Bleak House - Charles Dickens (read this if txt) 📗

to Lady

Dedlock, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and ask her ladyship

whether, even after he had left here, she didn’t go down to his

chambers with the intention of saying something further to him,

dressed in a loose black mantle with a deep fringe to it.”

 

Sir Leicester sits like a statue, gazing at the cruel finger that

is probing the life-blood of his heart.

 

“You put that to her ladyship, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, from

me, Inspector Bucket of the Detective. And if her ladyship makes

any difficulty about admitting of it, you tell her that it’s no

use, that Inspector Bucket knows it and knows that she passed the

soldier as you called him (though he’s not in the army now) and

knows that she knows she passed him on the staircase. Now, Sir

Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, why do I relate all this?”

 

Sir Leicester, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a

single groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By and by he

takes his hands away, and so preserves his dignity and outward

calmness, though there is no more colour in his face than in his

white hair, that Mr. Bucket is a little awed by him. Something

frozen and fixed is upon his manner, over and above its usual shell

of haughtiness, and Mr. Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in

his speech, with now and then a curious trouble in beginning, which

occasions him to utter inarticulate sounds. With such sounds he

now breaks silence, soon, however, controlling himself to say that

he does not comprehend why a gentleman so faithful and zealous as

the late Mr. Tulkinghorn should have communicated to him nothing of

this painful, this distressing, this unlooked-for, this

overwhelming, this incredible intelligence.

 

“Again, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” returns Mr. Bucket, “put

it to her ladyship to clear that up. Put it to her ladyship, if

you think it right, from Inspector Bucket of the Detective. You’ll

find, or I’m much mistaken, that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn had

the intention of communicating the whole to you as soon as he

considered it ripe, and further, that he had given her ladyship so

to understand. Why, he might have been going to reveal it the very

morning when I examined the body! You don’t know what I’m going to

say and do five minutes from this present time, Sir Leicester

Dedlock, Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, you

might wonder why I hadn’t done it, don’t you see?”

 

True. Sir Leicester, avoiding, with some trouble those obtrusive

sounds, says, “True.” At this juncture a considerable noise of

voices is heard in the hall. Mr. Bucket, after listening, goes to

the library-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again.

Then he draws in his head and whispers hurriedly but composedly,

“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this unfortunate family affair has

taken air, as I expected it might, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn

being cut down so sudden. The chance to hush it is to let in these

people now in a wrangle with your footmen. Would you mind sitting

quiet—on the family account—while I reckon ‘em up? And would you

just throw in a nod when I seem to ask you for it?”

 

Sir Leicester indistinctly answers, “Officer. The best you can,

the best you can!” and Mr. Bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook

of the forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices

quickly die away. He is not long in returning; a few paces ahead

of Mercury and a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed

smalls, who bear between them a chair in which is an incapable old

man. Another man and two women come behind. Directing the

pitching of the chair in an affable and easy manner, Mr. Bucket

dismisses the Mercuries and locks the door again. Sir Leicester

looks on at this invasion of the sacred precincts with an icy

stare.

 

“Now, perhaps you may know me, ladies and gentlemen,” says Mr.

Bucket in a confidential voice. “I am Inspector Bucket of the

Detective, I am; and this,” producing the tip of his convenient

little staff from his breast-pocket, “is my authority. Now, you

wanted to see Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Well! You do see

him, and mind you, it ain’t every one as is admitted to that

honour. Your name, old gentleman, is Smallweed; that’s what your

name is; I know it well.”

 

“Well, and you never heard any harm of it!” cries Mr. Smallweed in

a shrill loud voice.

 

“You don’t happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?” retorts

Mr. Bucket with a steadfast look, but without loss of temper.

 

“No!”

 

“Why, they killed him,” says Mr. Bucket, “on account of his having

so much cheek. Don’t YOU get into the same position, because it

isn’t worthy of you. You ain’t in the habit of conversing with a

deaf person, are you?”

 

“Yes,” snarls Mr. Smallweed, “my wife’s deaf.”

 

“That accounts for your pitching your voice so high. But as she

ain’t here; just pitch it an octave or two lower, will you, and

I’ll not only be obliged to you, but it’ll do you more credit,”

says Mr. Bucket. “This other gentleman is in the preaching line, I

think?”

 

“Name of Chadband,” Mr. Smallweed puts in, speaking henceforth in a

much lower key.

 

“Once had a friend and brother serjeant of the same name,” says Mr.

Bucket, offering his hand, “and consequently feel a liking for it.

Mrs. Chadband, no doubt?”

 

“And Mrs. Snagsby,” Mr. Smallweed introduces.

 

“Husband a lawstationer and a friend of my own,” says Mr. Bucket.

“Love him like a brother! Now, what’s up?”

 

“Do you mean what business have we come upon?” Mr. Smallweed asks,

a little dashed by the suddenness of this turn.

 

“Ah! You know what I mean. Let us hear what it’s all about in

presence of Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet. Come.”

 

Mr. Smallweed, beckoning Mr. Chadband, takes a moment’s counsel

with him in a whisper. Mr. Chadband, expressing a considerable

amount of oil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his

hands, says aloud, “Yes. You first!” and retires to his former

place.

 

“I was the client and friend of Mr. Tulkinghorn,” pipes Grandfather

Smallweed then; “I did business with him. I was useful to him, and

he was useful to me. Krook, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law.

He was own brother to a brimstone magpie—leastways Mrs. Smallweed.

I come into Krook’s property. I examined all his papers and all

his effects. They was all dug out under my eyes. There was a

bundle of letters belonging to a dead and gone lodger as was hid

away at the back of a shelf in the side of Lady Jane’s bed—his

cat’s bed. He hid all manner of things away, everywheres. Mr.

Tulkinghorn wanted ‘em and got ‘em, but I looked ‘em over first.

I’m a man of business, and I took a squint at ‘em. They was

letters from the lodger’s sweetheart, and she signed Honoria. Dear

me, that’s not a common name, Honoria, is it? There’s no lady in

this house that signs Honoria is there? Oh, no, I don’t think so!

Oh, no, I don’t think so! And not in the same hand, perhaps? Oh,

no, I don’t think so!”

 

Here Mr. Smallweed, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of

his triumph, breaks off to ejaculate, “Oh, dear me! Oh, Lord! I’m

shaken all to pieces!”

 

“Now, when you’re ready,” says Mr. Bucket after awaiting his

recovery, “to come to anything that concerns Sir Leicester Dedlock,

Baronet, here the gentleman sits, you know.”

 

“Haven’t I come to it, Mr. Bucket?” cries Grandfather Smallweed.

“Isn’t the gentleman concerned yet? Not with Captain Hawdon, and

his ever affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain?

Come, then, I want to know where those letters are. That concerns

me, if it don’t concern Sir Leicester Dedlock. I will know where

they are. I won’t have ‘em disappear so quietly. I handed ‘em

over to my friend and solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, not to anybody

else.”

 

“Why, he paid you for them, you know, and handsome too,” says Mr.

Bucket.

 

“I don’t care for that. I want to know who’s got ‘em. And I tell

you what we want—what we all here want, Mr. Bucket. We want more

painstaking and search-making into this murder. We know where the

interest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If

George the vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an

accomplice, and was set on. You know what I mean as well as any

man.”

 

“Now I tell you what,” says Mr. Bucket, instantaneously altering

his manner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary

fascination to the forefinger, “I am damned if I am a-going to have

my case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as

half a second of time by any human being in creation. YOU want

more painstaking and search-making! YOU do? Do you see this hand,

and do you think that I don’t know the right time to stretch it out

and put it on the arm that fired that shot?”

 

Such is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is

that he makes no idle boast, that Mr. Smallweed begins to

apologize. Mr. Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him.

 

“The advice I give you is, don’t you trouble your head about the

murder. That’s my affair. You keep half an eye on the newspapers,

and I shouldn’t wonder if you was to read something about it before

long, if you look sharp. I know my business, and that’s all I’ve

got to say to you on that subject. Now about those letters. You

want to know who’s got ‘em. I don’t mind telling you. I have got

‘em. Is that the packet?”

 

Mr. Smallweed looks, with greedy eyes, at the little bundle Mr.

Bucket produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and identifies

it as the same.

 

“What have you got to say next?” asks Mr. Bucket. “Now, don’t open

your mouth too wide, because you don’t look handsome when you do

it.”

 

“I want five hundred pound.”

 

“No, you don’t; you mean fifty,” says Mr. Bucket humorously.

 

It appears, however, that Mr. Smallweed means five hundred.

 

“That is, I am deputed by Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, to

consider (without admitting or promising anything) this bit of

business,” says Mr. Bucket—Sir Leicester mechanically bows his

head—“and you ask me to consider a proposal of five hundred

pounds. Why, it’s an unreasonable proposal! Two fifty would be

bad enough, but better than that. Hadn’t you better say two

fifty?”

 

Mr. Smallweed is quite clear that he had better not.

 

“Then,” says Mr. Bucket, “let’s hear Mr. Chadband. Lord! Many a

time I’ve heard my old fellow-serjeant of that name; and a moderate

man he was in all respects, as ever I come across!”

 

Thus invited, Mr. Chadband steps forth, and after a little sleek

smiling and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands,

delivers himself as follows, “My friends, we are now—Rachael, my

wife, and I—in the mansions of the rich and great. Why are we now

in the mansions of the rich and great, my friends? Is it because

we are invited? Because we are bidden to feast with them, because

we are bidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play

the lute with them, because we are bidden to dance with them? No.

Then why are we here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful

secret,