LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1071, 3 December 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A QUEER CL UE. [From ‘Chambers’ Journal. 5 ] (Conti'mud.) There was no getting over this. There was not a shadow of pretence for remanding him, and so -much to Mr Parkway’s evident annoyance—Lytherly was discharged. He became more popular than ever among his associates - although the respectable people of the town looked down upon him— and they had a supper in his honour that night, at which old Jimmy Crotton presided. In default of Lytherly, no cine could be found. Rot a shilling of Miss Parkway’s money was ever discovered in her apartments ; so her murderer had got clear away with his booty. Many wiseacres said we should hear of Lytherly quietly disappearing after things had settled down.

Some little excitement was created by Lytherly attempting to get into the sole funeral carriage that attended the hearse; hut Mr Parkway would not permit such a thing, and was himself the only fo’lowor. It was very clear that the stranger, in common with many others, was not half satisfied with the explanation that secured Lytherly’s escape ; and as I was on the ground at the funeral, I saw, as did everybody else who was there, the frown he turned on the young man, who, in spite of his rebuff had gone on foot to the churchyard. Mr Parkway left that evening, having placed his business in the hands of Mr Wingrave ; for as there was no will, he was the heir-at-law. Now this was a very curious affair about the will, because Miss Parkway had told her landlady not many days before, that she had made her will, and in fact had shown her the document as it lay, neatly tied up, in her desk. However, it was gone now ; and she had either destroyed it, or the person who had killed her had taken that as well as the money ; and even if the latter was the case, it was hardly likely to turn up again. So, as I have said, Mr Parkway went home. The solicitor realised the poor lady’s property ; and all our efforts were in vain to discover the slightest clue to the guilty party. As for Lytherly, he soon found it was of no use to think of remaining in Combestead, for guilty or not, no one of any respectability cared to associate with him ; and, as he owned to me, the worst part of it all was that old Crotton the lawyer, whenever they met at any tavern, would laugh and wink and clap him on the shoulder, and call upon every one present to remember how poor old Jemmy Crotton got his young friend off so cleverly, how they * flummoxed ’ the magistrates and jockeyed the peelers, when it was any odds against his young friend. So he went; and a good many declared he had gone off to enjoy his ill-gotten gains; but I never thought so ; and one of our men g ing to Chatham to identify a prisoner, saw Lytherly in the uniform of the Royal Engineers, and in fact had a glass of ale with him. The young fellow said it was his only resource ; dig he could not, and to beg where he was known would be in vain. He sent his respects to me ; and that was the last we heard for a long time of the Combestead murder. OH AFTER 11. I had left the police altogether, and was living very comfortably, my good lady and I, up at Islington, in the same street with my married daughter, who was doing very comfortably too, her husband having a good berth in the City. I had always been of a saving turn, and had bought two or three houses ; so with a tidy pension, which I had earned by thirty years’ service, I could afford to go about a bit and enjoy myself. Of course in all that time I had made the acquaintance of a good many professional people ; and there were very few theatres or exhibitions that I couldn’t get admission to. We - my wife and I, I mean—made it a rule to go everywhere that we could get tickets for; and whether it was the launch of a ship, the charity children at St. Paul’s, or Sam Cowell at the Canterbury Hall, it didn't matter to us ; we went. And it was at the Canterbury I first had the Combestead murder more particularly recalled to my mind.

I was there by myself, the old lady not being willing to leave my married daughter —because, well, it was in consequence of her being a married daughter-so I went by myself. There was a young woman who sang a comic version of “There's a good time coming” splendidly; and as I was always of a chatty turn, I couldn’t help remarking to the person that was sitting next to me how first-class she did it, when he exclaimed : ‘ Hollo 1 why, never! Superintendent Robinson ? ’ And then he held out his hand.

It was young Lytherly, but so stout, aud brown, and whiskery—if I may so—that 1 didn’t know him.

‘Mr Lytherly!’ I exclaimed, ‘I didn’t expect to see you ; aud you’re right aa to my being Robinson, although police officer no longer. Why, I thought you were in the army.’ ‘ So I was,’ he returned ; ‘but I’m out of it now ; and I’ll tell you how it was.’ It seems he had been in India, and got some promotion after three years’ service; and had the good fortune to save his colonel from drowning, or what was more likely in those parts, been taken down by a crocodile, under circumstances of extraordinary bravery. He did not tell me this last bit, but I heard so afterwards. Lytherly was always a wonderful swimmer, and I remembered bis taking a prize at London. The exertion or the wetting brought on a fever, and he was recommended for his discharge. The colonel behaved most liberally. But what was the best of all, the old fellow who kept the canteen at the station died about this time, and Lytlrrly had been courting his daughter for a good bit, more to the girl's satisfaction than that of her father ; so then they got married, aud came home to England, and he was tolerably well off. He naturaLy tdked about the Combestead murder, and said frankly enough, that — e>o?nt the people with whom he lodged, and , t.l oy were suspected, he said, of perjury—he 1 thought I was the only person ia the town whu did not believe him guilty of murder. < But murder will out, Mr Robinson,’ he s.-.id ; ‘ and you will sec this will Lc found ‘out some day. 5 ‘ W’e'l, 1 am sure I hope it will, Mr i Lytherly,’ I answered him', ‘But as for ; | “ murder will out” and all that, I don’t ithink you will find any policeman or raagistrats who will agree with you there; and there was less to help us when you had got out of the scrape in this Combestcad buai*

ness, than any affair I was ever concerned n. ‘I don’t care, 1 he says ; ‘it will come out, Hr Robinson, I dream of it almost every night; and my wife consulted some of the heat fortune tellers in India, and they all t-Id her it would be discovered.’ ‘ Hum .' ’ I said ; we don’t think much of fortune-tellers here, you know.’ ‘l’m perfectly aware of that,’ he says; ‘ and I shouldn’t give them in as evidence ; hut if you had lived three years in India with people who knew the native ways, you might alter your mind about fortune tellers Anyway, you will remember, when it’s found out, that 1 told you how it would be.’ I laughed, and said I should ; and after we had bad another glass together ; and he had given me his address and made me promise to call on him, we parted. I told my wife all about it ; and it is very carious to see how women are all alike in curiosity and superstition and all that; for although my wife had been married to me for thirty years, and so had every opportunity of learning better, yet she caught at what young Lytherly—not so very young now, by-the-by—had said ahoutthese fortunetellers, and was quite ready to believe and swear that the murder would be f und '>ut. Tt’s no use arguing with a party lUe that; so I merely smiled at her, and passed it off. It was the very next day that Mrs Robinson and myself had agreed to go and see a new exhibition of paintings which some one was starting in London, and tickets were pretty fteely given away for it; but the same reason which stopped my wife from going to the Canterbury, stopped her from going to the exhibition. I went, of course, because I couldn’t be of any use, under the circumstances, to my married daughter ; and a very good exhibition it was too. There were plenty of paintings, and I had gone through all the rooms and entered the last one. There were very few persons, I was sorry to see, in the place, so that you could have an uninterrupted view of any picture you pleas-’d. After glancing carelessly round the room, for one gets a kind of surfci l ed with pictures after a bit, I was struck by a gloomy looking painting to the lejft of the doorway, and which I had not noticed on my first entry. When I came to look closer into it, I was more than struck—l was astounded Ir, was a picture representing the finding of old Trapbois the miser, in Fortunes of Nigel. The heavy dull room was lighted only by the candle which the young nobleman held above his head; and it appeared to be excellently painted. But what drew my attention was that, as a part of the confusion in which the struggle between the old man and his murderers had placed the room, the washstand had been upset, had fallen into the fireplace, and the ewer had rolled into the grate, where it was shown as being unbroken, although the water was flooding the boards—all exactly as I had seen the same things five years before—so exactly, that I was perfectly sure no chance coincidence had produced the resemblance, but that whoever had painted this picture had seen the room where Miss Parkway was murdered, and had had the scene stamped on his memory. Who so likely to have the scene so stamped, I instantly thought, as the murderer himself ? As this rushed on my mind, I could not repress an exclamation, although pretty well guarded as a ru e. The only other person in the room heard me, and came to see what had excited me so strongly. Apparently, he was disappointed, for he looked from the picture to his catalogue, then to the picture again, then at me, back to his catalogue, and then went away with a discontented grunt. I did not move, however, but remained quite absorbed in the study of this mysterious painting ; and the more I looked, the more convinced I became that it was copied from the sc-ne of Miss Parkway’s murder. There were several little points which I had not at first noticed, and in fact had quite forgotten ; such as the position of the fire-irons, the direction in which the water had run, and so forth, which were all faithfully shown in the picture. To be brief, 1 had made up my mind before I left the room that I had at last found the real clue to the Combestead murder.

The artist’s name was Wyndham; and I determined that I would very soon, as a natural beginning, make some inquiries about this Mr Wyndham ; and indeed I began before I left the exhibition. I engaged the hail-keeper to have a glass with me at the nearest tavern, and when I got fairly into conversation with him, asked carelessly where Mr Wyndham lived, as I thought I had known him many years ago, giving a description of some entirely imaginary person. The hall-keeper said ; ‘No—that was not the sort of man at all. Mr Wyndham was’ (here he described him); ‘and he doesn’t live at the west-end of London, as you said, sir, but at a place in Essex, not very far from Colchester.’ He knew where he lived, because he had several times posted letters to him at ‘The Mount.’ This was about all I got from the hall-keeper, but it was as much as I wanted.

1 am not greatly in the habit of taking other people into my confidence, but this was altogether an exceptional case; so, after a little reflection, I went straight to the address John Lytherly had given me, and told him what I had seen. He of course introduced me to his wife, a very pretty darkeyed young woman; and when I had told all, they exchanged looks less of surprise than triumph. ‘Oh, it is coming all right! ’ he exclaimed. ‘I know the murder will cry out some day. And now you w-ill have a little more respect for Indian fortunetellers.’

4 1 am not quite sure about that,’l said. ‘ But don’t you go making so certain that we are going to find out anything, Mr Lytherly: this may be only an accidental resemblance.' Because, as you may suppose, I had not told thorn how confident I felt in my own mind.

‘ Accidental ! Nonsense ! ’ was all he said to that; and then he asked me what was the first step 1 proposed to take. I told him that I thought we ought to go down to this village and see if we could learn anything suspicious about Mr W yndham ; aud by my old detective habits, and the way in which the officers about would be sure to help mo, I thought we might reckon on rinding out what was wanted. He was delighted, and asked when we should start, and when I said that very night, he was more delighted still. ( To ho oontinvod,')

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