CHAPTER XVII
IN WHICH BECKY, CONTINUING HER LETTER, RELATES HER IMPRESSIONS OF MRS. PREEDY’S YOUNG MAN LODGER
MY OWN DEAR FRED, – Once more I am in my little cupboard of a bedroom, writing to you. Again it is past twelve o’clock, and Mrs. Preedy is asleep.
I will now tell you why I have altered my mind with regard to Richard Manx, and why I have determined to watch his movements. The seal to this resolution was fixed the night before last.
Mrs. Preedy was sitting up, as usual, drinking her regular allowance of gin and water. I was in my bedroom, supposed to be asleep, but really very wide awake. Peeping through a chink in my bedroom door, I saw Mrs. Preedy thus engaged, and engaged also in reading an account of the police-court proceedings in which you were so cruelly implicated. There was nothing interesting in this picture of Mrs. Preedy, and I crept into bed again. I was dozing off, when I was roused by the sound of Mrs. Preedy leaving the kitchen, and going up-stairs to the street-door, which she opened. I ventured out into the passage, and listened. She was talking to a policeman. Presently she came down-stairs and mixed a glass of gin and water, which she took up to him. Then after a little further chat, she came down again, and resumed her melancholy occupation. After that, I fell asleep.
Changes have taken place in me, my dear. Once I was nervous; now I am bold. Once I could not sleep without a light in my room; now I can sleep in the dark. Once I was a sound sleeper, and was not easily awakened; now the slightest sound arouses me. The dropping of a pin would be almost sufficient to cause me to start up in bed.
On the occasion I refer to, it was something more than the dropping of a pin that aroused me. It was the sound of voices in the kitchen – Mrs. Preedy’s voice and the voice of a man. What man? I peeped through the chink. It was Richard Manx, our new lodger.
He was standing on the threshold of the kitchen door; from where I knelt I could not obtain a good view of his face, but I saw Mrs. Preedy’s, and it seemed to me as if she had received a fright.
Richard Manx, in reply to an observation made by Mrs. Preedy, said her clock on the mantelpiece was wrong, and that he had heard twelve o’clock strike a quarter of an hour ago. Mrs. Preedy asked him if he had come to pay his rent. No, he said, he had not come to pay his rent. Then Mrs. Preedy very naturally inquired what he had come for, and Richard Manx, in a voice resembling that of a raven with a bad cold, said,
“I have – a – heard it once more again!”
My dear, the moment he uttered these strange words, Mrs. Preedy rushed at him, pulled him into the kitchen, and then flew to my bedroom door. I was in bed before she got there, and when she opened it and called my name, I was, of course, fast asleep. She made sure of this by coming into my little cupboard, and passing her hand over my face. My heart beat quickly, but she herself was too agitated to notice it. When she left my room, I thought it prudent to remain in bed for awhile, so as to avoid the risk of discovery. My mind was in a whirl. Richard Manx had heard it once more again! What had he heard?
I rose quietly, and listened. Richard Manx was speaking of a sound in the empty house next door, No. 119. He had heard it twice – a week ago, and again on this night. He said that he was in the habit of smoking in bed, and asked if Mrs. Preedy was insured. He was interrupted by the breaking of a storm, which appeared to frighten them both very much. I will not attempt to repeat, word for word, all that passed between them. Its substance is now what I am going to relate.
Eight nights ago, Richard Manx, sitting in his attic, was startled (so he says) by the sound of a tapping or scratching in the house next door, in which the murder was committed. Being, according to his own declaration, of a nervous nature, he left his attic, and crept downstairs. In the passage below he met Mrs. Preedy, and related to her what he had heard. She endeavoured to persuade him that his fancy had been playing him tricks.
“How is it possible,” she asked him, “that you could have heard any sound in the next house when there’s nobody there?”
A convincing question, my dear, which carries its own convincing answer.
Richard Manx wavers, and promises her not to speak to the neighbours of his distressing impression. He says he will wait “till it comes again.” It comes again on this night the events of which I am describing, and in great fear (which may or may not be real) he creeps downstairs to Mrs. Preedy to inform her of it. He says the noise may not be made by a mortal; it may be made by a spirit. So much the worse. A man or a woman one can meet and hold, and ask questions of, but a spirit! – the very idea is enough to make one’s hair stand on end.
It did not make my hair stand on end, nor did Richard Manx’s suggestion frighten me in the least. It excited me almost to fever heat, but there was no fear in my excitement. Expectation, hope, painful curiosity – these were the feelings which animated me.
What if Richard Manx were, for some reason of his own, inventing this story of strange noises in an empty house, the boards of which are stained with the blood of a murdered man? The idea did not dawn upon me; it flashed upon me in a certain expression which dwelt upon Richard Manx’s face while Mrs. Preedy’s back, for a moment, was turned to him.
When they were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table, the man was timid, confiding, humble; but when Mrs. Preedy turned towards the dresser for the sugar basin, there stole into his face the expression I have referred to. What did it denote? Cunning, ferocity, triumph, duplicity. It was but for a moment; upon Mrs. Preedy confronting him again, he relapsed into humbleness and timidity.
What was the meaning of this sudden change? That the man was playing a part? Clearly. Then behind his systematic acting was hidden a motive. What motive?
He had accepted Mrs. Preedy’s invitation to a glass of gin and water, and had asked for sugar. It was while she was getting the sugar that he had allowed the mask to slip from his false face.
“If it gets known,” she said, “I’m a ruined woman!”
“Ah,” said Richard Manx, “I comprehend what you mean by ruined. A house with a shadow – a spirit ghost in it, would be – a – horrible! Listen you. This house is likewise.” Mrs. Preedy shuddered. “Well,” he continued, “I will say – a – nothing.” He placed his hand on his heart and leered at her. “On my honour. But be you positive – what I have heard is not – a – fancy. It is veritable.”
He said a great deal more to the same effect, and I never saw a woman more completely prostrated.
Richard Manx speaks imperfect English, and I cannot make up my mind whether he is a Frenchman, or a German, or an Italian, or an Impostor. I am not only suspicious of the man, I am suspicious of his broken English.
What I wanted now to ascertain was whether any person had heard the tapping or the scratching in No. 119, and the person I fixed upon to settle this point was Mrs. Bailey, our old lady lodger on the first floor. If anything was going on in the next house it could scarcely have escaped her ears.
Yesterday morning while I was tidying up her room, I broached the subject.
“I wonder,” I said, “whether the next house will ever be let.”
“I wouldn’t take it,” said Mrs. Bailey, “if they offered it to me for nothing a-year – eh?”
“It wouldn’t be a pleasant place to live in certainly,” I remarked. “I should be afraid of ghosts.”
“Do you believe in them, eh, Becky?”
“I’ve never seen one,” I replied, “but I can’t help believing in them – a little. There’s one comfort – they don’t trouble people who haven’t wronged them. So we’re all right.”
“Yes, Becky, yes – they wouldn’t come through brick walls to scare a poor old woman, eh?”
“No,” I said, “and I’ve never read of a ghost speaking or making a noise of any kind. Have you?”
“Not that I can remember,” replied the old lady.
“Mrs. Bailey,” I said, “since the night of the murder you have not heard anything going on next door?”
“Not a sound, Becky. It’s been as still as a mouse.”
“As a mouse,” I repeated; “ah, but mice scratch at walls sometimes.”
“So they do; but there can’t be any mice next door, or I should have heard them. Nothing for them to eat, Becky – eh? Mice can’t eat ghosts – eh?”
“No, indeed,” I said. “I hope you are sleeping well, Mrs. Bailey.”
“No, I am not, Becky. As night comes on I get a pain in my side, and it keeps me awake for hours.”
“What a shame!” I exclaimed. “I’ll come and rub it for you, if you like, when my work’s done. Were you awake last night, Mrs. Bailey?”
“I didn’t close my eyes till past two this morning; too bad, eh, Becky?”
“Indeed it is. I hope you were not disturbed.”
“Only my side, Becky; nothing else.”
This conversation convinced me that Richard Manx had not heard any such sound as he stated. What was his purpose in endeavouring to deceive Mrs. Preedy?
The same day I was sent out to the greengrocer’s, and the woman said to me that she supposed I was not going to stop much longer in my place.
“Why not?” I asked.
“There isn’t one girl in a thousand,” said the woman, “as had live willingly in a haunted house. Why, Becky, it’s the talk of the neighbourhood!”
“All I can say is,” I replied, “that I have heard nothing of it, and I don’t think Mrs. Preedy has, either.”
“Ah,” remarked the woman, “they say you must go abroad if you want to hear any news about yourself.”
My dear, the woman in the greengrocer’s shop spoke the truth. Before the day was out, it was the talk of the neighbourhood, that both houses, Nos. 118 and 119 Great Porter Square, were haunted. When I went out last evening to write my first letter to you, I was told of it by half-a-dozen people, and the policeman himself (they are all friends of mine) made inquiries as to the time and shapes in which the ghostly visitants presented themselves. And to-day I have observed more than a dozen strangers stop before our house and point up to it, shaking their heads mysteriously.
Mrs. Preedy opened the subject to me this evening.
“Becky,” she said, “there is no end to the wickedness of people.”
“That there isn’t, mum,” I replied, sympathetically.
“Why, Becky,” she exclaimed, “have you heard what they are saying about the house?”
“O, yes,” I said, “everybody says its haunted.”
“Do you believe it, Becky?”
“Not me, mum!” (Observe my grammar, my dear.) “Not me! Who should know better than those that live in a house whether it’s haunted or not?”
“That’s it, Becky,” cried Mrs. Preedy, excitedly; “that’s it. Who should know better than us? And I’m sure I’ve never seen anything nor heard anything. Nor you either, Becky.”
“Nor me, neither,” I replied. “But the worst of it is, mum, mud sticks. Give a dog a bad name, and you may as well hang him at once.”
Now, who spread this rumour about our house being haunted? Somebody, for sure, who has a motive in giving the place a bad reputation. There is never smoke without a fire. Shall I tell you who is the cause of all this? Richard Manx.
What leads me to this conclusion? you ask. Instinct, my dear. It is an important quality in animals; why not in human beings? What possible motive can Richard Manx have in spreading such a report? you ask next. A just Heaven only knows, my dear. But I will find out his motive, as I am a living and loving woman.
You are not acquainted with Richard Manx, you may say. Nor am I. But is it certain that it is his true name? You are not the only person in the world who has concealed his true name. You concealed yours for an innocent reason. Richard Manx may conceal his for a guilty one. Then think of me, known simply as Becky. Why, my dearest, the world is a perfect medley! Shall I tell you something else about him? My dear, he paints. I hear you, in your unsophisticated innocence, exclaim, “O, he is an artist!” He is, in one sense. His canvass is the human skin. He paints his face.
What will you ask now? Of course, your question will be, “How on earth do you know that he paints his face?” My dear, here I am your superior. Trust a woman to know a natural from an artificial colour. These few last questions trouble your soul. “Does she paint, then?” you mutter. “No, my dear,” I answer, “my complexion is my own!”
Twice have I seen Richard Manx to-day, and I have not avoided him. I looked at him. He looked at me.
“You are Becky,” he said; and if ever a foreigner spoke like an Englishman, Richard Manx did when he said, “You are Becky.”
“Yes, if you please, sir,” I replied, coyly.
“You are a – what you call maid-of-all work here,” he said.
Maid-of-all-work! What do real, genuine foreigners know of English maids-of-all-work? The very use of the term was, in my judgment, an argument against him.
“Yes,” I replied.
“And a very pretty maid-of-all-work,” he said, with a smile.
“There’s missus calling!” I cried, and I ran downstairs.
In that short interview I had convinced myself that he painted, and I had made up my mind that he wore a wig. Think of that, my dear! Our innocent, timid, humble young man lodger, with a false head of hair! I blush.
The meaning of all this is, that Richard Manx is no chance lodger. He came here designedly. He has not paid his rent. It is part of his design. He would be more likely to attract attention as a man with plenty of money than as a man with none. There are so many poor people in the world, and they are comparatively so unimportant? He has spread a rumour that the house he lodges in and the next house are haunted. It is part of his design. To bring the houses into disrepute will cause people to avoid them, will lessen the chance of their being occupied. The better opportunity for him to carry out, without being observed, any scheme he may have in his false and wicked mind.
I have but one thing more to relate, and that will bring the history of your adventurous little woman up to the present moment of writing. It is an important incident, and has a direct bearing upon all that has gone before. At nine o’clock to-night the street door was opened and closed. My mistress and I were in the kitchen.
“It is Mr. Manx,” said Mrs. Preedy.
“I didn’t know he had a latch key,” I observed.
“I gave him one to-day,” said Mrs. Preedy. “He is looking for a situation, poor young man, and asked me for a latch key, as he might have to keep out late at night, and didn’t like to disturb me.”
“Very considerate of him,” I said. “What kind of situation is he after? Is he anything at all?”
“He is a professor of languages, Becky, and a musician besides.”
“What kind of musician?” I asked, scornfully. “A trombone player?”
“I can’t say, Becky.”
“Does he play the cornet, or the fiddle,” I continued, with a certain recklessness which overcame me for a few moments, “or the harp, or the flute, or the piano?” And as I said “or the piano?” a dish I was wiping slipped clean out of my hands, and was broken to pieces.
“What a careless girl you are, Becky!” cried my mistress. “That makes the third you have broken since you’ve been here.”
“Never mind,” I said, “I have had a legacy left me.”
She stared at me, and cried “A legacy!” And, upon my word, my dear, until she repeated the words, I scarcely knew what it was I had said. However, I was committed to it now, and was bound to proceed.
“Yes; a legacy. That is what I really went about last night.”
The information so staggered her that her voice became quite deferential.
“Is it much, Becky?”
“A clear three hundred pounds,” I replied, “and perhaps a little more. I shall know for a certainty in a week or two.”
“You’ll be giving me notice presently, I daresay, Becky, now you’ve come into money.”
“Not unless you want to get rid of me,” I replied.
“Becky,” said Mrs. Preedy, graciously, “I am very satisfied with you. You can remain with me as long as you like, and when we part I hope we shall part friends.”
“I hope so too, mum; and I hope you’ll think none the worse of me because I’ve been so fortunate. I should like to hear of your having such a slice of luck.”
“Thank you, Becky,” said my mistress, meekly, “but I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.”
“Ah,” said I, wisely, “it isn’t always the most deserving as gets the best rewarded.”
Do you know, my dear, so strong is the force of example and association, that I sometimes catch myself speaking exactly as if I had been born in that station of life which I am at present occupying in Mrs. Preedy’s service.
Here a bell rang. “That’s Mrs. Bailey’s bell,” I said; “shall I go up to her, or will you?”
“You go, Becky,” said Mrs. Preedy; “she likes you best.”
Up I went, and found Mrs. Bailey writhing in bed; she was evidently in pain.
“My side, Becky, my side!” moaned the old creature. “You promised to rub it for me?”
“Wait a minute,” I said, “I’ll go and fetch some liniment.”
I ran downstairs, and took from my little bedroom a bottle of liniment which I had bought at the chemist’s in expectation of such an emergency as this. Then I rubbed the old lady’s side, and soon afforded her relief.
“What a soft hand you’ve got!” she said, “It’s almost like a lady’s hand.”
I sighed. “I haven’t been a common servant all my life,” I said. “But never mind me. Do you feel easier?”
“I am another woman, dear,” she replied. “O dear, O dear!”
And the old creature began to cry, and moan, and shake. I pitied her most truly at that moment.
“What are you crying for?” I asked.
“O dear, O dear!” she repeated. “I had a daughter once, who might have looked after me in my old days. My Lizzie! my Lizzie!” She continued to weep in the most distressing manner, calling upon her Lizzie in touching tones. I asked tenderly if her daughter was dead, and her reply was —
“God only knows!”
And then she related to me, often stopping to sob and moan in grief, a sad, sad story of a girl who had left her home, and had almost broken her parents’ hearts. I cannot stop now to tell you the story as this lonely woman told it to me, for my fingers are beginning to pain me with the strain of this long letter, and I have still something more to say which more nearly concerns ourselves.
Bear in mind that from the time Richard Manx had entered the house, no other persons had entered or left it. Had the street door been opened I should for a certainty have remarked it.
Mrs. Bailey had told the whole of the sad story of her daughter’s shame and desertion, and was lying in tears on her bed. I was sitting by her side, animated by genuine sympathy for the lonely old lady. Suddenly an expression of alarm appeared on her face, which gradually turned quite white.
“Becky!” she cried.
I leant over her, my heart beating quick, for she had startled me. I feared that her last hour had arrived. I was mistaken. It was fear of another kind which had aroused her from the contemplation of her special sorrow.
“Don’t you hear?” she asked, presently.
“What?” I exclaimed, following her looks and words in an agony of expectation.
“The next house,” she whispered, “where the man was murdered! The empty house! Something is moving there!”
I threw myself quickly on the bed, and lay by the old lady’s side.
“There, Becky! Do you hear it now?”
“Hush,” I whispered. “Don’t speak or stir! Let us be sure.”
It was not possible that both of us could be dreaming the same dream at the same moment. There was a sound as of some person moving in No. 119.
“Answer me in a whisper,” I said, with my mouth close to Mrs. Bailey’s ear. “The room in which the murder was committed is on a level with this?”
“Yes,” she replied, in a whisper, as I had directed.
“Do you think the sounds are in that room?”
“I am sure of it, Becky.”
I lay still for about the space of a another minute. Then I rose from the bed.
“What are you going to do, Becky?” asked Mrs. Bailey; “Don’t leave me!”
“I must,” I said, firmly. “For about five minutes. I will come back. I promise you faithfully I will come back. Are you afraid to be left alone?”
“Somebody – or something– might come into the room while you are away,” said the old lady, shuddering. “If you must go, lock me in, and take the key with you. But don’t be longer than five minutes, if you have a spark of pity for a poor, deserted old woman!”
I acted upon her suggestion. I locked her in and went – Where? Upstairs or down? Up, to Richard Manx’s room.
I reached his door and listened. No sound came to my ears – no sound of a waking or sleeping inmate of the room. I retreated down half-a-dozen stairs with a heavy tread. No one appeared at the attic door to inquire the meaning of the noise. I ascended the stairs again, and, with a woman’s touch, placed my hand on the handle of the door. It yielded. I looked into the room. No person was there. I ventured boldly in. The room was empty!
Assuring myself of this, I left the room as quickly as I had entered it. I did not pause at Mrs. Bailey’s room on the first floor. I went down to the street door, and quietly put up the door chain. Now, no person could possibly enter or leave the house without my knowledge.
Then I went down to Mrs. Preedy in the kitchen, and said that Mrs. Bailey was unwell, and wished me to stop with her for a little while.
“Stop, and welcome, Becky,” said Mrs. Preedy, with the sweetest smile.
What a power is money! My fanciful legacy of a paltry three hundred pounds had placed this woman and me on an equality, and she was the first to acknowledge it.
I ascended to Mrs. Bailey’s room, and unlocked her door. I had really not been absent for more than five minutes, but she said it seemed like thirty. I remained with her for over an hour, during which time the muffled sounds in the next house continued. I convinced myself that they could not be heard in any other room by going out, now and again, for a few moments, and listening in other rooms on the first and second floors. At length the sound ceased, and after waiting a quarter of an hour longer without it being renewed, I bade Mrs. Bailey good night, telling her, in a cheerful voice, that she was mistaken in supposing there were no mice in the empty house next door.
“Are you sure it is mice, Becky?” she asked, anxiously.
“Am I sure?” I repeated, laughing. “Why, you nervous old creature, what else can it be? Let us make a bargain to say nothing about it except to each other, or we shall have everybody laughing at us. And what would be worse, the detectives might appear again.”
The bargain was made, and I kissed the old lady, and left her.
I went straight upstairs, cautiously, as before. Richard Manx was in his room!
I went down to the street door. The chain was up! A convincing proof that it was this very Richard Manx, our young man lodger – the man who paints and wears a wig, and who is flat-footed – whose movements I had heard through the wall which divides Mrs. Bailey’s room from the room in which the murder was committed.
I am too tired to write a minute longer. This is the longest letter I have ever written. Good night, dear love. God bless and guard you!
Your ever devoted,BECKY.