"There is the Hotel de Belle Vue, the Hotel du Faucon, the Hotel Victoria, the Hotel Schweizerhof. There is the Hotel schrodel, the Hotel Schneider, the Pension Simkin."
Fanny as yet had no other suspicion than that the doctor had accidentally written a wrong name. Her mistress was at Berne: she would be in one of the hotels. Berne is not a large place. Very good; she would go round to the hotels and inquire. She did so. There are not, in fact, more than half a dozen hotels in Berne where an English lady could possibly stay. Fanny went to every one of these. No one had heard of any such lady: they showed her the lists of their visitors. She inquired at the post-office. No lady of that name had asked for letters. She asked if there were any pensions, and went round them all—uselessly.
No other conclusion was possible. The doctor had deceived her wilfully. To get her out of the way he sent her to Berne. He would have sent her to Jericho if her purse had been long enough to pay the fare. She was tricked.
She counted her money. There was exactly twenty-eight shillings and tenpence in her purse.
She went back to the cheapest (and dirtiest) of the pensions she had visited. She stated her case—she had missed milady her mistress—she must stay until she should receive orders to go on, and money—would they take her in until one or the other arrived? Certainly. They would take her in, at five francs a day, payable every morning in advance.
She made a little calculation—she had twenty-eight and tenpence; exactly thirty-five francs—enough for seven days. If she wrote to Mrs. Vimpany at once she could get an answer in five days.
She accepted the offer, paid her five shillings, was shown into a room, and was informed that the dinner was served at six o'clock.
Very good. Here she could rest, at any rate, and think what was to be done. And first she wrote two letters—one to Mrs. Vimpany and one to Mr. Mountjoy.
In both of these letters she told exactly what she had found: neither Lord Harry nor his wife at the cottage, the place vacated, and the doctor on the point of going away. In both letters she told how she had been sent all the way into Switzerland on a fool's errand, and now found herself planted there without the means of getting home. In the letter to Mrs. Vimpany she added the remarkable detail that the man whom she had seen on the Thursday morning apparently dead, whose actual poisoning she thought she had witnessed, was reported on the Saturday to have walked out of the cottage, carrying his things, if he had any, and proposing to make his way to London in order to find out his old nurse. "Make what you can out of that," she said. "For my own part, I understand nothing."
In the letter which she wrote to Mr. Mountjoy she added a petition that he would send her money to bring her home. This, she said, her mistress she knew would willingly defray.