'What good? I must know; I must make sure! Supposing it is Marie—but it might be another.'
'The body is buried.'
'Yes; but I would get an order for its exhumation. It was buried with a view to disinterment should the man whose wife was to join him at Monte Video arrive in Cape Town.'
I had heard Mrs. Burke talk of some of the shops Marie had completed her outfit at. Her old nurse had herself attended her in most of her shopping excursions before the sailing of the ship, and after exchanging a few further sentences with my father, I left the bank, called a cab, and was driven to a dressmaker's near Cavendish Square.
Here, however, I could not learn that Marie had ordered a serge dress; but on inquiring at a shop in Regent Street, I discovered, with much pains—they were very busy and very slow—that Miss Otway had, on a day towards the close of March, purchased a jacket trimmed with fur; the fur was described; and certainly the 'garment,' as the shopman called it, corresponded with the brief description of the jacket that had been found on the body of the woman.
I could recollect no other shops; but hoped that Sir Mortimer might be able to tell me if a serge gown had been included in Marie's outfit. This should have been, and no doubt was, known to Marie's maid. But the girl, on the departure of Miss Otway, had gone, I had some recollection of hearing, with a family to Germany.
In this same day I drove to the offices of Messrs. Butcher and Hobbs, and had scarcely entered the place when Wall came in, greatly to my satisfaction, as I particularly desired his opinion. Both partners were present, and on my showing them the Cape newspaper they called Wall to us and we thoroughly talked the matter over. To the seaman, who was somewhat illiterate, I read and re-read the newspaper account.
'It's wonderful!' he exclaimed. 'Most sartinly it answers to the young lady. I've heered of females lying afloat like that. 'Taint so long ago that a woman was picked up alive arter washing about for thirty-six hours on her back.'
'But how can the body be Miss Otway's?' said Mr. Butcher, 'if the master of a schooner recognises it as a Mrs. Ollier's?'