Wyllard's Weird (Mystery Classics Series). Mary Elizabeth Braddon

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СКАЧАТЬ was only uneasy about Mrs. Wyllard and my sister. We are keeping them up rather late,” said the Coroner apologetically.

      “Dora won’t mind. She loves the tranquillity of midnight,” replied Wyllard. “Go on, Distin. What is your plan?”

      “Your adjourned inquest does not come on for nearly a fortnight,” said Distin. “Now, you can’t expect me to waste all that time in Cornwall, delicious as it would be to dream away existence among the roses of your delightful garden; so the best thing I can do is to run up to London tomorrow morning”—he spoke as if he were at Maidenhead or Marlow—“find out all I can there, and return here in time for the Coroner’s next sitting. By which time,” added the specialist cheerily, “I hope we shall have got up a pretty little case for the Public Prosecutor. Mr. Heathcote will kindly keep me informed of any new details that crop up here. I shall have the poor little girl’s photograph in my pocket-book. You’ll send a messenger to your town early tomorrow morning, Wyllard, and tell the photographer to meet me at the station with his photographs of the dead girl? He ought to have them ready by that time.”

      “I will give the order to-night,” said Wyllard; and then the three men repaired to the drawing-room.

      “I have been very happy here,” said Hilda to her brother; “but I thought you were never coming for me. Mrs. Wyllard must be dreadfully tired.”

      “Never tired of your company, Hilda,” interjected Dora. “Nor of Schubert.”

      “And as for Mr. Grahame, he has been asleep ever since dinner.”

      “That is a baseless calumny, Miss Heathcote. I have not lost a note of your songs. I am told that Schubert was rather a low person—convivial, that is to say somewhat Bohemian; fond of taverns and tavern company. But I will maintain there must have been a pure and beautiful soul in the man who wrote such songs as those.”

      “I am so glad you like them,” answered Hilda, brightening at his praise. “I daresay you often heard them in India.”

      “No; the people I knew in India had not such good taste as you.”

      “But in a country like that, where ladies have so little to do, music must be such a resource,” persisted Hilda, who was curiously interested in Mr. Grahame’s Indian experiences.

      She was always wondering what his life had been like in that strange distant world, what kind of people he had known there. She wondered all the more perhaps on account of Bothwell’s reticence. She could never get him to talk freely of his Indian days, and this gave the whole thing an air of mystery.

      The clock in the great gray pile of stabling was striking twelve as the Coroner’s carriage drove away.

      “I cannot think what has happened to Mr. Grahame,” said Hilda. “He used to be so lively, and now he is so dull.”

      “The change is palpable to others, then, as well as to me,” thought Heathcote. “Whatever the cause may be, there is a change. God help him if my fear is well grounded! If I were a criminal, I would as soon have a sleuthhound on my track as Joseph Distin.”

      Mr. Distin was on his way to London before noon next day, curled up in a corner of a coupé, looking out eagerly at every station for the morning papers. He had the dead girl’s photographs—full-face, profile—in his letter-case. On making his adieux at Penmorval he declared that he had thoroughly enjoyed his little run into the country, his night in the fresh air.

      “So delicious to wake at six—my usual hour—and smell your roses, and hear your fountain,” he said. “I look forward with delight to my return the week after next.”

      * * * * *

      During that interval which occurred between Mr. Distin’s departure and the adjourned inquest, Edward Heathcote gave himself up to his usual avocations, and took no further trouble to fathom the mystery of the stranger’s untimely fate. After all, he told himself, wearied by brooding upon a subject that troubled him greatly, it was not for him to solve the problem. He was not the Public Prosecutor, nor was he a detective, nor even a criminal lawyer, like Joseph Distin. His business was to hear what other people had to say, not to hunt up evidence against anybody. His duty began when he took his seat at an inquest, and ended when he left it. Why, then, should he vex his mind with dark suspicions against a man who was the near kinsman, the adopted brother, of that woman for whose sake or for whose happiness he would have gladly died?

      This was how Edward Heathcote argued with himself; and it was in pursuance of this conclusion that he gave himself up to a life of idleness during the twelve days that succeeded Mr. Distin’s departure. He rode far afield in the early morning, he drove with his sister and the twins in the afternoon. He appeared at two archery meetings and three tennis-parties, a most unusual concession to the claims of society, and he dawdled away the rest of his existence, reading the last new books in English, French, and German, and discussing them with Hilda’s duenna, Theresa Meyerstein, a curious specimen of the German Fräulein, intensely domestic, and yet deeply learned—a woman able to turn from Schopenhauer to strawberry jam, from Plato to plum-pudding—a woman who knew every theory that had ever been started upon the mind and its functions, and who could tell to a hundredweight how much coal ought to be consumed in a gentleman’s household. Mr. Heathcote had discovered this paragon of domesticity and erudition, acting as deputy-manager at a boarding-house at Baden, during the first year of his widowhood, and he brought her away from the white slavery and the scanty remuneration of that institution to the luxury of an English country house, and the certainty of a liberal recompense for her labours. Fräulein Meyerstein rewarded her employer by a most thorough fidelity, and adored Hilda and the twin daughters. Her soul had languished in a chilling atmosphere, for lack of something to love, and she lavished the garnered treasures of long years upon these Cornish damsels who were committed to her care.

      More than once during those long summer days Hilda urged the necessity of calling at Penmorval; but her brother told her she could go alone, or take the Fräulein, who dearly loved a drive, and a gossip over a cup of tea, and who was always kindly received by Mrs. Wyllard, in spite of her short petticoats, anatomical boots, and Teutonic bonnets.

      “You can perform those small civilities without any assistance from me,” said Heathcote. “You women are so tremendously posted in the details of etiquette. Now, it would never have occurred to me that because we dined at Penmorval a few nights ago, we were strenuously bound, to call upon Mrs. Wyllard before the end of the week. I thought that, with friends of long standing those Draconic laws were a dead letter.”

      “I don’t mean to say that we need be ceremonious, Edward,” answered Hilda, “but I am sure Dora will expect to see us. She will think we are forgetting her if we don’t go.”

      “Then you go, dear, and let her see that you are not forgetful, whatever I may be,” said Heathcote.

      He had a horror of entering that house of Penmorval just now, lest he should see or hear something that would give him new cause for suspecting Bothwell. He had a feeling that he could only cross that threshold as the bringer of evil: and it would be a bitter thing for him to carry evil into her home for whose peace he had prayed night and morning for the last eight years.

      So Hilda drove her ponies up the hill to Penmorval, and Miss Meyerstein sat beside her in all the glory of her new bonnet, sent from Munich by a relative, and reported as the very latest fashion in that city. Unhappily for the success of the bonnet in Cornwall, Bodmin fashions and Munich fashions were wide as the poles asunder. Bodmin boasted a milliner who took in the fashion-magazines, and beguiled her clients with the idea that everything she made for them was Parisian. СКАЧАТЬ