“Where has he been found?” Amelius asked, snatching up his hat.
“There’s no hurry, sir,” Morcross answered quietly. “When I had the
honour of seeing you yesterday, you said you meant to make Jervy suffer
for what he had done. Somebody else has saved you the trouble. He was
found this evening in the river.”
“Drowned?”
“Stabbed in three places, sir; and put out of the way in the
river--that’s the surgeon’s report. Robbed of everything he
possessed--that’s the police report, after searching his pockets.”
Amelius was silent. It had not entered into his calculations that crime
breeds crime, and that the criminal might escape him under that law.
For the moment, he was conscious of a sense of disappointment, revealing
plainly that the desire for vengeance had mingled with the higher
motives which animated him. He felt uneasy and ashamed, and longed as
usual to take refuge in action from his own unwelcome thoughts. “Are
you sure it is the man?” he asked. “My description may have misled the
police--I should like to see him myself.”
“Certainly, sir. While we are about it, if you feel any curiosity to
trace Jervy’s ill-gotten money, there’s a chance (from what I have
heard) of finding the man with the squint. The people at our place think
it’s likely he may have been concerned in the robbery, if he hasn’t
committed the murder.”
In an hour after, under the guidance of Morcross, Amelius passed through
the dreary doors of a deadhouse, situated on the southern bank of the
Thames, and saw the body of Jervy stretched out on a stone slab. The
guardian who held the lantern, inured to such horrible sights, declared
that the corpse could not have been in the water more than two days. To
any one who had seen the murdered man, the face, undisfigured by injury
of any kind, was perfectly recognizable. Amelius knew him again, dead,
as certainly as he had known him again, living, when he was waiting for
Phoebe in the street.
“If you’re satisfied, sir,” said Morcross, “the inspector at the
police-station is sending a sergeant to look after ‘Wall-Eyes’--the name
they give hereabouts to the man suspected of the robbery. We can take
the sergeant with us in the cab, if you like.”
Still keeping on the southern bank of the river, they drove for
a quarter of an hour in a westerly direction, and stopped at a
public-house. The sergeant of police went in by himself to make the
first inquiries.
“We are a day too late, sir,” he said to Amelius, on returning to the
cab. “Wall-Eyes was here last night, and Mother Sowler with him, judging
by the description. Both of them drunk--and the woman the worse of the
two. The landlord knew nothing more about it; but there’s a man at
the bar tells me he heard of them this morning (still drinking) at the
Dairy.”
“The Dairy?” Amelius repeated.
Morcross interposed with the necessary explanation. “An old house, sir,
which once stood by itself in the fields. It was a dairy a hundred years
ago; and it has kept the name ever since, though it’s nothing but a low
lodging house now.”
“One of the worst places on this side of the river,” the sergeant added,
“The landlord’s a returned convict. Sly as he is we shall have him again
yet, for receiving stolen goods. There’s every sort of thief among his
lodgers, from a pickpocket to a housebreaker. It’s my duty to continue
the inquiry, sir; but a gentleman like you will be better, I should say,
out of such a place as that.”
Still disquieted by the sight that he had seen in the deadhouse, and by
the associations which that sight had recalled, Amelius was ready for
any adventure which might relieve his mind. Even the prospect of a visit
to a thieves’ lodging house was more welcome to him than the prospect of
going home alone. “If there’s no serious objection to it,” he said, “I
own I should like to see the place.”
“You’ll be safe enough with us,” the sergeant replied. “If you don’t
mind filthy people and bad language--all right, sir! Cabman, drive to
the Dairy.”
Their direction was now towards the south, through a perfect labyrinth
of mean and dirty streets. Twice the driver was obliged to ask his way.
On the second occasion the sergeant, putting his head out of the window
to stop the cab, cried, “Hullo! there’s something up.”
They got out in front of a long low rambling house, a complete contrast
to the modern buildings about it. Late as the hour was, a mob had
assembled in front of the door. The police were on the spot keeping the
people in order.
Morcross and the sergeant pushed their way through the crowd, leading
Amelius between them. “Something wrong, sir, in the back kitchen,” said
one of the policemen answering the sergeant while he opened the street
door. A few yards down the passage there was a second door, with a
man on the watch by it. “There’s a nice to-do downstairs,” the man
announced, recognizing the sergeant, and unlocking the door with a key
which he took from his pocket. “The landlord at the Dairy knows his
lodgers, sir,” Morcross whispered to Amelius; “the place is kept like
a prison.” As they passed through the second door, a frantic voice
startled them, shouting in fury from below. An old man came hobbling
up the kitchen stairs, his eyes wild with fear, his long grey hair all
tumbled over his face. “Oh, Lord, have you got the tools for breaking
open the door?” he asked, wringing his dirty hands in an agony of
supplication. “She’ll set the house on fire! she’ll kill my wife and
daughter!” The sergeant pushed him contemptuously out of the way,
and looked round for Amelius. “It’s only the landlord, sir; keep near
Morcross, and follow me.”
They descended the kitchen stairs, the frantic cries below growing
louder and louder at every step they took; and made their way through
the thieves and vagabonds crowding together in the passage. Passing on
their right hand a solid old oaken door fast closed, they reached an
open wicket-gate of iron which led into a stone-paved yard. A heavily
barred window was now visible in the back wall of the house, raised
three or four feet from the pavement of the yard. The room within was
illuminated by a blaze of gaslight. More policemen were here, keeping
back more inquisitive lodgers. Among the spectators was a man with a
hideous outward squint, holding by the window-bars in a state of
drunken terror. The sergeant looked at him, and beckoned to one of the
policemen. “Take him to the station; I shall have something to say to
Wall-Eyes when he’s sober. Now then! stand back all of you, and let’s
see what’s going on in the kitchen.”
He took Amelius by the arm, and led him to the window. Even the sergeant
started when the scene inside met his view. “By God!” he cried, “it’s
Mother Sowler herself.”
It _was_ Mother Sowler. The horrible woman was tramping round and round
in the middle of the kitchen, like a beast in a cage; raving in the
dreadful drink-madness called delirium tremens. In the farthest corner
of the room, barricaded behind the table, the landlord’s wife and
daughter crouched in terror of their lives. The gas, turned full on,
blazed high enough to blacken the ceiling, and showed the heavy bolts
shot at the top and bottom of the solid door. Nothing less than a
battering-ram could have burst that door in from the outer side; an
hour’s work with the file would have failed to break a passage through
the bars over the window. “How did she get there?” the sergeant asked.
“Run downstairs, and bolted herself in, while the missus and the young
‘un were cooking”--was the answering cry from the people in the yard. As
they spoke, another vain attempt was made to break in the door from
the passage. The noise of the heavy blows redoubled the frenzy of the
terrible creature in the kitchen, still tramping round and round under
the blazing gaslight. Suddenly, she made a dart at the window, and
confronted the men looking in from the yard. Her staring eyes were
bloodshot; a purple-red flush was over her face; her hair waved wildly
about her, torn away in places by her own hands. “Cats!” she screamed,
glaring out of the window, “millions of cats! all their months wide
open spitting at me! Fire! fire to scare away the cats!” She searched
furiously in her pocket, and tore out a handful of loose papers. One of
them escaped, and fluttered downward to a wooden press under the window.
Amelius was nearest, and saw it plainly as it fell, “Good heavens!” he
exclaimed, “it’s a bank-note!” “Wall-Eyes’ money!” shouted the thieves
in the yard; “She’s going to burn Wall-Eyes’ money!” The madwoman turned
back to the middle of the kitchen, leapt up at the gas-burner, and set
fire to the bank-notes. She scattered them flaming all round her on the
kitchen floor. “Away with you!” she shouted, shaking her fists at the
visionary multitude of cats. “Away with you, up the chimney! Away with
you, out of the window!” She sprang back to the window, with her crooked
fingers twisted in her hair! “The snakes!” she shrieked; “the snakes are
hissing again in my hair! the beetles are crawling over my face!”
She tore at her hair; she scraped her face with long black nails that
lacerated the flesh. Amelius turned away, unable to endure the sight of
her. Morcross took his place, eyed her steadily for a moment, and saw
the way to end it. “A quarter of gin!” he shouted. “Quick! before she
leaves the window!” In a minute he had the pewter measure in his hand,
and tapped at the window. “Gin, Mother Sowler! Break the window,
and have a drop of gin!” For a moment, the drunkard mastered her own
dreadful visions at the sight of the liquor. She broke a pane of
glass with her clenched fist. “The door!” cried Morcross, to the
panic-stricken women, barricaded behind the table. “The door!” he
reiterated, as he handed the gin in through the bars. The elder woman
was too terrified to understand him; her bolder daughter crawled
under the table, rushed across the kitchen, and drew the bolts. As the
madwoman turned to attack her, the room was filled with men, headed by
the sergeant. Three of them were barely enough to control the frantic
wretch, and bind her hand and foot. When Amelius entered the kitchen,
after she had been conveyed to the hospital, a five-pound note on
the press (secured by one of the police), and a few frail black ashes
scattered thinly on the kitchen floor, were the only relics left of the
ill-gotten money.
After-inquiry, patiently pursued in more than one direction, failed to
throw any light on the mystery of Jervy’s death. Morcross’s report to
Amelius, towards the close of the investigation, was little more than
ingenious guess-work.
“It seems pretty clear, sir, in the first place, that Mother Sowler must
have overtaken Wall-Eyes, after he had left the letter at Mrs. Farnaby’s
lodgings. In the second place, we are justified (as I shall show
you directly) in assuming that she told him of the money in Jervy’s
possession, and that the two succeeded in discovering Jervy--no doubt
through Wall-Eyes’ superior knowledge of his master’s movements.
The evidence concerning the bank-notes proves this. We know, by the
examination of the people at the Dairy, that Wall-Eyes took from his
pocket a handful of notes, when they refused to send for liquor without
having the money first. We are also informed, that the breaking-out of
the drink-madness in Mother Sowler showed itself in her snatching the
notes out of his hand, and trying to strangle him--before she ran down
into the kitchen and bolted herself in. Lastly, Mrs. Farnaby’s bankers
have identified the note saved from the burning, as one of forty
five-pound notes paid to her cheque. So much for the tracing of the
money.
“I wish I could give an equally satisfactory account of the tracing of
the crime. We can make nothing of Wall-Eyes. He declares that he didn’t
even know Jervy was dead, till we told him; and he swears he found
the money dropped in the street. It is needless to say that this last
assertion is a lie. Opinions are divided among us as to whether he is
answerable for the murder as well as the robbery, or whether there was a
third person concerned in it. My own belief is that Jervy was drugged by
the old woman (with a young woman very likely used as a decoy), in some
house by the riverside, and then murdered by Wall-Eyes in cold blood.
We have done our best to clear the matter up, and we have not succeeded.
The doctors give us no hope of any assistance from Mother Sowler. If
she gets over the attack (which is doubtful), they say she will die to
a certainty of liver disease. In short, my own fear is that this will
prove to be one more of those murders which are mysteries to the police
as well as the public.”
The report of the case excited some interest, published in the
newspapers in conspicuous type. Meddlesome readers wrote letters,
offering complacently stupid suggestions to the police. After a while,
another crime attracted general attention; and the murder of Jervy
disappeared from the public memory, among other forgotten murders of
modern times.