Chapter XVI: The Podmores Think of Emigration

It is nine o’clock when Alexis leaves the prison, the latest hour to which he can, by any stretch of authority, be allowed to remain. It is a moonless night, with a drizzling rain, and the road is wet and muddy.

In going back to the ‘Coach and Horses’ he has to pass Lancaster Lodge, and here something arrests his attention. It is a cab loaded with boxes standing before the lodge gate. He sees this vehicle from a little way off, and it has driven through the Bar before he reaches the lodge door.

He rings the bell sharply.

‘Who is that just gone away in a cab?’ he asks.

‘Mr. Podmore, sir, the butler,’ answers the woman at the lodge.

‘Do you know where he is going?’

‘To the railway station, sir.’

‘Yes, of course. But where afterwards?’

‘I don’t know for certain, sir, but I think I heard Mrs. Podmore--she came to pack her husband’s things--make mention of Liverpool. I believe it’s his ’ome, sir.’

‘But his wife and children lived in this town, didn’t they? What do you mean by Liverpool being his home?’

‘Yes, sir, they lived here, Podmore being in service here, but they was only lodgers. I believe Liverpool is his ’ome when he is at ’ome.’

‘When does the train go?’

‘At half-past nine, sir.’

‘And where can I get a cab?’

‘None nearer than the “Coach and Horses.”’

‘Thanks.’

Alexis looks at his watch. There is just time for him to walk the distance at his fastest, and he would rather trust his own legs than wait for a fly to be got ready at the ‘Coach and Horses,’ always a slow business. He is at the station just as the bell rings. The platform is clear, no sign of Podmore or Podmore’s family. Alexis runs along by the side of the carriages, catches a glimpse of the Podmore household, almost snowed up in bandboxes and bundles, in a second-class compartment, and then jumps into a carriage himself, calling to a porter to get his ticket. There is no time to get a ticket, and Alexis has to defer that operation till the next station. He is hardly in the carriage when the train starts. At Krampston he sees the Podmore troop struggling on the platform, a slatternly woman in a trailing shawl with a frowsy bonnet hanging to the back of her head, two bare-legged children hanging to the long shawl, Podmore, hurried and excited, trying to do two things at once,--namely, to look after his luggage, and to inquire what train he is to take for Liverpool.

‘Ten fifteen,’ gasps a guard, without looking at the enquirer, ‘second platform on the right, change at Wandlethorpe, change at Spilbury.’

Alexis hears this, and follows the Podmore party at a respectful distance. He waits to see Podmore take tickets for Liverpool, sees him and his belongings safely shipped in another second-class compartment, both children crying, and Mrs. Podmore frantic about a missing bandbox, and then he hurries to the telegraph office and sends the following message to Mr. Levison at the ‘Coach and Horses,’ Redcastle:--

‘Podmore is off to Liverpool with family. This looks like a bolt.
I am after him. Telegraph your instructions to the Washington
Hotel.’

This done, Mr. Secretan takes a second-class ticket for Liverpool, and gets into the compartment adjoining that occupied by the Podmores, whence come sounds of infantine wailing and wifely remonstrance, and the husky tones of Podmore as if in pacification of these avenging spirits.

Wandlethorpe Junction at midnight is about as dismal a place as a student of the hideous need care to behold. It is on the bank of an inky canal, and coal barges and railway trucks seem to be mixed up in hopeless entanglement. Huge cranes stand up in iron ugliness against night’s purple sky. Sidings run off at impossible angles, and unknown lines dip under bridges as if they would take the traveller into the bowels of the earth. Lights are sparsely sprinkled on the gloom, and what lamps there are have a lurid glare, suggestive of the under world.

Solitary engines block the anxious traveller’s way, and snort defiance at him from their sonorous throats, as he tries to cross the labyrinth of iron rails. The soil is coal-dust, and the atmosphere smoke. In the horrible deeps of that infernal world which Dante saw in his midway of life, this last and lowest horror of a railway junction in the coal districts was wanting.

Here, on a dark platform, Alexis is able to keep pretty close to the Podmore family, who are too much occupied with their own affairs to perceive that they are watched. Podmore consoles himself with a tumbler of hot gin and water at the refreshment counter, and gives the same balm to his wife; while the children, with solemn sleepy faces, resolutely gnaw their way through buns of the most indigestible order.

There is half an hour to wait at Wandlethorpe, and then a journey of an hour in the slowest of trains, through a coaly district, on the border of a canal, brings them to Spilbury, where they arrive in a chilly hour on the edge of night, and where they have again to wait for another train to take them on to Liverpool. It is gray morning when they arrive at that busy port, having wasted more time at junctions than the actual journey has occupied, and having spent more time altogether in the transit than would have been required for a journey from Liverpool to London.

The Podmore family have a weary look as they select their belongings from the heterogeneous contents of the luggage van. The elder child reposes on his father’s shoulder, the head of the younger infant hangs helplessly across the mother’s arm.

‘When does the _Horonoker_ sail?’ asks Podmore of a porter.

‘’Merican steamer. Inquire at the office.’

‘I hope we’re in time,’ says Mrs. Podmore to her lord. ‘If we are to go, the sooner we sail the better. We shan’t do no good dragging about here, spending money in a strange place.’

‘_Oronoko_,’ says a man of seafaring aspect, who has just possessed himself of a huge green chest, ‘_Oronoko_ for New York. You’d best look sharp if you’re going in her, mate; she sails at ten o’clock this morning.’

‘Ten o’clock?’ echoes Podmore, ‘then there’s time enough to get a bit of breakfast, anyhow.’

‘And I’m that faint I’m ready to drop,’ adds his wife, plaintively. ‘Such dragging about as we’ve gone through, I never did. I feel as if I’d been travellin’ for a week at a stretch--and as dizzy in my poor head----’

‘Hold your jaw!’ says Podmore, sternly; ‘there never was such a woman to whine. You’re wuss than the childring.’

Podmore arranges with a porter for the conveyance of his boxes, inquires for a decent coffee-house at which he may breakfast, and then leaves the station, his wife straggling after him, clutching a child with one arm and a bandbox with the other, and trailing her gown through the Liverpudlian mud, which is a compound _sui generis_, and a little worse than anything to be found at the east end of London.

Alexis follows the family party to a side street near the station, and into a coffee-house, in whose dusky window three empty breakfast-cups, a stale muffin, two yellow-looking eggs, and a plate of watercress are suggestive of the temperate refreshment to be obtained within.

Mr. Podmore is just seating himself at a table in a corner, when Alexis taps him on the shoulder.

‘I think you’d better have a private room, Mr. Podmore,’ he says, ‘for I want a little chat with you while you are eating your breakfast.’

Podmore stares with a bewildered air.

‘Did you ring, sir?’ he asks, and then recalling his scattered senses, ‘I beg your pardon, sir, I haven’t the honour of your acquaintance.’

‘Oh yes, you have, Mr. Podmore, and you’ll know more of me before we’ve done with each other. Waiter, can we have a private room?’ asks Alexis, appealing to a sleepy youth in a white apron, who is making a good deal of unnecessary clatter with some cups and saucers in the endeavour to keep himself awake.

‘Yes, sir, convenient room upstairs, families and private parties. This way, sir.’

‘Now then, Mr. Podmore,’ says Alexis.

‘But really!’ remonstrates Podmore.

Alexis half pushes him up the stairs, following close upon his heels. The wife follows, dragging her children after her. When they are all safe inside the room, Alexis turns to the waiter and whispers,--

‘Go and fetch the cleverest police officer in Liverpool, and let him wait outside this door till I want him. I’ll take care of you if you look sharp about it.’

‘I’m fly,’ answers the youth, brightening at the prospect of excitement and remuneration. ‘Case of ’bezzlement, I suppose, sir? I’ll get you the right kind of man in a quarter of an hour, if you can keep your party quiet till then.’

‘Ham and eggs and coffee for four,’ says Alexis, aloud, as he enters the private room--a musty den redolent of the meals that have been consumed within the last month. The atmosphere without not being much purer than the atmosphere within, opening the window to admit fresh air is but a choice of evils.

‘Now, sir,’ says Podmore, plucking up his spirit, and assuming a defiant air, ‘may I ask by what authority you take me and my family in hand, and order us up to this here room----’

‘For which we shall have to pay hextra,’ interjects Mrs. Podmore, shrill with indignation.

‘And ordering of our breakfastes.’

‘’Am and eggs is no choice of mine,’ protests Mrs. Podmore. ‘If they’re in, I would rather have a Yarmouth bloater.’

‘Who are you, sir, may I ask, to take all this upon yourself?’ inquires Podmore, finally.

‘I’ll tell you, Mr. Podmore. I am the husband of a lady you know something about; a lady you have known as Miss Sibyl Faunthorpe. That lady has been accused most unjustly of being concerned in the murder of her uncle, and what I am here to do is to find the murderer.’

‘You won’t find him here,’ shrieks Mrs. Podmore; at which maternal outburst the two children set up their loudest wail, the youngest crying his hardest with all his fingers in his mouth, and his innocent nose streaming sympathetically.

‘I don’t know anything about the murderer,’ says Podmore, doggedly.

‘Oh yes, you do,’ replies Alexis, resolutely. ‘You know so much that you are either a principal or an accomplice. That is why you have left Redcastle, stealthily, under cover of night, although bound to appear as a witness at the adjourned inquest. That is why you are on your way to America. And let me tell you, Mr. Podmore, that an accessory before the fact is a principal; and that if you knew that this deed was to be done, and stood by while it was done----’

‘I didn’t. I didn’t know it. I was as innocent as that baby there.’

‘Then why have you tried to get away? Come, Mr. Podmore, if your share in this work is not that of a principal, if you can clear yourself from actual participation in the crime, or consent to it, the best thing you can do is to make a clean breast of it. Help me to prove my wife’s innocence, and I’ll stand your friend through thick and thin.’

‘I may have better friends than you,’ grumbles Podmore, with a dogged air,--‘friends as willing to help me, and better able to do it.’

‘Yes,’ cries Alexis at a venture, ‘such a friend as Mr. Pilgrim, who gave you the money to go to New York, who wants to get you out of the way, who poisoned Stephen Trenchard with your knowledge and consent.’

The bow drawn at a venture has sent its shaft home. Alexis can see that in the butler’s face. Mrs. Podmore sits by open-eyed, open-mouthed, horror depicted in her countenance. Whatever the butler’s secret may be, it is evident that his wife has not shared it.

‘Not with my knowledge, nor yet with my consent,’ cries Podmore, affrightedly.

‘But he did it, and you knew that he did it,--after the fact, perhaps, in which case you’d better turn Queen’s evidence. Come, Mr. Podmore, your only chance lies in candour. This attempt to get away from the country is in itself enough to condemn you. You had access to your master all through the night. You gave him his medicine. Who so likely as you to have given the fatal dose? Come, I have a police officer waiting outside this door with a warrant for your arrest.’

‘Run and look outside, Liz; this here’s only bluster,’ says Podmore; but before his wife can reach the door Alexis has turned the key and put it into his pocket.

‘Neither you nor your wife leave this room till you’ve told me all you know about Stephen Trenchard’s death.’

‘Podmore,’ cries the wife, distractedly, ‘what have you been and done? What disgrace and trouble have you gone and brought on your innocent wife and children? This is all along of drink, Podmore. I always said you’d bring us to the workhouse, but I didn’t suppose you’d bring yourself to the scaffold.’

‘Hold your noise, you lunatical idiot!’ roars Podmore. ‘I’ve done nothing to bring me to harm, but I may know somethink about them that have.’

‘Remember that to help or comfort a murderer, or to conceal his crime, is to become an accessory after the fact, Mr. Podmore,’ says Alexis.

‘Tell what you know, Podmore, and clear yourself,’ cries the wife, clasping her hands. ‘Clear yourself, and clear your innocent wife and children. I never did like the looks of this sudden scuffling of us off to New York. It’s all very well to emigrant, but I like to emigrant at my leisure. Not a thing fit to put on me or the children is there in them boxes, and not so much as a bottle of Daffy for baby. A nice thing to have this blessed innocent in convulsions with his teeth on board ship, and me that seasick I couldn’t do nothink for him.’

‘Hold your tongue, Liza,’ exclaims the ex-butler testily. ‘Come now,’ he says, turning to Alexis, ‘if I tell what I’ve got to tell am I to be kept clear of the law?’

‘Yes, if it’s in my power, or in the power of Levison and Levison to clear you.’

‘And what am I to get for standing by you and helping you to clear your wife--Miss Sibyl Faunthorpe that was.’

‘Everything.’

‘That ain’t definite enough for me. I want five hundred pounds to set me up in the public line. Hang New York! I ain’t going to be pitched and tossed across the Atlantic if I can get myself comfortably provided for at home. Give me a written undertaking to pay me five hundred pounds if I get your wife clear off. Take me round to a lawyer’s office, and do it all in legal form, _scundem hartem_, as a master of mine used to say, and I’ll go back to Redcastle with you and bear the brunt of having kept something back as I ought to have told. I expect I shall get a twelvemonth for it, but I shan’t so much mind that if I’ve got a snug bit of capital to fall back upon.’

‘Podmore!’ shrieks the wife.

‘You shan’t go to prison if Levison and Levison can get you off scot-free,’ says Alexis. ‘And now we’d better get back to Redcastle as fast as we can, and the agreement can be drawn up there by Mr. Levison.’

‘Oh, come now, when you’ve got me back you won’t care about the agreement. I’m not such a fool as to walk into a trap of that sort.’

‘If you don’t come of your own free will, you’ll have to come in custody,’ replies Alexis, firmly. ‘It wasn’t an empty threat of mine about the police officer. He’s outside.’

He has heard a firm foot on the stair. He turns the key, opens the door a little way, and looks out. Yes, there stands the officer, steady as a rock.

‘The gentleman outside is ready to take you into custody, Podmore,’ says Alexis, ‘unless you accept my offer and come back quietly with me. As a proof of good faith, I am prepared to hand you fifty pounds, on account of the five hundred.’

He produces his purse and takes out a bank note for fifty pounds. He had written to his bankers for a supply of ready cash on the day of his arrival at Redcastle, knowing that the sinews of war would be needed at this juncture.

The sight of the crisp new note, and of the officer waiting outside, has a wonderful effect upon Podmore. He looks at his wife dubiously, contemplates his children, whose tears have been dried by their mother’s judicious administration of peppermint rock, and who are now engaged in looking out of the window, and printing impressions of their sticky paws upon the dingy glass.

‘I don’t want to go to New York, no more don’t she,’ he says, with a jerk of his head towards his wife; ‘but we’ve sent all our traps on board, and it’ll be very awkward----’

‘All awkwardness can be got over by the expenditure of a pound or two. Here are five sovereigns for Mrs. Podmore. She can see to the recovery of the luggage, and bring it back to Redcastle by a later train. We had better catch the next that starts.’

The golden coin has a pacifying effect upon Mrs. Podmore’s nerves. She takes the sovereigns up one by one, and turns them over, rings them on the table, and finally engulfs them in a greasy-looking leather purse.

Podmore is thoughtful, but consentient. Alexis says a few words to the officer, and that functionary accompanies Mr. Secretan and his charge to the railway station, sees them comfortably into their carriage, and there leaves them, satisfied with the modest honorarium which Alexis slips into his palm at the last moment.

The train once started, Alexis feels quite capable of dealing with Mr. Podmore single-handed.