The indiscretions of a lady's maid

February 17th

Ah! Quel monde! I have just had another strange experience.

It came about in this manner. Soon after the departure of Madame Houget I found myself again in the bureaux, and one morning was interviewed by a lady named Wentworth, tall, graceful and chic. She had luxuriant fair hair, and I could see in a moment that she was used to the services of an experienced maid.

As we sat together in the small private room of the agency, she looked me straight in the face for a few moments before speaking, and at last said—

“I have seen your excellent recommendations, Mariette, and I think you will suit me. But the fact is I am in want of a maid in whom I can repose the utmost confidence. I want a person whom I can trust with a secret in the certainty that I shall not be betrayed.”

“Any confidence Madame reposes in me I shall respect,” I replied demurely, scenting a fresh scandal.

“Well,” she said, after a few moments’ hesitation, “I was told of you by one of your late mistresses, who held you in high esteem, Mariette, and I hope that if I engage you, you will serve me equally well.”

“I always endeavour, Madame, to serve my ladies loyally,” I replied. “A secret with me is always a secret from Monsieur.”

“Ah! Then we understand each other!” she exclaimed, apparently much relieved. “You will become my maid and my confidante as well.”

“I shall be delighted, Madame,” I said. “Madame lives in the country, I presume?”

“You are very shrewd, Mariette!” she exclaimed, with a laugh. “How did you know that?”

I shrugged my shoulders, replying—

“There are little things which a femme-de-chambre is quick to notice.”

“Ah! I see you are a clever girl—yes, you will suit me admirably. Now I wish to confide in you—remember what I am about to say is strictly in secret.”

I placed my finger upon my lips.

“Well, the facts are briefly these,” she said. “I am the wife of the owner of Elmhurst Court, in Sussex, with about ten thousand acres. In residence there are my husband, and daughter aged ten, the governess, and the servants. Six months ago, while dressing, I found a curious mark upon my arm, but took no notice of it. Soon afterwards, however, I developed diphtheria and very nearly lost my life. My doctors could not account for it in any way. Both the water and drainage were perfectly satisfactory, and mine was the only case in the district. My recovery was slow, and only three weeks ago I returned from Italy, where I have been spending my convalescence. Strangely enough, however, on the morning before last I found another mark upon my arm exactly similar to that prior to my serious illness. It is a mystery how it was inflicted. Just look at it, and see what you think.”

Whereupon she took off her coat, rolled up the sleeve of her blouse, and showed me upon her right arm just below the vaccination marks two curious scarlet spots about half-an-inch apart, just like the marks of a serpent’s tooth.

“It looks like a snake-bite, doesn’t it?” she said, to which I responded in the affirmative.

I examined the surface of the skin. There were two distinct punctures, slightly inflamed, but too clearly done and too small to have been inflicted by a reptile’s tooth.

“Bon Dieu! They probably have been done by some insect—a spider, for instance,” I remarked. Yet I certainly had never seen such a mark upon human flesh before. “It has been proved, I believe, Madame, that certain insects can convey the microbe of diphtheria. Did you tell your doctor of it?”

“I did, but he only laughed at me. Nevertheless, I feel much alarmed, now that I find a second puncture upon my arm in nearly exactly the same place as the first.”

I admitted that there was something uncanny about the occurrence. Madame, in reply to my questions, could not recollect feeling any pain, hence I could but conclude that it was inflicted while she was sleeping. She seemed unnerved, fearing that she was about to be again stricken down by the deadly malady, in which case, weakened as she was, she would no doubt succumb.

“I have a habit of locking my door at night, therefore no intruder could enter my room. Hence it must be, as you suggest, Mariette, due to some poisonous insect. The curious point of it, however, is that I do not sleep in the same room as I did when I noticed the first puncture.”

“Madame feels no ill effects?” I asked.

“None—as yet,” she replied seriously.

“It may be a mere coincidence,” I said in an endeavour to improve her despondent frame of mind.

But she shook her head, declaring that the bacilli of some deadly disease had been injected into her blood by an unknown agency.

“Then do you suspect an attempt upon your life?” I asked.

“Well, that is just what I want to know, Mariette,” she said. “What do you think?”

“At present, the affair seems distinctly mysterious,” I replied. “Is there any reason why your life should be taken? Have you any enemy capable of such an action?”

She shifted uneasily in her chair, and was silent for a few moments. Then, not without some reluctance, she replied—

“Well—the fact is, I do suspect an enemy.”

“Whom?”

“I do not wish to say,” she responded evasively.

“Some one who would profit by your death—eh?”

“No. That’s the curious discrepancy in my suspicion. The person would not profit, but lose considerably, by my decease.”

“Is it a relative?”

“Excuse me, Mariette, if I decline to answer.”

“Of course, Madame,” I said, “your private affairs are no concern of mine. I do not ask for the sake of prying, but merely to obtain information to aid me in forming a conclusion. What do you wish me to do?”

In reply she urged me to go with her down to Elmhurst and look at the room in which she slept, a course to which I consented.

The remainder of that day I spent strolling in the London streets. The mystery, as it stood, was a somewhat curious one, and yet, after all, the marks might have easily been inflicted by an insect. No. If my new mistress was in such fear of another attack of some fell disease, why did she not name the person of whom she held suspicion?

Did she suspect her own husband? He certainly would lose by her decease, as she explained to me.

If she suspected her husband she certainly would not tell me. Therefore, I decided that such was the fact.

Bien! Next morning I met her at Victoria Station, and we travelled together down to Crawley, whence the car took us another six miles to Elmhurst, a magnificent old Elizabethan house in the centre of a fine park—one of the finest places in the county.

Captain Wentworth, her husband, did not impress me favourably. He was a short, thick-set, ferret-eyed man, with a thin nose, a hard mouth, and a line between his eyes indicative of bad temper.

Yet he was quite affable, and, welcoming me, expressed a hope that I should remain with them for a long time.

In the afternoon I took a tour round the house, which I found even finer and more full of valuable works of art than I had imagined. Magnifique! The house had been the gift of Queen Elizabeth to the first Lord Elmhurst, one of her favourites, and had been in the family for many generations until purchased by Captain Wentworth ten years before.

The room in which my mistress had been sleeping when she received the first mark upon her arm was in the east, or modern wing of the house. I examined it thoroughly, but could detect nothing suspicious. There was only one door, and upon that was a patent lock which showed no sign of ever having been tampered with.

The room in which she was at present sleeping was some distance away, nearly in the centre of the house. It was a large, pleasant apartment, overlooking the broad park, and had recently been modernised, with a dressing-room and bath-room adjoining. Like the other, both doors of the bedroom bore patent locks of the best pattern, a fact which caused me some reflection, for people do not usually put street-door latches upon their bedroom doors.

This, however, was quickly accounted for by a remark of my mistress’s.

“You see those are patent locks, Mariette,” she said. “I had them put on because, as you notice, my safe is here,” and she pointed to a small green-painted safe in a corner. “I keep my jewels there, and I think it best to put good locks on the doors.”

“Whatever locks Madame puts on would not protect the safe from professional safe-breakers,” I remarked, with a smile.

“Well, anyhow,” she said, “they would prevent any one entering here while I am sleeping, wouldn’t they?”

I shook my head dubiously.

“If you left the keys in, they could be opened from the outside, while if the keys were out, they might be opened with duplicates. I see there are no bolts,” I remarked.

“No. I’ll have some put on to-day,” she said. “I had never thought of that.”

Then presently she called the butler Ford, and ordered some one to go down to the village and fetch the carpenter.

Enfin, I had been at Elmhurst four days, idling about, with my eyes very much open. I passed all the servants in review, one by one, but there was no suspicion. Indeed, what suspicion could there be, if, as was so feasible, the punctures had been inflicted by an insect?

In reply to my questions while I was dressing Madame’s hair one morning, she said that she had told her husband nothing of the fresh mark upon her arm, fearing to unduly alarm him. He was not strong, she said, and the doctor always feared a shock because of his weak heart.

His doctor, I learnt, was named Emmott, of Cavendish Square. Therefore there was no suspicion that he had had any hand in this suspected subtle attempt at assassination.

Extraordinaire! All my surmises were based upon such flimsy evidence that I began to laugh at my own theories as utterly unsound. There was, as a matter of fact, no actual evidence that the first puncture had anything to do with the subsequent attack of diphtheria. It was mere surmise.

This I pointed out to Madame, but she only shook her head, as though certain of the origin of the disease.

Could it be that Madame knew more than she had explained to me? Could it be that she had felt the sharp touch of a hypodermic needle? She had admitted her suspicions of some person she refused to name, thus showing that she was, at least in some things, a secretive woman.

In the course of careful inquiries I made during the week I was Madame’s femme-de-chambre, I discovered that Mrs. Wentworth was of an extremely quarrelsome turn of mind, that disagreements between she and her husband were frequent—so much so that Miss Wylde, the governess, had given notice to leave. I learnt, too, that Mrs. Wentworth was “horrible jealous” of her husband, and further, that she had probably some cause. It seemed that Miss Wylde’s predecessor had been a young French lady of peculiar attractiveness.

“And,” added my informant, the rustic under-gardener, with a laugh, “the captain is a good judge of a pretty face.”

“Where is this Mademoiselle now?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. She got sent out at a moment’s notice by the captain’s wife. A bit ’ard on ’er, I think, for she was very nice, was Mademoiselle.”

“What was her name?”

“Perrin—Lucie Perrin. She went back to France, so I ’eard.”

“How long ago did that happen?”

“Oh, perhaps eight months. It wor’ just before Lady Day, I remember. And the most funny part of it all is that the disagreement arose out of a cake.”

“A cake!” I ejaculated. “How?”

“Well, according to what Mr. Ford, the butler told me, it appears that when the birthday cake was carved, Mademoiselle found in her portion a splendid diamond ring—and Mrs. Wentworth accused her husband of placing it there. That was the commencement of the jealousy.”

“Were there no other presents in the cake?”

“None. The captain denied that he put in the ring, and there the affair remained a mystery—only Mademoiselle had the ring, and wore it.”

Madame had told me nothing of this, though I gave her every opportunity to do so. Therefore I became suspicious that if there had been any foul play, it was in this direction that I ought to seek the motive.

I left Elmhurst, with Madame’s connivance, at the end of the week, but I did not at once leave the neighbourhood. Inquiries I subsequently made, however, negatived the idea that Mrs. Wentworth’s suspicions had any foundation, for it seemed that a certain young man named Alfred Ackland, the son of a neighbouring squire, had become deeply attached to Lucie Perrin, and that the pair had often been seen by the villagers walking together in places where they had believed themselves unobserved.

Diable! I suppose I had returned to London about ten days and was still much puzzled regarding the affair, when one day I received a telegram from Madame, and in response went down to Elmhurst. There I found her lying in bed suffering from what the doctor had on the previous day diagnosed as typhoid.

“Did I not tell you, Mariette,” she said faintly, “that I had been again innoculated with some disease? They mean to kill me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked quickly. “Tell me.”

But she only sighed and turned uneasily in her bed, saying—

“I—I am a doomed woman.”

“But tell me your suspicions. Then I shall probably be able to get at the truth. You have an enemy—one whose sole desire is to encompass your death by means that shall appear natural. You have heavy insurances, I suppose?” Truth to tell, I had not been idle.

“You have made inquiries about them, eh?” she asked quickly.

“I have all the numbers of the policies in the various offices. They total over thirty thousand pounds,” I said. “In whose favour have you made a will?”

“That is my affair,” she snapped.

Madame was still disinclined to tell me anything which might serve me as a clue to the would-be assassin.

That there was foul play was now perfectly plain, for was not Madame again stricken down by one of the most dangerous of fevers?

Her husband, unlike his usual self, was highly concerned about her, and tended her night and day, although two nurses were in attendance.

I turned up the sleeve of her nightdress to look again at the mysterious mark, and there, to my entire surprise, I found a third, evidently quite recent, close to the second. Mystère!

She was unaware of it, and when I pointed it out to her she lay staring at me utterly dumfounded and terrified.

The matter had grown more mysterious, and I confess that I had become very much puzzled.

Of the whereabouts of the French governess I could learn nothing. I remained in the house for several days, but the state of my mistress grew worse, and the two doctors became apprehensive, while Captain Wentworth and the faithful Ford were full of anxiety and dread lest a fatal issue should result.

Madame was delirious, therefore I ran up to London in order to transact some private business, and again returned to Elmhurst to fulfil a promise I had made to remain near her.

The crisis of the disease was a grave one. One day at noon a nurse came to me saying that the doctors had agreed that she could not possibly live till evening, therefore things looked blackest. Poor Madame! She had been struck down by a hand unknown and unsuspected. The first attempt not being successful, the second and third innoculations had accomplished the object.

And her enemy was a person whom she refused to name.

I kept all my information to myself, remaining alert and watchful. My presence in the house was accounted for by the story she had told Captain Wentworth of how she had found a treasure of a maid, and that she wished me to be near her during her illness.

The fateful day wore slowly on, and happily, quite contrary to the medical men’s expectations, her strong constitution withstood the strain. At midnight came a turn for the better, and with noon next day came a marked improvement. From that moment she made slow progress.

When at last I was allowed in the darkened room she gripped my hand, and in a low, appealing whisper said—

“You will protect me, Mariette, won’t you? You won’t allow them to do it again.”

She spoke in the plural. Then her suspicion had fallen upon more than one person!

I promised, and she gripped my hand in silent thanks.

All through the month of December, during Madame’s convalescence, I remained at Elmhurst. Yet I was just as much in the dark as to the motive of the crime, or its perpetration, as I had been on the first day when she had told me about it.

I was frank with her, and told her so. But she urged me to persevere, adding bitterly—

“If you discover who has tried to take my life—if it is the person I suspect—then, by heaven! I will have my revenge.”

During the weeks of Madame’s illness the grey-haired butler proved an invaluable servant, and was entirely devoted to his mistress. He was a quiet-mannered, highly-respectful person, with dark side whiskers and a sleek, even pompous, appearance. And though this was the man who had gossipped about his master’s affairs in the Elmhurst Arms, yet I could only believe that he had done so after his tongue had been loosened by sundry strong drinks.

Vraiment I liked the man for his quiet manner and his entire devotedness. He was frequently up all night attending to his mistress’s wants, while the captain was always full of his praises.

A month passed. A change for the better had occurred, and Madame became so well that she could now come down-stairs to meals, and it had been arranged that she was to go to Hyères to avoid the rigours of the English winter.

The greater part of the first day on which she came down-stairs I spent with her beside the boudoir fire, but at night we kept up an occasion to celebrate her marvellous recovery.

It was a purely family dinner, consisting of my master and mistress, Miss Wylde and her pretty fair-haired charge.

Served by Ford in that long old room which had echoed to the laughter of many a hundred bygone feasts, the meal was essentially of the good old-fashioned kind, satisfying, if indigestible, as judged by the standards laid down by to-day’s food-cranks.

They were a merry party, all welcoming Madame back again to the table after her long illness, and raising their glasses to her better health.

Then, following the dainty dinner, Ford entered, carrying upon his tray an ice pudding.

Peeping through the crack of the door, I glanced towards Monsieur, seated at the head of the table, before whom the grave, silent butler placed the ice. Were his thoughts, I wondered, running in the same channel as my own?

Ford handed the clean plates to his mistress, who at once commenced to serve out the pudding, first to her husband, then to Miss Wylde and Doris. Afterwards, upon the remaining plate, she placed the last portion, and all took up their forks and spoons.

That instant I entered the room, exclaiming suddenly—

“No one must eat this!” and I added firmly, “Charles Ford, stand there! I accuse you!”

The confusion my words caused may well be imagined. The ladies shrieked, believing I had taken leave of my senses, while little Doris clung to her father in fright.

“What do you mean, Mariette?” gasped Monsieur, pale and startled.

“Shall I speak, M’sieur?” I asked him.

For a second he hesitated.

“No,” Madame answered hoarsely. “Not here—not before them, Mariette. Come into my boudoir and explain there.”

“I should prefer that the others left the room,” I said, still with eyes turned upon the grey-faced butler. He stood before me as though dazed, his face white as a sheet, his grey eyes staring at me in terror.

“Will you please leave us?” Madame said, addressing her husband.

“Of course, dear,” he said; “but all this seems very strange. I—I really don’t understand why Mariette should upset our night in this tragic and unaccountable manner?”

“I will explain later on, Monsieur,” I exclaimed, my eyes still fixed upon the exemplary Ford.

With the governess and little Doris, Captain Wentworth rose and left in indignation at my sudden threatening of the old servant. Then, when the door had closed behind them, I turned to my mistress and said—

“Please be very careful to preserve your plate, Madame.”

“Why?” she asked in surprise. “I don’t understand!”

“Ecoutez, Madame. You consulted me some time ago concerning a certain matter, and I have since made diligent inquiry and kept vigilant watch. Three days ago this exemplary servant of yours, Mr. Ford, was granted a day’s holiday, and went up to London to see his brother. The fictitious brother whom he desired to see was a Frenchman named Gervais, a student of bacteriology, living in London because there is a warrant out for him in France. Ford brought away from that house in Earl’s Court Road a tiny tube filled with gelatine, in which were cultivations of a deadly malady. It was his fiendish idea to administer them to you at the moment of your joyfulness at recovery—at your dinner to-night. Look! Examine your plate well, and tell me what you find.”

Madame took her plate beneath the stronger light beside the overmantel, and examined her plate carefully.

“Yes!” she gasped. “There are certainly some tiny scraps of a colourless jelly. The ice pudding seems to have covered some of them!”

Ford stood blanched and trembling beneath my unsparing denunciation.

“You fiend!” shrieked his mistress, turning upon him. “Then it is you—you who have innoculated me so secretly when I have dozed in my boudoir, in the hope that I should die—you—the woman to whom you owe your life and liberty!”

“Pardon, madame,” I said, interrupting. “Would it not be judicious to say the least possible about this affair—for your husband’s sake?”

“I shall say what I like, Mariette,” she replied angrily. “That man is a murderer!”

“I know,” I said. “Probably I know more than you think.”

“Oh, what do you know?” she asked, not without a twinge of sarcasm. This latter rather piqued me.

“Très bien,” I said. “If you wish that I should speak openly, I will do so. You have not been exactly frank with me, Madame, and had it not been that your life was at stake, I should have refused to carry on the inquiry. But as I saw that murder was intended by some unknown person, and without motive, I prosecuted my inquiries. Their result has been, to say the least, curious. I found that that man yonder was not your servant at all, but your partner in certain very shady gambling transactions in an illicit gaming-house you own in Hamburg, unknown to your husband, and from which you derive your income. From Consols your husband believes it to be. Four years ago a Frenchman named Perrin was robbed and killed there—killed under circumstances which left no doubt that your partner was the murderer. Under threats of closing the house and placing the evidence you had in the hands of the Hamburg police, you compelled him to give up his share of ownership, and to serve you here as your servant. You——”

“Ford killed him! He has admitted it!” interrupted my mistress. “I took the poor fellow’s daughter as governess in order to keep her from starvation, but that man played a shabby trick upon me. He placed a diamond ring in a cake as though it were a present from my husband, which naturally aroused my jealousy.”

“That matter does not concern the present affair,” I replied. “This man Ford saw that if you died, he would again become proprietor of the lucrative establishment in Hamburg, and at the same time your lips would be closed, and he would be revenged upon you for your action in depriving him of half the profits for several years, and for compelling him to become your servant.”

Ford tried to speak, but his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth.

At last he managed in wild, abrupt words, to crave forgiveness of the woman whom he had tried to kill by such insidious means.

But the other only turned upon him fiercely, denouncing him as an assassin.

“Madame,” I said, “I have kept my promise to you, and have performed my duty. It now remains with you what action you will take against this man. Remember, however, that your husband is in ignorance of everything—believing that your income is derived from legitimate business.”

“Yes,” she said hoarsely, “for my husband’s sake—for the sake of little Doris—I suppose I must still allow the fellow his liberty.” Then, looking across at the assassin, she said, “Go, you murderous brute! And if ever you cross my path again, by Heaven, I’ll shoot you like a dog!”

The grey-faced old scoundrel slunk out, and when the door had closed my mistress said in a low, confidential tone—

“Of course, Mariette, not a word must be breathed about this! My husband must never know. I admit all you have said against me, but I’ve resolved to give up the place in Hamburg. I can live quite comfortably without it. By Jove! I’ve had a narrow escape. Come, let’s go up-stairs to my room. I’ve a headache, and I’m tired.”

For my silence I received next day an English bank-note for one hundred pounds.

Oh, là là!