The Mysteries of London, v. 4/4

by George W. M. Reynolds

“That will do,” said the learned gentleman, who forthwith proceeded to call the driver of the cab which Mrs. Fitzhardinge and Perdita had taken on the night in question. “At what hour,” he demanded, “did the prisoner and the young lady who accompanied her hire your vehicle?”

“It was twelve o’clock,” replied the man. “I am sure it was precisely midnight, because I had just left a public-house when I was hailed by the ladies.”

This witness was ordered to stand down; and the landlady of the house in Suffolk-street was called next. She deposed that she was sitting up for her lodgers on the night in question, and that they reached home at twenty minutes to one. She was certain as to the correctness of her statement, because she looked at the clock in the passage as she passed by to let the ladies in. There was nothing confused in their manner. She attended them to the door of their bed-chamber, and did not observe that their shoes were at all soiled with damp clay. She was convinced that they did not leave the house again that night. The ladies had always appeared to have plenty of money from the very day they entered her dwelling.

The learned counsel then proceeded to address the magistrate on behalf of Mrs. Fitzhardinge. He began by remarking on the meagre nature of the evidence against her—the mere fact that she and the young lady who was with her, and who was her daughter, were the last persons seen in the company of the murdered man;—and he complained bitterly that his client should have been arrested—ignominiously brought back to London—and forced through the ordeal of a public examination on such a shallow pretence. Every circumstance, adduced that morning—every feature of the evidence, tended only to exculpate the prisoner at the bar. In the first place, it was clear, from the testimony recorded, that the prisoner and her daughter had quitted the house of the deceased at half-past eleven—had taken a cab at the Angel at midnight—and had driven straight home, reaching Suffolk-street at twenty minutes to one. Now the distance from the scene of the murder to the Angel would require rapid walking for two females to accomplish in half an hour, and leave not an instant to accomplish the crime before they set out, much less to cut away the door-post, ransack the deceased’s boxes, and so forth. From the Angel they were traced home, and they did not leave the house again that night. Now, the evidence of the inspector of police tended, to show incontestibly that the murder had been perpetrated by a man. He (the learned counsel) was instructed to state that Mrs. Fitzhardinge and her daughter had called upon Mr. Percival for the purpose of obtaining the discount of a bill; that he did discount the document, and that he left his cash-box open on the table during the negotiation. It was presumable that some man, who probably knew the premises well, had clambered up against the back-window, had beheld the cash-box and its contents, and, during the night, had perpetrated the bloody deed. The speedy departure of the prisoner, her daughter, and the gentleman who had been alluded to, on the morning following that night of the crime, was occasioned by the fact that the young people contemplated a matrimonial alliance unknown to the gentleman’s parents; and the means of travelling having been procured by the discount already mentioned, there was no necessity to delay the departure for Paris any longer. This was the simple and plain explanation of the suddenly undertaken journey and the precipitate decampment from Suffolk-street. But the ladies did not act as if they had committed a crime, nor their male companion as if he had been an accomplice in one; for they travelled by post-chaise instead of by rail, to Dover; and there they waited quietly until the steam-packet left next morning, instead of hiring some small craft, as they might have done, to waft them across, the same night of their arrival, to Calais. Again, if the prisoner and her daughter had even entertained such a fearful idea as that of depriving the miser of his life for the sake of his gold, they would have had a better opportunity of carrying it into execution while alone with him in his back parlour, than by the roundabout manner suggested by the nature of the charge against Mrs. Fitzhardinge. During the short time the two ladies had dwelt at the lodgings in Suffolk-street they had not been embarrassed for want of funds; nor even when they sought the aid of the discounter was their need so pressing, much less was it of that desperate nature which could alone prompt to such a dreadful alternative as murder. The reason why the assistance of the deceased was sought at all, could be readily explained by the avowal that the bill to be discounted was not a security which any other class of money-lenders would entertain: it was the promissory note of a young gentleman raising cash upon his expectations, and therefore of a character suiting only the purposes of a discounter who took an amount of interest proportionate to the risk which he ran. In conclusion, the learned gentleman insisted that there was not a shadow of evidence against his client.

The magistrate acquiesced in this view of the case, and discharged Mrs. Fitzhardinge forthwith. She was, however, compelled to repair from the Marylebone Police-court to the tavern where the coroner was holding an adjourned inquest upon the body; but the result of her examination before the magistrate being communicated to that functionary, she was not detained on his authority. A verdict of “Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown” was returned, and the old woman once more found herself at liberty.

The evidence given by the inspector of police at the Marylebone court, and repeated in the presence of the coroner, had excited certain suspicions in the mind of Mrs. Fitzhardinge; and the more she pondered upon the subject—the more she reflected upon the occurrences at Percival’s house on the night of the murder, and the details of the manner in which the deed itself must have been accomplished, the more confident did she become that she could name the assassin.

Had circumstances permitted, she would have remained in London to ferret out the individual whom she thus associated with the crime: but she could not now spare the time; for she was anxious to proceed, without delay, to Paris, and join her daughter and Charles Hatfield, who, she had no doubt, had reached that capital in safety.

Her examination at the police-court, and her attendance at the inquest, had however consumed the entire day; and she therefore waited until the next morning, when she departed by the first train for Folkestone, at which town she arrived in time to embark on board a steamer for Boulogne.

In order that we may accurately show the precise time when Mrs. Fitzhardinge reached Paris, we must request our readers to observe, that on the same day that Charles and Perdita crossed the water to Calais, the old woman was borne back to London by the constables: on the following day, while they were journeying towards the French capital, she was undergoing the examination already recorded;—on the third day, when they were married at the British Ambassador’s chapel, she was hastening to join them;—and it was, therefore, in the after-part of the fourth day, being the one on which the separation of Charles and her daughter had occurred, that Mrs. Fitzhardinge entered Paris in the diligence, or stage-coach—thoroughly wearied out by the fatigue, annoyance, and excitement she had lately undergone.

The old woman repaired to an hotel in the immediate neighbourhood of the office where the coach stopped; and, having changed her apparel, drove forthwith in a hackney vehicle to the British Embassy: for it must be remembered that she was entirely ignorant of every thing that had taken place in respect to her daughter and Charles since she had been separated from them, and knew not where they had put up in Paris. Indeed, she even had her misgivings whether they were in the French capital at all, or whether they might not have set out upon some tour immediately after their marriage; for that they were already united in matrimonial bonds, she had no doubt. That they had returned to Dover to look for her, she did not flatter herself; inasmuch as she had latterly seen enough of Perdita’s altered disposition to be fully aware that all maternal authority or filial affection were matters which the young lady was more inclined to treat with contempt than with serious consideration. But Mrs. Fitzhardinge was resolved not to be thrust aside without an effort to regain the maternal authority: as for the filial affection, her soul—tanned, hardened, rendered rough and inaccessible, and with all its best feelings irremediably blunted by the incidents of her stormy life—her soul, we say, experienced but a slight pang at the idea of having to renounce that devotedness which it is usually a mother’s joy and delight to receive at the hands of a daughter.