The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes (color ebook reader txt) 📕
He stepped past her heavily, and though she said nothing, he knew she grudged him his coming joy. Then, full of rage with her and contempt for himself, and giving himself the luxury of a mild, a very mild, oath--Ellen had very early made it clear she would have no swearing in her presence--he lit the hall gas full-flare.
"How can we hope to get lodgers if they can't even see the card?" he shouted angrily.
And there was truth in what he said, for now that he had lit the gas, the oblong card, though not the word "Apartments" printed on it, could be plainly seen out-lined against the old-fashioned fanlight above the front door.
Bunting went into the sitting-room, silently followed by his wife, and then, sitting down in his nice arm-chair, he poked the little banked-up fire. It was the first time Bunting had poked the fire for many a long day, and this exertion of marital authority made him feel better. A man has to assert himself sometimes, and he, Bunting, had not asserted hi
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But now all that was changed. She was as keen as anyone could be to hear the latest details of an Avenger crime. True, she took her own view of any theory suggested. But there! Ellen always had had her own notions about everything under the sun. Ellen was a woman who thought for herself—a clever woman, not an everyday woman by any manner of means.
While these thoughts were going disconnectedly through his mind, Bunting was breaking four eggs into a basin. He was going to give Ellen a nice little surprise—to cook an omelette as a French chef had once taught him to do, years and years ago. He didn’t know how she would take his doing such a thing after what she had said; but never mind, she would enjoy the omelette when done. Ellen hadn’t been eating her food properly of late.
And when he went up again, his wife, to his relief, and, it must be admitted, to his surprise, took it very well. She had not even noticed how long he had been downstairs, for she had been reading with intense, painful care the column that the great daily paper they took in had allotted to the one-time famous detective.
According to this Special Investigator’s own account he had discovered all sorts of things that had escaped the eye of the police and of the official detectives. For instance, owing, he admitted, to a fortunate chance, he had been at the place where the two last murders had been committed very soon after the double crime had been discovered—in fact within half an hour, and he had found, or so he felt sure, on the slippery, wet pavement imprints of the murderer’s right foot.
The paper reproduced the impression of a half-worn rubber sole. At the same time, he also admitted—for the Special Investigator was very honest, and he had a good bit of space to fill in the enterprising paper which had engaged him to probe the awful mystery—that there were thousands of rubber soles being worn in London… .
And when she came to that statement Mrs. Bunting looked up, and there came a wan smile over her thin, closely-shut lips. It was quite true—that about rubber soles; there were thousands of rubber soles being worn just now. She felt grateful to the Special Investigator for having stated the fact so clearly.
The column ended up with the words:
“And to-day will take place the inquest on the double crime of ten days ago. To my mind it would be well if a preliminary public inquiry could be held at once. Say, on the very day the discovery of a fresh murder is made. In that way alone would it be possible to weigh and sift the evidence offered by members of the general public. For when a week or more has elapsed, and these same people have been examined and cross-examined in private by the police, their impressions have had time to become blurred and hopelessly confused. On that last occasion but one there seems no doubt that several people, at any rate two women and one man, actually saw the murderer hurrying from the scene of his atrocious double crime—this being so, to-day’s investigation may be of the highest value and importance. To-morrow I hope to give an account of the impression made on me by the inquest, and by any statements made during its course.”
Even when her husband had come in with the tray Mrs. Bunting had gone on reading, only lifting up her eyes for a moment. At last he said rather crossly, “Put down that paper, Ellen, this minute! The omelette I’ve cooked for you will be just like leather if you don’t eat it.”
But once his wife had eaten her breakfast—and, to Bunting’s mortification, she left more than half the nice omelette untouched —she took the paper up again. She turned over the big sheets, until she found, at the foot of one of the ten columns devoted to The Avenger and his crimes, the information she wanted, and then uttered an exclamation under her breath.
What Mrs. Bunting had been looking for—what at last she had found —was the time and place of the inquest which was to be held that day. The hour named was a rather odd time—two o’clock in the afternoon, but, from Mrs. Bunting’s point of view, it was most convenient.
By two o’clock, nay, by half-past one, the lodger would have had his lunch; by hurrying matters a little she and Bunting would have had their dinner, and—and Daisy wasn’t coming home till tea-time.
She got up out of her husband’s chair. “I think you’re right,” she said, in a quick, hoarse tone. “I mean about me seeing a doctor, Bunting. I think I will go and see a doctor this very afternoon.”
“Wouldn’t you like me to go with you?” he asked.
“No, that I wouldn’t. In fact I wouldn’t go at all you was to go with me.”
“All right,” he said vexedly. “Please yourself, my dear; you know best.”
“I should think I did know best where my own health is concerned.”
Even Bunting was incensed by this lack of gratitude. “‘Twas I said, long ago, you ought to go and see the doctor; ‘twas you said you wouldn’t!” he exclaimed pugnaciously.
“Well, I’ve never said you was never right, have I? At any rate, I’m going.”
“Have you a pain anywhere?” He stared at her with a look of real solicitude on his fat, phlegmatic face.
Somehow Ellen didn’t look right, standing there opposite him. Her shoulders seemed to have shrunk; even her cheeks had fallen in a little. She had never looked so bad—not even when they had been half starving, and dreadfully, dreadfully worked.
“Yes,” she said briefly, “I’ve a pain in my head, at the back of my neck. It doesn’t often leave me; it gets worse when anything upsets me, like I was upset last night by Joe Chandler.”
“He was a silly ass to come and do a thing like that!” said Bunting crossly. “I’d a good mind to tell him so, too. But I must say, Ellen, I wonder he took you in—he didn’t me!”
“Well, you had no chance he should—you knew who it was,” she said slowly.
And Bunting remained silent, for Ellen was right. Joe Chandler had already spoken when he, Bunting, came out into the hall, and saw their cleverly disguised visitor.
“Those big black moustaches,” he went on complainingly, “and that black wig—why, ‘twas too ridic’lous—that’s what I call it!”
“Not to anyone who didn’t know Joe,” she said sharply.
“Well, I don’t know. He didn’t look like a real man—nohow. If he’s a wise lad, he won’t let our Daisy ever see him looking like that!” and Bunting laughed, a comfortable laugh.
He had thought a good deal about Daisy and young Chandler the last two days, and, on the whole, he was well pleased. It was a dull, unnatural life the girl was leading with Old Aunt. And Joe was earning good money. They wouldn’t have long to wait, these two young people, as a beau and his girl often have to wait, as he, Bunting, and Daisy’s mother had had to do, for ever so long before they could be married. No, there was no reason why they shouldn’t be spliced quite soon—if so the fancy took them. And Bunting had very little doubt that so the fancy would take Joe, at any rate.
But there was plenty of time. Daisy wouldn’t be eighteen till the week after next. They might wait till she was twenty. By that time Old Aunt might be dead, and Daisy might have come into quite a tidy little bit of money.
“What are you smiling at?” said his wife sharply.
And he shook himself. “I—smiling? At nothing that I knows of.” Then he waited a moment. “Well, if you will know, Ellen, I was just thinking of Daisy and that young chap Joe Chandler. He is gone on her, ain’t he?”
“Gone?” And then Mrs. Bunting laughed, a queer, odd, not unkindly laugh. “Gone, Bunting?” she repeated. “Why, he’s out o’ sight —right, out of sight!”
Then hesitatingly, and looking narrowly at her husband, she went on, twisting a bit of her black apron with her fingers as she spoke:— “I suppose he’ll be going over this afternoon to fetch her? Or—or d’you think he’ll have to be at that inquest, Bunting?”
“Inquest? What inquest?” He looked at her puzzled.
“Why, the inquest on them bodies found in the passage near by King’s Cross.”
“Oh, no; he’d have no call to be at the inquest. For the matter o’ that, I know he’s going over to fetch Daisy. He said so last night —just when you went up to the lodger.”
“That’s just as well.” Mrs. Bunting spoke with considerable satisfaction. “Otherwise I suppose you’d ha’ had to go. I wouldn’t like the house left—not with us out of it. Mr. Sleuth would be upset if there came a ring at the door.”
“Oh, I won’t leave the house, don’t you be afraid, Ellen—not while you’re out.”
“Not even if I’m out a good while, Bunting.”
“No fear. Of course, you’ll be a long time if it’s your idea to see that doctor at Ealing?”
He looked at her questioningly, and Mrs. Bunting nodded. Somehow nodding didn’t seem as bad as speaking a lie.
Any ordeal is far less terrifying, far easier to meet with courage, when it is repeated, than is even a milder experience which is entirely novel.
Mrs. Bunting had already attended an inquest, in the character of a witness, and it was one of the few happenings of her life which was sharply etched against the somewhat blurred screen of her memory.
In a country house where the then Ellen Green had been staying for a fortnight with her elderly mistress, there had occurred one of those sudden, pitiful tragedies which occasionally destroy the serenity, the apparent decorum, of a large, respectable household.
The under-housemaid, a pretty, happy-natured girl, had drowned herself for love of the footman, who had given his sweetheart cause for bitter jealousy. The girl had chosen to speak of her troubles to the strange lady’s maid rather than to her own fellow-servants, and it was during the conversation the two women had had together that the girl had threatened to take her own life.
As Mrs. Bunting put on her outdoor clothes, preparatory to going out, she recalled very clearly all the details of that dreadful affair, and of the part she herself had unwillingly played in it.
She visualised the country inn where the inquest on that poor, unfortunate creature had been held.
The butler had escorted her from the Hall, for he also was to give evidence, and as they came up there had been a look of cheerful animation about the inn yard; people coming and going, many women as well as men, village folk, among whom the dead girl’s fate had aroused a great deal of interest, and the kind of horror which those who live on a dull countryside welcome rather than avoid.
Everyone there had been particularly nice and polite to her, to Ellen Green; there had been a time of waiting in a room upstairs in the old inn, and the witnesses had been accommodated, not only with chairs, but with cake and wine.
She remembered how she had dreaded being a witness, how she had felt as if she would like to run away from her nice, easy place, rather than have to get up and tell the little that she knew of the
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