Somehow; but how? The poor little hoard which I had saved from my quarterly allowances lay locked up on Beechwood Hill in my box beneath my bed. By what conceivable means could I regain possession of it, unknown to Mrs Bowater?
Conscience muttered harsh words in my ear as I sat there holding that cold, limp hand with mine, while these inward schemings shuttled softly to and fro.
When my patient had fallen asleep, I got downstairs again—a more resolute, if not a better woman. Removing latch and box keys from their ribbon round my neck, I enclosed them in an envelope with a letter:—
"Dear Mr. Anon,—I want you, please, to help me. The large one of these two keys unlocks my little house door: the smaller one a box under my bed. Would you please let yourself in at Mrs Bowater's to-morrow evening when it's dark—there will be nobody there—take out Twenty Pounds which you will find in the box, and send them to Miss Fanny Bowater, the Crown and Anchor Hotel, B——. I will thank you when I come.
"Believe me, yours very sincerely,
"M. M."
It is curious. Many a false, pandering word had sprung to my tongue when I was concocting this letter in my mind beside Mrs Bowater's bed, and even with Mrs Petrie's stubby, ink-corroded pen in my hand. Yet some last shred of honesty compelled me to be brief and frigid. I was simply determined to be utterly open with him, even though I seemed to myself like the dark picture of a man in a bog struggling to grope his way out. I dipped my fingers into a vase of wallflowers, wetted the gum, sealed down the envelope, and wrote on it this address: Mr ——, Lodging at a cottage near the Farm, North-west of Wanderslore, Beechwood, Kent. And I prayed heaven for its safe delivery.
For Fanny no words would come—nothing but a mere bare promise that I would help her as soon as I could—an idiot's message. The next three days were an almost insupportable solitude. From Mr Anon no answer could be expected, since in my haste I had forgotten to give him Mrs Petrie's address. I brooded in horror of what the failure of my letter to reach him might entail. I shared Fanny's damnation. Wherever I went, a silent Mr Crimble dogged my footsteps. Meanwhile, Mrs Bowater's newspaper, I discovered, lay concealed beneath her pillow.
At length I could bear myself no longer, and standing beside her bed, asked if I might read it. Until that moment we had neither of us even referred to the subject. Propped up on her pillows, her long face looking a strange colour against their whiteness, she considered my request.
"Well, miss," she said at last, "you know too much to know no more."
I spread out the creased sheets on the worn carpet, and read slowly the smudged, matter-of-fact account from beginning to end. There were passages in it that imprinted themselves on my memory like a photograph. Mr Crimble had taken the evening Service that last day looking "ill and worn, though never in what may be described as robust health, owing to his indefatigable devotion to his ecclesiastical and parochial duties." The Service over, and the scanty congregation dispersed, he had sate alone in the vestry for so unusual a time that the verger of St Peter's, a Mr Soames, anxious to get home to his supper, had at length looked in on him at the door, to ask if his services were required any further. Mr Crimble had "raised his head as if startled," and "had smiled in the negative," and then, "closing the eastern door behind him," had "hastened" out of the church. No other human eye had encountered him until he was found at 11.27 p.m. in an outhouse at the foot of his mother's garden. "The head of the unfortunate gentleman was wellnigh severed from the body." "He was an only son, and was in his twenty-ninth year. Universal sympathy will be extended by all to the aged lady who is prostrated by this tragic occurrence."
Propped on my hands and knees, fearful that Mrs Bowater might interrupt me before I was prepared, I stared fixedly at the newspaper. I understood all that it said, yet it was as strange to me as if it had been written in Hebrew. I had seen, I had known, Mr Crimble. Who, then, was this? My throat drew together as I turned my head a little and managed to inquire, "What is an inquest, Mrs Bowater?"