The Greatest Murder Mysteries of Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Mary Elizabeth Braddon
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we of the upper ten thousand have Tattersall’s and Her Majesty’s Theatre, and John Jones (who, low republican, says he must have his amusements too) has such little diversions as wife-murder and cholera to break the monotony of his existence.
The Count and the violet-seller at last come to a pause. They had walked very quickly through the pestiferous streets, Raymond holding his aristocratic breath and shutting his patrician ears to the scents and the sounds around him. They come to a stand at last, in a dark court, before a tall lopsided house, with irresolute chimney-pots, which looked as if the only thing that kept them erect was the want of unanimity as to which way they should fall.
Raymond, when invited by the woman to enter, looks suspiciously at the dingy staircase, as if wondering whether it would last his time, but at the request of his companion ascends it.
The boy in the large coat and slouched hat is playing marbles with another boy on the second-floor landing, and has evidently lived there all his life: and yet I’m puzzled as to who drove that cab home to the stables at the back of Park Lane. I fear it was not the “temporary tiger.”
The Count de Marolles and his guide pass the youthful gamester, who has just lost his second halfpenny, and ascend to the very top of the rickety house, the garrets of which are afflicted with intermittent ague whenever there is a high wind.
Into one of these garrets the woman conducts Raymond, and on a bed—or its apology, a thing of shreds and patches, straw and dirt, which goes by the name of a bed at this end of the town—lies the old woman we last saw in Blind Peter.
Eight years, more or less, have not certainly had the effect of enhancing the charms of this lady; and there is something in her face to-day more terrible even than wicked old age or feminine drunkenness. It is death that lends those livid hues to her complexion, which all the cosmetics from Atkinson’s or the Burlington Arcade, were she minded to use them, would never serve to conceal. Raymond has not come too soon if he is to hear any secret from those ghastly lips. It is some time before the woman, whom she still calls Sillikens, can make the dying hag understand who this fine gentleman is, and what it is he wants with her; and even when she does succeed in making her comprehend all this, the old woman’s speech is very obscure, and calculated to try the patience of a more amiable man than the Count de Marolles.
“Yes, it was a golden secret—a golden secret, eh, my dear? It was something to have a marquis for a son-in-law, wasn’t it, my dear, eh?” mumbled the dying old hag.
“A marquis for a son-in-law! What does the jibbering old idiot mean?” muttered Raymond, whose reverence for his grandmother was not one of the strongest points in his composition. “A marquis! I dare say my respected progenitor kept a public-house, or something of that sort. A marquis! The ‘Marquis of Granby,’ most likely!”
“Yes, a marquis,” continued the old woman, “eh, dear! And he married your mother—married her at the parish church, one cold dark November morning; and I’ve got the c’tificate. Yes,” she mumbled, in answer to Raymond’s eager gesture, “I’ve got it; but I’m not going to tell you where;—no, not till I’m paid. I must be paid for that secret in gold—yes, in gold. They say that we don’t rest any easier in our coffins for the money that’s buried with us; but I should like to lie up to neck in golden sovereigns new from the Mint, and not one light one amongst ’em.”
“Well,” said Raymond, impatiently, “your secret! I’m rich, and can pay for it. Your secret—quick!”
“Well, he hadn’t been married to her long before a change came, in his native country, over the sea yonder,” said the old woman, pointing in the direction of St. Martin’s Lane, as if she thought the British Channel flowed somewhere behind that thoroughfare. “A change came, and he got his rights again. One king was put down and another king was set up, and everybody else was massacred in the streets; it was—a—I don’t know what they call it; but they’re always a-doin’ it. So he got his rights, and he was a rich man again, and a great man; and then his first thought was to keep his marriage with my girl a secret. All very well, you know, my girl for a wife while he was giving lessons at a shilling a-piece, in Parlez-vous Français, and all that; but now he was a marquis, and it was quite another thing.”
Raymond by this time gets quite interested; so does the boy in the big coat and the slouched hat, who has transferred the field of his gambling operations in the marble line to the landing outside the garret door.
“He wanted the secret kept, and I kept it for gold. I kept it even from her, your mother, my own ill-used girl, for gold. She never knew who he was; she thought he’d deserted her, and she took to drinking; she and I threw you into the river when we were mad drunk, and couldn’t stand your squalling. She died—don’t you ask me how. I told you before not to ask me how my girl died—I’m mad enough without that question; she died, and I kept the secret. For a long time it was gold to me, and he used to send me money regular to keep it dark; but by-and-by the money stopped from coming. I got savage, but still I kept the secret; because, you see, it was nothing when it was told, and there was no one rich enough to pay me to tell it. I didn’t know where to find the marquis; I only knew he was somewhere in France.”
“France?” exclaims Raymond.
“Yes; didn’t I tell you France? He was a French marquis—a refugee they called him when he first made acquaintance with my girl—a teacher of French and mathematics.”
“And his name—his name?” asks Raymond, eagerly. “His name, woman, if you don’t want to drive me mad.”
“He called himself Smith, when he was a-teachin’, my dear,” said the old woman with a ghastly leer; “what are you going to pay me for the secret?”
“Whatever you like, only tell me—tell me before you——”
“Die. Yes, deary; there ain’t any time to waste, is there? I don’t want to make a hard bargain. Will you bury me up to my neck in gold?”
“Yes, yes; speak!” He is almost beside himself, and raises a threatening hand. The old woman grins.
“I told you before that wasn’t the way, deary. Wait a bit. Sillikens, give me that ’ere old shoe, will you? Look you here! It’s a double sole, and the marriage certificate is between the two leathers. I’ve walked on it this thirty years and more.”
“And the name—the name?”
“The name of the Marquis was De—de——”
“She’s dying! Give me some water!” cried Raymond.
“De Ce—Ce——” the syllables come in fitful gasps. Raymond throws some water over her face.
“De Cevennes, my deary!—and the golden secret is told.”
And the golden bowl is broken!
Lay the ragged sheet over the ghastly face, Sillikens, and kneel down and pray for help in your utter loneliness; for the guilty being whose soul has gone forth to meet its Maker was your only companion and stay, however frail that stay might be.
Go out into the sunshine, Monsieur de Marolles; that which you leave behind in the tottering garret, shaken by an ague-paroxysm with the fitful autumn wind, is nothing so terrible to your eyes.
You have accustomed yourself to the face of Death before now; you have met that grim potentate on his own ground, and done with him what it is your policy to do with everything on earth—you have made him useful to you.
Chapter VIII
One Step Further on the Right Track
It is not a very romantic locality to which we must now conduct the reader, being neither more nor less than the shop and surgery of Mr. Augustus Darley; which temple of the healing god is scented, this autumn afternoon, with the mingled perfumes of Cavendish