The house in Kensington Palace Gardens was closed. One or two slouching fellows with big watch-chains, black hair and prominent noses, had called there soon after the news of the murder, to know if the master was really dead. The first gentleman of this class begged to look at the pictures in the dining-room. He had never looked closely into them; perhaps they would be sold now, and he might be a buyer. Several Stock Exchange men had called, partly out of curiosity, and partly in the hope that there might be some one at the house to tell them that those little claims of theirs for “carrying over” would be honourably settled; but not a soul called out of respect to the man, or from any deep-feeling of sorrow at his violent taking off. Certain tuft-hunters made inquiries, chiefly on account of the fellow being murdered in such aristocratic quarters, and a few “diners out” called to gossip with Tallant’s man about his affairs—how he would cut up—if it was true he had died not worth a penny, &c. &c. But there was speedily an end to all this. The servants had not received their wages for the past few months, and when they began to feel that there was no chance of legacies, and little hope even of their wages being paid, they began to disappear, and with them disappeared sundry articles of plate and wearing apparel, ornaments, jewels, china, and other miscellaneous things. If certain officers of the law had not been speedily placed in possession of the establishment, even the pictures, in which the Jews had exhibited such a lively interest, would soon have followed plate and jewellery.
After thundering at the great door (where Richard Tallant had stepped out into his carriage only a few mornings before) for a long time, it was opened by a lively-looking little man, with a woollen comforter round his neck, and a bowler hat upon his head. Mr. Bales understood his man immediately, and followed him into the kitchen, where he found another person of the bailiff profession, smoking a short black pipe and shuffling a pack of cards. They soon explained to Mr. Bales that they had nothing else to amuse them but cards. They had looked at everything in the house—at the pictures on the walls, the pictures in the books, and all the curious things up-stairs and down-stairs. They had searched every nook and corner to see if any money had been left about; but the servants had been before them in their investigations, and so they were unsuccessful.
The great house had a gloomy, melancholy appearance; blinds down, furniture in disorder, rooms dusty and unswept. After a brief conversation with the bailiff’s men, the detective hurried away to Westminster. The great brass plate was there as of old; the well-furnished offices; all that air of wealth and power which had been so attractive to the electioneering deputations in the late Christopher Tallant’s days. But with the managing director’s death, and the forced sale of his shares, the stock had fallen considerably in the market; and Mr. Bales found the directors discussing certain fraudulent bill transactions, which, through the managing director, involved the scheme in enormous liabilities. It was urged by the solicitor that the transactions were founded in fraud, and that the credit of the company was in no way compromised by them; but the board of directors were divided upon this, and the state of the concern, as the detective saw it, was all sixes and sevens. A rumour got abroad that it was to be wound up, and forthwith commenced all those intrigues which go on amongst a certain section of the city lawyers, who have recently made such heaps of money by winding-up shaky companies.
The most satisfactory part of the detective’s business in town, was the fulfilment of Lady Verner’s commission concerning Mrs. Dibble. He was instructed to give that lady a fifty-pound note and bring her back to Montem Castle.
He found Mrs. Dibble in the little house to which she had removed under the auspices of Lieutenant Somerton; but she was evidently in very low water. She had heard nothing of her husband’s crime.
“I have been exthpecting to have a letter from him for several days,” she said, “and it was my hope that I should have got the charge of a set of chambers, with Thomas for porter; but they say the panic has done away with all that; and me and Mrs. Robinson, we have been into the city together for days, and to see the beautiful places as is to let, it do make one’s heart ache, though there must have been swindling to build such grand houses and then to fail; and I often think it is a mercy my dear pa is not alive, for he would to a certainty have lost his money in building some of those palaces.”
“How long has your husband lived in Brazencrook?” Mr. Bales asked.
“Well, six months now, come December, though the family hath moved about a good deal, firtht from London, in Pall Mall, where one of the directors of the Meter Works first got him the situation, and then they went to Bath, and after to Brazencrook: it wath not my wish that Thomas should return to the menial employment of his bachelor days, but losing my money was a sore affliction, and Dibble, he thaith, ‘Maria, I shall soon save money, and when the family is once settled in a place, which they expect soon to be, you can come and live in that town, wherever it is, and have your own little house, and I will sleep at home,’ which, Mr. Bales, was all the recompense he could make for the mithfortunes which have come upon us, and the change in that position of society in which my poor dear pa brought me up, being, as I dare thay I have told you, a builder, and having large contracts, he could do.”
“Then you have not heard of Mr. Dibble’s recent efforts to restore a few hundred pounds of the lost money?” said the detective calmly, disregarding the injunctions of his prisoner.
“A few hundred pounds!” exclaimed Mrs. Dibble, bursting a hook-and-eye and making no effort to remedy the accident. “Hath he rethcued that thum from the fire? Well, so he ought; for what with one thing and another he thertainly hath been my ruin, for we should never have been in the panic at all but for him, though how that bank came to fail ith a mythtery to me which will never be cleared up.”