Chapter XVII: Nurse Ellen’s “young Man”

After twenty years; and he was still in his old place of business. That was characteristic of the man. I found Mr Churton in his workshop, planing a board which seemed destined for a coffin. He had a paper cap on his head; his indeterminate eyes were pale blue; his whiskers were of the colour of the sawdust which powdered the bench at which he wrought. From time to time, as I talked to him, his wife, a great strenuous woman of an imposing person and virulence, put in her head at the door, sniffed, each time in crescendo, and departed. There was an air of dogged helplessness about the man himself.

“The question,” I said, “is of Ellen Trimmer. You walked out with her once, you know.”

He took up a lath of wood, squinted along its edge, and put it down.

“Did I, sir?” he said. “Dear me; how one forgets.”

“You haven’t forgotten, of course. I can quite understand you. Mrs Churton wouldn’t favour such reminiscences.”

“Well, no, she wouldn’t,” he said. “Why should she, now?”

“She might, you know,” I answered, “if your peace of mind were in question.”

“It never is,” he said.

“Say your safety, then.”

That obviously agitated him a little.

“You see,” I went on, “to keep to yourself a secret which touches on the question of a crime, is to make yourself an accessory after the fact.”

That was a shot in the dark; but I saw his hand shake on the plane, and knew that it had struck.

“There’s such a thing, isn’t there, sir,” he said feebly, “as a Statute of Limitations?”

“Not in criminal cases.”

He went, rather shakily, to fetch a tool from a rack on the wall. He was quite a long time coming back with it.

“I don’t know, sir,” he said slowly, and with difficulty, “that I wouldn’t rather face the risk of hanging than----” he paused.

“Than the risk of offending Mr Dalston,” I put in.

He started violently, and the tool dropped from his hand.

“You see?” I said quietly. “Now put this to yourself. What if Mr Dalston himself were to be hanged?”

“Not through me,” he cried aghast. “I dursen’t risk the chance. He would get at and do for me somehow, even if it was from the condemned cell.”

I rose to my feet.

“You have said too much or too little, Mr Churton. There is nothing for me now but to consult the police.”

He made a sort of lost motion towards me with his hands. At that moment his wife burst in, and stood with arms akimbo.

“Get out of this,” she cried in an awful masculine voice. “What are you worritting him for with your questions? Who are you? What do you want?”

“It’s very simple,” I said. “I want to know what Ellen Trimmer confessed to him before she died.”

“Then you’ll just pack and go wanting it,” she vociferated. “What’s Ellen Trimmer to him, or him to her, or you to any of us? Get out, do you hear?”

“You’re blocking my way.”

“My dear,” said Mr Churton--“if it’s a question of conscience----”

“Conscience!” she bellowed: “a pretty conscience on my word. Who was it set you up in life, and give you the chance to marry, and something respectabler than your Ellen Trimmers, a baggage that could go dropping you for him, the slut, and no wonder to look at you!”

I fancied that I, for my part, could answer who. But Mr Churton only hung his head on its long neck, like a feeble tulip beaten down under a storm.

“Very well” I said, “if you’ll allow me to pass, I’ll go.”

“O, _I’ll_ allow you, my man!” said the virago, with an enormous mimicry which bore not the faintest resemblance to my voice; and, as I passed out, flounced at me with her apron as if I were a strayed chicken.

But I hadn’t walked a hundred yards down the street when I heard the sound of running footsteps behind me; and, turning round, there was Mr Churton labouring on my tracks. His breath was pumping in him, his weak eyes watered, the shavings in his whiskers shook like ringlets.

“I must say it, sir,” he gasped. “I had to break from her and follow you.” He smacked one ineffective fist into the palm of the other. “She’ll have to find out who’s master some time, and as well to begin now as later.”

He looked up piteously into my face.

“I were always a feckless creatur’. I know what I ought to ha’ done about that man arter I see him; but I couldn’t do it, sir, I couldn’t. It’s been on my conscience these years, dear God--my little Ellen that was so happy with me, and that he seduced from her plighted word!” He rubbed his bare wrist across his eyes.

“Was he the cause of her death?” I asked gravely.

“The cause, sir,” he said, “and not the cause. She told it me all in the hospital where she lay. She’d sent for me while she could speak. I was the only one left to her, and she owed it to me, she thought. She was frightened of him, sir--and why?--why was she frightened of him?”

“Well?”

“_Because he’d just taken her mistress’s baby away to a woman called Carey, and had it killed._”

There--it was out. I was in possession of the secret which “Mark” had dared this invertebrate witness to reveal. The poor fellow entreated me not to turn his confession to his ruin.

“He didn’t kill _her_, you know,” he said, in desperate extenuation. “She just jumped out of the cab, when she found it was dead, and was run over. There was a fog at the time.”

The fog, I thought, was lifting.

“Mr Churton,” I said, “so Luck favour us, you shall never see or hear from me again.”