The Victorian Mystery Megapack (96 page)

I saw the truth of that. My lady, after her first surprise was over, saw the truth of it also.

“You are certain the investigation is necessary?” she said.

“It’s the shortest way that I can see, my lady, to the end we have in view.”

My mistress rose to ring the bell for her maid. “You shall speak to the servants,” she said, “with the keys of my wardrobe in your hand.”

Sergeant Cuff stopped her by a very unexpected question.

“Hadn’t we better make sure first,” he asked, “that the other ladies and gentlemen in the house will consent, too?”

“The only other lady in the house is Miss Verinder,” answered my mistress, with a look of surprise. “The only gentlemen are my nephews, Mr. Blake and Mr. Ablewhite. There is not the least fear of a refusal from any of the three.”

I reminded my lady here that Mr. Godfrey was going away. As I said the words, Mr. Godfrey himself knocked at the door to say good-bye, and was followed in by Mr. Franklin, who was going with him to the station. My lady explained the difficulty. Mr. Godfrey settled it directly. He called to Samuel, through the window, to take his portmanteau up-stairs again, and he then put the key himself into Sergeant Cuff’s hand. “My luggage can follow me to London,” he said, “when the inquiry is over.” The Sergeant received the key with a becoming apology. “I am sorry to put you to any inconvenience, sir, for a mere formality; but the example of their betters will do wonders in reconciling the servants to this inquiry.” Mr. Godfrey, after taking leave of my lady, in a most sympathising manner, left a farewell message for Miss Rachel, the terms of which made it clear to my mind that he had not taken No for an answer, and that he meant to put the marriage question to her once more, at the next opportunity. Mr. Franklin, on following his cousin out, informed the Sergeant that all his clothes were open to examination, and that nothing he possessed was kept under lock and key. Sergeant Cuff made his best acknowledgments. His views, you will observe, had been met with the utmost readiness by my lady, by Mr. Godfrey, and by Mr. Franklin. There was only Miss. Rachel now wanting to follow their lead, before we called the servants together, and began the search for the stained dress.

My lady’s unaccountable objection to the Sergeant seemed to make our conference more distasteful to her than ever, as soon as we were left alone again. “If I send you down Miss Verinder’s keys,” she said to him, “I presume I shall have done all you want of me for the present?”

“I beg your ladyship’s pardon,” said Sergeant Cuff. “Before we begin, I should like, if convenient, to have the washing-book. The stained article of dress may be an article of linen. If the search leads to nothing, I want to be able to account next for all the linen in the house, and for all the linen sent to the wash. If there is an article missing, there will be at least a presumption that it has got the paint-stain on it, and that it has been purposely made away with, yesterday or today, by the person owning it. Superintendent Seegrave,” added the Sergeant, turning to me, “pointed the attention of the women-servants to the smear, when they all crowded into the room on Thursday morning. That may turn out, Mr. Betteredge, to have been one more of Superintendent Seegrave’s many mistakes.”

My lady desired me to ring the bell, and order the washing-book. She remained with us until it was produced, in case Sergeant Cuff had any further request to make of her after looking at it.

The washing-book was brought in by Rosanna Spearman. The girl had come down to breakfast that morning miserably pale and haggard, but sufficiently recovered from her illness of the previous day to do her usual work. Sergeant Cuff looked attentively at our second housemaid—at her face, when she came in; at her crooked shoulder, when she went out.

“Have you anything more to say to me?” asked my lady, still as eager as ever to be out of the Sergeant’s society.

The great Cuff opened the washing-book, understood it perfectly in half a minute, and shut it up again. “I venture to trouble your ladyship with one last question,” he said. “Has the young woman who brought us this book been in your employment as long as the other servants?”

“Why do you ask?” said my lady.

“The last time I saw her,” answered the Sergeant, “she was in prison for theft.”

After that, there was no help for it, but to tell him the truth. My mistress dwelt strongly on Rosanna’s good conduct in her service, and on the high opinion entertained of her by the matron at the reformatory. “You don’t suspect her, I hope?” my lady added, in conclusion, very earnestly.

“I have already told your ladyship that I don’t suspect any person in the house of thieving—up to the present time.”

After that answer, my lady rose to go up-stairs, and ask for Miss Rachel’s keys. The Sergeant was before-hand with me in opening the door for her. He made a very low bow. My lady shuddered as she passed him.

We waited, and waited, and no keys appeared. Sergeant Cuff made no remark to me. He turned his melancholy face to the window; he put his lanky hands into his pockets; and he whistled “The Last Rose of Summer” softly to himself.

At last, Samuel came in, not with the keys, but with a morsel of paper for me. I got at my spectacles, with some fumbling and difficulty, feeling the Sergeant’s dismal eyes fixed on me all the time. There were two or three lines on the paper, written in pencil by my lady. They informed me that Miss Rachel flatly refused to have her wardrobe examined. Asked for her reasons, she had burst out crying. Asked again, she had said: “I won’t, because I won’t. I must yield to force if you use it, but I will yield to nothing else.” I understood my lady’s disinclination to face Sergeant Cuff with such an answer from her daughter as that. If I had not been too old for the amiable weaknesses of youth, I believe I should have blushed at the notion of facing him myself.

“Any news of Miss Verinder’s keys?” asked the Sergeant.

“My young lady refuses to have her wardrobe examined.”

“Ah!” said the Sergeant.

His voice was not quite in such a perfect state of discipline as his face. When he said “Ah!” he said it in the tone of a man who had heard something which he expected to hear. He half angered and half frightened me—why, I couldn’t tell, but he did it.

“Must the search be given up?” I asked.

“Yes,” said the Sergeant, “the search must be given up, because your young lady refuses to submit to it like the rest. We must examine all the wardrobes in the house or none. Send Mr. Ablewhite’s portmanteau to London by the next train, and return the washing-book, with my compliments and thanks, to the young woman who brought it in.”

He laid the washing-book on the table, and taking out his penknife, began to trim his nails.

“You don’t seem to be much disappointed,” I said.

“No,” said Sergeant Cuff; “I am not much disappointed.”

I tried to make him explain himself.

“Why should Miss Rachel put an obstacle in your way?” I inquired. “Isn’t it her interest to help you?”

“Wait a little, Mr. Betteredge—wait a little.”

Cleverer heads than mine might have seen his drift. Or a person less fond of Miss Rachel than I was, might have seen his drift. My lady’s horror of him might (as I have since thought) have meant that she saw his drift (as the scripture says) “in a glass darkly.” I didn’t see it yet—that’s all I know.

“What’s to be done next?” I asked.

Sergeant Cuff finished the nail on which he was then at work, looked at it for a moment with a melancholy interest, and put up his penknife.

“Come out into the garden,” he said, “and let’s have a look at the roses.”

CHAPTER XIV

The nearest way to the garden, on going out of my lady’s sitting-room, was by the shrubbery path, which you already know of. For the sake of your better understanding of what is now to come, I may add to this, that the shrubbery path was Mr. Franklin’s favourite walk. When he was out in the grounds, and when we failed to find him anywhere else, we generally found him here.

I am afraid I must own that I am rather an obstinate old man. The more firmly Sergeant Cuff kept his thoughts shut up from me, the more firmly I persisted in trying to look in at them. As we turned into the shrubbery path, I attempted to circumvent him in another way.

“As things are now,” I said, “if I was in your place, I should be at my wits’ end.”

“If you were in my place,” answered the Sergeant, “you would have formed an opinion—and, as things are now, any doubt you might previously have felt about your own conclusions would be completely set at rest. Never mind for the present what those conclusions are, Mr. Betteredge. I haven’t brought you out here to draw me like a badger; I have brought you out here to ask for some information. You might have given it to me no doubt, in the house, instead of out of it. But doors and listeners have a knack of getting together; and, in my line of life, we cultivate a healthy taste for the open air.”

Who was to circumvent
this
man? I gave in—and waited as patiently as I could to hear what was coming next.

“We won’t enter into your young lady’s motives,” the Sergeant went on; “we will only say it’s a pity she declines to assist me, because, by so doing, she makes this investigation more difficult than it might otherwise have been. We must now try to solve the mystery of the smear on the door—which, you may take my word for it, means the mystery of the Diamond also—in some other way. I have decided to see the servants, and to search their thoughts and actions, Mr. Betteredge, instead of searching their wardrobes. Before I begin, however, I want to ask you a question or two. You are an observant man—did you notice anything strange in any of the servants (making due allowance, of course, for fright and fluster), after the loss of the Diamond was found out? Any particular quarrel among them? Any one of them not in his or her usual spirits? Unexpectedly out of temper, for instance? or unexpectedly taken ill?”

I had just time to think of Rosanna Spearman’s sudden illness at yesterday’s dinner—but not time to make any answer—when I saw Sergeant Cuff’s eyes suddenly turn aside towards the shrubbery; and I heard him say softly to himself, “Hullo!”

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“A touch of the rheumatics in my back,” said the Sergeant, in a loud voice, as if he wanted some third person to hear us. “We shall have a change in the weather before long.”

A few steps further brought us to the corner of the house. Turning off sharp to the right, we entered on the terrace, and went down, by the steps in the middle, into the garden below. Sergeant Cuff stopped there, in the open space, where we could see round us on every side.

“About that young person, Rosanna Spearman?” he said. “It isn’t very likely, with her personal appearance, that she has got a lover. But, for the girl’s own sake, I must ask you at once whether
she
has provided herself with a sweetheart, poor wretch, like the rest of them?”

What on earth did he mean, under present circumstances, by putting such a question to me as that? I stared at him, instead of answering him.

“I saw Rosanna Spearman hiding in the shrubbery as we went by,” said the Sergeant.

“When you said ‘Hullo’?”

“Yes—when I said ‘Hullo!’ If there’s a sweetheart in the case, the hiding doesn’t much matter. If there isn’t—as things are in this house—the hiding is a highly suspicious circumstance, and it will be my painful duty to act on it accordingly.”

What, in God’s name, was I to say to him? I knew the shrubbery was Mr. Franklin’s favourite walk; I knew he would most likely turn that way when he came back from the station; I knew that Penelope had over and over again caught her fellow-servant hanging about there, and had always declared to me that Rosanna’s object was to attract Mr. Franklin’s attention. If my daughter was right, she might well have been lying in wait for Mr. Franklin’s return when the Sergeant noticed her. I was put between the two difficulties of mentioning Penelope’s fanciful notion as if it was mine, or of leaving an unfortunate creature to suffer the consequences, the very serious consequences, of exciting the suspicion of Sergeant Cuff. Out of pure pity for the girl—on my soul and my character, out of pure pity for the girl—I gave the Sergeant the necessary explanations, and told him that Rosanna had been mad enough to set her heart on Mr. Franklin Blake.

Sergeant Cuff never laughed. On the few occasions when anything amused him, he curled up a little at the corners of the lips, nothing more. He curled up now.

“Hadn’t you better say she’s mad enough to be an ugly girl and only a servant?” he asked. “The falling in love with a gentleman of Mr. Franklin Blake’s manners and appearance doesn’t seem to me to be the maddest part of her conduct by any means. However, I’m glad the thing is cleared up: it relieves one’s mind to have things cleared up. Yes, I’ll keep it a secret, Mr. Betteredge. I like to be tender to human infirmity—though I don’t get many chances of exercising that virtue in my line of life. You think Mr. Franklin Blake hasn’t got a suspicion of the girl’s fancy for him? Ah! he would have found it out fast enough if she had been nice-looking. The ugly women have a bad time of it in this world; let’s hope it will be made up to them in another. You have got a nice garden here, and a well-kept lawn. See for yourself how much better the flowers look with grass about them instead of gravel. No, thank you. I won’t take a rose. It goes to my heart to break them off the stem. Just as it goes to your heart, you know, when there’s something wrong in the servants’ hall. Did you notice anything you couldn’t account for in any of the servants when the loss of the Diamond was first found out?”