Works of Ellen Wood, page 842
“Who are you, that you should put yourself up against the verdict?” resumed Mrs. Jones. “Are you cleverer and sharper than the jury, and the coroner, and me, and Mr. Ollivera’s friends, and the rest of the world, all of us put together? There can’t be a doubt upon the point, girl.”
“Let it drop,” said Alletha, with a shiver.
“Drop! I’d like to see it drop. I’d like the remembrance of it to drop out of men’s minds, but you’ve took care that shan’t be. What on earth induced you to go and do it?”
“It was a dreadful thing that Mr. Ollivera should lie under the imputation of having killed himself,” came the answer, after a pause.
“Now, you just explain yourself, Alletha Rye. You keep harping on that same string, about Mr. Ollivera; what grounds have you for it?”
The girl’s pale face flushed all over. “None,” she presently answered. “I’ve never said I had grounds. But there’s that vivid dream upon me always. He seemed to reproach me for not having sooner gone into the room to find him; and I’m sure no selfmurderer would do that. They’d rather lie undiscovered for ever. Had I kept silence,” she passionately added, “I might have become haunted.”
Mrs. Jones stared at the speaker with all the fiery fervour of her dark, dark eyes.
“Haunted! Haunted by what?”
“By Mr. Ollivera’s spirit; by remorse. Remorse for not doing as I am sure he is wishing me to do — clear his memory.”
Mrs. Jones lifted her hands in wonder, and for once made no retort. She began to question in real earnest whether the past matters had not turned her sister’s brain.
Dicky Jones was present during this passage-at-arms, which took place on the Thursday, after breakfast. He had just been enduring a battery of tongue on his own score; various sins, great and small, being placed before him in glaring colours by his wife, not the least heinous of which was the having arrived home from his pleasure trip at the unseasonable hour of half after one o’clock in the morning. In recrimination he had intimated that others of the family could come in at that hour as well as himself; not to do Alletha Rye harm, for he was a good-natured man, as people given to plenty of peccadilloes are apt to be; but to make his own crime appear the less. And then it all came out; and Mrs. Jones’s ears were regaled with Alletha Rye’s share in the doings at the interment.
On this same Thursday, but very much later in the day, Frank Greatorex and the Reverend Mr. Ollivera departed from the city, having stayed to collect together the papers and other effects of the deceased gentleman. Which brings us (the night having passed, and a great portion of the ensuing day) to the opening of the chapter.
Mr. Butterby sat in his parlour: one of two rooms he occupied on the ground floor of a private house very near a populous part of the city. He was not a police-sergeant; he was not an inspector; people did not know what he was. That he held sway at the police-station, and was a very frequent visitor to it, everybody saw. But Mr. Butterby had been so long in the town that speculation, though rife enough at first upon the point, had ceased as to what special relations he might hold with the law. When any one wanted important assistance, he could, if he chose, apply to Mr. Butterby, instead of to the regular police inspector; and, to the mind of the sanguine inquirer, that application appeared to constitute a promise of success.
Mr. Butterby’s parlour faced the street. Its one sash window, protected outside by shutters thrown back in the day, and by green dwarf Venetian blinds and a white roller-blind inside, was not a very large one. Nevertheless Mr. Butterby contrived to keep a tolerable look-out from it on those of his fellow citizens who might chance to pass. He generally had the white blinds drawn down to meet, within an inch, the mahogany top of the Venetian ones; and from that inch of outlet, Mr. Butterby, standing up before the window, was fond of taking observations. It was an unpretending room, with a faded carpet and rug on the floor; a square table in the middle, a large bureau filled with papers in a corner; some books in a case opposite, and a stock of newspapers on the top of that; and a picture over the mantel-piece representing Eve offering the apple to Adam.
Mr. Butterby sat by the fire at his tea, taking it thoughtfully. He wore an old green coat with short tails sprouting out from the waist, not being addicted to fashion in private life, and a red-and-black check waistcoat. It was Friday evening and nearly dusk. He had been out on some business all the afternoon; but his thoughts were not fixed on that, though it was of sufficient importance; they rested on the circumstances attending the death of Mr. Ollivera.
Before the brother of the deceased quitted the town, he had made an appointment with Mr. Butterby, and came to it accompanied by Frank Greatorex; the fly, conveying them to the station, waiting at the door. The purport of his visit was to impress upon that officer his full conviction that the death was not a suicide, and to request that, if anything should arise to confirm his opinion, it might be followed up.
“He was a good, pure-minded man; he was of calm, clear, practical mind, of sound good sense; he was fond of his profession, anxious to excel in it; hopeful, earnest, and without a care in the world,” urged the Reverend Mr. Ollivera, with emotion. “How, sir, I ask you, could such a man take away his own life?”
Mr. Butterby shook his head. It might be unlikely, he acknowledged; but it was not impossible.
“I tell you it is impossible,” said Mr. Ollivera. “I hold a full, firm, positive conviction that my brother never died, or could have died, by his own wilful hands: the certainty of it in my mind is so clear as to be like a revelation from heaven. Do you know what I did, sir? I went to the grave at night after he was put into it, and read the burial service over him.”
“I see you doing it,” came the unexpected answer of Mr. Butterby. “The surplice you wore was too long for you and covered your boots.”
“It belonged to a taller man than I am — the Reverend Mr. Yorke,” the clergyman explained. “But now, sir, do you suppose I should have dared to hold that sacred service over a man who had wilfully destroyed himself?”
“But instead of there being proof that he did not wilfully destroy himself, there’s every proof that he did,” argued Mr. Butterby.
“Every apparent proof; I admit that; but I know — I know that the proofs are in some strange way false; not real.”
“The death was real; the pistol was real; the writing on the note-paper was real.”
“I know. I cannot pretend to explain where the explanation may be hidden; I cannot see how or whence elucidation shall come. One suggestion I will make to you, Mr. Butterby: it is not clear that no person got access to the drawing-room after the departure from it of Mr. Bede Greatorex. At least, to my mind. I only mention this thought,” concluded Mr. Ollivera, rising to close the interview; for he had no time to prolong it. “Should you succeed in gleaning anything, address a communication to me, to the care of Greatorex and Greatorex.”
“Stop a moment,” cried Mr. Butterby, as they were going out. “Who holds the paper that was found on the table?” — , “I do,” said Frank Greatorex. “Some of them would have had it destroyed; Kene and my brother amidst them; they could not bear to look at it. But I thought my father might like to see it first, and took it into my own possession.”
A smile crossed the lip of the police agent. “Considering the two gentlemen you mention are in the law, it doesn’t say much for their forethought, to rush at destroying the only proof there may remain to us of anybody else’s being guilty.”
“But then, you know, they do not admit that any one else could have been guilty,” replied Frank Greatorex. “At least, my brother does not; and Kene only looks upon it as a possible case of insanity. Do you want to see the paper? I have it in my pocket.”
“Perhaps you’d not mind leaving it with me for a day or two,” said Mr. Butterby. “I’ll forward it up safe to you when I’ve done with it.”
Frank Greatorex took the paper from his pocket-book and handed it to the speaker. It was folded inside an envelope now. Mr. Butterby received possession of it and attended his guests to the door, where the fly was waiting.
“You’ll have to drive fast, Thompson,” he said to the man. And Thompson, touching his hat to the officer, who was held in some awe by the city natives, whipped his horse into a canter.
It was upon this interview that Mr. Butterby ruminated as he took his tea on the Friday evening. In his own opinion it was the most unreasonable thing in the world, that anybody should throw doubt upon the verdict. Nothing but perversity. He judged it — and he was a keen-sighted man — to be fully in accordance with the facts, as given in evidence. Excepting perhaps in one particular. Had he been on the jury he should have held out for a verdict of insanity.
“They are but a set of bumble-heads at the best,” soliloquised Mr. Butterby, respectfully alluding to the twelve men who had returned the verdict, as he took a large bite out of his last piece of well-buttered pikelet.
“Junes for the most part always are: if they have got any brains they send them a wool-gathering then. Hemming, the butter-and-cheese man, told me he did say something about insanity; and he was foreman, too; but the rest of ’em and the coroner wouldn’t listen to it. It don’t much matter, for he got the burial rites after all, poor fellow: but if I’d been them, I should have gave him the benefit of the doubt.”
Stopping in his observations to put the rest of the pikelet in his mouth, Mr. Butterby went on again as he ate it.
“It might have been that, insanity; but as to the other suspicion, there’s no grounds whatever for it on the face of things at present. If such is to be raised I shall have to set to work and hunt ’em up. Create ’em as it were. ‘Don’t spare money,’ says that young clergyman last night when he sat here; ‘your expenses shall be reimbursed to you with interest.’ As if I could make a case out of nothing! I’m not a French Procureur-Imperial.”
Drinking down his tea at a draught, Mr. Butterby tried the tea-pot, lest a drop might be left in it still, turning it nearly upside down in the process. The result was, that the lid came open and a shower of tea-leaves descended on the tray.
“Bother!” said Mr. Butterby, as he hastily set the tea-pot in its place, and went on with his arguments.
“There’s something odd about the case, though, straightforward as it seems; and I’ve thought so from the first. That girl’s dream, for example, which she says she had; and her conduct at the grave. It was curious that Dicky Jones should just be looking on at her,” added Mr. Butterby, slightly diverging from the direct line of consecutive thought: “curious that Dicky should have come up then at all. First, Alletha Rye vows he didn’t do it; and, next, the parson vows it, Reverend Ollivera. Kene, too — but he points to insanity; and now the young fellow, Francis Greatorex. Suppose I go over the case again?”
Stretching out his hand, Mr. Butterby pulled the bell-rope — an old-fashioned twisted blue cord with a handle at the end; and a young servant came in. “Shut the shutters,” said he.
While this was in process, he took two candles from the mantel-piece, and lighted them. The girl went away with the tea-tray. He then unlocked his bureau, and from one of its pigeon-holes brought forth a few papers, memoranda, and the like, which he studied in silence, one after the other.
“The parson’s right,” he began presently; “if there is a loophole it’s where he said — that somebody got into the room after the departure of Mr. Greatorex. Let’s sum the points up.”
Drawing his chair close to the table on which the papers lay, Mr. Butterby began to tell the case through, striking his two fore-fingers alternatively on the table’s edge as each point came flowing from his tongue. Not that “flowing” is precisely the best word to apply, for his speech was thoughtfully slow, and the words dropped with hesitation.
“John Ollivera, counsel-at-law. He comes in on the Saturday with the other barristers, ready for the ‘sizes. Has a cause or two coming on at ‘em, in which he expects to shine. Goes to former lodgings at Jones’s, and shows himself as full of sense and sanity as usual; and he’d got his share of both. Spends Saturday evening at his friend’s, Mrs. Joliffe’s, the colonel’s widow; is sweet, Mrs. Jones thinks, on one of the young ladies; thought so when he was down last October. Gets home at ten like a decent man, works at his papers till twelve, and goes to bed.”
Mr. Butterby made a pause here, both his fingers jesting on the table. Giving a nod, as if his reflections were satisfactory, he lifted his hands and began again.
“Sunday. Attends public worship and takes the sacrament. That’s not like the act of one who knows he is on the eve of a bad deed. Attends again after breakfast, with the judges, and hears the sheriffs chaplain preach. (And it was not a bad sermon, as sermons go,” critically pronounced Mr. Butterby in a parenthesis). “Attends again in the afternoon to hear the anthem, the Miss Joliffes with him. Dines at Jones’s at five, spends evening at Joliffes’. Home early, and to bed.”
Once more the hands were lifted. Once more their owner paused in thought. He gave two nods this time, and resumed.
“Monday. Up before eight. Has his breakfast (bacon and eggs), and goes to the Nisi Prius Court. Stays there till past three in the afternoon, tells Kene he must go out of court to keep an appointment that wasn’t a particularly pleasant one, and goes out. Arrives at Jones’s at half-past four; passes Mrs. Jones in that there small back hall of theirs; she tells him he looks tired; answers that he is tired and has got a headache; court was close. Goes up to his sitting-room and gets his papers about; (papers found afterwards, on examination, to relate to the cause coming on on Tuesday morning). Girl takes up his dinner; he eats it, gets to his papers again, and she fetches things away. Rings for his lamp early, quarter-past six may be, nearly daylight still; while girl puts it on table, draws down blinds himself as if in a hurry to be at work again. Close upon this Mr. Bede Greatorex calls, (good firm that, Greatorex and Greatorex,” interspersed Mr. Butterby, with professional candour). “Bede Greatorex has come down direct from London (sent by old Greatorex) to confer with Ollivera on the Tuesday’s cause. Stays with him more than an hour. Makes an appointment with him for Tuesday morning. Jones’s nephew, going up stairs at the time, hears them making it, and shows Mr. Bede Greatorex out. Might be half-past seven then, or two or three minutes over it; call it half-past. Ollivera never seen again alive. Found dead next morning in arm-chair; pistol fallen from right hand, shot penetrated heart. Same chair he had been sitting in when at his papers, but drawn aside now at corner of table. Alletha Rye finds him. Tells a cock-and-bull of having been frightened by a dream. Dreamt he was in the sitting-room dead, and goes to see (she says) that he was not there, dead. Finds him there dead, however, just as (she says) she saw him in her dream. Servant rushes out for doctor, meets me, and I am the first in the room. Doctor comes, Hurst; Kene comes, Jones’s nephew fetching him; then Kene fetches Bede Greatorex. Doctor says death must have took place previous evening not later than eight o’clock. Mrs. Jones says lamp couldn’t have burnt much more than an hour: is positive it didn’t exceed an hour and a half; but she’s one of the positive ones at all times, and women’s judgment is fallible. Now then, let’s stop.”
Mr. Butterby put his hands one over the other, and looked down upon them, pausing before he spoke again.
“It draws the space into an uncommon narrow nutshell. When Bede Greatorex leaves at half-past seven, Ollivera is alive and well — as he and Jones’s nephew both testify to — and, according to the evidence of the surgeon, and the negative testimony of the oil in the lamp, he is dead by eight. If he did not draw the pistol on himself, somebody came in and shot him.
“Did he draw it on himself? I say Yes. Coroner. and jury say Yes. The public say Yes. Alletha Rye and the Reverend Ollivera say No. If we are all wrong — and I don’t say but that there’s just a loophole of possibility of it — and them two are right, why then it was murder. And done with uncommon craftiness. Let’s look at the writing.
“Those high-class lawyers are not good for much in criminal cases, can’t see an inch beyond their noses; they don’t practise at the Old Bailey, they don’t,” remarked Mr. Butterby, as he took from the papers before him the unfinished note found on Mr. Ollivera’s table, the loan of which he had begged from Frank Greatorex. “The idea of their proposing to destroy this, because ‘they couldn’t bear to look at it!’ Kene, too; and Bede Greatorex! they might have known better. I’ll take care of it now.”
Holding it close to one of the candles, the detective scanned it long and intently, comparing the concluding words, uneven, blotted, as if written with an agitated hand, with the plain collected characters of the lines that were undoubtedly Mr. Ollivera’s. When he did arrive at a conclusion it was a summary one, and he put down the paper with an emphatic thump.
“May I be shot myself if I believe the two writings is by the same hand!”
Mr. Butterby’s surprise may plead excuse for his grammar. He had never, until this moment, doubted that the writing was all done by one person.
“HI show this to an expert. People don’t write the same at all times; they’ll make their capitals quite different in the same day, as anybody with any experience knows. But they don’t often make their small letters different — neither do men study to alter their usual formation of letters when about to shoot themselves; the pen does its work then, spontaneous; naturally. These small letters are different, several of them, the r, the p, the e, the o, the d; all them are as opposite as light and dark, and I don’t think the last was written by Mr. Ollivera.”
It was a grave conclusion to come to; partially startling even him, who was too much at home with crime and criminals to be startled easily.
“Let’s assume that it is so for a bit, and see how it works that way,” resumed the officer. “We’ve all been mistaken, let’s say; Ollivera did not shoot himself, some one goes in and shoots him. Was it man or woman; was it an inmate of the house, or not an inmate? How came it to be done? what was the leading cause? Was the pistol (lying convenient on the table) took up incidental in the course of talking and fired by misadventure? — Or did they get to quarrelling and the other shot him of malice? — Or was it a planned, deliberate murder, one stealing in to do it in cold blood? Halt a bit here, Jonas Butterby. The first — done in misadventure? No: if any honest man had so shot another, he’d be the first to run out and get a doctor to him. No. Disposed of. The second — done in malice during a quarrel? Yes; might have been. The third — done in planned deliberation? That would be the most likely of all, but for the fact (very curious fact in the supposition) of the pistol’s having been Mr. Ollivera’s, and put (so to say) ready there to hand. Looking at it in either of these two views, there’s mystery. The last in regard to the point now mentioned; the other in regard to the secrecy with which the intruder must have got in. If that dratted girl had been at her post indoors, as she ought to have been, with the chain of the door up, it might never have happened,” concluded Mr. Butterby, with acrimony.
