Henry Dunbar by M. E. Braddon

M >> M. E. Braddon >> Henry Dunbar

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"'He was confused, I suppose; and his hands trembled, eh?' asked the
detective.

"'No, sir; according to what Brigmawl said, Mr. Dunbar seemed as cool
and collected as if he was made of iron. But he kept trying first one
key and then another, for ever so long, before he could find the right
one.'

"'Did he now? that was queer.'

"'But I hope you won't think anything of what I've let drop, sir,' said
the waiter, hastily. 'I'm sure I wouldn't say any thing disrespectful
against Mr. Dunbar; but you asked me what I saw, sir, and I have told
you candid, and----'

"'My good fellow, you're perfectly safe in talking to me,' the detective
answered, heartily. 'Suppose you bring us a little strong tea, and clear
away this dessert; and if you've anything more to tell us, you can say
it while you're pouring out the tea. There's so much connected with
these sort of things that never gets into the papers, that really it's
quite interesting to hear of 'em from an eye-witness.'

"The waiter went away, pleased and re-assured, after clearing the table
very slowly. I was impatient to hear what Mr. Carter had gathered from
the man's talk.

"'Well,' he said, 'unless I'm very much mistaken, I think I've got my
friend the master of Maudesley Abbey.'

"'You do: but how so?' I asked. 'That talk about the gold-chain having
changed hands must be utterly absurd. What should Henry Dunbar want with
Joseph Wilmot's watch and chain?'

"'Ah, you're right there,' answered Mr. Carter. 'What should Henry
Dunbar want with Joseph Wilmot's gold chain? That's one question. Why
should Joseph Wilmot's daughter be so anxious to screen Henry Dunbar now
that she has seen him for the first time since the murder? There's
another question for you. Find the answer for it, if you can.

"I told the detective that he seemed bent upon mystifying me, and that
he certainly succeeded to his heart's content.

"Mr. Carter laughed a triumphant little laugh.

"'Never you mind, sir,' he said; you leave it to me, and you watch it
well, sir. It'll work out very neatly, unless I'm altogether wrong. Wait
for the end, Mr. Austin, and wait patiently. Do you know what I shall do
to-morrow?'

"'I haven't the faintest idea.'

"'I shall waste no more time in asking questions. I shall have the water
near the scene of the murder dragged. I shall try and find the clothes
that were stripped off the man who was murdered last August!'"

CHAPTER XXXIX.

CLEMENT AUSTIN'S JOURNAL CONTINUED.

"The rest of the evening passed quietly enough. Mr. Carter drank his
strong tea, and then asked my permission to go out and smoke a couple of
cigars in the High Street. He went, and I finished my letter to my
mother. There was a full moon, but it was obscured every now and then by
the black clouds that drifted across it. I went out myself to post the
letter, and I was glad to feel the cool breeze blowing the hair away
from my forehead, for the excitement of the day had given me a nervous
headache.

"I posted my letter in a narrow street near the hotel. As I turned away
from the post-office to go back to the High Street, I was startled by
the apparition of a girlish figure upon the other side of the street--a
figure so like Margaret's that its presence in that street filled me
with a vague sense of fear, as if the slender figure, with garments
fluttering in the wind, had been a phantom.

"Of course I attributed this feeling to its right cause, which was
doubtless neither more nor less than the over-excited state of my own
brain. But I was determined to set the matter quite at rest, so I
hurried across the way and went close up to the young lady, whose face
was completely hidden by a thick veil.

"'Miss Wilmot--Margaret,' I said.

"I had thought it impossible that Margaret should be in Winchester, and
I was only right, it seemed, for the young lady drew herself away from
me abruptly and walked across the road, as if she mistook my error in
addressing her for an intentional insult. I watched her as she walked
rapidly along the narrow street, until she turned sharply away at a
corner and disappeared. When I first saw her, as I stood by the
post-office, the moonlight had shone full upon her. As she went away the
moon was hidden by a fleecy grey cloud, and the street was wrapped in
shadow. Thus it was only for a few moments that I distinctly saw the
outline of her figure. Her face I did not see at all.

"I went back to the hotel and sat by the fire trying to read a
newspaper, but unable to chain my thoughts to the page. Mr. Carter came
in a little before eleven o'clock. He was in very high spirits, and
drank a tumbler of steaming brandy-and-water with great gusto. But
question him how I might, I could get nothing from him except that he
meant to have a search made for the dead man's clothes.

"I asked him why he wanted them, and what advantage would be gained by
the finding of them, but he only nodded his head significantly, and told
me to wait.

* * * * *

"To-day has been most wretched--a day of miserable discoveries; and yet
not altogether miserable, for the one grand discovery of the day has
justified my faith in the woman I love.

"The morning was cold and wet. There was not a ray of sunshine in the
dense grey sky, and the flat landscape beyond the cathedral seemed
almost blotted out by the drizzling rain; only the hills, grand and
changeless, towered above the mists, and made the landmarks of the
soddened country.

"We took an early and hasty breakfast. Quiet and business-like as the
detective's manner was even to-day, I could see that he was excited. He
took nothing but a cup of strong tea and a few mouthfuls of dry toast,
and then put on his coat and hat.

"'I'm going down to the chief quarters of the county constabulary, he
said. 'I shall be obliged to tell the truth about my business down
there, because I want every facility for what I'm going to do. If you'd
like to see the water dragged, you can meet me at twelve o'clock in the
grove. You'll find me superintending the work.'

"It was about half-past eight when Mr. Carter left me. The time hung
very heavily on my hands between that time and eleven o'clock. At eleven
I put on my hat and overcoat and went out into the rain.

"I found my friend the detective standing in one of the smaller
entrances of the cathedral, in very earnest conversation with an old
man. As Mr. Carter gave me no token of recognition, I understood that he
did not want me to interrupt his companion's talk, so I walked slowly on
by the same pathway along which we had gone on the previous afternoon;
the same pathway by which the murdered man had gone to his death.

"I had not walked half a mile before I was joined by the detective.

"'I gave you the office just now,' he said, 'because I thought if you
spoke to me, that old chap would leave off talking, and I might miss
something that was on the tip of his tongue.'

"'Did he tell you much?'

"'No; he's the man who gave his evidence at the inquest. He gave me a
minute description of Henry Dunbar's watch and chain. The watch didn't
open quite in the usual manner, and the gentleman was rather awkward in
opening it, my friend the verger tells me. He was awkward with the key
of his desk. He seems to have had a fit of awkwardness that day.'

"'You think that he was guilty, and that he was confused and agitated by
the hideous business he had been concerned in?'

"Mr. Carter looked at me with a very queer smile on his face.

"'You're improving, Mr. Austin,' he said; 'you'd make a first-class
detective in next to no time.'

"I felt rather doubtful as to the meaning of this compliment, for there
was something very like irony in Mr. Carter's tone.

"'I'll tell you what I think,' he said, stopping presently, and taking
me by the button-hole. 'I think that I know why the murdered man's coat,
waistcoat, and shirt were stripped off him.'

"I begged the detective to tell me what he thought upon this subject;
but he refused to do so.

"'Wait and see,' he said; 'if I'm right, you'll soon find out what I
mean; if I'm wrong, I'll keep my thoughts to myself. I'm an old hand,
and I don't want to be found out in a mistake.'

"I said no more after this. The disappearance of the murdered man's
clothes had always appeared to me the only circumstance that was
irreconcilable with the idea of Henry Dunbar's guilt. That some brutal
wretch, who stained his soul with blood for the sake of his victim's
poor possessions, should strip off the clothes of the dead, and make a
market even out of them, was probable enough. But that Henry Dunbar, the
wealthy, hyper-refined Anglo-Indian, should linger over the body of his
valet and offer needless profanation to the dead, was something
incredible, and not to be accounted for by any theory whatever.

"This was the one point which, from first to last, had completely
baffled me.

"We found the man with the drags waiting for us under the dripping
trees. Mr. Carter had revealed himself to the constabulary as one of the
chief luminaries of Scotland Yard; and if he had wanted to dig up the
foundations of the cathedral, they would scarcely have ventured to
interfere with his design. One of the constables was lounging by the
water's edge, watching the men as they prepared for business.

"I have no need to write a minute record of that miserable day. I know
that I walked up and down, up and down, backwards and forwards, upon the
soddened grass, from noon till sundown, always thinking that I would go
away presently, always lingering a little longer; hindered by the fancy
that Mr. Carter's search was on the point of being successful. I know
that for hour after hour the grating sound of the iron drags grinding on
the gravelly bed of the stream sounded in my tired ears, and yet there
was no result. I know that rusty scraps of worn-out hardware, dead
bodies of cats and dogs, old shoes laden with pebbles, rank
entanglements of vegetable corruption, and all manner of likely and
unlikely rubbish, were dragged out of the stream, and thrown aside upon
the bank.

"The detective grew dirtier and slimier and wetter as the day wore on;
but still he did not lose heart.

"'I'll have every inch of the bed of the stream, and every hidden hole
in the bottom, dragged ten times over, before I'll give it up,' he said
to me, when he came to me at dusk with some brandy that had been brought
by a boy who had been fetching beer, more or less, all the afternoon.

"When it grew dark, the men lighted a couple of flaring resinous
torches, which Mr. Carter had sent for towards dusk, and worked, by the
patches of fitful light which these torches threw upon the water. I
still walked up and down under the dripping trees, in the darkness, as I
had walked in the light; and once when I was farthest from the red glare
of the torches, a strange fancy took possession of me. In amongst the
dim branches of the trees I thought I saw something moving, something
that reminded me of the figure I had seen opposite the post-office on
the previous night.

"I ran in amongst the trees; and as I did so, the figure seemed to me to
recede, and disappear; a faint rustling of a woman's dress sounded in my
ears, or seemed so to sound, as the figure melted from my sight. But
again I had good reason to attribute these fancies to the state of my
own brain, after that long day of anxiety and suspense.

"At last, when I was completely worn out by my weary day, Mr. Carter
came to me.

"'They're found!' he cried. 'We've found 'em! We've found the murdered
man's clothes! They've been drifted away into one of the deepest holes
there is, and the rats have been gnawing at 'em. But, please Providence,
we shall find what we want. I'm not much of a church-goer, but I do
believe there's a Providence that lies in wait for wicked men, and
catches the very cleverest of them when they least expect it.'

"I had never seen Mr. Carter so much excited as he seemed now. His face
was flushed, and his nostrils quivered nervously.

"I followed him to the spot where the constable and two men, who had
been dragging the stream, were gathered round a bundle of wet rubbish
lying on the ground.

"Mr. Carter knelt down before this bundle, which was covered with
trailing weeds and moss and slime, and the constable stooped over him
with a flaming torch in his hand.

"'These are somebody's clothes, sure enough,' the detective said; 'and,
unless I'm very much mistaken, they're what I want. Has anybody got a
basket?'

"Yes. The boy who had fetched beer had a basket. Mr. Carter stuffed the
slimy bundle into this basket, and put his arm through the handle.

"'You're not going to look 'em over here, then?' said the local
constable, with an air of disappointment.

"'No, I'll take them straight to my hotel; I shall have plenty of light
there. You can come with me, if you like,' Mr. Carter answered.

"He paid the men, who had been at work all day, and paid them liberally,
I suppose, for they seemed very well satisfied. I had given him money
for any expenses such as these; for I knew that, in a case of this kind,
every insignificant step entailed the expenditure of money.

"We walked homewards as rapidly as the miserable state of the path, the
increasing darkness, and the falling rain would allow us to walk. The
constable walked with us. Mr. Carter whistled softly to himself as he
went along, with the basket on his arm. The slimy green stuff and muddy
water dripped from the bottom of the basket as he carried it.

"I was still at a loss to understand the reason of his high spirits; I
was still at a loss to comprehend why he attached so much importance to
the finding of the dead man's clothes.

"It was past eight o'clock when we three men--the detecting the
Winchester constable, and myself--entered our sitting-room at the George
Hotel. The principal table was laid for dinner; and the waiter, our
friend of the previous evening, was hovering about, eager to receive us.
But Mr. Carter sent the waiter about his business.

"'I've got a little matter to settle with this gentleman,' he said,
indicating the Winchester constable with a backward jerk of his thumb;
'I'll ring when I want dinner.'

"I saw the waiter's eyes open to an abnormal extent, as he looked at the
constable, and I saw a sudden blank apprehension creep over his face, as
he retired very slowly from the room.

"'Now,' said Mr. Carter, 'we'll examine the bundle.'

"He pushed away the dinner-table, and drew forward a smaller table. Then
he ran out of the room, and returned in about two minutes, carrying with
him all the towels he had been able to find in my room and his own,
which were close at hand. He spread the towels on the table, and then
took the slimy bundle from the basket.

"'Bring me the candles--both the candles,' he said to the constable.

"The man held the two wax-candles on the right hand of the detective, as
he sat before the table. I stood on his left hand, watching him
intently.

"He touched the ragged and mud-stained bundle as carefully as if it had
been some living thing. Foul river-insects crept out of the weeds, which
were so intermingled with the tattered fabrics that it was difficult to
distinguish one substance from the other.

"Mr. Carter was right: the rats had been at work. The outer part of the
bundle was a coat--a cloth coat, knawed into tatters by the sharp teeth
of water-rats.

"Inside the coat there was a waistcoat, a satin scarf that was little
better than a pulp, and a shirt that had once been white. Inside the
white shirt there was a flannel shirt, out of which there rolled
half-a-dozen heavy stones. These had been used to sink the bundle, but
were not so heavy as to prevent its drifting into the hole where it had
been found.

"The bundle had been rolled up very tightly, and the outer garment was
the only one which had been destroyed by the rats. The inner
garment--the flannel shirt--was in a very tolerable state of
preservation.

"The detective swept the coat and waistcoat and the pebbles back into
the basket, and then rolled both of the shirts in a towel, and did his
best to dry them. The constable watched him with open eyes, but with no
ray of intelligence in his stolid face.

"'Well,' said Mr. Carter,' there isn't much here, is there? I don't
think I need detain you any longer. You'll be wanting your tea, I dare
say.'

"'I did'nt think there would be much in them,' the constable said,
pointing contemptuously to the wet rags; his reverential awe of Scotland
Yard had been considerably lessened during that long tiresome day. 'I
didn't see your game from the first, and I don't see it now. But you
wanted the things found, and you've had 'em found.'

"Yes; and I've paid for the work being done,' Mr. Carter answered
briskly; 'not but what I'm thankful to you for giving me your help, and
I shall esteem it a favour if you'll accept a trifle, to make up for
your lost day. I've made a mistake, that's all; the wisest of us are
liable to be mistaken once in a way.'

"The constable grinned as he took the sovereign which Mr. Carter offered
him. There was something like triumph in the grin of that Winchester
constable--the triumph of a country official who was pleased to see a
Londoner at fault.

"I confess that I groaned aloud when the door closed upon the man, and I
found myself alone with the detective, who had seated himself at the
little table, and was poring over one of the shirts outspread before
him.

"'All this day's labour and weariness has been so much wasted trouble,'
I said; 'for it seems to have brought us no step nearer to the point we
wanted to reach."

"'Hasn't it, Mr. Austin?" cried the detective, eagerly. 'Do you think I
am such a fool as to speak out before the man who has just left this
room? Do you think I'm going to tell him my secret, or let him share my
gains? The business of to-day has brought us to the very end we want to
reach. It has brought about the discovery to which Margaret Wilmot's
letter was the first indication--the discovery pointed to by every word
that man told us last night. Why did I want to find the clothes worn by
the murdered man? Because I knew that those garments must contain a
secret, or they never would have been stripped from the corpse. It ain't
often that a murderer cares to stop longer than he's obliged by the side
of his victim; and I knew all along that whoever stripped off those
clothes must have had a very strong reason for doing it. I have worked
this business out by my own lights, and I've been right. Look there, Mr.
Austin.'

"He handed me the wet discoloured shirt, and pointed with his finger to
one particular spot.

"There, amidst the stains of mud and moss, I saw something which was
distinct and different from them. A name, neatly worked in dark crimson
thread--a Christian and surname, in full.

"'How do you make that out?' Mr. Carter asked, looking We full in the
face.

"Neither I nor any rational creature upon this earth able to read
English characters could have well made out that name otherwise than I
made it out.

"It was the name of Henry Dunbar.

"'You see it all now, don't you?' said Mr. Carter; 'that's why the
clothes were stripped off the body, and hidden at the bottom of the
stream, where the water seemed deepest; that's why the watch and chain
changed hands; that's why the man who came back to this house after the
murder was slow to select the key of the desk. You understand now why it
was so difficult for Margaret Wilmot to obtain access to the man at
Maudesley Abbey; and why, when she had once seen that man, she tried to
shield him from inquiry and pursuit. When she told you that Henry Dunbar
was innocent of her father's murder, she only told you the truth. The
man who was murdered was Henry Dunbar; the man who murdered him was----'

"I could hear no more. The blood surged up to my head, and I staggered
back and dropped into a chair.

"When I came to myself, I found the detective splashing cold water in my
face. When I came to myself, and was able to think steadily of what had
happened, I had but one feeling in my mind; and that was pity,
unutterable pity, for the woman I loved.

* * * * *

"Mr. Carter carried the bundle of clothes to his own room, and returned
by-and-by, bringing his portmanteau with him. He put the portmanteau in
a corner near the fireplace.

"'I've locked the clothes safely in that,' he said; 'and I don't mean to
let it out of my sight till it's lodged in very safe hands. That mark
upon Henry Dunbar's shirt will hang his murderer.'

"'There may have been some mistake,' I said; 'the clothes marked with
the name of Henry Dunbar may not have really belonged to Henry Dunbar.
He may have given those clothes to his old valet.'

"'That's not likely, sir; for the old valet only met him at Southampton
two or three hours before the murder was committed. No; I can see it all
now. It's the strangest case that ever came to my knowledge, but it's
simple enough when you've got the right clue to it. There was no
probable motive which could induce Henry Dunbar, the very pink of
respectability, and sole owner of a million of money, to run the risk of
the gallows; there were very strong reasons why Joseph Wilmot, a
vagabond and a returned criminal, should murder his late master, if by
so doing he could take the dead man's place, and slip from the position
of an outcast and a penniless reprobate into that of chief partner in
the house of Dunbar and Company. It was a bold game to hazard, and it
must have been a fearfully perilous and difficult game to play, and the
man has played it well, to have escaped suspicion so long. His
daughter's conscientious scruples have betrayed him."

"Yes, Mr. Carter spoke the truth. Margaret's refusal to fulfil her
engagement had set in motion the machinery by means of which the secret
of this foul murder had been discovered.

"I thought of the strange revelation, still so new to me, until my brain
grew dazed. How had it been done? How had it been managed? The man whom
I had seen and spoken with was not Henry Dunbar, then, but Joseph
Wilmot, the murderer of his master--the treacherous and deliberate
assassin of the man he had gone to meet and welcome after his
five-and-thirty years' absence from England!

"'But surely such a conspiracy must be impossible,' I said, by-and-by;
'I have seen letters in St. Gundolph Lane, letters in Henry Dunbar's
hand, since last August.'

"'That's very likely, sir,' the detective answered, coolly. 'I turned up
Joseph Wilmot's own history while I was making myself acquainted with
the details of this murder. He was transported thirty years ago for
forgery: he made a bold attempt at escape, but he was caught in the act,
and removed to Norfolk Island. He was one of the cleverest chaps at
counterfeiting any man's handwriting that was ever tried at the Old
Bailey. He was known as one of the most daring scoundrels that ever
stepped on board a convict-ship; a clever villain, and a bold one, but
not without some touches of good in him, I'm told. At Norfolk Island he
worked so hard and behaved so well that he got set free before he had
served half his time. He came back to England, and was seen about
London, and was suspected of being concerned in all manner of criminal
offences, from card-sharping to coining, but nothing was ever brought
home to him. I believe he tried to make an honest living, but couldn't:
the brand of the gaol-bird was upon him; and if he ever did get a
chance, it was taken away from him before the sincerity of any apparent
reformation had been tested. This is his history, and the history of
many other men like him.'

"And Margaret was the daughter of this man. An inexpressible feeling of
melancholy took possession of me as I thought of this. I understood
everything now. This noble girl had heroically put away from her the one
chance of bright and happy life, rather than bring upon her husband the
foul taint of her father's crime. I could understand all now. I looked
back at the white face, rigid in its speechless agony; the fixed,
dilated eyes; and I pictured to myself the horror of that scene at
Maudesley Abbey, when the father and daughter stood opposite to each
other, and Margaret Wilmot discovered _why_ the murderer had
persistently hidden himself from her.

"The mystery of my betrothed wife's renunciation of my love had been
solved; but the discovery was so hideous that I looked back now and
regretted the time of my ignorance and uncertainty. Would it not have
been better for me if I had let Margaret Wilmot go her own way, and
carry out her sublime scheme of self-sacrifice? Would it not have been
better to leave the dark secret of the murder for ever hidden from all
but that one dread Avenger whose judgments reach the sinner in his
remotest hiding-place, and follow him to the grave? Would it not have
been better to do this?

"No! my own heart told me the argument was false and cowardly. So long
as man deals with his fellow-man, so long as laws endure for the
protection of the helpless and the punishment of the wicked, the course
of justice must know no hindrance from any personal consideration.

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