so there had been no need for audrey to plot for the removal of madame coralie's yashmak. with the trifling aid of a tack, which had caught the veil when the woman rose suddenly from the divan, the truth immediately became known to the horrified and astonished girl. but was it the truth? at the first glance audrey recognised the side face turned towards her as that of her mother. but when madame coralie looked round fairly, and the light, filtering through the curtains of the shop window, fell on her full countenance, then audrey became doubtful. the wine-dark birthmark which disfigured mouth and chin and cheek had been absent from lady branwin's face.
"but--but you are my mother!" gasped the girl, still struck by the marvellous resemblance to the supposed dead.
"i am not your mother," replied the other, coldly, and evading the outstretched arms of her visitor. "but since you have seen my face, i had better confess the truth. i am your aunt, flora."
"oh!" audrey recollected what her father had said about the two sisters of bleakleigh. "flora arkwright?"
"yes. i see your mother told you about me."
"no, she did not."
madame coralie raised her hand imperatively. "this alcove is too public a place in which to discuss family matters. we must go upstairs. indeed, i fancy your exclamation of 'mother!' must have aroused badoura's suspicions."
apparently this was true, for when madame coralie drew her visitor through the pink silk curtains into the deserted shop, badoura was standing before them with an astonished look on her face. her employer at once sent her off on a false scent.
"miss branwin has called to see me about her mother's death," said madame coralie, quietly. "she is slightly hysterical, and you have, no doubt, heard what she cried out. i trust"--the speaker looked anxiously round the shop--"that no one else heard?"
"i am alone here," replied badoura, evidently accepting this explanation as a reasonable one. "can i get miss branwin a glass of water?"
"no, my dear," said the owner of the shop, who had replaced her yashmak. "i am taking up miss branwin to the still-room for a little quiet conversation. see that we are not disturbed."
"peri banou, zobeide and parizade are there, madame."
"i shall send them down. give them something to do here. come, miss branwin, if you don't mind climbing the stairs."
although audrey felt considerably annoyed at being described as hysterical, she nevertheless saw the necessity of some such explanation to satisfy the curiosity of the forewoman. therefore she wisely said nothing, and followed madame into the narrow back passage and up the stairs. on arriving in the still-room, the elder woman dismissed her assistants, and having looked behind the curtain to see that no one was hidden there likely to overhear the conversation, she closed the door. audrey watched her as she sat down with her back to the window, and tried to steady her nerves, which naturally had sustained a shock.
"now, miss branwin," said madame coralie, in a quiet voice, "we can talk. but first, so that you may be certain of my identity, i shall lay this aside," and she flung the long veil of the yashmak over her shoulder.
the girl examined that face carefully. madame coralie was certainly extremely like lady branwin. she had the same muddy complexion and large black eyes, and the same stout, shapeless figure. but the aggressive birthmark made all the difference, and after a single glimpse of it, much less this cautious and lengthy survey, there could be no question that the woman before her was not lady branwin.
"but my mistake was natural," said audrey, with a sigh.
"very natural," answered madame coralie, who had evidently followed her train of thought--no very difficult thing to do--"especially as you first saw my side face. the mark does not show when i look thus." she adapted her position to her words, and the resemblance became even more apparent. "dora and i were twins," ended madame, with a nod.
"my father did not tell me that."
"oh! so your father told you about me, my dear. i thought he had long ago forgotten the existence of poor flora arkwright."
"far from forgetting you," audrey assured her aunt, "he said that he wished he had married you instead of mother."
the information did not seem to please madame coralie, for her thin lips tightened, and she gave vent to a short laugh. then audrey noted, as a further difference between the sisters, that the woman before her spoke in a hoarse and loud, domineering voice. lady branwin, on the other hand, had always talked softly, and possessed a musical utterance, which was one of the few poor charms she owned.
"so joseph remembers me in that way, does he, my dear?" said madame coralie, clasping her hands. "ha! if i hadn't been a fool i should have married him."
"why didn't you?" asked audrey, bluntly.
"i have stated the reason," said madame coralie, drily. "i was a fool. but i am bound to say in my own defence that i never believed joseph would become so wealthy. he never struck me as particularly clever."
"yet he must be, to have so much money."
"there i disagree with you, my dear--i can call you my dear in private, as you are my niece--but joseph was always hard and grasping, and ever had an eye to the main chance. well, he is rich, and has now got rid of his wife, so he can marry into the peerage if he likes. i expect dora is glad she is dead, now that she is on the other side of the grave. joseph killed her."
"killed her?" audrey, with a sudden fear, turned deadly white.
"oh, i don't mean to say that he strangled her," said madame coralie, hastily, "for he is too careful of his skin to risk hanging; but his neglect killed her. she was always a good and faithful wife to him, and he broke her heart."
"papa was rather unkind," said audrey, nervously, but relieved by this explanation.
madame again laughed shortly. "unkind--rather unkind!" she repeated. "why, he treated her like a brute. she told me all about it. fancy the poor soul coming to me to be made young again, in the hope that she could regain joseph's affections. i told her that she was a fool; but she would waste her money. and perhaps she wanted to help me also," added madame coralie, in a softer tone. "dora was always fond of me."
"she knew that you kept this shop?"
"yes. in fact, she helped me to set up the shop some years ago. i made her promise that she would never tell joseph of my existence, and she kept her word. yet joseph remembered me. strange."
"papa said that you had the brains."
madame coralie looked round the room disdainfully. "and to what have my brains brought me? i am simply a renovator of faded women, and had to borrow money from dora to set up the establishment. flora arkwright is lost in madame coralie."
"mrs. edward vail, you mean," said audrey, quietly.
"oh!"--the woman shrugged her heavy shoulders--"i married eddy so as to have a companion. he's a handsome fool, and goes about making love to younger women, while he lives on my money. however, he is always good-tempered, and suits me well enough. but in bleakleigh i believed that my destiny would have been a better one. dreams, my dear dreams."
"you were born at bleakleigh?"
madame coralie nodded and folded her stout arms. then, rocking to and fro, she related her story and the story of her sister. it was strange to audrey, this history of her mother's early life. lady branwin had always been too much afraid of her husband to tell about her early struggles.
"dora and i were the daughters of a labourer," said madame coralie. "she was very pretty, and i--well, my dear, who could be pretty with this?" and she touched the birthmark. "although it was lighter when i was a girl, i have tried so hard to remove it that i expect i made it worse. if my customers saw it they would never believe that i could remove blemishes from their silly faces. for that reason i always wear the yashmak. my keeping what is called a turkish shop gives me a chance of doing so."
"i quite understand," said audrey, gently. "but tell me about my mother."
madame coralie looked at her swiftly. "you were fond of her?"
"of course. was she not my mother? besides, she was all that was good and kind to me. and," added audrey, clenching her fist so tightly that her glove split, "if no one else will revenge her by finding out who killed her, i shall do so."
"i fear you have undertaken a search which will never be ended," said her aunt, in a pitying tone; "but the feeling does you credit. i shall assist you by all the means in my power, my dear; for not only was poor dora my sister, but her death has harmed my business."
"we can talk of what we will do later," said audrey, quickly. "meanwhile, go on with your story."
"a very dull story, i fear, my dear," said madame coralie, with a sigh. "joseph, like dora and myself, was the child of a labourer. we lived next door to one another. then joseph fell in love with dora, because she was pretty, and went away to make his fortune. the papers will tell you how he did, so there is no need for me to talk about that. but i will say that joseph behaved well to dora, for he returned to marry her. then the ways of my sister and myself parted, and she went on a golden road, while i"--madame coralie glanced round the room again with great scorn--"while i made for this goal."
"did you not see my mother occasionally?"
"not for many years, my dear. i got married to a gamekeeper--the gamekeeper of squire shawe, of bleakleigh. he was killed by poachers within a year of marriage, and left me with a few hundred pounds in hand. there was no child, and there was nothing to keep me in bleakleigh, since my parents were dead, so i came to london. then--" madame coralie shivered.
"what happened then?" asked audrey, sympathetically.
"trouble. i was born to trouble, my dear. everything that could go wrong with me went wrong. i tried the stage, and failed. i became a lecturer, and lost my voice--you hear how hoarse it is still. i went to america as a lady's-maid, and was stranded there in san francisco. i worked as a typist; i laboured in a laundry; i took to reporting; i edited a woman's paper, and did all i could to keep myself above water. as a reporter i was sent to paris in the interests of the paper. it failed, and i went in for massaging people. then--well, to make a long story short, i learnt from a friend of mine in paris all kinds of secrets about the art of making women beautiful. it struck me that i might start in london. i came back and wrote to dora. there was no difficulty in finding her, as she was by this time lady branwin, the wife of a millionaire. i am bound to say that dora behaved very well. she said nothing to her brute of a husband, but managed in some way to get enough to start me in this business. then--" madame coralie stopped abruptly, with a gesture. "that's all, my dear."
"and does the business pay?" asked audrey, mindful of what ralph had said regarding the difficulties of the woman before her.
"yes. that is, it would pay if i could only get in the money. but all my clients, being women of fashion, are such bad payers--they ask for years of credit. then there's eddy, who is extravagant. i was a fool to marry him; but i did so for companionship. i bought him, so to speak, so we understand one another perfectly. of course, poor dora's death has done a lot of harm to me; but now that i have money to fall back on, i hope to pull round. it is weary work, though," said madame coralie, looking very old--"weary work."
"i am glad that you have saved money," said audrey, who could not but acknowledge that her aunt was marvellously candid.
"saved money! my dear, have you not been listening to what i have been saying? how could i save money with eddy's extravagance and these customers who never will pay their bills. it was dora who came to my rescue. she gave me her diamonds, poor dear."
audrey jumped up amazed. "gave you her diamonds?" she echoed. "but you said at the inquest--"
"i know perfectly well what i said at the inquest and what i am saying to you," interrupted madame coralie, sharply. "i denied that i knew anything of the diamonds. for obvious reasons i did so. if i had admitted possession of the diamonds, i would have been suspected as the person who strangled your mother. no one knew that dora and i were sisters."
"you could have explained at--"
"no," said madame coralie, positively, "i could not have explained, for my story would have appeared to be merely a made-up one to account for the possession of the jewels. of course, the resemblance--for dora and i were wonderfully alike, save for this birthmark--would have hinted that i was speaking the truth. but in that case i should have had to remove my yashmak, and then all the world would have known of this disfigurement. it would have ruined my business, my dear."
audrey looked bewildered. "but if my mother was not strangled for the sake of the diamonds, why was she killed?"
her aunt shrugged her shoulders. "i have asked that again and again; and yet i think that i can see a way. dora brought me the diamonds, pretending that she wished them to be reset. when we were in the bedroom together she took them out of the bag and gave them to me. then she placed the empty bag under her pillow. i came upstairs, after tucking her in for the night, in order to put away the jewels. all i can think of is that someone got into the court by means of that skeleton key, and, thinking that the jewels were still in the bag, strangled poor dora, and then escaped. if you remember, the label was found near the court door."
all this explanation was very frank, and from the mere fact that madame coralie admitted having the jewels audrey was certain that she was not the guilty person, nor had she employed anyone else to commit the crime. besides, as the two women were twin sisters--and the likeness proved this beyond all doubt--the idea of one murdering the other was out of the question. "i suppose," said audrey, after a pause, "that you know some people suspect you?"
"oh, yes," said her aunt, indifferently; "and if they knew about the diamonds they would be certain of my guilt. however, i got eddy to unset the stones and sell them separately. he has been over to antwerp selling them, so i am quite safe; that is"--she looked at audrey--"unless you tell the police what i have told you."
"i should not think of doing so," said the girl, anxiously, for she really believed her aunt to be innocent, "and, more than that, i will try and disabuse ralph of your guilt."
"ralph? oh, yes. squire shawe's younger son. poor dora told me he was engaged to you. well, is there anything else you want to know?"
"no; but you must help me to find out who murdered my mother."
"certainly. i shall do that for my own sake. come and see me again, and i may be able to give you a clue. between us we may trace the assassin."
"oh! aunt, will you do this?" cried audrey, with shining eyes.
madame coralie kissed her. "yes, even if i ruin myself. you love your poor mother's memory--i would do anything for dora's daughter."
