Page:Once a Week Jun to Dec 1864.pdf/284

 27, 1864.] seven or eight years had not sat lightly, and she looked at least sixty-six. “I’ve never liked Mr. Carlton since, I know that. It might have took away our characters, you know, ma'am.”

Mrs. Smith did not appear to know anything of the sort, or even to hear the delicate allusion. She had risen from her seat to fill the teapot from the kettle on the fire; but she put it down again in haste.

“It was just the clue I wanted!” she exclaimed. “Just the clue. I thought it so strange that he had not been here; so strange, so strange! It was more unaccountable to me than all the rest.”

“What do you mean?” exclaimed the little shrivelled woman, staring at the evident excitement.

“I mean her husband. That man concealed on the stairs must have been her husband.”

“What, Mr. Crane?”

“Of course it was. He killed her. I feel as certain of it as if I had seen it done. How came that fat nurse, Pepperfly, not to tell me this?”

“Mother Pepperfly don’t believe in it,” said Mrs. Gould. “She’s as certain as I be, that no man was there.”

“You might have told me this,” resumed Mrs. Smith, turning to Judith. “Why, it throws more light upon the subject than all the rest put together.”

“I have not had much opportunity of telling you anything,” answered Judith, who had sat in her usual silent fashion, sipping the hot tea and listening to the other two. “But I don’t believe it, either, for the matter of that.”

“Believe what?”

“That any man was concealed on the stairs.”

“But—I can’t understand,” cried Mrs. Smith. “Did Mr. Carlton not see one there?”

“He fancied so at the moment. But he came to the conclusion afterwards that the moonlight had deceived him.”

“And it never was followed up?”

“Oh dear yes,” said Judith. “The police sought after the man for a long while, and could never find him.”

“And they came to think at last, ma'am—as everybody else of sense had thought at the time—that there wasn’t no man there,” put in the little widow.

“Then I can tell them to the contrary,” was Mrs. Smith’s emphatic rejoinder. “That man was poor Mrs. Crane’s husband. I happen to know so much.”

Little Mrs. Gould was startled at the words. Judith arrested the piece of bread-and-butter she was about to put into her mouth, and gazed in astonishment.

“Yes,” continued Mrs. Smith, “it must have been him. I know—I feel that it was him. He was at South Wennock: I know so much as that.”

“You know this?” cried the other two in a breath.

“I do. I know that Mrs. Crane’s husband was at South Wennock.”

“And where is he now, ma'am?” asked the widow.

“Ah, where indeed!” was the answer given in an angry tone. “I have never heard of him since in all these years. I came down here now to find out what I could about him—and her.”

“It’s what old Pepperfly told me this morning, ma'am; she said she was sure you hadn’t come for nothing else. I know what I should have done in your place,” added the widow. “I should have declared myself to the police the minute I come, and got them to rake up the search again. You see there was nobody here belonging to the poor lady at the time, and it made the police careless over it —least ways, a many folks have held that opinion. All I can say is, that if there was any Mr. Crane on the stairs that night, he must have stole in surreptitious down the drawing-room chimbley [sic], for he never come in at the straightforward door.”

“There’s time enough yet to declare my business to the police,” was Mrs. Smith’s answer. “I have preferred to remain quiet, and feel my way. Not but that one or two have suspected who I was. Judith, here, for one; she remembered me at once.”

“And Mother Pepperfly for another,” remarked the widow, handing up her cup for some more tea.

“No, she did not; at first she did not recollect me at all,” said Mrs. Smith, as she filled it. “I think Mr. Carlton suspects who I am.”

Judith lifted her eyes. “Why do you think so?”

“Because he asked so many questions when I first came—who I was, and what I was, and all the rest of it; I believe he’d have gone on asking till now if I had not put him down. And one day I caught him looking curiously into my drawers; he said he was searching for rag for my child’s knee; but I have always thought he was looking to see what he could find.”

“Why! Mr. Carlton met you that time at the station at Great Wennock!” exclaimed Mrs. Gould, the event occurring to her memory. “I remember it came out at the inquest.”