Lady Audley’s Secret

Robert returns to Fig-tree Court to find no letters from George. Exhausted and worried, Robert falls asleep on George’s bed. He dreams that he has to go to strange places to uncover the secrets of the telegram, and that he goes to Helen Talboys’ grave to find her headstone gone.

Robert wakes to knocking at the door of his apartment. He assumes it is his incompetent housekeeper, Mrs. Maloney, who probably forgot her key again. Another knock comes, then Robert hears the key turning in the door. Mrs. Maloney enters, but says she did not knock at all, and instead just let herself in with her key.

Robert thinks about the mystery of the telegraph, questioning if Maldon purposely separated Robert from George or harmed George in order to get the 20,000-pound inheritance Robert manages for Georgey. He concludes that neither of these options explains the telegram.

Robert goes to Liverpool but does not find George’s name on the passenger list for the one ship heading to Australia. The clerk does remember a young man with his arm in his sling going by the name of Thomas Brown, but Robert doesn’t think it’s George.

Having concluded that George did not leave England, Robert returns to London and begins making a “Journal of Facts Connected with the Disappearance of George Talboys.” He reviews the list and then places it in his desk. He decides he will go back to Audley Court to look for George.