Have His Carcase

‘And it’s not everybody I’d do that for,’ said Mrs Lefranc. ‘Only I can see you’re one of the quiet sort. If there’s a thing I don’t want in my house it’s trouble. Though I’m sure all this dreadful business is trouble enough for anybody. The cruel shock it was to me,’ said Mrs Lefranc, gasping a little and sitting down on the beds as though to demonstrate that the shock had not yet spent its force. ‘I was that fond of poor Mr Alexis.’

‘I’m sure you must have been.’

‘Such a thoughtful boy,’ pursued Mrs Lefranc, ‘and the manners of a prince, he had. I’m sure, many’s the time when I was’ run off my feet with the girl and the lodgers and all; he’d say, “Cheer up, ma”—they all call me that, “cheer up, ma. Have a little cocktail with me and here’s to better days” Just like a son he was to me, I’m sure.’

Whatever Harriet ‘may have thought of this touching reminiscence, which sounded quite unlike anything she had heard of Paul Alexis, she did not ignore the hint.

‘How about a spot of something now?’ she suggested.

‘I’m; sure,’ said Mrs Lefranc, ‘I wasn’t meaning — well, there! It’s no end sweet of you, dearie, but I couldn’t touch anything this time in the day. Not but what there’s the jug-and-bottle at the Dragon just round the corner, which comes very convenient, and there’s no doubt as a drop of gin do help your dinner to settle.’

Harriet bent her energies to overcoming the resistance of Mrs Lefranc, who presently put her head over the staircase and called to ‘the girl’ to slip round to the Dragon for a suitable quantity of gin.

‘They know me,’ she added, with a wink. ‘What with these ridiculous laws about bottles and half-bottles, if they don’t know you, they’d get you all locked-up before you knew where you were. You’d think, they wanted to make folks drunk by Act of Parliament, wouldn’t you? What with one thing and another and the police sticking their noses in and asking questions — as though my house wasn’t always as well-conducted as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s — and they know it too, for I’ve been here, twenty years and never a complaint — it’s hard for a decent woman to keep her head above water these days. And one thing I can say — I’ve never stinted anybody, My house is just like home to ’em, and so you’ll find it, dearie’

Under the influence of gin-and-water, Mrs Lefranc became less and less guarded. She had her own version of the Leila Garland complication.

‘What there might be between those two,’ she observed,

‘I couldn’t tell you, dearie. It’s not my business, so long as my visitors conducts themselves quietly. I always say to my girls, ‘I’m not against ladies seeing their gentlemen-friends and contrariwise, provided there’s no trouble caused. We’ve all been young once,” I say to them, “but you will please to remember we want no trouble here. That’s what I say, and there’s never been a mite of trouble in this house till now. But I must say I wasn’t sorry when that little cat took herself off. No, I wasn’t. Nor I didn’t like that dago of hers, either. I, hope she’s making him pay through the nose. You couldn’t give that girl enough. Not but what she didn’t make herself pleasant enough, and bring me a bunch of flowers or a little present when she came to see Mr Alexis, though where the money came from I was not asking. But when poor Mr Alexis told me that she had taken up with this da Soto fellow, I said, “You’re well rid of her.” That’s what I said, and if you ask me, he knew it well enough.’

‘You don’t think; he killed himself on her account, then?’

‘I do not,’ said Mrs Lefranc.’ ‘And I’m sure. I’ve puzzled my head often enough wondering why he did it. It wasn’t on account of the old lady he was engaged to — I know that. To tell, you the truth, dearie, he never expected that to come off. Of course, a young man in his position has to humour his ladies, but her family never would have stood it. Mr Alexis as good as told me that would never come off and not so long ago either. “You see, ma,” he said to me no longer ago than last Sunday week, “one of these days I may do still better for myself.”

“Oh, yes,” I says to him, “you will be marrying the Princess of China, you will, like Aladdin in the Panto.” No. I’ve thought about it over and over again, and I’ll tell you what I think. I think it was his speculations went wrong.’

‘Speculations?’

‘Yes — those speculations of his in foreign countries. The letters he used to get! All stuck over with foreign stamps and addressed in funny handwriting. I used to chaff him about them. Reports, he said they were, and if they, came right, he’d be one of the biggest men in the world. He used