throat! No doubt! But it does not follow that because he might have been in some trouble of his own, he had anything to do with the other business; and, in fact, he couldn't have had, leaving by the five o'clock train for Birmingham. So we'll dismisshim.
"And now for the result?" concluded Mr. Butterby, with great deliberation. "The result is that I feel inclined to think the young parson may be right in saying it was not a suicide. What itwas, I can't yet make my mind up to give an opinion upon. Suppose I inquire into things a bit in a quiet manner?--and, to begin with, I'll make a friendly call on Dicky Jones and madam. She won't answer anything that it does not please her to, and it never pleases her to be questioned; on the other hand, what she does choose to say is to be relied upon, for she'd not tell a lie to save herself from hanging. As to Dicky--with that long tongue of his, he can be pumped dry."
Mr. Butterby locked up his papers, changed his ornamental coat for a black one, flattened down the coal on his fire, blew out the candles, took his hat, and went away.
Mrs. Jones was in her parlour, doing nothing: with the exception of dropping a tart observation from her lips occasionally. As the intelligent reader cannot have failed to observe, tartness in regard to tongue was essentially an element of Mrs. Jones's nature; when anything occurred to annoy her, its signs increased four-fold; and something had just happened to annoy her very exceedingly.
The parlour was not large, but convenient, and well fitted-up. A good fire burnt in the grate, throwing its ruddy light on the bright colours of the crimson carpet and hearthrug; on the small sideboard, with its array of glass; on the horsehair chairs, on the crimson cloth covering the centre table, and finally on Mrs. Jones herself and on her sister.
Mrs. Jones sat at the table, some work before her, in the shape of sundry packages of hosiery, brought in from the shop to be examined, sorted, and put to rights. But she was not doing it. Miss Rye sat on the other side the table, stitching the seams of a gown-body by the light of the moderator lamp. The shop was just closed.
It had happened that Dicky Jones, about tea-time that evening, had strayed into his next-door neighbour's to get a chat: of which light interludes to business Dicky Jones was uncommonly fond. The bent of the conversation fell, naturally enough, on the recent calamity in Mr. Jones's house: in fact, Mr. Jones found his neighbour devouring the full account of it in the Friday evening weekly newspaper, just damp from the press. A few minutes, and back went Dicky to his own parlour, his mouth full of news: the purport of which was that the lodger, Godfrey Pitman, who had been supposed to leave the house at half-past four, to take the Birmingham train, did not really quit it until some two or three hours later.
It had not been Mrs. Jones if she had refrained from telling her husband to hold his tongue for a fool; and of asking furthermore whether he had been drinking or dreaming. Upon which Dicky gave his authority for what he said. Their neighbour, Thomas Cause, had watched the lodger go away later, with his own eyes.
Mr. Cause, a quiet tradesman getting in years, was fetched in, and a skirmish ensued. He asserted that he had seen the lodger come out of the house and go up the street by lamplight, carrying his blue bag; and he persisted in the assertion, in spite of Mrs. Jones's tongue. She declared he hadnotseen anything of the sort; that either his spectacles or the street lights had deceived him. And neither of them would give in to the other.
Leaving matters in this unsatisfactory state, the neighbour went out again. Mrs. Jones exploded a little, and then had leisure to look at her sister, who had sat still and silent during the discussion. Still and silent she remained; but her face had turned white, and her eyes wore a wild, frightened expression.
"What on earth's the matter withyou?" demanded Mrs. Jones.
"Nothing," said Miss Rye, catching hold of her work with nervous, trembling fingers. "Only I can't bear to hear it spoken of."
"If Mr. Pitman didn't go away till later, that accounts for the tallow-grease in his room," suddenly interposed Susan Marks, who, passing into the parlour, caught the thread of the matter in dispute.
Mrs. Jones turned upon her. "Tallow-grease!"
"I didn't see it till this afternoon," explained the girl. "With all the commotion there has been in the house, I never as much as opened the room-door till today since Mr. Pitman went out of it. The first thing I see was the carpet covered in drops of tallow-grease; a whole colony of them: and I know they were not there on the Monday afternoon. They be there still."
Mrs. Jones went upstairs at once, the maid following her. Sure enough the grease drops were there. Some lay on the square piece of carpet, some on the boarded floor; but all were very near together. The candlestick and candle, from which they had no doubt dropped, stood on the wash-hand-stand at Mrs. Jones's elbow, as she wrathfully gazed.
"He must have been lighting of his candle sideways," remarked the girl to her mistress; "or else have held it askew while hunting for something on the floor. If he stopped as late as old Cause says, why in course he'd need a candle."
Mrs. Jones went down again, her temper by no means improved. She did not like to be deceived or treated as though she were nobody; neither did she choose that her house should be played with. If the lodger missed his train (as she now supposed he might have done) and came back to wait for a later one, his duty was to have announced himself, and asked leave to stay. In spite, however, of the tallow and of Mr. Cause, she put but little faith in the matter. Shortly after this there came a ring at the side-door, and Mr. Butterby's voice was heard in the passage.
"Don't say anything to him about it," said Miss Rye hastily, in a low tone.
"About what?" demanded Mrs. Jones, aloud.
"About that young man's not going away as soon as we thought he did. It's nothing to Butterby."
There was no time for more. Mr. Butterby was shown in and came forward with a small present for Mrs. Jones. It was only a bunch of violets; but Mrs. Jones, in spite of her tartness, was fond of flowers, and received them graciously: calling to Susan to bring a wine-glass of water.
"I passed a chap at the top of High Street with a basketfull; he said he'd sold but two bunches all the evening, so I took a bunch," explained Mr. Butterby. "It was that gardener's man, Reed, who met with the accident and has been unfit for work since. Knowing you liked violets, Mrs. Jones, I thought I'd just call in with them."
He sat down in the chair, offered him, by the fire, putting his hat in the corner behind. Miss Rye, after saluting him, had resumed work, and sat with her face turned to the table, partially away from his view; Mrs. Jones, at the other side of the table, faced him.
"Where's Jones?" asked Mr. Butterby.
"Jones is off, as usual," replied Jones's wife. "No good to ask whereheis after the shop's shut; often not before it."
It was an unlucky question, bringing back all the acrimony which the violets had partially soothed away. Mr. Butterby coughed, and began talking of recent events in a sociable, friendly manner, just as if he had been Mrs. Jones's brother, and never in his life heard of so rare an animal as a detective.
"It's an uncommon annoying thing to have had happen in your house, Mrs. Jones! As if it couldn't as well have took place in anybody else's! There's enough barristers lodging in the town at assize time, I hope. But there! luck's everything. I'd have given five shillings out of my pocket to have stopped it."
"So would I; for his sake as well as for mine," was Mrs. Jones's answer. And she seized one of the parcels of stockings and jerked off the string.
"Have you had any more dreams, Miss Rye?"
"No," replied Miss Rye, holding her stitching closer to the light for a moment. "That one was enough."
"Dreams is curious things; not to be despised," observed crafty Mr. Butterby; than whom there was not a man living despised dreams, as well as those who professed to have them, more than he. "But I've knowed so-called dreams to be nothing in the world but waking thoughts. Are you sure that one of yours was a dream, Miss Rye?"
"I would rather not talk of it, if you please," she said. "Talking cannot bring Mr. Ollivera back to life."
"What makes you persist in thinking he did not kill himself?"
Mr. Butterby had gradually edged his chair forward on the hearthrug, so as to obtain a side view of Miss Rye's face. Perhaps he was surprised, perhaps not, to see it suddenly flush, and then become deadly pale.
"Just look here, Miss Rye. If he did not do it, somebody else did. And I should like to glean a little insight as to whether or not there are grounds for that new light, if there's any to be gleaned."
"Why, what on earth! areyoutaking up that crotchet, Butterby?"
The interruption came from Mrs. Jones. That goes without telling, as the French say. Mr. Butterby turned to warm his hands at the blaze, speaking mildly enough to disarm an enemy.
"Not I. I should like to show your sister that her suspicions are wrong: she'll worrit herself into a skeleton, else. See here: whatever happened, and however it happened, it must have been between half-past seven and eight. You were in the place part of that half-hour, Miss Rye, and heard nobody."
"I have already said so."
"Shut up in your room at the top of the house; looking for--what was it?--a parcel?"
"A pattern--a pattern of a sleeve. But I had to open parcels, for I could not find it, and stayed searching. It had slipped between one drawer and another at the back."
"It must have took you some time," remarked Mr. Butterby, keeping his face on the genial fire and his eyes on Miss Rye.
"I suppose it did. Susan says I was upstairs a quarter of an hour, but I don't think it was so long as that. Eight o'clock struck after I got back to Mrs. Wilson's."
Mr. Butterby paused. Miss Rye resumed after a minute.
"I don't think any one could have come in legitimately without my hearing them on the stairs. My room is not at the top of the house, it is on the same floor as Mrs. Jones's; the back room immediately over the bedroom that was occupied by Mr. Ollivera. My door was open, and the drawers in which I was searching stood close to it. If any----"
"What d'ye mean by legitimate?" interrupted Mr. Butterby, turning to take a full look at the speaker.
"Openly; with the noise one usually makes in coming upstairs. But if any one crept up secretly, of course I should not have heard it. Susan persists in declaring she never lost sight of the front door at all; I don't believe her."
"Nobody does believe her," snapped Mrs. Jones, with a fling at the socks. "She confesses now that she ran in twice or thrice to look at the fires."
"Oh! she does, does she," cried Mr. Butterby. "Leaving the door open, I suppose?"
"Leaving it to take care of itself. She says she shut it; I say I know she didn't. Put it at the best, it was not fastened; and anybody might have opened it and walked in that had a mind to and robbed the house."
The visitor, sitting so unobtrusively by the fire, thought he discerned a little glimmer of possibility breaking in amidst the utter darkness.
"But, as the house was not robbed, why we must conclude nobody did come in," he observed. "As to the verdict--I don't see yet any reason for Miss Rye's disputing it. Mr. Ollivera was a favourite, I suppose."
The remark did not please Miss Rye. Her cheek flushed, her work fell, and she rose from her seat to turn on Mr. Butterby.
"The verdict was a wrong verdict. Mr. Ollivera was a good and brave and just man. Never a better went out of the world."
"If I don't believe you were in love with him!" cried Mr. Butterby.
"Perhaps I was," came the unexpected answer; but the speaker seemed to be in too much agitation to heed greatly what she said. "It would not have hurt either him or me."
Gathering her work, cotton, scissors in her hands, she went out of the room. At the same moment there arrived an influx of female visitors, come, without ceremony, to get an hour's chat with Mrs. Jones. Catching up his hat, Mr. Butterby dexterously slipped out and disappeared.
The street was tolerably empty. He took up his position at the edge of the facing pavement, and surveyed the house critically. As if he did not know all its aspects by heart! Some few yards higher up, the dwellings of Mr. Cause and the linendraper alone intervening, there was a side opening, bearing the euphonious title of Bear Entry, which led right into an obscure part of the town. By taking this, and executing a few turnings and windings, the railway station might be approached without touching on the more public streets.
"Yes," said the police agent to himself, calculating possibilities, "that's how it might have been done. Not that it was, though: I'm only putting it. A fellow might have slipped out of the door while that girl was in at her fires, cut down Bear Entry, double back again along Goose Lane, and so gain the rail."
Turning up the street with a brisk step, Mr. Butterby found himself face to face with Thomas Cause, who was standing within the shade of his side door. Exceedingly affable when it suited him to be so, he stopped to say a good evening.
"How d'ye do Cause? A fine night, isn't it?"
"Lovely weather; shall pay for it later. Has she recovered her temper yet?" continued Mr. Cause. "I saw you come out."
Which was decidedly a rather mysterious addition to the answer. Mr. Butterby naturally inquired what it might mean, and had his ears gratified with the story of Godfrey Pitman's later departure, and of Mrs. Jones's angry disbelief in it. Never had those ears listened more keenly.
"Are you sure it was the man?" he asked cautiously.
"If it wasn't him it was his ghost," said Mr. Cause. "I was standing here on the Monday night, just a step or two for'arder on the pavement, little thinking that a poor gentleman was shooting himself within a few yards of me, and saw a man come out of Jones's side door. When he was close up, I knew him in a moment for the same traveller, with the same blue bag in his hand, that I saw go in with Miss Rye on the Sunday week previous. He came out of the house cautiously, his head pushed forward first, looking up the street and down the street, and then turned out sharp, whisked past me as hard as he could walk, and went down Bear Entry. It seemed to me that he didn't care to be seen."
But that detectives' hearts are too hard for emotion, this one's might have beaten a little faster as he listened. It was so exactly what he had been fancifully tracing to himself as the imaginary course of a guilty man. Stealing out of the house down Bear Entry, and so up to the railway station!
"What time was it?"
"What time is it now?" returned Mr. Cause: and the other took out his watch.
"Five-and-thirty minutes past seven."
"Then it was as nigh the same time on Monday night, as nigh as nigh can be. I shut up my shop at the usual hour, and I'd stood here afterwards just about as long as I've stood here now. I like to take a breath of fresh air, Mr. Butterby, when the labours of the day are over."
"Fresh air's good for all of us--that can get it," said Mr. Butterby, with a sniff at the air around him. "What sort of a looking man was this Godfrey Pitman?"
"A well-grown, straight man; got a lot of black hair about his face; whiskers, and beard, and moustachios."
"Young?"
"Thirty. Perhaps not so much. In reading the account in theHeraldthis evening, I saw Jones's folks gave evidence that he had left at half-past four to catch the Birmingham train. I told Jones it was a mistake, and he told his wife; and didn't she fly out! As if she need have put herself in a tantrum over that! 'twas a matter of no consequence."
In common with the rest of the town, not a gleam of suspicion that the death was otherwise than the verdict pronounced it to be, had been admitted by Mr. Cause. He went on enlarging on the grievance of Mrs. Jones's attack upon him.
"She'd not hear a word: Jones fetched me in there. She told me to my face that, between spectacles and the deceitful rays of street lamps, one, come to my age, was unable to distinguish black from white, round from square. She said I must have mistaken the gentleman, Mr. Greatorex, for Godfrey Pitman or else Jones's nephew, both of them having gone out about the same time. I couldn't get in a word edgeways, I assure you Mr. Butterby, and Dicky Jones can bear me out that I couldn't. Let it go, 'tis of no moment; I don't care to quarrel with my neighbours' wives."
Mr. Butterby thought it was of a great deal of moment. He changed the conversation to something else with apparent carelessness, and then took a leisurely departure. Turning off at the top of High Street, he increased his pace, and went direct to the railway station.
The most intelligent porter employed there was a man named Hall. It was his duty to be on the platform when trains were starting and, as the detective had previous cause to know, few of those who departed by them escaped his observation. The eight o'clock train for London was on the point of departure. Mr. Butterby waited under some sheds until it had gone.
Now for Hall, thought he. As if to echo the words the first person to approach the sheds was Hall himself. In a diplomatic way, Mr. Butterby, when he had made known his presence, began putting inquiries about a matter totally foreign to the one he had come upon.
"By the way, Hall," he suddenly said, when the man thought he was done with, "there was a friend of mine went away last Monday evening, but I'm not sure by which train. I wonder if you happened to see him here? A well-grown, straight man, with black beard and whiskers--about thirty."
Hall considered, and shook his head. "I've no recollection of any one of that description, sir."
"Got a blue bag in his hand. He might have went by the five o'clock train, or later. At eight most likely; this hour, you know."
"Was he going to London, or the other way, sir?"
"Can't tell you. Try and recollect."
"Monday?--Monday?" cried Hall, endeavouring to recal what he could. "I ought to remember that night, sir, the one of the calamity in High Street; but the fact is, one day is so much like another here, it's hard to single out any in particular."
"Were you on duty last Sunday week, in the afternoon?"
"Yes, sir; it was my Sunday on."
"The man I speak of arrived by train that afternoon, then. You must have seen him."
"So I did," said the porter, suddenly. "Just the man you describe, sir; and I remember that it struck me I had seen his face somewhere before. It might have been only fancy; I had not much of a look at him; he got mixed with the other passengers, and went away quickly. I recollect the blue bag."
"Just so; all right. Now then, Hall: did you see him leave last Monday evening?"
"I never saw him, to my recollection, since the time of his arrival. Stop a bit. A blue bag? Why, it was a blue bag that--And that was Monday evening. Wait an instant, sir. I'll fetch Bill."
Leaving the detective to make the most of these detached sentences, Hall hurried off before he could be stopped. Mr. Butterby turned his face to the wall, and read the placards there.
When Hall came back he had a lad with him. And possibly it might have been well for that lad's equanimity, that he was unconscious the spare man, studying the advertisements, was the city's renowned detective, Jonas Butterby.
"Now then," said Hall, "you tell this gentleman about your getting that there ticket, Bill."
"'Twas last Monday evening," began the boy, thus enjoined, "and we was waiting to start the eight o'clock train. In that there dark corner, I comes upon a gentleman set down upon the bench; which he called to me, he did, and says, says he, 'This bag's heavy,' says he, 'and I don't care to carry it further nor I can help, nor yet to leave it,' says he, 'for it's got val'able papers in it,' says he; 'if you'll go and get my ticket for me,' says he, 'third class to Oxford,' says he, 'I'll give you sixpence,' says he: which I did, and took it to him," concluded the speaker; "and he gave me the sixpence."
"Did he leave by the train?"
"Why in course he did," was the reply. "He got into the last third class at the tail o' the train, him and his bag; which were blue, it were."
"An old gentleman, with white hair, was it?" asked Mr. Butterby, carelessly.
The boy's round eyes opened. "White hair! Why, 'twas black as ink. And his beard, too. He warn't old; he warn't."
Mr. Butterby walked home, ruminating; stirred up his fire when he arrived, lighted his candles, for he had a habit of waiting on himself, and sat down, ruminating still. Sundry notes and bits of folded paper had been delivered for him from his confrères at the police-station--if Mr. Butterby will not be offended at our classing them with him as such--but he pushed them from him, never opening one. He did not even change his coat for the elegant green-tailed habit, economically adopted for home attire, and he was rather particular in doing so in general. No: Mr. Butterby's mind was ill at ease: not in the sense, be it understood, as applied to ordinary mortals; but things were puzzling him.
To give Mr. Butterby his due, he was sufficiently keen of judgment; though he had made mistakes occasionally. Taking the surface of things only, he might have jumped to the conclusion that a certain evil deed had been committed by Godfrey Pitman; diving into them, and turning them about in his practised mind, he saw enough to cause him to doubt and hesitate.
"The man's name's as much Pitman as mine is," quoth he, as he sat looking into the fire, a hand on each knee. "He arrives here on a Sunday, accosts a stranger he meets accidentally in turning out of the station, which happened to be Alletha Rye, and gets her to accommodate him with a week's private lodgings. Thought, she says, the house she was standing at was hers: and it's likely he did. The man was afraid of being seen, was flying from pursuit, and dare not risk the publicity of an inn. Stays in the house nine days, and never stirs out all the mortal time. Makes an excuse of a cold and relaxed throat for stopping in; whichwasan excuse," emphatically repeated the speaker. "Takes leave on the Monday at half-past four, and goes out to catch the Birmingham train. Is seen to go out. What brought him back?"
The question was not, apparently, easy to solve, for Mr. Butterby was a long while pondering it.
"He couldn't get back into the house up through the windows or down through the chimneys; not in anyway but through the door. And the chances were that he might have been seen going in and coming out. No: don't think he went back to harm Mr. Ollivera. Rather inclined to say his announced intention of starting by the five o'clock train to Birmingham was a blind: he meant to go by the one at eight t'other way, and went back to wait for it, afeared of hanging about the station itself or loitering in the streets. It don't quite wash, neither, that; chances were he might have been seen coming back," debated Mr. Butterby.
"Wonder if he has anything to do with that little affair that has just turned up in Birmingham?" resumed the speaker, deviating to another thought. "Young man's wanted for that, George Winter:mighthave been this very selfsame Godfrey Pitman; and of course might not. Let's get on.
"It don't stand to reason that he'd come in any such way into a town and stop a whole week at the top of a house for the purpose of harming Mr. Ollivera. Why 'twas not till the Tuesday after Pitman was in, that the Joneses got the barrister's letter saying he was coming and would occupy his old rooms if they were vacant. No," decided Mr. Butterby; "Pitman was in trouble on his own score, and his mysterious movements had reference to that: as I'm inclined to think."
One prominent quality in Mr. Butterby was pertinacity. Let him take up an idea of his own accord, however faint, and it took a vast deal to get it out of him. An obstinate man was he in his self-conceit. Anybody who knew Mr. Butterby well, and could have seen his thoughts as in a glass, might have known he would be slow to take up the doubts against Godfrey Pitman, because he had already them up against another.
"I don't like it," he presently resumed. "Look at it in the best light, she knows something of the matter; more than she likes to be questioned about. Put the case, Jonas Butterby. Here's a sober, sensible, steady young woman, superior to half the women going, thinking only of her regular duties, nothing to conceal, open and cheerful as the day. That's how she was till this happened. And now? Goes home on the Monday night at nigh eleven o'clock (not to speak yet of what passed up to that hour), sits over the parlour-fire after other folks had went to bed, 'thinking,' as she puts it. Goes up later; can't sleep; drops asleep towards morning, and dreams that Mr. Ollivera's dead. Gets flurried at inquest (Isaw it, though others mightn't); tramps to see him buried, stands on the fresh grave, and tells the public he did not commit suicide. How does she know he didn't? Come. Mrs. Jones is ten times sharper-sighted, and she has no doubt. Says, next, to her sister in confidence (and Dicky repeats it to me as a choice bit of gossip) that she's haunted by Ollivera's spirit.
"I don't like that," pursued Mr. Butterby, after a revolving pause. "When folks are haunted by dead men's spirits--leastways, fancy they are--it bodes a conscience not at rest in regard to the dead. To-night her face was pale and red by turns; her fingers shook so they had to clutch her work; she won't talk of it; she left the room to avoid me. And," continued Mr. Butterby, "she was the only one, so far as can be yet seen, that was for any length of time in the house between half-past seven and eight on Monday evening. A quarter of an hour finding a sleeve-pattern!
"I don't say it was her; I've not got as far as that yet, by a long way. I don't yet say it was not as the jury brought it in. But she was in the house for that quarter of an hour, unaccounting for her stay in accordance with any probability; and I'm inclined to think that Godfrey Pitmanmust have been out of it before the harm was done. Nevertheless, appearances is deceitful, deductions sometimes wrong, and while I keep a sharp eye on the lady, I shall lookyouup, Mr. Godfrey Pitman."
One drawback against the "looking up" was--and Mr. Butterby felt slightly conscious of it as he rose from his seat before the fire--that he had never seen Godfrey Pitman in his life; and did not know whence he came or whither he might have gone.