The Debit Account Part 27

"Er--Miss Causton--can you stay for an hour or so? No, a private affair; I hope it's not inconvenient; thanks, and if I might give you supper afterwards?...

"Fact is, it's about poor old Jeffries. Better date it, and keep it safe. They've asked me to write something about him, and I'm no writer; but Izzard's found me a man who'll lick it into shape if I supply the material. 'Just talk it anyhow,' he said. Easily enough said, about a chap like Jeffries....

"You've seen this cutting, of course? No, not the first one; this from this morning's paper, about Mrs Jeffries. By Jove! it has followed quickly; awful! (By the way, you once met her, didn't you?) No, I want this copy; you can get another to-morrow; I'll read it out:

TRAGIC DEATH OF A LADY

We have to report a melancholy sequel to the death of Mr James Herbert Jeffries, of the Exploration and Mercantile Consolidation, Pall Mall, which was announced in our issue of the 10th ult. The circ.u.mstances of Mr Jeffries' sudden demise are still fresh in the public mind. The deceased gentleman, it will be remembered, succ.u.mbed to an attack of cerebral haemorrhage brought on by strain and overwork and culminating on the night of a dinner-party given by him at his mansion in Iddesleigh Gate. It is with the deepest regret that we now announce that his widow has survived him only a few weeks.

We understand that during the intervening time the bereaved lady had occupied herself by going through the private papers of her late husband, sitting up late at night in order to render this last devout service. At about three o'clock yesterday morning Ann Madeley, a housemaid in Mrs Jeffries' employ, suffering from insomnia, had recourse to a medicine closet, situated where the servants' quarters adjoin the dwelling parts of the house. Her attention was attracted to a strong smell of escaping gas. She woke James Baines, a butler, and the two, wisely refraining from striking a light, made their way in the direction from which the smell of gas seemed to come. This brought them to their mistress'

room. Obtaining no answer to their knocks, an entrance was forced, and in a small dressing-room lately used by Mr Jeffries----

"I hope this doesn't distress you too much, Miss Causton----

--Mrs Jeffries was found, fully dressed, stretched on a couch. The doors and windows had been closed, and a gas-fire turned on. We understand from Baines that Mrs Jeffries had remained as usual downstairs in the library until a late hour; and a page of notes in her husband's shorthand which has been found under one of the pillars of the writing-table----

"I've got that page of notes, by the way.----

--is sufficiently eloquent testimony as to what her sad duty had been. Dr McKechnie, who was at once summoned, certified that life had been extinct for some hours. The deceased lady, who was a great favourite in society, leaves two children in the care of a maiden aunt, Miss Angela Soames. The inquest is fixed for Tuesday next.

"Sad business, sad business.... Afraid they'll have to bring it in suicide--through grief, probably....

"Well, let's put it down as it comes. Of course he was a big man; lived an intense crowded life too. I should say at a guess there weren't many things he hadn't done at one time and another, short of committing a murder or a matrimonial infidelity. Don't think he could have been tempted to do that. One woman could do anything she liked with him, but the others wouldn't have much chance. Oh yes, a full life. Did you know, Miss Causton, that the man who first pa.s.sed him over to me found him helping to pick a fallen horse up in Fleet Street, when he hadn't a penny to his name? He was a commissionaire once.... As you know, he was the steam of this concern; it was the chance of my lifetime finding him, poor chap. Extraordinary man! He used to go at things by a sort of intuition; he tried to explain it to me, but I never could understand it. Once I said something about 'scientific method'; but he said it wasn't scientific method at all. Scientific method, he said, was something purely empirical, concerned with investigation, and not practically constructive in the least. Constructiveness came after. His method, he said, was based on the truths of art, 'the only truths we know anything about,' he said, whatever he meant. I never could follow him at all.... Well, if that's so, it rather explains a lot of these business giants going in for collecting--I mean it isn't that they just have the money to gratify their artistic tastes. But, as I say, I could never make head nor tail of it.... Which reminds me; that paper that got wafted under his desk; that was a dabbling in art in its way; fiction; did you know he tried his hand at fiction, Miss Causton? Here it is--an odd page--Whitlock knows a bit of shorthand, and he transcribed it for me:

_'--show him that red thing on the floor, and that curved thing on the door.'_

_But now Archie in his turn seemed to have become divided. He had suddenly turned white. But an habitual pertness still persisted in his tongue. I don't think this had any relation whatever to the physical peril he seemed at last to have realised he was in. I stood over him huge and black as Fate.... 'Spare him if you can,'

that generous bloodthirsty devil in me muttered quickly...._

_'Merridew,' I said heavily, 'you'll disappear to-morrow morning--or----'_

_'Shall I?' he bragged falteringly...._[3]

"And so on----

_His only chance now was to have screamed aloud; but he did not scream. Instead he stooped quickly, caught up the poker, and struck at my head with it._[3]

"And that's the end of the page. Sort of grim tale he would write. Queer hobby for a mercantile and political giant, wasn't it? But I'd go in for fiction myself if I thought it would make me like him.

"Verandah Cottage--that was no place for a chap like him. I hated to see him there. He could always go anywhere, meet anybody, was on equal terms with the best--and he without antecedents that I ever heard of, standing out solitary against a black background, just genius.... I wonder who his people were! Something uncommon, or else he was just a gigantic 'sport'----

"Of course--_de mortuis_ and so on--but he did marry the wrong woman. To tell the truth, she was as ordinary as they make 'em; would have looked her best in the lights of the Holborn Restaurant at half-past six, waiting with the rest of the shop-girls for her bus home. He was a ma.s.s of contradictions, and one of 'em was that he merely idealised her.

Pretty, of course, but poor Jeffries could have done better for himself than that. She never could bear me.... Well, there's nothing to be said now, poor creatures.... But sometimes it made me almost angry that he hadn't married the woman he ought....

"Well, let's begin with the day he first came to the F.B.C.----"

And Louie's pencil flew on.

FOOTNOTE:

[3] See "In Accordance with the Evidence."