When Ghost Meets Ghost Part 16

"Ah! Don't live there, though. Comes easy-like, now and again. Like the noospapers."

"He's a young liar, then. Told me his name was Ikey." Miss Hawkins pointed out that Ikey and Micky were substantially identical. But she was unable to make the same claim for Rackstraw and Ekins, when told that Micky had laid claim to the latter. She waived the point and conducted the beer-bearer back the way he came, handing him the brown jug over the wall, not to spill it.

But she suggested, in consideration of the high quality of the half-and-half, that her next-door neighbour might oblige by stepping in by the private entrance, to speak concerning Sapps Court and its inhabitants; all known to her more or less, no doubt. Which Aunt Elizabeth was glad to do, seeing that the cherry-tart was only just put in the oven, and she could spare that few minutes without risk.

Now, this old lady, though she was but a charwoman depending for professional engagements rather on the goodwill--for auld lang syne--of one or two families in Chiswick, of prodigious opulence in her eyes, yet was regarded by Sapps Court, when she visited her niece, Mrs. Rackstraw, or Ragstroar, Michael's mother, as distinctly superior. Aunt M'riar especially had been so much impressed with a grey shawl with fringes and a ready cule--spelt thus by repute--which she carried when she come of a Sunday, that she had not only asked her to tea, but had taken her to pay a visit to Mrs. Prichard upstairs. She had also in conversation taken Aunt Elizabeth Jane largely into her confidence about Mrs. Prichard, repeating, indeed, all she knew of her except what related to her convict husband. About that she kept an honourable silence.

It was creditable to Miss Juliarawkins, whose name--written as p.r.o.nounced--gives us what we contend is an innocent pleasure, that she should have suspected the truth about Wix or Daverill's want of shrewdness when he visited Sapps Court. She had been biased towards this suspicion by the fact that the man, when he first referred to Sapps Court, had spoken the name as though sure of it; and it was to test its validity that she invited Aunt Elizabeth Jane round by the private door, and introduced her to the darkened bar, where the ex-convict was lighting another pipe. She had heard Mrs. Treadwell speak of Aunt M'riar; and now, having formed a true enough image of the area of the Court, had come to the conclusion that all its inhabitants would be acquainted, and would talk over each other's affairs.

"Who the h.e.l.l's that?" Mr. Wix started as if a wasp had stung him, as the old charwoman's knock came at the private entrance alongside of the bar. He seemed very sensitive, always on the watch for surprises.

"Only old Treadwell from next door. _She_ ain't going to hurt you, Tom.

You be easy." Miss Hawkins spoke with another manner as well as another name now that she and this man were alone. She may never possibly have known his own proper name, he having been introduced to her as Thomas Wix twenty years ago. An introduction with a sequel which scarcely comes into the story.

His answer was beginning:--"It's easy to say be easy ..." when the woman left the room to admit Aunt Elizabeth Jane. Who came in finishing the drying of hands, suddenly washed, on a clean Sunday ap.r.o.n. "Lawsy me, Miss Hawkins!" said she. "I didn't know you had anybody here."

It was not difficult to _entamer_ the conversation. After a short interlude about the weather, to which the man's contribution was a grunt at most, the old lady had been started on the subject of her nephew and Sapps Court, and to this he gave attention. If she had had her tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses she might have been frightened by the way he knitted his brows to listen. But she had left them behind in her hurry, and he kept back in a dark corner.

"About this same aged widow body," said he, fixing the conversation to the point that interested him. "What sort of an age now should you give her? Eighty--ninety--ninety-five--ninety-nine?" He stopped short of a hundred. n.o.body one knows is a hundred. Centenarians are only in newspapers.

"I can tell you her age from her lips, mister. Eighty-one next birthday.

And her name, Maisie Prichard."

Mr. Wix's attention deepened, and his scowl with it. "Now, can you make that safe to go upon?" he said with a harsh stress on a voice already harsh. "How came the old lady to say her own christened name? I'll pound it I might talk to you most of the day and never know your first name.

Old folks they half forget 'em as often as not."

Miss Hawkins struck in:--"Now you're talking silly, Mr. Wix. How many young folk tell you their christened names right off?" But she had got on weak ground. She got off it again discreetly. "Anyhow, Mrs. Treadwell she's inventing nothing, having no call to." She turned to Aunt Elizabeth Jane with the question:--"How come she to happen to mention the name, ma'am?"

"Just as you or I might, Miss Julia. Mrs. Wardle she said, 'I was remarking of it to Mrs. Treadwell,' she said, 'only just afore we come upstairs, ma'am,' she said, 'that you was one of twins, ma'am,' she said. And then old Mrs. Prichard she says, 'Ay, to be sure,' she says, 'twins we were--Maisie and Phoebe. Forty-five years ago she died, Phoebe did,' she says. 'And I've never forgotten Phoebe,' she says. 'Nor yet I shan't forget Phoebe not if I live to be a hundred!'"

"Goard blind my soul!" Mr. Wix muttered this to himself, and though Aunt Elizabeth Jane failed to catch the words, she shuddered at the manner of them. She did not like this Mr. Wix, and wished she had not forgotten her tortoisesh.e.l.l spectacles, so as to see better what he was like. The words she heard him say next had nothing in them to cause a shudder, though the manner of them showed vexation:--"If that ain't tryin' to a man's temper! There she was all the time!" It is true he qualified this last substantive by the adjective the story so often has to leave out, but it was not very uncommon in those days along the riverside between Fulham and Kew.

"I thought you said the name was Daverill," said Miss Hawkins, taking the opportunity to release a curl-paper at a looking-gla.s.s behind bottles. It was just upon time to open, and the barmaid had got her Sunday out.

"Why the h.e.l.l shouldn't the name be Daverill? In course I did! Ask your pardon for swearing, missis...." This was to the visitor, who had begun to want to go. "You'll excuse my naming to you all my reasons, but I'll just mention this one, not to be misunderstood. This here old lady's a sort of old friend of mine, and when I came back from abroad I says to myself I'd like to look up old Mrs. Daverill. So I make inquiry, you see, and my man he tells me--he was an old mate of mine, you see--she's gone to live at Sevenoaks--do you see?--at Sevenoaks...."

"Ah, I see! I've been at Sevenoaks."

"Well--there she had been and gone away to town again. Then says I, 'What's her address?' So they told me they didn't know, it was so long agone. But the old woman--_her_ name was Killick, or Forbes was it?--no, Killick--remembered directing on a letter to Mrs. Daverill, Sapps Court.

And Juliar here she said she'd heard tell of Sapps Court. So I hunted the place up and found it. Then your Mrs. Wardle's husband--I take it he was Moses Wardle the heavyweight in my young days--he put me off the scent because of the name. The only way to make Prichard of her I can see is--she married again. Well--did no one ever hear of an old fool that got married again?"

"That's nothing," said Miss Hawkins. "They'll marry again with the rattle in their throats."

That tart was in the oven, and had to be remembered. Or else Aunt Elizabeth Jane wanted to see no more of Mr. Wix. "I must be running back to my cooking," said she. "But if this gentleman goes again to find out Sappses, he's only got to ask for my niece at Number One, or Mrs. Wardle at Number Seven, and he'll find Mrs. Prichard easy." She did not speak directly to the man, and he for his part noticed her departure very slightly, giving it a fraction of a grunt he wanted the rest of later.

Nor did Aunt Elizabeth Jane seem in a great hurry to get away when Miss Hawkins had seen her to the door. She lingered a moment to refer to Aunt's M'riar's talk of Widow Prichard. Certainly Mrs. Wardle at Number Seven _she_ said nothing of any second marriage, and thought Prichard was the name of the old lady's first husband, who had died in Van Diemen's Land. Miss Julia paid very little attention. What business of hers was Widow Prichard? She was much more interested in a couple of policemen walking along the lane. Not a very common spectacle in that retired thoroughfare! Also, instead of following on along the riverside road it opened into, they both wheeled right-about-face and came back.

Miss Julia, taking down a shutter to reinstate The Pigeons as a tavern open to customers, noted that the faces of these two were strange to her. Also that they pa.s.sed her with the barest good-morning, forbiddingly. The police generally cultivate intercourse with public-house keepers of every sort, but when one happens to be a lady with ringlets especially so; even should her complexion be partly due to correctives, to amalgamate a blotchiness. These officers overdid their indifference, and it attracted Miss Julia's attention.

Aunt Elizabeth Jane thought at the time she might have mistaken what she heard one of them say to the other. For, of course, she pa.s.sed them close. The words she heard seemed to be:--"That will be Hawkins."

Something in them rang false with her concept of the situation. But there was the cherry-tart to be seen to, and some peas to boil. Only not the whole lot at once for only her and Michael! As for that boy, she had sent him off to the baker's, the minute he came back, to wait till the bit of the best end of the neck was sure to be quite done, and bring it away directly minute.

That day there was an unusually high spring-tide on the river, and presumably elsewhere; only that did not concern Hammersmith, which ascribed the tides to local impulses inherent in the Thames. Just after midday the water was all but up to the necks of the piers of Hammersmith Bridge, and the island at Chiswick was nearly submerged. Willows standing in lakes were recording the existence of towing-paths no longer able to speak for themselves, and the insolent plash of ripples over wharves that had always thought themselves above that sort of thing seemed to say:--"Thus far will I come, and a little farther for that matter." Father Thames never quite touched the landing of the boat-ladder, at the end of the garden at The Pigeons, but he went within six inches of it.

"The water wasn't like you see it now, that day," said a man in the stern of a boat that was hanging about off the garden. "All of five foot lower down, I should figure it. _He_ didn't want no help to get up--not he!"

"It was a tidy jump up, any way you put it," said the stroke oar.

"Well--he could have done it! But he was aiming to help his man to a seat in the boat, not to get a lift up for himself. I've not a word to say against Toby Ibbetson, mind you! He took an advantage some wouldn't, maybe. And then it's how you look at it, when all's done. You know what Daverill was wanted for?" Oh yes--both oars knew that. "I call to mind the place--knew it well enough. Out near Waltham Abbey. Lonely sort of spot.... Yes--the girl died. Not before she'd had time to swear to the twist in his face. He had been seen and identified none so far off an hour before. Quite a young girl. Father cut his throat. So would you.

Thought he ought to have seen the girl safe home. So he ought. Ain't that our man's whistle?" The boat, slowly worked in towards The Pigeons, lays to a few strokes off on the slack water. The tide's mandate to stop has come. The sergeant is waiting for a second whistle to act.

Inside the tavern the woman has closed the street-door abruptly--has given the alarm. "There's two in the lane!" she gasps. "Be sharp, Tom!"

"Through the garden?" he says. "Run out to see."

She is back almost before the door she opens has swung to. "It's all up, Tom," she cries. "There's the boat!"

"Stand clear, Juli-ar!" he says. "I'll have a look at your roof. Needn't say I'm at home. Where's the key?"

"I'll give it you. You go up!" She forgets something, though, in her hurry. His pipe remains on the table where he left it smoking, lying across the unemptied pewter. _He_ forgets it, too, though he follows her deliberately enough. Recollection and emergency rarely shake hands.

She meets him on the stairs coming down from the room where the paralysed man lies, hearing but little, seeing only the walls and the ceiling. "It's on the corner of the chimney-piece," she says. "_He's_ asleep." Daverill pa.s.ses her, and just as he reaches the door remembers the pipe. It would be fatal to call out with that single knock at the house-door below. Too late!

She still forgets that pipe, and only waits to be sure he is through, to open the door to the knocker. By the time she does so he has found the key and pa.s.sed through the dormer door that gives on the leads. The paralysed man has not moved. Moreover, he cannot see the short ladder that leads to the exit. It is on his dead side.

"You've a party here that's wanted, missis. Name of Wix or Daverill. Man about five-and-forty. Dark hair and light eyes. Side-draw on the mouth.

Goes with a lurch. Two upper front eye-teeth missing. Carries a gold hunting-watch on a steel chain. Wears opal ring of apparent value.

Stammers slightly." So the police-officer reads from his warrant or instructions, which he offers to show to Miss Hawkins, who scarcely glances at it.

Who so surprised and plausible as she? Why--her father is the only man in the house, and him on his back this fifteen years or more! What's more, he doesn't wear an opal ring. Nor any ring at all, for that matter! But come in and see. Look all over the house if desired. _She_ won't stand in the way.

"Our instruction is to search," says the officer. He looks like a sub-inspector, and is evidently what a malefactor would consider a "bad man" to have anything to do with. Miss Hawkins knows that her right of sanctuary, if any, is a feeble claim, probably overruled by some police regulation; and invites the officers into the house, almost too demonstratively. Just then she suddenly recollects that pipe.

"You can find your way in, mister," she says; and goes through to the bar. The moment she does so the officer shows alacrity.

"Keep an eye to that cellar-flap, Jacomb," he says to his mate, and follows the lady of the house. He is only just in time. "Is that your father's pipe?" he asks. In another moment she would have hidden it.

"Which pipe?--oh, this pipe?--_this_ pipe ain't nothing. Left stood overnight, I suppose." And she paused to think of the best means of getting the pipe suppressed. There was no open grate in the bar to throw it behind. She was a poor liar, too, and was losing her head.

"Give me hold a quarter of a minute," says the officer. She cannot refuse to give the pipe up. "Someone's had a whiff off this pipe since closing-time last night," he continues, touching the still warm bowl; for all this had pa.s.sed very quickly. And he actually puts the pipe to his lips, and in two or three draws works up its lingering spark. "A good mouthful of smoke," says he, blowing it out in a cloud.

"You can look where you like," mutters the woman sullenly. "There's no man for you. Only you won't want to disturb my father. He's only just fell asleep."

"He'll be sleeping pretty sound after fifteen year." Thus the officer, and the unhappy woman felt she had indeed made a complete mess of the case. "Which is his room now, ma'am? We'll go there first."

Up the stairs and past a window looking on the garden. The day is hot beneath the July sun, and the two men in uniform who are coming up the so-called garden, or rather gravelled yard, behind The Pigeons, are mopping the sweat from their brows. They might have been customers from the river, but Miss Hawkins knows the look of them too well for that.

The house is surrounded--watched back and front. Escape is hopeless, successful concealment the only chance.