“Very well,” said she; “then in that case you needn’t go up now. You will be able to make the examination together. Eight o’clock, sharp, remember.”
With this she re-conducted me along the passage and—I had almost said ejected me; but she sped the parting guest with a business-like directness that was perhaps accounted for by the presence opposite the door of one of those grim parcels-delivery vans in which undertakers distribute their wares, and from which a rough-looking coffin was at the moment being hoisted out by two men.
The extraordinary promptitude of this proceeding so impressed me that I remarked: “They haven’t been long making the coffin.”
“They didn’t have to make it,” she replied. “I ordered it a month ago. It’s no use leaving things to the last moment.”
I turned away with somewhat mixed feelings. There was certainly a horrible efficiency about this woman. Executrix, indeed! Her promptness in carrying out the provisions of the will was positively appalling. She must have written to Cropper before the breath was fairly out of poor Bendelow’s body, but her forethought in the matter of the coffin fairly made my flesh creep.
Dr. Cornish made no difficulty about taking over the evening consultations, in fact he had intended to do so in any case. Accordingly, after a rather early dinner, I made my way in leisurely fashion back to Hoxton, where, after all, I arrived fully ten minutes too soon. I realized my prematureness when I halted at the corner of Market-street to look at my watch; and as ten additional minutes of Mrs. Morris’s society offered no allurement, I was about to turn back and fill up the time with a short walk when my attention was arrested by a mast which had just appeared above the wall at the end of the street. With its black-painted truck and halyard blocks and its long tricolour pennant, it looked like the mast of a Dutch schuyt or galliot, but I could hardly believe it possible that such a craft could make its appearance in the heart of London. All agog with curiosity, I hurried up the street and looked over the wall at the canal below; and there, sure enough, she was—a big Dutch sloop, broad-bosomed, massive, and mediæval, just such a craft as one may see in the pictures of old Vandervelde, painted when Charles the Second was king.
I leaned on the low wall and watched her with delighted interest as she crawled forward slowly to her berth, bringing with her, as it seemed, a breath of the distant sea and the echo of the surf, murmuring on sandy beaches. I noted appreciatively her old-world air, her antique build, her gay and spotless paint, and the muslin curtains in the little windows of her deck-house, and was, in fact, so absorbed in watching her that the late Simon Bendelow had passed completely out of my mind. Suddenly, however, the chiming of a clock recalled me to my present business. With a hasty glance at my watch I tore myself away reluctantly, darted across the street, and gave a vigorous pull at the bell.
Dr. Cropper had not yet arrived, but the deceased had not been entirely neglected, for when I had spent some five minutes staring inquisitively about the drawing-room into which Mrs. Morris had shown me, that lady returned, accompanied by two other ladies, whom she introduced to me somewhat informally by the names of Miss Dewsnep and Miss Bonington respectively. I recognized the names as those of the two witnesses to the will and inspected them with furtive curiosity, though, indeed, they were quite unremarkable excepting as typical specimens of the genus elderly spinster.
“Poor Mr. Bendelow!” murmured Miss Dewsnep, shaking her head and causing an artificial cherry on her bonnet to waggle idiotically. “How beautiful he looks in his coffin!”
She looked at me as if for confirmation, so that I was fain to admit that his beauty in this new setting had not yet been revealed to me.