Wyllard's Weird: A NovelBraddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
General
Wyllard's Weird: A Novel
Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
Murder -- Fiction; Mystery and detective stories
He had strewed the carriage with newspapers and magazines, and now he
began to collect all this literature and to strap it neatly together
before arriving at his journey's end. He was neat and methodical in
all small matters, yet he was in nowise a prig or a pedant. His tall,
powerful frame and strongly marked features were upon a large scale. He
had a large brain and a large manner.
Look at him now as he sits in his corner of the luxurious carriage,
against a background of light-drab cloth. A man in the prime of
manhood, five-and-forty at most; a fine head well set off; light-brown
hair, thick and silky, brushed aside from a broad square forehead,
in which there are all the indications of intellectual power. Large,
full blue eyes, whose normal expression is severe, but the expression
softens when the man smiles, brightens and sparkles when the man
laughs. He has a beautiful smile, a sonorous laugh, and a voice of
power and compass rare among English voices. The features are firmly
modelled, bold, massive; the mouth, when the lips are closely set, as
they are just now, looks as if it were cut out of stone. A man likely
to love profoundly, and not likely to hate lightly. A staunch friend,
as everybody knows in this part of the country; but perchance a deadly
foe were great provocation given; a man to keep a secret as closely as
the grave. A man to give money as freely as if it were water.
The train stopped at Bodmin Road, in a picturesque valley, deep amidst
pine-clothed hills, and adjoining a park of exceptional beauty. There
was a quiet little roadside inn, about five minutes' walk from the
station, and to this strange hostelry the dead girl was conveyed, a
shrouded form lying on a shutter, and carried by two railway-porters.
She was laid in a darkened chamber at the back of the house, to await
the advent of the Coroner, a gentleman of some importance, who lived
ten miles off.
An open carriage was waiting for Julian Wyllard, and in the carriage
sat a beautiful woman, smiling welcome upon him as he came out of the
station. The dead girl had been carried out by another way. The lady in
the carriage knew nothing of the tragedy.
"How late the train is this evening!" she said. "I was beginning to
feel uneasy."
"There has been an accident."
"An accident! O, how dreadful! But you are not hurt?" she cried
anxiously, looking at him from top to toe, suspicious of some deadly
injury which he might be heroically concealing.
"No, it was not a railway accident. There is no one hurt except a poor
girl who threw herself, or was thrown, out of the train."
"How terrible!" exclaimed Mrs. Wyllard. "Is it any one we know--any one
about here?"
"No, she is quite a stranger, poor child, and from her dress and
general appearance I should take her to be a Frenchwoman. But we shall
know more after the inquest."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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