Bleak House
“The murder was committed, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and you
know under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you to follow me close
with your attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and the case
was entrusted to me. I examined the place, and the body, and the
papers, and everything. From information I received (from a clerk in
the same house) I took George into custody as having been seen
hanging about there on the night, and at very nigh the time of the
murder, also as having been overheard in high words with the deceased
on former occasions—even threatening him, as the witness made out.
If you ask me, Sir Leicester Dedlock, whether from the first I
believed George to be the murderer, I tell you candidly no, but he
might be, notwithstanding, and there was enough against him to make
it my duty to take him and get him kept under remand. Now, observe!”
As Mr. Bucket bends forward in some excitement—for him—and
inaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his
forefinger in the air, Mademoiselle Hortense fixes her black eyes
upon him with a dark frown and sets her dry lips closely and firmly
together.
“I went home, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, at night and found this
young woman having supper with my wife, Mrs. Bucket. She had made a
mighty show of being fond of Mrs. Bucket from her first offering
herself as our lodger, but that night she made more than ever—in
fact, overdid it. Likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for
the lamented memory of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn. By the living
Lord it flashed upon me, as I sat opposite to her at the table and
saw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!”
Mademoiselle is hardly audible in straining through her teeth and
lips the words, “You are a devil.”
“Now where,” pursues Mr. Bucket, “had she been on the night of the
murder? She had been to the theayter. (She really was there, I have
since found, both before the deed and after it.) I knew I had an
artful customer to deal with and that proof would be very difficult;
and I laid a trap for her—such a trap as I never laid yet, and such
a venture as I never made yet. I worked it out in my mind while I was
talking to her at supper. When I went upstairs to bed, our house
being small and this young woman’s ears sharp, I stuffed the sheet
into Mrs. Bucket’s mouth that she shouldn’t say a word of surprise
and told her all about it. My dear, don’t you give your mind to that
again, or I shall link your feet together at the ankles.” Mr. Bucket,
breaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon mademoiselle and laid
his heavy hand upon her shoulder.
“What is the matter with you now?” she asks him.
“Don’t you think any more,” returns Mr. Bucket with admonitory
finger, “of throwing yourself out of window. That’s what’s the matter
with me. Come! Just take my arm. You needn’t get up; I’ll sit down by
you. Now take my arm, will you? I’m a married man, you know; you’re
acquainted with my wife. Just take my arm.”
Vainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips, with a painful sound
she struggles with herself and complies.
“Now we’re all right again. Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, this case
could never have been the case it is but for Mrs. Bucket, who is a
woman in fifty thousand—in a hundred and fifty thousand! To throw
this young woman off her guard, I have never set foot in our house
since, though I’ve communicated with Mrs. Bucket in the baker’s
loaves and in the milk as often as required. My whispered words to
Mrs. Bucket when she had the sheet in her mouth were, ‘My dear, can
you throw her off continually with natural accounts of my suspicions
against George, and this, and that, and t’other? Can you do without
rest and keep watch upon her night and day? Can you undertake to say,
‘She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be my prisoner
without suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than from
death, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till I
have got her, if she did this murder?’ Mrs. Bucket says to me, as
well as she could speak on account of the sheet, ‘Bucket, I can!’ And
she has acted up to it glorious!”
“Lies!” mademoiselle interposes. “All lies, my friend!”
“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, how did my calculations come out
under these circumstances? When I calculated that this impetuous
young woman would overdo it in new directions, was I wrong or right?
I was right. What does she try to do? Don’t let it give you a turn?
To throw the murder on her ladyship.”
Sir Leicester rises from his chair and staggers down again.
“And she got encouragement in it from hearing that I was always here,
which was done a-purpose. Now, open that pocket-book of mine, Sir
Leicester Dedlock, if I may take the liberty of throwing it towards
you, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the two words
‘Lady Dedlock’ in it. Open the one directed to yourself, which I
stopped this very morning, and read the three words ‘Lady Dedlock,
Murderess’ in it. These letters have been falling about like a shower
of lady-birds. What do you say now to Mrs. Bucket, from her spy-place
having seen them all written by this young woman? What do you say to
Mrs. Bucket having, within this half-hour, secured the corresponding
ink and paper, fellow half-sheets and what not? What do you say to
Mrs. Bucket having watched the posting of ’em every one by this young
woman, Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet?” Mr. Bucket asks, triumphant
in his admiration of his lady’s genius.
Two things are especially observable as Mr. Bucket proceeds to a
conclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a
dreadful right of property in mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very
atmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her as if
a close net or a pall were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around
her breathless figure.
“There is no doubt that her ladyship was on the spot at the eventful
period,” says Mr. Bucket, “and my foreign friend here saw her, I
believe, from the upper part of the staircase. Her ladyship and
George and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one another’s
heels. But that don’t signify any more, so I’ll not go into it. I
found the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr.
Tulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your
house at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you’ll say, Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet. No. But when my foreign friend here is so
thoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear up the
rest of that leaf, and when Mrs. Bucket puts the pieces together and
finds the wadding wanting, it begins to look like Queer Street.”
“These are very long lies,” mademoiselle interposes. “You prose great
deal. Is it that you have almost all finished, or are you speaking
always?”
“Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,” proceeds Mr. Bucket, who delights
in a full title and does violence to himself when he dispenses with
any fragment of it, “the last point in the case which I am now going
to mention shows the necessity of patience in our business, and never
doing a thing in a hurry. I watched this young woman yesterday
without her knowledge when she was looking at the funeral, in company
with my wife, who planned to take her there; and I had so much to
convict her, and I saw such an expression in her face, and my mind so
rose against her malice towards her ladyship, and the time was
altogether such a time for bringing down what you may call
retribution upon her, that if I had been a younger hand with less
experience, I should have taken her, certain. Equally, last night,
when her ladyship, as is so universally admired I am sure, come home
looking—why, Lord, a man might almost say like Venus rising from the
ocean—it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being
charged with a murder of which she was innocent that I felt quite to
want to put an end to the job. What should I have lost? Sir Leicester
Dedlock, Baronet, I should have lost the weapon. My prisoner here
proposed to Mrs. Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that
they should go per bus a little ways into the country and take tea at
a very decent house of entertainment. Now, near that house of
entertainment there’s a piece of water. At tea, my prisoner got up to
fetch her pocket-handkercher from the bedroom where the bonnets was;
she was rather a long time gone and came back a little out of wind.
As soon as they came home this was reported to me by Mrs. Bucket,
along with her observations and suspicions. I had the piece of water
dragged by moonlight, in presence of a couple of our men, and the
pocket pistol was brought up before it had been there half-a-dozen
hours. Now, my dear, put your arm a little further through mine, and
hold it steady, and I shan’t hurt you!”
In a trice Mr. Bucket snaps a handcuff on her wrist. “That’s one,”
says Mr. Bucket. “Now the other, darling. Two, and all told!”
He rises; she rises too. “Where,” she asks him, darkening her large
eyes until their drooping lids almost conceal them—and yet they
stare, “where is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?”
“She’s gone forrard to the Police Office,” returns Mr. Bucket.
“You’ll see her there, my dear.”
“I would like to kiss her!” exclaims Mademoiselle Hortense, panting
tigress-like.
“You’d bite her, I suspect,” says Mr. Bucket.
“I would!” making her eyes very large. “I would love to tear her limb
from limb.”
“Bless you, darling,” says Mr. Bucket with the greatest composure,
“I’m fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising
animosity against one another when you do differ. You don’t mind me
half so much, do you?”
“No. Though you are a devil still.”
“Angel and devil by turns, eh?” cries Mr. Bucket. “But I am in my
regular employment, you must consider. Let me put your shawl tidy.
I’ve been lady’s maid to a good many before now. Anything wanting to
the bonnet? There’s a cab at the door.”
Mademoiselle Hortense, casting an indignant eye at the glass, shakes
herself perfectly neat in one shake and looks, to do her justice,
uncommonly genteel.
“Listen then, my angel,” says she after several sarcastic nods. “You
are very spiritual. But can you restore him back to life?”
Mr. Bucket answers, “Not exactly.”
“That is droll. Listen yet one time. You are very spiritual. Can you
make a honourable lady of her?”
“Don’t be so malicious,” says Mr. Bucket.
“Or a haughty gentleman of HIM?” cries mademoiselle, referring to Sir
Leicester with ineffable disdain. “Eh! Oh, then regard him! The poor
infant! Ha! Ha! Ha!”
“Come, come, why this is worse PARLAYING than the other,” says Mr.
Bucket. “Come along!”
“You cannot do these things? Then you can do as you please with me.
It is but the death, it is all the same. Let us go, my angel. Adieu,
you old man, grey. I pity you, and I despise you!”
With these last words she snaps her teeth together as if her mouth
closed with a spring. It is impossible to describe how Mr. Bucket
gets her out, but he accomplishes that feat in a manner so peculiar
to himself, enfolding and pervading her like a cloud, and hovering
away with her as if he were a homely Jupiter and she the object of
his affections.
Sir Leicester, left alone, remains in the same attitude, as though he
were still listening and his attention were still occupied. At length
he gazes round the empty room, and finding it deserted, rises
unsteadily to his feet, pushes back his chair, and walks a few steps,
supporting himself by the table. Then he stops, and with more of
those inarticulate sounds, lifts up his eyes and seems to stare at
something.
Heaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold,
the noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing