The Pennycomequicks (Volume 1 of 3)

'And his cards are in it,' added the policeman.

Salome looked again attentively at the body.

'That is Mr. Pennycomequick's overcoat. I know it – but that cannot be Mr. Pennycomequick wearing it.'

Then, overcome with the horror of the scene, Salome shrank back.

The policeman had now extracted a letter from the pocket; the address was blotted, but after a little examination could be made out, 'J. Pennycomequick, Esq., manufacturer, Mergatroyd.'

'It is strange that he should be without his boots,' said the policeman.

'Not at all,' said Mrs. Sidebottom. 'Anyone but a fool, as soon as he is in the water, kicks them off, as they fill and drag him down. I can swear to the identity – that is my brother. Remove the body to the house.'

CHAPTER XI.

EXPECTATION

As Philip Pennycomequick came next day to the house of mourning – mourning, because three dress-makers were engaged in making it – he saw that all the blinds were down. In the hall he met Salome, who was there, evidently awaiting him. She looked ill and anxious, and her eyes were bright with a feverish lustre. She had not slept for two nights.

The extraordinary delicacy of her complexion gave her a look as of the finest porcelain, a transparency through which her doubting, disturbed and eager spirit was visible. Her pallor contrasted startlingly at this time with the gorgeous tone of her luxuriant hair. Her eyes were large, the irises distended as though touched with belladonna, and Philip felt his mistrust fall away from off him, as in some fairy tale the armour of a knight loosens itself, drops, and leaves him unharnessed before an enchantress. But the enchantment which dissolved his panoply of suspicion was an innocent one, it was the manifestation of real suffering. He could see that the girl was rendered almost ill by the mental distress caused by the loss of her friend and guardian. That she had loved him, and loved him with an innocent, unselfish affection, seemed to him undoubted.

'I beg your pardon for waylaying you, Mr. Pennycomequick,' she said, in a timid voice; one white hand lifted, with an uncertain shake in it, touching her lips. 'But I very much desire to have a word with you in private before you go upstairs to Mrs. Sidebottom.'

'I'm at your service.'

She led the way into the breakfast-room, recently cleared of the meal. She went to the window, and stood between the glass and the curtain, with her left hand entangled among the cords of the Venetian blind. In her nervousness it was necessary for her to take hold of something. Her delicate fingers ran up the green strings and played with them, as though they were the strings of a harp on which she was practising, and, strangely enough, Philip felt within him every touch; when she twanged a cord, some fibre in him quivered responsive, and was only lulled when she clasped the string and stopped its vibration.

A faint tinge rose in her white face to the cheek-bones and temples, touching them with more than colour, an apparent inner light, like the Alpine glow after sundown on the white head of the Jungfrau. As she spoke she did not look at Philip, but with eyes modestly lowered on the ground, or out of the window looking sideways down the street.

'What I wished to say to you, Mr. Pennycomequick, will soon be said. I shall not detain you long. I am sorry to differ from Mrs. Sidebottom, but I cannot share her conviction that the body found last night is that of your uncle.'

'You do not dispute that he is dead?'

'No,' she sighed; 'I think there can be no question about that.'

'Or that he was last seen on the canal bank at no great distance from where the discovery was made?'

'No,' she said, and her fingers unconsciously played on the blind cords the time of the melody in Chopin's 'Marche Funèbre.'

'Why do you say no?'

'Mr. Pennycomequick was full dressed when he went out – that is to say, he had on his great-coat and his boots and – in fact it was not possible that he could be discovered in the condition in which the body recovered from the canal was found.'

'It is, of course, difficult to account for it, but not impossible. My aunt declares that she went up to the bedroom of my uncle the same night, found the bed disturbed, and the dress clothes, or some of them, on the chair. She concludes that he pulled on his overcoat and went out half-dressed, that he got caught by the water somewhere in some place of temporary refuge, and saw that his only chance of escape was to strip and swim. That he drew on his great coat again as a protection against the cold, till the proper moment came for him to make the plunge – but she concludes that he never did start to swim, either his courage failed him, or the flood rose too rapidly and carried him away before he had removed the overcoat. This may be an over-ingenious explanation, nevertheless it is an explanation that accounts for all.'

'Not for all – the body is not that of Mr. Pennycomequick.' Salome spoke decidedly, and as she spoke her hand gripped the strings hard.

Philip stood by the table, resting his hand on it. The morning light fell strong on her face, and illumined her auburn hair. Philip took occasion to examine her countenance more closely than had been possible before. She was like her sister in build, in feature and in tone of colour, indeed strikingly like her, but in that only – certainly, Philip thought, in that only.

All at once she looked up and met Philip's eyes.

'No – a thousand times no,' she said. 'That is not uncle. He was brought here because Mrs. Sidebottom desired it, and is convinced of the identity. No objection that I can raise disturbs her. I thought that possibly, last night, I might have judged on insufficient evidence, and so I went this morning into the room to look at the corpse. Mrs. Sidebottom had sent last night for women who attended to it and it was laid out in the spare room.' She began to tremble now as she spoke, and her fingers played a rapid movement on the blind cords. 'I had made up my mind to look at him, and I did.'

She paused, to recover the control that was fast deserting her, as the delicate glow of colour in her face had now left it. 'It is not my uncle. I looked at his hands. The head is – is not to be seen, nothing is distinguishable there – but the hands are not those of Mr. Pennycomequick.'

'In what does the difference consist?'

'I cannot describe it. I knew his hands well. He often let me take them in mine when I sat on the stool at his feet by the fire, and I have kissed them.' The clear tears rose in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. 'I am quite sure – if those had been his dear hands that I saw on the bed this morning, I would have kissed them again, but I could not.' She shook her head, and shook away the drops from her cheeks. 'No – I could not.'

'Miss Cusworth,' said Philip, 'you are perhaps unaware of the great alteration that is produced by immersion for many hours.'

'They are not his hands. That is not uncle.'

She was so conspicuously sincere, so sincerely distressed, that Philip relaxed his cold manner towards her, and said in a gentle tone:

'Did my uncle wear a ring? There was none on the hands of the man found yesterday.'

'No; he wore no ring.'

'With what did he seal his letters?'

'Oh! he had a brass seal with his initials on it, with a handle, that was in his pen-tray. He used to joke about it, and say he was a J.P. without the Queen's commission.'

'For my own part,' said Philip, 'I am beyond forming an opinion, as I have seen my uncle but once since I was a boy, and then under circumstances precluding exact observation.'

Salome said nothing to this, but heaved a long breath. Presently Philip said:

'Your mother – has she been taken upstairs?'

'Oh no!' exclaimed Salome, excited as by a fresh terror. 'You do not know my mother. She has heart complaint, and we have to be most careful not unduly to excite and alarm her. She has suffered much on account of what has taken place; and the shock of seeing – ' She shivered. 'It cannot be.'

'And your sister?'

'She turned faint when brought to the door, and I could not persuade her to enter. She has been much tried by the German invasion of France, and her hurried journey.'

'Is there anything further you have to say?'

'No; Mrs. Sidebottom is wrong, that is all.'

Philip withdrew.

The girl had gained in his estimation. There was strength in her such as lacked in her sister. She must have had courage and determination to go by herself into the room where lay the mutilated corpse, and she had formed her own opinion, independently, and held to it with a firmness there was no breaking down.

Philip ascended the stairs thoughtfully. It had seemed to him at the time that his aunt had rushed at identification with undue precipitation; still, she was the sister of Uncle Jeremiah, and therefore better capable than anyone else. Now he was himself uncertain.

When he entered the study where Mrs. Sidebottom was, she saluted him with:

'Well, so you have had your interview with Salome. She has been hanging about the hall all the morning for the purpose of catching you.'