Collected works of j s f.., p.620
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 620
But Bartlett found himself considerably taken aback. Mrs. Champernowne, seated at her escritoire, was not one whit less formidable than Mrs. Champernowne, Mayor of Southernstowe in the big magisterial chair. Handsome and taking as her well-preserved face was, she could make it uncommonly stern and even forbidding, and she looked at Bartlett as Hackdale brought him forward much as she might have looked at a newly captured burglar hailed to the seat of justice. And while she motioned Hackdale to seat himself, she left Bartlett standing, and, as he stood, looked him over from head to foot in a fashion which made him feel at a decided disadvantage. It was not at his raiment she was looking — Bartlett was too certain of his respectable and even fashionable appearance to be uneasy on that point — it was as if she was examining his very soul: looking inside him as it were. He suddenly noticed that Mrs. Champernowne was neither as soft as butter nor as pliable as thin metal, and his self-assurance began to melt.
“Well, Bartlett!” began Mrs. Champernowne, in a sharp, business-like tone, “it seems that we are to have some dealings together, but I don’t care to have any transactions with men who are not steady. It’s not so very long since you were brought before me for drunkenness: I fined you for it. How do I know that you’ve altered your habit?”
Bartlett spread out his hands with a look of injured innocence.
“Do I look like a man of — of such habits as you refer to, Mrs. Champernowne?” he asked aggrievedly. “That — that was some time ago, ma’am. I may say I’ve adopted other habits — and a different course of life. I’m going in for respectability, Mrs. Champernowne — eminent respectability! Of course, ma’am, it’s merely to return to what I used to be — there are plenty of people in this neighbourhood, Mrs. Champernowne, who can remember me as a highly respectable person!”
“Glad to hear you’ve reformed, Bartlett,” said Mrs. Champernowne. “But I’m afraid that if you lead a leisured life on easily gained money you may fall into pleasure loving ways and get amongst convivial companions, and go back to your old excesses. And when wine’s in, truth’s out! — I dare — say you know what I mean.”
“Oh, I quite take your meaning, Mrs. Champernowne,” responded Bartlett, “and I’m not offended in the least, ma’am. But I assure you, Mrs. Champernowne, that my ambition is otherwise — quite otherwise! For one thing, ma’am, I’ve no intention whatever of remaining in this neighbourhood, and so I shall have no temptation to rejoin the convivial companions of whom you speak. Clean cut, Mrs. Champernowne, clean cut! — that’s what I intend to make.”
Mrs. Champernowne exchanged glances with Hackdale. Hackdale took hers for an invitation to join in.
“You were going to make a clean cut a little while ago, Bartlett,” he said. “You were going to America. You didn’t!”
Bartlett looked from one to the other of his inquisitors with a smile that was half a grimace and half an appeal.
“Why, now, Mr. Hackdale!” he exclaimed almost pathetically. “Now, sir — and now, Mrs. Champernowne — is it to be expected of a man to withdraw from the chance of making a bit of money? There was that handsome reward offered—”
“We don’t want to hear anything whatever about any reward or anything else, my man!” interrupted Mrs. Champernowne sharply. “We don’t want any reference, explanation, or anything, verbal about anything! — there’s a tacit understanding already between the three of us. And I, too, believe that you’ll live a sober and steady life, and not let your tongue wag!”
Bartlett’s self assurance came back to him at this, and his tone grew in confidence. “It’s to my interest — if we come to terms — to be both stead and sober, Mrs. Champernowne,” he answered. “I should think you see that yourself.”
“I think we can provide you with an incentive to be sober, steady, respectable in life and cautious and reserved in speech,” remarked Mrs. Champernowne, drily. “My terms will be conditional oh your being all that, Bartlett! I’m not going to have terms dictated to me, my man! But — what are your ideas about terms? Out with them!”
Bartlett hesitated a moment. Then, growing bold, he spoke.
“Well, nothing less than Miss Pretty offered — for information,” he said. “Miss Pretty mentioned three thousand.”
“Three thousand fiddlesticks!” interrupted Mrs. Champernowne. “You’re not going to get three thousand anything out of me, my good fellow! — not you! What you’ll get is a regular allowance — which you’ll forfeit if I have reason to complain of your conduct — in fact, it’ll only be paid if I find that you’re keeping sober and steady, and holding your tongue. Do you understand that? — an allowance!”
“For life?” asked Bartlett, sharply.
“For life — yes,” answered Mrs. Champernowne.
“Paid weekly?” demanded Bartlett.
“Every Friday,” said Mrs. Champernowne. “Mr. Hackdale will pay it.”
“Well,” said Bartlett. “But — how much?”
“Four pounds,” replied Mrs. Champernowne.
“Five, I think, ma’am,” Bartlett suggested. “Five! Can’t be done for less — and, in addition to that, I must have at any rate the thousand which I could get by going straight to Miss Pretty and telling her that—”
Mrs. Champernowne stopped him with a look and a word. They began to bargain. Eventually Mrs. Champernowne gave in to Bartlett’s terms — a thousand pounds cash down through a cheque made out to John Hackdale, and five pounds a for life to be paid by Hackdale every Friday. So there was an end.
The parlourmaid, hearing nothing, saw much. She saw Mrs. Champernowne eventually produce her cheque book, write a cheque, and hand it to Hackdale, then Hackdale and Bartlett left the drawing room. Jane Pratt heard them let themselves out of the front door and go down the drive and away. And she herself, marvelling and suspicious, was returning to the house, when from the trees in the orchard she heard a low and peculiar whistle. She turned from the house at that and made for deeper shadows.
CHAPTER XVI. DISCOVERIES AND AMBITIONS
THE PARLOURMAID CAUTIOUSLY slipped away from the vicinity of the house, and, keeping in the shadows of the trees that separated the garden from the orchard, stole through a gap in the hedge and turned, as if well accustomed to this procedure, to the right, and amongst a cluster of laurel bushes. In the darkness an arm stole round her waist, and a pair of ready lips sought hers. For a few minutes she and the owner of the arm indulged a mutual inclination for love making, in silence. But suddenly she disengaged herself from her unseen lover and began to whisper.
“How did you know I was there, Sim?” she asked.
“Saw you against that lighted window,” answered Simmons readily. “Knew you in less than a glimpse! — isn’t another girl in the town with a figure like yours, Jennie! But — what were you doing there?”
“Come further away from the house,” said the parlourmaid. “Come down the orchard — to the bottom. I’ve got some news for you — there’s something queer happened in there, just now.”
She drew Simmons away through the trees until they came to the edge of the sand pit in which Deane’s dead body had been found. Simmons remembered that on their first walk together they had come round by that sand pit, and Jane Pratt had been frightened. But she showed no fright on this occasion; all recollections of the place and its associations had vanished before the curiosity recently aroused in her.
“You want to know what I was doing at that window?” she whispered, as she and Simmons halted in the shadow of a clump of beeches. “I’ll tell you! I was watching!”
“Who?” demanded Simmons.
“Well, you’d never guess,” she replied. “I’ll tell you all about it. Getting on to perhaps an hour ago there was a ring at the front door. Of course, I went. There was your brother!”
“John?” exclaimed Simmons.
“John, of course — you have no other that I know of. John! But — he’d somebody with him. Who do you think?”
“Haven’t a notion! Who, then?”
“That Bartlett man! — dressed like a gentleman!”
“What, Jim Bartlett! With John? Why...” Then he paused, thinking. He had seen Bartlett in court, and in the street, and had observed the striking change in his appearance — it was clear enough that Bartlett had somehow or other come into funds. But — with John? — at Mrs. Champernowne’s? —
“Well,” he asked sharply, “what happened?”
“Your brother said they wanted to see the mistress. He wanted to see her first. Bartlett waited while he went in to see her. And I hid myself behind the curtain at the end of the front hall and watched. Your brother was in the drawing room with the mistress some time; then he went and fetched Bartlett. And so I slipped out and went round to the window — the mistress has a queer fad about blinds and curtains; she won’t have ’em drawn so I knew I could see into the room.”
“What did you see?” asked Simmons. He was already sure that some secret lay behind all this — this bringing together of Mrs. Champernowne, John Hackdale, and James Bartlett meant something. “If you could only have heard, now!” he added regretfully. “Heard!”
“I. couldn’t hear anything, of course,” replied Jane Pratt. “But I could see easily enough from where I was. Mrs. Champernowne talked for a while to Bartlett: your brother talked a bit, too — they all talked, but she did most of it. And in end she got out her cheque book.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Simmons. “She did, eh?”
“And wrote out a cheque,” continued Jane Pratt. “When she’d written it she handed it to your brother—”
“Not to Bartett?” interrupted Simmons quickly.
“No — to John Hackdale,” said the parlourmaid. “I noticed that particularly. And then they went away — straight off! They’d just gone down the drive, and I was going back to the house when I heard you whistle.”
Simmons, in the darkness, was rubbing the tip of his nose with the fingers of his left hand: a trick that he had when he was full of thought. His right arm was round the parlourmaid’s slender waist, and he gave her a sudden squeeze.
“Jennie!” he said, confidentially. “You’re a damned smart girl, and you and me’ll pull something big off out of this — you see if we don’t! But look here! — while I think of it. Where did the missus write that cheque?”
“At her writing desk — near the drawing room window,” replied Jane Pratt.
“There’ll be a blotting pad, then,” said Simmons. “You get hold of the top sheet of it — take it off and keep it for me. Eh?”
“That’s easy enough,” answered the parlourmaid. “I often take off the top piece — I can do that tonight. But I say — what do you think it all meant?”
“God knows!” declared Simmons with cheerful irreverence. “But I’ll jolly well find out. It’s all got to do with this, of course. Any hurry to get in?”
“No!” replied the parlourmaid. “Why?”
“Can you ask?” said Simmons, amorously. “Come on! — hang all that, now. Let’s have a nice half hour to ourselves.”
The demure parlourmaid had no objection. She retired with Simmons to a still quieter corner of the wilderness, and eventually went back to the house well satisfied with the atmosphere of love, intrigue, mystery, and spy business into which her swain was cleverly inducting her. She had had young men before — but they were ordinary and dull in comparison with Simmons. Simmons, in Miss Pratt’s opinion, had a brain: a young man who possessed a brain was much more interesting — and amusing — and generally diverting — than the young men who — apparently — had none. She found a good deal of pleasurable excitement in playing up to Simmons, and when they next met she was ready with the purloined sheet of blotting paper. This was on Miss Pratt’s weekly afternoon out, which was also Simmons’ — they met in a quiet spot on the outskirts of the town, and there being nobody whatever about when she handed over the desired object, Simmons immediately produced a small hand mirror from his pocket.
“Whatever’s that for?” demanded the parlourmaid.
“Watch, and you’ll learn something, Jennie,” replied Simmons. “It’s a trick well worth knowing if you want to get at other people’s secrets. Now, see, there’s not much on this blotting paper. And there, there, Jennie, is the impression of the cheque you talked about. Now, then, see, I hold the mirror with one hand; I put the blotting paper before it with the other. Now I look into the mirror. What do I see — good heavens!”
Simmons let out this exclamation through genuine astonishment. He saw by means of the mirror that Mrs. Champernowne had made out a cheque in favour of John Hackdale for one thousand pounds. Why? Was it for John himself? — Or was it for Bartlett? — Or was it for both? And was it — hush money?
The more Simmons thought things over, the more he was convinced that he was on the right track, The James Deane who had been murdered at, Southernstowe was the same man as the James Arradeane who had made a mysterious disappearance from Normansholt, some twenty years before; Mrs. Champernowne of Southernstowe was the same woman as Mrs. Arradeane of Normansholt. Everything seemed to indicate that Mrs. Champernowne or Mr. Alfred had shot Deane to keep his tongue quiet for ever. Now then — were John Hackdale and Bartlett accessories after the fact? — accessories in this way, that they had become possessed of knowledge about the murder and were keeping silence about it for the sake of the money they were undoubtedly getting from Mrs. Champernowne. It appeared to Simmons that the evidence against his brother was strong — strong enough already, he considered, to put John in the dock. This thing, this murder, happens, he mused; next day John Hackdale gets from Mrs. Champernowne an appointment which he certainly never dreamed of getting twenty-four hours previously — and now he handles a cheque for a thousand pounds. Clearly, John knew a lot — was probably being well paid, squared, bribed, call it what you like, to cancel a lot. But what about Bartlett? Where did he come in? Why was he present at Mrs. Champernowne’s, with John, when the cheque was drawn?
Bartlett was the puzzle — to Simmons. He tried to get hold of Bartlett, hoping by means of rum and conviviality to pump him. But Bartlett was not to be found in Southernstowe; he had, as a matter of fact, returned to his quarters at Portsmouth. Then Simmons vainly and unobtrusively tried to suck the brains of two or three of the policemen who did clerical work at the police station. He got nothing out of any of them — either they knew nothing whatever about Bartlett, or pretended that they didn’t. And then Simmons remembered that John had drawn his attention to the fact that there, in the open street, heading for the City Hall and — presumably — the police, were Bartlett, a stranger, and — Miss Pretty. So — Miss Pretty must know something about Bartlett. And Miss Pretty must be cajoled, or persuaded, or made, to tell him, Simmons Hackdale, what that something was.
He went to call again on Miss Pretty — after long and careful consideration of the best way to get round her. Miss Pretty, who was somewhat bored of an evening, despite the polite attentions of Shelmore and his aunt, and those of sundry towns folk who were anxious to do something for her, received him readily. In spite of his red hair, sharp nose, and close set eyes, she thought Simmons interesting, and she was sure he was no fool — moreover, she was not averse to male admiration, and she had seen from the first that Simmons, youthful as he was, had a keen eye for a pretty girl. When, therefore, he entered on this occasion, she had a smile for him.
“Found anything out?” she asked, when they were alone, and facing each other across the hearthrug.
Simmons smoothed the nap of the rakish hat which he nursed on his knee, and regarded Miss Pretty with sidelong glances.
“In cases like this, Miss Pretty,” he observed, “there’s a great deal of mystery! And one’s got to be cautious — even with principals. I might spoil everything by telling you — even you! — too much, too soon. And I’m a bit handicapped — through not knowing all I might know. I daresay, now, you could tell me something that would be very helpful to me?”
“What?” asked Miss Pretty.
Simmons suddenly made up his mind to be bold.
“What had that man James Bartlett to do with the watch business?” he asked. “He wasn’t called when Kight and Sanders were before the magistrates, but I’m sure he’d something to do with the affair, because I saw him with you and the jeweller to whom the watch was sold.”
“I don’t know that there’s any secret about it,” replied Miss Pretty, unconcernedly. “The police didn’t call Bartlett because it wasn’t necessary. But he was the man who gave information about the night porter and the chambermaid. He saw them go to the jeweller’s shop, found out what they were after, and told me.”
“So — you paid him that reward you offered?” asked Simmons.
“Certainly! He’d earned it,” answered Miss Pretty.
“And I daresay he’d like to earn the other rewards — especially the third one!” remarked Simmons. “He’d do with them!”
“I daresay,” assented Miss Pretty. “But he doesn’t know anything else — or I’m jolly well certain he’d have been after more money from me before now! No — Bartlett knows nothing more. I should know if he did!”
“You’re very anxious to have this mystery cleared up, Miss Pretty?” suggested Simmons. “You feel that it’s up to you to be — revenged, eh?”
“I don’t think it’s either a desire to be revenged, or a feeling of vindictiveness,” replied Miss Pretty. “What I feel is just this — I think it’s an abominable thing that a quiet, harmless, elderly man like my guardian should come into this town and be murdered in cold blood! — as I’m now sure he was. And I’m going to leave no stone unturned until I bring murderer to justice!”
“They say that murder will out,” murmured Simmons “But I don’t know! We hear — we lawyers — of some strange, unsolved mysteries. Miss Pretty. However, I’m doing my best to solve this. Make no pretence, Miss Pretty — the money you’ve offered as a reward would be highly useful to me. I’m the poor young man who’s got to make his way in the world, and, of course, I’ve got ambitions. I want to get on and to do well, so that I can have a home of my own and marry and—”
