Great Porter Square: A Mystery. Volume 2

B. L. Farjeon

Great Porter Square: A Mystery. v. 2

CHAPTER XX

THE “EVENING MOON” CONCLUDES ITS NARRATIVE, AND AFFORDS A FURTHER INSIGHT INTO THE CHILD-LIKE AND VOLATILE CHARACTER OF LYDIA HOLDFAST

IN the hope of her husband’s return, and looking forward with sweet mysterious delight to the moment when she would hold her baby to her breast, Mrs. Holdfast was a perfectly happy woman – a being to be envied. She had some cause for anxiety in the circumstance that she did not hear from her husband, but she consoled herself with the reflection that his last letter to her afforded a sufficient explanation of his silence. She mentally followed his movements as the days passed by. Some little time would be occupied in settling his son’s affairs; the young man most likely died in debt. Mr. Holdfast would not rest satisfied until he had ascertained the exact extent of his unhappy son’s liabilities, and had discharged them. With Frederick’s death must be cleared away the dishonour of his life.

“Now that he was dead,” said the widow, “I was ready to pity and forgive him.”

Her baby was born, and her husband had not returned. Day after day she looked for news of him, until she worked herself into a fever of anxiety. The result was that she became ill, and was ordered into the country for fresher air. But she could not rest. Her husband’s return appeared to be delayed beyond reasonable limits. Could anything have happened to him in the wild part of the world in which Frederick had met his death? She did not dream that in the tragedy which had occurred in the very heart of London, the murder in Great Porter Square, with which all the country was ringing, lay the answer to her fears. In her delicate state of health she avoided the excitement of the newspapers, and for weeks did not look at one. Thus, when her health was to some extent established, and she had returned to her house in London, she had no knowledge of the murder, and was in ignorance of the few particulars relating to it which the police had been enabled to bring to light. She knew nothing of the arrest of Antony Cowlrick, of the frequent adjournments at the police-court, and of the subsequent release of this man whose movements have been enveloped in so much mystery.

It happened during her illness that a friend, who witnessed the anxiety of her mind and sympathised with her, wrote to America for information concerning Mr. Holdfast, anticipating that the reply to his letter would enable him to communicate good news to her; and it also happened, most singularly, after a lapse of time, that it was to this very friend Mrs. Holdfast appealed for advice as to how she should act.

“I felt as if I was going mad,” are the widow’s words. “I could endure the terrible suspense no longer.”

She called upon her friend, not being aware that he had written to America on her behalf. On the table was a letter with the American post-mark on the envelope, and as her friend, in a hurried manner, rose to receive her, she observed that he placed his hand upon this letter, as though wishing to conceal it from her sight. But her quick eyes had already detected it.

“I did not know,” she said, after she had explained the motive of her visit, “that you had correspondence with America.”

He glanced at his hand, which still covered the letter, and his face became troubled.

“This,” he said, “is in answer to a special letter I sent to the States concerning Mr. Holdfast.”

“Ah,” she cried, “then I am interested in it!”

“Yes,” he replied, “you are interested in it.”

Her suspicions were aroused. “Is that the reason,” she asked, “why you seek to hide it from me?”

“I would not,” he replied, “increase your anxiety. Can you bear a great shock?”

“Anything – anything,” she cried, “rather than this terrible torture of silence and mystery!”

“I wrote to America,” then said her friend, “to an agent, requesting him to ascertain how and where your husband was. An hour before you entered the room I received his answer. It is here. It will be best to hide nothing from you. I will read what my correspondent says.” He opened the letter, and read: “I have made inquiries after Mr. Holdfast, and am informed, upon undoubted authority, that he left America for England some weeks ago.”

Mrs. Holdfast’s friend read this extract without comment, but Mrs. Holdfast did not appear to realize the true import of the information.

“Do you not understand?” asked her friend. “Mr. Holdfast, some weeks ago, left America for England.”

“Impossible,” said the bewildered woman; “if he were here – in England – I should not be with you at this moment, asking you to assist me to find him.”

Her friend was silent.

“Help me!” she implored. “Do you think he is here?”

“I am certain that he has left America,” was the reply.

A new fear assailed her. “Perhaps,” she whispered, “the ship he sailed in was wrecked.”

“That is not probable,” said her friend. “Mr. Holdfast, as a man of the world and a gentleman of means, undoubtedly took passage in a fast steamer. In all human probability your husband landed at Liverpool within nine or ten days of his departure from New York.”

“And then?” asked Mrs. Holdfast.

“Who can say what happened to him them? It is, of course, certain that his desire was to come to you without delay.”

“He would not have lingered an hour,” said Mrs. Holdfast. “An hour! He would not have lingered a moment. He would be only too eager, too anxious, to rejoin me. And there was another motive for his impatience – his child, whose face he has never seen, whose lips he has never kissed! Unhappy woman that I am!”

Her friend waited until she had somewhat mastered her grief, and then he asked her a question which opened up another channel for fear.

“Was your husband in the habit of carrying much money about with him?”

“A large sum; always a large sum. He often had as much as a thousand pounds in notes in his pocket-book.”

“It was injudicious.”

“He was most careless in money matters,” said Mrs. Holdfast; “he would open his pocket-book in the presence of strangers, recklessly and without thought. More than once I have said to him that I should not wonder if he was robbed of it one day. But even in that case – suppose he had incited some wretch’s cupidity; suppose he was robbed – it would not have prevented him from hastening to me and his child.”

“Do not imagine,” said her friend, “that in what I am about to say I desire to add to your difficulties and distress of mind. The length of time since you have heard from your husband – the fact that he left America and landed in England – make the case alarming. Your husband is not a man who would calmly submit to an outrage. Were an attempt made to rob him he would resist.”

“Indeed he would – at the hazard of his life.”

“You have put into words the fear which assails me.”

“But,” said Mrs. Holdfast, clinging to every argument against the horrible suspicion now engendered, “had anything of the kind happened, it would have been in the newspapers, and would have been brought to my ears.”

“There are such things,” said her friend, impressively, “as mysterious disappearances. Men have been robbed and murdered, and never more heard of. Men have left their homes, in the midst of crowded cities, intending to return within an hour, and have disappeared for ever.”

It is easier to imagine than to describe the state of Mrs. Holdfast’s mind at these words. They seemed, as she expressed it, “to drain her heart of hope.”

“What would you advise me to do?” she asked, faintly.

“To go at once to a lawyer,” was the sensible answer, “and place the matter in his hands. Not an hour is to be lost; and the lawyer you consult should be one who is familiar with criminal cases. I have the address of such a gentleman, and I should recommend you to drive to his office immediately, and lay the whole case before him.”

Mrs. Holdfast took the advice given to her, and drove at once to the lawyer who was recommended to her. He listened to her story, and allowed her to tell it in her own way without interruption; and when she had finished, he put a variety of questions to her, many of which appeared to her trivial and unnecessary. Before she left the office the lawyer said,

“If your husband is in England, we will find him for you.”

With this small modicum of comfort she was fain to be satisfied; but as she rode home she shuddered to think that she had seen on the lawyer’s lips the unspoken words, “dead or alive.” That is what the lawyer meant to express: “If your husband is in England, we will find him for you, dead or alive.” Another of his actions haunted her. At a certain point of the conversation, the lawyer had paused, and upon a separate sheet of paper had made the following memorandum – “Look up the murders. How about the murder in Great Porter Square?” She was curious to see what it was he had written with so serious an air, and she rose and looked at the paper, and read the words. How dreadful they were! “Look up the murders. How about the murder in Great Porter Square?” The appalling significance of the memorandum filled her with terrible forbodings.

But what were the particulars of the murder in Great Porter Square, of which till now she had never heard, and what possible relation could they bear to her? She could not wait for the lawyer; she had placed the matter in his hands, but the issue at stake was too grave for her to sit idly down and make no effort herself to reach the heart of the mystery. That very evening she ascertained that in a certain house, No. 119 Great Porter Square, a cruel murder had been committed, and that the murdered man had not been identified. On the date of this murder she was in the country, endeavouring by quietude to regain her health and peace of mind; her baby at that time was nearly two months old, and for weeks before the date and for weeks afterwards she had not read a newspaper. Now that she learned that the murder might, even by the barest possibility, afford a clue to the mystery in which she was involved, she felt as if it would be criminal in her to sleep until she had made herself fully acquainted with all the details of the dreadful deed. She went from shop to shop, and purchased a number of newspapers containing accounts of the discovery of the murder, and of the accusation brought against Antony Cowlrick. When the lawyer called upon her the following morning he found her deeply engaged in the study of these papers. He made no remark, divining the motive for this painful duty.

“I have not closed my eyes all night,” she said to him plaintively. “Where is Great Porter Square?”

“My dear lady,” he replied, “it is not necessary for you to know the locality of this terrible crime. It will not help you to go there. Remain quiet, and leave the matter with me. I have already done something towards the clearing-up of the mystery. Do not agitate yourself needlessly; you will require all your strength.”

He then asked her if she had a portrait of her husband. She had a photograph, taken at her request the day before their marriage.

“Mr. Holdfast was above these small vanities,” she said, and suddenly checked herself, crying, “Good God! What did I say? Was above them! Is above them, I mean. He cannot be dead – he cannot, he cannot be dead! I had to persuade him to have the picture taken. It is here – in this locket.”

She gave her lawyer the locket, and he departed with it. When he called upon her again in the evening, his manner was very grave and sad.

“Did your husband make a will?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, “and gave it me in a sealed envelope. I have it upstairs, in a safe, in which I keep my jewels. It is dated on the day on which he forbade his son Frederick ever again to enter his house. Would you like to see it?”

“It will be as well,” said the lawyer, “for you to place it in my care. I shall not break the seal until the present inquiry is terminated. It will be very soon – very soon. Are you strong enough to hear some bad news, or will you wait till to-morrow? Yes, yes – it will be better to wait till to-morrow. A good night’s rest – ”

She interrupted him impetuously. It would be death to her to wait, she declared, and she implored him to tell her the worst at once. Reluctant as he was, he saw that it would be the wisest course, and he told her, as tenderly and considerately as he could, that the portrait she had given him exactly resembled the description of the man who was found murdered in Great Porter Square.

“To-morrow morning,” he said, “we shall obtain the order to exhume the body. A most harrowing and painful task awaits you. It will be necessary for you to attend and state, to the best of your belief, whether the body is that of your lost husband?”

Our readers will guess how this painful inquiry terminated. Mr. Holdfast bore upon his person certain marks which rendered identification an easy task; a scar on his left wrist, which in his youth had been cut to the bone; a broken tooth, and other signs, have placed beyond the shadow of a doubt the fact that he is the man who took a room on the first floor of No. 119 Great Porter Square, and was there ruthlessly and strangely murdered on the night of the 10th of July. So far, therefore, the mystery is cleared up.

But the identification of the body of the murdered man as that of a gentleman of great wealth, with a charming wife, and shortly after the strange death of his son Frederick, who was the only person whose life was likely to mar his happiness – the facts that this gentleman arrived in London, and did not return immediately to his home; that he proceeded, instead, to a common Square in a poor neighbourhood, and engaged a room without giving his name; that during the few days he lived there he received only one visitor, a lady who came and went closely veiled – these facts have added new and interesting elements of mystery to the shocking affair. Whether they will assist in bringing the murderer to justice remains to be seen.

Mrs. Holdfast has been and is most frank and open in her communications to our Reporter, who, it will be presently seen, has not confined his inquiries to this lady alone. In other circumstances it would have been natural, on the part of Mrs. Holdfast, that she should have been less communicative on the subject of the domestic trouble between herself and Mr. Holdfast and his son; but as she justly observed,

“Perhaps by and bye something may occur which will render it necessary that I shall be examined. The murderer may be discovered – I shall pray, day and night, that he or she may be arrested! In that case, I should have to appear as a witness, and should have to tell all I know. Then I might be asked why I concealed all these unhappy differences between father and son. I should not know how to answer. No; I will conceal nothing; then they can’t blame me. And if it will only help, in the smallest way, to discover the wretch who has killed the noblest gentleman that ever lived, I shall be more than ever satisfied that I have done what is right.”

We yield to this lady our fullest admiration for the courageous course she has pursued. She has not studied her own feelings; she has laid bare a story of domestic trouble and treachery as strange as the most ingenious drama on the French stage could present – such a story as Sardou or Octave Feulliet would revel in; and, without hesitation, she has thrown aside all reserve, in the light of the great duty which is before her, the duty of doing everything in her power to hunt the murderer down, and avenge her husband’s death. It is not many who would have the moral courage thus to expose their wounds to public gaze, and we are satisfied that our narrative will have the effect of causing a wide and general sympathy to be expressed for this most unfortunate lady.

We now come to other considerations of the affair. The gentleman who was murdered was a gentleman of wealth and position in society. He loved his wife; between them there had never been the slightest difference; they were in complete accord in their views of the conduct of the unhappy young man at whose door, indirectly, the primary guilt of the tragedy may be laid. The reason why Mr. Holdfast did not write to his wife for so long a period is partly explained by the account he gives, in his last letter to her, of the injury he received in his right hand. We say partly, because, a little further on, our readers will perceive that this reason will not hold good up to the day of his death. Most positively it may be accepted that the deepest and strongest motives existed for his endeavour to keep the circumstance of his being in London from the knowledge of his wife. Could these motives be discovered – could any light be thrown upon them – a distinct point would be established from which the murderer might be tracked. Our Reporter put several questions to Mrs. Holdfast.

“Is it an absolute certainty that Frederick Holdfast is dead?” he asked.

She gazed at him in wonderment. “Who can doubt it?” she exclaimed. “There is my husband’s letter, saying he had traced his son to Minnesota, and was journeying after him. There is the account in the newspaper of the death of the misguided young man in a small town in Minnesota. The editor of the newspaper, knowing nothing whatever of any of us, could scarcely have invented such a paragraph – though we know they do put strange things in the American papers; but this, unhappily, is too near the truth.”

“Certainly,” said our Reporter, “the presumption would be a wild one – but it is possible; and I seldom shut my mind to a possibility.”

Mrs. Holdfast was very agitated. “It is not possible – it is not possible!” she cried, repeating the asseveration with vehemence. “It would be too horrible to contemplate!”

“What would be too horrible to contemplate?”

“That he followed his father to London” —

She paused, overcome by emotion. Our Reporter took up the cue. “And murdered him?” he asked.

“Yes,” answered the lovely widow, in a low tone, “and murdered him! I would not believe it – no, I would not believe it! Bad and wicked as he is, he could not be guilty of a crime so horrible. And, after all, it was partly my fault. Why did I not grow up into the likeness of an ugly old witch – ?”

She paused again, and smiled. There is in this lovely lady so much animation and vitality, so much pure love of life, so much sunlight, that they overcome her against her will, and break out in the midst of the gloomiest fits of melancholy and depression. Hers is a happy, joyous, and impulsive nature, and the blow that has fallen upon her is all the more cruel because of her innate brightness and gaiety of disposition. But it is merciful, also, that she is thus gifted. She might not otherwise have sufficient strength to bear up against her affliction.

“We will, then,” said our Reporter, “dismiss the possibility – which I confess is scarcely to be indulged in even by such a man as myself. As to your being beautiful, a rose might as reasonably complain that nature had invested it with grace of form and loveliness of colour.” Mrs. Holdfast blushed at this compliment. “You are right in saying that such an idea as Frederick Holdfast being alive is too horrible to contemplate. The American newspaper says that his body was identified by a gentleman who knew him in Oxford, and who happened to be travelling through the State of Minnesota. It is a strange coincidence – nothing more – that on the precise day on which Frederick Holdfast ended his career, a friend should have been travelling in that distant State, and should have given a name to the dead stranger who was found near the laughing waters of Minnie-ha-ha.”

Mrs. Holdfast replied with a sweet smile. “Yes, it is a strange coincidence; but young gentlemen now-a-days have numbers of acquaintances, hundreds I should say. And everybody travels now – people think nothing of going to America or Canada. It is just packing up their Gladstone bag, and off they go, as happy as you please. I couldn’t do it. I hate the sea; I hate everything that makes me uncomfortable. I love pleasure. Strange, isn’t it, for me, a country girl, to be so fond of life and gaiety, and dancing and theatres? But we can’t help our natures, can we? I would if I could, for you must think me a dreadful, dreadful creature for talking in this way just after my husband has been brutally killed! Don’t think ill of me – don’t! It is not my fault, and I am suffering dreadfully, dreadfully, though I do let my light heart run away with me!”

“How can I think ill of you?” said our Reporter; “you are child and woman in one.”

“Really!” she cried, looking up into his face with a beaming smile. “Are you really, really in earnest?”

“You may believe me,” replied our Reporter, “for my errand here is not a personal one, but in pursuance of my professional duties; and although you charm me out of myself, I must be faithful.”

“Ah,” said Mrs. Holdfast, “that is the way of you men. So stern, and strict, and proper, that you never forget yourself. It is because you are strong, and wise – but you miss a great deal – yes, indeed, indeed you do! It would spoil the sunshine if one stopped while one was enjoying the light and warmth, to ask why, and what, and wherefore. Don’t you think it would? Such a volatile, impressionable creature as Lydia Holdfast does not stop to do such a wise and foolish thing – we can be both wise and foolish in a breath, let me tell you. No; I enjoy, and am happy, without wanting to know why. There! I am showing myself to you, as if you were my oldest friend. You would not do the same by me. You are steadier, and wiser, and not half so happy – no, not half, not half so happy! O, I wish I had been born a man!”

Amused, and, as he had declared to her, charmed out of himself, our Reporter said, somewhat jocosely,

“Why, what would you have done if you had been born a man instead of a woman?”

“I am afraid,” she said, in a half-whisper, and with her finger on her lips, as though enjoining him not to betray her, “I am afraid I should have been a dreadful rake.”

Our Reporter resisted the beguilement of the current into which the conversation had drifted, although he would have been entitled to much excuse had he dallied a little in this vein with the charming and child-like woman.

“You forget your child,” he said; “had you been born a man – ”

Before he could complete the sentence, Mrs. Holdfast rushed out of the room, and in a few moments returned with the child in her arms. She sat in a rocking chair, and fondled the boy-baby, and kissed him, and sang to him. It was a picture of perfect and beautiful motherhood.

“Forget my child!” she murmured. “Forget my baby! You must either be mad or insincere to say such a thing. Ask the darling’s forgiveness immediately.”

“I do,” said our Reporter, kissing the baby, “and yours. You have proved yourself a true woman. But my time is getting short, and I have already trespassed too long upon yours. Let us continue the conversation about Mr. Holdfast.”

She instantly became serious, and with the baby in her arms, said, “Yes! Well!”

“The landlady of the house,” continued our Reporter, “in which he lodged has declared that he had but one visitor – a lady, closely veiled.”

“So I have read in the papers,” said Mrs. Holdfast. “Is nothing known about her – where she came from, where she went to, whether she was a lady or a common woman?”

“Nothing is known,” he replied.

“Are you sure?”

“Quite sure, as far as my information goes. One person says that she was tall, another that she was short; another that she was fair, another that she was dark – though they all agree that she never raised her veil. There is absolutely not a dependable clue upon which a person can work; nothing reliable can be gathered from statements so conflicting. What I wish to know is, whether you yourself have any suspicion?”

She flushed with indignation. “You do not mean to ask me whether Mr. Holdfast was enamoured of a woman with whom he made secret assignations? You insult me. I thought better of you; I did not believe you capable of harbouring such a suspicion against the dead?”

“You mistake me,” said our Reporter; “no such suspicion was in my mind. My thoughts were travelling in a different direction, and I was curious to ascertain whether what has occurred to my mind has occurred to yours.”