The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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pardon me, I hope, for detaining you so long; my duties —”
“It is I who should apologize for intruding upon you,” Robert answered, politely; “but my motive for calling upon you is a very serious one, and must plead my excuse. You remember the lady whose name I wrote upon my card?”
“Perfectly.”
“May I ask how much you know of that lady’s history since her departure from your house?”
“Very little. In point of fact, scarcely anything at all. Miss Graham, I believe, obtained a situation in the family of a surgeon resident in Essex. Indeed, it was I who recommended her to that gentleman. I have never heard from her since she left me.”
“But you have communicated with her?” Robert asked, eagerly.
“No, indeed.”
Mr. Audley was silent for a few moments, the shadow of gloomy thoughts gathering darkly on his face.
“May I ask if you sent a telegraphic dispatch to Miss Graham early in last September, stating that you were dangerously ill, and that you wished to see her?”
Mrs. Vincent smiled at her visitor’s question.
“I had no occasion to send such a message,” she said; “I have never been seriously ill in my life.”
Robert Audley paused before he asked any further questions, and scrawled a few penciled words in his note-book.
“If I ask you a few straightforward questions about Miss Lucy Graham, madam,” he said. “Will you do me the favor to answer them without asking my motive in making such inquiries?”
“Most certainly,” replied Mrs. Vincent. “I know nothing to Miss Graham’s disadvantage, and have no justification for making a mystery of the little I do know.”
“Then will you tell me at what date the young lady first came to you?”
Mrs. Vincent smiled and shook her head. She had a pretty smile — the frank smile of a woman who had been admired, and who has too long felt the certainty of being able to please, to be utterly subjugated by any worldly misfortune.
“It’s not the least use to ask me, Mr. Audley,” she said. “I’m the most careless creature in the world; I never did, and never could remember dates, though I do all in my power to impress upon my girls how important it is for their future welfare that they should know when William the Conqueror began to reign, and all that kind of thing. But I haven’t the remotest idea when Miss Graham came to me, although I know it was ages ago, for it was the very summer I had my peach-colored silk. But we must consult Tonks — Tonks is sure to be right.”
Robert Audley wondered who or what Tonks could be; a diary, perhaps, or a memorandum-book — some obscure rival of Letsome.
Mrs. Vincent rung the bell, which was answered by the maid-servant who had admitted Robert.
“Ask Miss Tonks to come to me,” she said. “I want to see her particularly.”
In less than five minutes Miss Tonks made her appearance. She was wintry and rather frost-bitten in aspect, and seemed to bring cold air in the scanty folds of her somber merino dress. She was no age in particular, and looked as if she had never been younger, and would never grow older, but would remain forever working backward and forward in her narrow groove, like some self-feeding machine for the instruction of young ladies.
“Tonks, my dear,” said Mrs. Vincent, without ceremony, “this gentleman is a relative of Miss Graham’s. Do you remember how long it is since she came to us at Crescent Villas?”
“She came in August, 1854,” answered Miss Tonks; “I think it was the eighteenth of August, but I’m not quite sure that it wasn’t the seventeenth. I know it was on a Tuesday.”
“Thank you, Tonks; you are a most invaluable darling,” exclaimed Mrs. Vincent, with her sweetest smile. It was, perhaps, because of the invaluable nature of Miss Tonks’ services that she had received no remuneration whatever from her employer for the last three or four years. Mrs. Vincent might have hesitated to pay from very contempt for the pitiful nature of the stipend as compared with the merits of the teacher.
“Is there anything else that Tonks or I can tell you, Mr. Audley?” asked the schoolmistress. “Tonks has a far better memory than I have.”
“Can you tell me where Miss Graham came from when she entered your household?” Robert inquired.
“Not very precisely,” answered Mrs. Vincent. “I have a vague notion that Miss Graham said something about coming from the seaside, but she didn’t say where, or if she did I have forgotten it. Tonks, did Miss Graham tell you where she came from?”
“Oh, no!” replied Miss Tonks, shaking her grim little head significantly. “Miss Graham told me nothing; she was too clever for that. She knows how to keep her own secrets, in spite of her innocent ways and her curly hair,” Miss Tonks added, spitefully.
“You think she had secrets?” Robert asked, rather eagerly.
“I know she had,” replied Miss Tonks, with frosty decision; “all manner of secrets. I wouldn’t have engaged such a person as junior teacher in a respectable school, without so much as one word of recommendation from any living creature.”
“You had no reference, then, from Miss Graham?” asked Robert, addressing Mrs. Vincent.
“No,” the lady answered, with some little embarrassment; “I waived that. Miss Graham waived the question of salary; I could not do less than waive the question of reference. She quarreled with her papa, she told me, and she wanted to find a home away from all the people she had ever known. She wished to keep herself quite separate from these people. She had endured so much, she said, young as she was, and she wanted to escape from her troubles. How could I press her for a reference under these circumstances, especially when I saw that she was a perfect lady. You know that Lucy Graham was a perfect lady, Tonks, and it is very unkind for you to say such cruel things about my taking her without a reference.”
“When people make favorites, they are apt to be deceived in them,” Miss Tonks answered, with icy sententiousness, and with no very perceptible relevance to the point in discussion.
“I never made her a favorite, you jealous Tonks,” Mrs. Vincent answered, reproachfully. “I never said she was as useful as you, dear. You know I never did.”
“Oh, no!” replied Miss Tonks, with a chilling accent, “you never said she was useful. She was only ornamental; a person to be shown off to visitors, and to play fantasias on the drawing-room piano.”
“Then you can give me no clew to Miss Graham’s previous history?” Robert asked, looking from the schoolmistress to her teacher. He saw very clearly that Miss Tonks bore an envious grudge against Lucy Graham — a grudge which even the lapse of time had not healed.
“If this woman knows anything to my lady’s detriment, she will tell it,” he thought. “She will tell it only too willingly.”
But Miss Tonks appeared to know nothing whatever; except that Miss Graham had sometimes declared herself an ill-used creature, deceived by the baseness of mankind, and the victim of unmerited sufferings, in the way of poverty and deprivation. Beyond this, Miss Tonks could tell nothing; and although she made the most of what she did know, Robert soon sounded the depth of her small stock of information.
“I have only one more question to ask,” he said at last. “It is this: Did Miss Graham leave any books or knick-knacks, or any other kind of property whatever, behind her, when she left your establishment?”
“Not to my knowledge,” Mrs. Vincent replied.
“Yes,” cried Miss Tonks, sharply. “She did leave something. She left a box. It’s up-stairs in my room. I’ve got an old bonnet in it. Would you like to see the box?” she asked, addressing Robert.
“If you will be so good as to allow me,” he answered,