Bleak House by Charles Dickens (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📖

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“Now, you see,” Mr. Bucket proceeds approvingly, “you’re

comfortable and conducting yourself as I should expect a foreign

young woman of your sense to do. So I’ll give you a piece of

advice, and it’s this, don’t you talk too much. You’re not

expected to say anything here, and you can’t keep too quiet a

tongue in your head. In short, the less you PARLAY, the better,

you know.” Mr. Bucket is very complacent over this French

explanation.

 

Mademoiselle, with that tigerish expansion of the mouth and her

black eyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a

rigid state, with her hands clenched—and her feet too, one might

suppose—muttering, “Oh, you Bucket, you are a devil!”

 

“Now, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” says Mr. Bucket, and from

this time forth the finger never rests, “this young woman, my

lodger, was her ladyship’s maid at the time I have mentioned to

you; and this young woman, besides being extraordinary vehement and

passionate against her ladyship after being discharged—”

 

“Lie!” cries mademoiselle. “I discharge myself.”

 

“Now, why don’t you take my advice?” returns Mr. Bucket in an

impressive, almost in an imploring, tone. “I’m surprised at the

indiscreetness you commit. You’ll say something that’ll be used

against you, you know. You’re sure to come to it. Never you mind

what I say till it’s given in evidence. It is not addressed to

you.”

 

“Discharge, too,” cries mademoiselle furiously, “by her ladyship!

Eh, my faith, a pretty ladyship! Why, I r-r-r-ruin my character by

remaining with a ladyship so infame!”

 

“Upon my soul I wonder at you!” Mr. Bucket remonstrates. “I

thought the French were a polite nation, I did, really. Yet to

hear a female going on like that before Sir Leicester Dedlock,

Baronet!”

 

“He is a poor abused!” cries mademoiselle. “I spit upon his house,

upon his name, upon his imbecility,” all of which she makes the

carpet represent. “Oh, that he is a great man! Oh, yes, superb!

Oh, heaven! Bah!”

 

“Well, Sir Leicester Dedlock,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, “this

intemperate foreigner also angrily took it into her head that she

had established a claim upon Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, by

attending on the occasion I told you of at his chambers, though she

was liberally paid for her time and trouble.”

 

“Lie!” cries mademoiselle. “I ref-use his money all togezzer.”

 

“If you WILL PARLAY, you know,” says Mr. Bucket parenthetically,

“you must take the consequences. Now, whether she became my

lodger, Sir Leicester Dedlock, with any deliberate intention then

of doing this deed and blinding me, I give no opinion on; but she

lived in my house in that capacity at the time that she was

hovering about the chambers of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn with a

view to a wrangle, and likewise persecuting and half frightening

the life out of an unfortunate stationer.”

 

“Lie!” cries mademoiselle. “All lie!”

 

“The murder was committed, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you

know under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you to follow me

close with your attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and

the case was entrusted to me. I examined the place, and the body,

and the papers, and everything. From information I received (from

a clerk in the same house) I took George into custody as having

been seen hanging about there on the night, and at very nigh the

time of the murder, also as having been overheard in high words

with the deceased on former occasions—even threatening him, as the

witness made out. If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether

from the first I believed George to be the murderer, I tell you

candidly no, but he might be, notwithstanding, and there was enough

against him to make it my duty to take him and get him kept under

remand. Now, observe!”

 

As Mr. Bucket bends forward in some excitement—for him—and

inaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his

forefinger in the air, Mademoiselle Hortense fixes her black eyes

upon him with a dark frown and sets her dry lips closely and firmly

together.

 

“I went home, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, at night and found

this young woman having supper with my wife, Mrs. Bucket. She had

made a mighty show of being fond of Mrs. Bucket from her first

offering herself as our lodger, but that night she made more than

ever—in fact, overdid it. Likewise she overdid her respect, and

all that, for the lamented memory of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn.

By the living Lord it flashed upon me, as I sat opposite to her at

the table and saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done

it!”

 

Mademoiselle is hardly audible in straining through her teeth and

lips the words, “You are a devil.”

 

“Now where,” pursues Mr. Bucket, “had she been on the night of the

murder? She had been to the theayter. (She really was there, I

have since found, both before the deed and after it.) I knew I had

an artful customer to deal with and that proof would be very

difficult; and I laid a trap for her—such a trap as I never laid

yet, and such a venture as I never made yet. I worked it out in my

mind while I was talking to her at supper. When I went upstairs to

bed, our house being small and this young woman’s ears sharp, I

stuffed the sheet into Mrs. Bucket’s mouth that she shouldn’t say a

word of surprise and told her all about it. My dear, don’t you

give your mind to that again, or I shall link your feet together at

the ankles.” Mr. Bucket, breaking off, has made a noiseless

descent upon mademoiselle and laid his heavy hand upon her

shoulder.

 

“What is the matter with you now?” she asks him.

 

“Don’t you think any more,” returns Mr. Bucket with admonitory

finger, “of throwing yourself out of window. That’s what’s the

matter with me. Come! Just take my arm. You needn’t get up; I’ll

sit down by you. Now take my arm, will you? I’m a married man,

you know; you’re acquainted with my wife. Just take my arm.”

 

Vainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips, with a painful sound

she struggles with herself and complies.

 

“Now we’re all right again. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this

case could never have been the case it is but for Mrs. Bucket, who

is a woman in fifty thousand—in a hundred and fifty thousand! To

throw this young woman off her guard, I have never set foot in our

house since, though I’ve communicated with Mrs. Bucket in the

baker’s loaves and in the milk as often as required. My whispered

words to Mrs. Bucket when she had the sheet in her mouth were, ‘My

dear, can you throw her off continually with natural accounts of my

suspicions against George, and this, and that, and t’other? Can

you do without rest and keep watch upon her night and day? Can you

undertake to say, ‘She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she

shall be my prisoner without suspecting it, she shall no more

escape from me than from death, and her life shall be my life, and

her soul my soul, till I have got her, if she did this murder?’

Mrs. Bucket says to me, as well as she could speak on account of

the sheet, ‘Bucket, I can!’ And she has acted up to it glorious!”

 

“Lies!” mademoiselle interposes. “All lies, my friend!”

 

“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, how did my calculations come out

under these circumstances? When I calculated that this impetuous

young woman would overdo it in new directions, was I wrong or

right? I was right. What does she try to do? Don’t let it give

you a turn? To throw the murder on her ladyship.”

 

Sir Leicester rises from his chair and staggers down again.

 

“And she got encouragement in it from hearing that I was always

here, which was done a-purpose. Now, open that pocket-book of

mine, Sir Leicester Dedlock, if I may take the liberty of throwing

it towards you, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the

two words ‘Lady Dedlock’ in it. Open the one directed to yourself,

which I stopped this very morning, and read the three words ‘Lady

Dedlock, Murderess’ in it. These letters have been falling about

like a shower of lady-birds. What do you say now to Mrs. Bucket,

from her spy-place having seen them all ‘written by this young

woman? What do you say to Mrs. Bucket having, within this half-hour, secured the corresponding ink and paper, fellow half-sheets

and what not? What do you say to Mrs. Bucket having watched the

posting of ‘em every one by this young woman, Sir Leicester

Dedlock, Baronet?” Mr. Bucket asks, triumphant in his admiration

of his lady’s genius.

 

Two things are especially observable as Mr. Bucket proceeds to a

conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a

dreadful right of property in mademoiselle. Secondly, that the

very atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her

as if a close net or a pall were being drawn nearer and yet nearer

around her breathless figure.

 

“There is no doubt that her ladyship was on the spot at the

eventful period,” says Mr. Bucket, “and my foreign friend here saw

her, I believe, from the upper part of the staircase. Her ladyship

and George and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one

another’s heels. But that don’t signify any more, so I’ll not go

into it. I found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased

Mr. Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description

of your house at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you’ll say, Sir

Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. No. But when my foreign friend here

is so thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear

up the rest of that leaf, and when Mrs. Bucket puts the pieces

together and finds the wadding wanting, it begins to look like

Queer Street.”

 

“These are very long lies,” mademoiselle interposes. “You prose

great deal. Is it that you have almost all finished, or are you

speaking always?”

 

“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, who delights

in a full title and does violence to himself when he dispenses with

any fragment of it, “the last point in the case which I am now

going to mention shows the necessity of patience in our business,

and never doing a thing in a hurry. I watched this young woman

yesterday without her knowledge when she was looking at the

funeral, in company with my wife, who planned to take her there;

and I had so much to convict her, and I saw such an expression in

her face, and my mind so rose against her malice towards her

ladyship, and the time was altogether such a time for bringing down

what you may call retribution upon her, that if I had been a

younger hand with less experience, I should have taken her,

certain. Equally, last night, when her ladyship, as is so

universally admired I am sure, come home looking—why, Lord, a man

might almost say like Venus rising from the ocean—it was so

unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being charged with a

murder of which she was innocent that I felt quite to want to put

an end to the job. What should I have lost? Sir Leicester

Dedlock, Baronet, I should have lost the weapon. My prisoner here

proposed to Mrs. Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that

they should go per bus a little ways into the country and take