Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (popular books of all time .TXT) đź“–
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meerschaum pipes, I suppose,” said Lady Audley, laughing.
“No; letters—letters from his friends, his old schoolfellows, his
father, his brother officers.”
“Yes?”
“Letters, too, from his wife.”
My lady was silent for some few moments, looking thoughtfully at the
fire.
“Have you ever seen any of the letters written by the late Mrs.
Talboys?” she asked presently.
“Never. Poor soul! her letters are not likely to throw much light upon
my friend’s fate. I dare say she wrote the usual womanly scrawl. There
are very few who write so charming and uncommon a hand as yours, Lady
Audley.”
“Ah, you know my hand, of course.”
“Yes, I know it very well indeed.”
My lady warmed her hands once more, and then taking up the big muff
which she had laid aside upon a chair, prepared to take her departure.
“You have refused to accept my apology, Mr. Audley,” she said; “but I
trust you are not the less assured of my feelings toward you.”
“Perfectly assured, Lady Audley.”
“Then good-by, and let me recommend you not to stay long in this
miserable draughty place, if you do not wish to take rheumatism back to
Figtree Court.”
“I shall return to town tomorrow morning to see after my letters.”
“Then once more good-by.”
She held out her hand; he took it loosely in his own. It seemed such a
feeble little hand that he might have crushed it in his strong grasp,
had he chosen to be so pitiless.
He attended her to her carriage, and watched it as it drove off, not
toward Audley, but in the direction of Brentwood, which was about six
miles from Mount Stanning.
About an hour and a half after this, as Robert stood at the door of the
inn, smoking a cigar and watching the snow falling in the whitened
fields opposite, he saw the brougham drive back, empty this time, to the
door of the inn.
“Have you taken Lady Audley back to the Court?” he said to the coachman,
who had stopped to call for a mug of hot spiced ale.
“No, sir; I’ve just come from the Brentwood station. My lady started for
London by the 12.40 train.”
“For town?”
“Yes, sir.”
“My lady gone to London!” said Robert, as he returned to the little
sitting-room. “Then I’ll follow her by the next train; and if I’m not
very much mistaken, I know where to find her.”
He packed his portmanteau, paid his bill, fastened his dogs together
with a couple of leathern collars and a chain, and stepped into the
rumbling fly kept by the Castle Inn for the convenience of Mount
Stanning. He caught an express that left Brentwood at three o’clock, and
settled himself comfortably in a corner of an empty first-class
carriage, coiled up in a couple of railway rugs, and smoking a cigar in
mild defiance of the authorities.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE WRITING IN THE BOOK.
It was exactly five minutes past four as Mr. Robert Audley stepped out
upon the platform at Shoreditch, and waited placidly until such time as
his dogs and his portmanteau should be delivered up to the attendant
porter who had called his cab, and undertaken the general conduct of his
affairs, with that disinterested courtesy which does such infinite
credit to a class of servitors who are forbidden to accept the tribute
of a grateful public.
Robert Audley waited with consummate patience for a considerable time;
but as the express was generally a long train, and as there were a great
many passengers from Norfolk carrying guns and pointers, and other
paraphernalia of a critical description, it took a long while to make
matters agreeable to all claimants, and even the barrister’s seraphic
indifference to mundane affairs nearly gave way.
“Perhaps, when that gentleman who is making such a noise about a pointer
with liver-colored spots, has discovered the particular pointer and
spots that he wants—which happy combination of events scarcely seems
likely to arrive—they’ll give me my luggage and let me go. The
designing wretches knew at a glance that I was born to be imposed upon;
and that if they were to trample the life out of me upon this very
platform, I should never have the spirit to bring an action against the
company.”
Suddenly an idea seemed to strike him, and he left the porter to
struggle for the custody of his goods, and walked round to the other
side of the station.
He heard a bell ring, and looking at the clock, had remembered that the
down train for Colchester started at this time. He had learned what it
was to have an earnest purpose since the disappearance of George
Talboys; and he reached the opposite platform in time to see the
passengers take their seats.
There was one lady who had evidently only just arrived at the station;
for she hurried on to the platform at the very moment that Robert
approached the train, and almost ran against that gentleman in her haste
and excitement.
“I beg your pardon,” she began, ceremoniously; then raising her eyes
from Mr. Audley’s waistcoat, which was about on a level with her pretty
face, she exclaimed, “Robert, you in London already?”
“Yes, Lady Audley; you were quite right; the Castle Inn is a dismal
place, and—”
“You got tired of it—I knew you would. Please open the carriage door
for me: the train will start in two minutes.”
Robert Audley was looking at his uncle’s wife with rather a puzzled
expression of countenance.
“What does it mean?” he thought. “She is altogether a different being to
the wretched, helpless creature who dropped her mask for a moment, and
looked at me with her own pitiful face, in the little room at Mount
Stanning, four hours ago. What has happened to cause the change?”
He opened the door for her while he thought this, and helped her to
settle herself in her seat, spreading her furs over her knees, and
arranging the huge velvet mantle in which her slender little figure was
almost hidden.
“Thank you very much; how good you are to me,” she said, as he did this.
“You will think me very foolish to travel upon such a day, without my
dear darling’s knowledge too; but I went up to town to settle a very
terrific milliner’s bill, which I did not wish my best of husbands to
see; for, indulgent as he is, he might think me extravagant; and I
cannot bear to suffer even in his thoughts.”
“Heaven forbid that you ever should, Lady Audley,” Robert said, gravely.
She looked at him for a moment with a smile, which had something defiant
in its brightness.
“Heaven forbid it, indeed,” she murmured. “I don’t think I ever shall.”
The second bell rung, and the train moved as she spoke. The last Robert
Audley saw of her was that bright defiant smile.
“Whatever object brought her to London has been successfully
accomplished,” he thought. “Has she baffled me by some piece of womanly
jugglery? Am I never to get any nearer to the truth, but am I to be
tormented all my life by vague doubts, and wretched suspicions, which
may grow upon me till I become a monomaniac? Why did she come to
London?”
He was still mentally asking himself this question as he ascended the
stairs in Figtree Court, with one of his dogs under each arm, and his
railway rugs over his shoulder.
He found his chambers in their accustomed order. The geraniums had been
carefully tended, and the canaries had retired for the night under cover
of a square of green baize, testifying to the care of honest Mrs.
Maloney. Robert cast a hurried glance round the sitting-room; then
setting down the dogs upon the hearthrug, he walked straight into the
little inner chamber which served as his dressing-room.
It was in this room that he kept disused portmanteaus, battered japanned
cases, and other lumber; and it was in this room that George Talboys had
left his luggage. Robert lifted a portmanteau from the top of a large
trunk, and kneeling down before it with a lighted candle in his hand,
carefully examined the lock.
To all appearance it was exactly in the same condition in which George
had left it, when he laid his mourning garments aside and placed them in
this shabby repository with all other memorials of his dead wife. Robert
brushed his coat sleeve across the worn, leather-covered lid, upon which
the initials G. T. were inscribed with big brass-headed nails; but Mrs.
Maloney, the laundress, must have been the most precise of housewives,
for neither the portmanteau nor the trunk were dusty.
Mr. Audley dispatched a boy to fetch his Irish attendant, and paced up
and down his sitting-room waiting anxiously for her arrival.
She came in about ten minutes, and, after expressing her delight in the
return of “the master,” humbly awaited his orders.
“I only sent for you to ask if anybody has been here; that is to say, if
anybody has applied to you for the key of my rooms to-day—any lady?”
“Lady? No, indeed, yer honor; there’s been no lady for the kay; barrin’
it’s the blacksmith.”
“The blacksmith!”
“Yes; the blacksmith your honor ordered to come to-day.”
“I order a blacksmith!” exclaimed Robert. “I left a bottle of French
brandy in the cupboard,” he thought, “and Mrs. M. has been evidently
enjoying herself.”
“Sure, and the blacksmith your honor tould to see to the locks,” replied
Mrs. Maloney. “It’s him that lives down in one of the little streets by
the bridge,” she added, giving a very lucid description of the man’s
whereabouts.
Robert lifted his eyebrows in mute despair.
“If you’ll sit down and compose yourself, Mrs. M.,” he said—he
abbreviated her name thus on principle, for the avoidance of unnecessary
labor—“perhaps we shall be able by and by to understand each other. You
say a blacksmith has been here?”
“Sure and I did, sir.”
“To-day?”
“Quite correct, sir.”
Step by step Mr. Audley elicited the following information. A locksmith
had called upon Mrs. Maloney that afternoon at three o’clock, and had
asked for the key of Mr. Audley’s chambers, in order that he might look
to the locks of the doors, which he stated were all out of repair. He
declared that he was acting upon Mr. Audley’s own orders, conveyed to
him by a letter from the country, where the gentleman was spending his
Christmas. Mrs. Maloney, believing in the truth of this statement, had
admitted the man to the chambers, where he stayed about half an hour.
“But you were with him while he examined the locks, I suppose?” Mr.
Audley asked.
“Sure I was, sir, in and out, as you may say, all the time, for I’ve
been cleaning the stairs this afternoon, and I took the opportunity to
begin my scouring while the man was at work.”
“Oh, you were in and out all the time. If you could conveniently give
me a plain answer, Mrs. M., I should be glad to know what was the
longest time that you were out while the locksmith was in my
chambers?”
But Mrs. Maloney could not give a plain answer. It might have been ten
minutes; though she didn’t think it was as much. It might have been a
quarter of an hour; but she was sure it wasn’t more. It didn’t seem to
her more than five minutes, but “thim stairs, your honor;”
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