The Female Detective (9 page)

What was to be done?

And I fell asleep only when I had quite decided what was to be done. I determined to go up in the morning by the first train, hurry to Shirley House, warn and save them. Such an act was no breach of duty. My work was to obtain Sir Nathaniel his heritage, not to punish Mr. and Miss Shedleigh.

I was awake betimes, though I had slept but for a short period, and getting up with a new sense of imprisonment and weight upon me, I made for the station, and before eleven I was in London.

Taking a cab, I reached the neighbourhood of Shirley House, and there for the first time I faced fairly the enormous difficulty I had to encounter.

I saw her as she was leaving the church. She had a very plain black prayer-book in her hand, and as she came out into the porch, a smile spread upon her face as she addressed first me and then another of those she saw.

She was one of the simplest and most unaffected ladies I ever knew.

She saw me, and nodded.

As she did so, a lady came up and touched her on the arm.

But it was absolutely necessary that I should warn her, so I went up to her and said—

“Miss Shedleigh, may I speak with you?”

“Certainly,” she replied, with extreme frankness.

“I mean up at the house.”

“Oh, call when you like.”

“Can I come now?”

She looked at me a little eagerly I marked, and then she said smilingly—“Will not to-morrow do?”

“No,” I replied; and it is evident I must have spoken wistfully, for she turned slightly pale.

“Come up at three,” she said. “I shall be quite disengaged.”

I bowed, and was falling behind her, when she turned quickly, and said, with some little asperity that I marked—

“Is anything the matter?”

“Nothing but what can be repaired,” I said, smiling, for I saw it would not do to alarm her.

But between that time and three o'clock I had discovered new cause for alarm. I saw by reference to my “Bradshaw” (a book with which the library of a detective is never unprovided) that an express train left Brighton directly after church-time. What if Sir Nathaniel should send for me at the Brighton address I had given?—and what if, finding me gone, he should take that express train and hurry on to Shirley House, with a policeman as his companion?

He was quite capable of such an act I felt sure, but I hoped, on the other hand, that his natural laziness, and his cynical belief that I had more to gain than lose by him, would together prompt him to refrain from making inquiries about me.

If he, however, did take the 1 P.M. train, it was perfectly competent for him to be at Shirley House by three, the after-lunch hour appointed by Miss Shedleigh for my interview with her. And I desire here to remark that this lady must have been one of most unusual kindness and consideration to give way to my request—I who was almost a stranger to her, and to agree to see me on that day which those ladies most devoted to their poor look upon as private, and to be passed without interference.

The time between one and three was not past very pleasantly.

At three I stood on the door-steps of Shirley House.

I confess I was ashamed of the work I had in hand.

When I came to the room in which I knew I should find her, I declare I was afraid to follow the man, and when being in the chamber, the servant had left it, and she had said, “And pray, my dear, what is it that is so important that it cannot wait till to-morrow?” I had for a few moments no power to answer.

“I am afraid,” said I, “you will not feel very great pleasure in what I have to say.”

“Let me hear it,” she replied, with a fine, delicate smile.

“I learnt a secret of your life quite by chance two weeks since.”

“A secret of my life!” she said, after a pause, during which she hesitated, and evidently tried to reassure herself, though she turned paler at the moment.

“Poor thing,” thought I, “it is clear she has but one great secret, which indeed is one no longer.”

“Yes,” I replied, “and I must speak to you about it.”

Here there came a little feeling of pride to her support, and she said, though very softly and coolly—

“Must?”

“Must,” I echoed.

“Pray,” she continued, speaking a little highly, “to whom am I addressing myself, that I hear such a word as—
must?
”

“I am a detective,” said I, using the phrase which I have so frequently uttered when secrecy has been no longer needful.

“A detective?” she said, evidently not knowing what such an officer was, and yet too unerringly guessing.

“Yes,” I continued, “one of the secret police.”

She started, and muttered something to herself. She uttered no cry, no exclamation of fear; indeed my long experience assures me that in the majority of cases where a sudden and terrible surprise comes upon people, the shock is so great that they generally receive the news with but little expression of their feelings. It appears as though shock rather stupifies than excites.

In a very few moments she became comparatively calm.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Indeed,” I answered, “to save you.”

“From what?”

“From the consequences of my duty.”

She looked at me intently, and at last she smiled.

“True,” she said, “you have your duty to perform as well as others. What does this conversation mean?”

“It means, Miss Shedleigh,” I said, “that I know the little girl who is in this house is not Mr. Shedleigh's child.”

She thought she had prepared herself for the worst, but she had not.

She trembled, and uttered a short, sharp cry, which touched one's very heart.

“There can be no doubt about it,” I said, desirous of preventing her from the attempt to fence with me and my information. “The cabman from whom you obtained the little girl pointed out the very spot where he placed the child in your arms. Pray do not fancy the case could not be proved. The doctor, Dr. Ellkins, may be dead, but he said enough to an apprentice he had, and whom I have seen, to show that the late lady could not have been the mother of the little girl who goes by her name. Avoid any proceedings which might be terrible. I do not know, if you denied everything, but that Mrs. Shedleigh's remains might be brought in evidence against you.”

These words, as partially I intended they should, shocked her inexpressibly.

“Surely they could not so outrage my poor sister's grave?”

“Indeed you are mistaken,” I said; “the law knows no pity while the truth is doubtful.”

“But—but what would you have me do?”

“Confess all to Sir Nathaniel Shirley.”

“Sir Nathaniel—do you know him?”

She was now truly alarmed. But she did not betray any wild excitement, such as I believe most people would suppose she would have shown.

“I left him only last night!”

A blank, deadly expression, or rather want of expression, stole over her face.

“Then all is indeed lost,” said she.

“No; not yet,” I replied.

“Woman, you come from him?” she said, in a tone of weeping defiance, if that term can be comprehended.

“No, indeed,” I replied, “I have come of my own will to warn you against Sir Nathaniel.”

“And yet you have come so recently from him.” Then catching, as the drowning man at the shadow of himself on the surface of the water, she said—“Perhaps
he
does not know all?”

“He does,” I said, wofully; “all, even to the addresses of the people necessary to prove his case.”

“And you furnished him with this power?”

“I did. I grieve to say I was forced to do so.”

“Ch, woman, woman! if you did but know what you have done.”

“I have done what it was but justice to do.”

“You have done a wretched thing,” she said. “Sir Nathaniel will have no mercy upon
me
, and I must suffer—I alone must suffer.”

“Mr. Shedleigh,” said I; “had not he better know—”

“Know? Know what?”

“Why, that the—the fraud has been discovered.”

“Woman, he thinks the child his.”

“What! he has heard nothing of the truth?”

“Nothing; the deception was practised on him in pity, and now you come, after four years' peace, and may perhaps kill him.”

“But,” said I, apologetically, “remember you have deprived Sir Nathaniel Shirley of his property.”

“Sir Nathaniel—Sir Nathaniel,” she repeated; “it were well for him that he should never be rich, and well for him that what was done was well done.”

I shook my head. I knew that right was right, and that the property was by law the baronet's.

“Sir Nathaniel,” she cried, beating her right foot upon the ground—by this time all fear for herself was past—“Sir Nathaniel, had he obtained the property, would have been a beggar by this time, whereas he would never have been unprovided for had you not learnt my secret. Now he will take the estates, though, if the wish of the late owner, my sister-in-law, could be consulted, I know she would keep every poor acre from her uncle. Oh, woman, woman, if you could but judge of the injury you have done!”

“I shall have a quiet conscience, Miss Shedleigh, whatever happens,” I said; “but it will be quieter if you will but let me, who have been the means of bringing destruction near you—if you will but let me save you. I am afraid of Sir Nathaniel, he seems so merciless.”

“First hear me,” she said. “Before you speak again you shall hear my excuse for my conduct—hear me, nor speak till I have finished. I know not by what terrible chance it has happened that you should learn a secret which I thought lay hidden in my sister's grave and my heart. How you have pieced your information together I am unable to imagine, but since you know so much I would have you know the rest, and in learning it, believe that I am to be as much pitied as to be blamed.”

I bowed, feeling rather that I was the poor lady's prisoner than she in a measure mine.

“You know my brother's wife brought a dead child into the world; you know that that child, being dead when born, in event of my sister-in-law's death her property could not be enjoyed by her husband for life, simply because the child had not breathed. It was she who put it into my head first. My sister's distress came upon us very suddenly, weeks before we expected, and no preparations had been made. When she learnt that she could not be a mother, news which she inferred rather than learnt, I believe the humiliation felt by her was so great that it led to her death, as certainly as that before she died she prayed Heaven to send her a child to comfort her husband after she was gone, for from the moment the doctor left her she never believed she would rise from her bed again. It was when she cried out that many a poor woman would be glad to find a home for her puny child, that the idea came upon me of the woman and infant I had seen pass the house about nine, as I came in at the south gate, and to whom I had spoken. I gave that poor woman some silver, pitying her much when she told me her child was barely a fortnight old.

“Perhaps I had no right to speak of this mother and child to my sister, for she was not quite herself at any moment from the time the doctor left to the moment of her death—perhaps I should not have excited her already excited brain. But no sooner did she comprehend what I said than she cried that heaven had heard her prayer, and bade me go and seek the woman. I refused at first, but she looked so powerful that it seemed to me as though she was inspired, and so I said yes, I would go, and I went quickly from the house and down the road, in the direction which the poor woman had taken.

“And when I heard the child crying from within that miserable common cab, I also thought that Heaven had had pity on us. I know now how guilty I was—how very guilty I was.

“I had not left the house twenty minutes when I was returning with the child, and when I came into her room, carrying the infant, I found her still alone, though I had taken no precautions to keep her by herself. She cried out, saying Heaven had been kind, and declaring how a good angel had brought it to me.

“There was no one in the house to see my act. It was the free-school
fête
day, and the servants, with the exception of one, were at Velvet Dell, three miles away—the only girl that had remained at home had gone down to the surgery with the doctor.

“Before a quarter past ten, at which time the servants came trooping home—they had been given to ten, and there had been nobody to send for them during that terrible hour-and-a-half—before a quarter past ten she was dying in the presence of Dr. Ellkins, who looked much confused and puzzled.

“Even then I felt the enormity of the crime in which I had engaged—I did indeed. Even then I felt that had I opposed my sister's wild idea instead of having fostered it, she herself would never have laid such injunctions upon me as she did.

“It was before the doctor arrived for the second time—and the moment the lady's maid returned with the medicine, I sent her back for the medical man—it was before Dr. Ellkins came again that she had commanded me to swear that I would never tell the truth about the child, she saying—‘Heaven sent it, Heaven sent it, though it was but a poor woman's daughter.'

“She told me,” the poor lady continued, looking eagerly in my face—it was now half-past three, as I saw by the great French clock on the mantelpiece, so that if Sir Nathaniel had come up by the 1 p.m. train he would soon be at Shirley House—“she told me that it would break down Newton—Newton is Mr. Shedleigh—if he lost both her and his child together, and that he was doing the world good, and that nothing must stop his work. You know,” she continued, breaking off, “she married my brother because she rather admired his intellect than himself.

“She said also I should save a poor child from destitution, and finally she declared that she willed that her uncle should not have her property—that he was wicked and wasteful, and that her husband ought to have it to do good with.