“Of course you have, Mr. Radcliffe. Or let Dale send in the account to me, if you prefer it.”
He went off without another word, his head down; his thick stick held over his shoulder. Tho Squire rubbed his face, and wondered what on earth was the next thing to do in this unhappy crisis.
Annet was in Wales with her mother at some seaside place. It would be a dreadful shock to her. Getting the address from David Skate, the Squire wrote to break it to them in the best manner he could. But now, a mischance happened to that letter. Welsh names are difficult to spell; the pater’s pen put L for Y, or X for Z, something of that sort; and the letter went to a wrong town altogether, and finally came back to him unopened. Stephen Radcliffe had returned then.
Stephen did not keep his word, instead of bringing Frank down, he left him in London in Finchley Cemetery. “The heat of the weather,” he pleaded by way of excuse when the Squire blew him up. “There was some delay; an inquest, and all that; and unless we’d gone to the expense of lead, it couldn’t be done; Dale said so. What does it signify? He’ll lie as quiet there as he would here.”
“And was it the heart that was wrong?” asked the pater.
“No. It was what they called ‘effusion on the brain,’” replied Stephen. “Dale says it’s rather a common case with lunatics, but he never feared it for Frank.”
“It is distressing to think his poor wife did not see him. Quite a misfortune.”
“Well, we can’t help it: it was no fault of ours,” retorted Stephen: who had actually had the decency to put himself into a semblance of mourning. “The world ’ud go on differently for many of us, Squire, if we could foresee things.”
And that was the end of Francis Radcliffe!
“Finchley Cemetery!” exclaimed Mr. Brandon, when he heard it. “That Stephen Radcliffe has been at his stingy tricks again. You can bury people for next to nothing there.”