“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