“Life!” he said. “You don’t mean to say that you think those things”—he pointed a half-scornful finger to a pile of novels which had come in from Mudie’s that day—“really represent life?”
“What else?” demanded Miss Penkridge.
“Oh—I don’t know,” replied Viner vaguely. “Fancy, I suppose, and imagination, and all that sort of thing—invention, you know, and so on. But—life! Do you really think such things happen in real life, as those we’ve been reading about?”
“I don’t think anything about it,” retorted Miss Penkridge sturdily. “I’m sure of it. I never had a novel yet, nor heard one read to me, that was half as strong as it might have been!”
“Queer thing, one never hears or sees of these things, then!” exclaimed Viner. “I never have!—and I’ve been on this planet thirty years.”
“That sort of thing hasn’t come your way, Richard,” remarked Miss Penkridge sententiously. “And you don’t read the popular Sunday newspapers. I do! They’re full of crime of all sorts. So’s the world. And as to mysteries—well, I’ve known of two or three in my time that were much more extraordinary than any I’ve ever read of in novels. I should think so!”
Viner dropped into his easy-chair and stretched his legs.
“Such as—what?” he asked.
“Well,” answered Miss Penkridge, regarding her knitting with appraising eyes, “there was a case that excited great interest when your poor mother and I were mere girls. It was in our town—young Quainton, the banker. He was about your age, married to a very pretty girl, and they’d a fine baby. He was immensely rich, a strong healthy young fellow, fond of life, popular, without a care in the world, so far as anyone knew. One morning, after breakfasting with his wife, he walked away from his house, on the outskirts of the town—only a very small town, mind you—to go to the bank, as usual. He never reached the bank—in fact, he was never seen again, never heard of again. He’d only half a mile to walk, along a fairly frequented road, but—complete, absolute, final disappearance! And—never cleared up!”
“Odd!” agreed Viner. “Very odd, indeed. Well—any more?”
“Plenty!” said Miss Penkridge, with a click of her needles. “There was the case of poor young Lady Marshflower—as sweet a young thing as man could wish to see! Your mother and I saw her married—she was a Ravenstone, and only nineteen. She married Sir Thomas Marshflower, a man of forty. They’d only just come home from the honeymoon when it—happened. One morning Sir Thomas rode into the market-town to preside at the petty sessions—he hadn’t been long gone when a fine, distinguished-looking man called, and asked to see Lady Marshflower. He was shown into the morning-room—she went to him. Five minutes later a shot was heard. The servants rushed in—to find their young mistress shot through the heart, dead. But the murderer? Disappeared as completely as last year’s snow! That was never solved, never!”
“Do you mean to tell me the man was never caught?” exclaimed Viner.
“I tell you that not only was the man never caught, but that although Sir Thomas spent a fortune and nearly lost his senses in trying to find out who he was, what he wanted and what he had to do with Lady Marshflower, he never discovered one single fact!” affirmed Miss Penkridge. “There!”
“That’s queerer than the other,” observed Viner. “A veritable mystery!”
“Veritable mysteries!” said Miss Penkridge, with a sniff. “The world’s full of ’em! How many murders go undetected—how many burglaries are never traced—how many forgeries are done and never found out? Piles of ’em—as the police could tell you. And talking about forgeries, what about old Barrett, who was the great man at Pumpney, when your mother and I were girls there? That was a fine case of crime going on for years and years and years, undetected—aye, and not even suspected!”
“What was it?” asked Viner, who had begun by being amused and was now becoming interested. “Who was Barrett?”
“If you’d known Pumpney when we lived there,” replied Miss Penkridge, “you wouldn’t have had to ask twice who Mr. Samuel Barrett was. He was everybody. He was everything—except honest. But nobody knew that—until it was too late. He was a solicitor by profession, but that was a mere nothing—in comparison. He was chief spirit in the place. I don’t know how many times he wasn’t mayor of Pumpney. He held all sorts of offices. He was a big man at the parish church—vicar’s warden, and all that. And he was trustee for half the moneyed people in the town—everybody wanted Samuel Barrett, for trustee or executor; he was such a solid, respectable, square-toed man, the personification of integrity. And he died, suddenly, and then it was found that he’d led a double life, and had an establishment here in London, and was a gambler and a speculator, and Heaven knows what, and all the money that had been entrusted to him was nowhere, and he’d systematically forged, and cooked accounts, and embezzled corporation money—and he’d no doubt have gone on doing it for many a year longer if he hadn’t had a stroke of apoplexy. And that wasn’t in a novel!” concluded Miss Penkridge triumphantly. “Novels—Improbability—pooh! Judged by what some people can tell of life, the novel that’s improbable hasn’t yet been written!”
“Well!” remarked Viner after a pause, “I dare say you’re right, Aunt Bethia. Only, you see, I haven’t come across the things in life that you read about in novels.”
“You may yet,” replied Miss Penkridge. “But when anybody says to me of a novel that it’s impossible and farfetched and so on, I’m always inclined to remind him of the old adage. For you can take it from me, Richard, that truth is stranger than fiction, and that life’s full of queer things. Only, as you say, we don’t all come across the strange things.”
The silvery chime of the clock on the mantelpiece caused Miss Penkridge, at this point, to bring her work and her words to a
