“Why are you so keen?” I asked weakly. “And what is it you want to
see.”
“Oh, everything! The place where it happened, and the weapon, and the
body, and any finger-prints or interesting things like that. I’ve never
had a chance of being right in on a murder like this before. It’ll last
me all my life?”
I turned away, sickened. What were women coming to nowadays? The girl’s
ghoulish excitement nauseated me. I had read of the mobs of women who
besieged the law courts when some wretched man was being tried for his
life on the capital charge. I had sometimes wondered who these women
were. Now I knew. They were of the likeness of Cinderella, young, yet
obsessed with a yearning for morbid excitement, for sensation at any
price, without regard to any decency or good feeling. The vividness of
the girl’s beauty had attracted me in spite of myself, yet at heart I
retained my first impression of disapproval and dislike. I thought of
my mother, long since dead. What would she have said of this strange
modern product of girlhood? The pretty face with the paint and powder,
and the ghoulish mind behind!
“Come off your high horse,” said the lady suddenly. “And don’t give
yourself airs. When you got called to this job, did you put your nose
in the air and say it was a nasty business, and you wouldn’t be mixed
up in it?”
“No, but—”
“If you’d been here on a holiday, wouldn’t you be nosing round just the
same as I am? Of course you would.”
“I’m a man. You’re a woman.”
“Your idea of a woman is some one who gets on a chair and shrieks if
she sees a mouse. That’s all prehistoric. But you _will___ show me
round, won’t you? You see, it might make a big difference to me.”
“In what way?”
“They’re keeping all the reporters out. I might make a big scoop with
one of the papers. You don’t know how much they pay for a bit of inside
stuff.”