Volume Three—Chapter Twenty Four.
Starting on a Continental Tour.
Lewin Murdock is dead, and buried—has been for days. Not in the family vault of the Wynns, though he had the right of having his body there laid. But his widow, who had control of the interment, willed it otherwise. She has repugnance to opening that receptacle of the dead, holding a secret she may well dread disclosure of.
There was no very searching enquiry into the cause of the man’s death; none such seeming needed. A coroner’s inquest, true; but of the most perfunctory kind. Several habitués of the Welsh Harp; with its staff of waiters, testified to having seen him at that hostelry till a late hour of the night on which he was drowned, and far gone in drink. The landlord advanced the narrative a stage, by telling how he conveyed him to the boat, and delivered him to his boatman, Richard Dempsey—all true enough; while Coracle capped the story by a statement of circumstances, in part facts, but the major part fictitious:—how the inebriate gentleman, after lying a while quiet at the bottom of the skiff, suddenly sprung upon his feet, and staggering excitedly about, capsized the craft, spilling both into the water!
Some corroboration of this, in the boat having been found floating keel upwards, and the boatman arriving home at Llangorren soaking wet. To his having been in this condition several of the Court domestics, at the time called out of their beds, with purpose prepense, were able to bear witness. But Dempsey’s testimony is further strengthened, even to confirmation, by himself having since taken to bed, where he now lies dangerously ill of a fever, the result of a cold caught from that chilling douche.
In this latest inquest the finding of the jury is set forth in two simple words, “Drowned accidentally.” No suspicion attaches to any one; and his widow, now wearing the weeds of sombre hue, sorrows profoundly.
But her grief is great only in the eyes of the outside world, and the presence of the Llangorren domestics. Alone within her chamber she shows little signs of sorrow; and if possible less when Gregoire Rogier is her companion; which he almost constantly is. If more than half his time at the Court while Lewin Murdock was alive, he is now there nearly the whole of it. No longer as a guest, but as much its master as she is its mistress! For that, matter indeed more; if inference may be drawn from a dialogue occurring between them some time after her husband’s death.
They are in the library, where there is a strong chest, devoted to the safe keeping of legal documents, wills, leases, and the like—all the paraphernalia of papers relating to the administration of the estate.
Rogier is at a table upon which many of these lie, with writing materials besides. A sheet of foolscap is before him, on which he has just scribbled the rough copy of an advertisement intended to be sent to several newspapers.
“I think this will do,” he says to the widow, who, in an easy chair drawn up in front of the fire, is sipping Chartreuse, and smoking paper cigarettes. “Shall I read it to you?”
“No. I don’t want to be bothered with the thing in detail. Enough, if you let me hear its general purport.”
He gives her this in briefest epitome:—
“The Llangorren estates to be sold by public auction, with all the appurtenances, mansion, park, ornamental grounds, home and out farms, manorial rights, presentation to church living, etc, etc.”
“Très bien! Have you put down the date? It should be soon.”
“You’re right, chérie. Should, and must be. So soon, I fear we won’t realise three-fourths of the value. But there’s no help for it, with the ugly thing threatening—hanging over our necks like a very sword of Damocles.”
“You mean the tongue of le braconnier?”
She has reason to dread it.
“No I don’t; not in the slightest. There’s a sickle too near his own—in the hands of the reaper, Death.”
“He’s dying, then?”
She speaks with an earnestness in which there is no feeling of compassion, but the very reverse.
“He is,” the other answers, in like unpitying tone; “I’ve just come from his bedside.”
“From the cold he caught that night, I suppose?”
“Yes; that’s partly the cause. But,” he adds, with a diabolical grin, “more the medicine he has taken for it.”
“What mean you, Gregoire?”
“Only that Monsieur Dick has been delirious, and I saw danger in it. He was talking too wildly.”
“You’ve done something to keep him quiet?”
“I have.”
“What?”
“Given him a sleeping draught.”
“But he’ll wake up again; and then—”
“Then I’ll administer another dose of the anodyne.”
“What sort of anodyne?”
“A hypodermic.”
“Hypodermic! I’ve never heard of the thing; not even the name!”
“A wonderful cure it is—for noisy tongues!”
“You excite one’s curiosity. Tell me something of its nature?”
“Oh, it’s very simple; exceedingly so. Only a drop of liquid introduced into the blood; not in the common roundabout way, by pouring down the throat, but direct injection into the veins. The process in itself is easy enough, as every medical practitioner knows. The skill consists in the kind of liquid to be injected. That’s one of the occult sciences I learnt in Italy, land of Lucrezia and Tophana; where such branches of knowledge still flourish. Elsewhere it’s not much known, and perhaps it’s well it isn’t; or there might be more widowers, with a still larger proportion of widows.”
“Poison!” she exclaims involuntarily, adding, in a timid whisper, “Was it, Gregoire?”
“Poison!” he echoes, protestingly. “That’s too plain a word, and the idea it conveys too vulgar, for such a delicate scientific operation as that I’ve performed. Possibly, in Monsieur Coracle’s case the effect will be somewhat similar; but not the after symptoms. If I haven’t made miscalculation as to quantity, ere three days are over it will send him to his eternal sleep; and I’ll defy all the medical experts in England to detect traces of poison in him. So don’t enquire further, chérie. Be satisfied to know the hypodermic will do you a service. And,” he adds, with sardonic smile, “grateful if it be never given to yourself.”
She starts, recoiling in horror. Not at the repulsive confessions she has listened to, but more through personal fear. Though herself steeped in crime, he beside her seems its very incarnation! She has long known him morally capable of anything, and now fancies he may have the power of the famed basilisk to strike her dead with a glance of his eyes!
“Bah!” he exclaims, observing her trepidation, but pretending to construe it otherwise. “Why all this emotion about such a misérable? He’ll have no widow to lament him—inconsolable like yourself. Ha! ha! Besides, for our safety—both of us—his death is as much needed as was the other. After killing the bird that threatened to devour our crops, it would be blind buffoonery to keep the scarecrow standing. I only wish, there were nothing but he between us, and complete security.”
“But is there still?” she asks, her alarm taking a new turn, as she observes a slight shade of apprehension pass over his face.
“Certainly there is.”
“What?”
“That little convent matter.”
“Mon Dieu! I supposed it arranged beyond the possibility of danger.”
“Probability is the word you mean. In this sweet world there’s nothing sure except money—that, too, in hard cash coin. Even at the best we’ll have to sacrifice a large slice of the estate to satisfy the greed of those who have assisted us—Messieurs les Jesuites. If I could only, as by some magician’s wand, convert these clods of Herefordshire into a portable shape, I’d cheat them yet; as I’ve done already, in making them believe me one of their most ardent doctrinaires. Then, chère amie, we could at once move from Llangorren Court to a palace by some Lake of Como, glassing softest skies, with whispering myrtles, and all the other fal-lals, by which Monsieur Bulwer’s sham prince humbugged the Lyonese shopkeeper’s daughter. Ha! ha! ha!”
“But why can’t it be done?”
“Ah! There the word impossible, if you like. What! Convert a landed estate of several thousand acres into cash, presto-instanter, as though one were but selling a flock of sheep! The thing can’t be accomplished anywhere; least of all in this slow-moving Angleterre, where men look at their money twice—twenty times—before parting with it. Even a mortgage couldn’t be managed for weeks—may be months—without losing quite the moiety of value. But a bona fide sale, for which we must wait, and with that cloud hanging over us! Oh! it’s damnable. The thing’s been a blunder from beginning to end; all through the squeamishness of Monsieur, votre mari. Had he agreed to what I first proposed, and done with Mademoiselle, what should have been done, he might himself still—The simpleton, sot—soft heart, and softer head! Well; it’s of no use reviling him now. He paid the forfeit for being a fool. And ’twill do no good our giving way to apprehensions, that after all may turn out shadows, however dark. In the end everything may go right, and we can make our midnight flitting in a quiet, comfortable way. But what a flutter there’ll be among my flock at the Rugg’s Ferry Chapel, when they wake up some fine morning, and rub their eyes—only to see that their good shepherd has forsaken them! A comical scene, of which I’d like being a spectator. Ha! ha! ha!”
She joins him in the laugh, for the sally is irresistible. And while they are still ha-ha-ing, a touch at the door tells of a servant seeking admittance.
It is the butler who presents himself, salver in hand, on which rests a chrome-coloured envelope—at a glance seen to be a telegraphic despatch.
It bears the address “Rev. Gregoire Rogier, Rugg’s Ferry, Herefordshire,” and when opened the telegram is seen to have been sent from Folkestone. Its wording is:—
“The bird has escaped from its cage. Prenez garde!”
Well for the pseudo-priest, and his chère amie, that before they read it, the butler had left the room. For though figurative the form of expression, and cabalistic the words, both man and woman seem instantly to comprehend them. And with such comprehension, as almost to drive them distracted! He is silent, as if struck dumb, his face showing blanched and bloodless; while she utters a shriek, half terrified, half in frenzied anger!
It is the last loud cry, or word, to which she gives utterance at Llangorren. And no longer there speaks the priest loudly, or authoritatively. The after hours of that night are spent by both of them, not as the owners of the house, but burglars in the act of breaking it!
Up till the hour of dawn, the two might be seen silently flitting from room to room—attended only by Clarisse, who carries the candle—ransacking drawers and secretaires, selecting articles of bijouterie and vertu, of little weight but large value, and packing them in trunks and travelling bags. All of which, under the grey light of morning are taken to the nearest railway station in one of the Court carriages—a large drag-barouche—inside which ride Rogier and Madame Murdock veuve; her femme de chambre having a seat beside the coachman, who has been told they are starting on a continental tour.
And so were they; but it was a tour from which they never returned. Instead, it was extended to a greater distance than they themselves designed, and in a direction neither dreamt of. Since their career, after a years interval, ended in deportation to Cayenne, for some crime committed by them in the South of France. So said the Semaphore of Marseilles.