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The name by which letters were addressed to her was "Mademoiselle Jeromette." Among the ignorant people of the house and the small tradesmen of the neighborhood who found her name not easy of pronunciation by the average English tongue she was known by the friendly nickname of "The French Miss." When I knew her, she was resigned to her lonely life among strangers.
The world will not be the worse, and may be the better, for knowing one day what I am now about to trust to your ear alone." My brother never again alluded to the narrative which he had confided to me, until the later time when I was sitting by his deathbed. He asked if I still remembered the story of Jeromette. "Tell it to others," he said, "as I have told it to you."
The two prisoners had hardly been locked up when she was dressing herself in a low, damp entresol over one of those foul shops where remnants are sold, pieces stolen by tailors and dressmakers an establishment kept by an old maid known as La Romette, from her Christian name Jeromette.
The Law advancing no further than this may have discovered circumstances of suspicion, but no certainty. The Law, in default of direct evidence to convict the prisoner, may have rightly decided in letting him go free. But I persisted in believing that the man was guilty. I declare that he, and he alone, was the murderer of Jeromette. And now, you know why.
I stretched out my hands to her imploringly. I said: "Speak to me O, once again speak to me, Jeromette." Her eyes rested on me with a divine compassion in them. She lifted her hand, and pointed to the photograph on my desk, with a gesture which bade me turn the card. I turned it. The name of the man who had left my house that morning was inscribed on it, in her own handwriting.
The portrait that had been found in my senior pupil's bedroom was the portrait of Jeromette! I HAD sent the housekeeper out of my study. I was alone, with the photograph of the Frenchwoman on my desk. There could surely be little doubt about the discovery that had burst upon me.
The unnamed person who was the obstacle to my pupil's prospects in life, the unnamed person in whose company he was assailed by temptations which made him tremble for himself, stood revealed to me now as being, in all human probability, no other than Jeromette. Had she bound him in the fetters of the marriage which he had himself proposed? Had she discovered his place of refuge in my house?
There was one moment, and one only, when the fear came to me that my reason might be shaken. I caught myself keeping time to the slow tramp of the horse's feet with the slow utterances of these words, repeated over and over again: "Jeromette is dead. Jeromette is dead." But my will was still my own: I was able to control myself, to impose silence on my own muttering lips. And I rode on quietly.
Ordering my horse to be saddled, I rode instantly to the railway-station. The train by which he had traveled to London had reached the terminus nearly an hour since. The one useful course that I could take, by way of quieting the dreadful misgivings crowding one after another on my mind, was to telegraph to Jeromette at the address at which I had last seen her.
I say, and believe, that Jeromette kept her word with me. She died young, and died miserably. And I heard of it from herself. Take up the Trial again, and look at the circumstances that were revealed during the investigation in court. His motive for murdering her is there.
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