The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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so after a few minutes’ consideration, I walked straight to the station. Hang me if I wasn’t too late for the train again. I don’t know how it was, but I couldn’t keep my mind off the young woman, nor keep myself from wonderin’ what she was a-goin’ to do with herself, and what she was a-goin’ to do with that ’ere baby. So I walks back agen down by the water, and as I’d a good hour and a half to spare, I walks a good way, thinking of the young man, and the cut on his forehead. It was nigh upon dark by this time, and foggy into the bargain. Maybe I’d gone a mile or more, when I comes up to a barge what lay at anchor quite solitary. It was a collier, and there was a chap on board, sittin’ in the stern, smokin’, and lookin’ at the water. There was no one else in sight but him and me; and no sooner does he spy me comin’ along the bank than he sings out,
“ ‘Hulloa! Have you met a young woman down that way?’
“His words struck me all of a heap somehow, comin’ so near upon what I was a-thinkin’ of myself. I shook my head; and he said,
“ ‘There’s been some unfort’nate young girl down here tryin’ to dround her baby. I see the little chap in the water, and fished him out with my boat-hook. I’d seen the girl hangin’ about here, just as it was a-gettin’ dark, and then I heard the splash when she threw the child in; but the fog was too thick for me to see anything ashore by that time.’
“The barge was just alongside the bank, and I stepped on board. Not bein’ so fortunate as to have a voice, you know, it comes awkward with strangers, and I was rather put to it to get on with the young man. And didn’t he sing out loud when he came to understand I was dumb; he couldn’t have spoke in a higher key if I’d been a forriner.
“He told me he should take the baby round to the Union; all he hoped he said, was, that the mother wasn’t a-goin’ to do anything bad with herself.
“I hoped not too; but I remembered that look of hers when she stood at the window staring out at the river, and I didn’t feel very easy in my mind about her.
“I took the poor little wet thing up in my arms. The young man had wrapped it in an old jacket, and it was a-cryin’ piteous, and lookin’, oh, so scared and miserable.
“Well, it may seem a queer whim, but I’m rather soft-hearted on the subject of babies, and often had a thought that I should like to try the power of cultivation in the way of business, and bring a child up from the very cradle to the police detective line, to see whether I couldn’t make that ’ere child a ornament to the force. I wasn’t a marryin’ man, and by no means likely ever to ’av a family of my own; so when I took up that ’ere baby in my arms, somehow or other the thought came into my ’ed of adoptin’ him, and bringin’ of him up. So I rolled him up in my greatcoat, and took him with me to Gardenford.”
“And a wonderful boy he is,” said Richard; “we’ll educate him, Peters, and make a gentleman of him.”
“Wait a bit,” said the fingers very quickly; “thank you kindly, sir; but if the police force of this ’ere country was robbed of that ’ere boy, it would be robbed of a gem as it couldn’t afford to lose.”
“Go on, Peters; tell them the rest of your story.”
“Well, though I felt in my own mind that by one of those strange chances which does happen in life, maybe as often as they happen in story-books, I had fallen across the man who had committed the murder, yet for all that I hadn’t evidence enough to get a hearin’. I got transferred from Gardenford to Slopperton, and every leisure minute I had I tried to come across the man I’d marked; but nowhere could I see him, or hear of any one answering his description. I went to the churches; for I thought him capable of anything, even to shammin’ pious. I went to the theayter, and I see a young woman accused of poisonin’ a fam’ly, and proved innocent by a police cove as didn’t know his business any more than a fly. I went anywhere and everywhere, but I never see that man; and it was gettin’ uncommon near the trial of this young gent, and nothin’ done. How was he to be saved? I thought of it by night and thought of it by day; but work it out I couldn’t nohow. One day I hears of an old friend of the pris’ner’s being sup-boned-aed as witness for the crown. This friend I determined to see; for two ’eds”—Mr. Peters looked round, as though he defied contradiction—“shall be better than one.”
“And this friend,” said Gus, “was your humble servant; who was only too glad to find that poor Dick had one sincere friend in the world who believed in his innocence, besides myself.”
“Well, Mr. Darley and me,” resumed Mr. Peters, “put our ’eds together, and we came to this conclusion, that if this young gent was mad when he committed the murder, they couldn’t hang him, but would shut him in a asylum for the rest of his nat’ral life—which mayn’t be pleasant in the habstract, but which is better than hangin’, any day.”
“So you determined on proving me mad,” said Richard.
“We hadn’t such very bad grounds to go upon, perhaps, old fellow,” replied Mr. Darley; “that brain-fever, which we thought such a misfortune when it laid you up for three dreary weeks, stood us in good stead; we had something to go upon, for we knew we could get you off by no other means. But to get you off this way we wanted your assistance, and we didn’t hit upon the plan till it was too late to get at you and tell you our scheme; we didn’t hit upon it till twelve o’clock on the night before your trial. We tried to see your counsel; but he had that morning left the town, and wasn’t to return till the trial came on. Peters hung about the court all the morning, but couldn’t see him; and nothing was done when the judge and jury took their seats. You know the rest; how Peters caught your eye—”
“Yes,” said Dick, “and how seven letters upon his fingers told me the whole scheme, and gave me my cue; those letters formed these two words, ‘Sham mad.’ ”
“And very well you did it at the short notice, Dick,” said Gus; “upon my word, for the moment I was almost staggered, and thought, suppose in getting up this dodge we are only hitting upon the truth, and the poor fellow really has been driven out of his wits by this frightful accusation?”
“A scrap of paper,” said Mr. Peters, on his active fingers, “gave the hint to your counsel—a sharp chap enough, though a young un.”
“I can afford to reward him now for his exertions,” said Richard, “and I must find him for that purpose. But Peters, for heaven’s sake tell us about this young man whom you suspect to be the murderer. If I go to the end of the world in search of him, I’ll find him, and drag him and his villany to light, that my name may be cleared from the foul stain it wears.”
Mr. Peters looked very grave. “You must go a little further than the end of this world to find him, I’m afraid, sir,” said the fingers. “What do you say to looking for him in the next? for that’s the station he’d started for when I last saw him; and I believe that on that line, with the exception of now and then a cock-and-a-bull-lane ghost, they don’t give no return tickets.”
“Dead?” said Richard. “Dead, and escaped from justice?”
“That’s about the size of it, sir,” replied Mr. Peters. “Whether he thought as how something was up, and he was blown, or whether he was riled past bearin’ at findin’ no money in that ’ere cabinet, I can’t take upon myself to say; but I found him six months after the murder out upon a heath, dead, with a laudanum-bottle a-lying by his side.”
“And did you ever find out who he was?” asked Gus.
“He was a usher, sir, at a ’cademy for young gents, and a very pious young man he was too, I’ve heard; but for all that he murdered this young gent’s uncle, or my name isn’t Peters.”
“Beyond the reach of justice,” said Richard; “then the truth can never be brought to light, and to the end of my days I must bear the stigma of a crime of which I am innocent.”
Book the Fifth
The Dumb Detective