Volume Ii Part 17 (2/2)

The man Parsons had been cool and collected enough before, but now he trembled, and he hurried out upon the landing with anxiety, to listen if there was any movement in the house. The struggle had been fierce, but there had been no noise. The murderer was considerably rea.s.sured, as he marked the dead silence that reigned in the place, and then he turned again towards the door of the fatal bedroom. He hesitated to enter it, for the wretch, though full of brute courage, feared to look again upon the face of the victim he had done to death. But there was nothing else for it; he entered the room in fear and trepidation, he gathered up his plunder with a shaking hand, and carefully secured it in a Gladstone bag which lay in the dressing-room; on it were the initials of the master of Azalea Lodge. Last of all he thrust the watch and chain of the murdered man into his pocket; then he looked upon the ground and saw with horror the marks of his own guilty foot-prints in hideous red blurs upon the gay carpet. He removed his tell-tale felt slippers, and the bag in one hand, the slippers in the other, and holding the end of the bit of candle which he had re-lighted high above his head, he regained the hall. He carefully placed the little parcel which he had left upon the hall table in the bag, and stuffing a sheep's skin mat and the blood-stained slippers in as well, he succeeded in deadening the jangling noise made by the plate. He s.n.a.t.c.hed down an Inverness cape which hung in the hall and flung it over his arm, and on tiptoe he gained the housemaid's pantry in safety; he put on his boots and washed his blood-stained hands. Then he strode down the garden of Azalea Lodge, carrying in his hand the rope and three-p.r.o.nged hook by which he had entered the premises. He scaled several walls with cat-like celerity, and then secreted himself among the shrubs of the front garden of a house in a main road of St. John's Wood. From this hiding-place he saw with satisfaction the infrequent policeman pa.s.s on his nocturnal round; then he put on the Inverness cape, which gave him a rather distinguished appearance, and walked boldly forth, carrying his Gladstone bag. He hailed the first hansom he met and drove to Charing Cross; there he took another cab to Matilda Street. He dismissed the man at the corner, and reached his lair.

Here the man Parsons disappears from our story. Early dawn saw him on board the Antwerp boat, and he reached the Continent in safety. No doubt he had his reward, in this world or the next.

And so Lord Hetton died, unlamented save by his lonely old father at Walls End Castle and by the woman who firmly believed that the very last determination of his life had been to cast her off as a worn-out garment and to ”wash his hands” of her for ever. Save to these two persons, and to those who had had the misfortune to back Lord Hetton's nomination for the coming Derby, his death made no difference to anybody. We have forgotten Reginald Haggard; he, lucky fellow, of course benefited, for it brought him one step nearer to the Pit Town t.i.tle.

It was after all but a vulgar tragedy, though it made considerable noise at the time.

When, in the early morning, the housemaid at Azalea Lodge found her pantry door unlocked, she was alarmed; and when she saw that the window was open and that one of the protecting iron bars had been wrenched aside, she very nearly fainted. In her tribulation she hurried to her fellow servants and informed them of her startling discovery. The four women were terribly frightened, and it was only after a considerable amount of persuasion that the cook consented to put on her bonnet and go in search of the police. While she was absent the three other women fortified themselves in the kitchen and awaited her return in fear and trembling. Constable Bulger, 130 D, was soon upon the scene; he examined the pantry window from the outside, he looked very wisely indeed at the foot-prints in the soft gravel path, and directed that they should remain undisturbed; and then he entered the house and proceeded to interrogate the servants.

”Anything missing, ladies?” he said.

No, nothing was missing in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and the policeman and the frightened maids ascended to the hall, where the parlourmaid instantly detected the absence of the Inverness cape.

”There's more gone than that, miss,” said Constable Bulger. ”They don't effect a forcible entry now-a-days for the sake of a coat or two; we'd better look in the dining-room.”

The parlourmaid flung open the shutters and drew up the blinds, letting in the bright suns.h.i.+ne. As the girl turned from the window she gave a succession of eldritch screams and went off into violent hysterics; for she saw that the doors of the ma.s.sive sideboard were standing wide open and that the empty plate-basket lay upon the floor. Constable Bulger was perfectly satisfied in his own mind that the parlourmaid, at all events, had had nothing to do with the burglary which had evidently been committed. For portly 130 D prided himself, and perhaps with some justice, on his intimate knowledge of the ways of women. He knew perfectly well that the dreadful laugh was not simulated, and he was quite aware of the appropriate remedies.

”Let her lie flat on the floor, ma'am,” he said to the cook, ”and just you run for a little water, miss, and be spry,” was his command to the frightened housemaid, who, pale as ashes, was standing in the doorway.

”Is his lords.h.i.+p at home?” said Bulger. ”I'd better see him at once.

Just run up and say I am here,” added he.

But not one of the women stirred; all three redoubled their a.s.siduities to the recovering parlourmaid, but each firmly declined to quit the dining-room, on the ground that ”it wasn't a woman's place.”

”Just keep your eye on the roadway, one of you,” said the constable, ”the sergeant'll be pa.s.sing directly, and if you see him you'd better call to him.”

And then Constable Bulger undid the b.u.t.ton of his truncheon case, not that he expected to find any one on the premises, but it was as well to be prepared for the worst, and he then ascended the stairs. One of the bedroom doors was wide open, and a horrid sight met his astonished eyes.

On the floor lay the murdered master of Azalea Lodge. The face looked like a waxen mask; the lips were bloodless and of an ashen grey, slightly parted, leaving the regular teeth of the dead man painfully apparent. The eyes were wide open and had a terror-stricken look; but the hands were clenched. The dead man lay in a pool of blood, with which his white nightdress was stained in many places.

The constable drew his truncheon, looked under the bed and into the dressing-room; a glance at the open safe told him that it had been rifled. Then, without in the slightest degree disturbing the dead man or his surroundings, the constable left the room, locking the door and placing the key in his pocket. He made a perfunctory search through the rest of the house, though he knew full well that the murderer had fled; and as he descended the stairs and rejoined the frightened women, his sergeant, whom the cook had hailed from the dining-room window, appeared upon the scene.

In a whisper Bulger communicated to him what had taken place; but while he was yet speaking shrieks and cries were heard from the dining-room.

Both men hurriedly entered it. The parlourmaid, mad with terror, was struggling with the other women.

”They have murdered him,” she shrieked. ”Oh G.o.d! they have murdered him,” she reiterated, as she pointed to a great pink stain upon the ceiling.

There was no need to break to them the dreadful news now. The girl continued to shriek and point at the awful stain for some minutes, and then went off in a dead faint.

All that morning a little crowd stopped to whisper and point at Azalea Lodge. In vain a special policeman entreated them to move on; they merely pa.s.sed over to the other side to point and whisper in mingled excitement and curiosity. The red-coated newsvendors did a thriving trade in the neighbourhood on that day.

”Special edition. Frightful murder of a n.o.bleman by burglars. Flight of the murderers. Further horrible details.” The red-coated men's harvest was a precarious one, and they made the most of it; they even succeeded in selling some of their papers at a s.h.i.+lling a-piece. But the purchasers were disappointed, for though the newspaper reporters had swelled their description of what they called ”The Tragedy in High Life in St. John's Wood,” into two columns of leaded type, yet nothing more was to be gained from it all than that the heir to the Pit Town t.i.tle had been brutally murdered by a midnight thief, that the a.s.sa.s.sin had escaped with his plunder, and as yet had succeeded in baffling the efforts of the police.

Ere nightfall every police station in the metropolis displayed a hand-bill headed by the startling word ”MURDER,” in big black letters, and offering a reward for the apprehension of a man wearing an Inverness cape and carrying a Gladstone bag. For days the police stations were besieged by anxious informers, desirous to give information about men with Gladstone bags and Inverness capes. Both cabmen came forward, and the murderer was traced as far as Matilda Street, but here the scent failed utterly; and though the old lord offered a further and larger reward, and smug-looking men, in slop clothes and billyc.o.c.k hats, hung about Matilda Street at all hours of the day and night, yet they failed to come upon any trace of Lord Hetton's murderer.

Twelve good men and true, his lords.h.i.+p's butcher, baker and candlestick maker and nine others of the same kidney, found a verdict of ”Wilful Murder;” and two days after the inquest the body of the unhappy n.o.bleman was conveyed to Walls End Castle and interred with due pomp in the family vault. The old lord, Mr. Haggard of the Home Office and Reginald Haggard, followed it to the grave.

Mr. Haggard had had a rather painful interview with a lady dressed in deep mourning in the dining-room of Azalea Lodge, on the morning of the removal of his lords.h.i.+p's body. The lady's grief was evidently unfeigned. When Mr. Haggard had informed her that the dead man had left her all he had to give, she was in no way consoled, and merely continued to sob and wring her hands in the bitterness of her grief.

A fortnight afterwards Azalea Lodge was in the hands of an auctioneer.

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