CHAPTER VII.

THE READING OF THE WILL.

Nearing the brink of a discovery, yet dreading to approach the edge, lest a false step should precipitate you into a chaos of darkness; holding the end of an intricate web in your hand, yet not daring to follow the lead, lest you should lose yourself in its mazes--so I felt on the morning succeeding my visit with Detective Jones to Blue-Anchor Lane; so, likewise, had that astute officer and faithful friend expressed himself when we had parted the night before.

"You see, sir," he said, "the whole of what we have gathered this evening may only mean that Mr. Wilmot has got mixed up with this De Vos or Sullivan in some-gambling transaction, who, hearing that he's left sole heir to poor Thorneley's fortune, means to hold whatever knowledge he possesses as a threat over him to extort money. Then, as to what passed at 'Noah's Ark,' why, it may mean a good deal, and it may just mean nothing, as not referring to the parties we know of. I don't wish to raise your hopes, sir; and until I've consulted with Inspector Keene and seen what he's ferreted out, I wouldn't like to say that we'd gained as much as I thought we should from our move tonight."

On my table I found a broad black-bordered letter. It was a formal invitation on the part of Lister Wilmot, as sole executor, to attend old Thorneley's funeral on the following Tuesday.

The intervening days were dark, and blank with the blankness of despair. Vigilant, energetic, and penetrating as was that secret, silent search of the detectives, no real clue was found to the mystery of the murdered man's death; no light thrown upon the black page in the history of that fatal Tuesday evening, save what our own miserable suspicions or fallacious hopes suggested. De Vos had entirely disappeared from the scene, leaving no truce of his whereabouts. Wilmot's public movements, though closely watched by the lynx-eyed functionaries of the law, were perfectly satisfactory: and the housekeeper remained closeted in her own room, intent, apparently, upon making up her mourning garments for her late master, and fairly baffling Inspector Keene in his insidious attempts to elicit a word further, or at variance to what she stated at the inquest, by her cool, collected, and straightforward replies to his 'cute cross-questioning. And yet, in concluding the short interviews between Mr. Inspector and Merrivale, at which I was generally present, after a silent scrape at his chin, and a hungry crop at his nails, he would still repeat with a certain little air of quiet confidence, "Good-day, gentlemen. I think I am on the scent."

Meanwhile the verdict at the inquest had gone forth and done its work; and Hugh Atherton was fully committed for trial next sessions at the Old Bailey. These were to take place early in November, and the thought of how terribly short a time was left till then filled us with a fearful, heart-sickening dread lest all, upon which hung the issues of life or death, could not be accomplished in so little space. True that a respite {739} might be asked, and the trial postponed until the following sessions; but upon what plea could the request be preferred? Some evidence not yet forthcoming. What evidence could we hope for? upon what future revelation could we rely? At present there was nothing, absolutely nothing, but our vague conjectures, our blind belief in the acuteness of the police officers whom we were employing.

And Ada Leslie, what of her? Every day, and twice a day, I went to Hyde-Park Gardens, sometimes with Merrivale, sometimes alone, repeating every detail, every minute particular, every circumstance, and going though everything with her said or done by each one concerned. It seemed to be her only comfort and support, after that better and higher consolation promised to the weary and heavy-laden, and which both she and Hugh knew well how to seek.

"Tell me all," she would say--"the good and bad. I can bear it better if I know nothing is kept back. To deceive me would be no real kindness; and who has a better right to know everything than I, who am part of himself? We shall be man and wife soon, in the sight of God and the world, and then nothing can separate us in other men's minds: but till then I am truly and faithfully one with him; and what touches him touches me, only infinitely more because it is for him. Don't you know what the idyl says about the fame and shame being mine equally if his? But better and holier words still have been spoken, and I say them often to myself now when I think of the time which is coming: 'They two shall be one flesh.'"

Strangely enough, though fully conscious of Atherton's danger, of the awful position in which he stood, she never seemed to take count for one instant that the simple plea of innocence on his part, and the belief of it on ours, would not weigh one feather's weight in the heavy balance of evidence against him.

Since my encounter with Mrs. Leslie, that lady and I had been cold and distant, conversing the least possible within our power, and avoiding one another by mutual consent. But one thing I noted, that come when I would, early or late, with news or without, alone or accompanied by Merrivale, whose visits seemed a great comfort to Ada, Lister Wilmot was certain to have forestalled me, and given in his version, either personally or by letter, of whatever had happened. And I found the effect of this was, that Mrs. Leslie was speaking of Hugh as guilty, though "poor Lister still persists in trying to think him innocent;" and was publishing about wherever she could that I had _volunteered_ to give evidence against him. Ada took a different view of Wilmot's conduct.

"I think, guardian, that Lister is almost mad," she said one day. "He talks quite wildly sometimes to me. We never thought he had a very clear head; and now he seems to be so incoherent and contradictory in all he says, and this confuses mamma, and makes her get wrong notions about it all. But he is so kind and good to me now. Once I thought he didn't like me; but he is quite changed now."

On the Saturday she was allowed to see Hugh, now lodged in Newgate Prison. She went with Wilmot and her mother; but she saw him alone, with only the warder present. Contrary to my expectations, she was calmer and happier, if one can use such a word, knowing all the anguish of the heart, than before. They had mutually strengthened and comforted each other. She repeated to me a great deal of what passed when I saw her in the evening; but she never said one word of what had passed about myself; she never brought me any message; and when I asked her if Hugh had expressed a wish to see me, she only replied, "No, he thinks it is best not--at least at present." The same reply came through {740} Merrivale, who seemed puzzled by it; the same through Lister Wilmot, who was offensively regretful for me. I could not bear it, and I gave utterance to the pent-up feeling which raged within me. I told him that none of his meddling was needed between myself and Hugh Atherton, and I hinted that the _rôle_ he had taken upon himself to play now would before many days were over be changed in a very unpleasant manner. A covert sneer curled his thin lips, and there was an evil light in his eyes, as he replied that he was not afraid of any plot that might be hatched against him, and he could make excuses for my excited feelings "As to myself," he concluded, "_I am prepared for everything_."

Tuesday, the day appointed for the burial of Gilbert Thorneley, at last arrived; and those invited to attend assembled for the time in Wimpole street to pay their tribute of homage to the man who had swept his master's office in his youth, and died worth more than a million of money in the Funds. They flocked thither at the bid of his nephew and reported heir; his comrades on 'change, his compeers in wealth, his fellow-citizens; those men who had passed through the same evolutions of barter and exchange, of tare and tret, of selling out and buying in, of all that busy tumult of money-making in which the dead man lying in his silver-plated coffin upstairs, and covered by the handsome velvet pall, had borne his share even to the fullest. For Wilmot had given orders for the funeral to be conducted on a scale befitting the magnificence of the fortune which his uncle left behind him; and the management of the affair had been placed in the hands of an undertaker whose reputation for conducting people to their grave with every mournful splendor of state and style was irreproachable. But amid those funeral plumes, those heavy trappings, those sombre mantles, those long hat-bands new and scarfs of richest silk, there was no eye wet with sorrow, no brow shadowed by regret, no heart that was heavier for the loss of the one going to his grave. It was a funeral without a mourner. On Lister Wilmot's face was the half-concealed triumph and elation, under an affected grief too evidently put on for the dullest man to believe in; and the only one who would have mourned, nay who did mourn, for the murdered man, lay in his cell within the walls of Newgate, stigmatized with the brand of wilful murder of him. So the gloomy pageant set out with its hearse-and-four, its dozen mourning-coaches, its string of private carriages belonging to the rich men invited there that day. So we went to Kensal Green and laid Gilbert Thorneley in the new vault prepared for him, lonely and alone--"dust to dust, ashes to ashes"--until the resurrection.

When the last solemn words had been read over the open grave and the earth thrown with hollow sound upon the coffin, we turned to depart. A greater portion of the large assembly dispersed in their carriages on their various ways, and a few were asked to return to Wimpole street and be present at the reading of the will. Whether bidden or not, I had a reason for being there likewise, and had made up my mind what to do; but to my surprise Mr. Walker came up as we were leaving the cemetery, and invited me in Wilmot's name to go back with them.

In the dining room where the inquest had been held we gathered once again--some dozen of Thorneley's oldest acquaintances, the two doctors, the rector of the parish with his three curates, myself, the housekeeper, and the other servants of the dead man's household. The guests grouped themselves in different knots round the room, talking and gossiping together on the money market, the state of the country, of trade, of politics, of I know not what, but mostly of the past and future concerning the house in which we were assembled, of {741} the murdered and the supposed murderer, whilst we waited for Lister Wilmot and his two lawyers. The servants placed themselves in a row near the door, the housekeeper somewhat apart behind the rest, as if shrinking from notice. Very striking she looked in her deep mourning, gown, fitting with perfect exactitude, her light hair streaked here and there with silver threads braided beneath a close tulle-cap, very pale very self-possessed, but with that dangerous look in the cold blue eyes and peculiar motion of the eyelids which Merrivale had described as "a scintillating light and a shivering."

In less than a quarter of an hour the three came in--Thorneley's executor and two lawyers; Smith, the senior partner--one of those pompous old men who are met up and down the world, embodying, only in a wrong sense, the conception of a late spiritual writer of "a man of one idea," that idea being self--carrying in his hand a large parchment folded in familiar form and indorsed in the orthodox caligraphy of a law-office. The hum of conversation ceased as they entered and advanced to the top of the room, where a small table was placed, upon which the lawyer deposited the document. I glanced round the room. All eyes were turned upon the three, who were now seating themselves at the table in question, with the eager curiosity of men going to hear news. The expression of triumph upon Lister Wilmot's face had deepened yet more visibly; but underneath I fancied I perceived a lurking anxiety, and especially when his eye fell with a quick, sharp glance upon myself, and then as quickly looked away. The two lawyers appeared very full of their own importance, and were very obsequious to their new client. Lastly I looked at the housekeeper. Two hectic spots now burned upon her singularly pale cheeks, and her lips were tightly compressed; her hands, delicate and white for a woman in her position, wandered restlessly over each other. Perhaps it was but very natural agitation, for those who had served so long and faithfully were no doubt expecting to be remembered in the will of their late master.

"Are you ready, Mr. Wilmot?" asked Smith, wiping his gold spectacles and adjusting them on his nose.

Wilmot bowed assent; and the lawyer unfolding the parchment, read in loud, high, nasal tones, "The last will and testament of the late Gilbert Thorneley, squire, of 100 Wimpole street, in the parish of St. Mary-le-bone, London, and of the Grange, Warnside, Lincolnshire."

A dead silence reigned throughout the room; as the saying is, you might have heard a pin drop. One thing only was audible to my ear, sitting a few feet distant, and that was the heavy pant of the housekeeper's breathing. Smith read on.

The said Gilbert Thorneley bequeathed to his nephew, Hugh Atherton, the sum of £5000, free of legacy-duty; to his housekeeper an annuity of £100 per annum for life; to his butler and coachman annuities of £50 per annum for life, all free of legacy-duty, and £20 to the other servants for mourning, with a twelvemonth's wages; to his nephew, Lister Wilmot, the whole of his landed property, all moneys vested in the Funds, all personal property, furniture, carriages, horses, and plate, as sole residuary legatee.

This was the gist and pith of Gilbert Thorneley's will, which further bore date of the 19th of August in the present year, and was witnessed by William Walker, of the firm of Smith and Walker, and Abel Griffiths, Smith and Walker's clerk. By it Lister Wilmot came into an annual income of something like £100,000; by it Hugh Atherton was cut off with a mere nominal sum from the joint inheritance which his uncle had from his boyhood upward in the most unequivocal manner and words taught him to expect. A murmur of surprise ran through the company assembled. {742} The equal position of the two nephews with regard to their uncle had been too publicly known for the present declaration not to excite the most unbounded astonishment. So certain did it seem that the cousins would be co-heirs of Thorneley 'a enormous wealth, that whispers had gone about pretty freely of that being the motive which induced Hugh Atherton to commit the crime imputed to him--the desire of entering into possession of the old man's money. I gathered the thought in each person's mind by the broken words which fell from them. "Then _why_ did he do it?" I heard one of the curates whisper to the other, and I knew that they thought and spoke of Hugh, believing him to be guilty.

I waited for a few minutes after Mr. Smith had finished his pompous delivery of this document, purporting to be the last will and testament of the late Gilbert Thorneley, and then I rose from the remote comer where I had placed myself and confronted the two lawyers.

"Gentlemen," I said, "I take leave to dispute that will which has just been read."

A thunderbolt falling in the midst of us could not have had a more astounding effect than those few words.

"Dispute the will!" shouted old Smith, purple in the face.

"Dispute the will!" echoed Walker.

"Dispute the will!" reverberated all round.

"God bless my soul, sir!" continued Smith, rising from his chair and literally shaking with excitement, "what do you mean by that? Dispute this will!" striking the open parchment with his closed hand; "upon what grounds, Mr. Kavanagh--upon what grounds and by what authority do you dare to dispute it, made by _us_, witnessed by _us_, and which _we_ know to be the genuine and latest testament of our late client? What do you mean by it?"

"I dispute that will on the ground of there existing another and a later will of Mr. Thorneley; and I dispute it on the part of those in whose favor it is made. Gentlemen, I have a statement to make, to the truth of which I am prepared to affix my oath."

Involuntarily I glanced at Lister Wilmot. He was deadly pale; but he returned my gaze very steadily, and I noticed the same evil light in his eye as I had once before seen. Smith drew himself up and settled his thick bull-throat in his white choker, whilst his junior partner ran his hand through his hair, and seemed to prepare himself for whatever was coming with a sort of "Do your worst--I don't care for you" air.

"I hold in my hand," I continued, "a memorandum from my journal, and dated October 23, 185--, last Tuesday, gentlemen; and I beg your particular attention to the extract I am going to read to you--'Received a note from Mr. Gilbert Thorneley, of 100 Wimpole street, requesting me to call on him this evening. Went at seven o'clock; made and executed _a will_ for the same, under solemn promise not to reveal the transaction until after his funeral had taken place. In case of my death, to leave a memorandum of the same addressed to Mr. Hugh Atherton. Saw the will signed by Mr. Thorneley and witnessed by his footman and coachman. Made memorandum of same for H. A., as desired. Put it with private papers, addressed to H. A.' That will, gentlemen, being of later date, will, if forthcoming, upset the will just read, and which is dated two months back."

There was a profound silence for some moments, broken only by the two servants. Barker the footman and Thomas the coachman, who both murmured in low but distinct tones, "Right enough, sir; we did put our names to that there dockiment."

{743}

"I don't quite understand your 'statement,' Mr. Kavanagh," said Smith at last, with an air which plainly said, "And I consider myself insulted by your making it."

"It is quite plain and straightforward, Mr. Smith, though, of course, you are taken by surprise. Allow me to hand you this copy of the memorandum I have read to you, and to which I have signed my name."

"But _where_ is that will, sir? Statements and memoranda go for nothing, if you can't produce your proofs; and the will itself is the only proof."

"Where it is," I replied, "is best known to Mr. Wilmot, or yourselves, or to both. I never saw it after leaving Mr. Thorneley's study on the evening of the 23d."

The two lawyers turned simultaneously to Wilmot.

"Did you know anything of this transaction, sir?" asked Walker.

"Only so far as came out at the inquest yesterday. Where is the will? I ask. Let Mr. Kavanagh produce it."

There was a world of defiance in his glittering eyes as he rose and faced me.

"Yes," he cried again, with a hard, ringing voice, "let Mr. John Kavanagh produce it."

"Gently, Mr. Wilmot," said Walker in an insinuating voice. "Allow us to deal with this matter; it is really only proper that we should."

"Only proper that we should," echoed old Smith in his peculiar nasal twang.

But Lister Wilmot waved them both imperiously aside; and advancing a step forward, he said with an evident effort to control himself:

"I don't see, Kavanagh, what you can gain by bringing forward this absurd statement. Of course we all imagined that the mysterious business upon which you saw my deceased uncle the last evening of his life was in some way connected with making his will; and Mr. Smith, Mr. Walker, and myself searched through his papers with the utmost care, and with this idea in our minds; but no will, no codicil, no letter, nor memorandum of later date than the one just read could anywhere be found. Knowing what an eccentric character he was, we came to the conclusion that, if any will posterior to this were made, he had destroyed it immediately afterward.--Is this not so?" he turned to the two lawyers.

"It is so," answered Walker, for self and partner. "We made the minutest investigation, and were all three together when the seals were removed which had been placed on everything by the police in charge of the house. Nothing could have been tampered with."

I was fairly baffled, and stood considering what was the next best thing to do, when an old gray-headed man stepped forward and said that, if he might suggest, it would be satisfactory to hear in what particulars the deed I had drawn up differed from the one just made known.

"Yes," said Wilmot, with something like a sneer; "let us hear what were the contents of this will which you say you drew up."

"Wilmot," I answered, "the one whom that will, to my mind, most affected, for reasons which will presently be obvious to all who listen to me now, was the only one who loved the old man in life whose remains we have just followed to the grave--the only one who, I know, mourns his death with all the sincerity of his true and noble heart. In his presence I would never publicly have dragged forward a history which is full of sin, of sorrow, of remorse. But he lies in a felon's cell, charged, through a dark mysterious combination of events, and I firmly believe a deeply-laid scheme to work his ruin, with a felon's crime. In his interest therefore, first of all, I must speak. There is also that of another concerned, who comes before most of those present as a complete stranger; whether to _all_ I know not.--Gentlemen, I, like you, believed until this day week that Gilbert Thorneley died childless and a bachelor. {744} Five-and twenty years ago he married a young and beautiful girl, an orphan, but possessed of an immense fortune. He married her for her money. It was a joyless marriage, without love, without happiness. One son was born to them, and shortly after _the young wife died_. The boy grew up an idiot, hated, loathed by his father, who sent him far away from his sight, and who for more than fifteen years before he died never saw his child's face. Remorse at last seems to have surged up in his heart, and he took a resolution to make what reparation he could for his past neglect. This is all which the deceased, Mr. Thorneley, confided to me in plain words; at the rest I can only darkly guess; but that much more might have been told which never passed his lips, that some terrible secret of the past remains still unrevealed, I am bound to say I feel convinced from the manner in which that little was revealed to me. Gentlemen, the will which I executed last Tuesday evening, and saw witnessed by the two servants now present, after bequeathing £10,000 a year to his nephew, Hugh Atherton, left the whole and entire of Gilbert Thorneley's property, landed, personal, and in the funds, to his idiot son, Francis Gilbert Thorneley, now living; and constituted Hugh Atherton as sole guardian of his cousin. With the exception of the same small legacies to the domestics of his household, no other bequest whatever was made; no other name mentioned. This will was executed as a tardy reparation for some wrong done to his dead wife."

There was the sound of a dull, heavy fall, and a cry from one of the women in the room. Mrs. Haag, the housekeeper, had fainted away.