The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes (color ebook reader txt) 📕
- Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes
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He nodded impatiently, as if the question wasn’t worth answering. Then, “It was all along of that bit of paper and my finding it while the poor soul was still warm,”—he shuddered—“that brought me out West this morning. One of our bosses lives close by, in Prince Albert Terrace, and I had to go and tell him all about it. They never offered me a bit or a sup—I think they might have done that, don’t you, Mrs. Bunting?”
“Yes,” she said absently. “Yes, I do think so.”
“But, there, I don’t know that I ought to say that,” went on Chandler. “He had me up in his dressing-room, and was very considerate-like to me while I was telling him.”
“Have a bit of something now?” she said suddenly.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t eat anything,” he said hastily. “I don’t feel as if I could ever eat anything any more.”
“That’ll only make you ill.” Mrs. Bunting spoke rather crossly, for she was a sensible woman. And to please her he took a bite out of the slice of bread-and-butter she had cut for him.
“I expect you’re right,” he said. “And I’ve a goodish heavy day in front of me. Been up since four, too—”
“Four?” she said. “Was it then they found—” she hesitated a moment, and then said, “it?”
He nodded. “It was just a chance I was near by. If I’d been half a minute sooner either I or the officer who found her must have knocked up against that—that monster. But two or three people do think they saw him slinking away.”
“What was he like?” she asked curiously.
“Well, that’s hard to answer. You see, there was such an awful fog. But there’s one thing they all agree about. He was carrying a bag—”
“A bag?” repeated Mrs. Bunting, in a low voice. “Whatever sort of bag might it have been, Joe?”
There had come across her—just right in her middle, like—such a strange sensation, a curious kind of tremor, or fluttering.
She was at a loss to account for it.
“Just a hand-bag,” said Joe Chandler vaguely. “A woman I spoke to —cross-examining her, like—who was positive she had seen him, said, ‘Just a tall, thin shadow—that’s what he was, a tall, thin shadow of a man—with a bag.’”
“With a bag?” repeated Mrs. Bunting absently. “How very strange and peculiar—”
“Why, no, not strange at all. He has to carry the thing he does the deed with in something, Mrs. Bunting. We’ve always wondered how he hid it. They generally throws the knife or fire-arms away, you know.”
“Do they, indeed?” Mrs. Bunting still spoke in that absent, wondering way. She was thinking that she really must try and see what the lodger had done with his bag. It was possible—in fact, when one came to think of it, it was very probable—that he had just lost it, being so forgetful a gentleman, on one of the days he had gone out, as she knew he was fond of doing, into the Regent’s Park.
“There’ll be a description circulated in an hour or two,” went on Chandler. “Perhaps that’ll help catch him. There isn’t a London man or woman, I don’t suppose, who wouldn’t give a good bit to lay that chap by the heels. Well, I suppose I must be going now.”
“Won’t you wait a bit longer for Bunting?” she said hesitatingly.
“No, I can’t do that. But I’ll come in, maybe, either this evening or to-morrow, and tell you any more that’s happened. Thanks kindly for the tea. It’s made a man of me, Mrs. Bunting.”
“Well, you’ve had enough to unman you, Joe.”
“Aye, that I have,” he said heavily.
A few minutes later Bunting did come in, and he and his wife had quite a little tiff—the first tiff they had had since Mr. Sleuth became their lodger.
It fell out this way. When he heard who had been there, Bunting was angry that Mrs. Bunting hadn’t got more details of the horrible occurrence which had taken place that morning, out of Chandler.
“You don’t mean to say, Ellen, that you can’t even tell me where it happened?” he said indignantly. “I suppose you put Chandler off —that’s what you did! Why, whatever did he come here for, excepting to tell us all about it?”
“He came to have something to eat and drink,” snapped out Mrs. Bunting. “That’s what the poor lad came for, if you wants to know. He could hardly speak of it at all—he felt so bad. In fact, he didn’t say a word about it until he’d come right into the room and sat down. He told me quite enough!”
“Didn’t he tell you if the piece of paper on which the murderer had written his name was square or three-cornered?” demanded Bunting.
“No; he did not. And that isn’t the sort of thing I should have cared to ask him.”
“The more fool you!” And then he stopped abruptly. The newsboys were coming down the Marylebone Road, shouting out the awful discovery which had been made that morning—that of The Avenger’s fifth murder. Bunting went out to buy a paper, and his wife took the things he had brought in down to the kitchen.
The noise the newspaper-sellers made outside had evidently wakened Mr. Sleuth, for his landlady hadn’t been in the kitchen ten minutes before his bell rang.
Mr. Sleuth’s bell rang again.
Mr. Sleuth’s breakfast was quite ready, but for the first time since he had been her lodger Mrs. Bunting did not answer the summons at once. But when there came the second imperative tinkle—for electric bells had not been fitted into that old-fashioned house— she made up her mind to go upstairs.
As she emerged into the hall from the kitchen stairway, Bunting, sitting comfortably in their parlour, heard his wife stepping heavily under the load of the well-laden tray.
“Wait a minute!” he called out. “I’ll help you, Ellen,” and he came out and took the tray from her.
She said nothing, and together they proceeded up to the drawing-room floor landing.
There she stopped him. “Here,” she whispered quickly, “you give me that, Bunting. The lodger won’t like your going in to him.” And then, as he obeyed her, and was about to turn downstairs again, she added in a rather acid tone, “You might open the door for me, at any rate! How can I manage to do it with this here heavy tray on my hands?”
She spoke in a queer, jerky way, and Bunting felt surprised—rather put out. Ellen wasn’t exactly what you’d call a lively, jolly woman, but when things were going well—as now—she was generally equable enough. He supposed she was still resentful of the way he had spoken to her about young Chandler and the new Avenger murder.
However, he was always for peace, so he opened the drawing-room door, and as soon as he had started going downstairs Mrs. Bunting walked into the room.
And then at once there came over her the queerest feeling of relief, of lightness of heart.
As usual, the lodger was sitting at his old place, reading the Bible.
Somehow—she could not have told you why, she would not willingly have told herself—she had expected to see Mr. Sleuth looking different. But no, he appeared to be exactly the same—in fact, as he glanced up at her a pleasanter smile than usual lighted up his thin, pallid face.
“Well, Mrs. Bunting,” he said genially, “I overslept myself this morning, but I feel all the better for the rest.”
“I’m glad of that, sir,” she answered, in a low voice. “One of the ladies I once lived with used to say, ‘Rest is an old-fashioned remedy, but it’s the best remedy of all.’”
Mr. Sleuth himself removed the Bible and Cruden’s Concordance off the table out of her way, and then he stood watching his landlady laying the cloth.
Suddenly he spoke again. He was not often so talkative in the morning. “I think, Mrs. Bunting, that there was someone with you outside the door just now?”
“Yes, sir. Bunting helped me up with the tray.”
“I’m afraid I give you a good deal of trouble,” he said hesitatingly.
But she answered quickly, “Oh, no, sir! Not at all, sir! I was only saying yesterday that we’ve never had a lodger that gave us as little trouble as you do, sir.”
“I’m glad of that. I am aware that my habits are somewhat peculiar.”
He looked at her fixedly, as if expecting her to give some sort of denial to this observation. But Mrs. Bunting was an honest and truthful woman. It never occurred to her to question his statement. Mr. Sleuth’s habits were somewhat peculiar. Take that going out at night, or rather in the early morning, for instance? So she remained silent.
After she had laid the lodger’s breakfast on the table she prepared to leave the room. “I suppose I’m not to do your room till you goes out, sir?”
And Mr. Sleuth looked up sharply. “No, no!” he said. “I never want my room done when I am engaged in studying the Scriptures, Mrs. Bunting. But I am not going out to-day. I shall be carrying out a somewhat elaborate experiment—upstairs. If I go out at all” he waited a moment, and again he looked at her fixedly “—I shall wait till night-time to do so.” And then, coming back to the matter in hand, he added hastily, “Perhaps you could do my room when I go upstairs, about five o’clock—if that time is convenient to you, that is?”
“Oh, yes, sir! That’ll do nicely!”
Mrs. Bunting went downstairs, and as she did so she took herself wordlessly, ruthlessly to task, but she did not face—even in her inmost heart—the strange tenors and tremors which had so shaken her. She only repeated to herself again and again, “I’ve got upset —that’s what I’ve done,” and then she spoke aloud, “I must get myself a dose at the chemist’s next time I’m out. That’s what I must do.”
And just as she murmured the word “do,” there came a loud double knock on the front door.
It was only the postman’s knock, but the postman was an unfamiliar visitor in that house, and Mrs. Bunting started violently. She was nervous, that’s what was the matter with her,—so she told herself angrily. No doubt this was a letter for Mr. Sleuth; the lodger must have relations and acquaintances somewhere in the world. All gentlefolk have. But when she picked the small envelope off the hall floor, she saw it was a letter from Daisy, her husband’s daughter.
“Bunting!” she called out sharply. “Here’s a letter for you.”
She opened the door of their sitting-room and looked in. Yes, there was her husband, sitting back comfortably in his easy chair, reading a paper. And as she saw his broad, rather rounded back, Mrs. Bunting felt a sudden thrill of sharp irritation. There he was, doing nothing—in fact, doing worse than nothing—wasting his time reading all about those horrid crimes.
She sighed—a long, unconscious sigh. Bunting was getting into idle ways, bad ways for a man of his years. But how could she prevent it? He had been such an active, conscientious sort of man when they had first made acquaintance…
She also could remember, even more clearly than Bunting did himself, that first meeting of theirs in the dining-room of No. 90 Cumberland Terrace. As she had stood there, pouring out her mistress’s glass of port wine, she had not been too much absorbed in her task to have a good out-of-her-eye look at the spruce, nice, respectable-looking fellow who was standing over by the window. How superior he had appeared even then to the man she already hoped he would succeed as butler!
To-day, perhaps because
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