The Female Detective Page 5

  “Well?” said I.

  “The motive for a supposititious heir is evident. The lady dies in childbed, as the dates of her death and of the birth of her assumed child testify—in all probability her infant is born dead, and therefore the mother dying without having given the father a just claim to the tenantage for life—by the conditions of the settlement the property would at once, upon the death of the wife, pass to her uncle, her father’s brother. To avoid this, the beggar-woman’s child has been made to take the place of the dead infant. The case is about as clear as any I have put together.”

  “But—” Here I stopped.

  “Well?”

  “Your argument suggests accomplices.”

  “Yes.”

  “Four—the father, his sister, the doctor, and the nurse.”

  “Four, at least,” said the lawyer.

  “Do you know, or have you heard of the true owner of the estates?”

  The reader will observe that I and the lawyer had already given in a verdict in the case.

  “I do not know him—I have made two or three inquiries. He is Sir Nathaniel Shirley. From what I can hear he does not bear a very good name, though it is quite impossible, I hear, to bring any charge against him.”

  “This will cost money,” I said.

  “It will cost money,” echoed the lawyer.

  I have always noticed that when a lawyer has anything not too agreeable to say, generally he echoes what you yourself observe.

  “Is he rich?”

  “Who?” asks the lawyer, with that love of precision which irritates any woman, even when she is a detective.

  “Sir Nathaniel Shirley.”

  “I hear not.”

  “Who, then, is to pay expenses?”

  “Who is to pay expenses?” says the lawyer, repeating my words. And then, after a pause, as though to show he made a difference between my own words and his, he adds—“Expenses there certainly will be.”

  “Shall we speak to Sir Nathaniel at once?”

  “You can speak to Sir Nathaniel at once. As for me, I shall wait till the baronet speaks to me.”

  “Oh!” said I.

  “Yes,” replied my attorney, softly turning over a heavy stick of sealing wax, such as, in all my detective experience, I never saw equalled out of a law-office.

  It stood clear that the case was to be left in my hands till it was plain sailing, and then the lawyer would take the helm. I have noticed that the law gentlemen with whom I have had to do are much given to this cautious mode of doing business.

  We detectives, who know how much depends upon risk and audacity, are perhaps inclined to look rather meanly upon this cautiousness, knowing as we do that if we were as fearful of taking steps we should never gain a crust.

  “I’ll see you again, Mr. M——, in a few days.”

  “Well,” said he, looking a little alarmed I thought, “whatever you do don’t drop it; turn the matter over in your mind, and let me see you again in three days.”

  “Thank you,” said I; “I’ll come when I want you.”

  I think I noticed a little mixture of surprise and satisfaction on the lawyer’s countenance—surprise that I showed some independence, satisfaction by virtue of the intimation my words conveyed that I did not mean to abandon the case.

  Abandon the case!

  Good as many of the cases in which I had been engaged might have been, I knew that not one had been so near my fame, and, in a small way, my fortune, as this; for I may tell you we detectives are like actors, or singers, or playwrights, who are always hoping for some distinction which shall carry them to the top of their particular tree.

  I had saved some money, for I am not extravagant; and though my necessary expenses were large, I had for some years earned good money, and had laid by a trifle, and so I determined myself to find the money which was required to begin and carry on this inquiry.

  So far I had got together only facts. Now I had to prove them.

  To do this, it was necessary that I should gain an entry into the house.

  I had, as the reader knows, planted my first attempt by calling at the house and presenting at the outset a small written card, setting out that I was Miss Gladden, a milliner and dressmaker, who went out by the day or week.

  This ruse, practised with success upon Mrs. Flemps, and resulting in two caps and a bonnet for that lady, I had always exercised; indeed, I may say, that I took lessons as an improver in both those trades, in order the better to carry on my actual business, which, I will repeat here once again, is a necessary occupation, however much it may be despised.

  If this world lost all its detectives it would very soon complainingly find out their absence, and wish them, or some of them, back again.

  But I could not wait till Miss Shedleigh sent for me, even supposing that she remembered me and my application. Even this supposition was questionable.

  It therefore became necessary to tout that lady once again. I sent up to the house a specimen of my work, and with it a letter to the effect that my funds were running low and I was becoming uneasy.

  The answer returned was that I could come up to the house on the following day at nine in the morning.

  I was there to time.

  The house was very splendid—magnificently appointed; and the number of servants told of very considerable wealth.

  The lady of the house, this Miss Catherine Shedleigh, was one of the pleasantest and most delightful of women—calm, amiable, serene, and possessing that ability to make people at home about her which is a most rare quality, and which we detectives know sufficiently well how to appreciate.

  I was located in the housekeeper’s room, and I was soon surrounded with work.

  I had not been in the mansion two hours before I saw the little girl upon whose birth so much had depended.

  She was a very pleasant child—nothing very remarkable; and her age, as given by the housekeeper, tallied exactly with the cabman’s story.

  The arrival of the child, who, to look upon, was comely without being pretty, gave me that opportunity for which I was waiting. I had felt pretty sure I should soon see the heiress; knowing that if children are not desirous of seeing new faces in a house, their younger nurses always are.

  “The little missy has lost her mother, hasn’t she?” I asked the housekeeper, an open-faced and a candid spoken woman. Somehow we close-mouthed detectives have a great respect for open, candid-speaking people.

  “Yes,” said the housekeeper. “Miss Shedleigh never knew her mamma.”

  “Indeed! how was that? Will you kindly pass me the white wax?—Thank you.”

  “Mrs. Shedleigh died in childbed.”

  “Dear me, poor lady!” said I. Then, after a pause, I asked, “Did you know her, ma’am?”

  The housekeeper looked up for the moment, a little offended. She soon regained her ordinary amiability, and replied—

  “Yes, I was housekeeper to her mother, and afterwards to her father, up to the time of her marriage, and we both came to this house together.”

  “Ha! then you were present at her death, poor lady?”

  “Pardon me, my dear,” the old lady continued. “I do not think there is any need to pity my lady—as I always called her after her mother’s, Lady Shirley’s death—she was sufficiently good not to fear death over much.”

  “Did she die peaceably, may I ask, Mrs. Dumarty?”

  “I was assured she did.”

  “Oh, you were not present, Mrs. Dumarty?”

  “No, my dear, I was not; and I shall never forgive myself for having been away at the time. But the fact is, that we did not expect any addition to the family for fully two months from the time when the poor dear lady suffered; and I—I shall never forgive myself—had gone down home into the country to see our relations—I mean mine and my lady’s, we both coming from one part.”

  “Oh!” I said, balked; for it was clear, as far as she herself was concerned, Mrs. Dumarty was valueless as one of my witnesses.

  “There never was such an unfortunate business as that; and dear me, my dear, talking about it has so confused me that I think I must have made a wrong seam!. Yes, I have—it’s two different lengths!”

  “But the lady was not alone?” said I.

  “No, not alone,” replied the housekeeper; and then she broke off from the tone of voice she was using, and said, in a higher key, “But you do seem strangely interested in the family?”

  “O dear, no,” said I; “but it is a way of mine when I am working for a family. I beg your pardon, and will not offend again.”

  The old lady nodded her head seriously as she pursed up her lips and began to unrip the seam she had foundered on; but she was not silent for long. Soon she began to speak again; and as a kind of apology for having been a little severe, she became more communicative than she had hitherto shown herself.

  “My lady was not alone,” she said, “though more might have been about her. For instance, Mr. Shedleigh was away from home, though to be sure his sister was in the way.”

  “What! was he not in the house when his wife died?”

  “No, poor dear; and I’m told that when he learnt the catastrophe—by electric telegraph—he was near broken-hearted, and mayhap he would have been had it not been for the little daughter. It upset him so he could not travel for two days. I learnt the news by electric telegraph, and I shall never forgive myself that I was away.”

  Here was information!

  It was clear, if the housekeeper was to be believed, and she could have no aim in deceiving me, that the father
was as ignorant as Sir Nathaniel Shirley of the real state of the case.

  “Do you think,” said I, leading up to another line in the case—“Do you think the doctor who attended the lady was a clever man?”

  “Bless you, my dear,” said the housekeeper; and I began to notice that she was becoming gratified rather than angry at the interest I was taking in the family, “Dr. Ellkins was the cleverest of medical men.”

  “Was?” I said, interrogatively.

  “Dead,” the housekeeper replied, in a kind of fatalistic voice. “He was never a very strong man, I should say, and he ought never to have tried the journey. He went to Madeiry, my dear, and in Madeiry he died.”

  So here was another of the four witnesses upon whom I relied beyond detection.

  “Perhaps the nurse neglected the poor lady,” I said, turning to another branch of my case.

  “Ah me!” said the old housekeeper, “that could not be, for it was all so sudden and unexpected, and the death followed the birth so soon that she was not sent for till hours after my poor lady lay dead. The only one she had to help her in her trouble was her dear sister, Miss Shedleigh, who saw her through all her trouble. Miss Shedleigh herself narrowly escaped with her life, and she has been like a mother to our little darling ever since.”

  So, of those four supposed witnesses to the birth, one only existed who could be of use to me in unravelling the secret; that one was she who had been entirely guilty of the fraud—the sister-in-law of the late lady, and sister of the self-supposing father, whom I now looked upon to be in all probability as certainly deceived as Sir Nathaniel Shirley himself. He had not reached home till two days after the death of the lady, and therefore two days, at least, after the supposed birth of the child which now stood as the heiress to the property, which was very large.

  The father was not in the house at the time of the birth or death.

  The nurse had not been sent for.

  The doctor was dead.

  The sister-in-law alone remained. How could I approach her? It was she whose interest it was chiefly to be silent. She would be on her guard, and I could hope for nothing from her.

  I began to see my chances of success getting narrower and narrower.

  But I did not despair.

  That same evening, after I had left the mansion for the night, I went down to the house in which Dr. Ellkins had lived, having learnt the address of the housekeeper, and I found that it was still in the occupation of a medical man, who, to be here short, was he who had purchased Dr. Ellkins’s business of that gentleman, when he decided upon leaving England.

  To inquire if Dr. Ellkins had had an assistant, and, if so, where he could be found, was child’s play.

  No; Dr. Ellkins had had no assistant.

  I had thanked the doctor’s housekeeper for her information, and was turning away, when I blushed for myself at the omission I had made when she remarked—

  “The doctor had a ’prentice.”

  “And where is he?” I asked.

  “Dear me, mum, how ever should I know! At one o’ the ’spitals up in London I suppose, leastways, I know he said he was a going to a ’spital, and likewise to be a Guy.”

  This statement gave me courage, for I had had some experience of medical students. Having had a case in which one ultimately became my prisoner, I knew that when this young man had said he was going to be a Guy he meant he was about to become a student at Guy’s Hospital over London Bridge.

  “What was his name?” I asked.

  “Dear me, mum! I do hope he’s got in no trouble—his chief fault, while he was with us, being dancing—which were his fascination.”

  “No; no trouble. I want to ask him a question.”

  “Blessed be!” said the old lady; “his name was George Geffins—a young man with the reddest hair, which he were ever trying to change, and it coming out the brighter for what he did to that same.”

  Saying I would call again (I never did), I left the old housekeeper.

  That same night I sent up word to the housekeeper at Shirley House, as Mr. Shedleigh’s mansion was called, that I should not be able to be with her on the following day, and when the next sun rose it found me in London.

  I was soon at Guy’s Hospital, and within a quarter of an hour of seeing the building I had learnt that a Mr. George Geffins was a student at that place, and the porter, with a grin, had given me his private address.

  It was then half-past nine o’clock, and upon reaching the house and getting into the passage I guessed that Mr. Geffins was at breakfast by the clicking of a spoon against a cup or saucer which I heard distinctly.

  When the landlady said a lady wanted to see him, the clicking of the spoon ended.

  Accustomed to hear with more than ordinary acuteness—for I have the belief that the senses may be sharpened up to any extent—I heard Mr. Geffins say—

  “Why the devil didn’t you say I was out?”

  Then he bawled—“Is that you, Matilda?”

  “No,” said I; “it’s not Matilda.”

  “Ho!” said he; (it struck me he spoke in a relieved tone)—“Ho!” coming to the door; “then who the devil are you, ma’am?”

  It further struck me, and I am willing to admit it, that when he saw me, the gentleman in question betrayed no extraordinary inclination to become better acquainted.

  The disinclination was the more marked when I said I had come upon business.

  He was a dissipated looking young man, and it appeared to me lived about three years in one twelve-month.

  However, he asked me into his parlour—the most forlorn and furniture-damaged apartment which I ever entered—and then awkwardly he asked me, his landlady having quitted the room with a disturbed air, “What I wanted.” He put “the” and a strong word between “what” and “I,” but I refrain from quoting it.

  “You were a pupil of Dr. Ellkins?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said, with a relieved air.

  “You were so in 1858?”

  “In 1858.”

  By this time, having got over his evident dread of me, he was beginning to suspect me, I saw.

  “I only want to know whether you remember the birth of a child at Shirley House in the July of that year?”

  “What, Mrs. Shedleigh’s child? Oh, yes, I remember specially. What on earth are you asking me this for?”

  “Simply because I want to find out the date of some business which relates personally to me, and which I can tell if once I know the date of the birth of Mr. Shedleigh’s daughter.”

  “Well, I can tell you,” said Mr. Geffins, “by as odd a chance as ever you heard. Sit down, ma’am, and excuse me going on with my breakfast; I’ve got to get to lecture by ten.”

  I sat down. It is the first lesson of a detective to oblige a victim; his second is to accept that victim’s hospitality if he offers it. Nothing opens a man’s or woman’s mouth so readily as allowing him or her to fill yours.

  “Will you take a cup of tea?” he asked.

  I did immediately.

  “Bless my soul,” said he, “I remember the day only too well—the 15th of July it was—for well I remember seeing it on the summons paper—‘That on the said fifteenth of July, 1858, you did wilfully and of malice aforethought, &c., &c.’ You see the fact stood, it was our guv’s old housekeeper’s birthday, and I had promised her a surprise, and she got it in the shape of a whole bundle of crackers, all set alight at once just under her window. And the constable passing at that time, why I got summoned, and had to pay five shillings fine and thirteen shillings costs—well I remember the date. I have got the summons now. I remember it was the governor going up to Shirley House which gave me the chance of firing ’em. But by Jove,” he continued, taking a great bite out of his dry toast, “I must be quick, or I shall never be in time for lecture.”