A woman's debt

by William Le Queux

The Larchesters left at the end of four years; the Buckleys remained behind. The soil suited Mr. Buckley’s gardening propensities, and so long as he could grow excellent peas and beans he had no desire to shift his quarters.

Six months later death claimed the old man. His demise was caused by his devotion to his hobby. He would insist on digging the ground in a pouring rain, with the result that he caught a violent chill, pneumonia supervened and carried him off within the week.

As soon as he was buried the daughter shook the dust of Brinkstone off her feet; she had been profoundly unhappy ever since the Larchesters had left.

“She was civil enough to all the folk around, but she had made no friend in the place except Miss Lettice,” the old man explained. “So we didn’t hear anything of her after she left any more than we did of the other two. But I did hear from a theatrical gentleman who stayed here for a few days a couple of years later, and with whom I used to gossip a bit, as I’ve done with you, sir, that there was a Miss Alma Buckley on the stage, and from the description he gave me of her I should say it was the same. I heard from Mr. Larchester that she was very fond of play-acting, but that the old man was a bit strict in his notions, a regular attendant at church and all that sort of thing, and he kept a pretty tight hand on her.”

Sellars pigeon-holed the name in his memory. This Alma Buckley might be useful to him if he could get hold of her. On the stage, according to Dobbs—well, she could not be a particularly well-known actress, or he would have heard of her, as he was a great theatre-goer. And besides, all this happened a great many years ago; it was very unlikely she was still pursuing her theatrical career.

“Now tell me, Dobbs, after the Larchesters left, do you know if the friendship was kept up at all—I mean, of course, in the way of correspondence?”

Mr. Dobbs answered this question in the affirmative. Mrs. Simpson, the then landlady, used to chat a little with Alma Buckley when they met in the village, and he distinctly remembered being told some three months after the Larchesters had left, that at one of these meetings the girl had mentioned she had heard from her friend, and that Mr. Larchester was going from bad to worse, and that things were growing very hard for them, in a pecuniary sense.

Sellars went back to London and, of course, paid an early visit to the detective. It had been arranged that he should not write during his absence, but deliver his news in one budget on his return.

“Well, you’ve got some very important information,” said Lane when the young man had finished. “Strange that I should have been suspicious of that nephew story almost from the beginning. Now, it is evident there is some mystery in which both Mrs. Morrice and Sir George are concerned, which has led them to concoct this lying tale. And this young Brookes, if he is not the relation it is pretended he is, who and what the deuce is he?”

“That’s what we’ve got to find out,” said Sellars. “This Mrs. Morrice is evidently a queer fish, and, of course, her pretended brother-in-law is another. I suppose Morrice really knows very little about her; they say he married her abroad, and, of course, she could fudge up any tale, mixing up truth and fiction as she liked.”