CHAPTER XLI.
MRS. EVITT MAKES A REVELATION.
Mrs. Evitt was very ill. It may be that a prolonged residence on a level with the sewers, and remote from the direct rays of the sun, is not conducive to health or good spirits.
Mrs. Evitt had long suffered from a gentle melancholy, an all-pervading dolefulness, which impelled her to hang her head on one side, and to sigh faintly, at intervals, without any apparent motive. She had been also prone to see all the affairs of life in their darkest aspect, as one living remote from the sun might naturally do. She had been given to prophesy death and doom to her acquaintance, to give a sick friend over, directly the doctor was called in, to foresee sheriff’s officers and ruin at the slightest indication of extravagance in the management of a neighbour’s household, to augur bad things of babies, and worse things of husbands, to mistrust all mankind, and to perform under her human aspect that ungenial office which the screech-owl was supposed to fulfil in a more romantic age.
She had always been ailing. She suffered from vague pains and stitches, and undefinable aches, which took her at awkward angles of her bony frame, or which wracked the innermost recesses of that edifice. She knew a great deal more about her internal economy than is consistent with happiness, and was wont to talk about her liver and other organs with an almost professional technicality. She was not an agreeable companion, but a long succession of lodgers had borne with her, because she was tolerably clean and unscrupulously honest. Upon this last point she prided herself immensely. She knew that she belonged to a maligned and suspected race; nay, that the very name of hercalling was synonymous with peculation; and her soul swelled with pride as she declared that she had never wronged a lodger by so much as a crust of bread. She would let a mutton bone rot in her larder rather than appropriate the barest shank without express permission. Rashers of bacon, half-pounds of Dorset, lard, flour, eggs, were as safe in her care as bullion in the Bank of England.
George Gerard, to whom every penny was of consequence, had discovered this sovereign virtue in his landlady, and honoured her for it. He had suffered much from the harpies with whom he had dwelt in the City. He found his half-pound of tea or coffee last twice as long as in former lodgings; his rasher of bacon less costly; his mutton chop better cooked; his loaf respected. For him Mrs. Evitt was a model landlady; and he rewarded her integrity by such small civilities as lay in his power. What gratified her most was his readiness to prescribe for those ailments which were the most salient feature of her life. Her mind had a natural bent towards medicine, and she loved to talk to the good-natured surgeon of her disorders, or even to question him about his patients.
‘That’s a bad case of small-pox you’ve got in Green Street, isn’t it, Mr. Gerard?’ she would say to him, with a dismal relish, when she came in after his day’s work to ask what she ought to do for that ‘grumbling’ pain in her back.
‘Who told you it was small-pox?’ asked Gerard.
‘Well, I had it from very good authority. The charwoman that works at number seven in this street is own sister to Mrs. Jewell’s Mary Ann, and Mrs. Jewell and Mrs. Peacock in Green Street is bosom friends, and the house where you’re attending is exackerly opposite Mr. Peacock’s.’
‘Excellent authority,’ answered Gerard, smiling, ‘but I am happy to tell you I haven’t a case of small-pox on my list. Did you ever hear of such a thing as rheumatic fever?’
‘Hear of it,’ echoed Mrs. Evitt rapturously. ‘I’ve been down with it seven times.’
She looked very hard at him as she made the assertion, as if not expecting to be believed.
‘Have you?’ said Gerard. ‘Then I wonder you’re alive.’
‘That’s what I wonder at myself,’ answered Mrs. Evitt, with subdued pride. ‘I must have had a splendid constitution to go through all I’ve gone through, and to be here to tell it. The quinsies I’ve had. Why, the mustard that’s been put to my throat in the form of poultices would stock a first-rate tea-grocer with the article. As to fever, I don’t think you could name the kind I haven’t had since I had the scarlatina at five months old and the whooping-cough atop of the measles before I’d got over it. I’ve been a martyr.’
‘I’m afraid that damp kitchen of yours has had something to do with it,’ suggested Gerard.
‘Damp?’ cried Mrs. Evitt, casting up her hands. ‘You never made a greater mistake in your life, Mr. Gerard, than when you threw out such a remark. There ain’t a dryer room in London. No, Mr. Gerard, it ain’t damp, it’s sensitiveness. I’m a regular sensitive plant; and if there’s disease going about I take it. That’s why I asked you if the small-pox was in Green Street. I don’t want to be disfigurated in my old age.’
Mr. Gerard looked upon Mrs. Evitt’s ailments as in a large degree imaginary, but he found her weak and overworked, and gave her a gentle course of quinine, ill as he could afford to supply her with so expensive a tonic. For some time the quinine had a restorative effect, and Mrs. Evitt thought her lodger the first man in his profession. That young man understood her constitution as nobody else had ever understood it, she told her gossips, and that young man would make his way. A doctor who had understood a constitution which had hitherto baffled the faculty was bound to achieve greatness. Unfortunately, the good effect of Gerard’s prescription was not lasting. There was a good deal of wet and foggy weather at the close of the old year and at the beginning of the new year; and the damp and fog crept into Mrs. Evitt’s kitchen, and seemed to take hold of her hard-worked old bones. She exhibited some very fine examples of shivering—her teeth chattered, her complexion turned blue with cold. Even three-pennyworth of best unsweetened gin, taken in half a tumbler of boiling water, failed to comfort or exhilarate her.
‘I’m afraid I’m in for it,’ Mrs. Evitt exclaimed to a neighbour, who had dropped in to pass the time of day and borrow an Italian iron. ‘And this time it’s ague.’
And then, forcing the attack a little for the benefit of the neighbour, she set up one of those dreadful shivering fits, which rattled all the teeth in her head.
‘It’s ague this time,’ she repeated, when the shivering had abated. ‘I never had ague until now.’
‘Nonsense,’ cried the neighbour, with an assumption of cheerfulness. ‘It ain’t ague. Lord bless you, people don’t have ague in the heart of London, in a warm, comfortable kitchen like this. It’s only in marshes and such like places that you hear of ague.’
‘Never you mind,’ retorted Mrs. Evitt solemnly. ‘I’ve got the ague, and if Mr. Gerard doesn’t say as much when he comes home, he isn’t the clever man I think him.’
Mr. Gerard came home in due course, letting himself in quietly with his latch-key, soon after dark. Mrs. Evitt managed to crawl upstairs with a tray, carrying a mutton chop, a loaf, and a pat of butter. To cook the chop had cost her aneffort, and it was as much as she could do to drag her weary limbs upstairs.
‘Why, what’s the matter with you to-night, Mrs. Bouncer?’ asked Gerard, who had given his landlady that classic name. ‘You’re looking very queer.’
‘I know I am,’ answered Mrs. Evitt, with gloomy resignation. ‘I’ve got the ague.’
‘Ague? nonsense!’ cried Gerard, rising and feeling her pulse. ‘Let’s look at your tongue, old lady. That’ll do. I’ll soon set you on your legs again, if you do what I tell you.’
‘What is that?’
‘Get to bed, and stay there till you’re well. You’re not fit to be slaving about the house, my good soul. You must get to bed and keep yourself warm, and have some one to feed you with good soup and arrowroot, and such like.’
‘Who’s to look after the house?’ asked Mrs. Evitt dismally. ‘I shall be ruined.’
‘No, you won’t. I’m your only lodger just now.’ Mrs. Evitt sighed dolefully. ‘And I want very little waiting upon. You’ll want some one to wait upon you, though. You’d better get a charwoman.’
‘Eighteenpence a day, three substantial meals, and a pint of beer,’ sighed Mrs. Evitt. ‘I should be eat out of house and home. If I must lay up, Mr. Gerard, I’ll get a girl. I know of a decent girl that would come for her vittles, and a trifle at the end of the week.’
‘Ah,’ said Gerard, ‘there are a good many decent young men walking the streets of London, who would go anywhere for their victuals. Life’s a harder problem than any proposition in Euclid, my worthy Bouncer.’
The landlady shook her head in melancholy assent.
‘Now look here, my good soul,’ said Gerard seriously. ‘If you want to get well, you mustn’t sleep in that kennel of yours down below.’
‘Kennel!’ cried the outraged matron, ‘kennel, Mr. Gerard! Why, you might eat your dinner off the floor.’
‘I dare say you might; but every breath you draw there is tainted more or less with sewer gas. That furred tongue of yours looks rather like blood-poisoning. You must make yourself up a comfortable bed on the first floor, and keep a nice little bit of fire in your room day and night.’
‘Not inherroom, Mr. Gerard,’ exclaimed Mrs. Evitt, with a shudder. ‘I couldn’t do it, sir. It isn’t like as if I was a stranger. Strangers wouldn’t feel it. But I knew her. I should see her beautiful eyes glaring at me all night long. It would be the death of me.’
‘Well, then, there’s Desrolles’ room. You can’t have any objection to that.’
Mrs. Evitt shuddered again.
‘I’m that nervous,’ she said, ‘that my mind’s set against those upstairs rooms.’
‘You’ll never get well downstairs. If you don’t fancy that first-floor bedroom you can make yourself up a bed in the sitting-room. There’s plenty of light and air there.’
‘I might do that,’ said Mrs. Evitt, ‘though it goes against me to ’ack my beautiful drawing-room——’
‘You won’t hurt your drawing-room. You have to recover your health.’
‘’Ealth is a blessed privilege. Well, I’ll put up a truckle bed in the first-floor front. The girl could sleep on a mattress on the floor at the bottom of my bed. She’d be company.’
‘Of course she would. Make yourself comfortable mentally and bodily, and you’ll soon get well. Now, how about this girl? You must get her immediately.’
‘I’ve got a neighbour coming in presently. I’ll get her to step round and tell Jemima to come.’
‘Is Jemima the girl?’
‘Yes. She’s step-daughter to the tailor at the corner of Cricket’s Row. He’s got a fine family of his own, and Jemima feels herself one too many. She’s a hard-working, honest-minded girl, though she isn’t much to look at. Her father was in the public line; he was barman at the Prince of Wales, and the stepfather throws it at her sometimes when he’s in drink.’
‘Never mind Jemima’s biography,’ said Gerard. ‘Get your neighbour to fetch her, and in the meantime I’ll help you to make up the bed.’
‘Lor’, Mr. Gerard, you haven’t had your tea. Your chop will be stone cold.’
‘My chop must wait,’ said Gerard cheerily. And then, with all the handiness of a woman, and more than the kindness of an ordinary woman, the young surgeon helped to transform the first-floor sitting-room into a comfortable bedchamber.
By the time this was done Jemima had arrived upon the scene, carrying all her worldly goods tied up in a cotton handkerchief. She was a raw-boned, angular girl, deeply marked with the small-pox. Her scanty hair was twisted into a knot like a ball of cotton at the back of her head; her elbows were preternaturally red, her wrists were bound up with rusty black ribbon; but she had a good-natured grin that atoned for everything. She was as patient as a beast of burden, contented with the scantiest fare, invariably cheerful. She was so accustomed to harsh words and hard usage that she thought people who did not bully or maltreat her the quintessence of kindness.
It was on the evening when Mrs. Evitt took to her bed, and the house was entrusted to the care of Jemima, that Mr. Leopoldand Mr. Sampson came to make their inquiries at the house in Cibber Street. George Gerard saw them, and heard of John Treverton’s arrest, with considerable surprise and some indignation. He felt assured that Edward Clare must have given the information upon which the police had acted; and he felt angry with himself for having been in some wise a cat’s-paw to serve the young man’s malice. He remembered Laura’s lovely face, with its expression of perfect purity and truth; and he hated himself for having helped to bring this terrible grief upon her.
‘There was a time when I believed John Treverton guilty,’ he told Mr. Leopold, ‘but I have wavered in my opinion ever since last Sunday week, when he and I talked together.’
‘You never would have thought badly of him if you had known him as well as I do,’ said the faithful Sampson. ‘He has stayed for a week at a stretch in my house, you know. We have been like brothers. This is an awkward business, and of course it’s very painful for that sweet young wife of his. But Mr. Leopold means to pull him through.’
‘I do,’ assented the famous lawyer.
‘Mr. Leopold has pulled a great many through, innocent and guilty.’
‘And guilty,’ assented the lawyer, with quiet self-approval.
He was disappointed at not being able to see Mrs. Evitt.
‘I should like to have asked her a few questions,’ he said.
‘She is much too ill to-night for that kind of thing,’ answered Gerard. ‘Her only chance of recovery is to be kept quiet; and I don’t think she can tell you any more about the murder than she stated at the inquest.’
‘Oh, yes, she could,’ said Mr. Leopold. ‘She would tell me a great deal more.’
‘Do you think she kept anything back?’
‘Not intentionally perhaps, but there is always something untold; some small detail, which to your mind might mean nothing, but which might mean a great deal to me. Please let me know directly I can see your landlady.’
Gerard promised, and then Mr. Leopold, instead of taking his departure, made himself quite at home in the surgeon’s arm-chair, and stirred the small fire with so reckless a hand that poor Gerard trembled for his weekly hundred of coals. The solicitor seemed in an idle humour, and inclined to waste time. Honest Tom Sampson wondered at his frivolity.
The conversation naturally turned upon the deed which had given that house a sinister notoriety. Gerard found himself talking freely of Madame Chicot and her husband; and it was only after Mr. Leopold and his companion had gone that he perceived how cleverly the experienced lawyer had contrived to cross-question him, without his being aware of the process.
After this evening Gerard watched the newspapers for any report of the Chicot case. He read of John Treverton’s appearance at Bow Street, and saw that the inquiry had been adjourned for a week. At Mrs. Evitt’s particular request he read the report of the case in the evening papers on the night after the inquiry. She seemed full of anxiety about the business.
‘Do you think they’ll hang him?’ she asked eagerly.
‘My good soul, they’ve a long way to go before they get to hanging. He is not even committed for trial.’
‘But it looks black against him, doesn’t it?’
‘Circumstances certainly appear to point to him as the murderer. You see there seems to be no one else who could have had any motive for such an act.’
‘And you say he has got a sweet young wife?’
‘One of the loveliest women I ever saw; I feel very sorry for her, poor soul.’
‘If you was on the jury, would you bring him in guilty?’ asked Mrs. Evitt.
‘I should be sorely perplexed. You see I should be called upon to find my verdict according to the evidence, and the evidence against him is very strong.’
Mrs. Evitt sighed, and turned her weary head upon her pillow.
‘Poor young man,’ she murmured, ‘he was always affable—not very free-spoken, but always affable. I should feel sorry if it went against him. It would be awful, wouldn’t it?’ she exclaimed, with sudden agitation, lifting herself up from her pillow, and gazing fixedly at the surgeon; ‘it would be awful for him to be hung, and innocent all the time; and a sweet young wife, too. I couldn’t bear it; no, I couldn’t bear it. The thought of it would weigh me down to my grave, and I don’t suppose it would let me rest even there.’
Gerard thought the poor woman was getting delirious. He laid his fingers gently on her skinny wrist, and held them there while he looked at his watch.
Yes, the pulse was a good deal quicker than it had been when he last felt it.
‘Is Jemima there?’ asked Mrs. Evitt, twitching aside the bed-curtain, and looking nervously round.
Yes, Jemima was there, sitting before the fire, darning a coarse gray stocking, and feeling very happy in being allowed to bask in the warmth of a fire, in a room where nobody threw saucepan lids at her.
George Gerard had rigged up what he called a jury curtain, to shelter the truckle bed from those piercing currents of air which find their way alike through old and new window frames.
Mrs. Evitt’s thin fingers suddenly fastened like claws upon the surgeon’s wrist.
‘I want to speak to you,’ she whispered, ‘by-and-by, when Jemima’s gone down to her supper. I can’t keep it any longer. It’s preying on my vitals.’
The delirium was evidently increasing, thought Gerard. There was generally this exacerbation of the fever at nightfall.
‘What is it you can’t keep?’ he asked soothingly. ‘Is there anything that worries you?’
‘Wait till Jemima has gone down,’ whispered the invalid.
‘I’ll come up and have a look at you between ten and eleven,’ said Gerard, aloud, rising to go. ‘I’ve a lot of reading to get through this evening.’
He went down to his books and his tranquil solitude, pondering upon Mrs. Evitt’s speech and manner. No, it was not delirium. The woman’s words were too consecutive for delirium; her manner was excited, but not wild. There was evidently something on her mind—something connected with La Chicot’s murder.
Great Heaven, could this feeble old woman be the assassin? Could those withered old hands have inflicted that mortal gash? No, the idea was not to be entertained for a moment. Yet, stranger things have been since the world began. Crime, like madness, might give a factitious strength to feeble hands. La Chicot might have had money—jewels—hidden wealth of some kind, of which the secret was known to her landlady, and, tempted by direst poverty, this wretched woman might——! The thought was too horrible. It took possession of George Gerard’s brain like a nightmare. Vainly did he endeavour to beguile his mind by the study of an interesting treatise on dry-rot in the metatarsal bone. His thoughts were with that feeble old woman upstairs, whose skinny hand, just now, had set him thinking of the witches in Macbeth.
He listened for Jemima’s clumping footfall going downstairs. It came at last, and he knew that the girl was gone to her meagre supper, and the coast was clear for Mrs. Evitt’s revelation. He shut his book, and went quietly upstairs. Never until now had George Gerard known the meaning of fear; but it was with actual fear that he entered Mrs. Evitt’s room, dreading the discovery he was going to make.
He was startled at finding the invalid risen, and with her dingy black stuff gown drawn on over her night-gear.
‘Why in heaven’s name did you get up?’ he asked. ‘If you were to take cold you would be ever so much worse than you have been yet.’
‘I know it,’ answered Mrs. Evitt, with her teeth chattering, ‘but I can’t help that. I’ve got to go upstairs to the second-floor back, and you must go with me.’
‘What for?’
‘I’ll tell you that presently. I want you to tell me something first.’
Gerard took a blanket off the bed, and wrapped it round the old woman’s shoulders. She was sitting in front of the fire, just where Jemima had sat darning her stocking.
‘I’ll tell you anything you like,’ answered Gerard, ‘but I shall be very savage if you catch cold.’
‘If an innocent person was suspected of a murder, and the evidence was strong against him, and another person knew he hadn’t done it, and said nothing, and let the law take its course, would the other person be guilty?’
‘Of murder!’ cried Gerard; ‘of nothing less than murder. Having the power to save an innocent life, and not saving it! What could that be but murder?’
‘Are you sure Jemima isn’t outside, on the listen?’ asked Mrs. Evitt suspiciously. ‘Just go to the door and look.’
Gerard obeyed.
‘There’s not a mortal within earshot,’ he said. ‘Now, my good soul, don’t waste any more time. It’s evident you know all about this murder.’
‘I believe I know who did it,’ said the old woman.
‘Who?’
‘I can remember that awful night as well as if it was yesterday,’ began Mrs. Evitt, making strange swallowing noises, as if to keep down her agitation. ‘There we all stood on the landing outside this door—Mrs. Rawber, Mr. Desrolles, me, and Mr. Chicot. Mrs. Rawber and me was all of a twitter. Mr. Chicot looked as white as a ghost; Mr. Desrolles was the coolest among us. He took it all quiet enough, and I felt it was a comfort to have somebody there that had his wits about him. It was him that proposed sending for a policeman.’
‘Sensible enough,’ said Gerard.
‘Nothing was further from my thoughts than to suspect him,’ pursued Mrs. Evitt. ‘He had been with me, off and on, for five years, and he’d been a quiet lodger, coming in at his own time with his own key, and giving very little trouble. He had only one fault, and that was his liking for the bottle. He and Madame Chicot had been very friendly. He seemed to take quite a fatherly care of her, and had brought her home from the theatre many a night, when her husband was at his club.’
‘Yes, yes,’ cried Gerard impatiently. ‘You’ve told me that often before to-night. Go on, for heaven’s sake. Do you mean to say that Desrolles had anything to do with the murder?’
‘He did it,’ said Mrs. Evitt, whispering into the surgeon’s ear.
‘How do you know? What ground have you for accusing him?’
‘The best of grounds. There was a struggle between that poor creature and her murderer. When I went in to look at her as she lay there, before the doctor had touched her, one of her hands was clenched tight—as if she had clutched at something in her last gasp. In that clenched hand I found a tuft of iron-gray hair—just the colour of Desrolles’ hair. I could swear to it.’
‘Is that all your evidence against Desrolles? The fact is strongly in favour of poor Treverton, and you were a wicked woman not to reveal it at the inquest; but you cannot condemn Desrolles upon the strength of a few gray hairs, unless you know of other evidence against him.’
‘I do,’ said Mrs. Evitt. ‘Dreadful evidence. But don’t say that I was a wicked woman because I didn’t tell it at the inquest. There was nobody’s life in danger. Mr. Chicot had got safe off. Why should I up and tell that which wouldhang Mr. Desrolles? He had always been a good lodger to me; and though I could never look at him after that time without feeling every drop of blood in my veins turned to ice, and though I was thankful to Providence when he left me, it wasn’t in me to tell that which would be his death.’
‘Go on,’ urged Gerard. ‘What was it you discovered?’
‘When the policeman had come in and looked about him, Mr. Desrolles says, “I shall go to bed; I ain’t wanted no more here,” and he goes back to his room as quiet and as cool as if nothing had happened. When the sergeant came back half-an-hour afterwards, with a gentleman in plain clothes, which was neither more nor less than a detective, them two went into every room in the house. I went with them to show the way, and to open cupboards and such like. They went up into Mr. Desrolles’ room, and he was sleeping like a lamb. He grumbled a bit at us for disturbing him. “Look about as much as you like,” he said, “as long as you don’t worry me. Open all the drawers. You won’t find any of ’em locked. I haven’t a very extensive wardrobe. I can keep count of my clothes without an inventory.” “A very pleasant gentleman,” said the detective afterwards.’
‘Did they find nothing?’ asked Gerard.
‘Nothing, yet they looked and pried about very careful. There’s only one closet in the second-floor back, and that’s behind the head of the bed. The bed’s a tent, with chintz curtains all round. They looked under the bed, and they even went so far as to move the chimney board and look up the chimney; but they didn’t move the bed. I suppose they didn’t want to disturb Mr. Desrolles, who had curled himself up in the bed-clothes and gone off to sleep again. “I suppose there ain’t no cupboards in this room?” says the detective. I was that tired of dancing attendance upon them, that I just gave my head a shake thatmight mean anything, and they went downstairs to the parlours to worrit Mrs. Rawber.’
Here Mrs. Evitt paused, as if exhausted by much speech.
‘Come, old lady,’ said Gerard kindly, ‘take a little of this barley water, and then go on. You are keeping me on tenter hooks.’
Mrs. Evitt drank, gasped two or three times, and continued—
‘I don’t know what put it into my head, but after the two men was gone I couldn’t help thinking about that cupboard, and whether there mightn’t be something in it that the detectives would like to have found. Mr. Desrolles came downstairs at eleven o’clock, and went out to get his breakfast—as he called it,—but I knew pretty well when he went out of doors for his breakfast, he breakfasted upon brandy. If he wanted a cup of tea or a bloater, I got it for him; but there was mornings when he hadn’t appetite to pick a bit of bloater with a slice of bread and butter, and then he went out of doors.’
‘Yes, yes,’ assented Gerard, ‘pray go on.’
‘When he was gone I put up the chain of the front door, so as to make sure of not being disturbed, and I went straight up to his room. I moved the bedstead, and opened the cupboard door. Mr. Desrolles had no key to the cupboard, for the key was lost when he first came to me, and though it had turned up afterwards, I hadn’t troubled to give it him. What did he want with keys, when all the property he had in the world wasn’t worth a five-pound note?’
‘Go on, there’s a good soul.’
‘I opened the cupboard. It was a queer, old-fashioned closet in the wall, and the door was papered over just the same as the room. It was so dark inside that I had to light a candle before I could see anything there. There was not much to see at first, even with the candle, but I went down upon my knees, and hunted in the dark corners, and at last I found Mr. Desrolles’ old chintz dressing-gown, rolled up small, and stuffed into the darkest corner of the cupboard, under a lot of rubbish. He had been wearing it only a day or two before, and I knew it as well as I knew him. I took it over to the window and unfolded it; and there was the evidence that told who had murdered that poor creature lying cold on her bed in the room below. The front of the dressing-gown and one of the sleeves were soaked in blood. It must have flowed in torrents. The stains were hardly dry. “Good Lord!” says I to myself, “this would hang him,” and I takes and rolls the gown up tight, and puts it back in the corner, and covers it over with other things, old newspapers and old clothes, and such like, just as it was before. And then I runs downstairs and routs out the key of the closet, and takes and locks it. I was allof a tremble while I did it, but I felt there was a power within me to do it. I had but just put the key in my pocket when there came a loud knocking downstairs. From the time Mr. Desrolles had gone out it wasn’t quite a quarter of an hour, but I felt pretty sure this was him come back again. I pushed back the bed, and ran down to the door, still trembling inwardly. “What the——(wicked word)—did you put the chain up for?” he asked angrily, for it was him. I told him that I felt that nervous after last night that I was obliged to do it. He smelt strong of brandy, and I thought that he was looking strange, like a man that feels all queer in his inside, and struggles not to show it. “I suppose I must put myself into a clean shirt for this inquest,” he says, and then he goes upstairs, and I wonders to myself how he feels as he goes by the door where that poor thing lies.’
‘Did he never ask you for the key of the closet?’
‘Never. Whether he guessed what had happened, and knew that I suspected him, I can’t tell—but he never asked no questions, and the closet has been locked up to this day, and I’ve got the key, and if you will come upstairs with me I’ll show you what I saw that dreadful morning.’
‘No, no, there’s no need for that. The police are the people who must see the inside of that closet. It’s a strange business,’ said Gerard, ‘but I’m more glad than I can say for Treverton’s sake, and for the sake of his lovely young wife. What motive could this Desrolles have had for such a brutal murder?’
Mrs. Evitt shook her head solemnly.
‘That’s what I never could make out,’ she said, ‘though I’ve lain awake many a night puzzling myself over it. I know she hadn’t no money—I know that him and her was always friendly, up to the last day of her life. But I’ve got my idea about it.’
‘What is your idea?’ asked Gerard.
‘That it was done when he was out of his mind withdelirious tremings.’
‘But have you ever seen him mad from the effects of drink?’
‘No, never. But how can we tell that it didn’t come upon him sudden in the dead of the night, and work upon him until he got up and rushed downstairs in his madness, and cut that poor thing’s throat?’
‘That’s too wild an idea. That a man should be raging mad withdelirium tremensbetween twelve and one o’clock, and perfectly sane at three, is hardly within the range of possibility. No. There must have been a motive, though we cannot fathom it. Well, I thank God that conscience has impelled you to tell the truth at last, late as it is. I shall get you to repeat this statement to Mr. Leopold to-morrow. And now get back to bed, andI’ll send Jemima up to you with a cup of good beef tea. God grant that this fellow Desrolles may be found.’
‘I hope not,’ said Mrs. Evitt. ‘If they find him they’ll hang him, and he was always a good lodger to me. I’m bound to speak of him as I found him.’
‘You wouldn’t speak very well of him if you had found him at your throat with a razor.’
‘Ah,’ replied the landlady, ‘I lived in fear and dread of him ever after that horrid time. I’ve woke up in a coldprespiration many a time, fancying that I heard his breathing close beside my bed, though I always slept with my door locked and the kitching table pushed against it. I was right down thankful when he went away, though it was hard upon me to have my second-floor empty—and Queen’s taxes, and all my rates coming in just as regular as when my house was full.’
Gerard insisted on his patient going to bed without further delay. She was flushed and excited by her own revelations, and would have willingly gone on talking till midnight, if her doctor had allowed it. But he wished her good-night, and went downstairs to summon the well-meaning Jemima, who was a very good sick nurse, having ministered to a large family of stepbrothers and stepsisters, through teething, measles, chicken-pox, mumps, and all the ills that infant flesh is heir to.
George Gerard communicated early next day with Mr. Leopold, and that gentleman came at once to Mrs. Evitt’s bedside, where he had a long and friendly conversation with that lady, who was well enough to be inordinately loquacious. She was quite fascinated by the famous lawyer, whose manners seemed to her the perfection of courtesy, and she remarked afterwards that if her own neck had been in peril she could hardly have refused to answer any questions he asked her.
Once master of his facts, at first hand, Mr. Leopold called a hansom, and drove to the shady retreat where his client was languishing in durance. Laura was with her husband when the lawyer came. She started up, pale and agitated, at his entrance, looking to him as the one man who was to save an innocent life.
‘Good news,’ said Leopold cheerily.
‘Thank God,’ murmured Laura, sinking back in her chair.
‘We have found the murderer.’
‘Found him,’ cried Treverton; ‘how, and where?’
‘When I say found, I go rather too far,’ said Leopold, ‘but we know who he is. It’s the man I suspected from the beginning—your second-floor lodger, Desrolles.’
Laura gave a cry of horror.
‘You need not pity him, Mrs. Treverton,’ said Mr. Leopold.
‘He’s a thorough-paced scoundrel. I happen to be acquainted with circumstances that throw a light upon his motive for themurder. He is quite unworthy of your compassion. I doubt if hanging—in the gentlemanly way in which it’s done now—is bad enough for him. He ought to have lived in a less refined age, when he would have had his last moments enlivened by the yells and profanity of the populace.’
‘How do you know that Desrolles was the murderer?’ asked John Treverton.
Mr. Leopold told his client the gist of Mrs. Evitt’s statement.
Treverton listened in silence. Laura sat quietly by, white as marble.
‘The young surgeon in Cibber Street tells me that Mrs. Evitt will be well enough to appear in court next Tuesday,’ said Mr. Leopold, in conclusion. ‘If she isn’t, we must ask for another adjournment. I think you may consider that you’re out of it. It would be impossible for any magistrate to commit you, in the face of this woman’s evidence; but Desrolles will have to be found all the same, and the sooner he’s found the better. I shall set the police on his track immediately. Don’t look so frightened, Mrs. Treverton. The only way to prove your husband’s innocence is to show that some one else is guilty. I wish you could help me with any information that would put the police on the right scent,’ he added, turning to John Treverton.
‘I told you yesterday that I could not help you.’
‘Yes, but your manner gave me the idea that you were keeping back something. That you could—an’ if you would—have given me a clue.’
‘Your imagination—despite the grim realism of police courts—must be very lively.’
‘Ah, I see,’ said Mr. Leopold, ‘you mean to stick to your text. Well, this fellow must be found somehow, whether you like it or not. Your good name depends upon our getting somebody convicted.’
‘Yes,’ cried Laura, starting up and speaking with sudden energy, ‘my husband’s good name must be saved at any cost. What is this man to us, John, that we should spare him? What is he to me that his safety should be considered before yours?’
‘Hush, dearest!’ said John soothingly. ‘Let Mr. Leopold and me manage this business between us.’